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ryanjdonovan · 3 months

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DONOVAN’S OSCAR PROGNOSTICATION 2024

Truth -- that seems to be the theme for the films at the Oscars this year. What is truth? Is there such a thing? Can it ever truly be known? (Anatomy of a Fall)… Is it perception? (American Fiction)… Is it fluid, subject to interpretation? (Poor Things)… Is it disputable? (Nyad)… Is it timeless? (Past Lives)… Is it colored by history? (Oppenheimer)… Is it clouded by memory and nostalgia? (The Holdovers)… Is it based on perspective, bent by fame? (Maestro)… Is it subjective, controlled by a narrative or manipulated for personal gain? (May December)… Is it controlled by power? (Barbie)… Does it get rewritten? (Killers of the Flower Moon)… Does it become forgotten or ignored? (The Zone of Interest)… Is it purple? (The Color Purple)… (Okay, I struggled with that last one.)

At a time when we doubt that anything is true, how can we believe in the Oscars themselves? It's still secretive and opaque. At least the cronyism this year has been discretely kept behind closed doors, as it should be, as opposed to transparently flaunted on social media (like last year with the Andrea Riseborough nomination scandal). So this year, if the Oscars are going to be manipulated, at least they'll have the decency to hide it from us.

Here's one truth that's irrefutable: My 25th annual Oscar predictions are guaranteed 100% accurate. So read on… and get ready for some unpopular opinions. Think I loved masterworks from celebrated auteurs, like Oppenheimer, Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Zone of Interest? No! Overrated, all of them. Film snobs (and Mattel executives) are sure to castigate and shame me for my treacherous viewpoints… because they are unwilling to accept the truth.

Fact Check = True: You can follow me on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/ryanjdonovan/

BEST PICTURE:

SHOULD WIN: The Holdovers WILL WIN: Oppenheimer GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: May December INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: The Taste of Things

It's a big year for characters that have been name-checked in retro popular music: Oppenheimer (in Sting's 'Russians'), Leonard Bernstein (in R.E.M.'s 'It's the End of the World as We Know It', Barbie and Ken (in Aqua's 'Barbie Girl'). Unfortunately for The Zone of Interest, there are very few pop songs about Nazis…

Oppenheimer will win Best Picture. That is certain. But should it? Maybe the better question is: Have we been tricked? Tricked into thinking this is the most important film of the year? Into believing that the only acceptable way to see this film is in 70mm IMAX on the biggest screen possible, when 90% of the film is people talking in small rooms? Into believing that this is dazzling, dynamic filmmaking because the editing, sound design, and score make it all (again, 90% talking) so seemingly intense? Into believing the most complex and destructive calculations that the world has even known can be written down and solved on a solitary blackboard or a single sheet of paper? My answer: Yes, we have been tricked. Now, I think it's a fantastic movie, and it deserves a lot of the recognition it's getting. And I'm exaggerating my assertion that we've been tricked… but only a little. Other than the One Big Explosion, was it really critical to see this in a format that only existed in 11 states (fewer than 20 theaters) in the entire country? I can't believe I'm being heretical of the theatrical experience, but… no, it wasn't. If you just saw it on a regular movie screen, was that okay? Yes, you can be forgiven for your cinematic transgression. (And, for all the hoopla about the technical perfection of the theatrical film print, I still had a hard time hearing the dialogue, which has been true of all of Christopher Nolan's recent films.) I can't shake the notion that the film is relentlessly propulsive… but also very boring. The sound, the way it's cut together, and the music (and let's be honest, the nudity) essentially manipulate the audience into believing the story is more interesting than it actually is. Without those elements working overtime, would we be nearly as captivated? Would we even care about the outcome of the trial or the hearing or the tribunal or the security clearance inquisition or whatever the hell is going on? Honestly, I wouldn't even put Oppenheimer in Nolan's all-time top 5. An apt comparison -- but superior film -- is Dunkirk: historical events, thrumming sound design, thriller pacing, time-hopping story, Oscar acclaim. However, that film has real stakes and drama, not senate committees and conference rooms and smirched reputations (the atomic bomb, of course, notwithstanding). Similar to Oppenheimer, during the first watch, many of the filmmaking elements in Dunkirk call attention to themselves, and the film tends to get in its own way. But on subsequent viewings, those initially-troublesome aspects pay off, and the viewing experience vastly improves. Today, I'm willing to call Dunkirk a masterpiece. Maybe the same will be true with Oppenheimer. I guess I only have to watch it five more times to find out.

So, my personal pick for what Should Win is not Oppenheimer. Unfortunately, I can't really decide between my top three films: The Holdovers, Anatomy of a Fall, and Past Lives. It keeps flipping. Ask me on a different day, and I'll give you a different answer. Such distinct movies. They couldn't be more disparate in the ways that they appeal to me. Okay, I've made a decision… for today anyway. Here I go again, voting with my heart instead of my head…

My choice is The Holdovers. (I can hear your disappointment.) Many would argue this is exactly the kind of dusty film we should be getting away from for Best Picture, and that my endorsement is the best evidence for why it shouldn't win. Fair. My cerebral choice would be Anatomy of a Fall -- that's the film I've spent the most time pondering over after the fact. But The Holdovers speaks my language. That's the best way I can describe my personal connection to it. I wasn't alive in 1970 and I didn't go to prep school and I don't know what my history teacher smelled like. But somehow it resonates. This is probably the Alexander Payne movie with the most heart and the most sincerity -- and that earnestness mixed with all the gleeful bitterness and sarcasm that you expect from Payne is what makes it so gratifying. For me anyway. Everybody else apparently prefers to watch bombs explode.

Masquerading as a domestic drama and a legal procedural, Anatomy of a Fall is actually a puzzle -- inviting and challenging, frustrating and rewarding -- and we're not even sure we have all the pieces. This is a good thing. As we go through the steps of the dramatic conflict and courtroom proceedings, we are compelled to pick up pieces along the way, and try to make sense of how they fit. We're even put through the paces as if we are being judged ourselves -- we endure the details and subjectivity and inhumanity of a trial. (And not just any trial, a French one. Which is nothing like American trials we see depicted in movies and TV. It's bonkers. I have no idea if it's accurate, but it seems that storytelling and conjecture are much more important than facts and evidence.) For me, it's an apt allegory for any conflict where there are multiple perspectives and selective facts (e.g., anything online, or every episode of Judge Judy); I find the older I get, the more I feel this way. By the end of the movie, when trying to draw a conclusion, we don't even know if we can trust the puzzle pieces that we've collected and stitched together. And we're forced to confront the realization: Maybe we can never know the truth… or, more distressingly, maybe there's no such thing as the truth.

Past Lives, the least assuming of all the nominees, might feel slight compared to other films that tackle more 'important' subject matter. (The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, or so they say.) The 'what might have been' theme is tried and true, but this movie puts a different spin on it, with the Korean concept of "in-yun" -- a kind of timeless fate between people. And the sweeping love story doesn't rely on shortcuts (overt sexiness or titillating dialogue or suggestive imagery) or manipulation (sentimental music or emotional close-ups). First-time director Celine Song gives the naturalistic film space to breathe and time to think. A prime example (Spoiler Warning, for those who have not seen the film) is the final exchange between Nora and Hae Sung, which is truly exquisite. They talk about what their relationship will be (in this life and future ones), and she says she doesn't know. Initially, I heard his restrained response as "See ya, then" -- a deflated resignation and farewell. But as it sunk in, I heard it as "See you then," as in "I'll see you in our next life" -- not as a goodbye, but as a resolute promise that he'll wait for her forever. Subtle and deeply affecting. (So, what about Nora and her husband Arthur, then? I'm still a cynic, of course; this film did not thaw my cold heart. They seem hopelessly tired of each other… and they don't even have kids yet. Sorry guys, time to start thinking about the next past life.)

It's a little hard to describe to someone why I like Poor Things without sounding like a depraved lunatic. "It's a really sweet coming-of-age story about a young woman who runs away from her domineering father -- who conducted experimental surgeries on her and an undead baby -- and has a sexual awakening that takes her across an otherworldly European hellscape, leading her to a life of prostitution and revenge. Her numerous dalliances, which are graphic and sexual but not actually sexy, could be perceived as statutory rape since she has the mind of a child. It's really great. Hilarious." Of course, the film is more than that, but it's a little hard to put into words. I can't say I relate to any of it, but the perverse humor, fanciful sensibility, and fairytale/nightmare mash-up strike a chord somehow. Maybe its power is in allowing the viewer a wide range of interpretations -- control or chaos, losing religion or finding faith, shunning love or welcoming it -- it's all there. A couple things hold it back from being a truly superior film for me, specifically the dark turn in the final quarter (I get the point, but I don't need it) and the occasional bluntness (using a chainsaw when a kitchen knife would do.) Overall a rewarding experience, but it's clearly not for everyone.

American Fiction has one of the toughest challenges of the nominated films: how to balance its many themes while still making their place in the story feel natural. It's not a breezy list: death, family trauma, financial strain, artistic integrity, stereotype fetishization, heartbreak, commodification of pain, self-serving elitism, professional disrespect, societal expectations, alienation -- mostly as they pertain to race. The film succeeds incredibly well. Despite the personal and touchy subject matter, it's inviting, not hostile. And despite its density and potential weight, it's thoughtful and light on its feet. (Categorizing it as a comedy, which has been the case during awards season, is a bit misleading; half of it is satire, with plenty of humorous moments, but it's also a drama that avoids getting bogged down.) Best Picture is not likely where the film will get rewarded, but I have a feeling it won't go home empty-handed.

When Killers of the Flower Moon debuted, it seemed like it might have good chance at unseating Oppenheimer as the favorite. And while there were plenty of rapturous reviews (though it's unclear how much of the fanfare was Scorsese-worship and how much was genuine love of the film), it never quite got there. While admirable and epic and filled with exquisite craftsmanship, it feels somehow lacking. True, the themes of evil in the hearts of men and descent into hell are undeniable and fuel every single scene (at an hour and a half in, the situation is already pretty execrable… and then they announce the KKK is coming). But the overall story itself doesn't quite justify the 3.5-hour runtime. The complex web of deceit and corruption might be more compelling if every character perpetrating the crimes wasn't such a moron. The ensuing investigation isn't exactly a chess match; it's more of a game of checkers against a five-year-old. (Bonus points to the brainiac who asks a lawyer if it's legal to adopt children and then murder them for financial gain.)

The Barbie trailer declares that the movie is for people who love Barbie and people who hate Barbie. But what about people who have never cared one way or the other about Barbie? Because that's me. So maybe not surprisingly, I neither love nor hate the movie. It's funny, engaging, and enjoyable. But I never saw it as a contender to vie for Best Picture. If you've been absorbing pop-culture satire anytime in the past 60 years, you know Barbie-as-metaphor is not a novel idea -- sketch comedy, music, The Twilight Zone, movies, etc. (How quickly we forget about Tyra Banks.) The movie has a lot of things to say, has been a huge success, and obviously means a lot to a great many people. But I, ever the curmudgeon, like to look with a more cynical eye: Is this a pro-consumerism movie? Or an anti-consumerism movie? Or a movie masquerading as pro-consumerism in order to satirize unabashed consumerism while actually convincing us of the virtues of anti-consumerism but underneath really just being a vehicle to sell merchandise for a large corporation? (Hint: Do you think Barbie doll sales increased in 2023?) Where are the lines between self-awareness and subversion and hypocrisy? Only Twitter knows for sure.

“A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.” Oh boy. That's exactly what we want to see at the beginning of a movie, right? -- a clear indication that it will leave us confused. That quote, from Leonard Bernstein, is what opens the film Maestro. And sure enough, it delivers on that promise: almost no answers. As someone who knew next to nothing about the legendary conductor ahead of time, I don't know what I was expecting to get out of this experience. And despite spending two hours with the character, I don't think I really know much now. Does that mean I wanted a more traditional biopic, a Behind the Music episode, or a film adaptation of his Wikipedia page? Sadly, maybe. The movie has its fans, and nabbed several nominations, so clearly some people are responding to it. I'm sure director/star Bradley Cooper knew there was no way to please everyone. (Maybe that's why Steven Spielberg pawned it off on him; Spielberg had planned to direct, but handed the keys to Cooper after seeing A Star Is Born, and stayed on as a producer. Incidentally, Spielberg actually has more nominations for producing (13) than directing (9); this film makes him the most-nominated producer ever.) Don't expect this film to factor in the race -- as soon as Cooper missed out on a directing nomination, its Best Picture chances were dead in the water.

I'm not quite sure what to say (or how to feel) about The Zone of Interest. Through unique sound design (what you hear rather than what you see), it's a film that highlights the atrocities of the Holocaust by presenting it with an unsettling sense of normalcy, as seen through the daily lives of the Nazi family that lives next to Auschwitz. The banality and ignorance are the point. The idea seems to be that anti-shock value is even more disturbing than shock value. But it's not sneaky, it's overt. (Case in point: the flourishes -- like the red screen, the reverse negative, or the loud screeching sounds -- which may or may not be there just to wake up any dozing audience members.) It's easily the most polarizing of all the nominees. Whether you appreciate the film probably depends greatly on how effective you think the approach is. Personally, I find the technique and the structure -- and therefore, the film -- confounding, preventing me from fully connecting with it. It strikes me more as an experience than a narrative -- novel and provocative, yes, but not successful in terms of story. (And it may or may not be pointing a finger at modern-day museum cleaning ladies, I can't be sure.)

My pick for Ingloriously Snubbed is The Taste of Things, which was France's submission for Best International Film (instead of Anatomy of a Fall), but shockingly didn't end up making the cut for Best Picture. It's a 19th-century French romance between a mature monogamous couple, set in a rustic country kitchen, cooking gourmet cuisine the entire time, with no violence, swearing, or enmity. In other words: porn for my wife.

Here is my unsolicited ballot with all the Best Picture nominees, from best to worst:

The Holdovers

Anatomy of a Fall

Past Lives

Oppenheimer

Poor Things

American Fiction

Killers of the Flower Moon

Barbie

Maestro

The Zone of Interest

BEST ACTOR:

SHOULD WIN: Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) WILL WIN: Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon) INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Ralph Fiennes (The Rat Catcher)

After months of being neck-and-neck with Paul Giamatti, Cillian Murphy has emerged as the front-runner for his work in Oppenheimer. (Though it's not a sure thing; there's always at least one curveball on Oscar night.) While Murphy and Giamatti both give bravura performances and are singularly perfect for their roles, Giamatti could probably do his Holdovers character in his sleep (or while eating a cheeseburger at In-N-Out). Murphy, meanwhile, gives a performance unlike anything we've seen from him, making it seem like more of a revelation. He certainly benefits from the year's best cinematography: framed like a portrait, wearing his hat and coat like a superhero outfit, paranoia frothing over his hard-edged face, and fish-eye-lens shots in close-up rendering him like a deer in headlights. There's also the drama-versus-comedy bias at the Oscars, of course. But in the end, voters will choose Murphy for delivering a career-defining performance and being the center of mass in the movie of the year. (Then again, you could use the same description for Margot Robbie in Barbie, and we know how that turned out with the Academy.)

The central figure in The Holdovers is what you might get if you put "Paul Giamatti as a teacher" into an A.I. engine. It is, without a doubt, the Paul Giamatti-est Paul Giamatti role ever. And it is totally my jam (which is definitely a phrase that people still use). After their magical collaboration in Sideways, it's hard to believe it's taken Giamatti and director Alexander Payne almost 20 years to team up again. (Then again, I realize "grouchy Paul Giamatti star vehicle" is probably not high on many studios' wish lists.) Readers of this article over the years (both of you) know he's a first-ballot Snubbed Hall of Famer: American Splendor in 2004, Sideways in 2005, and Should Win / Will Win for Cinderella Man in 2006. And so, of course, this year I'm picking… someone else to win. As much as it betrays the very fabric of my being, I think I have to endorse Murphy for Best Actor. In terms of Oscar bait, Giamatti is missing a key element: The Big Emotional Speech. You can almost picture it -- at the end, when he praises his student to his parents in front of the headmaster -- it could easily be a three-minute swooning monologue, full of lionizing epithets, clever wordplay, and inspirational Greek quotes, providing dramatic salvation for the boy while heartbreakingly sacrificing his own career, eliciting cheers as you uncontrollably and elatedly shout at the screen through tear-filled eyes, "O Captain! My Captain!" or "You're the man now, dog!" The Big Emotional Speech would have secured the Oscar immediately. But that doesn't happen. Payne doesn't subvert it (as you might expect), he simply avoids it. That's not Payne, and that sure as hell isn't this movie. True to life, Giamatti effectively sacrifices the Oscar by dutifully serving the film. Like the Hall of Famer he is.

With American Fiction, Jeffrey Wright finally relinquishes the title of Greatest Living Actor to Never Be Nominated. (On the ladies' side, Emily Blunt does the same with Oppenheimer.) You may recall that I accurately predicted a nomination for Wright two years ago (never mind the fact that I said it would be for a different film this year, Asteroid City). With Fiction, Wright elevates the already-crackling material in a way that I don’t think anyone else could. He seems extremely at ease with his character, despite the fact that the character is not at ease at all. His is probably the most believable portrayal in this race, a person you might know in real life. (Like, I would probably be his despised neighbor, Phillip.) He has some momentum here at the end of Oscar voting, having the most recent movie and winning the Indie Spirit Award, but it won't be enough to pull him ahead of Murphy or Giamatti. (I'm sure he'll take solace in the fact that I have him in a virtual three-way tie with those two actors for Should Win.)

If the Best Actor award is for who wants it the most, Bradley Cooper would win hands down for Maestro. The man is campaigning hard. If you've seen or heard one of the 5,000 interviews he's done this season, you know what I'm talking about. How Leonard Bernstein was speaking through him. How he trained 36 hours a day to be a conductor. How he was handpicked to direct the project by God (a.k.a. Steven Spielberg). In each interview, he makes sure to weep at least once and tries to work in the story where The Hangover director Todd Phillips told him he wished he believed in himself as much as Phillips did. To his credit, it all seems very earnest. I truly believe that handwritten notes from Michael Mann make him cry, and I truly believe that he very much wants to accept an Oscar. As for the performance, it's transformative, but often feels like it slips into caricature, especially in the second half -- it's like Joe Piscopo doing Frank Sinatra, with Ben Stiller's Maury Finkle and Rick Moranis's Merv Griffin sprinkled in. And as far as character motivation, I'm not entirely sure -- he seems to have two pursuits: getting summer to sing in him and humping anyone with nice hair. As actor, writer, and producer of the film, Cooper adds three nominations to his previous nine. But at the end of the night, the hardest-wanting man in show business will be 0 for 12, I'm afraid.

After years (decades!) of admirable work in supporting roles, it's nice to see Rustin's Colman Domingo get recognition in a star-making turn. It's just a shame it's not a better movie overall. The screenplay aside, the film has the immobility of a walled-in stage play, with performances that play to the back row. (Maybe not coincidentally, director George C. Wolfe has a highly-accomplished career in theater.) Everyone in the ensemble seems to be overdoing it by about 10% (even Jeffrey Wright, who's so great in American Fiction), with a striking lack of naturalism (especially when compared to, say, Past Lives, which got zero acting nominations). As such, Domingo, playing real-life activist Bayard Rustin, feels a bit broad early on; but he's at his best in the final act, when the performance rises to meet the poignance of the events in the film.

Ralph Fiennes, my Ingloriously Snubbed choice for The Rat Catcher, is the best argument for why performances in short films should be eligible for Acting Oscars.

BEST ACTRESS:

SHOULD WIN: Emma Stone (Poor Things) WILL WIN: Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Natalie Portman (May December) INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Juliette Binoche (The Taste of Things)

As we come down to the wire, it seems that Lily Gladstone is edging past Emma Stone, for her heart-wrenching role in Killers of the Flower Moon. They've been deadlocked most of the season; just a few days ago I would have said Stone had the slight edge. But the Screen Actors Guild award tips the race in Gladstone's favor. Really, it's still up for grabs, but if I were wagering, I wouldn’t bet against Gladstone. And while she gives a strong and effecting performance, she's not quite my top choice -- though it has more to do with the film itself. Despite being the lynchpin of the movie, I don't quite believe the love story between her character and Leonardo DiCaprio's. Her character seems too savvy and too emotionally mature to fall for DiCaprio's halfwit baloney. And because that relationship is so essential to the narrative (and true to life, according to their descendants), and because it allows the viewer to understand how so many awful events in the story take place, my disbelief causes much of the film to fall apart. And unfortunately, it's holding me back from fully endorsing her performance.

Emma Stone gives an astonishing, hilarious, and frank performance in Poor Things, as her character goes on a globe-trotting adventure of self-discovery and sexual awakening. (She could be the protagonist of the Seinfeld movie-within-the-show, 'Rochelle, Rochelle'.) She's my slight pick for Should Win over Sandra Hüller, based on the high level of difficulty in her role: She has to portray the mental and physical evolution of a child growing to adulthood in a woman's body (as well as portray a lot of "furious jumping") -- and despite the inherent bizarreness, none of it ever comes across as false. Her journey feels shocking, but also inevitable. Despite being manipulated by her 'father', she follows in his footsteps, using increasingly-scientific curiosity and methods to evaluate things, people, and experiences. (You know, she's something of a scientist herself.) Having won already for La La Land, many voters will be happy to give the award to someone else. But for my money, Stone's Poor Things performance blows La La Land away. (And I still hold a grudge against La La Land for crapping on A Flock of Seagulls.)

Watching Sandra Hüller's character, who's accused of murder in Anatomy of a Fall, she's like Schrödinger's Cat -- she's both guilty and not guilty. She skillfully draws us into her perspective while somehow keeping her distance; we empathize with her, but we never know what she's thinking. Upon that intimate unknowability, she adds more complex layers -- love for her son, knowing that she'll be judged in the public's eye even if she's found innocent, and arguing a point that she doesn't believe (or says she doesn't believe) for the sake of her defense. It's a remarkable turn from an actress largely unknown in the United States. Hüller may benefit from double-dipping (she's also fantastic in The Zone of Interest), but voters are clearly considering this a contest between Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone.

In another year, Carey Mulligan might get my vote for her performance in Maestro. Director and co-star Bradley Cooper has been vocal about Mulligan being the true star of the movie. She's a formidable foil for Cooper in the first half, though she risks veering into affectation. That changes in the second half, when the film ratchets up, and Mulligan's performance ascends, becoming more naturalistic and bare -- and as a result, more connected to the audience. It's a showcase for the breadth of her talent. Through it all, she more than holds her own in the cacophony of argumentative dialogue that gives the film its signature melody.

Why are we doing this? Why do we keep doing this to poor Annette Bening? Nominating her again when she has no chance to win? She doesn't need our charity. Her fifth nomination (for Nyad) feels like an unnecessary courtesy, especially given the number of other deserving actresses this year (more on that later). To be fair, at the outset of Oscar season, this seemed -- on paper anyway -- like a great shot for Bening to finally land the trophy: a biopic of a complicated real-life character, a unique story about a mind-boggling accomplishment, a punishing physical performance, a commentary about age and perseverance, and a potential showcase for emotion and drama. Unfortunately, the movie itself, about long-distance open-water swimmer Diana Nyad, is less than amazing, and her performance probably suffers because of it. She finds better footing (swimming?) in the second half of the film, however, when stilted dialogue and imitation give way to more authentic emotion. A bit of a surprise when nominations were read, Bening will have to hope for another crack at Oscar glory in a better movie. Regardless, I suspect she's doing just fine without us.

As for my pick for Ingloriously Snubbed… Thought I was going to say Margot Robbie for Barbie? I actually preferred her (abbreviated) performance in Asteroid City -- her scene was my favorite in the film. I have a few actresses I'd nominate over Robbie: The official choice is Juliette Binoche (The Taste of Things), but Greta Lee (Past Lives) and Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Shayda) would also be worthy inclusions.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

SHOULD WIN: Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer) WILL WIN: Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Charles Melton (May December) INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Willem Dafoe (Poor Things)

There's little doubt that Robert Downey Jr. will win his first Oscar for Oppenheimer. Voters are responding to an overwhelming sense of "it's his time", "the movie is awesome", and "he gives a great acceptance speech" (oh, and "his performance is good"). A question they may ask, before casting their vote in the supporting category, is whether they think Downey has an Oscar-winning lead performance in him sometime in the future. (If Dolittle is any indication, probably not.) Personally, I'm not quite sure who to endorse, in a group of solid if not electrifying performances. (See Ingloriously Snubbed for my real pick.) It's maybe more of a process of elimination, but ultimately I land on Downey too. It's not exactly his most dynamic or captivating performance ever, but for a supporting role, he delivers the goods without going all 'Downey'. And, I'm not going to lie, I'm rooting for him too… I mean, he does give a great acceptance speech. (One lament about Oppenheimer's supporting roles: I wish they would have gotten Gene Hackman out of retirement, just so he could say the word "Oppenheimer" in his signature growl -- à la his Oppenheimer Funds commercials of yore.)

Just a few short years ago, I gave Robert De Niro a rare double-helping of Gloriously Omitted (for The Irishman and Joker) and suggested he hang up his holster. I'm happy to say the calls for his retirement were premature. Killers of the Flower Moon is the best De Niro in years (decades?) and his first well-earned nomination since 1991's Cape Fear. It's vintage De Niro, full of menace and manipulation -- a schemer who's just wise enough to know that he doesn't have to outsmart everyone, just the guy next to him. (In a movie landscape full of shared universes, is it possible this role is a Louis Cyphre origin story?)

It seemed inevitable that voters were going to include one of the standout supporting performances in Poor Things -- either Mark Ruffalo or Willem Dafoe. While I would have picked the other one (see below), this is probably the silliest, most dynamic, and (intentionally) funniest Ruffalo we've ever seen. (No "They knew!" grandstanding here.) It's unlike any part he's ever played, and his odd vocalizations serve him well in the role. Despite being the 'adult' in his relationship with Emma Stone's character, he really nails the I-didn't-get-my-way pouting that every parent knows well. While effective, it ultimately feels like he's play-acting a bit, instead of authentically inhabiting the role, so voters won't be swayed to give him the award.

Well, one doll we know won't be represented in Barbieland is Oscar Winner Ken. Ryan Gosling is more than game in Barbie, but this is probably the film's least likely shot at a trophy. Maybe Gosling's Ken can use his clicky-pen doctor powers to explain to me what the point of the Mattel sub-plot is and what the corporation is doing in the movie. I don't mean what Mattel represents, I mean what they literally do. Like, how do the Patriarchy Ken dolls get manufactured so fast? The Ken revolution (and corresponding mass production) seems to happen in the span of a day, without any involvement from the company. Does Mattel make dolls, or do the dolls somehow self-manifest based on the actions of the Barbieland characters with Mattel just reaping the benefits? Basically, I don't understand any of the Mattel movie logic. (And Will Ferrell clearly doesn't either.)

Sterling K. Brown was a bit of a late-breaking surprise for his part in American Fiction. After three Emmy awards and a bunch of recent nominations -- so many nominations -- it seemed inevitable that an Oscar nod was going to happen for him sooner or later (though his movie career has taken longer to fully launch than expected). While he has no real shot to win, his nomination is likely an indication of things to come. (An even surer sign that he's made it is that he's created sworn enemies -- the sincerest form of flattery in Hollywood -- in Charles Melton and Willem Dafoe, two actors that were hoping to get his slot.)

Speaking of Charles Melton… I am, apparently, the only one on planet Earth that is not blown away by Melton's performance in May December. I understand that as a victim of trauma at an early age, his character is supposed to be stunted and withdrawn. But where viewers and critics alike find his performance mesmerizing and chilling, I find it… well, oafish and flat. ("Yes, of course it is!" the Internet yells at me. "That's because he's broken inside, you inconsiderate monster!") Okay. I get it. Actually, I don't. The performance doesn't strike me as particularly nuanced or engaging. ("But he has an emotional breakdown in front of his son who's half his age but twice as mature! The fact that they're totally baked and weirdly sitting on the roof of the house make it all the more poignant, you cretin!") Sigh. Every commenter out there anointed him the Oscar winner long before nominations were announced. ("He's so perfect they should rename the category after him!") I was unconvinced. And so, it turns out, was a large portion of the Academy. What will hindsight say? I've watched the film again, and, with everyone so passionate about the authenticity of his performance, I'm willing to admit that I may be wrong about it. On second thought, no. I'm not. And so I dub him Gloriously Omitted. (A couple silly honorable mentions: Brendan Fraser, for showing up to yell for 10 seconds in Killers of the Flower Moon; and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, for treating Cocaine Bear like it's a sequel to Wet Hot American Summer.)

There's only one choice for Snubbed: Willem Dafoe in Poor Things, as the Scientist, or as the Father, or as Dr. Frankenstein. (Or as God, if you like.) In fact, he'd be my choice to win the Oscar over all the actual nominees. His performance feels strangely authentic, despite the fact that his is probably the most audacious and ludicrous in the movie. There's no note of novelty in his performance (which is something I can't say about his screen-mate, Mark Ruffalo). It's as if Dafoe's long history of weirdo characters has led him to this wonderful culmination of superlative oddness. Some other smaller performances worth mentioning: Tom Conti in Oppenheimer (I seem to be the only one who likes his goofball Einstein), Rhys Ifans in Nyad (the shaggy, underrated soul of the impossible quests), and Milo Machado Graner in Anatomy of a Fall (the gifted child at the heart of the film).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

SHOULD WIN: Da'Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers) WILL WIN: Da'Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Julianne Moore (May December) INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Viola Davis (Air)

The two leading contenders are the ones that (not coincidentally) have the best and most complete parts in their respective films. The first is Da'Vine Joy Randolph, the runaway choice for her role as a grieving yet tender mother/coworker/road-trip-buddy in The Holdovers. She's arguably the third lead in the film, with her own standalone story and well-developed characterization. Typically a comedic actress, she gives her character a sense of faded warmth and vitality in the wake of recent difficulties. She's never been my official Snubbed choice, but she's been in consideration for standout performances in Dolemite Is My Name and The United States vs. Billie Holiday (not to mention as the comically fed-up but dogged investigator in Only Murders in the Building). (Good thing I'm not giving awards for Best Accent -- I'm not really sure what's going on with her occasional Boston inflection in The Holdovers. She evidently didn't study Ben Affleck's Dunkin' Donuts Super Bowl commercial.)

Danielle Brooks similarly benefits from a fantastic part in The Color Purple, and she fully capitalizes on it. The film brims with supporting roles that voters probably considered for nominations, but Brooks brings a unique (and welcome) energy to the film; each scene she's in changes the dynamics of the entire piece. Her nomination is a no-brainer, encapsulating pretty much everything the Academy likes in a supporting performance. She gets to sing, dance, and throw a punch -- but the role and screentime are less than what Randolph has to work with, so she won't realistically challenge for the prize. But getting her own catchphrase ("Hell no!") isn't a bad consolation.

Barbie has been called a lot of things -- smarter and dumber minds than mine have seen to that -- but one thing that stands out to me is that it's a sneaky coming-of-age story. But unlike director Greta Gerwig's previous films (Lady Bird and Little Women), we realize halfway through that it's a coming-of-age story for the mother character (which makes it a coming-of-middle-age story, I guess?). So the film in many ways is just as much about America Ferrera's character as it is Barbie herself. I think that is a big reason why so many people (and voters) have responded to her performance, beyond her "Woman" monologue. However, Ferrera's best performance of the year may have been trying to look impressed while co-presenter Kevin Costner awkwardly fumbled his way through an excerpt of her now-famous monologue at the Golden Globes. Yikes. (Bonus points to her for spoofing the speech in the Oscars promo video with Jimmy Kimmel.)

I think voters may have been grading on a curve when nominating Jodie Foster for Nyad. It's a competent performance, but I personally don't think it's anything out of the ordinary; the fact that it's in a middling film with underwritten dialogue doesn't help. I suspect that since she doesn't appear in many movies anymore, voters were enthused to see her on-screen, and lazily gravitated to her, over less-conventional performances from other actresses. She'll get a True Detective bump (like Matthew McConaughey, Mahershala Ali, and Rachel McAdams before her), but she's no threat to collect her third trophy.

While it's helpful to be graded on a curve, it's even better to be part of the snowball effect. Case in point: Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer. There's no real way to sugarcoat it: the nomination is week. There's simply not much for her to do. But Oppenheimer is rolling through town, and it's carrying a lot of people with it. So her nomination has seemed inevitable since last summer. The only surprise is realizing that she's never been nominated for anything else (like The Devil Wears Prada, The Young Victoria, Into the Woods, Sicario, A Quiet Place, Mary Poppins Returns, or The Girl on the Train). Despite being her only nominated role, Oppenheimer probably won't even make the highlight reel of her career. (At least her character has more to do -- albeit with less consequence -- than Rami Malek.)

The year had a lot of fun and interesting smaller roles, many of which weren't actually in contention for the Oscars, but are worth mentioning: Viola Davis is the obvious choice for Air, but it's certainly not her most memorable work. Sandra Hüller (in The Zone of Interest) is a bright spot in a film I otherwise didn't love. Kerry O'Malley is memorable in The Killer for what is essential a cameo. (I hope she had a stunt double.) Kate McKinnon is perfect in Barbie. (I'm waiting for an announcement of a Weird Barbie spin-off.) And Teyonah Parris: I'm not necessarily citing her role in The Marvels, but after doing action, horror, and drama, I would recommend a big-budget rom-com -- she has the best (and most under-used) smile in Hollywood.

BEST DIRECTOR:

SHOULD WIN: Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall) WILL WIN: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Bradley Cooper (Maestro) INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Alexander Payne (The Holdovers)

This is the strongest lock of the night: Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer. But there is still intrigue with this category… specifically, after winning every single award of the season, how long can Nolan continue to pretend to be surprised and grateful and humble? I don't think he can keep it up. I think on Oscar night, upon his crowning achievement, he'll finally say, "We all knew I was going to win, I'm better than all these hacks, and it is long overdue." A little honesty and pompousness would be refreshing. (After many months of officially giving no comment on the Barbenheimer phenomenon and clearly having no patience for all the viral marketing nonsense, maybe he will finally tell us what he really thinks of Barbie.) Perhaps he'll reveal how autobiographical his film actually is. I'm not the only one who strongly suspects that it's a meta-commentary on the world at large not understanding his films and the negative reviewers not appreciating his genius. (Lydon Johnson might as well be giving J.R. Oppenheimer a gold statuette instead of the Fermi Award at the end of the film, years after having his Inception Security Clearance revoked.) And of course, Nolan is the obvious choice for Should Win… right? I mean, how could he not be? …Right? Or…

…But then there's Justine Triet, director of Anatomy of a Fall. While her film may lack the spectacle of Oppenheimer, she finds subtler ways to make it engaging and keep the viewer glued to the screen. Through twisty psychology, magnetic performances, alternating points of view, DIY detective work, confounding legal proceedings, and shifting blame (plus a dog who may know more than everyone else), she keeps us highly invested while daring us to doubt the main character. The film is long, but effectively so; Triet puts the viewer into the center of the arduous situation, frustrating us along with the protagonist. It's a balancing act that could collapse at any time, but Triet keeps it all together. So for the effect she has on the viewer, and the way she orchestrates all the components to tell the most engrossing story, I choose her for my Should Win. (But if I'm being honest, that probably won't keep me from rooting for Nolan, one of my favorite directors over the past two decades. Had he already won for Dunkirk, like I said he should, then I wouldn't be conflicted.)

From a visual perspective, I probably like the look of Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things best of all the Director nominees. A Victorian fever dream with production design on steroids, the visual style matches the absurdity of the characters and the journeys they're on. Elements that shouldn't go together end up meshing in a lovely but jarring, unique but familiar way. It's a Frankenstein movie that evokes the aesthetic of a different monster movie -- Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. There are also strong influences from The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, of course. The city of Alexandria is straight out of Dr. Seuss's 'Oh, the Thinks You Can Think' (I was half expecting to see the Vipper of Vipp). Much of the iconography seems heavily influenced by the Follies numbers in The Great Ziegfeld from almost 90 years ago. And then it throws in some retro-future steampunk elements, just to irritate the European History teachers. (I'd love to hear what Paul Giamatti's Holdovers character would say.) I can't say I loved Poor Things quite as much as Lanthimos's previous effort, The Favourite, but he's become a must-see director for me.

Killers of the Flower Moon gives Martin Scorsese his 10th Best Director nomination, vaulting him past his old nemesis Steven Spielberg for most by a living director. (William Wyler is the all-time king, with 12.) As Scorsese nears the end of his career, many thought this would be the grand finale and score him an elusive second statue, putting him in elite company. But Christopher Nolan, his new nemesis, said, "Not so fast." Were it not for Oppenheimer, I could easily see Scorsese winning; Flower Moon is one of his best-looking films (it looks a hundred times better than The Irishman). It's also one of his best-sounding films -- without being able to lean on the Rolling Stones, he got a magnificent composition from Robbie Robertson (who passed away a few months ago), the kind of foreboding score that I really respond to, that isn't overly-manipulative or doesn't do too much heavy lifting (<cough> Oppenheimer <cough>). It's also probably the most sensitive film he's made in years; instead of focusing primarily on the FBI investigation (which would have been in his wheelhouse), he refocused the story on "love, trust, and betrayal", after hearing input from members of the Osage Nation. However, one hang-up I have is the radio-play ending, which felt awkward and blunt. There's something dissatisfying about not seeing the characters meet their fate. Maybe that’s the point… or maybe editor Thelma Schoonmaker said, "We gotta wrap this up."

This year's unconventional nominee, Jonathan Glazer, is an acquired taste, and certainly not for everyone. With his résumé of button-pushing films (Sexy Beast, Birth, Under the Skin), he's not exactly a family-friendly director. (My generation knows him as the director of Jamiroquai's iconic 'Virtual Insanity' video in the '90s, which won him an MTV Moonman Award. Maybe he's going for a MEGOT?) Glazer has jokingly referred to his film The Zone of Interest as "Big Brother in the Nazi house" -- which is not totally inaccurate. A more serious comparison might be Jeanne Dielman…, or other European observational 'slow cinema' films. Glazer goes to great lengths to make the film the inverse of what you might expect from a Holocaust film; visually, it's not graphic or assaulting or visceral, but thanks to the sounds he puts in the background (the "second film", he calls it), it is those things in your imagination. The film goads and baits the viewer in ways no other film in my memory does. I'm afraid to say it doesn't totally work for me, at least not as intended. I can't help but feel like it's a lot of pretense lacquered onto subject matter that probably doesn't need it. Glazer is clearly an artist of immense talent, who refuses to conform to conventions… which is another way of saying that he's probably a producer's nightmare. I'm guessing in school he was often told how much potential he had by frustrated teachers threatening to fail him. I just hope he someday channels that potential into a film that works for me (preferably one that includes a catchy tune, funky dancing, and a trippy moving floor).

I'm not sure if Maestro is well directed, but it's certainly very directed. I'm guessing I'm not the only one that has director Bradley Cooper on the Gloriously Omitted list. The film is full of pizazz and talent, but what's perhaps more fascinating than the film itself is the irresponsible psychological excavating we might do about its author. How much of it is self-examination of Cooper himself and his thirsty quest for artistic recognition? Only his therapist knows for sure, but I'd wager that the movie teaches us more about Bradley Cooper than Leonard Bernstein. Honorable mentions to David Fincher for The Killer, doing less of what he does best, and Todd Haynes for May December, doing… well, I don't know what the hell he's doing. (More on that in Original Screenplay.)

Under the singular direction of Alexander Payne, The Holdovers is like a warm, scratchy wool blanket at grandma's house -- despite the discomfort and awkwardness, it's so cozy and so familiarly specific that you never want to leave. I'm a sucker for his analog-film aesthetic -- I relish Payne's version of the 1970s more than other retro nostalgia-porn, like Licorice Pizza or Dazed and Confused. His omission was my biggest disappointment on nomination day, and is my easy Snubbed choice. Other worthy contenders include Celine Song for Past Lives and Anh Hung Tran for The Taste of Things. Song, a first-time film director, frames her shots in Past Lives like an old pro. Perhaps my favorite is when the Greta Lee character (the center of gravity in the film) leaves the two men alone together. The shot starts wide, as if it's unmoored by her departure, and calls attention to her absence. But then as the men talk and make their own connection, the frame becomes anchored, centering on them and slowly pushing in. But just subtly -- perfectly. On the other end of the spectrum, Tran's sweeping camera work in The Taste of Things heightens the culinary experience that is the soul of the film. While extremely complex and painstakingly choreographed, it feels effortless and looks natural, never calling attention to itself. He also eschews a musical score, so the camera highlights the sounds of the gourmet kitchen -- and those sounds effectively become the score, providing surprising rhythm and melody.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

SHOULD WIN: Arthur Harari, Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall) WILL WIN: Arthur Harari, Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Christos Nikou, Stavros Raptis, Sam Steiner (Fingernails) INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Alex Convery (Air)

There's an interesting phenomenon with the nominated writers this year: three of the films are written by domestic partners (Anatomy of a Fall, May December, and Barbie). And appropriately (or alarmingly), those films also happen to include major conflicts between the sexes. (I had assumed Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach had hashed everything out during Marriage Story.) Anatomy of a Fall, written by Arthur Harari and Justine Triet, seems like it would be cause for concern for the couple. Do we think a story about a woman who may or may not have killed her husband with zero remorse is a red flag? I can imagine their writing style…

Justine: [At the keyboard.] Arthur: [Turns up music.] Justine: "The husband is listening to his annoying music… and then he mysteriously falls off a third-story balcony to his death!" Arthur: Shall I turn down the music, love?

Assuming they haven't killed each other before then, I expect Harari and Triet will collect the Original Screenplay Oscar together.

But it's far from a lock. The script for The Holdovers (written by David Hemingson) has a good chance to sneak in. It has the uncanny ability to make me nostalgic for things I've never known, places I've never been to, life before I was born, and experiences I've never actually wanted.

Another strong contender and possible spoiler is Past Lives, the story of a love that defies the limits of time and distance… or the story of an Uber that shows up just a little too quickly. Writer/director Celine Song, with her first film, handles the script with the delicacy of someone with decades more experience. The film deals with the ideas of fate and free will, not just in this lifetime but across many lifetimes. It also references another fantastic screenplay: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That film is specifically mentioned by a character, but its themes of repeating connections and the inevitability of love (even when relationships fail and heartbreak is inescapable) also reverberate throughout the story and dialogue of Past Lives. Eternal Sunshine won Best Original Screenplay 20 years ago; even if Past Lives doesn't win, it's a worthy successor.

After watching Maestro, I'm still wondering what Leonard Bernstein has to do with the end of the world as we know it. The script, written by Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer, is probably the least compelling of the bunch here. I'm equally fascinated and frustrated by the dialogue; it's like Bernstein's music -- boisterous, abrupt, busy, discordant, jarring, overlapping… and, probably intentionally, difficult to fully understand. Aside from never saying what they actually mean, characters talk over each other and -- more crucially -- past each other. I get to the end of a scene and wonder, What did I just listen to? What are they fighting about? I heard words, and yelling, and disagreement, but I don't actually know the meaning of what they said to each other. The characters do not seem to be confused, but I am. If the dialogue in the film isn't for you, at least you can smile at the Snoopy Thanksgiving Parade Balloon metaphor (which, like life, literally goes by without Bernstein seeing it).

May December (directed by Todd Haynes, written by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik) was at one time a strong Oscar contender in several categories, but ended up an also-ran. Its lone nomination is for screenplay, and for me, it's a hard one to wrap my head around. How to interpret the melodrama-run-amok that we see onscreen? Upon a second viewing, it's clear that there's more than a healthy zesting of camp (if you're not sure, remember that Haynes is the guy that made Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story -- with plastic dolls). Here's my theory on how to reconcile the film (if you haven't seen it, skip this paragraph): We are not seeing reality; we are seeing the movie that Natalie Portman's character (the actress) is picturing in her head. She is imagining the events of her research and interaction with the family as a melodramatic episode. In her mind, she's picturing it play out as if it's her idea of a prestigious Oscar-type film. But since she's not very talented, she's imagining it in an over-the-top, overly-performative, amateurish way. So to Portman's character, it's supposed to be sophisticated, but it comes off (to us) as campy -- dramatic music, overt sexual tension, deceptive wife, boy-toy husband, evocative imagery, a lisp for a character tic, and herself as the sly (but ridiculous) seductress. Since she doesn't have a deep imagination, she rips off other movies -- specifically her favorite prestige movie from her formative childhood: The Silence of the Lambs. So she infuses the story with all kinds of Lambs elements that, of course, don't work at all in this narrative: butterflies, 1990s thriller score, a pet-shop stockroom that looks like Buffalo Bill's basement, a dark X-ray lab, face-to-face interrogation, characters looking into the camera. But she's no Jonathan Demme, so her version of it is terrible, of course. She thinks she's Clarice Starling, but she can't outwit Julianne Moore's Hannibal Lector. (The film even casts Moore, who played Starling… but not in the original; instead she was in the second-rate, non-Demme sequel.) We get to the end and see Portman's character has been deluding herself, stuck in a purgatory of basic-cable mediocrity.

If I name Asteroid City as my choice for Gloriously Omitted, will my Wes Anderson Fan Club membership be revoked? It's… (choosing my words carefully here)… not one of his best. I would probably go easier on the movie if 1) he hadn't included the scene with Adrien Brody and Margot Robbie, which is easily the most electric scene in the film, and made wish he made that movie instead, and 2) he hadn't also made The Rat Catcher, which I love, in the same year (see: the Adapted Screenplay category). To be on the safe side, I'll go with Fingernails (written by Christos Nikou, Stavros Raptis, and Sam Steiner). What a great premise. What a boring execution. The pitch: In an alternate reality, true love can be scientifically tested by ripping the fingernails off two people and putting them in a microwave-looking-thingamabob. The experience: Dull people sitting around doing their mundane jobs or watching TV and passively doubting or projecting their feelings, failing to make us believe any of these mopes could possibly be in love with each other. It should have been a lot weirder or a lot shorter -- it could have made a helluva Black Mirror episode. (As it is, it's still better than any of the actual episodes in the latest season of Black Mirror.) Honorable Mention unfortunately goes to celebrated writers Dustin Lance Black and Julian Breece for Rustin's script. The film takes a dynamic figure playing a pivotal role in landmark events in history, and makes the experience feel educational instead of cinematic. The screenplay often verbalizes the subtext, and makes it text. You can practically hear a producer's reductive notes coming through in the stale dialogue. A missed opportunity.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

SHOULD WIN: Tony McNamara (Poor Things) WILL WIN: Cord Jefferson (American Fiction) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Julia Cox (Nyad) INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Wes Anderson (The Rat Catcher)

All the scripts in the Adapted category are smart and challenging, and interrogate what we think (or what we think we think) about well-established events, people, and perceptions (and toys). A favorite among voters this year (and the likely winner) is American Fiction, the first film written and directed by Cord Jefferson. All the films in this category confront the preconceived notions in different ways, but I think American Fiction does it more elegantly that the others. My only reservation about the script is the ending. (Some spoilers here.) We come to form a relationship with Jeffrey Wright's character and become invested in his story. So it's a letdown when we get a satirical resolution, instead of a sincere, meaningful one. (I realize that's the point -- the character doesn't get to finish his own story, and he's succumbed to the idea of simply giving paying audiences the pandering ending that they think they want.) We're left to question not only what happens to him, but also whether he's at peace with his choices. Like the character himself, we feel a bit unfulfilled. But I suppose that's life.

Oppenheimer has yet to win a major screenplay award during the Oscar run-up, so despite it steamrolling through most categories, it's looking less and less likely to win here… but don't count it out. With Christopher Nolan a sure bet to collect trophies for Director and Picture, voters will likely use this category to spread the love around. And I agree with them; screenplay is not Oppenheimer's strongest suit. Despite all the timeline chicanery, it's mostly a courtroom drama (never mind the fact that characters keep saying it's not a court). More than that, it's a courtroom drama with low stakes. Do we really care if Oppenheimer loses his security clearance? Nolan's screenplay acrobatics try to trick us into thinking we care. But we do not. (And his framing device, despite being an attention-grabber, is ultimately inconsequential. But don't tell Rami Malek that.) In the script's defense, what I think Nolan is really trying to do is reclaim -- or at least reframe or question -- important (and very consequential) events in history. And he succeeds in that. (One final script critique: The movie goes out of its way to make the Trinity test extremely intense, but my wife will tell you, the most harrowing part of the movie is the relentless sound of the poor crying baby. Good lord.)

If you're looking for a potential upset, the intense nomination-snub backlash for Barbie could propel it to a win here, as a way to reward writer/director Greta Gerwig (and co-writer Noah Baumbach). The concept of a toy or doll coming to life is not exactly a new idea, so the core idea for Barbie is not terribly original. Think of Pinocchio, The Lego Movie(s), The Nutcracker, Small Soldiers, Wreck-It Ralph, Mannequin, Annabelle, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Ted, Child's Play… even Barbie herself in the Toy Story movies. They all yearn for (and usually get) agency over their own lives, and 'write their own story'. (Well… the screenwriters, like Gerwig and Baumbach, actually write their stories.) Within that construct, Barbie manages to take on some big ideas about humanity, womanhood, mortality, and feet. When it comes to screenplays with fantastical premises, I tend to get hung up on the in-movie logic. A small sampling: What's the relationship between the Barbieland Barbies and the actual toys? Is there one Barbieland Barbie for every single toy? If so, there would be over a billion of them, and many of them would theoretically look the same. And Margot Robbie wouldn't be the first doll to be outgrown and discarded. Or is it one Barbieland Barbie for every toy model? If that's the case, then that would mean that thousands of people have a toy that corresponds to Margot Robbie, not just America Ferrera. So wouldn't those people all have influence over her? Why is Ferrera the only one impacting her? But then how to explain Weird Barbie? Per the movie, Weird Barbie started as a standard model (maybe the Margot Robbie model?), and then got played with too rough. If it's one Barbieland Barbie for each individual toy, shouldn't there be a ton of Weird Barbies? And shouldn't their faces all look like the other standard Barbies that they originated from? Or if it's one Barbieland Barbie per model, then how did a single toy being mangled cause an entire model (with thousands of corresponding toys) to become Weird? (And I wonder why people hate watching movies with me.)

With movies, I have a tendency to laugh at things that are audacious, even if they're aren't conventionally funny. It's an expression of shock and bemusement, more than actual humor. As a result, I'm often the only one laughing in a movie theater. (Which just thrills my wife.) And so I spent a lot of time laughing at Poor Things (written by Tony McNamara). Don't get me wrong, the film is hilarious, wickedly so… but, understandably, not everyone appreciates the humor. But the audacity is where it truly excels and sets itself apart. In a category where any of the films could win, this is my pick for what should win.

I've already written at length about my lack of connection to The Zone of Interest (written by Jonathan Glazer). It's hard to judge the screenplay, when the directorial style overwhelms any real sense of story. Strong narrative is paramount to me. And this isn't that. To be fair, tidy storytelling and artful subtlety are not the film's aim; decrying complicity is. But Glazer's choice of contrasting audio and visual is a risky gambit, and the film is not as affecting for me as others covering a similar topic. I guess the important thing is that it calls into question whether we really remember the atrocities as an urgent warning, or if we breeze past them like a dusty museum piece -- just another rote, distant history lesson. (It can also be perversely seen as an outside commentary on the hollowness of the "American Dream", but I don't personally buy into that reading.)

This is probably unfair, but I'm giving Gloriously Omitted to Nyad, written by Julia Cox. It's hard to tell if the clunkiness is in the writing or directing or producing (or all of the above), but it's there nonetheless. If you've ever seen an underdog sports movie, you know the beats, you've heard the dialogue, and you've seen the cliches. The directors, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (another married couple!) are acclaimed documentary filmmakers (Oscar winners a few years ago for Free Solo), but this is their first narrative feature. So maybe not surprisingly, they deftly handle the physical feats but not the human drama. The good news is, the script and direction become more comfortable in the second half, and it's hard not to get the feels when the ending hits the right notes. (But then again, the real-life protagonist, Diana Nyad, has been accused of making a lot of stuff up about her accomplishments. So there's that.)

If I made the rules, Wes Anderson's short-film adaptation of The Rat Catcher would be eligible here, and I'd be clamoring for a nomination (thereby restoring my recently-revoked fan club membership). For feature films, Ingloriously Snubbed goes to Anh Hung Tran for The Taste of Things. At the screening I attended at the Chicago International Film Festival, the writer/director had a wonderful and brutal description of a script: he called it a "dead body", only becoming alive once it receives the language of cinema. For his buoyant script, I respectfully disagree.

#oscars #oscarpredictions #oscarpredictions2024 #oscarprognostication2024 #donovansoscarprognostication2024 #oscars2024 #academyawards #academyaward

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tabloidtoc · 3 years

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National Enquirer, May 10

You can buy a brand new copy of this issue without the mailing label for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Prince Charles orders Prince Harry to divorce Meghan Markle

Page 2: In a sniveling fit of pique, scorned Alex Rodriguez has trashed former fiancee Jennifer Lopez as a dud in the sack and A-Rod is moaning J. Lo drove him to chase excitement elsewhere because she couldn't keep up with his sex demands and Alex is defending his piggish behavior by saying Jennifer pushed him into it and their spark died long ago, and they were barely intimate for the best part of a year before calling it quits -- Jennifer would pack on the PDA for the cameras, but the moment they were in private she pushed Alex away and even made him sleep in a separate bedroom and he says it was like dating an ice queen and pities the next guy she ropes in -- Jennifer thought she and Alex had a pretty good connection during their happier times, even though she'd likely admit things really petered out toward the end when the lack of trust set in so it will sting her that he's trashing her skills in the bedroom

Page 4: Robert De Niro is getting pummeled by estranged wife Grace Hightower's free-spending ways and his bitter spouse is intent on taking the aging legend for every penny as their nasty divorce drags on -- Robert's lawyers argued in court that greedy Grace's extravagant lifestyle has forced him to take every job he can snag, causing the 77-year-old to toil 12-hour days, six days a week and what's more, Robert's Nobu restaurant business has hit hard times and his tax bills to Uncle Sam are piling up but he is reportedly worth a whopping $500 million, and Grace's lawyers have countered he's pleading poverty but regularly charters a helicopter to Sunday brunch, a charge denied by his lawyer and her attorneys also claimed Robert frequently flies to Florida on a private plane and spends millions and millions on himself -- meanwhile, Robert's relationship with 66-year-old Grace has taken such a nosedive, she's spending frivolously just to punish him and she's walked into a shop a spent $80,000 in 15 minutes and she will go on vacations to the Bahamas, stop at the duty-free store and pay four times the price of what things usually cost and she has more wigs than Imelda Marcos had shoes -- Robert met Grace in 1987 when she was working as a waitress in London, and they married a decade later but they split in 1999 then reconciled and renewed their vows in 2004 before finally calling it quits in 2018 -- De Niro has forked over as much as $375,000 a month to his spouse since their split and the financially squeezed star may resort to doing product endorsements just to pay the bills -- under the terms of the couple's prenuptial agreement, once Grace and Robert are finally divorced, she's allowed a $6 million home, $500,000 cash and $1 million in annual alimony, but her lawyers have argued she should be entitled to half his fortune

* Nearly two years after Hayden Panettiere accused ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson of brutally attacking her, the bully was sentenced to serve time in Los Angeles after he pleaded no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend, and the remaining charges of battery, assault with a deadly weapon and dissuading a witness were dismissed and he was hit with 45 days behind bars and four years' probation but he'll get credit for 12 days served -- he's done his own damage and will pay a permanent price for it -- meanwhile, Hayden is now in a great place in her life

Page 5: Danny Masterson has dragged Leah Remini into his rape case, claiming her docuseries Scientology and Its Aftermath influenced his alleged victims to file police reports against him -- former Scientologist Leah offered the women inducements and benefits to report Masterson to cops, his lawyer Tom Mesereau told a L.A. criminal court -- Danny, a 45-year-old Scientologist and That '70s Show alum, has pleaded not guilty to charges he raped three women in separate incidents between 2001 and 2003 -- Mesereau also called an LAPD detective who worked a second job as security for Leah a double agent and questioned how a 2000 police report made by one alleged victim went missing, but Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller dismissed Mesereau's double agent claims as hyperbole and said the defense got a copy of the missing report and Mesereau's request to push back Masterson's preliminary hearing, a Scientology delay tactic, was also rejected

Page 6: Kelly Osbourne's shocking relapse after nearly four years of sobriety occurred amid intense family drama for the former reality show clan -- Kelly's mom Sharon Osbourne's exit from The Talk amid racism claims by co-hosts and dad Ozzy Osbourne's struggles with crippling Parkinson's disease and excruciating nerve damage frazzled her and she confessed she relapsed and she's not proud of it, but she's back on track and she's truly learned that it is just one day at a time -- her parents' problems weighed heavily on 36-year-old Kelly, who first struggled with substance abuse in her teens, and there's no doubt her mother's scandalous exit from The Talk played a big role as Kelly was crushed over the beating Sharon took in the press and retired rocker Ozzy's relentless suffering also pains Kelly and throw in brother Jack Osbourne's progressive MS and she's dealing with a lot

Page 7: Distressed Dolly Parton is ready to stage an all-star country intervention for her party-hearty goddaughter Miley Cyrus after recent photos of the troubled wild child swilling booze triggered alarm bells for Miley's family members and inner circle, including Dolly who has acted as a mentor to Miley and Dolly has always fussed over Miley like a mother hen and she's worried Miley is going to throw away her career and her life -- 75-year-old Dolly is so concerned about 28-year-old Miley that she's talked about reaching out to other country icons to arrange a meeting with the former Disney child star and help her consider her options and Dolly wants to enlist women she knows Miley truly admires, like Reba McEntire and Loretta Lynn, and organize a sit-down and Dolly knows if Miley hears from legends who achieved so much in the music industry, she's likely to understand any mistakes she makes now can affect her life forever -- every time Dolly thinks Miley's got her demons beat, she hears of another slip-up, so she feels like it's time to take action and Miley's parents Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus, who are good pals of Dolly, are thankful for Dolly's concern because Billy Ray and Tish have tried talking to Miley, but she tunes her parents out and they agree their daughter is more likely to respond to Dolly and her legendary friends

* Angelina Jolie blamed her ugly divorce with Brad Pitt for dashing her dreams to direct movies -- she and Brad split in 2016 and the two have been locked in a mudslinging legal slugfest ever since -- Angie says she love directing, but she had a change in her family situation that's not made it possible for her to direct for a few years and Angie, who last directed 2017's First They Killed My Father, said she needed to just do shorter jobs and be home more, so she kind of went back to doing a few acting jobs

Page 8: Shamed sleaze Matt Lauer has been snubbed by his old Hamptons crowd, and it's got the scandal-scarred scumbag down in the dumps and the super-rich who live and socialize in the fashionable high-society playground won't forget how Lauer was axed from his longtime Today gig over bombshell allegations of sexual misconduct and Matt's done everything he can to regain his place in the community, from hanging out in the village to splashing money around and tipping too well and he's convinced he can make a comeback, but snooty residents turn their noses up and it must be difficult for him because it's tough for anyone who wants to get in with this crowd but for Matt it's become almost impossible -- with scandal raging, Lauer's marriage to Annette Roque collapsed and they divorced in 2019 after a two-year separation and they share three children, daughter Romy, 17, and sons Jack, 19, and Thijs, 14, and Lauer has denied any wrongdoing and insisted his reputation was wrongly smeared in a media feeding frenzy intent on destroying him -- after his divorce, Matt hooked up with public relations guru Shamin Abas and the two have reportedly been pals for years and were first linked when Matt took her to his New Zealand home in December 2019 and Matt's friends are saying he's talking about a big Hamptons wedding when he and Shamin make things official, but it would be a failure if no one attends but Shamin has a lot of connections, so maybe that will help in time -- Matt's obviously an embarrassment in the area and he's not getting much joy at the swanky country clubs he likes to frequent either and it's clear to see that doors from many A-listers, like Martha Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson, who have had ample time to put out the welcome mat and Matt won't be getting invites to their homes anytime soon

Page 9: Kourtney Kardashian is packing on the PDA with new boyfriend Travis Barker and insiders said her desperate bid to compete with her sisters has gone way over the top and ever since Kourtney and Travis first went public, the oldest Kardashian sibling has made it a point to post the couple's passionate romps in racy pics and videos on social media and people in her circle feel it's beneath her to advertise her personal moments like this and even her family thinks it's unflattering, but she's getting a kick out of showing off her wild side and Kourtney has been desperate to raise her profile to keep up with internet-savvy sisters Kim Kardashian and Khloe Kardashian, who promote themselves by posting incessantly and Kourtney was always more low-key, but now she thinks she needs to be outrageous to keep up but her friends and family say it's not who she is, and she should put a lid on the steam

Page 10: Hot Shots -- Alison Brie helped tend to newly planted trees in Malibu, Chris Rock tuned out the world with a set of headphones while walking in Miami, Dylan McDermott plays a bad guy on Law & Order: Organized Crime, Dancing with the Stars pro Sasha Farber buzzed around L.A. on an electric bike, Margot Robbie skating in Malibu

Page 11: Paula Abdul is filling in for Luke Bryan on American Idol, but she's gone crazy with fillers and Botox to the point where she can barely move her face -- 58-year-old Paula, one of the show's original three judges who left before the ninth season, jumped at the chance after Luke tested positive for COVID-19, but when she showed up for work, she was far from the familiar face everyone was expecting and she must have given her co-hosts quite a fright because her face is blown up like a balloon and her forehead has no lines and her eyes have no crinkling at the corners that you would normally expect on someone who's pushing 60 and people are saying she never did know when to quit and this time she's really gone overboard and it was a shame, since it's no secret she'd love to make a comeback on the show and she's still in fantastic shape, but it's kind of sad to see her fall victim to these Hollywood trends as she's a lovely lady and should leave well enough alone -- her heart-shaped face may predispose her to a slower aging process than longer facial shapes

* Jessica Simpson has plumped up her kisser, but one expert thinks her new inflated piehole would look better on a fish because she's gone overboard with filler in her lips and the end result is an unnatural and very unattractive look because the M-shape of the middle upper lip is distorted, creating a fishy appearance she surely wasn't going for

Page 12: Straight Shuter gossip column -- James Bond will be gunning for Top Gun: Maverick on movie screens in November, and Tom Cruise isn't happy -- moving the Top Gun sequel from July to November has left Tom shaken and stirred and no one is more competitive than Tom and going up against the new 007 film starring Daniel Craig has put the fear of God into him because Tom likes to win and coming in second is not an option so get ready for an all-out box office war between Tom and James Bond and this is going to get ugly

* Just out-of-the-closet Colton Underwood has been invited back to his old stomping grounds on The Bachelor but he won't be the new Gay Bachelor, but there's been talk about him returning to help contestants through the process -- he'll literally play the gay best friend who helps the straight contestants find love

* Bridgerton stud Rege-Jean Page won't be back for season 2, but crossing the show's powerful producer Shonda Rhimes was not smart because Shonda is not used to being told no, especially by an actor no one had heard of before she cast him -- Rege-Jean was naive about the business of Hollywood, but he's learning fast but saying no to Shonda is a move he's now thinking twice about

* Irina Shayk had her hands full during a photo shoot in NYC (picture)

Page 13: Racy reality series The Bachelorette has so disgusted some American viewers, they've flooded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with complaints and calls to yank the sexy show from TV -- according to documents, a season 16 dodgeball game that turned into a stripping competition among Clare Crawley's suitors in 2020 especially fueled viewers' rage, even though the aired footage was blacked out to protect the men's privates but the game was not over until one team was fully naked

* Matchmaker Olivia Newton-John is itching to play Cupid for longtime pal John Travolta as her Grease co-star approaches the one-year anniversary of the death of his beloved wife Kelly Preston and Oliva would like nothing more than to bring some joy and happiness back into John's life and she has lots of beautiful, fun-filled lady friends from the U.S. and Australia she could set John up with but he may not be ready for a new romance, and John himself has admitted mourning is individual and experiencing your own journey is what can lead to healing and John still hasn't gotten over Kelly's death yet and it feels like yesterday to him

Page 15: Tiger Woods' former mistress Jamie Jungers is dishing about her doomed 18-month affair with the then-married golf great and the fallout that triggered her harrowing spiral into drug addiction in a juicy new tell-all -- Jamie, 38, said she met the skirt-chasing links legend, now recovering from a shattered right leg after a February car crash, during her stint as a party host in Sin City and she claimed they kicked off a fling behind the back of his wife Elin Nordegren and Tiger would often fly his new squeeze to his L.A. home for their secret trysts and Jamie said she even once signed for a package at the newlyweds' pad that turned out to be wedding photos of Tiger and his bride, who divorced the sex addict in 2010 -- but it was not too hard for Jamie to convince herself the couple's marriage was on the skids because Elin spent so much time in her native Sweden and Jamie confessed she loved Tiger in a way but knew they'd never have a real relationship -- things came to a screeching halt when the tightwad millionaire refused to help her find new digs and Jamie kept her lips zipped about the hush-hush affair for three years, but she claimed her ensuing media appearances, in which she was dubbed Mistress No. 4, left her feeling humiliated, triggering a $500 a day pill habit that led to her getting hooked on heroin and meth and homeless Jamie endured failed stints in rehab, went through detox while behind bars and hit rock bottom before getting clean in 2018 and now sober, she said of her former flame she's not in love with him anymore

Page 16: Picky parents Alec Baldwin and Hilaria Baldwin have found one thing that's even tougher than raising six kids: finding the right nanny -- Alec and Hilaria have high expectations for prospective carers and exacting demands when it comes to their duties and Hilaria is so involved with the kids, so she's especially vigilant and has the final say when it comes to hiring and firing though Alec definitely has his checklist on what makes a good nanny and try as they might, they realize they can't do everything themselves and need help, lots of it, but it's been a logistical nightmare getting a team of nannies organized as Alec and Hilaria are tough on them and firm and long hours and multitasking are a must and of course they must be quick on their toes and know what to do with a cranky set of children without losing their cool and a good disposition, a clean and tidy appearance and the ability to step in last minute when needed are all prerequisites to be a Baldwin nanny -- Hilaria and Alec feel guilty about using more help than they initially thought they'd need and typically have at least two nannies on duty and they're doing their best to keep their home from becoming a nuthouse and stay sane and even when Hilaria and Alec are both home at the same time, they still need help changing diapers and doing endless loads of laundry, preparing meals and snacks and assisting homeschooling for the older ones and making sure they all get plenty of exercise and playtime -- it's been a challenge and they won't settle for anything but the most skilled nannies, and their friends can see the efforts are paying off

Page 17: Britney Spears has taken to social media to insist she's OK, but there are increasing concerns over the singer's state of mind -- Britney, 39, has shared bizarre Instagram posts showing her maniacally dancing and also bellyached that she's trying to learn how to use technology in this technology-driven generation, but to be totally honest she can't stand it -- the wacky videos followed the documentary Framing Britney Spears, which cast an unflattering spotlight on her troubled history amid her fight to have her conservator dad Jamie Spears removed from overseeing her personal and financial affairs and Britney, who has not had control over her own cash or major life decisions since her notorious 2008 breakdown, said the documentary's portrayal embarrassed her and brought her to tears and she cried for two weeks -- still, Britney reassured fans she's totally fine and she's extremely happy, she has a beautiful home, beautiful children, referring to her sons Sean, 15, and Jayden, 14, and although Britney, who's been coupled up with 27-year-old personal trainer Sam Asghari since 2016, insisted she's enjoying herself, she was caught on camera in Malibu appearing out of sorts and she looked a total mess and she looked like she hadn't brushed her hair in days and the truth is she's wracked with anxiety and she doesn't trust anyone in her orbit except her boyfriend

Page 18: American Life -- Like many dads, J.B. Handley couldn't understand his teenage son, but in this case, 18-year-old Jamison Handley is autistic and has not spoken a word since he was born -- using a breakthrough strategy called Spelling to Communicate (STC), J.B. discovered his son was hyper-intelligent and now Jamison is graduating from high school and will go to college to study neuroscience in 2022

Page 19: Newly single Kanye West is in the market for someone to cuddle with now that Kim Kardashian is out of the picture and the National Enquirer has decided to help him in his quest: Amanda Gorman, Bjork, Quay Dash, Marina Abramovic, Maria Cristerna

* While Kanye West is looking for a new lady to be his creative muse, his estranged wife Kim Kardashian sees the dating pool as the source of her next career move -- Kim has not been romantically linked to anyone since she filed for divorce in February and she's not dating anyone because, if she were, it would be a career move and Kim can't date quietly; she doesn't even understand what that would be like

Page 22: Katie Holmes and her boytoy beau Emilio Vitolo Jr. haven't been photographed together in more than a month, leaving people to wonder if the once snap-happy couple's romance is cooling off -- after being constantly caught on camera packing on the PDAs, the coosome twosome's vanishing act has sources suspecting work stress is taking a toll -- they're still together but things aren't anything like they were, and Katie seems pretty down and Emilio has been working long hours at his dad's restaurant, which was hit hard during the pandemic and that's meant less time for him and Katie to hang out and their romance may have gone from full boil to simmer

* Hollywood Hookups -- Danica Patrick and Carter Comstock dating, Zac Efron and Vanessa Valladares split, Madison LeCroy is dating a mystery man

Page 23: Lizzo stripped nude on social media for an unedited selfie to promote body positivity in all its glory and the 32-year-old defied the haters by bravely going makeup-free and wearing only her birthday suit -- she said she's letting it all hang out to encourage girls struggling with their self-image and self-confidence to embrace their natural beauty

* Bethenny Frankel plans to spend a whopping $10 million on her upcoming wedding -- she is set to wed Paul Bernon after she was spotted flashing a ginormous sparkler reportedly worth over $400,000 and movie producer Paul, 43, has given Bethenny, 50, carte blanche to spend whatever she wants so she's thinking 50,000 roses, champagne, gilt-edged glasses, a garden setting with fountains, dancers and a choir and Bethenny wants it to be perfect and she expects the best of everything

* Julianna Margulies has admitted things were hot on the set of ER, and it was because she and co-star George Clooney had a crush on each other and the chemistry on the beloved TV series between Julianna, now 54, and George, 60, was organic, she gushed in her upcoming memoir -- she also said when you create an environment that people feel safe in, then you do your best work and George taught her that and she felt so safe with him

Page 25: Troubled Tori Spelling is convinced having a sixth baby is the only way to bring her rocky 15-year marriage to Dean McDermott back from the brink -- Tori, 47, and Dean, 54, have been living separate lives for months and she has frequently been seen in public without her wedding ring and lately they've been more like brother and sister than husband and wife, but Tori is under the impression that another baby will give them a fresh start -- Dean has tried to repair their romance by taking on more dad duties and he even pushed for a recent family getaway to Palm Springs, where Tori socked her husband with the ultimatum to give her another baby or hit the highway and it's true they got along a lot happier when she was pregnant, but a lot of people think she's being delusional since they still have a lot of issues to work through and having another kid isn't going to be a magic fix and in fact, it may even add to their problems

Page 26: Cover Story -- Prince Harry's desperate bid to make peace with his estranged royal family exploded spectacularly when his father Prince Charles gave him an ultimatum to divorce Meghan Markle or you're out forever -- the secret showdown came after the funeral for his grandfather Prince Philip that forced family members to reunite for the first time following a year of bitterness and shocking allegations and any hope Harry had of mending fences and being welcomed back went out the window when he broke Queen Elizabeth's heart by snubbing her 95th birthday right after the funeral because he flew back to California the day before her birthday and it was the last straw for Charles, who was furious and he was stunned his son couldn't wait just 24 hours more to show respect for his grandmother and felt compelled to rush back to his pregnant wife Meghan and it would have meant so much for Her Majesty, who was still mourning her husband and needs all the comfort she can get but instead Harry headed back to his ritzy $14 mansion and Hollywood lifestyle, callously leaving his grieving grandmother on what should have been her big day -- the word is Meghan ordered him back as he'd been gone 10 days, their longest separation since they wed, and she didn't want his family playing mind tricks on him, trying to convince him he should return to the U.K. -- Charles confronted his younger son about snubbing Her Majesty during a phone call from his country getaway in Wales, where Charles was grieving his father Prince Philip and considering the future of the monarchy and Charles didn't mince words and he called Harry selfish and blamed Meghan for ripping the family apart and he bluntly admitted he and other royals, including the queen herself, were deeply disappointed and very angry by what the couple said in an explosive tell-all TV special and he couldn't believe Harry would agree to such a devastating interview without pressure from his publicity-obsessed wife or her advisors and Charles told Harry he was ashamed of him for turning his back on his family and breaking his grandmother's heart and Charles said he didn't believe Harry's marriage can survive long-term and suggested that Meghan was so ambitious, she'd dump Harry when something, or someone, better came along then he shockingly told his son he would only be welcomed back if he divorced that American actress and Charles insisted divorce was the only way to save the royal family and Harry himself -- Harry faced a great deal of frostiness from other members of the family after he arrived for Philip's funeral: Princess Anne, Prince Edward, his wife Sophie and other relatives didn't even look at Harry, they are so angry with him and Meghan, and Prince William and his wife Duchess Kate tried to put on a united front, speaking to Harry as they walked away from the service, but it was all for show as the queen had ordered a truce in the feud to avoid another public scandal, but family feelings are running very deep against Harry and Meghan for quitting royal duties and trashing the royals in their interview and the truth is if Harry doesn't divorce Meghan, this rift will never be mended

Page 36: Ellen DeGeneres confessed she'd swilled three cannabis-laced drinks and popped two snooze-inducing pills before driving wife Portia de Rossi to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy -- during an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Ellen said she'd downed a commercial beverage containing the weed compounds THC and CBD and admitted she didn't feel anything and then she drank three, and she also took two melatonin sleep pills and she's lying in bed and realizes Portia is not in bed -- after finding Portia on all fours and in pain, Ellen claimed her adrenaline kicked in and she rushed Portia to the hospital

Page 38: Gwyneth Paltrow knows at least one person who is not a fan of her catalog of sex toys: her mom Blythe Danner -- while Gwynnie loves to bang the drum for frisky female fun by hawking vibrators, whips, handcuffs, genital-themed jewelry and even a candle called This Smells Like My Orgasm, her 78-year-old mother is always shocked by her raunchy online inventory and is very proper, but Gwyneth said even proper ladies have sexuality too -- although her mom is not lining up to purchase the BDSM starter kit or the $15,000 gold-plated dildo, Gwyneth remains committed to tackling taboos related to female pleasure, saying she thinks that our sexuality is such an important part of who we are and one of the things they really believe in at Goop is eliminating shame from these topics

* The Entourage crew might get back together, with Charlie Sheen joining the gang -- the creator of the bro show and 2015 spinoff movie said he may bring the boys back with his buddy Charlie in the reboot and Doug Elin says whether he would ever be in Entourage as Charlie Sheen or whether he would create a character for him, he would be all for it -- Charlie hasn't been seen on the big screen since a 2018 guest spot on Saturday Night Live

Page 42: Red Carpet -- Sofia Vergara

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How Princess Anne became the shining light of the beleaguered monarchy

Once seen as haughty and aloof, today her old-school approach has never been more in demand

By Camilla Tominey, Associate Editor of the Telegraph.

Visitors to the Princess Royal’s house, Gatcombe Park, are often surprised to be greeted with antique-display cases groaning with ornaments, bookshelves overflowing with hardbacks and piles of magazines dating back to the 1970s. According to one friend, the 18th-century Grade II-listed Gloucestershire stately has a ‘homely’ feel, thanks to the frugal Princess’s reluctance to throw anything out.

‘It’s quite a nice thing really,’ they said. ‘There’s barely a place you can sit down in her house. Every time the staff go in there they try to take something away.’ A surprising revelation, perhaps, about the Royal family’s resident stickler, whose decadesold ‘updo’ and penchant for wearing white gloves on royal engagements suggest a somewhat starchier outlook. But as the Queen’s only daughter prepares to celebrate her 70th birthday this month, it seems that appearances can be rather deceiving.

Now more valuable than ever to an institution not only trying to reposition itself in the wake of a global pandemic, but still smarting from the fallout of Megxit and the Duke of York’s association with Jeffrey Epstein, Anne’s old-school approach has never been more in demand. Despite describing herself as ‘the boring old fuddy-duddy at the back’, who keeps reminding the younger royals not to forgo ‘the basics’, the Princess Royal, who has always put duty first, is finally getting the recognition she deserves.

Her appearance in June alongside the 94-year-old monarch for Her Majesty’s first ever video call shows how much the Queen is coming to rely on the Princess. And the public response to her appearing to snub Donald Trump during a Nato leaders’ reception at Buckingham Palace last December suggests the nation is finally warming to her modus operandi.

Where once Anne was regarded as haughty and standoffish, she is now hailed as one of the great English eccentrics whose unparalleled royal work ethic, carrying out more than 500 engagements a year, has rightly earned her national treasure status.

And having allowed a film crew to shadow her for the past year, the Princess, who is usually reluctant to blow her own trumpet, has never appeared more at ease with herself. She was persuaded to take part in last week’s ITV documentary Princess Royal: Anne at 70 because its makers, Oxford Films, had successfully produced Our Queen and Our Queen at 90 about her mother. Shadowing Anne on her dusk-to-dawn engagements – and featuring interviews with her children Peter, 42, and Zara, 39 – the documentary revealed just how much the Princess is cut from the Queen’s ‘keep calm and carry on’ cloth.

Having been regarded as a bit of a royal renegade as a teenager – and chosen to forgo titles for her own children, despite her own HRH pedigree as a ‘spare to the heir’ – Anne’s life story is a contradiction of both protocol taskmaster and occasional rule-breaker. As one insider who knows the Princess well put it: ‘She can turn from laughing and joking one minute to being an absolute stickler for the rules the next. She’s extremely dutiful and would hate to be regarded as being on the wrong side of protocol. You’d never dream of asking her a political question and she’s not at all gossipy.’

Erin Doherty’s portrayal of Anne in The Crown, as the deadpan princess with the permanently raised eyebrow, certainly sums up her teenage years when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were apparently so concerned about their daughter’s lack of direction, they asked the late Dame Vera Lynn for advice. Prince Philip, who famously joked of his daughter, ‘If it doesn’t fart or eat hay then she isn’t interested,’ allegedly confided in the Forces’ sweetheart: ‘We are concerned about Anne at the moment, trying to get her to make up her mind about what she wants to do.’

According to her school friend, Sandra de Laszlo, who boarded with Anne at Benenden: ‘She was a very normal teenager – sensible and fun.’ Leaving school with six O levels and two A levels in 1968, Anne had already resolved to follow in her parents’ duteous footsteps. Less than a year later, she made her official debut on 1 March – St David’s Day – when she handed out leeks to the Welsh Guards at Pirbright Camp in Surrey. It was to be the start of one of the most industrious royal careers in modern memory – with more than 20,000 engagements clocked up since.

Soon after she started work, she began dating – and in 1970, Anne’s first boyfriend was Andrew Parker Bowles, the dashing young adjutant of the Blues and Royals, who went on to marry Camilla Shand – later to become her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cornwall. The Princess and the brigadier – described as her ‘horsey husband’ – remain close and accompany each other to Royal Ascot and other race meetings every year.

Anne is also on good terms with her first husband, Captain Mark Phillips. A Sandhurst graduate with an equestrian streak, like Parker Bowles, Phillips met the Princess at a party for horse lovers in 1968 and reconnected at the Munich Olympics four years later, when he won team Olympic gold in the three-day eventing. They married in 1973. He was at the then 23-year-old Anne’s side a year later when she was threatened at gunpoint in an attempted kidnapping. The couple were returning to Buckingham Palace following a charity event when their limousine was forced to stop on the Mall by another car. When the driver, Ian Ball, jumped out and began shooting, Anne’s bodyguard, Inspector James Beaton, was injured, along with her chauffeur Alex Callender, and journalist Brian McConnell and Michael Hills, a police constable, who happened upon the scene.

But the attempt to hold Anne to ransom for at least £2 million is even more memorable thanks to the impervious Princess’s refusal to obey Ball’s order to get out of the car, replying with a trademark: ‘Not bloody likely!’ Eventually, she exited the other side of the limousine, as had her lady-in-waiting, Rowena Brassey (who is still with her to this day). A passing pedestrian, a former boxer named Ron Russell, punched Ball in the back of the head and led Anne away from the scene. Anne later told officers: ‘It was all so infuriating; I kept saying I didn’t want to get out of the car, and I was not going to get out of the car,’ according to files later released by the National Archives. ‘I nearly lost my temper with him, but I knew that if I did, I should hit him and he would shoot me.’

She was similarly sanguine about becoming the first member of the Royal family to have a criminal conviction after one of her dogs, a three-year-old English bull terrier called Dotty, attacked two children in Windsor Great Park in 2002. Pleading guilty to being in charge of a dog that was out of control in a public area, she insisted on no special treatment and took the £500 fine and £500 compensation on the chin.

The incident followed a number of brushes with the law for motoring offences, with Anne having twice been caught speeding on the M1 in the 1970s. She was also fined £100 and banned for one month in 1990 for two speeding offences and fined another £400 in 2000. On both occasions she pleaded guilty immediately, insisting she was late for an engagement.

As she said in the documentary, mistakes do happen when there is no ‘training’ for the job of being royal. ‘It’s just learning by experience. But hardly ever does anything go quite according to plan. You have to learn that.’ It wasn’t as if she didn’t feel the pressure of being the sovereign’s second-born, either – once describing the fly-on-the-wall Royal Family film, which followed the Windsors for a year in the late 1960s, as ‘a rotten idea’.

‘The attention that had been brought on one ever since one was a child, you just didn’t want any more. The last thing you needed was greater access.’

Famed for telling reporters to ‘naff orf ’, much of Anne’s mistrust of the media appears to stem from its rather uncomfortable coverage of Phillips fathering a love child, Felicity, with New Zealand art teacher Heather Tonkin in 1985. The Princess didn’t emerge unblemished either, having been revealed by The Sun to have received love letters from Tim Laurence, then the Queen’s equerry, in 1989, when she was separated – although still married to Phillips.

Anne and Mark finally divorced in 1992 and the Princess remarried eight months later, choosing Crathie Kirk in Scotland, as the Church of England did not at that time allow divorced persons whose former spouses were still living to remarry in its churches. The Prince of Wales had nicknamed Phillips ‘Fog’ on the grounds that he was ‘thick and wet’; but with his Royal Navy pedigree and impeccable manners, ‘quiet man’ Laurence fitted into the Royal family perfectly. One friend described the vice admiral as ‘a thoroughly decent man who never forgets a face’, before adding that ‘some may regard him as a little bit boring, but he’s a much safer bet than Mark ever was.’

Ever the pragmatist, Anne allowed Phillips to remain living on the Gatcombe estate, even after he married Sandy Pflueger, an American Olympic dressage rider, with whom he has a daughter, Stephanie, 22. As one equestrian insider put it: ‘The horsey set has always been very incestuous. Yes, Mark was serially unfaithful but there’s a lot of that going on – Anne just turned a blind eye.’

Now divorced from Pflueger, Phillips, 71, has vacated Aston Farm on the 730-acre estate, to make way for Zara, her rugbyplayer husband Mike Tindall, 41, and their daughters Mia, six, and Lena, two.

Peter also lives on the estate with his estranged wife Autumn, 42, and their daughters Savannah, nine, and Isla, eight. The couple are still living together despite announcing their divorce in January – an unexpected development that has left the Princess ‘sad and disappointed’, according to insiders.

One source said: ‘One thing about the Royal family is they are incredibly close. They are the most dysfunctional family there is, but the Princess and her children and grandchildren are as tight as anything.’

As ever, horse riding remains the tie that binds, with Anne – a former European eventing champion, BBC Sports Personality of the Year and competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics – passing on her enthusiasm for the sport to Zara. In recent years, Peter has taken over the running of the Festival of British Eventing at Gatcombe.

By her own admission, breaking with royal tradition by insisting that her children were called Mr and Miss ‘probably’ made life ‘easier for them’. ‘I think most people would argue that there are downsides to having titles,’ Anne said recently. Having initially been brought up, Downton Abbey-style, on the ‘nursery floor’, with her parents often away for months on end on royal tours, it was Anne who insisted she go to a ‘proper’ school – the first daughter of a monarch to do so – rather than be home-taught.

Both Peter and Zara were sent to Port Regis, a co-educational prep school in Dorset, before following in their uncle Charles’s footsteps to board at Gordonstoun in Scotland. Unlike the heir to the throne, who described it as ‘Colditz in kilts’, they thrived in the outdoorsiness of it all, excelled at sport and both ended up at Exeter University – Peter to study sports science and Zara, physiotherapy – despite university having eluded both their parents.

Zara also surpassed her mother’s equestrian achievements by winning the Eventing World Championships in 2006 and a silver medal at the 2012 Olympics – all while Anne was watching proudly from the sidelines.

One friend recalls how the Princess would think nothing of queuing up for the Portaloos at competitions like any other parent, much to the horror of Zara, who would tell her: ‘Mum, you can’t do that!’

Inconspicuous in her trademark Barbour jacket, tweed hat and sunglasses, Anne would regularly be stopped at events on her own estate by police not realising who she was. ‘I remember it happening a couple of times,’ said one source. ‘She was very good about it – she said: “Don’t worry, you weren’t to know.”’

After Zara collected individual and team gold medals at the 2005 European Eventing Championship in Blenheim, Anne invited the entire team, grooms and all, back to Gatcombe to celebrate, serving up ‘sandwiches and scampi in a basket’, in the courtyard. Very much a hands-on mother and grandmother, the Princess has a number of long-serving aides – but no large entourage. Along with Rowena Brassey (now Feilden), Lady Carew Pole has also been the Princess’s lady-in-waiting since 1970.

Unfussy Anne still insists on doing her own make-up and hair – which hasn’t been let down publicly in decades. Although according to one source who once witnessed the rare sight of her unclipping her bun and redoing it during an equestrian event: ‘It really is quite something. It’s still as long as it was when she was in her 20s.’

Part of Anne’s agelessness is down to genes. ‘She always says she doesn’t have very good role models for slowing down,’ Peter told the documentary. As Countryfile presenter John Craven found out when he dared to ask if Anne still rode, only to be rebuked: ‘Her Majesty is still riding, so come on!’ But as well as inheriting her mother’s DNA she shares HM’s strict adherence to style codes – and her aversion to profligacy.

Guests at the 2008 wedding of Lady Rose Windsor, the daughter of the Duke of Gloucester, were astonished when Anne arrived in the outfit she had worn to her brother’s wedding to Lady Diana Spencer, 27 years earlier. The size-10 Maureen Baker floral-print frock still fitted perfectly.

Quite what Anne must have made of Diana and Fergie’s wardrobe expenditure in the 1980s has never been disclosed – although it has long been reported that the Princess never thought too highly of either sister-in-law, regarding Diana particularly as ‘hogging the limelight’.

There were even reports that she viewed the pair as ‘lessening the stature’ of the Royal family, describing them behind the scenes as ‘those girls’. As royal biographer Penny Junor put it: ‘There was Diana on the one hand, who was incredibly touchy-feely, who hugged children, who put children on her lap, who even kissed people in public. And there was Anne, not touching anyone, not playing up to the cameras at all.’

As far removed from the suburban housewife as you can get, when Anne was once spotted mending fences at Gatcombe, she apparently retorted: ‘Somebody’s got to do it!’ ‘She’s never shirked anything in her life,’ said a friend. ‘She’s a real grafter.’

Weekends will invariably be spent with her four grandchildren. Revealing a surprising knowledge of popular culture – despite her dislike of indoor pursuits – the Princess revealed her familiarity with Catherine Tate’s stroppy schoolgirl character Lauren when she commented that Mia’s attitude to equestrianism was, ‘Am I bovvered?’

‘She’s superb with the kids,’ said a friend. ‘She’ll often be in the stables with the grandchildren. She’s got a tremendous sense of humour and is very likeable and kind. She loves Mike [Tindall, Zara’s husband]. He makes them all laugh.

The friend also pointed to Anne’s ‘surprisingly fruity’ sense of humour, adding: ‘And the Princess can swear all right. I’ve heard her use some quite colourful language.’

If the Queen instilled in Anne a love of horses then it was her father who encouraged her other great passion in life: sailing. Anne would regularly accompany the former Royal Navy commander to Cowes Week, and it is a testament to Philip’s infectious love of seafaring that Anne and Tim have kept their yacht Ballochbuie on Loch Craignish in Argyll, since 2012. The couple enjoy nothing more than cruising around the Inner Hebrides, where Anne indulges her passion of visiting lighthouses. She is patron of the Northern Lighthouse Board and is understood to have ‘bagged’ more than half of the UK’s 206.

But it hasn’t always been so easy combining work and pleasure. Anne was put to the diplomatic test when she became the first member of the Royal family to visit the USSR, at the invitation of the then-leader Gorbachev in 1990. In typical style, the Princess didn’t shirk the responsibility – and stayed for two whole weeks. Visits to war zones including Sierra Leone, Mozambique and Bosnia have been similarly taxing – with Anne once insisting after a particularly gruelling tour of Africa: ‘I don’t come here looking for trouble. I come to see if I can help.’

Her association with Save the Children, which dates back to 1970, has seen her slum it on camp beds and visit disease-ravaged Mozambique refugee camps. Once urged by photographers to hug an emaciated child, she refused, saying, ‘I don’t do stunts.’ And in response to a comment on her supposed lack of the maternal instinct, she said: ‘You don’t have to like children particularly to want to give them a decent chance in life.’

Yet her reputation as one of the most diligent royals ever has also been honed by her dedication to little-known domestic causes, like the Wetwheels Foundation, which provides ‘barrier-free boating’ for the disabled. One of more than 300 charities the Princess is involved with, its founder Geoff Holt, a paraplegic who was the first disabled person to sail solo around Britain in 2007, and then across the Atlantic in 2010, has known Anne for over 30 years. ‘I’ve got photos of us going back decades. I’ve got older and older and she’s stayed the same,’ he joked.

‘She’s got to be one of the most hard-working people I know. I’ve never known anything like it – the amount of engagements she packs in. She doesn’t do sycophancy, though.

Michele Jennings, chief executive of Hearing Dogs for the Deaf, of which the Princess has been patron since 1992, also tells staff ‘not to fawn’ when the Princess visits. ‘She hates that,’ she said. ‘We’re a pretty down-to-earth charity and when she comes she’ll have dogs jumping at her shins and crawling all over her, but she doesn’t mind one bit. There’s no awkwardness.’

Another source revealed how during one royal visit, Anne had joked about missing out on all the posh canapés – royals are discouraged from eating in public. ‘I’ll just have to put up with Great Western’s finest,’ she quipped, referring to her train journey home.

Although a ‘daddy’s girl’ growing up, since the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret died in 2002, Anne has become ever more devoted to her mother. Having helped to counsel the Queen through many royal crises over the years, the Princess has been HM’s first port of call when discussing recent tumultuous royal events. Although one can only guess what stalwart Anne makes of Harry and Meghan’s behaviour, she has made no secret of her opposition to royals trying to modernise the institution, seemingly referring to the Sussexes when she remarked recently: ‘I don’t think this younger generation probably understands what I was doing in the past and it’s often true, isn’t it? You don’t necessarily look at the previous generation and say, “Oh, you did that?” Or, “You went there?” Nowadays, they’re much more looking for, “Oh, let’s do it a new way.” I’m already at the stage [of ], please do not reinvent that particular wheel. We’ve been there, done that. Some of these things don’t work. You may need to go back to basics.’

When she turned 60, the Queen elevated Anne to the Order of the Thistle and there was a joint birthday party with Andrew, who was 50 that year. But Covid-19 – not to mention Andrew’s fall from grace – mean this year’s celebrations will be more muted. Indeed, she is not thought to have had much contact with her brother, with whom she shares a love of country pursuits, but little else.

With the Queen having been self-isolating at Windsor Castle since March, it is thought Anne will be reunited with her parents at Balmoral this summer, where she and Tim will once again take in Scotland’s sights by sea.

At a time when the monarchy finds itself somewhat cast adrift, it is the indefatigable Princess Royal who is proving to be its trustiest anchor. As she prepares to turn 70, showing no sign of slowing down after half a century of engagements, lighthouse-lover Anne has become the Royal family’s beacon of good, old-fashioned public service.

#couldnt add the last couple of photos #because tumblr doesnt function properly #but here u go anon!#and everyone :)#princess anne #princess royal #newspapers

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brideofcthulhu10 · 4 years

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Behold another Lost Boys holiday special! It was between this and Valentine’s day, but honestly I love writing Christmas specials, its such a cozy time despite the high suicide rates, but lets not get into that. A BIG SHOUT OUT TO @imlostinsantacarla FOR HELPING ME EDIT MY FINAL DRAFT!

Fun Fact! My husband, David (yes, that is actually his name) actually does have the bah humbug hat I mention in the head canons. He’s a heavy metal goth so when I found it at the store I had to get it for him. And you just know if our David found that, he wouldn’t be able to resist it!

Christmas with the Boys

Alright, so the whole touchy, feely and mushy feelings that surround even the topic of Christmas time is not something any of the boys will ever openly admit to enjoying. After all, they see themselves as these bad ass brutal killers who thrive off of death instead of holding hands and caroling with the goodie goodies of this coastal town.

Yet, it's challenging for them not to get sucked into the glitz and glam of the holiday season. Everything is a big deal in Santa Carla. Dia De Los Muertos, Halloween, Thanksgiving- everything! But especially Christmas.

Christmas in Santa Carla dwarfs the frenzy craze of Halloween. The entirety of the boardwalk is decked out with red and green lights that are tightly wound around palm trees, red bulbous bows are wrapped tightly around street lamps, the reds and whites of velvety fabric swirl down the posts, creating the effect of candy canes. All the store windows are painted to appear frosted, or covered with painted snowmen whilst several rooftops are covered with white felt in which mimics the texture and sight of snow. Even the boats in the harbour are all extravagantly decorated in a sea of lights that parade around brightly at night in every color imaginable.

Between the dates of the 30th of November all the way to the 24th of December the city of Santa Carla hosts a plethora of wondrous events in it's annual Holiday Festival. Large green, white and red kiosks are erected, selling a wide range of baubles and treats, from delectable chocolate coated rice krispy Santa Clauses, elf candy apples caked in a plethora of dark chocolate and peppermint, to a variety of Holiday hats, masks and even hand made costumes by the many local artists. Even hand carved candles in wondrous scents of pine, mint, or spice.

Currently, David possesses a black fur Santa hat which he acquired on a night out that boasts the words "Bah Humbug" proudly sewn over the front. It's the only holiday attire he'll even humor. Last time Marko attempted to place reindeer antlers on his head, David had set them on fire roasting atop a pan of chestnuts. Now it's not to say that he's a grinch persay. Rather, the complex and intense emotions that come hand in hand with Christmas can leave him perpetually indifferent at best, disdainful at worst. The whole occasion leaves him displeased. After all, he was an orphan who had been almost eagerly abandoned by his hooker mother left to fend for himself from the beginning, and of course never met his father. Even she could not identify which of her many clients may have been responsible. Most of his mortal life he had lived as a street rat, barely making ends meet by picking the pockets of tourists and Santa Carla citizens oblivious to the true dangers of the lower side of town. The rich and uppity classes who often snubbed their entitled noses his way would never suspect as he lurks between alleyways, leaving them cornered at knife point. It was scarce that he ever did see a kind face in the sea of those who had little interest for anyone that was not themselves. Back then it was rather uncommon for anyone to step outside their own little lives, which led to most interactions, outside of the other boys, having been met with great hostility, thus he had learned to be just as equally hostile in turn. Even the mere thought of anyone suddenly dawning a false kindness due to a certain time of year simply agitated David. It rattled him to the very core in a way very few other things did. Why bother with the lies? Couldn't people just face the very basic fact that they weren't nearly as charitable as they often deemed themselves to be? I mean, the young man had seen firsthand a family having previously snubbed a dirty homeless man with appalled disdain at the sight of his muddied clothes and dirt stained skin, only to then begin volunteering at a soup kitchen to purge whatever guilt they carried on their conscience once the holiday season began. The whole ordeal was pitiful! Nevertheless, - more so for Paul and Marko's sakes than his own -, he did humor these traditions amongst the holiday's festivities. Ruining a good time just wasn't his style. Unless they started fucking singing.

Most traditions David could tolerate, some he even enjoyed slightly; although he would never be caught dead admitting something as embarrassing as that! However, he just couldn't stand Christmas carols! They were the bain to his immortal existence. The repetitive nature of these overly cheery jingles left him covering his ears lest they nest in his brain leaving him humming the same damn melody for weeks. This was the case because the dynamic duo of dumbasses were well aware of his hatred for Rudolph the Red Nosed fuckin' roadkill! Stupid red nosed abomination.

“OOOOOOH-,” Paul begins with cheerful mischief.

“Don’t. You. Fucking. Dare.” David seethes through tightly clenched teeth, eyes screwed shut in indignance.

Paul hesitates. He looks at Marko. Marko looks at Paul. Wicked grins of agreement spread wide like wildfire across their faces as their master plan comes into play. Full throttle. What’s more fun than annoying the shit out of David? One on the left, the other on the opposite side of the cave on the right. This was nothing but Divine perfection if you asked the two troublesome vampires.

“OOOOOH DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW!” Paul belted out at full volume.

“IN A ONE HORSE OPEN SLEIGH!” Marko followed in suit, the widest eerie grin plastered on his face.

“OVER THE HILLS WE GOOOO” Paul howled enthusiastically.

“I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU BOTH!” David's voice hit a whole new octave it had never in all his life so far. All the while Dwayne had opted to vacate the room lest he be caught in the middle of the escalating madness with Laddie in tow. He loved these guys, but not enough to dive head first into their fuckery.

Paul thrives during the Christmas holidays! How could he not? The food, the punk rock covers of Christmas songs, the absolute babes prancing around the town in Santa hats under mistletoe?! He loved it all! You can find him sneaking under mistletoe with many sweet honeys on a constant basis, regardless of whether or not he's acquainted with them. Most do roll their eyes or laugh it off, but every once in a blue moon the guy will get a little lovin' from a beach babe in the Yuletide mood. What else could he ask for? You can bet he’ll run into the woods December first, and quite literally RIP a pine tree out of the ground to bring home like a wee carrot being plucked from the ground. The bigger the better! He may even drag Dwayne or Marko along with him if it's too big for him to carry himself. And all the boozy drinks he can concoct up? This boy is in his element! Mulled wine, spiked eggnog, candy cane vodka, butterscotch bourbon hot chocolate?! Yes! David straight up refuses to try anything that Paul creates himself (remember the concoction he made in Max's kitchen? Those poor goldfish....) which is also another reason why he has Dwayne help him. Or rather, the other boys insist the most responsible of them monitors the blonde lest he poison them with some sickly brew. That, and the fact that Dwayne's the least likely out of all of them to blow up the damn kitchen!

Dwayne is indeed the designated cook during the holiday rush, albeit a field even he tends to struggle. Avoiding the kitchen catching aflame, perfecting his craft lest he blow up the stove, leaving only a pile of ash in its wake. As previously mentioned, ever since the dreadful chain of events that lead to the unfortunate destruction of Max's kitchen, this raven haired vampire has attempted his hand at learning to use a stove properly: Although he often finds himself forgetting ingredients either in the midst of cooking or after the final product is done and he's taken a big bite.

“Shit! I forgot the milk and eggs!” Dwayne grumbled with a mouthful of dry crumbs, a true disgrace of a cookie.

Paul always gives him crap for it of course.

“Oooh I just thought you were going for a sandy, dusty dry cookie kinda thing.”

"Yeah man, these taste like ass!" Marko would cough out in midst of choking.

"And what, like you dumbasses could do any better," Dwayne retorts with a huff. Only Star manages to have any manners when testing his failed baking endeavors.

"Well I mean, the taste isn't that bad. Just a little dry is all."

"At least Marko wouldn't be choking to death." David would mutter from the darkest corner of the room, a little late in the conversation.

In all honesty, Dwayne's biggest motivation when it came to improving his skills was obviously Laddie. The kid never got much of a Christmas whilst living with his mom, so now that he was with the boys, he wanted to ensure that Christmas's were something that Laddie would remember for all eternity. Though granted, it is quite the mess when he was helping in the kitchen. But when the mini vamp grins from ear to ear whilst coated in flour and rapidly stirring an overflowing bowl of chunky cookie dough--the sight is too freaking cute!

Since Laddie joined the boys, they participate in Secret Santa every single year, which definitely includes Paul bursting through the entrance of the hotel as Santa on Christmas day. We won't talk about the fact that each year he almost falls flat on his face and swears, ruining the surprise for the kid.

"Santa where are your reindeer," he'd question, to which Santa Paul scoffs

"Pff, reindeer, I don't need any fucki- Ow," cut off by a firm and covert kick to the shin from Star, Paul quickly changes his response. "Oh! Ho ho, well, you see little boy, Santa can fly too! On his, uh, uhm… magic motorcycle! Yeah, that!"

But it's okay because Laddie already KNEW (he figured it out a year or two ago after Paul's beard fell off not once, but three times), he just doesn't have the heart to tell any of them because, well Paul really gets into it. And he knows the others are playing along for his sake. But to be fair, Laddie would have to be pretty dumb to believe it was Santa. I mean, the beard Paul's wearing is hanging half off his face by this point! But anyway, just like Paul's style, the entirety of the goody two shoes schpiel is thrown out the window, replaced with sleeves that have been ripped off, muddy boots, spiked bracelets and his Metallica shirt in full view beneath his flared red coat. He calls this BIKER CLAUS!

Laddie is not a squasher of traditions! But there was the one time that David had to intervene when Paul and Dwayne thought it would be great to use Laddie as the star at the top of the tree. David practically had a heart attack. Well, that's impossible but it still felt like he was having one!

“Ho ho ho! Now, don’t be a bitch, little David or Santa will have to give you coal.” Paul stated mockingly to David, brows furrowed.

“Well, Santa,” David scolds, a wry smile developing on his face when setting down the eight year old now off to shake his presents beneath their behemoth of a tree. “You best be careful. You never know what's in those milk and cookies, hm?”

Each year Marko buys bird toys for the pigeons in the hotel. Well, buy is probably the wrong word. More like he liberates the stores of their stock. And then for the next six months, David has to hear the agonizing jingle of bells. David almost roasted one pigeon in particular that kept flying over him to drop the ball with a bell in it on his head. That was Paul's entertainment for the next five hours, hell, he'd try to find it if the bird lost it and give it back. Marko defends the pigeon. Between running through stores buying up surprises for his friends, he's helping Paul throw out decorations for the cave. The dollar store has some surprisingly unexpected treasures, allowing him to deck the fucking halls to the max. Tinsel here, ornaments there, tiny light up trees to hide around the caves, a butt ton of cinnamon pine cones which he ends up throwing back and forth with Paul.

And Paul often steals his gifts or goes dumpster diving for any hidden gems. He forgets to take the tags off of them the majority of the time, which is always an indicator whether or not its new. Any time Star asks where he got them from he refuses to answer. Just gets up and walks away. But for David's gift? Well this lucky bastard has found coal in the dumpster and chucks it to David when he's not looking and he sighs deeply in disappointment because this is the third year Paul has done this.

"Huh? What? Who did that? Wasn't me. Somebody's throwing stuff."

Other than that he'll find a fat bag of charcoal and just tape the name David on it. David is certainly not amused. Dwayne will actually try to figure out what the others want, and has the sense to save the money taken from their previous meals. After all, they're dead, they wouldn't have much use for it anyway. He's not about to waste his hypnosis on some poor cashier. That would be a waste of time in his eyes.

When Christmas did arrive the tree was piled with mysterious boxes crudely mashed and taped together with bows and ribbons underneath it. It's obvious which ones are from Star since those gifts are wrapped in neatly pressed paper, wound tight beneath curled ribbons that remind the boys of her hair. Marko often goes on a food run rather than allow them all to be subjected to a potentially charred turkey, no offense to Dwayne of course. So, with a table covered from end to end with copious bowls of gravy, potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, a beast of a turkey in the center packed to the brim with cornbread stuffing, the boys cram into their chairs knocking back beers and spiked cider. Keeping to their own traditions, after fattening up, they gather around the tree and play card games, just as they had over eighty years ago on that frigid night. David still slays them in poker, and Marko is an utter dark horse when it comes to blackjack. Paul insists they try Go Fish. No one ever wants to play Go Fish. Closer towards the end of the night Dwayne will slip away to Jasper's shrine and bring him a fresh glass of rum as well as unwrapping what he got him that year. While Dwayne is there, the other boys will join him - omitting Star and Laddie left unaware of the Lost Boy they'd never met - in celebrating the last hour or so of the Holiday season with their fallen comrade.

Although Christmas time is often about uncomfortable mushy moments and emotions that create deep, unfamiliar times for David. The entire ordeal becomes that for everyone of the boys and Star. But God forbid anyone who even mentions it! I mean, it's kinda obvious though considering he's spending it with the people he always called family, knee deep in traditions that are sentimental to himself and the boys. There's a fluster of emotions running rampant during this particular Holiday Season, and although the blonde brooding vampire decides to squint at it with skepticism he savors these moments, knowing like Jasper, it could all be swept away with a single ray of light or the foolish hand of a hunter. So as they sit, drunk, full, and laughing beside Jasper's grave he can't help but smile at the sentimentality of it all. Christmas is a pain in the ass, but… it's a pain he'll gladly sit through for his brothers.

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kell-be-belle · 4 years

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Desperation

a/n: I am so unbeliveably proud of myself for finishing this. It has been a long time since I’ve written anything and it has been such an amazing experience to create again. This fanfiction was written as part of the @grishaversebigbang project. I am only a minor piece in a great work of art so be sure to check out all the other amazing stories and artworks all dedicated to Leigh Bardugo’s @lbardugo incredible grishaverse.

Corporalki: @december-dragon

Materialki:

@phy-be [Artwork] @randomlpsbrecken [Artwork] @ahkielos [Edit1] [Edit2]

Summary: Kaz Brekker never thought he would find himself hopelessly in love, let alone with his own Wraith. Unable to contain his feelings and unsure how to confess them, a desperate Kaz seeks help from his fellow crows. But he may have gotten a little more than he bargained for.

Ao3: Read It Here

In all his life, Kaz Brekker could only recall three instances where he had found himself feeling truly desperate. The first time had been when he had awakened on the Reaper’s Barge, tossed mercilessly amongst the foul, festering corpses without regard for the life to which he still clung. Using his own brother’s rotting corpse as a flotation device was an act of survival and one whose consequences echoed well into his present.

The second time had been on the flat shores of Vellgeluk after their harrowing escape from the Frjedan Ice Court; watching as his meticulously orchestrated plans crumbled between his leather gloved hands. Four million kruge gone. His team weary and in varying stages of unraveling. Inej small and limp like a child’s doll in the arms of the Squaller as she disappeared over the distant horizon. How hollow he had felt. The fire inside him temporarily extinguished leaving him teetering on the very edge of collapse.

The third time was now as he sat perched on the sofa of the Van Eck mansions’ lavish parlor. Kaz had made it a personal policy of his to spend as little time as he could at the estate. Had he been Wylan, he probably would have seen the place burned to the foundation long ago. Something so absurdly ostentatious had no business existing. The furniture was too plush, the wallpaper too colorful, the floral arrangements too plentiful and pungent. Kaz would take the hollow under a bridge long before this monstrosity.

Jesper Fahey, however, was in his glory.

Jesper was swathed in a rich velvet smoking jacket, the sleeves embroidered with shimmering gold thread. He cradled a glass of deeply colored wine in the curve of one hand. He pinched a thin cigarillo between the fingers of the other. His grin was oil slick and smug as a gambler on a hot streak as he took a drag of the cigarillo and breathed it’s sweet smoke back into the even sweeter air.

“Ah Kaz,” he purred, the smoke standing white against the richness of his Zemeni skin. “I’ve been wondering when you would finally grow the dice to come seeking my expertise.” He swung one spindly leg over the other in a high arc and the wine sloshed in his glass like a small sea.

Kaz allowed himself the momentary pleasure of imagining knocking out Jesper’s obnoxiously white teeth with the head of his cane. The leather of his gloves creaked as his grip on said cane tightened. “Well… here I am,” he rasped. “And with the dice I assure you I had long before today.”

“Oh no doubt, but I assure you that having the dice to con the most powerful man in Ketterdam and having the dice to do this takes two totally different sets.”

Kaz clenched his jaw and teeth, like his gloves, creaked menacingly. “Enough with this ridiculous euphemism. Is the deal the deal?”

“Oh, you mean right now?” Jesper quiried. His attempt at a poker face was pathetic as ever. It was no wonder he lost so frequently. “It’s just… you’ve never come to me to help with this sort of thing and I’m finding myself… overwhelmed with emotion.” It was some emotion, but it certainly wasn’t something as innocent as love for a friend.

Shame burned white hot under Kaz’s skin. He knew full well that the request he was making was unorthodox if not hideously pathetic. However, that did not mean that he had to sit here and suffer mockery from the likes of Jesper Fahey. “That’s it. We’re done here.” He rasped, his coat surging around him like the tides of a stormy sea as he took up his cane and limped defiantly towards the door.

Jesper sprang from the couch like a tightly wound coil. He had wanted to have his fun, but he hadn’t meant to drive Kaz away. “No, no wait!” he squawked, scrambling to place his wine glass safely on the side table so he could pursue the retreating Kaz. “C’mon Kaz, I was just fooling arou-!” Jesper clapped a hand on Kaz’s shoulder.

He couldn’t have made a bigger mistake.

Even on his best days, Kaz struggled to cope with the trauma of his childhood. Today was most certainly not what he would consider one of his best. Instinct took hold and wielded him like a marionette. He twisted around and snatched Jesper’s arm with the speed of a striking viper. He wrenched it backwards and the joint of the Zemeni’s shoulder groaned in its socket. Kaz was not a hesitant fighter. On the streets of Ketterdam, hesitation brought certain death. Within a heartbeat, he hefted his cane and lifted it in a high arc with the steel crows head aimed to strike. “K-Kaz please! Wait!”

Realization washed over him and Kaz snapped back to his senses as if plunged into the canal midwinter. His eyes flickered up to see his cane; the steelhead glinting in the light of the crystal chandelier. A star teetering on the edge of the heavens. A meteor set on destruction. Kaz released Jesper with little grace and the Zemeni fell on all fours with a gasp of relief. Jesper rolled his shoulder and winced. “Saints, Kaz… I wouldn’t have teased you had I known it would entail an attempt on my life…”

Kaz made no remark, only blinked tiredly down at Jesper before he turned and slunk away; pushing a hand through the sheaf of his dark hair. Why was he even here? Seeking Jesper out had been a thoughtless idea and his regret was palpable. There was only a small handful of people Kaz dared to consider comrades, but still he kept them at arm’s length. It was smart. It was safe. Making Jesper privy to this information was a betrayal of his most sacred of rules- never expose your weaknesses.

Jesper recovered with the kind of ease that only he could manage, smoothing the lapels of his smoking jacket and picking up his cigarillo from where it was smoldering feebly on the carpet. The Zemeni perched it back between his lips and took a long drag. He breathed the sweet smoke back into the parlor. “Boy… it’s worse than I thought. How long has it been?”

Kaz pressed his lips together, “Much longer than I care to admit.”

“You make it sound like you have some kind of disease,” Jesper chuckled watching the smoke tendrils dance into the air above him.“It’s only love, Kaz.”

Even the word made Kaz’s stomach twist. Love. What even was love? It was something that he might have known at one time, but was so distant in his past it may as well have been another lifetime. The concept was so foreign to him now that he struggled to understand where and when it had managed to entrap him like a rabbit in a snare.

Inej. Kaz loved Inej.

Somehow, this Suli girl had managed to wheedle her way under his carefully structured armor. He should have just been able to swallow it down. He should have buried it in the deep pit inside himself where he shoved all other feelings that didn’t pertain to revenge, control, or power. All the things that made him Ketterdam’s Bastard of the Barrel. However, he couldn’t. He just couldn’t and he had tried with every ounce of willpower in his broken, miserable body. Every time he looked at her, caught the scent of her perfume, felt the warmth of her touch lingering on the window sill; he felt himself unraveling.

Kaz forever envisioned his life spent with no company other than his own and he had accepted it with no qualms. He enjoyed his own company. Now he was posed with a situation he had never prepared for and had no clue how to proceed with. And it was for that reason that Kaz was here today.

Kaz was desperate.

When it came to choosing an acquaintance with romantic experience, his options had been slim and even that was an extreme understatement. His choices included Jesper Fahey and Nina Zenik. Neither of them were nearly capable enough to handle this sensitive information with any form of maturity. At the very least, Jesper lacked Nina’s ruthlessness.

“Jesper!” A voice rang out from the nearby foyer. “Jesper, I’m home!”

“Shit, it’s Wylan!” Jesper hissed, scrambled to the table beside the sofa and opened the lid to a small trinket box. He hastily snubbed his cigarillo out inside and snapped the lid shut before waving his hands like an overgrown bird in an attempt to disperse the lingering smoke. He only just had time to throw himself into a lounging position before Wylan appeared in the door.

Wylan Van Eck had grown quite a bit since he had first joined the ranks of the Dregs. His face had lost some of its boyish roundness.

Wylan stopped mid stride, his nostrils flaring as he raised his chin and took in the fading scent of Jesper’s freshly extinguished cigarillo. “Jesper! How many times do I have to tell you, stop smoking those in the house! That smell gets in the carpet!”

If only Jesper’s smile was as effective in getting him out of trouble as he believed it to be. Wylan sighed exasperatedly, but made no further comment. This was obviously an ongoing struggle. Wylan crossed to the card table adjacent to the fireplace, depositing his armful of packages on its surface. “So… what business, Kaz? It’s not often we see you here…. I know you can stomach this place just about as well as I can.” Wylan had made it known more than once that he had absolutely no sentimental feelings towards his childhood home. It seemed his presence there hinged solely on his affections for Jesper who had settled into life of luxury as if he had never lived any other way.

Kaz hesitated. It couldn’t have been more than half a moment, but the subtle arch of Wylan’s brow indicated he had caught the uncharacteristic action. “I need help with a job. I came to ask Jesper for help.” It wasn’t entirely a lie though not specifically the truth either.

“Oh, really?” Wylan queried, unwrapping one paper swathed package. “What kind of job?”

Jesper was the one to intervene, springing up from his perch on the sofa once more like a tightly wound coil. “A stakeout!” he blurted. Wylan blinked at him suspicion. “Uh… yeah, a stakeout! It looks like the Black Tips have been sniffing around Fifth Harbor and Kaz wants me to keep an eye on the borders.”

“A stakeout, huh?” he queried once more, lifting another of his packages. He pulled away the paper slowly and deliberately. The slow riiiiiiip it produced should have been classified as an instrument of torture in Kaz’s current state. “That doesn’t really sound like a job for Jesper.” Kaz glared pointedly at Jesper. The Zemeni merely grimaced, bouncing his shoulders and mouthing a silent word of apology. “Did something happen with Inej?”

“No. It didn’t.” Kaz came out much more bitter than he had intended which caused Wylan to arch his brow even further. It didn’t take an idiot to know something with their story didn’t quite check out, but still Wylan had become so damn perceptive since entering the ranks of the Dregs. His cunning rivaled Kaz’s own which at most times impressed him, but sometimes left him mildly disquieted. He would make a fine successor should he ever decide to abandon some of that meddlesome humanity.

“Alright, sounds good. Be safe.” Wylan abruptly stated, gathering his unwrapped purchases in the cradle of his arms and proceeding out from the parlor. “I’ll be in the lab if you need me!” echoed out behind him as he rounded the grand staircase and disappeared from sight. Kaz and Jesper stood silently, gawking at the empty space where Wylan had been as if they hadn’t yet processed the fact he was no longer there.

Jesper glanced dazedly over at Kaz, “Okay, well…. I guess, that… settles that.” Jesper clapped his hands together and swiveled on the balls of his feet to face Kaz. “Alright! Let’s talk about the game plan! I’m thinking some new clothes.”

The pit that had been growing in Kaz’s stomach grew deeper still. If it were possible to feel worse about this decision than before than he most certainly would, but it seemed there was no choice now. No mourners, no funerals.

******

“Alright,” Jesper sang, clapping his hands together. “Inej should be arriving back in Ketterdam sometime in the next few days correct?” Kaz affirmed with a bare nod. “Why don’t we start with the basics?” Jesper had brought Kaz to a quaint little square in the Zelver district. The planters surrounding the square were bursting with freshly bloomed crocuses and tulips. Townsfolk were perched at wrought iron bistro tables, nursing cups of steaming coffee bright with fresh cream or pecking at delicate pastries from the neighboring coffeehouses. A small handful of children ran around chasing a brightly colored ball in a jubilant cacophony of giggles and shrieks.

Kaz hated it.

Places like this so reminded him too much of the brief dream of a life he and his brother had lived upon their arrival in Ketterdam. It reminded him too much of the house with the blue door and white lace curtains in the windows. Too much of hutspot and rich hot chocolate and a porcelain doll of a girl with a red ribbon in her hair. Suffering had been the forge in which Kaz Brekker had been created and remembering that there were people had never known the same was always hard for him to swallow.

Still, Kaz couldn’t complain. He refused to take any of Jesper’s so called “lessons of love” anywhere in the remote vicinity of the Barrel or East and West Stave. The risk of him being recognized in those places was too great and he didn’t wish to expose himself any further than he already had. Here he was blissfully anonymous and therefore exempt from some marginal amount of embarrassment or so he believed.

“Alright, so generally when people are happy they tend to smile, correct?” Jesper was pacing a line in front of Kaz, the crumbs of a recently eaten pastry still stuck to his lips. Kaz didn’t bother to tell him they were still there. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you actually smile before. I mean, I’ve seen the scheming face smile before, but that doesn’t exactly count, does it? It looks more like that kind of smile an opponent might give you when they’re about the beat your hand with a royal flush and-! ”

“Jesper.” Kaz barked, setting the Zemeni still like a hound called to heel. “Please, I am not getting any younger sitting here listening to your ramblings over the opinion of my expressions. I would appreciate you getting to your point at some moment in my lifetime. Also there have been crumbs on your face for the last ten minutes. For saints sake, clean yourself up.”

Jesper blinked at him a moment before swiftly brushing the crumbs from his mouth with a swipe of the back of his hand. His cheeks were dark with embarrassment. “Right, okay focusing…” He took a collective breath. “So, you need to let Inej know you enjoy being around her.”

“I’m not sure if you’ve realized, but that’s the whole reason we’re here.”

Jesper sighed exasperatedly, “Work with me here, Kaz. You can’t just run up to Inej and scream about your feelings in her face. You have to start small; baby steps if you will.” Kaz raised one dark brow. “You have to start subtle. Start smiling at her more, maybe throw in a laugh at something she says. Make her feel like you enjoy being in her company.”

“But I do enjoy being in her company.”

“Yeah, I understand that, but you would never know it with that sourpuss of a face you have.” Kaz furrowed his brows. Jesper swallowed thickly. “N-not that there’s anything wrong with that! I mean, your face is what it is and it’s perfectly handsome,” Kaz brushed off the fact that Jesper had just referred to his face as ‘perfectly handsome.’ “But maybe you should just try and-!”

“Fine.” Kaz cut Jesper’s ramblings off at the knee. He no longer had the patience for them. “I will… try to smile.” Kaz moistened his lips, stretched his mouth out and back in to test the functioning of his muscles. He took a collective breath. The corners of his lips twitched upwards; a direction they were not accustomed to moving in. He believed he was doing a fine job of things. He certainly didn’t think he was the picture of serenity, but he thought the smile looked genuine. Unfortunately, judging from the look Jesper was giving him, the Zemeni didn’t think the same.

Kaz’s smile fell. “What? Am I doing something wrong?”

“Not really, it’s just…” Jesper sucked the air in through his teeth with a small hiss. “Well you’re kind of just making your scheming face.” Kaz’s stomach dropped. Conspiratorial smiles were all well and good in his line of business, but not when trying to convey affection to significant others. Kaz furrowed his brow, not entirely sure how to proceed. Jesper must have sensed his frustration and jumped to encourage him. “Hey, hey don’t get discouraged! You just need some practice, that’s all! Look, try again and I’ll tell you how to make it look more genuine, okay?” Kaz agreed reluctantly because what other choice did he have?

For the better part of the next hour, Jesper coached Kaz on how to smile like a proper man and less like a Barrel-born thug. He offered little bits of advice like smoothing is brow, relaxing the tension in his jaw, and showing just a hint of teeth. By the time they were through, Jesper was looking at him with accomplishment in his grey eyes. “Not bad, not bad at all,” he mused. “I would almost say you look genuinely happy! Alright, that’s enough practice for now.”

Kaz let his face fall back to its natural expression, massaging his cheeks with the tips of his leather clad fingers. He had endured beatings, knife wounds, several broken bones- one of which had caused him a permanent disability- and yet somehow learning how to smile had been more arduous. The muscles in his cheeks twitched from the strain. They were painfully underused, afterall.

Jesper was beginning to explain phase two of his plan when a brightly colored ball bounced towards their bench, rolling the last few feet before coming to a stop at the edge of Kaz’s pristinely polished shoes. He tilted his chin upwards, watching as the gaggle of children who had been frolicing about the square barreled towards them in pursuit of their escaped plaything.

With one look at Kaz, however, the children stopped dead in their tracks; their combined momentum nearly sending them toppling onto the cobblestone like dominoes.

Kaz knew how he appeared to children, a creature comprised of sharp angles and shadows that more resembled the monster under their bed than it did a man. He had no qualms against this vision of himself since he had no fondness for children as proven with sweet little Hanna Smeet. He looked down at the ball with distaste. It’s overly-saturated color made his eyes sting as if staring into the light of the sun.

“Oh, this is perfect!” Jesper clapped his hands together jubilantly. “Okay Kaz, here’s where all the hard work comes into practice! Bring that ball back over to those kids and give them your best smile when you do it.”

“You can’t be serious.” Kaz rasped, bitter coffee gaze sliding from the ball to the Zemeni as he flopped onto the bench beside him.

“I assure you that I am one hundred percent serious. You don’t get unrestricted candor from anyone like you do from children. If your new smile works on them, then all of our hard work will have been worth the effort.” Jesper flashed his own brilliant white smile. It was just as bright and damning as the ball- as the sun.

Kaz looked down at the ball, looked back up at Jesper who’s unrelenting smile was beginning to shift from aimable to unnerving. He certainly wasn’t giving up on this no more than he would surrender his beloved pearl handled pistols. “Fine,” Kaz growled. “Just stop smiling at me like that.” Kaz scooped the ball into the palm of one hand and grasped his cane with the other, hoisting himself up from the bench with a small creak of protest from his bad leg. He limped towards the children, the steel tip of his cane rasping against the stones beneath.

The children stood paralyzed, caught between their fear of the monster approaching them and their desire for the ball in his hand. Their knees knocked, lips wobbled, eyes swimming with the imminent threat of tears. This couldn’t possibly end well. Nevertheless he persisted, intent on seeing this through. He stopped a few feet before the children and used his cane to lower himself into a kneeling position. His bad leg creaked in protest once more and he growled with annoyance. The children shrunk away with a chorus of barely contained gasps.

“No wait, I…” The children waited with bated breath, curiosities momentarily overshadowing their trepidation. Kaz took a collective breath, briefly tested the muscles of his lips. He leaned forward, offering the ball in his outstretched palm. He thought back to all of Jesper’s tips, smoothing the furrow of his brows, relaxing the tension of his jaw, revealing a hint of teeth. “I believe this belongs to you.”

The children scattered like roaches caught by the light, screaming and bolting off in a multitude of directions. In her haste, one little girl tripped over the hem of her skirts and collapsed face first to the cobblestones. One braid had come loose from where it had been wrapped around her head and it hung limply against the side of her dirt and tear streaked face. One boy mustered up enough courage to turn back, grasping his friend by the arm, dragging her up from the road, and carting her off towards a cafe.

Kaz sat there dumbfounded. Of course he hadn’t believed that would go well, but he still didn’t expect the disaster that unfolded. He surmised that one of them would snatch the ball with a hurried word of thanks and then the lot would scurry off to continue their game. Instead they had run off like the grim reaper galloped on their heels atop his skeletal steed. Kaz had expected nothing and yet was somehow still disappointed.

Kaz swiveled on the balls of his feet, craning his neck back to where Jesper sat by the bench, hands clasped over his mouth to silence the laughter that was still evident in quiver of his shoulders. Kaz shot up from his position despite the protest of his leg, stalking across the square back to Jesper. The Zemini snapped straight and still as Kaz approached like a soldier to his commanding general. “We’re going.” Kaz barked. “If you so much as breathe a word of this to anyone ever, Saints help me Jesper I will shove a hundred kruge down your throat and then slice you open so they tumble out like a damn slot machine.”

Typically, such a threat would be disturbing to the average person, but Jesper only cast him a wry smile and fell into step behind him. “Whatever you say, boss. Whatever you say.”

*********

After the incident in the Zelver district, Kaz and Jesper thought it best to seek out new territory to continue their lessons. The cherry on the top of this day would be some pinched faced merchant wife crying for the Stadwatch and demanding repercussions for the Barrel thugs who terrorized her little darlings. Jesper and Kaz moved eastward, passed the Church of Barter and towards the University District. This district was blissfully void of the snotfaced cretins known as children.

Unfortunately, children of another kind populated this particular district. The incredibly cocksure, yet sickeningly nebulous breed known as the university student. It was nearing the end of the term and they were skittering about like rodents; wild eyed and bristling at the slightest inconvenience.

One student bumped shoulders with Kaz and reacted with a fiercely growled, “Watch where you’re going!” And muttered afterwards, “Lousy cripple.” It probably wasn’t meant to be heard, but was there nonetheless and Kaz wasn’t in a particularly passive mood. Kaz brushed his shoulder off with a practiced word of apology. The student righted himself and readjusted the stack in his arms before turning to bustle off to wherever he had been hurrying to before the collision.

Kaz gripped the head of his cane in his gloved hand. He jabbed the steel tip backwards with pinpoint precision and struck the back of the student’s knee. He folded to the ground like a gambler with a losing hand; his papers falling around him like a hail of confetti. They caught on the breeze like escaped birds. The student made no movement to recapture them. He laid there on the stones with his face scrunched in a way that couldn’t have been anything other an effort to hold back tears. Had that truly been all it took? Kaz almost felt sorry for him as he strode away.

Almost.

“Did you really have to do that to him? Final exams are a ridiculously stressful time.” Jesper said reproachfully casting a glance back at the student who was still lying in the street. He had curled in on himself like a dying insect.

“It certainly made me feel better so… yes. Yes I did.” Jesper rolled his eyes, but judging from the quiver of his dark lips, he was trying not to find too much satisfaction in the student’s retribution.

Jesper and Kaz settled in a courtyard just off the main thoroughfare. It was mostly secluded, save for a single student perched on the bench in the far corner. Her nose was buried so deeply into a leather bound tome that the rest of her face was not even visible. She wouldn’t be interrupting them any time soon. They sat down on a bench as they had in the Zelver District, Jesper tucked into the far right and Kaz the far left. Kaz closed his eyes for a brief moment; drinking in the serenity of the courtyard. After the cacophony of sensations from the square, this place was a sanctuary.

He felt the planks of the bench beneath him bow and bend as weight shifted atop them. He opened his eyes and glanced sidelong at Jesper who appeared to have grown closer. Kaz eyed him warily, but determined the space between them was still sufficient enough. Kaz tried to immerse himself back in his moment of peace when he once more felt the bench planks bow and bend as Jesper inched closer still. He swiped his cane from where it had been propped against the bench and wielded it as a makeshift barrier between them.

“Jesper. Whatever it is you’re doing it better stop right now. I require a least two feet of distance from you at all times.”

“First of all, ouch. Second of all, prepare yourself because this is lesson number two, Kaz.”

“If lesson number two involves the continued invasion of my personal space, then I’m afraid this lesson is over.” Kaz retreated further down the bench though there wasn’t much space left to retreat into. The curled, wrought iron of the armrest pressed into his side through the bulk of his wool coat.

“C’mon Kaz! Do you want to win over Inej or not?”

“I don’t know, Jesper, would you like to lose an arm?” Kaz growled. “Because that’s the direction we’re heading if you don’t shift down the other end of this saints forsaken bench.” Customarily, Kaz did his utmost to contain the sickness inside him. Exposing it meant exposing what was perhaps his greatest weakness and weakness was not of Kaz Brekker’s list of desirable personality traits. However, the stress of this day had left him cracked.

“Do you want to win over Inej or not?” When Kaz didn’t immediately respond, Jesper shifted closer. “Well, do you or don’t you?” He stared at Kaz expectantly, his grey eyes seeming to penetrate through to his very soul. Kaz pressed his lips together and gave a bare nod. “That’s what I thought. Just sit back and let the master show you how it’s done.” Jesper shimmied a little closer, further closing what little space remained between them. Kaz’s skin crawled, but he remained still.

“So, when you’re sitting next to her, you start moving in closer. Remember to take your time with it; you don’t want to be intimidating.” Jesper was now a hair’s breadth away; he could feel the warmth of the Zemeni’s body. It made his stomach roil. “Now, this is when the magic happens.” Jesper’s grin was not assuring of any type of magic. “So, sit like this for awhile. Kind of let that tension grow. Drive ‘em a little stir-crazy. Then, real smooth like, pretend like you’re going to yawn, stretch your arms up,” Jesper raised both lanky arms over his head; stretching them out before casually bringing one down and around Kaz’s shoulder. It settled there as if there was nowhere else it had ever been. “And boom, there you have it. Now the two of you are nice and cozy and perfectly poised for smoochin’.” He winked. Kaz nearly wretched.

“Oh dear… am I interrupting something?” Kaz nearly jumped from his skin, leaving it like a molted shell on the bench behind him. He whirled around to see none other than a deviously grinning Nina Zenik. Kaz swallowed thickly. The cat about to devour the canary. “Jesper Fahey, how could you?!” she bewailed. “I always knew you were a degenerate, but cheating on your sweet innocent Wylan with Dirty Hands himself?” The student who had been buried in her book across the courtyard briefly bobbed above the pages.

“Nina… dear…” Kaz’s voice was low and feral, barely contained like a wild animal moments away from breaking its restraints. “Would you kindly shut that plump little mouth of yours?” Unfortunately with Nina, everything worked in the opposite. All positives were negatives, all negatives were positives, and ‘shut your mouth’ meant ‘please continue on as emphatically as your obnoxious voice box can manage.’

“Oh, poor Wylan will be devastated- absolutely heartbroken! I fear he may never recover from such a blow. I hope the taste of danger was worth it, Jesper!”

Jesper looked stricken. “Nina! How could I? How could you? I love Wylan more than life itself! And even if I didn’t, would you truly think that this-” He gestured to Kaz- “Would be the one I would choose?” Kaz glowered at Jesper. “No offense, buddy, you’re just not my type.” Kaz could’ve ripped his hair out.

Kaz stood from the bench, his coat once more rising in a swell around his legs. “I told you to shut your mouth.” He turned the ferocity of his gaze on Jesper. “And I extend that to you, too. I can’t stand either of your wailings. I swear, you’ll make my head split.” It was true that Kaz’s head was beginning to ache; his temples throbbing like the steady beat of a drum. This day had put him into so many situations beyond the limits of his comfort zone and it was starting to wear his nerves thin.

Nina and Jesper exchanged a glance. “Alright, fine, Kaz, we’ll stop…” Nina muttered. She made it her personal business to give Kaz as much hell as humanly possibly, but something must have told her to push that aside. Something about Kaz was different. He wasn’t just being his usual disgruntled self. Whatever this was, it ran deeper than the average vexation. “But seriously, what is going on? I know how particular you are about your personal space so you must have a good reason to be out here letting Jesper put the moves on you.”

Kaz only sighed, collapsing onto the bench. “It’s none of your business, Zenik. Just run off and eat cake or raise the dead or whatever it is you do for fun these days.” Kaz pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes in hopes to relieve some of the pressure building inside his skull.

Telling Nina Zenik to mind her own business was like telling the sun to not shine. Now that she knew something was amiss, she would pursue it like a dog with a bone. “Like hell it isn’t, Brekker. I know you’re about as personable as Genya Safin on a bad hair day, but this is beyond even that. Whether you like it or not, Kaz, I’m your friend and I want to help.” As frustrating as she could be, Nina was fiercely loyal and Kaz had to give her some credit for that. However, he still wasn’t in the mood for this.

“I said no.” Kaz bit.

“And I said tell me,” jabbed Nina.

Jesper, having grown restless with the building tension finally blurted, “Kaz is in love with Inej and we’re trying to come up with ways he can tell her!” The words left him in one great rush and he had to suck in a deep breath to recover. When he realized what he had done, he clapped his hands over his mouth; eyes twitching back and forth between Nina and Kaz.

“Oh, that’s all,” Her laughter fluttered like butterflies wings. “I already knew that. You like to think you’re Mister Cool-and-Detached, but I’ve been watching you pine after her for years!”

Kaz sucked a breath to retort, but found all his words caught in his throat. Had… had really been so painfully obvious about it? He supposed that it must have been somewhat unsubtle since Van Eck had known to use Inej as a pawn for negotiation. Still, he found himself somewhat embarrassed knowing Nina had noticed.

“If you’re looking for ways to win over Inej, then look no further! I happen to be an expert in the art of winning affection.” Nina dismissed with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand. “The way to any woman’s heart is through her stomach!”

Jesper and Kaz exchanged a quick glance at each other, brows arched in matching expressions of confusion. Jesper piped up, “Umm…I thought that only worked on men?”

“Of course, typical male chauvinists!” Nina huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “You do realize that not everything is about men, don’t you? A woman’s heart can be won over just as easily with the offering food. An example of one such woman stands before your very eyes.” She says with a gesture to her ample form. “So, what kind of food does Inej like?”

“I don’t know.” Kaz replied curtly.

Nina’s smile fell. “You… don’t know? Well, saints Kaz, you claim to love her and yet you don’t even know what kind of food she likes to eat?”

“Do you?” he bit back.

Nina furrowed her brow, stroking the smooth curve of her chin as she gave Kaz’s question some thought. “Um, well- I guess… I don’t know either. She’s not really much of an eater.”

Kaz leaned forward on his cane, his fingers steepled across the crow’s head. “Then enlighten me, my dear Nina, on what makes you think that cooking a meal would do to win her over?”

Nina puffed her cheeks. “Well, at the very least I know she likes waffles. Good waffles. Thick fluffy waffles soaked in golden honey syrup and smothered with soft, salty butter. Bejeweled with luscious red strawberries and… oh, just thinking about it makes me famished.” Nina’s cheeks had flushed a dusty shade of pink. Her relationship with food clearly bordered on the edge of unnatural and Kaz did his best not to think too hard about it.

Nina blinked and broke free from her pastry induced stupor. “A-anyway, I think you should cook something for her! Knowing that someone took the time and effort to make something especially for you is extremely romantic. It would certainly mean a lot coming from you especially because your every waking moment is dedicated to your unhealthy obsession with kruge”

“I think you forget that my unhealthy obsession with kruge is what helps to feed your own. Every time you sit down to stuff yourself with biscuits or cakes or waffles, you should be saying your graces to me and not your Ravkan saints.”

Nina looked at him momentarily with a wooden expression as if she could not believe Kaz Brekker could be so unspeakably conceited. She seemed to think better of it though since she had known Kaz several years now and knew that he, indeed, could. “Either way, I am not the issue, here. The whole reason you’re out here practically spooning with Jesper on a public bench is because you need to learn how to woo Inej. Preparing a meal is a very reasonable solution. There is, however, one little hitch… Kaz, do you even know how to cook?”

“He knows how to cook up some pretty good heists!” Jesper chortled, his face plastered with an idiotic grin. He had shaped his fingers to resemble pistols and shot a round at both Kaz and Nina accompanied by the appropriate sound effects. The joke did not have the desired effect and Jesper awkwardly lowered his “guns”. “Uh… sorry…” He coughed, shoving his hands under his thighs.

“Anyway,” Nina dispersed the awkward air with a small clap, “I know a bakery not far from here that actually offers lessons in the art of waffle making! We should go see if they’re having a class!”

“That’s perfect!” Jesper exclaimed, springing up from his place on the bench. “We’ll all take a lesson! Oh man… imagine what Wylan would think if I surprised him with breakfast in bed and with a breakfast I made! Oh… all the smooches I’d get…” Now Jesper’s face had gone flushed and dreamy.

“No, I don’t want to hear it!” Nina suddenly cried, returning to her earlier bit. “You leave that innocent boy alone! You’ve toyed with his heart enough!”

“Oh, for Saint’s sake.” Kaz growled, snatching his can and hauling himself from the bench. “Can we just get a move on already?” He stalked off towards the entrance of the courtyard and paused as he reached it. He looked up the left side of the street and then the right and sighed exasperatedly. “Nina, I don’t know where I’m going!”

“Calm down, you big baby! Take the right.” Nina and Jesper trailed after Kaz and together the three of them proceeded down the path in a jumble of laughter and growls.

The student who had been sitting in the courtyard at last lifted her book and rested it spine down against her lap. She had absolutely no idea who any of those people had been and sure that none of them belonged to the university. She was glad they were gone, but she couldn’t help the heartening sense that she hoped he got his girl. She lifted her book and buried her nose and once more submitted herself to her studies.

************

Kaz, Nina, and Jesper soon found themselves outside the bakery Nina had spoken of. The sign out front displayed the name Zoet Verliefed. Sweet Love. How sickeningly appropriate. Nina breezed through the front door as if she were the breath of spring herself; Her hair trailing behind her in a cascade of chestnut curls. There was a young boy standing behind the counter. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. The son of the owner, Kaz pondered. He was playing with a coin, spinning it with a flick of his fingers and observing how many times it revolved before clattering back to the counter.

“O-oh! Ms. Zenik!” he gasped, his face flushed red all the way to the tips of his ears. Oh. Kaz understood now. It seemed that Nina was a regular customer here. Perhaps more than regular judging from the way the counter boy sputtered so abashedly.

“Hi, Gerrit!” she sang, fluttering her way up to the counter with her curls all abounce. She pressed her palms to the counter, bracketing the ample shape of her bosom with her arms and giving her assets just the right amount of lift. “I haven’t seen you in so long! I’ve missed you,” she purred, bouncing on the balls of her feet and making her form jiggle.

Gerrit looked like he could’ve passed out.

“T-t-that’s okay, Ms. Zenik! I’m just glad to see you’re well!” That probably wasn’t the only thing he was glad to see judging from the way he squirmed.

“Oh please, I’ve told you not to call me that, you make me sound like an old lady!” Nina giggled, twirling a lock of hair around one perfectly manicured finger. Kaz cleared his throat into a closed fist, reminding Nina that they were here for reasons other than harmless flirting. “Oh, right! Gerrit, are you having one of those little cooking classes here today?”

Gerrit broke free of his stupor, meeting Nina’s eyes with an owlish gaze, “Cooking class?” He echoed back like a mockingbird. “Oh um, no we aren’t. We usually only do them on Wednesdays and Fridays.”

Nina jutted out her lower lip, sank heavily against the surface of the counter.

“You see my friend back there?” She gestured to where Kaz and Jesper stood behind her. Gerrit’s eyes darted between the two of them, not entirely sure to which friend she was referring. “Not the human beanpole, the one that looks like he might bite your face off.” Gerrit’s eyes settled on Kaz, flinching slightly as their gazes met. “You see… underneath that unforgiving exterior is the bleeding heart of a man yearning to love.”

“Nina,” Kaz growled lowly. Nina held up a hand to signal his silence.

“Yes, there is a girl he loves so deeply and passionately that he has risked life and limb for her and yet despite all that he is too emotionally stunted to confess the true nature of his feelings. Jesper and I,” Jesper gave a small wave. “Have been working all day to help him find ways to make his true feelings known and we thought cooking a meal would be the perfect solution!”

Gerrit stood there a moment, gaze darting from Nina to Kaz to Jesper, back to Nina then Kaz and back once more at Nina. He licked his lips nervously, clearly unsure where he fell into all of this. “Um… that’s uh… really sweet?” Nina’s smiled twitched.

“Yes… it is,” she drew out. “But, oh woe!” she cried, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead like a damsel about to swoon. “We are here on a day when no cooking class is offered! Whatever are we going to do?” Nina paused, sneaking a glance at Gerrit to see if her acting had made things any more clear. He blinked owlishly, his hands wrung around the excess material of his apron. Nina’s smile twitched once more, obviously losing patience with this boy and his obliviousness. “If only… there was someway… someone-” she emphasized the word- “Who could help us out.”

Something inside Garrit seemed to click, “O-oh! You mean me! Oh, well, uh… I guess my dad won’t be back for awhile, but there won’t be anymore to mind the shop if I’m in the kitchen….”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about the shop. Here,” Nina reached into her pocket and extracted a small stack of gold coins, placing them on the counter with a like clink. “For your trouble.”

Gerrit’s eyes flickered once more between all parties, now with the addition of the gold coins stacked on the counter. He wrung his apron more tightly. “O-okay, but only for you, N…Nina…”

Nina squealed in delight, bouncing excitedly on the balls of her feet. “You’re just the absolute sweetest! Oh, I could kiss you!” Gerrit once more looked like he could’ve passed out. His eyelids even fluttered.

“O-Oh y-you don’t have to do that I m-mean…” He bumbled helplessly, his face growing redder as the idea seemed to take root in his mind. His hands wrung his apron so tightly Kaz swore he could hear the cloth groaning with the strain. “The kitchen is this way!” Gerrit suddenly blurted, scurrying off through a set of carved wooden doors.

Nina looked quite satisfied with herself, smirking from ear to ear. “That’s how it’s done, boys.”

Kaz stepped up to the counter beside her, “Have you no shame?”

“No more than you do, crow boy. And put those coins back, won’t you? I actually like these people.”

Kaz huffed softly and did as bidded, returning the stack of coins Nina had placed there as if they had never been anywhere else.

********

Gerrit was a whirlwind as he set up the kitchen; setting out various bowls and spoons and ingredients. For something that was supposed to be so simple, it seemed like more effort than it was worth. Why make something yourself when it could be more easily purchased? Call him strange, but he would much prefer to be bought a steak dinner properly cooked than made one that was all grisel and fat. There was something to this he didn’t understand, but he supposed that was why he asked for help in the first place.

Kaz stripped himself of his jacket and hung it up on a post near the door. He rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to the elbow, partially exposing the crow and cup tattooed on his inner arm. Gerrit eyed it warily, but swiftly turned his gaze when caught staring.

He wet his bottom lip, “Um… I-I think cooking might be easier if you remove your gloves.”

“And I think cooking might be easier if you mind your own business.” Gerrit pressed his lips together and stepped back. He had heard Kaz’s bark and seemed smart enough not to goad him to bite.

“Okay… then, let’s start.” Gerrit explained to them the basics of waffle batter. Told them about the balance between wet and dry ingredients, proper stirring techniques to ensure optimal fluffiness. As he talked, he performed each task with a practiced ease. He seemed sure of himself here. He was no longer the bumbling boy who had nearly passed out at the sight of a little flesh. When the batter was complete, he showed them how to use the waffle iron. It was all simple enough. If this child could make waffles with such finesse, there was no reason why Kaz Brekker- Leader of the Dregs, Conqueror of the Fjerdan Ice Court, Bastard of the Barrel- could not do the same. Kaz looked down at the ingredients. Flour, eggs, salt, milk…

“Do you really think Inej is going to like this?” asked Jesper from Kaz’s left. His flour was already sifted into his bowl, soft and powdery like freshly fallen snow. He was now measuring out the salt.

“Of course, why wouldn’t she?” conferred Nina from Kaz’s right. She paced evenly with Jesper in the process of her batter; her dried ingredients all resting in the bottom of the bowl. She was working on removing the cork from a bottle of milk. Kaz’s heart skipped a beat. How had they managed to work so quickly and without his notice? He jumped to start his own batter. He wasn’t going to be shown up by the likes of Nina and Jesper.

Nina continued on, unaware of Kaz’s inner plight. “Whenever Inej is home from sea voyaging, we always make sure to meet up for a waffle date. Waffles were one of the things we always talked about getting when we returned to Ketterdam from Fjerda.”

Kaz paused in measuring his flour. Wait, they did? Kaz didn’t always see Inej when she returned to Ketterdam. Sometimes he would find only a small bag of birdseed on the windowsill of his office, a small handwritten note beside it bearing the simple phrase ‘don’t forget.’ It brought him back to the memory of Inej perched on that same windowsill. Stray locks of her midnight hair tugged free from its braid by the breeze, her lashes soft and feathery against her cheeks as she basked in the dying sunlight. She seemed to glow gold, an immortal being trapped in the lowly world of men. Outside, the crows pecked merrily at the seed she had thrown. The Queen of Scavengers. The Goddess of Lost Things.

Kaz slipped back into reality with an inaudible gasp. Had he… put in one cup of flour or two? He peered down into his bowl. It didn’t seem like very much; he had probably only just added one. He measured another and dumped it in.

“I guess you’re right about that,” Jesper hummed as poured the milk into the well of his dry ingredients. He did it little by little, mixing between each bit. “I don’t always get to see her, but I’ve gotten quite a few letters from her! She’s always sending me information on all the weapons she’s come across in her travels; sketches, samples of ammunition. She even sent me the latest in Zemeni revolver tech! It fires eight rounds in under ten seconds! Wylan and I tested it out some of his father’s old portraits.”

Kaz looked down at his bowl, half full of flour. He, too, had received letters from Inej, but they weren’t frequent and weren’t especially personal either. They typically contained a vague description of her current whereabouts, information about the slavers she had apprehended and the people he should be looking out for on the homefront. She often asked after her parents. They had long since moved on from the dismal streets of Ketterdam, but Kaz was sure to keep tabs on them to make sure they were well.

He started adding salt and baking powder.

The only thing that ever caught him were the signatures of her letters. She always finished them with the phrase ‘yours, Inej.’ Yours. It was such a simple word used constantly with little consequence. Did she have any knowledge of what she was doing to him? Did she know how his heart writhed every time he saw that one little word scrawled so careless at the end of every correspondence? Did she know how it drove his sleep away and left him tossing and turning on the narrow shape of his bed, grappling with the question of whether or not he dared to think of her as his? No… Inej belonged to no one. She was her own keeper.

“Kaz…? You alright there, boss?” Jesper’s queryshook Kaz free from the devolvement of his thoughts and blinked at Jesper owlishly.

“Alright? Of course I’m alright. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well you were just kind of… staring at your baking powder,” piped in Nina.

Kaz looked down at the bowl of powder cupped in his palm. It was made from thick ceramic and adorned with a motif of tittering blue birds. Had… had he actually added it? He peered down into his bowl, but everything was a wash of white. He couldn’t tell what was flour and what was powder. What was sugar and what was salt. “I was… just remembering the recipe. Two teaspoons of baking powder.” He scooped out said amount and dropped it in amongst the other white nonsense.

Within a short amount of time, the three of them had each accomplished the creation of a waffle batter. Kaz frowned into his bowl. How could something look so lumpy while simultaneously so runny? It seemed to defy the very laws of physics and Kaz questioned how he had managed to bring such a strange substance into existence.

The group was about to cook their batters when the faint tinkling of the shop bell took Garrit’s attention. He hurriedly excused himself from their presence and scurried off between the kitchen doors. “Wait for me before you use the iron!” he threw behind him. The three of them watched the doors swing back and forth on their hinges before ultimately settling with a small rumble.

“Screw that.” Nina snatched her bowl of completed batter and strode over to where the waffle iron still sat red hot and unattended.

“Wait Nina!” Jesper titered. “Gerrit told us to wait until he came back.”

“When have I ever done as I’m told? When have any of us-” she waved her arm in a broad gesture to the rooms three occupants- “Ever done as we’re told? All I know is that I want waffles and I want them now.”

Jesper thought about it for a moment, but then bounced his shoulders in a shrug, “Enh, you’re right! Besides it’s just a waffle iron. How hard could it be?” He huddled near the oven with Nina and the two of them chattered and giggled as they each took their turn and brought their creations to life. Nina’s was the picture of perfection

Kaz stepped up to the oven, glancing briefly between his bowl of batter and waffle iron. It sizzled quietly with the residue of the last batch. He was still not sure how he had gotten to this point, but he supposed it would be a waste if he didn’t see it through. He greased the waffle iron with a thick pad of butter and it hissed into new life. He poured his batter in the center and it flooded through the nooks and crannies with the rush of a rogue wave. He swiftly slammed the lid shut before it could run out the sides.

“How did you do, Kaz?” piped Jesper, suddenly appearing over Kaz’s shoulder. His proximity was certainly too close for comfort and Kaz shifted away from him.

“You know it’s not supposed to be a liquid, right?” added Nina, appearing at his other shoulder.

Kaz scowled and stepped away from them, “I didn’t hover over your shoulders and criticize your handiwork so why should you with me?”

“Because something about it really didn’t look right,” Nina retorted. “I have to make sure you’re not over her committing atrocities against waffle kind over here.”

Suddenly the waffle iron was overflowing; batter seeping through the cracks of its cast iron shell and dripping into the fire below. It sizzled and sputtered and spat back at him in thick drops of hot grease and fat. He gave silent thanks for his gloves for without them his hands would’ve surely suffered burns. Jesper and Nina had begun to shriek, their own skin unprotected and already turning pink where the batter had spat at them.

“Saint’s, that fucking hurt!” Nina keened, cradling her injured hands against her chest. “What the hell, Kaz?! What did you do?”

“What did I do? Absolutely nothing!”

“Well you clearly did something because I’m pretty sure waffles aren’t supposed to do that!”

Jesper interrupted their bickering, “Uh, guys? It’s getting worse!” He pointed a freshly blistering finger to where the fire beneath the waffle iron had grown nearly twice its original size. It licked around the edges of the oven like a beast lashing out between the bars of its cage.

“Water! We need water!” Nina whirled around, her curls following behind half a second slower and whipping her in the face. She sputtered and tugged the chestnut locks from her face as she stumbled blinding in the direction of the sink. One curvaceous hip swung out and struck the corner of the table. The dishes on top spilled forward, rolling off the surface and onto the floor in a spray of ceramic shrapnel. She swore to herself.

“A little broken china is not really the priority,” Kaz pointed out.

“You’re not helping, Kaz!” Nina stepped around the broken china as best she could, some crunching underfoot as she made her way to the sink. She swiftly filled a nearby basin and swung it into her arms, the liquid inside sloshing over the sides and onto the floor. She made it halfway back towards the blaze when she slipped on a spilled puddle of water. Nina sprawled out across the floor in a mass of tangled limbs and scarlet fabric. The bucket flew from her arms and the water inside along with it. It was close enough to reach the fire, but it was enough to reach Kaz and Jesper. The two now stood with their clothes thoroughly soaked, the excess running down their faces like fresh rainfall.

Kaz could feel the vein in his temple throb as he pushed a hand through his dampened hair in an attempt to return it to shape. “Thank you, Nina, you’re doing such a marvelous job. Have you considered joining the fire brigade?” he growled sarcastically.

“Shut it, crow boy! I don’t see you doing anything to help!” Nina raged, peeling herself from the floor. Her dampened hair clung to the side of her face like pieces of seaweed. “In fact, I don’t see either of you doing anything! If this place burns down, I’ll be sure they’re sending you the bill!”

With that Jesper shuttered to life. He had enough gambling debt as it was; he couldn’t afford to add damages for cruddy bakery on top it. “O-Oh, I got it!” He then sprung into action, swiping the basin from the floor and leaping over the fallen Nina. He skirted around puddles and danced over piles of broken ceramic. He made it the sink and filled the basin once more to the brim. He proceeded back towards the blaze, slowly pricking his way back along the path he had used to get there in the first place.

“Sometime before we all burn to death would be preferable,” snapped Nina.

“I don’t think we’re going to get another shot at this so I’m trying not to spill it, unlike someone.” He glared briefly and pointedly at Nina who clenched her fists in a familiar, but now useless fashion. Had this been a few years ago, Jesper would’ve sunk like a stone cast into a lake.

Gerrit pushed through the kitchen doors, “Sorry about that, I-!” He promptly cut his sentence short as he discovered the state of the kitchen. The floors slick with water and ceramic shards scattered around like some kind hazardous confetti. Nina was still half sprawled out, Kaz still dripping wet, and Jesper about to pour water on a grease fire.

Gerrit jerked forward like a puppet whose strings had been tugged. “Nononononono don’t do that! Don’t use that water!” He scrambled across the kitchen to where Jesper was mid motion; mere moments away from pouring the whole basin into the flames. He tackled the Zemeni with the force of a charging bull, knocking the wind from them both and sending crashing unceremoniously into the nearby wall.

Jesper coughed and groaned, “Fu… ugh, what the hell kid?” Gerrit was not listening. Not in the slightest. He was gasping like a fish out of water, half clutching his shoulder as he scrambled back towards the oven. He snatched an inconspicuous can from the floor close to the oven, squinting his eyes against the heat of the fire. Gerrit ripped the lid off and it clattered to the floor. Whatever was inside, he threw it into the flames where it then backfired in an explosion of white powder. The four of them coughed and choked on the cloud until it had dispersed enough to allow the normal flow of oxygen.

Kaz looked down at his shirt. It was still soaking wet, but in addition he was now also covered in… flour? He swiped a little from his chest and rolled it between the fingers of his gloves. Definitely flour. It had begun to mix with the moisture in his shirt and was quickly becoming a thick paste that he was sure would have cement like qualities if allowed to dry. Kaz lifted his gaze and saw Jesper and Gerrit were both in similar states. Three spectres, all the victims of a blazing inferno now left to haunt the housewives come to buy bread.

If only they had been so fortunate.

Gerrit swallowed thickly and finally croaked, “My…. my father is going to kill me.”

“Not if we kill him first.”

Gerrit looked up at Kaz with a mixture of horror and appraisal, for a split moment seriously debating whether or not he should take this newly born ghost up on his offer. He didn’t.

If only Kaz had been so fortunate.

********

Nina convinced- demanded, more appropriately- that Kaz and Jesper stay to aid her and Gerrit in the cleaning the Zoet Verliefed kitchen. They could have very easily ditched and vamoosed their way back to the Van Eck estate, but Nina insisted that she simply could not live without the bakery’s confections and was unwilling to burn that bridge. Kaz would’ve burned that bridge. Kaz would’ve every bridge in Ketterdam just to take back this absolute catastrophe of a day.

By the time they arrived back at the Van Eck estate, the mixture of flour and water that covered Kaz had dried to the plaster-like consistency he had been expecting and it was just about as pleasant as one would expect. His shirt scraped against his skin and crackled with his every movement. This certainly wasn’t the first shirt Kaz had ruined, but he still mourned the loss of a well tailored piece of clothing.

Wylan looked up from his sketch pad and immediately dropped his pencil. It rolled across the floor with a light thk thk thk before ultimately settling under the coffee table. “Oh my…” His mouth worked up and down. “What in Ghezen’s hand happened to you?” He rushed up to Jesper, furiously rubbing his hand against his cheek in an attempt to remove the dried flour paste.

“Wylan…. Babe, please,” Jesper protested weakly, his words distorted as his cheek stretched back and forth. Wylan spoke right over him.

“I can’t believe this! I let you off on your own for one day and look at what’s happened! You lot look like you got in an argument with a baker.”

“I wouldn’t say we got in an argument with one, but we certainly caused one some trouble.” Nina chuckled. Wylan momentarily ceased his ministrations to furrow his brows at Nina before returning to his cleaning of Jesper. This time he licked the pad of his thumb for extra cleaning power.

“Wylan, please!” Jesper barked exasperatedly, taking his boyfriend’s wrist in his grasp. “This stuff is only coming off with one very long soak in the tub; preferably one with lots of bubbles and some champagne to soothe my frazzled nerves.” Wylan stood stubbornly for a moment, but ultimately gave up the fight and let his arm fall to his side.

“Seriously, what happened? I thought you were just going to teach him some stupid pickup lines or something. Maybe council him on which bridges give the best view of the stars, not blow up a bakery.”

“I’d just like to clarify that we didn’t blow up a bakery, but I would be lying if I said we didn’t come close to it,” Nina chimed in. “I would also like to add that if we did it would have been completely unintentional. I would never consciously bring harm to a pastry.” Kaz, Jesper, and Wylan simultaneously cast her a look. “Y’know what… I’m just gonna go clean myself up. I’ll come back when all of this-” She gestured broadly to the boys- “is sorted out.” And slipped from the parlor assumingly to take refuge in one of the mansions many luxurious bathrooms.

With Nina gone, Wylan looked between Jesper and Kaz. He drew in a breath, on the brink of delivering a very interminable lecture, but it died in his throat and escaped as nothing more than a long sigh. “Jesper,” he breathed. “I should’ve known this would’ve happened. Your kind of romance is too much for Kaz.”

Jesper looked nervously at Kaz and back at Wylan, “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about. We weren’t doing anything romance related. We were at uh, uh… a stake out mission with the, uh… ah shit…”

“The Black Tips.” Kaz deadpanned. He knew the jig was up, but it was at least somewhat consoling to watch Jesper try and salvage it.

Wylan’s mouth tilted as he arched one coppery brow, “Really? So you’re telling me that Kaz didn’t ask for your help romancing Inej and that you weren’t teaching him that silly move where you pretend to yawn and then somehow conveniently end up with your arm around me?”

Jesper gaped at Wylan, slack jawed. He glanced helplessly at Kaz who only blinked tiredly at him.

“Oh, I knew what you were doing the whole time,” he chirped. “I have to admit, Kaz, I’m baffled as to why- out of all of us- you thought Jesper was your best ticket to winning Inej.”

Jesper clutched a hand to his chest in afront, “Wy… Wylan, you wound me! Have I not been a perfectly loving boyfriend to you?”

Wylan chuckled pressing the curve of his palm into the shape of Jesper’s cheek, “Of course you have and I love all those silly, romantic things that you do for me. I love when you recite me poetry or use your revolvers to write obscenities in my father’s portraits,” Kaz quirked a brow at that. “But those are things that work for us Jesper. Our relationship is our relationship. What we do won’t work for everyone.”

Jesper pressed his lips together, considering Wylan’s words. After a few moments he sighed defeatedly, “You’re… you’re right. All this time I was trying to teach Kaz the sorts of things I would do for you, but that’s not right. Inej isn’t you and Kaz definitely isn’t me.” Kaz’s frown deepened, but this time Jesper paid no mind as he was busy entwining his fingers with Wylan’s. “Boy, I always knew you were smart, but this is ridiculous.“

Wylan smiled shyly, “Well, when books aren’t an option you tend to read people.”

Wylan and Jesper turned to Kaz, but he was already gone as quick and silent as the wraith that ensnared his heart.

***************

Kaz found a water pump tucked into a narrow space behind the carriage house and stopped to clean the mess from his face. His skin was pinkened and raw by the time he had managed to scrub off the tacky mix of flour and water, but he at least he no longer looked like a ghost. His clothes, however, he could not do much about. Kaz buttoned up the length of his coat to hide to worst of it and sauntered from the grounds of the Van Eck Estate.

Kaz retreated south towards the place where the Barrel gave way to the last dregs of Ketterdam. There was a secluded bridge over the canal he liked to frequent when he needed a place to think free from all the responsibilities that bound him. He glowered down at his reflection in the canal. It was distorted and malformed in the water’s current. That was what he was. Distorted. Malformed. Broken. Cold. Ruthless. Monstrous. Creatures like him weren’t meant for things so human as love. The most human thing about him was his foolishness. Foolishness is what had driven him here and he loathed himself for acting upon it.

He swiped a stone from the bridge’s path, hurling into the water with a great splash. “Fool!” he cried to no one in particular. Not really to himself. Not really to the saints or to Ghezen. Perhaps most to the void where he supposed all unheard cries went.

When the water’s surface became placid once more, Kaz saw Inej peering back at him. Her eyes were unfathomably dark as if he could fall into them endlessly. He groaned and clutched the railing of the bridge, pressing his forehead against the grit of the splintering wood. His mind had been plagued with thoughts of her for so long that he had at last been driven mad enough to see her visage in the sordid waters of the canal. “Saints,” he rasped. “Cure me of this madness or strike me where I stand. I can’t take this any longer.” Only silence greeted him and he closed his eyes in defeat. There was no deliverance; not even divine retribution. There was only Kaz and his madness and the phantom in the water.

“I’m sorry, but I believe the saints are feeling far too benevolent to commit murder today.” Kaz’s heart leaped into his throat. He couldn’t even take in a breath around its girth and it made his lungs ache. There, on the bridge behind him, was Inej Ghafa. Live. In the flesh. No less a phantom than Kaz himself. She stood with the same knife sharp posture; both incredibly graceful and frighteningly intimidating.

“You are foolish.” The edge of her voice was hard. Serrated. The edge of a blade sharpened against a stone. “Foolish to have forgotten that all walls have ears. Imagine if you had, perhaps, admitted to your greatest weakness.” Her eyes shone with knowing.

Kaz unwittingly stepped back. A first for him since he was not a man often caught off guard. “W-what are you doing here? You weren’t due back until the week’s end.”

Inej arched a dark brow. “Goodness, I really must have been gone too long.” Lacing her fingers behind her back; she stepped forward towards the edge of the bridge where Kaz stood. Her steps were lined and measured as if even now she walked the highwire. Graceful. Powerful. “Have you really forgotten how to detect the presence of your Wraith?”

There was that word again. Your. Your Wraith. Yours, Inej. It made Kaz’s stomach tighten. He pressed his lips into a hard line. “I… I don’t know what to say…”

“Well, isn’t that a first?” The breath of her laughter speared through his heart like a hot iron spike. A wave of gooseflesh broke over the skin of his arms. “Seems that you can’t talk your way out of every situation.”

“So it seems…” He breathed quietly, casting his gaze to the boards of the bridge. They were withered from the moisture of the canal below. They were worn from the treads of thousands of feet. Perhaps, were he fortunate enough, the boards would give beneath him and send him plunging into the water never to resurface again. It seemed much easier than facing Inej.

“I heard it all, you know. Everything at the Van Eck estate,” she said. Her signature braid shifted from the perch of her shoulder as she turned on the toes of her rubber soled slippers and leaned against the railing beside him. How he wished to wrap that braid around his hand, brush his thumb over those silken plaits.

Kaz nodded barely, shifting his weight to the side furthest from her. She smelled of salt air and quiet, star-filled nights. He pictured her perched atop the tallest mast of her ship, her dark hair loose of that braid and draped about her shoulders like a cloak of shimmering silk. The Goddess of Lost Things. The Queen of the Night and Sea.

“And what of it, then…?” he asked quietly. He rapped the steel tip of his cane against the planks in a broken staccato. Nervous energy crackled under his skin.

“Of your current lack of charisma, or…?” He only looked at her gravely and her eyes shone once more with that knowing glint. She was only teasing him. Unlike Kaz, Inej was no fool. She breathed a soft sigh through her nose. “I’ve told you once before, Kaz. I will have you without armor, I will not have you at all.” Her gaze was steady and fathomless and she held Kaz in absolute rapture with it. He remembered. He remembered the last time she had spoken those words as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. Only this time was different because she was looking him in the eye. She had grown bolder in her time away from Ketterdam. She was more sure of herself than she had ever been in his company and it left him hopelessly intimidated. It made him desperately proud. “I will not say it a third time. I want you to understand that.”

Dread slithered in his stomach like a serpent. What was he to do? He had let Inej go once before and he had been living with the regret of it ever since. He had been young, then. Sharp edged and hungry and unwilling to yield to her requests out of ignorance. He was older now. Wiser. He knew what he wanted and here was the opportunity presented to him on a silver platter and yet it had not grown any easier. But he had to tell her.

It would eat him alive if he didn’t.

Kaz pushed off from the railing; leaving his cane resting securely against it. He squared himself in front of her, his mouth set and determined. “Inej…” He breathed her name quietly; hallowedly. “I am not a good man. I am not humble, I am not honest. I am not aimable or empathetic. I have built my life on the foundation of deception, bloodshed, and revenge and I don’t have much intention of living differently. I know nothing else now, however…” He pressed his lips together.

Words were failing him now. They rushed through his head in a flurry of blaring traffic. Every time he took one in his grasp it slipped between his fingers like water through a cracked glass. Kaz specialized in threats- in bargains and deals- not affections. What if he said the wrong thing? What if he offended her. His chest ached with panic. With desperation. Desperation to make her stay; to make her see.

Realization dawned on him like a crack of thunder. There was only one way to win over Inej. It didn’t involve charming smiles or snuggling on park benches. It didn’t involve music or poetry or elaborate gestures like homemade waffles. There was only one thing Inej wanted from him and it was the most dangerous gift he could give.

Shallow, rapid breaths rattled in his ribcage. Perspiration was beading at the line of his dark hair. His hands trembled as he hooked his fingers into the wrist of one glove and slowly peeled it away. He let it flutter to the wooden planks beneath them and the other followed soon after. They were sad, withered creatures without his slender fingers to give them life. Inej watched him all the while; her eyes dark and steady. The air on his skin was foreign and the chill of it sent a shudder up his spine. He felt naked. Exposed. Weak.

Kaz flexed his fingers, testing their dexterity without the hindrance of his gloves. He looked up at Inej who regarded him with the same steady curiosity as she had before. This was not the Kaz that she was familiar with. “I want to,” he rasped. She inclined her head towards him, listening more closely to his words. She looked at him from under the fan of her lashes and it made his heart flutter. “I want to… touch you. Would that be alright?” Just as much as Kaz struggled with his own inner sickness, so too did Inej. He did not want to do anything that would make her uncomfortable.

Inej nodded her head.

Kaz kept his movements slow and deliberate. It was just as much for himself as it was for her. There had been a time where he had been better, when he had been able to hold her hand without the barrier of his gloves. The passage of time and her absence had resensitized him to the touch of others. It was like learning to walk all over again. Kaz raised both hands; his palms up and fingers splayed. A magician with nothing up his sleeves. He breathed as deeply and evenly as he could, bringing his hands to hover on either side of Inej’s face. He could feel the radiating warmth of her skin and it made his stomach squirm with a mix of pleasure and disgust. He tried to ground himself as best he could, focusing on the sturdiness of the planks beneath his feet. He was on the bridge. Not in the harbor.

“Kaz,” she uttered softly; trying to rein him back from the place she knew his mind wandered.

“A moment… please,” he rasped. Give me the chance, he added wordlessly. He sucked in another breath and steadied himself. He closed the distance between his hands with the shape of Inej’s cradled tenderly in the middle. She stiffened only slightly. Something that would have gone unnoticed had he not known her so intimately. It melted away a moment later and she leaned into the curve of Kaz’s touch with a nearly inaudible sigh.

It drove him wild.

Kaz tentatively arched a thumb, caressed the pad of it ever so softly against the apple of Inej’s cheek. Her skin was pliant, but not the sagging, spongy thing all his nightmares insisted it would be. It was warm and sent his whole body into a burst of fever. It was as if he were lying under that bridge so many years ago; his body aflame with the Queen’s Lady Plague. Black starbursts appeared in his vision and he had to fight not to be dragged back down into the memory.

Inej did not break her gaze. What at first had been intimidating was somehow becoming comforting. She was like a lighthouse shining bright at the shore of a stormy sea guiding him home. Kaz moistened his lips and slowly leaned forward; pressing his forehead against hers. “Rietveld,” he breathed quietly. Inej blinked at him quizzically. “My name… my true name is Rietveld. Kaz Rietveld.” Her gaze flickered briefly to his shoulder, making the connection between this and the seemingly aimless tattoo that stained the skin there. “One day… one day I promise to tell you… to tell you how I became Kaz Brekker, but for now I hope that my name will suffice. Think of it as collateral.”

Her smile was a soft and tender thing, nearly unnoticeable by anyone who did not know her. “It’s nice to meet you… Kaz Rietveld.” No one had spoken his true name in years and the sound of it struck him with unexpected poignancy. Hearing it in the smooth hush of Inej’s voice only made it more so.

Despite himself, he found that he had started smiling. It was a weak and fragile thing, but it was perhaps the most genuine one had made in all his life. He moistened his lips once more, “I… I want to kiss you. Would that be alright?” Her lips parted slightly in silent invitation, but Kaz still waited for affirmation in the bow of her head.

Kaz stroked his thumbs over Inej’s cheeks; acquainting himself further with the feel of her skin. Desensitizing himself. Preparing himself for the next step. He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip, following its deep curve. A shudder coursed up Inej’s spine and it made Kaz burn with desire. He had spent countless nights imagining this moment. He had spent countless nights awake, tossing and turning in his bed for want of her; his mind alight with the thought of what her lips would feel like.

Inej did not move. She stood there were her hands still laced gingerly behind her back; her face cradled between Kaz’s bare hands. Her eyes had slipped shut and her lashes fluttered with the ebony gloss of crows’ wings at the tops of her pinkened cheeks. Kaz’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm in his chest as he further closed the gap. Further and further until nothing more than a hairsbreadth remained between them.

And then at last they met.

The two drew in sharp breaths; the meeting of their lips as achingly nerve wracking as it was anticipated. This moment was never meant to be a moment for them; the forces of the universe had robbed them of that long before their paths had ever crossed. Phantom hands tugged at them, urging them to push distance between themselves. It was tempting; to retreat back into the comfort and familiarity of distance. But Kaz was a fighter. Inej was a fighter. And now that they had finally fought their way into one another’s arms, they would not so easily be broken apart.

Inej’s hands unlaced from behind her back and came up to twist in the material of Kaz’s sleeves. Her nails grazed the skin of his forearms and he shuddered, but did not pull back. For the first time in his life, his head broke above the surface of the water. In the rot, there bloomed life. There was only the balmy crush of Inej’s mouth against his own and the exuberant thrum of their heart beats. It had made him more daring and in the heat of the moment he even went so far as to card his hands through the silken sheaf of her hair.

When they at last separated- foreheads still pressed against one another- Kaz was reeling. The world rocked around him in the warm and pleasant way that being drunk did. It blurred at the edges, pushing everything out of focus save for the Suli girl in front of him. He returned his hands to her cheeks and stroked them tenderly. Her skin was sweet and supple and he reveled in the feel of it. He swore nothing had ever felt so wonderful.

“I love you,” he whispered, unwittingly. It had slipped from his mouth before he had the chance to stop it and for a moment, he tensed. Life had trained him to expect the worst of every situation and one brief moment of triumph was not going to make up for that. The worst, however, never came. Instead Inej smiled wide and bright. The Queen of the Night and Sea. The Empress of his heart.

“I know, I’ve always known… but it was still nice to hear you say it. Sometimes even monsters and wraiths need the reassurance that someone loves them.”

#grishaversebigbang #grishabigbang #six of crows #crooked Kingdom #kaz brekker #nina zenik #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #inej ghafa #kanej #fanfiction #grishaverse #leigh bardugo #lbardugo #gvbbcreation

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turtle-steverogers · 5 years

Text

Summer Nights

HOLY SHIT ME??? POSTING A FIC??? wow.....

warnings: alcohol, smoking, abuse mentions...would y’all believe me if i said its actually really fluffy? also, the use of ‘pal’ as a term of endearment because i’ve been reading way too much stucky

ship: sprace

editing: actually, yeah

word count: a whopping 4038

May

“So where’d you get your fake ID?” Spot startles and chokes on the glass of Jack and Coke that he had been nursing. His throat burns as the vile liquid travels down his esophagus much faster than he would have liked and he looks with watery eyes at the person who had spoken to him.

The guy is tall and somewhat lanky with blonde hair that seems to shoot out in various directions. His eyes glint behind a pair of black framed glasses and are highlighted by the bags that hang underneath them. His face is set in a permanent smirk, but there’s a tired essence about him.

“Excuse me?” Spot manages, trying to suppress the coughing fit that threatens to overtake him.

“There’s no way you’re older than me,” The guy scoffs, “So I’m wondering how you managed to get your drink.”

Spot’s gaze travels down to the cigarette perched between the guy’s fingers, nose scrunching as the smell hits him and his neck tingles with desire.

The guy seems to notice his stare and he scoffs, “You want one?”

Spot shakes his head, “I shouldn’t.”

“But you do want one,” The guy says slowly, raising his eyebrows, “Don’t you?”

Spot gives him a half-hearted shrug, raising his glass to his lips and taking a small sip.

The guy chuckles, “Suit yourself,” he takes a drag, settling on the stool next to Spot. Spot gives him a side glance as a bartender swoops past, asking to see the guy’s ID, before sliding a glass of rum and Sprite over to him.

“Where’d you get yours, then?” Spot asks, eyes flicking down to the glass as the guy snubs out his cigarette in one of the provided ashtrays.

“Hm?” The guy doesn’t seem too bothered as he knocks back half of his drink in a single gulp.

“Your fake ID.”

“Oh,” The guy says, swallowing, “A friend.”

“Oh,” Spot pauses circling his drink around for a few moments, peering at its contents, “I’m almost 21.”

The guy looks at him, eyebrows raised, “Yeah? How old are you, then?”

“Twenty,” Spot says, “My birthday’s in December.”

“You’re still like,” The guy furrows his eyebrows, thinking, “7 or so months out then.”

Spot shrugs, “Close enough. How old’re you?”

“I’m nineteen, turning twenty in August.”

“Cool,” They fall into an awkward silence, although the guy looks generally at ease. Spot clears his throat, motioning for the bartender to bring him another drink. Another glass is passed to him and he brings it to his lips, intoxication swirling in his gut.

“You live around here?” The guy asks.

Spot nods, “Just got home from school.”

“Ah,” The guy nods, understanding flashing across his face, “S’that why you’re here?”

“What?”

“Well the last semester just ended, like, last week,” The guy points out, “At least it did for me, so we haven’t been home very long. Are you already sick of it?”

“Sick of what?” Spot squints at the guy, dumbly.

“Being home,” The guy’s voice had turned from jovial to unsettlingly serious. He fixes Spot with a hard, knowing look.

Spot squares his shoulders, turning to face the guy all the way, “Why,” he demands, “are you?”

The guy seems to shrink in on himself a little bit and Spot feels a pang of guilt shoot through him before he remembers that the guy had started it.

“What’s your name?” The guy asks, shaking out his shoulders, his smirk returning to his face.

“I don’t even know you,” Spot says, warily.

“Hi,” The guy sticks out a hand, which Spot shakes briefly, “I’m Race. There, now you know me. What’s your name?”

“Spot.”

“‘Cause of your freckles?” The guy, Race, blurts out. His eyes widen and he backtracks, stuttering over his words, “Unless that’s not, like, a nickname and-”

Spot quirks an eyebrow, amusement playing on his lips, “No, you’re right,” Race’s shoulders sag in relief, “My old foster brother started calling me that when we moved in together.”

“Oh, nice.”

“Yeah,” Spot says, “Race?”

“Yeah?”

“No,” Spot shakes his head, “Why Race?”

“Oh,” Race blushes, “I don’t really know. My dad always told me I was racing to catch up with my head and it kinda stuck.”

Spot nods, tucking the information somewhere in the forefront of his mind, but not answering. The silence that stretches back out between them is welcome this time, a new sort of familiarity in it. Something dynamic in the pause strikes a chord with Spot, a rare understanding bounding between them. Race’s presence no longer renders a threat, although the mischief that seems to emanate off the other boy doesn’t go unnoticed. But as they sit there, idly sipping their drinks, Spot becomes increasingly aware that the mischief isn’t directed at him.

“Well,” Race grunts, sliding his glass away with a sigh and checking his watch, “I’m outta here,” he hops off his stool, briefly stretching his shoulders, “see you ‘round, Spottie,” he pauses for a moment, eyes boring into Spot intensely before lightening, “try not to commit arson in your home or something.”

Spot barks out a startled laugh, “Same to you, pal.”

But Race is already gone.

XXX

“I quit last year.”

Spot skips the pleasantries, gesturing to the cigarette that Race was currently working to light. His head is buzzing minutely, nothing to be entirely concerned about, but the alcohol didn’t fail to make its presence in his system known. He’d lasted a few days sober in his home before he gave into the seedy bar’s beckon call and strolled out the front door, looking for an escape.

Spot couldn’t necessarily say he’s surprised to see Race back- he seems the type to frequent the place- but his presumptuous aura is absent as he startles, wide, red-rimmed eyes fixating on Spot’s.

Spot’s eyebrows furrow, but Race looks away before he can speak.

“Fuck off, I don’t need shitty life advice right now,” He grumbles, pocketing his lighter and inhaling a tangy lungful of smoke.

Spot raises his hands in mock surrender, “No life advice, got it. You okay?”

Race scoffs, gaze still cast to the side. Spot can see the misty lamplight twinkling in his eyes, but the playful light that had been there last time is nowhere to be seen. It’s disconcerting.

“You wanna talk about it?” Spot asks casually, moving to lean against the damp, brick wall next to Race, “Believe it or not, I listen pretty well.”

Race doesn’t look at him as he takes a long drag of his cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a long, thin line, “I don’t even know you.”

“You know my name,” Spot smirks, “that was enough for you the other day.”

Race doesn’t seem to have an answer to that. He takes another drag, then holds his cigarette up to the light, studying it with a resentful eye.

“I don’t like smoking,” He concedes, “It’s just the only thing that can ever-“

“-Keep you sane?” Spot guesses, knowing all too well what he meant.

Race spares a glance at him, “Yeah.”

Spot skips letting him know that he gets it. Hell knows Race probably doesn’t want to hear it.

Instead he asks, “Does anything else keep you sane?”

Race scoffs again. He seems to do that a lot. Like the world is sad and laughable. It kind of is.

“Uh,” Race scrunches up his nose, dropping his arm to his side, cigarette still secure between his nimble fingers, but momentarily forgotten, “Writing.”

Spot carefully avoids letting his surprise slip, “What kind of writing?”

Race shrugs, fingers going loose. Spot eyes flick to the falling cigarette. Something sort of like pride wells in his chest. The hardest part is already done. Letting go.

Not that quitting is going to be easy in any respect from here on out, but that initial admission to the notion is key. And it looks like Race has given in.

“Anything. Stories, memoirs, thoughts,” He trails off for a moment, thinking, “just not poetry. I suck at poetry.”

“Poetry is overrated, anyway.”

A moment of silence. Race carefully stomps on the butt of the cigarette, “I guess.”

June

“I haven’t smoked for two weeks.”

Spot looks up from his bottle, something he could almost mistake for fondness swelling in his chest. Race slides onto the stool next to him, waving over the bartender and gesturing for a beer. The bartender hands it to him and sidles away.

Spot allows his gaze to scan over his new friend, noting that while he looks exhausted, there’s a healthier quality about him. The bags under his eyes have let up a bit and the sallow, stretched skin of his cheeks have become fuller- redder. He catches sight of the notebook that’s cradled protectively in Race’s grasp, but doesn’t say anything. If Race wants to show him, he will.

“I’m proud of you,” Spot says genuinely, taking a sip of his beer and facing forward again.

The now expected silence settles over them again.

“And I’ve been writing more again,” Race admits, sheepishly holding up the notebook. He delicately opens it, flipping through the pages slowly until he lands on one that has been bookmarked by an old movie ticket.

“I don’t usually let anyone see it, but…” He turns it towards Spot and thrusts it into his grasp, “If you want, uh, you can look.”

Realizing the underlying establishment of trust that accompanies the gesture, Spot takes the notebook, being careful to keep his expression judgement free. He reads the passage- a short, choppy piece that doesn’t entirely make sense to him. It’s a memory, that much is clear, but key details are missing. It’s more of an imagery work, bringing Spot to an old park somewhere in Race’s childhood. He isn’t sure exactly what importance or deep-felt symbolism the park may hold, but it’s obvious that it’s special to Race. And if it’s been keeping Race from smoking, well, that’s a win then.

“That was brilliant, Race,” Spot says genuinely as he carefully closes the notebook and hands it back, “Has it helped?”

Race looks at the notebook, a small, half-smile on his face, “So far.”

XXX

“Wanna take a walk?”

This time, Spot isn’t surprised to see Race standing expectantly next to him. The notebook is back in his grip, but it seems to be more of a comforting presence than anything else. Race is fiddling with the movie ticket bookmark that peeks out the top, running his thumb over the worn, leather bounding.

“Sure,” Spot answers before he can give too much thought to the notion.

Race’s face breaks into a wide grin and Spot finds himself mirroring it.

“Awesome, c’mon,” Race says, taking the glass out of Spot’s grip and replacing it with his hand.

He pulls Spot out of the bar and doesn’t let go as he leads him down the street. It’s decently late and as they venture further away from town and closer to the surrounding neighborhoods, the company of people surrounding them ceases. They take a sudden turn into a little cul-de-sac and Race slows their pace as they cross to the other side of the street. In front of them sits a small playground. It looks old. Everything is made of wood or metal and Spot can see pieces of paint chipping off the sets.

“Oh,” Spot murmurs, mind venturing to the passage Race had shown him the other day.

“Yeah,” Race says, leading Spot to the swingset and nodding for him to perch on one of the swings. They sit, rocking back and forth in companionable quiet, “Why did you decide to quit?” Race asks after a moment.

Spot thinks for a moment, tilting his head to look at Race. Race is watching him intently.

“I was tired of not being in control,” Spot says, honestly, “I had lost my mom and my dad was being shitty and so I started smoking to help ease off the edge, but after a while it just made me feel more out of control. So, I quit.”

Race hums, eyes shifting to his own hand clasped around the chain of the swing, “Was it easy?”

Spot watches him fidget with the chain for a moment, “Is it easy?”

Race looks back at him, “No.”

“Then there’s your answer.”

“But it can be done?”

Spot smirks, “I quit, didn’t I?”

Race nods and Spot allows himself to smile, “Then there’s your answer.”

XXX

“I like you, Spot.”

Spot blinks, turning his head to look at Race. They’re back at the park, this time in the early morning. He wasn’t sure when they’d gotten so close, but sometime between the last park visit and now, phone numbers had been exchanged and bonds tied tighter. What they seemed to have was nice. Never had Spot felt so real and raw with a person before, but in the span of a few weeks, Race had wormed himself into his life. They didn’t talk very often about themselves, but the understanding of each other they seemed to have meant they didn’t have to. They just got it.

“I like you, too, Race,” Spot says, bemused.

“No, like, I like you,” Race holds eye contact and Spot feels his stomach flip. Race’s bluntness has always impressed Spot and he doesn’t think he’ll ever truly get used to it.

“Oh,” Is all he can think to say. It isn’t that he doesn’t like Race back, it’s just that he hasn’t given his feelings much thought. He’s mostly just run with what feels good in the moment.

“I think I want to kiss you,” Race continues, gaze never wavering.

Spot feels his heart leap to his throat and he swallows, “Okay,” he manages.

Race raises an eyebrow, “Okay okay? Or just...okay.”

Spot nods, “Okay okay.”

Race smiles and stands from his swing, closing the short distance between them until he’s directly in front of him. He grips one of the chain handles and rests his other hand on the side of Spot’s face. Spot stares at him, memorizing the movements. His own hand finds the taller boy’s hip.

Nothing happens for a moment, then Race leans down, capturing his mouth in a tentative kiss. Spot hums a little and it’s all Race needs to deepen the kiss. They move in tandem, feeling out each other’s presence for what could be an eternity. Then, Race pulls back.

Their foreheads stay pressed together and Spot smiles.

“Thank you,” Race breathes.

“For what?” Spot whispers back.

Race shrugs, “For being here.”

“Thank you, too.”

July

“Why do you like the park so much?” Spot asks one day as they walk away from the bar. He’s always wondered, but asking seemed too personal. But now that whatever they have has been solidified, it seems appropriate.

Race doesn’t answer immediately. Spot didn’t expect him to.

“Went there a lot as a kid,” Race says, “always had been an escape. Still is.”

Spot nods, “Neat.”

Race laughs, squeezing their conjoined hands, “Neat? What are you, 50?”

“Maybe,” Spot teases, eyes crinkling as he looks up at Race, “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Ewww,” Race whines, scrunching up his nose, “I do not want to think about kissing on an old man.”

“You brought it on yourself, pal,” Spot says, shaking his head.

“I know, but you- ugh, nevermind.”

They take their usual seats on the swings, hands still clasped together between them. Spot smiles. He’s happy.

XXX

The first setback happens a month after Race initially pledges to quit. Spot had been expecting this. Granted, lasting out a month without a cig was incredibly impressive, but it still wasn’t a surprise when Spot’s phone rang on a Tuesday afternoon.

He furrows his eyebrows, staring for a moment at Race’s contact photo before sliding his thumb across the screen and lifting his phone to his ear.

“Race?” He sits up when he hears a jagged cough on the other end, “Hello?”

“Spot,” Race rasps. He isn’t crying, at least, Spot can’t hear it in his voice, but he sounds miserable, “I fucked up.”

Spot purses his lips. He knows what he’s talking about- it’s obvious enough- but he wants Race to say it. Needs to have him talk it out.

“What happened?” He asks, already tucking his phone between his ear and shoulder and pulling on his shoes.

“I smoked,” Race says. His tone is dull, plain. He sounds utterly defeated.

“Did something happen? Or was it just urges, or-”

“My uncle hit me.”

“Goddamnit,”Spot paused in tying his shoes, taking a moment to draw in a measured breath. Race didn’t talk much about his home-life, but Spot knew the basics. He knew that his parents had passed in a car crash and Race had been sent to live with his aunt and uncle. He knew that things had been good at first, but quickly physical abuse had reared its ugly head and Race was subject to things that no kid should know. He didn’t know much, but he knew enough to make his blood boil.

“Sorry,” Race’s voice was still lifeless and Spot almost wished that he were crying. This was just plain scary.

“I’m not mad,” Spot quickly reassures him, “I’m actually proud that you got this far without a smoke. I’m coming, hang tight.”

“I’m at the park,” Race says, “In case you didn’t figure that already.”

Spot had figured, but he bites his tongue, “thanks, don’t go anywhere.”

He spots Race immediately, sitting on top of the monkey bars instead of the swings. His head is turned outward, glazed eyes staring at the treetops. There’s a nasty bruise forming on his left cheekbone, still red and glaring. Spot’s shoulders sag.

“Hey,” He calls carefully, not wanting to startle Race into falling. Something tells him that wouldn’t be especially appreciated right now.

Surprisingly, Race turns towards him. Spot had speculated that it would take a little coaxing to pull him out of his mind.

“Hey,” Race calls back. His voice is scratchy and Spot vaguely wonders how many cigarettes he’s had. Though, looking closer, there’s no sign of a pack or any stubs on the ground.

“I threw them in the forest,” Race mumbles, gesturing aimlessly, “S’why you can’t see any. I didn’t wanna see any.”

Spot raises his eyebrows. He’s got a million questions, a million concerns, but he elects to simply say, “I’m proud of you for throwing them. How many did you have?”

“Only two,” Race watches him as he climbs up next to him, settling down on one of the bars, “only two…”

“That’s...not as bad as I thought,” Spot admits, “good job.”

Race scoffs, “Don’t praise me for messing up.”

“I’m not,” Spot says firmly, tapping his chin to get him to look at him “I’m praising you for realizing that it was a mistake and actively preventing yourself from having another. I couldn’t even do that when I was tryna quit.”

“Oh,” Race looks down at his hands and Spot reaches out to grab one, “Okay.”

“Lemme see,” Spot says gently, lifting a careful hand as Race turns his head to the side, allowing for a full view of the abrasion. Spot gingerly runs a finger over it, immediately stopping when Race winces, “Hurts still?”

Race nods, “He got me good.”

“Wanna talk about what happened?” It was probably a ‘no’, but Spot always offered, anyway. Just to let Race know that he could.

“No,” Race mumbles.

“Alright,” Yep, as predicted, “Let’s get you some ice.”

He climbs down, waiting close by to help Race if he needs it. A moment later, they’re walking towards town, hands linked together in Spot’s jacket pocket.

August

“Hey, happy birthday,” Spot greets Race with a smile, handing him a small parcel. Race looks up at him from where he’s sitting at the swing and Spot is instantly reminded of their first kiss. His smile grows.

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” Race says, biting his lip to hold back a smile of his own.

“Yeah, I did,” Spot rolls his eyes, stepping forward so that Race’s knees were resting against his shins, “Open it.”

Race blushes a little, bowing his head as he unwraps the gift. Spot watches as his fingers slip underneath the tape, carefully unsticking each fold. It always baffled Spot how meticulous Race is. He emanates such boisterous chaos that Spot would have never pegged him for the gentle type. But with Race, the surprises never really stopped.

“Fuck,” Race breathes, jaw going slack as he takes the new notebook out of the paper. It’s a little bigger than the one he has at home and in much better shape. He holds it to his nose, closing his eyes as he notes that the leather smells real, “this is beautiful, Spot.”

Spot’s grin turns into something a little more gentle, “I knew you were running out of pages in your other one, so I thought…” Spot takes Race in as he opens the notebook, running the pads of his fingers over the crisp, yellow pages, “Oh and here,” Spot digs into his pocket and pulls out a small pack of .5 mm pens, “these might be a little more fun to write with than a mechanical pencil.”

Race takes the pack and glances up at Spot before cracking open the lid. He takes one out and uncaps it with his teeth, focusing intently on his paper as he writes out a short message. His handwriting is surprisingly good and looks even better in the fine, black ink. He tears out the paper and hands it to Spot.

Spot eyes him amusedly before reading the message,

Much love for you...thank you

Spot smiles, as Race pulls him down by the front of his shirt, “I love you, too,” he mumbles, already closing his eyes. Their lips fit together like puzzle pieces.

XXX

Spot looks around at the boxes in his room, taking a deep breath as he goes over a mental checklist of anything he might have missed.

“You all packed?” Race asks, wrapping his arms around Spot’s waist from behind. He tucks his chin on Spot’s shoulder, pressing a light kiss to his pulse point.

“I’m 99 percent sure,” Spot says, turning to wrap his own arms around Race.

“Good,” Race leans down, pecking a kiss to the tip of his nose, “I’m gonna miss you.”

“S’just college Racer,” Spot says, kissing his chin, “We’ll both be back for Fall and Winter break and shit.”

Race scrunches his nose, an impressive pout forming on his face, “But that’s so long, Spottie,” he whines.

Spot chuckles, “I know, I’m sad, too.”

“One day,” Race’s pout melts away, a smirk spreading across his lips instead, “I’m gonna marry you and college or anything can suck my dick.”

Spot laughs loudly, head tilting back, “You do that.”

Race pulls him back in, capturing him once more in a kiss, “Oh, I will.”

6 Years Later

“Racer, I got the garlic!”

Spot pushes the door to their apartment closed with his foot, holding the grocery bags above his head as their dog, Linda, bounds up to him.

“Hey, hey, no, Linda- down, babygirl! This food isn’t for you,” He transfers the bags to one hand and shoves Linda off with the other.

“Thank god,” Race pokes his head out of the kitchen, “I was worried that this chicken would have to go herbless and our taste buds would suffer tragically.”

Spot shakes his head, plucking the garlic pod out of the bag and tossing it to his husband, “Drama queen.”

He puts the groceries away, then joins Race at the stove.

“This all smells really good,” Spot says, dipping a finger in whatever pasta sauce Race is making.

“Hey, get your fucking fingers out of my sauce,” Race chides, hitting Spot lightly with a wooden spoon and getting pasta water on the sleeve of his henley.

“Asshole,” Spot bites, but there’s no real malice behind it.

“Mmm, you love me,” Race says, turning back to one of the pots.

Spot gently grabs his elbow, turning him and leaning up to kiss him, “Indeed I do.”

hehe

thanks for reading, chiefs

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nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany · 5 years

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Trump Promised Massive Infrastructure Projects—Instead We’ve Gotten Nothing

Digital Elixir Trump Promised Massive Infrastructure Projects—Instead We’ve Gotten Nothing

Yves here. In a bit of synchronicity, when a reader was graciously driving me to the Department of Motor Vehicles (a schlepp in the wilds of Shelby County), she mentioned she’d heard local media reports that trucks had had their weight limits lowered due to concern that some overpasses might not be able to handle the loads. Of course, a big reason infrastructure spending has plunged in the US is that it’s become an excuse for “public-private partnerships,” aka looting, when those deals take longer to get done and produce bad results so often that locals can sometimes block them.

By Tom Conway, the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW). Produced by the Independent Media Institute

Bad news about infrastructure is as ubiquitous as potholes. Failures in a 108-year-old railroad bridge and tunnel cost New York commuters thousands of hours in delays. Illinois doesn’t regularly inspect, let alone fix, decaying bridges. Flooding in Nebraska caused nearly half a billion dollars in road and bridge damage—just this year.

No problem, though. President Donald Trump promised to fix all this. The great dealmaker, the builder of eponymous buildings, the star of “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump, during his campaign, urged Americans to bet on him because he’d double what his opponent would spend on infrastructure. Double, he pledged!

So far, that wager has netted Americans nothing. No money. No deal. No bridges, roads or leadless water pipes. And there’s nothing on the horizon since Trump stormed out of the most recent meeting. That was a three-minute session in May with Democratic leaders at which Trump was supposed to discuss the $2 trillion he had proposed earlier to spend on infrastructure. In a press conference immediately afterward, Trump said if the Democrats continued to investigate him, he would refuse to keep his promises to the American people to repair the nation’s infrastructure.

The comedian Stephen Colbert described the situation best, saying Trump told the Democrats: “It’s my way or no highways.”

The situation, however, is no joke. Just ask the New York rail commuters held up for more than 2,000 hours over the past four years by bridge and tunnel breakdowns. Just ask the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave the nation a D+ grade for infrastructure and estimated that if more than $1 trillion is not added to currently anticipated spending on infrastructure, “the economy is expected to lose almost $4 trillion in GDP, resulting in a loss of 2.5 million jobs in 2025.”

Candidate Donald Trump knew it was no joke. On the campaign trail, he said U.S. infrastructure was “a mess” and no better than that of a “third-world country. ”When an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight and injuring about 200, he tweeted, “Our roads, airports, tunnels, bridges, electric grid—all falling apart.” Later, he tweeted, “The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me.”

Donald Trump promised to make America great again. And that wouldn’t be possible if America’s rail system, locks, dams and pipelines—that is, its vital organs—were “a mess.” Trump signed what he described as a contract with American voters to deliver an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his administration.

He mocked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton’s proposal to spend $275 billion. “Her number is a fraction of what we’re talking about. We need much more money to rebuild our infrastructure,” he told Fox News in 2016. “I would say at least double her numbers, and you’re going to really need a lot more than that.”

In August of 2016, he promised, “We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports that our country deserves. American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation.”

In his victory speech and both of his State of the Union addresses, he pledged again to be the master of infrastructure. “We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, school, hospitals. … And we will put millions of our people to work,” he said the night he won.

That sounds excellent. That’s exactly what 75 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll said they wanted. That would create millions of family-supporting jobs making the steel, aluminum, concrete, pipes and construction vehicles necessary to accomplish infrastructure repair. That would stimulate the economy in ways that benefit the middle class and those who are struggling.

That contract Trump signed with American voters to produce an infrastructure plan in the first 100 days: worthless. It never happened. He gave Americans an Infrastructure Week in June of 2017, though, and at just about the 100-day mark, predicted infrastructure spending would “take off like a rocket ship.” Two more Infrastructure Weeks followed in the next two years, but no money.

Trump finally announced a plan in February of 2018, at a little over the 365-day mark,to spend $1.5 trillion on infrastructure. It went nowhere because it managed to annoy both Democrats and Republicans.

It was to be funded by only $200 billion in federal dollars—less than what Hillary Clinton proposed. The rest was to come from state and local governments and from foreign money interests and the private sector. Basically, the idea was to hand over to hedge fund managers the roads and bridges and pipelines originally built, owned and maintained by Americans. The fat cats at the hedge funds would pay for repairs but then toll the assets in perpetuity. Nobody liked it.

That was last year. This year, by which time the words Infrastructure Week had become a synonym for promises not kept, Trump met on April 30 with top Democratic leaders and recommended a $2 trillion infrastructure investment. Democrats praised Trump afterward for taking the challenge seriously and for agreeing to find the money.

“It couldn’t have gone any better,” Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal, D-Mass., told the Washington Post, even though Neal was investigating Trump for possible tax fraud.

Almost immediately, Trump began complaining that Democrats were trying to hoodwink him into raising taxes to pay for the $2 trillion he had offered to spend.

Trump and the Republicans relinquished one way to pay for infrastructure when they passed a tax cut for the rich and corporations in December of 2017. As a result, the rich and corporations pocketed hundreds of billions—$1 trillion over 10 years—and Trump doesn’t have that money to invest in infrastructure. Corporations spent their tax break money on stock buybacks, further enriching the already rich. They didn’t invest in American manufacturing or worker training or wage increases.

Three weeks afterthe April 30 meeting, Trump snubbed Democrats who returned to the White House hoping the president had found a way to keep his promise to raise $2 trillion for infrastructure. Trump dismissed them like naughty schoolchildren. He told them he wouldn’t countenance Democrats simultaneously investigating him and bargaining with him—even though Democrats were investigating him at the time of the April meeting and one of the investigators—Neal—had attended.

Promise not kept again.

Trump’s reelection motto, Keep America Great, doesn’t work for infrastructure. It’s still a mess. It’s the third year of his presidency, and he has done nothing about it. Apparently, he’s saving this pledge for his next term.

In May, he promised Louisianans a new bridge over Interstate 10—only if he is reelected. He said the administration would have it ready to go on “day one, right after the election.” Just like he said he’d produce an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his first term.

He’s doubling down on the infrastructure promises. His win would mean Americans get nothing again.

Trump Promised Massive Infrastructure Projects—Instead We’ve Gotten Nothing

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bbclesmis · 5 years

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The Big Issue: 'Les Misérables' star David Oyelowo reveals an epic, sweeping drama

Victor Hugo's epic of love, loss and smashing the system is set to explode on to our screens as the first big event TV of 2019. David Oyelowo tells us why BBC's Les Misérables doesn't need to make a song and dance to be a hit

David Oyelowo is a proper movie star these days.

A power player in Hollywood who can make big film projects happen. A respected actor who now also produces around 80 per cent of the films and television series he stars in. And a changemaker with friends and collaborators in very high places, not least media giant Oprah Winfrey – “like a mother to me, but also a mentor” – who is actively reshaping the movie industry from within.

And he is starting off 2019 with a flourish. For the first time since 2009’s role in the stunning adaptation of Andrea Levy’s Small Island, Oyelowo is back on the BBC in a major drama, their non-singing, non-dancing adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

It offers a reminder of the 42-year-old’s immense talent: Oyelowo is quite brilliant as Javert, the tenacious jailer hot on the heels of Dominic West’s prisoner-turned-mayor Jean Valjean, finding something heroic in the antagonist of the piece during their epic 19th-century game of cat-and-mouse.

“It is what the BBC does best, this kind of epic, sweeping period drama that feels very resonant to the times we are in because of how Hugo captured the politics, the revolution, the humanity, the sex, the religion, the notion of forgiveness and redemption and evil and good,” he says. “All that we are is in this piece.”

Javert in Andrew Davies’s six-part adaptation is a world from Russell Crowe’s depiction in the 2012 musical film. Oyelowo explains that whereas fitting this extraordinary story – and all the songs – into just over two-and-a-half-hours for the movie meant painting in “broad brushstrokes” and “primary colours”, the series allows more context, more nuance, more depth and dimension.

Screenwriter Davies has added a sexual frisson as well. “We really muddy it up. I wasn’t interested in playing a villain,” says Oyelowo. “It would get very dull if I was twirling my moustache and constantly doing something dastardly for six hours. I don’t think that would be paying homage to the levels of humanity that Victor Hugo manages to get into this novel.

“And Javert is always played posh, which is incredibly lazy. Because he is not. As Hugo clearly states, he was born in a prison, he is working class, he is a prison guard.”

The man is so alone we don’t see any level of human contact that even hints at an ability to connect

And the repressed sexuality that Davies teases us about at the screening? “It is in there, but not something we dwell on. The man is so alone we don’t see any level of human contact that even hints at an ability to connect. Javert can come across as asexual, because he is so consumed by his desire to combat what he deems to be criminality. It is what he has dedicated his life to.

“Javert doesn’t have the luxury to legislate what is right or wrong. You steal a loaf of bread, you go to jail.

“Now, should Jean Valjean be there for 19 years? I would argue not. But considering his upbringing, there is something admirable about a man who decides to fight for the law.

“My hope is that people will not necessarily empathise, but they may find just a few minutes within the six hours where they sympathise with who Javert is and what he does.”

In the intervening decade since Small Island, Oyelowo moved to LA, become a US citizen and appeared in films including Lincoln, The Paperboy, The Butler and Jack Reacher.

Then came his performance as Martin Luther King Jr in Ava DuVernay’s Selma for which he won plaudits galore but, mystifyingly, was snubbed at the Oscars. He expresses no bitterness about it, but he does admit that he finds it “very nice to be back on the Beeb, and with a show I am really proud of”.

The story is set two decades after the French Revolution, by which time the promise of liberté, égalité, fraternité was already turning to merde. The extremes of wealth and poverty had only become starker. Paris was burning. And people like Jean Valjean were criminalised simply for being poor.

“The revolution was born out of the haves and have nots being such extremes. But the unrest that caused the revolution continued to burn under the surface,” says Oyelowo. “And if you look at the protests and marches and disquiet we are seeing, both in America where I live and here, the women’s marches, marches for gun control, against terrorism, against war, against Brexit, against Trump, there are people on the streets of France as we speak. You can transpose a lot of the unrest now onto what was going on then.

“It is the criminalisation and marginalisation of the poor and of minorities. It is the abuse of power.”

What does it take to bring Oyelowo onto the street, protesting? “Racial inequalities and any kind of marginalisation of people on the basis of who and what they are. Although,” he adds, “I try to be a doer not a talker. So there are causes I fight for in ways I don’t need to beat the drum about. It is all about trying to effect real change. Especially as I have been afforded a certain platform that means I can do that.

My attitude is that I would rather put a little drop in the ocean of the problem than sit back and cry over how vast this ocean is.

Oyelowo is not, he says, an avid reader, but devoured Hugo’s mighty novel in its entirety. Given the times we are living through, the love and idealism, hope and redemption described could be pretty useful.

“They are not only useful, they are absolute necessities,” says Oyelowo. “They are the core of who we actually are. When you look at Jean Valjean, at Cosette, at Fantine, who have such a goodness about them, they are the pinprick of light in the darkness. I think that is why the story is so enduring.”

I wonder the degree to which his politics inform the roles he takes and the projects he produces. “My politics is very much informed by my morality, my spirituality,” he says. “So the way I live, the way I vote, the work I do is all born out of my faith as well. You know, love God, love one another. It is as simple as that. The gospel is boiled down to that.”

Or, as it says in Les Misérables, “To love another person is to see the face of God”?

“Exactly, And that really, is why I wanted to do it. The journey Jean Valjean goes on is so biblical, I think it is a deeply spiritual piece.”

Les Misérables starts on BBC One on 9pm on December 30 (x)

#les mis bbc #bbc les mis #david oyelowo #javert #Interviews #articles

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sexydeathparty · 2 years

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Susanna Reid Tells Tory MP To 'Have Some Respect' After Mocking NHS Doctor

Susanna Reid put a Tory MP in his place after he snubbed an NHS doctor while speaking on Good Morning Britain on Monday.

The doctor, Dr Rachel Clark, was explaining why she was deeply concerned about the government’s impending decision to drop Covid measures, including the legal obligation to self-isolate.

Dr Clark said: “The idea that, with a serious infectious disease that is capable – as we know – of killing 175,000 people in two years, the idea that the government could think it was okay to stop self-isolation for that disease, to literally let people wonder around knowing they’re positive, infecting other people...

“It’s not just irresponsible or reckless, it’s worse than that.

“It just underlines the dishonesty of the government rhetoric throughout this pandemic.”

She added that some vulnerable people have essentially spent the “last two years under house arrest”.

“I feel as though the government rhetoric throughout the pandemic has been about protecting vulnerable people, but the reality we’ve seen over and over again is actually those most –”

Reid then pointed out that the video call had clearly frozen, only for fellow guest, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen to quickly add: “Thank goodness.”

The TV presenter pointedly said: ”Well, let’s have some respect for somebody who works on the frontline of this, Andrew Bridgen – while she was speaking, you were saying what she was saying was appalling.”

Dr Rachel Clarke - The idea the government could thinks it's okay to stop self isolation for Covid... is not just irresponsible or reckless, it's worse than that.. Susanna Reid - The line has frozen Andrew Bridgen - Thank goodness Susanna Reid - Let's have some respect..#GMBpic.twitter.com/XWiZibA1Rl

— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) February 21, 2022

Bridgen defended his stance, and said: “We’re all going to have to make our decisions about our own protection going forward, as we do most issues in life.”

He claimed the UK should not be “effectively restricting the people who aren’t vulnerable for the people who are vulnerable,” and pinned his argument on the controversial claim that this country can now enjoy “herd immunity”.

He even went so far as to say “Omicron may well have been the best Christmas gift we’ve ever had” – a detail much disputed by the medical and scientific community who urged the country to get boosted in order to protect itself against the new Covid strain in December.

Dr Clark, who uses the handle @doctor_oxford on Twitter, has not yet responded to the moment of tension but did retweet a message which described Bridgen’s outburst as “barefaced contempt” for the NHS.

She also told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that Covid rules should only be lifted if there is a “proper plan in place” to protect everyone – rather than “closing your eyes and putting your fingers in your ears and saying the pandemic is over”.

She added that she believes removing the Covid restrictions is just a political act from the government amid a particularly unstable part of Johnson’s time in Downing Street.

Barefaced contempt for frontline NHS staff from Andrew Bridgen pic.twitter.com/7A2huIIPXw

— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) February 21, 2022

Related...

‘Really Weird Timing’ - Top Scientist Slams Boris Johnson’s Decision To Lift Covid Restrictions

Richard Madeley addresses backlash on Good Morning Britain after Keir Starmer comments

Richard Madeley Addresses Backlash After Questioning Whether Keir Starmer Death Threats Were 'A Big Deal'

Kate Garraway Discovering 'New Way To Be In Love' With Husband Derek Draper Amid His Covid Recovery

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statetalks · 3 years

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Why Does Fox News Support Republicans

False Claims About The 2020 Election

Alabama columnist: What does support of Moore do to the GOP?

After Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Fox News promoted baseless allegations that voting machine company Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems had conspired to rig the election for Joe Biden. Hosts Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and promoted the allegations on their programs on sister network Fox Business. In December 2020, Smartmatic sent a letter to Fox News demanding retractions and threatening legal action. However, Pirro, Dobbs, and Bartiromo refused to issue retractions as they played a three-minute video segment consisting of an interview with an election technology expert who refuted the allegations promoted by the hosts, responding to questions from an unseen and unidentified man. In February 2021, Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against the network and the three hosts. On March 26, 2021, Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation suit against the network. On May 18, 2021, Fox News filed a motion to dismiss the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, asserting a First Amendment right “to inform the public about newsworthy allegations of paramount public concern.” A Dominion lawyer said that Fox News dismissal of the lawsuit would give them “blank check” to lie.

Fox News Will Be ‘loyal Opposition’ To Biden Fox Ceo Says

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said Thursday that it is the job of Fox News to serve as the opposition to the Biden administration, clearly stating the political biases of a network that until 2017 billed itself as “fair and balanced.”

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor conference, Murdoch said Fox News stood to benefit from Biden’s presidency because the network would act as “the loyal opposition” to his administration.

“The main beneficiary of the Trump administration from a ratings point of view was MSNBC … and thats because they were the loyal opposition,” Murdoch said of the rival cable network. “Thats what our job is now with the Biden administration, and youll see our ratings really improve from here.”

A spokesperson for NBCUniversal News Group, which includes NBC News and MSNBC, said in response that “our role, and the role of any legitimate news organization whether it includes an ‘opinion section’ or not is to hold power to account, regardless of party.” Comcast NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC News and MSNBC.

Murdoch’s remark is an on-the-record acknowledgement of something that has long been obvious to fans and critics but never stated so publicly by the executive leadership itself that Fox News is firmly aligned with Republicans and the right and intends to use its platform to fight Democrats.

There Is No Equivalent For The Left

Fox News, especially post Trump, so relentlessly and consistently praises Trump for successes, papers over failures and tries to twist them into successes, and deliberately omits anything they cannot twist. Their only criticism of the Republican party is when they perceive it to be insufficiently loyal to Trump. They talk about their enemies as evil and prize pundits that will drill their opinions of the news into their viewers over actual journalism that informs them of the facts. There isn’t really another side in mainstream media. MSNBC has strayed to the center lately, and the Washington Post, New York Times, and CNN all have a centrist, corporate bent to them, so even if they criticize Trump or Republicans, they do so sincerely, and get upset about the actions of the left just as often. Nothing in mainstream media, not even MSNBC, has ever in history had a leftwing tilt to it like Fox News has a right wing tilt, or non-mainstream sources like the Young Turks have a left-wing one. There is just nothing equivalent to Fox News in size, scope, or depth of partisanship supporting the Democrats. They have several sources that lean in their direction, but none so slavishly devoted to them as Fox News is to Trump and Republicans, and none with such a wide audience.

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You May Like: Who’s Right Democrats Or Republicans

Fox News Channel Responses To Criticism

In June 2004, CEO Roger Ailes responded to some of the criticism with a rebuttal in an online Wall Street Journal editorial, saying that Fox News’ critics intentionally confuse opinion shows such as The O’Reilly Factor with regular news coverage. Ailes stated that Fox News has broken stories harmful to Republicans, offering, “Fox News is the network that broke George W. Bush’s DUI four days before the election” as an example, referring to Bush’s DUI charge in 1976 that had not yet been made public. The DUI story was broken by then-Fox affiliate WPXT in Portland, Maine, although Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron also contributed to the report and, in the words of National Public Radio ombudsman Alicia Shepard, Fox News “sent the story ping-ponging around the nation” by broadcasting WPXT’s coverage. WPXT News Director Kevin Kelly said that he “called Fox News in New York City to see if we were flogging a dead horse” before running the story, and that Fox News confirmed the arrest with the campaign and ran the story shortly after 6 p.m.

Former Fox News personality Eric Burns has suggested in an interview that Fox News “probably gives voice to more conservatives than the other networks. But not at the expense of liberals.” Burns justifies a higher exposure of conservatives by saying that other media often ignore conservatives.

Fox News personalities have also taken part in back and forth disagreements with media personalities such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Who First Buried The Dead

Anthropologist Donald Brown has studied human cultures and discovered hundreds of features shared by each and every one. Among them, every culture has its own way to honor and mourn the dead.

But who was the first? Humans or another hominin in our ancestral lineage? That answer is difficult because it is shrouded in the fog of our prehistorical past. However, we do have a candidate: Homo naledi.

Several fossils of this extinct hominin were discovered in a cave chamber at the Rising Star Cave system, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. To access the chamber required a vertical climb, a few tight fits, and much crawling.

This led researchers to believe it unlikely so many individuals ended up there by accident. They also ruled out geological traps like cave-ins. Given the seemingly deliberate placement, some have concluded the chamber served as a Homo naledi graveyard. Others aren’t so sure, and more evidence is needed before we can definitively answer this question.

Read Also: Why Did Republicans Vote Against Equal Pay

Walked A Fine Line: How Fox News Found Itself In An Existential Crisis

The rightwing channel was the first to call Arizona for Biden and Trump and his supporters have been furious ever since

It was about 11.20pm on election night when Fox News made the call. The Democratic candidate had clinched a key swing state, a win that could set them on a path to be president of the United States.

In the Fox News studio, Karl Rove, conservative panelist and longtime Republican strategist, was apoplectic. Around the country, Republican supporters were bereft. Fox News launched an immediate inquisition into its own decision, but the network stood by the call.

Barack Obama had won Ohio, defeating Mitt Romney. Obama would be sworn in as president, for the second time, on 20 January 2013.

Fast forward eight years, and Fox News found itself in a strikingly similar position on 3 November 2020. The rightwing news channel was the first to call Arizona, which has gone blue once in the past 72 years, for Joe Biden.

Donald Trump and his campaign were furious, barraging the network with a series of phone calls in an attempt to get the decision overturned. The presidents supporters were upset too.

At protests outside a vote counting center in Phoenix, Arizona, a crowd chanted: Fox News sucks!, turning their ire on a channel whose hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have spent the past four years praising Trumps almost every move or utterance.

That makes the effort to look like a news organization increasingly difficult.

Obama Administration Conflict With Fox News

In September 2009, the Obama administration engaged in a verbal conflict with Fox News. On September 20, President Obama appeared on all the major news networks except Fox News, a snub partially in response to remarks about the president by commentators Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and general coverage by Fox News with regard to Obama’s health care proposal.Fox News Sunday hostChris Wallace called White House administration officials “crybabies” in response. Following this, a senior Obama adviser told U.S. News that the White House would never get a fair shake from Fox News.

In late September 2009, Obama senior advisor David Axelrod and Fox News founder Roger Ailes met in secret to try to smooth out tensions between the two camps without much success. Two weeks later, White House officials referred to Fox as “not a news network”. Communications director Anita Dunn claimed that, “Fox News often operates as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.” President Obama followed with, “If media is operating basically as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing, and if it’s operating as a news outlet, then that’s another,” and then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel stated that it was important “to not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following FNC.”

Also Check: How Many Republicans Voted For Impeachment

Do Hair And Fingernails Grow After Death

Nope. This is a myth, but one that does have a biological origin.

The reason hair and fingernails don’t grow after death is because new cells can’t be produced. Glucose fuels cell division, and cells require oxygen to break down glucose into cellular energy. Death puts an end to the body’s ability to intake either one.

It also ends the intaking of water, leading to dehydration. As a corpse’s skin desiccates, it pulls away from the fingernails and retracts around the face . Anyone unlucky enough to exhume a corpse could easily mistake these changes as signs of growth.

Interestingly, postmortem hair and fingernail growth provoked lore about vampires and other creatures of the night. When our ancestors dug up fresh corpses and found hair growth and blood spots around mouths , their minds naturally wandered to undeath.

Not that becoming undead is anything we need to worry about today.

Fox News Is The Republican Party

This is why Democrats’ massive spending bill could pass | FOX News Rundown

Trumpism will endure because Murdochs Fox News made that choice on behalf of the Republican Party it commands.

To see what is in front of ones nose, George Orwell wrote, is a constant struggle.

Orwells wise, timeless counsel is often lost on writers who prefer to bury the plain truth beneath a blizzard of distractions and obfuscations.

The tendency of Americas punditocracy to miss the glaring point has, once again, been on grating display in the still smouldering residue of the mad January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill conceived, planned and executed by thousands of Donald Trumps rabid disciples who were, on cue, unleashed en foaming masse by the former president.

Beyond considering Trumps political future, the punditocracy was seized with debating the existential implications of the deadly mayhem for the Republican Party.

The quick consensus was that a reckoning was certainly in the offing. The Republican Party confronted an inflection point the media-manufactured cliché du jour that required either finally abandoning Trumpism in the wake of the bloody insurrection or continuing to embrace it.

The assumption was that the Republican Party, including its congressional leadership, would make that seminal choice. But who constitutes the Republican Party and its leadership and how would they go about deciding which path to take?

These questions were largely left adrift.

What a chilling prospect.

It is a silly, almost comical, suggestion.

Also Check: Why Do Republicans Say Democrat Party

False Claims About Other Media

CNN’s Jake Tapper

In November 2017, following the 2017 New York City truck attack wherein a terrorist shouted “Allahu Akbar”, Fox News distorted a statement by Jake Tapper to make it appear as if he had said “Allahu Akbar” can be used under the most “beautiful circumstances”. Fox News omitted that Tapper had said the use of “Allahu Akbar” in the terrorist attack was not one of these beautiful circumstances. A headline on FoxNews.com was preceded by a tag reading “OUTRAGEOUS”. The Fox News Twitter account distorted the statement even more, saying “Jake Tapper Says ‘Allahu Akbar’ Is ‘Beautiful’ Right After NYC Terror Attack” in a tweet that was later deleted. Tapper chastised Fox News for choosing to “deliberately lie” and said “there was a time when one could tell the difference between Fox and the nutjobs at Infowars. It’s getting tougher and tougher. Lies are lies.” Tapper had in 2009, while a White House correspondent for ABC News, come to the defense of Fox News when Obama criticized the network for not being a legitimate news organization.

Fox News guest host Jason Chaffetz apologized to Tapper for misrepresenting his statement. After Fox News had deleted the tweet, Sean Hannity repeated the misrepresentation and called Tapper “liberal fake news CNN’s fake Jake Tapper” and mocked his ratings.

The New York Times

Low Gravity And The Troughs

: University of Georgia / NASA / JPL

It has been assumed, says Cheng, that the “troughs are fault-bounded valleys with a distinct scarp on each side that together mark the down-drop of a block of rock.”

However, there is a problem with this theory. It is based on the way rocks and debris behave under the force of gravity on Earth; Vesta’s gravitational pull is far less. Indeed, Dawn found Vesta’s gravity consistent with an iron core having a 140-mile diameter; the Earth’s, by comparison, is about 2,165 miles in diameter.

Cheng notes that “rock can also crack apart and form such troughs, an origin that has not been considered before. Our calculations also show that Vesta’s gravity is not enough to induce surrounding stresses favorable for sliding to occur at shallow depths. Instead, the physics shows that rocks there are favored to crack apart.”

Cheng summarizes, “Taken all together, the overall project provides alternatives to the previously proposed trough origin and geological history of Vesta, results that are also important for understanding similar landforms on other small planetary bodies elsewhere in the solar system.”

So while still consistent with the prevailing theory that the impacts resulted in the troughs, the researchers suggest that they did not cause landslides on Vesta. The impacts cracked it.

Also Check: When Will Republicans Do The Right Thing

Down In The Polls Trump Seeks Familiar Embrace Of Conservative Media

The president considers many Fox News figures among his closest advisers. These include Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and others. He has drawn from the ranks of Fox contributors to fill senior White House appointments and even considered stars for Cabinet positions. And they, in turn, have been ferocious in relaying the president’s baseless claims, winning his frequent appearances on their programs and stratospheric ratings in response.

Earlier this year, Fox News stars helped whip up protests in opposition to shutdowns related to COVID-19 and orders to wear masks. Fox News stars stoked potential scandals involving Biden’s son Hunter based on unauthenticated reports from Murdoch’s New York Post material Fox’s own reporters largely could not validate.

As one small sign of the ways in which Fox and Trump Republicans can orchestrate programming, on Friday evening, NPR reviewed an internal GOP memo sent to top party officials to prepare Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel for her appearance on Hannity’s show that night. It set out in great specificity the intended flow of the show’s lengthy opening segment including its guests, articles and subjects and the primary points Hannity would make. The two jointly focused on stoking suspicions of voter fraud.

The network stood by its decision desk.

What To Watch For

Trump is reportedly considering launching his own media company to compete with Fox News after he leaves the White House, Axios reported Nov. 12. The offering would reportedly take the form of a subscription-based digital streaming channel online, rather than a pricier cable television network, but Trump aim to replace Fox as his supporters top destination for news, Axios reports.

Don’t Miss: Who Supported The Republicans In The Spanish Civil War

Why Do All The Women On Fox News Look And Dress Alike Republicans Prefer Blondes

From pundits like Ann Coulter to Kellyanne Conway, American rightwingers are a uniform vision of dont scare-the-horses dressing

Why do so many rightwing American women have bottle-blond hair, often worn girlishly long? Im thinking of Kellyanne Conway, Ann Coulter and almost any woman on Fox News.

Jonathan, London N16

Excellent question, Jonathan! I was pondering something similar myself recently while looking through Ivanka Trumps fashion collection on ivankatrump.com, which seems to be one of the only places it is stocked these days. The grimly bland suede pumps, the simpering floral shifts, the just-flirtatious-enough body-skimming little black dresses welcome, people, to death by mainstream feminine. You know how your mother goes on about how you wear too much black/denim/weird stuff, and you cant figure out what the hell it is she expects you to wear? Well, allow me to introduce you to Ivanka Trump. What a shame it seems to be sold almost nowhere these days, as these are the clothes your mother dreams of. Oh well, looks like shell have to put up with you in your awesome Bella Freud jumper and Topshop wide-legged culottes combo for another weekend!

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-does-fox-news-support-republicans/

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tabloidtoc · 3 years

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Globe, December 7

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Hillary Clinton health crisis

Page 2: Up Front & Personal -- Larsa Pippen in a bikini in Fort Lauderdale, Olivia Culpo wrestles with recycling outside her L.A. office, Shia LaBeouf ditches his face covering for a phone call in an L.A. market

Page 3: Pete Wentz plays tennis, Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe outside the Dancing with the Stars studio, Sean Penn hits the beach in Hawaii

Page 4: Barbara Walters was sharp as a tack when she grilled the world’s biggest leaders but ravaging dementia has now tragically turned the 91-year-old into a prisoner in her own bed

Page 5: Pistol-packing Elvis Presley was so gaga over guns that he’d even take a firearm to bed with him

* Ringo Starr’s childhood bout with appendicitis at age six caused him to fall into a coma and spend a year in the hospital to recover then five years later he contracted tuberculosis and spent two years in a sanitarium where he discovered drums as part of the hospital band

Page 6: If it’s true that Gentleman Prefer Blondes Marilyn Monroe was the perfect star for the flick because she dyed her carpet platinum to match the drapes -- beauty guru Kenneth Battelle suggested Marilyn change the color of her pubic hair after a jerk spilled champagne over her sheer dress at a party showing everything because she didn’t wear skivvies so the guru ran to the hotel drugstore and got some dye and told Marilyn to go in the bathroom and bleach

Page 7: Celine Dion has turned into a frightening bag of bones leaving friends worried she’s headed for a catastrophic health crisis -- now down to a gaunt 96 pounds the star is driving herself to the brink of collapse with a diet and exercise plan to prepare for the relaunch of her hit world tour and she starves herself in her drive for perfection and to maintain the stick-thin look that helped turn her into a fashion icon

* Julianne Hough confesses feeling she didn’t deserve the A-list life she enjoyed while dating Ryan Seacrest where she was on private planes and yachts and living in a very well-off house and her life was pretty different from where she grew up -- she left Ryan in 2013 after three years because she wanted to create that for herself because she felt like she didn’t deserve it

Page 8: Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson is searching for the Fountain of Youth by working out with Pierce Brosnan’s trainer -- the ex-wife of disgraced Prince Andrew is following a grueling exercise regimen in hopes of joining people who are said to be biologically younger than their true age

Page 9: Disgraced Prince Andrew has been kicked from the royal family and now Prince Charles plans to boot his sister Princess Anne from his inner circle once he becomes king -- while the princess has carried her share of official engagements Charles plans to shrink the monarchy after his mother Queen Elizabeth passes and the phrase slimmed-down royal family constantly keeps coming up and the royal family will evolve with Charles coming to the throne -- Anne will be on the chopping block mostly because of ambitious Duchess Camilla who is Charles’ wife and who has carried out a ruthless dirty plan to be queen for decades and she wants no one else taking the limelight and that includes Charles’ sister

* Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle dissed his dad Prince Charles with a surprising public snub as the couple failed to publicly wish Charles a happy birthday when he turned 72 -- Queen Elizabeth and Prince William and Duchess Kate all sent birthday wishes to the future king on social media but Harry and Meghan took a pass even though Harry popped up on the British TV show Strictly Come Dancing that night to wish a pal good luck

Page 10: A nuclear-sized catfight has exploded in North Korea where dictator Kim Jong-un’s baby sister and his pop star lover are battling to claw their way to be top gal -- while sister Kim Yo-jong seemed to be running the nation after Kim vanished and was rumored dead he popped back up with old galpal Hyon Song-wol on his arm and his current wife Ri Sol-ju nowhere to be seen

Page 12: Celebrity Buzz -- Mario Lopez wearing a clear mask (picture), Lauren Simon of The Real Housewives of Cheshire in the U.K. claims to have had sex with an actual ghost, Kaley Cuoco has a theory about shooting those sexy big bangs with ex-boyfriend Johnny Galecki that the pair’s sneaky sitcom boss got a kick putting the real-life former lovers under the covers, Reese Witherspoon lost her beloved dog Pepper to cancer and returned to her ole Southern roots when picking a name for her brand-new puppy: Minnie Pearl, plagued by seemingly endless allegations of being mean and ignoring a toxic workplace Ellen DeGeneres is now plugging a Be Kind subscription box valued at $270

Page 13: Kristen Taekman tops of her gas tank in L.A. (picture), Jeff Goldblum feeding a parking meter in L.A. (picture), Hilary Duff gets primped and primed on the NYC set of Younger (picture)

Page 14: Reclusive ailing widow Yoko Ono finally loosened the reins and is handing over her $800 million empire to Sean Lennon her only child with Beatles legend John Lennon but John’s eldest son Julian Lennon was left out of the hitmaker’s will but Julian managed to eke out a $25 million settlement okayed by Yoko after he dragged his famous dad’s estate to court, Kelsea Ballerini snapped at a nosy fan for rudely asking if her rounded tummy was a blossoming baby bump

* Fashion Verdict -- Lara Spencer 9/10, Laura Veltz 2/10, Lauren Akins 3/10, Lauren Alaina 4/10

Page 16: Michael Jackson’s baby mama Debbie Rowe reveals getting pregnant was no thrill because she was artificially impregnated -- Debbie met ex-husband Michael when she was working for his dermatologist and she insists the couple never had sex and a sperm donor fathered the pop star’s two kids she carried in her womb -- son Prince Jackson is rumored to have been fathered by Debbie’s doctor boss Arnold Klein -- British actor Mark Lester claims her could be Paris Jackson’s father -- Debbie is unsure of the paternity of Michael’s youngest son Blanket who now goes by Bigi Jackson

Page 17: Fans gaga for Dr. McDreamy on Grey’s Anatomy got a super thrill on the season 17 premiere when Patrick Dempsey returned to the hit hospital drama after departing the show five years ago -- Dempsey whose character Dr. Derek Shepherd died in a car crash came back in a dream sequence reuniting with star Ellen Pompeo’s Dr. Meredith Grey on a beach -- Dempsey split from the show to spend more time with his family and pursue his auto racing hobby but he’ll return to the show several more times

Page 19: 10 Things You Don’t Know About Emma Corrin

* Reba McEntire reveals she turned down The Voice gig that went to Blake Shelton and now she regrets it big-time

* Nip/tuck junkie Dolly Parton says she plans to keep freshening her face by going under the knife and crows she’s gonna look like a cartoon and she’ll look as young as her plastic surgeons will allow her

Page 20: True Crime

Page 21: Former soap stud Cody Longo was socked with a domestic abuse charge following a jealous booze-fueled attack on his dancer wife Stephanie Clark -- Cody played Nicholas Alamain on Days of Our Lives from 2011-2012

Page 23: Meredith Baxter felt booby-trapped by her enormous breasts and confesses she welcomed breast-reduction surgery after getting cancer -- the Family Ties star reveals her former 42-inch bust was the plague of her life

* Weatherman Al Roker has a secret weapon in his stormy battle to recover from prostate cancer surgery which is the love and support of his wife Deborah Roberts who is keeping him happy and positive doting on him day and night plus they talk about everything and make medical decisions together so there’s no fear or anxiety entering their world

* Jennifer Lopez kicked booty when a federal judge dismissed a $40 million lawsuit brought by a former stripper who claims she inspired the hit movie Hustlers -- Samantha Barbash claims she’s the real-life model for J.Lo’s pole-dancing swindler Ramona Vega and insisted the movie ruined her rep by implying she did drugs around her kids but the judge tossed the case because Barbash’s name or portrait or picture or voice wasn’t used in the film

Page 24: Cover Story -- Hillary Clinton has tragically packed on nearly 100 pounds since she vanished from the spotlight four years ago and is struggling to breathe and walk and now a medical expert is warning the 73-year-old is facing a health crisis as she tips the scales at 247 pounds -- Hillary has a history of broken bones and shocking collapses

Page 26: Health Report

Page 30: Country girl Carly Pearce’s divorce from Michael Ray has gone from bad to ugly and he’s now parading his romance with Travis Tritt’s daughter Tyler Reese Tritt -- Carly was all for taking the high road but now she’s taken off the gloves -- they’re bad-mouthing each other far and wide and Carly’s tossed everything that reminds her of Michael

* Southern Charm belle Madison LeCroy has been flashing a pic of her newest charms which is a set of bigger boobs

Page 36: Diva Mariah Carey’s demanding ways are driving her boyfriend Bryan Tanaka bonkers and the couple of four years may be headed for Splitsville unless she changes her ways -- Mariah treats Bryan like an assistant instead of a lover and it’s giving him fits and he’s been so patient with Mariah and he loves her but she’s wearing him out with her incessant orders like she has him drawing up her schedule for online greets plus she’s ordering him to do all her holiday shopping for friends and be in charge of everything from decorations to food prep

* Emma Roberts confesses being pregnant makes her weepy and she’s hit the point where like halfway up the stairs she has to sit down sometimes and maybe tears roll down a couple times a week but despite that Emma says she feels grateful and lucky to be expecting her first child

Page 38: Real Life

Page 40: Phil Collins’ embarrassing court battle with third ex Orianne Cevey is casting a pall over his daughter Lily Collins’ wedding plans -- Lily is desperate to tie the knot with Charlie MacDowell but the dirty charges flying back may force her to put the happy day on hold and it’s hard for Lily to concentrate on making wedding plans when her father is caught in an ugly public fight -- Orianne is battling over Phil’s $38 million Miami mansion where they lived after reuniting in 2018

Page 44: Straight Talk -- NXIVM cult is warning to us all

Page 45: Treasure hunters have launched a frantic search for a $150 million stash of gangster gold hidden by mobster Dutch Schultz in Upstate New York after two sleuths recently discovered coins they believe are linked to the stash -- following a long list of cryptic clues Canadian fortune seekers Steve Zazulyk and Ryan Fazekas uncovered gold coins dated 1903 a few miles from the Prohibition Era beer baron’s hangout in the Catskills town of Phoenicia and their find triggered a race against other prosecutors seeking a two-by-three-foot steel box filled with diamonds and gold coins and $1000 bills and $7 billion in World War I Liberty Bonds and the hoard has an estimated value of $150 million today

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xtruss · 3 years

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What Led Benjamin Franklin to Live Estranged From His Wife for Nearly Two Decades?

A stunning new theory suggests that a debate over the failed treatment of their son’s smallpox was the culprit

— By Stephen Coss | Smithsonian Magazine | September 2017

A painting of Franklin’s return to Philadelphia from Europe in 1785 shows him flanked by his son-in-law (in red), his daughter and Benjamin Bache (in blue), the grandson he’d taken to France as a sort of surrogate son. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

In October 1765, Deborah Franklin sent a gushing letter to her husband, who was in London on business for the Pennsylvania legislature. “I have been so happy as to receive several of your dear letters within these few days,” she began, adding that she had read one letter “over and over.” “I call it a husband’s Love letter,” she wrote, thrilled as though it were her first experience with anything of the kind.

Perhaps it was. Over 35 years of marriage, Benjamin Franklin had indirectly praised Deborah’s work ethic and common sense through “wife” characters in his Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard’s Almanac. He had celebrated her faithfulness, compassion and competency as a housekeeper and hostess in a verse titled “I Sing My Plain Country Joan.” But he seems never to have written her an unabashed expression of romantic love. Whether the letter in question truly qualified as his first is unknown, since it has been lost. But it’s likely that Deborah exaggerated the letter’s romantic aspects because she wanted to believe her husband loved her and would return to her.

That February Franklin, newly arrived in London, had predicted that he would be home in “a few Months.” But now he had been gone for 11, with no word on when he would come back. Deborah could tell herself that a man who would write such a letter would not repeat his previous sojourn in England, which had begun in 1757 with a promise to be home soon and dragged on for five years, during which rumors filtered back to Philadelphia that he was enjoying the company of other women. (Franklin denied it, writing he would “do nothing unworthy the Character of an honest Man, and one that loves his Family.”) But as month after month passed with no word on Benjamin’s voyage home, it became clear that history was repeating itself.

This time Franklin would be gone for ten years, teasing his imminent return almost every spring or summer and then canceling at nearly the last minute and without explanation. Year after year Deborah stoically endured the snubbing, even after she had a stroke in early spring 1769. But as her health declined, she gave up her vow not to give him “one moment’s trouble.” “When will it be in your power to come home?” she asked in August 1770. A few months later she pressed him: “I hope you will not stay longer than this fall.”

He ignored her appeals until July 1771, when he wrote her: “I purpose it [his return] firmly after one Winter more here.” The following summer he canceled again. In March and April 1773 he wrote vaguely of coming home, and then in October he trotted out what had become his stock excuse, that winter passage was too dangerous. In February 1774, Benjamin wrote that he hoped to return home in May. In April and July he assured her he would sail shortly. But he never came. Deborah Franklin suffered another stroke on December 14, 1774, and died five days later.

We tend to idealize our founding fathers. So what should we make of Benjamin Franklin? One popular image is that he was a free and easy libertine—our founding playboy. But he was married for 44 years. Biographers and historians tend to shy away from his married life, perhaps because it defies idealization. John and Abigail Adams had a storybook union that spanned half a century. Benjamin and Deborah Franklin spent all but two of their final 17 years apart. Why?

The conventional wisdom is that their marriage was doomed from the beginning, by differences in intellect and ambition, and by its emphasis on practicality over love; Franklin was a genius and needed freedom from conventional constraints; Deborah’s fear of ocean travel kept her from joining her husband in England and made it inevitable that they would drift apart. Those things are true—up to a point. But staying away for a decade, dissembling year after year about his return, and then refusing to come home even when he knew his wife was declining and might soon die, suggests something beyond bored indifference.

Franklin was a great man—scientist, publisher, political theorist, diplomat. But we can’t understand him fully without considering why he treated his wife so shabbily at the end of her life. The answer isn’t simple. But a close reading of Franklin’s letters and published works, and a re-examination of events surrounding his marriage, suggests a new and eerily resonant explanation. It involves their only son, a lethal disease and a disagreement over inoculation.

**********

As every reader of Franklin’s Autobiography knows, Deborah Read first laid eyes on Benjamin Franklin the day he arrived in Philadelphia, in October 1723, after running away from a printer’s apprenticeship with his brother in Boston. Fifteen-year-old Deborah, standing at the door of her family’s house on Market Street, laughed at the “awkward ridiculous Appearance” of the bedraggled 17-year-old stranger trudging down the street with a loaf of bread under each arm and his pockets bulging with socks and shirts. But a few weeks later, the stranger became a boarder in the Read home. After six months, he and the young woman were in love.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s governor, William Keith, happened upon a letter Franklin had written and decided he was “a young Man of promising Parts”—so promising that he offered to front the money for Franklin to set up his own printing house and promised to send plenty of work his way. Keith’s motives may have been more political than paternal, but with that, the couple “interchang’d some Promises,” in Franklin’s telling, and he set out for London. His intention was to buy a printing press and type and return as quickly as possible. It was November 1724.

Nothing went as planned. In London, Franklin discovered that the governor had lied to him. There was no money waiting, not for equipment, not even for his return passage. Stranded, he wrote Deborah a single letter, saying he would be away indefinitely. He would later admit that “by degrees” he forgot “my engagements with Miss Read.” In declaring this a “great Erratum” of his life, he took responsibility for Deborah’s ill-fated marriage to a potter named John Rogers.

But the facts are more complicated. Benjamin must have suspected that when Sarah Read, Deborah’s widowed mother, learned that he had neither a press nor guaranteed work, she would seek another suitor for her daughter. Mrs. Read did precisely that, later admitting to Franklin, as he wrote, that she had “persuaded the other Match in my Absence.” She had been quick about it, too; Franklin’s letter reached Deborah in late spring 1725, and she was married by late summer. Benjamin, too, had been jilted.

Just weeks into Deborah’s marriage, word reached Philadelphia that Rogers had another wife in England. Deborah left him and moved back in with her mother. Rogers squandered Deborah’s dowry and racked up big debts before disappearing. And yet she remained legally married to him; a woman could “self-divorce,” as Deborah had done in returning to her mother’s home, but she could not remarry with church sanction. At some point she was told that Rogers had died in the West Indies, but proving his death—which would have freed Deborah to remarry formally—was impractically expensive and a long shot besides.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in October 1726. In the Autobiography he wrote that he “should have been...asham’d at seeing Miss Read, had not her Friends...persuaded her to marry another.” If he wasn’t ashamed, what was he? In classic Franklin fashion, he doesn’t say. Possibly he was relieved. But it seems likely, given his understanding that Deborah and her mother had quickly thrown him over, that he felt at least a tinge of resentment. At the same time, he also “pity’d” Deborah’s “unfortunate Situation.” He noted that she was “generally dejected, seldom cheerful, and avoided Company,” presumably including his. If he still had feelings for her, he also knew that her dowry was gone and she was, technically, unmarriageable.

He, meanwhile, became more eligible by the year. In June 1728, he launched a printing house with a partner, Hugh Meredith. A year later he bought the town’s second newspaper operation, renamed and reworked it, and began making a success of the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1730 he and Meredith were named Pennsylvania’s official printers. It seemed that whenever he decided to settle down, Franklin would have his pick of a wife.

Then he had his own romantic calamity: He learned that a young woman of his acquaintance was pregnant with his child. Franklin agreed to take custody of the baby—a gesture as admirable as it was uncommon—but that decision made his need for a wife urgent and finding one problematic. (Who that woman was and why he couldn’t or wouldn’t marry her remain mysteries to this day.) No desirable young woman with a dowry would want to marry a man with a bastard infant son.

But Deborah Read Rogers would.

Thus, as Franklin later wrote, the former couple’s “mutual Affection was revived,” and they were joined in a common-law marriage on September 1, 1730. There was no ceremony. Deborah simply moved into Franklin’s home and printing house at what is now 139 Market Street. Soon she took in the infant son her new husband had fathered with another woman and began running a small stationery store on the first floor.

Benjamin accepted the form and function of married life—even writing about it (skeptically) in his newspaper—but kept his wife at arm’s length. His attitude was reflected in his “Rules and Maxims for Promoting Matrimonial Happiness,” which he published a month after he and Deborah began living together. “Avoid, both before and after marriage, all thoughts of managing your husband,” he advised wives. “Never endeavor to deceive or impose on his understanding: nor give him uneasiness (as some do very foolishly) to try his temper; but treat him always beforehand with sincerity, afterwards with affection and respect.”

Whether at this point he loved Deborah is difficult to say; despite his reputation as a flirt and a charmer, he seldom made himself emotionally available to anyone. Deborah’s famous temper might be traced to her frustration with him, as well as the general unfairness of her situation. (Franklin immortalized his wife’s fiery personality in various fictional counterparts, including Bridget Saunders, wife of Poor Richard. But there are plenty of real-life anecdotes as well. A visitor to the Franklin home in 1755 saw Deborah throw herself to the floor in a fit of pique; he later wrote that she could produce “invectives in the foulest terms I ever heard from a gentlewoman.”) But her correspondence leaves no doubt that she loved Benjamin and always would. “How I long to see you,” she wrote to him in 1770, after 40 years of marriage and five years into his second trip to London. “If you’re Having the gout...I wish I was near enough to rub it with a light hand.”

“We throve together,” Franklin wrote of his wife (right) in his autobiography, which he began at age 65. But he did not mention the birth of their son, Francis (left). (Left: Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo; Right: Public Domain)

Deborah Franklin wanted a real marriage. And when she became pregnant with their first child, near the beginning of 1732, she had reason to hope she might have one. Her husband was thrilled. “A ship under sail and a big-bellied Woman, / Are the handsomest two things that can be seen common,” Benjamin would write in June 1735. He had never been much interested in children, but after the birth of Francis Folger Franklin, on October 20, 1732, he wrote that they were “the most delightful Cares in the World.” The boy, whom he and Deborah nicknamed “Franky,” gave rise to a more ebullient version of Franklin than he had allowed the world to see. He also became more empathetic—it’s hard to imagine he would have written an essay like “On the Death of Infants,” which was inspired by the death of an acquaintance’s child, had he not been enraptured by his own son and fearful lest a similar fate should befall him.

By 1736, Franklin had entered the most fulfilling period of his life so far. His love for Franky had brought him closer to Deborah. Franklin had endured sadness—the death of his brother James, the man who had taught him printing and with whom he had only recently reconciled—and a serious health scare, his second serious attack of pleurisy. But he had survived, and at age 30 was, as his biographer J.A. Leo Lemay pointed out, better off financially and socially than any of his siblings “and almost all of Philadelphia’s artisans.” That fall, the Pennsylvania Assembly appointed him its clerk, which put him on the inside of the colony’s politics for the first time.

That September 29, a contingent of Indian chiefs representing the Six Nations was heading for Philadelphia to renegotiate a treaty when government officials halted them a few miles short of their destination and advised them to go no farther. The legislature’s minutes, delivered to Franklin for printing, spelled out the reason: Smallpox had broken out “in the heart or near the middle of the town.”

**********

Smallpox was the most feared “distemper” in Colonial America. No one yet understood that it spread when people inhaled an invisible virus. The disease was fatal in more than 30 percent of all cases and even more deadly to children. Survivors were often blind, physically or mentally disabled and horribly disfigured.

In 1730, Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette had reported extensively on an outbreak in Boston. But rather than focusing on the devastation caused by the disease, Franklin’s coverage dealt primarily with the success of smallpox inoculation.

The procedure was a precursor to modern-day vaccination. A doctor used a scalpel and a quill to take fluid from smallpox vesicles on the skin of a person in the throes of the disease. He deposited this material in a vial and brought it to the home of the person to be inoculated. There he made a shallow incision in the patient’s arm and deposited material from the vial. Usually, inoculated patients became slightly ill, broke out in a few, smallish pox, and recovered quickly, immune to the disease for the rest of their lives. Occasionally, however, they developed full-blown smallpox or other complications and died.

Franklin’s enthusiasm for smallpox inoculation dated to 1721, when he was a printer’s apprentice to James in Boston. An outbreak in the city that year led to the first widespread inoculation trial in Western medicine—and bitter controversy. Supporters claimed that inoculation was a blessing from God, opponents that it was a curse—reckless, impious and tantamount to attempted murder. Franklin had been obliged to help print attacks against it in his brother’s newspaper, but the procedure’s success won him over. In 1730, when Boston had another outbreak, he used his own newspaper to promote inoculation in Philadelphia because he suspected the disease would spread south.

The Gazette reported that of the “Several Hundreds” of people inoculated in the Boston area that year, “about four” had died. Even with those deaths—which doctors attributed to smallpox contracted before inoculation—the inoculation death rate was negligible compared with the fatality rate from naturally acquired smallpox. Two weeks after that report, the Gazette reprinted a detailed description of the procedure from the authoritative Chambers’s Cyclopaedia.

And when, in February 1731, Philadelphians began coming down with smallpox, Franklin’s backing became even more urgent. “The Practice of Inoculation for the Small-Pox, begins to grow among us,” he wrote the next month, adding that “the first Patient of Note,” a man named “J. Growdon, Esq,” had been inoculated without incident. He was reporting this, he said, “to show how groundless all those extravagant Reports are, that have been spread through the Province to the contrary.” In the next week’s Gazette he plugged inoculation again, excerpting a prominent English scientific journal. By the time the Philadelphia epidemic ended that July, 288 people were dead, but that total included only one of the approximately 50 people who had been inoculated.

Whether Franklin himself was inoculated or survived a case of naturally acquired smallpox at some point is unknown—there’s no evidence on record. But he emerged as one of the most outspoken inoculation advocates in the Colonies. When smallpox returned to Philadelphia in September 1736, he couldn’t resist lampooning the logic of the English minister Edmund Massey, who had famously declared inoculation the Devil’s work, citing Job 2:7: “So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of the foot unto his crown.” Near the front of the new Poor Richard’s Almanac, which he was preparing to print, Franklin countered:

God offer’d to the Jews salvation;

And ‘twas refus’d by half the nation:

Thus (tho ‘tis life’s great preservation),

Many oppose inoculation.

We’re told by one of the black robe,

The devil inoculated Job:

Suppose ‘tis true, what he does tell;

Pray, neighbours, did not Job do well?

Significantly, this verse was Franklin’s only comment on smallpox or inoculation through the first four months of the new outbreak. Not until December 30 did he break his silence, in a stunning 137-word note at the end of that week’s Gazette. “Understanding ’tis a current Report,” it began, “that my Son Francis, who died lately of the Small Pox, had it by Inoculation....”

Franky had died on November 21, a month after his 4th birthday, and his father sought to dispel the rumor that a smallpox inoculation was responsible. “Inasmuch as some People are...deter’d from having that Operation perform’d on their Children, I do hereby sincerely declare, that he was not inoculated, but receiv’d the Distemper in the common Way of Infection,” he wrote. He had “intended to have my Child inoculated, as soon as he should have recovered sufficient Strength from a Flux with which he had been long afflicted.”

Franklin would remember his son as “the DELIGHT of all that knew him.” (Tim O’Brien)

**********

Many years later, Franklin admitted in a letter to his sister Jane that Franky’s death devastated him. And we can imagine that for Deborah it was even worse. Perhaps out of compassion, few of Franklin’s contemporaries questioned his explanation for not inoculating Franky or asked why he had gone so quiet on the procedure in the months before his son died. Many biographers and historians have followed suit, accepting at face value that Franky was simply too sick for inoculation. Lemay, one of Franklin’s best biographers, is representative. He wrote that Franklin fully intended to inoculate the boy, but that Franky’s sickness dragged on and “smallpox took him before his recovery.” Indeed, Lemay went even further in providing cover for Franklin, describing Franky as a “sickly infant” and a “sickly child.” This, too, has become accepted wisdom. But Franklin himself hinted that something else delayed his action and perhaps cost Franky his life. Most likely, it was a disagreement with Deborah over inoculation.

The argument that Franky was sickly is based primarily on one fact: Nearly a year passed between his birth and his baptism. More substantive evidence suggests the delay was due to Franklin’s oft-expressed antipathy to organized religion. When Franky was finally baptized, his father just happened to be on an extended trip to New England. It appears that Deborah, tired of arguing with her husband over the need to baptize their son, had it done while he was out of town.

As to Franky’s general health, the best evidence is in Franklin’s 1733 piece in the Gazette celebrating a scolding wife. If Deborah was the model for this fictional wife, as she seems to have been, it’s worth noting the author’s rationale for preferring her type. Such women, he wrote, have “sound and healthy Constitutions, produce vigorous Offspring, are active in the Business of the Family, special good Housewives, and very Careful of their Husbands Interest.” It’s unlikely that he would have included “produce vigorous Offspring” if his son, then 9 months old, had been sickly.

So Franky probably wasn’t a particularly sickly child. But he might have had, as Franklin claimed, an unfortunately timed (and uncommonly drawn-out) case of dysentery throughout September, October and early November 1736. This was the “flux” that Franklin’s editor’s note referred to. Did it render the boy too sick to be inoculated?

From the outset, his father hinted otherwise. Franklin never said his son was sick, but that he “had not recovered sufficient Strength.” It’s possible that Franky had been ill, but was no longer showing symptoms of dysentery. This would mean that, contrary to what some biographers and historians have assumed, Franky’s inoculation was not out of the question. Franklin said as much many years later. Addressing Franky’s death in the Autobiography, he wrote: “I long regretted bitterly & still regret that I had not given it [smallpox] to him by Inoculation.” If he regretted not being able to give his son smallpox by inoculation, he would have said so. Clearly Franklin believed he had had a choice and had chosen wrong.

How did a man who understood better than most the relative safety and efficacy of inoculation choose wrong? Possibly he just lost his nerve. Other men had. In 1721 Cotton Mather—the man who had stumbled upon the idea of inoculation and then pushed it on the doctors of Boston, declaring it infallible—had stalled for two weeks before approving his teenage son’s inoculation, knowing all the while that Sammy Mather’s Harvard roommate was sick with smallpox.

It’s more likely, though, that Benjamin and Deborah disagreed over inoculation for their son. Franky was still Deborah’s only child (the Franklins’ daughter, Sarah, would not be born for seven more years) and the legitimizing force in her common-law marriage. Six years into that marriage, her husband was advancing so quickly in the world that she might have begun to worry he might one day outgrow his plain, poorly educated wife. If originally she had believed Franky would bring her closer to Benjamin, now she just hoped the boy would help her keep hold of him. By that logic, risking her son to inoculation was unacceptable.

That scenario—parents unable to agree on inoculation for their child—was precisely the one Ben Franklin fixed on two decades after his son’s death, when he wrote about impediments to the procedure’s public acceptance. If “one parent or near relation is against it,” he noted in 1759, “the other does not chuse to inoculate a child without free consent of all parties, lest in case of a disastrous event, perpetual blame should follow.” He raised that dilemma again in 1788. After expressing his regret over having failed to inoculate Franky, he added: “This I mention for the Sake of Parents, who omit that Operation on the Supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a Child died under it; my Example showing that the Regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen.”

Franklin took the blame for not inoculating Franky, just as he took the blame for Deborah’s disastrous first marriage. But as in that earlier case, his public chivalry probably disguised his private beliefs. Whether he blamed Deborah, or blamed himself for listening to her, the hard feelings relating to the death of their beloved son—“the DELIGHT of all that knew him,” according to the epitaph on his gravestone—appear to have ravaged their relationship. What followed was nearly 40 years of what Franklin referred to as “perpetual blame.”

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It surfaced in various forms. A recurring theme was Benjamin’s belief that Deborah was irresponsible. In August 1737, less than a year after Franky’s death, he lashed out at her for mishandling a sale in their store. A customer had bought paper on credit, and Deborah had forgotten to note which paper he had bought. Theoretically, the customer could claim to have purchased a lesser grade and underpay what he owed. It was a small matter, but Benjamin was incensed. Deborah’s shocked indignation is apparent in the entry she subsequently made in the shop book, in the place where she should have entered the details about the paper stock. Paraphrasing her husband, she wrote: “A Quier of paper that my careless wife forgot to set down and now the careless thing don’t know the prices so I must trust you.”

Benjamin also conspicuously overlooked, or even denigrated, Deborah’s fitness as a mother. His 1742 ballad in praise of her, as Lemay points out, touched upon every aspect of her domestic skills except motherhood—even though she had mothered William Franklin since infancy and, shortly after Franky’s death, had taken in young James Franklin Jr., the son of Ben’s deceased brother. And when Franklin sailed for London in 1757 he made no secret of his ambivalence about leaving his 14-year-old daughter with Deborah. After insisting that he was leaving home “more cheerfully” for his confidence in Deborah’s ability to manage his affairs and Sarah’s education, he added: “And yet I cannot forbear once more recommending her to you with a Father’s tenderest Concern.”

Authors of a 1722 pamphlet on inoculation in Boston included a “reply to the Objections made against it” to counter the “Heats and Animosities” the procedure aroused. (Harvard College Library)

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At some point in the year after Franky died, Benjamin commissioned a portrait of the boy. Was it an attempt to lift Deborah out of debilitating grief? Given Franklin’s notorious frugality, the commission was an extraordinary indulgence—most tradesmen didn’t have portraits made of themselves, let alone their children. In a sense, though, this was Franklin’s portrait, too: With no likeness of Franky to work from, the artist had Benjamin sit for it.

The final product—which shows Franklin’s adult face atop a boy’s body—is disconcerting, but also moving. Deborah appears to have embraced it without qualm—and over time seems to have accepted it as a surrogate for her son. In 1758, near the start of Franklin’s first extended stay in London, she sent the portrait or a copy of it to him, perhaps hoping it would bind him to her in the same way she imagined its subject once had.

Returned to Philadelphia, the painting took on a nearly magical significance a decade later, when family members noticed an uncanny resemblance between Sarah Franklin’s 1-year-old son, Benjamin Franklin Bache, and the Franky of the portrait. In a June 1770 letter, an elated Deborah wrote to her husband that William Franklin believed Benny Bache “is like Frankey Folger. I thought so too.” “Everyone,” she wrote, “thinks as much as though it had been drawn for him.” For the better part of the next two years Deborah’s letters to Benjamin focused on the health, charm and virtues of the grandson who resembled her dead son. Either intentionally or accidentally, as a side effect of her stroke, she sometimes confused the two, referring to Franklin’s grandson as “your son” and “our child.”

Franklin’s initial reply, in June 1770, was detached, even dismissive: “I rejoice much in the Pleasure you appear to take in him. It must be of Use to your Health, the having such an Amusement.” At times he seemed impatient with Deborah: “I am glad your little Grandson recovered so soon of his Illness, as I see you are quite in Love with him, and your Happiness wrapt up in his; since your whole long Letter is made up of the History of his pretty Actions.” Did he resent the way she had anointed Benny the new Franky? Did he envy it?

Or did he fear that they would lose this new Franky, too? In May 1771, on a kinder note, he wrote: “I am much pleased with the little Histories you give me of your fine Boy....I hope he will be spared, and continue the same Pleasure and Comfort to you, and that I shall ere long partake with you in it.”

Over time, Benjamin, too, came to regard the grandson he had yet to lay eyes on as a kind of reincarnation of his dead son. In a January 1772 letter to his sister Jane, he shared the emotions the boy stirred in him—emotions he had hidden from his wife. “All, who have seen my Grandson, agree with you in their accounts of his being an uncommonly fine Boy,” he wrote, “which brings often afresh to my Mind the Idea of my son Franky, tho’ now dead 36 Years, whom I have seldom seen equal’d in every thing, and whom to this Day I cannot think of without a Sigh.”

Franklin finally left London for home three months after Deborah died. When he met his grandson he, too, became infatuated with the boy—so much so that he effectively claimed Benny for his own. In 1776 he insisted that the 7-year-old accompany him on his diplomatic mission to France. Franklin didn’t return Benny Bache to his parents for nine years.

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