#and i would rather not live through 2020 again

[292pantone]

Okay! Time for some Glass Onion analysis bc I'm already obsessed with this movie.

GLASS ONION SPOILERS AHEAD READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

I've seen people saying that it was unnecessary for the movie Glass Onion to be set in May 2020 during the height of the pandemic, and that it took away from the movie, but I disagree. The specific setting is relevant because of all the movie's subtext about the Black Lives Matter movement and its resurgence in May 2020. Hear me out- there are several parallels between Andi's death/Helen's avenging her death by wrecking the mansion, and the riots in 2020 following the unjust deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others.

To begin with, there's the power dynamic between Andi and Miles. A mediocre, unexceptional white man stole the contributions of a brilliant black woman and got away with it because his influential friends closed ranks around him in a system designed to benefit him. He got the benefit of the doubt and weaponized the legal system to financially ruin her. Even though she was telling the truth, no one believed her, and Miles fully expected this pattern to continue once her sister Helen took up the cause.

Miles burns the incriminating evidence of his lies and flat-out tells Helen that no one will ever believe her with only circumstantial evidence. Even Benoit Blanc acknowledges that his skill as a detective can only go so far without the police and courts on his side.

In the case of police brutality, cops similarly weaponize the legal system and avoid accountability for their murders by closing ranks through police unions that invoke "qualified immunity" (aka shielding the cops from legal liability). The privilege of white men, compounded by their wealth and connections, makes it difficult for them to face actual consequences for the harm they do.

We see the concept of avoiding consequences again with Miles' crew of "disruptors", all of whom rely on his money to bail them out of trouble. Birdie was implied to have done blackface, made tone-deaf comments comparing herself to Harriet Tubman, completely ignored all COVID restrictions, and tweeted ethnic slurs to the point where her assistant had to take away her phone, but her line of loungewear still takes off thanks to Miles' financial backing. In response to the latest scandal, personal assistant Peg says "We will do what we always do! Deny, half-apologize, then go silent awhile." Despite her litany of offenses and half-assed attempts at accountability, no consequences stick to the privileged Birdie either.

However, Helen refuses to accept this unfair state of things. In a situation where she appears powerless, with her sister gone and the valuable napkin burned, Helen essentially goes "fuck that" and makes Miles pay for what he did anyway. If the law won't take her side, she has to take it into her own hands. This is where the parallels to the 2020 riots come in.

We see her smashing the symbols of Miles' wealth, starting with his glass sculptures, and at first the other characters don't mind. They cheer her on from the couches, even though they all just refused to testify for her in court. This parallels the performative activism seen in many celebrities, who would rather watch from the sidelines and say vaguely supportive things rather than do any meaningful action to change the system. The other guests are happy to break the glass sculptures alongside her, saying how cathartic it feels, but they get antsy when she moves on to breaking more valuable things instead of giving up after a short while like they did. The camera shots of Helen smashing things and lighting a fire linger uncomfortably long as it starts to sink in that this isn't just a momentary temper tantrum. The so-called "disruptors" wince and gasp and exclaim how a piano belonged to Liberace and so on, completely ignoring how THE DESTRUCTION IS THE POINT, because if Helen only broke safe, acceptable targets, then it wouldn't actually mean anything. Similarly, when people rioted in 2020, there was a huge amount of pearl-clutching by people saying rioting is going too far, and can't we all just be nonviolent and have unity and forgive each other? In both cases, there's a veneer of support from people who just want the victims of injustice to "get their anger out of their systems" and move on without any serious changes being made.

I find it very fitting that Helen burns the Mona Lisa with Miles' own unregulated hydrogen fuel cell, using the override switch that he carelessly installed. She exploits the natural consequences of his self-centeredness so they all catch up to him at once. In the end, Helen's acts of protest do disrupt things and lead to change, even as people tell her she is going too far. Once Helen does the actual work of tanking Miles' reputation for good, only then do the "disruptors" jump ship and promise to back her up in court. They're willing to take the side of justice only when things have shifted to the point where it's the better act of self-preservation. If there was any chance of still hanging onto Miles' golden titty and making his reputation their hill to die on, they would've done it.

Blanc, the protagonist of the movie, gives Helen tacit permission to burn everything down by handing her the chunk of hydrogen fuel. He stands by her the whole movie and takes her seriously, demonstrating a path to better (non-performative) allyship.

Glass Onion shows that lasting change has to be demanded, not wheedled, and that sometimes things have to reach an undeniable crisis point to do so. In other words: protest is necessary.

#discussion #glass onion #knives out #glass onion analysis #black lives matter #knives out analysis #benoit blanc #miles bron

[supercalifragipopculturevomit]

THE ALIENIST, S02xE06 (2020) Daniel Brühl as Dr. Laszlo Kreizler

"Sara, if you have no prior engagements, a spare pair of hands would be very much appreciated." A scene from The Alienist that lives rent-free in my mind: John casually (for the time period) asking Sara if she can help him go through the New York Times archives after they finally hooked up and Laszlo, picking up on the weird vibe, surreptitiously but carefully watching it all play out.

Always cracks me up, how he looks up again, like he can't help himself. Like, you know, all of us. It's a small moment but it endeared me to the good doctor even more.

It's in throwaway scenes like these that Daniel's talent as an actor is evident: he's reacting rather comically but still with enough subtlety to be true to his character. This is also why I want him to do more comedies. A character being funny with no idea he's being funny is the funniest thing ever.

#daniel brühl #laszlo kreizler #the alienist #s02e06 #dr laszlo kreizler #sara howard #dakota fanning #john moore #luke evans #daniel bruhl #my gifs #gifset

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I just read through the Wish Upon A Star event for the first time and it's a nice heartfelt story! But hoo BOY do some things about this event feel unexpectedly heavier now with the context of Book 6 and what's currently out for Book 7, particularly with the Diasomnia boys ...

Wish Upon a Star was really nice for the Shroud brothers' story in hindsight! I wouldn't say the event has anything "essential" (you can still understand book 6 without seeing any of Wish Upon a Star), but it definitely adds extra context (like sprinkles on top of an ice-cream sundae!) and some vague foreshadowing to the upcoming main story happenings. (It helped a lot that both brothers were featured cards for this event; they could share the spotlight!) We learn some new information that is fundamentally rooted in what we already know of the Shroud brothers (ie Idia is into video games, Ortho is supportive of his brother) and how it all plays together in a grander narrative. Star Rogue was actually first introduced in this event as something important to Idia and Ortho's childhoods, which later becomes a recurring motif in book 6. The book even closes on Idia playing it with all of his new NRC friends (?). The legend of the Starsending itself, of course, refers to the story of Pinocchio, where a puppet turned into a real boy--a theme which eventually carries over to Ortho, the robot that gains humanity. Additionally, we get a more in-depth exploration of Ortho and Idia's relationship in Wish Upon a Star. We see that Ortho, despite being a robot who would easily be able to look up anything he doesn't understand, still has a child-like wonder about wishes coming true and even dedicates his own wish to hoping that his older brother's wish comes true. It's Idia who expresses a deep cynicism for the Starsending and acts like a buzzkill (pointing out that the stars most likely react to people's body temperature rather than light up in response to being whispered a wish). This reflects their behavior in book 6 too: Idia is the one who has given up hope, and Ortho is the one who seeks to help his brother's dreams come true.

I guess something similar applies for the Diasomnia boys? 🤔 Although to be fair, this event came out in summer of 2020 (when the game itself first launched in March 2020), so we didn't know a ton about the Diasomnia boys back then. A lot of what they said for their wishes would have easily been dismissed as just normal characterization, but it definitely comes off as more ominous knowing what we now know of book 7:

Sebek’s wish: “I wish for the whole world to kneel before our king.” WELL. You definitely got that wish granted, Sebek 😭 cuz all of Twisted Wonderland is about to kneel over in a deep sleep once Malleus’s UM spreads far enough… Sebek is pretty much always going on about how powerful Malleus is, but in book 7 it’s not so fun having to deal with that magic now turned against us and set on consuming the world.

Silver’s wish: “I wish… for my father to have a long life.” When we first heard of this, the assumption was that Lilia would outlive Silver?? Especially with how spry Lilia is portrayed to be… BUT THEN IT TURNS OUT 700 YEAR OLD LILIA’S MAGIC IS ON THE DECLINE AND HE WANTS TO GO DIE ALONE IN A FOREIGN LAND 😩 Silver also mentions during his wish segment that he owes a lot to his father and isn’t close to repaying him for everything he has done. This is a sentiment Silver shares again in book 7… in which he then proceeds to break down and cry in front of Malleus about those insecurities 😭

Lilia’s wish: “My wish is… for humans, fae, and all other species to live in harmony.” This one hits super different because right now we’re witnessing Lilia’s past self as a general actively fighting against humans and being suspicious of them. His present self is much more peace and harmony loving, even instilling in Silver a respect for all creatures and lecturing Malleus and Sebek for their sometimes ignorant behavior towards other races. He acknowledges the challenges that come with bringing together those from all walks of life, but he’s also the first to preach about how the importance of it. People may be weak alone, but they can come together like the threads on a spindle to become something stronger together. This is a testament to how much Lilia’s feelings and him as an individual have evolved over time. What’s even sadder is that when you read Lilia’s words, it definitely sounds like he’s reflecting on his unsavory past, and wishing for a better world for the future: “You've learned about […] all the countless tales of our failure to compromise, and the resulting conflicts? I have no desire to see such history repeated.” So he makes the same wish every year…

Malleus’s wish: “I wish for Roaring Drago (Gao-Gao Dragon-kun) to make a friend.” Gao-Gao makes his first appearance in Malleus’s Labwear vignettes, but becomes a more integral part of Malleus’s story in other materials, then culminates as a motif in book 7. The importance of this virtual pet cannot be understated in regards to its connection with Malleus’s understanding of human lives and change. Prior to book 7, we see Gao-Gao as something “like Malleus”—it’s alone, a dragon hatched from an egg. (One can say that wishing for Gao-Gao to have friends is a metaphor for how Malleus himself wants friends.) During book 7, the perception of Gao-Gao changes; now it is likened to Malleus’s loved ones. He fears them leaving, just like Gao-Gao does when he’s all grown up—and so Malleus justifies his extreme actions with the excuse of, “I want them to live a happy fantasy forever and ever, just as though Gao-Gao were with me for all of time”. It’s how Malleus rationalizes his actions and comes to understand others. What makes Gao-Gao and even more prominent symbol in book 7 is its ties with Lilia; as Malleus notes in his Starsending segment, Gao-Gao was a gift from Lilia’s travels… and Gao-Gao set to leave once it has fully matured, so, too, comes the painful reminder that Lilia set to leave soon. It puts more pressure on Malleus to act, to come up with some kind of solution for a “happily ever after”. It’s his way of keeping his friends with him… whether they want it or not.

#twst #twisted wonderland #Diasomnia #Malleus Draconia #Lilia Vanrouge #Sebek Zigvolt #Silver #disney twisted wonderland #spoilers #notes from the writing raven #Idia Shroud #Ortho Shroud #Ignihyde #Pinocchio

[homunculus-argument]

People talk about what decade they would've liked to live in and I keep wondering how that would work. Like, just one decade? Dude you're a human, you get ten decades if you're lucky. Even if they threw you back to your favourite decade, you'd just live through it and then go right back to longing to go back to the one you're nostalgic for. Or would it be like a time loop? Living the same decade over and over again?

While I wouldn't want to do that forever either, I think I would be delighted to spend like a thousand years as an immortal living through a 30-year time loop from the 70s to 90s - every time the clock hits New Year on 1999, it loops back around to midnight on the first of January in the year 1970. Wander around, meet people, settle down somewhere, spend one loop growing a tech empire and another one cultivating a garden. Spend 30 years working as the foreign janitor in a japanese office, mopping the floors and learning to eavesdrop in a language I don't speak. Being the only one living through the 80s with the absolute carefree confidence that the nuclear war isn't going to happen.

And then once I've done that like 33 or 34 times, I would like to get back to my own real life in the early 2020's, where time has not passed at all in my absence, which was so brief that I was never absent at all. Because I rather like it here right now.

[grapejuicegay]

A... rather personal defense of Pran

I've seen a lot of people being confused about Pran's behaviour and rather upset by him. But like @waitmyturtles said in their review, "I see Pran dealing with something really complicated." Which, yes. That's what this post is about. I just don't think it's about Singapore.

It's about Pran's OCD. I think there was a consensus last week with the way Pran talked about it that it was a recent diagnosis. And I think this episode just confirmed that for me.

This is where the personal part begins - I was diagnosed with OCD in 2020, in the very first few months of covid. When I told people about it I got about the same response that we had to Pran - it's not surprising but it's good that it's an official diagnosis now.

Such a diagnosis is almost a relief when you get it because suddenly a lot of things start making sense. But it also comes with a very fun challenge - learning to deal with it. Because while you understand why you get so much more anxious and overthink more than most people, you're also suddenly more aware of your thought patterns. You have to be, to find a way to work through them, to not give into the intrusive thoughts. But looking at the intrusive thoughts is one of the best ways to let them take over. You do have to look at them though, because you have to learn to recognise them. Because you cannot deal with them until you do. It's a rough cycle.

I was a few years older than Pran when I was diagnosed, and in a very different place in my life. The pandemic that we didn't know a lot about at that time looming over our heads did not help my anxiety, but the lockdown gave me something really special - time and space to work through it all. I wasn't in college so I didn't have the constant looming threat of deadlines and figuring out my future in that very moment. I also didn't have the very unique set of stressors Pran lives with - friends and family from whom you're hiding a relationship that if revealed could potentially lead to very severe consequences, consequences that in the past have been the worst of his anxieties come to life. Nor a relationship to maintain while being overtly aware at all times that this is not the kind of relationship your partner would really want, that they're only in this because of you.

And there is the sacrifice of it all. There is the thing that keeps coming up again and again - that Pat does so much for him. That Pat helps him all the time, that Pat's sacrificed so much for him, that Pran isn't sure he's good enough or ever will be.

Add to that the regular reminders from Pat that he overthinks. They're meant in a very good way and they do help in the moment, I'm not denying that at all. But it's also a fact that Pran struggles with. It adds to his concern that he's a burden on Pat with the way he thinks, that Pat has to do so much work because of Pran's brain, something Pat had no say over (something Pran had no say over but it's harder to see it like that in the moment).

I've had my diagnosis for the past 3 years now. And it hasn't been until the past year that I've finally started feeling confident in myself and my ability to regulate my anxiety, to finally start feeling like I have control over my brain. Because as much as knowing the diagnosis helps, the work you have to do afterwards is no joke.

So yes, Pran is going through something very heavy, but it's not the prospect of going to Singapore (I don't believe that exists just yet, but it's coming soon). Pran is in the process of figuring out how to make his brain work in his favour instead of actively against him. He's learning to rely on people when he needs to while fighting off constant reminders that he's a burden.

And we've seen Pran make a lot of progress. Any points at which he talks about being anxious are progress. Any time he lets himself be upset is progress. Any time time he says any of his worries out loud (even if he can't say them directly to Pat yet), he has fought his way through who knows how many intrusive thoughts to get to that point. And in the same regard - he probably feels guilty about having Pat say "I can't live without you" first. Because he's likely just as aware that Pat has done so much for him that this is just another thing he's adding on top of that.

But - and I think this is very big - he knows that he needs Pat to say it first, to give him permission to feel this, that this isn't too much for him to ask for. This is him asking for help to express himself when he feels like too much. It helps them both in the long run. And I do think it's a very important step to get what we saw in ep 12 - a Pran that demands love, that demands to be babied. This is him giving himself permission through the hardest part of learning his diagnosis.

I love that we get this between ep 11 and 12 because with this ep 12 also becomes a hug, a way of telling us things may be rough for him but he gets through it. He'll get where he needs to be, wants to be. Just give him some time. Because just like with the parents, sometimes time is just what you need.

#so this is probably the most personal i have ever been and will ever be on here #but i think it needed to be said #so here it is #bad buddy #bad buddy brain rot #bad buddy series #our skyy 2 #our skyy bad buddy #i understand people being upset with him #but i think it's important to understand why he's acting the way he is #especially when you add in a pretty serious mental health diagnosis #and they are dealing with it pretty well! #i think showing the struggle is important sometimes #and at least they're showing a version of it that makes sense #it's not just a need for everything to be orderly - although that can be part of it and likely is for pran #but it never just ends there

[gloster]

FAVORITE FANFICS OF 2023

We did it. We made it. We made it through the end of 2023, and BOY AM I HAPPY AS HELL TO SAY GOOD-FUCKING-BYE TO IT. I don't know about you guys, but this year- particularly the last quarter- have been a lot to say the least. A lot of headaches, a lot of mental breakdowns, a lot of emotional gymnastics, and more.

But thanks to good friends, good shows, good music, and of course good fanfics I managed to see it through the end.

One of my favorite New Year's Eve's traditions where I do my annually fanfic recs/favorite fanfics of the year. This marks a whooping 5th year doing it, YAY 🎉💃🏿 If interested, check out 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 lists.

Please know there's no real ranking, despite the number ordering. Loved all these stories listed. Loved all the fanfics writers featured. And of course highly highly highly recommend

Without further ado, here are my favorite fanfics of 2023:

1). Something Good by @no-net-ensnares-me (kathony/kanthony)

Summary: Eager to earn a wage that would provide a more suitable life for her family and prepare for Edwina’s debut in a couple years, Kate accepts a position as governess for the Bridgerton family and moves to London, where she finds herself thrown into the chaos of living with the severe yet handsome Viscount Anthony Bridgerton and his seven siblings.

or

The Sound of Music AU

The Hills are aliiiiiiiiiiiiive with the sound of music/and the feels are FEEEEEEEEEELT with each new chapter. LOL, but all jokes aside, yes it's been a year since we saw our dear Viscount and Viscountess yet I still ride hard for them like it's their season premire all over again. Thanks of course to the awesome fic writers who keep us well-feed as we wait for season 3, such as this gem right here

Seriously, I cannot stress how insanely good this was. A good retelling where you see elements of Sound of Music while also being its' own thing. The longing, the longing between Kate and Anthony is so good. READ IT.

2). A Devil's Love by FormerlyIR (Irony_Rocks), Irony_Rocks (kathony/kanthony)

Summary: When Kate's sister goes missing, she gets herself a waitress job at the Pebble Lounge to track her down, working under London’s seedy underbelly to find the only person she has left in this world to love. And Anthony Bridgerton? No matter how alluring and distracting he may be, he’s just a means to an end, his life defined by his family business built on corruption.

Kate won’t dance to that tune. She’s just trying to find her sister.

Two in a row. A win for kathony/kanthony. Where the first one for the most part is cozy and light, this one is dark. Not surprising since this story, according to the author, was inspired by the 2022's The Batman, focusing on the electric dynamic between our favorite Bruce and Selina Kyle. Or rather in this AU, the dynamics between a dangerous mob boss and a woman going undercover as a waitress to figure out what happened to her sister.

It's got everything. Protective/possessive Anthony. Stubborn, witty Kate. Great sexual tension. Fair warning, there is an unplanned pregnancy so keep that in mind. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride

3). Intent to Cherish by iffervescent (kinn x porsche)

Summary: A mouthy beta runs off with Kinn's watch. He goes to get it back.

4 chapters this story is. 4 chapters of hilarious back and forth. 4 chapters of Porsche keeping that stubborn streak in tact with Kinn trying to chip his way through. 4 chapters we get to watch Porsche go from intriguing thief, to Kinn's employee, and finally intended.

This story checks off so many boxes. ABO AU, which is always a favorite. Sugar Baby and Sugar Daddy dynamic- never get tired of that. And of course Porsche being spoiled rotten. What more could you want?

4). burnt cotton series by taetaehland (taekook)

Summary: here's a series featuring your favorite bratty taehyung and his whipped husband, jeongguk (plus their adorable pups)

Once again, we got ABO and we so far have 11 stories of it featuring our favorite BTS as they grow more of their little family, grow more in love, and of course Tae growing more crafty and poor Kookie growing more insane. I love it.

Not to mention seeing all the ways Jungkook becomes more and more whipped for his husband is just the icing on the cake.

5). 'Tis a Far Better Thing by @the-sinking-ship (drarry)

Summary: 'Tis a far, far better thing doing stuff for other people — or however the Muggle saying goes — because Potter is in need of professional help, and Draco is just the man to give it to him.

A Drarry Clueless AU.

Sometimes you come across two things, such as two fandoms that on the surface seem so far farfetched until one ambitious fic writer creates a story that combines elements of the two and creates a wonderful gem of a story. Which is exactly what happened here.

Draco Malfoy and Cher Horowitz are so much alike, it's not even funny. Thus enhancing my enjoyment for this story to outright love love loving.

Again, elements to a famous story that brings on the nostalgia and enjoyment while also being it's own fresh spin. Plus FASHION. Draco as a Fashion Designer with Harry being his newest client. Along with Draco massively simping- always a win in my book.

6). Tracklist by Mia_Moon (sukuita/sukuIta)

Summary: Singer Sukuna x Fanboy Yuuji

Where they do kinky stuff together first and then get to know each other later.

Sometimes you have that fandom with an OTP that's set and your loyal ride or ship. Then there are other fandoms, where you love most of the characters, see the chemistry between them, love the dynamics, and it's fair game for shipping season. Jujutsu Kaisen is one of those fandoms, and sukita/sukulta was one of those ships that I just ended up falling in love with it.

Listen. Listen. Listen. I know the synopsis just give smutty smutty good time, but you get that and MORE.

What more you say be asking? Well, for starter our dear boy Yuuji who gets spoiled rotten, pampered, and yes, also gets sexed up 7 ways to Sunday- featuring some of the hottest smut I've read so far might I add. Mia_Moon did their thing, and I definitely will be reading more of and more of their works.

I don't know why to explain it, but there's something about a celebrity AU, where we have one half of the ship be this famous celeb and the other being this outsider getting pulled into their world. I ate it up every single time.

7). I'm Only Going to Heaven (If it Feels Like Hell) by stereobone (eruri)

Summary: "Are you saying you want to be my sugar daddy?" Levi says.

This story, I kid you not, came at the best timing, especially as I still try to untangle my very tangled feelings regarding the final season of Attack of Titan. But one positive that came outta it was my ulitmate love for Levi Ackerman, along with rekindling my love for eruri.

Good to note, one of the quickest quickest ways for me to immediately read a fanfic is if I see the keywords: Sugar Daddy.

What can I say? It gets me everytime. And this one was no different. This story not only came to my radar at the perfect time, but it also was just so damn perfect. So damn good. And of course had me looking through whatever other eruri stories the writer had under their belt.

8). Minor Family Supremacy by @yoonmoonbii (vegaspete, kinnporsche,payurain, prapaisky)

Summary: Like Vegas, Venice Theerapanyakun was born into a dangerous world of crime and power plays. And unlike Vegas, he is well protected by his family who shelters the little boy and spoils him to the core. However, in a day like every other, Venice is kidnapped.

Oh dear lord, where do we begin with this one? Well, much as 2023 was a hot flaming mess, it also became the year of Love of the Air (my new comfort show) and Kinnporsche. For not only me but also for my dear friends @littlenightdragon & @kila09. And what does one do after getting into a new show/fandom? Find fanfics to satisfy the fangirl cravings.

Minor Family Supremacy, or as me and @littlenightdragon often like to call it, the Minor Family Saga was the fanfic for us. And deliver what we needed after finishing Kinnporsche and wanted more of Vegas, more of Pete, and see the other side of the Minor Family.

This one, massive massive props, praise, and all the kudos for @yoonmoonbii for putting this series together because wow. Series starts off with Payu aka Venice as a kid, best friends with his cousin Prapai, being protected by his loving parents until one day changes their dynamics forever- and further widen the gap between the two . But quickly as each story goes on, the two find themselves being more aware of their positions, the complicated histories of their families, and how to stay on course of their own lives without falling into the trappings of Korn's narcisstic chesse game.

It's that good. Each story is like a TV season to the vegaspete spin-off we were so badly owed and sadly weren't granted.

9). Haute Couture, Mon Amour by @goldentruth813 (sheith)

Summary: When a scruffy stranger walks into Mamora Designs, personal shopper Shiro decks him in finery instead of sending him away. Little does Shiro know there’s more to this man than meets the eye and while trying to give him a picture perfect moment he just might find his own instead.

When it comes to @goldentruth813, you can count on several things. Amazing sheith stories. Incredible moments that will make your heart swoon or flutter (depending on the rating). And of course for Shiro to be spoiled rotten and given more depth than the show did.

This one, one word: FASHION. Fashion, fashion, with a lot of a Cinderella-ish vibe, only slightly if you catch it.

Honorable mention:

Wishing on a Frat Boy

10). He's The Bride by @sashadistan (tododeku)

Summary: Fae Prince Shoto has been waiting his whole life to marry his betrothed. As it turns out, a few interesting details were lost in translation, but Shoto still thinks his bride is worth the wait.

Oh @sashadistan, how I adore thee. For the way you just drop these amazing stories for us peasants, feeding us with wonderful content one story at a time. I always love your stories whether it's sheith, tododeku, and more.

This one was no different. This story has everything I could want: Fae Shouto, possessive Shouto, body worship, Izuku being his stuttering and flustering mess, and arranged marriage.

If y'all told me 5 or so years ago, I'd get into arranged marriage, I would have been dumbfounded. Or wonder if you were trying to be funny. Now? I love it. Just goes to show that sometimes it takes a good writer to make something you don't like a win in your eyes.

And now for the Honorable Mentions that were insanely good but due to time & length, couldn't go into full depth:

Just Breathe by @icecream-suga (2 part series w/1st part focusing on yoonmin & the 2nd on taekook; gangsters, drugs, gunplay, OH MY. So goooooood)

Right at Home by cmere (firstprince, alex x henry; grad students in a non-royal AU, fake-dating, and hijinks)

Hair Ribbons and Silk Ties by writer_of_passion (tiana x nanami/tianami; loving husband goes bonkers seeing his wife's curls loose and it GOES DOWN, so so so good)

Bedroom Hymns by Writcraft (drarry; daddy kink w/dom & sub undertones, insanely HOTTT)

Like, Comment, and Romance by @xskyll (tododeku; Youtuber Deku, pro-Hero Shouto, mutual longing and pining wrapped in a insanely fun read)

And there you have it. As usual, thanks to the awesome fanfic writers who do what they do. Fanfics, literally, is the only thing keeping us sane. And please check out all these stories.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, GUYS

#favorite fanfics of the year #fanfic recs #fic recs #kathony #kanthony #kathony fic recs #bridgerton #drarry #drarry fanfic recs #drarry fic recs #harry potter #sheith #sheith fanfic recs #sheith fic recs #voltron legendary defender #tododeku #tododeku fanfic recs #tododeku fic recs #my hero academia #payurain #prapaisky #love in the air fanfic recs #love in the air fic recs #love in the air #vegaspete #kinn x porsche #kinnporsche the series #kinnporsche fic recs #eruri #eruri fanfic rec

[sunflowervolvimp3]

from eden: I

A/N: alright SO!! if you were around in summer 2020, then you know I started planning and writing a witchrry au that got pushed to the back burner when drea and I began collabing on you're someone I just want around. that fic quickly took over our entire lives, and every other story got put on pause, including this one. flash forward to present day, where after finishing one degree, moving, finishing ANOTHER degree, and beginning a career in my profession, I finally have a bit of time to write again!! I'm so excited to FINALLY be able to share witchrry with you, as well as my first OC on here. I haven't officially written in...a long time, so I apologize if I'm a bit rusty. but any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!! letting content creators know that you're enjoying their content helps motivate us to create more 💌 I really hope you enjoy this story and these characters, because I have a lot planned for them!! someone asked me yesterday if this story was going to be fluff or if it was going to get twisty, and the answer is always, ALWAYS twisty, so I hope you stick around to see it 💌 also!! i would like to give a big thank you to drea for creating this beautiful banner and story dividers (graphic design is not my passion)!! go give her a follow @adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy if you haven't already!!

masterlist : askbox : read on wattpad

word count: 15.7k

content/warnings: YOU get mommy issues!! and YOU get mommy issues!!! EVERYONE GETS MOMMY ISSUES!!!!, an overwhelming use of hand imagery, the normalization of talking to pets as if they can respond, Harry doesn't understand how to use figures of speech, drugs: just say no, time to meet the man of your dreams (literally), Rowan "well mark me down as scared AND horny!" Frances, and the beginning of a journey to see how many references to Practical Magic (1998) can be made in each chapter.

When Harry first stumbles through the door of the shop, the rain pounding on the roof is reaching biblical proportions, and Rowan is convinced that the universe is playing some sort of cosmic practical joke on her.

If the day, which had just entered it’s thirteenth hour, hadn’t already been bad enough—if she hadn’t already spilled coffee down her front, staining her favourite ivory shirt and forcing her to change; if she hadn’t already misplaced her favourite pen, the one with violet ink that glides so delightfully over the countless inventory forms she has to fill out; if she hadn’t already knocked over a flower arrangement that had taken two hours to construct and two seconds to destroy, shattering the sea-glass green vase that she had waited three weeks for in the mail; if none of that was enough—she had forgotten to flip the sign on the door to say that her floral shop was closed for lunch (which, because of her rush this morning, would be her first actual meal of the day), and now there is a soaking wet stranger standing in her doorway, who is shaking out his sopping hair with an urgent glance around the store, and his eyes settling on Rowan with unspoken need.

The moment she heard the bell of the door tinkle from his disturbance, Rowan had turned toward the entryway, a strained smile pasted to her face before she even made eye contact with the stranger. “I’m sorry, sir,” She says, her voice barely meeting sorry, and edging more on irritation with every passing moment. “But we’re actually closed for lunch. You can come back at two, if you’d like.”

The man—who is dripping all over her freshly cleaned hardwood floors, she notes wryly—looks up at her with a raised brow, as if he’s surprised to find that there’s someone inside the small shop. Perhaps he’s just flustered from being caught in the storm, Rowan thinks, because it’s clear that the rain has soaked straight through his thin army jacket and maroon knit sweater, and is coating his entire being in ice, right down to his bones. The rain had come on rather quickly; Rowan recalls hearing the sudden thundering outside just after she had shattered the beautiful vase. It makes sense that the man looks like he hadn’t been expecting it. In fact, he still looks rather unmoored as he runs his ring-covered hand through his sopping wet chestnut ringlets once more, his hunter eyes darting another round over the store before refocusing on Rowan.

“I’m very sorry to disturb,” Rowan is surprised to hear the silky British accent that slips from his raspberry mouth, the hue matching the ruddiness of his cheeks—a sure side-effect of the freezing weather in which he’d found himself caught. “But I’m in a bit of a hurry, and I was wondering if you had any yarrow flowers.”

Despite her mouth already open to inform the man that, once again, her shop is currently closed, his incredibly specific request makes Rowan pause. Yarrow flowers are hardly a popular arrangement choice for someone who’s annoyed their partner—which she assumes this man has, given the hurry that he says he’s in. Normally, when men show up in her shop with a desperate look on their faces and urgency in their voices, they’re searching for flowers such as roses, calla lilies, daisies—things known to bloom for love. Yarrow flowers, with their small clumps of pastel petals offset by long, wiry stems, hardly match that description. 

The curiosity peaking inside her chest, more than anything else, is what prompts Rowan to change the response that’s resting on the tip of her tongue. “I, um, may have some in the back,” She says slowly, as if feeling out the words as she utters them. “I use them as fillers, sometimes, in arrangements. I can…check for you, if you’d like.”

The man visibly breathes a sigh of relief, his face relaxing just the slightest bit as his shoulders slump beneath his soaked clothing. “That would be lovely, thank you. I’d really appreciate it.”

Rowan nods again, giving the man one last look of pensive confusion before stepping out from behind her (messy as usual) desk to make her way to the back of the store to the workshop. As her shoes echo against the wooden floor, she wonders if this is a smart idea; should she be leaving a strange man with even stranger requests unattended in her shop? Should she be turning her back on him while walking towards a private back room that contains multiple objects of the heavy and sharp variety? Objects that she’d hate to see catalogued by a forensics team when her body is eventually discovered with a pair of gardening shears protruding from her chest? 

Reaching the half-opened door of her workshop, Rowan pauses in the frame just long enough to glance back over her shoulder at the man. With her promise to check her inventory for his requested flowers, he’s allowed some of the tension to slip from his body, and is busying himself by extracting a leather journal from an inner pocket of his jacket to thumb through. No, Rowan decides as she studies his furrowed brow and focused gaze. The man, albeit a little strange, isn’t a potential 48 Hours suspect; he’s just a little frazzled by the unexpected events of the day, a feeling to which Rowan can relate. And perhaps, if she wasn’t as frazzled as she is, she would have noticed the peculiarity of the man’s entire person being soaked while the yellowed pages of his leather-bound journal remain completely dry. 

Or maybe she wouldn’t have. After all, she’d spent her entire life ignoring the irregularities around her. What’s one more anomaly to turn a blind eye to?

Rowan doesn’t bother to close the door behind her, knowing that she’ll only be spending a few minutes inside her slightly chaotic workshop. The long wooden table and decorating stations are just as she left them an hour ago—meaning they’re covered in tissue wrappings and loose, wilted petals, with clipped leaves and discarded stems littering the floor below her—and she bypasses the mess to pull open the heavy insulated door that leads to her freezer.

She shivers as she steps into the refrigerated room, pulling her cable-knit cardigan tighter around her shoulders as she begins to scan the alphabetized shelves. Rowan’s eyes quickly scan one label to the next until she finds the little label that says “yarrow” in her neat writing on the lower half of the second metal shelf, nestled neatly beside a pile of violets. There are only a few of the little white flowers left in her stock, enough for about two small bunches, so Rowan removes both from the shelf before stepping out of the freezer and shutting the door tightly behind her to preserve the other flowers that are stocked away.

Clutching the two miniature bouquets in her hands, Rowan nudges the door of her workshop open a bit more as she passes back under the frame, picking off a few browning petals from the blossoms. She wishes the blooms were fresher—it wouldn’t be easy for the man to make amends for whatever he had done if he showed up with wilted flowers. Still, Rowan thinks as she flicks the dried petals to the ground, it’s better than nothing, and hopes that the small bouquets will be enough to appease whoever the soaked stranger had managed to piss off. 

“I found a couple bunches, and I wasn’t sure how many you needed, so I brought both—” Rowan stops short as she enters the front of the shop again, expecting to find the man near the door where she had left him, but finds only a damp spot on the wood where he’d dripped after his entrance. “Hello?” Confusion settles into her voice as she tentatively steps forward again, her gaze sweeping the perimeter of her shop.

“Oh, thank you,” The voice emerges from around the corner and behind a shelf of succulents, making Rowan half jump in surprise, and a small and shocked gasp leaves her mouth as the curly haired man steps out from behind the greenery.

“Oh—!” She clutches the flowers to her chest, taking a deep breath and releasing a strained laugh at her own over the top reaction, the sound both an apology and a nervous tic that’s lingered from childhood. “You scared me.”

With his emerald eyes tinged with regret, the man offers a peacemaking smile that borders on a grimace as he peers at her from the aisle. “I’m sorry,” He says slowly, his voice accented with sincerity as he presses a tattooed hand to his soaked chest, as if needing to catch his own breath as well. While it’s the movement that originally catches Rowan’s eye, it’s the tattoo inked into his skin that keeps her attention—it’s a strange symbol, resembling nothing she’s ever seen before, and yet…something about the crossing of lines and gentle curves of ink seems familiar. 

Shaking herself out of her thoughts with a quick jerk of her head, Rowan offers a smile to the man in return for his apology. “It’s fine,” She eases her tone to match the tilt of her lips, holding out the previously requested flowers to him. “Will these be enough for you?”

The man’s strawberry lips rise to mirror Rowan’s smile as he gives a gentle nod, relief and gratitude dancing through his sea glass irises. “Yes, thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Rowan waves off the praise with a casual flick of her hand before beckoning him back towards the counter, doing her best to ignore the strange spark of pleasure in her belly upon hearing the stranger’s praise. “C’mon, I’ll just ring you up at the front.”

The man follows her to the front of the store, his polished shoes squeaking against the floor with every step and keeping his presence in her peripheral thoughts—as if Rowan could forget it. Reaching the counter, however, provides her with a familiar sense of comfort that she didn’t realize she’d been craving until the mahogany bench is between their two bodies. It’s strange, though, she thinks as she curls her fingers around the edge of the counter, drumming them once against the wood before beginning to ring in the flowers on her tablet that’s housed on the front counter. Despite the distance bringing her comfort, there’s a distinct sense of lack that comes with the separation; her eyes flicker to the stranger in front of her once again as she sets the bouquet of flowers onto the tissue paper lying in front of her. The brunette man is searching for his wallet in his rain drenched pockets, extracting a misted phone and the surprisingly dry journal from his jacket in his vain efforts. His eyes flicker to hers in apology, his smile growing back into a sheepish lilt as he clutches the objects within one hand while still searching with the other.

“I know I have it—somewhere—” He mutters, his drenched locks curling into his eyes as his head drops back down to examine his clothing. “Sorry, I’m usually—a little more organized than this, I swear—”

“No, no, it’s alright,” Rowan offers the usual method of banter she employs with customers, in which she just agrees and relates to anything they say to put them at ease. It’s a little fake, to be sure, but what isn’t fake about customer service? It’s not like she can roll her eyes each time someone makes the “it must be free!” joke when her debit machine takes a moment to boot up. “It’s been a strange day for everyone, I think. I spilled coffee all over myself, knocked over arrangements…and then to top it all off, the weather began to act up, when it had been so nice for the last few days.”

Cocking his head to the side, the stranger considers her small talk for a moment—which is more than most customers have ever considered her in her life. The curiosity of his gaze ignites that unfamiliar feeling again, once more making her contrastingly thankful and remorseful for the mahogany barrier between them. “Yes, it has been strange,” Despite the lightness of his tone, Rowan doesn’t miss the way his eyes shift a hue darker as he speaks. “Certainly seemed to come out of no—got it!”

The florist watches as he triumphantly extracts a brown wallet embossed with a marking she doesn’t recognize (a brand logo, perhaps? For a company more luxurious than she’s used to?), tucking the rest of his items back into his jacket with one swift motion. 

“Wonderful,” Rowan means every syllable of the word as she begins to key in the purchase on her tablet, her expert fingers tapping away as relief flows through her body, both from having a new center of attention, and knowing that she’ll be able to really take her lunch break soon. “I’ll ring those in for you—” 

 “That’s an interesting marking,” The man interrupts her focus with the offhand comment, and when her gaze snaps up to him once more, she finds him nodding to the door of the shop as his ringed fingers open his wallet. “Do you know what it means?”

Rowan tears her eyes from his flushed skin to where his own gaze rests, settling her sights on the top of the door frame, where a black hand painted symbol sits in stark contrast with the white of the walls. “Oh, it’s just something my mom used to draw all the time,” She explains with a shrug, dismissing the symbol as her eyes turn back from the familiar six petal flower wrapped in a circle to the questioning man in front of her. “She used to say it was for protection of homes, so when I opened the shop, I figured…well,” Rowan offers a sheepish smile in return for her superstitious explanation. “New York can be a dangerous place. It can’t hurt to have extra protection, right?”

Not for the first time, an undecipherable response flits through the man’s hunter eyes, but it disappears just as quickly as it appears, before Rowan can make anything of it. “Right,” He agrees quickly, his nod more serious than it had been a moment before. “You can never have too much protection.”

Although his words echo the very phrase Rowan just spoke, something about his cadence of voice gives the simple saying a double meaning. The florist ponders it for a moment, her eyes searching the stranger’s as much as she dares, but decides it’s best not to pry. It’s not her place, really. She doesn’t know this man, and she doubts he’d bother to recommend her shop to anyone he knows if she tries to interrogate him over his expressions.

Clearing her throat, Rowan decides it’s time to change the subject, and refocuses her attention to the task at hand. “So, um—” She glances back down at her tablet, forcing herself to remember her usual spiel with her customers. “I’ll just need your name for records—your first name, if you don’t mind. It just helps me with counting and keeping track of stock.”

“That’s no problem,” The tone of his voice flips back to something more casual with ease as he rakes a hand through his damp curls once more. “My name is Harry.”

“Harry…” Rowan quickly types the simple name into her inventory logs before setting her tablet down on the counter. With nimble and practiced fingers, she begins to wrap the yarrow flowers in tissue, but Harry interrupts her with a shake of his head.

“Actually,” He gives an apologetic smile—something he seems to do a lot, she’s noticed (not that she’s noticed much about him, she tells herself). “I don’t need any wrapping for them; I’ll be using them right away, and I’d hate to waste the tissue.”

“Oh,” Rowan’s movements pause at his request, and she removes the flowers from the wrapping carefully before handing the bouquet to Harry. “Are you sure? It’s still pouring, and the rain will ruin them…”

The stranger—Harry, she reminds herself—waves away her concern with an unbothered flick of his hand. “Yeah, it’s alright. I’m going to be pulling apart the blossoms anyway.”

“You’re—” Despite the majority of this interaction being the strangest she’s had in a long time, this is the first comment of the man that’s made Rowan pause completely. Were these flowers not a gift for someone, like she’d originally assumed? “What?”

“I needed yarrow blossoms for a little…project of mine,” The molasses-like speed at which Harry utters the words gives Rowan the impression that he’s choosing them very carefully, and the florist can’t help but wonder what explanation pertaining to flowers would ever need to be so carefully considered. “Normally I keep a stock of them, but I ran out last month and forgot to order more, and I was in the middle of my project by the time I realized…” As if realizing he’s beginning to ramble, Harry offers another shy tilt of his lips before laughing lightly at his own antics. “Well, anyways, I don’t need the wrapper. But I really appreciate the help; I know I kept you open past your usual hours.”

The strange—albeit rambling—explanation leaves Rowan speechless for a moment as she debates whether or not it’s worth questioning Harry more about his project—what kind of project would so urgently need yarrow flowers? What kind of project would be worth running out into this increasingly raging storm, soaking oneself clean to the bone just to retrieve the small bouquet currently clenched in Harry’s hand?

A project that’s none of your business, Rowan tells herself firmly. None of your business. “It’s—don’t worry about it,” She straightens her spine in resolution, mimicking his earlier action of waving off concern as he sets a twenty dollar bill down on the counter. “Oh—no, it was only twelve dollars, actually—”

“Keep the change. As a thank you.” Harry tucks his wallet back into his pocket, as if his soaked jacket could do much to protect the object from the rain. “Oh, by the way—” His jade irises brighten once more as he extracts his tattooed hand from his pocket, holding out an object to Rowan in offering. “I found this on the floor—meant to give it to you…”

Grasped between his long, lithe fingers (that she is not staring at. Not in the slightest.) is Rowan’s favourite pen—the one with violet ink that glides so delightfully over the countless information forms she has to fill out. Her mouth drops open as realization lights up her face, and she retrieves the pen from him with a new and genuine smile painted on her lips. “Oh, I’ve been looking for this! It’s my favourite.” Clicking it once as if to test if it’s working, Rowan regards the soaked man with newly warmed eyes. “Thank you, Harry.”

Harry’s expression molds to match her own the moment their eyes meet, and he tucks the flowers under his arm before sheathing his hands within his pockets. “No need to thank me, Rowan. I’ll be seeing you soon.” His shoes click against the ground as he retreats back to the front door, casting one last glance at the floral symbol painted over his head before pushing the barrier open. “Stay dry, alright?”

Rowan nods automatically, repeating the phrase back to him as she waves goodbye with her pen still grasped between her fingers. The moment the door closes behind him, her previous hunger returns with more insistence than before, turning her stomach and effectively erasing all aspects of the strange meeting with the reminder that she needs to walk upstairs to her apartment to find something to eat.

It’s not until she’s sitting at her kitchen table, her cat sprawled languidly across her lap as she takes a bite of her cobb salad, that she realizes she had never told Harry her name.

…

“Oh, Christ—Butternut!”

The ginger cat scatters from underneath Rowan’s feet as the girl manages to catch herself on the edge of the kitchen counter, using the fern green cabinets to support her weight as she regains her balance. With one hand still holding the cat’s plastic food dish, Rowan uses the other to push herself away from the counter with a roll of her eyes, and resumes walking to the corner of the small kitchen to set the food dish down in its regular spot as Butternut watches from beneath a kitchen chair

“There you go,” Rowan sighs in exasperation as Butternut scurries from his hiding spot to the dish she’s just set down, and begins to feast on his wet and dry mix while Rowan brushes her fingers over his soft auburn fur. “You have to learn how to be patient, you know that?” She murmurs with a quirk of her brow. “You’d think after ten years, you’d have figured that out.”

The cat meows in response at her between bites of his food, and Rowan smiles softly as she gives one last stroke to his plush fur before straightening herself up and grabbing her mug of tea from the kitchen counter. It takes her the usual three steps to reach the small living room of her apartment, and she sets her mug on its usual spot on the coffee table as she grabs her journal from the couch, where she’d left it that morning, just as she always does when she realizes she’s running late for work. She’d hoped that owning her own flower shop would have cured her of her perpetual lateness that had plagued her childhood, but it seems that her lack of punctuality is just one of the many traits she’d inherited from her mother, in addition to being one of her least favourite traits she’d inherited from her mother.

“What did you get up to while I was at work today, Butternut? Anything interesting?” Rowan asks, only half-rhetorically as she picks up her mug again once settled into the couch. “Any important business I should know about?”

Rowan receives the usual meow in reply, and she hums thoughtfully in the back of her throat as she takes a small sip of tea. The boiling liquid scalds her tongue just the way she’s grown accustomed to—another trait she picked up from her mother, who had had a habit of setting down her teacups and promptly forgetting their existence for the better part of an hour. Drinking the piping hot liquid immediately, Rowan had learned the hard way, saves her the disgruntlement that comes with discovering ice-cold tea three hours after she’s made it. 

Blowing over the steaming mug, Rowan watches as Butternut continues to munch on his food. “I thought as much,” She replies to the cat seriously, giving Butternut a stern look as he continues to eat his food and pay her little regard. “I told you to stay away from Mrs. Piper’s cat, didn’t I? We both know Zipper is a bit of a heart breaker, and I just don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

Butternut squeaks out another meow, this one sounding more indignant than the last, which Rowan greatly appreciates. It’s easier to talk to the cat without sounding crazy, she rationalizes (as she has hundreds of times before), when the cat’s responses vary in tone, as if he can actually understand her.

“You’re a glutton for punishment, you know that?” Rowan clicks her tongue as she opens her journal, reading over her messily scrawled entry from that morning that she had barely managed to finish. “I’m just trying to look out for your best interests, and—”

A tapping sound from outside the living room window interrupts Rowan’s one-sided conversation, and she twists her head towards the source of noise with curiosity sparking across her face. When the tapping occurs again, sharper and more insistent this time around, Rowan stands up urgently, nearly spilling her tea in her haste to set down the mug and walk the short distance to the window. Although she can’t see anything that could have caused the noise when she arrives in front of the pane, Rowan’s curiosity is still unsatisfyingly unsatiated, and she quickly flips the latch on the window in order to push it open, the half-rusted mechanics squeaking in protest as they always do before she leans out towards her fire escape. 

With half her body now hanging out of her living room window, Rowan swiftly scans over the familiar view of Greenwich Village. Having lived in the Village her entire life, Rowan has to admit that there’s a satisfying, pleasurable comfort in her stomach every time she looks at the skyline of the neighbourhood. It’s a feeling of home, she thinks, as well as belonging, and she knows that she could never find anywhere else quite like it. There was a reason that her mother chose this as the place to settle down after moving from London; she had always told Rowan that the city called to her, even from across the Atlantic Ocean, like a siren stringing her towards her deepest desires. And when Rowan has the honour of watching the orange autumn sun sink down in the sky, staining the tops of buildings in a burnt glaze, she feels the same call. And, in a perhaps more easily explainable way, the Village reminds her of her mother. She’d never be able to leave it, even if she wanted to.

A now familiar tapping pulls Rowan from her admiration of the city she’s called home for her entire life, and the young woman cranes her neck to the left just in time to settle her eyes on the source of the sound, her brows creasing together in bemusement as she does so.

The crow perched on the edge of her fire escape has to have the blackest and shiniest feathers that Rowan has ever seen. The onyx tone of its wings is accented by the golden light of the setting sun, which sparkles in the creature’s knowledgeable eyes. Knowledgeable, Rowan observes, because the crows eyes seem to meet her own, both with purpose and some sort of recognition. 

Rowan cocks her head to the side as she engages in the staring contest with the bird, her state of mind growing more and more confused and unsettled with every passing moment. Were crows known to be the kind of bird that stared back at you? She wondered, her mouth opening and closing as she pondered the question without speaking it aloud. And were they not skittish? Rowan had made enough ruckus as she opened her window that she would have thought the bird would have long flown away by now, and yet, its piercing black eyes continue to stare back at her own. It’s ridiculous, and she knows this, but Rowan can’t make herself look away. Who loses a staring contest to a crow? She scoffs internally, leaning a little further over the ledge of her window. She refuses to be the first to blink. Surely it’s not that hard to outlast a bird; after all, she’s the one with a brain bigger than a ping bong ball. She can outlast a bird in a staring contest. Not that any sane person would ever actually challenge a bird to a staring contest, of course, but Rowan is sure stranger things have happened. And, furthermore, she’s not the one who started this. If anything, the bird challenged her—winning the imagined contest is a matter of honour.

And then Butternut jumps out the window, effectively breaking her perfect concentration, and sets all hell loose.

If Rowan hadn’t been so distracted by the crow’s strange behaviour, she would have remembered the dangers that come with leaving her window wide open as she had. Part of the reason the old mechanisms had squeaked so much when she yanked the fixture open was that she—save the few times she’d burned something while cooking and had to air out her apartment from the smoke of her failed dinner endeavors—very rarely opened the window more than a crack. Just as Rowan has a long list of troubling habits, so does Butternut, and one of those habits includes jumping out of open windows and giving Rowan a heart attack. 

The young florist had discovered this habit the first day she met him when she was twelve years old and found him wandering the streets of New York. His burnt orange coat had been speckled with mud and dirt, grown long from what seemed to be months of a lack of attention, but that hadn’t stopped her from scooping the surprisingly pliant cat into her arms and carrying him home to her mother. She’d been prepared to beg and plead on behalf of the animal and her right to keep him, but as it turned out, that hadn’t been necessary; all it took was one look at the poor creature, and Winnifred began to fill the copper sink with hot water and soap to bathe him. Rowan had been delighted at her mother’s acceptance of the new pet—until said pet jumped from the counter and out their kitchen window, which had been open to release steam from the soup Winnifred had been making. To this day, Rowan remembers peering out the window with horror as Butternut scurried along the ledge outside of their sixth floor apartment, and how she’d had to coax him back to safety with strings of shredded cheese. As terrifying as it had been, however, Rowan had learned her lesson—if Butternut is in the room, windows have to be closed. There had been a few close calls over the years, but never anything as bad as that first day, when she thought she would lose her new friend before she’d even had the chance to truly befriend him.

Until now.

The moment Butternut’s paws meet the rusted metal of the fire escape, he bounds after the crow, leaping for the ledge of the fire escape before Rowan can even absorb what’s happening. The crow, however, doesn’t have the same processing delay that she does, and flies away before the cat can sink a claw into his shiny feathers. Unfortunately, Butternut has always been determined, and by the time Rowan has scurried out through the window and onto the fire escape, Butternut has already begun bounding down the rusted metal steps and onto the street below.

“Fuck—” Rowan curses loudly, nearly tripping over herself in her hurry to clamber back from the window ledge and into her apartment. Grabbing only her keys from the catch-all table by her door, Rowan throws open the door of her apartment and slams it behind her, not bothering to check if it’s locked before hurling herself towards the stairwell of her building. 

Brushing her chestnut hair out of her eyes as she rounds the corner of the stairwell, Rowan has to give credit where credit is due; for a cat that’s over a decade old, Butternut moves fast, and that knowledge only incites more intensity in the girl as she tears through the stairwell and onto the street. Rowan pants as she surveys the bustling crowds, scouring the bottom of every black and grey raincoat until she just barely catches the yellowish hue of Butternut’s tail disappearing around the corner.

“Butternut!” She yells loudly, receiving a scoff and a dirty look from an old lady whose ear she’d just accidentally yelled in. “Sorry, ma’am, I just—sorry!” Rowan offers one more quick apology before dashing down the street towards Butternut. “Come back!”

Although she does her best to avoid pedestrians around her in her pursuit of her pet, Rowan still manages to ram her shoulders into four different people as she runs through the crowded Greenwich Village street. She spits out speedy apologies whenever she does so, her hickory eyes flashing with what she hopes is sincerity and not annoyance, but she doesn’t stop to say anything more; already, Butternut is disappearing in a sea of New Yorker ankles, and she’s worried that if she doesn’t grab him soon, someone else will.

After five blocks of pursuit—how does an aging cat have better stamina than she does?—Butternut seems to disappear completely, his fluffy tail nowhere in sight amongst the throngs of people. Rowan slows her pace to a light jog, her legs aching and lungs burning in protest as she pants so loud that passersby keep giving her concerned stares. There’s a feeling of dread beginning to coil itself around Rowan’s intestines, and she’s not sure if it’s the fear of losing Butternut, or the oncoming asthma attack, but it nearly doubles Rowan over as she struggles to move breath in and out of her lungs.

“I need—to work—out more—” Rowan puffs to herself, folding one hand over her stomach as she continues to push her way through the crowded sidewalk at a reduced pace. “I—” Her eyes widen as she spies an amber tail among the crowds. “Butternut!”

Although her loud exclamation once again startles an old lady (seriously, just how many old ladies are wandering around the village right now?), Rowan doesn’t stop to apologize this time, and instead simply offers a flash of an apologetic grimace before jogging after the fluff of golden fur that she just caught ducking into the open door of a shop.

Still wheezing loudly when she reaches the storefront, Rowan manages to crane her neck up to catch sight of the sign above her. The white washed wood plank with dark green letters reads Verbena & Birch Apothecary, and Rowan only takes a moment to admire the craftsmanship that must have gone into carving the plant sprigs next to the logo before she remembers the reason she’s here, and yanks the wooden door open to run inside.

“Butternut?” She calls out, still breathless from her impromptu marathon down the streets of Greenwich Village. “C’mon, stinky—” Her eyes scan over the countless shelves lined with delicate-looking glass bottles, and a feeling of dread grows in her stomach as she tucks her wild locks behind her ears. All it would take is one pounce from Butternut to destroy everything on these shelves, something she wouldn’t put past the mischievous cat that just scampered down five city blocks. “You can’t be in here! Let’s go!”

Rowan pauses for a moment and listens closely for the sound of familiar paws against the wooden floor, or the usual indignant meowed response when she calls Butternut stinky, or any sign that the cat is wandering the breakable-filled store, but hears nothing save for her own laboured breathing. Bracing her hand against her heaving stomach again, Rowan lets out a groan, hanging her head and letting her hair fall into her face as she bends over, submitting to another cramp that’s working its way through her insides.

“Does he belong to you?”

The lilting British accent that rings through the quiet shop pricks Rowan’s ears with familiarity as she snaps herself back into more appropriate posture, her palm still massaging her belly over her shirt. “What—?” Rowan whips her head around, searching for the source of the voice behind the towering shelves surrounding her. A flicker of movement from the corner of her eye catches her attention, and Rowan turns slowly towards a tower of white candles organized in glass jars as the owner of the disembodied voice emerges from behind it.

The first thing Rowan notices—to her immense relief—is Butternut happily situated in the man’s arms, purring contentedly as he stretches out languidly, seemingly pleased by the stranger’s body heat. This odd response is the second thing Rowan notes, as Butternut has never had an affinity for those he doesn’t know, and usually prefers to claw at strangers rather than flop over within their grasps. The third thing that Rowan notices, however, might be the oddest thing of all; the stranger in front of her is, in fact, no stranger at all.

Or, at the very least, she’s met him before.  Although his clothing isn’t soaked to the bone from a surprise thunder storm, his curls a bit lighter in colour and bouncier than ever when dry, and his cheeks displaying a tint of rosiness to them in the heat of the shop, Rowan recognizes Harry the moment she’s able to get a good look at him, even before noting the forest green apron with his name embroidered in the corner over his white t-shirt and tan cardigan. It’s his eyes, she thinks, cocking her head to the side as she appraises the familiar young man in front of her. The way his jade irises appear to swirl and shift in the light filtering through the storefront windows is so unmistakable that it’s branded into Rowan’s head from just their one brief meeting. And if the way those eyes are crinkling in the corners as his expression twists into a grin, Rowan can tell that Harry recognizes her, as well.

“Yes,” The florist finally replies to him, breathing a sigh of relief as she steps towards him. “Yes, that’s my cat. I’m so sorry, he just escaped from my apartment and ran all the way here, and I couldn’t stop him before he got inside—”

“It’s alright,” Harry assures her with a small smile that tugs at the corner of his reddened lips as he scratches Butternut behind his ears. “Worse things have stepped into this shop, I can assure you. And given how cute this particular intruder is, I can’t bring myself to mind it.”

Rowan’s upturned lips, while tentative, slowly lift to match the grin on his face as the full relief of knowing that Butternut is safe washes over her. “Thank you, really,” She reaches out and scoops Butternut into her arms, pressing the cat into her chest protectively while ignoring the burning feeling of Harry’s fingertips brushing over her own. “He didn’t break anything?”

“Oh, no, everything’s fine,” Harry says easily, waving one nail polished hand without an air of concern or notice of the contact. “No harm, no foul, and all that.”

“That’s a relief,” Rowan bounces Butternut in her arms absentmindedly as she glances around the shop, appraising the fragile wares more thoroughly than she had when she first entered. “His second worst habit after jumping out of windows is breaking things, and a lot of things here seem breakable.”

Rowan isn’t exaggerating for effect. Now that the relief of finding Butternut has uncoiled her stomach and she can take a moment to really look around the shop, she’s amazed that she managed to collect him without paying a small fortune for items destroyed in his wake. Every wall of the store is lined with a wooden built-in shelf, each one filled with an assortment of products, with the types of products varying from each wall. It’s much more organized than she’d thought at her first glance, and she allows herself a moment to sweep over each product with errant curiosity.

The wall to her left has shelves labeled with what she assumes are different kinds of teas, sorted by their uses, such as “awake and alive,” “blood pressure support,” and “happy tummy,” as well as sorted by flavour and blend. Another shelf is lined with small dropper bottles labeled with various types of oils, and the shelf to the right of that one is lined with small brown bottles labeled as various tinctures. The opposite wall to her right hosts a wide variety of salves and balms, also sorted by uses such as “super healing,” “anti-anxiety,” and “mood boost.” Along the back wall are rows of bulk bins usually found in the grocery store, except these bins are filled with large amounts of ground dried herbs, all labeled neatly to match everything else in the store. Despite the great quantities, however, there are also jars filled with unground herbs still attached to their host plants sitting neatly above the bins. The last wall, however, has the greatest variety of anything else in the store, and stocks row upon row of various crystals, stones, and minerals, all hosting neat labels with their properties and meanings underneath the names. And if all that product wasn’t enough—enough to pique her interest as well as her anxiety at the thought of Butternut roaming free in here—there’s stand-alone shelves throughout the store, displaying more tinctures, oils, and products, as well as candles, incense, and things that Rowan can’t even put a name to.

If Harry’s tone when he interrupts her observations is any indication, then her curiosity about the products is written clear across her face. “See anything interesting?” He asks conversationally, tucking his ringed hands into the pockets of his apron.

“I’d think it’s all interesting,” Rowan murmurs in reply, keeping a firm grasp on Butternut as she steps closer to a shelf of incense, squinting her eyes to read the—quite messy—handwritten labels. “What is all this stuff?”

“Well, they’re a wide variety of things, but to put it simply…they’re natural and organic products. I make them all here, in the back of my shop,” Harry untucks one hand to motion his thumb over his shoulder as he watches Rowan lean down to smell the incense, Buttercup meowing indignantly in her arms as she tightens her grip once more. “Well, except for the incense and candles. I have a supplier in Brooklyn that provides those for me, as well as some of the herbs. But all the oils and balms…I make those in house.”

Rowan doesn’t miss the hint of pride that lingers in the back of Harry’s voice, nor can she blame him for it. If she’d concocted all of this, she’d have more than just a hint of pride. “You make these?” Rowan repeats back in amazement, walking slowly to another shelf, this one housing a variety of creams and balms. Each row has a neatly labeled tester pot, and she runs her finger over the cool glass of the jars as she reads the labels out loud. 

“‘Patience’… ‘prosperity’… ‘protection’…” Rowan tilts her head towards Harry and raises a brow as the alphabetized names fall from her tongue. “How does a cream offer protection? Protection from what? Dry skin?”

The corner of Harry’s lips twitch. “Well, yes. Among other things,” He strides over to stand next to her, picking up the tester jar labeled “protection,” and dips a jewelled finger into the surface of the light cream. “May I?” He requests, extending his other hand to her.

“Oh, uh…” Rowan shifts Butternut’s weight to her left arm, freeing up her right arm for Harry to take between his fingers. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

Harry’s left hand grips her wrist with a warm and gentle touch, the curves of his fingers molding into the shape of her body easily. Despite feeling it a few moments earlier, Rowan isn’t prepared for the strange feeling that hums up and down her arm when Harry’s skin meets her own. Her walnut irises capture his own hunter pair, and the question that flashes through them quickly tells her that she’s not the only one noticing the buzz.

Harry, however, seems to be better at keeping his expression unreadable, because as soon as the question appears in his own eyes, it disappears again, his gaze returning to her hand. His fingers begin to dance over her wrist as he carefully rubs the cool balm into her skin, and Rowan watches the practiced motion for a moment before her attention slips to the strange tattoo that occupies the back of his hand, the one that she’d noticed in her own shop a few days before. It almost seems to dance over his skin, flexing and flowing with the movement of his muscles as he works the cream into her own palm. 

If the smell of sage and sandalwood filling the air hadn’t distracted her, Rowan might have begun to center her attention on the lithe movements of Harry’s calloused fingers over her hand, and how warm and welcoming his touch felt along her body, which would have led to her thinking about his hands traveling up her arm, following the natural line of her body to her collar bones, and then—  

 “That smells so good,” She says quickly, struggling to keep her voice balanced and even as she allows the fragrance to fill her senses, rather than her thoughts, which seem to be getting away from her at the moment. “Is that sage?”

Admittedly, the smell is quite distracting all on its own, even without Harry’s tantalizing touch working the scented balm into her skin, but Rowan can’t help but think that the relaxed and tranquil feeling flowing through her body has less to do with aromatherapy and more to do with the way Harry’s fingertips are pressing between her knuckles. Despite her brief encounters with him, there’s a familiar feeling in the way they interact; when he touches her, it doesn’t feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar, like the touch of a stranger should feel. Instead, the sensation that hums over her skin and settles inside her chest reminds her of the warm burn of a hearth, as if her body were a home that has been waiting for him to arrive and light the fire for the night that will keep the dark and damp away.

“I’m glad you think so,” Harry’s low and lilting voice cuts through Rowan’s trance as he rubs the last of the cream into her skin. Although his fingers cease their gentle massage, he still keeps her wrist clasped within his hand, the pad of his thumb brushing over her knuckles absentmindedly. 

“I make the oils for these myself. This one has some sage, angelica, clove, and sandalwood. I mix it with organic cocoa butter, organic coconut oil, and beeswax from my supplier in Brooklyn, and melt it all together while—” Harry stops talking abruptly, his poetry-like tone cutting off with a nervous glance and a sheepish smile. “Actually, I shouldn’t be telling you all this. S’a trade secret, you know. If I tell you, then you might tell someone else, and soon I’ll be boarding up my windows because everyone is cooking up their own balms in their kitchens. Won’t have any need for me anymore.”

Rowan, who had been more focused on the hypnotic cadence of Harry’s voice to process exactly what he’d been saying, offers a half-hearted laugh as she shifts Buttercup within her arm. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me,” She does her best to reassure him, but it’s hard to sound convincing when Harry squeezes her hand within his own, because for some reason, Harry is still cradling her wrist, which only stokes the hearth within her chest. “I don’t really understand it, anyways. You said it…offers protection?” Rowan blinks at his simple nod of explanation. “Um…protection from what?” 

Harry loosely lifts his shoulders into a noncommittal shrug. “Anything, really. Whatever the wearer feels like they need protection from.”

“Okay, but…if I felt like I needed protection from…I don’t know, a robber…” Rowan spins an imaginary scenario as she speaks, shifting Butternut in her arm once more as the cat begins to fuss (she should extract her hand from Harry’s. It would make holding him a lot easier). “How would a cream protect me from that?”

“It’s not so much the cream as what it’s made from,” Picking up the jar again with his free hand (despite his eyes flickering to the increasingly annoyed cat within her grasp, he still hasn’t relented his own grasp on her), Harry twists the container so that the ingredient list faces Rowan, leaving him to speak from memory as he recites it. “Sage, angelica, clove, sandalwood…all of those things have protective properties. Their aromas bring comfort and tranquility to those who smell them. Using them in a cream allows their fragrance to go anywhere with the wearer, so it can bring continual comfort. Think about that symbol above your door, the one you said your mum used to draw. That was for protection, wasn’t it? It’s the same idea.”

“Oh…” Realization sparks in Rowan’s mind as she glances around the shop again, taking in every item with newly opened eyes. “Oh. Like in a metaphysical sense, right? Like how lavender is meant to bring luck?”

Harry’s brows arch up in surprise at the connection as he sets the jar back on the shelf. “Exactly like that, yes,” He says slowly, his emerald eyes watching Rowan’s renewed examination carefully as he finally relinquishes her wrist. “How did you know that?”

Rowan clutches Buttercup tighter to her chest, and while the movement is easier with both arms at her disposal, she can’t deny that she misses the sensations Harry’s touch provided her. “It’s another thing my mom told me when I was a kid. She always kept a little lavender plant in a window box.” Her eyes settle on the glass bottle filled with lavender sprigs on the shelf nearest to her, the sight jogging memories she hadn’t played in her mind in quite some time. “She used to make me lavender and chamomile tea when I was a kid, because I had trouble sleeping sometimes. It always knocked me right out,” The florist shrugs lightly. “You know, looking back, she probably mixed in some Nyquil too, but…”

Although Harry offers a small chuckle at her joke, the sound that falls from his mouth is strained, and when Rowan turns her attention back to the man again, his face has shifted into an expression she can’t read. His previously relaxed brow has furrowed and creased, and his cherry lips have transformed from an easygoing grin to a thin pursed line. The dimples that had adorned his rosy cheeks have all but disappeared, and without them, Harry looks ten years older, and ten times more intimidating.

Rowan clears her throat in an attempt to ease the newfound tension. “That—that was a joke,” She mumbles with a weak laugh, stroking the amber fur of Butternut’s back as he fusses once more. “She, uh, she didn’t do that.” Turning back to the shelf of teas, Rowan scans over the labels swiftly to find one like she’d described. “You sell one too, huh? A bedtime tea?”

Harry gives a terse nod of his head as his eyes follow the gesture of Rowan’s chin, his gaze seemingly glued to every one of her actions. “I do, yeah. Would you—?” Although he cuts off the question before he can even ask it, he only pauses to run his tongue over his darkened lips once before beginning again. “Would you like to try some? I can make a little sample tin for you. Or…” When his irises meet her own, Rowan finds they’ve shifted once more, moving further and further from the brightness she’d first seen upon their initial meeting. “If there’s nothing here you’d like to try…I live above the shop, in the flat upstairs,” He jerks his chin upwards, as if the motion is supposed to convince her he’s telling the truth. “I’ve been testing out some new blends that you might like, if you want to try them…?”

The sudden invitation to come up to his apartment isn’t exactly unwanted, but still leaves Rowan taken aback nevertheless. It’s not so much the invitation itself, Rowan reasons, her fingers massaging down Butternut’s back lightly, but the way it was delivered. Every interaction she’s had with Harry so far has felt organic, as natural and easy as breathing. This, however…this request feels anything but. “Oh. Uh—”

“You’re under no obligation, of course,” Harry clarifies, straightening the jars on the shelf while his cheeks stain a darker shade of crimson. “I just thought—you may like to see more of—of some things I’ve made, or—”

“No, I would!” Rowan’s heart hammers in her chest as Harry stumbles over his words, the apparent anxiety in his strained explanation endearing him in a way she hadn’t expected. “I would, and it sounds wonderful, but…” She raises Butternut in her arms in lieu of an explanation. She’s not exactly sure what’s bothering him, but from the way he’s been fussing throughout their entire conversation—especially when he’d behaved so well while in Harry’s arms—it’s clear that there’s somewhere he wants to run to. Or something he wants to run from. “I should be getting this guy home.”

A sheepish look paints itself onto Harry’s features, dragging down his eyes and creased brow, and before Rowan can say anything else, an apology tumbles from his downturned lips. “Right, of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—to make you uncomfortable—”

“I’m not uncomfortable!” Rowan assures him just as quickly, giving a firm shake of her head as reinforcement. “I—actually, I’m very comfortable with you, which is strange, given we just met—” Her own cheeks flush at the candid admission, growing to match Harry’s in hue. “But I just—I have to get Butternut home, but—”

“You don’t owe me an explanation, it’s fine—”

“But if you’re free tomorrow afternoon, I’d love to come over for tea.”

Harry’s hasty apologies cut off before they can echo out of his throat, the unspoken words practically visible as they hang on the tip of his tongue. “You would?”

“I would,” Rowan confirms, the corners of her lips tugging up at the endearingly dumbfounded expression that sweeps over Harry’s entire face. “Maybe 2 o’clock, if that works for you?”

Tugging on his chestnut curls as his grin begins to grow once more, Harry gives a sharp nod of agreement. “That would be wonderful, yeah. I’ll see you here at 2 o’clock.”

…

At 1:59PM the next day, Rowan stands beneath the cream and hunter sign reading Verbena and Birch Apothecary, and re-evaluates her life choices. 

She’d like to consider herself a smart girl. Her mother had raised her to be thoughtful, introspective, and aware of her surroundings, as well as the people in them. If she had a bad vibe from Harry, or believed him to be dangerous in any way, she would turn on her heel and march back down the streets of the Village until she reached her own apartment. Or, even more, she probably wouldn’t have left her apartment in the first place, and would have let 2 o’clock come and go without a second guess. But Harry hasn’t given her any reason to think that he could hurt her; if he’d wanted to hurt her, it would’ve been much easier to have dragged her upstairs the day before. No one had seen her quickly ducking into his shop, and she’d been so busy chasing Butternut that she hadn’t told anyone where she was going. Their meeting today, however, has been pre-planned, meaning that Harry could assume that she’s told someone where she’s gone, or at the very least, left a note in her apartment in case police search it after she goes missing. There’s no reason for her to be concerned.

Then again, Rowan remembers the stranger danger lessons given to her in elementary school by New York police officers, and is reminded once more that the decision she’s making is probably a stupid one.

It’s just… Rowan touches the stone pendant hanging around her neck. The shining tiger’s eye had belonged to her mother before she passed, and Rowan could remember her rubbing a worried thumb over the smooth surface any time something was troubling her. Rowan herself thumbs over the honey-streaked stone, her own brow furrowing. Just.

It’s just Harry. It’s just something about him, something coded within his emerald eyes that makes her question everything she’d been taught. Of course she shouldn’t be having tea with a strange man she’s spoken to for barely fifteen minutes over the course of two encounters. Of course she shouldn’t accept an invitation into his home as if she was a lamb volunteering for her own slaughter. But Harry doesn’t feel like a stranger. At least, he feels unlike any stranger she’s ever encountered before.

The minute hand of the watch on her wrist slips past the twelve, leaving Rowan with no more time to dwell on the matter. Taking a deep breath as she tucks her shoulder length waves behind her ears, she pulls open the front door of the shop and steps inside.

Harry is standing behind the counter, writing in the leatherbound journal she’d noticed on his person the day he stumbled into her own shop. Upon hearing the tinkle of the chime above the door, his head turns up, and his emerald gaze meets her own.

“Rowan, hi,” Harry smiles easily at her as he shuts the journal, looping the leather tie around the bindings with practiced ease. “Right on time.”

“For once in my life,” Rowan jokes in an attempt to hide her nerves. She slips her hands into the pockets of the worn trench coat she’d found at an estate sale the previous year, trying to curb her habit of twisting her rings around her fingers when she’s nervous. “Sorry, am I interrupting your work?”

Tucking the leather bound journal underneath the counter in one smooth motion, Harry shakes his head. “No, not at all. It’s been a fairly slow afternoon. Not much to interrupt.”

“Really? No stray cats have run into your shop today?”

The small laugh that falls from Harry’s lips is light and easy, and lodges itself somewhere deep within Rowan’s chest in a way she doesn’t quite understand. “No, but the day is still young.”

Harry steps out from behind the counter, and for the first time, Rowan notices that his outfit is devoid of the hunter apron he’d worn the day before. Instead, Harry is dressed in a chunky knit chestnut coloured sweater with green detailing around the cuffs and hem. His pants are olive toned, baggy in their fit, and pool just above his black vans. He looks comfy. Cozy, Rowan thinks. Like he could laze back on a couch in the evening, his hands a bit sooty from stoking the fire, but that doesn’t matter, because he’ll laugh and try to swipe a charcoal covered finger over her cheek, and leave fingerprints along her skin when he—

“So you said you live upstairs?” Rowan’s voice is breathless when she pulls herself from her daydream, and she fidgets with the tiger’s eye around her neck in an attempt to calm herself with the familiar motion.

“Uh, yeah, I do. I—sorry, is that…” Harry’s gaze drops from her eyes to her fingers, watching as she twists the pendant up and down the old chain. “Is that tiger’s eye?”

Rowan glances down at the pendant caught between her fingers. The honey-streaked stone is cut in the shape of an oval and set into a metal backing, worn smooth from two generations of Frances women habitually rubbing it. It’s pretty, to be sure, but it’s never drawn anyone’s attention so quickly. But then again, Rowan’s sure the stone is stocked on the shelves behind her; it’s no wonder Harry’s noticed it.

“It is, yeah. My mom gave it to me,” Rowan says, letting the pendant fall back against her navy turtleneck. Technically, her mother didn’t give it to her. In all actuality, Rowan had claimed it after her mother passed away five years ago. However, now didn’t seem the time to dump all her mommy issues onto a virtual stranger, no matter how familiar he felt. The death of your only parental figure is more of a second date conversation, she thinks.

Not that they’ve had a first date. This is tea. She’s just here to try tea that Harry’s made. This rendezvous probably falls more under the category of a sales pitch than a date, and Rowan’s not sure why that fact makes her stomach churn in discontent, but she’s determined to ignore it.

“It’s lovely,” Harry says, seemingly unaware of the debate that’s playing out in Rowan’s mind. “May I?”

He reaches his right hand towards her, and Rowan’s eyes once again focus on the strange symbol inked into his smooth skin. A shiver runs up her spine as the uncomfortably familiar feeling of deja vu settles over her. His words are identical to yesterday, when he offered her a sample of the protection balm he made. But underneath that memory, there’s something else, something that settles at the very edge of her mind’s eye, just out of reach of clarity. That same phrase— “May I?”— echoed in a lilting British accent, a flash of a ringed, tattooed hand tugging at blush coloured sheets, the dangle of her tiger’s eye pendant over a flushed chest that’s inked with tattoos she can’t quite place…

The hand in front of her pauses, and its owner’s eyes find her own. Harry flicks his eyebrows up as if to repeat his question, and Rowan realizes he’s waiting for her to give him permission to examine her necklace.

“Yeah, sorry—” She hastily reaches behind her neck to undo the clasp, brushing her bobbed hair out of her way. “Let me just—”

She cuts off her speech with a stuttered gasp as Harry’s nimble fingers find the pendant that hangs over her turtleneck, carefully securing the stone between his digits without touching her.

It’s not until this moment that Rowan realizes that Harry is standing close enough to her that she can see the flecks of gold in his emerald eyes, which are trained on the pendant in a focused manner. The tip of his nose is flushed the same shade as the strawberry of his mouth, and the hue also skirts along the apples of his cheeks, barely visible with the concentrated expression that’s painted on his face.

Rowan doesn’t know much about Harry, but she stocks this new knowledge—how he’s careful to ask for her permission to move towards her, but merges his personal space bubble with her own once that permission is given—in the back of her mind. It’s so familiar that it produces an ache deep within her chest that confounds her.

“It’s a beautiful necklace,” Harry keeps his eyes on the pendant as he twists it between his fingers. “You said it was your mother’s?”

Rowan forces herself to sound calm and collected when she answers. “I did, yeah. She used to call it her lucky charm.”

“Tiger’s eye provides protection,” Harry murmurs the words quietly as he lets go of the necklace. It falls lightly back onto Rowan’s chest. “It’s a lovely piece. She was very kind to give it to you.”

“She was, yes,” Rowan fidgets with the necklace, fixing its position around her neck. “She’s—she’s a very kind person.”

Rowan’s not exactly sure why she slips into the present tense to describe her mother. Sure, she’s already decided that the death of a parent is a second date topic, but she’s also already decided that this isn’t a date. From past experience, she knows it’s better to rip off the “my mother passed unexpectedly when I was twenty years old and it tore apart my life” bandaid sooner rather than later, but she also knows that most men tend to stray away from the topic of mothers when they invite women up to their apartments for tea.

Then again, Rowan thinks ruefully as she follows Harry behind the counter a moment later at his request, Harry hasn’t acted like most men she’s ever met before.

The small corridor that leads towards the back of the shop is dark, lacking the sunlight that illuminates the front of the store. Instead, the floor creaks under Rowan’s feet, accented by the click of the heeled boots she may or may not have worn to bring herself closer to Harry’s height.

Harry pauses before an open doorway, and Rowan can smell the room before she sees it— lavender and sage, lemon and cloves, cinnamon and rosehips, and a thousand other scent combinations that Rowan can’t name. She peers over Harry’s shoulder to see a cluttered workbench, not unlike her own, covered in little glass bottles, bunches of greenery, and the familiar petals of yarrow flowers that she’d sold to Harry previously. Along the back wall, under a small window, is a row of bottles with different oils inside, and to the left is a gas range with two separate pots set on top. One of the pots is still steaming, the vapor coiling lazily above its contents, despite the range being off (Rowan checks with a flick of her eyes).

“This is where I make most of my inventory,” Harry says with a motion of his hand. “I had to add the range myself when I bought the place, but the butcher’s block and the work spaces were already here. I got pretty lucky.”

“It’s gorgeous,” Rowan replies, and she pauses a moment, waiting for the invitation to step inside and explore. When the invitation doesn’t come, and Harry turns his attention to the door to the left of the corridor, just before the entrance to the back room, Rowan can’t deny that she’s disappointed. However, part of her understands; she hates when anyone steps into her backroom. The organized chaos is always just one stray hand away from descending into madness, and what she stores in her workroom isn’t nearly as breakable as what’s inside Harry’s.

Instead, Rowan turns her gaze to the door that Harry’s unlocking with a key from his pocket. The key itself is small and brass, with a tarnished, well-worn handle and a detailed head. The object resembles something Rowan would expect to see in a movie set in the early 1900s rather than on the keyring of someone around her age, but it fits perfectly into the lock on the inconspicuous door. As Harry slips the weathered key back into his pocket, Rowan notes that it’s the only key on the keyring. She can’t say she’s surprised that there’s no car key present— hardly anyone she knows in New York has a car, much less their license. She’s one of the few of her friends that does, and that’s only because her mother had insisted she learn when she was eighteen. However, she is surprised to see no key to the shop on the ring. Rowan has three separate locks on the door to her own store, and keeps all the keys jumbled together with her apartment set.

“Like I mentioned, I live just above the shop,” Harry interrupts her pondering as he nods up the steep set of dark stairs. “Follow me, and try to watch your step. These stairs tend to trip people the first time they climb them.”

“Right, okay,” Rowan does as Harry says, following his practiced steps at the pace he sets. She lasts about three stairs before stumbling, and grabs hold of the worn railing to catch herself before she falls forward.

Harry turns around as much as the small space lets him, and the look on his face is concerned, but not surprised. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just regretting my choice of shoes right now,” Rowan laughs airily, hoping the darkness of the stairwell hides the blush she’s sure is working its way over her cheeks. “You really weren’t kidding, huh?”

“No, I wasn’t,” A set of fingers brushes over her hand that clings to the railing, and there’s a moment of hesitation before Harry tugs her hand away from the railing and grasps it gently within his own. “Here, just go a little slower. I’ll help you.”

It’s clear that Harry’s dashed up and down these stairs hundreds of times, because he has no trouble navigating the steep flight with his body turned sideways to guide Rowan to the top. His hand stays locked around hers, comforting without being controlling, until he pulls her onto the cramped landing at the top of the stairs.

“There we go,” He grins at her, his dimples barely visible in the dim light as he releases her hand. “You made it.”

“I did,” Rowan hopes the embarrassment isn’t detectable in her voice. “Only almost died once.”

Harry laughs, low and melodic, as he fishes in his pocket for something, and pulls his ringed hand back out with the same key he used to unlock the door to the stairwell. He presses the key into the silver lock on the door, and Rowan is surprised to hear the click of the lock two seconds later.

With a quick twist of the squeaky doorknob, Harry pushes open the door and leads Rowan into his apartment.

Although she’s only known Harry for a short time, she can’t really say she’s surprised by anything she sees in front of her. Harry’s apartment is big by New York standards, with exposed brick walls and greenery draped along every shelf. There’s a large set of windows along the far wall that sends a spark of jealousy down Rowan’s spine, and a velvet emerald-coloured couch that turns the spark into a flame. The scent of incense floats through the air, evidenced by the multiple holders she sees scattered along the living room, and pressed against the left wall is a bookshelf that holds multiple aged books set in leather and embossed with gold.

Harry’s apartment is earthy, and centered, and quite possibly the most beautiful space Rowan has ever seen.

“This is gorgeous, Harry,” She says breathlessly, her hand rising of its own accord to touch the frame of a print hung in the hallway by the door. “How long have you lived here?”

“God, about…eight years now, maybe? To tell you the truth, I think I’ve lost count,” Harry toes off his vans, and Rowan follows suit, tugging off her own boots and thanking her past self for deciding to spend the extra time to find matching socks this morning. “Can I take your coat?”

“Sure, thank you,” Rowan begins to slip the trench coat over her shoulders, unsurprised when she feels a second set of hands help slide the fabric down her arms. She’s adjusting to Harry’s easy way with touch— revels in it, actually, which is new for her.

Harry hangs her coat on the stand just beside the door, and that same dimpled smile is on his face when he turns back around. “The kitchen is just through here, I’ll show— Jesus—”

Rowan nearly slams into Harry’s back as he comes to a quick stop in front of her, his arms braced against either wall in the small front hallway. Before she can stumble more from the sudden pause, his hand reaches behind him, finding her waist and steadying her.

“Harry?” Rowan’s skin feels as if it’s burning underneath her sweater, the sensation warmest at her core where Harry is touching her. “Is everything—?”

“Yes, sorry, it’s just—” Harry lets go of her with a sigh, stepping over what appears to be a large smoke coloured furry pillow in the middle of the hallway. “It’s just Clint.”

Rowan regards him with confusion, her chestnut eyes searching his own emerald for an explanation. “Clint? Who’s Clint?”

“That’s Clint,” He nods down to the furry pillow and nudges it with his sock covered foot. The pillow twitches, stretches when provoked, and Rowan suddenly realizes it’s not a pillow at all, but in fact—

“You have a rabbit named Clint?”

Harry’s already walking towards the kitchen, unconcerned about Clint’s nap spot that blocks the entryway of his apartment. “I do.”

A million questions flood through Rowan’s head, a million different things she could say about this new tidbit of Harry trivia. But instead of asking how owning a rabbit works in a New York City apartment, why said rabbit seems to have an infinity for inconvenient nap locations, or if tripping over him is an everyday occurrence (which, based on Harry’s exasperated sighs, she thinks it might be), the comment that leaves her mouth is, “Clint is kind of a weird name for a rabbit.”

Harry pauses his movements in the kitchen, one hand frozen on a mahogany cabinet while the other holds a jar of a dried tea blend. “You think so?”

Rowan flinches inwardly, still stuck frozen behind the rabbit in the hallway. “I— shit, sorry, that was rude. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay. It is weird, I know,” Harry laughs, and the sound immediately drains the tension that had seized Rowan’s entire body. “But he likes it, and refuses to change it, so…yeah. Clint the rabbit. You can just step over him, by the way,” Harry says as he notices Rowan has yet to leave the entryway. “He’s pretty used to it, because he’s also stubborn about where he takes his fifteen daily naps, the lazy bugger…”

Stepping carefully over the rabbit as instructed, a smile plays on Rowan’s lips as she makes her way to the kitchen. “Damn. Sounds like Clint really needs to start pulling his weight around here.”

Harry snorts as he picks up the copper kettle located on his stovetop and fills it with water. “Try telling him that,” He says, flicking the gas range onto high and setting the kettle on the burner. “Even Atticus contributes more to the household, and I hardly have to feed him.”

Rowan leans over the stonetop counter, her eyebrow raised in curiosity. “Who’s Atticus? Another pet?”

“No, not a pet. More like a…friend…” Harry’s voice is barely above a murmur as he looks between the jar of tea in his hand, and the multiple jars lined up in his open cupboard. “Sorry, just…trying to choose what blend to give you.”

Tapping her index finger against the knuckle of her other hand, Rowan watches as a crease of concentration forms between Harry’s stern brow. “I can try any blend,” She offers, hoping to help with the indecision that seems to be plaguing him. “I’m really not picky.”

“No, but I am. I don’t want to give you the wrong one.”

“The wrong…?” Rowan tilts her head to the side, her own forehead creasing identical to Harry’s. “How can a tea blend be—?”

“This one,” Harry says triumphantly, swapping the jar in his hand with another stored at the very back of the cabinet. “I’ve been tweaking this recipe lately. I think you’ll like it.”

Harry opens another cabinet full of dishware, and grabs a midnight blue teapot with white detailing along the sides. After he sets the teapot on the counter, he pulls out two teacups with the same white detailing over midnight paint. 

It’s fascinating to watch the practiced ease with which Harry brews the tea. He’s added a few scoops of the blend into the diffuser that’s set inside the teapot by the time the kettle starts to whistle, and once he’s taken the kettle off the heat and poured the boiling water into the teapot to steep, he immediately reaches for a glass container that’s set on the counter. From her vantage point, Rowan can tell that it’s filled with honey.

Harry doesn’t ask her if she takes cream or sugar in her tea, and Rowan doesn’t interject to say she prefers one scoop of sugar and a dash of milk. Instead, she lets Harry dictate exactly how she’ll test out his own blend, observes carefully how he fills each teacup almost to the brim, but leaves enough room to add a few drops of honey with the glass wand that he keeps inside the matching jar. It’s clear that all of this is a science to him, from the amount of golden liquid added, all the way down to how he carefully stirs each cup before setting the drink down in front of her with a shy smile.

“Keeping with yesterday’s theme…” He says quietly, turning the cup so the handle faces Rowan for an easy grip. “Tea for protection.”

Rowan slowly lifts the delicate china to her mouth, blowing over the boiling liquid before inhaling the steam. “I smell…cinnamon, I think? And a little bit of lemon?”

Harry’s smile grows until his dimples flash at her. He’s still leaning over the countertop, mimicking Rowan’s curved posture. When she inhales again, she can smell the light scent of Harry’s cologne mixing in with the vapours of the tea.

“Good catch,” Harry praises her easily, tapping his ringed fingers against the countertop. “The base of the tea is a black tea blend, but there’s cinnamon and lemon balm in it, along with a few other things. A little cardamom, clove, nutmeg, ginger…a couple other spices. But they all do a really good job of keeping away things that could hurt you.”

Rowan doesn’t bother to inquire about how lemon balm can keep away something that could hurt her again; she doubts she’d get an answer that she really understands. Instead, she just blows over the surface of the tea one more time before taking a small sip. The flavours Harry listed rush over her tongue at a just below scalding temperature, swirling in her mouth before running down her throat and leaving a pleasant warmth behind.

Harry watches intently, his body still leaning across the countertop towards her. “What do you think?”

Rowan takes another small gulp of tea, more mindful of the heat this time. “It’s really good, Harry. The honey in it, too…adds just the right amount of sweetness.”

Rowan hadn’t realized the amount of tension that had strung itself between Harry’s shoulders until she watches it roll out of him. “Thank you. I’m glad you like it,” He says, straightening up before grasping his own teacup to take a sip. 

“Were you nervous I wouldn’t?”

Harry’s answering shrug is just on the edge of sheepish. “Maybe a little. I’m always a bit nervous when someone tries one of my products for the first time. I want them to like it, you know?”

“I get the same way when I design custom arrangements for clients,” Rowan confesses, swirling the tea in her cup. “There’s this moment, right before I show them their arrangements, when I swear I can feel my heart in my throat. I used to get so nervous that I felt like I was going to pass out.”

“Really?” Harry raises an inquisitive brow. “How did you stop it?”

“I started using this trick my mom taught me. Right before I show the arrangement to a client, like right before, when I’m getting it from the fridge, I picture what I hope their reaction will be. Excitement, surprise, happiness, things like that. More often than not, clients usually react the way I imagine they will. It helps keep me calm.”

That crease appears between Harry’s brow again, but smooths out a moment after Rowan takes notice of it. “Your mother is a smart lady.”

“She…yeah,” Rowan clears her throat and takes another sip of tea, the temperature more comfortable now. “And she keeps coming up in conversation, which is probably pretty annoying. Sorry.”

It takes all of Rowan’s self control to stop herself from pressing her thumb between Harry’s brows as that damn crease comes back. “Why are you sorry? I like hearing about your past. It makes it easier to understand you in the present.”

The sincerity in his tone brings a flush to Rowan’s cheeks. “Is that something you’re having difficulty with? Understanding me?”

Harry hums in consideration as he brings his teacup to his lips. One of his rings, the one set with a red stone— a garnet?— flashes under the light. “It’s becoming progressively easier the more I’m around you. But there’s still so much that seems…clouded.”

Rowan can’t suppress the shiver that runs down her spine at his words, but tries to disguise it under a humorous tone. “Well, we only just met. I’d be a bit concerned if you knew everything about me.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to know everything about you; I said I wanted to understand. You don’t have to know every facet of someone’s life to understand who they are,” Harry argues in a tone that borders on defensive. 

“And is…understanding people something you’re good at?” Rowan asks after a moment, fighting to keep her own tone light.

“Usually. It’s easier to understand some people than others.”

“Where do I place on that scale?”  Rowan pitches her voice lower than she means it to be, as if she’s whispering something in the dead of night. As if she’s afraid to be heard. “In, like, terms of difficulty…if one was the least difficult person to understand, and ten was the most difficult. Where do I sit?”

“The difficulty of understanding you…” Harry trails off, and for the first time, Rowan realizes that understanding is a placeholder word for Harry. It’s a word that’s almost synonymous with what he means, but doesn’t carry the same intention. It’s a verbal facade, disguising what he’s really trying to say behind a half truth.

But the thing about half truths? They’re always half lies, as well.

“I don’t know,” Harry says after a weighty moment, his tongue swiping over his lips. “I can’t quite place you yet.”

This time, Rowan detects the half lie right away. But she doesn’t push it. In all honesty, she’s a little afraid of the answer. There’s something in the way Harry’s jade eyes regard her, the way he leans into her space, both mentally and physically…she’s almost convinced that if Harry were to tell a whole truth instead of a half, the answer may break her.

Which is dramatic, and unfathomable, and even as Rowan repeats that to herself over and over internally, she knows that only half of what she’s repeating is true. A half lie, born of her own mind.

“Well,” Rowan drops her eyes to the contents of her teacup as she lifts the drink to her lips. “Let me know when you do.”

If Harry’s aware of the charged nature of her words, he doesn’t say anything. The two of them finish their tea with casual small talk, rather than more evaluations of the other’s character. Rowan reveals that she’s a born and raised New Yorker, while Harry tells her about growing up in London (Rowan mentally pats herself on the back for restraining her instinct to tell Harry that’s where her mother grew up). Harry talks little about his family, mentioning an older sister who’s married, a mother who passed away when he was a boy, and a father who still lives in his childhood home. When Rowan asks when Harry last visited the country of his birth, his eyes drift a shade darker, and his tattooed hand drifts upwards to his chest, rubbing the area with the same subconscious movement that drives Rowan to fidget with her necklace. The tone of his voice when he says that he hasn’t been back since his move brings her to drop the subject altogether. 

The two of them learn that they both share the same love of the first snowfall of the season, and a sense of melancholy when it rains. Both Harry and Rowan experience deja vu frequently, as well as knock on wood to prevent themselves from indirectly jinxing things they say. They both record their dreams in a journal, both sleep better with the sounds of the city as a lullaby. And by the time Rowan stands up to leave, they’ve both agreed to see each other again.

 As per Harry’s request, Rowan types her number into Harry’s cell phone as he carries their used teacups to the sink. When she hands him back his phone (her number is saved under the name Flower Shop Girl, which Harry had confessed he thought of her as before he knew her name, and the admittance brings so much warmth to her chest that Rowan forgets again to ask how he knew her name during their first meeting), Harry has a small satchel in his hands, which he gives to her in exchange.

“This is another new blend I’m working on,” Harry’s fingers just barely brush over hers as he slips the satchel into her hands. “It has chamomile and lavender in it, so I recommend drinking it before bed.”

Rowan brings the satchel to her nose, inhaling deeply at the pleasant scent. “I can smell the lavender, and…cinnamon?”

A small smile plays on the corners of Harry’s lips as he walks her to the door (he takes Rowan’s hand to help her step over Clint, who’s still asleep in the entryway). “You’re good at that.”

“Thanks. I guess spending pretty much all my time around flowers is useful for…scent identification,” Rowan flinches internally as she slips her boots back onto her feet. Who the hell says shit like scent identification? She switches the topic back to the satchel in her hand, hoping she doesn’t sound as awkward as she feels. “Is it meant to help with sleep? The tea, I mean.”

“It can, yeah. It’s, uh…well, it’s meant to help with clairvoyance,” Harry slides Rowan’s trench coat off the coat rack and holds it open for her to slip on.

Goosebumps prick up along Rowan’s skin as she slides on her jacket. “Clairvoyance? What do you mean?”

“Just…someone’s perception of things,” Harry shrugs nonchalantly, tucking his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “It helps clear the mind, keep it open, that sort of thing.”

Rowan looks down at the unassuming satchel still clutched in her hand. “There’s not, like, magic mushrooms in here, is there? Because I had a really bad experience once in university, and I’d rather not—”

Harry’s laugh is loud and rolling, echoing enough through the entryway that Clint’s ears prick up. “No, no psychedelics. Not in this blend, anyways. But I’d love to hear about your experience with shrooms, if you’d like to share.”

“Maybe some other time,” Rowan rolls her eyes as she tucks the satchel into her pocket. “We can swap embarrassing intoxication stories another day.”

“We could, yeah. Maybe over dinner?”

There’s a note of hopefulness in Harry’s voice that fans that flame inside her chest. “Yeah. Maybe over dinner.”

Harry’s shoulder brushes against hers as he reaches past her to open the door. “It’s a date.”

…

In her dreams, Rowan is in Central Park.

At least, she thinks it’s Central Park. It’s pitch black, with the only light to illuminate her path being the shine of the full moon above her head. Rowan knows the trail through the park like the back of her hand, having walked them most of her life. However, she’s never traversed through the park in the dead of night, let alone by herself, and there’s a sense of uneasiness resting over her.

She wants to turn around. She wants to find her way back to the busy streets, and hail a taxi that’s surely still cruising through the city that never sleeps. She wants to make her way out of the freezing cold of the night, and retreat back into the comfort of her tiny apartment. She wants to be anywhere but here.

And yet, her feet keep taking measured steps forward, further and further into the only forest in the middle of a suburban sprawl. When she was a child, she’d been fascinated with photos of the park from above, by the stark contrast of nature and industrialization. She’d often dreamt of being a bird, and flying over the city so she could make the comparison for herself.

Dream, Rowan thinks, and her steps pause. This is a dream. She doesn’t need a taxi; all she needs to do is close her eyes, and think about being back home, and then—

A hand wraps around her waist from behind, and before Rowan can scream out in surprise, another clasps itself over her mouth. Fear courses through her body, freezing her limbs more than the bitter winter air ever could, and she shudders as a pair of lips brush over her ear.

“It’s okay,” A voice says in her ear, and the low British lilt is familiar to her now, as easy to place as her own. “It’s alright, love. S’just me.”

Rowan relaxes in Harry’s arms, but only by a fraction. She tries to mumble against his hand, but he keeps it pressed tight over her mouth, careful not to obstruct her nose as well.

“You need to listen to me, okay?” Harry’s breath is hot on her neck. While Rowan typically finds sensations to be dampened during dreams, the feeling of his breath rolling over her skin is so pleasurable that her knees almost buckle. “Nod if you’re listening.”

Rowan nods, the urgency in Harry’s words being just enough to keep her from succumbing to the newfound desperation supplied by his proximity.

“Good, that’s good. I don’t have long, so you need to listen carefully.”

Humming against his hand, Rowan knows that Harry senses her meaning: get on with it. 

“When you get to this night— this night, this specific night— you need to pause when you reach the fork in the path, alright?” Harry’s thumb strokes over her cheek as he murmurs the instructions in her ear. “Look up to the sky. Do you see the moon?”

Rowan’s chocolate eyes tilt up to the sky as she hums her understanding. It would be so much easier to communicate if he would uncover her mouth. Why won’t he uncover her mouth? She could talk to him if he did, tell him she understands, tell him what the feeling of him pressed so tightly against her back is doing to her, tell him to bring his lips just a bit closer to her skin…

“It’s a full moon. Memorize what the cold feels like against your skin,” Harry’s voice reaches hypnotic levels as he commands her. “The smell of pine in the air. You need to remember this moment, okay? Remember this night, remember this dream, and remember to pause when you get to the fork in the path.”

“Harry…” Rowan tries to whisper his name from underneath his hand, but the plea comes out muffled, barely audible over the whistling of wind through the trees. 

The hand over her mouth tightens reflexively, rings pressing so hard into her skin that Rowan thinks it’ll leave an imprint of the metal band once she’s released. The thought sends a ripple through her body.

“You need to be quiet, love. It’s almost time, and it’ll hear you,” Harry squeezes her body tighter against his, almost like an apology. “I have to go in a moment, before it knows I’m here.”

The sound that falls from Rowan’s lips is involuntary, and strays so close to being considered a whine that she’s glad Harry’s grasp on her is muffling her words.

“I’m sorry,” There’s a new note in Harry’s voice, a tone of distress just barely straining his normally soothing speech. “I wish I could tell you more. I wish I could explain, but I can’t. Not yet. Just— just remember what I said. Pause when you reach the fork in the path. Promise me you’ll do that.”

Rather than try to speak incoherent words behind Harry’s hand, Rowan raises her own and brings it to her mouth. With her index finger, she draws two lines over the back of his hand, hoping he gets the message. 

Cross my heart.

The sigh that Harry heaves blows the hair around her neck in separate directions, and Rowan’s eyes flutter closed for a moment as the sensation rolls over her.

“Good girl,” Harry breathes the words into her ear, and the breath that Rowan pulls into her chest is shakier than ever. “I have to go. And you need to wake up.”

Rowan shakes her head as her hand settles on top of Harry’s, keeping his palm pressed over her mouth. It feels so good, so much better than she ever could have imagined. It’s been so long since someone’s touch has made her feel like this, like she’s falling into their heat without a second thought. She doesn’t want to leave this moment. 

“You need to wake up, Rowan,” Harry’s voice grows more persistent in her ear, more urgent. The wind picks up around them, whipping her hair around her face as she leans into him more. “Wake up!”

…

It’s still dark outside when Rowan jolts upright in her bed.

For a moment, she thinks she’s still in her dream. She reaches behind her for Harry, but instead of finding the warmth of his body, she encounters the smooth cotton of her pillow. There’s a movement to her left, and she whips her head around, almost expecting to see Harry there, his emerald eyes intent on her. Instead of emerald, she finds ochre, and sees that Buttercup is watching her, clearly awoken by her own abrupt start.

Finally accepting that she’s in her bedroom, Rowan flops back into her pillows, ignoring Buttercup’s meow of indignation at being jostled. She pulls the cat into her arms, and the familiarity of his fur against her skin calms her racing heart. 

It was a dream, she tells herself. It was an incredibly vivid dream, one that brought to life desires that she didn’t even know she had, but a dream nonetheless. With a sigh, Rowan glances at the mug of tea on her bedside table, still containing liquid that’s turned icy cold while she’s slumbered. She hadn’t even finished half of the brew before it knocked her out. Rowan wonders if it’s possible to ask Harry if the tea contains anything that could cause strangely vivid and…Christ, she can’t deny it— arousing— dreams without giving away the fact that he was the star of them.

Buttercup purrs against her chest, and Rowan sighs again, gently moving him back to his preferred spot next to her before curling onto her side. She can worry about her weirdly touch-centered dreams in the morning, she decides, when she’s more fully awake to process them. It’s been a long day, and Rowan is tired. She needs some rest, proper rest. She’s too exhausted to think right now.

And too exhausted to notice the imprint on her lip that resembles the band of a ring.

#harry styles fanfiction #witch!harry #witchrry #witch!harry styles #witch au #harry styles au #harry styles fic #harry styles x oc #harry styles x original character #one direction fanfiction #one direction fic #one direction au #harry styles #harry styles smut #harry styles fluff

[miru667]

Hi again, Miru! I need your opinion on something as an old onceling. Do you think there's still room for new oncelings to do an analysis of something in the movie, or maybe interviews, or maybe the fandom itself? Is it possible to find a way to output new content? I look through archives and it honestly feels like the entire movie has already been picked apart way back in 2012 - 2014. Your thoughts?

As we are all unique individuals who have gone through different experiences in our lives and no experience is the same, yes there can always be some new perspective that someone can bestow through their watch of the movie.

For example, in 2020, 8 years after the fandom began, @floooopafloooopa made several analyses on aspects of the movie that I personally had never seen anyone else delve into, and I was really impressed by them. My favourites include the one comparing Once-ler and Thneedville to Disney and EPCOT: [link] and of course the 85 page analysis comparing Once-ler to the Beatles and other popular people and aesthetics of the 60s and 70s: [link]

And another example, just recently I happened to revisit The Conservative Lorax video on YouTube from 2012: [link] and although I know many youtube comments are the most worthless comments in the world, I still found some interesting perspectives from people in the comments even in the past year, talking about capitalism. Here's a topic that really stayed with me: One person said "a real capitalist would replant to make a profit" and another said "a true capitalist would farm the trees instead of cutting them all down" to which others replied:

These comments were all made only within the last 3 years. I doubt these people have even seen the 2012 movie.

So now if you take these ideas and think about our dear Oncie...yes, he is still a dumbass for not thinking about maintaining his resources and then being shocked that he ran out of trees, but there are evidently people out there who would've instead called him dumb for not planning to immediately move on to capitalize on the next big thing, like air. Some people would've agreed that short term profits are the smart move! This, or the Once-ler should've moved on to synthetic fibres to replicate Thneeds, or that he should've planted GMO trees that grew really fast, patent them, then also patent the air they produce (and then we wouldn't need O'hare anymore). But we all know what genetically modifying truffula trees can cause... 🧟 haha. So the 1st comment up there has a point - the story really is more of a metaphor for respecting nature rather than trying to say something specific about business decisions.

And look! I just gathered and put together a mini analysis on the subject of "sustaining your resources vs how far the Once-ler actually could have gone in the other direction". In 2023! So yes, I believe there's room for more analyses.

Not to mention that concept art for the 2012 movie keeps gradually being shared over the years well beyond 2014: [link] I pretty much consider it new source content which can then spark new analyses, as well.

As for anaylses on the fandom itself...I would just advise to be careful and respectful if you're wanting to talk about anything from the past that you weren't a part of (having been in the fandom for only a month in 2012 doesn't count either, iykyk), since many past oncelings are still around even if they're not active in the fandom anymore, and it hurts to get misrepresented.

#SORRY THIS GOT SO LONG #miruask #onceler #the lorax #etsulovesonceler #reference #miruanalysis #long post

[viridian-tay-leaf]

Pick a Pile (General Message)

Pile 1 🌸| Pile 2 💮

Pile 3 🌼| Pile 4 🌺

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pile 1:

🎶 2020, 2020 vision... I wonder if you look both ways when you cross my mind~🎶

Y'all are down bad huh

Love songs all day bb

🎶 Sweet sweet fantasy baby~🎶

You think they don't like you back but you'll never know unless you try

Think of it this way, would you rather pine for them for months without knowing what you could be or would you rather take the risk & either get together or save yourself time getting over them

The choice is always yours since only you have the power to change your situation

Do it afraid, it's best to know than to regret not trying in the first place

If you choose to confess and it works out I'm happy for you and I expect you to communicate clearly in your new relationship

If you confess and it doesn't work out how you thought it would, it's a blessing in disguise (may need to see/been drawn to Pile 4)

🎶What goes around comes back around, hey my baby..... I will always be the best thing you never had~🎶

As always Be good, Be kind, Be safe love

Pile 2:

You guys are just chillin, going with the flow day by day babes

Strolling through town, walking like you own the place, embodying your favorite self.

Okay self love, keep it going babes!

👏🏽 Good For Youuuuu 👏🏽

Some of you may have just gone through a breakup. You want them back, or atleast the feelings you had during that time.

It'll be okay, you're not gonna be crushed by this. It's all apart of the bigger picture. Big things are coming and you have to clear out the old to get the new. The universe is working in your favor, you just have to trust & cocreate with them

For now, nurture yourself. What would Childhood you do when you feel like this? Do it & tap into your childhood energy. It might be more impactful than you think

Coloring pages, candles, childhood music, movie nights, hot chocolate, tea time, back into holiday spirit

🎶I feel nice, like sugar & spice~🎶

Farewell & Good luck for the journey you're about to go on

As always, Be good, Be kind, Be safe~

Pile 3:

Who hurt you!?!? And can I have their address, I just wanna talk 💢

Seriously though, are you okay? Do you need a hug if so go hug someone or a plushie if you can.

Y'all are in a slump/stuck in the vortex or your emotions

Take the feelings you have, acknowledge them and if they help the current situation. If they don't do much but make you stuck, I suggest blessing them and letting them go (easier said than done ik)

It'll take some time, as all heartbreaks do, but you'll get through it and bounce back stronger than ever

Once you get back into your groove, no one can stop you

🎶Nothing can stop me I'm all the way up~🎶

As always, Be good, Be kind, Be safe..........especially to yourselves

Pile 4:

Heyyyyyyyy, I love your energy, your vibe, your aura babes. Ahhhh *chefs kiss * 😘

Y'all are in your bag, spiritually & physically

You've done the work.

You've changed your mindset/limiting beliefs

Now is the time babe, all you gotta do is ask and it's yours

You're in New territory. Your mind/heart are screaming at you to "Be careful!" ⚠ 🚨. Sirens are going off and your ego is trying to protect you by sending some fear

Here's the thing though, you've been through this before. You've lived thousands of lives and nothing stopped you back then, so why should it stop you now?

You're aware of your power now. You broke the barriers. You know you have the control over your situation, over your life and what you want to do with it. Cause it's yours, it's your life, you can do what you want (within reason) and you can get what you want if you just try

🎶What you gonna do if it doesn't work out how you thought it would...Feels unfair and you wanna turn around but its for your own good~🎶

🎶I've never been here, but that makes it new doesn't mean it's strange~🎶

🎶I'm not lost, I'm on an adventure~🎶

Take your time

Rest if needed

Self-care is super important for this pile

Breathe it in

Enjoy your adventure, cause soon enough it'll be a wild ride. Even more than you could've ever imagined

Get rid of the plan & go with the flow of the universe

Let the ideas come to you, let them guide you, let go and cocreate with em

Don't chase what you want, attract it by knowing that it belongs to you, it's already yours so why worry

🎶Why should I worry, why should I care~🎶

Do things you love, change up your daily routine, be more present and actually look at what's around you

Take the next day slow & really be present. Then reflect on how this feels at the end of the day. You've got this. You just have to believe that you do. You are the authority of your own story, so make it a good one~

As always, Be good, Be kind, Be safe 😘

#witchblr #pagan witch #higher vibrations #law of manifestation #law of abundance #law of assumption #law of attraction #divine messages #pick a pile #pick a picture #paganblr #viridian channels? #viridian channels #viridian creates #universal laws #tarotblr #astro community #astroblr #viridian lives #viridian rambles #self love #be good #be kind #be safe #take care of yourselves #you are loved #Spotify

[cbk1000]

Hi there!

Ive recently stumbled across your works, and I just wanted to say that I enjoy your writing soso much!! Each time i read any of ur pieces, i feel ever so blessed that i can read them for freee,,, ??like wow!! I absolutely love your characterization of arthur, and any piece of banter you write never fails to make me laugh!

Your writing style is so addictive, ive honestly found myself missing it when I read anything else. Because of this, id like to ask if you have any book recs? hehee anything that inspired that brain and writing of yours seems like it would be a worthwile read!! From ur alltime favs, or recent favs, comfort books, or books that gave u personal epiphanies, pls feel free to not hold back !! (If its not too much trouble)

And once again, thank you soso much for all your lovely works!! 💗

I LOVE talking about books, so thank you so much for this ask. This is a very truncated list of some of my favourite authors and books because if I wanted to talk about all of them, that would be a post as long as one of my fics.

First up is Terry Pratchett, who I came to rather late; I just started reading Discworld in 2020, despite @clonemaster-general and @jinxedwood telling me years earlier I should read him, so they should feel free to be smug about the fact that I ignored their sound advice for a long time and then went, "Ok, where do I sign up for the cult" after reading approximately one (1) Pratchett novel.

Discworld is a fantasy satire series that's over 40 books long, but those 40+ books simply take place in the same world and do not have to be read in order, although I would recommend reading any subseries featuring the same characters in order (the City Watch books starting with 'Guards! Guards', the Witches starting with ''Wyrd Sisters' etc.) Pratchett did write some non-Discworld books, although the bulk of his very large body of work is that series. He was a very gifted writer who was able to present the stupidity and injustices of humanity in a way that made you laugh and feel that it's bearable to live alongside these things. No other author has made me laugh so much at dumb little puns or dick jokes and then suddenly slapped me with a banger of a line about human nature.

'The Once and Future King' by T.H. White. A retelling of Malory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur'. It's silly, it's touching, it asks why humans go to war. If you're tired of relentless grimdark, this book shows you that a novel can explore serious themes and ask serious questions of its readers while also being a bit silly and stupid, because like suffering, silliness and stupidity is an intrinsic part of the human experience.

'The Left Hand of Darkness' by Ursula Le Guin. I could really just say, "All of Ursula Le Guin's stuff" because I've read several novels, a ton of her short stories, plus most of her essay collections and I've loved them all, but I wanted to mention this one particularly because Le Guin was examining our ideas of gender and society in the fucking 60s and I'm tired of hearing right-wing nutjobs bang on about trans people like they're some alien species newly landed on our planet to kidnap our children. Also, what I love about Le Guin's sci-fi is that she was concerned primarily with the culture of alien societies, not laser guns, and her world building is incredibly deep in that regard. Her father was an anthropologist, and you can see how his studies shaped her writing.

'The Lymond Chronicles' by Dorothy Dunnett. I love me a good swashbuckler, and these are some good swashbucklers. There's also some really beautiful prose that really evokes the landscapes of 15th century Europe, and her action/battle scenes are some of the most gripping I've read. The caveat with this one is that I actually don't like the main character all that much; he's a real special guy who speaks all the languages, is good at all the things, is a master strategist at 20, and is hot to boot. But the story is told mostly through the POVs of other characters that get caught up in his exploits so you're not stuck in his insufferable perspective, and I found the books overall (there are six in the series) very hard to put down.

'The Count of Monte Cristo' by Alexandre Dumas. The OG swashbuckler, really. Shipwrecks! Duels! Poison! Revenge! People just don't do dramatic adventure novels like Dumas anymore.

'War and Peace' by Tolstoy. I can't not mention this; I've read it twice so far in English and once in Russian. Tolstoy was an amazing observer of human nature. Also, he clearly thought Napoleon was a little bitch and reading about him from the perspective of a Russian novelist is quite entertaining after reading about him from Victor Hugo's perspective.

'Les Miserables' by Victor Hugo. I also have to mention this one. Yes, there are very lengthy asides on the Parisian sewer system. In the middle of a chase scene. But tbh, Hugo was curious about everything and while maybe he talked about every single one of those things a bit too long, it still endears him to me. Also, he was known more as a poet than a novelist by contemporary readers, and even in translation I think the fact that he was a poet really comes through in the prose.

Also, really anything by Patricia McKillip if you want dreamy, poetic fantasy that feels like being dropped right into the middle of a fairytale where magic has no hard rules and is something a bit wild and dangerous and beautiful.

I also read a lot of non-fiction, so I'll just list a few of my faves: 'Survival in Auschwitz' by Primo Levi; 'The Gulag Archipelago' by Alexandre Solzhenitsyn; James Herriott's 'All Creatures Great and Small' series; 'Landmarks' by Robert Macfarlane (but really any of his nature writing; this one I liked particularly because it's about the power of language to evoke a sense of place and how our vocabulary for the natural world is slowly being subsumed by our increasingly technologically-driven world). 'The Demon-Haunted World' by Carl Sagan, which was written in the 90s but if anything is even more relevant today as we struggle with parsing the mythology of pseudoscience and the real-world harm it perpetuates.

And I read a fuck ton of poetry, so I'll just rattle off a list of some of my favourite poets: Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooks, Edward Thomas (I also love his nature writing), Alexandre Blok, Pushkin, Ursula Le Guin (she's primarily known as a novelist, but she has some very good poetry as well), Mikhail Lermontov, Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Pope, Tennyson (particularly Idylls of the King), Seamus Heaney, and Yeats.

Anyway, this is a small sampler of books I've read and loved.

#books #jenn reads

[littledead-ridinghood]

okay, on my last meta I said Bruce has made Jason cry before and shown a lack of remorse for the fact as he does in the webtoon, and @tumblingxelian asked if they could see my "crying Jason" folder for their comic analysis videos (which go watch them!!! They're very good and break down misconceptions of characters usually focusing around Talia Al Ghul, Jason Todd, and Stephanie Brown). Specifically, the ones where bruce makes Jason cry. There's a 10-panel limit so this will be two parts split up between part one: Adult Jason and Part Two: Child Jason. These panels are either because Bruce made him cry or Bruce is in relation to the problem of why Jason is crying (think Lost Days which will be in the next part).

---------

Red Hood: Outlaws webtoon; episode 10, "Like Father, Like Son"

Shockingly, this is not the interaction that sparked so much controversy over the last couple of days. People are more so focused on Jason's Robin portrayal and the modern version of "he's another speck of dirt that belongs in the sewer" dialogue (no that's not what bruce said in the webtoon, for transparency, but that's what the toddler quote reminded me of. Bruce, when really mad at Jason always circles back to him being "dirty" and a "destined criminal" which I can write a whole think piece about if anyone cares(please)). As I said yesterday, I have had and still have no plans to read this story, the summary never interested me when announced and now I'm scared, so, grain of salt, people!

Roughly, Bruce and Jason get into an argument over the outlaws incompetently breaking laws. To which Bruce treats Jason like how a sexist pig of a man treats a woman when upset (i.e. "are you on your period?") It isn't later revealed until the end of the story (about 6-7 panels later) that yes, Jason was in fact crying underneath his helmet for the majority of his interaction with Bruce.

Classic Under the Red Hood monologue. Bruce didn't make Jason purposefully cry here, he, they, are both just....really goin' through it. Jason is crying, Bruce can't even look at him out of guilt and shame. I don't think this one needs much explanation, Jason would rather die than live with the Joker continuing to wreak havoc, and if Bruce doesn't do it, that's fine, he will, but if that bothers the man then he's gonna have to kill his resurrected son (spoilers: He does)

Remember, folks! We end this monologue with a flayed open and dead Jason!

This one I didn't realize Jason was crying because the panel's so small on the actual page until a different person pointed it out and I was like "Holy Fuck He Is! *screenshot*"

This one comes from Event Levithan (2020) where Bruce asked for Jason's help with the mass killings that have been going on around the world until Bruce reveals his hand and accuses Jay of being the mastermind behind the whole plot. The idea that Bruce was going off of was that Jason was blacking out and doing it out of grief over Roy's demise or something. Not a strong case. But, yes, this takes place in the continuity when Jason is Super DisownedTM. When Bruce finds him I'm pretty sure Jason says something along the lines of "I'm surprised you want my help" (it's been a minute). Once again, Jason's fully prepared to ignore his emotional grief and work placidly with Bruce's team. He just wanted to help Bruce on this case before Bruce once again takes that trust and shatters it (Ex: Batman and Robin N52 #20, iykyk). You can see the dark tear on the black part of his mask when he realizes and questions Bruce about what he actually wants with him. Bruce then sends his detective team off to apprehend Jason, who escapes because even if this story has super janky dialogue and unclear art, at least we get competent Jason.

This is from Jason's White Knight spin-off. Total Elseworld, but the theme carries over, Bruce, this time in relation, making Jason cry. The dude's kinda fucked up from being tortured for, what is it here, 3 months? Jason gets tortured a lot, kind of a multiversal constant for the man. You know that trope in sportsball movies where the guy's like "I could've gone pro if not for XYZ injury and my dreams were shattered. Don't end up like me. Don't play this game; it's a waste of time!" before becoming the gruff reluctant mentor to said child? That's Jason's characterization here, but, hey, at least he acknowledges he needs help. Again, Jason is only the sanest bat because he's the only one, elseworld and canon, who I've ever seen remark on the fact that their person is so entirely messed up, sick in the head, and needs help. All the other bats are like "I'm Fine!" when they're clearly not fine. So, A for effort. Again, very UtRH monologue, more so having a breakdown in relation to bruce rather than bruce causing it. He looks so young and forlorn in the second to last panel, and so alone in the last :(

This is Scott's interpretation of UtRH in RHatO V1. Very pretty Jason, not what happened. This was not a scene, and the rest of this scene completely contradicts Jason's main goal in UtRH, but I can't resist a crying Jason panel. He's debating shooting Bruce, he won't, but this one, ONE, panel of Lobdell's UtRH retcon does, I feel, accurately represent Jason's feelings during his Lost Days/UtRH phase. Think of him putting the bomb underneath the Batmobile. He says he wants Bruce to die, but every time he has the ability to do it, Jason is hit with these overwhelming feelings of "No, I *Don't* want Bruce to die! I just want him to understand!" That's why UtRH is so intriguing to read because yes, Jason primary goal is to control crime because a utopia of no crime is impossible. Yes, he's also an 18-year-old who died alone, came back alone, and didn't legitimately regain his ability to function until late 16-early 17 with the whole new trauma of the pit. You gotta find that sweet spot of morality & philosophy juxtaposed against feelings & trauma. Very Man vs. God. Yes, he brought Gotham's criminal world to his knees. Yes, to Jason, he literally died like 18 months earlier whereas everyone else got a nice 3 years to process his death and move on.

Bonus classic "Jason is clearly devasted but not crying" panels:

Hey! remember earlier when I mentioned Batman and Robin N52 #20? Ya, that's this one! I love using it in metas because I feel it's often forgotten about. This is after the Death of the Family arc where the Joker says he cut off the bats' faces with a razor blade and was going to force feed it to them as well as Dick forced to go undercover by Bruce (everyone else thinks he's dead), and Damian's death arc. In RHatO V1, the clown almost kills Jason again via acid to the face, so he's in a coma having unreliable narration within fever dreams until he has a heart-to-heart with subconscious Bruce. He wakes up and has a heart-to-heart with Real Bruce where they bury the hatchet (Jason took all the blame for everything in their relationship (Bruce! slit! his! throat!)). Later, when Bruce drops Jason off in front of his murder location, that whole interaction reads Very emotionally manipulative and prime-y (which is why I can take neither the hug with dream or real Bruce with love. Again, bitchful Killjoy. sorry). I could talk about this forever! He's so heartbroken! On the next page Jason says "how he was ready to put everything behind him." and that he "was done looking back." Anyway, they fight. Jason throws the first punch and kinda sorta halfway misses and Bruce responds with a whammy to the jaw. Hitting him into the dirt in the same spot the joker did. It comes to light, implicitly, that Bruce didn't even want Jason there to reveal his murder, but because he knew it would trigger Jason to lash out at him. He was using Jason as a tool to punish himself. Jason commits mental suicide after this; enter: amnesia arc.

Again, no tears. But they're implied.

I wanted to put the entirety of RHatO V2 #25 here, but, because that is not possible, instead y'all get this third of a page where Jason's literally given up and dropped into unconsciousness to which Bruce finally stops beating him. ahhh family, you know, dragging them around like trash because you think they did something but also have a shit tone of pent-up anger over your failed wedding and the scapegoat just happens to get caught in the crossfire of everything, and oh! Look! It looks like you beat your kid to death with your bare hands! Oh My God! Jason predominantly doesn't fight back during this, hardly even defends himself. Jason doesn't cry when he's taking or taken hits. He just rolls with them. Whether he thinks he deserves it, taking the hits for someone else and wants to be a strong protector, and/or he grew u getting beat around a lot so he's used to it/doesn't want to give [them] what they want/knows it'll only make it worse/etc etc. (*whispers* he's a child of severe abuse).

Jason is characterized as someone who is super smart, logical, and pragmatic, but he also acts with his heart a lot. He wears his helmet because as much as he tries to hide his true feelings, he has never been able to consistently hide them from his face and sleeve. Jason gets pulled in multiple directions by who he is and by what a bat is supposed to be, and I don't mean that just kill or no kill. That is not the only line that isolates him from the other. Part is due that the majority of the bats joined and formed in the wake of his death, but also a lot of his internal working seem very not bat-stereotype no matter how much his external is. I will always go back to his freedom of emotional expression on this as it's such a huge part of his character that other bats constantly rag on. For another example, for as many trust issues he has and as many times his trust has been broken, Jason, as opposed to many of the other bats, consistently puts himself back out there to trust people again and again, even if it's the same people who have abused that trust. Jason continues to try to fix things with Bruce, he continues to help people who have tried to kill him before, multiple times even (Think Duela and Suzie Sue), he tells his non-superhero friends who he is (think isabella in V1 who really wanted that openness from Jason and he gave it to here), and he continuously places complete and utter absolute trust in the teams he runs with. Artemis even said, roughly, in V2, that "as much as he tries to pretend he doesn't, Jason cares a lot. Takes every hit to the heart." And that's just a whole long-winded way of saying I like that Jason cries a lot because that emotional rawness of overwhelming emotion is really cathartic to read. I've read metas and commentary on it where people complain that Jason cries too much and it makes him pathetic and weak. I disagree. Jason has always just been like that, and this segues into Part Two! Child Jason crying about Bruce

#i'm proud of that ending lead into the next part #bruce wayne #jason todd #jason todd meta

[seventeenlovesthree]

If you were chosen to continue the Digimon Adventure 2020 story, what headcanon theories or ideas would do you have for the series going forward?

What you want the Digidestineds next great adventure to be? How would you want them to grow and develop as characters? And how would their relations evolve? Especially how do you imagine Tai's relation with Sora and Izzy would develop? (I love the three of them soooooo much in the 2020 series!)

If it were to take place right after the end of Digimon 2020?

Oh, if only I HAD that power...! I had already outlined a few aspects here before, but for completion's sake, I can elaborate again, because there are several possible scenarios I would like to see:

1.) Give me a slice-of-life-anime with the 8 being somewhere between 12 and 17 and have them go through some Tamers/Ghost Game-esque adventures in the real world. I had written a love letter for how much I adore episode 31 of OG Adventure structurally the other day and I would really love a series with the same vibe. Since the first season of the reboot was more plot-driven, this second season would primarily focus on their personal stories/backgrounds/family lives with Digimon-related shenanigans affecting technology and their everyday lives in the process. Giving every single character time and space to bloom. We would also learn more about the Crests and how each kid was chosen in the first place - I don't NEED reincarnation theory to be confirmed, but I would really like some more breadcrumbs into a satisfying explanation as for WHY THEY were chosen specifically in "this timeline" and how exactly the Crests came to be.

2.) I also had an idea based on a dream I once had, additionally furthered by the last episode or rather the "epilogue" that was presented there: I had outlined the idea here as well, but basically, it'd be about dividing the cast into primary and secondary squad (to allow more focus on singular characters in a shorter number of episodes) and have the former actually go gate-hopping and exploring the different worlds out there. It's a more self-indulgent idea, as it mainly focuses on the dynamics between Taichi, Koushirou, Sora and Mimi, but I couldn't keep the others away completely either. So I haven't fully utilized the idea yet...

3.) An interesting idea that was brought to my attention recently was the idea of making a season revolve around Taichi disappearing due to the gate-hopping. Since the first season basically revolved around typical Shounen protagonist Taichi Yagami, the second season would be about the others gate-hopping as well to find him. I haven't thought this one through yet either though...

In terms of general character development and relationship dynamics, I would be happy to actually see more about their individual selves, their flaws and worries and how they get along - or don't. It's really difficult to put a finger on how exactly that would look like, because I absolutely cannot blame the creators of the reboot for being "careful" on how to depict the characters beyond some general tropes. We've known these guys for TWENTY FIVE years and Tri already tried to tackle some things that were different, while still resorting to predictable outcomes without much depth we had already seen several times over - without intending to change the status quo too much. I obviously don't want to see perfect happy endings for everyone, but things were missing in the reboot so far that made the original characters so charming - and the reboot HAD the chance to elaborate on different outcomes here.

We already saw Jyou going for a more leadership-esque route, which his OG self actively didn't choose. So how would that affect his relationship with Taichi, who naturally got the leadership role again? How about Sora having a semi-peaceful relationship with her mother this time, so she can actually be experimental AND also choose to be a vital part of the group? What about Mimi coming from a rich family that provides technological gadgets - how would her knowledge on that influence the way she communicates with Koushirou? Would she try to be competitive for example? Show me more insecurities, show me how they'd actually challenge their Crest meanings? Show me a Hikari who rebels against her brother, show me a Takeru who takes charge, show me Koushirou being honest about his back story to the others (LET US KNOW IF HE IS EVEN ADOPTED IN THIS TIMELINE OR NOT), show me Yamato being vulnerable or try to be more humorous and failing at that! Show me Taichi having flaws! Again, I don't NEED him to be depressed AGAIN, but he has to have something he is insecure or unsure about.

As for Taikoura's relationship, once again, there are several ideas I could see, all shipping aside. One of them is the very self-indulgent "Team Light are actually connected mentally now and can sense and feel when the others are in danger" soulmate scenario that may affect how they interact with each other...

... In more general terms, I do need them all to spend more time together. If you take the ideas 1 I outlined above, they would go through their daily lives together, visiting the same school, etc. So of course Taichi and Sora would focus more on their passion for football as they promised in season 1 and, as mentioned above, Sora might still feel weird about "growing into herself", but she would be more comfortable about experimenting. Combining her tomboy-ness with a more feminine side and exploring that further (and in an ideal scenario deepening her relationship with Mimi in the process, because the reboot did NOT focus on that yet AT ALL). And I want Taichi to be supportive of her in this!

Taichi also made a promise to Koushirou that they would explore the other worlds together - which may also apply to idea 2 I outlined, because I need them to have an OWG-esque partners-in-crime relationship in which they go on cyber adventures together. And in both idea 1 and 2, they would have to balance their daily lives and responsibilities with that. Meaning, this would be a great opportunity to actually see Taichi and Sora learn about Koushirou's home life - he might still try to hide it from them, but I'd want a huge chunk of the story to focus on them trying to get something out of him (gently of course!), having him explore his own identity in the process as well. Showing him that the bond he developed with these two (and the others too) does not just exist because he is "useful" to them, but because he really means something to them.

I obviously also want Koura to bond more with each other - not only over their shared affections for Taichi and because they want to figure out if he is actually hiding something behind that unshattered mask of positivity... Maybe in this timeline, I can finally get them to become canonical fashion buddies, who knows?

Edit: A very important aspect I forgot is that I want and need new Jogress and branch evolutions between the different characters! BE EXPERIMENTAL, TOEI, IT'S GOOD FOR MERCH AND SHIPPING.

#personal #my two cents #taikoura #digimon adventure 2020 #digimon adventure: #digimon adventure reboot sequel #long post

[leos-soggy-wolf-nuts]

Green Flag: Leo x Kinda-self-insert Episode 1

I'm deciding to write these in many short bursts rather than in a few long stories. My need to write these is fleeting but powerful, like passion itself. Or that handjob in Carl's route.

Also, when I say "kinda-self-insert" I mean that the main character won't be me/my fursona, but he'll act generally the way I would in his situation. He's like if I was cooler.

This takes place a few years after Leo's good ending. Maybe...2019 or 2020 (the pandemic will not be included in this Echo AU.)

Final disclaimer: this is almost totally self-indulgent. Okay, thanks, enjoy.

Final final disclaimer: I don't know how car insurance works.

"Goddamnit." echoes through my bathroom as it dawns on me that I'm out of antler polish. It's snake oil, of course. I fidget with my glasses in frustration. Antlers don't need polish, it's just something that makes me feel better, like if I bring them into the realm of mundane self-care, they'll stop seeming so wild. That's what I don't like about the desert. All the heat and sunlight makes them awkwardly big. To me, anyway. Everyone else seems to like them.

Regardless, they clatter against the doorframe as I exit the bathroom to get my wallet and keys. My apartment is 3 rooms. The living room/kitchen, where I've lined up a few of my dirty novelty mugs on the coffee table, always just forgetting to take them to the sink. Then my bedroom, a windowless cave of iniquity, and finally the bathroom, which I keep comparatively nice and neat. My keys and wallet are on the dresser next to the front door, and I feel complete as they fill my pockets. More powerful. Like boarding a mech.

The Payton sun is...aggressive. I always fantasize about wearing leather jackets, right up until I exit my front door. I jog awkwardly to my car, un-relieved as I find each time that the inside has been cooked like a thanksgiving turkey. Wincing against the heat, I jam the key in the ignition as fast as possible to crank the AC, furrowing my brows as the engine stutters but won't go over the edge into a full start. This shit has been going on for weeks.

vp vp vp...vp vp vp...vp vp vrrMMMMMMM....

Fuck, finally. I've had to save up a little cash before going to the mechanic, and it seems like I'm bringing it just in time. It's never taken that many tries before.

Lo and behold, the AC isn't working either.

I ride slowly, with the windows down, through the busy main street of downtown Payton. My car creaks and sputters awkwardly as I reach the shop.

ALVAREZ AUTO REPAIR

I pull into their lot on a low incline, nearby a canine in a white t-shirt holding a clipboard. I open the door and step out, the hot air still cooler than the inside of my car. I drag my shoe idly across the asphalt. It's now I realize I don't know how this works.

"Hey, uh..." I say, my words hanging flaccid in the air. The canine continues facing his clipboard, but his eyes look up at me. He has a sort of...amused smirk on his face.

"Do you have insurance?" he asks me.

I think on it for a moment. "I do, yeah."

"Good."

CRASH!

I whip my head around and see the trunk of my car crumpled against the base of a tall street light.

"Fuck!" I shout. I didn't put the fucking car in Park. It rolled right down. The canine sauntered after me, grabbing a pen from his pocket and biting off the cap.

"Name?" he asked, voice slightly muffled with the cap still in his mouth.

"Lionel." I replied, exasperated, blood pumping as I watched smoke billow from my car. The canine shifted his stance, pulling the cap from his teeth.

"Do you have a last name?"

"Shit, sorry. Uh, C-E-I-R-W."

"Key-err-wuh?" he tried to pronounce. I laugh, despite the stress.

" 'Kayroo'. " I corrected. He nods, then takes a pensive breath.

"I think your car is broken."

I laugh again. "Oh really?"

He scribbled a little more on his paper, then clapped me on the shoulder. His paw is heavy, the type of weight I'd expect from someone resting a booted foot on my shoulder instead.

"I'll tell insurance it did that on its own. If they ask."

I turn to him, head on a tilt, keeping my antlers from hitting him.

"Thanks-" I pause, reading his name tag. "-Leo."

Shit, he's got a nice chest.

I clear my throat, pushing away the perverted thought before it becomes a problem. He smirks a little wider. "Of course. But I doubt you came here for the crash. What else is wrong?"

"Oh, it takes a while to start the ignition. And just today, the AC broke."

A sympathetic look crossed his expression.

"In this weather? Come on, let's get you inside the office."

I nod, and let him lead me there, my eyes wandering to his backside. Damn. I physically shake the thought away as he leads me into the shop's office. It's delightfully cool. Invoices, to-do lists, and part orders litter the sides of the desk and various bulletin boards, not to mention the file cabinet in the corner. Leo sits down behind the desk, and I sit across from him.

"So." he begins, "a slow start could be a bad battery, a problem with the starting circuit, a problem with the connection cables, a bad alternator, and a few other things. The point is... we'll have to keep it here for a little while."

I scratch the back of my neck. "Does Payton have like a, town car or whatever? So I could get to work?"

He taps his fingers on the desk. "What time do you go to work."

"8:30."

The wolf looks me up and down. It turns my face a little hot.

"I could give you a ride."

#my leo fic

[yuraslefttoe]

DOUBLE BONUS i found the full render so here you go : unreleased 2020 tart content warning its really loud and really bad listen at your own discretion lyrics:

Stasis, just like a house of cards I think I’m ‘bout to cave in The things I’ve said look better when put in perspective, A picture-perfect palace stained, but yet the world keeps turning, “ad meliora” Traces, when the world comes crashing, burning, falling, In your places Isn’t that enough? Though you’re still changing, Taken by the sun, down to one Through the light, and the triumph Don’t think you’ve seen the last of me Right hand idle,  Played the devil’s hand for three, I’m burning through time, She’s yet to be appeased And even so, you’d never see her count her woes, Oh, believe me, I’ve seen the sunlight come and go Go and tell your lies, It doesn’t come as a surprise You’re making bets with a dead man’s compromise And tell me again, how you plan to escape the walls that you’ve grown so close to know And even if I cared, You burnt that bridge long ago Let’s put on a show, For the viewers there at home You’re falling again, reaching ever dropping lows How long will it be, until you finally let go   I don’t care about the things you say, And if it comes to love, I’d rather throw my beating heart away So read your morals, “so divine” I’ll call your bluff, shut you up, Until these walls of mine just cease to fight Constricting, the rooms around us push me back up onto my feet With every step you take, you’re drawing closer to me Focus on the sun, now ‘till none Through the rage and the fury Don’t think you’d win so easily Oh, are there you are, screaming again, And by the power in him, You’re too far gone, Tried to keep his true intent I know it’s hard, But continue and abstain, Oh, what’s the point of seeing how I end the game? Simply put, I’d rather read the clues Of who you knew, And how they came in twos, Shove my life to the side, Do or die, and when the tides come crashing down I’d doubt I’d ever hold the crown Half side idle, Played the devil’s game for me, She’s staring bleakly, I’m sure he’s been released And even so, I’ve seen this play out all before, Oh, believe me, I’ve known her longer than her soul And so it seems, the monster’s latched on with his teeth, Singing so faintly, I hope she’s found her peace The years pass by, have you ever wondered why It never fades, even as the stars comply And even if you’re right, I’d be living out of spite, Nowhere else to go, So just make your way back home I’m laughing again, never would I find the time, To look to the sky and see you meet your own demise Find yourself another game to play, ‘Cause when it comes to love, you’re not the one that I’d choose to save So read my morals, They come entwined, Your time is up, called your bluff Don’t fool yourself, I know you’ve seen the light Trigger idle, Don’t play the devil’s games with me And when I see you the whole world seems to convene, And even so, you’d never think I should’ve known Oh, believe me, I know the sunlight comes and goes “Aren’t you sick of life?” The silent speaks up without strife, The vise takes the blows, “Pack up, the labyrinth is closed” You’ve fallen again, How much farther can you go? I think that it’s time for you to finally call home Think about all the things that you’ve said, ‘Cause if I’ve really lost, wouldn’t I be here lying dead, So read his morals, see the light, This is enough, wrap it up, I’ll see you when you finally know right— I don’t really know, If I’m the one that’s all alone, My heart takes the blow, It seems the soulless took their toll I’m starting to crash, farther than the deepest lows, How long has it been since I was clearly overthrown? I don’t care about the things you’ll say, ‘Cause if it’s come from above, then I’ll just take my place and stay The world’s gone under, too far gone,  Don’t call his bluff, pack it up, And run with me if you wanna see dawn

#vocaloid #mymusic #luo tianyi #kyo vocaloid #unreleased #da #labyrinth

[popentertainment-interviews]

JA Bayona and Enzo Vogrincic

Society of the Snow is One of the Most Harrowing films of All Time – and Chilling As Well by Brad Balfour

It’s an understatement to say that I’ve seen lots of films with varying degrees of frightening circumstances informing them. But Society of The Snow was one of the most harrowing – well deserving of award nominations, including the Oscar for Best International Feature. Though the film is fiction, it’s based on a true story and is done in such a way that you feel yourself actually experiencing the cold, anguish and pain as the story reveals itself.

In 1972, a Uruguayan rugby team chartered a flight to Chile, which catastrophically crashed on a glacier in the heart of the Andes. Of the 45 passengers on board, 29 survived the initial crash, although more would die from injury, disease, and an avalanche over the following weeks. Trapped in one of the most inaccessible and hostile environments on the planet, the survivors were forced to resort to survival cannibalism of those who had already died in order to stay alive. However, rather than turn against each other, the survivors drew upon the cooperative teamwork they learned through rugby, along with their spiritual faith, in order to escape the mountains. Only 16 of the 40 passengers ultimately survived.

Director JA Bayona discovered Pablo Vierci's 2009 account of the crash, La sociedad de la nieve, while conducting research for his 2012 film The Impossible. He bought the rights for the book when he finished filming that movie. Bayona recorded more than 100 hours of interviews with all of the living survivors. The cast is composed of Uruguayan and Argentine actors, most of whom are newcomers. The actors had contact with the survivors and the families of the victims.

Society of the Snow was the closing film at the 80th Venice International Film Festival, in an Out of Competition slot. It played in theaters in Uruguay, Spain and a limited run in the United States in December 2023, before streaming on Netflix in January 2024. Society of the Snow received positive reviews and won 12 awards including Best Picture and Best Director at the 38th Goya Awards and was nominated for Best International Feature Film, representing Spain, along with Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the 96th Academy Awards.

This Q&A with writer-director Bayona and star Enzo Vogrincic took place in front of an audience a few weeks before Oscar Night.

Society of the Snow was shot in sequence, which is so rare now. Also shooting on location with all the challenges. How important was it to you to have an Uruguayan voice to this film, this passion in your life for the last decade?

JA Bayona: This story is not only well-known in the Spanish-speaking world, but also [throughout] the whole world. There are many documentaries about it. There were two movies already done (ed note: Survive! in 1976 and Alive in 1993), so we had to do this one right. We spent the time, and we wanted to shoot in Spanish. There was no way to shoot this film in another language than Spanish with a Uruguayan accent, since it was based on a book by a Uruguayan author with a Uruguayan voice and a Uruguayan actor. It took us 10 years to find the financing, find a place where we were allowed to show up and believe in the film, and believe in the level of ambition we were looking for, again in Spanish. Once we knew the film was going to be done – actually before then – we did auditions for nine months, looking for the actors. I saw 2,000 self-made tapes, and from those, I started to choose faces and meet actors online, because it was during the pandemic. We finally got our cast. That was at the end of 2020. We did two months of rehearsals – which is a luxury – maybe seven weeks. Then, all the cast met the real people they were portraying or the families of the dead. Then we spent a very long shoot, 140 days, which was extraordinary. We created such a beautiful family. Everything that’s in front of the camera was real. The friendship, the love, the sense of camaraderie, and we were there with our cameras. We captured that. 

Who was your continuity director? You've been recognized for makeup and hair. This was another-level continuity.

JA Bayona: I gave the actors a lot of space and freedom to improvise, because they were so well prepared. They spent two months in rehearsals, met the survivors, and read the book. They had all the information, and then they worked in similar conditions, with a context that was constantly stimulating the performance. There was a lot of space to improvise. We shot 600 hours of material. The heroes of this film are the editors because they had to deal with that. There were a lot of continuity issues that we had to deal with in the editorial.

Enzo, when it comes to rehabilitation in the hospital, the showers, the emaciated bodies – and being a 2024 film realist – it wasn’t body doubles. Your body weight went from 159 to 103 during the shooting of this film. That was real. How important was it for you, for the living and the dead, to honor your character?

Enzo Vogrincic: While we were making the film, as actors, we always thought we owed the people that survived and those that died, to tell their story as realistically as possible. Therefore, when we were filming things such as hunger or cold, we were barely able to move. It was a way of replicating what they had gone through, beyond our acting, because we knew that we had a responsibility to the people and to the characters. This was not a typical shoot whatsoever. It was part of the story, so fundamentally, we were willing to do whatever it took to get that realism in. After putting in 12 hours of filming and besides, we were eating very little, we found that we could set up a gym afterwards. At night, those of us who were not filming, we were training and continuing to lose weight.

How important was it to you that this project be delivered in a Uruguayan voice?

Enzo Vogrincic: This is something that was fundamental to us because this story has been told before, but not with our voice. I thought that was the key thing to do because – though some theories say we are human regardless of where we took place – but these were the stories lived and survived by actual Uruguayans. We thought that to be able to tell it in the original language, it was important for us to understand the tales of the survivors so we could tell the story better. There were terms, feelings, and all those things which mattered, because it hadn’t been done that way before.

There were scenes that involved faith, the notion of a higher power, permission from God. On the other hand, what kind of God would allow this? Those scenes were directed with great care. Tell us how you approached that?

JA Bayona: I always try to be as close as possible to the characters, to the reality, in order to be able to capture them with a sense of authenticity, a sense of place, of being there. These guys were, most of them, very religious. There was a lot of religious iconography. I like to think the film tries to be more spiritual than religious. I see these people like orphans, abandoned in a place where life is not possible, and they need to reinvent life. They need to, somehow, reconsider what is important and what is not, as human beings.

By doing so, the movie becomes a mirror of ourselves. They had to start everything from scratch. They were abandoned by the authorities, they were abandoned by their families, so they had to. For them, it was a journey of self-discovery. It was also a way of understanding that God was everywhere, in order to survive. There was not a religious institution in the middle.

When we mention cannibalism, when we talk about it, that's a word they don't like to use. I think this film makes a big change; in that it's not about taking. It's about giving, about giving yourself to others and suffering the same pain that they are suffering. By doing that, feeling empathy …understanding that you and the other person in front of you are really the same. It's like when Gustavo Zerbino told Roberto Canessa, "You have the strongest legs, you need to walk for us." [And he did just that, walking out from the crash down the mountain towards civilization until they were found, which saved everyone who remained.] 

There's an immediate realization that you and the other ones are the same. We are all the same. To me, that feels sacred, spiritual and transcendent. To understand that we are all part of the same thing. That resonates in the world we live in right now, especially with young people. We are surrounded by so much conflict, and finally having this story that tells you that we are all part of the same thing, that we are all aboard the same plane. We need to come together to find a solution. We had such an important message. That was our fuel. 

With today's GPS, the flight would have landed at its destination safely, one would hope. You had to get the technical details right. The formal report said it was pilot error. That's clear from your work. How challenging was that, starting with your visit to the crash site? 

JA Bayona: We had to give the context to make others understand what they went through, and by doing so, what they did. We put so much effort into all the details, like talking about the type of plane. We went to the Uruguayan Army. We had a very honest conversation with them. They accepted that it was human error. But it was actually a combination of human error with some kind of an early model of GPS that failed that day. They basically had to do this turn there because that kind of plane was not able to fly at 40,000 feet. So they had to go through a lower pass. They had to do this kind of U-turn. It takes 20 minutes to get from one side to the other. They turned to the right only when they were six minutes into it. That's why it's considered to be a human error because there was no way that the pilot didn't know that. The pilot had done that journey many times. But we really don't know what happened in that cockpit. I decided to leave the camera outside of the cockpit out of respect for the pilots. We knew that there was a machine that failed there. But anyway, we decided out of respect not to get into that space, so we stayed with the other characters.

Will your life ever be quite the same after the experience of filming this movie?

Enzo Vogrincic: In life, everything you do changes you. You're never the same after an experience this informative. Of course, I’ve changed. I am different. I like to take every opportunity to continue changing myself. The biggest changes were on a professional level and in terms of how much I learned. I had to go in depth into my character and we spent one to three years with those people talking about life, death, friendship, love, family and making friends. I've made 25 new friends and therefore I like to think that I did change.

Talk about your immersion in your new extended family. The family of the living and the family of the dead.

JA Bayona: I sent an email to the survivors in 2011 and in that first email, I already sent a line about Roberto Canessa that said, “Talking to the dead, accepting peace, gives us the chance to live other lives we didn't have the chance to live.” I was very struck by that conversation between the living and the dead and that sense of depth towards the dead. The more I was in contact with the survivors and the more we talked, the more I realized that they needed the film to be completed and released even more than I did.

My big question was what was left to say after so many documentaries, books, and movies. Now I realize, after seeing the film with them, that it was not about telling something that wasn't being told yet. It was more about giving them the chance to say thank you to people who’d been so important. I see how it was like a poetic thing, the fact that people who didn't make it, they gave everything they had for these people to be alive. Now they are using their testimony to bring these people back, to keep them alive again on the screen. By doing so, I realized that they were comfortable with the story. So it was more about giving these folks a chance to say “thank you” to those who had helped while capturing the mood, feelings and context of what they had gone through so that people seeing the movie would understand what had happened. 

In the hands of another director, the debate over sheer survival might not have been handled as beautifully as it was with you. There's a line in the script where Enzo’s character says, “What was once unthinkable became routine." As the black & white photos are being taken, there's a shot showing a human rib cage in the background, almost cavalierly, but it mostly was kept out of the photos. The pictures, of course, are still with us today. They're on the web for people to see. You've managed to take on such a life-and-death topic and deal with it matter-of-factly but with great respect and discretion.

JA Bayona: I'm so glad that you asked about that “unthinkable” line because that's life. That's life. First, you do what you think is impossible, then you get used to it, and then there's a moment that you don't pay attention to it. Our ordinary lives are about that. These people remind us how important every single detail is in our lives. It doesn't matter if your skin is black or white or if we’re American or Spanish. We each have our chance to live life. But when you meet these guys, you meet people who’ve been given an extra chance. That makes a big difference. Their story helps us realize that sometimes we complain and don’t appreciate what we have, the fact that we do have lives to live.

How cold did it get? At what altitude did most of the filming take place?

Enzo Vogrincic: Well, I have to admit, it was hard to tell this story. You feel you have to go through the pain yourself, in order to tell it well. The shooting was hard, obviously, because you have to connect the pain with your own body. We had to lose weight and experience the cold. You have to do it until your body becomes part of that character’s story. There were experiences that allowed us to feel the pain. We were able to work less on certain things and still retain the emotional tone of the story. The emotions didn’t take over necessarily when your body had to suffer. There were other important components, too, in addition to the pain and the suffering. You were able to see that you had a duty to carry out which took you beyond the pain, because you had a story to tell in a competent way. 

JA Bayona: Let me add one story. Enzo did such an extraordinary job. He was so committed to the performance of Numa that when we finished the shoot we had to go back to the Andes because the first time we went, there had been very little snow because of global climate change. We went for one year. Once we finished the shoot, we went back to shoot again in the background. Secretly he was in Uruguay, and I called Enzo and said, “What are you doing next Wednesday?” He said, “Nothing.” I said, “I want to take you to the actual place where the plane crashed. I don't have permission from the other producers, but I think I can manage to bring you there. How much is the ticket?” He said, "$400.” I said, “Well, we can pay $400. I can talk with the insurance company and the professional drivers.”

I secretly took Enzo finally with the blessings from the other producers just because he did so much. We had this shoot then we had the person in Germany that was to do this film. I really wanted Enzo to be there and be able to shoot some shots that were very helpful for the film. You can treat the audience by putting in a couple of shots of Enzo there and there. At the same time, Enzo had a closure to that journey. He was able to do these shots but was also able to stand in front of the great theater. I don't know what you said there, what you did there, but you had your moment there. To me that was very important. When you do a film, the whole atmosphere affects the final result. I pay attention to these kinds of details. Also, I wanted him to be there and have that closure.

Having just shared this in a theater, I know that’s what movies are designed for, communal viewing experience. But when someone watches your movie on a streaming device. How does it affect you? And to be honest, can you interpret it for any language that it needs to be interpreted for?  

JA Bayona: Can we take the Netflix people out of the room for a second? No, listen, we spent 10 years trying to make the financing for this film. We tried to do this film by conventional windows to the cinemas. Apparently, there is no market for Spanish films that are over $10 or $15 million in budget. We couldn't do this film with that budget. We spent 10 years and when we were about to give up, Netflix showed up and put in the money and gave us the freedom. They made the film possible.

At the same time, I come from Spain. To me, it's more difficult to handle the market in the US than in Spain. I'm quite popular there. We released the film on December 22nd. It was a limited release, 100 cinemas. Normally one of my films would be in 500 cinemas. We released the film in 100 cinemas. I decided to go with the film. Every week, I went to a different city and showed the film. The film is still in the cinemas, in the same number of cinemas. We've done 100 million admissions. The film actually is doing better since it's on Netflix. I'm very happy that Netflix made the film possible and made it accessible to the whole planet. We had 100 million people watching the film in the first 10 days. So it’s not true. There is a market for Spanish films. But I'm glad that the movie is still in theaters for people who want to see it there.

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 6, 2024.

Photos © 2024 Brad Balfour. All rights reserved.

#JA Bayona #Enzo Vogrincic #2024 #Interviews #Season of the Snow #Brad Balfour #Youtube

[plaguern]

Two weeks ago, I walked into a unit that was utilized as the main COVID ICU of my hospital. Myself and many other nurses spent all of 2020 and the majority 2021 in this space. At the time, it was only lit with artificial lights, was run down with old equipment, and felt more like a cave than an ICU.

The smell of fresh paint and the brightness of the unit were in stark contrast of the heaviness I felt in my chest. This particular area of the hospital had been all but abandoned after the surges were over, and now it was being repurposed to once again house critically ill patients.

Ignoring my internal conscience’s screams of, “Don’t take another step”, I walked a bit further into the unit. I should have listened to myself; I shouldn’t have taken that last step. Something caught my gaze and I froze, effectively thrown back into a place and time I would rather keep deep in my memories. Ventilator settings written in dry-erase marker on a glass ICU door.

The scent of the fresh paint and the bright, natural light merged together with the memories of the most difficult and painful experience I have ever experienced as an ICU nurse. The faces of every patient, each Code Blue, every family FaceTime that occurred before we intubated-with the intention of saying goodbye, because they knew they would more than likely not make it-flashed before my eyes in full technicolor.

I snapped back to reality and felt angry, an anger that was so overwhelming, breathing became difficult and hot tears fell freely. I was angry about the loss of precious life, the unsuccessful resuscitations, and the misinformation that spread like wildfire, that only lead to more death. Most of all-I was angry at the ventilator settings written on glass doors for eliciting such a vehement response out of me. I was caught off-guard and completely unprepared to face the trauma that imprinted itself upon me; so I turned and left the unit for (what I thought would be) the last time. I had no intention of ever going back.

I spent that entire night thinking about what I had seen that day and my reaction to it. I finally came to an agreement with myself. I would go back in there and erase the ventilator settings, but I needed to make it a calm and healing experience. My favorite chaplain was all-too agreeable to helping me through this. The next day, I entered the unit I had promised myself I would never step foot in again.

Since it had been quite a while since they were written, the ventilator settings would not wipe off the glass easily. It was almost as if they were taunting me and making me work to erase them. Once the first glass was wiped clean, I felt a wave of grief wash over me. I was no longer angry, I was saddened. Saddened by loss. Loss of so many lives, loss of friends that left our amazing profession, and loss of our way as a society. Guided by my emotions-I erased all the writing off of each door to each room. It was cathartic to erase every trace of grief and despair that I could see. I then threw away the paper towels that held the remnants of another time, and walked out of that space feeling lighter than I thought I would.

#Nurse #icu nurse #fuck covid #ptsdawareness #trauma