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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years

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Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’

By: Laura Snapes for The Guardian Date: August 24th 2019

Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom.

Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes. Meanwhile her oven is still covered in stickers, more teenage diary than adult appliance.

Now 29, she has spent much of the past three years living quietly in London with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, making the penthouse a kind of time capsule, a monument to youthful naivety given an unlimited budget – the years when she sang about Romeo and Juliet and wore ballgowns to awards shows; before she moved to New York and honed her slick, self-mythologising pop.

It is mid-August. This is Swift’s first UK interview in more than three years, and she seems nervous: neither presidential nor goofy (her usual defaults), but quick with a tongue-out “ugh” of regret or frustration as she picks at her glittery purple nails. We climb down from the birdcage to sit by the pond, and when the conversation turns to 2016, the year the wheels came off for her, Swift stiffens as if driving over a mile of speed bumps. After a series of bruising public spats (with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj) in 2015, there was a high-profile standoff with Kanye West. The news that she was in a relationship with actor Tom Hiddleston, which leaked soon after, was widely dismissed as a diversionary tactic. Meanwhile, Swift went to court to prosecute a sexual assault claim, and faced a furious backlash when she failed to endorse a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, allowing the alt-right to adopt her as their “Aryan princess”.

Her critics assumed she cared only about the bottom line. The reality, Swift says, is that she was totally broken. “Every domino fell,” she says bitterly. “It became really terrifying for anyone to even know where I was. And I felt completely incapable of doing or saying anything publicly, at all. Even about my music. I always said I wouldn’t talk about what was happening personally, because that was a personal time.” She won’t get into specifics. “I just need some things that are mine,” she despairs. “Just some things.”

A year later, in 2017, Swift released her album Reputation, half high-camp heel turn, drawing on hip-hop and vaudeville (the brilliantly hammy Look What You Made Me Do), half stunned appreciation that her nascent relationship with Alwyn had weathered the storm (the soft, sensual pop of songs Delicate and Dress).

Her new album, Lover, her seventh, was released yesterday. It’s much lighter than Reputation: Swift likens writing it to feeling like “I could take a full deep breath again”. Much of it is about Alwyn: the Galway Girl-ish track London Boy lists their favourite city haunts and her newfound appreciation of watching rugby in the pub with his uni mates; on the ruminative Afterglow, she asks him to forgive her anxious tendency to assume the worst.

While she has always written about relationships, they were either teenage fantasy or a postmortem on a high-profile breakup, with exes such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles. But she and Alwyn have seldom been pictured together, and their relationship is the only other thing she won’t talk about. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she says, laughing after I attempt a stealthy angle. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Instead, she has swapped personal disclosure for activism. Last August, Swift broke her political silence to endorse Democratic Tennessee candidate Phil Bredesen in the November 2018 senate race. Vote.org reported an unprecedented spike in voting registration after Swift’s Instagram post, while Donald Trump responded that he liked her music “about 25% less now”.

Meanwhile, her recent single You Need To Calm Down admonished homophobes and namechecked US LGBTQ rights organisation Glaad (which then saw increased donations). Swift filled her video with cameos from queer stars such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen singer Adam Lambert, and capped it with a call to sign her petition in support of the Equality Act, which if passed would prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in the US. A video of Polish LGBTQ fans miming the track in defiance of their government’s homophobic agenda went viral. But Swift was accused of “queerbaiting” and bandwagon-jumping. You can see how she might find it hard to work out what, exactly, people want from her.

***

It was girlhood that made Swift a multimillionaire. When country music’s gatekeepers swore that housewives were the only women interested in the genre, she proved them wrong. Her self-titled debut marked the longest stay on the Billboard 200 by any album released in the decade. A potentially cloying image – corkscrew curls, lyrics thick on “daddy” and down-home values – were undercut by the fact she was evidently, endearingly, a bit of a freak, an unusual combination of intensity and artlessness. Also, she was really, really good at what she did, and not just for a teenager: her entirely self-written third album, 2010’s Speak Now, is unmatched in its devastatingly withering dismissals of awful men.

As a teenager, Swift was obsessed with VH1’s Behind The Music, the series devoted to the rise and fall of great musicians. She would forensically rewatch episodes, trying to pinpoint the moment a career went wrong. I ask her to imagine she’s watching the episode about herself and do the same thing: where was her misstep? “Oh my God,” she says, drawing a deep breath and letting her lips vibrate as she exhales. “I mean, that’s so depressing!” She thinks back and tries to deflect. “What I remember is that [the show] was always like, ‘Then we started fighting in the tour bus and then the drummer quit and the guitarist was like, “You’re not paying me enough.”’’’

But that’s not what she used to say. In interviews into her early 20s, Swift often observed that an artist fails when they lose their self-awareness, as if repeating the fact would work like an insurance against succumbing to the same fate. But did she make that mistake herself? She squeezes her nose and blows to clear a ringing in her ears before answering. “I definitely think that sometimes you don’t realise how you’re being perceived,” she says. “Pop music can feel like it’s The Hunger Games, and like we’re gladiators. And you can really lose focus of the fact that that’s how it feels because that’s how a lot of stan [fan] Twitter and tabloids and blogs make it seem – the overanalysing of everything makes it feel really intense.”

She describes the way she burned bridges in 2016 as a kind of obliviousness. “I didn’t realise it was like a classic overthrow of someone in power – where you didn’t realise the whispers behind your back, you didn’t realise the chain reaction of events that was going to make everything fall apart at the exact, perfect time for it to fall apart.”

Here’s that chain reaction in full. With her 2014 album 1989 (the year she was born), Swift transcended country stardom, becoming as ubiquitous as Beyoncé. For the first time she vocally embraced feminism, something she had rejected in her teens; but, after a while, it seemed to amount to not much more than a lot of pictures of her hanging out with her “squad”, a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham. The squad very much did not include her former friend Katy Perry, whom Swift targeted in her song Bad Blood, as part of what seemed like a painfully overblown dispute about some backing dancers. Then, when Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had rewarded white women at the expense of women of colour, multiple-nominee Swift took it personally, responding: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” For someone prone to talking about the haters, she quickly became her own worst enemy.

Her old adversary Kanye West resurfaced in February 2016. In 2009, West had invaded Swift’s stage at the MTV VMAs to protest against her victory over Beyoncé in the female video of the year category. It remains the peak of interest in Swift on Google Trends, and the conflict between them has become such a cornerstone of celebrity journalism that it’s hard to remember it lay dormant for nearly seven years – until West released his song Famous. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The video depicted a Swift mannequin naked in bed with men including Trump.

Swift loudly condemned both; although she had discussed the track with West, she said she had never agreed to the “bitch” lyric or the video. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released a heavily edited clip that showed Swift at least agreeing to the “sex” line on the phone with West, if not the “bitch” part. Swift pleaded the technicality, but it made no difference: when Kardashian went on Twitter to describe her as a snake, the comparison stuck and the singer found herself very publicly “cancelled” – the incident taken as “proof” of Swift’s insincerity. So she went away.

Swift says she stopped trying to explain herself, even though she “definitely” could have. As she worked on Reputation, she was also writing “a think-piece a day that I knew I would never publish: the stuff I would say, and the different facets of the situation that nobody knew”. If she could exonerate herself, why didn’t she? She leans forward. “Here’s why,” she says conspiratorially. “Because when people are in a hate frenzy and they find something to mutually hate together, it bonds them. And anything you say is in an echo chamber of mockery.”

She compares that year to being hit by a tidal wave. “You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she says. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards!” She’s on a roll. “Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”

After the incident with Minaj, her critics started pointing out a narrative of “white victimhood” in Swift’s career. Speaking slowly and carefully, she says she came to understand “a lot about how my privilege allowed me to not have to learn about white privilege. I didn’t know about it as a kid, and that is privilege itself, you know? And that’s something that I’m still trying to educate myself on every day. How can I see where people are coming from, and understand the pain that comes with the history of our world?”

She also accepts some responsibility for her overexposure, and for some of the tabloid drama. If she didn’t wish a friend happy birthday on Instagram, there would be reports about severed friendships, even if they had celebrated together. “Because we didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen – and I realised I had done that,” she says. “I created an expectation that everything in my life that happened, people would see.”

But she also says she couldn’t win. “I’m kinda used to being gaslit by now,” she drawls wearily. “And I think it happens to women so often that, as we get older and see how the world works, we’re able to see through what is gaslighting. So I’m able to look at 1989 and go – KITTIES!” She breaks off as an assistant walks in with Swift’s three beloved cats, stars of her Instagram feed, back from the vet before they fly to England this week. Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith haughtily circle our feet (they are scared of the koi) as Swift resumes her train of thought, back to the release of 1989 and the subsequent fallout. “Oh my God, they were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake. And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” The rules kept changing.

***

Swift’s new album comes with printed excerpts from her diaries. On 29 August 2016, she wrote in her girlish, bubble writing: “This summer is the apocalypse.” As the incident with West and Kardashian unfolded, she was preparing for her court case against radio DJ David Mueller, who was fired in 2013 after Swift reported him for putting his hand up her dress at a meet-and–greet event. He sued her for defamation; she countersued for sexual assault.

“Having dealt with a few of them, narcissists basically subscribe to a belief system that they should be able to do and say whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to,” Swift says now, talking at full pelt. “And if we – as anyone else in the world, but specifically women – react to that, well, we’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to have a reaction to their actions.”

In summer 2016 she was in legal depositions, practising her testimony. “You’re supposed to be really polite to everyone,” she says. But by the time she got to court in August 2017, “something snapped, I think”. She laughs. Her testimony was sharp and uncompromising. She refused to allow Mueller’s lawyers to blame her or her security guards; when asked if she could see the incident, Swift said no, because “my ass is in the back of my body”. It was a brilliant, rude defence.

“You’re supposed to behave yourself in court and say ‘rear end’,” she says with mock politesse. “The other lawyer was saying, ‘When did he touch your backside?’ And I was like, ‘ASS! Call it what it is!’” She claps between each word. But despite the acclaim for her testimony and eventual victory (she asked for one symbolic dollar), she still felt belittled. It was two months prior to the beginning of the #MeToo movement. “Even this case was literally twisted so hard that people were calling it the ‘butt-grab case’. They were saying I sued him because there’s this narrative that I want to sue everyone. That was one of the reasons why the summer was the apocalypse.”

She never wanted the assault to be made public. Have there been other instances she has dealt with privately? “Actually, no,” she says soberly. “I’m really lucky that it hadn’t happened to me before. But that was one of the reasons it was so traumatising. I just didn’t know that could happen. It was really brazen, in front of seven people.” She has since had security cameras installed at every meet-and-greet she does, deliberately pointed at her lower half. “If something happens again, we can prove it with video footage from every angle,” she says.

The allegations about Harvey Weinstein came out soon after she won her case. The film producer had asked her to write a song for the romantic comedy One Chance, which earned her second Golden Globe nomination. Weinstein also got her a supporting role in the 2014 sci-fi movie The Giver, and attended the launch party for 1989. But she says they were never alone together.

“He’d call my management and be like, ‘Does she have a song for this film?’ And I’d be like, ‘Here it is,’” she says dispassionately. “And then I’d be at the Golden Globes. I absolutely never hung out. And I would get a vibe – I would never vouch for him. I believe women who come forward, I believe victims who come forward, I believe men who come forward.” Swift inhales, flustered. She says Weinstein never propositioned her. “If you listen to the stories, he picked people who were vulnerable, in his opinion. It seemed like it was a power thing. So, to me, that doesn’t say anything – that I wasn’t in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was more than nine months into his presidency, and still Swift had not taken a position. But the idea that a pop star could ever have impeded his path to the White House seemed increasingly naive. In hindsight, the demand that Swift speak up looks less about politics and more about her identity (white, rich, powerful) and a moralistic need for her to redeem herself – as if nobody else had ever acted on a vindictive instinct, or blundered publicly.

But she resisted what might have been an easy return to public favour. Although Reputation contained softer love songs, it was better known for its brittle, vengeful side (see This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). She describes that side of the album now as a “bit of a persona”, and its hip-hop-influenced production as “a complete defence mechanism”. Personally, I thought she had never been more relatable, trashing the contract of pious relatability that traps young women in the public eye.

***

It was the assault trial, and watching the rights of LGBTQ friends be eroded, that finally politicised her, Swift says. “The things that happen to you in your life are what develop your political opinions. I was living in this Obama eight-year paradise of, you go, you cast your vote, the person you vote for wins, everyone’s happy!” she says. “This whole thing, the last three, four years, it completely blindsided a lot of us, me included.”

She recently said she was “dismayed” when a friend pointed out that her position on gay rights wasn’t obvious (what if she had a gay son, he asked), hence this summer’s course correction with the single You Need To Calm Down (“You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). Didn’t she feel equally dismayed that her politics weren’t clear? “I did,” she insists, “and I hate to admit this, but I felt that I wasn’t educated enough on it. Because I hadn’t actively tried to learn about politics in a way that I felt was necessary for me, making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people.”

She explains her inner conflict. “I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’” In 2003, the Texan country trio denounced the Iraq war, saying they were “ashamed” to share a home state with George W Bush. There was a boycott, and an event where a bulldozer crushed their CDs. “I watched country music snuff that candle out. The most amazing group we had, just because they talked about politics. And they were getting death threats. They were made such an example that basically every country artist that came after that, every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.’

“And then, you know, if there was a time for me to get involved…” Swift pauses. “The worst part of the timing of what happened in 2016 was I felt completely voiceless. I just felt like, oh God, who would want me? Honestly.” She would otherwise have endorsed Hillary Clinton? “Of course,” she says sincerely. “I just felt completely, ugh, just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance.”

I suggest that, thinking selfishly, her coming out for Clinton might have made people like her. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she stresses. “I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break. For a while.” Did she seek therapy? “That stuff I just really wanna keep personal, if that’s OK,” she says.

She resists blaming anyone else for her political silence. Her emergence as a Democrat came after she left Big Machine, the label she signed to at 15. (They are now at loggerheads after label head Scott Borchetta sold the company, and the rights to Swift’s first six albums, to Kanye West’s manager, Scooter Braun.) Had Borchetta ever advised her against speaking out? She exhales. “It was just me and my life, and also doing a lot of self-reflection about how I did feel really remorseful for not saying anything. I wanted to try and help in any way that I could, the next time I got a chance. I didn’t help, I didn’t feel capable of it – and as soon as I can, I’m going to.”

Swift was once known for throwing extravagant 4 July parties at her Rhode Island mansion. The Instagram posts from these star-studded events – at which guests wore matching stars-and-stripes bikinis and onesies – probably supported a significant chunk of the celebrity news industry GDP. But in 2017, they stopped. “The horror!” wrote Cosmopolitan, citing “reasons that remain a mystery” for their disappearance. It wasn’t “squad” strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.

There is a smart song about this on the new album – the track that should have been the first single, instead of the cartoonish ME!. Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince is a forlorn, gothic ballad in the vein of Lana Del Rey that uses high-school imagery to dismantle American nationalism: “The whole school is rolling fake dice/You play stupid games/You win stupid prizes,” she sings with disdain. “Boys will be boys then/Where are the wise men?”

As an ambitious 11-year-old, she worked out that singing the national anthem at sports games was the quickest way to get in front of a large audience. When did she start feeling conflicted about what America stands for? She gives another emphatic ugh. “It was the fact that all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked,” she says. “The thing I can’t get over right now is gaslighting the American public into being like” – she adopts a sanctimonious tone – “‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’ We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate.” She doesn’t use Trump’s name. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”

As we speak, Tennessee lawmakers are trying to impose a near-total ban on abortion. Swift has staunchly defended her “Tennessee values” in recent months. What’s her position? “I mean, obviously, I’m pro-choice, and I just can’t believe this is happening,” she says. She looks close to tears. “I can’t believe we’re here. It’s really shocking and awful. And I just wanna do everything I can for 2020. I wanna figure out exactly how I can help, what are the most effective ways to help. ’Cause this is just…” She sighs again. “This is not it.”

***

It is easy to forget that the point of all this is that a teenage Taylor Swiftwanted to write love songs. Nemeses and negativity are now so entrenched in her public persona that it’s hard to know how she can get back to that, though she seems to want to. At the end of Daylight, the new album’s dreamy final song, there’s a spoken-word section: “I want to be defined by the things that I love,” she says as the music fades. “Not the things that I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.” As well as the songs written for Alwyn, there is one for her mother, who recently experienced a cancer relapse: “You make the best of a bad deal/I just pretend it isn’t real,” Swift sings, backed by the Dixie Chicks.

How does writing about her personal life work if she’s setting clearer boundaries? “It actually made me feel more free,” she says. “I’ve always had this habit of never really going into detail about exactly what situation inspired what thing, but even more so now.” This is only half true: in the past, Swift wasn’t shy of a level of detail that invited fans to figure out specific truths about her relationships. And when I tell her that Lover feels a more emotionally guarded album, she bristles. “I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star,” she says. “And then even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.”

Even so, Swift begins Lover by addressing an adversary, opening with a song called I Forgot That You Existed (“it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”), presumably aimed at Kanye West, a track that slightly defeats its premise by existing. But it sweeps aside old dramas to confront Swift’s real nemesis, herself. “I never grew up/It’s getting so old,” she laments on The Archer.

She has had to learn not to pre-empt disaster, nor to run from it. Her life has been defined by relationships, friendships and business relationships that started and ended very publicly (though she and Perry are friends again). At the same time, the rules around celebrity engagement have evolved beyond recognition in her 15 years of fame. Rather than trying to adapt to them, she’s now asking herself: “How do you learn to maintain? How do you learn not to have these phantom disasters in your head that you play out, and how do you stop yourself from sabotage – because the panic mechanism in your brain is telling you that something must go wrong.” For her, this is what growing up is. “You can’t just make cut-and-dry decisions in life. A lot of things are a negotiation and a grey area and a dance of how to figure it out.”

And so this time, Swift is sticking around. In December she will turn 30, marking the point after which more than half her life will have been lived in public. She’ll start her new decade with a stronger self-preservationist streak, and a looser grip (as well as a cameo in Cats). “You can’t micromanage life, it turns out,” she says, drily.

When Swift finally answered my question about the moment she would choose in the VH1 Behind The Music episode about herself, the one where her career turned, she said she hoped it wouldn’t focus on her “apocalypse” summer of 2016. “Maybe this is wishful thinking,” she said, “but I’d like to think it would be in a couple of years.” It’s funny to hear her hope that the worst is still to come while sitting in her fairytale living room, the cats pacing: a pragmatist at odds with her romantic monument to teenage dreams. But it sounds something like perspective.

#taylor swift #interview #by taylor #the guardian #lover era #lover album #not sure how I feel about the interviewer's approach...there's a lot of irony in it #but a fun read for us nonetheless

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lol-jackles · 3 years

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Please excuse me first. English is not my native language and I try to write as understandable as possible. And I tend to ramble, please shorten the text if it becomes too much blah. 😆

I really enjoy reading your blog and admire with what objectivity but also with the right trace of irony you write your posts. Your entries often remind me of Mark Shepard's panels. You never quite know what you're going to get. A friendly hug or a scathing, sarcastic response. 😅

Now I'll take a chance and see if I get a hug or an arrow in the back. 😆

I am an absolute realist in professional life. I get that the world is not all frosting and rainbows and that in principle it's really always about one thing. Power and / or money.

All the more it amazes me how much the friendship of the two Js touches me. Over the years I have seen how the boys became men, family fathers and role models. Who have managed to bring a professionalism to a set without losing the fun of the work. And who have always emphasized at conventions, in social media or through interviews how close their friendship is and that virtually no leaf fits between them.

I admit, it was exactly this relationship that made me want to go to Creation cons and spend my money on photos and merch.

For the last three years, however, I've been getting the feeling that either something has happened or it's just an act. It's little things. No more activities outside the set or the cons. The regular tweets about each other, completely disappeared. Jensen moving away from Austin.

Now Covid is obviously a reason that can't be dismissed, but the feeling has been there before and I don't see it changing. At the virtual cons they still seem to be best buddies, but as soon as those are over - radio silence.

I have more and more the feeling that actually both have long gone their separate ways and have nothing more to say to each other, except that now and then one writes a tweet, where he advertises the job of the other.

But at conventions they are suddenly very close again and emphasize how much they like each other.

As mentioned, I am usually rational. I know that the business with the cons is lucrative and why should you let a source of income dry up that gives you such a good basis.

I just don't want to be lied to.

I am happy to go to cons and listen to two work colleagues talk about their former time on the set. What I don't like is being led to believe "oh, we like each other so, so much" and as soon as the curtain falls they don't look at each other anymore. "Galaxy Quest" sends its regards...

After all that babbling, I just want your ruthlessly, honest answer:

Do you think that (at least in recent years), this oh so intimate friendship is only celebrated at the cons, so that we fans please continue to come and leave our money there?

The short answer is they’re still friends. Sure it's gone through changes and maybe one or two reboots, but they're still friends. So if you go to conventions you'll get what you'll see from the J2 panel.

Longer answers....

"For the last three years, however, I've been getting the feeling that either something has happened"

Three years ago was when CBSTV studios approached Jared with an offer of a holding deal, and Jared agreed and subsequently sealed the end Supernatural that is going to put a lot of people out of the job, yes including Jensen’s. I don’t care how mature you are, your emotion is still going to kick you in the gut, it has nothing to do with logic or rational. I now think Jared was originally going to leave after season 14 and WB would have attempted a Jensen-led season 15. But the two studios came to an agreement to allow Jared continue for one more additional season and then WB will wrap up the show for good.

"No more activities outside the set or the cons. The regular tweets about each other, completely disappeared."

The J2 friendship is indelibly part of the SPN brand and their new projects, Walker and The Boys, don't want to be overshadowed by the SPN brand since they naturally want their own "family" brand to shine. If you're Coke, the last thing you want your new VP to do is tweet how much fun it was to hang out with Pepsi and then put SM on blast with pictures of all your weekend outings with Pepsi when you’re supposed to be part of the Coke “family”.

Even SPN fans who are watching Walker got very annoyed with a writer who won’t shut up about SPN while writing recaps and reviews on the Walker episodes, like comparing Cordell and Emily’s initials on a saddlebag to Sam and Dean’s initials on the bunker table. Occasional comparison or homage is fun, but not all the damn time.

"Jensen moving away from Austin."

Temporary. I think he was trying to save his marriage with a change of scenery. He owe it to his wife and kids to try.

“But at conventions they are suddenly very close again and emphasize how much they like each other.“

These are SPN conventions so for reasons mentioned earlier, J2 are allowed to giggle together like school girls and talk about themselves and each other at will.

“What I don't like is being led to believe "oh, we like each other so, so much" and as soon as the curtain falls they don't look at each other anymore”

That’s true 90% of time because most actors are not friends. Jared and Jensen are the exception to the rules in part because they know how hard it is to form new genuine friendship past the age of 30, so they’re going to do their best to maintain their friendship. One of the reasons why high school friendship endures for decades is because of shared experiences, nobody else in the world knows what you experienced in that particular school in that particular timeline during particular cultural events, it doesn’t matter if you all are different as night and day. What also works in J2s’ favor is they both grew up in Texas’s unique cultural brand that becomes a shared DNA.

#holding deal

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manamanadodoodadodoo · 4 years

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Let’s talk about The Next Right Thing

I’m a little surprised that in all the Frozen II reactions I’ve seen online, I had to actively search to find people talking about arguably the most important song in the whole movie. And when I do see people talking about it, they take it from a character writing perspective while examining Anna, or they talk about how it resonated them because of their own battles with mental illness. And I don’t want to discourage that, I love those posts and I think that Anna’s character arc is excellent and super important, and that if people resonated with her song because of their own depression then that has value and meaning. But that’s not what I got out of it.

The Next Right Thing struck me in a very particular way because as much as it is a song about depression, it’s really a song about grief. Those things are incredibly closely related, but there’s an ever so slight nuance I need to point out. Anna does not have depression. She is depressed at this moment, and probably will be for a while, because she is grieving. And grief, really heavy grief, is not something I see depicted often in media, especially children’s media. I think the closest example I can think of off the top of my head is Simba’s reaction after Mufasa dies in The Lion King, and even that takes a lot more of a show-don’t-tell approach to how he copes. So let’s talk about the best song in Frozen II.

This song holds some of the most well-written and accurate depictions of what true grief feels like. I am no expert on grief by any means, but I did lose my little sister seven months before seeing this movie so I speak with some certainty when I say this song nailed me right between the eyes. There are several lines in particular that really capture just how grief can hit you:

“I’ve seen dark before, but not like this. This is cold, this is empty, this is numb. The life I knew is over, the lights are out. Hello, darkness, I’m ready to succumb.” Anna is going through the shock of a sudden and unexpected death, and realizing that this is the turning point. From this moment on, there will be the Anna who was Before, and the Anna who was After. It’s like the moment in Mulan when the song A Girl Worth Fighting For gets cut short. Up until that moment, life was not necessarily easy but it was normal and bright. Then at the end of the song, shit got real. Anna is realizing that from this moment on, life can never go back to what it was like before.

“I follow you around, I always have, but you’ve gone to a place I cannot find. This grief has a gravity, it pulls me down. But a tiny voice whispers in my mind, ‘You are lost, hope is gone, but you must go on and do the next right thing.’” The heavy grief you feel when someone you’re close with dies has a physical weight. Your body will react, you’ll feel tired and like you can’t get up or do anything. This is the part of the song which looks the most like the typical depiction of depression to me, however I myself have never struggled with depression so I’m only really qualified to speak on the part about grief. We both see and hear Anna going through the physical weight of her grief. But then the song goes on to talk about the little voice inside of her telling her that even though nothing in life can be worse than what she’s going through right now, she needs to get through it little by little. I think one of the hardest parts about grieving is that as much as you don’t want it to, life goes on. There is no other option. So you continue to eat, and you continue to breathe, and as you go you start to slowly pick yourself off the ground, and as life moves forward so do you because there’s no other option. You must go on.

“Can there be a day beyond this night? I don’t know anymore what is true. I can’t find my direction, I’m all alone, the only star that guided me was you. How to rise from the floor when it’s not you I’m rising for? Just do the next right thing. Take a step, step again, it is all I can to do the next right thing.” This paragraph I think has a lot more to do with Anna’s particular situation than grief as a whole, but regardless a few key points stand out. There are a lot of aspects of your life that you take for granted as constants, and when somebody dies, especially suddenly, it rocks your whole world. Everything you were certain of is suddenly proven to be temporary, and in a time where you need the most stability you can’t trust the very things you used to rely upon. Then with the last part of the paragraph, she goes on to emphasize that grief is difficult to work through, and the only thing you’re capable of doing is getting through it. Grieving is a lot of hard work, and nobody wants to do it.

“I won’t look too far ahead, it’s too much for me to take. But break it down to this next breath, this next step, this next choice is one that I can make.” This bridge is basically the whole message of the song and is pretty straightforward. In times when life is overwhelming and you have no choice but to continue, it feels like an impossible feat. But even when you can’t do anything, if you can just take that one little step forward then eventually you’ll be one step further and further away from where you were.

“So I’ll walk through this night stumbling blindly toward the light, and do the next right thing. And with the dawn, what comes then? When it’s clear that everything will never be the same again? Then I’ll make the choice to hear that voice and do the next right thing.” I think the worst part of grief, aside from missing the person you love and feeling awful, is the realization that nothing will ever be like it was. You truly feel like there was a you Before and a you After. You go through life and even if you can’t pinpoint precisely what it is that’s bothering you in that moment, the whole world around you just feels wrong. And you get to go through life knowing that even if as time goes on the grief won’t hurt in the same way, a grief that’s heavy enough will never truly go away. It may feel different, but the world will never feel completely right. And that’s just the way it is. The last thing Anna says has a lot to do with who she is as an optimist, but I think it’s another important message in the song. In an interview with Kristen Bell, she said that being an optimist doesn’t mean that you’re happy all the time. You still feel the full range of emotions and experience all of life, the good and the bad. But you make the choice to focus on the bright side of life. In grief, looking at the bright side of life feels like a slap in the face. But even so, you can make the choice to let yourself move just a little bit further in the right direction. And every little bit is one step closer to life being if not right, then at least a little bit less wrong.

Aside from all the amazing lyrics in the song, we also get to see Anna suffering. We see her lying on the cold ground of the cave. We see her struggle to claw herself back to her feet. We see her heave herself up the side of the cave wall. We see her take a deep breath and leap across that gap, and we see how heavily she lands on her feet. When she finally makes it outside, she wails the line about how everything will never be the same again. And even after the song is over and she yells at the earth giants, she doesn’t sound like the quirky and funny Anna we love, she sounds tired, and pissed, and defeated. She’s on a mission sure, but that’s exactly what it is. It’s a mission, and a goal, and once she’s done with the harrowing experience she takes a minute to briefly look at the good that happened, and then you can watch the weight of the grief sink into her again. And then Disney makes everything all better and we have a nice happy ending.

I think my point in going through all of this is to demonstrate that really heavy grief sucks, a lot, and that it’s important to show it in the media. The irony of grief is that at some point in our lives, every single one of us will lose somebody we care deeply about and it will scar is forever. When you’re the one grieving, it’s impactful to see that there are other people in the world who understand what you’re going through, and that no matter how alone you may feel you’re not truly alone. And if you’re not the one grieving, and you’re lucky enough to have not felt this way in your life yet then I’m so happy for you. But take a look at Anna and ask yourself, what would you do if you were in that cave with her? What could you possibly do or say to make it any better for her? Do you console her by reminding her how much Elsa suffered in life, and that she’s in a better place now? That’s not going to make her feel any better. Do you tell her it’s okay to let herself feel happy, and that Elsa would want her to live a happy life? Maybe, but only if it looks like she’s struggling to let herself be happy, and definitely not in the immediate aftermath. So what do you say? The answer, unfortunate though it may be, is that there’s nothing you can do or say to make it better. The best thing you can do is say that you’re sorry, and show that you’re there for them and that you think of them and their loved one. Even months or years after the fact. The best thing you can do is show that even though somebody died, their life had meaning and an impact that can’t just be forgotten.

And to that end, I’m grateful that this song was in the movie. I’m glad that Disney was brave enough to show the complexity and hardships of grief as it truly is. And I’m glad that I finally have a grief song that I can point to when people don’t understand what it is people go through when they grieve.

#frozen 2 #frozen #elsa #anna #the next right thing #grief #bridget #depression #frozen ii

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fremedon · 3 years

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Brickclub 2.8.8, “A Successful Interview,” and 2.8.9, “Cloistered”

I don’t really have anything to say about 2.8.8 that Bird didn’t say in his excellent writeup, so let’s move straight on to 2.8.9, “Cloistered.”

This is a long chapter and there’s just so much here. In the first sentence, we are told, “In the convent, Cosette continued to keep quiet.” She’s been trained to be quiet and small and had only just started to trust Valjean when he went away and left her again. But by the end of the chapter, Cosette is laughing, loudly enough and often enough for Valjean to pick out her laughter from the other girls’; and, “[t]hough still not pretty, Cosette, it must be said, was becoming delightful.”

Valjean came back for her. Her faith and trust were finally rewarded, and she gets to build on that. Cosette bounces back. Valjean… hoo boy.

He puts her mourning outfit aside in a suitcase full of camphor—which is to say, an embalming chemical. For Cosette, putting off mourning is a good thing. She starts laughing again. For Valjean—the clothing of a child that no longer fits (and mourning doesn’t fit beyond its term) was the first example given of the shades of the past making an invalid claim on the present. Cosette will dub the suitcase The Inseparable; Valjean will keep it always next to his bed with the key on his person—but his distance from Cosette herself starts growing, and will continue to grow.

When there are outside errands, the elder Fauchelevent runs them, and the nuns never notice that Valjean never leaves the convent cloister: “These four walls now constituted his world. Here, he saw enough of the sky for his own serenity and enough of Cosette to be happy.”

So, firstly, FOUR WALLS. As in FOUR, as in WALLS, and as in WAR BETWEEN—three levels on which this is not a good place and Valjean’s serenity and happiness do not mitigate that.

I do like the ambiguity of the nuns either being incapable of spying on Valjean, or too preoccupied with spying on each other to bother. It’s a nice transition into Valjean’s POV on the nuns, from the narrator’s.

And it’s a big shift. All through the heist sequence, the nuns have been really worldly—driven by ambition—right up through the end of 2.8.8 where they’re humblebragging about the heist in their confessions—and focused on worldly obstacles: public health regulations, bureaucracy, fines, and the physical challenges of moving and concealing a body. From Valjean’s POV, we don’t get any of that—he doesn’t perceive the reality and individualism of the nuns that Hugo has spent a very long digression building up. Some of his observations about the convent are probably true—I’ll come back to that—but he’s idealized it to a degree that Hugo has just spent a hundred pages telling us we shouldn’t.

Which, in conjunction with all the other things I’ve been noticing about the convent this time around, leaves me really not sure what to do with this:

God has his ways, after all. The convent contributed, like Cosette, to sustaining and completing in Jean Valjean the work of the bishop. It is certain that there is an aspect of virtue that leads to pride. There is a bridge there built by the devil. Jean Valjean was perhaps unwittingly quite close to that aspect and to that bridge when providence cast him into the Petit-Picpus convent. So long as he compared himself only with the bishop, he regarded himself as unworthy and remained humble, But for some time past he had been starting to compare himself with other men, and pride was germinating in him. Who knows? He might have ended up returning very slowly to hatred.

So, to start with. This is one of those paragraphs where there’s an awful lot that’s implied but not stated, and I am learning that Hugo is usually up to a lot of trickery when he does that. Parts of this paragraph make me want to read it as Hugo’s usual brand of irony or even sarcasm—that last line undercuts itself so many times I have a hard time reading it any other way.

And I have a very hard time seeing the pride Valjean has developed as a bad thing, or regarding himself as unworthy—a tendency that’s going to increase a hundredfold in the convent—as good. The constant repetition of fours and eights, Gothic death imagery, and all the comparisons to literal jails are driving home the ways that this is not a healthy place for Valjean.

But then there’s “sustaining and completing the work of the bishop.” There’s…definitely a reading to be made that the particular work of the bishop that’s being completed here is not Valjean’s salvation or his rescue from hate and despair, but the undermining of his sense of self-worth and righteous anger. I don’t know if that’s what we’re intended to take from this. I definitely think, this time through, that the bishop isn’t set up as perfect, that we are meant to critique his way of dealing with Valjean and the world—but tying him to this place and what it does to Valjean feels like a deeper acknowledgement of fault than I get the sense the book is ready to make.

After this comes the long, point-by-point comparison of the bagne and the convent, ending with

“And in these two places, so alike and so unalike, these two species of human being, so different from each other, were devoted to the same task: expiation.

Jean Valjean well understood the expiation of the former, personal expiation, expiation for oneself. But he did not understand that of the latter, that of these blameless creatures free from sin, and he wondered with a shudder: ‘Expiation of what? What expiation?’

A voice in his conscience replied: ’That most divine of human generosities, expiation for others.’

Here, all our own thinking is set aside. As narrator, we are simply putting ourselves in Jean Valjean’s position and conveying his impressions from his point of view.

Just as whenever Hugo insists that he’s digressing onto a completely irrelevant tangent, he’s making a central point, I’m pretty sure that right here he’s stressing that these are also the views of the book and of himself, Victor Hugo.

So we do get the bottom rungs of the ladder whose top is the barricade: another republic enclosed in four walls, expiating the sins of others, but doing it more effectively—a tollgate to the future. The nuns really are attempting a great good, even if everything about how they’re going about it is inside-out.

But Valjean is going to take exactly the wrong lessons from them:

Sometimes in the evening at twilight, a time when the garden was deserted, he could be seen kneeling in the middle of the path running alongside the chapel, in front of the window he had looked through on the night of his arrival, turned towards the spot where he knew the sister who was making reparation lay prostrate in prayer. And so he prayed, kneeling before the sister. It was as if he dared not kneel directly before God.

We’ve seen him kneel like this outside the bishop’s house; and we’ll see him prostrate himself in front of Cosette’s little mourning outfit. Throughout his life, we see him approach God through intermediaries because he feels unworthy of any other approach.

But I’m also feeling echoes here of Grantaire—someone else who recognizes the divine generosity of work that he doesn’t feel worthy or qualified to join in, and can only get as far as venerating the person doing the work.

Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to take from the promissory note from the Royal and Catholic army, pasted to the wall of Valjean’s room by an ex-Chouan gardener—a piece of scrip from the other side of the revolution, kept as a souvenir with no actual value, just as Grantaire will have an old assignat in a drawer.

#brickclub #lm 2.8.8 #lm 2.8.9

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carpstan · 3 years

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hi @wasp-factor! i'm your secret santa. i just wanted to say how happy writing this fic for you made me - i love gakushuu too, even though i never had the chance to write about him before, hopefully it's in character. i know you like gakushuu/isogai, and i tried to include it in the fic (apparently i really like this ship, i never thought about it before). i hope you'll like it and, since we don't know each other, maybe we'll become friends. happy holidays!

Asano Gakushuu discovers the magic of Christmas

He had done it on purpose. There was no other possible explanation.

Winter holidays were approaching and the headmaster himself had given class A a social studies assignment about the influence of Christmas. Normally, Gakushuu would not have minded writing a paper on a topic that he deemed to be quite fascinating, but that was really not the case: the headmaster apparently thought it would be delightful to have everyone discuss a different aspect of the main theme, so joining all the students’ essays would result in a rich dissertation that would cover every little detail. The problem was the theme he got.

According to the instructions he received, his task was to understand what made Christmas so appealing to people in terms of improvement of their mood and behaviour; in easier words, he had to investigate the odd phenomenon known as “the magic of Christmas”. Oh, and he had to provide actual evidence to support his thesis as well. He had to go on the streets and interview people.

So, his father absolutely did that on purpose. Forcing him to reflect on a social event he considered not only pointless but plain out dumb, while also having him interact with random strangers who were likely just as dumb was an extremely clever way to torture him. Like that was not enough, he knew he could not complain about it with his friends, who he was sure considered him lucky and would have immediately said he got the best topic. The audacity.

It could have been literally anything else. And to say he was almost excited - no, not the right word. He was intrigued when the theme was announced. He had made some research on his own and he had stumbled upon an interesting article regarding the frailty of a consumist economy which revolves around a single month of extreme consumptions, he would have been ready and enthusiastic to write about it. Ren got that part instead. Now that was luck.

Well, he better start to plan out his actions. First of all, he was going to complain to his friends: they were not going to understand him, but he still needed to get rid of some frustration. Then he would start right away. The deadline was two weeks from then and he needed to get properly organised to avoid spending too much time on this project. The sooner he turned it in the better.

---

It was not going as well as he expected. He thought everything would have run as smoothly as usual, but he should have taken some factors into account. The problem was that for the first time in his life, he found himself in the unenviable position of talking about a topic he had no knowledge nor experience of.

His father and he never celebrated Christmas, or any holiday to be fair. Their house was the only one in the neighbourhood, or maybe in the whole city, which was completely missing decorations. Once he was asked how he felt about it, and the truth was he did not feel anything at all. His family was not religious, and not believing in Jesus Christ sounded like a perfectly good reason not to celebrate his birth to him. He did not mind his house keeping its sobriety either; being exposed to flashing lights for more than two minutes gave him a mild headache, actually. He never thought it was sad, or whatever people said about those who did not celebrate, it was just behaving like usual in a time of the year which was just like any other period.

Still, he was having some troubles doing his deed. He had decided to start off with the interviews, since he knew from the beginning he would have had to rely on other people’s experiences, and also he wanted to get rid of the most distressful part first. That turned out not to be a good idea too.

Well, to be fair he did not have a choice. He just seemed to be particularly unlucky with the people he met. He tried his best to select those who looked more likely to actually answer his questions, but these last days also did their best to remind him the one thing he’s not good at: understanding others.

He wanted to develop a good thesis, so his intention was to gather information from people belonging to different social classes, age groups, gender, occupation and so on; he had thought that, if he had been able to analyse the phenomenon through different perspective, he would have also found the key to see the whole picture. Apparently he could have not been more wrong.

Apart from being dragged down a rabbit hole of war stories and memories of a long dead man by an old lady, witnessing a college student have a full on mental breakdown and having a business woman tell him that her children were ruining her life and their expensive desires were driving her crazy - that would have been helpful, if only he had got the part about the economy - he received the same answers from everyone. And those were not answers he could work with.

A lot of his targets claimed that presents were the best part - both receiving and giving. It made sense, at least the part about receiving, because he really could not see the appeal of wandering all day through the streets - oh, the irony - looking for gifts and getting crazy while trying, and probably failing, to figure out what someone might appreciate. Again, it could have been an interesting take to explore for the economic aspect, but he should stop thinking about that.

No, the tradition of presents was actually a decent starting point, maybe it was kind of shallow and too closely connected with the intrinsic materialism of a consumerist society - okay, enough - and it was not completely clear to him why everyone was so obsessed with Christmas and not any other holiday if it was just about gifts, but he could make it work. What actually bothered him was the other answer he frequently received.

It was lights. People actually told him that they liked the little lights all over the buildings and all the other decorations. Lights. Was he supposed to say that what made the population radically change its habits and attitude in the month of December depended on lights? What is wrong with everyone?

Exchanging presents and “festive atmosphere” really was all he got. He could feel his average grade suffer. He was not going to let it happen, let alone because of a social studies assignment on the magic of Christmas.

---

It was his fifth day of scanning the streets for someone who would give him some good material to work on. He had been reviewing his notes and the night before he had had an idea: it was his last resort, but time was running fast. Reluctantly, he made his decision. He was headed towards the 3E building and he intended to make a truce.

When he did arrive at the building he could not find anyone. Class E was definitely odd, but how skilled each of them appeared to be at getting through that hell of a path down the mountain was beyond weird if you asked him. Maybe it was for the better, he thought. He would have found another way, he did not need any help, certainly not from them.

Just as he was about to head back he noticed someone walking out of the building and towards him. Isogai arrived at the spot where he was standing fast, stopping at an appropriate distance before speaking.

- Asano-kun, I didn’t expect to see you. Do you need anything?

He did not look too happy to see him there, but he was very polite, just like it was expected from him. Isogai also seemed eager to know what brought him there, which was legitimate; he swallowed down his pride and forced himself to do what he came for.

- Actually, yes, I do.

Gakushuu straightened his back before continuing.

- I’m writing an assignment for social studies about the social effects of Christmas and I need to interview some people. I haven’t received any satisfying answer so far, so, would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?

Isogai was surprised by what he could tell. Fair, he thought. He was not aiming at him specifically, but any 3E student would have had the same reaction. Or a way less polite one. He had to admit, he was quite content having met him: he did not insult him and sent him away, which was already a lot, and Gakushuu did have some sort of respect for him, if he could call it that. He acknowledged he was smart and most importantly he was skillful enough to be able to use his intelligence to do a good job as class representative. He was from class E, so he mostly despised him, but a little less than he despised the others.

- Of course. What is it?

He had hesitated for a couple of seconds before pronouncing the words, and Gakushuu guessed he had debated whether he should indulge in their conversation or not until the very last moment.

- Do you consider Christmas important?

Isogai pondered his words upon answering.

- My family is Christian, but I’ll admit we don’t give much weight to the ritual celebration. Apart from that though, we do take Christmas seriously.

Gakushuu nodded slowly. Not religion then. He had already figured that bit on his own, religion might have been a relevant fuel in the past, but it could not get such an effect in these times. It was time to ask the infamous question then: he really hoped he was not going to hear presents and lights again; this really was his last resort.

- If not religion, what is it that makes Christmas so special? How is it different from any other holiday?

Isogai took yet another pause.

- Well, it is the only holiday that brings my whole family together. On Christmas day no one is at school, or at work, and even if it happened before that we had to spend it in the hospital, we still were all together.

A small smile was forming on his face as the words rolled out of his mouth; he may have not even realised the corners of his mouth rising ever so slightly.

- We also usually get to eat a meal that is a little more elaborate than our usual, and since we cook all together too it’s another chance to spend as much time as possible with each other without worrying about everyday’s problems. It’s the one day we can live completely carefree. And since everyone else tends to feel more generous, they leave higher tips, which is convenient.

Family. Was that the key? It was the message that also laid under those college students who mentioned some dishes that their relatives were going to cook and that they were looking forward to eating. He should have understood before, he told himself, but he knew he could not. He just could not. He was never going to understand what it really meant, he knew because he had forced himself to do it before. Even those times he had tried to picture a cohesive family, he still did not manage to get past the notion that the concept of family itself is supposed to be on a higher level than most things. Why would something one had no control over ever be so important? How could relationships decided by casuality alone be more relevant than those born out of mutual choice? It did not mean anything to him. He was never going to understand.

But at least he had enough material to write a good essay now. He could have just thanked Isogai and left, but there was that last sentence he had said. He did not think too much before opening his mouth again.

- Don’t you think that’s hypocritical?

Isogai now gave him a full, conscious smile, even though it had a shade he could not quite place: it looked almost sympathetic. He shrugged before finally replying.

- Maybe it is, but I’m not in a position to judge, if anybody is.

Gakushuu was not sure about what he should do with that statement. It was something to think about.

- Alright, that’s all I needed. Thank you, Isogai-kun.

---

Gakushuu did not write the essay right away. Instead, he took his time to adjust all the information he had gathered. He did not take any notes while talking to Isogai, but he soon realised that was not going to be an issue at all: he remembered all his words perfectly, he noticed, and he proceeded to write them down in the evening.

Later, he caught himself thinking about that conversation more than once. They did not even say much, and he wished they had taken some more time. Speaking with Isogai again was something he would have liked; they did not have much in common, but he still thought they might have some interesting discussions, if only they had the chance.

He actually ended up handing in his paper on the last day. It was not usual for him, or, to be honest, it should be said it had never happened before. He knew he had made excellent work.

---

It was not evening yet, but the sun had set long ago. The sky was clear and a soft yet glacial wind was blowing; Christmas lights seemed brighter when the moon was not high up in the sky, drowning the stars themselves with their overwhelming glow. After a careful analysis, Gakushuu was confident in confirming that he hated them, and the flashing ones still gave him a mild headache. How all those people could appreciate them was forever going to be a mystery.

Mindlessly walking through the city centre, he was still thinking about that assignment. It had kept him occupied for a good portion of time, and he was glad it was now something he did not have to worry about anymore. As he was passing close to a café, something at the corner of his eye caught his attention. He stopped by the side of the street, unsure of the reason, and peeked through the café’s window: there he saw Isogai serving a couple of elders with a warm smile on his face. He was working hard, probably, no, surely looking forward to spending the next day with his mother and siblings. The man he had just served handed him what looked like a very generous tip, and his mind trailed back to that one conversation again. He could not understand Isogai’s situation either, he had to admit it, at least to himself. At the moment, it felt okay. Realising he could not understand everything for once did not feel like a tremendous crime he had to atone for. It actually seemed to him that he could empathise with Isogai, just for a second, and despite knowing it was nothing but an ephemeral feeling that was going to be gone in a flash, it made him feel well. Maybe poor people deserved rights, after all.

Then Isogai noticed and his face went pale. Gakushuu did not immediately interpret that reaction correctly, but he soon became aware of what his presence there had meant in the past: he thought he was going to tell his father about it.

Isogai excused himself and rushed outside to meet him without even bothering to grab a coat and started talking before Gakushuu had the chance to clarify his intentions.

- Asano-kun, I know I shouldn’t be working but I really-

- I’m not going to report you to the headmaster.

Gakushuu interrupted him immediately. Isogai did look significantly relieved.

- I was just passing by. But since I’m here I wanted to thank you for helping with my assignment. It was an interesting conversation.

Isogai’s eyes were wide open - he almost looked like a deer caught in the headlights. But soon he started to warm up and reserved him a smile similar to the one he gave to the clients in the café.

- Oh, I’m glad I was helpful. It was interesting indeed.

Gakushuu could almost feel himself starting to smile in the moments of silence that followed, which he hurriedly broke.

- Well, it’s cold. You should head back inside.

He quickly said then. Isogai was almost shivering actually, but he looked somehow pleased. Gakushuu suspected he had seen him smiling, but he could not be sure.

- Yeah, that’s right. Merry Christmas then, Asano-kun.

He greeted him; his smile might have been brighter than those Christmas lights.

- Merry Christmas, Isogai-kun.

He really did not despise him that much.

---

After leaving the café, Gakushuu decided to head home. The walk was not long and he deemed it quite relaxing. He was not paying a lot of attention to the familiar buildings of his neighbourhood: everything was in place, just as it was when he had left the house in the morning.

Except there was a difference, a small detail that could have gone unnoticed and that most people had surely missed, but which appeared like a massive change to his eyes: on his house’s front door there was a Christmas wreath. It was small and quite simple, but it was there. He stared at it for what might have been a whole minute before snapping out of the shock and entering the house.

He found his father sitting on the sofa reading a book like nothing had happened, but he was the only person who could have put it there.

- What does it mean?

Gakushuu asked as soon as he arrived in the living room, without bothering to greet him first.

- What is it?

His father asked, his eyes still fixed on the book in his hands.

- The Christmas wreath on the front door, what about it?

- I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Gakushuu stared at his father for a handful of seconds, before huffing what sounded like a “whatever” and going straight to his room. There, he allowed himself to smile.

#assassination classroom #assassination classroom secret santa

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empty-as-the-sky · 4 years

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Edward and Bella romantic comedy in Twilight is GOLD

Okay HOT TAKE.

TL;DR - The banter/comedy between Edward and Bella in Twilight is SO GOOD and it deserved to be kept in the movies and it’s a crime that it wasn’t.

As we all know, Twilight is mostly really problematic BUT re-reading the first book and the Midnight Sun draft I am DYING reading about all of the times Edward laughs at Bella or any time she says something sassy to him and they banter back and forth. It’s genuinely SO CUTE. When I was a young teen reading the books I loved their banter, and tbh I really didn’t think it would hold up years later, given how much of the books really DON’T hold up, but the banter absolutely does.

I think one of the reasons that the movies didn’t quite work for me - besides Chuckesme, the nightmarish CGI, terrible accents in BD pt 2, and the bad wigs - was that we didn’t get the humour of Bella and Edward’s relationship, and we didn’t really get to see the process of them falling in love. It just kind of . . . happened?

I’ve heard about that famous story in which Rob almost got fired from the first movie because he refused to be more light-hearted and smiley, and listen. I love Rob Pattinson because he is a chaotic boy and I love every interview he has ever done, but he really hated the books SO MUCH (fair) that he refused to play Edward as anything other than a depressed, ultra-serious boy. And sorry, but that sucks. Just do your job. Like yes, Edward is dramatic AF but he also thinks Bella is so funny that he’s ALWAYS laughing at her. In Midnight Sun, other kids in his class frequently give him weird looks because he is laughing OUT LOUD or smiling to himself at the shit that Bella does and says. The director/producers were TOTALLY RIGHT in highlighting all of Edward’s light-hearted moments in the book for Rob because there are so many of them, more than a lot of people seem to remember. And yeah, I think that maybe Rob should have been fired so that someone else who would have taken that direction could have played the part. In Romeo & Juliet, the rule with doing that show is that the angst and tragedy is only compelling if the first half is fully played as a rom-com and if it’s actually funny. You can’t play the end at the beginning. Same goes for Twilight, and most things tbh. Otherwise, you don’t really root for the central couple if it’s all melodrama and angst all the time. No one wants to see characters predicting the tragedy. I think that’s part of why, on top of all the actual legit criticism, a lot of people criticized Twilight for being too teenage angsty or mumbly when that wasn’t really the book at all, and the comedy allows for a lot more self-awareness to come through.

I’m not even going to quote all of the times that Edward suppresses, or tries to suppress a laugh or a smile at Bella’s expense in Twilight. There are way too many, but they are constantly roasting each other.

Maybe I’m projecting my own feelings onto the books that aren’t really there, but hear me out:

- In the early days, Bella keeps parking so far away from Edward in the parking lot and in Midnight Sun, Edward is upset and confused by it EVERY SINGLE TIME. And they’re both frowning about it but for different reasons. Bella’s frowning because she’s trying to stay away from his dramatic, beautiful, mood-swinging, abrupt ass and he’s frowning because he doesn’t understand why she is avoiding him and he’s sad about it. He’s like, “Why?? Did she park so far away from me?? Do you think she’ll come talk to me? Hopefully she will. Hopefully she won’t?? DO YOU THINK SHE’LL WALK PAST ME? SHOULD I TAKE A DEEP GULP OF AIR JUST IN CASE??

- In Midnight Sun, Edward is so amused at Bella getting emotional over the snow chains that Charlie put on her tires. Seconds before he sees Alice’s vision about the van, he’s just like, “This girl?? Is getting emotional?? Over her truck?? Why is this human?? So weird??”

- Bella FUMING about Edward just getting to waltz right through the hospital doors like a normal person and not having to receive medical attention after the accident. Edward even betrayed her by telling them that she hit her head and maybe had a concussion, because she DID hit her head, but she is SO GRUMPY that he showed concern for her physical health, cause we all know this depressed bitch wouldn’t have. And she is SO EMBARRASSED about having to wear a neck brace and loaded into an ambulance, that she has the balls to take off the neck brace and chuck it under the bed when no one is looking. We stan an iconic queen. Like babe, they put that on you for a reason but you just like throwing your own safety out the window I guess.

- Edward realizing that he never noticed how clumsy Bella is as he watches her through the eyes of her classmates? Also iconic. “Goddamn, this clumsy ass human, how does she?? Survive??”

- EDWARD CUTTING BELLA OFF IN THE PARKING LOT AFTER SCHOOL SO THAT TYLER ASKS HER OUT IN FRONT OF HIM IS ALSO SO FREAKING FUNNY. And Bella being tempted to scratch the paint on his car when she sees him shaking with laughter? So good.

- Edward trying to irritate Bella by making her think he’s going to be the fourth person to ask her to the dance, only to ask her to go to Seattle instead at the last minute

- “THE WASTING OF FINITE RESOURCES IS EVERYONE’S BUSINESS”

- Bella being too embarrassed to tell Edward her comic book-inspired theories but Edward dazzling her into telling him anyway, and then he just proceeds to roast her about her lack of originality

- Edward almost RIPPING THE DOOR OFF HIS CAR when he sees Mike lowering Bella to the ground after she faints in Biology because EDWARD THINKS SHE’S DEAD? And then Bella sees him approaching and IS SO EMBARRASSED and just tells him to go away? Chapters 3-5 of Twilight in terms of ComedyTM are *chef’s kiss*

- Edward just scooping up Bella and being super entertained at the irony that the sight of blood makes her ill.

- “He absolutely loathes me” - Edward about Mike, CHEERFULLY

- Bella calling Edward pushy when he insists on driving her home, which is just really accurate, because he absolutely is

- Edward making Bella lean in and then asking her not to fall into the ocean in La Push and Bella. Is. SO offended.

- Bella grabbing her own throat and pretending to be terrified when Edward says “Breakfast time” IS SO FUNNY and then her making a bad joke about “watching her hunt” and all she gets is CEREAL, while Edward looks on in confusion, like this girl has a sense of humour

People, the first half of Twilight in terms of rom-com material is fantastic. Yes there are still problematic elements and there’s a surprising (and worrying) amount of ableist language in the text, and there are obviously other issues with Edward and consent for sure. BUT the the banter is comedy gold and the problematic bits can be so easily edited out for adaptation. The banter makes Edward and Bella way more compelling as a couple because it makes them more human (no pun intended) and real, and it definitely gives them more personality.

In the movie, I just feel like we missed how gradual them falling in love really was and how reluctant they both were about it, and their belligerent banter was a big part of the sexual tension between them. Otherwise, I’m not really sure where it came from other than the fact that Kristen and Rob are really beautiful humans. Even though they were a couple at the time, I really missed that part of their chemistry onscreen.

I’m aware that for the movie, a lot of it came down to having to cut stuff in the script for time’s sake. But I still think they could have kept the spirit of the banter while cutting what they needed to.

Look, there’s a lot in the Twilight canon that’s not compelling at all, so it makes me really sad that one of the genuinely compelling things didn’t make it into the movies at all.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

#twilight #twilight saga #stephenie meyer #midnight sun #twilight renaissance #comedy #romantic comedy #edward x bella #edward cullen #bella swan #books to movies

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kellyvela · 5 years

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That "might burn your family" tweet is indicative of what I know is going to happen in fandom: sure, people are indignant now about Dany but most people don't like to be rebels; they like to be co-signed by authority (the "I'm right b/c its canon" crowd"). And no matter how it was sugarcoated, GOT canon is that Dany is a mass-murderer. Those who are not stans will slowly but surely fall in line with this reading of her, not the least b/c they don't want to be wrong AGAIN when the books come out.

If you didn’t see it already, this is the HBO_UK tweet the anon refers:

You sound very hopeful Anon. I agree that, in general, most people don’t like to be wrong, and certainly they don’t want to be wrong again about the same issue.

But this fandom is something else…

Certain part of it just decided to live in denial and delusion (oh the irony): “I would never post a pic of dead dany”, “dany belongs to her fans that really love her and not to the misogynist show/books creators” (copyright what?), “I would never read the Books if that is the final”, etc, etc, etc.

We also have the actress that played dany saying/doing things like these:

I stand by Daenerys.

Clarke revealed that she met Beyonce at an Oscars after-party hosted by the musician and her husband, Jay Z. There, she was approached by the host herself, who gushed about Daenerys Targaryen. Beyonce, however, like the rest of the world, was at that point ignorant about Daenerys’ dark turn in Season 8. “All I wanted to scream was ‘Please, please still like me even though my character turns into a mass-killing dictator! Please still think that I’m representing women in a really fabulous way,’ ” Clarke said of the encounter. [x]

About the backlash on the final season: “It was profoundly flattering. Is what it was, because when someone cares that much, that they’re ready to make such a noise about how they believe the characters should have been… should have been finished, and how the story should have been gone. That’s just enormously flattering, that just shows how much everybody loved it.”

She is using Dany and Drogon images to promote her charity. Dany is not bringing fire and blood for once, she is a cute little nurse bringing help to those in need.

We also have certain group of “asoiaf experts“ so called BNF, that decided not to watch the Show years ago, because it’s “sacrilege“, only the books are canon (in this I agree), but they have created their own canon, the way they interprete and understand the Books, and their followers buy everything they say as “the canon”. They still believe in their 20 years old theories that include Dany is the hero, maybe she would have a brief “dark phase“ but then “enters Jon” and they gonna fall in love, make love, celebrate life, have a baby, defeat the big bad guys walk walkers and sacrifice themselves to save the humanity. Tyrion will be the third head of the dragon, etc.

As you can see Anon, that very human sentiment to hate being wrong, sometimes includes the belief that you can’t be wrong. So all these people (fans/stans/experts/etc) will stand by their beliefs and theories till the very end (when the books are at last published and they read them). And even after that they would say that GRRM is wrong, just like right now they are saying D&D are wrong.

Dark Dany is not new. It have been theorized for years, And according to Elio García, co-author of the World of Ice and Fire, GRRM himself complimented that Dark Dany essay: “(…) he referred very specifically to the Meereenese Blot website and the knot essays. He said he was told about them, read them, and was very pleased that someone was able to get his difficulties and his intentions perfectly.”

And for those that paid attention, it was clear that the Show was taking that route at least since season 2. Her conversation with the Spice King is very telling. There is also this conversation with Hizdahr Zo Loraq in season 5 that is very much the same conversation she had with Jon just before he killed her.

The Battle of the Bastard’s script says: “She doesn’t have to look. She only allows the faintest hint of a smile. A smile that says: my tyranny is not ended, motherfucker. It’s only just begun.”

People also have season 7 and even after watching those seven episodes, they believed that GOT was going to have a happy ending, a Disney one, with Targaryen restoration, jonerice wedding, king and queen coronation, boat baby and all.

But you are right, the sugarcoat was real. They change season 7 - episode 2 title from “The Mad King’s Daughter” to something more poetic/whitewashed: “Stormborn”:

What I was impressed by was the little hints that we saw of potentially her (Daenerys) becoming like her father in those conversations ( her talking with Varys). You know, threatening to burn somebody alive, in any universes, it’s not great.

Bryan Cogman: She has dragons, an effective form of execution.

But knowing what her father was doing to people that line sticks in your ear and also when inviting him ( Jon) down and she wants him to immediately bend the knee

Bryan Cogman: Yeah, I mean, she sees this as her birthright… it’s plain and simple, you know, they took this from her, it’s hers.

And so much of the episode ( really the whole season) not just for Daenerys but for a lot of our characters is dealing with the legacy of their families and the generations that preceded them and dealing not only with how they feel about it and what they might share with some of those ancestors but how other people perceive you.

That legacy it’s kind of why I wanted to originally call it the Mad King’s daughter (I like Stormborn, I think is a great title actually), I really wanted to call it the Mad King’s daughter and actually it would have made more sense.

In the original edit there were more characters referring to her like this in pretty much every scene and I think some of that was lost in the final edit but in the original script and in the original edit ( which was longer) pretty much every character that wasn’t in the Daenerys‘s circle was referring to her as “the Mad King’s daughter is here” .

Considering this idea that she’s got a reputation before she has ever set foot there, because she has a brother’s reputation too, that first scene is definitely about her reconciling with that, wrestling with how much of that legacy is good for her brand and what isn’t and certainly that is a big part of the no-fire bombing strategy.

It’s like: you could come in here and torch the whole place and everyone would be horrified and what have you achieved? If you want to rule, you need to take a different approach.

But under that, and I think you picked up on something in that first scene, is that she’s got a real kind of need and desire to go in guns blazing and from an emotional point of view the scene has to set up this.

Game of Thrones’ Writer Bryan Cogman: In Conversation (Part 2)

The Mad King’s Daughter, she’s got a real kind of need and desire to go in guns blazing.

Yeah, hero material you all.

And even during season 8, after episode 2, Bryan Cogman made this really telling comparison between Sansa and Dany:

Sansa knows that of all the Starks that were ripped from Winterfell, she suffered the most to get it back. She’s the driving force for getting it back. Now she’s being told, “It’s not yours, and it’s not the Starks’ anymore. It belongs to Hitler’s daughter, the worst person in the world’s daughter, the daughter of the person who murdered your grandfather and uncle in the worst way possible. And guess what? Your brother, who you convinced to step up when he wanted to fuck off because of his death experience, bent the knee to her and is telling you that she’s your queen.” What part of Sansa’s reaction to any of this is irrational?

At the same time, if you’re Dany, this is the family that stole your family’s legacy. You grew up as a child living in constant fear that you were going to be murdered the next day. Then you’re married off to a warlord, and you’ve scraped and suffered and endured, and here you are. You’re going to help these people who destroyed your life and your family’s lives. Where’s the gratitude?

Even if he described both sides’ positions and sentiments, if you say one side’s reaction is not irrational, and then call the other side “Hitler’s daughter”, you know exactly who is the good guy and who is the evil one.

D&D surely sugarcoated Dany, they were not calling her plainly “The Mad King’s Daughter”, but they were subtly telling us that she indeed was Aery’s pretty version:

Jon: She’ll be a good queen. For all of us. She’s not her father.

Sansa: No, she’s much prettier.

—GOT season 8 - episode 1

In that “I stand by Daenerys” article, the interviewer recalled Kit Harington’s words about Jon killing Dany, during season 8 filming:

“I think it’s going to divide,” Harington says of the finale’s fan reaction. “But if you track her story all the way back, she does some terrible things. She crucifies people. She burns people alive. This has been building. So, we have to say to the audience: ‘You’re in denial about this woman as well. You knew something was wrong. You’re culpable, you cheered her on.’”

Harington adds he worries the final two episodes will be accused of being sexist, an ongoing criticism of GoT that has recently resurfaced perhaps more pointedly than ever before. “One of my worries with this is we have Cersei and Dany, two leading women, who fall,” he says. “The justification is: Just because they’re women, why should they be the goodies? They’re the most interesting characters in the show. And that’s what Thrones has always done. You can’t just say the strong women are going to end up the good people. Dany is not a good person. It’s going to open up discussion but there’s nothing done in this show that isn’t truthful to the characters. And when have you ever seen a woman play a dictator?”

After reading what Kit said, Dany stans gone rabid. They said things like HBO forced him to say those words and others simply insulted and hated him. Because, you know, he is wrong. D&D are also wrong. They are just a pair of white misogynist dudes that can’t stand women in power… SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

I mean, look at these headlines. Dany stans/targ lovers are now justifying genocide. They are making/selling/buying “Her Satanic Majestic” T-shirts.

So there you have it Anon. Some of them decided to believe Dany will still be the hero in the Books, because she ended slavery you know, that’s not what villains do, if you think different, you are a slavery apologist, also misogynist, and surely a Stark stan, those fucking classists xenophobes…

Some others just joined “Her Satanic Majesty” cult. Those ungrateful peasants deserved to be burned alive because they didn’t love Dany. it was their fault that Dany had to go in guns blazing on them. Burn them all! Dracarys! Fire and Blood!

It would be a long ride Anon.

#Daenerys Targaryen #Dark Dany #Game of Thrones

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marginalgloss · 4 years

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A little while ago I wrote about Swimming to Cambodia, a copy of which I discovered in a charity shop. I read it and I liked it a lot. And then for a while I forgot about Spalding Gray until one day my wife pointed him out to me in the film Beaches. I think he played a doctor of some kind — I wasn’t really paying attention — but it was enough to get me thinking about his stuff again.

I started trawling YouTube for what I could find. Most of his stuff is out of print, but there at least you can find a few of the monologues — Terrors of Pleasure, Gray’s Anatomy and It’s a Slippery Slope are all delightful. The most interesting primer is Steven Soderbergh’s documentary And Everything is Going Fine, which is assembled entirely from excerpts from Gray’s monologues and interviews. It’s a deft, skilful, and beautifully elegiac piece of work which feels more like one great final performance than it does a conventional biography. Appropriate, perhaps, given that so much of what Gray did was rendering up his life through storytelling.

I also bought a couple of books: Impossible Vacation, which is the only novel Gray published, and the posthumous collection of extracts from his journals. Apparently he laboured for years over the text of Impossible Vacation, with the original draft running to over a thousand pages — the monologue Monster in a Box was actually performed with the manuscript sitting in a scruffy cardboard box at his elbow. The final published form of Impossible Vacation is a relatively svelte few hundred pages in paperback, which is enough to make anyone wonder about the scale of the original.

I was expecting Impossible Vacation to be a bit more novel-like. I was expecting a modern American comic story along the lines of A Confederacy of Dunces, perhaps. But in fact, the novel is a lightly fictionalised version of Gray’s own life. And that’s about as ‘light’ as it gets: it’s funny, but it’s also just as self-involved as any of his monologues. Gray’s protagonist is renamed Brewster North, but not much detective work is required to map North to the author. Much of the novel is mirrored elsewhere in Gray’s stories from the stage: the trip to India, his brief stint as an actor in pornographic movies, the experimental theatre scene in New York; and above all the memory of his mother, and the lasting effects of her suicide.

If you read (and watch) far enough into Gray’s work it feels a little like wandering into a hall of mirrors: we see the same selves and preoccupations reflected over and over again, sometimes in distorted or disturbing ways. Glimpsed in passing the effect is comic, but after a while the effect becomes haunting. There is a moment in Gray’s Anatomy where he describes watching a student in a storytelling workshop, and staring into her eyes, and watching her face somehow disintegrate until the flesh falls from her skull and her face becomes a sort of ball of white light. Sometimes that’s what reading his stories feels like: the contortions of history and storytelling are subject to a relentless focus that becomes so intense that the reader is lulled into a sort of hypnotic compliance.

This feeling of falling into a sort of dissociative trance is not uncommon in his work; it seems emblematic of a sort of transcendental feeling that Gray was perpetually striving for. Hence the dream of the ‘perfect moment’ in Swimming to Cambodia, hence escapism via skiing in It’s a Slippery Slope. Set against that dream of escape is everything the real world has to offer: the anguish of the domestic; the problems caused by anxiety, depression, drinking; the sad, strange, tortuous complications of his love life. In these respects, it hasn’t aged well – I can imagine audiences today having a little less patience for Gray’s occasional sways into mysticism. And his attitude towards women might at times be generously described as ‘problematic’. In the 90s perhaps it was easier to dismiss his casual reports of philandering as the trappings of the tortured artist; today it only seems sad, and a little wearying.

So why is it that I find his stuff so appealing? I’m not in the habit of reading biography. I like podcasts, but while Gray seems like a model for all kinds of modern tendencies in vlogging, I’m not aware of anyone who is doing exactly what he did in the same way he did it. Current trends towards the confessional in stand-up comedy don’t quite fit, either. The form of the thing is so important. He was as much a performer as he was a storyteller. The closest equivalent that I know of is David Sedaris, and I find his stuff intolerable. There are a few reasons for this, but to me Sedaris always seems convinced that the problem is with other people. He is stuck in a mode of perpetual disdain. But with Gray, we are never really left in any doubt that this author is in fact the only author of his own troubles. And yet he also knows how to have fun, sometimes; and I find that endearing because it seems to me more honest, and less spiteful.

One point of comparison is Proust. I don’t mean to say Gray’s prose is exactly Proustian, but they have an endearing amount in common. There’s a perpetual anxiety about death and entropy that often manifests itself as hypochondria. There’s the obsession with the mother, the retiring nature, the preoccupation with irony. The pursuit of the perfect moment through which emotion can become recollected in tranquility. And though both took to entirely different forms of media, it seems like both were attempting something a level of formal innovation which, while initially seeming familiar, approached a new way of committing memory and experience into art.

Impossible Vacation is often intense but it’s not always laugh-out-loud funny. More often it seems possessed by a restless, struggling, enquiring energy. Sometimes the writing is inspired, but it lacks form – the feeling of form that was so dominant in the monologues themselves. As it stands, you wouldn’t consider half of the things that go on in the book as the plot for a novel because (like life) they don’t entirely cohere. And the story ends before it ever really begins, though it does at least contrive a neat circular ending that recalls (lightly) Finnegans Wake.

Still, it’s a shame that the novel is out of print because, much like his monologues, it’s certainly worthwhile; the published journals of Spalding Gray are an entirely different and more difficult thing. The journals are kind of a mess. An enormous amount of biographical heavy lifting is provided by the notes and annotations by the editor, Nell Casey, and without this context any reader would struggle to discern what was going on. But the notes are pretty comprehensive, and in the end this seems as close to a biography as we are ever likely to get. It does, however, take a long time to get going. The journal entries all through the 70s and early 80s are sketchy, and not especially interesting. A lot of the time they’re purely expressive, and we have to be told what it is exactly that they are referring to. It’s only once the monologues get going that his private style becomes elaborate and involved enough to be worth reading.

The picture we get of Gray is less of a single-minded auteur and more of a man who sort of wandered-or-fell into fame as a monologuist. After the fame and exposure of Swimming to Cambodia there is a sense of freewheeling — of doing what he’s doing because it’s what he does, and it’s rarely entirely under his own steam. He is perpetually worried, questioning, uncomfortable. Eventually he would become concerned with the idea that he had used himself up, and that he had no private life worth living outside the performances. But some of this was ameliorated by the late in life arrival of children and a more settled family situation. For a while, he thought himself happier than he had ever been.

In 2001, Gray was involved in a terrible car crash while on holiday in Ireland. His injuries included a broken hip and a fractured skull that likely caused brain damage. The accident changed his life, and afterwards he was never the same. The journal entries from after this point are harrowing — there is no other word for it. I knew of his eventual suicide, but I had no idea until of the extent to which depression utterly consumed his life. I didn’t know about the frequent hospitalisations, the shock treatment, and the pain his failed suicide attempts caused on others. There aren’t many extracts from this time shown, but what we are given was enough at times to make me wonder if any of it should have been published at all. But perhaps there is a purpose in trying to give a picture of the anguish he was in.

All through his life Gray had been preoccupied with the idea of his mother taking her own life. The story he told about this was that this was precipitated by his parents moving house, to a new place away from the ocean, which his mother could never feel at home in. After the accident he and his family also moved house, and he came to regret this decision intensely. The editor Nell Casey calls this ‘his obsession, a mythic rant’. Gray cannot seem to accept the idea that a house might be, as a psychologist puts it, ‘a pile of sticks’. Here is how Gray considers trying to explain it to his sons:

‘…And they said, I’m sure, that, you know, Mrs. Gray—my mom—has other problems about the house, it must be symbolic of something, that same old Freudian rap, you know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes a house is just a house. She missed the house. It wasn’t symbolic of something, she really missed walking along the sea. I miss walking in the village, I miss the cemetery, I miss hundreds of things. But boys, listen: when you get to that point, where you have been driven so crazy by something, like for me, when I think about the house, it’s not me thinking about it, it’s thinking me…’

#spalding gray #impossible vacation #swimming to cambodia #books

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sneek-m · 4 years

Video

youtube

ZOC just launched their YouTube channel. Though the intro video was very loose with the group trying to come up with a name for their channel — Marina’s pitch was Atsumare! Zoc No Mori; I loved Katy’s, Zoc A Go! — the follow-up took a sharp turn into the serious with the idol group, sans Marina or Maro, explaining the thoughts that went into creating “Family Name.” Being the one who wrote the song, Seiko did a bulk of the talking, and she brought up a few great points:

On the difference between writing Seiko’s own songs vs. ZOC songs (from around 3:50–5:15):

“ZOC is the SNS generation. I’m part of the original generation who first started to use it, but they’re a generation after, so they’re great at it. Saying things that grab you using the shortest amount of words, and that gets pulled out… Or a short portion gets pulled out of a long interview, and that goes viral. We have a lot of members who got popular because of a viral pull quote being attached to their pictures, so thinking about things like that, looking at comments on the internet, I wanted to make something that was SNS-ish.

…[While looking at idols in music videos,] I bet there was something like “I’m singing this, but I really wanted to sing that.” I can sing a full song because I’m solo, but for a group, I wanted to definitely make sure that no one gets handed lyrics to sing and think “oh so I’m singing *this* lyric.” I wanted them to look great singing the song no matter when they’re captured. I didn’t make it so the song is great when you read it in full, but so that they always look great singing any line when they pull out a single section.”

Approaching her songwriting as products of influence of social media, and the distinction between her two projects being determined by the different between the generation, is really interesting!

When Seiko started to get more mainstream exposure, a big thing that the media focused was her songwriting technique of her jotting down lyrics on the Notes app on her iPhone. That image of her work process really informed how I looked at her actual lyrics as text, which is often sprawling, very indulgent in content and a mouthful to actually sing out loud; it basically reads like a long block of text sent to someone private.

So it’s fascinating to see just how much concision comes into play when it comes to writing ZOC songs. She explains before that quote I translated how commercial pressures obviously feeds into how she writes her songs. It’s got to be catchy, and it’s got to have lyrics that a listener can remember; it’s got to be pop. But I do like her very current perspective to lyrics as an instrument to communicate message. Her lyrics start to look more like tweets and not the threaded kind. Fragmented is how they get disseminated anyway, even in song, with members only getting single bars of their own before it’s quickly volleyed to another. But fragmented, or more like distilled, is how audiences share their appreciation of their lyrics, too, as they pull their favorite and declare it as the skeleton key to their personal issues.

On the response to “Family Name” (around 10:25–11:05)

“The moment I finished the song, I felt like it was a song that can save people, and even more with them singing it. I feel it’s getting to the people it’s supposed to get to. On the YouTube comments, it’s not like, “she’s so cute!” but “in my home…” It’s a song where you want to talk about yourself. It’s not that “this girl is great” but it makes you like yourself; it makes you like the person who got to like them. I wanted ZOC to be a group where in the end, life is great because you came across them. There’s a lot of feedback like that with “Family Name.”

On the lyric, “kusso ikiteyaru,” or I’ll fucking live (12:30–13:30)

Katy: Not that long ago, people were saying, “I wanna die, I wanna die,” but they’re starting to say, “I’ll fucking live,” and I’m happy. I want them to think that “I want to die” is out of fashion.

Seiko: Right now, it’s a time when intense words are the kind that spreads around easily. I think an emotion like “I want to die” is something you can do a lot more with. You can say “I want to die” even when you want to say you’re hungry... It starts to become cheap… We want to completely change how we express that. We want to invent something new.

This makes me happy, too, especially coming from Katy, who often projects disinterest when she’s out in public. It reminds again of the discussion on the SNS/social media generation, how we express depression the internet, and how that expression has fed into pop music as of late. There’s still a transition, I think, growing out of the deep, cynical irony people use to dance around speaking about our issues directly — a habit more prevalent in the first generation, my generation. I don’t think the execution of “Family Name” is perfect in what it sets out do, but at least conceptually, it’s an inspiring rethinking of how to go about a sensitive topic like depression and suicide ideation.

#translation #ZOC #Seiko Oomori

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hutchhitched · 4 years

Text

The Vintage Joshifer Series: End of Love—Chapter 18

End of Love by hutchhitched

A kazillion years ago, I started posting this story. I never intended for it to drag on this long in between updates, but life happens and so does writer’s block. I know there’s little readership in the Joshifer fandom anymore, but I needed to finish it. If you’re still around to read it, thank you. If you want to dive in, I’d appreciate it. You definitely don’t have to be a Joshifer fan to read it since Josh and Jen’s characters are historical actors and not versions of their modern selves. There are three more chapters after this one, all of which will be posted this month (fifty years after the events that take place in the final chapter).

Historical events in this chapter include the following:

The Democratic National Convention took place in Chicago in August 1968. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination (see Chapter 16) threw the convention into chaos since there was no longer a clear front runner. LBJ’s vice president eventually won the nomination, but the real story was outside the convention in the streets where members of the New Left protested—including the Yippies, who nominated a pig for president (3:38). Riots broke out in the streets, and protestors, police, and journalists were all injured.

Not long after the DNC, there was a protest at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, NJ, led by those who were supporters of women’s liberation. The New York Radical Women (NYRW) and National Organization of Women (NOW), and members of consciousness raising groups all participated. Gloria Steinem, who helped found Ms. magazine and just recently toured the country promoting her new book, was one of the founders of NOW.

Shout out to @xerxia31 for drawing my attention to the quote, “The version of me you created in your mind is not my responsibility.”

Chicago, Illinois, August 1968

“Jen, are you working again today?” Amy shouted through the closed bedroom door. When there was no answer, she rapped loudly on the wood.

Half asleep, Jennifer stretched and rubbed sleep from her eyes. She rolled over and slipped her arm over Josh’s naked torso and yelled in a sleep-choked voice, “Yeah, I have to be there at noon. Sleeping in.”

“I’ll be home late tonight. Be careful.”

“Thanks, Amy,” she replied and nestled her head into Josh’s shoulder.

“Yeah, be careful,” he grunted and shifted onto his side. “Someone might try to take advantage of you or something.”

“Mmm… Good morning,” she breathed as he traced her collar bone with the tip of his tongue.

“Good morning to you. Signs point to it being very, very good.”

Jen spread her legs and sighed as he settled between them. His mouth greeted her as if they’d been separated for months, even though they’d spent the majority of the night before high and trying new positions from the Kama Sutra he’d scored from one of his friends at work.

“I’m not going to be able to walk today if you don’t stop that,” she teased in between sharp intakes of breath. She twisted her fingers in his hair as she approached her climax and tugged hard.

“Don’t gripe, doll,” he said as he tore his mouth from her. “You know you love this.”

Wrapping her arms around him, she tugged him against her and welcomed him inside. His long strokes drove her over the edge quickly, and he plunged into her as she gripped and rippled around him.

When they were finished, he tugged on a pair of bellbottoms with frayed denim hems and walked to the bathroom. He returned a few minutes later, dropped a kiss on her forehead, and left with only a brief farewell tossed over his shoulder as he walked down the hall. Stunned, she sat up and stared after him, but he didn’t return.

“Something’s still off,” she muttered before shrugging and dressing for work.

She’d only been at her new job for a few weeks. Once she’d decided to take Jack’s advice, things had moved quickly. She interviewed and got the job within a few days, allowing her to leave her job at the Tribune and take a reporter position at the local NBC affiliate. It had taken a bit to readjust to reporting news on camera instead of typing it, but she had no regrets. Her boss at the TV station was a saint compared to Mr. Murrow, and she enjoyed the new relationships she’d developed with her co-workers, most of whom were incredibly good-looking and closer to her age. The field was an entirely different world than the newsroom, and Josh seemed amused by her stories.

“Not sure what’s wrong with him today,” she mused as she made her way to work to receive her assignment and camera operator for the day.

“Jennifer,” her boss called from his office and motioned her inside. “I want you on the DNC this week. I know you usually work weekends, but Chicago doesn’t get the convention every year. You’ve got today and tomorrow to prep, and then you’re on until Thursday. I need you at the top of your game. These things are notoriously dull, so you’ll need to create some interest through interviews. Get people’s ideas.”

“On the convention floor?”

“No, you’re outside. I’ve got another team inside the convention itself,” he explained. “I need you to report on the mood outside the event.”

“Is anybody going to be hanging around outside? If people can’t get in, why would they be there?”

“I put in a call Daley’s office. The good mayor seems to think there might be trouble. Police are expecting some more radical groups to be in the streets.”

“Radical groups,” she murmured. She’d ask Josh what he’d heard when she got home. He knew more than she did about who would be there.

****

But Josh wasn’t at home when she got there. She stayed up late, studying and prepping for her assignment, but he didn’t come back. His clothes still hung in her closet, so she knew he hadn’t bailed on her and would return eventually. Still, his absence grated on her, especially when he didn’t return the next day either.

She woke early on Wednesday to featherlight kisses on her forehead. Josh settled onto her, pressing her into the mattress and winding his fingers in her hair.

“I missed you,” he whispered and wiggled his crotch between her legs.

Grouchy from lack of sleep and even more frustrated he’d been missing for the past two days without any sort of explanation, she snapped, “Where have you been, asshole?”

She almost smacked him when he chuckled, but she forgave him quickly enough when he explained he’d been planning a demonstration for the day at the DNC. He kissed her softly, lovingly, and she relented. She closed her eyes, let him inside, and moaned when he moved inside her. His political pillow talk excited him more than anything else lately, and he eventually came with a long, guttural growl in her ear. He pulled out quickly and dropped his head between her legs. His mouth worked magic on her. When he kissed her afterwards, she tasted both of them in his mouth. She wasn’t sure why that turned her on so much, but it drove her to beg for another round before she left for her shift.

****

Jen was met by a throng of protestors and twice as many police as she stationed herself outside the convention and attempted to interview as many people in the crowd as would talk to her. She wrangled a conversation with a woman named Katie, who proudly proclaimed herself a member of the Youth International Party.

“Katie, can you tell us a little bit about why you’re protesting today?” Jen yelled into the microphone and turned it toward the other woman. She bumped into the other woman when someone jostled her, and she strained to hear the answer.

Katie screamed at the top of her lungs, “Fuck the pigs! The Yippies are here to show how corrupt the police and government are. They support the military industrial complex, sending our boys to die in ’Nam while they wallow in filth in D.C. We’re here to nominate our own candidate, Pigasus the Immortal, because even a pig could run this country better than that asshole in the White House.”

Jen’s eyes widened imperceptibly, but she schooled her features as best she could. No matter what her interviewees said, she needed to remain neutral and report the news. No matter how radical or extreme, no matter if she agreed with the sentiment or not, her job was to present the facts and share what was unfolding in Grant Park to the rest of the nation.

As the crowd around her shouted, “Pigs are whores,” she marveled at the irony of nominating a pig for president while simultaneously slandering the police as whores. Tension crackled in the air, and she wondered briefly if Josh was actually somewhere in the crowd like he was supposed to be. Admittedly, while her political bent was less radical than his, she still agreed with a lot of his ideas. This, though, seemed more like it could burst into a riot immediately and not stay just a protest.

Hours passed, and she kept interviewing, kept side-stepping potential problems, and kept doing her job. As darkness fell, the crowd’s energy ticked higher. Something was going to happen. She could feel it. Thousands of police and national guard and military surrounded the protestors, and all it would take was one spark for the area to erupt.

Three minutes later it did. Someone threw a rock, the police retaliated, and a full-scale riot broke out in front of her. A Molotov cocktail whizzed over her head, and she motioned to her cameraman to start rolling. She had no idea if the station would pick up her report, but she wasn’t letting this opportunity go. This was a career-maker.

“As you can see, violence has broken out at the protests outside the Democratic National Convention here in Chicago. It’s 11:00 pm, and city ordinance says that all public parks must be closed at this hour. That hasn’t fazed the protestors, mainly members of the Youth International Party and others of the New Left, who demand an end to American involvement in Vietnam and a rehauling of the federal government.

“Chicago mayor, Richard Daley, has consistently declared that he will see law and order maintained, and he’s backed up that assertion with over 12,000 police, 5,000 national guard members, and 12,000 regular army troops, according to reports from the mayor’s office itself.

“Earlier today, Yippies, members of the Youth International Party, nominated a pig for president as a statement about the state of the government. Tonight, the establishment is fighting back. Expect more—”

Something struck her in the side of the head, and she saw stars. She focused enough to see her cameraman swivel the camera to capture the events, so she could gather herself.

“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, careful to keep her voice low in case her microphone was broadcasting. She pressed her fingers to her forehead and grunted at the pain. When she pulled her hand back, she was stunned to find it covered in blood.

The crowd jostled her, and she realized she needed to get out of harm’s way. Her head hurt, and she swayed when she tried to take a step. Dizzy and confused, she staggered to her left. A few seconds later, she collapsed.

****

“Wake up, Jennifer.”

The voice was insistent and familiar, and she tried to listen. It hurt too much. Too tired to care, she slid back into darkness.

“Jennifer Shrader Lawrence. Wake up!”

“No. Ow. Sleep. Sleep now.”

“Come on, doll. Wake up. Right now.”

With a growl, she nudged into the hand cupping her jaw and opened her eyes. The light from a single lamp made her head explode, and she whimpered in pain. It took several seconds for her to focus. When she did, she sighed, “Josh.”

“You know, you shouldn’t get a bottle thrown at your head. You’re too pretty to carry off a scar on your forehead.” His eyes were filled with concern and a hint of anger, but his lips curved into a gentle smile that made her want to kiss him.

“Good thing I have bangs,” she joked quietly in an attempt to keep her head from swirling. “How’d we get back here? What time is it?”

“A buddy of mine gave us a ride. I saw you get hit, and I managed to pick you up before you got trampled. Also, don’t black out in the middle of a riot. That’s just common knowledge.”

She frowned. “I was working.”

“You were,” he agreed before adding forcefully. “Now, you’re not. You take a bottle to the head and bleed all over yourself, you’re in no shape to be on TV. And it’s almost 4:00 am. You’ve been out for a while.”

“I took you away from the protest.”

Josh didn’t answer. Instead, he put a bag of ice on her forehead where the bottle had hit her right over her right temple. Indicating she should take it from him, he grabbed a bottle of aspirin off the bedside table, popped three into his hand, and put them on her tongue when she opened her mouth.

“You’re going to be laid up for a few days. You should call your boss when it’s a reasonable hour. He can call in a replacement.”

“Josh, I need to work.”

“What you need to do,” he snapped, “is get well. I’m going to sleep. I have to be back out there tomorrow.”

“You’re going back?” she yelped. “Why? So you can get hurt? There are thousands of police out there and the army and Daley doesn’t give a shit about any of you.”

“Which is exactly why we’re protesting, Jennifer.”

“Doesn’t make it smart.”

“I never said I was smart.”

Before she could say another word, he flipped off the light and headed to the living room.

“Where are you going?” she demanded, her anger barely contained.

“I’ll be on the couch tonight. Go to sleep.”

“Jackass,” she muttered, but she wasn’t in any shape to drag him back to bed. Instead, she closed her eyes and drifted to sleep. When she woke up the next morning, he was gone.

****

“There you are. I thought you weren’t going to make it home before I left.”

Josh stood in the hallway, his expression unreadable, and Jen zipped her suitcase closed. She rose and crossed to him, but he didn’t reach out for her or return her tentative smile. She really shouldn’t be leaving town when their relationship was on the rocks, but her boss insisted they needed her presence in Atlantic City, that her coverage of the riots not quite two weeks prior had shot her to superstardom—at least as much as a local news correspondent could be. She was the trusted face of news in Chicago and covering the Miss USA pageant would give her a softer side that would solidify her image of being able to report everything in the news cycle. She thought it was bullshit, but she wasn’t really in the position to argue.

“This isn’t exactly the farewell I was hoping for when I asked you to make sure to say goodbye to me.”

“You shouldn’t be going,” Josh grumbled, and anger flooded through her.

“I don’t exactly have a choice, do I?” she snapped. “Not if I want to keep my job. Besides, it’s a beauty pageant. It’s not like I’m going to get hurt again. I’m not covering a riot.”

“Jennifer, there are consciousness raising groups all over the country headed to Atlantic City. They’re planning all sorts of protests against this—this—this travesty that likens females to cattle. I can’t believe you’re willing to cover something that makes other women look like pieces of meat.”

He threw up his hands, and she pursed her lips. “It’s my job.”

“Get a new one, then. You’re supporting the establishment. I thought you were against all the shit—”

“I’m a journalist, Josh. A journalist, not an activist. That’s your job.”

He glared at her before whispering, “Maybe you’re not who I thought you were.”

“The version of me you created in your mind is not my responsibility,” she said, her voice frigid. “I’m leaving. I have a flight to catch.”

He didn’t stop her when she grabbed her suitcase and stalked past him. She was down the stairs and into the cab before tears spilled over and wet her cheeks.

****

Atlantic City proved to be a lot more than Jennifer expected, and it made her furious that Josh was right. Of course, she was always mad when Josh was right and she’d argued against him. He liked to gloat, and she had no desire to go back to Chicago and hear him snicker.

Worse than that, she had an aching fear in her gut that she’d fly home, and he’d be gone. She didn’t know why, but she hadn’t been able to shake that he was planning to leave for months. It seemed only a matter of time. How could she tame Josh Hutcherson, activist and rebel and total playboy?

Why hadn’t they managed to have a discussion about their relationship in the year they’d been living together? They’d never promised to be exclusive, never had the conversation, and Jen had a sinking feeling that he was just biding time until he went back to his former life—floating from place to place and woman to woman, following the fight for the causes he supported and relationships be damned. Andre and Jackson were his only close friends, and he hadn’t seen either of them in months either.

Something wasn’t right, and she was terrified of eventually discovering what it was.

She shook herself as her mind drifted to Josh for the hundredth time in fifteen minutes. The action behind her on the pier ramped up as the pre-pageant sessions dragged on. She’d interviewed dozens of protestors, asking them their views on the women’s movement and women’s liberation. Several members of the New York Radical Women were there leading the protests, and Jen thought she’d go insane if she heard the words “consciousness raising” again.

Jen directed her attention to what she thought would provide the clearest portrayal of what the protestors were attempting to accomplish. She interviewed women carrying signs of females marked up as cuts of meat; she directed her crew to record the Freedom Trash Can as women threw in high heels and tweezers and bras and pantyhose; she heard the term bra burner and twirled to spot a fire until the woman she was interviewing explained that they’d decided not to set the trash can on fire because they feared the wooden boardwalk would go up in flames. Finally, she took copious notes during the pageant itself until protestors in the balcony unfurled a large banner and simultaneously set off a smoke bomb that drove everyone from the auditorium.

In short, she realized later when she was back in her hotel room and reviewing her notes, she’d done everything she could possibly do to both keep her job and work against the establishment Josh seemed to want to insist she supported. If she was honest, her work that day was a giant middle finger to both her boss and her whatever-the-hell he was to her because Josh sure hadn’t promised her anything.

She was fuming by the time she landed in Chicago the following evening, ready to return to her apartment and find him and his belongings missing. If she could stay mad until she found out for sure that he was gone, maybe she’d be able to survive the loss.

When she walked in the door, she had a string of curse words waiting on the tip of her tongue to fall, to distract her from the pain she knew was coming.

“Hey, doll. I missed you.”

Tears pricked her eyes, and she dropped her suitcase. She took three giant steps and threw herself into his arms. He tried to ask her what was wrong a million times, but she shut him up with her mouth every time.

“Take me to bed,” she begged, and he obliged. She was well into her third orgasm before she believed he was really there.

#joshifer #joshifer fanfiction #the vintage joshifer series #joshiferrecs #joshifersource #fyeah-joshifer #jhutchdirectory #end of love #1960s

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thesinglesjukebox · 4 years

Video

youtube

PLANET 1999 - PARTY

[5.92]

I just wanna go back, back to...

Kylo Nocom: As the PC Music manifesto expands internationally -- people refer to music as "PC Music-inspired" far more than they use the now-antiquated "bubblegum bass" moniker -- the label itself seems to be the least important part of its movement. Planet 1999's dreamy Yumi Zouma-esque musings would have been a complete anomaly in 2014, free of any irony or noise. It also would've been one of their best: the rudimentary drum production, gentle synth plucks, and stuttered vox are handled with finesse. "Party" hints at prettier things ahead for a collective that's evolved into something far more important than would have been anticipated when they were seen as pretentious sophisticates. [7]

Ian Mathers: I loved my first listen of "Party" so much that I needed to know more immediately. This led me to an interview where the band's Alex, when asked to describe the "hallmarks" of their sound, simply says "A minimalistic shoegaze loop with over-processed vocals on top of it" and I'm not sure I have anything to add to that besides that I can't remember the last time a description that appealing to me actually translated into the kind of song that description would make me dream of. For what it is, it's so simple and stripped back (as is "Spell" now that I've looked that up), that having no complete words on the chorus is actually kind of genius. [9]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: PC Music's own take on Hatchie's "Stay With Me." The chorus's vocals are nothing but cut-up babble, but better for it; "Party" makes a case that imagined nostalgia is the most blissful of all. [7]

Leah Isobel: "Pitch-shifted Britney Spears fronting Cocteau Twins" is a proposition squarely aimed at my pleasure center, even if Britney would sound more present. [7]

Thomas Inskeep: Their name is Planet 1999, but this sounds much more like 1993 to me: those drums could've been ripped straight off a Curve record, and the aural aesthetics on display are very Future Sound of London. The singer's vocals are very shoegazy, to boot, albeit with a pop edge, like if Kylie fronted Pale Saints. A curious, compelling listen. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: I assume the "1999" in the band name refers to how the instrumentation, particularly the drums, sound like a MIDI you downloaded off Tripod? If the snippetized vocals are an anachronism, the flat affect and dream-pop lyrics are more of one. '90s bubblegum pop about partying was not nearly this chill or tasteful. Have you set foot in an S Club party? Boarded a goddamn Vengabus? [3]

Alfred Soto: Singing the melody in a falsetto and acting as if the drum program doesn't exist produces the right effect, but the tinkling keyboard devolves from an irritant to an active menace. I'm not sure what era Planet 1999 evoke -- nothing in 1999, 1991, or 1986 gouged my eyeballs like this. [4]

Brad Shoup: My estimate is dream-pop Paula Abdul, but a lot of those Abdul singles made you do the heavy lifting too. [5]

Alex Clifton: It's good, although it does feel a bit in love with itself. It also hits a point for me where I really can't differentiate the sounds and vocals around me and it all blurs together. I can't lean into that mix, though; I just feel neutral, which is not a great sign for a song called "Party." [6]

Will Adams: Doesn't sound like a party, doesn't particularly sound like 1999, but what it does sound like is PC Music's standard approach of throwing reference darts at a nostalgia board and stopping there. (Floppy disks! Edutainment CD-ROM style graphics! A Furby!) Dream-pop that hits those wistful notes of youth-passed-by already exists, and, more crucially, it doesn't sound this wooden. [4]

Juana Giaimo: I enjoy the dreamy atmosphere of "Party," but although it is less than three minutes long it feels too monotonous. There is no risk -- not even the vocal manipulation in the chorus can make an impression. [6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A nothing song wrapped in enough gauze to briefly fool you into thinking it's wistful mood music -- the vocal chop on the chorus serves mostly to hide that it's not a catchy melody even when it's not cut up. [4]

Jibril Yassin: Quaint but dripping with energy and wrapped up in a post-vaporwave blanket, "Party" makes sweet of a fraught, uncertain future starscape. What separates it from similar efforts that use an '80's playground of sound is its '90's optimism and naivety: a combination that succeeds even if it looks strange on paper. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Planet 1999 #pop #music #music review

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thelangdoncooperative · 6 years

Text

Forbidden Fruit--Part 1

All your life you've never seen

A woman taken by the wind

Would you stay if she promised you heaven?

-Fleetwood Mac

She stopped keeping track of the days, or what she thought were the days. It was hard to really know when you were miles underground. Outpost 3, cold and industrial in design, was exclusively lit by candles and fireplaces which made everything seem like one long today. She spent most of her time in her room. The others would move about the bunker in their purple and gray outfits, each dressed according to status. She liked to stick to her own space where she didn’t have to force herself into a stiff, purple dress. The lace around the neck irritated her skin. Dinner, of course, was a different story. If she expected anything at all, she knew the dress was a requirement, although most days the nutrition cube didn’t seem to be worth the effort she had to make to get it. Regardless, she always made sure her dress was presentable and her brown curls were perfectly neat.

“So what’s your story?” Coco said, almost aggressively to her, as Mr. Gallant patted her frizzy hair down.

She looked around at the others gathered in the common room who had all turned their attention on her, “Me? What do you mean?”

“You barely leave your room and when you do you’re quiet. Like creepy quiet. Or maybe you think you’re too good to hang out with us.” Mr. Gallant looked over Coco’s hair to scan her face following this latest allegation.

Y/N put down her glass on the coffee table in front of her, “Please don’t take it personally. I just like being alone. It’s mostly to avoid wearing these stuffy clothes. I lived almost exclusively in leggings before this.” She chuckled, sweet and sincere.

Coco seemed convinced, “We’re going to need friends in this hell-hole. It wouldn’t hurt you to come out once and awhile-“ Coco snapped her eyes at the figure coming through the door, “Mallory! There you are. Get me another glass, will you?”

Just like that, the conversation was dropped. Y/n had known the conversation wouldn’t be on her for too long. Coco’s attention moved like the wind, especially if she as in need of Mallory’s assistance. She watched the people around her: Mallory, Coco, Mr. Gallant and his Nana, Dinah, Andre, and the two almost-lovers. Emily and Timothy tried to be as subtle as possible but she knew they snuck into each other’s room. She would never tell but did warn them to be careful on the rare occasions she caught them moving back and forth through the halls in the night.

Emily sat next to her on the couch, “Don’t worry about it,” she smiled kindly as she patted y/n’s hand. They sat a few minutes more speaking in hushed tones that made Timothy self-conscious. He wondered if they were talking about him. As he stood to sit with them, the doors swung open.

“Everyone, we have a visitor. He has some news to share from the Cooperative,” Ms. Veneable leaned on her cane, shifting from side to side in an uncomfortable way, “His name is-“

“May I?” The man said, moving to stand incredibly close to Ms. Veneable. When she moved he continued, with everyone’s undivided attention, “My name is Langdon. I’m with the Cooperative.”

He continued to tell them the horrible fate of the world above their heads. Outposts have been overrun. People are dying from disease and radiation poisoning. He was there to interview them to see who was worthy of moving to a more secure facility. Y/N heard the words but she also could not believe her eyes. His long strawberry blonde hair, his light eyes, the impenetrable confidence he carried with him always. His eyes moved around the room as he spoke, not lingering on one person for too long. She did note how he looked back at her once more before he finished speaking. Did he remember her? She certainly remembered him but that was years ago.

Mr. Gallant spoke first, “I volunteer. If I can get out of here, I wanna be interviewed.”

“Everyone will get their turn,” Langdon shook his head, “Ms. Veneable, will you provide me a private space to conduct my interviews.” She did so reluctantly and in a few minutes returned.

She looked gravely at y/n, “You’re first.” Her voice was laced with venom and if y/n wasn’t mistaken, a hint of suspicion.

Y/n walked into the large room. Naturally, it was lit by candles but it seemed even more dim than the other rooms in the bunker. She saw a desk and place for her to sit but she dare not. She stood in the middle of the room waiting for Langdon. The room felt colder and shiver ran down her spine. It was then she felt someone behind her. A hand brushed her hair off shoulder and pulled her close by her waist. She closed her eyes and sighed, relaxing into the arms that held her.

”I didn’t know you’d be here,” His voice said with relief. She turned in his arms to face him and smiled.

Y/N looked up at him,fighting back the tears that formed at the sight of a familiar face, “Michael.”

“Y/N,” He smiled, “I’m happy to see you,” He thumbed away her tears and leaned his forehead against her.

She pulled away after a few seconds, far enough for her to inspect his face. She ran her fingers gently along his jaw and cheekbones. She noted the way he closed his eyes when she did this. She played with the ends of his long hair. It was longer than the last time she’d seen him, now past his shoulders. She had frozen him in her mind as the little boy she had grown up with. Memories flooded her: them running around the neighborhood, late night drives when he got his license before her, the first time they kissed in his backyard before his mom sent her home. He was still as beautiful as she remembered.

“I went to your house to look for you before the bombs hit. You were gone and I hoped you’d be here but I wasn’t sure. You rarely do as your told.”

She continued playing with the ends of his hair, “They told me I had to come here. Didn’t really give me a choice, actually. I’m not exactly sure why I was chosen. Some of these people paid ridiculous amounts of money. Some of them said they were chosen for their genetics. No one gave me a reason why I’m here.”

He took her hands in his, “You’re here because I made sure you would have a place,” She sighed deeply, laying her head to rest against his chest, “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe. It’ll be fine.”

“Everything’s gone, Michael. How can that be fine?”

His body stiffened but he continued to pet her hair, “We’re here. So it’ll be fine.”

They stood that way for what felt like a lifetime. Y/N closed her eyes and for a moment she could just be a girl in the arms of a boy and nothing more. When she opened them, her eyes adjusted to the candlelight once more and the fantasy was gone. Michael released her and moved to open the sliding doors behind them. It was what Ms. Veneable had designated as his sleeping quarters for the duration of his stay.

”Please, come whenever you’d like. Even if it’s just to say hello,” He pushed a curl behind her ear and cupped her cheek in his hand.

She leaned into it, looking up at him with her wide eyes, “Michael, who are you?”

He smiled tightly and kissed her cheek, “I need to interview the others. It’s time for you to go back.”

-------------------------------------------

Y/N sat in the porcelain bathtub, candles lining the room, and she wondered if this is how life was before electricity. She thought a lot about decades past since she’d been brought to the outpost. The bombs had set them back so much. The bunker itself was a testament to the advancement of humanity but she couldn’t help but feel the irony of the way of living inside such an advanced facility. She wondered how people were living above-ground and if she could even call that living. Michael had made it sound like a horror story, almost too gruesome to be true. Michael. He made the unpleasant thoughts disappears. He always did. He always seemed to know when she needed him. He was always there. She used to tease him, telling him he was the wind, everywhere at once.

She couldn’t get Michael out of her head, how much time had passed since she’d seen him last. It wasn’t just the fact that his hair was longer. It wasn’t the way he carried himself with such confidence. He had always been sure of himself in front of other people. It was a quality she longed to possess. When they were younger, she always thought that they if she was around him long enough she might absorb it, but she never did. She still felt very much like the shy girl he met as a kid. She was sitting outside on the porch of her latest foster home reading Jane Eyre when he first approached her. He was no older than twelve when he rode up to her house on his bike to introduce himself. All those years, middle school through high school, they were inseparable. It was after high school that the life separated them more and more until now.

Now, she was sitting in a bunker miles underground, nothing left above, her eyes closed, thinking about the boy she’d always loved but never truly had. It was in these thoughts that she got lost. She sunk lower into the warm water so that it lapped over her collar bone. For a moment, she thought her mind had manifested that overwhelming smell of him. It wasn’t until she heard the rustling sound of clothing that she realized she wasn’t alone.

She jumped slightly, “Michael, what are you doing here?” She spoke in a rushed whisper.

He had knelt beside the tub, his head resting on his arms that were leaning against the edge. He laughed at her visible panic, “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry. I came to say goodnight. That’s all.” He scanned her body in the water. The room was dimly lit but she was aware of how much he was able to see. He hadn’t seen her so exposed in such a long time. He could see the thoughts running through her head as if they were written on her face, “Do you want me to go?”

She shook her head and continued speaking softly, “You can stay. Not too long. I don’t want to find out what will happen if Ms. Veneable finds out you’re in here.”

He unbuttoned the cuffs of his black shirt and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, “Why does it matter what she thinks?” Her knee was bent and stuck out of the water. He took advantage of this and skimmed her skin gently with his knuckles. Y/N’s mouth open slightly but no words came out, only the sound of her breathing deepening, “Y/N. Answer me.”

She took a wet hand and wiped her cheeks, hoping to cool down her warm face, “She doesn’t like...this.”

He cocked his head to the side, “What is...this?” He gripped under her knee firmly, gently moving it to perch on the edge of the tub.

“Michael…” She leaned her head against the back of the tub, “If she finds you in here-....They killed a couple for having...for-.... A few of us saw them being executed as we were brought in.”

He stopped caressing the skin on her thigh, “What? Are you sure that’s why?”

Able to think more clearly without his touch, she continued, “She told us when we came. That’s one of the rules.”

He looked away from her, his eyes scanned everywhere in the room but on her face. She wondered if she had said something wrong until he continued rubbing his thumb against the skin on her thigh as he spoke, “It’ll be fine. Be good, ok?”

She frowned, “Am I not usually?” She laughed weakly.

His hand crept up her thigh and he moved his body closer to hers. His face was now so close she could feel his breath on her face when he spoke, “You’re right. Forgive me. Goodnight,” He kissed the top of her head and left. She called his name but when she turned to the door he was already gone.

She got out of the tub feeling colder than when she had gotten in.

#michael langdon #american horror story #ahs8 #american horror story apocalypse #michael langdon fanfiction #michael langdon fanfic #cody fern #evan peters #ahs smut #american horror story fanfiction #american horror story smut #michael langdon smut #michael langdon x reader #smut

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faveficarchive · 5 years

Text

Fire and Ice: Part 2 & 3

By Friction

Pairing: Xena/Gabrielle

Rating: Mature

Synopsis: In this uberfic, Danielle (Gabrielle) is robbed by a mysterious woman, and as a result, discovers a lot of new things about herself.

CW: There’s straight up DV and attempted sexual assault in this story, just as a head’s up.

When Danielle arrived at work their was a message for her from Liz, the editor of the women’s section. She could barely contain her excitement as she made her way to her office. As she approached the door, Liz motioned her in.

"Dear, I’m so sorry to hear about the robbery. I’m glad you weren’t hurt."

"It wasn’t bad really, just a little excitement."

"Do the police have any leads on the robber yet?"

"No, I don’t think so. When I stopped this morning to give them a statement, they didn’t mention anything."

"I’m sure you’re tired of the whole thing." Liz paused and smiled. "I have some news that should make your day. I like your idea for the battered women’s story."

"Really?" Danielle brightened.

"Yes. It’s a fresh approach on an old topic. The idea of following up on a story done five years ago to see how the shelter’s program may have changed these women’s lives is intriguing. It’s a good human interest piece. I’m giving you the go ahead to do a small three part series."

"That’s great! Thank you."

"This is your chance. I want part one on my desk by next Tuesday."

Danielle’s thought’s were racing. This was the crack in the door she had been waiting for. If she could make this series a success, she would be given the opportunity to do more writing.

She hurried back to her desk to contact Elaine, the director of the Domestic Violence Program. When she had first arrived in town, she had made an appointment to see Elaine to discuss her idea. They hit it off immediately and quickly became friends. Elaine was a rather petite woman with long curly hair. What she lacked in stature she made up for in her serious no nonsense demeanor. Having been abused herself she was the perfect role model to guide these women into safer lives. Danielle dialed excitedly. She could hardly wait to tell her friend the good news.

"Hi, Elaine."

"Hey, I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. I read the paper. Are you okay?"

"I couldn’t be better. Listen, I’ll tell you all about that later." She paused unable to keep the excitement from her voice. "You aren’t going to believe this, but I got the go ahead for the series we discussed."

"That’s terrific! I thought you had something there."

"Have you had any luck setting up a meeting?"

"Yes, of the 35 woman who were in the program when the last story was written, nine agreed to be interviewed by you this evening at the center."

"That’s great."

"Danielle, I assured these women that their identifies would be kept confidential. I can’t stress how important that is."

"I understand. Elaine, thanks for your help with this."

"You bet, I think it can be a positive thing for the center." From Elaine’s first meeting with the young woman, she was touched by her need to help others. Danielle was genuinely interested in the program and enthusiastic in her desire to inspire battered women to seek help. Elaine felt that printing the stories of women who had been successful in turning their lives around could only encourage others.

"Okay, I’ll see you tonight then."

"And Danielle, tonight I want to hear all about this robbery thing."

Danielle was still smiling when she hung up the phone.

***

Elaine walked Danielle to the small conference room and stepped up to the podium in the front of the room to introduce her. Danielle glanced at the nine rather anxious women seated before her and touched Elaine’s arm, stopping her introduction.

"I’m sorry Elaine, I don’t mean to interrupt but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind." She spoke to the women before her. "Is there some place more comfortable we can sit and talk? A lounge or kitchen maybe? I don’t know about the rest of you but I would love a cup of coffee."

Elaine lead them to the kitchen, where they all gathered around the large table. Danielle sat on the counter facing the others. "My name is Danielle Stafford, Elaine has probably explained why I wanted to meet you here. I was hoping you would be willing to share your stories."

"Aren’t you going to tape us or something?"

Danielle smiled. "I don’t use a recorder. I like things informal. Besides, I have a knack for remembering details. Ever since I was a child I loved hearing people talk about their lives. I’d like to keep this casual if it’s okay with all of you." There was a perceptible shift in the room as the women relaxed.

A woman with short red hair spoke up. "Why do you want to hear our stories? None of us are important."

"I think everyone has a story to tell. But in addition to that, all of you are in a unique position. You have faced difficult times and made it through them. I believe that other women in similar positions might find hope for themselves in your stories. My intention is to reach out to them and show them there’s a way out."

"What about confidentiality?" a tall, willowy woman asked. "Some of us are worried that our husbands might track us down."

A woman with short cropped dark hair interrupted. "I come back to the shelter to help out when I can. I know Danielle. She spends a lot of time here. I trust her."

"Thanks Spike, I don’t intend to use any names and I will keep details from the stories that would disclose too much. I’ll give each of you the opportunity to look over what I’ve written before it’s printed. If there is anything you object to or are uncomfortable with, I’ll change it."

"That sounds fair enough." A woman with long blonde hair commented. The other women nodded in agreement.

"Great, I’d love to hear your stories. Anyone feel comfortable starting things off?"

The dark-haired woman spoke. "I think Ann should start." She turned to face a plain looking woman with straight brown hair. "If you feel up to it?

Ann looked up shyly and cleared her throat. Her hands trembled as she clutched them in her lap. She nodded.

"My name is Ann. I got married when I was sixteen. There were nine children in my family. My leaving meant one less mouth to feed so my folks didn’t care. My husband was in training to be a police officer and I felt pretty lucky that a man in such an important position would marry me. The men he worked with really liked him. His friends nicknamed him ‘ice’ because he never lost his temper, at least not around them. What they didn’t know was that he saved up all his anger for me."

"Anyway, that lucky feeling I had didn’t last long. In the fifteen years I was married to him I lost track of the number of times I was knocked unconscious. He hit me nearly every day. Any problem at work was reason enough to come home and beat the tar out of me. My nose has been broken so many times I forget what it used to look like." She shook her head in frustration, "But I stayed with him."

"I had four miscarriages. I think my body was worn out from all the beatings. Probably had a lot of bruises inside too. After I lost those four babies, my husband decided he wanted one for real and the beatings lessened. I ended up giving birth to the son he wanted."

"I was happy during those months when I was carrying my son. It was the most peaceful time I’d known in my marriage. I thought the baby was my salvation. But, shortly after his birth the beatings started up again. I didn’t mind so much cause I had Josh. He was the sweetest little boy, so shy..." she paused and looked down at her hands. The woman to her right lightly touched her shoulder, bringing her out of her thoughts."

"One time, not long after Josh turned seven, my husband had to take me to the hospital. I was broke up pretty good that time. I’m sure I should have gone to the hospital for a lot of the injuries I had over the years, but it was hard to explain to the doctors how I got that way, so most times I suffered alone at home."

"This time when I peed, I could see red. I knew it was bad. The doctors said it was good I came in. They had to sew me up inside. My husband told them I took a bad fall and, since he was a police officer, they believed him."

"I knew I came close to dying and after I got home I began to think about my son and what would become of him if something happened to me. After a while I worked up the courage to ask my parents for help. My father didn’t believe me. He said I should stop complaining and count my blessings, my husband was a good provider and they didn’t grow on trees. My mother, who had always born her suffering privately, thought I should do the same."

"It was five months after my parents turned me and Josh away that I got the worst beating of my life. He came home one night drunk and mean. I think I would be dead, but Josh stepped between us to protect me. I’ll never forget his small body twisted in a heap on the floor. The doctors told me he died instantly. Those few minutes play over and over in slow motion in my head. Six years later and I still see them."

The room fell completely quite as if they shared a common memory. Although her face and voice showed no trace of emotion, Danielle could see the loss reflected deeply in her eyes: a pain so great that she would forever be marked by it.

"Even though my husband didn’t mean to hurt Josh, he meant to hit me, he ended up going to jail for it. I can only hope he will be there a good long time." She took a deep breath. "Anyway that’s how I found my way here. I remember how strange it seemed to go to bed without pain and wake up without new bruises."

"At first I almost missed it. That must sound funny to you, but for nearly fifteen years the pain was there, proof that I had survived another day, reminding me I had to be careful not to set him off." She sighed at the irony.

"This place saved me. They got me the medical help I needed and kept me safe. It’s been five years, I’ve been on my own. I have a job working as a clerk in the county morgue. I don’t like being around people much, so the work suits me. It’s quiet and kinda peaceful."

There was an awkward silence. An attractive woman with brown hair tied in a pony tail spoke up. The shorter redheaded woman next to her was holding her hand. "God, we all knew how to pick ‘em didn’t we?" The women laughed in agreement.

"By the way, my name is Nikki." She looked at Danielle. "Our stories are similar except for a few different twists here and there. All of us..." She waved her arm to indicated everyone in the room. "we are the fortunate ones, we survived. Many women don’t." She looked lovingly at the woman seated beside her. "Kate and I met here. We both had feelings for women from the earliest time we could remember but we got trapped in loveless, abusive marriages trying to fit in and be ‘normal.’ Whatever that is." She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, after several years of being close friends we realized that we loved each other. We’ve been together as a couple for over two years. It’s the happiest I’ve ever been."

Her partner nodded and squeezed her hand. "We went to school to become Emergency Medical Technicians. In fact, we work for the same ambulance company, usually on the same shift. The job’s different everyday. We like that. Both of us are kind of adventurous. But the best part of our work is being able to help people when they need it most."

"I think everyone here would agree that Elaine deserves the credit for giving us a second chance in life. She works hard helping women like us. Your story should really focus on her and the good she does." Everyone voiced their agreement. The bond these women shared was tangible. Danielle could almost feel the aura that surrounded them. It was a wonderful thing.

The brassy young woman with the spiky hair and vibrant eyes chimed in. "For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Tara, but my friends call me Spike." She ran her hand through her shortly cropped hair for clarification and smiled. "I used to be a hooker. I was in an abusive relationship with my pimp, but only for three years. So I was luckier than some. But like the rest, I never knew what was going to set him off. I blamed myself, thought it was my fault. I wonder to this day why I stayed as long as I did. But you know, in spite of it all, I cared for him. After a bad attack he would be so attentive and loving. At times it seemed almost worth the beating."

Several of the women nodded in understanding.

"You see, they break you down over time. It’s not only physical. There is mental abuse too. Anyway I’m a survivor, thanks to the support of Elaine and the women from the shelter. Believe it or not, I’m a stunt woman in television now. I figured I been thrown around enough that it seemed right up my alley." The women laughed softly.

"Yep, life experience gave me most of the training I needed." She smiled wryly. "The best part is that now, they pay me for it - and pretty well I might add."

Rachel, the long-haired blonde sitting on the end was the next to speak. "Yeah, it’s ironic the path life leads us down. I was completely dependent on my husband. My life revolved around him. Leaving was the farthest thing from my mind.

The neighbors used to call the cops when they heard him ranting. When the police came, they never did anything. So after I got my life straightened around. I decided to become a cop."

"I found my own power. The kind that comes from deep inside. There were so many times I prayed for someone to be there to help me. In the end, I had to take that first step myself. The rest would not have been possible without Elaine. I want to make a difference, like she has. I want to help women like me. And the best part is, I think I have. At least I’ve tried."

"Although I’m new on the force, I make an effort to see that the police are more aware of the problems abused women face and why they are reluctant to press charges and ask for help. I try to stop by the center on a regular basis to encourage the new women. When they first get here they are so down on themselves. All the good feelings have been beaten out of them."

"I know Danielle too. She’s a good friend. I wanted to be interviewed, the story is a good idea. Battered women need to see that there’s still hope."

Danielle smiled, "Every now and then we all need to be reminded of that."

They talked until late. Each woman elaborating on her tale. Danielle listened intently to their stories. They were compelling and often heartbreaking. She was amazed by their strength and courage. They had found their places in life and were making their unique contribution. If only she could find hers.

***

Danielle stirred, her mind deep in the throws of a dream. She was in the park. Looking for the lovers that she had become obsessed with. They were not there. She walked to the tree and ran her fingers against the rough bark. A soft sound behind her made her turn. It was him, the thief. His face covered by the mask. He took a step toward her, raising a gloved finger to his lips. Her heart raced as he came closer, leaving only a few inches between them.

Strong hands settled firmly on her waist, easing her back against the tree. His eyes met hers, silently questioning. She placed her hands over his and guided them down over the curve of her hips. She moaned as she felt the cool fabric of her skirt caress her skin as he lifted it. Her heart hammered. She prayed he wouldn’t stop. She slipped her hands under his leather jacket and froze as they came in contact with the gently sloping curve of breasts. Her eyes snapped open.

It took her some time to fall back asleep.

A loud crash woke her the second time, something breaking. It was followed by a male voice raised in anger. It sounded like her neighbors were fighting. So much for the joys of apartment living. She tried to block out his angry voice. She was ready to grab for a pillow to cover her ears when she heard a woman’s scream, followed by a loud bang. Something was wrong. She picked up the phone and called the police.

The ranting continued. She quickly dressed in sweats and went to the door of their apartment. She could hear a muffled voice through the door.

"You bitch, what did I tell you about staying out of my things!"

A woman’s voice pleaded in the background. "Not the stomach... please." There was a sickening crack.

Danielle knocked loudly. It became quiet and she heard footsteps approach. A very handsome man opened the door. She was rather taken back by his appearance. The expression on his face was so casual that she felt she had made a mistake.

"Yes?" His voice was calm. His look questioning.

"I heard... screaming, I was concerned that someone might be hurt."

"Oh that, I’m sorry. We must have had the television too loud. I apologize."

"Of course, I’m sorry I bothered you." Danielle’s face colored. Embarrassed for jumping to a rash conclusion. She guessed it wasn’t too surprising since she had spent the evening listening to stories of abuse.

She was about to leave when she noticed blood spattered on the front of his shirt. Danielle tried to keep a neutral expression on her face. Her mind searched for a way to stall him until the police arrived. "I live across the hall." She put her hand out in greeting. "Danielle Stafford." He took it awkwardly.

"Drake Morrison". His hands were cold, clammy, not nearly as composed as his face.

"It’s nice to meet you ." He smiled warmly. His voice was so charming compared to the raging she had heard moments before that it caused a chill to run through her.

"I promise we’ll keep the noise down in the future." He began to close the door when she heard a low groan and a terrible wet coughing sound. She held her hand out stopping the door and looked at him questioningly.

"My wife’s got a cold. Bad time of year for that kind of thing."

"I’ve had some first aid training. Maybe I could take a look at her?"

"Thanks but that’s not really necessary, she’s seeing our family doctor." A small cry for help came from behind him.

His expression hardened and he glanced over his shoulder. Danielle pushed past him. About ten feet in front of her she saw a woman sprawled on the kitchen floor. She hurried toward her and nearly slipped in a pool of blood. Danielle had never seen a face so savagely brutalized. She knelt on the other side of the woman, careful not to turn her back to him. She watched him cautiously as he approached. His face stricken.

"She fell."

The terrified woman whimpered like a wounded animal. Danielle laid her hand lightly on the woman’s shoulder, in an attempt to calm her. The comment didn’t even rate an answer. Her contempt for this man rose like bile. "You can tell it to the police. They’ll be here any minute."

His mouth opened in confusion. He ran his fingers through his hair nervously. Then without a word he turned and headed into another room.

The woman grabbed Danielle’s hand. "He’s going for his gun... he’s going to kill us." Another violent cough brought up blood. Danielle had no reason to doubt her. She pulled the woman to her feet and struggled toward her apartment. They made it into the hall before he caught up to them.

Danielle leaned the woman against her door and stepped in front of her protectively. "Don’t make things worse for yourself. Put the gun down."

"You should have minded your own business, bitch!" The change in his expression was terrifying. Like Jekyll and Hyde. Danielle tried to keep her composure. She had to buy them time.

"Your right, I have a real problem that way. But this can still be fixed." She paused gauging his reaction. "When the police come we can say she fell down the steps. That would explain the noises I heard. I know you didn’t mean to hurt her. She knows that too." She could see that he was considering her words. She just needed time.

A car backfired outside. He spun around to look, startled by the noise, when he turned back to face them, Danielle drove the palm of her hand into his nose. The gun flew from his hand and rattled down the stairs. He buckled and clutched his nose painfully. She used her momentary advantage to push the woman through the door to her apartment, locking it behind her.

The man pounded so violently that Danielle feared the door would give in. She grabbed for the phone and dialed 911. They calmly assured her help was coming. Danielle hung up the phone and shoved a chair under the door knob. Slipping her arm around the trembling woman’s back she moved her to the couch. The woman looked about eight months pregnant. As Danielle watched a trickle of blood run down the inside of the woman’s thigh, she silently prayed the police and ambulance would arrive in time to save the woman and her child.

In the distance she could hear the sirens approach. She took the woman’s hand in her own. "Hold on, it’s going to be all right. Help is coming."

***

Alex finished dinner and settled in for the evening. She sat by the fire, curling her legs underneath her, she paged to the next journal entry.

7/9

Faceless women with raven hair haunt my dreams. My obsession has prompted me to do something that had previously never occurred to me: I decided to go to a lesbian bar.

I fretted for an hour over what to wear, finally deciding on black jeans and a T-shirt. The club I picked was a small smoky little place. I stopped at the bar to get and drink and found a seat in the back where I could watch without attracting attention.

It wasn’t much different from other bars I had been in, with the exception that there were only women there. I watched them as they danced, talked, held hands, and kissed. Many of the women were very attractive, but I felt nothing. I finished my drink intending to leave, when a tall woman walked by me, headed toward the bar.

I inhaled and my head reeled. The scent of her leather jacket sent a rush of excitement through me. I watched her take a seat at the bar. My eyes were riveted to her back. With a shake of her head, her dark hair cascaded down her back. My heart skipped a beat. I watched with interest as she shifted in her seat, amazed at the sensations I was experiencing. My entire body tingled. She stood, her hips swaying as she pulled money out of her pocket to pay for the shot.

A pleasant fluttering in my abdomen nearly caused me to gasp out loud. My arm were covered with goose bumps. I gently ran my finger over them, thrilling at the sensation. When I looked up she was gone. A panic swept over me as I quickly scanned the room. I caught sight of her heading for the door. She was leaving.

Without thinking, I jumped up and hurried after her. Just as she was about to exit I reached out, grazing her lightly on the shoulder. When she turned to face me, my heart fell. She looked at me puzzled. I lamely apologized and told her she looked like someone I used to know. As I heard my own words, I felt that somehow they were true.

She was nice, but I left the bar alone. Unfortunately, I still felt nothing. I had no desire to be with her in a sexual way.

I am more desperately lonely than before. I could deal with the fact that I might be a lesbian. What truly depresses me is the fact that no one of either sex holds any attraction for me. I’m confused. But, these occasional bursts of sensation leave me hopeful. I feel I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. It’s both exciting and frightening.

7/10

Mother called today to remind me about the medallion. She wanted to make sure my uncle remembered to give it to me next week on my birthday. It surprises me how much this tradition means to her considering how strained her relationship was with my grandmother. She never got over the hurt and embarrassment of her mother leaving my grandfather for a woman. She felt abandoned and could never understand how my grandmother could put a mysterious woman before her own child.

I never knew my grandmother. She died before I was born. Mother never talked about her. I understood even at a very young age that the subject was not to be brought up. My mother only discussed her with me one time and it was very brief. The day my grandfather died I found her in the backyard burning stacks of papers. Her face was wet with tears. In a fit of anger she had burned the letters my grandmother had written to her throughout the years.

I never understood the magnitude of this loss until I was older. Now, I would give anything to have those letters. A sense of my heritage has always been important to me. I have recorded my thoughts since I was a child. Writing is a life line. I find solace in it no matter how alone I feel. It’s sad that we never knew each other; somehow I feel connected to her. I think her thirst for adventure is in my blood.

Of grandmother’s belongings, mother kept only two: the leather journal I have used since childhood, and the medallion. As the eldest daughter, the medallion will pass to me on my twenty-third birthday as it did to my mother before me. Mother never wore it that I knew of, but family is very important to her. I think the medallion represents a link to her mother. I will treasure it.

Alex set the journal down. The enormity of what she had taken from this young woman flooded over her. She knew somehow she had to set things right.

The ringing of the phone interrupted her thoughts and she moved across the room to answer. It was Sal.

"Thought you might be interested in the late news on channel seven tonight."

She clicked on her set. Danielle appeared on the screen. Alex watched intently as the cameras panned first to the woman on the stretcher and then to the concerned face of Danielle Stafford. At the corner of the screen she could see a man being directed into the squad car. She recognized the look in his eyes and knew immediately that Danielle was in trouble.

"Sal, I need you to do a favor for me."

He was surprised by the request. In all the years he’s known her, Alex had never asked anything of him. "Sure Alex, what can I do?"

"I have a package I need to have delivered to this Danielle Stafford at the newspaper on Monday. I can’t have any connection to it. If I drop it by tomorrow morning, can you find someone reliable to handle it?"

"It shouldn’t be a problem."

"Make sure the delivery person can’t be traced."

"Okay..." He hesitated. "Alex, tell me it’s not a bomb."

"That’s hardly my style." She smiled and shook her head. "And besides, what makes you think I’d trust you with a bomb?"

He laughed "I had to ask."

"Sal thanks, I owe you one."

After hanging up, Alex couldn’t get the young woman off her mind. She sensed danger and she was rarely wrong about these things. She could think of a hundred reasons why she shouldn’t get involved but none of them mattered. The instant she had sensed trouble her mind had been made up. She had a few days before she needed to leave town, enough time to follow this woman and make sure everything was okay.

***

The next evening, after visiting the hospital, Danielle went for a long walk. Her mind was swimming. In the past few days she had experienced more excitement and danger than she had her entire life, but it still left her wanting.

She walked through the park, stopping by the tree where she had seen the two women. Her fingers brushed the rough bark. She leaned against it, closing her eyes. Her mind flashed back to her dream. She could feel the strong hands moving down her hips, the warm breath against her neck. When she opened her eyes the fantasy faded. She felt empty, alone.

Danielle headed back to her apartment, taking a shortcut through a rather deserted neighborhood. Gradually she became aware of someone behind her and increased her pace. The footfalls behind her quickened, matching her own. She tried to calm her racing heart, sure her imagination was getting the best of her.

As she turned the corner, she stopped to listen. It was quiet. She took a relieved breath and was about to continue home, when a hand grabbed her from behind, pulling her into a dark alley. He pushed her roughly into the corner.

It was the Drake, the wife beater, and he had two friends with him. She looked around quickly for a way to escape. There was very little gap between the men. She was effectively trapped in the corner.

"You never should have interfered in my life, bitch." A coldness settled in the pit of her stomach. His confidence surged as he sensed her fear. He smiled menacingly.

"Go ahead, scream." He taunted her. His voice filled with hate. "No one will hear you." She tried to break past him but one of the men caught her and threw her back against the wall.

"I’m going to teach you to mind your own business." He glanced back at his friend.

"Joe, watch the entrance." The heavy set man turned and walked toward the street. That left two. She knew this might be her only chance. She had to act quickly.

As Drake reached out to grab her, she struck out hitting his bruised nose. He stepped back wincing in pain. But, before she could run, the other man punched her hard in the face. Her head snapped back and hit the brick wall. She reeled from the blow.

The wife beater wiped a trickle of blood from his nose. His eyes filled with rage. He swung at her face but she managed to dodge the blow. She tried once again to get past him but he threw her back, punching her savagely in the stomach. She doubled over with pain. Taking advantage of her weakened state, he grabbed her hair and forced upright. He hit her several times in the face, splitting her lip. She fought to stay on her feet but her legs were too wobbly to hold her up and she slumped to the ground.

"Grab her hands."

The large man pinned her hands above her head, while Drake positioned himself between her legs. "You’re going to pay for that."

Danielle struggled to free herself, but the man above her was too strong. She felt Drake’s hands slide under her skirt, pushing it up and knew he meant to rape her. She kicked wildly with her feet as he tore at her underpants. When she cried out for help, he punched her repeatedly.

Pain flooded her body, draining the strength from her limbs. She lay helpless, praying for unconsciousness.

Her vulnerability excited him. He unfastened his belt and unzipped his pants. His callused hands grabbed her thighs and forced her legs farther apart. "Here it comes bitch."

He leaned forward preparing to thrust into her, when a loud thud behind them prompted him to turn. "Joe?"

A tall figure illuminated by the street light, walked slowly toward them. He squinted, struggling in the dim light to see who approached. It was a woman.

"Joe can’t answer you, I broke his jaw." Something about her manner and confidence unnerved him. He stood up quickly, haphazardly zipping his pants.

Alex glanced at the man holding Danielle. "Let her go... NOW!"

He released Danielle and rushed Alex. She threw a round house kick to his chest knocking him to the ground. He came at her again. This time, she stepped to the side and grabbed his arm, twisting, while jerking it upward, neatly dislocating his shoulder. He dropped to the ground screaming in pain. A single punch to the temple knocked him unconscious.

Drake looked at her fearfully, not sure what he was up against. It was one on one and he didn’t like his odds. She turned to face him. He saw her face for the first time and his blood ran cold. She was smiling.

"Your fun is over. And mine is about to begin." She moved in deliberately slow, giving him time to think about his predicament. He back up fearfully, but quickly ran out of space.

"Looks like your luck just ran out." She grabbed him by the neck and pressed him viciously to the wall. He looked at her in horror as he felt his feet leave the ground. She lifted him like a rag doll. Slowly he felt her grip tighten, shutting off his air.

Disoriented and in a great deal of pain, Danielle could think of nothing but escape. She began a torturously slow crawl toward the street. As she got closer her eyes focused on the back of the tall woman strangling her attacker. The gurgling sounds he made as he gasped for air sickened her.

"You are a dead man." Alex snapped, her voice filled with menace. His feet flailed helplessly as he struggled for breath. His face was flush, an ugly purple color.

"Wait, please." Danielle tried to get up but her legs failed her. "We need to call the police." She pleaded as she crumpled back to the ground in pain.

The tall woman eased her grip, sliding him down the wall, back on his feet. His lungs burned as he took in desperately needed air. He looked into her eyes. The coldness he saw there terrified him. He prayed the girl would go for the police. Alex grabbed his crotch and twisted savagely. He released an agonizing cry as the pain tore through him in an excruciating wave. He feared he was seriously injured.

"No police" She growled.

The words sent a chill through him. Her face was poised only inches from his, her expression feral. He tried to turn his head away, but she grabbed his face and glared at him. His fear doubled when he saw the predatory look in her eyes. Understanding he was the prey, his body shook uncontrollably.

"I take care of my own problems. No loop holes. No juries."

There was something in the tone of the woman’s voice. Danielle knew without a doubt that she intended to kill him. She spoke again. Her voice weak and filled with pain. "Please don’t do it... not for me."

Alex paused and breathed deeply. She leaned into his ear and for one chilling moment he thought she might bite it off. Instead she tightened her grip on his neck and whispered. "If I ever lay eyes on you again or hear that you’ve come within a hundred miles of her, I will kill you... slowly."

She glared at him. He nodded, tears streaming down his face. "If anything happens to her, I’m coming after you." Her knee ground into his groin and he nearly passed out from the pain. She released him, letting him collapse to the ground, his pants soiled by his own blood and urine.

Danielle clutched her stomach, and tried to rise. Alex went to her side and gently picked her up, carrying her out of the alley. Danielle squeezed her eyes shut as her stomach spasmed and ripples of pain rolled through her. "I’m going to be sick..."

Alex eased her to the ground and held back her hair as the she vomited, her bruised muscles clenching painfully. Alex untucked her own shirt and used it to wipe the young woman’s mouth.

"Easy... it’s okay." She held her, speaking softly. Her soothing voice had a wonderfully calming effect. Danielle’s body relaxed in response. She slowly opened her eyes and looked at the face of the woman who had saved her. A gasp escaped her lips.

Alex misunderstood her reaction. She tightened her hold on the young woman, cradling her in her arms. "I won’t let anyone hurt you."

Danielle knew without question that this was the one, the soul she sought. Fate had brought them together. She stared into Alex’s blue eyes and prayed she wasn’t hallucinating. "Are you real? Am I dreaming?"

Alex smiled softly. "I’m real." Danielle closed her eyes as a wave of pain rolled through her. Alex gently pushed her hair from her face, taking a quick inventory of the damage. The young woman grimaced in pain as Alex ran her hand over the bruised ribs. Her injuries didn’t seem life-threatening but she was reluctant to take unnecessary chances.

"I’m going to take you to the hospital."

"No, please." Danielle knew if her family found out it would be impossible to convince them she would be safe remaining in the city. She tried to get up but dizziness toppled her back into Alex’s protective arms.

"Do you live near here?"

Danielle could not make out her words, but she listened, finding comfort in the steady voice. Finally, the picture was complete: the voice, the hair, the eyes. The last thought to cross Danielle’s mind before she lost consciousness was leather, the biting scent of leather. She knew she was safe. A weariness descended on her and she gave into it without a struggle.

Alex made the decision to respect the woman’s wishes. She would take her home with her and they could talk more about it in the morning. She carried Danielle to her car and settled her gently into the passenger seat, buckling her safety belt. Danielle was in a world of hurt, even in unconsciousness her body reacted to every bump in the road. Alex drove carefully trying to spare her discomfort. Twenty minutes later they pulled up in front of Alex’s cabin.

She carried the young woman in and laid her on the waterbed. Alex used a damp wash cloth to wipe the dried blood from Danielle’s face. She took great care not cause her further pain. When she had finished she allowed herself the luxury of lightly running her fingers through her soft blonde hair.

Danielle’s lashes flickered and her eyes opened. Her body ached. As the horrors of the night flooded over her once again, her stomach rebelled. She raised her hand weakly to her mouth. Alex carried her into the bathroom, where Danielle dropped to her knees. She retched into the toilet, her stomach long ago empty. Alex knelt beside her, an arm supporting her shoulders and gently wiped her face with a cool cloth.

Danielle went limp in Alex’s arms and the tears came. "God if you hadn’t come..." She cried for her helplessness, her vulnerability. For the first time, she had an idea of what the women at the shelter had faced. "I... I need a shower."

The sight of the battered young woman broke her heart. "Are you strong enough to stand?" Danielle nodded. Alex started the water and went to get some clean towels.

When she returned Danielle was in the shower. Alex set the robe, towels and toothbrush down and left, gently closing the door behind her. Much later Danielle emerged from the bathroom. She staggered, exhausted from her efforts. Alex carefully lifted her and carried her to bed. When she pulled the covers over her, Danielle grimaced. Every breath, every movement tormented her bruised ribs. She closed her eyes tightly and tried not to cry out.

"I’m going to give you something for the pain."

Alex removed a medical kit from the closet. She pulled out a hypodermic and quickly unwrapped it from its packaging. She inserted the needle into a small vial. Carefully eyeing the dosage, she pulled back the covers and injected the Demerol into the fleshy part of Danielle’s hip. "This will ease your discomfort and help you sleep." She gently tucked her in. "I’ll be in the next room, if you need anything just call." Alex stood to leave.

"Please..." Danielle reached out, imploringly. "Can you stay with me for a while?"

Alex pulled a chair next to bed and took the young woman’s hand. Danielle squeezed tightly and closed her eyes. In a few minutes the pain eased. She felt marvelously lightheaded, as if she were floating. She curled on her side facing Alex. Her eyes flickered open not quiet fixing on anything. She pulled Alex’s hand under her cheek and inhaled deeply.

Just before sleep claimed the young woman, Alex heard her whisper "I always knew you would find me."

She seemed so frail. It was all Alex could do to look at her bruised face. If she had only gotten there a few minutes sooner, but she had lost Danielle in the park when a drunk delayed her. Alex wished suddenly that she had killed all three men. They were monsters. Her anger began to surge but dissipated when she felt the woman’s warm cheek snuggle against her fingers.

Normally nothing would have prevented her from taking their worthless lives. Alex thought of the young woman’s appeal for mercy on her assailant’s behalf. She had glimpsed something she hadn’t believed existed, something she had long ago stopped fantasizing about: forgiveness. A calmness enveloped her.

She took a deep breath, allowing her body to relax. Why did this feel so right? The need to protect this young woman was almost instinctive. She watched over Danielle for a long time, until, at last, she too fell asleep.

Part 3

Danielle awoke the next morning disoriented. Memories of last night, came flooding back. Her body ached from the beating she had received, confirming that it hadn’t been a dream. She looked in wonder at the woman asleep in the chair beside her. She was the most attractive woman Danielle had ever seen. It was as if this dark beauty had stepped out of her dreams. A warrior sent to protect her, she fantasized. A calm washed over her, when she thought of this woman staying with her the entire night, insuring her well-being. She had never felt so safe, so protected.

Her muscles complained, stiff from being stationary. She needed to shift her position, but hesitated, not wanting to awaken the woman. As if sensing her thoughts, Alex opened her eyes. Danielle was momentarily stunned by the blue she saw there.

"How are you feeling?" Alex asked.

The sound of the woman’s voice was like a balm to her soul. He mind went blank for an instant. The troubled expression on the woman’s face brought Danielle back to her senses. "I’m better. I...I don’t know how to thank you."

"I was just in the right place at the right time."

"I don’t even know your name."

"There wasn’t much time for formal introductions last night." She smiled warmly. "Alex. Alex Lord."

"Danielle Stafford."

Alex gently pulled her hand from under the young woman’s cheek. Danielle flushed with embarrassment. It had felt so natural against her skin that she hadn’t realized she was still holding it.

Alex smiled. Flexing her fingers, "I’ll need these if I’m going to fix breakfast."

Danielle’s stomach perked up at the mention of food. It felt abysmally empty. When Alex went to the kitchen, Danielle gingerly made her way to the bathroom. She was shocked when she looked in the mirror. Her nose was swollen and both of her eyes were back and blue. She opened the robe and winced at the ugly bruises on her abdomen and ribs. It could have been a lot worse. She had been incredibly fortunate.

Enticed by the aroma of chicken soup. She made her way to the kitchen. "Mmm, something smells wonderful."

"Chicken soup out of a can. I’m sorry, but I’m not much of a cook." Alex apologized, placing a bowl in front of the woman.

"This is great, thanks." Danielle began eating with a fervor that warmed Alex’s heart. It was clear she relished every bite. Alex passed her the bread and watched while she finished the entire pot of soup and half a loaf of bread.

"Good to see you have an appetite." She was fascinated by the way Danielle’s eyes sparkled when she smiled.

"I’m always able to eat, believe me." Danielle commented, flashing her beautiful smile again.

"Yes, I see." Alex lifted a brow playfully. There was something completely disarming about the young woman’s demeanor. Alex found herself looking at her longer than was appropriate. She stood up and began cleaning the dishes.

Danielle stretched cautiously. Amazed how much better she felt. "That miracle drug you gave me last night really helped. Are you a doctor?"

Alex hesitated. "Not really, I hope you’re not going to turn me in for practicing without a license."

"Are you kidding? It would have been a rough night without your help." Danielle shivered involuntarily as she thought how close she had come to being raped. "Where did you learn to fight like that?

"It’s just something I picked up." Alex replied and tried to shift the direction of the conversation. "Why were you walking alone in that part of town?"

Danielle blushed. There was no way she could explain the park thing. "It’s a long story. But this wasn’t a random attack, he knew me. I called the police the night before last when he nearly beat his wife to death." She frowned. "I can’t believe he’s out walking the streets already."

"If it’s any consolation, he won’t be walking that well this morning." Alex smiled, rather pleased with the vision.

"I found that the police aren’t very effective in dealing with these situations." Danielle was puzzled by her friends reluctance to get the police involved, but after all Alex had done to help her she didn’t press it.

"It’s hard to understand what drives a person to such violence. I went to see his wife at the hospital last night, she’s in pretty bad shape. They had to deliver the baby early and weren’t sure if the child would make it. It’s so tragic. What a way to come into the world."

Alex couldn’t meet her gaze. "Violence is all some people understand, they don’t have any good in them. One way or another this baby is better off without that kind of father, believe me."

"I don’t agree. Everyone has good in them, deep down. Even he deserves a second chance, an opportunity to get help."

Alex decided not to argue the point and wondered if she needed to believe just a little of what Danielle had said. "It’s sunny outside. Feel like having a cup of coffee on the porch?"

They sat out on the deck that wrapped around the back of the house. It had a magnificent view of small lake only a hundred yards off.

Danielle sat back in the wicker chair, letting the sun warm her achy muscles. "This is a wonderful place you have."

"Thanks, actually I’m only renting. I won’t be staying much longer."

Danielle tensed at the news. "You’re moving?"

"Yeah, I never stay in one place very long. I get restless."

Danielle tried not to let her anxiousness show and changed the subject. "What do you do for a living?"

Alex hadn’t prepared herself for a conversation with the woman. She used an old standby. "I just got out of the service. I’m between jobs."

"That must be where you learned to handle yourself so well, huh?"

Alex nodded. Uncomfortable with the lie. She stood, attempting to divert the focus of the conversation. "I’m about ready for a refill. Can I get you one?" Alex walked inside, effectively avoiding further questions.

***

Detective Sands rushed into Bowin’s office and tossed a file on his desk He looked up to find her grinning ear to ear.

"We got a break on the Palanos robbery." His eyes brightened with interest.

"We really got lucky on this one. The guys in vice picked up some rich boy on drug charges. Turns out his father is a jeweler. In an effort to save his sorry-ass son, he offered information on a recent robbery. He agreed to give the name of a fence who sold him the items, if the charges were dropped against he and his son."

"Who’s the fence"

"Our old friend Sal."

"Call Judge Brennen, let’s get a search warrant."

Marisa winked and handed Bowin the warrant. "I thought you were going to say that."

He smiled outright. "What would I do without you?"

"Beats me."

"Let’s go get him."

***

Alex rummaged through her clothing looking for something that would fit Danielle. The best she could do was a T-shirt and pair of sweats. She also grabbed a pair of underwear. Danielle was sitting on the couch, staring into the fire. She looked up when Alex came into the room.

"I think I’ve managed to find some clothes for you. They are no a fashion statement but they should do for the trip home."

Danielle was quiet. The idea of going home to her empty apartment right next door to her attacker frightened her. Alex noticed the change in the young woman and sat beside her. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I... It’s just the thought of going home... He’s my neighbor."

Alex cursed herself for being insensitive to the young woman’s fear. The pained expression on Danielle’s face made her want to take the young woman into her arms and comfort her but she held back. "I’m sorry, I should have thought... I... you’re welcome to stay with me as long as you need to."

"I don’t want to be a bother... I’ve been too much trouble already. I just..."

"You haven’t been any trouble..." Alex tried to think of something to say that would make Danielle feel better. "I have enjoyed your company. It’s been nice having someone around to talk to."

Danielle glanced at her hopefully. "Really?"

"Yes, I’d like it if you stayed." Alex realized with some surprise that she truly meant it.

"Thanks... if I could just stay the weekend?"

"As long as you want." Alex watched the young woman visibly relax. "I have one condition though. I want you to get these underclothes on so that I can take a look at your bruises. I want to make sure you’re healing properly." Danielle heart swelled at Alex’s concern.

She beamed. "I’ll get changed."

While Danielle was in the bathroom dressing, Alex went to the bedroom to retrieve a jar of homemade salve from her medical bag.

"Okay doc... I’m ready."

Alex smiled. "Hop on the bed and lie down."

Danielle did as she asked, suddenly feeling a little self-conscious. Alex sat beside her and examined the bruises on her face. The swelling had gone down from this morning, but she still looked as if she was the loser in a boxing match.

"I’m going to put a little salve on the cuts and bruises. The pressure may hurt a little, but the salve itself is painless." Alex dipped her finger in the jar and began to apply the ointment with gentle strokes.

Danielle closed her eyes and braced herself for the pain. She was sore, there was no getting around it. But, the physical discomfort was forgotten as she became acutely aware of the softness of Alex’s fingers and the tenderness in her touch.

She opened her eyes. Alex was leaning over her, blue eyes focused on the task. Her fingers were so attentive that it brought to mind the intimacy of a lover’s caress. Danielle felt the surface of her skin heat.

Her glance dropped to Alex’s mouth. Her full lips were parted slightly. She wondered if they could possibly feel as soft as they looked. Danielle wanted to know. She felt an urge to press her lips to Alex’s and fought to suppress it, but she couldn’t help thinking about what lay beyond her lips. What would this amazing woman taste like? Her body was melting under Alex’s touch. It tingled all over. She stiffened, afraid she would not be able to control the sensations building inside her.

Alex pulled back. "I’m sorry...did I hurt you?"

"Just a little," Danielle lied. "But it’s okay."

"I’m done with your face, I’m going to take a look at your ribs and stomach. Ready?" Danielle nodded.

Alex’s hand hesitated momentarily at the tie of Danielle’s robe. She flashed back to the robbery and forced her mind to clear. Her finger trembled slightly when she causally attempted to open the front. As she looked down at Danielle’s slender form, her eyes lingered on the firm, well proportioned body. Alex gently ran her fingers over the ribs. Although Danielle was terribly bruised, the skin was not broken. She slowly began to cover each bruise with the medicine.

Danielle clenched her teeth to stifle a moan. Her body was alive with sensation. She could feel her nipples harden against her bra, so sensitized that the material felt coarse against them. The muscles of her lower abdomen tightened and she felt a warm moisture building between her legs. She could not believe what was she was experiencing. Was this what other people felt? It was incredible. She glanced quickly at Alex, praying she hadn’t noticed. Alex was focused on her task.

Danielle had never in her life felt anything so wonderful. Her skin burned everywhere Alex touched. With each stroke her arousal increased. She felt a spasm between her legs and held her breath, terrified her body would betray her feelings.

Alex felt Danielle flinch and assumed she was in pain. She tried to hurry along. At last, she finished. When she removed her hand, Danielle’s body trembled. Alex quickly closed her robe.

"You’re going to be fine. Nothing’s broken. You’re healing well. I want you to apply this salve twice a day until the bruises begin to fade." She handed her the jar.

Alex noticed the oddest look on the young woman’s face. She let it pass without comment. Danielle had been through a lot in the past few days. It had taken it’s toll. Danielle needed rest and time to allow her body to heal. Alex stood up reluctantly.

"You should try to get some sleep. I’m afraid I don’t have much in the house to eat. I’m going out to get groceries. I thought I’d pick up Chinese food for dinner… if you like it."

"Sounds great!"

"Okay then, I’ll be back in a little while." Alex closed the door quietly behind her.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Danielle released an audible sigh. Her body hummed with a new found energy. The physical excitement pulsing through her was intoxicating. She pulled the comforter over herself and let her hand slide under the elastic of her underpants. Her inquisitive fingers slid lightly across her sex. She withdrew them from the slippery wetness and curled up on her side. A single tear hit the pillow. Alex had just awoken her.

***

When Alex returned she noted the subtle aroma of incense. Danielle had also set the table and started a fire. Suddenly the cabin felt like a home to her. Not since she was a child had she come home to find someone waiting for her. It reminded her how alone she had been and it hurt to realize that soon she would be alone again. Danielle would return to her life, as she would. She squared her shoulders and went to the kitchen. She found Danielle there, brewing a pot of coffee.

"I thought you were going to get some rest?" Alex questioned.

"I did sleep for a little while... I had a nightmare and..."

Alex put down the groceries and turned to face the young woman. "You don’t have to worry about him hurting you. I know his kind. He’s a coward. You’ll never see him again. In fact I doubt he’ll return to his apartment."

Danielle hugged herself rubbing her hands along her arms in an attempt to rid herself of the chill that enveloped her. "I hope you’re right. Just thinking about going home makes me nervous."

"I would never take you back there, if I thought it weren’t safe." Alex spoke with more emotion than she had intended. She felt the heat rise to her face and shifted uncomfortably.

"Anyway, I hope you’re hungry. There’s a lot of food here."

Danielle smiled, relieved to have something else to focus on. "I’m always hungry."

After they put the groceries away, they sat down to eat. Alex handed the young woman a pair of chopsticks.

Danielle had never used them before and watched Alex for a few bites before giving it a try. After a few attempts, she was successful at grabbing a pea pod and lifted it carefully. It was almost to her mouth when the sticks separated, sending it flying toward Alex who gracefully snagged it in mid air with her own chopsticks. Danielle looked at her in amazement.

"Wow, you’re really good with those!"

Alex winked. "Just one of those unusual skills I’ve picked up." Danielle looked regretfully at her empty sticks. Alex smiled and held the morsel out for her to eat. Danielle opened her mouth in grateful acceptance. As Alex slid the chopsticks from Danielle’s lips, their eyes met. Danielle felt the spark between them and glanced down.

"Maybe I should get you a fork." Alex said clearing her throat.

"No, I want to give this a chance. Let me try again."

Alex walked up behind her and leaned down. She placed her hand over Danielle’s molding her fingers into the proper position. "It’s just a matter of applying the correct amount of pressure."

Her hair draped down, tickling the young woman’s neck. Danielle felt Alex’s breath against her skin and realized if she turned her head, their lips would nearly touch. She felt a rush of heat and fought to stay concentrated on her task. With Alex steadying her fingers, she made it all the way to her mouth.

"See? Nothing to it." Alex released her hand and sat back down. "Now, try it on your own."

Danielle looked reluctantly at her friend. "Something tells me this is going to be the longest meal in history." Alex smiled.

Danielle poked at her food and tried to sound casual. "So you said you were leaving soon. Where are you moving?"

Alex hesitated momentarily. "I’m trying to decide between a couple of places." She quickly changed the focus of the conversation. "It depends on what I decide to do career wise. What about you? What do you do?"

Danielle had finally gotten the hang of eating with the strange instruments and hurried to finish a mouthful. "I work at the Sentinel."

"A reporter, huh?"

"Well, not yet. I’ve been stuck writing obituaries for the past six months, but I just got the go ahead to do my first article." Danielle paused thoughtfully. "I really don’t think of myself as a writer. I’m more of a storyteller. People’s lives and adventures fascinate me. My whole life I’ve been intrigued by exciting and dangerous tales."

Alex watched Danielle with interest. She enjoyed the animated way she spoke, using her hands and body with great flourish. "It’s good they’re finally giving you a chance."

"Yeah, this is a big break for me."

"So, what’s the story about?"

"Battered women who have survived and turned their lives around. I hope that victims of abuse who read it find comfort in hearing how others have escaped and gone on to happier lives. Maybe they’ll be encouraged to do the same."

"You like helping people." Alex stated.

"Well, yes. These women are so brave. They have triumphed over such adversity. Their stories really touched me."

Alex got up to pour coffee. "So do I get a preview of the article?"

Danielle’s face lit up. "Sure."

They sat by the fire while Danielle spoke about the women’s lives. Alex was moved. But it wasn’t just their stories that captivated her but the skill with which Danielle related them. She had a wonderful ability to bring their experiences to life. Alex felt like she was watching their stories unfold. She found herself touched by the tragedy and inspired by their courage. Alex could visualize the women, feel their pain and appreciate their achievements.

Much later that evening, Danielle finished, nearly breathless. Her face was flushed with excitement. "I’m sorry, I really ran on."

"Don’t apologize. You were wonderful. You really have a gift."

Danielle blushed, flattered. "A gift of gab maybe." She smiled.

"I think these women are fortunate to have you telling their stories. It’s great that you’ve found your niche."

Danielle had a talent for drawing people out, getting them to talk about themselves. But, so far she’d been unsuccessful with Alex. Whenever she tried, Alex became uncomfortable and changed the flow of the conversation.

"Have you found yours?" Danielle questioned.

Alex smiled cynically. "I’ve found what I’m good at. I’m just not happy doing it anymore." She stood anxiously. Danielle could almost feel the walls go up.

"I’ve kept you up long enough. You need your rest. I’ll grab a blanket and sleep on the couch."

"I don’t want to kick you out of your bed again tonight. I can sleep on the couch."

"No, I insist. I end up falling asleep on the couch most nights anyway."

"Okay, goodnight Alex." She turned, a little reluctant to face her dreams."

"Danielle if you have a nightmare and need to talk... I’m a light sleeper."

*****

Alex awoke in the middle of the night. An unfamiliar noise alerted her senses. Someone was in the room. Slowly her eyes adjusted and she looked about warily.

Danielle lay on the floor beside her, curled up in a blanket.

Alex whispered, not wanting to startle her. "Are you all right?"

Danielle rolled over to face her. "I’m sorry. Did I wake you?"

"Is everything okay?" Alex asked.

"I had another nightmare. I didn’t mean to wake you... I just wanted to be close to... someone. I’m such a coward."

"You are anything but a coward." Alex reached down to give her a hand up. "Come on, I think we would both sleep better in bed."

Danielle felt relief wash over her and she looked up gratefully. The unexpected tenderness of Alex’s expression touched her heart. Their eyes met, and Danielle felt that pleasant flutter again. She glanced away nervously.

Alex noticed her anxiety "You don’t snore, do you?" Alex teased.

"Err, no. At least I don’t think so..." She relaxed a little and decided to play along. "I hope you aren’t one of those people who steal all the covers."

Alex started toward the bedroom. "I’ve never had any complaints."

Danielle didn’t doubt that for a minute. She smiled to herself and followed.

They settled in quietly. The memories of her attackers were the furthest thing from Danielle’s mind as she lay beside the older woman. She felt safe.

"Thanks."

Alex was on her side facing the door, an ingrained safety precaution. She turned to Danielle, and gently tucked a stray lock of hair behind the young woman’s ear. "Get some sleep. Everything’s going to be all right."

Danielle knew it was true; she never felt better. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. In no time she was fast asleep.

*****

It was a beautiful sunny day. They rowed across the lake to a favorite spot of Alex’s to have a picnic lunch that Danielle had spent the morning preparing. After pulling the boat ashore, they hiked into the woods for several miles. It had been well worth the walk. The view when they broke through the woods into the clearing took Danielle’s breath away. The sun streamed down giving the area a magical feel.

It was a pleasant afternoon. Danielle spent most of the time chatting non-stop while Alex listened.

She had tried to draw her friend out on a couple of occasions but Alex seemed content to let Danielle monopolize the conversation. She found the stories about Danielle’s childhood experiences fascinating. Danielle’s youth had been so different from her own.

Alex began packing up the remnants of their picnic lunch while Danielle sat back enjoying the feel of the refreshing breeze against her skin. She had never been more content and didn’t want to come down from this natural high. The time she had spent with Alex the last two days had been wonderful.

She stood and stretched in the warm sunlight, taking in her surroundings with a child-like awe. Catching a glimpse of color to her right, she walked toward it.

"Wild flowers!"

Alex watched with amusement, as Danielle ran her fingers over the brightly colored petals and took in their sweet scent. She was amazed how the smallest things gave Danielle pleasure. The young woman saw only the good in things, approaching life with a naive wonder. It was a fragile quality and Alex found herself wanting to shield her from anything that would corrupt it.

Danielle sat on a log, reveling in the beauty around her. She was so distracted that she didn’t notice four fox pups emerge from a burrow near the end of the fallen tree. They ran playfully toward her. She gasped in surprise.

"Alex, look..."

Alex got to her feet and scanned the tree line cautiously, sure the mother was nearby. "Danielle, get up and back away slowly."

Danielle looked up and smiled. One pup playfully nipped at her shoelace, pulling her attention from Alex. Danielle laughed and gently ran her fingers through it’s coat. "He’s so soft."

Alex started to repeat her warning, but it was too late. The vixen broke through the woods and headed toward Danielle. There was not enough time to position herself between Danielle and the mother. Alex looked around quickly for something she could use as a weapon. She eyed a good sized rock and bent to pick it up.

Danielle noticed the mother’s approach and looked toward Alex. When her eyes settled on the crude weapon in Alex’s hand, her stomach lurched. She understood what her friend meant to do.

Alex gauged the distance, taking the weight of the rock into consideration. She watched the vixen anxiously, her muscles taut, ready to react. If the fox made a move to attack Danielle, she felt fairly confident she could hit it.

"Wait!"

Danielle slowly stood up. She took a small step backward. But, the pups followed her playfully biting at her sneakers. The mother was only about twenty feet from Danielle now, weaving back and forth, watching her intently.

Danielle sat down, eyeing the worried mother. She slid her sneakers off and began playing with the pups. The vixen got within ten feet and stopped. Her attention fully focused on the young woman.

Danielle could not contain a laugh as one aggressive pup pulled the shoe from her grasp and proudly pranced off to present the prize to it’s mother. The vixen sniffed the shoe and laid down, cautiously watching the scene.

Alex looked on in disbelief. Three of the pups were frolicking around Danielle and the fourth was snuggled up against her leg. "Alex." Danielle waved her arm, encouraging her friend to come closer.

Alex approached slowly, never taking her eyes off the mother. As she neared, the vixen sat up warily. The tall woman’s body was tense, ready to react. Danielle smiled up at her and reached out, lightly brushing the fingers that clutched the jagged weapon. The young woman’s touch melted her tension away. Danielle eased the rock from her grasp and laid it down, replacing it with the warmth of her hand. She gently pulled Alex’s arm, urging her to sit.

As soon as Alex was at their level, the pups were all over her, sniffing and prodding. Danielle held her hand, squeezing comfortingly, then she placed it on the pup at her side. "Feel how soft. Aren’t they beautiful?" The orange pups had black ears and feet. Their bellies were white and their tails were long and bushy. Their eyes were alert, cat like.

Alex ran her fingers through the plush fur, acutely aware of the hand that lay over hers. As Danielle’s fingers stroked the soft fur, her palm caressed the back of Alex’s hand. Alex sunk her fingers into the thick fur and quietly relished the innocent contact.

Danielle didn’t seem to notice. Her attention was focused on the playful pups. Alex allowed herself the luxury of extending her gaze at her young friend. She was entranced by the way Danielle’s nose crinkled when she smiled and her eyes sparkled when she laughed. Alex thought for one moment about lifting the soft fingers to her lips and quickly closed her eyes.

Suddenly the energetic pups bounded onto her lap, pushing her backward. Danielle was startled by the soft sounds coming from her friend. It struck her that it was the first time she had heard Alex laugh. It was magical.

Danielle looked down at the happy woman, normally so stoic and controlled, and her heart swelled. The pups were having a field day. One had a hold of the laces of Alex’s top, another was licking at her neck, while yet another was engaged with her in a tug of war for Danielle’s sneaker.

The sun reflected off her dazzling blue eyes and suddenly Danielle was lost in them. Without thought, she moved her hand to Alex’s face, her fingers lifting the stray strands of dark hair from her moist lips. Their eyes met and Danielle began to lean down.

There was a sharp bark. Danielle pulled back and Alex sat up quickly. The father was at the edge of the woods calling. The family quickly ran to him, disappearing into the woods. Danielle’s heart was pounding furiously. She meant to kiss Alex and had nearly done it.

Alex smiled and looked at her. "That was amazing."

Danielle heart stopped for one instant, then realized they were thinking different things. Alex hadn’t even noticed her clumsy advance.

Danielle shrugged and tried to recover. "Animals like me." She winked. "You aren’t the only one with unusual skills." She effectively masked her disappointment with humor.

"Apparently not." Alex grinned.

Danielle glanced at Alex’s dark top sprinkled with red fur. She innocently wiped the hair off, accidentally brushing Alex’s breast. Suddenly aware of the intimacy of her action she pulled back. "I... err... they got hair all over you."

Alex’s nipple hardened from the brief contact. She stood up awkwardly and brushed off her clothes. A torrent of unfamiliar emotions flooded through her. "Yeah... ah... it’s getting late. We should finish packing up and go back."

"Sure, if you want." Danielle said sadly.

They picked up their things in awkward silence. Danielle was angry with herself for ruining the moment. Had Alex thought she was making a pass? She hadn’t meant anything by the casual touch, but even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew her lack of courage had been the only thing to keep her from doing more. Her fingers tingled, remembering the brief contact. She felt miserable and risked a glance at Alex who seemed to be avoiding eye contact. Danielle got up to search for her sneakers.

Alex watched Danielle walk away and grimaced. She didn’t think Danielle had noticed her react to her touch but she wasn’t sure. Alex was confused by the excitement coursing through her body. Her friends action had been innocent, she had no doubt about that, but for a split second she had considered pushing the young woman back on the grass and ...

What was happening to her? She knew she had to get a grip on her emotions. She cared about Danielle far to much to lead her on when nothing could come of it. The thought saddened her. She looked up to see Danielle return shoeless and tried to act casual.

"No luck, huh?"

"Nope." Danielle shrugged. "They were kind of old anyway." She looked hesitantly in the direction of the lake. The idea of tromping through the woods in her stocking feet didn’t appeal to her.

Alex hesitated only a moment. "I’ll give you a lift."

Danielle looked at her curiously. Alex smiled. "Come on, I’ll carry you."

"You...you mean like a piggy back ride?"

"Yeah, didn’t you ever do that when you were a kid?"

"Sure, it’s just... well I’m quite a bit heavier now. I don’t want to hurt you."

Alex’s face broke into a playful smile. "I think I can handle the strain."

Danielle couldn’t help but laugh. "All right, you asked for it."

Alex positioned herself in front of a large rock. "You’ll have to carry the basket. I’ll hold your legs." Danielle stepped up and wrapped her free arm around Alex’s neck. Her legs slid easily around the taller woman’s waist. Firm arms locked around her thighs, securing her in place. They were a perfect fit.

True to her word Alex carried her effortlessly and much sooner than Danielle would have liked, they were back at the boat. The trip across the lake back to the cabin was a quiet one. Both women had a lot on their minds. The weekend was over. It was time for Danielle to return home.

#xena #xena warrior princess #xena/gabrielle #xena/gabrielle fanfiction #author: friction #femslash #fanfiction #mature

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