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obscure-sentimentalist · 4 years

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19. tibny

Prompt from the drabble challenge list

Part of the “Take It Back Now Y’all” (TIBNY) timeline; follow-up to this

“And that’s how you ruin a life. Congratulations.”

Connor comes to with a half-snort just in time for what feels like a newspaper to smack him full in the face.

“The hell, Tommy?” he grouses, doing his best to disguise the high-pitched whine underneath a jaw-cracking yawn. He flounders with the blankets to groggily push himself up into a seated position against the wall behind the bed, before belatedly snapping, “Get out of my room, asshole” like a sullen teenager.

“Happy to oblige,” his brother replies cheerfully, yet Connor doesn’t hear any shuffling or footfalls to corroborate that statement. After a moment, he finally cracks one eye open (immediately protesting the sun’s glare through an opening in the curtains) to see Tommy standing directly in the doorway, making jazz hands.

“Threshold, it doesn’t count!” The Cheshire grin doesn’t waver—it grows, even—when Tommy contorts his body to evade the pillow that Connor subsequently lobs at him.

Not willing to try again and further feed into this childish back-and-forth, Connor lets his head fall back against the wall as he scrubs a hand over his face. “Do I want to know why you thought it was necessary to use the spare key I gave you for emergencies and come barging into my place at…” He fumbles his free hand blindly over the nightstand. “…where’s my phone…?”

The very distinctive sound of a throat clearing makes Connor pause in his poorly-planned search. “If you’d turn your attention to your morning briefing,” Tommy prompts, nodding towards the jettisoned paper now resting in Connor’s lap. He clearly means to phrase it like a joke, but there’s an undercurrent of unease in his tone.

The reason for it becomes clear once Connor’s vision defogs enough for him to make out the contents of the front page.

(It’s admittedly not very difficult to do so, not with the font choice and very recognizable subjects of the blown-up photo positioned front-and-center.)

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’,” Tommy parrots, finally sinking down to sit with his back propped against one side of the doorframe. “Just wanted to make sure you knew that this is what you signed up for and very casually accepted when we told Dad.”

“I guess I just… wasn’t quite expecting it to be on this level,” Connor confesses, a whole truth that he so rarely tells these days. He had, indeed, been ready for the Starling City media outlets catching wind of a lookalike to one of their questionably-favorite headline-makers, and whatever fallout ensued from telling their father.

(So far, it’s just been a simple press release pulled together through the preferred Merlyn Global PR channels—Malcolm forwent any sort of public address, likely so he could regroup and reexamine how being pulled into the spotlight like this might affect his plans moving forward. Neither of the twins have crossed paths with him since securing the future of the clinic, putting them into direct contrast with Malcolm’s ghostwritten wishes of “reuniting and getting to be a family with [his] two sons.”)

But this?

FROM RICHES TO RICHES: CHICAGO DEPARTMENT STORE HEIR REVEALED AS SON OF STARLING CITY BILLIONAIRE

Connor could maybe live—albeit uncomfortably—with being demoted from (up-and-coming, at this point) surgeon to just “that Rhodes.” Being called Malcolm’s son is toeing a line, but it’s an admittedly necessary evil. Even the accompanying photo—snapped by some paparazzo or another during one of Connor’s carefully-coordinated excursions through downtown Starling City—gets a pass, having captured Connor with his eyes squeezed shut in laughter and Tommy’s arm slung playfully around his neck.

No, the thing that really smacks Connor with his miscalculation is the newspaper’s logo printed across the top, and how it decidedly does not match that of any of the local publications.

“This is a big day for you,” Tommy says, falling just short of teasing as he rolls his head towards Connor and his eyebrows shoot up. “You made national news, you overnight celebrity, you.”

Connor groans, tipping to the side and unceremoniously face-planting into the mattress.

. . .

“You are seriously lucky that you told Claire that all of this was coming down before word got out,” Tommy declares around the slice of toast dangling out of his mouth when Connor steps into the kitchen, freshly showered and dressed for casual comfort.

(Evidently, he’s not going to be showing his face outside of his apartment today, so faded jeans and the first t-shirt blindly unearthed from one of the boxes yet to be unpacked it is.

…At least the sunglasses-wearing Golden Retriever screen-printed on the front is adorable.)

Cringing—both at the reminder and the ill-mannered voicing of it—Connor yanks open the refrigerator to retrieve the orange juice bottle. “I know, I know, and I should be grateful that you were the one who pushed me to do so…”

“Damn right.” Tommy takes a bite and then waves the remainder of the bread for emphasis. Miraculously, not a single glob of cherry-berry jam slips off and plops onto the kitchen island as he does so. “You almost forgot entirely.”

“I didn’t… forget entirely,” Connor counters weakly. He ignores Tommy’s displeased look in favor of grabbing a clean juice glass from the cupboard. “I was trying to handle one reveal at a time, and getting the clinic back was the higher priority.”

“Right. And that’s why you yelled, ‘Oh shit, Claire!’ and whacked your knee on the dashboard as we were about to pull out of the parking lot after dropping the bomb on Dad. Clearly a smooth transition into the next stage—I commend your planning skills.”

Connor takes a swig of orange juice rather than giving that a verbal reply, daintily lifting a finger that’s decidedly not his pinky as he does so.

“Hey, it might be made for spreading delicious jams and jellies, but I will use this knife if you keep being rude,” Tommy warns, pointing the utensil at Connor threateningly enough that the dulled edges can be excused.

Withdrawing the glass from his lips, Connor raises his hands in casual surrender before setting it down on the counter. “Alright,” he starts, blowing out a deep breath, “so maybe I had a bit of… tunnel vision about all of this.”

Really, that’s the nicest way Connor can phrase it, without exposing the full ugliness of the truths underneath. Tommy’s right—Connor owes him credit for getting that conversation with Claire in motion immediately after the realization hit. But he’s also mistaken, thinking that this was something that just slipped Connor’s mind and to-do list.

In actuality, the idea had never truly crossed his mind, not until after they’d confronted Malcolm.

It’s a cruel confession, one with many layers that drive the knife in deeper and deeper. Connor had been single-mindedly focused on saving Tommy’s life, uniquely capable of doing so due to his knowledge of the months to come—as a result, everything else took an automatic backseat. And while that alone admittedly isn’t the healthiest mindset, the situation worsens the more Connor thinks on it and can rationalize what might have been, had Tommy not intervened.

He can tell himself that things would have been fine, leaving Claire be for a while. He’s lived through this before, knows that his relationship with his sister was as simple and distant as exchanging a few texts on birthdays and major holidays at this point in the timeline. It would still be a few years yet before they’d begin to repair things, after both are in Chicago again and Russell is brought in and Claire reaches out and Connor finally breaks, one mid-May night. He has time.

That would have been justification—cold, but still reasonable—enough, had things transpired as they did before. But with Connor doing everything in his power to alter the timeline, to avert mass casualties and his own personal loss… if everything goes right, he’s never going to hit that breaking point. Never going to move back to Chicago, at least not under the same circumstances. Any time he thought he had doesn’t so much run out as become nonexistent—no progress with rebuilding their relationship, but also no further decay.

At least, that’s what would have been the case if he didn’t fix things with Claire and didn’t reveal himself to Malcolm. It was moving forward with the latter that finally sent the consequences careening into Connor’s face, and slapped a definitive countdown clock on the former.

Saving Tommy while flying under the radar like Connor’s always done would be one thing. Doing so by coming forward as a Merlyn, and leaving the Rhodes family to hear the news along with the rest of the public, though?

Banging his knee against the dash at the realization was only going to be the beginning of Connor’s pain, if he didn’t handle things right and immediately.

Sacrificing his relationship with his older sister has never been on the table, even if Connor wants nothing to do with Cornelius Rhodes ever again. Yes, they aren’t blood-related, and yes, Claire’s loyalty to Cornelius (and discrediting of Connor’s issues with him outside of genetics) was still a rift even after reconciliation the first time around, but those are, in no way, grounds for complete severance.

“You can’t risk irreparable damage with one sibling just so you can officially be recognized as a brother to the other,” Tommy sighs, dragging Connor out of his thoughts even as the sentiment grounds them. Brushing stray toast crumbs off the island and onto his plate, Tommy slides off his chair to bring the dish over to the sink. “So no more of that ‘tunnel vision’, okay? I was actually hoping to invite Claire out for a visit once things settle down, and that isn’t going to go well if the two of you aren’t talking.”

Connor’s stomach twists at Tommy’s request—it’s too easy to equate giving up that laser-focus with risking Tommy’s life—only to plummet, heavy with guilt, when the rest hits him. “You were?”

“Well, yeah.” Tommy shoots Connor a confused look over his shoulder as he turns on the faucet. “She’s your sister, and even if that doesn’t really make her mine too, I still want to get to know her. Especially since I’ve had ‘Claire for Fashion Help Only’ saved in my contacts list for years and never put two-and-two together.”

Right, that had been a surprise. Knowing that Claire and Tommy had met once before at Dolan Rhodes and that Claire remembered it enough that she kept the receipt had been one thing; finding out that she’d given Tommy a means to contact her and he held onto it even as the memory of where it came from faded was something else entirely.

It meant that, even as Tommy’s existence shattered the truths she thought she knew about her family, Claire still cared enough to quietly anchor him to the Rhodeses and ensure that he wouldn’t be lost again. It meant that, even though the encounter didn’t linger and the gravity of it was concealed, Tommy was just aware enough of that tether to keep a grip on it.

Most importantly, though, it meant that this was a link that had existed in Connor’s original timeline, and could have surfaced in a quieter and more personal way than over a hastily-placed phone call, warning Claire of the oncoming explosion of her family’s private life.

It would have been entirely possible to keep both—eventually all, with the addition of Thea—of his siblings and forge bonds between them without causing a big fuss. Claire might have balked at first over not telling Cornelius anything, but Connor has enough faith that her wishes to reconnect with one brother and accept a new one would have won out in the end. Tommy, if his latest confession says anything, would have smothered the eagerness, but still jumped at the chance to acquire a new sibling. All Connor would have had to do was give his two family ties a tug, and that thin, invisible connection between them would keep the ends close while drifting to center.

But that was a could-have-been in a timeline gone by, one that Connor had never grasped for even though it was fully in his power to do so. Any second chance he has this time around is going to come with a sea of new complications and resistance, and that’s after he almost let it slip from his fingers at the very start.

It’s a certain painful irony, Tommy salvaging Connor’s fraying family life while Connor does his damndest to ensure that Tommy remains alive in general.

“We’ll shoot for this summer to get together,” Connor finally says, throat tightening around the words as if fearful he’s promising too much. “Let the fifteen minutes run out and give the media time to go rabid over something else.”

Tommy hums in acknowledgement, setting his clean plate on the drying rack next to the sink. “We could probably make it a little earlier, really—beat out the summer heat wave, but still leave enough time for the story run its full course. She could come in mid-, late spring, maybe?”

Connor is incredibly grateful that Tommy’s back is still turned, because the agonized cringe that suggestion provokes is insuppressible.

Tommy is going to survive—Connor won’t accept any other outcome (never again). But in the event that he can’t bring an end to Malcolm’s plans ahead of time, or prevent them from being put in motion, or…

“Nah, I’m thinking July,” Connor manages after a moment, keeping his voice level and casual before he takes a final swig of orange juice. “We’ll get Claire in town for a few days, then maybe do a short road trip. Get out, see some sights—you know, family bonding stuff.”

Tommy lets out a snort of laughter at that and flicks some lingering soap suds at Connor’s face before toweling off his hands. “Long hours in an overstuffed, overheated car with your adult siblings—that sounds like the perfect set-up for a successful fratricide.”

“Come on, a little positivity here. Claire’s going to love you.”

“Oh, no, I’m not the victim here, and neither is she,” Tommy corrects. “If you pass out in the back and start saying weird shit in your sleep again, I get the feeling that she’ll be on the same page as me about booting you out of the car in the middle of nowhere.”

Connor allows himself an exaggerated eye-roll at that, but otherwise lets it slide.

Tommy shoots his balled-up paper towel into the kitchen trash can before turning his attention back to Connor, his eyes stopping pointedly on the grinning, shades-sporting Golden. “Alright, since you’re clearly not dressed to be going anywhere in broad daylight, what do you say I run you off Rainbow Road a couple times? Don’t think I didn’t notice that you prioritized hooking up the Wii over all of your other unpacking.”

“Big talk for a guy with a shell-shaped target on his back,” Connor swipes back, but he grins and heads into the living room to grab the remotes and wheel controllers.

As driven as he is to save his brother’s life, a few Mario Kart victories are a worthy-enough detour.

#obscure-sentimentalist writes sometimes #merlyn boys #connor rhodes #tommy merlyn

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clonelyboy · 4 years

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quick headcanons:

he eats spiders. terrible.

ate a pregnant spider once, and felt guilty for it. made a memorial for her and her several unborn children.

despite feeling guilty (only a little), he keeps doing it.

he loves cats, despite being allergic. “if i die, i die.”

he has pink heart-shaped sunglasses. if they break, he’s got a spare pair. and another spare pair. and another spare pair. and yet another spare pair. and--

where does he keep ’em all...

he made Adelaide -- then A.D.I. (pronounced ‘Addy’), short for Artificial Developing Intelligence -- when he was 7 years old. the name change came after the bandit attack that cost him his right eye, left forearm, and left lower leg, after the first argument with his dad about why Teddy never leaves the farm, and the conversation about mortality between Teddy and (now) Adelaide.

Bonnie the doll was fixed with an AI, also called Bonnie, 6 months before Teddy finds out about both Jack and Emmanuel.

Milicent is in frequent contact with both Alex and Teddy after she finds out that Teddy exists. she never visits, despite only living in Overlook (and having moved there after Jack’s death), but she cares a lot for Teddy.

after the discovery about Jack and his own being a clone, Teddy is terrified now to meet new people, fearing misdirected retribution, even though he only bares so much resemblance to Jack at the age of 10, and given that he has 2 green eyes thanks to the ECHOeye.

he’ll look significantly more alike when older, and will go to great lengths to keep the connection hidden -- completely hidden face, short hair if he must go without a hood, fake names, etc.

if he is shown otherwise, however -- as in, found family and acceptance -- he will be less likely to hide himself.

one of Teddy’s previous incarnations (in my head, and for lack of a better word) included him being given the names James by Tim; being brought up solely in the bunker by Autohn who was less a father figure and more of a bastard; having killed Autohn on his 10th birthday and pushed him/his corpse into the lower depths of the bunker where the previous failed attempts at cloning were put; previous failed clones were actually still alive and amalgamated together to form The Amalgam (later, Malcolm, then-James’ many brothers); then-James did not have prosthetics.

another incarnation (actually the 3rd; the one i’m writing as now is the 2nd) was Teddy being alone with his robot daughter, singular, A.D.I. / Adelaide after Autohn was murdered by bandits two years before, and he carried out business and trade through several fake names while in the safety of the old bunker which he and Adelaide went back to. i can’t remember much else from it, if there was anything else; only that the fake names carried back over to this version and they’re the ones he will use when he’s older.

#all you have is your fire and the place you need to reach. (headcanon & meta.)#long post cw #ask to tag #(some of this is a bit grammatically... not fantastic)#(but yeah!!!)#(for now; that's it)#(im sure i had more but we'll see)

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smilingcrumb · 6 years

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Part 2 of refreshing the worlds

Welcome to Oasis Springs!

New sims have settled down, sims who already have been there got a make and a lot of new buildings are there now. Let’s have a look, what’s new...

(1) We start with the Caliente & Lothario family because - well, they are a real family now since Don and Nina got a child together! (house from EA)

Don Lothario - he’s the womanizer of Oasis Springs and - surprise! father since his daughter Laura was born. For her he does his best to stay with Nina but ahhh...look at all these women...

Nina Caliente - she loves her little girl and she loves that Don has to be with her now! None of these other b****** has a chance as long as Nina has an eye on him

Dina Caliente - she finished with Don and is now focused on her career as a mixer, there are also very nice guys at the bar...

Katarina Caliente - she’s already in love with Don but for her granddaughter she hides her feelings

Beryl & Fayn - these two little kittens are from my breeding, they are oriental shorthair cats

(2) Money, money, money... This is probably all this family is thinking about. Well, except for dinners and how to show people how rich they are... (house from EA)

Geoffrey Landgraab - he lost a few hairs, maybe because his wife gives his money away with both hands...

Nancy Landgraab - diamonds, wine, sunglasses, clothes, more diamonds... these are her priorities, why shouldn’t she buy these things? That’s the reason why she married fell in love with her husband in the end

Malcolm Landgraab - he’s a spoilt boy with an evil vein!

Shaska - an Afghan Greyhound which is for sure purebred

(3) Antonella and her son have moved to Oasis Springs from Selvadorada because her family disregarded her when she got pregnant without beeing married. Now they have a new beginning. (house from ruthless_kk)

Antonella Navarro - she’s a cheerful dance machine with a liiittle kleptomaniac problem but now she has to look how to survive as a single parent

Juan Esteban Navarro - he’s a real rascal which doesn’t make it easier for his mother...

(4) I have no idea where they are from or why I created them but they waited in my library so, now they are here! (house from Charmidem)

Ananaya Gupta - she’s a genius and clumsy red head who’s sometimes a little bit hot headed, the most important thing in her life is her family

Myra Gupta - she’s Ananaya’s sister and a bit insane...but actually she’s a really nice person who get’s along well with everybody she met

Krishna Gupta - he’s Ananaya’s son and with his blonde hair and blue eyes totally a heartbreaker! Like the most teenagers he’s a lazy pc freak

Ethan - this lovely guy is another offspring from one of my breedings (on FB), he’s a lazy, friendly bullterrier

(5) Maja Bauer is a hippie girl who can now live her dreams in an trailer in Oasis Springs! (house from ju1ka)

Maja Bauer - she’s an active, vegeterian and jealous sim with a huge dream, one day she will open her own vegeterian restaurant!

(6) I love this family! <3 My cutie pie Bene and the beautiful Cassy from @l0unacutex fell in love together and have now their own family. (house from @jenba)

Cassy Cutex-Feron - she’s a clumsy geek who loves making music, listen to music, read about music...well, she loves music and of course her adorable twins!

Bene Cutex-Feron - he’s a childish romantic who loves his family, the twins are his world and with his wonderful woman he has the perfect family! Oh and don’t forget Jaden he’s part of the family as well.

Yannik & Ygritte Cutex-Feron - the twins are really active and curious so it never gets boring in this household!

Jaden - a lovely and patient dalmatian who always has an eye on the twins

(7) Hiko Kobayashi was made for a competition on FB and now she can start her life in Oasis Springs! (house from pablobri)

Hiko Kobayashi - she’s a very self-assured, cheerful and creative sim who loves the music. Her dream is to become a professional musician!

Sumi - she’s not alone, her cat Sumi is always to there for some cuddles

(8) The last one for today is Finch Ventura. I’ve downloaded her from a very talented simblr here but I can’t remember who it was and searching lasts years :/ if you recognize where she’s from tell me and I can complete it here :) (house from wrathofcath)

Finch Ventura - she’s a lovely geek who loves gaming and books but also has some gloomy thoughts sometimes... hopefully she find someone to cheer her up in her new hometown!

Community lots:

Schlangennest NEW! - from smilingcrumb (that’s me ^^)

Club Llamante - from @jenba

Ristorante Amore - from Ninnster

Let’s Go Fitness + Gym - from Aviator9527

Desert Bloom - from Quarree

Calico Community Pool - from jenba

Springside Market - from jenba

Eiscafé Russo - from smilingcrumb

other lots which are uninhabited at the moment:

Colorful Mediterranean - from simlicy

Cartagena House - from anasoeiro

Olympe BaseGame *No CC - from 96LangerLui99

#sims4 #ts4 #newsave #oasis springs

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shirleylawson · 3 years

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Four Days in Dubai

After I unpacked my bag last Wednesday from my London/Brighton trip to see my girl I was told by my darling husband to re pack, as we were off to Dubai the next day. Just got back from 4 days in Dubai, first time in the Middle East and not a social visit so absolutely exhausted. We had to go for us to basically make the final decision on whether or not to sign on the dotted line to transfer there or not (and I had a few wee contacts of my own to see, but keeping quiet about them at the moment, due to my superstition) and of course this time wifey had to come along as she is the one who has the final yay or nay at the end of the day!. Firstly, 4 days is not enough to get a real feel for a place but, depending on your pace, and ours was approx. 4 hours sleep per night, you can get a fair idea. If I had to choose whether or not to live there according to the flight, then the deal is done! We travelled Economy Class, of course, but with United Emirates Airlines, it doesn't feel like economy. Three tunnels take you onto the aircraft, one for First class, one Business and us cattle classes in Economy. We had to pass through the last two aisles of Business to get to our seats without even a whiff of the champagne and caviar being served in First, but the sight of the business class was enough to make me wonder if they all sat through there in First Class in a Living Room setting with shag pile carpet, full four poster beds and a log fire! Our flight was wonderful. Five hours and 40 minutes of sheer relaxation. A warm fluffy blanket and big soft pillow on every seat, which reclined backward and outward for your legs. Huge TV/Computer/Games Station/CD Radio in front with 700 channels to choose from. All the latest movies, I watched, My Sisters Keeper, Julie& Julia a bit of Malcolm in the Middle and listened to some of the new Red Hot Chilly CD and we had arrived, being served three times in between with wines, and a wonderful three course meal. There was an under aircraft camera to watch the assent from Rome and descent into Dubai. As we approached Dubai airport the first thing that stuck me was the proximity of the airport to the actual city. The runway seemed to be in the very centre of all these magnificent buildings and I felt I could reach out and touch the tips of them. From the air Dubai has a skyline similar to Manhattan but on a grander scale and with the lights and glitz of Las Vegas thrown in. I could see the Burg Dubai (tallest building in the world) rising above them all and it was spectacular. We disembarked and the airport was not a disappointment after the flight. It was huge and as I stood at passport control I looked up and couldn’t see the where the building ended, all I could see where lights and water falls and sky trains whizzing past, I felt like I’d stepped into another century. All airport staff are fluent in English and are only too willing to assist you with any enquiries you may have with a smile. It took a fair hike to eventually arrive outside but of course we were standing on Travelators the whole time and trying to take in the sights of the airport. I never thought an airport would make me want to get the old camera out (unfortunately it was packed away). The floors were white glistening marble with the gleam of silver everywhere (had to keep on the Prada sunglasses, also to show these Arabs I’m a classy Italian broad), sparkly little fairy lights and fabulous water features accompanied by music. Never mind a bloody hotel, I thought, lets just go get some sleeping bags and park here for the 4 days! We wouldn’t have needed the sleeping bags as it turned out, with an abundance of leather reclining seats in front of TV’s and computers. The services offered inside the airport were also very impressive, a line of pristine baby buggies in wonderful Disney Technicolor lined one wall for complimentary use and looked like a baby had never had it’s nappy soaked bum near one. Outside the warm night air hit us. It was 11.30pm but still warm and me in my boots and padded jacket. Our dear friend from Rome Paolo was coming to pick us up. He’s been living and working there for just over a year now and we’ve known him for 13 years, so we trusted his judgment of life in Dubai. Outside there was a queue of limousines and hummer limos…………..does no one have a normal car in this city?? Apparently not, Paolo drove up in his huge 4 by 4 Merc! The drive to his apartment took all of 20 minutes and then I saw some of the real Dubai City!!!! I craned my neck out the window the entire journey as Stefano and Paolo chatted away and caught up after not seeing each other for some time. Row after row after row of the most spectacular examples of 21st century architecture lined the streets to my left. Each building making me gasp until the two second gap of the next. Apartments blocks, office blocks, hotels and restaurants each one more impressive than the other. To the right was the sea. A pier stretching as far as the eye could see in the shape of a palm tree full of hotels, swimming pools and talcum powder beaches. Paolo’s apartment was on the 22nd floor of a dark blue building, the glass looked dark blue from the outside but normal from the inside. His balcony had a sea view to the right with the Marina and all the amenities it had to offer, a pool directly below and the skyline of glittering, sky scrapping buildings to the left. We sat out there drinking and talking and laughing (Paolo’s girlfriend lives with him) till 4 am which was silly, since Stefano had to be up early in the morning and had a hectic few days ahead, but he managed! He went off to “Internet City”, the main office area of the city by 08.30hrs and I set off to check out the local area. Taxis are in abundance (just like Rome I hear you say…………….not), in fact, there is even no need to raise your arm or call for one, they seem to instinctively know you are coming to the road for a taxi and up they pull. Out gets the driver and opens the back door for you, with polite, thank you Madams and welcomes. All the locals speak perfect English I soon learnt, even though I insisted on speaking to everyone in Italian!!! Please don’t ask me why I did this, as I have no logical explanation why my seriously defective brain seems to work slightly different to the norm. After 4 days of doing this and seriously analysing why I would speak in Italian to these polite English speaking people, I can only assume it’s because in my brain they are foreign, and with all foreigners I speak Italian (I did it in Greece last year also) as that’s MY foreign language that I know! Does it make any sense to anyone? Please tell me it does! Shopping malls are pretty standard (by Dubai standards of course, think airport, sky trains and water features) but they had Marks and Spencer’s, Debenhams (dedicated to British readers) New Look, Top Shop………every single High Street British shop including, of course, Italian designer shops and the American chains, although I have to say it was a mainly British city from the signs (lift not elevator) and the electric plugs in the houses (heaven, adaptor stayed in the bag for 4 days). To give you an idea of the size of the mall it is equivalent to 73 football fields with over 700 shops (I read this outside;) and has an indoor ski resort in which you can ski or snow board or sledge the day away and swear as far as the eye can see that you were in the Alpine Mountains. Lisa, Paolo’s girlfriend and I headed down to check out the beach which was a 5 minutes walk from the apartment. The beach had long white sandy beaches running into the crystal clear sea, the Persian Gulf, (surely they can’t have cleaned that up manually as well?) which gave me time to digest my lunch and listen to some tunes on my ipod whilst catching some much missed sun rays. Since it is after all November, it started to get a wee bit chilly around 6pm, so we headed up to the apartment and joined our men folk in the pool for a swim. Whilst swimming my laps of the pool I see three women chatting away at the side of the pool and detect Scottish accents. Swimming a little closer, not only are they Scottish but from Glasgow so I casually, accidentally swim up to them and say, “Hi, are those Scottish accents I hear?” “Yes, one of them replies “I’m from Newlands” We get into a wee bit of chit chat and discuss how long they’ve been living there (one 9 years, one 5 years and one a sister who’s just visiting) and why we are there and I’m trying to decide if it’s for me. I ask if they like living there and the two that live there say it’s like living in paradise. “So?”, one says, “What do you think, do you like it”. “Well I can’t really tell at this point as it’s only been a day and at the moment I kind of know how Scarlett Johansson felt in Lost in Translation, it all feels a bit like a golden cage and surreal to me. “Where have you come from?” she asks, to which I answer Rome, I’ve been living in Rome for the last 6 years. “AAAAhhh” she says with a look of disgust on her face, “well if you can cope with living in Rome you can cope with living anywhere!!!!!” well (directed to my Italian friends and other international friends living in Rome) it was like someone had insulted my kid! You know that feeling? Like, you can moan and complain about your own kids all you want but,……………. if someone else does!!! I thought, you cheeky cow, I never thought I would feel so defensive about Rome. I told her I think I would miss the history and the piazza’s and the general integration and embracement of the Italian culture, but was still feeling a little shell shocked by her comment when Stefano, who was eaves dropping said, “So you’re from Glasgow?”, Yes she said, we moved from Glasgow to here. “Well”, says Stefano, “I suppose anywhere would feel like Paradise straight from Glasgow!” Shabam!!!! and he swam away leaving me smiling and wondering how I never manage to think of smart comments at the right time. First night dinner was had at the Royal Hotel Meridian, the hotels seem to be the place where all the local expats hang out for drinks and eating as alcohol is not served in pavement open air cafes. No idea what the star rating is of this hotel as it seems to be the same rating as every hotel I have seen but if I worked for the AA hotel rating system, I would give this a big 10 star rating. I felt like a super star. When I went to the bathroom the door was opened for me and I reluctantly stepped into the cubicle, checking my back that she wasn’t following me in to wipe my ass. She very discreetly left the restroom and returned when she heard me open my door with a clean hot towel and even put on the bloomin tap, (hey, this kind of service was giving to me in Starbucks that morning, not quite on that level but not too far off). I returned to find the waiter rush tomy chair for my return. I really wanted to say, like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, “Look darlin, I’m a sure thing, I’ve been living in Rome for 6 years and I’m impressed if you say sorry after bumping into me, it’s really easy, no need for this, honest!”. The guys went inside to choose the fish and lobsters that were still swimming around happily, so I declined. The most amazing fish and crab was served and eaten by all (we were joined by another couple who are friends of Paolo’s) and we then walked down to the hotel swimming pool and drank some drinks under the gazebo and looked out over at the spectacular grounds. Stefano and I went for a walk in the gardens and he put his arm around me and said, this is the life I have always wanted to give you, would you rather be here or in Rome right now. I looked around and said, without a doubt it is spectacular and breathtaking but honestly………….I’d rather be snuggled up with my huge log fire crackling away under our blanket watching TV in Rome! Over in the bar we could hear some English football being watched by some Brits on a big screen TV and some Scottish accents in the balmy night air. We left to go onto another bar called Budda Bar which was in an Indian style,(I suppose the clue is in the name) and had a cocktail before deciding at around 2am that since we had to get up at 08.30am we had better head for home. Another step out into the night with a taxi stopping before you even know if you need one yourself and another fare of 10 dirham’s which is less than 2 euro’s (10 dirham’s is 1.80 euro) and when we gave him a 20 he was most grateful. By the way, we took a taxi back to the airport which is around 25-30 minutes and it cost 12 euro, with luggage and helping in and out of the car. We both walked down to the seafront at lunchtime the next day relaxed and knowing that the work part was over and lets really see this place. We stopped into Starbucks and had a coffee and decided to drive up the desert and go sand dune quad biking. The drive wasn’t long, around 45 mins before we reached a landscape untouched by human hand of approx. 2,500 miles of desert. It was still bright and sunny when we paid for our buggies and all four of us headed over to the “practice area” to get the hang of the buggies before excitedly driving through the gate and heading straight for the desert. The first mile or so you can see that people have been coming here at night and having bonfires or whatever and leaving their rubbish behind (bastards!) but after that it’s miles and miles and miles of swooping dunes and wind brushed sand with no sign of human touch. In the distance a few wild camels and apart from that just…………..nothing! It was such fun! Stefano took a dune a bit too cockily and toppled his buggy over but apart from his pride, nothing was hurt! The sun started to set and we all four stopped at the top of a huge dune around 60 ft high and watched this wonderful sight. You feel the silence and no one said anything for a few minutes (which believe me is a wonderment in itself from Paolo). Then once again we were off all racing along and over taking one another and we all reached the top of a dune at the same time and braked hard to look down at a straight vertical drop of around 60 feet. We all parked and looked down and decided that we wouldn’t take the chance and put the buggies into reverse, we lacked the needed adrenaline rush of an 18 year old at this point and with a combined age of around 150 years, we all headed back to the flag in the distance, which was our marker flag for returning the buggies. What a fabulous experience. That night we went out for a Persian meal in a restaurant set on a channel not unlike sitting in Venice, only a few years younger. Again, first class service, first class meal and wonderful wine. We thought about going to the cinema one night but decided it was really silly to go to the cinema when we had such little time and you can go to the cinema anywhere, although looking at the website of the nearest cinema was enough entertainment in itself. Huge individual leather reclining lazy boys in pairs or fours. All with waitress service of meals, wines or snacks accomplished by the push of a button on your chair. Basically, to summarise the rest of the trip was very short indeed and I would have loved to have had another week or two there. We slipped away early one morning, insisting that Paolo stay in bed as taxi’s are so cheap, and there we were back in the wonderful airport where I felt I had been in only yesterday. Whilst waiting for my flight I popped into the toilet to be greeted by another towel/open door woman and thought, how will I survive without you in Rome? We landed at Fiumicino airport in the morning and before going outside to call the Park&Go guy to get our car I ran into the tobacco shop to buy cigarettes. As the woman threw my change down on the counter ignoring my outstretched hand and saying nothing but nodding to the next customer to tell her what he wanted I thought, yip, back in Italy, a vero?. In conclusion…………….we spent a very stressful next few hours back at home discussing back and forth the pro’s and con’s of staying in Rome or leaving and working and living in Dubai. I would miss my house terribly, and the friends I have made. Stefano would miss the outdoor life and his horses. I would miss my dogs. He looked like a 12 year old boy at one point and I felt so bad for him that he couldn’t make the decision. If we don’t like it we can stay a minimum of one year perhaps 18 months. If we do……….. indefinitely. The house here in Rome will always be ours, we will rent it out and in fact already have an interested family without even having advertised. Chris will come live with us when he finishes school and there are an abundance of British Colleges and Universities although I think he has his heart set on sailing school. I would spend July and August in Rome to escape the 50 degree temperatures over there and to have Jen over for the summer as that’s where all her friends will be returning from University for the summer are and where she feels is home. She will of course come to Dubai to visit us and I will go there, but we already agreed that if this job was taken, that summers would be spent in a rented apartment in the city centre of Rome. Without talking about finances, although it’s hard not to as they are incomparable, I would be able to go to Brighton and see Jen whenever I wanted to without worrying about how much the flight was and staying as long as I wanted. I could go up to Glasgow to see Chris for the next year or so till he is with us also or have him come down for weekends in Brighton. Money would be no issue. We have made the decision. It’s a yes!

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rachelkulagodfrey-blog · 5 years

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A [MUSIC] Review: My 10+1 Favorite Live Acts From the Last Six Months

Originally posted on January 17, 2019.

Some people procrastinate by online shopping, cleaning, or watching the first season of a Netflix show that truly isn’t worth it (Judd Apatow’s Love stole my time and I want it back).

Others make an Instagram post about how they “just can’t focus :/”, masturbate to a point where it’s almost violent, or complete every single task except for the most pressing one at hand.

I am all of these people. Baked to perfection.

As appealing as all of these options are, my favorite way to procrastinate is watching live musical performances. If I said this was my number one choice because I really love to see what each and every artist can do on their feet, I would be LYING; it’s because I’m broke. Imagining I’m in the actual audience sounds like a cute and affordable outing to me.

I was originally going to write a late post about my ten favorite live musical acts of 2018, but then The Holy Trinity™ a.k.a The Goat Trio (Noname, Smino, and Saba) decided to perform on The Late Night Show with Jimmy Fallon and fuck up my whole plan.

Fucked up my whole plan, but made my whole life.

Here are the 10+1 live acts that have rustled my big and bright feathers in the last 184 days, ordered by upload date:

1. Mac Miller: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

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August 6, 2018

I was tabling at my school’s Student Activities Fair when one of my best friends approached me looking like tears were seconds from falling down her cheeks and flooding the fucking campus. Her “I have to tell you something” was followed by what most onlookers would probably describe as an unnecessarily loud processing of the Five Ws and One H of Malcolm McCormick’s death. It probably looked overdramatic, but it honestly didn’t feel that way.

Mac’s placement in my mind shifted in tandem with his style. In his “Knock, Knock” days, he was the weird white kid who Wiz Khalifa seemed to have taken under his wing. I started high school a week or two before “Smile Back” was released. And I was in attack mode after a girl had used up MY oxygen to talk about me not being a “real” Black girl. While 14-year-old-me did put a hex on her soon after, Mac’s anthem of the opposition not being worth my stress set my mind right. Did not reverse the hex, though. Sorry, sis.

His eventual Earl Sweatshirt, Ab-Soul, and Anderson .Paak collaborations reframed the way I thought of him as a creative. I realized how open he was, and how honored he was to share space and thought with a wide range of musical talents. You can hear it in the production of the songs. His NPR Tiny Desk was an elevation of this. His energy was right. Thundercat on bass was right. Watching this performance made me want to bop the shit out of my head but also call all my old niggas and let them know I was suing them for stealing energy I could have put toward studying a cool cat’s artistry. So much love to Mr. Malcolm.

Favorite Moment(s): When Mac laughs at Thundercat’s abrupt tone change during “What’s the Use?” @ 9:10.

2. Rex Orange County performing “Sunflower” live on KCRW

August 14, 2018

I know I’ll get heat for this. But Alex O’ Connor is worth the slack.

In this performance, Rex Orange County looks and sounds like the place where lo-fi, Big Mouth, and driven-over lilacs meet. Doesn’t seem like the most appealing thing that could come out of your speakers, but it’s honestly just one really sweet surprise. And romance may be a capitalist sham, but all I can say is ShamWow! After finding out that he wrote “Sunflower” for his girlfriend of 3+ years, the bridge started to make me feel like someone slipped me a “Would You Date Me?” note in detention. Uncomfortable, but definitely entertained.

Favorite Moment(s): The aforementioned bridge @ 3:02.

3. serpentwithfeet – mourning song (Live on KEXP)

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September 11, 2018

Josiah Wise, better known as serpentwithfeet, is one of the greatest storytellers I have ever witnessed. His entire KEXP performance is worth watching to see an immersive experiment in chaos and control using lighting, backtracks, and his voice. Confidence is not something we often associate with grief. In this performance of “mourning song”, he lists all the ways he will allow himself to think and feel through the end of an intimate relationship. Every time I listen to this song, I feel like he actually rips the voices from my head that tell me I am a burden, or that I must hide any part of myself.

I’m not really a church-going girl anymore so I won’t say watching this took me there. But it definitely took me to the Pokémon Center. HP on 255, bitch.

Favorite Moment(s): When he plays around with distance from the mic @ 2:30.

4. 070 Shake – I Laugh When I’m Friends But Sad When I’m Alone

September 14, 2018

My dearest New Jersey babe. The shining star of the 070 Crew, Danielle Balbuena, used to be at the top of my “Anal Sounds Great!” list after the 2016 “Bass for my Thoughts” release. Trevante Rhodes has since stolen her spot.

Shake takes her time with COLORS to sing about her unadulterated thoughts about the negatives that come along with fame, as well as how the perceived positive of always being around people can be suffocating. No matter what life decisions we try to make, no matter what our intentions, we’ll always be criticized. 9/10 times the criticism will come from people who are too scared to live out their own dreams and have decided to try and put their hooks into the dreams of others. I love this performance because she manages to make the sentiment hit relying primarily on her flow, with the beat not coming in until more than halfway through the video.

Favorite Moment(s): The belting at the end. She sounds like Roy Woods and it makes me want a collab.

5. Noname Performs A Three-Song Medley From Her Album ‘Room 25’

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October 18, 2018

I am a walking Noname stan account.

I saw her perform during my sophomore year of college, soon after Telefone‘s release. I had never felt so represented in my existential absurdity. She was as wishful as she was uncertain; the last time I had felt that seen was when I heard Paramore’s “For A Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic” for the first time. But you know angsty white people are always doing something, so it didn’t really click the same. I sobbed in the first row while Noname rapped about the effects poverty has on the Black imagination, battling with addiction, and finding the will to fight our own apathy.

In this performance, she gifts us with a three-song medley, featuring “Blaxploitation”, “Prayer Song”, and “Don’t Forget About Me”, three singles from Room 25. Together, the musical collage tells a story about trying to create in a culture that values what we make more than our livelihood.

Favorite Moment(s): The GIGGLE when the music ends before she does.

6. dvsn: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

November 28, 2018

Roy Woods and Majid Jordan were my favorite OVO acts for the longest time. I had heard of dvsn and didn’t really care for the duo at first. I didn’t even know they were a duo until like a week ago.

One night I was at a party that I didn’t want to be at, and I really wasn’t feeling the music. While I waited to sober up so I could walk home, I put on my headphones and started playing my own music. When the beat in “Mood” dropped and Daniel Daley’s vocals came in, I knew it was the beginning of a spiral into a rabbit hole full of fuck nigga energy… Energy to which I am apparently still very open. In this performance, Daley’s falsetto as he sings about not wanting to pull out of his partner is literally the most disarming sound I’ve ever heard. It’s what I imagine the Sirens in the Odyssey sounded like. I’m 100% certain that behind the sunglasses, his eyes are pitch black. Because Satan.

Favorite Moment(s): 6:13 – 6:35. Mother of God.

7. Rapsody, “Sassy” Night Owl | NPR Music

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December 4, 2018

RAPSODY IS ONE OF THE MOST UNDERRATED LYRICISTS OF ALL TIME AND I WILL NOT REST UNTIL JUSTICE IS SERVED.

Like… I’ll sleep and all that. But I will be dissatisfied. Known for her home-hitting lyrical additions – Kendrick Lamar’s “Complexion (A Zulu Love) and Anderson .Paak’s “Without You” – Marlanna Evans deserves so much more for the brilliance that went into Laila’s Wisdom. When she was nominated for 2018 Best Rap Album of the Year, she was the fifth female-identifying nominee in the 23-year history of the category. This performance of one of Laila’s singles, “Sassy”, makes me want to bounce through the streets in some high tops. It demonstrates her ability to give us all profound lyrics and pop-off sounds.

Favorite Moment(s): Her dance break @ 2:45.

8. H.E.R.: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

December 13, 2018

H.E.R. had already appeared on NPR Tiny Desk before this performance, but five minutes of listening to her voice were simply not enough. Whenever I listen to one of her songs, I have to listen to two or three more. The cool thing is that she’s not using subliminal messaging! It’s literally just carefully-honed skill and talent! These niggas can’t even spell talent!

The transitions in this video are wild. Seeing how many times Gabi Wilson switches the instrument she’s playing is honestly just really fun. “Focus” is my favorite H.E.R. song, and this performance takes it up three whole notches. Considering the fact that she’s an actual child prodigy, I cannot help but smile seeing her get the shine she deserves; hearing people refer to her as “the girl who covered the Drake song” really made me as upset as the people who fight in the comments under Lebron highlight reels seem to be.

Favorite Moment(s): The back-and-forth between H.E.R. and the two amazing background vocalists @ 16:28.

9. JPEGMAFIA – Thug Tears | A COLORS SHOW

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December 14, 2018

I really cannot tell if Barrington Hendricks/JPEGMAFIA/Peggy is the kind of person who hates astrology and everyone who mentions it, or if he consults his Co-Star chart every morning. Regardless, as the sole member of the non-Scorpio Scorpio Fan Club, I love this Scorpio king.

One second into his COLORS episode, I thought my speakers were fucking broken. Twenty seconds in, I thought I was having a stroke. I eventually realized that I was not being Punk’d by the peculiar nigga on my screen, and decided to go back to the beginning and try this shit again.

I became so infatuated with JPEGMAFIA after watching this performance. This may mean that I need to call my therapist soon, but I would argue that my interest stems from the healing power I feel is available in his artistry. While different from serpentwiththefeet’s “vibe”, Peggy presents us with a similar sentiment: being unafraid to display your emotions, whether it be grief or anger, in ways that are not respectable or palatable can shake up a nigga’s psyche. Lord knows this shit had me shook all the way the fuck up.

Favorite Moment(s): He starts off stretching. Definitely didn’t realize how necessary it was going to be.

10. KOFFEE – TOAST (LIVE FROM KGN)

December 23, 2018

I first listened to Koffee when she performed with Chronixx on the Real Rock Riddim. This past November, the 18-year-old released the inspirational fucking BOP, “Toast”. In the song, she speaks to her performances with Chronixx and other key moments in her musical journey as well as the bright future she sees ahead. The song itself has been at the top of my morning playlist; you already KNOW I love to bust an early whine while I brush my teeth. But this performance… it’s magic. You can barely hear Koffee herself with the audience screaming all the words back at her, letting her know they’ve got her back. And with a big ass smile full of braces, you can tell she’s feeling all the love they’ve got to give. Everyone, myself included, is ready for Koffee to rise to the top.

Favorite Moment(s): Her disbelief at the room’s energy at the beginning, and when she brings on the girls to help her sing @ 1:30.

10+1. Noname ft. Smino and Saba: Ace

January 8, 2018

One day, I’ll share the story of how Noname was an instrumental part in my sexual “becoming”. It’s the same story that I shared with her after the aforementioned concert (still so sorry about that, yikes). Until then:

I screamed when I found out this performance was happening. I don’t even think I can put into words how Noname, Smino, and Saba’s performance of “Ace” changed my whole attitude. For the last eight days, my sense of clarity has been… well, CLEAR! I realized how much my hair had grown. I finished grant and job applications. I’ve received great personal news and old, important friendships are being rekindled. They have too much power. I’m tweaking.

All I have to say is that this video ran me a bath, put a glass of wine in my hand, and made me dinner. Enjoy.

Favorite Moment(s): I. Cannot. Choose. (But wow. The way they look at Saba @ 1:56. I’m emotional.)

#reviews #chewsandswallows #music #2018 #2019 #art #artists #ranking #performance

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marcythewerewolf · 7 years

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I am suddenly reminded of my giant, never to be written TDA AU, where the events of Lady Midnight happen a few years earlier, and slightly differently. Malcolm successfully raises Annabel and then kind of kidnaps the Blackthorn kids and quickly loses any control of the situation because Annabel is not a happy zombie girl and Julian and Emma aren’t making things easy for him and Arthur’s ghost is kicking around. Also Diana is trying to hunt them down and the faerie courts get involved. Everyone is mentally ill and everyone is messed up. It’s a disaster, and I just wanted to get it all down somewhere since I love it and it will never be expressed in the two million word epic gothic format it truely deserves, so a super long summary textpost will have to suffice. Warning for being just... so long. This is practically fic, guys.

It would start shortly after Julian and Emma’s parabatai ceremony, I think, so they’d be fourteen or so and still dealing with this fresh soul bond on their consciences. When the deaths start up Diana successfully conceals them from lil’ Emma, and because all the people who would foil him are too young to really put up a fight or be much of an adversary, Mark doesn’t come back and Malcolm more or less gets away with most of his plan up until the last part. He still needs that Blackthorn blood.

Meanwhile Julian is starting to have suspicions. Handling most of the Institute’s paperwork in secret, he’s cottoned onto the fact that there is an ongoing investigation and Centurions are in the city (the Clave sent a cursory note to Arthur). He tells Emma and while she tears off to search the city as much as a fourteen year old girl without a car can, he guards the Institute. He’s there when Malcolm turns up and asks to speak to Arthur alone, upstairs. He’s perceptive enough to realize something is off, and confronts Malcolm. Malcolm, who has known Julian for years now and is getting kind of tired of lying, lays it all out on the table. Yeah, sure, I’m totally going to murder someone. I thought your uncle might be nicer to you, since you haven’t harmed me much, literal ninth grader that you are, but I will absolutely take you down and grab Dru if that’s what it takes. I’m a warlock, I could do it. Make a choice, Julian. And don’t get in my way.

And Julian, still not old enough to grow a beard but with his father’s blood on his hands, hesitates. That’s enough. Arthur draws himself together, falls over his desk, and says Malcolm can have him, under one condition. He has to promise to take care of the Blackthorn children.

Malcolm is delighted, since a willing sacrifice is so much better. He’ll look after the kiddos, sure thing. No skin off his back, once Annabel is back. But Arthur’s a big man, and Malcolm isn’t, so Julian is enlisted to help carry him out.

Julian is like neck deep in this and having nine different crises, but there’s no way to back out. He helps carry Uncle Arthur out. He tells Livvy and Ty (all of twelve) to hold down the fort until he gets back, because Uncle Arthur is very, very sick and Malcolm is helping him. Then, once they’re out of earshot, he puts a knife to Malcolm’s throat and makes him swear again, on his life, that the children won’t be harmed. Arthur is important. He’s all that’s keeping their family together.

“I’ll fix that,” Malcolm reassures him, and portals off, and comes back with Uncle Arthur’s blood all down his shirt and a waxen, slightly stunned looking young woman with long dark hair and Blackthorn eyes in his arms.

“She tried to stab me a little,” Malcolm says, looking lovestruck, “But I think she’s just in shock. Help me get her to the Institute, will you? Then tell your siblings to pack their bags. Emma too, I suppose.”

The choices at that point are to go along with Malcolm, or tell the Clave that the only family member willing to take care of them all just got murdered by a rogue warlock. Julian is willing to get a little kidnapped for that, at least for now, while he makes another plan.

He tells the kids and a recently returned, slightly grimy, disappointed Emma that something terrible has happened, he’ll explain later, but for now they need to get out. Then, just for effect, they set the Institute a little bit on fire on the way out. Just the bits they don’t use.

Malcolm is kind of overwhelmed as well. He expected to be going back to his cottage in Cornwall with Annabel, triumphant, with the Clave none the wiser to his scheme. Instead he’s mildly daggared, and has half a dozen kids on his hands who he kind of promised to take care of. And he may have spilled a bit too much of his plan to Julian, so he doesn’t want the boy leaking that to the Clave. He could just murder all the baby Blackthorns, but that seems a little unfair, especially now that Annabel is awake. She’s less stabby if she wakes up and is immediately disoriented by a ten year old girl asking her lots of questions about her hair.

The cottage won’t fit them all, but not going to Cornwall is... not an option. He really needs to return to the site the tortures inflicted on him and Annabel to really feel like love has won out. He ends up dropping the kids at the Cornwall Institute, and then staying to keep an eye on them. It’s a place full of bad memories, but it can also fit a lot of people. They dust the spiders out, settle the kids down and then Julian and Malcolm and Annabel have a Chat.

(Emma is barred, because she still doesn’t know Malcolm killed her parents. He rather suspects she wouldn’t like that. Julian doesn’t know either, but he trust himself to keep it a secret less with Emma around. She’s wily and more focused on revenge than child protection.)

Julian wants a guarantee of safety for the kids, a modicum of security, all the comforts of home. The Institute at Cornwall, once it’s cleaned out a bit, can provide that. He wants to know they won’t be separated. Malcolm can definitely promise that. Malcolm wants to know that Julian isn’t going to snitch on him to the Clave, or talk to the Clave, or really go anywhere near the Clave. Julian isn’t ready to say that unless the pot is sweetened a little, so Malcolm pulls his ace. He has contacts in Faerie and he can try to negotiate for Mark’s return. That seals the deal.

Annabel doesn’t say much, but she’s listening very closely, and occasionally asking questions about how the Clave works these days, and how the Blackthorn kids are related to her, and how they ended up parentless, and why Julian is so blase about the fact his uncle just got stabbed. The last one kind of messes Julian up, which by extension messes Annabel up, and Malcolm kind of vaguely dismisses the meeting by picking up his girlfriend and fleeing.

MEANWHILE

Diana Wrayburn shows up to work the next morning and finds out that all her charges have disappeared into the night with most of their possessions, there is blood all over the front hall (Arthurs) and also a third of the Institute is smoking mildly. Authorities are alerted. A full scale investigation is launched, with Diana both desperately trying to find her kids and also not blow her cover.

Ty is exploring the grounds of the Institute, finding lots of fun bugs and hidey-holes and investigating. Dru is helping. Livvy is locked in a spider free room with Taavy. Ty finds lots of interesting old books, some sketches, and some hints of Annabel and Malcolm’s former life. He thinks they were nice. They grew up together, just like Julian and Emma!

Back to the big couples, Emma is not happy about being locked out of the loop, and compensates by finding Julian ASAP and grilling him for details. She gets... some of them. Not enough. There is a parabatai fight, ending in a parabatai makeup, because even Emma has to admit it’s all pretty messed up. Julian finally spills some more deets, like the fact that Arthur has been ill for years and also he died as part of a ritual to bring Annabel back from the dead. He says Arthur’s participation in this human sacrifice was “not really voluntary, I don’t think, it was messed up”. He does not mention his part in the messed up. Then he says Malcolm can get Mark back. Emma says she thinks Malcolm is very shady now and she doesn’t trust Annabel, but for Mark, she’ll refrain from stabbing.

In a closed room, behind two sets of doors, Annabel is saying much the same thing to Arthur’s ghost. Arthur, like any good if befuddled uncle leaving his brother’s kids with a murderous immortal, decided to stick around through the afterlife. Unfortunately none of the Blackthorn kids can see him, so he can’t do much for them. Annabel on the other hand spent a lot of time dead and is very much aware of his presence. They have a conversation that more or less boils down to: “Your life sucks, my life sucked, Malcolm is messed up, I’m sorry, but let’s focus on the little ones, shall we?” There are some arguments. Even in death Arthur is still prone to rambling. His illness didn’t stop when his heart did. Annabel just got forcibly revived and is just super duper traumatized. They bounce off of each other for a while before Arthur makes an impassioned plea on the behalf his niblings, which is only slightly ruined by the fact that he can’t remember some of their names. Annabel decides that she will also not stab, and she will go talk to Malcolm. There are going to be some changes around here. She didn’t come back from the dead to be anyone’s happy ending, especially not Mr. Murder A Middle Aged Invalid. They’re doing things Annabel style now.

*cue sunglasses and long YEAAAH*

*also cue the disaster of the century as six kids, a murderer, a ghost, and a dead girl, try to play happy families in a rundown old ghost house in England*

Malcolm is pretty desperate to please, even if it means playing nice with the little Blackthorns. He pretended to love them for years, pretended so hard sometimes he forgot he didn’t. He can pretend a little longer, especially if it’s what Annabel wants, or at least what he thinks Annabel wants.

Julian and Emma are pretty desperate to keep Malcolm and Annabel away from the kids, but aren’t sure how to do so without revealing the whole “semi-murdered Uncle Arthur” thing which seems... less than ideal. So at least for a little while it’s all adorable, slightly creepy hijinks. Malcolm tries to take Tavvy and Dru down to the store in town for a shopping trip, Emma runs interference. Unbeknownst to anyone, Uncle Arthur’s ghost helps. Annabel and Livvy bond while Julian freaks out in the background. Everyone pitches in with magic and runes to get the spiders out of the basement, but because of Ty’s campaigning they have to do it non-lethally. Just good, cute, unsettling stuff while the kids settle into the abandoned Institute and Annabel readjusts to life. Movie night! Ice cream on the beach!

Annabel and the twins bond especially. She values their contributions a lot, and they like having someone new and adult and mostly trustworthy around. She’s like a cool older sister who’s actually old enough to drive. Sometimes you can hear her wake up screaming at night, but it’s all fine. She shows them all the places around town and the Institute where she and Malcolm used to hide and play, teaches them about the animals and the plants and the pixies in the sea grass. She and Livvy spar. It’s very sweet. People on th

All the while Julian and Emma are putting pressure on Malcolm to follow through on his promise to get Mark back. Malcolm is busy doting on Annabel and cleaning up the cottage and setting up wards to protect them all from the Clave, but Julian and Emma are insistent. They demand action. This is because they have a Plan, or at least thirty percent of one.

Since they’re still kids, and they are technically hostages, they figure they’re all right. No one can blame children for cooperating with their captors. They snuck into town to call Helen and Aline, assured them that they were all right, and checked in on the status of the Clave (the investigation into the disappearance of the Blackthorn children is ongoing but being blamed on faeries because why not?). All the while they’re collecting information on Malcolm, what magic he has active, and what his ties are the the courts, so that they’ll have a good body of blackmail material. They general gist of the plan is to get Mark then make a run for it and seek refuge in Idris, possibly lighting some things on fire on the way out. With information and maybe a few magic relics grabbed from Malcolm, they figure they can make a deal with the Consul. At the very least, Mark will be with Helen, and not alone.

It isn’t a very good plan, but they’re fourteen. So sue them.

Malcolm is dragging his feet though, which means Emma and Julian are left brooding and trying to take care of the kids and maintain some order in an orderless environment. Julian gives them lessons, so they won’t be behind when they go back. He and Annabel bond over art, it’s great.

BACK WITH DIANA

Things are not great. She’s been cleared of all suspicion, because why would she be the culprit, she’s a Shadowhunter, but there’s little progress on actually finding the Blackthorn kids. The Clave is super not happy, since Nephilim blood is precious and losing six full blooded Shadowhunters in training at once is less than ideal, but all they’ve done is sent lots of war parties to negotiate with the Seelie and Unseelie courts which Diana doesn’t think is going to get them anywhere. The whole thing is quickly becoming less about finding the children, and more about demonizing faeries, and by extension, Downworlders, further, and she’s had enough.

She makes a choice. She leaves Idris and the investigation, goes back to LA, and starts searching for the truth on her own. This cop is going rogue. Of course, like most people looking for something in LA, she starts with Johnny Rook, who is locked down in his house under like twenty wards.

After she breaks in, she and Johnny argue a lot. She meets little Kit, which gives her enough bargaining power in the conversation to weasel out of Johnny that Malcolm is the one who told him to hide, that Shadowhunters were looking for trouble. Diana realizes that Malcolm must have been a suspect as well, he was close to the Blackthorns, and goes to his LA house, only to find it abandoned. She calls him, he tells her he got interrogated but didn’t have anything helpful to say and wanted to get out of town in case they were looking for someone to blame.

Dead end. Diana decides to take a different approach. She asks Catarina and some other warlocks of her acquaintance to help dig up a connection between the Blackthorns and the deaths the Silent Brothers told her to hide, the ones killing faeries and humans around Los Angeles. Looking back, she thinks she recognizes the symbols on the bodies from Emma’s Wall of Revenge, and there’s a definite suspicious circumstance there. Then she figures out how to get to Wrangel Island to talk to Helen and Aline.

They’re weirdly unhelpful, closed off and edgy about the investigation. Part of that might be that they’ve been hurt before, but Diana feels like something is off. It all stinks, and she needs to figure out why.

So she goes back to Johnny Rook. This time, she’s getting answers, even if she has to camp out in front of his house and harass him to get them.

Arthur’s ghost and Annabel are bonding over the time they spent in Cornwall as young people, centuries apart, and the dangers of loving where love is forbidden. Annabel opens up about her memories of her death a little and has some traumatic flashbacks. Arthur quotes Marcus Aurelius at her.

Malcolm finally brings Iarlath home and introduces him to Julian and Emma, “Yes, these are the children I am in a mutual blackmail pact with, my girlfriend loves the little rascals to death, bless them” and starts to open the issue of Mark. Iarlath is here for his own reason entirely. Shadowhunters are asking about children, Malcolm. They’re very insistent. It’s making trouble and it’s jeopardizing the King’s interests. You need to either kill these kids and blame it on some else or return them in a non-dangerous way. Like, maybe cut out their tongues so they can’t say anything? Idk, just a suggestion.

Malcolm: Dude, Annabel wouldn’t approve of that.

Iarlath: Why does everyone always get boring after they get into a relationship?

Emma and Julian are both obviously very alarmed, but Julian, a forward thinker, always, has a way to pull this in his advantage. The Clave isn’t happy, huh? Well, he could make that easier, maybe misdirect them a little bit. Some anonymous letters saying the kids have run away, for example, or some other way to push blame onto an alternate party. Iarlath gets where he’s going and has to admit, it’s not a terrible plan to shift the fault. In fact, the Seelie Court has a long history of cooperating with the kidnapping of Blackthorn children, doesn’t it?

Julian is starting to feel a little bit out of his depth, so Emma makes some vague threats as well, and Iarlath decides he’ll talk it over with his king and get back to you, Malcolm and kids. Maybe you’ll get your big brother back, who knows? In the meantime, the Unseelie Court will be keeping a close eye on him.

Everyone leaves the meeting feeling a little shaken up. Malcolm suggests a day out on the town, mostly because he really hates being in the Institute, but their plans get interrupted when Annabel sprints in saying that she saw a warlock woman with blue skin in town. Luckily the lady didn’t known her, or know enough to recognize Annabel in jeans and a tee, but Annabel rightly surmises that this means someone is poking around Cornwall. They hustle the kids down to the basement and Malcolm goes back to his cottage to run interception on Catarina, who started looking up Blackthorn scandals as a favour to Diana, remembered Malcolm’s history with the family, and is now getting suspicious. Ty beats everyone at Uno while Malcolm convinces Catarina that he’s looking for the missing Blackthorn tykes too, really! He decided to use their old family home in England as a base, figuring English raised Arthur might decide to come back if they were to escape from their captors.

Catarina buys it, but just barely, and she leaves sounding mighty suspicious. This means that it’s probably time for a change of pace. Time to hide out in the Unseelie Court!

The Blackthorns are reluctant to go, and so is Annabel, for her own reasons. Since Arthur spent a lot of time in Cornwall when he was younger, he can more or less hang out around the Institute, but he can’t come to Faerie, and she likes having a ghostly presence on her side. Also, knowing he was who rescued Malcolm but not her, she is not the Unseelie King’s biggest fan.

There’s an argument, and despite technically having more power in this situation, Malcolm is helplessly outnumbered and gets shot down. Eventually he concedes defeat, but does point out that it’s probably not a good idea for the kids to leave the Institute anymore, which does Not make Livia happy, because, as it turns out, she has been taking advantage of the trips to make friends with a bunch of local girls and now has a crush on a mundane girl she met at the beach.

Nevertheless, Julian rules, best to stay safe. Livia flounces off to sulk, accompanied by a sympathetic Dru. Emma goes to practice stabbing things, since she has a lot of anger issues to work out at this point and is getting antsy cooped up. All the Shadowhunters kind of are. They’re meant for fights, not interminable politics.

Back with Diana and the Rooks, we get a lot of worldbuilding about the Market and Johnny’s place in it while Diana just relentlessly trails him, and by extension little Kit, though she is trying to leave the kid out of it.

She has lots of contacts due to her medical needs, but nothing like Johnny’s reservoir of friends and favours. She sees Barnabas and Anselm, and marks Anselm down on her list of suspects since he and Arthur were close. Nothing related to the Blackthorns other than a lot of ill-will comes up, though everyone is even more against the fair folk these days, and she sees Hyacinth putting up a fight against the new surge of prejudice.

Eventually Johnny catches her and she and he have a long conversation full of thinly veiled threats. Diana brings up Emma’s visits to him, Johnny points out that that’s more Diana’s fault then his, then makes a veiled reference to Diana’s medical status. Diana lashes back with an ill thought out jab at Johnny’s kid, young Kit, and Johnny panics a little. Actually, a lot. Maybe even a little too much.

In a flash of insight, Diana throws one of her weapons at him, and it lights up when he catches it, confirming her suspicions. She now has the power needed to make Johnny talk, at least a little, but finds with a sinking feeling that she really doesn’t want to use it. She’s not going to ruin another set of lives through the Clave. She apologizes, recommends Johnny find Kit a good combat teacher because she saw that boy trying to come and confront her a few times and if he’s that much of a troublemaker he should know how to fight, then excuses herself, promising not to mention it to anyone. Johnny, in a rare show of good faith, throws her a line. Something is going on with the Unseelie, something dark and complicated, and factions inside faerie aren’t happy about it. He suggests she find someone there willing to talk to her.

Once again, it comes back to the fair folk. Diana is not thrilled.

And a cut to Helen and Aline, who have their own stuff going on. When your mysteriously missing younger sibling calls you out of the middle of nowhere and tells you not to worry, it somehow raises even more questions. Helen trusts Julian absolutely, but she also knows he’s just a kid and whatever’s going on with him, he’s going to need help. So Helen is kind of putting together an army, through Skype. She’s got Magnus and Alec, who know Clary and Jace are at the Seelie Court, interrogating her and looking for the kids. She knows there are other people out looking for them too. Someone named Tessa and someone named Jem and a lot of other Downworlders, who know clearing their name is bound to get the Clave to stop poking around. The New York Wolf pack and Magnus’s alliance have promised to help out if things come to a fight.

Aline is handling the Shadowhunter side of things, coordinating with her mom and listening to gossip from her dad and passing it on. Meanwhile Helen and Aline both are keeping their eyes on some weird ward activity, looking for any sign that they need to call in the troops.

Diana calls up Anselm Nightshade and has a nice chat with him about the best way to get in touch with the fey outside of Clave rules. Anselm, who used to be a Shadowhunter once, comments that he knows for a fact the Rosales family used to have ties to them, and they’re not too far away. Diana considers this for a while, considers Anselm with his shady business dealings and seventeen tiny dogs, and then decides she’s going to trust him on this one. In the meantime, she asks him to talk to the local Downworlders and make it clear that the best way to get this Manhunt and Blame Party About The Blackthorn Children over with is to find the real culprits. Otherwise, the Clave and all the Shadowhunters who she knows have just been waiting for a chance to scapegoat the Downworlders? They’ll start a war, or a registration or something.

Anselm agrees. He’s seen this sort of situation before, he’ll keep an eye out. Questionable business ventures or not, he knows no one really profits in a conflict, especially not the closest people to the epicenter of it.

With that promise in hand, and some century old intel on the Rosales, Diana heads down to Mexico City to find someone to talk to about faeries.

Back at the Blackthorn house, tensions are running high when Iarlath comes back and says that the king will see them, in person, to discuss the matters of Mark Blackthorn and getting the Clave off their back, because it is kind of an emergency at this point? It’s getting emergent. He doesn’t say as much, but he does look a little nervous.

With Catarina poking around, leaving anyone behind isn’t really an option. They’re going to have to haul everyone to the Unseelie Court, including the little kids. Julian isn’t happy about that, but no one is really happy about this. Time passes strangely in faerie land after all, and they have no guarantee except the King’s word that things will still be peachy when they get back.

Still, they get everyone decked out in coats and socks and sturdy shoes, pack some bags of food and weapons (though Iarlath insists that they won’t need the latter) and set out for the nearest fairy fort to make their entrance, Iarlath escorting them and making all the Blackthorns very uncomfortable.

(Annabel whispers goodbye to Arthur before they go, and promises to take care of his nieces and nephews. Arthur gives her some bizarre advice about dealing with the fey, then promises to look after the house.)

They trek across faerie, which takes more time than it should because Taavy and Dru get tired and Emma gets distracted by a revel and kisses a very cute boy who then turns out to be about four hundred years old. Iarlath tries to rush them, but Annabel and Emma object to being bossed around on principle and push back. When they enter Unseelie lands, Julian is the first to notice that their runes don’t work like they’re supposed to, since he’s been using them to keep everyone old enough to wear them awake and moving. Malcolm administers some emergency ice cream as a replacement, and they all move on, but are moderately freaked out because Faerie isn’t supposed to work like this and Iarlath refuses to answer questions on the topic.

Eventually they make it to the court, where the Unseelie King greets Malcolm like he knows him, and Annabel like he knows of her, and gives the Blackthorn children a general unimpressed once over before asking who he’s supposed to be negotiating with here, because all he sees are children. Not even big children!

Julian, trying to hold hands with all four of his younger siblings at once, says it’s him, he’s in charge. Relatively in charge. Emma is his stony faced backup while he awkwardly makes his case, but the entire thing is undermined by the fact that Dru is staring at everything and Ty is laying on his stomach inspecting the grass with interest, and also he’s holding a six year old. Livvy is getting increasing distracted by the nice boys, presumably the king’s youngest sons, on the edge of the circle, and is starting to wander off towards them, and eventually does escape with her twin to explore, much to everyone in the Court’s delight. The overwhelming impression is that they think this is like watching a bunch of kittens trying to scam the UN. Very cute, little Shadowhunters.

Livvy, meanwhile, is making friends and taking names among the preteen section of the Unseelie Court, while Ty hangs back and listens carefully. One boy pushing his way from the very back of the throng is catching his attention though. He looks about thirteen, or so, with fair hair and the rich clothes of nobility, and people keep trying to hold him back from the Shadowhunters but he’s hard to deter. Ash, as he introduces himself, hasn’t ever seen a Shadowhunter before and has some questions. Livvy is tightlipped on the subject of her family, but friendly, and asks lots of questions in return. Ty, sensing based on the sudden guard presence around them, that this fellow young man is important, very loudly brings up the subject of their brother Mark who was stolen from them and who they really want back. Ty is straightforward, but earnest, and eventually the adults around decide that a pair of twelve year olds, Shadowhunters or not, probably aren’t a threat to Ash and the younger princes. They all talk about weapons for a while, while Ty, a born mystery solver, hangs back and thinks for a while about where he’s seen Ash’s face before.

Diana goes to the Mexico Institute and first has an audience with Cristina’s mother which goes very, very badly and more or less ends with her threatening to call the Clave because they will not be involved in treason. However as Diana leaves, she is pulled into a corner by the dynamic trio of Cristina, Diego, and Jaime, sixteen and fourteen, respectively, and pretty interested all of them in faeries. Cristina especially likes the idea of getting in touch with them, especially to save the Blackthorns (Diego says she has a minor fixation) and is willing to offer her substantial teenage knowledge, access to the Institute library, and the help of some of the elder members of the Rosales clan who Diego and Jaime know might be more sympathetic. Although the family history with the fey doesn’t get discussed much anymore, it’s still there, and it might be enough to help Diana.

After some hasty research, because she doesn’t know how much of a time limit she’s on, Diana decides the best thing to do would be to jump the moon path as soon as possible and use some information from the Rosales to find the Wild Hunt, one of the parties Anselm mentioned Hyacinth mentioned was not thrilled with the current situation in faerie. She knows Julian and the Blackthorns well enough to know that they’ve never truly forgotten about Mark, and whatever’s going on he might be involved. Seeing the Hunt, much less straight up summoning them, is wildly dangerous, but Diana is willing to give it a try.

The second young Cristina Rosales, teen optimist, hears about Diana’s plans she wants to come as well, but Diana, Diego, and Jaime all talk her down. Diana departs, alone, to make her way into faerie. On the way in Cristina Rosales catches up with her. Diana tries to send her back, but Cristina refuses to be dissuaded and uses her medallion, a powerful charm against the dangerous time streams of the realm, as a bargaining chip. Since, short of wrestling the Rosales girl home, which Diana doesn’t have time for, she doesn’t know how else to make her go away, she reluctantly accepts her assistance. They cross into faerie together, meeting various guardians along the way and doing the usual faerie song and dance of riddles, enigmatic advice, and strange sacrifices. Diana gives up a weapon that belonged to her late sister, and Cristina is told when she would naturally die, which shakes her even though she admits that as a Shadowhunter she’s probably not going to make it that far.

Eventually they’re on solid ground, and by a stream of blood, Diana readies herself to call the Wild Hunt. She makes Cristina hide, then calls on Gwyn Ap Nudd. Gwyn Ap Nudd, obediantly, appears, along with a stampede of riders bearing down on her. Without flinching, Diana stands them down, and, shouts her intentions. Gwyn, suitably impressed and a little charmed, stops and dismounts.

Diana says she is looking for the Blackthorn children, whose disappearance has caused so much chaos, and that failing that she would like to see her brother. For the sake of all of Faerie, this matter must end as soon as possible.

Gwyn admits he doesn’t have Mark anymore, though he wishes he does. He was taken by emissaries of the Unseelie Court, and is now in their custody. Besides, even if Gwyn wanted to help, which he kind of does because this whole disaster is getting messy and also Diana is very pretty, he couldn’t. He and all his riders swore not to go after Mark. Also, though you are lovely, strange Shadowhunter lady, you did just ring up the Wild Hunt. That has to have consequences.

Prepared for this by the Rosales kids, Diana answers that she’s willing to meet her fate, but first, she would like a favour. A small gift, for a doomed woman. Gwyn, sensing where this is going and willing to be “tricked” into not murdering this very nice lady, agrees, expecting to be asked for a rowan branch picked by his own hand, or something like that. Which, in fairness had been what Diana was planning.

Except... a young man with blue hair is making frantic hand gestures as her and he looks like he’s been crying, and do you know what? Diana Wrayburn hasn’t gotten far through playing it safe so far. Instead, Diana asks for his cape.

Gwyn is furious. He calms down quickly though, seems to realize what’s going on, and begs her to ask him for anything else. Anything but this.

Now, they’re really cooking with gas. Diana asks for, just to start with, the full story of what’s going on and why. The Hunt, meanwhile, is pulling a discovered Cristina out of the underbrush, but Gwyn waves them down. He’s being blackmailed by an attractive lady over here.

Gwyn gives up the whole story, and then some, at least as much as he can say without violating his oaths. Something is going on with the Unseelie, it’s not Super Great, Mark was taken by them, he’s probably there now. The other Blackthorn children he hasn’t heard direct word of, but if they took Mark something must be going down. Diana tells him everything she’s figured out as well, that there is a faction in the Clave determined to make life hard for Downworlders, that they’re coming down hard now, that the fey are being scapegoated with every day the Blackthorn kids stay missing. She says that she thinks Julian and Emma left to find Mark and possibly revenge for the deaths of Emma’s parents, who might have been killed by the Fair Folk or another party in the aftermath of the Dark War, as part of some dark rite, and that they’re in way over their head. Also, this is Cristina, she won’t leave me alone, because all I needed was another teen in danger. Gwyn agrees, kids are trouble. For example, slightly traitorous blue haired boy (introduced as Kieran) has been trying to run away every day since Mark was taken, and frankly Gwyn doesn’t blame him.

Cristina recognizes the sigil on Kieran’s gloves as that of the Unseelie King, and asks if Kieran is one of his sons. Gwyn can neither confirm nor deny.

Recognizing that Gwyn really wants to help but can’t Diana comes up with a plan. Gwyn can’t go after Mark, but surely he can repay her for not taking his cloak by letting her and Cristina go and lending them Kieran to “guide them to the Unseelie Court” (and most certainly not do any Mark rescuing whatsoever).

Gwyn is straight up delighted to agree, hands over Kieran with orders to take these nice ladies and help them however he can. Then, just to be safe, he gives Diana a kiss and slips her an acorn she can summon him with in the future.

Kieran is sulky until he realizes this is his Mark rescue chance, and then brightens up considerably. He still isn’t good company, but he pulls Cristina and Diana up on his horse and swears he’ll convey them to the Unseelie. He really wants his Mark back. Cristina is visibly puzzled as to why, meanwhile Diana is just resigned. She hates working with teenagers so much.

Back with Julian, the Unseelie King is ready to make his case. It’s a very short case. It goes, hi, we have your brother, we have some ideas of ways to make the Clave leave us alone, and you’re all going to cooperate, or else. Just to make his point, he drags a very bloody, semi-unconscious Mark out, and then starts to make his demands.

He wants the Blackthorn children, and he wants them peaceably, and frankly since their runes and steles don’t work and they just wandered into his court without securing really good terms of safe passage, he doesn’t think he’s going to have much trouble with this, right Malcolm?

Malcolm hesitates, and Annabel goes off.

Everyone, faerie and Shadowhunter alike, watches as they have just the most epic row in the history of rows. There is shouting, there are accusations, there’s a lot of “I brought you back to life!” and a lot more of “well maybe you didn’t consider that I didn’t want that!”. It’s messy, both of them are rapidly flirting on the edge of a total nervous breakdown since most of their mental health at this point is questionable. Although it starts off being about the Blackthorn children and how much Malcolm hates them and how much Annabel hates that he hates them (which makes Dru and Tavvy very upset) it eventually devolves into a rehash of their shared past. It’s... disturbingly like Emma and Julian’s childhood, actually. Especially in the details.

All of their story is awful and heartbreaking and the Unseelie seem to be really into it, honestly, which makes sense. Even Emma and Julian are nodding along as they slowly back away with the kids. The closer they get to the specifics of Annabel’s resurrection though, the more edgy Malcolm (who still has some self preservation instincts) gets. He really doesn’t want Annabel talking about this, but Annabel is on full rant now. She can’t be stopped, won’t be stopped.

Uncle Arthur’s death, in every gory detail, spills out from her, the way the blood felt on her skin, how she could feel herself coming back to life, inch by painful inch as his lifeblood flowed out. Julian is shaking. The twins are staring in horror, and so are Dru and Tavvy. Even Emma, who mostly knew this happened, is pretty upset. No one likes to hear about an old man being killed.

But Annabel goes further. She talks about rituals, about hands, about dark murders, about burning and drowning, and Emma slowly starts to feel recognition sink over her. She knows this, she knows she does.

“So many people, Malcolm!” Annabel shouts, “So many people I had to feel die, just to come back to life. Do you know what that’s like, do you? Ever since you killed that couple two years ago, I felt everything.”

Emma knows at almost the exact same moment Malcolm realizes how close Annabel is to spilling the secrets that have kept Julian and Emma more or less cooperative. He moves on Annabel, hands raised.

And Emma, in the middle of the Unseelie Court, stabs him in the back with Cortana.

There is silence for a second.

Then the Unseelie King starts clapping, and eventually the whole Court is, a hollow sort of applause that rings around the children, cages them in, reminds them of how outnumbered they are.

“Now that our little piece of theater is over,” he suggests, “And you’ve killed, frankly, the only one of you who I think could put up much of a fight here, why don’t you all surrender?”

Back with Diana, Cristina is in full sixteen year old form, asking Kieran all sorts of questions about the Hunt and Mark and is it really so bad if Gwyn gives up his cloak. Kieran is ignoring her, and Diana is focusing on logistics. She isn’t so naive as to think they’ll be able to charge into a full faerie court and win. She’s going to have to do this stealthily. Luckily Kieran, who knows his way around the court, thinks he can help. Anything to help Mark.

In the Unseelie Court, things are not going great. Annabel has rallied and is trying to make a case for herself and the Blackthorn kids, using some of Arthur’s quotes about Faeries and also some random latin, but while it does distract everyone (there’s nothing the folk love more than a good show and a compelling disaster, and Annabel is more or less the Hottest of Messes right now) she isn’t putting together much of a coherent argument. Julian grabs one of her lines about “children and the mad” though and uses it to point out that technically, all the Blackthorn’s fall under the purview of the fey right now, and can therefore demand certain rights, unlike enemy Shadowhunters who wandered in illegally.

And... no one can really argue right now that they aren’t children and Annabel isn’t mentally ill, but really, child, what are you going to do with that, demand trial by combat?

Almost immediately upon hearing that this is an option, Emma does so. She wants trial by combat! For Mark! He’s blood, and blood matters to faeries, and they want him back, as is their right as relatives.

The Unseelie King accepts, of course, because it would be wrong not to. However he’s not willing to let Emma face combat, he needs these kids alive to placate the Clave. No, he wants Annabel.

Annabel isn’t in any sort of state to fight right now, that much is obvious. She’s a powerful warrior, but no one staring at the love of their life’s corpse on the ground is really in much of a state to fight. Whatever her (big) issues with Malcolm, they did love each other, and between that and the Baseline Stress of being Annabel Lee Blackthorn at this point, she’s barely managing to not disassociate out of her.

Julian is actually ninety percent panicking now, because he doesn’t want Emma to fight but also he doesn’t want Annabel to lose (which she definitely will). Emma grabs his arm, taps “TRUST ME” on his hand, and nods. He knows what he has to do, he clearly does, even if she doesn’t entirely yet.

So Jules, well read up on the fey because he’s had to be, fourteen, and utterly determined, steps forward, kneels next to Annabel, and slashes a tendon in her left leg. Blood spurts, Annabel collapses. Then he stands up.

“I think technically Annabel is injured now, and unable to fight duels? Take Emma, or me, I guess, but I think you’re going to have better luck convincing the Clave Emma accidentally died then me. She’s impulsive, you see.”

He keeps eye contact until the Unseelie King, rapidly losing patience with this and the Blackthorn kids period, gives the order to have his champion readied. They’re fighting a duel with a little girl, apparently.

Against the fully armoured faerie knight, Emma looks even more outmatched than wild eyed Annabel (who Julian is now trying to bandage up without looking away from his parabatai). She proves herself quickly however, making up for what she lacks in reach and size and experience with sheer tenacity and down and dirty fighting. At one point she does knee her opponent in the groin. She’s got way more skill than her age would suggest, and she gets him down on the ground eventually. Jules’ nod is all the confirmation that she needs that she needs to make the killing blow.

She’s killed faeries before, but here, in the hush of the ring, with her adversary prone and not actively trying to kill her, it feels different. When she removes his helmet with shaking hands, she’s almost unsurprised to see her mother staring at her with wide, fearful eyes.

Emma hesitates. She falls to pieces. And amid the laughing of the crowd, there is a childish shriek and Ty drags Ash forward, with a knife to his throat.

Livia has a split second of trying to scold him for being rude, before she realizes that this is her twin and she’s always behind him. She draws her sword too, and uses it to keep everyone else at bay as Ty pulls Ash in front of the King, which takes longer than you’d think. Ash is strong for his age, or anyone’s age, and clearly has some combat training, but turns out to be no match for the combined strength of the twins and the element of surprise.

As soon as Ty grabs him, the earth starts quaking, little shakes at first, but growing in size. By the time they’re standing in front of the furious King, next to Julian, the rumble is audible and Ty has to shout over it to say,

“Let us go, or we’ll kill the Queen’s son.”

He doesn’t mention the other thing, because he’s not sure of it yet, but the moment of recognition as Dru looks at the boy is enough. Ty’s good at mysteries, and he knows this boy is the key to freedom.

Back at Wrangel Island, Helen and Aline have already noticed the surges of magic around LA and Cornwall that marked Malcolm’s death. Now their entire maps are going wild. Something is up, as clearly as the sky is blue. Helen calls Magnus, waking him up from sleep, and tells him it’s time. Magnus turns over and wakes up Alec, who immediately contacts Jace, who is in the Seelie Court feeling the same phenomenon, and tells the Queen to find every warrior she can, now. Jem and Tessa, crashing on the Bane-Lightwood apartment’s pullout couch while they help with the case of the Missing Blackthorn kids, wake up immediately ready to help. Slowly, an army pulls together.

In Los Angeles, Johnny Rook grabs Kit off the couch and throws him through the front door, before a swarm of demons descend on the house. Across the city, Catarina, searching Malcolm’s house, has had to save herself from the whole thing collapsing on her. When she fights her way out of the rubble, she notices the cloud of demons down city immediately, and on instinct moves to help.

She gets to a bloody and running Kit, recognizes his face even though years of inheritance has changed it so much. With him pulled tightly to her side, she banishes the demons, using almost every bit of power she has. She’s older than Magnus, and she knows what she’s doing.

Even with her considerable skills, it’s too late for Johnny once she gets to him, and she feels a moment of regret for the great-great-great adopted grandchild she never knew.

Then, because she’s a healer, she takes Kit away. It’s not healthy for a boy his age to be seeing things like this.

The hostage situation unfolding in the Unseelie Court is Not Going Great. Weapons are finally being drawn, patience with these Shadowhunters wearing thin. Ash is still trying to fight free, and has bit Ty doing so, and now both Ty and Livia and Dru are restraining him one limb at a time. The ground is still quaking. Their steles are shaking slightly to, which concerns everyone. Emma is still on the ground, cradling what looks like her mother. Still, Ty remains adamant and the fact that they aren’t dead yet means he’s on to something. Julian pushes their hand.

Except, as the Unseelie King reminds him coldly, he has a hostage too. He turns back to Mark...

Only to find the guards around Mark in various states of being on the ground, and Kieran and a young dark haired girl in Shadowhunter clothes trying to sneak him away. Mark, who refused to even look at his half-siblings when they were placed in front of him, is similarly reluctant to trust Kieran. The Unseelie Court put him through some stuff. He is, however, not as opposed to Cristina, who’s a relative stranger and not immediately threatening.

More faeries approach them, but Kieran shoots them, even as his father shouts curses on him as a traitor, and other things to the tune of “you get back here right now, young man!” Kieran wavers, but stays firm. Gotta save that Mark.

In this drama, Annabel crawls Emma, still crying on the ground, but mostly forgotten amid the chaos. Emma is desperately trying to help her “mother” but no one is paying attention.

Annabel pries her hands away, holds her close, and talks low and fast to her, about Julian, about the Blackthorns.

You love him, don’t you? More than life itself? You would do anything for him, you have done anything for him. You put your revenge aside to help his brother, Arthur heard, Arthur told me, sweet girl. Now, put aside the past to help him, or he might die.

Her words shake Emma out of her reverie, just enough. It’s the memory of Julian’s skin on hers and the Blackthorn children, and the Hall of Accords when there was nothing but each other that helps her the rest of the way.

She stares down at her mother, her mother’s lips moving, begging for help, telling her how much she loves her, how much she cares.

“I avenged you”, she promises, and stabs down.

The glamour lifts, and Emma, shaken but now starting to realize that she’s been tricked, pulls herself up, and Annabel as well. Waving Cortana wildly, they hobble over to Julian and the others. Faeries try to stop them, with swords and blows, but Diana is over her, protecting her, and helps get them back to the main group, the Blackthorn children and the wailing, increasingly hard to control Ash.

Kieran and Cristina make a break for the woods with Mark, and Diana leans into Julian’s ear and says, “Explanations later. Your brother is safe, we need to go.”

Julian nods, and slowly the little bundle starts moving backwards, using Ash as a shield, the ground shaking underneath them. The court lets them, because they have no other choice. As soon as they’re away from the bulk of the group, Julian scoops Tavvy onto his back, tells Dru to hold onto him, and tells them all to run.

They try.

It’s nearly impossible, as a cluster of children and unwilling hostages and the injured. They can’t even let go of Ash for long enough to hand him to Emma, because he is just a tiny wolverine of a boy, and so Ty and Livvy are burdened down. Annabel is still limping.

Kieran and Cristina are waiting for them, because Cristina made them, but they still have only one horse and no hope of escaping on foot. Kieran, realizing how big of a rescue operation this is, starts to regret things. The King and his steeds will be coming, sooner rather than later.

Annabel, leaning on Emma for balance, right herself mostly and asks for a sword, because she’s going to stay behind and fight them off while everyone else runs. There are protests, some more heartfelt than others, but at the moment with her hair in her face and her eyes flat, it seems to be the only thing Annabel is sure of.

“I promised your Uncle I’d take care of you,” she say, “And it is not fair for the living to die, when the dead are right there to take the blow. Now go.”

Julian and Diana, no nonsense to the end, make them. Kieran is already gone, and he’s taken Mark and Cristina with him (To get the Hunt and help, he promises, but his horse cannot carry more, especially not people who might fall off, and though Cristina tries to give up her seat to Tavvy and Dru, the little ones can’t be trusted there) Livia pauses and reaches over Ash to pat Annabel’s hand and say goodbye. Emma lingers the longest, making sure everyone else runs into the woods, runs toward safety.

“Thank you,” she says to Annabel.

Annabel shrugs. “Go. Love your Julian, make the most of it.”

Emma is momentarily too scandalized to remember she needs to run. “We’re parabatai,” she points out, “It’s illegal.”

Annabel, sweet Annabel, shrugs. “Two centuries ago, I could not love Malcolm,” she points out. “And I paid the price. Make a better story, Emma Carstairs. And take care of our nephews and nieces. Now, run for your life.”

Emma does. Being young and fast, she catches up with the others quickly, and then keeps pace with them as they trip and fall over roots and branches, as the earth shakes around them. Julian tries to make Ty let Ash go, but as he collapses to the ground the earth starts going suspiciously ashy around him so Ty just grabs him by the collar again and keeps running. No time for that, whatever that was.

They run, and run, and run, as the hounds close in behind them. There are some screams, Annabel’s, behind them. Diana gives in and picks up Dru, so they can go faster.

Soon they are running on ash, white as the moon, and not the forest floor. Soon they are running breathless.

When the army comes out of nowhere in front of them, Emma almost goes at the first person she sees just on instinct. The fact that it’s Clary Fray, looking oddly at home on a faerie horse, somewhat dissuades her.

Ash, screaming at the top of his lungs, and Ty, halfway to a meltdown and screaming with him, collapse into a puddle as the group stops short and are quickly separated by Seelie Knights, which does seems to make Ash shape up somewhat. He seems almost... relieved? Delighted? Only Ty is really sure what’s going on and Ty has decided that if he is no longer needed he’s just going to fall apart. Livvy holds him tightly, but she’s crying as well. The rest of the Blackthorn kids dissolve as well, once the immediate threat is gone. Emma is injured from her duel, and finally realizes it. Tavvy and Dru are shellshocked but in the clingy way kids are. They refuse to let go of Julian, and Julian refuses to let go of Emma, and Emma won’t let go of anyone because she’s terrified if she does they’ll die, and frankly even though Clary and Jace are here, Emma isn’t really in a mental place to trust anyone anymore.

Diana takes over as the leading adult, which is good, especially when Kieran shows up with the Hunt. Someone needs to adult here. She helps bandage Emma up, because runes still aren’t quite working. Then, once they’re back in the relative safety of the Unseelie Court, a blonde woman who looks like Mark applies poultices to Emma and the Blackthorns and a totally out of it Mark who calls her something in the language of the faeries that makes her cry. Then, she puts them all to bed.

When they wake up, the world makes a little more sense.

Things have been sorted out more or less in secret, in meetings between the Seelie Queen and Clary and Magnus, and at least one that blue haired Kieran got to attend which he is very proud of. Once Mark is sensible, there are tearful reunions. Diana introduces them all to Cristina, who “gives Emma a run for her money in terms of bullheadedness”.

Clary brings them all in front of the Queen, who is resplendent. Ash, the screaming boy, looks very different and yet very much the same, in Seelie finery, sitting on the step below her. He and Ty and Livia make faces at each other.

The matter of Ash’s ancestry is not exactly brought up, but with him in full daylight, it’s impossible to deny whose child he is. Emma looks livid. Julian just looks resigned. A tired looking Clary promises it’s all under control, seriously, auntie’s promise just, maybe don’t mention this to the Clave? It could make things... difficult.

All the Blackthorn children promise, as long as they get Mark back.

That’s more difficult to negotiate, but it gets done, and he’s theirs again, fresh faced and shining. Kieran is reluctant to see him go, but he’s even more reluctant to see Mark hurt again.

Politics happen, in bits and pieces, but with their brother returned to them, the Blackthorn children don’t care.

It’s when they get back to the Clave that things really get complicated. There are rounds of questioning, the Mortal Sword again, for the second time in their young lives. Clary coaches them all carefully on what to say, so as not to reveal too much. The reveal that Malcolm and the Unseelie Court collaborated on some great evil that literally shook magic to its core is enough to spook the Clave, they don’t need to know about Ash or some of the other messy stuff.

The Cold Peace is upheld, to some extent, because there can be no forgiveness after what the Unseelie King did. The Queen on the other hand, is reluctantly welcomed back into the fold, some of the restrictions on her are weakened.

It’s all Jia can do to protect Mark from the same backlash, but she does, using the great help the Blackthorns were and their bravery, convince the Clave that Mark can be forgiven, Helen pardoned. It will take a while to reassign Helen and Aline back, but they will come back and take over the LA institute as soon as anyone can find a qualified replacement for them. In the meantime, Diana is the Blackthorn children’s temporary guardian. It’s an empty gesture, at this point everyone important knows that Julian has been raising the kids for a while.

Still, it seems important to at least try to protect the children, though at this point, Livia says they might as well not try. Been there, done that, been traumatized.

(Tavvy and Dru are back to having nightmares of death and their father’s blood, except this time it’s Malcolm who’s being stabbed. Never mind how cruel he was, first he was kind and that’s a hard thing to forget. Livia and Ty’s nightmares are more ghoulish, they dream of Annabel’s fate and the empty Cornwall beach and the ground turning to ash underneath them. Emma doesn’t have nightmares, but she and Julian aren’t really sleeping these days. They sit up together instead, in each other’s arms, with the kids on the bed next to them, and find that as long as they draw an energy rune the next morning, they’re fine, which is weird. Maybe being in faerie made them stronger.)

Before Helen and Aline come back, there is one more thing to do. Julian asks Magnus to take them all to Cornwall, to the Institute there, and with all the Blackthorn children in the main hall, he thanks Uncle Arthur. He tells him their all fine now, they’re safe, and Mark and Helen are coming home, and please, if he can, he should be at peace now. The Blackthorns have had enough restlessness in death.

Then, he and Emma take the children back out, through the paths Malcolm and Annabel once walked, and they go home.

(As they pass the church on the way out, there’s an incident with a demon that has Magnus very concerned, but Emma and Julian light everything on fire, so it’s an issue for another day.)

Some more notes on this AU

Jem and Tessa are kind of miffed that as soon as they took a second to spend on another project, Catarina found the lost Herondale child before they could. They very much appreciate her help saving Kit though. Catarina is more reluctant to surrender this Herondale bb to the Clave, and instead offers to raise Kit in New York herself. He can go to the Institute after school and learn safely there. Kit adores her, and gets along well with Alec, although not so much Jace at first. He and Ty and Livvy meet though Clary, and stay in touch because Catarina insists Kit have other Shadowhunters his age to compare his life to. Livvy is delighted to have a penpal.

The twins also keep in touch with Ash, although that’s less willing and more of a burgeoning nemesis-hood. Dru, possibly just to spite the twins, possibly as a way of acting out, insists she has a crush on him. Luckily time passes differently in faerie and the Seelie Queen is eager to keep him away from people, so other than a few instance of belligerent eye contact and some accidental dream sharing, it’s mostly at a distance.

The primary reason they even see each other at all is because Kieran got handed to the Seelie Queen as a “hostage” after all the polticking went down. (It was the safest way to keep him away from his family and out of trouble.) Unfortunately Kieran isn’t going to let a little thing like technical prisonerhood prevent him from seeing Mark. Mark is still readjusting to being a Shadowhunter, and Kieran makes him confused, but it’s a good confused and also no one knows how to make them stop.

It means lots of “Taking Kieran Back To The Seelie At 3AM” though.

Cristina is delivered back to her family with a condemnation a dagger for bravery and an Official Scolding From The Consul. She’s grounded until she’s eighteen but she’s too happy with the results to care. She helped rescue Mark Blackthorn! She and Diana stay in touch, and though Diana she and Emma become especially close. Cristina swears that as soon as she’s of age she’s taking her travel year in LA. Diego and Jaime feel neglected in contrast.

Helen returns to take care of the kids, and she and Mark are reunited, and it’s beautiful, but it’s still been years and she’s awkward around her younger siblings. Julian does a lot of the day to day childcare work, but he’s finally not taking care of every issue at the Institute on top of that and everyone comments on how less stressed he seems to be with his sister home. He and Emma spend a lot more time together, keeping their growing relationship secret. They learned a lot from Malcolm and Annabel, including how not to get caught.

Bad things are still happening demonically speaking. No one is quite sure how to stop it, not even the Seelie Queen. Clary swears they’re going to get it under control though, and at least for now, Emma and Julian trust her.

I think there would definitely be some followup books dealing with the Unseelie King’s revenge and Emma and Julian hurtling down the path of catastrophe and also Ash being a little anti-christ. The Black Book is still missing, ect. Annabel and Malcolm would come back as actual zombies. That sort of thing. I just really wanted more Blackthorn feels a tighter, more family focused narrative. Also, more Malcolm and Annabel. (And more Diana and Arthur, it turned out. Just, more traumatized grownups.)

I just... love these tragic kids so much and I want them to self destruct more explicitly and ten times as slowly.

#the dark artifices #lord of shadows spoilers #malcolm fade #annabel blackthorn #diana wrayburn #arthur blackthorn #m writes #fanfic #blackthorn babies #long post very long post

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buffystylez-blog · 7 years

Text

I Robot... You Jane

Written by: Ashley Gable and Thomas A. Swyden

Directed by: Stephen Posey

Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon, Anthony Head, and Robia LaMorte.

Welcome to I Robot... You Jane, in which Willow gets Catfished by a demon who likes breaking people’s necks for some reason.

It’s another filler episode and it’s... fine. Willow scans a book into a computer and it turns out it’s not a book but the place a demon called Molloch the Corrupter was bound by some guys called Kayless or whatever. Molloch is unleashed on the internet, but it’s 1997 so I guess the only real damage he could do would be to mess with the Space Jam website. Just checked it - it’s still ok.

I mean, this was the latest technology:

And I was jealous because I didn't have it yet.

Outfit 1

It’s a Pollyanna-heavy episode. But Buffy switches it up a little bit with pigtails. This is a very cute shift dress. I like when Buffy does 60s. I was very keen on the 60s and 70s as a teen. It seemed fun.

Are you wondering if she’s wearing her trusty knee-high boots?

Are you new here? OF COURSE SHE IS.

Jenny Calendar is so cool. She is definitely a teacher I would suck up to and then worry I was creeping out. Like a lot of my lecturers at Uni.

Giles is so hot. I’d probably volunteer for this boring task just to hang out with him. Like a lot of my lecturers at Uni.

Outfit 2

Oh... No. No no. But the high ponytail is killer.

Willow is sporting a cute jacket and headband. The skirt is... also there.

I would have wanted the plastic rings and the shirt. I believe this was related to a thing I remember being obsessed with called French Kitty without knowing exactly what it was. It looks like it was a clothing brand. Maybe it was books. I don’t even know anymore.

I had a little toy thing that hung off my mobile phone that seems vaguely related to this print. I would have lost my shit for this.

The jacket is a slight improvement. Xander’s sweater also makes it seem slightly better. By comparison, that is.

Here they’re wondering if Willow is talking to a murderous circus freak on the internet. Internet Dating really was the Black Mirror of the 1990s.

Outfit 3

I can’t focus on anything other than the scrunchie on Buffy’s wrist. This is no small thing because those sweatpants are hideous. Back in the day I called them tracky-dacks. The day being yesterday. And today. And every day.

Where is she getting all of these t-shirts? The Gap? Australia didn’t have The Gap back then. We had Just Jeans, Jeanswest and Sportsgirl. Maybe Espirit. But those were places in which I couldn't really afford to shop. Well, maybe we just didn’t have The Gap where I grew up in Newcastle, NSW. At the time of writing they don’t even have a legit Topshop.

Outfit 4

The shoes remind me of a story I heard once from the set of The Deerhunter (1978). One day Christopher Walken was about to start filming, but the wardrobe department couldn’t find his shoes. They were starting to panic, Walken was getting agitated, the director was furious. Anyway, Walken’s costar Robert De Niro walks by, and when they look down and they see he’s wearing the missing shoes.

“Hey, De Niro!” the wardrobe person shouts, “these boots are made for Walken!”

Ahem.

That’s not a real story. It’s a joke I made up.

Buffy wears these boots most of the episode. It could have been due to filming constraints that week. They look marvellous.

There’s a print on the dress/shirt. I couldn’t tell what it was. It was probably very 90s.

I bloody love it when Buffy dresses like a detective from the 1970s. I also love that she thinks this makes her blend in.

HOW IS SHE PERFECTLY MATCHING SUNGLASSES TO HER JACKET AND HER MAKEUP.

Outfit 5

This Pollyanna. Is. AMAZING. Every time I try this I end up looking more like Tina from season 2 of Spaced. Which is fine, I guess.

Xander’s jacket is... actually not that bad. In fact, it might look really good... on Faith. But I’m getting way ahead of myself here.

This is sparkly and kind of lovely if not for the black trim and questionable bra underneath. I really liked it - I bought a very similar shirt from Just Jeans. I believe mine was Lurex. I never wore it. I recently saw something close in a Rose Gold at Sportsgirl. I did not buy it.

Buffy here is about to be stopped by Dave, who tells her Willow is waiting for her in the Girls Locker Room.

Buffy, no! It’s a trap!

Those pants will not age well.

Still better than Xander’s hair.

I feel like Molloch’s brainwashing has affected Willow’s style. Her ensembles have gone from super adorable to just adorable.

So cool.

So hot.

This pattern is nice.

Buffy’s animal print jackets give me life. If I’m honest I prefer the hooded one from Never Kill a Boy on the First Date. She looks a bit like a Mob Wife here. This is a compliment.

Buffy and Xander go to the creepy research lab place thing and save Willow. Sort of. Willow saves herself as best she can. And Jenny and Giles are doing internet spell things, too.

Molloch tells Willow that he lied about being Malcolm and being a demon but his feelings were real. That’s what they all say, Molloch. That’s what they all say.

Pretty sure I had Xander’s shoes in year 10.

The day is saved. Hooray!

So fucking cool.

So fucking hot.

Outfit 6

The Scooby Gang reflect on their love lives being shithouse: Xander was nearly killed by a Praying Mantis who preys on virgins, Willow’s aforementioned Catfishing, and Buffy being attracted to a vampire. At least they all look pretty great. Even Xander.

SHE’S MATCHING HER SUNNIES TO HER LIP COLOUR AND IT’S WONDERFUL HOW IS SHE DOING THIS HOW IS SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR SO CUTE.

Coming soon on the blog I’ll fill you in on the next audio commentary me and my buddy Luke are cooking up next. I promise there will be Spells, Man. Spellman. Sabrina Spellman. That’s... too much. I gave away too much.

Next up, something scarier than vampires: high school talent shows.

Until then, Slayerettes.

Screencaps via Screencapped.Net

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lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar · 1 year

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#showaddywaddy #a night at daddy gee's #1979 #MALCOLM JUST BURSTS IN THROUGH THE DOOR AND SPINS HER #he doesn't only love to spin himself he also loves to spin others apparently #i had to leave those scenes together in one gif because it's better #malcolm your face #where are your sunglasses #YOU ALL DID THIS SONG IN 1979 WHERE ARE YOUR SUNGLASSES #i'm not complaining because i love his face #and i wish i could see it without sunglasses more often but IT'S FINE #(not me thinking of multiple scenes in videos where his eyes would have looked beautiful IF I COULD SEE THEM)#malcolm screams his 'COME ON EVERYBODY WE'RE GOING DOWN TO DADDY GEE'S' line and buddy nods his head once in the background #the dress and russ's suit match #they're the same color #dave omg #romeo just looks very unfazed about all of this #ROD HE'S SO CUUUUTE #I LOVE ROD I LOVE ROD I LOVE ROD I LOVE ROD I LOVE ROD #i'm laughing at how everybody picks the girls up in some way and walks out with them #except malcolm #also malcolm are you struggling to open that door in the 6th one #showaddywaddy gifs

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emperor-norton-ii · 7 years

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this is overdue as well but for the headcanon thing would you be willing to do wesker? your other ones were seriously brilliant!

I’m not a huge fan of Wesker. I’m especially not a huge fan of Wesker as the fandom tends to treat him.

He started working for Umbrella at the age of 18, and went straight into illegal human experimentation. By the time he steps onscreen in the first Resident Evil, 21 years later, Wesker has a personal body count that could easily be up to four or five digits, most or all of whom were his test subjects. He would’ve had to watch them die; he would’ve personally administered the viruses or chemicals that killed them. He was complicit in the torture of Lisa Trevor for no other reason than to see what would happen. In all the ways that matter, Wesker was inhuman long before he came back from the dead.

With that in mind, I think the fandom’s attempts to humanize him, with relationships (regardless of who they’re with) or affection for certain TV shows or what-have-you, ring false. There’s a tendency to treat him in fan work as if he’s simply eccentric or introverted, but no: he’s utterly selfish and has precisely zero empathy. He was willing to betray and murder the entire STARS team (and the STARS took the team very seriously) for financial gain. This also had the side effect of leaving Birkin’s ass twisting in the wind, and Birkin was supposed to be Wesker’s best friend in the world. Wesker’s got no use for other people and he’s well beyond saving.

(To be fair, this happens with every fan community I’m aware of. The more twisted and murderous the antagonist, the more likely it is that there are at least a dozen fans who are super invested in a version of the canon where he (or she, but seriously? he) could be redeemed by a star-crossed relationship, whether he’s canonically capable of such a thing or not.)

This isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be interesting or possible to explore Wesker’s private life. Dude’s a biologist; he’d recognize the value of downtime, rest, and recreation, even if he resented their necessity. You’d just be starting virtually from scratch, since we only ever saw Wesker when he was in the field.

To my mind, he’s not unlike Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. There are a lot of things that Wesker used to do because he’s aware humans are supposed to do them, and despite his disinterest, to act otherwise would draw undue attention. I’d imagine that’s a good part of why Jake exists, and why Jake’s mother immediately took him as far away from Wesker as she could; she got a glimpse of who Wesker actually was.

I can’t imagine post-virus Wesker wanting to have a relationship with anyone. Maybe he threw some token signs of interest to Excella to keep her on his side (and found out to his chagrin that she was super into completely unavailable men), but he seems to think of the rest of the human race as little better than livestock.

(My #1 Wesker ship is Wesker/nobody. There is no #2.)

I’m also a big believer in the old fan theory that when Wesker killed Spencer, that was also the moment when Wesker snapped. Wesker’s entire life up to that point had largely been about getting to a point where he was the controller, not the controlled. Before RE5, he’s a calm manipulator who rarely enters the field himself; afterwards, he’s ranting about his ascension to godhood. I think the revelation of the “Wesker Project” broke him in a couple of significant ways, and nobody knew him well enough to notice there was a change.

What they smell like:

An extremely expensive, understated cologne that costs more per ounce than some people see in a month.

Also, well-maintained leather. Wesker didn’t just pick that duster off a rack. He picked that coat specifically for how it would billow behind him. That is a cinematic coat.

How they sleep (sleeping position, schedule, etc):

He probably doesn’t. Before his mutation, he’s exactly the kind of character who would sleep for two hours a night and only when he was utterly exhausted and passed out on top of his lab notes or keyboard.

(Wesker and Birkin had their own spin on the Black Blood of the Earth. No genetic tampering, no virus: just high-quality coffee beans run through very expensive laboratory equipment for maximum distillation. It would stain pewter and corrode spoons. Annette had half a cup once and was up for 72 hours.)

After the mutation, he’s got superhuman levels of stamina and resilience combined with a disdain for his former humanity. Why would he sleep if he didn’t absolutely have to, especially since he’s so busy? Maybe he’d catch a nap on a plane, or if he was waiting on test results, but having to spend a third of his life unproductive? Why?

What music they enjoy:

Classical music because it’s good for the brain and for no other reason.

How much time they spend getting ready every morning:

Wesker’s hair doesn’t just happen. That takes effort and styling gel.

You know, come to think of it, he’s pretty vain. He may have started out wearing all black because it simplified his routine (like Ian Malcolm in the Jurassic Park novel), but he clearly puts a lot of money into his clothing and sunglasses. Dude probably has a luxury sedan with all the extras.

Hell, you can see that going as far back as the STARS unit. How much would it cost to get all 12 cops in a unit their own personal customized nine-millimeter handgun, especially when the RPD doesn’t use the Beretta?

…how did nobody notice this asshole was on the take?

Their favorite thing to collect:

War crimes? Viruses? Other people’s research?

Left or right-handed:

He shoots right-handed.

Religion (if any):

Almost certainly none. He’s a mass murderer with messianic delusions.

I bet he had an angry teenage atheist phase, but it would’ve been in the mid-seventies, so he couldn’t do anything but annoy local clergy.

Favorite sport:

I’m having a hard time picturing him watching television at all. Maybe mixed martial arts or boxing? There are a lot of elements of his fighting style that indicate he was actually trained at some point, rather than relying entirely on his powers.

Favorite kind of weather:

I really can’t imagine. Probably the kind that suits his current goals.

A weird/obscure fear they have:

Loss of control. If someone wanted to hit Albert Wesker with his own personal hell, it’d be a lot like what he did to Jill: a situation in which he couldn’t so much as scratch his nose without someone else’s permission.

In a character who didn’t have his delusions of grandeur, Wesker would probably harbor a fear for the rest of his life that whenever he wanted something, it was because Spencer programmed him to want it. “Do I like single-malt whiskey, or did Spencer like it so much that he made sure all of us liked it as much as he did?”

The carnival/arcade game they always win without fail:

I can’t imagine Wesker going voluntarily to that kind of thing. It’s amusing to think of him using his bullet time to be really good at Dance Dance Revolution, but he’d never do it.

There’s probably some tavern game like darts or billiards that he’s still very good at, because it was something he used to do when the STARS would insist on taking him to a dive bar. I could actually see him as a pool shark, in that 1996-1997 period where he was “just” a police captain.

#resident evil #albert wesker

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lodelss · 3 years

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Irina Dumitrescu | Longreads | August 2020 | 5,406 words (21 minutes)

When I was a teenager I read James Thurber’s Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I fell in love with this story of a meek, middle-aged Connecticut man whose daydreams afford him temporary escape from a dreary shopping trip with his overbearing wife. Maybe it was because I was an incorrigible daydreamer too. Or maybe I read in his fantasies of being a fearless Navy commander, a world-famous surgeon, or a brandy-swilling bomber pilot a sense of my own opportunities in life, at that point still wide open if you left my gender out of it. Unlike Walter Mitty, I could still learn anything, be anyone.

With time I found a calling, studied for a doctorate in medieval literature, published a book only a handful of people would read, and gained a longed-for professorship. But new desires arose. I discovered I want to write books for more than five readers, and that doing so is remarkably hard. I started to feel afraid of being trapped in one role for the rest of my life. That sense of endless possibility I once had was slipping away.

One day, when MasterClass sends its millionth paid ad into my Facebook feed, I decide this is the answer to the Walter Mitty lurking inside me. MasterClass seems to offer everything: from writing seminars with over a dozen famous authors to celebrity-driven inspiration to take my hobbies further. Clearly, all I was missing were the right teachers, filmed professionally and beamed into my living room. I may not become a surgeon or a pilot, but what if the renaissance woman I’d hoped to be is just a $200 subscription away?

* * *

It’s October 2019, and I begin with Malcolm Gladwell. The funny thing about these courses is that you have a relationship with the teachers already — or at least with their reputation. Gladwell has a host of detractors. He’s been reproached for oversimplification and vast generalization, for illogical arguments and a lack of critical thinking. A book reviewer once wondered why Gladwell didn’t “hold a tenured professorship at the University of the Bleedin’ Obvious.” But nobody questions Gladwell’s ability to write. He is the small-town Canadian boy who made it to the New Yorker on the strength of catchy ideas, brilliantly told. I have been reading his books, sometimes despite myself, for years.

Gladwell teaches his class in a cozy space that looks like a cross between a bar and an apartment. A chess set on a low table behind him suggests something intellectually challenging could happen, but no worries, strong drinks will be served. Ever the model pupil, I open a fresh notebook and write down every other sentence Malcolm says, intent on letting no insight or bon mot slip my attention. I spend so much of my life teaching that it feels like a treat to be a student again, waiting to be filled up with wisdom. It helps that Gladwell is wry and quietly charming, his self-effacing good humor belying a deep seriousness about the calling of writing. More importantly for me, he offers a lot of practical advice — nitty-gritty tips for conducting interviews, structuring articles, and building characters.

I may not become a surgeon or a pilot, but what if the renaissance woman I’d hoped to be is just a $200 subscription away?

Having so much concrete information about how he goes about his work makes me feel confident that I could do it too. Suddenly, this all seems possible. I will become a fantastic writer! I will publish features in the New Yorker and give entertaining talks to sold-out auditoriums! David Remnick will invite me to dinner and I’ll have everyone in stitches with my anecdotes! Pass the butter!

Most exhilarating for me is Gladwell’s approach to imperfection. “What you find interesting is not perfection,” he explains. An imperfect moment in an essay irritates readers just a little, like “red pepper,” but keeps them thinking and talking about it. Gladwell appears generous, providing his audience with surprises and space to draw their own connections. But he’s also happy to make promises he won’t keep, or to force an unwieldy argument together with writing. His way of working is wildly unlike my good-girl academic mindset, but it seems suited to getting things done. “The task of a successful writer,” he says while arguing for bad first drafts, “is to lower the bar.”

Of course, it is one thing for your writing buddy to tell you to embrace your imperfections and slam out a crappy draft, and another for Malcolm Gladwell to do it. Success creates its own truth. This is the MasterClass formula: once a person is famous enough they acquire a charismatic glow. Their counsel is prudent, their past decisions are justified, and their jokes are funnier, too.

* * *

Gladwell’s MasterClass leaves me energized. Writing seems more manageable now, simply a matter of the right tools and attitude. I decide to work on one of my weak areas. Due to a series of curious life choices, I trained to become a scholar and teacher but wound up spending much of my workday carrying out managerial tasks. MasterClass is ready to help me, however, with a course by Anna Wintour on “Creativity and Leadership.” There is a cheekiness to offering advice on how to deal with employees when a hit movie has been made about your notoriously demanding — if not outright callous — management style. Then again, maybe I could use a bit of that Wintour ruthlessness, or what might be called “decisiveness” if she were a man.

The course introduction confirms my suspicion that its appeal is as much about offering a glimpse of the woman behind the mysterious sunglasses as it is about learning how to deliver negative feedback. Sitting in a discreetly lavish apartment, and wearing a stunning green dress with bulky statement jewelry, Wintour describes her vertiginous rise to the top — from somewhere remarkably close to the top. She learned the ropes from her father, Charles Wintour, editor of the Evening Standard in London at the time. (She leaves out the part where he arranged her first job at Biba, a trendy fashion store.) Much of the course revolves around Wintour’s comfort with risky decisions, even if they are wrong. She deals with her mistakes by owning, acknowledging, then moving briskly past them. It sounds like excellent advice for people cushioned by money and an astounding network of connections. By the time Wintour says, “act like no one’s telling you ‘no,’” I want to ask her if anyone ever did.

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The most depressing thing about Wintour’s advice is that it is not wrong. “Own your decisions,” she says, “and own who you are, without apologizing.” It’s just that most people do have to apologize at some point in their lives. (If they are Canadian, like me, they will apologize to complete strangers simply for disturbing the air in their general vicinity.) I want to see a visionary describe how they wrestled with mistakes that had real consequences. Wintour’s suggestion to give direct feedback does give me the courage to have a frank conversation with an employee, and we are both better off for it. But I wonder how her life lessons could possibly translate to someone else’s reality.

The name MasterClass also increasingly bothers me. I remember when I first saw the term (as the two-word “master class”) on a poster in graduate school. A musician friend explained that a visiting eminence would work with one of the students on stage, correcting and training them right in front of an audience. It sounded horrifying, but my friend said it was an honor to be chosen for this kind of specialized attention.

Was there a more sinister urge that made “master class” such good branding for a course? I suspect that the name appeals to people because it promises not just expertise, but power.

Over the years, I began to see all kinds of things called master classes, not just intensive live workshops for people who already had a thorough grounding in their field but online introductions to topics like social media marketing and meditation. Why couldn’t people just take classes, I wondered, especially when they knew nothing about the topic? Were they worried about feeling like a child again, afraid of admitting their own ignorance? Was there a more sinister urge that made “master class” such good branding for a course? I suspect that the name appeals to people because it promises not just expertise, but power.

* * *

It seems easy to turn into a success story when you start out young and privileged. I want to watch a self-starter, someone who had to figure out how to practice their craft on their own. Enter Werner Herzog, who materializes on a dark, empty film set, wearing a green Bavarian-style jacket with elbow patches. Herzog begins with his childhood: the bombing of Munich, his escape with his mother to the mountains, living with no running water and only occasional electricity. “I did not see films until I was eleven,” he says, “in fact, I was not even aware that cinema even existed until I was eleven.” I know there is some legend-polishing here, especially when he mentions the bombing again in the second video, but it’s a more appealing myth than the well-connected London girl who becomes editor of Vogue in her thirties.

Herzog has the air of a professor who has cultivated his eccentric persona for so long that he can now let it do most of the work. His voice alone, at once hypnotic and foreboding, brings me back to evenings in grad school when my German boyfriend did his best to introduce me to the highlights of the Herzog film corpus. Lessons of Darkness, Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man — we watched these masterpieces on his laptop in bed. I usually fell asleep after about 20 minutes, occasionally waking up just enough to be confused by a burning oil field or a screaming Klaus Kinski. Still, that boyfriend became my husband, so I have a soft spot for old Werner. I don’t need him to make sense or teach me anything practical. I’m not going to make a movie. I’m just hoping to absorb some of the unflinching resolve of a man who once ate his own shoe after losing a bet.

Although the course is aimed at budding filmmakers, much of Herzog’s advice applies to making art in general. It helps that he speaks in enigmatic aphorisms: “you have to know, you have to know, that you are the one who can move a ship over a mountain.” It also helps that he cares very little about the standard ways of doing things or about the rules of a particular medium. Herzog’s advice is to search for inspiration in a wide range of music and books, to gather nuggets that can be reshaped into a snippet of dialogue or an unusual camera angle. I love this, probably because it confirms so many of my own beliefs. “Read, read, read, read, read, read, read!” he intones, and laments all the prestigious film-school students he meets who do not read and are doomed, as he puts it, to be “mediocre at very best.” Could I make my own students watch this? Could I show them Herzog reading the opening of the Poetic Edda out loud, explaining how its laconic description of the creation of the world and the birth of the gods helps him edit his scenes?

There is a gossipy appeal to watching famous people play an avuncular version of themselves, but I’m not sure what I can really learn from them.

My semester is shifting from intense to overwhelming, so I watch much of the course while folding laundry or cutting vegetables for dinner, chuckling at reliably absurd Herzogisms. My notebook and pen are always close by, but my notes wind up as cryptic as his movies. What is the iguana? The Swiss chocolate? Why have I written down “20 milking cows”? Something penetrates my distraction, though: the intensity of Herzog’s belief in his own films, and by extension, in the power of great art. Although I teach literature for a living, I rarely hear my fellow scholars talk about why creative work matters. And seldom does anyone venture a judgement about the quality of a book or a poem. It seems like it would be overstepping our boundaries to call something “excellent,” or “middling,” or even “bad.” We are deft at dissecting novels and plays, pinning down their references and ideologies and unresolvable tensions, but not particularly good at putting things together. I realize at this point how ill-suited years in the academy have made me for making art.

My husband walks into the room at one point and watches a few minutes with me. “With Herzog you get the feeling that he absolutely does not censor himself,” he says quietly, “No self-doubt. He totally trusts his own judgement.” Mired as I am in endless discussions with my inner critic, I find something beautiful about Herzog’s assurance in the brilliance of his own work — even when it is, let’s be honest, kind of awful. A deep belief in my writing would give me the freedom both to make a mess on the page and to edit it ruthlessly. Herzog seems to be speaking directly to me when he says that “there’s something much bigger than your own quest for perfection: your own quest for inner truth.”

* * *

Three months in, the MasterClasses are beginning to frustrate me. There is a gossipy appeal to watching famous people play an avuncular version of themselves, but I’m not sure what I can really learn from them. Am I ever going to be the editor of a fashion magazine? No. Am I ever going to direct a movie in Antarctica? Actually, come to think of it, even that’s more likely than the fashion magazine. I want something within reach, I want a celebrity to teach me something I can actually try to do. I have spent untold hours watching Gordon Ramsay tell people what they’re doing wrong in the kitchen — now it’s time for him to show me how to do it right.

In order to do Gordon’s cooking class full justice, I prepare a full dinner spread and bring it to the couch on a tray. I have baked frozen miniature spring rolls and jalapeno poppers in my oven, which at this point has had a broken thermometer for about four months. For a touch of class and nutrition, I also have fresh radishes. And a cold beer. It is some sight.

The class is set in Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen, which is spacious, sunlit, all marble and polished steel, and filled with jars of fresh herbs. Through the window we catch a glimpse of a manicured lawn, a backyard pool, and behind it a gently rolling Cornish hill. This kitchen is possibly the most pornographic thing I have ever seen. I try not to think about my own kitchen, which my husband and I outfitted in a hurry when we moved into our bare apartment, as you have to in Germany. The cabinets were the cheapest available from Ikea, and we bought them second hand. We got our fridge from someone who had used it to store raw meat for his dog. All of it began falling apart immediately.

Ramsay is annoying at first. He repeats himself a lot. Everything is “unbelievable.” At one point he demonstrates how to choose good produce, picking up flawless baby vegetables from a tray in front of him and showing them to the camera. (“Unbelievable!”) I think about how I could not buy those vegetables even if I had the time to seek them out in my city. But as I let the videos roll on, I start to find him charming. I have watched Ramsay play a dour taskmaster in a series of television shows by now, but here he has the enthusiasm of a labrador retriever. He explains how to lovingly brush carrots with toothbrushes instead of peeling them (confession: I will never do this), and describes herbs as being like “a lady putting perfume on.” Then he demonstrates how to sharpen knives and I’m off to the races.

I have a decent set of knives — a remnant from my childless twenties, when I did footloose things like take the free knife-skills classes offered at Williams-Sonoma. The day after beginning Gordon’s course, I go on a hunt for my knife sharpener, which finally appears behind an entire regiment of mismatched tupperware. I spend a meditative afternoon sharpening my knives, testing each one by slicing it through a piece of paper I hold up in the air. At one point my son and husband walk into the kitchen, see me with all the knives, and quietly slink out again. I feel powerful. My knives are sharp. I can cut things again. I resolve to use my honing steel every time I cook, with the exact up-and-down movement Gordon taught me. It gives me the feeling of being a kitchen warrior.

I have come to suspect that MasterClass will put any celebrity in front of a camera for a few hours and call it a course.

Gordon’s is the one course I don’t watch in order. Instead, I pick the recipes I think I can manage given the state of my oven. I decide to attempt the poached eggs and mushrooms on brioche. To my surprise, my local discount supermarket carries brioche buns, most of which my delighted son eats before we make it to breakfast. I get up on Sunday morning, make myself a pot of coffee, review the recipe, and cook alone for an hour. The result is not perfect. I oversalt the mushroom-and-bacon mixture. My eggs come out a bit harder than I would’ve liked. It has been so long since I have poached an egg that I’ve forgotten how to do it.

But the time spent in the kitchen, learning some new techniques and remembering others, brings me back to the early days of my relationship to my husband. There was a time in our lives when we would spend an entire weekend day trying out a new recipe, or experimented with poaching eggs three different ways to see which method was best. Now we put eggs in water with a tiny mechanical device that plays “Killing Me Softly” to let us know they are soft-boiled. You could say our standards have fallen. But on this particular day, we eat so much brioche with protein on it that we are unable to move for hours. I’m not sure what makes me feel younger, trying out a new recipe or spending an entire day doing nothing afterwards.

Emboldened, I take on experiment number two: lobster ravioli. Fresh lobster would be impossible to get, but I look up a vegetarian filling with spinach, ricotta, and pine nuts. Nor can I find the correct Italian flour, so I settle for the most promising alternative. But life intervenes, and by the time I have a few hours to make fresh pasta, most of the eggs have disappeared from the fridge. I decide to make a smaller batch, with the wrong flour, just one egg, and a bit of oil and water — after all, I think, surely an Italian nonna could make do without the ideal number of eggs? The dough turns out tough, and my wrist hurts trying to soften it, which seems far from the sensuous experience Gordon is having as he expertly kneads his pasta dough in the video.

My son comes to the kitchen to see what I am doing, and I convince him to join me. He tries to knead the pasta with his little hands, helps me roll out the dough and run it through the pasta machine. Sometimes he loses interest in the work but likes staying close to me, and I find it comforting to feel this small, curious creature by my side. At one point he insists on making a dough of his own out of flour and water, which I am to fry for him. After three hours of labor, we manage to produce a grand total of ten ravioli filled with spinach and ricotta; in all the excitement I forgot to add the pine nuts. We supplement our small dinner with my son’s fry bread, cut in half and smeared with cream cheese. Making and shaping the dough has been so pleasurable that we don’t mind that we got almost every part of the recipe wrong and had very little to show for our efforts. In the weeks that come, my son and I make pasta again, screwing it up even more thoroughly, and having even more fun.

* * *

The idyll does not last long. My life is increasingly taken over by work. In January, I am part of a grant renewal application that involves a two-day inspection by a crew of visiting scholars, a process in which millions of Euros of funding are at stake. I remember that I am, in fact, expected to demonstrate mastery at my job. In my morning shower and before I fall asleep at night, I practice answers to potential questions, working out what impressive German abstract nouns I need to survive this experience. I try to cultivate an air of confidence, but worry it might be coming out more Herzog than Wintour. But the questions we get are not the ones I practiced, and by the end of the ordeal my project is booted out. I travel to my hometown to teach for a few months, and the hassle of settling in helps me put the failure out of mind. Then, a few weeks later, I learn that someone I trusted has spread a damaging lie about me. My stomach drops. I feel rage. Then I feel as though I have left my body altogether. A day later, my lower back spasms. I wind up immobile in bed.

I had planned to learn tennis with Serena Williams or do barre with Misty Copeland, but here I am in a rented house in a rented bed, moaning in pain if I turn as much as an inch. Propped up against pillows that do little more than fix my body in the least excruciating position, I have little patience for books or even television. Then MasterClass sends me one of its emails, and I can barely believe my eyes: it’s RuPaul.

I have come to suspect that MasterClass will put any celebrity in front of a camera for a few hours and call it a course. This particular class is only nominally about drag: it claims to be about “Self-Expression and Authenticity.” This is convenient, because covered with heating pads and smeared with a variety of pungent salves, I’m not in much of a position to try and look fabulous. Still, I would watch RuPaul explain the finer points of installing drywall, so I click the button to join.

By this point, I have realized that there are two kinds of teachers. Some focus on transmitting their skills. They seem to be saying to the student: “this is how to do what I do.” Others offer themselves as models to be imitated: “this is how I became who I am.” Many MasterClass instructors pretend they are selling the former while in fact delivering the latter. RuPaul doesn’t even pretend. Dressed in a carmine suit and seated against a black-and-neon set reminiscent of Studio 54, RuPaul talks about some of the most basic challenges of growing up in the world. He describes the course of his career, the role artistic inspirations played in his life, the challenges of addiction, criticism, and just plain being ignored. I take no notes — I physically can’t. But I am moved by RuPaul’s vulnerability, a refreshing change of pace after the unrelenting cockiness of the other teachers. Instead of presenting himself as magnificent from the get-go, brave and destined for greatness, he comes across as a human being who had been broken but helped along his way by kind mentors, friends, and a lot of therapy.

Here is something bracing to think about: it is hard to learn how to be yourself.

The other MasterClass teachers seemed impervious to criticism, able to brush it off with a knowing smile. But what do you do when you are not born that way, or if you have been brought up to value the opinions of others, sometimes to a fault? In one episode, RuPaul describes the unquenchable hunger of bullies to feed their fragile egos: “The only time they feel visible is when they create pain.” I reflect on how attached I still am to what people think of me, and how hard this makes it to distance myself from the hurt they cause even when I know they act out of their own self-loathing. RuPaul’s answer is to focus on finding what he calls “your natural frequency, your natural energy source.” Incapacitated, I can muster little of my usual cynicism about talk of “energies.” Besides, I like what he seems to be getting at. Maybe the secret to freedom is not to emulate the bravado of a few wildly successful people, but to tap into what feels true. According to RuPaul, doing so will draw other people with a similar energy to yours, but, “like a garden, it takes managing. You have to cultivate it.” Here is something bracing to think about: it is hard to learn how to be yourself.

I binge-watch RuPaul’s MasterClass late into the night. I am only half-focussing when a story breaks through my daze. RuPaul recalls his parents divorcing when he was seven. His father had custody on the weekends, and every weekend, little RuPaul would sit on the front porch waiting for his father to pick him up. His father never came. RuPaul looks straight into the camera and speaks softly now, to the child he somewhere still is: “Baby, that had nothing to do with you.” I think of my father, who left my life eight years ago, who is now just an hour’s drive away, and who I know I will not see. I think about the grandson he has never met. I am fuzzy on the details, but this may be when I begin weeping like a baby. Ru breaks down too as he describes his own journey to sobriety. And there we are, two people separated by a screen, crying together in the dark.

* * *

Half a year after starting my MasterClass adventure, I am a different person from the eager pupil who scribbled down every pearl of wisdom from Malcolm Gladwell’s lips. I am disappointed in other people and — in a distant way I cannot quite place — also in myself. I wish I were stronger, or easier to transform. My back still hurts. And if that were not enough, I have returned home to voluntary quarantine. Now, instead of a fun distraction from everyday life, the computer is my only point of contact with the rest of the world. I cannot bear to see more people talking on the screen, but there are not too many other places to go.

As the global pandemic unfolds, MasterClass shifts its offerings with uncanny acumen. Instead of promising me greatness, the ads in my inbox invite me to take what seem like a humbler course: gardening. The instructor, Ron Finley, is a fashion designer turned urban-gardening advocate. MasterClass pitches him as a “gangsta gardener,” and he offers fresh, zen koan-like takes along the lines of “Air is gangsta as fuck” and “When Bambi dies, or some shit… no one buries it.” At first, I ignore the ads. I have no green thumb. My rap sheet includes a long list of potted herbs, houseplants, and even cacti that I have, by some amazing level of neglect, managed to dry to death. In the past 20 years I have moved through a variety of dorm rooms, house-sits, and rental apartments in three countries. How could I grow something when I have barely put down roots myself?

The ads keep coming. One night, I have a dream about planting a garden. Then I get flashes of another version of myself: a teenager tending to the front and back yards of my family home. I had the boring chores of raking leaves and mowing the lawn, but I also grew flowers and pulled weeds and cared for a bed of strawberries. I remember now how I used to pore over seed and bulb catalogues, calculating the amount of sun each part of our yard received, imagining how I could replace our lawn with a glorious cacophony of color, if only my parents would fund the project. I never did manage to plant the garden I dreamt of. One bad spring my mother spread grass seeds all over my flower bed, and in my anger I gave up gardening altogether.

I start the course.

Finley is charismatic and funny and, wouldn’t you know it, down-to-earth. He’s not precious about gardening, a point he makes by showing how to turn a wooden dresser drawer into a makeshift planter. The course itself is not so much a master class as a basic introduction to keeping a plant alive. Finley stands behind his big wooden table and rubs different kinds of soil between his hands to show how to recognize the good, loamy kind that plants will flourish in. He gently eases seedlings out of their pots and pats them into the ground, pokes holes with his finger, and pops in sugar snap peas. Given that I haven’t touched a bag of soil in over two decades, this is what I need.

Between little jokes like “size does matter… in a garden,” Finley slips in an entire philosophy of being in the world. He describes building a relationship to plants as a way of connecting to one’s body, one’s environment, to life itself. Learning to care for plants, he says, is a way to learn to care for yourself. As he shows how to loosen the roots of a nursery plant or divide a sprouted sweet potato, Finley calls attention to the creative force deep inside all living things. “Plants want to grow, they wanna live, they wanna thrive,” he says, and I’m enchanted by the potential of survival he sees in a part of life I had wholly overlooked. I can’t remember looking at a plant and not seeing a future reproach.

In my happiest moments of creation, I have experienced this sensation of standing by as a mysterious energy unfolded itself according to a plan all its own.

Watching these videos makes me want to nurture something. I run to my kitchen and pick up a pot of fragile supermarket parsley. I pick off the dry leaves, then water it. A few days later, it has perked up. I gain courage. That weekend, I go with my family to a garden center, where we don our masks and look through fogged glasses at a bewildering variety of soils. We spend hours on our balcony, mixing soil with fertilizer, planting a cut-off wine barrel full of kitchen herbs. In other pots, we give a tiny strawberry seedling and a tomato plant a chance next to some sprouted onions from the pantry that I have learned how to divide on YouTube. In the days that follow, the three of us are stupidly happy. We go out on the balcony, stare at the plants the way parents watch sleeping newborns, call each other to witness how quickly they have grown. Then, what begins as an experiment turns into a minor obsession. Flowers and a miniature olive tree join the herbs. We plant peas and potatoes, and my son and I try germinating seeds for herbs we could not find in the store. There is no special talent here: it is an ordinary hobby, but that does not dull its wonder.

As I observe our seedlings take root and flourish, it dawns on me how little power I have over their growth. I can provide them with a fertile space to be. I nurture, prune, and guide them as necessary. I can destroy them through neglect or poor decisions. But I do not make them what they are. In my happiest moments of creation, I have experienced this sensation of standing by as a mysterious energy unfolded itself according to a plan all its own. It is what being pregnant felt like. It is also how some essays have come to me, in full bud and pressing to be written down.

More often than not, though, making things in the world feels like slamming dead clay on the ground, hoping that enough force might shape it into something beautiful. It occurs to me that what I have to learn in my little balcony garden has nothing to do with mastery. As I watch the cilantro and the basil and even the sad supermarket parsley take root, I feel that I am coming back to myself, to a part of me I had forgotten. Here it is at last: something new.

***

Irina Dumitrescu is an essayist and scholar of medieval literature.

Editor: Ben Huberman

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