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toyahinterviews · 1 year

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MY 80s PLAYLIST, VIRGIN RADIO WITH STEVE DENYER 5.5.2023

STEVE: We're going to start off with your first track. Bowie, “Ashes To Ashes”. Is this your favourite Bowie song? Why have you picked it? TOYAH: It's a very powerful Bowie song for me. Bowie always punctuated the points in my life where I felt the carpet had been pulled from under my feet. The first time I heard “Life On Mars”, for instance, I was doing an audition with Phil Daniels for a play on BBC2. I sang “Life On Mars” at my first audition and got the part With “Ashes To Ashes“ - I was already becoming a very cult, famous figure within the punk movement in 1980. I remember going away to write songs with my writing partner at that time, Joel Bogen (the guitarist of the Toyah band). We were just a bit lost. We'd been signed to a record label but we hadn't quite got the full band together “Ashes To Ashes” came on the radio when we were in a cottage somewhere in Dorset, writing, and my whole life changed in that moment. Bowie did that for me whenever I felt lost or broken. Bowie put me back together and “Ashes To Ashes” is one of those songs STEVE: I've always wanted to ask you about Derek Jarman. I heard that he kind of spotted you. As far as the movie “Jubilee” goes, which I've seen - it blew my teenage mind. But he said to you “I want you in this movie. I don't care who you play. I want you in here" Tell me how you met him? How it started out? TOYAH: The actor Ian Charleson, (who was in “Chariots Of Fire”), we were both working at the National Theatre. Ian said to me "you've got to come and meet this director called Derek Jarman. He's making a movie about the punk movement and the royal family". I think the original name of the movie was going to be “Down With The Queen” and it became “Jubilee” Derek and I and Ian and had tea at his apartment. Derek's way of casting a movie was just extraordinary. He said, “look at the script. Pick your role. But you can't play "Amyl Nitrate" because that's Jordan”. Jordan, the iconic punk queen (below on the right) I picked “Mad”. I literally flipped through the script and went for the part with the most lines But then a few weeks later Derek had to say to me that his budget had been cut, and he had to cut down the whole film to four characters. He instinctively realised that I was heartbroken that “Mad” was going to be cut from the script. Then a week later Derek phoned and said “I've given up my fee so that you can be in the film" and he put “Mad” back in That is exactly who and what Derek was. Derek put people in a room and said “do whatever you want”. So if you can imagine, literally, where this building is that you and I talking in now, was one of the sets ... It was an old warehouse. John Mabry doing the sets. Kenny the drummer from Siouxsie and the Banshees was painting the walls You had Adam Ant and myself, Little Nell, Jenny Runacre. We were all together just making this film happen in this kind of family atmosphere, with Derek Jarman giving us sandwiches to sustain us. And it worked. I actually believe that that film was 40 years too soon Now, in today's climate, and with today's revolution of language, of history, of addressing the equality of everyone, and the equality of choice within everyone - Derek was there 42 years ago. Behaving like that, living like that and fighting for those rights. This film, as mad as it is, I think belongs today

STEVE: Yeah, amazing. Also these movies have gone down in cult status now. Blew my teenage mind watching that. I wasn't sure what I was watching, but I loved it and I'd never seen anything like it before

TOYAH: (There was) nothing like it. Very collage and very free thinking. As performers we're all bouncing off the walls with our energy. What I love today is so many young kids, and I'm talking about 16 - 17 year olds, are coming up to me saying “we're studying Derek Jarman. We want to make movies like that” STEVE: Brilliant. What shall we pick next? What would you like? TOYAH: I think Kate Bush because Kate, quite rightly, her catalogue from 1985, which is “Hounds Of Love” is just … It's announced today that she's getting a song writing nomination as a contemporary artist for the Ivor Novello Award. It was absolutely amazing when the “Hounds Of Love” came out. It was groundbreaking. It lifted Kate from the artist that everyone felt they knew with “Babooshka” and “Wuthering Heights” It lifted her into the stratosphere of A-list writers, even in 1985. To have it come back the way it has, and she's being discovered now by a completely new audience, I think is the most perfect trajectory for a career anyone could have STEVE: What do you think about the whole situation with a movie or a TV show picking up on a song from years ago, using it and suddenly ... (makes an explosion sound) TOYAH: I personally would say the record industry as it is today, where we are reliant on download sales ... that doesn't necessarily pay our way. We're all completely reliant on what's called sinks and that is your back catalogue being discovered or even your present catalogue being placed in a movie, an advert or a TV series. We’re totally reliant on it But I feel really, really optimistic that it opens up the world of music. Every genre, every timeframe. 80s, 70s, 60s, 90s, 2000. I mean, it's all possible now and it's all happening STEVE: Did you know Kate? Do you know her? Have your paths crossed? Can you tell me something about her? TOYAH: When Kate had Bertie and the world didn't know about her son, Kate would come to our house. I live on the River Avon and my father would take them out on his boat. They had privacy and could play. So we know the private Kate STEVE: What is she like? Is she otherworldly? TOYAH: She's incredibly bright and intelligent. Otherworldly, possibly, yes. But just a really beautiful human being. Kind. She loves other people. She loves interesting people. She's always interested in what you're doing and what you're up to Always wants a lovely conversation. Kate never sits down and talks about Kate. Kate sits down and talks about you. Very like Derek Jarman. Just a really lovely soul who just wants to be plugged into creativity STEVE: Amazing. How do you think she feels now after the year that she's had? TOYAH: She thrilled STEVE: You know? You’ve spoken to her? TOYAH: Well, we got an email at Christmas and she said "my goodness, you wouldn't believe what's going on!" Kate's very private, and she loves the silence of her home life. She makes jam. She makes cakes. She loves being involved with Bertie’s social circle. I think it amazes her as someone, who tries to stay out of the limelight, that she's increasingly been thrown back into it The most amazing conversation I had with her was backstage at “Before The Dawn” (Kate's concert residency at Hammersmith Apollo) in 2013. She'd just been invited to take the show to Broadway and she said "I just look forward to going home.” I love that! STEVE: You’ve probably answered my next question. Would she go out on tour again off the back of this success? TOYAH: I'm not answering that for her. That's her right STEVE: Do you think she might do a couple of shows? TOYAH: (shakes her head) That's for her to talk about. But what I will say is the most talented people in the world and I've worked with a lot of them - they're not actually terribly ambitious. My husband's Robert Fripp (below with Toyah in 1986). He's the most private, home based person I know. And Kate is very similar. Her values are with love and family, as well as creativity

STEVE: “Hounds Of Love” - what does it mean to you?

TOYAH: When I first heard "Hounds Of Love" I was on a plane going to meet my husband. He was about to propose to me and I was very vulnerable. I was in tears. I was leaving my old life to go to America. So “Hounds Of Love” to me is about the life I was about to enter into. Very broken time for me. I was leaving an old life to start a new life

STEVE: What's the next one we're going to go for?

TOYAH: Well, it's very linked to Kate Bush in many ways - it's Peter Gabriel. I'm going for “Sledgehammer”. His management called me in to listen to his album. I was blown away. I'm very flattered that they wanted my opinion on it. They played me “Sledgehammer” and I thought "this is fantastic!". I have loved Peter Gabriel ever since he went solo

And of course my husband produced him as a solo artist and played on “Here Comes The Flood” (1977,) I believe. So the links are all there. My husband was in the studio hen Peter and Kate did “Don't Give Up”. Peter did about 73 takes, I've been led to believe, and Kate got it right on the first take. My husband was in the studio and he was sitting there thinking “she's got it right. Just stop doing takes. She's got it right on the first take!”

STEVE: The pressure!

TOYAH: So I want to play Peter Gabriel because he inspires me. If ever I need to just open my mind up and feel really creative ... it's “Sledgehammer”. It’s “Us”, the album. Everything he does informs me of what I would like to do

STEVE: Can you remember hearing this track for the very first time because obviously now it's gone down in legendary status. How did it make you feel?

TOYAH: The first time I heard it I felt complete envy. Because this is such a complete song. The production, the vocal. The arrangement is so wonderful. I envy anyone who has that time and that focus to do it. Peter can scrap whole albums and start again but when he gets it right, my goodness, it's there for eternity

I then went to Switzerland to film a TV programme and I was in the Alps, in the snow, sitting on a balcony just looking out over the mountains. "Sledgehammer" was on a loop on my Walkman. I came away from that experience, just an hour listening to “Sledgehammer” and wrote an album called “Ophelia’s Shadow”, which was critically acclaimed in America

It's nothing to do with “Sledgehammer”, but the whole experience of Peter’s voice, his choices of how he sings words, like Bowie, how he'll deliver a line, his timing ... just unlocked me creatively. I just sat there, writing non-stop

My husband watches me do this when we watch TV. When I see Claes Bang, the actor, in a film or a drama ... they unlock me. I keep a pen and a pad next to me. My hand is just writing, writing, writing, writing. My husband says “how are you doing that? You're not even looking at the paper.” I just think certain people open a creative pathway. I never let those moments go and I can come away with 10 pages of ideas

STEVE: Of course we do need to quickly chat about the video to this track because it really is, even now, something special!

TOYAH: Groundbreaking

STEVE: He apparently sat under a sheet of glass for 16 hours in the knowledge that nobody would do that and never come close to doing it

TOYAH: This was at the time when stop frame technology was the only way to do it. There was no CGI at this time. There was no other way of doing it than animation and this is live animation. I just think he knew he was onto a good thing. He trusted the filmmakers

This is what's so beautiful about Peter’s career is that he will go off on really strange tangents that bring something back into the Zeitgeist and he creates Zeitgeist. And that's why he is who he is

STEVE: Brilliant. Which one are we going to go for next?

TOYAH: I would love to go for Marc Almond and “Tainted Love"

STEVE: I love it! Tell me about this TOYAH: I'm touring all of this year with my husband, Robert Fripp. We’ve got Isle Of Wight, Cropedy Festival (above, Toyah at Cropedy in August 2022) and many many other festivals. And then we're touring in October, in homage to our social media hit “Sunday Lunch” STEVE: What happened there? Tell me about that because that's exploded - TOYAH: What we're doing for the tour is we'll have a big screen and the show will have an image and narration of looking back at the “Sunday Lunches”. But basically Robert and I are just doing an absolutely rocking tour. We're going out and doing rock music. It's a live music show STEVE: Have you toured with him before? TOYAH: Yes, with a band called Sunday All Over The World in 1988. But not since then. But we love working together. So people will come up, they will have a fantastic show. The show is 50% British writers, 50% English writers 11 of my songs are in the show but then we pepper the show with great rock. So we have Guns N' Roses, we have Marc Almond - which is why I want to play “Tainted Love”, because that's in our show. I cannot believe this came out as early as 1981 - STEVE: That's amazing TOYAH: Isn't it incredible? STEVE: 43 years ago TOYAH: When that intro begins you just need that first da da and the audience just go crazy! I've seen this. I work with Marc Almond all the time at the “Rewind” and “Let’s Rock” festivals and you just get that first da da and the whole audience is just dancing. Elated! I think that's the power of this production for Marc Almond The video is sensational because it's the first time people wore this kind of lighting technology. So you have two dancers come in through a window and they've got a light suit on. Then they're dancing while there's the model lying in bed and Marc is projected - STEVE: He’s a very attractive young man, if I may say so TOYAH: Oh, he’s gorgeous! The video is just perfection and I think this song is what the 80s is about STEVE: The album version is mixed into “Where Did Our Love Go” TOYAH: Oh, is it? I probably have heard it STEVE: It’s so good. And obviously this is a cover of a song by Gloria Jones. But everybody remembers this version TOYAH: This is the definitive and artists have done it very brilliantly ever since. But Marc - his delivery is vocal. He is a torch singer. You can feel his pain in everything he does. He delivers a very beautiful pain I think it's quite important within popular music that we recognise broken hearts. We recognise relationships that didn't last and all of that. He does it with a such a joyful song STEVE: Which one should we go for next on your list? We could do all of these. Did it take you a long time to put this list together? TOYAH: No, it didn't take a long time to put the list together because I think the 80s has so much to offer. I just don't think it's going to go away. These are storytelling songs. I’ve chosen INXS next, “Need You Tonight”, just because INXS by 1987 were able to strip the production back It was about rhythm. It was about hitting the beat. And you had this gorgeous beautiful adonis on lead vocals, Michael Hutchence. There's such an innocence about what they do and yet he cannot help exude extreme sexuality STEVE: What was it about him?

TOYAH: Perfect body. Perfect voice. He was flirtatious with the microphone and the camera. And of course the very famous story about Paula Yates at that time. It was the love story that everyone was intrigued by. Was it at that time or had they not met? STEVE: The love thing with her started on “The Big Breakfast” in the 90s. So "Need You Tonight” … 10 years later they were dating and he passed away in 97' before she did TOYAH: I interviewed her just before she passed away and she was actually in a very good place. Utterly beautiful. Just legendary beauty. Articulate. But she was in a good place She arrived with her friend Belinda, who protected her like a dragon, quite rightly Paula was able to talk about everything. I was super impressed and fell in love with her like everyone did, who met her. But I think something was going on with Michael long before it was public, which is why I've picked up on it STEVE: They were very very flirty on "The Big Breakfast". It was in bed, wasn’t it? TOYAH: I think Michael couldn't believe how forward she was. But they were made for each other. You could see it. I think he's a beautiful man and (it's) a fantastic band. I've always felt protective of him ever since (he was) at the BRITS. He was presented with a prize and the person who presented it said "you're a has-been" Fom that moment on I would fight a battle for Michael. I would fight to protect him because it was disgraceful that anyone, yet alone another artist, should abuse someone in front of such a big world audience like that. So I've always just felt really protective towards him STEVE: What a loss. What a shame TOYAH: A big loss! STEVE: How sad. I watched the Paula Yates documentary recently TOYAH: She was breathtaking STEVE: But it's great to hear what you said because everybody said the same thing that she was in a really great place and that death, if you want to call it accidental or whatever - it wasn't meant to happen TOYAH: Of course it wasn't meant to happen. Looking back at Peaches (Paula’s daughter with Bob Geldof) ... (her death) wasn't meant to happen. The DNA in this family is absolutely brilliant. What would Paula be doing now? She'd just be doing magnificent things. And she was in a great place at that time STEVE: We've done the five songs but let's pick another one because I’m having a great time TOYAH: I would love to pick Alice Cooper STEVE: What I really want to ask you, Toyah ... you were there. It's amazing to talk to somebody who was there at the punk scene. You remember it first time round. Do you think there's a chance that we could revisit anything like that? Do you think the punk scene might come back again? Or is it done and dusted? TOYAH: Oh no, it's not done and dusted. I do the Rebellion Festival (below, 2017), which is a punk festival and that audience is all ages. So obviously we original punks, because I'm about to turn 65 - we're of a certain age. But that audience is all age groups. I think what's beautiful about the punk philosophy is it policed itself. In the beginning it needed to be policed. There was a sidetracking into kind of the wrong image

STEVE: Was it really genuinely anarchic? TOYAH: Yes, absolutely! I was at the National Theatre when I was 18. I think I punked the National Theatre! I was the first punk there and it did shock people even in an establishment like the National, which is a groundbreaking theatre. But what it did for me - I'm not a conventional physical type for a woman in music. I'm very, very small. I don't have beautiful long legs. I'm just powerful. I have a lot of energy and bravado Punk allowed me into the music industry. People really resisted it. People resisted signing me. I probably was one of the last acts signed. I got signed to an independent label called Safari about 1978 and that was quite late to get signed. My sheer will and bravado pushed me into the front runners, as it were. And only last December (the album) “Anthem” (1981) was re-released and it charted again, went straight in at number 22 So I think because I haven't had physicality in my favour … Firstly I was gender neutral at the beginning of my career. I dressed gender neutral. I thought there was absolutely no point trying to win people over by being feminine. It just wasn't going to work

STEVE: Does that mean that you were non-binary? You didn't identify as being a she? TOYAH: I didn’t want to be identified as a gender. It was nothing to do with he or she. I just felt that people were judging me when they were writing about me as not attractive as a woman. No one that they wanted to sleep with as a woman. I found that really insulting that I was being judged purely on being attractive and not really as an up-and-coming artist. So I just started to not go that way STEVE: Did anyone ask any questions because it would seem that people were quite accepting of “you do you”? TOYAH: People were genuinely fascinated that I had the guts to not play the game of being that cute little woman. I was very aggressive in how I moved through my career. Not violent, but strident. People were genuinely fascinated My clothes designer was a woman called Melissa Caplan, who designed for Bananarama, Adam Ant, Steve Strange, and possibly Marc Almond at that time. Her remit was I want to be gender neutral. I am a human being not an agenda STEVE: Tell me about Alice Cooper, and why you want this song? TOYAH: “School's Out”. I love this song. And funnily enough, my husband loves this song. We covered it in our “Sunday Lunch” social media. Oh no, it's “Poison”! STEVE: Just explain what “Sunday Lunch” is just in case people haven't seen it or don't know what it is TOYAH: It’s on the Toyah You Tube channel and every Sunday at 12 noon we post 90 seconds of performance from Toyah and Robert. In the lockdown years this was huge around the world. It's still huge now! STEVE: Is that when it started? During the pandemic? TOYAH: Yes. We did it because we posted one film of us dancing, April the 19th 2020 and we instantly got replies from around the world. From New Zealand, from Bali, from Hong Kong. So we continued to do it every Sunday. We've had 111 million visits STEVE: Wow, that's impressive TOYAH: We're now having a documentary made about us, which is filming for the next 12 months, following us on on our tours STEVE: You do this track? You do “Poison”? TOYAH: On the tour we're going to do “School’s Out”. We did this track on "Sunday Lunch" and Alice Cooper was sent it. He was played it live on his broadcast. His band said “you need to see this.” We were made to watch him watching it live He was like, “Oh, what is this?” I sent a message to him ... “I'm really sorry about this, Alice, but you do not know what you mean to me. As a teenager in the early 70s and today. You've proven to me that you can just go through life being strong, doing what you believe in STEVE: What did he say back? TOYAH: He was so gracious STEVE: Is he lovely? TOYAH: He laughed his head off at the “Sunday Lunch” because I was dressed as a nurse and I think he was really embarrassed by it. But he was really lovely STEVE: An absolute pleasure. Toyah Willcox. Lots of love TOYAH: Thank you. Lots of love and see you on the road STEVE: See you there. Maybe at Glastonbury, maybe not. We don't know. It could happen … I'm getting a look (they both burst out laughing) Watch the interview HERE

#toyah #toyahwillcox #toyah radio #toyahradio #toyah 2023 #toyah2023 #toyahinterview #toyah interview

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crashbandicunttt · 3 years

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So, I wrote this Borra smut fanfiction upon no one’s behest. lmao. I just love Bolin so much and thought if the writers paired him canonically with Korra, I imagine their energy would be just chaotic in a good way. Plus, that Borra date montage just really has me in a chokehold, especially the way Bolin looks at Korra. let me die.

FIRST

A Bolin x Korra smut fanfiction.

E rating.

Set in a mix of the LoK universe and the modern world. There’s enough context in the story though, I think. You don’t need that much context though, this story is just mostly horny.

“So.” Bolin said, half chuckling.

“So.” Korra responded in a small voice.

They stayed that way for a little while longer, under the cover together but never touching.

And to think everything seemed to start off relatively easy.

—

The agreement was simple and straightforward, a pact made when Korra was thirteen and Bolin was fourteen: if neither of them gets laid by the time they are eighteen, then they would rather lose their virginities to each other. At the time Bolin admitted it was not his brightest moment. After all, it was at age ten that Bolin first discovered Korra was not only the girl he wanted to hang out with all day during the weekends, but that he wanted to be beside her all the time. He realized he wanted to be with her long before the pact was made.

If he remembered correctly, the pact was made clumsily and in response to an encounter they should have probably not experienced.

It was a fateful winter night when the pact was formed. Bolin’s large extended family was home for the holidays, and being that their family was large, every holiday saw their house filled to the brim with people. Bolin beamed with joy, completely in his element interacting with each and every member of his family. Unlike Mako, Bolin was less sullen and enjoyed the company of many as much as he enjoyed the company of his own brother.

Or Korra, it seemed, who he finally spotted standing with her back flush against the wall closest to the basement door, holding a cup of water in her hand that she was so intently watching. Bolin excused himself to stroll closer to her, ignoring the way his heart pounded so much louder whenever he was around her.

There was no reason she had to know.

Holding his cup in his own hand, he waited for her to look up at him and the way she instantly smiled just made him feel all sorts of warm and… funny inside. Only when he got older would he realize what that was, but at the time, he labelled that feeling ‘funny,’ an emotion that made him grin at her.

She grinned back. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he responded, clinking his cup against hers, to which she obliged happily. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just a lot of people. And I only really know you. And Mako. And your grandmother.”

That she did, and no matter how many times Bolin introduced her, she seemed to forget them. Bolin supposed that was just the thing about big families. Now, enough movies told him that whisking a girl away to somewhere nice in the middle of a party was the way to go. Only there were no ‘nice’ places in their household, and the cold winter night outside limited their options severely. So Bolin turned to the next best thing: the basement.

It made sense that Korra would stand in the proximity of the room they hung out in the most. Every Friday like clockwork since they were old enough to understand how to operate the DVD player, Bolin and Korra would sit on the couch in the basement and watch a movie together. Sometimes Mako would join them, but as he grew older, he remained in his room for longer periods and joined Friday basement movie nights only sparingly.

This time, Mako was bustling about helping their grandmother tend to the guests. Bolin and Korra snuck away to the basement with ease, and when Korra flopped down onto the sofa, she seemed to sigh in relief for the first time all night. Bolin hid a careful smile as he turned to the DVD player. A disk case of their favourite movie sat on top of the DVD player. Bolin figured if there was something that could help Korra’s nervous energy abate, it would be watching something familiar.

Only, when he sat down and pressed the remote so the disk would be fed into the slot, something completely different materialized on the screen. It was… not their favourite movie, that was for sure. In fact, it didn’t even seem very appropriate at all. Bolin and Korra looked at each other but neither made a move to pop open the DVD player, go back upstairs, and forget this ever happened. Perhaps it was pubescent curiosity that made them stay seated where they were, staring intently at the unfolding events on screen until it finished. Both of them had questions in mind that they did not have the courage to ask each other just yet. Not now that Bolin’s shirt felt too tight and his skin too hot, not now that Korra’s hair seemed to lay much too flat on her forehead, sticking down due to the light sheen of sweat.

“Uhm,” Bolin awkwardly broke the heavy silence first. “So, that was a different, uhm, movie.”

“That was… Bo, I don’t think that was a movie.”

“Y-yes it is,” Bolin responded with nervous laughter, tugging at his collar. “Didn’t you see the actors?”

Korra’s look was puzzled, but she didn’t say anything for a long time after that, and neither did Bolin. The party upstairs continued merrily, and soon, thankfully, Bolin’s body temperature dropped and his shirt no longer felt three sizes too small.

Well, until Korra decided to attack the awkwardness by saying: “I’m pretty sure that was sex.”

Bolin couldn’t help but agree. He knew Korra well enough to sense that this specific tone of her voice brokered no argument. Which meant they were venturing into uncharted territory and he had to be careful not to show any signs that, well, he would rather not have this conversation with her because, well, it was simply too awkward to talk about something so intimate in such a casual manner with the person he liked so much.

He gulped. “Yes. I think so, yes.”

Korra looked thoughtful, her gaze back in her cup of water again. “What do you think it feels like?”

“Wh—what?”

“Sex,” she asked, unyielding blue eyes now trained at him. Too tight. Tomorrow, he will burn this shirt.

“I don’t know.”

“Should it feel bad?” Korra tilted her head.

Something told Bolin it shouldn’t, but he had the same question in his head while they were watching the video. “I don’t think so,” he said. Of this, at least, he felt sure. He and Mako may not have any parents anymore but he was vaguely aware two people in love also engaged in… well, sex, and that their love meant sex was supposed to feel good. With a full blown blush, he told Korra as much, and she took his information like it was nothing but plain fact rather than fuel to an increasingly uncomfortable conversation. For Bolin, of course, who had never had this conversation with a girl before. With some of his guy friends at school, sure, but never with a girl, much less Korra.

He drank from his cup as he watched Korra think from the corner of his eyes. Finally, she blinked up at him.

“You think that will hurt me?” She asked. Bolin choked on his water. Korra was quick to pat his back, which only made it worse.

“I— uhm,” he cleared his throat. “I don’t know.”

“You think it will hurt you?” She followed up, unfazed by his discomfort. Spirits, this is the first time he actually regretted going to the basement. It wasn’t supposed to end up like this. He just wanted Korra to feel a little less overwhelmed so that when she goes back up with him to the party, it’ll be easier for her to interact with everyone else.

“I— I hope not.” He finally croaked out, thumping his chest lightly with his balled fist, willing the discomfort in his throat to melt away. It didn’t, especially not when Korra’s resolute eyes trained on him. This time, he knew a decision was going to follow it and he didn’t exactly know if it would be a good one. He hoped it would be good because Korra sticks to things she wants to do with a fiery passion.

Korra crossed her legs on the couch and set her cup down on the floor.

“You said that sex was something that two people who loved each other did.” She explained, almost to herself. “But in the video, they didn’t seem to be happy doing it.”

“Yeah?” Bolin said, setting his own cup down and rubbing his throat from all the coughing.

“Does that mean she didn’t love him?”

This conversation was so weird. Bolin had such a vague idea of sex that every question Korra threw at him felt like a trap. Granted, he was one year older than Korra and thus felt like he knew about this whole thing more than her, but he felt like it was still not his place to talk about these things with her. After all, she had her parents.. But the cat was already out of the bag and there didn’t seem to be a way he was going to get Korra to think about anything else until this was finished.

“I don’t know many things about that but… I guess maybe, they’re not doing it for love.”

“Why not?”

“I think because maybe… maybe it doesn’t matter if they love each other.” This was horrible. If only it weren’t so cold outside then maybe he could bend himself a little rock house and promptly die in it.

“So they’re just having sex?”

Bolin shrugged, trying to be dismissive about it. “I think so.”

“Well,” Korra said after a while. “I thought of something.”

“Okay?”

“Obviously, when I grow up, I’ll be doing that.”

Bolin winced, feeling entirely responsible for the blunder. She was only a year younger than him and yet he already felt like he’d violated her, even though they didn’t really expect porn to be tonight’s movie.

“And,” Korra started again, a small smile gracing her lips for the first time since this whole thing started. “Since I already love you, maybe you can be the first person I do that with!”

Since I already love you.

He knew she just meant the friendly type of love, he knew this. He did. But it felt so nice, so warm in his heart when she said that, her sincerity clear in her eyes. It was just the other half of her statement that made him blink in disbelief.

“You want to… what? With— with me?” He asked while placing a hand on his chest. “M—me?”

“Yeah.” Her smile was blinding, like she hadn’t just said something that started to fry Bolin’s pubescent brain in a hot oil bath of dangerous teenage boy curiosity.

“Well,” he grappled for an excuse and found one just as quickly. “We can’t, though, because we’re not old enough.”

Korra considered this, eventually nodding. “Eighteen, then.”

Bolin gulped. “Eighteen? What do you mean?” Lie, he berated himself. He knew exactly what that meant. And from the looks of it, so did she.

“We wait until we’re eighteen and then we do it. If we don’t find anyone else to do it with by then.”

And this was when his famous mistake began: he’d agreed.

He was so sure she’d forget, so sure she’d eventually turn 19 and only think about the time they popped in a porno into the DVD player by accident as something to laugh about as she went on with her life. Thinking this, Bolin had felt it safe to agree with her request. And so, the pact was made.

Bolin and Korra would lose their virginities to each other if they don’t find any other partner by the time they reach 18.

—

And like almost every promise she made, she made good on this one, too, showing up at his dorm room door a week after her birthday, after she’d moved into the same school he did for college.

Fuck, he thought as he let her enter his dorm room. His roommate was out for the night for his weekly DnD habit.

He sighed. Just his luck, then.

As he closed the door, Korra bounded up to him in a great hug, and Bolin caught her, encircling his thick arms around her. When she pulled away, she punched his arm.

“Ow, Korra!” He admonished, rubbing the spot. “When did you get such a mean right hook?”

“Training to be the Avatar, of course! I also came because I promised I would beat you in an arm-wrestling match one day, didn’t I? Prepare to be defeated!” She exclaimed, before Bolin moved to hush her on account of the other sleeping students on the floor. Korra apologized in an instant, smiling sheepishly at her antics.

There was that funny feeling in the pit of Bolin’s stomach again. And it just intensified when she settled on his single bed, deftly taking off her boots and kicking it to the side. She spotted a folding table off to the side, leaning beside the window. She pulled it close, placing it in front of Bolin’s bed before pointing to a spare chair near the door that was piled high with laundry.

“Come on, pull that seat over here and fight me like a man!” She said, sending Bolin laughing.

“You’re on, lady! I’ll show you what a man looks like!” He retorted, speaking loud enough for effect but quiet enough so as not to disturb everyone else on the floor.

This was good. Good. She came here for a different promise. He might just be able to get out of this. With a flourish, he sat down on his seat and flexed his arm, placing his elbow on the table in preparation for their battle. Realizing he had been topless all this time, he felt a little subconscious, looking at Korra and then scooching his seat just a little close to his bed so he could reach for his tank.

Korra waved her hand dismissively. “Hey, Bo, relax, it’s just me.”

“Oh, okay,” he retreated to his seat, positioning his arm on the table. “Let’s go, little lady,” he said, grinning when she fit her hand easily into his own. Bolin reminded himself that this was an arm-wrestling rematch and willed himself not to dwell on the thought that her hand in his just felt so… perfect. So, so perfect.

Soon, she was exerting effort into her hand, her teeth gritted as she pushed against Bolin’s grip.

“Not to brag but I was born to have a tighter grip, Korra. It’s an earthbender thing.”

Korra scoffed. “No it’s not, and that’s definitely a brag. Don’t forget I’m the Avatar.”

Bolin laughed, and it felt just like old times. “You still weren’t born an earthbender, unfortunately. But fortunately, our established friendship means you can request for me to go easy on you. See that? I used unfortunately and fortunately together. Neat, huh?”

“Ha! No way, Bo! I didn’t practice all that time for nothing,” she responded, and Bolin was surprised to find his hand was actually giving.

“Okay, whoa,” he said, unable to help it. “Okay, that’s impressive. But not more than this!”

With the strength of the right half of his body, he pressed tighter against her hand, determined to give her the fight she deserved. A light sheen of sweat beaded on her brow and it was more alarmingly… attractive than it needed to be. Korra’s hand started to give this time, but with a tight groan, she was able to summon up enough strength to slam Bolin’s hand in defeat.

“Ah, what! No fair! Did you go into the Avatar State just then? That’s illegal, you know.” Bolin protested, comically crossing his arms. Korra’s eyes flitted to his bunched biceps just then, and unbidden, Bolin arched a curious brow. Interesting.

“No, I didn’t,” Korra coughed into her hand before momentarily turning her head to look around the room.

He’ll let that slide. For now. “I could have sworn I saw some glowing! Explain yourself!” He protested, proceeding as normal.

“I have nothing to explain!” She replied, standing up abruptly. They stared at each other, squinting for only a split second and for a split second, Bolin thought she was going to storm out out of embarrassment. Luckily, they’d just ended up laughing together. Korra closed the distance between them to hug him again, and Bolin was all too happy to return her tight embrace.

“It’s so nice to see you, Bo. I really missed you!”

“No, I missed you!” Bolin said, pouting at her. She poked at his cheek intending to kiss it when just at that moment, Bolin turned his head.

The kiss landed on his lip.

A million thoughts rushed through Bolin’s brain in that moment, the most prominent being ‘put as much distance between you and Korra,’ and ‘never let her go.’ It didn’t help that these two thoughts fought each other in his head, rendering him immobile after the soft smack of her lips. It was a tiny thing, he barely tasted her, but his body singed for more. And it did this so because it also knew what day it was, how old they both were.

It knew of the pact.

Bolin swallowed; Korra caught it. Eventually, they broke apart, both feeling flustered. Bolin resolved to find solace away from his room, which now felt entirely stuffy.

“I— uh, need to get something, uh, outside. You can, uh, stay here!” Bolin swung the door open hastily, but stopped when Korra said, “Wait.”

Don’t fight it, you’ve always loved her, his heart screamed at him. But his brain told him this wasn’t what he had in mind. Korra deserved to be worshipped in, maybe, silken sheets or something, not in his cramped dorm room.

“Bolin, please look at me.” She pleaded, and when Bolin turned back to look at her, he wished he wasn’t wearing gray sweats to bed tonight. He could hide nothing in the thing.

Desperate for a distraction, Bolin thought about many other things. All the things, if it meant he could calm down his wildly beating heart in front of her. He stood stock still, shoulders tensed and hunched inward.

“You know why I came here, don’t you?” She asked, stepping slowly towards him and just when Bolin thought she was too close, she reached behind him to close the door. The lamp was usually enough light for him, but with her here, it seemed to shrink back at her brilliance.

Bolin closed his eyes, worried that if he doesn’t, he might just lose himself staring into her eyes. So close. What was only seconds felt like ages before Bolin felt Korra’s careful breath against his cheek. So close. He resisted the urge to bite his lip.

With a shaky smile, he quipped, “H— hi, Korra. It feels so nice to be close friends with you.” How he could still manage a joke right now is beyond him, especially when earlier they had already accidentally kissed and even that nearly sent him into cardiac arrest. Korra’s hushed laughter at the joke made his shoulders relax just a little, before her next words made him tense up anew.

“Can I kiss you?”

Bolin’s been hit by a heavy rock to the chest before, but all his training built up his resistance over time. But this… this was a hit to his heart. His breath hitched, unbidden, and he braved one eye open to look at… exactly how close she was. Much too close.

“Korra, I—“

“Can I at least touch you?”

“Korra—“

She reached tentative fingers into his jet black hair, and the small shiver that shot down his spine made his mouth run dry. That was just a hair-touch! His body is betraying him! She’ll definitely see the effect she has on him if she just looked down. Please don’t look down. Please don’t look down.

“Is this okay?”

“Y-yes,” His mind screamed. But then Korra stopped touching his hair.

“Yeah?” She asked.

Bolin brought up a hand tentatively just to facepalm. “I— I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Yes you did.”

“I’m such an idiot,” he mumbled.

“You are,” she agreed.

Bolin raised a brow at her. “Hey!”

Korra chuckled, which served to take away some more of the tight tension in his body. He was still on guard, though, making small steps backward to put some distance between them. But Korra easily caught on to what he was doing. She inhaled deeply and steeled her face into an unreadable expression. Oh no, no.

“If you didn’t want me to be here then maybe you should have just told me! God, I feel like an idiot!” She groaned, shoving past him to get to the door. No, no, Bolin thought. He has to fix this.

“Korra wait—!” He exclaimed, wrapping his fingers around her wrist just before she reached the doorknob.

“What?” She snapped, and when she whirled her head towards him, he saw her eyes were watering. Oh, Korra.

“I— can we just talk about it first? Yeah?”

“What’s there to talk about?! When you obviously don’t want me here!”

“Korra, listen— just listen to me.” He pleaded, ignoring his brain’s call to be careful when touching her. That was always a slippery slope. Especially now when they’re in a room together, about to discuss a five-year-old pact Korra never forgot about. “Come here.” He said, loosening his grip on her wrist and holding her hand. He tugged her closer to his bed and settled on the floor in front of her when she finally sat down on his covers.

Bolin took a deep breath. “First of all, I missed you, too, in case that part wasn’t clear. What with all the… you know, this going on. Heh. And second of all, well, I didn’t really…”

Oh man. This was so hard. Korra stared at him, waiting for his answer.

Bolin cleared his throat, scratching the back of his head and shifting his gaze away. “I didn’t really want our first time to be just here. In my dorm room. You deserve something special, you know! It’s just all a surprise, is all.”

A beat. “So you do want to have sex with me?”

Oh.

Well. He walked into that one.

Bolin swallowed and his answer came in a squeak. “Y—yes.”

Korra bit her lip and it took everything in Bolin’s body not to physically react to that. He remembered the accidental smack from earlier, how soft her lips were.

“I don’t really care where we are.” She finally said, settling on the floor, too, in the space between him and the bed. “As long as I’m with you.”

Fuck. “T—thank you, Korra. I appreciate that.”

“So… do you want to do it?” She pressed, moving an inch closer on her hands and knees. This time it was his turn to bite his lip.

He turned the offer around in his head, willing his heart and… nether regions to calm down. If he did this, there was no going back. Something would change and it will never be the same between them. What he couldn’t figure out was whether or not that was a bad thing.

He finally looked at her, really looked at her. “I’m not going to wiggle out of this one, aren’t I?”

“Unfortunately, no,” she said with a cheeky grin.

Sighing, he replied. “Alright, then, oh Miss Avatar, I am your willing participant. But please, do come back to bed. It’s much more comfy there.”

Korra smiled a bright smile, happily settling on his bed. He followed after her, all too aware of her proximity now. She didn’t seem to be as nervous as he was, which made sense to him because even though he knew she didn’t expect him to, he had already put himself under the pressure of making this feel good for her.

“Alright so what now?” She enquired, bright blue eyes glinting with mischief and… something else. Bolin tried to think. One of them had to be level-headed around here, which was rapidly becoming hard to do when his body was already heating up at the prospect of the pact.

He stretched his legs out and patted his lap. “Sit on me.” He said, and the resulting flush on Korra’s face made him swallow. Doing great so far, Bolin, doing great.

She followed his command, sitting just a hair’s breadth away from where he was already at half-mast. Bolin tentatively put his hands on either side of her thighs, silent watchful stare asking for her permission. She placed two hands on his shoulder before nodding, prompting Bolin to slide her closer and fit her against his chest so she was sitting directly on top of his groin. His next exhales became hotter, as he pressed his forehead against her chin. She too was affected by his closeness, her thighs clenching ever so slightly, almost imperceptible.

“Korra, if we do this, I want you to tell me exactly when I’m making you feel uncomfortable, okay? If you tell me to stop, I will, immediately.” He assured, absently drawing circles on her thighs. She nodded, adjusting herself on his lap. He hissed when she did and she looked at him in a panic.

“Oh, no. Are you okay?”

With his voice strained, he replied, “I’m fine, I’m fine. It’s just I’m very hard right now.”

They both fell silent enough that they could hear each other breathe. Slowly, tentatively, Bolin saw Korra move her hips again, grinding down his erection. His grip on her thigh tightened as he groaned. “Korra.”

“Yes?” But she kept going, slowly and then with more confidence, causing Bolin’s breath to escape him in hot bursts against her neck.

“Korra— s—slow down,” he pleaded in jagged breaths. He wanted this so bad but it was moving too fast. He placed his hand on her hips so he could manually stop her and Korra gave a whimper when he did. The sound made his cock twitch. He took a deep breath to steady himself before looking up at her face. She was flushed, no doubt the same way he was. He wanted this to last a bit longer, a bit more. If this was going to be just the fulfillment of a pact and nothing else then he was going to draw it out and worship her and then burn this memory in his mind if this was the first and last time he was going to do this.

“Okay, just an update,” he said, breathing labored. “So, I’m hard as a rock under there and you’re… much more, uh, willing than I thought you were going to be. You know, for a virgin.”

Korra crossed her arms, shooting him a challenging glare. “For a virgin.”

“For a virg— yes. That’s not a bad thing, though! It’s just— I want to make this feel good for you. You deserve it.” If his voice quieted at that last sentence, he didn’t notice. He smoothed his hands up to the small of her back, pressing a thumb against the part of her waist he knew was ticklish. A bubble of laughter escaped her lips and before he knew it, she was kissing him.

Korra.

Korra was kissing him.

It was messy. She was inexperienced after all. But so was he. So it was a strange mix of wet, slippery, and teethy but neither of them cared. They just kept kissing until it felt right, and after Bolin found tilting his head a little was easier for both of them, he continued to kiss her fervently. Her arms snaked back around his neck as her chest pressed close to his. He groaned at the contact, pushing his tongue past the seam of her lips to taste her. She’d had something to drink before coming here, something fruity. Bolin smiled against her lips, savoring the taste and feel of her. Soon, she was grinding down his cock again, breaking apart for air and throwing her head back when Bolin latched onto her neck to mark her with fiery hot kisses.

“Bolin,” she sighed to the room and he pulled her closer at the sound.

Maybe he’d died. That’s right; he’d died and even in heaven was tormented by the delicious feeling of having Korra so close, tasting her, feeling her, loving her. That last part he didn’t think he’d say but it was there. He did love her. Even before all this began. He still loves her.

She shuddered when he started suckling on the skin of her neck, urged by a need to mark her in some way. To put something on her body that reminded them both what had transpired here. His wandering hands reached underneath her tight blue tank, the one she loved to wear so much ever since she grew those muscles he loved so much. He pressed his mouth on top of her tank where he knew underneath sat her breasts and she trembled some more, moaning in heated pants. Bolin smoothed his hands up her back, making sure to touch her feverish skin as he peeled the tank off of her and let go of her clothed breasts. He chucked it somewhere in the room, forgotten momentarily, to pay attention to her sarashi wraps next, the only barrier between him and his prize.

Korra was looked almost shy as he drank the sight of her, topless, and he knew this was because she had not been naked with anyone before. Bolin’s heart swelled at the thought of being the first to see her like this, his forever best friend and the now, as ever, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

He kissed her cheek when the last of the wraps finally fell to the floor. “Good?” He asked, pressing the word against her chest where he planted a small kiss.

Korra swallowed and then muttered, “Yeah.”

“Tell me how you feel.” He asked almost automatically, and he was struck with how smooth and even his voice was. He’d thought he would be too anxious for this but when it came down to it, he was more sure about this than he ever was in any other thing in his life.

Korra’s fingers found the curls on the back of his head before she pressed her forehead against his for another passionate kiss. Breaking away momentarily, she whispered, “I’m feeling good.”

“Good,” he replied, grinning and slowly tracing her nipples, budded now and very eager. Her moan was long and drawn out when he finally took one of her nipples in his mouth, languidly caressing the other one with his hand.

“Oh, Bolin,” she hummed, bucking her hips against his straining cock. He gripped her hips at the contact, grinding her down himself. It was too much, much too much, but his brain still screamed for more. He nipped at her breast and sucked like it was his last meal. And when he licked from one breast to another with his tongue flat against her skin, Korra’s fingers tightened in his hair, hard enough to hurt — he didn’t care. On her chest he left marks, too, and she was only too happy to have them.

Bleary-eyed, he lifted his head up to meet her eyes again, one hand still showering attention to one of her breasts. “You look so beautiful.” He breathed out, kissing the corner of her lips. “And you feel so good.”

Korra looked at him in a daze, too, breath hot and fast against his face. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

And despite their current steamy interaction, they couldn’t help but laugh. There was something so easy about this whole thing, something that went beyond sex and Bolin knew it was their friendship, but he also knew it was about love. His love. He could not say the same for Korra.

“Feeling good?” He finally said, burying his face in between her breasts and exhaling. If she moved unceremoniously now, he might just paint his sweatpants white on the spot. That small moment of laughter seemed much more effective in tipping him over the edge than the half hour they already spent on kissing and fondling.

You’ve got it bad, Bolin. So bad.

Korra nodded, reaching a hand down into her pants before Bolin could think.

Fuck, this was real. It’s getting very real now.

Wordlessly, he watched intently as she slid a hand into her waistband. He drew circles on her clothed thighs, his chest feeling tight and his cock feeling ready to burst. Fuck, no. No. Not now.

Before he could do anything about it, he spilled into his sweatpants the exact moment Korra moaned so deliciously as her fingers slipped inside her pussy. No, he’d ruined it. Out of shame, he bit his lip and thrust small upward strokes despite himself. He couldn’t control it. It was too much. Korra stopped when she noticed, slipping her finger out of her entrance and placing her hand back up on his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, I— Korra, I ruined this.”

“Shh, it’s okay, Bolin. We have all night.”

“A—all night?”

“Well, if—if you want to, of course—“

Bolin was sure he’d stopped breathing at some point. And if he thought he’d been dead before, he was sure now that he really had died. There was no way any of this is real, no way Korra wanted to spend all night with him having…

He gulped. “But I already came.”

“You will again.” She said with a smile, climbing off of him to position herself on the other side of the bed, her legs falling open before him.

You will again, a statement hotter than it had any right to be. A statement that seemed to linger far longer even as she started to take off her pants beside him, still frozen in place at what she said.

Wait. Pants?

“Korra, are you sure?” His cock twitched again even in its flaccid state, highly interested in the way she was currently wiggling her hips out of her pants. When it was finally off, he just sat there, watching her legs fall open to reveal all of her. The air felt too thick, like the only way to breath was to swallow. Korra watched his Adam's apple bob consistently before taking her fingers slowly down and tracing between her folds. There was gathering wetness there and Bolin could see it, he couldn’t stop seeing it. He thought maybe he never will. The room was quiet enough that he could hear the way the slick coated her folds. After what felt like forever, she finally plunged a finger back inside and released a groan that was identical to his own. His cock was back and ready for more. And yet he sat there, patiently, cock painfully straining, transfixed by the way she was moving her fingers. In, out. In, out.

But then she stopped. And then she covered her face before releasing a disjointed sigh.

With furrowed brows, he placed a reassuring hand on the side of her thigh, growing increasingly worried when her disappointed whimpers increased.

“Hey, hey, Korra, are you okay?” In a flash, he was on the floor, kneeling beside her on the bed and kissing her sweaty forehead just because he could. “Talk to me.”

“This always happens.”

“What always happens?”

“I start off and I think I’m wet enough when I’m actually not.” This time she turned around, pressing her chest against the bed and burying her face into his pillow. It took every ounce of willpower in Bolin not to touch her in that moment. A beautiful, naked woman was in his bed. And not just any beautiful, naked woman, no, Korra.

“What can I do to help? I’m very helpful, you know. Do you want some tea? Or like, maybe a hug?”

Frustrated, she groaned some more.

“Okay, okay. I’m just going to, uh, get in bed with you here but I’m going to give you a little bit of space for now, alright? I’m here for you, Korra, really,” and he meant it with all his heart. More than she will ever know. “And besides,” he began, gently encasing them in his blanket and kissing her hair. “I pretty much finished waaay too early for this whole thing so I don’t want to judge you for your uh, drought.” He grimaced when she groaned at the word choice. “I meant your situation! Your situation! Oh, that’s not any better is it?”

A pause and Korra was chuckling into his pillow. After what seemed like forever, she turned around, pulling the blanket up to her chest to cover herself. With one hand, she pulled her ponytail out and stared at the ceiling.

“So.” Bolin said, half chuckling.

“So.” Korra responded in a small voice.

They stayed that way for a little while longer, under the cover together but never touching. Bolin hummed a tune as the seconds dragged on before Korra spoke again.

“Do you think I’m naïve, Bo?” She asked.

“What? No, of course not.” He responded all too quickly, worried as to where this is coming from. “Why would you say that?”

She turned to him and he propped himself up with his hand against his cheek. If he noticed how Korra eyes shifted to the way his biceps moved, he didn’t mention it. She took a deep breath. “Because I came here thinking I can do this. Only for me to… lose interest just when it was getting good.”

He’d read about this before somewhere, and he was pretty sure it didn’t expressly mean losing interest. “I don’t think that’s it.” He said, tentatively reaching a hand to stroke her hair. She looked at him, blue eyes meeting green, before shifting just a little bit closer so he could do what he wanted. Even her hair was soft.

“Then what is it?” She asked.

“I think you just need more… stimulation.”

She groaned again. “What more stimulation do I need? I’d already touched myself before coming here and it still wasn’t enough.”

His hand stilled. “You touched yourself? Before coming here?”

“Uhm, yeah.” She replied, making herself smaller.

“What did you think about?”

“What?”

He propped himself up on both arms now, angling himself just right so she could see both his arms flex. Her curious little eye flutter made him feel… sexy.

“What did you think about, Korra? Before you came here and decided to rock my world.”

“Pfft, rock your world. That’s two rock puns now, Bo,” she snickered. Bolin pouted.

“Hey that was a legitimate thing you did, grinding down on me like that.”

“Okay,” she conceded. He wanted to kiss her again. So he did. And she kissed him back with ease, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Well, I thought about this moment, really. I’ve actually been thinking about it since I— what are you doing?” She asked, watching Bolin leave her side to kneel in front of his bed.

“I have an idea. Just keep talking. You were saying?”

“Okay, well, so uhm, I’ve just been thinking about this moment since I moved in a week ago.” Just then, Bolin lifted the blanket off her feet and slid her gently sideways so her feet were dangling over the edge. He watched her swallow, watched as she lifted herself up gingerly to look at him.

“Wh—what are you doing?”

“Listening to your story.” He simply replied, hiking the blanket up just above her knee before planting a kiss there. “You were saying?”

“But th—that’s it,” she sighed when he ran his finger slowly on the inside of her thighs.

“Oh?” He made sure to breathe out the word against her thigh, letting his breath fan out against her skin. He watched as she threw her head back.

“Bolin, what—“

“Do you trust me?” His voice was much lower now and because of his earlier release, this time around he felt more in control. It helped that Korra was so pliant in his hands, so responsive even though he hasn’t even put his lips on her just yet. Good idea, he thought. “Tell me, Korra. Tell me you trust me?”

Bolin never really thought of himself as particularly… skilled in the art of oozing sex just by his words. But he felt now, maybe he was wrong, as he watched Korra nod eagerly. “I trust you,” she said, voice tight.

“Good girl,” he replied, almost unaware of it. “I’m going to eat your pussy out, okay? Now, it’s gonna feel weird but I read somewhere this helps with the dryness.”

Korra blushed again. “Do you have to bring it up again?” She said, irritated. Playfully, he nudged his nose against the downy curls of her sex, blowing air onto her folds. She yelped, clenching the blanket in a white-knuckled grip.

“I’ll bring it up when I want to.” He pressed, remembering that lesson in female anatomy he taught himself. “Tell me what you like, okay? If you don’t, I will stop.”

Bolin continued to run his nose in her downy curls but when she remained wordlessly panting, he lifted his head. She blearily stared at his face, a questioning look flashing on her face. “What—“

“Tell me what you like,” he insisted, pulling her legs closer and hooking it over his broad shoulders. The smell of her sex this close felt exhilarating, like he wanted to drown in it. “Won’t you, Korra?” He asked, licking a small stripe up against her folds with the tip of his tongue. She arched her back nearly off the bed, mewling and babbling.

“Korra, answer me.”

“Yes! Yes, I’ll— I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you, Bo. Please.”

“Please what?”

“P-please that, uhm, lick me again.”

Bolin was more than happy to oblige, settling ever closer, only ever closer, so close that he can press the flat of his tongue against her folds completely, licking very slowly from her entrance up to the little bud of nerves on top. Korra cursed, the first time he’d heard her do so. It was sinful. The way she just said fuck followed by his own name. Motivated, he pressed his face closer, continuing to lick, tasting her at each pass. His cock twitched with renewed interest and he ignored it only until he couldn’t, palming himself.

When he opened his eyes, he saw her watching, mouth agape and blue eyes glazed. Fuck. He wanted to stay here. In between her legs. Just eating her out. Forever. Eventually, she became antsy, and Bolin saw in her face she wanted to say something.

“Something on your mind, Korra?”

“I— p— please do the licking with something e— else…”

“Like?” He asked, almost innocently, even as his lips and chin glistened with her wetness. As if in suggestion, he probed at her opening with a thick finger.

“That! That’s—“

“Oh, this?” He asked, running his finger down her wet folds and then pushing it inside agonizingly slowly. Korra’s hips bucked into his hand but he steadied his finger, stopping and kissing her inner thigh. “Tell me, Korra. Tell me you want me to fuck you with my fingers.”

He was gone. Gone. All coherent thought replaced by giving her whatever it was she wanted.

“I— please f—fuck me with your fingers…”

With a pleased rumble from within his throat, he gently pulled his fingers in and out and as he sucked his own finger and watched her breathe much more heavily at the sight, they knew that she was finally wet enough.

Bolin slipped another finger on the next pass, testing how open she already was, and she welcomed him easily, just as he dove back in to flick her clit with his tongue. Korra wailed, hands flying up to his hair and fucking up into his face. Underneath, his cock was straining so hard but he didn’t care, palming mindlessly. Korra was coming or he was going to stay here until she did. Or maybe even after that just to lap her up.

“You like that? On your clit?” He asked, giving a flat lick that covered the entire bundle.

“Fuck, ah, yes, Bolin. Oh, yes.” He focused his attention on the bundle, following the tantalizing tug of her fingers in his hair. He groaned each time she did, and the vibration of the sound seemed to increase the intensity of her moans.

“Right there,” she babbled over and over again as he hit a spot inside her with his fingers. “Oh, just stay there, ah.”

Inspired by another naughty idea, Bolin lifted his head from her opening, breathing harshly against her sex. “Listen to me.” He began, kissing her thighs to get her attention. “I’m going to eat you out until you scream, until you come. And then when I drink you up, I’ll fuck you with my cock. Is that okay?”

“B—but, I’ve already come by then,” she looked concerned, but he’d read about this before. Multiple orgasms.

“You will again.”

She recognized the quip as her own and couldn’t help but crack a smile. But she still looked worried. “A—are you su—sure? What if I don’t c—come?”

“You will. I’ll make sure of it.” Without another word, he moved his fingers in and out of her at a much faster rate than before, all while swirling his tongue around her clit. Korra panted so harshly at his attentions, as though she was drowning in desire. Bolin already was. He wanted to drown in her cunt forever. It was not long after that that her thighs clamped on either side of his head. He could die here for all he cared. It’ll be a lovely death. Though cramped, he moaned into her pussy, curling his fingers to hit that spot inside her that made her gasp and moan loudly. If he was concerned about his neighbours before, he wasn’t now. Let them hear.

It didn’t take long for Korra to reach climax, her whole body trembling violently at the force of it. Between her clenched thighs, Bolin caught every last drop on his tongue, giving her folds a final kiss before finally standing back up.

She was a vision. Not even in his wildest wet dreams did he imagine how beautiful and utterly ruined Korra looked like on his own bed right now. Her hair haloed around her face and her mouth open, her lips swollen from how much she was biting them. The quick rise and fall of her chest made her breasts look all the more lovely, and her lax and shaking legs made his head spin.

I made Korra come. I, Bolin, made her come.

“C—come here, p—please, Bolin.” She reached her hand out weakly, and in an instant, Bolin was on her.

“So,” he kissed her cheek, positioning himself on top of her and pressing his erection between her legs. “How’d that feel?”

“So good. I thought you were a virgin.”

“I am. Well, sort of.”

Korra raised a brow.

“Well, I am a virgin. I’ve never gone all the way. But I’ve eaten pussy before.” But never like this, never this delicious, never this good, he wanted to say. Never you. “This… this felt different.” He admitted, which was not a lie. He hid in the crook of her neck. “Your pussy? Heaven.”

Korra chuckled. “Liar.”

“It’s true!” He chuckled with her, kissing up to her ear. Not knowing she was sensitive there, he felt her hips buck up again. He chuckled darkly. “Excited, aren’t we?”

She tried to protest but he was already sucking and kissing at her neck.

“Bolin,” she moaned, long and deep.

“This is the part,” kiss, “where I fuck you again,” kiss, “with my cock this time,” kiss, “tell me to stop and I will,” kiss, “I’ll do anything for you.”

It hurt his heart how much he meant that last part. He pressed his forehead against hers, his eyes searching. He did nothing else, waiting for her response. He didn’t even move, his arms having no problem holding him up. Korra stared at him for what felt like forever until he felt her wrapping her legs around his lower back. Bolin took a shuddering breath, closing his eyes to quell the irresistible urge to just thrust.

“Tell me,” he pleaded again. “Tell me you want me to fuck you.”

Korra looked at him, panting softly against his lips. She kissed him. “Fuck me, Bolin.”

It was like a switch had been turned on in his brain, like her words wiped away every rational thought in his head so that all he could think about was going back into her wet heat. With hurried hands, he shucked his sweats off and pounced right back on top of her, loving how slick and open she was now to his stiff cock. Still, he pushed slowly, watching her face intently at each delicious inch that sank in. Satisfied, he made the final push to bottom out, the tight, wet heat around him nearly making him lose his mind. How would he ever exist after this? After experiencing Korra like this?

Bolin planted a wet kiss against her temple. “Is this okay?” He asked, pulling back slightly to slide back in gently. Korra’s legs around his lower back tightened and he grit his teeth so hard at the sensation.

“Yes. Yes,” she panted, bringing Bolin’s face closer and kissing him greedily. Slowly and then a little faster, Bolin pulled out and slid in until she was open enough to take all of him in each stroke. Each push inside made him see stars and it took everything in him not to blow his load right then and there. It was just too good.

“Korra,” he moaned against her lips, watching with half-lidded eyes as her breasts bounced with each thrust. “Fuck, Korra. You drive me insane.”

“Bolin,” she babbled his name over and over again. “Faster.”

“What was that?” He said through broken gasps.

“Faster!”

“What?”

“Faster! Please Bolin!” She clamped down on her bottom lip, staring intently into his eyes as he neared the delicious edge of his orgasm. He could feel she was close too, but he was determined for this to be about her. Only her.

“Come for me, Korra, please?” He muttered against her lips, capturing her in a bruising kiss. As the sinful sounds left her lips in staccato, Bolin continued on with his relentless pace, feeling her whole body shake as she neared her own orgasm.

“Yes, yes, yes, Bolin!” She all but shouted when she came, throwing her head back and arching her whole body underneath him. Shortly after he let go, too, seeing spots and hearing his own ragged rasps echo in his head. He bucked gently as he emptied in her, shivering when he was all spent. He collapsed on top of her, admiring the modest peak of one of her breasts, blissed out and too pleased to think about anything other than Korra. He kissed the side of her breast lazily, running a finger on her raised nipple. Korra flinched, feeling oversensitive.

When she didn’t say anything for a long time, Bolin grew worried. But when he lifted his head to look at her, her eyes twinkled with mischief.

“Is there any chance we can do that again?”

Bolin’s breath caught in his throat again. How could he ever deny her? He couldn’t even wiggle out of this silly pact. Grinning, he kissed her and his heart sang at how eagerly she kissed him back.

When they broke apart, he said, “Could you at least bring me flowers next time? A man wants romance too, you know.”

Korra laughed. “Sure thing.”

If you want to read it over on AO3, here’s the link. :D

#legend of korra #borra fanfiction #bolin #korr #bolin x korra #fanfiction #bolin smut #smut #no one asked for this #but here you go #join me in this pretty much dead ship lmao #idc #i love them both

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angelsarts · 5 years

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Hey I'm sorry to ask, but do you have updates for korean dramas? I can't find the link to your old one but also maybe some newer suggestions? (It's okay if you don't!)

It’s cool, I can do a new one! These are all in the order that I watched them in!

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD

1. Coffee Prince ( A great choice for a first k-drama)

Choi Han-gyul is the grandson of chairwoman Bang of Dong-in Foods, a company that has a thriving coffee business. He has never had a job and does not care for responsibility. Han-gyul is hung up on his first love, Han Yoo-joo, who only sees him as a friend. Go Eun-chan is a 24-year-old tomboy who is often mistaken for a guy. Her father died when she was 16 years old and since then she has taken over as the breadwinner in her family. When Han-kyul and Eun-chan meet, he, not knowing that she is a girl, decides to hire her to pretend to be his gay lover so that he can escape the blind dates arranged by his grandmother.

2. Cinderella with four knights

Eun Ha Won is a bright college student who dreams of becoming a teacher. Unfortunately, she loses her mother in a tragic accident, moves in with a cruel stepmother, and has no money for her education. One day, she helps an old man and as fate would have it, moves into a gorgeous mansion with three equally gorgeous men, who also happen to be billionaire cousins and heirs to the Kang family fortune. Between the rebel-minded loner Kang Ji Woon, playboy money machine Kang Hyun Min and the super-sweet singer Kang Seo Woo, Eun Ha Won finds herself in the middle of the hottest love quadrangle to ever befall a modern fairy tale princess. Rounding out the mansion’s chaebol lifestyle are Lee Yoon Sung, who serves as the cousins’ handsome bodyguard, and Park Hye Ji, a gorgeous girl who has her own interests in the Kang family and is not above manipulating one cousin to get closer to another.

3. Bride of the century

Taeyang Group is the largest conglomerate in South Korea. The Choi family who runs Taeyang has supposedly been under a curse for a hundred years that the first bride of the eldest son will always die. When the wealthy heiress Jang Yi-kyung disappears right before her wedding to chaebol heir Choi Kang-joo , Na Doo-rim , a lookalike impostor, is brought in to take her place. Unlike the cold and calculating Yi-kyung, Doo-rim is sweet and sunny, and Kang-joo genuinely falls in love with her. As the wedding plans progress, Kang-joo and Yi-kyung’s mothers both scheme and plot behind the scenes will the romance gets more complicated with the secret of not being the real Jang Yu-kyung.

4. Strong woman Do Bong Soon

Do Bong-soon was born with superhuman strength. Her strength is hereditary and passed along only to the women in her family. Her dream is to create a video game with herself as the main character. She desperately wants to become a delicate and elegant woman, which is the ideal type of her crush, In Guk-doo, a police officer. Thanks to her strength, she gets a job as bodyguard to rich heir Ahn Min-hyuk, the CEO of a gaming company, Ainsoft. In contrast to Guk-doo, Min-hyuk is an eccentric man who is playful, a little spoiled, has no regard for rules, and dislikes policemen. He has recently received anonymous threats and has even been stalked, leading him to hire Bong-soon as his bodyguard after seeing her beat up a bunch of men after they threatened an old man who was an elementary school bus driver. A series of kidnapping cases soon happen in Dobong-dong, the district Bong-soon lives in, and she is determined to catch the culprit, who targeted her best friend. With help and training from Min-hyuk, she manages to control her strength to use it for good causes. Min-hyuk and Bong-soon find their relationship growing into something more.

5. My secret romance

Jin-wook and Yoo-mi meet at a Gangwon-do resort and get caught up in a series of misunderstandings and accidents. Yoo-mi is there to attend her mother’s second wedding while Jin-wook is there working as a bellhop (a position given to him by his Chairman father to teach him responsibility.) Yoo-mi is charmed by Jin-wook’s sly and playful personality, and they unexpectedly spend the night together. However, Yoo-mi disappears in the morning, leaving Jin-wook feeling perplexed and insulted. Three years later, the two meet again when Yoo-mi becomes a nutritionist at the company cafeteria where Jin-wook works. It seems that once a playboy Jin-wook, has given up his carefree life and works at the company owned by his father. He has feelings for Yoo-mi and has kept her bra-pad as a memory of the night that they spent together. At first, he is strict toward her, though it is only because he is looking for reasons to be near her. He later confesses this to her and agrees to wait for her.

6. Scarlet heart ryeo ( One of my all time favourites)

During a total solar eclipse, a 25-year-old 21st-century woman, Go Ha-jin, is transported back in time to the Goryeo Dynasty. She wakes up in the year of 941 in the body of Hae Soo, among the many royal princes of the ruling Wang family. She initially falls in love with the gentle and warm-hearted 8th Prince Wang Wook, and later Wang So, the fearsome 4th Prince who hides his face behind a mask and is given the derogatory label of “wolf dog.” As the story develops, Hae Soo finds herself unwittingly caught between the rivalry and politics among the princes over the fight for the throne, an she stay alive long enough for a happy ending?

7. Falling for innocence

Min Ho is a cold-blooded corporate raider who takes no prisoners. He is a scoundrel investment banker for Gold Investment, seemingly the world’s largest financial service firm. As a cynical, self-defensive, suspicious sociopath, he wears down people with his tenacity and takes advantage of them with his delusions of grandeur. However, Min Ho has his own story of how he became evil - it was because of his uncle’s betrayal. His father was overthrown by his uncle and it caused his family to hit bottom. As Min Ho vows to get revenge, he meets Soon Jung, the daughter of his father’s former secretary who betrayed him and whom now works for his uncle. One day, he has a heart attack and is taken to a hospital. He miraculously survives his heart attack after undergoing a heart transplant. His heart is actually from Dong Wook, a young detective and Soon Jung’s fiancé who suffered from brain damage from a mysterious car accident. After receiving a new life thanks to the new heart, he is no longer the cold and callous person that he has been and undergoes a profound change to his personality, talking differently and warming up people. But he still pursues his plan to get revenge on his uncle even though his emotions get in the way at times. He gradually learns the meaning of happiness when he finds Soon Jung, whom he wants to cherish and protect. His heart becomes tender and his eyes swell with tears when as he works with her. He falls in love with her without realising it.

8. The bride of Habaek / the water god

When the narcissistic water god Ha-baek visits earth in order to find three stones powerful enough to help him claim his throne, he seeks out the help of his servant and destined bride, psychiatrist So-ah, whose family is fated to serve the water god for generations. The problem is that she has no belief in the gods and initially mistakes him for suffering from delusions. Things get even stranger when the wind god Bi-ryeom, the water goddess Mu-ra, and the semi-god Hu-ye show up to complicate things

9. Weightlifting fairy Kim Bok Joo

Kim Bok-Joo is a promising collegiate female weightlifter. Her father runs a small chicken restaurant and her uncle wants to become an actor. She has a bright personality and strong sense of justice. Kim Bok-Joo and her friends on the female weightlifting team are not popular with the guys and they don’t have boyfriends. The weightlifting team and the rhythmic gymnastic team also don’t get along at all. Meanwhile, Jung Joon-Hyung is a collegiate swimmer plagued with numerous false start disqualifications. He is 21-years-old and has a free spirit. His uncle and aunt raised him along with his cousin Jung Jae-Yi. One day on campus, Kim Bok-Joo bumps into Jung Joon-Hyung while he is riding his bicycle. Her face looks familiar to Jung Joon-Hyung. After he leaves, Kim Bok-Joo picks up a handkerchief left behind by Jung Joon-Hyung. The handkerchief is very important to him and he begins looking for it. Later, Kim Bok-Joo cleans and irons the handkerchief. She goes to the school’s swimming pool and gives back his handkerchief, but he explodes with anger when he sees that she cleaned it. Kim Bok-Joo then falls into the swimming pool and Jung Joon-Hyung jumps into the pool to save her. At that moment, Kim Bok-Joo and Jung Joon-Hyung realize where they have seen each other before. When they were both children, Kim Bok-Joo saved Jung Joon-Hyung’s life by catching him before he fell to the ground.What happens now they know each other?

10. I’m not a robot

Kim Min-kyu lives an isolated life due to a severe allergy to other people. He develops extreme rashes that rapidly spread throughout his body once he makes any form of skin contact. Jo Ji-ah is a woman who is trying to make it in life by creating her own businesses. Kim Min-kyu who owns the KM Financial company which owns Santa Maria team headed by professor Hong Baek-kyun. Professor Hong’s team has created a humanoid robot called Aji 3 which looks like his ex-girlfriend Jo Ji-ah. CEO of KM Financial, Kang Ki-young, and his father try to sell the Santa Maria team to foreign investor, Martin, who secretly knows about the Aji 3 and wants to use it as a weapon. Hong Baek-kyun sends the robot to Kim Min-kyu to convince him not to sell the team. Before Aji 3 is delivered, the robot’s body is accidentally damaged. Hong Baek-kyun approaches Jo Ji-ah, asking her to pose as the robot, giving the team time to repair Aji 3. Jo Ji-ah agrees, and impersonates the robot under the supervision of the Santa Maria team and the robot’s computer brain, can she survive without being caught out?

11. Goblin / Guardian the lonely and great

Kim Shin is a goblin and protector of souls. He is the landlord of the grim reaper, who is in charge of taking deceased souls. Wanting to end his immortal life, Shin has been looking for his human bride, the only person who can end his life. Meanwhile, Ji Eun-tak is a high school student who remains optimistic despite the tragedies and difficulties she has experienced in her life. She summons the goblin by chance, and through various encounters, ends up falling in love with him. Sunny is a chicken restaurant owner, whose beauty is undeniable, but what has she got to do with the goblin and reaper? These four characters’ lives took a series of twists and turns when they intertwined.

12. Terius behind me (Another favourite!)

Go Ae-Rin suddenly loses her husband left to take care of her two children on her own. A mysterious man, Kim Bon, that lives next door ends up getting tangled into their lives. Kim Bon is a legendary NIS agent and 3 years ago, he was involved in a failed secret operation and the woman he loved died. He has since become disconnected with the world and lives alone quietly but that soon changes as he helps his neighbor Go Ae-Rin with her children and uncover a conspiracy, which her husband became involved with all the while trying to keep his secrets by the nosy neighbours in the building.

13. 100 days my prince

Lee Yool is the Crown Prince of Joseon, a perfectionist who disregards the majority of those in the royal palace and appears to be cold and demanding, when in reality, he is lonely. He then passes the law that all women must marry before they reach the age of 28. Hong Shim is head of the first detective agency in Joseon, a strong, intelligent figure who takes on multiple jobs to support herself and her father. She is also the oldest unmarried woman in her village, and begins to look for a husband to avoid trouble from law officials. In an attempted assassination, Lee Yool develops temporary amnesia and wanders around aimlessly as a commoner with no name or identity, until he meets none other than Hong Shim, who takes him under her care. Hong Shim is then forced to marry Won Deuk to save her village from drought, due to beliefs in that era where natural disasters are a result of an unmarried woman’s misery. This drama depicts how the love story of Hong Shim, ‘Joseon’s oldest unmarried woman’ and Lee Yool, the amnesiac Crown Prince, develops over the span of 100 days.

14. My ID is Gangnam beauty

Kang Mi-rae decides to get plastic surgery after years of being bullied because of her looks. Her “rebirth” seems successful at first, but as her life at the university unfolds, her plan starts to backfire. The pressure of being a “pretty girl” begins to pressure her and, worse, those who can see through her surgery ridicule her and tag her as the “Gangnam plastic surgery monster.” The drama follows Mi-rae’s story of recovering self-esteem as she figures out what a two faced friend is and gets to know her coursemate, and former schoolmate in middle school, Do Kyung-seok

15. The secret life of my secretary

Do Min-Ik works as a director of the mobile media 1 team at T&T, he’s smart and excellent at his job however he doesn’t like to attach himself to people or his secretary. His secretary is Jung Gal-Hee, a diligent and motivated person that does whatever it takes to keep her job and feed her family. Do Min-Ik often does childish things like calling Jung Gal-Hee continually, Jung Gal-Hee carries out Do Min-Ik’s orders without complaints but though she may look soft, she hides her tough side. The tough side soon comes out as she is fired, much to Do Min-Ik’s regret he soon discovers that he’s going to need her more than ever and discovers a new side to her in the process.

16. W - Two worlds ( Really recommended!! )

A love story of two people split apart in different worlds connected by a webtoon. The series focuses on the eponymous fictional webtoon entitled W, written and illustrated by its legendary author and illustrator Oh Seong-moo. W became famous in the entire South Korea, the storyline of the webtoon W starts with the younger years of its main character Kang Chul, a handsome and intelligent boy who is also skilled in shooting. He becomes famous as he won a shooting competition during the 2004 Athens Olympics but this fame gets ruined when his entire family was killed by an unknown Murderer, and then framed for it. Another villain Han Cheol-ho handles the case to gain political popularity, pronouncing in court to impose death penalty upon Kang Chul. Nevertheless, Kang Chul was deemed innocent of the crime. Depressed over losing his family, he attempts to commit suicide over the Han River but he stops himself and chooses to move on with his life.Ten years later, Kang Chul becomes a multimillionaire, starting his “Project W” in his continuous efforts to catch the real culprit behind his family’s death; part of the project is his television broadcasting company dubbed “W,” after the initials of the interrogatives “who” and “why” (hence, the title of the webtoon). One night, he receives a suspicious phone call and gets severely injured by the same mysterious Murderer at the rooftop of his penthouse, only to be saved by a mysterious girl, none other than the authors daughter. How did she get there? Why is she there? How will they become entangled?

17. My contracted husband Mr Oh

Han Seung-Joo (Uee) is a single woman in her mid 30’s who works as a PD at a broadcasting station. She does well at her job, but is not nearly as good when it comes to housework. Han Seung-Joo has a hard time dealing with social prejudices about single women but still refuses to marry at least until an incident that occurs leading to a dramatic change in her life. She seeks to find a husband thinking it would help her situation but to get the position of a “married woman,” Han Seung-Joo marries Oh Jak-Doo as a contract husband who lives in the mountain that she just happened to own. Their marriage is not based on love, but their relationship develops romantically after several twists and turns.

18. Marriage contract ( For those who love to cry, seriously heartbreak ahead )

Kang Hye-soo is a single mother who struggles to raise her daughter while paying off her late husband’s debts. Han Ji-hoon is the son of a chaebol who seeks a contract marriage in order to save his mother, who needs a liver transplant. When Hye-soo is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, she agrees to marry Ji-hoon and donate part of her liver to his mother, in exchange for enough money to provide for her daughter until she reaches adulthood. Han Ji-Hoon is driving along when Hye-Soo is almost hit saving her 7 year old daughter Eun-Seong, He rushes her to the hospital as she faints however while she is being tested the Manager of the restaurant Han Ji-Hoon owns Ho-Joon tells him might be a scam and to make sure she is really hurt. Han Ji-Hoon has Hye-Soo’s phone and receives a call from a mysterious man which turns out to be the debt collector who comes to the hospital after hearing it being said in the background. He chases Hye-Soo when she is leaving, where he almost catches her but she in the end hides in Han Ji-Hoon’s car with Eun-Seong. Han Ji-Hoon’s mother has been rushed to the hospital where they find out that if she doesn’t get a liver transplant she will die but she is way down on the list so Han Ji-Hoon decides to marry a Hye-Soo she agrees so she can pay off her debt and also make sure Eun-Seong has money to grow up on as she gets the results back from when she fainted and she has a brain tumour. Eun-Seong in the beginning doesn’t like Han Ji-Hoon but she warms up to him as the pretend relationship blossoms into something real.

BONUS

19. 200 pounds beauty

Han-Na is a very large girl with a warm heart. She also possesses an unbelievable voice. Han-Na wants to become a pop-singer, but due to her extra-large appearance, can only work as a faceless singer. She provides the vocals for a popular singer named Amy, a beautiful young lady that can’t carry a note to save her life.Han-Na is also in love with Amiys music producer, Sang-Joon, but it’s a one-sided love. One day, Han-Na is invited to Sang-Joon’s birthday party and receives a red dress from him to wear to his party. Han-Na is excited, yet scared. The dress is revealing and quite extravagant. With her very large figure, she is not sure if she can wear such an outfit. Han-Na does eventually go to the birthday party in the red dress, but is mortified when petite Amy appears in the same red dress. During the course of the birthday party, Han-Na absorbs more emotional trauma and she simply disappears for one year. Han-Na then returns as the beautiful Jenny, a beautiful stunner who decides to make it on her own in the industry but encounters her once sided love. Will she be a success? Will her feelings get in the way and can she keep the guilt of the consequences of what her change brings?

20. Takane to Hana ( Japanese )

A tv show adapted from a manga ( that I particularly loved). After her older sister refuses to go to an arranged marriage meeting with Takane Saibara, the heir to a vast business fortune, high schooler Hana Nonomura agrees to be her stand-in to save face for the family. But what happens when Hana meets Takane is an unexpected pairing of utter opposites! Although it seemed a little rushed at the end it was a nice tv show!

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rumandtimes · 3 years

Text

Does Cultural Appropriation Apply to Natalie Portman?

Sean Ezersky

Assoc. Fantasy Contributor

Does appropriation apply to the worst parts of European cultures?

Today, I want to discuss cultural appropriation. Yes, the issue of the times. But what exactly is cultural appropriation? Well, nobody knows. Starting at the first word, it claims to be some kind of appropriation. And it has something to do with culture.

Firstly, it should be said that this article has nothing to actually do with cultural appropriation. That is because cultural appropriation is essentially defined by racism. The term first appears, so it goes, as a description of how racist citizens of England marginalised and exploited the peoples of the Caribbean, and attacked sections of the working class schtick, for fun. Sounds evil enough.

The term cultural appropriation cannot be used as a mild term or played around with much, because it is by definition a form of misconduct. The term cultural appropriation is defined by the words “inappropriate,” “racist,” and “commercialist.” There is no redeeming quality to cultural appropriation because cultural appropriation is used to describe exclusively irredeemable activity, markedly opposite to cultural exchange or respect.

Consider the worst perpetrator in the United Kingdom and the United States: hip-hop / rap music, curly hair, or a summer tan. Racists always attack these music genres and human characteristics un-European, placing them into the same box on the fringes of their minds, but at the same time view themselves as ‘cultured’ for dipping into the same music, view themselves as ‘interesting’ for factory curling their hair, or view themselves as ‘unique’ for getting a spray-on tan. There is a murderous and delirious sense of bad irony, that racists altogether marginalise, demonise, and lust after perfectly normal traits and human practices, which the racist calls exotic, for fear of being labelled as freaks themselves. That is cultural appropriation.

Another bad actor is the billion-dollar yoga industry in Western nations as well, which attempts at every corner to steal Indian culture then mutilate the original concept, taking the yoga gurus off the cover and planting in some body-bleaching whores, or some wavy Italian guy, to appeal to the racist American, à la youth female target audience. All the while, Hinduism, inextricable from yoga’s origins while not necessarily the same as yoga in any way, is viewed as a false and inexpiable religion by most people in the West. Yoga was not learned from the Hindu, it was looted, and replaced with a shallow, cruel, commercial, and disgraceful attempt to Europeanise and trivialise the hobby while selling it the crude sex markets. That is a form of cultural genocide and religion-sacking. That is cultural appropriation.

But this article is not about cultural appropriation, in a way. The distinction was only added to please those offended by the comparison. This article is about movies, as part of a series of Star Wars critiques, and it’s about Natalie Portman.

Long have I harboured a question about Natalie Portman’s career, as it is so vapid yet so prolific, so vain yet so ubiquitous. This is just the opportunity. Natalie Portman got her start in acting as a 16-year-old leading actress on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. She returned three years later as a 19-year-old lead on Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, where her character dies. After moving on from the Star Wars prequels, she used that resume to enrol at Harvard University to study psychology.

She has actually commented on this, as all Harvard associates eventually do, saying she and her peers felt she was only enrolled because she was in Star Wars, and this insecurity led her to push harder than her friends in her classes and challenge herself by picking ‘harder-than-necessary’ classes. Still, psychology is the most common undergraduate degree major among women, so hardly original. Whether or not Natalie invites the assessment or feels it is correct, this is undoubtedly true; She, as most people, never would have been looked at by Harvard if she did not have some kind of bank of riches or wealth of limelight that could be mined by the admissions board. Natalie might want to be viewed as a genius of “Hebrew literature” who stood out among the crowd, but that is just impossible parlour speak. Not that she deserves to go to Harvard any less than anyone else, no one deserves to go to Harvard, as Harvard in the 20th Century existed for the sole purpose of excluding people who were not rich, famous, or connected: not academics, so Natalie’s lie to herself merely parrots Harvard’s lie to the world.

But I want to go back just a second. Yes, Natalie Portman said she studied Hebrew at Harvard, even if not intensely enough to double-major in it. That is because her name is not actually Natalie Portman. Her name is Neta-Li Herschlag, and she is Jewish. So, studying Hebrew isn’t impressive knowing she speaks fluent Hebrew at home. That is not to undermine literature, as English-speakers still study English literature, but it’s hardly extraordinary. Hershlag, as I will now be exclusively referring to her, is using her association to Harvard, Judaism, and other, lesser, things to seem smart, yet all of those were gifted to her by either birth or Star Wars.

Now comes the question of cultural appropriation. Neta-Li started her acting footprint as an understudy for the part of Elle Woods in Broadway plays. Yes, that Elle Woods, aside Britney Spears no less. It hardly seems like the right role for a good Jewish girl. But lo, there are some who might point out that Hershlag is an Ashkenazi, and therefore not actually Jewish, that is, not a Semitic person. This is a touchy subject for the Jewish community, particularly since the establishment of Israel: Who actually is Jewish, by means of ethnicity or heritage, and not just language and religion? Is there a meaningful distinction between the Semitic Jewish culture that remained in the Levant, the Sephardic Jewish culture that emigrated to Africa and Iberia, the Mizrahi Jewish culture in Iran and Arabia, the Yiddish Jewish culture that stuck around in Germany, and the Ashkenazi Jewish culture that settled Eastern Europe? Really, who knows, and that is a deeper question; a question, perhaps, for a student of Hebrew literature, wherever we should find one.

Nonetheless, Hershlag is most certainly not British. That Israeli-American nuance is fine for the world of “Naboo” in Star Wars, which ideally would defy every concept of the term “ethnicity,” but works less congruously for Elle Woods. In Star Wars, Hershlag was a doppelganger of Keira Knightly, a dyad which has persisted the entirety of Netali’s 30-year-long career. Here too, we find questions.

Netali gave an interview, which I discuss almost on a daily basis among my social circle, where she firmly wanted to establish herself as a kind of British legacy. She said, of herself, “I iron out my Jew curls” and bleaches/dyes her hair, for no particular reason other than she wants to, and thinks it will make her fit in. Netali also went on to say that no one has naturally yellow hair — which is true, they don’t — implying that a non-Jewish, European actress would not face the same questions about her hair she did. Because the concept of hair straightening and hair bleaching are Nazi holdovers in British and American culture, and as someone who personally hates Nazis, this endlessly infuriates me. All the more so because Hershlag identifies as Jewish!

If Hershlag thinks modifying her hair to make it look ‘more European,’ or, more correctly (since almost all young Europeans have brown hair), to make it look more Hitlerite, more ‘Arianised,’ is acceptable, then she must either view herself as European first and Jewish second, or just care very little about the legacy of antisemitic racism. Why else would a person who calls herself Jewish want to alter her appearance so drastically, in order to look like a posterchild for one of the Hitler Youth?

Many Jewish-Americans feel pressures of Nazi antisemitism and colonial racism in the United States, and many Ashkenazim respond to that by changing their names, Nazifying their looks, and abandoning the Jewish religion. Netali retains a veneer of her Jewishness on the inside, within her own self-perception, while turning into the Arianised version of the Elle Woods archetype on the outside, for the world to see. Is she just playing a part? Is there a real difference in the personality and values of Netali Hershlag vs. Natalie Portman?

People don’t treat her as such. Keira Knightly, for instance, is an Englishwoman. Knightly claims she is ‘British,’ not English, but she is definitely English. Intriguingly, Knightly never went to school, reportedly a dyslexic, while Hershlag, in the Jewish stereotype, went straight to Harvard College. I wouldn’t say Hershlag seems like a nice person, she seems like an ordinary person. Remember that she is part of the Star Wars pantheon of small-time actors who were lifted by George Lucas to notoriety, like Mark Hamill (despite him being my favourite Star Wars actor, I can never remember his name), Harrison Ford, and of course, Sir Alec Guinness CBE.

Jokes aside, with all the classically-trained, upper-class, heavy-hitters from Britain — Peter Cushing OBE, Sir Christopher Lee CBE, and Sir Alec — not to mention the affable nobodies from Hamill to Ford, most Star Wars people are considered likable, especially by fans of nerdom.

That is not to say anyone was struggling, as every lead character in Star Wars was already documented as rich and famous by the time they were cast, but they were “nobodies” in the sense they were not household names until after the film became one of the first Hollywood summer “blockbusters” in history.

Most of all, it is undeniable that, other than Lucas, no one defined the Star Wars films as much as Carrie Fisher, if not for a want of contrast. Fisher was the only female character in all three of the movies, and both the predecessor and counterpart to Hershlag’s character in the Star Wars prequels. Does Hershlag meet the comparison?

The two are very different, both personally and on-screen. Fisher at the age of 19 had sex with numerous middle-aged members of the cast, often the only female and only teenager in a room of dozens of men, forbidden to wear a bra or choose her own hairstyle but allowed to partake in the rumoured plethora of drugs on the set. Hershlag, part of Star Wars from 16 to 19, was entirely unremarkable, both in life and profession, not a very impressive actor or much of a hoot. Again, the good Jewish girl. Some blame Netali’s poorly role on the weakness of the prequels compared to the originals, just as some blame Carrie’s bipolar diagnosis for her eccentricity. Both of these are half-truths, as personality and talent can never be substituted for anything other than what they are. Nonetheless, Fisher and Hershlag were both made rich and famous. While Hershlag is the lesser in terms of her performance, she probably got in the end a much better long-term deal.

A boring role meant Netali would not be immediately typecast, though she went on to play exclusively the girl-next-door leading female interest for a male protagonist, much the same as in Star Wars: Episode II. Coming into acting younger meant she could largely leave acting after childhood, then return to it later as an adult experience. Moreover, we never got to see teenage Netali chained to a bed in a gold bikini.

Our good, Jewish girl.

So, if Hershlag is playing roles given mostly to British, or Hitlerite, actresses, is she not taking away from the British actor? There are too many actors in the world. They are overexposed and over paid, seen too much and given too much, as they are in the same camp as clowns, entertainers, and comedians. But, people like to be entertained, and in the world of capitalism where only money is worship in lapse of dignity, anything people like sells, and anything that sells can make people rich, and riches are a substitute for class, if only a thin one. Just as the weak-minded can be fooled by the Force, so are they easily bought and sold. The British or American actor suffers for nothing, and there are too many of them as it is.

But, does Hershlag have a place in displacing them, or moulding in to become one of them? And would it be cultural appropriation? Undeniably, Netali is conforming to something objectionable when she plays simple roles as sex objects and Hitlerite women, embracing if not embodying the racism and problematic nature of Hollywood casting. But then again, it is with her very body that she represents this trend. One could defend Hershlag, saying she is made to do these things, that she is not so much appropriating Western culture for her ends, but more so that Western culture is stifling her true self, at least if she wants to continue to have a role in acting.

An interesting counter-point, but undermined by Hershlag’s particular brand of coy self-promotion, and eagerness in taking on such roles. And are the Jewish people entirely exploited by Hollywood? In many respects, so-called Europeans are exploited by powerful Jewish moguls in media more often than the other way around, even if they are Jewish Europeans themselves. Harvey Weinstein, a Jewish millionaire who sexually assaulted non-Jewish Western women in order to get them roles, his Jewishness hardly made a ripple.

The biggest names in Hollywood: Steven Spielberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Rudd, Marta Kauffman, J.J. Abrams, Scarlett Johansson, Harrison Ford, John Stewart, Louis Szekely, Mila Kunis, Daniel Radcliffe, Rachel Weisz, Gal Gadot, Roseanne Barr, Judd Apatow, Marcus Loew, Lauren Bacall, Adam Sandler, Amy Schumer, Larry David, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cassidy Freeman, Stanley Kubrick, Jennifer Connelly, Richard Dreyfuss, Samuel Goldwyn, Julia Garner, Elijah Allan-Blitz, Kirk Douglas, Ellen Barkin, Ingrid Pitt, Darren Aronofsky, Eva Green, David Geffen, Lesley Ann Warren, Paul Newman, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ben Stiller, Louis B. Mayer, Alison Brie, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chuck Lorre.

As Conan O’Brien jokingly stated: “The Cash-ews run Hollywood.” Almost every major production in Hollywood has a massive Jewish section of development. The United States, for whatever reason, is a majority “Christian-identifying” country, but Judaism plays a much more massive role in the culture than Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism combined. Even most of the agnosticism in ‘progressive’ Hollywood values comes largely from material secularism, or Jewish incredulity of Christianity, not an ideological pull towards atheism. Is this cultural reproachment why Jewish people are pulled towards media and entertainment, theatre being a known haven for outcasts and oddballs? The Judeo-Protestant alliance of the Hollywood ilk would seem to disqualify the established Jewish community — rich, interconnected, secular Jewish communities of New York, Los Angeles, and DC — from being an oppressed mass.

An important editor’s note is that the actors listed are: Jewish people who adopt non-Jewish appearances or non-Jewish values to a borderline-racist degree (i.e. Eva Green: Jewish actress who plays roles bookmarked for non-Jewish Europeans), thoroughly Jewish people who refuse to identify as Jewish (i.e. Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Jewish billionaire heiress who plays Jewish characters on TV), or regular observers of Judaism who are really, really famous (i.e. J.J. Abrams: co-director of the controversial Star Wars reboot).

More often behind the scenes than on-screen, but usually leading the show when taking a starring role, the Jewish imprint is inseparable from American movies, media production, television, the comedy scene, finance, and screenwriting. Is Jewish not the ruling order of Hollywood? And then would Europeans be the group on the margins? But why, if Jewish people write, pay for, and put on the shows, are there so few Jewish actors, and of those who are, why do they not look Jewish, or a better question would be, why do they try to avoid looking Jewish, and actively attempt to look Western European? That gives the impression that Jewish people are still marginalised in media, even if they are overrepresented in media, and generally more affluent, interconnected, and educated than those non-Jewish counterparts. Why do Jewish people go out of their way to appeal to racist audiences, and in the process erase their own Jewishness.

Maybe it is because the Hollywood Jewry isn’t actually Jewish. Nothing about their jobs or their behaviours embodies the Jewish religion. Most people in Hollywood in general consider themselves as nonreligious, yet that too, might be an influence of a markedly Jewish trait. Non-Christians in the United States are much more likely to turn to atheism and agnosticism on the one hand or fanatical extremism, likely due to being outcast by the mainstream Protestant dialogue, with liberal Jewish people often going agnostic and conservative Catholics often going supercharged while Muslims live on somewhere off in the shadows of public perception.

Yet nonreligious Jewish people still identify as Jewish, separating the religion of Judaism from the ethnic mark. Faith has nothing to do with appearance, and appearance is the base of antisemitism. Enter non-Jewish-looking Jewish people, usually women with heat-flattened hair, like Netali Hershlag and Gal Greenstein Godot. That is not to say they don’t look Jewish, as in an equal measure they all do and at the same time no one does, since what a Jewish person “looks like” is a narrow heuristic based on problematic cultural expectation. That is not to say they are or aren’t Jewish. But are Jewish people like Natalie Portman being forced to conform to racist society, or are they jumping on the bandwagon of racist society and using it to their advantage? Is there actually a difference between the two?

There is a deeper question lying beneath the surface here: The questions of “Jewish complicity in racism?,” “Jewish participation in neo-Nazism?,” and “If ‘Jew’ is a ‘race’ and ‘White’ is a ‘race’ then why are there ‘White’ and ‘non-White’ Jews?,” which other people have asked before. This article is not to address those questions, but they are acknowledged.

Certainly, there are some Jewish people who attach themselves to racist tendencies and Hitlerite habits out of personal advantage in the racist countries in which they might live. In this narrative, the notional collaborator Jewish community would blame the Europeans for racism and cast themselves as convenient survivors. That is not a uniquely Jewish trait, it is a flawed human trait, bystanderism, which defies religious teachings. Why there is such a prevalence among rich, secular Jewish people, of racism mixed with liberalism, is a concern. It could be as simple that, at a certain point, the trait “rich” might start to cancel out the trait “religious.” Old guard antisemites would be unforgiving regarding hatred towards ‘ethnic Judaism,’ and contemporary racist sentiments would reject Jewish people from the points of heritage and beliefs, but it is not immediately clear if Western neo-Nazis would target non-religious Jewish people who, quote, “pass” as Euro-Christians.

If Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim join Western cultures, ideals, and appearances while abandoning the Jewish religion, are they functionally Jewish at all? In the absence of different brands of generational antisemitism, what is holding back an atheist Ashkenazi from becoming a Nazi themself? The Jewish community and Israel critics have been ablaze with debate about the Eurocentric, Ashkenazim-focused account of Judaism in the West, drawing attention to the issue of inter-Jewish racism and inequality among the diaspora of the Jewish faithful. This question is debated separately for Jewish communities because unity is their faith. Followers of Christianity have always cut one another down over heresies and infidelities, but discourse and diversity have defined the post-Rabbinic tradition. The notion of one Jewish diaspora being more powerful than another, based not even on secularism such as in Christianity, but based solely on racism and adjacency to Christian empires, causes non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities to question that proximity in values and appearance Western Ashkenazi populations have with the goyish counterparts. Even the terms Ashkenazi and Mizrahi have taken fundamentally racist connotations, particularly in the advent of Zionism, to separate the ‘European Jewish’ from the ‘Arabian Jewish,’ in a kind of wartime apartheid of academia; a conflict emblematic of larger paradoxes in modern Israel.

This is not the focus of this article. Obviously, Jewish people living in Western Europe and urban America are more “Western” than people who live somewhere else. And obviously, Western nations have a serious and prolonged issue with racism. However, welding those two facts together, then conflating them with Judaism in some sense, would be a mistake.

There are some racist people in Hollywood who identify as, or are identified as, Jewish. That is not the question. The question is: How does the concept of cultural appropriation contribute to that complex dynamic, of conformity and exploitation in Hollywood, even amongst the big names?

This all comes back to the perceptual balance of power. Just as the term cultural appropriation is defined as a group being in a oppressive position and exploiting something that that group itself has made derogatory.

Is Netali Hershlag appropriating Western culture? In a way, yes. As a rich, powerful Jewish actress, she could hardly be said to be put at a disadvantage to Keira Knightly (Harvard versus dropout, remember), or the millions of aspiring brown-haired actresses who are shunned from Hollywood castings. And yet, she decides to look more like them. Obviously, as an ordinary woman herself, she has been victim to the usual sexism and obsessive demands of producers and directors concerning appearances, but that is hardly so say she is a victim. At any moment, she could deign to take a different part or produce her own movies (I would balk to call them films), rather than be typecast as the sexy and innocent girl-next-door. She lives the life of the good Jewish, girl, but never takes on those types of roles, opting instead for Princess Amidala, ballerina Nina Sayers, valley girl Elle Woods, comic book Jane Foster, or Englishwoman Anne Boleyn. Hershlag could at any moment leave acting to climb the ladder a Harvard A.B. clears the way for. How could Harvard Law School, or subsequently the California Democratic caucus, say no? Who wouldn’t pay for a doctor’s visit with the woman from V For Vendetta?

This is not to say that Jewish people are appropriating or imposing themselves upon Westerners, but it is to say that there is a distinct group of Jewish people who draw from Western or Hitlerite practices while entirely avoiding ‘Juden-haus’ or ‘Euro-trash’ rhetoric that hampers people on both sides of the racist conflict. Portman is Netali’s grandmother’s name, so she does have some kind of loose claim to it, if her cousins are still go by that name and she is close with them, while Natalie is a form of the name Neta-Li, and plenty if not most actors use stage names. Many people do racist or questionable things because they are in fashion. But altogether, one must ask the question why the self ascribed curly-haired Netali Hershlag is appearing is French wig and makeup commercials. Is it raw, unidealistic money? Is it Maybelline? Or it is fake hair, fake lashes, and a fake identity?

Natalie Portman is hardly an inspiring figure for women, playing roles subservient to men, often murdered by her lovers or terribly afflicted herself. This is true in Star Wars, Black Swan, Thor, V For Vendetta, and when she played the wife of wife-killer Henry VIII. Where is the liberty in being bedded by an uxoricidal maniac, be it a tired British period piece, or the obsessive Anakin Skywalker? Body modification of any type is not the product or respect or exchange, and can only be looked down upon as unnecessary and insecure. Acting is lying, but that does not mean the actress must change their looks or change their self to read some lines to a camera.

#Natalie Portman #Hollywood #Judaism #Cultural Appropriation #Star Wars

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wastelandcrown · 4 years

Text

logan lark’s adventures in trying to appease his parents

CHAPTER 6: don’t lose ur head (the terrifying tales of the grimm monarchy)

Summary: Logan Lark is a fairly average high school student. By all means, he should be impressing his parents on all grounds. Except...he doesn’t exactly have a social life. So after his parents give him puppy dog eyes, he decides to join the local theatre's youth production. Good grief...His life is about to get weird isn’t it?

Warnings: Potential ooc behavior, Roman is a teenager who makes bad choices EXTREME edition, Remus being Remus, Intrusive Thoughts, Minor Bad Parenting, so much swearing it’s insane (If I miss something please tell me!)

Notes: This fic is based off an idea from @under-the-blue-moonlight. If you wanna be tagged in chapters, please ask!! I love this freaking chapter SO much but I’m really scared of how it’s going to be received. All feedback is extremely welcome!!

Pairings: Intrulogical, Eventual Rociet, One-Sided Logicality, Platonic DRLAMP

Tagslist: @under-the-blue-moonlight @why-should-i-tell-youu2 @im-actually-ok @hauntedturkeycalzonedreamer @croftersjam15 @rainbowsixth @snaketho @wasinotwantedatthisexactsecond @a-soul-among-the-stars @sweet-razz-tea @the-cactus-lord

Over the course of the next month Logan learns that despite their reputations, Roman and Remus are the opposite of what everyone thinks of them.

Logan is the smartest person he knows, there is no way in hell he’d ever miss Roman’s multiple attempts to sabotage his role as Hamilton. Smart, and yet so oblivious. Each time Roman had tried to mess with Logan after he began cultivating a friendship with Remus he was miraculously saved from the torment at the last second. Remus is a hundred percent certain that Logan has no idea that he’s fighting off his brother at each and every turn. He’s not certain of much, so it’s saying a lot. There is a beautiful dichotomy in Logan’s logs of the events and the stories Remus tells about his brother’s scourge against his brand new ‘enemy’. On a page labeled ‘Roman Incidents’ in Logan’s succinct handwriting documents every incident through the month when Roman attempted to sabotage him.

July 20th - Roman tripped near my things in the drama room while holding coffee. When I went to check on my things, someone had removed the contents of my bag and filled it with around six pounds of glitter. If this happens again, throw the bag away. Glitter makes anything unsalvageable. You will keep finding it everywhere.

Remus knew Roman had been planning something. Of course he did. Though they didn’t share a room anymore, sneaking into it had never been exceptionally hard. Neither had eavesdropping, when it counted. It counted now more than ever because Remus had become unreasonably attached to Logan and when he heard Roman talking to himself and mentioning the name of his favourite little nerd badly he knew it was now or never. It took two excruciating hours of sitting still and listening to get the juicy stuff. He almost got caught by their mother twice. She’d only been home for three days and she’d checked on Roman twice in one night. If Remus told her about the amount of effort he was putting into something she might keel over dead from shock.

What a funny sight that would be to him. His mother, dead from the shock of his hard work to do something good, thumping onto the floor. He laughs a little, quiet enough to keep Roman from hearing. His brain supplies the rational next step of Roman running out of his room and distraughtly cradling their mother’s head in his lap. Roman sobbing. Roman blaming him. Roman screaming about how it was his fault. And it would be, if she died like that. Remus doesn’t think it’s all that funny anymore, but once the train of thought starts it can’t be stopped. He decides that eavesdropping isn’t fun anymore and makes his way to the kitchen, trying to shake the idea of his brother cursing him out for killing their mother out of his mind.

It doesn’t really work, but he tries anyway. The kitchen is full of distractions, good and bad. The knives in the block look so enticing to his self-proclaimed ‘shitty-dick-wad brain’, but the cookies he nabs from the cupboard are so easy to shove into his mouth that he figures it evens out. He sits at the kitchen island and doesn’t even bother to turn on the light. It takes six cookies in his mouth at once before he can direct his thoughts somewhere else momentarily. How in the hell is he going to combat Roman’s plan? He spits all the cookies onto the counter as his brother walks in, flicks on the light, and sighs deeply.

“You could at least do that onto a plate.”

Remus just shrugs, so Roman speaks again, “How’s your evening been?”

“Before like...five minutes ago I was really liking it.” Which was true, Roman slides into the seat next to him and picks a cookie from the box.

“What changed?”

“Shitty brain,” He replies, “Y’know how it gets.”

“I do indeed. Do you need anything?” His voice is surprisingly soft with him, to the point where Remus has to give him a confused look before deciding what to say next. He figures out how to fuck with Roman’s plan in that moment.

“I wanna go to Party City and terrorize the night staff.”

Roman only chuckles, Remus watches his twin put away the cookies and grab his car keys from the bowl on the counter.

“Come on then, we can buy some of those plastic babies you like so much.”

As Remus is falling asleep later that night, his chest feels warm. He attributes it to the upcoming scheme-ruining scheming. It’s easier than admitting that that was the first time Roman had willingly hung out with him alone since elementary school. He knows the next morning that Roman is most likely buttering up because he suspects Remus knows. Which is...fair. Even if it hurts a little. They get coffee on the way to the theatre and separate. They both have important things to do. The best part about their somewhat rocky-relationship is that they always know where the other is in order to avoid each other. Remus knows that Roman has gone to see Janus and probably make heart eyes and pine over him like a dumbass. Roman knows that Remus is off drooling over his arch nemesis. Today it is more imperative than ever. During practice Remus manages to steal Logan’s backpack while he’s busy.

He swaps the contents out with the six pounds of glitter he bought the night before and shoves Logan’s things into his bag for safe keeping. Nobody would dare look into Remus’ bag for fear of gore or weird pornography, even if he only has one in his bag at the moment. He’s shoving a small notebook in when he catches a title. “Hamilton Performance Experiment”. It takes literally all of his self-control not to immediately snoop. He makes it through, eventually meeting up with Logan and even carrying his bag to ‘be nice’ so Logan doesn’t pick up on the bag glitter. When Roman walks by with his coffee and “trips”, spilling his coffee all over Logan’s bag, Remus smiles.

“Oh! Logan I’m so sorry! What a terrible accident!” Roman cries, ever the actor.

Logan looks downright frantic as he lunges for his bag and rips it open. Glitter goes everywhere. Logan’s hair, Roman’s shoes, the entire dressing room floor. The look of distress fades from Logan’s face momentarily, returning full force when he realizes his things are missing.

Remus pulls them out of his bag in secret, walking to the corner of the room, walking back and exclaiming, “What a good prank Roman! You must be taking some tricks from my book!”

When he hands the things back to Logan, Logan smiles. He decides not to ask about the notebook.

July 27th - One of the props from the prop room was moved in with my things. I suspect Roman because of the look on his face when Remus took the fall for me.

Just because he didn’t ask about the notebook does not mean it left his memory. By the time he gets in the car alone with his brother he realizes that Roman is pissed off at him.

“Couldn’t you have left it alone? How did you even find out!?”

“I have my ways. Now shut up about it before I tell mom about that time in 8th grade-”

“Okay! Okay! I’m shutting up!”

And he did. However that included no longer voicing his plans out loud. Which meant Remus had to get creative. He was very very good at getting creative.

Dinner with their mother was much more quiet that week. Both twins brooding and not speaking with each other, their mother only prompting Roman to talk. It was too familiar in the worst possible ways. Remus despised his mother, but he knew how much his brother loved her. She was...well she was beautiful, intelligent, a very influential fashion designer, extremely supportive. Roman would go on about how perfect she was for hours. Sure, Remus could concede that their mother was beautiful, intelligent, and a very influential fashion designer, but whenever Roman talks about her he never says she’s at all a good mother. Especially not to him. He watches her laugh breathily at one of Roman’s shitty anecdotes from practice and decides he’s had enough of family dinner. He gets up and dutifully cleans his plate and places it in the dishwasher. The chef gives him a smile, and he smiles back.

“Remus, dear,” His mother begins in her shrill voice, “If you’re not going to eat with us, at least go and shower. Your smell is unbecoming.”

Then she turns back to her food like she didn’t just attempt to insult him. Jokes on her, it takes a lot more than that to hurt his feelings. He still ends up forcing himself into the shower for thirty-five minutes that night.

The rest of the week he’s more tired than usual, which the others notice. He makes an effort to not be, he really does. When his mom is in town, everything just sucks. He hangs out with Janus three times and Virgil once to get out of the house and away from his family. The other nights he spends sitting outside the convenience store with a monster or two. He ends up calling Logan one of those nights out of need for company. Logan chuckles when Remus makes up a silly reason for calling that he can’t even remember now, but he can remember Logan’s laugh. He listens to Logan talk about the book series he’s been reading and he feels a little lighter. He never ends up finding out what Roman has planned, but it’s so easy when it’s happening right in front of him. Despite his lethargy lately, he feels a fire lit in him when the missing prop is found with Logan’s bag.

Virgil and Janus are the only two teenagers with keys to the prop room. If Logan stole the missing prop, he would have had to steal the key. No one but the twins even knew Janus had a key, and Virgil was dead set on not letting a soul into the prop room. The idea that Logan, precious little innocent fucking lamb Logan, committed theft not once but twice enrages Remus. When they find it with his things, Logan is utterly baffled. Then he realizes the implications and his face pales. Roman calls for Thomas, spouting off about how Logan stole the prop and he should face consequences, when Remus laughs as loudly as he can.

“Hah! You guys are so funny! You think specs could ever!? Guess my prank worked out pretty damn good if you actually think Mr.Goody-Two-Shoes could commit such a heinous fucking crime!”

Thomas sighs, tells Remus to just ask next time, and leaves. Roman stares at his brother for a solid minute with his mouth slightly ajar. Janus and Virgil are both looking at him like he’s insane because it’s so obvious to them that Roman did it. Patton is looking not at him, but at Logan, with so much concern. And Logan...Logan stares up at Remus with the look of a small and confused animal.

“Did you really do that?”

“Of course I did! I’m the resident rat bastard, I have to cause a little recreational chaos.”

He’s pretty sure Logan believes him until they’re leaving for the day and Logan whispers a ‘Thank you’ to him as he walks by. He would have melted into the floor if Janus hadn’t put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him down to whisper to him.

“Why the hell did you let Roman get away with that?” Virgil is on his other side now with a scowl.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about JJ! I committed a very heinous crime!”

“Then why did Roman ask to borrow Janus’ key earlier?” Virgil asks, and Remus drops his smile to replace it with an annoyed look.

“He just fucking asked for it!? I can’t even believe I’m related to that half-witted twit.”

“Yeah,” Virgil scoffs, “Not really the sharpest sword in the armoury, is he?”

“Please, we’ve known that for years. What I’d like to know is what are we going to do about it?” This quieted Remus, but made Virgil smirk a little.

Janus continued, “After the backpack incident, and now the stealing incident, I’m half-convinced we have a brand new chaos demon in the group.”

“At least Remus’ chaos is fun sometimes,” Virgil mutters, “Roman’s just an ass.”

Remus gets away with being quiet as they talk until they get into Janus’ beat up old van. He doesn’t call shotgun, doesn’t slap the car's ‘ass’ as a joke, he just climbs into the back and sits there. He’s so quiet that Janus and Virgil are a little shell shocked.

“Remus?” Virgil asks quietly and pensively, it sounds just like that soft tone Roman used with him last week.

He’s quiet, Janus starts the car and clicks his tongue, “I’m going to shove Roman down a flight of stairs.”

“Don’t.” He manages, and the boys in the front seats go quiet. Virgil passes him the aux cord.

He plays “Call Them Brothers” by Regina Spektor and Janus and Virgil know that tonight will be a very quiet outing.

They’re sitting at IHOP drawing dicks on their pancakes in syrup when Remus’ phone rings. Janus and Virgil know who’s calling the second Remus sees the caller ID and smiles.

“Evening Logie-Bear, why do I get the pleasure of hearing your devilishly sexy voice in this IHOP tonight?” Remus says and Janus groans loudly.

“You’re at IHOP?” Is the first thing Logan says, which makes Remus smile even brighter.

“Yes, sir! I’m with Virge and Janny too, you wanna say hi?”

Logan sounds a bit contemplative when he mutters, “I was hoping you’d be alone...”

Eavesdropping Janus and Virgil make surprised faces, Remus smacks Janus in the arm, “Oh you were, were you? Why? Phone sex?”

“I wanted to ask for an opinion on a predicament.” Virgil smirks and Janus nabs his phone to speak for Remus.

“Remus would love to-Remus let me talk-You should come have some pancakes with us-Ow, watch the face!-and tell us all about how your science is going.” Janus can hear Logan hiding his laughter through the phone as Remus wrestles with him in the booth.

“It’s more of a philosophical predicament.”

Janus nearly sees red, eyes widening and making Remus cackle,“Why in the world would you ask Remus Grimm about phi-”

It’s silent for a few moments then Logan hears a familiar voice. “It’s Virgil, we’re at the IHOP on 81st and Green.”

Logan laughs brightly, “I’ll be there. Order something for me.”

They spend the evening with breakfast for dinner, and the four get into a fairly heated friendly debate about moral ethics. Janus isn’t sure he’s ever had more fun in his life. When he’s driving away from Virgil to drop Remus off at home, he can’t help but smile at Remus’ improved demeanor.

“Remus,” He starts after they’re alone, “I thought you and Roman were doing better, did something happen?”

“He tried to sabotage Logan twice for entirely selfish reasons, I wouldn’t care if he dies!” Remus dramatically cries.

“You and I both know that’s not true.”

They’re quiet the rest of the ride, and Janus gets out to give Remus a hug before he goes in. Remus ignores Roman’s questions about his whereabouts and locks himself in his room to try and keep his mood up. It doesn’t work, but he tries. He does.

August 3rd - Roman gave me a “peace offering” in the form of lunch. I am led to believe he was attempting to give me food poisoning, as Remus ate the lunch and has now come down with food poisoning.

His mother leaves for her office in Paris on August 1st. Roman cries and hugs her, says he’ll miss her, goes on and on about how it’s so terrible how she’s never home. He does this every time their mother and father leave, he has since they were young. Remus couldn’t give less of a shit. His plan now was finding out what Roman’s next move was. Which was hard because they were back to avoiding each other like the plague. They’d spent a few months getting better at being brothers, then one of their parents shows up and ruins it. This time it was great, Remus would never admit it, but it was. Roman made an effort when their parents weren’t around, a few months ago he started doing things like making dinner for them both and bringing it to him, offering to do a load of laundry for him while he was doing it, being mindful of his volume when practicing his singing and acting, all these little things.

He’d even started initiating physical contact again, which Remus couldn’t get enough of. Literally. An occasional pat on the back, a grab of his hand to pull him somewhere, a light slap to his knee or arm when he said something distasteful. Giving physical affection to Remus was something that seemed to be unique to Roman. It had always been like that when they were younger, and Remus didn’t think he wanted it to stop. Any time he thinks about it he always drifts back to his head against Roman’s knee a few weeks ago when Roman had carded a hand through his hair and then a few minutes later practically tackled him to douse him in perfume The shit smelled awful, but afterwards Roman had slung an arm over his shoulder and gave him a squeeze. That and the closeness with Logan kept him buzzing for the next two days.

Now there was nothing again. It was like Roman could turn off his affection for Remus and pretend he didn’t exist. Remus tried not to be angry about it, he really did, but he couldn’t stop the fire that he felt when the other people on stage got his praises and affection. Both of them were incredibly clingy, but Roman was so much worse at hiding it and it made Remus nearly scream. He piled all of his affectionate behavior onto Logan, and Logan never really minded. He’d place his head on Logan’s shoulder, hold his hand on stage, sit pressed up against him offstage. He loved it, he did. He loved protecting Logan, talking to Logan, existing in the same space as the dork was exhilarating. He hated having to protect Logan from his brother. There was no way in hell that Remus would let anything terrible happen to Logan, but there was no way he would ever let his brother’s stupid selfish decisions fall back on him. He knows he shouldn’t give a single shit, but he does.

His tiredness fades with his mother, but he’s still exhausted because Roman keeps trying to fuck with Logan when he knows damn well Remus won’t let him. The selfish ass. This time, Roman has the gall to pull his entire scheme in front of Remus.

“Logan,” He starts, his affected air is slightly dim today and his hands are hidden, “To apologize for my unkind actions, I have brought a peace offering.”

Roman hands Logan a little bag from a restaurant Remus swears he recognizes.

“Oh, thank you.” Logan says quietly, opening the bag and pulling out a wrapped burger.

Logan takes it out and inspects it as Remus wracks his brain trying to remember where he knows the packaging. It hits him right before Logan takes a bite. This burger is from the restaurant that gave Roman food poisoning a few months ago. It looks like the same burger too. At this point, Remus is half-convinced Roman is taunting him. He’s in a bit of a panic and doesn’t think before he snatches the burger and shoves it in his mouth.

“Remus!” Both call out, the wrapper is still on the end of the burger so he pulls it out then chews and swallows the thing whole.

He coughs and sputters for almost two minutes after, then shoots Roman an awful glare.

“What just happened?” Logan asks, extremely puzzled.

Roman is gawking at Remus again, “Why did you eat that!?”

“Fuck you that’s why, you horsefucking shiteating egomaniac bastard.”

Roman walks off in a huff, Remus lays on the floor.

“Are you alright?” Logan questions, handing him a water bottle.

Maneuvering onto his side, Remus takes a sip and his throat feels miles better, “I just straight up ate a burger whole like a fucking snake, how do you think I am dipshit?”

“Hm,” He pauses to think, “Bad.”

Both boys laugh, and Logan joins Remus on the ground.

“I am beginning to believe your brother has a vendetta against me.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Logan pauses, looking at Remus who is still occasionally wheezing.

“Are you alright...emotionally?” Remus wheezes and laughs at the same time, sounding something similar to a goose.

“‘Thought you didn’t know much about those, poindexter.”

“I do not. However, as your friend I feel like it’s important to ask.”

Remus just sighs, closes his eyes, and blows a raspberry at the ceiling.

“Me and Roman are complicated.”

“I can tell.” Remus laughs, Logan really is something else.

It’s quiet when Remus asks, “Do you hate him?”

“No,” Logan’s response is measured and confident like he’s asked himself this question a hundred times, “I don’t hate him. I think he’s got some things to work out, and is taking out his frustration on me as of late.”

He keeps talking, Remus covers his closed eyes with his arm, “More importantly, do you hate him?”

He almost rockets to his feet when Logan says curiously, “Or, more interestingly, do you love him?”

It takes him nearly two and a half minutes sat up and sipping water, watching Logan pack his things, to muster up the will to tell the truth.

“Of course I love him. Nobody else is gonna fucking do it.”

He could barely comprehend Logan’s response to his admission so he shoved it out of his mind with all the force he could muster, then waved a goodbye to him when he parted and left Remus with his mind.

He ends up going home early because his awful decision ended up actually giving him food poisoning. He takes a sick day the next day, and spends most of the time feeling like shit physically and emotionally. His brain has kept tabs on all the shitty feelings and thoughts he’s had and is now playing out a full length shitty horror movie about his life and his dumb brother and his shitty summer crush. Then there’s that conversation with Logan. The last sentence is running through him over and over again. He keeps coming back to it, though he’s sure Logan didn’t even mean anything by it. Seventeen words and his world was sent spinning.

“Ah, I understand, it’s hard to love somebody when they don’t act like they love you back.”

Logan doesn’t even know the half of it.

August 20th - Roman asked me directly to leave the production. Though I admire the effort, all it achieved was a quite awful night, and an angry lecture(?) of sorts from Janus. I do not believe Roman will be trying this tactic ever again.

Roman tries to apologize multiple times, but something angry and petty in Remus doesn’t accept any of them. They’re both getting more and more frustrated by the minute. By the time the thirteenth of August rolls around they aren’t on speaking terms again and everyone can tell that it’s taking its toll on them both. Remus acts out more than usual against people he doesn’t usually target. He scared an ensemble girl one too many times, to the point where she ended up slapping him. He deserved it, but it still stung. Roman poured himself into his role more than ever, but it only ended up stressing him out even more than usual. When his voice so much as wavered on stage it shattered his confidence.

It affected their friends as well. Roman spent more time with Patton and Emile, avoiding Remus and Janus as much as he could possibly manage. Janus rolled his eyes but just resigned himself to the tech booth with Virgil, Remus, and Logan. The only good thing that was happening lately was Janus’ newfound attachment to Logan. The pair's insane intelligence and love of debate meant one was nearly guaranteed every other time they were in the same room. It was exhilarating to watch, and probably exhilarating to take part in. Remus didn’t much care for debates, but watching Janus and Logan go at each other with an occasional snarky comment or new suggestion from Virgil was making him grow a fondness for them. At this point there was barely anybody in the theatre who didn’t adore Logan.

The staff, the cast, the tech. Everyone adored him. He was smart, diligent, and hard-working. He asked questions, didn’t undermine others, and respected the entire cast's talent at what they did. It was magical to watch everyone in the auditorium drift under Logan’s thumb. Remus was included. They were saving Say No To This until near last because of the lack of dancing involved, but it didn’t even matter. Say No To This was not needed in Remus’ seduction plan because Logan seemed to gravitate towards him with ease. He is a damn good friend and Remus is determined to make that boy his bride.

Despite his growing lack of sleep and reliance on caffeine, Remus is skating by just fine without anything bad happening. Until his brother decides to fuck with his life again. He’s on the thin line between being shitty in secret and full-on breakdown, Roman really isn’t helping his case. Remus is lounging on the floor while Logan reads in a chair next to the makeup mirrors. He hears someone enter, but isn’t bothered enough to move.

Ever the polite, Logan greets the newcomer “Ah, Hello Roman, how are you?”

“I need to ask you something.” His brother asks, and Remus turns his head away from the noise.

“Alright, what is it?” Logan sounds so measured and calm.

There is a long pause, “What is it going to take for you to realize you should quit?”

The calmness in Logan’s voice wavers, and Remus can hear it wobble, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me! I mean, it’s obvious I've been trying to get you to leave, so what’s been keeping you!?” Roman raises his voice near instantly, that same childish selfishness burns from his tongue.

“It is none of your business.” There’s a dignified fire raging under his voice now, it’s like he’s been practicing for this.

“You’re not even a good actor! From what I can tell, you’re entirely uninteresting and way too intellectual to be here!” Roman continues, Remus feels the urge to get up but he can’t find the will to move.

“Roman, please think before you say something you regret.” Remus knows what Roman is going to say before it happens.

“No!” His brother is so typical, “You have no idea what this role means to me, why can’t you just leave!?”

That’s typical too, Remus opens his eyes and looks at the pair. Logan looks pissed off, Roman looks pissed off, and Janus is watching from the doorway.

“I try very hard to give you the benefit of the doubt in regards to your debilitating egomania, but it is beginning to appear as if your whole sense of stability and purpose is built upon some false reality where you need to be the star at every possible moment. Go to therapy about it, and leave me alone.” Logan spits this in Roman’s face, then turns back to his book.

Clenching his fists and staring at the ground, Roman looks almost defeated until he catches Remus staring and his face morphs into something so bitter he has to force himself to look away.

“No. I will not leave you alone until I get this part. None of you have any idea how much I need it.”

“Roman-” Janus speaks up daringly from his spot by the door, his tone is enough to warn him to stand down.

Roman’s eyes are squeezed shut, his fists are clenched, “I know we have the same face, but I’m not a failure like my brother.”

That sends Remus to his feet and out the door before anyone can say a word. As he passes Janus on the way out Janus tries to stop him but he pushes past him, past everyone, and out the front door of the theatre.

Janus turns on Roman in an instant, walking slowly into the room and shutting the door with purpose. Roman’s eyes are sewed shut and all the guilt he tries to push down floods him when he makes eye contact with his pissed off friend.

“Roman, we need to have a talk.”

#sanders sides #sanders sides fic #ts remus #ts logan #ts roman #ts janus #ts virgil #intrulogical #REMUS BABY IM SO SORRY-#this title could just be titled 'roman fucks up for 4k words straight' and it would fit #i genuinely loved writing this chapter and i hope it goes over well with yall #roman IS going to get kicked in the teeth with character development #the boy has been self-sabotaging himself so hard #Honestly after chapter 6 imma need to tag 'The Grimm Parents' A+ Parenting' like i'm on fucking ao3 or some shit #anyway!! theres the fic!! happy reading!!#Love you all and goodnight!!

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cywscross · 4 years

Photo

From @lightveils on Twitter (free to use wherever!). I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. I definitely have enough fics to fill it lol~

-0-

A Fic You Love Without Knowing The Source Material:

I was born for this by esama (Assassin’s Creed | Altair x Desmond | M)

Juno did her best to lead him to her preferred fate, but the end is coming and Desmond has doubts.

A Fic With A Premise That Shouldn’t Work But Does:

Proposing To Strangers by moonstalker24 (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | G)

At the end of a strained relationship, crime novelist Stiles chooses to hide from the world inside a bar with far too many motorcycles outside it for comfort. Here he'll meet the man of his dreams, eat food and propose marriage, all within the first five minutes.

Peter doesn't know who this kid is, but he's cute and looks like he could use a break. So he feeds him. He's not expecting a marriage proposal, but with what comes after, he doesn't really mind.

A Fic You’ve Reread Several Times:

Hooverville by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | E)

Town to town, train to train, tent to tent.

By 1932, the dust had begun to blow and the jobs were gone.

Anonymity was a byproduct of looking for work, which made it both necessary and convenient.

Stiles had enough secrets of his own to know to look the other way when he saw something that shouldn’t be possible.

The ghost of a tail giving enough balance to disembark a moving train.

Near silent Latin whispered on the edge of a tent encampment.

A flash of burning eyes.

He had more than enough to worry about without adding the oddities of others, and besides- having unusually sharp teeth certainly didn’t make a man worse than the ones running from the wife and kids they couldn’t feed.

So Stiles kept his observations to himself. He kept his everything to himself.

Until he met a man. One with eyes so blue they seemed to glow- and then they did.

Stiles tried to look away, but for the first time he was stopped.

“Don’t be like that sweetheart. Aren’t you curious?”

A Fic You Still Remember Many Years Later:

All True-Hearted Souls by mardia (Temeraire | Laurence x Granby | G)

“For God's sake, if someone doesn't talk Laurence out of these constant heroics, I wouldn't bet a farthing on his chances; no, and not ours either.” Four times that John Granby helped save William Laurence's life. Laurence/Granby. Spoilers up to Empire of Ivory.

A Comfort Fic:

Nothing Improper by Bunnywest (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | G)

“How long since someone touched you, sweet boy?” Peter asks, his voice barely a breath in Stiles’ ear. “Days? Weeks? Months?” Stiles nods imperceptibly at that last one.

“After…after everything, after Allison,” is all Stiles manages to get out.

A Cathartic Fic:

Swing by ShippersList (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | T)

Stiles wants to fly.

A Fic You’d Print And Put On Your Bookshelf:

Nose to the Wind by Batsutousai (HP | Tom x Harry | M)

While Harry had been content with his second chance, that didn't keep him from thinking what he could have done different, how many people could have survived if he hadn't been set on the very specific path he'd walked. Third time is the charm, though, right?

A Fic You Associate With A Song (x2):

Strange Duet by BelleAmante, thiliart (thilia) (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | M)

The past three years have been a series of shocking, or not so shocking, successes for 2018 Tony award winner and two time Grammy nominee, Stiles Stilinski. You don’t typically find classically trained opera singers singing alternative folk rock to crowds at Coachella. Nor do you find indie singer/songwriters winning best actor awards at the Tony’s for their Broadway debuts. Stilinski has made it his lifetime habit to defy and exceed all expectations.

-or-

A Steter fic loosely based on Phantom of the Opera

Full Circle by Nike Femme (FMA | Roy x Ed | T)

Edward Elric returns with amnesia. He has lived the past four years as Auric, a Gatekeeper. But there are some battles that only he can fight. Will his friends be able to awaken Ed, and what happens to Auric if they do?

A Fic That Inspires You:

Off the Line by esama (FFVII | Cloud x Vincent | T)

In which Cloud gets a Virtual Reality Dream Console – ShinRa's latest in virtual reality technology. Aaand everything pretty much goes downhill from there.

A Fic That Brought You On Board A New Ship:

Me and Mine by linndechir (Fast and the Furious | Deckard x Owen | E)

The last time they'd spoken, Deckard had told Owen that he was tired of cleaning up his messes. But the first thing he did after breaking out of prison was to take Owen to the other end of the world so they could lick their wounds and start planning their revenge.

A Fic You Wish Could Be A Movie:

Moving In (To Every Single Aspect of Danny’s Life, Including the Boring Bits like Dry-Cleaning) by westgirl (Hawaii Five-0 | Steve x Danny | T)

It felt wrong for Steve to sound unsure of his place in Danny’s life. His place in Danny’s life was at Danny’s side, driving him slowly insane. Steve should feel secure about that.

A Fic That Led To You Making Friends With The Author:

Begin and End by Rikkamaru (Log Horizon x HP | G)

This is how it begins: a boy rejected by his family, a boy reunited with his brother by his sister-in-law's intervention. A boy who found a family in an online game. But how will it end?

FREE SPACE:

Reverti Ad Praeteritum by Batsutousai (Fullmetal Alchemist | Roy x Edward | M)

Unwillingly forced to serve as a human trial for a crazy alchemist experimenting with time travel, Edward Elric finds himself standing across from Truth in the moment it takes his leg from him. Armed with the knowledge of what's to come and burdened with guilt for the choices he'd made as an adult, Ed sets out to fix every mistake he ever made and save every life they ever lost, no matter what it takes.

A Fic You’ve Gushed About IRL:

Designation: Miracle by umisabaku (Kuroko no Basket | M)

It's been three years since seven human experiments, called "Miracles," escaped Teiko Industries, alerting the world to the presence of super-powered children. Now they're finally integrating into society-- going to normal high schools, playing basketball, falling in love-- and trying to find out if it's possible to truly escape their past.

A Fic You Associate With A Place (have to self-rec for this one):

Safe Harbour by cywscross (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles x Chris | T)

Peter didn't think he'd find a home here. He certainly didn't think he'd find a home with two other men.

Chris and Stiles prove him wrong.

A Fic That Made You Gasp Out Loud (kind of? it was suspenseful):

Sanctuary by DiscontentedWinter (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | E)

The Hale Wolf Sanctuary isn’t just for wolves.

It turns out it’s for Stilinskis as well.

A Fic You Found At The Right Time:

slow increments by Areiton (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles)

Peter is enigmatic, egotistical, sometimes barely sane. He's sharp and cutting and takes more time to care for the pack than anyone.And sometimes, John catches him watching Stiles.

A Fic That You Would Read Fic Of:

if you try to break me, you will bleed by Dialux (Game of Thrones | Jon x Sansa | T)

It had been a slash across her chest from a White Walker’s sword that finally ended her life. Sansa’d landed in a puddle of her own blood, and she’d died quickly, quietly.

And then she’d awoken with a gasp, trembling, in a bed that had burned under Theon’s betrayal.

A Fic That Made You Laugh Out Loud:

The Path towards Unwilling Godhood by Sky_King (Bleach | Kisuke x Ichigo | G)

Ichigo has never had the most normal life, and this latest chapter of it is no different.

"I'm not a god!"

A Fic With A Line (Or Two) That You’ve Memorized By Heart:

Atlas by distractedKat (Star Trek | Spock x Jim | T)

Between what was and what will be stands James Tiberius Kirk, in all his fractured patchwork glory. Because saving the Federation was only the beginning.

A Fic That Gave You Butterflies:

The Rest of Our Lives by mia6363 (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | T)

“I don’t know, as a kid I watched a lot of movies, you know? And at first I figured like… I’d be on some great adventure that would take me away from it all, you know? Like Indiana Jones comes around and is all, ‘Hey Stiles, buddy, come with me we’ve got to go save the world.’ Then… you and… everything happened… then I just… I figured I’d die before I was eighteen.”

A Fic That Embodies Something You Value In Life:

The Boy Sleuth by Shey (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | T)

Stiles is eight when he discovers a box of his mom’s old Nancy Drew Mysteries in the back of the guest bedroom closet.

A Favourite AU:

Love What is Behind You by KouriArashi (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | M)

Basically what it says on the label. Hunger Games type fusion. Stiles doing way better than anyone anticipates. Peter finds him intriguing. Ruthless, devious assholes working together to ruin bad guys, as the Steter ship is meant to be.

A Fic You Stayed Up Too Late To Finish Reading:

Of Dwobbits, Dragons and Dwarves by ISeeFire (The Hobbit | Fem!Bilbo x Fili | T)

Bilba has been a slave her entire life. All she knows of the outside world is what she sees from time to time outside the gates of Moria and the stories her mother used to tell her. Stories of a place called the Shire where her mother once lived and a placed called Erebor where, as far as she knows, her father still lives. Stories of dragons a thousand times larger, and more intelligent, than the beasts the orcs rode and of a strange concept called freedom where one was allowed to live as they wished with no one to tell them what they could, or could not do.

The stories meant little to Bilba. The only future she had was to live, and die, as a slave as countless number had before her.

And then the orcs dragged an injured female firedrake through the gates, her rider screaming obscenities behind her as he fought to reach her side...and everything changed.

A Fic That Made You Feel Seen (another self-rec lol):

i am addicted to death (so remind me what it’s like to live) by cywscross (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | T)

Stiles is sixteen years old. He has already died seventy-eight times.

#Fic Rec Bingo #Bingo #Misc Fanfic Rec

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feckin-zicons · 3 years

Text

Squids, Dancing, and Dirty thoughts... Not necessarily in that order or all at once.

Apparently people like this? I am more confused than Liam is in this chapter. Which you know, makes sense bc this character only exists in my head, but also doesn’t at all bc I have no idea what goes on in there most of the time. Anyway this is for Zayn, Oxford commas, @stanmedusa who pointed out Zayn was also an Oxford comma stan, @redyellowberry, and their anon to started this mess. Also please imagine Zayn with his current blue hair, but also with his long Aladdin hair bc that’s what I’ve been doing and oh holy gods do I need that to happen. Please. Hair gods make it happen I’m begging

Same warnings as ever its 4AM, this is much longer than planned, and I have no interest in editing, making it sound coherent, or good. No, I don’t know about the squids either.

Parts 1&2 here

Liam would like to point out while he's not a stranger to feeling confused, he's still having trouble pinpointing how exactly he got to be Dance Mistress Irina Alinova's personal bitch.

Ever since he accidentally interrupted one of the dance practises while looking for a missing prop for Director Corden, more and more of them started disappearing only to show up in the basement. No one else was interested in facing the Dance Mistresses' wrath, but Liam didn't mind the yelling. As long as Mistress Alinova didn't start throwing things, he figured he was safe enough. After all, it gave him the chance to see the blue haired ballerino again.

Zayn Malik, the god in mortal form, the prima ballerino, the prettiest man Liam had ever seen, who had no idea who Liam even was.

Liam had it bad.

Liam had it so bad.

Liam had it so bad he tripped over thin air, spilled hot coffee over himself, and walked into a door when he thought he saw him at a Costas with Louis. The man he saw wasn't Zayn, thank fuck, but the entire sequence of events did give Louis more ammunition to tease him with. Stupid pretty boys with long blue hair and piercings sent from hell just to ruin Liam's life. Yeah, he was a goner.

Louis dragged out the whole sorry story after Liam texted him about spiking his lunch and laughed himself sick knowing just how much of a mess Liam became around people he was interested in. They still didn't talk about Danielle. Which was a good thing considering the end of that relationship had Liam pretty much swearing off women for the rest of his life. No pussy was worth that mess. Dick though? Liam was willing to take that chance on Zayn, even if asking Harry didn't give him much information.

According to Harry, Zayn had been around for a few years but mostly kept to himself or the other dancers. There was something about him throwing a fit a few weeks before Liam showed up. Upset about being forced to learn the choreography for Winston's show when it was just going to fail on opening night like it always did.

Liam thought he had a point, considering. He didn't know what bananas, ballet, and really bad rapping had to do with King James VI but didn't want to voice that in front of the man playing the gay king. No one dared fire Zayn, considering he kept the whole theatre afloat, but it also didn't make many actors happy with him. Especially not Mizz Wendy Williams, who played Marie Antoinette in the play. Again, Liam had a lot of questions he didn't dare ask out loud. It's not like he was ever good at history, so it was entirely possible the two lived in the same time period. Or it was some sort of allegory that went over his head like the aristocrats wearing banana suits did.

Louis always found his stories about his placement hilarious, but even that one had him wondering if there wasn't some sort of gas leak in their apartment. It wouldn't have been the first time, or the second. Most likely, it was the theatre that was growing some sort of mold that caused insanity if breathed in. Some of the things Liam had been forced to clean in the past few weeks were unspeakable.

But even that probably couldn't explain Zayn Malik. Nothing could explain that sort of beauty and talent. Or those hands... and thighs... and fingers. Ung. Liam would love to get up close and personal with all of him.

Either way, Liam had just been cleaning the mirrors in the practice room, humming along to Brandy and Monica on the radio, wondering if Niall was actually going to come down and help him instead of hiding away like a coward. Again. By the second verse, he'd given up trying not to sing along, not expecting anyone to come by. It was late, the dancer's practise long over, and Winston left screaming over an hour ago. Liam would have done a recce and skipped out on the last half hour if one of the managers wasn't sticking around still. Piers Morgan, an absolute cunt who treated the lads on probation like hardened criminals, and he was the prison warden. Despite, you know, most of the lads on summary probation, and Liam’s arson charge being the most serious crime out of all of them.

Anyway, the last thing he's expecting is for anyone to come in while he's singing about the boy being his, rolling his body to the beat. Which is probably how he ends up tripping over himself when he notices Zayn leaning up against the open door, watching him. Watching him, in bright, tight, teal dance tights (were dance tights usually blue? They should be) that looked nice with his hair and complimented the gold tones of his skin. The skin he could see a lot of. Because he was shirtless. Because he was shirtless and had a lot more tattoos than Liam realized. Tattoos Liam wanted to bite. Not hard enough to make a mark or anything, that would be sacrilegious, but enough to make him make a sound. God, Liam hoped he was a moaner. Not that he thought he had a chance with Zayn or anything, but it would be a shame if Zayn was the type that stayed quiet during sex.

Except he wasn't being quiet now, he was talking. And Liam was staring at him, like an idiot, not paying attention. Because he was an idiot.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, why did this always happen to him?

"Er, what?" Liam asked, desperately hoping he didn't sound as stupid as he felt right then, which was pretty fucking stupid. He probably looked even stupider than he felt and ruined his chances at ever-

"I asked if you were almost done? Was planning on practising more tonight," Zayn answered him.��

Zayn, Zayn Fucking Malik, answered him, and he was still staring at him like an idiot. Shit Liam say something.

"Pretty"

Not that you idiot.

"What?" Zayn asked, looking confused and adorable.

Oh god, he was precious. Was that a smile? Was he smiling at him? Liam? Oh no.

"Pretty much, I meant. Pretty much done," Liam replied, wishing the ground would swallow him whole. "Just one more mirror, and I'll be out of your way."

There, those were words, sentences even. Now all he had to do was act normal and finish cleaning. Easy.

"So, Brandy and Monica, right? You like R'n'B then?" Zayn asked him, walking into the room with a heavy dance bag, setting it off to the side.

Liam felt himself flushing as he turned back around to finish cleaning the mirror so Zayn wouldn't see. "Yeah," he answered, trying not to peek at Zayn bending over as he rifled through his belongings.

Those legs, Fuck. Liam wondered what it'd feel like to have them around his-

"I didn't expect that," Zayn said, drawing Liam out of his filthy thoughts, and making him turn back around.

"What?"

"No, I- I didn't mean it in a bad way or anything. I guess I just expected you to listen to more rock?"

Liam was pretty sure he missed half of the conversation somewhere. Was Zayn blushing? He was so pretty. Wow.

"No, I like everything," he replied dumbly. They were still talking about music, right? That would make sense. Why was Zayn talking to him again? God, Liam couldn't handle this. "Do you like it? The music, I mean."

"Yeah, grew up listening to ‘em. My older sister was obsessed with Monica. So... Who's your favourite artist?"

"Artist? Oh uh, I've been listening to a lot of Post Malone? How about you? What do you- who do you listen to?"

"Post Malone's sick, mate. I like most music I guess, but I've been listening to a lot of The Weekend."

"Have you heard his new album?"

"Yeah, it's sick! Do you-" Zayn was cut off by Niall running in out of breath. The bright orange tee that labelled him as one of the community service workers was wet and stained black. Actually.. all of him was soaked and stained black. Was that ink?

"Hey, Payno, are you done yet because we have a situation upstairs," Niall gasped out, hands on his knees, looking like he'd just seen his life flash before his eyes.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"There's a squid stick in the toilet."

"There's a what?"

"A Squid! A giant fucking squid in the toilet!"

Liam blinked in confusion, trying to wrap his head around why there would be a squid anywhere near the theatre let alone one of the toilets. Did Corden want live animals in his show now? Or Winston. It could be either of them.

"Why do you need me?" he asked. "I don't know anything about squids."

Niall sounded like he was at the end of his rope when he replied, "You know something about plumbing at least!"

"Not a lot! Enough to keep the water on at home, but I'm not a plumber."

"Doesn't matter, we need your help, Ashtons gone to find some butter," Niall said, stomping back around, leaving behind a trail of watery black ink. "We'll meet you upstairs when you're done."

"Wait, what do you need butter for?!" Liam called after him but didn't get a reply. Butter? How was butter going to help?

A muffled giggle distracted Liam from his thoughts, and he was abruptly reminded Zayn was still in the room. Zayn, might as well be a god, was in the room, and Liam was just talking about squids in toilets.

Why him?

"I guess I should go see what they need help with?" Liam tried to say without sounding... Well, he wasn't sure what the proper response was in this situation or how to react to it.

Zayn smiled at him, and oh. How was it possible he looked even more attractive now?

Liam thinks Zayn said something about the other lads needing him and it sounding urgent, but really, Liam was in a daze until he also got a face full of ink... From another squid in an entirely different toilet.

What the fuck.

Louis was never going to let him live this down.

Really? Squids???

#yeah idk #my fic #ballerino au #genuinely have questions for myself #why is it always crack #ngl I'd be interested in seeing Winstons 'historical' play and Corden's musical #if only to know what the hell my own brain is coming up with #the globus theatre is its own warning #lmao #Ziam au #Ziam fic #idiot boys with crushes #Liam is a simp

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luciaxromero · 3 years

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IC INTRO

BASIC INFORMATION

Full Name: Lucia Romero

Nickname(s): L, Romero, Luce

Age: 25 years old

Date of Birth: 6th August 1995 (Leo)

Hometown: Bogotá, Colombia (Sacramento, California)

Current Location: Seattle, Washington

Ethnicity: Latina

Nationality: Colombian, American citizen

Gender: Female

Pronouns: she/her

Orientation: Pansexual

Religion: Raised catholic

Political Affiliation: tends to keep to the left

Occupation: Scrub Nurse

Living Arrangements: Small apartment near the hospital where she lives with her daughter, Camila, and her cat, Gustavo.

Language(s) Spoken: English, Spanish

Accent: mostly californian accent, a hint of a colombian accent

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Face Claim: Cierra Ramirez

Hair Color: Black

Eye Color: Brown

Height: 5′1

Weight: -

Build: Curvy, but fit.

Tattoos: an EKG curve of her fiancés heartbeat on her rib cage alongside the name of their daughter: Camila.

Piercings: 6 on the ears (4 on the right ear and 2 on the left)

Clothing Style: edgy mixed with floral

Usual Expression: pouting her lips and furrowing her eyebrows in thought

Distinguishing Characteristics: None

HEALTH

Physical Ailments: -

Neurological Conditions:

Allergies: wasps and bees, lactose

Sleeping Habits: wherever and whenever (rarely), sleeps on her side hugging a pillow

Eating Habits: generally healthy, loves Spanish cuisine

Exercise Habits: goes running every morning, baby yoga at least once a week

Emotional Stability: Very stable, around an 8. She’s been through enough, she’s calm in a crisis. Life has taught her that she does not have time to break down, someone always needs her.

Sociability: A typical ambivert. She loves socializing but needs time to recharge her batteries after a lot of socializing.

Body Temperature: warm

Addictions: None

Drug Use: None

Alcohol Use: Drinks wine most evenings, can become too much wine

PERSONALITY

Label: -

Positive Traits: caring, easy-going, stable

Negative Traits: stubborn, realistic

Fears: abandonment, loneliness, heights

Hobbies: knitting, cooking, baking

Habits: bites her lips, cracks her knuckles

FAVOURITES

Weather: sunny

Colour: red shades (pink, purple, burgundy)

Music: latin dance music, anything that reminds her of home

Movies: Horror, drama, director Mike Flanagan, actor Leonardo DiCaprio

Sport: Soccer

Beverage: Coffee

Food: Bean Burritos

Animal: Pig

FAMILY

Father: Carlos Romero, 60, auto mechanic, biological father, colombian, the reason the family moved from Colombia to USA. Still lives in California

Mother: Gabriela Romero, 56, nurse, biological mother, colombian, Lucia’s rolemodel in life. Still live in California

Sibling(s): 3 siblings, her older brother Tomas (27) and her younger siblings the twins Julia and Jesus (22). They all still live in California.

Children: her biological daughter Camila who was born in January 2019, Camila’s father is Lucia’s fiancé and high school sweetheart who died in a hit and run in 2018.

Pet(s): Cat, Gustavo, lives in her apartment with Lucia and Camila. He’s 5 years old and Lucia and her daughter picked him up from a shelter a few months back.

Family’s Financial Status: not great. Lucia is a single mother with a nurse’s pay. They have enough money to get by, but just about.

#traumaintro

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scribblesandsnark · 3 years

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“Days Gone Bye” (TWD 1.1)

There’s so much about “Days Gone Bye” that is well done – not least because it operates primarily on silence and visuals rather than the preachy dialogue that takes over down the road. (Yes, season 2, I’m looking at you.) That said, not gonna lie, it took me bloody ages to figure out where the opening scene falls in Rick’s post-hospital, pre-Atlanta adventures. (And when I say ages, what I really mean is it took me about six or eight times watching the episode. Ye gods.)

I feel like Rick might have lucked out in the apocalypse. He’s a cop, so there’s obviously a uniform to wear as he waltzes off into the unknown. What would you opt to put on if you were in his shoes and didn’t have a uniform to default to? (Personally, I’ve realised I have a serious lack of practical apocalypse shoes on hand. Although I’m inclined to think that my high heels would come in handy for breaking dead limbs and stomping in undead brains, so there’s that to consider.)

Burnt out and/or flipped cars are popular for set design in post-apo/dystopian TV and films, as are buildings with blasted out/shattered windows, but until fairly recently I’d always viewed them as sort of abstract decorations without really registering how they might get that way. Indeed, in earlier drafts I spent some time snarking about how the zompocalypse must infect people’s driving abilities (a terrifying thought considering the actual driving ability of your average non-zompocalypse-affected person) and, to quote myself,

Given the amount of fire damaged/cars upturned/miscellaneous damage inflicted on cars, you’d think that fcking flamethrowers and grenades and rocket launchers were being wielded by random Georgian citizens as they frolicked through the streets escaping the dead.

But this year [2020], between the port explosion in Beiruit, which flipped cars with the force of the blast and turned high rises into ghouls with hundreds of gaping mouths, and the fires in California, leaving burnt-out hulks in their wake, it’s really come home to me how easy and careless that kind of destruction can be – and how swiftly it can come to be seen as a norm. No flamethrowers or grenades necessary.

Even the empty streets and the silence we’re greeted with in this opening scene, as Rick drives down a barren street and walks through an abandoned campsite, now has more resonance since the 2020 lockdowns brought that apocalyptic empty street into reality. I don’t think I’d ever really thought to walk down the middle of a street before, because, you know, traffic – and yet for a time, when there were no cars on the road and people were hidden away in their homes, that became a new normal. There was a freedom in knowing you could walk in the middle of the road with almost no risk, because all normal rules had been suspended indefinitely. Why stick to the sidewalk when you know a car’s unlikely to drive through?

I guess apocalyptic fiction only ever seems apocalyptic and unimaginable until the real world catches up.

There are a lot of things I could say about this opening scene, aside from the great visceral pleasure of getting absorbed by the camera work, feeling one with Rick as we witness the destruction, the abandonment, the death… There’s a stillness that I wish we saw more of in the later episodes. The introduction of the little walker girl sets up Rick’s hope and his despair in a wonderful way. Having the first appearance and first death of a walker be a little girl in her jammies really shows us just how much the world has been turned on its head – Rick’s a police officer, whose job is to help people (ideally, at any rate), and the realisation that in this new world the only way to help is to kill those he used to protect sets up a(n albeit inconsistent) through-line for the rest of the series.

So yeah, I could wax lyrical about the excellent beginning of “Days Gone Bye” – but because I’m a snarky arsehole, I’m going to talk about the dead. And I’m going to do so with the caveat that while I’ve read some of the behind-the-scenes commentary etc., I am not actually a Walking Deadhead, and consequently do not have at my fingertips the reasons why certain production decisions were made.

There’s an oddity in the first…two seasons? when it comes to cars and the dead, in that there are a startling number of people who seem to have just…died, while in the driver’s seat of their cars. We see two clear examples in the opening scene, as Rick passes between two cars, facing opposite directions, each with their own definitely dead driver slumped at the wheel. This appears, rather more egregiously, in the traffic snarl at the start of season 2, but for the moment we’ll stick with season 1. The camera’s shown us an abandoned camp, any number of cars that seem to have become part of stationary living. Yet we’ve got two dead people behind the wheel, in cars facing opposite directions. Now, I’m not disputing that people could die at the wheel. As the show later goes on to show us, you can get chomped, die, and resurrect within minutes. The problem is in the fact that a proportionally ridiculous number of people seem to die at the wheel. I suppose the logical conclusion is that said individuals stupidly had their windows down and their arms out, got chomped, and sent away the rest of the car’s occupants or anyone else in the vicinity, and then opted to just hang out in the car until death – at which point zombrain kicks in and any attempt to use a door handle is moot. (See, e.g., the number of zoms hanging out in closed cars.) Combine that with people more likely than this show’s putative heroes to shoot someone who’s been infected in the head before they turn and simply move on… Eh. I suppose it’s plausible. It’s just not very realistic. (Not least because oh my god, there are undead people, roll up your fucking window you fucking idiot. I know it’s hot in Georgia but roll those windows up, babe. You might sweat, but at least a stealth zom won’t use your hand for a snack. Gah.)

…not going to comment on the inconsistent zombehaviour in which a smolzom stops to pick up her teddy (see, later, other zoms climbing ladders, scaling fences, and using rocks to bash through windows – and in one instance, tugging her zip hoodie back up over her arm). Instead, my issue is with smolzom’s slippers. How has she not lost those by now??

(Total aside, but I’ve been bingeing L&O:SVU lately, and boy howdy do a lot of TWD people pop up like daisies there. Daryl, Shane, Noah, Dale, Beth, Lori, Amy, Tyreese, Lizzie, Liza (tbf from FTWD)…)

The fries that Rick and Shane are eating just look sad and wimpy and not worthy of eating. Do better, cops. (Do better, fries.) Really, it’s almost a surprise they’re not nomming doughnuts and coffee. There’s no doubt that the two are meant to be close, though; you have to be close to dab your fry in your partner’s ketchup (oh no, Lori).

Jon Bernthal is a good actor. I just wish they hadn’t given him a character who was so all over the place. (I’ll delve more into this in later episodes.) The first scene he appears in, after the opening credits, clearly sets him up as a chauvinistic dick, in contrast to pauvre Rick, whose relationship with his wife is suffering – and, critically, this is not because of Rick, but because of Lori. Her first introduction as a character is as a woman at odds with her husband – and the fact that her husband is in law enforcement really should not be glossed over here, not given America’s contentious relationship with LEOs. (We’ll get back to Rick and Shane eventually.) It’s no secret that spouses of people in law enforcement, or in the military, often struggle because their partners are always absent. I’m not trying to apply blame, here; law enforcement and military positions require a lot, and there is absolutely a high degree of trauma that can result due to the kind of work in which they engage. That said, the way Lori is set up as the antagonist from the get-go is just…distasteful. Rick is presented as reasonable, as wanting to try to make things right, as trying to do what Lori wants and yet always being the bad guy. The sad thing is that Lori is no one’s favourite character, and yet the character never had a chance. She was fucked over long before she actually turned up on screen, ensuring that our perspective of her is negative from the start. In a show that takes years to establish strong women, Lori stands out as a particularly egregious example of a woman, wife, and mother who realistically could have been a positive representation of a woman that instead was turned into a caricature everyone loves to hate. (We’ll get to Andrea eventually, I promise.)

I think perhaps, most egregiously, the fact that Rick says something like “It’s like she’s pissed at me and I don’t know why” sets up Lori as being irrational and Rick as being patient and anxious to fix things without knowing why. Lori is fucked in terms of character development from before she ever appears on screen and never has the opportunity to claw back some of that lost ground. Rick literally labels her as cruel – and cruel in front of their son, to boot. Who doesn’t view a person cruel to their child as a villain? Gah. Lori was absolutely fucked by merit of being Rick’s wife. And it’s really a shame, because every so often Sarah Wayne Callies absolutely kills it (no pun intended, but leading up to Lori’s death is perhaps the character’s best scene).

Of course, too, the whole convo between Shane and Rick sets up Shane as a “fuck me, women, man” – and yeah, absolutely, this attitude ends up extrapolated to his behaviour towards people in general. Yes, it bonds our two good ol’ boy policemen as lads who love each other and try to jive each other into better moods but are sensitive enough to listen to actual emotional shit… But ultimately it establishes Shane as a dick and Rick as a victim. Shane’s absolute disdain for women’s emotion/women talking about their emotions is in some ways bizarre when you look at his future relationship with Lori – and yet at the same time, that disdain echoes through all of anything he does with Lori, with Carl, and with Rick in future.

Okay, so, let’s move on to the fuckfest in which Rick gets shot. (Twice, Lord help me. These fuckers are alarmingly inept.)

Pro: they fling out the spikey “stop the bad guy” chains.

Con: …well, at least one dude doesn’t know about the safety, so that’s … not ideal. (His death: not surprising.)

Pro: Rick can apparently drive backwards with skill. I can’t even back around a corner.

Con: Leon is a fucking moron.

Pro: Rick and Shane disposed of their hats??

Con: what happens to the Black cop? Why is he the only one we don’t know the fate of? (See TWD’s treatment of Black actors in general…)

Pro: the car does not flip in their general direction.

Con: pretty much everything else in this scene.

I dunno about the average viewer, but I feel like the two apparently competent cops – Shane and Rick – should each be assigned to one of the shitty cops, rather than riding together, because really, do you want cops rolling in to save you when they clearly don’t know the first thing about gun operation? (Yes, as any number of viewers have pointed out, there’s no safety on the gun that Leon is holding, but the fundamental point is to articulate how much of a fuck-up he is as a cop. If you’re out in the field and don’t know how your piece works, should you even be out there? Don’t they give cops gun training? You’d hope so…yikes. Although I guess it does sort of set up the absolute nightmare of season 2’s gun control plot line. (Oh god, season 2. Help.))

Am I the only one amused by the name Leon Basset? He’s a cat and a dog at once!

It takes Rick and Shane and co. an embarrassingly long time to put down the baddies – one of whom manages to hit a cop in a spot not covered by his vest, after having been flipped violently upside down in a car crash. Seriously, the fact these dudes are able to crawl out of the car and start merrily firing away, much less actually hit someone, is fucking insane. Have they trained in post-car crash shooting? I have to conclude they have, because otherwise the fact they have better aim than the multiple cops shooting at them is absurd. (Also hilarious: bad dude #1 crawls out of the completely totalled, upside-down car with, like, a scratch on his cheek. Until bad dude #2 takes a shotgun blast the chest, he appears to have lucked out with almost zero wounds from the crash. Are we sure *they* aren’t actually already dead??) And really, Rick’s an idiot in this scene – his fellow cops are intelligently hanging out by the cop cars, using them for cover, while Rick displays a high degree of absolute idiocy in waltzing straight out into the open; it’s made even worse by the fact that he’s brandishing his cute little Colt Python revolver while at least two of the cops behind him are wielding shotguns.

Bad copping, Rick. Cop better, please.

There are several shots right before Rick gets shot the first time where the camera angle makes it appear that Shane has his shotgun pointed straight at Rick, including the actual frame where he *does* get shot in the vest – when he’s shot in the side closer to Shane than the unnamed assailant. Now, this is probably due to bad blocking, although you’d think Rick would know better than to walk directly between the baddies and his fellow cops when there’s active gunfire, since it makes him a liability (seriously, I doubt the efficacy of the cop training programme in whatever bit of Georgia this is), but with the benefit of hindsight you could also see it as foreshadowing the eventual deterioration of Rick and Shane’s relationship. Think about the scene in “Wildfire,” the penultimate episode of the season, when Shane and Rick are in the woods doing a sweep, and Shane sights down that shotgun at Rick walking through the trees ahead of him for a long moment before Dale turns up. In that later episode (and moving on increasingly through all of Season 2), Shane wants Rick out of the way, but it takes a very long time in terms of screen hours to actually get around to making his final move. Ironically, it’s only ever here in the opening episode, following Shane appearing to be aiming through Rick’s back at the assailants, that Shane ever successfully gets Rick out of the way. Unintentionally, of course, but there is nevertheless an odd parallelism created here due to blocking and weapon of choice.

Dammit, Shane.

You know, on thinking it over, I’m surprised that this police force functions at all. Yes, the dispatcher only noted two individuals in the car, but if I’ve learned anything from watching procedurals it’s that before stopping to chat about anything you clear every possible place an unknown assailant could be hiding. I’d think that would especially be the case for a car chase, because how accurately can you see inside a speeding car? (That’s a legitimate question; I have no idea.) And actually, entirely aside from the possible existence of a third assailant, if you shoot someone with a gun, surely the follow-up after they’ve gone down is to immediately approach, ensure any weapons are out of arms’ reach, ascertain if the individual is dead, and if not, call immediately for medical attention. I know the baddies took several shots to the chest, but come on. They also emerged almost entirely unscathed from a totalled car, so clearly they’re already marked as practically unkillable. And yeah, following procedure wouldn’t have allowed Rick to get dramatically shot for real after the first fake-out, but they could easily have had him get dramatically and unexpectedly shot by the third dude when following procedure and checking to see the other two were dead. Most of the dialogue could have been retained as well. But oh well. I guess the show sets up the failure of authority figures to function effectively from the very start; not following procedure proves to be useful to Rick, considering his future actions as leader of the Merry Undead crew.

Further proof these cops don’t know how to cop: literally no one notices the third dude crawl out of the car, not even to go “hey!” Dude literally has enough time to crawl out on his hands and knees, stand up, point a gun, and actually hit his target before anyone (aka Shane) so much as notices his existence. There are at least three other cop cars in the vicinity – the other car that arrived with Rick and Shane (the “wait what’s a safety” cop and his partner) and the two cars that were chasing the criminals in the first place (four more dudes) – and yet apparently no one noticed a third guy standing up with a gun in his hand. And yeah, I’ll cut some of them a bit of a break on the theory that they probably couldn’t see the guy until he stood up because of the car in the way, but with seven people standing, *someone* should have seen him. Given Shane’s angle when he shoots, the two cops behind him definitely should have noticed something. The fact that someone only shouts to move in after Rick gets shot is just…shoddy copping. Seriously, this is the kind of stupidity that leads you to wish characters would just die. I’m sure someone would miss these people, but the world isn’t likely to notice they’ve gone. (Also, Shane blowing away the third dude on the first shot is pretty much the only time any of these professionals have actually hit their target immediately. Glad to know the safety of the Merry Undead crew is in the hands of people with worse aim than people flung around in a totalled car. Hurray!)

I’ve decided that after Shane goes with Rick to hospital in the ambulance, the rest of the terrible cops get eaten by the reanimated baddie crew. It’s what they deserve, really.

Moving right along…

Rick has a frigging massive hospital room. Either he or Lori is secretly a drug runner, or else the local cops have some pretty sweet health insurance. Lucky for Rick; if he’d been in a shared room or on one of those corridors with multiple beds separated by curtains, he’d have been walker munchies asap. Unforeseen side-effects of the zompocalypse: healthcare edition.

I…am not going to deal with the time issues of Rick being in hospital and then waking up to a hellscape. Suspension of belief, yeah?

I think the weirdest thing in the cut from Shane with the flowers to Rick waking up on the bed is the silence. The background beep of the machines has vanished, telling us the power’s gone off; the off-screen background hospital noise – heard most notably in the undiscernible PA behind Shane talking – has also vanished. Rick’s harsh breathing under Shane’s words also vanishes when the shot does, though I’m not sure if that’s meant to suggest Rick is better, worse, or otherwise. The scene doesn’t show it, but it sounds vaguely like a ventilator is functioning when Shane’s in the room, which would suggest Rick’s still hooked up to breathing support following surgery; if that’s the case, Rick was taken off the ventilator to breathe on his own at some point after that, since he wakes up only with oxygen to his nose. The shift from all that background noise to absolute silence is incredibly effective, because though we can’t register it visually, and may not consciously notice the shift in audible sounds, it nevertheless conveys to the viewer that something has changed before Rick even opens his mouth.

Horrifying thought, though, being stuck in hospital in Georgia without aircon. (I’d melt. Not just in hospital, but in general. Heat and humidity are not my friends.) Frankly, I’m surprised Rick manages to get any words out of his mouth given he’s probably a wee bit on the thirsty side; my mouth goes a bit dry and I might as well be trying to talk through a damn desert for all the words I manage.

It’s kind of amusing that there’s a lingering shot of the clock on the wall. Yeah, it adds to Rick’s confusion and disorientation because dammit, he can’t even tell what time it is – and what is the world without timekeeping?? – but what are the odds it happened to run out of battery in time to inconvenience the last man standing in the zompocalypse? “Oh no! I’ve missed the end of the world! Ah well, better late than never.”

Helpful that Rick woke up during the day – can you imagine how disorienting it would have been to wake up in pitch dark with zero sound? Anyone who lives in a vaguely urban or suburban area is almost entirely unaccustomed to the dominance of both anymore; when I moved back to suburbia after living in a sort of downtown-y bit of an offshoot of the nearest city, I had serious issues for months because at night everything was so quiet and so dark, especially during the period when the house next door was unoccupied. Seriously creepy. (Although I’ve also seen raccoons, deer, and a coyote as well as the ubiquitous squirrels and birds and neighbourhood cats, so that’s exciting. Actually, weirdly, there’s a surprising dearth of animals, to say nothing of pets, floating around in the apocalypse. We see dogs occasionally as time goes on, running about the streets of Atlanta, eating the dead, getting eaten when times are desperate; deer pop up every now and then, and crows alight ominously all over the place, but…where are all the dead goldfish? The cats??)

Does Rick just have a super special water faucet in his private bathroom, or are the utilities still working? (Nice to immediately have a way to quench his thirst. It also apparently gives him super strength, since he doesn’t keel over again despite the probable weeks he’s been flopped out in bed not using his muscles.) Alexandria has running water, but if I recall correctly it was also designed as self-sustaining. Hospitals usually have generators, since if the power cuts for whatever reason (earthquake, hurricane, T-rex attack) you want to make sure a bunch of people don’t cut out as well as a result, but as far as I’m aware that…doesn’t affect the water systems? (I am definitely not a water engineer. Are there water engineers?) And since he later goes down stairs to get out of the hospital, is there really a system still functioning that pumps water up several stories when the electricity appears to be dead? Convenient water is convenient.

Obviously there must be a generator or some kind of power still functioning, since there are some lights on in the hall, complete with requisite horror-themed buzzing and flickering. (Help, I’m having flashbacks of my mother’s kitchen.) Useful, in any case, since otherwise Ricky boy would be tripping over the debris in the hall before he got to the nurse’s station. (I guess we’ll put his continued unclothed state down to disorientation, but if I looked out my door and saw that much of a hallway disaster, I think I’d find some shoes first. Yikes.)

The clock at the nurse’s station has also stopped. These are battery-run, guys, they don’t go off when the power does. Speaking of electronics, though – it’s 2010, right? Why doesn’t the nurse’s station have any computers? I mean, I got my first laptop in 2006 and I think we always had a family computer when I was growing up, so it’s not like this predates the computer era. Actually, that’s a point – in all of the places that the Merry Undead crew break into/crash at, I’m struggling to think of instances of computers, laptops, mobile phones, etc. Rick has an mp3 player at the start of season 4, when he’s in his farming phase, and Olivia in…season 6? still carries her long-dead mobile around, but aside from the CDC and actual hospital-related machinery, there’s a startling lack of technology. I dunno, it just seems odd. Like the lack of feral cats.

I know Rick wants to illuminate the situation (hah), but his first thought is RUMMAGE THROUGH SHIT TO FIND MATCHES. Like, seriously, open a drawer or something, there’s probably a flashlight in there somewhere? I suppose we couldn’t spend too much time on finding lighting resources, though, considering that would delay the DRAMATIC DISCOVERY of Rick’s first dead person.

On which point – what are the walker rules for nomming a corpse, and what are the rules for reanimation? If the only way to actually put down a walker is through the brain, why isn’t our eviscerated lady corpse in the hospital undead? Her head appears entirely intact, although we might be missing a wound on the far side. (Although jeez, given how many facial bites and tears we see throughout this series, including the little girl at the beginning of this episode, how has no one snacked on her delicious face??) A single bite will kill and turn you, and some people do manage to get an initial chomp and then remain unconsumed before turning, like Sophia and the little girl at the start of the episode. But is there a maximum limit of flesh that can be consumed before a person is thoroughly dead and won’t reanimate? A severed head sans body will reanimate, as we see later with Hershel and the Whisperers’ victims, so it seems like percentage of bodily consumption can’t factor in. Certainly bike lady later in this episode is missing her entire lower half without it having affected her walkerdom eternity. Yet we have people like hospital lady corpse and T-Dog in season 3 who get more or less entirely consumed without reanimating. And that’s without even talking about all of the dead who appear to have croaked in their cars without becoming undead despite the lack of a head wound. So where’s the boundary?

At least some of this we can probably attribute to early days inconsistencies, since most shows don’t dive in with all of the rules for new worlds and supernatural creatures laid out and set in stone, but the amount of consumption has always bothered me. From the other side, too, actually, because walkers appear to be wholly driven by a single purpose: consume. So when a walker has a nice juicy item in front of them with plenty of flesh left on it, why would they leave it behind to drift off after something else? Walkers are later shown to be drawn by light, by sound, by smell (operating on the suspension of disbelief that undead would retain any of the senses of sight, hearing, or smell, but never mind), but since the underlying drive remains to consume, why would light, sound, or smell be sufficient to draw them away from a meal directly in front of them? I could see it if, for instance, a corpse were being devoured by a whole bunch of walkers and so those who couldn’t easily get to the body went “welp fuck it, Imma go follow that gunshot I just heard,” or if a body has pretty well been picked to the bones, since then there’s not anything left to consume and the drive would push on to the next. But there are plenty of times over the course of the series when walkers abandon a perfectly delicious human with plenty of meat left on the bones in order to go chase something else. I’m not saying walkers are meant to be intelligent hunters or anything, since as Jenner shows us there’s just some sad little sparkles at the brainstem that are still operating, but if you boil it down to the most basic drive, walkers are driven to consume, and it makes little sense that they’d abandon something consumable in front of them that’s a sure thing to chase something else (I could see maybe abandoning an animal to chase a human, like dropping the pigs’ feet to chase after sirloin). But to leave something not completely eaten… Unless they get full? The human stomach can only contain so much at one time, so maybe there’s a default survival code that overrides the consumption drive to stop a walker eating if continuing to do so would explode the stomach. Although that doesn’t really make much sense, either, since any number of walkers are wandering around with their innards more or less exploded without it being a problem. Hmm. No real answers, there, other than that overriding logic of THE PLOT. I guess the only thing I can say with some confidence is that at least part of the walker digestive system seems to still operate, because when Rick and Daryl gut a walker to make sure it hadn’t eaten Sophia, not only is the woodchuck turned from fur and flesh into nasty black goo, the skull of the woodchuck has also been stripped clean. (Then again, I have difficulty envisioning how a walker manages to swallow an entire woodchuck skull, but that’s neither here nor there. Who’s up for woodchuck chilli??)

Anyway, back to Rick and his terrifying exploration of his new world of doom.

I have to laugh when I look at this disaster of a hospital. Did someone, in the last throes of the world ending, just take medical records and fling them everywhere? When is there ever that much paper floating around loose in a medical facility? Ye gods, Rick could learn confidential patient information! Nooooooo…

Ahem.

Like the episode’s opening scene of Rick working his way through the abandoned streets, silence is used to great effect from the time Rick wakes up through to his encounter with Morgan and Duane. The audience takes in everything along with Rick, unfettered by exposition. The silence, the dark, the emptiness, the dead – it all unfolds through Rick’s shocked and bewildered eyes. I mean, what would you do if you wandered down the hall and suddenly discovered a mostly devoured corpse? (I’d probably hurl. Ew.) Alas that so much of the series later gets bogged down by humans who never shut up. (Yes, Rick, I do mean you.)

Of course, in order to do that, the episode also, to quote CinemaSins, conveniently conveniences a bunch of its walkers. Where are they? Where they can’t hurt Rick before he knows what to do. Which is…kind of ridiculous. Logic be damned! I mean, if there’s one thing this show has been consistent about, it’s the inconsistency of its walkers.

Wait.

Man, I would not want to be walking across that floor barefoot. Ew. And ouch.

I’d be a terrible candidate for the apocalypse. I’m afraid of the dark.

I do like the background details of all the blood spattered on the walls. It’s more quiet filling in the blanks of what happened when Rick was in his coma – all that lovely show, don’t tell that later gets left by the wayside. BUT HE’S WALKING BAREFOOT THROUGH GLASS OH MY GOD PLEASE STOP AND FIND SOME SHOES AAAHHHHHHH.

PUT ON SOME DAMN SHOES.

DON’T DEAD OPEN INSIDE.

The fact that the doors are bound with a chain AND with a slat of wood just makes me laugh. I don’t think that wood’s going to do much if the chain breaks.

That’s a shockingly good manicure for a dead person. She might be stuck in a locked room for eternity but at least her nails look fab.

I know Rick is freaked out by the groaning and dead lady manicure and chained up door and blood all over the place, but charging into a pitch-black stairwell armed only with a fold of matches seems really stupid. This is perhaps the most egregious instance in this episode of convenient walker placement. The fact that Rick not only makes it down the stairs and outside without tripping and smashing his pretty face is one thing, but it’s really stunning that there are no walkers who got trapped between the stairwell doors. I guess maybe that was the military exit route so they cleared as they went (and…took the bodies with them, as well)? Then again, I’d rather rappel out a window using bedsheets than make my way through an endless stairwell of night, so…

I’m going to be *extremely* nitpicky here and wonder why Rick hasn’t noticed the smell. Between lady chewy and the not insubstantial blood puddle he walks by, you’d think there’d be at least a whiff of the smell of decomp, especially if the power and thus the aircon are out and humidity reigns supreme. Blood is a biological hazard, and it…is definitely not odourless, especially after it’s been sitting around for days. Rick does grimace when he first goes into the stairwell, implying he’s caught a whiff of the dead, but he doesn’t encounter anything going down the stairs that seems likely to have caused it (maybe the dead laid out that he encounters outside?). Scent’s an ongoing problem with this show, though; it crops up when it’s a useful narrative point, like smearing yourself with guts to escape detection or realising there’s an ocean of the dead nearby, but otherwise, not so much. Okay, yeah, maybe I can buy that after a while of living in close proximity you’d acclimate – humans are stunningly resilient – but given how quickly humans tend to get tetchy when in forced contact with disgusting smells, are you really telling me that Rick just…doesn’t notice? Or is his own “I’ve been in a coma for an indeterminate period of time” smell so bad that it overpowers the death smell? Yikes.

That said, the moments of tension when Rick’s match goes out and he’s left alone breathing in the dark of the stairwell are lovely. It carries the audience along with Rick’s fear and anxiety and confusion, knowing he knows something is hinky without actually knowing what’s happened and what’s going on, while as a viewer conversant with the horror genre you keep expecting something to happen, to lurch up out of the dark. That nothing does actually is a delightful defiance of expectations. And after a silence and darkness punctuated only by the dim, narrow light of a match and Rick’s harsh breathing, the overwhelming brightness of the outdoors combined with the sawing of the cicadas almost begs you to retreat back into the contained, comparative safety of the stairs rather than venturing out into the huge unknown of the world outside the hospital and its endless supply of the dead.

Shame that the hospital’s flickeringly dodgy power doesn’t include the EXIT sign. Aren’t those supposed to work even if nothing else does? Maybe it was crashed with whatever took out the clocks. (Hah.)

Every barefoot step Rick continues to take hurts. Like, there’s all kinds of shit on the ground, and I’m not just talking bits of wire and other stabby pieces of metal. There’s blood and guts – do you really want to be squishing that between your toes?? Also, I’ve let it go this far, but Rick is wearing his hospital gown backwards, and if he’s been in a coma he…really shouldn’t be wearing boxers (and should have been hooked up to a catheter, but I think watching Rick rip that out instead of pulling the IV from his hand might have been a bit too traumatising for the average viewer). So out here in the open air, with all the wrapped rows of the dead, we get our first obvious sign of decomp in the number of flies buzzing around, and some of the limbs look like they might be mottling from decomp (kind of hard to tell, though). I know I said I wasn’t going to get into the time problems, but I promise I’ll try to keep it to this paragraph. The fact that the hospital and town are both almost entirely deserted, as we’ll go on to see, certainly suggests a decent amount of time has passed, since it takes time for that many people to up and leave somewhere. (I’m really surprised that in this show they only ever seem to encounter major traffic pile-ups on freeways or similar; if the people in my town were trying to skedaddle, we’d all get stuck on the road outside my neighbourhood. Hell, until they put in roundabouts it backed up horrendously just for getting to the schools in the morning! You’re telling me everyone was able to get out of their neighbourhoods to get to the freeway in the first place? Bullshit.) The state of the dead half-lady Rick runs into outside also seems to support that, since she’s pretty decomposed (though weirdly looks more mummified than not, which is odd considering Georgia’s on the humid rather than the dry end of the heat spectrum). On the other hand, though, the state of decomp of the lady in the hospital hallway and the corpses outside the hospital point to not much time having passed; they’re still juicy, if you like. As the following episodes will go on to show via characters’ minimal clothing and copious amounts of sweat, Georgia is hot and humid, and I hate to tell you this, guys, but if you keel over in a climate like that, you decompose quickly. You bloat up and your skin slides right off, and it’s all extremely disgusting. But here there’s a stunning amount of intact left on these corpses considering, again, it’s Georgia. (Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, so my observations might not be medically valid. Then again, the very idea that dead people are wandering around eating people is … also not medically valid.) In any case, Rick should be walking through a soupy mess of liquefying human tissue seeping through the sheets wrapped around the dead (yum. One more reason to acquire footwear, mate). The bodies piled in the truck should be sliding over each other as decomposing human makes the sheets slippery. I suppose that’s a major flaw in zombie construction in this particular zompocalypse; it forgot to take account of actual decomposition in the specified climate. (The smell also ought to be enough to pretty well bowl Rick over, but again, everyone apparently has the opposite of super smell in this series, so we’ll let it slide). Of course, if corpses actually decayed like normal, they’d be rid of most of the zombies in no time.

There’s a weirdly small amount of damage that’s been done to this hospital, from what little we’re shown. The hospital scene in “TS-19” suggests that bombing of the hospital, or nearby, has commenced, but all we see is a relatively small chunk of building missing, rather oddly in the middle of a wall, a downed ambulance sign, and then a bit more horizontal damage behind the military encampment when Rick gets up the hill. You’d think they’d have kept bombing, not least to eradicate the piles of corpses, but unfortunately we never really get to see much of the early days and the military reaction; we get snippets about bombing Atlanta and see Shane and Lori watch as Atlanta’s struck, and when Daryl and Carol stalk Grady Memorial there’s at least one shot of the city where it’s clearly suffered aerial bombardment. But there’s really not a lot of engagement with the drastic measures taken to try to control the situation, just the idea that those existed. Fear the Walking Dead, from my understanding, doesn’t really do much to deal with this either, despite ostensibly aiming to initially tackle the very period of time that The Walking Dead skipped over. So that’s a shame.

The military encampment is odd. Surely you’d only bail on things like helicopters and Humvees if you absolutely had to, since otherwise they seem to me like the first thing you’d hop into as an escape route (and certainly in season 3, the Governor indicates that military playthings are highly prized). Sure, maybe your random joe couldn’t commandeer a helo, but surely joe schmo could yoink a Humvee. I mean, if I were fleeing a hospital and there were a whole military encampment hanging out in the back yard that no one was minding, I’d be inclined to hijack something and zoom away. Operation Save the Toes! If a herd had passed through, surely we’d see more damage to what remains (for instance, would that nice tent still be standing?). Points, though, for framing of Rick against the broken military might that both visually and metaphorically shows us how small he is. Okay, so I have to ask: how far away from hospital did Rick and his family live? Because he appears to walk for quite a while – with a bullet wound that’s still healing! – and their house looks like it’s firmly in a nice suburban neighbourhood. So did he walk several miles to dead half-lady and steal her bike, or did he literally just walk down the street? Maybe the unhappiness in the soles of his feet is just being overwhelmed by, well, everything. All I can say is that I ran away from home barefoot around age 8 or 9 and ended up with such bruised and blistered feet – after maybe twenty minutes of walking total – that I couldn’t go to school for several days because I couldn’t walk. And I wasn’t even recovering from a gunshot wound!

(Also, can we talk about that hospital wristlet. That sucker should have waaay more info on it. Really, if nothing else I think we can conclude that the hospital Rick was admitted to post-shooting spent all their money on giant rooms and then forgot about actually hospitalling. Do we blame that on Georgia, America, or bad TV writing?)

CORAAAL!!

Further proof of the rapid adaptation of the human species: Rick spots the bike and goes AH YES MINE, sort of clocking the half of a lady ten feet away without really being fussed; maybe an hour (?) into his re-entry into this waking nightmare of a world, he’s already become so numbed to dead bodies hanging about that it barely registers until she moves. And, mind you, while he’s seen plenty of dead people, and seen undead fingers poking through the crack between doors, this is the first undead person he’s actually seen. His reaction to just…flee is very much in line with his general “holy fuck okay moving on” attitude that we’ve seen thus far; each thing is weirder and worse than the last, layering up the horror as a surreal reality that’s made even more bizarre by the utter lack of any living people to ground him. While his collapse and “is this real?” moment at the Grimes household is, I think, a bit misplaced, it’s also really understandable because everything he’s seen is so far out of the normal realm of expectation that the only logical reaction is to question reality. He’s almost certainly both dehydrated and undernourished, on top of which he’s been utilising muscles that haven’t been used in some time; probably the most unrealistic aspect of his first hours after waking up is that he actually manages to get out of hospital and home so easily, rather than keeling over somewhere in the street and becoming Walker O’s (part of a balanced breakfast!). Although I feel like I would have hit the “wake up” whacking yourself in the head point long before getting home and realising my family wasn’t there. I think I’d be more likely to believe I’d walk through the door and my family would be out than to believe that all of the dead or the moving dead were real. Obviously the latter for Rick makes the fact his family isn’t home that much more surreal and distressing, because thus far he appears to have awoken to a world where there are no living people aside from himself, thus leading to the conclusion that if there are only the dead and himself, Lori and Carl must be dead – but I think I’d crack before getting to that point. (Though I sometimes wake up in the morning and literally can’t tell reality from what happened in my dreams, so who am I to judge?)

Weirdly as well, there’s very little in the Grimes household that tells me anything about any of the family. I know Lori and Carly frolicked off with Shane super fast when everything went to hell and took pictures and photo albums, but this house (as excellent as it is) looks very much like a set. There’s nothing really personal. It’s weird. Who are the Grimes, even? It reminds me of my ex-boyfriend’s flat. No pictures, no posters, no books (!!), nothing on the walls, no trinkets or files or any personal touches at all (please don’t be a serial killer eek). No wonder Carl settles into the apocalypse quickly and Lori has no personality other than being a disaster. They had practically no pre-pocalypse life other than “I’m Rick’s child” and “I’m Rick’s bitchy wife.”

As Rick walks back out of his empty house, you can see that the letterbox appears to be full of envelopes. Do you suppose Lori wrote a bunch of letters to people on the off-chance they’d get picked up after she and Carl left town with Shane, or do you think the post carried on even after everything else collapsed? (Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds… Nor zombies either, apparently. Now I really want a series of shorts following a postman as she strives to deliver every letter she can (well, not the bills, obvs) even as the world continues to collapse around her head.)

Okay, so if you get home and discover your family is not there, and everything is topsy turvy and haywire and omg what the hell is even happening – who just goes and plonks outside to think? Surely you’d think “hmm, okay, maybe I should check the neighbours”?

Are overhead fans on the porch a southern thing? I can’t imagine having one here in the Pacific Northwest.

Can we talk again about how absurdly lucky Rick is when it comes to the existence of walkers in this town? The only ones in the hospital are literally chained behind doors with an explicit warning to piss off. The only one he encounters on his journey from hospital to home has no legs, and thus poses minimal threat to a man able to walk (or cycle, as the case may be). The first mobile walker he sees is in the distance and hasn’t noticed him yet, and before he has a chance to shout out and put himself in danger, Morgan and Duane ex machina themselves into position to not only take out the walker but also provide medical support. (I guess Rick’s just been running on…adrenaline? And yes, I know Rick also takes a shovel to the face – we’ll ignore the fact that there’s no apparent lasting damage from a shovel to the face, good grief – but that’s a far cry from the fate of having his flesh ripped from his bones before he even knew what walkers were. Boy, would that suck.) A whole bevy of walkers turn up that evening, ostensibly because Morgan had fired a gun, but then they all vanish by morning aside from a single walker still skulking around for the convenience of whacking practice. (I wonder what would have happened if the single walker still hanging around had been Morgan’s wife. Somehow I doubt he’d have been as willing for Rick to practise his new world survival skills on her.) Quite aside from his dubious hospital survival, Rick Grimes should be dead. I really wish this could be attributed to his cop training (but we know that shit is dubious as fuck), but unfortunately he’s just a dude wandering aimlessly who gets super lucky. Sigh.

(I can’t be the only one who looks at the walker Rick sees and thinks he must be either a mortician or a goth kid. That much black? When it’s apparently warm enough in Georgia that Rick is totally fine in your not-standard-issue hospital gown and boxers? Also, thanks camera for keeping the walker blurred out so we can’t tell he’s dead (did you save on makeup?), but in retrospect it kind of makes you wonder if Rick has eye problems. Now there’s a real problem in the apocalypse.)

Two things about Duane’s first appearance. First, he was inches away from Rick; how did he get enough room to swing a shovel? Second, wtf is Duane doing shrieking for his dad? He’s been living in this world for at least a month and his mum’s a zom: he has to know that walkers are drawn to noise, yet he’s yelping out like a wounded dog here. Apocalypse better, kiddo.

Rather hilariously, it’s when Rick sees Morgan casually shoot the walker through the head that he starts to panic. OMG HE KILLED A DUDE. I feel like with everything Rick’s seen so far he ought not to jump so quickly to the assumption that Morgan killed another living dude. Then again, he did just get whacked in the face with a shovel and should probably have a concussion, so…

Convenient that Rick passes out when Morgan threatens to kill him if he doesn’t answer, since given his current state I’m not sure he could have done coherently. Note to self: when faced with difficult or awkward questions, keel over. It’ll give you time to think.

The first conversation Rick and Morgan have when Rick first wakes up tied to the bed raises far too many questions related to how long Rick’s been in hospital and how bad his wound is. I…am not going to spend much time on this, because it’s a never-ending chase with no real answers. This is the scene that rips us out of the glorious silent exploration of Rick’s new apocalyptic world and thrusts us into exposition, which at least in this case has a reason given Rick’s total ignorance of the current state of the world – but it’s still exposition.

Anyway, briefly – didn’t Rick get hit from behind, under the armpit? Shouldn’t Morgan have had to change two dressings? But there’s only one, and moreover, Rick’s original bandaging didn’t come close to covering where the original gunshot entry wound was. Magical moving bullets! Mystery wounds! Exposition! Hurray!

Ugh, reasons never to work on The Walking Dead: you have to film in Georgia, and it’s hot and disgusting and everyone sweats, even at night. Blech. Thanks but no.

Morgan’s stupid use of the gun to kill the walker provides helpful exposition, but his reason for why he did it – “it all happened so fast, I didn’t think” – doesn’t make much sense. It was one walker, with no others anywhere in the apparent vicinity, and while his son had potentially whacked down another walker, there wasn’t exactly an urgent need to use the gun. And while I’m not sure that Rick would be able to articulate the idea that what Morgan killed was something other than a living human being, the fact that he’s so insistent that it must have been a man speaks to his desperation to cling to anything resembling normalcy, while unfortunately ignoring his experience since waking up in the hospital. What do you do when you don’t have the vocabulary to articulate what you’ve seen?

As an aside, Rick chained up to the headboard wearing his boxers and hospital gown kiiinda looks like he’s ready for someone’s doctor dom fantasy playtime fetish. Good thing Morgan’s not into that, right?

There’s something deliciously hilarious about Morgan warning/threatening Rick with his tiny little knife when the backdrop is such delightfully mundane floral pillowcases. Laura Ashley does not approve!!!

Why couldn’t Morgan have found Rick a snuggie? Or, I don’t know, slippers? Or socks? Or an actual bathrobe? He’s stuck with blankie chic.

I do love that shot though.

Sidebar, your honour, I have a digression to indulge.

Morgan’s “friend, you need glasses” is kind of hilarious given that now they’re into the apocalypse, sucks to be you if you have non-perfect sight or any medical problems requiring medication or other intervention. There’s a surprising lack of your average American with lots of health problems on TWD, perhaps in part as commentary that many of those individuals would have stood no chance against the relentless people-eating horde. While the introduction of Connie offers a welcome insight into how someone with a disability is able to survive in an apocalyptic situation, the show on the whole oddly glosses over that whole issue. America is not a healthy country (we weren’t pre-Covid and we’re certainly not doing well lately). Nearly half of Americans take prescription drugs, according to a survey from the National Center Health Statistics. Some of these are vital, in that without them the person would die sooner rather than later; others treat conditions that won’t kill you immediately if untreated, but will kill you eventually or will cause significant problems as time goes on; and still others treat conditions that, while usually debilitating, you can usually survive and be at least vaguely functional. Some medications can be substituted by herbal remedies (digitalis, marshmallow root), but many can’t. I have chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, and deal with chronic pain and migraines; I take daily meds to counter both pain and migraine, as well as an assortment of supplements (and hayfever tablets, oh god) that I *can* function without, but which to do so would seriously suck. Where are these people in the apocalypse? There are so many people with disabilities or on medication who would be able to keep functioning as potentially beneficial partners in the post-apo world. Where are they? And where are the characters grappling with the choice of whether to sacrifice themselves or let their family and friends deal with an ongoing and worsening condition? The only times we really encounter that sort of thing are Milton’s test subject Michael Coleman, who ultimately dies of prostate cancer, the vatos’ little senior citizen safe haven, and Lilly and Tara’s father, all of whom are elderly. We only ever get a little blip of each of those instances, as well, in what appear to be relatively comfortable and secure locations, so we really don’t get a sense of how their frailties or differing abilities play into the survival of those around them. Hershel’s worst health problem was the leg amputated post-walker bite, and that ultimately was irrelevant to how he lived and died. I might be missing someone – I probably am – but it’s an oddity, one that I suppose arises out of both a narrative need – the elderly and disabled and sick are often viewed as less capable and thus less interesting except as an emotional zinger – and a practical in-world need that wants to focus on the strongest and most active rather than devoting time to people who’ve not only had to adapt emotionally but also physically and psychologically. I’ve got a main character in a post-apo situation who’s not only hauling herself through cities and forests with a bad lower back and weak hip and reliance on a cane but who also is unquestionably the leader of her group, because while her disability is not ideal in this post-civilised world, it doesn’t negate her value. The apocalypse doesn’t eradicate every non-fit, medicated adult, and leaving them out or using them as plot conveniences isn’t ideal. To get back to Morgan’s glasses comment – a quick google search suggests that around 61 percent of the population is reported to wear reading or visual aids at least occasionally. This probably isn’t nearly as many once you wipe out the need for reading glasses among the older population (and, you know, people in their 30s like me… *sob*), but nevertheless there’s a significant portion of the population who can’t see very well without glasses (and let me tell you, good luck getting contacts during the apocalypse). My sister is pretty well blind as a bat without glasses and has been since she was in middle school. Imagine how differently things might have played out if Carl’s vision had been super shitty.

Sidebar complete.

I like the all-male hand-holding over the meal prayer. There’s something sweet about it, a clinging to old habits even in chaos.

It’s interesting that Morgan asks Rick if he even knows what’s going on, because by this point it must be at least a month into apocalypse (per Morgan’s line later in the episode that the gas mains have been down a month or so) – what are the odds you’d run into a random person so utterly clueless a whole month in? I guess maybe the hospital gown, boxers, and bare feet clued him in.

I’ve been thinking this all episode: Rick’s beard is beautifully trimmed for a dude who’s been in a coma.

Rick’s response to Morgan’s “yep, the undead, they’ll try to eat you” line is so blasé it’s funny. Like he’s just so overwhelmed by everything of the day that zombie cannibals or whatever are hardly worth getting fussed over. He jumps right from sort of reacting “oh dead people” to going “so they’re out there? Okey-day then”. Meanwhile, Morgan’s cool air comment about drawing zoms never occurs again, and there’s such a time gap between the firing of the gun and the walkers skulking around outside the house that it’s odd they’re still hanging around. Actually, you see this too at the end of season 2, when the herd of walkers wanders out of Atlanta and eventually ends up on Hershel’s farm – they turn when they hear the gunshot, but how good are their powers of perception? Like, they’re attracted to sound – fine, whatever, I can buy that, fine – but a gunshot, for instance, is a single instance of noise that then dies away. If you’re not in the immediate vicinity, as a walker, how do you continue knowing where to go? The show suggests that when zoms are drawn by noise it’s like a magnet, pulling them in unerringly to the source of the sound, but how do they continue to know which is the right direction for ages after the sound has ceased? It’s not like they have a compass or GPS.

Aww, we’re still early enough in the apocalypse that car alarms still work.

Morgan’s wife makes me sad in a lot of ways. Obviously she’s undead and roaming around looking for her next snack and her son and husband love and miss her and find her undead state to be traumatic, but it’s not that specifically so much as the consequences down the line. Morgan and Duane stayed in the same house where Mama Morgan died, meaning they’re regularly within eyeshot, thus inflicting pain and anguish, or suffering the threat thereof, long after her actual death. (Yes, of course, they had a secure and safe base in the house and didn’t want to move, but still.) Morgan couldn’t kill his wife when she dies, the first time around (although that makes me wonder at what point she was booted outside, considering she died in the house; did they chuck her dead body out the front door before she turned, or wait until she was ambulatory and forcibly eject her?). This – I guess you could call it weakness – proves tragic. When Rick gives him a rifle, he sets out deliberately to kill her and still can’t. And then, because Morgan repeatedly failed to put her down, she ultimately causes the death of Duane – and Morgan takes the blame, flipping into a state of madness that operates until he meets the cheesemaker. (I’ll come back to Morgan in later posts. I have *thoughts* about him as both killer and pacifist.)

How do you grieve loss or try to move on if you can’t actually lay the dead to rest? It’s a question that I don’t think gets explored enough in the show, because most of the time everyone is so concerned with pressing on and surviving that grieving is set aside. I’m not going to go into this here, because there’s ample opportunity to do so in later episodes without needing to jump seasons ahead.

Early days: walkers attempting to work doorknobs are a thing, rather than just pawing at the door.

Man, I miss having a bat. I have a wok and a kitchen knife to protect against the undead these days…and assorted high heels, should it come to that. (Oh god the humanity. My shoes would be ruined!!)

There’s something adorable about Rick wearing a damn headshield mask as he waltzes out the door in the morning with his wooden baseball bat and WHITE T-SHIRT to whack the undead dude on the front walk to death. Where did the headshield mask come from? Did the Drakes just happen to have one in the back closet in case of a pandemic? (*sad hollow 2020 laughter*) In any case, it’s a laughable contrast with rest of the show; by the end of the season, no one gives a shit about facial protection or protecting the skin. Potential backsplatter? Eh, give it here, I bathe in zomgoo for the health benefits daily.

Lori appears to keep a glass jar of pinecones on a shelf. She also apparently took framed photos from the wall in addition to the photo albums. At least one photo album makes an appearance in this season, but unless Morgan repurposed the empty frames for defensive purposes, there’s no indication ever of what Lori did with those framed photos. (Sadly, the photo album is lost when they flee Hershel’s farm. One assumes, anyway, since Carl later gets hold of a single photo for Judith because there are no others.)

Atlanta as a safe haven/refugee centre is…well, it’s a plot point to get Rick where he needs to go. Realistically, you don’t want to go into an urban centre when there’s a pandemic. In America, Covid is now hitting rural areas with force, but pretty much all of the early outbreaks and spread were in urban areas. And that’s without the added complication of the dead getting back up again! Cities obviously have more resources, but… I dunno. Although, to be fair, unlike Covid or the flu or the common head cold, zombieism appears only to transmit through bites (since we don’t yet know that everyone is infected!), like rabies, rather than being so contagious that if someone breathes on you, you’re sick. But even then – even accepting that people think that it’s passed solely through bites and not any other way – being bitten doesn’t necessarily mean instant death (Carl is perhaps the most obvious example of this, I think, but Jim and Deanna both also survive for a time after being chomped), so you could conceivably be bitten in a non-obvious area (your side, for instance), waltz into a populated area with only minor symptoms or hop on a plane and then be released into the population of another country, only to then actually die and start to nom people. Eh.

How many sets of keys do the Grimeses have??

I’d suck in the apocalypse because without showers I’d be so sad.

Ah, bonding is always best when undertaken half-naked and wrapped in a pristine white towel.

Duane is adorable. Why couldn’t we get a show following Duane and his sass?

This episode is almost entirely about following Rick in his discovery and acceptance of this new, batshit life, but in some ways I wish we’d got a snippet of flashback with Morgan and Duane and Lady Morgan. It wouldn’t really have fit into the episode, but I can dream.

Rick showers and puts his uniform on rather than civvies. The implication here is that the uniform retains a certain power – protect and serve – so anyone living who sees him would know that here’s a person whose job is to help. Contrasts sharply with the police officer in the second episode of Fear the Walking Dead who’s stockpiling water and clearly has already shifted over to an every-man-for-himself mindset. In light of America’s current epidemic of problematic police officers, it’s interesting to contemplate differences had TWD first aired in 2020. Or had it aired, for instance, in the Pacific Northwest or Northeast, which generally tend to have a more left-skewing and police-condemning attitude.

I mentioned guns briefly earlier, but seasons 1 and 2 have this cute “must respect guns” thread underlying any use of a firearm. Here Duane wants to learn to shoot, but both Morgan and Rick make sure to emphasise that he has to respect the weapon – “Yeah, it’s not a toy, son, when you pull the trigger you gotta mean it.” Season 2 has Shane (and Andrea) flouncing about articulating THOUGHTS about gun ownership and use and training. After that? Welp, fuck it. You get a gun! And you get a gun! And you get a gun! To be clear, I do think if you’re going to handle a gun you should know how to do so properly and safely, but in the context of the Walking Dead it’s an early seasons thing that’s totally dropped by season 3 as the zompocalypse marches on and nobody got time for that shit anymore. (I’ll get around to discussing the shooting practice in season 2 later…)

I don’t know if it’s just the camera angles, but when Rick remarks that a lot of the armoury is gone, it seems like a massive understatement – from what we see, almost all of the guns are gone. Which might be a prop issue (although given the number of guns floating around on this show you wouldn’t think that would be a problem), but does sort of make season 3’s trip to the ol’ hometown with Michonne and Carl kind of funny given that all the guns are gone if there were never really any left to begin with. (And, thinking about it, when Rick is trying to justify going back into Atlanta to get Merle, he comments that he cleaned out the armoury, which makes it even odder that Rick decides to go back for weapons against the Governor et al.

“Conserve your ammo. It goes faster than you think, especially at target practice.” Unless you’re in season 2 on Hershel’s farm, in which case everyone has so much ammo that they’ll never run out.

I know Rick is still in early days of understanding the apocalypse, but it’s still sweet, and ridiculous, that he gives Morgan a radio with the expectation they’d continue chatting and catch up with each other. It also highlights Morgan’s downfall: the unwillingness to get involved in others’ business. He could go with Rick and probably be safer, not least because there’s two grown men to protect one boy, but he instead waits – ostensibly to up his and Duane’s shooting proficiency, but ultimately we see that it’s very much about the unfinished business with his wife.

As an aside, it seems the police station was useful for (1) hot showers and (2) guns and ammo. I’ve never been in a police station, but weirdly I’d have thought they’d have supplies stashed away. Rick and co. didn’t even have a gander at what might be there. But again, early days, I suppose!

RIP Leon Basset.

I love how Morgan hammers the shit out of the wood he’s using to barricade the door. I guess the zoms are conveniently faffing about elsewhere. Especially funny given that he then goes upstairs to snipe walkers, none of whom seem to have noticed the hammering. Are hammers just soundproof??

Christ Morgan’s wife is beautiful.

There’s something…poignant about Rick tracking down the first living dead person he ever knew in order to put her to rest. It’s the same kind of early apocalypse care that we see in “Guts,” when he stops to look through the walker’s wallet so they know the life of the undead man they’ve killed. His sorrow and tendency towards mercy are both here clearly indicated and provide a sharp contrast with the man he becomes. The mercy and drive to do what’s right is what results in him feeling he has to go back to Atlanta to get Merle, what makes him so adamant that they don’t kill the living and should strive to go where there might be a cure, what drives him to hop off the road and go after Sophia and to keep optimistically searching for her. There’s a sweet innocence there that still exists because he came to the zompocalypse after the fact and still retains a strong need to do what’s right that time living in zombieland will beat out of him. The parallelism in this section of the episode, which switches between Rick and Morgan’s actions after leaving the police station, also highlights the difference between having to kill someone you love vs. killing someone you don’t know (or, rather, have no personal attachment to; Rick kills Leon Basset with few qualms, but also frames it as mercy).

Rural Georgia looks hot. And sticky. Thank God my sister didn’t end up moving to the south.

Are the cracks in the windshield and the dirty appearance of the glass supposed to be the result of the apocalypse, or just their police department being a bit short on funds? (Also, it’s Rick’s face in a cracked mirror! Premonitions of mad Rick??) At least Rick’s got his windows rolled up like a sensible person.

Initial observations of Camp Outside Atlanta:

Dale is wearing glasses that I *think* never appear again.

Amy is carrying an armful of kind of hilariously long twigs.

WHY IS AMY WEARING WHITE TROUSERS IN THE APOCALYPSE THIS IS A TERRIBLE DECISION.

Who on earth is on watch on the RV? From a distance it looks, frame-wise, like either Shane or Daryl, but Shane makes his appearance to the side and Daryl is off on a hunt, so who’s this? Actually, in general, it’s kind of amusing that there’s a whole slew of other people in this camp (mostly older/heavier people, based on visibility) that are just sort of vaguely there until the walker attack. It’s actually a shame, really that they didn’t do anything other than plonk some irrelevant extras in the background; it means that when they all die, it means pretty much nothing as a viewer. (I’ll come back to this.)

Shane has great hair. Shame he shaves it off later…

It’s difficult to see when you’ve watched the episode multiple times, but we don’t know what either Lori or Carl look like before they appear in the quarry group receiving Rick’s radio call – we only actually realise who they are when Rick flips down his visor. And, actually, despite what I said above, Lori’s first appearance is not that bad. She observes that there are others – Shane sort of dismisses it with “oh well we knew that.” And then she says that they ought to put up warning signs on Highway 85 to warn people away from the city. Which is smart. Yes, it’s potentially dangerous, but as we’ll go on to learn, they’ve sent people to Atlanta with no previous problem, on top of which the road into town is absolutely empty – Glenn’s exit from Atlanta on the same road Rick rode in on tells us that the road Lori is talking about here is the same road Glenn and Rick have been in and out on. And this is the first time that Shane puts forward an argument that’s just plain wrong. He says they’ve had no time. Okay, fair enough – but they have a group of five literally in Atlanta as they speak. And based on Glenn’s exit path on the way back to the quarry, that group of five followed the same route in. Setting aside the question of why the hell their scavenging team apparently couldn’t stop along the road to place a “Stay Away, Walkers Ahead” sign, Shane’s argument is that they can’t spare the time to place the sign, because it’s “a luxury we can’t afford.” This makes no sense. As we’ll go on to see, this isn’t the first time someone from their group has gone into Atlanta (although it turns out that Glenn, their “go to town” man, has previously only gone himself, without anyone else). Everyone else up by the quarry is basically just fucking around doing nothing. The fact of the matter is that putting up a sign to warn people away from the city isn’t a luxury, but rather a helpful, logical, and overwhelmingly safe thing to do. Shane’s objection comes, in the first instance, from a man reluctant to relinquish control; it’s clear that Shane is viewed as a decision maker with practical knowledge the other survivors lack, and as a result of that knowledge is viewed as a leader. It’s an important if subtle moment in which Shane is established as the leader of the camp, a position that he then unwillingly gets shoved out of when Rick turns up. It is interesting, though, that here Lori is gung-ho about leaving their mountain and going down to put up a sign, while she later adamantly vetoes her husband going back to Atlanta. Shane’s argument is that no one goes anywhere alone, but given later events, it seems that Shane’s objection is not that someone wants to go warn people away from Atlanta, or that they want to risk Atlanta itself, as much as it is his desire to not let Lori be in danger. And Lori’s frustration at Shane’s decree is obvious – and yet she relents and gives in once kisses are to be had. Shane following Lori to verbally whack her for even thinking of putting herself in danger just points up Shane’s chauvinism. NOT LEAST BECAUSE, OH MY GOD, HE CALLS HER GIRL. SHE’S A WOMAN, YOU TWAT. If the argument had been made that Lori shouldn’t go because she has a son, and she shouldn’t risk him being an orphan – that I could understand. But Carl is so side-lined here that he’s really just a reason to make Shane and Lori stop kissing. Sigh.

God I wish Lori would have socked Shane in the eye. He does have nice hair, though.

Also, those are some *really* nice giant tents. Although my best friend’s adventures have made clear to me that I have unrealistically small expectations about tents.

I’m a little concerned about the condition of the windows of Rick’s cop car. They’re…disgusting. The driver’s side front and back windows look equally awful – I guess it’s good the apocalypse happened, because good luck seeing traffic out those windows. His windshield doesn’t look much better. Is over-enthusiastic pollen a thing in Georgia??

So, about the dead couple whose farm Rick encounters/steals a horse from. They’re both dead, woe, sadness, etc. What I’m fascinated about is that dude took the time to shoot his wife, and then decided to write a message IN HER BLOOD on the damn wall. I mean, okay, you wanted absolution for killing your wife and being about to kill yourself. But you kill your wife and then use her blood to write on the wall??

Signs that Rick is still in early days acceptance: he doesn’t enter the house with two clearly dead people (and thus likely no walkers) and then has a sit on a bench, throws up, and then goes in search of alternative transportation.

…that poor horse.

Is horse-taming a southern thing? I feel like I’d be terrified enough of the giant heavy horse to…not approach it.

Iconic shot!

It’s stunning that Rick has encountered zero walkers aside from the little girl. Works with the need for the story to move along, but is silly in terms of later walker distribution (ignoring season 2, which is its own special disaster).

Is everything flat in Georgia? Legitimate question. The extent of my knowledge of Georgia is a flight transfer through Atlanta. (Atlanta airport employees are all super nice, though.)

There’s something about the two zomdudes hanging out on a bus that cracks me up. How do walkers decide to just park it somewhere? “Ah yes, I recognise this bus, I’ve taken it to work every day for ten years. Definitely the best place to spend eternity.” It’s also odd but entertaining that the two dudes on the bus are repeatedly seen once Rick is in the horde and then in the tank. Why these two? Yeah, they’re the first Atlanta walkers he passed by, but they’re not exactly presented as special or important enough to appear repeatedly. Rick pops out of the top of the tank and whacks the one across the face, and the other skulks around the base of the tank and makes eye contact.

One of the weirdest and most uncomfortable moments in this episode, for me, is the two crows nomming the dead military officer. Caw caw! There’s a mild horror at the thought of ever being carrion. Though I guess everyone is just food for something else…

I can forgive Rick for a number of odd decisions based on the fact that he’s really only been awake for, what, two days? Maybe three? He’s still adapting to the new world, learning its rules, etc. But he rides a damn horse into a major city and is just generally not concerned. He comments to the horse when they pass the bus with the two walkers that it’s no big deal, they can outrun them – and yet somehow doesn’t think ahead about the existence of the dead in a major city. I guess it can sort of be attributed to the fact that he’s encountered remarkably few dead, plus in his brain Atlanta and its refugee centres are the answer to everything. He just hasn’t actually thought about it.

And, again, I’m stunned at the amount of abandoned military equipment. I guess the moral of the story is “don’t trust the military, don’t trust the government, they can do fuckall to help you.”

So Rick sees a helicopter. When he meets the others after Glenn rescued him, they ridicule the idea that helicopters still exist. Which brings up two instances. Firstly, beginning of season 3, when Andrea and Michonne witness a helicopter crash with military dudes who’ve got others attached to them. Secondly, the helicopter that rescues Rick and has apparently set up Rick Grimes’s future films. I just wish I knew where this particular helicopter was from and where it was going.

For a cop, even one with minimal experience with the world as it is now, Rick is an idiot. He lunges forward as stupidly as he went forward alone in his confrontation with the idiot car guys. Surely you should be thinking ahead? He’s in relatively unknown territory in a relatively new world. I’m not saying he should have anticipated a horde of dead people, but you’d think he’d exercise as least some caution, especially when his nearby décor indicates that the damn military was swamped with the enemy, such that they fucked off elsewhere. But maybe it’s just me.

Ooh, look, an extra drinking water.

I like that the makeup artists decay the walkers more each season. Season 1, most of them are sort of “hai I’m a regular human, I just have some dramatic injuries and some zombie eyes.” They look like people who are mostly dead but haven’t started to decompose. (I’d never be hired as a walker – the longer the show goes, the more they need skinny people so the makeup and prosthetics aren’t so obvious…and I am not skinny.)

That poor horse…

Yet again, Rick seriously lucks out. We see him multiple times with “omg dead people” face, with walkers just sort of lurking/dancing in place because they can’t lunge in or he’d be dead. And then there’s conveniently a tank above him. I’ve never been able to decide whether Rick going “Lori, Carl, I’m sorry” and then putting his gun to his head is a genuine “Oh no, I’m about to die” or if he’d realised the hatch was above him and so it was a “welp if I die, I love you.”

Men have huge feet. Yeek.

It’s stunning how long Rick’s in the tank with a zombot before said zombot wakes up and attempts a menacing growl. Not least because Rick’s so overwhelmed at having been upwardly mobile that he completely fails to take in his surroundings. (Although, as we’ve seen, Rick has never been great at checking his surroundings. Dude should be walkerbait by now.)

Oh no, a walker. Haaalp.

I do appreciate that Rick suffered auditory pain from firing a gun in an enclosed metal space. I also find it funny that one of the buszoms comes into his eyesight, like for some reason he's important.

“Hey, you. Dumbass.” Glenn is fucking amazing and iconic. I wish he'd been the main of this show. No offense to Andrew Lincoln, of course, but Steven Yeun is great, and Glenn's development from a kid into an adult is just lovely.

Anywho, that marks the end of "Days Gone Bye." Good in so many ways, eh in so many others. What's not to love?

love em

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bohemian-napsodyy · 5 years

Text

Life In the City (Rami Malek x Reader)

Request: Your newly-public relationship with Rami is going okay... until it isn’t. You’re faced with plenty of backlash from his fans, and you’re not sure just how much of it your heart can handle. -- requested by my lovely friend @gayerthanthee <3

Word Count: 3.5k

Warnings: some insulting comments and mentions of insecurity.

A/N: So I got very carried away with a backstory for this one, so it’ll be in two parts, otherwise i’d probably end up over 10k! :o Enjoy, my friends!

Oh yeah! The title is inspired by The Lumineers’ song of the same name -- i feel it fits this piece really nicely! You can give it a little listen here!

When you and Rami began dating, it felt more like trying to pull off a secret agent mission rather than an actual relationship… with actual dates.

The two of you met at a bookstore, of all places. You were browsing the shelves when someone with their hood up and sunglasses on came and began to browse the same shelf as you. Soon enough, you found yourself doing double-take after double-take, not because you knew who this person was, but because what idiot in their right mind would be wearing sunglasses? On a rainy day? In a bookstore?

You thought maybe he had a light sensitivity issue, which would have explained everything, but you saw from his side profile that he kept squinting at the book covers, as if he couldn’t read them properly.

“You, uh, might have an easier time finding what you’re looking for without the sunglasses maybe?”

You earned a long stare from the stranger, and immediately felt your cheeks heat up as you cursed yourself for speaking before thinking again.

“Sorry,” You mumbled quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that, I was only-”

The man dismissed you with a wave of his hand and a smile, removing his hood as he did so.

“Nah, you’re right. These aren’t making the terrible lighting in here any better.”

As if you hadn’t done enough double takes before, you did what was probably a quadruple-take right there as the man took off his sunglasses and placed them on his head.

Weird Sunglasses Man was Rami Malek.

“Hey,” You said casually, a complete contrast to your heart that was racing a million miles a second. He grinned at you and nodded back.

“Hey.”

There was an awkward silence as the two of you stood there, his gaze never leaving your face while your gaze never left the floor.

“…looking for any books in particular?” You finally managed to ask, cursing yourself at the slight tremble in your voice. Rami shrugged.

“Maybe… I don’t really know. What do you recommend?”

The two of you spent the next hour together, poring over your favourite books while sitting on the floor right in the middle of the aisle. You had one big book stack going, consisting of all the books the two of you had read that you thought were exceptional reads.

“I have to get going now,” Rami whispered reluctantly after checking the time. He set the pile of books the two of you created gently to the side. “My break’s almost over, they’re going to want me back on set soon.”

“Oh.” You tried your best to hide the sinking feeling of disappointment you felt inside, but you were certain the look on your face gave it all away. “Okay, then. Thanks, that was… I had fun.”

Rami grinned as he put his sunglasses and hood back on.

“I had fun too.” You caught him quickly grab the book at the bottom of the pile, the one he told you was his favourite. “Gonna pay for this quickly, then I’m heading out. It was nice to meet you, Y/N.”

You nodded in reply. “You too, Rami. I hope filming goes well today.”

You remained on the floor in disbelief of the events that had transpired between you and Rami over the last hour. You were almost afraid to make any sudden movements, or even breathe for crying out loud, in case everything turned out to be no more than a dream and you’d wake up alone in your apartment once again.

As you slowly began setting the books back on the shelf, you heard footsteps rushing towards you, and saw that familiar grey hoodie approaching out of the corner of your eye.

“Y/N?”

You turned, to find Rami beside you once again, a slight smirk on his face.

“Yeah?”

He held out a little brown bag.

“This is for you. Thank you for the wonderful time.”

Your cheeks were on fire as you took the bag from him, unable to keep the smile off your face. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm, you told yourself over and over. It’s just a book.

“Thank you.” You replied, your voice quivering nervously. “That’s very kind.”

Rami placed his hand gratefully over yours briefly, pausing to give you one more appreciative smile, before turning and dashing off almost as quickly as he came.

You just about threw your bag and coat on the floor when you got back to your apartment a while later, you were so eager to open Rami’s gift.

As you peeked in the small paper bag, you couldn’t help but gasp. He had gotten the shop owner to wrap the book carefully in tissue paper. Silver ribbon was tied around the middle to keep it secure.

It was just a book, yet it felt as though you were opening the world’s rarest Christmas present.

Sure enough, the book he gave you was the one you caught him grab on his way out. The one he told you was his favourite, the one that nearly moved him to tears.

You opened the front cover, and a little note fell out, landing gently on your lap.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did, the note read. Give me a call when you finish it, I’d love to know what you thought. Maybe over coffee? :) -R

Sure enough, scribbled in tiny numbers at the bottom was his phone number.

You were so shocked, you laughed.

That man was smooth.

Your first coffee date, though, hadn’t been nearly as smooth. The paparazzi caught the two of you together almost immediately, which led to you taking him on the longest detour of your life to get back to your apartment to try and shake them off.

It worked, but not before a handful of articles came out the next day, questioning who Rami’s new ‘Mystery Date’ was, comparing the blurry photo they managed to get of your face alongside photos of other actors, hoping to piece together who, exactly, you were.

You found out later that day that Rami hated it just as much as you did, so the two of you decided your apartment would be the best place for dates.

It was fun at first, especially when you’d order takeout and play Monopoly. The two of you were competitive, so it would often end with one of you accusing the other of cheating, followed by demands for a rematch that was quickly abandoned and replaced with a makeout session on your floor.

But then the novelty wore off after a while.

The two of you wanted more. You wanted to be able to go out and spend the day with him, walking down the street hand in hand. Go to the beach. Go out for dinner for once. Even go see a movie that hadn’t come out on demand yet.

There was that one time when you tried to meet at a hole in the wall diner together. Rami came over with a plan. You were to leave first, head over to the diner, and a while later Rami would do the same, but take a different route to get there. You’d get different tables, and as soon as your food arrived, he’d sneak over to the booth you were sitting in.

The thought of it had you giggling. It was going to be like Mission Impossible, which had potential to be fun. You agreed.

And yet, somehow through the night, Rami’s plan failed.

Someone had managed to sneak photos of the two of you together, even though you were both seated in the far back corner with the bad lighting. Rami was even wearing his brother’s clothes, his hood and sunglasses back on as usual. Barely anyone had been in the diner by the time he snuck to the back to join you, and yet sure enough…

“Rami Malek seen with Mystery Date Once Again!” followed by an entire page of photos of the two of you.

“What do you say to making this public?” You asked him over the phone as you began making your breakfast. You could almost hear him choke on his coffee.

“What? I thought we agreed we’d keep this secret for now.” “We did,” you said, nodding even though Rami couldn’t see you. “But things are getting… difficult.”

“Go on.”

You sighed as you poured yourself a mug of tea. “Rami, we’ve been together for almost half a year and all the dates we’ve gone on are literally just you coming over to my place to watch movies and order Chinese food. Don’t you want to go out and do things? Go for a walk on the beach, go see that new Marvel movie, even do some tourist-y shit in our own neighbourhood, I don’t know.”

“Of course I do,” he replied gently. His voice had an edge to it, sadnes or anger, you weren’t quite sure. “But they’re going to see us.”

“So what?” You argued. “So what if a bunch of assholes with cameras see us? Rami, look what happened the other day. That was more than a two hour production just to get burgers, and we still ended up on the second page of Us Weekly. I don’t want to hide anymore, there’s clearly no point.”

There was silence on the other line. You were afraid Rami was angry at you.

“I agree with you.” He said finally. “If we make this public, they wouldn’t be on our asses so much.”

“Exactly.” You said, sighing with relief. “They keep pestering us because they want answers. So… let’s give them answers.”

“Okay. I agree… but Y/N?”

“Yeah?”

There was another pause on the other line as Rami took a deep breath.

“Are… are you okay with this? You’re going to be recognized from now on, there’s no going back. People are going to know who you are now.”

You knew what he meant. You’d lose the comfort of being able to walk around the city practically invisible to everyone else. You’d have a label now. People would recognize you almost anywhere.

“If it means being able to be with you, and not have to hide about it, then yes.” You declared. “I’m okay with it.”

“Alright.” Rami answered. “I’ll let my publicist know what’s going on as soon as I get to work.”

“Okay,” You whispered, taking a sip of your tea. You had to admit, you felt a little bit excited. You hadn’t told anyone about your boyfriend, in fear that someone, even your close friends, could have slipped up and spread the word about it.

“Y/N?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

You bit your lip as you smiled. Whenever Rami spoke those three words, it always released an entire kaleidoscope of butterflies in your stomach.

“I love you too.”

The first article to reveal your relationship was in GQ. To your surprise, as well as your utmost relief, they hadn’t said anything disrespectful about you. In fact, they had simply asked Rami a few questions about how you met, whether or not you were in the acting industry, and how things were going so far.

“It’s been wonderful,” Rami had said. “Y/N is an absolute light in my life. I’m so grateful for everything.”

It wasn’t much, but Rami was never one to brag about his personal life, especially not to the media. You read that one line over and over, unable to believe that Rami was actually talking about you.

“What do you say we take a trip to Santa Monica?” Rami suggested mere seconds after you let him into your apartment later that day. “I know we agreed to go see a movie, but I realized on the way here we’ve never done the boardwalk before and since I’ll be leaving tomorrow I thought-”

You cut Rami off with a kiss, unable to keep the smile off your face as you wrapped your arms around him in a hug.

“That would be so wonderful.” You said, grinning. “Let’s do it.”

People were staring.

Many people.

You found yourself gripping Rami’s hand tighter, feeling as though you were a child all over again as dozen of pairs of eyes all turned to stare at you.

“Hey,” Rami whispered comfortingly, protectively wrapping his arm around your shoulders. “It’s okay. Just ignore them.”

You leaned your head against his shoulder, and you felt him kiss the top of your head protectively.

“Here,” Rami suggested, leading you over to the side of the boardwalk. “Let’s just… stay for a bit.”

From where you were standing, with Rami so close to you, all the people surrounding you moments before seemed to almost disappear entirely. All you could see was ocean for miles. It felt… calming.

“Thank you,” you breathed, the tight knot of anxiety slowly fading away as you kept your gaze on the ocean. You rested your head gently on your boyfriend’s shoulder. “This really helps.”

“I’m glad,” Rami said, in turn resting his head on yours. “This takes a while to get used to, I know, but soon things will be okay. I promise.”

“E-excuse me?”

You jumped in surprise as you felt a tiny hand touch your own. Looking to your right, you saw a little girl, no older than nine or ten, glancing between you, Rami, and the ground. “I-I really liked your performance in Bohemian Rhapsody. Um, could I… could I get a picture please, if that’s okay?”

“Of course,” Rami said warmly. Your heart melted at the surprised expression on the girl’s face.

You watched as Rami knelt down to the girl’s level, and you stepped forward voluntarily.

“I can take your picture if you’d like?” You offered.

“Actually,” the girl began, glancing over at her dad who stood only a few feet away. “My dad’s taking the photo, but could you be in our picture too please?”

You smiled as Rami beckoned you over. “I’d love to.”

The three of you stood together on the dock for a moment, your heart full of joy as the girl couldn’t stop giggling out of excitement as she tried to stay still for a photo.

“Thank you!” She exclaimed, hugging Rami quickly before turning and giving you a hug as well.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” Rami called back as the girl bounded back over to her dad, who gave the two of you an appreciative wave.

“Dad, did you see Rami’s girlfriend?” You heard the girl ask excitedly as they began walking away. “She’s so pretty! I want to be like her when I grow up.”

You couldn’t help the tiny gasp that escaped when you heard her words. Happy tears pricked your eyes as you watched the two of them quickly disappear back into the crowd.

“Hey,” Rami placed a hand on your shoulder, his wide eyes gazing at you in concern. “Everything okay?”

You nodded, hastily brushing away a tear that managed to sneak its way down your cheek.

“That girl was so sweet.”

Rami smiled at your reaction, and pulled you gently into his arms.

“She was adorable.”

You weren’t sure if it was because of that photo with the girl, or the fact that the two of you were out in public that day, but you were everywhere in the media the following day.

Your Instagram was blowing up.

You even caught a photo of the two of you on TV that day too.

You ignored it at first, until later that night when you had nothing better to do than to browse through some of the comments people had started to leave on your latest post, which was of the two of you at Santa Monica Pier not long after your encounter with that little girl.

Most of the comments were sweet, congratulating you on your new (or at least newly public) relationship, while others were just plain hilarious:

‘@Y/I/N how did you manage to snatch him up?? that was my man, dammit :( ‘

‘damnnnn gurl, you’ve got good taste in men’

‘i’m so happy for you but i’m also crying at the same time, rip me’

But as you scrolled further, things began to heat up.

‘god, Rami could’ve done so much better. there’s nothing special about this girl like who even is she’

‘she’s literally a nobody. she probably works a minimum wage job and is only after his money smh’

‘she probably just another starving actor trying to make her way up to the A listers’

‘you can almost see the boredom in his eyes’

‘she’s about as attractive as a dry piece of bread’

You stopped yourself, turning off your phone and throwing it to the other side of your couch. You couldn’t bear to read any more. Was that really what most people thought of you, that you were only after Rami’s fame and fortune?

That’s not why, you told yourself firmly. You love Rami for who he is, dammit. You know that, you fool.

But… what if his fans were right? Maybe not about the fame thing, but what about the fact that they did have a point. You weren’t anyone special.

Rami could do so much better than you. You were an absolute nobody, with barely anything to offer.

You buried your head in your hands, unable to stop the sobs that began to hit you like tidal waves. You kept circling through comment after comment in your mind, a part of you still in disbelief that this was actually happening. You had done nothing wrong. Or at least... you didn’t think so.

Your phone rang from its place sandwiched between the couch cushions, a muffled tinny noise. You could see from the caller ID image that it was Rami, but you couldn’t answer the phone. Not like this.

You let the call go to voicemail, telling yourself you’d just call him back tomorrow morning. But then your phone buzzed again. And again. And again. Whatever Rami wanted, it was clearly urgent.

You pushed yourself up from your slumped position on the couch with a sigh, swiping at the tears on your cheeks with the back of your hand. You reached over and grabbed your phone, only to find to your surprise that none of the notifications had come from Rami, apart from the first voicemail.

They were DMs. Dozens of them.

You watched as they all began to flood in, sending you links to a blog post that had gone viral, demanding if ‘this’ was true, if you had really cheated on all your boyfriends prior to Rami.

You were getting messages from people you didn’t even know, demanding that you break up with him now to save him the heartache. They called you a bitch, comparing you to a handful of celebrities notorious for being promiscuous and altogether terrible people. They said you were no better, if not worse, than any of them. Some even sent you death threats.

All you had done was post a photo of yourself and Rami.

And within less than twelve hours, you got this in return.

You were certain Rami would hear of this soon, despite the fact that he was already over in London, preparing for his next project. They’d be shooting next week. By then people would definitely be talking. The crew would certainly know all about this by that time.

This was all your fault, if you hadn’t encouraged Rami to go public with your relationship, none of this would have even happened in the first place. You had to end all of this before it could get any bigger.

Your heart felt like an anchor in your chest as you dialed Rami’s number. Your vision began to swim as your eyes filled with glassy tears once more.

A part of you was praying he wouldn’t pick up, so you wouldn’t have to go through with this. You didn’t want to. You loved Rami with all your heart and more, but you just couldn’t sit here while all of this went on. You were a nobody who screwed everything up. Rami was the world, if not beyond that. He deserved someone who could give him the same in return, not you-

“Hey babe! I tried to call you a while ago. I just landed in London.”

“Rami?” You asked, trying to swallow back your tears and sound semi-normal over the phone.

“Yeah, what is it?” You heard him falter on the other line. “Y/N, what’s going on, are you okay?”

You paused, gazing emptily at the blank TV in front of you. Your hands trembled.

“T-there’s... there’s something I need to tell you.”

End of Part I.

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