Bye Skins
So I suppose that's it then.
There have been highs and lows, laughing, crying and even a bit of feet stomping, but I'll always have more than a little soft spot for this show. It gave me Cook, who I love and who continues to make me think and for that I should thank both Jack and Jamie, but more importantly it gave me a reason to start writing, and for that I will always be grateful. It might not be Skins, but I can't help but feel that everything I write now and in the future will in some way have roots back to these characters and this world that grabbed me*. Cheers guys.
Anyway, the real point of this post was that someone asked me if I could post my plot outline of The Bends on the (correct) assumption I wasn't going to finish it. So for anyone who is interested, it's under the cut.
I don't know if people are still using LJ, I have to say this is the first time I've logged in for quite literally years, but I hope you're all good and doing exciting things!
*Massive legal disclaimer - not plagiarising or breaking anyone's copyright here, I mean this purely from the perspective of inspiration!
==============================================================
The Bends - Where do we go from here? The words are coming out all weird, where are you now when I need you?
JJ goes back to see her in the morning. He’d stayed with her until she’d fallen asleep last night and he didn’t want to go home, but his mum was expecting him, and if he didn’t show up then she’d get worried and he didn’t want her to worry about him, there was already too much worrying going on. So he went home, and it had seemed like the right thing to do.
But it wasn’t. It can’t have been, because now he’s walking up Effy’s garden path, and he’s got dread building in the pit of his stomach, because her door isn’t closed properly, it’s open about an inch, swaying in the wind.
JJ gets drunk - wallows
Phones Effy, leaves message. "You don't talk to be like I'm five, you don't treat me like they do. And that was… that's…" But J doesn't know the words for it, only that it made him feel great when she managed to make out like he wasn't some sort of nut job and like he was real and not different. "And now you've gone and I don't know why, and I don't know what I did, but I'm sorry and I wish you'd come back please?"
Emily arrives - then Cook and Freddie.
J: "Why are you here Cook?"
C: "Uh, Naomi kicked me in the arse, didn’t she? I’m shit mate. I fucking love you, you know? And if she’s fucked you over then -”
"She’s not."
"Then why you down here downing your body weight in shit ale? Honestly, Jenkins, if you’re gonna do it, then at least do it properly"
JJ attempts a smile, but can’t. He feels tears threatening to spill over, but he shakes them off. “It’s bad Cook. Really bad. It’s off the scale type of bad. I don’t even know where to start and she isn’t getting better and it’s still bad and she won’t try anymore. It’s my fault, it’s all my buggering, bollocking, shitting, mong head fault.”
It ain’t mate, it ain’t. We’ll find her. We’ll fucking find her. It’s ok.
---
This is probably his fault. Everything normally is, so why shouldn't this be? Inevitable really, simple logic. He didn't want Effy, and now he doesn't have her and he does have Cook and Freddie.
Last year, that's all he wanted. For Cook and Freddie to be his friend again, and each others friends. And for Effy to just leave them alone. It didn't really work out of course, even after the boat, but right now, it's what he's got, kind of.
It's the same as what he'd always had before college, so he should be happy. That's what he wanted. That's what he had before. And maybe it's how things are meant to be. Maybe if he just tries hard he can forget that he was happy, for a while, with just Effy and with no Freddie, and with no Cook.
Change. Thomas was always saying about how it wasn't that bad, but this, this change. It wasn't good. When did Cook and Freddie not become enough for him? What was the exact moment that now means he's curled up in a ball against the wall, hiding from them, rather than desperately craving their attention. When did Effy become the only one that mattered? It's not the way it should be, and JJ hates that it makes him feel so unsettled, so confused, makes his brain go into meltdown at the sheer number of what ifs and whys and whens and hows. There are too many variables, too many alternatives and this isn't easy, having these feelings that he doesn't understand. It's not easy like when it was just the three musketeers, and it just was, because that was how it had always been and there were no questions, just an accepted fact between everyone that that was status quo and there was no question of it not being.
And then it did change, and it wasn't his fault, it wasn't him that wanted change, or initiated it, but he had to deal with the consequences. But the thing that he just cannot understand at all, is that now his situation is back to normal - or not normal in his case, which is normal, well, it's back to how it was, anyway - and he has what used to make him happy. So why is it not working now?
---
Katie: How fucking stupid are you lot? Where the hell do you think she’d be?
==============================================================
Bulletproof…I wish I was - You have turned me into this
Effy interlude
Effy thought that it was love with Freddie. But it wasn’t. Not for her. She knows that now. It was his love that she was struggling under the weight of. His expectations that brought that intense feeling that she thought was love, and it was why she ran so far and fought so hard against what she called love, she wanted to make it go away. But that’s not love, that’s being scared of disappointing someone. It’s not what she had with Tony, who loved her for her, and not what she might be one day.
It’s why she doesn’t trust herself, trust her body, with these things that people call feelings. Because they’re wrong.
---
It’s a shield, the smoke. Impenetrable.
---
Effy toys with her cigarette, spins it in her fingers expertly. It’s not the first time she’s done it. It won’t quite be the last.
She sucks in a mouthful, lets the smoke curl around her tongue before sucking it down. It burns her lungs. It’s something, she notes.
Love, she’d scorned Tony. What is love, she’d asked, years ago. Who needs love. She didn’t. She hadn’t. Tony. He hadn’t been fooled much, he said. He never was when it came to anything to do with her, and it was both a relief and a source of frustration at the same time. Frustration that he couldn’t be bested, not so easily like the others. Relief, well. For the same reason if she’s honest. She’s never honest.
But then JJ was never exactly fooled either. She could get him for lots of things, but he would always ask the questions, always to the point, deceptively sharp for a supposedly blunt object. It took the fun out of it, almost, that he would look for the answers that she sought to hide (it was the same with Panda).
And he was good. She knew it.
Tony, for all his good, for all his great, had also been just as bad. She saw that. She wasn’t blinded by family ties, because really, what difference did a bit of blood make.
And there was Cook, who was like that, so good and yet not.
And Freddie who she’d fucked up.
And Pandora who she’d ruined as well. Enabled, she supposed was the word for it. She had enabled Pandora to do what she had.
And now, here was JJ, the good turning again because of her.
He had sat there with that purple bruise, mottled blue at the edges already forming as the blood broke free of the vessels it was trapped in and rushed to the surface. And he was distraught at it all. At everything that had happened.
It was the beginning, Effy knew. She’s seen it before. With Cook. With Freddie. With Pandora. With her mum. Her dad.
It was only a matter of time now: the beginning of the end.
She doesn’t want to witness it again. She’s seen it too much and it’s a tired story. Predictability at its most banal.
So she goes. Just ups and leaves, not bothering to even lock the door, because everything in that house is shit anyway, and whatever wanker thinks any of it is of any worth, then. Well, if she could pity then she would because their life must be real shit if that’s a step up. And besides, she quite likes the idea of renewal. Being born again into fresh surroundings. Maybe some of that shit can be saved. They’re welcome to it. It’s of no use to her now.
---
She brought them to him. It was the worst type of betrayal, and if anyone would know, then it’d be Effy. She has a lot of experience on matters of betrayal. Experience had taught her lots of things.
But he was happy. He had been happy. It was written all over him, the grin he gave her when he opened the door, the surprise quickly hidden. The way his eyebrows furrowed slightly in the middle, showing he was concerned, worried perhaps at her unannounced appearance.
He wasn’t the only one never fooled by their sibling, and Effy was already good at watching, so.
It was a mistake, going there, she knew, even as he was sheperding her into his bachelors pad, arm hooked over her shoulder as he gave the grand tour and told a story about how he was getting it at half the price because he slept with the landlady one time and convinced her that it could happen again. He’s seen her daughter a few times, he adds proudly. Reckons there’s a possibility of a threesome if he plays his cards right.
It’s Tony. He’s better. He’s escaped. He went to Hell and now he’s made it back.
But she’s not, and this was a mistake. Coming here, bringing them here, leading them up the stairwell to his door. Wrong and stupid. Remarkably so.
---
The next escape is slightly more premeditated perhaps than her last. A little more thought goes into what gets packed (only one item other than the clothes on her back) and an idea of where to go.
He’d mentioned it. Briefly, in passing. During a story about taking some girl (it’s always just some girl with Tony) on a magical mystery fucking tour. Something about the place just felt right. Tugged her muscles just so, drew her attention in at that moment and then it became a question of when, not if. It was there, not where. She knew how of course.
She always had.
---
In the end, there’s only one escape, only one option.
The knife doesn’t hurt.
It’s beautiful, actually. Really, fucking beautiful.
The feeling of release that she feels as blood begins to seep through skin is one she savours. One she’s not felt in a long, long time.
And then she feels something else that she’s not felt in a long time. She feels free.
==============================================================
Just - You do it to yourself, it’s true, and that’s what really hurts
Road trip.
K: I’m sitting up front, because it’s Freddie’s car, and he wants me to be next to him, right babes?
C: Fuck’s sake.
Freddie issues with getting the car in gear.
C: Fucking pussie Freds, come on, just put your foot down man.
JJ: No, wait. We need to pick up Thomas.
==============================================================
Nice Dream - If you think that you’re strong enough, if you think you belong enough
Dressed in smart suit - mum makes him take flowers. Foreboding. Goes to Effy's house. Tony "Ready?"
--
“We’re going to be ok now, aren’t we?”
Effy smiles and tightens her grip on his hand. “Yeah, Jay. I think we might be.”
He pulls her closer and buries his face into her hair. It smells clean, but not chemically clean, but it smells sort of spicy and familiar, and JJ struggles to find the word in his vocabulary to describe it properly, but it smells, for lack of a more fitting word, it smells like Effy.
It’s nice, he thinks, just before drifting off, this thing called love.
==============================================================
An explanatory paragraph, as I'm aware that probably means very little to anyone who wasn't living in my mind at the time of writing.
Basically Effy's still mental (because I wanted to show that a mental person is mental, not because of who they're with, but because they have an actual problem) and goes off to try and kill herself because she brings misery EVERYWHERE with her, and the boys can't find her, and then Katie is like duh, Tony. So they go road tripping to Tony's, but she's already left. And then JJ comes up with this way of tracking her via triangulating (which is where you use a phone signal between three masts and working out how far away it is from every side of the triangle, and therefore pinpoint where the phone signal is) and Tony's super impressed but pretending like he knew all that the whole time. Then they find her but they don't know if she'll pull through or not, cause she's bleeding lots (hi again s4). Anyway, last one builds as if we don't really know alive or dead, but then JJ goes to visit her in the mental hospital and she's getting better and there's no expectations and they are a little bit ambiguous, but are forever bonded in ultra-you-saved-my-life-love that might somehow become relationshippy but now has to take a step back because of the whole suicidal thing. And that's the end. Basically.
There have been highs and lows, laughing, crying and even a bit of feet stomping, but I'll always have more than a little soft spot for this show. It gave me Cook, who I love and who continues to make me think and for that I should thank both Jack and Jamie, but more importantly it gave me a reason to start writing, and for that I will always be grateful. It might not be Skins, but I can't help but feel that everything I write now and in the future will in some way have roots back to these characters and this world that grabbed me*. Cheers guys.
Anyway, the real point of this post was that someone asked me if I could post my plot outline of The Bends on the (correct) assumption I wasn't going to finish it. So for anyone who is interested, it's under the cut.
I don't know if people are still using LJ, I have to say this is the first time I've logged in for quite literally years, but I hope you're all good and doing exciting things!
*Massive legal disclaimer - not plagiarising or breaking anyone's copyright here, I mean this purely from the perspective of inspiration!
==============================================================
The Bends - Where do we go from here? The words are coming out all weird, where are you now when I need you?
JJ goes back to see her in the morning. He’d stayed with her until she’d fallen asleep last night and he didn’t want to go home, but his mum was expecting him, and if he didn’t show up then she’d get worried and he didn’t want her to worry about him, there was already too much worrying going on. So he went home, and it had seemed like the right thing to do.
But it wasn’t. It can’t have been, because now he’s walking up Effy’s garden path, and he’s got dread building in the pit of his stomach, because her door isn’t closed properly, it’s open about an inch, swaying in the wind.
JJ gets drunk - wallows
Phones Effy, leaves message. "You don't talk to be like I'm five, you don't treat me like they do. And that was… that's…" But J doesn't know the words for it, only that it made him feel great when she managed to make out like he wasn't some sort of nut job and like he was real and not different. "And now you've gone and I don't know why, and I don't know what I did, but I'm sorry and I wish you'd come back please?"
Emily arrives - then Cook and Freddie.
J: "Why are you here Cook?"
C: "Uh, Naomi kicked me in the arse, didn’t she? I’m shit mate. I fucking love you, you know? And if she’s fucked you over then -”
"She’s not."
"Then why you down here downing your body weight in shit ale? Honestly, Jenkins, if you’re gonna do it, then at least do it properly"
JJ attempts a smile, but can’t. He feels tears threatening to spill over, but he shakes them off. “It’s bad Cook. Really bad. It’s off the scale type of bad. I don’t even know where to start and she isn’t getting better and it’s still bad and she won’t try anymore. It’s my fault, it’s all my buggering, bollocking, shitting, mong head fault.”
It ain’t mate, it ain’t. We’ll find her. We’ll fucking find her. It’s ok.
---
This is probably his fault. Everything normally is, so why shouldn't this be? Inevitable really, simple logic. He didn't want Effy, and now he doesn't have her and he does have Cook and Freddie.
Last year, that's all he wanted. For Cook and Freddie to be his friend again, and each others friends. And for Effy to just leave them alone. It didn't really work out of course, even after the boat, but right now, it's what he's got, kind of.
It's the same as what he'd always had before college, so he should be happy. That's what he wanted. That's what he had before. And maybe it's how things are meant to be. Maybe if he just tries hard he can forget that he was happy, for a while, with just Effy and with no Freddie, and with no Cook.
Change. Thomas was always saying about how it wasn't that bad, but this, this change. It wasn't good. When did Cook and Freddie not become enough for him? What was the exact moment that now means he's curled up in a ball against the wall, hiding from them, rather than desperately craving their attention. When did Effy become the only one that mattered? It's not the way it should be, and JJ hates that it makes him feel so unsettled, so confused, makes his brain go into meltdown at the sheer number of what ifs and whys and whens and hows. There are too many variables, too many alternatives and this isn't easy, having these feelings that he doesn't understand. It's not easy like when it was just the three musketeers, and it just was, because that was how it had always been and there were no questions, just an accepted fact between everyone that that was status quo and there was no question of it not being.
And then it did change, and it wasn't his fault, it wasn't him that wanted change, or initiated it, but he had to deal with the consequences. But the thing that he just cannot understand at all, is that now his situation is back to normal - or not normal in his case, which is normal, well, it's back to how it was, anyway - and he has what used to make him happy. So why is it not working now?
---
Katie: How fucking stupid are you lot? Where the hell do you think she’d be?
==============================================================
Bulletproof…I wish I was - You have turned me into this
Effy interlude
Effy thought that it was love with Freddie. But it wasn’t. Not for her. She knows that now. It was his love that she was struggling under the weight of. His expectations that brought that intense feeling that she thought was love, and it was why she ran so far and fought so hard against what she called love, she wanted to make it go away. But that’s not love, that’s being scared of disappointing someone. It’s not what she had with Tony, who loved her for her, and not what she might be one day.
It’s why she doesn’t trust herself, trust her body, with these things that people call feelings. Because they’re wrong.
---
It’s a shield, the smoke. Impenetrable.
---
Effy toys with her cigarette, spins it in her fingers expertly. It’s not the first time she’s done it. It won’t quite be the last.
She sucks in a mouthful, lets the smoke curl around her tongue before sucking it down. It burns her lungs. It’s something, she notes.
Love, she’d scorned Tony. What is love, she’d asked, years ago. Who needs love. She didn’t. She hadn’t. Tony. He hadn’t been fooled much, he said. He never was when it came to anything to do with her, and it was both a relief and a source of frustration at the same time. Frustration that he couldn’t be bested, not so easily like the others. Relief, well. For the same reason if she’s honest. She’s never honest.
But then JJ was never exactly fooled either. She could get him for lots of things, but he would always ask the questions, always to the point, deceptively sharp for a supposedly blunt object. It took the fun out of it, almost, that he would look for the answers that she sought to hide (it was the same with Panda).
And he was good. She knew it.
Tony, for all his good, for all his great, had also been just as bad. She saw that. She wasn’t blinded by family ties, because really, what difference did a bit of blood make.
And there was Cook, who was like that, so good and yet not.
And Freddie who she’d fucked up.
And Pandora who she’d ruined as well. Enabled, she supposed was the word for it. She had enabled Pandora to do what she had.
And now, here was JJ, the good turning again because of her.
He had sat there with that purple bruise, mottled blue at the edges already forming as the blood broke free of the vessels it was trapped in and rushed to the surface. And he was distraught at it all. At everything that had happened.
It was the beginning, Effy knew. She’s seen it before. With Cook. With Freddie. With Pandora. With her mum. Her dad.
It was only a matter of time now: the beginning of the end.
She doesn’t want to witness it again. She’s seen it too much and it’s a tired story. Predictability at its most banal.
So she goes. Just ups and leaves, not bothering to even lock the door, because everything in that house is shit anyway, and whatever wanker thinks any of it is of any worth, then. Well, if she could pity then she would because their life must be real shit if that’s a step up. And besides, she quite likes the idea of renewal. Being born again into fresh surroundings. Maybe some of that shit can be saved. They’re welcome to it. It’s of no use to her now.
---
She brought them to him. It was the worst type of betrayal, and if anyone would know, then it’d be Effy. She has a lot of experience on matters of betrayal. Experience had taught her lots of things.
But he was happy. He had been happy. It was written all over him, the grin he gave her when he opened the door, the surprise quickly hidden. The way his eyebrows furrowed slightly in the middle, showing he was concerned, worried perhaps at her unannounced appearance.
He wasn’t the only one never fooled by their sibling, and Effy was already good at watching, so.
It was a mistake, going there, she knew, even as he was sheperding her into his bachelors pad, arm hooked over her shoulder as he gave the grand tour and told a story about how he was getting it at half the price because he slept with the landlady one time and convinced her that it could happen again. He’s seen her daughter a few times, he adds proudly. Reckons there’s a possibility of a threesome if he plays his cards right.
It’s Tony. He’s better. He’s escaped. He went to Hell and now he’s made it back.
But she’s not, and this was a mistake. Coming here, bringing them here, leading them up the stairwell to his door. Wrong and stupid. Remarkably so.
---
The next escape is slightly more premeditated perhaps than her last. A little more thought goes into what gets packed (only one item other than the clothes on her back) and an idea of where to go.
He’d mentioned it. Briefly, in passing. During a story about taking some girl (it’s always just some girl with Tony) on a magical mystery fucking tour. Something about the place just felt right. Tugged her muscles just so, drew her attention in at that moment and then it became a question of when, not if. It was there, not where. She knew how of course.
She always had.
---
In the end, there’s only one escape, only one option.
The knife doesn’t hurt.
It’s beautiful, actually. Really, fucking beautiful.
The feeling of release that she feels as blood begins to seep through skin is one she savours. One she’s not felt in a long, long time.
And then she feels something else that she’s not felt in a long time. She feels free.
==============================================================
Just - You do it to yourself, it’s true, and that’s what really hurts
Road trip.
K: I’m sitting up front, because it’s Freddie’s car, and he wants me to be next to him, right babes?
C: Fuck’s sake.
Freddie issues with getting the car in gear.
C: Fucking pussie Freds, come on, just put your foot down man.
JJ: No, wait. We need to pick up Thomas.
==============================================================
Nice Dream - If you think that you’re strong enough, if you think you belong enough
Dressed in smart suit - mum makes him take flowers. Foreboding. Goes to Effy's house. Tony "Ready?"
--
“We’re going to be ok now, aren’t we?”
Effy smiles and tightens her grip on his hand. “Yeah, Jay. I think we might be.”
He pulls her closer and buries his face into her hair. It smells clean, but not chemically clean, but it smells sort of spicy and familiar, and JJ struggles to find the word in his vocabulary to describe it properly, but it smells, for lack of a more fitting word, it smells like Effy.
It’s nice, he thinks, just before drifting off, this thing called love.
==============================================================
An explanatory paragraph, as I'm aware that probably means very little to anyone who wasn't living in my mind at the time of writing.
Basically Effy's still mental (because I wanted to show that a mental person is mental, not because of who they're with, but because they have an actual problem) and goes off to try and kill herself because she brings misery EVERYWHERE with her, and the boys can't find her, and then Katie is like duh, Tony. So they go road tripping to Tony's, but she's already left. And then JJ comes up with this way of tracking her via triangulating (which is where you use a phone signal between three masts and working out how far away it is from every side of the triangle, and therefore pinpoint where the phone signal is) and Tony's super impressed but pretending like he knew all that the whole time. Then they find her but they don't know if she'll pull through or not, cause she's bleeding lots (hi again s4). Anyway, last one builds as if we don't really know alive or dead, but then JJ goes to visit her in the mental hospital and she's getting better and there's no expectations and they are a little bit ambiguous, but are forever bonded in ultra-you-saved-my-life-love that might somehow become relationshippy but now has to take a step back because of the whole suicidal thing. And that's the end. Basically.