world’s normalest family wishes you a happy halloween!

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chapter cards for thirteen: november - april

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thirteen update 🎹🪞📖👻

chapter 7: april

summary:

excerpt:

The world ended on a Wednesday in April.

Adrien Agreste was alone when it happened. He was doing homework in his room, an essay on French architecture that his mind kept wandering from. He was thirteen and a half years old.

His mind was wandering because it was almost Mother’s Day, and Adrien loved his mother very much. He was thinking of ways that he could make this Mother’s Day very special for her. There wasn’t much that Adrien could buy Maman that she couldn’t get herself, and he was pretty bad at making things, so he usually tried to do something meaningful with her instead. Maman really loved music and films and gardening. But they’d just watched a lot of films together for her birthday, recently, and Adrien wasn’t sure if she would feel up to making music or gardening. She hadn’t even been up to seeing him much at all since then. Maman had been very sick lately.

(Dying, Adrien’s mind kept whispering to him, paralyzing his body and sending shockwaves through his heart.)

So, Maman wouldn’t want to garden, probably. And anyway, the winter jasmine they’d planted last October had lost all its flowers the last time he’d checked, its barren stems thin and brittle. The sight of it had piled weights on Adrien’s heart, some deep-soaked sadness he couldn’t shake. Maman wouldn’t want to see that, he was sure. And, again, they’d already watched a bunch of films for her birthday.

So music, maybe?

Adrien swiveled his chair to face his piano, abandoning his homework entirely. He wasn’t sure that Maman would feel well enough to want to play something with him, to improvise like they used to do. But maybe he could learn something to play for her? If he snuck one of her favorite records into his room, maybe he could look up the sheet music and learn how to play it on piano for her. She would like that, right? That would be a nice present.

When he sat down at the keys, Adrien’s fingers automatically fit to the shape of the last song he’d played with Maman, a few months ago. He closed his eyes and smiled. Right next to him on the bench, she’d let the music spill out of her fingertips, dancing all around the two of them and nestling in his heart. He could still hear her laughing melody, could still feel the warmth. If Adrien played something special for Maman, he was sure that it would bring some life back into them both.

The moment Adrien’s fingers pressed down on the keys, a mangled scream erupted from the lower floor—a sound like a heart breaking, a world splitting in two.

Adrien froze, paralyzed.

It was his father’s scream.

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EXCELLENT question considering taylor swift just released an emilie agreste album. (and you’re so right about the adrien songs i definitely thought so too.) there were 6 songs that stood out to me as emilie songs, the first being:

I Can Fix Him, No Really I Can

this one is. well. it’s obvious that emilie is into toxic men. i love the idea that when she first got entangled with gabe, he was just an absolute broke problematic punk bisexual disaster (we can't ignore the harriel evidence) who her parents hated sooooo bad. and like literally everybody was so right that he was bad news but emilie was so confident that she could fix him until she finally realized that she was fr dying and he was actually going to terrorize the world about it. oops.

I Can Do It With A Broken Heart

already mentioned as an adrien song (which it is) but emilie and adrien are admittedly very similar and this song hits on exactly why. it’s about having such a tight control on how you’re perceived by others, putting on a fake persona that can be idolized and adored by everyone no matter how you’re feeling inside. it’s about being SO good at your job that you can’t actually get out of it. accidentally mythologizing yourself. losing your grasp of what is performance vs authenticity. you get it

Clara Bow

OKAY THIS ONE MAKES ME CRAAAZY. okay okay okay. so SPEAKING of accidentally mythologizing yourself, the song clara bow hits on a lot of the same themes as icdiwabh but there's this added sense of inevitable circularity to it that just drives me insane. I especially think a lot about adrien almost inheriting his mother's space in the public eye - the way emilie's acting career and universal adoration paved the way for adrien to be famous from birth, the kind of fame that makes his life almost unlivable at times. the whole bridge articulates it beautifully, I think - "beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours/demanding more" and "it's hell on earth to be heavenly." the idea that the world demands beauty from emilie, and she gives and gives until her ambition eventually breaks her, and she passes the performance down to adrien. and he takes up the mantle. the future's bright, dazzling.

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

so again, we return to the alleged bisexual punk disaster youth of gabriel agreste😭 this song is mostly related to my personal way that I imagine gabe and emilie's early years lol. I imagine that one of the things that drew emilie to gabe initially was that he was so opposite of the way her british nobility family was, and she was trying to escape that life. but eventually, once the money and success got to him, he became someone exactly like the family she once ran from. and she became different too, in a way she always regretted. hence the "say that I loved you the way that you were." the part of this song that feels VERY emilie to me is the "I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools/changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules/all to outrun my desertion of you." I think that emilie is very malleable, easily adapting her personality and presentation to fit whoever she's trying to please at the moment. but she never plans to stick around for long.

I Hate It Here

this one makes me laugh bc "I'd say the 1830's but without all the racists😒" ABSOLUTELY feels like something emilie agreste would say😭 and feel like she cured racism. but as for the actual song, I see emilie as always tending toward escapism. no matter how content she's trying to be in her situation, she's always stitching together an escape plan in the back of her mind. she doesn't like being tied down. she's such a romantic, and constantly disappointed by reality. always planting secret gardens in her mind

The Bolter

THE BOLTER!!!!! IS THE EMILIE AGRESTE SONG OF ALL TIME. TO ME. okay okay every single line but especially verse 2. "he was a cad, wanted her bad/just like any good trophy hunter/and she liked the way it tastes" just SAY gabriel and emilie. just say it. also the "splendidly selfish, charmingly helpless" SCREAMS emilie to me. one of the first things that ever came to me about emilie was her being flighty and kind of unreliable, as well as deeply attention seeking. I think of her as someone who gets restless if she's in the same place for too long, who has trouble with commitment. it's easy for her to feel trapped, and her impulse is always to break free. thinking about how content she was to leave behind her loved ones, "there's an escape in escaping" really defines her character to me. and of course it bleeds into adrien's struggle with confinement and tendency to run away when he's feeling unwanted etc etc <3

THANKS FOR ASKING A QUESTION SO RELEVANT TO MY CURRENT INTERESTS<3 umm I will throw in a bonus adrien song which is robin. ok goodnight

well right now im thinking about my original notes on emilie's character from last summer x taylor swift's "the bolter"

thirteen update ☀️🥀🪰🏚️

chapter 6: march

summary:

excerpt:

Time barrelled on after that, like a ground speeding toward him in freefall. 

Lessons slipped through his head and smiles stretched over his mouth and Adrien’s life became, more than ever before, defined by the moment he would next see Maman. It was like his brain couldn’t catch hold of anything else, couldn’t grasp it. Even when he was out doing other things, in other places, he wasn’t really. He was always back with her.  

The shift happened sometime in the beginning of March.

A change in the air, the bones. The house held its breath. Walls stood cleaner and quieter and bigger than before. Or maybe Adrien just got smaller. Maybe it was like a vacuum, like he’d learned about in physics. All the air sucked out of his lungs, crumpled up like a can. 

The silence was the worst. When Adrien was gone, he could lose himself a little. Turn his brain off at photoshoots and fall into the monotony of fabric on his body, skin on his face, hands all over, fixing him and fixing him and fixing him. Dissolve into the rhythm of fencing, blocking and thrusting and parrying and sweating and not thinking not thinking not thinking. But being inside the house was different. He couldn’t do anything but think, couldn’t be anyone but himself. Even his shows started to fall flat; Adrien found himself restarting the same Ouran episode ten times because he hadn’t absorbed a thing. The house was so quiet, his brain so loud. The world was transparent and he wasn’t quite sure he was real. 

And then he would see Maman. 

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and if i could give you the moon,

do you think émilie agreste knew, on the day she became too weak to leave that house, that she never would again

thirteen update 💕💍🍽️🩸

chapter 5: february

summary:

excerpt:

call my laptop émilie agreste the way she looks beautiful but can't function off of life support and is always threatening to die on me

adrien tell ur mom to leave me alone !

thirteen update 🌿👩🏼‍🌾🏚️🫢

chapter 4: January

chapter summary:

excerpt: