Marissa Cooper Forever

Mischa Barton will always be Marissa Cooper to me. That’s just the deal with The O.C.—you can know it intellectually as a teen drama that ran from 2003 to 2007 and ended badly for its best character, but emotionally it’s still the one where that girl lived and then didn’t. Following Mischa on Twitter felt like a logical extension of that attachment, and it genuinely makes my day a little better whenever she appears in the feed. There’s something sweet about an actress from a show that defined a particular stretch of your adolescence just existing in your timeline—not promoting anything, not in character, just Mischa, thinking that flowers blooming and winter finally clearing out is the best thing about March. She’s right. It is.