#I can't see Beth telling rio what dean did!

[pynkhues]

For the top 5 ask game I was wondering your favourite Brio moments and favourite of the girls’ moments? Xx

Nice! Thank you!

Okay, for the Brio moments, I'd say In no particular order:

All of 2.04. Yes, of course the bathroom break, but honestly all their scenes in this episode are so great. From the opening scene at the bar which just brims with her exhaustion and his excitement, to the last scene in Boland Motors where Rio both listens to her (doesn't tell Dean what they did) and doesn't (destroys the corvette), it's just hot and emotionally complex and good. Genuinely one of my fave eps of tv ever.

The bench scene in 3.06 where Beth and Rio finally confront reality. This scene just aches in all the best ways. I know a lot of people found their lack of communication frustrating, but I loved the way it made scenes like this one really pay off. They both feel like they're nearing breaking points, and the wound between them is still bleeding, and nothing they've put on it is making it stop, and you just feel that. I love it a lot.

"If you need something, all you gotta do is ask" in 4.15. It still makes me insane.

All of 3.04. I know, it's kind of another cheat, but the early scene in the bar where they're both so emotionally wasted juxtaposes so perfectly with the tension and promise of the money making scene at the end. The fact that it plays into all those things that make their dynamic so interesting - the way they can't stay away from each other, the fact tht he sees her, the fact that she always steps up for him - - it just gets me in all the best ways.

The Dubby in 2.07. I've done enough unhinged posting about this ep to last a lifetime, haha, so I'll just leave that there.

And for the girls - - I'd be here forever if I was talking about all my favourite scenes with iterations of them, so I'll try and keep it to trio moments:

Annie and Beth give Ruby the full cut at the hospital after Sara's seizure in 1.05. Honestly one of the scenes that encapsulates the show for me. Funny and tragic and always empathetic, it just shows off Christina, Retta and Mae's friendship chemistry like nothing else.

Ruby shooting Big Mike in the foot and Beth and Annie's reactions in 1.03. I SCREAM.

The bachelorette party scene in 4.08. Absolute cinema magic, they're on fire, I love them.

All of 2.08 - the flashbacks, Annie setting Beth and Ruby up, the crack in Beth's voice when she says she'd always choose Ruby. 10/10 ep actually, I love it very, very dearly.

All of 3.08. This one's maybe a surprise, but the episode where they retrieve Boomer is such a good one, especially for the push-pull between their motivations and the way we get to really see their growth from the start of the series. I love that it's Ruby who's actually the most accepting of the situation, and that Annie's the one who can't really cope. All three of them act the hell out of the episode, and play off each other so well, and I think especially given it felt like we got less of the girls together in s3, it really means a lot to me as an episode over all.

Ask me for my Top Fives

[sothischickshe]

Ok so (when) did rio learn/guess that the reason Beth et al stopped supplying the money was to do with not having the plate/s? Because that is the problem he solves.

I figure, the money doesn't appear, he sends mick round. Cos what's this maniac doing this time? Is she making moves? Has she shot up the machinery?

Mick reports back that Beth's super freaked, seemed about half a second off offering him a blowjob but then tried a bullshit bribe that makes no sense because she's clearly not making money atm. (oh and BTW there's a small chance this is all his fault cos mick twiddled all the knobs on the press the other day while snooping.)

So then Rio's like uh huh uh huh sounds familiar. He goes - maybe to yell at Beth? Maybe to snoop? Works out Lucy's place in everything. Maybe he is thinking hmm replacement material for a minute. (But I kinda doubt it? Because she's not. There's no reason to believe Lucy knows about the rest of the process or has any desire to do crime.)

I feel like when rio and his boys grab Lucy, she knows enough from what Beth and the girls have said to put stuff together. Maybe she's like, oh you're the one who sent Beth to get me to make more? And rio gets enough info from Lucy to work out what's fucked with the supply and what needs to be remedied? (or maybe he'd already figured that out from seeing Beth's whole process previously, knowing how printing works, clocking that Beth's stalled and freaked, knowing Lucy does all the designs and is connected to Beth and the store, being pretty sure it's not an issue with the press itself if that's what beth told mick it was...?)

Importantly: did Lucy tell rio that Beth stole her bird over it?????

[roxy206]

It's the 4 x 02 live tweet round up! Featuring an embarrassing exchange with the actor who plays Henry 😂

Oh God not the donor family again please #GoodGirls

Ruby: "Now that's what you call a statement piece."

Annie: "And I think we know what it says."

#GoodGirls

Not the donor family coming in with their sob story again 🙄 #GoodGirls

I just don't have a good feeling about this family. I think they're bad news #GoodGirls

Is Ben embarrassed of Annie? #GoodGirls

Yes Beth be pissed at Dean! #GoodGirls

JT the 4th Good Girl

#GoodGirls

Ruby & Beth saying "It's not Deansie" in unison is such bestie energy #GoodGirls

Stan: "Coming in like Steve Jobs" #GoodGirls

YES THANK YOU BACKGROUND CHECK THAT DONOR FAMILY #GoodGirls

Annie is not the character we want in a fake dating trope coughBriocough #GoodGirls

The pineapple centerpiece is very Psych #GoodGirls

YOU TELL HIM BETH #GoodGirls

"You rather I do it inside?" I squealed! #GoodGirls

I already can't wait to rewatch this episode #GoodGirls

This guy is too stupid for a fake dating scenario #GoodGirls

Oh no. This is. Not good. #GoodGirls

"I don't answer to my lady... She makes me look good" Dean... #GoodGirls

Beth having to deal with shitfaced Dean - ugh #GoodGirls

The amount of "Daddy's dead" / we wish tweets 😂😂😂 #GoodGirls

Mick is living his life & does not want to deal with Beth #GoodGirls

Look at Mick with his bathrobe! #GoodGirls

My heart hurts with Ben & Annie being on the outs #GoodGirls

I do love Annie treating the roomba like a pet though #GoodGirls

Ma'am that neckline! #GoodGirls

Okay well I'll give them this convo about moving the line, I do like that #GoodGirls

Shocking that the donor family is only there because of finances #GoodGirls

Yes Ruby! Set them in their place #GoodGirls

No. Nope. I don't buy this. The donor family paying them back for the car? There's something else going on #GoodGirls

What the actual fuck Fitzpatrick!? #GoodGirls

Wtf. #GoodGirls

I am concerned now about when they try to call off this hit. The man is unhinged #GoodGirls

I'm just saying this debrief about Fitzpatrick - we were robbed of at least Ruby debriefing with Beth about Rio in season 2 #GoodGirls

Mhm so did they ACTUALLY lose a daughter in that car accident though?? #GoodGirls

Oh shiiiit the dryer lint #GoodGirls

Beth looks THRILLED to be cuddling with Dean #GoodGirls

In season 4 I'd really like to see Annie not be with anyone. Girl needs some time to herself #GoodGirls

Seriously? The reason they're playing pool is DEAN?! Listen I'm really going to need pool table sex in that case #GoodGirls

//

To sum it up - I don't trust the donor family; Fitzpatrick is UNHINGED & they're going to have to take him out; Beth & Rio need to fuck

[magneticflower]

I don't really get what we're supposed to to feel about Dean's storyline. Like are we supposed to feel like he really cares about Beth? Are we supposed to be proud at him for resisting temptation to sway to the demands of his boss whilst also ignoring his tendency for cheating? Because I don't feel anything positive for any of that. Dean's just strongarming Gayle like he is Beth right now. He is threatening his seemingly female equivalent with persecution for the same sort of thing he used to successfully pull when he was the boss at Boland Motors, though I'm certain that Dean is so delusional that he truly believes that Amber and all the others were just really attracted to him. Dean only likes power plays when he is the one doing that and the writers think we should really be impressed that he is over here forcing Gayle's hand and acting like he has the upper hand.

I mean, in the same episode, we see Beth trying to get Dean to be swayed by her and he isn't into it because it isn't his invitation nor did he decide to bring it up. He is indifferent when it doesn't feel like he made it happen himself, I assume this has just been a glimpse into what their whole life has been like too. Aside from that, Dean's been putting added pressure on Beth as if he really knows what's going on but all he sums it up to is Rio's attraction towards his wife (and I purposely use his wife because Beth isn't anything but a property piece for Dean) and I'm pretty sure in some strange sort of way he thinks Rio is doing as a direct attack towards him even though I doubt Dean ever crosses Rio's mind unless he causes a problem in his operation.

Screwing up the plate and screwing everyone else in the process? Just Dean making sure his property is still his own. Every stupid line directed at Rio causing problems for his family? Just another property and power dispute. The ridiculous gun he bought? Just Dean making sure Beth knows that he can start to handle this situation for them at any point he so chooses. Honestly, if I thought the writers really thought too deeply on what they're trying to display in Death's relationship, I'd say Beth trying to seduce Dean into the shower with her was an attempt at her trying to keep him at bay and not on guard but I'm sure that they're just trying to insinuate that there is any reason at all for Beth to attracted to Dean still. D

on't even get me started and how they're somehow ignoring their own canon material in lieu of making Dean seem like he really knows how to appeal to people in a way that has him selling things left and right. The most plausible argument they could possibly throw at me there is that, for some reason, he just really understands hot tubs and he just never understood cars lmao.

Dean isn't anymore likable than he was in the beginning, and in many ways, seeing this strange attempt at making him seem sympathetic and likeable is doing the very opposite and I can't tell if that is the point in some sort of feminism attempt at showing what the white guy can get away with or if they just really don't understand what their show's appeal really was which definitely wasn't whatever this is. I mean, making Death somehow manage to stick together whilst seemingly trying to put a fork in between Ruby and Stan, the only relatively healthy relationship they've got going on in this show, is just not it.

If Dean and Beth don't separate by the end of this season, I really don't know what is going on with the writers' minds.

[medievaldarling]

idont think dean really manipulates her. hesa giant idiot. this ep def showed her finally realizing that. she's been in a stupor for 20 years. like she was so shocked to see that he can't actuallysell cars. she was telling her sistershe'sbeen expecting dean tobe the competent provider andonly now realizes hes not that at all. she's awakened and it was rio that shook her world and opened her eyes. he's been her teacher guiding her along and even maybe the sex was a lesson(/reward) to be/do better

When Dean and Beth got together (high school, I think it was mentioned), I think she was too young to realize what was toxic in a relationship. I don’t think she realized that she had the right to ask questions and the ability to be her own person, and I think that Dean knew how malleable she was (or soon discovered that she was).

Based on Dean’s interaction with women in the last episode - the woman from the dealership and his own wife - I think it’s safe to assume that at some point down the line, Dean convinced Beth to leave the workforce and raise the kids. He probably twisted it in a way where she’d be seen as a bad mother if she wasn’t with her children 24/7 or that it was her job as a woman to raise the children and if she neglected that, she was a failure.

And honestly, I think it was all about having Beth be reliant on him for everything so she could never leave. What woman is going to divorce her husband when she hasn’t worked in 20 years and doesn’t have a dime to her name beyond what her husband gives as an allowance?

My aunt went through a divorce a few years ago, and she told me that the absolute best thing that you can do is to never be reliant on someone else for financial stability. That way if you do choose to leave, you’ll be able to do so without being trapped (she thankfully was independent). That has stuck with me ever since.

Lying about cancer was clear manipulation. He knows that Beth would feel guilty/worry about the kids spending time with him. Dean knew that if he dropped that bombshell, she’d be more pliant and he’d be able to get his way again - and he did.

And because this has been their relationship for twenty years, when he feeds her some bullshit excuse, Beth doesn’t even think to question in because Dean has convinced her that he has all the answers.

As Dean’s lies start to unfold, I think that Beth is paying closer attention to what he says now. She was still so confident in him, thinking he could sell the cars and they could have money again, and when he came home talking about the giant ape he bought, you could see the hope drain from her eyes. She’s finally starting to realize that Dean isn’t the successful business man he likes to be seen as.

I definitely agree that Rio opened her eyes and let her see that she is valuable, that her time and knowledge are worth something and don’t let anyone tell you any different. He is always telling her that she can be something, that he sees something in her that makes him think that she could make it in his world.

I think the sex was her way to re-validate that to herself. She just sat across from a man who told her that her superpower was making cute sandwiches, while just that morning another man told her that he thinks she has the capability to run a criminal enterprise (albeit with a little more practice). That sex scene was 100% for Beth, created by Beth, and served Beth in the journey to reaffirm in her own eyes that she’s capable of ruling the world if she wants.

[sothischickshe]

9: Are there any fics you’d love to see but don’t want to write yourself? What are they?

i love this question SO much! <3 ty for asking!!

so i yelled a lil abt it before, but!! additionally:

1. post-canon: ruby breaks up with both beth and stan, and comes up with a plan to get annie out all by herself (or maybe ben n sara help?! they seem smart!), and then ruby and annie move somewhere really nice together with their kids!!! optionally also: diane tuts some sense into stan, and they both join the commune a bit later? also! annie and ruby grab beth's kids and marcus + rhea and nancy + dakota too!!! beth and rio are allowed to visit but!!! only at the same time as dean bc everyone else prefers one lump of suffering rather than eking it out.

2. turner faked his own death and has been on holiday with his bf this whole time having fun.

3. immediately post canon: ruby realises that getting dean hopped up on sugar and convincing him to beat vance to (near?) death solves a lot of problems, actually.

4. au: rio & lucy are in the same birdwatching club, and lucy knows beth from work or crafting or w/e, and she cupids them together. also maybe she's (a?) literal cupid?

5. beth runs kevin out of town and/or throws him off a bridge. (maybe annie/nancy endgame?)

6. rhea keeps teaming up with beth and then rio and then beth and then rio and so on and so on and can't really keep up with what's going on, and eventually beth and rio realise and get mad at her, and then she gets way madder back at both of them bc it is in fact their own fault. maybe she yells so loud they're literally blown off the planet?

7. beth and rio have a disgruntled grumpy sex life bc they both desperately want to be bossed around & have their hair yanked and it's super not working out. don't/resolve however you want.

8. stan realises he and beth are literally romantic rivals.

9. high school au in which beth and rio are both staff. and also literally high.

10. adult marcus + jane ~parent trap elderly beth and rio into a relationship

11. beth goes to revenge shoot mick in the shoulder. he convinces her she's pregnant with his kid. either true and/or plausible cos they DID hook up, or completely implausible bc they didnt, but he still manages to convince her.

12. beth and rio get married for some convoluted crime reason and are forced to co-habit to sell it and it's AWFUL

13. brio plumber au

14. rio/ruby enemies to lovers

15. rosa IS actually the boss. in fact she's no one's grandmother, maybe she kidnaps children and manipulates them into a life of crime??? nick's flashback manipulation was actually rosa's uber-manipulation. maybe beth/rosa endgame?

16. rio is in no way the boss, he's mick's idiot protégé and poss so drunk he hasn't noticed that fact. aggressively canon compliant.

17. rhyming names comedy pair ups (series?)!!! mick and nick can't tell which of them rio is mumbling at/about?! gene and dean meet fighting over a coffee order at starbucks?! ben and ken discover they're related?! annie and danny get matching tattoos?!

18. beth and rio have weird chair sex after the 'we can get away with anything now' or w/e abrupt ep ending. bonus: it's not very good, which ~explains much of their subsequent behaviour.

19. hipster hatted barman/dylan

20. literally anything from nick's assistant's pov

21. reader insert fic where dean's monologuing abt his weird sex dreams abt rio at y/n while you're trapped & forced to listen to him. bonus: ao3 skin which removes any nav away from the page.

22. annie/ruby/stan/mick (any combo, or any individual) feed an oblivious beth and rio weeded food bc they're annoying. shenanigans ensue? bonus: beth and rio are locked in a cupboard for containment reasons & forgotten about & then they die.

23. beth/crazy cat lady enemies to lovers.

24. arranged marriage brio au where they're both instantly repulsed by the other and aggressively try to wriggle out of this situation. eventually discover they have basically the same unpleasant personality and are VERY into the sitch, and probs get rudely angry @ whomever has kindly done something to help them wriggle out of said sitch. also they're in their 50s.

25. beth/rhea/hot coach

26. after beth goes to rio's family dinner thing, she feels compelled to invite rio to family dinner back (i guess this is an au where ppl have manners lol) with dean + the kids. it's extremely awkward fgfgf.

27. canon compliant: actually it was beth who put out the hit on turner.

28. immediately pre-canon, rhea finally breaks up with rio & this explains ~a lot.

29. s2 canon divergence where beth explains at least some of what happened with boomer / rio has the sense to ask some fucking sensible follow up questions to ‘throwing the wrong jacket away’ rather than simply pouting. rio IMMEDIATELY asks for marry pat’s phone number. maybe beth/mp endgame though?

30. jt develops better musical taste.

31. annie + angela fall in love. kevin is never heard from again.

32. when beth fobs judith off in s3 by telling her she got a promotion + they can afford help now, judith doesnt immediately buy it and keeps sniffing round, and she runs into mick a few times who’s on babysitting beth duty. beth convinces judith that mick is the nanny, and mick somewhat grudgingly goes along with it. presumably mick/judith endgame.

33. dean/his brief young car salesman boss from s2 enemies to lovers. 

34. that time dean claimed his shirt was covered in exploded hot sauce? no, that was dog blood. he’s a serial pet murderer. explains the cursed boland family pet sitch in detail.

35. literally anything from the pov of rio’s neighbour’s tiny gf. presumably mostly fascinated with architecture, but maybe she occasionally notices ppl too?

fanfiction asks, but this is clearly the best question of all time

[pynkhues]

I love brio and I've read almost every fic on ao3. I've made little notes here and there of some fics that I would like to write, but I've never wrote anything like fan fiction. I can think up scenes in my head, but I just can't seem to get it out on paper. What are some tips you can give me to help? Because I would really love to write, i just dont even know where to start?

Hi, anon! And how cool! Welcome to the wonderful world of writing. :-) 

My advice on how to start – as wishy-washy as it sounds – is always just to start. Pick up a pen, or open a word document, and just start throwing words together. See what comes out, and try not to edit or self-police as you write, particularly when you’re just starting out. It’ll cripple you creatively – gosh, it still does sometimes for me, and I’ve been writing for over 15 years.

A good way to try this out is to set a timer for fifteen minutes or half an hour, and just free-write – so just write, and don’t let yourself re-read any of it until the timer bings. Give yourself the space to write words – some will be good, a lot probably terrible, but you can always make bad words better. 

You can’t make nothing better. 

And look, I’m going to maintain that that’s the most important piece of advice here, haha, but I get that that sort of advice can also be sometimes frustrating to people who are looking for more structure, so hey!

Here’s some more meat-and-potatoes advice too.

(Put behind a cut to not eat your feeds!)

Plotting a story in three questions

Building a plot really comes down to asking three questions: 

1. What does your character want? 

2. What’s standing in their way stopping them from getting what they want? 

3. How will they overcome this to get what they want? 

It might sound basic, but it forms really the backbone of every story. Take the Harry Potter series for instance, for which these questions are crucial. 

1. What does your character want? 

Harry wants a family.

2. What’s standing in their way stopping them from getting what they want? 

Voldemort is a direct threat to the new family Harry’s found. A threat he feels acutely because Voldemort murdered his original family.

3. How will they overcome this to get what they want? 

Harry will do anything to save this new, found family – the stakes of which escalates with every book. 

Of course, stories are more than this too – they’re themes and settings and arcs and dialogue, and character motivation tangles up in those things which means that the story world appears to expand well beyond those three questions I listed above. After all, Voldemort’s never just a threat to Harry’s family, he is for the whole world, right? But the thing is the threat to the world is never what drives Harry through the story, and therefore isn’t what drives the story overall. 

The plot is always the threat to Hogwarts and the life and family Harry’s found there.

Good Girls is exactly the same. 

1. What does your character want?

Beth, Ruby and Annie want to provide for their children. 

2. What’s standing in their way stopping them from getting what they want?

All three of them are in dire financial situations because Dean’s lost everything, Sara needs a transplant and expensive medication, and Annie can’t pay for her son’s needs. 

3. How will they overcome this to get what they want?

They’re going to get into crime and make enough money to save themselves and their children. 

The answers to these questions can change and evolve too – after all, the ‘what’ has certainly grown more complicated for Beth, Ruby and Annie across the show’s run, but those changes should evolve out of plot progression aka cause and effect. 

Beth’s original want was for financial stability for her children, and she still wants that, but she wants more than that now too – something that has been explored through the instability of her circumstances, and her growing attraction to power after having lived a powerless life.

So let’s talk about cause and effect a little more.

Cause and Effect

With those questions in mind, it’s important to remember that the way a story takes shape should be a sort of domino effect of cause and effect. Scenes aren’t placed together in a haphazard order. They’re not stacked on top of each other like three children in a trenchcoat! One scene should always cause the next, and that scene should lead onto the next, and so on, and so on. 

The enemy of good storytelling is ‘and then’. 

So when you write a scene, don’t think ‘now what happens?’

Look at what you’ve written and say ‘okay, what does what I’ve written here mean? What is the fallout of this? What is going to happen to these characters and this story now given what I’ve just written?’

This is also a good way to reverse engineer a story (and something I often do!) If you have a scene in your head, but you know it’s a middle scene, or an ending to something, ask yourself what happened that made that scene happen. 

In one of my most recent standalone fics, Drive You Mad (wear me out), I actually started with two scenes in my head – one where Beth and Rio were soaking wet for a mystery reason I didn’t know yet, haha, and the fact that it lead to them having sex in his car, and I had a vague idea that I wanted it to be  related to a crime job. 

Similarly with the pornstar!AU! I just wanted Beth and Rio to make a porno, haha, but I wanted it to feel like a genuine choice for these characters, so I needed to think of authentic reasons that would put them in that room, opposite each other, about to throw it all to the wind and bone on camera. 

I reverse engineered  both these stories by just asking myself ‘but why did this happen?’ What choices did these characters make to get them here? How did Beth and Rio end up soaking wet? Why would they have sex in that car? What would get somebody like Beth to shoot porn? What would make somebody like Beth connect emotionally with somebody like Rio in this AU (and y’know what? It was the exact same thing as in canon – a combination of parenthood and validation).

In other words, your story should never say this happened and then this happened, it should always say this happened and so this happened. 

Agency

Every character in your story should make choices. Good choices, bad choices, choices they think are not choices at all (because never forget - you always choose to do nothing. Nothing is never thrust upon you). 

Your characters are what drive your story forwards, and they drive your story forwards by making choices, not by standing still and waiting for the story to come to them. And look, it’s great if they make the right one, but it’s so much more fun (and opens up so many and so possibilities!) when they make the wrong one.

Grounding Your Story

Grounding stories in a place or a space is something I think a lot of new and emerging writers struggle with, and it was something I was really, really bad at when I started writing and worked really hard to get better at. Characters should never be interacting in vacuums. We don’t exist in them after all. 

Stories come alive when characters are engaging with spaces, or when those spaces are utilised effectively. Horror does this especially well, but a lot of other stories do too (again, Harry Potter is actually a great example of this!)

This is something Good Girls pretty consistently does fabulously too – think of any of their heists for starters, but particularly the one in 1.01. Settings can open up and close and add conflict and provide release. Use them! Think about them! I can guarantee you’ll become a better writer for it.

When I was really struggling with this area, I got some incredible advice that I still use to this day from Kim Wilkins, a gothic fantasy and horror author from my home town. She told me that when I start writing a new scene, go through the five senses - what can your character see, smell, taste, touch, hear. Write all of it. Then pick the best two descriptions, and dump the rest. 

Then think about the function of those descriptions. Okay, so the character’s in a park and can hear the metal whine of a rusty swingset. Does the chain link snap? Harming their child? Or maybe they can hear thunder in the distance while they’ve been trying to have a romantic anniversary picnic! Do they make it to the car in time? How does that affect their dynamic? Does it lead to a passionate make out in the rain? Or a furious fight in it? (Notice how this is all cause and effect too?)

These descriptions don’t always have to lead to a plot point – sometimes they can be reflective of an emotional state – an oncoming storm can foreshadow an oncoming fight between characters as much as it can lead to those characters getting caught in it after all – and sometimes it can just be for atmosphere too! 

All of this serves though to build your story into something evocative and grounded for the reader, plus it can be really fun to play around with. 

Love it or have fun! Try for both, but never have neither. 

Sometimes writing is a slog. 

Sometimes you sit down for a session and want to pluck your own eyelashes out because the story’s not working or the words aren’t flowing or you know your characterisation is falling flat, but there’s a difference between not enjoying a writing session, and not enjoying writing overall.

Writing can be really hard work sometimes, and when it is, you either need to love it, and love the story you’re trying to tell, or you need to move on to something else. 

That can be your silly, fun crack fic that evades all logic and you just straight up enjoy writing, or it can be something that isn’t writing at all. 

You’ve got to make it work for you – and if you don’t love it, and you aren’t having fun? It’s not worth it. 

You can take a break and come back to it, or you can take a break and never come back to it. Just do what’s right for you. 

Don’t get turned off by The Gap

Ira Glass describes this perfectly in this interview, and it’s something I always recommend to people starting out. Writing is, like practically everything else, a trade. It’s something you grow and develop and should never stop growing and developing and learning about. 

Writing though I think is also something that’s really easy to give up when you feel like you aren’t immediately good at it, and, well - - 

I think he says it better than I ever could:

undefined

[pynkhues]

I just have ask, cause I need to just voice this.. (BTW I do love the show no worry) Am I the only one who thought it was such a stupid reason that the new FBI decided that the fake money was made by women was because they used fuckin' NAIL POLISH?!! I legit sat dumfounded, I mean... wtf? What, men can't think to add nail polish to their fake money?

Haha, I get why you don’t like it, anon. As a functional plot device it’s a little hammy, but I appreciate it as a thematic plot device so much that I actually like it a lot overall. 

This show doesn’t really have a lot of recurring objects like many shows do, but when they are introduced, they usually serve as a means of underlining the gendering of spaces, crime and life, which is a theme this show is about as obsessed with as I am. I talked pretty extensively about the gendering of spaces and how the show uses them in this post (man, I should update this with the delicious new spaces in s3, because they continue all of these trends in such interesting ways!), and briefly touched on the gendering of objects too (namely Rio’s golden gun, and the dubby), but it really does extend well beyond that.

So let’s break that down a little!

(Under a cut to save your dashes!)

Functional vs Thematic Plot Devices

Plot devices take a hundred different shapes and forms throughout a story, and of course, always serve to drive narrative forwards, tell the audience something about a character, or drive home a narrative theme. Plot devices aren’t always physical – in many cases they can be a trope, expectation, lie, red herring, among many other things, but for the sake of this post I want to talk about physical plot devices.

So basically, I want to talk about the way this show uses objects.

It might not seem like it on the surface, but this is a show that uses objects as plot devices a lot. Sometimes these are obvious – the money for instance, the Boland Motors car Turner drudges from the lake back in s1, the dubby (and ho, boy, I have a lot to say about that last one, but I’ll come back to that), the guns, Lucy’s phone, etc etc etc.

While these are, of course, essentially props, this is a show that typically lends a lot of weight to them, and in particular, it lends a lot of weight to feminine-coded objects that would in other shows frequently be dismissed as inconsequential.

A pearl necklace, an old lady’s porcelain figurines, a smear of lipstick on a pen cap, a child’s blanket, a new engagement ring, a pregnancy test, vials of botox, and nail polish, among many other things, become objects of narrative and thematic importance.

When it comes to these sorts of physical plot devices, I generally separate them into two categories: functional and thematic.

Functional plot devices are ultimately what they sound like. They serve an often purely functional purpose in the story. Things like the Boland Motors car that the girls took to Canada, dumped, and then was drudged up by Turner. It was used as a means of re-directing Turner’s attention on Beth, while also revealing to Dean that Beth had been the person who’d robbed him back in 1.03. More recently too, the hockey jersey that Ruby stole was a means of ultimately giving us a fun heist as the girls scrambled to get the money to pay for Beth’s life, as well as getting us to the pawn shop where Ruby would see the pen that Sara had stolen.

Functional plot devices – at their most basic – move plot forwards, bridge the gaps between characters and accelerate the action and drama of a story.

Thematic plot devices on the other hand serve a different purpose, and are often less bogged down, I find at least, in perfect logic. While they need to do what a functional plot device does, they also carry the extra weight of underpinning character arcs and often punctuating the key themes of the story. The sled in Citizen Kane is a really good example of this – as a functional plot device it’s just a specific sled and a sort of silly thing for a multimillionaire to want when he can buy as many sleds as he wants, but as a thematic one, we lean that it’s the key thing in his life connecting him back to his childhood, his innocence and his humanity, and comes to represent the central loss of the film.

Similarly, Harry’s lightning bolt scar in the Harry Potter series serves as a functional plot device to tell us and Harry when Voldemort is near, but it actually evades logic to eschew a greater purpose – which is reiterate the theme of motherly love and protection in the story.

Sharp Objects

Good Girls uses objects this way a lot and frequently shifts them between the two purposes, and it has done that since the very beginning. Using toy guns on the very first Fine & Frugal robbery for instance, was a silly plot point used ultimately to get them into the situation with Boomer at the end, but it also thematically represented the naivety of the girls in the robbery, and Annie and Beth’s powerlessness overall, but especially in the scene with Boomer (something immediately juxtaposed with Beth hitting him with the bourbon bottle). It also works effectively as a means of showing how far Beth would come across the first season as she held a real gun at the end of it, and the further slip of her moral character and what she’s capable of across season 2 and 3.

Sometimes they seem to appear as purely functional too, but evolve into thematic ones – meaning they are enriched with weight and purpose as they transition in their design.

A good example of that is Boomer’s cell phone in 2.03 which was purely functional – serving as a means of tricking the girls into believing they were disposing of Boomer’s body, not Jeff’s, before it was pivoted in the last scene to be used on a thematic and character level. By Annie listening to Marion’s voicemails through it, it served to re-link Annie to her own humanity, and underpin her arc with Marion that would ultimately lead to betrayal, redemption, grief and guilt.

The Dubby: a quick aside

The best example though, at least to me, is, of course, the dubby. The dubby does a lot of heavy lifting on virtually every story level, and I could honestly wax lyrical about it until the end of time.

On a functional plot level, it’s there to ultimately get Beth shirking Rio’s instructions and throwing her weight against him in their partnership. It forces her to confront the fact that she views herself and Rio as equals, when the reality is – in situations like that – they’re not. It also gets us to confrontations between Beth with Dean, Rio and Ruby, as well as Annie and Ben (I told you it did a lot of heavy lifting!), served as the means to which Noah and Annie met (boo), revealed Rio’s hand emotionally, and forced Beth to face on a textual level (as opposed to subtextual level) her changing relationship with her home, with her role as a mother, and ultimately her children.

On a thematic level, it explores all that and more! Not only is it deeply, deeply symbolic of a loss of innocence (a baby blanket in a drug den!) – something that’s reiterated by the girls almost being raped in that house – but Rio’s desire, for whatever reason, to give it back to her (something actually reiterated in 2.08 when he tries to handle the baby hitmen for her) – a really, really interesting beat for a character that seems to revel in her moral decline. Rio has, I think, always wanted her to be both. Again, something that is the clearest we’ve ever seen in this episode – he wants her to own up to what she is (a drug dealer) during their fight, while simultaneously trying to restore her to a seemingly frivolous comfort as a mother. It’s complicated! And I love it!

It’s also a highly feminised object that is weaponised against Beth twice. Firstly, by Jane as a means of guilting Beth (she lost it in the drug den), then criminally (by the, y’know, criminals), and then Beth actually weaponises it herself against the woman in the craft store in a female hierarchical sense which is totally fascinating to me and feels very true of Beth as reiterating the sort of alpha woman she is.

I could keep talking about this, but let’s move on, haha.

Claws

It’s not just about character arcs though.

Thematic plot devices are also often used as symbolic touchstones to re-emphasise the key themes of the show overall, and it’s in this sense that the nail polish operates – to me – really effectively. The writers aren’t saying that nail polish is only used by women, they’re saying that it’s a feminine-coded object deemed frivolous or silly by a patriarchal society (which it is, even when men wear it), and that women can use that dismissal as a weapon.

In other words, the key through line of the show.

The girls have operated with this sensibility since the show began, acting within underestimated, feminine-coded spaces and using them, basically in a way that messes with people’s expectations. It doesn’t always work in their favour, but that’s not a bad thing, and I don’t think that that’s the story this show is trying to tell. Rather I think it’s simply trying to say that these things are active, and can be powerful and used in interesting ways. They’re not passive or frivolous as history has told us.

They’ve frequently actually tried to use female-coded objects in crime before too – namely Marion’s figurines, the secret shopping scheme, the botox – all of which failed in unique ways (all of which too were briefly entertained but ultimately rejected by Rio, and it’s interesting that a key transition in Beth and Rio’s relationship occurred around Boland Motors – a masculinised space that Beth feminised on her takeover of it – I spoke about that quite a bit in the gendered spaces post I linked to above!)

The nail polish though has been the first true, pure success of a weaponised, feminine-coded object in the crime storylines, and it’s not an accident that that has coincided with the launch of the girls’ operation and their pure success without Rio. Being able to use it to make the money has been key to representing their feminisation of the crime world and the crime space on a thematic level, and I’d argue represents a ‘full circle’ moment with the success of their returns-for-cash scheme working with Rio originally (again, a feminine-coded operation).

Like I said in my gendered spaces post – Beth, Ruby and Annie are at their strongest and smartest when they’re utilising the familiar, feminine-coded world and weaponizing it, as opposed to copying Rio’s highly masculine-coded world (one of the clearest examples of this ever on the show was this season actually when Beth realised she couldn’t intimidate Gil like Rio, but could blackball him in PTA mom mode). The nail polish is actually a key symbol of that too, and the fact that it’s identified by a female FBI agent is about reiterating the same themes. Phoebe has a chance to take down the girls and close in on them because she doesn’t underestimate that world like Turner did and Rio’s still prone to doing.

The nail polish in that sense formed not only a functional plot device (with making the money in the first place), a thematic one (the underestimation of feminine-coded objects by men), but a bridging device that makes Phoebe a real enemy to the girls. It also serves as a great narrative underscore as Phoebe removes that nail polish from circulation, not only indicating that Phoebe operates in that space as well as Beth, Ruby and Annie, because she’s a part of that world in a way Turner wasn’t, but forming a terrific narrative parallel where as Beth loses further control of her operation, she also loses control of a key ingredient which gained her that operation in the first place.

So yes! Less function, more theme, but I don’t know.

I’m pretty into it, haha.

[pynkhues]

Howdy! Remember that scene in 2:06 where Annie is going on about Beth's dong fog? Well, she says "I can't stand watching them together" (might be paraphrasing). Had me wondering what they have been acting like in those off camera meetings after the girls found out about them. Head canon maybe?

Anon! This is such an old prompt, and I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to get to it, but I hope maybe this little ficlet is worth it. Hope you enjoy it :-) 

- 

1

So they’re boning.

Bumping uglies, thumping thighs, rubbing wet spots, doingthe horizontal tango, shaboinking, shagging. Screwing.

Her perfect housewife, total nerd, maybe criminal mastermindsister, and their terrifying, violent, definite criminal mastermind gangfriend,and honestly, maybe Annie should be less surprised. After all, it’s not likeeither of them have been subtle about their eye fucking, and hell, even beforethis latest development she swears she could smell it on them, the pheromonesjust like, radiating off the two of them like a skunk funk.

But god, that bar the other night had been a totally newtype of embarrassing. The way he’d swaggered on over, his eyes on her like he knewexactly what he was doing, a set to his shoulders that was all mating dance –peacock feathers up, and Beth just like, staring right back at him all - - intoit, like she was ready to make a nest and start laying eggs for him or somethingand just - -

It was gross, okay? And Beth had been like, a zeroon the embarrassment scale when she should’ve been a solid 98 million,storming out of the bar like she wouldn’t have murdered Annie for even entertainingthe thought of doing what she’d done, and Annie had spent the night in ateary fury imagining every possible outcome for this - - this development -- and never seeing a situation that didn’t end up with her sister dead or –worse – hurt.

(“And you think dragging her over the coals is going to stopeither of those things?” Ruby had asked her over the phone later that night whenshe’d called to check in, and Annie had frowned, topping up the vodka in herchipped mug.

“Yes,” she insists. Then: “No. Maybe. God, Ruby, you can’tseriously think this is a good idea?”

“Of course not, but making Beth feel bad for gettin’ somewith someone who isn’t Dean for the first time in her entire life is not a goodidea either.”)

Anyway here they are again, sitting in the back of BolandMotors, waiting for Rio to deliver a truckload of unwashed cash to theirdoorstep and blab on about how much he’s looking forward to his sixty percentwhich is frankly bull, because they’re doing all the hardwork and surelythey should be getting a better cut since Beth is like, literally blowing thedude.

And isn’t that an image? Annie scowls, gagging briefly, legjittery underneath her.

She can’t even imagine Beth like - -

Ugh.  

She bets he has a big dick.

He’s got that total vibe after all, that energy, and- - huh.

Annie squints at Beth.

She’s always kind of figured Dean had a micro penis, so thatmust be an adjustment and a half.  

“Stop looking at me like that,” Beth hisses suddenly, ablush having creeped up her neck, and Annie blinks, folds her arms over herchest, gives Beth the best ‘Beth Look’ Annie can manage.

“Like what?”

“You know like what,” Beth insists, and Ruby groans besidethem at the same time Annie loudly scoffs.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sister, if you’re inferring somethingin my look. You know, maybe that’s more a reflection on your guilty conscience,not my feelings, because I –”  

“Yo.”

Beth sits up straight suddenly, pink dusting her cheeks nowtoo and Annie scoffs again, looking sideways at where Rio’s materialised infront of them like he’s just beamed down from the USS Enterprise, or - - no, hewould never get into Star Fleet. He’d be like one of the Klingons or something,sure, the most handsome one to ever exist, but that’s irrelevant.

He’s bad news through and through, and Beth is like somesacrificial virgin or something and just - -

“Is that all of it?” Beth asks, and somehow she’s managed toget the bag off Rio and count it out in the time it’s taken Annie to catch up.She glances quickly over to Rio, at his stupid handsomeness and his sharpfeatures and his raised eyebrow and his eyes all up in Beth’s business.

“Little early to be uppin’ drops, darlin’,” he says, andugh, darling?

Annie scowls, gaze shifting back to Beth who doesn’t even reactto it, just powers through.

“We washed all your cash in record time last week.”

“Yeah, but you were,” he looks at her, purses his lower lipin a way that feels frankly obscene, and adds. “Motivated.”

And yes, Annie thinks with a scoff, motivated by theprospect of the cops finding the body he’d ordered them to kill, but - - wait,is that what he means?

Her gaze flicks between the two of them in horror. Did theymake some sort of sex deal on top of that?

Ugh.

She looks at Ruby, who’s just staring at the ceiling so shedoesn’t have to look at them, and Annie would do the same if she thought shehad it in her to miss this.

“Well, what if we did it again?”

He grins and recollects himself so quickly that Annie almostthinks she’d made it up, the sharp tug to his lips like something he couldn’tquite contain in the moment of it, and it’s enough to make her reel back alittle. To watch the neon security lights catch the angles of his face, andmake him look like some sort of impossibly handsome demon you could hang thenext hit spooky-style franchise on. When he speaks, his voice is husky.  

“Well then we could have another conversation, huh?”

“Right,” Beth says immediately, a little breathless, and shepuffs out her chest a bit which is just - - god, mortifying, and Rionods, eyes flicking down to her boobs like he knows exactly what they look likebeneath her grandma’s-curtains-blouse, which he must now, turning on hisheel to leave and Beth watches him, a look on her face that Annie doesn’t thinkshe’s ever seen before, like she’s - - hungry almost, and just - -

“Ugh,” Annie squawks and Beth swivels around, her eyes wide,like she hadn’t been two seconds away from climbing on his dick.

“What?”

“UGH,” Annie squawks louder, waving a hand at Beth before stormingaway towards her car.

 2

The music is too loud.

Which feels, y’know, kind of like a big deal, because Annieloves loud music, but this bar isn’t playing Train or Sheryl Crow, it’s playinglike, cool music, because it’s a cool bar, and absolutely not Beth– the least cool person she knows.

“I hate this place,” Annie says, and she can feel Ruby rollher eyes beside her, taking a sip of her fire engine, which is franklyridiculous, because even Annie is too mature for fire engines, or - -hmm. Maybe not. She eyes it off. Maybe that’s her next drink.

“You’ve been telling us to go here for months,” Beth says acrossthe booth, and Annie gapes, because, okay, she had, but - -

“Yeah, well, that was before gangfriend decided he wanted tomix up our vibe, okay? Whatever happened to the park at midnight, huh? Brunchat Cloud 9? Okay, I know what happened to brunch at Cloud 9, but what about, y’know- - your back patio?”

Ruby snorts at that, waggling her eyebrows suggestively andtaking a sip on her straw.

“Think we know what happened to Beth’s back patio too.”

It’s enough to make Beth turn about eight different shadesof red, and for Annie to spin around to Ruby in disbelief, spilling her own drinka little in the process, which - - whatever, this is categorically more important.

“Was that an anal joke?”

The question immediately makes Ruby’s eyes open dramatically,her lips parting in horror around the straw in her mouth, cheeks flushing.

“No! I just meant those French doors open up onto Beth’sbedroom, oh my god, Annie.”

Annie scoffs dramatically, shoving her drink in Ruby’s face ina theatrical gesture of punctuation.

“Please, you know what you said.”

“Can we please stop talking about this,” Beth saysdesperately, and just - - Annie swivels around in her seat, back towards Beth,squinting at her sister, trying to read her expression, because that insistenceis pretty interesting.

“Did you guys do anal?”

“No,” Beth hisses, furious. “There was no - -”

And because the universe clearly hates them, Rio choosesthat exact moment to slide too easily into the booth beside Beth, and y’knowwhat? The thing is wide, deep even, but he slides in so close his arm is pushedagainst hers, and just - - god, it’s embarrassing, the way Beth’s eyes widen,the way she sort of lurches sideways before steeling herself, and sort of like –half pressing back into him? It’s really fucking awkward, but Rio doesn’t evenflinch.

“Ladies,” he says, gesturing to the bartender for a drink,who apparently drops every other customer in a five foot radius instantly to serveRio, and Annie glares at him because she waited twenty minutes for her drink,dammit. “You good?”

Ruby’s eyebrows are high up her forehead as she stares betweenthem, and god, Annie can’t blame her. Beth’s so red she could be used to stop traffic,and the air just feels weird and thick, and it’s that whole pheromonething again, and Annie just doesn’t even know how to begin to unpack that.

Luckily she doesn’t have to as Beth suddenly grabs the sportsbag from next to her in the booth, pulling it over herself to pass to Rio, onlyRio stops her, drops the bag to her lap and unzips it there, making neat workof counting through the cash, shifting in his seat enough his back can shield whatthey’re doing from prying eyes.

“It’s all there,” Beth says, her voice all girlish and breathyas Rio goes through the bag on her lap. He doesn’t even reply, but Beth jumps suddenlyand Annie blinks because the only explanation for that means that he must’ve gottento the bottom of the bag, which means the only thing between his hands and herthighs and - - vagina - - is the thin waterproof material of the bag itselfand her sister’s jeans.

“Cool,” Rio says suddenly, zipping up the bag and lurchingto his feet. He swings it over his shoulder, giving Beth a final, loaded look,and says: “See you next week. I’ll bring the funny money.”

He’s barely out of the bar before Annie lets loose a long, strangledscream.

3

She’s been staring at Beth for the last few minutes, tryingto place what’s different when her gaze drops to her sister’s breasts and she justthinks - -

Ah.

“Is that a new bra?”

It’s enough to make Beth spin dramatically around on thespot, her eyes wide, a little wild, her cheeks bright red, and whatever, Anniethinks, rolling her own eyes. That sort of feels like a given these days.

“What? No,” she flusters, flailing her arms, gaze dartingsideways to where Rio’s clambering out of his car a little further down the lot.He looks like he’s on his cell, talking to somebody or other, even as he pullsa bag off the backseat of his car. “How would you even know that?”

Annie just looks at her.  

“I know all your clothes, including underwear. Plus youhaven’t worn a push up bra since like – ever – it’s not like you need one – andno offence, but your tits look like they’re about to become sentient, suffocateyou and take over your body.”

Beth just stares at her, and god, Beth really needs to learnto embarrass less easily. She’s like, nine different shades of red right now. Sheexhales sharply, looking irritated, gaze going sideways towards Rio and thenback to Annie, and then - -

“It was on sale,” she says quietly, and Annie snorts, but -- okay, maybe she feels a little bad when Beth slips a hand below the collar ofher shirt and starts surreptitiously fiddling with the strap on the thing. It’sjust the two of them tonight anyway – Ruby had had a shift at Dandy Donuts shecouldn’t quite squirm out of, and Annie had kind of hated the thought of seeingthe Beth and Rio show without her, but at least she didn’t have to deal with Rubyjudging her either.

So instead they both just stand there, watching Rio acrossthe lot, and he must know that they’re watching him, but he doesn’t acknowledgeit. Doesn’t even turn around to look at them, which honestly - - rude. Annieglances back at Beth, ready to basically tell her that she’s managed to landherself another asshole, only - -

Only Beth’s gaze is fixed. Her focus unwavering, her lips slightlyparted, like he has her hypnotised across the parking lot and that hunger’sthere, plain on her face, but there’s - - something different there too. Somethingthat runs a little deeper, that holds a little firmer, and Annie’s mouth closes,her forehead furrowing, and suddenly she needs to look away, uncomfortable, butnot for the reasons that she has been.

She hears the car door slam shut, and glances back up toRio, and the sound seems to have jerked Beth out of whatever had her in it’s griptoo, and well, at least the anger’s easier to hold onto again when Rio’s gazelaser focuses on Beth’s pushed up boobs.

“Hey, ladies,” he drawls, slipping the bag off his shoulder,but not quite passing it over yet. “Gonna invite me in?”

And Annie just watches.

Watches Beth flush, exhale, smile – just a little.

Watches her let him in.

[magneticflower]

Also, how do they still want to keep Dean and Beth together??? When he cut up that plate it should've been a deal breaker because he is a freaking wild card and the next time he feels threatened he is gonna do something stupid like that again and I just don't even get why she wasn't still livid with him by the end of the last episode ESPECIALLY after Lucy ended up dead. I mean I guess you could say emotional exhaustion on Beth's part but I still can't believe she didn't even let him know that what he did caused huge damage and just because she was alive didn't mean there weren't HUGE consequences. I don't get why he doesn't get to share that guilt and instead just gets to be like, 'well, you aren't dead, like I said, all's well that ends well, oh look a bird'

I especially don't get why we have to see him comforting Beth over things like how are they not strained really at all and ESPECIALLY after he throws pulled that cancer line this ep --- like she gives freaking Rio grief for less all the time but Dean just got SUCH a huge pass on the cancer thing as a whole even though that caused her nights of tears and so much worry over what to tell the kids for heaven knows how long before and yet she STILL hasn't confronted him even when he blatantly mentioned cancer regarding the bird which is a reminder of Lucy who ended up dead with the help of his bs impulsive behavior (even if she might have ended up dead in the long run, he still helped expedite that ish) and I don't get how there's such a double standard for her when it comes to those two even though they're both stressors.

Like, Dean is a legitimate wild card that could cause devastation at any second just because he wants to throw a tantrum and I don't get why the comfort of pretending that they're same old, same old is somehow worth the added stress. Starting to feel like that gun is the only thing that'll finally be the the straw that breaks the camel's back and that is just sad commentary that it has to get to that point before they move on.