#and I just know Morgan was just so pissed and could never articulate that he was jealous

[calcat89]

Me and Derek Morgan every time we remember that Penelope Garcia dated professional whiner Kevin Lynch for like years and years

[sunflowerdigs]

Here's the thing - Cocoa's general understanding of queerness is the average straight one. This is what we're up against. SM/Tumblr can be a bit of a bubble when it comes to queerness. Cocoa's attitude is the dominant one outside of the bubble. So, for that reason, I'm not overly pissed at her because I'm not overly surprised.

If you actually listen to what she said, she wasn't giving her own opinion on Buddie. She was asked whether or not she thought it would happen, meaning her answer was what she believed the network/executive opinion to be. And what she said is basically correct - there's a reason that the main, hot, young (typically white) dude is never allowed to be queer on most shows. And it's because, to the network/executives, that character is the draw for straight women - the point of him is to provide a character that they can fantasize about. It's why we couldn't get Spencer Reid or Derek Morgan on Criminal Minds, or Dean on SPN. Queer people are seen as a niche audience and straight people are seen as generally uninterested in queer stories except as ones that happen adjacent to the larger straight stories. If in s2 Minear had gone to the execs and said "Buck and Eddie have great chemistry, can I put them together?" I guarantee he would have been laughed out of the office. The two hunky heartthrobs who are there to fulfill the fantasies of straight women? Together? Please. It's why Buddie had to be a slow burn and why, frankly, I think Minear is a genius for how he's pulled it off so far.

And that's putting aside all of the straight dudes that see themselves or their friendships in Buck and Eddie. Again, according to basic network/exec logic, that's another role that the hot, main dude plays - he's someone for straight men to fantasize about being. It's why he gets the coolest stunts with the biggest weapons or power tools. I know that all of this sounds incredibly backwards but...yeah, this is why movies and TV in America are what they are. You can't watch all of the Marvel movies and say you haven't noticed this - their morality and logic are basically out of the 50's.

Cocoa wasn't overly articulate but I do think that she was trying to tell her fans something that's true but that she knew Minear and Murphy and Falchuck would/could never say. And it's valuable information in that regard. I see so much impatience about Buddie on Tumblr and I get it. But I also understand the frankly ENORMOUS risk that 911 is taking with it. I understand that if ratings crash, Buddie will be the scapegoat in part because it flies in the face of what networks/execs think they know about their audience. I understand that if Buddie is done badly and is poorly received, it's possible that no other show will be allowed to try something like it for a very long time. Just...don't shoot the messenger.

[babycracker]

28 dates with Unit Bravo - Day 4 prompt from @wayhavenmonthly: Coffee

Rating: Mature Pairing: Morgan/Male OC (Tanner Drake) Word Count: 1058 Warnings: Some cursing, tiiiiny sexual reference. A/N: I did it! A smut-less prompt!

--

Whether it's because of how bloody strong the stuff is or just because she's not at all used to smelling it, starting the day with the stench of coffee filling her nose puts Morgan in a bad mood before she's even left her room.

By the time she makes it to the common room she can just about taste the crap in the back of her throat and it's already giving her a headache. She pushes the door open and rolls her eyes, letting out a sigh so heavy and so disappointed that it may as well be a whine.

"Should've known." she mutters from her spot in the doorway, seriously considering turning around and going somewhere else when she sees Tanner sitting at one of the tables, a Styrofoam cup in front of him as he scrolls through his phone. Of course it’s him ruining her day before it’s even begun.

"Oh?" he sits his phone face down in front of him and grins at her, his fingers drumming a rhythm out against the top of the table. "Why? Getting a little wet in the knickers just from the smell of me?"

"Getting a little sick in the stomach from the stench of that shit you're putting in your mouth, actually."

"Perhaps you could suggest some alternative objects I could put in my mouth." Still grinning, and she wants to hate it, but he makes it far too tempting for her. So she takes a step into the room, a smirk slowly creeping across her face.

"I'm sure I have a ball gag stashed away somewhere."

He leans back on the chair he's sitting on and holds his hands out to her, wrists facing upwards.

"If you wanted to cuff me while you're at it I wouldn't be opposed." She can't tell if he's joking or not, still smiling cockily at her but there's what sounds like a hint of a challenge in his voice and she's not sure whether or not to take the bait.

"What are you even doing here?" she settles on asking, making her way further into the room until she's standing beside him, leaning back against the table. He doesn't answer for a moment, distracting himself by running one hand along the outside of her thigh. Only barely touching her but it's still enough to make her shiver.

"Came to see you didn't I, sunshine?" He finally answers, glancing up at her face with a smile. She just arches an eyebrow at him, waiting for a real answer until eventually he rolls his eyes, his smile fading as he looks away from her. "Your leader summoned me."

"Why?"

"Fucked if I know, otherwise I wouldn't be here."

She doesn't feel a slight pang of disappointment over him confirming that he's most definitely not here for her. She can't, because if she did, that would mean that she cares. Which she most certainly doesn't.

"Well next time drink that shit before you get here."

He just chuckles in response and shakes his head in amusement, sitting up straighter in his seat and resting his elbows on the table as he studies her.

"What?" She snaps, growing increasingly irritated under his attention.

"You really don't like me, do you?" It might be a genuine enough question, it might not get on her nerves so much if not for the amused smirk that remains plastered across his face.

"Not especially, no. Why?"

"You seemed to like me the other night."

Her focus snaps back down to him, his smile pissing her off more everytime she looks at it.

"I like your dick, just not the jackass attached to it."

He laughs at that. Not a chuckle, not a small scoff, an actual laugh, and it takes everything in her not to slap him across the face. She has a feeling he’d probably like that anyway.

"Well don't beat around the bush Morgan, why don't you tell me how you really feel?" he teases between laughs and all she can do is stare at him incredulously. Never has she seen someone become so - for lack of a better word - gleeful upon finding out that they're disliked.

He takes another mouthful of the coffee in front of him once he stops laughing and leans back on his chair again, his fingers returning to drumming on the table top and it's only then that she realises he's bored.

He has become bored waiting for Adam and saw his opportunity to entertain himself when she came into the room. And like an idiot she'd played right into it and given him what he wanted.

"I find it interesting that even though you hate me, you always seem to show up when I'm here." he adds after a while, his smirk gone and replaced with a curious expression.

"We're supposed to work together."

"I wasn't aware that you were needed here this morning. Adam asked you to meet him in here, did he?" The smirk returns when a few seconds go by without her replying to him, and he lifts his arms to fold his hands behind his head. "Didn't think so. And yet here you are. With me."

She racks her brain for a decent response, not liking the fact that she can't even justify why she's around him to herself, let alone articulate it out loud to him. Before she can come up with anything though, the door opens and Adam steps into the room. He pauses and eyes them both uneasily.

"I apologise, I didn't mean to interrupt…" his voice trails off and Morgan can tell that he can feel the tension in the room, as well as being able to hear her heart racing and Tanner's thumping away calmly. "is everything alright?"

"Fine." Morgan replies with a short nod, relieved for Adam's distraction and the fact that his presence is cutting through the atmosphere around her and Tanner enough for her to be able to make a beeline for the door.

She glances over her shoulder despite herself once she's in the hall. Adam's already talking, but Tanner's gaze remains fixed on her and he winks and gives her a small wave before the door clicks shut behind her.

“Cocky mother fucker.” she mutters to herself before stomping down the hall, headed back to her room.

--

tags (please let me know if you'd like to be added or removed): @admdmrtn @masonsfangs @oxjenayxo @mmerengue @agentsunshine @bravomckenzie @freckles-spangledvampire @mistyeyedbi @agentnolastname @kelseaaa @detectivewiseman

[thecrownnet]

Emmy Voters Shouldn’t Take Netflix’s ‘The Crown’ For Granted, as It’s The Last Chance to Reward Beautifully Understated Work

Season 2 is the final chance for "The Crown" stars like Claire Foy and Matt Smith to collect Emmys as they move on to other opportunities and new stars step in.

Netflix’s lavishly appointed Season 2 of “The Crown,” which takes place from 1956-1964, landed the same number of Emmy nominations as last year (13). But the series faces a mighty lineup of dramas this time, including Season 2 of last year’s winner “The Handmaid’s Tale,” as well as the penultimate season of “Game of Thrones” and the lauded final season of “The Americans.” This intense race could be close.

Netflix knows how to campaign, and the royal saga is popular, which would appear to give it an edge. But many Emmy voters seem to take for granted how well the team led by showrunner Peter Morgan (“The Queen,” “The Audience”), who writes and delivers all ten episodes at the start of each season, pulls off an historic costume drama on a fast-paced television schedule, complete with elaborate period sets and costumes. At a hefty $6 million-$7 million per episode for 20 episodes (a total $130 million), Morgan calls it “cinematic television.”

“He doesn’t mess around,” Smith told me. “It’s the only show I’ve ever been on where all ten scripts are in pretty good lick. He manages these characters and episodes and stories we think we know well and finds an interesting angle of approach.”

The Crown (L to R) Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth discuss Charles’ education [s2e9] Robert Viglasky / Netflix

And the acting is top-notch too, led by Golden Globe-winner Claire Foy (“Wolf Hall”) as rock-solid Queen Elizabeth. The Queen is trying to hang on to her fragile prime ministers as well as her dashing swain Prince Philip (Matt Smith) and keep the peace with her hipper sister, stylish Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby), who recovers from a broken heart by falling for swinging photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode). All earned nominations this year; last time only John Lithgow as Winston Churchill took home an Emmy statue.

It’s the last round for this cast, however, as Season 3 sends in an replacement crew to play the Royals as the hit middle age, including Olivia Colman (“The Night Manager”) as the Queen, “Outlander” villain Tobias Menzies as Philip, and Helena Bonham Carter (“Sweeney Todd”) as Margaret. While the original cast are wistful to leave the “The Crown” family, they’re moving on to opportunities aplenty. Before Season 3 started filming, Kirby was in touch with Bonham-Carter every day, sending her a music playlist for Margaret. “I’m grateful to get to share Margaret with somebody,” she said. “My obsession is extreme!”

Morgan did not know when he started how popular the show would be, but he signed his stars for only two years. “I don’t think it’s fair to ask an actor to age more than 20 years,” he said at a TV Academy panel. “If we’re going to be doing 60 years, it’s not fair for them to spend five hours in makeup every day. But it’s hard for me, now that I’ve got used to how Claire is. I’ve hit my stride in writing for her, it’s writers interruptus. You meet these wonderful actors and discover what they can do. The same with Vanessa. The new cast will present new challenges–it’s hard enough without new challenges!”

Smith had already experienced giving up a popular role with Doctor Who. “I’d rather do two years than seven,” he said.

While Smith (“Doctor Who”) and Goode (“The Imitation Game”) are fairly well-known, both Foy and Kirby launched film careers with the series, from Foy’s punk hacker Lisbeth Salander in the upcoming “Dragon Tattoo” sequel “The Girl In the Spider’s Web” to Kirby’s flirtatious turn opposite Tom Cruise in summer smash “Mission: Impossible–Fallout.” Meanwhile, Smith has taken on two creepy characters, Patrick Bateman in London musical “American Psycho” and Charles Manson in upcoming “Charlie Says.”

The issue of who got paid what has hovered over the series. Although Foy was cast first as the Queen of England and commanded more screen time, she was less established at the start than Smith, who broke out as a star in Doctor Who and had salary leverage when Morgan insisted on casting him because the chemistry with Foy was so strong in their auditions. “There was electric, immediate energy in the room,” said Morgan. “The producers said, ‘look, we’re in negotiation, does he really have to be Philip?’ ‘There is no option. It has to be him.'”

So they paid him more than Foy.

“I find a huge amount of support around me and in the industry and around the world,” said Foy of her unequal pay vs. Smith, “knowing that if I don’t speak up and support myself than nobody else will. You have to be your own advocate, without being difficult, and be willing to step away from something you don’t agree with. That’s happening and it’s extraordinary.”

If Season 1 set up the royal stakes in the central fraught marriage between dashing Navy man Philip and the Queen to whom he had bow and kneel, it was also a hard act to follow.  All the directors came back to shoot Season 2, including Stephen Daldry (who cherry-picked episodes eight and nine). There was more color and travel, roving from Tonga, Ghana and Papua New Guinea to the Antarctic.

With Season 2, the team moved with more confidence into the story that digs deeper into Queen Elizabeth’s relationship with her husband and her prime ministers, such as Anthony Eden (Jeremy Northam), as he colludes with Egypt on the Aswan Dam. Fashionably modern John and Jackie Kennedy come to Buckingham Palace. And old-fashioned Elizabeth faces harsh criticism from one politician, Lord Altrincham (John Heffernan), causing her to change the stilted way she speaks in public.

The cast who played royals practiced the accent constantly. “We spent all our time speaking it on set,” Kirby told me in a phone interview. “It must have pissed off the crew. We were all in it together. I tried to find a middle ground, we didn’t want to alienate people too much, I tried to make my voice slower. She sounds different by the end of the season, we’re growing up with them. “

As Morgan writes the episodes himself, he doesn’t have a writers’ room, but a researchers’ room. He sifts through history, dumping the obvious stuff in favor of delicious details that might surprise or upend conventional wisdom. “It’s an absolute joy, as a dramatist, looking at the intimate and the epic,” he said. “They are just like us and they are nothing like us.”

On “The Crown,” where the Queen tends to keep a stiff upper lip, a scene between Jackie and Elizabeth having tea and scones is as dramatic as it gets. “I’ve long been writing this for so long, everyone is so polite, I’m desperate for a fight scene,” Morgan said. “I long to write a punch-up, there’s been no blood on this show for 20 episodes. That scone was my fight scene. She buttered the scone irritatedly.”

Claire Foy, “The Crown” Stuart Hendry / Netflix

Most dramatists don’t pick an introverted, shy, middle-aged woman as their central protagonist. “With someone like Tony Soprano, any emotional response was valid: kindness, cruelty, gentleness, butchery sexiness,” said Morgan. “You don’t have that with the Queen. You’ve got her trapped within this other thing: it is very Russian doll. You’ve got the woman within the woman within the thing that is not the woman– the Crown–which is not gender specific, neither feminine or masculine. How a woman connects with that is complex, so she’s lost some of herself. She’s not an articulate person, so you can’t go on and on to explain that complexity. So someone like Claire is skilled enough to do it in repose. So you never feel that the character is not complex, because you’ve got an actor skillful enough to give you that, even in silence.”

In the editing room, Morgan found that whenever there was a missing transition he learned to rely on Foy’s reaction shots. “When Claire was on screen the whole thing was settled,” he said. “That wouldn’t involve her throwing plates. It was just the strength of her performance and how completely she inhabited the character, and how she as an actor in that character could give the whole thing an orientation and center and an anchor. As the Queen gives anchor and stability to the country, so Claire was doing in our show.”

Luckily Foy has always been a reactive listener. “I love being in a scene and not thinking about anything but what that character is thinking,” she said. “I’ve always loved listening and being able to think like the character. And this show appreciated a character who doesn’t go forward, but sits and lets people come to her. And not many shows appreciate that, they don’t put someone at the center, who’s just being and listening.”

Smith is Foy’s exact opposite. He brings a competitive athlete’s physical masculinity to Philip. “I quite like Philip’s maleness,” said Smith, “which in this day and age is interesting. And Elizabeth liked that about him.”

“Philip is a tough man,” said Smith. “Charles notoriously wasn’t, he’s the antithesis of Philip, emotional and sensitive. Philip is those things deep down. But he was growing up in a different time, he had to grow up quite quickly. He went through death and tragedy as a young man. He was essentially orphaned.”

Foy and Smith were opposites as actors. “We work in different ways,” Foy said. “We brought out in each other instantly a friendship, we’re able to give each other what we needed. Matt wants to try new things and get an extra take; I’m ready to go on the first take, to be real and never do it again. That was a tricky thing to negotiate.”

Foy admired Smith’s willingness not to make audiences like Philip. “He’s masculine and feminine, able to be emotional and vulnerable and bit of a love,” she said. “He can be incredibly selfish and you still like him, he has the gift of being likable.”

At the end of the series, as pregnant Elizabeth is lonely and isolated at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, scandal-plagued Philip finally comes to her on his knees, a supplicant. “That scene was a pain in the ass,” Smith said. “It took three days. The history is tricky. How much of it to reveal, a sensitive subject, that. With the Queen of England you never acknowledge the fact that Philip was over the abyss. I look at it as a man on his back foot fighting for his life. Whatever you say, they endure. They are a team. He makes her laugh.”

“The Crown” Alex Bailey / Netflix

On the other hand, Vanessa Kirby as Margaret gets to open up more. “The biggest gift was that she feels everything so deeply,” she said. “Whatever color of emotion she’s having is 100 percent. Claire is the master of subtle and internal; I’m sweating and spit is coming out. Margaret’s emotions are all on the surface, while Elizabeth’s are buried.”

In Season 2, Kirby gets to smash up her room a bit. Margaret is “someone in pain who descends into something quite scary,” she said. “Along comes Tony Armstrong-Jones and she meets him when she’s in the worst place.”

In the first cycle, Foy got to wear an elaborate wedding dress; now it was Kirby’s turn. “I’m not very fashionable, I wear jeans and shorts,” said Kirby. “Margaret taught me a lot, to express my internal life through costumes.” She and the costume designer Jane Petrie spent weeks choosing ratios and shapes and fabrics. “Her costumes are an indication of where she was at. Even when she trashes her room she’s wearing a gothic robe. The next morning, she’s pale in a yellow granny nighty, she had lost all sense of her identity. I wanted to take her on a journey to  show how Margaret finds her place in the world. She’s born into something she couldn’t escape from.”

Meanwhile, Margaret yet again has to seek Elizabeth’s permission to marry. “I didn’t want to overplay it or underplay it,” Kirby said. “It’s a mixture of resentment and intense need and exhaustion and vibrancy. She is in active denial, looking away from Tony who is massively disloyal and destructive and dysfunctional for her. All those things in one scene feels quite scary.”

[the-roanoke-society]

the condemned.

once upon a time in louisiana, something went awry.

featuring @agent-houdini and, in a roundabout way, agent whiskey of statesman.

go tell aunt rhody, go tell aunt rhody, go tell aunt rhody, everybody’s dead...

figures. give the quartermaster a wet dream, get a nightmare in return. fair play, universe.

houdini woke slowly.

she savored the rare morning off, a gentle, natural awakening as opposed to an alarm jolting her from a dead sleep to go train the newest round of recruits. she inhaled, deep, stretched and—oh. that’s right. jack was in new york.

she missed the familiar weight, the warmth of him next to her, but… it did allow her to stretch her limbs out in every direction as far as they would go. she laid like that for a moment before rolling up and reaching for her specs on her nightstand.

as soon as she slipped them on, she could see a small red dot in the upper corner. a new transmission. she opened it.

the imagery that met her turned her blood to cotton.

it was seraphim. and she looked awful.

the feed was timestamped at a little over one o’ clock in the morning. houdini frowned. seraphim had been afield for at least a week, somewhere down in louisiana. she hadn’t given anyone the specifics of what she was doing, she’d just—left.

“… good morning.”

seraphim began, her voice rough. she was facing her specs, recording, in an unfamiliar room. the familiar tinge of green that came with night vision mode cloaked all the visuals. even past that, houdini could see her skin was covered in a sheen of sweat. it almost made it look like she was made of plastic. “i’m ah—i’m sorry, if this wakes you. but i—you’re the only one i trust with this.” a crooked smile.

her speech was… something was wrong. was she drunk? drugged? where even was she? “i’m not sure how much time i have so i’ll try to make this quick. if i do this the right way, your specs should start loading my coordinates riiiight about—now.” codes started to manifest in the opposite corner. latitude, longitude, a map. she was deep in the bayou. “and some other files i thought might be useful.”

a logo. red, white.

what was the umbrella corporation?

“remember the drug cartel? in santa fe? regla de perro blanco?” seraphim continued, and coughed. “i ah, did a bit more research, when we got back. lauren, this thing—went a lot deeper then we thought.” she swallowed, shaking her head, looking at the floor for a beat. “i don’t know what this corporation is, i’m—i’m not even sure i can explain what’s happening now.” seraphim shifted, and pain ghosted across her face.

“… it’s something unholy.” she sighed, glancing around the room. ‘room’ was a generous word. houdini squinted. dilapidated carpentry, old stone. more like a dungeon, she thought. a prison cell. if seraphim was sitting on something—a chair, maybe just a mattress on a floor—she couldn’t see it. “i came here alone, thinking that i’d be able to handle what i thought i was going to be a little bit of reconnaissance, field research. the same occult ties we saw in new mexico are everywhere here. they’d—on my way in they’d made an altar out of the bodies of deer, and…”

and for the first time, houdini saw fear in the agent’s eyes. “i was wrong. i should’ve listened to harry when he told me about james.” another nervous grin. “rae’s, uh, rae’s gonna be pissed when i get back.”

the more she spoke, houdini realized that no, she wasn’t drunk. she wasn’t drugged. she was sick. tendrils of dark hair had curled against her forehead, and there were dark smatters of something down the front of her shirt. houdini couldn’t tell what it was. she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

but through the feed, seraphim looked squarely at the camera, meeting houdini’s eyes. her expression was equal parts physical discomfort, a subtle horror, and a not-so-subtle despair.

a woman alone in a cold, dark room.

“this is me formally sending a distress signal. you and jack—well, jack hopefully after you’re finished watching this—are now officially the only agents who know my whereabouts and that i have been—detained.” her cadence slowed. her words were being carefully chosen.

“and i am choosing the both of you, because you were with me in new mexico. and therefore you both—“ more coughing, a bit more violent. “—you both would understand why i came down here. this—this was—“ she made a vague gesture. “an accident. if—if i’d known—“ she ran her hands through her hair. she was shaking. “guess i’m not as strong as i thought i was, huh?” she tried to laugh, but houdini could see tears forming in her eyes.

she’d never seen seraphim this scared before and it was disturbing on a level she couldn’t quite articulate. their fearless leader, not so fearless anymore.

“and tell—tell merlin—“ for a second, seraphim couldn’t speak. she lifted a hand to her mouth, gazed off at some far-off point, breathing. trying to regain her composure. but her voice was thick when she began, “—lauren, i need you to lie to him. i need you to tell him whatever he needs to hear so that he’s not worried. he—he can’t know i’m down here, even lillith just knows i’m somewhere in the state, and… and i know, it’s already been a few days, i know hamish’s going to get suspicious, might already be but—“

tears began to roll down her cheeks. the night vision caught two separate glints of light—a cross around her neck, and her engagement band on her left hand. she wiped at her face, “—there’s nothing for it, lauren. you can ask him for any new tech, that’s it. this is a road that would swallow a quartermaster whole. and if—if you and jack can’t find me, or it’s been three weeks since this transmission and i’m not back…”

more coughing, this time so aggressive that seraphim bent in half out of frame. when she sat back up, she wiped at her mouth, and was that a smear of blood on the back of her hand? jesus, what had been done to her?

she stuttered out her next words, and houdini had a horrendous thought that maybe she was still choking on whatever dark substance had just come up her throat. she thought she was going to be sick for a second. “… w-well. in that case. tell him the truth. i asked you to cover for me, because i wanted to protect him, and—“ seraphim’s voice was steady, but she was weeping. “—that he was the love of my life. and it’s—“ she swayed, as if faint. don’t pass out, morgan, not yet-- “—i want to minimize the damage of what i have done.”

there were creaks. they sounded distant. seraphim abruptly froze, eyes wide, body stiff. listening. and houdini pressed her specs into her face, hearing what might’ve been footsteps over seraphim’s holding cell through an old wooden floor, not realizing that she’d been holding her breath until it was over.

seraphim waited until they’d passed. then closed her eyes, let out a smooth exhale. smiled. she whispered, “… but we’ll do as jack says, as burn that bridge when we get there. i will see you soon.” seraphim reached out then to grab the glasses, and the feed visuals shifted as she moved to shut them off. “help me lauren-wan kenobi—“ more footage of the room. “—you’re my only h—“

a gasp. a quick image at the very last second of the feed that passed too quickly.

then nothing.

houdini was fighting to not have a panic attack.

she reopened the transmission, fast-forwarding to the last few seconds, purposefully slowing the frames.

there was nothing about the building that seraphim was being held in that was helpful. it was rotting, it was condemned, and looked like many properties she’d seen the exorcist cleanse with agent succubus. garbage and—bones? all over the floor. scattered papers. she caught the corner of a stained box spring. a few empty budweiser bottles.

and that final frame.

jail-like bars. a doorway. light spilling out behind a man easily as tall as merlin, and twice as wide. the light blacked out all of his features, but caught on the lenses of his glasses.

in an apartment in new york, a phone screen lit up.

[8:46 AM]

sweetheart calling . . .