#but no it really was just “i wanted a crime procedural serial and this was really bad at being one (because it wasn't one)”

[queerholmcs]

hbomberguy's thesis is Flawed. also i don't remember him ever mentioning gatiss

LITERALLY!!! he spends an hour and fifty minutes complaining about how he hates moffat like he's the only person responsible for the show and his entire beef with the show comes down to "i have only engaged with the material on a very surface-level reading and i think they're clever little detective stories and i want any adaptation of the material to be a detective procedural done as a serial with isolated episodes. how dare you call the show SHERLOCK (in all caps) and then spend the majority of the runtime showing us the characters and not the crimes. also john watson literally serves no purpose and sherlock himself is just an absolute asshole all the time, we know this because he says he's a sociopath and also here are three clips of him being a pedantic dick, i am very good at engaging with media. tsot was a stupid episode because it opens with an insanely overproduced and high-effort scene for the sake of one stupid joke about how sherlock is thoughtless about other people's lives and then most of the episode is just sherlock standing in a room talking, he's not even solving crimes." and i'm like. literally What Are You Talking About shdkshdkdhdk. did we watch the same show. i have never watched someone be so wrong about so many things with such conviction.

[mywingsareonwheels]

The stratification (in marketing at least) between "grimdark" crime fiction (inc books) and "cosy" crime fiction grates on me sometimes, because I like nothing that's at either extreme. I don't want relentless pain (and I find both organised crime and serial killer plots pretty boring unless they're really well-handled), and I don't want cheerfully callous "ooh, the bodies are piling up! how inconvenient! have another slice of Victoria sponge!".

I want humanity and compassion and humour and treating deaths like they do actually matter even when they're of awful people, thank-you-so-very-much. I want the satisfaction of a puzzle solved. I want an awareness by the author that yes the human fascination with murder mysteries (going right right back to Oedipus Tyrannus etc.) is kind of odd, while also not apologising for it. I want characters I warm to and care about, even if I sometimes want to throw things at them. I want a predictable structure to some extent, because it helps my autistic brain when I'm having a rough time (see also romances!). If at all possible I like at least some awareness that there is structural oppression in the world and that capital punishment is Not Great even if by the very nature of the genre (especially in police procedurals) I never expect murder mysteries to have the same politics or morality as me[1].

Some of the murder mysteries/crime fiction I do really love: the Cadfael books, Endeavour, the Lord Peter Wimsey books, the Ruth Galloway mysteries, the Discworld Watch books, the Ian Rutledge mysteries, and every time KJ Charles or T Kingfisher get a bit murder mystery on us. And so on and so forth. There are a good number! And a fair variety in tone in all of these they just... still all operate in that blessed middle space between grimdark and cosy, and involve Caring About People, and I just wish there were even more. <3

(Do recommend your own favourites if you wish!) [1] In real life, I am very much of the opinion that ACAB, that prison is a horror, that capital punishment is one of the greatest evils there is, and that retributive justice in general is wrong and unhelpful; those views affect which murder mysteries I like and how I read/watch/listen to them to some extent but, well, fiction is not reality. And being aware of that gap helps me to keep true to my views while still enjoying stories that go very much the other way!

[hodginspodgins]

i know bones is a serial/procedural drama so conflict is important but they’re really making my guys go through the horrors :(

i just want this little found family to run around, solve crimes, and be silly

[racefortheironthrone]

How do you feel about the divisive fifth season of the Wire?

Regarding the newsroom storyline, I think David Simon was too close to the source material. The result was something unusually didactic (a flaw of his later work that showed up again in We Run This City) and focused more on settling scores with people he used to work with and for than really examining the deeper structures and institutions at work in destroying American newspapers.

There is a story to be told there about vulture capitalists stripping profitable companies for the equivalent of the copper wire in the walls, about how Web 2.0 companies destroyed the funding model often through deliberate fraud, and the deregulation that made all of this possible. That's not the story Simon wanted to tell.

Regarding the serial killer storyline, I think there were two main problems aside from any issues about realism or sensationalism.

The first is that I don't think it actually got to a truth about police corruption - in real-life Baltimore, the Gun Trace Task Force members weren't running around robbing drug dealers and committing overtime fraud in order to finance investigations of the major criminals actually harming the city, they did it to line their own pockets. Their resentments weren't driven by budget cuts and upper management, they were driven by black residents of Baltimore challenging them over police brutality.

The second is that I don't think it did a good job wrestling with the big question about "good police" versus "bad police." Leaving aside the whole abolition debate (which hadn't yet become a part of public discourse when the Wire was running), I think there are some legitimate questions about David Simon's frameworks about policing, with narcotics surveillance and Homicide held up as "good policing," and street-level War on Drugs policing as "bad policing." However, when challenged about the wave of exonerations coming out of the Baltimore Homicide Department involving the detectives that Simon had lionized as "good po-lice" in his book and Homicide and The Wire, Simon clammed up and stammered denials.

If even the supposed best of the police turn out to be systematically violating the rights of the accused because it's easier than doing their job legit, is there anything redeemable about the system? In Season 5, McNulty and Freamon commit many procedural crimes, but the policework they financed with them was sound - hence the tragic aspects of their downfall. But in reality, they just would have pinned a random murder on Marlo and engineered enough false witness statements to put him away.

[jimmycarterghostland]

Wildbow is amazing. He's writing all of these great web novels. His new one, Claw, is inspiring me to write a new web serial of my own. Claw is a crime procedural, if I'm not mistaken. I love how it's not supernatural or anything, unlike Wildbow's other works. I love it when creatives make something amazing in a genre they usually don't do.

Wildbow keeps proving to me that Worm is fine the way it is. There's no way it's getting published as an actual physical book series, but that's okay. Because Worm is good enough as its current form, a free online novel.

It was Wildbow who inspired me to get serious about making web novels. I remember discovering Worm, back when I was trying to find the longest online story or something. My searches led me to Wildbow's best work, Worm. One day I want to write web serial as great as that.

Anyway, back to fanboying about Wildbow. He's making web novels be taken more seriously, and I love that. He puts out great content and inspires me to do the same. And that's important because I really need to write something amazing. I'm a writer who doesn't see any of his works as worth anything. I want to change that. I want to write something that I will love and that many others will, too. Wildbow motivates me to do that.

I have yet to complete reading any of his web novels, unfortunately. Someday I want to read all of his work. I just have a hard time getting into reading lately. I can't even remember the last time I read the entirety of a novel or online story. Mainly, I do a lot of reading certain scenes out of order. I do this with Worm and a bunch of other books.

Web fiction is amazing. And I find more success with it than I do writing physical books. These days my focus is on writing web fiction. Wildbow is the web novel creator I look up to the most, and he's been a big inspiration. I wish him well. And I hope Claw gets very popular.

[doloresabernathysworld]

Finished Person of Interest season 3, and boy oh boy what a ride! I'm honestly kicking myself for not having watched when it was airing, but I really thought it was just another procedural crime drama like we had at the time (and like there's still plenty of those, but they're not really my cup of tea).

But that sent me kind of into a rabbit hole about its end and why I've never seen reruns of it where I live. I mean, I get it that there are factors in TV distribution and licencing, but to this day I see constant reruns of shows like Castle, Criminal Minds, CSI, NCIS, and the such. The fact that the network seemed to stop having interest in POI after it became more of a serial than procedural and the fact that viewership also declined after that is very telling imo.

It also made me really mad, because it reminded me of what happened with Westworld, and I can't help to feel sad and angry on behalf of Jonathan Nolan since capitalism and network policies seem to keep getting in his way and not letting him finish the stories he (alongside with other people) wants to tell.

I really do hope that the upcoming Fallout series is successful, and most of all I really hope he gets the chance to finally fully realize his vision.

[saltygilmores]

THOUGHTS WHILE WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS: S3/EP4/ONE’S GOT CLASS THE OTHER ONE DYES (PART 3)

This post is going to be a bit of a quicky. Scene: Lane's bathroom, where Rory is assisting Lane in dying her hair the color of Dean Forrester's balls. Purple. The dude's been waiting over 2 years to get past second base. Come on Rory. Throw him a handy. (Speaking of...the lack of Dean in this episode so far is making me fearful for when he may suddenly appear). Rory expresses her concern that using bleach in an unventilated bathroom might kill them both, but Lane is, like leave those windows locked! i want my mother to smell bleach when she arrives home! Because when she smells bleach she'll definitely think "Lane must be dying her hair" and not "someone is covering up a crime scene"

My belief is that deep down, every Gilmore Girls character is a potential serial killer, and they all have one specific event that will set their killing sprees into motion. Dave Ryglaski suddenly getting sucked into the Male Gilmore Girls Character California Wormhole may just be Lane's.

This episode's got the words "hell" AND "condoms" in it plus not one but TWO rapidfire pop culure references from the 1990's, and not 1973? We're getting bold and spicy in Season 3! Ole! The procedure goes horribly wrong and causes Lane tremendous scalp pain, so back to the beauty supply store they shall go in a few moments, where Shane has returned after servicing Jess on her smoke break. I really love the word "servicing" as a stand in for "blowjob", quite honestly. Per Wikipedia: Vin Diesel's birth name is Mark Sinclair. Sinclair began going by his stage name "Vin Diesel" while working as a bouncer at the New York nightclub Tunnel, wanting a tougher sounding name for his occupation. Vin comes from his mother's married last name Vincent, while the surname Diesel came from his friends due to his tendency to be energetic.

Why does that jacket make such a difference on Luke? When he takes that jacket off he looks super dorky, but jacket on, he looks pretty dang hot. More layers for Luke, fewer layers for Jess. One of the moots told me this event is supposed to be taking place at 4pm for an after school club, which is supposed to explain why L&L are talking to a classroom of teenagers while the main Teens of The Hollow are carousing about town, bleaching their scalps and getting serviced in closets.

In my regular Post-Post discussion with @frazzledsoul, we discussed how Luke, I mean, Butch here, graduated in 1984, the year Jess was born. At the same time Liz always refers to him as "big brother", so she would have been younger than 17 when she gave birth to Jess? Even though the writers retconned some of the other Liz Lore established in 2x5 (like that she was married) I think it's generally accepted that she was around 18 when she gave birth and not quite as young as Lorelai was when she had Rory. This is what 80% of the fanfics about Jess’ early life that I used to read had seemed to share a consensus on anyway. So we discussed the possiblity that Liz and Luke may be very close in age, even less than a year apart so they ended up in the same grade, which is plausible, or less likely, they're twins, but I'm not sold on that. Lastly, it's possible she just calls him "big brother" merely because she's annoying and the drugs have fried her brain and she doesn't even know what day of the week it is no less how old her own brother is.

That's the best part about Gilmore Girls.

The bleach appears to have seeped into Lane's braincase and she's delirious. She's not making any sense. I'm afraid there is no saving her now.

I mean, this has always been Rory's typical expression whenever another person reminds her that she's supposed to be so freaking in love with Dean, but she's aware she's actually dating a pile of camel droppings while everyone else has their heads so far up their asses that they don't see it, but now she's got the JessSweats on top of it. She's in a real pickle.

What is the "feeling" of dating Dean Forrester exactly? Is it that feeling Rory has been experiencing for the last 2 years, the feeling that there's vomit stuck in the back of her throat that is always so close to spewing out but it never does? Is that what you want Lane?

This is one of the clearest views of the Quarter on a String I've seen thus far, and now that I can see it so clearly, it actually looks more like a dented bottle cap and not a quarter.

All this time I've been giving Dean Forrester credit for spending 25 cents on this thing when he actually paid nothing because he stole it from Lorelai's business competitor, the homeless man who scours The Hollow for scrap metal and change with a metal detector. I was thinking an after school business club at Stars Hollow High School where you had to listen to Lorelai Gilmore speak would be pretty sucky, but then I remembered the alternative is being not at school in Stars Hollow instead and that's worse.

Lorelai Gilmore everyone, the Prominent Local Luminary. Beautiful handwriting on the chalkboard, did Jess write that too?

Oh how I love 35 year old high school Extras. "You all know Luke Danes from his fabulous diner." Yeah, it's where these "high school students" hold their AARP meetings. Luke Danes seeing a room full of high school students: I've never seen any of you people in my god damn ife but if you want a job waiting tables at a place where nobody tips and I flout child labor laws and pay you in lettuce scraps then come on down and fill out an application. Also, my nephew could use some friends. Lorelai Gilmore, seeing a room full of high school students: Which one of you handsome boys want to become my daughter's stepdad?

Yes, I have a question for Ms. Gilmore. After Crusty got you pregnant the first time, why do you still keep letting him stick his CrustyWiener inside of you again and again? Take your time I'll wait. By the way, did you know that David Sutcliffe recently said women shouldn't have the right to vote? Just putting that little nugget out there. What was surely going to be a motivational speech for the ages by Some Lady Who Barely Works At Some Inn is totally derailed when the 50 year old students keep asking Lorelai how babies are made. Despite her best efforts to change the subject, she fails miserably but for some reason KarenDebbie is put out by Lorelai's handling of the affair. I'm not sure what Lorelai was supposed to do exactly.

[extasiswings]

As someone who never watched bones, the bones blueprint???

What is the Bones blueprint? WELL, LET ME TELL YOU. So Bones is the show with one of, if not THE hetero slow burn ship of classic Fox procedural shows in the mid-2000s-early 2010s. (Pretty much every main network had at least one major procedural slow burn at a time. Fox had X-files, then Bones. ABC had Castle. CBS had NCIS and The Mentalist…you get it). So, let me set the stage with our characters:

Seeley Booth, played by David Boreanaz. Booth is an FBI Agent and former Army Ranger (with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart and a certain amount of PTSD that he doesn’t like to discuss). Catholic. Complicated relationship with his family. More than a little repressed. Definitely needs therapy (and gets it eventually—at first when he’s required to go, and voluntarily in later seasons). Good at and devoted to his job. Single Dad who feels like he missed out on a lot of the early years of his son’s life and worries about being a good father (he asked his ex to marry him when she got pregnant, but she turned him down even though she loved him—at least early on in the series even though they aren’t together it’s discussed that they have a tendency to fall into bed not infrequently) [I swear I’m not making this up]. Anyway, you get the picture.

And behind Curtain No. 2, we have:

Temperance Brennan (Bones), played by Emily Deschanel. Brennan is a forensic anthropologist. Super smart, super scientific, doesn’t have great social skills, but definitely has the whole “perceived as cold but actually feels things very deeply” thing going on. Tragic backstory. She’s also a novelist.

So! Booth and Brennan. They work together, they’re partners, they solve murders. And, naturally, they have the whole opposites thing that works for them—she’s very book smart, he’s very street smart, she believes in facts and science and logic, he believes in intuition and gut feelings and faith, etc. etc. As is often the case with the aesthetic of the crime procedural slowburn ship, they start out sort of reluctantly working together, but eventually develop a real partnership built on trust and friendship (and love!).

Early on, she has some things in her past with her family that she asks for his help investigating so that she can get answers. There’s also a time in the second season where Brennan gets kidnapped by a serial killer and buried alive while Booth is stuck trying to find her, which in addition to still being just An Episode(™) remains one of the great, classic, early-in-the-slowburn “I almost lost you and it made me feel Some Kinda Way, but no no we’re just friends really, nothing to see here” defining arcs, especially since Brennan starts dating someone not too long after. The same serial killer returns in season four and snatches Booth that time, and then it’s Brennan’s turn to find him (with the help of Booth’s younger brother). Anyway, classic slow burn—there’s a lot of Implication that you could read into if you wanted throughout the first several seasons, but not necessarily super concrete (although they get caught under the mistletoe once), and there are several rounds of saving each other in various ways as over the years they just become closer and closer until they’re Partners(™) in every way (even when they’re dating other people).

What’s making me yell and scream today though, is: the S4 finale and S5. In the S4 finale, Booth is in a coma after having brain surgery. He has a wild coma dream where he and Brennan are married and they run a nightclub, but there still ends up being a murder—ANYWAY, irl Brennan basically spends the whole time he’s in a coma at his bedside, but then he wakes up and he has no memory of who she is. Pivot to S5, Booth remembers her again, and also feels like he might have romantic feelings for her, but (in part because of some third party commentary) questions whether they’re real or just a side-effect of the surgery. He sort of tells her anyway, but flubs it massively. Later in the season, we get Booth’s son being concerned that his dad doesn’t have a girlfriend, both Booth and Brennan separately getting relationship advice from third parties, and Brennan getting asked out by a new guy. And then! The 100th episode.

The 100th episode, which reveals the start of the series wasn’t their first case, they worked together once before and kissed and almost slept together, but hadn’t ended up going all the way. And after they’re done telling their story, Booth finally stops and kisses her and gets to give his big damn love confession, lays it all on the line, tells her he’s always known she was the one and wants to really try…and she freaks out and cries and turns him down, and he accepts it but says he has to move on. And then they both date other people before fully running away from each other for many months (Brennan on an anthropological dig, Booth back to Afghanistan for the military). (And then, when they come back, she’s ready to put on her big girl pants and give it a shot, except that he went and got a girlfriend who he seems happy with so we all get to suffer through a season of angst and pining while he proposes to someone who isn’t Brennan etc while everyone else is like “you’re still in love with her though” but they do sleep together by the end of S6 and ultimately get married and have two more kids (not in that order)).

So, yeah—the blueprint! Making me especially crazy because here we are with Buddie on a Fox procedural, 4 seasons since they really started trying it seems to make Buddie something potentially real, and Buck is heading into a coma where he's about to hallucinate another life, and the 100th episode is coming up near the beginning of next season (and I really hope Fox learned from Bones that there's such a thing as dragging out the slow burn too much and just lets them be happy after the big damn feelings reveal but XD).

[artdcnaldson]

i’m dumping my longlegs thoughts on u bc only u and poppy have seen it >:( it would have been infinitely creepier to me if they removed the satan references and dolls and just made him a regular degular serial killer that threatened the mom into being his accomplice and moving into her basement in exchange for keeping lee alive like men being men and abusing a single woman living in isolation with her child is scarier to me than some black smoke that’s supposed to be the devil or some goat in the corner of a room and it was CORNYYYYYYY to say hail satan that many times. i was HOOKED during every scene where lee was doing fbi shit or when she was home alone and he was in her fkn HOUSE or when they were at the farmhouse like that was genuinely scary but longlegs himself…….gave nothing. prosthetics were ridiculous he looked like a fucked out grandma fr. he just was not giving psychotic evil unpredictable like i was promised i wanted a real life SERIAL KILLER who is framing fathers to be family annihilators and getting his hands dirty who gives a fuck about the dolls like actually. also oz needs to hire a screenwriter because “she was a nurse, but now her job was to kill families” like are u serious. why was that monologue even necessary like just show it visually and put longlegs as the voiceover or some creepy screechy instrumental it really turned into a youtube recap in the 3rd act. i’m gonna see it again just to see maika but my god what a bummer they used up all the creep factor in the promo pics and stretched themselves too thin with too many different plot lines so it ended up falling flat. WAH.

AGREE!!!!

Visually it fucked so hard like in terms of editing and such. I liked the 90s setting a lot. I liked the FBI procedural elements. But the supernatural element did ruin a lot of the movie for me. Would’ve been infinitely more interesting if Longlegs thought he was committing these crimes for the devil (fuck the dolls it was good for shock factor but so out of place otherwise) but was just suffering from psychopathy.

I just needed more of the crimes because That was the fucked up part for me. Thats what made my skin crawl. The 911 operator recording and actual crime details? That was what I needed more of in that movie.

And you’re SO right about how the mom plot line would’ve been better if there was no supernatural element there. Idk it’s just disappointing bc it’s been overhyped so much and I feel like I wasted a bit of my money when I could’ve realistically enjoyed it the same watching on my tv at home yk?

[drunktuesdays]

Re: The Mentalist. Red John is always there on high days and holidays, but many episodes don’t feature him. Can’t deny they do go on about him a lot though.

White Collar is PERFECT for a good three seasons or so (Talitha78's vid to ‘Tonight I’m Fucking You’ by Enrique Iglesias fills me with glee to this day) but at some point you realise that the same two emotional arcs (one of them is doing sometime secretly but not for the reason you think and the other one is onto their betrayal and now doesn't trust them, then swap) repeat over and over again and never build and I cared too much to stand it and had to stop watching. If you are there for homoerotic frivolity though, I expect that stays steady.

Person of Interest I loved at the time (old men repressed and devoted, benevolent AI god struggles to communicate, eventually lesbians, astolat fic) but since then one of the main actors has gone big as a right wing QAnon weirdo.

If you want Bones but somehow even dumber (ex-Joss Whedon actor stars in a show about an unconventional law enforcement/writer crime-solving partnership) then: Castle.

Best actual crime plots (but not that erotic, except I suppose Goren likely gets a nearly sexual thrill from cracking people's psyches open), and it’s so old they don’t have computers on their desks at first and have to go to the library to look things up- the first 3 to 4 seasons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. After that Vincent D’Onofrio gets tired and so do the writers.

My actual favourite procedural of all time is Elementary. I won’t say it doesn’t make mistakes (coughMycroft), but overall it is good all the way through, unlike all these other idiots.

THANK YOU FOR THIS. it's so helpful. i have read a lot of person of interest fic, to the point where i actually am not sure that i can watch the show, because i KNOW myself and i know i would spend the whole time being like "and when will they have the episode where the men enter a 24/7 bdsm relationship where sometimes harold keeps john in a sensory deprivation bodybag?

MY thing about procedural is that i'm suuuuch a wimp about murder. i actually cannot watch things that focus on the motivations of serial killers which is why the mentalist isn't gonna end up working out for me. i AM interested in bones, castle, and elementary as i enter this time in my life where i need to be watching something i halfway ignore, but again--i really don't like anything that focuses on murder and murderer rationales because i have a dumb soft little heart and dumb stupid old trauma. it's not all violence, or i obviously wouldn't be so into yellowjackets and tlou. it's literally just people dissecting very realistic murders and the why and how.

so you see why i have not managed to get into a lot of procedurals and why house md changed the entire game

[fabdante]

If you want: Tell me about the Verat psychic link AU? 👀 It sounds interesting! (I also wonder what it'd be like if the twins had something like that, but I don't really have any ideas on what to DO with that AU, so. *listens to you*)

Oh yes I would love to share!

This is going to be really long, bare with me asdfghjk I have to explain the AU first

I'm going to put this all under the cut because it's just a lot of random info asdfghj. But the short of it is: Kat, super powerful psychic, has linked her and Vergil's brains, ramping up their codependency and rendering them Very Scary to be on the bad side of.

The long of it below.

The AU is very weird. I love crossovers like, a lot, and so does my girlfriend so we had a while were we just kept making these massive multi thing crossovers. This AU was one of those which involved basically everything we liked but in Bioshock. Except the idea was like, Rapture from Bioshock if due to different leadership and regulations it lasted until the 80s where it's slow crumbling due to it's like, leadership crumbling and falling away to various gangs and organizations within the city (somewhat similar to the original Bioshock but more emphasis on the crime underground and less emphasis on Ayn Rand). This is where most of our characters were, the various crime organizations and gangs coming up and trying to gain the power that's up for grabs in the shifting environment of 80s Rapture.

Which is....genuinely such an alternative universe it...barely even feels connected to fandom anymore? Like genuinely, it'd be really easy to scrub the serial numbers off and just make this about some other underwater city isolated and secret from the rest of the world but, currently it's not that, and naturally the reboot kids are in it.

But it kind of existed in part to, yeah, explore the fun dynamics you can get out of your favorite characters and franchises all shoved into one very specific setting. But also what would happen in the setting of Rapture if it was allowed to last longer then the like 11 years it got in game and what the ramifications of that might be. Also because Rapture in the 80s would look very coo.

One concept we were really interested in is like, what would happen with plasmids in particular. For anyone unfamiliar with Bioshock, one of the main things is they've discovered a technology they can use to rewrite people's genetic code basically. This can be used for all sorts of things from cosmetic procedures to one of the main gameplay elements of Bioshock, various powers. Given the city of Rapture in game only lasted like, 11 years though and Adam (the substances used to create plasmids) wasn't discovered until a few years even into that we don't really see the results of it generations down the line.

Plasmids and what they do to the body and mind in game tend to be very...unstable. Adam and Eve, both which fuel plasmids, are addictive and most people kind of just lose their minds to it as the Adam eats at their bodies and minds.

But the effects of plasmids are in the DNA code of the pecxople who used them, right? Like, people in theory could pass these abilities down genetically, now that they're in their DNA code. So the idea was like, if you cracked down on Adam to avoid at least part of what led Rapture to fall in game, what would happen with the fact that you now have people who can essentially have super powered babies with abilities that may or may not be more stable then the original plasmids? Stronger to?

This kind of lays the ground work for the Verat part of the AU. Because the twins in this setting couldn't be Nephilim and Kat couldn't be psychic, but we wanted them to have abilities. So they became what we called 'genetic plasmids', a group of people born to parents who used plasmids which have since been highly regulated and banned but still retain abilities of the original plasmids used in Rapture before the ban because they were born with the genetic code for them.

Genetic plasmids kind of pose a problem for 80s Rapture so a lot of them, upon being found, are locked up in this separate area of the city with labs and what not to both study what makes the plasmids more stable in them and keep them away from everyone else.

The idea with Vergil is he had abilities based in those of the Winter Blast plasmid (Dante was Incinerate) so he has ice powers essentially. Probably largely immune to the cold as well. But his powers are less important here.

Kat, though, was based on Telekinesis and this is the important one. We wanted to play with the idea that more stable plasmids that are born with a person could mean infinitely more powerful plasmids. So Kat's powers aren't just telekinetic abilities, she is just an all around incredibly powerful psychic. This is also aided by the fact that Adam, as we know it in game, has a side effect of kind of connecting minds to begin with? Like, I'm explaining things very briefly here but we know it can do that so Kat can tap into that. So she's telekinetic, she can read minds, I think we toyed with tapping into the unused teleportation plasmid from the game, all that good stuff. (I have a soft spot for AUs where Kat is stronger then the boys).

We had a few versions of this AU so I don't have like one backstory for how and why Kat met but the important part of this for the question is that at some point, for whatever reason, Kat decides to psychically link her and Vergil rather permanently after just kind of visiting him a lot in his own mind. Thus making it so she is like, always in his head and always communicating with him in his head. He of course talks back and stuff and he's allowed back into her mind but the important thing is he can't shut her out, she can shut him out. If she wanted to, at least.

I've probably mentioned before but I tend to write Verat pretty codependent so this dynamic just ramps that up to an insane level. A lot of this is informed by that codependency.

So they kind of share two brains at all times and are always in communication with each other and they rarely talk outloud to one another anymore since they don't need to and they are almost always around each other. If they're not, they are still in active communication. They can share body sensations through Kat, and Kat can allow them to share dreams. She rarely, if ever, shuts off the link intentionally and they are just always, always in each others brains. Dante refers to them often as a two headed snake.

If the link is severed abruptly, I think I decided it hurts Vergil. Likely due to the fact somethings happened to Kat which has hurt her but, also just severing it so harshly is painful. They're also just so used to one another in their brains like, it's not a comfortable feeling when that's not there.

The AU was never really plotted, we liked throwing things at the wall and coming up with concepts for what this very large group of characters could be doing in this setting we made up based off another setting. So we had a few backstory idea's for what led to this and neither is really like...firm anymore. Particularly with how much time has passed since either of us has worked on the finer details of this AU. I just always really loved this dynamic for them, I thought it was interesting to explore both in how Vergil and Kat were together but also how other characters perceived them.

I also at some point made a like 7 hour playlist? I should go back in and clean it up sometime but here's that and I also have a tag for the general Vibes tm of the au here

Anyway, so that's the AU where Verat have a psychic link and it's everyone elses problem!

[spindrifters]

unpopular opinion: sirius can be a tank and feminine…at the same time.

idk why there’s ‘discourse’ between the fem/tank sirius factions but i think some people have forgotten these things aren’t mutually exclusive a buff hairy body doesn’t equate to masc and a waifish pretty boy doesn’t equate to submissive/fem…because body type≠personality??

SLAMS AGREE BUTTON.

I... have no idea how my original post got so taken out of context, or how I suddenly got accused of terf whistledog rhetoric. (I!! a trans gnc human!!) I think people saw the phrase 'gender essentialism' in reference to an mlm couple and lost their damn minds. anyway.

I want to talk about my experience at senior prom, back when I was eighteen and identified as a female lesbian and went to prom with my female lesbian girlfriend. both of us wore long prom dresses, and the sheer confusion we caused among the general populace was honestly astoundingly funny. the People simply didn't get it. but who's the man? who's the woman? how does it work when you're both wearing dresses?

I'm bringing this up because the fact of us both wearing long dresses had fuck all to do with our personalities, or our body types, or our relationship dynamic, or our private sexual experience with one another. it was senior prom and we both wanted to wear pretty gowns on that particular night. and yet the lack of clearly defined gender roles (within our very obvious queer relationship) simply did not compute. this was 2011, in a city widely known to be very liberal. it really wasn't that long ago.

queerness looks so many different ways. if one of us had wanted to wear a suit or tux, that would have been more than valid, and it still wouldn't have been acquiescing to gender essentialism. in the real world, acquiescing is impossible, because queerness is inherently about existing outside gender normative identity and roles. but we're not talking about the real world, we're talking about fictional characters, and what I think's gotten lost in this discourse is my initial point, which is actually about media literacy.

fiction feeds mainstream cultural understandings of what queerness looks like. ex: for a long time, most people didn't personally know a transgender person, so they were taking their understanding from film and tv. and what was the messaging there? serial killers (silence of the lambs, psycho), vomit-inducing jokes (ace ventura, the crying game), and sex workers who turn into murder victims (most procedural crime shows ever). and don't come at me saying some of these examples are actually cis men cross-dressing, most filmmakers/audiences at the time didn't know the difference and you'll just be proving my point.

so yes, I want a sirius who's both a tank and femme. I want a sirius who's waifish and femme, too! and guess what? I am all here for a sirius who is waifish, femme, a bottom, and a sub. but it's the automatic equation of body type with traditionally 'female' personality traits/gender roles/sexual roles that is actively harmful, because at the end of the day, it's a media depiction feeding into cultural understandings of gender essentialism within queerness. which doesn't exist in the real world.

you sly dog, you got me monologuing.

[adricthemindnimon]

Man, it's so refreshing watching The Fall and seeing actual good police work in a show. I don't just mean that the cops are presented as good or likable people, not all of them are. But for once, the cops do not go rogue. They don't do shady things that are "justified" by the severity of the crime they are investigating or the monstrosity of the criminal. They are repeatedly shown to be following protocols and respecting rights, and that is not presented as a bad thing or as an impediment to their jobs.

We are shown integrity. We see the DS reporting herself and her partner for failing the victim (ok that one's a little dicey, there's nothing official about her report, but also their negligence was only really apparent in hindsight so I'll forgive that). We see Gibson immediately disclosing facts about her personal life when they become relevant, even when potentially embarrassing, like the fact that she'd picked up a cop at a crime scene for a one night stand. And the one guy who tips off his superior that his son is in trouble, he's called a weak man and the show encourages us to agree with that.

More importantly, we're shown respecting of rights, including those of the man we know to be a serial killer. They sequentially get different warrants as the case progresses and as the evidence justifies. A man finds evidence while planting surveillance and Gibson says "we don't have a warrant for that; pictures only". They never interview minors without a suitable adult present. Someone says that they should try to limit the length of imprisonment of a minor, and Gibson says "yes of course". Gibson wants to wake the suspect up in the middle of the night and is reminded that he is entitled to 8 uninterrupted hours and that that clock resets if she interrupts his sleep and she will lose time the next day. And she nods understanding and does not protest or get upset about that at all. They're not allowed to show graphic pictures to a minor, and when the supervising adult protests at the way the interviewing officer is speaking, he acknowledges her and stops. (So yes, he pushes that line, but still, there is acknowledgement of legal/moral boundaries, he doesn't push it far, and again, at no point is there any complaining about that limitation). It's also explicitly mentioned that showing graphic crime scene images to anyone is considered legally and morally dicey.

Mysteries are fun. Cop shows can be engrossing. So it's really refreshing to find one that presents the procedural, legal, rights-upholding parts of the investigative process as good and necessary.

[gothprentiss]

i keep seeing people say the criminal minds reboot wasn’t necessary. this is a massive lol but also just the weirdest critique. beyond the general lack of necessity for any reboot (and the wider lack of necessity for most tv, especially formulaic crime procedurals which i think are probably quite bad for us culturally in ways that the true crime obsession is only highlighting), there’s not much on criminal minds that was happening because it needed to happen, because it furthered certain character arcs, or told an important story, or explored a topic worth exploring. in some ways, this is the first time i’ve seen criminal minds really have to justify its own existence.

on one hand, sure, the storyline is wildly fucking stupid and poorly conceived, serialized where it should be episodic, and too expansive to allow any individual episodes to probably be good on their own merits. but that’s also what criminal minds has been for almost all of its existence. the dynamics among the characters, on the other hand, are genuinely interesting. the show used to be genuinely terrible at reintroducing characters or exploring change, but that was because it never had to reintroduce them all at the same time, so you got (e.g.) the miserable and slapdash reintroduction of prentiss, or jj’s absence being poorly retrofitted seasons later; or you got the weird failure to appreciate the very high personal stakes of reid dealing with addiction, or morgan’s attempts to reconcile with faith. i don’t know if where we end up will be great in comparison— the show, because of reid, has had a sort of de facto main character for a very long time, and that old pattern is emerging around rossi and garcia (i suspect it’ll shift from him to her in the next couple of episodes but what do i know).

but the point is that this is the first time i’ve seen the show really actually evaluate itself. first, of course, the nearly defunded bau struggling to function and the question of whether the unit survives increased negative scrutiny naturally are figures for this season itself, especially as they try to get greenlit for more seasons. the bau racing to justify its own existence may pan out to merely be what it’s always been— the good agents versus the bad administrator, who will either die horribly or be shown the error of their ways— but it may also, along the way, involve the characters being given the space to properly explore both their purpose in the bau and what they want from life.

criminal minds has always struck me as a character-driven show which simply didn’t know this, or at least didn’t know how to deliver on this. given the season’s organization— the network of serial killers, dumb as it is, provides an overarching plot which could ostensibly meaningfully link together a series of disparate crimes— there’s space for each character to have an individual case/episode which explores them and their life, or for everyone to take stock and explore their options thematically. for example, 16x02 sicarius was the relationships episode; you can imagine a sort of progression through different facets of life from there. reboot press has said that the early episodes in particular are exploring the characters’ lives— part of this is literally just establishing where they are now, as we’ve seen. but the question of where they’re going, and the extent to which it will be as a group, seems entirely open. the season will almost definitely end with rossi’s retirement. it may not end with anyone else leaving, considering that they’re trying to get more seasons, but the show’s fondness for will-they-won’t-they cliffhangers suggests that the season might end with any of the characters poised to leave. penelope, for example, has carved out a totally functional life outside of the bau, one which she seems extremely reticent to give up. jj is on her, what, 11th? 12th? season of being torn between her marriage+family and the bau, and as the season opens with her early-onset empty nest syndrome, it’s not unimaginable that this might be the year she finally does it. maybe tara’s girlfriend will be trying to snag her an opening at the doj, where hours are more normal and safety is more assured. prentiss and alvez don’t currently have obvious outs, but with the potential impending dissolution or near-dissolution of the bau, each could be easily reassigned, and for a variety of reasons.

this is long. my point is that criminal minds evolution has, so far, first-season energy, which has genuinely regalvanized the show. it’s not amazing tv by any stretch, but it does feel both better and more thoughtful than the latest seasons were. i suspect it won’t end with any finality, but it’s quite well poised to, and regardless of how the season turns out it will likely have done more work exploring its characters as people beyond their work (i.e., establishing ground for finality) than most of the rest of the show combined.

[eddieredmayneargentinablog]

"Yes, That’s Eddie Redmayne Playing America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer"

The "Fantastic Beasts" star tells IndieWire why he couldn't escape the pull of his darkest character yet for "The Good Nurse."

By Kate Erbland

It’s the week before Eddie Redmayne’s latest film, Tobias Lindholm’s “The Good Nurse,” hits select theaters after a robust festival run. The Oscar winner is in an SUV, zipping from one engagement to the next (no, he is not driving; yes, he’s delighted to discover that the car itself has wifi, which makes Zooming possible). He’s been everywhere lately, Toronto to New York, Mill Valley to Newport Beach, Los Angeles to London. He’s all smiles.

And, hilariously, the genial Brit somehow lights up even more when asked why he took on the role of Charles Cullen, potentially America’s most prolific serial killer (29 confirmed victims, with a possibility of 400 total), for the Netflix drama.

Me: “This is so not an Eddie Redmayne role. You’re a serial killer!” Redmayne: “Oh, that’s like the loveliest thing you could possibly say!”

He continued: “I think the joy of what I do, the job that I do, is getting to push yourself in directions that one’s self doesn’t expect, and hopefully also the people who watch your work don’t expect. I read this script, I knew nothing about the story, and what unfolded for me was this sort of box-less, undefinable piece. It felt unlike anything I’d read before. On one hand, it was a true-crime piece, but it didn’t have any of the salacious qualities or the fetishization that I sometimes attribute to that genre. It felt like a superhero story, a real life superhero story about what this woman was able to accomplish.”

Based on Charles Graeber’s book “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder” and exactingly adapted by “1917” screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Lindholm’s take on the very en vogue sub-genre of serial-killer procedural drama gives Redmayne a quite unexpected role. Serial killer! The man who played Stephen Hawking! The wizard who loves magic animals in the “Fantastic Beasts” series! Heartbroken student Marius Pontmercy in “Les Misérables”!

How does that work? One possibility: Redmayne maintains a very healthy outlook on all his work. Asked about the Wachowskis’ infamous misfire “Jupiter Ascending” — which co-star Mila Kunis recently admitted she knew would be “a flop” after its budget was snipped — and the actor can’t help but laugh. “It lives on in meme history,” Redmayne said, likely referring to his own Razzie Award-winning role as “Balem Abrasax” in the inscrutable 2015 fantasy picture.

Still, his memories are only good, if a bit weird. “That world was so beyond my level of imagination,” he said. “I just wanted to go and swim in [the Wachowskis’] imaginations. I had sort of no idea what I was doing, I didn’t know anything about the budget, but I had a really enjoyable time making it. But I also wasn’t in it that much, and I just remember that the character I was playing was incredibly vain and was squishing up humans in order to make them into serum to live longer, so the thing what was most important was that I had a six-pack and a spray tan. So there was a lot of sit-ups involved and me clenching my attempt at abs whilst speaking in a strange voice.”

As for what’s next for the embattled “Fantastic Beasts” franchise — initially announced as a five-film outing, although three films in, controversy is up and box office is down for the “Harry Potter” spinoff series — Redmayne was less sure. Asked if he knew any information about a fourth film, he said, “I don’t. It’s more a question for J. K. Rowling and David Yates and Warners, but I don’t know, I’m afraid. I can’t add to that,” he said, though he’d likely enjoying getting back into character as “magizoologist” Newt Scamander after the Charles Cullen gig. “I love playing Newt, he’s a sweet man,” he added.

So, about Charles Cullen. Over the course of his two-decade career as a nurse, Cullen is believed to have killed as many as 400 patients — mostly by tampering with IV bags and filling them with lethal doses of digoxin, insulin, and epinephrine. After fellow nurse Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain) helped bring him to justice in 2003, he was charged with 29 murders and sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences. Lindholm’s film never gives a reason for Cullen’s crimes. Neither did Cullen. That was intriguing.

“I had that feeling when I read the script of, ‘Can I play this person without the why?’ But then I kind of thought on that and ultimately realized that the why and knowing the why is our need as human beings to feel safe,” Redmayne said. “As in, if we answered why Charlie Cullen did this, then we would be able to other him and go, ‘Oh, he did it for this reason, and that’s monstrous and we would never do that, so we’re safe.’ Whereas actually, that’s not how the world works and that’s not what he did.”

While the film doesn’t delve into Cullen’s backstory, Graeber’s book includes the killer’s “intricate” biography. Redmayne reeled off some of the more horrifying revelations of Graeber’s book with ease, like “he first tried to kill himself and someone else at age seven” or that, while Cullen passed all the psychiatric tests to get into the Navy, at one point during his service “he was found with his finger over the Poseidon missiles on a submarine.”

“How this guy was ever allowed near vulnerable people is one of the shocking questions,” Redmayne said. “But it also meant that as an actor, I had all of that research there.” Redmayne worked closely with Graeber, who provided the actor and the rest of the team copious audio transcripts from his many interviews with Cullen. Redmayne studied them.

“Eddie is a delightful, very handsome, delightful, playful human,” screenwriter Wilson-Cairns told IndieWire during a recent interview, so when he slipped into the role of Charlie Cullen, the writer was blown away by the ways he seemed to change right in front of her. “The first time in rehearsals that I saw him turn it on, I was totally bewildered, because Eddie Redmayne stopped existing and Charles Cullen was there in the room,” she said. “I’d spent 10 years listening to this guy, reading about this guy, writing this guy, being in this man’s head, and it was really startling.”

Loughren, who was on set for a few days of filming, was also struck by Redmayne’s ability to tap into Cullen. “[Loughren] actually took me aside after watching Eddie do a take and she said Charlie was here. She was like, ‘That was Charlie, I can’t get over it,'” Wilson-Cairns said. “She was staggered by it. What he did was profound. Eddie Redmayne acts with every molecule of his being, and probably most of the molecules around him as well. It’s insane. And what he gives in this film is more than I could ever have dreamed of when I was writing it.”

Redmayne is no stranger to playing real people or telling true-life tales — he still remembers the day Stephen Hawking showed up on the set of “The Theory of Everything,” a moment in which “all my bodily functions sort of failed, because you instantly feel a fraud” — but he’s learned how to navigate that. “It’s not documentary, it’s not the truth,” he said. “It’s as close to the truth as you can get it with the acknowledgement that this is an interpretation and so you have to, when you’re playing real people, kind of be kind-ish to yourself.”

For the actor, that includes a lot of preparation, by way of a process he knows doesn’t appeal to everyone or work for every other performer.

“I’m not an actor that stays in character,” he said. “One of the things I love about my job is working with people with completely different processes. My particular process is I have to do all the homework. I need a long runway, I need a long time for prep. … You want those things to be embedded in who the character is by the time I arrive on set.”

Redmayne was eager to pair with Chastain, a long-time friend whom he first met while he was on the festival and awards circuits for “Les Misérables” in 2012 (Chastain was stumping for her “Zero Dark Thirty,” which ultimately earned the actress her second Oscar nomination). “We had these years of what I describe as the most sort of Hollywood way that a friendship can work, which is that there this person who you meet on the couch of ‘The James Corden Show’ or on the red carpet of the Oscars or something, and it’s totally real and you really like this human being, but you meet dressed in glad rags and clad in jewelry,” he said with a laugh.

He admitted that, despite years of wanting to work together, he knows it can be “complicated to work with your pals.” But Chastain didn’t disappoint, on screen or off. “We were moving to New York with my family, and Jessica and her husband and actually [her close friend] Jeremy Strong helped find us places to live, someone to help do babysitting, all of that,” the actor said. “This was an intense story, but we wanted to make sure that it also our lives that we’re living [when not shooting the film]. Our families hung out, and it was a very special time actually, despite the intensity of what’s on screen.”

Redmayne’s wife and children were with him for most of the film’s shoot, only heading back to London when Redmayne had about three weeks left of shooting. Those were, incidentally, some of the most challenging weeks, including shooting a final act scene in which Charlie is caught, arrested, and interrogated. He also snaps, finally breaks, goes absolutely wild in a key scene alongside Chastain. 

They shot the sequence multiple times, which sees Redmayne ratcheting up both his emotional and physical intensity.

“He’s in such a broken place at that point and it’s something, a technique that I first actually was shown to by” — Redmayne pauses to offer a chuckle as he rolls out the big guns —“clanging name-drop, Robert De Niro, when I did a film called ‘The Good Shepherd’ years ago. When I worked with De Niro, he would keep the camera rolling on emotional scenes and you would do the scene, and the second the scene finished, rather than call cut, he would encourage you to bottle the emotion and start back in again with the scene.”

Redmayne said he’s used that technique in the years since, like during the “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables” scene in “Les Misérables.” It proved useful again for “The Good Nurse.” “That can only work in scenes where the character is in a high-stakes emotional place at the beginning of the scene,” he said. “And that’s what I did here. Sometimes, I think also that’s what you do on stage. You do it night after night and what your entire body creates as a consequence of reaching for extremes, that ends up being helpful when you go back into takes.”

Redmayne is happy not to be a Method actor, but he’s still enthralled by finding the lines between performer and character.

“I can remember once working with Julianne Moore, it was early on in my career and we’d be having a chat with the cameras about to roll and she’d be talking about ‘The Jonathan Ross Show’ and this time when she went on or something and then without me realizing, she had gone straight into character and I was still being Eddie,” Redmayne said. “I don’t want to speak for Julie, but I felt like part of her process was distracting herself. Everyone has different ways of doing it. I sort of have to be slightly in the zone, but I definitely have to break out of it.”

He paused to chuckle again. “Also, I have young children and my wife would not want to live with me coming home as a serial killer. That would be disastrous!”

*Netflix releases “The Good Nurse” in select theaters on Wednesday, October 19 and to its streaming platform on Wednesday, October 26.

[sircolinmorgan]

i'm watching endeavour for the first time and it's interesting to see the blog reviews get real negative around s4-s5. i get it if you were used to the style of those first couples seasons but i'm realizing i see the show differently than some fans seem to. maybe because the first episodes i saw were in later years.

like one of the major complaints is the plots getting too silly and morse being thrown into references to various detective stories and genres.

for me, one of the major appeals of endeavour in the first place was how pulpy and camp it can be. in the first few seasons you have an opera-obsessed serial killer, a classic creepy boarding school being haunted, and a tiger. come on. i love that shit. it was always there.

idk, now it's finished and looking back at all the years it was on, i'm glad they had as much fun with the morse character as they could. i love that they wanted to explore different sides to him and his arc is very moving when you know where they end it. the serious character study of those first episodes would've made a great mini-series but wouldn't be sustainable long-term.

sorry this turned into an essay, lol. i just wanted to share my thoughts with someone else getting super into it.

no need to apologise! i love talking about endeavour haha!

i haven't really come across that much negativity for those seasons? they're my favourite! series 5 especially. but then i have come to the show really late so i'm sort of unaware of how each series has been perceived individually i guess.

i think if someone is looking for a procedural crime drama that just follows the case-of-the-week pattern without much else than you can easily find that in the billion other crime dramas that are on tv. endeavour has a certain flair to it with its opera and cinematography and the occasional references to pop culture, and it's brilliant.

there have been a few episodes here and there that i've found a bit strange but the only time i've thought it got a bit silly was series 7, it was so wildly unrealistic lol. but i've only seen that series once and i'm currently rewatching it all from the beginning so i might change my mind when i get to that series again! there's also a couple of times when the resolution hasn't quite worked for me, the great gatsby episode where surprise! it's twins! was just all over the place lmao. but the cases aren't the main attraction for me so i don't really care too much!