#i collect things

[gromlyn]

they are not a want, they are a need

[addictedtostorytelling]

It's me again! I have finished all the original CSI seasons and I'm now on Vegas. One thing I am frustrated with is the lack of GSR kissing. I know a kiss was cut and I have seen your rant about the lack of kisses, but why do you think that is?? They are so happily married and obviously attracted to each other! Why do the writers constantly not give us more PDA between these two??

hi, @i-collect-things!

good to hear from you again!

re: your question:

my sense is that the reason why the writers were so stingy with gsr kisses (especially in the reboot) was because they were laboring under some mistaken impressions even though they really should have known better.

they believed that it was the paucity of gsr kisses that made the few that we got to see over the years special, when in fact such was never the case.

because of the way the fandom had responded to the gsr slow-burn storyline, they essentially mistook our enthusiasm for the few "table scraps" we had ever been fed as a preference for scraps in itself rather than correctly interpreting it as evidence of how much more excited we might have been had we ever been given access to a true feast instead.

they seemed to think that if they had made gsr kisses a regular occurrence for us, said kisses wouldn't have been "special" anymore, and our interest in the ship (and by extension the show) would have diminished.

no two ways about it: they were flat-out wrong, and the stunning lack of kisses in places where there should have been some is just egregious in retrospect, an absolute failure of writing and production, indicative of just how badly the csibods misjudged their audience in the later seasons of the show and reboot eras.

more discussion of the issue after the "keep reading," if you're interested.

warning: here be salt about csi and csi: vegas writing and production decisions. read at your own risk.

__

three kisses in twenty-one years for the only actual romantic couple in the entire csi: vegas storyworld: it reads like a bad joke at first, especially when one considers that said couple goes from being the classic "will they or won't they?" pairing, to dating, to engaged, to married (twice!) over that long span of time and has many of their most significant relationship moments play out on screen.

certainly, the experience is incomparable to anything else i have ever dealt with in my almost thirty years as a fangirl.

gsr kisses are rarer than gemstones, even though there is absolutely no narrative reason why they ought to be.

so what gives?

well, for my money, the lack of gsr kisses all goes back to the fact that, as anthony zuiker talks about in this interview, the original csi, by design, "never brought characters home [or] delved too deep into their personal lives."

that writing choice meant that while gsr was the show's flagship romance, it was never something that received a lot of mainline narrative focus.

—which in some ways made negotiating the gsr slow-burn romantic storyline difficult.

on other primetime shows, a flagship slow-burn romance will typically play out over the course of about three seasons, receiving measured but nevertheless steady development, with little romantic moments scattered in here and there, punctuated by one or two "romantic focus episodes" per season. there will be plenty of pining, some near misses, and usually a midgame ship or two along the way to stir up jealousies, resentments, and personal revelations until finally the two characters come together in the inevitable "consummation moment" that sees them confess their love, hold hands, kiss, and/or have sex for the first time on screen, after which point they are then officially a couple.

however, because csi never had any interest in giving gsr that much mainline attention, they didn't adhere to those traditional patterns. while gsr did get occasional peripheral development during the show's first three seasons—and even played the whole "one endgame character gets into a midgame ship with someone else that causes the other endgame character to get jealous" game for a while—by the end of s3, grissom and sara were actually further apart (relationally speaking) than ever, with grissom flat-out rejecting sara's most overt romantic overture to date.

on a show more willing to expend narrative resources exploring and developing the characters' personal lives (and depicting their actions outside of work), they might have been able to write their way out of this narrative low point for grissom and sara in relatively short order, having them "hit rock bottom" only to then bounce back and get together sooner rather than later, maybe by sometime in mid-s4. but on csi, where grissom and sara's romantic storyline by necessity had to (per the rules of the show) always remain in the margins only, getting the two lovers "back to good" was going to take more time; their relationship wasn't something that could be fixed quickly.

i mean, there is a reason why s4/s5 are such a roller coaster ride, gsrwise. and the fact that it couldn't be meant that the writers now had something of a pacing problem.

writing a slow-burn romance is an art, particularly when it comes to pacing. for as much as it's about teasing the audience's expectations and playing the "will they or won't they?" game for as long as possible, there has to be some indication that the characters are moving toward each other and will eventually reach that all-important "coming together" moment at some point. on the one hand, you have to be patient and draw the development out in order to build up the narrative tension, making the audience yearn for the consummation so badly it almost hurts before you ever give them the satisfaction of seeing it. on the other hand, you need to make sure that even if the slow-burn runs long, it still is in a constant state of progression, with the tension escalating over time until the consummation inevitably occurs, or otherwise you risk losing its momentum (and with it, the audience's interest). with gsr, the csi writers had already drawn things out with them almost as long as they could without overtaxing the premise.

that so, they had to wonder, after grissom's seemingly decisive rejection of sara at the end of s3, was there really any way to move the story forward? had they dragged their feet too long already, making romantic gsr unviable, or was there any way to navigate the coming season so that eventual consummation (maybe two or three seasons on) was still a potential option? initially, the writers thought the answer was "no."

but thankfully billy and jorja thought the answer was "yes," and they advocated for the romantic gsr storyline to continue, eventually persuading the writers to stick things out a while longer.

nevertheless, even once the writers decided to continue writing romantic gsr after all, given that by then they had long "overshot the runway" in terms of the usual slow-burn tropes, they had to get creative with trying to stick the landing—and what they decided, for better or worse, was that since the entire reason why grissom and sara hadn't gotten together previously was that, as a rule, the show didn't focus on the personal lives of their characters, they were going to double down on that narrative choice.

ipso facto, after spending s4 and early s5 slowly moving grissom and sara back toward each other, instead of having that traditional "consummation moment" occur on screen, they opted to just kind of skip over it.

have it happen but not on screen.

have it happen but not allow the audience to know that it had (at least at first).

while there were probably a lot of factors that influenced this decision on their parts, one of the big ones was the fan response they had already gotten to gsr so far: gsr had always been a "love it or hate it" ship, with very few people neutral on the matter.

among fans who hated the ship, certainly there were those who did so because they favored other grissom and/or sara pairings instead; however, there was also a fairly vocal contingent of folks who were just against the concept of csi portraying any romance in general, arguing that it pulled focus from the forensics of the show, posing a distraction from what they viewed as "csi's main point."

meanwhile, fans who loved gsr were (by this time) annoyed that the relationship had been teased for so long without being made canon.

by sublimating the consummation and making it happen off-screen, the writers spoke to those two disparate responses, essentially saying, "yes, this is something that's happening (see, gsr fans?), but, trust us, it's not gonna be a distraction from the show's main focus. grissom and sara have already been together for a long time, and you didn't even know it (gsr haters)!"

it seemed like a good way to compromise between doing what was right for the characters and gratifying some of the fans while at the same time honoring the show's thesis and production values without alienating the other fans altogether.

unfortunately, taking this particular approach also created a problem: just because the writers decided to skip over the initial consummation moment didn't mean that all that pent up tension and expectation for it just evanesced.

fans still wanted to see a gsr kiss, dammit, and the longer they didn't see it, the more ravenous for it they became.

and so the writers had written themselves into a bit of corner, making it so that any gsr kiss they might write would be, by its very nature, chimerical: a first kiss from the audience's perspective but a thousandth kiss from the grissom and sara's.

writing such a kiss would require finesse.

however, it also wouldn't have been impossible to do.

it's just that the writers chose not to do it.

part of their decision to keep holding off undoubtedly stemmed from that same old reluctance to focus on the characters' personal lives too much (and from a fear of alienating fans who either hated gsr and/or just didn't want there to be too much romance in the show in general).

however, part of it also undoubtedly came from the way fans were responding to lack of kisses so far—i.e., by being super vocal about wanting to see a kiss, campaigning for it online (as by now online fandom was definitely a thing), tuning in in numbers every week and particularly for episodes that touted heavy gsr content, and by just generally engaging with the show on the basis of wanting to see a kiss happen.

essentially, at the same time that the writers had officially concluded the gsr slow-burn storyline, they had also (largely inadvertently) stumbled upon a way to prolong the whole "will they or won't they?" of the thing, sustaining the same narrative tension that had kept them afloat for so long.

even though the couple was officially together, the audience still had something to yearn for with them.

and that yearning was too sweet to just easily relinquish.

so the writers milked it.

they dangled the promise of the kiss™ overhead, tantalean, making sure to remind us all the time that grissom and sara did in fact have a physical relationship but never letting us so much as glimpse it.

they teased it all through s7 and into s8, even going as far as to stage a "near miss" kiss during grissom and sara's engagement scene in episode 08x04 "the case of the cross-dressing carp" just to drive the fans up a wall. and who knows how long they might have continued in that same vein going forward, except for the fact that, all of a sudden, jorja fox was going to leave the show.

—and just like that, the writers were out of time.

jorja's impending exit essentially turned the kiss into a "now or never" proposition—and, thankfully, since grissom and sara were still very much in love (and were even engaged to be married) even with sara's departure looming, the answer had to be "now."

the writers had to finally write that kiss they had been withholding for so long.

luckily for them, their old problem of "how should we stage what is a first kiss to the audience but a thousandth kiss to the characters?" was essentially solved by the circumstances.

by having the first gsr kiss also be the last gsr kiss, that made things simple.

the significance was all wrapped up in the moment.

they didn't have to go out of their ways to stage or fame anything.

of course, as you might imagine, reactions to this kiss were mixed. while on the one hand, fans were pleased to finally see their beloved otp lock lips after 7+ years, on the other hand, the context of the kiss was so heartbreaking that it was hard for anyone to truly be gratified. many fans could not help but feel cheated that the first time they got to see grissom and sara kiss was also going to be the only time they ever would do so and also that the kiss itself was so overwhelmingly sad, with sara in tears and grissom confused and scared for her. the moment of the kiss itself was overshadowed by the harsh reality of sara's departure.

while i have no way to prove as much, i think, retroactively, the writers realized that they had fucked up—that they had waited too long to have the first gsr kiss altogether and that what ended up being the first kiss was just kind of unintentionally cruel to the fans.

mercifully, one season later, both the writers and the fandom got a chance for a redux: an opportunity to see one last gsr kiss, this time in circumstances much happier, during grissom and sara's reunion in episode 09x10 "one to go."

that kiss, they stuck the landing on.

it was triumphal. it was significant. it was everything that fans could've asked for and would have served as a very fitting ending to the entire gsr slow burn, had it indeed been the final word on the thing.

except.

then jorja came back to the show.

and her coming back raised once again the problem of how to depict gsr pda anew.

of course, without having billy on the show with her, there was no way to really portray grissom and sara kissing (much less having sex); innuendo was the only option.

and innuendo only would've been okay, circumstances being what they were.

except.

the circumstances changed.

billy did come back—first in his cameo in episode 11x13 "the two mrs. grissoms" and then for his more substantial guest role in "immortality."

and this is the point where i truly get baffled by the writers' choices.

why they didn't write an ending to episode 11x13 "the two mrs. grissoms" that involved grissom showing up at the lab after all was said and done with the bombing case, i don't know. if they could get billy on deck to film the webcam scene, then presumably they also could have gotten him on deck to film something in the same room as jorja. presumably there could have been a kiss.

and this one wouldn't even have had to be a big deal™ kind of thing! it could have just been a very lowkey kiss hello between a married couple that hadn't seen each other in a few weeks.

even more confounding is their choice not to include a kiss at the ending of "immortality."

like.

i literally cannot wrap my head around how they biffed that one so badly.

as i talk about here,

from a production standpoint, i cannot think of one even slightly defensible reason to not include a kiss, particularly given the way the scene is set up.

i mean, gsr is the show’s flagship romantic pairing, and the scene is the culmination of their love story, which has spanned every season of the show.

it would be one thing if billy and jorja hated each other, so the writers and production staff decided to spare them from having to kiss. 

but billy and jorja don’t hate each other. 

they’re dear friends who’ve kissed on screen before, and they even kissed each other (in a friendly way) unprompted at paleyfest. plus, they understand how their characters feel about each other and how television shows work.

all of that being so, i don’t think they likely objected to anything. if they’d been told that grissom and sara had to kiss, they undoubtedly would have gone for it as directed.

so the fact that there’s no kiss in the finale speaks to someone in power having made a very poor production decision along the way—either a writer or producer, who chose not to write a kiss into the script; or a director, who chose to ignore a kiss already written into the script; or even an editor, who took a filmed kiss out in post production.

somebody zigged when they should have zagged.

the csi powers set up the final scene of the episode perfectly to scaffold a kiss. based on the way grissom and sara’s reunion is staged, the music that’s playing, the narrative context, and even the camera angles, the audience has every reason to expect that grissom and sara will lock lips.

because the stage has been set for a kiss, not having one is such a letdown.

not only would a kiss have blown the audience’s collective mind just because gsr kisses have historically been a rare commodity on the show despite the fact that gsr has been a thing™ since day one—2.5 total kisses over fifteen seasons! not even a full kiss when grissom and sara get engaged!—but just in terms of the story that is told in the finale episodes, with all the longing and hesitation and pining and lovelorn looks, a passionate kiss between grissom and sara would have been the way to go. it would have been so narratively satisfying...

you can’t write a finale that is so intensely gsrcentric—to the point where it, frankly, neglects most of the other characters in favor of telling grissom and sara’s story—and spend the equivalent of two full episodes playing the “will they or won’t they?" game, showing ad nauseum that grissom and sara are still desperately in love with each other but too scared to say as much, and then have sara finally make the brave gesture, go to grissom, and lay her heart on the line, and not consummate the moment with a kiss!

based on the way the story has been told, a kiss is what the audience is wanting and expecting. 

a kiss is what would make sense from a narrative and cinematographic perspective. 

a kiss should be the pièce de résistance to what has essentially been “grissom and sara realize they can’t live without each other (and that they’re idiots for ever thinking they could): the two hour made-for-tv movie.”

everything is there, just ready to play out—but somehow anthony zuiker and co. completely fumble the setup.

just as they stoke the expectations of the audience to a frenetic pitch, they decide to bail out and instead go with the letdown move, inserting the hug.

it’s the television equivalent of failing to touch home plate after rounding third with the whole baseball game on the line.

one cannot even attribute the lack of kissing in the finale to the same desire to "build tension" that had led the writers to withhold kisses during s5-s8, as, in this instance, they had good reason to believe that it might be the last time they'd ever have the opportunity to put billy and jorja on screen together as grissom and sara again. it wasn't like there was more "will they or won't they?" territory left to be explored; the answer—they will! they have! they are!—had already definitively been given, and the story was ending on that very note.

all i can figure is that maybe they were somehow laboring under the delusion that gsr fans wouldn't want to see a kiss in that particular narrative situation—like maybe they were worried we would consider it overhasty (in the wake of the divorce and the fact that grissom and sara had been apart for two and half years) or believed that we would more appreciate the "subtlety" of a hug.

in any case, whatever was or wasn't in their heads, not having a kiss at the end of "immortality" was about as big of a fuckup as ever there was one.

and they definitely heard fans say so.

the csi twittersphere talked about the choice ad nauseum for a while, and though there were a few defenders ("the hug was good enough!"), there were many more folks who made their disappointment well-known.

so you think tptb would have learned their lesson for the reboot.

but no.

prior to the debut, fans excitedly speculated about what it was going to be like to after long last have a happy and married grissom and sara together on our screens. many of us speculated that we might finally get to see some regular gsr kisses for the first time in twenty+ years of shipping—a speculation that was only fueled by some of the early press surrounding the show, in which billy and jorja hinted about the show including more intimacy, with jorja going as far as to say "the show is going to air at 10pm, so we can be a little edgier than we were last time" in direct response to an interviewer asking her about the potential for gsr pda.

but then the first several episodes aired, and while we got to see a lot of cute gsr interactions, none of them included much physicality. some of us wondered if maybe pandemic safety restrictions were preventing kisses from being filmed.

but then the promo for episode 01x04 "long pig" dropped, and all such speculation went out the window.

obviously, kisses could be filmed—and one had been.

eureka!

for a few blessed days, the fandom rejoiced.

after so many years, we thought that finally we were going to get to see our otp just share a regular, everyday "just because we're happily married and it's how happily married people say goodbye to each other for the day" kiss.

imagine our devastation when the episode then aired and the kiss was nowhere to be found. the scene it was supposed to feature in came and went, and no middle-aged scientist lips got locked.

fandom complained.

loudly.

and bless her heart, jorja fox responded, tweeting out confirmation that the kiss had indeed been filmed, and she had no idea why it had been cut.

the fandom had no idea, either.

it would have been one thing had no kiss ever been filmed, but since it obviously had been, it made no sense for it to have then been omitted. since it was only ever meant to be a little goodbye peck on the lips and not a major turning point in the story, it couldn't have been edited out for storytelling reasons. ditto on time constraints, as it would have added only a few seconds (at most!) to the episode's run time, and there were definitely some long transition shots that could have been whittled down if needed in order to accommodate it.

my suspicion at the time was that the choice had been made because the powers that be were intent on teasing the fandom—trying to pull the same cutesy "tee-hee! we gotcha!" bullshit that they had been pulling on us for twenty years, withholding kisses just to string us along.

lo and behold, my suspicions were confirmed when showrunner jason tracey gave an interview in which he stated, "when you shoot something and the folks at [the] promo [department] get a hold of it, it’s a very enticing moment [to be included], but from a storytelling standpoint, i think that when the audience sees where we left things [with the season finale] and how we kind of brought it all home for those two characters. sometimes rewards are sweetest if you kind of have to wait. we like the shape of the story that we told. i hope people don’t feel too cheated, but we’ll see how they feel when they’ve gotten to absorb the finale and see that maybe we saved the best for last.”

basically, he thought that the roller coaster kiss in episode 01x10 "signed, sealed, delivered" would only hit if it were the sole gsr kiss of the season. he believed that having another kiss in the mix earlier on would somehow dilute the finale kiss's potency.

which.

jesus fucking christ.

after twenty+ years, you would think that the writers and showrunners would realize that it is not the paucity of gsr kisses that makes the few that we have gotten to see special but rather just the fact that it's grissom and sara and we love them and we love seeing them together.

that they were still laboring under the delusion that we only cared to see gsr kisses because they happened so rarely is just utterly baffling.

a cursory perusal of any kind of fandom space would show: we have been imagining all sorts of gsr intimacy for over twenty years now and haven't either tired of doing so yet OR exhausted the limits of our imaginations.

the actors were willing.

the story would allow.

we would have been happy to see it any which way and at any old time—but especially at those instances where it truly would have made good, solid narrative sense.

people kiss their beloveds at big reunions.

people kiss their beloveds at goodbyes.

people kiss their beloveds when they're giving comfort.

when they're celebrating.

when they're trying to seduce them away from their work in the middle of the night.

when they rescue their lost wedding ring out of a vat of liquid human decomp.

putting kisses in those parts of the story in no way would have cheapened those moments or inured us to the magic of the thing. it just would have made sense.

as i say elsewhere, "poor is the writer who can’t make a hundredth kiss feel just as special as the first one"—and especially not when they're working with such fantastically physical actors as billy and jorja who have natural chemistry in droves.

it's such a shame that the csi and csi: vegas teams never learned that lesson and instead persisted in thinking that they had to keep dangling that carrot in front of us in order to get us to watch.

anyway, suffice it to say, i'll be salty about this bad choice forever.

three kisses in twenty-one years!

infuriating.

what a complete waste of so many good opportunities.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[incorrectinfinity]

I have been collecting so much collage fodder recently it's crazy

[futilechildhooddream]

listen I helped my ex figure out they were demisexual before I realized I was. I'm just that type of dumbass

[unholyhymns]

still one of my favorite bits i ever got to commit was pretending not to know who jesus is when a street preacher was evangelizing to me. he was like "do you know who jesus is?" and i had so much time before my next bus and i wanted to know what would happen so i said no. and you know what. he had clearly never been told no to that question before because if i hadn't actually known who jesus was, his baffled and fumbling attempt sure wouldn't have told me. literally reversed the roles. now you get to stand here feeling very uncomfortable and wishing you could be somewhere else because guess what buddy, this is my bus stop, im early (and can catch like five other buses from this exact stop), and im now thoroughly invested in hearing about this mysterious jesus figure. you're locked in here with me. im eating the key as we speak. i will kill us both before i let you out of here.

very highly recommend this bit if you can pull it off and if you have time to kill

[unoriginal-and-dumb]

Look i dunno. SHES ORANGE AND SHE KINDA WEIRD LOOKING!!! I like her.

BUT i just really like her design a lot, kinda wish she was 2d animated though but i say that to everything

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

I can’t believe how accurate this is. I’ve had a rock collection since I was a kid, and I’m still collecting them to this day.

Do any of you relate to this? If so, what do you like to collect? It can be plushies, toys, whatever. :)

Neurodivergent Girl

[valdevia]

It's one of those

Netsuke of a Plum Sparrow (Japan, late 18th century)

kind of days.

[icaruspendragon]

make sure to leave suppressed bisexuality and self-worth issues out for castiel tonight

[theonewhowails]

cult trait: good die young

[jupiter-and-teardrops]

the hardest lines ALWAYS come from ao3 fanfics and I stand by this

Mostly thanks to @emilyelizabethfowl (their reblog contains many of the fic links!! thank u sm) and a few deep dives into my ao3 history, the sources of the quotes have mostly all been recovered! I apologise for not posting them all with proper credit originally, I truly didn't think the post would blow up so much, but the lesson is very much learned :) enjoy!

- number 1 is from merthur fic called Destiny Ordered You To Die, But I Willed You To Live by ironfamjam

-number 2 is from a klance fic called reach out for you (break these walls) by Paladin-Pile (UserFromPluto)

- number 3 is a batman fic called Home (jason centered) by Daisybirb

- number 4 is a zukka fic by I'm Not Angry Anymore by team_avatars_eyebags

- numbers 5 and 9 are from The Art Of Burning by hella1975, an amazing ongoing atla following zuko

- number 6 is a hualian fic called No paths are bound by cataclysmic_calamity (originally a thread fic but also fully uploaded on ao3)

- number 7 is a merthur fic called tell me every terrible thing you ever did (and let me love you anyway) by Stardustwrites17 (the quote is also originally from a poem apparently)

- number 8 is from a batman fic called Nature and Nurture by lurkinglurkerwholurks

- number 10 is from a steddie fic called let me know (everythings alright) by bexiguess

ALSO there is now a part 2 !! (which I swear is better organized)

[gromlyn]

my “congratulations on getting into seminary” gift to myself has arrived….

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hi! Thank you for answering my questions! I am curiou, what is your favorite GSR season and why?

hi, @i-collect-things!

while my favorite csi season of overall is s7, my favorite gsr season fluctuates between being s2, which has some of the fluffiest, most delicious "i am so madly in love with you" shippy scenes between them of the whole series (plus a soupçon of angst, too), and s5, which is pretty much their watershed as a couple.

s2 contains many of my top favorite gsr scenes of all time:

the chalk scene from episode 02x05 "scuba doobie-doo"

the "that's you talking" scene from episode 02x12 "you've got male"

the email scene from episode 02x12 "you've got male"

the scene where grissom orders the green plant for sara in episode 02x15 "burden of proof"

the "since i met you" scene from episode 02x16 "primum non nocere"

the arm-in-arm scene from episode 02x21 "anatomy of a lye"

the "unbound" scene from episode 02x23 "the hunger artist"

the back half of the season in particular has a very rom-commy feel in the best kind of way possible. though sara is dating hank at the time, she and grissom nevertheless seem very connected to each other. he is so superlatively charming to her, while she is so receptive to him.

of course, i also love s5 gsr because of the storyline. after the long, depressing slog of s4, s5 is where the light starts to come back into the story.

i've had that part of the gsr narrative "under the microscope" for a while because it provides the temporal setting for my fic "something in you i believe in," and in looking at it up close, what i am really struck by is how grissom and sara repair their friendship throughout the beginning of the season before tipping the scales toward romance from episode 05x13 "nesting dolls" on.

i love watching grissom start to show up more and more for sara; to just be that steady, reliable presence in her life who checks in on her and cares about how she is doing and gives her unconditional love. i love that sara becomes so honest with grissom and supports him through the team split, quietly slipping into the role of his right hand and stalwart.

and episode 05x13 "nesting dolls" is such a turning point just in and of itself.

as i've written about here,

to me, gsr’s whole vegas relationship can be divided into the “b.n.d.” and “a.n.d.” eras—i.e., “before ‘nesting dolls’” and “after ‘nesting dolls.’” the shift that occurs in their interactions once grissom learns sara’s secret is just absolutely everything...

as i’ve written about here, after realizing in s4 that he still loves sara and always will and that he regrets his decision to live without her, this episode marks the place where grissom starts to understand that he cannot continue to compartmentalize his feelings for and relationship with sara without hurting her; he has to be emotionally transparent with her or risk losing her forever. 

—and that’s what episode 05x13 “nesting dolls” is all about.

everyone is saying that sara is trouble, but grissom realizes that she’s troubled, which is different. he’s never been able to stand seeing her sad, and he’s felt helpless for a long time to do anything on her behalf. he can’t afford to “play it safe” anymore; he has got figure out what’s going on in her head and in her heart, but in order to do that, he’ll have to show her what’s in his head and in his heart first.

so he goes to her apartment in this attitude of total openness. he makes it clear to her that he’s there not because he’s her supervisor and it’s his job to reprimand her after her outburst but because he cares about her deeply and personally and wants to help her however he can. his show of interest is what gets her to open up, as she finally realizes that what happens to her matters to him. the fact that he would come looking for her when everyone else told him to let her go helps her to trust him.

so she tells him her story, fearing the whole time she’s talking that once he knows what kind of home she came from and what kind of violence is “in her blood,” he’ll reject her.

but then he doesn’t reject her.

he holds her hand.

he looks at her in a way that says there is nothing about her he doesn’t love.

—and to me? that’s what opens the door for grissom and sara to eventually become intimate.

not everyone agrees on the timeline, but i personally get a lot of joy from watching the back half of s5 through the lens of grissom and sara becoming a couple sometime circa episodes 05x19 "4 x 4" and 05x20 "hollywood brass."

to me, there is a lot of delight in reading that kind of eager excitement toward them leading up to the season finale as new relationship "honeymoon" energy.

sara just seems so happy.

grissom just seems so at peace.

anyway, while i have a lot of favorite gsr moments throughout the original seasons of the show, those two seasons are the ones i find myself probably spending the most time with, albeit for somewhat different reasons.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[gunstellations]

squidow meets the gang

[azulhood]

Conversations between best friends has often led to some reckless/stupid/not thought out at all decisions. Like one conversation the amity park trio had where Danny said that he couldn't see Tucker as a doctor (the medical kind) to which Tucker responded with "Alright, bet." and enrolled in medical school. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Wayne and Tucker Foley somehow by coincidence *cough* clockwork* became friends. And stayed friends even after Bruce dropped out and Tucker went on to finish med school. It was a strange friendship that was mainly just Bruce calling Tucker from the weirdest locations and asking things "Out of curiosity, if an immortal nutjob wanted you to marry his daughter and become his heir what would you do? uh-huh, uh-huh, really? ok, thanks." and meeting up for coffee every now and then. It was during one of these coffee meet-ups that Bruce confessed that he wanted to adopt a recently orphaned child by the name of Richard. There was currently push back from people who didn't think 'Brucie Wayne' would be a good parent and from others who didn't want a random kid having a chance to inherit the Wayne fortune, the media was also having a field day. Everyone kept asking him to "reconsider" and doing everything they can to stall/stop the adoption process. Tucker, being the good friend he was, said "Don't worry, I got this" Stood up from the cafe table, walked to the nearest library and politely asked to use one of their computers, spent a good ten minutes on it, printed something out on the library's printer, walked back to the cafe where he left Bruce waiting. And finally, he handed over the paper with the words "Take this." and continued drinking his now cold coffee. Bruce was, understandably, confused. "What is-" "Trust me, it'll work." Tucker assured him. That is how Bruce Wayne adopted one Richard 'Dick' Grayson.

And after that, Bruce went to Tucker whenever he came across a kid that he wanted to adopt, which was often. It's one reason why Tucker will do everything in his power to make sure Danny and Bruce never meet for fear that the Gothamite might try to add the Halfa to the growing army of children. Aka

Tucker Foley is The Guy