#it would not have been lost on her that debbie always respected her and didn’t reduce her to ‘russian handwhore’

[hayscodings]

debbie is the only character in the entire series who never looked down on svetlana for her work or called her by some derogatory name

[starfirewildheart]

Scars and Souvenirs 

Summary: Sy and his lady both retire from the army but not before tragedy befalls Sy. He slowly tries to adjust to life again on their ranch.

Pairing: Sy / OFC

Word count: 2,022

Rating: mentions of war; being a POW, death and animal abuse. Nothing graphic I promise but if the fic continues (if y'all like it) I'll add warnings for each chapter.

Scars and Souvenirs 

She watched Sy from her perch on the wooden fence as he carefully approached the skittish horse. Well defined muscles flexed and tensed under tanned skin as he galloped around the training ring, sweat building up as the morning sun was reaching its peak. The horse itself was beautiful as well.. A palomino mare, one of four horses they had rescued the night before, hoping to be able to save her and give her a good life. 

"Hey now, that wasn't very  nice," Sy said, keeping his voice soft and gentle while still admonishing the horse for nipping his shoulder.

Debbie chuckled. "You always did have a way with the ladies, cowboy. "

"Well, I caught you didn’t I?" He teased back, his attention always focused on the mare. Their calm voices would help her adjust to being around people.

"It was a limited dating pool baby. My choices were you, Rickshaw, Jizzy, or Boz. Rickshaw was a man whore, Boz had no personal hygiene standards and I'm pretty sure Jizzy fucked a couple of goats trying to get a section 8. You, my Captain, didn’t stink, or sleep with every woman on base or random farm animals. That and your ass looked amazing, even in fatigues."

Sy put his hand to his chest as if he was wounded. "You only want me for my ass!" 

She hopped down off the fence, walked over to him sliding her arms around his chest lightly nipping between his shoulder blades as her right hand snaked down his body until she was palming his denim covered cock giving it a gentle squeeze. "I started dating you for your ass but I stayed for your dick baby," She teased.

Sy inhaled sharply and bucked against her palm. He couldn't imagine his life without her. She was the only good thing that came out of that damn desert hell hole where he toiled for eight long fucking years. Even the Texas sun couldn't stop the shiver that raced up his back from the memories.  "Whatever it is that keeps you here I hope I never lose it because you are my everything." He leaned back against her and placed a soft kiss on her lips, over his shoulder.

"You're stuck with me, always. I'm never letting you go baby." She hugged him tight. "Well except for like right this second because I gotta go muck the stalls," She sighed dramatically causing him to laugh. "A cowgirl's work is never done," he chuckled, smacking her ass as she walked away.

~~~~~~♡~~~~~~

Debbie started cleaning the stalls, and spreading new straw. Music was playing on a radio they had in the staging area and she got  lost in memories about how she and Sy had met. 

She was a doctor who worked the MASH unit in the green zone and also ran missions as a medic when needed. She'd been assigned to the Vikings unit as a medic after their last one had been wounded. When she reported to their Captain it didn't go well. At first she took Sy's very boisterous refusal to work with her personally and she despised him and what she took as his sexest bullshit. After a few very long hours of arguing she realized it wasn't because she was a woman that he didn’t want to take her into the field, he didn’t get her file (imagine that, the government dropping the ball) and he didn't know she had field experience. Sy learned she wasn't intimidated easily. She was a tough as nails, ball busting soldier who could give as good as she got. She earned his respect and he earned hers. Needless to say the issue was resolved and she was frequently a medic for them. 

Over time she and Sy became really close and eventually started a relationship which meant she was no longer allowed to be with their unit. Sy had a lot of pull because of what his unit did and was able to keep her on base though. She continued to work both at the MASH unit and with other teams on missions and they spent their free time together. 

It had been a year and a half since she’d cycled out of the Army and a year for Sy. While she served during war time and has been in some bad shit and had to do even worse sometimes, it was nothing compared to the hell Sy had experienced. The last four months of his tour were by far the worst for him. One of his unit's final scheduled missions turned out to be their worst and last. 

Their objective was to shut down ordinance supply areas for the insurgents because the damn RPG attacks were killing more of our soldiers than combat. The Viking unit had made a huge impact on the supply already and they hoped to be able to take out some of the top ranking members of the opposition with today's raid. Sy had been promised a second unit as back up with the high profile target but true to form, command said they didn't have enough manpower to send back up which meant if shit got bad he'd have to call in an air strike which would be at least thirty minutes out. There was a shadow in the back of his mind that this was a bad idea and he even suggested to his C.O. that they postpone the mission but he was told he was there to follow orders not think.

Things started out successfully as they secured the facility and a cache of weapons, supplies and several high value prisoners. "Robbins, call it in. Tell them we need a clean up crew and transport for 10 prisoners," Sy ordered.

"On it Cap," he gruffed.

"Jimminez, Boz, recheck the perimeter."

"Yes sir."

"Sanchez, Richter, get 'em in restraints."

"Cap!" Boz yelled as he slammed another man through the metal doors of the building. "This asshole was on a phone out back."

"Fuck," Sy's stomach fell to his feet. This was bad. He stormed over and grabbed the insurgent by the shirt and started to question him. Within minutes Sy's life would change forever.

Explosions, gunfire and blood filled the air as several truck loads of insurgents arrived having been alerted by the man with the phone. All of Sy's men were captured and either executed or tortured for information. The insurgents did unspeakable, unimaginable things to the men claiming to want intelligence, after a while Sy came to believe they did it for pleasure.

Two weeks went by and Sy and Boz were the last two alive. As the leader of the team he'd been forced to watch his men be brutalized and eventually executed and his men were forced to watch him be tortured, the insurgents hoping to show them his weakness but Sy never begged.

It was just a few days later that Debbie got the call that he'd been rescued and was being flown to Ramstein AF base in Germany. She’d been home for four months, a choice she and Sy had both made, each agreeing to retire and not re-up. She dropped everything and flew to Germany to be by his side.

~~~~~~♡~~~~~~

Debbie was pulled from her thoughts as Sy walked the mare back into the barn and started brushing her down. She was amazed at how much Sy had recovered in the year he'd been home. They bought his dream ranch and he'd designed their home and the barn that was built there. They had gone to a cattle auction to bid on some horses for the ranch and that's where they found their new passion. 

They were walking through the stalls checking out the animals when Debbie overheard a farmer talking about selling his horses to the meat market. From that day on they researched and scouted these 'meat' auctions and bought as many of the animals as possible. They rehabilitated all that they could and gave them to loving homes; the others who'd been too abused to recover they kept on their own farm where they could live in peace and safety. 

Sy looked over at his beautiful girl and grinned. "Come 'er baby girl."

She stepped out of the stall and slowly crossed over to him watching his eyes rake up and down her body. "See something you like, Captain? "

"Hell yea," he rasped, pulling her flush against his body wrapping his arms around her tight. Her fingernails lightly running up and down his back nearly made him purr as he placed soft kisses on her neck. 'It's your love' came on the radio and he started dancing around the barn singing to her. 

She squealed with laughter as he spun her around. 'It's your love' was their song, the first song they ever danced to. Letting her hands slide down to his hips she softly pressed her lips to his in a loving kiss. She allowed him entry when his tounge sought its way into her mouth as he deepened it. Their hands began to roam, finding just the right spots to drag moans from each other until he was pressing her against the wall, his rapidly filling cock digging against her stomach. His hand worked its way under her shirt and he squeezed her supple breast rubbing her nipple through the silky material of her bra and was about to lift her up around his waist when they heard gravel crunching on the driveway announcing a car approaching. "FUCK!"

Debbie laughed and patted his ass. "Not now baby, your mom is here but if you're a good boy, maybe later." She waggled her eyebrows at him playfully. "You should probably take a walk for a second until the little monster calms down."

"Fuck," he whined pitifully as he laid his head on her shoulder.

"HI honey," mama Syverson's sweet southern voice rang out as she approached. A concerned look crossed her face as Sy stood with his head on Debbie's shoulder. "Everything alright?" She asked as she put a hand on his back.

He raised up and greeted her with an awkward hug, keeping his hips back so his hard-on didn't accidentally brush against his ma. He shuddered at the thought. "Yea we were just taking a break," he told her as he walked over to the mare he'd brushed down before dancing with Deb. "Let me put this girl in her stall and we can all head to the house for lunch."

"Oh, um, I'm sure Debbie has a lot of work to do," she hedged throwing a look toward the other woman. "A lot of rescues to take care of and all."

Sy closed the stall door, brow creased in bewilderment at what she’d said "Ma, what the h…"

"She’s right," Debbie cut him off. "Horses gotta be fed and watered and I need to get some round bales out in the pasture feeders. Gonna take me the rest of the day." He started to argue but she kissed his cheek and whispered, "She needs you. Go be with her." Before walking to the storeroom to start pulling out grain. 

Sy's mom was a sweet, kind, loving, God fearing southern woman but for some reason she seemed to dislike Debbie. Deb had tried everything to get her to warm up to her because she knew how important Sy's mama was to him but nothing seemed to work. It worried her because she didn’t know how it would affect her relationship with Sy in the long run but there was nothing she could do about it. She sighed and went about feeding all the animals and working through her day.

@shellyshellshell

[arcanadreams]

y’all know that dialogue from the beginning of episode 4 where you talk to Mathieu? the one where you can ask if he wants to reenact Titanic with you? yeah well i’m still salty we didn’t actually get to do that so i’m fixing it with some added self-indulgent headcanons for good measure (in second person format of course because i exclusively write and read x reader fic LMAO) headcanons will be under the cut!!

-----

“Want to come to the front of the ship with me and yell ‘I’M THE KING OF THE WORLD!’?” Mathieu merely blinked in response to your suggestion, arching an eyebrow at you. 

“...No? Why would I do that?” You were honestly surprised at how unenthused with the idea he was. The only other earthling in the entirety of El and didn’t event want to reenact Titanic with you! The audacity!

“Because it’s fun! Why else?” Mathieu clearly disagreed with your reasoning, narrowing his eyes at you skeptically. “Fine, be that way. I’m going to go bask in Leonardo DiCaprio’s glory all by myself, and I’m going to have a great time.” With that, you left the brunette standing on the ship’s deck. You made your way to the bow. Standing at the edge, you sucked in a deep breath of air, sticking your arms out.

“I’M THE KING OF THE WORLD!!”

Mathieu:

Still as unimpressed as when you proposed the idea, to be honest. But he respects that you have the gumption to go through with it.

You glance behind you when you’re done and stick your tongue out at him before smiling triumphantly.

It’s contagious, he’ll admit...he can’t help but smile back. Maybe it would’ve been fun to join in, if only to see that smile up close...

And the way the wind is blowing through your hair is quite pretty, too...

It’s only when you wink at him that he realizes he’s been caught staring.

His cheeks turn a light shade of pink and he looks away, running a hand through his hair in that way he always does. This time, though, there is a noticeable sheepishness in the gesture that isn’t usually present.

Later you tease him about it, saying he should’ve thrown his ego away and joined you if he was just going to watch all the fun you were having and shoot envious eyes from the sidelines the whole time!

Yeah...that’s definitely why he was staring...cough...

Lance:

Literally what in the name of fuck are you doing? - his inner monologue

AT FIRST

He’s an observant man; he looks around for context. Honestly, the way Mathieu is rolling his eyes and Koori is laughing at the scene makes him think you lost a bet of some sort and were purposefully embarrassing yourself.

But before he can think any more on the matter, you turn around with this brilliant smile on your face.

(heart eyes.jpg) It’s such a far cry from the sides of you he has seen up until now; he’s only ever seen you distressed or enraged...both of which were due to his actions and presence.

Seeing the crinkle of your eyes when you’re genuinely happy is new and, dare he say it...intriguing. Beautiful, even.

But then the sun hits your hair just right and you almost have a halo around you and suddenly he remember who he is looking at: the savior of El, the hero who saved the entire world...from him. And he remembers he has no right to be looking at you like this, to be peering in on your moment of joy. So he looks back out over the horizon instead.

Leiftan:

Ah, there’s the Y/N he knows. Always there to bring levity to his aching heart.

...Even if he has no idea what the fuck you’re doing.

Just be careful, please!! Don’t topple over the edge of the ship!! He’s a worrywart, be patient with him.

If he weren’t in self-imposed ‘all things to do with Y/N’ exile, he’d be heading right over to ask just what the hell you were doing.

But then the wind rustles your hair and you turn around, resting your elbows on the railing, and oh...the sunlight creates a halo around your head as you close your eyes, clearly enjoying the salty sea air.

Mans about to have a heart attack! You look just as stunning as you did the day he lost you (and himself but he doesn’t really care about that part) to the crystal.

He can literally feel your angelic aura singing, calling out to him in that moment, but he squeezes his eyes shut and shakes it off. He has sworn off anything of the sort. No matter how mesmerizing you are, he can’t give in...(yet)

Nevra:

“Good to know you’re taking this mission seriously, Y/N.”

We’ve got a Debbie Downer on our hands, folks! Ugh! (Just say, “You weren’t as much of a party pooper before I died for seven years.” That’ll shut him up!)

“I’ll have you know I am taking this perfectly seriously,” you turn your body around to face him, and he resists the urge to smile at the grin you meet his gaze with. “In fact, what I just did is a tradition on Earth for sailors. It promotes safe travels.”

“Is that so?” As you nod assuredly, the vampire rolls his eyes. He knows you’re bluffing...but he’ll still probably ask Mathieu about it later. When you’re out of earshot, of course.

“I learned from the best that having a little fun on missions never hurt anyone,” you say, thinking back to your first few missions with him, back before the crystal. Back when he was...different.

“And I learned that it can kill,” argumentative as always, he was...you sighed. Seven years in a coma and your favorite mischief buddy had shoved a stick up his ass while you were gone! Damn.

He noticed the disappointment in your eyes, then, as the sun vanished behind a cloud. Shit. He didn’t...he never meant...ugh. “...If the journey to Genkaku goes well, I suppose your sailor’s tradition will be proven to work.” He was happy to see your face light up the slightest bit at his peace offering. 

“It’s gonna be smooth sailing from here on out, and I’m gonna rub it in your face after.” “I look forward to it,” despite himself, his lips tilted upwards the slightest bit. He felt lighter, much more ready to face the mission ahead...as well as your teasing if you were right about the trip in the end.

Koori (because I’m gay and I love her):

Stands next to Mathieu and laughs. Like a lot. What can she say? What you’re doing is already funny enough, but the fact it’s making Mathieu facepalm is just the perfect cherry on top!

She loves when you get mischievous like this. She happily approaches you to ask what you’re doing.

“I’m reenacting a human movie by myself since Mathieu is too much of a coward to join me.” (There’s a clear “Hey!” in the background but the two of you mutually elect to ignore it.)

“Is this the same movie with the Let It Go song Mathieu likes to sing?” She asks, and you laugh. “No, but is it probably just as famous. It’s about a huge cruise ship that sank.”

“Don’t tell me you just set us up to get swallowed by the ocean!” Her ears pressed down to her head as she joked with you. She watched you laugh, the sun shining off your hair and creating a slight halo effect. It kind of reminded her of when she was able to create that illusion of your angel powers for you, only much, much prettier...

She asks for you to tell her all about the Titanic “so we can avoid the same fate,” but in reality she just wants to stare at you in this lighting, in this moment, for longer. 

Soon enough the two of you are sat on the stairs to the bow while you blabber on the whole story. She watches the way your eyes light up as you recount the dramatic bits and smiles. You’re so cute. You’ll make this rough journey easier on her, she’s sure of it.

[dreamylyfe-x]

Reactions: 11x06: Do Not Go Gently... (etc)

You know, I was going to do one of these for 11x05 and then I got so mad about the “Pollack” thing that I just couldn’t. 

Shameless is such a challenging show in so many ways... because there is a lot of cringe a lot of the time and I am a delicate flower about those things. But... I do love it and so much of its strengths at this point are the performers and just the length of time we have been with these characters. And sometimes you really see that, and sometimes you frustratingly don’t, but this episode was much more the former than the latter. 

I’m going talk about Carl right off the jump when I thought I was going to avoid talking about it at all because... not a topic I enjoy. If you don’t enjoy, I will keep it all in this bullet so it’s really skipable. I will see where I eventually land on it, because I am wary -- lots of bad consent on this show over the year and very little longterm exploration and all. But. I have seen a lot of sexual assault storylines over the years. I can’t readily remember if I’ve ever seen someone on a TV show have that moment where they feels weird, tell someone why, and get someone emphatically tell them that they’re right to feel weird, because they’ve been violated. That is something that is so common in life. I have unfortunately had more than one conversation with someone that took exactly that trajectory. There is so often this period of shock and uncertainty and people will then use that against people to demonstrate how they couldn’t POSSIBLY have been hurt. If they were going to tell a story about a sexual assault, I’m glad they did this -- something that they set up like “this is grey!” and then have Debbie say “It’s not grey. It’s a crime.” Weird to them basically SMASHCUT to a totally new topic but I will swing back around to that. 

I like Debbie best with Sandy so this was a rough one for me with her. 

Frank: WTF, why do I care about Frank’s story? They’ve set this up all season so it’s not a surprise, but... I dunno. Frank is awful. But he’s also an addict. And the thing I will always have empathy for on the topic of addiction is the way it can steal your life. What’s happening to Frank is scary and a direct result of an addiction which we have pretty much never seen him try to get out from under in any meaningful way. He has lost his life to it -- his potential, his relationships, his children -- and now he’s losing his mind. Just. Fuck. 

Speaking of: Lip. WTF are you doing? I feel like, by the end of the episode, they’d made it clear that Lip is acting out. That he’s angry and frustrated and it’s making him do stupid and destructive things that aren’t actually going to add up to ANYTHING good for him. Which... Kinda classic of Lip. But those moments where Mickey is looking at him and is the voice of reason ... I mean, I love that. But Lip. That’s not a great look for you. 

Once again, V’s story just sorta weird? Like active shooter drills being a replacement for gym class... Um.  Wait. What is this story about, exactly? Gun violence or school funding? Or both? What are we doing? 

Liam: Stop going to Carl with your problems. Christian: I love what you’re doing. Because boy do I feel Liam’s terror. And I’ll come back to that, too. 

Gallavich! It was a Gallavich story where the focus was on MICKEY. Just... Wow. I literally didn’t think that was going to be a thing this year. We love to see it. 

Mickey helping Lip rob Born Free... There are a lot of blanks in all of that, but he seemed quite integral to the operation, Ian clearly knew it was going down and Mickey seems to have primarily seen it as a way to do a thing for family. I love the Lip and Mickey relationship -- I love the history of it. I love that they’ve known each other since grade school and are completely different kinds of alphas. Lip has always had being the smartest in his back pocket, but Mickey often leaves him speechless by just being the most fearless. I love how there’s always been a bit of begrudging respect (and on Lip’s side, maybe a bit of sympathy) there and I love that the show let us have a moment where Mickey is going out to help Lip do crime and then coming back to the house with donuts for everybody. Just. Beyond my wildest dreams for season 11. 

Speaking of “beyond my wildest dreams” -- that there would be some decent level of complexity with Mickey and Terry. I think a lot of that complexity was left up to Noel to convey -- but that’s a choice they’re making and I think it’s the right one. I loved Ian observing that this was the most Mickey ever talked about Terry, because that seems true. It’s a little nod, too, to when Ian desperately WANTED Mickey to talk about Terry and the fact that Ian has, for years, accepted that Mickey won’t. It’s in character for Mickey not to want to SAY a lot about his dad, and it’s also just a true fact that the writers can give Noel a non-verbal moment (or five) and get us as the audience what we need to understand about where Mickey is at. And that’s history, too. Because we have watched Noel let the audience see Mickey’s heart through nothing but his facial expression for 10 of 11 seasons. 

One of those Milkoviches looks a lot like Jody, so that was weird. 

So one of my less popular Shameless opinions is that it makes sense that Mickey is involved with Terry in season 10. For many reasons I won’t get into here, but one of them is just that... people who have been abused by their parents do tend to have some kind of relationship with those parents. Most of that is just the fact that Terry -- while being absolutely horrific -- is still Mickey’s father. And Mickey clearly struggles to completely shrug that off. He struggles with it in seasons 3 and 4, and he struggles with it now. He understands that he has every right. But. Mickey isn’t Terry. And that’s going to make it harder for Mickey to completely shut that door. Since Mickey actually DOES have empathy. 

Ok -- everyone has and will say what I’m about to say, which is just: The scene on the couch was amazing. Being take care of is such a loaded issue for Ian. It was loaded enough that it broke them up in season 10. Ian might talk about being paralyzed, but he’s saying that knowing that he will have to rely on Mickey to take care of him sometimes. He knows Mickey knows that and he knows Mickey signed up for it. But it’s hard for him. I think Ian knows the answer to the question -- has to -- but he asks it to ground Mickey in the idea that they both have each other. Mickey isn’t going to end up like Terry. He isn’t going to be alone in his chair with every single member of his family satisfied to leave him on the curb in a hospital gown. 

To take a step back, this is also why I love the prior scene on the sidewalk, because that is a lot of how Ian takes care of Mickey. I reblogged Gallavictorious’s post yesterday that talked about an accusation that the fandom promotes the idea Mickey is supposed to solve Ian’s problems. This is the show helping her rebuttal, because my gut response to that idea was “where is Mickey now if Ian hadn’t shown up and loved him the way he did?” -- and that moment on the sidewalk is an example of how that still impacts Mickey. That’s what Mickey sticks around for. To have someone standing right in front of him when he wants to do something that will blow his life up just saying “Don’t.” Like how powerful is it for Mickey to have someone care like that? Mickey doesn’t want to talk. That’s not how he wants to receive love from Ian. But I think it’s incredibly valuable and important that Mickey has someone telling him he doesn’t need to give up his life to punish his father. That Terry isn’t worth it and that Mickey’s life IS. 

Back on the couch scene tip: How exhausted must Mickey BE at this point? He’s up all night helping Lip, then he’s driving with Ian all day. Just what a long 24 hours for this guy. 

I love that Ian doesn’t chase Mickey when he gets up. That he follows, but he doesn’t seem alarmed. He seems to understand they are past the gun-to-the-forehead part of this experience. 

I also love that Ian helps him. I’ve seen several people note that this is Ian observing Mickey’s boundaries and it is. But it’s also Ian pointing out that Mickey isn’t in this alone. 

It WAS big of Mickey, Ian. I fully agree. Far beyond the call. 

I think Ian’s been wanting to tell Mickey he’s better than that all day. But this was the moment where Mickey was most going to be able to hear it. 💕

Selling the house: Well, we are really getting to the “last season of Shameless” stuff. I get where Lip is coming from, when he looks at his options. I get Debbie’s reaction. I also understand, given Ian’s day, while he is IMMEDIATELY all in. I only have one question: WHAT ABOUT LIAM???? I’m already mad at all of you for not giving that kid a hug. 

But. I mean, overall? Literally wanted to see that much Terry/Mickey stuff for years. I never thought it would get here, so I’m happy. 

But oh my God. We’re halfway done. 😳

[dramaticviolincrescendo]

I've really enjoyed your recent meta takes and was wondering if you could elaborate on your thoughts on Mandy + Ian and her going for Lip as a result (from your Ian Relationships meta)? I love reading about M+I and their connection is just so dear to me 😭

(P.S Thank you for being such a beacon of positivity in the Shameless fandom! I only got into the show during lockdown last year but it's become such a comfort so it makes me so happy to see positivity right now. ❤ )

Oh my gosh, thank you so much! You’re seriously too kind! I totally sympathize with you: Shameless has shot straight to the top of my list of comfort media since watching it right around the same time, so I’m really passionate about sharing the love around. 😃🧡 

To me, one of the most important things to look at in this analysis is motives—who each of these characters are, what they desire for themselves, and how those factors fit together like a puzzle.

Mandy is in such a difficult position. It’s not as easy as saying that she’s a victim of abuse and wants nothing more than to get as far from her family as possible, because that’s simply not true. In s1, we see that she’s very comfortable in her house. She and Mickey exhibit your standard sibling animosity (and competition for Ian’s attention, unbeknownst to her), she makes breakfast for Terry even though she’s obviously not super respectful to him as a parent, and she clearly has a solid understanding of where her family stands in the neighborhood. In a way, she thrives on that in the beginning. At but a word, she can do serious damage to somebody without raising a finger herself. Viewing Ian’s lack of response to her advances as an insult, she takes full advantage of that. In s2, we know that she is being abused in such a heinous way. She takes charge of the situation, although not in a manner that would save her from it. She leaves the house for a while to avoid Terry; she holds him at gunpoint and forces him to accept what he already knows so that he won’t hurt Ian. When they talk afterward, she even recounts what happened in a way that makes it sound like no big deal—he was drunk, and he didn’t know who she was, so it’s whatever. (It isn’t. We know it isn’t. If this is going to be her reality, however, then she’s going to own it. No one will look down on her, especially not a Gallagher who’s barely ahead of her in social standing.)

We’ll pause there because so much of how Mandy changed afterward is tied to Lip, but we can already see that Mandy isn’t like Mickey. Mickey stuck it out with his family and very clearly fell into the same trap we’ve heard verbalized by other male characters, namely the notion that men can’t be abused. It doesn’t matter that that is entirely inaccurate—that’s what they’ve been taught in their environment. That’s what’s normal to them. (That’s part of the dramatic irony in this scenario: we can see how damaging and traumatic these events are, but the characters don’t have our perspective. I don’t think Mickey sees what happened to him as rape, just like Ian doesn’t see what happened to him as grooming or assault. That’s for the audience to comprehend in terms of gravity and should add to our sympathy for them.)

Mandy is different. Women are abused all the time in their neighborhood. It’s visible, and it’s pervasive. In s3, Mandy immediately teaches Debbie how to defend herself against it. She didn’t have to learn. Like not seeing themselves as victims is part of the boys’ culture, fighting not to be one is part of the girls’. But there’s a contradiction in her life: the Milkoviches are the neighborhood badasses, and while she shares in that, it’s limited by her sex. There is something she will never be able to overcome in order to see the same return on her reputation that Mickey and Terry do, not unless she gets out, which will be extremely difficult on her own merits. She’s living in poverty and not doing well in school. Her prospects are limited—she told the counselor so. Based on that conversation and her history with boys even before meeting Ian, she clearly sees one surefire avenue to get out of this hole she’s stuck in: a man with the resources to get out and take her with him.  If she’s lucky, it’ll even be a good man with a good heart who wants to do good in the world.

Now, let’s talk about Ian. (See what I did there?) This doesn’t need to be long because I’ve already talked so much about Ian already lately, but let’s wax poetic just a bit. Ian wants to be a good person. He wants to be able to get by, even be successful, without having to do it through scamming and stealing. He has goals and ambitions, and whatever anybody thinks of those ambitions, he did it with the mindset that he would be a hero—a protector. Along with that, he never gives up. When Mandy sets her brothers on him, he doesn’t hide forever—he seeks her out multiple times to fix the situation. When he can’t get into West Point, he doesn’t quit ROTC and ignore his dreams. He keeps going.

Not only is he someone who wants to be good for himself, but he wants to be good for others too. He shows Mandy kindness that she arguably hasn’t seen from anyone else before. He takes care of his family when hers tends to focus on themselves and their own individual survival more of the time. Ian has what she would have seen as the potential to get out, and at the time, that is what he wants. It isn’t as an escape for him, but as a way to facilitate his own dreams.

The problem? Ian is gay. We can see that that bothers her sometimes because she forgets. She goes in for a kiss in s2 and has to reel back, settling for a hug instead. She gets tired of hearing him talk about Kash in s1 and kisses him to shut him up, saying she just wanted to kiss her fake boyfriend. Ian isn’t attainable. If Ian leaves, he won’t take her with him as a partner, and she can’t ask as a friend. How desperate would that seem to someone who refuses to be put in a position where she even slightly perceives him to be pitying her? She can’t ask. Not Ian. She needs someone else, someone who is also good and capable of getting out of here—who can be convinced to even if they don’t want to. Someone she can also trust and has some sort of connection with. Someone who is a fixer, and someone she can draw in with the only thing she thinks she has of any value: her body.

That would be Lip. Not only does he meet all of those criteria at the time, but she knows she can trust him. She trusts Ian, and Ian is closer to Lip than he is to anyone else—even her. No, Lip doesn’t have any convictions or real desire to leave, but he has potential. She can work with that. She’s also there for the entire Karen saga, so she knows that Lip is someone who takes his responsibilities to the people he’s with very seriously and tries so hard to cultivate that connection. (For example, feeding him, making herself sexually available as often as possible, letting him stay with her when he can’t go anywhere else without any conditions, etc. We even begin to see her distancing herself from Ian a little bit by s3, putting all of her energy into what she has with Lip when, a year ago, they were sneaking around because she said she didn’t want Ian to know about them. That isn’t to say that Ian was seeking her out either, being quite distracted with Mickey, but it’s noticeable for me.)

Like Mickey, Mandy also has a very deep capacity for emotion and affection that seems incongruous with her personality a lot of the time. Also like Mickey, nobody brought that out in her—it was always there. As much as she seemed to hope that Lip would take care of her, the process of growing closer to him led to a level of affection. I don’t particularly read their relationship as being a deep one. Both of them were using the other, to an extent, to deal with their trauma in other areas of their lives. But that sort of thing can foster a kinship, a mutual understanding that transcends time and place and even the terrible stuff that people do to one another.

So, it doesn’t work out. Mandy is hurt and does something unforgivable. She then runs from Lip, straight into what she feels is her only alternative now: an abuser. What else is there for a girl in her position? Ian was unattainable because of his sexuality, but to someone beaten down again and again, perhaps she believed he was also unattainable because he was too good a person. Lip was unattainable despite her best efforts to bridge that gap because of what he had with Karen, but to someone beaten down again and again, perhaps she believed he was also unattainable because her position in his life was to give but never to take. With Kenyatta, all she does is give. She’s embraced being beaten down because what else is there? She leaves with him, believing there’s nothing for her there.

When she finally finds her strength, far from home but hopefully under better circumstances than when she lived in Chicago, she still follows the formula that has ruled her decision-making for some time: finding a place where she can have the control over her life that was never there before, but still with the belief that what she has to offer isn’t academic or able to be built or improved upon. Ian has worked past his perception that his body was what he had to offer, that it was what would provide him with the love he was looking for. But of course, he has. He’s had Mickey to love him when he’s healthy and love him when he’s lost a bunch of weight from a depressive episode spent in bed. He’s had his family to mess up here and there but ultimately love him so much.

Mandy doesn’t have that. She didn’t then either. She got what she wanted—she got out. She even implied that that was the most important thing by telling Ian that being born on the South Side doesn’t mean that’s where they have to stay. But Ian “got out” of the spiral of abuse he unknowingly suffered and the mindset that it fostered while Mandy didn’t. This isn’t to say anything negative about sex work, of course, only the mindset that led Mandy to this point in her life. And when she leaves the house for the last time, she looks at Lip after having asked about him, and they acknowledge each other the way that people who once knew each other do.

I’ve made the joke before that to Milkoviches, Gallaghers are like catnip. It’s flippant and funny enough when we consider how many of them have dated at one point or other. I’ve also said the Milkoviches are designed as a foil to the Gallaghers, a juxtaposed image of what they could have been had their situation been altered slightly. In s10, Mickey mentions how the Gallaghers are messed up and he’s never been happier to be a Milkovich, so there’s some awareness there that these are the two notorious families of the neighborhood, albeit for different reasons. For Mandy to see that not one, but two Gallaghers are out of reach? To perhaps feel as though she’s less than even them, or made to feel that way in her interactions with Lip? It’s the ultimate slap in the face.

She trusts Ian more than anyone else in her life, to the point where she will still call him to help her hide a body long after she’s left him and their home behind. But trusting Ian led her to loving Ian, and she couldn’t have him. Trusting Ian led her to meeting Lip, and if Ian was so good and loved Lip so much, he had to be worth it too. And to her, he was. The problem was that she felt that she wasn’t.

Self-fulfilling prophecies suck: when you’re treated like garbage by a neighborhood that sees your family as garbage and repeatedly experience things that will make you feel like garbage around people with the best intentions, you’ll start believing that you are, in fact, garbage. I think what we’ve watched with Mandy is a steady decline from a place of strength in herself and weakness in her environment to an overall place of weakness that she couldn’t escape. Not with Ian and, when she realized that wouldn’t happen, not with the only real alternative she thought she could trust since she trusted Ian so deeply. 

[slashingdisneypasta]

Horror Villains: (Top) Most Delusional Yandere’s to Least (Bottom)

Note:

Delusional, meaning they think you’re in love with them too.

Most: They’re convinced you’re a happy couple

Least: They know that they’re keeping you captive and are not willing in this.

Warnings: OBVIOUSLY, this includes some bad stuff. Its yandere, and I’m not gonna hold back. Includes suggested/hinted/out right stated rape and kidnapping. 

~~~

Jill Roberts: Oh god, if anyone on this list is delusional, for any reason, its Jill. She just plain thinks you two are in love, simple.

Chop Top: Chop honestly thinks you’re playing a game with him when you scream or try to run away or anything like that. And he l o v e s playing it with you.

Patrick Bateman: Okay, there’s a lot going on here in his head, but we’ll focus on the two main points. First of all, obviously he’s forceful and violent on a normal day. Even if he wasn’t yandere for you, so there’s that. Secondly, he is so shocked that he feels love and care for you, and that makes him so determined to have you, and he wants you utterly, and entirely- your affections included. // And he is in a confused overly emotive state! He’s never felt this much before! So that all contributes to him being convinced you love him back and you’re head over heels for each other.

Pamela Voorhees: You are the… well, I’m hesitant to say ‘Other mother’, because that makes you think of Coraline, but you are. To her, you are the other mother / father, to Jason. You are a happy family. She cannot let you go. Stop fighting it, you know you want to be apart of the family.

Sheriff Hoyt / Charlie Hewitt: Okay, he is aware that you aren’t in this yet, but he’s sure, like Jed, that you care for him at some level (Because to him you fuck only when you’re in love and he’s fucked you. Don’t ask me how he thinks this even though he raped you, because I can’t explain it. He’d utterly delusional) and you will eventually fall in love with him. And he’s in it for the long game.

Jedidiah Sawyer: He doesn’t think you quite ‘love’ him, but he definitely thinks you have the capacity to, and that you care for him. I mean, for so long he thought he was going to be alone except for his grandmother. And then Heather came along, and she started to love him, shocking him. So why shouldn’t you?

Mayor Buckman: Very similar to Luda Mae, in that he does think you love him back but theirs this nagging thought in the back of his brain at all times saying ‘Maybe. Maybe, you really are terrified.’. But, generally he does think you love him. I think, in his little town, Buckman has always been like, you know the prime suitor amongst the ladies, okay? He’s got that old-fashioned charm to him (I mean, they voted him mayor for a reason, he’s cheerful and kind to them) and he’s handsome- so why wouldn’t you feel that way about him, too? This is getting long, but also the final important point: He’s from a time where ‘no’ from a lady really didn’t mean ‘no’. Men were very easily able to convince themselves that you were playing hard to get.

Luda Mae Hewitt: I mean, did you not see the scene where she was cleaning off Bailey and acting all sweet like ‘I never had me a little girl,’? She’s totally able to convince herself you love her back to some degree, on the inside. But there will always be a nagging, sane voice in the back of her head saying that this is a lie. Much like her son’s sanity and her family’s general stability.

Debbie Loomis: She’s aware at first that you don’t love her back (The same as her son), she just doesn’t care. But, as time goes on, she’s so desperate to be loved by you like her husband didn’t love her, that she convinces herself that at this point you and her have developed a connection.

Bubba Sawyer: His brothers tell him you’re perfect for him and he translates that as ‘You are a perfect couple’, which includes you being in love with him as well, not ‘You would be perfect for him if you liked him back,’. But he can see the way you jump back from him when he tries to touch you or really, do anything with you. Even smile. It hurts him in his heart and he knows you don’t feel the same for him. But, he’ll just have to keep trying. One day, you will. He’s desperate. Bubba thinks at some secret, tiny level you are falling for him. He can’t think any other way.

Jennifer Check: She is in the same boat as Inkubus. Except she is even more pissed, because a. She is used to people just loving her, or wanting her. For her beauty or because of her powers- whatever. They just do- why the fuck don’t you?! And 2. She’s unbelievably hormonal. // She takes to being sweet with you, and thinks you definitely like her now.

Inkubus: If it weren’t for his powers he would be at the bottom with Freddy. But, he is incubi, which means he has certain powers like Jennifer and he’s sure that you will fall for him- everyone else has. If you don’t, he will just be mystified and probably convince himself out of anger that you’re just playing hard to get or your dignity is keeping you from admitting to him your feelings.

Stu Macher: “You’ll fall for me baby, just you wait.” He also thinks this is ‘kinky’, not ‘illegal and disgusting’. I mean, he does think the second one. But as well as the first one.

Chucky / Charles Lee Ray: Similar to Bubba, he knows you don’t love him right now. But, he thinks you’ll grow to. There hasn’t been a girl he hasn’t managed to wear down (; (Wink is from Chucky, not me. So we’re clear) With lots of time together and bonding exercises, you’ll get there. But he isn’t deluded into thinking you’ve started yet, so his mind is clear as to where he stands.

Roman Bridger: He knows you don’t want him or love him back but that doesn’t really matter- he’s used to it. He’s also exhausted with you resisting him. Like, just, he’s gonna act like you’re such a strain on him even though he has kidnaped you and is keeping you in a basement.

Drayton Sawyer: He’s quite aware that you don’t love him back, and he apologises for being this way with you, but you’re his. Side note, Drayton’s a pretty polite yandere. He knows you won’t get away from them (Uh, that amusement park they lived in during the second movie was a fricken maze, and Bubba is terrifying. You aren’t escaping on your own.), so he sees no reason to be rough with you. And he also just likes to be nice to you.

Billy Loomis: Think about it like this, if it was Billy and Stu who were keeping you somewhere as a hostage, he would be the one convincing Stu that you actually want this. This is a game- you’re a bit kinky. Really, Billy is the kinky, obsessed one.

Mickey Altieri: He half loves that you don’t love him back, that this is such a captive situation. Its fun for him, and hot.

Thomas Hewitt: Isn’t absolutely bonkers like his mother and his brother. He just loves you, plain and simple. He does hold out on a tiny little, weeny baby hope that you will one day love him even a little bit back. But only quietly. Only secretly.

Jason Voorhees: Jason can see clearly how you shake when he gets near you or automatically jump away when he comes to touch you. He clearly hears the words you spit at him. He knows you aren’t in love with him back, because he would never do these things to you. But he’s lost too much that he loves in his life and he isn’t about to lose you.

Michael Myers: Like Jason he can see and hear and feel your rejection (Its more physically for him though, as you futilely kick him and punch him to get him away while Jason will mostly respect your boundaries.), he just doesn’t care. He picked you, you are his. Michael doesn’t do well with ‘no’, or ‘stop’.

The Man: On the exact same level as Michael, I just didn’t want to put him between Michael and Jason because he is nothing like Jason. He doesn’t think you love him, he just doesn’t care. Also, he’s a damn psychopath so he probably finds some enjoyment seeing your pain, fear, and suffering.

Freddy Krueger: Read this slowly. He, is, quite, aware that you are not in this with him. He’s only above Carrie (Among the mentally human horror villains) because she is in pain over it at least- he probably prefers it this way.

The Midnight Man: You’re a lowly human to him, you have no free will when he decides you don’t. He doesn’t get off on it like it’s a kink or anything like some of the others, its just a fact for him.

The Pennywise’: Just like Freddy is below Michael despite them both knowing exactly that you are not interested in this, that is the reason Penny is above the Midnight Man. They all three think of you as just a human and since, now he (They?) want you, you now live for him. Difference is though (Again, just like Freddy and Michael), the Pennywise’ enjoy the fact that you’re resisting.

Carrie White: She won’t think you love her back even if you actually do, and that will hurt her. She is hyperaware of it. But it’s not enough of a reason to let you go.

[kreekey]

examples of people being racist toward yoko unintentionally: 1- calling her a weird stalker when they glorify/don't mind the many white fangirls who used to stalk the Beatles. 2- spreading misinformation that she lost custody of her daughter when in fact she'd won against her white crazy ex despite everything NOT in favour of her 3- bashing her for using John's glasses on the album cover she worked with John on, when they would've praised the artistry and bold statement if she was a white woman

Hey sorry I got around to answering your ask so late! You make a lot of really interesting points and I rarely hear people consider that. 

1 - reminds me of a Tumblr post I saw about an obsessive Beatlemaniac stalker and people were like “me” or “bless her” haha. Definitely different when they can interpret Yoko’s actions as “stalking”. And your point also reminds me of this quote, which isn’t about fangirls but still somewhat kinda related.

“Like Yoko when she met John, Linda was a divorced woman with a daughter when she met Paul mere months later.  There are stories similar to those about Yoko of her “scheming” to meet and marry Paul.  In the same way that Yoko is said to have joked prior to meeting him that she was “going to marry John Lennon,” Linda joked like any woman with a celebrity crush about how she was “going to marry Paul McCartney.”  (Bob Spitz notes both in his book The Beatles.  Guess which one he thought was conniving, and which one he thought was adorable.)... Was it the lucky fact that Linda got the scene a few months later than Yoko, or was it her whiteness?“ 

X

And I don’t have the answer if it was Yoko’s race that made her such a target, but it’s something interesting to consider and note. [And I’ll clarify this, I'm pretty sure Yoko didn't know about the Beatles until she became face to face with one, like she wasn't a fan who got lucky enough to meet her idol. In the David Frost interview and the 1971 Rolling Stone interview, John noted that Yoko didn't know him when they met, and Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies by Neil Beram says this on their meeting: "She was about as familiar with John's work as he was with hers. "I was an underground person, and such an artistic snob," she said later. "I knew about The Beatles, of course... but I wasn't interested in them." Just about the only thing she could recall about them was the drummer Ringo Starr's first name, because ringo means "apple" in Japanese.”] Also, and this definitely wasn’t stalking, but I posted a quote from Bob Spitz’ biography where he writes along the lines of

“[Linda] always insisted that she was going to marry Paul McCartney,” [Nat Weiss] recalls, “even before she met him”... It was no accident that Linda Eastman veered into his aura. She’d taken a few polite shots of Ringo and George before “zeroing in on Paul,”... Linda had come dressed to kill. Most days she played the typical rock chick, decked out in rumpled jeans and a T-shirt, with little or no makeup and unwashed hair. But today her hair had been carefully blow-dried so that it fell perfectly forward in wing points at her chin. And she was dressed in an expensive double-breasted striped barbershop jacket arranged just so over a sheer black sweater, with a miniskirt that flattered her gorgeous legs. When she squatted down – not so subtly, in what must have been a rehearsed gesture – in front of Paul for an intimate chat, he had trouble keeping his eyes from wandering below-decks...

, and some people commented that it appeared kinda predatory/pre-planned (reminds me of some criticism of Francie Schwartz’s meeting with Paul), but overall cute and everything. At the time I wondered how people would react if Yoko did that to John lol. No way of knowing, just a thought. And also, I know Yoko sent him Grapefruit and little instructions often, I think that’s usually what people cite as the stalking, that she tried to ensnare him with it. Again quoting Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies, 

For a time Yoko kept in touch with John by mailing him daily instructions-she called this Dance Event-that said things like "Dance" and "Watch all the lights until dawn" and "I'm a cloud. Watch for me in the sky." John found the instructions as perplexing as he found them intriguing.

And quoting this interview (in which she also asserts that “each and every occasion she visited John at Kenwood, it was at his invitation.”),

Despite the popular theory that Yoko was frantically inventing schemes to snare the wealthy Beatle, she was struggling with problems in her marriage [with Tony Cox] and also working hard to establish her career in the UK. Arriving in London in September 1966 to perform at the ‘Destruction In Art Symposium’, Yoko was already respected as an avant-garde artist and performer in New York, where she was allied to the Fluxus movement. She had a trained musical background, and had recently been involved in the improvisational music favoured by her peer group. She had also compiled a book of conceptual and instructional pieces called Grapefruit, and printed up a limited edition.

Yoko distributed copies to a number of influential people during 1966-’67. And John Lennon was one of the recipients. This has since been interpreted as one of various ruses on Yoko’s part to enchant Lennon.

She retorts: “There was a myth that I sent Grapefruit to him… how I wanted to trap him. It was a printed, published book. I had an orange carton of them, a lot of it. I would be giving it to critics. It was that sort of thing. He wasn’t the only one who got it.”

X

And by then, John had already eagerly offered to sponsor one of her shows, I think he was genuinely interested in her work. I don’t think John was actually threatened by these notes or felt he was harassed, especially since he made the jump to invite her over while his wife was away (and Yoko just thought it was a party!). He once referred to Yoko “someone that could turn me on to a million things” in the Lennon Remembers interview, he admired her art. And I know he said to Cyn that the letters were just junk from another one of those weird artists, but c’mon, what do you think John would say to his wife regarding the woman he’s romantically interested in? I don’t think it would’ve been fully truthful IMO, especially considering when John said that he nearly invited Yoko to India around that time because he liked her so.

2 is very true. Tony himself tried to make it seem like Yoko and John were crazy heroin druggies, and that's the case he tried to make (and that’s what he tried to tell Kyoko, that he was “saving” her from drug obsessed occultists). But, Yoko had gone “cold turkey” (ala the song) off heroin in 1969. This was 2 years before she won full custody in 1971. 

Although neither parent had been awarded sole custody of the child, Mr. Cox became increasingly reluctant to let Yoko and her new husband spend time with Kyoko, and finally refused to permit it at all. For a year before the Lennons came to America, they had been chasing Mr. Cox and Kyoko around Europe. In Majorca, Spain, the Lennons caught up with them and spirited Kyoko off to their hotel; but Mr. Cox called the police, and a Spanish court gave the child back to him. The incident added to his fear that the Lennons wanted to take her away from him for good.

Soon after the Lennons arrived in New York, they went to the United States Virgin Islands, to the same court where Yoko had been divorced, and that court awarded her permanent custody of her daughter.

X

But, Tony then took Kyoko to Texas (hiding/kidnapping her) which was in violation of that court order. Then more custody battle due to Tony’s stubbornness and evasiveness, but yes, Yoko did win custody then despite everything (even though John was very threatened by Tony lol, to the point he disallowed Yoko to visit him alone in order to discuss co-parenting when that was an option and suggested kidnapping Kyoko. But then again Tony was also kinda crazy. Seriously though IMO Yoko really tried gallantly to have Kyoko in her life, and the loss hurt her. To hear people try to spin it as Yoko being the monster in the situation through misinformation is unfortunate.)

3 is hypothetical, but I do speculate that if Yoko was white, the attitude toward her would’ve been different. Sean said, “It’s intense how racist the world is. If my mother had looked like Debbie Harry, I really think the reaction would have been different.” (X) Yoko’s former partner, Sam Havadtoy, also touched on this in an interview from 1990:

Q: ...No matter what Yoko does, she’s frequently the victim of a bad press. Any idea why?

Havadtoy: After John’s death, newspapers wrote that Yoko was this selfish person hoarding John’s memory, controlling it, not willing to share it with his fans. So after two years, she puts out 200 hours of film footage and a record and they say she’s exploiting John’s memory. She can’t win.

Q: Why not?

Havadtoy: Racism. If she were blond-haired and blue-eyed, nobody would have blamed her for breaking up the Beatles. They were the darlings of the universe; she was an outsider, an Oriental, an avant-garde artist--easy to pick on. When John married Yoko, the British press wrote: “At least he will have clean laundry.” And it’s still happening. America is infatuated with Japan-bashing. 

X

And I do think Season Of Glass was a memory thing, I posted about it here: X. 

And yes, I think that much of Yoko’s criticism/legacy was rooted in that initial reaction, which was pretty sexist and racist. But I think that influence can still be felt today, in ways that aren’t obvious. And like you said, unintentional. (Before anyone gets mad, if you dislike or hate Yoko that doesn't automatically make you racist lol. But the narrative built around her might’ve influenced your opinion of her, and the narrative was kinda rooted in a racist mentality. So that’s why and re-interpreting her in a fresh light is necessary).

[mst3kproject]

Curse of Bigfoot

This is a very bad mummy movie from the 60’s which was re-edited and re-released as an unbelievably bad bigfoot movie in the 70’s.  It would belong on the Satellite of Love even if it didn’t have a small part for Jackie Neyman Jones.  Remember her? Debbie from Manos: the Hands of Fate?  Yeah, as far as I know she’s the only member of the cast ever to do any non-Manos-related film work for the entire rest of her life and it was this.

Once upon a time, somewhere in the American Southwest, Primitive Man was terrorized by Even More Primitive Man.  In modern times, a Bigfootology professor is giving a guest lecture to a class of students.  First he shows them a clip of a movie just as bad as the one we’re watching, then we get an inaccurate history of bigfoot, including the tale of two idiots in a pickup truck who get a big, hairy ass-whooping.  Then, half an hour into the movie, we finally get to what’s supposed to be the main plot.  A professor of archaeology takes some of his students into the wilderness to help excavate an ‘ancient Indian campsite’, but along with the expected potsherds and prayer sticks, they find a tomb containing a mummy from a lost prehistoric civilization.  It comes to life and shambles off into the forest to kill people, because it’s a movie and mummies do that.

This movie does not waste time.  It starts sucking right out of the gate.  Almost everything that’s going to be wrong with it is introduced in the first ten minutes, as if the movie wants to prepare us for the ordeal ahead.

The opening sequence is an incredibly drawn-out scene of a woman getting up in the middle of the night to calm her barking dog, only to be killed by a zombie that wanders out of the woods.  This scene is around six times longer than it needed to be. We almost have to watch every moment of the dog drinking a bowl of milk she pours for it.  The woman’s voice was dubbed in post, and neither the voice nor the physical acting is any good.  The sequence is supposed to take place in the middle of the night, but was clearly filmed at high noon, reaching Attack of the The Eye Creatures levels of not giving a shit in having the sun appear in several shots, standing in for the moon!  The actual attack happens off screen, because the film-makers could not afford effects.

Then this part ends, and we realize that what we just saw was supposed to be a clip from a horror film that the professor was showing his students.  This provides a fleeting moment of hope, as we think perhaps its overwhelming badness was intended as parody. No such luck.  We then move into the two loggers getting stalked and killed by bigfoot.  The monster costume is different, but this piece is identical in anti-quality to the zombie scene.  The film-makers were just morons, and these mistakes continue throughout the entire ninety-minute run time.

It’s actually astonishing that the movie is so consistent in its incompetence, because we are in fact watching two different films here. Curse of Bigfoot has a backstory similar to that of They Saved Hitler’s Brain, in that somebody in the fifties made a short movie and somebody else, years later, added useless filler to expand it into something they could show in a late-night TV slot. They Saved Hitler’s Brain feels very bifurcated, the new material being both narratively and stylistically different from Madmen of Mandoras.  But if you didn’t know that Curse of Bigfoot was twenty minutes of extra film sewn onto a 1963 movie called Teenagers Battle the Thing, you might not immediately notice.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ll probably remember that I thought Madmen of Mandoras was a significantly better movie than They Saved Hitler’s Brain (even if it still was definitely not a good movie) – the added footage was distracting and pointless.  These two films, however, I would say are about equally awful.  The footage added to Curse of Bigfoot is still pointless, but it looks exactly like what was originally shot for Teenagers Battle the Thing, the only noticeable difference being a slight change in the film stock! Both are depressingly earth-toned movies in which it takes for-fucking-ever for anything to happen, with night scenes shot in the blazing daylight, and lines dubbed in by bad voice actors over bad physical performances. Both feature shitty monster suits and every possible cost-cutting measure.

This leads me to wonder whether Curse of Bigfoot might be terrible on purpose.  The people tasked with turning Teenagers Battle the Thing into a full-length movie got a couple of the actors back to play their older selves in the added footage.  Making stuff match was clearly on their minds.  Could they have actually thought things like, “we’d better use the wrong filter for this, or it won’t be as bad as the day-for-night in the original footage!” or “we need to pad this attack a bit, to match the pace!”?  If so… I don’t know whether to be impressed, or just to crawl under the bed and cry.

On the other hand, Curse of Bigfoot does at least try to do one thing better than Teenagers Battle the Thing – it wants to have something to say.  It spells this thesis out for us in the opening narration and in the professor’s speech about horror movies: our society has forgotten about monsters.

We in the twenty-first century don’t spent much time thinking about monsters unless we happen to be film-makers, political commentators, or maybe paleontologists trying to figure out what the fuck this bugger is.  It wasn’t so long ago, however, that they were very real to many people.  Archaeological evidence suggests that people in New England believed in vampires as recently as the 1820s.  Nowadays, monsters have been taking out of the ‘scary’ category and placed in the ‘fun’ one, and so when people report things like bigfoot or a sea serpent, we don’t take them very seriously.

Bigfoot, sea monsters, and vampires don’t really exist, obviously, but in losing our fear of monsters we may have lost a proper respect for nature.  Every so often the newspapers in my city carry a story of some tourist who tried to get a better selfie with a grizzly bear and got mauled.  We are so used to thinking that we have tamed nature, that there are no monsters left, that we don’t recognize danger when we’re confronted with it.  This certainly seems to be a theme of the stories we’re presented with in Curse of Bigfoot: it never occurs to the woman in the opening that her barking dog may be trying to warn her of danger, or to the two loggers that the mysterious figure in the woods might mean them harm.

The party of archaeology students certainly don’t think they’re heading into any danger, despite the fact that they repeatedly do dangerous things.  A group of them climb to the top of a cliff to see where a fallen stone came from, and never worry about falling.  When they pry open the tomb entrance, the strange smoke that wafts out might be considered a warning sign, but they ignore it.  They head right into this dark hole without any worries about rodents, rattlesnakes, or cave collapses.  When one character warns the others that the mummy has just moved, they laugh it off. A couple go for a walk through the dark woods at night to get to a vending machine, without a second thought.

Lest you think I’m in any way praising this movie, I’m not – I just like my reviews to be at least a certain length, so sometimes I really dig for material.  This was a dig on the level of saying The Incredible Melting Man is about how we treat the elderly.  My high school English teacher might buy it, but I doubt anyone else would.

One thing I do wonder is why they chose to reframe this as a bigfoot movie.  The footage from Teenagers Battle the Thing makes it very clear that this is a mummy movie, although they couldn’t afford any of the genre’s traditional accessories.  Instead of a museum and a treasure, we get one cabin in the woods and… that’s all. When the characters talk about the situation, they always describe the monster as a mummy, and even when they theorize that it’s the product of a lost civilization, the idea that it may not be human never crosses their minds.  It is not particularly tall.  It is not remarkably hairy.  It looks nothing like the bigfoot the two loggers saw, although it does somewhat resemble the zombie from the opening.  Why the man telling the story decided this being must be bigfoot is an absolute mystery.

The only thing I can come up with as an explanation is that bigfoot movies were popular in the 1970s.  Having seen a number of these, I can’t say I find them particularly inspiring.

Curse of Bigfoot is almost incomprehensibly boring, to the point where I’m not sure MST3K could have done much with it if they had featured it.  In the opening sequence it takes forever for the woman to be attacked and then we don’t see it.  In the logger sequence it takes forever for the guy to be attacked and then we don’t see it.  And in the main plot it takes forever for anyone to be attacked and then we don’t see it! The only attack we see is when the mummy attacks the sheriff at the climax and that really, really wasn’t worth the wait.

Congratulations, Jackie Neyman Jones – you managed to be in a movie worse than Manos.

[aion-rsa]

Ghosts Series 2: ‘They’re stuck in an existence they didn’t ask for… like all of us’

https://ift.tt/35QzhQ6

The Ghosts creators have worked together for over a decade. To-date, the six-person team (Mat Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond) have written and performed in long-running children’s sketch comedy Horrible Histories, three series of fantasy sitcom Yonderland, feature film Bill, and two series of the supernatural BBC comedy Ghosts, with a third on the way. 

Channelling Mrs Merton asking Debbie McGee what first attracted her to the millionaire Paul Daniels, I ask Baynton and Howick via Zoom what inspired the group to write Ghosts, a sitcom about a group of individuals who frequently drive each other nuts, trapped together for what may well be eternity? 

Both laugh. “I’m sure we do drive each other nuts in many ways,” says Howick, “but the truth is, like the ghosts, what we always come back to in these episodes is that they love each other and don’t know what they would do without each other. I think that can be said for the group?” He looks to Baynton for confirmation and gets a happy nod. 

Considering the well-documented fallings-out and imploding egos of other comedy gangs – the Pythons not least among them – this level of harmony over such a long period feels remarkable. What’s their secret? “I think we keep each other honest,” says Baynton. “There are certainly heated debates.”

Heated’s too strong a word, says Howick. “We only really fight for our opinion, we never fight each other.” On the rare occasion that there isn’t unanimity about a particular topic, there might be a locking of horns and a democratic vote, but real arguments don’t happen. “There’s no animosity or jealousy with each other’s independent careers,” he explains. “We are our most important project. We have no desire to work each other up. We’re all genuinely fond of each other.”

That much is clear watching them interact. The online BBC press launch for series two was punctuated by the group making each other laugh. Silly voices. Running jokes. At one point, to the absolutely delight of his colleagues, Simon Farnaby’s crotch moved unavoidably front and centre as he stood up in front of his webcam to adjust a window blind. The rapport is real. 

Indeed, during UK lockdown, say Baynton and Howick, the group’s regular Zoom calls drafting Ghosts series three were a godsend. Aside from the boon of having regular work when so much of their industry was in uncertainty, being able to see friends for three hours on a Wednesday evening kept them sane. 

“It’s been a tonic in an otherwise relatively difficult and quite miserable time to have been able to jump on Zoom and make each other laugh with ideas for these characters that we love,” says Baynton. Entertainingly, when the group splits off into writing pairs, each does impressions of the absent characters while drafting dialogue. “It’s funny,” remarks Howick. ‘When we come together as a six, if we’re trying to pitch a positive idea, it’s usually done in a [segues into the regional accent of his upbeat character] Pat voice. Or if it’s a melodramatic idea or if it’s over-the-top, it might be a [Baynton’s Romantic poet character] Thomas voice.” 

Via video chat, it took a little longer for the group’s writing wheels to start turning. Ordinarily a new series would start with two weeks of the gang together in the same room. Stretching that to months of three-hour Zoom calls, fitted in amongst home schooling for the parents among them, was an adjustment. “The energy that you would bring to a room at 10 o’clock in the morning in an office wasn’t there,” says Howick. “You’d have to try and generate this feeling even though everyone was exhausted.”

Howick found himself seeking out frivolity to reach the right frame of mind. He played videogames. “If I sat and thought too hard about what was going on outside my door, it would make me really sad, and so in order to keep a vital part of me going, in order to meet with Mat and the others every Wednesday and keep that bright demeanour, it was good to do that.” The writing momentum started to return with the ease of lockdown, says Baynton. “The simple mental health-saving fact of being able to meet up with family in a garden helped a lot.” 

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Trying to write comedy against a such a serious backdrop of world events also felt uncomfortable, says Baynton. “You feel like it’s almost… immoral is too strong a word, but when there are nurses and doctors and teachers and crucially important people doing the work they do… It felt like an elephant in the room to be tap tap tapping away at a story about another day at Button House and what the ghosts are up to.”

It helped to know how warmly Ghosts series one had been received by its many fans. “What’s touching is when we do get messages from fans who say how much the show means to them. I know how important comedy has been to me in my life, so if we can be that to other people, it doesn’t feel completely frivolous.”

Ghosts, with its colourful selection box of characters (there’s a caveman, a headless Elizabethan, a 17th century witch, an excitable Regency woman-child, an Edwardian snob, a WWII captain, a 1980s scout leader and a 1990s Tory politician) may look frivolous, but series one had moments of real pathos. Baynton is proud of the fact that the series doesn’t shy away from the bleaker side of its ‘dead people’ premise. “If you really interrogate the truth of it – these are people who lived, people who died, people who loved or were thwarted or killed or suffered injustices or never got to love the person that they admired…”

The original idea was for a much bigger cast of ghosts, with everybody playing multiple parts, Horrible Histories-style. It quickly became clear that the story needed to home in on a small ensemble, giving the gang what Howick calls “its own silhouette”. Had they stuck with the original plan, “It would have been like The Muppet Show,” he says. “Every week would only have scratched the surface.” Too many ghost characters would have diminished the show’s emerging premise, says Baynton, which is about “being stuck forever in a tedious and endlessly repetitive existence.”

A bit like lockdown, we joke. Exactly, says Baynton. 

“We talk about this a lot. The way I see it is that their situation is just the same as a living person’s: they’re stuck, they’re in an existence they didn’t ask for, they don’t know why they’re there or what happens next. They know that there is a next ‘thing’ but whether they go to heaven, or hell, or something else, they don’t know. They’re just the same as people on earth.”

Howick agrees, “Their existence is very mortal in that respect.” 

Writing about the afterlife, a sense of existential metaphor is unavoidable, says Baynton. “There is something deeply relatable about it, which is where sitcom will always thrive. You can’t really fail to connect with a story about a person who doesn’t know what to do with their time or who feels stuck. Regardless of class or job or circumstance, that is all of us.”

If the ghost characters are all of us, they’re also peculiar to their time period. The collision and unexpected blending of different social contexts is where much of the series’ comedy comes from. Howick compares the composition of the group to Blackadder Goes Forth, which kept “ranks of characters from different classes stuck together in a hell hole, cheating death every single week.” 

The source of much of the comedy is thwarted status, says Baynton, “It’s the stuff of Alan Partridge and Hyacinth Bucket and Basil Fawlty… people who see themselves a certain way but who aren’t that way to the audience. Every single one of the ghosts is that to some extent. Anything that gave you status in life, you’re robbed of the second you die, so that’s already pretty funny in the sense of a captain who can’t lead, a wealthy woman who has no wealth, a politician who is not recognised as an authority, a poet who can’t pick up a pen, a Scoutmaster with no kids…”

“Not Scoutmaster!” interrupts Howick. “Adventure Club leader!” Before series one aired, they were instructed not to use the “Scouts” organisation name in scripts. “That was before they knew who Pat was going to be,” says Howick. Pat, for info, is a sweetie, and the Scouts should be proud to have him. He’s also a vibrant dancer, as series two, episode two shows. 

“There’s a lot of dancing this series” says Howick. “Without giving too much away, there’s dancing in the last episode. I think Thomas’ best dance is at the end.”

Fans can expect more playfulness with series two. Now that the characters are established and the tone has been taken to heart, the team could afford to experiment a little more. “With series two, because the audience hopefully are with us at this point, we can throw different curveballs,” says Baynton.

“In that way that The Simpsons or those long-running American things, you can suddenly do one in black and white, as if it’s a Hitchcock thing. We’ve definitely had fun. There’s an episode later in the second series which is a format of its own. We’re thinking about those things for series three, being free to be really playful with it.”

There’s a Christmas special episode to come, “the last one ever to be filmed!” joked Farnaby at the press launch. The timing on series two’s filming was especially jammy, with only one day lost to the UK TV and film industry shutdown in March. They made the decision not to use supporting artists in the last scenes filmed, set in a Medieval plague village. The irony of having to tell actors they couldn’t come and play plague victims because there was an actual plague wasn’t lost on them, says Baynton.

Thomas gets a gun in series two, they tease, and we’ll find out how he met his end. “The burning question for fans of the show is how the characters died, and you will find out some in each series,” says Baynton. “There are some we’re holding onto for as long as we possibly can, but rest assured, they’re coming!” 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Ghosts series 2 starts on BBC One at 8.30pm, with all six episodes available to stream afterwards on BBC iPlayer. 

The post Ghosts Series 2: ‘They’re stuck in an existence they didn’t ask for… like all of us’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 42 Review: Here Goes Peter Cottontail

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

At last, we’ve hit another milestone on Strange Paradise. A little less than a year ago, I discussed the third and final costumed flashback. Just under six months ago, we reached Episode 30, the first episode for which conclusive proof of executive meddling exists. And today we shall explore the introductory episode of a character particularly notorious among Strange Paradise fans. That’s right: this episode features the first appearance of the infamous Rabbit of Evil. The true face of evil has arrived on Maljardin, and it's soft with long ears and a fuzzy tail.

Because the plot has now split off completely from the Lost Episode summaries and I’ve already discussed the one for this episode, I’m going to ignore it for this post. I’m not even going to do much analysis this time. Instead, let us just lay out our beach towels on Maljardin, relax, and bask in the glow of the coming insanity.

Early morning on Maljardin. The unseen clock chimes three, and already Jean Paul Desmond is up sitting on the couch in the Great Hall next to the decanter of his favorite drink. Although it is the demon hour and almost everyone else in the château is asleep as far as he knows, he is already dressed in his brown velvet jacket, as one does when one is the richest man in the world on the coldest tropical island in existence. One would assume that he would at least loosen his tie to make himself a little more comfortable, but then, I’m not a fancy rich guy living in the 1960s, so what would I know?

Feeling the presence of his demonic ancestor Jacques Eloi des Mondes, he stands up and approaches his portrait as though in a trance. During their brief staring contest, Jacques begins to taunt him: “Come now, Jean Paul Desmond. Three o'clock in the morning and still you wander the house. Why?”

“Because your evil wanders here, Jacques Eloi des Mondes!” Jean Paul answers overly dramatically. “I sum-”

“Jean Paul, no oaths on your honor that you would be compelled to uphold. It might be the end of us both. And Erica might never rise to a new beginning.”

Jacques tells Jean Paul to go to bed because *he’s* tired. Could this be evidence that Jacques and Jean Paul are one and the same?

I like the way that Raxl's face appears on the screen just as the title card is fading.

Raxl paying her respects to Erica Desmond.

We cut to Raxl visiting Erica’s cryocapsule, when suddenly a little cockatiel starts tweeting. And who could it be but our mascot, the adorable Chalcko?

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<3

Quito checking on his beloved bird.

Meanwhile, Jean Paul visits the lab to find Dr. Alison Carr sleeping at her desk, Dr. Menkin’s notes next to her:

For the love of yourself, Jean Paul, do not disturb!

He wakes her up despite it being very early in the morning (because God forbid she not sleep in her own bed, I guess?). Really, there are only a handful of good excuses to wake someone up at 3 AM, including to ensure they catch an early flight and to kick them out of your bar after they passed out drunk with their glass shattered into a million pieces in front of the talking portrait across the room. Having fallen asleep at one’s desk while pulling an all-nighter that your employer deems unnecessary isn’t one of them, IMO. But, just like my cat who wakes me up around 3 almost every night crying for a midnight snack, he gets away with it because he’s cute.

Jacques has made cat-like faces before on this show, so now it’s Jean Paul’s turn to act like a cat.

That’s not to say that Jean Paul’s cuteness makes Alison any less annoyed with him. He asks her why she stayed up so late to study the notes, and she responds, “I can't sleep very well, anyway, and what else is there to do, since you keep us here as prisoners on this Island? Good night and please don't disturb anything.“ She leaves and he starts flipping through the notes.

Meanwhile, outside among the suspiciously Canadian coniferous trees of Maljardin...

Wait for it...

Quito finds a big, fluffy black rabbit hopping around the garden and brings the adorable, plump creature inside. His crush Holly happens to be in the Great Hall when he returns, and she falls in love with the rabbit at first sight.

“I didn't know anything as wholesome and innocent like that existed on Maljardin,” she coos. "Oh, he's so sweet! I haven't seen anything like him for--well, it seems like a whole lifetime.”

Then she remembers what Raxl said about there being no wild animal life on the island. “But Quito,” she says, “Raxl said like, nothing like this could exist on this island for three hundred years! I guess this little fellow disproves that, doesn't it?”

“What are you going to do with it?” she continues. “I mean, are you going to keep it?” Quito shakes his head. “You should. You should keep it for a pet. He’d make a lovely pet, something nice in this house of accident and death.” Because Quito is reluctant to keep the rabbit and has no way of expressing why to Holly, she offers to keep it as a pet.

“I wonder how he managed out there with all that poisonous undergrowth around?” she thinks out loud, as the rabbit starts to try to jump out of Kurt Schiegl’s arms, which I doubt was in the script. The rabbit they got to play the new embodiment of evil on Maljardin doesn’t always want to behave the way the plot demands. I suspect that, instead of getting a trained animal actor, someone just brought in their pet or bought a bunny on short notice at an Ottawa pet store or nearby farm. I like the rabbit. The rabbit does what it wants and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about following the script or doing what Jerry Layton wants it to.

Holly asks Quito to make her a cage so that she can keep the rabbit in her room, and he nods in agreement (I’m guessing just because he knows it’ll please her). He leaves. She sits down at the dining room table and rings for Raxl, who is not pleased when she tells her about the new guest:

Holly: "Hey, Raxl." Raxl: "Good morning, Miss Holly." Holly: "You know, everything I've heard about this island isn't the truth." Raxl: "Truth is a matter of seeing." Holly: "Well, I've seen. You told me that because of the curse, nothing could exist outside in that poisonous jungle." Raxl: "The Devil's evil is everywhere on Maljardin!"

Holly: "Well, just this once, Raxl, you may be wrong." Raxl: "It may be that demon wants you to think I am!"

Raxl instantly suspects that the rabbit is a tool of THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES.

The bit about all the plants being poisonous on Maljardin, by the way, may be a retcon. In Episode 13, Jacques mentions that papayas are native to the island. I suppose that, because he didn’t say that they were picked on Maljardin, that they could have been grown on another island. Still, I’m not ruling out the possibility of Ian Martin and/or a ghostwriter retconning this detail.

This scene is followed by a cool shot where the camera pans along the side of the staircase and over to Jacques’ portrait (see the beginning of Part 2), then a short scene of Quito pulling out a huge wicker picnic basket for a makeshift cage while Chalcko tweets as though trying to warn him of the evil presence.

In the morning, Alison returns to the lab to find Jean Paul in a scandalous state of undress:

Ye gods! He took off his suit jacket again! I am SHOCKED and SCANDALIZED by this wanton display of nudity! ;)

Jean Paul must be even more stressed now than last night if he not only has his suit jacket off, but has also loosened his tie. Turns out he ended up pulling an all-nighter himself in the lab reading the notes, even though Alison doubts that he possesses the necessary knowledge to understand notes about cellular reconstruction. Jean Paul asks Alison if Dr. Menkin did any experiments on animals, but it’s not clear if he’s asking just out of curiosity, because of something mentioned in the notes, or if somehow he feels the presence of the rabbit despite not having seen it yet. Whatever his motivation, the screenwriter almost certainly added the line to imply that the rabbit may have belonged to Dr. Menkin.

Using such a line as a hint (or, more likely, as a red herring) is a very Ian Martin thing to do, so I’m thinking that he must have written this scene. For a while, I suspected that perhaps some ghostwriter hired by either Jerry Layton or Steve Krantz inserted the scenes with the rabbit into a later draft, but now I’m having second thoughts. While it is possible that one of the showrunners hired a ghostwriter to speed up the script edits, this line has Martin’s influence written all over it. The insertion of the evil rabbit isn’t his style, but this kind of dialogue certainly is.

Also note that the very next shot is of the rabbit again.

Hearing the bird tweet is making Quito anxious. It’s obvious that the bird detects some sort of presence.

Jean Paul and Alison go to the dining room and sit down for breakfast with Holly. Jean Paul reminds her that another séance is coming and she tells him that she wants no part of it. “The spirits will decide that, and the Conjure Woman,” says Raxl.

“Vangie said that the conjure cards--the Tarot cards--spoke to one person,” Jean Paul adds, flubbing his line adorably. “They may well speak to another, for or against.” I’m not sure what he’s implying, especially because he faces Alison (or maybe the Teleprompter) as he delivers the line.

More proof that Maljardin is no tropical paradise, but a dystopia. (”Rattled” = “Raxl’s”)

Alison tells Holly that Jean Paul will probably blame them if the séance doesn’t bring him into contact with Erica and Jean Paul glares at her before flouncing passive-aggressively. I’m so conflicted about Jean Paul at this point because he’s becoming more and more of a control freak (and therefore more and more unlikeable), and yet he’s so adorable. Take a look at the face he makes just before flouncing:

Foxy!

And this shot of him from earlier in the scene:

Never have I seen any guy look this cute after pulling an all-nighter.

Holly tells Alison about the rabbit Quito bought brought her (yes, there’s another creative line interpretation). “That’s impossible!” she replies, stunned. “I mean, nothing alive exists out there now.” There are so many flubs in this episode that it makes me wonder if the actors had less time to rehearse than usual.

An unspecified amount of time later, Alison catches Jean Paul arguing with Jacques’ portrait, then Quito feeds the rabbit a carrot to the sound of more tweets. (Anyone else miss the days when “tweets” referred only to the noise that birds make? God, I'm barely 28 and already I feel so old.) Alison warns Jean Paul that dabbling in the occult is bad for his mental health, but he doesn’t care because he needs to hear Erica’s voice so badly. He tells her he’ll buy her some animals for her experiments the next time he visits the main island just to shut her up. (Spoiler: He won’t.)

And then Quito arrives, carrying the rabbit in its makeshift cage. Like Raxl, Jean Paul is not pleased to see the animal. “Holly, where on Earth did you get that!” he asks.

“Right on this Earth, on this island, from Quito,” she responds innocently.

Jean Paul giving his best “WTF” face. He’s lived on the island long enough to know that the rabbit came out of nowhere.

He asks Raxl about it and she cries out to the Great Serpent to tell her what the Devil’s plans are for Maljardin, making the Sign of the Great Serpent with her hands. Alison insists that the rabbit is only an animal, but Raxl reminds her that no animals can survive outside on the island--meaning, by her logic, that it must be a demon or similar evil being!

Jean Paul asks Quito where he found the rabbit. Raxl interprets the signs he makes as meaning “on the path to the boathouse,” which leads Holly and Alison to think that the rabbit must have snuck aboard Quito’s boat and sailed there with him. Raxl’s response?

Raxl: “It is a creature of the Devil!”

Holly objects and insists that the rabbit is only an animal, but Raxl sticks to her belief that it’s actually a demon assuming the guise of innocence, most likely sent by THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES himself! No one believes her, not even Jean Paul:

Jean Paul: "I must admit, Raxl, this is very unlikely." Raxl: "Not here. An animal here is an impossibility. Is that not true?" Jean Paul: "Until now, yes!" Raxl: "Then what force altered the impossible? There are forces at work on Maljardin as the hour draws near when the master will attend a séance and seek through purified mind and cleansed spirit to reach his Erica beyond the veiled curtain. What does the master say?"

Jean Paul does not respond. He looks like he is about to cry.

Raxl: "Quito! You will remove the rabbit. It is evil!"

Raxl: "It brings danger and wickedness and more evil than we will ever know! It must be destroyed and buried in the sea!"

Raxl: "If the master wishes to contact his Erica and hear her voice, he will be advised: that animal is evil!" Holly: "Mr. Desmond, please, no!"

Jacques’ commentary.

Coming up next: Raxl makes a horrifying--and mystifying--discovery when she examines the Rabbit of Evil.

{ <- Previous: Episode 41   ||   Next: Episode 43 -> }

[debbiewilder]

@butchdyke69 yo idk how to reply to shit so here we are.

ok, I will say I think it speaks to how poorly they’ve treated their protagonist that she does not only something she could’ve done in 1x01, but it’s also something she does do. Debbie says Ruth should live another way (get a family) in 1x01, Ruth says no. Debbie says Ruth should live another way in 3x10 (become a director), Ruth says no. That locker room and airport scene have so many parallels--Debbie says in both “Don’t you want to be happy?” (and live the life I’m leading), Ruth says no, both scenes contain hugs, etc

Like, I get the point is highlighting Ruth’s rut but it’s actually awful writing that they never let her grow and made their protagonist (who should be driving the story) so passive for three seasons. There are ways to treat people pleasers while allowing them to be active and grow. But, instead they took every opportunity and made it about letting other people grow instead and kept her static, submissive, and passive. This isn’t Paddington (a character who doesn't get a character arc because everyone else grows because of their interactions with Paddington since he is unflawed and teaches them how to lead better lives). Ruth is fucked up. As fucked up as Debbie. She deserved three seasons of growth.

(This got long so added read more.) 

I will say her finally facing her reflection in 3x08, being so lost that she speaks to a psychic, avoiding/destroying real acting opportunities throughout season 3, destroying relationships left and right throughout season 3, etc does suggest they might finally give her an arc. In the past, she couldn’t grow because she told herself she wasn’t shiny like Debbie. But, now everyone around her is growing (Sheila, Justine, Melrose, etc) and that lie she’s always told herself is harder to believe. Overall, I think her choosing to go back to that life of constant auditions could finally lead her to grow. And, it could be a really great thing ultimately. It could finally lead her to fall apart and realize she needs to change on her own terms. 

Do I completely trust them with Ruth? Nope. They’ve given me so many reasons not to. They made her sexual harassment about bolstering Sam and downing Debbie (the way the show juxtaposes those reactions is super gross and sends the average viewer to ignore Debbie’s internalized misogyny and just view Debbie as bad TM and Sam as good TM and just like that aw his misogyny is erased). Ruth also gets no pov on her own sexual harassment. What kind of show does that about this subject, let alone a show that’s run by women?! They had Ruth “I choose work” Wilder choose shitty men who manipulate her and ones that she clearly doesn’t want. They consistently treat Debbie like the protagonist. The arc of season 1 is so clearly because of Debbie’s choices rather than Ruth’s. Debbie is the one who drives the story (at least most of the time). Debbie gets one of the best arcs on television. And...Ruth is also there. So, I don’t trust they respect or value Ruth the way I do but I’m definitely way more hopeful after season 3 than I was after season 2.

To be clear though, I would’ve hated if Ruth chose to go with Debbie’s offer. That would’ve been a huge regression. Not only would she be submitting further to Debbie’s control and what Debbie wants for her but she’d also be giving up on her dreams just because Debbie says to rather than uncovering what she wants and growing on her own terms. And, Debbie doesn’t offer that just out of love. To be clear, she could’ve offered Ruth acting. She could’ve told Ruth she could direct and also act. She didn't need to be so cruel about Ruth’s dreams. In fact, she knows what Ruth will say to that offer. She says at the top of 3x10 to Tex that she could never tell Ruth to give up acting (roughly) and then she does that at the end of the episode. She does it for some kind reasons but also some very shitty ones. It’s not a good offer and Debbie doesn’t phrase it well either. I mean, also...Ruth is like 32, not 50. She can keep going on auditions all she wants. She’s not Debbie. Power doesn’t interest her, not in the same way. She loves performing, she loves fiction, she loves acting. She just needs to repair her relationship to those things. To the point where I think there could even be a satisfying ending with Ruth still auditioning (I don’t think they’ll go that route, I think it’d be a hard sell but just saying). As long as she heals her relationship to acting and other people more and she’s not turning to acting in such an unhealthy way. Oh also another thing I’d like for season 4--a new proposal from Debbie but less shitty. Debbie, feelings are scary I know but you can do better :(

So yeah anyway I think this choice she makes at the airport has the potential to make her realize that she’s not that person anymore, that she got used to having a voice and control on GLOW, and realizes she feels powerless when auditioning. And at first she’ll cling harder to auditioning but she’ll ultimately fall apart and this will force her to grow and discover a new relationship to fiction/other people/herself/acting. If they care about her. I will say there’s a sliver of hope given that season 3 did at least give us a bit of her growing awareness that the way she’s living is unhealthy. So yeah tbh I’m not mad about how that scene went down. I’ll just be mad if there’s no payoff and am mad that she didn’t get to drive her own story or grow for three seasons.

[nellie-elizabeth]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Manhunter/Captain Kim (7x01/02)

This really should be split into two different reviews, but I am lazy so here we are. Let's dive in!

Cons:

The first episode this week featured a subplot where Amy thought she might be pregnant. I know it's just a one-off thing in terms of episode composition, but it bothered me that in the premiere of the season, Rosa and Amy's plot thread was them standing around and talking about pregnancy. They didn't really have much else to do, which was a bummer and a slightly weak opening for these two characters.

Terry had the least to do of any character, in both of these episodes. In the first, he's paranoid that other people are talking about him, and in the second, he's talking up his daughters to someone involved in a good school he wants to get them into, and then avoiding a caterer who he thinks is trying to poison him for putting him in prison years ago. Even this slightly more exciting plot thread didn't really provide much for him to do. This is just the start of the season; I'm sure he'll have plenty in the coming weeks... but I thought I'd point it out!

The first episode, "Manhunter," started with the news that there was an attempted assassination, but despite the supposedly high stakes, the whole thing devolves into a story about Holt and Jake finding a new balance after Holt's demotion. That's a lovely story to tell, but it kind of sucked the urgency out of the whole "assassination" thing.

Pros:

I absolutely loved the guest character Debbie, Holt's partner now that he's a beat cop for a year. She was so funny - I loved that she was totally content and indeed relieved to be given pointless tasks, and relegated to "cone duty." Her whole story kept unfolding as the episode went on, in absurd and funny moments. After spending time with this bubbly and slightly incompetent woman, who's obsessed with a pedometer app, she suddenly declares that the reason she became a cop was to find her twin sister's killer... and later randomly lets everyone know that it's her birthday. She was hilarious and kind of relatable too. I'll admit there have been times at work when I too would be okay with being given unimportant tasks instead of anything too urgent!

I also really liked the Jake and Holt dynamic in this first episode, as Jake of course respects and loves Holt, but at the same time, doesn't want him stealing his thunder on this case. It's awkward to suddenly be the "boss" of your former Captain, and I think they play with that tension very well. Especially the conclusion, wherein Holt is right about the case for the most part, but Jake and the others still have to come in and save the day. Holt then apologizes for disrespecting Jake's authority, while Jake acknowledges that it's going to be a little strange to get used to their new situation. That was a good balance, wherein both men were able to communicate openly!

Despite wishing Rosa and Amy had maybe a little bit more to do, I did enjoy the beginning of the "Jake and Amy start a family" story-line. A pregnancy scare leads Amy and Jake to contemplate whether it might be time to start trying for real, and they decide that it is. I liked this because it shows real growth for both characters. Amy, the meticulous planner, is willing to let her schedule fall by the wayside and start letting things happen as they may. And Jake, who has been afraid of being a father, doesn't have a relapse or freak out at the thought of Amy becoming pregnant. I love this adorable couple and want the best for them!

The second episode I found to be stronger than the first. A new captain has shown up, and Jake and Holt are both suspicious of Captain Kim. They think she must be working to bring them down from the inside. While the rest of the precinct is taken in by Kim's kindness and the effort she takes to get to know them, Holt and Jake refuse to be swayed. They hunt for clues at a party Kim throws at her house, and end up releasing her pet dog from a locked room, which causes chaos. Turns out, Kim did actually have good intentions. She wanted to be a captain at the Nine-Nine because Holt is her hero, overcoming so much to become captain. In the end, though, she realizes she'll always feel like an interloper, and decides to leave. Because of Jake and Holt's meddling, they've lost a great captain who was planning on stepping gracefully away at the end of the year to let Holt come back!

I was really glad there wasn't some twist with Kim, that she really was a good person who just wanted to get to know them and work with them. Of course, that wouldn't bring very much drama moving forward, so now we're going to have to see what comes next for the precinct!

While the first episode had Holt and Jake at odds, the second episode had them teaming up to investigate Kim, each having their own reasons for suspecting her. I love the two of them as scene partners; they work so well playing opposite each other, and also being allies. They rile each other up in the best ways. I think my favorite Holt moment was when he's seeking motivation for being drunk and destructive at the party, and lists a few possibilities - a fight with Kevin, something happening to Cheddar, and then lands on a scenario wherein he's been demoted and he feels rejected and abandoned by his chosen family... he and Jake agree that this last scenario seems like a good idea!

My favorite comedic exchange actually goes to Jake and Amy though, right towards the end. As Jake recounts his step-daddy issues, he recalls that the two separate men who dated and cheated on his mother had been limo drivers. The following exchange takes place:

Jake: "*gasp*! The problem is with limo drivers!"

Amy: "Babe, it's not."

Jake: "It's not?"

Amy: "No."

Jake: "Okay thanks, I love you."

It's just such a casual, familiar little routine. Jake gets a wild idea, Amy calmly rejects Jake's premise, and Jake, who trusts Amy's gut more than his own, thanks her for keeping him in check. Their dynamic is the best!

Boyle had funny subplots in both episodes. In the first, he decides to be Jake's sidekick on the case. While Jake is the "Manhunter," Boyle is the "Boyhunter." This obviously leads to hilarity, as he continually says things that sound oh so wrong. I just find it so charming how Boyle is okay with being the sidekick, and how he actually thrives in that role. He's the best.

The second episode hangs a lampshade on Boyle's "sidekick" status, however, having him gain confidence by wearing Rosa's leather jacket. He becomes a new "cooler" version of himself - Chuck Boyle. He has confidence with the ladies, struts around, and ends up calling Jake out on an unintentionally inappropriate comment, instead of the other way around. It's a fun switcharoo, and the resolution is lovely too. Boyle sacrifices his jacket to an insecure husband worried that his wife is going to leave him, and instantly his power is stripped from him, and he reverts to normal Charles. It's all silliness, but I really enjoyed it all the same. Boyle steps in to some more confident shoes, as it were, but he's not unhappy with the person he really is at the end of the day. (He does probably regret missing out on the chance to meet Sutton Foster, though... that made me laugh!)

There's more I could talk about here, but the first two episodes were pretty strong as they were! Some characters had less to do than others, especially Rosa and Terry. But I'm sure there will be chances further down the line for them to shine as well!

8/10

[justauthoring]

something else // lip gallagher

Request: Hi! Can I request a Lip x reader who's being harassed when walking to school, so she asks him to walk with her in hopes it would scare the harassers off?

Please don’t plagiarize my work!

Word Count: 1,050

It’s obvious, by the expression on his face, Lip is surprised to see you stood outside his house that Monday morning.

You look more fragile then ever, stood there, clutching your hands together, wringing them tightly against one another. You’re constantly glancing around yourself, as if afraid someone will come bursting out from one of the bushes. Your bottom lip is in between your teeth and you’re gnawing on it.

But, the minute Lip’s siblings coming bursting through the front doors, you seem to snap out of your stupor and your eyes meet Lip’s. Carl and Debbie offer you a short greeting, Ian nodding at you but you only seemed focused on Lip. It takes him a moment longer before he follows the rest, heading down the steps, but instead of turning off, in the direction of the school, he takes the last few steps your way, brows furrowed.

“What’s wrong?”

Sighing, your shoulders fall and finally, you pull your hands against, rubbing them over your face instead. “I need your help.”

Taking a step forward, Lip nods; “what’d you need?”

“These guys,” you start, exhaling with a shaky breath. It’s odd for Lip to see you so scared. Normally, you didn’t let anyone cross your path, let alone scare you. It’s what makes Lip unsure, so eager to help. “My dad... he pissed them off, and seeing that it’s just me and him, they’re using me to get to my dad. Not that the ass-hat would care... Lip, i’m scared they’re gonna attack me on the way to school.”

“So,” Lip pauses, “you want me to walk with you?”

“Only if you don’t mind,” you assure, holding your hands out before you. “You don’t have to. It’s just-”

Taking your hand in his own, Lip pulls you into step with him. “Of course I don’t mind,” he says after a moment, grinning over at you. “Anybody that tries to hurt you, has got to go through me first.”

His words elicit a smile from your lips, some of your worry and anxiety disappearing as Lip grins over at you. And as you continue, the two of you fall into step with one another, falling into a casual conversation. For once, the walk to school doesn’t seem so unbearably long, and you find yourself at ease with Lip by your side. Even though the two of you have been friends for as long as you can remember, you can’t ever remember the two of you talking, just you and him, like this before.

It’s what truly places the smile on your face. That, and his jokes.

And, just as you are about to reach the final stretch of street that will lead you to school, the peace is interrupted.

“Yo, Y/L/N! Where’s your father’s money?”

You halt, body freezing. 

“We know you can hear us!” Another voice calls, “you ain’t deaf... Last time I checked.”

Slowly, you turn around, not unaware of Lip’s gaze on you. When you finally see the men, you realize there are only two of them, and while you don’t recognize them, you don’t have a doubt in your mind that these are the men your father owes money to.

Stowing away your fear, you raise your chin; “I don’t have it. Talk to him if you want it.”

The two look at each other, laughing; “we want the money now. And you’re gonna give it to us, or we’ll take it from you.”

“Did you not hear her?” Lip bellows, taking a step forward. “She ain’t got it!”

“And who the fuck are you?”

“Lip Gallagher,” Lip introduces himself, “now fuck off.”

One of the men take a step forward, obviously angered from Lip’s disregard of respect. “Listen,” he huffs, pointing at you. “This bitch’s dad owes us money, and we’re gonna get it. One way or another.” He takes a threatening step towards you, smirking, his friend coming up behind him.

Lip takes a step in front of you. “You take one more step towards her, and i’ll fucking kill you.”

Your lips part, eyes widening. Was he trying to die?

“Look, this guy thinks he can beat us.”

“Suits him,” one of them men shrug, cracking his knuckles. “I don’t mind proving him wrong.”

Before you know it, with seemingly a blink of your eyes, Lip lunges forward, socking one of the men across the cheek. He stumbles back in response, his friend catching him as your lips part, eyes widening. Your heart falls, fearing the worse, but then Lip’s grabbing you by the wrist, pulling you down the street you’d been heading towards and running.

“We’ll fucking kill the both of you!”

The two of you don’t stop running. You run past school, and continue, until you find yourselves tuck in some alleyway, hidden within the corners of it. When you’re finally able to stop, you fall against the brick wall behind you, hands falling on your knees as you pant to catch your breath.

“I think we lost them,” Lips says after a moment, breathless.

“Are you insane?” You screech, turning to him with wide eyes. “They could’ve killed you!”

Lip turns to you, his own eyes wide; “and they would’ve killed you the moment they realized you really didn’t have your father’s money.”

Sighing, your shoulders drop. “Doesn’t matter,” you huff, letting your head fall into your hands. “The minute they find me, or you, they’ll kill us both.”

“That won’t happen.”

Shaking your head, you turn to Lip; “look, i’m grateful. You helped me, you... you saved my life. But they will eventually find us, and my dad won’t pay them back. No matter what, i’m dead. And so are you.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

You pause, eyes falling on Lip’s own. “You’d do all that, for me?” You question, raising a brow. “A girl you’ve talked to a few times, sure, but have never been more than friends?”

Without hesitation, Lip nods; “yes.”

Shaking your head, you let out a laugh; “you’re something else.”

“Sure am.”

Blinking, you meet his eyes; “you mean it?”

“Of course,” Lip nods, taking your hand into his own, much like he had before. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” then, with a smile, “or myself.”

You laugh, “okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

-

let me know what you thought? remember, reblogging always helps!

requests are open for lip gallagher!

[theother-will-grayson]

Overcompensating

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Summary: So, it's Thanksgiving, and Virgil is spending it with his boyfriend's family for the first time. In the quiet of post-party cleaning and after dinner coffee, Virgil gains a home and a family. Human!AU. 

Pairings: Paternal Moxiety. Background est Analogical, background est Logicality.

Warnings: none

Also on AO3 and FFN

The smells of turkey and pie had faded, and November’s early night had descended, frosty but snowless. The house, once singing with wine-flushed laughter and childish delight now only held four exhausted, lazy bodies. A Christmas movie played unwatched on the TV in the living room where Logan sat reading a book, Roman lying asleep next to him and quite possibly drooling on his lap. Occasionally, Logan would catch Virgil watching him from his perch on the kitchen counter. They’d exchange a smirk and then go back to their respective activities — Logan to his reading and Virgil to watching Patton clean up.

“Here ya go, kiddo.” Patton handed Virgil a steaming mug of black coffee, too hot to drink for now. “Watch your head.” Virgil scooted over to allow Patton access to the cabinet the was blocking. “Thanks, you’re a peach!”

“Let me help you.” Virgil made to set the mug down and hop down from his perch, feeling guilty and awkward as a guest in this man’s house, perhaps one that was overstaying his welcome despite also claiming the guest room.

Patton chuckled — not malicious, but joyful. “You are helping, ya little moonbeam. You’re keeping me company.” He started in on tossing clean silverware in the drawer. “Drink your coffee.”

Folding his legs back under him and settling in, Virgil obeyed, blowing on it for a little bit before taking a cautious sip. Jesus. An involuntary shudder ran through his body. “You people really don’t mess around with your joe, do you? Shit.” He clapped his hand over his mouth. “Sorry.”

Patton laughed and took the cup from Virgil’s hand. “Oh goodness, you pure, beautiful lamb. Here, let’s do this.” He turned the sink on and waited for the water to warm up.“Sorry, kiddo. I live with two hyper-intelligent workaholics. I had to get used to strong coffee, too.”

Virgil chose not to say anything, but Patton corrected himself anyways, frowning and staring at nothing for a moment. “One. I live with one hyper-intelligent workaholic now.” Their eyes didn’t meet as Patton handed back the coffee, now cooler and watered down a little. There were the gentle beginnings of tears in Patton’s eyes as his gaze fixed on the living room. “You’re lucky, seeing him every day.”

Virgil’s grip on the mug tightened. What the fuck was he supposed to say to that? “I know.”

Patton sighed, pushing up his glasses to wipe at his eyes. “Gosh, this is ridiculous. It’s only been two months.”

“Exactly.” Virgil shrugged, sipping his coffee. Much better. “It’s only been two months. Give it time, it’ll get easier.”

That earned him a smile as Patton straightened himself out and went back to his task. A companionable silence fell over the kitchen, the only sound the clatter of dishes and the faint sound of jingle bells lilting from the living room.

The coffee was warm, smelled sharp, wafting in tufts of steam from Virgil’s hands to his nose. It was the same warmth and spice that had massaged his senses the moment he walked into the house. Patton’s radiant smile occasionally thrown his way, Roman’s gentle snores, and Logan’s gentle hand on his sleeping father’s shoulder, only moving to turn a page…

“Whatcha thinking about, kiddo?” Patton was wiping down the stove mechanically, watching him.

“Hm?”

“You’re smiling for the first time since Logan’s Aunt Debbie arrived.”

So he was. Aunt Debbie was a fine woman, but her arrival marked the beginning of the steadily crushing stream of people invading the safe space of the Sanders home, talking and getting drunk and stifling him. He dealt with it, of course. He always had. And Thanksgiving at Logan’s childhood home was certainly better than at his own. But he had yet to figure out if it was worse when Logan’s extended family endlessly pelted him with questions or when they let him melt into the wall and pretended he was nothing more than a decoration to fill the blank wall space in the corner.

“Did you ever think that you’d end up with an astronomy professor for a son?” Virgil asked.

“Not at all,” Patton replied, scooping leftover mashed potatoes. “I used to think I’d end up with an astronaut. Then an entomologist — that’s the one that studies bugs, right? Then a physicist, then a doctor, then an archaeologist, then an environmentalist.” Patton was lost in the memory now, and Virgil was just along for the ride. “I always knew Logan would be a teacher, though.”

“Really? How?”

Patton smiled into his work. “Well, I taught him how to read when Roman was working. We couldn’t afford a nanny or daycare, so it was just me and little Logan all day. But Roman still wanted to participate and be a part of Logan’s life, so he would always ask him, ‘Hey Logan, what’s this word?’ or ‘What does that sign say?’ Eventually, Logan got it in his head that Roman had no idea how to read.”

Virgil nearly snorted coffee out his nose. “Seriously?”

“I have a photo, too.” Chuckling, Patton slapped a lid on the last tupperware filled with leftover sweet potato casserole. “Logan sat him down and said, ‘Papa, it is time you learned something very important.’”

Virgil could just picture a tiny Logan looking sternly at his Papa through his too-large glasses, his hands on his hips, his voice stern, a Dr. Seuss book in his grip. The image made him smile.

Patton sipped his own mug of coffee, shaking his head and leaning against the counter opposite Virgil. “He’s such a precious little nerd. It took all Roman had not to laugh.”

“So you do that to Logan too, huh?”

Patton blinked, eyes owlish behind his thick glasses. “What do you mean?”

Blush heated Virgil’s face in a sharp blast, shattering the easy conversation they had created over the past half an hour or so. “I don’t know. That thing you do. You know, with all the names.”

Patton looked a little embarrassed. “Oh, jeez. I’m sorry. People are always telling me I get a bit weird when I do that.”

Oh, Jesus. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to, like, call you out.”

“Oh, not at all. You wouldn’t be the first anyways.” Patton looked as if there was something else he wanted to say, but his teeth worried his lip instead.

At a loss, Virgil caught Logan’s eye again. He was leaning as if ready to hop up from the couch at the first sign of panic or discomfort on Virgil’s face. What’s wrong? His eyes asked. Virgil opened his mouth, but shook his head. What the fuck was he supposed to do right now?

“Virgil…” Patton’s voice drew him back to the kitchen, Logan’s gaze still burning into his temple. “To be perfectly honest, Logan told me a little bit about your...situation. Not everything!” he quickly reassured, noticing Virgil’s panic. “But just a little about your dad, and what happened to your mom —”

“Nothing happened to my mother,” Virgil bit out. “My mother was something that happened to me, and now she’s gone.”

As soon as the words were out, Virgil wished he hadn’t let his bitterness surface. Patton wrung a dish towel in his hands, obviously uncomfortable with Virgil and everything he had ruined in the night so far.

“What I'm trying to say, Virgil, is that we just wanted to include you.”

What? Patton’s hand was on his knee and Virgil wasn’t pushing it away. He felt unsure, he felt confused, he felt —

“When Logan asked to bring you home, I was beyond ecstatic to mean the man who makes my little go-getter poindexter so darn happy. I said yes, obviously, but when Logan told me about your home life, it broke my heart. It really did. So I panicked, I started thinking of ways to show you what real family is like. That’s why I asked everybody to make an effort to talk to you. It’s why I got Logan to have you sleep over. It’s why I decided to get in the habit of calling you the same weird pet names I call everyone that I care about. I may have overcompensated a little, but I just wanted you to feel like you’re part of this family, because you are.”

Virgil met Patton’s warm brown eyes, at a loss for words. “Thank you,” he managed. “Thank you.” And then he had to set his coffee down, had to jump down from the counter, had to throw his arms around Patton and bury his face in his neck, breathe in his scent. He smelled like cologne, like wine, like pumpkin, like all the things a real father should smell like.

“Thank you, kiddo.”

Virgil felt a hand on his shoulder and peeked out to see Logan, smiling at him in approval and relief. In all the overflowing emotion, Virgil hadn’t even considered Logan, seeing his boyfriend and his father hugging in the kitchen on one of the most family-oriented days of the year.

“Ugh, what time is it?” Roman’s voice pierced the moment, low and rough. He shuffled past the now broken hug and picked up the mug from the counter, rubbing his eyes sleepily. He took a sip, and promptly made a gagging motion which was obviously dramatized, because it’s Roman. “Gah, whose water is this?”

“Uh, mine.” Virgil raised his hand, vaguely cautious of the consequences.

Roman’s groggy gaze fixated on Virgil. He didn’t break eye contact as he dumped the coffee straight into the sink, grabbed the pot, poured himself another cup, and sipped it. He ruffled Virgil’s hair as he headed back towards the living room. “Welcome to the family, Sir Broods-a-lot.”

Virgil looked around at his new family, full of smiles and hugs and nicknames and little thumb strokes and love. Okay, so that’s what Thanksgiving is supposed to feel like.

~

@ironwoman359

I don’t do all that much regular posting, but if you would like to be added to my general taglist, I would happily oblige and also appreciate the compliment!

[poemsforcowboys]

What a Feeling // Freddie Mercury

Chapter One  Chapter Two 

Pairing: Freddie Mercury and Katy Newton (OC)

Summary: Before she moved from London to New York at the age of thirteen, Katy Newton had always been friends with Brian May. He was the only one she knew who encouraged her creative side, especially her designs for fashion and makeup. So much so, that Katy is hired as Queen’s newest stylist. But what she doesn’t expect is her knew found friend, Freddie Mercury. Will their casual flirts lead to anything of substance? Or will their relationship just become another lost love as they both make their journey towards self acceptance.

Warnings: there will be smut eventually but not in this chapter, bisexuality (?), feels 

CHAPTER THREE 

“Newt?” Brian was proud of himself for coming up with the new nickname as he scanned the extensive menu of the small New York cafe he and his friend had met for breakfast in. It was adorable, with light yellow walls and peach undertones, they sat in comfy lime green large chairs, it was unlike any he was familiar with in England.

She looked up from her sketchbook and smiled, she rather liked that one.

“They don’t have tea here” he stated, a little flabbergasted, as he continued to search the menu in disbelief. Katy chuckled.

“Some places have it, Bri but some places don’t, it’s not as popular here as coffee” Katy used her now navy blue painted fingernail to direct his gaze to a large section of the menu, listing the different coffees served. He huffed and shook his head.

A short while later, they placed their orders and began to catch up. Katy showed him some of the designs she was working on, he had always encouraged her to make what she wanted, and soon the two were talking again like nothing had ever changed.

But things had changed. Things were constantly changing, Brian felt like every day was a new adventure, one that would take him farther from home. There was something that he saw in Katy,  it reminded him to take a break. That’s why he was ecstatic the entire time they were in that cafe, Katy just assumed it was because of the show and their reunion but she knew there was something else, she just didn’t want to push it.  

Finally, their tealess meal arrived and Brian knew it was time to “spilled the beans” (an American phrase he was extremely happy to have picked up from Jo).

“Katy” he took a cautious sip of his coffee and instead of her name, his funny reaction to its bitterness caused her to look up.

“Last night was fun, yeah?”  he asked, she smiled and nodded.

“Fun’s an understatement! Even when I fixed John’s pants” Brian just smiled, she had created the perfect way for him to tell her.

“Y’know, Debbie’s quit” he stated, taking another sip of the coffee, he didn’t like it but for some reason, he kinda liked it.

“Yeah, I heard Freddie screaming to your manager about it” she replied, not having the most sympathy in her voice. Debbie was the one who had originally sewn the pants John ripped last night and Katy could tell that she wasn’t the best at her job.

“Did ya also happen to hear what our manager said back to Freddie?” his smile grew larger every second. But Katy returned it with a confused look.

“No, I didn’t, what are you talkin-”

Brian interrupted her out of excitement.

“He saw what you were doin! Katy, he wanted me to ask ya if you were willin to come with us on our tour. Apparently Freddie talked you up” Brian was hesitant to relay the last part, but at the same time he was thankful that Freddie had helped to create an opportunity for Brian to see his friend maybe every day.

Katy’s eyes just widened, neither of the acts she had done last night were to insinuate this in any way, and she was in awe that their manager took notice to her. She was also a little confused. Freddie “talked her up?” What did that even mean? They had only met that night. She decided not to ask about it, she had a feeling that Brian wouldn’t be too keen on the idea of her becoming so interested in his cocky bandmate.

“I- I don’t know what to say, I mean, I’m-”

“Katy, we’d be paying you, you could show your parents that you can actually make a living off of what you want to do, not just that law shit” he egged her on. He had gotten his chance to do what he loved, and wanted nothing more than to let her have that same happiness.

Katy hadn’t thought about that. She felt her eyes beginning to well up, what if she actually showed them? Or, what if they never spoke to her again? In theory, her mother loved what Brian was doing, but would she let Katy bask in the same light? The proposition was overwhelming to her, and Brian got up to hug her, he didn’t care who was around.

“I mean, I don’t know Bri, I would be honored, but my mum, you know her” she hugged him back, her head only really reaching his mid chest.

“I know, but well um” there was a second piece of news that Brian had received since parting ways with Katy shortly after she had repaired John’s pants the night before.

“What is it?” Katy asked, it was now him who was struggling to speak, he didn’t know how she was going to react to what he was about to say.

“Your mum actually called me this morning” he started, and Katy groaned.

“She wanted to know if I wanted to come over for dinner tonight, and well, Freddie took the telephone from me and said he would love to. Your mum thought it was Roger who was speaking so she invited them all over too”

Katy stopped hugging him and just stared. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. She thought. Brian with her family was one thing, but everyone else? This might even hurt her chances of being able to work with them on their American tour.

“Bri, I-”

“I know, but your mum is so excited, I never remember her actually being excited. Maybe you can bring it up to her tonight after she is so impressed by our manners” Katy couldn’t tell if that last part was sarcastic or not, she only perceived this as being able to go in one way: an absolute nightmare.

- 

Katy was just as nervous several hours later as she fixed her hair in the mirror. She hated the fact that she had to be more reserved around her parents, tying her dark hair into a neat low bun. She put on a black turtleneck with sleeves that ended just above her elbows and white shorts, it was summer after all. She still couldn’t believe she had agreed to this. If it wasn’t for the prospect of a new and fulfilling job possibly starting tomorrow, she would never have found herself in this situation, more worried than ever.

She made her way down the stairs, wanting to see how the cooking that her mother had insisted on doing was going. She ran into her little brother, who was trying to figure out how many people to set the table for. James was way younger than Katy and now thirteen, he wasn’t even born when they had made the move.

“I think there’ll be eight of us, let me help you with that” but before Katy could fully extend her arms to take some silverware, the doorbell rang. She froze. They were here already? She looked at the clock, it was her who was running late, not them, she had no idea how time had slipped away so quickly.

Katy rushed for the door, but her mother beat her to it “Kathryn, make sure the chicken doesn’t burn, please” she said, shooing both Katy and James off to the dining room before opening the door.

“Brian, dearie! Oh, you’ve gotten so big!” all four of them were standing there, Freddie even holding a bottle of wine, but Clara Newton ran straight to hug Brian. Even standing on her toes to kiss his cheek, he hugged her back, not as hard as she was holding him, and managed to make out a “thank you” through the suffocation.

Roger coughed. “Why did no one tell me Katy had a sister? Freddie did you call dibs on her too?” he winked at Mrs. Newton. No one was sure how serious Roger was being, but it caused both Freddie’s face and Clara’s to turn bright red. Roger was an asshole, both Brian and Freddie could agree on that at the moment. Freddie hadn’t even told Roger anything and he was already making things worse.

Mrs. Newton’s eyes squinted at the last part Roger said, turning to Freddie and looking him up and down, causing him to become extremely uncomfortable and self conscious about the outfit he was wearing. Brian had told him to dress “appropriately” so he had chosen one of his “safer” outfits, a white button up (although he hadn’t exactly buttoned it up), a red velvet jacket, and very subtle eyeliner, more for him than anyone else. He extended the wine bottle and she took it, smiling politely but still cautious.

“I’m actually Kathryn’s mother, but you’re sweet, come in and make yourself comfortable” she laughed to Roger, taking the wine bottle but deciding not to comment on Freddie.

The Newton home was a modest one, decorated in earth tones and covered in art and houseplants. They’re small black lab, Rocky, was only a puppy and stumbled into the room, making his way towards Brian to lick his boots. Although it wasn’t the same dog that Katy had had in England, it was sweet that he approached Brian with the same curiosity Katy’s old dog Finn did, and Brian received this curiosity with the same slight wave of anxiety.

Freddie looked around the room, Katy was nowhere in sight. He was really hoping tonight would go well and she would be able to join them on their tour. He had only spoken to her for a little bit, but the conversations they had had were fascinating to him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about them, to be honest.

Instead, a young boy with curly dark brown hair entered the room, chasing after the small dog, who was now nipping at the hem of Roger’s bootcut jeans.

“Sorry ma’am, he’s only a couple months old” James apologized, taking the small dog into his arms. Freddie burst out laughing and came over to pet the small thing, gaining a new respect for who he suspected was Katy’s brother.

Roger huffed. “Why do people ALWAYS do that” he stated, punching Freddie in the arm lightly for laughing.

“Have- have you looked at yourself, Rog?” John was also laughing. Roger hit him too.

“Hey guys! Bri, it’s been like forever since I’ve seen you” Katy let out a chuckle as she walked out of the kitchen, James mentally thanked her for ending the conversation he had accidentally started.

“That it has” Brian hugged her again anyway. Freddie wanted to say something, but he wasn’t quite sure what. There weren’t many moments he felt like he was at a loss for words, but the way that Katy looked tonight made him feel like he had forgotten how to speak. Her outfit really was quite simple and modest but for some reason he couldn’t stop admiring her legs and curves. John lightly kicked his foot and muttered something like

“Stop staring, Freddie.” Freddie cleared his throat, turning his fascination to the ceiling, he had no idea what John could possibly be talking about, and the light fixtures suddenly were very interesting.

Katy’s mother entered the room again, happy to see that she was talking to Brian. She clapped her hands, instantly gaining the attention of everyone, Freddie made note of the tactic.

“It’s time for dinner, if you could make your way this way” “Lovely home, Mrs. Newton, truly”

“Why thank you, John” he was always the best at impressing parents, Brian came in a close second, and whether Roger or Freddie was last was a heavily argued debate.

They took their seats at the small table, it was kind of a tight squeeze as Brian was arguably twice the size as Katy, his knees hitting the top of the table every time he laughed. During their meal, James asked John what his favorite lyric he had ever written was, and each of them took their turn replying with heartfelt responses, taking a few moments to really think about it.

“I was really proud of-”

“You call me sweet like I’m some kind of cheese? That one truly moved me Bri, I swear it did” Katy smirked, interrupting him and causing him to scowl.

“Ha!” Freddie laughed before quickly closing his mouth “I thought I was the only one who loved it, it truly was your best work, dear” he and Katy shared the laugh, looking into each other’s brown eyes, eventually everyone else joined in when they realized the sarcasm radiating from the two. Brian just glared.

Dinner was interesting to say the least, the red wine that Freddie had so graciously brought made the conversations flow a little easier for everyone, a lot easier for Freddie.

“And so, what I’m saying is,” Freddie took another long sip, he was sitting next to a very confused James, who was also trying to avoid Roger’s eye contact, they were sitting right across from each other. Freddie was in the middle of telling a story, one that no one was quite sure what direction it was headed in.

Katy, nervous, continuously glanced over at her mother. She seemed to be enjoying herself, thank god, even though Roger making the usual flirty chit chat that he was best at. She only hoped that the happiness would continue into the night, long enough for her to ask about the tour.  

“Brian was going to be an astrophysicist, Roger a bloody dentist! But now? They’re part of a band with a chart topping song! Not to mention enough pounds to support our families, and if that” he took one more sip, James couldn’t stop staring at the singer’s heels. Katy made eye contact with Brian, hoping Freddie would stop.  

“doesn’t tell you to follow your dreams, I don’t know WHAT does” he smiled, winking at Katy, her mother choked on her water.

Katy froze, why would he say something like that.  

“Freddie, can we PLEASE just eat our food” said John.

“Well” her mother cleared her throat. “I am glad that your talents have taken you that far. You should consider yourself lucky” she said coldly. James stared at his plate, now too nervous to admire Freddie’s shoes any longer.  

“Clara, this has been a wonderful meal, thank you” Brian said suddenly, he couldn’t have been more angry at Freddie.

“It really has, the potatoes were delicious” John added in, also aware of the situation. Freddie didn’t regret what he had said. He knew Katy was talented and that that talent would take her places too, he didn’t deny she would prove her mother wrong one way or another.

“I wish we could stay for longer, but I think we must be going, we’ve got interviews early tomorrow morning, but Clara, you are truly a gem” even Roger piped in, his addition making her crack a smile. Katy had to admit she appreciated that.

“Alright, well thank you all for coming, it’s been a pleasure” “The pleasure is all mine Mrs. Newton.” Roger kissed her on the cheek.

One by one, they cleaned their plates and helped Katy and James clear the table. Although Freddie didn’t regret what he had said, he still tried to be extra polite to everyone since that remark.

Eventually they filed out, each saying their goodbyes to Katy’s mum and younger brother.

“Goodnight, Katy I hope it goes well, best of luck to you and hopefully I will see you tomorrow” Freddie shyly hugged Katy, this time being aware of how loud he was talking and making sure her mother couldn’t hear it.

“Thank you” she smiled, hugging him back, a little surprised at his actions. She hoped she would see him again too.

Eventually the house was quiet again, except for some faint barks from Rocky, and James, Katy, and her mother were left sitting alone on their brown leather couch.

“So Mum” Katy started, more nervous than ever.

“Are you dating Brian?” her mother asked excitedly, James also looked at her a little expectantly.

“No! Mum for the last time, I will never be dating Brian, that will never be what one of these conversations is about” Katy laughed nervously.

“One of these conversations, Kathryn is everything okay?” her mother asked, furrowing her eyebrows and starting to look worried.

“Yeah, mum, everything is great actually but um, you know how Freddie talked about following your dreams and actually becoming successful?”

Now, her mother’s eyebrow was raised in confusion. “I do remember that, yes” her voice grew a little colder.  

“Well, Queen’s manager has asked me to join them on their American tour. I’d be their designer and stylist, Mum, I’d be getting paid and working normal hours, and I would be doing what I loved” Katy was hesitant to start, but with every word she became more confident and sure of herself. James let out a squeal, the whole night not wanting to admit how much he had enjoyed being around the band. Her mother just stared at her, unsure of what exactly to say.

“They really asked you this?” Katy nodded, trying to search her mother’s eyes for any hint as to what she was going to say, but all she saw was brown.

“They did Mum, they’re a band in extremely high demand and they asked me, their tour manager Mum, not even Brian, asked me to work for them”

“Kathryn I,”

“Oh come on Mum she’s been waiting for this for ages” James interrupted her, his help was necessary as he always brought their mother back to reality.

“Well” she started sternly “as long as they will be paying you, and as long as you keep yourself out of trouble, and in America, I don’t see why not. You’d just better be sleeping in your own room every night unless it’s Brian’s and make sure he protects you I don’t want my Kathryn getting swept up in-” she was interrupted again, by Katy’s tight hug.

“Mum I promise I won’t let you down, I will write and call to you and James every week I promise I promise I promise” Katy could not stop smiling, she couldn’t really believe what was happening. She was actually doing it. She was going on tour with her best friend and some already amazing people, doing what she loved most in the world.

Katy could cry, and she did. Her brown eyes welled up and she thanked her mother again before running upstairs to call Brian, James quickly running after her.

“Katy” he hugged her “if you’re gonna call Brian, I think he’s still outside” he said laughing. They walked over to her window, to see all four members of Queen still at her house, sitting on the hood of their car. Freddie had asked for a cigarette break before they left, but at the same time he was hoping for one more chance to see Katy. He got that chance.

She smiled and excitedly opened her window, scaring John and causing him to stand up from his seat and look around, he spotted Katy and waved.

“Guess who’s your new stylist?” she called out, James giggled from behind her.

They all started to cheer.  

CHAPTER FOUR 

AN: thank you guys for reading! so, these updates came out fairly quickly but chapter four might not be done for another two or three days. I would expect something definitely by Tuesday night :) 

tagged: @come-with-me-and-imagine, @mimisfangirlfantasy, @runawayxwithme, @feministsatanworshipper, @axxl-rose  

[calzona-ga]

In her first interview since being let go from the ABC medical drama, the actress talks with THR about how the Emmy nomination for shortform series 'B-Team' is opening new doors as Drew plots her next chapter.

For Sarah Drew, the Emmy nomination for Grey's Anatomy's shortform series B-Team — which she directed — was profound to say the least. The nomination came nearly two months after she was let go from the ABC medical drama after a nine-season run.

"My confidence had gotten a bit shaken in the wake of being let go and the nomination after the fact made me go, 'I don't need to be worried about anything or have my confidence shaken,'" Drew tells The Hollywood Reporter.

The six-episode web series, which focused on the ABC medical drama's latest intern class, served as Drew's directorial debut and, to hear her tell it, a new chapter in her career. "I'm not only pursuing my career as an actor but now I'm walking into this world as a director and producer. The world is so wide open," says Drew, who called the nom part of her "rebirth."

Here, in her first interview since wrapping her run as April on Shondaland's Grey's Anatomy, Drew opens up about the impact the Emmy nomination has had on her, how April's journey ended and what's next.  

Did you know that ABC was submitting the web series for Emmy consideration?’ I knew when we started putting the whole series together because there were certain rules we had to follow in order to be eligible for a nomination. I've been submitted as an actor for an Emmy every year but that didn't mean anything. [Laughs.] It was a great, huge, wonderful surprise to get that nomination. The whole "B-Team," we were just out of our minds. I'm still pinching myself over the whole thing.

What was your reaction to the nomination coming after you'd been let go from Grey's and after you'd already completed production and your last episodes had already aired? It was a bolt of good news. [Laughs.] My confidence had gotten a bit shaken in the wake of being let go and the nomination after the fact made me go, 'I don't need to be worried about anything or have my confidence shaken.' I'm not only pursuing my career as an actor but I'm now also walking into this world as a director and as a producer and the world is so wide open. More than anything else, the last few weeks after my final episodes have been a really beautiful rebirth and a really exciting time. I'm running around, meeting everybody and talking to producers and talking to heads of casting at all the networks and the studios and I'm finding that the landscape is so different. There's so much more content, it's a totally different world for television. The nomination in the midst of walking out into the world and feeling like I'm engaging in this beautiful rebirth was more affirmation that this is a good space in my life right now; that I don't need to be sad and I don't need to be mourning and I don't need to be in grief over the end of something that was so beautiful. I can just rise from the ashes in a more brilliant way. The nomination was such a profound affirmation.

Take me back to the day that you found out that you would not be returning to Grey's. I was let go during an episode where I was shadowing Kevin McKidd [who stars as Owen and regularly directs episodes]. It was in the afternoon and I went back to my trailer and I did my crying and called my people. A whole bunch of people came into my trailer to give me hugs and cry with me and tell me they were so sad I was leaving. I was supposed to be shadowing Kevin this whole episode with the hope that I would get to direct an episode of Grey's but [after being let go] it seemed like wasn't a possibility anymore. I wondered if I should keep shadowing Kevin. My husband was like, "Of course you go." I had this incredible opportunity to grow as a director and as an artist with a director that I respect so much. I had nothing to be ashamed of and didn't need to hide. So that's what I did: I showed up the next morning at 6 a.m. and shadowed Kevin until I got cast as Cagney and had to leave to go shoot CBS' Cagney and Lacey.

What a profound experience. I'm a believer in things happening for a reason and finding beauty in the midst of grief. I don't regret or begrudge anybody this season of my life. I'm embracing it. I had a profound and incredible season of my life on Grey's Anatomy. I got to tell stories I believed in. I got to work with Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers and learn from the best. I got to work with an incredible community of people that I will have lifelong friendships with. I got to build a platform and have my children in an environment where I was cared for because of who Shonda is and how she takes care of her mamas and her women. It's hard for me to come up with anything I could be angry about.

What do you think about now that you've had some distance from the show? [Being let go] was painful when it happened but, in retrospect, I think it would have been hard for me to walk away from that job. I was on it for nine years. It feels right and it feels like a good time to move onto something else with all the great love in my heart that I have for everybody and respect and gratitude for what that experience was. Playing a character for nine years is a long haul.

Are you taking more meetings for directing after the nomination? Yes! I'm certainly keeping that in the forefront of a lot of my conversations. I want to do all of it: produce, direct and I want to dig into another really fun character. I got bit by the directing bug because I produced my first film — Indivisible — during our last hiatus and it's coming out in theaters on Oct. 26. I realized on that film that I was scared of directing because I thought maybe I couldn't keep all the different things in my head all at once: everybody's journey, props, costume, wardrobe, shot lists, visuals, etc. I found that it came quite naturally to me and I got excited about it. I called [Grey's Anatomy's producing director] Debbie Allen from that set and asked her to shadow and learn how to direct. That's when she told me about B-Team and that they wanted to have a director who was in the [Grey's] family do it. I shadowed Chandra Wilson (who plays Bailey and regularly directs) to prep for those webisodes. I was terrified in the prep and so afraid of completely failing.

Would you return to Grey's Anatomy as a director? Maybe.

When news that you and Jessica Capshaw initially broke, there was an uproar on social media of people who assumed that the show could not afford to keep both of you after paying Ellen Pompeo $20 million a year. How was the decision explained to you? I was told that the show had too many characters and that they needed to downsize because they couldn't service all of the characters effectively. They didn't want any of us to be left in the background and not getting much of a story. Because there were so many series regulars, they needed to downsize and to find some characters that they felt like they could tie up their stories well. [Showrunner] Krista Vernoff said that she felt like April had been through so much and had come out the other side and that she didn't know what she could put her through again. It was really hard to hear that. But Krista had a lot of very complimentary things to say about the work that I had done — especially this past season — and that April was going to have her happy ending.

April winds up quitting her job to do, as she called it, "God's work," and winds up getting married to Matthew (Justin Bruening). If that is the last viewers see of April, what do you think about how her journey ended? In the midst of it, I was devastated that Jackson (Jesse Williams) and April wasn't an end game. I thought Jackson and April were meant to get back together and they were going to get married again and realize they'd been crazy and it was just going to be this long, slow burn. But after thinking about it, there's a real sweetness to that story of April's faith. She ran off with Jackson and loved him and wouldn't regret a single second of that relationship because it made her heart grow and she got a beautiful daughter out of it. She grew as a woman and as a person of faith. All of that had to happen. But there was something beautiful about the redemption story between April and Matthew. She hurt him worse than anybody had ever hurt him by walking away from him [at their wedding]. For there to be reconciliation from that scenario? That's a really beautiful redemption story that there could be forgiveness there. He lost his wife and then find his first love again. It's lovely.

Yet at the same time, viewers didn't really get to see that journey between April and Matthew. I wish that we had gotten to see more of their journey before they got married. I would've liked to play those scenes and I would've liked to have told that story in a more full way. I can see the beauty in it. But part of me will always be a little heartbroken that April and Jackson were not end game.

April is one of a small handful of Grey's characters to exit the show alive. Have there been any conversations about having you back at all as a guest star, especially since April and Jackson share custody of their daughter? I have not heard anything about that.

Would you be open to doing that? Maybe.

ABC has Grey's spinoff Station 19, and Matthew works as a paramedic — which would make sense to see in that world. Last summer, I wrote to [Station 19 showrunner and Grey's alum] Stacy McKee and told her that Justin Bruening has to be on your firefighter show. But who knows? I think he'd be an awesome addition to that cast. It would be fun to play in the world of Shondaland. But at the same time, I have said goodbye to April and put her to rest. I would be perfectly happy not being April again. I don't feel a particular urge to play her any time soon. I love that character.

Will you keep watching Grey's? There is something about watching your family go on without you that's a bit painful. I'm not sure I need to put myself through that. I love them and I'm sure it's going to be a great season but I think it might be challenging for me to tune in.

Looking back, what would you say April's impact on Grey's was? So many of April's stories were about resilience in the face of pain and rising above in the midst of sorrow and grief. That's what I want people to remember about her. April's story throughout the whole nine years on the show was a story about someone going through pain and emerging in a more beautiful, more glorified state of hope and of gratitude and of resilience and of strength. That's what I hope people take away from April.

What was it like moving from April to an iconic character like Cagney? I didn't have time to process what I was doing when I walked into Cagney. I got let go on a Tuesday, the news broke on a Thursday, I had five test offers in front of me on that Thursday and I chose to pursue Cagney. I tested on Saturday, got the offer on Monday and was shooting Cagney at 7 a.m. Tuesday. I had been given the role at 3 p.m. on Monday when I was on set shooting Grey's and I had to finish my day with Kevin directing. [on Cagney and Lacey] I had to cuff somebody on day one and our technical advisers had to show me how to do it and I had to figure out how to pull a gun on somebody! It was such a different energy than April. We were heartbroken that that didn't get picked up.

What did you hear about why CBS didn't pick it up? Everybody loved it and it was just one of those, "I don't know what happened" kind of things. It's certainly heartbreaking in the moment but I know that there's something around the corner for all of us that's meant to be even better.

What's next for you? I'm reviewing options. I'm currently dipping my toes in a couple different development things. I haven't officially signed on anywhere but I've got three or four different potential projects that I'm interested in potentially producing and acting in and maybe directing episodes of.

Will you go back to 24-episode broadcast shows? Not right now. I'm thinking more about 10- to 13-episode things. The things that I'm thinking about developing all feel like streaming and not broadcast network stuff. We'll see! It's all very open and exciting right now.