#showrunner's challenge

[alliaskisthepossibilityoflove]

You know what? Buck also deserves to experience what a good, loving reciprocal relationship looks like and feels like. I'm Buddie endgame, always, but I want them both to be READY damnit, and Buck’s track record up to now has been him bending himself out of shape to be whatever he thinks his partner needs. And the way they are writing Tommy? Like, he's grown so damn much from his Chimney/Hen begins days. He knows HIMSELF, he ACCEPTS himself and he doesn’t need Evan (love love love that he calls Buck Evan BTW!) to be anything but a baby bi. He knows the job, so he's not running, as far as we know he doesn’t need emotional support, he has his career and they are COMPATIBLE, and he's already seen Buck at his worst, most petty and he KISSED HIM ABOUT IT!!!!! and also I will die on this hill, nobody try sway me, he knows he himself is not Buck’s forever and he's absolutely cool with that. So Buck can have a nice, just NICE AND EASY relationship, figure out what he likes in a partner, how to solve conflicts like an adult, experience being appreciated for EXACTLY WHO HE IS - and when the time is right, be exactly the kind of partner and father he WANTS to be for his forever FAMILY

[what-in-procrastination]

they’re playing man city next week and the person who wrote the episode also wrote man city (2x08). I don’t know if you guys understand how not normal I’m gonna be about that

[barbie-edits]

I think I'll do the showrunners challenge (see previous post) with the top two movies in this poll, as like a sequel to both that's also a crossover. So pick one and get ready for chaos 😈 and i might add a third of my choosing, depending which get picked.

[griseldagimpel]

Disruption Chapter 3 Poll

This is the poll for Chapter 3 of my fan fic Disruption for The Magnus Protocol, with the winning disruption applied to Chapter 4.

Chapter 3 will be up later today, in which there shan't be any special effects.

[lovecolibri]

Buck nearly DIED and we didn't get to hear a WORD from Eddie about it or have anyone ask how HE was doing or talk about how he might be struggling like they did with Buck after Eddie's shooting, or have anyone even mention that Eddie was hit with the same lightning bolt as Buck, enough to throw him right off the truck. So I think we're absolutely justified to bitch this week too if Eddie, canonically Buck's BEST and CLOSEST friend, is not allowed near him during his recovery.

"There's only 42 minutes, they can't fit everythi-" STFU, they absolutely CAN and DID for like, almost 4 seasons. The problem isn't the amount of time in the episode, the problem is the showrunner and what she thinks is or is not important to see on screen. She spent 10 minutes setting up that spider call that only needed to be the 2 minutes from the guy calling 911 forward, and then tacked Eddie's breakdown onto the last 2 minutes of the episode. It's bad writing. She knows how much run time an episode is, it's not like, a surprise each week how much time they get. These are deliberate choices to not show certain characters, dynamics, or conversations on screen. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[juniperhillpatient]

nothing more obnoxious then this weird thing some shows do where they give you a “preview” of what’s to come & it’s like, all the best quips & one liners etc in preview form automatically at the end of the episode. in my house we rush to turn that shit off. what is the point of this? what lunatic does this bs appeal to? I thought we as a society were anti spoilers these days

[helpicant-stop]

i hope tumblr does to wenclair like it did to destiel

[runawaymarbles]

There should be a fanfic writing game called the showrunners challenge where someone writes a story and partway through someone else can play things like "actor leaves after 4000 more words" or "topic now too politically sensitive due to unforeseen world events" or "lost rights to that reference"

[ladaeliseeva]

[xiaolindude]

no tv shows have ever come close to breaking me the way Lost and Stranger Things did

[handsomelyerin]

the iwtv writers' room twitter account saying that rolin jones (the showrunner) favored hiring playwrights for the writing team makes so much sense bc there are so many lines of dialogue that are so evocative and have a heightened quality of a stage play and you can almost picture the actors delivering it in a dead silent theater to a rapt audience: "it was a cold winter that year, and lestat was my coal fire." "he has roots in me. all his spindly roots in me." "i send my love to you, and you send it back round to me" "you're a challenge every sunset, saint louis" "i heard your hearts dancing" "sits on the truth like it's his chair" "he has veins like rivers" "his love is a small box he keeps you in"

[blueiight]

ldpdl, ethnicity, and the false monolith of blackness

there's this false tendency to think amc louis being made black is pandering, or a means of removing louis from his oh-so-detailed /sarcasm/ background in the books. i also find that people tend to not even understand what show louis's ethnic background is, despite rolin jones the showrunner and even the fictional louis both coalescing around this multigenerational explanation of the gens de couleur in new orleans, and how jim crow disempowered them.

I came around to his ethnicity a sort of interesting way which is through Lestat. [ … ] I was like lets give him a legitimate a third attempt at figuring how to be with somebody for the rest of his life and how to not repeat your mistakes. [ … ] I started from there so it had to be someone with some money cause he had to be with his own folks and I thought he wanted someone who could fight back and who could be a challenge and would force him to restrain himself. And nobody at AMC was interested in 7 seasons of the regretful plantation owner, so we made Louis come from a lineage that did have a plantation and did own slaves.

rolin jones in the s1 post-finale episode of the podcast names how he came to this understanding of louis's character. lestat, after failing to make a bride of his mother, and a concubine of nicki, was seeking for someone of a similar background, or the most approximate equivalent. he would not have been interested in louis if louis was an anglophone baptist black man descended from upper-south arrivals into new orleans, nor would he have been interested in louis if louis was a poor black creole honestly s1 does not give a good reading of claudia's ethnic bg in new orleans, but since she cannot understand french, we can presume shes either a poor creole removed from her cultural background with her vampiric adoption narrative in mind, or was also of an anglophone baptist black background like claudia was. louis coming from this fallen sort of gentry, the free gens de couleur, similar to that of the tvl lestat who came from this barren aristocracy dating back to the crusades, was key to lestat's long-term goals with louis.

Capital accrued from plantations of sugar and the blood of men who looked like my great grandfather but did not have his standing. But then decades of Jim Crow and the electrified light of a new century had vanquished any idea of a free man of color. - AMC IWTV 1x01

louis was of the first generations of the gens de couleur to be born, raised into, and face the institutional and personal ramifications of being viewed as black in america. this fuels much of the character's rage as he moves through storyville, trying to continue the similar modality of exploitation to the contrary of pretty baby with brooke shields, majority of the brothel circuit was statistically black girls + women being sexually pawned off to white men but ultimately failing to do so bc of the anglophone white american class that now rules over him. [tom anderson, alderman fenwick, finn o’shea starting out as louis’s subordinate then ending w/ him entering whiteness by having a sporting house throwing torches at louis’s brothel in s1e3]

By 1850, the free population of color, beset by the hostility of white supremacy, was economically diminished and residentially segregated. The Americanization of Louisiana, and in particular New Orleans, was completed before the state became the sixth to secede from the Union in 1861 in the struggle over the perpetuation of slavery. [link] The Democratic redeemers who came to power in 1877 lost no time in redefining the Negro's "place" in Louisiana life. They immediately restored the color line in the New Orleans public schools and offered silent support to de facto segregation practices in places of public accommodation. With the assistance of two landmark decisions by the United States Supreme Court, the redeemers soon dismantled the egalitarian legal apparatus put together piece by piece under the Radicals. Finally in 1890 they began to write their "final solution" into Louisiana law with a series of "separate but equal" statutes. Soon New Orleans Negroes were again segregated in virtually every public pursuit. [link]

[drakaripykiros130ac]

“My uncle is a challenge I welcome, if he dares face me”

I’m sorry…but doesn’t Daemon actually spend the majority of the Dance trying to find this coward?

The showrunners actually thought that they are making Aemond cool for saying this 😂 The kid doesn’t stand a chance.

Also, if memory serves me right, Daemon hardly commits any crimes during this entire war (aside from B&C), while Aemond goes batshit crazy and commits genocide in the Riverlands, murders the entire Strong family, among other things.

And despite all that, Daemon was still considered the most feared man in the Realm, not Aemond.

[signalburst]

“Hell’s no place I haven’t seen before. Let it from your mind."

Gif: @yocalio

'Shogun showrunner Rachel Kondo revealed that the idea to have Blackthorne step up as Mariko’s second was initially “a shock” to her.

“It was one of those things that felt both surprising to us, but also inevitable. Like, naturally, this is the woman he loves. He doesn’t want her to writhe in eternal hell that he knows she believes in, right? I don’t even know if he believes in it, but he, this was his moment to look at her and to see her and to do something,” Kondo said.

“The one thing he does not want to do — he most doesn’t want to do — and he does it because of her, for her.”

Blackthorne’s poetic “last words” to Mariko during the seppuku scene were a suggestion from Cosmo Jarvis: “Hell’s no place I haven’t seen before. Let it from your mind,” to help him grapple with Blackthorne’s out of character decision to volunteer to kill the woman he loves.

“It was quite a challenge to find the motivation for a man to do that,” Jarvis said. “A man who hates unnecessary violence. Blackthorne hates unnecessary violence. And this would be the pinnacle of unnecessary violence and it’s somebody that he cares deeply for.”

“But, you know, that’s the joy of the work. You have to find motivations for these things and you have to do them and commit to them,” he said, explaining the genesis of the line, applauding the showrunners' collaborative nature for keeping it in.

According to Anna Sawai, Blackthorne’s decision to step up and second Mariko’s seppuku was “the biggest gesture of love that she feels from him.”

Gifs: @yocalio

“It’s when she realizes how much she means to him. Because he is a Protestant and he’s going against his religion and he’s taking her over himself. He’s allowing her to die a loyal Catholic and a samurai,” Sawai said during an interview earlier this week. “It’s a very romantic thing for her and she’s in a way kind of seeing him in different eyes because of what this means."

“He’s taking her over his own religion and beliefs,” Sawai explains of the powerful moment. “A couple scenes before that he’s asking her to keep living for him. And so I think that it just shows that he really, really cares, and that is the most romantic thing that you could ever do for someone that you love.”

Mariko is spared, for a night. A night that Mariko and Blackthorne get to share together. Although Yabushige’s treachery would result in Mariko’s death later that night, the two lovers get to spend one last evening in each other’s arms.

“It was just a moment of like, ‘I deserve this. We deserve this. We accept each other, we see each other and we can share this moment together,'” Sawai said, giving Mariko’s story a bittersweet, tragically romantic ending.'

Full interviews:

Anna Sawai Reveals the Moment Mariko Fell in Love With Blackthorne

Anna Sawai Details How Mariko’s Seppuku Attempt in Episode 9 Binds Her and Blackthorne Forever: “It’s a Very Romantic Thing for Her”

[griseldagimpel]

Disruption Chapter 2 Poll

This is the poll for Chapter 2 of my fan fic Disruption for The Magnus Protocol, with the winning disruption applied to Chapter 3.

But wait, you say, Disruption doesn't have a Chapter 2!

Yeah, so tumblr only allows polls to be set for a day or a week, but it's most convenient for me to write the fic and post it on Sunday, which means I need the poll to run for slightly less than a week. Ergo, the last poll is considered closed even though it still has 6 hours on it, and I'm getting this poll up now. You can expect Chapter 2 to be posted later today.

[lovecolibri]

That comment about the musical so that she doesn't have to struggle thinking about a plot gets me irrationally angry, I'm sorry. If the musical is a one-off thing to pay homage for the talents' ability, sure I will watch it. If the main reason is so that she doesn't have to properly do her job, throw that idea to the trash can, please thank you. She actually thinks writing a musical without any experience in that is easy.

And I don't fucking care if she's joking. When you're admitting you're struggling for a job you see as "the next step in my career," making a joke is the last fucking thing you have to do. When will this Kristen Reidel nightmare be over please?!

Honestly. I saw that quote and had to like, take a minute. Like you said, even if she's joking, at this point with all the flack the show has been getting about the declining quality and having too much filler, is it really the right time to be admitting on the record that you are having multiple instances of not being able to come up with enough story to fill out episodes and are trying to work in an episode that lets you get away with doing less?? Especially because for a musical episode to work for a show without a real supernatural element, there needs to be a damn good reason for it to be happening (thinking about the musical episode of Scrubs) which requires, shocker, a solid story element! You can't just pass the whole episode off to the music department and wash your hands of it so you can get out of having to do the job you're being paid to do.

Like, it's just SO insulting on top of everything too! Like, yeah it makes her look incompetent (and Tim too for letting her take over when she clearly doesn't have the chops or the desire to put in the actual work), but it's also clear that she thinks it's a big joke! She's getting paid, she's getting a job to put on her resume, what does she care if the audience is bored with it? It's not about the audience, or the stories being told, it's about HER getting to boss people around and call the shots and be petty when the audience pushes back on what she's doing. And that? That is what is getting to me the most. She has no interest in improving because she isn't making this show for the audience, she isn't making this show to continue telling the stories and exploring the characters she was given, she's making this show to get a paycheck and a leg up, and to write out her fantasies whether they are true to the characters and make sense or not.

Girl, go back to writing fic and maybe you'll feel better. You can self-insert as much as you want! You can write song fic so you don't have to plot too hard! You can do random shit and just call in an AU! And best of all, you'll stop dragging the show down, and someone who actually cares about writing plots and cares about these characters can take over.