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avatar-news · 4 years ago

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The Fire Nation Awaits 🌺 An in-depth look at the ever-elusive islands in the era of Korra and when we will finally pay them a visit

[Artwork by Avatar News; not official.]

Note: This article was published before the official announcement of Avatar Studios at the Paramount+ investor day.

“Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.” We’ve all heard those words a million times. The four elements, and the power to control them bestowed by four subspecies of giant lion-turtles, are at the very heart of the world of Avatar. The balance between them was once upon a time broken by one of the four, the Fire Nation, forming the main conflict of Avatar: The Last Airbender. For much of Aang and the Gaang’s quest at the close of the Hundred Year War, the Fire Nation was a forbidden, far-away location, until the curtain was finally drawn back in the aptly-named Book Three: Fire when our heroes entered the inferno, undercover behind enemy lines. A dramatic tropical destination! New outfits! Culture shock! Needless to say, it was a big deal.

→ 🌺 The big reveal of the Fire Nation in Book Three: Fire had its own marketing push, matching public anticipation.

When the Hundred Year War ended, the newly-instated Fire Lord Zuko dedicated his life to righting the wrongs of his forefathers and working with Avatar Aang to bring the Fire Nation back into the fold under peace. By the time Aang’s successor debuted as the next Avatar in the titular The Legend of Korra, Zuko had abdicated the five-pointed crown and his daughter, Fire Lord Izumi, took the stage leading a reformed, rebalanced Fire Nation.

There was no more war, no more enemy lines, yet the Fire Nation became more distant and mysterious than ever before.

Korra’s close encounters with the land of fire

To this day, Korra has never visited the Fire Nation, nor has it been seen at all, nor do we know anything about it in her era. In fact, practically the only thing we do know is that its leader is a noninterventionist, which conveniently gets it out of the way of making an appearance in Korra’s journey as the Avatar so far.

The closest we have come to seeing the Fire Nation in The Legend of Korra was in Book Two: Spirits, Chapter Five: Peacekeepers. In the midst of the Water Tribe Civil War, Korra sets out across the sea to get help from the royal family, however, she is intercepted by a dark spirit and never makes it to her destination. In the next episode, she washes up on a secret island home to the Bhanti sages, which probably technically counts as Fire Nation territory, but as we know from The Shadow of Kyoshi (more on that later), this faction predates the Four Nations themselves so it doesn’t really count.

→ 🌺 Korra washes up on the beach of Bhanti Island in Book Two: Spirits, Chapter Six: The Sting.

No, as cool as that location and the events of the Beginnings two-parter that happened there were, it wasn’t the main draw of seeing the Fire Nation that we’re still waiting for: seeing how the Fire Nation, which was already industrializing in Aang’s time, changed over the decades, compared to places like Republic City and Ba Sing Se; meeting new characters; visiting new and familiar locations; worldbuilding both new and expanding on what we already learned.

After this aborted tease in Book Two, we never come close to the island country again (at least not with this Avatar and in her era; yes I’m leading up to something...). Instead, the focus turns strongly to the Earth Kingdom in the third and fourth Books, and beyond.

Keep in mind that The Legend of Korra aired for about two-and-a-half years total from 2012 to 2014. Since then, the story has continued in comics. The comics era has lasted from 2015 to present-- seven years to the animated series’ two. In that time, there have only been two comic trilogies due to various production troubles, and neither have touched the Fire Nation. Instead, they directly continue the Earth Kingdom-focused threads started in Books Three and Four of Korra, both originally airing in 2014. Or, in perspective: we had a focus on Republic City in 2012, the Water Tribes in 2013, and the Earth Kingdom from 2014-2021.

Will we finally see the Fire Nation in the next graphic novel trilogy?

This question comes to mind every time new Korra content is supposed to roll around, and the powers that be know it-- it’s a pretty obvious gap in the world of Avatar right now. This franchise is iconically built around four elements and the Four Nations based on them, so one of them being MIA is quite glaring, and for that reason everyone is understandably always asking about it.

The most concrete confirmation we’ve gotten was this AMA answer from franchise co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino in 2016, two years after the show ended and a year before the first graphic novels did come out:

“Yes, hopefully in the [Korra] comics, we’ll have a chance to go to the Fire Nation and see how it has changed since A:TLA.”

Since then, as previously discussed, two comic trilogies have come and gone, obviously not getting closer to the Fire Nation-- and I would actually argue entrenching themselves further away from it.

I want to make it clear that I’m against fan entitlement. Creatives telling the tales they want to in service of the story and the artform is how the industry should run. I’m just hoping to offer some perspective on how we got to where we are almost a decade into the era of Korra and the metatextual pacing of the franchise itself.

Either way, the next Korra comic trilogy has been official confirmed by the editor for Avatar at Dark Horse Comics in this informal statement on Twitter:

We’re not ready to announce any details yet, but we are working on the next trilogy. I really appreciate your patience and hope it’s worth the wait! ✨

There’s currently some kind of holdup for which we really have zero context or information, and we of course have no idea what this next trilogy will be about. (I do speculate a bit on what it could be a few paragraphs down.)

But, like what turned out to be Ruins of the Empire before it, I faithfully made a mockup graphic for my post announcing the confirmation of the next The Legend of Korra graphic novel trilogy. And like before, I chose to completely speculatively and blindly make it Fire Nation-y, as if the next comic could/would(/should?) feature it. This is mainly because I feel like that’s what most people’s eyes would be caught by and thus result in the most successful post (hey, at least I’m honest), but also because it’s just fun.

Here are both images, from 2018 and 2020 respectively:

→ 🌺 Speculative edits I made for my posts on the announcement of previous and upcoming Korra comics before we knew anything about them.

In both cases, the response was huge, and people were super excited about the prospect of Fire Nation content just from my quick speculative mockups. I am of course hoping that the new artwork I made of the Krew for this post will have a similar effect (it’s the first time I just straight-up drew it instead of editing existing images) but again it’s really mostly just for fun.

Anyway, until the next trilogy is properly revealed, we’ll just have to wait and see.

However, that’s not the only place this could happen.

Are they saving the Fire Nation for an animated movie?

With Avatar’s HUGE success on Netflix last year, interest in the franchise rocketed to an all-time high. The streaming wars have begun, and Avatar’s owner and its parent company, Nickelodeon and ViacomCBS, have finally started to notice.

ViacomCBS is launching Paramount+ on March 4th, a relaunch of its existing streaming service CBS All Access. Paramount+ is meant to be a big expansion and refocus to compete with the big hitters: Disney+, HBO Max, and, yes, Netflix. (There’s quite an entanglement there, with Netflix being the home of Avatar’s big year and the upcoming live-action series.)

One of the keys to a successful streamer today is high-profile originals to drive new subscribers. ViacomCBS knows this and they know Avatar has just become among the highest profiles a property can have, breaking records and going toe-to-toe with other big-hitting sci-fi/fantasy/genre franchises. This knowledge goes right to the top of the food chain: the CEO of ViacomCBS mentioned Avatar by name when discussing potential originals for Paramount+.

I have previously discussed how The Search relates to this. The Search was the second ATLA comic trilogy, focused on the search for Zuko’s mother in the thick of the Fire Nation, and if you didn’t know, it was originally pitched by Bryke as an animated movie after the original series ended.

I just want to be clear that what I’m discussing here is purely speculative, but this is the only other piece of the Avatar franchise that we know was optioned for animation besides the shows themselves. It’s possible they would be interested in going back to this idea as a Paramount+ original (and it would certainly be popular among audiences), but it is of course set during the era of Aang and thus covers both a time period we’ve already seen, and also by nature of already being released as comics, events we’ve already seen too.

However, the whole point of this article is that there is one major, huge thing we haven’t seen yet, with massive anticipation building for a decade behind it: the Fire Nation in the era of Korra. So, again, this is just speculation, but it’s also possible that they could return to the very smallest seed of the original idea for a The Search movie, and do a Fire Nation-focused Korra movie now.

→ 🌺 ATLA’s Fire Nation-focused The Search was originally pitched as an animated movie.

You can skip this next part if you don’t want to see me embarrassingly promote my fan idea 😆 but this is where the artwork I made for this article comes into play. The general idea for it, and the reason I tried to replicate the show’s style as much as possible, is that it’s what a Fire Nation-focused movie could maybe look like. Something as standalone and unrelated to Earth Kingdom drama as possible, with fresh new looks for the Krew to get people excited for something fresh and new! I really feel like the Avatar franchise has so much potential for expanded content like this, that’s why I have high hopes that Paramount+ will make the most out of it! You can see the individual characters’ artwork in larger size here. Ok I’m done back to business.

If the idea of a movie seems too impossible to you, we can also take a deeper look at Bryke’s involvement with upcoming comics instead.

After Korra ended, they officially each went their separate ways. They vaguely consulted on Avatar stuff, and Mike of course wrote the Korra comics, but Bryan was planning on writing and drawing his own original non-Avatar comic series and Mike was releasing his own non-Avatar novels. This all appears to have come to a stop when they signed on to showrun the live-action retelling of ATLA at Netflix, officially reuniting the partnership and committing to Avatar again in a big way. Of course, they ended up leaving that project over creative differences, but it did result in a big, lasting change: this time they remained official creative partners and have indicated they’re still working on Avatar now, together. This is a far cry from the official breakup after Korra, so it begs the question what exactly they’re working on. I of course have my fanciful predictions of a sprawling expansion of the Avatar franchise at Paramount+, but what if it’s actually a combination of the ingredients from before the live-action series...

More speculation, but what if the reason for all the mystery behind the next Korra comics is because they will be made by Bryke, with the two of them co-writing and Bryan doing the art for the first time? If that’s the case, they could want to make them a bigger deal than the other Avatar comics have been so far, and maybe that’s why it’s taking so long to iron everything out, have a more significant story, have more of a marketing push, etc. If they’ve been saving the Fire Nation for something big, this could be it.

I personally think this is less likely than a show or movies or something, but it is possible. Anything is possible right now since we know so little about the large-scale direction of the franchise moving forward, just that it’s gonna get big.

⛰️🌋 The Fire Nation in the era of Avatar Kyoshi

We’re not done! Despite everything I’ve written here, believe it or not, the Fire Nation was actually the star of the show in the last year.

With the debut of the Avatar franchise’s first original novels, Kyoshi made a huge splash (in a way only she can). If you haven’t read them yet, you NEED to-- they’re some of the best Avatar content EVER. The Rise of Kyoshi hit shelves in 2019 and The Shadow of Kyoshi followed in 2020. The latter is of particular interest here, because it was almost entirely set in the Fire Nation and featured practically everything and anything you could want from a visit to elusive islands. Though obviously set in a historical period some four hundred years before Aang’s time, Kyoshi’s sojourn in the Fire Nation gave us a huge amount of new information, a depth and breadth of worldbuilding, culture, and character we’ve never really seen in Avatar before. It truly makes the most of the literary medium, so hats off to author F. C. Yee for the passion and effort he put in.

In The Shadow of Kyoshi, we learn about the era of the previous fire Avatar before Roku, Avatar Szeto. Through Kyoshi and her own Team Avatar, we learn about the different clans and islands of the Fire Nation, as they experience the fraught early reign of Fire Lord Zoryu and the conflict between the Keohso and Saowon clans, culminating in the Camellia-Peony War. We get a multitude of fleshed-out perspectives from the upper crust to the flea-bitten underworld, matching the heights of the worldbuilding quality of Republic City. It’s such cool, intricate stuff, and really shows Avatar’s potential (and that’s all just the worldbuilding-- the character work is also top-notch).

That’s not the only place the Fire Nation has shone recently. One of Insight Editions’ awesome scrapbooks, Legacy of the Fire Nation, gave us a tour through the royal family’s history, including never-before-seen looks at young Iroh and Ozai and much, much more.

All this just goes to show that the Fire Nation has been a hot ticket throughout the ages and there’s one conspicuous gap in that history: the era of Avatar Korra. With so much recent expansion and development of the Fire Nation in our world, it would be perfect to see the culmination of it all in the current time period in the world of Avatar too.

If this made you excited for the potential of what the Avatar franchise could look like in the coming years, same boat!

The next concrete date where something could be announced is February 24th, when ViacomCBS will host their investor day and present their streaming strategy, including Paramount+ originals. There’s no guarantee Avatar is mentioned, but I’m keeping a hopeful eye out.

As for comics, Dark Horse’s schedule marches to its own beat, so there’s no way to know when the next drop of information is coming our way.

Could this finally be the comics that take us to the Fire Nation, or could the much-anticipated visit be in another medium like animation? Stay tuned-- as always I’ll post as soon as we learn anything new!

#korra comics #paramount plus #the fire nation awaits

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cierrabiscuits · 4 years ago

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Miya Atsumu X Fem Reader : Eligible Bachelor Alt route.

Word count: 5.4 K

Warnings: Some suggestive content, harassment, alcohol consumption, Nightmares, and a dab of angst. Happy ending :)

AN: I felt awful for breaking his heart in Sakusa’s route, but I’m atoning for my sins today. I went with a new approach and the ending is very fluffy! Also a big shoutout to @ambershaydeoffical for helping me edit and giving me some ideas! I hyper linked all the songs used! I hope you guy enjoy.-CB

Find Sakusa’s route here

Find Bokuto’s route here

~Story~

“Why did I ever agree to let you pick me up?” Your hand was gripping the support bar In Atsumu’s car for dear life.

“Because you love me and you know I’d get lost without my lovely Y/N.” Atsumu gave you a goofy smile as he shifted the gears.

“First off I’m your manager, second can you please go the speed limit. I’d like to make it to this charity event alive and in one piece.” You looked over to see him giving you a devilish smirk.

“You said we were late, therefore I’m making up for the lost time.” You rolled your eyes at him, but knew he was right.

“Maybe I should have let Omi take me, at least he would have driven the speed limit.” You said smirking at the setter.

“Oh yeah? Well yer stuck with me, besides I play good music.” He spun the volume button on the console all the way up. ‘This is what you came for’ started to boom through the speakers.

“Baby, this is what you came for Lightning strikes every time she moves And everybody's watching her But she's looking at you, ooh, ooh-” His thick accent attempted to sing along. You couldn't help but break out laughing.

“Tsumu I love you, but there is a reason you're a setter and not a singer.” You turned the music down so he could hear you.

“So you do love me?” He whipped his head to look at you. Your face ran hot, but panic came right with the rush of heat.

“Umm-TSUMU WATCH THE ROAD.” You screamed as he swerved a bit. Your hand found refuge yet again on the support bar. “Thank God we're almost there, you're an awful driver. Maybe worse than Bo.”

“I was kind enough to offer you a ride since your car is messed up and this is the thanks I get.” Your car’s transmission decided to go out, leaving you without transportation until it was fixed. But it ended being a blessing and a curse. Blessing being you get to hang with Atsumu alone and not to mention how sexy he was driving the standard shift. Curse being he was a crappy driver and your transmission broke your savings account.

“In all seriousness thank you Tsumu, you're the best.” You knew you were feeding his ego by saying that, but you were truly grateful. But he didn’t speak or even give you one of his normal cheeky comments. You looked over to see his cheeks glowing red,. You wish you could take a picture of the blushing athlete, but the venue was the next turn off.

“Tsumu, turn left at the next light.” You could see the huge venue center, the picture you saw online didn’t do the justice.

“You really sound like a GPS Y/N. Cute.” He turned the wheel with one hand and pulled into a parking spot.

“You have reached your destination.” You tried to imitate a GPS voice, but failed.

“I hear ya, wait here.” Atsumu unbuckled and hopped out of his car. You sat confused but then realized he was coming to open the door for you. He opened your door and offered you a hand which you gladly took.

“What a gentleman. Tsumu you're spoiling me.” You could get used to this side of him.

“No fair, Omi didn't open the door for me.” You turned your head to see Bokuto pouting.

“You're lucky I even drove you here, quit pushing it.” Sakusa rolled his eyes. “That goes for you too.” He then shot a death glared at poor Hinata.

“Okay guys less fighting more walking, Now pick those feet up, I need to meet with the event coordinator!” You lead the boys towards the venue. It reminded you of a Roman colosseum. It was stunning.

“Wow this place is huge! I bet there's a lot of people in there!” Hinata looked up at the venue it awe.

“How dreadful.” Sakusa said, adjusting his facemask. You had to beg him to come. After a little persuading he finally said yes.

“You already agreed to come Omi, please don’t back out now.” You pouted at Sakusa, causing him to roll his eyes. “Besides we’re already here.” You pointed at the large doors that led into the venue. They all looked excited to be here (Minus poor Sakusa).

“I know yer just itching to letcher us. I can tell by the look on your pretty face.” Sporting a smug look, Atsumu leaned on the side of the building. He never missed an opportunity to make your heart flutter.

“You know me so well Tsumu.” You smirked at the setter. You turned your attention to the rest of the group. “As you already know this is for charity, so keep it classy. You will also be auctioned off for a date, so whoever gets you, please be nice and respectful. You have a little time to kill so explore the place a bit and put yourself out there.”

“We'll be on our best behavior!” Bokuto chimed in giving you a thumbs up.

“I know. Now let's head in.” You went to open the door but Atsumu beat you to it. A heat tried to crawl its way up your neck, but you pushed it down. There was a time and place to dwell on the way Atsumu made you feel giddy. Now was not the time, sadly. It was hardly ever the right time, being the manager was a demanding position, their public image was one of your main concerns, which meant having an unprofessional fan girl moment was out of the question.

Once inside, you couldn’t settle your eyes to any one spot. To say the venue was packed would be an understatement. It was a flood of designer dresses and fancy tuxedos. It made you feel severely under dressed, but you're not here for fun. As much as you would love to dance the night away with the boys, specifically Atsumu, you were mature enough to realize how important tonight is.

“Bokuto let’s go eat! Atsumu isn’t your brother catering some of the food?” Hinata asked, eyeing the onigiri.

“Yup, he worked all day to make enough onigiri for tonight.” Atsumu said proudly. He and his brother may fight and quarrel, but they are both so supportive to each other.

“We better hurry and get some!” Bokuto grabbed Hinata by the arm and ran towards the food.

“You know where I’ll be. Just come get me when it’s time.” Sakusa walked towards a secluded corner.

“Now what do you plan on doing Tsumu?” You asked looking around the crowded room.

“I don’t know. I’ll probably bother Omi-Omi at some point.” He glanced at Sakusa sulking in his designated corner.

“Leave him alone! I need him to stay cooperative.” You wacked Atsumu in the back.

“Whatever you want doll. I have some orders for ya too.” Atsumu’s bright hazel eyes met your tired ones. Could he tell how nervous you were for this event? What could he possibly order you to do?

“What would that be?” You looked up at him, ready to deny his request.

“If you're gonna dance, make sure it's with me. We killed ‘Down on me’ at the last gala we went to.” Atsumu wiggled his eyebrows. You will never forget that night, you were full of liquid courage and danced on him all night long.

“Tsumu you have to dance with whoever bids on you. I’m in manager mode tonight and I’m staying sober this time.” You glanced at your watch and it was almost time to meet with the event coordinator. “ I doubt I’ll have time to dance at all. Oh snap, look at the time,I have to go to Tsumu.” You turned to walk towards the stage but he grabbed before you could get too far.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make my way to ya. Count on it.” He spoke right next to your ear, causing your hair to rise up. He released you and disappeared into the crowd. Your face was burning from the bottom of your throat, to the tip of your ears. Damn that Miya.

“Y/N thank you for coming!” The coordinator extended her hand for you to shake.

“No problem, I look forward to working with you.” You shook her hand and smiled. The flashing lights of the dance floor blinding you for just a moment. You wished you were dancing instead of working.

“Same here! Now let's get down to the plan. We’ve got a good line up tonight, I’ve got everyone lined up by group size, with yours being the smallest we will have your guys go last.” She scanned the clipboard in her hands. “Have them here in an hour please! I better get going, the rugby team is next and they have a lot of the team here! Ciao Y/N.” She made everything sound easy enough, but the hard part was rounding the boys up.

The music was booming, and the vibrations went through your body like an electric current. You wanted to dance so bad, but you remind yourself you have things to attend to. You try to spot the boys in the sea of people. You went to the food bar first but it looks like Hinata and Bokuto attacked it already considering there was nothing left. You began to walk towards the dance floor and heard the ‘cupid shuffle’ start playing. It was an iconic dance song, and a fun one to get a crowd going. People began to line up and make room to dance. You notice the tips of Bokuto’s hair, Hinata was on his right and Atsumu was on his left. You needed to reach them before the song really kicked in but It was too late.

“Just in time Y/N!” Bokuto beamed down at you.

“Guys we need to get lined up. Plus we still have to grab Sakusa.” You semi yelled over the music.

“Come on Y/N one song won’t kill ya, well get rounded up quick after this okay?” Atsumu wrapped an arm around Bokuto and Hinata. “Now get beside me, you always mix your left and right up.” He wasn't lying, you loved to dance but sometimes became uncoordinated.

“Fine.” You accepted defeat and got beside Atsumu, you took the chance to check him out. He looked so good in his suit, he had a grey tux that fit him like a glove. The white shirt underneath was unbuttoned and his tie left loose around his throat. He was too pretty for his own good. The music finally reached the start of the shuffle, and it pulled you from your thoughts. You followed the music with the rest of these boys in perfect sync. Tsumu nudged you in the right direction every now and then, but no one could see his hand lingering on your side. You smiled from ear to ear, it felt so good to dance some stress away and it felt even better to be so close to Atsumu. You watched his smooth movements, he was calculated on the court and on the dance floor. You could tell he was catching the eyes of women besides yourself. But right now it was you dancing next to him and that's all that mattered. The song came to an end and everyone tried to catch their breath.

“Okay now let's go get Omi.” You lead them out of the dance crowd and toward where Sakusa was. You find him exactly where you left him. He had an intense aurora surrounding him. If looks could kill you would be six foot under right now.

“Omi It's time to go lineup, are you ready?” You asked and he nodded his head. “Follow me guys.” You lead them to the side of the stage.

“So who’s going first?” Hinata asked nervously. You could only pray he wouldn’t puke on stage.

“Hmm good question, lets have Bo go first, then you, then Omi and Tsumu last.” You felt nervousness creep on you, this was really about to happen.

“Y/N you really saved the best for last hmm.” Atsumu flipped his hair dramatically. You rolled your eyes at him.

“Do I have to take my mask off?” Sakusa gave you a pleading look.

“Whatever is comfortable with you. I’ve put you through enough,” Sakusa sighed in relief at your words.

“Okay now, make sure to make a good impression and run these rich ladies pockets up.” You smacked your hands together. “I better get going, remember I’m counting on you guys.” You gave them one last thumbs up.

You got a seat in the front so you could take some pictures of the boys. You were definitely going to get some good ones for the teams Insta. You know what the fans want and you feed them. You were to caught up in getting your phone ready you didn’t notice someone sit next to you.

“Hey Y/N.” Osamu adjusted himself beside you.

“Oh. Hey Osamu! Your onigiri was a hit tonight I heard.” Too bad you didn’t get any, you thought.

“They paid me good for catering tonight, I wanted to make sure it was the best. I even had Tsumu come and try new recipes. He ate so much I thought I'd end up taking him to the ER.” He chuckled. You knew Atsumu loved his brother's cooking. “But enough about that airhead. You looked a little sad earlier when I saw you walking around, Is something wrong?”

“Everything is fine, I’m just stressed. Plus I want to dance and can’t.” Your hands fell to your lap in defeat.

‘Why can’t you dance? Are you hurt?” He gave you a concerned look.

“No I’m fine.” You smiled up at the twin. “I have to take pictures of the boys with their dates and make sure everything goes smoothly. Plus my dance partner will be taken anyway.” You let out a laugh to hide your disappointment. You really wanted to dance with Atsumu, but he will have fun with whoever gets him.

“Oh I see.” He seemed to have a small smirk on his face. “It looks like it’s starting.” The lights of the stage turned on and an upbeat song came on.

“Welcome to the annual Valentines day date auction! We are so glad you all could come out and join us. We have a great line up or should I say roster. This year our theme was sport team singles! Ladies if you plan on bidding tonight just raise your hand when you see the man of your dreams. Shall we get started?” The announcer said hyping up the crowd of women young and old. Neither your or Osamu paid any attention to the stage, instead you made small talk and showed him embarrassing pictures of Atsumu. Your favorite one being his face pressed up against an airplane window fast asleep. You sat beside him on that flight and ended up falling asleep on his shoulder. You remember him covering you up with his blanket at one point, he was a sweetheart when he wanted to be. Time flew by and it was finally time for the boys to get on stage.

“Next up we have the MSBY volleyball team!” Bokuto was called up, you got some good pictures of him flexing and just being his goofy self. Hinata came on stage and was more collected than you thought he would be. Sakusa came out and was stiff as a board the whole time, but you wouldn't complain considering he was kind enough to even come. And now it was Atsumu’s turn. You saw him walk on stage and your stomach began to feel like a merry go round. His wavy hair bounced with every confident step he took, he was hot and he flaunted it. Your eyes were glued to him, and once he found you in the crowd his eyes locked onto yours. He winked right at you and gave you one of his shit eating grins. You felt the embarrassment creep up on you, your attention went to your phone to take pictures of the cocky setter.

“I wonder what poor soul will get Tsumu.” Osamu stuck his tongue out at his brother.

“Hopefully someone who can put up with him, and keep up with his erratic dancing.” You laughed out. If you were being honest you wished you were the ‘poor soul’.

“I only know one person who fits that description.” Osamu smirked at his brother

“What?” You looked up at him confused. “Who?”

“Alright for 175,000 yen, going once , twice...” You eyed Osamu and he reached his hand out and tickled your side, causing your arm to shoot straight up in the air.

“We are now up to 180,000 yen! Going once, twice, and sold! That concludes the auction! We hope you all have a wonderful night and a Happy Valentine’s Day.” Astumu gave you one last smile before exiting the stage. You were still in a state of shock as the stage lights dimmed.

“I know what yer thinking Y/N, but it will be easier if you go talk to the dumbass. He’s a watin for ya.” Osamu got up and left you in a state of shock. You stood up quick and made a beeline towards the large crowd of athletes. You could feel your heartbeat pick up the closer you got. You just had to know why.

“Y/N over here!” You heard Hinata’s familiar voice over the crowd. You made your way to him and noticed the rest of the team standing with him. You wanted to congratulate everyone before you interrogated Atsumu.

“You guys did so well! I’m proud.” You smacked Bokuto and Hinata on the back. “Your dates should come get you soon, remember to have fun and be kind to them!” Sakusa was standing nervously against the wall, you hope someone tame got him. You looked over at Atsumu and he mouthed ‘Let’s go to the lobby.’ You nodded your head and you left the team to find out what was up. He led you through the crowd and into the empty lobby.

“I hope you're not mad at me Y/N, truth is I had something planned for you this Valentine’s Day, I wanted to surprise you, but we ended up having to do this which ruined my plans. Kinda.” Your eyes widened at his words. “You may be the team's manager and I may be the setter. But tonight let’s just be Y/N and Atsumu. You won me fair and square so either way you're stuck with me.”

“Okay, I’d like that actually. But I still have to check on the other every now and then.” You felt your heart rate pick up again. “But I have to know, who paid for you really?”

“Samu did. He was going to give most of his earnings back to the charity anyway.. I didn’t want just some girl beside me tonight, I wanted my girl. So after some begging he agreed to do it. But In return I must refer to him as the superior twin for the rest of the year.” Atsumu had you dumbfounded. You would have to thank Osamu later.

“Tsumu what do you mean by ‘my girl’?” Your knees felt like jelly. You knew what he meant, but you needed to hear it.

“Exactly what I said. I think we both know about each other's feelings. I love you more than Omi loves flu shots and lysol.” This was the oddest declaration of love, but it still made your heart melt.

“That makes you mine too, right?” He nodded his head and began to rummage through his pockets.

“Yes It sure does darlin’. I’m glad to get that off my chest. I got you a little something, close your eyes and hold your hand out.” You closed your eyes and felt his hands clasp something around your hand. “And open.” You looked down at the tennis bracelet you’ve been eyeing for a long time.

“Tsumu how did you..” You were at a loss for words, the bracelet was something you’ve been saving for. It was a pretty bracelet with a pretty big price tag. You couldn't help but smile.v

“When we all went to the mall a few months back I went to find you and saw you trying it on at the jewelry store. You looked sad when the cashier put it back in the case. As soon as you left the store I went right in and bought it. And before you say a thing, that smile you have on is worth every penny I spent.”

“Tsumu thank you, but I’m sorry I didn't get you anything.” You felt guilty but he wrapped an arm around your shoulder.

“Having you with me right now is plenty enough for this fool. Now let’s go check on everyone and get on the dancefloor.” He began to walk you back into the ballroom. You spotted the boys talking to their dates. Bokuto was with a shy curvy girl, she was absolutely stunning and she was definitely his type. You knew he would treat her good. A volleyball player from America bided on Hinata, they were talking about receives. She was a perfect fit for him. Sakusa was with an older woman, she seemed to be very respectful and calm. She mentioned that he reminded her of her late husband. All was well. They left with their dates and now it was time for you and yours to hit the dance floor. Atsumu grasped your hand and led you to the center of the dance floor.

“Tsumu wait.” You stopped a server and downed a glass of champagne.

“Oh my, here we go again.” Astsumu rolled his hazel eyes. You and drinking never ended good.

“I won’t go overboard. Now let's go dance.” You began to speed walk to the dance floor. The DJ was playing some straight up bops, you felt the music take over your body and you began to dance. As soon as ‘hips don't lie’ began to play you both went straight feral. You pulled away from him and swayed your hips side to side. Atsumu's eyes stayed glued to you as you let Shakira guide you. You came to a stop when you felt a lingering presence from behind you. You felt an unfamiliar pair of hands linger over your hips. You felt a wave of panic wash over you but Atsumu was quick to react, he wrapped his strong arms around and spun you away from the creep.

“Don’t even try, she obviously ain’t yours, now screw off asshole.” Astumu held you as close to him as humanly possible while telling the creep off. The smell of his cologne grounded you. The man flipped Tsumu off and disappeared back into the crowd. “Are you okay Y/N?”

“Yes thank you, but I need a drink to loosen back up.” You said eyeing the bar. You swore sobriety tonight, but you were feeling yourself. “But just one.”

“Sureee just one, I know better than that. You’ll be plastered by the end of the night.” He leaned down and whispered in your ear. His thick accent made your hair stand up. You rolled your eyes and led him to the bar. Bokuto was with his date at the bar, he was talking her head off, but she seemed to be interested in what he was saying. You didn’t want to disturb them, but Bokuto called you and Atsumu out.

“Tsumu! Y/N! Drink with us!” Bokuto ordered him and his date another shot.

“I’m not drinking tonight, I’m the DD tonight. But our manager here is feelin bold.” Atsumu waved down the bartender and ordered your favorite drink.

“Don’t get too drunk Bo, Sakusa will kill you if you get sick in his clean car.” You downed your drink. The champagne from earlier already making your head buzz.

“Yes ma’am, now me and this cutie are going back to the dancefloor. Have fun.” Bokuto held the girls hand and guided her back to the dance floor. They looked so cute together.

“I’ve got to use the bathroom, I’ll be right back.” Atsumu left you alone at the bar. Bad idea. You waved the bartender down and ordered two shots of tequila. You needed to get loose and the sugary drink he ordered for you wasn’t gonna cut it. You downed the shots and felt the warmth in your cheeks. You ordered one more for safe measure. With the evidence gone Atsumu didn’t suspect a thing when he came back.

“Ready to get back out there?” You nodded and headed back out. You noticed Bokuto was absolutely throwing it back on that girl, she looked so embarrassed but was definitely enjoying it. Sakusa and the older lady were enjoying a conversation at a secluded table. Hinata was hyping up the volleyball girl as she slowly dropped on the dance floor. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves.

“Now let's get back down to business.” Atsumu spun you around and pulled you close to him. “You have no idea how happy I am right now. I’m so glad your with me ” Atsumu planted a kiss on your forehead.

“Me too, I figured it would be another lonely valentines day, but this was a pleasant surprise.” You kissed him back on his cheek. Under the flashing light you could see the blush spreading on his cheeks.

“You won’t be lonely as long as I’m around Y/N. And that is a genuine Miya promise.” He crossed his heart as the upbeat music came back over the speaker. “Now let's get busy.” You two danced with your bodies hot and heavy against one another. It felt like heaven the way your bodies swayed under the strobe lights. It was like no one else was on the dance floor but you and him. You were fine and then all at once the tequila from earlier hit you like a train. The room was spinning and your spirit was rising. The liquid courage strikes again. You pulled away from Atsumu and stood in front of him.

“Tsumu you are so freakin sexy did ya know that?” You wrapped your arms around him and kissed his neck.

“Well yeah I am pretty sexy, but what’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” He quirked his eyebrow up.

“Tsumu, I had a little extra alcohol while you were in the bathroom. Don’t be mad please, but I’m feeling greatttttt.” You slurred out your words. “But don’t *hic* worry *hic* I can still dance, I’ve got a ton of songs left in me.” You looked up to see three Atsumu’s looking down at you. Between the alcohol running through you veins and the bright lights flashing your head went dizzy. The only thing you remembered before passing out was Atsumu saying something along the lines of “ARE YOU KIDDIN ME Y/N.”

“Next on the stage we have Miya Atsumu, he is the setter for the black jackals! He is single and ready to mingle.” You watched Atsumu walk up on stage, your body felt frozen. You watched him but his eyes never met yours once. You heard girls screaming out his name and bidding on him. But he's yours, right? You were unable to move, unable to speak. You wanted to scream out to him, but no avail.

“Going once, going twice, and sold.” You watched Atsumu jump off the stage and ran to the girl who won him. He picked her up and spun her around. This can't be right, he was yours. He wanted you, why is he going after her? He looked so happy to be with her, but he was yours, he even said it.

“Tsumu why?” Your voice came out finally.

“Your not good enough, you never were.” He began to laugh at you as the girl pulled him by the tie and kissed him on the lips.

“NO!” Your body jolted up. You could feel your heart rate skyrocketing. You realize you had a nightmare, but it felt so real.

“Y/N what wrong? Baby are you okay?” You heard Atsumu's voice but couldn’t make out where it was coming from.

“Tsumu, where are you?” You felt hot tears run down your face. You see a lamp flicker on and spy Atsumu wearing a white fitted shirt and boxers. You realize you are in his bed, you could tell from the sheets and comforter you helped him pick out a few months back.

“Hey, hey It's okay, tell me what's wrong.’ He came over and sat down beside you.

“Tsumu am I enough for you? You could do so much better than me.” You sobbed out, he gave you a confused look.

“You’ve always been enough, I don’t need better when I already have the best. Tell me what has you sayin these things.” He began to rub soothing circles on your back.

“I had a nightmare, you told me I wasn't enough and there was another girl and she kissed you.” Atsumu looked sad as you explained your nightmare to him.

“It was just a nightmare Y/N, yer my one and only. No one even compares to you.” He kissed your tear stained cheek. “What can I do to make you feel better?”

“Kiss me.” You blurted out, you covered your face with your hands in embarrassment. “Tsumu you don’t have t-” Your body fell back on the bed and Astumu hovered above you.

“Ask and you shall receive.” He leaned down and gave a kiss that made you lips tingle. He pulled away and look down on you with a gentle smile on his face. “Better?”

“Umm.. yes.” You lifted yourself back up. “Not to kill the mood, but what happened, how did I get here?”

“You blacked out on me princess. I had to get Bokuto to help drag you out of there and load you in my car. I was going to take you home, but I brought you here to make sure you were alright. No more drinking three shots of tequila back to back, Sakusa saw you and ratted you out.” Atsumu handed you some aspirin and a bottle of water he had on his nightstand.

“Sorry Tsumu.” You lowered your head in shame. You felt guilty for making him go through all the trouble.

“Don’t be, you were kinda cute clinging to me.” He got up from the bed and walked towards his dresser.

“Uh, Tsumu what is this on the floor?” You asked looking at a pile of pillows and blankets scattered beside of the bed.

“That is my makeshift bed, I was going to sleep on the couch, but I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He rummaged through the dresser. “I’ve got some of your spare clothes from the last team sleepover. Do you want to shower?” He handed you the clothes.

“Please.”

The hot water felt like heaven on your tired body. You lather yourself in Atsumu body wash and tried to remember what happened exactly. You can remember Bokuto and Atsumu gilding you to his car at some point. You also remember Sakusa dragging a drunk Hinata to his car, at least you weren't the only one. You remember a little bit of the car ride, Atsumu drove alot smoother thankfully. You stepped out of the shower and dried off. You felt like something was missing. You changed into your clothes and looked into the foggy mirror. You reached up to fix your hair and noticed the tennis bracelet Astumu had given you was missing. You slammed open the bathroom door and ran to Astumu’s bedroom, he was laid back playing on his phone.

“Tsumu my bracelet is missing!” You began to look around the room in sheer panic.

“It's here, I took it off ya when we got here.” He pointed at his nightstand and you see the bracelet shine under the light of the lamp. You grab your chest and sigh with relief.

“Thank God, I thought I had lost it. I would be devastated if I lost the first gift my boyfriend gave me.” You eyes widened when you realized what you said.

“Boyfriend huh? That’s got a nice ring to it.” Atsumu turned his phone off and plugged it into a charger. “Are you ready for bed, my girlfriend?” That did have a nice ring to it. You nodded your head and climbed into his king sized bed. Atsumu went to get back in the floor but you grabbed his wrist.

“I’d feel a lot better if you slept next to me. Please.” You averted your eyes.

“Anything for you, I’m relived you asked really. The floor is not very comfortable.” He lifted the comforter and crawled in beside of you. He kept a distance from you, despite what people may think, he was a true gentleman. You inched you way to his side of the bed and it didn’t go unnoticed. “Your making it obvious you want cuddled, come on over, I don’t bite.” You scooched over and laid your head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around you securing you in place. Your could hear the soft beating of his heart lulling you to sleep.

“I love you Y/N.” He softly whispered into you ear and gave your forehead a feather light kiss.

“I love you too Tsumu. You’ll be here when I wake up right?” Your eyes struggled to stay open.

“Yes I will, I will always be here. Sweet dreams my pretty girl.” You smiled and slowly fell asleep feeling safe and loved in his arms.

Fin

#Haikyuu Fluff #atsumu x female reader #atsumu x you #atsumu x reader #haikyuu angst #msby x reader #miya atsumu #atsumu fluff #haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader

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florrickandassociates · 3 years ago

Text

TGF Thoughts: 5x01- Previously on...

Welcome back!! I’m so excited to be writing one of these again. I think this hiatus has been the longest I’ve gone without new Diane Lockhart content in ten years, and it sure feels like it. A lot of important stuff has happened in the time since TGF season four ended (not concluded—ended). Most notably, CBS All Access became Paramount+ and suddenly started offering a lot of content I care about! I kid. 2020 was quite an eventful year, so I was curious how television’s most topical show was going to take it on. TGF is always forward-looking, but too much happened in 2020 to be ignored. And while I didn’t think TGF would have much to say about the pandemic, it seemed impossible to imagine a season five that pretended it never happened. Going into this premiere, I was expecting that they’d either skip COVID entirely or include very few references, but after seeing this episode, I feel like the writers took the only approach that made sense. And that is why they are the writers, and I'm just some girl on the internet who writes recaps.

Anyway, before I dive into the episode, I should also note that my pandemic boredom spurred me to actually pay $30 to watch this episode early as part of the virtual ATX Festival. Yes, I paid $30 on top of the money I spend every month on Paramount+ for this show. But I write tens of thousands of words about each TGF episode—are my priorities really that surprising? I note this not to brag or even to poke fun at myself, but because watching the episode before I knew a single thing about it (not even the title!) completely changed my viewing experience. I’ve never had an experience like this with TGW or TGF. I’m one to search for critics tweeting cryptically about screeners and refresh sites looking for background extras (haven’t done this in the TGF era, though) and read every single piece of press I can find. For any big episode, I usually know the outline of what to expect going in (I even knew about Will before the episode aired in the US!). Not this one! So, I got to be surprised, and I had to—gasp—formulate my own opinions before I knew what anyone else thought! It was really pleasant, actually. I think the structure of the episode worked extremely well for me because it caught me by surprise... and also because I’m the kind of person who somehow managed to write a college paper about Previously On sequences.

I see Tumblr has made it so that “keep reading” expands the post in your dash instead of opening a new tab. I absolutely hate this. Here is a link to the post you can click instead of the keep reading button!

The ATX stream started mid-sentence, meaning I missed the “Previously On... 2020...” title card and skipped right to Adrian saying “I’m retiring.” It was pretty easy to pick up on the device (the directness of the scenes at the start, their cadence, and their placement in the episode made it clear this was meant to mimic a Previously) but the second title card hit way harder because... well, I had no idea if this was meant to be 2020 or some moment outside of real time until a bit later in the episode.

Man, before I get any farther into this, two things that I don’t know where else to put. First, this episode had to cover so much ground. They had to write out both Adrian and Lucca—more on that later--, figure out how to deal with all of 2020, figure out how to either wrap up or continue all the truncated season 4 plotlines, and set the stage for a new season... in 50 minutes.

Second, just wanna shout out the Kings’ other Paramout+ show, Evil, which you should absolutely be watching even if you hate horror. Evil is a Kings show, so it is unsurprisingly topical (sometimes evil takes the form of racism or misogyny or Scott Rudin) and at times very, very funny. I would be recapping it if Paramount+ weren’t attacking me personally by airing it at the same time as TGF. Ever hear of too much of a good thing, people?! (On that note, I am VERY upset with myself for not having made a Good vs Evil joke about the Good shows and Evil. I didn’t even think about it until Robert King made the joke on Twitter, and it was right fucking there. How did I fail so miserably?!)

So STR Laurie, who wants a 20% downsizing, is still a thing. Noted.

This scene with Landau is the only one in this previously that is actually old footage, right?

Unexpected Margo Martindale! Yay! (Ruth Eastman is a character who is so much more effective on Fight than she was on Wife and I’m quite glad they’ve had her appear on Fight several times. It kind of redeems season seven. Kind of.)

I don’t think the writers intentionally chose for Adrian’s book deal to be with Simon & Schuster because it is the most politically fraught publisher (the number of stories about controversial memoirs they’ve picked up in 2021 alone...) but I kind of like that Adrian’s Road Not Taken involves S&S. My guess is they chose S&S because it is owned by ViacomCBS.

“Years ago, I wanted to create a law firm run entirely by women, but it never worked out. So, why not now?” Diane says to Liz. One of the advantages of having twelve (!!!) seasons of Diane Lockhart is that we’ve seen what she’s talking about. And we’ve seen her put this idea forward multiple times, too. I have my reservations about Diane’s brand of feminism, and I’ll say more about how fraught a Diane/Liz firm would be as the show explores the potential issues there, but on the surface I’m kind of excited about the prospect of a Diane/Liz led firm. Diane has wanted this for ages, Liz is a good partner, and this actually makes sense (unlike the nonsensical Diane/Alicia alliance of late season seven, where the only rationale was “well, Alicia needs to betray Diane in the finale, but they’re not on good terms. So maybe we make them business partners so then the betrayal stings more?”). Plus I fully love that Diane would end up running a firm with Alicia’s law school rival.

(Has TGF mentioned that Liz and Alicia were law school rivals? No. Am I still clinging on to that as a large part of Liz’s character? ABSOLUTELY.)

Julius is on trial for Memo 618 reasons; Diane is defending him. So this is still happening. (There’s more old footage here.)

Do they put these references to one/two party consent in these episodes as a wink at the fans? It has to be intentional. (Please do not ask me what the actual law is on this, this show has thoroughly confused me.)

I knew Cush was filming stuff for TGF, but I didn’t know it was for the premiere. She was just posting about it a few weeks ago, so either they shot a lot of it right before air or she posted a while after filming. Anyway, yay Lucca!

Bianca’s still around. And, TGF gets to shoot New York for New York, since Bianca is there. I do wish TGF could do more location shoots; there’s something about seeing an actual skyline that feels more real.

Bianca wants Lucca, who has never been outside of the country (except to St. Lucia, as Bianca reminds her) to go to London and buy her a resort. It’s supposed to be a three week stay and Bianca’s already arranged childcare. Speaking of children, because of COVID and filming constraints, that’s Cush’s real kid in this scene! You can’t really see him, but I recognized his curly hair from Cush’s Instagram, and the Kings confirmed in an interview.

Adrian wants to write a book about police brutality cases he’s worked on. Ruth very much does not want him to write that book. She wants him to write a book without substance about how white people and black people can work together. He, understandably, has no interest in writing this book. (Also, you can see in the background that Ruth doesn’t think Biden’s odds of winning the Democratic primary are good—there is a big down arrow next to his picture, which definitely dates this scene.)

Oh, David Lee is in this episode. He acts like an asshole towards Marissa when she’s trying to help him.

Marissa, not happy with the lack of respect, calls Lucca for advice “for a friend.” Lucca mentions she’s in London and Marissa does not believe her and keeps going on and on about her frustrations and her new desire to become a lawyer—quickly.

Marissa wanting to become a lawyer because she “hates being talked down to” is not a plot I would’ve expected but it’s also one that makes a lot of sense. I think Marissa’s used to being respected and praised even when she’s doing things that aren’t glamorous, so I see how she’d get very restless when she’s no longer outperforming expectations and is instead taken for granted.

Bells toll in the background on Lucca’s side and Marissa asks where she is. Lucca again notes she’s in London and Marissa still doesn’t believe her.

I’m going to miss Lucca so much, especially since we’ll also be losing a lot of the Millennial Friendship scenes with her. Cush is fantastic (even if she never really got enough to do here) and she plays so well off of the rest of the cast. I even sometimes liked the writing for Maia (who?) when she had scenes with Lucca, Lucca is that good.

Jay wakes up sweating and unable to breathe, so he deliriously calls his father-figure Adrian. This whole scene is shot like something out of Evil and (I’m getting ahead of myself here) this plot is the only thing about this episode I felt was a misstep.

“I think you’re my father,” Jay says to Adrian. Heh, I didn’t catch this line the first time around (maybe subliminally I did, since I just called Adrian his father figure lol) but I love that it is included here. Adrian and Jay’s relationship definitely deserves a goodbye.

Adrian calls an ambulance and also gets to Jay before the ambulance somehow. Adrian notes that Jay might have “this thing from China” and... we’re doing the pandemic, y’all. (Minor nitpick: on March 13th, 2020, when this scene is dated, COVID was not “this thing from China”-- we were all aware of it. March 11th was the day Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced they’d tested positive and the NBA shut down and travel was restricted and every single brand that had my email sent me a message about their plans and measures. March 12th was the last time I was in my office, and we’d been getting emails telling us to wash our hands and prepare to work remotely for weeks. I went to San Francisco in mid-late February and distinctly remember deciding to leave a burrito unattended on a table while I washed my hands because I was paranoid about COVID... and then I remember making a specific trip to Walgreens to buy hand sanitizer so that didn’t happen again. My point is, Adrian lives in the same world I do. On March 13th 2020, he would not be treating COVID like it was some new thing he’d vaguely heard of.)

(I am going to nitpick this timeline, but please know that I’m only doing it because I can, not because I think it’s necessarily a bad choice. Lines like this do feel a little forced, but I see the reason for introducing COVID as something new rather than going for the line that’s exactly historically accurate. I also am pretty sure there are references to dates in March/April in s4 of TGF that are now going to be contradicted by this episode, but I truly do not care. The writers get a pass on this one.)

We skip slightly back in time to the beginning of March after the MARCH 13TH title card, or maybe this is supposed to be after March 13th and my own memories are preventing me from believing these face-to-face interactions were happening. Who knows.

Michael Bloomberg is... here, again, I guess? He asks Diane to assist with a Supreme Court case about gun control. I guess it does add some weight to the plot and make the stakes feel higher.

Oh hey, this case is the 7x17 case!!!! Love that continuity.

Diane and Adrian are both at the office late, working, and there is an unnecessary split screen that feels even more unnecessary when you consider that the editing alone was enough to create the parallel.

Diane and Adrian have a nice convo (which I’ll really miss, their dynamic is great and this really feels like a successful partnership) as they wait for the elevator. When the elevator dings, they nearly tumble down into nothingness because... the elevator never came. Apparently this is a reference to an law old show I’ve never seen that killed off a character this way, and it’s meant to be a wink at how they are not going to kill off Adrian.

I do not know why I remember this, but I do: after they killed off Will, a critic (Noel Murray; I just googled to confirm my memory) who didn’t want to spoil things tweeted, “Exactly 23 years and 2 days ago, Rosalind Shays fell down an elevator shaft.” Please tell me why I remember this reference that I didn’t even understand well enough to have tracked down the original tweet in under a minute. (https://twitter.com/NoelMu/status/447942456827326464)

Back on this show, Diane and Adrian share a drink and talk about their wishes. Diane wants to argue in front of the Supreme Court, and Adrian encourages her to speak up. His own near-death experience motivates him to trash the book Ruth has him writing, and Diane trashes the (bad) legal strategy someone else prepared for the Supreme Court.

DIANE IS WEARING JEANS!!!!!! Tbh, I think my favorite part of this episode is how many slice-of-life scenes and settings we get. These are always my favorite moments. I love the satirical and political stuff too, but the character moments are what get me invested enough to write these. (Yes, Diane in jeans constitutes a character moment.)

Diane tells Bloomberg she wants to be involved and advocates for herself. Kurt gets a call on their landline (hahaha) from Adrian.

God, I love Diane and Kurt. Not only is their banter fun, you can just see a different, more relaxed side of Diane in these scenes. Diane tells Kurt she has good news for herself, but bad news for him since she’s arguing for gun control. She asks him to help her prep for court, too.

So this is before Jay is rushed to the hospital, because now we are back at the hospital with Julius, Diane, and Marissa. I do not believe any of these people would be setting foot in a hospital like it’s any other day on March 13th, 2020. But I'm trying not to nitpick.

I get why they chose to give Jay a rather severe case of COVID. I just don’t get literally anything else that follows from the initial shock of Jay having COVID.

I see why the writers chose March 20th (the actual Illinois stay at home order) as the next date for this timeline. I still do not believe that people were in this particular office on that date.

You know what else I don’t believe? That RBL just shut down for two weeks and was like, no work is being done. Did law firms really do this? I can believe it if it’s an excuse to cost-cut, and I know there were massive layoffs, but this seems... really weird???

Why are they setting up a teleconferencing infrastructure (didn’t they have one at LG? In season five?) if they are not planning to do work?

Lol Diane explains what Zoom is, very slowly. She asks everyone to “download a program called Zoom.com” which is one of the first Zoom jokes I’ve chuckled at in a while.

Marissa is not happy to hear that there’s no work for her in a work-remote world (this I believe 100%), so she calls Lucca again with more questions about law school.

Love these NYC and London location shots. Wish they could do that for Chicago.

Lucca asks Bianca to help get Marissa into a law school, fast, and Bianca tells Lucca to use her name... then offers her a job.

Marissa is at the office, alone, boxing up her things, when one of the office phones rings with some dude offering her a spot in a law school class. I guess we are really all-in on this! (Why would Lucca have given a firm phone number not specific to Marissa, though?)

Adrian and his corrupt girlfriend decide to shelter in place together. I still do not understand why he is okay with her being corrupt. I also don’t really understand why they’re going from talking about sheltering-in-place to George Floyd. How did we just skip from late March to late May? Are Adrian and corrupt gf having a conversation about sheltering-in-place two months into sheltering in place?

Okay, I am not doing so good at this no-nitpicking thing. Again, I understand why they need to merge several scenes into one to keep things moving. And I guess they could just be getting around to this conversation.

I’m going to nitpick again, I can’t help myself. How did we just go from a scene of Adrian specifically talking about sheltering in place to a scene of Adrian bursting into a bustling and maskless DNC headquarters room? How!? The only masks in this scene are on TV!! There are like ten people in this scene!

Anyway, more importantly, Adrian tells Ruth off and screams at her that she needs to listen to him instead of acting like she knows the way forward. He is completely right.

Why is travel from London closing down in May 2020? Is it because this scene is supposed to be at a different place in the episode? Liz is asking Lucca to come back home from her three week stay in London (which has now lasted three months but travel is just now closing down), and Lucca’s hesitant to come home.

This is all happening via Zoom, btw. Lucca’s in her hotel, Diane and Adrian are at their respective homes, and Liz is in the office. All of this feels right. There is a chat off to the side of the screen where you can see Adrian and the others discussing how to unmute on Zoom. Very real. Though probably not very real in late May 2020. Feels more like April. I am convinced this scene got spliced in later to help the episode flow because everything in this scene (except the TV footage that definitely was added later) feels like it should be happening in the March section.

Lucca mentions that Bianca offered her a job, and at this point we as viewers know how things are going to go—Lucca's going to end up taking it. Liz types in the Zoom chat that they don’t want to lose Lucca. When Lucca tells them how much Bianca’s offering ($500k/year, go Lucca!), Diane types “Shit.” into the chat. “Shit’s right,” Liz replies. “Yes... What should our counter be?” Diane replies. Lucca is kind enough to point out the messages are not private (again, this feels like March not May) but I think knowing that their reaction to topping $500k is “shit” tells her all she needs to know.

Diane’s background still says that RBL is a division of STR Laurie. Weird how little we are hearing about the overlords except the 20% staff cut.

Liz and Adrian chat and decide the only way to keep Lucca is to make her a partner. Which, yeah, if you’d just made her a partner years ago when you told her she was in the running for partner and then offered it to fucking MAIA, maybe she wouldn’t be considering Bianca’s offer. Lucca is definitely one of RBL’s stars, and I don’t think she’s wrong to feel like they don’t value her enough. They treat her well enough to be upset about losing her, but not well enough to have already made her partner and not well enough to actually give her authority (even though she runs a whole department). I’d be pretty unhappy too. It kind of feels sometimes like they take her for granted, and I don’t know that Lucca is one to feel like she owes a company anything. She’s more of an “I’m out for myself” type.

Madeline and the other partner we’ve seen a few times who isn’t Liz/Diane/Adrian, walk into the office (wearing masks! Which they take off as soon as they enter a room with Liz! Without asking her if she is okay with this! TV logic!) and ask who is replacing Adrian. They think this is a good time to reevaluate having a white name partner of an African American firm, and they are spot on. Liz tries to deflect, noting that Diane is already a name partner and was before Liz even joined, but Madeline and other partner (whose name I really wish they would say so I can stop calling him “other partner”) won’t let up. Their position is that Diane shouldn’t have been made a name partner then—all she did was bring in ChumHum, an account that quickly left the firm. Good point.

“What is this firm if it’s not African American? It’s just another midsized all-service Midwestern law firm, one of 50,” Madeline argues. The other partner says Liz needs to remove Diane and promote two African Americans to name partner. Liz laughs and asks if they mean themselves. Madeline does not—she's concerned about the number of black associates they’re letting go. Liz heads out, but this conversation is very much ongoing.

And I think it’s a very interesting dilemma! There’s a lot of mileage the writers can get out of this, because I don’t think there’s a right answer or a wrong one. It’s all about what Liz decides she wants the future of the firm to be. If Liz chooses Diane, she might be choosing something that works for her personally or that she thinks is a safer financial bet—but she’ll be choosing to work at a firm that can no longer be thought of as a black firm, and she’ll be choosing to move away from her father’s vision for the firm. And since the plot hinges on what Liz will decide rather than what’s objectively the right path forward, there’s a lot of interesting tension there I can’t wait to see.

(My favorite thing about Adrian leaving is that Liz will likely get more to do, especially when it comes to managing the firm. Adrian tends to speak up first, but Liz is more than capable of managing without him and I’m so excited to see what she does when her ex-husband isn’t constantly talking over her.)

Marissa and Lucca video chat with Jay. He’s still in the hospital. One thing that bugs me about how this episode handles COVID is that I never really get the sense that any of the characters are particularly afraid of the virus. Maybe none of them were. But you’d think you’d see a little of that fear, the weird dance of trying to assess others’ comfort levels with masking, etc., in an ep specifically about living through this time. ESPECIALLY since someone they all know and are close to has been hospitalized for MONTHS with this thing! It’s just so weird to go from a scene where people wear masks until they come in contact with other people (when masks matter the most) to a scene of someone in the hospital with COVID.

And now Jay’s weird hallucinations start as his battery dies on the video chat. I really, truly, hated these hallucinations. I was ready to be done with these from the second they started. They’re weirdly shot, they go on for too long, and they feel like the clunkiest parts of Mind’s Eye when Alicia starts having a debate in her mind about atheism mixed with the (far superior) hospital episode of Evil.

I don’t have much to say about these hallucinations except that I hated them a lot. When there’s the reveal that Jay is hallucinating a commerical, I almost came around on the hallucinations because that’s kind of funny and inspired. And then several more hallucinations popped up and they had a round table and Jesus got added to the mix and I was like, nope, this is bad in a very uninteresting way. I reject this.

I feel like the Kings didn’t have much to say about COVID, the actual virus. This episode is definitely more about what the characters’ lives were like during COVID and not the pandemic itself. I think they likely got a lot of their COVID commentary out of their system with their zombie COVID show The Bite (I have not seen The Bite due to it airing on Spectrum On Demand, which I have no way of accessing. Like, I would have to move and then decide to pay for cable in order to watch it.) I also suspect a lot of their commentary on COVID isn’t going to be specific to the virus and is instead going to be about things like mask-wearing and vaccinations becoming political. And, really, that’s just a new variation on talking about polarization... and they’ve been talking about polarization for years.

In fact, they even wrote a whole series about an outbreak of a (space-bug-spread) virus that caused political polarization before Trump was even elected. BrainDead is basically commentary on the pandemic before the pandemic even happened. Soooooo I get why they are more interested in recapping 2020 than in doing a Very Special Episode about themes they’ve been talking about for years. (I still think they would’ve benefitted from at least one character being afraid of getting sick or getting their family sick.)

There is likely some interesting content in these Jay hallucinations. I hate them so much I cannot find it. You know when you’re just on a completely different wavelength than the writers? This is an example of that.

Also I’m not a fan of the shadowy directing. I think this is meant to look cooler than it does.

Have I mentioned yet that I absolutely love the “Previously On” device for this episode? It’s such a fun, propulsive way to get through the slog of 2020. Scenes can be short and to the point, and each scene has to do a lot of lifting to fill in the gaps. I think that leads to scenes that are better constructed and telling on lots of levels—where are people when they’re quarantined? Who’s wearing casual clothes and when? What about this scene defines this character’s life at that moment in time?

Bizarrely, even though this episode is pretty much all plot (this happens! Then that!), I actually found this to be one of the most character-driven episodes TGF has ever done. There’s a lot of story, but most of that story is about how the characters reacted to 2020 rather than overarching plots that will weigh on the rest of the season. This episode covers a lot of ground, but it does it with character moments that resonate.

Now it’s July and Diane’s prepping to argue in front of the Supreme Court. Kurt’s helping her witness prep and it gets a little personal... and that ends up turning Diane on. Good to see McHart hasn’t lost its spark. (Remember how Kurt cheated on Diane in season 7 of Wife? No, me neither, because that never happened.)

Corrupt judge is back. Adrian playfully tries to distract her from work. Then he takes a video call from Liz, who updates him on the conversation she had with John (so that’s his name) and Madeline. I guess that part of May was close to July? Anyway, Adrian isn’t surprised to hear that people are upset at the prospect of Diane being one of two name partners.

Liz is at the office in workout clothes and I love it!

They’re losing 15 black associates (and Adrian and Lucca) and 4 white ones, Liz says. This sounds like a very big problem. (I’d be curious to know what that is as a percentage of the firm and how the racial composition shifts.)

Liz knows it’s not exactly up to her if Diane stays on as name partner (the other partners get a vote, but I think Liz knows she has a lot of sway here). She’s also wondering if Biden could win, and if so, would it be to the firm’s advantage to be black-owned? Interesting.

“Well. If you’re thinking it, then Diane’s thinking it, too,” Adrian says. He’s right. “White guilt. It runs verrrrry deep on that one, huh?” Ha. He is right about that, too. I actually can’t decide which of these interpretations is correct, because it could be either even though they seem contradictory. (1) Is Adrian saying it with a hint of mockery because he knows Diane will fight for her partnership even as she would say she’s a huge supporter of black businesses? (2) Is he saying it because he knows Diane would have enough white guilt to realize what her presence as a partner means and think through the implications? I think it is, somehow, a combination. I’m interested in this line because this whole dilemma (from Diane’s POV) is something that’s very familiar. Diane’s always been an idealist who will betray her ideals for personal gain. That sounds like an attack, but I mean that as neutrally as I possibly can. There are so many examples of this that this is kind of just a character trait of hers at this point. Usually those ideals are about feminism, but this situation seems closely related.

Adrian overhears Corrupt GF talking about Julius, Diane, and Memo 618. You would think she would wait to have this conversation until there is no chance of Adrian overhearing, because if Adrian overhears, he might...

... do exactly what he proceeds to do and hop into a car with Diane to give her a heads up. (I think I’m just going to have to accept that the mask usage rule on this episode is “we use masks to show that the characters would wear them, but we don’t want to have scenes where characters are fully masked because that’s annoying.” If that’s not the rule, then why else would Adrian be masked outside... and then take off his mask as soon as he gets into a confined indoor space with Diane?

Baranski looks ESPECIALLY like Taylor Swift in this scene.

Adrian tells Diane what he knows. He dug deeper after overhearing Charlotte, so he has even more info. “If you tell me, I will use it,” Diane warns. Adrian knows that, so he takes a moment to decide. And he decides that he cares more about Diane and Julius than about his relationship with a corrupt judge.

Diane and Julius are masked in court. Visitor and the judge are not. They use masking in a clever way in this scene: Diane uses being masked to her advantage because it means no one can possibly read her lips, so she can use the info Adrian fed her against Charlotte without any fear of spies. Charlotte, who is unmasked, guards her lips with a folder, as the Visitor watches interestedly.

Diane convinces Charlotte to recuse herself. Charlotte says she’s making a mistake; Diane does not care.

The new judge is, unfortunately, the idiot who doesn’t know anything about the law. Uh oh.

Charlotte decides she’s done sheltering in place with Adrian. He tries to talk through the conflict, but Charlotte says “You made your choice, Adrian. Julius Cain over me.”

“The choice was about right and wrong, Charlotte,” Adrian tries to explain. I mean, yeah, but if you’re dating a judge who has admitted she’s totally corrupt, didn’t right and wrong go out the window a while ago?

Adrian seems to think the other people involved in the events are bad and Charlotte is good. I am not convinced. I don’t think she’s the big bad, but I don’t think she’s good.

Charlotte points out that he invaded her privacy. She is right about that. “You said the choice was between right and wrong. Turning over my emails was the choice,” she said. I get her POV. But also, she is corrupt.

I do not like the way the part of the scene where Adrian physically restrains Charlotte to keep her from leaving is shot. I don’t think this is an abusive scene but I think it should’ve been shot from a little farther back so we could see it’s more like Adrian reaching out in desperation than trying to choke Charlotte. Because it very much looks like he is trying to choke Charlotte.

He tells Charlotte he loves her. She says it’s too late and leaves. “Maybe you won’t be with me. But you keep down this path... you’ll be done, I’m telling you, you’ll be done.”

I think something that I’ve been missing in these interactions is that I didn’t quite realize until this scene that the Adrian/Charlotte dynamic is more interesting than Adrian liking a corrupt judge. I think he truly believes Charlotte is a good person who got caught up in some bad stuff, and that she can bounce back from it. I’ve always seen Charlotte as someone who is corrupt for herself and then ended up going along with the corruption of others, too, so I’ve dismissed her and the relationship. This is the first scene that has felt real to me, and the first scene where she’s felt like more than a caricature. Kind of sad it’s the last she’ll get with Adrian—now I’m actually starting to find her interesting. Notice how in these last few sentences I’ve used her name instead of “Corrupt GF”!

Charlotte says she loved Adrian too, but that’s not enough. Awww.

He can’t really be surprised though, can he?

Now it is August and we get to see Diane and Liz react to the announcement of Kamala Harris as Biden’s VP pick, and I would like to thank the writers for giving me the opportunity to see Diane and Liz react to this. It’s kind of fan-service, but it’s also a nice tie-in to the girl-power theme of the Diane/Liz alliance.

Diane and Liz realize that Adrian’s probably not a good candidate for 2024 if the DNC only wants one black candidate and Harris is the clear front-runner. Liz suggests keeping him on as partner instead, in a way that very much implies this would be her ideal solution. Diane, being Diane, says she was liking the idea of an all-female firm. Liz hesitantly says she was too, and Diane senses the hesitation.

“Let’s look again at which associates to fire. I’m worried we’re losing too many African Americans,” Diane switches the subject. How have they still not made this decision? If any employees know downsizing is coming, and they’ve had months to act on it, assuming there are jobs elsewhere, people would’ve been jumping ship by now.

But that’s not the point of this scene. The point of this scene is that Liz corrects Diane: “Black. You can just say Black people.” Very nice moment underlining the tension. Diane means well, but she’s still acting like a white lady who doesn’t know how to act around black people... and she wants to (and, I guess, already does) run a black firm. Major yikes.

Marissa and Lucca are talking again. Marissa does not want to be in law school—she just wants to be a lawyer. Lucca won’t accept Marissa’s refusal to memorize meaningless rules: “Marissa. I know that you know how to play the game, but you have to pass the bar to get into a position to play the game.” Why does this line make me love Lucca? This line isn’t even anything amazing. It’s just a line that cuts through the bullshit and makes a good point.

Marissa keeps going, insulting all of her peers and teachers, and Lucca figures out how to cut through that, too: she tells Marissa that she’d hire her as a lawyer if she killed someone, but only if Marissa passes the bar. Marissa is instantly intrigued.

“Why are you leaving here? I’ll miss you,” Marissa says.

“Because they won’t pay me what I deserve,” Lucca says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Anyway, I thought they fired you.”

“But they didn’t mean it. It’s like the smoothie place—they kept trying to fire me and I just kept showing up,” Marissa replies. That checks out. (Love the callback!)

Lucca tries to get Marissa to come over to England. Marissa shuts that down as Lucca gets a news alert—and it’s not good news.

Our next date is September 18th, 2020 and I will get my nitpicks out of the way up front! I don’t really know why it is daytime for Lucca when she reads the news, considering it was already the evening in the States when the RBG news broke. And, also, it was Rosh Hashanah, so Marissa probably would not have been sitting in her bedroom studying... she most likely would’ve been with family or friends. OK I’M DONE. FOR NOW.

Diane is getting ready for her arguments in front of the Supreme Court. It’s almost time! She’s in casual clothes but has on a wonderful mask. She’s standing in front of Kurt’s guns to make a point (love that she’s using her video call background to her advantage) and there are several people in her bedroom getting the tech all set up. I have noted before that they only built one set for Diane’s apartment, and it’s just a massive bedroom. Diane choosing to be in front of the guns does a nice job of cutting off my question about why she’d be arguing in front of the Supreme Court from her bedroom rather than the home office she absolutely would have.

Kurt walks in and tries to shake hands... he’s clearly not very COVID paranoid, and Diane seems to be, and... that’s something I might have wanted to see? How was Diane okay with Kurt taking risks that also affected her?

Diane confirms she intentionally chose to stand in front of the guns. That’s when Kurt gets the push notification. He pulls Diane into the bathroom to show her the news. He hands her his phone and Diane’s face falls. She starts tearing up. “2020 just won’t let go,” she says, speaking for us all.

Normally I hate things that are like, we’re going to contrive this so the news hits at the worst possible moment! This works for me, because the Supreme Court plot for Diane feels more like something that exists to be a through line for the episode. It would also be a little hard to work in RBG’s death as a main plot point—and it is definitely important enough to be a main plotpoint—if it didn’t also affect something in the world of the show.

Also, another reason I like this contrivance is that it makes it all the more powerful when Diane says, “It’s over. He gets to nominate someone. Another Kavanaugh! We’ll have a conservative court for the next 20 years. My whole fucking life!” She’s not thinking about how this affects her case (and that case is basically a life-long dream for her). She is thinking about way bigger things, and knowing that her mind goes to the bigger things before the personal with news like this really underlines how big of a deal RBG’s death was.

Diane tells Kurt, “I don’t deserve you. You don’t agree with me.” “I can still feel bad for you,” he responds. He holds her while she cries.

Jay’s hallucination thing is back. Now Karl Marx is here. So is Jesus. I’m so done with this. It’s nice to get a break from writing.

Malcolm X is also on the roundtable and now they’re talking over each other in that way that everyone on this show always does. (RK gave an interview about Evil where he said he likes having the children on that show talk over each other because he grew up in a household like that. I did not need to read that interview to understand that RK likes scenes where people talk over each other.)

If anything happened in those hallucinations, I missed it, because I didn’t pause the episode. Because I do not care about the hallucinations. Because I hate them.

Now it’s November 2020... Diane’s watching election results and rocking back and forth. She tells Kurt he can go watch Fox News in the other room (so they do have more than one room!). He says he’s fine—he thinks Diane needs it more.

“Yes, but Kurt, if you stay, I know this isn’t sensible, but... Trump seems to get more votes whenever you’re sitting on this couch,” Diane tells him. Ha, I relate to this kind of superstition so hard. “Are you serious?” Kurt says. “I am so deathly serious,” Diane responds. “Whenever you’re sitting here, Arizona goes for Trump. Humor me, please. Just go in the other room.”

When Kurt tries to kiss her, she pulls away: “No, no, no. No kiss. If you kiss me, we’ll lose Georgia.” This scene feels so, so real and perfectly captures what it was like (at least for me, though I don’t have a Republican husband or anything) watching election results come in.

“Uh, if you lose, we’ll be fine, right?” Kurt asks. “Kurt, let me just say this. I’m only saying that we won’t be fine so that the universe will grant me a win,” Diane responds. This scene is so fun and so good! It simultaneously captures a relatable mood, adds some levity, gives us a window into Diane’s life, and shows some of the tensions in her marriage?! I want this all the time!

Kurt leaves the room. Diane pours more wine.

Later, with Diane still rocking back and forth with anxiety (just you wait for the several more days this will drag on!), Kurt brings in the champagne. “That was for when Hillary won. I can only drink it if Biden wins,” Diane protests. Did I also refuse to drink any celebratory alcohol until things were absolutely certain? No comment.

“It’s odd you progressives resisted religion. You seem to have a hundred religions to take its place,” Kurt says, speaking on behalf of the writers’ room. (This joke doesn’t get written if the writers don’t believe this and probably even see it in themselves.)

“Go away, Trump. I mean Kurt,” she shoos him away. Have I mentioned yet I love this scene?

“Love me even if you lose?” he jokes (though I do wonder if this isn’t that joking? I think it is, but he keeps saying it!) as Diane gestures at him to get out.

I could do without the joke about Diane’s heart on the TV for a couple reasons. One, it goes on too long. Two, I was very worried something would actually happen to Diane. You’d think that would make the scene feel more tense, but it does not, because it takes me out of the moment.

“Ok, God. You know I don’t believe in you. But I will believe in you if Joe Biden wins. I’m sorry. I know that that’s not what Jesus taught. There’s nothing in the New Testament that says, ‘Believe in me, and I’ll make sure your candidate wins,’ but I need Joe Biden to win. I’m sorry, God, but I just do. I need some faith.” This is a little much but... yeah. Also, is this the first time Diane’s flat out said she’s an atheist? I think it is, though I’ve assumed as much for quite a while.

The next day in court, masks are no longer required if you’re a series regular and votes are still being counted. I remember those days. Marissa thought Diane was checking in on Jay... Diane was not. She was checking on vote counts.

Apparently Jay’s finally being released from the hospital!

Bad news for Julius—the idiot judge finds him guilty of some nonsense charge and sentences him to seven years in prison.

Diane says not to worry, and Julius asks “Why not?” Good point.

Then we have election results! We skip, specifically, to December 14th and the electoral college vote. I’m a little sad we skipped over the huge party that was November 7th, but I get why they’d rather keep things moving along. I think showing November 7th in an uncomplicated way would’ve just been too close to fanservice. But, man, what a day.

Diane, in a red hoodie with leopard print that she somehow manages to still look classy in, is ready to pop champagne. Then she hears that on January 6th, a joint session of Congress will count the electoral votes and there might be a debate. “Nope. If I open it now, something bad will happen,” she reasons. “I’ve waited four years. I can wait another few weeks.”

It’s been almost a year and they’re still somehow negotiating with Lucca, but I understand why they’d space this out across the episode. Otherwise we’d have to say goodbye to Lucca in the first like, 15 mins of the episode and all those scenes would be in a row. I can forgive (and still nitpick) choices like this when the reasoning behind them seems sound.

Adrian says they don’t want to lose Lucca. He, Liz, and Diane are all in the conference room, and they ask Lucca for a yes or no on their latest offer by the end of the call. Diane offers Lucca partner—she'll be the youngest partner in the firm’s history—and she’ll get a $500,000/year salary. Adrian tries to sell her on being part of American history by being part of the firm.

“We are a black firm, Lucca, and we need you,” Liz says with a lot of passion for someone who knows she might very well partner with Diane. Diane looks at Liz with a bit of suspicion at this, wondering if Liz is showing her cards.

Lucca manages to make the wifi malfunction (or she gets very lucky) and uses the disconnection to call Bianca for a counteroffer, even though they said they needed a yes or no on the spot.

“They used George Floyd because they want you for less. They have never appreciated you as much as I do. All those scars, all that time being taken for granted and undervalued has made you a fighter. It’s made you someone I now want,” Bianca tells Lucca. She gives Lucca a counter offer of $1.3 million and the title of CFO. Lucca takes it. Is there really another choice? (If she were concerned about loyalty to the firm and the partnership was what she wanted, she probably would've just taken it.)

(Also, the partners can’t really act like Lucca is making history by being the youngest partner ever when they passed her over for partner two years earlier and offered it to Maia! To MAIA! Who had like three years of work experience! And yes I was fine with Alicia and Cary getting partnership offers with four years but, one, that was a scam, and two, Alicia and Cary actually worked. Oh, I see I still hate Maia with a passion. Back to THIS season...)

Lucca apologetically informs Marissa she’s leaving and the offer was just too good to turn down. I believe it. I also believe Lucca wants that job more. What has loyalty to RBL gotten her? She's someone so talented and good at her job that she just gets job offers from acquaintances all the time (starting with Alicia!). RBL appreciates her, but just enough to appease her while still undervaluing her. I don’t know that I would’ve believed a plot where Lucca actively job hunts, but I definitely believe this.

“Marissa, we don’t have to work together to be friends,” Lucca tells Marissa. I’m going to miss this so much. Why is this the best material Lucca’s gotten in ages?! I think one of the things that makes Lucca such a great character is that you can see why everyone instantly wants her on their team. She’s a fantastic friend (without giving too much of herself), she’s not a pushover, and she is incredibly sharp and able to get to the heart of any situation. I love her and I’m sad we won’t get to see more of her.

(On that bit about friendship—I can’t write about Lucca’s departure without writing about the moment I realized just how great of a character Lucca was. It was in 7x13, when Alicia has her breakdown that’s seven seasons in the making... and Lucca supports her. But the writing, and Cush’s performance, never make it feel like Lucca exists to be a part of Alicia’s story. Lucca seems like her own fully formed person who happens to be supporting Alicia at this moment. I don’t think I can overstate how tough of a task it is to get me to care about the other person in a pivotal Alicia scene, especially when that other person was added to the cast in the final season and many suspected she’d just be a replacement for a different beloved character! Anyway, Lucca’s been great for years, and I’ll miss her.)

Just when I thought I couldn’t hate the hallucinations more, we get a hint that they are going to continue: Jay sees one right after he learns that Marissa’s used her quarantine to start law school and he’s done nothing.

Jay says he carries a gun now and it’s “performative.” I have no idea what that means and Marissa and Lucca don’t seem to, either.

Another thing I like about Lucca’s final scene is that it isn’t rushed. We have time for all that, and also for Lucca to tell Marissa about the time she stole her breakfast sandwich, and for Marissa to react to it, and for Marissa to find Lucca’s Birkin bag, and for Lucca to tell Marissa to keep it, and for Marissa to react to that, and for Lucca to sappily say “think of me when you use it,” and for Marissa to nonsensically reply, “you think of me when I use it,” and there’s still a little bit more of the scene after that!

Marissa’s silly line makes Lucca tear up. “God, I’m gonna miss you guys,” she says. “I’m gonna miss this. You make me smile. I didn’t smile much before you guys.” Awwwwwww. This is also so true to character! Her friendship with Alicia aside, Lucca’s definitely said before she’s not one to have friends (which is hilarious because she is, as I've said like 100 times, a fantastic friend and also just like, the coolest person??? Who wouldn’t want to be HER friend?!).

She says she has to go because she’s getting too emotional and says goodbye. She’s also super sappy and when Marissa says, “you were the best,” she responds that they were the best TOGETHER! Awwwwwww.

What a nice, fitting goodbye for Lucca. There’s no bad blood or fireworks—she just makes a change like a lot of people do. I’d like to think she’ll still be friends with Marissa and Jay after this. I don’t want too many Lucca references in future episodes, but I would really like it if we see Marissa and Jay update each other on the latest from Lucca, or if a scene begins with Marissa closing out an Instagram post from Lucca of her kid, or something. I wouldn’t want clues about what Lucca’s up to, but I’d love to see that she’s still a part of Marissa and Jay’s lives.

Now it is January 6th. Liz, Adrian, and Diane sit on the floor of the mostly empty office, watching TV coverage and drinking. It’s so relaxed it’s almost surreal, and it, like many other moments in this episode, feels like a slice of life. Everyone’s dressed casually and no one is worried about appearances or looking like the boss.

“God, have you ever seen anything like it. It’s so fucked,” Diane says. Adrian’s more optimistic—the courts rejected most of the challenges to election results! “System worked,” he says. “Yay.” Liz says in response. She’s not as optimistic as he is.

“Liz. Liz. Sometimes when things work out, there is no parade. There’s no congratulations, but I’ll tell you this: We live to fight another day,” he explains to her even though she makes a good point that a system just barely hanging on doesn’t bode well for the future. (She doesn’t say all this, but that’s a very loaded, “Yay.”)

“Yeah? Then why are you leaving the law?” Liz asks. Diane seconds to the question.

Adrian announces he’s still retiring—and he’s moving to Atlanta. He wants to go to the south to help “create and consolidate political power.” He’s excited to start over and inspired by Georgia going blue. This is a very nice exit for Adrian. I fully believe that he’s interested in political organizing, that he’d be good at it, and that he’s ready for a change. I don’t think he’s always the most progressive person (of the three in this scene, Liz is absolutely the most progressive one, though Diane probably thinks she is!), but I absolutely think he thinks of himself as an activist and I believe that if he’s going to step away from the law, he’d do so to make a move like this.

Adrian—and Lucca, but especially Adrian—probably both got better exits thanks to the events of 2020. If Adrian had just left to be groomed by the DNC, that would’ve been a predictable and boring ending for him. His candidacy would, obviously, go nowhere, and the whole thing felt weird from the minute it was introduced. But this? Adrian being energized—like so many others were—by the ways the world changed in 2020 and using his already announced departure from the firm and recent breakup as a chance to start over and make change? This is great!

Adrian asks Liz and Diane what’s next for them. Liz says that she thinks the Biden admin will be better for black businesses. Adrian asks if they’re replacing him, and Diane says, “I think the big question is, are you replacing me?” She’s smart. I like how this scene goes from friendly to tense very fast, with everyone kind of testing the waters. Adrian tries to force the conversation, Liz opens with something vague yet pointed, and Diane speaks what’s previously been unspoken.

Liz says it’s not her intention to push Diane out. “I can’t change the color of my skin,” Diane replies. “I know,” Liz laughs. Audra’s delivery is fantastic on that line.

“Hey, I’m gonna fight for my partnership,” Diane says. “I know,” Liz says. The tone of this scene is so different from previous partnership drama on these shows and I’m excited about it. This is just a bunch of adults talking about business decisions with each other and treating each other as equals?? It's not backstabbing?? Or drama?? No one is hiding things?? It’s refreshing and I hope this plot stays like this. We’ve done so much partnership drama that I think drama that stems from a real, pressing question that has no easy answers and isn’t anyone’s fault is going to be much more fruitful for the show.

Adrian heads out—ah, I see now this scene is set in his empty office and this is why they are on the floor—and gets a nice last moment with Diane. And then they give him a last moment with Liz, which I knew they would but was still glad to see.

Liz asks if he knows what he’s doing—he says he’s not sure.

Adrian asks if Liz knows where she stands regarding Diane. “It’s going to be interesting,” Liz says. I don’t think she’s decided what she’s going to do yet.

It wouldn’t be an Adrian and Liz scene if Adrian didn’t have some unsolicited advice. “Diane’s a terrific lawyer, but this firm belongs to you. Your dad built it. He did, Liz. Despite all his faults. You got to run this place the way you want. This is a black firm. And after today, the world needs black firms. You got me?” He tells Liz. He makes it seem like Liz gets the choice and then tells her what to do. She says, “I got it,” signaling she understood him but not that she necessarily agrees.

I cannot wait to see what Liz does next!!!!!!! About this but just in general!!!!! Without Adrian there giving her constant advice I feel like she can grow so much and the show will have to give her more to do!!! I think Adrian, for all his many wonderful qualities and all he brought to the show, can suck all the air out of a room with his charisma, and Liz usually ends up suffering as a result. She’s such a capable lawyer in her own right, but Adrian has a way of making it always seem like he’s right—even in arguments she wins. I’m excited to see Liz lead (or stumble at leadership; she is fairly new to management) without Adrian’s direct influence.

Liz walks Adrian out and it’s cute. They run into Marissa and Jay. “Everybody fun is leaving,” Marissa notes. Liz is minorly offended, but playfully. Heh.

Adrian asks Jay how he’s doing; Jay says he’s a long-hauler but he’s doing okay. I like that they included that moment in Adrian’s goodbye sequence. It’s a very little thing, but it underlines that Adrian cares about Jay.

Then Liz interrupts to note that Trump pardoned a lot of convicted and corrupt Republican officials....... including Julius.

Everyone celebrates, but especially Diane and Marissa. Diane lets out her wonderful laugh and then we, finally, get to the credits. Because now that the previouslies are over, it’s time for the real show.

The credits are absolutely delightful, btw. I was a little worried some of the kittens would blow up, though! Once I relaxed and realized what they were up to—literal puppies and kittens because Biden won—I couldn’t get enough of these credits. They work so well because they accurately capture the way I (and all of these characters, except maybe Julius and Kurt) feel about the election results, but it’s so exaggerated that you know the kittens and puppies aren’t a realistic representation of our new reality. They’re just too good to be true, but you may as well enjoy them for a minute. I’m sure we’ll be back to exploding vases next week.

What a great episode! My timeline nitpicks and whatever they’re trying to do with Jay aside, I was blown away by how well the writers managed to move on from season 4, tie up loose ends, and write out two main characters. And they did it all while making me revisit the events of 2020, a year I don’t think many of us want to spend much time thinking about! This episode was enjoyable, fun, emotional, and clever. I don’t know what to expect from the rest of the season, but I’m definitely excited about the show in a way I haven’t really been in quite some time.

This season’s naming convention seems to be titles that end with ... and only have the first word capitalized. I want to see more.

Season FIVE? There have already been as many TGF seasons as there were TGW seasons prior to Hitting the Fan?! Time flies.

Please writers: No topical episodes this year-- no pee tape, no Melania divorce, no Epstein. None of that business.

Sorry if I repeated myself here. I never proofread these things, and I wrote half of this on Saturday and half of it today (Wednesday) and the days in between were an absolute blur so I cannot remember if I said the same things about this episode twice.

#the good fight #tgfthoughts

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kolbisneat · 4 years ago

Text

MONTHLY MEDIA: March 2021

Hey March was a weird month what with all the pandemic anniversaries and such but here we are. It’s March. Goodbye March.

……….FILM……….

Attack the Block (2011) After about 20 minutes my partner asked if this was basically a British episode of Goosebumps and....she’s not wrong? I liked it back when it came out but it’s aged really well. Tight script and casual class politics along with the very good space stuff.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) It turns out I’d remembered so little of this movie that it was essentially a fresh viewing. The artistry and ambition still holds up today plus a noir set in L.A. is always good time. But then you add cartoon hijinks and it’s all just that much better.

The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears (2021) So we watched the ep on Britney Spears and...it didn’t really seem to cover all that much. It kept feeling like it was about to start and then after an hour and a half of that it just sorta wraps with a small legal victory. I know this isn’t fiction so I’m not expecting a happy ending, but I don’t know what it wanted to say.

CBS presents Oprah with Meghan and Harry (2021) I mean I don’t think anything said or shared was surprising anyone. Though I appreciate Oprah not letting either of them sidestep a question. Either answer or say you won’t; none of this fancy poetry.

……….TELEVISION……….

Great British Bake Off (Episode 9.01 to 9.04) This is our first season without Mary Berry, Sue, and Mel and it’s a real shift! But despite all the new faces, it still feels very much like the good-natured GBBO I’ve come to love. Great stuff.

City of Ghosts (Episode 1.01 to 1.06) I hope all that I’m seeing about this means that Netflix will greenlight another season and more television like this. The artistry is fantastic, the concept allows for both whimsy and poignancy, and it’s casually funny in a way that I can’t fully describe. Great stuff.

WandaVision (Episode 1.09) So this didn’t quite stick the landing for me. I figured there’d be some blasts and magic and zooming around in the sky, but I also assumed we’d get some resolution (maybe even consequences) for what Wanda did to the town. Sure, she’s not the villain and it wasn’t intentional, but the show appeared to be built around this theme of denial and acceptance yet abandoned that in the end. But I will give it this: it really has sold me on the relationship between Wanda and Vision.

The Night Manager (Episode 1.05 to 1.06) You know I think I’ve been so primed by Bond films and action set pieces that, while I won’t spoil the ending, I was pleasantly surprised by how it wrapped up. It was a nice change of pace.

The Bachelor (Episode 25.09 to 25.12) What a season. It was a mess, sure, but I also think it was the uncomfortable mix of stagnation and progress. The show needs to evolve and I feel like the finale and aftershow really highlighted that the change has to happen. Maybe it’s starting to happen already or in future seasons it’ll change whether production likes it or not.

……….READING……….

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Complete) Really fantastic read and such an effortless blend of science fiction and...necromantic fantasy! Dark and gross and light and funny all at the same time. 100% recommend and am very excited for the next entry despite this feeling whole and complete on its own.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Complete) I want to work my way through the series (or at least the original 14 written by Baum) so we gotta start at the beginning! There’s such a light air about the book that everyone kinda just rolls with everything. Sentient objects and talking animals and lots of murder are just met with a “Great! on to the next adventure!” and I love it.

The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Complete) It’s really great that the second book has a lot of the same core components (human child meets a bunch of wacky sidekicks while on a very small adventure) yet casually expands the mythos and world. It even builds on the plot established by the first book (the main conflict revolving around Scarecrow being overthrown as leader of Oz ever since the Wizard disappeared). Great stuff.

Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Complete) Bringing back Dorothy and it’s really a merging of characters from book 1 and 2. If anything, this series is shaping up to be about making friends and the genial conflict resolution is really heartwarming. Now i’m keen to watch Return to Oz.

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum (Complete) This might just be me but I find a mostly human cast (outside of Jim the Cab Horse) to be far less interesting than the diverse adventuring parties of the first three books. Lots of fun stuff in here and playing fast and loose with the world-building works well; highlight the fun parts of a land made of wood and then continue on to the next location! Great stuff.

Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 9 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) It feels like everything is starting to come together and wrap up and I’m totally here for a story that knows what it wants to do. And while there doesn’t seem to be as much room cooking with the overarching plot that is driving the story, it never feels like it’s moved away from the heart of the characters and for that I can’t recommend it enough. Excellent world-building, excellent cast, and really great humor.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The IDW Collection Volume 9 by Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Mateus Santolouco, Dave Wachter, Pablo Tunica, Sophie Campbell, and many more! (Complete) The human/secret agent stuff will always be boring to me (even if they’re hunting the turtles) cause that’s not what I want in a comic. I don’t want Batman hunting burglars, I want bright colourful villains for our bright and colorful heroes. Luckily we get into a pocket dimension for a toad god and his relatives during the second half of the volume. Overall, still my favourite ooze series.

……….AUDIO……….

Musicalsplaining (Podcast) Great host dynamics and hot dang I love a good musical.

……….GAMING……….

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The group has taken a break from the infected giant colony to sort out some Pirate drama! Further session breakdowns are over here on Reddit!

Dungeons & Designers (Podcast) I had the rare chance to play in a D&D campaign instead of run it and it’s even up online! They also air the sessions through their podcast!

And that’s it! As always, let me know anything you think I should check out and thanks for reading.

Happy Wednesday.

#Monthly Media #Kolbisneat #Andrew Kolb

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fanficmemes · 4 years ago

Note

Dear CB,

The seasons are changing and the coldness of the day we first met is slowly melting away. Time have passed, new discoveries about the art of writing showed in the space is your personal journal, esteemed opinions come and go, and i find myself always thinking about you.

You have written to me in secret, adding at a post scriptum of a letter not meant for me, and i come to answer.

You do not have to worry about still not having published my article about the incredibles and quite particulars exemplars of mhytological figures i had the possibility to study and describe in your famous estate. The text was meant only as an help for you in your tiring work of maintaining such a complex ecosystem, and for how much i appreciate your desire to give me credit, the final piece about the lore of your world will still be indeed yours, and i would never want to make what is an entertainment a burden for you.

You are wrong in thinking it took too much of my time, when no time would be too much in a matter tickle so much my curiosity and so much want to be studied. While writing i could live again all the moments my little summary wanted to convey, and i felt so taken by these important figures the limit between the myself and the lore was so thin i would question myself if i personally was not one of them and living like them.

Preparing some sweet cake yesterday i hoped you were in good health. The cake come out delicious, and i like to think it was your thought. How your country is cruel to you! I am so sorry about your works. Send world if in some way i could be of help. I thought about how sweet it would have been to offer you some slices,do you like citrus flavour? My lemon pie is quite renewed in this piece of earth, i could send you the recipe if it is at your liking. An ocean keep us apart and i don't think i will ever find myself in a situation to come in your home and offer it to you by myself.

Everyone is in need of bosom friends who offer them cake.

Truly yours,

Soupy

P.s: in these trying time, i offer you the little silly game of finding one of the letters i have already sent you anonymously in the last months. I have to tell i don't even know myself how many i have written. The days are long and my morbid curiosity on these matters too strong to be resisted, but i would love to see in what words you think find my spirit, being about cursed matters or common talks. I will give you the clue that this week no cursed story was written to you by me, having my researches being fruitless.

My dearest Soup,

I have long avoided writing this letter, as the most meaningful words simply would not come to me. How, I wondered, shall I respond to the most beautiful letter I’ve ever seen? I shall begin, I think, of telling you of the flowers I’ve pressed for you in my most beloved journal. As there is an ocean in between us, most likely I will never be able to give you your thank you flowers, but I’d love to post a picture of them for you later, if that is acceptable.

It has been a most cruel and formidable year for us all, and I speak not only for myself, but for the whole of my blog when I say that you have made it much brighter. Your letter not only made me cry when I read it, but it has inspired me to start writing for the first time in over two years.

If you are amenable to the idea, I’d quite like to share a recipe for spiced pecans and hot wassel (a sort of spiced cider, my mothers recipe) with you. I’ve always believed that recipes should be shared with friends, and these are some of my favorites.

Yours in both curses and friendship,

p.s. I’m actually quite bad at noticing small details unless they are pointed out at me, a rather bothersome character flaw, I’m afraid. Hopefully you will forgive me for not noticing, but it was an exciting journey through asks of old while searching for them. Thank you for not only the research and letter, but the fun of a scavenger hunt.

#asks #personal asks #soups letters #im writing a response to your other letter as we speak #no worries they were not eaten #srsly im printing this out its beautiful #thank you so much dude fr fr for the lore and the serotonin

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ncisladaily · 4 years ago

Link

Renée Felice Smith was only six years old when she knew that she wanted to be an actress and storyteller, but people tried to dissuade her from her chosen career path, telling her it was an impossible goal. Luckily, Smith’s parents weren’t among the naysayers, and today she’s living her dream, starring as Intelligence Analyst Nell Jones on NCIS: Los Angeles (Sundays, 9 p.m., CBS) and co-authoring her first children’s book Hugo and the Impossible Thing with her creative partner Chris Gabriel.

So, when her French Bulldog Hugo was diagnosed with a brain tumor, Smith once again ignored the doubters and found the best vet possible to give Hugo a shot at life rather than listen to those who told her it was “just truly impossible.”

“We just knew we had to try for our little guy, and we’re so glad we did because he was with us for another two beautiful years, just grinning, growling and running around the yard like the wild man that he always was,” Smith tells Parade.com in this exclusive interview. “So, we’re so glad we fought for him and advocated for him.”

When Hugo finally passed, Smith and Gabriel knew they had to tell his story to inspire others to conquer the seemingly impossible things in their life. So they wrote a story about a little dog named Hugo, who succeeded where others didn’t even try as a result of his bravery, curiosity, teamwork and persistence.

“The love is still here, and it needed someplace to go, so now we have the book and Hugo’s message that now we get to share with the world, which I’m just so grateful that it’s become real,” Smith adds.

Related: NCIS: Los Angeles‘ Daniela Ruah Speculates About Whether Kensi and Deeks Will Survive the Obstacles Ahead

This Sunday night, Smith will be back with some teamwork of her own when NCIS: Los Angeles returns with a new episode dealing with technology, which is something that Nell excels at. In the “Imposter Syndrome” episode, NCIS obtains a hard drive containing a realistic deep fake video of a deceased terrorist and must retrieve the dangerous technology behind it. However, when the team’s comms are hijacked during their mission, they find that one of their own has been a victim of its potential.

And, spoiler alert, Smith says that in the May 23 Season 12 finale, Nell will finally be reunited with Hetty (Linda Hunt)! But how that will play out remains to be seen.

“Linda was essentially sidelined by the pandemic, but, very exciting, I do share a scene with her in our season finale and it’s one of the most memorable scenes of my time on NCIS: LA, so I’m very grateful to have her back as my scene partner,” Smith says.

For more of what Smith had to say about her real-life Hugo and Hugo and the Impossible Thing, as well as more NCIS: Los Angeles scoop, read on.

With your background, a movie seems a more natural project than a book about Hugo. How did it turn into a book?

Chris, my other half, and I are lovers of all types of books. We grew up with children’s books and some of the most impactful stories and lessons we feel that we’ve learned in our lives we learned in the pages of those books, so we really wanted to create this modern classic, a book that kids, or quite frankly, anyone nowadays could really benefit from.

Especially right now, we’re all dealing with our own version of the impossible thing, and we’re trying to find our way to the other side. What better way to inspire you and yours to go out and conquer whatever your impossible thing is than through a storybook following this spirited French Bulldog through the forest, kind of this yellow brick road, Wizard of Oz structure? He meets up with his forest friends and they end up helping him through the impossible thing. It’s really a story about bravery, curiosity, teamwork and persistence. We wanted to encourage that in our readers, both young and young at heart.

Tell us about Hugo and his battle with his brain tumor.

Hugo was diagnosed with a brain tumor and we were truly beside ourselves. It was an out-of-body experience. He was a feisty, curious, wild man who was quite literally sidelined by this potentially terminal disease, and we just knew that we didn’t want to give up on him, and he wasn’t giving up on himself. Every step of the way, we would say out loud, “Hugo, just let us know, buddy, do you want to keep going?” And he met us with this enthusiasm for the process every step of the way. And that is truly why we kept going.

Did Hugo instill in you the belief that the impossible might be possible? Or did you already have that?

That’s interesting. I think the process really showed us that if you ask the questions, oftentimes the people who ask the questions are the people who find the answers, and this process really reiterated that. He inspired us to advocate for him, because animals are helpless on their own, but we could do something about it. We could ask the questions; we could be his voice. I’m just so thankful that he was always this bright light that had this insatiable curiosity for life. He definitely imbued that in me, and I know he imbued that in Chris. He did inspire us to help him conquer his impossible thing. If he didn’t have the fight in him, if he wasn’t such a spirited dog, I don’t know if that would’ve happened, but he was singular in a way. I reference him as my canine son, because he was. He was my baby.

On NCIS: Los Angeles, Nell is torn these days. She feels Hetty tricked her into taking the job when she said she didn’t want it, but she has the support of her team and also Kilbride. So how do you think she’s feeling these days?

She really is at a crossroads in her life. I think a lot of young women find themselves at this point, where they are very good at their job, but is it the job that they always saw themselves in? Is it the job they saw their future selves thriving in? I think for Nell, she’s really questioning whether she wants this to be her story, and in the process, she’s really finding her voice this season. There’s a scene with Sam Hanna, LL Cool J‘s character, that recently aired, where she spells out her frustrations in her position as de facto operations manager and how she’s struggling to keep the plates spinning. And she tells him that he needs to get on her team. It was a really stern moment for Nell.

I don’t think we’ve really ever seen that. Actually, LL Cool J and I were talking about what a different flavor this scene is bringing to the show because Nell usually is quick with a quip, but she doesn’t often drop the hammer in this way. And this season, we really do get to see Nell drop this hammer, stand in her power, and let people know that she needs help and she’s questioning this process.

I think that’s the side of being the operations manager that we didn’t really get to see very much with Hetty because she had everything under control. So, it’s kind of fun and new to see the person, who may be greener in the position, find her way in this new position of leadership.

How much has COVID affected what we’re seeing this season? Is that why we don’t see more of Linda Hunt, to keep her safe? And I noticed there are fewer people in scenes, especially in ops.

You’re absolutely right. Our show did an incredible job managing the crisis that was the pandemic and continues to be the pandemic. We are tested five days a week. Our crew was incredible in keeping everyone safe. The was goal to keep everyone safe, and we were, in turn, able to create 18 episodes of television, which is incredible.

You were just picked up for your 13th season, so it isn’t over yet, but when you look back, what will you take away from it?

Oh, my goodness. We’re a family, you know, but it’s been a mini-film school for me as well. My time at NCIS: LA has been educational. I just pinch myself how lucky I am that I was able to quite frankly lock onto a job like this for so long. In our industry, stability as an actor is not something you often experience. So, to have this group of people who I’ve grown to love and really consider extensions of my family, I’m just so grateful for the time. I feel like I’ve been a student. I feel like I went to school all over again for 10 years.

With Linda being this master in her craft, I can’t even quantify what I learned from her and most of it happens when we’re waiting to do our scene. It’s in those moments that I hear the stories from her childhood and the stories from early in her career, just these nuggets of wisdom that I have now in my little carpet bag.

From your work outside NCIS: LA, it seems as if maybe long-term, you’re more interested in being behind the camera and writing, producing, directing.

It’s interesting, often as actors, we’re part of someone else’s story, we’re carrying out someone else’s vision, but I’ve always been a storyteller. As a kid, I would essentially write my own little plays and perform them in the yard and direct my friends and family, my sister, namely, in those plays. And for as long as I remember, I’ve always wanted to tell stories. So, yeah, that is where I see myself heading in the future.

You’ve said that you knew at age six that this is what you want to do. And you were lucky that your parents supported you.

Oh, 100 percent. I wouldn’t be standing here today if they hadn’t instilled confidence in me and in my creativity. They really created an environment that fostered out-of-the-box thinking, and I’m so grateful for that.

Which takes us full circle back to the impossible just might be possible.

It’s so true. If you’re curious enough and brave enough and you have the support, obviously, of your community, I think that’s the missing piece in a lot of these puzzles. It’s really the support because you can’t get there alone. No one can. The one-woman show does not exist. It’s an ensemble; it’s a production.

#s12 #Renee Felice Smith #Linda Hunt #ncis la #ncisla #NCIS Los Angeles

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fritae · 4 years ago

Text

The Missing Piece : Chapter 1

Gang leader! AU / Corporate! AU

Characters: Dabi x F/OC

Status: Ongoing

Summary:

Rina Aoki is the secretary of one of the world's biggest broadcasting stations - only she hates her job and wakes up everyday asking herself if this is all there is to life. Then, she meets Dabi: a man of overpowering confidence and many, many secrets. But beneath all that confidence is a wounded soul and years' worth of repressed anger. The two struggle with fear, ambition, vulnerability - but eventually learn that life may just be better when you don't have to struggle alone.

A/N:

There are no quirks in this story. I tried to give it a real world spin. But it will explore dynamics between good and evil, right and wrong, and feelings of family, friendship, love and belonging. I'm super excited about the story and I hope you enjoy it!Chapter 1: the meeting

Chapter One: The Meeting

It was raining.

I hide my tote under my coat out of fear for my laptop. If it gets wet, I'm done for. My boss isn't exactly the most considerate person out there. If anything were to happen to the highly coveted files on it, I might as well hand in my resignation.

I sigh with relief once the bus arrives, and quickly hurry inside.

As I find a seat, I lean my head against the window, not caring for germs or the subtle tremble of the glass. It feels cool against my skin, and not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. But more importantly, it is distracting. It'll give me something else to focus on during the ride.

At least I hoped so.

But within minutes, it becomes clear that my mind has no intention of being distracted. The thoughts creep in and suddenly the soft hum of the engine is no match against the throbbing in my head.

Of course not.

Distractions simply don't last long these days.

So I surrender to the thoughts as I stare at the passing streets, feeling increasingly empty by the minute.

I hate my job. I hate everything about it. Working as a secretary for a broadcasting company is a dream for many. The salary isn't bad. I have access to exclusive events and frequently coordinate with the biggest names in the industry. I know the ins and outs of selling an idea and making it resonate with millions.

But I quickly learned all the people in this industry are insufferable. The whole premise rests upon the art of manipulation, taking something that may very well be worthless and conning people into thinking it will fill a hole they didn't even know they had. The people are superficial, be it actors or other famous personalities. Everyone is so obsessed with images. How to best put on a show to gain the love and admiration of millions.

But what use is their love if it's built upon the distortion of reality?

I shake my head before burying it in my palms.

No matter, I tell myself.

As frustrating and unfulfilling as the work may be, it pays the bills and keeps me busy.

A little too busy...

I get up once my stop arrives. I say a quick thank you to the bus driver before hurrying out.

The cold makes me shiver and I pull my skirt to cover more of my thighs before plastering a fake smile onto my face.

The fake smile is part of the uniform here.

My heels click together with attitude as I make my way through the building. The noise hits my ears immediately. Loud chattering, blaring music and upbeat announcements stand in sharp contrast to the calm of the rainy world outside. I blow kisses as my colleagues call out my name from the studio floor.

My friend and roommate Aliyah takes off her headset to wave me over. She left home extra early today owing to her busy schedule as floor manager. The glaring lights tell me they're about to start shooting but as much as I want to help her with final preparations, I have more important things to worry about right now.

"Can't talk now, Al!" I say apologetically. With one point to my tote bag, she understands. "Good luck!" she shouts back, before returning her attention to the production crew.

I sigh.

I will definitely need all the luck I can get.

I take the elevator up to the highest floor of the company. While our studios are bright, loud and fun. The offices are formal, professional and characteristic of a multibillion dollar company. I knock twice before heading into the largest office at the end of the hall, where my boss is waiting for me. The letters NNTV adorn the walls in an elegant gold print behind him.

A pair of glasses sits on the bridge of Mr. Lane's nose as he reads over today's reports.

"You're late, Ms. Aoki." He says without looking up.

"Apologies, sir. It was unexpected."

"Do I not say to account for the unexpected in your planning, Ms. Aoki?"

"It won't happen again, sir."

He offers me a *tsk* in response.

"Our ratings have gone down this month. Much more than we anticipated." Mr. Lane grumbles.

"CBS' new reality show has attracted a lot of viewers, sir. It's competing with our usual broadcasts at-."

"Then why have you not found a program to substitute whatever we usually air at that time?"

I bite back a sigh. "The current schedule is the most optimal, sir. If we switch around any programs we risk affecting the viewership of The Midnight Show and Killer."

"Well then figure something out!" He barks. "That's what your job is, isn't it?"

"We have a team for a reason, sir. Perhaps we can consult them today? I can schedule an emergency meeting to address this."

I say this knowing the rest of the team won't alter the schedule. The nature of the industry is ratings fluctuate all the time. To change our scheduling at every hint of a drop will only harm our future ratings.

He waves me away. "Schedule it for two hours from now. Cancel anything else I have at that time."

"Yes sir." I confirm, before turning around.

My nostrils seethe as I suddenly hear him mutter *Useless* under his breath.

The rest of the day is spent taking more orders and backtracking on Mr. Lane's previous decisions. Just as I'd expected, the board decided it would be better to simply wait out the next two weeks until the current programs are finished before rearranging any of the schedules. I make a mental note to consider what might be a suitable alternative in the meantime.

The hours drag on. I should have been done at 5, but 7 o clock hits and I'm still taking phone call after phone call. It isn't until a quarter to 9 that I can finally go home.

I sigh as I pass the much quieter studio floor on the way out. I don't find Aliyah among the crew, but I'm sure she's taking care of her own things at the moment. The Midnight Show is scheduled for well, midnight, so she's probably taking a final break before her last project of the night.

Once I am outside, I let out a deep breath I didn't know I was holding in. Instead of taking the bus straight home, I find myself walking toward Café Du Monde. It sits a few blocks away from the NNTV building.

The smell of roasted coffee beans and fresh pastries greets me as I enter. The soft jazz is welcomed by my ears after a day of nonstop chatter and corporate debate.

As I stand in line, I remind myself to pick up coffees before I leave for the crew working late tonight. Hopefully Aliyah will be back by then.

---

"Shit," I hear the man ahead of me in line mutter. "I think I forgot my wallet back in the office."

He checks his pockets again, but finding them empty he looks up at the cashier. "Sorry man, I'll be back another day."

But before he could walk away, I step up to the register. "It's okay, I got it."

He glances at me. "Nah, don't-"

"It's nothing. Can you add another coffee to the order please?"

The cashier punches a few numbers into the register and I hand him a 20.

---

The man tips his hand in thanks. I nod back at him and walk up to the roof.

With a coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I sigh. Now to get the day out of my system...

"How can I repay you," A smooth voice says behind me.

I look over my shoulder to see the man walk up to the ledge with me. He has electrifying blue eyes, a head of thick dark hair, and the kind of walk that signifies authority.

"You good at conversation?" I ask.

He thinks for a moment. "How about I let you be the judge of that?"

I pass the man a cigarette. "Then distract me."

"You don't look like the type to smoke." He comments before accepting it.

"Looks can be deceiving." I shrug.

"It feel good or something?"

"Or something." I confirm with a smile. "Just reminds me to breathe in," and with a soft easing in my chest, "and breathe out."

He leans back against the railing. "Hm. You know breathing quality isn't exactly what people would associate with cigarettes."

I roll my eyes. "You know what I mean."

The man chuckles. "Yeah. Although I think rearranging a few things in your life would help more than smoking. Don't want to grow reliant on an outside source for relief now."

"Well, well. Wasn't aware I was speaking to a mental health guru."

He seems amused by that. "That's not what the people working for me would say but it's nice to know their sentiments aren't universal."

"Ah. So you're a shitty boss."

"I'm just a boss." He corrects. "What people think of me has nothing to do with me."

"Must be nice to believe that." I sigh, taking another puff of my roll.

"No reason not to, eh? Letting others' opinions matter to you means you lose power over yourself. There's nothing you could want from them that you can't do for yourself."

"Money?" I suggest.

"That's easy. But it depends on how willing you are to work for it."

"Work quite a lot." I scowl. "...starting to wonder if it's worth the headache, to be honest."

The man leans closer to me, his breath warm against my ear. I try not to focus on the scent of his cologne, musky with notes of amber and cedar wood. "Then what you want isn't really money. Sounds like you want more."

"More?"

"Yeah. Money by itself isn't satisfying," He says matter of factly. He leans away to take a sip of his coffee. "Only when it's coupled with a goal."

"Hm."

"Money doesn't take you anywhere; it's just a means to an end." He continues. There's an air of mystery behind those turquoise eyes of his. "Your goal is what guides you. Where do you want to go?"

Someone in this neighborhood that doesn't live and die for money? I almost want to laugh. What goal guides him then? What does he stay alive for?

But I keep those questions to myself. I shouldn't get too close to a man I'll never see again.

"I want to be my own boss." I say with a soft smile. Be my own boss. Wouldn't that be nice? No more waking up with Mr. Lane's voice already echoing in my head. No more plastering fake smiles and maintaining that "professional" semblance for hours on end. "I'm tired of taking orders from other people."

I almost miss the sudden gleam in his eye.

"Now that's more like it."

---

I leave the cafe with a box of donuts in one hand and a coffee tote in the other.

I said goodbye to the stranger, happy to have shared these thoughts with someone. It strikes me that I didn't even ask his name.

I shrug. Perhaps that's the magic of moments like these. The universe puts us in places we don't expect to be in. Brings two strangers together and they realize maybe this meeting was just what they needed today. The man got his coffee and I...I was able to let my thoughts run freely.

At least for a while.

"And now we abandon the fantasies and return to reality," I mutter with a sigh. I hook my pinkie with the large glass double doors of NNTV and pull the handle toward me.

There's a small audience present now, the guests for the Midnight Show. I walk around them and smile when I find Aliyah, arms crossed and eyes trained on the set, trying to catch any faults before we air.

"Al!" I call out in a whisper. She immediately looks my way, face lighting up at the sight of the coffee.

"Oh, you're a lifesaver!" She says excitedly as she takes the sweets from my hand. "Hey Joe, set this up for the crew, will ya?"

An intern shuffles forward and takes the bags anxiously to prepare a little station for the team.

"How'd you know I needed the coffee?" She smiles at me.

"Because I needed the coffee," I say with a laugh. "And you've been awake far longer than I have."

Aliyah laughs and rubs her eyes. "I forget how much time I spend here sometimes. No matter - you staying for the show tonight?"

I smile apologetically. "You know I'd love to, but I can barely keep my eyes open. I've got a long day tomorrow, I'm gonna need all the sleep I can get."

I say goodbye to the rest of the crew, smiling sheepishly as they spout *thank you*s for the late night coffee and donuts, and make my way home.

Later that night, as I lay in bed with my eyes trained on the ceiling, I feel a sudden urge to whisper these words out loud.

Please let my life be worth more than the value I add to a company.

#dabi #dabi x oc #dabi x female reader #todoroki touya #dabi fic #dabi fanfic #dabi angst #dabi fluff

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talesofafangirlwithadvr · 4 years ago

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October/November Picks

Long time no see! So...it’s been a little bit since I’ve posted a wrap up. I had all intentions of posting one after October, but then you know life gets ahead of you and before you know it it’s Thanksgiving. Not much has changed in my viewing habits for these past two months, so I thought I’d group them together for a mega wrap up. Hope you enjoy :)

Without further ado here come some spoilers.....

…..

….

SECRET SOCIETY OF SECOND BORN ROYALS

This Disney + original movie was one of my highly anticipated watches for the fall. I am disappointed to share that it was a let down. The concept was such a cool and creative one. Having the second born in a royal family not simply be the “spare” but be the protector...with superpowers! (In a very YA way, getting their powers at a specific age.) They just should have gone about the story in a better way. I wanted more time with them learning about the powers and to make the villain stronger. Overall the acting wasn’t bad (which is good for a Disney + original), but it was just lacking. The movie was LONG and yet much did not feel like it happened. It was cool seeing Casa Loma (the castle they filmed at) as I was just there two summers ago. Sadly, I will not be watching this movie again.

VIOLETTA SEASON 3

We all already know how pumped I was when season 3 of Violetta was released on Disney Plus in September. I couldn’t believe it after waiting so long for the second season. I really enjoyed the beginning of this season and knew we would be headed down a road where I would grow tired of the storylines.

We have hit that point.

Quick Violetta rant. Things I am done with:

Roxy and Fausta plot

Fran and Diego being a secret

Herman and Priscilla

Pablo not at the studio

Milton being evil

Ludmilla lying

Recently, my sister is catching up to where I am in the season, so this has pushed me to watch more. I am on episode 43 and some of the above venting has been solved, so that is super exciting. I am finding myself wanting to watch it more now, so fingers crossed it continues to get better.

JULIE AND THE PHANTOMS

Kenny Ortega has done it again! When I first heard the premise for this show and watched the trailer on Netflix I wasn’t too sure. Then both of my sisters watched it and they wouldn’t stop talking about it, so that was a sign that I needed to watch it. Since then, I have watched the show twice and can’t stop listening to the music. THIS. SHOW. :) I get the hype. It’s just so wholesome and feel good. The characters are well crafted and the episodes go way too fast. They are the kind of characters (and cast) that make you wish you were a part of the show. I can’t wait for the next season (because there better be one). Definitely add this one to your list if it’s not on their already.

THE OUTPOST

The Summer CW shows were pushed to the fall line up due to delays in filming of the originally planned shows. I hope this means that they’re getting a little more love this year. The Outpost deserves it, as it is currently in its third season. (I think it might have gotten a little more now that the 100 is over and the commercial aired during the 100′s last season. Maybe people heard Black-blood and decided to give it a go.) This season has seen a new threat and during the first eight episodes there’s been MANY twists and turns, making it hard for me to remember how this season started. There’s been a lot of unrest in the Outpost and changes in who is in charge. While there are some unnecessary plot-lines (like that Tobin had to be married), I’m really enjoying others. Like how important Janzo is, his relationship with Ren, more Munt and that TALON AND GARRETT FINALLY GOT TOGETHER!!! It makes me so happy and is what we deserve after these three seasons. I love how strong both of their characters are and how they are both Warriors. I hope the season ends strong.

PANDORA

Just like The Outpost, Pandora was originally a Summer CW show that is now airing its second season. I really enjoyed the first season (like more than I was expecting), so I went in with higher hopes for this new season. Unfortunately, I have been let down so far. With the first season, there were parts that left me confused and my biggest review of this show has always been how there were gaps or moments where I didn’t know how much time had gone by. Those kind of things I could overlook, but this season the overall plot just seems weaker. I think this in part because of so many new characters. I know a lot of the season 1 cast ended their characters’ plots away from the Academy, but I wasn’t expecting them not to be a part of this season’s story. That has been a difficult adjustment. I also feel like I only understand Jax’s story and not so much about the other government/rebellion points. It’s getting a little better, but I hope it gets to be more enjoyable.

THE SPANISH PRINCESS--SEASON 2

When I originally was creating this list I had just started this season, and felt completely different than I do right now. I just finished this season last week. Much like my above review on Pandora, The Spanish Princess wasn’t sucking me in. I had a few episodes gather on the DVR. Then once we hit episode 3 or 4 and more drama was starting/Henry was starting to show glimpses of the Henry VIII we all know, I was growing more interested. In season 2 of the Spanish Princess, we do not see a loving Catherine and Henry for long. Problems Catherine have in conceiving a boy (male heir) are one of the main focal points, as is Woolsey’s growing influence on the king. With several sub-plots this season, I specifically enjoyed learning more about Meg in Scotland (as a big Mary Queen of Scots/Reign fan, I liked seeing a portrayal of her grandmother) as well as Princess Mary Tudor (who I was unfamiliar with. I loved her and Charlie Brandon’s relationship and wish we could have gotten more.) Each week I watched this show, I found myself Googling a lot. That is always one of my favorite parts of watching a historical drama based on true events. I know right now it looks like the producers aren’t continuing with the Tudor line and might have a different part of history as their next show, but I wish they would. I’m feeling the call to watch the Tudors as it’s on Netflix and I haven’t seen it before. I want to learn more about his wives.

BLOWN AWAY

In a complete shift from a period piece, here is another Netflix show I thoroughly enjoyed watching last month. Do you find the act of glass blowing to be extremely interesting, but you would never dream of trying yourself? Or do you like competition game shows that are not like anything else you’ve watched before? Then Blown Away might be for you! It’s a very fast watch with only a handful of episodes that are about a half hour a piece. (I honestly wished they were a bit longer because it was SO GOOD!) Each contestant is a glass blower and they get to show off their skills by competing in a specific challenge. Each episode you see someone get eliminated until the final where the winner gets a residency at Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. This show came out in 2019 and I am hoping a second season comes out.

LIFE IN PIECES

This CBS comedy was one that I remember loving when it first came out. But I only remember watching the first season because then I couldn’t remember which day it was on. (It’s going to sound weird, but because I don’t watch a lot on this network I often forget it exists. We also only had a one room DVR at the time, so we couldn’t tape more than 2 things. Oh, the joys of multi-room DVR). After I finished my re-watch of Derry Girls in September, I was looking for another sitcom to re-watch. This was when I stumbled on the full series of Life in Pieces on Amazon video. (It’s free to watch with Prime.) I was so surprised to see there were 4 seasons! Since then I have been watching a good amount of episodes when I sit down to watch it. Now I’m about mid way in the second season. I highly recommend this show if you haven’t seen it before. It gives vibes of Modern Family. Very short episodes that include four storylines. The format is one that I haven’t seen done before in a sitcom.

SUPERMARKET SWEEP

The revival of the beloved game show from the early 90s is now hosted by Leslie Johns and is the best thing you should be watching on Sunday nights. If you know your grocery shopping list like the back of your hand then you are all set for this show. Leslie Johns is hilarious as are the cast of characters that are regulars in her supermarket. I think it would be a great TV show to be on and I’m not just saying that because I want one of the sweatshirts (although that would be great). If you want (another) feel-good watch, look no further! You catch up on demand.

RE-WATCHING

ANNE WITH AN E

It’s hard to believe that we only got the third season of Anne with an E at the beginning of this year (as this year feels like its been going on forever and when I watched the third season I was in a much less stressed place). Currently, I am teaching a class involving Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. The main focus is on how these stories get adapted in recent times and include such modern plots (and sub-plots). Naturally Anne with an E is perfect for this topic (and after watching season 3 at the start of the year) was one of my major reasons for choosing this topic. (The other being Greta Gerwig’s latest Little Women.) As I’ve been planning my schedule, I’ve re-watched this show. There is something so great about watching it from season 1 all the way through to season 3. You get to watch them grow up and it’s crazy to see how young they first were. Comparing it more to the novel has been a fun time, but also analyzing it more has been great and made me appreciate it even more. With all the stress of our current situation watching this show has made me escape and feel good. (Yes, I know I’ve used that word a lot in this wrap up, but it’s true.)

***

******

Hopefully my next wrap up isn’t as delayed. Wishing everyone a happy holiday season!

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thestartline · 5 years ago

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“Ray” May 2020 Issue - Stray Kids Interview (Maknae line)

Cute like a puppy ❤︎ the mischievous vocal - Seungmin

Born on September 22nd, 2000. Blood type A. With his mid bass tone, he in charge of vocals. He is fluent in English, and served as the MC for Kpop shows for foreign viewers. He is serious and a good student, but at times, he breaks down according to the members...?!

#Genius_puppy

BC: Seungmin is a puppy haha (In Japanese)

HN: A clever puppy, genius puppy!

BC: A very sensible and a genius puppy, Seungmin is bright and clever. He is knowledgable, and he accurately accomplishes everything that needs to be done.

Q. What is your charming point?

SM: My smile and singing voice. I’m also good at taking photos!

Q. What is the first thing you do in the morning?

SM: I immediately change my clothes.

Q. How do you switch up when you’re tired or feeling down?

SM: Sleep is the best medicine! But, at times when that doesn’t even work, I listen to music and change my mood. When I’m feeling down, I listen to sad songs on purpose and share the feeling.

Q. If you weren’t a singer, what do you think you would be doing?

SM: A university student thinking about the future. I would have been a university student, thinking about my own future. When I was younger, I played baseball, and there were a lot of things I wanted to do!

Q. Tell us something surprising about the members!

SM: Bang Chan hyung can do anything, but he is really bad at games. I can beat him even with one finger!

Q. What do you think is the most important aspect to accomplish a dream?

SM: Earnest thoughts. If you truly and seriously think about what you want to be and do, I think you’ll be able to get closer to your dream.

Q. Is there a place you’d like to go in Japan?

SM: Character shop! There are many cute characters in Japan, so I want to go to a character shop and do some shopping.

Q. Is there any Japanese piece you like?

SM: The ninja’s in “NARUTO” are really cool! The artists I like are “SEKAI NO OWARI”. I think they have a really pretty voice.

Q. What is a Japanese word you learnt recently?

SM: 「気をつけて帰ってください。」(”Please go home safely.”). I used it at the Japanese concert.

Q. If you become another member for a day, who would it be?

SM: I want to become Changbin hyung and shout! Changbin hyung has a really cool voice. He is a integral part of Stray Kids’ music.

The more you know, the more there is to know; the sweet and pure boy - Felix

Born on September 15th, 2000. Blood type AB. From Australia. From his cute and sweet visuals, his super deep voice rap and sharp movements cannot be imagined. His hobby is to play games.

#Magic_face

IN: He’s really good looking. No matter what performance he does or whatever he sings, he always looks good, and any hairstyle suits him! “It’s magic!”, is what I think.

HJ: He has this atmosphere to him, and his facial structure makes him look noble. Yet, his actions are cute.

#Fiery_charisma

LK: He recently dyed his hair red, and when he stands on stage, along with his strong gaze, he is really cool.

Q. What is the first thing you do in the morning?

FX: I play games sometimes haha. I play games and wake myself up. These days I’ve been playing “Call of Duty” or RPG games.

Q. If you weren’t a singer, what do you think you would be doing?

FX: Probably something to do with music like piano or singing. I like gaming, but I don’t think I would have been a pro gamer. It becomes stressful when its something professional so. I want to have fun with games haha.

Q. How do you switch up when you’re tired or feeling down?

FX: Music is the best! Light music is relaxing. I used to listen to the sound of harps, but these days I listen to band music more. I like Coldplay these days.

Q. What do you think is the most important aspect to accomplish a dream?

FX: To understand yourself. To find the reason why you’re alive in this world. By looking for that reason, I think it is most important to understand who you are. I think that might make it easier to find happiness in your life.

Q. What made you the most excited recently?

FX: When I went to the dog cafe. I went alone to one last year in November. I used to be a cat person, but these days I can understand dogs and their actions so I’m really interested in them! I went for the first time with my mother, and it was so fun that I’m really into it now. I have a lot of memories with many puppies at different cafe’s now haha. I play with them while drinking something, pat them, feed them, and relax while I’m there,

Q. Is there any Japanese piece you like?

FX: i have a lot! I’m interested in anime’s like “Dragon Ball” and “NARUTO”

Q. If you become another member for a day, who would it be?

FX: Changbin hyung. He has a nice figure and he’s also muscular. I want to have Changbin hyung’s body and hold up things and people.

Q. What is a Japanese word you learnt recently?

FX: 「ぴえん」(t/n the pleading face emoji). A Japanese fan told me at a fansign! It sounds really cute so I remember it!

Q. What is something you always bring with you on foreign schedules?

FX: Charger with four ports. I charge my phone, earphones, game controller, and charger at the same time.

Q. What is your charming point?

FX: My freckles. I didn’t have that much when I was younger, but because I grew under the sun in Australia, it seems like I gotten more. There aren’t many people with freckles, and I think its something unique about myself! I also had a photoshoot with a Korean magazine before which I purposely didn’t put on any makeup and showed my freckles.

A genius multi-player that attracts the audience in a second - Han

Born on September 14th, 2000. Blood type B. Part of 3RACHA along with Bang Chan and Changbin, and while he is well known for his passionate and melodic tunes, his high tone is well received along with his lyric and song writing. Also humourous, and is known as the mood maker.

#七方美人 (t/n: the original saying is 八方美人 and refers to people who’s nice to everyone / tries to please everyone)

SM: In Korea, we call people who can do anything 八方美人 but because Han is lacking something, we call him 七方美人

CB: He’s lacking something, but we don’t know what that is haha.

HN: I really like it!

BC: Like this, Han is the mood maker. He makes his surrounding brighter.

HN: Everyone laughs just by looking at my face haha.

Q. What is your charming point?

HN: My face that resembles a squirrel. Squirrels are cute - I’m happy people call me that!

Q. What made you the most excited recently?

HN: When I was able to watch an anime from the start to the end in my bed at our dorm in Korea. Its an anime called “Himouto! Umaru-chan”. I really love anime!

Q. Anything you’re into these days?

HN: Um... to watch anime haha. I feel calm when I watch anime, and all the cluttered thoughts in my head goes away. “Himouto! Umaru-chan” is really funny, the main character is so cute!

Q. Is there any Japanese piece you like?

HN: Gibli is a legend! If its anime, definitely “Himouto! Umaru-chan” haha. Besides that, I like “Howl's Moving Castle”, “Spirited Away”, “My Neighbour Totoro”, “Castle in the Sky”... Gibli is a legend, everything is a masterpiece. If its an movie, “I want to eat your pancreas”. Its very sad and I watched it four times.

Q. What is a Japanese word you learnt recently?

HN: 「この番組は、ご覧のスポンサーの提供でお送りします。」(”This program is brought to you by these sponsors.”). I saw this a lot whenever I watched “Detective Conan”, and I got curious so I looked it up haha.

Q. If you weren’t a singer, what do you think you would be doing?

HN: I would have continued studying. I’m not great at studying, but my parents wanted me to study so. I didn’t have any dreams besides becoming a singer, so if I didn’t become one, I would have probably listened to what my parents wanted me to do.

Q. What do you think is the most important aspect to accomplish a dream?

HN: To have a precise goal. You need to have a specific goal to know how you will accomplish your goal. I think its important to have a plan to know how to accomplish it.

Q. Tell us something surprising about the members!

HN: Seungmin is actually quite silly haha. He has a very intelligent and wise image, but when his tension is at max, he does really silly stuff! He shouts in a loud voice, or he suddenly comes into the room and says “Aaaaah!” and leaves.

Q. If you become another member for a day, who would it be?

HN: I would want to become handsome Hyunjin, and see how the others watch him haha.

Thoughtful and the maknae loved by everyone - I.N.

Born on February 8th, 2001. Blood type A. The youngest who has the cutest smile is said by all members that there is no one sweet as him. He tends to lose things easily, and apparently, he has lost his wireless earphones 3 times.

#Tornado_of_Cuteness

HJ: He’s too cute! He’s always just cute!!

Q. What is your charming point?

IN: How my eyes droop when I smile. My long eyes are my charming point. I’m normally the youngest and loved, but when I’m on stage I don’t smile as much, so perhaps that gap might be a charming point as well? haha

Q. Anything you’re into these days?

IN: Coffee frappuccino. I’ve always liked coffee and normally drink americano, but the other day I wanted to try something new and ordered it. It was really good and I was surprised!

Q. What do you think is the most important aspect to accomplish a dream?

IN: To have fun. If you can have fun, you can be positive! If you can accomplish your dream, I think it is important to be happy.

Q. Is there any Japanese piece you like?

IN: Since I was young, I’ve always loved “Crayon Shin-chan!”

Q. If you become another member for a day, who would it be?

IN: Bang Chan hyung who has wide shoulders! He also has a lot of physical strength, so I want to know what it feels like to have wide shoulders. But, I think I enjoy being myself the most haha.

Q. What made you the most excited recently?

IN: When we were given our breaks! My home is in Busan, I look forward to going home and eating during the break. There are many good foods, and because there is the sea, it feels great too. I want to recommend Gwangalli Beach and pig gukbap!

Q. What is a Japanese word you learnt recently?

IN: 「これはなんですか？これはゼロコークです」(”What is this? This is Coke Zero”)

Q. Tell us something surprising about the members!

IN: Han hyung surprisingly doesn’t sleep a lot at night. He seems like he sleeps a lot, and its not like he doesn’t, but he’s the type to be on his phone at night and staying up late. And, Han hyung watches a lot of dramas, after Hyunjin hyung.

Q. If you weren’t a singer, what do you think you would be doing?

IN: A preschool teacher or a social worker I think.

Q. How do you switch up when you’re tired or feeling down?

IN: I don’t do anything specific, but I try to make some time to think and sort my head out on my own. I think it is best if you rest at times like that, so I make time to rest, and try to think positively as possible.

!! Take out with credits; @yarn1003 on twitter !!

#Stray Kids #SKZ #SKZ2020 #Seungmin #Felix #I.N.#Han

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gdelgiproducer · 6 years ago

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DOTV AU: An Exercise in Alternate History (Part VIII)

Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII offer more detailed context. (To briefly sum up why these posts are happening: alt history – as in sci fi, not “alternative facts” – buff, one day got the idea that DOTV could have turned out hella different if Jim Steinman looked for a star lead in other places, decided to reason out how that might work.) This is still getting a good response, so I’m gonna keep the train rolling.

Parts of the AU timeline established so far:

Instead of stopping at recording two songs from Whistle Down the Wind on a greatest hits compilation, Meat Loaf wound up taking more of an interest in Steinman’s new theater work than he did in our timeline, and through a series of circumstances found himself volunteering to play Krolock in the impending DOTV when Jim poured out his woes to him about needing to find some sort of star to attract investors. At a loss for any better ideas, Jim accepted Meat’s impulsive proposal, but not without resistance from his manager, David Sonenberg, who proposed Michael Crawford as an alternate candidate. Through quick thinking on Meat’s part, and inspiration on Jim’s, Crawford left the room accepting an entirely different role than he walked in hoping to get, leaving Krolock still open for Meat.

There was a brief speed bump, when Meat disliked Jim’s English script for the show, but after meeting with the original German author Michael Kunze and convincing Jim to compromise, things were on the road to being back on track… at least until 9/11 occurred.

Following a brief hiatus, everyone involved met to re-assess their options. The current game-plan was to put the new script on paper, schmooze with potential investors or producers, and put together a new creative team. Preferably not all at the same time, but with the crunch on, they’d do whatever needed to be done.

Schmoozing went well, but everybody that Meat, Jim, and the crew wanted to be involved was tentative. The conclusion reached was that they needed to show them there was a working show, which resulted in a concert of selections from the score paid for by none other than Courtney Love (!) that received some in-depth press coverage.

Now we join our heroes as new wrinkles emerge in the path to Broadway.

A week after the concert of selections from Dance of the Vampires (and after Michael Riedel noting that Meat Loaf has yet to sign on the dotted line for the show), a brief story appears in Rolling Stone’s Random Notes section: “Rocker Meat Loaf announced this week that he has terminated the management services of Allen Kovac and is currently seeking new representation. Kovac, who is in the process of leaving Left Bank Management to form his own firm, issued the following statement which is believed to be a comment on the heavyset singer’s departure, though he is not mentioned by name: ‘I don’t tell artists what they want to hear, I tell them what I know to be true. When I first sign an artist I let them know that I’m not their friend. Too many artists don’t measure their manager on their performance; they measure them on how many times they’ve been invited to their house. That’s not my style. If an artist is going to be successful, you need to tell them how to run their business -- not ask them how to run their business. Does it work? Look it up: no artist has ever done better after leaving my company.’” Requests from the Vampires team to speak to Meat about what’s up are met with total radio silence.

Meanwhile, the business side of Vampires continues to shore up. Jim Steinman receives delighted reports from his manager, David Sonenberg, that Jerry Weintraub and the Weisslers are ready to commit, bumping the total number of producers thus far up to nine. “How’s it looking now?” Jim queries. “Well, remember we’re trying to raise 15 million,” says David. “I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but it will be an uphill battle.” “What else is new in the theater?” Steinman grumbles in response. “On the bright side, we can now tighten the list of how many producers we need to seven.”

The representatives from Concerts West, based in L.A., get back to them within the week. Reports Sonenberg to all parties by e-mail: “They’re interested, but only if it tours. Live touring events are what they do, and the theatrical market is something they haven’t explored; they’d be more comfortable with a national tour than a Broadway run, it’s more similar to what they do at a nuts-and-bolts level.” A decision is ultimately reached by quorum to make Concerts West’s involvement in a national tour contingent on investing in the Broadway run first, and the counter-offer is duly sent their way.

As the business side shores up, the creative side is beginning to percolate as well. Meetings are had with John Rando, the Urinetown director who attended the concert and spoke very enthusiastically about the show in Riedel’s column. He’s very excited about the chance to work on the show, both to work with David Ives again (having done numerous shows at Encores! together, he feels working with David will be really special and help focus the play) and especially to work with Meat. “I’d get to hear him sing every day,” Rando enthuses. “That’s a blessing. Can you imagine that? Every single day of your life you get to hear that voice.” He also ticks the right boxes when it comes to the commercial appeal of the piece and how it meshes with his vision for the show: “It’s such a different reality. It’s silly and fun and kind of glamorous, too. These vampires sort of pull you in and you find you’re turned on by them, too! It’s a wonderful, Gothic playground.” When asked for suggestions for a choreographer, and more specifically if they should ask his choreographer on Urinetown, John Carrafa, to be a part of the show, Rando is mildly hesitant but mostly enthusiastic. Jim is admittedly happiest when it comes to Rando’s assessment of how much creative control he should be allowed to have: “Look, Jim, what are you worried about? It’s your baby! You’ve been working on it forever! The quality, the tone, the ideas, the music... this play is all you! You’d be very much a part of it.”

More progress is made when a new set designer is engaged: David Gallo. Jim immediately likes him instinctively, when, upon meeting him for the first time, Gallo stops the interview process dead. “I have two things to tell you before we continue. Number one: I’m probably the only set designer in America who still subscribes to Heavy Metal Magazine. Number two: I bought Bat Out of Hell because I saw the album cover artwork and decided I had to have it before I even heard the music.” This is no idle compliment, considering the album cover was conceived by Steinman and executed by Richard Corben... and a sequence very similar to the events depicted on the cover forms the shape of one of Vampires’ opening scenes. His sample sketches of the sets are surprisingly atmospheric as well.

The more things shape up on the creative end, however, the more everyone on the business side of the table nervously eyes the chair where Meat Loaf should be. Since his firing of Kovac, who was more a hindrance than a help so is not really missed, he hasn’t said word one to anybody. Irving Azoff, widely proclaimed the biggest agent in the world, who attended the concert and may be interested in the show, is sending them queries about who is managing Meat now, hinting that he has his eye on Meat as a client. But nobody knows what’s going on with him. When he is finally able to get him on the phone, Jim pleads with Meat to see him, one on one if need be. Meat agrees.

The scene: Le Bar Bat, in Hell’s Kitchen on West 57th. Only 9 years prior, Steinman had conducted an interview for Bat Out of Hell II at this very establishment, celebrating his and Meat Loaf’s long-awaited reunion. Plastic bats still hang from the ceiling, and the bar is still sparsely attended. A deafening fusion group still plays a seemingly endless set. Steinman greets them, as per tradition, with a cheery “fuck off!” as they finish a tune. Meat sits alone in a booth, awaiting Jim’s arrival. He rummages through his CBS Records holdall, his shoulder juddering as if it were a pneumatic drill. His graying hair could do with a shampoo. Finally, he finds what he is seeking: a couple of throat lozenges, which he pops. “Jimmy, I don’t think I can do the show.” Immediately Jim’s heart is in his throat: “WHAT?!?” “What we’re about to do is insane! Lunatic. Totally insane. We’re just gonna go out there in front of everybody with our pants down!” Jim, searching for a way to respond, can only come out with “Think of it as a character-building experience! It’ll be amazing!”

“Have you read what your fans are saying about this on the Internet? They’re saying you should be sticking aside all the old, fat guys named after a dinner dish! ‘Get rid of Meat Loaf.’ They don’t want to see me do this!” “Now, Meat, come on. You know better than to buy into their bullshit. If I believed what I read on the Internet about anything I should do, I’d never get anything done. You’re going to be glad that you stuck with it.” “Well... we need to go out of town first. New York is the hardest when it comes to people being critical. We’re gonna be judged. A lot.” “Meat, you know we can’t afford to do that. Besides, every musical that you’ve done on Broadway has opened cold in New York. I like having the preview audience be the New York audience. There’s no BS -- they’re right there telling you what you need to fix. It’s great.”

Meat heaves a sigh: “Jimmy, I’ll be honest with you; I’m more tired now than I was when Amanda was two months old!” “Meat, listen to me. We have a lot of time. We’re gonna work very hard and very slowly. I know you’re not good at dealing with change, but you really have to stay focused and believe in the project.” “But Jimmy, it’s huge! It’s got to be one of the biggest shows on Broadway right now without even opening yet. And there’s still so much to work out.”

“What happened to Allen?” “He never believed in the show. You saw what happened when he kept the door open for Night of the Proms. After the concert, I called him to ask why he wasn’t there, and he said to me, ‘Y’know, an album and a tour are still possibilities, so why not do that instead? At least you know that will sell.’ We got into it pretty hard, and he called our show garbage. He said I did better off away from you, and that if I did this album and the tour, I could retire, or I could come back afterwards if you wanted to talk Bat III, but he was adamant that I was not doing this show. It became pretty clear to me that it was going to come down to either you or him.” Jim, touched, perhaps even a little misty-eyed: “And you chose me?” “As if I had a choice! Jim, you’re my brother. I love you... more than you’ll ever know.”

A beat of silence, awkward, emotional, and then... “Irving Azoff liked the concert.” “Yeah?” “He keeps calling us. I think he wants to sign you, and he wants to do the show too. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a manager who was on the same page?” “...will it get him to produce if I sign with him?” “I dunno. Maybe?” “I’ll give him a call. What else is going on?” Jim proceeds to update him on everything going on with the show, culminating in the reminder that they have a meeting with John Carrafa coming up to decide his suitability to the choreographic duties. “Can I count on you to be there?” “Jim, I’m signing the contract for a year, manager or no manager. If we’re fortunate enough to run, that’s how long I’ll be here. And then I’ll be in a nursing home, no doubt!” For the first time all night, both men laugh. A rosy future may well be in sight.

TO BE CONTINUED!

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sshbpodcast · 4 years ago

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Tales from the Holodeck: DS9 Fanfic: Caitlin’s Teleplay

In celebration of A Star to Steer Her By’s fourth anniversary, we did what pretty much all theaters are doing right now and put together a little Zoom reading. This time around, our latest fanfics in our “Tales from the Holodeck” series are all Deep Space Nine teleplays that you can listen to us cold read here (this one starts at 2:51), complete with really dodgy attempts at accents! Follow along with Caitlin’s teleplay below or read with your friends with your own dodgy accents!

“Constable Odo Day!”

By Caitlin

Random pick: Odo

Scene 1 - the promenade. Odo enters to see, to his surprise, that garish decorations had bloomed there overnight, proclaiming “Happy Constable Odo Day!’

ODO: (displeased Odo sound – you know the one, Jake)

SISKO: Constable! I see you’ve found our surprise – isn’t it wonderful? Happy Constable Odo Day!

ODO: (uncomfortable) Yes, wonderful… But I don’t approve of all of these fire hazards on my promenade...

SISKO: (chuckling) I assure you, all necessary precautions have been taken. Besides, it’s a station-wide holiday – we’re giving you the day off, and we have lots of surprises in store for you!

ODO: (annoyed Odo sound)

KEIKO enters, walks quickly to ODO and SISKO, grabbing the Constable’s arm.

KEIKO: Odo, I’m glad I got to you fir- … well, second! Come see what the children have done for Constable Odo day!

ODO: (incredulous) How is it possible, with ALL of my contacts, that I didn’t hear ANYTHING about this?

SISKO: I don’t know if this will make you feel better, or worse – but it required a little help from Morn.

ODO: I’m impressed – I wouldn’t expect Morn of all people to be able to keep a secret!

Scene 2 - KEIKO’s classroom. The students have been busy with Odo-themed art projects. DAX awaits within, holding a small, mostly featureless doll in a security uniform, made in ODO’s image.

DAX: (laughing) There’s the guest of honor! Happy Constable Odo Day, Odo.

ODO: I’m glad you are amused by this, Lieutenant.

DAX: Odo, don’t be such a grump! For one day, cut loose a little and have fun.

ODO: This may be hard to believe, but for me, my work IS fun, not all this being the center of attention…

KEIKO: (gushing) Surely even the Constable isn’t immune to the charms of all the student projects! Nalas created a beautiful portrait, Antos carved this wooden figurine... and Jake even wrote you this wonderful short story where you’re a 20th century private investigator – what they used to call a “private eye”...

ODO accepts the tablet containing Jake Sisko’s story.

ODO: (under his breath) Well, this, at least may have some merit… I uh, think I’ll return to my quarters so I can read this immediately. Thank you, Keiko, and all my thanks to your students as well.

Before anyone can object, ODO exits. The rest follow behind, puzzled. After everyone has left, the little ODO doll springs to life, comically looking one way, then the next, before disappearing from our view.

Scene 3 - ODO’s chambers. Thinking he has escaped, briefly, ODO sits down and breathes a sigh of relief.

The doorbell rings.

ODO: (annoyed) ENTER.

KIRA enters. ODO leaps to his feet to greet her.

ODO: Major, what a pleasant surprise. Have you heard about this Constable Odo Day utter non-

KIRA: Of course I heard, that’s why I’m here. I know in spite of my d’jarra, my work isn’t much, but I made this to commemorate the day.

KIRA produces a small sculpture from behind her back; it looks like a melting popsicle. ODO accepts it, bemused.

ODO: Major, I don’t think I’ve ever been more touched. What… what is it?

KIRA: (blushing) Why, it’s you, Odo – at the time between humanoid Odo becoming… something else. It doesn’t look like much, but I put my heart into it.

ODO: I have never been so pleased by any gift. Thank you, Major.

ODO and KIRA gaze into each other’s eyes, until… the doorbell rings.

ODO: (actually really fucking annoyed) ENTER!

SISKO enters.

SISKO: There you are, Odo! Oh, Nerys, I didn’t know you’d be here – I hope I’m not interrupting anything.

ODO: (quickly) No, Captain, Major Kira was just bringing me this, uh, beautiful sculpture she made for me. For Constable Odo Day.

KIRA: (laughing) A Kira Nerys original, Captain.

SISKO: (also laughing) Another fine piece of work, Major. (Serious) Odo, I’m sure right now you must feel pretty overwhelmed with all of this –

ODO: Yes sir, it has been most irregular and has really disturbed my schedule –

SISKO: Good, good! We really wanted you to enjoy the day!

Odo: (flat) Oh yes. It has been most... enjoyable.

SISKO: Well, we saved the best for last!

KIRA: Second-best, I think you mean...

SISKO: ...yes, second-best, Major. I’m going to take you to a baseball game in the holosuites!

ODO: A baseball game in – (stops, defeated, seeing the excitement in Sisko’s eyes). Yes, sir, I can’t imagine anything I’d… enjoy more…

SISKO: I hoped you’d feel that way!

SISKO hands ODO a London Kings baseball jersey.

SISKO: Here, get changed into this, and meet me at Holosuite 8 in 15 minutes! I have to go change!

Exit KIRA and SISKO. ODO studies the jersey Sisko has given him, concentrates for a moment, and shapeshifts so it looks like he’s wearing the jersey. He steps in front of a mirror to check his work.

ODO: Well, I certainly am getting better at clo-

BZZT! ODO is stunned with electricity from behind; we can see the taser-style weapon, but not who holds it. ODO falls unconscious, becomes ODO goo.

A hand reaches into shot to pick up the jersey; we hear a laugh as the scene fades.

Scene 4 - Quark’s

Some time later…

ODO runs into Quark’s bar, looking a little wild. He is approached by O’BRIEN and BASHIR.

BASHIR: There’s the man of the hour – Happy Constable Odo Day!

ODO: Thank you, but I’m here on urg-

BASHIR: No urgent business today, Constable – come and have a pint with Miles and I, have a round of darts…

O’BRIEN: Yes, Constable, join us for one round of daerts! Who knows – you might like it?

ODO: No, I can’t right now – I really have to –

BASHIR: Constable, lighten up – we won’t keep you long – just a half-hour or so?

O’BRIEN: Aye, we just want a small chunk of your time…

ODO: You don’t understand – I have more important –

Enter: SISKO and… ODO?! Both wearing baseball caps, jerseys, holding pennants, and laughing gaily together.

SISKO: Somehow I just KNEW you would love baseball, Odo…

ODO 2: (A little too happily) Captain, I cannot think of anything I have ever enjoyed more...

O’BRIEN notices the second ODO, does a spit take from his pint.

O’BRIEN: Jaysus! Odo – there’s two of you!

BASHIR: Oh, dear. But which one is the real Odo?

O’BRIEN: (panic stricken) ‘Ow are we gonna tell ‘em apaert?

Quark enters, whistling, strips of latinum sticking out of his pockets, and carrying a tray laden with tiny buckets, full of shimmering golden liquid; approaches ODO 2.

QUARK: There you are, constable! You simply must try one of my limited-edition-commemorative-Constable-Odo-Day-Odo-bucket cocktails – just 1 strip of lat… Well, for you, I guess it’s on the house... But don’t get used to it.

ODO 2: How generous, Quark – thank you! (accepts drink, shoots it)

SISKO: (puzzled) Odo, I’ve seen your coffee trick, but I didn’t think you’d moved on to actually… ingesting food and drink? Perhaps I should have planned that banquet after all...

ODO: (enraged/bemused) I think if everything else wrong with this picture hasn’t clued you in, Doctor, that should answer your question – this impostor did an all right job of impersonating me, apparently enough to fool the Captain, but – can you imagine me being so pleasant to Quark, quaffing down one of his cheap gimmicks – or enjoying baseball?!

BASHIR: … Now that you mention it, no.

FOUNDER 48Σπ7 (nee ODO 2): (transforms into other, oddly shaped humanoid Founder) Who would have thought, on a station so large, we would bump into each other like this?! Grah! (transports away. To where? Who cares!)

ODO: That’s what I was trying to tell you, while you two fools wouldn’t stop yammering about darts – there was another Founder on the station, wreaking who knows what kind of havoc and now they’ve escaped! (turning to Quark, rage building) And you! Using my… image… to make money? On Constable Odo Day?!

QUARK: (backing away, nervous) You know, Odo, you really should be thanking me – after all, it was my limited-edition-commemorative-Constable-Odo-Day-Odo-bucket mini cocktails that tipped everyone off that you weren’t… quite yourself today....

ODO: (frustrated) QUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARK!

-FIN-

—

Check out Ames, Jake, and Chris’s stories for more Tales from the Holodeck! Also, be sure to keep listening on SoundCloud, follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and pick up your own limited-edition-commemorative-Constable-Odo-Day-Odo-bucket mini cocktail at Quark’s, on us!

#star trek #Star Trek Deep Space 9 #ds9 #fanfic #star trek fanfiction #constable odo #odo #shapeshifter #changeling #teleplay #ds9 fanfiction

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gethealthy18-blog · 5 years ago

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344: Get Your Kids to Listen Without Nagging, Yelling, or Losing Control With Amy From Positive Parenting Solutions

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/news/344-get-your-kids-to-listen-without-nagging-yelling-or-losing-control-with-amy-from-positive-parenting-solutions/

344: Get Your Kids to Listen Without Nagging, Yelling, or Losing Control With Amy From Positive Parenting Solutions

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic… a company I’ve loved for years for their superfood mushroom based products. They use mushrooms like lions mane, chaga, cordyceps and reishi in delicious products. Mushrooms are amazing in and of themselves. Did you know that mushrooms are more genetically similar to humans than plants are? And that they breathe oxygen and exhale CO2 just like we do but mushrooms spores can survive the vacuum and radiation of space. These amazing fungi are always a part of my daily routine in some way, usually with Lion’s Mane Coffee or Matcha in the morning, Plant protein and mushroom elixirs like chaga and cordyceps during the day and reishi at night to wind down. As a listener of this podcast, you can save on all Four Sigmatic products. Go to foursigmatic.com/wellnessmama and the code wellnessmama gives 15% off.

This episode is sponsored by Everlywell, at-home lab tests that you can get without a doctor’s order! I’ve used many of their tests and can recommend a couple that have been especially helpful. They have an at-home allergy test for 40 of the most common allergens using the same CLIA-certified labs used by Allergists/Doctors. The labs are reviewed by an independent physician and measure IgE levels of common allergens including pet dander, mold, trees, grasses, and more. But you can do it from your own home with a finger stick. I also really like their food sensitivity tests that test for IgG reactions. This was a big key for me in my health recovery, as there were foods that didn’t show up as an allergy that were causing inflammation. I used an elimination diet, but this food sensitivity test also filled in the missing piece of the puzzle for me. Through healing my gut, I’ve been able to remove all sensitivities except for eggs. Finding out I was highly sensitive to eggs made a huge difference for me, as I ate them often as an inexpensive protein source. I feel so much better now that I don’t eat eggs and I would never have known that without this test! I also use their at-home Vitamin D test to keep an eye on those levels. Check out all of their tests at wellnessmama.com/go/everlywell. Use code MAMA10 for 10% off orders.

Katie: Hello and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from WellnessMama.com and Wellnesse.com. That’s wellness with an E on the end. It’s our new line of personal care products that are both non-toxic and highly effective. This episode is all about how to get your kids to listen without nagging, or yelling, or losing control because I am here with Amy McCready from Positive Parenting Solutions. And I think you’re really going to enjoy this episode if you have kids. She’s the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions and the creator of the “7-Step Parenting Success System,” which is a course that I’m going through right now to prepare for this interview. She is also the author of two best selling parenting books. The first called “If I Have to Tell You One More Time” and “The Me, Me, Me Epidemic.”

She’s a regular contributor on the “Today” show and CBS, CNN, “Fox and Friends,” “Rachael Ray,” etc. And she’s helped thousands of families to have a happier home life and many parents to become calmer, happier parents. And in this episode, she gives a lot of really practical strategies for how to navigate a lot of what we’re facing right now. When your kids are home a lot more, how to navigate autonomy versus responsibility in older kids. Her “when then” system for getting things done without nagging around the house. Some tips for getting kids to want to actually do homework and schoolwork without the fight, etc. It’s a really fun and lightning episode. I think you’ll enjoy as much as I did. So without further ado, let’s jump in.

Amy, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Amy: Katie, thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to talk with you.

Katie: I am so excited about this interview because almost everybody listening is a parent. Most of my audience are moms. And I think this topic is timely and helpful all of the time. But especially, right now, with so much going on, and with summer starting, and kids home more, I feel like the information you have is just so vital for parents. So, I wanna jump right in. This is the thing I get a question about quite a bit as well, and I think you’re more qualified to speak on. So I have my kids home all the time because I homeschool. And I hear from my friends who are moms this time of year, like, “Oh gosh, the kids are gonna be home for all these weeks.” And they get stressed about it. So let’s start there. What do you say to parents who are kind of struggling to balance having the kids home for an extended period of time?

Amy: Well, I think it’s always more challenging when kids are home, whether it’s summer, or holiday breaks, or whatever it happens to be. And I think for parents, we have to just give ourselves a little bit of grace, and forgive ourselves. We may be a little bit more on edge or we may lose our temper more than we would normally. And that’s okay. But the other thing to know is that there are some concrete strategies that you can use all the time but especially, when kids are home, on break or vacation or whatever, that can make things go more smoothly, help your routines stay in check. And if they can implement some of those very basic things, then they’re gonna enjoy that time a lot more with their kids, their kids will be better behaved. Moms and dads will feel better about that time together and family life would just run a lot more smoothly.

Katie: That makes sense. And I think kind of also to start broad, like, I’d love to hear a little bit of your story because I’ve read a little bit of it and I’m going through the positive parenting solutions course right now. But have you always been this patient calm mom?

Amy: Hardly, hardly. And that’s probably the thing that parents don’t know about me unless they’ve heard my story is that I call myself a recovering yeller. Because when my kids were younger, I wanted to be a great mom. I have great kids and they’re wonderful but I found myself on a daily basis getting into this cycle of nagging and reminding my kids, and nagging and reminding, and nagging and reminding, and then I would just blow. And my yelling occurrences were not a one-off. It was a pretty much everyday thing and many times multiple times a day. And so that’s actually how I got into what I do now, is that I would find myself yelling so much, and I was feeling so defeated and frustrated, and sometimes even resentful of my kids, like these people that I love more than anything in the world. But I wasn’t being my best self. And so that’s when I started studying parenting strategies. And it was just so life-changing for our family, for me, personally, for my kids. And my business background was actually in adult training. And that’s what I did for a living. So I took that training expertise and thought, “I really feel like I could bring these strategies to parents and teach them in a way that was fun and it would be easy for them to implement.” And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. So to answer your question, no, I’m not a calm and very Zen person by nature. I’m Type A, I’m controlling, I’m all of those things that tend to bring out the worst in terms of kids’ behavior. But, again, once you know the tools and the strategies, you can definitely turn that around.

Katie: I love that. And, you know, I always hear that line that parenthood doesn’t come with an instruction manual. And I think that’s really true. But I also found out, for me, just on the household side, I wanna go deep on the parenting side with you but I had a similar experience where I was so overwhelmed and exhausted, and just constantly stressed out at home, and I was running a business, and I was running my household. And I stepped back and went, “Why is it so easy to run my business and I am so stressed all the time at home? And I realized, at work, there were defined expectations. I had systems for things, I had a plan and goals and it was clearly defined. Whereas at home, I was trying to sort of manage everyone’s lives in my head, eight people off the top of my head, plan all the meals, and just keep all of that in my head all the time. So, from a household perspective, I realized if I could put the systems in place for my house, that would take a lot of that mental stress away, and I would still get the same amount done just without the stress of it. And I would guess for parenting, you probably discovered some similar things that if you had the strategies, and the frameworks, and the methods to do this, it actually makes your life probably much easier, right?

Amy: Absolutely. And I was laughing to myself when you said, you know, that your job came so much more easily and that’s what I found as well. I felt like I was very capable in my work job, my outside of the house job, but at home I felt like I was floundering. And I think, yes, you’re absolutely right. When you put those processes in place and the routines, and you have the expectations for everyone, it goes so much more smoothly. But the one piece that tends to happen with our kids is that when we put the processes in place, and when we have the rules, and the boundaries, and all those things, that’s helpful but our taskmaster nature actually tends to undermine things with our kids. So I always talk about, you know, how much time we spend sort of ordering, correcting, and directing. That tends to invite power struggles for our kids. So the piece that we have to remember at home is that we have to make sure that we intentionally create those emotional connection opportunities. We’re filling their attention buckets because if we don’t do those things, all of the systems can be in place but if we’re not doing those emotional connection times with our kids, then we’re gonna fall into this pattern of attention-seeking behavior and power struggles, and it’s gonna feel like so much more effort than it really should.

Katie: I love that. Can you give some examples of what that would look like? Because I feel like a lot of parents or at least speaking from my own experience, I know you can get stuck in that cycle of, my kids actually do need to get these things done. They need to help around the house, we’re part of the family, and then you’re just stuck reminding them and nagging them. So give us some examples of stepping back and reinforcing the emotional connection like that.

Amy: Yeah, so that’s the funny thing is that, you know, kids have these hard-wired needs for emotional connection and attention. But they won’t come to you and say, “You know what, Mom? I feel like my attention bucket is really not being filled right now. I’m not feeling that warm and fuzzy emotional connection from you.” Unfortunately, that need that they have will present itself as being overly clingy, and needy, and whining, and more of these attention-seeking behaviors, which makes us more frustrated. And again, you get into this vicious cycle. And just like our kids have an attention bucket, they also have a power bucket, which means that they need to have an age-appropriate sense of autonomy and control over their own lives. But again, they’re not gonna come to us and say, “You know, I feel like I need more control and decision-making opportunities.” They’re gonna dig in their heels. They’re gonna push back. They’re gonna resist, backtalk, and those types of things. And I always remind parents that kid priorities are not the same as parent priorities.

So the more we want them to do the things we want them to do, if we’re not meeting their needs for that emotional connection, filling their attention bucket and filling their power bucket, they’re gonna continue to resist. So the simplest thing is just spending one-on-one time with your kids on a daily basis, and it can be as short as 10 minutes. But in our positive parenting solutions community, we call this mind, body, and soul time because it reminds us for that 10 minutes, we are fully present in mind, body and soul with that child. And nothing is more important, and you’re doing exactly what that child loves to do. So it might be reading a chapter book, or playing Legos, or jumping on a trampoline, it’s whatever that child loves. But in those few moments, you’re giving them your 100% attention. They’re getting that emotional connection with you. And parents are just blown away, Katie, by how much more cooperative kids are, they’re willing to do all of those things that are parent priorities and not really kid priorities. But the key is when we meet their hardwired emotional needs first, all the other stuff becomes so much easier.

Katie: I love that. It’s such a good reframe. And I’ve seen that quote online as well. Like, you know, we have to remember as parents, especially the adults in these relationships, that when kids act out, they’re not trying to be the problem, they’re having a problem. And if we can reframe it and, like, look at what are their needs, and how can we address this, it totally changes how you look at your child and that totally changes the relationship. And I think that’s encouraging to hear as a parent also is, you know, this doesn’t have to be four hours a day per child, which wouldn’t even be possible in my case. You know, it’s like just having that actual focused quality time goes so far. And I think I did this somewhat intuitively, one of my daughter’s, as she got older, like, I could tell she was pulling back a little bit and just a little bit more moody and reserved. And so to connect with her on her level, I literally had to start pole vaulting. But now she’s, like, opened up and we’ve connected so much more. But it took exactly what you said. It took finding the things she loves to do, and me being willing to try it, and not be good at it, which I think is another important lesson for parents. You know, like, let them see you out of your comfort zone and let them see you work through something difficult because we help them work through difficult things all the time. How does that translate then into when they do need to get stuff done, when they need to do their laundry or the dishes or whatever it may be? Do you find just by the nature of putting that time in, they’re just so much more willing or are there strategies that you use to help them also be more willing to want to do those things?

Amy: Well, just by filling their attention bucket intentionally every day, it is almost, almost like a magic bullet that they are so much more cooperative, and easygoing, and willing to do those things that they’re supposed to do. Now, we all know there’s no such thing as a parenting silver bullet so you need some backup strategies. So one of the strategies that I teach to parents is called the when-then routine. And in a when-then routine, it requires that the yucky stuff is done before the more fun parts of the day. So a when-then routine might sound like this. When you finished unloading the dishwasher, then we can have our special time before lunch. So that yucky thing that they don’t wanna do gets done before the more enjoyable thing or when you’ve completed your schoolwork or when you’ve completed your family contributions, then you can have your 30 minutes of technology time. So we’re always the positioning the yucky stuff before the more enjoyable things. It’s important to note that this is not a reward system. If you do this, then you can get that. That’s something very different. Actually, we don’t advocate that at all.

But it is these normally occurring privileges, like whatever maybe technology time you allow or going outside to play with your friends or even our special time together. When the family jobs get done with the schoolwork or whatever those things are, then you can enjoy whatever that thing is. But that when-then routine is magical. And in fact, all of your routines should be set up in a when-then format. So, in the morning, when kids are going to school, let’s say they’re going out to school, when you are dressed, your bed is made, hair is combed, backpack and lunchbox are by the door, then we’ll have breakfast and we can have some special time before we leave for the bus. In the evenings, when you’ve had your bath, teeth are brushed and flossed, and clothes picked up for the morning, then we’ll have our special time before lights out at 8:00. So sometimes you have to put a time limit at the end there, but all of your routines you can set up in a when-then fashion, and it’s fabulous for parents because they can get out of the nagging and reminding business. It really works so beautifully, Katie.

Katie: That makes sense. And in fact, it probably takes the responsibility of having to do any of that nagging or reminding pretty much off your plate because if they come ask, “Can I do screentime? Can I play outside?”, whatever, all you have to say is, “Well did you do this?” And it’s then their choice and their responsibility. The one confounding thing I’m thinking is with my older kids. What about when you get older kids who don’t want to do the one-on-one time as much or they’re pulling back or, like, you know, just aren’t engaging as much in general because they’re kind of hitting that age is? How do you emotionally connect with them?

Amy: That’s a great question. So, mind, body and soul time, I really advocate for kids of all ages. But sometimes we position it differently. So for all kids, if possible, I like to label it. So call it something, you know, Jason and mommy time, whatever you wanna call it. Now, for older kids, you may not label it. So you don’t want it turn into this big, like, you know, they roll their eyes when you say, “Okay, it’s Jeffrey and mommy time.” You just sort of make it happen without making a big pronouncement out of it. And so sometimes that is just being in their vicinity. So if they’re sitting reading a book, you sit down with your book and read it with them. And then afterwards, you can say, “I love sitting here reading with you. This is so cool.” So we don’t make a big deal about it beforehand, but you sort of just slide your way into whatever they’re doing. But then you book end it with just that little, “Aah, I love spending this time with you. This is so fun.”

And then the other thing is being interested in what they’re interested in. And so if they’re into photography or even social media, like you said before, let them teach you things. So let them teach you how to use new platforms or how to, you know, do photos properly on Instagram and all of those types of things that kids are so much better at than we are. Use that as an opportunity to emotionally connect with them. But the connection time is still really important for teens. We just do it slightly differently. The other little thing, Katie, too, even for teens, I love having some sort of a tuck-in routine with them, if you will. Again, it’s gonna look different than your littles. But just some connection time where you are just spending a few minutes with them, connecting, talking about the day, whatever it is. It’s just so powerful and kids may act like they don’t want it. They really do love it once you get into a good routine.

Katie: That makes sense. I could definitely see that. And from that to the other end of the spectrum, at least, for me, with toddlers, I feel like they’re the easy ones to connect because they’re sponges. And if you wanna read a book, or they’ll play Legos, any of that, they love it. But then you run into more of, like, the tantrum or meltdown phases where it’s like, how do you break that cycle when they’re in that kind of a phase?

Amy: That’s the classic question for the younger ones, that’s for sure. So a couple of things, you will find that when you start doing the mind, body, and soul time consistently on a daily basis, the frequency and intensity of those tantrum episodes will decrease. That is proven time and time again. So that’s the first piece. The second piece is when that tantrum happens, again, recognize that that child is having difficulty. It’s not about you, the child is having a hard time. So the most important thing is to connect, be there, get down on their level. Through trial and error, figure out what’s gonna help that child in that moment, show empathy, work on calming strategies, breathing techniques, all of those things that sort of help recenter the mind and body. We can start to teach those things at a young age. We have to recognize that these are kind of skills that kids have to learn. And it takes a little while, but we can start that process right then and there. But I think if we view it, as you said earlier, “This child is having a hard time,” rather than it being a misbehavior, it puts us in a totally different mindset in terms of how we respond to that child. And it’s gonna completely shift how quickly the child comes out of that episode.

Katie: That makes sense. Okay. So in the very beginning, we started talking a little bit about routine. And I’d love to circle back to that, especially with times like kids being home for the summer and not the normal school year type routine. Do you recommend being rigid and creating a routine to kind of keep through the summer or being more lenient in times like that? How do you navigate those?

Amy: Yeah, so I am big on routine. I don’t think we have to be militant. But I think a routine is important, one, because human beings in general, but especially kids crave a sense of order. And most kids do better when there is a sense of order to their day. And so if there can be a general routine that we follow, things happen in a certain order of events, the day will just go more smoothly. So if you are homeschooling, you know, you kind of have your block schedule in terms of the order in which we do things within those blocks and there can be a lot of flexibility. So if it’s a movement or a creativity block, what we do within that can be very flexible. But you would do less nagging and reminding, Katie, if we can have a routine that we follow, even during the summer. Now we want summers to be fun and all of that, but certain things can remain the same. So kids have family contributions, and I call them family contributions, not chores. We can talk about that later. But they have family contributions that they do every day. I highly recommend that bedtimes remain the same.

And the bedtime can be different, say, during the summer, the time can be different during the summer than during the school year if they’re going out to school, but it should be the same every night because kids internal clocks, they still need the same amount of sleep. Their internal clocks don’t recognize the difference between a Saturday night versus a Tuesday night. So keeping routines the same for bedtime can really go a long way in just easing just a lot of stress and anxiety for the parent. The other reason that’s important is that if the bedtime is 8:00 one night, 8:30 the next, and 9:00 the next, you really don’t have a bedtime routine. You don’t have a bedtime. So it becomes negotiable every night and it can turn into this power struggle. So even during summer vacations or holidays, or when we’re all home for other reasons, the more that we can keep the routine pretty consistent, it’ll just make things a lot easier for parents and a lot easier for kids.

Katie: Gotcha. Okay. And I’m glad that you brought up bedtime because I think that’s another area where parents can have a lot of difficulty and it seems to change. So the little ones, at least in my house, it’s been more of the having trouble getting them to get in bed, stay in bed, and then they need water, and they need to go to the bathroom, and then they had a bad dream or whatever, all the things maybe. With my older ones, it’s more of anything, they just wanna stay up and read longer. But any strategies for navigating bedtime and all the different ages and enforcing it without it being a fight?

Amy: Yes, so that we could talk an entire hour just on bedtime. There’s so much to cover here, but just some general guidelines. So you talked about all the requests, the drink of water, the one more hug, all of those types of requests that you get during the bedtime routine. I recommend that you with your kids revisit what that routine is gonna look like. So all the things that they asked for you build that into the routine. And so we decide that, you know, lights out is at 7:30 or 8:00 or whatever time that is, and then all of those things, that extra kiss, and the drink of water, and the back rub, all of those things happen within the routine. Once you close the door, that’s it. Now, you can prepare ahead. Like, you can keep a sippy cup in the room with just, you know, a little tiny bit of water in it. So if they get thirsty in the middle of the night, they have it there. But once the door closes, that’s it. Now there’s quite a bit of a training process that we help parents with to kind of navigate that so it doesn’t turn into a big power struggle. But what we don’t wanna be in the business of is, you know, just responding all night long with these requests because then parents never get a break. They’re exhausted. They end up dreading the bedtime routine.

And it’s a big power struggle. The other thing that I recommend is that the tuck-in time, be one parent and one child, rather than, you know, we read books with everybody together, we do prayers with everybody together, all of those things. While that’s efficient, it doesn’t really fill their attention bucket. And the other problem is when there’s, you know, two kids and one parent, sort of the pack mentality can set in and they start acting up, and that can be difficult. So the more you can do one parent, one child for the tuck-in routine, which means you’ll be staggering, that’s gonna give you better results. Then for older kids, that is just sort of working with them. You know, if they wanna have more reading time, that’s probably fine. But still having a lights out time that you respect. Certainly, we wanna have a technology lights out time, long before their actual bedtime, just so they’re not doing a lot of technology right before they go to bed. So a lot of things to consider in the whole bedtime routine, depending on the age of the child, the preferences of the parents and what kind of power struggles we’re having in general.

Katie: Gotcha. And I’m glad you brought up technology as well because certainly, this is an area that I think our generation kind of uniquely gets to figure out how to handle with kids. Because, at least, for me, that was just starting to come around when I was a teenager. So it wasn’t really… Like, there was no social media at that point. My parents didn’t really have to figure out how to navigate that. And now, we have kids with these devices and they’re connected to the world through technology, which has many advantages and certainly is not going away. And as adults, they’re going to need to know how to navigate technology. But as parents, we have a responsibility for teaching them to navigate it responsibly and also not letting it take over our family lives. And also, before we jump into any topic like this, I also wanna say I realize this is different, I’m sure in every family and there are times where kids are using technology for schoolwork or for other things. So I’m not trying to, like, poo technology at all. I just am curious, do you have any guidelines for navigating technology appropriately at all the different stages?

Amy: Yes, it is important that you really give some thought to that because you’re right, kids, whether they are doing remote schooling, you know, they’re gonna have technology that they’re using for that. And there’s not much that we can do about that as parents. But there is a lot of what I call recreational technology time that kids are spending and we do have the responsibility to put some boundaries around that. We have the responsibility to do training around that. So, it can’t be a free for all, that, you know, all day long they can have access to the technology. So, again, it’s going to depend on the age of your kids. But first I recommend that you make technology part of a when-then routine team that we talked about earlier. So when your family contributions are done, then you can have your technology time. We also want to be very clear that when technology time is over, we put it away, and then it’s over. If there’s a lot of griping, or groaning, or complaining, or, “Mom, can I just have five more minutes?” And if it turns into a power struggle every day, then that’s not working. And so that tells you that probably that child may not be mature enough to handle the privilege of that technology. And we really wanna back off of it for a while, or we might need more training or whatever it happens to be.

But it cannot turn into a situation where the parent is the technology police and that every day is a battle because that’s not working for anybody. So we’re gonna put those boundaries in place. If kids cannot follow the rules that you’ve set forth based on your wisdom and what you know is appropriate for their emotional well-being and safety, if they can’t follow those rules, then they’re not gonna have access to that technology. And working with parents, I think that’s one of the most difficult things, Katie, because parents fear the wrath of their kids when they limit technology. And so they are fearful of putting the boundaries around it and then it turns into a free for all. So we have to do that. If kids can follow the rules, then they can have access to the technology because it is a privilege. It’s not a right. The other thing is that the training piece is really important. You wouldn’t send your kid out in the car without any training. Well, the same is true for technology. So teaching them how to use it responsibly. And there’s a lot of great online resources for that, how to use social media responsibly, training on your digital footprint. All of those types of things are really important. That’s our job. And so if we’re gonna allow them to have that technology, we need to make sure that we do take care time for training as well.

Katie: Gotcha. Okay. I think those are great guidelines. Another thing that seems to be an issue with certain parent-kid dynamics is back talking or acting sassy with parents. Any strategies for that? I would guess like everything we’ve talked about, probably the one-on-one time helps and just having natural consequences and systems built-in so you’re not constantly nagging, means there’s fewer times for that, but any other strategies or ways that you navigate?

Amy: You’re right, Katie, that’s probably the number one thing that parents bring to me us, like, the problem behavior, it’s that backtalk, and sassiness, and attitude. But the thing that we have to remember and we talked about this kind of at the beginning is that that is the symptom. It’s not the real problem. So if we can think about the backtalk as the symptom and not, like, that’s not the thing that we have to fix, we want to address the root cause of the behavior. And so as you said, we can do that by filling their attention bucket one-on-one every single day. That is essential. And again, if there’s a magic bullet in parenting, that is it. We also wanna be aware of our communication, and how much ordering, correcting, and directing that we do. One of the things that I teach to parents in our program is a parent personality assessment programs so, like, to figure out how your personality brings out certain behaviors in your kids. So for me, my personality is super controlling, naturally. So if I allow my natural controlling Miss Bossypants tendencies to show too much, I’ll naturally get power struggles. So for parents, they can learn how to sort of tweak their natural responses, so they do less ordering, correcting, and directing, and then use other tools that will get better cooperation. That will help reduce the backtalk.

When that does happen, again, remember that the child is having difficulty. There’s something else going on. So to show grace and empathize with that child. “Wow, you seem really frustrated. Wow, I can tell you are really mad about this.” Empathize with whatever it is they’re being sassy about, forget the sassiness for a minute and get to, like, what the theme is that they’re really upset about and show empathy with that. We’re gonna be much more likely to get through that if, again, we connect on that emotional level. The other thing that we can do is recognize that the backtalk, the sassiness, those are power behaviors. So when kids are exerting their power behaviors, it is usually an indication that they’re not feeling enough personal control, power autonomy over their own world. So there are strategies we can use for that. A simple one is giving them more decision-making opportunities. So think about areas in your family life, where you can get kids more involved in making decisions. Maybe it’s meal planning for the week. If the family is taking a vacation several months from now, get them involved in that. The more that they can have real-world decision-making opportunity, that is gonna really help their power bucket. And then the last thing that I would say and this is the hardest, Katie, is don’t take the bait.

When kids kind of serve up that sassy remark, that backtalk remark, it is so instinctive for us to respond with power, “You will not speak to me that way.” You know, “I demand respect,” or whatever the words are that you would say. But when we do that, it totally escalates the power struggle. So instead, if we can refuse to take the bait and just say with a smile and in a calm voice, say, “Sweetie, I’d love you too much to argue about this. Let’s talk about this when we’re both feeling more calm.” But just that smile on your face in a calm voice, “I love you too much to argue about this,” it just diffuses it. It says, “I’m not gonna engage in this power struggle. I’m not accepting your invitation and we’ll talk about this later. Whatever it is that you’re upset about, that’s important to me but I’m not gonna get into a battle with you.” So, again, I keep saying this, but we could talk for just a whole hour on backtalk, and attitude, and sassiness. But just sort of remembering those core issues of why it’s happening in the first place and addressing that will be our best strategy.

Katie: Yeah, I think you’re so right. It’s important to reframe that and I really also liked that you brought up the control autonomy dynamic because I’m just in the early stages of having to navigate this. So I’m by no means an expert. But it is something I think a lot about right now, just having a teenager and soon to have another teenager, and remembering what it was like to be a teenager as well. And I’ve read enough psychology to know, kids in that age, especially once they hit the teenage years, psychologically, they actually are trying to become more independent. And that’s an important psychological stage for them, as they’re preparing for adulthood. And also, as parents, we, of course, want them to be prepared for adulthood, and to have the skills, and the foundation they need to be independent, and to live outside our homes. And I’m seeing firsthand and definitely understand how difficult that is because at the end of the day, like, I still think of my oldest as my baby even though he’s almost as tall as I am. But realizing they do need to learn to have that autonomy and to feel control over and an ability to make their own decisions. In our house, we turn this thing on its head. So most people have heard the saying, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And we tell our kids, it actually works the other way. “With great responsibility comes great power.” When you show us that you’re responsible, we want to give you freedom, and we want to give you the power to make decisions. And so we have constant conversations around that. But just because it’s so top of mind, for me, right now, I’m curious, are there any, like, guidelines or ideas that you have for navigating with teenagers when certain levels of autonomy are appropriate or is it very much case by case based on the maturity level of the child and the relationship with the parent or how do you handle that?

Amy: First off, I just love what you just said, “With great responsibility comes great power.” That’s amazing. The other thing that I just want our listeners to remember is that this issue about needing more autonomy and control is absolutely an issue with teenagers. But it is the exact same thing with your two-years-old, three-years-old, six-years-old It doesn’t matter. Every kid at every stage has a need for autonomy and control. So I just don’t want people to think that we need to wait until the teen years to be thinking about this. But let’s talk specifically about what you asked when we want kids to be prepared to be successful in the adult world. And so we have to do our job to train them. So part of that is on an ongoing basis, always training them on tasks that they’ll need to do in the adult world, whether that’s managing their money, or changing air filters in the house, or car maintenance, or gardening, or whatever those things are, we always wanna be training them on adult tasks, so that when they leave the house, they’ll be prepared. But in terms of taking on more responsibility, one of the tools that I just love is called Convince Me. And this tool would apply when your kids wanna do something. Maybe they want to…you know, it’s a middle school or who wants to go to the mall on their own with friends, or somebody wants to go to a concert in the next town, or start driving, or whatever it happens to be, it is something that your kids wanna do that you’re a little bit, like, “I’m just not totally sure I’m ready for that.”

So you will use the tool to Convince Me. And so the way that works is you would share your concerns. So you would say, “You know, I understand that this is really important to you. Let me share my concerns about you going to the concert, or going to the mall, or riding your bike to school,” whatever that happens to be. These are my concerns. “So why don’t you take some time and think about this, and come back to me with your plan to address my concerns?” And so that’s what the kid does. They take some time, and then they come back, and they try to convince you if you will, but they do it in a way that takes all of your concerns into consideration, and then they share the plan that they’ve come up with. And so then, if you are comfortable with the plan that they’ve put forth, you can say, “Okay, I feel comfortable with that. It seems to me that you’ve thought through all of the possible things that could go wrong, you have a backup plan in place. That sounds great, let’s go ahead and, you know, do whatever you’ve asked to do.” And then you see how that goes. If they do well, then that makes you think, “Wow, yes, you know, he did a really good job by taking on this additional responsibility. And now I feel comfortable giving him more responsibility in the future.” Or if not, if it didn’t go so well, well, then that tells you, you’ve got more training to do.

We have more work to do in terms of responsibility. But the reason that I love this is because it requires the child to understand your point of view. So we’re fostering that empathy. And then they have to use their reasoning, and decision-making, and planning skills to come up with something to convince you that would address all of your concerns, but still, let them get the outcome that they want. And so it’s just a great strategy for adult life, right? We’ll be doing the same thing in our jobs or in group projects in college, or whatever, and you can start doing this really, as young as six or seven. Obviously, the problems and the issues will be different. But you can use these strategies, you know, all the way through into the teen years. And it’s great for kids and it’s great for parents.

Katie: That’s so great. I’m writing that one down to remember for sure because, you’re right, it puts the control actually in their hands. They’re getting to have a chance. And it removes all those things I used to say as teenagers, like, “You don’t understand or you don’t listen to me,” or whatever it is because you are listening as well, like you said, and then you’re having them pull from skills that will serve them their entire lives to develop, and potentially be able to get the outcome they want if they are able to do that effectively, which I love. I think there’s also crossover here when it comes to schoolwork or homework and how to navigate that. I’ve personally always taken the approach that even though I homeschool teach them, I’ll teach the concept but I’m not going to handhold, and babysit, and go through every problem with them. That’s school, that’s actually their work and I want them to learn how to kind of autonomously work through it themselves. And I feel like we have a good rhythm on this because we’ve been home homeschooling for so long, but I hear from a lot of parents who say things like, “It’s just getting to be so much. I have five hours of homework with my kid every single night after school where I spend, you know, three hours trying to get my first grader to do worksheets.” And any advice for parents who are trying to navigate that.

Amy: Yeah, so that can be a real challenge and I totally feel for parents, especially if you have multiple kids, but there are some simple sorts of things that you can put in place to avoid that. First as with all things, you will be successful with homework and schoolwork if you have filled their attention bucket first. So yeah, if your kids are coming home after school, take that time to connect emotionally first before you start being the taskmaster and start with, “Okay, we have to get the homework done and what are your assignments,” and all of that, start with connection first. It makes everything else go more smoothly. The next thing is, have some homework policies in place. So one of your policies can be, “I am happy to help you with anything that you need in your homework, as long as you’ve done as much as you can on your own. And then you can come to me and let me know what you still need help with. Now, when you come to me and let me know where you’re having trouble, I wanna know your thought process for trying to figure this out.” So basically, Katie, I don’t want them coming and saying, “I just can’t do this. This is too hard.” I wanna know, “Okay, on number seven, I see this problem, tell me your thought process for going through it and where did you struggle?” That way, I know they’ve put some time into it. And they’re not just playing the helpless card. The other thing is, have homework help hours. So that means I’m willing to help you with your homework from 5:30 to 8:30. After that, I’m too tired, you know, that’s not gonna work for me. So have homework help hours, like your office hours, if you will.

That gets you out of the situation where they’re coming at, you know, 9:30 at night, “I can’t do this. And it’s due tomorrow.” And so really put your homework help policies in place. Again, I tell parents, “You’ve already done the fifth grade. Your job is not to sit there and you know, side by side with your child, while they complete their homework and you being involved in it.” As you said, you want them to be doing that autonomously. You’re certainly there to support but it’s not your job. I would also have a talk with the teacher and let the teacher know that you are working on training for responsibility in your home. And so you will be there to support your child in doing their homework if they need help, but you’re not gonna cook some prod and that sort of thing. And so that then allows the natural consequences to play out. So if the kid doesn’t get the homework done, then that’s a discussion they’re having with the teacher and you can stay out of it. I think, Katie, where we run into trouble is, parents feel like, “I’m gonna look like a terrible parent if my kid doesn’t get their homework done.” Let the kid experience the natural consequences at school, that’s gonna be much more effective and it’s gonna keep you out of the role of the bad guy. Obviously, if there is a learning difference or an attention difference are other interventions that are required, you can, you know, work with the teacher and the clinicians, and whoever is on your team to do that. But they should be autonomously doing their homework, just as you suggested.

Katie: Yeah, I’m a big fan of natural consequences as well. And I’ve never heard it framed as well as you did with when and then, which I think is that just the language of that is wonderful because it avoids the power struggle and it lets them easily understand it in literally two words, that this happens when you’ve done this. But you’re right, I think that there’s been a shift at least it seems like. Obviously, I’ve only parented this current generation, but it seems like there’s a shift even since I was a kid of trying to protect kids from natural consequences. We’re not wanting them to have to feel the discomfort of not getting a good grade at school or facing something that’s difficult. And it’s funny because I don’t think my parents had those same fears. I always knew I had to get my schoolwork done. And if I messed up at school, I was gonna get in trouble at school. They certainly weren’t gonna save me. And then I was gonna get in trouble when I got home too. But there does seem to be at least a little bit more protecting kids from natural consequences. What other ways can we gently and lovingly incorporate those natural consequences? Because I feel like as adults, that’s something we all deal with very much every single day, if we don’t do our jobs, if we don’t take care of our houses, if we don’t do any of the things that adults have to do. There are very, very real natural consequences. So how can we let our kids start learning that from the earliest of ages?

Amy: Yes, absolutely. In fact, Katie, you’re doing our course right now so you’ll be getting to this in step 3, where we talk about creating a consequential environment. If we don’t create a consequential environment at home, our kids are really gonna struggle when they’re out on their own and have to face consequences for the first time. So, you know, from the younger years, all the way up through the teens, we have to create that consequential environment. And some of those come from, like, natural consequences. Well, if you refuse to take your coat to school, you may be cold outside at recess. It’s the middle of winter, that’s just a natural consequence. But then there’s also consequences around personal responsibility. So you mentioned homework is one of them, that if you don’t get your homework done, then you’re gonna have to face the consequences with your teacher. One of the things that we talk about is implementing a no rescue policy. And a no rescue policy is for areas in which we’ve been through this a million times, whether it’s remembering your lunchbox and remembering the homework, or your sports equipment, or whatever it is, we’ve talked about this, we’ve trained on it, I’ve already rescued you, probably more times than I should have. But now I know that it’s time to implement the no rescue policy. And so that starts with training. And we always kind of position it in a very positive way because marketing is everything. “You know, you are really growing up and you’re becoming so responsible in so many ways. And so now this is an area where you can take responsibility.” So let’s say it’s the sports equipment. “So from now on, you’re gonna be responsible for packing your sports bag and remembering to take it, making sure you have your uniform, and your cleats, and all the equipment.

I’m not gonna get involved in that anymore. I’m not gonna remind you, that is gonna be your responsibility. And if you choose not to take that responsibility, if you don’t have your stuff ready, if you forget your stuff, I’m not gonna be driving it to the field.” So what that means, Katie, is, you know, I’ve taken time for training… Oh, and also part of this has to do with systems. So I would say since I’m not gonna be reminding you about this anymore, what systems do you need to put in place so you can remember what you need to do for soccer or for your homework or whatever it happens to be? So we’ve done the training, we’ve put the systems in place, we’ve sort of set the expectation that we’re not gonna rescue, now we have to let it play out and let the child experience the consequence. Again, bring the coach or the teacher into the loop, if that makes you feel better, so they know you’re not a slacker parent, but in fact, you’re teaching responsibility. And if he shows up without his equipment, you know, you encourage the coach to implement the consequences that he has in place. So it’s implementing that no rescue policy. It’s not for a once in a blue moon mistake, we all make those and as a family, we have each other’s back. We help each other out. But for ongoing consistent issues that we have talked about, then we know it’s time for the no rescue policy. So that’s one example and many examples of how to create a decision rich environment for your kids that are going to set them up to be accountable, responsible for their own choices and to be successful functioning in a teen and in an adult world.

Katie: Got it. And I also wanna hear the explanation because you use the word family contributions, which I love because I think chores has a negative connotation. And adults don’t do chores, we just contribute to the family as well. But I’d love to hear, like, how you first of all came up with that term and how you use that because I think it’s such a great alternative.

Amy: Yeah, it’s so funny you asked how I came up with that term, and I actually don’t have any idea. I don’t remember how I came up with it. But you’re right, the word chores just denotes drudgery. Nobody wants to do chores. That sounds awful. And when you call those things family contributions, it doesn’t make the task any more enjoyable. Nobody enjoys folding laundry or unloading the dishwasher. But it does reinforce to your kids that when you do those things, it makes a difference for our family. And again, part of that power bucket that I talked about is a feeling of significance. We all have a hard-wired need to make a difference, to be significant, to contribute to the greater good. And so for a child or a teenager, the greater good is their family. And so when they are doing those things, they are contributing. So I highly recommend that parents change the language on that. I will tell you, Katie, to this day, my kids still roll their eyes a little bit when I say family contributions. But that doesn’t stop me one bit, I still call them that because when they contribute, it makes a difference. And the other piece of that is that we need to remind our kids what a difference their efforts make. And this applies to your partner too. Even though it’s their regular job, let them know, “When you do that, that makes such a difference for me. That makes our home runs so much more smoothly. That’s a big job that I don’t have to do.” We have to remember on an ongoing basis to let our people know how much we appreciate their contributions because that makes them feel better about it. When they know that their efforts are making a difference for you, they’re gonna be more likely to want to do it in the future.

Katie: That makes sense. Yeah. And it’s a great reminder. A lot of these things, just even our language, and our reframing, and making time for one-on-one connection, those are all such important things with our partner too, not just with our kids. Yeah, I think those are such helpful things.

I’d also love to hear because I know you’ve worked with probably now thousands of families. For people listening who are wondering like, “This all sounds great, and it makes sense. But does it actually work? And do you really see a big difference? And how long does it take?” So can you talk about kind of what is the typical path that someone’s family will see when they start implementing these things, but maybe tell us a couple of stories of families that have used these strategies and how that changed their lives?

Amy: Oh, my goodness, I could go on forever. But so there are some changes that you see immediately and some that take a little bit longer. So I’ll give you a couple of examples. The mind, body, and soul time that I mentioned, that tool about one-on-one time every single day, you will see a difference in your kid’s behavior in one or two days, promise. Like as I said, if there’s such thing as a magic bullet, that is it because it is getting to their core emotional needs. So that change you see right away. Now in the work that I do with parents, I like to make it really easy for them. So I teach it kind of in a step-by-step pattern. So you implement one tool, and then you build on it with the next and the next. And with each tool that you implement, you are getting better and better results. And that makes sense because all of the tools focus on giving kids the positive power that they have to have. But then also, the other tools are intended to sort of diffuse those power struggles, but in a way that’s more positive than we’ve done before. So the more you use the tools, in general, the behavior gets better and better. So with the mind, body, and soul time, you’ll see that right away. Now with sibling rivalry and fighting, that takes a little bit longer to implement and to see the results. You’ll see some initial results right away, but it won’t solve every single thing in the first week, of course. And the reason for that is so for you, you have a 13-year-old, your oldest is 13, Katie, what’s the age of your next child?

Katie: Eleven, almost 12.

Amy: Okay. So between those two kids, there’s 11 years of baggage or competition, rumblings, that have sort of been baked into the relationship. And so that’s an example that takes just a little bit longer to resolve because we have to teach kids the conflict resolution strategies and we kind of have to work at some of that victim competition that naturally happens because, right, the day that you bring that second baby home from the hospital, there’s some competition that is just baked in. That’s just the way it works. So those types of behaviors may take a little bit longer to turn around. But in terms of transformation, I would encourage your listeners to go and read our Google reviews, our five star Google reviews, the transformation is just amazing. And it’s parents who felt like they were failing at their most important job, they feel like they’re not even cut out for parenthood, they feel like they’re not meeting their kid’s needs like every day. It just is a cycle of frustration and guilt. And they just feel extremely discouraged. And then they start implementing the tools and things start to turn around. So we have so many success stories, whether it’s on, you know, getting your kids to sleep through the night, whether it’s the sibling thing that I talked about, whether it’s just the emotional connection with your kids, reducing the power struggles.

There are so many transformations. But, you know, as a mom of now I have young adults, like, I will tell you, that time just goes so quickly. And you wanna look back on it and think, “Yes, like, I really enjoyed that time with my kids.” You want your kids to look back on their growing up years and think, “Yes, I had a great relationship with my parents. Things weren’t always perfect, but when things came up, we dealt with in a way that was positive, and it was solution-focused, and we want them to have those good memories. So the transformation can absolutely come. The thing that I always tell parents, Katie, is that parenting is not intuitive. Like, just because you’re smart, and loving, and nurturing, and you’re a good person, that doesn’t mean that you have the tools to deal with temper tantrums in Target or, you know, the meltdowns, or the defiance, or the sassiness, or the homework hassles. Like, we don’t have that stuff intuitively. But the good news is, it’s things that you can learn, really simple strategies that parents can pick up and just make such a difference in their day in day out life with their kids.

Katie: Yeah, exactly. And so far, I’m really enjoying the course. And I know you have a couple of books as well, I’ll make sure those are all linked in the show notes. So for all of you guys listening, you can head over to wellnessmama.fm and find the show notes there. But just talk a little bit about the system you have in your course, in the books and what you recommend for parents. Like, where should they jump in?

Amy: Yeah, so our system is called the 7-Step Parenting Success System. And again, it’s kind of a very linear approach because that’s the way my brain thinks. But it teaches parents all of those tools that they need to bring out the very best in their kid’s behavior, but also to bring out the best in the parent’s behavior so they can get out of the nagging, and reminding, and yelling cycle that they have been in. So in the 7 steps, parents learn the tools in the toolbox. But then there’s also the more intensive advanced modules. So if you have a bedtime problem, if you have a mealtime problem, if you have a child, you’re struggling with schoolwork and homework for a child with ADHD, so there are all these very specific advanced modules to tackle specific problems. So parents can just progress through that and learn all of those tools and have the advanced modules. If they want to sort of test drive what that system is all about, they can take a free class that we have, it’s called “Get kids to listen without nagging, reminding or yelling.” I can give you that link too. I also have two books, “If I Have to Tell You One More Time,” and then the other one is called “The Me, Me, Me Epidemic,” which is all about unentitling our kids. So lots different places that parents can get information. I’d say definitely start with a free class because that way they can sort of dip their toe in and see if they like what I teach, and they can put those tools, you know, into place right away with their own families and see what kind of results they get.

Katie: I love it. So again, all those will be in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm so you guys can find them. This was such a fun episode. Our time flew by. And another question I selfishly love to ask at the end because I’m a very avid reader is other than your own if there’s a book or a number of books that have really changed your life, and if so what they are and why?

Amy: Oh, this is such a hard question. I’m sure everybody tells you that. But there are a couple of books that I love. So this first one has been around for a while, you may be familiar with it. It’s called “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Dr. Carol Dweck. And it is a great read. It’s an easy read, but it’s all about her groundbreaking research on a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. And that applies to everyone, whether it’s, you know, sports, academics, your work life, but so important for your parenting. And there are things that we parents do that sort of undermine a growth mindset for our kids, particularly as it relates to praise. And so her book is really a mindset shift for a lot of parents. I’ve also incorporated a lot of her concepts into what I teach. So that’s a great one. Another one that I love, and again, this is from forever ago, but it is still a classic. It’s called “How to Talk so Kids Will Listen & Listen so Kids Will Talk,” by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. And again, super easy reads, like lots of cartoons. But it’s ways to phrase things to kids so that it’s accepted with an open heart, doesn’t invite a power struggle but allows you to get things done. So, again, as I said, it’s a classic book, but it is one of my favorites and one that I always recommend to parents.

Katie: I love both of those suggestions. And like I said, this has been such a fun interview. I think it’s gonna help a lot of families. And I’m going through your course right now so I’ll make sure that link is in the show note as well. But thanks for the time and for all the research. It’s just been fun.

Amy: Well, thank you. I really appreciate the time to chat with you and thanks for all the important work that you’re doing out there for your community.

Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for joining us today and sharing one of your most valuable resources, your time with us. We’re very grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama Podcast.”

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/positive-parenting-solutions/

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