#Dallas star named after a Texas town

[formulanni]

Dallas star

Tag list: @st-leclerc @rubywingsracing @saviour-of-lord @three-days-time @the-wall-is-my-goal @albonoooo @ch3rubd0lls @brawngp2009 @korolrezni-nikolai @d00dlespng

[theshypinkflower]

What are Dereks other siblings like? I love your writing so, so much ♡

OHHHHH BOY YOU SHOULDNT HAVE ASKE DME THAT EHHEHEHE

🥇Matt:

-the overachiever always trying to get attention from Sal

-he was Mr. Perfect, doing anything and everything so that Sal could be proud of him (and perhaps get a leg up in taking over his company unlike DEREK). He wants to EARN the company and not be a huge nepo baby like Derek

-he always fights with Derek, seeing his brother as beneath him since he’s so reckless, and thus doesn’t deserve such prosperity!

-has trophies among trophies and medals, at some point Sal stopped displaying them in the trophy case and so most of them just take up room in his closet

-forced to do football and managed to be star quarterback his senior year in high school. He didn’t really care to do it in college, but Sal insisted (it’s cause bro was living through him since he lost his football scholarship when he was in college).

-ridiculously good at math, like he can divide numbers in his head lighting fast

-experiences a bit of physical abuse from Sal, but definitely not as uch as Derek. Its mostly when Matt “disappoints” his dad

-Matt is named after his grandad! (Sal’s dad)

👠Rochelle:

-the much more famous of the siblings

-big time model who’s been on the cover of a couple magazines (nothing like vogue or anything, but definitely bigger than whatever local magazine is in town)

-basically Kate Moss. Eating disorder, coke addiction (the only reason she even stays home is cause of Sal’s coke supply), so thin it makes you jealous

-use to be a pageant girl. Her grandma Esther (Sal’s mom) was so estatic her son finally had a girl (she always wanted a girl of her own), and thus immediately set her up to win pageants and perhaps be miss universe (she made it to Miss Dallas, failed to be Miss Texas and dropped out the running)

-one of the siblings who is NEVER seen. She’s always in her room, working out, or at photo shoots. She does come down for dinner (cause if she doesn’t Sal gets into her for it) and spends the whole time moving food around her plate before giving it to the dog)

-has a little chihuahua she carries around in her purse (the dog is named Princess)

-prom queen, homecoming queen, you name it. If it was a popularity contest she won it!

-had a phase when she was a teen to shoplift drugstore makeuo (even tho she could afford it)

-any abuse she faces is verbal, Sal ironically enough doesn’t hit his daughters (Sal also was so awkward when his daughters were growing up)

🦇Gwendolyn:

-the “goth” sibling

-she has a superiority complex due to her alt style. Thinks that she’s so much better than the “normies” for being goth (she’s…not all that goth)

-is basically ALWAYS in her room listening to music or writing deep poetry (it is as deep as a puddle)

-she always rolls her eyes whenever Sal tells her she looks like a vampire and to wipe that shit off her face

-isn’t that close with the other members of her family, besides Rochelle and Esther

-she insisted she wanted to major in history, but Sal refused to pay for her college if she majored in such a “useless” degree. She didn’t wanna work for scholarships or anything so she majored in science which by Sal’s standards is “much better”.

-her hair is actually brown! She dyes it black with box dye and everyone is always pissed she stains the sink/tub with her box dye. Derek is especially pissed whenever he notices black spots on his towel, throwing them at his sister and saying that she can keep the damn towel.

-learned how to shoplift from Rochelle, mostly just shoplifts makeup and snacks

-yearbook editor! She’s actually unbelievably good at photography, although it’s not something she’s super interested in that she wants to make money off it. It’s a hobby for her. She has a lot of camera lenses and a camera that takes two hands to lift. She also owns a digital camera so she can take more aesthetic pictures.

-has a space hey where she uploads all the pictures from her digital camera. She loves the internet cause she can pretend to be someone and people will give her so much attention

-gets a lot more verbal abuse than Rochelle, mostly just berated for being a weirdo. But Gwendolyn at least stands her ground a bit better than Esther

🪻Esther:

-the “quiet” one

-she actually use to be a lot more outspoken, especially politically. Sal is obviously much more conservative and has a lot of sexist views which just grinded her gears. The two would argue frequently until Sal finally smacked her (the only time Sal hit his daughters) after a certain insult and was like “Don’t you fucking sass mouth me.”

-after that incident Esther just stayed more quiet and hardly talks. One smack (and a bunch of yelling) was enough to break her resolve

-she’s horrified none of her siblings did anything to help her, but then again she also did nothing when Sal was berating them

-she once tried to get her siblings to band together and do something about Sal, but all they looked at each other and went “are you fucking stupid?”

-Esther is named after her grandmother!

-it took her awhile, but she eventually learned its better to not argue. Complicity leads to less problems.

(Honestly I’d love to write the other six but it’s taking me forever and I don’t wanna keep you waiting honey so have the first four 😭)

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

Welcome to Too Much Information Tuesday.

Castrated men live longer.

It only takes 0.2 seconds to fall in love.

Research shows vaping can shrink testicles and cause sperm counts to plummet.

New scientific research suggests finding new scientific discoveries is getting harder.

Not having enough sleep per day leads to a desire for sex, depression and alcoholism.

You are 13.8% more likely to die on your birthday than on any other day of the year.

Ferrero, the maker of Nutella, uses about 25% of the world's hazelnut supply.

In a lifetime, the average person will spend over five years of their life on social media.

Canada’s largest cemetery is plagued by groundhogs who keep digging up the bones.

People who sleep late have more mental stamina and can outperform early risers.

Steve Jobs was adopted. His biological father was Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian Muslim.

At least 1/7th of subscription service revenue is from people who forgot they were subscribed.

People who read books live an average of two years longer than those who don't, according to a Yale study.

Studies have shown that people who frequently use emojis in text messages have more active dating and sex lives.

In 2023, Canadian residents were shocked to see an enormous phallic iceberg float past their home town of Dildo.

A Japanese woman was having laser surgery on her cervix when she farted, igniting the laser and setting herself on fire.

A study found that marrying an older man reduces a woman's lifespan, but marrying a younger man reduces it even more.

The world’s first nudist colony, founded in India in 1891, was called The Fellowship Of The Naked Trust. (Good job Tolkien didn't name it!)

The most powerful way to win an argument is by asking questions. You'd be surprised at how it can make people see the flaws in their logic.

Athletic shoes are called ‘sneakers’ because, when they were invented, people used them to their advantage to move around quietly.

Walking for just one hour twice a week increases the size of the hippocampus, the brain area in charge of verbal memory and learning.

The word ‘dude’ was first used in the 1800s as an insult towards young men who were too concerned with keeping up with the latest fashions.

The best thing in life is finding someone who knows all your flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses, and still thinks you're completely amazing.

In Detroit, a man was arrested after installing and bolting a marijuana vending machine to the front of his home and selling weed to his neighbourhood. He was making over $2,000 a day.

Movie theatres in Iceland, Switzerland, Egypt, Turkey and India often have a 10-minute intermission in the middle of the movie, giving viewers a chance to visit the concession stands or use the restroom.

Diddy has reassigned his publishing rights back to all the artists and songwriters who helped build Bad Boy Entertainment. Ma$e, Faith Evans, The LOX, 112 and the estate of the Notorious B.I.G. have already signed agreements to regain those rights.

The TV show ‘Dallas’, about the family of an oil tycoon from Texas, was named by a producer. When the writer protested saying that, “Houston is the oil city,” the producer said, “Who knows that? Who cares? Do you want to watch a show called ‘Houston’?”

Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca in Star Wars actually had to be accompanied by crew members dressed in brightly coloured vests while filming in the forest of the Pacific Northwest. This was to ensure that he wasn't shot by hunters who might mistake him for Bigfoot.

In 1940, the Nazis sent 12 spies to Britain to pave the way for an invasion. However, the spies were captured, partly due to their poor knowledge of British customs and lack of fluency in English. Two spies were arrested for biking on the wrong side of the road, another for ordering alcohol at 10 a.m.

The Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) is an area in London where an emissions standard based charge is applied to non-compliant road vehicles. Plans were announced by London Mayor Boris Johnson in March 2015 for the zone to come into operation in September 2020. Sadiq Khan, the subsequent mayor, introduced the zone on April 8th, 2019.

Okay, that’s enough information for one day. Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday! I love you all.

[twofoursixd]

* mason gooding + he , him + cis man  –  have you seen  sullivan  ‘jaws’  johanssen  around los angeles? the  twenty6  year old is usually jamming to  big poppa by notorious big. word around the city is that they’re  steadfast, yet, they can also be  severe, but you didn’t hear that from me. they’re currently a  head of personal security / bodyguard  and are typically seen walking the streets of los angeles with  a pair of vintage raybans obscuring his hard gaze. when i think of them, i think of  oversized hoodies hiding a powerful frame , semi-permanent bags beneath your watchful eyes , & minding your business ( until it becomes your business ) .  let’s hope the city treats them good! 

𝟎𝟎𝟏. 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐒 :

𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 :  sullivan  ‘jaws’  johanssen 

𝘢𝘨𝘦 :  twenty - six

𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯 :  cape town , south africa

𝘰𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 :  former drug dealer , former club bouncer , current security detail .

𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 :  + steadfast , modest , focused  - troubled , severe , non-committal 

𝘩𝘰𝘨𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 :  hufflepuff 

𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 :  lawful neutral

𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 :  6′2

𝟎𝟎𝟐. 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐎 :

jaws was born in cape town and spent his entire upbringing there . he had a big family and they scraped by on the bare minimum so he’s rather grateful for that upbringing .

moved to the us for university , played rugby and thought he was going to make it big until a dirty tackle shredded his shoulder . thinking he wouldn’t get by on academics alone , he started selling drugs to the rich kids to supplement his income .

he went to texas a&m for computer engineering until he was kicked out his sophomore year during a frat party bust where he was caught dealing coke . he narrowly escaped jail time but was forced to fend for himself and figure out some way to make ends meet after deciding college was just a waste of time .

still retaining a rugby build and with an imposing energy about him , he made a living as a bouncer at a local hot - button luxury club . it was the nicest place in fort worth , but the hedonism and rich kid energy fueled dallas’ distaste for the bravado these people put on .

parties begin to request his presence specifically , noting that the other vip bouncers tend to act weird around them or sellout their location to the paparazzi . before he knows it , jaws is head of security , eventually being shipped out to LA to set up a second location of this club with an even bigger star list .

he eventually leaves night life in order to pursue the more lucrative business of private security . he's loyal , neutral , and minds his business , so old money families start to spread word of the quality of his services and before he knows it , he's a celebrity bodyguard and security planner for several big names in the los angeles area .

𝟎𝟎𝟑. 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓����

jaws is known for being something of a mystery , though those closest to him argue they can see right through him . he’s quiet and reserved mostly due to his tendency to watch what goes on around him — he’s always seeing , always thinking , and always calculating how to make his next move for the hustle . he keeps to himself and his crew and is generally quiet in most new situations 

when he’s comfortable , he becomes a harbinger of mischief . he enjoys chill nights in spent smoking and roasting his friends in good fun . he’s levelheaded and astute and finds the most fun in minding his own business , often calling out the stupidity of the world around him with minimal filter once provoked . though warm and protective , jaws won’t hesitate to put someone in their place if he’s really been fed up with their stupidity

when he’s not focusing on work , roasting people to bits or high as a kite , jaws is mellow and gentle as a teddy bear . he feels his emotions incredibly deeply and is known for being as honest of a person as they come . he can be possessive to an extent and won’t hesitate to call out or even swing when needed to protect someone in his circle .

[shigironkii]

Information on my postal babe (Ellie)

• she was born in Dallas, texas. She had a rocky relationship with her family due to serious issues, and being the scapegoat for the family’s issues. She said ‘fuck it’, and went on her own way at 17 years old. Ellie became a cam star at 19 years old after moving to Arizona since it was familiar to her from her own hometown. Plus easy money and easy bills to pay. It wasn’t until she reached 23 did she finally make a good following online and began to make more money from that than in a bank. Ever since then, she’s been doing online shows for people and makes good bank, along with fixing up a garden and doing small activities

• she met dude when he was entering the town, mainly from the commotions and damage he’d cause in the town, but chalks it up to gossip and drama. It isn’t until she realizes he lives close to her that she began to slowly talk to him. He didn’t like her at first, seeing her as some random woman who just wanted something or needed something. After awhile of catching her smoking on the porch of her camper and hanging out abit, they became good friends at first. It wasn’t until the divorce and falling out of his wife did she finally make a move, saying how he deserves a wife that’s better and more for him than she was. (She doesn’t pick sides but understands the stories and sometimes hearings of their fights and disturbance) she confessed first, basically all or nothing when asking him. He said sure, slowly beginning to trust her and respect what she does and who she is.

• she’s a chronic weed smoker, mainly for helping with depression and chronic illness (horrible spine, hip out of place). Dude pokes fun but has made a weed table for her before he went out to town to make his move for the day.

• Ellie’s real name is Veronica edwards, but legally changed it to Ellie Simpson.

• currently I ship her with postal 3 or 4 dude, so she’s about 26-27 years old. She’s pansexual, Demi-romantic. She/her pronouns.

• Ellie is also autistic and will go about sonic, hello kitty and digimon for hours. Dude has timed her talking about the lore of sonic x for over two hours with every detail too.

• she doesn’t celebrate Christmas, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Only Halloween, valentine, and her birthday. Any other holidays besides those are ignored or forgotten on accident.

• if the current employment doesn’t work out, she wants to be a salon girl. Or do make up for others, dudes been practiced on plenty of times with eyeshadow and eyeliner.

[mwsa-member]

Sky Thunder by Charles A. Stewart

MWSA Review Pending  

Author's Synopsis

Charles Stewart served 26 years in the military as a sniper in the Airborne Infantry and in units with Special Operations Command worldwide. He is a combat veteran of Desert Storm and the Global War On Terror, with multiple deployments to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Charles later served his nation's Government in high-threat arenas as a Personal Diplomat Security Specialist until his retirement in 2017. He now resides in his East Tennessee hometown with his wife Cheryl and his service dog Sadie. Charles has completed his latest sequel, "Sky Thunder," a gripping and potent work of fiction that keeps the pages turning until its provocative conclusion.

The Colt Hawkins series reveals stories of the men and women of one of the world's most elite and secretive para-military organizations. Special Activities Division of the CIA, Former Tier One Operator Colt Hawkins is gritty, smart, honorable, battle-tested, and devoted to his fellow operators and his country, who are frequently put in harm's way by the evils of the world.

Colt leads Task Force 24 on a mission in Tangiers, Morocco, to secure a CIA operative and her principal, a defecting Chinese Scientist, who has given classified information to the CIA to secure him and his family in the West. The Russian and Chinese governments have worked together on this new technology in top-secret facilities. The Chinese have named the first strike weapon a stealth missile, Sky Thunder. The U.S. has failed for years in this advancement, and now it must figure out how to defeat it.

During the mission, Colt and his team identified the Texas bombings mastermind, VLAD BENECHIKO, a former Spetnaz Commander and the founder and President of Red Star Group, a private security company contracted by the Russian Government.

Benechiko and his men are modern-day mercenaries who do the dirty work for the powers of Moscow, and Vlad travels to Tangiers to assassinate the defecting Chinese scientist. Along with Vlad are WAHID MADI, a former Iranian Quds soldier, now radical extremist, and former teacher, now bomb maker AMAL SEFER. They are all wanted, escaping authorities after bombing Dallas and attacking a small Texas town.

This vital knowledge is the first hurdle for the President and his new administration. CIA Director MARKUS DURHAM is tasked with using the Special Activities Division and Special Operations Units to retrieve this technology and destroy the secret facility where the Russians are building the missile—but for reasons they aren't aware of, a secret meeting in Washington, a spy emerges, giving information about the operation to the Chinese, knowing they have a secret alliance with Russia. With this new development, Benechiko sets a trap. He doesn't believe the world's superpower has what it takes. At the same time, however, a trap has sprung at a deadly cost to the CIA.

The White House administration pulls the plug in the middle of the operation. Colt and his unit are stranded, and though their goal is to save their country and democracy, they must first save themselves.

Author Charles A. Stewart's engaging book is an excellent choice for Adult Thriller readers, Using his real-life experiences in his stories.

Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle

Review Genre: Fiction—Mystery/Thriller/Crime

Number of Pages: 286

Word Count: 89,000

[merrock]

CHARACTER INFORMATION

face claim: ashley park

full name: joella mae suh

nickname(s) / goes by: jo

pronouns & gender: she/her & cis woman

sexuality: bisexual

birth date: February 17, 1992

birth place: Dallas, TX

arrival to merrock: arrived in town 2000, left 2010, and returned 2022

housing: loft in historic downtown

occupation: performer at mirage, performer at events

work place: mirage, various

family: mother in town, younger siblings

relationship status: single

PERSONALITY

Joella is stubborn, chic, and sassy all wrapped into one. She's the kind of friend you want on your side during a debate because she can argue her way through a room. Or the friend who you can tell your secrets to late at night during a sleepover. Jo is the type of person who is stubborn and who may not listen to authority or be the first admit responsibility. But after everything she's been through, she's also smart and has learned from her mistakes.

WRITTEN BY: Erin (she/her), PST.

BACKGROUND / BIO

triggering / sensitive content: military mention, death, parental death

Joella was born to Jennifer and Jonathan Suh in Dallas, Texas. The first of four kids, she was the apple of their eye. Then came three more. Joella fell into the role of big sister easily, making sure to take that role seriously. As time went by, the family was happy and doing well. Of course, life wasn't perfect and had its bumps in the road but the kids were well-loved and supported. Like all things, the good must end. At eight years old, life threw a curveball. After her father had left on one of his military tours, and didn't come back, Joella and her siblings made their way to Merrock with their mother. 

Trying to adjust to life without their father was a challenge. Joella started to get into trouble, even at a young age. There was so much trapped energy and things that the young girl didn't understand. Being the oldest of four siblings didn't make anything easier. Jo and her mother never really saw eye to eye. Like any mother/daughter relationship, the two bickered over different things from school, to clothes, to dating.

One of the many loves Joella had was of music. From an early age, she had a love of musicals and performing. It came naturally to her and was something she wanted to pursue in her life. To say that Joella was naturally talented was an understatement, she found herself in a few lead roles but also challenged to make herself stand out. That's when after high school, Joella left home, much to her mother's disapproval, forgo college to try to become a star.

That plan didn't work out as she wanted. The gigs didn't come right away, so Jo ended up working whatever jobs she could get, until she started landing some performing roles. They were small, but it was better than nothing. Once Jo realized that money was hard to come by, she had no choice but to come back with her tail between her legs... to her mother and start over back in town.

[readingforsanity]

The Hunting Wives | May Cobb | Published 2021

The Hunting Wives share more than target practice, martinis, and bad behavior in this novel of obsession, seduction and murder.

Sophie O'Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and the stressful, competitive life of big city Chicago to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town. It seems like the perfect life with a beautiful home in an idyllic rural community. But Sophie soon realizes that life is now too quiet, but she's feeling bored and restless.

Then she meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives. Sophie finds herself completely drawn to Margot and swept into her mysterious world of late-night target practice and dangerous partying. As Sophie's curiosity gives way to full blown obsession, she slips farther away from the safety of her family and deeping into this nest of vipers.

When the body of a teenage girl is discovered in the woods where the Hunting Wives meet, Sophie finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation and her life spiraling out of control.

Sophie O'Neill is living the slowed down life in small town Mapleton, Texas after leaving the hustle and the bustle of city life in Chicago. Once a magazine editor, she is now a lifestyle blog journalist and stay at home mom to her 3 year old son, Jack, married to her husband, Graham.

But Sophie's slowed down life is going to get a bit more hectic once she meets the Hunting Wives. They consist of gossipy Tina, reserved Jill, uptight Callie and the gorgeous Margot. The four friends meet every Friday night at Margot's lake house on the outskirts of town to skeet shoot, drink and generally enjoy life together. But they invite Sophie to take part in their secret society. Sophie is thrilled, especially since she has formed an unhealthy obsession with Margot, harboring a sort of crush on her.

On the first night, Sophie understands why they call themselves the Hunting Wives: bored with their husbands and daily life, they go to bars where they aren't well-known and hunt for men to fool around with. Pleased to be included, Sophie goes along with it and is shocked to learn just how much Margot's star shines even in small, hole in the wall bars.

As their friendships deepen with each other, Sophie continously finds herself in strange situations, like that of getting black out drunk while attending a night club in Dallas with the girls, where she sees her friends clearly going against their rule of never going all the way with these strange men. Her crush on Margot continues to deepen no matter what she does to get rid of it.

But, Sophie feels badly about what she is doing to her marriage to Graham. She has fooled around with an 18-year-old boy named Jamie, the best friend of Brad who happens to be Jill's teenage son. Brad and Margot have been sleeping together for quite some time, despite Brad being in a relationship with a sweet girl named Abby, a Junior at the high school.

On one of their Friday nights, Margot decides to call it a night early but talks Sophie into staying behind, much to Callie's chagrin. The others leave, and Margot tells Sophie that both Brad and Jamie are heading to the lake house to hang out with them. After drinking too heavily, Sophie finds herself too drunk to drive home to her husband son, and ends up passing out on the couch. Later, when she returns home, she learns that Abby has gone missing and that a search for her is underway.

Sickened at the thought, Sophie can't help but think that Margot and Brad had something to do with her disappearance after she spied some unruly text messages between the two of them. However, a few days later, Abby's body had been found on Margot's lake property, a shotgun to the chest. And Sophie is now the number one suspect after the murder weapon is determined to have her fingerprints on the trigger.

Slowly, Sophie's life unravels around her. Graham finds out about her trysts with Jamie, though nothing truly ever happened between the two of them outside some touching and kissing, but he can't stand the sight of her at this point and kicks her out. It was determined that Abby had been pregnant at the time of her death, and now she's sure that Margot and Brad had something to do with it.

She goes to the lakehouse to confront Margot, but finding her with Callie, can't bring herself to do anything about it. After accepting a glass of wine from Callie, Sophie realizes that she had been drugged. In her atempt to sob herself up, Margot seduces her and the two of them sleep together. When she comes to later that night, she finds Brad in the doorway of the master bedroom, and she nervously leaves, heading back to her hotel.

But, Margot goes cold to her in the coming days, only for her to find out later by the detectives working on Abby's case that Margot is also dead, having drowned in the water on her property, a clear struggle and foul play apparent. Sophie feels grief in a way she didn't think she would, but she now realizes that Margot never had any intention of helping her out of the situation she had found herself in.

Realizing now that someone was trying to get Abby to have an abortion, she heads to Dallas in search of answers in the abortion clinics. She locates the one that she is sure Callie and Margot had taken Abby too, but instead of finding out that it was Margot, she learns that it was Jill. The same Jill that she is now alone with on a boat, heading out into the middle of the ocean.

Jill confesses that she had to kill Abby because of the unwanted pregnancy, stating that it was going to limit Brad if she had decided to keep it, therefore she took her to the clinic in the hopes she would end the pregnancy. But when she wouldn't, she found Abby sitting on the curb outside of her home after Brad had attempted to end things with her. Luring her to her own lake house with the idea that Brad was going to be there waiting for her, she took her to Margot's property and shot her with the shotgun that Sophie had used that evening during their skeet shooting.

She also killed Margot when she realized that she was still sleeping with Brad even after Abby had been killed, and she was also standing in the way of her son going off to college. And she says that she now has to get rid of Sophie because she knows too much. But, unknowingly, Callie is walking up on them with a shotgun of her own, holding it against Jill's back until the police arrive.

Two months later, Sophie is back in her home but Graham has moved out and is renting a house across town, and the state of their marriage is still unsure at this point. But she is happy to be back in her own space, and is talking with a therapist in her hometown of Chicago and is looking forward to the future.

[agreatandhonorablesoldier]

because @salemfrogtrials and @brabe encouraged it here are some things about growing up in texas that don’t come up in media as texas things from someone who grew up in Texas since so much of the fandom headcanons Hangman as from texas (myself included, thank you glen for your twang)

Disclaimer: these swing wildly from serious shit to “are you shitting my dick” levels of ridiculous. Welcome to Texas

Texas is not a monolith. This, specifically, extends to accents. I know a lot of media likes to portray it as there is One Texas Accent but honestly some places have more of accent than others. I grew up in Houston and have a very generic to non existent accent (i get asked all the time why I don’t twang), someone who grew up somewhere else might have a stronger accent but by and large, we do not all sound like McConaughey. (I personally sound a lot closer to Matt B.omer, who is from 20 minutes up the road from where I lived)

I’m putting the rest under a cut because this is getting long

We don’t measure how long a trip is going to take in Miles. That shit is in hours or minutes. I have no idea the mileage between Houston and Austin or Houston and San Antonio but I know it’s four hours 

Getting out of Texas takes a ridiculously long time. When I would go to New Orleans, it was a six hour drive. Literally half of that drive was getting out of Texas, the other half was crossing the WIDEST part of Lousiana. 

Most Texas do not live on ranches. If someone lives in a city, they’ve most likely never even been on a ranch.

We refer to highways by their numbers. (example, if I’m going to Galveston I would say I took 45 the whole way).

Texas History is taught seventh grade year. The entire year we learn about parts of the state history. (parts because they definitely gloss over the whole confederacy is one of the ‘six flags over texas’ thing, among other shit.)

texas has it’s own pledge of allegiance, don’t ask me it, I don’t remember. I just remember having to say it. 

It is a pavlovian response to clap three times if someone says in any kind of sing songy way “The stars at night are big and bright.” because of the song deep in the heart of texas.

The rivalry in Baseball between the (Houston) Astros and (Texas) Rangers is very real. The rivalry in Football is SIGNIFICANTLY stronger with College Football. (the A&M - UT Rivalry is real and intense)

Some colleges have beef simply because of who they’re named after (looking at you Stephen F Austin and Sam Houston Universities). SFA and Sam had real life beef back in the 1860s that was so strong, SFA moved the capital of Texas to Austin from Houston.  

The Alamo is a lot smaller in person than you expect it to be. It’s been built up around. There’s literally a Ripley’s museum like right across the street from it. 

It is super common to not travel that far from where you live. I grew up in Houston and have only been to Austin, San Antonio and Dallas once respectively. They’re all a four-five hour drive away and I would dead ass rather go to New Orleans. 

East Texas has a lot of Louisiana influence, West Texas has strong Mexico influence because -gestures at how close they are to the respective borders-

Rodeos! Houston has the Largest Livestock show and Rodeo in the world. It also offers the biggest payouts. The Rodeo events are televised. Other Rodeos in Texas are not as big but some places still have decent sized rodeos. (if you want me to ramble more about rodeo events, lemme know)

Texas has large population of BIPOC. As of the 2020 census, it was only 42.5% white (39.3% non-hispanic white). Contrary to popular belief! Smaller towns are likely to be predominately white but the big cities like Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and El Paso are Minority-Majority areas. 

Speaking of, Austin is left leaning. Austin is the reason the state said cities can’t defund their police. Austin’s (unofficial ?) slogan is “Keep Austin Weird”. 

Houston is also a very democratic area.

Houston is the fourth largest city in the entire US and largest in the state. It’s also sprawled the fuck out and that makes Dallas try to claim the largest city but then again Dallas tries to claim Fort Worth’s population as it’s own. (There’s a rivalry here.)

It is very common for Texans (of long established families) to say that you are not a Texan unless you are born there. It doesn’t matter if you moved when you were four almost five and lived there for 27 years (-raises a hand-), it’s not enough to be considered Texan unless you were born there. The only exception most people give is military brats. 

The Texas Flag is the only state flag that is flown at the same height as the US flag because it was a country (the Republic of Texas) from 1836-1845. Being able to fly the flag at the same height is one of the few things left in the post reconstruction constitution. 

Hurricanes! They suck if you live in coastal areas but aren’t as bad of problem further inland. Most hurricanes run out of steam before they it places like Dallas, Austin or San Antonio. Most. Particularly strong ones will barrel on through and dump a shitton of rain in those places. 

With Hurricanes comes flooding, Much bigger problem in areas like Houston that are basically swamp. 

Texas is very diverse in it’s geographical types. There are plains, mountains, plateaus, hills, swamps, bayous and deserts all in the same place. 

It snows in north texas but typically no anywhere else unless there’s a ~freak~ storm like that blizzard that blew through. 

Air Conditioning is in every public building. Most homes come equip with AC. 

After Hurricane Katrina, a lot of people from Louisiana moved to Texas. Katrina hit right at the start of my senior year of high school and my graduating class was 200+ people more than my cousin’s who graduated the year before (*coughs* y’all can keep Javy from NOLA and still have him in high school with Jake *cough*)

for clarification, my graduating class was 600+ people. 

Country music is a given. George Strait is King. Johnny Cash has all the respect. From there, opinions change based on where you’re at. In Houston, there’s a lot love for Clay Walker because he’s our local boy but that’s not necessarily true for everywhere. 

HOWEVER, Texas also has very large scenes for other genres. The Chop and Screwed style of Rap is from Houston, Tejano has a huge music base, Zydeco has a huge base. 

Selena is the Queen. We still will do anything from the Selenas. 

Tex-mex is not Mexican food but you will hear it refer to as such. We all know it’s fusion food. We frown on people who bitch about that. 

There is a healthy LGBTQIA+ Community in Texas. I promise. There’s still a lot of problems to be faced but I swear to god, we’re there. 

Speaking of problems, there are still sundown towns in Texas. 

That’s all I got for now but lemme know if you want more?

[rxscss]

“𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓅𝒶𝓇𝓉𝓎 𝓁𝒶𝓈𝓉 𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝒶𝓌𝒻𝓊𝓁𝓁𝓎 𝒸𝓇𝒶𝓏𝓎 𝒾 𝓌𝒾𝓈𝒽 𝓌𝑒 𝓉𝒶𝓅𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓉. 𝒾 𝒹𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒𝒹 𝓂𝓎 𝒻𝒶𝒸𝑒 𝑜𝒻𝒻 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝒶𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝑔𝒾𝓇𝓁 𝒸𝑜𝓂𝓅𝓁𝑒𝓉𝑒𝓁𝓎 𝓃𝒶𝓀𝑒𝒹. 𝒹𝓇𝒾𝓃𝓀 𝓂𝓎 𝒷𝑒𝑒𝓇 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓈𝓂𝑜𝓀𝑒 𝓂𝓎 𝓌𝑒𝑒𝓀, 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝓂𝓎 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝒹 𝒻𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓃𝒹𝓈 𝒾𝓈 𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝒾 𝓃𝑒𝑒𝒹. 𝓅𝒶𝓈𝓈 𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝒶𝓉 𝓉𝒽���𝑒𝑒, 𝓌𝒶𝓀𝑒 𝓊𝓅 𝒶𝓉 𝓉𝑒𝓃, 𝑔𝑜 𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝓉𝑜 𝑒𝒶𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝒹𝑜 𝒾𝓉 𝒶𝑔𝒶𝒾𝓃.”

(—) ★ spotted!! bradley chadley on the cover of this week’s most recent tabloid! many say that the 31 year old looks like gregg sulkin, but i don’t really see it. while the reality star/dj is known for being energetic my inside sources say that they have a tendency to be dimwitted i swear, every time i think of them, i hear the song i love college by asher roth {he/him, cis male} - penned by candice

𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓴𝓼

wanted connections + connections || musings || pinterest || instagram || headcanons

𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓼

name: bradley brody chadley

age: thirty six

nicknames: dj bradley c, brad, brady, brady c.

date of birth: august 1st, 1992

astrological sign: leo

place of birth: austin, texas

occupation: reality star/dj 

voice/career claim: pauly d/the chainsmokers, drew taggart from the chainsmokers, 

label: the himbo

positive traits: energetic, positive, welcoming, hard-working

negative traits: dimwitted, fleety, indecisive un-committed 

characters/celebrities he’s like: pauly d from jersey shore, michael kelso from that 70′s show, joey tribbiani from friends, drew taggart from the chain smokers, jason mendoza from the good place, 

𝓫𝓲𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂

born in the biggest party and college city in the country, austin, texas, bradley chadley was born to paula santiago bradley - a former dallas cowboys cheerleader and stradley chadley - college football coach for the university of austin and owner of the most famous sports bar in austin ‘champs.’

growing up in such a party town, bradley spent his days on the football field with his dad and while he was never the most athletic, still played football all throughout his school years.

however, not being the best athlete, nor the best student in school, meant that he had to find a niche for himself and that niche was partying.

bradley was notorious for throwing the most wildest house parties - from after football game ragers to ‘just because’ get togethers that turned into a scene out of project x, he became an absolute legend in austin.

his parents, condoned all of this, simply because they felt better about him doing what he was doing under their own roof than out on the streets somewhere.

when high school came around, his parents gifted him his first dj set for chirstmas and soon, that became his thing at his parties.

dubbed ‘dj brady c’ he became obsessed with making mixes and creating his own stuff, blowing up on the austin social scene, so much so that bars and clubs began to hire him to perform.

skipping out on college, he spent most of those college years bouncing around texas and the west coast, becoming a huge dj in the party scene in america. however, that was all he had going for him, but he was fine with it. his goal was to build a life that was a constant party.

so when his mother came across a casting call for a new mtv reality show (inspired by jersey shore) bradley jumped at the opportunity to be paid to party.

for ten years of his life, he dedicated it to the show, which catapulted him into absolute stardom. he became the loveable fun one, the one who was more or less a ring leader to the group, always getting into crazy antics, pulling pranks on the cast and overall, being the fun one who always kept moral up.

the beauty of the show was that he could still work on his dj career, it often being incorporated into his plotline. eventually, him and his co-star (wanted connection - the vinny to his pauly d and the drew to his alex) teamed up and began djing together as the notorious duo the chainsmokers.

they began playing clubs, parties and festivals all over the country, and eventually the world, becoming notorious on the scene and only upping their celebrity even more.

the world fell in love with the duo, who even had a few spin-off seasons of their own show called ‘double shot at love’ which was a dating show where the two attempted to find love, but of course, the party boys never did, because they simply can’t commit.

after the show ended last year, brady started putting all his focus into djing with his partner, and they released their very first album ‘bouquet’ with hit songs like roses and don’t let me down.

gearing up for their second release ‘collage’ brady is at the top of the world, on the top of his game, and has no plans on ever stopping or slowing down.

𝓯𝓲𝓵𝓶𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂 & 𝓬𝓪𝓻𝓮𝓮𝓻

reality tv career:

jersey shore : from 2013-2023

double shot at love : two seasons 2020-2022

music career:

career claim: the chainsmokers

released in 2022- ‘bouquet’ ep featuring songs like roses and don’t let me down

upcoming: collage ep

[hockey-fics]

Broken Promises and Forbidden Relationships ~ Jamie Oleksiak

Summary: Having Roope as your best friend was one of the best things in your life. The biggest downside had always been how protective he got. So you made a promise to never get involved with one Dallas Star defensemen in particular...but sometimes feelings are stronger than past promises. 

Word Count: ~10.5k

Warnings: Language, very cliche, a lot of drama.

Video source of gif

Huge shoutout to @klingeroopesalove​ for the idea and then being the most patient person on planet earth for waiting so stupidly long for me to finish it. 

A/N: There’s a few sentences in Finnish throughout this. I tried my absolute best with the translations. I don’t speak Finnish so I had to rely on contextual dictionaries for this so I’m really, really sorry if I butchered it! Also, it’s not my best writing in general and I don’t love it, but I hope you enjoy it!

Roope had been the older brother you never biologically had since you were 7. When your parents, the free-spirits they were, had decided to sell the house you had lived in for the first seven years of your life on a whim. But rather than move across town or to a new city or even a different state they decided to start fresh in Tampere, Finland. You moved into a house across the street from another family that your parents quickly befriended and the next thing you knew Roope was showing up at your front door every morning to walk you to school. And after the end of the school day he would show up at your classroom door to walk home with you. He was only one year older than you but he very quickly became protective over you, you were the epitome of a new kid and he wanted to make things as easy for you as possible. And just as quickly you grew attached to Roope, the first day he was sick and couldn’t walk with you to school left you crying so hard your mom agreed to take you herself, leaving her forty minutes late to work. 

You had always talked about moving back to the United States growing up. It wasn’t that you disliked Finland, in fact, in many of your daydreams about the USA it felt more like a temporary stop. To reconnect with some of your earliest memories before moving back to Finland eventually. 

Saying goodbye to Roope when he moved to Texas after being signed by the Dallas Stars was one of the hardest days of your life. But in retrospect the sadness you felt was overkill. Because within four months you were also living in Texas. And you had adapted incredibly easy to the move. But you knew you had Roope to thank for that, for being the catalyst to finally doing what you said you were going to do. 

“Mind if we pick up Y/N on the way?” Roope asks, turning his head to look across the interior of his car at Jamie. Jamie’s car was in the shop and when he mentioned getting a rental car for the day Roope told him he could just carpool to and from practice that day with him instead of going through that hassle. What he didn’t think about was the fact that he had agreed to pick you up on his way home for a movie night at his apartment. 

Jamie glances over at Roope with a mischievous grin. He had heard all about you. As had the rest of the team and most likely anybody who Roope had talked to. Everybody knew you were Roope’s best friend and even though he had never said it out loud everyone was well aware of the reason he never brought you around to meet the team. He was protecting you. Protecting you from the possibility of you falling for and getting hurt by one of his teammates. He would try to protect you from getting your heart broken by any guy in the world if it was possible, but the best he could logistically do was keeping you from his teammates.

“No problem,” Jamie replies easily, turning back to look out through the front window of the car. 

Roope stops at a red light, glancing back over at Jamie. “Don’t make it weird.” 

“Why do you think I would?”

“Because she’s…,” Roope’s voice fades out as he presses on the gas, accelerating through the intersection. “I don’t….she’s really pretty, I guess,” Roope mutters in the way a brother would talk about his sister, uncomfortable even acknowledging the fact that someone might look at you in a way that was more than just friendly. 

Jamie chuckles, shaking his head. “Fine, I won’t make it weird,” Jamie assures him with finality, sounding more reassuring than Roope felt. 

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, drawing your attention away from the book you were reading. ’I’m here’ the text message from Roope reads. Swiping your keys from the counter and your bag from beside the door you head out, hurrying down the stairs and outside. 

Approaching Roope’s familiar vehicle you reach out for the door handle on the passenger’s side, pausing when you notice a person in the passenger’s seat already. Before you have the chance to get to the backseat the door opens. 

“You can have the front seat,” the man tells you and after a couple moments you recognize him as Jamie Oleksiak. Oleksiak. You were more familiar with him by his last name after watching almost ever single one of Roope’s games. 

“No, no,” you tell him quickly, watching as he steps out of the car. But your hand is already on the back door. “Get back in,” you laugh, gesturing towards the car. 

Jamie shakes his head, an amused smile on his lips. “I’m the one messing up your movie date.”

“It’s not…it’s not a date…and you’re definitely not messing anything up.” You weren’t sure where that need to clarify came from. You had joked about dating Roope more times than you could count. About how often he would pay for your meals out, picking you up and taking you home, texting and FaceTiming constantly when you weren’t together. But you wanted Jamie to know it wasn’t like that. And even though you wanted to deny it, it was pretty hard to convince yourself that it wasn’t simply because of Jamie. Because of his tall figure towering over you. Because of the grin on his lips as he looked down at you. Because of the tattoos covering his muscular arms, partially obscured by the sleeve of his t-shirt. Because of his piercing eyes locked on yours. And maybe, just maybe, you finally understood the jokes Roope had made to you about keeping you away from his friends. Because you really had underestimated just how attractive Jamie really was, the brief shots of him on the television screen during games doing him no justice. 

Jamie chuckles, his hand resting casually on top of the car door in a way you knew would look ridiculous if you ever tried. “I’m not the one making it weird,” Jamie says, turning to look back into the car at Roope. 

You narrow your eyes as you lean down to look through the interior of the car, watching Roope turn his head to look back at you. “Mene vain autoon, Y/N,” Roope says, telling you to get in the car. 

You blink a few times as Roope begins to speak Finnish, something he only ever did when he was frustrated with you or wanting to tell you something privately when other people were around. “Mikä sinua vaivaa?” You reply, voice hushed as you ask him what his problem was while climbing into the backseat of the car. 

You watch as Jamie apprehensively gets back into the passenger’s seat, eyes shifting back and forth between you and Roope.  

“Älä flirttaile hänen kanssaan,” Roope warns, telling you not to flirt with Jamie as he turns back around in his seat to look out through the front window. 

“En flirttaillut hänen kanssaan,” you state harshly, letting Roope know you weren’t flirting with Jamie. But perhaps it was a slight lie. With the way you made it very clear that he wasn’t messing up your day, the way your eyes lingered on his just a little too long. You turn your head to the other side of the car, noticing Jamie glancing back at you. “Sorry,” you tell him with a soft smile. “Someone doesn’t know it’s rude to speak in a language their guest can’t understand,” you state, a jab at Roope, playful, but still a jab. 

Jamie chuckles, not looking back out the front window for a few minutes. “I’m Jamie, by the way,” he tells you, now settled in the car and realizing nobody had even done introductions. Not that they needed to be done. You had watched Jamie play more times than you could possibly count and he had heard more stories about you than he could possibly count. 

“Nice to meet you,” you tell him, stopping yourself before saying ‘I know’. “I’m Y/N.”

“I know,” he says and you can’t help but smile at that, at how quickly he said exactly what you hadn’t. “Heard a lot about you.”

“Oh god, that can’t be good,” you joke, laughing as you slide into the seat behind Roope so you would have a better view of Jamie as you continued the conversation. 

Jamie chuckles and turns his head to glance at you, the glance lingering longer than it should have and you can’t ignore the butterflies in your stomach coming alive with the way he was looking at you. “All good stuff,” he assures you.

“Good,” is all you can manage to whisper. It wasn’t like you to be at a loss for words, but your mind was a blank slate, empty under his gaze. But the second his eyes flick away from yours you know you’re in trouble, because all you want is for them to be back on you. “What are you doing this afternoon?” You blurt out and Jamie turns to look back at you while Roope glances in the rearview mirror, trying to figure out if you were really about to do what he thought you were. 

Jamie shrugs, shaking his head. “I don’t know, I’ve got no plans.”

“Come watch a movie with us,” you suggest, trying to sound casual about it, not too eager.

“Y/N, ei,” Roope mutters, telling you no. 

“I-,” Jamie begins, looking over at Roope and then back at you, seeming torn. “If you don’t mind.” You weren’t sure who the latter part was directed at, but you were pretty sure it was Roope given his uncomfortable tension through the entirety of the car ride. 

“That’s fine,” Roope mutters. You know it’s not fine. You know he doesn’t want you to get close to his teammates. He never did. 

Growing up in high school when everyday you were in the same building as the junior hockey team it was harder for Roope to keep you from getting hurt. And hurt is exactly what you got. Hurt by one of Roope’s teammates when he cheated on you after your five months together, a reasonable feat at 15 years old. And of course Roope hated him after that, but you made him promise that he wouldn’t let it impact how he played. That whatever happened during the 60 minutes of his hockey games had to be completely unrelated to what happened with you. And as far as you could tell, he upheld that promise back then. 

But you weren’t going to let that one experience when you were 15 years old interfere with your life all these years later. 

You’re in Roope’s apartment soon after, Jamie standing a few feet away, watching as you put a bag of popcorn in the microwave while Roope had disappeared somewhere in his apartment. 

“What movie are we watching?” Jamie asks, watching you push the button for the popcorn on the microwave. 

Turning to him you press your hip to the counter as the microwave whirs in the background. “I think the guest should pick.”

“You’re the guest here too,” Jamie points out. 

Rolling your eyes playfully you cross your arms over your chest. “Hardly. I’m here almost as much as my own apartment.”

“Okay, well you have to at least help me out.”

Lifting your eyebrows you look up at him. “Oh, do I?”

Jamie nods, a smirk on his lips. “Yeah, you do.”

“Okay,” you tell him slowly, waiting for him to go on. 

“What category of movie should I pick from?”

“Romantic…comedy, a comedy,” you tell him, quickly changing your answer when you considered the possibility of your suggestion coming across too strong. You weren’t going to deny that you were attracted to Jamie, but you couldn’t be that outright about it. You had to feel things out for now. 

“Romantic comedy,” Jamie states, combining the two suggestions you made into one. It felt so easy, the way he said it, his voice gentle and sweet. 

You feel your cheeks getting a little warm and you immediately divert your attention back to the microwave, eyes watching the numbers decreasing. You’re sure for a moment that time has slowed down to make you sit in this situation for longer than normal. “Can you grab a couple bowls?” you ask Jamie, nodding towards the cupboard behind him.

Jamie turns around and opens the cupboard door, reaching up to grab a couple of the bowls from the top shelf. As he does so you can’t help but look back in his direction, eyes taking in the sight before you. Sure, you knew you shouldn’t be staring. Maybe it was disrespectful or inconsiderate. He was just doing what you asked, helping you out, you shouldn’t be checking him out. But it felt like a magnetic pull that you didn’t know how to break from. 

You don’t look away quick enough when Jamie turns back towards you, the two bowls in hand. You know that he had caught you staring. You knew it from the smirk on his lips as he extends his arm with the bowls, silent as he hands them to you. 

“Thanks,” you whisper, taking them and setting them on the counter. Keeping your back to him you take the popcorn out of the microwave, dumping some into each of the bowls, trying to ignore the urge you had to look back and see if he was watching you. You were fairly sure he was, if not simply because you were the only other person in the room. 

“No problem,” he replies, leaning against the counter. 

When you look back over he’s already looking at you, but he’s unwavering in it. “He wasn’t lying.”

“Hm?” You hum, one hand resting against the counter as you look up at Jamie.

“Roope said you were really pretty…he wasn’t lying.”

You feel your heart hammering, loud and distracting in your own ears. “He must have forgotten to give me the same message about you.” Your eyes were focused on the counter, on the clock on the stove, briefly on Jamie’s lips, anywhere but his eyes. You were scared if you looked into his eyes you simply wouldn’t be able to look away, to hide the fact that you were falling for him harder and faster than you knew you should be. 

“That I’m really pretty?”

And suddenly the tension in the room has changed. It’s lighter now as his comment makes you giggle. When you look over from where you were staring at the flashing light on the dishwasher you notice him already looking at you with an amused grin. “Yeah, you’re for sure one of the prettiest people I’ve ever seen,” you joke. 

“I’m flattered,” Jamie chuckles, reaching over and picking up at piece of popcorn. 

A moment later you reach over as well, grabbing a few pieces as you step away from him and into the middle of the kitchen. “Catch,” you tell him, tossing a kernel of corn through the air. 

Jamie instinctively reaches out, catching the popcorn in his hand with ease. 

You can’t help but laugh, shaking your head. “Not with your hand, dumbass,” you tease. Occasionally it came back to you. Flirting in the same way you flirted as a teen, with a slight meanness to your comments. “Your mouth.”

Jamie laughs and you feel your cheeks warm up again. “Not…,” you begin, trailing off as you realize you didn’t need to clarify that you didn’t mean anything sexualize by it. You try again, tossing it towards him. 

“You’re going to have to throw higher than that.”

“You’re too tall,” you giggle, trying to get some more height on the popcorn. “It’s too light,” you whine about the popcorn. 

Jamie grabs a handful of popcorn, nodding for you to step back before he grabs one piece and throws it in your direction. You manage to catch the first kernel, laughing as you spin in a celebratory circle. Jamie tries again and this time you step overzealously to the side, your hip smacking against the corner of the kitchen island. 

“Ow,” you whine, laughing as you grasp your hip. 

“Are you okay?” Jamie asks, stepping over towards you, his hands hovering towards you, as if wanting to do something to help the situation but falling short of knowing what to do. 

You can’t help but fall just a little more for him, for the way his eyes were filled with concern over such a little thing. “Yeah, completely,” you assure him, looking down at his hands. You watch him hesitantly bring one to the counter, resting it there in an attempt to look like he wasn’t unsure of everything he was doing. “Thanks for asking though.”

“Of course.” 

You place both your hands onto the counter, hopping up onto it. For the first time you’re the same height as Jamie and you’re finally looking into his eyes for more than a couple fleeting seconds. “You have really nice eyes.” Your voice comes out as a whisper, eyes locked on his. 

“Thank you,” Jamie replies, his own voice in a low whisper as he gravitates a little closer. He leans a little closer and you realize he’s looking into your eyes, really and truly looking into them. “Yours too.” 

Jamie is standing directly in front of you now. You couldn’t stop your mind from flooding with all sorts of less than PG thoughts about Jamie standing so close to you, so close to standing between your legs. You can’t even manage to say anything over the volume of the thoughts in your head. 

“What movie are we watching?” Roope asks, breaking you away from the moment you were having with Jamie. 

“Jamie is picking,” you tell him, turning your head around to look over your shoulder at Roope. As Jamie steps back you slide off the counter, grabbing the two bowls of popcorn from the counter. 

“A romantic comedy,” Jamie chimes in as you and him follow Roope into the living room. 

Roope laughs as he plops down onto the recliner he always sat in. He always sat in the recliner so you could lay on the couch. “Oh, you’re not joking,” Roope comments, noticing he was the only one laughing. 

“You’re going to make Jamie share the couch and popcorn with me?” You ask Roope, your tone lighthearted but your insides twisting into anxious knots. How did Jamie have such control over your feelings? He was just a guy. Just one of the most attractive guys you had seen in awhile. But just a guy. 

“I don’t mind,” Jamie says, already sitting down on the end of the couch. 

Nodding you walk over, sitting down a couple feet away from him as you set the bowl of popcorn between you two. You reach over for the remote, handing it to Jamie as you pull your legs up onto the couch, shuffling a little closer to him so you could reach the popcorn.

“Olen kolmas pyörä,” Roope mutters, complaining about feeling like a third wheel. 

“Hiljaa,” you reply, telling him to shut up as you shake your head. He wasn’t a third wheel as he was insinuating with his comment. Though perhaps if you really did have it your way he would be. But just as that thought pops into your mind you’re quick to get rid of it by focusing on the Netflix options Jamie was scrolling through. 

Fifteen minutes later a movie is playing and you’re all sitting quietly watching it. You were far more tense than normal. You weren’t lounging on the couch shovelling popcorn into your mouth without a care in the world. 

But halfway through the movie you felt some of your nerves dissipating, the familiar feeling of getting over the initial anxiety during a first date. But you felt ridiculous that you were feeling like that. This was so far from a first date. 

Eventually the popcorn bowl is moved onto the coffee table, leaving the space between you and Jamie empty. And you find yourself gravitating towards him a little every time you adjust on the couch. And then his arm is around the back of the couch behind you and you can’t help but turn to look at him with a playful smile on your lips. Because it was such a classic move, the arm on the couch, it wasn’t as forward as putting your arm around someone. It was subtle, it was open to interpretation. It was a way to make a move where you couldn’t be directly denied. But when he looked back down at you, you knew that you hadn’t misread the situation. So you slide a little closer, tentative as you lean against him. 

“Do you like the movie?” Jamie whispers once you’re leaning against him, his arm still resting on the couch. 

Nodding you tip your head back, looking up at him. You notice the stubble on his jawline, obviously having shaved recently but not too recently. And it looks so effortlessly attractive. His eyes are soft as he gazes down at you. “Yeah, I do. It was a good choice.” 

“You’re picking next time.”

The corners of your lips pull into a smile when he says this, feeling his arm slide down from the back of the couch to rest on your shoulders. “Next time?”

Jamie lets out a breath of laughter. “Hopefully,” he whispers.

“I feel left out of this conversation,” Roope announces, looking over at you and Jamie. He waits till you look into his eyes, immediately giving you a look. A look of disapproval, a look of ‘what are you doing?’ Rather than addressing it you quickly break eye contact with him. 

“Sucks, hey?” Jamie jokes, referring to when Roope kept speaking to you in Finnish. 

You can’t help but giggle at that, feeling Jamies fingers brush over your shoulder, as if to silently tell you he appreciated you laughing at his joke, at being in on a joke with you. 

Roope shakes his head, turning back to the movie without saying another word. 

By the time the movie comes to an end you’re completely cuddled up with Jamie. He’s sitting at an angle, allowing you lean against his chest, your legs pulled onto the couch. You can feel every time he chuckles at a joke in the movie, the steady rise and fall of his chest with his breath. 

“Ready to go?” Roope asks harshly when the movie ends, sitting up straighter in the recliner. 

You’re taken aback by this. He almost never asks you to leave after just one movie. He almost never asks you to leave in general. He typically waits will you ask him to drive you home. “Yeah,” you mumble, pulling yourself away from Jamie and stretching your arms in front of you. 

You feel a sense of urgency as you pick up the bowl of popcorn to take it to the kitchen, bustling around as you gather your belongings while Roope waits to drive you and Jamie back to your apartments. 

This time it’s you who has to be the one to break out the Finnish. And you felt bad with Jamie a few feet away, but the way Roope was acting was equally concerning and irritating. “Miksi käyttäydyt näin?” You ask him why he’s acting like that. 

“I thought it was rude to speak another language,” Roope deadpans, grabbing his keys from the counter. 

“Whatever,” you grumble, following him out the door. Your relationship with Roope was so much closer to a sibling relationship than a typical relationship. You two would bicker and argue all the time, but you knew it never really meant anything. Well, it normally didn’t mean anything. 

After dropping Jamie off at his apartment Roope turns to look at you. “You can’t go out with him.”

“Okay,” you say, the word drawn out as you say it.

“I know you’re into him.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t say that,” you tell him defensively, despite the fact that it was very true. 

“I know you well enough, I can tell you are,” Roope says, his eyes focused intently out the front window. “Not that I have to know you well to tell, with you two all over each other on the couch.”

“We weren’t,” you begin, sighing loudly as you roll your eyes. “We weren’t all over each other. He had his arm around me…that’s it.”

“I don’t ask much from you but can you just listen to me for once?”

“What the hell?” You whine, rolling your eyes. “I listen to you all the time.” And it was true, you were always going to Roope for advice. The only difference is that was advice you were asking for, this was advice he was giving you. 

“Can you please just agree to this?”

“Fine,” you huff. You knew it would be easier to just let this go. It wasn’t like Jamie even asked for your number or made any real plans to see you again. So it wasn’t worth arguing for something that wasn’t even going to happen. 

“Good,” Roope comments, stopping at an intersection. “So do you want to come back to my apartment and watch another movie?”

Laughing you roll your eyes. So getting you to leave was just to get Jamie away from you. “Of course,” you reply. 

Later that night, after two more movies and pizza for dinner with Roope you’re back at your apartment, getting ready for bed. After you crawl under the covers and pick up your phone you notice an Instagram notification. 

Jamie Oleksiak (jamieoleksiak) started following you. 

Clicking the notification your phone unlocks, opening his profile. After a few minutes of scrolling through his profile you go back to the top, pressing the follow back button with a smile on your face. You shouldn’t have been so happy. For a few different reasons but primarily because it simply didn’t mean anything. 

Months later and you never received so much as a DM from Jamie. You had gotten your hopes up for nothing. Nothing but a friendly gesture for him to follow you. He had liked all your new posts since then, but nothing more than that. 

“Yeah, I’ll be there in fifteen,” you tell Roope, your phone sitting on the bathroom counter as you were finishing the last bits of your hair. It was a blatant lie. The drive to his apartment took ten minutes itself and you had lost hope of being out of your apartment in the next five.

It was the Dallas Stars’ annual casino night and Roope had asked you to come with him. He had never invited you to anything like this before and you had a slight inkling you knew why that was changing. Because you had met Jamie. You had met Jamie and absolutely nothing happened. Nothing happened and Roope was ecstatic about it. He was coming around to the idea that perhaps he had been just a little too protective with you.

So here you were, standing in front of the mirror in a black dress, looking more done up than you had been in awhile. You simply had no reason to get this dressed up, makeup and hair done to match. 

“I know you’re lying,” Roope comments and you can hear the humour in his voice, can picture him shaking his head. 

“Okay, fine,” you huff, yanking the curling iron cord from the outlet, swiping your phone from the counter as you make your way to your bedroom. “Twenty,” you tell him, digging through your closet for the pair of heels you knew you had but hadn’t worn in long enough for them to end up stashed in the back of the closet. “I’m just putting my shoes on now,” you call to your phone on the other side of the room, pulling the heels on and securing the tiny, delicate buckles around your ankles. 

“I knew you would be late, we don’t actually have to leave my place for like forty-five minutes.”

You pause, looking over at your phone with narrowed eyes, as if you were really looking at Roope. Huffing you walk over, picking your phone up along with the purse you had already prepared with the essentials for the night. “You’re so…infuriating. I’ve been panicking for like an hour about being late.”

“But if I didn’t do this you would still be panicking and we really would be late,” Roope chuckles. 

Rolling your eyes you remain silent, knowing it was the truth. Walking to the door you grab your car keys. “I’m leaving now,” you mutter, pretending to be annoyed with him when you were truly relieved. 

“See you in a bit.”

When you get to the venue you become aware of the fact that the night was going to be more overwhelming than you had anticipated. You wanted to make a good impression with Roope’s teammates. But to meet them all at once was a bit more than you bargained for. 

“So you must be Y/N.”

Turning your head in the direction of the voice you smile at the man approaching you. Tyler Seguin. You knew who most of the players were, but you knew him especially. Because one of your friends in particular had shared her much more than innocent feelings for him with you. 

“I am,” you say with a soft laugh, looking over at Roope teasingly, coming to realize he really did talk about you more than you thought. You talked about him all the time too, with your friends and family. About current things, games and achievements but also when you talked about your past. Because from the moment you met Roope he had been such an important part of your life than almost all of your memories included him in some form. “Tyler, right?”

Tyler smirks and you know it’s just friendly but Roope steps forward, almost between you two. 

“Calm down,” you laugh, jokingly pushing at Roope’s arm. “It’s not me you would need to worry about around him.”

Roope’s brows furrow as he stares at you and you can see in his eyes he’s running through the rolodex of options. “Who?” He finally asks, voice hushed as if you were spilling some serious secrets. 

“Allie,” you giggle, shaking your head at how intrigued Roope had become. 

“Allie, hey?” Tyler chimes in, laughing as he says it, making it evident that he was just joking. 

“Don’t get too excited, she’s in Finland,” you explain to Tyler. 

As you, Tyler, and Roope continue your conversation your attention it caught by a tall figure across the room. Jamie. And he was looking right back at you. 

“Sorry, you’ll have to excuse me for a minute,” you say to Roope and Tyler, stepping back and around them. 

Walking up to Jamie you smile up at him. “Long time, no see.”

“Too long,” he replies, lifting the glass he was holding to his lips. “You look beautiful tonight…I mean, you look beautiful always, but tonight especially,” he stammers, chuckling at himself as he shakes his head, both of you aware that he was flustered because of you. “You don’t want a drink?” He asks, clearly feeling like he needed a couple more himself. 

“Thank you,” you say politely, replying to his compliment, uncertain of exactly how to take it. Perhaps if he had shown more interest, between the time you met and now you would have a better grasp of how to respond. You wanted to think he was truly into you, but you couldn’t get rid of the nagging in the back of your head telling you that he could have done more. “Yeah, actually, I would,” you tell him finally, glancing around for the bar. 

“Let’s go find you a drink then.” Jamie’s hand pressing into your lower back makes you jump, the contact unexpected. “Sorry,” he says instantly, pulling back. You knew he was just doing it to guide you through the crowded room but it caused your stomach to erupt with butterflies in a way that made you realize that the excitement you felt initially was still very much alive.  

Laughing you shake your head. “It’s fine, I just wasn’t expecting that.” You glance down at his hand, hesitantly reaching over and taking it in yours, nodding in the direction of the bar. “Let’s go find that drink.”

Jamie nods, eyes not leaving yours, a smile on his lips. Completely wrapped up in you, like nothing else going on in the room mattered for the time being. 

And you don’t let go of his hand till you’re at the bar, standing next to him while you wait for the crowd of people already there to be helped. You were in no rush because a part of you worried this might be the only time you got to be with Jamie that night. You needed more time with him, to figure out what was happening with him…if anything was happening with him. 

“I was surprised when Roope said he was bringing you,” Jamie says as you were glancing around the room, taking in the large and crowded room, the sound of music faded below the hum of conversations blending into one steady drone. 

“I think he’s feeling a little more comfortable after we met,” you explain even though you’re certain he already knows this. “Because nothing happened even though we were…” you trail off, hoping Jamie would fill in the blank. 

Attracted to each other? Flirting? You were hoping for something, but you receive nothing but a nod of acknowledgement instead. 

After getting your drink you glance up at Jamie, wishing for a moment that you didn’t have to do what you were about to do. “I should go find Roope, I haven’t been a great date so far.”

Jamie chuckles and nods. “So it’s a date this time, hey? I remember you got a little defensive about that word last time.”

“I’m more sure that you know Roope and I aren’t a thing now,” you explain, taking a sip of your drink. “I’m surprised you still don’t have someone to bring with you tonight though.”

Jamie chuckles, shrugging. “The person I’m interested right now is here with someone else tonight.”

Laughing you roll your eyes playfully. “Good one, Casanova.” Out of the corner of your eye you notice a couple people standing a few feet away, glancing over in Jamie’s direction. “I think you’ve got some people who want to talk to you,” you tell him, stepping back. “And I should get back to my date,” you add with a teasing smile. 

He nod, intoxicated by you, watching you till you had turned around and walked away, back in Roope’s direction. 

You can feel the temperature in the place increasing with time, the amount of bodies crammed into the space too much for the air conditioning to keep up. It’s fairly late in the evening when you excuse yourself again. Roope was wrapped up in a conversation with a fan, an elderly gentleman, that you felt rude enough interrupting to tell him you were going outside for a moment. 

“I’ll come with you, just give me a couple minutes,” Roope says quietly. “I don’t want you to be outside alone.”

Sighing you shake your head, annoyed both that he felt like you couldn’t go alone and also because a part of you knew he was right. “I’ll be fine.”

“Y/N,” Roope says seriously. 

“Fine, I won’t go alone,” you tell him, your eyes having landed on Jamie. He also seemed to be in a conversation, but he was just talking with Jason and Miro. It would be less rude for him to leave them than for Roope. Not to mention you liked the idea of spending a few more minutes with Jamie. 

Roope follows your gaze, jaw clenching. But you knew he couldn’t say anything about. Not here, not in front of another person. “Okay,” he mutters to you before continuing on with his conversation with the older man. 

You weave your way through the crowd to Jamie who smiles as soon as he sees you, not helping to clear up whether he was into you or not. “Hey,” he greets before you’ve even come to a stop. “Need another drink?” He jokes, referring to your empty hands. 

“No, I actually need a chaperone to go outside with me,” you laugh. “Roope won’t let me go get some air by myself.”

Jamie nods, gesturing towards the doors. “Lead the way.”

“You guys coming?” You ask Jason and Miro with a friendly smile. 

Jason chuckles, shaking his head as he glances down at the ground. There’s a knowing smile that he’s trying to hide by avoiding looking you directly in the eyes. “Nah, we’re good.”

Nodding you step back towards Jamie. “I’ll have him back soon.”

“Take your time,” Miro comments, making Jason laugh again after just containing himself.

Outside you lean against a waist height cement retaining wall, taking a deep breath of the cool air. More than cool, the air was straight up cold, sending a shiver down your spine. You wrap your arms around your body but by the time your hands are on either arm Jamie has slid his suit jacket off. He opts out of offering it to you first, stepping in front of you he wraps it around your shoulders. 

“Thank you,” you whisper as he keeps his hands on the lapels of the jacket. “You didn’t have to.”

“You’re cold,” he reasons, as if it were a given that your comfort should be above his own. 

“Because I didn’t bring my jacket out here. Now you’re going to be cold.” You feel your heart racing as Jamie steps closer to you, his hands slowly dropping from where he was clutching at his jacket you had around you. 

“I’m tough,” he jokes.

“I don’t doubt it,” you giggle, watching as Jamie pulls back from you, turning around to lean against the concrete wall beside you. “Jamie?” you whisper, eyes focused on the ground a few feet in front of you. 

You can feel his eyes on you without having to actually see him. “Yeah?”

Swallowing heavily you cross your arms over your body. For so long you had prided yourself on not being the girl who would chase. You didn’t chase guys, didn’t ask for their attention. But here you were, doing just that. “Why didn’t you ever message me on Instagram? You followed me, I thought you were going to, but then…” you trail off, shrugging, knowing that he knew exactly what you were saying and you didn’t need to keep explaining. 

Jamie is quiet for a second. “I didn’t want to get between you and Roope. I know how much you mean to him and I’m sure it’s the same thing for you.”

You can’t help but laugh, turning your head now to look at him. “Nothing could ever come between Roope and I. We’re like siblings. It doesn’t matter what happens, nothing could ever come between us.”

Jamie nods, reaching over and taking your hand, gently pulling you away from where you were standing. You follow his lead, letting him guide you to stand in front of him. His free hand slides beneath his jacket, along your waist. You swallow heavily as he pulls you a little closer. “I was surprised when I actually met you.”

“Why?” You whisper, looking up at him intently. 

“Because I never thought you would actually be as incredible as Roope made you out to seem. But you are.”

You feel your breath hitch in your throat as you stare at him, speechless. How could you respond to that? You could count on one hand the number of guys who had said things that nice to you completely unprompted, without seeming to want anything in return. 

You were already wearing heels but you lean up as much as you can, Jamie quickly taking the hint as he pulls you a little tighter, leaning down. But he’s moving slowly, agonizingly slowly. Just as you’re about to let out a sigh of disapproval loud chatter and laughter piling from the front door makes you pull back. You’re moving so hastily that you almost end up falling, thankful for Jamie’s quick reflexes grabbing your arms and steadying you. But he understands the message behind what you just did and lets go of you, shoving his hands into his pockets to try to seem like they weren’t just all over you a couple seconds later. 

“There you are.” 

It’s Roope and for the first time in your life you wished he wasn’t there. You loved him with your whole heart. You would do anything for him. But you really wished he was back inside being asked a million questions about hockey. He’s with Miro who is still chuckling about something that had been said before they came outside.

“Hey,” you say to him, smiling softly. 

“Some of us are going back to Tyler’s place for a few drinks after, do you want to come?” Roope asks you. You know if you said no it would be no problem, that Roope would happily go home with you and watch movies on your couch. But before you can think about what you’re doing you turn around to look up at Jamie, to see if he was going. You knew how it looked but you were already preparing yourself to brush it off, to say it was just a friendly thing, seeing if Jamie was going. Nothing more. 

“I’ll probably go for a bit,” Jamie says to the group but you know the words are directed at you.

You look back to Roope, waiting a couple seconds. You didn’t want to seem too eager to follow up Jamie’s answer with a yes. “Yeah, could be fun,” you tell him casually. 

And so a couple hours later you’re standing in Tyler’s kitchen with a can of cider in your hand, the second since you got there. Between that and the three glasses of wine at the event you were feeling a little bit of a buzz. And a little buzz always came with a lot of confidence. 

So you excuse yourself from the conversation you were having, walking over to where Jamie was leaning against the doorframe. “Want to go outside…again?” You ask him simply. 

Jamie smiles and nods in the direction of the front door, waiting for you to begin walking towards it before following after you. Before you’re even outside Jamie has his jacket off, sliding it over your shoulders as you step outside. 

“Kiss me,” you whisper once the door is closed. 

“Right here?” Jamie asks, wanting to make sure you were absolutely certain about the risk you were about to take. Knowing that at any moment Roope could, and would, be coming to find you. But he seems to have no qualms about it as he places his hands on your waist, pulling you closer to him. 

“I don’t want to wait any longer, Jamie. I wanted you to kiss me that first day we met.”

So he does as you ask, leaning down and pressing his lips to yours. He’s gentle, just like his personality but you have a sneaking suspicion that he might be a little less gentle if you made it clear that’s what you wanted. So you bring your hand around the back of his neck, pushing your body into his. He brings one arm around your lower back, supporting you as you teeter around in an effort to be taller. 

Breathless and flushed you pull back from him, eyes fluttering open to look at him. “I think it’s time for me to go home now,” you whisper. 

“Why’s that?” Jamie asks, his hands still on your waist. 

“That’s all I really came here for,” you tell him, leaning up to press your lips to his again, a quick, gentle kiss this time. You pull away and take a step back, his hands falling from your body. 

Just as you turn around to go back inside, to find Roope, to tell him you were going to get an Uber to go home, Jamie’s hand wraps around your wrist. He pulls you back gently, hand sliding on the side of your face, tipping your head back to kiss you again. The feelings it evokes are even stronger than the first kiss and it feels like every nerve in your body is firing, body hot and tingly as he kisses you passionately. “Let me take you out, on a date,” he whispers as he pulls back. 

All you can manage to do is nod. Pulling your phone from your pocket you get Jamie to give you his number, sending him a text right there so he has yours. Then you walk back inside, leaving Jamie outside. 

By the time you find Roope and you’re back outside to get in your Uber Jamie is gone. You don’t know if he’s back in Tyler’s place or if he’s gone home too. You don’t worry too much about it thought. Because this time you were pretty sure there would actually be another time. Unlike the first meeting, the empty promise of another movie night, this felt much more concrete. 

And concrete it was. Jamie had sent you a text the next morning, asking when you were free. You didn’t want to seem too eager so you told him that you were free three nights from that day even though you were free that very night and the night after as well. You two went for dinner, then you went back to your apartment and watched a movie. 

After that first date you two both realized that you were truly good with each other. Your conversations flowed easily and you spent so much of the night laughing. You simply enjoyed being together. 

So you continued going on dates, for many weeks, months, without telling anyone about it. Neither of you brought up the fact that you were hiding the relationship. It was an unspoken truth. Because you both had a lot to risk. You both had made a promise to Roope. That you weren’t going to give the other a chance and neither of you wanted to own up to breaking that promise. 

It was a Friday night and the Stars had just won a home game, a game that you were in the arena to watch. Because Roope asked if you wanted to go, as he often did. But you couldn’t deny that you spent a lot of that game watching Jamie, drawn to him even from such a distance. 

Usually you went back to Roope’s place after games, having been given a key to his apartment long ago. He always said it was easier for you to just go straight there but you always figured it was part of his ploy to keep you away from the guys. A hunch that was confirmed when he gave you instructions for where to meet him after the game if you wanted to hang around and wait for him before heading out. 

So you followed his instructions, a little uncertain as you made your way from your seat and past the doors you always left after a game. You made your way to where Roope had told you, pulling out your phone and trying to look busy, like you belonged where you were. 

A couple minutes later you sense someone is looking at you and you look up, seeing Jamie approaching you with a smile. “Hey,” he says, glancing around before placing his hands on your waist, leaning down. 

“Jamie,” you whisper, panic in your eyes and in your voice. “Jamie we’re going to get caught.”

“Roope takes forever,” Jamie informs you, trying to sound reassuring. “He said you were here tonight, I was hoping you would still be here.”

Leaning up you press your lips to his softly. “Oh, so you came out here looking for me then?” you tease. 

“Of course,” he tells you. “Are you going to go hang out with Roope tonight?”

Pulling back a little you shrug your shoulders. “It’s usually what we do, but we didn’t talk about it.” You glance behind you before looking back up at Jamie. “Should we go back to my place instead?”

“You and Roope?” Jamie asks with a teasing smile. 

Shaking your head you lean back towards him, onto your tip toes. “You know I meant with you,” you whisper, pressing your lips against his. He kisses you back quickly, both of you so caught up in each other that you were quickly losing your motivation to stay away from each other any chance a person might catch you. 

But of course the second you let your guard down the slightest bit it all comes tumbling apart. 

“Mitä vittua?” 

You almost push Jamie away with how quickly you try to get away from him, wide eyes finding Roope. You knew it was him. From the language, both Finnish and the exclamation of ‘what the fuck?’. You’re standing speechless, simply staring at him. 

“You promised,” Roope says, shaking his head. “You both did.” And with that he turns away from you, heading in what you assume was the direction of the way out. 

“Roope,” you call, pushing past Jamie as you follow after him. “Please, wait, can you please just slow down. We need to talk about this.”

“No, Y/N,” Roope says, getting to the door. You were pretty sure he may have just clocked the record for fastest exit. He finally turns around when his hand is on the door. “You promised me.”

“I didn’t know,” you plead, shaking your head. “I didn’t know he even liked me, I didn’t think anything would happen.”

“I just need to go home.”

The way he says it makes your heart ache. You know it means he doesn’t want you to go with him. You can feel your eyes filling with tears and you try to blink quicker, to hide the tears. 

But Roope sees it. Sees your tears. And he can’t handle that, can’t leave you upset. So he steps forward, wrapping his arms around you. “Please don’t be mad. I really like him,” you whisper, tears rolling down your cheeks. 

Roope takes a deep breath, you can feel it in the way his chest heaves against you. “I just wished you hadn’t lied to me. Wished you both hadn’t lied to me. How long has this…what is it?”

“Hm?” You hum in confusion, pulling back to look into Roope’s eyes. 

“You and Jamie, what are you two?”

You stare over up at Roope in silence. “I…,” you begin, trailing off. “I don’t know.”

“How long?”

“Not long,” you tell him honestly. “Casino Night.”

Roope nods slowly, processing what you had told him. “You’ve been seeing him for months?”

You take a deep breath, nodding. “Yeah.”

“Are you going to go home with him?”

You stare at Roope, eyes filling with tears again. “I don’t know,” you croak. You didn’t know how to answer that. It’s what you had been planning but you didn’t want to say that, didn’t want to make the situation worse. “Roope, I can’t…I can’t lose you.” You knew what you said to Jamie, that nothing could ever come between you and Roope. But now, being faced with reality, you couldn’t push those fears out of your mind. Because on the list of your biggest fears losing Roope was right up there at the top. 

Roope quickly pulls you back into a hug. “Never.”

You sniffle quietly, nodding. “You’re just going to go home?”

Roope pulls back and you notice his eyes are no longer on you, looking over you down the hallway. Slowly you turn around, looking over your shoulder and seeing Jamie. He looked hesitant, uncertain. “I’ll text you later, okay?”

You look back at Roope, eyes pleading for him to reassure you that he wasn’t upset. But he doesn’t. He simply pulls away from you, turning around and heading out through the door, leaving you alone. 

You bring your arms around you, hands clutching at your arms. A few minutes later Jamie is in front of you, quickly pulling you into a hug. “It’ll be okay. You said yourself you’re never going to lose him.”

You nod, letting yourself relax into him. 

“Don’t know if he’ll be my biggest fan from now on though,” Jamie jokes. 

You let out a relieved breath of laughter, glad that he was breaking the intensity. “As long as you don’t hurt me you have nothing to worry about,” you tease, pulling back to look up at him. 

“I could never.”

His answer doesn’t feel like a joke and your breath catches in your throat at the sincerity of it. You had been trying to lighten the conversation but you didn’t know if you could make another joke after that. “Should we…”

“Get out of here?” 

“Yes,” you answer, eagerly. 

You kick off your shoes when you’re in Jamie’s apartment, pressing your back to the wall as you watch Jamie take off his own. “You think he’s going to be okay…with this?”

Jamie looks up from where he had focused his attention on his shoes. “I don’t know,” he replies honestly. Stepping in front of you Jamie places his hands on your hips. “If he doesn’t…”

You swallow heavily, your hands sliding up Jamie’s arms. “Jamie,” you whisper. 

He nods and you know the smile on his lips is forced. “I know.”

“It’s not that I don’t care about you. I really, really like you. But he’s been my best friend for as long as I can remember and I can’t…I don’t think I could handle losing him.”

Jamie pulls you closer, pressing his lips to your forehead. “I understand.” 

“I’m sorry,” you croak. You wished it didn’t have to be like this and you really wished you didn’t have to say it out loud, didn’t have to tell Jamie that he would always come second to your friendship with Roope. 

“Don’t be.” Jamie’s voice is gentle and genuine. You know he’s not lying, that he truly doesn’t want you to be sorry. He’s not upset, it was no no surprise. Anyone who knew you, knew you and Roope’s relationship would know that nobody would, or could, ever come between you two. But it doesn’t make you feel any better. When you look back up at Jamie your eyes are watery, vision blurry. “Come here,” Jamie whisper, pulling you into his chest, large arms wrapped firmly around your body. “Let’s go watch a movie,” Jamie suggests, hands sliding down from your back to the backs of your thighs, leaning down and scooping you off the ground. 

“Jamie,” you giggle, legs wrapping around his torso as you clutch onto him. “Put me down.”

“No,” Jamie chuckles, turning around with you in his arms. 

While you felt that it was entirely unnecessary for him to be carrying you around you were pretty grateful that he had done something, anything, to break the tension, to make you laugh. “What are we going to watch?” You ask as Jamie carries you the short distance to his living room, leaning down and setting you down on the couch. 

“Your choice,” Jamie tells you, handing you the remote. “What do you want for snacks?”

Smiling softly you feel your eyes fill with tears again. You knew you hadn’t been with Jamie long enough to let it get between you and Roope. But things were going so well between you two. He was so considerate, so kind. But he was also fun and he was constantly making you laugh. 

“What are you thinking?” Jamie enquires, giving up on the movie and snacks for the time being as he sits beside you. Jamie reaches over, taking your hand and gently running his thumb over the back of your hand. 

“It doesn’t matter. I just really like you. There’s nothing we can do about it right now,” you say quietly, blinking rapidly. 

Jamie slides his arm around you, tugging you onto his lap. “We’ll figure it out.” You knew it was a lie. It was Roope who was going to figure it out. But you liked the reassurance regardless. 

Sliding one of your legs over Jamie’s lap you pull back slightly, leaning in and pressing your lips to his. Jamie kisses you back but you can feel that he’s hesitant. Everything feels slower than normal that night.

Jamie slides his warm hands underneath your shirt, his skin rough in contrast to your soft skin. He pulls gently on your lower back, bringing your body closer to his. You don’t think it’s possible to get any closer as your hands grasp at him, his biceps, shoulders, sliding up to the back of his neck, fingers curling into the hair at the nape of his neck. 

“Please, Jamie, I need you,” you whisper against his lips, hips grinding down into his. 

And that’s all it takes. He has his hands behind your knees, gently sliding you off his lap. Before you know it Jamie is guiding you to his bedroom. 

“You’re sure?” Jamie whispers when you’re in the bedroom, his hands on your waist as he guides you over to the bed. “Tonight?” He clarifies, wanting you to consider the ramifications of this. Given everything that happened that night, given the fact that you had already admitted that you would end things with him if Roope couldn’t accept it. 

“Yes.”

The next morning you wake up tucked beneath Jamie’s arm, your head on his chest, leg over top of his. For a split second you forget. You forget about the night before. You forget that your relationship could potentially be coming to an end very soon. But it all comes back to you and you roll over onto your back, staring up at the ceiling. 

Your movement causes Jamie to stir and he follows your direction, rolling onto his side and wrapping his free arm around you. “Good morning,” Jamie whispers, his voice filled with a sombreness that makes it evident that he hadn’t for a moment forgotten. 

“‘Morning,” you whisper, turning your head to look at Jamie. “What do we do now?”

Jamie takes a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling. He seems to be thinking for awhile. “Go out for breakfast, probably.”

You stare at him blankly for a couple minutes. It was such a simple answer. So simple and yet so surprising. “Okay,” you eventually say. 

Shortly after you’re sitting across from Jamie at a small cafe, a cup of coffee in front of you and your breakfast orders already taken by the waitress. “Roope texted me,” you say, hesitantly. You didn’t want to ruin the morning, but it was something that needed to be addressed. 

“What did he say?” Jamie is fidgeting with the edge of the napkin wrapped around his cutlery. 

“Just that he wants to talk.” Before you even think through what you’re doing you reach across the table, grabbing Jamie’s hand. “I’ll go over to his apartment after breakfast.”

Jamie nods, squeezing your hand gently. “Whatever you decide, I’ll understand,” Jamie tells you.

And after that you leave any talk about Roope about the potential end of the relationship behind. You move on, to other topics. You talk about work and hockey and you tell him about the drama in your workplace and he listens intently. He cracks jokes and makes you laugh. And it’s three hours before you actually leave the cafe. 

Jamie drives you to the arena where your car was from the night before and you head to Roope’s apartment. The drive seems to go on forever, your nerves building with each passing minute. 

Half an hour later you’re sitting on Roope’s couch, legs pulled up to your chest as you stare at him. “I’m sorry, Roope. I’m sorry I lied to you but I’m not sorry that I’ve been seeing Jamie,” you begin. 

Roope is quiet, elbows on his knees as he leans forward, eyes on the ground. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

Once he looks up you shrug. There was no easy answer. You were confused, conflicted. You were scared. Scared that Roope wouldn’t approve. Scared that you would end up in this exact situation. “I knew you would tell me it couldn’t happen.”

“You don’t know that-.”

“Yes, I do,” you exclaim. You weren’t about to let him sit there and tell you he would have just let it happen. “You’ve never approved of a single guy I was seeing. You made me promise and now I wished I had never agreed. I wish I could go back to that day and tell you the truth, Roope. Tell you that you have no right, you have no right to tell me who I can and can’t see. You’re one of the most important people in my life. I love you. I trust you. But none of that means you get to tell me who I’m not allowed to date.” Even you’re shocked by the outburst but the way Roope physically recoils in his chair tells you that it was the last thing he was expecting. 

“I-,” Roope begins, falling speechless. “You’re right,” he eventually mutters. “I just, I don’t want you to get hurt. What if something happens? How am I supposed to deal with that?”

“You don’t need to deal with it,” you tell him. “If something happens then that’s between Jamie and I, you won’t be involved. We’re adults, we’ll figure it out ourselves.”

Roope groans, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. “Why him? Of all people…why him?” Roope whines, making you giggle. 

“Because he’s sweet and funny and so hot.”

“Gross,” Roope mutters, turning his head to look at you. “Will you promise me something?”

“What is it?” The last promise he had you make regarding Jamie didn’t go so well. 

“You won’t talk about how hot he is again.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” you laugh. 

Roope chuckles and you can feel the tension in the room dissipating. You weren’t naive enough to think that he was completely okay with it. But you were okay with that. You were okay with him needing time as long as it meant that he wasn’t giving you an ultimatum to end things with Jamie. You knew it was all you could ask for right now and you were happy enough just with that. 

[lokilickedme]

The Queen of Springtown

I’m going to tell you a story.  It’s a true story.  There’s a bit of conjecture here and there to fill in empty spots, but not a lot.  It’s a story about my grandmother - my paternal grandmother, not my maternal grandmother - I feel the need to specify who exactly it is because mom’s mom has a bit of a story too, but that’s for later.

This one’s about the one I’m going to call Elizabeth.  Elizabeth was her middle name, it was a family name, it belonged to her mother and her grandmother I believe, though I didn’t know any of those people so I couldn’t swear by it.  The family records are long gone if they ever existed.

Elizabeth’s last name was one of those romantically ridiculous names that still clung to old families at the turn of the century.  It had a lot of extraneous letters at the end, a handful of unnecessary and partially silent sounds that looked beautiful in the flowery handwritten script of the time, a noble sounding -eaoux that did little more than tag a fancy sounding o onto the back end.  A lot of fuss for such a little piece of sound.  And when Elizabeth’s grandfather moved his family from France to Ireland and signed the manifests upon arrival in the new old land, he dropped the -eaoux and shortened the family’s name to four tiny letters and a single syllable.  They were Irish now.

Elizabeth’s father carried the new name and the new heritage, and when he was of age he went and married an Irish beauty named - yep, Elizabeth.  They say she was redheaded and blue eyed and fair skinned, though no pictures exist to prove it.  All that exists is my grandmother, who supposedly looked just like her mama.  She didn’t remember Ireland...she was too young when her daddy moved his family to a new land just like his own daddy had done, and she never really told anyone she was Irish.  No one actually knew, once her parents were gone.

But you could tell.  She looked it - flame red hair, china blue eyes, fair skin.  She had the bones of whatever French nobility had been in her lineage from way back, but her colors were the Emerald Isle all the way.  A beauty like you’d see in the movies, petite and ladylike and perfectly put together.

But my god that woman had a wild streak that dated right back to the Celts whose blood made up half of what she was.

(continued under the cut because long story)

So Elizabeth grew up in America, the daughter of an Irish mother and a French father.  She had brothers and sisters, quite a few, though I never knew any of them.  I believe I met two of them when I was too young to remember much about the encounter, but I’ve always found it hilarious that one of her sisters was named Bill.  Bill, like the man’s name.  I never found out why and I’m not entirely sure there was ever actually a reason.  It was just one of those things.

The newly American family settled in Texas.  And when Elizabeth was very young - probably not yet in her 20′s, though nobody knows for sure just how old she actually was because it’s likely she tended to fib a bit about her age to get into places she had no business being - she got herself involved with the Texas mafia.

Now let me tell you a thing or two about the Texas mafia.  It wasn’t an official operation - not like the Italian Mafioso or the Eastern Syndicates or whatever the hell was going on between Florida and Cuba at the time.  But it was every bit as dangerous and vicious and bloody and corrupt as any of those bigger organizations, and it was led for the most part by a man I’m going to call Big Joe.

This was the early 1940′s or thereabouts.  Elizabeth was a party girl - up for anything, always out and about, girl-gang at the swing club, the works.  And Big Joe saw her in the club one night, it may very well have been his club she was dancing at, and the proverbial first-sight thing kicked him hard in the gonads.  This girl was a looker, and she was dancing with everyone in the place, whooping it up, living life like tomorrow it was all going to take a header into the sea.  He had to have her.

And he did.

Big Joe was likely in his late 30′s, maybe early 40′s.  There’s not a lot of information on him other than a handful of facts mentioned once and only once by my grandmother to my aunt - that Big Joe was a handsome man, big and tough and a snazzy dresser, and he always had enough money in his pocket to take Elizabeth anywhere she wanted to go and buy her anything she wanted to buy.  And Elizabeth, party girl extraordinaire, was all up for that.

So Elizabeth and Big Joe become a thing.  Everybody knows she’s his squeeze - and suddenly not a male soul in Dallas or the surrounding metropolitan areas will dare to lay an eye on her, not even a quick glance, because she’s Big Joe’s girl.  And that means something.  Elizabeth doesn’t know quite what it means because she’s likely not even 20 yet, but Big Joe is fun and romantic and he takes her on trips and buys her nice clothes.  He buys her a ring, a blood red garnet, a ring that I inherit many decades later.  He’s going to marry her, he says.  She doesn’t care much one way or the other, she’s having too much fun dancing every night in his club, traveling with him, going shopping, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous of the Southwest.  She’s all but a star, protected and adored.  Big Joe’s men follow her everywhere she goes when she’s not with him.  And Big Joe starts going out of town without her a lot, taking care of business that he never tells her the details of.

She’s cool with that.  He’s a businessman, that’s what he’s always told her.  Things to take care of out of town.  The Boss.  He has a lot of operations to oversee, operations that make all that money he spends on her.

She has no idea what he actually does.

All she knows - or cares to know - is that when he comes back to town he ushers her around town in his big fancy black car, buying her furs and expensive dinners, showing her off to society.  When he isn’t slapping her around...but hey, that’s part of the deal isn’t it?  It’s the 1940′s, and Big Joe is very much a man of the era.  Women grew up knowing they’d have to take the back of a man’s hand from time to time, and Elizabeth knew which side her bread was buttered on.  She kept Big Joe happy, put a smile on his face, did the old grin-and-bear-it on the rest of it.

And then one night Big Joe comes banging on her door.  He’s frantic.  He pushes a set of keys into her hand - keys to the fancy black car that takes her everywhere - and tells her to keep it there, at her house.  Don’t drive it anywhere, just keep it there.  He’ll contact her soon and tell her what to do.

He leaves in another car with one of his men, and that’s the last time Elizabeth ever sees him.

A few weeks later she gets a letter from Big Joe telling her to drive the car into Grapevine Lake, on the far side by the shoals.  Don’t open the trunk, he says.  Put a brick on the gas pedal and put it in drive.  Do it at night and make sure nobody sees you.

That night Elizabeth picks up her best friend and they drive the car to Grapevine to do as Big Joe said, sinking it in the murky green water on the far side of the lake.  The two girls - just girls, barely even women yet - stand on the shore watching it disappear into the deep dark.

A week later Big Joe is shot to death.  A deal gone bad maybe, or a competitor moving into the territory.  Nobody really knows - grandmother never said.  Don’t think I haven’t done my research...I know what I know, and according to a nearly nonexistent little trove of newspaper articles microfiched in a tiny little library in Azle Texas that isn’t even there anymore, odds are very likely that Big Joe went down in a shootout with the Dallas Police Department.

Elizabeth never opened the trunk of that car.  At least she said she didn’t...it’s one of the many things that nobody ever knew or will ever know, because once she shut the door on that part of her life and moved on, it might as well have never happened.  Getting this much out of her was outrageously difficult.  Thanks to my very tenacious and very persevering aunt, what I’ve just told you managed to survive.  It’s very likely my aunt was the only person she ever told, and it’s very likely I in turn am the only person my aunt ever told.  And now my aunt is in her 70′s and in poor health, and this little unknown family story has started poking around at the back of my skull.  I don’t want it to be lost.  I don’t like the idea of soon being the only person alive who knows it.  It’s not a spectacular story, but it’s testament to the fact that extraordinary things happen to ordinary people, probably more often than you’d think - and that those ordinary people sometimes take it all to the grave with them.

Elizabeth - my dad’s mom, my grandmother, the one I look like and act like and laugh like, the one whose cheekbones and eyes and hair and size I was born with, passed away twenty-something years ago.  She lived through some extraordinary things.  After the demise of Big Joe she married an oil roughneck, one of the semi-transient oilfield workers that were prevalent in the Texas Panhandle at the time, and had two children with him - one of whom was my father.  The roughneck was the epitome of the James Dean romantic brooding bad boy type, handsome and manly, but unfortunately also a scoundrel who had a second family in another city that he went to every other month when he traveled to another rig for work.  She left him when she found out.  It was almost unheard of at the time, a young mother taking her two little kids and leaving her husband to be on her own, but she did it.  And when my father was 12 she met and married a very tall, very handsome, very Cary Grant-esque railroad worker who loved life every bit as much as she did.

They were together for the rest of her life.  I’ve never to this day seen two people more in love than Elizabeth and Jesse.  I spent many summers in Texas with them and not a night went by that I couldn’t hear them giggling in the next room after lights-out, talking and laughing quietly until granddad’s wallshaking snores echoed through the house.  It just about killed him when her heart gave out.  But she was old, and she’d lived a life worth living.  There was nothing in her face in those final moments that could ever convince anyone she wasn’t ready and willing to go when the time came.

I’d been married for a couple of years when she died, and my husband and I traveled to Texas for the funeral.  The first night there, as my aunt brought out grandmother’s jewelry box and told me to take whatever I wanted, the story was passed from her to me.  And when it was all told I opened a little drawer in the bottom of the jewelry box and pulled out an old garnet ring that I’d seen before, when I was a small child snooping in grandma’s stuff.  I’d always been fascinated with it...it just looked like it had a story to tell.  That’s it, my aunt said.  That’s the ring he gave her.  That’s all she ended up with.

It was the only thing I took.

The church was so full the next morning you’d have thought it was the final sendoff for some local celebrity.  Everybody loved my grandmother, everybody, but this was sort of astounding.  Some of them I knew from my childhood, from many many summers spent in the Panhandle, but people came from all over to say goodbye and nobody in the family knew who a lot of them were.  They just showed up, some of them cried, some just stood in the back of the church all stoic in black suits.  Some were very old.  And when it was over and I turned around to watch a group of distinctly important-looking old gentlemen quickly and quietly leave the building, I looked over at my aunt and pointed at them.  She arched her eyebrows in that way she always did, that way, the way that said What did I tell you?? - and I wondered if maybe all those years ago some of Big Joe’s men hadn’t pulled that car out of Lake Grapevine and found the trunk empty.

I mean...this is Elizabeth we’re talking about.

[carcasstohounds]

anyway, here are the native ellen claremont headcanons that totally aren’t just me projecting

-ellen’s mom is from the white earth reservation, but due to the american indian relocation act, ended up in dallas, then lometa. her parents moved back up to white earth when she was 18, but she ended up pregnant with ellen. she stayed back to try to stay with the guy who knocked her up, but he dipped because white men suck and she just sort of had to deal with being a native single mom in a tiny town in texas.

-she worked hard and taught ellen to do the same, and eventually ellen ended up in law school where she met oscar. they bonded over being brown in a crowd of white assholes, graduated together and got married. they had june a few years after that, that, then alex, and things move on as they do in the book.

-every summer, ellen sent june and alex up to family on the rez for a month, then oscar would send them down to family in mexico for a month.

-both june and alex started dancing before they could walk (lmao same). june had a tiny jingle dress with like, five cones per row because it was so small, and alex had little grass dancer regalia. 10/10 cuteness.

-alex and june went as victor and thomas for halloween twice, once as toddlers and once as adults. it was hilarious both times.

-also i’m living for the idea of long hair alex. can you IMAGINE.

-june was a powwow princess once, which is the source of several of her inside jokes with henry.

-alex speaks ojibwe!!!! he would teach it to himself over the school year, and then spend the month in white earth practicing nonstop. i think june and ellen probably know some too, but alex is the only one who’s mostly fluent.

-jumping off that, ellen introducing herself in ojibwe first, and then in english for speeches!!!! (this is a thing a lot of native speakers do, and it’s cool to hear every time.)

-pendletons all over the austin house. when alex and henry move in together, alex pulls out like 4 of em and a star quilt or two he got for graduation, and henry’s like ????

-also, ellen got a giant star quilt from her family when she was elected and cried.

-they all have their indian names. ellen got hers when she was in her twenties, but got junes when she was 8 and alex’s when he was 7.

-ellen (and alex and june) having to deal with a second accent issue. people already don’t like southern accents, but they also don’t like rez accents.

-june and alex codeswitch so much it’s ridiculous.

-alex, to henry in the wedding scene: fuckin skoden

-alex, pointing at a pidgeon feather on the ground: some real sacred shit, right there.

henry, who can’t tell if he’s joking: ????

-alex, sobbing to fawn woods “lonesome for you” at 3am: no i don’t miss henry why do you ask

-follow up to that last one: alex makes henry listen to remember me and they both cry

-ellen: no june, i can’t say i hate white people in a speech.

-they’re the definition of boujee natives

-june and ellen wearing b yellowtail to events!

-they go to gathering of nations every year and june and alex always end up lost in the vendor areas with armfuls of shit because they started talking to someone and the person was really nice so they felt obligated to buy stuff (we’ve all been there lmao)

-junes biggest flex is that she once ate powdered sugar frybread in a black dress on a windy day without getting any of it on the dress.

-on days when the “president mom” face comes down, ellen, june, and alex make frybread and wild rice together in the white house kitchens, just like they did at the austin house.

-this ones really specific, but one of june and alex’s favorite candies are the maple sugar candies from native harvest (they’re sold out on the website :( hopefully they’ll be back this winter though)

-ellen has a beaded lanyard (are you really a native person in a position of power if you don’t have a beaded lanyard)

-june has so many earrings. so many. she has an entire jewelry box dedicated just to earrings.

- wait earrings alex

-june had the brown kid bleach streak in middle school (this is such a specific phenomenon and i don’t really know what’s up with it or why no one else seems to know what i’m talking about, but if you put a group of native kids in a room together i can guarantee that about 1/3 of them have a bleach streak)

-alex can do the powwow mc voice perfectly, which is one of the things he’s proudest of.

[aion-rsa]

Friday Night Lights: A Non-American’s Guide to American Football

https://ift.tt/3zYMt15

Friday Night Lights is now back on Netflix and you have to watch it. 

Just to be clear, that isn’t a request – it’s an order. The NBC football drama is simply one of the most affecting, thrilling American TV shows of all time. Though premiering in 2006, the show can mark its lineage all the way back to a true story from the late ‘80s. In 1990, sports journalist H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger published the non-fiction book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream. The book follows the story of the 1988 Permian Panthers high school football team in Odessa, Texas as they make a run for a Texas state championship.

The book was adapted into a Peter Berg film of the same name in 2004, starring Billy Bob Thornton. The story of the Permian Panthers was dramatically rich enough to conquer two mediums already, but when a third was announced in the form of a TV series for NBC it seemed like overkill. Did the world really need more high school football drama after a successful book and movie? It turns out that the world really did.

Friday Night Lights, the TV show, further fictionalized Bissinger’s story. Odessa, Texas becomes the fictional Dillon, Texas (though the Permian Panthers logo remains a big yellow “P”). Kyle Chandler steps into the role of a new coach, the magnanimous Eric Taylor. Shot in a cinema verite-style where blocking is optional, Friday Night Lights makes the viewer feel like they are just another Dillon citizen, desperately dreaming for a state championship. Above all else, this empathetic show never speaks down to its small town characters. 

As previously stated, Friday Night Lights is a must-watch. But if you’re one of our many non-American readers (Hello, everyone! I see you out there, writing “s” in words that need “z”), the football angle may seem like a real roadblock. So let’s tear down that roadblock. American football is the most popular sport in the United States but also perhaps its most impenetrable. The rulebook is thick and its connection to American culture deep. What follows is an attempt to explain American football for non-American viewers who are hesitant to tackle the show. Hopefully this will also prove useful to existing Friday Night Lights fans who have some questions about the game. 

To simplify matters, we’ve broken our football school down into three parts: The Different Levels of American Football, which explains the sport’s place in American culture and why high school football is a big deal; The Rules of American Football, which is as succinct a distillation of how the game is played as possible; and The Strategy of American Football, which examines whether Eric Taylor is even a good coach anyway. 

The Different Levels of American Football

Football is a pervasive force in American society. The highest level of play in the country (and the world) is the National Football League in which 32 teams of well-paid professionals compete against one another. The NFL is the richest sports league in the world by revenue and its championship, the Super Bowl, is usually watched by roughly 100 million people per year. Football’s influence doesn’t begin and end with the NFL though. The NFL doesn’t have a minor league or development system, so those interested in watching younger athletes are able to do so by following the sport on the collegiate or high school level.

College football is a huge deal. Some major universities’ football stadiums can house upwards of 100,000 fans. Four-year universities and colleges across the country field their own football teams that compete against one another in 12-game seasons (before a postseason consisting of “Bowl Games” but that’s too complicated to get into right now). Football at the collegiate level contains hundreds of teams split up into different leagues based on size and different conferences based on geography (for the most part). There isn’t any promotion and relegation like in European football leagues but if an institution grows big enough they can secure an invite to a higher level.

Though the decision-makers of the sport like to pretend it’s an amateur exercise and the players are not paid, college football is really a multi-billion dollar business. In fact, college football’s governing body, the NCAA, was just spooked enough by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that it allowed its athletes to finally pursue “Name, Image, Likeness (NIL)” deals in which they are allowed to make money from personal sponsorships. 

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Then we come to the high school level of football. Longtime viewers of American teenage dramas may have a pretty good idea of what a U.S. high school is now but here’s a primer for those who don’t. High school is the highest level of free public education in the U.S. before the more academically (and financially) strenuous college system. High school follows eighth grade (which together with seventh grade usually comprises of “middle school”) and consists of freshmen (ninth graders or 14-15-year-olds), sophomores (tenth graders or 15-16-year-olds), juniors (11th graders or 16-17-year-olds), and seniors (12 graders of 17-18-year-olds).

In some areas of the country, high school football is a bigger deal than college football or even the NFL. Though this level of the sport is played by essentially children, a high school football team may be the only competitive sports enterprise within hundreds of miles for some communities. This is particularly true in the massive U.S. state of Texas. Every region of the U.S. loves football, but passion for the sport is particularly acute in the Southeast, Midwest, and Texas. West Texas, where Friday Night Lights is set, is really high school football mad. The region is distinctly rural and far removed from the state’s three big cities – Houston, Austin, and Dallas. As such, high school football is the singular cultural force that many oil-drilling West Texas communities rally around.

High school football leagues across the country differ considerably, but like in college football, schools are generally grouped together by size and funding. Public and private high schools are able to compete in the same sports conferences as long as they have similar enrollments and budgets. Typically a high school football season consists of only 10 games (football is a physically brutal sport and as such plays far fewer games per year than other sports like baseball, basketball, or soccer). The regular season is usually followed by a bracket-style playoffs culminating in a state championship. There is no country-wide tournament, which is why “winning state” is the ultimate goal in Friday Night Lights. 

The Rules of American Football

I won’t lie to you: this is going to be difficult. Explaining any sport from scratch is a tall task, let alone a sport as complicated as football. Let me attempt to do so from the ground up and please be patient. There will be some visual aids as well.

First, it’s probably helpful to know about the field that football is played on. There’s a reason why in some European markets that the sport is known as “Gridiron Football” and that’s because the field resembles a cooking utensil known as a gridiron.

Every American football field consists of 100 yards (split into two sides of 1-50 yards). At the end of each side of the field is an “endzone.” A player entering into the endzone with the football is called a “touchdown” and nets a team six points. At the back of each endzone are the goalposts – yellow tuning fork-like structures that the ball is occasionally kicked through for more points. These are akin to rugby’s goalposts but slightly differently shaped. Let’s table the whole kicking thing for now and focus strictly on the action on the field.

The goal of football is to enter into the endzone with the ball to score points and have more points at the end of the game than the other team. A football game is 60 minutes, split into four 15-minute quarters (with a lengthy halftime break after the second quarter). Eleven players take the field for each team, one side on “offense” and one side on “defense.” A coin is flipped at the beginning of each game to decide who gets to start as offense and who gets to start as defense. The team who began the game on defense will get to be the offense at the start of the second half.

The offense is charged with advancing the ball 100 yards down the field into the end zone, while the defense is tasked with stopping them by tackling the person with the football to the ground. The offense is granted four tries or “plays” to try to score. The action isn’t continuous in American football like it is in European football. After a team runs a play to attempt to advance the ball, they get a 40-second break to plot their next play. A play simply refers to the action on the field that the offense takes to get down the field. It begins with the “center” “snapping” the ball to the “quarterback” behind him and ends when the offense either scores (rare) or is foiled in some way – whether that means being tackled in bounds, stepping out of bounds, or throwing the ball out of bounds. Here is a chart of the typical football positions.

The offense’s two most reliable ways of advancing the ball downfield are either throwing it or running it. On a running play, the quarterback (Jason Street or Matt Saracen in Friday Night Lights) will receive the snap and hand it off to a running back (Smash Williams or Tim Riggins) who tries to run the ball upfield while his teammates block for him. Alternatively, the quarterback can throw the ball to an open wide receiver as long as the throw originates from behind the line of scrimmage (the area on the field where the play originated). 

Four tries to reach the end zone are rarely enough opportunities for the offense. Thankfully, that’s where “first downs” come in. If the offense advances 10 yards, their “downs” or attempts to score reset back to the full four. That’s where terms like “1st and 10” or “2nd and 7” or “4th and 1” come from. The first number refers to which “down” or attempt the offense is on (1, 2, 3, or 4) while the second number refers to how many yards they need to reach to achieve another first down. Due to penalties or a player being tackled well behind the line of scrimmage (called a “sack” or a “tackle for loss”), the number of yards needed to reach a first down can exceed 10. One time in 2012, the Washington Football Team even had a “3rd and 50”, meaning they needed to move 50 yards for a first down. 

If the offense fails to score or get a first down while on fourth down, possession of the ball is granted to the other team on the same spot that the offense failed. This is called a “turnover on downs.” The team that was previously on offense will bring their defensive unit into the game while the other team will bring their offensive unit. At the collegiate and professional level, players usually only play on one “side” of the ball – offense or defense. In high school, where the level of talent is more inconsistent, it’s not uncommon for several players to be on both the offensive and defensive units. This doesn’t come up much on Friday Night Lights though – for the most part the offensive players stay on offense and the defensive players stay on defense.

It is possible for the defense to force a turnover in other ways beyond just a turnover on downs. If the offense drops or “fumbles”’ the ball and the defense recovers it, it belongs to them. If the defense catches a ball thrown by the offense it is an “interception” and the offense suddenly becomes the defense and the defense suddenly becomes the offense. This situation factors prominently in Friday Night Light’s first episode. 

Turnovers are awful, so the offense has a couple of tools to combat them. At any point during their drive down the field, the offense can choose to “punt” the ball. This means that if they’ve reached 4th down and are unlikely to convert a first down (if it is 4th and 10 from their own 30 yardline for instance), they can choose to have a kicking specialist called a “punter” enter the field. The punter receives the snap, tosses the ball up in the air, and punts the ball far down the field to the other team to catch and try to advance. This is a surrender from the offense but at least they’re making things a bit more difficult for the other offense by pushing the new offense further down the field. Punts rarely factor into Friday Night Lights as they aren’t particularly interesting. 

Alternatively, if the offense is close to the end zone but not close enough that they’re confident they can reach it, they can attempt to kick the ball through the aforementioned goalposts for three points. A “kicker” is brought onto the field and attempts to kick the ball through the goalposts from the ground. A “holder” is allowed to hold the ball upright for the kicker but the ball must be touching the ground for the attempt to count.

Let’s delve a little further into the scoring system. We’ve mentioned that kicking the ball through the uprights is a field goal and nets three points while carrying the ball into the endzone is a touchdown and nets six points. But there are a couple other ways to score in football as well. After a touchdown is achieved, the offense is immediately granted the opportunity to score again. They must choose whether they want to kick the ball through the uprights from extremely close range (which nets one extra point) or to try to reach the end zone again from extremely close range (which nets two extra points). Additionally, if the offense is tackled in their own end zone, it nets two points for the opposing team and they receive the ball back via punt. This is called a “safety.”

To recap: 

Safety: 2 points

Field Goal: 3 points

Touchdown: 6 points (+1 for a field goal attempt, +2 for a scoring attempt).

This means that football scores can generate pretty much any result other than 1-0 or 1-1. Typically a “normal” scoring game will be somewhere between the 20-40 range in divisions of 7 or 3. A score of 35-28 is a pretty usual final football score.

Still confused? That’s understandable. Football is a fairly confusing sport at times. But hopefully you are a little better equipped to understand the action on the field in Friday Night Lights. The show certainly isn’t trying to present a complicated depiction of football. Armed with the basics, you should have a rough idea of what’s happening during all the football action. 

If you feel like you’ve mastered the basics, feel free to move on to the final section of this piece.

The Strategy of American Football

The only constant in football is change. The rules of the sport are tweaked every single year and sometimes the sport undergoes truly massive alterations. In fact, the forward pass itself (now a staple of the game) wasn’t even legal for the first few decades of football’s existence. As such, the offensive and defensive strategies of football are in a constant state of flux. 

What’s interesting to note about Friday Night Lights is how old-fashioned its depiction of football appears to be at the series’ beginning. Keep in mind that this story began with the 1988 Permian Panthers. So despite premiering and taking place in 2006, the Dillon Panthers offense looks quite antiquated at first. 

The Dillon Panthers open the series as a run-first offense in a “Wing-T” formation. Running back Brian “Smash” Williams is the cornerstone of the Panthers’ strategy because back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, athletically superior running backs were usually the most dominant force in any high school offense. The Panthers plan of attack is to have a fast tailback (colloquially called a “running back” because they begin the play in the backfield and then…run)  and a strong fullback in the backfield alongside the quarterback. The Panthers’ plan is to snap the ball, give it to the fast guy, have him follow the big blockers, then rinse and repeat.

Interestingly enough, the show uses the primitiveness of the Panthers’ offense to its advantage in later seasons. When some parents and Panthers boosters (literally just rich people that support a high school or college team) want to oust Coach Eric Taylor, they point to his inability to change with the times and create a sophisticated passing attack as one reason. Coach Taylor does eventually attempt to implement a “spread” offense. 

Spread offenses were all the rage at the high school and collegiate level in the early aughts. The “spread” strategy refers to “spreading” three to five wide receivers on the line of scrimmage to force the defense to cover them man-to-man. Defenses are always strategizing just like offenses, and by forcing the defense to spread out and guard many receivers, it takes away a lot of their more sophisticated coverage options (like double-teaming or divvying up the field into “zones” of coverage). 

In later seasons, when Coach Taylor gains access to a fast, dynamic quarterback, he incorporates a bit of the “option” into his spread offense. This is where the QB uses the spacing from the spread to scan the field, analyze certain players’ positioning on the defense, and decide to pass the ball, hand off the ball, or run the ball himself.

Based on all this, it sounds like Eric Taylor is a pretty brilliant coach, right? Well, not exactly. The internet is littered with breakdowns of Taylor’s strategy from smart football minds. Most of said articles criticize him on two big fronts. The first is his tardiness in adapting to a pass-heavy offense. The second is his absolutely abominable clock management. Since the clock counts down in American football and there is no stoppage time, managing time is a huge part of a coach’s responsibility. 

Since the show naturally wants to inject some drama into its football scenes, the Dillon Panthers as coached by Eric Taylor often have next to 0 clock awareness. This breakdown even notes than in the pilot episode, the Panthers somehow only move the ball 30 yards in five minutes of gametime. That is…pretty curious. 

Also, while it’s not uncommon for a head coach to specialize in either the defensive or offensive side of the ball, Eric Taylor’s is particularly offensive-focused. Defensive plays aren’t as exciting to depict on television, so Coach Taylor is rarely shown coaching up the defensive half of his team. That’s a pretty big blindspot when it comes to head coaching. 

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Now that you’ve read through this full breakdown of American football, give Friday Night Lights a watch or a rewatch. Who knows – you may even be a sharper football mind than Coach Taylor at this point.

The post Friday Night Lights: A Non-American’s Guide to American Football appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[nevernevadahq]

Everyone suspects COOPER CASTILLO of at least one of the cardinal sins, but in Nevada, the worst sins are bound by blood and this is HIS: THE ASENAS. HE rolled the dice FOUR YEARS AGO ago as a HEIST SPECIALIST. Under the desert sun, they claim the act of OWNER OF IN THE PITS AUTO REPAIR. They’re often mistaken for PETER GADIOT before those crimson colored glasses slide down their nose. CC better get busy living, or they’ll get busy dying by the ripe age of THIRTY-FIVE. There are no second acts in a marked life, and it’s measured out by the melody of MONSTER BY SKILLET.

DATE OF BIRTH: October 28th, 1986

GENDER AND PRONOUNS: Cis Man, He/Him

HOMETOWN: Dallas, TX

MARK: Evil Eye Point

CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY [TW: Death, Neglect, Drugs]

In Dallas, the Castillo name was known through the streets. Cooper’s father was one of biggest drug lords who owned the North side. From the day, Cooper could walk and talk he was already thrusted into the family business, forced to understand the ins and outs before he even learned the alphabet. At the age of five, the eldest Castillo knew how to take apart and put a gun back together, at the age eight knew if a bill was fake or not, at the age of ten knew how to weigh drugs, at the age of fifteen knew how to steal something without being undetected and at the age of sixteen knew how to shoot a gun with no hesitation.

Cooper was the star child, the one his father took under his wing and gave all his attention too. It wasn’t a difficult decision for the eldest to take over that role to protect his five other siblings from the dangers of the business. In fact, the male had already decided he was going to be the one to climb the ladder and embed himself in the life their family had for the last few generations. It was until the age of twenty-five where things had gone in the Castillo’s favor. During one of the drug deals, the people they were dealing with took out every single one of Castillo’s people including his father.

After the downfall for the Castillo’s, Cooper gave everything he had to his siblings and told them to get out of Texas. No one was going to stop the bloodshed until every single Castillo didn’t exist. Once his siblings were safely out of Texas, Cooper took it upon himself to get his revenge for the death of his father. After weeks of planning, the Castillo male took down the organization one by one and when Cooper finished painting the small part of Dallas red he packed a bag and left.

Bouncing from town to town, state to state Cooper worked in several different fields; fast food, mechanic, retail. Once he got bored a town or started to lay down roots he would leave and never look back. This went on for years until four years ago he stumbled upon Las Vegas, Nevada. He walked into one of the local mechanic shop and used all the money he had saved to buy the mechanic shop from the older man who owned it. A few weeks into working at the shop, Cooper was itching for something more and decided to put together his own little heist. The last thing he had expected was to meet someone along the way, Jackson Barrett who had been doing a heist in the same location. Jackson ended up becoming somewhat of a mentor, a friend, and someone who would introduce him into the inner workings of the families that led this city.

COOPER CASTILLO IS WRITTEN BY ALYSSA.

[qsdblogging]

Top 10 TV Shows You Need To Watch Right Now

Now, I watch a lot of television. I always have and frankly, I’m much more of a binge watcher than a wait-around-for-a-week-for-the-next-episode kind of watcher. 

And with everything the past few months, there wasn’t all that much to do other than start rewatching some of my favorite shows and some that I’ve never seen or haven’t seen in a while.

So, that’s what I did and here I am giving you some recommendations for shows to add to your own watching lists. 

Warning, though, some of these don’t end the best way and may end up more as a disappointment. I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

I. Fringe.

I cannot recommend this show enough to people. It’s got five full seasons (although the last could’ve been a little better, but it’s honestly not that bad of a final season) of high-risk scenarios revolving around almost unexplainable phenomena regarding a tear in the fabric of reality. It deals with experiments that gives superpowers (basically), advanced technology, and a parallel universe. 

Plus, there’s a cow.

What more could you want from a show?

Some familiar faces that are in the main cast or show up at some point include John Noble, who you may recognize from Sleepy Hollow and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Lance Reddick, who was in The Wire, White House Down, American Horror Story, and played Charon in the John Wick franchise, Leonard Nimoy, who you should know from the original Star Trek series, and Anna Torv from Mindhunter. 

II. Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector.

Now, if you know crime books, you may know exactly what this is based off of. If not, fear not, I am here to tell. This series (which, like a lot of the others down the list, unfortunately, got cancelled and won’t get to see a second season) was based off of The Bone Collector, a first in a series of novels by Jeffery Deaver. 

If you like crime shows, you should definitely give this a shot. Don’t let the fact that it’s only one season stop you.

Things get pretty wild in just one season as it revolved around a retired forensic criminologist, who had been trying to catch the Bone Collector only to get injured, that gets back into the game three years later when an ambitious young detective is determined to help solve the case when a new body shows up.

You might even recognize a face or two, like Arielle Kebbel (the ambitious young detective) from her role as Lexi in The Vampire Diaries and Olivia Charity in Midnight, Texas, and Russell Hornsby (the retired forensic criminologist) from Grimm, The Hate U Give, Proven Innocent, and The Affair.

III. Manifest.

Luckily, this show is said to be getting a third season and so far, isn’t going to get cancelled. It focuses on passengers from Flight 828, who show up five years after their plane went missing. Some passengers start experiencing what they call ‘callings’ and try to figure out if they were chosen for some sort of duty that the callings led them too, but things get a little confusing when someone who wasn’t on a flight seems to have a year missing of their own life after being deemed missing.

Things get a little weird and dangerous along the way, and not everyone is happy about how things turn out.

It’s pretty interesting and I’m really looking forward to what else they come up with. There’s a few familiar faces that play a part in the show that includes Daryl Edwards, who you may recognize from the first season of Daredevil, Ellen Tamaki who is also in the reboot of Charmed, Athena Karkanis, who’s been in The Expanse and Lost Girl, and Josh Dallas, who one may recall playing Prince Charming in Once Upon a Time, and Fandral in Thor.

It’s a rather good show to get lost in and I definitely recommend giving it a go.

IV. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

If you don’t have an idea as to what this show is, I don’t know what to say. The title kind of gives it away. It’s the only Marvel Show (as of now since none of the shows in production have come out as of yet) to technically be connected to the MCU itself.

That’s found in one of the main characters, Phil Coulson, who you’d recognize from Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, and The Avengers. Plus, Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill) and Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury) both give a cameo in the show. 

The show was rumored to have been set in a different, but similar, timeline to that of the MCU movies, but I don’t know for sure if it’s true or not. 

It follows its own set of issues, including a deeper dive into the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., issues with HYDRA, and so on and so forth. The last season, which I honestly cried during, gives such good twists and callbacks to previous seasons and the MCU movies that you can’t help but enjoy how it’s handled.

As a show, it probably has one of the best final seasons possible and I highly recommend giving the full seven seasons a watch if you haven’t already.

V. Primeval.

Now, if you like dinosaurs, this is a show for you. It’s BBC, so obviously everyone has an accent. It gave a run of five seasons (which is kind of funny because I didn’t realize that until just now writing this as the show is listed as number five on the list) with different episode amounts. 

The show centers around anomalies that seem to open up a window to the very distant past of Earth when dinosaurs still roamed the land. It causes a lot of issues, especially if one person has anything to do with it.

It’s pretty interesting and honestly has got some great characters (my personal favorite is Captain Becker, played by Ben Mansfield) and while it can get pretty serious, it’s also pretty entertaining. It’s one of the three shows on this list to get to end on a good-ish note. (AKA, no cliffhangers!)

Obviously, I highly recommend giving it a shot. It’s kind of the point of this list.

VI. Terra Nova.

Now, like Primeval, this show technically has to do with dinosaurs. Dinosaurs aren’t the main focus, but they do play a part in this one season (because cancellations) story. 

Terra Nova is focused on both the future and the past. In the distant future (2149), the Earth is dying. A group of people, researchers, and military as well as some of their family members, are sent to the past (85 million years) to inhabit Terra Nova, a colony of humans given a second chance to build civilization. 

So, obviously, dinosaurs are going to make an appearance now and then. And unfortunately, the show only got one season and ends on a cliffhanger. Which I hate, because I really enjoy this show and wish it had been able to at least get a second season.

Plus, there are some familiar faces amongst the cast. Jason O’Mara, who plays one of the main cast members, played Jeffrey Mace in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Christine Adams, who plays Lynn Pierce in Black Lightning. Allison Miller, who played Sonya in 13 Reasons Why. And Naomi Scott, who is known for her roles in Lemonade Mouth (one of my all-time favorite DCOMs) and Aladdin. And this was just to name a few of the cast members. 

Shame it got cancelled, truly, but I recommend giving it a shot.

VII. MTV’s Scream.

I think you can figure out the basis of this show. While it doesn’t have anything to do directly with the movie franchise, it is kind of similar and a lot of the characters reflect those from the show. Neve Campbell even said that if the show did well, she would be willing to do a cameo.

It revolves (at least the first two seasons as season three is an entirely different set of cast and premise that I refuse to watch because of that) around Emma Duval and her group of friends as they’re picked off one by one by a serial killer going around town. Things get bloody and suspicions arise amongst the crew when things are revealed as the show continues, but things eventually work out in the end.

And personally, I really enjoyed the show even when the second season ended on a cliffhanger. I have theories about that cliffhanger, however, so watch out for a possible post regarding it. 

I highly recommend giving it a chance if you haven’t seen it. 

VIII. The Society.

Now, the title doesn’t give you much. A group of teenagers, who were sent off on a trip, suddenly are dropped back off in their town to find it completely empty aside from themselves. They have to form their own society to survive and figure things out.

Once you know that, it makes a little more sense.

It seems really similar to the Pied Piper tale, but it doesn’t seem like we’re going to really know for sure. Season 2 had been given a go-ahead, but not too long ago Netflix announced the cancellation of the show.

That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the first season like I do. Plus, if you’re a fan of Supernatural and the character of Claire Novak, Kathryn Newton plays one of the main roles in this show.

It’s a shame the show got cancelled, especially on a cliffhanger, but what can we do?

IX. The Mysteries of Laura.

Laura Diamond, a Homicide Detective, cracks case after case while trying to raise twin boys and locking horns with her less than helpful Police Detective ex-husband. At least, this is according to IMBD and frankly, it’s not really wrong. 

For two seasons, it’s packed with comedy and crime. It’s more of the former, but it still gets pretty serious every now and then, and unfortunately ends on a cliffhanger. 

However, some cast members may be familiar. Like Josh Lucas, who voices Home Depot commercials (and trust me, it made my family laugh when we first heard one after watching the show), Laz Alonso who plays MM in The Boys, and Debby Ryan, from Disney Channel. 

If you like light-hearted crime shows (like Brooklyn-Nine-Nine) you should definitely give this a watch.

X. Warrior Nun.

As far as I know, this show has been renewed for a season two. I’m really hoping for it because it’s honestly kind of interesting. You can kind of tell by the title what it may be, but I’ll dive a little deeper.

After waking up in a morgue, Ava, an orphaned teen, discovered she now possesses superpowers as the chosen Halo Bearer for a secret sect of demon-hunting nuns. (Taken from IMDB). Interesting, right?

With characters like Shotgun Mary, Sister Beatrice, and Sister Lilith, you know the show’s going to be interesting. But the premise is pretty interesting on it’s own too.

There’s even a character called JC, who apparently has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, but I still like referring to him as such because it’d be pretty funny if that’s how it turns out. Also, someone gets beat up with a whole chicken at some point.

It’s only got the one season so far, but it’s pretty funny and action packed. Like everything on this list, I definitely think you should watch it and find out for yourself if you want to add it to your list if you haven’t already.