#also i feel in my bones that the show is gonna be about motherhood

[hauntingofhouses]

While theorising about the events to come in future seasons, I just keep going back to the question about who Mizu's parents really are.

So to try to figure it out, let's go over what we already know about Mizu's parentage and the white men. This info is from the flashback of Mizu as a baby in Episode 3, from the bounty hunters who came to kill Mizu in Episode 5, and from Fowler's reveals in Episode 8, assuming that everything he said is the truth.

Mizu must be someone important, as Fowler calls her Little Miss. It is capitalised in the Netflix official subtitles. This implies that Little Miss is something like a title, rather than just a nickname.

There is a bounty on Mizu's head with a sum few can resist. Whoever is trying to kill Mizu is rich and powerful.

Two men are sent to kill Mizu as a baby. They are Japanese. We know this because their swords are both katanas, and they're shocked when they see Mizu's blue eyes, discovering she's a "half-breed." Man #2 also calls her a "devil child" at the end of the flashback.

Man #2 is hesitant to kill her, as she's "only an infant," and ends up killing Man #1 to stop him from killing Mizu. Man #2 then gives Mizu to Mama, who is actually her maid.

Mama is paid to keep Mizu hidden. Mama does as told for years. We can infer that there was a steady stream of income going towards her, as she did as told until "the money ran out."

Skeffington and Routeley were the "worst" of the four white men, making their money from "selling Japan's unwanted daughters." Unwanted daughters like Mizu.

One of the white men "tried to burn Mizu alive as a baby."

One of the white men killed Mizu's mother ("Don't you want to know which one killed your mother?").

When bounty hunters came to the ranch to ambush Mizu, she asked them which white man they worked for. They only replied that the only white person they see is her. This could just be a way to avoid her question, or it could also imply that they do not work for a white man at all.

So from this, again assuming this is all true, let's go over some things:

The white men are NOT the ones who paid Mama to protect Mizu, as one of them had been responsible for trying to burn Mizu alive as a baby.

Mizu's mother was killed by one of the white men. She likely died protecting Mizu.

If it was the white father who tried to kill Mizu and her mother, then it's likely the mother's side who paid Mama to hide Mizu.

Mizu's mother must have been rich enough to afford servants.

Mizu's mother must have been someone powerful enough to have been in the shogun's inner circle, allowing contact between her and the white men.

Furthermore:

Mizu's mother should be someone tied to existing characters, to make the reveal of her identity more narratively significant.

So with all that said, let me dip my toes into wild theory-land for a bit and propose a new idea.

WHAT IF: Mizu's mother was a concubine or even the previous wife of the Shogun? And, considering how people have pointed out how similar Lady Itoh and Mizu look (credits to @roninzuzu in particular for her post on this), what if, maybe just maybe, Mizu's mother was also Lady Itoh's sister?

If this is true, then Mizu's connection to the shogunate would explain why and how Fowler knew so much about Mizu's past, especially regarding her maid taking care of her, etc. This is because Fowler is allied with the Shogun himself, as well as one of the shogun's closest advisors, Master Chiba. So if it were true that the previous wife/consort of the shogun gave birth to a blue-eyed baby, it would've been a big scandal that was certain to reach Master Chiba's ears, and he would have in turn informed Fowler about it.

If this is the case, both the shogun and the white man would be trying to kill Mizu and her mother. The shogun would be trying to cover up the scandal, while the white man would be furious that she wanted to keep the baby at all, as the scandal likely ruined his business dealings in Japan and forced him to retreat back to London or wherever else he came from.

But then, if that is the case, then who would have been the one paying Mizu's maid to take care of her? I think it's Lady Itoh. If she and Mizu's mother had indeed been sisters, perhaps Lady Itoh went behind the shogun's back to protect her sister and her baby niece. Because maybe Lady Itoh knew that Mizu's mother had wanted to protect her no matter what happened. In such a case, what kept Mizu alive would thus have been love. Her mother's love. In this scenario, Mizu would have been brought into the world through the sheer strength of her mother's unconditional love. This would be a very poignant message that overturns everything Mizu believes about herself.

Moreover, Mizu having connections to the shogunate would inevitably lead to her wanting to discover the truth about her mother's identity. This would thus bring Mizu back to Edo palace, and would neatly tie Mizu and Akemi's storylines together again, letting them cross paths once more and work together to face the main plot-conflict.

TL;DR it's my crazy theory that Mizu's dead mom was the sister of Lady Itoh and the previous consort of Shogun Itoh. She had an affair with one of the white men, and against her better judgement and against what everyone else wants from her, she decided to keep Mizu. By making this decision, she risked and sacrificed everything for Mizu, out of love.

[notallwonder]

Ok, CME 17x03 I am ready for you!!

Spoilers below, if you care.

- Emily ordering Luke not to tell JJ about the deepfake porn site IM YELLING. when JJ finds out they are gonna have WORDS

- just remembered when JJ says "we're boned" in ep2 and it made me giggle

- ok so I've said it before and I'll probably say it 157 more times, but Jennifer Jareau this season is FINE AS FUCK. I can't pinpoint what it is that's different but she is MESMERIZING. aj cook my god. I don't care what this alleged jemily moment might be, I'm sure it will make me feel some type of way bc both Paget and AJ are 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

- wow ok I thought it would be a big deal but she already knew (...sort of? sounds like it's worse than they assume). "Emily using discretion is not lying, it's leadership" I do enjoy that she's expressing full faith in Emily. Does this also sound like a line she's used for herself? Or that she heard from someone in the course of her sometimes clandestine career?

- so the last couple months I've been watching station 19 and when kiele sanchez showed up as a firefighter sub in season 6, I couldn't remember what I knew her from at first, only "hot mom of some sort". lmao when I finally remembered it was from CME

- BRIAN GARRITY!!!!! 😂

- "that sounds...like a book" I want more of Emily reacting to him forever

- is it just me or does the "regular" case plot drag? like, it's taking me out of the flow of the (more interesting) voit/gold star stuff.

- I take it back, it didn't drag for long

- I guess I just have to make peace with the fact that motherhood is a core part of jj's identity that they simply will not shut up about. and like, okay! it is a very very important part of who she is! why does it bother me that they bring this up so consistently all the time?

- whoa whoa whoa. this scene with Luke dropping the bomb on JJ in the kitchen nook. here's the other shoe, or one of the shoes. but... I'm not sure if I like how this was shot. it feels weird to not be able to see her face very well. the shock and discomfort is palpable (good job I Guess!).

- I am enjoying Tyler more this season

- zomg Emily drinking wine at her desk??!. the way she says "Brian" lmao. reminiscent of her "ma'am" moment with Strauss

- oh no JJ. Oh noooo baby, no! 😭 facing this all by her lonesome

- Prentiss to the rescue in that baller long coat. oh shit. Uh oh. A setup!!! And I bet she's gonna get dinged for the alcohol too. WTF! Fuckin' Brian!

Hey I'm glad CME is back I needed a little fun.

[hobiiwan]

the mandalorian with a pregnant s/o

⇒ pairing: the mandalorian x reader

⇒ summary: pretty self-explanatory

⇒ warnings: brief mentions of some nsfw spicy times

⇒ notes: based on this anon (thank you!) thought the gif would be fitting. this could potentially be extended into dad!Mando (although that’s already kind of shown in the show👀so let me know if yall are down for some MandoBaby bc i definitely am) also i kinda went overboard, but who am i if not extra

you’re not quite sure how it happened

i mean, okay,,,,

you knOw

but you can’t seem to fathom how one day you were just you and now you’re you’re carrying a little person inside you

it comes as a surprise

even though the signs were all there

the other day, you’d snapped at mando for the tiniest thing

twenty minutes later you were practically on him

not to mention the morning sickness

thaT should’ve been your biggest red flag

yet you simply chalked it up to the fault of questionable cantina food

however, now with the pregnancy test in your hands with the double red lines mockinG you straight to your face

there’s no denying it

you’re pregnant

you hate that your first thought instantly jumps to doubt

how are you going to raise this baby?? your life was not one for a child

you would never want your child to grow up in a constant state of danger

and what would mando think??? what if he doesn’t want to keep the baby; what would you do then?

you haven’t even seen his face, how are you going to raise a child together

will the child be raised a mandalorian????

so many questions

but under it all, you were happy

you’ve always wanted a family of your own

not that baby yoda doesn’t count as your child bc it totaLLY DOES

although this isn’t exactly how you expected it to happen

you’re determined to let your baby grow up surrounded by love

you just hope mando is too

when you tell him, it’s not a big occasion

it’s another day, he’s checking the ship’s controls and you’re curled up on the seat next to him

he instantly knows something’s up

because for once, you’re quiet

you gnaw on your lip as your knee bounces up and down

the anxiety is radiating off of you and it’s starting to get to him

never one to beat around the bush, he asks, turning to your huddled form, straight to the point

“what’s wrong?”

taking a deep breath you force the words out your mouth

“i’m pregnant, mando.”

your throat burns as your eyes well with tears

he goes absolutely silent

even the usual rhythm of his breathing through his moderator goes cold

his helmet is turned towards you, but you feel as though he’s looking anywhere but at you

the second the first teardrop spills down your cheek, that’s when he finally moves

whatever was on hand is dropped as he goes to take your hands in his

“i—” he starts, continues with a waver, “do you want this?”

his voice is gentle, more so than you’ve ever heard it before

mando’s thoughts are soaring

he can’t believe this is real; you’re real

he takes a moment to thank the maker for gifting him with you, and now your baby

he swears all the planets align when you nod

you’re smiling now and even with the tear tracks drying on your cheeks, mando thinks he’s never seen anything more ethereal

his hands tighten around yours as he pulls you close to him

“but what about—how can we raise a child like this?”

at this moment, he sounds so vulnerable; so open with his fears that you can’t help but love him a little more

you press your forehead against mando’s helmet

closing your eyes, you know he does too

“we’ll find a way.”

it’s in the way that he allows you to place your hands just where his helmet meets his shoulders, fingers brushing against the sliver of exposed skin

the way his own hands are heavy against the small of your back, keeps you grounded in this moment of euphoria

he doesn’t have to say it; neither do you

the words hang in the air, unspoken yet heard

you know your baby will be loved

NOW,,, TO THE FUN STUFF

mando ups his protectiveness to the goDS

not one haiR on your pretty little head will be harmed on his watch

he won’t let anyone get close to you, and his awareness has been tuned to a whole new level

it’s to be expected; you know he’s just doing this because he cares

but,,, manz forgotten you can take care of yourself just fine

the first few weeks, he’s a little paranoid, to say the least

but once he sees you slam a slimeball who got a little too handsy into a wall, he relaxes a bit more

still, don’t expect to do anything on your own bc for the next 9+ months, mando’s signed up to be your new butler

most days, he’ll have everything you want on hand; whenever you have cravings, back pain, swollen ankles

he’s got u

on the days you have terrible all-day morning sickness, he’s right there holding your hair up and rubbing your back soothingly

when you slump against the toilet, you swat him away because you don’t want anyone to see you right now

he doesn’t give a flying damn

cuddles are a biG thing (which surprises both of you since you’re both quite reserved people)

most nights you’ll fall asleep to his hand tracing over your growing bump and not gonna lie,,,, it’s kinda great

unTIL your bump really starts to grow and you can no longer reach down to pull on your own boots or sleep on your back

that’s when it really hits you

by the time you get to your third trimester, you’re ready for this baby to be out of you

you can’t say you particularly enjoy feeling bloated 24/7 and not being able to frequent your beloved grimy cantinas

but you’re also really excited to meet your lil baby!

you wonder how he or she will look; like you or their father?

what will their name be? 

you probably should have planned these things out by now

but since when were you and mando known for planning?

eventually mando sets up a little nursery on the ship; baby yoda’s going to have a sibling very soon

you have yet to discuss the whole helmet issue with mando

hell, you don’t even know his real name

what you do know is that you want your child to know the face of their father

but you also know how important it is for him that his face is kept hidden

mando knows the conversation is bound to happen one way or another, yet he’s still a deer in the headlights when you bring it up

he sighs heavily, and tells you he’ll think about it (despite that usually being a half-assed answer from anyone else, you know his to be genuine)

you don’t bring it up for a while afterwards; you don’t want to push him

until one day,,,,,

you’re chilling with the Child (not your own) (yet), who’s happily cooing in your arms, when the father of your actual child comes stomping in

“dyn.”

you blank, eyebrows furrowing in confusion; the Child mimics your expression with full emphasis on the eyes

“come again?”

he sighs, (a common occurrence nowadays)

reader, you’re exasperatinG (but in a good way)

“my name,” he tries again, “it’s dyn. dyn jarren.”

your eyes widen comically as it dawns on you; that is noT what you were expecting today

he would’ve chuckled at your expression but this was noT the time

“dyn,” you breathe out as a smile grows on your face

you like it, it’s suits him perfectly

that’s when he decides he likes his own name, if it means he can hear you say it again

you lean up to press your lips against where his own would be under the helmet

“thank you,” you murmur with a softness he still hasn’t gotten used to

suddenly mando feels ready to reveal his whOLE life story to you

this is a hugE step obviously, and you can’t help but still call him mando from time to time

force of habit :’))

but when you feel that first wave of sharp pain piercing your lower back, his name is the first thing that escapes your lips

after the first ‘oh shit’ ofc

he’s by your side within a span of ten seconds

you still manage to tease him about the cacophony of clanging metal as he runs through the ship

but then the next wave of contractions hit and you’re 200% sure you blackout (mando tells you later that you didn’t)

because the next thing you know, (6 hours later, mando says) there are about 4 medical droids around you

they’re telling you to push

and boY DO YOU PUSH

you didn’t think you had it in you

mando didn’t think he had it either, as you crushed every single bone in his hand

you’re also mildly cursing him

“daMn yoU MANDO, I HOPE YOU ENJOYED IT BECAUSE I AM NEVER SLEEPING WITH YOU EVER AGAIN-”

that’s a lie, obviously

there’s a pause as you gasp for breath

you’re knackereD

suddenly there’s a little cry

the droids clean your baby up and they hand him to mando

it’s a,,,,,,, drumroll please

girl !!!!

his heart stops when the baby, your baby, meets his eyes, or rather, his helmet

at that moment, mando knows he’d do absolutely anything for this little person

he’d take his helmet off a thousand times if it meant he’d get to love her properly, the way a real father should

that’s exactly what he decides to do

within the next few days, you’re back home

one morning, you wake up, suspiciously well rested

that’s weirD,,,,

you realise your daughter never cried last night

you bolt upright as quickly as you can in your state, alarmed

motherhood is wiLD

you stumble outside, eyes darting for your baby when they land on something that makes your heart stop

there he is, dyn jarren, the mandalorian, holding your baby girl in his arms, bathed in all the glory of the binary sunrise

but that’s not what gets you

his back is turned to you, and you can see the back of his head, tufts of unruly dark brown curling around warm, bronzed skin

there are tears welling in your eyes as he turns to face you

your gaze meets his own, not the reflection you’re so used to

but his eyes, rounded and dark; the ones you see on your daughter

as soon as your face breaks into a grin, he knows he’s made the right decision

your breath hitches as his lips curl into a smile; it’s a little uncertain, a little nervous

but it’s one you know you’ll never get tired of in this lifetime

he’s taken it off.

[california--poppy]

book recommendations for each 911: lone star character

okay this is just something i’ve been working on for fun but i feel like sharing it! i picked books based on similarities between their content and the character’s storylines (or in some cases, what i wish their storylines were), so maybe some of these only make sense to me. i wanted to have two books for every character but for some of them, i could only think of one for so maybe i’ll add more to this list later based on season 2b. if you have any of your own recommendations i’d love to hear them! 

TK: a little life by hanya yanagihara (sad boy hours) or the great alone by kristin hannah (moving far away and facing a parent’s mortality hours)

Carlos: memorial by bryan washington (dad issues! dad issues! also, you know my favorite character was gonna get one of my all time favorite books.) or on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong (idk. i just feel this one in my soul.)

Owen: the great believers by rebecca makai (i know the show has never once referenced the 80s or even owen’s backstory before 9/11 but it’s rob lowe so i had to go with a book that partially takes place in the 80s + deals with some complicated parent/ child relationships) or lily and the octopus by steven rowley (cancer is sad. cancer is scary. i don’t care for the character of owen but god. cancer is so fucking sad.)

Grace: the hour i first believed by wally lamb (okay hear me out on this one. this book is about a man whose wife is at columbine high school during the 1999 school shooting and the resulting fallout of both of their trauma. he’s in another state when it happens and it takes about a day for him to find out that she’s okay. grace was stuck on the other side of the phone during the factory explosion! how long until she even got to be with judd?? how scary was that?? and i know we saw a little bit of her struggling with judd’s recovery and ptsd and i know her character is calm under pressure and handles difficult situations well, but i can’t help but want to see her make a mistake or be a little mean. supporting someone with mental health problems is hard! nobody’s perfect! aren’t you tired of being nice, grace? don’t you just want to go ape shit?)

Judd: east of eden by john steinbeck (i did not think i would like this book when i started reading it but i really, really did. much like judd himself.) or things you would know if you grew up around here by nancy wayson dinan (did i think of this book because it might be the only book i’ve read that takes place in texas? yes. but it works, trust me. a book about texas, but also the lengths you will go for the people you love)

Tommy: red at the bone by jacqueline woodson (a book about motherhood and figuring out what you want and how nothing’s just one thing. about how all of the members of a family affect each other. i really love tommy’s storyline and the ups and downs in her dynamic with her daughters and husband, and how it’s not bad, but it’s not perfect either) or separation anxiety by laura zigman (a much lighter, funnier option still with the themes of motherhood and changes within a family)

Marjan: less by andrew sean greer (marjan spent more than half of her life knowing who she was going to eventually marry and now that’s just gone. what’s next for her? i’m dying to know! i kinda want to see her lose herself a little before she figures out what she really wants from life.) or circe by madeline miller (it boils down to this: i want marjan to go on a journey)

Paul: beach read by emily henry (okay hear me out again. i thought this book was a little annoying because the character of gus was this brooding, bad boy type who also was soooo in touch with his feelings and always wanted to talk things out when there was a conflict and always said the right thing and it just felt a little flat to me. BUT i feel like a character like paul would work a little better-- sensitive and intuitive because of how he’s had to live his life, wants to be open but has a hard time navigating how to discuss his past with people he’s dating-- plus we’ve seen that dating and relationships are important to him. where’s paul’s ‘this is totally NOT a basic romance novel’ but then it fucking is!!! i can’t believe i fell for that!! moment??) 

Mateo: oksana behave by maria kuznetsova?? (idk i had a really hard time coming up with one for mateo. i settled on this one but i’m not 100% happy with it. a book about trying to do the right thing but it doesn’t always work out that way.)

Nancy: girl woman other by bernadine evaristo (haha jk unless.............)

happy 9 days until 2b everyone!!

[pynkhues]

Thank you so much for pointing out that ridiculous meal Beth made when her kids came back home. Could you analyze it a little more? I mean, it was quite the show. Also, who's gonna carve that big old piece of meat up at the table? Dean? Giving me mad 1950s vibes? Can you picture all of them having a formal dinner like that? Those kids talk about feeding bunnies to snacks and masterbating.

Anon, I’d love to analyse that scene for you, because I actually love it a lot, haha. It more or less confirms for me the show has a continually active thematic throughline of positioning food and the cooking of food as a performative act. This has really been around since the very first episode and has continued all the way through to season 3, but is really, really prominent through 2.09 and 2.10. Interestingly too, while the throughline is felt the most with Beth, I think it goes well beyond her too, most notably with Ruby.

SO! Let’s explore that! 

A Domestic Goddess

Domestic duties like cooking have been pivotal to Beth’s identity since the start of the show, and her internal battle to simultaneously disentangle from that identity while desperately reaffirming it has been a real cornerstone of her arc overall. She’s over it when she’s doing it, but feels real guilt when she’s not doing it – something we felt the most in 2.07 with Jane, 2.09 with Dean taking the kids, and in 3.02 where Beth struggled with Judith’s larger presence in the house.

The two domestic duties we see Beth really take up the most are cooking and cleaning, and while cleaning is ultimately a means to an end, cooking erupts out of Beth at different times and in different ways. It’s frequently a means to an end (she’s gotta feed the family!), frequently part of a performance (and I’ll come back to that!), but it’s also something she does when she’s stressed or anxious (most notably at the very end of 2.11 when she realises Jeff is not Jeff), when she’s bored (most notably in the early days of s1, but I’d argue also 2.10), and when she’s trying to make others feel loved.

Interestingly, this is one of the ways Beth and Ruby are shown to be the most similar, because while she doesn’t do it as much as Beth, Ruby does it a lot too. Significantly with Ruby, there’s a strong sense of it being a demonstration of love, which it is for Beth too! Just the context around both characters really colours the way cooking-as-an-act-of-love is depicted.

The Way to a Man’s Heart is Through His Stomach

The old saying is one the show’s certainly taken to heart, haha.

Food is immediately introduced as a pivotal part of how the show represents Beth and Dean’s relationship – literally from the first scene they’re in. We all know the textual pretty well at this point, I think (“I love you” / “Tuna fish, keep it in the fridge”), but it’s there in the visual dialogue too.

Beth’s making lunch for the kids and for Dean, but they’re presented as five, identical brown paper bags, ergo Dean’s basically represented through visual cues as one of Beth’s kids, not as her husband or partner (something contrasted later with Ruby and Stan, who frequently share in the cooking in a way that depicts intimacy, but I’ll come back to that).

From that moment on, food becomes a touchstone motif in the narrative for Beth and Dean – Dean asks to take lunchmeat back to the motel in 1.04 because he’s sick of vending machine dinners (aka he’s lost without Beth), Beth hides the money in cereal boxes in 1.07, heavily implying Dean doesn’t prepare food for himself or the kids, and Dean tries to woo Beth back by making one (1) meal in 1.07.

This is pivoted in s2 as Beth and Dean’s dynamic changes. Beth guilt cooks Dean his favourite meals after getting him shot in 2.01, Dean eats dessert while Beth gets drunk and ready to bone Rio in 2.04, Dean forgets the kids’ lunches in 2.06.

In this sense, I think the show’s pretty careful with how it utilises food and cooking in the Boland house, and that it frequently becomes a bit of a chess piece between the characters, and an indication of shifting power dynamics. Yes, food’s tied to love, but in the Boland house, that love is – as Christina articulated in her Build Interview – a broken love. As a result, it becomes frequently a pointed gesture and a performance in a way that really underlines the power dynamics in Beth and Dean’s relationship.

When Beth has power, Dean often at least tries to cook something and fend for himself (getting the lunchmeat to make himself a sandwich, attempting to make meals for the kids in 2.07, etc).

When Dean has the power, well:

Ruby & Stan

As I mentioned above, Ruby and Stan make for a pretty interesting comparison point and I think a deliberate contrast. There’s no powerplay in how Ruby and Stan cook for one another, rather it’s frequently depicted as a shared act of love within their home. Cooking is intimacy and bonding and connection. 

Ruby might cook when she’s stressed or scared, but Stan finds her and holds her through it. When Sara has to have soup before her surgery, the whole family does. Food is something that’s shared in the Hill house, for better and for worse, which is why moments where that meal making becomes loaded is all the more painful.

In particular, Ruby cooking for Stan to distract him during the Sweet P’s job in 3.11, and Sara’s staunch betrayal over Stan’s arrest and Ruby serving food in 2.09. These are two very different moments of course – Ruby cooking for Stan to distract him is a deliberate act to move him to where Ruby needs him to be – something we’re much more used to seeing from Beth than Ruby, while the scene with Ruby, Stan and Sara in 2.09 isn’t a performance in itself, but is, in my interpretation, perceived as a performance by Sara.

Which hey! Brings us straight to my next point!

Acts of Service / Acts of Performance

As a narrative device, food and the cooking of food are really two very different things.

Food on it’s own can really be a lot of things – it can mean sensuality or gluttony, poverty or sacrifice or sustenance or hope. Without the cooking, without bearing witness to the effort behind it, food becomes whatever you want it to be.

The Hill’s eating soup at their dinner table is a great example of that! The food wasn’t important, what was important was Sara’s surgery, and the narrative stakes for Ruby. In that scene, the soup was love and equity and what Ruby had to lose.

Likewise in Judith’s stroganoff in 3.02, that meal was an indication of Judith’s usurpation of Beth’s place in her own household.

Cooking though is different, because particularly on a show like Good Girls which is heavily steeped in the idea of what women do to survive, you can’t really divorce cooking from being an act of service.

In that sense, cooking is frequently depicted on Good Girls – particularly with the Boland women – to be something women do for men and their children.

This is probably most noticeable in the scene of Beth’s sad pre-packaged turkey dinner in 2.09, but I think it’s also depicted pretty strongly in the fact that Beth, Ruby and Annie very, very rarely cook for one another on the show. And they eat together a lot! Just it’s always a diner, Chinese takeout, a bar. It’s an interesting equaliser in their relationship with each other, but I’ll talk about that another time, haha. Because what matters here is that when you match up the ideas of domestic duties, women’s roles and identities, and servitude, along with the pointed gestures, cooking becomes frequently a part of a performance on this show which all three of the girls – but particularly Beth – use to play a part and position whoever they’re trying to move where they want them.

Sometimes this looks like appeasement – which is what most of 2.09 looks like, but again, I’ll come back to that – but other times it’s deliberately manipulative.

Again, think of Ruby cooking for Stan in 3.11, or Ruby trapping Sara with the cookies in 3.03:

Think of Beth deliberately coaxing Turner with food!

Again

And again

And again

Even think of Annie trying to make Ben forgive her in 2.08! A clear attempt to emulate her sister if ever I saw one!

And hell, it’s not even always as transparently performative!

Food becomes key to the girls manipulating their secret shoppers way back in 1.05!

And even outside of the girls, think about how important the gender reveal cake was to Nancy! I don’t think she even entirely realised she was performing until the cake was purple.

In fact, I think a lot of the characters don’t realise that they’re doing it. In some ways, it’s more realistic that they don’t. I think the show’s interest in the thematic throughline is ultimately in the ways domestic spaces have long been understood as feminine, and how even now, those domestic spaces are frequently the only ones where women wield power. Cooking has become a chess piece in the Boland house because for twenty years, Beth – like so many other women – likely had no power outside of the kitchen, bedroom, nursery, and so it became one of the few things she had to wield, for both good and bad.

2.09 + 2.10

Cooking features extraordinarily heavily across both Beth and Ruby’s arcs in 2.09 and 2.10 in a way that that hilariously inappropriate meal at the end of 2.09 lands smack bang in the middle of. The way it features too I’d argue is a real effort to explore these sorts of ideas around domestic performance and identity, and in that way, I think it’s felt a lot. 

It’s felt in Beth cooking for herself, a moment of expectation vs reality with the box of her frozen meal:

It’s felt in Judith and Beth’s conversation about Dean cheating being over cutting the cake for Emma – an extremely loaded talk about servitude in motherhood while they slice dessert for Beth’s children.

It’s felt in Ruby preparing the meal for the family after she gets Stan out of jail, and Sara’s judgement at their display of love:

A scene that immediately precursor’s Beth’s totally bonkers meal for the kids and Dean – a real turkey dinner. A pretty perfect juxtaposition to what Beth would prepare for herself, while also complimenting the Ruby scene. 

Both those meals are made out of love and relief, but Beth’s comes with the added layer of appeasement to Dean. Something that’s only built on in the next episode, where Beth cooks:

And cooks:

And cooks.

Before destroying it all when it goes unserved.

And god, I could talk for hours about that – because here you have the one ounce of power Beth had in this part of her life. Her deep-rooted sense that acts of service (i.e. cooking) was what she contributed, how she held power, and to have it packed up and sent home with her by other women and not even Dean is so, so diminishing, it causes me physical pain. 

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? The performance in her effort which started with that dinner at the end of 2.09 isn’t even shattered – it’s entertained, and then it’s ignored.

Similarly, it’s really interesting to me that the show chose to have the drugs from the Canada pick-up packed underneath food Ruby and Annie had prepared. Especially to be held in contrast with Ruby at the dining room table with Stan and Sara at the end of 2.09, to have a meal seemingly blanket Stan’s crime to Sara, and then have Ruby remove the later crime from beneath food for her daughter feels pretty deliberate to me too.

So yes! I think this show’s in constant conversation with itself when it comes to food, and I think that conversation is at it’s clearest during 2.09 and 2.10. I think it’s really significant to this show narratively, and that they utilise it frequently used to depict performance, power and yeah, love too.

Not Really a Sandwich Guy

Just for a fun note to end it on, haha, but I think it’s extremely loaded that Beth offers to make a sandwich for Rio and he turns it down. A pivotal part of their arc together is that past the end of 1.02, Rio’s never seen Beth the way Dean has. She’s never just been a mother or a wife, and that’s manifested in a lot of ways throughout the series, but is perhaps perfectly articulated in this scene.

Fucking on breakfast dishes might’ve been a part of a fantasy she had way back in 1.05 – again, an interesting note when you loop it back into domestic spaces and where Beth felt powerful – but Beth cooking not just for him, but around him, has always been off the table (pun intended!!!)

It makes not just for an interesting shipper note, but a pretty notable indication of the shift Beth feels in her identity when she’s around him, and I’m curious to see how that might change in future, particularly as Beth’s getting better at weaponizing her own womanhood – from playing up her physical assets around Rio, to blackmailing Gil by going full Karen at his legitimate place of work, to the Paper Porcupine job, to playing hysterical wife to distract the money guy at Sweet P’s.

I think it’s ripe territory, and I’m curious to see where the show goes with it! 

[magicofthepen]

i am Extremely interested in the titles of every single one of your wips but i am actually begging you for details on 'Veega my beloved' because she is also my beloved <3 (🤝 our unity bullshit ❤❤)

Send me a WIP doc title (list here) and I’ll talk about it!

I’ve had “something Leela/Veega” on my fic idea list since Time War 3 came out....but it’s your fault that this fic has skyrocketed to the top of my priorities now, thank you so much for jumping into this sandbox with me <33

Initially I wasn’t sure whose pov I wanted to write from – we know Leela, we know her baggage going into this world and this relationship, and exploring all those internal emotions could be really interesting? But at the same time we don’t know Veega very well and so *insert “It’s Free Real Estate” gif*

So the project evolved from “something Leela/Veega” to “Veega character study” because I realized if I was writing from her pov, I wanted/needed to know what baggage she’s carrying when she meets Leela, and that means this fic has to be about her life and her backstory. 

I keep thinking about Unity as the end-of-the-line, a place people end up when they have nowhere else to go (I feel like there’s actually a quote about this but I can’t find it right now so it’s possible I made that up?) So I see Veega’s backstory as one of running, of losing one home and building another and losing that one too. There’s tragedy throughout her life, but she keeps choosing to create a home as much as she can wherever she is, and keeps choosing to love even in this universe that’s tearing itself apart. 

And since Veega’s father was a soldier who died in battle (and she references the battle by name when she’s talking to Romana, as if Romana would have heard of it), I see her story as one of running from the Time War specifically – sometimes she’s ahead of it, sometimes it catches up to her and tears at her world.

The fic is going to be structured around that idea of loss and rebuilding – I’ve kind of split it up in my head into the different families she builds throughout her life? So starting off with the family she was born into – her parents, I’ve invented a younger sibling – and seeing where she grew up and what that world and that family was like (I’m thinking maybe she originally grew up on a farm, and so there’s a ‘coming full circle’ narrative with the farm on Unity, and also she’d have certain skills and memories to lean on when she’s starting the farm on Unity later in life?). And then how that world falls apart – the death of her father and something that forces her family to run/scatter in some way (still working on this bit).

For her second family (when she’s a young adult), I have vague ideas for this group of twentysomethings all on their own who become close friends as they’re all thrown into the same work environment or running in the same direction together.....again, a lot of the details of this fic are still tbd. But I think this part is likely to be quite spaceship-based? It’ll depend on what I decide for how she got separated from her mother and sibling and what kind of work she gets involved with (Veega’s work experience/background is something I’m still thinking about).....but if the first part and next part of the fic are very grounded on a particular planet, I like the idea of telling a story here about her finding a home while hopping from place to place – there's never the same ground under her feet, but there are the people she loves around her.

And then we hit Things Get Bad, Round 2. Also very nebulous right now? In general, I don’t want to just kill of or have her get separated from everyone she’s ever loved throughout her life, but she is definitely quite alone by the time she meets Leela so.....yeah it can’t really be a happy backstory?

But I think Rayo’s father is going to be one of the people in that friend group, so there’s some continuity-of-family there? And I can get into the backstory of that relationship, and then how they eventually ended up alone together on Unity. And this is the third family – the two of them setting up this life on the farm, and Veega getting pregnant, and them preparing for this kid who they’re so ready to love and do everything they can to shield from the war.

And then, not long after Rayo is born.....yeah. (This fic really is just me continually ripping the ground out from under Veega’s feet unfortunately, but also that cycle of loss is what I want to explore – particularly because it parallels how Leela keeps losing one home and finding another one, so by the time they meet they’ve both loved and lost so much - but they still choose to love again.)

So Rayo’s father dies, Veega’s alone with baby Rayo on the farm, things are very rough.....and then Leela shows up, injured and alone, running from the city and the slavers she recently escaped from. And I’m going to spend quite a bit of time on this family (of course). The early days: Veega taking Leela in and taking care of her, Leela protecting her and Rayo (if Leela’s way of dealing with grief is throwing herself into a fight, Veega’s is throwing herself into caring for others). Them learning to communicate (bc language barrier – I could handwave it and say the Trell, who must have given Leela the ability to speak the language on that planet in Mother Tongue, left her with that ability – but I want to try exploring the idea of not having a translator?). And the eventual shock of learning that Leela’s from Gallifrey, and processing that (honestly I could write a whole fic just on that, so I’ll probably just touch on it here?). Growing into being a family, falling in love (and I know it’s from Veega’s pov, but I’ll have to at least indirectly touch on Leela’s motherhood-related trauma and initial wariness around Rayo because of it, and Leela’s complicated emotions towards Romana and Narvin and how there isn’t any closure there so it’s hard to let go?)

One thing I haven’t completely decided is the exact relationship backstory I’m going with for Leela and Romana and Narvin in this fic – it’s not something the fic will get into too much, but I’d like to know in my head? But there is a good chance I’ll end up making this fic What We Choose compliant. I want my post-Time War fic to be a WWC ‘verse fic and I want to get into Leela’s grief for Veega in that fic, so it is all nice and convenient if all the fics can co-exist in the same universe, even if the Veega fic won’t formally be part of that series? And I like the idea of there being an overtly romantic backstory there, because then I can explore how not ever ending things with or being able to talk with Romana and Narvin affects Leela re: getting into a relationship with Veega.

I would actually want to explore a different relationship backstory for those three for the Everyone Escapes Unity AU.....but that’s not an active project/as likely to actually get written, so I probably won’t let that factor into things. 

And back from that tangent: so eventually, we once again hit the Things Go Wrong times – the raids keep getting worse and worse. The shadow of the Time War is looming.

Veega gets sick.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted this fic to go right up until her death but I think it will – because I want to touch on Romana and Narvin showing up, and how Veega resents them for crashing into her life but also is glad that they’re hear because maybe Leela will have people to lean on after Veega is gone. Maybe, if they get the TARDIS, Leela and Rayo can run when they need to and continue to keep away from the war as long as they can.

Stylistically, this fic’s gonna be along the lines of knock the ice from my bones or leaned in and let it hurt, with shorter scenes spanning a (in this case very) long range of time. It’s in vague outline stage right now – I’ve got this general structure, but I’m in the process of figuring out what scenes I actually want and making actual proper backstory decisions. It has the potential to end up quite long, but I also don’t want to go overboard – there’s a lot of coloring in the lines I could do in future fics, this one is meant to sort of sketch an outline of her life? So I want to make sure I’m being selective with how many and which scenes I’m including, and if they’re each contributing to the thematic through-lines.

So this fic is gonna take a little while, but most definitely watch this space :)

[samsexualdeancurious]

Accidental Happiness | Part One

Pairing: Sam x Reader

Words: 2,164

Warnings: Accidental pregnancy

Summary: Sam gets a call from his top secret girlfriend - a girlfriend not even Dean and Cas know exists.

Written for @saxxxology as her August Angel request.

Betaed by @manawhaat

--

She calls right as Sam is getting back from his run. There’s something in the tone of her voice - tight, like she's holding back a breakdown and trying to hide it - that makes him jump in the car without a shower or even an explanation to Dean. His mind is racing with all the horrible possibilities - angels, demons, vampires, and that's just the start of the supernatural options. Sam doesn't even want to think about the things regular human beings can and will do.

The drive across town to her safehouse is a quick one but it still feels like too long before he's pulling into her drive. She opens the front door before he even reaches it and he pauses, taking a moment to just look her over. She looks fine, if a little stressed, but he knows from experience that looks aren't everything.

"Y/N," he says stepping into the house and pulling her in his arms as the door falls shut behind him. "What's wrong?"

She looks terrified and it takes Sam a second to realize that she's scared of him. His heart twists and he presses a kiss to her forehead, cradling the back of her head in one hand.

"You can tell me, baby." He moves back a little to cup her face in both hands. "No matter what it is, I won't get mad."

"Promise?" she whispers.

"I promise," he says firmly.

Y/N blurts out, "IthinkImightbepregnant."

Sam blinks, brain struggling to process the string of words, and brushes his thumbs over her cheek bones. "Deep breath. Try that again."

She nods, bracing her hands against his chest and drawing a deep breath before saying in a shaky voice, "I think I might be pregnant."

Those words stop any response Sam might have planned out in its tracks. Finally, after a moment of stuttering, he manages, "Have you… taken any tests?"

She shakes her head. "Not yet. I- I wanted you to be here when I did. I've been throwing up a lot, though, and I missed my last period."

Shit. Sam takes a few deep breaths of his own and kisses her forehead again. "Okay. Okay. Do you have tests to take or do you want me to go get some?"

Her fingers curl to grip the front of his shirt. "I have a few. Please don't go."

"Y/N," Sam says, looking her right in the eye. "I'm here. I’m not going anywhere."

--

He finds himself sitting on the edge of her bed, listening to her rummaging around behind the closed bedroom door. It feels like hours before the toilet flushes and he hears her wash her hands. When the door opens, she has her phone in her hand with a timer on the screen.

"Now we wait," she sighs.

Sam scoots up to sit against the headboard and opens his arms. Y/N falls into them, settling between his legs with her own thrown over his thigh and looping her arms around his waist.

"No matter what happens," Sam says softly, tucking her head under his chin, "we'll figure it out together."

They sit like that until Y/N's phone starts vibrating, announcing that the time is up. Y/N startles and groans.

"Don't wanna move," she mutters against his collarbone.

"C'mon," Sam urges, nudging her gently. "I'll go check them with you."

Together they make their way into the bathroom, where the three different tests are lines up neatly on the counter. Three positive tests.

Y/N grips Sam's hand tight.

--

They end up sitting across the kitchen table from each other, mugs of tea making little spirals of steam in the air between them. Sam watches her carefully, noting the way she's already pressing her palm to her stomach. She's clearly nervous but there's a little bit of awe in her eyes when she does it.

"I guess we should talk about this," she murmurs, fiddling with her mug.

Sam bobs his teabag in his own mug. "I just have one question and I want you to answer honestly. No matter what you think I want to hear. Can you do that?"

Y/N hesitates, studying his face, before nodding.

He sits forward, looking her right in the eye. "Do you want this baby?"

There's a second of silence and then she whispers, "Yes."

Sam can't stop his smile. He leaps to his feet, rounding the table to sweep Y/N into his arms and kiss her.

"I'm gonna be a dad," he says, a little choked as his joy overwhelms him.

She's a little startled but still grins up at him, reaching up to hold his face in her hands. "Yes, you are."

--

Reality will hit later, when Sam misses her first ultrasound because of a hunt. He finds himself irritable with Dean and Cas the whole time. He knows that between keeping Y/N secret and hunting, the next nine months aren't going to be easy.

That's when doubt sets in. Should they really be doing this? A baby will be another person to keep secret - the keep safe - and on top of that, how's he supposed to be a dad if he's hunting and she's living on the other side of town?

Fuck.

He finds himself checking his phone constantly until she texts him a picture of the ultrasound. That's when he knows the decision is already made.

--

He's able to make it over there the day after they get back the hunt, giving Dean some shit excuse about needing to be away from him and taking one of the cars his brother is fixed up in his free time. She's pleasantly surprised to see him on her doorstep, quickly pulling him into a kiss.

"I didn't expect to see you for a few days," she says when they come up for air. "How'd the hunt go?" She brushes her fingers across a fresh bandage on his inner forearm, just peeking out from under his sleeve.

"Shifter. It went as well as expected and I'll tell you all the details later." He presses a kiss to her forehead, savoring the feeling of her body against his own. "I just couldn't stay away," he admits, letting go of her long enough for her to close the front door. "Plus, I have something to talk to you about." When fear turns the corners of her mouth down, he quickly leans in to kiss her. "It's not a bad thing. Just a thought I had that I want to run by you."

She relaxes visibly. "Okay. Take your shoes off. I just finished making dinner and there's plenty to go around."

They banter back and forth for a moment when they reach the kitchen, both wanting to serve the other, and Sam comes out on top. He gets to work dishing out bowls of taco soup with all the toppings she's laid out, watching her out of the corner of his eye. Y/N's also watching him, thoughtfully rubbing a hand over her belly. She's not showing yet and won't for at least another month or so, according to Sam's research, but that doesn't seem to matter to her subconscious. Motherhood runs deeper than he could possibly learn from any of his research.

"Thank you," she says when he sets her bowl in front of her, lifting her chin for a kiss. "What is it you wanted to ask me about?"

Sam settles into the chair across from her with his own bowl, automatically stretching out one socked foot to hook it around her ankle. The contact is comforting to both of them.

"How would you feel about moving into the bunker?" he blurts out before nerves can get the better of him.

Y/N stares at him in silence for a few excruciatingly long seconds. "Me… move in with you?"

Sam nods.

"But that would mean-"

"Introducing you to Dean and Cas," Sam finishes. "I know. You don't have to if you don't want to - I can understand why you wouldn't. I was just thinking with the baby, it would be nice to have you close by, and plus the bunkers warded against pretty much everything so-"

"Sam," she says gently, interrupting his rambling. "Of course I would like to move in with you."

All the anxiety about asking drains from his body and Sam grins. "Really?"

"Really," she assures him, smiling softly. "Plus, it's been how long? It's about time I met the rest of your family. I want our baby to know their uncles." She sobers a little. "You don't think Dean will be mad?"

"Dean? Hell no. He's gonna give me shit for it, I can guarantee that, but he loves kids. He's gonna be over the moon about being an uncle."

--

"You're seriously only telling me about your secret girlfriend because you knocked her up?"

Sam winces at his brother's words and leans back against the hood of his car. "I would've told you eventually."

"Uh-huh. And she knows about what we do?"

Sam nods. "Yeah. Her parents were hunters. They managed to raise her outside of the life but she knows."

"When are you gonna bring her around?"

"I was thinking tomorrow." He glances up to see Y/N through the kitchen window, dividing leftover soup into containers.

"I'm guessing you're spending the night?" "Yeah."

Sam can practically hear Dean's smirk. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Sam rolls his eyes and hangs up.

--

Sam's woken early the next morning to Y/N making a mad dash for the bathroom. He lies there a moment, blinking sleepily in the dimly lit room and trying to figure out exactly what's going on. He always sleeps so much deeper with her by his side. Maybe she's making him soft - he can't bring himself to care.

After a minute or two, he drags himself out of bed and goes to lean in the doorway. Y/N is sitting on the rug next to the toilet looking absolutely miserable.

"Hey," Sam says quietly. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

She shrugs. "Some tea might help."

"Mint or ginger?"

"Mint, please."

Sam makes his way down to the kitchen and puts some water in the electric kettle. This is definitely something they're bringing with when she moves in. The stovetop kettle the bunker has is good - if ancient - but electric ones are just so much better.

Y/N comes down stairs while her tea is steeping. She falls right into Sam's arms, snuggling up against his chest and rubbing her nose into the soft fabric of his pajama shirt.

"Tea's almost ready," Sam tells her, stroking her head with one hand. "What time so you want to head over to the bunker?"

She shrugs. "Whenever we feel like it. Think Dean would like me more if we bring him food?"

Sam chuckles. "Oh yeah."

---

They stop to pick up breakfast at the diner in town, chatting amicably with the waitresses while they wait for their food, and then head right over to the bunker. By the time they get there, Sam is confident Dean will be awake. Y/N is a bundle of nerves - the bout of morning sickness that hit in the diner definitely isn't helping - and it takes a minute for Sam to coax her out of the car.

"We come bearing food," he calls as they finally make their way down the stairs to the war room and then up the library steps.

Y/N can't stop looking around, taking in everything. Sam feels a little proud of his home. He works hard to keep the bunker clean, roping Dean and Cas in whenever possible, and it shows. The hard wood of the library gleams under the old-fashioned lights.

"So many books," she murmurs, running her fingertips along the spines of the closest ones.

"I hope you went to Deborah's. Otherwise I'm kicking you both out."

Sam chuckles as Dean appears in the door on the other end of the library. "Where else would we have gone?" He holds up the bags.

Dean stops a few feet away, finally noticing Y/N where she's standing a little behind Sam. She’s prettier than Dean expected or something because he puts on his flirting-with-a-cute-girl face. "Why, hello there."

Y/N ducks her head a little, clearly nervous, and holds out the one thing she insisted on getting for Dean specifically. "We brought you a pie."

Dean lights up, eagerly accepting the box she's offering him. He looks her up and down quickly, and then nods with a boyish smile. "You can stay."

He shoots her a wink and heads off towards the kitchen.

Y/N visibly relaxes, hooking her arm around Sam's. He leans down to press a kiss to the top of her head.

"Toldja it would be okay. C'mon. Let's go get breakfast started before Dean and Cas starting fighting of who's gonna be number one uncle."

---

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—

Team Forever: @mrswhozeewhatsis @laughing-at-the-darkness​​ @tumbler-tidbits​​ @imsuperawkward​​​​ @emoryhemsworth

[chiliiscereal]

Okay so I kinda wanted something a little heart felt and sad, and I got back into Voltron again so here we goooooooo. Also since Mother's Day is on its way it's kinda themed that way. Go hug ur moms okay? Or go hug the people that matter to you if you can't or don't want to :p 

By the way, there's mentions of death so... beware? 

——

"Keith, don't push yourself too hard." You called from the side of the training room with worry. That boy kept upping the fighting level of the training bot. He hadn't eaten breakfast yet, he hadn't had any water, and he went to bed late last night. It was just a disaster waiting to happen. 

  Keith wiped the sweat off his forehead and readjusted his grip on his sword. "I'm fine." He ran at the bot again. 

  You bit at your nails nervously. "You want to take a break? I can make you a snack or something. You should really eat or take a nap..." 

"I said I'm fine!" He yelled as the bot swiped at him. "You're distracting me! Just go!" 

You swallowed your hurt. "Okay... let me know if you need-."

"Go!" 

——

"Hunk, that's dangerous!" You called up to the yellow paladin.

He was cooking in the kitchen and was trying to reach the bowl on the top shelf. Instead of grabbing a ladder he used a swivel chair. 

"I got it!" He yelled down to you. 

You knitted your eyebrows together. "You sure? I can grab a ladder... or I can get the bowl for you?" 

He could fall and hurt himself. 

He could break a bone.

He could get a concussion.

"Y/N, no offense, but I don't need your help, okay?" He informed you, stretching his hand out to grab the bowl. "I got it. I can do things myself, you know." 

"I know..." you trailed off, running closer to stabilize the chair he was standing on. "I just worry about you guys." 

  "Just stop, okay?" His fingers barely touched the rim of the bowl. "We don't need a mom." 

 His words ripped at your heart. So you let go. He was right. They didn't need a mom. You were just being a smothering worry wart. 

"Okay." You sighed, leaving the kitchen and casting one last glance at the disaster waiting to happen. "You're right! But if you need anything-."

  "Nope. I'm good."

——-

"Pidge, maybe you should put the computer away." You told the girl from your spot on the couch. "You've been on it all day."

She wasn't being very social. It couldn't be good for her. Maybe a little time away from it would be good for her.

  She snorted. "And do what?"

  You frowned at her. "I don't know, play a game? We could rope the other paladins into it." Your worry faded as your enthusiasm grew. "Maybe Allura and Coran have some Altman games we could try?" 

  "I doubt we'd understand it." Pidge shot that idea down immediately.

  You tensed a bit. "Okay... maybe we play an earth game!" 

  Pidge chuckled as she typed away at her computer. "What, like hide and seek?"

  "Yeah! The castle is big enough and maybe it'll lift everyone's spirits-!"

  "Sorry, but hide and seek is a bit childish." Pidge rolled her eyes before returning to her screen. "We're not little kids." 

  You clenched yourself fists a bit. "I know that, but-."

"Then act like it." 

You stood up awkwardly. "Okay... I'm sorry. I'll just... I'll just go."

Pidge said nothing as you left.

——

"Lance don't tamper with that!" You ran over to the boy messing with the gravity generator. "You don't want to break it!" 

  He rolled his eyes. "I'm not gonna break it. Coran told me that it needed to be fixed, so I'm fixing it! You should be happy I was motivated to help for once!" 

 His humor didn't ease your nerves. If anything it made your worry more. 

"Do you know what you're doing?" You glanced over his shoulder. "You could get shocked or turn the gravity off!" 

 "It's fineee. Besides, Pidge told me how to fix it a little while ago." He shrugged and continued rewiring it. 

  You fidgeted a bit. "How long ago was that?" 

  Lance paused and thought a bit. "I don't know, maybe last month?"

  "Lance!" You groaned. "Why don't you at least go ask Pidge again? Or ask Hunk or Coran?" 

  "I got this! I know what I'm doing so just back off!" His playful attitude faded. "Just get off my back!" 

You bit your lip and nodded. "Okay... I'm sorry." 

  He glanced at you still watching him with worry. "I mean like... right now."

  "Oh. Right." You sighed and walked down the hallway.

——-

You bit at your nails as you tried to wrap your mind around what you should do. These kids needed someone to look out for them, but how could you do that without smothering them? Maybe not jump into the problem right away? Would that work? Would they still get upset? 

You walked by the lounge door and stopped when you heard a conversation on the other side. Maybe you should join them! Test out your idea. Just relax. Show them you wouldn't smother them. 

You took in a breath and went to open the door. 

The words you heard inside stopped you. 

"Ugh, she's been breathing down my neck since we first got to the castle!" Pidge complained. 

"She has been a bit... much." Hunk added. "It's hard to relax and cook when someone is constantly making sure you're not messing up." 

  "I know right?!" Lance jumped in quickly. "I was trying to fix something, and she just wouldn't stop pestering me!" 

  "She also distracted me when I was training this morning." Keith muttered. "I feel like I don't get enough space." 

  "If you want space, just look out the window." Lance chuckled. "Plenty of space out there." 

  "Shut up!"

  "Ow! Don't hit me!" 

You shoved down the immediate response you got of trying to break up their fight. They didn't want that. Or you. At all. 

 "Yesterday, she even tried to tell Allura she needed to rest." Pidge added. "Something about how she needed her energy or whatever. Allura's the princess! And an alien! She doesn't need someone to boss her around. Especially someone who doesn't even pilot a lion!"

Bossy. 

Nosey. 

Smothering.

Annoying.

Useless.

  That's what they really thought. 

  You turned away from the door, face growing warm and tears threatening to fall. 

You could change. 

You could stay away. 

Maybe you could just... not try to see when they needed help.

Avoid the situation entirely.

Then you wouldn't feel the need to be like that. 

   You swiped the tears from your eyes. 

  "Hey, are you okay?" A voice asked from behind you. 

 You jumped and turned around quickly. 

"Oh," you sighed in relief when you saw your best friend, Shiro. You'd trained with him in the Garrison and even worked with him as a teacher. "Hey Shiro." You wiped the remaining tears away. "What up?" 

  He frowned and walked closer. "Nothing... just a bit concerned I guess. Have... have you been crying?" 

  You shook your head quickly. "No! No I haven't. I'm good." 

  He chuckled lightly. "You know, lying isn't very effective when there's evidence." 

  You laughed to. "Yeah, I guess that's right." 

  "I just wanted to check on you... cause I know the anniversary of... you know...." he rubbed the back of his head nervously. 

  "Yeah." You looked to the ground. "It's coming up." Your heart jumped a bit at the thought. It'd already been two years since that day. Your tears began to fall a little faster.

Shiro frowned. "I just wanted to let you know that we're here for you, okay?" 

You nodded. "Yeah, definitely." 

He rubbed your shoulder a bit. "I know I wasn't close with him, but it hurts me to... even though I only met him a couple times." 

  You smiled softly. "He still adored you. He thought you were the coolest thing Dino nuggets. He tried to convince me to let him cut his hair like yours, and I nearly had a heart attack when I caught him trying to take apart my car engine to follow you into space." 

You both shared a fond laugh.

  "Well, just let me know if you need anything, yeah?" He grinned. "I'll be in the lounge." 

You nodded. "Yeah, I'm just gonna be in my room." You gestured to the hallway.

 "I'll tell the paladins you say hi." 

[sueboohscorner]

#JaneTheVirgin: Jane the Brokenhearted Chapter Fifty Four

Chapter Fifty Four

Look, I feel some kinda way and I knew it was going to happen.  You’ll recall in my midseason finale/spoiler alert post, I told you this was coming to pass.  I hate being right.

(If you haven’t seen the eppy yet, 1) why are you reading a recap and 2) don’t read ahead unless you want the spoiler spoiled.) (Go away.) (Stop playing.)

First of all, this episode was tight. It was Jane in peak form, firing on all cylinders, every single character involved.  It was written by showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman and directed by Melonie Mayron (Professor Donaldson).   At the top of the show, the Narrator takes us back to young Michael instead of young Jane.  Young Michael is dressed for Halloween in a cop outfit that’s adorably too big for him. In a nice bit of foreshadowing, Michael wants with all his heart to go trick-or-treating, but he’s sick and his mom won’t let him go.  In the present, Jane and Michael are looking through old photographs and come across a pic from that long ago Halloween. Michael swears he remembers that moment perfectly, but Jane explains something called “flashbulb memory,” memories that seem so vivid and clear because of the intensity of the emotion attached to them, not because of our accurate recollection. (She read that in the New Yorker, here’s the article: http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/idea-happened-memory-recollection) (I wish I could figure out how to hyperlink). Michael says, “Nah, I remember everything.”

The phone rings and Jane is offered her dream job, assistant to a publishing wunderkind.  (What happened to the other lady? Last I remember, Jane and Michael (sob) wowed the assistant at a bar singing Bruno Mars karaoke, right?). Rogelio stops by with a different kind of picture: a still from his nude scene (Rogelio’s genitalia is a gift that keeps on giving).  Ro invites Jane to the screening and she agrees to come as long as he tells her when to look away in order to avoid having the image her padre’s cadre seared on the inside of her eyelids.

Unlike the last time when Catalina (may she never return) told Jane to wing her interview, Jane is hella prepared.  And when Jane is prepared, she does the darn thing. She’s given a memoir to read and her prospects ($40K and benefits) look amazing.  Jane goes to pick up Mateo from Abuela’s where Xiomara is watching him.  Xo wants some quid pro quo and asks Jane to come to dinner with Alba, Bruce, and Scary Tess.  Jane agrees.  When Xo asks Jane for feminine protection, Jane realizes she’s late.  And she’s been having a lot of sex. A lot of sex. With Michael. La amor de su vida.  (Why, Jennie Snyder Urman, why?!)

Michael comes home happy (he’s so happy this episode; he’s like a dog that doesn’t know he’s about to be put down) and Jane is making pasta. She tells him she might be pregnant, and she’s worried about their timeline and Mateo—but the look on Michael’s face assures her that a little Cordero would make Michael the happiest man on the planet.  Jane takes one of Xo’s old pregnancy tests (what is she stockpiling them?) but the test is expired, and the result is unreadable.  I loved that there was this kind of lingering hope that they might have a baby, even though I knew Michael was doomed. Doomed, I say!

Rogelio has been trying to come up with a matchmaker reality show for Darci. Darci wants him to co-star, but Ro is all about that indie life.  He invites Darci to walk down la alfombra roja to the screening of his movie. At the screening, Ro’s big reveal has been edited out of the movie. (“They cut my penis!”). He storms outside and Darci tries to console him. As a bystander secretly records Ro’s freakout on cellphone, Ro says “penis” about a hundred times and he also hurts Darci, telling her she just wants to be Bethany Frankel while he wants to be a serious actor. Not the move, Ro.

At the Tess dinner, Tess is being a shady little heffa, but Jane wins her over by telling her that she and Michael live near a popular coffee shop Tess likes (okay….). Back at the apartment, Jane tells Michael she got her period, and she’s not pregnant (seriously, she had to tell him that last part. I’m like, Mike, you’re a cop!)  They agree they’re disappointed, and Michael says they’ve got all the time in the world because he’s doomed! Doomed, I say! There’s a knock at the door and it Tess, drunk as a skunk in a trunk! Jane takes her to Xo’s, where Tess escapes on a bike, only to be captured by Abuela, who tells her to get in the car ahora mismo! Xo calls Bruce, who wants to lock Tess up forever, but Xo offers some sage advice that saves Tess’s butt, which Tess overhears, opening the door to a civil relationship between Tess and Xo.

Oh! The other people—you know, the ones who survived Jennie Snyder Urman’s death scythe.  Scott told Petra he and Anezka are married, and he has gazillion copies of the will’s addendum (I love Anezka’s forever bangs, lol). Rafael tells Luisa (remember her?) he’s not a real Solano and she assures him he will always be her brother and she’ll always have his back.  Rafael finds out he’s going to have to do some jail time for cooking the books after his dad-not-dad died. Petra freaks because she hasn’t bonded with the twins, but she eases into motherhood and tells Raf to go ahead to jail if that’s what he wants (maybe he’ll see Petra’s mother, Magda in the co-ed prison yard!). Luisa introduces her new girlfriend, Eileen (come on!), to Rafael and Rafael is like, “I’ma need some bloodwork, proof of plastic surgery, and MRI, a bone scan” whatever it takes to prove Eileen is NOT Sin Rostro. 

Of course, Eileen IS Sin Rostro (does she even have cartilage left?) and she has a look alike go take all the tests for her. Meanwhile, Jane delivered Ro’s naked pictures instead of the memoir summary and analysis to the publisher and torpedoed her chances at getting her dream job. Ro shrink-wraps a bus and wins Darci back.

The Date. God, this was beautiful writing.  Jane and Michael go to the amusement park they went to when they first started dating. The scene alternates between the shy pair feeling their way around commitment to the married couple dreaming of forever.  They play carnival games and take photo booth pictures.  Jane looks at Michael and they both smile, knowing they’re going to ride the Ferris wheel, where they became a couple (yes, I thought it was the night of Jane’s 21st birthday, too, but you remember they added that Sam in the beginning of season 3). As the wheel goes round the past folds in on the present and you just know Michael is doomed. Doomed, I say! Chile, I thought the Ferris wheel was gonna break and send him hurling to his death there were so many omens! That didn’t happen; instead, Michael remembers some minor detail from an investigation that proves the memoir wasn’t entirely true and will allow Jane to march back to the publisher’s office, find out it was all a test and get the job. Because Michael is Jane’s safe place to land, always guiding her, supporting her, loving her.  Sigh.

Jane gives Michael the cutest lunch box to take to the LSATs. She tells him she loves him, she’s proud of him.  Michael goes to take the test. When he finishes and lines up to hand his test in, he collapses and dies.  When Jane receives the call that Michael has died from some complication from his gunshot wound, she drops the phone and lets out a scream that better be on Gina Rodriguez’ Emmy reel, because it was life! Rafael comes in and wraps his arms around her (they are never, ever getting back together, so forget it #TeamRafael!).  There’s a hint that Jane goes through some dark times and we’re about to jump ahead three years (no more Mr. Sweetface?!), but we’ve reached the end of part two.

So, basically, this is a reboot of the entire show. They’re jumping ahead three years, so anything can happen for the rest of the season. Raf’s going to jail. Sin Rostro’s back.  Jane’s going to a wedding ( I bet it’s Alba’s!) and she has a funky new haircut. But as a member of #TeamMichael, my heart will always be a little broken when I don’t see Brett Dier’s goofy-sweet face mooning at Jane. (I hope he comes back as a Patrick Swayze in Ghost like spirit! Jennie  Snyder Urman told The Hollywood Reporter they will do Michael flashbacks! Yay!)

A+ eppy. Can’t wait until next week.

Tell me what you think of Michael's death in the comments section!

Kellybelle

[the-end-of-art]

Forced increase

Every Day is Magic: Ada Limón by Alex Crowley in PW

In her 2015 collection, Bright Dead Things, a National Book Award finalist for poetry, Ada Limón writes of moving to Kentucky: “Confession: I did not want to live here.” It’s perhaps not a surprising sentiment coming from a coastally oriented person who was raised in Northern California, attended college in Seattle, and then spent over a decade in New York City.

But Limón and her husband, Lucas, have been in Lexington for seven years now and the effects of settling into this place are noticeable in her new book, The Carrying (Milkweed, Aug.). It’s a phenomenally lively and attentive collection replete with the trappings of living a little closer to nature. While Bright Dead Things is marked by a preponderance of light, such as images of fireflies and neon signs, The Carrying features numerous appearances by various trees, birds, and beetles. Limón also demonstrates a greater willingness to be explicit in naming colors, particularly green. “It’s crazy green, the whole book,” she says. “Lexington is the greenest place I’ve ever lived.” Similarly, where in Bright Dead Things, Limón tells a lot of stories and anecdotes, in The Carrying she is very present in her thoughts and experiences.

As it turns out, these shifts in focus have another, altogether unexpected source. While putting Bright Dead Things together, Limón was diagnosed with chronic vestibular neuronitis, which can cause bouts of vertigo. “If I’m really having vertigo, it’s pretty intense and I really have to focus,” she says. “There’s a focus on presence that I think that the body has given me in the last three years that I’ve had to listen to. When I was sick, everything was a little bit of a blur. When things would stand still, it was the most amazing technicolor. It’s almost like the static stops and then suddenly the picture became clear. ‘Oh my god, I see the mailbox! I see the little red flag.’ Those became things I anchored on to. It was a way of saying that I was surviving, that I was ok.”

Limón’s writing process has been heavily impacted by this new reality. “I used to write everyday but when the vertigo was bad, it was nearly impossible for me to write. So when I could, I would try to write a poem every day, because I felt good. Suddenly the brain would stop worrying about remaining in balance and would be, ‘oh, remember words?’ So this book was written much more in fits and starts.” Limón thinks it’s likely that lots of poems didn’t happen because of her health but that what she did produce benefited from the forced increase in concentration, “in the stillness of it.”

The book’s title points to another health issue that Limón confronts in its pages: struggles with fertility. “What if, instead of carrying// a child, I’m supposed to carry grief?” she asks in “The Vulture & The Body.”

“It took us a while to even come around to the idea of trying,” she says of she and Lucas having a child. “We thought, ‘let’s try this, it might be amazing.’ Unfortunately, The fertility drugs made the vertigo worse.” Limón has since ceased the fertility regimen she discusses in several poems and is now “happily child-free.”

“You wait for the universe to send you an answer and the universe does. It just said ‘no!’” But this reality opened up a new avenue for her, what she calls being a “poetry mom”: “Anyone can have a different experience, but for me, I find a lot of creativity, creation, in poetry and in writing, so I have this element of myself that I feel I’m giving to the world and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a child.” In the poem “Mastering,” Limón writes, “perhaps the only thing I can make// is love and art.” It’s a subtle political stance, given the ways that womanhood and motherhood are conflated: “Think about the word mother or woman. How are you valued? It’s a lovely, beautiful thing to know you can be valued and respected and even cherished without giving birth. Because motherhood becomes such a definition of, ‘well, you’re not a real woman until you’ve given birth.’”

Following that line of thought, Limón pays homage to Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, and Sylvia Plath, for “speaking about motherhood in a way that was never spoken before.” She lists a number of important influences—”Sexton, Plath, Rukeyser, Brooks and Clifton. Adrienne Rich! These women who were opening little doors”—before continuing: “Isn’t it cool that, even if I don’t get to be a physical mother, the people who’ll read my work will somehow be affected. I’m related to Gwendolyn Brooks. I’m not, but in that way I am.”

Limón’s deep respect for her predecessors also points toward another core theme of The Carrying, that of the interconnectedness of beings and how humans attempt to express it through language. “If we’re gonna say we’re poets, we’ve got to say that language matters, but we really have to look at a thing in all sorts of ways. Every aspect of it. How does it enforce patriarchy, how does it enforce white supremacy? The way we think about gender fluidity? All these levels. Let’s look at our language deeply. Why not pick it apart? Why not use it as the right tool?” Limón brings up her poem “A New National Anthem,” in which she delivers the brilliant insight that maybe there is a hidden third verse to every song of America. She asks, somewhat rhetorically “Why do these words, for me, fail?”

Here, the subtle politics of The Carrying become more explicit and pointed. “It’s hard not to be political now,” Limón says. “A lot of poets, they’re like, ‘well, I’m not political, I don’t do this,’ and it’s like, no, we have to. You can’t be truthful if you don’t talk about it.” She realized it was true of her own disability issues: “I realized on some level how much I’ve taken my own ableism for granted.” The general public is finally starting to talk about ableism, Limón notes, and suspects it’s part of a wider phenomenon within contemporary poetry: “Poets seem to be at the forefront of those conversations; like, there’s an openness that we’re always trying to get to, instead of getting comfortable when one door comes down—what about the next one?”

Limón says she constantly asks herself, “Can I go deeper? What kind of poems come out of revisiting the stories we tell ourselves?” She has taken such a step, both formally and substantively, between these latest collections. It’s most notable in a set of letter poems written to poet Natalie Diaz. “She’s so fun to write to,” Limón remarks. Written over the course of nine months, she says that these poems “became a way where even if I wasn’t feeling well I felt like I could write to her because we didn’t have any agreement to publish; they were very personal.” These four poems are more fluid and off-the-cuff than most of Limón’s usual lyric narratives. “They really intended to be letters, so I wanted to remain true to that; I wanted them to communicate just to her, so I wasn’t thinking about an outside audience at all. That’s totally different for both of us.”

Limón opens her notebook to show me a handwritten draft—in effortless, fluid script—of one of her poems to Diaz, discovering in the process another that she had forgotten about. “Oh, this is funny, I don’t remember this poem. This is a totally different poem, I never typed this poem up. Holy shit.” She scans the page for a minute and reads aloud, laughing: “it says ‘Was Bishop a mean drunk?’” She then finds the draft of “Cargo,” the poem she was looking for. “It’s very letter-like. When I typed it up, though, that’s when all the edits happened.”

Limón and Diaz also read a book by Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer called Braiding Sweetgrass, which in its discussion of Native wisdom and ecology offered insights that suffuse all of The Carrying. “I think there was a part of that that seeped in about connectedness, the aliveness that I wanted to experience in the world,” she says. “I’m a narrative lyric poet, but I really wanted to do my due diligence and give attention to the things that were not necessarily myself. Even though I’m definitely talking a lot about myself in the work, it’s hopefully not in a way that feels disconnected or isolated.”

“I read a lot, but when I’m writing it’s hard because I’m a mimic,” Limón says about direct poetic influences on The Carrying. “I need a bit of radio silence. But I do think Lucille Clifton plays a powerful role for me in this book. And Joy Harjo,” from whom she takes the collection’s epigraph. “Natalie and I both talk about Creeley and Lorca, and they’re both in there; Lorca especially with his magical realism,” which she says reminds her that she’s allowed to engage as well. “The weirdest thing in the world is reality. I’m more fascinated by the idea of magic than I am of god. I mean, I understand why we think about it, but I think the idea of every day being this incredible gift, this chance for the bizarre and the ordinary to interact and dance and get twisted. That’s magic.”

Now that magic happens in a house in Kentucky, where Limón has her own office “and a screened-in porch with a big table and a grill—that’s a good writing space for me.” Still, she laments that “Sonoma is still deep within me,” especially after the 2017 forest fires, which appear in The Carrying. “And one thing about New York that I miss so much is that bar on the corner.” But, showing me pictures of her home, she scrolls past a picture of a snake in the yard and mentions that her poem “Against Belonging” is about how “these snakes find their home wherever they want to find their home. And I felt like that’s what I’m doing, wherever I am I’m finding a home.”

Limón returns to “A New National Anthem,” which ends with a “song that says my bones/ are your bones, and your bones are my bones,/ and isn’t that enough?” She repeats the question to me, “Well, isn’t that enough? I don’t know. Clearly it’s not, but I want it to be enough. I feel like poems can sometimes fail by trying to be too resolute, or by trying to give some received wisdom when there is none. I’m not a wise person. I’ve lived some years and I’ve had some experiences, but do I have wisdom to pass on? I dunno. I think I have questions to pass on,” Limón says, laughing again. Maybe knowing how to ask the right question is its own kind of wisdom and she doesn’t realize how wise she is. “It’s another way of saying we’re all in this together. I don’t have it figured out.”

(https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/77427-every-day-is-magic-ada-lim-n.html)

[lindyhunt]

4 Comics Who Are Keeping it Real About Motherhood ( and 4 Who Are Proudly Not Procreating)

Having children is one of life’s greatest pleasures…or so I’m told. But what happens when you become a mother and life is not the mommy-blog perfection that we all expect it to be? Lucky for all of us, some  comedians have given us all a glance into the unfiltered world of pregnancy and parenting. And, greatest pleasure or not, that shit seems terrifying). An important part of the conversation when it comes to motherhood is that it’s a choice, and probably shouldn’t be considered the default choice for women. That’s not to say that women who don’t breed don’t like children, they’ve just decided that it doesn’t fit into their lifestyle. Like that time that I got side bangs without realizing the amount of work I would have put in  to styling them every day. And yes, I’m saying bang maintenance is exactly the same child rearing.

Regardless of whether or not you want to raise tiny humans, here are the voices of comedy who are keeping it real on all ends of the spectrum.

Ali Wong 

“I used to hate on other moms for the clothes that they wore, you know, all the cheesy-ass animal print and loud metallic shiny shoes, and now I see something that’s bedazzled in rhinestones and I’m like ‘oh that looks nice, I think I’m gonna get that,’ because when you’re a mom you need sparkle to compensate for the light inside of you that has died.”

I’m grateful the weekend is over. #WorkIsEscape #TGIM

A post shared by Ali Wong (@aliwong) on May 28, 2018 at 7:03am PDT

There’s something so incredibly wonderful about watching a heavily pregnant, 5’3″ woman dancing around the stage with her middle finger high in the air. Ali Wong became a household name in 2015 when she released her stand-up special Baby Cobra on Netflix. At the time, she was seven months pregnant with her first child. Three years later, and equally pregnant Wong came back on stage for her new Netflix collar, Hard Knock Wife, to report back to us on childbirth and motherhood. She gave the audience and viewers a…graphic look into what she’s been up to since we last saw her. She spoke about childbirth, breastfeeding and how she sometimes wants to throw her kid in the garbage (fair enough). She also speaks on her choice to continue her career after having children, and how that’s a choice she was privileged to be able to make. To sum up, Ali Wong should write a parenting book ASAP. Even my childless-self would read that thing cover to cover.

Natasha Leggero

“It is very humbling to think that you’re carrying life inside of you, you know? I don’t want to get too emotional but it’s even more overwhelming then when I realize that it’s gonna be five more months before I can do drugs again.” 

A post shared by Natasha Leggero (@natashaleggero) on May 25, 2018 at 4:43pm PDT

Best known for her blasé delivery of shock-comedy, Leggero’s stand-up will have you thinking whether or not you should feel bad for laughing (you should, but it’s okay). When she walked out on stage for her set in The Honeymoon Stand Up Special (which she did with her husband, Moshe Kasher) heavily pregnant in a sequin minidress and white-fur coat and told the audience to hold their applause because she was “still in the abortion zone,” Leggerro proved that she had no intention in changing her comedic style due to her maternal-status (nor should she!). Though Leggero hasn’t released any new material since the birth of her daughter, she’s taken to Instagram to reassure fans that she’s still the same-old Natasha. Whether she’s posting a photo of her breastfeeding while adorned in gold or introducing her daughter to the world of Vogue, she’s making sure that her comedic voice is still known.

Katherine Ryan

“My daughter’s six. Right now I just have to keep her hair out of her face and her hands out of her pants and I’ve nailed the day.”

💜

A post shared by kathbum (@kathbum) on Aug 9, 2017 at 11:19am PDT

Originally from Canada, this UK-based comedian released her Netflix special — In Trouble — in 2017. Ryan talked about her dating life, pop culture and life as a single mother. She’s also quick to gossip about the other moms that she has to interact with, which is relatable to anyone with or without a child. In her most recent set at Noel at the Apollo, Ryan tells her audience all about a mother at her daughter’s school named Jane. “Does anyone know Jane from the North London school run?…Jane said to me ‘Katherine, you must be so sad that you don’t have a husband at Christmas.’ This coming from the woman whose ham-coloured husband Brian is a man I’ve never seen out of a bicycle helmet.” Whether it’s dealing with the death of her child’s pet or bringing her kid along so that she can meet Prince Harry (true story), Katherine and her daughter are setting up to be the modern-day Gilmore Girls.

Tig Notaro

“I feel like [my wife] and I are doing a great job, I really do. But I also feel like it would be reasonable if somebody called child protective services a couple of times.”

When I have to share my Cheerios 😕

A post shared by Tig Notaro (@tignotaro) on Mar 5, 2018 at 2:02pm PST

A veteran on the stand-up comedy circuit, Tig Notaro has always included her personal life in her bone-dry comedy. In 2015 she released her documentary Tig on Netflix, which followed her ability to find humour in her breast cancer diagnosis and eventual double mastectomy. In her newest Netflix special, Happy to be Here, Notaro had much happier experiences to draw from. She spends most of the hour telling stories about her wife Stephanie and their baby twin boys Max and Finn. A lot of her material now stems from her kids, including her one son’s sudden outbursts. “A couple month’s ago, he just out of nowhere yelled ‘I’m gay’.. yeah, Max the whole family is gay, it’s not a big deal, except for Finn but even [our cat] is bi-curious.”

Michelle Wolf

“If having babies really was the best job in the world, men would’ve figured out a way for them to do it.”   

Not in the spirit of the mission.

A post shared by Michelle Wolf (@michelleisawolf) on Apr 29, 2018 at 9:52pm PDT

Michelle Wolf is most recently known for her set at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner which received mixed reviews to say the least. Now, she has her own show called The Break with Michelle Wolf on Netflix where she does a little bit of everything. In the premiere episode, Wolf sat with her friend and fellow comic Amber Ruffin to talk about their choice not to have kids. This isn’t a new topic for Wolf however, she touched on the concept of “making a human” in her HBO Special, Nice Lady. “It should be hard to make a human. It’s hard to make a croissant. It takes three days to make a croissant, you can make a human in that bathroom. You cannot make a croissant in that bathroom.”

Sarah Silverman

“I love kids, but I also really love what I do. Which is anything I want, all of the time.”    

A post shared by Sarah Silverman (@sarahksilverman) on Nov 20, 2017 at 11:56am PST

Sarah Silverman is another stand-up comedy veteran to speak about the idea of motherhood. Silverman is known for never holding back, so it seemed perfectly normal for us to share her ideas on having children in a monologue for her show I Love You, America. Silverman also brought it up when she was on Chelsea with Gloria Steinem and Chelsea Handler, all who have chosen not to have kids. “Loving kids  and having kids of your own are two very different things. The thought of having my own baby completely paralyzes me.”

Chelsea Handler

“Sometimes in your 20s and 30s people will trick you into having kids. But it’s possible to remain childless and alone. You just have to want it.” 

This sums up what I’m dealing with on the home front. Every day, it’s like I’m starting over.

A post shared by Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) on May 22, 2018 at 4:52pm PDT

Chelsea Handler has always made her aversion to having children known in her material. In her show, Chelsea, she has a recurring PSA spoof called Kids: They’re Not That Great. She is seen having a cocktail in her bathrobe or binge watching TV, telling people that being childless is actually pretty great. She even got wrapped into hosting a kids Halloween party, and it’s absolutely hilarious.

Jen Kirkman

“If you do something as big as having a kid…you gotta have an urge to be good at it and an urge to do it. And I’ve never had the urge to ruin my life.” 

Hello world!

As you can see – I’m not on tour right now. I’m on a job writing to bring you entertainment on the streaming teevee. Some years I hit 30-40 cities in about 3 countries – this is not that year! So far! ✈️✈️✈️ But there are plans and things in place for fall and winter – and things will go on sale before that. My weekly email newsletter is THE ONLY way to find out what’s going on in my head – where I’m thinking of heading next and why. 📝📝📝📝So, join up! Again, I am not on a big tour this year – I’m just going to be popping up in really surprising places in America and beyond. I KNOW WHAT they are – but you don’t! Cuz you’re not on my newsletter. CLICK LINK IN BIO TO JOIN. It takes you to my website homepage and the link is there. 🌟🌟🌟🌟😁 *****any question you ask below about what city I am coming to is literally the reason I have a newsletter. Save me the headache. The answer to all questions is JOIN MY NICE FRIENDLY FUN PERSONALLY WRITTEN BY ME 🙋🏻‍♀️ every week newsletter*******

A post shared by Jen Kirkman (@jenkirkman) on Mar 5, 2018 at 8:46am PST

In Jen’s first Netflix Special, I’m Going to Die Alone (and I Feel Fine), Kirkman speaks out about not having kids has never been an issue for her as much as the people around her. She even published a book in 2013 called I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids. Needless to say, kids have never been on Kirkman’s radar, and the only problem she has with it is the fact that people have a problem with it.