#also not mentioned is how she wrote her husband a letter under duress confessing that sam is billy's and that tara isn't his either.

[krikeymate]

I'm actually in love with the Billy kidnapps baby Sam and Tara AU.

How would Sam and Tara's personality change by growing up with Billy? Is he still ghostfacing? Is he still obsess over Sydney? Is Stu or Mrs Loomis still alive?!

I think things mostly go pretty much the same as canon (1-4), only that Billy never got shot in the head, he managed to escape.

Mrs Loomis wants revenge on Sidney not for killing her boy, but for ruining his life and his reputation because now he's on the run. Maybe Sidney spent all that time thinking maybe he had just died in a ditch somewhere, forgotten and unfound, but now she's got confirmation that Billy's alive, and that's what forces her into the isolation we see in 3. Maybe Roman even knows, maybe he gives Sidney a snide Billy sends his regards. Maybe when the Ghostface attacks happen in 4, she's convinced it's Billy.

Billy takes a long time to heal, alone in some abandoned shack on the outskirts of Woodsboro, hidden in the trees on long-abandoned land. He reaches out to his mother, he reaches out to his father, he reaches out to Roman. Only one of them responds, only one of them helps him. He's been abandoned by his family, but Roman was abandoned by his too, he understands him, he helps Billy get back on his feet. He even becomes like a brother to him. It just gives Roman more fuel to his hatred of Sidney Prescott.

Billy meanwhile, he's kind of tired. His body heals, but his mind stays tired, especially after Roman's death. He didn't feel better for killing Maureen, his family still stayed broken. He didn't feel better for any of those he killed, just angrier and angrier. Stu, his mother, the lunatic she hired, now Roman... it's very sexy of her, he thinks, but he's not going after Sidney Prescott again. He's no desire to get himself killed, and he's not an idiot, the odds are stacked against him. She's got a death count as high as his.

Roman names Samuel Carpenter, the man who is like a brother to me, in his will. With cropped hair dyed black and a beard, he's unrecognisable. He begins life again. One day he's bored and goes looking through the abandoned contents of what remains of Roman's effects. He finds a box of files, Roman's research. He skims through it all, feeling something like nostalgia. Inside, he finds a birth certificate for one Samantha Carpenter born May 1997 to Christina Carpenter. It feels like fate.

Billy's hardly some upstanding moral man now, he has no problem with killing, and enjoys it. But he's not going out of his way to do it. He's worked too hard to forge a new identity, he's not going to put himself at risk. Not now there's no one left to help him pick himself back up.

So, anyway, this AU has two paths. There's 'Uncle Sam' path, or there's Billy takes the girls' path. I'm leaning towards Uncle Sam path being the better one, but let's take a look at the other one.

Billy tells Christina to sit down. It's authoritative. He leans back and makes himself comfortable on the couch as Christina perches herself on the armchair, Sam, frowning, hovering beside her, glancing between her mother, her sister, and the intruder. He observes them, watches as Christina slaps away Samantha's hand as she tries to take the fussing baby back. He laughs and tells the woman to give the girl the baby. It wasn't a suggestion, and the deer-in-headlights look she shoots him reveals she knows it. She hands it over. The baby stops fussing, and his daughter softens. He pats the couch beside him, telling Samantha to come here. She sends a nervous look to her mother, and she gives a stilted nod. He pulls the girl into his side, wrapping an arm around her, and tells Christina to tell their daughter the truth. She shakes her head, and begs him no, but he tuts at her, unamused. Tell her the truth, or I will… and you won’t like the way I will. So, Christina reveals the truth, that her father isn’t her father. Billy makes Sam go upstairs, tells her to pack a bag for herself… and her sister. Christina leaps up at that, gets angry, tells him that he can’t just take her. He asks her what kind of loving mother leaves a baby home alone. He sees the way Sam curls herself further around the baby as he speaks the words. Samantha is my daughter, she continues, and oh, it hits him, she wasn’t even talking about the baby. If he hadn’t have already made up his mind, he would have made it then. He tells Sam to go upstairs once again, and this time she does, leaving her mother to argue with the man who calls himself her father. She’s scared and confused and crawls into her bed with her sister, taking comfort in the way she doesn’t understand anything that’s going on around her, just happy to be with Sam. Billy comes upstairs a little while later, smiling. He smells kind of funny now, and there’s red on his t-shirt, was it red before? Together they pack. He puts it all on the backseat of her mother’s car, and has her sit in the front with her sister on her lap. He drives them away.

Wildly enough, this is actually one of the most well-adjusted timelines that Sam & Tara can have, as I've decided Billy isn't just going around Ghostfacing up the place. Sam will still have a bit of a breakdown at the realisation of who her father is- was at some point (the news surrounding the 2011 attacks), but she's had years with this man, seen who he is with her own eyes, seen how he is with her sister. She struggles to merge the two men in her head. Tara gets a well-adjusted and stable childhood where she's cared for.

Billy's definitely a no judgement kinda parent, who encourages anger and retaliation and smart thinking. He's not the type to encourage them to hurt others, but he will certainly provide advice and help, and he doesn't not encourage it either. Just reminds his girls not to draw attention to themselves. Sam still ends up mostly raising her sister because Billy knows shit all about kids, but he does patiently listen and take instruction from Sam on how to do things, so it's not like a total lost cause.

Tara never knows any parent other than her father (as Sam), and knows nothing of the mother than abandoned them. She doesn't know about Billy, until...

One day, Tara is home alone when someone in a Ghostface mask breaks in and nearly kills her. Someone knows the truth about Billy.

[darkhorse-javert]

Happy Birthday Pauline

Happy Birthday, many happy returns and mazel tov @paulinedorchester​

I made you a thing... Meta-fictiony based on your Andrew and Sam Headcanons. But it was your actual letters in your fic that gave it a physical form too. I hope you like it

Wierdly you have to right click and ‘View image’ for it to come up properly

Transcript:

“The Foyles of Hastings: An Appreciation

By Hannah James

 To most passers-by the whitewashed bungalow with honeysuckle climbing the walls and a driftwood boarded front door is a pretty but unassuming, though it carries some of the charm of the nearby Old Town. Yet it is here, that I find one of Hastings’ most famous living sons and adopted daughter, for whom 2008 is a Red-Letter Year.

The warmth and sparkle in Mr Andrew Foyle’s eyes belie his recent 90 birthday as he and his wife Samantha ‘Call me Sam, I was only ever Samantha to my family or when I was in trouble’ (89) welcome me into their comfortable sitting room.

Hastings born, bred and raised Andrew Foyle is best known for his screenwriting, and  novels. Sam, under her maiden name of Stewart, has been a regular contributor for this paper, the author of various historical biographical pieces, and screenwriter with her husband. However she is most commonly known for her memoir One Woman’s War, which itself celebrates its 10th Anniversary this year.

When I compliment them on the house they share a wry look and regale me with the story between them. “We moved somewhat under duress, the children pointed out that it was highly likely one of us would go topsy-turvey on some of those stairs one of those days.” Sam has an expression on her face which suggests she was not particularly willing to concede to this point. “Stewart stubbornness and Foyle tenacity, we’d have much better hope telling the sea to stop moving.”

“We knew they were right,... but it was a wrench to give the old place up.” The old place, as Andrew Foyle affectionately calls it, is 31 Steep Lane, in the Old Town, where he was raised and where the couple have spent much of their married life over the years. It was also on the very solid front steps than this enigmatic couple first met, in September 1940. Sam, then a driver in the MTC “Motorised Transport Corps”, arrived to collect DCS Christopher Foyle and Andrew answered the door.

Was it love at first sight? “Yes.” Andrew gives his wife a look of such fondness we should all be so lucky to receive. “I just took two years to actually realise what I was feeling.”

Sam meanwhile bursts out laughing at the question “Hardly!” She glances at Andrew “Oh you started out alright with ‘Hello’”

“Then I proceeded to open my mouth again, put both feet firmly in it and sink right up to my middle ala Doctor Gloucester…”

“Saying you didn’t expect a girl to be driving your father, especially ’such a pretty one.”

“You were - and are...Anyway you put me sharply back in my place I wished the floor would swallow me, especially when Dad appeared.”

Listening and watching them, it’s clear how these two have lasted so long together, mutual affection, respect and occasional teasing rolled together.

Discussing their meeting easily brings us onto the subject of the War itself, and in particular One Woman’s War, a title its author is mollified to now after ten years. Sam admits she is gratified by the reception it received, already becoming a key text in schools studying the War, noted for both its straightforwardness and it’s occasional humour.

“It’s good for the MTC to have recognition, even during the War we were seen as rather a poor cousin, they  kept trying to disband us or move us to the A.T.S.” [The better known  Auxiliary Territorial Service]

I ask her about the controversies over the books’ title and dedication, as well as her use of ‘girls’ in the text, which some have called biased

Her head comes up in spirited rejoinder “We were just girls, most of us. When I joined up I was 20 and still needed my father’s permission to do so, full majority was 21 in those days. Why they must make such a fuss over it?” She gets up and goes to one of the tables by the fireplace, bringing back a smartly framed photograph.  A young woman in khaki uniform, recognisable as Sam, stands with two men, one short, one tall, both in long coats and Trilby hats of the 1940s “That’s us:” she points to each one “Me, Mr Foyle and Paul Milner, Sargent Milner as he was then, he became an Inspector after the war. They were the ones I worked with day in day out, through those years. The war changed me ...they changed me, taught me such a lot, especially Christopher.” There’s a soft moment of silence fondness and reflection as she looks at the photo. “That’s why they get the dedication, and Andrew because he kept nudging until I started writing.” Then she smiles, “Goodness Paul looks young, this can’t have been taken very long after I was assigned to Hastings.”

Her own favourite of her biographical pieces? “Amelia Earhart, because that was the first I did, when I found I had the knack, and because of her pluck. Or maybe Andrée de Jongh [leader of the Comet escape line during the War]… she saved so many. She was brave and bold right in the Nazi’s faces, at the risk of her own life. And I’m not just saying that because I married an RAF officer.”

Where to start with Andrew Foyle’s wide ranging, nearly seventy year long, library of work?

He laughs when I mention this predicament “Well, what’s your favourite? We’ll start there and work around to the others.” I confess, shyly, that it is the 1958 film Twilight of Blue. The film is set post-war, a ‘character study’ of a RAF officer coming to retirement. Andrew nods slowly, his eyes soft with thought and memory. “That’s one that I most wanted to be excellent… to capture the ends, not just the rigmarole of ‘well done old chap, good job,  wonderful having you, excellent service, have a badge, enjoy your medals and your life’… but the thought pattern, the feelings there, loss, relief, confusion even. You have given most of your life to the service, your family has too, and now it is going to be your past. And where do you stand without it? How do you stand without it? Where do you go?...” The depth of feeling is clear in his voice “And I had to be good with it too, because there were a lot of chaps in that situation. I owed it to them to get it right. Especially to WingCo, Wing Commander Turner, it was for him, really. A tiny insignificant thank you for everything he did… If I’d got it wrong…” he shakes his head, “But I don’t think I did…”

He certainly didn’t if the reception of the film over the years is anything to go by. Twilight of Blue was a roaring success when it first came out, and while it isn’t one of the ‘Classic War Films’ of battles and victory, the very human story means it has aged well across the years.

Now noted  for the depth of its characters,  a fully remastered anniversary DVD came out on 15th September. Wryly Andrew informs me that it includes a commentary by himself “very strange to be watching it over again, recalling the writing of it, but also trying not to talk over my favourite bits.”  

We shift somewhat from anniversaries and retrospective to something more present. Aged 90 he might be, Andrew has still been busy, writing scripts and consulting on the BBC adaptation of The Replacements, his first published novel, back in 1946. Unusually, it focused on the RAF at the tail of the Battle of Britain, and the years after,. The focus, Andrew admits was based on his own experience, “I joined the fighting squadron in Hastings in late September 1940, just after the big turning point against the Luftwaffe, then I got sent off to Malta long after the great battle for survival the history books know. I was a right Tail-end Charlie.”

Technically this is the second adaptation of the book, the first was a 1948 BBC film. When I mention this, some of the good cheer disappears from Andrew’s face, replaced by a stony expression and narrowed eyes. “I had no hand in that debacle, and I utterly disown it. I only thank goodness it wasn’t taped, or if it was that the tape was lost. It wasn’t an adaptation, it was a travesty, practically an insult.” He simmers, but I note that Sam has a wry smile on her face and she interjects, “We didn’t have a television in those days, few people did. So we went two doors up to watch it.” She glances at Andrew with a fond smile ,“I remember that as it played your smile dropped and your eyes got narrower and narrower, you were practically spitting rivets for the twenty yards home.”

“I very nearly wrote a scathing letter to the BBC refusing them anymore adaptation rights ever again. But someone disabled the typewriter, jammed the keys, and overnight I just decided that I’d have to have a hand in the next one.” He shrugs easily “Didn’t have a clue how it was done mind you… “ The rest, reader, is screenwriting history.

“There were two tiny good points.” The anger is all gone as Andrew looks at his wife “You got to be a W.A.A.F at last.  And there were RAF crew as extras who could just do, they still had the knowledge, and a profusion of Spitfires.”  There’s a rueful look on his face, “We’ve been having some trouble with that now.” He straightens in the chair, and there is a flash of an officer there still, “Not that I forgive it the heinous transgressions. This one will stick to the book, and to everything that the book was drawn from.” •

The Replacements will begin  tomorrow on BBC1 at 9pm. Twilight of Blue: 50th Anniversary Edition is out now on DVD.

Pictures Credits:

Previous Page: MTC driver Sam Stewart DCS Christopher Foyle and Sargent Paul Milner of Hastings Constabulary 1940. © M.O.I. Above: Sam Stewart and Sqn Ldr Andrew Foyle together circa VE day 1945 © Anne Woods.”