#breach 2007

[evmorfi-a]

فيلم Breach 2007 مترجم HD اون لاين

[my-name-is-bunnyfoxy]

Letting ya'll know that, art trades, art collabs and art requests are open! I lack ideas so if you wanna please give me some. Also this is my poor attempt to interact with artists XD Feel free to DM me or send me an ask.

Note: I'm not gonna promise to draw every single request, or anything like that I get. Mainly since I still have a life. However, I will try as best as I can. Also I'm free to deny an art request and or an trade if it's NSFW, problematic, targetted hate, or I simply just can't draw it lol. Okay that's all.

[pikbro]

what if we kissed in freddy fazbears mega pizzaplex

[schazk]

Guys guys guys guys GUYS

Montgomery Gator x Raphael

It could work so well

They'd be so cute

And if were an AU where Monty’s a mutant, THERE'D BE SO MUCH POTENTIAL

[book--brackets]

Temeraire by Naomi Novik (2006-2016)

DESCRIPTION

Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future – and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire. 

 Capt. Will Laurence is serving with honor in the British Navy when his ship captures a French frigate harboring most a unusual cargo–an incalculably valuable dragon egg. When the egg hatches, Laurence unexpectedly becomes the master of the young dragon Temeraire and finds himself on an extraordinary journey that will shatter his orderly, respectable life and alter the course of his nation’s history.

 Thrust into England’s Aerial Corps, Laurence and Temeraire undergo rigorous training while staving off French forces intent on breaching British soil. But the pair has more than France to contend with when China learns that an imperial dragon intended for Napoleon–Temeraire himself– has fallen into British hands. The emperor summons the new pilot and his dragon to the Far East, a long voyage fraught with peril and intrigue. From England’s shores to China’s palaces, from the Silk Road’s outer limits to the embattled borders of Prussia and Poland, Laurence and Temeraire must defend their partnership and their country from powerful adversaries around the globe. But can they succeed against the massed forces of Bonaparte’s implacable army?

Wayside School by Louis Sachar (1978-2020)

There was a terrible mistake. Wayside School was supposed to have been built with thirty classrooms all next to each other in a row. Instead, it was built with the thirty classrooms all on top of each other - thirty stories high! That may be why all kinds of strange stuff happens at Wayside School. Especially, on the thirteenth floor. It is a school full of unusual characters too. Mrs Gorf the meanest teacher in the world. Terrible Todd who always gets sent home early. John who can only read upside down.

Modern Faerie Tales by Holly Black (2002-2007)

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she drifts from place to place with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces them back to Kaye's childhood home. But Kaye's life takes another turn when she stumbles upon an injured faerie knight in the woods. Kaye has always been able to see faeries where others could not, and she chooses to save the strange young man instead of leaving him to die. 

But this fateful choice will have more dire consequences than she could ever predict, as Kaye soon finds herself the unwilling pawn in an ancient and violent power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms--a struggle that could very well mean her death.

The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist (1982-1986)

My name is Pug. I was once an orphaned kitchen boy, with no family and no prospects, but I am destined to become a master magician...

War is coming to the Kingdom of the Isles from another world, bringing with it chaos and destruction. Pug yearns to train as a warrior and fight for his kingdom alongside his foster-brother, Tomas, but instead he is forced to follow a different path: a path that will lead him right into the heart of the enemy. And one that will change the course of the war - and two worlds - forever.

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (2009-2011)

It is the cusp of World War I, and all the European powers are arming up. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition. The British Darwinists employ fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet. 

 Aleksandar Ferdinand, prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battle-torn Stormwalker and a loyal crew of men. 

 Deryn Sharp is a commoner, a girl disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered. 

 With the Great War brewing, Alek's and Deryn's paths cross in the most unexpected way...taking them both aboard the Leviathan on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure. One that will change both their lives forever.

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede (1985-1993)

Cimorene is everything a princess is not supposed to be: headstrong, tomboyish, smart - and bored. So bored that she runs away to live with a dragon - and finds the family and excitement she's been looking for.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (2020-present)

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.

In an attempt to prove himself a true brujo and gain his family’s acceptance, Yadriel decides to summon his cousin’s ghost and help him cross to the afterlife.

But things get complicated when he accidentally summons the ghost of his high school’s resident bad boy, Julian Diaz – and Julian won't go into death quietly.

The two boys must work together if Yadriel is to move forward with his plan.

But the more time Yadriel and Julian spend together, the harder it is to let each other go.

The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi (2003-2004)

After finding a mysterious, handmade field guide in the attic of the ramshackle old mansion they've just moved into, Jared; his twin brother, Simon; and their older sister, Mallory, discover that there's a magical and maybe dangerous world existing parallel to our own--the world of faerie. 

The Grace children want to share their story, but the faeries will do everything possible to stop them...

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (2012-2015)

Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high.

Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered in suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs, the captain of the Queen's Guard. While they begin to uncover a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect the secret behind her musical gift--a secret so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life.

The Queen's Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (1996-2022)

Gen can steal anything—at least that's the boast he's made in wineshops across the capital city, and this bragging has landed him in the king's prison. His chances of escape look slim—even for someone of his talents. When he is invited to join a quest to steal an object straight out of a legend, he's hardly in a position to refuse.

[sgiandubh]

News from Birmingham, part 4: last tidbits

The Highlanders 7 con ended about one hour ago. Here is the last batch of selected pics from the closing ceremony, immediately sent by the girls.

Same restrictions as yesterday: Mordorians need not apply and no stealing for X or Instagram, please - whoever you might be.

An interesting tidbit was brought by this guy, in his closing speech:

Meet Sean W. Harry, the owner of the Highlanders franchise. He took the time for a special kudos to Steve Himber and he said that when he first got the idea of organizing the convention, he didn't really know where to start. He knew, however, that Himber was 'the Number One in the US for convention casting', contacted him and told him he 'wanted the OL cast' : 'thank you, Steve, none of all this would have been possible without you'.

As mentioned by @misssophie-me, things might be more nuanced, IRL. Thank you for the research, honey and might I add a screenshot of my own, for clarity:

The guy owns two companies, on each US coast: Himber Entertainment Worldwide, in New Jersey and Himber Entertainment, in LA. He introduces himself as a 'talent manager', but I can't understand how and why his number of professional connections is so limited. Perhaps he is just like me, he doesn't like LinkedIn much - go figure:

Himber lost a trial in court, in 2007, against another LA talent manager, Holly Lebed, for 'negligent breach of contract' - no fraud, however, was retained against him:

The above go to show the plaintiff won the case and took the money. Lebed's attorney and Lebed herself, as plaintiff, were served a 'satisfaction of judgment'. This shows they received the money they were owed by Himber, who lost the case. His reputation must have been stellar, afterwards. I bet the farm.

If Himber is 'Number One in the US', I wonder who Lebed is: Number One in the entire galaxy? There is quite a difference in numbers, on LinkedIn:

Remember (LOL for years) this New Jersey convention, in 2018? Granted, it was way before my time, but hey, Internet is forever:

Neither S, nor C could attend (last minute) due to conflicting filming schedules and were replaced by Rankin and Skeleton. Something caught my eye in the very stiff statement released by Himber, at that time. Perhaps it might clarify his status as far as S and C are concerned:

'The booker who coordinated Sam's appearances between his theatrical agents and promoters such as yourself'. For sure, those guys at Creation Entertainment were mightily pissed. Himber's choice of words is peculiar, though and he lends the impression he doth protest too much. This is the kind of statement and the kind of guy that would make many people suspicious.

You make up your own mind. I think there are many things that just begin to make sense, now.

But to end on a somewhat lighter note, remember (LOL for all the rest of the season) this recent pic, at Wimbledon?

Turns out the same guy showed up at the Highlanders Con, as Skeleton's assistant for the autograph session. I have no pic to substantiate, but I was told by our girls he was helping out with post-its, etc. Weird.

Questions, questions.

[hotjaneaustenmenpoll]

Round Three Round Up!

In Round Three we were seeing double as 6 out of our 8 pairs were put against their alternative selves and we asked why not pit two bad bitches against each other ?

In the only match-up where the newer version won out we lost another one of our tournament's Mr Knightleys as you declared that riding through rain, willing to ride through worse was not enough to win your hearts - instead he must have a proper understanding of muslin! And so Mr Tilney (2007) became our first Quarter-finalist.

Mr Knightley (1996) was not alone in taking his leave of us as your votes decided that Johnny Flynn's Mr Knightley (2020) was too blonde badly done compared to Mr Knightley (2009) and must go!

Mr Elliot (2022) will be likely soon spotted in town with a Mrs Clay on his arm as though he may have proved himself the hottest of the Persuasion (2022) men he was no match for Colonel Brandon (1995). Joining him in bad-boy exile is Willoughby (2008) who could not beat the man best known as Emma Thompson's husband leaving Willoughby (1995) as the last libertine standing.

In another win for Sense and Sensibility (1995) Edward Ferrars (1995) proved that while a Wet Shirt scene written by Andrew Davies might have worked once, Dan Stevens chopping wood in the rain was too blonde not enough to prevail against Hugh Grant and the power of being married to Emma Thompson in any universe, real or imagined.

Captain Wentworth (1995) also sailed through against his 2007 counterpart as the voters told us once again that they hated blonde men if it was made in '95 that man was staying alive for another round and so Captain Wentworth (2007) becomes only a gallant Captain Wentworth, in a small paragraph at one corner of the newspapers.

In one of our tightest run polls that went back and forth several times it was Bingley Vs Bingley but in another win for the '95 contingent - the curly hair clinched it and Mr Bingley (1995) proved the victor.

And of course I must end with the biggest poll of the week, breaching the walls of our little tournament to be voted on by 28,987 tumblr users, the poll that ended in a most well deserved 50/50 split, Mr Darcy Vs Mr Darcy. How could anyone vote for THAT Mr Darcy you yelled at each other - HAND FLEX! WET SHIRT! you cried! But when push came to shove despite 14,484 of you declaring that you loved him most ardently 14,503 of you had decided he was the last man on earth who you could ever be prevailed upon to marry and left that wet cat out in the rain. And so, though we offer him a most cordial curtsey we must say goodbye to a very worthy loser Mr Darcy (2005).

Thank you for all the excellent propaganda sent in - I will be taking a days break before putting up the Quarter-final polls, giving you until Thursday to send in any propaganda you want included on the main poll posts and me time to add it! But for now we must once again say...

Farewell Gentlemen!

[sharkposting]

Daily shark day 12:

(The return of daily sharks??)

The Thesher Shark!

Todays shark is the Thresher shark, which are large mackerel sharks of the family Alopiidae and can be found in all temperate and tropical oceans of the world; the family contains three extant species, all within the genus Alopias.

All three thresher shark species have been listed as vulnerable by the World Conservation Union since 2007, their conservancy status is in part do to their popularity as big game sport fish, and additionally they are hunted commercially  for their meat, liver (for shark liver oil), skin (for shagreen) and fins (for use in dishes like as shark fin soup).

Thresher sharks are solitary creatures that keep to themselves. It is known that thresher populations of the Indian Ocean are separated by depth and space according to sex. Some species however do occasionally hunt in a group of two or three, contrary to their solitary nature. All species are noted for their highly migratory (or oceanodromous) habits. When hunting schooling fish, thresher sharks are known to "whip" the water. Their elongated tail is used to swat smaller fish, stunning them before feeding. Thresher sharks are one of the few shark species known to jump fully out of the water, using their elongated tail to propel them out of the water, making turns like dolphins; this behavior is known as breaching.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

Yesterday, a group of “gay furry hackers” known as SiegedSec released 200 gigabytes of leaked data from the Heritage Foundation on their Telegram, a group texting application. “This breach can help shine light on who exactly is supporting Heritage, and also encourage people to fight against them even more than before,” said a member of the group known as “vio” to LGBTQ Nation. “I believe it’s also worth noting, this could help show the amount of support Heritage has that’s provided by malicious users or bots from China,” she said while linking to a thread on X by journalist Jackie Singh, which analyzes the leak’s data.

The leak resulted from a string of hacks carried out by the group’s “#OpTransRights,” which targets groups opposed to trans civil rights. The Heritage Foundation in particular was targeted for its creation of Project 2025, a plan to install ultraconservative policies if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election. Project 2025’s desired policies include strong restrictions on transgender care and denying any legal recognition of trans people’s gender identities.  LGBTQ Nation obtained access to the leaked data. It contains information from between 2007 and 2022, and it focuses primarily around the Heritage Foundation’s news wing, The Daily Signal. The data includes information on commenters’ email and IP addresses, along with information regarding those who had articles posted on the site.

[...] SiegedSec has targeted other groups and individuals earlier this year as part of #OpTransRights, including the ultraconservative outlet Real America’s Voice and a Minnesota church pastor who was accused of transphobia.

Project 2025 architects The Heritage Foundation got targeted by a gay furry hackers collective called SiegedSec. These heroes shined a light on Heritage’s bigoted ways.

See Also:

The Advocate: Gay furry hackers target Heritage Foundation

PinkNews: Heritage Foundation exec rages against ‘degenerate’ Gay Furry Hackers following hack

[eretzyisrael]

By Bassem Eid

Outside obfuscators often try to misplace blame for the suffering onto Israel's "blockade" on the Strip, but a brief consideration of the timeline shows the absurdity of this conceit. Israel unilaterally withdrew all of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005. Within hours, Hamas-aligned looters had stripped bare and destroyed the greenhouses and farms Israel had left behind for local sustenance. In 2007, Hamas seized military control of the strip in a brutal local coup against the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority (PA), throwing its supporters off the roofs of buildings.

Since then, rather than engage in peacemaking and economic development, Hamas, like a Mediterranean North Korea, has diverted all of its resources to warfare. It and its ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), have repeatedly fired rocket salvos into central Israel—in 2008-9, 2012, 2014, and 2021. In October 2023, Hamas breached all precedent with an all-out invasion of Southern Israel, massacring over 1,200 innocents in a single day—including 300 young people at an all-night nature dance party celebrating peace.

Rape, torture, and bodily mutilation were reported on a systemic scale, and over 240 innocents were dragged back to Hamas's terror emirate in Gaza as hostages. Hamas is still holding over 130 of these innocents hostage.

As a human rights activist and a human being, I recognize that it defies all rules of geopolitics, morality, and human nature to suggest that Israel not respond militarily to dismantle Hamas and rescue its people, who we now know are being raped and psychologically tortured in captivity.

And yet, amidst the intensity of the ongoing war, Israel has facilitated the transfer of international aid to Hamas-controlled territory—while Hamas has been seizing these essential supplies and transferring them for military purposes. Hamas has built a massive network of tunnels under the Strip that exceeds the New York subway system in length, where hostages have been kept underground without light and used as human shields to protect terrorist commanders. Hamas's cannibalization of the civilian economy has gone so far as to dig up water pipes and convert them into makeshift rockets to fire into Israeli territory.

[beardedmrbean]

How can we understand the terrible, self-imposed deprivation now gripping the people of Gaza? The heart-wrenching stampede that unfolded in Gaza last Thursday casts a stark light on the brutal reality of life under Hamas's rule. It is a somber reminder of the urgent need to address the suffering of Gaza's people, but it also serves as a crucial moment to clarify the accountability for Gaza's plight.

The chaos and desperation that led to this tragedy are direct outcomes of Hamas's governance, which prioritizes violence and killing Jews over the welfare of its population. The stampede, occurring during an aid distribution, tragically underscores the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Driven by sheer desperation, people found themselves in a deadly crush, a situation that should never occur.

To pave the way for peace and stability for my brothers and sisters in Gaza, it is essential to acknowledge the root causes of their suffering. Hamas's diversion of resources, suppression of dissent, and neglect of civilian needs must end. The international community, along with the Palestinian people, must demand accountability and seek a future where governance prioritizes human dignity, economic opportunity, and peaceful coexistence. Only through addressing these fundamental issues can we hope to prevent such tragedies and build a brighter future for all Palestinians.

As a Palestinian human rights activist deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people and the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that the terrorist group Hamas is responsible for the suffering of Gazans.

Outside obfuscators often try to misplace blame for the suffering onto Israel's "blockade" on the Strip, but a brief consideration of the timeline shows the absurdity of this conceit. Israel unilaterally withdrew all of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005. Within hours, Hamas-aligned looters had stripped bare and destroyed the greenhouses and farms Israel had left behind for local sustenance. In 2007, Hamas seized military control of the strip in a brutal local coup against the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority (PA), throwing its supporters off the roofs of buildings.

Since then, rather than engage in peacemaking and economic development, Hamas, like a Mediterranean North Korea, has diverted all of its resources to warfare. It and its ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), have repeatedly fired rocket salvos into central Israel—in 2008-9, 2012, 2014, and 2021. In October 2023, Hamas breached all precedent with an all-out invasion of Southern Israel, massacring over 1,200 innocents in a single day—including 300 young people at an all-night nature dance party celebrating peace.

Rape, torture, and bodily mutilation were reported on a systemic scale, and over 240 innocents were dragged back to Hamas's terror emirate in Gaza as hostages. Hamas is still holding over 130 of these innocents hostage.

As a human rights activist and a human being, I recognize that it defies all rules of geopolitics, morality, and human nature to suggest that Israel not respond militarily to dismantle Hamas and rescue its people, who we now know are being raped and psychologically tortured in captivity.

Read more

I'm a Palestinian. Hamas Alone Is Responsible for the Blood Shed in Gaza

We Palestinians Must Dump Our Leaders and Accept Israel's Offers for Peace

Hamas Is Committing Terrorism Against My Palestinian Brothers and Sisters

And yet, amidst the intensity of the ongoing war, Israel has facilitated the transfer of international aid to Hamas-controlled territory—while Hamas has been seizing these essential supplies and transferring them for military purposes. Hamas has built a massive network of tunnels under the Strip that exceeds the New York subway system in length, where hostages have been kept underground without light and used as human shields to protect terrorist commanders. Hamas's cannibalization of the civilian economy has gone so far as to dig up water pipes and convert them into makeshift rockets to fire into Israeli territory.

Beyond economic manipulation, Hamas's rule in Gaza is marked by a severe crackdown on political dissent. Opposition and press voices are silenced, often violently, with human rights organizations reporting arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings. LGBTQ+ individuals, and anyone else who defies the harsh religious extremism governing all life in the Strip face torture and execution.

The real victims of Hamas's governance are the ordinary people of Gaza, who endure the consequences of their rulers' bloodthirsty actions. The youth, facing unemployment rates that are among the highest in the world, see their futures evaporate in an economy stifled by mismanagement and artificially exacerbated conflict. The sick suffer from a health care system in disarray, with hospitals overwhelmed and under-resourced, in part due to the diversion of medical supplies to serve Hamas's fighters and the repurposing of these healing spaces into military command centers.

As a Palestinian human rights activist, my loyalty lies with the Palestinian people, whose rights and future have been compromised by a cruel leadership that prioritizes military and terrorist objectives over human welfare. For those of us caught in the middle, the path forward requires an honest confrontation with the reality of our situation.

The plight of Gaza is a wound at the heart of the Middle East, a testament to the failures of an international policy that has foolishly coddled a brutal tyrant and implacable foe. Only by dismantling the governing rule of the irredeemable Hamas can we begin to heal this wound and move toward a future where the rights and dignity of all Palestinians are upheld, and peace and economic development alongside our Israeli neighbors can at last bear fruit for both sides.

Bassem Eid is a Palestinian human rights activist. He lives in the West Bank.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

[teaandmisanthropy]

We had to say goodbye to Snookums a few weeks ago, on August 16, 2024. These are some of the last pictures I have of him.

He was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as a result of (probably) lymphoma and had been losing weight for a couple of months and his digestive system was deteriorating.

He got lots of attention and extra treats at the end of his life, and he lived to the age of fifteen and was a happy, goofy, lazy snugglebug who was full of affection for us and friendly to everybody, including multiple dog acquaintances. He was a devoted, biddable sidekick to the BB (Arwen) (2007-2021) and a wonderful adoptive uncle to Tristana (2020, adopted April 2021-). And despite being a mellow fraidy cat who had always been submissive before, he didn't hesitate to become the senior boss cat and tell off Anubis (who is young and unusually strong and was about half again his size) and actually defended Tristana from Anubis's attempted attacks a few times when he managed to breach containment.

Snookums was my baby, and what you might call my familiar animal or one true cat, from the time we brought him home. He spent three days hiding in a blanket cave in the sauna at our old apartment in Turku and wouldn't eat for over 24 hours, until I finally got him to by feeding him from my hand.

He was afraid of crackling noises and especially plastic bags and loved chasing/ collecting hair elastics and chewing on rubber bands and silicone oven mitts and old wired earbud wires, all of which had to be hidden from him. He loved kisses and his method of kissing was to headbutt you in the head, earning him the nickname "butthead".

He was also the most talkative cat we had ever met when we got him, and used to meet me every time I came home and make a long speech that I referred to as the Kittysburg Address. He purred very loudly and was terrible at cleaning his own claws, which was perhaps partly because he was already missing a couple of the tiny teeth when we got him at age 1.5, but mostly because he was lazy. So he had to have toe gunk cleaned from his claw sheaths basically his whole life and he hated it, but was fundamentally non violent, so the most resistance he ever offered was occasionally squirming in a half hearted escape attempt.

When he was young he also used to wake me up in the middle of the night wanting to play, and I woke up many times back then to find his toys (usually hair bands and silicone oven mitts) in or around the bed. But even when young and irrepressible, Snookums was pretty lazy and spent much more time snoozing and snuggling than the BB, who often ran around bouncing off the walls without him, even though he was her constant companion and playmate.

In later years he got more lazy, as well as becoming more like himself in other ways (snuggly, silly, food-motivated), and he also acquired diabetes, which reduced his energy a lot. But he lived for about six years with his diabetes under control after his diagnosis, and was doing very well recently. The final illness was probably not related to his diabetes.

For many years, actually since he was very young, I used to periodically just start crying while I was holding him in my arms, because I loved him so much. The spectre of losing him someday, even when it was far in the future, was already scaring me. (We got him two years after the death of @waxjism's One True Cat, Lily, so this wasn't out of left field.) Maybe I did some of my grieving in advance. I felt like I didn't have time to grieve right after, but even though the sadness is massive, I have had an easier time adjusting my brain to the new reality than after the loss of past pets. Cornish rexes are very snuggly and affectionate cats and most of them spend a lot of time lying on people's laps, giving out hugs, basically, but Snookums is the only pet I've ever felt was comforting and soothing me just as much with his snuggles as I was soothing him.

[netherfeildren]

FEAR OF GOD: Chapter VIII: The Fisher King

Series Masterlist ; Moodboard

Pairing: Joel Miller x OFC

Summary: Teach me how to ask for forgiveness, even when I know I don’t deserve it. 

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: angst; PTSD; very brief mention of infertility in the first section, description of injury

A/N: Art is Breach by Keith Perelli (2006-2007)

Word Count: 4.2K

Read on AO3

CHAPTER VII: The Fisher King

But still. Still.

Bless me anyway.

I want more life. I can’t help myself. I do.

I’ve lived through such terrible times, and

There are people who live through much worse, but… You see them living

anyway. When they’re more spirit than body, more sores, than skin, when they’re

burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in

the corners of the eyes of their children,

they live. Death usually has to take life 

away. I don’t know if that’s just the animal. 

I don’t know if it’s not braver to die. But I 

recognize the habit. The addiction to being 

alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope

anywhere, that’s it, that’s the best I can do.

It’s so much not enough, so inadequate but

…Bless me anyway. I want more life.

-Tony Kushner, Angels in America

“Do you think you’ve been happy, so far?” you ask her one night. 

“I think so, yes. Have you?” Her answer is immediate. She’d never been one for much indecision – that was always your role.

“Yes. At times. I’ve also been very sad.”

“Me too.” You can hear it now, that sadness, in the quietness of her voice.

“I hope we can be happy in the future. That we’ll be together, always.” The two of you are laying under the stars, hidden in the forest, in your old sleeping bags. She says the trees guard you, keep you safe. If you’d had more experience, you’d have felt very close to death in that moment. 

“We will be. Don’t worry about that.”

“I don’t want either of us to die,” and you can hear how young you sound, how naive. Despite all you’ve been through, you’ve not been able to let go of that part of yourself. When you’re older you will think that, perhaps, that was not such a bad thing. 

“We won’t. That won’t happen.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can. I have a plan. If we stick to it, we’ll be okay.”

“Alright.” Your trust in her is implicit, after all. 

She is very quiet for a while after that, you think she’s fallen asleep, but then suddenly: “You know, I can’t have children.” 

“How do you know?”

“Things were off – Dad was able to run some tests.” That sadness is there again, echoing in her voice, and it is a very painful thing to hear from someone you love so much – someone you know would want that for themselves. 

“I’m sorry.” For there is nothing else to be said in light of such a tragedy for her. She would make a wonderful mother.

“It makes me really sad.” There’s quiet again, for a long time, but then: “I know it’s a terrible world. Not safe – but still… It makes me very sad.” 

“I’ll have one for the both of us. We can share.”

One of the last times you ever hear her laugh – you should have cherished the sound more – branded it in your memory. “I’d like that.”

Beth is dead two days later. 

-

He sits by your sick bed for days. Shrouded in darkness, he lets his fear, his nightmares swallow him whole – the great gaping maw of a monstrous dream come to fruition. He thinks of Sarah’s mother, his ex-wife, for some reason – can’t understand why she comes to his mind in this moment, honestly. He hasn’t thought about her in decades, that woman he’d known so long ago – can hardly remember her face now. It makes him indescribably sad.

He’s trying to prevent his mind from dissociating. To keep himself present, in case you wake, in case you need him. But the sight of you, small and pale and broken. So still. It fractures his mind in a way he cannot understand. The days of you being lost – of his mad flight to find you, out with teams of hunters, combing the forest for any sign of you, the way he’d screamed at Maria and Tommy and Ellie and anyone else who got too close, spoke too loudly. He’d been extremely close to violence, of the unimaginable sort. That terrible last night, his own destruction, flashing over and over and over in his mind, the things he’d said to you. He could not compare the terror to anything else he’d ever experienced before. The pure horror of that being the last memory you’d ever have of him, of coming across your dead, mangled body, of never seeing your bright, unguarded smile again – in decades filled with fear, day in and day out, he now felt he’d been infected with the most unimaginable of diseases. A stabbing, bone melting pain to his mind, his heart, his flesh, again and again, all of his own making. 

This is his fault. He did this to you. Pushed you away. Made you feel like you needed to flee, escape him. He wants to be angry with you for being so stupid, for going out there without him. But how could he not understand it – for what choice did he give you? That you’d prefer to face the monsters out there, rather than the one inside, the one in front of you – rather than him. He thinks he too would rather face the horrors out there, a thousand infected, than face himself. Face his own guilt, his own shortcomings. 

He still isn’t speaking to Maria – can barely look at her. He’d told her if you were dead it’d fall on her head. That he’d blame her for it forever. It was a viciously unfair, nasty thing to throw at her when he’d been the one to push you away, the one to tell you to leave, when this was really all his fault alone. 

He thinks of Tess – how he’d not been able to keep her safe either, all that time ago. A regret so profound, he’s sure he’ll swim in it for the rest of his miserable life. 

Ellie had said sending you away that night had perhaps been the worst thing he’d ever done. The sight of you in this bed proves that fact, and he is filled with a rage so black, so all consuming, it cripples him, will send him to his grave if you don’t come out of this. 

He hasn’t slept in days. Merely closing his eyes to rest his racing mind a few moments at a time. The baby you’d had with you has been with Maria. Tiny, squealing, rageful thing that she is. She only quiets when Maria brings her into your room, lays her beside your sleeping form. As if she knows already, even now, that the best place in the entire world is at your side. He closes his eyes in the quiet interminable moments of waiting and tries to picture Sarah’s mother in his mind. To remember her face. He cannot. There’s only a flash of dark curls. The sound of her voice, gone to time. All he can conjure with clarity is the image of Sarah’s smiling face that last morning he’d spent with her. His most precious memory. Something he exercises in his mind every morning when he wakes, lest, he too, forget that. He wonders if she’s still alive, what happened to her after the outbreak. He hopes she survived – hopes she lived a life not too full of terrible, painful things. Although, he isn’t entirely sure there exists any other version of this life anymore. He hopes he can find it, if it does, and give it to you, if you’ll let him.

He looks back at your resting form. The welts and scrapes that had marred the side of your face are healing well. The swelling receding into angry bruising. Nancy was worried you’d sustained a head injury, as an explanation for your prolonged unconsciousness, but neither the bones in your face, nor your skull were broken. Perhaps only a mild concussion, she thought. It inclined her to believe this was simply a side effect of the blood loss you’d endured from the wound in your side, the exhaustion and trauma.

Joel thinks he might become a religious man after this. Thinks he might start going to church, prostrating himself at the effigy of the cross to thank whatever higher power there exists for bringing you back to him, keeping you alive, allowing him another chance to see that smile, even if it’s never directed at him again. Because that is something else he is terribly afraid of. That his last words to you that night, will be the only thing you’ll ever be able to remember of him. All you’ll ever be able to see of him, going forward. He is so, so afraid of the consequences of his own terrible actions. Terrified that the moment he cast you away will be the only moment the two of you live in together for the rest of your lives.

And he thinks: Joel Miller, you are a man made up of fears. 

-

The first thing you see when you finally open your eyes again are his hands. They’re scarred. Tiny, faded marks of a life past, marring the lines of a map of all his pain, his history. Your body hurts, one large throbbing bruise. But the fire in your shoulder, the muscles of your back and arm, has abated. You say a silent prayer of thanks that you’d been able to keep from straining it more. Any more damage and you’d have probably lost function of the limb entirely.

His eyes are closed, his temple pressed against his fist on the arm of the chair pulled up to your bedside. The house is entirely silent – dark and peaceful. You stretch your legs under the blankets, no terrible amount of pain, and his eyes spring open immediately at the subtle sound of your shifting. So attuned to you, that the mere rustling of the sheets brings him to wakefulness. You watch the dilation of his pupils, everything else frozen in place. Head still resting against his fist, he stares at you wide eyed and unblinking. You take in his face – his eyes are bloodshot and rimmed in the harsh purple bruising of exhaustion. His too long, messy curls lie limply across his forehead. He looks haggard, wrung dry. The most defeated you’ve ever witnessed him. Neither of you say anything as you study the other. He still hasn’t moved and the look in his eyes – afraid, resigned, like you’re a predator about to come in for the kill strike. 

You feel indescribably sad for him, seeing him like this. Brought down low. It’s wrong. Not an image of the Joel you know that should exist in the world. You’re sure you mustn’t look much better. Broken, the both of you, in this shared moment. You slowly start to slide your palm across the bed towards him, and like a flip bringing him back to life, he melts onto the ground from the chair. Coming to kneel on the floor at the edge of the bed, he grasps your outstretched hand and presses his forehead into your palm, his grasp so, so gentle. His other hand snakes up, under the blankets to grip your bare knee in his warm palm, his thumb slowly sweeps over the bend.

His shoulders begin to jerk, in tiny little gasps. He’s crying.

“I was so afraid.” It is choked and guttural, a confession of the highest order, an admission of weakness, a supplication for mercy, for forgiveness. 

You know that his words are all encompassing. He was afraid that night, when the two of you were attacked, when he told you he loved you, when he sent you away, when he couldn’t find you. He’s been afraid for decades, since the moment he met you, since the moment his daughter died. Your heart cleaves in two at the sight of his defeat. The hot slide of his tears through the spaces between your fingers, pooling in the cup of your palm, the liquid feel of them burns you, incites a violence in your heart to rise up at the sight of his suffering, of his pain. But you say nothing. Too weighed down by your own terror, your own pain. 

By the prospect of having to tell him the truth. The secret you’ve been carrying with you, that you’re pregnant. Terrified of his reaction. Of his possible rejection. For it isn’t just you anymore that would feel the loss of him. There’s two, three, of you now. And you’re terrified of having to ask him to bear this with you. Don’t want to have to ask. And part of you knows, is positive, that he’ll be there for you without you ever having to even ask. That there would be no question of it. No other alternative. That if anything else, the man before you is honorable and good – despite his violence, despite his sins, despite his fear, he is good. He would never abandon you to face this alone. But still, you’re afraid. Just as he is, just as he has been. So you say nothing, simply bring your other hand up to cup the back of his bent head. 

There are no words that could fit in the quiet space of your room in that moment – so swollen is it with all your shared fears, all the things left unsaid. You let him cry. 

-

Ellie finds him sitting on his front porch, guitar in hand, strumming gently – a mug sits by his side. There is no fight to be had now, this she knows. Perhaps no reconciliation, either – not at this moment. But there is much to be said, still, or even perhaps, merely silence to be shared. This is her olive branch. In the days since your disappearance, and then since you’d been found, recovering, she’s had a lot of time to think. To consider her choices. 

“Hey.” The look on his face as he watches her walk up guts her – so full of reluctantly glad surprise. 

“What’re you drinking?”

“Coffee.”

Of course. “Where’d you get that?”

“Uh… those people that came through last week. A little embarrassed as to what I had to trade to get it, but … it’s not bad.”

“Oh,” she’s slightly at a loss for what to say, how to continue. Their once easy banter seems so unreachable with so much laying between them. “You need to stop harassing Jesse about my patrols.”

“Okay,” he says succinctly – like he’s not going to take her incendiary bait. He looks away, considering what he’s about to say next. “Dina. Is she your girlfriend?”

And nope, she sure as fuck hadn’t been expecting that one. “No! She – That was just one kiss. It doesn’t mean anything,” she denies, referring to the kiss he’d accidentally witnessed last night when he was on his way home from trying to see you. “She just… I don’t know why she did that.”

He tilts his head contemplatively, gives her a knowing look. “You do like her.”

“I’m so stupid.”

“Look, I have no idea what that girl’s intentions are, but I do know that she would be lucky to have you.”

And she knows she told herself she didn’t come here to fight, but he’s so damn aggravating and nosy, she can’t help it. “You’re such an asshole!”

“I’m not trying to –”

“Just – just leave it.” She snaps, looking out at the dark road. “Have you been in to see her today?” Veering towards less conflictive ground. 

“Nancy didn’t let me in, said they were both restin’.” He drags his hand tiredly over his face, “Haven’t had much of a chance to talk at all.”

“But before… how’s she been?”

“On the mend – tired, I think. Nance said she’s recovering well. But quiet. She– she doesn’t much want to see me, to be honest …” Maria had said you’d been withdrawn. Not really wanting to see anyone besides Nancy and the baby.

“That was – When we couldn’t find her… Scared the fuck out of me.”

He looks down into his mug of coffee, his jaw shifting side to side, “Yeah… yeah. I– it was–” She knows he can’t discuss it, can’t even voice the terror that gripped him at the thought of losing you. Something about the confirmation of knowing how much he loves you, settles something within Ellie. Reinforces the resolve in her heart. 

“Not just for her though. I was scared for you too.” The look he gives her then – she sees that flicker of desolation she was so scared he’d be lost to forever if you’d not come back – if you’d died. There isn’t much left in Ellie that’s overly sentimental, but she could cry at the relief of knowing you’re okay, the both of you. 

“Kate’s cute as fuck,” she smiles. 

“She is… got those big blue eyes.”

“What are you gonna do? With them?”

“Not much I can do, I guess. ‘Cept take care of ‘em. Keep ‘em alive. If she’ll have me…”

“Love them,” she adds, and he hums in agreement, tilting his head a bit. No point in hiding it, he’s gone soft, everyone knows now, might as well embrace it. Put up a sign. “Well,” she continues, “We both know you’re good at doing that, at least,” her eyes are full of laughter, full of memories. “Taking care of misbehaving girls that can’t ever do what they’re told.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, kiddo. You listened sometimes.”

“Yeah…” she chuckles, “You’re right, there was the rare occasion.” Her grin is roguish.. 

“Guess I’ve got enough practice ‘bout now, don’t I?

She goes suddenly serious, “Do you ever feel ashamed? When you remember what you did?” The question is abrupt, as if she wasn’t expecting herself to ask, but couldn't help it. She could be referring to so many things, so many sins. 

He thinks about the day after Sarah died, when he’d been so ready to follow her to whatever end. His mind shies away from the memory – that is shame –  a wound healed over, but still tender if pressed on too harshly. But he considers it now, in light of her question, how the overwhelming feelings driving that choice had been acceptance in that instant. A readiness to be done with all that continuing in a world without his daughter promised. Fate had granted him the opportunity to flinch, a chance he’d then passed on as a gift to Ellie. No matter how she saw it, he’d given her a chance to flinch. Something perhaps, one couldn’t recognize had they never consciously held that cold gun in their hand, pressed it to the tender nook of their temple and looked their own mortality in the face. But he’d given it to her, and not even an entire life of reliving all he’d endured as of yet, could ever, ever make him regret that choice. A parent did what they could to give their child the gift of choice. That was, in the end, the only thing one could do. The gift of choice, something he now had and so arrogantly squandered. Birdie was his choice. Fate had given him a gift once again, now he had to consciously decide to flinch or not. 

“No. Never.” There is no doubt – no room for doubt. “I told you once, if I ever had the chance to do it again, I’d do it exactly the same.” There was a space where one could exist with their sins and not resent them. Joel knew it well now. There was only one road that had led him to this moment, to this place. He could not regret the decisions that’d brought Ellie to this life of peace and safety. That had brought him to your door. You had never felt like a sin. The sight of you, it made him calm, so free. There had been fear, too much of it, but never regret, never shame alongside your name.

“Do you feel ashamed when you hear my name?” he asks her, and he can see the question takes her aback, a second of shock crossing her face. It’s all the answer he needs – for the thought to never have even entered her mind. She shakes her head, sharp and quick, “No.” She pauses, and then says, “Fuck your fear, Joel. If that’s what’s keeping you from her you have to let it go. It’ll be the thing to kill you in the end. Maybe not dead in the ground, but in a worse way.”

“I know…I know, Ellie.”

And so what if he had been afraid? In a world, a life, overrun with the worst possible outcome playing out in real time, what was one more terror? He realized it wasn’t the fear of loss that held him back. It was the fear of himself. Of his own inadequacy, his own monstrousness. Because he’d already lost you. Could feel the current loss of you, your absence, acutely. Like a gaping, putrid wound. The days you’d been missing, that he’d been so fucking terrified that he’d never see you again, that you were dead, as he searched desperately for you – he was already experiencing that which for so long was the reason for his denial. And he could think of nothing now that could be worse than not having you. Of knowing his little bird was existing out in the world and that he couldn’t touch you, hold you, kiss you. Fuck his fear indeed. 

What did it matter if the world was vast and cruel if, in the end, they had one another?

“I struggled a long time with surviving. And no matter what, you keep finding something to fight for, something to be brave for,” he repeats his long ago words to her.

“You keep going for family… And she’s family.”

“Yeah… she is.”

“All this, it can’t have been for nothing.”

“It’s not. It won’t be.”

Existing in a grave for all those years, only to be violently pulled awake by a forest fire of a little girl – it changed the nature of a man. His nature had been changed irrevocably. And he needed to give this new version of himself to you now, in its entirety. And what struck him most was that despite all this, despite all he’d changed, lost and grown, since the start of all this, since Sarah died – who he was hadn’t entirely been determined yet. There was still possibility within him. There was still hope for more. And you saw that, you’d always seen that. 

In a sudden startling way, he could perceive what he was, what he lacked, what he could be. You shared that perception; your vision of him was another gift. What was it about this sudden acute sense of self perception that was so close to madness, and how was it that suddenly, when you realized you were in love, it was as if you were able to see the world as it really was? Cordyceps had blanketed the earth in a film of death that he now saw in spectrums. There was a spectrum to death as it existed in the world, as what you allowed it to shape itself, and you, as. How did you perceive death – loss? How did you let it affect you when it inevitably touched your life? Was it to overwhelm you – or exist alongside you as simply another phenomena of nature? He could exist on that spectrum set about by nature or he could break free from it. Cordyceps – and all humanities’ basest desires it catered to – could go on existing, could continue to subjugate the world to its will, but he would break free from that subjugation of fear, of death, of failure, he would live his life now as he chose to. He could perceive with such clarity now what was real and what was not. His little bird was real and alive and waiting for him. This was no delusion, no farcical whim; it was a glance down into time – into the realities he’d once known and lived in, a world before calamity and fungus and dead little girls – and it wore the staggeringly beautiful face of you, a glance at the woman he loved. 

“She’s angry with me. I– I hurt her.”

“Hmm… True… but she isn’t like us… she’s good. Kind. She’ll forgive you. She understands you.”

“Perhaps,” he says, but he isn’t sure, is terrified of the alternative, will try and make it up to you for the rest of his life if you need him to. 

“Maybe time’ll be the thing to heal this wound” 

He pauses at that, “It wasn’t time that healed it… remember?” The memory of their past hangs, once again, heavy in the air, but perhaps now, in this moment, a bit lighter than before. 

She shakes her head, gives him a small smile, “I remember.”

 She’s quiet for a moment, pensive. He’d missed her so much. This easy casual nothingness between the two of them. Just being together, talking. And as he takes her in, her chin tipped to the breeze, eyes closed, he thinks: if he could have done it all again, he would have loved her better. Perhaps made better choices. But he could not have loved her more. 

How broken, how small he must have been, just a short time ago, to have found that thought so difficult to confess, even just to himself. 

“Go find her, Joel. Tell her what you need to tell her.”

Chapter IX

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

[thebrightestwitchofherage]

Ok here are some facts since y’all really need them,

Please actually read this whole post before commenting / sending me ✨death threats ✨

People here are not separating Hamas and the Palestinian people. The people who attacked Israel are Hamas.

The forces involved

-Hamas is a terror organisation. Simple as that. They’re not heroic resistance fighters. They take, kidnap and murder innocent people (children, women, elderly).

-Hamas is a “selfish” organisation, funneling money for weapons used against Israel- instead of helping its people like we all wish would happen.

What happened in October 7th?

-On Saturday morning, hundreds of terrorists breached the Gaza border ,

With the intention to kill as many Israeli they can.

-They’re an organised army force. They split into teams and attacked different cities close to the border.

-They barricaded houses, burned them down so people would come out- only to shoot them.

They went door to door and murdered everyone inside. They fired ROG rockets on bomb shelters were people were hiding.

-They laughed and played songs while raping and killing partygoers at a rave that soon became a massacre.

The aftermath

-Thousands were injured, an estimated total of 900 were murdered. approximately 100-150 are kidnapped. And so many more are missing.

Over 5,000 thousand rockets were fired.

* these numbers are up to today’s date, October 10th.

-people found out that their loved ones were kidnapped or killed through live streams the terrorists posted.

- The survivors of the attacks are now starting speaking up, please hear their stories.

Some more facts

No military operations besides defensive ones happened recently. Contrary to popular belief,

We don’t go around killing innocent people.

-Israel has no presence in Gaza since 2005. All Israelis were removed.

-in fact, since 2007 Gaza is controlled by Hamas.

Which is funded by other terror organisations and Iran. Their goal is to eradicate all Jewish people living in Israel.

-Israel has the right to defend itself, especially after the crimes that were committed against its civilians .

-There are many reasons why Israel should exist, I’m not going to name them. We’re not colonisers or settlers.

The fact the American people commented this on my post is just baffling.

-Educate yourself.

Use of buzzwords like genocide

-Especially before throwing around buzzwords like “genocide” ,”apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing”.

None of these describe the situation at hand.

-In fact, The amount of Palestinians have quadrupled since 1948. That’s literally the opposite of what you are all claiming that is happening.

-Genocide (and the rest of the things I mentioned) requires a will to eractide an entire population . This is not the case.

Obviously, the Palestinians are suffering. We all know and agree on that.

This doesn’t justify the horrific attacks that were carried out on October 7th.

Ps

In reply to comments on my previous post

-Whatever happened before doesn’t rule out the fact that Israelis deserve to be safe as well.

-Nobody deserves to be woken up to a home invasion, where you are rounded up and killed.

-No one deserves to be kidnapped behind enemy lines after this , to be raped and killed. They kidnapped a 4 month old baby. Does he deserve that?

*****

I will block death threats. I will block rude messages. My people are suffering, and so am I.

עם ישראל חי 🇮🇱

ישראלים- הגיע הזמן לכתוב פה את המציאות מהצד שלנו.

[justforbooks]

Christina Hendricks

The star of Good Girls discusses Mad Men, sexual harassment and squaring her glamorous reputation with her ‘weird, goofy’ personality

Christina Hendricks appears on our video call with the most dramatic backdrop. Art deco gold peacocks bedeck a black wall, making her look, as she has so often in her career, a bit too good to be human. Perfectly poised, perfectly framed, perfectly lit, she is more like a dreamy vision of what humans look like. “I, erm, like your wall,” I say, pointlessly. She flashes a smile, as if to say: “Obviously.”

We are here primarily to discuss the comedy-drama series Good Girls, the fourth season of which will resume in the US this month after a midseason break. The elevator pitch would be Breaking Bad for girls: three suburban women, each hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, unite to embark on a life of cack-handed crime, only to discover they are good at it. The ensemble – Hendricks, Mae Whitman, who plays her sister, and Retta, their friend – works strikingly well, their pacey comic rapport instilling a sense of perpetual motion. You just can’t imagine Good Girls ending. Every time a plot line seems to be reaching its climax, something worse – and funnier – happens.

“It’s funny you say that, because originally, when I read the pilot script, I thought: ‘I love this, but I can’t imagine this being more than one episode,’” says Hendricks. “It felt like it finished itself.” She is unsentimental about it. Hendricks wasn’t looking for a new show – “I was happy doing films, taking my time” – but went into it with her eyes open. It is a network drama, for NBC – it is shown on Netflix in the UK – so producers are always aware that “it’s going into every house in the US on a Thursday or a Sunday and a family is watching it. They’re much more careful about numbers and advertisers and people being offended or not getting it. A cable show is much more: ‘We trust this creator – they’re a visionary.’”

It has a conventional tone – however dark the material, it is handled very lightly. Yet you can’t help but notice some hard-boiled social commentary from the off – if it weren’t for the bracingly callous US health system, the generation of wage-stagnation casualties and the patriarchy, none of the characters would have gone anywhere near a supermarket heist. More than Breaking Bad, it reminds me of Roseanne and the golden age of US mainstream comedy, when you could be poor on TV without that being a breach of good taste.

The 48-year-old has been a household name for almost 15 years, thanks to Mad Men. She was born in Tennessee, where her mother was a psychologist and her father worked for the Forest Service, and educated in Oregon and then Idaho. She didn’t have time for formal acting training; by the time she was 18, her modelling career had taken off. Later, when she had a manager, she took acting lessons: “I did that for almost a year and a half and put auditions on ice. Then I was watching a film – I don’t even remember what film it was or who was in it – and I thought: ‘I’m ready. I can do this.’” She has the most insistent work ethic; as she describes her life’s trajectory, she notes diligently the jobs she had while she was at high school, at a hair salon and a menswear shop.

In 2007, she appeared as Joan Holloway in Mad Men. She played the role for the next eight years, her character growing around the depth she brought to it, until by season seven she was almost the central part. In the early 2010s, Hendricks was talked about constantly, although she says the original focal points of obsession were the male characters: “Men started dressing like Don Draper and Roger Sterling. Suits came back in, skinny ties came back in. It took three to four seasons and then all of a sudden people wanted us [the female stars] on magazines. We were like: ‘This is strange – we’ve been doing this for a while.’”

Hendricks, along with January Jones, who played Betty Draper, came to represent so much. There was a great deal of rumination on their physicality, Jones as elegant as an afghan hound, Hendricks like the pin-up painted on the side of a bomber. What did it mean, people asked, that in the middle of the 20th century there were multiple ideals of the female form, whereas in the 21st century there was only one? How did that complicate the perception of gender equality as a steady march towards the light? Thousands of column inches went on that question – but, from the actor’s perspective, it was an annoying distraction. “There certainly was a time when we were very critically acclaimed, and getting a lot of attention for our very good work and our very hard work, and everyone just wanted to ask me about my bra again. There are only two sentences to say about a bra,” she says.

The signal impression the show left was of an ensemble at the peak of its creativity: actors, writers and the creator, Matthew Weiner, working in almost telepathic unison. It won the Emmy for outstanding drama series four times in a row, but the more notable year was 2012, when it was nominated for 17 Emmys (and didn’t win any of them). The take-home was: everyone involved with this is absolutely brilliant.

That harmonious picture was blurred two years after the show ended, when one of the former writers, Kater Gordon, accused Weiner of sexual harassment. Marti Noxon, a consulting producer on Mad Men, concurred that Weiner had created a toxic environment and said that he was an “‘emotional terrorist’ who will badger, seduce and even tantrum in an attempt to get his needs met”.

Hendricks takes this head on, in a considered, straightforward manner. “My relationship with Matt was in no way toxic,” she says. “I don’t discount anyone’s experience if I wasn’t there to see it, but that wasn’t my experience. Was he a perfectionist, was he tough, did he expect a lot? Yes. And he would say that in a second. We were hard on each other.”

It is impossible, from this distance, to adjudicate on Weiner’s character, but Hendricks’s response reveals something of hers. The easiest response in this situation, and the one 90% of actors give, is: “No comment.” Hendricks is always collected, never evasive, doesn’t gabble. She reminds me powerfully of Joan Holloway – and I am sorry to say it, because she insists throughout: “I’m an actress. I am completely not Joan. Not in any way. I wish I was more like Joan.”

I wonder if, while we were all fixating on Joan’s bras and whether or not, in the asinine words of Lynne Featherstone, the UK’s equalities minister in 2010, she represented a “curvy role model”, the audience was responding to Joan’s deeper life lesson – that self-possession is 9/10ths of the law.

What Hendricks emphatically doesn’t do is minimise the existence of sexism and sexual harassment in the industry: “Boy, do you think anyone in the entertainment industry comes out unscathed and not objectified? I don’t know one musician or one model or one actor who has escaped that. I have had moments – not on Mad Men; on other things – where people have tried to take advantage of me, use my body in a way I wasn’t comfortable with, persuade me or coerce me or professionally shame me: ‘If you took your work seriously, you would do this …’

“Maybe it was my modelling background, but I knew to immediately get on the phone and go: ‘Uh oh, trouble,’” she says. “That’s where it’s very much a job. We need to talk to the producers and handle this professionally.”

Yet, at the same time, she is defensive of her industry. “It gets a lot of attention because people know who we are. I’m sure there’s a casting couch at the bank down the street, I’m sure the same thing happens in management consultancy, but people don’t know who the management consultants are.”

Modelling always sounds like a harsh environment – predatory photographers vying with stringent agents to give everyone a complex about their thighs and stop them eating carbs. But that is not how Hendricks describes it at all. Her career sounds like one out of an 80s Judy annual: innocent and hearty, good for pin money and travel opportunities. “I think I was lucky – I didn’t start when I was 14. When I was about 18 or 19, I went to Japan for the first time, I went to Italy. We’d be lots of girls, sharing a house, and I sort of became the den mother. I’d make everyone egg salad sandwiches and Greek salads, going into this mother hen role.”

That is what they say about being taken hostage: if you want to survive, choose someone to look after. “Oh,” she says, coolly. “I wouldn’t consider being a model as being a hostage.”

She was only ever medium-successful, she insists – an “unusual and quirky” hire, rather than the slam-dunk face of everything. About as far as it went was that she never had to get another job to supplement her income. Probably the most famous image of that era in which she was involved was the poster for American Beauty. Two models were in the frame, so they took a photo of the stomach and the hands of each. In the end, they used Hendricks’s hand on the other model’s stomach. It sounds like a clunky metaphor, but it is true.

During this period, she moved to London with a friend, for the hell of it, living in a flat on Gloucester Road, “surviving on cider and hummus”. It is a glimpse of the oddball she says she was growing up, the outsider as whom she is rarely cast. This has been the story of her CV. “Early on in my career, I would get auditions and I would call my manager and say: ‘I would never cast me in this – she’s a cheerleader, she’s a bimbo. Can I audition for the other one, the weird doctor?’ And they’d be like: ‘No, they saw your picture.’ And I started realising that people didn’t see the weird, goofy me that I saw.”

She made the jump from modelling to acting via adverts, with what looks like fairytale ease. In fact, it was “a lot of pounding the pavement and showing up for auditions and getting rejected – and learning, as a young woman, to not take that personally”. By the late 90s, she was the face of ultimate female confidence, the woman who drinks Johnnie Walker and doesn’t need a chauffeur (these are two ads, not one for drink-driving). “I always thought of modelling as freeze-frame acting. It felt like a scene, and I still consider it that way. There are so many technical things that I think people don’t notice. They see you playing dress-up.”

From the commercials, she learned “how to hit a mark, how to memorise a line”, but acting wasn’t novel. She had been doing community theatre since the age of 10, and grew up expecting an alternative life, supplementing an art-house existence any which way. She never amplifies her creative urges. She is much happier talking about professionalism and graft, but that is strategic more than anything else. “I am incredibly emotional and I take things very personally. But I’ve learned to be a little bit of a politician and a little bit of a producer along the way. As a female actor, the easy go-to is: ‘She was emotional, she was hysterical.’ It can be a million other people’s fault, but it’s easy to point your finger at an emotional artist. So, I realised: if I’m going to be taken seriously, I need to have professional perspective and I can cry about it to my friends later.”

Yet she cares deeply about creativity, as is clear when she talks about Mad Men. “It may eclipse anything I ever did. And, if it does, it was a good one and I’m proud of it,” she says. “I got to bring who I was as a woman. I think I learned some of how to be a woman from Joan. No one would give a shit about me if it wasn’t for that show. I’d still be doing good work, but no one would have found me. If that’s the best thing I ever do, it was pretty good.”

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[mbrainspaz]

The only thing that's made watching most of the whole season of Dresden Files (2007) bearable is imagining a universe breach situation where the real Harry Dresden ends up getting his hands on a copy of this show. Butters and the wolf pack stop by the castle unannounced and find him yelling "THAT'S NOT HOW MAGIC WORKS!" at the screen during episode 2 so of course they demand to stay. Bob sides with them and refuses to play episode 3 until everyone is settled in with popcorn. Someone secretly dials Mac and he shows up with a cooler. Bob hits 'play' and Harry watches through his fingers. Billy is the first to fall off the couch laughing when TV!Harry raises his hockey stick staff. By episode 5 they have to take a break to assure Bob that he's cooler and sexier than Ghost Bob. Everyone yells 'BOOOO' whenever the Jeep is on screen. Someone throws a popcorn bowl at Justin's face after they find out he killed Harry's dad. Georgia puts a hand on Harry's knee and whispers a worried, 'that's not true, right?' Harry just rolls his eyes. They all drink a toast to Murphy even though they agree that Karrin would've hated 'Connie' Murphy. They marathon the whole series that night. Nobody teases Harry after episode 12, which is just as well because he's barely holding it together. "That was...," Bob starts, but his voice fades out. "Terrible," says Mac. There's a tired chorus of agreement. Harry thinks that's the end of it until a ribbon-wrapped hockey stick appears on his doorstep a few days later.