#everyone is a potential enemy. even his nearest and dearest.

[autisticandroids]

CASTIEL: If I knew then what I know now, I might have said, it's simple. Freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.

[watch on youtube]

a season six anxiety attack. they're gonna eat him alive.

[dannymillerfansite]

EMMERDALE SPOILERS: AARON’S HEARTBROKEN SAYS ACTOR DANNY MILLER

Aaron Dingle takes on ‘cousin’ Mandy when she takes advantage of  the Dingle clan. With Robron coming to an emotional end, Emmerdale actor Danny Miller talks about his new feud and filming Robron’s final scenes…

You’d think with all the turmoil going on in Robron’s lives at the moment the last thing Aaron Dingle would want to do is get embroiled in someone else’s drama – think again! His new nemesis is none other than Mandy Dingle!

Since arriving back in the village, Mandy has been sponging off Aaron’s nearest and dearest – Chas and Paddy, Marlon and Uncle Zak. But when Chas discovers a bag full of stolen casino chips, Aaron steps in. Actor Danny Miller explains more…

“Aaron takes an instant disliking to Mandy when she comes back,” Danny says. “When he finds out from Chas that she’s nicked this bag of casino chips, he wants to knock her down a peg or two, because she’s been asking Paddy, Marlon and Zak for money and the whole time, she has this money in her pocket. Aaron decides to give her a taste of her own medicine, taking the chips off her and takes them to a friend who works in a casino to cash in the chips.”

“Aaron is trying to have as much as fun as he can with Robert. They enjoy having some money in their pocket, especially as they don’t have long left together…”

Given the troubled times ahead for Aaron and Robert, could Aaron be adding to their worries by making an enemy of Mandy. Will she break the Dingle code and retaliate?

“Aaron doesn’t really care that Mandy is experienced in these kind of situation, or if she knows the right people in these situations,” adds Danny. “If anything he’s testing how far he can push her. He doesn’t like his family being mugged off and for that reason he decides to teach her a lesson.

“The pub is closed so Chas is struggling for money, Zak needs a few quid, so in his head the logic is he’s going to nick it, give Mandy a share, pay everyone else in the family, and keep some for him and Robert. He knows she can’t go to the police about it because she’d be dobbing herself in.”

Meeting at the scrapyard, Aaron gives Mandy a dressing down for how she’s treated the family. When he reveals that he’s taking a commission, Mandy goes berserk. A heated argument leads to Aaron ‘accidentally’ dropping the bag of money into the fire pit. Mandy and Vinny are distraught, but is all as it seems? Who has Mandy stolen the money from and will that in turn bring trouble to the Dingle’s door?

“As you can imagine £18,000 cash going in the fire, nobody is going to be best pleased,” quips Danny. “But she’s fuming because she needs the money for something unbeknown to Aaron.

“Aaron just thinks she’s ripping off his family, even though she is family, and he wants to knock her down a peg or two. You can’t come back to the village and think you run this family. he really gives it to her.

“As far as the Dingles are concerned its just the casino that’s out of pocket – but then again I don’t know who owns the casino…”

For Danny, this is the first time he’s got to work with Lisa Riley, who plays Mandy and it seems the two have plenty in common.

“She’s brilliant,” he enthuses. “Someone said she’s the female version of Danny Miller. We got off on the right foot from the start and it bodes well for the future because I love working with her and her character. Aaron and Mandy seem to play off each other really well. I’m a big fan of Lisa’s. Thought she was brilliant in Three Girls and when I went over to Scott and Bailey, the production team sent me her episode to get a feel for the show, and she was brilliant in that.

“I feel very blessed I get to work with Lisa Riley. Her enthusiasm and joy for the job is amazing. I can’t believe I’m getting to work with her. She won’t thank me for saying this but I used to watch her as a kid on You’ve Been Framed, and now we’re actually friends!”

With Robert Sugden’s departure hurtling towards us and the end of the #Robron era, does this mean we’ll see more of Aaron with other members of the Dingle clan?

“Definitely,” Danny exclaims. “Often, because of Robert and Aaron’s partnership, they seem to be inseparable on screen and in their stories which is great for me and Ryan, but we also like to spread your wings and do other things and have our own sense of individuality on the show. I don’t know what’s coming up for the Dingles but I’ll be back working with Jeff Hordley again. Cain and Aaron have always worked really well together, there’s a hidden love there for each other, so working with Jeff again will be incredible. I’m looking forward to him having a bit of rebellion and seeing how Aaron’s life unfold a bit now that he’s lost his one true love.

So how is Aaron feeling in general with Robert’s potential prison sentence looming? Is he is as worst state as the Robron fans?

“He’s heartbroken,” Danny sympathises. “He knows the core of his family will just be ripped away from him. It’s almost inevitable that Robert’s going to prison but we don’t know how long it will be for at this point. He knows he’s going to lose the love of his life but he’s also going to lose him to the worse possible way, which is behind bars.

“Aaron’s been there and done that and we all saw how terribly wrong that went, the mistakes that he made and the impact it had on his family. He’s worried Robert may go down that same route and what it might mean for the relationship. Does he wait for Robert; does Robert wait for him. He’s confused and desperate to cling on to as much love and happiness as he can whilst he’s here.

“In a nutshell, he’s utterly devastated but he’s putting on the bravest of faces to try and not show Robert he’s going to struggle while he’s inside. He’s grabbing every minute with Robert while he can.”

The Robron fandom is a powerful force, with many friendships formed, fundraising for charity, brilliant fan art, fan fiction, etc so the news of the end of an era was always going to be hard. So what’s Danny made of the fan reaction since Ryan’s departure was announced?

“I’d honestly say that for the first time, it’s split down the middle 50/50,” Danny says. “People are angry and upset that the couple are coming to an end and they don’t understand that it’s a decision that every actor should take at some point – to go out there and spread their wings and unfortunately with that you lose the character. And then other people are excited to see what Ryan gets up to and thanking the couple for the stories they’ve told over the past four or five years. That’s the most important thing to the fans, the representation of the couple and the representation of them being two best mates who just happen to be madly in love with each other. As the old saying goes ‘love is love’ and it doesn’t matter who it is with.

“They’ve had some great stories together – breaking up, getting back together, doing stupid things, one night stands, and all that kind of stuff and I think people will miss that and I’ll miss that because I’m also losing a friend as well as my co-star. It’s quite a sad time really but I’m excited for Ryan. I think he’ll do really well and he might be back in a couple of years or that might be it for Ryan at Emmerdale and he’ll go off and do amazing things. Time will tell but all we can do now is tell a story to the best of our abilities to keep a little bit of a surprise even though people know he’s leaving.

Most fans are already dreading the inevitable final scene but imagine being Ryan and Danny! Will those final Robron scenes be weird to film?

“We’ve done a lot of the goodbye, upset ones, and there was real raw emotion in there for both Ryan and myself,” admits Danny. “There was a very emotional scene when I speak to him for the first time when he’s in prison, and at that point I realised it was real and this is actually happening and there were some genuine tears. We’ve been very close Ryan and I over the past four years. It won’t be the same without him but the show goes on and we’ll have to wait and see what happens to Aaron…

After losing Kelvin Fletcher (Andy Sugden), Adam Thomas (Adam Barton), and now Ryan Hawley, Danny’s yet to find a new bromance but its his on-screen sister who he is closest to now.

He explains: “I’m very close to Isobel Steele (Liv Flaherty) and her family and vice versa. I’m often round at her house, we’ve got a really solid friendship there.

When I saw Isobel in the audition I instantly knew she’s going to be a superstar, and we need her, we have to have her here before she gets older and goes off to do more amazing things. Kate Oates, then producer, was in total agreement. Kate said: ‘You need to guide Isobel in the right way and help her out.’ But, I would never tell her what to do but just say this is my advice from my experience and this is what I did wrong. This girl’s got the head and shoulders of an older woman, she’s very clever and talented. All I ever wanted to do is push her on and give her the confidence to express herself and show how good she really is. Now, she’s not afraid to suggest extra little lines or ways to develop a scene. If I’ve had anything to do with it I’m very proud of her, but she’s done it herself, she’s very switched on.

“Also, Lucy Pargeter and Dominic Brunt are my go-to’s – Jeff Hordley and Mark Charnock as well. Those I work the most and closest with. I came in to Emmerdale when I was a kid and every one of them looked after me and mentored and nurtured me in to the business and in to the job. I can’t thank them enough for it.”

Interview by  The Emmerdaily

[firsthopemedia]

The Cult of the Narcissist FIRST HOPE MEDIA The narcissist is the guru at the centre of a cult. Like other gurus, he demands complete obedience from his flock: his spouse, his offspring, other family members, friends, and colleagues. He feels entitled to adulation and special treatment by his followers. He punishes the wayward and the straying lambs. He enforces discipline, adherence to his teachings, and common goals. The less accomplished he is in reality - the more stringent his mastery and the more pervasive the brainwashing. The - often involuntary - members of the narcissist's mini-cult inhabit a twilight zone of his own construction. He imposes on them a shared psychosis, replete with persecutory delusions, "enemies", mythical narratives, and apocalyptic scenarios if he is flouted. The narcissist's control is based on ambiguity, unpredictability, fuzziness, and ambient abuse. His ever-shifting whims exclusively define right versus wrong, desirable and unwanted, what is to be pursued and what to be avoided. He alone determines the rights and obligations of his disciples and alters them at will. The narcissist is a micro-manager. He exerts control over the minutest details and behaviours. He punishes severely and abuses withholders of information and those who fail to conform to his wishes and goals. The narcissist does not respect the boundaries and privacy of his reluctant adherents. He ignores their wishes and treats them as objects or instruments of gratification. He seeks to control both situations and people compulsively. He strongly disapproves of others' personal autonomy and independence. Even innocuous activities, such as meeting a friend or visiting one's family require his permission. Gradually, he isolates his nearest and dearest until they are fully dependent on him emotionally, sexually, financially, and socially. He acts in a patronising and condescending manner and criticises often. He alternates between emphasising the minutest faults (devalues) and exaggerating the talents, traits, and skills (idealises) of the members of his cult. He is wildly unrealistic in his expectations - which legitimises his subsequent abusive conduct. The narcissist claims to be infallible, superior, talented, skilful, omnipotent, and omniscient. He often lies and confabulates to support these unfounded claims. Within his cult, he expects awe, admiration, adulation, and constant attention commensurate with his outlandish stories and assertions. He reinterprets reality to fit his fantasies. His thinking is dogmatic, rigid, and doctrinaire. He does not countenance free thought, pluralism, or free speech and doesn't brook criticism and disagreement. He demands - and often gets - complete trust and the relegation to his capable hands of all decision-making. He forces the participants in his cult to be hostile to critics, the authorities, institutions, his personal enemies, or the media - if they try to uncover his actions and reveal the truth. He closely monitors and censors information from the outside, exposing his captive audience only to selective data and analyses. The narcissist's cult is "missionary" and "imperialistic". He is always on the lookout for new recruits - his spouse's friends, his daughter's girlfriends, his neighbours, new colleagues at work. He immediately attempts to "convert" them to his "creed" - to convince them how wonderful and admirable he is. In other words, he tries to render them Sources of Narcissistic Supply. Often, his behaviour on these "recruiting missions" is different to his conduct within the "cult". In the first phases of wooing new admirers and proselytising to potential "conscripts" - the narcissist is attentive, compassionate, empathic, flexible, self-effacing, and helpful. At home, among the "veterans" he is tyrannical, demanding, wilful, opinionated, aggressive, and exploitative. As the leader of his congregation, the narcissist feels entitled to special amenities and benefits not accorded the "rank and file". He expects to be waited on hand and foot, to make free use of everyone's money and dispose of their assets liberally, and to be cynically exempt from the rules that he himself established (if such violation is pleasurable or gainful). In extreme cases, the narcissist feels above the law - any kind of law. This grandiose and haughty conviction leads to criminal acts, incestuous or polygamous relationships, and recurrent friction with the authorities. Hence the narcissist's panicky and sometimes violent reactions to "dropouts" from his cult. There's a lot going on that the narcissist wants kept under wraps. Moreover, the narcissist stabilises his fluctuating sense of self-worth by deriving Narcissistic Supply from his victims. Abandonment threatens the narcissist's precariously balanced personality. Add to that the narcissist's paranoid and schizoid tendencies, his lack of introspective self-awareness, and his stunted sense of humour (lack of self-deprecation) and the risks to the grudging members of his cult are clear. The narcissist sees enemies and conspiracies everywhere. He often casts himself as the heroic victim (martyr) of dark and stupendous forces. In every deviation from his tenets he espies malevolent and ominous subversion. He, therefore, is bent on disempowering his devotees. By any and all means. The narcissist is dangerous.

[themachiavellianpig]

The Walking Dead, Episode 11: Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Hilltop

Episode 11 of The Walking Dead, and we get to see characters! Talking to each other! Being good at communicating and also fighting! (Look, one day I’ll be over this development, but it is not this day.) 

More specifically, we get to see what happens when a horde shambles into town, Eugene definitely makes a new friends, and there’s so many heartwarming character moments that I am genuinely terrified about who’s going to die next week. 

Full review and spoilers below. 

The episode opens with the Whisperers getting ready for some sort of hijinks - Beta angrily stabs a tree until sap starts coming out, and Alpha gets Negan to cane her. The indulgence in physical chastisement isn’t particularly new or surprising for the Whisperers - what is interesting is the look on Negan’s face when he actually strikes Alpha. 

Now, this is the man who, ten years or so earlier, held red-hot irons to people’s faces and beat randomly-selected victims to an actual pulp in front of their nearest and dearest. He is not a man who you would expect to be uncomfortable with violence, hence his most interesting discomfort. 

Maybe it’s just because he can’t see the point of this violence - his violence was always public, a spectacle designed to act as education and deterrent for all involved, so a private caning session might be out of character. Maybe it’s because he’s just not used to any sort of violence anymore, after so many years farming and helping Judith with maths homework. 

But, regardless of his hesitation (the first real hesitation, I would argue, we’ve seen from him since he joined the Whisperers), he beats Alpha, is beaten in return, and is rewarded with his very own Whisperer mask, standing by Alpha’s side as she leads her army of the undead out to cause some trouble. 

Interestingly, Negan also tries to get Alpha to tone down her plans for Hilltop and Alexandria - to break the communities and make them surrender rather than just massacring all of them. Again, is this because of a genuine desire to save lives or just because he’d rather see his captors humiliated than killed? I’d really like it to be the former, but we all know that I don’t always get what I want from this show. 

The army of undead shambling towards Hilltop is, thankfully, spotted in time by Daryl and Lydia, who have been out trying to find a way back to Connie and Magna - Kelly’s remaining surprisingly level-headed in the face of her sister’s ongoing disappearance, but does have a moment of anger when Yumiko more or less admits that she’s not expecting to see either of the women alive again. 

But that concern, and those of Earl (who’s been raising Adam, the little Whisperer baby, alone since his wife’s murder at the hands of Alpha, and who doesn’t want Mary-the-Former-Whisperer anywhere near his little ward), are all pushed aside in favour of deciding whether to stay and fight, or run and hide. 

The compromise - to evacuate the kids at least - is a delightfully smart and reasonable one, and the sight of little RJ climbing into a wagon with his sister’s hat and Uncle Daryl’s vest on his tiny shoulders was flat-out adorable. Unfortunately, RJ doesn’t get his fun holiday to the safety of Oceanside because the roads are all blocked in a move entirely reminiscent of Negan’s redirecting of the gang way back at the end of Season 6 - as Daryl immediately puts together. 

With the ways out blocked, and no way to get anyone else in place in time to make a difference, Hilltop has to stand and fight - no question about it. 

Meanwhile, in between the fears for the future, Eugene is continuing his long-distance flirtation with the mysterious Stephanie via radio-links. It’s adorable, genuinely adorable, and it was admittedly working really well to quieten down my concerns over the whole “don’t tell anyone about these conversations” thing - although the fact that Stephanie then asks Eugene to meet her somewhere without telling anyone about that either immediately set off all my Teacher-Safeguarding-CyberSafety alarms. 

Their interactions are temporarily derailed by Rosita finding the unattended radio and trying to speak to Stephanie - in direct contravention of the “no one else can know” rule. Stephanie freaks out and stops responding, while Eugene snaps at Rosita to, essentially, mind her own business. 

Eugene later opens up a little bit more to Rosita, telling her the bare bones and voicing some of his concerns about the potential of such a relationship. Rosita, for obvious reasons, can’t really comment on the intentions of a voice on the other end of radio, but she does help Eugene figure out that, actually, he is pretty serious about Stephanie - certainly serious enough to knock his lingering attraction to Rosita squarely on its ass, which is a bit of relief for everyone involved, I’d imagine.

He then gets Stephanie to pick up the radio again by singing to her - a move which was way sweeter than I imagined, even as it played over the sights of Hilltop preparing for the kind of noble last stand that you normally see in old black-and-white war films. It works! The two set a date and a location for a face-to-face meeting - here’s hoping it’s a date that Eugene doesn’t miss due to unexpected death. 

In their maybe-final-afternoon, Carol and Ezekiel “reconnect” (*coughcough*) after Ezekiel admits that his health isn’t actually all that great, and Carol and Lydia had a weird little moment, the daughter of a monster talking openly with the mother who lost a son to that very same monster - even the admission that Carol will kill Alpha, not even to save others but just because it will feel good, isn’t enough to make Lydia hate someone who already seems to hate themselves so much.  

Alden, former boyfriend of Enid and surrogate son to Earl, is in a far less accepting mood, and snaps at Mary when she comes to see Adam - despite the genetic factor, Alden rejects her as any relation of Adam, pointing out that she and the Whisperers abandoned Adam. It’s an argument which isn’t likely to be solved anytime soon, and I do hope that they'll revisit the issue with whoever survives the horde. 

Daryl and Ezekiel speak for the first time since maybe the first episode of the season - the two have never really been at odds, expect for the moments post-Henry’s death in which Ezekiel thought Daryl’s presence was going to end his marriage, and it was nice to see them speak respectfully to one another. Daryl’s quiet sympathy over the cancer is perfectly in character and his request - that Ezekiel saves Judith and RJ should Daryl fall in the battle to come - is perhaps the single greatest sign of respect that Daryl could possibly give to the King without a Kingdom. 

Speaking of Judith, the conversation between her and Daryl was all sort of adorable, especially her firm insistence that she’s not scared, really she’s not, but that if she was just a little scared, it would be of losing her family. In a moment which did really almost make me cry, she found some time and some paint to replace the broken wing on Daryl’s vest. 

With all the players feeling surprisingly sorted, the gang forms up for their defence of Hilltop. The plan isn’t bad, per se, especially given their limited numbers of fighters: as many fences as they could cobble together (including a really good, if sadly shortly-lived, electric fence courtesy of Eugene and his stash of car batteries) and then some really long weapons to stab walkers with.

Of course, very few battle-plans survive contact with the enemy, and the fences give way under the weight of the approaching horde.

And that’s when the Whisperers reveal their trump card - exploding bundles of sap, which is way, way more flammable than I ever realised. A few well-placed flame arrows later, and the Hilltop defenders are trapped between an army of walkers and a wall of fire. 

My final note for this episode is simply “How dare you?”, which pretty much sums up that cliffhanger, if you ask me. I swear to God, next week’s episode had better also be at Hilltop or else I’m going to throw things. 

Previous Walking Dead reviews are available here.