#hes here to talk about a docuseries hes working on

[vakonawaa]

my college invited daveed diggs??? of hatsune miku binder fame ??? to talk to us ? on a random thursday evening ????? do u think hes here to announce hamilton 2

[agendabymooner]

MASTERLIST: A-N F1 DRIVERS by agendabymooner

LINK TO MASTERLIST: O-Z F1 DRIVERS by agendabymooner

LINK TO SOMETHING SINFUL (SMUT) MASTERLIST by agendabymooner (MINORS DNI)

note: I CANNOT OFFICIALLY FIT MY WORKS IN ONE POST 😭 so here is my alphabetical f1 masterlist!!!

legends/genre:

a = angst g = general fic hc = hurt/comfort h = humour

s = smut (minors, dni) mc = mature content (minors, dni) f = fluff

★ - newly added ♡ - favourite piece

ALSO CHECK OUT:

MOONY'S CHARACTER DIRECTORY

MOONY'S FILIPINO CHARACTERS DIRECTORY

alex albon (aa23)

front page lover (thai!kpop idol!ofc)

keeper, smau: polly berkshire has obscure interactions with her thirsty boyfriend and it's safe to say that they love each other.

fashion week, smau: the williams driver and polly always got something for everyone to talk about.

double aa, socmed snapshot: a series of instagram stories in which alex is a dad to alice albon

own it, smau: alex's hidden talent is being a good boyfriend with a dash of photographer. ★

fernando alonso (fa14)

the breakup and makeup series (pro wrestler!ofc)

time to rock and roll, fic: the first time beatrice staedtlander and fernando alonso had broken up. (hc) ♡

heaven, smau: back in 2000s, fernando alonso and beatrice anastasia 'trish' staedtlander were every racing and wrestling fans' couple. years after, trish alonso became a mother and a wife... and the grid's crush of the season. fernando was certainly not happy so what's a better way to remind everyone that he was hers? (f, g, h)

from the ground up, smau: tino and tiago alonso were the twins that trish had given birth to at the age of 40, and everyone understood now why she didn't make it to the 2024 canadian gp. (f)

look what god gave her, smau: beatrice 'trish' alonso survived fernando's messy image better than anybody did. (f, g, h)

bonnie and the fame

maneater, smau: bonnie catherine sutton was carlos sainz's ex-girlfriend who returned to the f1 scene as a different woman. turns out, she's fernando alonso's fiancée (f)

ego, smau: never underestimate a woman's self-esteem, it might end up wounding you more than it would her.

oliver bearman (ob8)

ice ice baby, smau: kimi raikkonen's daughter romania raikkonen debuted in formula one with her friends AND it's safe to say that the iceman doesn't like ollie that much.

icy in saudi, smau: aroma raikkonen was ollie's biggest supporter in his f1 debut. plus, she also had her personal 'reverse harem' consisting of her best friends in the f2 grid. ★

ollie on thin ice(man), scenario: kimi raikkonen had proven himself to be oliver bearman's biggest hater at some point. ★

jenson button (jb22)

pride and pettiness (x british!actress!ofc)

one, 2004: in which, ada and jenson met for the first time.

the mr. darcy type, smau: much like the popular love interest, jenson should have known better than to say things that wouldn't impress a woman he grew interested in. OR ada abbott made sure that he worked hard for her time and attention. (f) ♡

shunt the hell up! (x hunt!driver!ofc)

shunt your lovers, kiss your enemies. smau: it was funny how enemies can be your teammate AND your lover at the same time. OR jj hunt, the daughter of the late james hunt, was jenson's biggest rival until a certain baby predicament cost her her entire racing career. (g) ♡

better enemies than strangers, smau: the brawn gp docuseries discussed jj hunt and the surprising turn of events in her rivalry/partnership with jenson in 2009. ★

other works

affection, blurb: in which, jenson learned that he should just say it without being a little too drunk.

pierre gasly (pg10)

newsflash, smau: ensley soleil doesn’t like playboys. too bad, pierre gasly’s down bad for her (attention and love). (f, g, h)

odds, fic: their timing was always wrong, maybe that's why pierre should consider making it even for the two of them as she writes songs about him and their courtship.

lowkey, smau: fans thought that pierre moved on from ensley four months after publicly declaring his (love?) for her. funnily enough... (f, g, h)

indigo, chatfic + smau: there's really no reason for pierre gasly to be jealous over some man that ensley wrote 'high school in jakarta' about. not when she wrote one or more songs about the frenchman. (f) ♡

high school in jakarta, fic: meeting ensley’s close friends would also mean that he’d have to meet her high school sweetheart, who he believed he couldn’t compete against until ensley ensured that his two-day attendance wouldn’t be spoiled by some guy who couldn’t let go of some memories she couldn’t even remember. ♡ 

dancing with the devil, smau: ensley soleil doesn't care about what people are saying about her relationship with pierre especially now that she's married to him. (f)

vintage, smau: pierre gasly is a husband and a fanboy of ensley soleil gasly amongst other things. (f)

hot dad era, socmed snapshot: pierre gasly. 30% f1 driver 70% dilf.

other works

do i make you nervous, blurb: lesson learned: just date her first rather than being friendly in the bed.

lewis hamilton (lh44)

stevie and lewis (hearth sister!ofc)

thick and thin, smau + fic: lewis should know better than underestimating her and her capabilities to yearn for him for years. (hc)

hands on and paws on, socmed snapshot: lewis is a stay-at-home dad to lottie hamilton and his best boy, roscoe, happens to watch his mummys everywhere she goes as she carries baby hamilton #2.

the hamilton daycare, fic: lewis is already a stay-at-home dad so what makes his day out in monaco with his two kids any different? (f) (2/3 of daddy, debriefed!)

where the bad girls are (kpop idol!ofc)

lifted, smau: lewis is married to a kpop idol who happened to be one of the girls to shape the image of female groups in the korean pop community.

crowned couple (x miss universe!ofc)

the couple of the universe, smau: lewis is a careless being this season and everyone's wondering why.

melody series (x performer!ofc)

summary: with her sharp eyes focused on her audience, a burlesque performer who went under the name of melody returned to rythme romantique, an entertainment lounge which exclusively caters to the wealthiest people of monaco — or in this case, to the people with a status that are recognized by all. her three exclusive performances were meant to be a closure for her connections in the principality. still, a certain formula one driver saw it as an opportunity to reconnect with his former flame after two years of her absence. felicity vos learned that this was a rich man’s world and that he could do whatever he wanted, but she also realized that the agreement they settled on years ago was corrupted the moment he expressed his love for her. 

one, million dollar man: monaco was a world of glitz and glamour that she left two years ago. returning to the principality clearly was a huge mistake as she found herself talking to the man who swore to nothing but his love for her.

two, this is what makes us girls: "decorum isn't something you can buy with money or fame." or what did lewis really want from her and why did he show up on the second night of her performance?

arthur leclerc (al12)

the scheming schumachers, smau: sunny schumacher is mick's cousin and what does a family do? they attract arthur leclerc to get him away from his best friend, who happens to be mick's girlfriend. thankfully, the schumacher cousin is something of a welcome distraction for the monegasque.

charles leclerc (cl16)

the leclerc boys series (x hearth sister!ofc)

debunking drama, smau: prequel to of long lines and names; aimee hearth, the mclaren media manager and one of the famous hearth sisters, was rumoured to be dating lando norris. a certain monegasque's baffled reaction became a trending topic in twitter as he counteracts the rumour with an instagram post of his lover. (f, h)

many kids with many names, smau: everyone found out that aimee and charles were having not only one but two babies. turned out, those two babies have at least a million name. (h) ★

of long lines and names, fic: five kids with (almost) five names under six years. OR the three pregnancies that charles had witnessed told him how motherhood and memories could come in two sets of twins and a boy that looked so much like him. (f)

the leclerc daycare, fic: before his last set of twins were born, charles had to watch his boys on his own- not exactly by himself when he's got esteban and pierre acting as his right hand men. (f) (1/3 of daddy, debriefed!) ♡

about names, scenario fics

summary: extension to of long lines and names and the leclerc daycare; charles and aimee's boys and their names go hand in hand OR times when the couple had to tell their kids that their names were signs of love and respect for their namesakes.

one, an amazing boy with an amazing name: hervé's anger left his parents confused after he refused to be called by his first name. thankfully, his mamé pascale had an easy access to his heart that eventually led to an answer to his sadness.

two, the wingman of maranello: jules leclerc learned two things as he travelled to italy with his father: he had an uncle named uncle teague and uncle teague had a best friend that was once charles' godfather.

other pieces

"slut", smau: charles' ex trashed his new girlfriend a while ago, but too bad he wasn't really into the thought of making music with anyone but lou villar.

breaking curses not hearts, smau: frankie bardot atkinson was also known for her curse in the film industry. after breaking her long streaked curse and finally won an oscar, was it finally charles' time to break his curse at monza gp?

kevin magnussen (km20)

family ties, smau: lando norris forgot that his brother-in-law is in the grid with him and lola norris magnussen couldn't help but make of her brother for it.

lando norris (ln4)

lover era (x alessandro sister!writer!ofc)

london boy, smau: nicola 'cola' alessandro moved to britain and what's a better way to introduce yourself to england than taking a trip around with a certain mclaren driver? (f, g, h)

i think he knows, smau: grazia nichols published her debut novel based off formula one, and a fan could have sworn that the the book bf - nolan langford - was based off of lando's character as a driver altogether. (f, g, h)

✿ honey, honey! series masterlist - lando norris x ofc (honey-sue lewis) ft. sidemen

other pieces

too good to be true, smau: just a brief overview of lando’s relationship with a countryside girl who, beyond her introverted tendencies, was an unhinged, unserious yet amazing mother and girlfriend. ★

f1 drivers (general)

✿ 9 to 5 series masterlist - f1 grid x ofc (lester alessandro) ft. fictional wolff kids

✿ f1 voicemail blurbs - series of blurbs with voicemails left by the drivers. ★

too much caring, smau, sv5 + jb22: kpop idol juno was assumed to have cheated on retired driver jenson button with his best mate sebastian vettel. oh how wrong those people were...

[jmdbjk]

Hello 2024

I did a thing:

We know there will be lots to look forward to but if you find yourself with some time, please read the book, Beyond the Story.

A lot of things that are confusing, especially to those who weren't around since 2013, can be understood more clearly through the words of the members in the book.

If you can, watch the docuseries Beyond the Star. So much information from them, in their own words, their tone of voice, and in context with what they are trying to communicate, adds another layer of context.

And watch the recent HYBE Labels series that explains what T&D is... their staff become emotionally attached to their trainees too. To see them bloom into fully rounded artists that take off on their own journeys must be an amazing experience. It helps to have real human faces to associate with "the company."

The series should be eye-opening for some. I hope it is. Hearing that Namjoon and BTS formed the foundation for how they develop trainees... imagine that... huh...

You will learn so much about them and how they got to this point.

That's not to say that they didn't work hard, that they weren't pushed, that they didn't question themselves, but the big picture is that they were young, making it up as they went, both the members as individuals and the company itself. Bang PD had the experience but he also had other ideas that broke away from the normal.

Not to mention the enormous pushback, bullying, downright hate, they received all through it. I don't know how they kept going.

It took years for them to be able to stop, take stock in what they'd accomplished and how they got there and then decide what they wanted to do from then on. And then they did it again this past year, choosing to forge ahead as a group with their company.

I believe they indeed talked about ten, twenty, even thirty years and have tentatively outlined what they want to accomplish. I think they are working their way toward whatever it is they envisioned.

Nothing is a coincidence but I bet a LOT is serendipity.

On another note, my two that I pay closest attention to...

Jungkook tried all year to tell us they were a pair. And Jimin... bless his heart. What a handful he has, right? Maybe they are both a handful for each other and that's why they are together right this minute.

Jimin sort of intimated in his last live that after MS he can do whatever he wants without hindrance, whether he means pushing the envelope with his creativity or just being able to work without anything hanging over him...

And Jungkook is apparently building a wonderful and securely-walled place to live that will be ready for when they're discharged. Very large for one person and a dog...yeah, it's huge.

Just my own thoughts here: at this point, with everything we know, the possibility could be that Jimin and Jungkook may live together following MS. There will be enough room in that place for sure, 5 levels? 12,000 square feet? It's huge. Why wouldn't they? That's just my own thought.

[vladdyissues]

We Have A Problem

Danny could scarcely contain his excitement. After eight long months, the wait was finally over: Tonight was the premiere of the hotly-anticipated new television docuseries, Knowing Universe.

The product of decades of research and collaborative efforts from the world’s greatest minds—astronomers, physicists, astronauts, engineers—Knowing Universe was rumored to have had a production budget somewhere in the hundreds of millions and boasted the latest advancements in computer graphics and long-range photography. New lenses had to be fitted to NASA’s telescopes to provide viewers with high-resolution images. Helmed by a famous Hollywood director and scored by Hans Zimmer, Knowing Universe was expected to go down in history as the most pivotal science documentary ever created, eclipsing even Carl Sagan’s beloved Cosmos.

A year ago Danny would have eschewed such blasphemy, but the litany of promos and sneak peeks on The Science Channel had finally won him over. It was all he had talked about for the past month.

Every member of the Fenton family knew what a monumental occasion this was to Danny, and had marked their calendars accordingly. With the big day finally here, a festive atmosphere descended upon Fenton Works. Pizza was ordered. Living room furniture was rearranged around the TV, the windows blacked out with construction paper. Glittery blue streamers festooned the ceiling. Glow-in-the-dark stars and meteors spackled the wall. Jack made three enormous batches of “galaxy brownies”, a regular brownie recipe but studded with white chocolate morsels and multicolored candy sprinkles. Maddie and Jazz took care of the music, arranging a playlist consisting of space-themed songs that featured such hits as David Bowie’s Space Oddity and anything by Daft Punk. Sam brought over a tray of veggies that had been cut into star shapes, and Tucker had printed out cards for an astronomy-themed parlor game to play while they waited.

At eight o’clock the lights were dimmed. Everyone gathered in front of the TV. Danny, hyped out on too much sugar, grinned like a maniac, practically vibrating with anticipation.

Sam passed a smirk to Tucker. “I think we know what to get him for his birthday this year.”

“Yeah,” Tucker laughed. “Posters, t-shirts, the DVD set—”

“Shh, shh,” Danny hissed. “It’s starting!”

Six pairs of eyes glued themselves to the opening sequence: a panning, high-definition shot of Earth, complemented by a gentle, sustained note on flute. Then, a voice:

“For as long as humanity has existed, we have looked to the stars…”

The ecstatic grin slid off Danny’s face.

It wasn’t David Attenborough’s educated gravel, or Neil deGrasse Tyson’s friendly, conversational baritone. No, this voice was intimately familiar, lightly accented, arrogant, with phlegmy fricatives and a rolling, almost musical modulation.

Tucker clapped his hand over his mouth. Sam goggled at the screen.

“Oh, my God, no,” Danny murmured.

Jack Fenton popped to attention. “Hey! That’s Vladdie!”

“No.”

“Vlad’s narrating the show!”

“No.”

“Hey, Danny, isn’t this—”

Outside Fenton Works, a howl rose over the rooftops, and every dog in the neighborhood took up the call:

“NOOOOO!”

Read on AO3

[gingergofastboatsmojito]

It was a documentary, not a series, that's why we were not satisfied because we wanted fiction, not a docuseries.

This only solidifies my POV, which I have already gone over on the Under The Table Podcast and in many previous entries on my blog, about the whole problem with S3 being in the WR. Coming from a very solid S2 and amazing S1 award season, only made matters worse, of course.

Viewers appreciate realism, as a matter of fact the kind of audience The Bear appeals to is the kinda public that digs realism and adult content, with lots of cussing, raw directorial style, fast-paced, etc. We are not the typical rom-com or even drama series audience. The Bear became a hit show back in 2022 because its eps were fast-paced, with a dramedy quality that made it original, lots of adult language, and with a hint of sexual tension that was "promising" if explored in future seasons, that at that point were not confirmed yet. S2 was ordered in July 2022 in the middle of the momentum the show was starting to get, and shot from February to April 2023, then it premiered in June 2023, only to compete now, in this award season that opened a few weeks ago at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards.

Meaning: the reason why S3 didn't work as expected, and the numbers back that up that is why they haven't released them yet, is because the writers were not able to write a BALANCED plot. Yes, it hit all the realistic marks in terms of mental health struggles and fine dining 7th circle of hell, but at the same time, it lost every other "ingredient" that it used to have. THERE IS A WAY to write the best of both worlds, and I certainly expected that coming from who I considered the best script writer out there, the sadist. And his right hand wired for romance, Miss Calo. They didn't do it. They disappointed me. They went all in with the docuseries' raw realism style of Carmy hitting rock bottom, which if you were really paying attention in S2 was nothing but PREDICTABLE → as I proved even before S3 premiered here and here but they didn't build towards a cliffhanger that left you wanting more, actually, 03X10 is altogether hard to watch, there's no balance like in FISHES 02x06, for instance, just one punch after the other, all below the belt, no comedy, no breather, just tragedy and more tragedy and more sense of doom and more PLEASE MAKE IT STOP! THAT'S IT, END THIS, PULL THE PLUG, STOP IT! etc... Like I said: No balance.

Storer only focused on Carmy's background story, but didn't give us anything we couldn't have figured out on our own anyway, he didn't explore Syd's background story, which should be a collection of gems and absolutely Sydcarmy friendly because the more we know about her, the better we will be able to figure out how will Sydcarmy happen and when (I already know when, but still) and he also focused on Tina's background story, IMO that was completely unnecessary as T is not a central character, what he showed there was also easy to guess anyway and could have been summarised in a couple of scenes, not an entire bottled episode, not when other characters are UNEXPLORED after 3 seasons. So basically, all the decisions made in terms of SCRIPT were WRONG. The acting was perfect, the direction was too, the soundtrack, the cinematography, all of it, but the foundation wasn't there because in the WR the creative decisions made for S3 were completely fucked up, we were served a docuseries as opposed to the fictional show with a realism bouquet we were watching the previous 2 seasons.

WE WANT TO WATCH FICTION, write it realistically, sure! BUT DON'T LOSE WHAT YOU HAVE SO FAR, DON'T MUTATE INTO A DOCUMENTARY OF ALL THAT'S WRONG IN THE MENTAL HEALTH DEPARTMENT OR IN SOCIETY OR IN THE CULINARY INDUSTRY, we already know that and if we don't, we can always tune in the motherfucking news, not FX, and certainly not Disney+. Thank you very much.

[aksannyi]

Left Behind (1/1) - Captain Swan

Emma and Killian are urban explorers, taking camera crews and checking out abandoned spots to get footage of these liminal spaces for their docuseries - Emma's on YouTube, and Killian's on Netflix, when they converge on one location by complete coincidence. They argue over who has the rights to film this location when they find themselves trapped, and they come to realize that they’re more alike than not.

(I have been more than a bit obsessed with watching explorations of abandoned locations and learning their history and I just needed to put Killian and Emma in one of them.)

--

“Whoa, look at this place! This is so creepy!” Mary Margaret lowered the camera she’d been holding to take in their surroundings, her jaw dropping as it came into view.

The building loomed before them, its dark, brick exterior peeking out from behind the thick overgrowth of trees and vines. It was massive, so massive that they couldn’t see the full length of it from where they stood, and its dark, partially broken windows gave only the suggestion as to what the interiors once held.

Emma Swan, of YouTube fame, along with her friends (and camera crew) David and Mary Margaret, had always had a fascination with abandoned locations. There was something so unsettling about these liminal spaces, as though she could step within and be transported to a different time. Perhaps even be someone else for a while.

“How long has it sat here?” David was always amazed by just how much a space could decay in a short period of time, particularly with no upkeep.

“2005, I think?” Emma chimed in, taking her phone out to do a quick search of the location. “Yeah, 2005.”

“There’s no way this building is only 20 years old, Emma, look at it.” Mary Margaret said it with a wave of her hands, as if to punctuate her statement.

“No, that’s just how long it’s been abandoned. It was built like, a hundred years ago. But it’s only been left to rot since 2005.”

They walked toward the building, taking care not to trip over the cracks in the pavement. They’d parked Emma’s car a bit further away, so as to not arouse suspicion. It was best not to draw anyone’s attention to their excursions. “A hundred years old,” David mused. “That makes more sense. They were probably doing a bit of maintenance when it shut down, but couldn’t keep up with all the problems such an old place would have.”

“Okay, Bob Vila,” Emma teased. She always joked that David must have been a carpenter in his past life ‘or something,’ because he was always talking about the structure and maintenance of these places.

“I’m just saying. If this building was only twenty years old, it wouldn’t look like that. Even if no one so much as picked up a broom.”

“All right, all right,” Mary Margaret intervened. “Let’s hurry up and get inside before someone sees us.”

“You see anyone?” Emma had been keeping an eye on their surroundings as they approached, but it was always a good idea to make use of everyone’s senses.

“No,” David said, taking another glance around.

“Not a soul,” Mary Margaret confirmed.  

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54187552

They didn’t approach the front entrance of the building – that was almost certainly closed off, boarded up tight. Anyone wanting to keep someone out would have closed off the front door as their first line of defense, and it was probably the most heavily watched. Emma didn’t see any cameras, but if there were any, they’d be toward the main entrance of this dilapidated former hospital.

Instead, they headed toward an entrance to the side, which sat hidden under an awning of sorts, almost like it had been a hotel. She could see cars driving through here, picking up and dropping off patients, or perhaps ambulances. She shivered at the thought. Hospitals were not exactly her favorite place to be, even when they weren’t abandoned.

“Can you get it?” Mary Margaret was saying, watching over David’s shoulder as he used a crowbar to pry the doors apart. They had clearly been glass doors once. The glass was long gone, of course, but the doors were firmly boarded against trespassers.

Such as themselves. “Almost…” he grunted. “There!” The crowbar clanged to the ground loudly, startling all three of them as it echoed through the quiet space.

“Come on,” Emma beckoned, prying the doors a bit further apart and stepping carefully inside. They would have to try to close them when they left, so it would be best if they didn’t break anything.

“Oh my god,” Mary Margaret breathed as she took in the space.

It was a mostly empty room, save for a few thick support pillars, all of which had peeling paint and graffiti. “I FUCKED UR MOM” one of them proudly proclaimed, while others were considerably less coherent. There were a good number of swastikas and racial slurs throughout, and Emma rolled her eyes at the amount of blurring they’d have to do so that kind of crap would get minimal exposure. There were already enough assholes on the internet, no need to stoke those flames. She continued looking around, noting that the walls looked much the same, although there had clearly been a two-toned paint pattern, with some peeling wallpaper in a few spots.

A handful of chairs were scattered about, two of which were joined together, as waiting room chairs often were. One was turned on its side, and papers were scattered all around the floor – almost none of them containing anything legible, though a poster reminding patients about skin cancer still warned against the dangers of UV rays, even from its crinkled spot on the floor.

Some ceiling tiles were missing from the space, and stripped wires hung down, unimpeded. Some of the tiles lay broken on the ground, while a few others leaned against a wall. All of the fluorescent bulbs had been taken out, leaving only the shell of what was undoubtedly a bright, buzzing interior. A few boxes sat in the corner, their age apparent by the way they sagged beneath their own weight, and a lamp sat overturned, its lightbulb and shade both long gone.

“Wow,” Emma breathed, impressed. The first sight of any of these places was always the most breathtaking, and this was no exception. She knew that David had gotten her reaction, while Mary Margaret was busy filming the scenery.

“Smells kinda…musty,” Mary Margaret said, crinkling her nose at the smell.

“That’s an understatement.”

David was sure to keep Emma firmly in the frame, the light from his camera casting unnatural shadows in the darkened space.

“You’d think, with all the broken windows…” she trailed off. Would it really air out that much, with such a small amount of exposure to the outside air? Sure, there were plenty of broken windows, but many of them had been boarded up, and the ones that weren’t were quite a way off the ground.

“Well there’s a lot of dust,” David said, kicking at the dirt on the ground. The building seemed to hear them, as one of the ceiling tiles that had been leaning against the wall fell over, kicking up a cloud of dust that caused all three of them to start coughing. Sometimes, Emma wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea for them to wear protective masks or something.

Emma cleared her throat, reaching into her backpack for a bottle of water. “You’re getting all of this, right?” She took a swig, then tossed it over to David, who caught it deftly, even with the massive camera on his shoulder.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he confirmed.

“Good.”

Emma continued to walk around the space slowly, taking in everything. This was only the first room, a waiting area of sorts, and she knew there would be plenty of other spaces to explore. This type of abandoned building was a gold mine for decay junkies like her viewers. (And herself, obviously.)

“Look, some of the furniture is still here. Ugh, look at all that mold on the cushions. It amazes me how they just leave these places. It’s like one day they just…stopped coming here. Like they just locked the doors one day and never came back. Everything just left here.”

“That’s actually true though. This part of the building was never used as anything after the hospital closed.” 

“Yeah, I think they wanted to use it but couldn’t find a tenant.”  

“Hard to imagine why,” Emma murmured dryly. The building was in horrible condition, that much was clear.

“Well, it looks like looters did pretty well for themselves,” David commented, noting the obvious lack of furniture, fixtures, and even coverings for the electrical outlets.

A shrill, quick beep sounded from down a hallway, and all three of the occupants jumped in surprise.

“Oh Jesus! Was that a fire alarm? Low battery?” Emma would never admit it to a single soul, but the mournful chirping of a dying smoke detector was probably one of the most unsettling sounds in the universe. She hated that sound. She always changed the batteries in her smoke detector well before they could ever hope to get to the point of alerting her that they were barely clinging to life.

“I think so, yeah,” David confirmed.

Emma was unnerved. “How long has that thing just been beeping every few minutes?”

“Probably as long as the building has been vacant.”

“That’s so creepy,” Mary Margaret breathed, and Emma nodded in agreement. Glad I’m not the only one who thinks so.

The alarm chirped again insistently, and all three of them startled again, despite knowing to expect it.

“Case and point,” Mary Margaret added unnecessarily.

“Like they just up and left! Those things have battery backup, but they’re mostly electric, right David?” He nodded. “But the electricity has been off for years, and that thing has been beeping pitifully ever since?”

“There’s no way,” David supplied. “No batteries are that good. I wonder if they just keep a few smoke detectors rigged up in case of fire?”

“Ooh, yeah. Arson is a problem at some of these places.” Mary Margaret began to rattle off a list of other abandoned places, some of which had been burned to the ground by vandals looking to get a cheap thrill.

“But why would they care? The building is condemned. What difference does it make if it gets torched? They could rebuild something better.” Emma kicked at the ground, scoffing. “It isn’t like this place can be repaired.”  

David shrugged under the camera. “Beats me.”

“Maybe it’s an insurance thing.” They would have to have smoke detectors on the premises to get an insurance settlement, right? That had to be it. The alarm chirped again, and Mary Margaret took a deep breath. “So how long would this one have been here before its battery dies?”

Emma set her backpack down on the ground and reached into her pocket for her phone. She clicked on a few things, then rattled off the answer: “This site says anywhere from a year to like, five years. Depends what batteries they used?”

“Really?” David seemed intrigued, and Emma knew that he would do some more research into this topic when they made it back to their hotel.  

“Yeah, today I learned that smoke detectors work better with specific batteries.”

“Huh,” he responded, confirming that he, too, had learned this very thing today.

Beep

“That’s gonna get old,” Emma said, heaving a deep sigh.

David shrugged again. “Well, do you have a nine-volt battery?”

“Of course I don’t, David! Who the hell ever has a nine-volt battery?”

“Well then let’s just try to ignore it and keep going.”

Mary Margaret changed the subject. “Oh my god, look at this. That’s the reception desk.” She had walked across what had to have been the waiting area to a curved counter, faded turquoise, the formica cracked – and in some places, gone entirely. Above the counter, the outline of the letters RGEN Y were still visible, although many had been painted over by vandals, obscuring their original verbiage. “Look, you can still see the outline where the letters were. Wow, this was the ER.”

“Well, the ER waiting room. Or like, triage,” Emma corrected. The actual emergency rooms would be down the hallway a bit. She wondered if any of the beds or curtains were still there. Probably not.

“Wonder how many people died here?”

David coughed. “Good lord, MM, why are you so macabre?”  

“Like seriously! I’m just saying! This place has got to be haunted.”

“We’re not Ghost Adventures,” Emma reminded her. While it would be cool to have a show on the Travel Channel alongside big name shows like Ghost Adventures, she wasn’t sure that their particular brand of entering – which often involved the “breaking” part of “breaking and entering” – would be palatable for TV, even for cable television.

“Oh, come on, Emma, they’d love this!” Mary Margaret’s eyes were shining. She loved the show, and even Emma had to admit that it was fun to watch late at night with the lights off. Even if Zak Bagans and his team were overdramatic as all get-out.

“All right, all right, now can you stop fangirling and get over here with the damn camera?”

She picked up the pace with a huff. “Coming.”

Emma was standing behind the reception desk, poking around. There had once been drawers, but they were long gone. A small piece of corroded wire stuck out from inside one of the recesses where the drawers used to be, and some broken glass sat atop the desk, covered in dust. “Look, there’s some files.”

Mary Margaret zoomed in on the small pile of paperwork. It was a stack less than a centimeter high, the file folders warped with moisture damage and mold. “Do they have anything important?”

“They’re all stuck together. But I’d really doubt that they were personal medical files just…left here.”

“That’d be one hell of a HIPAA violation. Did HIPAA even exist when this place was still operating?”

“Nice pun. And I think at the end? Maybe?” Emma shrugged. She didn’t really feel like looking it up this time, and the signal here was weak anyway. “These were probably like protocol files or something.”

“I guess we’ll never know,” David replied with an exaggerated inflection. “One of the great mysteries of this place.”

“Oh, not you too with the dramatic haunted house crap,” Emma grumbled. “You guys-“

Suddenly, there was a loud banging noise coming from somewhere else in the building, followed by a shuffling sound and a couple of thumps. All three of the explorers jumped before freezing, their eyes wide with fear.

“What the fuck was that?” Emma whispered, her voice wavering slightly.

“I told you this place was haunted.”

“Mary Margaret, I swear to-“

“A rat?” she supplied, keeping Emma from finishing whatever threat she’d been about to level.  

“Would a rat have been that loud?” David asked, and they all knew the answer.

“No, but at least a rat wouldn’t be the worst thing we’ve encountered.” A few years ago, they’d come across an angry, terrified raccoon. They had no intention of harming it, but the wild animal certainly hadn’t known that, and it looked like it wanted their blood. Instead of exploring further, they’d turned around and explored other parts of the building, hoping it’d leave them alone.

It had.

Emma, David, and Mary Margaret still stood in place, not moving. Just as Emma was about to shake it off and get them back into the exploration, another series of noises wafted toward them.

It was voices, and they were muffled. Emma could only make out every few words or so. “We’re on…Haven … Hospital … 2005. … 1987 … was built, and it … the years, but nothing … building, who had hoped … hotel, … to rot …fell through.” Whoever it was had quite a monologue going, Emma mused.

Mary Margaret sighed. “There are other explorers in here?”  

“Who the hell?” David asked.

“I think I know who that is,” Emma said, and she hoped she was wrong. “Hello?” she called out, alerting the others to their presence.

From the distance, she could vaguely hear another voice saying something about reshooting.  

Emma wasn’t amused. She knew they had heard her, so why were they ignoring her? “Who’s there?”  

“The last thing we need…” they heard, as the voices inched closer, “…some amateurs out here causing trouble.”

The voices were nearing, and there was one she definitely recognized. Damn it, not this guy. “Yeah, we need to get these trespassers out of here. They’re a liability.”

Emma heard the word trespasser and her blood ran cold. Shit. She couldn’t afford to get another trespassing charge. While she and her crew were always careful, that didn’t stop curious, concerned citizens calling in on them, which resulted in their getting citations more often than not.

But another group of urban explorers wouldn’t rat them out, would they?

Suddenly, an entire entourage came around a corner, three men and a short woman. Emma knew all of them. Killian Jones, the star of a Netflix documentary series about abandoned places, and his crew, Robin, Will, and Belle.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she groaned as she spotted him, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms around her chest.

“Emma Swan,” Killian Jones said, looking as though he had just discovered buried treasure. Emma was far less amused at the sight of him, but then she realized that he’d said her name.

“You know me?”

“Of course I know you. We seem to explore quite a few of the same places. Killian Jones, at your service.” He stepped forward, offering his hand.

Emma didn’t take it. Instead, she stared him down. “I know who you are.”

He lowered his hand, wiping it on his jeans. “So then you understand why we’re here, exploring this place,” he said, as if that made the fact that he’d encroached on their shoot any less obnoxious.

“It’s a cool location that I’m sure will be extremely popular with my viewers.” Behind her, David coughed again, and she could practically hear Mary Margaret thinking, but neither said anything. They both knew about Emma’s dislike of Killian Jones and had listened to the way she’d rant about him after hate-watching his show. Neither David nor Mary Margaret understood Emma’s vitriol toward the man – or his series – but they were her friends, and friends let friends rant about Netflix docuseries and the smarmy British narrators who made them.

Or so Emma had said, once upon a time.

“I would say the same, which is why I’m here.”

Emma wasn’t budging. “Well I heard you talking about kicking us out of here. You don’t own the building, so you have no right.”

He stepped forward, and Emma steeled in her resolve not to move. She wouldn’t let this guy push her around. “Given how nervous you were when we came around that corner, it seems that you felt as though you were caught. Breaking and entering, Swan? Is that how you get to all these places the other YouTubers don’t ever seem to hit?”

“It appears that way, doesn’t it,” she said, leaving the last word to hang between them for a few minutes.

He shook his head. Behind him, she watched his crew stand silently, though a look passed between Belle and Will. “Tsk. Do your viewers approve?”

“I’m not stupid! I would never put anything incriminating on film. Which reminds me – you’re going to need to delete that footage.”

“Well this certainly got a bit more interesting,” he mused, and there was that look passing between his crew members again. Emma felt her hackles raising.

“Listen, we’re just here exploring. How we got in here is irrelevant, isn’t it?” David chimed in from behind Emma, sensing Emma’s growing annoyance. She turned her head and looked back over her shoulder, shaking it slightly. Let me handle this, was the message.

Killian was already replying. “I wouldn’t say that it’s irrelevant-“

“Isn’t it? We’re here now.” She shrugged slightly, scuffing her boot on the dusty floor. “But it also appears that you’re doing the same exact thing, so I don’t get why-”

“Not quite. You’re going to have to leave.”

“Hold on a minute, we were here first! And if you’re breaking in, too, I don’t see how you have the right to tell us we’re wrong. A bit hypocritical,” she pointed out. Killian rolled his eyes, but didn’t address the accusation.

“Ahh, but you see, I’m filming a professional production,” he supplied.

“What the hell do you think we’re doing?”

He shrugged. “Being amateurs,” was his response.

“Asshole,” she spat.

“An honest asshole.” Emma’s YouTube channel was very popular, and her videos got hundreds of thousands of views, but they weren’t, strictly speaking, professionals as far as the industry was concerned. It was one of the pitfalls of content creation platforms – it was a job, but at the same time, it wasn’t. And it pissed her off that Killian was right. They were amateur filmmakers. Talented amateur filmmakers, but amateurs nonetheless. That still didn’t give him the right to be a dick, though.

“Honest my ass! You don’t get to come in here and kick us out when you’ve just done the exact same thing you’ve accused us of doing. “

“I-“

She put her hand up to stop him, gesturing with her finger as she spoke. “So just turn around, walk your ass the other way, and get the hell out. We were here first.”

It was clear that she wasn’t going to listen to his explanation, so he decided he’d try to be diplomatic. This space was enormous, surely they could get enough unique footage to satisfy both of their audiences.

“Look, we’re both here now, why don’t we just do this together? You don’t have to get me in any shots, and I’ll keep you out of mine. We can agree to be silent while the other team is talking, aye?”

“Why would I do that? You’ll get all the same footage as us.”

He drew in a sharp breath. “While I might get some of the same footage as you, you may have noticed that this building is massive. And besides, why are you so worried about overlapping footage when your video will be posted before my film is edited and released?”

“Are you saying we don’t edit our footage?” Emma was rarely this easily angered, but he’d managed to strike every nerve he possibly could in the short time they’d been speaking to each other.

Killian drew a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Emma waited silently, giving him the opening to answer her question. She could tell that he was getting aggravated with her. Good, she thought. Maybe she’d piss him off enough that he’d get tired of arguing and just leave so they could get back to filming.

“I’m saying you’re not professionals. We are. And professional productions take time.”

“Fuck you. “

“Perhaps later, you may wish to clean yourself up first.”

She balked, resisting the urge to repeat her previous statement, lest he take it even further. “Listen, just because you’re some bigshot Netflix star doesn’t mean you get to treat everyone else around you like shit. My channel has been steadily growing for the past ten years, I have a solid viewership, and I know what I’m doing. So why don’t you take your big, expensive camera crew back around that corner and go fuck off to somewhere else.”

He shook his head. “After all the work I’ve done on this location? You’re mad.“

“All that work and yet, we still got here first.”

“Fine. We’ll do this the hard way then.” He nodded his head to one side, indicating that his crew should follow him. Robin had set his camera down, and he picked it back up, following Killian’s lead. “We’re on the site of the Mist Haven Memorial Hospital, which closed in 1987. It saw a few ownership changes in the time since, but fully closed – and was left abandoned – in 2005. When the-“

Emma started speaking over him. “We’re going to head down the hallway-“

He raised his voice, continuing, “they thought they could transform the building-“

“remnants they’ve left behind-“

Killian stopped, rolling his head back and interrupting her. “You’re polluting my footage.”

“You’re polluting my footage.”

They were in a standoff, staring each other down. Behind them, both crews stood quietly, watching but unwilling to interrupt. Emma narrowed her eyes, then Killian narrowed his. They both took twin deep breaths, and Killian tilted his head slightly with a saucy wink, knowing it would irritate her.

“Ugh!” This was going to cost so much extra time in editing, to remove all traces of Killian fucking Jones and his stupid fucking documentary voice. She turned around, motioning for Mary Margaret and David to follow her.

“Come around this way, look down this hallway! One of these rooms is where a nurse was stabbed.”

“Guess it’s a good thing they were already in the ER,” David supplied, and Emma let out a slight puff of air, amused. She was still annoyed, and she couldn’t seem to get a natural flow back knowing that Killian Jones was there, probably overhearing everything she said. She kept speaking, but despite her best efforts she couldn’t shake the feeling of being observed. She hoped that their footage past this point wouldn’t look forced or unnatural.

“This hallway is creepy,” Belle spoke up behind her, after having been instructed to also continue observing the space as though the other team was not there.

Killian continued into a nearby room, continuing his history lesson. “Back in this room, the founder of the hospital died, which was the first death knell in the lifespan of this hospital. A series-“

“Look at how this handrail is falling off!” Emma exclaimed, much louder than she’d have normally pointed out a feature of a location. Her team was still in the hallway, but she knew that her voice would carry and the other team would have to reshoot. She gloated inwardly. “David, zoom in on that.”

“Oh gross, it’s moldy,” Mary Margaret added, getting a different angle.

“Christ, that stinks,“ Emma continued, wrinkling her nose and stepping back.

“Opened back in 1927, this hospital saw the worst parts of the Great Depression, as people suffered from easily curable diseases they simply had no money to pay to eradicate. Suicides were at an all-time high, and many of the nurses sat right here on watch, trying to ensure-“

“This room is freezing,” Emma interrupted again, and Killian glared at her.

“Reshoot,” he said with a sigh, the obnoxious chirp of the dying smoke detector punctuating his statement. “You know, we could take turns-“

She interrupted, pretending to ignore him completely. “All these patients, all these rooms, now empty. Left to rot, like-“

“Water damage,” Killian pointed out, stepping in front of Emma’s crew and crouching near the baseboard to get a closer look at the line that indicated that there had been some type of flood.

“Really?!”

“What? You interrupted me, I feel it only right that I should do the same.”

“You’re the most aggravating-“

He stood back up, turning to face her, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “Hey now, I offered to share the space. You wanted to do this the hard way. So by all means, keep going. I’m going to do my job. My editors are going to charge me double for this.”

“Then get the hell out of my shots.”

“My shots.”

They stared each other down, but neither of them wanted to concede even an inch. “I’m wasting time,” Killian said to his crew, turning and continuing to talk about the location. “It’s eerie, isn’t it, the way this bedframe is just situated at an angle? It certainly wasn’t like that while the hospital was operable-“

“Oh my god, look at the writing in here! What the fuck does that even say?” She ran her fingers along the letters, faded from years of wear and tear, and unintelligible.

“Swan, you can’t curse on my footage,” he growled.

“I’m not on your footage.”

“Unfortunately, you are.”

“Emma-“ Mary Margaret began, but Emma ignored her, focusing solely on getting Killian Jones out of this damn abandoned hospital.

“Could you just go away?”

“No can do, Swan. I’ve a deadline to meet.”

“Killian-“ Robin spoke up, but he was also ignored.

They were standing at a doorway, and Emma turned to enter the room at the same time as Killian did. The doorway was not narrow, but they jostled for position all the same, Emma bracing her hand on the doorframe and standing with her legs far apart, raising her elbows to shove him when he tried to pass. “I was here first!”

He elbowed her back. “You keep saying that, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got a film to make.”

David spoke up again, sighing. “Come on, Emma, we can go to the other side of the building.”

“Why should I? We got here first. They can go shoot over there and come back here later.” She stepped on Killian’s foot, and he kneed the back of her thigh. He was now bracing himself on the other side of the door frame, refusing to give an inch. It was childish, and they both knew it, but neither wished to be the one to forfeit.

“When there’s less light? Hardly.”

“Jones…” Will tried, as unsuccessfully as the other crew members, to get them to stop.

“Bugger off,” was Killian’s response as he took an elbow to the back.  

“Let me in the goddamn room!”

“Watch your elbow,” he grunted out after she hit him with it a third time.  

“Well, if you’d let me in the room I wouldn’t have hit you!”

“Listen, I offered for us to share-“ They were both bracing on the doorframe still, and he heard a slight cracking sound, as though the wooden frame was faltering. They both stopped, their limbs still half-entangled from their battle.

“What the fuck was that?” There was another crack, and Killian released the doorframe.

“We should probably-“

It was as if everything happened all at once: the building was creaking and groaning and the next minute, the foundation above the doorway was falling away, causing the beams from the ceiling to fall. He didn’t even think, just jumped toward her, pushing her toward the ground and out of the way of the falling beam. He landed on top of her with a grunt, but they seemed to have avoided the biggest pieces of debris.

A few more rumbles and they heard more of the building crashing down around them. He could hear Emma beneath him, screaming, and he couldn’t exactly blame her.

The dust settled. A small bit of light peeked through a crevice in the debris, and he could see that the space they were in was pretty tight – they’d narrowly missed being crushed to death.

They both spoke at the same time.

“Ahh, shit!”

“Bloody hell.”

“You can get off me whenever.”

He shuffled away carefully, trying to make sure he didn’t disturb anything that had fallen around them, in case the building wasn’t done yet “Sorry,” he apologized awkwardly.

“No… thank you.” He could tell what a supreme effort it took for her to thank him, but even Emma Swan couldn’t be so crude as to refuse to thank someone for saving her life.

“I do suppose gratitude is in order.”

“Yeah that’s why I thanked you. And I don’t think this is something you can flirt your way out of, hotshot. Unless those pouty lips can lift this door frame.”

He chose not to comment on the descriptor she’d chosen for his lips. “Unfortunately, my lips lack the skills to lift heavy wooden beams out of the way. They do, however, have other skills…”

“Ugh! Stop!”

“Fine, fine, I’ll stop,” he said, laughing slightly. “You do realize that I’m just trying to get a rise out of you?”

“You succeeded. Now we need to find a way to get out of here.” She looked around, surveying the damage. The space they were in was just barely big enough for the two of them to sit up, and neither dared to lean on anything. “How the fuck did this happen?”

“We’ve both been exploring for years. These buildings are all falling apart. It’s a wonder it hadn’t happened sooner.”

“Well that’s comforting,” she muttered. “Don’t you have people who come out to check these places first? Like, for safety? For your big, professional productions?”

“Of course I do, and I’m given specific instructions on places I should avoid for this very reason. This part of the building was determined by the insurance adjuster to be sound.”

“Well, someone fucked up.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Us.”

She was immediately on the defensive. “You think that our argument caused this?”

He looked at her, his eyes glinting mischievously. “Perhaps it was your yelling, it disturbed the delicate foundations of this place.” She narrowed her eyes.

“Perhaps it was your gigantic ego being incapable of fitting through the door.”

“Perhaps- “

She sighed. “Perhaps arguing isn’t fucking getting us out of here. Come on, if we reach up here we can probably-“

He shook his head, taking another long look around the space. He couldn’t be sure that they weren’t under several layers of debris down here. If they moved one thing, everything else could come crashing down. “Love, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She glared at him. “You got a better one?”

He took his phone out of his pocket, clicking the home button and seeing that he had no service. Emma mirrored his action, seeing her phone screen was cracked.. She groaned as she attempted – unsuccessfully – to turn it on. Calling for help was out of the question.

“Wait for rescue?” He asked, and even he knew it sounded pathetic. She let out an incredulous huff.

“From who?”

“The crew?”

Oh God, the crew! In their current predicament, she’d forgotten that she’d brought two other people in here with her, and that Killian had brought his team, as well. “Do you hear them? What if they- oh god, what if they’re all… it’d be my fault, I dragged them here…”

“Shit.” It was quiet. He thought they’d have heard some yelling by now. What if he’d been responsible for killing his entire crew?

“If they’re… and we’re stuck here… how long…?” She found it hard to speak the word. If they were dead. Dead. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. These were her best friends. She would never live with herself if she survived and they hadn’t.

“I don’t know.” He let out a long breath. Emma could tell that he, too, felt the weight of responsibility for the people he’d brought with him.

“Would anyone nearby be able to hear the crash? Would they think to look for people?”

“My truck is parked outside, so I’d hope so,” he replied. Sure, they hadn’t parked directly in front of this exact location, but eventually someone would find it odd that there was a car parked in front of an abandoned hospital.

“Mine, too.“

“That ridiculous yellow contraption?”

She felt her irritation rising again at his tone. “I like it” The Bug was old, but it was hers – one of the first things that she’d ever bought for herself.

“It fits you, I guess,” he said, and she snapped her head to look at him.

“And what does that mean?”

“That thing looks like it’s held together by duct tape and dreams. Kind of like-“

“Do not finish that statement,” she warned. She didn’t know what he’d been about to say, but it couldn’t have been anything kind, judging by their conversation so far. She sighed. For a moment, it had seemed like they were starting to get along, but now he was antagonizing her again.

“Fine,” he snapped.

“Fine,” she snapped back.

The silence enveloped them, and Emma realized at that moment just how little space they had. She could see that there were some small openings in the debris – she could barely see the light from one of the windows – so it wasn’t like they would run out of air, but the space was not a comfortable one by anyone’s definition. She wondered what would happen if they had to sleep here – if they had to spend the night, waiting for rescue, in a tiny space where perhaps one errant move could send the rest of the building upon them.

It was only when Killian spoke again that she realized she’d started breathing a bit more rapidly. “Your breathing is disrupting my thinking.”

“Oh, I’m sure your thoughts are exhilarating,” was her reply. As much as she’d tried to sound sarcastic, she was secretly glad that he’d drawn her out of her headspace.

“They are, actually. Not that I can hear myself think over the sound of you hyperventilating.”

“Well excuse me for panicking! We could die in here, and you’re hellbent on antagonizing me!” He recoiled, realizing that his attempts to lighten the mood with teasing had not been taken in jest. “This is your fault!”

It was his turn to be defensive. “How in the hell is this my fault?”

“If you hadn’t come around that corner and bothered us while we were filming…” she waved her hand, seemingly showing the result of him walking into the hospital.

“Oh, so I was supposed to just know you were here?”

“You could have just seen us and turned around. Let us do our thing. It isn’t like the building is going anywhere.”

He turned his head toward her slowly, giving her a pointed, incredulous look.

She swallowed. “Okay, so the building was going somewhere. How were we supposed to know that?”

“Exactly, love,” he nodded. “How were we supposed to know that?”

Emma huffed, a short breath pushing a few errant strands of hair away from her face, and she reached up to brush her hair back behind her ear. As much as she wanted to blame Killian Jones for all of her current woes, she knew as well as he did that they were both responsible for their predicament. Had they not been shoving each other like a couple of five-year-olds, the building probably would still be mostly intact.

He was still talking, she realized. “And we could have collaborated, if you’d been amenable to it.”

“Could you cut out the proper British guy act? This isn’t fucking National Geographic.” Who the hell uses words like amenable?

“I hate to break it to you, love, but this is my natural accent.”

“I mean your stupid vocabulary,” she amended, and he snorted, trying to keep from laughing.

“The mere fact that I have a vocabulary indicates that it is not stupid.” And damn it, she hated that he was right. Again.

She sighed. “This sucks.”

“On that, I am in agreement with you.”

“Fuck, I don’t even have my backpack on me.” Killian raised an eyebrow, silently asking her to elaborate as to why that mattered. “My backpack has water. Some snacks.”

“Planning on getting trapped?”

“No. But you so eloquently pointed out my ‘yellow contraption,’ which is kind of old. I like to be prepared. Plus, I like to snack. We spend hours in these places. You mean to tell me you don’t bring snacks? You don’t have anything to drink?”

“We keep a cooler of water in the truck, but snacks, no. Not on location,” he mused. He’d never thought to bring snacks into one of these places; they would shoot different parts of the documentary at different times, and they could always grab something to eat while outside the venue.

“On location,” she mimicked, her horrible rendition of his accent making him snort with laughter. “You sound so pretentious.”

“I’m a filmmaker, love. That’s what it’s called.”

“Totally pretentious.” He couldn’t stop himself from laughing, snickering softly under his breath.

Emma was less amused. “What’s funny about this?”

“I’m laughing at you,” he replied with another shake of his shoulders, though he at least managed to contain his grin.

“Yeah, sure, laugh at me, kick me while I’m down! We’re both in here, we’re both gonna die! Why aren’t you taking this seriously?”

“I am!”

“No you’re not!”

“Okay, well, first of all, we’re not going to die, and I was just trying to make you feel a bit better,” he said with a shrug, his tone apologetic. He realized that his approach with Emma had been wrong. She was far too guarded to find the humor in a situation such as this, and he should have contained himself, at least more than he had.

“Why should I?” She asked, throwing her hands up. “Feel better, I mean?”

“What’s the use in panicking? You’ll use more energy,” was his response.

“Why should that matter? We’re not going to be pushing our way out of here, we’ve already established that.”

He reached to push her hands down, keeping a grip on her wrist. He was surprised when she didn’t push his hand away. “When a crew comes to let us out, you might need some strength.”

“When. You seem awfully confident,” she retorted, her eyes betraying the worry she’d been trying to conceal. Despite her tough exterior, he could tell that Emma was more afraid than she’d let on.

“People know I’m here,” he said, hoping to provide an extra bit of reassurance. “They will be expecting to hear from me.”

“People other than your crew?” She swallowed again, trying not to think too hard about what might have happened to their friends.

“Yes, believe it or not,” he replied. “People actually care about me. People who aren’t on my payroll.”

At that, she cracked a smile, but decided to keep playing the role. “Like who?” she asked, as if she didn’t believe him.

“Like my brother, who will no doubt gloat about my idiocy in getting trapped in here, and who will be sure to tell me to stop my ‘foolish dangerous hobby,’ as he calls it.” Emma dropped the façade immediately, becoming indignant on Killian’s behalf.

“It’s not a hobby if you get paid for it.”

“Exactly. I told him that. This is my job. A job I quite enjoy.” As an afterthought, he added, “most of the time.”

“This is mine, too.”

He was surprised by that. It wasn’t easy to be able to support oneself with a career in content creation. “Really?”

“It’s almost impossible to produce good, quality YouTube content like this without committing to it. I worked for the first few years while I ran my channel, and you can tell by the quality of my videos, because I didn’t have the time to devote to the locations, or the time for editing them the way we do now Then I…I lost my mother,” she took a shaky breath and felt him squeeze her arm, “my adoptive mom, I never knew my real mother – and I decided then that I’d pursue this for real. She left me a bit of money, so I could comfortably quit and try to make this happen. If it didn’t work out, I’d at least know I tried. If it did – well, I’d be where I am right now.”

“Trapped in a collapsed building with me.”

“Maybe I should have kept my job,” she joked, but there was no bite behind it.

“Am I all that bad?”

No, she wanted to say, but somehow couldn’t form the word. It had been hard for her to let people in, to trust people, and she was already trusting him a lot more than she’d ever intended upon. True, she hadn’t expected to meet him and then become trapped in a tight space under a partially collapsed building, but she still wasn’t ready to be completely open.

He could see her warring with herself, so he continued. “I think we’ve got quite a bit in common, love. You say you never knew your birth mother, I’m assuming that extends to your birth father, as well?” He paused, and she nodded in response. “My mother died when I was four, then my father abandoned my brother and I when I was five. Liam was fifteen. One of his friends’ mums took us in so we wouldn’t get separated from each other. She kind of became my second mum.”

“What happened to her?” Emma asked, though she sensed there was no happy ending to this story.

“She died,” he said, swallowing hard. “Last year. Cancer.”

“It’s a bitch,” she said softly.

He chuckled darkly in response. “Indeed.”

Emma didn’t know how to respond, other than the usual platitudes and sympathy, and she had a feeling that he wasn’t one for wallowing. She was the same way. Hearing people offer sympathy to her forced her to think about it, and she didn’t want to think about it.  

“Let me ask you something, Swan,” he said softly, and she lifted her head up.

“Hmm?”

“Is that why your series is named ‘Left Behind’?”

“Um. Yeah, actually.” She was surprised. There were so few people who understood the double meaning of her series title, and in mere hours he’d picked up on it.

He nodded sadly. “I knew I saw it in you. The look of someone who had been abandoned. You put so much love and care into these explorations. You’re fascinated by things left behind, but you recognize the tragedy in it all..” She was too stunned to reply. “We’re more alike than you think.”

That shook her out of it. “I suppose. And what about your series? ‘Desolate and Deserted’?” She watched him reach to scratch behind his ear, a nervous gesture that made him seem oddly endearing.

“Aye, I was in a kind of rough patch when I came about the name. My girlfriend had just left me to go be with one of my mates, and I felt pretty much desolate and deserted.” He stopped for a moment, then continued. “Looking back, it never would have worked out, so I guess I should thank her for it, but the name is rather unfortunate, at that.”

“Ugh, I’m sorry. Cheaters are the worst. No one should have to go through that. It’s a shitty feeling.” Feeling like you’re unwanted, she didn’t add, but she didn’t have to. He understood.

“I told you. We’re more alike than you think.”

“I suppose we are.” It was weird, realizing that she may have been wrong about him, and that for all his bravado as portrayed on TV, he was just as flawed and broken as she was. “Look, I’m sorry for all of that, back there. Being the first to explore a location, that’s kind of my whole thing. Audiences are fickle, and I’m terrified of losing everything I’ve built.”

“I understand, Swan. More than you think. When you come from nothing-“

“Do you hear something?” They both sat silently, listening for something out of the ordinary. Then he heard it – some faint yelling. Were people here already, looking for them? Should they begin yelling?

The yelling was getting closer, though they couldn’t make out what the person was saying. Whoever it was didn’t seem to know where they were. “Is that-“

Mary Margaret interrupted him, her voice calling loudly from what must have just been outside the room they were in. “Emma! Killian! You guys in there?”

“Jones!” Robin’s voice called, and he heard Belle and Will calling further off in the distance.

“They’re alive,” he breathed.

“Oh thank God,” Emma replied, heaving a huge sigh. Not only were the people she loved alive – and probably fine, but they were actively looking for them.

“We’re here!” She yelled as loud as she could. Killian flinched and tried not to cover his ears, despite the volume of her voice. “We’re both fine! A few scratches!”

“Killian?” Will shouted, apparently needing to hear him.

“I’m fine! What took you lot so long?”

Even through a thick brick wall and a mountain of debris, Killian could hear Will’s biting tone: “We were trying to get out, you wanker!”

“We thought you were dead!” Mary Margaret yelled. “You weren’t calling for us, so we assumed…”

“We thought you were dead!” Emma shouted, and wiped a tear that had started rolling down her cheek. When they got out of here, she was going to give Mary Margaret and David the biggest hug imaginable.

“We’re calling 911! Don’t kill each other!”

“WHAT!?” Emma bellowed, her face turning to panic. The group outside didn’t respond, so she assumed that they were already in the process of calling.

“How else do you think they’re going to get us out of here? Divine intervention?” Killian asked.

She rolled her eyes. “The cops will come.”

“So?”

“We’re trespassing. Why are you not freaking out? We’re trapped under all this shit, the foundation is probably not that sturdy given… everything… and we’re going to get arrested once they pull our stupid asses out of here. How can you be so calm?”

“I have a permit, along with liability insurance,” he replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“You do?” Now it all made sense, the way he’d reacted to her crew breaking into the location.

“You mean to tell me you don’t?”

“Would I be freaking out if I did?”

“Fair point,” he conceded. He had been teasing her earlier, but now it seemed that their explorations were a lot more amateur than he’d thought. When they got out of here, he’d try to convince her that she should start doing things the legal way. That wasn’t a conversation to be had at this particular moment. “But anyway, my insurance specifies ‘Killian Jones and his crew.’ None of their names are listed on the document.”

What did that have to do with anything? she wondered. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that you could pretend to be a part of my crew – you and your own crew – and you can avoid the charges associated with trespassing.”

It was a generous offer, one Emma couldn’t believe he would make. “Why would you do that? After all the shit I’ve given you today?”

“What kind of person would I be if I didn’t?”

She didn’t respond, because she realized that everything she’d said about him earlier had been borne of assumptions, almost all of which were wrong.

He continued. “An asshole?”

“Listen, I didn’t mean…I mean…” she pursed her lips together. She knew she had to apologize, but Emma wasn’t always the greatest at admitting when she was wrong.

“No, no, I’m your competition, after all. That’s why you were so upset that we were here. You don’t want to lose half your viewers to my episode.”

“I mean, you’re not really my competition.” His eyebrows shot to the sky, and she quickly amended, “You’re not a YouTuber. Our audiences are not the same, and people expect different things on YouTube than they do on Netflix.”

“So then you really shouldn’t have been so upset about us being here,” he pointed out, and she shrugged. He was right.

“But to be fair, we are often covering the same locations, a fact that you have mentioned more than a few times in your videos.”

Emma was shocked. “You’ve watched my videos?” It shouldn’t have been such a surprise, given that he’d recognized her on sight, but she still felt flustered at the knowledge that someone as prominent as Killian Jones, a renowned documentary filmmaker who had a non-zero amount of Emmy nominations throughout his career, sat down to watch her videos.

Suddenly, she wanted to know more. Did he subscribe to her channel? Was he familiar with her posting schedule? Had he ever commented on one of her videos before?

“I’m just full of surprises, aren’t I? They’ll get us out of here, I’ll give them my insurance information, I’ll say we were all here filming together, and we can go our separate ways. Nothing to worry about, Swan.”

No one had ever called her by her last name before, and she kind of liked it, loathe as she was to admit it to herself. “Thank you.” She waited for him to make a snarky comment, or to make another flirtatious remark about how she could properly show her gratitude. When he didn’t, she turned to look at him, noting the way his eyes had softened.

“And when the firemen finally get us out of here, I’d like to take you to dinner.”

“Can’t just let a favor go for free, can we?” she snarked, immediately regretting her words when she saw him flinch slightly. She let out an apologetic breath, giving him the space to continue.

“Well you see,. I quite fancy you, when you’re not yelling at me.”

If someone had told her this morning that not only would she meet Killian Jones, but she’d be sitting next to him under a pile of rubble while he confessed to liking her, she’d have called that person a dumbass. And yet…

And yet.

He watched the surprise play across her face before continuing. “I’ve watched your videos for years, Swan. Not to copy your locations – we have similar tastes, is all. I actually enjoy your content. You have a fresh enthusiasm that my documentaries lack. A – youthfulness, a feeling of whimsy.”

“Yours are kind of clinical,” she agreed, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. “How old are you anyway? Fifty?” Emma Swan was not one for sincerity, but teasing? That, she could do.

He ignored the age comment, pointing playfully. “I knew you watched them!” His wide grin was perhaps the most endearing thing Emma had ever seen.

“Sometimes there’s nothing else on Netflix,” she shrugged. He narrowed his eyes at her, letting her know that he didn’t believe her for a second.

“Okay, okay! I’ve watched them! The history you dig up is really interesting. I sometimes wish I went through all the trouble before getting to these places. I mean, we do get a little bit of background, but you’re like an abandoned building archaeologist. The stuff you find out about these places is fascinating.”

“It does give the exploration more depth,” he agreed. It was a lot of work, the research that went into each of his videos, not to mention the interviews and location shots. He was glad to hear that someone he admired as much as Emma appreciated it.

“Tell me the history of this place.”

“Now, now, Swan, no spoilers.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think I know how this episode ends already,” she joked, and he had no response to that.

“All right, so, George Mills made a fortune in the steel industry at the turn of the century. He was one of the first to open a steel mill just outside Pittsburgh, which – as you know – is well-known for steel production. He met his wife there, a woman half his age by the name of Regina Barnes. She was, according to many accounts, a tyrant, and just prior to the first World War, she forced him to sell the mill and move their family – they had three kids at this point – and settle in this area.”

“Why here?” Northern Maine wasn’t particularly close to Pittsburgh, so it seemed an odd choice.

“She had ‘a feeling about this place.’ A small, unincorporated area of the country, well off the beaten path, and she wanted to live there. She packed up her family, ‘convinced’ dozens of families to leave Pittsburgh with them, and they all settled down and incorporated the town of Storybrooke, which holds its name to this day.”

Killian’s use of air quotes had not gone unnoticed. She imitated the motion, asking, “Convinced?”

“Coerced. Allegedly.” Emma gave him a pointed look, urging him to continue. “She was apparently great at getting dirt on people, which was an excellent means for her to get her way. So she basically brought a small town’s worth of people with her to settle down, got them all to build her a mansion which, sadly, burned down about ten years ago, and appointed herself mayor of the town.”

“Her husband wasn’t bothered by this?”

“He was very enamored of her, it seems.”

“Or she had something on him, too,” Emma suggested, and he nodded slightly.

“We’ll never know, I suppose. Anyway, that’s how this hospital came to be. One of their children developed a chronic illness, and rather than travel to another city for healthcare, she blackmailed a doctor out of Boston and had the hospital built. They began construction in 1920, and the first wing of the hospital opened that year. This whole massive building was built and operational by 1927, funded in part by the number of disabled war veterans needing continuous care. Storybrooke was a thriving small town at that point, and the hospital was the largest for miles for over thirty years.

“It saw the tail end of the depression, had a major boom during the Second World War, as did the town. George Mills died shortly after the war, and Regina inherited his fortune. She ran the town, and the hospital was part of the town. She wasn’t mayor anymore, but every subsequent mayor answered to her. She had the money, and with it, the power. There is a lot of scandal surrounding Regina Barnes-Mills, so much that I can’t possibly put it all in the episode. I could do an entire documentary on her alone.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I don’t have time, for one. Perhaps I will revisit her story someday.” He paused, heaving a slight sigh. “Anyway, she died in 1983. She was 102 years old then, and held onto control right up until the end. Following her death, her children had a huge battle with each other over inheritance. Our lovely Mayor hadn’t been too clear about her intentions. Some local historians say that she didn’t intend to die.” He paused, giving Emma a chance to giggle. “The familial in-fighting and lack of leadership at the hospital was essentially its death warrant, though there were many other factors. Newer, more state-of-the-art facilities, people leaving the town, and the questionable decision to convert the hospital – well, a wing of it, at least – to a mental health facility. Problem was, there weren’t enough patients locally, so they kind of… outsourced.”

“I take it that didn’t go well?”

“Not as such, no. There were some lawsuits over the mistreatment of patients, and the hospital closed in 1987. A wealthy investor bought this place hoping to turn it into a hotel, and some parts of the building were converted into rooms. That lasted a couple years. It’s not like this area is a tourist hotspot. Except, you know, for people like us who want to explore decrepit, abandoned places,” he joked.

“I know the rest, I think. They couldn’t find anyone else to buy it and there was a huge fire all the way on the other side of the building. People wrote it off, right?”

“That’s essentially it, yes. And here it sits.”

“And here we sit,” she grumbled, heaving a deep sigh. He responded with a sigh of his own. They sat in silence for a few moments, and Emma pretended to be supremely interested in her cuticles.

Killian broke the silence. “So, have I made this place more interesting to you?

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head and trying to hide her smile from him.

“I beg your-“ He grabbed her wrist, causing her to look at him. “You were hanging onto my every word!”

Emma couldn’t help but laugh. He was so offended at her feigned disinterest. “Perhaps I was merely appreciative of the messenger.”

“And not the message?”

She huffed out a breath, pushing an errant strand of hair away from her face. “I was trying to compliment you.”

“You were?” He raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, he cleared his throat slightly. “All right then. Thank you.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but didn’t get the chance. “You guys all right in there?” Robin’s voice carried over the rubble.

“Fine!” Emma called, trying not to be too annoyed at the interruption from outside. They were just trying to help, after all.

Killian seemed to sense her frustration. “But you could get us out, yeah?

“The firemen are on their way. Try not to kill each other,” Robin advised. Killian made a mental note to remind Robin later that he didn’t need a second over-protective older brother.

“No promises,” Killian shouted back, winking at Emma as he did so.

Right then, she seemed to make a decision about something. “Okay,” she said, agreeing to an unknown prompt.

“Okay what?”

“Okay I’ll go to dinner with you,” she replied, her eyes glinting with amusement at the way his face lit up.

“Really Swan, what changed your mind?”

“I quite ‘fancy you’ as well,” she replied, in a poor imitation of his accent.

“Emma Swan, were you watching my documentaries to admire the locations, or just to admire me?” he teased, wiggling his eyebrows in an animated fashion.

“You really are such a dick sometimes.” The insult was spoken, but it had no bite.

He shrugged casually. “It’s part of my charm.”

“I suppose.”

“But you didn’t answer my question,” he pressed, and she looked down at her fingers again, picking at one of her nails.  

“Both,” she muttered.

“Both?” He repeated, wanting to be sure he’d heard her.

She threw her hands up exasperatedly. “Both the locations, and you. All right?”

“Was that so hard?”

“Admitting that I’ve been a bitch to you all this time because I didn’t want you to know that I liked you?”

And there it was, out in the open. Sure, there had been the worry about him getting all of the prime bits of footage before she could manage it, but the real reason she was being so prickly was that she hadn’t wanted to admit to him – or to herself, for that matter – that she liked him. Kind of a lot.

“I wasn’t going to say it.” He knew better than to use that particular word in reference to a woman. She smiled then, surprisingly relieved that it was out in the open now.  

“So what do you say, Swan, care to plan a collab? Starting here?”

What did she have to lose? “Okay,” she said. “But I still get to release my video on my schedule.”

“I wouldn’t dream of trying to manage how you run your channel, love.”

“Good.”

Inwardly, she wondered how it would all work – would they have contracts? As much as Killian said he wouldn’t want to meddle in her production, she knew that the folks over at Netflix would probably have a few more stipulations.

As if reading her thoughts, he continued. “I can’t promise that my agents will appreciate me bringing another personality onto the team. Especially one as volatile as you,” he said, shaking his head slightly.

“Don’t make me find something to throw at you.”

He grinned. It really was too easy to get a rise out of her. “But. If we were to collaborate with each other, even if it’s only on this location - I think we could really have something. Your videos are good. And I daresay my documentaries are good. But together…”

“We could be great,” she finished, letting her mind wander beyond just their filmmaking endeavors. They could be great. What would it be like to get to know Killian Jones on a personal level? How much of his narrative charm was genuine? The more she got to know about him, the more she wanted to learn.

She startled when he spoke again. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re quite fetching in that tank top.”

“I’m sweaty,” she protested, her face beginning to flush. “And covered in dust. And I probably smell terrible.”

He was close enough to dispute that assertion. “You smell nice, actually.” His voice was lower, huskier. He reached to brush a strand of her hair away from her face, and she shuddered at the gentleness of his touch.

She turned her head then, meeting his intense gaze. She leaned ever-slightly toward him, noting that he did the same. A pang of longing shot through her, and she parted her lips in anticipation of what was to come.

They closed the distance slowly, their lips barely grazing when a loud cracking noise pulled them from their reverie. “Y’all just sit tight in there, we’ll have you out in a few,” came the reassuring voice of what could only have been one of the firemen over what must have been a megaphone.

“All right,” Emma yelled weakly, barely trusting her voice. A loud motor roared to life outside, and the moment was effectively broken. The faint sound of rhythmic beeping, signaling that a vehicle was backing up, seemed to draw closer. She wondered how much work the rescue crews would have to do to pull them out of there. Exactly how much of the building was piled on top of them?

“We’ll finish that later,” Killian promised, grazing her cheek with the back of his hand. How he desperately wanted to pull her into him and claim her, but the background noise of the rescue effort was especially jarring. They may as well have doused him in freezing water.

He and Emma hunched over, keeping their eyes shielded in an effort to avoid any falling debris. There was a constant din – between the motors of vehicles, the yelling of workers, the beeping, and the sound of the building being lifted, Emma would be surprised if she left without a headache.  

Be grateful that’s all you’ll have, she reminded herself. She grasped Killian’s hand, and he squeezed it reassuringly. “Bit loud,” he commented, and if she hadn’t just been thinking the same thing, she’d have made some sarcastic comment about him being Captain Obvious.

The fireman had said, “a few,” but they had no frame of reference for that statement. A few minutes? A few hours?

The noise was such that they couldn’t really converse, so they sat beside each other waiting for their eventual release, trying to be patient. Periodically, one of them would look up to check the progress, but that didn’t really give them any indication as to how much longer it would be, and the rescuers weren’t stopping to give them any updates. Eventually, though, the firefighters were pulling them out – Emma first, followed shortly thereafter by Killian. The sky was slightly darker, but night hadn’t quite fallen.

There was a flurry of activity as everyone rushed to hug each other and express their overall relief that this ordeal was over. The police had already questioned both crews, and they gathered statements from both Killian and Emma.

Emma must have seemed worried, because the officer reassured her that the questioning was merely for insurance purposes. The firefighters left first, and before long, the police officers were leaving, as well, leaving behind a construction crew, who had been tasked with ensuring that they got everything cleared from the site. They were all given strict instructions not to reenter the building by both the police and the construction workers.

“Good thing we got all of the cameras then,” Will grumbled, though Emma suspected that Will – not unlike herself – would have had very few qualms about disobeying the police.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Mary Margaret fussed over Emma, and Emma could only respond with a pointed look. A few meters away, Killian was subjected to similar treatment from Belle, and he met Emma’s gaze as he repeated – much like she had – that he was fine.

“I’m fine, Mary Margaret,” she said again, not even looking at her friend as she did so. In the waning daylight, Killian’s slightly mussed form seemed even more enticing, if that was even possible, and she caught his eye, noting how his gaze darkened with lust. “I’m fine,” she breathed, hardly aware of anyone – or anything – other than Killian Jones.

He raised an eyebrow at her and that was it. She stalked over to him, grabbed the collar of his still-dusty leather jacket, and practically crashed their lips together. Within seconds his hands were tangling in her hair, pulling her possessively closer and groaning deeply into the embrace. She felt her knees go weak as he kissed her passionately, his toned frame seemingly the only thing keeping her upright.

They breathed each other in, their hands clinging, groping, desperate, their breaths hot against each other when Emma finally – reluctantly – pulled away slightly, her lips trembling and a shudder shooting through her. She had never been kissed like that.

“Would you like to have that dinner date now?” Killian asked softly, his words low and gravely. For as long as she lived, Emma was certain she would never, ever forget how absolutely fucking sexy he sounded in that moment.

She giggled against him, pressing her lips to his in another short, quick, kiss, giggling again when he chased her lips with his own. “Maybe we should just skip the dinner part for now,” she suggested.  

“I like the way you think,” he murmured against her, “But I do still want to take you out on a proper date,” he added, closing the distance between them again as she nodded her agreement. 

“Mate, you gonna keep snogging her there all night?” Robin teased, and they stepped back from each other, noting the various states of amusement on the faces of their spectators.

“Right,” Killian said. He wasn’t going to stand here so his mates could give him the third degree, not when Emma Swan wanted him to take her somewhere more private. “Shall we, love?” he asked Emma, nodding slightly toward where his truck was parked. The crew could take care of the equipment and get the van back to their hotel.

Emma reached into her pocket and grabbed her keys, tossing them toward her friends. “M&Ms, take the Bug, would you?” Mary Margaret caught the keys, just barely, jingling them a few times with a pointed look, one that very clearly told Emma that they were going to have a long talk about this, and Emma felt Killian put his arm around her waist, leading her away from the stunned onlookers.

“Told you,” they heard Mary Margaret whisper loudly as they began to walk away, and Emma could only smile as she let Killian lead her to his car.

A few years later

“For Deserted and Left Behind, I’m Killian Jones,” he began the sign-off.

“And I’m Emma Swan,” she continued.

“And we’ll see you in the next exploration,” they finished together, holding their final pose until the camera crew gave them the all-clear. They’d probably reshoot that a few more times, but Emma personally felt that it was satisfactory.

It was one thing she’d had trouble adjusting to when she’d agreed to these periodic special collaborations with Killian – Netflix’s need to have them constantly reshoot everything. It was for camera angles, or lighting, or just a different tone of voice. She’d never known how exhausting it all could be.

“Hey, don’t go anywhere,” he said as she turned to leave, grabbing her elbow before turning to one of the cameramen.. “Can we get some more footage real quick?”

“Killian, I’m hungry,” she protested. “Can’t it wait?”

“This won’t take long, love.” He nodded to the cameraman, who started recording again before nodding back, indicating they were rolling.

“Three years ago, I ran into this lovely yet infuriating lass when we both stumbled upon the same location-”

“They know all this-“ she began to interrupt, but he silenced her with a finger on her lips.

“Like I said, infuriating.” She tilted her head to the side, giving him that affectionate-but-annoyed look she’d perfected since they’d begun dating. “Little did I know, however, that I would find not just a partner in exploration, but one in life.”

He took her hand, dropping to one knee. “And I’d like to ask her to continue to be my partner, for the rest of our lives.” Her mouth hung open, tears welling up in her eyes as he took out a small ring box, opening it to reveal a perfect, beautiful ring.. “Emma, will you marry me?”

“Infuriating?” she teased as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Takes one to know one.”

“Emma…” he warned with a groan, squeezing her hand. Only Emma Swan could take a proposal and make it sarcastic.

“Yes, Killian. I’ll be an infuriating wife to an infuriating husband,” she agreed with a huge smile, and he slid the ring on her finger before standing up and pulling her in to a searing kiss, oblivious to the cheers – and tears – around them.

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?” he asked against her lips, and she shook her head slightly before diving back in.

“God, I hope not,” she replied, and kissed him again.

[ghostbird-7]

Thoughts while I’m rewatching dead reckoning-roughly the first 2 hours

This movie is just so visually pleasing and engaging. I want to eat it. The shot from beneath the submarine looking up at the ice?? Fucking gorgeous.

I know logistically why they made the call but the Russian submersible crew speaking Russian accented English will always be funny to me. Also reminds me of the doctor who episode in 11’s run with the Russian submarine. It was Clara’s era. Anyway, they also do a great job of making us immediately empathize with the crew just based on their fear and confusion in the face of the enemy. It helps that that enemy is the same one the protagonist is facing, but it’s also just great acting on the crew’s part in a relatively short period. The existential horror of being trapped in a submarine of all things with a murderous ai is genuinely chilling.

I really love how old they let Ethan be in this movie. With most action franchises with an aging protagonist they refuse to alter the character, instead sticking to what’s been proven to work and MI has always done the opposite of that and it’s just so good. All his interactions with the new IMF agent just speak to his experience, and how many people he’s seen just like this guy, inexperienced and thrown in over their heads, not make it out. His fucking sadness after he welcomes the delivery guy to the IMF and he leaves is so good. TC your micro expressions will never not destroy me. Mildly controversial opinion but I didn’t think Grace and Ethan’s chemistry was in any way romantic or paternal, I think they’re going to be really great friends. Also “we live and die in the shadows for those we hold close and those we never meet” is both super corny and such a perfect representation of Ethan’s character it makes me screech.

I have complicated feelings about Ethan’s backstory retcon which I won’t go into but I do think they definitely made the right choice not doing the deaging thing for the flashback.

One of these days I’m going to write something exclusively about everything I love about Ilsa, but that day is not today. For now, even looking at pictures of her makes me a bit emotional. Rebecca Ferguson you have changed me, body and soul. Also that eyepatch being because she can’t wink is so funny. No ones doing it like her.

Ethan briefly gives his horse pats and I liked it. I feel like he’s a horse girl. In his heart. I like that none of the horses die in this sequence. I know it’s unrealistic but this is fucking mission impossible we’re talking about it’s not a docuseries and it would make me sad.

Ilsa’s costuming in this movie is so fucking good. The looseness and lightness of everything she wears really complements the economy of motion that Ferguson does so well.

Indira Varma win!!

In retrospect watching Ethan move so unimpeded into a meeting of some of the highest ranking us intelligence officers is such a great look at him as a character for newcomers to the franchise. He’s such a spy in this, it’s so good. It’s just a great standalone movie.

Kitttridge!!!! I hate this bitch, and I’m so glad he’s here.

In every interaction with kittridge ethan is such a bitch, I love him so much.

“It’s my job to use you. Just like it’s your job to be of use” is fucking heavy. The decades of being of use, and having the shit beaten out of him and his loved ones leaving or dying so he can serve, the absolute mindfuck of his loyalty to the IMF and to a greater extent to keeping the world safe and lack of regard for himself. I don’t have coherent words about this, but it’s great characterization and I’m so sad about it.

I love how much of an ensemble movie this is, by the way.

“The man himself is expendable” Briggs I am going to break your legs. He is my special guy.

I love how much this is a manifestation of Benji’s monologue in MI 3 about the Antigod. It was silly but he was not wrong.

Also Benji’s outfits and Luther’s hat… really good.

I cannot wait for them to tell us what the connection between Ethan and Briggs is because it’s SO weird

Benji and Luther’s relationship being given a chance to evolve is really good, it was a side of their team that had felt underdeveloped and it works really well here. Them not letting Ethan know gives us insight into some of the troubleshooting on missions that he just can’t cover because of his skillset and it’s really good. Also banter 👌👌

The return of his sleight of hand is gorgeous. “Putpocket” is horrible and super silly.

The entire scene where Benji is interrogated by the bomb is so good, Simon pegg is as always excellent, being forced to admit that he fears death, that he loves his friends more than anything else, all without any stakes, it’s just so clearly meant to humiliate and tear him into bits and it works and then he goes back on the job because all the things he said are true and now the machine Knows.

Pom is flawless in this movie. As a character, she’s delightfully unhinged. As someone who’s attracted to women, it’s. It’s nice for me. But also genuinely from a narrative standpoint it would be so easy for her to be extraneous but her presence is so strong it just carries. Her monster truck and combat boots and small ponytail compel me deeply.

Running scene running scene running scene running scene

I fucking love his little lawyer outfit.

That car chase scene is maybe my favorite in the series. You can see McQ and TC’s commitment to stunts as a carrier for narrative and character, it’s visually stunningly, it has Paris who I’m obsessed with, everything Ethan does is just impeccable and Grace plays the perfect foil. His deep discomfort with not being the one who’s driving, repeatedly reassuring her after the crash, his getaway driving skills, his little looks to Briggs (again what the fuck is up there), wanting to be the protector and being deeply embarrassed with the fiat. Not actually knowing how to drive it is such a great comedy moment and also blue screening when he can’t do it immediately. That 5 minutes of him just being so embarrassed and frustrated with himself. I want to eat it. It’s so good. And then of course he’s doing stunt driving in it and that’s also glorious. Grace going in circles in the fiat is so fucking funny. Also Ethan’s the worst fucking backseat driver it’s amazing. He is losing his mind. He is actually scrunching up in the seat, which he can do even in a fiat because he is tiny. It’s just quality television.

I knew they would do the train thing the second I saw the tracks and I just hate it. It’s really good objectively but I hate it every time.

Him having to just carry this wheel around for a solid 5 minutes-it’s his new rock. It’s his sadness object and he’s holding onto it forever.

Ethan’s fucking despair every time he sees his friends during a mission for the first time because he knows they might be hurt, the fact that that is consistently his first thought beyond relief or gratitude makes me insane.

Also the tacit acknowledgement that Ethan has just been working his way through the mitsopolis family is so fucking funny. It’s also fairly uncomfortable for Alanna because he seems substantially less into it than he was with max, but I digress.

I cannot wait for his hair to be longer, I think somewhere between MI 1 and 2 is the ideal length, but I hold a deep fear of the potential bowl cut.

The repeating pattern of all of Ethan’s friends withholding information from him is really interesting.

We all know Ethan’s whole shtick with you’ve gotta get out of here it’s dangerous I can’t protect you is a testament to how much he loves them but it’s also just..so much a trauma response. Every time he does it you can see him panicking and trying to change an eventuality he can feel creeping behind his shoulder.

The quiet moments between Ilsa and Ethan in Venice are really good. Their initial reveling in being able to wordlessly communicate and talking to each other in the context of work and danger has given way to this very comfortable worn in curiosity about each other, and a willingness to give of themselves to satisfy each others curiosity. It feels like they’ve sort of grown up a bit in their relationships with other people by having their relationship with each other and it’s just really cool.

Pom’s outfit with the mask at the party in Venice is so fucking good. I tend to try not to linger on attraction to female characters because it feels more creepy than it does with male characters, likely due to some of my internalized nonsense, but she really does feel so much for the queer gaze. She also has a sword. I’m just really into all of it.

Some of the things Vanessa Kirby said about learning about projecting power make so much sense watching her move, there’s this artificiality and stasis to her that feels innately threatening.

The loop back from Gabriel’s religious overtones and the themes of sin in the first mission impossible movie is fascinating.

I love it when he vaults over railings and down floors. The easiness of it, it’s just good to look at.

Getting closer to Ilsa’s death scene is complicated. I understand why it had to be someone, and why that someone should be her. I understand that Rebeca Ferguson was done with the character. I’m just sad because I like her, and I’ve managed to separate that feeling from a reflexive anger at the narrative choices that were made, which I admit I sometimes have an issue with. Him finding her body and just sitting and breathing and looking at her is fucking brutal. Also the entity using Benji’s voice to misdirect him is A Lot.

The brutality of that back alley fight scene is such a good establishing look at Paris’s fighting style and a great character moment for both of them. We get her first moment of fallibility and we see what he’s made of when his back is literally against the wall.

I know either rogue nation or ghost protocol is supposed to be Ethan’s fever dream nightmare scenario, but dead reckoning feels so much more like that to me. An enemy he can’t hit, who has a better chance of predicting his insanity, who uses an almost literal ghost from his past to kill the people he’s built himself around in the present. He also is forced to jump off a cliff and be a passenger in a car. It’s all not coming up Ethan in this movie is what I’m saying.

For the rest of the movie we don’t see a lot of his grief, mostly his anger. Don’t get me wrong, the bit we get is very good and did make me cry a bit, and I know how much they’re packing into one movie, but I hope we get more of it in the next film. Anything else seems like a bit of a disservice to Ilsa’s character.

It bothers me every time that Grace doesn’t have contacts when she’s playing the white widow. She sits almost directly opposite her brother, they make full eye contact a lot.

Ethan’s “your life will always matter more to me than my own.” And Grace’s “you don’t even know me” and Ethan’s “what difference does that make.” Hm. I am having complex feelings, consisting mostly of distress. Her looking at Benji and Luther, and them both acknowledging the weight of Ethan saying that and confirming it’s the same for them, AUGH.

What the fuck is going on with the cryogenic tube/coffin Gabriel was in on the train?? I know he was probably using the mask to communicate with the entity and he had to do that convertly but the whole thing is just weird.

I’m gonna pick this up when it’s not about to be a Monday. Tune in shortly for a continuation of me losing my mind over some action movies, I guess.

[katharinepar]

well, now I will have to ask your opinion 👀

Lol! Okay, I’ll fold. I already talked about this a bit on my Instagram, but beware the 500 year old spoilers ahead! (Also, I’m writing this from my phone as I am still in the hospital so bear with me in terms of typos!)

Here is what I did like: the soundtrack was tolerable (modern, but not terrible); Anne and Henry’s respective actors had palpable chemistry as performers; the filming locations are all visually sumptuous; it’s flush with well-known historians with keen insight into the Tudor court. Tracy Borman, one of the ‘talking heads historians’ and a leading voice in BS&R, is also the author behind Private Lives of the Tudors, a book I continuously go back to in my own research (it isn’t infallible - but it is incredibly detail-oriented and I hold Borman in some esteem for that). I am also one of those people who happens to enjoy dual perspective docuseries - this one, in particular, is split between the actors in all their regalia and the grounding, guiding hands of the historians. The manner of filming was similar to The Boleyns on PBS, except more of an emphasis is placed on the actors in BS&R, and it is certainly a great deal fluffier.

Here’s where you’ll allow me to nitpick, though: there were a few hits within the costuming department, I’ll allow them that. Some of the bodices worked in reflecting the Tudors’ love of tapering, V-shaped waists, and square décolletages adorned with jewels. However, as the show progressed, the hits became fewer and far between - and from the very start, the headdresses were atrocious. There was nothing remotely Tudor about them.

And here is what I loathed:

The driving ideology behind BS&R - especially from Borman’s perspective - encompasses the idea that Anne was ‘not like other girls’ (taken verbatim), an ideology that is both lazy, obsolete and downright frustrating ESPECIALLY considering this program was meant to be from a ‘feminist’s’ point of view. I would pay good money to scrape that phrase from every historian’s lexicon, for the love of God. It is especially tasteless when done in unison with tearing down Catherine of Aragon, Jane Seymour, & Jane Boleyn. Ir seems the only appropriate analysis for a woman like Anne Boleyn is that of comparison to her female contemporaries, in which Anne is always depicted as a woman ahead of her time and her rivals and peers as unthinking, unblinking paperweights. The show also strangely chose to go down the route of depicting Anne as coming from literally nothing - “plucked from obscurity” - which is laughable?? The Boleyns were well-connected and Anne was privileged enough to enjoy an education abroad, so I’m genuinely baffled that the idea Anne was a mangy lil peasant was even mentioned? And oh, yes, didn’t you hear that Anne introduced the idea of charity to the monarchy? 🙄

With this in mind, I also had trouble believing that the powers that be behind BS&R have any concept of ‘feminism’ at all - at least, not the intersectional kind. Anne’s portrayal as a hyper-proto-feminist is a very far take from existent 16th century sources and the contexts of Early Modern England. Anne was not a feminist. We may view her actions as being triumphant through the lens of women’s history, but none of her behaviours suggested she was anything more than influenced by the lofty standards set by medieval queens - such as the distribution of charity, care for the poor, interest in the spread & heartiness of religion, etc. I could understand if the directors sought to paint Anne as an independent woman through her influence of Henry’s state affairs, but we know from primary sources that Henry did not welcome her input - he wanted a quintessential queen, giving birth and sustaining the Tudors image of strength and unity - in the way that he had formerly accepted Catherine’s (at least for a time, particularly in matters of international warfare.)

The prolific use of modern speech also becomes, at times, grating - at others, it makes Anne seem like an idiot. George Boleyn uttering the phrase ‘haters gonna hate’ caused my skin to crawl (despite this I liked the casting for both George and Jane - wish they had been given more of a spotlight). When the academics are using formal speech and the actors are using phrases like ‘bestie’ and ‘screw the Pope’ it’s like… are we designing these characters to seem relatable or just plain stupid?

I also found myself stretching my imagination in order to believe the actress who plays Anne is ‘actually’ Anne Boleyn. She plays Anne as a quirky Bridget Jones type instead of the cool, charismatic, and intriguing firebrand we have come to know. In that vein, I did enjoy certain glimpses of Anne’s more ‘charismatic’ and fun-loving side: these traits are almost always done away with in order to portray Anne as a slick femme fatale, but we know it was to boisterous, convivial courtiers that Henry was most attracted. Showing Anne laughing, having female relationships, and bantering with members of the court from high to low status is perhaps the most ‘revolutionary’ thing BS&R accomplished - it is, in my opinion, one of the better parts of the show.

But what I was really looking forward to in BS&R - considering we were promised a ‘feminist’s’ take on Tudor history - was a fleshy portrayal of Catherine of Aragon. I didn’t dare dream we would have this in Jane Seymour, and indeed, Jane only appears on the sidelines for a single scene. Anyway, I had hoped with names like Borman, Lipscomb, and Emmmerson attached, the show would have opted not to revive Catherine as the dark-haired shrew we were so close to burying. Alas, Catherine was only given two lines - all dripping with jealousy and hatred towards Anne and Henry - before she is erased from the narrative completely. She is only mentioned again when Anne sports flamboyant yellow tulle at her death. But let me tell you, Anne hammers in that neither Catherine nor Henry ever loved each other in every episode - which is just… not true.

If BS&R is what the producers had hoped to be a ‘gateway drug’ into Tudor history, they succeeded; I can understand why casual watchers may enjoy the story of two sex-obsessed, madly in love, desperate to break the mold royals. But for anyone looking for a nuanced, meaty, comprehensive view of Anne Boleyn and the Tudor court, Blood Sex and Royalty is a resounding disappointment. 🥲

[declan-castle]

Star Wars and the Vietnam Connection

Trigger Warning: Mentions of Nazis, SS, Perpetrators of the Holocaust, and mentions/pictures of the Vietnam War.

For my first post, I wanna talk about something that many Star Wars fans are aware of, but something that I still think is cool and a good starting point!

Many people know that the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars franchise was, from a design perspective, based off of Nazi Germany. This is evident all throughout the original 1977 film, written and directed by George Lucas. The uniformity of the grey officers’ regalia is reminiscent of the infamous uniforms of Nazi SS Officers. Peter Cushing’s antagonistic character and the face of the Empire in this film, Grand Moff Tarkin (below), represents this connection, and his fellow Imperial Officers share similar clothing (While I will picture Tarkin below, I do not feel comfortable posting a picture of an SS officer on here). Another similarity would be the use of “Stormtrooper” to describe the Empire’s soldiers, a term which developed to describe special forces of the German Empire in World War One and became the common identification for Nazi troops.

While these more surface-level similarities are worth talking about, there is a different connection beneath that surface. George Lucas was not making Star Wars in the 1940s, he was making them in the 1970s, and he was an American man with a strong distaste for the recent events of the Vietnam War.

In James Cameron’s limited docuseries, James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, the acclaimed director behind sci-fi hits like The Terminator, Aliens, and Avatar sits down with Lucas to discuss his space opera. Cameron asks him about his choice to depict the noble Rebel Alliance as a group of rag-tag freedom fighters, and how they are similar to what the US Government might call terrorists today. Lucas qualifies his point, specifying that he was thinking of the Viet Cong, the guerrilla fighters of North Vietnam who warred against the United States for many years, of which Lucas refers to as the “American Empire.” The clip of the interview will be pasted at the bottom of this post if you want to watch! The Rebels (top left) fought against a major technological power in the Galactic Empire (top right), in a similar way to the Viet Cong (bottom left) ending up in a war with one of the world’s military superpowers (bottom right).

Ultimately, while Lucas was putting forward an anti-authoritarian message in general, comparing the Nazi-inspired villains of his film to America’s actions in historical events very recent to him was a biting commentary, especially when McCarthyism was still fresh in Hollywood’s memory. Although a simple message, that simplicity of the “little guy” standing up to the “big guy” trope is one that works, and is likely why Star Wars has been immortalized in every generation since its release.

I hope you found this connection as fascinating as I did, and I hope that you enjoyed reading! If you want to suggest me to cover something, feel free to mention it below! I have lots of other ideas, but I'm always open to new ones as well!

[hertwood]

dts s3 e1-3

e1: -i'm glad that i /have/ seen lawrence stroll outside of his businessman mode (chloes wedding pictures came to mind) because i'm SURE he's a kind n lovely guy but holy cow -otmar has littlefingercore advisor to the king energy. i'll say it. -lance is very adorable bbgirl here if i became a fan in 2020 i would've been easily convinced -lando is so LIL im so excited to see more of him~ -[lando squeals] subtitle is always so funny to me. print that on a t shirt -the pink mercedes drama is So Juicy 2 me i wish i was there 2 see it -this poor mclaren man trying to spoonfeed lando pr friendly sentences -cash is king? cash is king. is SO iconic 2 me. the sport is not the same w/o sewis

e2: -christian wants to fuck toto soooooo bad its embarrassing its the end of a multimonth quarantine and ur like when can i tease my work enemy again?? embarassing -the urge to put alex getting deepthroated by that covid swab in my next gifset lmaooooooo -favorite part of christian/toto dynamic is christian will talk SOOOO much shit in front of the camera but when hes talkin to toto he's like *head craned up at a 50 degree angle* hey how ya doin -first time i watched this "DAS" as an acronym threw me off So Bad bc it's also used to describe a tetris playstyle (delayed auto shift). still really throws me off alkdjfaklsdjskjla -HI MICHELLE YEOH'S HUSBAND -"against a mercedes team that is so strong, so dominant, you have to exploit every opportunity you possibly can" hi christian i hope you respect this mindset when the tables are turned! (he wont) -love lando celebrating his p3 start (face down ass up) -being hyped up abt a potential first alex win while knowing how it ends is PAINFUL -also contextualizes alex's anger around checo only getting a 5 second penalty in singapore this year, and hes right!!! its not fucking enough -lando's first podium is so SO special tho!! and netflix do an amazing job with it with the shots of the garage going nuts and the music swelling its just incredible -and the contrast with alex's missed podium is so well done narratively. another very great episode from a writing/editing standpoint

e3: -age old mercedes driver right of passage: listening to lewis sing next door -having watched the brawn docuseries now--i think there are some interesting parallels between valtteri&lewis vs rubens&michael. theyre very different people but how many others have had that experience with a teammate like that? -always LOVE the bits with valtteri in finland my soul yearns for scandanavia -BROCEDES INTERLUDE AAAAAAAAAAAAAA -i do like these lil bits about time penalties explained in episodes because before watching races you really underestimate how much they can effect races. i'm looking forward to seeing netflix continue to use these instances for drama (especially season 4 max v lewis 👀) -TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. FUCK YOU

[philhoffman]

Breaking my own rule and rewatching 25th Hour less than a month after my last Monday Philm watch because, obviously. I was interested to check out one of the commentary tracks (my copy has three) to hear what Spike Lee says about 9/11 and its place in the film. Also, today I watched the docuseries 9/11: One Day in America, which included a shot of people gathered along the East River 22 years ago today, covered in ash and blood—the same riverside park where Monty is sitting at the start of the film.

Spike's commentary track was great. He's got a really great laugh. And his commentary style is fantastic, very easy and fun to listen to. Some filmmakers get bogged down in very technical details, follow irrelevant threads, just lose sight of what they're going on about. But Spike is on it—he knows every shot, every line, every cut right before it happens. He keeps up with his own pace and provides some enlightening tidbits.

Here are some quick hits:

In one scene, Spike swears they shot a close up and his editor swears they didn’t. That’s such a simple, funny quibble—those things you can’t remember if you forgot or if you forgot to remember. Directors: they’re just like us!

He said the dog that played Doyle was a very good dog :)

In an earlier cut of the film, they removed a lot of the Doyle stuff—Ed Norton saw that cut and made them put it back.

Every time Spike sees Jakob Elinsky he says the same thing: "Jake and his problems." "Jake, as I said before, he has problems." "I said it before, Jakob Elinsky has a problem."

Spike had to fight the studio to include that long shot of Ground Zero. He also talked about filming that scene with Phil specifically: "We did eight or nine takes. After the fifth, Philip was saying, 'Spike, don’t you think we got it?' Philip is more impatient than I am. He comes in, hits it from the beginning, ready to go. I like that. I like it very much."

“I’m glad I was finally able to work with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. He’s a pretty good softball player, too.” Phil had a 25th Hour baseball cap I've always been curious about, and tonight I learned Spike often has his casts play softball together for bonding purposes. Mystery solved! Wbk he was a great first baseman

The Jakob Elinsky dolly shot: "That is a 'what the fuck have I done' look. 'I’m gonna burn in hell.'"

Phil was in New York on 9/11, of course. Three weeks earlier, he was at a club on the 114th floor of the WTC. From an old pal: "We hugged forever, his beard tucked in close against my face... ohhhhh man! ... As I took the railing looking out upon the NY landscape, I looked down to read the plated sign, 'Warning: Please hold the railing tightly before focusing on the street below, as you might lose your balance and even fall.' Phil quietly murmured, 'It's all about perception.'"

He was just a few blocks north in Tribeca on the day of the attack. A couple of his friends and acquaintances have talked about seeing him that day. Every single one of them mentions the big hugs he gave them. Just something I've been thinking about today.

[frontproofmedia]

"Mr. McMahon: Netflix Exposes WWE's Controversial Kingpin

The Squared Circle Unmasked: Vince McMahon's Fall from Grace - A Raw Look at WWE's Controversial Kingpin

By: Joseph Correa

Are you ready to rumble? Strap in because we're about to bodyslam our way through the electrifying world of professional wrestling and its most controversial figure: Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Netflix's new docuseries "Mr. McMahon" is pulling back the curtain on the WWE empire, and boy, is it a slobber knocker!

The Man, The Myth, The McMahon

For decades, Vince McMahon wasn't just the man behind the curtain - he was the ringmaster of the greatest show in sports entertainment. This larger-than-life figure transformed wrestling from a patchwork of regional promotions into a global phenomenon. WWE gave us legends like Hulk Hogan, The Rock, and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, turning spandex-clad warriors into household names.

But here's the real shocker - McMahon's off-screen antics make his on-screen persona look tamer than a headlock. We're talking about a guy who once scripted his own daughter's kidnapping for ratings. Talk about taking "bring your kid to work day" to a whole new level!

Behind the Curtain: The Making of "Mr. McMahon"

Director Chris Smith (yeah, the "Tiger King" guy) spent over 100 hours interviewing McMahon and a star-studded cast of wrestling royalty. We're talking Triple H, Shane McMahon, and even the 24-inch pythons of Hulk Hogan himself, brother!

But just when you think you've seen it all, the production hit a steel chair to the face - allegations of sexual abuse and trafficking forced a sudden halt. This unexpected twist gave Smith access to a treasure trove of WWE footage that might've otherwise been locked away tighter than the Undertaker's casket.

The Art of the Work: McMahon's Kayfabe Conundrum

For the uninitiated, "kayfabe" is wrestling's code word for maintaining the illusion of reality. It's the secret sauce that makes grown adults believe a man can be buried alive and come back for revenge (looking at you, Undertaker).

McMahon was the master of kayfabe, blurring the lines between his real self and his villainous on-screen character. But in "Mr. McMahon," we see a man who might have worked himself into a shoot (that's wrestling lingo for accidentally turning fiction into reality).

In one jaw-dropping moment, McMahon admits, "I don't want anybody to really know me." Well, Vince, be careful what you wish for, because this series is serving up more revelations than a Royal Rumble has surprise entrants!

The McMahon Legacy: A Double-Edged Sword

"Mr. McMahon" doesn't pull any punches when exploring the dark side of wrestling's evolution. From the physical toll on performers to rampant drug use and tragic accidents (the Owen Hart incident still gives fans nightmares), the series paints a complex picture of McMahon's impact on the industry.

Perhaps the most damning indictment comes from McMahon's own flesh and blood. Shane McMahon's statement, "I think my dad gets the rap that he wants," speaks volumes about the calculated nature of Vince's public persona. It's a moment that'll hit you harder than a Stone Cold Stunner.

The End of an Era or Just Another Work?

With WWE set to move to Netflix, this docuseries could be seen as the streaming giant's way of ushering in a new era. It's like they're powerbombing the old regime while setting up the next big storyline.

But remember, in the world of wrestling, everything's a work until proven otherwise. Is this truly the final bell for McMahon's career, or just another plot twist in wrestling's never-ending soap opera?

The Bigger Picture: American Dream or Nightmare?

"Mr. McMahon" isn't just about wrestling - it's a funhouse mirror reflection of American culture. McMahon's story of a self-made billionaire building an empire on spectacle and controversy might sound eerily familiar (no names mentioned, but certain ex-presidents might be sweating).

The series also forces us to look in the mirror. As fans, are we complicit in the problematic aspects of wrestling's past? It's a question that'll leave you more conflicted than a referee during a run-in.

The Count

"Mr. McMahon" delivers a powerslam of entertainment and insight, It's a must-watch for wrestling aficionados and a fascinating peek behind the curtain for casual viewers.

The series excels in its unflinching look at McMahon's complex legacy, backed by a wealth of insider interviews and rare footage. It stumbles slightly in pacing, occasionally getting caught up in the ropes of wrestling minutiae that might lose non-fans.

However, the compelling narrative and shocking revelations make "Mr. McMahon" a contender for one of the year's most talked-about docuseries. It's a tale of power, manipulation, and the blurred lines between fiction and reality that'll keep you hooked from bell to bell.

The Final Bell

As the dust settles on this no-holds-barred look at Vince McMahon's career, one thing's for sure - the landscape of professional wrestling will never be the same. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing... well, that's for you to decide.

So, what's your take? Is this the end of McMahon's reign, or just another swerve in wrestling's ongoing saga? Drop your thoughts in the comments below, and let's keep this conversation going!

Remember, in the wild world of wrestling, the only thing predictable is unpredictability. And that, folks, is the bottom line!

The promotional poster for the Netflix docuseries "Mr.

McMahon." Courtesy Of Netflix

Final Verdict: 8 out of 10 stars ⭐

[greensparty]

Stuff I'm Looking Forward to in December

I can't believe it is now the END of 2023 and it's the last month of the year. In addition to Pearl Harbor Day (Dec. 7), Hanukkah (Dec. 7-15), Winter beginning (Dec. 21), Christmas Day (Dec. 25), Kwanzaa (Dec. 26-Jan. 1) and New Year's Eve (Dec. 31) here is what's on my radar:

Movies:

Silent Night

John Woo is one of my personal filmmaking heroes. I even made a tribute to him with my short film To Be John Woo. He has not made a film in the U.S. in twenty years and now he's back with an action-packed revenge film. Opens 12/1 (review to come).

A Disturbance in the Force

The 1978 TV special Star Wars Holiday Special has become legendary…mainly because it was so critically reviled and George Lucas has tried to prevent it from ever being re-broadcast or released. I got my bootleg DVD and I’ve written about it quite a bit here. Now there is a documentary about the SWHS. It’s directed by Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak. Coon co-directed Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made, which I named my #14 Documentary of the 2010s! Blu-ray and streaming release on 12/5.

Wonka 

I have a very special place in my heart for Roald Dahl's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In third grade we did a production of it and I made my acting debut as an Oompa Loompa. Tim Burton's 2005 remake got a bad rap, but I kind of liked it and dug how they tried to get into his background. Now there is a new prequel about Willy Wonka's early days and the lead up to his becoming a chocolate king. I would call myself cautiously optimistic about this. Opens 12/15.

Ferrari 

I can't say I love every movie Michael Mann has made, but when he's good he's really good and whenever he has a new film I always check it out. This biopic of Enzo Ferrari looks good! Opens 12/25.

The Boys in the Boat

George Clooney has directed some of his best work when it's based on real life, i.e. Good Night and Good Luck and The Monuments Men. This one is about the 1930s University of Washington rowing team. Opens 12/25.

Occupied City 

Steve McQueen's directed some great narrative films and now he has a new documentary about Amsterdam from World War II to now. It's also 4 hours and 6 minutes (not a typo). Opens 12/25.

Music:

Peter Gabriel I/O

Peter Gabriel hasn't released a new album of original material in 21 years (there's been covers and re-recordings since then), so this new album he's been teasing throughout the year is cause for celebration. Album drops 12/1.

TV:

Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too?

As the singer and bassist for Rush, Geddy Lee has amassed quite a cult following. Now he is doing his version of a travel show, where he meets with other notable bassists to do some of their favorite activities, see their home and area, talk shop and yes, compare bass playing tips. Series premieres on 12/5 on Paramount+.

John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial

The 1980 murder of John Lennon is one of the great tragedies in that he was such a tremendous talent taken from us at age 40 by a deranged "fan". This 3-part docuseries deep dives into that killing and the aftermath. Series premieres on Apple TV+ on 12/6.

End of the Year Lists:

As anyone who knows me knows, I wait until after the year ends to begin unveiling my best-of-the-year lists (you never know, something great might be released on 12/31!), so expect my lists to be rolled out beginning in January. In the meantime, I’ll be reading all of the Best of 2023 lists that begin dropping this month!

[dragonmuse]

I’m loving “I may be bad” especially the thought that in the end Izzy kind of became the sugar baby.

My question is, since the crime world and the bar internet, do Pete and Lucius ever meet up in this au? Does Oluwande get involved in the bar?

(Thank you so much for all your amazing writing and creativity!)

Oh yeah, the sugar tables sugar turn on him! So, you asked before I threw out the Oluwande/Jim answer, but yes, they do get involved in the bar. Lucius and Jim have to...follow up. On things. Lucius takes on the bartending job to be there and Jim has some fun knife throwing on stage and they just take up the positions they have in the mainverse a few years late and what started as a sort of surveillance project just becomes fun.

As to Pete...

"Get you a drink?" Lucius offers as the cute guy with bright blue eyes comes out of the dressing room, wiped clean of drag.

"Just a coke, thanks," Pete smiles at him. "How's your first night going?"

"Pretty great. Fun place. I liked the way you juggled those balls."

"Yeah?" the guy laughs and it's warm. Lucius likes that.

"Mmhmm, I appreciate a man with rhythm."

There's a wedding ring on the guy's finger when he accepts the glass with a warm, "Thanks."

"Married long?"

"Just a few months. Met him here, actually. Roach, the one with the chainsaw? His cousin. Nico."

He says the name with a sweet reverence. It's true love. Lucius suppresses an annoyed groan.

"Yeah? That's sweet. What's he do?"

"He's a pediatric nurse at St. Sebastian's."

Of fucking course he is.

"That's awesome," he says. "Must be a tough job, being around sick kids."

"Harder than mine. But he doesn't let it show much."

Out of curiosity, Lucius finds the man. Nico is disgustingly clean. Truly just a solid human being that enjoys his job, generally respected by his co-workers and has no history of complaints. He has friends, calls his parents regularly and there are pictures online of a small wedding, they're there in the background and seem to like Pete.

"Can you believe it?" Lucius asks Jim, showing them the picture of the guy tending to a small child. "Mythical creature."

"What do you care?" Jim gives him a sideways glance. "Pete's fine, but you can have whoever."

"I don't know," Lucius looks down at his phone, swipes away the picture of Nico. "It's just...annoying. Like something stuck in my teeth."

"Go home, Luc," they advised. "Take a bite out of your own man."

Lucius doesn't bite Izzy. Much. But it is good advice. Being home reminds him of what he wants. Izzy doesn't make him work for it. Izzy is ready and easy and thrilled and in love. Lucius can bathe in that as much as he likes and get easy sex.

He doesn't need a man with bright blue eyes that would probably want to talk about feelings and have someone listen to him earnestly. Just thinking about it gives him a headache.

A heartache.

"How was your day?" Lucius asks as he traces the edges of a scratch on Izzy's thigh.

"Good," Izzy plays a hand through Lucius' hair, "figured out where that money got misplaced. Sent you and Jim an email. Error in interest. Bank is taking care of it."

"You're the best," he kisses Izzy's skin right where it's slightly broken and bleeding.

"Do you have to go out tonight?"

Technically, he has a shift at the bar, but he's already trained the Swede to cover for him. Stede doesn't really keep track of the schedule, distracted and a little heartbroken, poor thing.

"No," he decides. "I want to stay in with you. Let's finish that docuseries."

"Want me to make popcorn?"

"Yes."

And he can tell Izzy is over the moon that he's stayed, even if he expresses it by just laying his head on Lucius' lap.

Lucius is a greedy person. He can have Izzy and want another. Many others sometimes. The voracious void in him would happily swallow down other lives.

He watches Pete in the days that follow, looks for cracks where he could get in. But none appear. And eventually, as he usually does, Lucius loses interests. The bartending exposes him to dozens of interested men and he makes good use the single stall bathrooms.

Nico comes in sometimes. Lucius finds ways not to wait on him. It's too tempting and Jim would be furious if he upsets their little charade now. They're having a thing over Oluwande, and it's kind of cute, Lucius has never seen them that way before.

He lets them have their new little love story. He leaves Nico alone. He flirts with Pete the same amount he flirts with anyone else and then not at all.

He goes home to Izzy and reminds himself of what he wants.

It's fine.

It's enough.

Which doesn't quell the jealous hunger, but he's used to that by now. He uses it in other ways.

Like acquiring the bar, bit by careful bit. Jim likes that. And they are so hard to buy for, it makes for a perfect birthday gift.

[okayto]

Micro-Reviews: Stuff I enjoyed with my Apple+ free trial, Part I

Recently had the chance to spend a couple months with Apple’s streaming service, and while I’m not going to keep an ongoing subscription, I did find several shows that I watched and enjoyed in their entirety and would recommend! The ones in this post are all documentary-related, and I think several would be worth having a one-month subscription to watch, at least.

Prehistoric Planet

Fantastic dinosaur documentary, narrated by David Attenborough, with the more current (presumably) understanding of prehistoric creatures’ lives and appearances--including feathers! I know feathered dinosaurs aren’t new, but I feel like it’s taken a while for feathers to make their way into moving depictions, y’know?

Anyway, it’s very fun, because dinosaurs are very fun. The creatures are photorealistic, and the backgrounds were so realistic I literally couldn’t even guess if they were all CG, or if they used real-life shots and placed the creatures in. 

I know I’m not talking much about the content, because I can’t find much to say other than fantastic, absolutely worth watching. It combines a bunch of my favorite things: dinosaurs, BBC documentaries, and David Attenborough narration.

Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds

Another one for the documentary and science lovers. At an hour and a half, I broke it up into multiple sessions. This is about “the cultural, spiritual, and scientific impact of meteorites” and their craters.

Narrated and written by Werner Herzog, whose narration continually delighted me because it’s a bit like a monologue from a conversational partner. We’re introduced to a South Korean antarctic station, and as the camera walks trough the spacious, sunlight rooms, Herzog recounts how nearby, Robert Scott’s men spent the winter in tiny cave. 

As we watch people prepare food in a shiny modern kitchen, he recounts how the historical men dreamt of banquets ripped away from their forks; one man who managed to eat in his dream was “rightfully hated” by his comrades. [heavy pause] But we’re not here for lobster and kimchi. Anyway, about the science...

Later, we get a digression about how delighted he is by some footage of someone walking into the background of a camera shot and doing some work on the ground, against the rules of good filmmaking.

Topic to tangent back to topic again. I suspect this is what people experience in conversation with me. The subject matter was interesting, but Herzog’s narration himself was so much fun that when I discovered he had previously created a documentary about people living in Antarctica, I immediately placed a library hold on it.

Earth at Night in Color

Absolutely fascinating. Using state-of-the-art cameras that are able to film at night not in the grey-and-green-toned night vision we’re used to, but in color that, if you didn’t remember the name of the show, would have you guessing they’re filming in the day, or maybe dusk at most. If you’re the kind of person who likes nature documentaries, you’ll like this. I also enjoyed the “behind the scenes” bits at the end of each episode that show how the crew filmed things, or issues they ran into. I am continually amazed at nature documentary camera people--the episode on Patagonia noted that the crew walked a collective 5000 kilometers.

Also notable is learning via Tom Hiddleston’s narration that apparently the British way of pronouncing puma is pyoo-mah, which led me on a google rabbit trail that ended in a linguist’s blog post from 2006.

Tiny World

A nature docuseries that spotlights small creatures, narrated by Paul Rudd because he played Ant Man, which is hilarious. (The narration is perfectly fine, but reading the rationale in an interview cracked me up.)

I was continually amazed and astounded and the close-up footage they got of tiny creatures--at least with pumas (*Tom Hiddleston voice* pyoo-mahs) you can film them from a distance! Each episode focused on multiple creatures--more than five each time--so you get a good look at a lot of things. “Tiny” here ranges from ants and other teeny insects to small lizards, shrews, geckos and more. 

They did a great job keeping a light, inquisitive tone--it’s not a comedy and you’ll also find yourself fearing for a hummingbird in the middle of a Caribbean hurricane, but my absolute favorite part was the episode with peacock spiders (tiny and cute and colorful), the males of which do a courtship dance. Tiny World made the fantastic decision to play The Macarena to accompany this.

[active-mind-15]

Thanks for the tag! Here's my bingo card for you. I got bingo in like 4 different directions, LMFAO.

And just like you, I'll elaborate on all the boxes I crossed off. Since you said I'm new to you, I'll try and give you as much info as I can on my personal writing experience. I think I'll go row by row for this, starting from the left side.

-When I first started writing, I was on Fanfiction.net. I still have that account and recently updated a fic on there (Accidental Siblings), but I still gotta get back to/clean up some of my other old fics on there.

-Yep, still got an AO3. I cross-posted some of my FFN fics there, but now more than half of the works there are AO3-exclusive.

-I distinctly remember beta-reading for a friend back in the day, but it was so long ago I don't even remember what the fic was called. First and only time I beta-read, though.

-All of my fics are un-beta'd. We die like men.

-The very first fic I ever wrote was basically a self-insert even though I tried to play it off like it wasn't. It was a Pokémon fic that I wrote when I was like 15. But eventually, as time went on, I thought it was too cringey and deleted it off not only FFN but my hard drive, too. I couldn't even show the fic to you if I wanted to. It's gone for good 😭. There was also another fic of mine that I wrote soon after deleting my first one, which is a KNB episodic style one-shot collection that is nothing but self-indulgent. I still need to clean that one up, though, so I won't share it just yet.

-Keyboard smashing is what I do. More so on Twitter, but if I see something that really just causes me to go crazy then imma show it. If it's a fic that I really like, I'll also write a big ass essay in the comments about all the things I like about it.

-Oh yeah, there have been multiple occasions where I wanted to leave kudos, but I apparently already had. Some works are just that good.

-Not only is Fluff most of what I read, but it's most of what I write as well. Fluff is a BIG part of my works because I don't do well seeing people suffer. Especially since a lot of my early works were Akashi-centric. I was tired of seeing this boy be miserable, so I was like, "Why can't we just have a story where he's not miserable for once?" and so I wrote it. I enjoy the warm feelings I get inside when someone gets the love and affection they deserve, whether that's platonic, romantic, or otherwise. This is also why I'm a sucker for Hurt/Comfort fics, too.

-The M/M I wrote was more of an unfinished premise, but I just wanted to try writing romance for once since I never do. But idk if I'll ever expand on what I wrote because I have no thoughts about where I would take that plot, and I'm also busy with other stories.

-I do believe fanfiction is a legitimate genre and is an integral pillar of literature. It deserves its flowers.

-As stated in my bingo card, I write mainly for KNB and BTS. My BTS stuff is more popular, though, for reasons I'm sure are obvious to you.

-The amount of research that goes into some fics of mine is actually kind of insane. Some of it involves Google searches that I hope the FBI isn't looking at, and the other part is watching things related to the topic at hand. Like for Accidental Siblings, my research on the behaviors of children for that fic led me to watch a British ongoing docuseries called 'The Secret Life of 4, 5, and 6-year-olds' just to see the kinds of things kids that age did and talked about. It's a genuinely good program, too. I'd recommend it.

-I ALWAYS keep an outline for writing. I actually have notebooks for all the fics I write. It's usually one fic to one notebook, unless it's one-shots. Then I do multiple one-shots to one notebook. Whenever I have chapter outlines to write or miscellaneous world-building I want to make note of, I just write it down. And then, when the time comes to write a chapter, I look back at my notes. Usually, my outlines are just chronological bullet points of events I want to happen in the chapter. Sometimes, I may write down specific dialogue I want to use or specific details I want to make mention of. And then when I get to writing the chapters, it's simply going by the outline and then filling in the blanks with my imagination.

-I don't "anxiously" wait for feedback these days, but back then, I was FEENING for attention. Comments on my work would make me so happy. They still do! But since I update very sporadically, I understand that I may not get feedback as often as I used to. And that's fine! When it comes to fics, I'm fairly intrinsically motivated. So even if I get no feedback, I won't stop putting my work out there.

-Back when I was updating for Accidental Siblings more frequently, @clubakashi, whose fanart inspired me to make the pic, ended up drawing Akashi and baby Bokushi and then posting it! There were also people submitting to them too talking about their own headcanons for the fic, which was cool to see.

-I have several unpublished stories and even more unfinished ones. I think I have 6 fics that are still ongoing. The rest are one-shots. But I have a few unfinished new fic ideas in my USB that have yet to be released to the public.

-I'm a perfectionist by nature, so editing and formatting is always a grueling experience because I care too much about little details that nobody will even notice/care about.

-I always get ideas in the middle of the night. Especially because I sometimes like to role-play scenarios in my head to see if they'd work in my fics. I may even go as far as physically acting something out or saying a line of dialogue to see if it would fit.

-My ongoing fics are the ones that receive the most attention, but my one-shots are what I hope would get more attention because I still worked hard to write them. Both for BTS and KNB.

But yeah, I think I elaborated on all of my points. I hope you were able to get to know me better through this bingo sheet! Thanks again for the tag! 💜

I felt implicitly tagged by @lilypheria. Here's the template too.

It may seem like I only write KnB these days but I don't consider myself to be done with my SPOP comics yet.

Tagging all my writer friends but I'm going to mention @active-mind-15 because you're kind of new to me. But I really want to hear about all my writer mutuals and followers. By the way if you've written one unfinished fic or tried to start to write your ideas but can't, or haven't written for years, or have any other struggle that makes you feel invalid, you count as a writer.

Going to elaborate under the cut because I felt like it.

My old account was FinFanFun, a Finnish site I used mostly for reading Facebook wall fics about that which should not be named.

AO3 is where I publish my KnB fics though I've considered branching out to see if there's still some fandom corners I haven't reached.

I'm slowly introducing myself to writing smut but the only story I've published has been called mild and soft smut or smut-ish, and I doubt the rest will be much different.

I frequently beta-read for friends, though fanfiction is the minority.

I used to have two beta-readers but they're unable to do it anymore so all my fics rely solely on me for now, which makes me really anxious sometimes. I am pretty desperate for a new beta-reader so if KagaKuro and a million words of "homework" doesn't frighten you, please jump into an adventure with me!

All my fics are self-indulgent in that they're what I want to see play out in the story. They are not personal fantasies, or necessarily what I want to see in real life, but it's what I envision for these characters.

I'm always reading old favourite fics again and I need to branch out actually.

If I'm in need of a short fic to read I will probably pick fluff.

Have written m/m and f/f (and m/? and m/f) but honestly it's weird to put them in the same category when m/m is so overrepresented.

I'm not actually sure if I consider fanfiction as a genre or rather a medium, because all genres exist inside fanfiction. Medium is probably more true but I seem to have checked it anyway because I feel like the point here is whether fanfiction is valid literature and that it is.

I don't know if two fandoms with one being dormant would be considered multifandom so maybe no.

I do anxiously wait for feedback since I'm very community oriented but I'm also very introverted and internally motivated so the lack of it doesn't discourage me. I have patience and I can wait for connection for years and years. Not that lack of connection doesn't affect me, of course it does, but giving up is just a very antithetical concept to my beliefs and life.

I have one on-going long KnB story and one unfinished She-Ra fic that is waiting for a better time. Which is an exception since I tend to finish what I start before moving on.

Editing fanfiction is actually not as bad as editing original fiction because I put much less pressure on myself, partially because you can always edit your fic again.

Always listening to hours long conversations in my head between characters when I'm trying to sleep. They're really bad at shutting up and I'm supposed to remember this stuff in the morning?

I was mildly drunk for ten days straight to write Anything Can Happen. Haven't done that since but it was really fun.

My main KnB storyline gets most of my attention. It's just my thing, I pour everything into it.

I didn't check 'wants to be a professional writer' because after three traditionally published books I consider myself to be that already. I actually went the other way around than seems to be the norm: I was an original fiction writer first and then branched out to fanfiction in my twenties. I can see it greatly affects how I write fic, and it's probably the main reason I feel like a bit of an outsider.