#i like to think the real paul and emma would do the same thing if they ever got married

[eldritch-ace]

People seemed to enjoy my other hatchetfield art, so enjoy some murder spouses >:3

[awigglycultist]

NPMD thoughts

Omg Richie's screams

Poor Richie my beloved

He's dead <3

Oh wait Ruth's headgear is missing in this song

Grace covering her mouth!

STEPH! PETE! <3

WHAT A START

Sycamore! We really need to know more about them

Rip Peter

I love the running in Literal Monster

Out first Max saying Bitch incident!

Get him up! Get this fucker up!!

I love being able to properly see everyone's facial expressions

I hate Solomon so much

Steph is very stupid for putting her hand above her phone as it's about to me smashed but also I'd probably do the same

"this projects on thermodynamics, what the fuck are you talking about?"

I literally love Ruth's, Pete's and Richie's friendship so much

"What was I like when she touched your arm? Did you cum!?"

"Pete silence your phone in the library!" you guys have been screaming this whole time but ok

NANI?

Ugh Pete you are cooler than you think you are!

Love Max finishing the "woah oh oh oh"

"Had to sell your bowtie to feed your fuckin family?"

Omg Pete's breathing and whining while Max is monologuing <3

"now say your fucking prayers bitch!" "-amen!" is still such a good transition

"mom will you pass the buttstuff?" "I just want some head and butter" "bread and buttstuff" still get me

"I love... Jesus <3 :)"

Dirty Girl should not be so good

"WHO ON OCCASION GETS DIRTY!"

Me trying to watch this and imagine watching with my dad to figure out the appropriateness and if gonna have to skip past parts

Ugh Pete <3

Ugh Steph caring about Pete so much despite knowing him for one day <3

Hatchettown notfi!

#pottypants let's get it trending

IT'S BULLY THE BULLY TIME!!!

Love hoe you can see Steph slowly getting into it

Beans cool? Excellent!

Pete's and Richie's finger fun moment!

"who was that?" "my boyfriend!" "sounded like a telemarketer" "okay my ex boyfriend"

Love the screams after "you kinda look like that homeless man from downtown"

"fucking useless Pete!"

"no he thinks the ghost is real he's just really fucking brave"

"I am Jägerman! I am God! Go Nighthawks!"

Skele'on

The little bit of info that Max's dad would call him a cuck and the fact that his bullying likely comes from a lot more trauma with his dad

It's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for him :(

Rip the glow in the dark skeleton costume

"this is Hatchetfield, people go missing everyday!"

Love Kyle and Brenda, what a supportive couple

"this is really your C+" "oh, Steph, you can keep it :)"

"with consent of cour cause we care!"

FUCK YOU CLIVESDALE!!!

Zeke the fighting Nighthawk like Ezekiel from Perky's Buds! Did Ekekiel name himself after Hatchetfield's mascot?

Love the audience cheering after "fuck Clivesdale fuck em straight to hell!"

Richie struggling with costume is so good

"I love being alive!"

God the costume and makeup up close! So good!!!

Smoke club!

Richie's fall is so good!!!

Jon's singing is seriously so good in npmd

And god Will is incredible

Yup Mark & Karen were just so wild at 18

"you don't say, you don't say. I'm be down there in a jiffy" "what'd they did dad?" "they didn't say"

Jeff voice over cameo!

Davis!

Love that Grace calls the cops pigs

Davis and Virginia!

Ziggy! Barry! Charlie!

Bryce's solo <3

Gerlad!

Love the cameos so much (but also rip Jerry, least it's preserved in the album

The bbq monologues bit is so stupid and so good and funny

Me Barbecue!

I love Trevor I hope we see him again

"I'm my dreams, it's my barbecue!"

Just For Once is so silly and so emotional love it it's underrated

"it fucking worked I'm fucking here he's fucking her!"

Lauren is so good!!

"take a bow, bitch"

"Every citizen of Clivesdale is guilty until proven innocent"

Shapiro saying she found the wwjd bracelet in the principal's office really got me the first time

"it's God plan! And now he's leaving me out to dry! Do something you son of a bitch!"

PAUL & EMMA!!!!

The knowledge of what card Jon hands Lauren makes this scene better

"I have been waiting for what feels like 5 fucking years and I still haven't gotten my hot chocolate!"

Emma spitting in the coffee!

Rip "women shoe"

AHHH IF I LOVED YOU!!!

"Leave room for Jesus!"

"she's bisexual and dead where else would she be!"

Rip Angela's fall

"get your hands out of your pocket! Put your hands down! He's going for a gun!"

The scream!

Also the audience screaming during this entire scene from Paul's & Emma's entrance to Emma screaming, so valid and great

"don't comfort her she's fucking weird"

I hate him but we absolutely need to know more about Solomon, how do the Mayor's learn so much

The black book! The nightmare time theme!

And another reason we need to know more about Solomon, why tf did he have the black book and what did he do with it

Max's one liners are so great

"on the ground bitch I'm a cop!"

"are you a women of faith?" "catholic" "I'll take that as a no"

"there's something deeply wrong with this whole town" yeah there sure is

Pete saying he has no idea what he's doing when he checks for Shapiro's pulse is such a great way of keeping it unknown if she's alive or dead

AAAHHHH THE SUMMONING

"t'noy karaxis" particularly scratches my brain

AHHH THE LORDS IN BLACK

I am a bit sad you can't see all the dance moves at the same time and you so you can't really see them changing dances with each other but also the close ups are so cool and very fitting for the scene!

Jon putting his fingers together so it's reminiscent of the doll only having three is such a cool choice

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT JOEY RICHTER WHY DO YOUR EMOTIONAL PERFORMANCES HAVE TO BE SO GOOD

I WAS RIGHT I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR CAITIA REPRISE

They both do a great job during this and I NOT OKAY

Max's fucking beat boxing

"so you do know the bible!"

This is scene is seriously so crazy

Graces entrance afterwards with the cigarette is so great and Max's entrances afterward laying on the bench is so great

The spin!

The lighting!!!

Homecoming time!

Someone remind me to add Joey in best of you to the air guitar thread

And that's it. That's where ends :)

Grace is so crazy and I love her

[lady-loveluck]

my best friend whom watched tgwdlm a while ago said she liked it, but in my futile attempts to get her to watch more of the hatchetfield universe like NPMD she kept asking if paul was in it and when I said he isn’t the main focus but makes a few cameos here and there she said she’ll think about it aka meaning that she won’t.

knowing her if she did she would just skip everything to the part where he appears, her favourite character in any media is always the main character to the point she won’t consume content or fics if her blorbo isn’t the main focus, and i’m pretty sure she only remembers paul’s name beside ted who she really really hates

nonetheless i’m not giving up and during my very futile attempts both in text and real life, i have created a few headcanons along the way and want somewhere to rant about it

Paul had a bit of the gift when he was younger, a bit more powerful than the average person, part of a fic i wanna do

his powers were a combination focusing on the mind and emotions along with foresight that later developed into a strong intuition when he grew older, one of it was being able to influence people around him whenever he gets emotional making them feel the same thing as he does and make them do the things he wants to do in that moment

another was being able to trigger emotions onto people and send them into a frenzy, making them panic and such but limited to a range but also being able to calm them down and have them to relax

Paul never was aware much about what his powers can do beyond make the lunch lady at school give him an extra cookie (the warm fresh out the oven type and not the cold ones yknow) and getting to experience the relaxation and hype of weed without ever actually doing it, never tried to figure out more and was just content with it

Paul likes disney movies but groans everytime a song comes on, holding on to the belief that “Disney movies would be more well-liked if they just didn’t add the random songs in. I mean, the girl is singing in a snow storm!”

Emma was park of the smoke club in highschool, participating in Brigadoon the musical was never her choice but Jane had somehow convinced her to do it because she too was in it and snidely commented things that she couldn’t handle it which lead her to auditioning and getting the part which emma later found out was part of Jane’s plan to get her out there and stop wasting awake smoking pot. although she dreaded it, the moments between her and Jane after rehearsals making fun of the other kids while getting shitty snacks from the 7-11 nearby were one of times she and Jane had gotten along

After the performance of Brigadoon, Paul had complained about how awful and shitty it was. Emma overheard it, may or may not have threw stale popcorn at him, and complained to Jane about the star wars shirt-wearing bean-pole of a geek afterwards.

Alice has different rankings of her dad’s coworkers and friends, most of the time Uncle Paul’s at the top next to Charlotte since she likes them the most whenever they take care of her though Charlotte is a rare occasion

Pete, Richie, and Alice were all friends as kids cause of their guardians being coworkers/friends with Richie being Paul’s nephew

Paul takes Richie to anime cons with his only knowledge of it being from 2 episodes from sailor moon and lain’s experiments that traumatized him, Richie tries to get him to cosplay with him everytime and sometimes he does

Once they did a duo cosplay of Richie as Shinji and Paul as Gendo, everytime Richie wanted to take a picture that was canon accurate he couldn’t because Paul kept smiling and doing a thumbs up acting nothing like Gendo. later he told him that he should have gone as Yui instead

No one in the CCRP technical department knows how computers since the company doesn’t really care if their workers are even eligible for the job cause they’re just guinea pigs for experiments and the LIB, Paul’s the only qualified guy with an actual degree in computer science and they go to him for help. Everyone else either has a degree in anything but computer science or doesn’t even have a degree at all, CCRP doesn’t really do background checks or give a shit.

The other Paul clones got offed by Paul 23 because they too wanted to have the og’s life, on the chance one of them escaped they would’ve been hunted down by paul 23 and android emma

CCRP was walking on eggshells after the revolution of the paul clones, they side-eyed paul 23 whenever they see him smiling or just doing work, doesn’t stop their business of sending clones to a secret mining facility on the moon even if some of them wanted to choose another guy to clone

No one knows what CCRP actually does, they have no idea what their company at all and all of them have completely different ideas on what the company is

Paul watches horrific world war movies to relax, he suggests watching Come and See with his friends, after that no one ever takes his recommendations

”Why don’t any of you wanna watch my movies?” “Uh, no one wants to watch any of that horrific shit? It’s all sad and makes us feel shitty, we don’t want to feel shitty on a friday at 8pm paul.”

He likes sweeter drinks like a caramel frappe but still keeps ordering a plain black coffee just because of how fast he gets it

at the beginning paul had a slight very short-lived crush on melissa that was mostly based on the fact she was pretty nice to him and was a bit cute, when bill said she was like a daughter to him, paul couldn’t get the image of alice outside his head and poof! his lil crush was gone and forever forgotten

Melissa would actually tweak the fuck out if she finds out about that

that headcanon was purely created because i thought it would be funny if Melissa actually had a chance and it got ruined by Bill who is their biggest shipper

— 🥮

SO MUCH FOOD DUDE THANKS FOR ALL OF THIS

[owchie-wowchie]

Same anon that mentioned my favourites of your fics;

I'm glad me caring about them means a lot to you, and I'll extend my own thank you to you for writing them!

I would love to know how you were intending the rest of BSAWW to go (but don't feel obligated to explain if you don't want to) :]

*takes long drag from cigarette* gather round the campfire, kids. So, I felt like it was getting kinda bloated plot wise so I was preparing to slim down on things (and then I slimmed so much, it stopped existing lol), but, iirc, Paul was going to go talk to Emma and, I never got around to explaining this, but at the end, it was actual real Paul there. Like that was really him.

Basically, Pokey let go of Paul for a bit and shoved the real Paul back in for a bit as a trick. He wanted Paul to trick Emma and co into letting their guard down and taking Paul to Webby's castle where he was going to go back to infected Paul and do some evil shit (I don't remember the whole original plan tbh)

In the rush of everything, Webby and Holloway met up and hurried to create the spell that would send Webby and her brothers back to hell (They didn't have enough time to make sure Webby could stay, it was going to be this whole bittersweet thing)

Paul would die fr because there was no Pokey to keep him alive and he'd die in Emma's arms and it'd be all sad. Wilbur, freed from the lords, goes back to the Wilbur he was before he met the lords and became a good guy. I think maybe he was going to lose all his magic, though I can't remember, I never wrote down the plan because I thought I'd be able to write the story faster. Oh, also, John was Wilbur's grandson the whole time. I never figured out how to slide that into the story naturally :/

That's basically the gist of what I wanted to do, there would've been a lot of plot lines that got dropped or didn't have satisfying endings but that's on me. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll try to remember

[pastriibunz]

Quatervois - Emma’s Perspective

Paring: Emma Perkins + Kai Drew (platonic)

Warnings: major spoilers for TKWDLM

Summary: (n.) a crossroads; a critical decision or turning point in one’s life | Emma’s perspective of Kai and the events of the apocalypse.

Jane often talked about Tim.

And having a kid, overall.

She loved being a mother.

I never understood.

Kids just seemed like a nuisance.

You raise them for 18 years, and you just have to hope you did enough so that they come out okay and don’t become a total screw up/douchebag/creep/etc.

It seemed like a lot.

And it just seemed like an overall annoyance.

So, I decided a long time ago that I was never having kids.

I was fine with that.

I’d just be the cool aunt or whatever.

I never wanted to be a mom.

But things change.

Especially when a dorky 12 17 year old girl with the world’s brightest teal hair heads up to your counter.

Her order was simple.

Anything with caramel, and make it extra.

I could do that.

And then she tipped me.

I hated that tip jar and the stupid ‘tip for a song’ policy.

I didn’t want to sing just so I could make, what, less than 25 cents after the split?

That’s less than a fucking jukebox!

But, I had to do the singing thing. I needed this job to work my way through college.

Jane would want that, right?

So I did the stupid fucking singing thing.

I half assed it. Nora didn’t say I had to sound good. There was my loophole. I had hoped this kid wouldn’t get too pissed and ask for the manager or something. I did not have the patience for that.

But the kid didn’t.

She clapped like it was the best thing she had ever heard.

I was confused. Especially when she said I did great.

She seemed so happy. She even said she had tips for me. Ones that she said she’d keep to herself.

Usually I’d just laugh it off awkwardly, thank her for the compliment, give her the coffee she ordered and send her on her way.

But something inside me said not to let her go.

I don’t know what it was. 

But I listened

So I let her share her singing tips with me.

And she was so passionate about it.

It was adorable.

And I dunno, something just…

…unlocked in me.

The only thought in my head was:

“That’s yours.”

“That’s your kid.”

And who was I to fight it?

She was mine the moment she walked into the coffee shop.

I got her name before she left.

Kai Drew.

Cute name for a cute kid.

She said she should leave, so she wouldn’t hold up the line.

It was sweet how considerate she was.

I didn’t care about the line.

This kid was way more important than whatever those guys needed.

But it was fine.

She could’ve leave if she wanted.

Would I like it?

No.

But I wouldn’t ever like it, so I just had to learn to work with it.

So she left.

I just had to hope she’d be back.

…

And she was.

The very next day.

My favorite little customer walked in through that door.

I understand why Jane would always talk about Tim now.

I wouldn’t be able to shut up about Kai, either.

My only regret is not knowing her earlier.

I sang for her. I was technically required to, so I could keep my job, but I’d like to think I made it special for her.

She loved it.

Of course she did.

She said it was “real grand.”

The best compliment I’ve ever gotten.

She didn’t even need to ask for her drink.

I knew what she wanted.

Same thing as yesterday.

She seemed like the type to have a specific order.

And she was!

She sat happily in the corner, waiting for her coffee.

It would’ve been a great day.

If not for Paul.

Well, it wasn’t his fault.

He just brought to light that our lives were in danger.

I didn’t believe him until I saw it firsthand.

He wanted to run.

I stayed.

Something that the thing that used to be Zoey had said sang.

“We got a triple for you!”

It had caught me off guard.

There was only me and Paul, wouldn’t that be double?

Then her little voice spoke.

“Oh! Coffee’s cool!”

She was safe.

“Welp, Bottoms up!”

But clearly not for long.

My brain went blank, and the one thought in my head was:

“Protect your daughter.”

And so I did.

And I continued to.

Sure, she was technically old enough to take care of herself.

But that didn’t stop me from keeping her safe.

In my eyes, she was a baby.

My baby.

And I didn’t want her hurt.

And I sure as hell didn’t want her dead.

I felt like I needed to protect her.

To hold her in my arms, shielding her from the world. 

I wanted to hold her close and never let go.

I’d protect her with my life.

And if I couldn’t, I made sure someone else would.

And if she went out alone?

I’d panic.

I wasn’t a mess, but I was close. 

I just reminded myself she could hold her own. 

That she was almost an adult, she could take care of herself.

But still.

She was my baby.

I don’t think I’d ever not be scared for her.

I love her, after all.

I finally understand why Jane loved being a mom so much.

I finally understand why people want to be parents.

I love Kai so, so much.

She’s like if you packed all the happiness in the world into one adorable little human being.

She’s my universe.

I love her more than anything.

I just want her to be safe.

…

But of course she couldn’t.

I knew something was up.

I knew it.

I was right to panic.

I had to sprint over.

I didn’t care if I had a pole straight through my leg.

My baby was in danger.

If she was hurting, so was I.

I wouldn’t be okay if she wasn’t okay.

I wouldn’t get better if she wasn’t safe.

It was like a sixth sense, knowing if she was safe or not.

Maybe that was the maternal instincts that Jane had always talked about.

That was besides the point.

I just want my baby to be okay.

She was singing.

She was being forced to sing by that fucking blue shit.

No, no, no.

Not my baby.

She’ll only sing when she wants to, not because some stupid fucking alien infection forces her to.

She’s strong.

Stronger than anyone I know.

She can fight it.

I know she can.

I love her so much.

She can’t die on me.

I refuse to let that happen.

Parents aren’t supposed to see their children die first.

It’s not supposed to happen.

There’s a reason there’s a word for a child who lost their parents, and not a word for a parent who’s lost their child.

It’s not supposed to happen.

And it’s sure as hell not gonna happen to me.

Not to my baby.

Please.

I just want her to be safe.

…

She destroyed the meteor.

Good on her.

But I don’t care.

Fuck the goddamn meteor, is my kid okay?!

Nothing is worth it if she isn’t safe.

Life isn’t worth living if my baby isn’t okay.

…

Oh- oh yes!

There’s my girl!

There’s my beautiful baby girl!

She did it!

We did it!

We won!

We won!

She’s okay, she’s safe, she’s-

…

That’s not her.

That’s not my baby.

What happened to my baby?

WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO TO MY BABY?!

No, no, no, no.

She’s fine.

This is all some sick joke.

She’s fine.

Why is Paul trying to leave?!

I’m not leaving!

I’m not leaving without my baby!

She’s-

…

She’s infected.

But-

But she’s still in there.

She just needs to snap out of it.

Give her back.

Please, God.

Don’t take her away from me.

Not when I just started to like being a mom.

…

…What’s she doing?

Wait.

WAIT.

NO.

NO NO NO NO NO.

NO!

KAI, DONT YOU DARE-

…

…My baby.

Oh, god, no.

Not my baby.

No.

Please.

Please, God.

Please let her wake up.

Give me my baby back.

Please.

I just want my baby back.

I just want her to wake up.

…

…That’s not her.

What the fuck- 

What the fuck did they do to her?!

She needs help.

We need help.

Why won’t anyone help us?!

SOMEONE HELP US!

…

…Nobody’s coming to help us.

Nobody’s coming to save us.

My baby is dead.

My daughter is dead.

Kai is dead.

Oh, god.

We lost.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Thoughts on the oscar noms? (…and the current drama surrounding it)

Honestly, I need people to realize that Barbie was a cute movie that was ultimately meant to sell Barbie dolls. It had a great set design, really cool visuals and costumes, some fun jokes, and a very good performance from Ryan Gosling. I think Greta being snubbed is weird because the movie was very CLEARLY. DIRECTED. But then again, Wes Anderson does that a lot to mixed results with the Academy, so. A very clear and strong eye does not always please them. If we're gonna talk about women (because apparently the Oscars allow only one lady director) who directed films very smartly, I would say that Celine Song is a better choice. Past Lives was such a good movie, and I think her direction really helped communicate a story in which a lot was left unsaid, pairing well with the actors.

And I'll be real... I need people to get that the movie was always more about Ken. Ken had the best script. Ken had the best arc. Is that right, for a Barbie movie? I don't know, dude. But I frankly don't blame the Academy for nominating Ryan and not Margot, because Margot had nothing great to do and she didn't elevate the material. She was good, she was charming. Ryan was performing a lot more. I like America btw, but I don't get that nom lol.

Also, stop complaining about I'm Just Ken, it was great, let us have fun song nominees.

Best Picture: I don't know why Barbie is there, the Oppenheimer sweep has been boring and though I liked the movie, as a film it was absolutely nothing without Cillian and to me that does not a Best Picture make, Killers of the Flower Moon or American Fiction should win but won't, Maestro is a joke, Past Lives deserves but also deserves more noms, haven't seen Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall, or Zone of Interest (though at least filmtwt can stop complaining about it not being well-marketed for the Academy) yet. I liked The Holdovers, but that was before I found out the director is uhhhhh a very very bad man.

Best Actor: Leo was snubbed and I do think him campaigning for Lily so hard had something to do with it but that was legit one of his most interesting, un-Leo performances; Bradley is a joke; happy for Colman but haven't seen Rustin yet; Cillian should win and I think he will but Paul G could dark horse it--I don't think his performance was Oscar-worthy but he was good and he's been picking up his fair share of awards; Jeffrey Wright was amazing in American Fiction and if anyone should dark horse it it's him. I'd still give it to Cillian. If this was up to me, I'd toss out Bradley and throw in Teo Yoo, who was so so good in Past Lives. But the Academy is sending a HARD backlash message to Asian creatives after the EEAAO sweep, imo.

Best Actress: As I said, I don't care that Margot wasn't nominated and I don't think she should've been, and imo her best performance was easily I, Tonya; I haven't seen Nyad so no comment on Annette, same with Sandra for Anatomy, and I think Carey had moments in Maestro but she overall was not one of those "standouts in a horrible movie" actors; Lily should win and absolutely killed her performance and dominated her movie, but I am worried that Emma could take it. I'd toss out Carey for Greta Lee.

Best Supporting Actor: Everyone needs to stop saying Sterling snuck in because he was deeply moving in American Fiction and is lowkey highkey one of the best actors working right now; RDJ basically just did Leslie Odom Jr. in Hamilton and F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus but with his RDJ cadence of speaking he can't drop to save his life, but he's taking this for a career Oscar; I hate that Charles isn't there, but if it wasn't him I'd give it to Sterling or De Niro, who gave one of my favorite performances in his career and was SO disgusting and menacing in Killers. Haven't seen Ruffalo, so if it was up to me depending on his performance I'd toss out RDJ for Charles Melton and possibly shuffle some other people around.

Best Supporting Actress: Lol Emily was horrible in Oppenheimer and I'll die on that hill, generally liking her as an actress; Da'Vine will win this and she was amazing in The Holdovers but the director really sours it for me; happy for Danielle, haven't seen TCP; America shouldn't be there but whatever; I literally though Nyad was about a mythological creature until I Googled last night and found out it was about a swimmer.

Best Director: This is going to go to Christopher Nolan for one of his better movies but not his best because that is FAR. AND AWAY. THE PRESTIGE. Should go to Scorsese, his direction for Killers is why (to me) that movie still felt like it was moving at a clip despite the length.

[dailyniallnews]

Niall Horan: Live at The Royal Albert Hall

While some may argue that too few artists have done their bit to raise awareness for the people of the music industry who since March 2020 have been forced to stop practicing their profession, one artist who has stepped up to the plate is singer-songwriter and former One Direction star, Niall Horan. Joining forces with the crew-led organisation, We Need Crew, on 7 November 2020, the singer welcomed fans from around the globe to bear witness to a one-off performance from the eerily empty Royal Albert Hall, with all profits going to his touring family and technical entertainment charity, Backup.

In the lead up to the livestream, Horan could be found on almost every television network, promoting the show and explaining why the performance required the attention of all music lovers. In his own words: “I’m putting on this gig to raise awareness of the immense value they bring to an industry enjoyed by so many and do something to help them and their families. I ask all my fans to support them with me and buy a ticket if you can, and I encourage all artists to do the same.”

With several weeks passing since both artist and crew took over the RAH, TPi caught up with the crew behind the project and to get their thoughts on this very special event.

PRODUCTION ORIGINS…

“I remember it was a Monday morning when I got the call from Karen [Ringland] and Alice [Martin], who explained the concept of We Need Crew,” reminisced Ant Carr, Head of Production for Modest! Management. Both founders of We Need Crew explained to Carr that the goal of We Need Crew is, in association with #WeMakeEvents, to raise money for touring professionals who have fallen on hard times due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What really appealed about their organisation was that it was created by crew, for crew,” Carr said. “Around the same time, I was having conversations with Niall, who had already seen a few peers doing livestream performances, and we discussed the idea of performing in an iconic venue to raise awareness for the plight of the industry.”

With these two conversions in mind, Carr began to pull the pieces of would become Horan’s streamed performance together, as well as a big launch for the We Need Crew campaign. Carr and the rest of the Modest! team got to work reforming his touring family, whose album cycle had been stopped prematurely in March 2020.

“We were in LA when everything began shutting down,” stated Carr, who explained how he and the rest of the crew were in their last few weeks of promo before heading into rehearsals for Horan’s world tour. “We were finishing up a week on James Corden when the announcement came that the borders were due to be shut, so we all had to head back to the UK pretty quickly.”

After several months with no work, both Carr and the rest of the crew were all enthusiastic about getting back together to put on a very special performance. “In many ways, it was like we had never been away,” explained Production Manager, Andy Colby. “There was a part of me that thought it might have been a bit strange with it being so long since we worked together, but 30 minutes into the first rehearsal at SW19, it was like we had just got off the plane from LA.”

Colby was one of many familiar faces from Horan’s touring family who got the call to help with the livestream, alongside several technical suppliers including Wigwam and midnight:lights. KB Event provided a Megacube Artic for rehearsals in SW19 along with a Tech Kit for the show, oversaw by Lead Driver, Steve Crawley. Pulse Films and promoter, Driift were brought into the fold to make the event a reality.

In total, some 127,000 tickets for the performance were sold to 151 countries. “The response we had from fans was fantastic,” enthused Carr. “The funds raised are going to be able to help a good number of touring crew and their families and we kept this in the forefront of our mind in all aspects of the show.”

Carr was also quick to complement the attitude of the man in front of the camera. “Niall was very involved in every step of the process. He really gained a full grasp of the situation and during the promotion of the show, he really wanted to educate the public, and his fanbase, about what was going on in the sector.”

SETTING THE STAGE…

A few weeks from the broadcast date, a small group visited the Royal Albert Hall to make a start on planning how the show would come together. Lighting and Show Designer, Emma Bull and Director, Paul Dugdale led the creative vision. The livestream began with Horan performing a song on the piano on the venue’s stage, before walking down to the centre of the room to play the rest of the show in 360° in the centre of the hall. A top priority for the visual team was putting both Niall and the venue in the spotlight.

Bull elaborated: “Although several dance shows utilise the centre of the room, Paul’s Dugdale’s suggestion to do this for a music act felt fresh and was a strong starting point for the design,” she noted. “Having Niall and the band in the centre gave us a few options to really show off the building and take advantage of the fact the whole space was empty.”

One of her design ideas to make use of the space was to fill the empty boxes of the hall with lights. “It really ‘shined a light’ on the fact that there was nobody in the space,” she commented.

Aiding her in both the programming and running the show was Richard White of midnight:lights. “In total, we built 114 bespoke plinths for the audience boxes,” he stated. “On these sat a combination of Robe LED Beam 150s and Robe Spiiders.” The arrangement of these fixtures and boxes created a 360° backdrop of the central stage, with fixtures focussed into the room as well as back on themselves to flood the boxes.

The other key lighting elements included three Robe BMFL Robospots for keylight, which were placed in the venue’s gallery level. “We kept most of the control of these at the console with it being a 360° shoot,” stated White. “We were then able to shift the keylight/backlight across the fixtures as the camera tracked.” Around the central stage, the lighting team deployed SGM Q2s to provide some glowing footlights, along with Litepanel Gemini Softlights for Niall’s microphone position. “From the beginning, I knew I didn’t want there to be any rigging or trussing in the shot,” explained Bull. “We didn’t want anything to distract from the key elements of the shot – Niall and venue – to produce a clean look.” This is also why the visual department moved away from the idea of a backdrop and instead showed off the immensity of the famed venue.

Aiding both Bull and White in their endeavours was Lighting Programmer, Dan Young. In the lead up to the show, both Young and White spent several days in the previs suite at midnight:lights using Syncronorm Depence² to plan the show. “I have worked with both Dan and Richard several times and they have a great understanding of my aesthetic,” praised Bull. “I like things to be quite static in terms of colour palette with refined looks.” During the show, White oversaw the key lighting with Young programming all the moves. This gave Bull the freedom to act as a go-between between both the lighting and the stage to ensure the integrity of the design for the broadcast.

“The main challenge for this show was to provide consistent lighting over the different shooting styles,” mused White. “On one hand, we needed to have soft beauty lighting for close-up shots and steadycam work, but we also needed to make sure that the stage was physically as clear as possible for all the wide room shots and overhead wire-cam.” To add a level of accuracy, most of the live show was programmed to timecode because the visual team were situated outside of the room during the shoot.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, LIVESTREAM…

Jim Parsons was brought in by Pulse Films to assume the role of Producer. “By the time I got involved, the concept had already been fairly well developed by Emma Bull and Paul Dugdale,” Parsons began. “From my side, it was a case of getting all the video and visual elements and working out some of logistics of how we’d get the event to the finish line.”

Parsons has collaborated with Horan several times over the years. “The fact he came from the TV world means he has much more of a grasp than many of his peers of what goes into this style of performance and how to connect with fans through a camera,” he enthused.

Speaking a few weeks after the event took place, Parsons reflected on what he and the team achieved with the livestream. “We always knew we had an opportunity to do something different with this show,” he commented. “The end resulted was big and beautiful, but it was still ‘live’.  It had the feel of a real show and didn’t come across prescriptive or dull.”

Parsons went on to describe the collaboration between himself and Driift, having worked together several times during 2020 on shows for Kylie Minogue and Sleaford Mods. “Ric Salmon and the rest of the Driift team are the kind of broadcasters I really like collaborating with in that they just let you get on with your work,” stated Parsons plainly. “They were obviously interested in the initial conversations and in the creative, but once it was all in place, they left us to it.”

Driift CEO, Ric Salmon offered his two cents on the project. “The fact that Niall ended up selling 127,000 tickets for the event is such a huge achievement, made all the better as it was all for such an amazing cause,” he stated. Unsurprisingly, 2020 was a busy year for Driift as the company offered livestreaming solutions for several artists. “There are almost too many benefits with this format of show,” stated Salmons while discussing the progression of livestreaming solutions that have only expanded in the past few years. “As we move forward, I think you’ll find more people opting for this style of event over, say, music videos,”

Parsons described what it was like working in the RAH. “It’s a beautiful venue, but we have all seen it thousands of times and there’s no denying that making it look different is quite a challenge. So, hats have to go off to the visual team for making this livestream look so unique.”

A Luna Remote System Junior 5 Telescopic remote compact dolly on a circular track along with a Dactylcam Pro point-to-point wire camera system captured the magic of the livestream. The spanned the periphery of central stage to present virtual audiences with a 360° view.

Camera Supervisor and joint Owner of Luna Remote Systems, Dean Clish discussed what it meant to be involved in such a prestigious show. “It was an honour to be involved in Niall’s show,” he commented. “It was for such a great cause and it’s always good to be in the Royal Albert Hall – you can’t go wrong with such a beautiful location.”

He continued to discuss why the camera selection was ideal for this type of performance. “The Junior 5 and the Dactylcam Pro are perfect for this kind of shoot because of the need to socially distance and, of course, with this sort of intimate production, they are both really unobtrusive and discreet systems,” he explained. “We’ve rigged the Dactylcam in the Royal Albert Hall before. It’s a brilliant system to use in there as you can really capture the essence of the hall from a height, in flight, in a way that you can’t with static systems.”

SOUNDING OUT…

The production brought back the audio double act of FOH Engineer, Matthew Kettle and Monitor Engineer, Joe Campbell to oversee the mix for the livestream and the band on stage. Having started working with Horan on his first solo album cycle, Kettle gave an overview of his time with the artist. “I didn’t really know what to expect before I’d heard the debut record and, as I was more known for working with rock music, I wasn’t sure I’d be the right fit,” he commented. However, with Horan’s solo music citing influences including Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen, the Engineer explained how it had been a fruitful partnership over the past three years. “Niall is really quite involved with the audio production and often during rehearsals will listen to the mixes to get a feel of what is being produced.”

Having been put on a hiatus since the tour’s cancellation in March, Kettle described what it was like to pull the pieces back together for the tour. “It’s really quite a different process producing a mix for a livestream compared to a live show,” he mused. “I have always had massive respect for broadcast engineers as it is such a different craft. When you’re mixing live in a venue, if anything goes wrong, you can fix it for the next performance. However, with a broadcast, everything is under much more of a microscope and under a great deal of scrutiny. Not only that, but you only have one shot at a show.”

Kettle explained that once he and the team entered rehearsals, they soon found their rhythm. “The approach to mixing was not too dissimilar to what we had already been working on for the tour. Just like the visual department, we didn’t want the production to be too flashy, aiming to simply reflect the intimacy of the performance without too much embellishment,” he commented.

For this reason, both Kettle and Campbell virtually replicated their audio setups they had planned to use for the world tour, featuring two DiGiCo SD5 consoles for monitors and FOH, along with Shure Axient Handhelds with Sennheiser 2000 Series IEMs, d&b audiotechnik wedges and a V-Series for side fills.

The console setup was not significantly different from the touring configuration, with multiple inputs from various SD-Racks in different parts of the stage and performance areas going to the broadcast SD5, all connected by an Opticore loop and shared with Campbell’s SD5 in monitor world. “The SD5 is my favourite console in the world,” said Campbell. “I love it and, because DiGiCo products are well proven and rock solid reliable, we rarely have to include them directly in what we do.” Cambpell was initially concerned in the lead up to the show, having not touched a desk since March. “Thankfully, Wigwam had kept the desks in pristine condition – so much so that our show files were even still loaded on the desk from the tour. This saved a great deal of time in rehearsals and certainly made it easier to get back into the saddle.”

Campbell was keen to replicate the same stage setup for Niall and the band. “During the tour, although he uses IEMs, I still have a wedge and side fills just in case he wants to take out his ears to hear the crowd,” he explained. “Even though it was a livestream with no audience, I wanted the show to feel as familiar as possible for him and the band.”

Despite a relatively “meat and potatoes” band setup, Campbell had just under 100 inputs on his desk – the result of several reverb returns and an elaborate talkback system. “Each one of the band members have a talkback mic so throughout the performance they can talk to one another and me,” he noted.

Meanwhile, Kettle’s ‘FOH’ position was slightly further away, setting up in a corridor off from the main hall. “Wigwam prepared an acoustic treatment kit so I sat at the desk with several studio monitors to mix the show and then sent my audio feed to the Pulse team,” stated Kettle. “Before going into the RAH, I was concerned with how the room would react with no audience in there to dampen the sound, but from the first sound check it sounded fantastic.”

Discussing Wigwam’s involvement with the project, Tom Bush commented: “We were all extremely proud to be supplying Niall’s livestream, especially as it was addressing the We Need Crew and #WeMakeEvents funds and highlighting what goes into putting on a production with the unseen and behind-the-scenes rolls.”

Bush went on to explain the approach to this type of performance: “A slightly different thought process can be needed – the standard positions for mixing, for example. The package wasn’t too dissimilar to the one we had ready for the world tour, so we had a good starting point. A few additions and tweaks were needed to adhere to the show setup, but Matt and Joe’s attention to detail made sure the process was smooth. The need for trucks full of PA hasn’t been required yet, but soon hopefully. We currently have a few livestreams pencilled in that we’re all looking forward to.”

#WENEEDCREW…

Looking back at the slew of 2020 livestreamed performances, Niall Horan stands out among the crowd, not only for its aesthetic, but because of everything it represented – not to mention the sizeable pot of funds it raised for the live events industry.

As we enter a new year with the live events sector entrenched in the clutches of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hope is that more musicians will follow in Horan’s footsteps to shine the spotlight on hardworking crew members that are so often out of sight and mind to the average live music lover. In the meantime, more information regarding the We Need Crew initiative can be found on www.weneedcrew.co.uk

[josiecarioca]

“Family...the real one.”

Summary: Emmet “Fin” Finnerty has found the love of his life in Doug Cleary. The next logical step is introducing him to his family...The real one.

Because “family” are those who take you in, when the ones who should love and protect you, fail.

Disclaimer: Fin and Doug are secondary characters of “Post War”, so while thechnically this story happens in the “Harry Potter” universe, it is not a fanfic as much as it is an original story, hence why it’s a tumblr publication alone. Evelyn is in this, but there will be no Snape, no magic and nothing of what my readers are used to see in my stories. I hope you still like it.

Warning: contains domestic violence, homophobia, homophobic slurs and emotions

Tagging, as usual:   @arabellafiggypudding @the-witches-son  @hummingbird-flying-in-the-rain @artisticreptilequeen @viper-official @be-zoar @violet-knox @mafagafobebum @marvelschriss @codename-thedoctor @zealouspickleeggdragon @green-oasis @drawnfromthedead @snapescapades @madshelily @serosvit  @snapecentric @hbprincealice @hayalee8 @lilythemadqueen @paracosim @oliverlandomens​ @sleepysnapesnake

“Family...the real one”

Dublin, Ireland

June 1998

“Full disclosure?” Fin was rambling. He knew he was. He usually did when he was nervous. Doug surely knew that by now. He even claimed he found it “adorable”. Only Doug could say something like that.

Three months. Three months and he was ready to make this official. He knew Doug felt the same. Unlike Fin, he had no problem showing his feeling, shouting them from the rooftops even. That didn't come so easy for Fin. It never did. But now, now he could do just that. Shout it from the rooftops. Make it official. And making it official started here. Introducing him to Lyn. It was a big step.

“Go ahead” Doug smiled, gazing at him with bright blue eyes full of endless patience.

Three months. Three months and Fin was starting to feel like this was it. He had found what he looked for in that handsome, sweet 6'ft tall dork of a man.

“You´re the first boyfriend I introduce to Evelyn since...God, I don't know...1995?”

“And why is that?” Doug asked, somewhat amused. After all, how much of a big deal could this possibly be? Sure, he was about to introduce his new boyfriend to his best friend, obviouly it was important, but how could he begin to explain it wasn´t just that simple?

“You know how it was...back then, I mean. I wasn't really being safe, and Lyn was just so worried about me and I never really thought she would approve of … Nevermind, now it's different. I want you to meet her. It's important.”

Fin looked around. He had picked a good place. The restaurant was nice enough that it felt like an occasion, but casual enough that it didn't seem like he was making a big fuss of it. But he was. It was a big deal. Fin wasn't the 'dating' type. But Doug was not like anybody he met before. Doug has this sort of tranquil aura about him, this kindness in his words and actions, such love in his eyes. Doug made him feel like he could just rest, breathe easy. This time he knew it was different. It just felt different. It felt like it could last.

Doug reached over the table to hold his hand, reassuringly.

“Her opinion means a lot to you, no?”

“Well, yes...this is my family we´re talking about. The real one, you know?”

Doug had been lucky. His parents loved him unconditionally, as parents should. He wasn´t kicked out of the house when he came out, he wasn´t told his entire being, his entire identity was an abomination before God. He wasn't made believe that no matter how good he was, how much of a good Christian he was, he would still go to hell for something he couldn't change. No, his parents loved him, protected him. Fin had also been lucky, but in a different, more complicated way. The family that loved and protected him wasn´t the one he was born into. It was Evelyn's.

“So, you told me you've known each other since you were kids...but, you never really said much more than that...”

That's right, Fin thought. He'd never told him. Not everything. He had to.

“I was friends with her brother growing up...Paul. We went to school together.”

There it was, that bittersweet ache in his heart. He hadn't felt it in a while

“I daresay I had a bit of a crush on him. Sometimes I wonder if he felt the same. But I guess I'll never know.”

“Why not?”

“Paul passed away. There was a fire in their house when he was just eleven. Lyn was there too. Their father pulled her out in time because she was closer to the door, but when he got to Paul it was too late. It happened too fast. ”

“I'm so sorry” Doug seemed stunned out of words. “I didn't know.”

“I didn't tell you. I should have. Specially today....we still have some time before she gets here, so....I think if we're serious about this, then you should meet Evelyn and her family...my family. That's why this is important to me. That you meet her and that you meet them.”

“Ok...So tell me. Tell me about your family, Fin.”

“I guess I should start from the beginning, then...Paul and I, we went to the same school. Catholic school...fun times.” he scoffed “Lyn was just a yar younger than us, and she went to an all girls school. Their father, Mr. Black was the headmaster, there. Paul took her everywhere with us when we weren't at school. Nothing could separate those two...Well, then...Paul passed away, and I was devastated, but her? I don't think there was a word in the entire dictionary that could have described how she was feeling, the poor girl. So I started going there to visit. They were all in such pain that I think Mr. Black let me spend as much time in their house as I wanted because he hoped it would help her. As it turns out it helped me. Being around her was a little like being with him. She looked so much like Paul it was eerie, nearly identical. I swear, if you could have seen them together, you'd swear they were twins. She was different though. Paul was like a hurricane in a boy's body. Lyn was much gentler. Anyway, the years went on and she just became...my sister, in a way. More than my own sister, to be honest. I'm pretty sure my parents expected us to date or something, but she knew, she was the first person I told. So she just came to my house, and smiled and nodded when my mother went on babbling about how we were perfect for each other and whatever nonsense. Then it happened...”

…

Doolin, Ireland

June, 1977

“What do you think?” Evelyn twirled, wrapped in meters of flowy, flowery fabric. The sun that came through the curtains filtered though the fabric, colouring the room.

“What am I looking at?” Emmet put down his magazine and watched her, trying to picture what she planned to do with the material she was showing him.

“My new dress, Fin!” she smiled, calling him by the nickname Paul had come up with years ago. Fin for 'Finnerty'. After Paul died, it was just the two of them. Fin and Lyn. “For my birthday. Since I'll be 15, mam said I can have it however I want.”

“Your birthday is in September!”

“It takes time to make a dress, and my grandma is going to have her hands full with Halloween costumes soon, so she's going to make my dress now. I want it long, with a bodice and medieval sleeves. Like Stevie Nicks in that magazine my dad brought from Dublin. He brought me the new Fleetwood Mac record too, here put it on.”

She set the fabric aside and fished the long play from the big canvas bag she had brought.

Whenever Lyn came over she always brought that huge bag, filled with clothes, magazines, records and books. She knew Fin couldn´t have any of that stuff at home. His mother didn't allow him to wear anything more colorful than a blue dress shirt for sunday mass, and his father was the one who decided which records, books or magazines were allowed in the house. Which meant no fashion or entertainment mags, no rock or pop music, and no books that seemed “suspicious”, which was pretty much anything that wasn't a school textbook. If not for Evelyn's father Emmet wouldn't even have read Oscar Wilde.

She handed him the record and he put it on, in the old record player Evelyn had snuck in for his last birthday. Her mother had got a new one, so she let Fin have the old 1967 Magnavox. His parents had no idea he had that thing in the bedroom, so he had to keep the volume low enough that his parents wouldn't hear it downstairs, or that they'd just think he had the radio on.

“We should ask my dad to take us next time he goes to Dublin. He promised me new shoes for my birthday. Red leather ones. With heels, I'm old enough for heels now. They only have those in Dublin.” Evelyn suggested, as both of them lay on the floor, staring at the reflection of the sun on the ceilling.

“You know my parents won't let me go.”

“They will if my dad is taking us. Or even better, if mam comes too. Your mother goes to church with her, of course she's going to let you go if she's with us. She's better to shop with anyway.”

“Maybe.” he trailed, knowing it wouldn't happen.

“We can buy some things for Halloween costumes. You should ask my grandma to make you one as well.Ooh, you know what? We can go as John Steed and Emma Peel! All you'll need is a suit, an umbrella and a hat, and grandma Liz can make me a jumpsuit. That purple one, with the chains! Or you want do do something spooky?”

“We´re not kids, anymore, Lyn.” he laughed

“And?”

“You really want to dress up for Halloween? We´re too old for that.”

“My grandparents still dress up for Halloween.” she scoffed

“It's different.”

“How?”

“They're...old-old. When you get to be their age you can do whatever you want.”

“They're not that old. I mean, if you...”

Evelyn's sentence was cut short by loud banging on the door. Emmet scrambled to his feet to turn off the music and toss a blanket over the record player. His father never banged on his door more than twice before yanking it open without waiting for an answer.

“You, downstairs now.” he barked at Emmet, before turning to Evelyn “And you can go back home, young lady. I need to talk to my son”

Emmet felt his stomach drop. His father never bothered to 'talk' to him, unless he was in trouble.

Evelyn picked up her things in a hurry and shoved it all back inside her bag, glancing over her shoulder at him all the while. She looked like she wanted to say something, but didn't know what.

“Now!” his father thundered from the stairs.

Emmet was frozen in place.

“Emmet is just helping me with my things, Mr. Finnerty. We'll be right there.” Evelyn answered, her voice slightly breaking.

“Come on...” she told him, holding his arm. “I'll go with you.”

“You have to go home.” he finally found his voice and his feet moved.

Emmet felt her hand grab his as they climbed down the stairs. His father was walking around the livingroom in circles, while his mother was talking to somebody. He heard her apologizing profusely. Then he realized why. She was talking to Connor Walsh's mother. As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Mrs Walsh shot him a disgusted look on her way out.

“Evelyn, dear, you can go now.” Mrs. Finnerty said, and Emmet noticed she had a piece of  paper in her shaky hands. He knew that piece of paper. He looked at Evelyn, feeling like the world was a minute away from crashing down onto his head. She  looked back at him, knowingly. He had told her about Connor...about the letter. She knew. He felt her hand squeeze his again.

“I won't.” she whispered.

Emmet didn't want her to go. But he also didn't want her to stay. He didn't want her to see what he knew was about to happen.

Neither of them had the time to say anything else. His father snatched the letter from his mother's hand and grabbed Emmet by the collar, nearly shoving the paper into his face.

“Did you write this?” he roared

Emmet couldn't find his voice. He felt warm tears swelling in his eyes. He could hear his mother's voice, asking his father to let him go and telling Evelyn to just go already.

“Did you write this drivel, lad?! Answer!” his father insisted, pushing the letter into his chest.

“Answer, Emmet!” his mother was crying “This is just a prank isn't it?”

It was over.

There was no point in lying, he had the letter right there. His mother might try to lie to herself, to convince him it was nothing, but it was there, plain for anyone to see it. They read it. They knew. He was sure they had already heard the rumors, the talk, the othe boys calling him this and that.

They knew it. They couldn´t pretend they didn't

“I did.” he  barely whispered.

Next thing he knew he felt his body hit the wall in full force. It didn't even hurt. It didn´t feel real.

Evelyn screamed and, from the corner of his eye, he saw her run to him. His father stepped in front of her.

“You get out of my house now, before I drag you home to your father, so he can teach you to mind your own business, lass.”

“Fin, I'll be right back!” she cried, running out the front door.

“What the devil were you thinking writing this?!” his father pulled him to his feet by his shirt.

“Stephen, let the lad go. This was just a game, just stupid prank. Tell him, Emmet, tell him this isn't serious.”

This was it.

They knew it.

They read it.

There was no turning back now.

“I did it, mam. I did it, I wrote it. It wasn't a prank, I really wrote it.”

“You hear it, Edith?! Your son can't even have the decency to be ashamed!”

“Why?! Why would you do something like this?!”

“You know why!” Emmet nearly screamed, overwhelmed, dizzy “You read it, didn't you? You know why! Iwrote it because I love him!”

His parents stared at him as if they were looking at something alien, something they couldn´t comprehend.

“Mam...dad...” he felt the tears run down his cheeks, burning. But he refused to cry, to sob. He wouldn't do that. “I'm gay.”

Emmet had expected his father to hit him.

What he didn't expect was for his mother to slap him.

But she did. She slapped him hard across the face and left the room. Like it was nothing. Like he was nothing.

Anything after that didn't hurt. He didn't even feel it.

It was as if he had left his body. He could vaguely discern some broken words, something about “bringing filth into his house”, “shame” and “hell”...he could see the blows coming, and his body acted on instinct, raising his arms to protect his head, his face. But he didn't feel it. He didn't feel any of it.  He just cowered on the corner and closed his eyes, praying it would be over soon. Praying he would get tired eventually. Before he hurt him too bad. Before...

“Stephen, what the devil are you doing?!” Emmet knew that voice, that deep voice filling the air around them like thunder. “Have you lost your mind?!”

The blows stopped and he opened his eyes.

Mr. Black was standing right there, with both his arms around his father, draging him away.

“Let me go, Marius!” his father shouted, like a man possessed, while Mr. Black kept holding him back.

“Leave the boy alone, Stephen! You're trying to kill him?”

Emmet tried to get up but he was too dizzy.

“Fin, are you ok?” Evelyn was kneeling next to him, frantically pushing his hair away form his face.

“You called your dad?” he was terrified.

“Of course I did!” she helped him up.

He heard a loud thump and looked up. Mr. Black had flung his father onto the armchair, and was now standing, looming over him. He looked taller than Emmet remembered him, much taller. And his father, sitting on the chair looked so small by comparison.

“Enough!” Mr. Black boomed, and Emmet could had sworn the ground under his feet trembled.

“You don't get it, Marius! You don't know what this...what this boy did!”

“Whatever it was, it doesn't justify this!” Mr. Black took off his thick rimmed glasses and pinched the brigde of his nose, in evident frustration.

His father got back to his feet, standing right in front of Mr. Black and he still looked small.

“This none of your business!”

“You made it my business when you sent my daughter back home in tears, scared out of her wits that you were going to kill her friend!”

“Then take your daughter back home and let ME handle what happen in MY house!” He pushed past Mr. Black and barrelled towards Emmet.

Mr. Black tried to hold him back, but he took a swing at him. Emmet and Evelyn both screamed, but Mr. Black managed to dodge it. He reached for his father again, shoving him so he'd back off.

“Linnie, get Emmet out of here!” Mr. Black told his daughter, and Lyn tried to pull him by his arm, but Emmet couldn't move.

“Stephen, for the love of God, stop! You'll regret this!”Mr. Black pleaded, stepping between Emmet and his father.

“What do you know, Marius?! You don't have a fecking faggot living under your roof! Count your blessings, Marius, because I rather have a dead son than this!”

For a second, a long, agonising second, time seemed to stand still. Emmet could see it on his father's face that he had regretted those words the moment they left his mouth. Not because of what they meant to Emmet. No, he knew his father meant every bit of that. But because he knew, of all the things he could have said to Mr. Black, that was the wrong one.

Emmet had known Mr. Black his entire life. He never saw him raise his voice, he had never seen him angry. He was a gentle man. A man who took them birdwatching on weekends, who bought them magazines and records whenever he went to Ennis or Dublin, who told them about his favorite poets and painters. Emmet didn't think he was physically capable of being anything other than gentle and kind.

But in that moment, he changed.

Emmet never thougth he'd see Mr. Black punch somebody. But he did it. A single punch, right to the side of his father face, so strong, so sudden, he fell to the floor  like rotten fruit falls from a tree.

“Never” he growled in a voice that didn't sound like his voice at all “you hear me, NEVER talk about my son again! You heard me, Stephen!? NEVER! I promise you, you mention my boy ever again, and it will be the end of your sorry life upon this Earth, I promise you!”

“I didn't mean it like, that, you know I didn't...” Emmet watched with disgust as his father tried to get back on his feet, stumbling, humiliated.

“I know exactly what you meant! And you know what you meant, you dirty coward!”

He kept trying to make excuses, but Mr. Black would have none of it.

“You don't know, you have no idea, what it is to bury a child, and I hope to God you never find out.” his voice was calmer, but there was a frightening coolness to it “Are you out of your damned mind?! This is your son! Standing right there while you´re wishing him dead! What I wouldn't give to trade places with you! To have my boy here, alive, like him!”

Emmet was numb. He felt Evelyn rest her head against his shoulder and weep, softly. He wanted to hug her, to do something, anything. But all he could was stare. Stare at his father, trying and failing to stand up to her father, as Mr. Black towered over him, his face filled with righteous, godly, ice-cold anger. And he felt so embarrassed, so ashamed that this man, this petty, pathetic, bumbling excuse of a man was his father.

“Easy for you to say, Marius, but if Paul had been a...”

“I won't hear my son's name from your mouth again, Stephen. Paul is dead. And if I could have him back, I would have him however he was. Trust me, nothing can worse than a dead child. Nothing!”

“That's a pretty sentiment coming from somebody who doesn´t have to live with THAT under your roof! But I won't stand for this! I won't have this in my house!”

“Fine, I'll take him!”

“What?!”

“You don't want him under your roof? I'll solve that problem for you, then. I'll take him. However he is. I'll take him.”

…

“What on earth happened to you, dear?” Mrs. Black seemed horrified when she laid eyes on him, as Lyn walked him throught the front door. Emmet, still dazed, wondered how bad he must have looked for her react that way. She put her hand on his cheek, and her blue eyes were filled with something he couldn't describe. “What has he done to you?”

Only then did he cry. Only then did he allow himself to sob.

It was Evelyn's mother who held him in her arms as he had, so foolishly, hoped his mother would.

“I...I...told them I...I'm sorry, I...” he pulled back and wiped his tears, suddenly aware that...she didn't know. Mrs. Black went to church with his mother. She didn't know he was...  A rush of panic coursed through him. What would she say? He couldn't. He couldn't go through this twice.

“Take a breath, pet.” she told him, pulling him to sit on the couch. “Linnie, love, go get the first aid kit in the kitchen, we need to patch this lad up a bit. And try not to alarm your sister, if you will. And where is your father?”

“He's waiting for Mrs. Finnerty to get him all of Fin's...I mean, Emmet's stuff.”

Mrs. Black nodded, as if she knew something. As if she had been expecting to be told exactly that. Lyn looked at her mother with the same knowing expression in her eyes and went to the kitchen as intructed.

Emmet felt like runnning away, as far away as he could.

“Mr. Black he said...I'm sorry,I have to...I have to go back, I can't...”

“Emmet, calm down.”

“Mrs. Black, I know you don't want me here. I...I'm...I mean, I...told my parents...”

“I know, pet. I know.”

“No you don't...”

“Emmet, my darling, why do you think I allow you to be in Linnie's room for hours with the door closed? I'm not stupid.” she laughed softly.

“How?”

“A mother just knows...”

“Mine didn't.”

“If she let your father do this, then she's not that competent of a mother is she?” Mrs. Black scoffed. “But, trust me...a mother knows.”

Then it clicked. Then he knew.

“You mean...” he trailed, stunned “...Paul?”

“I carried him inside me 9 months, I birthed him, clothed, fed him, cared for him till the day he left this Earth. Nobody knew him better than I did, except God.”

“God...” he spat out “My mother thinks God will send me to hell. Because the Bible says...”

“Oh pish-posh...I pray on the Bible as well as any Christian, but Jesus knows where I would be if I took  everything it's written in there so seriously. Thou shall now lay with a man, and whatnot, fine, but you don't see anybody that eager to give up their breakfast bacon because the Bibles says it's forbidden, now do you? Your parents didn't stone your sister in the town square when she left the house married for two days and pregnant for 2 months, did they? Like we all didn't know.  Enough of this nonsense, now, we need to get you fixed up. God, you're bleeding.”

“So I really can stay?”

“Do you want to stay?”

…

“So I stayed.” Fin smiled. He looked up at Doug and took a deep breath, hoping he didn't think it was sillly that he had tears in his eyes over this. But all he saw in Doug's expression was understanding...and love. So much of it.

“I stayed until we both left for college, Lyn and I. She studied history and I went for journalism.Mrs. Black was the one who got me my first camera, then Mr Black gave me my first professional camera, and books about photography and journalism. They did everything for me that a mother and a father would do. I stilll go back with Lyn to spend the holidays with them. Well, with her...He passed away a few months ago. His heart. Funny that of all things, it was his heart that would kill him.”

Doug's hands closed over his.

“Thank you.” he said, quietly. “For telling me all this. I know it wasn't easy.”

“I...” he didn't finish. Over Doug's shoulder he saw the restaurant door open, and Evelyn walk in, wrapped in a long, flowy, flowery dress. “There she is.”

[readbyred]

Angst - Main gang (+Zoey, Alice)

One very angsty fact about your relationship; not canon, don't take it as a part of the series; I just like to write angst

Bill

It's painfully obvious that as much as he tries he is still bitter about his wife leaving him. He makes an effort to stop himself from saying things he does but it seems impossible. And oftentimes you listen to his rants about how love isn't real and relationships always end the same. You are sure he doesn't mean it but it hurts. Just as much as the fact that he seems to only grow closer to you in spite of his ex and her boyfriend. But he wouldn't date you just to make her jealous, right?

Paul (forever and always spoilers!)

He’s a great guy, he really is but lately you can't help it but notice a sudden shift in his behaviour. When he came late one night you were immediately alerted but your boyfriend assured you that he was fine. You promised yourself that you will ask him about it later but at this point you start to get frightened. He acts very nervous lately, you think that he knows you are suspicious. But the eerie presence only grows stronger and you really hope you are just imagining things from lack of sleep

Charlotte

When you entered this relationship you knew about her many romances. But Sam was an abusive guy and all the men around her just tried to use her vulnerability for their own gain. That's what you told yourself. That she was in no way a part of this. But now she started coming home late herself, smelling of that same cheap cologne as the tech guy from the office. You fought for this relationship for too long to give up now and perhaps things will change in the future?

Zoey

She’s a smart person and not the one to care for others’ feelings. That's an admirable quality to be so painfully honest. And you’re used to hear poking on your wounds for her own gain, it's something she does often. Yet sometimes you wish with time it would hurt less. But it never does.

Emma

You dated her long enough to know that her quirks and such. Which is exactly why as soon as you came into her work to get some coffee and see your girlfriend at work you noticed how she looked at one of the office workers who came soon after you. And you told yourself that it's just your mind playing cruel tricks but deep down you know she never looked you in such a way

Henry

When all of your friends told you he was crazy you scoffed and defended him proudly. He was misunderstood! But month passed and although many took back their words seeing the positive influence you had on the man it hit you that you might have been the one in the wrong. Sometimes, in small gestures and those loving looks that he gives you you see it. Something buried deep but at the same time boiling right underneath his skin, something rotten and evil and you can't help but wonder how long will it take for your ‘fixed’ lover to go off the rails again

Alice

After her parents divorced something shifted. At first it was nice, it came in a form of ‘good morning’ texts and longer hugs but soon it got darker. You want to understand her, that she’s just scared to end up like her parents, but you got yourself all tangled up in her overbearing presence and your good intent. Not wanting to hurt her you comply, following her like a dog would follow its owner. She doesn't want you to be like her mother and leave for a long lost love, you get that really. But the more she presses the more you feel yourself suffocating

Ted

It hurts to hear him talk about himself so badly, hiding those words between his usual cocky attitude. You always made sure to try and show him he’s much more that what he and others claim him to be. But with time the realization came to you that he might have been right. There is a presence looming over your partner, something or someone who doesn't quite let you to take their place yet. A dead lover? Broken heart? Whatever it is, it holds him still in place. And it would shatter your heart to betray him and break all your promises that you’ll let him heal and stay no matter what. It's still true that you want to! But a relationship needs commitment and you slowly feel drained loving someone who actively doesn't allow himself to do the same to you or himself

[seymour---krelborn]

may i inquire about your theory that wiley might be ted?

Okay so I wanna preface this with the fact that this is only half serious and most if not all of it is probably coincidence or jokes, but ANYWAY big ol’ Nightmare Time spoilers under the cut

So we’ll start off with a real reach. In TGWDLM, MacNamara has a line, “We’re great again/No answers to be found”. This could very well be referring to him wanting answers regarding what exactly happened to Cross and, if he’s aware of his current state (Assuming he got Fucked Up in the Black and White in this timeline), how to get him back to normal. The reach is the fact that he sings this not long after killing/infecting Ted. Does that mean anything? Probably not, but let me have this.

Another reach is in Time Bastard, when Kilgore (I think, if I’m remembering correctly?) refers to Ted as “A wiley one”. Which, once again, could mean nothing, or could even just be a joke because Joey plays both characters. Or even a red herring to people like me who read too much into things lmao

BUT, we also have the Time Bastard song. Obviously this is about Ted, no question about that. But there’s the lyric,  "You're a masterful criminal, but the student will be your fall". Sure, Ted does beat the shit out of 2004 Kilgore, but I wouldn’t say that makes him a “masterful criminal”. And as for the student line, there’s not really anything about a student in the story. Maybe Kilgore was in college then, since Ted also was, but he didn’t exactly take Ted down. Unless I’m either missing something or it’s lore we haven’t gotten yet, the only thing I can think of that it could be referring to is the fact that Cross was MacNamara’s mentor. In a song about Ted, from a story where neither Cross nor MacNamara are even mentioned.

(Now we’re going off into Tangent Town a bit so bear with me)

I also noticed that both Ted and Wiley have a watch, and though it’s difficult to tell, they do look to be the same one. Which that could just be re-using costume pieces, or hell it could even just be Joey’s own watch.

But I do wanna talk about the watches in the show more. Specifically in TGWDLM. We all know the iconic “WEAR A WATCH” scene. MacNamara is aware of the paranormal. When he tells Paul about it, he gives Paul the watch. Jeff is not wearing one as either Mr Davidson or Sam (And I don’t think Man In A Hurry, either). I know that he doesn’t need the watch until Act 2, but if I were in his position, I’d figure that it would be easier to just put the watch on while getting in my Act 1 Scene 1 costume. Unless there was a reason I shouldn’t.

 There’s only one other person in the show (Again, unless I’m missing something, which is possible) who wears a watch. And that’s Joey. I’m going to ignore the fact that his Smoke Club Kid is wearing it because he had about one minute to go from Ted to SCK, and quickchanges are hard enough as it is. You can also see the occasional flash of Homeless Ted wearing it in La Dee Da Da Day. But again, that could come down to quickchanges. 

Fast forward, and we’re at the scene where Bill talks about wanting to go save Alice. Ted goes off on his little “Cut off the head” rant, which ends up being foreshadowing to Paul going to blow up the meteor. He also tells Bill, “You’re gonna get there, and she’s gonna be dead, and you’re gonna die, too”. And sure enough, by the time Bill and Paul arrive at the school, Alice is infected, and Bill is killed while they’re there. 

So what I’m getting at with this bit is, what if, whether he realizes it or not, Ted is somehow tied to the Black and White, possibly via the Bastard’s Box, allowing him to be subconsciously aware of different timelines, futures, etc. After all, Homeless Ted is in all these realities, so it’s tied in somehow.

This could also be tied to the fact that in the finale of Black Friday, he looks significantly more scared than the others, and, at some point, almost confused. Like he knows that they’re not going to make it, but he’s not sure why or how he knows it. That being said, Joey is also very expressive onstage, so it could just be him Acting.

(The watch thing gets kinda iffy if you consider Tom’s at the end of Black Friday, but listen it’s fine)

We could also use this to answer the question of why Ted, who wants nothing more than to just survive TGWDLM, makes them pause and have a heart-to-heart when they have a very limited time to get to the helicopter, instead of just waiting until they got to safety. Maybe he knew that this would be the last time they would see each other, he just didn't know the details as to what would cause that. So when Paul gets attacked and Emma goes after him, Ted assumes that they must be dead, not knowing that he's the one about to be converted.

(Updated on Feb. 28th) While watching TGWDLM last night, I paused it to see what was on Mr Davidson’s newspaper and

There’s also the “You opened the box” line in Made In America, but honestly, to claim that’s referring to the Bastard’s Box is the biggest reach in this whole damn post, and that’s saying something

This is way longer than I intended it to be but HERE YOU GO

[riddlegecko]

Paulkins on christmas? Or maybe the Thanksgiving before they go over to Tom and Tim's?

Gonna do Christmas bc I couldn't think of any Thanksgiving ideas. Gave myself a craving for pancakes writing this one.

After a surprisingly smooth Christmas Eve spent at Tom's place, Emma had elected to stay over at Paul's apartment for the night. She had stopped at her own apartment to grab a few things (Emma had claimed it was just a pair of pajamas, but considering she had just worn one of Paul's sweatshirts to bed, he was positive it was his Christmas present), but once they arrived at Paul's, it was quite the cozy night-in.

The night had passed by in bliss, and before Emma knew it, she was waking up all bundled up in the blanket of Paul's bed. Though Paul himself was nowhere to be seen, she caught the faintest whiff of pancake batter coming from the kitchen.

Grabbing a pair of fuzzy socks to protect her feet from the cold floor, Emma made her way out into the kitchen. The sight to greet her was almost unbearably domestic. Paul was busy at the stove, carefully flipping two pancakes onto a plate and softly humming to himself. As she stepped further into the kitchen, Emma managed to catch the scent of hot chocolate. Real, homemade hot chocolate, not the store-bought stuff. Quietly as she could muster, Emma padded into the kitchen, and wrapped her arms around Paul's waist from behind, earning a small, startled gasp out of him.

"Morning, Paul," she yawned, her voice slightly muffled as she buried her face against the back of his robe. "Merry Christmas."

Paul snickered, craning his neck around to try and get a good look at her. "Morning, sleepyhead," he greeted her, a lightly teasing lilt to his voice. "Wish you would've slept in a little longer, I was gonna wake you when breakfast was done."

"You left me alone in bed and teased me with the scent of pancakes, and you expected me to wait?" she asked, playfully incredulous. "No way, pal. But I do appreciate you making pancakes, despite your incorrect preferences."

Chuckling, Paul turned around to face Emma as she unwrapped her arms from his torso. "Waffles are better, and I will die on that hill," he said, his tone full of affection as he gently cupped her face with one hand, stroking over her cheek with his thumb. He then pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. "But it's Christmas, and I wanted to surprise you, so pancakes it is."

"Sap." Emma teased with a snicker.

"Maple syrup, actually," Paul playfully retorted. He gently ushered her in the direction of the kitchen table. "Breakfast is almost done, have a seat while I finish up."

For the next five or so minutes, Emma patiently waited at the table while Paul finished preparing the hot cocoa, her stomach occasionally giving a rather impatient rumble. A part of Emma was shocked at how normal this felt. After all, she never thought she'd be the type to wake up on Christmas morning to a romantic partner making her breakfast. But at the same time, that just made it sweeter. The fact that Paul made something so unlike her feel so... right. Paul had a way of doing that with her, making the abnormal feel normal.

"Breakfast is served!" Paul declared, sliding an absolutely delicious looking plate of pancakes on the table in front of her, alongside a mug of hot chocolate. He took a moment to place his hands on her shoulders, pressing a long enough kiss to her temple to get her giggling like a total sap. "Merry Christmas, Em."

Excited and thoroughly starving, Emma sliced a small sliver of butter off of the stick that had been waiting in the center of the table, and spread it across the top of the short stack. As Paul began to do the same with his own, Emma grabbed the syrup and drizzled a moderate amount over the two pancakes. God, they smelled wonderful. Unable to wait any longer, she grabbed her knife and fork, and began to dig in.

"How is it?" Paul asked expectantly, pouring syrup over his own stack.

"God, fucking amazing," Emma replied between bites. They were perfectly light and fluffy, as all good pancakes should be. And there was one particular flavor to it that Emma took quick notice of. "Did you bake cinnamon into the batter?"

"Yep!" Paul confirmed with a proud nod, taking a quick sip of his cocoa. "I knew you'd like that little touch."

Emma smiled, shaking her head. "You know me too well," she quipped lovingly. She picked up her mug of hot chocolate, gently blowing on it before taking a sip. She could almost feel her face lighting up at the taste. "Jesus, Paul, since when are you so good at making hot cocoa?"

Paul shrugged. "Dunno," he replied simply. "I honestly don't make cocoa that much."

"Yeah, honestly, I'm surprised you're able to function right now without your morning coffee." Emma teased before taking another sip.

"Eh, give it a few hours," Paul snickered. "I'll probably end up caving and making a pot later."

Laughing, Emma cut off another small section of the pancake, letting a bit of excess syrup drip off of it before eating it. As she ate, a cozy feeling of peace swirled around inside her. Spending Christmas morning with this guy that she loved was something she could definitely get used to, different as it was for her. Once the two finished up, Paul nervously drummed his fingers on the table.

"So, you enjoyed it?" he asked.

"What gave it away?" Emma snarked playfully. She found herself giggling once more at the bashful blush that crossed Paul's face. "For real though, it was really good. I loved it."

"I'm glad," Paul said, a hint of relief in his voice. "So, what do you wanna do next?"

"Well, we still gotta exchange gifts, don't we?"

"Yeah, of course! But what about after that?"

Emma briefly thought it over. They could get freshened up and go on a nice Winter walk around Hatchetfield, but something about getting dressed just didn't sound appealing to her. They could spend the day in bed, exchanging a different type of gift. But they'd had enough fun last night after arriving back at Paul's apartment, and frankly Emma wasn't in the mood. But there was one other option that sounded nice, as ridiculously domestic as it was.

"Why don't we just cozy up on the couch and watch movies?" she suggested. "Not the most exciting thing, I know, we have movie nights at least once a week, but-"

"That sounds lovely, Em."

Emma felt her face flush. "Really?"

Paul smiled at her in that soft, familiar way that never failed to make her heart melt a bit. "A day spent just watching movies with you?" he said. "Sounds like the perfect day to me."

Emma looked down at her lap with a grin, preparing to say something that she was still getting used to saying to Paul, and would probably find herself saying a lot today.

"I love you, Paul."

Paul's face flushed brightly, a frankly adorable sight that Emma would never tire of.

"I love you too, Em."

[thecrownnet]

October 3, 2020

Series four of The Crown takes on Princess Diana: exclusive pictures and interviews Charles has found a wife, Andy’s got a racy new girlfriend and Thatcher’s coming for tea... Megan Agnew gets an exclusive tour behind the scenes of the most wild and lavish series yet

Lasers. That’s what helped Emma Corrin understand Princess Diana in the latest series of The Crown. When the cameras were rolling, she imagined that lasers were pointing at her, as if she were in a spy film or a bank heist drama. It was her way of imagining hundreds of people staring right at her. Lasers helped her with the iconic Diana head tilt. She pretended she was shying away from them.

Corrin could also draw on her own trajectory as a 24-year-old actress. Before landing her part in The Crown, she was an unknown. Suddenly “there’s a huge amount of pressure”, she says.

When I visit the set at Winchester Cathedral, which is pretending to be St Paul’s, the paparazzi arrive to catch Corrin pretending to be Diana. She’s dressed in a replica of the outfit they papped at the actual royal wedding rehearsal almost 40 years ago. Every time she moves between buildings and trailers, Corrin has to be shielded with umbrellas. Life imitates art imitates life.

Almost every person Corrin has spoken to since getting the role has their own “Diana moment” — they might once have waved at her car in the street, been a pupil at a school she visited or knew someone who sat next to her at a dinner. Diana was one of the first celebrities to whom people laid claim. “Everyone has this ownership,” says Corrin. She was, and still is, the People’s Princess. But Corrin is trying not to think too much about it. Public expectation has been “overwhelming since the beginning”, she says. She wants to do Diana “proud”. “I know that’s strange and cheesy, but I feel like I know her.”

Emma Corrin as Princess Diana/ NETFLIX

The first television series of The Crown, which aired in 2016, was at the time the most expensive in history. Each series since has been estimated to have cost upwards of £50 million. The first two covered the first decade of Elizabeth II’s rule to wide acclaim, but series three — in which Her Majesty Claire Foy was succeeded by Olivia Colman — had mixed reviews. “The jewel in Netflix’s tiara has lost its shine,” said one. It was “okay”, said another.

Now, with series four’s reported £100 million budget eclipsing the Queen’s own sovereign grant last year of £82.2 million, The Crown is barrelling straight into the Eighties era of celebrity glamour and modern party politics grit. Peter Morgan, the show’s creator, is taking on two of the most controversial public figures of the past 50 years: Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher. “The word ‘iconic’ is overused, but in the case of these two women quite justified,” Morgan says. Both have passionate fans and detractors. “Writing them was a bit of a high-wire act, but it was exhilarating.”

We meet Diana as a teenager, scampering around her huge family home in Northamptonshire. She is young and apologetic. The Prince of Wales, at that time dating her eldest sister, is rather distracted. A number of years later, Diana is leaving her relatively modest flat in Earls Court and her job as a nursery school assistant to move into Clarence House — but finds herself in solitude. Bored and lonely, 19-year-old Diana rollerskates down corridors to Duran Duran and sits all by herself in her chamber. One night, after finding out about Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, she gorges on puddings and makes herself vomit them back up.

Behind the scenes: the latest series of The Crown/ NETFLIX

*Spoilers*

It is a dark moment that Corrin wanted to get right. She listened to real-life accounts of people who had suffered from bulimia and talked with experts from the eating disorder charity Beat. Diana herself said that it was the most “discreet” way of harming herself: “Everyone in the family knew about the bulimia,” she said in recordings from the 1990s later made into a Channel 4 documentary.

“Drawing on my experience,” says Corrin, “not that I’ve experienced that kind of self-harm, but mental health in general, it can lead you down a very dark path when you’re struggling to cope, when things feel out of control. Diana very much doesn’t have the love and comfort and attention she needs from the man she loves or the family, who aren’t really acting as a family to her. There is a build-up of emotion she can’t deal with and making herself sick is a way of taking back control.”

When Josh O’Connor, who plays the Prince of Wales, first read the script for this series he thought: “Oh God, how can Charles be like that to Diana? But he feels wronged. He feels like she has an addiction to the spotlight,” he says. “I have to feel sympathy for him in that world. This is a family who have an intense inability to be emotional and he has inherited that awkwardness. In this series there’s an awful lot of Charles trying to explain himself and not being allowed to. He’s trying to say that if he can be with Camilla, then at least two of the three people can be happy. As it is, there’s three miserable people.”

The Crown works differently to other shows in that the “writers’ room” is not made up of writers but researchers, who constantly feed back to Morgan, the king of The Crown. It means that for each word eventually spoken on film, there are pages and pages of briefing notes. Annie Sulzberger, head of research, started this series by hiring a young team. “I wanted people who did not grow up believing one or the other [Diana and Thatcher],” she says. “You have to be curious enough and ignorant enough, I suppose, to write the kind of work we need.”

This series will span the Thatcher years — 1979 to 1990 — and will include the assassination of Charles’s great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, by the IRA, Charles and Diana’s wedding, and the Falklands War. Once the team has laid out a timeline, Morgan picks out the events he wants to feature. The research team starts to hone in on each, getting increasingly “micro” in their investigations. In the making of this series, one of the team spent two weeks researching the label on a bottle of wine from which a character briefly swigs.

Dress rehearsal: Josh O’Connor and Emma Corrin act out Charles and Diana’s wedding run-through/ NETFLIX

As the show has progressed, the fact-checking work has multiplied, thanks to the tabloid journalism of the 1980s. “It’s not just about words being printed,” Sulzberger says, “but who wrote it. Diana will become very close with a journalist called Richard Kay and feed him information, and Charles’s team will do the same. So you need to start unpicking the biographies of all the writers in order to know that what you’re doing has some objectivity.”

Did the team speak to any of Diana’s family or friends? “No.” Do the producers give any material to the Palace to see beforehand? “No. We have no connection to them that would result in editorial shifts. These are real people, these are real stories and we are filling in the moments that aren’t recorded — private conversations, moments of reflection, philosophical moments.”

When I ask Morgan if it’s true that he meets high-ranking courtiers four times a year, he is keen to clear up that he doesn’t. “I have never had any discussions with anyone actively working at the Palace,” he says. “The two worlds, the royal household and The Crown, exist in a world of mutual deniability, which I’m sure is every bit as important to them as it is to us.”

Corrin, though, did speak to Patrick Jephson, Diana’s private secretary, who appears as a fictionalised character in this series. “I got a sense of her joy from him,” Corrin says. “He said she was so naturally happy. When she joined the royal family, she had come from living with flatmates in Earls Court and she was a very normal girl. Patrick said she was still full of that girlish silliness, very down to earth.”

The couple themselves at the real thing in 1981 MIKE LLOYD/SHUTTERSTOCK/REX

The executive producer Suzanne Mackie says that “particularly now” The Crown team feels a sense of responsibility “to living people, people’s children, people’s parents. Obviously what we don’t do is engage on a fact level with the royal family. We have a tacit understanding that they need distance from us and we need distance from them.”

It is a cold day in January and I am watching Charles and Diana’s wedding rehearsal in Winchester. About 75 per cent of the show is filmed on location around the world, over the course of seven months. The rest is filmed at the show’s base, Elstree Studios, just north of London.

Today in Winchester Cathedral there is a crew of 78 and a cast of almost 200. The sight is as epic as the show’s budget would suggest. Between takes, Corrin sits on the stone steps by the altar, scrolling on her iPhone with one hand and biting her fingernails on the other. Even before the clapperboard snaps shut, the resemblance between her and the princess is uncanny.

Sidonie Roberts, head buyer and assistant costume designer, has a timeline of photos of Diana covering the wall of her studio at Elstree. Roberts is devoted to the cause. She travels to Paris to buy buttons from the same shop the Queen’s dressmaker uses (it sells more than 30,000 types of button) and to Soho to rummage in basements for fabric. Last year she was in a Bangladeshi fabric shop in Brick Lane, east London, when she saw a roll of material right on the very top shelf. “It was still in its plastic, but I just knew — that’s Diana’s colour,” Roberts says. She got a ladder, climbed to the top, pulled down the fabric and bought it for £3.50 a metre. When Roberts got back to the studio at Elstree, she unrolled it and saw a stamp at the bottom: “The Lady Diana Collection, made in Japan.” Roberts did some research. It was real silk, from a collection made in the princess’s honour.

In the corner of the studio an assistant is gluing tiny pearls to Diana’s flat wedding shoes. She has been decorating them, exactly like the originals, for a day and a half. “We’ve had a long conversation about the size of those pearls,” says Roberts. David and Elizabeth Emanuel, who designed Diana’s original wedding dress, donated patterns to the show, which were used to make the new version. With its 25ft train, it took ten people to get Corrin into the dress. In the show it is seen in full, and only from behind, for no more than 15 seconds.

Paying their respects: Olivia Colman as the Queen and the rest of the royal family at the funeral of Lord Mountbatten/ NETFLIX

Corrin is masterful at inhabiting Diana’s coyness — hunching her shoulders towards her ears as she walks, the smirk, her intonation. Diana’s voice was the “polar opposite” of the royals’, says William Conacher, The Crown’s dialect coach. “She moved her jaw twice as much, so her voice was more forward, open, easier to access, and I don’t think it’s especially revelatory to suggest accessibility was her shtick,” he says. “She used a minor key that made her seem vulnerable. Despite the Queen’s and Prince Charles’s accents being ‘stiffer’ to listen to, I think it comes entirely naturally, whereas I find Diana’s voice more studied. I think she spoke to have an effect.”

What sort of research did Colman do for series four’s Queen? “Yeah, I don’t do research,” she says when we speak on the phone in the summer. “The research team on The Crown is a bit like the British Library. It’s extraordinary, and when they kick in, your computer can’t really cope with the amount of stuff they send you.” Was there something in particular that the team sent her that made things click? “No.” There is a longish silence. It seems Colman’s royal duty is waning. “They’ve got every image and film of the Queen ever made. I’ve also got three kids, so I can’t spend all my time going through all of it.”

As she wraps up a second series of The Crown — Imelda Staunton will take over for five and six — Colman knows that she would “really not like” to have the Queen’s job. “There are very few people who are forced into a job and have no choice about it,” she says. “She’s done it with dignity, for decades, bless her. It’s amazing.”

The funeral of Lord Mountbatten took place in 1979 BENTLEY ARCHIVE/POPPERFOTO/GETTY

If there were rumours of Elizabeth II being unhappy about the last series of The Crown, I can’t imagine she’ll be too chuffed about this one. Series four’s Queen is colder and more distant, and the effects of her duty on her children more obvious: Charles is heavy with melancholy, Anne feels unheard, Edward is portrayed as a spoilt bully and Andrew is dangerously arrogant.

Speaking of Andrew, there is a subtle nod towards recent events. At one point the prince discusses a young American actress he is dating. The actress had recently played a 17-year-old who must entertain several “old predators who seduce the vulnerable, helpless young Emily”. The real prince dated the actress Koo Stark in 1981, who had starred in The Awakening of Emily, which had a near-identical plot.

In series four, the pivotal relationship between the Queen and Margaret Thatcher begins well. They are respectful of one another as no-nonsense working mothers, but tensions arise — not least, over tea etiquette at Balmoral.

In preparation for her role as the Iron Lady, Gillian Anderson met Charles Moore, Thatcher’s biographer, as well as secretaries who worked with her. “The only way for me to go about sitting inside of her was to find the reason behind her actions — growing up, what she learnt from her father, how much she truly believed that she was the answer and as long as we all took the sour medicine now we’d be able to turn around this country, completely shutting her eyes to the people that she was turning out on the street.”

Anderson eventually “settled into” the body of Thatcher. “She walked very fast, always up ahead,” Anderson says. “She would power forward in front of presidents. With [Ronald] Reagan she would supposedly be alongside him, but was walking ahead. Always walking ahead of [husband] Denis, telling him to catch up.”

Thatcher’s barnet also features. In one scene she spends an asphyxiating four seconds hairspraying it in preparation for a showdown with the Queen. The hairdo took endless camera tests before Morgan was happy with it. “It essentially meant destroying it so it had an overprocessed ‘frothy’ quality,” says the hair and make-up designer Cate Hall. “To treat a wig so badly was against all of our instincts — they’re so expensive — but I’m grateful now that we went through the process with Peter, with him saying no, more, it’s not right, try again.”

Clash of the titans: Margaret Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson, is filmed meeting the Queen, played by Olivia Colman, in a memorable scene from series four/ NETFLIX

Series five will have a whole new cast. Colman says she is “not the sort of person who keeps the shoes of a character they played 20 years ago”. But Helena Bonham Carter is going to miss Princess Margaret. “She does pop out [in everyday life],” she says. “The other day I was at some public event and there was the normal scramble of people and I just told them, ‘No, shut up.’ The finger came out, which is very her, and I said, ‘Shut up and wait. Don’t get hysterical.’ So I’ve got the bossy side of her.”

Originally Morgan said there would be two more series after this one. Then he changed his mind, describing series five as “the perfect time and place to stop”. Now there are two more again (“To do justice to the richness and complexity of the story,” he reneged). The show is creeping closer to the modern day. It is now said to be ending in the 2000s, spanning, perhaps, Charles and Diana’s divorce, the deaths of Diana, Margaret and the Queen Mother, the marriage of Charles and Camilla, and the teenage and twentysomething princes. “I want to end it close enough to present day to feel that we have completed a long journey and distant enough to feel historical,” says Morgan. “I have a specific incident in mind, but until I’ve actually written it and seen if it works, I can’t commit to discussing it.”

On set with Mackie, I mention Harry and Meghan. “Too often,” the couple posted on their Instagram page that month, “we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring.” Is it possible, I ask Mackie, for the royal family to humanise themselves while still justifying their existence as something mightier, more important, regal? “That’s where you go wrong, as a public figure, letting light in on the magic, especially as a monarch,” she replies. “You have to be an ideal. After years and years of that subjugation of self in order to put duty first, you, the essence of you, is buried somewhere. The Queen is a tiny little person inside many, many Russian dolls.”

Series four of The Crown is available on Netflix from November 15

[susiephone]

okay okay okay okay i just finished episode 2 of nightmare time. SPOILERS BELOW, HOLY SHIT SPOILERS. SCROLL PAST IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN. but here are my thoughts

overall:

the lang brothers are geniuses

this could truly be the next twilight zone

the hour-long format is PERFECT for expanding on the hatchetfield multiverse. it’s not overstuffed like black friday was and we get to delve deep into so many different facets of the world

MAJOR PROPS TO THE PIANIST

i also love that this whole thing gives fanfic authors free reign. anything we write COULD be canon in some other timeline. and if there’s an inconsistency? blame it on the multiverse

bill and sylvia: new otp

there haven’t been any songs i’ve really loved yet (besides the theme song), but the stories are so good that i almost don’t care

forever and always:

i fully expected not-emma to be called “kelly”

my theory is that the emma we met from tgwdlm is indeed the real emma perkins, because i don’t think not-emma would’ve been as surprised by the invasion and blue shit as she was. plus, she would’ve kicked infected!paul’s ass

lauren lopez deserves an award for the scenes where she played both emmas. that was incredible.

as horrifying as the ending was, i kind of smiled at the idea of not-emma and paul-23 going off together to live in unholy matrimony, forever. in a way, they’re perfect for each other. and i think they do genuinely love each other, in spite of it all.

i feel like having mariah and robert sing the song together was throwing us a bone since we didn’t see them play a couple in black friday (though angela turned out to be the perfect lex in my opinion)

i thought the fact that clones/androids have the same memories and thinking process as the original was super interesting and it really does muddy the waters as to who’s “real” or not

also makes me wonder if jane was somehow mixed up in all this... the timing of emma’s supposed death and her death, both via vehicle crashes, is awfully coincidential

time bastard:

i didn’t think anything to come out of hatchetfield would spook me more than the ending of black friday. 

then this fucker.

little sad this debunked the theory that ethan is ted’s little brother, but oh well

it made me a little sad that ted really does think of paul as his best friend

the homeless man reveal SHOOK ME TO MY CORE. my jaw was on the ground.

also i loved the grins of the cast, like they’d been waiting for that moment the whole time

i bet the livestream went INSANE

also ted’s vision of dancing with jenny at the wedding genuinely made me tear up. joey’s so good at making me pity ted even when he’s being an absolute shitbag

speaking of which, i actually gasped and went “oh no...” when i realized ted was fucking it up with jenny when he went back in time. i really wanted it to all work out somehow.

i REALLY hope andy and jenny come back

the ending of this had me horrified and tearing up at the same time. it really does remind me of the ending of some twilight zone episodes, where the protagonist brings their fate wholly on themselves, but it’s just so horrible that no one really deserves it.

GET TED OUT OF THE BASTARD’S BOX 2K20.

[whenrockwasyoung19]

It’s Time to Talk about a Bespectacled Elephant in the Room

I’ve been in the Beatles fandom for 8 and a half years. I have had a Beatles blog for the entirety of those 8 and a half years, and I have watched as discourse about these four men evolve. The discourse inside and outside the fandom has become so toxic that I don’t think I can engage with it in the same way that I could before. Let me explain. 

When I entered this fandom 8 and a half years ago, it was in 2012, quite an infamous year in tumblr history. That was the pique of “”cringey”” fandom culture. The Beatles fandom was as steeped in fandom culture as any other fandom. I know this because I was part of two of the top of fandoms at the time, Doctor Who and Sherlock. Believe me, I have seen cringe. 

The fandom at the time was totally aware of the John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s flaws as individuals, but most fans tended to simply enjoy Beatles fandom as if it were the 60s. Some might call it ignorant bliss. If you asked me at the time, I’d have said it was self-aware ignorant bliss--if that even makes sense. At the time, there wasn’t a person with a Beatles icon who hadn’t heard the line “John Lennon beat his wife.” Everyone knew it, but everyone also knew the real story, and so everyone just made peace with it. As a result, people didn’t think about every bad thing the Beatles ever did on a daily basis. It was more like a once-a-month kind of thing. Otherwise, fandom discourse was quite fun and relaxed. There were no shipping wars, no one fought over who was the best Beatle, everyone gushed over the Beatles wives, and we all just had fun with fics and fan art. 

Of course, in this period, people engaged in conversations about one bespectacled Beatles problematic behavior. These conversations usually came from outside of the fandom. It was usually randos coming into the tags or into someone’s ask box and ranting about John Lennon’s violent behavior. Some of it came from within the fandom. Some people really didn’t like John and gave others shit if they listed John as their favorite Beatle. A lot of the discourse boiled down to: ‘hey, I see you like John Lennon. You should know that he beat his wife. And now that you know that, you should feel bad about ever liking him in the first place.’ And the response was often, ‘Actually, John Lennon didn’t beat his wife. They weren’t even married at the time. And also he didn’t beat her, he slapped her once in the face, and then never did it again.’ No one’s minds were changed. The fans had made their peace, and the antis came off as cynical and pretentious. 

When Dashcon happened, and Tumblr took a hard look at its cringey fandom culture, the Beatles fandom evolved as well. The fandom became, frankly, less fun. It no longer felt like a group of people who found the Beatles decades after the 60s and were fangirling like it was 1965. There was still some of that left, but a lot of it kind of faded. So, most fandom interactions were reblogging pictures of the Beatles from the 60s and various interview clips and quotes. But the barrage of antis never really went away, and the response didn’t evolve. 

Then, the advent of cancel culture came on. I always waited for the Beatles to get, like, officially canceled, but I also felt they were uncancel-able at the same time. Let me explain. I have been a Beatles fan primarily in an online space, rarely engaging with fans in real life. But I have met fans who are life-long Beatles fans, people who are a lot older than us and who’s fandom isn’t tied to the internet. They don’t give a shit about any of our discourse. They may or may not have heard it before, but they seem totally indifferent to all of it. I’m sure most of them have never heard ‘Mclennon’ before. These are the people that flock to see Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in concert (and pay astronomical prices for it). These are the people who go to record shops and buy vinyl. These are the people I run into at flea markets who buy up all the Beatles merch before I can even arrive (true story). So, the Beatles will never be canceled because there will always be people who love the Beatles and don’t engage with online discourse. Rarely said, but thank god for Gen-X. 

As cancel culture took over the internet, fandoms changed. It’s not as noticeable in fandoms without problematic favs. For instance, I’m also steeped in the Tom Holland fandom, and that boy is a little angel who has done no wrong. No one has discourse about the unproblematic boy who plays an equally unproblematic character. But in fandoms with ‘problematic favs’ the mood has shifted. I’m also in the Taron Egerton fandom. Taron Egerton, for those who only follow me for my Beatles stuff, is a genuinely sweet and kind person who has had zero scandals in his six year career. There were some rumblings when he was cast as Elton John, and some people took issue with the fact that he’s a straight man playing a gay man. This discourse seemed to die quickly as a whole lot of straight people played gay people in that same year (Olivia Coleman as queer Queen Anne, Emma Stone as her queer lover, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury). Why jump on this boy who at the time was still technically on the rise. He’s not exactly the same target as someone like Scarlett Johansson who has her pick of roles. Taron doesn’t have quite that some power in Hollywood, and I think most people made peace with the fact that this was a big role for him, and it’s not really fair to take that away from him. So, all in all, the closest thing to a scandal was something that died pretty much on arrival. 

That was until this summer when everything changed. When George Floyd was murdered, celebrities flocked to social media to mourn his loss. Taron’s social media account was silent. For weeks, Taron said nothing about Black Lives Matter or Floyd’s death. This caused outrage in the fandom. Many raced to defend him, starting a hashtage #IstandwithTaron. Others sought to tear him down and anyone who supported him. The kind of mania this one incident caused tore through an otherwise peaceful fandom. What I saw was two sides in a total panic. The antis were people who once had faith that Taron was a good person and were now questioning that. Andthe defenders were people who desperately wanted him to be a good person and were afraid that he wasn’t. In essence, both sides could feel Taron about to get canceled. The defenders wanted to stop it, the antis wanted to ride that wave. 

What this long drawn out Taron example is meant to convey: is that cancel culture has put fandoms on edge. One’s fav has to be perfect, otherwise it can jeopardize the existence of the entire fandom. I’ll admit, I was afraid that I’d be some kind of pariah for standing by Taron through all of this. My actions were to basically reason with the antis but still defend Taron. I defend him mostly because I felt that his silence was the result of a needed social media absence and that trying to shame him back onto social media was an invasion of privacy. But I was genuinely afraid that he would get canceled, and the fun of the Taron fandom would be lost. 

In the Beatles fandom, it often feels like the Beatles, mainly John, have already been canceled. I see this coming from two different sources: antis from outside of the fandom and antis within the fandom. The outside antis are just the same as the ones from 2012. These are people who like to drop in that John Lennon beat his wife, posting this in the tag (which violates an ancient tumblr real by the way--no hate in the tags). 

The antis outside the fandom speak to a larger anti-John Lennon sentiment online. I see references to John Lennon ‘beating his wife’  on Tiktok and twitter. The tone of anti-John Lennon posts has shifted. Before, it felt like the antis were being smug but also argumentative. They wanted to have a conversation about this bit of info they read on Reddit with no context. Now, “John Lennon beating his wife” is practically a meme. It’s a running joke online that John Lennon was a wife beater. I can’t look on my instagram explore page because every so often a John Lennon beats his wife meme will pop up amongst the other, normal, memes.

This change in discourse suggests that the internet has just accepted this as fact now. I should note that back in 2012, it seemed as if few people knew this fact. The fandom knew it, and these random antis knew it, but few others did. Now, because of how common these memes are, it seems to be widespread knowledge.

Consequently, the Beatles fandom, who used to ward off attacks from antis, seems to have given in. I recently saw a post from a Beatles blog (had the URL and icon and everything) that confessed they felt guilty for listening to the Beatles, and I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed in the fandom. People tend to put disclaimers in posts about John or even all four that John is an ‘awful man.’ It seems like the self-aware ignorant bliss has completely gone away. Occasionally, I still see posts joyously talking about Mclennon or reblogs of old photos from the 60s. But the culture has shifted. 

Online, it no longer feels comfortable to be a Beatles fan. It feels like you have to own up to 8 decades of mistakes by four men you’ve never met. And, I should note, this is kind of how it feels to be a fan of anything right now. Taron is not canceled today, but he could be tomorrow. It’s this pervasive feeling of guilt that the person you’re supporting may or definitely has or is doing something wrong.

I’ll admit this uncomfortable feeling has expanded into other parts of my fandom life. I listen to their music, and I feel elated--the way I always have. Then, I get these intrusive thoughts which sound like all the worst parts of Twitter combined. It wasn’t always like this. Back in 2012, when I knew almost nothing about them, I saw them as four young men who were full of happiness, love for another, and talent. Back then, listening to their music was exciting and joyous. Sometimes, I fear that I can never feel that way again. Next year, when I finally go to Liverpool, will I be filled with excitement or guilt? 

I say all this for a few reasons. One, I love John Lennon. I appreciate all the good he did for the world not just as a musician and an artist but also his advocacy and charity work. I love him, and a part of me will always love him, but observing the change in discourse has enlightened me as a historian. Part of my job is to observe people’s legacies, and John’s is perhaps the most interesting legacy I’ve ever observed. When he died, he was hailed as a saint. But tall poppy syndrome set in, and the antis started. This culture grew and grew to the point where it seems to, at least among the younger generation, taken over the sainthood. 

But as a historian and a fan, I have never seen the saint or the devil. I’ve only seen the man, the incredibly flawed man. The thing that these antis never understand is that John Lennon was painfully aware of his own flaws to the point where it made him all the more self-destructive. In essence, his past mistakes caused him to make additional mistakes. But John, aware of his own flaws, always tried to change and was often successful. I’ve talked about this before, but John demonstrated that he was capable of being a good person, like properly so, again and again. After he struck Cynthia, he never hit her again. His shortcomings as a father to Julian weren’t repeated with Sean. He worked on his drinking, his drug addiction, and his anger, trying to overcome those demons till the day he died. By all accounts, the John Lennon that died in 1980 is not the John Lennon who struck Cynthia Powell at school. That John Lennon was living a cleaner, healthier life. He was a better father to both his sons by that point, and was trying to repair his relationship with Julian. He was a good husband to Yoko and saw himself living a long and happy life. 

John Lennon cannot and should not be boiled down to just his flaws. It’s one thing as a fan to acknowledge that John is a flawed human being (news flash: they all are), but he is also much bigger than that. 

So once again, why am I writing this long, rambling post, once again talking about John Lennon’s virtues? Because if I can’t engage with healthy discourse about the Beatles and John Lennon, then I can’t engage with discourse on the topic at all. So, I probably will post less Beatles stuff because I find it hard to go through the tags or even my dash (well, I can’t really go through my dash anymore for other reasons I’m not going to get into right now). If any of my followers have noticed a lot of Taron posts lately, it’s not just because I love Taron, it’s because Taron’s  tag is pretty much the only location on tumblr I feel 100% comfortable in. Any foray into John or the Beatles tags becomes uncomfortable and guilt-ridden quickly. 

So, I probably will post less about the Beatles until I can find a blog or a tag that doesn’t give me bad vibes. My fandom will likely outgrow tumblr and the internet. I have a ton of Beatles books; maybe I’ll rely on those. I am doing official scholarly research on them now. Maybe that will be my outlet. I’m sorry if I post less about them now, but it’s really for my own well-being. 

[crowdvscritic]

round up // JANUARY 21

New year, not-so-new Crowd vs. Critic! It’s another batch of films, TV, music, and reads that were new to me this month and think you would enjoy, too. As we cozy up inside for the winter, nothing warms you up like a good piece of pop culture.

January Crowd-Pleasers

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Does this sequel reach the heights of 2017’s Wonder Woman? No, but I wish more superhero movies were like this one. I explain why at ZekeFilm. Crowd: 9.5/10 // Critic: 8/10

21 Bridges (2019)

A solid action crime thriller with a solid Chadwick Boseman at the center. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7.5/10

The Lethal Weapon Series (1987-98)

I watched the first Lethal Weapon in 2017 for ZekeFilm, but now I’ve a decade’s pleasure of progressively over-the-top action sequences and progressively more absurd ways to destroy Roger Murtaugh’s (Danny Glover) house. The Murtaugh/Riggs bromance holds this progressively sillier series together, and an supporting cast of charismatic actors (Jet Li, Darlene Love, Chris Rock, Rene Russo) are game for whatever comes their way. Joe Pesci is the true MVP. Series Crowd: 9/10 // Series Critic: 7/10

The High Note (2020)

Tracee Ellis Ross’s Grace Davis is a diva in every sense of the word. A high-strung and highly successful singer, she’s also highly demanding of her assistant Maggie (Dakota Johnson), who wants to step out of her shadow and become a music producer. This rom-com-adjacent flick is one of the most fun escapes I’ve had from a 2020 movie, and it’s perfect for a girls’ night in. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7/10

Double Feature—Rom-Coms With a Magical Twist: Just My Luck (2006) + When In Rome (2010)

Disclaimer: These movies are not good. In fact, they’re junk, but they’re my kind of junk. In Just My Luck (Crowd: 7.5/10 // Critic: 6/10), Lindsay Lohan loses her life-long lucky streak when she kisses schlimazel Chris Pine. And When in Rome (Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 6/10), Kristen Bell attracts unwanted admirers (Will Arnett, Danny DeVito, Josh Duhamel, Jon Heder, and real-life future husband Dax Shepard) after she steals their coins from a wishing fountain. To their credit, both of these movies know they’re silly, which means you have permission to just sit back and laugh along with (or, honestly, at) them.

WandaVision (2021)

I sometimes fear for the world of entertainment when I think of how much intellectual property Disney has gobbled up, but WandaVision is evidence the company is a benevolent dictator at least for now. This odd delight is a send up and a tribute to sitcoms like I Love Lucy, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Brady Bunch, and Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen are so charming and weird I don’t need whatever mysterious sub-plot they’re building.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

If you want to make the most of watching Robin Hood: Men in Tights, first watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), an action flick I saw last February and didn’t include in my monthly Round Up. This Mel Brooks spoof is a direct response that self-serious Kevin Costner adventure, even down to copying its costumes. While I wish I could find a Mel Brooks comedy with any substantial female character (in every movie I’ve seen so far, the joke is either, “She’s got a great rack!” or “Wow, she’s an uggo!”), I still couldn’t stop laughing at this 104-minute version of the Robin Hood scene in Shrek. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 8/10

Aliens (1986)

Peak ‘80s action. Peak alien grossness. Peak girl boss Sigourney Weaver. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 8/.510

Big (1988)

After talking about Laverne & Shirley with Kyla on SO IT’S A SHOW?, I had to check out Penny Marshall’s classic. While a few moments haven’t aged so well, its heart is sweet and the script is hilarious. And that Tom Hanks? I think he’s going places. Crowd: 9.5/10 // Critic: 8/10

Unstoppable (2010)

I’ve laughed at SNL’s spoof of this movie for a decade, so it’s about time I got around to enjoying this action thriller very loosely based on the true story of a train that got away from its conductor. Denzel Washington (“You’re too old!”) and Chris Pine (“You’re too young!”) are our heroes in this over-the-top ridiculousness, and their chemistry is so extra it makes me hope they team up for another movie again. Crowd:  9/10 // Critic: 7/10

January Critic Picks

Double Feature—‘90s Space Adventures: Apollo 13 (1995) + Contact (1997)

I have no desire to join Tom Cruise as he films in space, but I know I’ll be pumped to watch whatever he makes because I love sci-fi and space  adventures. Apollo 13 (Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 9/10) tells the story of an almost-disastrous NASA mission in the ‘60s, and it taps into our hope for the human spirit to overcome obstacles. Contact (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 8.5/10) surmises what might happen if we received communication from extraterrestrial life, and it taps into our struggle to reconcile faith and science.

McCartney III by Paul McCartney (2020)

I spent January catching up on the albums on Best of 2020 lists, and the one I listened to for hours and hours was Paul McCartney’s latest solo album. Catchy, thoughtful, and musically surprising, it ranges from pop to rock to folk in 45 minutes and still feels like it’s over too soon. Like Tom Hanks, this Paul McCartney guy is going places!

The Thin Man Series (1934-47)

Like Lethal Weapon, I watched the first installment of The Thin Man awhile back, and Kyla and I even covered the series on our podcast. But thanks to a full series marathon on TCM earlier this month, I’ve now laughed through all five. When you talk about great chemistry, you’ve got to talk about William Powell and Myrna Loy, who make Nick and Nora’s marriage feel lived in and romantic as they solve crimes together. Witty, suspenseful, and jaunty, this series is still sexy cool over 80 years later. (Also, Asta? Still one of the cutest dogs in cinema.) Series Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

The King and I (1956)

Here’s your regularly scheduled reminder Hollywood works differently now, and many casting decisions of the ‘50s wouldn’t fly today. What has aged well in this film: The Rodgers and Hammerstein music and the sumptuous costumes and set design. I love extravagant musicals of yesteryear—perhaps it’s time for Hollywood to revisit and remake The King and I for modern audiences?

Inauguration Day

In a year with no major televised events with celebrities in a room together, Inauguration Day felt like the most exciting cultural event in ages. We’ve been missing major fashion, but then we got Lady Gaga! We’ve been missing live performances, but then we got Amanda Gorman! And I got a lot of tears during that poem—not just me, right?

Good Reads

Writing that made me think and smile this month:

Steven Soderbergh’s list of everything he read, watched, and listened to this year, Extension765.com (2020) – An indirect inspiration for these monthly Round Ups!

“My Year of Making Lists,” NewYorker.com (2020) – I made a lot of lists in 2020, so I feel this author’s #mood

“Betty White Says She Will Spend Her 99th Birthday Feeding Two Ducks Who Visit Her ‘Every Day,’“ CBSNews.com (2021) - “Betty is a treasure,” I say as I watch The Proposal for the 99th time

“A Sculpture’s Unusual Journey to SLAM [St. Louis Art Museum],” SLAM.org (2020) – With a casual mention of an attraction I never knew about in St. Louis

“The Culture Is Ailing. It’s Time for a Dr. Fauci for the Arts.” WashingtonPost.com (2020) – An idea that occurred to me a few months ago: Why don’t we have an Arts Cabinet?

“The Arts Are in Crisis. Here’s How Biden Can Help.” NYTimes.com (2021) – Partly in response to that Washington Post piece, a historical look at how artists have made it through difficult times in the past and how we can revive artists’ livelihoods mid- and post-pandemic

“The Right’s Message to Silicon Valley: 'Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee,'” TIME.com (2021) – A more thoughtful and less reactionary take on a volatile moment in the history of modern technology

“'It Makes Me Sick With Grief': Trump's Presidency Divided Families. What Happens to Them Now?” TIME.com (2021) – A study on how politics has done damage to family dynamics in America

“Help, the Only Cinema I Can Handle Is Zac Efron Prancing Angrily in High School Musical 2,” Vulture.com (2021) - In a lot of ways, same

“50 Easy Things To Do When You are Anxious,” ShopTwentySeven.com (2021) – I especially endorse coloring, puzzling, and watching happy movies!

Double Feature—Miss Marple Mysteries: Murder at the Gallop (1963) + Murder Ahoy (1964)

Remember when I was all like, “Watch these Agatha Christie movies so you’re not sad Death on the Nile is delayed”? Remember when I said I was just a few movies away from becoming an Agatha Christie junkie? Well, I think I’m there because I can’t stop with the murder mysteries! Margaret Rutherford is a treasure whether she’s solving a murder at a horse ranch or on a boat, and a cast of colorful supporting characters (including Rutherford’s husband) makes these breezy instead of heavy. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 8/10

8½ (1963)

File this with 2001: A Space Odyssey—I don’t know if I really understood this film, but I think I liked it? Federico Fellini’s surrealist, male gaze-y drama blurs the lines between reality and imagination, love and dysfunction, and the past and maybe some future that involves clowns? What resonated with me was the story of a director with creative block, wondering if he’s already peaked and if he’ll create anything worthwhile again. Crowd: 6/10 // Critic: 9/10

Sense and Sensibility: The Screenplay and Diaries by Emma Thompson (1995)

Sense and Sensibility is not just one of my favorite Jane Austen adaptations—it’s one of my all-time favorite films. One of the co-hosts of one of my favorite podcasts has raved many-a-time about Emma Thompson’s journals from the making of film, so it was only a matter of time before I read them myself. Witty, informative, and all-around lovely, Thompson’s journals are an excellent insight into the filmmaking process and how novels are adapted.

Also in January…

I reviewed the new-ish documentary Flannery for ZekeFilm, which is all about the writer Flannery O’Connor and feels a little like going back to high school English class.

In addition to the Lethal Weapon and Thin Man series, I rewatched all of the X-Men series this month. You can see everything I am watching on Letterboxd, including favorites I love returning to (i.e. X-Men: Days of Future Past) and the movies I try that don’t make my monthly recommendations (i.e. The Wolverine).

Photo credits: Paul McCartney, Zac Efron, Sense & Sensibility. All others IMDb.com.

[apffee]

My Thoughts Rewatching TGWDLM and Black Friday:

*btw the section for tgwdlm is much shorter than the one for black friday because it’s less new so more people have already said almost all there is to say about it i guess*

The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals: - in the first scene the same phone rings about 32/33 times wow (i counted) - when charlotte is talking about sam singing in the shower, let it out plays real quiet and it's cool - i’ve always wondered what emma was gonna say before join us and die, and to me it seemed like she was gonna talk about paul’s crush on her and maybe reject him (she was acting remorseful, like she was sorry for being about to hurt his feelings maybe), idk if anyone tweeted nick lang about this yet but i wanna know - emma seems to jinx herself every time she says "we made it" or along those lines, like in the helicopter she says "we got outta there!" and before inevitable she says "paul! we made it!" - fuck nora :)

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Black Friday: - the sniggles deserve betterrrr also lauren sniggle <3 - mnfnmggghfht them <3 paulkinsss <3 - silent night playing while we enjoy paulkins - "oH SHIT A BABY" - emma has beanies shopping bags so she either still works there and brought snacks or she just went there with paul idk - paul like "it's christmas time in hatchetfield isn't that fun" and im having flashbacks - i love paul's awkwardness but emma, he's your boyfriend ok (ok? ok. ok.) - emma copying bae like - how does lauren turn into an entirely different person with emma and linda ik it's acting but I CAN'T ENVISION THEM TOGETHER AS THE SAME PERSON - if i think about videos and streams of lauren, it seems like emma's personality is kinda similar to lauren's own personality huh - i think this part with emma and paul is so funny not just cause them and their wonderful delivery but also cause the paulkins content is more condensed in smaller amounts of time since they aren't the protagonists anymore, so it's more funny at once, while tgwdlm is probably more funny in total but it's more spread out - i love emma’s adorable laugh snort thing when tom tells her about the surprise it's so lovable <3 - tom just getting in emma's face when he says "he was sledding. WITH HIS MOTHER" ;-; - they just sneak off while tom sings like - what if emma has a different hairstyle in each musical? anyway lauren is so pretty no matter what her hairstyle is but her hair looks even more amazing down in general, i should probably stop now or i'll keep rambling on about lauren - but like lauren and jon are so cool i'm just more attracted to lauren in general but they're probably my two favourite starkid and YES I AM BIASED, SO WHAT? - tom teleports to the parking lot of the mall during what tim wants - tom: what tim want? tim: JUST ASK ME WHAT I WANT - why does linda look over when sherman says "omg its becky barnes" like u just spoke to her and hate her guts lmao why do u care -adore me plays when linda belittles becky bout stanley -webby: hey hannah do the thing ethan's doing with his hands hannah: *does it and gets scolded* webby: *wHeEEeEzeee* - paul in wdywp "i want what everyone wants, money, a partner, kids someday, maybe.." and linda talking to wiley "i want what everyone wants, to be loved" - linda is holding one of her boots, why did one come off? the camera doesn't show below her waist while she's talking to wiley so idk - lauren lopez as jingle the elf doing a bugette voice is attractive as hell - tom: "i'd do anything for him" me: awwww thats sweet! tom: "even if it means pounding the guts outta some little twerp!" me: :/ - what would happen if tom managed to give the doll to tim? tom: take this doll son. tim: i don't want that lmao? tom: W-WHAT? tim: i want u but ur distant and sad now :c tom: :'o - sHE'S hEaVY! D: - do ya think it's a coincidence that wiley AND xander call the president the nickname howie? maybe xanders dead and this is a fake idk lol - the sniggles are still cute in made in america (especially lauren sniggle) and lauren looks so good with her hair like that actually her hair always looks good why DOES HER HAIR ALWAYS LOOK SO GOOD AND HER NOSE AND (this is just a rant about lauren now whoops) - at 1:42:55 when wiggly is talking to john the "look what happens nightmare time" riff (i think its a riff) plays hmmmmm; also someone else mentioned how the light in not your seed is green, so i think grace chasity (yeah apparently it’s chasity) is the connecting thread in all these things and since she is likely the protag in npmd its probably important. oh also maybe grace and jane are connected somehow? idk just trying to think of stuff that could be in npmd - when wiggly gasps after his hiccup laugh thing it's so uncomfortable and creepy i love it good job jon! - you have pOonies?? - i threw em in the FUCKING TRASH! - you killed the pOoNIES! -"she can go on her own" NO LEX HANNAH NEEDS YOU ;o; -lex: reach? like this? *gun flies towards her and smacks her in the nose* ARGH! - lex: patiently waiting for tom to finish singing - i remember something about either the song a meteor hits or just the wiggly jingle scratch track or something being to the tune of if i fail you, so thats cool - jon is so damn feral as gary and it's wonderful i'm having so much fun - gerald's such a good dramatic device - she's drunk AGAIN? what would you know about becky being drunk linda? im imagining drunk becky and linda talking in a bar idk how else linda would know about that eh - behold the wonderful shriek of lauren lopez - i can sing the range of adore me and califorMIA since im an alto and yet lauren can do her high octaves as well as my own comfotable octave she's just destroying the song wiggle and my belief in what singing ability i have with her TALENT!!! - *obnoxious laugh* bECkY BaRNeS! - lets just appreciate jon and lauren sneaking off stage and doing a quick change into their paul and emma outfits in like 40 SECONDS WHAT also everyone else saying their lines slower so they had more time to quick change - "taaahm?" (i love lauren's midwestern accent) - emma and tom never got to talk about jane :'( but also her grateful little smile when he says it and ghfighdfisdfskh emma and paul <3 - why does emma always want to go to hidgens tho lmao like how trustworthy is he really? aw but i guess emma doesn't have anyone else in hatchetfield except paul and jane's family :'( - PAUL SMILING AT EMMA TO COMFORT HER AWWWWWW I LOVE THEM SO MUCH (2:14:02) like i don't mind about how well lauren and jon know each other because their acting is so good that it gets me so invested in paulkins <333333333333333 - i wanna see the paulkins hug D:< i can just see emma in her cute ass bobble beanie hat thing coming over and then the camera pans away WHY - i love that at the end everyone's just squinting at the sky in confusion and paul's just doing a bug-eye face of shock like O-O - ok at the end of tgwdlm it was sad and scary that emma was still in character and screaming for help but i'm just imagining as everyone bows in a line emma just screaming and staggering around again even though this is black friday and it would be really weird but my brain's also weird - tim died alone in the car :( - fuck nora