#just to her... indiscreet flamboyance

[il3x]

I also have a very vivid "Tattletale annoying Grue in the early Undersiders days" animatic to this one in my head. I mean...

"A man who sees clues almost if they were alighting" "And though his attire's informal, his skills are paranormal!"

"Um, where do I start? First of all, you're not a psychic-"

"But with shortcuts-" "And cons!" "And the proper presentation..."

"The truth of the matter is it's all good fun 'til an eye comes out, I do what I have to do for my own safety-"

[asleepinawell]

I'm having a lot of Shoot feels today. Could you share your head canons as to how they comfort each other when they're having a bad day? how they show they love each other thru small everyday stuff? how Shaw reacts/reassures Root when she is insecure about her disability (one deaf ear)? How and what they argue what? And how their arguments get resolved? Do they show PDA (kiss, hugs, hand holding) in public?

I usually write ‘I think’ or ‘In my opinion’ or ‘I head canon’ constantly in head canon posts but after about 20 uses of ‘I think’ I went back and edited it all out to replace it with this disclaimer. These are all my head canons and therefore not the ‘correct’ or ‘right’ answers, just my answers.

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Shaw’s bad days are very rare, and usually she just wants to be left alone on them. She doesn’t want to be coddled or fussed over during those times and Root figures that out pretty quickly. But Root can still comfort her indirectly. She makes sure Bear is at the apartment, leaves food from Shaw’s favorite restaurants on the counter for her, pesters TM to find her exciting/distracting missions. She hangs around in Shaw’s peripheral vision, there in case she needs anything, but not crowding her.

Root gets quiet and withdrawn on her bad days. She loses herself inside her own head. Shaw learns how to pick out the bad silences and when she needs to step in. Shaw always notices when she does something that Root really likes and she keeps a mental list of those things for times like these. She sits a little closer to her, tries for more casual physical contact than she might normally. She’s patient and waits for Root to feel comfortable enough to open up and doesn’t press if she doesn’t. She probably also consults TM sometimes if she doesn’t know what exactly the cause is. Not in a nosy way, more in a ‘do you know what’s going on enough to point me in the right direction of how to help’ way.

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Root will sometimes show up when Shaw’s on a stakeout to bring her a hot drink and an extra coat. She’s always somewhat handsy, touching Shaw on the back or arm and never seeming to expect Shaw to return the gestures or react to them in any way. She gets better about checking in when she’s away because Shaw worries sometimes…the checking in may or may not involve obscene text messages and pictures. She gets Shaw things for no reason…like fun new guns, or her favorite food, or a new hoodie to replace the one she permanently borrowed. She tries to find things that Shaw will enjoy…like exciting missions, or fast cars to steal, or possibly inappropriately timed sexcapades. She’s also very good at knowing exactly when to back off and give Shaw space and when Shaw actually wants her to crowd her a bit.

Shaw makes sure Root eats regular meals and actually goes to sleep sometimes. She always, always listens when Root’s talking to her about stuff. A lot of little intimacies don’t come naturally to Shaw, but she tries to incorporate them for Root even though Root would never ask her to. She’ll never be a casual hugger, but she can let Root lean on her, or stick her feet in her lap on the couch. She scolds Root for stealing her clothes, but it’s mostly for show and Shaw sort of likes seeing her wear them and maybe sometimes leaves them around for her. She answers Root’s calls when Root’s away on a mission and doesn’t mind sitting on the phone with her for hours even if they’re not saying much.

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I’m not completely sure how insecure Root is about being deaf in one ear. They don’t touch on it much in the show after it happens. What’s worth pointing out though is that we very rarely see Root scared for herself and the scene in Aletheia where she realizes what Control’s about to do is one of those rare moments. I think that has a lot to do with Root being terrified of being made useless to the Machine, which is very much how Control words the threat. So I think if Root is feeling insecure about things related to her being deaf it’s possibly related to that. She has fairly low self-worth despite her extreme confidence and cockiness, and sometimes she’s not sure why she’s important to others and worries about being discarded. I think Shaw deals with that in a lot of the ways I went into above and also maybe some blunt, slightly-awkward flattery or compliments, because Root loves that shit. She does little things to show Root that she’s valued and that she wants her around (TM does similar stuff as well).

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I don’t write about Root and Shaw arguing much partly because I don’t see them having many big flare-up, drawn-out fights. When issues come up they get aired almost immediately and not left to fester, in good part because Shaw is pretty blunt and not passive-aggressive and doesn’t stand for long drawn out sulking and brooding fits. I do think a thing that comes up a bunch especially early on is Root’s recklessness. Shaw doesn’t yell about it, she just gets quiet and disapproving because they’ve talked about this and Root knows how worried Shaw gets and she still runs off without back up anyway. Root feels guilty about it and slowly, over time, she gets better about it, because even if she doesn’t always value her own life, she would never want to do something that hurt Shaw.

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Root has never been great at keeping her hands to herself around Shaw, though she knows when to back off. Shaw doesn’t mind Root touching her most times, and even if she brushes her off it’s often just for show (because John is right there and he is going to tease her later and she is going to have to hurt him). But a lot of the more intimate stuff they don’t do as much in public…I don’t really mean sex here, more like physical contact that has emotionally intimate implications, which is a lot of PDA. Probably not a lot of hand-holding out in public, or only on rare occasions. Maybe brief hugs if they haven’t seen each other in a while (with some indiscreet butt-groping involved). Shaw probably is more okay with things where Root is touching her than things where she needs to reciprocate. 

When they’re outside but somewhere empty or not crowded and not around people they know, they’re way more relaxed about it. And making out is totally fine because that’s more of a sex thing and neither of them is shy about sex things. Root follows Shaw’s lead on when she’s not comfortable with stuff, and when she kind of enjoys the attention, but Root also has limits for herself as well. She’s a very flamboyant person and quite open with her adoration of Shaw, but she’s also very private in some ways. They both get a little more relaxed about all of it further into their relationship though.

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Kind of in conjunction with all these things… I wrote something similar to this in another head canon post recently. When Shaw goes out of her way to do something for Root, regardless of what it is, Root notices and understands what it means for Shaw to do that and that’s what really matters to her, and the fact that that’s exactly what Root needs from her is exactly what Shaw needs from Root. Root likes knowing that she matters to Shaw, and Shaw likes knowing that she’s good for Root exactly the way she is.

[gyrlversion]

Franky Boy gunned down in grisliest New York Mafia murder in 34 years

Frank Cali, 53, was killed in front of his Staten Island home on Wednesday night

The killing was particularly brutal and, it was quickly noted, showed none of the ‘respect’ that should have been due to a Mafia Don.

On Wednesday night, Francesco Cali was fatally shot in a hail of bullets outside his suburban New York home as his young family were indoors.

Police believe the killer lured Cali out of his home by backing his vehicle into Cali’s silver Cadillac SUV and knocking off his number plate. The gunman handed the plate to Cali and shot him when he opened his car boot to store it. Cali then dropped to the ground and tried to hide under his car.

The city of The Godfather and Goodfellas was immediately dragged back into a bloodier era. ‘Gambino boss whacked’ was the headline on the front page of one of the city’s newspapers. ‘Rubbed Out’ cried another. Both were dusting down a gangster vocabulary scarcely heard since New York became one of the safest cities in the U.S.

Frank ‘Franky Boy’ Cali was the reputed head of the city’s Gambino Mafia family — once America’s largest and most powerful criminal group.

His ugly demise is the first time a New York Mob boss has been assassinated since 1985 and — organised crime experts fear — it could signal the beginning of a new Mafia war in the city.

Cali, 53, lived in the wealthy neighbourhood of Todt Hill, Staten Island, where Paul Castellano, another Gambino boss, once resided in a palatial home that resembled the White House.

The Corleone family compound in The Godfather was filmed in Todt Hill, too.

The Cali killing could have come straight from a movie. The Mob boss, who fell near the open boot of his car, was shot six times in the chest and head by a gunman in a blue four-wheel pick-up truck at around 9.20pm.

The hitman drove over his body for good measure before speeding off.

Family members poured out of the house. ‘Papa! Papa!’ wailed one man before lying on the grass, sobbing.

A woman yelled into her phone: ‘Why doesn’t the ambulance come? He’s not breathing!’

Another woman ‘was just making loud noises’, say neighbours who insisted they had no idea Cali was a mobster. He was still alive when he got to hospital but had lost so much blood doctors were unable to save him.

Neighbours say they had no idea of Cali’s Mafia connections, which isn’t surprising since he spent his life avoiding attention. He had only one, relatively minor criminal conviction, having served 16 months in prison a decade ago for attempting to extort a lorry driver.

The son of a household goods store owner from Palermo, Sicily, who had emigrated to Brooklyn, Cali had ties by blood and marriage to the Gambino family and rose rapidly up its ranks. He became its head in 2015 after his elderly predecessor was forced to retire.

Cali had deep links with mafiosi in Sicily and married a member of the Inzerillo, a powerful Palermo Mafia clan forced to flee Sicily in the Eighties after a war with other crime families.

Italian police say Cali was also a member of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra (‘our thing’), as the Mafia is also known, and became the contact in New York for visiting Sicilian mobsters.

An Italian mafioso was once overhead saying on a bugged phone line that Cali was ‘everything’ in New York.

Under Cali, the Gambinos have reportedly been heavily involved in trafficking cocaine from Latin America to Italy.

Hand prints, likely caused by officers dusting for fingerprints, is seen on the side of a SUV being pulled from the scene 

Cali also brought in Mafia thugs from Sicily — known as ‘zips’ — and ramped up the Gambinos’ involvement in heroin and Oxycontin, the highly addictive painkiller implicated in America’s ongoing opioid epidemic.

However, unlike previous Gambino boss John Gotti, a flamboyant hood who craved the limelight and frequented expensive restaurants with bodyguards, Cali remained in the shadows. Aware that many of his predecessors were prosecuted after being bugged or betrayed, he kept personal contact with other mobsters to a minimum and forbade other Mafia captains from phoning him, insisting on meeting in person.

A law enforcement official who investigates the Mafia described Cali as ‘a ghost . . . you wouldn’t see him at social clubs or nightclubs or boxing matches’. Police say there have been no arrests and the investigation into Cali’s killer is ‘ongoing’.

Mafia experts and police alike were quick to note that whoever killed him had ignored the traditional rules of internecine Mob warfare by murdering him at his home with his family nearby.

‘Even Gotti had more respect,’ a police insider told the New York Post. ‘He did it out in Manhattan.’ The officer was referring to the 1985 murder of Gambino boss ‘Big Paul’ Castellano. He was executed on the orders of his lieutenant, John Gotti, outside Sparks Steak House in a crowded Manhattan street a short walk from the United Nations headquarters.

Gotti, who subsequently took over the Gambino family, was dubbed the ‘Teflon Don’ because police had such difficulty making charges stick to him. He had been upset Castellano had been appointed boss over another mobster, Aniello Dellacroce.

Gotti and other mafiosi also resented how Castellano had become a recluse in his Staten Island mansion, earning the nickname ‘the Howard Hughes of the Mob’.

Gotti was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1992 after being convicted of five murders, including that of Castellano.

Mafia experts believe one theory can be ruled out about the latest killing — it wasn’t any of New York’s other Mob families.

Despite the impression given by Hollywood, New York’s five Mafia clans — the Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno, Colombo and Lucchese — rarely interfere in each others’ business. It is assumed instead that the ‘hit’ on Cali was carried out by a rival faction within the Gambino family.

Some suggested yesterday that the Gottis might again be involved. John Gotti died of cancer in prison in 2002 but last September his younger brother Gene was released from jail after serving 29 years for dealing heroin. Now 71, Gene was expected to demand a senior role once more in the Gambino clan.

Police responding to a 911 call about an assault in progress just after 9.15pm arrived to find Cali with six gunshot wounds to the torso. He was pronounced dead at a hospital soon after. (Above, the scene of the crime) 

One possibility is that Gene Gotti got Cali before Cali got Gotti: Gambino clan insiders had warned months ago that the publicity-shy Cali wouldn’t welcome the return of the famously indiscreet Gotti family. With so many of its leaders in prison, often as a result of fellow Mafiosi breaking their ‘omerta’ or code of silence by giving evidence against each other, it’s been widely assumed the Mob is a spent force in New York.

However, both the FBI and Mafia experts insist the New York Mob is far from finished.

As well as drug trafficking and dealing, the Mob is still quietly involved in its old activities such as illegal gambling, extortion, controlling construction industry unions and loan-sharking, say investigators.

‘I don’t think the [New York] Mafia ever died and this murder shows they are still players,’ Professor Federico Varese, a criminologist at Oxford University, said yesterday.

Prof Varese believes the answer to who murdered ‘Franky Boy’ Cali may lie in Sicily where he had been involved in backing one Mafia family against another.

Whatever the truth, there are fears that his killing could be just the start of another bloody conflict.

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