#meta: production

[addictedtostorytelling]

team graveyard gsr reveal reactions: preface

@camilaar85 asked what exactly might go through the minds of grissom and sara's teammates—including not just the other csis but hodges, wendy, doc robbins, super dave, brass, sofia, and ecklie, too—when they learn the truth of grissom and sara's relationship during the events of episodes 07x24 "living doll" and 08x01 "dead doll."

since tumblr now has this shitty 4096-character limit per post, i've had to break up my response into several parts, which you will be able to find here, once they're all posted.

so i've talked about this issue at more length here, but the way the show treats the team’s reaction to grissom and sara’s “coming out” is, frankly, weird.

for a full season, the writers have their fun playing narrative games involving grissom and sara’s secret relationship—letting the fans in on what’s happening in episode 06x24 “way to go,” long before anyone on team graveyard also learns the truth, and then proceeding to tease the issue for the duration of s7.

from the season premiere on, they repeatedly float the possibility someone at the lab could find out grissom and sara are together, sometimes to comedic effect (such as when ecklie scares grissom and sara half to death with his “too close to home” insinuations in episode 07x01 “built to kill” pt. i) and other times much more dramatically (such as when the events of episode 07x13 “redrum” put sara on edge about how her teammates might react once they eventually learn of her and grissom’s grand deception).

here and there, they pepper in clues as to how various members on team graveyard might potentially respond when finally everything comes to light, hinting not everyone will likely be accepting either of the relationship itself OR of how grissom and sara have chosen to go about conducting it—having, for example, warrick ominously warn sara he hates being lied to (see episode 07x13 “redrum”) and nick express incredulity relationships between coworkers can ever thrive (see episode 07x22 “leapin’ lizards”).

this protracted writerly game of “will or won’t the other characters figure out the gsr secret?” finally comes to a head in episode 07x24 “living doll,” when after sara is abducted by the miniature killer, grissom blurts out to the team she is the “only person [he] ever loved,” at long last opening the door for them to have the same information the audience has already known about for the last twenty-four episodes.

but for all of the narrative build-up to this occasion, the strange thing is how much of a non-occasion it ultimately turns out to be.

after twenty-four episodes of teasing, with countless close calls and run-ins, heaps of foregrounding, and heaps more of innuendo, we are treated to a grand total of nine seconds’ worth of wordless immediate reaction from the team to grissom’s revelation in episode 07x24 “living doll,” then a single benign “what did you know about them?” conversation between nick and greg and some administrative probing from ecklie in episode 08x02 “a la cart,” and, thereafter, the issue of grissom and sara having kept their relationship a secret from their friends is never spoken of in-universe again.

while of course it is reasonable team graveyard wouldn’t put a pause on their investigative efforts to find sara during the events of episode 07x24 “living doll” in order to have some kind of formal conversation regarding the news of grissom and sara’s relationship the moment grissom makes his declaration, the notion they never seem to have any kind of conversation—either formal or otherwise—about the news subsequently, even after sara is safe and sound, is, honestly, a bit unbelievable.

are we really to understand all the more discussion which ever takes place surrounding this issue is just some lighthearted “hey, did you have any idea this relationship was going on before grissom told everyone about it? no? well, shucks! me, neither” breeze-shooting between nick and greg (and four and a half months after the fact, to boot)? shouldn’t gossip of this magnitude be more of a talking point around the lab? and shouldn’t we get to see more of that talking happen on-screen, for all it was foregrounded throughout s7?

that we never get to see/hear the team really respond to the relationship or the deception either amongst themselves or to grissom and/or sara after the big reveal is weird, and what’s weirder still is no one on the team is shown to have any kind of personal reaction to learning about either thing.

no one’s relationship with grissom and/or sara seems to change at all after they “come out.”

emphasis on at all.

for all of the show’s previous hinting various team members might have complicated feelings about being lied to or even just having two coworkers dating each other contrary to departmental policy, none of that foregrounding amounts to anything, as no one on the team has any measurable reaction to the news of grissom and sara’s relationship whatsoever.

no one really seems all that happy for them.

no one really seems all that put off by them.

they’re all just completely neutral.

i mean, they barely even acknowledge what by all accounts should be a truly massive revelation to them.

of course, some of this weird nonreaction on the part of the team could in theory be attributable to the four and a half-month in-universe time jump between the events of episodes 08x01 “dead doll” and 08x02 “a la cart.”

like.

maybe we could chalk up everyone’s nonchalance to the passage of time within the universe of the show—assuming people do have their reactions, only we just don’t get to see them happen on-screen, because presumably they take place during the off-screen interval between sara’s rescue and her return to work.

but the thing is, if such reactions do happen off-screen, then there is absolutely no fucking trace of them ever having happened once the events of episode 08x02 “a la cart” transpire, to the point where, functionally, they may as well never have taken place at all, insofar as we as the audience are concerned.

for all intents and purposes, there is no “new normal.”

the boys have not developed a habit of teasing sara about being in a relationship with the bug man. hodges isn’t constantly trying to pry into grissom’s love life. brass never rolls his eyes after catching grissom and sara giving moony looks to each other in the hall. even when the issue of graveyard shift being shorthanded without sara comes up, catherine never once says anything, either smug or conciliatory, about the consequences of “fishing off the company pier.”

the show outright refuses to acknowledge anyone’s feelings about grissom and sara might have changed, either for better or for worse, in the wake of them “coming out” and starting to live openly as a couple. there is just a total dearth of in-text response to this sea change.

—all of which is to say:

in attempting to answer your question, i have to operate in a strange space between what we actually see in canon—which is across the board neutral acceptance—vs. what i think we should have seen in canon, given the characters’ internal values, relationships with grissom and sara (both individually and as a couple), feelings regarding deception, relative faithfulness or unfaithfulness to departmental rules, etc.

next up, some actual analysis in part i.

[consultingfujoshi]

[endomentendo]

IT IS A SPOOKY MONTH!

[monsters-demons-and-heralds-ohmy]

We know Machine Herald Viktor's ideas of perfection are flawed and influenced by societal values and personal opinion. We've already talked about Viktor's white and gold puppets representing the Piltovian ideal and the shrine Viktor keeps with puppet Jayce and letting Jayce keep his face scar. But, can we talk about the NEWTS?

Like... The only animals we see bigger than an insect that survived the glorious evolution were NEWTS?

You ain't slick wizard man.

[lazylittledragon]

just realised i never posted any of the stuff i did for the alternative steddie dads au

[waterizsilly-comms-open]

Glitch shows are so cool guys

[ladymiraclewings]

The Glitch banner changing each week to a Gaslight District aesthetic

And there's today's change

Only a week left before it's completely transformed.

[ghostdrinkssoup]

homura’s time travel magic is such a genius way of showing the nature of kyubey’s system and how the girls were never at fault for the pain their wishes caused. taking responsibility for our moral failings within an exploitative system is part of how the system enslaves us. it leads us to wonder whether the outcome would’ve changed if we made different choices. homura blamed herself for not being strong enough to save madoka. she thought the system could empower her by giving her autonomy over her circumstances. but all she does is repeat the same month over and over again, her autonomy stripped from her. madoka’s fate is inevitable because no one can survive the system while working within it. it’s only when madoka rewrites the rules that she can make substantial change. and even then she doesn’t break the rules enough to stop kyubey from finding loopholes because none of their mentalities have shifted away from his worldview. even while rebelling homura takes personal responsibility for madoka’s death. both in the first timeline, the timeline when homura mercy killed her, and the final timeline when madoka became god. homura cannot save madoka if she never forgives herself. that’s the root evil of kyubey’s system

[empty-movement]

JadeSabre nabbed this incredible piece of production material, the key cel douga and accompanying individual frames of Anthy's eyes as she stabs Utena in episode 38. They're in beautiful condition and Jade was kind enough to get them scanned. I made this GIF to show them off, and you can check out the gorgeous originals below! Thanks so much @jadedofmara!

[blightbright]

Celene's abuse of Briala in the Masked Empire (and Mythal/Solas parallels)

I'm finally reading The Masked Empire and wow it's really sad! Let's talk about Briala and Solas!

Trick Weekes is making direct, intentional comparisons between Celene -> Mythal, Briala -> Solas, and Celene/Briala -> Mythal/Solas, comparisons that are actually Felassan's last fucking words as Solas kills him. (That's a whole other post btw.)

Solas in DA:I says re: Orlais, "The powerful have always been the same. Only the costumes change." AND THIS BOOK IS A REAL FUCKING BUMMER.

Briala isn't magically influenced, magically restricted, or enslaved, but as a servant, the book explicitly discusses how her role by default requires walking on eggshells around everyday verbal and physical violence and sexual assault from people who answer to Celene, which Celene does not defend her or other people from, because Celene enacts it too in her own way. And even when Briala tries to be obedient and careful, this violence happens anyway. Briala also stays in her role despite her own suffering because she doesn't have easy options, she sees her comparative privilege, AND she's trying to strategize to help oppressed people.

Celene thinks she's progressive because she's not just a free-for-all moustache-twirling warmonger like Gaspard (cough Elgar'nan cough) and because she advocates for inclusion of some elves into inherently oppressive structures that harm them in those spaces. Thanks to her, a rare number of elves can work really really extra special hard and prove they have approximately as much merit as humans while being shit on constantly, wow! Meanwhile, no systemic critiques. No questioning of her or anyone's right to rule over people at all.

In some ways Celene is progressive by comparison (just like Mythal doesn't want the entire world torn apart by Blight, unlike Elgar'nan lmao), but it's insidious neoliberal racism versus overtly hostile racism (both are white supremacist). She's been through trauma herself, she thinks she's doing right by her people, and she believes that she loves Briala. That makes Celene an interesting, well-written villain and it's truly disgusting to see her mindset, i.e., she "allows" Briala to sleep a little longer in her bed one morning without waking her up right away. She's so self-congratulatory about how much she must love her that she lets her servant get a few more minutes to doze (after sexually abusing her...) before more acts of servitude. She does not see Briala as a full, autonomous being. The only truly loving gesture I've read so far is a young Celene telling young Briala to run away and escape after Briala's parents are murdered (wanting a loved one to be free is actually love) except that she's the one who set Briala's parents up to get murdered in the first place, and (like Mythal in Solas' memory) Celene refuses to give up her power.

In Celene's entitled and completely fucked view of the world, she says she envies Briala and, even early on, the book reveals that Briala is not so naive or lovestruck after all. Briala is deeply disturbed by Celene's comment, then keeps acting. Briala knows. Even before the most extreme betrayals are revealed to Briala, some part of Briala knows that she's in Celene's bed because of oppression. She loves Celene, she's attracted to Celene, but part of her knows that she leans into her love and attraction because it's the only thing that makes what is ultimately a political survival strategy/resistance strategy (for herself and her people) tolerable and survivable at all. She's not entirely faking but she's also not whole or safe, and that combo is a truly awful mindfuck to experience. Celene "loves" Briala but does not love her at all, because as bell hooks said, love and abuse cannot coexist.

It's a fucked up situation. It is not consensual, no matter how much Briala may long to be near Celene and how much she may sometimes enjoy sex with her. In a position of power as the literal monarch of an entire empire, sexual contact with your elven servant who is always at threat of violence if they do not obey or even if they do but just because powerful people feel like it, is sexual assault. Period. No matter how "nice" you are sometimes. No matter how much you "let" them sleep in some days because they're pretty.

And, of course, Celene commits overt genocide/massacres an Alienage and actively chooses to stamp down an elven rebellion for her own power. By the time DA:I rolls around, Briala is a rebellion leader who loves her abuser/oppressor, grieves her abuser/oppressor, and is willing to let that oppressor die if it's the way people may one day be free, and I also think everything I just said is true for Solas, to whatever degree it is even magically possible for him to do anything about it directly. Since, of course, he is even more restricted spiritually than Briala is.

Mythal is different than Celene. In some ways, it's less racialized (Mythal and Solas have loosely the same origins), and it's less stable over time, since there is a possible interpretation where they historically knew each other as actual friends, equals, and maybe even pre-body spirit lovers if you wanna headcanon that, whatever that word means for spirits (whereas Celene has always had power over Briala, even as children). Some of it is nearly identical, however. There are multiple Evanuris-related codexes and flashbacks that have direct parallels. We're seeing the gist of what Mythal as "the best of the Evanuris" was like when we see Weekes write Celene. Think about what also-abused Morrigan approves or disapproves of (parroting her mother's beliefs) at the start of DA:O to add another layer of Mythal's mindset, which aligns directly with DA references to Mythal serving "justice" to "the worthy" and strong. Fuck that. True justice protects the most vulnerable. In some ways, Mythal/Solas is even worse than Celene/Briala, too: magical spirit corruption is an extreme and literal version of the real but less tangible impacts of trauma, plus actual bodily modification at best and creation/vaguely parental vibes at worst, slavery rather than servitude, the possibility of magically-compelled direct orders if Mythal ever decided to use them (per how the Well of Sorrows works in canon), and deity-level power, the only power level higher than empress.

Briala reminds Felassan of Solas, and he's right, of course.

TL;DR? This book is fucking sad. Neither Solas nor Briala are naive about their abusers. Mythal and Celene are absolutely both abusers to Solas and Briala respectively. Idk if Mythal and Solas had sexualized contact any time after she bound him to her service, but if they did, that's sexual abuse. Kill Celene in DA:I unless you wanna do an evil playthrough. Free Solas in DATV. Briala and Solas both need hugs and safe love, not abuse couched in messages of love. They've both done some fucked up things, and that doesn't change anything I stated above.

[bigtittiecomitte]

POMNI!!! TARI!!! LOOK BEHIND YOU! OH FUCK THEY CAN’T HEAR US

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hi! I love your meta and how beautifully you write about GSR, I would like to know what you think about this, do you think Grissom and Sara would have been good parents? Why do you think the show didn’t allowed them to have a geek baby?

hi, anon!

thank you for your kind words!

i have got a big, ol' meta that covers my thoughts on potential gsr parenthood here, if you're interested.

i also have another big, ol' meta that specifically covers my thoughts on how they would have reacted to experiencing an unplanned pregnancy during their "secret dating" phase in s5-s6 here, if you're interested in that one, as well.

the tl;dr version is that while i think grissom and sara would be kickass parents were that particular life choice one they ever decided to make together, i also don't think they would necessarily ever be likely to make that particular life choice together, just given their respective characters and backgrounds.

grissom is—prior to his retirement—highly career-driven, meaning he might not want to put his focus on parenthood rather than work. he likewise has some pretty sizeable hang-ups regarding his own capacity to nurture and be unselfish, his age, his social deficits, etc., all of which might cause him to question his potential fitness as a father.

there's a line from another show i love from a character facing down the prospect of first-time fatherhood that i can absolutely see grissom saying (in so many words): "if, for nine months, you're hearing how this is gonna change your life, and ‘you've never loved anything like this’ and ‘my god, the love!’ and ‘nothing is gonna be important anymore’—it just never felt to me like i was someone who had the capacity for those feelings. plus, you know, i-i like what's important to me. i want it to stay important. i wanna be able to do it well."

meanwhile, sara has her own considerable hang-ups regarding how she was raised, her family and personal history of mental illness, her social deficits, etc. that might cause her to feel similarly unequipped for motherhood. she is also in her twenties and thirties—i.e., prime childbearing years—very career-minded, like grissom, so she might not be inclined to step away (even temporarily) to have a kid.

maybe if grissom and sara were to experience an unplanned pregnancy at some point, they would (under very specific circumstances) consider the possibility of having a child. ditto for maybe a one-in-a-million type scenario where they encountered a kid in the system who needed fostering or adopting.

however, i think nine times out of ten, they'd opt not to have a kid—and especially not if "nature never came to bear" or if one was never put directly into their paths.

that said, since i personally find the idea of them as parents very intriguing—the issue is one that pushes a lot of fun character buttons for both of them, butting up against their hopes and fears and senses of self in some very complicated and interesting ways—i have written a big, ol' geek!baby fic, where they find themselves dealing with an unplanned pregnancy in an au version of s8.

i call it the happy accidentsverse, and if you're interested, you can read that fic series here.

as for the issue of why the show never pursued a "grissom and sara have a kid" storyline in canon, i think there are probably multiple reasons why they didn't.

more discussion after the "keep reading," if you're interested.

__

to my mind, probably the biggest reason why we never saw a "grissom and sara have a kid" storyline in canon is that, particularly in the earlier seasons of the show, the showrunners tried not to focus too much on the characters' home lives.

though they would show the occasional "off the clock" scene here or there or every once in a while toss in some kind of love interest- or family-centric story beat, anthony zuiker and co. wanted the majority of the show's focus to be on the job—on the cases the csis investigated, the goings-on at the lab and in the field, the team's interactions with each other as colleagues, the team's interactions with other law enforcement professionals and people they met in connection to their cases, in the politics of the department, etc.

they were much stricter about this policy even than other procedurals of the time.

that's why we saw so little of grissom and sara's romantic relationship actually play out on screen—because tptb never intended to offer us anything more than just a small window into their personal lives outside of their careers.

and while of course grissom and sara having a kid (whether through sara getting pregnant or them deciding to foster and/or adopt) would definitely affect their working lives and could allow for some interesting storylines centered around the lab and in the field—for example, how might sara deal with the physical and emotional requirements of her incredibly demanding job while pregnant?, how might grissom and sara have to change their workaholic habits if they were to try to become foster or adoptive parents?, how might having a kid in the mix affect both grissom and sara's willingness to face the dangers inherent in their profession?, would becoming parents change the way they responded to certain cases?, etc.—that kind of storyline, just by its nature, would also probably require the show to spend more time at home with grissom and sara than the showrunners and writers ever really intended to.

narratively speaking, catherine having a school-aged kid to start out the show is one thing, while grissom and sara having a newborn or a brand new foster kid and becoming first-time parents would be something else entirely.

in catherine's case, her being a mom to an older kid from the get-go is a much more lowkey deal, not only because a kid at that age can mostly exist in an off-screen capacity except for in episodes where her presence is plot-relevant but also because it's an already-established fact.

catherine is a mother—and an experienced mother, at that—from the very first time we meet her; it's part of both her personal and professional identities from day #1. the baseline is there. there are no questions about it. no big blanks to fill in. she's already made the life-changing decisions. she's already entrenched in that role.

the same would not be true if grissom and sara were to have a kid.

because they were "first timers" (and especially because they had seemingly never aspired to parenthood previously), the show would have to answer questions with them—depict grissom and sara making the huge, life-altering decisions; reckoning with big emotions; figuring stuff out; working through their fears and hang-ups; adjusting to a monumental change in their lives; drawing together in new ways; changing and developing as characters and as a couple; establishing new patterns; etc.

the groundwork would need to be laid where the audience could see it being laid in real time, you know?

and laying that groundwork would require showing lots of private conversations between grissom and sara, trips to the ob's office or talks with the social worker, painting the nursery or putting up a swing set, making childcare arrangements, changing their lifestyle, etc.

my sense is that tptb never really wanted to go there.

that much focus on grissom and sara's home life would have been too distracting—too much of a serialized personal storyline that required attention in every episode, regardless of the "case of the day"—for their tastes.

now.

in theory, the "keep the focus on the job, not the home" rule is one tptb could have considered breaking, had they really wanted to.

after all, it was just a production choice, not actually any kind of hard and fast rule, so if they'd decided they wanted to go the "grissom and sara have a kid" route, they could have done so.

there's always the old flannery o'connor maxim: "it's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. you can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much."

however, another reason why i think they never chose to go the geek!baby route, beyond the "it goes against our sense of what our show is actually about" thing, is that, frankly, within the universe of the show itself, the timing for grissom and sara was never right.

grissom and sara don't even get together as a committed couple until s5/s6, so, barring a major deviation from what is now canon, they likely could not have had a child at any point prior to 2005/2006, just to start out with.

then their relationship remains a secret until the end of s7/beginning of s8, meaning that between 2006-2007, they're definitely not looking to have a kid and probably would be pretty averse to having one even were they to experience an unplanned pregnancy, just given the potential fallout where their jobs are concerned.

they would have to "come out" as a couple, and one or both of them might end up getting fired over it.

fast forward, and between s8 and s9, sara experiences a mental health crisis that eventually culminates with her moving away from vegas for the better part of two years from 2008 to 2009 while grissom remains behind—and by the time she's stable and moves back to vegas circa 2009/2010, grissom is then living abroad, and they're only seeing each other once a month via transatlantic commute.

back in the day, when sara first turned up in s10, i know there was some internet scuttlebutt that maybe at some point it would be revealed that in-between the events of episode 09x10 "one to go" (when last we'd seen them) and episode 10x01 "family affair" (when sara returns to vegas to "temp"), grissom and sara had had a "secret honeymoon baby."

however, such a revelation was never made—timeline-wise, it would have been a tight fit anyhow, as, within the universe of the show, episode 09x10 "one to go" takes place in january '09 and episode 10x01 "family affair" takes place in september '09—and neither did grissom and sara ever have a kid at any subsequent point.

with sara living in the states and grissom not, the likelihood that they would ever decide to expand their family steadily diminished as s10, s11, and s12 rolled on, both because they were getting older and because their marriage eventually ended up on the rocks.

cue the whole divorce debacle of s13, a few solid years of misery and loneliness in the interim, and by the time grissom and sara get back together/remarried in 2015, sara is forty-four years old and probably peri- or even full-on menopausal, and she and grissom are living a nomadic seafaring lifestyle, so the likelihood of them either having a biological child or fostering/adopting is incredibly low.

again, there was some speculation among fans—based on previous comments from showrunner anthony zuiker regarding his ideas for grissom and sara's post-"immortality" life at sea—that when the reboot rolled around, we would eventually get a "in the six years since we last saw them, grissom and sara have had a kid" reveal.

no dice, though.

s1 of csi: vegas ran its course with no secret boat babies anywhere.

all of the above being the case, there just weren't even that many points during the show's run when it would have made logistical sense for grissom and sara to have children together.

they were always either in a state of having to keep their relationship a secret for the sake of their careers or else of living apart from each other, and by the time they finally got all their shit together and were living in the same place on a full-time basis, sara was nearing the end of her prime childbearing years and they were living the kind of lifestyle where fostering/adoption would be next to impossible.

narratively-speaking, parenthood just was never in the cards for them.

of course, it's worth stating, the writers could have maybe swung a geek!baby storyline in the later seasons had they wanted to if they had just made the choice to move grissom back to vegas along with sara between s10 and s15. he wouldn't even have had to appear on-screen. sara would have just needed to reference him occasionally in dialogue and be shown to take phone calls from him at times, a "i'm meeting grissom for our first ultrasound appointment" here, a "he's been at home painting the nursery all morning. he put little ladybugs up the walls" there. they could have done a whole pregnancy storyline that way, and it would have given sara something to do during seasons when she is otherwise criminally underutilized. then maybe if they were lucky, they could have gotten billy to come back for a guest spot when it came time for the baby to be born. but, alas, such a storyline would have required them to imply depth, which is something they had no idea how to do.

—which brings us to the last big reason why i think the showrunners never had grissom and sara have children:

because, ultimately, they just never felt it was right for the characters.

as stated above, both grissom and sara have plenty of reasons, both individually and as a couple, based on their backgrounds and predilections and development, why they might never choose to pursue parenthood.

while there are certain very particular scenarios were i can imagine they might set those reasons aside, overcome their hang-ups and fears, and decide to "go for it" re: having kids, i also think it would take a lot of narrative work to get them there—that thread would be something the writers would have had to really develop, requiring more than a few "acts of god" and major plot interventions to make the idea seem feasible.

they could have done it if they really wanted to.

but in the end, i think they didn't feel any compelling need.

grissom and sara have been an unconventional couple from the get-go, and their development has been circuitous and unstraightforward. there have been many setbacks for them along the way and strange turns. they've definitely not done everything "by the book."

for them to have a somewhat "untraditional" happy ending—at least by primetime, network early 00s flagship couple tv standards—makes a good amount of sense.

they're not the "white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a dog" norman rockwell family, and i think tptb are very okay with that outcome.

they like the image of this middle-aged couple that found immense fulfillment in each other and in their shared work (whether as csis or conservationists) and never felt the need to look outside of those things in order to be happy.

that's not to say they might not have written things differently had some of the production realities of the show been different along the way—like, say jorja fox had never left the show during s8 and grissom and sara had been able to get married in vegas as planned while both still working at the lab or that billy had come back to the show with jorja between s10 and s15; maybe in those cases, they might have eventually decided to go for the geek!baby storyline after all—however, all things as they were, i think they were generally pretty comfortable with how things ended up in regards to grissom and sara remaining childless.

they had explored the notion of "csis as parents" as much as they cared to with catherine, warrick, and russell.

they didn't want to go there with grissom and sara.

and who knows? maybe there were other outside factors that influenced their decision to that end, like actor preferences or the difficulty of including infant actors in a complicated production such as theirs, etc.

suffice it to say, i think the showrunners' decision to keep grissom and sara childless was probably a multifaceted one.

the good news is, regardless of how things turned out in canon, we as fans can always play around with the geek!baby concept as much as we want to and in as many different permutations as we like.

i certainly have a lot of fun in my accidentsverse, imagining grissom and sara facing both the challenges and rewards of parenthood, and i know a lot of other fan authors who have their own takes on that idea, as well.

anyway.

rambling now.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[binomech]

Hampton resents Harmony for leaving to work in the Kier branch of Lumon, for four reasons that work in tandem:

He knows Harmony came up with the designs for the severance chip, and that it was her work that allowed the Eagans to shut down the factory and restructure the company around the idea of a severed floor in a different, public facing building, which the ether factory could not be.

That company restructuring resulted in the factory being shut down, people being out of jobs and the employees who worked there suffering the medical sequelae of having worked since childhood in the factory without any help from Lumon’s pharmaceutical products.

He resents Sissy for encouraging Harmony to join the Myrtle Eagan school for girls, both because it took her away from him and because it ultimately led to the factory shutting down, with the whole town falling through the cracks except for Sissy, who was credited for Harmony’s upbringing. The only one still living by the nine (principles) after what Lumon did to them all.

Harmony references their friendship and puppy-love through Lumon language (chums), to which Hampton replies that [it was] child fucking labor. As Harmony talks of Kier and Imogene meeting as colleagues in the ether mill and taking to each other still as colleagues, Hampton replies cynically and with complicity “was she hacking up a lung at the time?” (possibly implying that part of the reason Harmony was encouraged to leave was the respiratory issues exposure to the chemicals gave her mother.)

It’s Harmony’s admission that she is not working with Lumon, that was she did was bad enough to be surveilled, that ultimately earns Hampton’s trust and makes him keep watch while she’s at Sissy’s.

Sissy mentions selling Harmony’s childhood belongings to the poor, making the poor pay for goods that were not theirs to have in the first place, to use their meagre salary to pay for someone else’s things she didn’t even get to enjoy. The way the laborer at the factory makes the product, and the client has to pay to enjoy it, but this separation between maker and user is necessary for the generation of surplus for the patron. But despite Harmony’s pretense of disdain when she says it’s shameful that he sells the vitriol, she kisses him for it.

Hampton doesn’t sell drugs, he gives them away. He doesn’t charge for the coffee, he doesn’t charge for the huff. Lumon gave him and Harmony vitriol as child laborers to get through 8 hour vat-stirrings, even as they mirrored Kier and Imogene. Vitriol is a Lumon product that Lumon can’t cash in being used to mitigate the damage working for Lumon did for the people of the town, it’s an anaesthetic. Harmony says to Sissy “you gave him his thirst for (the huff)”, and it was Lumon who created a dependency, who cut them off of their payroll and safety and substance access when they sent their staff to Kier.

[setmeatopthepyre]

one little detail I really like about 8x12 is that buck's hoodie matches his phone case and matches the ovens in his kitchen

in an otherwise fairly neutral environment those pops of color really tie them together visually. could be a neat way to emphasize the two people currently missing in buck's life, or the ways he deals with what he's missing

[irregulord]

✨️ Happy Halloween 2024! ✨️

My entry for the Glitch inn discord halloween banner contest that got me an honorable mention. It took me almost 19 hours and it was super fun! 🖤

[oneluckcatsgirlhero-blog]

Is completely