#my guess is maybe she specifically didn’t become a trial lawyer

[bulldog-butch]

Ignoring everything else about the episode, I find it hilarious that that was taissa’s first brush at being a lawyer and then she got out of the wilderness and went “yep, I’m going to law school”

[cardiophileanonymous]

Late Night Errands Chapter 1

Mulder x Reader

Summary: The reader is a paralegal preparing to help defend her client on trial in a week. The stress has finally convinced her to go out and get a stethoscope to help calm her down. Little does she know a certain agent was watching her out while she was out late at night, and it makes her a prime suspect in his eyes.

Y/n= your name

Y/f/n Y/l/n= your first and last name

B/f/n= your best friend’s name

...

Y/n slammed the door shut then started to punch the sides of the steering wheel. What in the world was going through her mind? Of course this store wouldn’t have any stethoscopes! Even if it was a pharmacy. People don’t have stuff like that lying around in their homes. Not normal people, anyway. What was she gonna say to the employee when they inevitably asked why she was looking for one? “Oh, I don’t need one, I just want it for my weird-ass heartbeat kink!” Yeah, that was one conversation she didn’t want to have.

She silently stared at the moon for a few brief moments. Why couldn’t she have a normal kink like everyone else? Like feet, maybe. It still would’ve been weird, but dammit, at least she’d be able to find porn of it. The best she could find easily was cardiophilia fanfiction, and even then, it was scarce.

She snuck glances around the parking lot. Nobody in sight. So hopefully, nobody would notice the blush on her face when she brought up an hour long “asmr heartbeat” video for the sake of calming herself down.

She smiled in bliss. When a heartbeat was in the background, it was like everything melted away. She groaned in frustration when she heard a text from her friend, B/f/n.

Don’t forget we’re having lunch tomorrow! I’m taking your mind off that trial if it’s the last thing I do!

She was double pissed now that the stress of last week filled her head. She was a paralegal, and one of her clients was set to go on trial less than a week from now. It was the oddest case she’d ever seen. The case of Bill Brown.

The man had killed exactly one-hundred people in the span of less than half a year. And the details he gave were chilling. They were vivid and graphic. So, he must’ve been a sociopath or something, right? Well he was super remorseful. And upon turning himself in, that’s right, turning himself in, he sobbed for three days straight. What’s strangest was he claimed he didn’t know they happened until the memories came back to him that night.

She wouldn’t have believed it either, if he didn’t point to bodies that hadn’t been found yet. He helped officers uncover at least a quarter of his victims.

It gave everyone working in his defense a headache. Argue innocence and a false confession? He flat out admitted details the public didn’t know. Did they argue insanity? He seemed pretty fucking sane during interviews and psych evaluations. Self defense? Not in a million years.

What got at her was the genuine feeling he was innocent, and that someone, or something, could be out there. The idea of being out there in the city alone with it out and about gave her the creeps.

“Whatever,” she whispered, turning the audio up so she could return to her blissful ignorant state. Where everything melted away. Where she was actually pretty happy with a smile on her face. With that, she began to drive away.

…

All she could think about when she finished getting dressed was the trial. The trial, the trial, the trial. This was gonna be the biggest train wreck she would ever see in her career, and she had only become a paralegal a mere three years ago. She didn’t envy the defense attorneys she was working under.

Her thoughts were interrupted by three knocks at the door. Strange, she wasn’t expecting anyone today, except for B/f/n, and she was always late for everything.

She looked through the peephole to see two people in fancy clothing outside. She opened the door just a crack.

“H-hello…?”

“Y/f/n Y/l/n,” the man asked. Y/n nodded hesitantly. The man speaking held up the badge and the woman behind him did the same. “Agents Mulder and Skully, FBI. We have a few questions about your client. The one who’s set to go on trial next week.”

She turned her head to the side.

“I’m sorry, I think you might be mistaken. I-I’m not an attorney, I’m just a paralegal.”

“Oh, we’re not mistaken. That’s exactly why we wanted to talk to you.”

She looked inside her apartment real quick, then back at them.

“Okay… come on in. Just come in quickly so the cat doesn’t get out. She has a habit of running outside.”

She was internally grateful that her friend talked her into going out for lunch. She would’ve felt embarrassed if she had had to talk to these well dressed professionals in her pajamas. Skully knelt down, petting Y/n’s cat that had just walked up to the two.

“Um… would you like tea or anything? I’m about to make some for myself now.”

Skully lifted up one of her hands while she let the small animal nuzzle into her other one.

“That won’t be necessary. We plan to be out as soon as possible.”

“O-okay… um... I’m guessing you’re here to ask about Bill Brown?”

Mulder nodded.

“That’s correct.”

“I… don’t really understand. He’s set to go on trial less than a week from now. Why is the FBI getting involved? I thought this was settled, more or less.”

“We think he may be the wrong guy. We’re investigating a series of murders strikingly similar to the ones he supposedly committed a year and a half ago. We need to look at some of the previous evidence and cross examine it with the crimes happening now.”

She still seemed unconvinced.

“Why haven’t you gone to my firm? Or better yet, the police? I-I’m sure they have everything on file.”

Mulder shook his head.

“The lawyers won’t speak to us. And the police department doesn’t want to reopen the investigation when they’re so close to closing it. They don’t want to cause panic.”

She nodded. That actually wasn’t that hard a story to believe, considering the people she worked with on a daily basis. She just looked around the room.

“Okay… you might want to rethink my offer about the tea, then. And have a seat. Because this’ll take a long time.”

...

She presented them with a long list of documents. Some images, most legal papers. She pulled out the two things that were most of interest to her, a map of where the killings took place as well as a few images of supposed murder weapons.

“I’m not really sure what you’re looking for, so here's everything, I guess.”

Skully started flipping through the legal papers, reading passages of the man’s confession. Y/n’s cat slipped under Skully’s arms and laid on her lap as she continued to read. Mulder took a keen eye to the map.

“When did these murders take place?”

“Um, September 14th through February 10th, sir.”

“And he moved here the day these murders started, correct?”

“C-c-correct. You… didn’t already know this?”

“Oh I did. I just wanted to make sure you did. Encyclopedic knowledge of a case is the sign of a good paralegal, don’t you think?”

“Oh!” She let out an embarrassed chuckle. “Thanks…”

“Tell me, Y/n. What do you think happened?”

“Well, the evidence clearly shows he’s guilty, so… we are going to be arguing that he did these crimes due to mania and insanity.”

“No, Y/n. What do you really think?”

She looked down, and started to get finicky. She sat up straight.

“I think he’s innocent… and I have a theory about what happened. But… I don’t think anyone would believe me.”

Skully raised an eyebrow.

“Why haven’t you brought it up with any of the defense attorneys?”

She looked away, then back at the both of them.

“You won’t… tell anyone, right? I don’t wanna lose my job because everyone thinks I’m crazy.”

Mulder nodded expectantly.

“Of course not. Now, what did you find?”

She flipped through the papers.

“While they were at his house… they found a lot of these DVDs.” She was somewhat mumbling under her breath. When she pulled out the image she presented it to Mulder. “I’ve looked them up and they’re all from a lesser known hypnotist.”

Mulder read the bottom of the DVD covers.

“Hannah Martin?”

“...yes. I’ve tried to find those specific DVDs myself, on her website or Amazon or whatnot, but, uh, I can’t find them.”

“Why do you find these significant?”

“Um… Skully, was it? May I please have the written interview?”

She handed it to her. Now that her hands were free, Skully began to pet the cat sitting on her legs, who purred in appreciation. She cleared her throat and began to read.

“Bill said ‘I moved to start a new life, I tried to smile every day, I helped my neighbors, I listened to hypnosis videos every night before bed to make me a better person. I did my best to turn my life around… but I guess I was a monster this whole time. Last night, my memories came back to me in my dreams. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…’”

Mulder nodded.

“So you think that the hypnosis videos he watched before bed may have mind controlled or influenced him into committing these crimes overnight?”

Her face began to turn red and a wave of feeling stupid hit her.

“I’m sorry! I know that sounds insane!”

“No, not to me.” She was in awe. He was actually entertaining her insane supernatural idea? “How far have you looked into this Hanna Martin?”

“You have to pay at least five-hundred dollars for her to create a hundred and fifty custom sessions to send to you personally through DVDs. Um, the first alleged murder was one hundred and forty-nine days before the last alleged murder. That day he confessed would be day one hundred and fifty.”

Mulder seemed incredibly interested. He gazed down at the image he was holding.

“Thank you for bringing this information to my attention. Can you please scan this and make a copy for me? I want to see if I can track down these DVDs.”

“O-okay!”

She was a little excited that her idea was being entertained. And, aside from that, this agent was very cute! So he was cute and as conspiracy crazy as she was?! She smiled like a dope when she was no longer being watched, her back to the two. She began making the copy.

“Another question for you, Y/n.”

She gulped. Something about this man saying her name made her stomach drop.

“Y-yeah…?”

“Do you go out at night often?”

The feeling of her stomach dropping was now from fear.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw your car parked outside the local drugstore late last night, any reason for it?”

She swallowed, hard. She was going for ulterior motives, but she was relieved she had something to fall back on.

“I was getting my medication. Um, I can show you if you want proof?”

“There’s no need to. But midnight is fairly late to be running errands like that, don’t you think?”

She breathed in.

“I couldn’t sleep. So I thought I might as well do something productive.”

He nodded. She turned to look at him, but she couldn’t quite read his face. Was he insinuating what she thought he was? Or was this all in her head? If he thought she was involved, he was probably crazy. She just laid out all this evidence to prove her client innocent, and possibly even helped point to the real killer, yet he thought she might be the guilty one?

“Did you happen to purchase anything from this hypnotist?”

“No, I don’t have that kind of money… and besides, i-if I am right, I don’t know if I would want to get anything from her.”

“Mhm.”

Her dopey smile and blush was gone by the time she handed the copied image to Mulder.

“I’m not sure about the legality of this…”

“Don’t worry. I’ll deal with it.”

She was a bit angry when they left. B/f/n was a bit confused walking in.

“What happened?”

“Ugh! The stupid FBI is involved in the case now. They wanted to see some stuff.”

She tilted her head to the side and her nose crinkled in disbelief.

“The FBI?”

“I don’t know either! Just… help me pick up these papers. Actually, don’t! I need to make sure they’re all in order before court in a few days!”

She nodded as Y/n began to put everything as they were supposed to be.

“...that guy was kind of cute.”

She sighed.

“I thought that, too. But actually, he’s a dick.”

[reverseblackholeofwords]

Bo and Yancy

As the possible paths dwindle down to a single choice, Professor Beauregard has to figure out how she’s going to get Yancy out of a tight situation. The Warden and Actor Mark aren’t letting her go easily, and her gamble might just cost Yancy his life.

Part Eight: I Don’t Wanna Be Free

The prisoners shout from their cells. As the Warden leads Yancy down the cell block. His friends reach their arms through the bars, calling out to him, but he refuses to look up from his shuffling feet. Beauregard follows behind with heat in her cheeks and ice in her heart.

She didn’t have another choice, did she?

Warden Murder-Slaughter marches Yancy into one of the cells and shuts the door behind them, handing the keys off to Actor Mark through the bars as he gives one final, cocky glance in the professor’s direction. They move aside the toilet first and then the fake section of the wall to reveal the hole, perfectly shaped for a human being, maybe even Yancy specifically.

“You’re really a cruel little thing, aren’t you?” The Actor teases watching Beauregard twitch as Yancy stares emptily at the strange hole in the wall of cell 13. “You remind me of someone I used to know. She would’ve liked you.”

She wants nothing more than to dissolve him slowly in acid. “Did you stuff her into a human-shaped hole, too?” Bo snaps at him, but the Actor only smirks.

“No, I fed her to a shadow creature haunting my house, and she and her twin brother became trapped in my old, dead body.” He inspects his nails with a sigh as Beauregard stares up at him in a mix of horror and disbelief. Actor merely shrugs. “Don’t worry. I hear they’re doing just fine these days.”

Warden Murder-Slaughter claps his hands together once, and the thunderous echo nearly bursts Beauregard’s ears along with the cries of the inmates. He’s smiling, everything he’s ever wanted right here at his fingertips at last. Actor told him that he could bring him someone powerful enough to finally answer the Warden’s questions, and he hasn’t failed him. “Alright, my boy, are you ready to find out the answer to the Enigma of Happy Trails Penitentiary?”

Yancy eyes are all but dead. His hands, marked with names he does not know in a struggle he does not understand, hang limply at his sides as his tattoo on his arm grows one final pair of boxes, resting on the inside of his wrist, right above his pulse. He stares into the human-shaped hole, takes a deep breath that might be his last, and plunges in.

Beauregard’s heart stammers in her chest.

Has she made a mistake? Will Yancy really survive this? She grips the bars in front of her, useless to help him now as he disappears into the darkness. The Warden scarcely makes a noise. The whole penitentiary draws a collective breath. Everything is perfectly silent aside from the blood pounding in her ears.

And then...

Nothing. There are no death screams, no sounds of bones cracking or skin breaking open. There is not even a whisper. They wait and they stare and they wonder, but nothing ever happens.

Yancy never comes back out.

The Warden paces back and forth. He goes to the entrance, his hands resting on either side as he leans his head in, calls after Yancy. But he receives no answer. The young man is simply gone.

Beauregard’s knees buckle, and she falls to the ground outside the cell. She was so sure, so sure that he would somehow make it out. He trusted her. Right up until the very end, and she failed.

“Well,” Actor says, not an ounce of remorse in his show-host voice. “That was anti-climactic, wasn’t it?” He chuckles, and a few of the inmates jeer at him.

The rest of them are silent. They stand there in their cells frozen, eyes wide and mouths agape. Most of them cannot see what has happened, but somehow they know. They all felt it. That they lost someone, someone who meant the world to them.

Beauregard drags herself up by the bars of the cell, leaning her weight into them as she tries to make sense of it. “I hope you’re satisfied,” she spits at the Warden. “He was a good man, better than you even if he did kill people. At least he felt remorse for it.”

The Warden’s face is red with anger. He shakes as he storms up to the bars and stands over Beauregard even though he is a prisoner in a cell of his own making. “Oh, and you’re so high and mighty, are you, Professor? You let this happen. You didn’t save him! You sent him to his death just as much as I did!”

“Tell that to your lawyer,” she says, all the fight gone from her words, but her eyes do rise to meet his. “I’m pressing charges for what you’ve done here today. Maybe they won’t believe everything that’s happened here, but they will see what you did to Yancy. And they’ll come looking for him, only they won’t find him.”

“And just how do you think you’re going to prove any of it?” he sneers.

And Beauregard taps a pin on her lab coat, with a perfect black circle in the center, a camera. “Because I came prepared, Warden.” She releases the bars and takes a step back. “Get used to that cell. You’re going to end up in one just like it.” Then she turns on her heel and stomps out of the prison, the clacking of her shoes ringing like nails in a coffin.

It takes a year for the trial. Beauregard sees it through to the end, stands in front of everyone and tells all she knows, all they will believe at least. She even submits the recording Yancy left for her, just to prove that he never intended to escape. He never wanted to be free.

None of this was his fault.

And she gets what she wanted in the end, in a way. The Warden becomes the inmate, but she’s thrown herself under the bus, too. Breaking into a prison, releasing a known murderer, performing unlawful tests on a human being--not to mention threatening a governor, though she certainly doesn’t regret that one.

That gets you a few years no matter how you slice it.

But Bo doesn’t really mind. Someone once taught her that when you make mistakes, you have to pay for them. And, he was right, the amenities are nice.

“So, you really never think of breaking out?” Dr. Flemming asks her during their session. “Not ever?”

“No,” Beauregard answers truthfully. “I don’t kid myself. I know I wasn’t innocent.”

“But you had good intentions,” the doctor urges. He asked to work with her personally when he found out what happened, and Beauregard supposes that she appreciates the thought even though she does find him somewhat annoying. Too endearing, too eager to please. “You were just trying to bring to light the injustice you saw in the world.”

The professor shrugs. “Maybe, but that doesn’t mean my hands were clean. And besides, there’s no zombies in prison. If a time anomaly ends reality as we know it, at least I can die in peace knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it.” The therapist’s eyes go wide. He probably thinks she’s delusional, but Bo can’t bring herself to care. “So no, I don’t want to break out. Maybe if I had someone out there, maybe... But I don’t. So it doesn’t matter.”

“It says here in your file that you have a brother, Dr. Cawthon, I believe?” He checks the file again to confirm. “What about him?”

Bo shakes her head. “No, we had a falling out a long time ago. He couldn’t care less about me.”

Dr. Flemming looks like he might say something, but in that moment, his phone rings. And he stands. “Excuse me a moment, Professor, while I take this.” He steps into another room, leaving Beauregard alone with her thoughts. She smooths her hands over her prison uniform. She always hated the color orange.

“Break out? O’ this place?” An exasperated laugh. “Why would anyone want to break out?”

Bo turns around in her chair to see him leaning in the doorway behind her. Still wearing that white shirt and striped pants, his hair slicked back, a smile on his face. “Yancy!” She jumps up, and he sweeps her into a hug.

“Hi, Miss Bo.” He laughs, squeezing her tight. “Sorry it took me so long, but after Happy Trails shut down, it took me a year to find where everyone was transferred to, let the gang know I was alright.” He sets her down and takes a step back. “And of course I wanted to save the best for last.”

“How?” she asks, tears in her eyes. They never found a trace of him, not even a scrap of clothing. He disappeared so completely. She never thought she’d ever see him again. And here he is, whole and happy and everything. “How did you make it out of there?”

Yancy scratches the back of his head. “I don’t really knows myself, and I certainly don’t have time to explain right now.” He elbows her gently, wiggling his eyebrows. “What do youse say? There’s still a time anomaly out there what needs stopping! And since I’m legally dead and all, I guess youse could say I’ve atoned for my crimes...”

Beauregard looks around, the bars over every window, the security cameras watching them right now. “B-but, how? How are you going to...?” But he just puts an arm around her shoulder and smirks.

“Don’t worry, Miss Bo. Nobody knows how to break out better than Yancy. Youse just leave it to me!” He reaches behind the door. “And besides, I thought you might needs this.”

He puts her laser gun into her hands, and with a deep breath, Beauregard feels like herself again for the first time in year. “Well,” she laughs, absolutely dizzy with happiness, “for the love of physics...”

The End?

[thebeautyofdisorder]

The Undone & The Divine (BBC Dracula) - Chapter 7

A/N: Okay, here is the next chapter finally. Nothing quite so... explicit as last chapter, but fun none the less. A lot of conversation/exposition, and Zoe may or may not be inadvertently sciencing her way into a crossover opportunity that I won’t take, but she does have a mind of her own, that one. Drac does a bit of grumpy pining.

Pairing: Dracula & Agatha/Zoe, Dracula/OFC

Rating: M, for blood, language, mercenaries with guns, and direct references to sexual acts performed in the last chapter.

Chapters 1-2 Here - Chapter 3 Here - Chapter 4 Here - Chapter 5 Here - Chapter 6 Here

Can be found on AO3 - Right HERE - or enjoy below the cut

“I don’t think she’s coming, sire.”

Dracula looked up from where he’d been absently staring off into the abyss - granted the abyss did look an awful lot like his front door, to meet the infuriatingly attentive gaze of Frank Renfield, as he stirred his tea, and pretended to peruse the morning paper.

“I’m sorry?” It was less of a question of clarification, and more a second chance to remedy his daring presumption, though apparently this did not occur to the lawyer at all.

“Dr. Helsing. I think she’s far more stubborn than even you give her credit for.”

“What exactly gives you the idea that I’m waiting for anyone, much less her?” he challenged, quirking a brow at his rather unwelcome company. He had asked for daily updates on his current investments, true, but it wasn’t necessarily his intention to have the man pop up at random hours of the morning to do so. Just because he could be a morning person now certainly didn’t mean that he actually wanted to be.

“I’ve never seen you so disinterested in sustenance when it’s right in front of you, unless she’s involved, of course.”

The vampire was very tempted to rip the knowing smile right from his skull, but barely managed to restrain himself out of sheer disinterest at working to find another malleable Londoner to do his business. Picking up his sadly cooled breakfast, he drained the glass simply out of spite and sat it back down with a force just shy from shattering it.

“I don’t pay you to psychoanalyze me, Frank,” he warned, barely concealed with a charming edge of fondness that came off even more menacing than any blatant threat, as he stood to his full height and paced over to the window.

The lawyer paled. “Yes, master.”

“What’s my schedule for this evening?”

“I believe you indicated you were finishing off your first experiment tonight, Count. The painter.”

“Ah. Yes,” he confirmed, even as he proceeded to juggle his mobile phone between his hands distractedly, mind somewhere else entirely. “I might...hold off on that for another week. Can’t be too hasty...I really don’t want anymore failures on my hands. And perhaps we should really begin to encourage the writing of wills in this process… When is that ‘natural burial’ movement going to be ‘en vogue’ over here, you think?”

“In a city this size? Hard to say…” Frank winced, seeming to fall silent far longer than necessary to think about it, and Dracula was really beginning to regret meddling with his mental faculties so much. It did, however, shut him up long enough for him to send a text to the woman he'd just been accused of thinking about.

HAVE YOU RECONSIDERED JOINING ME FOR DINNER?

After three minutes of silence, Dracula scowled and refocused on Renfield's babbling, which had taken back up after his initial, blissful silence. Something about 'death positivity' which brought a brief smirk to his lips. Just when he thought humanity had lost its sense of reality entirely.

You text like my grandfather.

The Count grinned in partial triumph. Partial because while she'd certainly replied, she didn't seem nearly as outraged as he'd dearly hoped. Would have to remedy that. Very soon.

BUSY?

Very busy. How did you get my number?

HUNGRY? 🍷

No.

LIAR.

Show off.

Renfield had the audacity to clear his throat.

-----

Peaking into the disheveled mass of books, vials, and files that had become the current state of Zoe Van Helsing’s office, Bloxham at first mistook it for empty. The lights were dimmed, and the chair behind the desk was not only lacking in an occupant, but instead was serving as an unsteady shelf for what looked to be a hundred-year-old phonograph.

“The sign specifically said ‘do not disturb’, didn’t it?”

Dr. Bloxham spun around suddenly, placing a hand to her chest in shock as her eyes adjusted to the far corner of the room, where a small pseudo lab seemed to be occupying the back corner. Zoe was standing still as a statue, frozen in the midst of studying a vial of a thick red substance by shining a black light through it. She stayed frozen.

“Jesus, Zoe you scared the shit out of me,” she remarked at first. “And actually it says ‘danger: enter at your own risk’ but it was so bloody dark in here I thought you’d gone home.”

“All the same, get out. I’m busy,” Zoe murmured tightly, and her colleague frowned, making no motion to leave as of yet.

“Zoe...you haven’t been coming to meetings, nor have you really spoken to anyone in a week. Is everything...alright?”

“Fine. Just dandy. Now get out, please.”

“Sarcasm, much? I’m just...worried.”

Zoe still hadn’t moved. In fact, she was forcing herself to stay rooted to the spot, or she wasn’t entirely certain what she would do. A sudden shuffling outside the door, however, pulled her away from her steely focus and her eyes shot up with inhuman speed to the door where a crack of light cut through the carpet.

“Who else is with you?” Zoe asked, eyes shooting towards the other woman directly for the first time since she’d entered.

Bloxham swallowed audibly, eyes darting quickly away to avoid eye contact.

“Look, our sponsor has been sending inquiries about this...situation, and we need to provide him with answers. I thought if I could get a glimpse of your research, we could figure out what it is you’re doing and give a proper update…"

“Dr. Bloxham… Kate I really need you to go. My research is mine and until it’s complete, I have no interest in sharing it,” Zoe stated firmly.

Dr. Bloxham advanced forward a step. “But Zoe-”

Zoe’s grip on the vial in her hand tightened and the glass gave a warning crackle that froze the shorter woman in her place.

“Leave!” The words came out in nothing short of a growl, and had the exact opposite effect on the situation that she’d intended or hoped.

The door swung the rest of the way open with a deafening bang and two large men with guns came in behind Dr. Bloxham, only halting their approach at the raise of her hand.

“That won’t be necessary boys, thank you,” she stated with carefully practiced calm, even though Zoe could hear the thrumming of her pulse hitting an anxious high speed. She forced her fingers, which had flexed into something resembling claws, to relax, though her spine stiffened further. Would guns hurt her? Maybe, maybe not but it would certainly lead to a load of inconvenience even if they didn’t - more so if they didn’t, she decided.

Ignoring the intrusion completely, even as they seemed to stand down, Zoe addressed Bloxham directly. “Is this really where you’re going with this? I’m not an animal, Dr. Bloxham. In fact, I’m doing everything in my power to avoid that outcome, and would like to continue to do it in peace.”

She slammed the glass beaker down and against better judgement beckoned her reluctant colleague forward.

“Come. Look.”

She hesitated, but gesturing a casual hand back at the men at her back, she approached Zoe, who distinctly moved out of the way entirely.

“What am I looking at?”

“Just a basic five-senses test, Doctor, what do they tell you?”

Kate leant down at eye level with the beaker, perusing it, picking it up and shifting the substance around, taking a whiff of it.

“It smells, looks, and behaves like blood. De-fibrillated, if I had to guess - from who or what I don’t know.”

Zoe looked minutely pleased, though was still almost robot stiff as she handed a folder over to her.

“It’s a protein and nutrient compound. I'm running a few...tests to see if I can find a supplemental vampiric food source. The information is all there."

Bloxham took the folder with a glance of astonished intrigue, and greedily began to look over the contents, forgetting about her intimidation tactics. Momentarily, at least.

"Could this actually work?"

"To keep them alive...yes, potentially. Or to ward off the cravings and reduce the need to result in homicide, at the least. As for the grander implications… I don't know."

"You need a subject."

"I am the subject."

The other doctor nodded briefly, biting her lip and pacing back towards the desk, folder still in her hands.

"You think he's infecting others?'

"I know he is," Zoe scoffed, the distance between them making it somewhat easier to function. To breathe, however much she still could.

"And have you run any trials yet?"

"With a couple more tweaks, I was planning to start this evening."

Bloxham gestured with her eyes toward the phonograph, and the exceedingly out of place stack of various religious texts and mythos.

"These?"

"Doing some updates on my great grandfather's research.  None of which is replaceable, ergo my want for privacy."

She nodded, understanding but not commenting. It was one of the things Zoe always appreciated about her - she never spoke without thinking first.

"I would like you to run this as an official experiment in the lab, if only for the sake of an external eye. First hand trials are never 100% accurate - we both know that. You can't afford to miss something. If you feel...unsafe with the others, we can isolate you where you can still be observed - at your discretion, of course. And all of your private research will remain that way, you have my word."

Zoe pursed her lips into a thin line, weighing her options. Who was she kidding, she didn't have options. She had partial control or none at all; a glass box or an autopsy table. This was a negotiation of surrender.

"All right. Fine."

-----

“...The second son of Vlad II became ruler of Wallachia in 1436, leading to one of the bloodiest but most successful reigns in Romanian history simply by fearful reputation alone. Drakula as he was often called, in his day simply in honor of his father meaning 'Son of the Dragon'. Now it just adds to his legend, since 'Dracul' in modern Romanian more accurately translates to Devil. A very literal interpretation of dying a hero or living long enough to see yourself becoming The Villain ™ …"

Kat skimmed the notes for at least the fifth time, mindlessly chewing her nail polish off her thumb in a manic, nervous habit she thought she'd squashed at 16. She hadn't made it to class that morning - hell, she didn't even hear her alarm. It had blared for three hours before her mind swam its way back to consciousness.

He'd been gone when she awoke finally, the mid-morning sun streaming harshly through her curtains. He left her a note, written in comically perfect cursive on the back of a concert flyer, with his mobile number scrawled across the top, laid on her bedside table atop the book he'd brought her.

I had to run for a meeting early. Enjoy the book. - D

P.S. I did try to fix your shelf, though I do believe I owe you a new lamp.

Her cheeks were still burning hotter than her coffee as she later sat down to email her professor, claiming sudden illness and begging a forward of his notes. Luckily he was a pretty laid back type or it would have been twice as humiliating to think she was effectively calling in due to being fucked into oblivion.

She'd barely recalled being conscious after, though she knew she had been. Though the memory of laughing off the wall-pounding complaints of her next door neighbor was swimming interchangeably with the images of her very bizarre dream. At least she'd assumed it was a dream - men sprouting fangs was clearly her orgasm-delirious brain reacting to last week's ill-timed Buffy marathon and too many re-readings of Legends of the Carpathians. It had to be.

That was her logic anyway, up until she looked at herself in the floor length mirror after jumping in the shower, and found herself marveling there far too long. She wasn't one to complain about a hickey or two, but her fingers trailed the jagged white indentation of teeth at the juncture of her neck and shoulder -  a pale slash interrupting the bruised flesh - and shivered. Red, stripe-like lines trailed the length of her legs and hips, unfaded and tangible. There was even still a red gash-like mark on her shoulder where the strap of her camisole had dug into her flesh as he ripped it like it was made of crepe paper.

Her mind returned to those notes, lingering on the name 'Drakula' far too long without coming up with a real reason to be so concerned. It could be an ancestor or a weird inside joke of an alias she had missed. For all she knew of Romanian customs it could be a fairly common name there now.

"Impaled by Vlad the Impaler...ridiculous," she joked, half audibly to herself

"I quite like the sound of that."

A bonafide squeak of surprise rose out of her throat, though she didn't have the time to be humiliated as the tall shadow of the man himself showed up in the mirror behind her, taking up the whole of her bedroom door frame.

"Apologies, it was unlocked. I did knock to be fair, but I can see why you didn't hear." His eyes were locked on her body still dripping from the shower, a towel barely clasped around to cover the important bits.

Kat quickly caught her breath, forcing a chuckle. "No, it's...alright. I was just trying to...go over my notes," she excused, gesturing to where her laptop sat open on the desk in the corner.

"Didn't make it out of bed this morning," She shot him a look of playful accusation, before turning back to the mirror, already dismissing her earlier fears now that she was seeing him in broad daylight for the first time. He was definitely not a big pile of dust, or if he was he was the most attractive one she'd ever seen.

He made a show of wincing. "I suppose that was my fault." He paced forward, meeting her eyes through their reflections as he approached, tracing a finger down the side of her neck and over her shoulder, skimming the harsh redness. "This definitely was."

Her breath stuttered audibly and she felt her lower muscles clench almost painfully just at the barest reminder of his presence.

"Yeah...you… go a bit feral, don't you?" She breathed, fingers tracing her legs as well.

"You do make a lovely canvas." He smirked lightly, but other than meeting her reflection's gaze, he looked away from the mirror entirely, and brushed his lips over the bite mark as he turned away.

Well, he certainly has a reflection, she couldn't help but muse as she remembered to breathe, watching his backside as he paced over to the laptop casually.

"I see you're onto the 15th century."

"Yes… family of yours?" She prodded with mild curiosity, as she adjusted the towel.

He was silent for a moment , as though debating just how directly to answer.

"Something like that," he seemed to settle with, and despite lifting a curious brow she didn't pry. Something in his eyes brooked no reproach, as funny as that felt to think.

"I unfortunately need to be going again," he added before she could think of any further inquiry, or pounce on him again as she was half wont to do.

"I mainly just came to replace your lamp," he said, stepping back to the hall and pulling up a bag he had left on the floor, offering it to her.

She couldn't help but laugh as she took it from him.. "Why thank you."

Not that she could ever look at the bloody thing again without remembering knocking it onto the floor to smash into pieces as he pounded her into next week. Though judging from the demonic glint in his eyes as he pressed an otherwise chaste kiss to her knuckles in farewell, that was exactly what he'd intended.

----

She felt him before she saw him. It was both refreshing and annoying that he couldn't sneak up on her anymore, even if it just meant a few more minutes of blissful ignorance before he intruded on her evening.

"You shouldn't be here."

He was even more annoyed by it if the disgruntled sigh was anything to go by. He remained at a distance in the shadows nonetheless.

"Neither should you, Zoe," Dracula warned in a tone that was so low, it was almost genuine in its concern. "I know what you're doing, at least in part, and while the effort is admirable it's not going to work."

"And how would you know?" She snapped, frustration lacing her words as she tried desperately to keep her eyes on the screen in front of her. "Have you ever even tried not killing anyone? Of course not, because you enjoy it too much. You're a monster and that's how you like it." She slammed a few keys with audible force.

Dracula scoffed, approaching from the shadows with an affronted air. "What do you call what I've been doing?! I would think you'd appreciate the gesture."

Her eyes narrowed, incredulous confusion colored by exasperation. "I'm sorry, are saying you attempting not to murder half of London is supposed to impress me?"

"Yes, of course."

At that she couldn't help but laugh, for probably the first time in months, though it contained plenty of Agatha's sardonic mirth as well.

"You really are a 500 year old infant, aren't you?"

His lips formed into an exaggerated pout, barely masking his amusement. "Is that what she's said about me?"

"Among many other things, yes," Zoe confirmed dryly, standing to her feet. They both knew he was speaking of Agatha, though whether he knew about the letters she wasn't sure, nor did she want to bring it up. Not yet.

"And what about the girl who's throat you almost ripped out last night? Or did you? Was that out of spite or just the chance to show off?"

"She's perfectly fine.  Actually I would say I improved her night immensely ." The lascivious tone was blatant and twice as irritating as he leaned over the desk towards her.

Her nostrils flared as the breath expelled through his words lingered between them, smelling of blood.

"You're revolting." She despised that the words came out in a gasp.

"And deep down, you enjoy it."

"Like I enjoyed cancer."

He smirked, though there was a bitter edge of impatience to it.

"They're going to try to kill you, you know. And you don't have the strength to fight it."

"Then I suppose I'll die," she dismissed, just to irritate him. In truth it was something she was concerned with as well, but the last thing she wanted was for him to know it

He scowled briefly though it manifested as more of a snarl, pulling a hip flask from his pocket and placing it on the desk between them. An offering, given in silence.

Zoe barely looked at it. "And which one of your conquests did that come from?"

"Leading hematologist in London - willingly donated in a sterile, medical setting - very much alive and happily at home with his idiotic family as we speak. If and when you could use the boost - or the expertise."

"Not necessary," she ground out, doing her best to ignore its presence entirely. Not to mention the implication he was even offering assistance in his selfish, convoluted way, despite his opposition to her plan.

Dracula could have opened it and left her with no choice, but he didn't. Instead, he straightened to his full height and met her eyes again with a sigh as he made his way back towards the door. Where he’d actually gotten in without notice, she had no idea, and she’d rather not think about it..

"Good luck, Dr. Helsing," he bade her farewell, unable to resist adding sardonically: "You'll need it."

----

Sooo... Zoe’s kind of trying to invent True Blood, and I’m a whore for Drac being a suck up (no pun intended). This is going to get...interesting.

Tag List: @break-free-killer-queen @mephdcosplay @charlesdances @punk-courtesan @crowley-needs-a-hug @hoefordarkness @bellamortislife @malkaviangirl @imagineandimagine @chelsfic @my-fanfic-library @mymagicsuitcase @littlemessyjessi @desperatefrenchwriter @crazytxgradstudent @ginevra-weasley @iloveclaesbang @mr-kisskiss-bangbang @carydorse @hyacinth-meadow @vampiregirl1797 @dreamerkim @gatissed @alhoyin @girlonfireice @dracula-s-bride @festering-queen @jangleprojet @ss9slb

[mikumutual]

answers aa themed questions nobody asked because i’m cool and sexy

also i havent played the 5th or 6th games so

YOUR FAVOURITE…? 1. Favourite Ace Attorney game? honestly? phoenix wright ace attorney! everything’s fresh, there aren’t many weak characters, and the plot is remarkable (especially the fifth case). the whole trilogy is really good as one unit though 2. Favourite case? 1-4, 1-5, 2-4, and 3-5 are tied lol, i can’t make a decision to save my life. 2-1 is really really funny tho 3. Favourite defendant? as a defendant, lana skye. as a person, edgeworth 4. Favourite prosecutor? as a prosecutor, franziska von karma. as a person, edgeworth 5. Favourite ship? wrightworth obviously... ive probably put more thought into them over the last 3 years than any other ship 6. Favourite victim? probably mia fey or gregory edgeworth... but for non-relevant victims, neil marshall :( 7. Favourite murderer? shelly de killer, i LOVE that guy. but dee vasquez was very cool as well 8. Favourite assistant? maya fey!!!!!!!!!! but i like kay faraday a lot too (im so sorry ema) 9. Favourite witness? adrian andrews... or maybe iris? i mean i didn’t like iris but god what a person 10. Favourite quote? “It doesn't matter how many underhanded tricks a person uses... The truth will always find a way to make itself known. The only thing we can do is to fight with the knowledge we hold and everything we have. Erasing the paradoxes one by one... It's never easy... We claw and scratch for every inch. But we will always eventually reach that one single truth. This I promise you.” - Miles Edgeworth i made this one of my senior quotes :]

YOUR LEAST FAVOURITE…? 11. Least favourite Ace Attorney game? uh fucking apollo justice. literally what the hell was that 12. Least favourite case? turnabout visitor wasn’t very strong? i guess it’s fine as an intro, but it’s also wonky with the timeline of aai 13. Least favourite defendant? max galactica. he’s better in the anime though 14. Least favourite prosecutor? manfred von karma, obviously. i like every other prosecutor (who i know of) though, even winston payne is pretty funny in hindsight 15. Least favourite ship? “miles edgeworth/female oc”. there are a lot of bad ships though, mostly involving phoenix & his assistants. dont do that please 16. Least favourite victim? zak gramarye for kickstarting that shitty, shitty game 17. Least favourite murderer? again mvk... but also fucking frank sahwit LMAO 18. Least favourite assistant? i guess trucy 19. Least favourite witness? fuck everyone from turnabout big top unless it was the anime episode 20. Least favourite memory of Ace Attorney? repeatedly trying and failing to download the emulator for aai2 hbjsjhdb i eventually got it but someone had to send me the download fully pre-patched and i felt kinda useless DO YOU PREFER…? 21. Phoenix Wright or Apollo Justice? phoenix wright. fuck that “GOTCHA!” mechanic jesus christ 22. Maya Fey or Trucy Wright? maya fey. nothing personal against trucy but i just dont like aj hbjsdjhsdb also maya is really sweet and fun and she has the best sprites. she seems like she’d be a good friend, it’s too bad that she doesn’t have the time for them as a spirit medium and all :( if maya ema and kay got to hang out together itd be wild 23. Investigations or trials? trials are easier in my opinion because investigations have several things you could be doing without such a linear style, so if you miss something, you won’t really know until you wander around forever 24. College Phoenix or Hobo Phoenix? college feenie!!!!! he’s like trilogy feenie but more emotional and less witty. i like to pretend that hobo phoenix doesnt exist 25. Klavier Gavin or Kristoph Gavin? who would say kristoph 26. Ace Attorney or Ace Attorney Investigations? ace attorney but only because phoenix is in it lmao. im actually rewatching a playthrough of aai now, and playing aai2 at the same time, so while it is on the mind, i feel like the cases characters and mechanics - while loved - don’t hold up to the OGs 27. Apollo’s perceive, Phoenix’s magatama, or Athena’s Mood Matrix? i actually kinda like the mood matrix more than anything because it has a really good UI and the magatama is kinda grating. but FUCK the gotcha mechanic it is SO FUCKING STUPID and IMPOSSIBLE TO USE.  where is logic chess 28. Ace Attorney trilogy or Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies? you already know my answer to this one 29. 3D models or sprites? i do like the 3d models a lot but i like the original sprites more! imo original pixel sprites > 3D models > HD sprites. mostly bc the hd sprites are garbage (see here, here, and here) 30. Ema Skye as she is in Rise from the Ashes or Ema Skye as she is in Apollo Justice? rfta !!!!!! shes actually really nice as an assistant, esp considering the fact that we actually see her interact with her sister, which is something maya didn’t have very often. also her random appearance in aai was well appreciated by me

MISCELLANEOUS 31. Did you like what they did to Phoenix in Apollo Justice?

NO I AM SO FUCKING MAD WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT TO HIM ISN’T HE A LAWYER WHY COULD HE NOT JUST DEFEND HIMSELF FROM THE FACT THAT HE “FORGED EVIDENCE” IT WASN’T EVEN HIS IN THE FIRST PLACE SOMEBODY ELSE FORGED IT AND HE DIDN’T KNOW THAT, MANFRED VON KARMA GOT AWAY WITH A FUCKLOAD OF NONSENSE AND SO DOES EVERY OTHER LAWYER SO WHY IS IT THAT PHOENIX CAN SURVIVE EATING A POISONED GLASS NECKLACE AND GETTING HIT OVER THE HEAD WITH A FIRE EXTINGUISHER AND FALLING FROM A BURNING BRIDGE INTO A RUSHING RAVINE AND BEING HIT BY A CAR BUT HE CAN’T FUCKING DEFEND HIMSELF LIKE HE DOES IN EVERY OTHER CASE BECAUSE THAT’S THE POINT OF THE GAME AND ALSO HIS ENTIRE CHARACTER

32. Your opinion on Dai Gyakuten Saiban? haven’t played it! it looks pretty cool though

33. Do you think Dai Gyakuten Saiban and/or Miles Edgeworth Investigations 2 will get localised to the West? doubt it, since the creators have said that it won’t be. but the fan translations are pretty good, so i think it’s okay

34. Do you think Miles Edgeworth should get another Investigation-game or do you think another character deserves a spin-off? i mean he already has two, so i guess he doesn’t need another? like i love edgeworth but he’s not as fun without phoenix around. ngl i would play a franziska game. or a maya game, or any spinoff revolving around a side character. hell i’d play hotti game if it meant it took place in the trilogy era

35. Opinion on the soundtrack of the Ace Attorney-franchise? REALLY good. really really good. i love how each game of the trilogy has different composers but each track has the same theme and feel!!!

36. Do you like where the franchise is heading or did you prefer the atmosphere in the original trilogy? seriously absolutely completely prefer the trilogy. i’m sorry but the rush of youth and trust is way, way more enjoyable than whatever “i’m 35 and therefore middle aged” nonsense is happening in the 2020s

37. Capcom suddenly announces that Phoenix will no longer appear in the Ace Attorney franchise! Your reaction? He’s been replaced by Penny Nichols. Fuck you.

38. Capcom suddenly announces that the Ace Attorney franchise has ended for good! Your reaction? it was me i ended it

39. Would you like there to be another Ace Attorney/Professor Layton crossover game? i didnt play it but i really like the idea!!!!!! aa crossover games are really funny to me, i mean have you seen edgeworth in project x zone 2, lmao

40. Would you like an Ace Attorney anime? we have one now! honestly i don’t think it did a very good job of representing the cases, but it did do a good character remix of turnabout big top so that they’re not creepy anymore. they also did a really good job with the anime-specific cases, like the one on the train! it feels a lot better paced when it’s intended for that medium rather than just adapted.  also the childhood episodes made me cry

41. Opinion on anime cutscenes in Ace Attorney? like in 5 and 6? mm, the art style is kinda weird, and i don’t really like the voices, but i guess not everything can be pachinko and prozd

42. Would you want to play an Ace Attorney game where you take on the prosecutor’s role? YEAH ACTUALLY!!!!!! it might be kinda weird being on the right side of the screen though lmao

43. Do you like having DLC in Ace Attorney-games? uhhh i hate having to buy extra things, but i’ll admit that they are pretty funny

44. Opinion on Lamiroir’s storyline? i only played aj so if shes in other games idk but i thought she was fine

45. One thing you think the Ace Attorney games can improve on? stop having creepy characters please. also jesus christ if phoenix and edgeworth arent wearing rings in aa7 i will become the ceo of capcom myself

46. Capcom suddenly announces an Ace Attorney movie! Would you like it to be based on an already existing case or would you like an all new storyline? i mean the musical did a pretty good job of adapting existing cases, so it might as well be new. it would be kinda hard to balance the games’ timeline & character development without being repetitive or an au

47. Capcom suddenly announces an Ace Attorney movie! Would you prefer it being live-action, 3D animated or 2D animated? stylized 2D animation, probably? i would want it to feel more like into the spiderverse than an anime, though. in my dream ace attorney movie, they’d just need a high art budget, several plausible deniability wrightworth scenes, and prozd to voice edgeworth

48. If there could be an Ace Attorney crossover with whatever franchise you’d like, which one would you choose? (Does not need to be a video-game franchise) your turn to die is probably closest in characterization, although its premise is more “locked in a room” than the open-world investigation of aa

49. Opinion on recurring witnesses? (Wendy Oldbag, Lotta Hart, Larry Butz, etc.) honestly, i like them a lot! i don’t know why people hate them so much - i mean, i know lotta lied, and wendy is a horrible old flirt, and larry just kinda sucks all around. but they’re also pretty funny to have around! larry is a constant comic relief who reminds you how much better nick & edgey are in comparison, lotta is likeable as a general character (like in 2-4, although yeah, not remarkable), and wendy oldbag is really funny. she’s so fucking funny. none of you appreciate wendy oldbag’s quirks and you are SLEEPING ON IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

50. Do you think Dual Destinies deserved its M-rating? no idea, holy shit, it got an m-rating? i mean every game before it has had blood violence and very mild swearing, and since DD probably doesnt have anything too sexually risqué, i doubt it deserves a rating any harsher than the rest of the series

okay thanks thats all

[sooghostwriter]

Bodyguard

Pairings: Do Kyung Soo x OC

Genre: Mature,  Romance, Angst (But not love angst), fluff 

Warnings: Main character under trauma.

Summary: Ae Ra is a singer who has been receiving threatening messages and letters for a while now, but she didn’t give them importance. Until one day the sender decides to act and kidnaps her. It’s then when her agency decides that she needs protection, so they hired two bodyguards for her. Mister Do and Mister Park.

Chapter 9 

She was back at her house two days later. An intern from her agency made sure to keep her house fresh, the plants watered and her fridge full. It wasn’t too hard to go back to her normal life. At least inside her house. She really missed her bed, her studio, her garden, and even her furniture. She even was able to sleep alone. At least the night of Chanyeol’s shift.

By the third day she decided that it was time to start facing things. She wanted to end this issue as fast as possible “Mister Lee Joon Young in now been questioned by my partner and the psychologist” It felt weird to finally know the name of that man. She wasn’t sure if it was a good weird or bad weird “I was at home once and I saw her perform on stage” She read on his statement “And I could see it. Her body language, the way she looked at the camera and her lyrics, she was calling for an uprising so her twisted ideas could reign, followed by a horde of innocent people who would do everything she said, they are all organized, ready to attack at any moment” Ae Ra couldn’t believe what she was reading “We ask him what his sources were, with the excuse that we needed to investigate it so we could press charges against you, he gave us a list of websites, hashtags, usernames, etc” He stopped and sighed in frustration “They were all fansites, blogs dedicated to you, fan accounts, and the words they used to refer to you are Queen, goddess , and everybody professed rather feverishly they love and blind trust towards you, acting like a cult, this only feed is fantasy” Chanyeol and Kyung Soo were showing their anger in different ways. Chanyeol was holding his head between his hands, shaking it in disbelief. Kyung Soo was laying back, his arms folded across his chest, and a leg bouncing in exasperation. He looked so mad that it scared her. It was tragicomic, Minseok always joked about how every fan meeting looked like mass, someone took it literal “That’s all we have for now, he believes he is in the right, so his attitude towards us is of course not the best, but he already confessed, everything is there, so we don’t need you to meet him, not until the trial at least” That was a relief. She was ready to face him, but that readiness was a lot of fake it until you make it. She was still terrified by him. And she didn’t even know what he looked like.     The detective walked them out of his office and engaged in a light conversation with them when they heard a small commotion ahead. Ae Ra stopped on her track, instinct maybe, and Chanyeol and Kyung Soo stood behind her. A couple of policemen walked in front of them, talking in their radios, and a couple of steps behind, two more cops walked by holding a handcuffed man. Ae Ra looked down out of respect and watched the three pairs of feet walked by, but one of them stopped “Ae Ra” A male voice called quietly “It’s you Ae Ra” He said louder this time, almost shouting. She looked up, she knew she shouldn’t have to, she should have taken a step back. But she didn’t, she looked up and met the eyes of the men calling her name. Lee Joon Young. He was tall, with long limbs, gaunt, and his skin lacked any shine or color. His eyes were red and big. He stared at her without blinking. He kept struggling, trying to free himself from the grip of the policemen, moving closer to her. She wanted to move away, but her legs didn’t respond “Let me go so I can finish her!” He shouted right on her face, but before she could move away, Kyung Soo pulled her behind him and rushed on his direction. Chanyeol was quicker this time and grabbed Kyung Soo, passing his arms under his armpits and over his chest. Kyung Soo tried to charge again, but Chanyeol stopped him. Joon Young began laughing, a loud, terrifying laugh “Look at that, your toy boy is here!” She was sure she felt the same rush of anger that Kyung Soo felt, wash over her. She took two big steps, but Chanyeol stopped her too, grabbing her by her jacket, stopping her from taking one step closer. She was furious, him calling Kyung Soo like that remained her of the times he tried to hurt him. She wasn’t going to let that happen again. She tried to take her jacket off so she could move, but Chanyeol noticed it and pulled her again, making her lose some balance. Only then Kyung Soo looked away from Joon Young and moved her attention to Ae Ra, worried that she could fall. At the same time, the two policemen were able to control Lee Joon Young and took him out of the place. Chanyeol didn’t release his friend or Ae Ra, just in case “You two are making a scene, let’s go!” He grabbed them both by the arm and walked them back into the detective’s office.

++

A couple of days later, Mister Min arrived at her house with her lawyer. Kim Junmyeon looked as young as he was, and she liked that.  Maybe he wasn’t very experienced, but he had the ethics that only youth gives you. And if Mister Min brought him, it meant he was good. Mister Min, Junmyeon, Kyung Soo sat at her dining table with her, cups of coffee at hand and folders with police reports inside “Lee Joon Young confessed all his crimes, although he didn’t really need to, his fingerprints were found on the gun that was used to shoot you, his car and motorcycle matched the ones seeing on the footage,  and we are going to use that,  but he sustains that it was a favor for our country, the defense is having a hard time” “What about Jin Tae Ri?” “Well in her case, she has a record, she recognized that she attacked you in the bathroom and broke into your house, the bathroom attack was a femicide attempt, which will give her the highest sentence and she was also an accomplice all the way” She was asking about that, sure, but she was worried about something else “What Miss Ji is really worried about is their mental state, Miss Jin has a story of substance abuse and Mister Lee has a diagnose of schizophrenia” Kyung Soo was able to put into words what she was really worried about. Junmyeon was worried about sentences and how many laws they broke, and it was great because he was a lawyer. And Ae Ra was conscious about how much they both hurt her and affected her these last months, but she also knew that it was something beyond their control. So they couldn’t pay for what they did as everybody does. And also, they got Kyung Soo in the middle. That wasn’t going to go unnoticed.  “Miss Ji, I can ask for a number of years…but the prosecution needs a stand on that matters too, I understand your position and I support it, and I can promise you that I will try to help you, helping them” That was all she was asking for “Thanks Mister Kim” He smiled warmly at her and kept informing them about the curse of the case.

+++

After weeks, she stayed by herself at her house for the first time. She missed the company, but she didn’t feel lonely or scared. One time a bird clashed with her kitchen window, and she almost called the police, yes. But after she took a couple of deep breaths, as her therapist recommended, she was back to normal. Therapy was doing wonders. And not only in the matters related to Jin Tae Ri and Lee Joon Young. She now had new weapons to come back to her idol lifestyle. She learned that she didn’t need everyone’s approval, that resting was necessary, that her own image couldn’t be based on how people saw her and that she didn’t own an explanation to anyone regarding her life. Most specifically her private life. She realized that therapy will become a health necessity for her, like the 6 pills of vitamins and supplements she took every day.

Kyung Soo arrived a bit after dinner time “I thought today was Chanyeol’s shift” She commented as he great her at the door, kissing her warm cheeks and giving her a long hug “It was, but we reached a deal” A deal was kind of a big word. He simply told Chanyeol that he was going to Ae Ra’s house, and he only agreed. He grabbed her hand and walked her inside the house into the living room. He sat in the couch and patted the spot beside him. Ae Ra sat as close as she could and passed her arms around his waist resting her head on his shoulder “Did you eat? I cooked some pasta like you taught me” He regretted the bowl of Udon he ate, he wanted to try her food “Don’t worry, I ate with Chanyeol before I came here” He embraced her back, pulling her even closer and kissed the top of her head “Ae Ra, Chanyeol and I had a meeting today with your boss and our boss” “Our bosses, remember we are coworkers” He laughed softly and ruffled her hair “Right, I forgot, well, a lot of things came from that meeting” He prompted her to move so he could look at her when talking about this matter. She released him from her hold but grabbed his hand. He was pleased with the skinship “Tell me, tell me!” She asked eagerly “First, your agency will be hiring the services from our agency permanently for you and your colleagues, which got us two big bonus checks” He was going to be able to afford a new mattress and a better oven “Congratulations!” “Thank you, also, we talk about our contracts” He saw the change on her face. From happy too wary in a second “You are going to have a bodyguard from now on, that will accompany you only in public appearances” “And is not you” She guessed “And is not Chanyeol” She was right again “Is a colleague and friend of us, Jongin” Her expression softened a little bit “If he is your friend, I guess is alright, when is he starting?” “After your trial” Now she was free of tension “You wanna see him, I’m sure I have pictures with him” He fetched his phone from his back pocket and searched for a picture. He found one of Jongin and Chanyeol at the new year party of the agency in full suit. Ae Ra’s eyebrows went up “Is he going to protect me with how beautiful he is? Is he planning of dazzling people?” He laughed at her comment and looked at the picture again. He did look quite dazzling “Don’t look at him too much, you could end up falling in love with him” He joked, bringing up their inside jokes “Impossible” She leaned forward, tilting her head, her eyes focused on his. He knew that look. He liked that look. He grabbed her strongly by her waist, pulling her on his lap. He wrapped Ae Ra’s body with his arms, nosing her neck taking in her wonderful scent. She circled his neck with her arms and caressed his back and head absentmindedly. He felt like taking a nap. Ae Ra always talked about how he was a strength for her. How he brought her peace and calm. But she had no idea how peaceful felt to be in her arms. How healing her warmth was. And it wasn’t that he was particularly stressed, but the world always drove him a bit mad. Too much noise and too many things going around. But being with Ae Ra felt as if she was stopping time, and he had time to breathe.

++++

She met with Mister Kim several times before the trail. He always came in with new information. He confessed that this was the first time he worked almost hand in hand with the prosecution “Next week we will present our evidence, they will say that it was all product of his schizophrenia and her drug abuse, and then we will ask for a sentence that the judge has to approve” “What sentence are you asking for?” “15 years…that’s the minimum” He clarified, but still it sounded like so much “He hasn’t been very collaborative with his lawyer. They could lower if he accepted that he is sick and needs treatment for example, but he isn’t doing it yet…in fact, he keeps repeating that you need to be put on trial” Ae Ra was worried about that. She had to be at the trail. And if he kept acting as he did before when encountering her, the situation wasn’t going to be pretty “What should I say? If I get ask if I am sending secrets messages through my music and all that, what should I say?” Junmyeon gave her a funny look. And when she heard what she just asked, she felt stupid “Ok, I know what I should say, no, of course, but how?” It was an honest question. Did she need to be calm? Or be emphatic? Maybe giggle before answer because it was a stupid question, should she bring proof that she wasn’t a dictator? “If they ask you, just say no, explain what your writing process is, what you write about, actually Joon Young told the police which are the songs with subliminal messages” He pulled a list of ten songs from one of the folders. They were all singles, of course “This is insane, this two are about summer, this one is about partying, this three are about not giving up and the rest are love songs” Junmyeon asked her if she wrote all of them. She did. He recommended her to bring the drafts for the songs, notebooks, etc, so they could have it on hand. Just in case. Their meeting went on for two hours. He had to go to the police station for the last bit of proofs “Miss Ji, we can’t make him go through therapy before the trial, I wish we could,  I will do my best so you both have a fair trial, but you have to remember that justice is here for a reason” “Why are you telling me that?” “Your manager and bodyguard told me that you could be thinking of drop all charges on him” Those bastards, how could they read her so well “Don’t worry Mister Kim, I will not do that, I trust you” He bowed at her smiling, and then left. A couple of minutes before he left, she got a message from him – Sorry, forgot to tell you that the trial is set for next Friday – She had to run to the bathroom for the sudden nausea she got.

+++++

She wasn’t surprised when she arrived at the court and a sea of reporters rushed to her. Chanyeol and Kyung Soo stayed next to her, unwavering. She didn’t answer any question as instructed by Mister Kim and walked inside the building. Head up, as Kyung Soo instructed. She was amazed at how she didn’t fade, even after not eating for almost a day. Her anxiety got the best of her and only water could go down her throat. Any solid thing was immediately rejected. It scared her a little bit. This was worse than on other occasions. She even had a pregnancy test, because of nausea. The idea of having to relive everything that happened in the last months. Every fear, every encounter disgusted her. Mister Kim promised her that she wouldn’t have to talk more than necessary, after all, there were proofs that spoke for themselves. But having to hear everything, as if someone was reading a horror novel to her, wasn’t appealing at all. Chanyeol, Kyung Soo, Mister Min, Sehun, Minseok, Baekhyun were witnesses. Specially Kyung Soo and Chanyeol since they were there at the worst attacks. She sat next to Junmyeon as a couple of journalists allowed at the courtroom arrived. She could recognize two girls from her fan site, a small group of people wearing t-shirts with her name on it and people from her agency. Time passed so slowly. Junmyeon told her that in 10 minutes Lee Joon Young was going to arrive. But those 10 minutes never passed. And then he arrived. And suddenly everything happened very fast. First thing Joon Young does when he arrives is lock eyes with her and grin menacingly. She looked away immediately and found Kyung Soo’s eyes looking at her. He looked peaceful as always. He smiled softly at her, and involuntarily she smiled back. How not to. And he did that for the rest of the trial until it was his turn to give a statement. Lee Joon Young remained quiet the entire time. When Chanyeol and Kyung Soo testified, Mister Kim asked them very specific questions, then the prosecutor did the same and Joon Young stayed quiet the entire time. Smiling sometimes, nodding or talking to himself. Ae Ra avoided his figure. He only looked at whoever was standing in the witness stand. She didn’t quite listen to what they were saying though. It was self-defense. The last one to give his statement was Mister Min. Ae Ra couldn’t avoid listening to him. He spoke seriously, but every word was charged with a fatherly feeling an emotionality. Once he was done, the defense had their turn. It all went as Junmyeon told her. The prosecutor did what he could with what little he had. He didn’t deny any accusation. And when he reached the motive for the attacks, his tone was apologetic. But the whole room reacted. Her agency never published the whole story. They all knew Ae Ra took the hiatus for the attacks, but no one knew who was attacking her, or how. The angriest ones were her fans. The small group that made it to the courtroom complained loudly at the lawyer and Lee Joon Young. She could feel the shade they were sending them. The defense finished and the judge called for a twenty minutes recess and left the room, so he could come back with the verdict. The police took Lee Joon Young to another room and Ae Ra went to sit between Chanyeol and Kyung Soo. He grabbed her hand and hid it under his coat, meanwhile Chanyeol and Baekhyun distracted her with silly comments. Junmyeon looked confident and it was contagious. She was feeling positive all of the sudden. This could end up soon and in the way she hoped. Twenty minutes passed. This time faster, and they all went back to their sits. The judge, a middle-aged man who looked bored started going over the case. Pointing out the facts, how believable the evidence presented was “After considering the evidence showed to me, listen to all the witnesses and considering the mental situation of the accused, besides him not being able to recognize it, I came to the decision that Mister Lee Joon Young will be sentenced to 15 years at psychiatrist facility designated by this court, where he will receive the treatment he needs to overcome his situation, but also serve his sentence for the several times he broke the law. Because even if the history that his mind was making up about Miss Ji and her intentions for the citizens of South Korea was true, killing her was never the answer. As she came to justice to clean this situation, he should have done the same” He hit the table with his hammer, and everybody stood up as he left. Joon Young lost it there. He started shouting that he wasn’t crazy and that she needed to be erased from here. Before he could keep shouting and getting himself another charge, two big bulky officers came and almost lifted him from the floor, taking him out. Hearing Joon Young’s loud voice scared her again, and she was sure the memory of it will keep making her jump in shock. She could hear him shout outside, until the sound was a low hum. No one celebrated. No one clapped. And she was thankful for it. Her fans didn’t try to talk to her out of respect, but she made sure to thank them for being there. She answered a couple of questions from the journalist but cut it short since she was planning on giving a press conference. After everybody left only her friends and boyfriend stayed with her. They didn’t congratulate her nor celebrate. They only hugged her and patted her back. There was nothing to celebrate really, so she was kind of relieved by her friends’ actions. They took their time to go out, although time wasn’t going to help. The journalists outside the court were able to wait for her under heavy rain if it was necessary. They resumed their positions and Chanyeol and Kyung Soo sandwiched her and walked outside, pushing back every daring journalist and photographer that came too close. She jumped inside the van, and went to the back seat, feeling exhausted “Now go straight home, take a bath, eat and then go to bed, we need you strong for tomorrows trial with Jin Tae Ri” Right, it wasn’t over yet, she thought, falling asleep on the back seat.

++++++

After the two trials, she stayed at her parents’ house for a couple of days. Her house was still surrounded by journalists. It was a very emotional visit. She didn’t inform them about all the things that happened to her this past month. She forbid them to go to the trial or google her and they obeyed. That’s why when she told them everything that happened, they broke into tears, especially her dad. She spend some good thirty minutes being hugged by them. Just like that time when she was 10 and broke her arm, they didn’t know what else to do to comfort her, to make the pain go away “But there is no more pain mom and dad” She assured them “And that’s the next thing that I want to talk about with you both…Kyung Soo you can come in now”. When Kyung Soo was driving her to her parent's place, she dropped the bomb “Since we are visiting them and is your shift, I will tell mom and dad that we are dating” He almost crash with the car ahead “Can you wait until we stop working together?” “Why?” “Well…what are they going to think about me? We started dating, we work together and we pretty much live together, that makes me look like a horrible man” She giggled and hold his hand “My mom already knows about us, and she doesn’t care, my dad is going to be busy thanking you for taking care of me and all that, don’t worry they are going to love you, and also, they are modern people, they got married after I was born and my mom is 7 years older than my dad and she was his boss at the company they worked” “I…ok…yeah it’s like us” “It’s not like us, because she was his boss and we are…” “Coworkers, yes, we are coworkers” He interrupted her, sounding exasperated but still smiling. He wasn’t smiling when he came to their living room though. He was dead serious, he was good at that. She gave him a signal to relax, but he ignored her. Kyung Soo sat on the sofa in front of them and remained silent “As mom already knows, so I guess dad you are informed too, Kyung Soo and I are dating” Kyung Soo bowed until his chest almost touched his knees. Ae Ra stood up and sat next to him, she didn’t like how lonely and sorry he looked there by himself “I’m aware of your relationship…I’m glad you brought him, we are going to have a couple of days to know each other better” “I’m sorry we have to meet under this circumstances Kyung Soo” Her mom spoke to him softly, smiling at him “I’m sorry I didn’t come here early ma’am” “Oh, those are silly details, don’t worry” Her dad got up and stood in front of Kyung Soo, signaling him to get up too. He did so with military obedience, and her dad immediately catch him in a hug “My wife told me all the great things about you, I know how much you have done for our daughter, I’m glad I can call you son from now on” She always knew she got her talent with words from her dad. After the crying and after her parents finally left Kyung Soo alone with all their hugs, she was able to get her boyfriend back and go for a walk with him. It was already dark outside and there were very few people on the streets. Kyung Soo bought two coffees and they walked for almost three hours around the neighborhood. She showed him her high school, her old house, the place where she took piano lessons since she was six, the laundromat where she worked for the first time “And last, the next year I was hired by my agency, the owner plays one of my records every day” “Were you a good employee?” “Of course I was…although one time I was careless and a red sock went inside a charge of white clothing…thank god it was my dad’s clothing, he wore pink shirts and t-shirts for months” Kyung Soo broke into a goofy laugh, his apple cheeks glistening in the night lights. It was so nice to see him laughing like that again.  It felt like in the past week everybody around her, including herself, were pained, or pitying and Kyung Soo wasn’t the exception. She knew why, she wasn’t going to blame him. He was always the one giving her calm and reassurance, but he was as human as she was, and he was only worried for her. But know everything was over. Jin Tae Ri and Lee Joon Young were sentenced, and they were going to receive the help they needed. Her agency was taking care of the press and arranging her press conference, and finally her marvelous fans were taking care of all the hate she could get in social media. Now her only worry was to go back to her normal life. She got a text from her mom telling them to go back home for a midnight snack, so they turned around and walked back, holding each other by the waist, sharing some warmth. It was three in the morning when they went to sleep. Her parents went to their room, Kyung Soo got a futon on the living room and she went to her room. She didn’t go to bed immediately though. She waited until her parents were asleep, to snick out of the room to the living room. She found him in bed already, but still awake “Ae Ra, go to sleep” He told her from under the covers “No, I want to cuddle, move” She got under the covers and pushed Kyung Soo to the side until her body was firmly pressed to his. Despite the initial response, he immediately enveloped her in his arms, kissing her nape “What if your parents come in?” “They are already sleeping, nothing can wake them up” He hugged her tighter, so she imagined he had already given up “I like your parents” “They like you” “Thank god, so we are really doing this? Dating?” She turned around in his embrace, curious “What do you mean? We have been dating for almost a month now” “Yes,  but now you introduce me to your parents, so is very official” He was right, kind of “Actually, we haven’t informed my other parents yet, my agency” Kyung Soo cursed under his breath “Look, I will take care of that, but only after Jongin starts working with me” “So this Monday” “That soon! Today is Thursday!” Kyung Soo covered her mouth, but it was too late, with some luck, her parents wouldn’t hear her yelling “If it helps, tomorrow Chanyeol will be with you, but I’m going to take Saturday and Sunday shift” That did help, a lot “And then on Monday Jongin will take over, but since you don’t have a schedule until Friday, Chanyeol and I will guide him through some stuff at your house and agency, so for some days you are going to have three bodyguards” Not bad, she thought “Kyung Soo, I still have to talk with my agency, but for the time being, I prefer us to keep dating in secret, I want to avoid any situation where you could get hurt, some fans can be very rude and hurtful, you don’t deserve going through those things… at least meanwhile all this fades off” “Whatever you want Ae Ra, I want the best for us, especially for you, I can only follow what you say in this matter, you know best, so whenever you feel ready, open up about us” She felt a burn in his heart, not a bad one. It was just a burst of something. That burst she felt whenever she saw him, but it was stronger when he said those kinds of things. Words of understanding, support, care and love. She planted a chaste kiss on his lips, because what else does one do on those situations. He smiled and she knew she did well. She caressed his cheeks, his cute ears and head “Are you willing to be kept in the shadows? I can’t tell the world about you, I can’t even take you out on dates” As she asked him, her voice broke. He was alarmed for a second, but then smiled at her again, returning her caresses “I don’t like going out that much either” She moved her hands away from his face and hugged him. His lips pressed against her forehead, hers resting on the base of his neck. Kyung Soo whispered different words of love until she fell asleep.

The next morning she was awakened by her mom “Ae Ra, wake up and go to your bed before your dad comes in, poor Kyung Soo would be mortified” She followed her mom’s order, half-awake, half asleep and was able to release herself from Kyung Soo’s grip. She saw Kyung Soo move peacefully on his sleep. It was still 7 in the morning, he still had some minutes of sleep left. As she closed the door of her room, a strange feeling settled in her chest. This peace and this homely feeling they have been sharing all this time were coming to an end. She was on her way to come back to her normal life. To the busy schedules, the airport life, the rumors and the lack of privacy. And despite all the things Kyung Soo told her that night, one could never know how he would actually feel when rumors of her dating another celebrity came out, or when she cancels dates, when she was so physically and emotionally exhausted that she didn’t want to see anyone or when the first possessive fans started attacking him. She trusted that he was brave and that he loved her. But this wasn’t about her. She was terrified of the mere thought of him getting hurt.

___

Note: After watching police show after police show (Bones, The Mentalist, Brooklyn 99, etc). After watching so many dramas with lawyers on it (Suspicious Partner, Lawless lawyer, While you were sleeping, etc) here I am forgetting every single term and how the law works. Fuck it.

Next week, last chapter!!

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 3x02-- The One Inspired by Roy Cohn

Thoughts under the cut!

I’m predicting it now: Despite the title of the episode, there is going to be MORE than one episode “inspired by Roy Cohn.” Lucky us.

We start off with Roland Blum, a new character I can already tell the Kings are enamored of, injecting something into his face while standing pantsless at a mirror. I will never care about these eccentric, obnoxious characters who take up more screentime than they need to. The only reason I don’t hate this scene is that it’s an effective introduction to the character.

Cut to: Maia in court. Someone’s allowed Maia to argue a case by herself! Her opening arguments are shaky and don’t land with the jury. I’ve also listened to them three times now and can’t make myself pay close enough attention to actually understand what happened, other than that a reporter was murdered (the return of “kill all reporters”), there may have been a hit man, and there are two separate defendants being tried at once.

Maia also calls this overly complicated and I’m not sure what is complicated. The idea of a hit man? How is that complicated? Whatever. Case stuff. The important thing is that the jury is as moved by Maia’s argument as I am.

Maia sounds like a student at their first mock trial. This girl made it three years in a law firm?!

Roland walks in during Maia’s argument and distracts everyone. Maia keeps going. That can’t be the best move.

Hey, it’s Matan Brody! Hi Matan!

Roland’s opening arguments are way more captivating than Maia’s. They’re also nonsense and idk much about the law but what he’s doing can’t be legal???

I think most of what I’m going to have to say about the Roland/Maia subplot is: (1) Ugh, he’s annoying and there’s too much of him. (2) At least he works better than past attempts at the rule-breaking disrupter characters (like Damian). I can actually see what the writers are trying to do and he’s doing that one thing effectively. He’s just ONLY doing that one thing. (3) Maia going to ~the dark side~ because no one takes her seriously when she follows the rules and puts in no extra effort would be kind of a compelling Maia plot, but also, it’s still a Maia plot and we could just give Lucca and Liz more screentime. Hopefully that makes this recap fast to write.

Julius brings in a candidate for the divorce law position. He’s another conservative lawyer, and Julius is optimistic about his chances.

And the candidate-- Geoffrey-- seems to get along with the partners. He doesn’t get along with Lucca, though. I thought Lucca was offered and basically told she had to accept this position last week? Did she turn it down and get put on a hiring committee? Was the role supposed to be temporary?

Anyway, Lucca’s noticed that most of Geoffrey’s clients are men. He blames his current firm for that.

Diane leaves the interview to talk to Marissa. Marissa’s got dirt on Eric and Don’s safari (which I didn’t think we’d hear about again!): They waited 48 hours to take Kurt to the hospital so they could shoot a giraffe.

Adrian is in favor of hiring Geoffrey and notes he’ll bring in 6 divorce clients. For those of you who have more legal expertise than I do, what does this mean? Is there any business in a divorce once it’s finalized?

Lucca disagrees, but doesn’t say anything until Liz specifically asks for her opinion (which, I imagine, Liz does partially because she wants to hear from Lucca but mostly because she knows that Lucca will voice something it wouldn’t be politically advantageous for Liz to say). Lucca thinks they should look for “someone who doesn’t only look at the men in the room.” Oof.

Julius decides to play rank for the second time in two weeks-- this is a “partner-level decision.” But Liz again asks for Lucca’s opinion to be heard, and says they should keep looking.

After the meeting concludes, Liz takes Lucca aside and asks her if she wants the job. Lucca says she doesn’t know. “Well, decide, because this guy is way ahead of you and I’m gonna have to vote for him unless you can make a strong case against it,” Liz says. I love how direct Liz is in this scene. She’s giving Lucca an opportunity but also making it very clear that Lucca can’t waffle on this decision or take her time.

Before he leaves, Geoffrey drops an important bit of information: Julius is at the top of the list for a federal judgeship. Oooh.

Adrian isn’t pleased with Liz. He wants to know why she encouraged Lucca to “rip into [Geoffrey] Payton.” Offering a valid criticism of a potential hire is “ripping into” someone? Okay, Adrian.

“Geoffrey Payton makes sense for this firm, Liz,” Adrian says in that mansplainy tone he so often adopts. I think he’s done it to male characters too, but he has a habit of adding the name of the person he’s talking to at the end of a sentence where he states his opinion as fact. Does Geoffrey Payton make sense for the firm? Maybe to him. But Liz doesn’t need to be told that.

Liz isn’t happy that Geoffrey is conservative. “Liz, you’re bringing politics into this in a way that’s not…” Adrian starts. Liz cuts him off to remind him that politics is already in this (she’s right).

“I’m trying not to let politics get in the way of moving the firm forward,” Adrian explains. “And this is our first hire since our fresh start, so I am having a second look, okay?” Liz counters.

“So. I guess we’re back to ‘who are we?’” Adrian says. Well, yeah, because all you said was that you didn’t have a past. “I don’t think we ever left it,” Liz replies.

“But you do agree we should be looking ahead to the future?” Adrian questions, even though that was Liz’s idea in the first place. (Also that’s supposed to be italicized; I don’t think Tumblr has been keeping my italics when I copy this out of Word. Apologies for confusion.)

Liz sees right through Adrian: “A future where Trump wins in 2020.” Adrian acts like that’s ridiculous, but Liz keeps going: “I see what you’re doing. These associates you’re trying to hire, and this partner. You want to bring in more conservative voices.”

“We’re hiring a matrimonial attorney, Liz,” Adrian explains in his explaining voice. He says politics don’t matter. But Liz (correctly!!!) insists that this is about the makeup of the firm, that this is “exactly WHO we are.” She’s right. (I am now using ALL CAPS instead of italics for emphasis, but only when I remember lollol.)

How did Liz Reddick become my favorite character on this show!? (Well, maybe tied for #1 with Lucca.) I find everything Liz does interesting. She’s smart, she’s strategic, she’s layered and flawed, and she’s so well-written and well-acted. I didn’t think a character introduced as Alicia’s enemy could be someone I like so much, but I was wrong.

(It’s interesting to me that Liz and Alicia were ever rivals. I can see it, because I think they have very different personalities and approaches even if they could agree on many things in many settings. I would also guess that law school Alicia was quiet and reserved and law school Liz was opinionated and confident. Wouldn’t surprise me if Liz was the type to constantly offer Alicia unsolicited advice about how she should live her life (or argue in court) when Alicia was doing just fine without her. I don’t think Liz does that NOW, but it’s something I could very easily see young Liz doing. And young Alicia probably acted distant because she didn’t know how to react. And now back to the show instead of whatever Liz/Alicia related tangent I’ve somehow gotten myself onto.)

Then Liz QUOTES AUDRE LORDE as part of her explanation for why a fresh start and hiring Trump supporters are not the same thing. Liz!!!!!!

Adrian acts like he has the same goal as Liz and a different approach to achieving it, but I’m not sure he does. Where’s the dismantling of the master’s house (mentioned in the Lorde quote) in Adrian’s plan? What I’m hearing is that the firm is going to become more white (based on promos) and more conservative, which will benefit… the firm. How is that going to dismantle anything? Seems to me like Liz wants to create a firm with a mission (that’s also profitable) and Adrian wants profit (and sure it’s nice to be on the right side of political issues when possible).

Goodie. The case is back. As I mentioned, this is my third time through the episode. The first time through I was mildly interested. Second time through I was checking my phone. Trying to write about this? Mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Blum is obnoxious and ridiculous and SO LOUD and accuses Matan of being the killer, and Maia looks annoyed and doesn’t know what to do.

Even though I wouldn’t wish this man on Alicia, he’s the kind of character she would’ve been able to deal with and hold her ground against. Maia talks back.

Diane scrolls through Eric’s Instagram, dismayed. When she gets home, Kurt is tying ribbons on beer bottles because they’re celebrating his new job at the VA. It’s a job that will keep him in Chicago, so he can stay!

Kurt calls Diane “Mrs. McVeigh” which is kinda cute and kinda weird and since Diane doesn’t have a problem with it I don’t have a problem with it.

Diane and Kurt are ADORABLE together and I love how much we’ve already gotten this year of them just being a couple. I said repeatedly throughout TGW’s run that one character asking another, “How was your day?” was more meaningful to me than any steamy sex scene or passionate kiss or moment of tension. These scenes are why I said that. Diane seems like a different, happier, more playful person when she’s around Kurt. Watching Diane and Kurt flirt in their own bedroom tells me so much about why they work as a couple.

The only catch to Kurt’s new job? He was recommended by Eric and Don. Diane asks why it took them so long to get him to the hospital, and Kurt shakes it off like it’s nothing.

“I’ll be doing what I think is important, and it allows us to be together,” Kurt explains as he says he’s taking the job. “And that trumps everything else.” “Oh, don’t use that word!!!” Diane screams. I. FEEL. THAT.

I like how there are two cases filled with guns in Diane and Kurt’s bedroom/sitting room. The rest of the room is so completely Diane and then there are guns.

Diane takes out her aggression at aikido.

In the hallway at court, some man comes up to Maia and starts yelling at her about how much money he’s lost. “My money went to your pocket, you fucking Rindell!” he accuses. The way he says “you fucking Rindell!” makes it sound like “a Rindell” is an insult and not a name and it amuses me just a little.

“It was my father. It wasn’t me,” Maia fights back. You’d think she’d have found a better way to address this by now. It’s been two years and being defensive cannot possibly be the best strategy. She could try, “I know. I’m sorry, and that’s why I turned my dad in to the feds.” Or just not engaging.

Blum comes to her rescue. Now he’s intrigued: he’s gross, so he RESPECTS Maia’s cartoon villain father. He hadn’t realized Maia was a Rindell, since in the time between last episode and this one she changed her name on her stupid website to “Maia Hanson”.

It’s time for another soliloquy!!! It’s Lucca’s turn and I’m pleased to report that this week, we are talking bruise free!

“So what do I do, Joseph? Huh?” she addresses her sleeping baby. Then she starts singing and in the process gets a song stuck into my head.

“If I fight to take over the divorce practice, I have to put in even more hours, which takes me away from you for even longer. And I love being with you. Isn’t that odd? I never thought I’d be one of those women. But here I am, talking like the world revolves around you,” she begins.

“I feel like I’m missing out on something when I’m with you, and I feel physically ill when I’m away from you. But when I saw that lawyer today, I thought… I could run motherfucking rings around him,” I love that first sentence. I like that she doesn’t say she’s missing out either way and acknowledges that being away from her baby makes her feel differently than being away from her job. That’s not really something you hear people admit that often, and it’s why the soliloquy works well here.

“So, less time at work and more time with you? Or less time at work and I forget about the partner track, which I have worked my ass off for. And it’s not just about ambition, either, I mean, how do I pay for schools?” Lucca’s such an interesting character to become a parent. Independence has been her thing since we met her: She didn’t have friends, and, hell, she didn’t even have a boss. I still can’t figure out why she was working as a bar attorney when we first met her, but I would bet that the fact she didn’t have to answer to anyone was a big part of it. (Also wouldn’t shock me if Lucca didn’t go to one of the top law schools and had trouble finding a job at a big firm until Alicia saw her potential.)

She asks for a sign from the baby and the baby farts. Dunno what that means but it’s a funny way of ending Lucca’s monologue and making her realize she knows what choice she wants to make.

She calls Liz and says she wants the job. I think Lucca will be happy with that decision. Sure, she could pass it up and make her way back to the partner track (this isn’t the only chance she’ll get), but asserting herself now will show everyone, especially Liz, she’s serious about her commitment to the firm. And it seems to be a fast-track to partnership, so she’ll be making more money faster.

Anyway, I really liked Lucca’s soliloquy. I can’t speak to how hard it is to be a working mom since I don’t have kids, but I appreciate that FINALLY, someone other than Alicia (or Caitlin lol) is dealing with this question. At least based on what I’ve heard from others who DO have kids, the way Lucca phrases her options and the trade-offs seems realistic.

I can’t really figure out the meaning of the song choice (Lucca’s singing again) but I think it works.

Diane arrives home to find Kurt putting on a tie. There’s more flirty banter. Kurt explains he’s going to a cocktail party for work and he thought Diane wouldn’t want to come to a Republican fundraiser. But Diane wants to come.

“You won’t like it. Eric and Don are speaking,” he warns. “Are you kidding?! Eric and Don!?!? I have lived my life for this moment! What shall I wear?!” Diane responds. Just writing out the line doesn’t do it justice. Christine Baranski’s delivery of these lines is flawless and hilarious.

Also Diane CERTAINLY has a bigger closet than that.

Now Maia and Blum are at his “office” and Blum takes off his pants, does a ton of drugs, and reassures Maia he’s “not going to fuck her.” He doesn’t use the words “try to” in that sentence which makes me even more uncomfortable than I already was.

Blum tells Maia that you don’t make the story fit the evidence, you make the evidence fit the story. Yawn. You can also win by telling a strategic story. There are some arguments I’ve heard on this show (and TGW) so many times I’m just tired of them. One is that you have to represent Lemond Bishop/Colin Sweeney types if you want to be profitable, which is complete bullshit that does not justify taking them on as clients. Another is quickly becoming this “a story is more interesting than facts, so what if we just lie???” idea. It’s interesting, but didn’t W418 (Peter punching Kresteva; Vero lying to the kids) and F207 (Liz’s impeachment strategy) cover this? What more is Roland Blum going to add to this discussion? Because, entertaining as some of his antics may be (and I don’t even think they’re entertaining), is whatever point they’re trying to make going to be worth what’s sure to be a large portion of screentime? I highly doubt it.

Blum tells Maia some nonsense about how she is “in prison” and doesn’t know what it’s like to be free. Then he gives her a fentanyl lollipop. Go the fuck away, dude. (I do like that he seems to insist that Maia can be corrupted because he respects her shitty father. I don’t think I’m ever going to love this arc but that’s a smart way to mention Papa Rindell: As an icon for other pieces of shit.)

Blum also tells Maia about his hero, Roy Cohn. He goes so far as to say Roy Cohn lives on through him.

I did not know much at all about Roy Cohn, so I can say that this song does a very good job of explaining who he is. It’s also really funny and catchy. I’m on board with these Good Fight shorts. The animation in this one is particularly inspired.

Blum explains lying. I get it. He’s terrifyingly awful. Moving on.

Wait no not moving on, what the fuck is a “wet pussy” going to do for Maia in court?

Now moving on for real: Diane and Kurt arrive at the fundraiser, and Diane baits (though it doesn’t take much effort) the guests into saying offensive shit, which she records.

Kurt tells her delete the recording, and she doesn’t fight over it too much. She deletes it. (I wonder if she has another copy saved. I don’t think she does, but I won’t be shocked.)

Diane takes out her aggression at aikido again, but when the instructor tells her she’s hitting too hard and begins to talk (for some reason) about a Jewish conspiracy (I thought the cut in the promo was funnier than the cut in the episode), she realizes she needs a new outlet.

Badass!Maia’s theme returns. She’s carried the fentanyl lollipop INTO THE COURTHOUSE and is still toying with the idea of sucking on it. Maia, throw it in the fucking garbage. You owe this man nothing.

Is it really weird that, despite having seen characters in the courthouse elevator numerous times and despite the fact that the view out the window is of other buildings, I’ve somehow always just thought the courtrooms were all on the first floor of the building? This makes no sense, and I don’t think I ever registered that I thought they were all on the first floor, but it caught me off-guard this episode that they were higher up.

Maia taunts Blum about the lollipop and he responds with some sexism and by telling Maia she’s a disappointment to her father. I would hope to disappoint that scumbag. I can’t think of a higher compliment tbh.

Oh, the witness who was in a Bishop case and also played a role in Cary’s case in season 6 is here. Case stuff happens.

Blum asks Maia to act outraged when he signals her to, AND SHE DOES. Maia, you don’t have to listen to him and be complicit in Blum trying to blame MATAN BRODY for this murder.

I think Maia enjoys this little act of rebellion (and the approval of Blum) and oh boy, we’re in for a ride. As I said earlier, entitled white girl decides to act out because it’s just now occurred to her she can be “bad” and she gets a thrill out of it is a plot that makes sense for Maia, but also, it’s kinda insufferable. At least she’s working.

“I want to run divorce law,” Lucca declares. “You’re a fourth year, Lucca,” Adrian counters. There he goes again, belittling female colleagues by saying their name at the end of sentences! Also, how is it possible that Maia’s a third year and Lucca’s a fourth year? Lucca said she was a third year in season 1, episode 2.

Lucca turns her lack of experience into a selling point: she’s eager. Liz approves.

“You just had a baby, Lucca,” Adrian responds. Oh, my God. That sentence. That one. That is everything I’m trying to say about Adrian’s casual sexism. It is not ADRIAN’S business that Lucca just had a baby. And even if he believes she might not actually give her all to the job (which is sexist) he shouldn’t be TELLING her she just had a baby. I’m pretty fucking sure she remembers giving birth and remembers that she has a baby. And he caps off that delightful sentence with Lucca’s name, in that same damn tone he’s always using.

(To be clear I think Adrian having a hint of sexism in him is an interesting-- and intentional-- choice on the part of the writers. I’m just ranting about the attitude, not about the writing.)

Adrian decides they’ll interview Lucca like they interviewed the other candidates, and Lucca agrees.

“Ah, you’re lining up your women’s army,” Adrian says to Liz as soon as Lucca leaves. “No, I just want what’s best for the firm,” Liz retorts. Yeah, it’s a women’s army when Liz hires a woman, but a “smart decision” when Adrian hires a man. OK COOL NO PROBLEMS THERE. “Bullshit,” Adrian says.

Yes, because if Liz disagrees with him on what’s best for the firm and, gasp, thinks alienating female clients and passing over their own talent (because their own talent just had a baby) is not good for the firm, it’s clearly just a GENDER WAR. Can’t be a valid reason for that! Liz just thinks boys have cooties and wants the firm to be GIRLS ONLY because GIRLS RULE AND BOYS DROOL. Yes. That MUST BE IT.

Liz tracks down Lucca after the meeting and gives her more advice. She tells her to bring in some clients to prove her worth to the firm.

Do I think Liz is doing this in part because it’s advantageous to her for Lucca to get the job? Yes. Do I think it’s only advantageous to Liz because Lucca’s great and she truly thinks Lucca’s a good fit for the job? Also yes.

Lucca phones Francesca while simultaneously instructing Marissa to dig up some dirt on her competition. Francesca has a book club full of wealthy women in need of divorces (convenient!) and Lucca’s not above using it. I’m not even sure she’d hesitate for even a second.

Francesca’s totally on board and sets up a “Sip and See” where her book club will come see baby Joseph. It works. Francesca sings to Joseph, “Mom and Dad split and I don’t care!” and lollollol this child is going to have quite the life.

Maia and Blum end up at a hospital to claim illegal drugs (unclear how Maia drives all the way to a place before realizing it’s different from the place she went yesterday. Methinks Maia is more curious about Roland Blum than she’s letting on.). You know, I’m not even tempted to type out all the obnoxious things he does and says? It’s just the ones that pertain to plot I feel the need to type out, because the others are just outlandish stuff for shock value. I am quickly becoming as unfazed by Blum’s bullshit as Alicia was by Sweeney’s creepiness. And I don’t mean that in a “desensitized” way. I just don’t care. I already understand who he is and no naked extras or drugs or provocative statements are going to add anything to my understanding. They are also NOT FUN. I want to make that clear. I am NOT AMUSED. Let’s get on with the point here and spend less time on his antics.

(Wow, I was not this off-put by Roland Blum the first time through the episode, but the third time? I’m already done with his entire arc.)

I used to think “trust, but verify” was a Bree Van de Kamp quote and I’m just now realizing it’s a Reagan quote. Well, that joke went over my head when I was 12.

Why is Maia even wasting her time with this guy? Is she going to check in with anyone at the firm on this?

His “trial strategy” is to repeat what he said about lying. Cool. This was useful.

Diane’s found a new outlet: axe throwing. It does seem like a good way to get out aggression!

Blum exists, case stuff happens, Maia wears a horrible suit.

Tara, who has previously cared a lot about privacy, shows up at RBL to confront Diane. Naomi’s contacted her about the abortion. Diane denies knowing anything (and by denies, I mean she lies to Tara’s face) and subtly suggests it was one of the other many people Tara told. “This is supremely shitty,” Tara says on her way out. Yes, yes it is.

“Do you want the result on that Geoffrey Payton check?” Marissa asks Lucca. No, she just wanted Marissa to have some fun investigating!

Lucca goes into her interview prepared. She’s brought in 3 new cases, compared to Geoffrey’s 6, and hers (unlike his) are more than just divorces. (Again, I don’t see how six divorce cases is that helpful. Are these six men going to get divorced multiple times a year?)

Lucca’s also got some dirt, in case proving her worth wasn’t enough. Payton is a Republican, but he’s also one of the attorneys who prepped Kavanaugh. Lucca’s wise enough to know that’s some sticky content right there. (“Okay, let’s just keep politics out of this, Lucca,” Adrian says and I’m only noting it because, again, TONE.)

Diane picks up a flier for the resistance at the axe bar. Nothing to say about this, but it’s obviously a plot point.

Case stuff happens, there’s a mistrial (unclear if this is a good move that plays out badly on Maia’s part or a stupid one she hadn’t thought through), now we have to deal with this in a future episode too. Did I mention that this is totally disconnected from the rest of the episode? I’d be totally fine if it continues to be disconnected since it’s way easier to block out bad plots that affect nothing than bad plots that get wound into the fabric of the show. This isn’t a bad plot YET but I love everything else going on and I’m SO DONE with this.

(I should not watch Roland Blum plots three times.)

I think I’m even skipping over the bigger character based moments of that plot. They all involve Maia and no matter how many times the writers show me that Maia’s becoming more bold, I am not going to care about Maia unless they give me a reason to care about her. On a show where every other character is so complex and captivating, why should I devote any attention to Maia Rindell?

The Rindell hater is back, showing Maia what he’s lost. “What the fuck do I care?” Maia replies as she puts on her sunglasses. I imagine it can’t be easy dealing with constant harassment and she personally owes this dude nothing, but I’m not about to applaud her for telling someone her parents hurt to fuck off. And those sunglasses are ridiculous.

(It’s not the sunglasses themselves as much as it’s the way she puts them on like they’re magic and she’s the biggest badass in the world. This is like the X rated version of that episode of Lizzie McGuire where Lizzie gets detention and decides she wants to pierce her nose to be like the rebellious girl who bullied her in detention. The biggest difference, other than the profanity, is that Maia is an adult.)

Lucca gets the job! Yay!

Julius lets Geoffrey know he didn’t get it, and either Geoffrey didn’t really care or Julius is more opportunistic than I thought, because he asks if he’s still being considered for a judgeship. Really, Julius?

Diane and Liz go to deliver Lucca the good news. This isn’t Diane’s victory but I can see why she claims it as hers. Lucca’s holding the “if you’re happy and you know it” dog, and she is, indeed, happy. I’m surprised the dog didn’t start singing.

Adrian is waiting in Liz’s office when she returns from the 22nd floor. “So, you won,” Adrian says. “We all won,” Liz replies. “No, I don’t think so. Geoffrey was the smarter choice for the firm. Lucca was the smarter choice for you,” Adrian replies. What does that even mean? What does Liz get out of having Lucca in the position, and why is what Liz wants not “for the firm”? I need Adrian to explain.

“I told Lucca she needed new clients. She got three in one night,” Liz counters. “And the partners didn’t care about that. They cared about the dirt that she dug up on him,” Adrian dismisses Liz. Why can’t it be both? They wouldn’t vote FOR Lucca if they didn’t also think she was competent. From what we’ve seen, divorce law is mainly digging up dirt on others and not being afraid to use it, and that’s exactly what Lucca did (this is Liz’s next point, more or less). If the partners were dismayed about Payton’s connections but didn’t think Lucca was up to it, they’d just… keep looking for candidates.

“Play dirty. Manipulate. Backstab,” Adrian says. He says this like these are new dirty tactics Lucca’s pioneered at the firm, like LUCCA QUINN is going to corrupt the firm. PLEASE. Adrian has done all of these things. As Liz points out, Adrian ENCOURAGES all of these things. And what Lucca did here was mild. She asked for the job? She did a background check and made the facts look good for her? And sure, what she dug up was sensational, but it’s no worse than what they dig up on opponents in court on a weekly basis. That doesn’t make it okay, but I’m not going to draw the line here when this is one of the least dirty/manipulative/backstabby things anyone’s done on the show. (Also who is she even backstabbing?)

“So we answered the question, ‘who are we?’” Adrian replies. “Yep. Welcome to the thunderdome,” Liz says with a smile. So you decided you’re a firm that doesn’t know who you are. Best of luck with that. I’m Team Liz.

Tara’s being harassed by the press and Diane’s only reaction is to say “I’m sorry” to a screen and look at a flier for the resistance.

(Hey, does Diane get a say in who the firm is?)

[ashwithswag101]

I need to say something

I know everyone is going all out on Pink Diamond and their theories on how she was shattered, specifically who was responsible. Normally it's thrown around that it was Yellow Diamond or White Diamond but…where are we to judge? We were told Pink Diamond was a pure cinnamon roll who was a victim of circumstance. What we got was a spoiled brat who although we ADORE her, she's NOTHING like we thought she'd be.

So why are we judging White Diamond so quickly?

So this is just a rant. I'm writing my point across because I'm trying understand what immediately points people to Yellow or White.

Why Yellow is probably innocent:

Yellow has shown remorse for the loss of her fellow Diamond when she sings "What's the use of Feeling Blue?" where she is singing to Blue Diamond, asking why she would drown herself in regret and mourn for THIS long. At the end we see her growing upset of Pink, who by her size is probably off colored, and is trying not to let a single tear appear as she's trying to get it together but as the song repeats "What's the use of feeling?" she questions herself.

YELLOW CARED ABOUT PINK A LOT.

We may not see it as plainly in Jungle Moon as she says things and does things really differently than we'd expected. Now assuming this is like the theory where this was an EXTREMELY early memory of Pink's, Yellow may have just started to get acquainted with Pink being around her. She did however call her "honey" so I'm assuming 1) if this Theory holds up then maybe Yellow was talking like she normally would. Then I look back at how she acts with Blue but let's not forget, she was trying to bring Blue to her senses, not having any type of "normal" conversation. In fact, Connie's own mother was in place of Yellow Diamond. This means Yellow was at the very least a family figure. I don't care who you are in the family, when someone is older than you, you immediately think "well they're very authoritative" until you turn 16. 2) Like I mentioned, it still could be earlier on but some time after Pink's birth. Enough time in fact that she at least felt like calling her that. Think of that sister or brother you've had for a few months and you say shortened versions of their names or give them nicknames like "boo boo" "little bean" or "darlin'". Guys,

YELLOW IS NOT TO HAVE LIKELY BEEN THE GUILTY PARTY!

Oh but what about the trial, you ask? Well, let me ask you something…think hard on this one. You have the criminal everyone says shattered your beloved relative anD THEN THE LAWYER SUDDENLY TURNS TOWARDS YOU AND SHOUTS THAT YOU MAY HAVE KILLED THEM INSTEAD! Do you see my point? Yellow didn't get frustrated and zap the Zircons because she shattered Pink but because THEY DARED to think a DIAMOND, someone they cherished, WOULD HURT ANOTHER DIAMOND!! It was so ridiculous to Yellow that she lashed out!

Why White Diamond may possibly be innocent:

This one is more so your perception. How did you picture her absence? In my head I thought that she was OFFICIALLY DONE with all this mess. Like in every group there is the Strategy, the Muscle, the Heart, and the Spirited. I like to think that when we meet White Diamond, she will be the mind, the strategist of the group. The Athena of the gods, if you will. Yellow Diamond is probably more so on a war like side so I've pictured her as Ares and GUYS! This has to somehow be similar! From what we've seen, Blue is mournful and at times angry around her subjects. I HONESTLY think that Blue and Pink had a Demeter and Persephone relationship; aka a mother and daughter relationship. Pink is the spirit, thinks should have whatever wants and does what she feels like if she can get away with it.

But white…White is hiding from everyone. I feel like she might have become more withdrawn. Pink has been shattered and from all we can see is that Bkue isn't finished with her mourning; Yellow finished rather quickly and did things as she did before by my guessing, but White… What if…and only what if, White had been more social based? We all must have heard the theory that she may have some type of perception of the mind but wouldn't that mean you have to talk as well? They're are many people I've read who can control people or change people with their mind and the majority of them are SOCIAL BUTTERFLIES. What if Pink's shattering hurt White so deeply that she had become withdrawn, doing her work like Yellow but still mourning like Blue? What if somewhere in between she was able to move on…she was able to accept Pink was gone and that they would rise from this but this still left emotional damage. White started to be more like Yellow, didn't socialize as normal and why? As where Yellow is okay going to where Pink used to be and believes she won't cry, White probably believes she will.

So why would she go to a trial where she would see Pink's murderer?

Guys, white has had enough. She didn't want to go on this roller coaster of emotions again. She didn't want to remember Pink! Like Yellow she wants it behind her, but that's also where they differ. White did leave it. She didn't go to the trial. Yellow, on the other hand, did. Yellow can't leave it even though she wants to. White agreed to the war because THAT was her closure!

This is why we can't judge them like this. This is why we can't point fingers to someone we don't know.

But what is my opinion on what happened? Well, I don't know. How could I? They're are SEVERAL theories that Pink is actually Rose, that Pink shattered herself, there's also the two Pink Diamond theory. Who knows, Rebecca might curve us one and reveal Pink was never actually shattered and the only reason Eyeball thought she was shattered could be that she disappeared after seeing Rose Quartz.

What am I suggesting? Something completely out of fanfiction. Something that will make you people slap me, probably. I honestly don't know WHAT happened or who did it. But how did Rose know she couldn't exist with Steven? There'd have to be ANOTHER hybrid for her to know. I'm suggesting that Pink Diamond may have fallen in love with a human. THINK ABOUT IT! Yes, she may have fallen in love with nature but COME ON! She was raised in a place where she was to disregard it. I think she didn't see it, like most gems, until she saw the humans. The humans grew scared, thinking they did something to displease their gods. One human male with no other half walked up and SPOKE to Pink. Pink was probably baffled and this only grew her interest in humans. She probably spoke a lot to this ONE human. He told her things about humanity. He explained they're needs, wants, pleasures; and at the time, nature was indeed a type of pleasure. Humans in this age RESPECTED nature. They LOVED it. Nature gave them a home, gave them food! This changed Pink's outlook on the nature of Earth and decided to preserve it. Pink still needed more information. She evidently WANTED to experience some of their 'pleasures' and surely fell in love with that male. They didn't know how this would work though. After researching, giving so much life to the Zoo, she decided she would have a child despite the low survival rate of women.

She tell Rose Quartz the day of her supposed "shattering" and when she leaves she gave birth, making her physical form disappear. The male took his child and ran somewhere safe. Eyeball ASSUMED she was shattered by Rose Quartz. Rose knew about the child and when she was still fight the war, found the male taking care of the child. Rose asked questions and THIS is how she knew she wouldn't be able to stay when she had Steven. It's also very logical, and even if it wasn't the case, that Pink shattered herself; let's think this over. Pink is probably a hot mess. She feels the need to prove herself because of Yellow. White? Well, she gave her this planet. White most likely set expectations. Ones she believed Pink could complete, which Yellow may have argued with. Blue was there to act as a compromise for Yellow, saying she'd help.

Well that's all I've got to say…This whole thing was to show how much I dislike us pointing fingers because WE DONT KNOW what happened. I wanted to be the opposition to the "White shattered Pink" theory. Thank you for your time!

[reekierevelator]

Open and Shut

‘It’s Twelve Angry Men all over again isn’t it?’ I grinned with jocular nervousness. But there were actually fifteen of us in the Edinburgh High Court jury - eleven men and four women.

No-one replied. The men, of various ages, all stony-faced, fixed their eyes on mine. Their deafening silence seemed to loudly declare ‘it’s black and white, an open and shut case’.

The usher left, closed the heavy door, and within two minutes a bluff, thirty-ish man in a dark grey suit and open-necked white shirt had become foreman merely by proposing himself and finding no-one else volunteering when he asked.

He scowled and said ‘I don’t know why they bother to bring this stuff to court anyway.  Waste of bloody money.  The woman’s obviously been around. You just need to look at her. Look, let’s just have a show of hands and we can all get off home again pretty quick.’

Hands were duly raised. Fourteen to one.

           I heard the mutual intake of breath and their eyes going through me like lasers. I muttered ‘But, well, ‘it’s a rape case, isn’t it? Surely rape cases are never as simple as that?’

The four women jurors – two older, one middle-aged, and one younger – turned their heads towards me somewhat balefully, pityingly, seeing me as an innocent abroad not yet wise to the ways of the world.  Nevertheless, I felt encouraged enough to continue.

‘Ok, the woman, the victim, she’s not perfect, she’s not the ideal human being I grant you, but then again who is?  And you certainly don’t have to be perfect to be the victim of serious crime, do you?  Anyway, it’s not her that’s on trial; it’s that man, the one in the dock with the aggressive, superior look on his face. We all heard the police evidence, laying bare all his dubious sexual practices, his even more dubious prior sexual encounters.

‘Hey,’ the foreman barked, interrupting, ‘the judge said to disregard that stuff about his sexual practices. He said the so-called evidence wasn’t gathered correctly.’

And the smirks round the table said ‘boys will be boys’ and there’s no accounting for their peculiar sexual proclivities. The men’s eyes narrowed as they focused on me, deeply suspicious, a traitor in their ranks.

‘And his explanation that the woman approached his car with him having any forewarning, opened his car door, sat down beside him, kissed him and started undoing the buttons on his shirt.  Well, I mean, how likely is that?  He’s a total stranger and she’s a married woman just out with some pals for a laugh and a giggle on a Saturday night and she’s just stepped outside the club a minute to smoke a cigarette.’

‘Happens all the time,’ insisted the foreman sternly. ‘Wild women out there.  Especially with a drink in them.’ And then concluded the character assassination with ‘She admitted to three gin and cokes didn’t she?’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I just don’t even think the Crown Office would fork out the money to bring this case if they didn’t think the police had established good grounds for possible conviction.  And that woman, I mean, would she go and put herself through all the police hassle and shocking indignity of an internal examination if she didn’t feel really wronged? I mean, I don’t have any axe to grind. It’s not like this is Runaway Jury is it?’

But by the angry blank looks it seemed they didn’t like Grisham’s book or the insinuation of a conspiracy to fix a jury was lost on them. I ignored their frowns and shaking heads and struggled on regardless.  

‘I mean’ I said, ‘is everyone so convinced of his innocence that we don’t feel we need any discussion at all?’  

Shoulders shrugged round the room. Some, like the foreman, replied emphatically ‘That’s right, we don’t’.  

‘But she definitely said “No” didn’t she?’ She said she said “no” I insisted. ‘And no means no doesn’t it?’

‘Only got her word for it,’ said the foreman.

Another male juror added that ‘Maybe she did say that. But she would say that, wouldn’t she? She’s not going to admit she fancied a bit of rough.’ He was a little guy, early twenties, going prematurely bald under his habitual baseball cap.

An older man, in flared trousers, who looked like he’d never left the nineteen-seventies behind, made his contribution: ‘That no means no stuff – it’s just political correctness gone mad.  It’s just words, slogans. It doesn’t mean anything.’

The implication, that women say no but mean yes, hung heavily in the air.  

The women looked pained but said nothing. It was 2010 and I was left wondering whether I was dreaming or if I had mistakenly wandered on to the set of Life on Mars or Ashes to Ashes.

‘Asking for it, I’d say.  Got into the car with him, didn’t she?  Didn’t jump out when he drove her off to that secluded bit of the car park, did she? Probably asked him to do that.’ The self-appointed foreman was aggressively insistent.

‘She couldn’t jump out, the car was moving,’ I argued, trying to keep calm. It was strange in the jury room.  It was like the Lord of the Flies. There was no teacher, priest, lawyer, or any kind of external authority or respected superior intellectual being to hold sway over us, to interrupt a juror’s tirade of prejudice. There was only the foreman, and of the people in the room I was the only one he felt the need to interrupt.

‘Remember, he drove the car to that secluded spot so he was away from the street lights, away from any passing vehicles.  Must have barely been able to see where he was going.  But I’m guessing he must have been there before.’

‘Now you’re just making things up,’ shouted the foreman, his face reddening. ‘If you ask me, if anyone knew that quiet corner it was that woman.’

The women jurors remained quietly tense, occasionally twitching, but mainly looking resigned.  One chewed her bottom lip as she stared at the floor.  Their body language spoke volumes: nothing changes, it said, we’ve heard it all before, keep your head down, just let it pass over and hope for the best.

Three days of evidence, nuanced legal deliberations over what details to take into account, what to disregard, and the implications of specific points of law, it all went for a burton. It was like none of it had ever happened.  Three days of legal instruction counted for nothing against lifetimes of hard won experience and habitual responses.  The aggressive male and the passive female were resurrected as if from a 1950s movie.

And there was no Henry Fonda in the jury room.  No subway train, no commonplace knife to trace, and no self-serving witness either.  There was no runaway juror with a secret agenda, no conspiracies going on inside or outside the room.  Just fifteen people feeling out of place, disconcerted and uncomfortable.  There was no black and white, just shades of grey. There were no puzzles awaiting perfect solutions, just jigsaw pieces that didn’t fit together too well, some pieces missing, and players under pressure to declare the fit near enough right or near enough wrong.

An idea sprang to mind. ‘Do you remember A Time To Kill?’ I asked. Consternation once again registered on my fellow jurors. ‘Where the father of the black girl who was raped by Southern rednecks shoots the perpetrators and then, at his trial, he’s acquitted when his lawyer’s sums up and ends up asking the all-white jury what they would do if the girl had been white.’

More moans and sighs, chairs scraping, calls to shut up, and someone saying ‘This has got nothing to do with films’, and then baseball cap shouting ‘She’s a woman, she’s white, you’re a numpty.’

‘Ah’, I called over the hubbub, ‘but what if this white woman had been a white man?’ More frowns, the question regarded as unintelligible nonsense, heads shaken from side to side, and then the foreman saying ‘You’re totally off your rocker, pal.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘men get raped too. What about Deliverance?  Suppose it was a man who had accepted that lift home from the club that she says she was offered?  A man who’s had quite a few – maybe even four or five gin and cokes. It’s a warm evening. Maybe his shirt is open to the waist.  Maybe the driver is attracted to that kind of thing, likes what he sees. Now, is it up to the man getting a lift to be on his guard against predatory rapists, to be conscious of the dangerous situation he’s putting himself in?  Does the man’s vulnerability give the driver some kind of licence, some justification for overpowering him, driving him to a secluded place and attacking him? Can that really be justified just because the driver is a man and we’re resigned to the idea that men are like that?’

The women stared at me, more appalled and disgusted than puzzled, more shocked than if I’d placed a pet kitten on the table and attacked it with an axe.  

‘Don’t be such an arse,’ said the foreman. ‘You obviously watch way too many old movies. We’re not talking about a movie here.  It’s about some daft lassie that went out with her pals, got drunk, lost her inhibitions, and her hormones got the better of her.’

‘But she was a thirty-two year old married woman,’ I replied, but it was lost in the general hubbub of here, here’s and quite right’s.

‘Happens all the time,’ concluded the foreman. ‘Open and shut.’

I visualised Henry Fonda, holding out day after day, gradually winning over more and more of the other jurors, wearing them down gradually with little bits of under-scrutinized evidence. But this was Scotland and this was the twenty-first century.  Fifteen jurors and only a majority verdict required.

‘Right’, said the foreman, ‘Enough of this crap, eh?  I’m self-employed and this is costing me money.  I need to get back to work.  Call it fourteen to one, ok?’

Only then did the youngest woman look up from the table, wincing to avoid the foreman’s gaze. She murmured ‘Well maybe I’m not so sure now. I think maybe that man did do something awfy wrong. She did say she’d just wanted home; thought she’d struck lucky when he flung his car door open and shouted over to her. ’

But even if it had been 2018 it was already too late for #metoo. The foreman’s chair was scraped back across the polished floor.  He was determined not to allow the arguments of the case to be rehearsed any further. He pushed himself up, his arms pressing down on the desk, and glared at the youngest woman juror, the hope for a more egalitarian future, and spat out his response. ‘So thirteen to two then, that suit you, everyone ok now?’

Heads nodded. There were various muttered approvals and acceptances and people pushed their chairs back and stood to stretch their legs.

And with that I discovered with regret that the world I lived in was not yet swathed in the bright new golden dawn of sexual equality.  The realm of Hollywood Oscar winners celebrating #metoo was still several years away, and it was sure to be even longer before a culture of sexual equality fully established itself in Scotland.

My personal voyage of discovery included, unsurprisingly, the revelation that I’m no Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men; at best more of a James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, foolishly taking a stand against general unfairness in the world while accepting that ultimately I will be reabsorbed into that very world and knowing that, sadly, it’s not me that’s going to be the man spending his entire life trying to change the way other people think. I’ll say my piece but I won’t be out there campaigning relentlessly for the new world order.

It’s wasn’t quite an epiphany, more an appreciation of my place and standing in the world and a new awareness of the length of time it takes for real cultural change to take a firm hold in that world.

The foreman chapped the door and, as the court usher poked his head around, said ‘Aye, we’re ready now, we’ve reached a verdict.’

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 2x06-- Day 443

Sorry for the delay, guys. I liked this episode but for some reason I found it super boring to rewatch and kept putting off writing this. (I think you will be able to tell that I was writing this just to write something.)

A chair sits in a brightly lit, half unfinished room. This turns out to be the studio where Adrian is recording an interview with Cable News (they say it like it’s a proper noun in this episode so I’ve decided it is). Adrian looks uncomfortable doing this—the strange room, the logistics of the interview, the soundcheck, the unmanned camera.

We only hear Adrian’s side of the interview, and we have no context for it, so it sounds awkward. He misgenders someone (he can’t see the rest of the panel) (this is just like s5 Alicia!) and makes a comment about a case and then it’s over.

When Adrian arrives at the office, he’s wearing a black baseball cap. I am not sure why but it’s a look.

Marissa applauds him when he gets off the elevator—apparently the ten words he said were super impressive. Marissa also informs Adrian that Diane and Julius are in his office and there’s a visitor there for him. What, exactly, is Marissa’s job?

There are still boxes left over from the party. That’s a lot of booze.

“The next time they ask me to be a pundit, tell me no,” Adrian laughs, thinking he made a fool of himself.

“Wait, wait, wait, we’ve got to discuss Lucca,” Diane says as Adrian starts to leave. “We can’t ask her if she’s pregnant. It’s illegal,” Julius explains. “And Lucca’s not saying anything,” Adrian understands. The partners quickly realize that Lucca’s not saying anything specifically so she isn’t bumped from “the biggest case of the year” which goes to trial in two months.

Julius’s solution is to “talk to her friend Maia” to get info about Lucca’s pregnancy. Well, that’s shitty. Also, where is Liz? In this episode, but also in this scene specifically. We get Julius for this but not the name partner who is a mother?

The dude involved in the Peeper case Adrian referenced on Cable News shows up in the conference room, wanting Adrian to represent him.

And it’s Adrian’s lucky day, because a prominent Chicago lawyer we’ve never heard of is in reception too! Diane seems more impressed by him than I would think, since I was long under the impression that Diane Lockhart was supposed to be one of the biggest names in the Chicago legal world.

Ok I take that back, this Franz dude says “And Diane Lockhart, I know you,” when after introducing himself to Adrian. Ok, good.

He also knows Julius. Where has Julius been these past few episodes? I thought he was a series regular. Maybe he went for a visit to the New York office. Or he was spending time with the six children he has.

Franz was impressed with Adrian’s Cable News appearance too. It apparently has 300,000 likes.

Franz tries to stand while everyone from RBL sits, and Adrian won’t let him. I’m reminded of the Supreme Court Superlawyer in W4x09 who preached at Diane, Will, and Alicia. Adrian remains standing, so Franz can’t literally talk down to him.

Then some weird pantomiming of fighting happens. I am unsure what is going on, but I do know that Adrian’s air punches have been gifed and are on GIPHY or something, because on my commute home one day this week I looked up for a second and saw a gif of Adrian from this scene on someone else’s phone screen. (Sadly, he selected another, non-TGF gif to use in his conversation.)

Oh, we are talking about Wilk Hobson again. I didn’t realize he was in multiple episodes—I only remembered him from 2x05—but he popped up last night when I was rewatching 4x17, and IMDb says he’s also in 2x10.

Franz wants to talk about the lawyer killings. In fact, he informs RBL, “the big six firms have been meeting over the past few weeks to discuss how to address this problem.” I’ve never heard of the Big Six firms, but I guess that makes sense. If all firms in Fictional Chicago go through as much turmoil as LG always did, I can definitely believe there’s an alliance of six firms we’ve never heard of before.

Franz extends RBL an invitation to meet with the Big Six, because he saw Adrian on Cable News.

After the meeting, Diane and Adrian are shocked and Julius is so excited he’s had to leave the room (lol no he’s just disappeared without an explanation again). “What DID you say on Cable News?” Diane asks.

Now we get to see the Cable News panel from the other side, and I’m still not sure why what Adrian said is impressive. It lasts for about five seconds and he offers some mild pushback. That’s it. I feel like if you’re going to bother with showing something from one perspective and then later filling in the blanks, the scene should make sense the second time around. It still seems awkward and abrupt to me, and even though I’ve seen the episode and know what Peeper is, I don’t get what Adrian’s talking about. I am not sure what would get this clip 300,000 likes?

Diane and Marissa (who’s popped up because… idk she has) encourage Adrian to go on Cable News again.

The fact that Adrian has a framed picture of himself with Obama is fantastic but it doesn’t really help me believe that his office is anything other than Diane’s office, redecorated. Just swap out the Hillary/Diane pic for an Obama/Adrian one…

Adrian was doubting his Cable News abilities, but not anymore!

Julius goes to talk to Maia about Lucca’s pregnancy. Maia is at a table rather than a work station and Julius asks why. “I got here too late,” Maia says. Why would you tell your boss that, Maia? I can’t imagine RBK is chill with people strolling in whenever they want (though actually, maybe they would have a flex hours program) and you probs shouldn’t tell a partner that you arrived to work too late to grab a desk.

Julius asks Maia about Lucca’s “condition” and they both know what he’s talking about. “I think she wants to be thought of as a lawyer and not an expectant mother,” Maia explains. Yeah, something like that. And Lucca’s not even slightly wrong to assume her pregnancy would affect things.

Case in point: seconds after Maia says this, Julius doubles back to ask Maia to take the lead on the next step in Lucca’s big case. Maia is stunned and runs after Julius to protest her new assignment. It’s Lucca’s case, after all. When Maia asks why she’s been put in charge of the motion, Julius says “I’m a partner, and you’re an associate, and I want you to take it.” Good ‘ol Julius. I think he takes pleasure in lording his power over underlings.

“Is this about Lucca’s condition?” Maia asks. Um, yes, it obviously is. Equally obvious is that Julius would never say that out loud.

“No. It’s about you having a chance to be first chair,” Julius replies.

“Does Lucca know?” Maia asks next. “No. Go ahead and tell her!” Julius tells Maia. Seriously, he sounds delighted to give Maia this task.

Maia immediately goes to inform Lucca. “You are different since your ride-along,” Lucca observes after Maia makes a comment about being fine without a desk. What? First Maia was different after prison, now she’s different after her ride-along… can we stop saying Maia’s changed so much? And if we’re going to stick with that narrative, can it at least be consistent? I don’t even understand what her ride-along would’ve changed or how her comment about desks is possibly related to it.

Lucca jumps right into talking about the case, and Maia hesitantly tells her about what Julius asked her to do. Lucca asks why, and Maia says she doesn’t know, but Julius was asking about her “condition.” Lucca just goes, “Oh, fuck.” She’s not thrilled that the partners are assuming things about her work performance.

“You haven’t even told me, and I’m your friend,” Maia says. … Lucca is v obviously pregnant (she’s showing!). But, as she says, it’s not that she’s unaware that others can tell—it’s at least in part “just having those words [I’m pregnant] come out of my mouth. It feels weird.”

“Now, here’s the other worry. I’m on the partner track. For the first time in my career, I have some traction. And now I’m worried they’ll use… this to penalize me,” Lucca explains.

This prompts Maia to say what may be the smartest thing I’ve ever heard Maia say: that the partners can’t legally penalize Lucca for her pregnancy, but if she continues to keep it a secret, they can blame “performance” and make moves against her without being liable.

I do not remember much about the opposing counsel in the COTW, Amber Wood Lutz, but I remember that she was on last season and I expected her to become a recurring player. And here we are again.

“Every time a new lawyer is killed, I think of you,” she tells Adrian. I definitely don’t remember this rivalry. It was probably a thing. I just don’t remember it.

Mike from Veep is a judge now! He keeps saying that trials are nothing like what we see on TV. He even makes the same comments twice. The point—which could’ve been conveyed in far fewer lines, IMO—is that this trial is going to become extremely theatrical (even by TGW/F standards) since Adrian’s in Cable News mode.

This case is not that interesting. It could be, but it’s not much more than an excuse to talk about the alt-right and neo-Nazis. So, I probably won’t comment on it much, if at all.

Diane and Adrian head from court to a meeting of the Big Six Plus RBL, which is being held in a space that looks like the Cheesecake Factory but for people who think they’re too classy for the Cheesecake Factory.

Amber Wood Lutz is also in the Big Six. Adrian believes this is because they are “pretending to be diverse.”

I really don’t know how I’m forgetting this Amber/Adrian rivalry from last season. It’s quite intense.

Oh God, I’m only just at the credits? Can you tell from how sloppy my writing is that I just want to get this written? This episode wasn’t bad and it wasn’t great. It wasn’t even that interesting. I like writing about things that give me a lot to chew on, and I like writing about things that are so terrible I can rant for pages. Recapping something boring… is boring.

This episode was written and directed by women! (Finally.)

RBL is asked to donate $40,000 pretty much immediately after they sit down at the table. The widow of a wealthy lawyer needs $40,000 donations from seven firms? Why the fuck does she need $280k?

“We are being hunted,” Franz says. The show would like us to believe, at least to an extent, that the lawyer killings aren’t being investigated thoroughly because the police and lawyers aren’t friendly and everyone hates lawyers.

Now we get a rehash of the debate about giving the police your firm’s client list that we already heard in 2x03. That reminds me, when do we get to learn more about Liz’s husband?

Adrian comes up with a good next step for the Big Six. And then he’s on Cable News again (okay, it’s called Review of the Day). This time, he isn’t doing an interview remotely, but it’s the same show. If the show was in Chicago this whole time, why was Adrian doing the interview remotely from a studio in the first place?

There is another black man on the panel that night—“I’m the young, angry activist. You’re the older Obama statesman. That’s the only way they keep two black pundits on the panel, if we both stick to our lanes,” the other panelist warns. Adrian waves this advice off.

There’s been another lawyer killing, only this one may be racially motivated as well. Or, at least, that’s what Cable News thinks. This goes about as well as anyone who has ever watched a panel on actual cable news would expect, which is to say that people start screaming at each other about racism and making claims they can’t support based off of baseless assumptions they’ve made.

Adrian then insults Asshole Panelist and says he’s being overpaid to “ignorantly yap your mouth off.” Heh. I get why that one might go viral.

This makes the other panelists mad. Asshole Panelist thinks Adrian is playing high and mighty and the other black panelist accuses him of intentionally coming after his job. Even the host isn’t thrilled: Adrian mentioned money, and you’re not supposed to mention money.

Adrian’s second appearance is poorly received by some of his peers, even though this time, he was sure of what he was doing. Diane (playfully) accuses Adrian of intentionally stirring up trouble, and Adrian doesn’t deny it. Instead, he smiles and laughs.

For some reason there is a young woman who wants an autograph in reception at Adrian’s office. Don’t y’all have security?

Case stuff happens.

Lucca waits nervously to talk to the partners. She chats with Marissa a little and informs her of her pregnancy. “I’m telling everyone now,” she says. Marissa says she’s going to throw Lucca a shower—with a stripper. I want to see that! The shower, not the stripper. (Though…)

The partners congratulate Lucca when she shares her news. It seems genuine enough, and I’d love to believe that the partners won’t hold Lucca’s pregnancy against her. It’s certainly possible not to! I just need to see it to believe it with these people at this firm on this show.

“The birth date is scheduled for May 22nd,” Lucca says. It’s SCHEDULED? Honey. I’ve never spent any time around babies and even I know that you can’t make a baby obey your schedule. Lucca claims she’ll be back at work on the 25th. I’m curious to see how Lucca’s priorities and expectations shift over the course of the season. I think it’s very reasonable that she would want to keep working and I definitely don’t expect—or want—to have that choice invalidated. But a lot of what Lucca’s saying right now sounds more like denial of the realities of being a parent and nervousness about losing the things that are part of her identity than an actual plan for parenting.

Julius Cain is the father of six. I am assuming he doesn’t spend much time with any of his SIX kids given that there are six of them, and in nine years we’ve never heard about a single one. Poor Julius. The writing for him seems to consist of excuses for why he’s been absent and revelations that are out of left field. (Though I do buy that he’s the father of six. If you told me he was the father of six and he was very involved in his kids’ lives, I might have a problem believing that.)

Yeah, the partners are just putting on a show. They’re still going to watch Lucca very carefully. And they’re going to keep Maia ready to step in. If this case is so big, why is MAIA the backup plan? No offense to Maia (or maybe offense to Maia)—she hasn’t proven herself capable of this so why would the partners trust her with a big case?

The Big Six are back at Fancy Cheesecake Factory because that’s their favorite spot. I don’t even know what’s going on. It’s about police suits. I don’t care, since I know this whole conversation is lead-up to the reveal about Franz trying to woo RBL into dropping their police brutality suits so he’ll get more business from the police. It’s also a theoretical debate about issues I can’t have a stance on because they’re created for the show. Are the police failing to investigate lawyer killings? I mean, IDK, because the lawyer killings are fiction.

JULIUS wants to pursue police brutality cases and DIANE wants to drop them because “it’s worth every fucking irritation in the world!!!” to sit with the Big Six? What kind of opposite land is this where the Trump voter wants to hold the police accountable and the Hillary voter who gives no fucks is obsessed with status? (I don’t think it’s out of character for Diane to consider trading her values for status. I just think it’s weird that right now Diane is concerned with status, and also that she’s literally screaming at Julius about this.)

ALSO WHERE IS LIZ?

Lucca and Colin are in court with Judge Friend (hello!) and Colin tries to move the trial out by four months, to the week Lucca’s due in May.

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE WRITERS, DID YOU NAME THE EPISODES AFTER REAL-TIME DATES JUST TO DRIVE ME MAD? Lucca and Colin hooked up after the Rindell case (202), but that was five months ago, even though it was the 415th day of the Trump administration and this is the 443rd day. And the 443rd day is in April, but May is four months away. Writers. If the dates aren’t going to have any bearing on the timeline of the show, maybe pick a different gimmick? Plus, it’s fucking annoying to memorize numbers.

Lucca and Colin fight in an elevator about the timing. Colin is more than a little annoyed that Lucca seems to be expecting him to ignore her pregnancy. While I agree that Lucca is expecting everyone to just ignore it, I feel like maybe if Colin wants Lucca to be more open with him, he should be supportive of her and her decisions and not incessantly propose to her (when it should be obvious to anyone who has ever met Lucca she would not want that) slash lash out against her in court.

Apparently Colin knows—or Lucca believes he does—that Maia would be the one to try the case if Lucca couldn’t. Why would Colin know that? And again, why would this fall on Maia?

Marissa hatches a plan because she believes Franz has ulterior motives. In a cafeteria, she chats with his assistant. His very chatty assistant. Turns out he wants the business of the police.

Case stuff happens. The jury is totally captivated by Television Personality Adrian Boseman, and the judge isn’t having it and tries to tell Adrian not to play to the jury. Diane objects and asks what, specifically, Adrian is doing wrong, and for the judge to rule on her objection.

“To quote a lawyer that I respected, ‘I want a ruling that I can appeal,’” Diane explains. Awwww, it’s a Will reference! (Will says this in W116, to Judge Lessner). IMO, these small, subtle references to Will are meant to show that Diane’s thinking about her former partner. And how could she not be thinking about him each time another lawyer is murdered?

Diane did not witness Will asking for a ruling he could appeal, so I imagine he must have told her the story at some point. Since there’s already a scene in W116 where Will recaps his case to Diane (he’s talking about auditioning for Bishop and groveling), it’s so easy to picture a conversation between them about this moment.

Back at Fancy Cheesecake Factory, Adrian and Diane fuck shit up by announcing that Franz is trying to land the business of the police (and that’s the only reason he invited RBL to the meetings in the first place). When the lawyers start arguing over one another, Diane and Adrian, satisfied with the mess they’ve made, leave. Hehe.

Lucca and Colin haven’t settled on a court date, so Lucca decides to tell Judge Friend that she’s pregnant and Colin’s the father. I don’t have much to say but it’s a really fun scene.

Colin shows up at Lucca’s office and explains his motivations. He didn’t want Lucca off the case: he wanted Lucca to be able to relax and not be stressed about the case! “This was for your benefit!” he says. “Oh my God. I didn’t think this could get any worse, but here we go,” Lucca responds accurately.

Colin is concerned Lucca might miscarry if she’s stressed. He asks if he can be even a little concerned, and she says that he can’t. Especially not if he’s going to express his concern that way!! Lucca also says she regrets having sex with Colin, and Colin’s all “I didn’t regret it.” Sigh. Lucca’s turned him down so many times. If there’s a way to win Lucca over—and there might not be!—this is definitely NOT it.

Anyway, Colin has info to help in the Peeper case. Which means that more case stuff happens and RBL wins.

Adrian calls Marissa (at work) to thank her for finding dirt on Franz. And to give her a 10% raise. “This is the first raise I’ve ever gotten,” she replies. “First of many, I’m sure,” he says. Aww. I like what they’re doing with Marissa and Adrian this year. It’s clear she respects him, and also clear that he’s recognizing her work when she does a good job (also clear is the fact she is doing a good job).

Adrian goes back on Cable News and finds out that J.D. (the young black man) is no longer on the panel.

On the panel, Asshole Panelist starts crying reverse racism. Adrian decides to burn all bridges with the show and its inanity, and he tries to stir shit up by getting the white panelists to say the n-word. Heh. Diane watches the clip (with a glass of wine and, likely, some drugs) at her desk and laughs.

Then she swivels around in her chair and hallucinates the Trump Mask People fucking. She laughs even harder. How many scenes of Diane laughing loudly is too many? I don’t think there could ever be too many scenes of Diane laughing.

I love Adrian not giving a fuck about what the host of the show has to say. He tells him off and then the ep ends with Adrian looking at himself in the mirror. This is a much better Adrian-centric episode than last week’s effort.