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anotheronechicagobog · 4 years ago

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Rangers, Lead the Way

Written by: @anotheronechicagobog

Warnings: Swearing, canon compliant violence, I had to use a lot of material from the actual episode, mention of domestic abuse

tagging: @detectiveinchicago

A/N: So, this is a new series. Basically, OA Zidan (FBI), Jay Halstead (Chicago PD), and Kenny Crosby (FBI: Most Wanted) all went to Ranger training together and kept in touch, something that was useful when they couldn’t be the one to keep their ‘partner’ safe and need to call one of the others for assistance when their ‘paartners’ are temporarily working with another member of the trio.

OA wasn't a name that he'd heard in a long time. They weren't in the same unit but they were in Rangers training together. Jay was one of the only two people there who didn't have it out for him solely because of his religion, while he was shocked to find a Muslim among the ranks at first, he quickly got over it. Not only did he trust that his superiors wouldn't let a terrorist into the army at all, let alone Ranger training, but OA was a U.S. citizen, and had a very personal hatred for everyone who sullied the name of Islam and used it for violence and their own personal gain. So he and Kenny Crosby befriended OA despite the shock and ignorance from their brothers and sisters in arms. They studied together, trained together, ate together, and bunked together. When they'd all been given different assignments they made sure to stay in touch. And they continued to call, email, and text each other after they'd all been discharged.

When Hailey got temporarily assigned to New York Jay was... Well, it's hard to describe how he felt. It was such a nightmarish combination of devastated, terrified, and heartbroken. It was like an icy hand had enclosed around his throat and was slowly squeezing, painfully closing his throat, all while his heart was being dissected out of his chest by another. Not only was he reliving one of the most traumatic moments of his life all over again, but Hailey was going to be in the field without him. She was going to be in danger without him there to watch her back.

And since Hailey was amazing, she could tell just by looking at him that his mind was dropping down into a dark place faster than Alice tumbled into Wonderland. "It's just temporary. And I'll be okay, Jay."

"Hailey..."

"I'm going to put in my time and come back as quickly as possible. It's okay. It's all going to be okay." Hailey's words didn't reassure him in the slightest. How could they, when they didn't even reassure Hailey?

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"Special Agent Zidan."

"Hey OA, it's Jay."

"Hey man, how are you?"

"Honestly, not great."

"What's wrong?"

"My- uh my partner..."

"Hailey Upton."

"Yeah. She's getting detailed out to the FBI for a bit. I found out that she's getting assigned to your unit."

"That makes sense, my partner's doing a UC detail right now, we'll probably be partnered together."

"OA... Watch out for her. Please. She is strong and more than capable of defending herself, and you quite frankly, but- she's my- I..."

"Don't worry, Jay. I'll have her back. She'll make it back to you."

"Thank you. Seriously, you have no idea how much this means to me."

OA looked at the now-empty desk that had been causing his heart to ache at the sight of it. His shoulder sagged at the pain that was pulling in his chest, the dark fog that filled his mind whenever he started to think, started to wonder, caused his head to throb. "Actually, I know exactly how you feel."

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"You will be partnered with Agent Zidan."

"Hi, I'm OA."

"Hi. Hailey."

"Nice to meet you."

"You too."

"Listen up, everyone. This is Detective Hailey Upton from Chicago PD. She will be with us for the next few weeks as part of our interagency training program."

"All right, so let's, uh, direct our attention to the screens here. Found the body of a young John Doe in St. Nicholas Park. A hundred yards from Alexander Hamilton's house. Federal land, federal case- and no, it is not where Aaron Burr shot him. The famed duel took place in-- anyone, anyone? Weehawken, New Jersey. Kristen knew. Unfortunately, there's far less clarity in the present homicide case. Evidence of torture and abuse, the victim was brown-skinned, but there was no other evidence of a hate crime. So let's dig in, get to work, start filling in the blanks. Yeah? Go."

"You ready?"

"Yeah."

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"So, Chicago PD? Should I be nervous?"

"Nervous?"

"You guys have been in the news a lot and not for good reasons."

"Uh, yeah, we've had some issues, but they're being addressed. It's a great place. I'm proud to be a part of it. The next time you want to insult me, just come out and say it, you don't need to disguise it as a compliment. This car right here?"

"Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean it like that. It's just my way of saying we do things differently here."

"Mhmm."

"Just trying to keep it real." And keep you from getting hurt so that Halstead doesn't develop a full head of grey hair. "So, you spend much time in New York?"

"Nah, first time here."

"Any early observations?"

"Pizza's too thin. It's like a cracker with sauce on it. Just trying to keep it real."... Okay, so maybe it would've been nice if Jay had warned him that she had an axe to grind, but he could make do.

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"If I hear you're harassing any more immigrants, I'm gonna come back here, and I'm gonna break your arm. Do you understand?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

"I forwarded Kristen the pictures of Aman. She'll get us a street block number based on the license plates in the background."

"Just like that, huh?"

"The FBI, Upton. Our tech resources are pretty sick. Look, it's not a big deal, but now that you're working with us, just try and be a little bit more careful. If that guy Prichard calls the Bureau complaining that you threatened to use force..."

"Look, man, I don't need a lesson on how to talk to people, all right?"

"Hey, hey, hey. Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with someone breaking that idiot's arm, it's just... It's just that the Bureau is hardcore, and they take that stuff really seriously."

"You're right. I'm sorry. If he files a beef, I'll eat it and make sure you're clear. All right?"

"Appreciate that. But what the hell's a beef?"

"It's an expression."

"I'm kidding. Kristen said Aman's house is around this area."

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So, Hailey is a badass. That was pretty damn cool to witness. Sidenote; Jay is going to murder him.

Hailey was fine, more than fine, she actually saved his ass. But that didn't matter, Jay had trusted him to protect Hailey and hadn't failed, but he hadn't done the best job either.

They'd been searching a house, and after coming down the stairs he completely missed an assailant in the kitchen. But Hailey hadn't. No, she saw him and got him out of the line of fire. He provided cover fire while she jumped back over to the wall at the end of the stairs. OA tensed, more than usual when he was in a firefight unless Maggie was- nope, not going there, the point is, he didn't miss the way a bullet penetrated the wall a few centimetres from Hailey's head.

"Halstead."

"Don't be mad-"

"Oh god-"

"Hailey's fine. One-hundred percent fine, not even a scratch. We just, uh, we got into a shootout with an assailant. He got a shot off close to her head. She's fine- more than fine! I swear! She actually saved my ass in that altercation! And I was covering her the whole time!"

"... That's it? That's a pretty normal day for us, OA. She's okay, you're okay... So, everything, is... Okay. And seriously, thanks again, man. I can't even begin to tell you how much this means to me. I know that she can take care of herself and the others around her, but it's hard when I'm not the one there to have her six. So I really appreciate that I know and trust the person who is."

"Well, I'm glad that you're not gonna come at me like you did when I stole one of the cookies your mom made from your care package."

"Yeah, we wouldn't want a repeat of that."

"Plus, I know how it feels to... Not know. My partner is under right now and..."

"You're going out of your mind?"

"More than you can believe. I can't eat or sleep, and every time my phone buzzes I think it's a death notification instead of an emergency call from work."

"Sounds like you've got your own Hailey. You'll have to introduce me to Maggie one day."

"Yeah, I will. And Ken's definitely gonna have to introduce Hana. We have heard far too much about her to not even be able to put a face to the name."

"Tell me about it. Sometimes I regret our 'no search' rule, but then I remember how much we embarrass each other."

"By the way, thank you."

"Huh? For what?"

"For saving my ass back there. In the house."

"Oh. Okay. Cool. You're welcome."

"Halstead, how much do get shot at, exactly?"

"Why are you asking?"

"She pushed me out of the path of a bullet and when I thanked her afterwards she treated it like it was nothing."

"... I mean, there's not exactly a whole lot I can do about people trying to kill us..."

"Jay. Dude."

"I can try to stop being 'idiotically reckless' as Hailey calls it, but I'm not trying to be a hero or a dumbass or anything, it's just that... If it's not me getting hurt..."

"...It's her."

"Yeah."

"We're both whipped, aren't we?"

"Oh, ridiculously whipped. The desk Sergeant at my precinct is constantly making fun of me for it."

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"Just got ballistics back on the slugs fired at OA and Upton. They match the bullets that killed Aman, but get this; they also match the bullets pulled from a drive-by murder victim two months ago."

"Could they ID a suspect yet?"

"Yeah, arrested him too. Name is Santiago Gonzalez, known associate of the Latin Players. He's being held at MDC pending trial."

"Latin Players. That's a Chicago gang."

"Hmm, looks like they're expanding."

"So the Latin Players killed someone, they get arrested, go to jail, and the gun

stays on the street."

"And the new owner uses said gun to kill Aman, a studious Indian engineering student?"

"Right. What are we missing? How are these two murders connected?"

"Have OA and Upton pay a visit to Inmate Gonzalez. Maybe he can help us answer that question."

"Right."

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"So this guy, Gonzalez, is originally from Chicago. Runs with the Latin Players, so maybe you should take the lead on this one. But go hard on him." Hailey and Gonzales were from the same city, same blood, this was her turf, and OA wanted to make sure that he abided by that.

"You want a reaction?" Hailey seemed to get exactly what he meant, what he wanted, but she also seemed hesitant, like she needed more than clarification. It was like she needed permission.

"A big one. Big enough to force him to call his people."

"I think I can do that." And just like that, she had a smirk in her voice and was walking ahead of him. OA could see the wheels turning in her head and a coolness to her features let him know that she'd come up with a game plan. He didn't know if he should be afraid or not.

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"Where's the gun you used in the drive-by?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." They were less than a minute into the interrogation and he was already annoyed. Why did these guys always have to be so smug? He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and just let Hailey do her thing, only popping in to keep the flow going. "One of your friends used it to kill a civilian last night."

"Used it again this afternoon on us. Fired off ten rounds."

"Like I said, I don't know what you're talking about." OA had to hold in a sigh.

"You're staring 20 to life on the case you're riding. Give us the name of the person you gave the gun to, and maybe I'll be able to get you a reduced sentence."

"Get my ass, blondie." OA quickly debated the pros and cons of stepping in. Honestly, this guy would probably just make him angrier with his smug attitude and sexist remarks, plus Hailey wasn't even phased. She was still in control, and she actually seemed a little... Bored.

"I'm not a fed like him. I'm Chicago police."

"So what?"

"Means I play by different rules. Also means I know the names of all the shot callers in the Latin Players. Tomorrow morning, we're gonna do a warrant sweep. Means a lot of people you know are gonna get arrested."

"That's not my problem."

"But it is. Because I'm gonna make sure that they know you are the snitch who gave them up."

"Now, you know nobody's gonna believe that."

"Really? Because in my experience, pissed-off bangers don't do their homework, and if they think you're a snitch, you're a snitch. In the street, rumours become facts like that."

"I'm done talking."

"Alright."

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"So you think he believed us?"

"I don't know. What?"

"Nothing, you just reminded me of my partner, Maggie, in there."

"Oh."

"In a good way."

"Then thank you."

"Can you cue up the audio feed?" The prison guard nodded back at OA and did as he asked.

"So where is your partner?"

"Uh, she is on an undercover assignment. That I know absolutely nothing about besides the fact that she is gone and unreachable."

"That's gotta be pretty tough."

"Yeah, but she's really good, so she'll be fine."

"We're up." The guard unmuted the computer and moved out of the way so that he and Hailey could see it clearly.

"Yo, just say the word, man. Chicago about to throw that heat."

"What are you talking about?"

Gonzalez sighed. "Police and FBI here sweating me, man."

"About what?"

"That piece that I left behind. I'm guess it's all connected to what happened on the night at Highbridge Park."

"All right, thanks for looking out."

"No doubt."

"Can you trace the number that he called?" OA was ansty, ready to get moving fast before their lead disappeared and from the honed in look in Hailey's eyes he could see she felt the same.

"Payphone up in Washington Heights." The prison guard was curt and efficient, exactly what they needed and OA was silently grateful.

"Okay. Thank you."

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"I'm guessing that's his girlfriend."

"Hold on. I talked to her at the park, right before we found Ernesto's body." From the way her body tensed OA could tell Hailey wasn't happy she'd let this girl slip through her fingers. He could tell her that it wasn't her fault, no one was even remotely aware of this connection, but he knew that was pointless. Any passionate law enforcement officer would beat themselves over something like this, himself included.

"Ah, and we have a hit off of social rec. Her name is Harper Quinlan, 23 years old, last known address is 84 Groton Street, Queens, New York."

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"Why were you at the park?" OA sat across from the young woman, dead set on getting all the information she knew. Arman's murder was quickly dissolving into a larger more horrifying crime and he was worried that the poor man who this had all started with would be forgotten and he didn't want to think about why that enraged him so much.

"I told you before. I was walking."

"Or was it to recover the glove that Lucas dropped after he killed his drug supplier?"

"I don't know anything about that."

"We have video of you in the driver's seat of Lucas' Range Rover at Highbridge Park the night that Lucas killed Ernesto Garcia, so you are now an official suspect in a murder investigation. That means no more lying, no more protecting your boyfriend. You either cooperate with us here and now, or you go to prison."

"I'm not gonna help you ruin Lucas' life. I just won't. He's a good person."

"Harper, good people don't sell drugs or kill people."

"Yeah, you don't know him like I do. He's so nice, and... he's sweet... He really loves me."

"Lucas isn't who you think he is, Harper. Protecting him will only get you and more innocent people hurt. Tell me why you think he was in the park that night."

"I'm not gonna help you."

"Are you listening to what I'm saying to you? You're a suspect in a murder investigation here. Lying to protect him makes this worse. You're putting more lives at risk. Be smart. Tell me why you were there that night. Harper, you don't need to go to prison for him." OA knew he wasn't getting anywhere and was trying to think of some other- any other method- to try and get Harper to talk, when Hailey burst into the room. She looked calculated, like she had a plan or idea that needed to be executed exactly or else the worst might befall those she was trying to protect. Which, if he read her character right, was everyone.

"Unlock it."

"What's going on?" Harper was just as confused as he was, but he knew better than to show it.

"Do it. Pull up your texts."

"Oh, my God."

"What does it say?" Hailey already knew, that much was obvious, but whatever was going on needed to be as brutally real as possible to Harper, and voicing it out loud would drive whatever was going on home for Harper.

"'Return the product, or he's dead. You have four hours. Tell your man to meet us at the place we did our first deal.' Oh, my- oh, my God." Harper's sobs quickly took up the space of the interrogation room, it didn't matter that she hadn't seen her father in so long, losing him would devastate her, and the Latin Players knew that well.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Let me take a run at her. I might have an angle to play." OA watched Hailey carefully, trying to make out was she was thinking, what angle she could possibly have, but he hadn't known her nearly long enough for any of that. There was this... Knowing glint in her eyes, and a sort of dark confidence had taken over her aura. She was confident in whatever plan she had, obviously, he just had no way of predicting what it was. In that moment, OA could really see what made Jay all twisted over her. She didn't look excited to break the accomplice of a drug dealer, or eager to impress the FBI. She looked like she was ready to get elbow deep in someone else's mess just for the sake of protecting as many people as possible with her quick wit and razor-sharp intelligence. So he just inclined his head and got ready to watch her work from the other side of the glass.

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"You're in a tough place right now, Harper. We have video of you at the scene of a murder, which makes you an accessory. You're looking at 15 to 20 years in prison. But if you cooperate, we can help you. We'll talk to the prosecutor, explain why you were there, help him understand the nature of your relationship with Lucas."

"What are you talking about?"

"I know what's going on. He hurts you, doesn't he?"

"No. That's not true. He's a good guy-"

"No, he's not. What are those bruises on your neck? You tried to cover them up, but I can see them. When you first met, I bet he was great. You guys hit it off, you had fun. He was everything you wanted. But then he started chipping away at your friends and your family. So you pop a pill to numb the pain and tell yourself everything's okay, just hoping that the abuse is gonna stop. Harper. It won't. I talked to your dad. He loves you very much. And he needs you right now. He's in a lot of danger. If these guys don't get their drugs back, they will kill him. The only thing that matters now is you helping us to find Lucas, so we can recover the drugs and find your dad." Watching Hailey in the interrogation room really was something else. From the slight waver of her tone, the palpable understanding in her voice that seemed to wrap a crying Harper in the first hug she's had in a long time, he could tell that she was exposing a pain-filled part of herself to this- this girl, this accomplice in drug dealing and murder. And still, she was able to remain professional and in control, and OA could honestly say that her incredible ability to do her job both made his heart ache for her and impressed him far more than he thought she would.

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They were in the surveillance van, waiting for Harper and the SWAT team to get in to place. What OA was itching to ask her was highly personal. He did not expect her to feel comfortable talking to him about it, but she'd given Harper some of her strength and after revealing something so heart-wrenching, the protective Egyptian older brother in him needed to make sure that she'd left enough for herself. "So, how do you know so much about abuse? I am sorry, I did not mean anything by that."

"No, it's fine. It's all good. Everyone becomes a cop for a reason. I guess that's mine."

"Uh, yeah."

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"Don't forget, Harper. He wants the cash to get out of town, but we need the location where he first met his dealer. That's where your dad is." OA nodded along to Hailey's instruction, keeping a critical eye on the emotionally distraught Harper.

"Babe. They took my father."

"What are you talking about?"

"That guy that you deal with, they grabbed my father and texted me that they're gonna kill him unless we return the drugs that you took."

"Oh, no, no. I can't- I can't do that."

"They took my father!"

"Look, I feel bad, but they will kill me. Oh, Jesus, don't-"

"Lucas."

"Don't give me the sad eyes look."

"Lucas."

"I'm screwed. Look, I gotta look out for me- for us, you understand?"

"Look, I need to know where you and Ernesto did your first deal 'cause that's where they wanna meet."

"I just told you, I'm not going-"

"I will go! I'll call my uncle. He has a lot of money. Maybe I can negotiate a deal or something."

"I gotta get moving, all right, so give me the money."

"Where did you meet him?"

"Stay strong." Hailey could see her waver, could see her lose her ground and need someone to keep her steady. "Location first, then give him the money."

"Lucas. Lucas. Lucas!"

"I'll call you later on, all right?" Lucas, being the selfish douchebag that he is, grabs the bag of money and moves to book it, leaving his girlfriend who needs him behind.

"Damn it. Move in now!" OA sounded the call and immediately all agents left their posts and honed in on Lucas.

"Lucas!"

"You lying sack of..." Lucas, in an effort to prove that he really is a stellar guy, pulls out a gun and starts shooting at the agents, causing panic and fear in the civilians around them. Really, Harper? This guy?

"Get down! Get down!" Hailey pulled Harper out of the line of fire and pushed her to the ground before covering her with her own body, amazing OA with her selflessness yet again. You really picked a good one, Jay.

"Move, move!"

"Drop it!" Scola had joined them when Lucas went for the kill, forcing OA to do the same. Only OA was a good shot, though.

"Lucas! Lucas! Lucas! Lucas..." Harper couldn't stop calling for him, and OA was certain that the only reason she hadn't crawled over to his body was that Hailey was holding her in place. "It's okay." Hailey seemed to be stuck on repeat, comforting Harper. OA personally couldn't see how someone who had been abused would mourn their abuser... But then again, he thankfully had never had to suffer through that. Unlike Hailey.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Sounded like he was ready to hit the road, so I'm guessing his dope is close by. Nothing back here." OA went to the Range Rover with Scola to look for anything- finding the drugs would've been preferable, but as long as it was a tangible clue, they could call it a win.

"Yeah. There's nothing here either."

"Any luck?" Hailey approached them, her I-know-something-that-you-don't-but-don't-worry-I'll-tell-you plastered on her face.

"Nope. Nothing."

"You have the keys on you?"

"Yeah."

"Here, let me try something. Hop in. Shut the trunk." Hailey closed the driver's door, started the engine, pushed a button on the stereo and on the car door. A drawer illuminated by blue light opens, containing the missing drugs.

"I already pushed it. Nothing happened." Scola sounded mildly insulted, but OA just chuckled internally.

"Okay, Chicago." He was impressed, and he wasn't going to hide that. He was also going to give Jay a call later to tell him to ask her out already. There's no way a woman this amazing stays single for long.

"I have a CI who installs these things. Engine has to be on and doors closed in order for it to open."

"Okay, we got the dope. Now we just gotta figure out where to deliver it to."- OA

"Yep."

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"We have Lucas' texts from the phone he was carrying since Harper said he started doing business with the Latin Players about a month ago-" Kristen was leading their group of field agents and Jubal towards the front desks, explaining what she found, and while normally they would have totally enjoyed her explaining just how smart she is, things were a little time-sensitive.

"Yeah."

"We need to scrub that time period."

"There, on the 28th. There's a text that says, 'Meetings at 2. Let's do 9 instead of 8.'" One of the analysts pulled the info onto the computer screen in front of them, showing them the text records.

"'Let's do 9 instead of 8'? But the meeting's at 2:00. Is that some sort of code?" Jubal's mind was whirring away with Kristen's, figuring out exactly what it meant.

"Well, here's Lucas' GPS data from that day around that time." Kristen worked her magic so that Jubal could work his.

"All right, so from 1:37 to 3:12, he was in Brooklyn down by the river. Kris, can you zoom in? Get a more specific look at this. Yeah, over here. Can you drill down right there?"

"Okay."

"They met at 2:00 at a dock. Pier nine instead of pier eight. That's the meeting place." Scola voiced it out loud, like he was still in thought and hadn't had time to put all of the pieces in place internally first.

"There it is." Jubal's prideful voice made OA smirk.

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"We've got 67 minutes to get the drugs down to pier nine. Unfortunately, the guy we need to deliver the drugs is at the city morgue." Isobel voiced the dreadful obvious from her office, forcing them all to sigh and start their plan to catch Arman's killer from scratch.

"I'll go under as Lucas' friend. I'll give him the coke in exchange for Harper's dad." Hailey volunteered herself, but not with the same gusto she'd been working the entire case. Something was off and OA's 'spidey senses' were giving him no peace.

"No. These guys have done their homework. They're not gonna buy that." OA knew he made a good point, but he hoped that no one saw the way his shoulders went rigid.

"I get it, but I think I can pull it off."

"No, I agree with OA. It's too risky." Isobel agreed with him and OA felt like he could breathe again, he promised Jay that he'd watch her back, something he couldn't really do if he was watching her not with her. And if he were honest with himself, he'd become a little attached to her in the time they'd been partnered together, hoping that they would become friends.

"So we need a plan C."

"Let me do it. He's my father. I'm the one who got him into this awful situation. So let me do it. Let me do something meaningful. Something that will make me feel good about myself... Please. Gotta let me do it." Harper looked at Hailey, not even acknowledging the rest of the room.

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"You're gonna do great. Just follow the plan we laid out."

"He doesn't get the second bag until you see your father."

"Right. Got it."

"And if your dad's not at the meeting place, you tell the man to bring him there. He'll say no. You stand your ground." Hailey seemed to be offering more comforting advice.

"You have more leverage than you think. This dope is worth a lot of money, and that's all they really care about." While he seemed to be offering more calculated advice.

"It's okay to be nervous. They'd be suspicious if you weren't. You good?"

"I'm good."

"Okay."

"Okay. Here we go."

"Alpha team in position."

"Where's Lucas?" The gang leader, covered in tattoos was menacing as he approached.

"He sent me instead."

"And my product? There's only one kilo here."

"The other four are close by."

"Close by doesn't do me no good."

"Show me where my father is, and I'll get you the other four."

"Don't get cute with me, mama. I'll cut your throat. Go get my dope."

"Let's get ready to move in."

"No, no. Give her a chance."- Hailey was confident, but OA couldn't help but side-eye her. Wondering just what made her so sure.

"You trying to get your dad killed? 'Cause, that's what's happen if you keep playing."

"I need to see him."

"He's alive. I promise."

"I need proof."

"[whistles] Right over there, chica."

"Okay, we got eyes on the dad. We're good to go."

"Wait, wait, wait. Let's see if we can get him talking about Aman's murder. As soon as we see a weapon, we roll."

"Okay." OA knew that Hailey was smart, and she had been making great calls throughout this case, but he was still hesitant. An innocent man's life was in the balance, but he wanted justice for Arman too.

"Be a good girl, go get my dope. Do that, Big Papa walks. I'll go with you."

"So... So... How do I know you're not gonna kill me and my father once I give you the dope?"

"I don't kill civilians. Bad for business."

"You kill that Indian guy? He was a civilian."

"I try my best, but I'm not perfect, mama." Harper meekly retrieved the second bag from behind construction equipment.

"You did good, Harper." But 'good' wasn't enough for him. Suddenly a large silver gun was pointing at the middle of her forehead.

"FBI! Don't move!" OA lead the charge, coming out of hiding and announcing himself the second that they got confirmation that he murdered Arman they'd burst out of the van and beat SWAT to Harper, the Latin Players, and Harper's father.

"Drop your weapon now! Let me see your hands now! Put the gun on the ground! Step away! Put it down now!"

"Get on the ground! Get on the ground, now!"

"Dad!"

"Let me go! Dad! Dad! Dad!" Honestly, he didn't give the tearful father-daughter reunion much attention or thought, but he noticed that Hailey did, if only for a couple of seconds longer than necessary. He didn't know what to make of that, though.

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"Hey."

"I just filed my 302. Do you need help with yours?"

"Nah, I just finished."

"So, I have to admit, I wasn't so sure about you."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't sure about you either. But you're all right. For a fed."

"You wanna grab a beer?"

"I'm okay. You don't have to look after the new kid."

"I am pretty sure you don't need looking after. Come on, you saved my life. The least you can do is let me buy you a drink."

"For the tenth time, I didn't save your life. All right, let's grab a beer, but only if you tell me why you became a fed. I told you my reason. It's only fair you tell me yours."

"Deal."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They didn't quite 'go out for a beer'. When OA heard Hailey's stomach throw a temper tantrum in the elevator he suggested going out for food that was accompanied by a beer. She'd agreed as long as they didn't go out for "crackers with sauce on them". OA had laughed, not even remotely or phased by Hailey's obsession with Chicago pizza. It's just another thing she shares with Jay. Besides, he wanted to take her somewhere else.

When they sat down Hailey looked around, taking it all in. Omar has been coming to this restaurant all his life. It had been open longer than he'd been alive, he'd even had his tenth birthday here. He hadn't brought Maggie here yet, not because he didn't think they were close enough, he just didn't know how she'd react to realizing that they are that close. "I hope you like Egyptian food."

"I've never had it, but I'm Greek and I know that there are a few shared foods and ingredients."

"Really? I wouldn't have guessed Greek from 'Upton'."

"My parents changed it when they moved here, their name was too difficult for Americans to pronounce, and there was some... Other stuff."

"I'm familiar with 'other stuff'. Do you want any recommendations or need me to explain anything on the menu?"

"You know what? You can choose what I eat tonight. If I like what you pick, I won't tease you for it the rest of the time I'm here."

"Well, for the record-"

"What record?" Hailey laughed.

"For the record, I am completely confident in my knowledge of food so I know I'll find something you'll like. After all, it can't really be bad so long as it's not non-Chicago pizza. Right?"

OA ended up choosing a dish called 'kushari', it wasn't like the Chicago or Mediterranean food Hailey was used to but she'd loved it. OA was smiling at her, proud of his victory, Hailey rolled her eyes, smirking at his impishness. "Tell me about your partner." The question caught him off guard and for a moment he'd felt a significant crack in his walls, leaving him exposed. Suddenly all the feelings he'd been pushing back since Maggie went UC enveloped and starting drowning him. Fear gripped his heart, haunting curiousity stabbed his mind, and loneliness hooked onto his soul. "OA? We don't have to talk about her, I'm sorry I asked, I didn't mean to upset you."

"She's one of the most amazing people I know. She's smart, strong, generous, empathetic, courageous... She's honestly one of the most amazing people in my life and I love having her as my partner." Hailey looked at him the same way his sisters and mother did whenever he spoke about one of the most important people in his life. Like they were able to listen between his words and decipher another meaning to what he'd said. But like his mother, his sisters always gave him hell for it, she said nothing. I couldn't even dispute it if she did say anything.

"She sounds badass."

"She is. What about your partner? Tell me about them?" He'd narrowly averted saying 'him', unsure how she'd react if she knew just how close she and Jay really were, and just how much Jay had told him about her. She got this smitten grin on her face, and OA knew that the roles were reversed from a few moments ago when he had that same smirk and far off look in his eyes. "His name is Jay Halstead, and he's an amazing person, except for when he's getting himself shot, the reckless idiot. He would rather get shot at than get a needle which rattles me to no end, especially because he's so much more kind and intelligent than he gives himself credit for and we need him you know, alive, but still, I admire him so much. He makes me laugh and he just knows how to get to me, you know? I would... I would follow him anywhere. Wow... What is in this food? Truth serum? I'm not usually that open..." It was like he could literally see a forcefield shaping around her. Shrinking in on herself, her face hardening, hastily putting a forkful of food in her mouth. She looked at the wall behind him, pretending to be interested in the decorations, trying to pass off the slight panic in her eyes.

"Maybe it's just my charming demeanour, or that I got personal first, really personal. Or maybe it's because you needed to tell that to someone you don't see every day."

"Yeah. Maybe." She still wouldn't look at him and a tense silence enveloped them until she took a deep breath and shook herself. Light seemingly went off in her head before she gave him an absolutely devilish smirk. "I believe I was promised your origin story."

"Is that what we're calling it? An 'origin story'?"

"It is now."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Halstead."

"Get your head out of your dumb ass and ask Hailey out."

"I- OA-"

"You won't regret it, Jay. I actually think that you will regret it if you don't."

"I just don't know if I'm ready to admit anything to myself, forget Hailey."

"When does life ever wait until you're ready, man? Neither of you work in a stable occupation, and even then the universe isn't exactly known for working on anyone else's timeline. I can literally feel you aching for her from here."

"But what if I'm not good enough."

"Oh, I've only known her for a few days and I already know that no one's good enough for her-"

"Damn have you adopted her as another honourary sibling? How many do you have now? And Hailey actually knows you've adopted her, right?"

"Not important, and don't try and change the subject."

"But if no one's good enough for her, then..."

"You're too hard on yourself Jay. No one's good enough for you either. Why shouldn't two people who are far too good for the world be together? You deserve happiness, Jay. You both do, and I think telling her that you're far gone with her would be a great start."

"Thanks, man. Really."

"No problem."

"... So you think that I'm 'far too good for the world'?"

"And now I'm regretting every word we've spoken." No I don't, but your head really doesn't to get bigger.

"Nope, no take-backs. You think that I'm badass and amazing."

"I never said 'badass' or 'amazing'."

"Jay Halstead- described as 'far too good for the world' by the humble and decorated OA Zidan-"

"I also called you a 'dumbass' but whatever, goodnight Jay. And seriously, ask Hailey out."

#One Chicago #Chicago PD #hailey upton #hailey x jay #jay halstead x hailey upton #upstead #upstead fic #jay halstead #OA Zidan #maggie bell #oa zidan x maggie bell #zibell #fbi cbs

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panharmonium · 4 years ago

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(1/3) Heya! A while back you were discussing Morgana's character and Merlin's relationship with her WRT magic and mentioned "gaslighting." I know for myself when I refer to Merlin gaslighting her it's not in regards to him not outing himself, but that 1) Pre 2X03 he goes along with Gaius in pretending to not believe that her visions are true and giving her the sleeping draughts. And Post 2X03, after reassuring her that they're still friends, he just doesn't really talk to her again until 2X12.

Hi! So, I will preface this by saying that I normally don't have a chance to respond to asks in this much depth, but luckily I had some free time over the past couple of days, and there's nothing I like better than writing incessantly about Merlin, so I took the liberty of doing a deep dive. :)

My impression (because these asks don't actually include a particular question for me to answer) is that I'm being asked to expand/defend my own analysis from my original post with regard to the above points. And I'll be honest and say that I won't always do that for folks on demand, because I really am of the school of thought that I don't write meta to convince anybody of something or "prove" a point - I really am just talking to myself in my own room for fun, and it isn't important to me to make a case to anybody who would rather approach from a different angle. Like - if we’re on different pages, it’s chill; I don’t feel a need to discuss it or like...change someone’s mind. (In all seriousness, I really have just been writing these things for myself and a couple of friends. Prior to three days ago, when some kind of a bizarre surge happened, I had no followers who were here specifically for Merlin.)

But there are definitely some things referenced in these messages that I do have strong opinions about (though as I always say, that doesn't mean anyone is obligated to agree with me!) And since I have the free time and am actually interested in this topic, I figured I'd try to address these things one by one (though I can't promise to do so in order.)

I'll put everything under a cut, because this did get quite long.

disclaimer: as always, whenever I write meta: these are just my own thoughts, and I don’t expect anyone to share them. If we are on different pages, feel free to scroll past and keep having fun in whatever way is most enjoyable to you!

1) “after reassuring her that they're still friends, he just doesn't really talk to her again until 2X12″

So first, I have to pose a question.

Why does this say "[Merlin] just doesn't really talk to her again" after 2.03?

Specifically, that framing.

Merlin doesn't talk to her again.

Because what actually happens, from 2.03-2.10, in an objective, this-is-what-we-see-onscreen way, is this: Merlin defies Gaius and tells Morgana that he believes she has magic. He sends her to the Druids so they can help her, tries to distract the attacking knights so she can escape from Camelot with the Druids permanently, and, when that fails, he makes sure to come to Morgana's room and tell her that he supports her and her secret is safe with him.

Then, from 2.04 through 2.10, they don't have screen time together.

Not "Merlin just doesn't talk to her."

They don't have screen time together. You could say "Morgana just doesn't talk to him" and it would be just as true.

But somehow we immediately frame our discussion of this as Merlin not doing something. And that is what I am pushing back against.

Merlin takes massive risks to help Morgana in 2.03. He makes it very clear that he is there for her and he will never tell her secret, and Morgana, for her part, is shown to be very appreciative of that. It's clear that she trusts him and believes him. They part on a very positive note, at the end of 2.03.

Why, then, do we automatically frame the objective, unattributable-to-any-one-character fact that they don't interact onscreen after that as being somehow a failing on Merlin's part? Why do we frame the simple fact that "they have no scenes together" as something for which we can lay blame? (On Merlin, of course. Never on Morgana.)

It's not as if we see Morgana reaching out and failing to get a response. From 2.04-2.10, there are zero scenes of Morgana trying to approach Merlin and being rebuffed. There are no scenes of Morgana wishing for guidance and being turned away. And, with the exception of the Witchfinder episode (where Merlin already does literally everything in his power to expose this dangerous man and protect Morgana from his machinations) Morgana is not, in fact, shown to be getting "more and more freaked out and isolated."

I want to pause and address that, because I know we've all sort of...collectively decided to imagine that this is what happened (because as a fandom we've tried to just fill in with fanon what feels like a blank left by the writers), but onscreen, in terms of the source material: it is false to say that “in the background you kind of see Morgana get more and more freaked out and isolated as the season progresses.” It just doesn’t happen.

With the exception of "The Witchfinder," Morgana is never shown to be having any inner conflicts about her magic, not until 2.11. Episodes 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 - absolutely nothing. There is one scene in 2.08 where she mentions having trouble sleeping, but then that issue is immediately resolved for her when Morgause gives her the healing bracelet and cures her nightmares. There are no scenes of Morgana worrying about her magic. No scenes of her needing help. No scenes referencing her position as a person who is struggling with being a secret magic-user. No scenes referencing her magic at all, in fact. She is not shown to be getting more and more freaked out and isolated; rather she appears to have integrated back into her old life, comfortable now in the knowledge of who and what she is. It’s like what she told Merlin at the end of 2.03: "I know now who I really am. And it isn't something to be scared of. Maybe one day people will come to see magic as a force for good."

And we can of course debate whether that was really an appropriate writing decision, to have Morgana be fine, fine, fine, until suddenly we hit 2.11 and it's like, 'oh, suddenly not fine,' but we also can't evaluate or judge Merlin based on a fanon image of what we imagine was happening in Season 2. We can only evaluate him based on what actually happens onscreen (whether we feel like it was well-written or not), and what actually happens onscreen is that minus her fear in The Witchfinder, which Merlin already takes decisive actions to address, Morgana is not shown to be distressed or isolated or conflicted until we hit 2.11.

She appears, as far as Merlin and the audience can see, to be doing just fine.

I’ve got to be clear on this: "Merlin just doesn't really talk to her again" is a loaded sentence, when the phenomenon we're really trying to describe is "Merlin and Morgana have no scenes together." It inherently assigns responsibility, agency, and blame for any non-interaction to Merlin, when there is nothing in canon to support that framing.

If Morgana wants to talk to Merlin, she can come talk to him. She knows Merlin is on her side. She is shown to trust and appreciate Merlin without reservation at the end of 2.03. And even if she had been shown to be spiraling into a bad place in 2.04-2.10 (which, as discussed above, is not the case) she could have come to Merlin at any time. It is literally not Merlin's responsibility to pursue Morgana and press her to talk to him. He has done his due diligence. He makes sure she knows he is on her side, that he supports her, that he believes her, that he will never reveal her secret. And she is shown to believe him when he says that. If she needs him, she knows she can approach him. And if she chooses not to do that - then that is on her.

This is a tough pill for even the in-universe characters to swallow, but Merlin is not responsible for the well-being of every single person in Camelot. It is not his job to make sure that every single person in his orbit is 100% okay at all times. It is not his job to read his friends' minds, or anticipate every single one of their needs, or to offer himself to them constantly, repeatedly, every time he has a spare moment, especially when they seem (like Morgana from 2.04 to 2.10) to be doing well. Merlin has already been placed in a position where he is expected to devote almost all of his energy to serving someone else's interests. When we expect him to also worry about and monitor and manage the health and happiness of all the other people around him, we are perpetuating the same damaging narrative for which we criticize characters like Kilgharrah, Gaius, etc - that everything is on Merlin, and if he can’t manage to juggle it all, then the negative consequences that ensue are his fault.

A personal illustration of how this would play out in real life:

I live with my sister. I am a pretty stoic person. And when something is the matter, I sometimes don't tell her about it. I just pretend like everything is fine. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would listen to me and support me if I ever came to her with a problem, but sometimes I don't do that. And if that’s the choice I make, then that’s fine, but I have to take responsibility for it. It's not okay for me to get angry and BLAME her for not helping me, when I never gave her any indication that I needed help in the first place.

So - flipping the narrative, what if we reframed the original statement to an equally loaded but equally accurate “post 2.03, Morgana just doesn't talk to Merlin.” The two of them go through a harrowing experience together, where Merlin takes deadly risks to try to help Morgana escape Camelot and find her true self, where he offers his continuing support to her after it's over, and then she just never takes him up on that offer. She retreats back into her comfortable position as Uther's noble ward, and stops associating with Arthur's lowly servant. When Merlin helps save Gwen from the bandits in 2.04, Morgana never thanks him. When Merlin is framed for theft by Catrina and hunted down, she doesn't stand up for him or try to help him. When Gaius is arrested and tortured by the Witchfinder, she never stops by to see how Merlin is doing and check if he's okay. When she's approached by a total stranger who wants her to steal a "weapon" for him, she doesn’t talk to Merlin at all, but rather agrees to steals the Crystal of Neahtid without ANY understanding of what it actually does or what Alvarr's plans are for it, leaving Merlin completely in the dark about why she's suddenly sneaking around acting so strange and suspicious.

Think back to Season One. When Gwen is accused of sorcery and sentenced to death, Merlin confesses himself in order to save her. Despite enjoying none of the protections Morgana has as Uther’s ward, Merlin still confesses himself in order to protect a friend. But when Merlin is accused of sorcery in 2.07 (and when Gaius is then sentenced to be executed), Morgana does nothing comparable. She just lets them take the fall. Merlin allows himself (and Gaius) to be accused, even though he could easily have ratted Morgana out instead, and Morgana, despite knowing that Merlin is keeping silent to protect her at his own expense, never says a word to defend him, or approaches Merlin about it afterwards. She sees Merlin dragged out of the Council Chambers screaming after Gaius is sentenced to death, but she says nothing. She knows Gaius is going to be burnt at the stake, but she does nothing, not even making her usual appeal to Arthur.

Does that mean we should assume that she was being negligent? That she was abandoning Merlin when he needed her most?

For clarity - I'm not saying that the answer to that question is yes. I’m saying that I’ve never seen anybody assign intention/bad faith to Morgana when it comes to her non-interaction with Merlin from 2.04 to 2.10 (even though that particular read is actually far more justified by the text). There is no reason to assign intention to Merlin, either.

Ultimately, I just want us to be aware that saying “Merlin just doesn’t really talk to her again” inherently assigns agency and blame to an agentless fact. Morgana and Merlin not being on screen together from 2.04 to 2.10 =/= "Merlin just doesn't really talk to her." The phrase "Morgana just doesn't really talk to him" is an equally true statement, but one we don't hear nearly as often, because in the Merlin-verse, everything is Merlin's responsibility. And therefore, when there’s a problem, everything is Merlin's fault.

2) “pre 2X03 he goes along with Gaius in pretending to not believe that her visions are true giving her the sleeping draughts”

Okay, this is just my own opinion, but - I personally think it is unreasonable for us to expect Merlin to correct every single bad choice that the people around him make, and it's unfair to transfer the blame for other people's choices onto his shoulders.

If Gaius is making bad choices prior to 2.03, then they are Gaius's bad choices. Merlin, in 1.07, has just arrived in Camelot within the last couple of months. Gaius has lived in Camelot all his life, and has been dealing with Morgana for two decades and Uther for longer than that. Gaius is a trained physician. He is in a position of authority over Merlin, and he has far more experience with the royal family than Merlin does, and when he tells Merlin that the safest thing for Morgana right now is to help her sleep through the night without having potentially-prophetic nightmares, of course Merlin listens to him.

But five minutes into 2.03, immediately after Merlin learns that Morgana actually has magic (not just dream-visions, which this show states to be a separate gift) he is arguing with Gaius, saying that "you need to be honest with her." At the fifteen minute mark, he is in Morgana's chambers telling her how to find the Druids.

I cannot get on board with transferring blame that belongs to other people and dumping it all on Merlin's overburdened shoulders. He directly defies Gaius's orders so that he can help Morgana, as soon as it becomes apparent how serious her situation is. He leads Camelot's army on a chase through the woods in an attempt to help her run away, putting himself at extreme personal risk to do so. How would he explain that, if he were caught? If he were seen?

He does more to help her with her gift than anyone, and he puts himself at risk of discovery and execution to do it. The standards to which we hold him, and the number of responsibilities we expect him to assume, and the ways we hold him accountable for choices that other people in positions of power have made, even when he ultimately corrects their mistakes - are impossibly unreasonable, and they certainly aren't the same standards we use to evaluate Morgana’s actions.

3) “while I don't think Merlin owed outing himself to anyone IMO was a really nasty undercurrent in the writing of ‘crazy/hysterical woman with her volatile lady feelings can't be trusted’ even after he's known her for like a year compared to Lancelot, Gilli, Daegel etc. being a-okay.”

Comparing Morgana to Lancelot, Gilli, and Daegal as a way of saying that Merlin underrates Morgana's trustworthiness in favor of theirs doesn't make sense.

Merlin doesn't choose to out himself to Lancelot at all. It's an accident.

Merlin doesn't choose to out himself to Daegal, either. He's put in a situation where it's either "use magic" or "we both die."

Gilli has a little more wiggle room in terms of "was this an active decision on Merlin's part," but it's also not accurate to interpret this situation as arising out of Merlin's personal desires/level of trust in Gilli as a person. Merlin reveals himself because he feels like it is the only way to get through to someone who is going to get themselves killed looking for revenge. (And I've written previously about how I think Merlin's choices in this situation are in fact directly influenced by the decisions he didn't make with Morgana, and how making the opposite choice here in an attempt to "do the ‘right’ thing this time" doesn't actually change the ultimate outcome, but that's neither here nor there.)

None of these three instances are moments where Merlin looks at these characters and goes, “these people seem way more trustworthy than that crazy, volatile lady i know; i’m gonna reveal myself to them!" He is forced into all of these situations, against his will, and is outed either by accident or necessity.

Additionally - the above is really the more important counterpoint, but I do think it's worth mentioning that Morgana, as far as the closeness of her relationship with Merlin goes, also can't be meaningfully compared with the other three characters on this list because her position as a noble places her in a totally different category altogether.

Merlin legitimately likes Morgana in the early seasons, and he's thrilled to be her friend. But Merlin is also class-conscious - he has to be, given his position in society; and moreover he's spent the first twenty years of his life being best friends with a dude who is both hyperaware of and hypervocal about the inequalities of the current social system. Merlin is ALWAYS aware that Morgana is on a different level than he is, and he is perfectly justified in being slightly more reticent around people who aren't cut from his own cloth, in the same way he is justified in being slightly more careful around Arthur, who also leverages his power and privilege whenever "equality" becomes inconvenient for him.

Take the comparison between Lancelot and Morgana, for example. Merlin has known Lancelot for slightly less time than Morgana (Merlin meets Lancelot in 1.05), but he cleaves to Lancelot more quickly, and it is only natural that Merlin would do so. Merlin is a peasant farmer. He is literally as low on the social ladder as you can get without being one of the itinerant poor. Morgana is, in essence, a princess, and Merlin isn't wrong for feeling more comfortable around Lancelot than he is around her, because Morgana, for all that she is generous-minded with the servants, is SO far above the level of people Merlin is used to associating with, and she has SO much more influence than he does - it's a power differential that can't be erased, no matter how friendly Morgana is with him. And it’s a dynamic that isn't limited to Morgana, either - it exists between Merlin and Arthur, too.

This is an element of the show that I don't necessarily see discussed often when it comes to Morgana and Merlin (and Gwen, for that matter), and most of the time it seems to be ignored in favor of like...“Morgana doesn't see class! She's friends with Gwen and she's friends with Merlin!" And I'm not disputing that she considers herself to be friends with them at first, but I also am not going to pretend that she doesn't then weaponize her class against them as soon as the situation changes.

In S3, she leverages her privileged position to threaten Merlin with execution if he tries to reveal her misdeeds, because she knows that no one will believe a servant even if he tells the truth ("Just think how Uther would react if he learnt that a serving boy had tried to poison his beloved ward"). She is horrified at her vision of Gwen taking the throne in 3.10, saying "How can that be? She's a servant." She mockingly calls Gwen "My lady" when capturing her in 5.06, and, when offering Gwen a drink of water, says, "Is it too good for you now that you're queen?" She scathingly criticizes Helios’s capture of Merlin in 4.06, saying, "And you bring me how many men? Or should I say how many servants?" She tells Merlin, "You are Arthur's servant, nothing more" later in that same episode. She dispenses with all semblances of equality with Gwen in late Season 2 whenever Gwen's in the way, instead snapping at her, ordering her around, and booting her out of the room. And in "The Dark Tower," she drags Gwen behind her on a rope.

Morgana in the early seasons is committed to an "I'm not going to lord my social status over my lower-class friends!" attitude. But that doesn't mean her social status doesn’t exist, or that the power differential has vanished. And when the chips are down - when Morgana feels like she's getting less than she "deserves" but her former servants are getting more than they themselves do - she falls back on the power she has as a noble. The ways in which Morgana interacts with Merlin and Gwen, after Morgana's falling out with Camelot, don't manifest as just "you betrayed me and we're not friends anymore," they express themselves in ways that specifically target Merlin and Gwen's "lowly" status, in comparison to Morgana's lofty one.

4) “I also hate the Merlin and Gaius talk in 2X12 where they more or less write her off as using her powers for eviiiiil when she hadn't consciously used her powers for ANYTHING yet.”

I suppose this could be subject to personal interpretation, but I’m pretty sure Gaius and Merlin think Morgana was consciously aware that she was the source of the magic.

They don't know that she wasn't consciously involved. The audience doesn't even know that, frankly. What Morgana is actually aware of is left undefined by the show. (I personally always got the vibe that Morgana obviously knows it has something to do with the agreement she and Morgause made, but that she doesn't exactly understand the details of how it's working.) But that's still never actually stated.

Merlin, (after Kilgharrah tells him the magic is coming from Morgana), assumes she is aware of what's happening. And I personally think it’s impressive that even given this, he covers for her the entire episode. At first he doesn't even suspect she has anything to do with it at all, not even after what she did in the previous ep - he makes up that story about Gaius having given her a potion to cover for her, assuming her magic is what's keeping her awake. It's not until Kilgharrah tells him what's going on that he realizes the truth, and EVEN THEN, he continues to lie for her.

If she was afraid - if she was in over her head - if she regretted her actions and wanted to change her mind - she could have confessed to Merlin and asked him for help. Literally everyone in Camelot was incapacitated, and as far as Merlin knew, Morgana’s plan was to let them all die. It's not that I'm happy about Merlin's choice to poison her, and neither is Merlin - but I'm also not comfortable blaming him to the exclusion of Morgana or critiquing him for feeling like Morgana did something bad. She did do something bad! She made her own choices. Merlin didn't make them for her.

Erasing Morgana’s responsibility erases her agency. She makes decisions to get where she is in 2.12. She makes an agreement to help Morgause without doing her research and without getting the details about what would actually happen to the people around her, just like she made an agreement to help Alvarr retrieve the Crystal of Neahtid without finding out what it actually was or how Alvarr planned to use it. Merlin didn't make Morgana do any of those things.

Re: the Merlin+Gaius talk in 2.12 - I personally don't read that conversation with Gaius as Merlin "writing [Morgana] off."

Merlin doesn't think Morgana is irredeemably evil. He apologizes to Morgana when she returns in 3.01. Even when she displays shame and self-recrimination about her own actions, he doesn't say one word condemning her for anything she did in the last season. All he feels is sympathy for her suffering. He tells her, sincerely, "I am so sorry for everything you've been through." He holds absolutely no grudge for what she did in 2.12. None.

And even when he finds out she's betraying them again - he first approaches her as a friend. He begs her to stop. He tells her, "It doesn't have to be like this. We can find another way." He answers "no" when she asks him if he believes she deserves to be executed for who she is. Even as she's trying to kill them all.

And when she snaps, "Good!" in response to his statement that women and children are dying and the city will fall, he responds, "You don't mean that." That is not the response of someone who's already written her off as evil. He doesn't believe she wants all this violence. He is trying to reach her.

She doesn't ever reach back. And that is not Merlin's fault.

5) kilgharrah indiscriminately kills people

I don't think I can really address Kilgharrah in any meaningful way, because personally I don’t feel like dragons operate on or can be evaluated by human moral standards. Other folks can take a different tack with this, obviously; there's no canon information one way or another. That's just my own personal approach.

6) “[Kilgharrah] and Merlin are bros again by 3X02 but Morgause and Morgana and Kara killing knights and guards (who work for Uther/Arthur) are OMG murderers, have crossed a line, etc.”

Okay, look, let’s be honest here - this issue is a real philosophical question raised by the show, but Morgause and Morgana are not just killing knights and guards. Morgana, with Morgause at her right hand, literally orders her crossbowmen to murder a bunch of civilians in the street, as if shooting fish in a barrel. She tells her forces to “burn [the people’s] crops.” She raids Ealdor, a poor peasant village that isn’t even within Camelot’s borders, at the end of Season 4, and at the beginning of Season 5, Morgana’s Saxon army is attacking innocent peasant villages in Annis’s kingdom and capturing the villagers to be taken as slave labor to Ismere. Later in Season 5, Morgana kills other magic-users like Finna and Alator, who have been just as wronged by Arthur/Uther as she herself has been.

Kara - I've already written extensively about how she did nothing wrong and Arthur deserved to be deposed, so...same page there!

To wrap this up -

Nobody does everything right in this show. Everybody screws up somewhere. And the degree to which various people are both victims and villains is something we all have to decide for ourselves, and not all of our conclusions will be the same, which is perfectly fine.

But in the end, for me, the difference between Merlin and Morgana is that Merlin owns his choices. He believes he is the one to blame for what happens not just to him, but to the people around him. He literally says to Morgana, "I blame myself for what you've become." And while I don't necessarily think that's even true, he certainly does. Despite the fact that there are so many factors limiting him and forcing his hand and trapping him into certain courses of action, he never cites those factors as excuses, or seems to recognize their existence at all. He takes responsibility for himself, regardless of any extenuating circumstances. He looks back at his choices, and he feels remorse for some of them, and at the end of the day, when things go badly, he blames himself.

But when things go badly for Morgana, she only ever blames others. When something is wrong, it's because Merlin or Arthur or Gwen or whoever didn't help her (even though she never asked them for help in the first place.) We never see her acknowledge a mistake or regret a decision, even though she obviously makes her fair share of bad ones. She is never shown to be sorry for anything. The closest we get to remorse is her interaction with Mordred in 5.09 ("I hope one day you find the love and compassion which used to fill your heart"), and that brief moment of inner conflict never goes anywhere (which is so unfortunate, as a writing decision, but again, in a piece like this, I can only evaluate what actually happened onscreen, not what I wish had happened).

So, all this being said, I personally am very careful about assigning more blame to Merlin than what he already assigns to himself - especially when he doesn't deserve it (for example, see Part 1 of this piece). Merlin makes his share of mistakes, but we are generally much quicker to hold him accountable than we are Morgana, and we outline impossible expectations for him that we don't expect from any other character on this show. We hold him to a different standard, one which is, frankly, pretty much in line with how he's treated in the canon: that everything is his responsibility, and when things don't work out, everything is his fault. And I can’t get behind that mindset, because a) it isn’t fair to him, and b) I don’t think it holds up under scrutiny.

#sorry this got so long! i get going about merlin and like...time ceases to exist lol #apologies #putting most of this under a cut to spare your dashes #the once and future slowburn #meta #replies #sometimes you've got to do what is right

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freshlybakedspiderbread · 4 years ago

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I brought up hanyang type 88 here and i said i’d explain, so here I am!!

okay so first off here’s a bunch of likely useful context about girls frontline. There is this feature in the game called digimind upgrade, or mod 3, where certain t-dolls can be upgraded past the normal maximum levels and stats, and at the same time gaining whole new abilities and also a new design. Basically a reinvention. There are like hundreds of playable characters in the game, and only a fraction will get mod 3s, typically the ‘main characters’ who are relevant to the major ongoing plot.

two things about getting a doll who has the ability to do digimind upgrade, to actually do that. One, is that it can be very costly in terms of in-game materials. like, maybe i just played the game wrong but I would have to grind for weeks in order to amass the materials to upgrade just one doll to mod 3. So even though by now there are dozens upon dozens of dolls who are capable of this feature, i’ve only actually done so with like, less than one dozen. A normal player probably has to be picky.

secondly, and this is the big one, every t-doll’s mod 3 comes with story cutscenes that become available for you to view upon upgrading them. Personally, i think most of the only worthwhile mod 3 stories are the ones that are associated with the actual major characters of the main story, especially since their upgrades actually happen in-canon and their mod 3 stories fill in blanks or otherwise expand upon the regular story chapters.

for the t-dolls who aren’t major characters that get digimind upgrades, their associated stories tend to follow a very basic pattern. They’re feeling like they are falling behind other T-Dolls in abilities or are otherwise experiencing a drop in confidence in their abilities, but then find the resolve in them to either change themselves or stand by an aspect of themselves, and this leads them to heading to the lab to get upgraded. obviously theres some nuances here and there depending on the character, but a lot of them, from what i saw, follow this basic pattern.

hanyang type 88 has a mod 3 but i certainly never wanted to see it. Firstly, using the feature at all takes up resources are kinda precious so i wasn’t just gonna use it on anyone. Secondly, she is just one of many one-off t-dolls that basically dont ever show up in any actual main story cutscenes or even funny events. Thirdly... you saw what she looked like in the linked post, i was in no rush to make use of her.

That being said, even if you don’t ever upgrade a t-doll, simply having them in your possession allows you to at least view the first of four parts of their mod 3 story, which nets you a small amount of those materials needed to see the rest (its a pretty fiendish system, huh o_O). I was lacking in some materials to upgrade a doll i cared about, so i just mucked around, eventually happened upon type88 again and decided that instead of just immediately feeding her to the furnace, I’d watch the first chapter of her mod 3 story. I watched it, it made me just curious enough to look further, and well. ...I got into it. Exactly what I got into, i shall now just elaborate and summarise the whole thing in my own way! Warning, it’s long!

(disclosure: my summary will bias towards my own preferred interpretation whenever any aspect is somewhat vague.)

The story starts with type 88, or as she is called by others in griffin base, Ai, working her shift in the base’s cafe, because what else would she be doing.

i hate looking at her! Anyway, its just a pleasant peaceful day and Ai is taking the logistic person, kalina’s order when suddenly in the middle of a conversation, Ai freezes in place and starts making worrying sounds.

kalina here and the t-dolls present in the cafe are concerned, and talk about how Type88 has actually been crashing like this more and more frequently lately, yet has not reported any of this to the maintenance crew despite the advice of her friends. They try rebooting her on the spot, but it has an even more concerning effect, because she starts erratically acting like she doesn’t recognise the others, and talks about how she is a maid in “Jiangcheng Cafe”. Afraid that her neural cloud (her mind) has been scrambled, they put her to sleep and bring her to the repair bay.

Its in the repair bay where they explain exactly what is wrong with type88. She is a fairly old doll, and her processing capacity has been severally clogged up for a long time. Her internal memory is overflowing because many large sections of her mind is filled with very large encrypted files (memories that she stored away). she is likely to keep crashing and possibly even cease functioning entirely one day if those encrypted files are not deleted, but nobody is really keen on just deleting parts of her mind without her consent. For now, kalina just opts to try and decrypt the files and see what they are.

And from here, we watch type88 memories from her perspective. Sort of. Kind of. It gets complicated later but for now, we view the first memory of her life, not as a combat t-doll type88, but...

...as 59898, a doll designed to be what is basically a ‘crash test dummy’ for testing artillery technology in a research station. With a purpose like this, 59898 has an (ostensibly) rudimentary AI. Her learning ability is intended to be used to better aid the results of their testing, but she also knows how to understand and even imitate specific human gestures in order to better respond to instructions or conversation, even though she herself has no voice module to speak with. She is assigned to assist one specific person.

first off, i was pretty shocked right off the bat that this story above so many others actually has unique assets to it. The above two sprites don’t show up anywhere else in the game, i don’t think. Secondly, this woman’s name is only ever spelled with those white squares, so I’m stuck with having to just calling her ‘the pilot’, as dry as that sounds... I just don’t want to type out weird characters every time, or call her ‘triple cube’...

Anyway, so 59898 is assigned to help this woman in testing artillery tech (stuff like mechs and tanks). I should mention really quick that in the game’s story, during this point of time is when world war iii is happening, but that’s just a backdrop for robots to eventually gain more prominence. Anyway, we move on to the second memory, where some time has already passed. At the beginning of this memory, the pilot is visibly depressed, which 59898 takes note of.

Her ‘comfort mode’ consists of patting the pilot on the head, who while surprised, actually is grateful. She feels comfortable enough to talk about her worries aloud to the doll, mentioning how she is a war refugee and has to make a living in the research base because she can’t go back to her home in china, at least not before making enough money for a very expensive and exclusive train ticket. She continues to talk at length to the doll...

...not that the test doll is capable of responding to anything she says. The pilot insists that she’s happy just to have someone listen to her though, since she feels like she can’t really express her feelings to any other person on the base. Despite that-

That aside, the pilot says that referring to 59898 by her serial number all the time feels a bit weird, so she decides to give the doll a name. (I sure wish the story would give this woman a name too, other than ‘three white squares’ but oh well...)

She talks more with Jiangcheng Ai, or just Ai, after that, asking her if she’d like a change of clothes sometime, like some casual clothes, or an old maid outfit from an old cafe job she used to have (I guess they had to throw in any explanation for that outfit somehow) Point is, more and more time passes.

As time passes though, and we go into the third memory, the pilot brings up complaints to her superiors about how the more recent testings, becoming more increasingly intense and frequent, are putting a great strain on Ai, and even repairs can only help maintain her chassis so much. She insists on wanting to take Ai’s place in the testing, but they refuse because, well, Ai’s entire purpose is to take the strain of these tests so that the human pilot doesn’t have to, and the doll is just a tool there to pave the way for the pilot to eventually take over the mech in action

The next time Ai wakes up from her most recent repairs, the pilot is there to greet her, and Ai can tell straight away that she’s unhappy and tries to comfort her again. The pilot is not surprised at this and talks about how this is how Ai has been since they first met. She goes on to say how all the other people on the base don’t know her half as well as Ai does. Ai tries to understand and determine what the pilot’s intentions with saying all this is, but she cannot do so and can only listen while offering ‘executing - affirmative nod’.

The pilot talks about how once the war is over, she’d like to take Ai back home with her, where they could go to all sorts of gatherings, and the pilot would introduce Ai to her friends.

Ai reviews her personal data, confirming that she has no owners or obligations other than the pilot, so she executes another affirmative nod, and the pilot says this:

As Ai tries and fails to further determine this, something bad happens! if you’ve read this far, i’m sure you’ve already guess what happens next...

At that exact moment, a warning goes out and the research base is being attacked by nebulous enemy forces. With no time to talk anymore, both the pilot and Ai head out into their first real fight.

They spend a good long while repelling enemy forces, working well together and apparently using all sorts of wacky anime weaponry like beam blades and whatever ‘retrograde evasion’ is!

obviously though, you already know this isn’t going to end well for them... When the pilot takes a breather, Ai moves to protect her, but at a critical moment, a sudden high-speed projectile comes her way. In the next instance there’s a crash, and we move onto another memory. Where its all fire and debris, and Ai can’t move.

^ this text box actually repeats several times, indicating that she is repeating her scan for life signs over and over. She gets an internal warning from her systems (differentiated with red text) that she has insufficient power and it warns her to immediately cease ineffective operations. [Unable to detect owner life signs] repeats again.

At this point, uuuuh, its a little stupid actually? because two humans show up, reusing generic ‘bad guy’ sprites from other events that don’t match the current environment and situation at all (one is in a suit and the other is in casual clothes). but the reason they’re here is to provide exposition out loud about what happened. It looked like the human’s mech took a hit for the doll and was blown to bits, though they talk about how that doesn’t make any sense.

Ai at this point tries to execute a bunch of different actions like hugging [target not found] and screaming [no relevant module] but they all fail, and her internal systems tell her that her power is running out and she will cease to function in 30 seconds.

So in those last 30 seconds, Ai decides to quickly review her internal files. the damage she took has corrupted her memories and she doesn’t have the time to properly go through them, so she executes a ‘simulated processed records’, which basically mean she’s just filling the blanks of those memories herself with simulations.

And I have to say. I was decently into and enjoying this little story so far, but its this part that’s the reason i became forced to make this stupid giant post. the first ‘memory’ loads up, and we see the pilot.

Different ‘memories’ of the days spent with the pilot are loaded back to back, each are very short and only last a few lines. Across these files, the two of them talk comfortably with each other, Ai is invited to go get coffee with her, the pilot talks about how going alone is boring and would rather spend time with Ai, Ai saying back with her own words that she always likes spending time with her, etc etc etc.

And then finally, she loads one last ‘memory’, from earlier that same day, before the explosion and the fighting.

and she shuts down.

i passed by this scene the first time all calm, but an hour or so later when I was in the bathroom replacing shampoo bottles, i started thinking about it and I literally started sobbing. And then again later that night when i was in bed. I hate this game!!

so that’s the ‘end’ of that, and the next scene opens, once again in griffin base’s cafe, except...

Ai is sporting a brand new (ugly) look. She says she’d like to take kalina’s order but she was just leaving on other business, as she likes keeping herself busy with all sorts of work around the base ever since she got upgraded into a gundam gajinka. and after she leaves, kalina talks with the other dolls about how Ai used to have some cache issues because her neutral cloud was too full, but upgrading into this new chassis easily fixed that and even allowed her to make use of her old locked away abilities.

Because of the way this scene in the cafe opens up exactly like the very first one at the beginning, it makes me believe that this final scene is also a simulated ‘memory’, that is, Ai filling in the blanks of her corrupted memories with what she wishes to be reality. And i feel confident in believing that because after the scene fades to black, we see more of her internal system monologue.

She (the system) says that the priority execution is to preserve those encrypted memory logs. She does so, and the neural cloud upgrade is complete with confirmation of no loss files. With no risk of deletion in this new form, she executes the command to unlock the encrypted memories. And finally...

[spiderbread dies]

i still wouldn’t use her in gameplay because i can’t stand looking at her design but i told you all i eat up robot with feelings stuff and this is like prime example of exactly that... and if i didn’t make this post, i think my own neutral cloud’s cache would be at risk of overflowing x_X!

#spider bread crumbs #gfl

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langernameohnebedeutung · 5 years ago

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The reason I don't like Hannibal Rising is bc ot takes away the mystery about his past. It explains a character who is better off left without explanation

My post wasn’t actually meant to be that deep but...in all seriousness, I personally always prefer to have more material on a character rather then less, because if there’s something I don’t like or would rather ignore, I can easily do that. If I don’t like something or prefer the mystery I just ignore the canon. I understand where you are coming from and I know “Hanibal Lecter is supposed to be a larger than life villain/monster” or “Hannibal Lecter being inexplicable is makes him such a good villain” was a common argument against Hannibal Rising. On the other hand, it was no secret that Hannibal Rising would give us a backstory so anyone who doesn’t want a backstory, can easily ignore the novel - bc Dragon, Lambs and Hannibal where already out and you don’t need Rising to understand them. Harris didn’t force it on anyone, there is no extra chapter in Silence of the Lambs containing the backstory - it’s a book of its own that was widely marketed as the story of Hannibal’s childhood. When you read the earlier novels it’s pretty clear that Rising and the backstory Harris gave Lecter hadn’t been planned when he wrote them (I know the last time I read all the books one after the other was in 2012 and I read Hannibal Rising last and noticed some contradictions but don’t nail me down on what it was, bc I don’t remember) and personally, that’s something that bothers me more than over-information or too many details - lack of consistency. That’s why I, personally, prefer to have a backstory for a character in mind when I write them, even when I don’t disclose it or just give a few hints and let the audience fill in the blanks for themselves. It’s something that helps me keep a character consistent and to lend weight to their actions and decisions. There are great villains and characters who’s backstory is never explained - and who become scarier for it and I think at the end of the day, it definitely has to do with personal taste. There are also poor examples. There was a lot of debate on Tumblr lately about “spoiler culture” and stories that only work through plot twists rather than actual stakes and developments and personally, the same thing can be said about villains - because villains are always part plot-deviced, no matter how well they are conceived.

They are always the antagonists and have to keep the plot going. There are villains that are basically walking plot-twists. And while they may be exciting and keep us and the other characters on our toes, they have little substance. If you look closer, they only consist of quirky traits and sudden changes of mind with little substance. They are fun but forgettable. They are the opposite of fleshed-out. A character whose not fleshed out has a backstory, motivation, and a moral alignment, but no traits or personality or interests or interesting quirks or feelings. Villains that only have personality and quirks and plot-twists lack a skeleton - something that gives them consistent a motivation and moral alignment. It does strip them somewhat of their mystery and maybe even makes them less scary - but in my opinion, it makes them more interesting and, I think Hannibal is an excellent example of that - it doesn’t make them less scary or effective. We know that Harris looked at actual serial killers as role-models for Lecter. And maybe it’s lack of creativity on my part, but before Hannibal Rising came out, my mind usually wandered to those people, Ted Bundy etc.. And personally...I always felt like that corroded the mystery far more than any actually tragic dark backstory I could come up with, because...I find these biographies are pathetic and mundane whenever I read up on them. So it didn’t bother me much when Rising gave Hannibal Lecter a backstory different from what I had assumed until then. That said, for me personally, Rising as a story is very separate from the rest of the series. I don’t even have Rising in mind when I watch Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal. And Hannibal Rising doesn’t need Hannibal Lecter as the main character to be an interesting story. I probably would have bought it even if it wasn’t about Hannibal. Of course, knowing how Hannibal is going to turn out impacts the way the audience reads this story, but it might actually be interesting how people experience the novel and the main-character if they hadn’t known how he’s going to turn out. But either way, in the setting of Hannibal Rising, he isn’t yet the Hannibal Lecter we know from Lambs or Dragon. Personally, that’s maybe where I would draw the line. I don’t want to read “Hannibal Rising 2″ or “Hannibal Rising 3″ or “Red Dragon the Prequel.” I don’t need to see the entire path between adult Lecter and child Lecter mapped out and maybe that’s also rooted in a certain desire for mystery, but for me, child!Lecter is so far away from Red Dragon-Lecter that I don’t feel it gives us too much information.

Rising could have been a singular story - and that was mostly how my post was intended, anyway. That Hannibal Rising wasn’t a bad film or a bad book. It’s definitely legitimate to debate what exactly this story adds to the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, but it doesn’t affect the other books and while it did affect the TV series, there it was drastically changed bc they couldn’t place Hannibal in a WW2 setting.

The film had a trailer and the book and a summary that was publicly available. No one was tricked into reading/watching it and therefore I’m a bit annoyed at the dislike it gets for its mere existence. Imo it’s honestly very simple: You don’t want to know a backstory for Hannibal Lecter? Don’t read the book about Hannibal Lecter’s backstory or critique it. You want a backstory for Hannibal Lecter? Sure, read the book, watch the film - and then tell us if you liked it. It’s perfectly understandable if someone reads Hannibal Rising and doesn’t like the backstory it gives him, points out the inconsistencies or dislikes the implications of the story or the pacing, writing, presentation, setting - whatever. Those are absolutely fine to critique but I get the sense that many people are just annoyed that this book and this film exist at all and not about the story itself or how it is presented.

#fandom #hannibal rising #Anonymous

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mycelsiaflorist-blog · 4 years ago

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Small Business Saturday: Meet the Floret Team

A few of my favorite thingsI’m asked all the time, “Erin, how do you do it all?” And the answer is: I don’t. There is no way I could do it all myself. But, boy, did I sure try for many years…and I came close to quitting more times than I’d like to admit.

As I shared in a Design Sponge essay earlier this year, I used to think I should do it all, and that letting others help was a sign of weakness. I wasn’t that I didn’t want to relinquish control, it was actually that I was afraid for anyone to see what a mess my life really was. And while my inbox overflowed with hundreds of unanswered emails, my office was a total disaster and my work-life balance was insanely out of whack, I continued to try and do it all myself for far too long.

It was only after I took a huge leap of faith and hired Jill part time to tackle some of the things that were falling through the cracks, that Floret really started to soar. Since then, I’ve worked really hard to open myself up and let others bring their magical gifts into my life. Over the past few years we’ve built a fantastic team of folks who work both on and off the farm to support our little flower business. In honor of Small Business Saturday, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to the amazing folks that I’m proud to call teammates, friends and part of the Floret family. I can’t imagine how I ever did life without them!

I asked each of them to share a little bit about themselves and their role here at Floret. If you’re a small business owner and you’re still going it alone, I hope this post will inspire you to at least consider getting some much needed help. I can’t even begin to describe how dramatically my life has changed (for the better) with the addition of each of these incredible souls. It can be hard to feel like you deserve to be supported, but the truth is, you really do.

Since I try never to ask the team to do things I haven’t done, I’ll start us off:

Erin Benzakein

Role at Floret: I handle the majority of our marketing and social media. I also do a ton of writing and product creation and work with our amazing team to bring all of our big ideas to life. I also lead workshops, plan out the fields and greenhouses, harvest, and fill in wherever I’m needed when we’re short staffed.

Best part of the job: I have a few favorites! I love trialling all of the varieties for our seed company, especially sweet peas. I absolutely love growing every variety in a specific flower group and then observing each one individually, comparing them to one another and recording their special traits.

I love writing and creating new things with Jill. Whenever we have a big project that we’re diving into, we huddle around my dining room table, get out the whiteboard, the Post It notes and plan until our brains hurt. Once there’s a road map in place, we start writing. She sets the outline, then I fill in the blanks, and then we lob it back and forth (sometimes 15 times!) until we get it just right. I’m sure it sounds crazy, but it’s such a thrilling process because with each pass the idea becomes clearer and more real.

Lastly, I love capturing the magic of the flowers. After everyone has gone home for the day, I usually head to the field and harvest whatever is at its best. Then I haul out all of my funky old backdrops and make a big ole mess in the yard. When magic hour hits (the hour before sunset) Chris and I run for the field and frantically try and capture the magic before the light fades. It’s kind of stressful and crazy, but when we get “the shot” it’s completely exhilarating.

Favorite flower memory: Growing up I spent part of every summer in the country with my great grandparents. During the long hot days my Grammie would tell me tales of her flower garden back on their farm in Nevada. She’d always send me outside with scissors to pick a bouquet for her bedside table. While it was nothing like her old garden, there were always a few treasures to be had if you dug around long enough. Leggy snapdragons, a few hybrid tea roses and always a rainbow of sweet peas scrambling up posts by her backdoor. If I close my eyes I can still smell them.

Favorite place to find inspiration: When it comes to business inspiration, Marie Forleo is hands down the best source I’ve ever come across. I look forward to her newsletter every week and have taken both of her online courses multiple times. When it comes to personal growth inspiration, my Mom is certainly my biggest source. She always has some incredible quote that she’s just read, or some amazing heartfelt wisdom to share, or a special way of taking even the worst situation and finding the gold in it. Her nickname for me is “Champ” and whenever I’m feeling down, or discouraged she says,” Champ, you gotta get off the ropes. Keep your head in the game. You can do it!” Without her I would certainly be lost.

Favorite tool on the farm or studio: My Farmer-Florist tool belt. Seriously, it changed my life! Now I never lose my phone, my jeans no longer have holes in the back pockets, and I can always find a pen or Sharpie when I need it. Sounds silly, but it really was a game changer for me.

Chris Benzakein

Role at Floret: I take most of the photos, oversee the shipping end of the shop, run the farm with the help of Jill, Marlee and Erin, handle repairs and maintenance and fill in the cracks wherever needed.

Best part of the job: Seeing our ideas and creations materialize. Witnessing the unique and powerful connections between people and flowers.

Favorite flower memory: My grandmother grew hundreds of gladiolas at her Wisconsin garden every summer. She would pick them and always make the church arrangements. I remember her being the happiest in her garden, especially when she had a handful of flowers.

Favorite place to find inspiration: I love listening to books on tape when I do deliveries. I often listen to war stories and am inspired by the courage and tenacity that it takes to overcome such intense struggles.

Favorite tool on the farm or studio: I love my Canon 6D and Mark III cameras for helping tell the story of Floret. On the farm, my favorite tools are my Kubota tractor and my Leatherman knife. I use both every day.

Jill Jorgensen

Years at Floret: I was the first florist to buy flowers from the farm when Erin was just starting out, over 8 years ago. I had a flower emergency and left a rambling message on her answering machine and the tape ran out! She kindly returned my call and we became flower friends. I’ve worked for Floret in an “official” capacity for 3 years. Prior to that I always worked traditional 8-5 jobs, but helped Erin grow Floret on the evenings and weekends, lending my creative writing skills and being a sounding board. It was a long time dream to work with her and her amazing family.

Role at Floret: It’s a beautiful mixed bag! Everyone calls me the “switchboard operator.” I help triage the work load, coordinate our workshops, and communicate with vendors. I also help Erin take smaller bites so her plate isn’t as full and break down daunting projects into achievable component parts so we can divide and conquer. I spend a lot of time at the Benzakein dining room table with Post It’s and white boards, and lots of strong coffee.

Best part of the job: How much space do I have? There are too many “best parts” to count and very often I find myself thinking, I can’t believe I get paid to do this. I take a great amount of pride in the quality of our workshops and their evolution from the smallest seed of an idea. I love communicating with really enthusiastic, supportive people via email, and then sometimes I get to meet them in person which is always really fun – lots of hugs and squeals. I love having magical Floret flowers in my house, but I love giving them away even more. I love meeting people that also get so excited about flowers (like garden roses!) that they nearly hyperventilate. I could go on forever. See, too many bests.

Favorite flower memory: My grandpa George was a pretty amazing home gardener. He’d grow a lot of things in big, galvanized trash cans with holes in the bottom and line them on the warmest spots of their great big house. All fall and winter he’d layer them with maple leaves to make what he called “black gold.” I have a great picture of him standing in front of his prized dinner plate dahlias and Sweet 100 tomatoes on long ropey vines. I can still hear him lovingly say, “Jill, look at my damn tomatoes!”

Favorite place to find inspiration: I live about 30 miles north of the farm and work remotely for most of the week. When I drive south to work, there is a stretch of I-5 that drops like a chute into the Skagit Valley and the hills open up to this vast expanse of farm land swaddled by the Cascade Mountains. I always feel my tension release, my shoulders relax and I breathe deeper, and I’m instantly filled with appreciation and gratitude.

Favorite tool on the farm or studio: In my own garden, I feel lost without a Hori Hori knife at the ready. I spend more time behind the computer though. My swivel chair, lightning fast laser printer and the Justin Bieber Pandora station make me feel like I’m handling some serious lady business.

Susan Studer King

Years at Floret: Wow, I guess it is going on three years now!

Role at Floret: I work remotely from Ohio to help pull together text and information for Floret newsletters, blog posts, story pitches, website pages, workshop materials or any other miscellaneous tasks that come my way.

Best part of the job: I love working with Erin and the rest of the team to develop resources to support flower lovers, especially fellow farmer-florists. Getting emails or reading comments from people who have been helped by something that I had a hand in pulling together is super satisfying. I don’t think I’ve ever loved a job as much as this one.

Favorite flower memory: Definitely my wedding flowers! I asked my mom to grow and design them many, many years before we started our own farmer-florist business. Every time I smell a stargazer lily, I’m transported back to that July day in 2000.

Favorite place to find inspiration: The farm where I grew up. I love exploring the windbreak with my mom and scouting for shrubs and plants for use in our design work. Plus, the barns and the attic of the farmhouse are great to explore and hold vast troves of “treasures” (what some people might call junk) that are fun to re-purpose.

Favorite tool on the farm or studio: Fabric scissors. In our design studio, there is only one pair that works well at cutting the pretty ribbon finishes for handheld bouquets and we always seem to be fighting for it.

Marlee Powell

Years at Floret: I stumbled into the Floret family in the summer of 2014.

Role at Floret: My job duties at vancouver florist are ever changing. I started as just part time harvesting help, then into full time harvester and farm hand. With the expansion of Floret as a company, I am now in charge of shipping and seed packing. I work remotely about 30-40% of the time in the fall and winter months. During spring and summer I am the point person for all of our workshops to keep everyone on track. I’m the bearer of bad news, such as FIVE MINUTES LEFT! But I say it and mean it with the utmost love!

Best part of the job: The best part of my job is seeing the joy we bring to people. That makes me feel like the hours I spend putting my heart (and back) into digging thousands of dahlias is so worth it. The simple act of sharing flowers, or even photos of flowers, has the ability to transport people out of their own world, even for a short time. Another “best part” is that I feel a part of a second little family. Being able to combine work, family and balance in my life is so important and brings so much joy to my life.

Favorite flower memory: My favorite flower memory had to be around 12 years old and my little sister was 5. My Mom home schooled us and we found a project in a book called “How to grow your own flower tee pee.” Oh man, I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was to try this! The three of us worked so hard building our tee pee and then added rows of corn, carrots, and lined the 20 x 50 foot plot with sunflowers.Sadly everything grew EXCEPT my tee pee. But those sunflowers — I had never seen such a thing. I didn’t even know they could get that big! My sister and I would run thru them and hide in our little jungle land playing in the dirt.

Favorite place to find inspiration: I do CrossFit as exercise, a sport, and something to have fun and enjoy my community through. I actually find a lot of personal inspiration with CrossFit and how it brings people together and lifts them up through fitness.I also find a lot of inspiration through pictures. I especially love the January image on Floret’s 2017 wall calendar shot by Chris. That photo of our green houses in the morning frost is so real to me. I feel the cold in my bones when I look at it. I love that a photo can make you feel very specific feelings.

Favorite tool on the farm or studio: Favorite tool has to be my Farmer-Florist tool belt! That baby makes me feel powerful and like some kind of flower pirate. Not to mention it’s HIGHLY functional. You can keep so many goodies in there! Snips, phone, rubber bands, chocolate bar, maybe some gummies…lots of things. And the tape machine is a close second. Thanks to you all, that thing is getting a workout!

Jill Powell (aka) “Angel Jill”

Years at Floret: 5 years

Role at Floret: I sow seeds, plant, weed, keep things clean, flip greenhouses (pull out spent flowers and replant), set up drip irrigation, get everything ready for workshops and help in the shop if needed.

Best part of the job: All of it. There’s always something different to do. Depending on the season it could be seed sowing, planting, weeding.

Favorite flower memory: The first summer I worked here we filled the entire truck with freshly harvested blue statice.

Favorite place to find inspiration: Working across from Erin because I realize I can go even faster than I thought ; )

Favorite tool on the farm or studio: The pallet forks on the tractor, the battery operated compost tea sprayer, the electric stapler and the Japanese weeding hoe.

Meg Almanza

Years at Floret: Almost two years now.

Role at Floret: I help manage the house, keep things clean and organized. At the workshops I help set up and breakdown the events, plus handle the food and hosting guests. I also work with Erin to tackle big projects like reworking spaces for maximum efficiency, setting up systems within the business, and keeping inventory organized and accounted for.

Best part of the job: I love contributing to the ongoing success of Floret and assisting Erin with the home and the business. I get the most out of my job when I am making someone else happy and I strive to do that every chance I get.

Favorite flower memory: I never had an appreciation for flowers until I came to work at Floret. But after seeing them growing at the farm and the sheer magnitude of their beauty, they’ve taken over my soul. Seeing the way that people react to the beauty of them at the workshops is overwhelming. My biggest joy is when Erin sends me home with buckets of leftover flowers. I fiddle around putting them together in little arrangements and put them all around my house. They make me smile when I get up in the morning.

Favorite place to find inspiration: I love to go junking, “lookie looing” around and finding special things for people in my life to make them feel good.

Favorite tool on the farm or studio: My wagon cart! I can haul all kinds of stuff and it helps me save time when I running back and forth. It makes me feel like I’m accomplishing a whole lot of stuff in a short amount of time. Erika Stephens

Years at Floret: Two years.

Role at Floret: I help with the Floret workshops and have helped with weddings.

Best part of the job: I love to see the students as they come into the barn, feeling held and welcomed. The flowers. I love to watch people open themselves a bit more as they are given new concepts relating to their farms, businesses and their lives as a whole.

Favorite flower memory: Helping my grandmother Astrid cut and hang to dry roses for wreathes she would make. I loved to be close to her and the smell of the roses. I don’t know if it was actually the roses that smelled or she was wearing tea rose perfume. Doesn’t matter, I loved it all the same.

Favorite place to find inspiration: I love to look at Andy Goldsworthy’s photographs and the concept that his art is ephemeral and a large part of the reason he chooses to photograph his pieces, so that they become “everlasting.”

Favorite tool on the farm or studio: My Grundens rain overalls and Bogg boots. Close second, the flower snips.

Nina Foster

Years at Floret: I have been with Floret from the start! Erin and I met when our girls went to kindergarten together. We were each other’s first flower friend. While our kids played, we talked about our dreams and visions over coffee, seed catalogs, and Martha Stewart Living!

Role at Floret: I now live in Vermont and fly back to act as the hostess for the workshops. My job is to make sure all the attendees are comfortable. I am a total mama bear to all.

Best part of the job: The best part of my job is meeting new flower friends, and getting to be part of their experience at Floret. It’s a beautiful thing to witness people following their hopes and dreams.

Favorite flower memory: My older sister Gray, taking me hunting for trilliums and fairies in early spring in the forests in Vermont. Those trilliums were pure magic.

Favorite place to find inspiration: When in Washington, my favorite place for inspiration would be Rosario Beach and Erin’s roses! In Vermont, I have trails in the forests I walk daily. Nature has always been my biggest inspiration.

Favorite tool on the farm or studio: I’d have to say my Floret tool belt is my favorite tool on the farm and in studio. It holds everything!

Readmore: A few of my favorite things

#vancouver flower delivery

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