#this made me want another live season so goddamn badly

[what-if-queen-camilla]

Chapter 24

Another sad one but tomorrow's chapter is going to be brighter again, I promise you 😉

1st December 1994

"I don't want you to divorce! You promised me you're not going to divorce but now you are! You lied to me!" Seeing her poor little daughter standing at the edge of the staircase, desperately crying and screaming at them broke Camilla’s heart into a thousand pieces but also kind of summed up that absolute hell of a year they'd all been through. That goddamn interview Charles had given and everything it had brought about for her and her family, her mother's death and, now Andrew had announced that he wanted to divorce her. She had begged him to at least wait until Christmas was over, so that they wouldn't ruin the festive season for their little girl, but he had been relentless, he wanted to divorce her, as soon as possible, and wanted to marry Rose - as soon as possible. "It will break her heart.", Camilla had told him in regards to Thea, but he'd been sure she'd cope well - but it now turned out that he'd been wrong. He had, indeed, managed to ruin not only the festive season for her but basically crashed down everything she'd loved and believed in, everything that'd given her safety, within the wink of an eye. And she hated him for that. "Thea, darling, please, come here…", she said, rushing up the stairs to take her crying daughter in her arms, but Thea was so pissed off she couldn't bear that kind of closeness right now (a trait which she had definitely inherited from Charles…), turned around and stamped over to her room, slammed the door behind her, fell onto her bed and sobbed into her pillow. "Well done, Andrew! I hope you're proud of yourself!", Camilla hissed at her future ex-husband, looking at him so withering that it almost froze his blood. "See, Camilla, that's exactly why I want this divorce as soon as possible - because, in your world, it's always somebody else's fault, you're perfect and never do anything wrong, it's always somebody else!", he screamed at her and she couldn't believe the utter nonsense he was talking. "Oh just shut up and leave me alone! You know what? You can have your divorce, as soon as possible if it's so important for you, go and marry your lover and live happily ever after, I don't care anymore, I really don't!", she screamed back. "Just go! I can't have you here tonight, go to Rose or any of your other affairs but get out of my way!", she added, knowing exactly that there had been only Rose for him for at least the last five years and there was no "other affair" anymore, but there had been times where he probably couldn't recall all his lover's names himself, and after he'd made her baby so unhappy, she thought he deserved a little punishment tonight. Andrew grumbled something, grabbed his car keys from the sideboard and took his leave.

Once the door had slammed shut behind him, Camilla allowed herself to cry a few tears, before pulling herself together again, putting on a brave face and going to her daughter, who needed her love and comfort so badly. "Come here, darling.", she said, pulling Thea into her arms, tenderly rocking her back and forth, like she had done when she had been a baby. "Don't worry, my sweet little darling.", she whispered. "I know this is a hard time for you, but Daddy and I love you so much and we will always be there for you, both of us." "But everything's going to change!", Thea moaned. "And Daddy won't have time for me anymore. Will he get himself a new family, like my friend Gemma's Daddy? She only sees him like once a year nowadays… I don't want to see Daddy only once a year!" "Shush, darling. Of course you will still see Daddy. He can come and visit you anytime, or you can visit him whenever you want to.", Camilla promised her.

"Are we going to relocate?", Thea asked further, immediately adding: "I don't want to relocate. This is our home and I want to stay here!" Camilla sighed and lied down on the bed next to her, staring at the ceiling in excessive demand and desperation. "God help me…", she thought, pressing her daughter against her chest. "We haven't decided on that, yet.", she said, but that was a lie, they actually had, and it was clear that they'd have to sell the house but she didn't manage to reveal that, not today, not like that. Thea was already so heartbroken, she simply couldn't bear giving her more bad news. Instead, she said: "But no matter what's going to happen and where we might be a year from now, I will always be by your side, my darling, and we'll always have it nicely and cosy, as long as we have each other, I promise you." At this, Thea's sobbing decreased a bit and she buried her little face on her mother's chest. "When Daddy marries Rose, will you marry Sir now as well?", she asked, totally out of the blue and Camilla almost burst into laughter. "No, darling. That's not going to happen.", she said and Thea frowned her forehead. "But why not?", she asked, as if it was the silliest and most illogical thing she'd ever heard, explaining: "You're in love. You always kiss." Camilla couldn't suppress a smile. It had been a rough few months for them in summer and she had been really upset and mad with him, but he'd done such an effort to get her back, apologised a thousand times, not only to her but also to her children, to her father, and even to Andrew… he'd sent flowers, wrote letters and poems and hadn't she finally given in at some point, he'd probably have climbed on the roof of Buckingham Palace and performed "If I could turn back time" from Cher or something. So by the end of September, they were all in love and together again, though things remained difficult and they still had to be extremely cautious. He did indeed still hope to be able to marry her one day but she couldn't really see that happening. Apart from the fact that she surely wasn't, and wasn't ever to be, the sort of wife anyone with or without influence wanted for a future King, she herself didn't want to live that sort of life either. She loved him dearly, of course she did, and she, too, hoped that one day their relationship would at least be so much accepted that they wouldn't have to hide anymore and could maybe go out together again like a normal couple could but for nothing in this world would she ever voluntarily marry into that family and the sort of life it'd mean. In contrast to Diana, she had always been aware that nobody could ever marry "just Charles". She'd have married "just Charles" immediately back in 1972, but even then she had been aware that it wasn't "just Charles", but it was a public role, she'd have said yes to as well, a whole institution, with their own sometimes cruel rules, traditions, duties, forces and sacrifices, and that as something she had never wanted and still didn't want. She loved her freedom and was not willing to give up on it, not even for him. Also, she wanted her daughter to grow up as normal as possible, and it was already hard enough for her now with the divorce and everything. This was certainly going to be a very sad, last Christmas at Middlewick House for all of them…

*Side Note: Camilla and Andrew's marriage was officially divorced on 19th January 1995. After everything that had happened, they decided to release a joint press statement which reads as follows:

"The decision to seek an end to our marriage was taken jointly and is a private matter, but as we have no expectation that our privacy will be respected, we issue this statement in the hope that it will ensure that our family and friends are saved from harassment. Most especially, we ask that our children, who remain our principal concern and responsibility, are left alone to pursue their studies at what is clearly a difficult time for them. Throughout our marriage we have always tended to follow rather different interests, but in recent years we have led completely separate lives. We have grown apart to such an extent that, with the exception of our children and a lasting friendship, there is little of common interest between us, and we have therefore decided to seek divorce."

I've read these lines about a hundred times but it still breaks my heart. It all must have been so hard for her. Thinking of these dark days makes me appreciate everything we get to see of her as a happy and healthy Queen these days even more.

[justiceshot]

Inspiration

There’s been this phenomena bothering me for a long time now, and I’ve never spoken up about it because I didn’t feel like I had the authority to do so or the right words to articulate just what about it made me feel so hollow inside. I was doing meal prep today on my lunch hour and the words finally hit me. Like, “Holy shit I get why recipe blogs start with an 85 page thesis on country living before you get to the recipe” level of Hit Me.  

While I was chopping onions I noticed how I was holding my knife (badly) and an old scene from Good Eats popped up into my mind. Immediately it made me smile and I corrected the way I was holding my knife. I used to know the words to every episode of that show--and there were many seasons. I don’t anymore. I couldn’t remember the words to the scene and it made me a little sad before I moved on with the chore.

Why bring this up?

Let me dredge up some old, old tea to give you an idea of when I first noticed it acutely and how it’s changed the way I view media in general. There was a scandal years ago now. Might have been 2016 for the First Trump campaign even where donor information got out on a bunch of celebrities and Alton Brown was on that list as having donated sizably to the Republican party. This was about the time when fear at the LGBTQA community online was at an all time high. I follow a Lot of artists on Twitter and there was just this chorus of despair and dismay. Mr. Brown gave the predictable confusion as to why he was getting backlash and why his decisions should matter and all manner of very logical defensive statements as to why he should do exactly as he did. 

I’m not sure if he ever understood why an entire generation of people who grew up naming him as possibly a childhood hero or at least the reason they gave a passing shit as to why they���d care what they made for themselves suddenly turned away from him. Fast forward a few years and it’s the same story for the creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s (Scott Cawthon, I think?). And again and again there’s this tone deaf confusion from the people I and a lot of other people had kind of put on a bit of a pedestal as someone we wanted to emulate -- or at least aspire to their level of success and influence-- having an Inconvenient Truth coming to light about them. There are more. Many more, but these two were the ones that finally made me sit and think about it.

I never retweeted anyone’s comments pouring my heart out about it. I didn’t think I’d have anything valid to say. I do now.

Here’s the Finally Getting to the Recipe portion of this post.

No one is surprised to see an Influential white man support either the Republican party or values/actions that have been supported by said party as it marches ever toward regressive Authoritarian values. Not ten years ago, not fifty years ago, not now. That’s not why they lose a generation of fans.

When someone creates something they don’t get to choose who gets inspired by the content they create unless it never gets shown to the outside world. It’s how symbols get stolen by radical groups. Symbols that have to be hard fought to be reclaimed if they ever can be at all. So when a wholesome cooking show comes along that appeals to the nerdy and teaches them how to cook, or an indie horror game makes waves on the online community as being the brainchild of one person and these things get Big they’re going to reach a Lot of people. 

I’m posting this on Tumblr, almost none of y’all are cishet and even if you are chances are you’re either an Ally or at the very least not a goddamn enemy. So I’m talking to the choir when I say the older I got, the harder it was to find adults or media outlets in the mainstream who I could feel good about supporting. When news like this breaks? It breaks my heart a little bit every time and takes me by surprise. 

Not because another older white man is putting team mentality politics over the well being of his fellow Americans. But because these people through their creations and success have been able to get out of their tiny home bubbles and meet people. Either through real travel or online. They’ve gotten to expand their horizons so much to make all those waves. And when they come back to their homes and decide where the fruits of their labor should go, they show they haven’t Grown because of those experiences. 

They still choose the side that wants to take away basic human rights. 

So I’ll continue to say goodbye to a lot of childhood heroes I expect. Not because they’ve passed, but because I’ve grown more than they have as a result of their creations. It doesn’t make the lessons I’ve learned or the joy I’ve taken from their works any less valid, but it does make me look elsewhere when I want to find that next rainbow to chase.

[hislittleraincloud]

...

...

...

...Yes, I realize I'm late to ranting about this (I've been BUSY),

but fucking no.

Kinda funny that the crit for this is a lot similar to that of MG..."it could have been, but..."

They better not be touching my Misery, even if it's a "loose remake". The Weeknd already ruined his acting cred with the cringe-inducing The Idol. His ego is so...huge yet there's nothing but hot air there, and those stroking it (Trey Edward Shults) needs to take a second look at that crap show with his bad acting.

Misery's another pop culture thing that I've been devoted to for over 30 years. I have the book in several iterations (French 🇫🇷🥖🫠 is my favorite) and I keep finding Misery VHS tapes around the area where I live (it's just yet another weird phenomenon that I can't explain). I have three, floating somewhere around this garbage dump of an apartment, even though I don't even have a VCR.

My baby dog is named after a character in the newish, successful prequel to Misery, the second season of Castle Rock. The backstory on Annie was phenomenal, and Lizzy Caplan was robbed of all the awards for her portrayal of Annie. Fucking ROBBED.

(Also, whoever made this decision here was a fucking genius...bringing to mind the final shot of the original Psycho movie was brilllllllliant.)

So Misery has a very close place in my heart (not to fucking mention that it came out around the time I had my own goddamn stalker...that is part of the attempted murder thing I've yet to post). It was the last movie my father took me too, as well (he's still alive...but like Cairo, I have very selfish parents).

Do I have faith that our girl Ortega can do it? Of fucking course I do. She plays Crazy pretty well. But it would be trusting the material to a child (ha ha) who, from the looks of past cringey work, is just driving another (mid) vehicle for Ortega to get hurt in the crash. Too many people LOVE Misery, and Annie Wilkes is beloved. She's a most iconic villainess, and just about anyone who plays her gets accolades (Laurie Metcalf in particular was fkn great in the stage play). I don't see Ortega dropping the ball on any iteration of Annie Wilkes, but I see people looking at the Weeknd after The Idol and laughing (as well they should).

Plus, there's this factor:

Who is Ortega's agent? Isn't she getting fucking sick of re-doing everything from 30+ years ago? What's fucking next, a remake of Gremlins with her as Gizmo?

...

...Actually, I'd pay to see that. I WOULD PAY.

But seriously, she wanted to become a scream queen of sorts and now she's fucking stuck doing the same shit other people did before her, and within the memories of people who were alive when the originals came out. Maybe if 50 years had passed between everything, sure. Maybe she should try remaking more stuff from the 60s and 70s. But then again, this is happening with Burton (and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which I still kinda feel is perfect for the barely 5' foot tall Ortega 🤣) and I still feel it's just doing the same thing over and over and over again when there are literally thousands of original scripts out there that aren't getting a second look. There's also thousands upon thousands of books that haven't been adapted.

Or, if she really wants to remake something so badly, something that would be completely controversial: Anne Desclos's The Story of O. A new take on it, one that will confuse the Purity Culturalists just as it pissed off feminists in the 1970s before Desclos, a woman, was revealed to have written it in the 90s. Much like it is today, people get pissed off when female characters are written by women as anything less than 'more' (perception-wise, ofc) than the men around them/young women can never be written as willingly submissive or horribly deranged. Can't write Cairo to be the crazy stalker Adrian Forrester was. Can't write anything where a woman willingly throws herself at/or is submissive to a man (because that never happens IRL, right 💀).

The problem is, people love Crazy/unhinged. We fucking love. It. WHEN IT IS DONE WELL. We need substance behind it, especially if it's a new take on a beloved, completely and utterly unhinged character like Annie Wilkes.

Jesus Christ, can't I just sleep for the next 20 years and skip all of this crap?

[lonzobeans]

My favorite things from the Dimension 20 Live RTX Event Stream:

Everyone introduces themself as Zac Oyama, immediately setting the tone for the entire one shot

The one shot adventure was a visit to Astral State University, an interplanar college for adventurers!  Lou couldn’t be there, so Fabian’s reason for being absent was that he "under no circumstances would consider attending any form of higher education”

The introduction of every single Bad Kid aside from Adaine is a complete mess. Fig is trapped under the piano in Mordred Manor smoking cigarettes until Jawbone gets her out.   When Jawbone asks her to consider installing a ladder or trapdoor or something for her own safety, she states that she sleeps under the piano intentionally because “then I never have to get up first, because how lonely would that be?”

Gorgug has a conversation with his parents about whether or not they should come on the college tour (Gorgug wants to go on his own but also doesn’t want to say no to them, the Thistlesprings want to come but also want to give Gorgug his space).  Brennan describes the entire exchange as “High Octane Kindness Chess”

The Thistlesprings: “But what do you want, bud?”  Gorgug, sweating profusely: “I just want everyone to be happy”

Kristen is a mess and misses Tracker.  She wakes up, swaddles herself  in a blanket, and rolls all the way downstairs.  Fig, who is used to this, pours oatmeal and coffee directly into her mouth.  Adaine puts Boggy in the blanket hole where Kristen’s head is.

Riz is grappling with his newly discovered knowledge of extraplanar conspiracies.  He has not slept because he has spent all night making conspiracy boards about the other planes.  He bursts into Mordred Manor panicking about how the existence of other planes means that,  technically, none of the villains they’ve fought are actually dead.

Fig: “Well that’s kind of comforting, because it means that no one ever really dies.”  Riz, sweating profusely: “Then it’s on us, the good people who don’t die, to... kill... the bad guys… who don’t die!  You see the problem here???”

More below the cut:

In a detail that is simultaneously hilarious and horrifying due to its real world parallels, Aguefort apparently has a massive amount of outstanding student debt.  Fig comes up with a scheme to scam colleges by performing at their welcome week celebrations and then using the money to pay off other people’s student debt.  She also gets Gorgug on board for this.

Fig: “Gorgug’s back in the band.”  Gorgug: “I was out of the band?!”

Astral State University incorporates the Spelljammer setting!  It’s also built on the desiccated corpse of a dead god, surrounded by other floating corpses of dead gods, which is tight as hell.  Zac describes it as “like a startup graveyard”, which is just good comedy.

There is an entire sequence of Fig trying to climb on the roof of a Spelljammer buggy to surf on it, the tour guide telling Fig not to surf on the buggy, Adaine casting Greater Invisibility on Fig to let her surf on the buggy, Riz telling on Fig and Adaine to the elemental powering the buggy, and then Riz being immediately psionically marked as a narc.

Kristen, who spends half the trip swaddled in her blanket, meets a cool senior interplanar gender studies student named Cheska.  She somehow dumps a bowl of oatmeal on herself, after which she slightly regains her composure and uses Leomund’s Tiny Hut to somehow try to take a shower, then comes back out and interrupts Fig impersonating her using Disguise Self in an effort to somehow salvage Kristen’s first impression, and just completely bungles the encounter in every conceivable way.

Kristen, to Cheska: “I like how your haircut is daring me to find you attractive”

They spend so much time fucking around the university that they roll initiative with only a half hour left in the stream.  The combat only lasts for one round because there is only a half hour left in the stream.  It’s perfect.

Ayda shows up briefly at the end!

If you missed the stream, it’ll apparently be on Dropout later on so don’t worry!

[naruhearts]

I’m done keeping my composure.

Sorry, this will be a LOADED post! (And I’ll be repeating the points others have made)

for real, to everyone being nasty and telling heartbroken fans that “Dean was always supposed to die get a grip you’re just butthurt etcetera etcetera—” F you royally.

How dare you police the brutal feelings that’s been embroiling us since the Finale That Must Not Be Named aired. 

The show you think you all watched, the show you all believe was the same SPN from Season 1-4, changed at some point. Kripke wrote his original vision, put it to screen, saw it through in S5 as he intended, and closed the door on that era.

In 2008, Supernatural was adopted and inherited. As you know, there was a supreme paradigm shift post-Kripke era. The show FLOURISHED (we won’t talk about Gamble thanks). It evolved, transformed, grew beyond trauma-induced self-worthlessness and toxic masculinity and endless death and hegemonic social ideals and conservatism and repressive anti-revolutionary ideas. Castiel, the iconic favourite and beloved staple of the series portrayed by Misha Collins, was introduced in Season 4 as the core lead character, and he ushered in a brand new era of Christian mythos that SPN took advantage of. Longevity SKYROCKETED. Audiences were INTERESTED. SPN amassed an incredibly groundbreaking fanbase infused by non-nuclear principles. A massive subversive wave began, fighting the Status Quo of the times since 2008. It’s precisely why such an abysmal ending to a show of extensive Freud-Jungian metanarratively meta META complex stature and social POWER will render us totally and unbearably broken for years to come.

Point is, DEAN WINCHESTER NO LONGER WANTED TO DIE. HE WANTED TO LIVE. HE WANTED TO SIT ON THE BEACH, PLUNGE HIS TOES IN THE SAND, AND SIP UMBRELLA DRINKS WITH HIS BROTHER AND HIS BEST FRIEND. He said this in Season 13. And then, a season later, he told the ghost of his long-deceased father — the source of his deep-running trauma and the figure of self-reductive authoritarianism permeating his arc since Season 1 — after being questioned why he didn’t pursue the Nuclear Fam, that he already has his own: his brother Sam, his adopted child Jack, and Cas.

Dean’s best friend Cas. Oh god, Cas, who made his inevitably permanent mark on Dean’s soul beyond allyship. Castiel, renamed to Cas, God’s -iel removed by Dean. Dean, the human spark that lit the fire of pre-existing autonomy in the inherently rebellious angel who was, this entire time, the catalyst for free will in God The Writer’s puppet show. Their friendship set on goddamn fire. I can also write paragraph upon paragraph about my love for Cas while devastated tears stream down my face, but I digress—

Cas’ romantic love for Dean pushed our main Heart of SPN to love himself. Love is free will. Free will is also love. Of note, Cas’ love confession in 15x18 was supposed to offset something so vastly important and fundamental...to maybe (read: most likely) pull the trigger on SELF-TRUTHS in conjunction with free will. And The Great Anticipated Follow-Up to the episode penned by the passionate Berens should have included (read: seemed like it was going to be) Dean, closeted trauma survivor in love with his best friend, being given the opportunity to do it right: to SPEAK HIS TRUTH, and then that very singular opportunity was STOLEN so grossly. After poring over it for days, I refuse to believe we made their years-long story up out of thin air, spun it out of fantastical-delusional dream cotton candy, because we DIDN’T. IT WAS REAL.

As I said in another post: “I’ve just been feeling physically ill for the past >40 something hours with the terrible knowledge that 19/20 undid years of vital progression towards healthy interdependence, autonomy, and a positive endgame, where Sam, Dean and Cas close the ring of found family in final empowering self-fulfillment...where Dean, no longer repressed and set free, is able to use his words and speak his truth as a queercoded trauma survivor, henceforth confirming and self-affirming his own bisexuality since S1 by reciprocating — by telling Cas that he always loved him, too, loved him endlessly, which would have altogether divested Supernatural of its cult status and catapulted it into global worldwide significance as the longest running sci-fi genre show in American broadcasting history that actually dared to defy and, by proxy, empower LGBTQ2IA+ everywhere who found profound personal meaning in Destiel through VALIDATION,” — found themselves mirrored in Dean and Cas’ respective character journeys individually and as each other’s queer love interests.

THIS IS WHY DEAN WASN’T MEANT TO DIE.

THEY WERE SO ESSENTIAL, NOT JUST TO THE OVERARCHING STORY AND HEALTHY INTERPERSONAL THEMATICS OF MODERN SPN, BUT ALSO TO THE SOULS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD WHO FOLLOWED THEIR JOURNEYS, HOPED FOR THEM, ASPIRED TO BE LIKE THEM, TREASURED THEM, WEEPED FOR THEM, AND FOUGHT FOR THEM, LIKE YOU AND ME.

Heck, how could anyone think Sam Winchester had a well-deserved characteristic ending? He didn’t. Dean’s brother was shafted so badly. He stopped hunting when seasons ago, he had canonically accepted that he no longer wanted an apple pie life. He simply...turned the lights off in a resoundingly empty bunker and left — abandoning his dead brother’s room — never to return (he did return later to get the Impala, family photos etc, I mean this symbolically)...as if — dare I say it — Supernatural itself eerily told us, in the negative-spaced pitch blackness, that the organic show and the wonderfully complex, matured characters we’ve grown to love weren’t going to survive or be revisited...that it was all going to perish, and that they no longer gave a single shit about their own show, which, to me, is the worst cardinal sin, because how dare they throw Team Free Will, an immovable and indomitable and passionate found family they built from the ground up, a found family CHOCK FULL TO THE BRIM OF LOVE AND LIFE RAGING AGAINST THE AUTHORITARIAN MACHINE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE FREE WILL, under the bus no matter who is to blame. Growth was stomped on.

Then Sam married a faceless wife who wasn’t his textually established (and deaf) love interest Eileen, named his son Dean Jr., and grew old miserably, still mourning the passing of his older brother, shaken and sombre. Back to square one. IT WAS ALL ANTITHETICAL, even OUTSIDE a shipping context, and I ripped my hair out at this point in sheer disbelief.

This 15x20 ending would have fit somewhere between S4-7. Now? IT DOESN’T FIT. IT’S A JAGGED PUZZLE PIECE THAT DOESN’T BELONG ANYWHERE. IT’S THE FOREBODING UNKNOWN STRANGER IN ITS OWN LAND, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY. This kind of ending was basically an illogical, unsound cluster of metastasized cells that, to me, ruined the viability of previous seasons to sustain bold praise and respect and dignity and rewatches and classic nostalgia in such insidious ways.

Dean Humanity Winchester and Cas, after everything they’ve been through, were silenced and lost in death, ripped apart from each other, unable to love each other the way they deserved, because of disappointing, vile incompetency and homophobia. The greatest love story ever told, again obliterated in less than 60 hollow minutes.

You know what this tells your audience, CW SPN? Death without self-growth is the way to go, and no one is allowed to forge their own path to freedom.

HOW INSULTINGLY HARMFUL IS THAT?

I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving.

We all deserve answers.

[bananonbinary]

Time for a Salty Meta Post about Martin!

people who’ve followed this blog for a bit know that spending six hours combing through text for some goddamn sources is my specialty, so i compiled every time jon ever talked about martin’s work in season 1. which for the record, he stopped complaining about all the way back in episode 26, where he was angry that martin of all people got hurt.

things jon gets mad at martin for:

not being able to find records that don’t exist

not being able to find someone based only on a first name

the Dog

not wearing trousers in his off-hours

being the one that got caught up in the jane prentiss thing

mag 004 and mag 012 both have jon taking potshots at martin over research that was proven accurate by outside sources

things jon has never once complained about:

martin not understanding the filing system and just putting stuff away at random

martin being clumsy, constantly ruining things, spilling tea everywhere everyday, etc

martin turning in incompetent, poorly-edited, or badly formatted reports

martin not understanding the terminology used, skills expected, etc., and generally being extremely new to the field

please for the love of god stop making martin the silly bumbling idiot who can’t do anything right just because he doesn’t have a formal education. there’s zero evidence for it in the text, and it’s really weird to act like a 4 year degree would outweigh the *10 years* of job experience he has, not just in academia, but in the institute itself by season one. my boy has worked there longer than ANY of the rest of the main cast. screw you guys.

tl;dr: martin is never once shown to be bad at his job, jon pretty much only ever gets mad at him for the really stupid first impression and also not finding stuff that no one else was able to find either. after martin got hurt, jon talks about his research basically the same way he talks about tim’s or sasha’s work.

fucking proof under the cut:

(i didnt include the s1 finale or martin’s statement bc that’s just...two entire episodes of them talking to each other, but there isn’t really any notable Martin Complaints in either of them imo)

I swear, if he’s brought another dog in here, I’m going to peel him.

[pre-launch trailer]

.

Well, technically three, but I don’t count Martin as he’s unlikely to contribute anything but delays.

[...] Alongside this Tim, Sasha and, yes, I suppose, Martin will be doing some supplementary investigation to see what details may be missing from what we have.

[MAG001 Anglerfish]

.

Martin couldn’t find any records of Ex Altiora as a title in existent catalogues of esoteric or similar literature, so I assigned Sasha to double-check. Still nothing.

[MAG004 Pageturner]

.

I had Martin conduct a follow-up interview with Mr. Woodward last week, but it was unenlightening. Apparently there have been no further bags at number 93 and in the intervening years he has largely discounted many of the stranger aspects of his experience. I wasn’t expecting much, as time generally makes people inclined to forget what they would rather not believe, but at least it got Martin out of the Institute for an afternoon, which is always a welcome relief.

[MAG005 Thrown Away]

.

Martin was unable to find the exact date the original house was built but the earliest records he could find list it as being bought by Walter Fielding in 1891.

[...]

We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree.

[MAG008 Burned Out]

.

According to Martin, who was here when they took this statement, it was at this point in writing that Mr. Herbert announced he needed some sleep before continuing. He was shown to the break room where he went to sleep on the couch. He did not awaken; unfortunately succumbing to the lung cancer right there. Martin says the staff had been aware of how serious Mr. Herbert’s condition was, and had advised him to seek medical aid prior to giving his statement, but were told rather bluntly by the old man that he would not wait another second to state his case. I can’t decide whether this lends more or less credibility to his tale.

[MAG010 Vampire Killer]

.

“Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin,” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out.

[MAG012 First Aid]

.

I sent Martin to look into this ‘Angela’ character - not that I want him to get chopped up, of course, but someone had to. Apparently, he spent three days looking into every woman named Angela in Bexley over the age of 50. He could not find anyone that matches the admittedly vague description given here, though he informs me that he had some very pleasant chats about jigsaws. Useless ass.

[MAG014 Piecemeal]

.

Martin declined to help with this investigation as he’s “a bit claustrophobic”

[MAG015 Lost John’s Cave]

.

There simply aren’t enough details given in this statement to actually investigate, short of Martin confirming that Mr. Vittery did indeed live at the addresses he provided.

[MAG016 Arachnophobia]

.

Oh, he’s off sick this week. Stomach problems, I think.

Blessed relief if you ask me.

[...]

I asked Martin to try and hunt down Mr. Adekoya himself for a follow-up, but have been informed that he passed away in 2006. 

[MAG017 The Boneturner’s Tale]

.

MARTIN

Well, I need to tell someone what happened, and you can vouch for the soundness of my mind, can’t you?

ARCHIVIST

…

That is beside the point.

[MAG022 Colony]

.

Martin! Good lord man, if you’re going to be staying in the Archives, at least have the decency to put some trousers on!

[MAG023 Schwartzwald]

.

Martin found one other thing while combing through police reports for the Hither Green area. About a month after this statement was given, on May 15th, 2015, police were called out to once again investigate the chapel.

[MAG025 Growing Dark]

.

I know, but it would have to have been Martin, wouldn’t it? I mean, anything goes wrong around here, it always seems to happen to him. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. Why didn’t you report this?

[MAG026 A Distortion]

.

Martin made contact with the son, Marcus McKenzie, but he declined to talk to us, saying that he’d “already made his statement.”

[MAG027 A Sturdy Lock]

.

Tim and Martin had a bit more luck investigating Tom Haan, though only really enough to confirm that he seems to have completely vanished following his departure from Aver Meats on the 12th of July.

[MAG030 Killing Floor]

.

Martin’s research would seem to indicate the place employed a reasonable number of international staff they preferred to keep off the books

[...]

TIM

Ah well, that’s actually what he was asking, huh! Um, apparently Martin, uh, took delivery of a couple of items last week addressed to you. Did he not mention it?

ARCHIVIST

No, he… Oh, yes, actually. I completely forgot. He said he put it in my desk drawer, hold on.

[MAG036 Taken Ill]

[sapphic-woes]

Hi! Just wanted to say I really enjoyed part 2 of the tlk au and I hope you continue it because you're such a wonderful writer! Also I just got through season 3 and I can't believe they did that to Thyra she was such a sweetheart 😭

NO BECUASE LITERALLY WHY. IT SERVED NOTHING RLLY OTHER THAN SEEING BEOCCA THROW HANDS????

Ok. Deep breath. I am calm :) this was kinda mentioned in another ask I got today, but like, tlk is notoriously so bad with writing women it's insane. Like... Like it's not even the women themselves MOST of the time that are badly written (tho some lack substance tbh), it's just what happens around them or who interacts with em or if they. Yk. LIVE. ...okok imma go down the list I'm srry

Iseult: her death REALLY made no sense. Her character was interesting and even tho they had that classic "he's MY grubby good for nothing man" trope going on with Midrith (I dunno if that's her name, can't remember) her whole thing with seeing and saving Alfred's kid was like. Actually really good. And then to have her ask Uthred to essentially fuck the prophetic powers out of her only so that she can't see her death coming.....boo. boo she was so cool fuck uuuuu. But yk she was set up to fail from the start tbh

Hilde: I won't get into her but I'm thinking if you're at season 3 you must be starting to be like 👁️👄👁️. That feeling will continue they fail her high-key

Gisela: I HAVE NEVER SEEN. A DEATH MORE WORTHLESS. literally died OFF SCREEN TOO if I remember and like why. She was a good character that didn't REALLY drive the plot but she literally was just That Girl yk. Every line was iconic and awesome (also we get Uthreds iconic "now I will never be taken away from you" line which was!!!!!!!!) Also how did she move the plot along more with her death than when she was alive I mean. C'mon.

I won't talk abt brida :)

Stiorra: actually just brida-ed. You'll get what mean later.

Eadith: godsent. Perfection. She can do no wrong. Somehow she made it through amazing and iconic

Aelswith: ICONIC AMAZING. YOU HATE HER YOU LOVE HER. IN THE END YOU STILL TALK ABOUT HER. WISH I WAS HER. (SEASON 5 I THINK EP. 7?? THATS ALL I HAVE TO SAY.)

Skade:..... Imagine having an entrance like a god. And then being done so dirty. They way she was reduced to three men fighting over fucking her was like. When Uthred LITERALLY TEASES FUCKING HER THAT WAS IT FOR ME. NOT HIM BEING LIKE "YO DONT PROTEST BEING TRADED AND ILL COME BACK FOR U AND FUCK U :)" BITCH LICK HER FEET U GODDAMN– (fun fact I went thru my very first watch thinking everyone was better than Uthred. I still kinda do...other than Alfred lmao...also I still don't know how skade dies. I always skip thru somehow????)

Uhh I forgot how to spell her name, the lady of Mercia: I feel like she had the most character. Like everything that happened to her was iconic. I don't know why she loved Uthred tho. Like the romance was neat but like that guard dude was. There. Anyways won't say more but she and Erik for life.

I can't think of anyone else but as u can see I am very invested into tlk :)

[strideofpride]

Wait, BLAIR decorated the CB townhouse????? That’s so… 😔 Okay also, idk if this is common fandom knowledge already but, did you know that that townhouse is actually the same one that Miranda Priestly lived in in The Devil Wears Prada? Which, I’m sure it was just chosen as a fun shout out, but going back to the W arc… Miranda was basically the most famous fictional equivalent of the real “powerful woman” Blair was trying to emulate, before she got fired and apparently just gave up on fashion journalism altogether and decided being a princess and then taking over her mother’s company would be easier. Maybe it’s just because I made the association with Blair’s career potential and TDWP when I was first watching season 4 but, there is something very melancholic to me about Blair deciding to make a home in the house of the fictional character who basically represents the sort of life she could of but ultimately didn’t have. She wanted so badly to be the next Anna Wintour/Miranda Priestly, but instead she just became another nepotism baby whose life work is fulfilling her mother’s dreams instead of her own. But hey, at least she’s got the townhouse so she can pretend, right?

Wow you really came for her!!!

Yeah, I mean there’s definitely a line in that flashforward that Blair did all the decorating herself of the 🪑townhouse and I mean. It’s ugly as fuck lol. Girl clearly lost her sense of self lol (also as @terrainofheartfelt pointed out blue is a color dair both shared in their childhood bedrooms so 😏)

Okay but for real, I think I knew that TDWP fact in the back of my head but wow when you spell it all out like that…I don’t think it was even a shout out at all, it’s probably just a popular filming location. But the unintentional layers it adds !! But god anon you are so right. Gossip Girl is a goddamn tragedy

[phynali]

another post about the secret good supernatural that lives in my brain

where’s that interview or convention quote from mark sheppard about how he wishes Rowena had been Crowley’s ex-wife instead of mother?

i absolutely love Rowena and Ruth O’Connell did an incredible and fantastic job with bringing her to life, but i do feel like that’s the world’s most Valid critique. 

and i kind of get that the show’s later seasons really like to dabble in the parenthood narratives, with Rowena, with Mary, with the Jack storyline, with Lebanon. what does it mean to be a mother/father/parent, and how do we do the best by our kids? what happens when we fuck up? what happens when we’re selfish? how do experience being a person and a parent when those are in conflict?

but i don’t see how making rowena into crowley’s mother really added to any of those conversations, tbh. 

if anything, them as exes would give a lot more weight to her, y’know, killing her (other) son at the end of s10. obviously she’s got this “i hate that i can’t hate you i hate that i love you” maternal thing with crowley but what if she was killing her son and crowley was thinking about the kid crowley had all those years ago who also gets resurrected when rowena is around and who crowley has to let go of, right? i mean what if that was both their kid? what if they had to mutually watch him die? what if that’s why they hated each other in the first place? what if crowley made that stupid childish deal he did just to punish himself for rowena leaving him after their son died and he blamed himself and meanwhile rowena went and got herself invested in witchcraft in a vain and failed attempt to bring their kid back and everything about them went to shit - 

god, i want this so badly now?

and i see why they might not have wanted to reduce all their stories to siblings or lovers, why other dynamics keep things fresh, but i think exes who still get along but also can’t stand one another but also love one another but are never, ever getting back together and that’s for the best but also if you lay a finger on him i’ll kill you only i get to kill him - 

well i just think that’s a bit more interesting than what we got? especially with lucifer thrown in the mix and the obvious infidelity feelings. right now lucifer and rowena reads as abusive romance but they didn’t lean into any paternal dynamic between lucifer and crowley, like it’s just pure debasement on an equal level, and they obviously just did not know or were too afraid to tap the very disturbing familial parallels they could have setup there so why even paint themselves into that corner? 

why not setup lucifer and crowley as romantic rivals, neither of whom actually want rowena or a relationship but both of whom play tug-of-war with the loyalty and allegiance of women because they’re awful people (devils, literally) and why not have rowena’s narrative involve rejecting all of that bullshit and overcoming the inherent misogyny. not to say there’s not some of that in her maternal storyline as well but it’s - empty? in comparison (by which i mean delivery). and much better explored with mary in s12.

and the samwena vibes would be so fascinating!! if rowena was crowley’s ex the show might have actually dug into crowley and sam’s super interesting and massively under-explored dynamic because the weird jealousy and territorialness would be so goddamn fun!! 

“no i don’t want to be with her but no she is not allowed to flirt with you what the hell do you mean you’re the one destined to kill her oh fucking no you aren’t that is my job she broke my heart and i am the king of hell, not you mr boy-fucking-king-who-abdicated so you will pry the right to kill her from my cold dead demon hands i will save her life just so you don’t get to kill her you bastard - “

come on! 

right now samwena and crowley was super under-explored as it is, and at minimum we 150% deserved crowley being cheeky with sam for having chemistry with his mother and sam being a little flustered/unsure how to respond while inevitably sassing crowley back. please. it would be so weird. you cannot convince me that the crowley we know and love wouldn’t have deliberately flirted with mary just to see sam’s eye twitch and for dean to break a tooth by tensing his jaw too hard. i mean it wouldn’t work because mary hates demons almost as much as sam but it would be in character and it would delight me, personally.

anyway i also saw someone else comment that when rowena was introduced the witchcraft in the show went from super fucking dark (how it was introduced to the show in kripke era, then left mostly untouched in s6-9) to pretty purple sparkles and tbh that’s so true and also dull? like rowena was legit introduced in the process of reading a book and drinking tea (or wine?) while two guys bled out slowly on her ceiling held up by her dark af magic and by the end she’s just ...  doing spells that sam and dean have no moral compunctions about using? dabb do you know what horror is as a genre why did you change the genre of this show in its final 3 seasons? why did we not get to retain the dark and demonic aspects of witchcraft? 

i am so disappointed at how they watered down so many different things with rowena and final note she absolutely should have fucked sam literally any other character behind the bookstacks except gabriel omg.

[nicknellie]

Anonymous requested: Carrie and Flynn play love interests on TV, and viewers ship them together hard core, not knowing that off camera there is some MAJOR pining (hidden by fake “hatred” for each other) happening. featuring background willex being exasperated by their lesbian friends not knowing how to function around each other?

I’m sorry you sent such an amazing request and then I effectively left you on read for literally months. Seriously anon, this is glorious, I had so much fun writing it. I got like 1.5k words in and realised I had not yet got to anything even close to your request, so there’s quite a bit of background, but I’m still happy with how it turned out (even if it is a lot angstier than you were probably expecting). I really hope you like it, thank you for being so patient!

She Was a Goddamn Dream

Despite the way she acted, there weren’t actually that many things that Carrie Wilson was completely and utterly certain that she was good at. There was her singing and dancing, but every time she watched back recordings of her performances she would pick out a dozen things she could have improved upon; there was her acting, but every time it got to the tenth take of a scene she began to feel like she was messing up time and time again, tripping over her words, delivering her lines flatly with no emotion; there was her frequent attempts to connect with her fanbase, but every now and then a fan would take it too far and she would feel like the one who had ruined it all. People could tell her those things didn’t matter or that they weren’t her fault as many times as they liked, but it never stopped them gnawing away at Carrie’s self-esteem, making her feel like sometimes she didn’t deserve the fame or renown she had built for herself over the years.

But there was one thing she knew for a fact that she was good at: being in love with Flynn Taylor and hiding it.

Carrie had first met Flynn in elementary school. She had been playing with her long-time best friends Alex and Julie when little Flynn, a new student, had walked up to them and asked if she could join in because their game (something about aliens and cowboys if Carrie remembered correctly) looked really fun. Carrie could still recall how Flynn had looked that day, even if it was going on twenty years ago – her hair hung down by her shoulders in cute twists, she had worn a bright pink t-shirt and blindingly yellow dungarees, and she wore sneakers that lit up when she stamped her feet.

Carrie remembered thinking how cool Flynn looked (for a six-year-old) and something inside her had turned defensive. She had advocated for leaving Flynn out of the game, claiming they already had enough players and it would ruin it if they had any more, but Julie had pointed out that if Flynn joined, they would have an equal number of aliens and cowboys so Alex wouldn’t be so outnumbered by the two of them anymore. Carrie had quickly been outvoted, Flynn had been allowed to play with them, she and Julie had clicked in an instant, and Carrie decided that day that she didn’t like Flynn Taylor, not one bit.

For a few years, things had been a little rough. Carrie wasn’t shy about how much she disliked Flynn, but in return Flynn didn’t mind telling anyone who would listen about how much she hated Carrie. The two of them would bicker and squabble and argue over the tiniest of things, and Carrie only realised how bad it was getting when Julie blew up at them.

It was sometime in their freshman year of high school and their feud had been going on for years without showing any signs of letting up. Julie had been going through the worst time of her life; her mother (Rose, who was the closest thing Carrie had to a mother as well, but she knew it wasn’t the same thing) had passed away, she was facing getting kicked out of the music programme for lack of participation, her family was considering moving house, and every day it seemed like more and more things got added to her list of things that were going wrong in her life. Carrie and Flynn had made a silent agreement to put their arguing on hold for Julie’s sake, knowing their friend didn’t need that extra stress in her life right then. And for a while, it had been going well.

Until suddenly it was going badly again.

The three of them were having a movie night at Carrie’s house and everything was great. They were watching their favourite films, eating copious amounts of junk food, talking and laughing and having fun, and Carrie couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Julie smile so much. It had all been going so well.

But then Flynn suggested a movie, but Carrie had wanted to watch something else, and one thing had led to another until they were yelling at each other in the middle of Carrie’s living room, the whole world dropped away around them to the point that all they could focus on was each other. They were so enraptured in their argument that neither of them heard Julie’s phone chime, neither of them watched her open a text from her dad, neither of them saw the tears slide down her cheeks as she read it. Neither of them noticed anything was wrong until Julie tried to suppress a sob but instead just made it come out louder than it would have. Flynn and Carrie had turned to face her, argument forgotten in an instant, and rushed to comfort their friend.

Julie had kind of lost it that night. She had told them everything on her mind from the text she’d just received from her dad telling her they’d officially found a buyer for the house to the fact that she had been exhausted for years from all their arguing. She explained that she thought recently the two of them were finally getting better, finally working on having a civil relationship, and maybe something was finally going right for her because they wouldn’t be at each other’s throats all the time anymore.

“I guess not,” she had said defeatedly, fiercely scrubbing at her face in an attempt to dispel any of her tears, “because you two were just faking it for me. I told you I didn’t want anyone to tiptoe around me like I’ll break if I’m dropped, but you still did. I thought you guys would understand that I just want things to be normal again.”

“We were only trying to make things easy on you,” Carrie explained, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Yeah,” Flynn agreed, “we never meant to upset you, Jules.”

Julie had scoffed. “Yeah, well, you’ve done a great job of that.”

Julie had apologised for it all in the morning, but Carrie didn’t blame her for anything she’d said the night before. She had clearly got a lot off her chest that she really needed to, and everything she had said to Carrie and Flynn had been deserved in a way. Carrie knew that her and Flynn’s intentions had only been good, but Julie had asked for reality, and they hadn’t given her that.

Which had got Carrie thinking – in this situation, what was her reality?

For years and years, she would have said she hated Flynn. She would have believed it, too. She would have said that from the moment they’d met on that playground, Flynn had been her worst nightmare. But when she thought back on everything, how she saw Flynn even when they were fighting, she couldn’t call Flynn a nightmare.

She was a goddamn dream.

Carrie had spent night and day thinking about what Flynn really meant to her, why she made her so angry, whether it was really anger at all, and she had come to a revelation that really wasn’t as surprising to her as it should have been. It turned out that it wasn’t anger at all, it was a severe case of repression and Carrie Wilson was very much a lesbian.

That was another thing she knew she was good at – repressing things.

Though she was kind of underwhelmed by her epiphany (really, she thought, she should have worked it out a lot sooner), it did make things harder. Now she knew that she didn’t want to argue with Flynn, she wanted to kiss her, and that was very inconvenient. They didn’t argue as much anymore anyway, making a genuine effort to like each other rather than pretending for Julie’s sake, but that just meant that Flynn smiled at her more often and laughed at Carrie’s snarky jokes and it was nearly impossible not to fall at her feet in worship every time she so much as breathed.

So Carrie got very good at pretending she wasn’t in love with Flynn. By the time they were halfway through freshman year, they were friends and nobody ever pointed out that Carrie felt much more than friendship. Things in all their lives began to improve – Carrie and Flynn were no longer feuding, Julie ended up not moving house and got back into the music programme when she started a band, and she got herself a boyfriend – Luke – who made her the happiest Carrie had ever seen her.

(It had prompted many a discussion about whether or not Carrie and Flynn had anyone in mind they wanted to date. Carrie had panicked and said Nick, the school’s star lacrosse player who she had spoken to maybe three times and was definitely not her type. Flynn had given a suspicious hum and said she was still figuring out what it was she wanted; Carrie had excused herself and had a ten-minute panic in the bathroom over the implications of that.)

By the time university rolled around, Julie entered the big leagues with Julie and the Phantoms, deciding not to pursue further education but instead focus on her career, while Carrie and Flynn had gone to the same performing arts school. The same performing arts school where they’d been hired by the same agent. The same agent who kept getting them roles on the same shows together. It was a ticking time bomb, Carrie knew, and it went off a few days after her twenty-fourth birthday.

Carrie had been hired to play Flynn’s love interest in the third season of a show that Flynn had been cast in two years previously.

The truth was, it was both a dream come true and a living nightmare all at the same time. For one thing, Carrie adored the show and had been aching for a role on it since it came out. But on the other hand, she would be Flynn’s love interest, and according to the scripts they would have their first on-screen kiss at the end of the season – Carrie always made sure to separate her work from reality, but in her mind, kissing Flynn was kissing Flynn, no matter what disguise it was hidden by, and it was what she would have to do if she wanted the job.

She tried not to panic, she really did, but it wasn’t the easiest thing to not be panicked by, which was where everything started to fall apart.

It was the day of the kiss scene and Carrie was a wreck (which was putting it kindly). She had been pacing back and forth in her trailer in front of Alex for more than half an hour, trying not to mess up her hair every time she ran her hands through it, saying words but not making any sense.

“Carrie,” Alex said, equal parts firm and amused. Carrie stopped her pacing and turned to face him so fast she was surprised she didn’t get whiplash. “Will you please stop moving? You’re making me travel sick.”

“Very funny,” she deadpanned, but nonetheless she crashed down next to him on the little couch, flopping against him and resting her head on his shoulder. He easily threw an arm around her and she closed her eyes, trying to ignore the stress she was under, but the pounding of her heart made it very difficult.

“Talk to me,” Alex said. “What exactly is it that’s getting you so worked up here?”

“I have to kiss Flynn,” Carrie grumbled.

“And that’s a bad thing?” Alex asked.

“No,” Carrie groaned. “Don’t ask stupid questions. It’s a good thing, which is why I’m mad about it. Keep up, Alex.”

She felt him shake with a badly hidden laugh and scowled. “There’s no point asking me to keep up when you’re at least a hundred steps ahead of me. Explain it to me, get it off your chest.”

Carrie groaned dramatically but nonetheless she lifted her head and turned to face Alex, looking him in the eye.

“Fine,” she said heavily. “I’m in love with Flynn.”

Alex nodded. “Yep.”

“We have been acting like we’re in love with each other for the entirety of this season.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s been longer than that–”

Carrie smacked his arm and he grinned devilishly. “Don’t interrupt me. We’ve been acting like we’re in love with each other for the entirety of this season, and now I have to kiss her.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Helpful,” Alex said with an expression that suggested it was anything but helpful.

“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” Carrie asked. She was almost certain that Alex was messing with her now, forcing her to admit what he already knew because he probably thought it would do her some good, and she didn’t know if she was grateful for that or not.

Alex just nodded once.

“Fine,” she conceded. “I don’t want to kiss Flynn because I want to kiss Flynn. If I kiss her on the show, it won’t be real, but I won’t be able to stop thinking about it anyway. I won’t be able to stop myself from wanting to do it again, but not as our characters – as us. I already want to kiss her half the time and I know that’ll only get worse once I’ve done it for real. But I won’t be able to do it again unless it’s scripted because Flynn doesn’t love me back. Do you see my problem now?”

Alex was silent for a beat, his face working through a thousand different emotions in one go. He opened his mouth to reply, closed it again, and whipped out his phone, opening up a message.

“Oh, this is how it is?” Carrie said indignantly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I spill my secrets to you and your response is to text someone instead of reacting at all?”

“I’m texting Willie,” he explained. “I’m asking him something.”

“What?”

That moment, Alex’s phone pinged with a text from Willie. He opened it up, smirked, and showed Carrie the screen.

Alex’s text read: hey, Flynn is in love with Carrie right?

Willie’s reply said: only for like ten years, yeah

Carrie read the messages. Then she read them again. Then she read them a third time, refreshed the chat, and read it again. Then she swiped Alex’s phone from his hand and turned it off, chucking it across the trailer so it landed in a pile of clothes she’d been meaning to get washed.

“Okay,” Alex said. “What was that for?”

“That’s not helpful,” Carrie whined. “How do you expect me to focus now that’s in my head?”

Alex blinked bewilderedly. “Because now you know Flynn loves you back. Which means you two can get together. You’d be able to kiss off-screen, and you were literally saying that’s what you wanted about two minutes ago.”

“But she doesn’t love me back,” Carrie said like Alex was being particularly dense.

“Were we reading the same messages?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“Yes,” Carrie stressed, “but you’re wrong. She’s never flirted with me or said anything that might sound even a little bit like she thinks of me that way or anything like that. There’s no way she likes me.”

Alex opened his mouth, presumably to argue with her, but at that moment the door of the trailer opened and someone popped their head in to call Carrie to set. She thanked them and they closed the door as she got up to get ready. Alex heaved an exasperated sigh and said, “It’ll be fine, okay? If it helps in any way, just focus on the fact that it’s not you and Flynn – it’s Monica and Kai. It’s your character, not you. Got it?”

“Yes,” Carrie lied, leaving the trailer. “I’ve got it.”

Walking to set felt like walking to her death. Carrie was certain that nothing good would come out of this scene. The kiss would look realistic, yes, but she couldn’t truthfully claim that was because she was a good actress – it would only look real because it was real for her.

She arrived on set and steeled herself, going over her lines in her head and trying to ground herself. She’d been on this set so many times throughout the season; it was Kai’s apartment (Flynn’s character, a charming DJ with a rebellious streak and secret penchant for art and literature), utterly trashed after it had been broken into the previous episode. According to the script, Monica – Carrie’s character – would be helping Kai clean things up when Kai got upset about the whole situation, and it would fall to Monica to help her calm down and search through all her feelings. It would end with a big revelation as they admitted their love for one another, and their kiss would fade to black, ending the episode and the series.

On paper, it looked good. In Carrie’s mind, it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to her, but all she could do was go with it.

All thoughts of calming herself down bled out of her mind the moment Flynn walked onto set. She was in costume, a bright red tracksuit and minimal makeup, and she was smiling from ear to ear. The look was nothing special, but it was beauty if Carrie had ever seen it. Comparing herself to Flynn, she felt underdressed, even though her costume of a floral summer dress and cream-coloured cardigan was much less casual than Flynn’s.

When Flynn turned and met Carrie’s eye, she smiled that wonderous smile of hers, the one that made Carrie feel like they were the only two people in existence, everything else dropping away from them. She tried to smile back, but it was weak and close to a grimace, so she turned away to save herself the embarrassment.

And five minutes later, they began the scene.

To begin with, it went well. Carrie immersed herself in the role of Monica, playing up her concern for Kai, making sure to watch her with the most obvious heart-eyes she could manage (which wasn’t difficult). When Kai broke down crying, Monica rushed to her side, wrapped her in the tightest embrace possible, and tried not to cry herself. She leaned in close and whispered the words she had so painstakingly memorised into her ear.

“This wasn’t your fault,” she breathed. “You could never have known this would happen.”

“But it did happen,” Kai sobbed, her breath rattling heart-wrenchingly. “They targeted me. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Monica said softly, holding Kai tighter. “I can’t imagine how anyone would ever want to hurt you like this. Or hurt you at all. You don’t… you’ve been through so much, Kai, and you don’t deserve any of it. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. I wish I had those magic words that would somehow fix all this, but I don’t. All I can do is be here for you because that’s what you deserve. You deserve someone who’ll pick you up when you’re down, someone who will go out of their way to make you happy in life, someone who would love you forever and not think about stopping that for a second.”

Kai drew back a little but remained close enough to look Monica in the eye. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying… I… Kai, I…” The words died in Monica’s throat.

“I love you,” Kai finished, the start of an incredulous half-smile on her face.

“Yeah,” Monica whispered. “I love you, Kai.”

“God, I love you too.”

And then when they surged together, meeting in a fierce kiss, it suddenly wasn’t Monica and Kai anymore. This was Carrie and Flynn, kissing each other like they meant it, hard and fast and unrestrained and everything Carrie had ever imagined. More than Carrie had ever imagined. Flynn’s intensity hit her like a truck, but for once she wasn’t one to complain. She gave as good as she got, all that built up longing releasing itself in one fell swoop. Carrie Wilson was kissing Flynn Taylor and it was the most incredible thing she’d ever felt.

The call of, “Cut!” broke them apart. For a moment, Carrie looked into Flynn’s eyes, trying to read what was written in them, but it was useless. Her hands were still on Flynn’s waist, but she let go, and a moment later felt Flynn’s hands untangle from her hair.

They did the scene again and Carrie cursed herself for not foreseeing this massive issue. They never did one-take scenes, everything was gone over time and time again. She wasn’t kissing Flynn just once that day; she was reliving it over and over, and every kiss was better than the last as they got more acquainted with each other, figured things out, became less messy but kept all of the passion. It was a change of pace, but Carrie was handling it.

Until she messed up her lines in the worst possible way.

It was supposed to be, “Yeah. I love you, Kai.”

Carrie said, “I love you, Flynn.”

The director picked up on her mistake immediately and was good-natured about it as he made them take the scene from the top. Flynn said nothing, just laughed it off, mentioned that Carrie must be getting a little tired, all that kissing really taking it out of her. Everyone was fine with it and it didn’t happen again, but Carrie was mortified. She knew that those words had held all the sincerity it was impossible to fake, even with years of acting experience under her belt. She knew she had sounded honest in a way she never could have pretended to be. She knew that it was probably the take they would use, editing her use of Flynn’s name to Kai. And it felt like the biggest mistake of her life.

As soon as she was cleared to leave set, she all but legged it out of the room and back to her trailer where Alex was still waiting for her. She sat down beside him, head on his shoulder, and she cried.

The worst part was that she was no longer certain whether she was any good at pretending not to be in love with Flynn.

*

Promos and trailers for the show gradually released over the next few weeks. Carrie avoided social media as often as she could – it hadn’t taken people long to figure out that she would be Flynn’s love interest, and she simply couldn’t handle their reactions.

Some comments she had seen were harmless, related only to the show. ‘Monikai for life’ seemed to be a common one, as well as ‘she better treat my girl Kai with the respect she deserves’ or some form of ‘I swear they look literally perfect for each other’. Those comments were the kind Carrie could get along with. She liked a few posts, teasing just enough to get speculation up, but not enough to confirm anything.

Then there were different comments. Comments that weren’t about Monica and Kai, but instead about Carrie and Flynn. ‘Oh my god, I have been waiting for these two to play girlfriends forever’ seemed to crop up a lot. If it wasn’t that it was ‘we are finally going to see Carrie and Flynn kiss!’ and sometimes it was the worst comments like ‘they should date in real life’.

Everything about it made Carrie feel bad. For one thing, she hated people saying things like that about her private life – she might have been famous, but she was still a human being, and these people didn’t know her, so nothing gave them the right to talk about her and Flynn like that. But also, it was a constant painful reminder of what she didn’t have, and that was too much for her to process.

She had hardly spoken to Flynn since the wrap party despite Flynn messaging her every day. She was ashamed of her slip up and terrified that if she spoke to Flynn the same thing would happen again. Now that those words were out there, she didn’t think she’d be able to rein them back in ever again.

So Carrie was scared. Scared that she had ruined everything with Flynn, scared people would figure out how she really felt, scared that this was something she couldn’t bounce back from.

And she lashed out.

Admittedly, she knew could have handled the situation better. She could have ignored all the rumours and comments, stuck to one side of the fanbase, been proud of what she and Flynn had created. But she didn’t do any of that. There was one thing she knew she was still good at, and that was acting as if she hated Flynn Taylor. It had seemed like a good idea at the time – reveal to everyone that she hated Flynn to get them off her back. If she had thought it through for more than a second, she wouldn’t have done it, but one night something inside her broke and she let it all out.

She had reverted back to old habits and written a load of unsavoury tweets about Flynn, saying she hated her and couldn’t imagine anything worse than dating her, telling everyone that the idea of them being in a relationship was really creeping her out and she wanted nothing to do with it. She had posted them all before she could think any more about it, but the regret had been instant, as had the furious messages from her PR team and agent, the thousands of unfollows, the way people immediately tried to cancel her, and the way all of Flynn’s attempts to contact her stopped after those hateful words had been said. She deleted the tweets, but they’d already been screenshotted many a time, so it didn’t do much good.

The only surprise that came from it was a follow-up tweet from Flynn reading: You guys don’t need to cancel Carrie. It’s not as if I’m upset. I’d only be upset if I liked her, which I never have done.

Somehow, she had managed to ruin everything, just with a slip of the tongue.

The night of the season premier, Carrie got a knock on her door. That in itself was weird – she hadn’t invited anyone over, planning on spending the night alone, not even necessarily watching the show she’d worked so hard on, and none of her friends were really the type to just show up unannounced.

Well, none of them except–

“Willie,” she greeted with a smile when she opened the door. He stood on the threshold with his skateboard tucked under his arm, helmet lopsided on his head, and a smile on his face that looked half genuine and half like he was up to something. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d come and watch the premier with you,” he said, inviting himself in and removing his helmet, hanging it on a coat hook as he propped his skateboard up against the wall. “Wouldn’t want you to be lonely for something as huge as this, right?”

“Okay,” she said, unconvinced, “and what’s your ulterior motive?”

Willie knew better than to argue. He frowned slightly and said, “Flynn told me what you said and that you’re not talking to her now, Alex told me that you totally freaked out – like freaked out, freaked out – and then went all despondent and sad, and I wanted to see if I could help. Maybe, you know, talk some sense into you.”

She rolled her eyes, leading Willie into the living room and sitting on the couch with him. “I’m not ignoring Flynn, I didn’t freak out, and I’ve got plenty of sense in me, thank you very much.”

Willie raised an eyebrow. “Sense? Or denial?”

She didn’t reply.

“Carrie,” he said, shuffling closer, “listen to me, okay? That day, when you said to Flynn that you love her, you ran to Alex while she ran to me. She was a total mess, telling me she had no idea if you had meant it or if you’d really just messed up. She said she wanted to talk to you, and after that day she said she kept trying but you wouldn’t pick up and she thought she had done something wrong. And then all those tweets… Carrie, what’s going on?”

She sighed, threw her head back to try and tip the tears welling in her eyes back into her skull, and then turned back to Willie.

“I meant it,” she breathed. “When I told Flynn I love her, I meant it. But she doesn’t feel the same way about me.”

“Yes she–”

“No,” Carrie said firmly. “She doesn’t. I shouldn’t have said it, I shouldn’t have lost myself like that. I should have had some freaking restraint. And now that I’ve told her, she’s going to hate me because I will have made her uncomfortable and she won’t want to be around me anymore. I’ve ruined it, Willie. And the tweets were a stupid idea, even I know that. I was scared, which is a terrible excuse, I know. I thought people were figuring out how I really felt so I… god, I’m such an idiot. I never should have done it. And now I know she hates me, she said so herself.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Willie said softly, shaking his head.

Carrie just raised an eyebrow.

“Look, I’m… I’m not going to make you talk about it tonight if you really don’t want to,” Willie said. Carrie breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing a little. “But you’ve got to promise me you’ll talk to Flynn. Just to explain yourself. No matter which way your conversation goes, I really don’t think you’ll regret it.”

Carrie just hummed, not willing to provide an actual answer, and flicked the TV on, putting on the season premier of their show. She and Willie settled down together and watched. If Carrie teared up a little watching her first interaction with Flynn, Willie was kind enough not to mention it.

*

Eventually, Carrie took Willie’s advice, more because she missed Flynn than anything else. And in any case, she felt she owed Flynn an apology and an explanation. She had been awful to her in a way she hadn’t since they were teenagers, and she was ashamed and guilty and just wanted things to go back to some semblance of normal. On the night the season finale aired, Carrie drove to Flynn’s house and knocked on the door before she could change her mind.

“Oh,” Flynn said when she opened the door. Carrie couldn’t read her expression but fought down the panic that arose. “What are you doing here?”

“Can we talk?” she asked, hating how cliché it sounded, but that didn’t matter when Flynn nodded and opened the door wider, letting her in.

They settled together on the couch in front of Flynn’s television. It was set to the channel their show aired on, but it hadn’t started yet. When Flynn didn’t say a word, Carrie took that as her cue to start the conversation.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“Go on,” Flynn encouraged, sounding unimpressed.

“I’m sorry for everything I said about you online,” she continued, doing her best to look Flynn in the eye when all she wanted to do was look away. “I didn’t mean any of it. You’re such an amazing person and one of my best friends and I can’t believe I let myself do things that would jeopardise that. None of it was true, anyway. I just… I got scared.”

“Scared of what?” Flynn pressed, voice slightly softer than it had been a moment before. Carrie hoped she hadn’t imagined Flynn scooting ever so slightly closer to her on the couch.

She took a deep rattling breath. She had come there that night having promised herself that she would be completely honest with Flynn because she owed her that much. Well, now was the point when she needed to be honest and it was the most terrifying prospect she’d ever faced.

“Scared of people working out how right they are about me,” she admitted. “I saw people saying that we… that we would be good together as a couple in real life. And it hit too close to home because I’ve always thought that exact same thing, but I’ve never been able to do anything about it.”

“What are you saying?” Flynn breathed.

“I’m saying… I meant what I said on set. It wasn’t me slipping up, it was genuine. I couldn’t hold it back that day.”

“You mean when you said ‘I love you’?” Flynn asked slowly.

“Yeah,” Carrie said. “I meant it when I said that I love you. I love you, Flynn, I really do.”

Flynn was silent for far too long. Carrie felt her heart sinking, knowing she had made a mess of this, that they would never be able to return from this, that Flynn probably wanted nothing to do with her now, despite what Alex and Willie seemed to think about the whole thing. She prepared herself for the shouting, the accusations, the breaking off of their friendship.

But then Flynn said, “You shouldn’t have run out of set that day.”

“I know, I know, I should have explained myself and apologised there and th–”

“No,” Flynn interrupted. “You should have stayed so that I had the chance to say it back.”

“So you… what?”

Flynn’s hands, soft and gentle, came up to cradle Carrie’s face. She felt Flynn run the pad of her thumbs deftly over Carrie’s cheeks, looked deep into her gorgeous brown eyes and lost herself in them. When Flynn said, “I want to say it back,” Carrie was so up in her own thoughts that she almost forgot what they were even talking about.

“Then say it,” she returned, leaning into Flynn’s touch.

“I love you, Carrie.”

“God, I love you too.”

They kissed again, leaning forward to meet each other, and it was like their first kiss all over again. This one wasn’t tinged with the bittersweet sting that their on-screen ones had been, but rather peppered with the joy they shared having finally revealed their truth to one another. It was a ‘thank you’, a ‘sorry’, an ‘I love you’, a ‘you are it for me’ all in one go, made of love and care and everything good in the world. Carrie lost herself in Flynn – she thought that would never stop happening – and it made her feel free.

Here was another thing she was good at: loving Flynn and showing it to her.

At some point, long after they had broken their kiss, instead curling up together on the couch to watch their show, Flynn snickered and said, “You know, our agent told me that our little spat online had done wonders for the show’s publicity.”

“Where are you going with this?” Carrie asked, smirking, knowing that Flynn wasn’t just dropping that out of nowhere.

She shrugged. “I think we could do our bit to help out with ratings. For a while it might be a good idea to keep the act up, you know? Act like we hate each other and watch everyone freak out over it. And if it’s super funny for us then that’s just a bonus.”

“Fine, on one condition,” Carrie said. Flynn nodded. “We don’t tell Alex and Willie what we’re doing. They’ve been laughing at our stupidity for years, I think we deserve a little revenge.”

“I love the way you think,” Flynn laughed, leaning up to kiss Carrie again. “I love you. But as far as anyone else is concerned, no I don’t.”

Pressing another kiss to the side of Flynn’s head, Carrie said teasingly, “I don’t either.”

(Alex and Willie were not best pleased when they found out three months later that Carrie and Flynn were not in fact mortal enemies but girlfriends when the girls asked them for help moving all of Flynn’s stuff into Carrie’s house because they’d decided they wanted to live together. They’d been given the silent treatment the entire time, but it was worth it.)

*

Taglist (if you want to be added or removed just let me know): @ace-bookworm @williexmercer @boggie-brainrot @itstiger720 @the-reckless-and-the-brave @that-one-newsie @bluedarkness @lookingthroughmirrors @tmp-jatp @ghostlydahlia @julieandthequeers @lmaohuh @sunnysbright @sylphrenas @callmeontheleyline

[goatsandgangsters]

Hi! I know you have probably answered this before, but I was wondering how you think meyer and lucky got together (in boardwalk empire)? I think about it a lot, and I just can never fully grasp what I feel about it, especially because this was in the 1920s

yeeeeeeeEEEEeeeeSSSS oh I’m so glad you asked, I’m gonna have so much fun! So YES I do have specific headcanons for how they got together, though I don’t know if I’ve ever actually laid them out explicitly? (also I’m saying “my” headcanons but I wanna acknowledge that they originate from Friend Conversations that happened a number of years ago, to the point where I don’t even know who originally said what but the idea of it is just lodged in my brain now. BUT ON THE FLIP SIDE, I don’t want to present this as This Is The Fanon We Agreed On, Everyone Has To Think This, because fandom should never operate that way. ANYWAY)

TL;DR: I think Meyer’s near-death experience in Emerald City was an instigating event for them to get together, because it shakes them enough to act on their feelings. Plus, it coincides nicely with Vince and Anatol becoming more comfortable around one another as actors in a way that lends itself to that reading. BUT I AM NOT THE EXPERT OR THE ARBITER ON THIS MATTER, and I think any interpretation is perfectly wonderful!

So the headcanon I operate with is that they got together after the near-death experience in Emerald City. That originates from a Watsonian vs. Doylist perspective on Vince and Anatol’s acting. They’re not quiiiiite in sync with each other in the first few eps they share, which I’m sure in actuality is them finding their groove and their dynamic as actors. But from a Watsonian perspective, it’s really easy to read their earlier scenes as pining. Like in their first scene together in Home, they’re both constantly looking at each other, but never quite meeting each other’s eye. It’s like that thing where you have a crush on someone, so you keep looking at them, but oh god they saw me and you look quickly away. And they both keep doing it!

Some of their other early scenes—like with the D’Alessios while Charlie’s playing pool, or that weirdly staged scene earlier in Emerald City where Meyer’s sitting way farther away at the table—they may exchange looks, but there’s a fleetingness to it. But then you watch the scene at the end of season 1 where they’re talking to AR with the umbrellas AND THE PSYCHIC BOND HAS ARRIVED. They are having those telltale Full On Conversations with their glances! They are synced up. They’re a team, they’re a unit, they’ve hit that dynamic that they have for the rest of the show.

And in actuality, probably it was Vince and Anatol finding their footing with each other as actors. But if you read into that textually, they go from “staring at the other but constantly dodging eye contact, like they’re afraid to be caught looking” to “we’re having an entire conversation in one look” and you’ve gotta think: what changed?

Meyer’s near-death experience in Emerald City, conveniently enough, happens in the middle. And I think that works well as an instigating moment for them, because it’s BIG. Meyer almost died, in another state—in goddamn New Jersey!—and that’s enough to make anyone act on things they wouldn’t otherwise act on or reevaluate life and relationships.

In terms of their feelings for one another and when those developed and how, my usual interpretation is that… I mean Charlie was heart-eyes from the jump, but not in a romantic way, whereas Meyer was the first to develop full-on pining feelings feelings. Because obviously Charlie was not like “I have feelings feelings for this tiny child” when they first met, but he DID very much imprint on Meyer like a little baby duckling and was like HEY I LIKE THIS KID, WE’RE GONNA BE FRIENDS, CAN I FOLLOW YOU HOME whereas Meyer was like “um, what the fuck.” Classic “enthusiastic puppy befriends sulky cat” dynamic. But then when the FEELINGS FEELINGS come into it, I think of Meyer as having been harboring feelings for Charlie for a while. (also basically all of this is from @meyerlansky, because we successfully tag-teamed on headcanons by one of us wanting to hyperanalyze Meyer and the other wanting to hyperanalyze Charlie and then we just shared!) I mean, you know, Charlie’s good-looking and they’re friends and Charlie’s so casual about flinging his arm around Meyer’s shoulders or roughhousing with him and Meyer’s insides do a little flip that they shouldn’t be doing, but they’re getting older and Charlie’s starting to sleep around with girls and that stings and bothers him in a way that It Shouldn’t, but also It Is What It Is, there’s nothing he can do about it, they’re friends and they’re business partners and that should be enough and it’s all it’ll ever be so focus on the task at hand and ignore the flip in his stomach.

For Charlie, I’m not actually sure WHEN he realizes there are feelings for Meyer. I don’t have a solid, definitive default interpretation for that. But in early season 1, pre Meyer-getting-introduced, he’s definitely enamored and smitten with Gillian, and he’s similarly moonstruck towards AR. I think that can read as, “trying really hard to distract yourself so you don’t acknowledge that maybe you’re in love with your best friend.” Whether he’s doing that consciously or unconsciously, I could also go either way on that.

A lot of this interpretation is based around the simple fact that Charlie was introduced and established in the show before Meyer, so I wonder how my headcanons would have been different if they’d been introduced together from the start. But with how the show unfolds, the change as Anatol and Vince find their groove as actors, plus a near-death experience to make someone act on something they wouldn’t otherwise act on—it all lends itself nice and neatly to Emerald City being the get-together point.

(I know a number of people have worked that headcanon into their own fics and written post-Emerald City get-together, which I can rec you. Though again, by no means do I want this to come across as “this is what the fandom has decided, you have to think it too” because that’s never how fandom should operate. No one is the arbiter of When Did Charlie and Meyer First Kiss. I love get-togethers in general, so I will always be happy reading any get-together fic that happens at any point in time, with any instigating factor, in any way, because that’s just delightful!)

Here are some get-together and/or pining fics that I can recommend:

born once of flesh, then again of fire, i am reborn a third time (a post-Emerald City get-together)

Contact (another post-Emerald City get-together by @rubecso)

Making Accommodations (by @transdracosmalfoy, the post-Emerald City genre lives on!)

to see God in the skyline (by @lurusciutelumare a sprawling masterpiece of chapters intertwining Charlie and Meyer’s childhood and growing up. It takes a while to reach the get-together point, but the whole thing is well worth the read. The entire fic is set pre-Boardwalk Empire)

beg dead trees for money next (by @meyerlansky, a pre-Boardwalk fic of Meyer realizing he has feelings for Charlie which is one of my faves for a lot of reasons)

(also I’m sorry if I missed anyone’s get-together fic. I tried to wrack my brain but I’ve been in this fandom for, uh, a while and it’s hard to remember back sometimes. Feel free to add yours in if I did!)

Also re: getting together in the time period and how it being the 1920s shapes things, there would definitely be added concerns and dangers, though I don’t think it’s necessarily a black-and-white thing. I don’t think the wider attitudes of society towards queerness would have impacted them as much in comparison to the specific culture of lower Manhattan and the criminal spheres they operated in.

Because on the one hand, in the criminal world in which they were operating, it likely would have been dangerous for anyone to know that they’re queer. It probably would have hurt their business and their reputation among their peers and rivals, and—because of how masculinity and queerness interconnect and operate—would look like weakness to others. But in terms of “well can Charlie make a move, because it’s dangerous if Meyer doesn’t reciprocate or reacts badly” (or vice versa), it would reflect equally bad on both of them? Like, if Charlie made a move and Meyer was like “nah,” he can’t very well go gossiping to the whole Lower East Side about it, because it hurts his reputation too, it hurts his business, and they were also close enough as friends that even if there wasn’t reciprocation, neither one of them would do anything to damage the other’s reputation like that.

As far as how they feel about it on an internalized level, I definitely don’t think they… care from a legal and/or moral standpoint. I don’t think Charlie’s like “oh god I’m going to hell for liking men,” because by the time he and Meyer kiss, he has DEFINITELY KILLED PEOPLE. They already break a lot of laws all the time. So that wider societal stigma from a moralizing perspective probably doesn’t matter to them much, because wider society already thinks they’re an “undesirable criminal element,” they’re already “dangerous immigrants,” so what’s it matter if they also bang on top of doing crimes and killing people? Charlie and Meyer are already outside the Predominant Ethical Framework of Society by virtue of their class background and criminal enterprises (and class and queerness have huge intersections historically in terms of what the experience was like). Being in an urban area in the 1920s (especially New York), queer sexuality is something they would have known about; it probably wouldn’t have been any more shocking than any other “vice” they grew up around in that area.

If they do have any concerns or guilt about what they’re feeling for one another, for Charlie I think it all has to do with masculinity and with the machismo he’s grown up around. It’s also something he’s already touchy about, given the emasculation that happened being called Sal (which, at the time, was common nickname for Sally) and historically he has a history of experiencing sexual violence. So I can see him struggling with conflating that together—as well as worrying that his feelings for Meyer are unwanted and similar to what he experienced. Meyer, I would say, cares less about the performance of masculinity, but I do think he sees himself as an eventual family man in a way that Charlie does not. @meyerlansky also has more thoughts on Meyer + sexuality + being a-spec.

I’M SORRY FOR MY LONG TANGENTS!! I literally do not have the ability to be succinct.

IN SUMMARY, I think Meyer’s near-death experience in Emerald City was an instigating event for them to get together, because it shakes them enough to act on their feelings. Plus, it coincides nicely with Vince and Anatol becoming more comfortable around one another as actors in a way that lends itself to that reading. BUT I AM NOT THE EXPERT OR THE ARBITER ON THIS MATTER, and I think any interpretation is perfectly wonderful!

As for the time period and being the 1920s, it definitely has ramifications on how they conceive of themselves—particularly in relation to their ethnic and class identities—but that also the history of sexuality is very non-linear and I think queerness is less shocking and scandalous to them than it would have been to someone more upper-class who didn’t grow up in the Lower East Side, or to someone more rural, or to someone who was more “inside” the social framework of the time, as opposed to being forced outside of it already by class, ethnicity, and criminality.

Finally, and most importantly, they should KISS!!!!

[365days365movies]

April 12, 2021: Mrs. Doubtfire (1992) (Recap)

Hey, Robin Williams. Been a while.

I’m sorry that I haven’t watched your movies for a while, and that I always skip your comedy stand-up when my phone’s on shuffle. I just...let me explain. Since I was a kid, you were one of my favorite entertainers. That might as well have started the day I was born, because...well, we share a birthday, fun fact. But it definitely continued with the first movie I ever saw in theatres.

While I don’t quite remember the first time I saw it, Aladdin was one of my favorite childhood movies, and I knew that you were the voice of the Genie from an early age. You might have actually been the first actor I ever knew by name. Which makes sense, because your stardom during the ‘90s was nearly unparalleled.

The next film I remember seeing (and hearing) you in was Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. That also starred Tim Curry, who would also be a major figure of my childhood. It also wasn’t the best movie, in hindsight, but it is the only time I’ve heard you rap since.

But eventually, I watched your forays into live-action, too. Jumanji, Hook, even the objectively bad Flubber, are all movies that I vividly remember watching during childhood. I was really excited for Flubber, even, and I LOVED Jumanji growing up. I liked Hook, too, but I appreciated that more as I got older.

Of course, during this time period, you also made less family-friendly films. The Fisher King, Good Will Hunting, Dead Poets Society, Good Morning Vietnam, and What Dreams May Come were all very successful, and cemented your reputation as an actor. I also haven’t seen any of them. In fact...I don’t think I’ve seen any of your dramatic roles, and that’s something that I’ll fix this year. Hell, in a few days, I’ll watch The Birdcage, another of your big hits of the ‘90s.

But why haven’t I seen them up to now? Well...I was going to watch these films, about seven years ago. But...I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. Because it hurts. A lot.

I know that this is a downer, but my relationship with Robin Williams today is tainted by his tragic death. I was fucking BROKEN when his death was announced, and I really haven’t been able to watch him since. I’ve seen Aladdin recently, but that’s about all I could stand to watch. I mean, the guy shares a birthday with me! I’ve always loved his comedy stylings, and his improvisational skills are something I’ve internalized to a certain degree.

So, yeah. This one’s tough. But, it’s about time I moved on, and celebrated the man’s career for what it was: stellar. And that also brings up an important question, that some of you have probably asked by now:

HOW HAVE I MISSED MRS. DOUBTFIRE, WHAT THE FUCK

I KNOW I KNOW OK?

Look, I’m not entirely sure how I haven’t seen this movie, because I’m MORE than aware of it! I remember it airing during the ‘90s, my Dad AND girlfriend love this movie, and I know FOR A FACT that my family owned both the DVD AND THE VHS of this movie! So, how? HOW HAVE I NOT SEEN IT BY NOW?

I honestly have no idea, but let’s fix it now, huh? Yet one more man-dresses-as-woman movie this month! And no, I am not watching White Chicks...because I’ve already seen White Chicks. Also, it’s...problematic.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

 Recap

Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams) is a voice-actor, and a good one. Which, given that it’s Robin Williams, isn’t entirely inaccurate. He’s also a voice actor with a spine, as he morally objects to a scene in the cartoon that he’s performing for, in which the main character smokes. By the way, I’m 99% sure that this cartoon is animated by Chuck Jones, and it looks well-made.

Anyway, this leads to him quitting the cartoon altogether, and allows him to pick up his kids early from school. These kids are Lydia (Lisa Hykub), Chris (Matthew Lawrence), and Natalie (Mara Wilson), and it’s Chris’ 12th birthday. Daniel arranges a...surprisingly large party, given that it’s completely impromptu, and it comes with a petting zoo and complete trappings. However, it’s not a party of which his wife will approve.

This wife is Miranda (Sally Field), a successful architect and the breadwinner of the family. After getting a call from the neighbor about the party, she comes home and busts the outrageous party. And for the record, I’m entirely on Miranda’s side here. This party is INSANE, and very irresponsible, given the fact that Daniel currently has no job. And yeah, he’s a very loving father, and a good person, but...it’s too much.

Miranda feels the same, and after 14 years of frustration, she realizes that she no longer loves Daniel. In a genuinely sad scene, she tells him that she wants a divorce. And she goes through with it MUCH to Daniel’s detriment. He has no home, as he’s staying with his brother, Frank (Harvey Fierstein) and his partner Jack (Scott Capurro). He also still has no job, meaning that he has no way to provide for his children. This means that he has no ability to provide, and the judge awards Miranda full custody. Oof.

However, this is a conditional arrangement, as another hearing for joint custody will be held in 3 months, and if Daniel can get a home and job in that time, he has a chance. He performs a litany of voices and impressions with his court liason, Mrs. Sellner (Anne Haney), which amuses me, but not her, and he gets a job in order to be with his kids for more than one day a week.

Meanwhile, Miranda IMMEDIATELY starts dating fellow designer and old flame Stuart Dunmeyer (Pierce Brosnan), like, almost before Daniel leaves the house. He bids a heartfelt goodbye to his kids, with the promise that he’ll see them on Saturdays. And now begins the absolute hatred and petty bitchiness of Daniel and Miranda! Seriously, it’s...it’s fucking terrible, and it takes away from my sympathy from either side. I get that divorce is rough and ugly, but GODDAMN, neither of them perform the act with any form of tact or grace.

This is put on display during the kids’ visitation to Daniel’s semi-crappy new apartment, which doesn’t even seem that bad, to be honest. Miranda dropped them off late and picked them up early, as if to slowly starve Daniel of time with his kids, which is extraordinarily shitty of her, fuck me. Daniel’s not taking it well, understandably, but then does something...really dumb, when you think about it.

See, Miranda’s looking for a nanny, to help watch the kids and clean the house during the week. Daniel volunteers his services, which is actually a good idea, but Miranda says she’ll think about it, which we ALL know means no. I DO NOT like Miranda, even if I understand the initial reasons for the divorce. She’s being especially spiteful, and it’s not a good look.

Daniel’s stupid idea, though, is to change the phone number on the ad for the nanny, which Miranda shows him before she takes the kids. Instead, he calls her number, and pretends to be various terrible applicants, until finally supplying his own applicant: the completely fictional Euphegenia Doubtfire (Daniel Hillard).

Daniel plays Mrs. Doubtfire as an elderly British woman, and a seasoned nanny in her day. Which is why it’s weird to me that, when he does to Frank and Jack to help him make an elaborate disguise as Mrs. Doubtfire, that they go through various other impressions and get-ups. Which, yes, is goddamn hilarious, but also makes NO SENSE, given that they’ve already established her character to Miranda. Funny, but nonsensical.

But, regardless, Euphegenis Doubtfire comes into being, and introduces herself to Miranda and the kids. Mrs. Doubtfire is exactly what Miranda’s looking for, although the kids aren’t exactly overjoyed, ESPECIALLY the oldest, Lydia. Also, during this first meeting, Miranda openly bad-mouths Daniel in front of the kids, in just the WORST fuckin’ way. I genuinely dislike Miranda A LOT. Again, the divorce was certainly justified, but I REALLY don’t like her. Daniel loves his kids, and they’re HIS kids, TOO. Stop using them as weapons against him, OOOOOOOOOOOH I DON’T LIKE MIRANDA

Anyway, that evening, after she’s officially been hired by Miranda, Mrs. Doubtfire heads home, only to find court liason Mrs. Sellner waiting to speak with Daniel. After a litany of puns, and a humorous changing scene, Daniel accidentally throws the Mrs. Doubtfire mask out of the window, and is forced to improvise through equally humorous circumstances. Hence, the above meringue mask scene. Has anybody tried that, by the way? Could that work as a groundbreaking beauty technique? Or would the sugar just feed the skin bacteria and give you acne? Genuinely curious.

Now going between his job as Daniel and the nanny job as Doubtfire, Daniel’s not doing too badly for himself. The nanny job begins, and Mrs. Doubtfire IMMEDIATELY contrasts with Daniel, creating a disciplinarian atmosphere in place of Daniel’s formerly loosey-goosey attitude. Which is interesting, and it works! I mean, it’s not how I would parent, but it does work. Doubtfire makes the kids to their homework, rather than watch TV, and then attempts to make dinner. Instead, though, the dinner’s ruined, and Daniel orders takeout and makes it LOOK like homemade food. And it looks good, too! Daniel’s full of hidden talents.

After dinner, as Mrs. Doubtfire’s leaving, Lydia apologizes for backtalking her earlier, and thanks her for making her mom happy with everything she did that evening. he also says that she’s still a bit messed up about her dad being gone. And yeah, it’s sweet-but-sad. 

Going forward (and in a montage set to Aerosmith’s Dude Looks Like a Lady), Mrs. Doubtfire takes care of the family, and Daniel even betters himself to become a better Mrs. Doubtfire. Which...to be honest, Daniel REALLY should’ve done this before. I get that he needed the pressure of losing the kids to do this, but...look, Daniel really wasn’t that responsible of a parent, and the fact that THIS is how he learns to be so is...not great. Like, here’s an example, OK: take Donald Trump.

Yeah, I know, what’s this politics doing in my peanut butter? And WOW, that reference is older than me, but anyway. Let’s say that, in two years, a new politician comes on the scene, and her name is Karyn Walldottir. She has somewhat centrist views, and behaves in a way that’s inclusive to the majority, and backs up her claims and promises with evidence (at least true enough for us to suspend our disbelief). This is, of course, Donald Trump disguised as a woman in order to gain custody of the United States of America again. Naturally.

Karyn Walldottir gets elected in 2024, and all of her policies are markedly different from Trump’s and Biden’s, but leaning closer to Biden in progressive standpoints (assuming that that worked for him come 2024). While Trump is doing this specifically to be president again, he ends up revising his personal policies, and being a better person and president for the country. A literal impossibility, I know. But suspend your disbelief to ask this question:

WHY THE FUCK WOULDN’T HE DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE? IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!

OK, now that that dumbass (and mildly horrifying) thought process is concluded, let’s get back to Mrs. Doubtfire. In the process of Mrs. Doubtfire’s ingratiation with the family, Miranda’s been dating Stu, whom Mrs. Doubtfire subtly insults when they meet. And yeah, Daniel’s being a little petty here, but it makes a bit of sense at least.

That night, after an accidental intrusion by Chris when Mrs. Doubtfire is going to the bathroom, Daniel’s basically forced to tell Chris and Lydia his little secret, which Lydia’s happy about, but Chris is understandably weirded out about. But, they agree to keep the secret from their mom and younger sister.

At his OTHER job, delivering film reels from a TV station, he witnesses the filming of an extremely boring kids educational TV show, and comments as such to another man watching. As he quickly learns, this is the owner of the station, Jonathan Lundy (Robert Prosky), on whom Daniel makes a good impression.

In the meantime, Mrs. Doubtfire has a talk with Miranda about their love lives, real and fictional. Daniel realizes how badly Miranda had been suffering in their marriage, which she never told him because...well, he never seemed to take anything seriously. Which is entirely fair...but this is why Miranda’s a tricky-ass character. She’s got two sides: there’s the justified caring mother and strong woman, and there’s the PETTY ASSHOLE who genuinely doesn’t care about Daniel or his feelings AT ALL. Jesus.

And Stu...look, Stu is LITERALLY a Gary Stu, who’s mostly perfect. Sure, he’s not always been that way, but he definitely is now! He’s responsible, wealthy, in love with Miranda AND her kids. And yeah, at a country club that he’s a member of (OF COURSE he is), he privately badmouth Daniel in front of Mrs. Doubtfire, calling him a loser, and...yeah, he’s not really unjustified in that statement. Fact of the matter is, Stu is barely even a plot device.

Meanwhile, in Daniel’s day job, he finds himself alone in the studio, where the toy dinosaurs from the TV show are still sitting on the table. He plays with them, gives them voices, sings some songs, and impresses Mr. Lundy, who’s there in the shadows after all that. He’s impressed, and invites Daniel to dinner to talk about a potential future show at the network.

But then, it’s also Miranda’s birthday coming up, and Stu’s holding a dinner for her, to which Mrs. Doubtfire is invited. Trouble is, it’s at the OH FUCK IT. YOU know what this is. It’s at the same time and place as the Mr. Lund meeting yaddayaddayadda LOOK. We ALL know how this is going to end. It’s the GODDAMN LIAR REVEALED TROPE AGAIN. And here’s the thing:

I FUGGIN’ HAAAAAATE THE LIAR REVEALED TROPE

You know, that thing in movies (especially family movies of the ‘90s) where somebody starts off a situation with a lie, they get deeper and deeper into that lie, grow close to people under false pretenses, and then OH NO! THE LIAR IS REVEALED! And everybody’s angry and/or sad, the liar slumps off, defeated and broken, but then realizes the error of his ways, while everybody else realizes the same thing, and he comes back to vindicate himself, and is welcomed back with open arms. And it introduces unneeded tension AND I HAVE ALWAYS FUCKING HATED IT.

Let’s list the examples, shall we? A Bug’s Life, Aladdin, Mulan, The Road to El Dorado, Chicken Run, How to Train Your Dragon, Klaus, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Megamind (SUBVERSIVE MY ASS), Over the Hedge, Rango, Toy Story, Steven Universe (the whole Pearl/Sardonyx arc, which went on for WAY too long), the list goes on and fucking on. And I GODDAMN HATE IT. Not to say it can’t be done well. Disney actually usually does a pretty good job with it, and Dreamworks uses it A LOT, but almost always pretty well. But sometimes...GOD. Either way, it’s still used FAR too fucking much. And look. Here’s another one. Joy.

Look, at this point...I will freely admit that I'm biased against this trope, but it’s also obvious where this is headed. Basically, Daniel switches back and forth between the dinner with the family, and the dinner with Mr. Lundy. With Mr. Lundy, he gets absolutely SMASHED. Great. Great decision, Daniel.

So, yeah, Mrs. Doubtfire’s also smashed, which is pretty goddamn apparent to them all. At this point, I’m wondering why Daniel, as Mrs. Doubtfire, didn’t just say she was sick as hell, and had to go home. Or, considering the fact that Daniel proposes her as a show idea regardless, the switch wasn’t even necessary! And that means that none of what’s about to happen, happens. Or, here’s a crazy thought, maybe Daniel shouldn’t have POISONED STU’S FOOD WITH CAYENNE PEPPER THAT HE’S ALLERGIC TO! 

YEAH! Because that causes Stu to go into anaphylactic shock for a hot sec, causing him to choke. Mrs. Doubtfire does the right thing and gives him the Heimlich maneuver, and in the process, SURPRISE! IT’S BEEN DANIEL ALL ALONG! BUH BUH BUHHHHH DA DA DA DAAAAA DA

Yeah, so Miranda is understandably ENRAGED by this revelation, and it’s all over. Daniel represents himself in court at the custody hearing, but the judge deems his “lifestyle” dangerous for children. Which...yikes, Judge, that statement didn’t age well AT FUCKING ALL. But, given Daniel’s admitted stupidity with this whole idea, he’s not wrong about the dangerous part. But, I have to say, Daniel’s speech in his own defense is nice...although he also says he’s addicted to his children, so let’s throw a second yikes on there for good measure.

The speech moves Miranda...but not enough to prevent Daniel has his custody stripped away from him! GOD THEY BOTH SUUUUUUUUCK. Daniel’s a broken man, and Miranda and the kids are similarly broken without him and Mrs. Doubtfire. However...Daniel’s career isn’t broken AT ALL, as Mrs. Doubtfire is now a kid’s show host! Yeah! And she’s a hit! And again, it brings me to wonder why Daniel DIDN’T APPLY HIS OBVIOUS TALENTS LIKE THIS IN THE FIRST GODDAMN PLACE

Realizing that she made a mistake, she goes to the set during the filming of a show. She congratulates him on the show, and he replies by stating how broken he is now! Thanks, Miranda! Well, after an argument, and after Miranda sees how badly she’s messed up someone she used to care for, they come to an agreement: joint custody. FINALLY GODDAMN IT

And good, because I don’t want them back together. I have to give this film props for that: they acknowledge that these two are NOT good for each other, and they deliver a message in the end: families are families, no matter how they’re shaped. One mom, one dad, uncle or aunt, grandparents, adoption, two separated or divorced parents...oh, also, two dads or two moms. Yeah, that isn’t said in Mrs. Doubtfire’s final monologue, which is odd considering Daniel’s brother and his life partner...but it’s also kid’s TV in the ‘90s, so I guess that sadly makes sense. And with that, and their new family arrangement, Daniel takes his kids on an afternoon out, as himself.

...Look. That’s Mrs. Doubtfire, yaddayaddayadda LOOK. I don’t dislike this movie. In fact, here: have this mini-Review:

Cast and Acting - 9/10: Good, although Brosnan was a little stiff.

Plot and Writing - 5/10: It’s an idiot plot, what can I say? It’s actually based off of a book, which was a surprise to me, but it was adapted by Randi Mayem Singer and Leslie Dixon, and...eh. Still an idiot plot.

Directing and Cinematography - 8/10: It’s Chris Columbus, you get what you get. Definitely has that Home Alone flair to it.

Production and Art Design - 8/10: I mean, yeah, the Doubtfire disguise was good most of the time, but...I dunno, I could still tell it was Robin. But, still, it was good. Took 4 hours of makeup, fun fact.

Music and Editing - 8/10: Music by Howard Shore (ooh, Howard Shore!) was pretty nice, especially the ending theme. Editing by Raja Gosnell was...RAJA GOSNELL???

OH GOD. Yeah, OK, I see what happened here. Also, I didn’t know he was an editor! I just know him as the director of the Scooby-Doo films, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, The Smurfs films, Big Momma’s...

...OK, no, I am not doing Big Momma’s House OR the Madea movies. THE TROPE-BUCK STOPS HERE! I am moving on to something else! But, of course, I have to sum this up in a Review. See you there!

[katsidhe]

15.19 Final Thoughts

I was all set for disappointment after 15.18, but this was… good, actually! Not perfect by any means, but the beats it hit and the points it made were by and large ones I’d been waiting for all season. Where it wasn’t touching (and it was touching!), it was absurd enough for me to enjoy it heartily anyway. I wish that this episode had been split into, like, three, so that it could have spent the time it needed on wallowing.

I love the empty earth. Love it to absolute PIECES. Because it fits so, so well, right? The claustrophobia of the Winchesters’ lives writ grotesquely large. They’re the most important people in the universe, of COURSE they are, because Chuck feels like it, and of course they can’t die, of course they’re doomed to wander eternally—ughh I love it. It’s the natural, absurd, and absurdist conclusion to where this story has always been heading. I am so glad that they went there.

Sam’s heartbreaking guilt—his knowledge that his defiance in 15.17 was what led to this empty universe. Oh, Sam. Again sublimating his loss and his agony into personal responsibility. And the worst part is that he’s right. I love the tragicomedy of Sam and Dean’s offer to play along for Chuck, and that he refuses, preferring to watch them walk the earth alone. Honestly? if it had cut to black right there? I would be mightily pleased.

ok but SAM!!! if there was a winner of 15.19 (and therefore a winner of SPN in general? sure feels that way to me), it’s Sam. Sam defied Death and defied God (and in 15.17 defied Dean). Sam saved Jack, who was the key to everything. Sam got the assist on Lucifer. Sam tricked Michael. Just, GAHH, what a great episode for him.

I about lost my goddamn mind when Lucifer showed up, because I had lost any inkling of hope that he’d turn up again. Kinda figured that plot thread had been irrevocably dropped. I’m sorry for losing my faith, Show! I should have believed that you’d eventually give me a taste of what I wanted!

I predict this opinion is going to be a little unpopular, but I was so happy to see him. I don’t care that he was too quippy, I don’t care that he was gone in like six minutes, I don’t care that his and Michael’s fight was, again, anticlimactic (though at least there weren’t wires, t god). Here’s the thing. I don’t NEED my fictional suffering to be like, artisanal, and thoughtfully designed. I’ll buy that shit at Costco, in ten gallon drums. I’ll chug it straight from the bottle like trauma ketchup. I’ll watch Lucifer resurrected a thousand times, if it means I get to watch Sam’s FACE while they’re in the same room. PRAISE.

The corollary: the ABSOLUTELY AMAZING CONCEPT of the last five people in the entire world being Michael, Lucifer, Sam, Dean, and Jack, all stuck awkwardly in the Bunker. Omfg. This SENT me so hard I had to take a walk, I was laughing too much. What a ripe premise. What an ugly premise. I need fic, immediately, stat, stat means now.

Relatedly, I love the mental image of Sam unobtrusively going offscreen and getting the archangel blade and handing it to Michael and quietly hissing, “uh PLEASE ffs kill your goddamn brother.” Pfffffffffffffffff.

Deeply disappointed that Jack didn’t get a chance to say anything to Lucifer. Yet another thing that needs further treatment.

I’d figured Lucifer was telling the truth when he told them he was joining Team Kill Chuck. However, Lucifer’s willingness to be on board with Chuck’s plan makes, just, a ton of sense. He’s always had less to lose than Michael, when it comes to accepting his father’s olive branch, since he fell so far so long ago, while Michael is still teetering on that precipice. And Chuck’s just extended, basically, a massive apology to him by erasing all the people and places and stories that he favored over his children. Of COURSE Lucifer wants to be alone with his dad, the only chosen one left, in a universe that is finally pristine. Of course he wants to rub his new favor in Michael’s face. I just wish we’d seen and heard more of this. His resurrection wasn’t pointless at all, but it was underdeveloped.

Michael’s inability to separate himself from his father’s will at the bitter end is a tragic and somber end. Jake Abel brought his A-game again. I wish very deeply that we’d been able to see more of him this season: he is one of the few surviving people with genuine investment in Chuck as a person, and he had a deep, deep betrayal to unpack.

Chuck and his enemies: Billie was always too straightforward in her goals and motivations to be truly interesting as an enemy to Chuck; she is less a character, and more an avatar, a force of nature. She opposed him the way a river opposes stone. The Emptity is nearly disinterested in the whole mess—it just wanted to be left alone. The really interesting sources of conflict for Chuck were always going to come from his family: Amara, and the archangels. And I’m glad we got some of that conflict now, even if it was too little too late.

Both of his children were unable to separate themselves from craving his approval. It’s a dire, tragic condemnation of this immortal cosmic family. And it says something about the microcosm of the Winchesters, of them as the model for the stories Chuck enjoys, the stories he inhabits. Supernatural is a story about being trapped. 

Sam somehow tricking both Michael and God? Sam, your BRAIN, it’s simply too big! but real talk how did he manage this? Does he still have the protection from Chuck’s sight via his now-erased God hole? I’m gonna go with yes, and in fact I’m gonna go a step further and pretend he still had that bullet wound this entire season, and that it healed when Jack took Chuck’s power, because now it makes even less sense than ever that the writers chose to erase that tantalizing physical connection. There, in my head, I’ve now fixed it.

Jack. Oh, Jack, what was the show ever going to do with you? The only thing it could, I think. I love that Dean, with absolutely no sense of irony, demanded Jack return with Sam and Dean to where he ~belongs, accusing him tacitly of selfishness, as if not three days ago he’d been egging him on to suicide. For Jack’s own sake, I am glad he is away from the Winchesters, and I hope he spends several decades talking to Amara and like, manifesting as a tree or something, to get some badly needed emotional balance and sense of scale. There is still so much wrong with putting this much power and responsibility in the hands of a browbeaten three-year-old. But, yes, my heart does swell at the thought of Sam’s imperfect love fostering the new God.

The image of Sam and Dean, broken bones, bloodied faces, laughing in the face of God like they’re insane is a pretty damn good one.

Also, Dean denying himself as the “ultimate killer”? Hahahaha so much to unpack there

My least favorite part was, predictably, the saccharine speech about #freewill, complete with the goddamn table carvings. I will certainly cop to really enjoying the montage, tho (but can anyone explain to me why it was like, almost-but-not-quite in chronological order? ).

I’m probably going to have more to say about all of this. Please talk to me about this episode. I’ll forgive 15.18, and hell, I’ll proactively forgive 15.20. Together with 15.17, 15.19 paints a more pleasing, more damning, and more fruitful conclusion for SPN than I ever dreamed I’d get.

[rupertgayesarchive]

hey jenn...

so tell me about your plot planning process

oh chi i hate this question so much askfjajfakds

okay okay so i had to think about this because?? i don't do a lot of this consciously. have any of y'all looked at writing advice stuff and tried to make it work for you?? i keep trying and idk... i really tried to be the type of writer with like, outlines and bullet points, and usually i might have notes of some sort somewhere... it's all very much a 'trust the process' um. process. so here's stuff i do? in some semblance of order, but more like for your reading benefit than how it might actually happen.

first of all - i start with a concept (that fucks, obviously). considering the current spn fic i'm writing and the last longfic i wrote (marvel fandom) were both borne of that age old 'i read all the fics with this trope so now i have to write my own', i guess that's a pattern?

second, once i have the beginnings of like, a Thing I Want To Read Badly Enough That I Will Bite The Bullet And Write It Myself, how can i write it, considering like, who i am? for heard from your mother, a spn character getting sent back in time to fix things isn't a totally unique plot, but i am someone who 1. has not actually watched that much spn and 2. really enjoys the early seasons. so pretty quickly i started to think along the lines of 'writing a time travel fix it would require an in-depth knowledge of canon that i don't have past like, s3'. then my brain starts spinning off in all these other directions which leads to -

plot, i guess? by the time i put out the first chapter of heard from your mother i knew how cas got sent back in time, kinda sorta what would happen, and a rough idea of the ending, but no real sign posts. i think the main other thing i knew was that dean and cas end up together before the end of the fic, but even then, i didn't really know how. i also thought it would be a fun idea to give cas a cellphone that sends him anonymous messages as another draw/guide to the story. since pre-pilot was mostly focused on dean and cas meeting and getting together, a lot of energy was focused in trying to get them to be in the same place at the same time, bond, and eventually become an item. which also means -

what stories happen within the story? in any of my longer fics, there's usually an A/B plot going, which can shift and morph and intertwine as the story goes on. In heard from your mother, the A plot is probably dean and cas getting together, up until s1 starts, in which case it's the 'find dad' s1 plot, and the B plot throughout the fic is 'cas needs to figure out what he is and how he got where he is now'. there are shorter c plots (like offscreen stuff that happens with jess, bobby, pamela, etc.) but they're shorter lived.

another thing plot-wise that i don't consciously think of too much but is still important is payoff. these can be big or small, but this fic is SO goddamn long that it's good to idk, give the readers *something*. early in s0, this was dean and cas meeting up again after doing their own thing, like, yay! fun treat! good times! or another clue to what cas is (aka the RIBS chapter). some fun reveal, like seeing an old character pop up again, or maybe another emotional moment, like the resolution of the scarecrow episode rewrite, where dean finally comes out to sam. these are all moments that i personally really enjoyed writing, and if you're in this fic for the long haul, i imagine you're reading and going 'omg, finally!' or 'whoa, cool' - just something to make you pick your head up after however many words.

when i actually sit down to write a chapter, i kind of know where i want things to end up? like a lot of s0 was making sure certain characters met each other, s1 was more or less the same as the canon s1 with more focus on how the characters have grown/changed, and everything else is made up on the spot. like the hunts in s0 were made by me thinking: 'oh this monster got mentioned in an early season of spn, dean probably hunted that before. let's find a town for it to take place in, and maybe write it in a way that highlights one of his character flaws' very much an early monster of the week type of fic - creature story with an aesop somewhere inside that prompts dean (and usually cas) to confront something about themselves and hopefully push themselves closer together. we see this in the chapters dealing with the gillepsie family and the crocotta, probably the most obviously? i try not to beat anyone over the head with it. heard from your mother has a writing style that is sort of like 'here it is, you make sense of what people are thinking/feeling bc i'm not narrating that' which is very spn and male coded of me i think.

if i ever get stuck on how to approach something, i usually will put the fic down and listen to music or read something else, or i just talk out the ideas i have (to a lot of people on tumblr actually! thank you!!) a lot of my writing is latent and i just kind of let it happen. there are definitely deliberate choices for some things i do in this fic (i mentioned this with a previous ask about putting stuff in the plot that could help the characters from being backed into a corner later on), but heard from your mother is still something that to me is like 'this is a fun little story, watch me type away at my google doc and see what happens!'. like i take it seriously, i want people to enjoy it, but i want to enjoy writing it just as much.

i guess my writing is just: find what you want to read, figure out how you could write it taking into account your personal hangups, get it started, know kind of where you want to end up, and have fun figuring out the stuff in between (and leave some breadcrumbs in the middle there so if you end up way off base and you're already putting out chapters you can write your way out of it).

[ahgastae]

worst chefs in seoul (outline) – kim seokjin x gn!reader

➥ word count: 3.9k | reality/cooking show au | crack | fluff

➥ m.list

➥ a/n: we’re back at it again with another wip i never finished lol. this one is the outline for what was intended to be a social media au (as evidenced by some of the notes i left for myself), though it’s likely that’s not how it actually would’ve come out. i’d love to hear some of your thoughts/reactions, and i hope you enjoy ♡

day ???

start w y/n and yoongi goofing off on twitter

the whole y/n eating a moldy grape thinking it’s a kiwi thing

and yoongi panicking bc of it

could transition into them talking about the finale episode of their favorite show: worst chefs in seoul

they’re both huge fans, and equally complete disasters when it comes to culinary skill

yoongi likes the show bc he likes the competition aspect and tbh he got addicted after y/n forced him to watch the first season w them

y/n also likes it for that reason, but the main reason they watch it is bc of a certain kim seokjin

anyway, they talk about the finale, and then yoongi says something about the next season’s ‘nominations’ coming up soon

y/n jokingly says they’re going to nominate yoongi bc of that one time he made tacos with dog food

and yoongi fires back w the time they managed to light the microwave on fire making cup o’ noodles

they agree to let each other live

…..for now

sike!

the two actually do end up nominating each other w/o the other knowing

y/n honestly just thought it would be funny if yoongi got picked and yoongi was like “fuck it why not”

little did they know…..

while the nomination guidelines assure that the selection process is completely random, this is a reality show

meaning for anyone w a brain that’s obviously not the case

contestants are actually chosen by the show’s assistant producers and approved by the chefs themselves and then the higher ups

but who are those assistant producers??

none other than park jimin and kim taehyung

neither of them keep their involvement with the show a secret, and one takes it a teensy bit more seriously than the other

anyway, they’re usually told to find a batch of contestants (that they feel) would conjure up the most drama for the show

it is tv, after all, and they have to keep people watching

and that part is crucial

to their credit, they do (somewhat) succeed for the most part

jimin selects yoongi and namjoon from the nomination pool bc he thinks joon’s clumsiness w yoongi’s nonchalant nature will work for max chaos

and taehyung chooses y/n and jungkook bc while their competitive drives are similar, y/n’s subdued nature has a big chance for conflict w jk’s out-there attitude

(how do they know all this? they’re experts at what they do leave me alone)

day ??? 2.0

y/n (and yoongi, secretly) is ecstatic when they get the emails/DM/whatever that they’ve been “chosen for the next hot season of worst chefs in seoul!”

but then yoongi asks if it’s allowed for them to know each other and accept the nomination

like they’re best friends. is that going to present some kinda problem that’ll get them both kicked off??

should only one of them accept it?

(he’s immediately ready to sacrifice his own nomination bc he knows how much y/n cares about this stupid show)

y/n says they’re not going to let him do that bc they were both chosen, meaning they both should get to go

but—

“it’s fine!! we can just pretend we don’t know each other when we’re on set!”

and so they’re off

to some undisclosed location in seoul

day 0

jimin and taehyung are the first to greet everyone, collecting all four contestants together for a tour of the dorms

and y/n starts texting yoongi in a panic bc both of their dumbasses forgot that the contestants are separated into teams as soon as they arrive

yoongi prolly says smth like i’m two feet away from you why are you texting me

(y/n reminds him they can’t make it seem like they know each other)

yoongi acts like it’s not that big of a deal

prolly says there’s a good chance they’ll end up on the same team

and if they don’t they can just hang out in the dorms when the cameras are off and away

which is when jimin loudly announces that this season, each team is getting their own dormitory

and that contestants will be required to stay in their dorm while filming the season, except for approved ‘outings’ for the show

he moves on before anyone can ask what that means

they’ll be allowed to pick whichever dorm they want to stay in for the first night, since they want to get the contestants’ reactions on camera when they reveal the teams

but after they’re revealed tomorrow, it’s your dorm and your dorm only

y/n and yoongi automatically gravitate towards each other

they end up together in the ‘new’ dorm, which yoongi grumpily notes is practically bigger than their whole apartment

y/n wonders if they ended up in seokjin’s dorm, and gets excited at the thought of this being a ‘test’ to see which chef’s team they’ll be on

to which yoongi asks what makes this dorm his?

“idk i just...feel his aura in here”

“.......okay, weirdo. i’m gonna go ‘feel his aura’ in the bathroom and take a—”

“yoongi!!”

y/n can either ask what yoongi thinks of the other contestants or they can both pretty much blow them off entirely for the time being

idk which yet

day 1

next morning, the contestants are woken up bright and early by none other than our favorite assistant producers

the wake up call comes in the form of a new group chat between the six of them

along with a link to ‘download’ the calendar for the shooting schedule

(which is really an app/virus that disables certain functions on their phones)

((such as most social media and texting numbers outside their ‘parameters’))

after that’s all hashed out, jm & t explain that this group chat is for any and all notifications and updates about the show, as well as any questions and/or concerns the contestants might have

like

“can i just vote to eliminate myself now and go home?” and

“how do i get this fucking thing off my phone” and

“when do we find out what team we’re on??”

the answers to which are

no

you’ll find out when filming is finished

and right now!

they tell the contestants to get up and get dressed as their first day on set officially starts now

y/n and kook immediately jump into action and leave the gc

joon lags behind a little confused but follows the flow

yoongi, ever the people person, gets aggressive when they don’t answer his questions about their goddamn malware

“is this even legal?? are you even fucking allowed to just disable our devices like this?”

“what if there’s an emergency??”

“looks like you’ll just have to find out, huh?”

yoongi’s phone then crashes and won’t let him unlock it until the first block of filming is finished

jm: “oops ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ”

day 1 recap

we find out through our superfan what happens during the first episode

(maybe do something like this person is some kinda press/‘news’ account dedicated entirely to w.c.i.s. and the two chefs)

((mayhaps they leak the contestant list before it goes public??))

((jimin and tae could have some kinda unspoken rivalry w them lol))

anyway the story is told through them in a series of twitter threads

(plus a few messages from y/n to yoongi freaking out about the teams they get put on)

first event of the day is: the team announcements

yoongi and joon end up on team kim seokjin and y/n is on team jyp w kook

being split up puts a bit of a damper on their plans, and with this stupid cell block they don’t know if they’ll even be allowed to talk to each other

none of them get much time to react, though, as they’re then shuffled off to their respective kitchens

where they finally meet their respective chefs

and, lo and behold, y/n is goddamn terrified

jinyoung is even scarier in person than he is on tv

“don’t laugh at me yoongi!! this is the guy who made a girl sob on live television!”

“and now ur gonna be the next person what’s the problem lmao”

while y/n tries to get past their fear, they’re given their first official task: work together with their new partner to create a meal of their choice

the catch is that they aren’t allowed any help from their chef yet

and since the teams were just announced literally like 10 minutes ago, none of them have had much of a chance to get to know each other

(the network knows this, and does this on purpose since most of the seasons’ first episodes are spent either arguing or being completely lost)

things go about as well (read: badly) as expected

y/n and kook soon discover their very conflicting personalities and spend the majority of the round bickering back and forth about what to make/how to do it

meanwhile yoongi slaps a piece of sliced cheese directly on the stove while joon runs around like a chicken w its head cut off

in the end, team jyp somehow manages to come out victorious

they cobble together some (semi) edible banana milkshakes to present to the judges

(‘together’ meaning y/n wanted to make plain vanilla milkshakes and kook switched it for banana milk when they weren’t looking)

yoongi and joon tried (keyword being tried) to make grilled cheese

but between yoongi’s cheese-to-stove method and joon dropping their two pieces of burnt toast right before the timer rang

they didn’t get many points

as their reward, team jyp has the honor of picking what they’ll be making tomorrow

they’re given the rest of the day to think and talk it over while team ksj is told to reflect on what went wrong in today’s trial

back at the dorms (now in their separate teams), y/n finds that yoongi finally graces them w a response

(and that they were right about which one was ‘seokjin’s’ dorm)

yoongi tells them about ‘that little shit’ locking him out of his phone and that he honestly just wants to get tf out of there contract or not

y/n convinces him to stay and stick it out, if not for them then for the prize money at the end

yoongi then asks what dish they’re going to pick for tomorrow, and asks if they can pick something he at least has an idea how to make

cue y/n saying that they were thinking of suggesting one of seokjin’s signature dishes but not knowing if kook would go along w the idea

“he kept trying to switch out our ingredients for banana milk and i don’t know how to tell him to knock that shit off”

“honestly you know i’m not one to take charge but he wasn’t even listening to me!! what’s to say he’s actually going to listen to the PROFESSIONAL chef here to help us??”

“aNd SPeAkINg oF THaT”

cue y/n whining about how they wanted to be on jin’s team and it’s not fair that they both got stuck w jinyoung AND a bratty kid on their team

yoongi sympathizes since he was looking forward to them being on the same team, but makes y/n agree that if he has to give the competition a chance then they have to give kook one too

“i mean yeah he seems like a bit of a dumbass but isn’t that why we’re all here? bc we have no fuckin clue what to do in the kitchen?”

hmm...fine they’ll give him a chance

but they still think he’s a lil shit and don’t really wanna talk to him at all, let alone reach some kinda compromise on what to make

they don’t get much or a choice, though, as they both receive a mysterious message from...jungkook? in another group chat?

the contestants find that they have all been manually added to another gc

except this one is missing the two assistant producers who love to breathe down their necks

everyone but jk is immediately suspicious

is this some of trick to get them to screw up?

to break some kinda hidden clause in the contract none of them actually read?

wasn’t that thing they downloaded supposed to block incoming messages like this?

“but wait, yoongi, then how were we able to…?”

but as of right now, they don’t get any answers

and they’re all too afraid to ask anyone but each other

“well we’re all here so...we might as well get to know each other right?? :D”

this is where we get our first in-depth look at the four people stuck on this show together, who in their lives nominated them and why

(y/n and yoongi’s lying skills are put to a bit of a test as they each rush to pull stories right out of their asses)

kook talks about bambam and says his nomination said smth about “adding banana milk to everything f*ckin thing he makes”

he doesn’t really get why that was enough to land him a spot on the show but he thought it would be pretty cool to be on tv and just went along with it

namjoon talks about hobi and emphasizes that he’s not that bad of a cook

he just gets nervous and confused when it comes to recipes and cooking which expresses itself in the form of his unabashed clumsiness

joon then asks if they’ll really be prevented from having any outside communication until filming is finished

he, like yoongi, questions the legality of deceitfully installing the block on their phones

y/n says there probably was some kind of hidden clause that allowed them to do that, as they “can’t imagine seokjin would take part in a competition that abuses its contestants”

to which joon replies that they don’t actually know seokjin so they can’t really ‘imagine’ anything about how he will or won’t act

right as yoongi is about to jump in and tell him to back off, jungkook decides that that’s way too much legal talk for him

he forces changes the subject back to the gc as a whole and says that even if they’re prevented from talking to their friends he’s happy they’ll “at least have each other :D”

y/n feels like part of that is directed at them and feels bad for how they thought he was ‘just a dumb kid’ before

namjoon, however, is still hesitant

he’s not sure if this chat could get them in trouble in regards to the show and their contract and what not and says that they all should probably delete it just to be safe

but that is unanimously vetoed by y/n and kook (and yoongi, reluctantly) and they decide that if the block allowed it to pass through then it must be allowed

before joon can argue anymore, they all receive a message from tae in the ‘official’ gc

he briefly explains the lights out policy of the dorms and tells them that they’re probably going to want a good night's sleep for their ‘big day’ tomorrow

yoongi then says smth like “well...guess that’s lights out then” and jk responds excited as ever w “night guys!! see you all in the morning! :)”

and y/n can feel their soul leaving their body for even thinking anything ill about him

day 2

contestants are woken up bright and early by alarms they didn’t set

(“oh great, so they just hijacked every app on our fucking phones then”

jimin tells them all to hurry up, get dressed, and meet the chauffeur outside bc they can’t afford to be late

(“literally! every second you waste is money docked from the network’s wallet! so get your asses in gear, guppies!”)

y/n and kook get outside first, but yoongi and joon are nowhere to be seen

y/n decides to text the q & a gc to get the dirt on seokjin

they kinda start sucking up to jimin and tae to see if they’ll reveal any info, particularly about what the chef is like and if it’s possible for him to talk to the ‘other’ team’s contestants

and while the producers are pleasantly surprised that one of the contestants actually want to use that gc for something other than yelling at them

they unfortunately can’t give much info besides what most people already know

and confirm that one of the chefs talking to the other’s students was probably not allowed, but that it’s also never really happened before so they’re not really sure lmao

(“taehyung!!” “what? was i not supposed to say that?”)

jimin cuts the conversation short there as yoongi and joon arrive and they all get on the shuttle for the set

taehyung does say one last thing tho

“good luck!! hopefully they don’t tear u up too bad!”

but first

our superfan gives us the downlow on the competition and how it works

after being split into teams, the contestants will rotate between ‘training’ w their chef and competing against each other in timed trial rounds

prizes can be won for both events, but the ones for the trial rounds are generally more competition based while the ones for the training rounds are more about luxury/quality of life while filming

each trial round win counts as a point towards the team’s score in the competition

only trial rounds affect this score

once a certain number of points has been reached (5), that team moves into the next phase of the competition

instead of working as a team, they are split up and now have to work against each other to win the favor of their chef

and in the finale, after one last big cookout competition, an individual winner is chosen and crowned a ‘former’ worst chef in seoul

once the contestants arrive on set, the chefs reiterate that today is just a training round

(they all let out a collective sigh of relief)

and it’s a good thing everyone woke up so early bc they’re just in time to learn how to make breakfast!!

“it’s not like we had much of a choice-oof.”

“anyway! team jyp, since you won the pretrial round yesterday, you get to decide what both teams will be learning how to make today. so, y/n, jungkook. think carefully. what do you want for breakfast?”

y/n is about to suggest seokjin’s signature strawberry and cream crepes when jungkook, who is still half asleep, blurts out “omelette”

(also i’ve decided that jackson is the host of the show now and i’m not changing my mind)

and it’s decided. they’re makin’ omelettes

(y/n is only a little bit peeved)

shuffled off to their separate kitchens, y/n is reminded of just how terrified they are of jinyoung

sure, they thought he was scary yesterday when they realized they were on his team, but now he has to actually teach them and they can’t help but think he’s going to make them into an idiot sandwich by the end of the day

as such, they try to keep half-asleep kook in between them and jinyoung at all costs, even if it meant running around the kitchen like a lost puppy

jinyoung, fully aware of how the show portrays him and how fans view him, notices this almost instantaneously

but he unfortunately doesn’t get to pull y/n aside to address it before jungkook starts digging through the fridge for banana milk and almost throws the entire carton of eggs on the floor

professional chef jyp mode: on

and they’re off

it’s a little difficult with y/n dancing around the kitchen anxiously and jungkook’s absolute aversion to being told what to do (as y/n predicted), but jinyoung manages to whip them into shape long enough to (barely) make a ham, cheese, and “green onion? wtf is that?” omelette

team seokjin, however, does not favor as well

yoongi apparently doesn’t know what tf a green onion is either and just throws in whatever green vegetable he can find while jin is struggling to keep namjoon from setting himself on fire

….and it turned out to be celery

that, plus joon somehow managing to burn the omelette to a crisp, costs them the training round

y/n and kook start to celebrate their victory and actually working as a team when jackson informs them that their ‘prize’ is they get to eat what they cooked while the other team gets whatever is left over on the catering table

“i hope you listened to your chef!”

“...jungkook, please tell me you used actual milk in this”

“um…”

back at the dorms, the contestants share their thoughts on their first day of training, as well as their first official day w their chefs

(also include y/n saying something about their banana milk omelettes actually not being half bad)

y/n immediately recalls how much they were terrified of jinyoung, almost cutting their finger off when he glanced over their shoulder when they were slicing the green onions

jk agrees, adding smth about how he didn’t think a scowl could ever be so intimidating

“it reminded me of my mom’s face when she found out i tried to pierce my own ears in the bathroom in middle school!! i was too afraid to push the needle all the way through and walked around with it in my ear all day until one of my teachers finally noticed and sent me to the office!”

...ok jungkook

during all of this, yoongi and joon are both like...wtf

“seokjin was literally nothing but nice to us. even when namjoon almost set his sleeve on fire lmao”

“hyung how did u manage that” “doesn’t matter”

jungkook thinks the difference in the chefs is hilarious, but y/n is only upsetti spaghetti

they go on a bit of a rant about how badly they wanted to be on jin’s team

saying something about how jinyoung is scary and mean and they’re almost positive he can sense their fear or something and probably use it against them while jin’s team would be so much better on the sole fact that they wouldn’t feel like he would turn them into an omelette for getting something wrong

cue jk being all babey asking “you...don’t wanna be on a team with me? :((“

and y/n immediately PANICS and tries to explain that NO, it’s not HIM but yoongi saves their ass by saying that seokjin is just their favorite and that’s all

jungkook feels better, but then namjoon is like “hol up. we all just met. how could you possibly know that?”

insert more y/n fumbling and jk confusion

yoongi (once again) covers w some bullshit story that he was able to just guess that based on what y/n’s said in the gc so far

joon wants to question it further, but jungkook informs them that the lights out call just came in before he can

another yoony/n sigh of relief

in private, y/n freaks out to yoongi for almost blowing their cover to the others

prompting a short conversation over whether they think they can trust them or not

y/n admits that they’re warming up to kook, but is a little suspicious if namjoon will keep their secret yet

convo ends with yoongi saying something like “well, the kid’s right about one thing. at least we know we have each other”

end.

[drivingsideways]

k-drama rec list

Prior to 2020 I’d maybe watched 2 k-dramas in my entire life, but this year I got sucked in, thanks to some great recs, and y’know, *gestures * everything.  

I think I’d held off watching kdramas because my impression of them was limited to romances that I didn’t enjoy at all. But this was the year I discovered the equivalent of “gen fic” kdrama- dramas that had wonderful ensemble casts, strong story lines that weren’t entirely romance focused and also a variety in terms of themes and styles. A big plus was that I found so many of these dramas had women leading the writers’ room, and seeing the effect of that in the story telling. (Notable exceptions: a certain “star” writer who should please stop inflicting her badly written, formulaic crap on the world, yes Kim Eun-Sook, I mean you, and whoever wrote that trashfire Flower of Evil)

So here I am with my own rec list! Caveat- these are mostly not the dramas released in 2020, I’m still playing catch up! :)

Under the cut for length

My Mister/ My Ahjussi  (2018, Written by Park Hae-Young, Directed by Kim Won-Seok, starring Lee Sun-kyun and Lee Ji-eun aka IU) 

This was definitely my absolute favourite of the shows I watched this year across western/ asian media. It’s a story about the thread that binds us all and the ineffability of human connection. It’s also a story that deconstructs ideas of masculinity and honour and shame in a non-western context, but with an extremely compassionate touch.  It’s a story that doesn’t shy away from showing the consequences of material and spiritual poverty; and how one can so easily feed into the other. It’s a love story that isn’t a romance, except that it’s a Romance. It’s about finding salvation in one another and in the kindness of strangers.  It’s about choosing life, and picking yourself up off the floor to take that one last step and then the next and then the next. The one quibble I have with the series is that it could have been better paced, it does get extremely slow after the half way mark. But god, do they land the ending. Both Lee Sun-kyun and IU turn in absolutely heartbreaking performances, and fair warning, be prepared to go through an entire box of tissues watching this series. 

Life  (2018,  written by Lee Soo-yeon  and directed by Hong Jong-chan, starring Lee Dong-wook, Cho Seung-woo, Won Jin-ah, Lee Kyu-hyung, Yoo Jae-myung and Moon So-ri.)

Medical dramas are very much not my thing, and I wouldn’t have taken a chance on it except that @michyeosseo said I should, and she was right! It’s a medical drama in the sense that it’s set in a hospital, but rather than a “case-fic” format, this is actually a sharp commentary on the corporatization of health care, and the business of mixing, well, money and what should be a fundamental human right. Writer Lee Soo-yeon was coming off the global success of Stranger/Secret Forest S1 when this aired, so I understand that expectations were probably sky-high, and people were disappointed when this show didn’t give them the adrenaline rush that they wanted. On the other hand, I thought that this outing was really much more nuanced in terms of the politics and also how the ending doesn’t allow you the luxury of easy-fixes. This show has a great ensemble cast, and while it took me a while to get used to Lee Dong-wook’s woodenness (i ended up calling him mr.cadaver after watching this and was surprised to learn that he’s very popular?), in the end I was quite sold on his version of angry angst-bucket elder-sibling Dr.Ye Jin-woo. His best scenes were with Lee Kyu-hyung who turns in a lovely, achy performance as the paraplegic Dr. Ye Seon-woo who just wants to live a normal life. The love story between the two brothers is actually the emotional backbone of the story, and I think they landed that perfectly. 

My one quibble with writer-nim is that she ended up writing in a forgettable and somewhat (for me at least) uncomfortable romance between the characters played by Won Jin-ah and Cho Seung-Woo. I think part of my uncomfortable-feeling was that I got the strong sense that the writer herself didn’t want to write this romance, it was as if she was being made to shoe-horn it in for Studio Reasons, and she basically grit her teeth and did the worst possible job of it.  I do wish we could have absolutely had the OT3 of my dreams: Moon So-ri/Cho Seung-woo/Yoo Jae-myung like, c’mon TV gods MAKE IT HAPPEN, just...look at them!!!! 

Anyway, that apart, I think this was a very engaging series, and by engaging, I also mean thirst-enabling, see below. 

 Stranger (aka Secret Forest  or Forest of Secrets) S1 & 2 : (2017-, Written by Lee Soo-yeon, directed by 

2017′s smash hit aired a much anticipated second season in 2020, and I managed to catch up just in time to watch that live, so that was thrilling :D . Writer Lee Soo-yeon  mixes up thriller/office comedy/political commentary in an ambitious series. I think S1 is more “exciting” than S2 in terms of the mystery and pacing,  but S2 is far more dense and interesting in terms of political commentary because it takes a long hard look at institutional corruption and in true writer-nim fashion doesn’t prescribe any easy solutions. Anyway, please enjoy public prosecutor Cho Seung-woo and police officer Bae Doona as partners/soulmates kicking ass and taking names in pursuit of Truth, Justice and just a goddamn peaceful meal, along with a stunningly competent ensemble cast. Also yes, Han Yeo Jin is a lesbian, sorry, I don’t make the rules. 

Search: WWW  (2019, Written by Kwon Do-Eun, directed by Jung Ji-hyun & Kwon Young-il, starring  Im Soo-jung, Lee Da-hee, Jeon Hye-jin)

GOD. Where do I start? +1000 for writer Kwon Do-Eun saying “fuck the patriarchy” in the most grandiose way possible, i.e. absolutely refusing to acknowledge that it exists. Yes, this is that power fantasy, and it’s also a fun, slice-of-life  tale about three women navigating their way through work, romance, national politics and everything in between. It’s true that I wasn’t entirely sold on the amount of time spent on the romance, and I really wish they’d actually had a textual wlw romance, though the subtext through the entire series is PRACTICALLY TEXT. But still, it maintains that veneer of plausible deniability and I think queer fans who are sick of that kind of treatment in media have a very valid grouse against the show. On the other hand, personally I felt that the queer-platonic vibe of the show is very wonderful and true to real life, and it was only reinforced by the ending. This is a show written by a woman for women (like me), and it shows. 

Hyena  (2020, Written by Kim Roo-Ri, directed by Jang Tae-yoo & Lee Chang Woo, starring  Kim Hye-soo and Ju Ji-hoon )

Those of you who’ve been watching hit zombie epic Kingdom are probably familiar with Ju Ji-hoon’s brand of sexiness already. I had not watched Kingdom and got hit in the face by Mr.Sexy McSexyPants’ turn as a brash, privileged-by-birth, up and coming lawyer who gets completely runover by the smoking hot and incredibly dangerous fellow lawyer/competitor from the other side of the tracks in the person of Kim Hye-Soo. When I say they set the room on fire, I mean it, ok. Every single scene between these two is an actual bonfire of sexual attraction and emotional hand grenades, and they’re both absolutely riveting to watch. “Flower of Evil” wishes they had what this show has- an actual grown up romance as opposed to a thirteen year old twilight fan’s idea of an adult romance. 

The “lawyer” shenanigans and the “cases” are hit or miss, and I think the occasional comedy fell flat for me. But that’s not why I mainlined like 6 episodes of this series overnight like a coke addict, and that’s not why you’re going to do it either. It’s so RARE, even in these enlightened days to find a female character like Jung Geum-ja: hard as nails, unapologetic about it, and not punished by the narrative for it. The best part for me is that she feels like a woman’s woman, not a man’s idea of what a Strong Female Character should be. Anyways, when I grow up I want to have what Kim Hye-soo has ok?

Other dramas that I watched this year, quickly rated:

The King: Eternal Monarch (3/10 and those 3 points are only for the combined goodness of second leads who deserved better- Jung Eun Chae, Woo Do Hwan and Kim Kyung Nam. Please head over to my AO3 and read my attempts to fix this garbage fire and rescue their characters from canon)

Flower of Evil (-10/100, dont @ me)

Tale of the Nine Tailed (5/10, I think it succeeds at what it set out to do, which is a light hearted, sweet fantasy-romance-melodrama, plus “second lead” Kim Beom will make you cry as the hot mess of a half human/ half fox spirit ALL TEARS character. I think if you’re into kdrama romances as a genre, this is probably a good bet?)

Signal  (7/10,  This was the first full kdrama I watched this year and would definitely recommend. It’s a police procedural with time travel shenanigans and has an engaging plot, good pacing, texture and compelling performances. My one disappointment with it was the way they wrote Kim Hye-soo’s character. As literally the only female character to survive in any way, she was given short shrift, and toward the end it really began to grate on me.)

Six Flying Dragons - (7/10, also would recommend if you’re interested in Korean historicals. It definitely already feels a bit dated in terms of styling and production values, and even scripting and acting choices. But it has a good balance of fantasy and history and political commentary. I was not a fan of Yoo In-Ah’s performance in this series, but it’s not anything that would make you want to nope out of the series. It’s GoT , if GoT was thoughtful about politics and characters and not the misogynist, racist trashfire that it became.)

My Country: The New Age - (3.5/10, and that’s 3 points to Jang Hyuk’s fan and 0.5.points to Woo Do Hwan’s heaving bosom. If you like your historical drama/fantasy with very pretty men, very gay subtext -seriously RIP to show makers who thought they could hetero it but didn’t account for Woo Do Hwan’s Tragic Face- lots of blood and tears and very nonsense plot, this is right up your alley. I probably would have enjoyed it more in other circumstances, I think? But this one just annoyed me too much at the time! 

I have a couple of more dramas to watch on my list, that’ll probably carry me over into 2021, so see ya on the other side! :D