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lady-divine-writes · 3 years ago

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Kurtbastian fic “Always and Forever” Chapter 3

Summary: After the death of their daughter Grace, Kurt and Sebastian drift apart. Kurt wraps himself up in his grief so tightly he starts to push Sebastian away, and Sebastian, feeling himself shoved aside when he needs Kurt most, cheats. They make the decision to start over, to leave New York City and their pain behind, and start over again in a house Upstate. Sebastian buys Kurt a "fixer upper" and gives him free reign. While redecorating the room that will be his studio, Kurt comes across something interesting underneath the wallpaper. It starts to become an obsession for Kurt - an obsession that begins to replace Kurt's love for his husband, which Sebastian is holding on to by a thread. Can Kurt and Sebastian break through the pain and the hurt and find a way to fall in love again?

Read on AO3.

Chapter 3 (4753 words)

Kurt stares out his studio window at the neighborhood below. It’s 10:15 a.m. and a Tuesday, so it isn’t as if the place is teeming with activity. Everyone living on Colony Lane seems content to stick to their own spaces, abide by their own schedules, and go about their lives without much interference from the world outside.

Kurt hates to hand it to Sebastian, but that’s what he wants as well. Isolation in a quaint fixer-upper is precisely what he needs.

Another point for Sebastian.

Damn.

He seems to be racking them up lately, while Kurt…

Kurt can admit that he’s not trying as hard as he should be, but he’s giving himself permission to be selfish. There shouldn’t be a timetable for bouncing back from loss, and Kurt got the double-whammy.

Sebastian gave him betrayal to get over, too.

Kurt knows that he should deem repairing his marriage a priority, but he also needs to do what’s right for him.

He hasn’t figured out what that is yet, but it'll come to him.

Underlying childhood guilt has him believing that he should introduce himself to the neighbors. Etiquette and all that. It’s what his mother would do. Every time his family moved, and there had been a handful of times, Kurt’s mother would bake a batch of cookies for the neighbors. She'd put a baker's dozen into colorful cellophane bags, tie the tops with curled ribbon, and take them door to door to say hello. She wouldn’t wait for people to show up on their doorstep with a casserole and a smile. She believed in being proactive. She would tell him, “New neighborhood, new life. Go out and be a part of it.”

But Kurt doesn’t want to, and the neighbors seem fine with that.

It’s been three days, and Kurt and Sebastian have only gotten one visitor – the technician who came to fix the heating. Of course, the neighbors could be waiting for them to get settled. Then they’ll pounce over with perfectly iced Gingerbread Bundt cakes and Chicken Kievs, church invites, and Girl Scout cookie order forms, like a swarm of Stepford Wives.

Kurt doesn’t care about being proactive, and his mother isn’t around to scold him for behaving like a hermit.

That may sound harsh, but it's true.

The clouds pulling together in the sky overhead, threatening rain, give Kurt an excuse to shut himself away and work on the house - an excuse he can ply without the assistance of a tragic backstory. With his laptop open on the floor in front of him, he browses those websites that feed his design fetishes: Ethan Allen, Neiman Marcus, Anthropologie.

But he's not the least bit inspired.

He’d decided to start small, take things room by room instead of attacking everything at once. But he gets stumped, staring at the screen in front of him, unsure whether the chair he’s been mulling over for the past half hour is gorgeous or gaudy.

He should focus on bringing the living room together since it’s where they do the bulk of their entertaining, provided they ever start entertaining again. And he should do something about the master bedroom, which, for the moment, houses a bed, a TV, and a dresser within the confines of four ashy walls.

Opinions on the topic vary, but Kurt has always felt that the bedrooms are the heart of the home. They’re sanctuaries where dreaming, planning, and affirmation happen. He only has the one to worry about, so he should put extra effort into making it comforting, relaxing, sensual on the off chance he ever plans on touching his husband again.

The jury is still out on that one, unfortunately.

The kitchen, he’s not looking forward to decorating. Aside from his studio, he and Grace spent much of their time together in the kitchen. They baked daily: cakes, cookies, bread, and anything else they could slop onto a baking sheet and shove into the oven. They also made jam, pickled fruit, and taught themselves (using YouTube videos mainly) to prepare various types of cuisine. Some were a hit, others a miss, but it was always an adventure.

Kurt had done something similar with his mother and her collection of vintage cookbooks, congregating around the kitchen island in the afternoons to shed the angst of public school, and spread the wings of his stifled creativity. He and his mother discussed everything in the kitchen while sifting flour and creaming butter. It was a tradition he had so looked forward to continuing.

Now, he’d rather not be bothered going into the kitchen again.

He could pick a page out of the IKEA catalog and recreate it. That should offend him. It did when Sebastian suggested it the first time Kurt redecorated their penthouse. But Kurt hardly cares. It doesn’t matter as much as it did. He can’t remember the last time he stepped into the kitchen and prepared anything more elaborate than toast and coffee, maybe dry scrambled eggs. Sebastian took over cooking duties after Grace died, which, nine times out of ten, means ordering out, if for no other reason than he gets to leave the house to pick up the food.

He knows Kurt appreciates the time alone more than he does a home-cooked meal.

Then there’s Sebastian’s office, which Kurt is decorating for the first time. He has tried to start a shopping cart for it numerous times, but, unlike the windfall of ideas he had for his studio, he can’t get into a groove. He remembers a time when thinking about decorating Sebastian’s office put a hundred ideas into his head.

Currently, he has only one.

The cheap, vomit-worthy, knock-off furnishings of the no-tell hotel room he pictures whenever he thinks of Sebastian sleeping with another man.

Kurt shivers in disgust. He wouldn't wish that on his worst enemy.

The room or the infidelity.

But how would Sebastian react if Kurt decorated his office to look like the business suite at the Marriott?

Kurt snickers, envisioning the sitcom-worthy shock that would erupt on Sebastian's face if he presented that to him.

"As you can see," Kurt would say, strolling through the room with his head held high atop the straightest spine pettiness can deliver, "I have chosen the most flame-retardant carpet available in subtle hues of tan and beige, a color combination well suited for concealing cum stains. This ergonomic, curved leather loveseat, for when you want to get adventurous with your afternoon romps, which, at your age, requires plenty of lumbar support. Plus, it cleans up in a snap with just a Clorox wipe, so that's a useful feature. Faux fireplace, faux aquarium, faux chandelier... are we sensing a theme? And in the corner, I've provided you a foldout of your own, for when you bring... ahem... work home."

The grin on Kurt's lips slides when Sebastian, wearing a gutted expression, pops to mind. It's an expression that Kurt didn't believe possible for Sebastian till their daughter died. He's only seen it once. He doesn't want to bring it back.

He sighs.

Revenge-dreaming isn't helping.

It isn't as satisfying as he thought it would be.

He’s not breaking through his creative block anytime soon. He puts his plans for the other rooms on the back burner and decides to spend time picking out furniture for his studio. With the exception of his sewing machines, he didn’t bring anything from his penthouse studio here, so he’s starting over fresh. He switches tabs and starts filling his online shopping cart with the basics: a new drafting table, a cabinet, a chair he’ll have to custom-upholster, a bolt of drapery fabric he can repurpose to make a bedspread (if he goes through with his plans for a foldout), and a few other miscellaneous odds and ends, nothing worth wasting too much brain-power over.

The clunk-clunk of Sebastian stacking cans in the kitchen cabinets reaches Kurt upstairs, as does the water running in the sink while he washes dishes and the squeak of the sticky pantry door when he fixes it. Kurt plans on redoing the kitchen and giving the entire room a facelift. Sebastian knows that. But repairing the door gives Sebastian something to do.

Sebastian has been considerate enough to let Kurt do his thing undisturbed for the morning. Kurt’s reluctance to talk to anyone extends to Sebastian, which Sebastian understands. He’s keeping his distance. But it’s nice to hear him puttering around the house. It gives Kurt comfort, the same way listening to his father snore in the middle of the night helped Kurt feel less alone after his mother died.

He may want to be left alone, but it’s nice to know that he’s not alone.

Especially not today.

Today did not start out good for Kurt.

Kurt woke up later than he’d intended, and when he did, he couldn’t remember where he was. Sebastian had woken up and gotten out of bed hours earlier, leaving Kurt alone to sleep in. Kurt climbed out of bed and wandered around frightened, hands crawling along the walls, searching for something familiar. Footsteps passed somewhere underneath him, and he froze. He didn’t want to venture downstairs because he didn’t know who could be there. Maybe someone had broken in, or worse - this was somebody else’s house, and Kurt was the intruder.

His heart raced. He started hyperventilating. He went from room to room, trying to figure out where he was and why he was there. It wasn’t until the second time he went into his studio that he began to remember. He saw his bag on the floor and, beside it, his sketchbook. He remembered sitting in there the day before, making plans. He remembered the wood grain of the floor, the dusty glass, the tree outside, the wallpaper, and that ripped corner by the window, which Kurt refuses to acknowledge any more than he has to.

He feels it behind him, like the sun on his back, trying to get him to turn his face to it, but he refuses. Of all the things he needs to deal with, that ripped corner and the word beneath it don’t make the list. It isn't doing the palpitations in his chest any favors.

It confuses him.

It angers him.

It saddens him.

It makes him consider what could have been, forces him to face everything he's lost. He didn't succeed in running away from his problems. He ran headlong into brand new ones.

But this is his house. He has to get used to it.

These episodes aren’t uncommon. They crop up whenever Kurt needs to adapt to change. They’re unexpected, like mines in fields he discovers he’s been running through when a second ago he was picking flowers in the park or strolling down the street.

It's their unpredictability that is the true torture.

They show up even on his good days.

His life for the last ten years revolved around his daughter. When she was a baby, he adjusted his work schedule to match her sleep schedule. They had the money to afford the best nurses in New York, but Kurt didn’t want that. He didn’t want his daughter raised by a governess. He was as hands-on a parent as there ever was.

As Grace grew, her schedule changed, and Kurt adjusted: daycare, Gymboree, kindergarten, ballet, elementary school. He dropped her off in the mornings, then picked her up in the afternoons. They spent the rest of the day going over her homework until it was time to make dinner, which they did together.

That was the great thing about being a designer and freelance editor. Kurt could work from anywhere, and, aside from doing consultations at Vogue, he could work any time.

When Grace became sick, her doctor visits and her medication regimen dictated Kurt's schedule, then her chemo.

Towards the end, there was only one item written in Kurt’s schedule - lie beside his daughter in her bed, holding on to her for dear life.

And not just her life.

His, too.

In sickness and in health, Grace kept Kurt’s life regulated.

Things flipped drastically when she died.

He felt adrift. Detached from the life he had gotten used to, he didn’t know what to latch on to. His internal clock would wake him up at six to get Grace ready for the day, only to find himself walking into a vacant bedroom. At the supermarket, he would grab her favorite cereal out of habit and put it in his cart, even though it wasn’t on the list. He would jolt when he'd come across a song he thought she’d like or saw an advertisement for a movie he thought she’d enjoy.

He has yet to stop the automatic deposits from his bank account to hers, her weekly allowance piling up on top of birthday and Christmas money. She had earmarked it for college (her decision, not his). Now it waits to be donated to the children’s hospital that took such incredible care of her. He doesn’t have the heart to empty it. She was so proud of it.

He doesn’t know what it will do to him to see the balance at zero.

But the worst moment of all, the absolute worst, was when he tried to go back to work right after they lost her.

There are many moments after Grace’s death, during Kurt’s own struggle for acceptance, that blur together, but this one he remembers so vividly, it brings a lump to his throat and tears to his eyes.

He was in the middle of a brainstorming session with his team. His boss Isabelle was there. She had dropped by with a box of cronuts and a grande nonfat mocha. Kurt hadn’t been eating. Everyone could tell. But Kurt overlooked the signs – the sharper than normal angle to his cheekbones and chin, his collarbone that showed through his skin a little too much, his hands that never stopped shaking. He had waved the food away when she offered.

An hour later, he was on his third one.

The tension of his presence in the office so soon after his daughter’s death slowly dissipated, making way for the familiar, though attenuated, back and forth banter he had so missed. Without knowing it, he was paving the way for a potential comeback. He wouldn’t have a line up for a while, and he would need to keep an eye on fashion trends as they came and went in his absence. But this, this felt so natural, so normal, it almost seemed like it was. He got caught up in the rhythm of this impromptu jam session. He smiled, he laughed.

He felt alive again.

Somewhere in the middle of outlining a rough schedule, he glanced down at the time on his phone. Mid-sentence, he got up from his chair and walked over to get his coat off the hook by the door.

“Alright,” he said with a chuckle over Chase’s last clap back at a jab from his boyfriend Ian, “thanks for everything, you guys, but I’ve gotta run. We’ll talk about this more when I come in tomorrow.”

The room went pin-drop silent. Kurt didn’t notice.

“Where are you going?�� Isabelle asked, getting up from her seat on the corner of his desk and approaching, knowing that he would need her in a second, the way she always knew. Kurt has referred to Isabelle as his Fairy Godmother ever since he first walked into Vogue fresh out of high school and trying to find a foothold in the hectic Gulf Stream that is New York City. She became his pillar of support, a sympathetic ear, and a clear head whenever he needed one. She had thrown his bachelor party. Hers was the condo he stayed in the night before his wedding. She’d hosted Grace’s baby shower.

Also, Grace’s wake.

She didn’t have children of her own and didn't plan on it, but she loved Grace as much as anyone.

And hers was the shoulder Kurt cried on when he found out Sebastian had cheated.

Kurt looked at her, confused, wondering why it was that everyone around him seemed to be holding their breath. “I just… have to go pick up Grace. From school. I’m going… I’m going to be late.”

Isabelle shook her head and put a hand on his. “Sweetie… ”

It took Kurt a second.

Even after one person gasped and another sniffled, with Isabelle’s sorrowful eyes staring at him, begging him to remember so she wouldn’t have to say it, he didn’t catch on.

When he did, it hit him like an electric shock straight through his body, rendering his muscles useless, and he crumbled to the floor. Isabelle held him for over an hour in that spot until Sebastian arrived. Kurt didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go to their empty penthouse and face the truth about his empty life. He wanted to stay at Vogue with Isabelle and live in that moment where everything was alright again for one shimmering second, even if it wasn’t real.

But he had to go. He had to leave with Sebastian, who had hurt him, back to his home, even if it killed him because even though he felt like his life was over, everything else continued on. People lived, and people died. The sun set in the evening, but in the morning, it would rise again.

He just didn’t want to be a part of it anymore.

Not without his Grace.

He was cried out by the time Sebastian got him home. Sebastian undressed him, helped him with his cleaning and moisturizing routine, and then put him to bed. It was Friday evening when Kurt shut his eyes and went to sleep. He lived that horrible moment at his office over again a hundred times before he opened his eyes. And when he did, it was Sunday morning.

Like this morning, but to a greater extent, when these attacks happen, locked in his own brain, sifting through the pieces to find one big enough and sturdy enough to hold on to, Kurt loses time.

In a blink, hours go by, sometimes a day. He’ll climb in the shower in the morning, turn the water on hot, and by the time he realizes it’s cold, it’s close to noon. He has sat at the dining room table for breakfast, staring at a bowl of oatmeal, and when he found the will to pick up the spoon, the oatmeal was old and stiff, and it was dinner time. He’s gone to bed on Monday and stared at the black behind his eyelids till Wednesday.

As far as Kurt knows, it’s only around lunchtime, but he glances at the clock in the corner of his screen to make sure.

12:45.

He breathes a sigh of relief. He double-checks the date to make sure he has a reason to and sighs again.

Still Tuesday.

Kurt switches back to the IKEA tab he’d been laboring long but not hard on earlier. He looks at the shopping cart he’s been steadily filling, scrolls through his selections of personality bereft, assembly line furniture, and groans. This isn’t him. This house, this blank slate, should be an endless fount of motivation.

But he's numb.

Maybe he's rushing into this. He should give this house and the neighborhood time to grow on him before he sentences it to the mundane.

He needs a break. (Kurt Hummel need a break from shopping? Since when?) He flips to a new page in his sketchbook. For shits and giggles, he tries drawing a sketch for his husband’s office. He starts with the easy part – Sebastian’s desk. Sebastian didn’t leave that in the penthouse, so Kurt will make it the linchpin and design around it.

Things flow surprisingly easily from there once he gets started, with a pencil in his hand writing on paper instead of working on a screen: an ornamental rug, a matching leather chair, burgundy velvet curtains, a chainmail style Tiffany desk lamp, 1930s art deco décor with a soupcon of Persian flair. But he doesn’t want the room to be too dark. No. Kurt wants nothing in their house to be dark. He adds a Salento chandelier over the open portion of the room and a sweep of color – one wall, opposite a window, a lighter shade than the rest. He doesn’t know what Sebastian’s office looks like, but there has to be a wall in there that will fit the bill.

An enamel and copper vase, a Khatam inlaid photo frame, a few Negar Gari…

Kurt stops.

Would Sebastian want that? The softer elements countering the strict lines of the art deco pieces, what could be described as feminine influences, are Kurt’s signature touch. But might Sebastian prefer the art deco without Kurt’s fingerprints all over it? Isn’t that what Sebastian meant by Kurt being heavy-handed with the pastels?

Back in high school, Kurt had decorated his bedroom so that he and his stepbrother could share it. He'd skipped school so he could complete it in one day. He’d worked hard on it, trying to fuse a masculine air with his theatrical influence. What he thought was an eclectic representation of the masculine and the feminine turned into a Moroccan-themed disaster.

The word his stepbrother chose to use at the time was faggy, but there were ulterior motives behind it.

Sebastian made jabs in high school about Kurt not wearing boy clothes, comments that adult Kurt recognizes as the teenage boy equivalent of pulling Kurt’s pigtails. But at the time, they stung. Sebastian wouldn’t have made those comments if there weren’t a grain of truth to them, would he?

Sebastian has never retracted those statements, so as far as Kurt is concerned, they stand.

Kurt flips his pencil over and starts erasing. He’ll pare down the extras – trade the Tiffany lamp for a banker’s lamp, replace the rug with something more Brooks Brothers than Pier 1.

Maybe he should just opt for another IKEA recreation, but that feels like copping out, going back on his word.

He could always ask Sebastian. He swears his husband has passed by a few times, his footsteps rising and falling outside his door, but Kurt didn’t think anything of it. He figures Sebastian is passing through on his way to get something from the bedroom that he needs downstairs. Kurt doesn’t imagine the man is pacing the hallway, even if he is, trying to find a way to tell Kurt that lunch is ready. Little things like lunch, innocuous things, have become huge divides over the past few months. With anyone else, Sebastian has a history of railroading over them, hurt feelings be damned.

But Sebastian has learned his lesson. He paid a hefty price learning it, too.

Contemplating between clearing his throat so that Kurt knows he’s there and letting another meal go cold, he sees Kurt’s head lift up. It seems like an opening. Whether or not it is, Sebastian takes it.

“Lunch is ready.”

“Mm-hmm,” Kurt mumbles, brushing eraser shavings aside.

“Are you… are you coming downstairs?”

Kurt erases again, then pencils something on a sheet of paper that Sebastian can’t see. “Hmm… mmm?”

It sounds like a question and an answer, but since Kurt doesn’t follow it up with anything, it most likely means that Kurt will be skipping lunch… again. Sebastian knocks idly on the door frame, giving Kurt a second longer to tell him for sure.

“Alright.” Disappointed, he turns to leave. “I guess I’ll come back up at dinner then.”

Kurt doesn’t know why the thought returns when he wasn’t even thinking about it, why it decided to nag at his brain when he had been able to ignore it for this long, but that’s the way his brain works now. His thoughts don’t always travel straight paths. They twist and turn, taking one thing and linking it to something unrelated. Erasing the ideas he’d sketched out, removing every inch of himself from Sebastian’s office, made him think about how eager he was to be rid of that word darling from above the window, and that ripped corner returns to his mind with a vengeance.

Well, as long as Sebastian is there, he might as well ask.

“Sebastian?”

Sebastian pauses in the doorway, not daring to move. “Yes?”

“When was the last time you were here?” Kurt raised an eyebrow at the idea when it originally came to him. When would Sebastian have come to this house that Kurt didn’t know? They traveled Upstate once a year, but they always did it together as a family. And while they were here, Sebastian rarely ventured out alone. Sebastian isn’t the kind of person who would buy a house sight unseen.

Unless he had found it during one of his outings with Grace. Which would mean that Grace had seen the inside.

Grace would have seen this room and thought it would be hers, thought that they would someday live here, and Sebastian hid that word darling by the window for her and not Kurt.

The thought is so painful, it makes Kurt want to tear his nails out with his teeth so he’ll stop thinking about it.

Sebastian keeps his eyes locked to Kurt’s profile so he won’t miss the moment Kurt decides to look at him instead of the floor, the wall, or the ceiling.

“I found this house online. It wasn’t even on the market when I stumbled on it. To be honest, I’d only driven by it once. I hadn’t been inside until we moved in.”

“But you saw the inside,” Kurt asks. “Otherwise, how would you know about this room?”

“I took a virtual tour,” Sebastian admits sheepishly, “but it was extremely thorough. I’ve seen the blueprints, gone over the permits and the zoning. I had Tristan from the office look over the place when he came up to visit his folks. He facetimed me while he was here.” Sebastian furrows his brow. “Why? Is something wrong?”

Kurt’s heart beats regular again. Grace hadn’t seen it.

Thank God.

His eyes find the torn section of wallpaper, but they don’t stay there. He doesn’t want to clue Sebastian in about it if Sebastian doesn’t already know. He wants to uncover this mystery on his own. If Sebastian gets to keep secrets, big ones at that, then Kurt wants this one for himself.

“No, no. Nothing’s wrong. I was just curious, you know. Wanted to understand your process. Why this house, why this neighborhood, that sort of thing.”

Kurt’s sentence comes out choppy. It’s odd how awkward talking has become for them. Sebastian used to think that the two things they had mastered were talking and fucking. They did both together with such ease. There were never any boundaries between them, emotionally or physically. Even when they were cutting each other down, which they did in the beginning, they did so with such finesse.

Not like now, when Sebastian is walking on eggshells and Kurt doesn’t want to hear half of what he has to say.

“If you come down for lunch, we can talk about my process. If you’re curious, that is.” Sebastian watches Kurt expectantly, waiting for an answer.

And while Sebastian does, Kurt looks at his sketch – Sebastian’s office, the same way Sebastian always has it decorated. This is Sebastian without him and Grace: bland and emotionless, no light, little color, and no joy. Nothing exciting, nothing nuanced, nothing to indicate that he and Sebastian are together.

Not even those snapshots he’s so proud of.

Kurt hasn’t decided whether that’s a bleak picture or not.

“Sure. I’ll be down in a sec,” Kurt decides because he does and doesn’t have an answer to that one. It changes as the day changes, and the days change too quickly.

“Alright. I’ll be waiting.” Sebastian walks away, or Kurt thinks he does. He checks the time on his clock. It’s closing in on 2.

Kurt glances up at the window, the dangling wallpaper bouncing with the breeze coming from a draft near the ceiling. It would be so easy to tear it down – grab an edge and rip, be done with it once and for all. It might even feel cathartic, exposing whatever is underneath it. But lunch is ready. He’s already left Sebastian waiting long enough.

He leaves that mystery for another day.

#kurtbastian #sebkurt #sekurt #sebastian smythe #kurt hummel

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howtosingit · 4 years ago

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Fic: don’t wanna lose me, don’t wanna lose you

Carlos drives TK home after their date.

A missing moment from 1x03.

1.7K | Also on AO3

- - - - - -

They’re both quiet in the car on the way back to TK’s place, letting the music on the radio fill the otherwise silent space between them.

Carlos isn’t really sure what to think. He had been nervous to ask TK out again after the failed dinner at his place, but something about the way the firefighter smiled at him as he left the police station made Carlos want to try again. Their conversation at his desk spoke volumes, with Carlos realizing that TK’s intense reaction hadn’t really been about him at all, but more about his past. TK seemed to be fighting his own demons and instead of scaring Carlos away, it just made him want to suit up and fight by his side.

His mom always said his big, selfless heart was going to destroy him one day. Now, Carlos wonders how she could’ve possibly anticipated TK Strand; he certainly didn’t.

He’d planned a casual date, not wanting to overwhelm TK again. The bar felt public and open enough to keep the other man from feeling cornered, and Carlos knew there would be familiar faces around in case TK needed to escape again.

(Not that he had actually planned for that to happen, but he really had no idea what to expect.)

What he had not anticipated was some kind of work-related falling-out between TK and Judd. The presence of the older man had set TK off the minute they walked in the bar, his body growing tense and guarded as a heated anger seemed to boil right underneath his skin. Carlos had initially been curious to find out what was going on, but after a full 30 minutes of TK only ranting about Judd, his patience had started to wane.

He finally got through to TK, and the rest of their date had been fine. TK was tragically terrible at darts, but his natural competitiveness led them to playing for a full hour. After his sixth loss, TK had begrudgingly admitted defeat, a scowl clouding his beautiful features.

Through it all, they talked. Nothing too deep, just the basic getting-to-know-you stuff: why they picked their jobs, how they felt about their families, and of course, how they discovered they were gay. As he drives, Carlos fondly remembers the ten-minute argument over the best sitcom in history - TK had argued for The Office, while he chose the classic I Love Lucy. The conversation had ended in a draw, through Carlos fully intended to revisit it in the future.

Now, turning onto TK’s street, Carlos wonders if they’ll ever get the chance to argue about TV shows again. It’s not that the quiet between them is awkward - in fact, if not for the fact that the date was kind of all over the place, it would be kind of comfortable. There’s a familiarity to sharing space with TK, like it’s just what he’s meant to do. Except, the date was all over the place, and now Carlos doesn’t know what to make of TK’s silence.

He pulls into the driveway, putting the car in park and switching off the ignition. The music keeps playing, content to continue until one of them opens the door. Carlos briefly glances to his right, watching as TK stares up at the house he shares with his dad. His face is in profile, his sharp features thrown into stunning relief. The firefighter pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, clearly lost in his thoughts, and Carlos wants nothing more than to run his finger along the line of TK’s mouth, to remove the obvious stress that weighs on the other man.

Instead, he folds his hands in his lap, twiddling his thumbs as his heart begins to race. He has no idea what happens next, but he knows it’s TK’s choice to make.

“I had a really good time tonight,” TK says softly a few minutes later, finally breaking the silence. The sentiment is so unexpected and so at odds with the current atmosphere inside the car, that Carlos can’t help but let out a huff of laughter, shaking his head. “What?” TK asks, and Carlos turns to find him wearing a confused expression.

“You don’t have to lie, TK,” Carlos says, leaning back against the headrest as he stares over at the other man. “I’d much rather you just be honest with me.”

“I am being honest,” TK says, his voice firm.

Carlos stares at him for a moment, captivated by the way his blue-green eyes shine in the semi-darkness. “Okay,” he says, giving him a nod.

TK huffs out a breath, his hand coming up to rub at his forehead. Then, seemingly coming to a decision, he looks back towards Carlos, his face set. “Walk me up?” he asks.

Instead of answering, Carlos pulls his keys from the ignition, reaching for the door. The music cuts out as he climbs from the car, circling around to join TK on the passenger side. He’s surprised when the other man leans into his side, wrapping his fingers around Carlos’s bicep as they begin to make their way up the front path.

“I’m sorry,” TK begins, as they climb the few steps up to the porch, “for kind of being all over the place tonight.”

“You don’t have to apologize, TK,” Carlos assures him, stopping in front of the door and turning to face him. “I said I wanted to get to know you, and that means all of you. Even your work drama.”

“Do you really think Judd was right?” TK asks him for the second time this evening, though less aggressive than the first. Carlos stares at him, wondering how to handle the question. “Be honest with me,” TK says, repeating his words from earlier.

“I think,” Carlos starts, choosing his words carefully, “that you and Judd can learn a lot from one another. You’ve both had very different lives, had very different experiences on the job, and you’ve both learned a lot from them. I think if the two of you found a way to be on the same side, you’d be pretty unstoppable together. But,” he continues, a smirk pulling at his lips as he brings a hand up to rest against TK’s cheek, “you both have to lose the hard heads, or you’ll just wind up in a never-ending bullfight.”

He shifts, balling his hand into a fist as he gently knocks it against TK’s skull. TK rolls his eyes as he lets out a laugh, reaching up to grab Carlos’s hand. He lets their joined hands fall between them, linking their fingers together.

“Can I make another observation?” Carlos asks after a moment, his heart pounding in his throat.

TK nods, letting their hands swing gently between them.

“It kind of seems like this move to Texas has been a really big change for you, in a lot of ways,” Carlos says, trying not to sound patronizing. He’s just trying to be realistic about this. “And even without all of the stuff that you left behind in New York, it would be a lot to handle.” He takes a deep breath, working up the nerve to say what they both need to hear. “I’m just not sure I know where I fit into all of that.”

He watches as TK visibly swallows, his eyes moving to look everywhere but directly at Carlos.

“I’m not trying to make a decision for you,” Carlos assures him. “I’m just saying…” he hesitates, trying not to be pushy. TK tightens his grip on Carlos’s hand, a reassuring action. “I guess I’m just saying that there’s no pressure here, with you and me,” he finishes, unsure if he’s made his point clearly.

TK takes a step closer, bringing his free hand up to cup Carlos’s cheek. “I think you’re right,” TK says, his voice gentle between them. “As much as I wish it wasn’t true, my life is… a mess right now. You don’t deserve to have to deal with that.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, TK,” Carlos states defensively, bringing his own hand up to cover TK’s, keeping him close. “I’m not running away from you, that’s not who I am. I would just hate to be someone who adds to the stress when I think we’re both mature enough to avoid it. Does that make sense?”

“It does make sense, even if it sucks,” TK agrees, his eyes somehow growing softer. “I meant it when I said I had a good time tonight. You really do help to pull me out of head, and I need that sometimes.”

Carlos nods. “That doesn’t have to change,” he reminds him. “You have my number, whenever you need it. I’m not running away, TK, and I’ll be here.”

“That sounds a bit like a friendship, Reyes,” TK hedges, stroking his thumb against Carlos’s cheek; he feels his skin heat up under TK’s touch.

“It can be, if that’s what you want,” Carlos assures him, turning his head to press a kiss to TK’s palm before dropping their hands between them. “You should know, though, that if we’re going to do this, you have to watch I Love Lucy reruns with me. I have friendship standards, Strand, and that’s a non-negotiable requirement,” he jokes.

TK ducks his head, laughing as he steps back, letting their hands finally disconnect. They stand before one another, two men separated by a harsh wall of reality and bad-timing.

“I like the sound of that,” TK whispers, a smile softening the resignation in his voice.

They stare at one another for a moment, letting their decision envelop them. A part of Carlos aches to reach out and touch TK; he knows that, after tonight, he might not get the chance to hold him again. But, a larger part of him knows that they’ve made the right choice, so he can’t regret it. This is for the best.

“I should go,” he finally says, digging his hands into his pockets to keep them away from TK. He turns, stepping off the porch and onto the front path.

“Good night, Carlos,” TK says, his voice carrying easily through the still night air. Carlos pauses, turning back to give him a wave.

“Good night, TK,” he says back, a forced smile on his lips.

It’ll get easier, he thinks, as he turns to keep walking.

He knows it will.

#tarlos #tarlos fic #911 lone star #tk strand #carlos reyes #I wrote a thing #tarlos missing moments collection

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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The Color of Friendship Review (Commissioned by WeirdKev27): A World of People

Happy Black History Month! Another day, another comission from longtime supporter of the blog Weird Kev and like a good chunk of his-non duck asks, he asked me for something outside my usual wheelhouse. In the past this has meant an episode of the short lived fox show whoops in which we found out how Santa dealt with the end of the world, didn’t know how doors worked, and interacted with some characters so thin you could remake the episode with just Mick Foley in a santa suit and carboard cutouts playing the characters lines and it’d be about the same, and earlier this month Sorry Wrong Meeting, an episode of a sitcom i’d never seen an episode of the Jeffersons about the KKK. So unsuprisingly his big comission for Black History Month was the 2000 Disney Channel Original Movie, The Color of Friendship.

I couldn’t find much on the making of the film, which dosen’t entirely suprise me as at the time this came out, Disney was releasing around 10 a year and whlie that stopped shortly, it still was a whopping 6 a year for some time, ocasionally more ocasionaly less, slowly dwindling down to the two of year we have now. Though it’s still an ongoing concern and has been since the channel started in 83, closing in on 40 years ago, so it’s still impressive Disney hasn’t just outright phased them out. Then again the popular ones make them a lot of money and some like High School Musical and the Descendants Trilogies have broken out so big they’ve lead to spinoff books, tv series in the latter’s case, and all that stuff making them money hand over fist. So making some cheap movies that MIGHT end up making them rich and usually star people that are already on shows they have or were at one point is a no loose proposition, especially now they add an extra release to the Disney Plus callender twice a year. And while the library has it’s gaps and i’ve griped about them enough.. I will say it’s stil la damn good library and it’s nice to be able to watch a film like this, as the dvd was LONG out of print and likely horribly expensive, and while renting it was an option, it would’ve chipped into what I got commissioned for the film. Still would’ve done it it just would’ve sucked to loose money on the deal, if only two bucks, for something I had no control over. Still would do that over adding it onto the comission fee. Point is stuff that’s not been easy to get for some time is now just a few clicks or taps of the remote away, and having the VAST majority of disney’s long and storied history from theatrical to dcom to weird tv oddities like.. this thing

I don’t know what Fuzzbucket is, and frankly I don’t want to know.. I mean I will for a comission or something but i’m not going to go out of my way to find out what that thing is and if it can give me scabies through a telvision screen despite being fictional and proabably long dead. At least I tell myself it’s long dead so ic an sleep at night without worrying about that thing breaking into my house and watchnig me while I sleep changing “SOON JACOB, SOON”. So yeah while you’ll hear me complain about the gaps in DIsney Plus’ library a lot on this blog.

I will give credit where it’s due, and what is on there is pretty expansive and now includes the Muppet Show, which I give them full credit for as that probably took a LOT of work and money to make happen. Plus WandaVision is fucking fantastic, especially now i’m finally all caught up.

But while as I said I couldn’t find much on the making of the film I did find a bit on it’s inspiration: It was inspried by a short story wrtten by Piper Dellums, a writer, poet and activist, and daughter of Ron Dellums. Dellums is a notable congressman who fought against apartheid and constantly fought for a bill to divest from South Africa, something that SHOCKINGLY, Ronald Regan tried to veto because he was a racist disney anamatronic what did you expect, and all in all seemed pretty awesome. He sued Bush SR to try and prevent Desert Storm, in his earliest days in office had an exibit near his phsyical office of vietnam war crimes to try and hold them acountable and in general seems to be a fascenating, hardworking man who constantly and religiously fought for the people and against war.

The story was a real life account of the Piper’s experince housing a South African Student, Marie, who the Delums Family expected to be black.. but turned out ot be white. During Apartheid, south africas racist as hell and horrifying goverment system of segregation that wasn’t abolished till the 90′s. As expected she was racist, but as a proudct of the horribly racist country she came from and much like with her fictional counterpart in this film, slowly grew to realize how fucked up her homeland was and by the time she went back, became an activist She and Piper were very close but her story ends tragically as eventually Piper stopped hearing from her after she was arrested and despite attempts to talk to her.. it was clear by the silence, and by the fact Piper visited South Africa post-aparthied to help and likely would’ve seen her.. that she was likely quitely killed by the state. But her story thankfully lives on, so join me under the cut to see how a 20 year old disney movie aired during black history month handles this difficult real life story, racisim and the 70′s.

The Cast: Quick bit about the cast since I usually do this for first episodes of an animated show and wish i’d done so for my other film reviews so far. Though to keep things simple, i’m only doing the main four cast members, especailly since frankly outside of Mahree’s parents the rest are more supporting roles that don’t have a lot of screen time and in hte case of the south african embassy workers, are just there to be racist card board cutout villians. Piper, who keeps her name from real life is played by Shadia Simmons, who eventually retired from acting to become a High School and Acting Teacher. During her career she was in a bunch of Disney Channel Original Movies, including the first two Zenon Movies, and was in a major role in a bunch of live action childrens shows: I Was A Sizth Grade Alien, Strange Days at Blake Holsely High, and Life with Derek, the only one of which i’ve seen and even then barely so I can’t comment on the rest of her work. Simmons does a decent job in the film, and does shine in the more dramtic scenes, not the best part of it but certainly not bad at all.

Lindsay Haun plays Mahree, and had more of an acting career after this one, having a small recurring role on True Blood as Hadley, while also directing some smaller films. Haun is easily one of the two highlights of the movie and the best of the two main tween actresses by a mile. More on that in a bit.

Next we have Carl Fucking Lumbly as Congressman Ron Dellums. Carl has had a long and storied career and the fucking is because of what I best know him from: Playing the Martian Manhunter Jon Jonzz on Justice League. And let me not undersell it: his version of Jon is waht made me LOVE the character, still do to this day, being the first time I encountered any version of Jon and the one I still love the most, a stoic man who tries to adapt to a world he feels he can never be a part of, adding shades to his stitled demeanour to show off his emtitons and in general being the heart and soul of what made this verison work and made me love the character with his performance. He’s done other stuff too including Cagney and Lacey, Doctor Sleepand what have you.. but he’ll always be Jonn to me and that’s not a bad thing in the slightest. Unsuprisingly he’s the other standout here.

Finally we have Penny Johnson as Ron’s wife and Piper’s Mother Roscoe, who played Captain Sisko’s love intrest on Deep Space 9 and was one of the leads on castle. Haven’t seen either of those but she does seem awesome and does a terrific job here.

Moving on to the film itself.. it’s really fantastic. It has some awkwardness and goofy bollocks as you’d expect from a disney channel original movie in 2000, but it handles a really heavy subject, race relations, gracefully and clearly with the goal of educating an audience with a lot of white kids in it about race. So I can praise what it does right i’m going to be handling the parts that are a bit wobbly first so I can get to the good stuff

Awkwardness and Goofy Bollocks:

First the out and out criticism: The films TV Movie roots show in places, as this film lacks the polish these films would have later this decade, with the film barely having an opening title sequence and just sorta throwing you in, though to their credit it does open with the utterly awesome Back in Love Again, because 70′s.

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That slaps and that’s an undeniable fact. What’s also an undenaible fact is the film dosen’t try the hardest to be very 70′s in it’s sets and what not, though it does do it a little with the clothes and that not being the case with Mahree is intentional, as her family while wealthy is from another culture and one literally and metaphorically behind the times.

I will also say Shadia Simmons is a decent actress, but is mildly weak in comparison to the other 3 in the leads, but its more the result of putting a pretty standard child sitcom actress up against two experinced actors who know what their doing and one whose about as experinced as her, but simply has a LOT to work with and goes above and beyond. It’s less that she’s bad and more that she’s simply not as good as what’s around her, and in general I tend to go easier on child actors since it’s not an easy job for a grown adult much less a teenager, it’s very pressurey and there’s a reason a LOT of them bottom out as they get older or retire all together.

I will say though that Piper’s brothers are awful and I feel are only there because she actually had brothers. The actors try, i’m not pinning this on them but writing wise their just two little shits who contirbute ntohing of value to any scene their in, being generally way to young to get into the heavy topic at hand, and mostly being there for unfunny shneanigans. They aren’t in the film too much otherwise they might’ve ruined it for me, but if Shadia struggles a bit agianst sttronge perofrmances imagine who younger actors with the stage direction “Be the bane of my existence” and you’ll MAYBE see the problem.

The film also loves cheesy time passing montages, including an actual factual shopping montage, easily the goofiest, but it’s something you’d expect from a dcom and helps lighten the mood. That’s a running theme outside the brothers there really isn’t anything too silly.. until the last act. See in the last act, the film tackles the real life death of Steve Biko, a South African activist against apartheid who was captured by the state and very transparently murdered in jail. with the government claming he killed himself which no one bought because why would they, and it sparked riots worldwide and finally got the US to take Apartheid seriously according to the film. Though as I mentioned earlier Regan did not in case you thought the republican party being terrible and deeply racist was a brand new thing. It was not. Guys like Tucker Carlson and Former President Trump are a symptom, not the disease.. though they certainly look and feel like some form of plauge. Point is Mahree is breifly taken by the embassy.. whose staff who take her feel like the Disney Channel Original Movie form of Nazi’s. The heavy accents, the way they compose themselves... I half expect an elderly indiana jones to show up to whip the piss out of them. And dont’ get me wrong, the only diffrence between these pricks and a nazi is the fact they don’t call themselves nazis, this isn’t a nuanced horrifying racist to be scared of but a saturday morning cartoon version.

While white supremacists in real life can be cartoonishly evil, again see trump and carlson, it does kind of undercut the seriousness and nuance of things to have your villians be cold, cackling cutouts who are 5 seconds away from saying “You are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor take her away” to our heroine, especailly since Mahree’s reaction to being taken away and confusion at everything and at being treated like a prisoner by her own people are very painful and very well acted. I do get showing them as monsters, because they were, but given Mahree’s father who as a south african police man was DEFINTELY ONE and even outside his racisim doubts and downtalks his own daughter, still feels like an actual person, if not a GOOD person, they could’ve done better and did in the same film.

But that stuff aside.. I really can’t find much that’s honestly that silly or bad and as you can tell what little I did was more a product of being a tv movie. So now i’ve got the negatives out of the way

This Film Is Pretty Good: It truly is, for a lot of reasons. But the biggest is the nuance. It could’ve been easy to just have Maree as some racist kid needing to learn a lesson who was openly cruel and easy to jeer at.. but the film went iwth the reality: that she was instead an extremley privlaged and insulated girl who simply NEVER knew better. To her her very racist and segregated world is just the way the world worked for her and she dosen’t even consider when the Dellums come to pick her up minus Ron these aren’t servants and her own servant’s words fall on deaf ears, as the poor woman tries to make it clear how miserable her life is and how much she deseprately wants this child to do better. Marhee is never actively malicious even when, due to the shock of her all black host family, she baricades herself in Piper’s room. It’s obnoxious sure and CERTAINLY hurtful and the film makes no bones about it and Piper rightfully calls her out on it. The film dosen’t let her get away with any intetnional racisim like that and after Piper calls her out, she realizes she’s been selifsh and makes a genuine effort. And even then the film makes a good choice in not making it an easy road to realization. Mahree makes a genuine effort in the first place not because of any big revelation or anything, but because she simply hears her dad in her head telling her she’d give up after a week and that, coupled with Piper’s words, makes her see herself as a selfish brat. Even after she’s floored by a mall where black and white people stand side by side aand casually talks about horrors like ID Cards like i’ts a GOOD thing, because that’s what she’s been taught by her dad. That black people are happy being told where they can and can’t go when no they weren’t they simply had no chocie in the matter. And while we do see early on when an asshole at a restraunt assaults a waiter for an accident that Mahree clearly isn’t okay with the more horrifying side of things, she still dosen’t quite grasp WHY that happened, simply that it’s something that does reguarly she dosen’t like. It’s excellently, and unsuprisingly called back when they visit an ice cream place in the states and something similar happens.. but the guy takes it in stride, even ordering a sundae, to Maree’s confusion.

It’s what makes the film work and all the more striking: As Roscoe makes clear to Ron, whose admant about nto having a racist in the house, this is not her fault. While the film makes it clear Mahree’s behavior at first was not okay and her prejudiece is not okay, it also makes it VERY clear she’s a product of a terrible system and terrible parenting from people who choose to benneift from the system instead of challenge it. She’s only like this because she hasn’t had a reason to ever think diffrent and just took her parents at face value and no mater the country, this is something that sadly happens far too often: Someone hating a group or thinking discrimination is okay because that’s how they were taught and that’s all they’ve known and the only way to change that is to challenge that opinon and try to get them to have some empathy and see the other way and as this film shows it’s a struggle.. and at the end of the day while the Dellums make a concentrated effort, Maree is the one who has to realize what her parents taught her is bad and her country is inherently flawed and NEEDS to change, just like ours did, and STILL badly needs to.

And that’s where the nuance kicks in as the good congressman is understandable in not wanting a racist in his house... but his wife is equally right that Maree is not some easy symbol of his hatred towards south africa, but a girl who grew up knowing nothing more than the fucked up system, and eventually he comes around, realizing , especially after she apologizes for him even thinking she’d use a racial slur on piper after a very powerful conversation with the two and piper accidently saying she used the South African N Word, almost accidently getting her friend thrown out, that she simply hasn’t been outside her shell and gently guides her to keep reading roots, even letting her take it with her if she wants back home. The film shows the full pain of the situation but also shows change is posisble. Again it’s not easy, Mahree has a panic attack waiting in an almost all black line in school and it’s shown to be as horrible a thought as it is., but she DOES change and it comes off as real, as someone realizing the system they grew up with is broken and needs to be fixed and she can’t just sit back and let it.

What makes this happen, besides the aformentioned kidnapping by saturday morning cartoon racists, is Piper confronting her after a friend from south africa forces Piper to acccept that while her and Mahree are friends, Mahree might not seee her as equal and Piper in turn in a heated argument and easily Simmons best performance of the film, that things are broken and wrong and that her “firend”, her nanny/servant back home, is not happy. It leaves Mahree crying and Ron telling her the honest truth: Change was, and again still is but this was 2000 and while we should’ve had this talk disney channel wasn’t ready for it, needed to make things better here.. and tha’ts what south african’s doing> Fighting for equal rights at last. It’s some powerful, heavy as hell stuff you woudln’t expect from a line of movie that also include a robot house, before that was an actual thing, a merMAN dad MerMan, a boy slowly turning into a leprechaun, and at least two diffrent movies centering around wacky kidnappings. It’s a nuanced and hard look at race, as hard as late 90′s jsut turned into the 2000′s disney could get mind, aimed at kids and the film, whiel stilted really has my utter praise. It’s genuinely moving, well acted and teaches a valuable message that while not eveyrone can change.. it dosen’t hurt to try and help them, as well as the equal message that change start with YOU. someone has to WANT to be better and learn and actually let other people in to help them. And I wont’ lie and say this is the most naunced or subtle film.. at time’s it’s about as subtle as a ralph wiggum throught he window

But sometimes you don’t need to be. It also taught kids about apartheid, not me as I barely saw the film, but many learned of something ghoulsih that had barely ended at the time of the film’s release, something I only learned about as a teen via bloom county and a diffrent world, which has an utterly awesome apartheid episode “A World Alike”. Seriously check it out if you have prime, as it shows that america isn’t the only country with a deep history of ingraned racisim. And was it an easy way to have an anti racisim narriative without fully confronting america’s own racist history? Yup. Just.. yup. Can I blame Disney Channel for it when they clearly, while equipped to tackle racisim, weren’t ready to tackle something that dense or heavy, and while Proud Family later would there’s a diffrence between a 20 minute one off episode of a cartoon and 90 minutes of film? Yeah. For what it is and for what the time period is, I applaud this film taking on such a heavy topic with grace. Some goofyiness here and there yes and some lack of subtly.. but still grace. For what it is is, it’s pretty good and i hope to show it to my nieces one day soon. It has i’ts heart in the right place and thus has a place in my heart. See you next rainbow.

#the color of friendship #disney channel #dcom #disney channel original movie #black history month #black lives matter

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fishoutofcamelot · 4 years ago

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(for the ask thing) any book/tv show/movie/song recommendations?

BRO! I heckin got you man! Now, I’m gonna skip the song and book recommendation bit because that sorta thing isn’t really my scene. BUT! In terms of TV? My rec list is like a mile long. I’m gonna include a read-more line, actually.

BBC Merlin: You know I had to put this on the list. But the fact that you’re on my blog means you’ve probably watched this one, so I won’t go into detail about it. Available on Netflix

Mob Psycho 100: Just a cute, sweet story about a bunch of psychic kids trying to kill each other. A story with this much fighting has no right to be so wholesome. Mob is just a good boy, he doesn’t deserve all this! Fair warning, its messages about identity, self love, and growth WILL make you feel Emotions. Available on various anime pirating websites

Red vs Blue: The found family game is SO strong in this one. By far the best found family plot/dynamic I have ever and will ever experience. The characters are all so solid, yknow? Like it took me three rewatches to understand the plot, but I didn’t even care because I loved the characters SO MUCH. It’s also really, really funny (although some of the jokes have aged a bit poorly tbh). Basically about a bunch of space marines who goof off and accidentally dismantle corrupt governments along the way. Available on Youtube

Supernatural: Is it cringey? Yeah. Does the fandom suck? Also yeah. Is Destiel overrated? BIG yeah. But it’s got monsters, magic, family, and a plot that doesn’t revolve around romance - and really, what more could you ask for? And sure, a lot of people don’t really like the later seasons, but idk I actually prefer them. Season 15 has me THRIVING. I mean come on - character vs author?! Fighting the guy who literally wrote you into existence because he doesn’t want to give your story a happy ending?! Say what you will about Supernatural, but it’s one of the most imaginative shows I’ve ever seen. Available on Netflix

Avatar the Last Airbender: You like stellar animation, intricate worldbuilding/magicbuilding, and a perspective on war that is surprisingly mature for a kids show? Check it out. This show is without a doubt one of the best animated series of all time. Go on. Watch it. It’ll change your life. Available on Netflix

The Umbrella Academy: Time-travelling assassins. Superheroes. Ghosts. Talking monkeys. Murder mysteries. Baller soundtracks. This show will never give you what you expect. I don’t even think I could properly describe it to you. Available on Netflix

Detective Conan: An anime. It’s about a teen detective - think Nancy Drew but bloodier - who witnesses a crime and is fed an experimental poison in order to keep him from telling anyone. But instead of killing him, the poison turns him into a 6-year-old. So now he’s got to solve crimes and take down a criminal organization while in the body of a child. Naturally, shenanigans ensue. Fair warning, the main character becomes a bit of a Mary Sue in later episodes, but the first 300 or so are pretty fun. A few episodes are available on Netflix, but not any of the good ones. You’ll need an anime pirating website for that

Knives Out: My favourite movie ever, of all time. It’s a murder mystery that both subverts and pays homage to its parent genre in all the right places. It’s funny, it’s intelligent, and has a spectacular ending! Although I do wish the fandom would stop being so horny for Ransom, I mean he’s literally racist...No clue where you can find this tbh, I saw it in theatres

Derry Girls: Now I’m not normally a big fan of realistic fiction/sitcom stuff. Despite how funny they are, I’ve not even watched The Office or Parks and Rec because that normal daily life stuff just doesn’t peak my interest. And yet, somehow this story about a group of Irish high schoolers just has me enthralled. Very funny, very well-written, give it a watch. Available on Netflix

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: Another anime. Phenomenal animation? Check. Fascinating plot and characters? Check. Detailed magic system that gets my lore-obsessed heart fluttering? Big heckin check. So basically two kids try to use Fantasy Science to bring their mom back to life, only the experiment fails and has some pretty nasty consequences - one boy loses his arm and leg, while the other loses his entire body and has his soul bound to a suit of armour. Now they gotta go through government conspiracies, ethical dilemmas, and Daddy Issues to try and get their bodies back. Available on Netflix

The Disastrous Life of Saiki K: Yet another anime. I know, I know, I’m a nerd, get over it. This show doesn’t have a complex plot or even complex characters, tbh, but what it does have is some amazing humour. It’s extremely funny, and it’s also just a nice show to kick back and relax to. Basically this guy who’s so op that he could rewrite the laws of reality on a whim is stuck dealing with relationship drama in high school despite being very, very asexual and very, very tired. Mostly he just uses his powers to avoid people and eat junk food, which is honestly a mood. Available on Netflix

Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Honestly I’d recommend almost anything that’s Scooby Doo-related because that was my childhood obsession. I used to have like 20 of the movies on DVD before my mom gave them all away. To this day I still love Scooby Doo, and watch it whenever I get the chance. But if you ask any SD fan, they’ll probably tell you that Mystery Incorporated is the best, most intelligent, most creative installment in the franchise. And they’re right (although I do wish there was less relationship drama...) Available on Netflix

Evil Genius: This is a documentary series about the Collar Bomb Robbery. Now, despite what the above list might indicate, I actually watch a LOT of documentaries, and if I were here to recommend all of them then we would be here all day. Not really ‘funny’ like the other entries on this list, it’s actually rather tragic, but definitely a cerebral viewing experience. Available on Netflix

Screwball: Now this is a documentary that IS funny. It’s about drug scandals in baseball. But the dramatic scene re-enactments are done with child actors that are all wearing fake beards and pretending to be drug dealers. It’s not only a fascinating subject, but it’s got amazing editing and visuals that have me in awe. Available on Netflix

Behind the Curve: Yet another documentary. This one’s about the rise of the Flat Earth movement. You’ll spend most of the time on the verge of having a stroke because of how stupid it all is. Available on Netflix

The Movies That Made Us: Okay okay okay last documentary on the list I swear. This one’s exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a series talking about the behind-the-scenes production of iconic movies like Home Alone and Ghostbusters. I eagerly await the second season. Available on Netflix

Monster Factory: If you’re familiar with the McElroy brothers and their brand of humour, you’ll love this. Griffin and Justin team up to make the most disturbing avatars they can create using video game character creators. The origins of the Final Pam meme. If I had a shirt with a quote from Monster Factory on it, I’d die a happy man. Available on Youtube

Baman Piderman: The dumbest show I have ever watched, but it’s so adorable and stupid and I love it so much. It doesn’t really have a plot, but later episodes allude to the presence of one and I’m upset because there are so many mysteries/questions hinted at and we’ll never get answers because it’s been abandoned. PLEASE watch it. Available on Youtube

Stranger Things: Okay, season 2 was a bit of a let-down imo, but season 1 was ICONIC and the Scoops Troop subplot in season 3 deserved its own freakin spinoff. I’m not joking. I didn’t even like s3 all that much, but the only reason it’s my favourite is because the Scoops Troop plot was so great. People call this show ‘horror’ but I don’t think it’s scary enough for that, although it is admittedly kinda spooky. If you like 80s nostalgia and the horror aesthetic, then I’d give it a watch (Do it for Scoops Troop. Do it for Robin). Available on Netflix

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart: Despite my overwhelming love for this film, I’ll be the first to admit it’s kinda mediocre. The plot is weird and the romance feels forced, but despite its flaws it manages to be one of my favourite movies. Mostly I just like it for the unique concept and beautiful ending. Also the music is off the par man. Probably because the writer/producer of the movie was the lead singer for a French band called Dionysus (what? I do my research). Available on Netflix

Wakfu: I haven’t seen past season 3, but so far it’s pretty good. You go in thinking it’s just a wholesome action/adventure show about a kid who can create portals - but then it just. Sucks you in. From its bopping theme song to its fantastic found family to the unique worldbuilding, you very quickly fall in love with it. It’s got a cool plot and also talking dragons, and it doesn’t get better than that. Available on Netflix

Mystery Skulls Animated: Technically not a TV show so much as it is a series of animated music videos with a plot, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the greatest things of all time. It’s basically Scooby Doo but if Shaggy got possessed by a demon and killed Fred, causing Fred to become a ghost hellbent on revenge-killing Shaggy in return. And if Scooby was an ancient Japanese spirit that bit off Shaggy’s arm, forcing him to wear a metal prosthetic. Yeah, MSA is wild. It’s only got three videos out so far, with a fourth one coming out this October, but there’s already so much lore! Available on Youtube

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared: Ah yes, yet another cringey entry on this list. But you know what? Cringe culture is dead!!! And despite its fandom being...like that...DHMIS really is a cool show. Think if Sesame Street was like haunted or something. The episodes about creativity and telling time remain the most unsettling, imo. Definitely worth a watch. Available on Youtube

Inanimate Insanity: Oh boy. Am I seriously recommending you dip your little fingies into the object fandom? Yes. Yes I am. This show is so obscure it makes freakin Detective Conan look popular. At its core it’s a parody of Total Drama Island and Survivor but with anthropomorphized inanimate objects as characters (hence the name). Season 2 is actually really, really good and surprisingly competent. You just gotta get through season 1 first. Available on Youtube

The X-Files: Wow, a live action series on this list? Who woulda thought??? But seriously, this show is really fun. Memes and jokes aside, I love it. Scully and Mulder are fun characters with great chemistry (both platonic and romantic), the Lone Horsemen are hilarious, and every episode is a unique adventure into the most creative acid trips the human mind could conceive of. Phenomenal from start to finish (if you ignore the last season). I have no clue where you would watch this. Pirate it, probably

Buzzfeed Unsolved: Two idiots investigate cold cases and haunted locales while being utter dumbasses about it. You know the “hey demons it’s be ya boi” meme? That came from these guys. Available on Youtube

Kingdom: Ngl, I didn’t go into this expecting zombies. Or for it to take place during Korean feudalism, for that matter. But mediocre dubbing aside, this show has such a clever concept. It takes the zombie apocalypse genre and gives refreshing, unique twists to old tropes that they feel like something new. Seo-bi is my wife and she deserves all the love and appreciation in the world, and those are just Facts. Available on Netflix

My Hero Academia: Superhero high school anime. I personally am not a fan of later episodes/arcs, but the first three seasons are pretty dang good. Diverse, colourful ensemble cast that you easily grow to adore, interesting commentary on disability (although I’m not qualified to give any actual takes on that), and a school curriculum that makes me very, very concerned for the wellbeing of these children. Plus all the superpowers - aka ‘quirks’ - are super imaginative and, well, quirky! I just wish people would stop shipping the main character with his childhood bully...You’ll need to pirate this one too lmao

Danny Phantom: The highlight of this show is its ‘phandom’, because unlike someone (*cough* Butch Hartman), we’re not a bunch of cowards. It’s about a guy who messes around with his parents’ lab stuff and accidentally acquires the ability to die! Well, half-die. He can turn into a ghost and fight other ghosts. Although the show never explores the existential, traumatic fallout of being kinda-sorta-dead, the potential for something deep and emotional is there. Plus there is a LOT of accidental subtext for a Big LGBT+ Metaphor. So much so that the Trans Danny theory is basically canon. Uhhh not available on Netflix anymore so it’s time to whip out your pirate hat, matey

And there you have it! Like I said, I have a lot of TV recommendations. And I just KNOW I’m forgetting a ton, but this is already really long so we’ll have to cut off here.

Thanks for the ask! <3

#ask #fish post

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rhetoricandlogic · 5 years ago

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Wolf 359 - Gabriel Urbina, Zach Valenti

Although the last full episode aired over two years ago, Pooja Ramakrishnan thinks Wolf 359, a dramatic science-fiction podcast, is worth both your ears and more.

In the past year and a half, I have listened to dozens of podcasts - some mediocre, some phenomenal and some skip-worthy. Among these, I have cherry picked a handful and reviewed them for TU Delta. Yet, in this vast library of audio programmes, none has stood out to me more than Wolf 359.

Written by Gabriel Urbina (and occasionally by other guest writers), Wolf 359 is a dramatic science-fiction serial set in the near future. Imagine if the game Fallout Shelter was set in outer space and then turned into a sitcom - Wolf 359 is something along those lines. It begins with the voice of Communications Officer Doug Eiffel aboard the U.S.S. Hephaestus - a space station orbiting the red dwarf planet of Wolf 359 - recording an audio log of the day‘s events. His two colleagues, Commander Minkowski who is a stickler for doing things by the book, and the mildly lunatic scientist Officer Hilbert are often the catalysts for all Doug Eiffel's problems. The aim of these space agents is to make first contact with other life forms in outer space and we follow the crew’s hilarious and absurd conundrums on the spacecraft. Over time, radio broadcasts of classical music are picked up and we are led to believe these are old radio broadcasts from earth (alluding to a space-time warp) but perhaps there is more to it than it seems ...

The manned space station is also controlled by a sentient operating system - Hera - who is a brilliantly written character that allows the show to explore the human condition through a very different lens. There are several tangents throughout the show - the kidnapping of a toothpaste tube, a plant monster that loves the air vents, a mysterious box 953 and other strange occurrences that eventually push the main plot forward. As our team navigates problem after problem in every episode, listeners get a glimpse of the real mystery lurking in the shadows in what is unsaid. The foreshadowing and Easter eggs are deliberate, well-placed and accompanied by top class sound recording and background music.

The entire show spans about 61 episodes of varying lengths - perfect bite-sized audio entertainment. As we journey with them, we are unwittingly pulled into their orbit and begin rooting for this muddled but endearing bunch of humans. The medley of unorthodox friendships, incredible comic timing, excellent writing and fantastic voice acting puts this show way above the rest. Zach Valenti, who voices Doug Eiffel and Officer Hilbert, is more than just remarkable and does full justice to the two very different characters.

Although the last full episode aired over two years ago, Wolf 359 is still reaping awards for the sheer quality of its production. In 2018, it won the Best Ongoing, Long-form, Dramatic Production at Audio Verse. Although classified as a science fiction drama, this show has so much more to offer than labels can tell. The show ends on a moving and wonderful note - whether you binge listened or paced yourself, you ultimately are so invested in these characters that it is almost tragic to hear the storyline complete itself. If I'm honest, I even teared up a little. And that is just yet another testament to what a genius of an audio programme this is. Wolf 359 - a tiny, little podcast in the vast space we call the internet - is worth both your ears and more.

#Gabriel Urbina #Zach Valenti #Wolf 359 #mahreviews #long post #there's a novel out now

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jmsa1287 · 6 years ago

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Netflix's 'Chilling Adventures of Sabrina' Justifies TV's Reboot Obsession

hi i wrote about Netflix’s “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.”

Peak TV requires more content than ever and creators and network suits are reaching deep into their back catalogues to bring back shows that have been off the air for years or in some cases, decades.

Over the last few years, fans have seen some of their favorites return. Some shows came back with their tried-and-true format: The gang on "Will & Grace" reunited without missing a beat and, despite its inevitable demise, the return of "Roseanne" earlier this year became one of the most-watched sitcoms of 2018. Other shows like CBS's "MacGyver," Fox's "Last Man Standing," Netflix's "Lost in Space" and the CW's "Dynasty" have been rebooted without much notice, adding to the fatigue some audiences feel with TV's obsession over resurrecting old programs.

Some series have returned with something to interesting say and weren't a simply nostalgic cash-grabs. "Twin Peaks: The Return" on Showtime was a work of art and nothing what fans expected. Netflix's "One Day at a Time" is an emotional and lovely sitcom that takes on a number of today's biggest issues. And that streaming services revival of the beloved "Mystery Science Theater 3000" — with new hosts and writers — was a welcomed surprise.

Unsurprisingly it seems that Netflix has had the most success with rebooting and brining back TV shows. It's "Fuller House" reboot is said to be one of the company's most-watched shows. The "Gilmore Girls" returned for a highly anticipated new season in 2016 and the streaming service was also praised for picking up "Arrested Development" after Fox bailed on the beloved comedy. So it makes total sense that Netflix is releasing "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina," a new teen drama from Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who developed the hit "Riverdale," based on the Archie Comics, for the CW.

Most people who are now in their 20s and 30s know Sabrina Spellman from their youth. "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," starring Melissa Joan Hart, was a staple on ABC's essential T.G.I.F. line-up on Friday nights in the mid 90s. Based on the Archie Comics of the same name, the light-hearted and charming sitcom had more in common with "Home Improvement" than "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." But "Chilling Adventures" is based on a new set of comic books, written by Aguirre-Sacasa (who also serves as the chief creative officer for Archie Comics), which launched in 2014. It's a darker reimagined take on the teen witch that trades in a saccharine veneer for spooky horror tropes. With some changes, Aguirre-Sacasa's new TV show brings back a classic story but with a totally fresh and thrilling take. It's one of the few new shows that justifies networks' hungry reboot phase.

Fans of the T.G.I.F. sitcom looking for a return to Westbridge, Massachusetts will be disappointed. But if they do decide to stick around in Greendale they will treated to a haunting delight. Sure, "Chilling Adventures" is closer to a teen version of "American Horror Story" than "Pretty Little Liars," but it's a refreshing take. Like the 90s sitcom, Sabrina (played here by the wonderful Kiernan Shipka) is being forced to chose how she wants to live the rest of her life. On her 16th birthday, which happens to be Halloween, Sabrina, half witch and half human, will have to pick between her two identities: Leave all her human friends behind and start a new life at a new school as a witch, or forget about that enticing and mysterious world and give up her powers to live life as a normal teen girl. Her decision is what sparks most of the tension and drama in the first season, especially when it comes to her family: Her two aunts Hilda (Lucy Davis) and Zelda (Miranda Otto), and her cousin Ambrose (Chance Perdomo).

Of course, "Chilling Adventures" has plenty of similarities to "Riverdale" (the two shows are set in the same universe) and Aguirre-Sacasa's over-the-top writing (a la Ryan Murphy) is imprinted all over the new show. Fans of the wild Archie Andrews teen drama will surly binge watch the ten compelling episodes of "Chilling Adventures" as it's just as addicting and soapy as what made "Riverdale" a cultural hit.

Like "Riverdale," the new series is pretty woke and diverse, taking on a number of hot button issues that teens face today, including bullying and assault, censorship and women's rights. It also has actors of color and queer characters, including Ambrose who is pansexual and Sabrina's confidant. (Though, he's a tragic figure who is bound to the Spellman house and cannot leave the property.)

While Season 1 of "Chilling Adventures" is sharp, witty and straight up scary at times (it makes "Haunting of Hill House" a cakewalk) it's hard to tell how long Aguirre-Sacasa and Co. can sustain this enchanting tale. "Riverdale" is already approaching its third season and has absolutely gone off the rails. Teen shows develop ardent fan bases but, like a many network programs, the quality of the shows quickly deteriorate. Having to come up with plot and twists for dozens of episodes is a hard task. But even if the solid first season of "Chilling Adventures" is all that's in the (spell) books, it still proves that reboots can yield exciting and fresh TV shows.

#chilling adventures of sabrina #sabrina the teenage witch #netflix #tv #riverdale #roberto aguirre-sacasa #kiernan shipka

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theradioghost · 3 years ago

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it is somehow both exciting and sad to see the newer waves of fiction podcast people getting into wolf 359 because I’m like. there’s so much i don’t think a lot of them know about. sure, fandom stuff like our aggressive stabby the roomba phase, or the unique mental state of the season 2-3 hiatus, et cetera.

but like. do they know about the many many q&as? “kepler’s been riding jacobi hard for years”? the ars paradoxica remix of succulent rat-killing tar? do they know about maxwell and jacobi’s secret cameo in the live show video?? everyone’s birthdays??? the old blog stuff from gabriel with all the extra character tidbits??? the complete pryce and carter??? ALAN RODI’S PUPPETS?????

because I want them to know!!!!!! I want them to have all that joy!!!!!!! they’re getting to experience that wonderful, wonderful rollercoaster for the first time and I want them to have the best fucking ride ever!!!!!!!

#my posts #this is a problem that could be solved with a masterpost or something maybe #tragic space office sitcom

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the-desolated-quill · 7 years ago

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Siliconia - Red Dwarf blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Well I suppose I might as well just come right out and say it:

I don’t like Siliconia.

I suspect this may come as a shock to some people. It’s pretty much become common knowledge how much I love Kryten, so you’d think I’d be all in favour of an episode where all the characters become Kryten-ified. I admit it’s got potential, but there’s a lot more to an episode than just having an idea. There’s execution to consider. You have to consider how to expand and develop the original concept. How will the characters change and evolve as a result of said idea? Use the idea as a jumping off point for some good comedy. Sadly, in all of those areas, Siliconia is just woefully inept.

Let’s start with my biggest problem. The lack of humour. Which is not to say that Siliconia is utterly devoid of humour. There are a few chuckles here and there. The first five minutes involving Lister’s guitar was quite funny, as was the Dwarfer’s initial appearance in their new robot bodies, and the trauma survivor group produced a few sniggers from me, but the majority of the episode seems to consist of a lot of recycled jokes that just aren’t as funny as they once were (change my head and call me Stanley) or mediocre jokes that start to outstay their welcome (MILFs).

Believe it or not, the lack of humour doesn’t necessarily have to be a problem (which I know sounds weird considering I’m talking about a sitcom, but just go along with me for a moment). Series 5′s The Inquisitor wasn’t a particularly funny episode neither, but it’s still my all time favourite Red Dwarf episode because it’s a really intelligent, well executed story with some truly great characterisation. See the difference between The Inquisitor and Siliconia is that with The Inquisitor, the writers took the time to put meat on the bones and flesh out the initial concept. Siliconia on the other hand is basically just a flimsy skeleton. It’s as though Doug Naylor said to himself ‘let’s make all the Dwarfers robots’ and that’s as far as it ever got. Without the comedy, The Inquisitor still works exceptionally well. Here the lack of humour makes it painfully obvious just how weak Siliconia really is. The whole thing just feels like an excuse just to get the cast in Kryten makeup and do really bad Kryten impersonations (sorry Chris Barrie).

And let’s quickly talk about the Kryten makeup. Craig Charles, Chris Barrie and Danny John-Jule’s makeup is really good, but the makeup and costumes for the other robots is surprisingly shoddy. One could argue that they didn’t have the time or money to reproduce effective Kryten makeup for everyone across the board, but my response to that would be that if you don’t have the time or money to execute an idea properly, don’t use that idea. Pick something else. And I’m sure some of you out there are probably rolling your eyes at me right now. ‘Typical Quill, nitpicking about shit that doesn’t matter as usual.’ But the thing is it actually DOES matter because it affects the experience. At no point did I ever buy that the characters were on a ship full of robots. It felt more like the characters had accidentally gatecrashed a Red Dwarf convention full of bad Kryten cosplayers. It shatters the illusion.

Another problem with Siliconia is that I can’t escape the nagging feeling that we’ve done all this before. The episode asks whether Lister has actually done Kryten any good by breaking his programming and questions whether Kryten has really changed. But... haven’t we explored this already in Krysis? In that episode, everyone accepts that Kryten has changed for the better after all because while he still serves Lister, it’s his free choice to do so. Plus he’s only fairly recently broken his programming and learnt to be independent, and there’s still a lot further he could go with time. Siliconia basically just reiterates all of this, only far less subtly and far less effectively with Craig Charles and Robert Llewelyn being forced to perform painfully sappy monologues about aspects of Kryten’s character that are so incredibly obvious by this point.

What hurts even more is that there are aspects of Siliconia that could have been expanded upon. Lister becoming a robot could have been an opportunity to get him to realise and fully appreciate just what his best friend has done for him all these years, but Doug Naylor barely even touches on that, instead devoting his time to that stupid ‘clean-off’ segment, which I honestly can’t tell if it’s supposed to be funny or not (Lister and Kryten competing to see who could clean a floor faster might have been funny, but cleaning each other? Huh?!). The robot class structure could have been interesting to explore too. Have the Dwarfers start a revolution perhaps. But that never goes anywhere neither.

And then there’s all the stuff that just straight up don’t make sense. Why do the MILFs turn the Dwarfers into robots in the first place? It’s supposed to be a punishment, but why would the MILFs view being a robot as a punishment? They’re robots! Wouldn’t it be more humiliating for the Dwarfers if they were forced to serve robots as themselves? Okay they wouldn’t obey orders without question like their robot selves would, but I’m sure there are ways around that. At one point they even cite Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, saying it prevents robots from harming humans, hence why they changed the Dwarfers into robots. But if the MILFs have rebelled against humanity, why would they care about following Asimov’s laws?

Then there’s the Dwarfer’s slow conversion. Rimmer’s desire to remain a robot seems tragic at first glance, but it doesn’t really make any sense if you think about it. If this happened before Series 10, I might have believed it, but after Series 10? No way. After The Beginning, you got the sense that Rimmer had let go of some of his ambitions, saying that his real father would have been proud of him. Okay he accepted the promotion in Officer Rimmer. He was hardly likely to turn that down, was he? But you feel as though he wasn’t pursuing unrealistic career prospects like he was before and was more at ease with himself. So his whole monologue about his feelings of inadequacy just doesn’t ring true for me. And what reason do the Cat and Lister have to give in to the change? Rimmer’s transformation makes sense (you know, if you completely disregard his character development in previous series), but why do the Cat and Lister eventually give in?

And don’t get me started on that AWFUL deus ex machina ending. Turns out Siliconia is a Divadroid International Update Station. First of all, what use is an update station in deep space that requires you to be within a few centimetres of the bloody thing in order to get the damn update? And second, why would it update the older models? Yes I get the whole ‘everyone is equal’ crap, but it completely spits in the face of canon and good business sense. Remember The Last Day? Where Kryten was going to be replaced by the Hudzen 10? If you can just update your old robot, how is the company supposed to sell their latest models?

Siliconia just didn’t click with me at all. In fact I thought it was a bit pathetic, if I’m being honest. This is the kind of episode I’d expect from Series 6, 7 or 8. Not in Series 12 where the show is supposed to be enjoying its Second Golden Age. I suppose it’s not terrible or anything, but I can’t deny I’m incredibly disappointed by this one. I expected better from Doug Naylor.

#siliconia #red dwarf #doug naylor #review #spoilers

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papermoonloveslucy · 7 years ago

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LUCY THE LAUNDRESS

S2;E17 ~ January 12, 1970

Directed by Herbert Kenwith ~ Written by Larry Rhine and Lou Derman

Synopsis

After bragging to Craig about her perfect driving record, Lucy smashes into a laundry truck. In order to pay for the repairs, she has to go to work at the laundry and keep her identity a secret when Kim and Craig are suddenly plagued with clothing stains.

Regular Cast

Lucille Ball (Lucy Carter), Gale Gordon (Harrison Otis Carter), Lucie Arnaz (Kim Carter), Desi Arnaz Jr. (Craig Carter)

Guest Cast

James Hong (Lee Wong) was born in 1929 and began his screen career in 1954. He has lately been acclaimed as the voice of Mr. Ping in the Kung-Fu Panda franchise. Aside from his nearly 500 screen credits, Hong is one of the founders of the East-West Players, the oldest Asian American theater in Los Angeles. At Desilu, he unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Sulu in “Star Trek.” This is his only appearance with Lucille Ball.

Mr. Wong is a widower with two young girls. He operates Lee Wong's Hand Laundry on Pine and Hurst.

Lauren Gilbert (Mr. Michaels, Insurance Adjuster) played recurring characters on “Edge of Night” and “Hazel” - both named Harry. This is his only appearance with Lucille Ball.

Bee Thompkins (Secretary) had only a handful of other screen credits between 1969 and 1972. Also in 1970, she was one of the passengers in the blockbuster film Airport. She was variously credited as ‘Bea Tompkins’ during her career.

Rosalind Chao (Linda Chang Wong, right) made her screen debut with this episode. She created the role of Soon-Ye Klinger on “M*A*S*H” and “After M*A*S*H” but is perhaps best known for playing Keiko O'Brien on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine.” During that series she also filmed The Joy Luck Club. She recently guest-starred on TV's “Blackish,” “This is Us,” and “The Catch.”

Heather Lee (Sue Chin Wong, left) makes her only screen appearance in this episode.

Linda Chang and Sue Chin are sisters and the daughters of Lee Wong.

Romo Vincent (Laundry Customer) was a Broadway performer from 1942 to 1959. He played an airline passenger in “Lucy Flies to London” (TLS S5;E6). This is the first of his two episodes of “Here’s Lucy.”

Vincent was cast for his size. He claims his shorts are size 52.

This is the first of nine episodes written by Larry Rhine and Lou Derman. Rhine had been nominated for an Emmy Award in 1963 for writing for “The Red Skelton Show.” He was nominated again in 1978 for an episode of “All in the Family.” Derman was also an Emmy nominee for “All in the Family.” Together they also wrote many episodes of “Mr. Ed.”

In his DVD introduction to the episode, James Hong tries to diffuse any misinterpretation of Lucy's disguising herself as an Asian character.

“Sometimes it's very offensive for the Asians to see that kind of image. But she was in essence playing that character pointing out how society had this cliched image of the Asians. So she was laughing at herself and and laughing at the society's concept of Asians. To contrast that they had me dress up in this wonderful suit – very elegant!”

In the opening scene, Lucy comes home with a bag of groceries containing Cheerios. On the bottom right corner of the box it states that a free Super-Ball is inside. [In the inset photo it is for Wacky Racers as a Super-Ball box was not available.] During the summer of 1969, scores of American kids begged their parents to buy the General Mills cereal to get the amazing Super-Ball inside.

Next to that is a box of Nabisco Rice Honeys, also a breakfast cereal. The cereal was first marketed under another name in 1939 and, after several more name changes, was discontinued in 1975. What is unique about this particular box is that it includes free Beatles’ Rub-Ons promoting their movie Yellow Submarine. The film was released in November 1968, about a year before filming. If you saved one of those boxes, they're currently going for over $1,000. In 2014, someone sold one for $1,430.50 at auction!

At the office, Lucy gets a call from Mary Jane. The character does not appear in this episode, but is played by Mary Jane Croft.

Harry is looking for the Treshkin contract.

The car accident costs Lucy $97.50. When Lucy doesn't have money to pay for the damages to Wong's van, he suggests she should “Sell car. Take bus. Leave driving to us.” This was a paraphrasing of the advertising slogan of the Greyhound Bus Company. It was previously quoted in “Lucy Helps Craig Get a Driver’s License” (S1;E24) and “Lucy and the Used Car Dealer” (S2;E9).

When Sue Chin Wong learns that Lucy will be working for her father, she exclaims: “Well, there goes the neighborhood!” This was a common expression used to grouse about integration, which was a hot topic in the late 1960s. To further reinforce the role reversal comedy, the writers give the line to an Asian character.

When Lucy meets Wong's daughters, she greets them in an exaggerated and condescending Chinese accent. The girls look horrified and answer back in voices totally devoid of any Asian influence. To further the humor of Lucy's backward thinking, the girls are eating hamburgers with ketchup, a typical American-style meal.

Mr. Wong's daughters inform Lucy that their father only pays sixty five cents an hour. In late 1969 the minimum wage was $1.30 per hour, but rose to $1.45 per hour in February 1970. The girls explain that their dad thinks that because he's Chinese he can pay “coolie” wages. The word “coolie” refers to an unskilled native laborer generally from India, China, or some other Asian country. Depending on the context, this word can be considered offensive or pejorative.

When Kim enters the shop to get a stain out of her new dress, Lucy disguises herself with a bright kimono, thick eyeglasses, and a fringed red lampshade on her head. She disguises her voice to a stereotypical Asian accent by changing her Rs to Ls (ie: “tellycroth lobe”).

After Lucy's true identity has been revealed, Harry says “Well, if it isn't Madam Butterfly.” He is referring to the title character in Madam Butterfly, an Italian opera by Giacomo Puccini that premiered in 1904 and is still in the classical repertory today. In the opera, a 15 year-old Japanese girl falls in love with an American sailor with tragic consequences. The story was also the inspiration for the Broadway musical Miss Saigon (1989) and the play M. Butterfly (1989).

Lucy Ricardo also caused havoc at a laundry in “Bonus Bucks” (ILL S3;E21).

Lucy tells Craig that Mr. Wong is a decorator who is there because she is considering doing the house over in Chinese Modern. Chinese Modern was the style that Carolyn Appleby redecorated her apartment in “Lucy Tells the Truth (ILL S3;E6). Sworn to be truthful, Lucy says it looks like “a bad dream you'd have after eating too much Chinese food.”

Lucy fibs to Craig that Mr. Wong decorated Grauman's Chinese Theatre (everything but the footprints). The iconic Hollywood movie palace was the setting of “Lucy Visits Grauman's” (ILL S5;E1) and the footprints were integral to that episode and the following one, “Lucy and John Wayne” (ILL S5;E2).

Lucy Carmichael also disguised herself as an Asian character in “Lucy and the Soap Opera” (TLS S4;E19).

Lucy Carter's ironing skills seem no better than that of Ricky Ricardo and Fred Mertz, who both left their ‘marks’ on the laundry during “Job Switching” (ILL S2;E1).

In season one, Lucy Carter celebrated her birthday at a Chinese restaurant.

Ouch! Lucille Ball accidentally scalded her hand during the filming when using the steam press. This is ironic, since the dialogue has Mr. Wong warn Lucy to be “careful with the steam iron” when he first agrees to let her work off her debt.

The Shadow Knows! There is a moving shadow across the side of the desk when Harry bends down to get a key from the drawer. The next shot is a close-up (below), which necessitated the camera move that caused the shadow.

Props! Harry offers Lucy a mini-bottle of booze that he got on a flight to Hawaii. It is hidden inside the jade green desk ornament that coincidentally makes its debut with this episode – and disappears thereafter. In the above photo, the bottle is difficult to see. Only the neck of the tiny bottle with its white seal can be seen.

Where the Floor Ends! This time the floor ends in the Chinese Hand Laundry.

Sitcom Logic Alert(s)!

From the time Harry hears Lucy's collision outside his window to Lucy's entrance into the office is a mere 8 seconds! Take into account that she says she left a note for the owner on his windshield – and put the windshield in the front seat!

Mr. Wong arrives with an estimate of the damages on the very same day as the accident.

At the laundry, Lucy immediately knows how to work a commercial laundry press with no instruction.

Even with the accent and disguise, Kim should probably recognize her own mother's voice.

Oops! When Lucy trips and her hat and wig fall off, the black masking placed next to her right ear to hide her red hair stays on. Lucille Ball has to duck down quickly and rip it off.

“Lucy the Laundress” rates 4 Paper Hearts out of 5

This episode feels the most like an episode of “I Love Lucy.” Lucy is caught in a fib, so instead of telling the truth, she goes to elaborate lengths to conceal her lie. The thorny issue of racial sensitivity rears its head when viewed by a modern audience. But it is clear that Lucille Ball was trying to portray Mr. Wong and his family as average Americans, and Lucy's view of Asian culture as backward. It is worth noting that all the Asian characters are actually played by Asian actors. When the young girls call Lucy out for her patronizing attitude, Lucy immediately acknowledges that she's been wrong and the scene (and the comedy) continues without any rancor. The hard-fought Civil Rights battles of the 1960s are slowly having an effect on television.

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mrmedia · 7 years ago

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Happy Birthday to Amy Fox, creator, showrunner and co-star of TV’s first transgender sitcom, "The Switch"! 2017 VIDEO INTERVIEW

“The Switch” – a new TV sitcom from creator Amy Fox, who also co-stars in it – is about being true to who your heart tells you that you are… even if your biology and anatomy are a little at odds on the issue.

In other words, to quote the great creator of Looney Tunes cartoons, Chuck Jones:

“Pronoun Trouble!”

The show, which bills itself as the world’s first transgender sitcom, follows Sü, an American who relocates to Vancouver to start life over in a new gender identity. Nyla Rose plays Sü with great warmth, joie de vie, and no fear of pratfalls. It’s a workplace comedy that is genuinely funny and cleverly written.

And, I will admit, the first episode left a tear in my eye at the end.

By the way, the predominantly transgender cast features all trans roles played by trans actors.

The first six episodes became available in the US – and most English-speaking countries -- via Amazon and iTunes – on August 15. If you enjoy a splash of diversity in your comedy, I recommend “The Switch.”

https://mrmedia.com/2017/10/1326-switch-turns-transgender-blues-tv-sitcom-video-interview/

AMY FOX podcast excerpt: "A lot of times when movie or TV people are casting some tragic, Oscar-bait bio pic, they go, 'We couldn't find any trans people.' And I'm thinking, 'You had millions of dollars and we had, y'know, a shoestring budget and we're borrowing office space. And somehow we found five trans and/or non-binary lead actors. Plus trans people on the production and writing teams. We look for trans talent like we would look for talent for any other job."

#The Switch #transgender comedy #transgender sitcom #Amy Fox #Nyla Rose #Vancouver TV production #lgbtq pride #lgbtq community

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christianworldf · 5 years ago

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New Post has been published on Nehemiah Reset

New Post has been published on https://nehemiahreset.org/christian-worldview-issues/lgbt/george-takeis-extraordinary-trek-the-washington-post/

George Takei's extraordinary trek - The Washington Post

NEW YORK — As a child, he believed the camp to be a magical oasis, where mythical dinosaurs prowled the woods at night. A native of Los Angeles, he marveled at the “flying exotica” of dragonflies, the treasures of rural life and, that first winter, the “pure magic” of snow.

George Takei spent ages 5 to almost 9 imprisoned by the U.S. government in Japanese American internment camps. A relentless optimist, he believed the shameful legacy of incarcerating an estimated 120,000 Americans during World War II would never be forgotten or duplicated.

At 82, Takei came to understand that he may be mistaken on both counts.

Stories fell into the sinkhole of history, given the omission of the camps from many textbooks and the shame felt by former internees, many of whom remained silent about their experiences, even to descendants. Takei takes no refuge in silence.

The “Star Trek” actor has lived long enough to see thousands of immigrant children jailed near the border. On Twitter, to his 2.9 million followers, he wrote, “This nation has a long and tragic history of separating children from their parents, ever since the days of slavery.”

Sitting in his Manhattan pied-à-terre near Carnegie Hall, the activist for gay rights and social justice calls his government’s actions “an endless cycle of inhumanity, cruelty and injustice repeated generation after generation” and says “it’s got to stop.”

Takei was fortunate. He and his two younger siblings were never separated from their parents, who bore the brunt of fear and degradation in the swamps of Arkansas and the high desert of Northern California. They shielded their children, creating a “Life Is Beautiful” experience often filled with wonder. His father told him they were going for “a long vacation in the country.” Their first stop, of all places, was the Santa Anita Racetrack, where the family was assigned to sleep in the stalls. “We get to sleep where the horsies slept! Fun!” he thought.

[Book review: George Takei has talked about internment before, but never quite like this]

Takei had little understanding of his family abandoning their belongings, the government questioning their patriotism and their return to Los Angeles with nothing, starting over on Skid Row. As a teenager, he came to understand the toll.

“The resonance of my childhood in prison is so loud,” says the actor, who still lives in L.A.

The only surviving photograph of Takei while he was in the Rohwer Japanese American Relocation Camp in Rohwer, Ark., in 1942 and 1943. (George Takei)

This summer, Takei is accelerating his mission to make Americans remember. Almost three-quarters of a century after his release, he feels the crush of time: “I have to tell this story before there’s no one left to tell it.”

He has a new graphic memoir, “They Called Us Enemy,” intended to reach all generations but especially the young, by the publisher of the best-selling “March” trilogy by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

In August, Takei appears in AMC’s 10-episode “The Terror: Infamy,” a horror saga partially set in an internment camp. Four years ago, he starred in the Broadway musical “Allegiance,” inspired by his personal history.

“That experience in the camps gave me my identity,” he says in the apartment he shares with his husband, Brad, which is decorated with Japanese ink drawings and “Star Trek” bric-a-brac: a Starship Enterprise phone, a Sulu action figure in a Bonsai tree.

It’s possible those years in the camps subconsciously nudged Takei toward acting. “To me, the theater was life, its artists, the chroniclers of human history,” he writes in his 1994 autobiography, “To the Stars.” He would star as Hikaru Sulu in a short-lived sci-fi series that would, improbably, spawn more movie and television iterations than furry Tribbles.

In turn, that success created a springboard for social activism. He became “a social media mega-power” — his website’s phrasing, as he has 10 million followers each on two Facebook pages — fueled by a six-member influencer agency, which he calls “Team Takei.” That influence, to a doting and ever-expanding audience, might ensure his experience in the camps matters.

From left, “Star Trek” actors Leonard Nimoy, Takei, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan attend the first showing of the Space Shuttle Enterprise in Palmdale, Calif., on Sept. 17, 1976. (AP)

The eternal frontier

Takei frequently refers to his life as “an American story.” It is also a singular, improbable one.

Who else enjoys continued success through the curious alchemy of “Star Trek,” coming out at age 68 and regular appearances on “The Howard Stern Show”?

“George is a little outrageous, and a little Mr. Rogers. He’s sort of where they meet in the middle,” says filmmaker Jennifer Kroot, who produced the 2014 documentary “To Be Takei.”

After enrolling as an architecture student at the University of California at Berkeley, Takei transferred to UCLA to pursue acting at a time when there was almost no work for Asian Americans except dubbing Japanese monster movies like “Rodan” into English and portraying crass caricatures in the Jerry Lewis vehicles “The Big Mouth” (1967) and “Which Way to the Front?” (1970).

Takei accepted the jobs, the Lewis ones to his everlasting chagrin: “I shouldn’t have done it.” But he learned. Never again.

Fortunately, he landed “Star Trek,” Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision of space pioneers from varied backgrounds working together in harmony and oddly cropped slacks. Two decades after World War II, it showed an Asian American in a positive role.

Jay Kuo, who co-wrote “Allegiance,” grew up in a household where television was largely forbidden. Not “Star Trek.” Kuo’s Chinese American parents knew “we needed to see ourselves represented. We were invisible. George was the only Asian sex symbol. That shirtless sword scene was groundbreaking,” he says of the scene in which Sulu believes he’s an 18th-century swashbuckler after the crew is infected by a virus.

Mr. Spock (Nimoy), Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Hikaru Sulu (Takei) and Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (Doohan) stand on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in the 1968 Season 3 “Star Trek” premiere. (CBS/Getty Images)

The Starship Enterprise was tasked with a five-year mission. Five? The original “Star Trek,” the mother ship of Trekiana, didn’t make it past three, running for just 79 episodes. The final show aired a half-century ago this year.

Takei felt blessed to land the role of the master helmsman. When the show was canceled — “I knew it would be. Good shows were always getting canceled” — Takei was despondent that he would never work again.

Hah! Space became the eternal frontier: six movies with the original cast, an animated series.

[Alyssa Milano’s improbable journey from child star to A-list activist]

Those early TV contracts didn’t favor actors. Takei’s residuals stopped after the 10th rerun. Which happened, Takei says, “about 10,000 reruns ago.”

Fortunately, what the network taketh away, the Trekkies giveth.

Takei jumped on the convention train, across the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany and Japan, signing autographs and posing for photo ops for up to eight hours, his lustrous baritone growing hoarse.

“Star Trek has been enormously bountiful to us,” Takei says. “We had no idea that this phenomenon of Star Trek conventions would follow.”

Now, Takei is one of only four original cast members still alive, along with William Shatner (Capt. James T. Kirk), Nichelle Nichols (communications officer Lt. Uhura) and Walter Koenig (navigator Pavel Chekov).

Takei as Nobuhiro Yamato in AMC’s anthology series “The Terror: Infamy,” set within a World War II-era Japanese American internment camp. (Ed Araquel/AMC)

His professional life flourished, riding the wave of nostalgia and outsize fandom. His personal life, particularly for someone who has always been political and outspoken, was more complicated. Friends and associates long knew Takei was gay. He met Brad Altman, then a journalist, through a gay running club. They started dating in 1987. Brad took George’s last name in 2011.

Takei worried that coming out publicly would deep-six his acting career. So he waited and waited, an eternity, three and a half decades.

“The government imprisoned me for four years for my race. I imprisoned myself about my sexuality for decades,” Kuo recalls Takei telling him. “You can’t imagine what kind of sentry towers you can build around your heart.”

Takei came out in 2005 as a statement, after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in California. Quickly, he moved from the closet to the front of the pride parade.

“I was prepared that I wasn’t going to have an acting career,” he says.

Uh, no.

“The opposite happened, and I was more in demand,” Takei says, almost in song. “They love gay George Takei!

It was as though gay was an honorific — and Gay George Takei was a reboot. Gay + “Star Trek” — the latter listing toward camp with its community theater props, too-tight tops and Shatner’s Hamlet-like readings — was a fitting combination.

Takei was hired as much for his droll persona — his catch phrase, “Oh Myyy!” — as his talent. Work was constant: He had appearances on the sitcoms “The Big Bang Theory” and “Will and Grace,” and in Archie Comics (as hero to gay character Kevin Keller), plus that surprising gig on Stern’s show.

Takei and Brad Altman after their wedding on June 17, 2008, in West Hollywood, Calif. The couple started dating in 1987, and Brad took Takei’s last name in 2011. (Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images)

“That was a strategy after I came out,” he says of Stern. “We had reached decent, fair-minded people, the LGBT audience. Howard had a huge national audience.”

On Stern’s show, hired technically as “the official announcer” but also as a routinely pranked foil, Takei surprised listeners by inverting his elegant persona — a man who rarely swears or raises his voice — by being as raunchy as the regular crew.

Takei revealed more about his sex life than perhaps anyone anticipated. Mentions of Brad became a constant. Takei’s once-closeted life was broadcast by the master of all media all over Sirius XM.

In 2017, former model Scott R. Brunton alleged that Takei drugged and sexually assaulted him in 1981. No charges were ever filed. Takei denies the incident, which was never substantiated. The actor says, “It’s a fabrication of somebody who wanted to have a story to regale people with.”

Takei moved past it. “It was a very upsetting experience, but it’s never come up again.”

His optimism buoyed him. And he had important causes to serve.

Takei came out in 2005, after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in California. “I was prepared that I wasn’t going to have an acting career,” he says. “The opposite happened, and I was more in demand.” (Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post)

A witness to change

The first time I met George and Brad, at a party in Los Angeles last year, they were bickering.

When we meet in Manhattan, they bicker again over lunch, over the smallest details. Brad worries about almost everything. George does not. It was somewhat refreshing. A cult icon and his spouse being themselves in front of a reporter. Takei’s openness contributes to the continuing embrace by fans five decades after “Star Trek” was canceled and why he’s a natural for Stern. He presents authentically as himself, a man who extols life’s fortunes. Why isn’t he angry with the country that imprisoned his family?

“Because it would be another barbed-wire fence around my heart,” he says.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 formally apologized to former Japanese American internees. Takei received a reparation check for $20,000. He donated it to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, which he helped found and for which he serves as a trustee.

Takei, far right, with his sister Nancy Reiko Takei, brother Henry Takei, mother Fumiko Emily Takei and father Takekuma Norman Takei, around 1947 to 1948. (George Takei)

Takei has witnessed his country change, often for the better. “When I was growing up, I couldn’t marry a white woman” he has said, due to anti-miscegenation laws. “And now I’m married to a white dude!”

In 2012, when he was on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” he invited host Donald Trump to lunch at “any of Trump’s properties” — smart move — with the intention of discussing marriage equality. Trump accepted the offer. Takei recalls that Trump told him “he believed in traditional marriage between a man and a woman. This from a man who has been married three times!”

Takei was in New York recently for Pride Month, attending the Stonewall anniversary concert and City Hall ceremony. The events are as vital to his identity as acting.

“I was active in almost every other social justice cause as well as political candidates,” he says. “But I was silent about the issue that was most personal to me, most organic to who I am, because I wanted my career.”

Time was generous. He began life in internment camps and came out in his late 60s. At 82, he’s flourishing in a field that had little use for him when he started.

Takei’s graphic novel “They Called Us Enemy” recounts his experience as a child in Japanese American internment camps during World War II.

The actor says he wants to ensure all generations know the story of what happened to his family. (Top Shelf Productions)

LEFT: Takei’s graphic novel “They Called Us Enemy” recounts his experience as a child in Japanese American internment camps during World War II. RIGHT: The actor says he wants to ensure all generations know the story of what happened to his family. (Top Shelf Productions)

But time can punish memory. Takei wants to ensure we know the story of what happened to his family, in his country.

The worst day of internment was the first one, he recalls. Soldiers marched up the driveway with bayonets on their rifles, pounded on the door and took the family away to who knew where and for how long. Says Takei, “It was a terrifying morning.”

Bayonets and a 5-year-old boy. It is, as Takei says, an American story — a frightening and lamentable one.

All we can do is learn.

At 82, Takei is thriving in an industry that once had little use for him. His graphic novel “They Called Us Enemy” was released this month, and AMC’s “The Terror: Infamy” premieres in August. (Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post)

Story by Karen Heller. Portraits by Jesse Dittmar. Photo editing by Mark Gail. Video by Erin Patrick O’Connor. Copy editing by Whitney Juckno. Design by Eddie Alvarez.

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