#also this feels like the most ‘marty’ marty i’ve ever drawn if you get me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

glenncoco4 · 3 years

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Hiding

A/N: A/N: He's a pro-surfer. She's a waitress. A chance meeting brings them together and their relationship grows into something more, but it's not always how one imagine it to be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

His eyes move with the waves as he watches the barrel form, imagining himself and going through his body movements as he focuses on standing up, and becoming one with the wave. He’s drawn out of his trance at the feel of her hand sliding down his chest as she comes up behind him, her breath warm against his ear. “We should go out for dinner.”

He closes his eyes, letting out a deep gush of air. “Baby, you know how much I want to but-“

Snatching her hand away, she walks around the couch and heads straight for her bag. She’s furious with him, but more so with herself because she agreed to go along with it in the first place. Early on she thought it was just a normal fling and nothing was going to come of it but boy was she wrong. “But nothing. I’m tired of this, Marty. I’m tired of your excuses.”

At her words, he quickly hops up off his seat and scurries over to her, his hands finding their place on her shoulders. “Kens, baby, please don’t go.”

She lets out a deep calming breath, willing herself not to cry before turning around and coming face to face with decision she had no idea she’d be making today. “I deserve more, Marty. I deserve a whole lot more than what you’re giving. I thought I could handle hiding out, and sneaking around so you can protect your “bad boy” image, but I’m sick of it.”

“I’m trying to protect you, why can’t you see that.”

“You’re trying to protect yourself and I can’t be in a relationship with someone who’s more focused on the opinion of strangers than the opinion of the person they said they love more than anything.”

He reaches out for her but she pulls back, stinging him like nothing ever before. “Baby, no. Don’t go.”

“Goodbye, Marty. Call me when decide to live your life the way you want to and not the way others want you to.”

He watches as she walks out the door, leaving the life they had behind her. The ache that’s in his chest tells him just how bad he screwed up, how selfish he was. Leaning against the wall, he slides down to the floor as the tears begin to make themselves known. “What did I do?”

XXXX

She sits the plates down in front of the respective customers, telling them to enjoy their meal. At this point she’s just going through the motions. Yesterday was a shit show inside a dumpster fire and the numbness continues to grow. She can’t get him out of her head, out of her heart. Maybe she walked away too soon, maybe if she-NO, she did the right thing.

The brunette’s so lost in her own thoughts, she does’t see him until she’s halfway across the dinning room, stopping her in her tracks. “What are you doing here?"

“I’m here to apologize to you.”

“And you chose to do it now?”

“Marty Deeks?”

Their attention turns to the older woman who is now in their immediate vicinity. He sends her a quick smile before turning his attention back on Kensi.

“Oh, my god. I’m like your biggest fan.”

“That’s nice.” Any other time he would talk to her but right now is not the time. So he sends her a brief smile only to turn back to see the brunette’s retreating form.

“Kens, please?”

She quickly turns around, irritation written clear on her face. “WHAT?”

“I love you. Please?”

“You can do better than that, Marty.” She knows it sounds harsh, but she can’t turn a blind eye any more.

He can feel the eyes in the room on him, if there’s ever a moment when he needs her to know how sorry he is, it’s right now, so he powers through. “I love that you push me to be my best because you know what I’m capable of. You see me for me and no one ever has before, not really. Ever since I was 18 all I ever was to anybody was a dollar sign, but not with you.” Gaining a small amount of courage, he takes a few steps towards her almost as if she’s pulling him in. “I was wrong to keep you hidden, because you deserve to be shown off to the world. You deserve so much more than what I can give you, but if you’ll forgive me, I promise to do everything to become the man you deserve.” This is the moment of truth. Reaching into his pocket, he takes out an intricate ring, the one that he widdled from the piece of wood of the cutting board that she burnt the first time she tried to cook dinner for him. “Kens, will you marry me?”

Tears spring in her eyes, she so badly wants to say yes but she can’t, knowing he could just as easily back track tomorrow. “I can’t be your secret anymore.”

Taking a deep calming breath, he does something he’d never thought he’d ever do. He pulls out a chair of the empty table that’s right next to them and uses it as a stepping stool to stand on top of the very expensive dining table. “Excuse me, can I have your attention please?” If there were some that weren’t paying attention to what was going on before, they definitely are now. “I've been dating this amazing woman for the past year and a half. Against my better judgment I listened to my team and kept it a secret, but no more secrets.” His attention turns from his “audience” and towards the woman whose always been there for him, loving him, and brining a light he’s never known into his life. “Kensi, I love you. I’ve loved you ever since I met you at the beach and you insulted my roundhouse cutback.” At he sight of her smile, he’s suddenly filled with a sense of confidence. “You didn’t care who I was back then and you don’t now, and I mean that in the best way possible. You see me for me and who you know I can become. Ever since I met you, there’s a peace that has washed over me, a peace that up until then, I had only found when I was out in the water. Kens, you deserve to be shown off to the world, and I was wrong to even go along with the idea of hiding your light. Baby, I promise I will never put you in second place again and I promise to love you with everything I am for the rest of my days. So if you’ll have, I would very much like to be your husband.”

The room is filled with a resounding gasp, drawing Kensi’s attention to just how many people are watching them. She’s not use to this and it freezes her. The only thing coming out of her mouth being one of reprimand. “You’re not allowed to stand on the tables.”

He crosses his arms, keeping his feet firm on the piece of furniture. “Well, I’m staying here until you give me an answer.”

“Fine, get down.”

“So?”

For the first time tonight she allows herself to lock eyes with him. She sees the desperate love so clearly written in his cerulean blues and can’t help but give in. Closing the distance between them, she lays her palm on his cheek before standing up on her tiptoes to bring her lips to his in a kiss that she so desperately missed. “Yes.”

The goofy grin that spreads to his face is one that reminds her of a kid on Christmas morning, yet somewhat in disbelief that what he’s asking for is really in his grasp. “Yes?”

She nods, confirming her answer one last time.

“She said yes!!!!” Before she knows it, he has her wrapped up in a bear hug, spinning her around the dinning room of one of LA’s most glamorous restaurants, not a care in the world.

XXXX

Later that night as they step into his loft, Kensi hesitantly observes the room, even though he did everything to make her believe he wouldn’t hide their relationship anymore, there’s still that hint of disbelief in the back of her mind. Before she looses her courage, she turns around, seriousness set on her face. “How do I know this is going to be any different from last time?”

“Turn on the TV.”

Her brow furrows at his evasiveness and weird request, but does it anyway. “Now what?”

“Turn it to E!.”

They stand side by side in the middle of the living room for about 10 minutes before Kensi’s finally aware why she’s watching. “Breaking News: Pro Surfer Marty Deeks is reportedly engaged to longtime girlfriend Kensi Blye an International Global Studies major from UCLA. The assumed “bad boy” surfer has been known for having numerous girlfriends in the past, but it looks like that was just for show. The surfer just released this statement a short while ago.”

First of all, I want to publicly apologize to my fiancée, she wanted no part of keeping us a secret and frankly, neither did I. But I was talked into it by my team because they thought I needed to protect my bad boy image and it also didn’t “look good” that she was a waitress. They were wrong…I was so very wrong. Kensi stood by me even though I haven’t stood by her and there’s no excuse for what I did. Believe me when I say that I will spend the rest of my life apologizing to her. I don’t care about any image or what people think of me other than her, and it took almost loosing her for me to see that. I’ve lived in a persona most of my career and frankly I’m sick of it. She’s the best person I know and she makes me a better man every single day. I can’t wait for the day that she finally becomes my wife. - Marty Deeks

“Wow, talk about love confession.”

She turns to him, tears in her eyes. There comes a point in life when you realize who’s here to stay and who’s just here in passing. Asking more of him wasn’t a good feeling at first because she knew the risk, but taking that risk and telling him what she needed had to be done. For her and for them. “I love you.”

Wrapping his arms around her, Marty pulls her into him, placing a kiss on the top of her head. The thought of how close he was to loosing her will haunt him for a long time, but spending every day for the rest of their lives together will without a doubt bring in the sunshine. “I love you too.”

#Densi #Densi Fanfic #AU #Kensi Blye #Marty Deeks #NCIS: LA #NCIS: LA Fanfic #Densi AU

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parachutingkitten · 4 years

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Dancing Without You - Ch 4: Ice Cream

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3

Whose ready for the title drop? I am! I absolutely had way too much fun writing a party with this select group of ninja for the second half of the chapter. It’s a bit of fun fluff before absolutely everything hits the fan next chapter.

Happy Reading!

“I’ll take a double scoop of the rocky road.” Cole pointed to the tub through the window as Madelyn began scooping.

“In a cone, or a cup?”

“Cup please,” He smiled.

“Anything else?” Madelyn asked, handing him his cup over the counter.

“I also need a double scoop of cotton candy in a cup as well please.”

I hit Cole on the shoulder as he chuckled. “I can pay for my own ice cream, you know!” I scolded.

“Chill Lia, I have a bunch of extra cash on my student account that I’ve got to spend by the end of the month,” He explained. “I accidentally added an extra 200 dollars to my account instead of 20 dollars, so... I’m definitely going to be hitting up the student shop later this week.”

I laughed as Madelyn handed me my cup and moved over to the cash register.

“That'll be $6.50, just go ahead and swipe your student id.” Madelyn instructed.

Cole did just that as the receipt started printing. “And that’s it! Thanks,” she smiled, handing it to him.

“Thanks Maddie!” I smiled as we walked out towards the field.

“You know her?” Cole asked.

“She works there every Wednesday and Friday. Don’t you recognize her?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “But I don’t know her name!”

“I don’t know. I think it’s rude not to make an effort,” I shrugged as we sat down on the grass. It was a beautiful sunny day outside for being the middle of fall. It was the perfect temperature outside with the sun peeking out just enough to warm the air. I knew perfect weather like this couldn’t last long though. “So, you ready for midterms?” I asked, eating my first spoonful of ice cream.

“Midterms,” Cole laughed nervously. “Yeah. I have no idea how ready I am, but it’s definitely not ready enough.”

“I’m excited! I mean, in just a few weeks we’ll get our rankings! Aren’t you excited to see where you fall?”

Cole rolled his eyes, looking down at his ice cream, mixing it around with his spoon. “I don’t know. It all seems a little superficial to me. I mean, how can you possibly distill all of someone’s talent down into one number? And then they’re going to take everyone’s number and rank us against each other? Doesn’t that just seem needlessly antagonistic?”

“I mean, most schools have grades. That’s how grading things works,” I shrugged, taking another bite.

“It just doesn’t seem right. Singing and dancing and all this stuff is all just so subjective. It shouldn’t have such a concrete ranking system attached to it.”

“Well… yeah. It’s blunt, but that’s kind of just how performance arts work. They’re competitive, and messy and… harsh.”

Cole seemed distant. He looked at me for a moment, pensive. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just not really for me.”

“What do you mean not really for you?” I pressed.

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” he sighed. “But it’s like… recently, I’ve been feeling more and more like instead of going to school here, I’m just being trapped here, you know?”

I studied him. He was being honest, but I didn’t exactly know what to make of it. “Well, I know classes can be tough, but everyone knows first year is the hardest. Things will ease up soon. I mean, you might feel like you want to leave, but it’s not like you’re actually considering it, right?”

He paused for a moment, looking out at the skyline. “...maybe. I mean, the more I stay here, the more I feel like I just don’t belong. Like I can’t fit into the mold that everyone wants from me.”

“Cole, you’re a great dancer! If you’re worried about living up to people’s expectations, don’t be-”

“It’s not that.” he shook his head. “I just don’t fit in the system. I can’t do this forever. I can’t live like this.”

I set my ice cream down on the grass, thinking for a moment. “Look, I know this kind of stuff is a lot of work. And I get that it comes easier to me than it does for a lot of people, but you shouldn’t throw away your chance just because it gets hard. I mean, why did you come here in the first place unless you really wanted something out of it, right?”

Cole’s head hung low as he picked at the grass.

“I… didn’t choose to come here.

My dad did.”

~*~*~*~

“Oh! We’re halfway there! Oh! Livin’ on a prayer!”

They both sounded absolutely terrible at this point in the song, but the energy in the room was undeniable. Lia had pulled out all her snacks, moved the furniture, dug up her mini disco ball, and had started blasting music. She and Jay and were currently caught in an intense impromptu Karaoke battle, Jay singing into the ice cream scooper while Lia had chosen the tv remote as her microphone of choice.

“Hold on! Hold on!” Jay screamed out, “Air guitar solo!”

“Shred it guys!” I called out, egging them on as they flailed around in the middle of the room.

“Put your heart into it, Jay!” Pixal mocked him. “She’s wiping the floor with you!”

Pix and I both laughed as the last set of choruses came around.

“You really weren’t kidding, she’s extremely high energy.” She looked over at me, smiling.

“Yeah, she was a good warm up for dealing with Jay,” I joked, both of us laughing again.

“Take my hand! We’ll make it, I swear!” They were singing into each other’s faces at this point, more screaming than singing. “Oh! Living on a prayer!”

Both of them pumped their fists in the air as the song faded out, Pix and I both cheering them as they bowed.

“It’s such a good song!” Jay raved.

“It’s such a good song!” Lia tossed the remote onto the couch in the corner, taking a few heavy breaths.

“Sorry about that Cole, I had a bit of a point to prove,” Jay boasted, walking over to the snack table. “Which flavor did you want?” He looked down at the various tubs of ice cream.

“You know what, I don’t even think I want ice cream anymore,” I shrugged.

“Well, I want some mint chip!” Lia called to him, running over. “I am overheating big time!” She smiled.

“I know, right?” Jay agreed, dishing some up for her, my eyes drifting.

“You rocked it up there.”

“I’ve done my fair share of lip sync battles, I know how to work a good song,” Jay smirked, handing her the bowl he had scooped.

My eyes had been drawn to the neat orange stone hung around Lia’s neck, shining in the dancing light of the disco ball. “Is that the necklace?” I asked.

“Oh! Yeah,” She lifted it off her neck. “I usually only wear it for good luck, like when I’m auditioning for stuff or what not, but I thought since you’re here it’d be appropriate.”

“I didn’t even think you’d have it still,” I chuckled.

“What’s this all about?” Pix asked.

“Oh nothing,” Lia shrugged. “Cole just got me this necklace at the end of first semester.”

Pixal leaned over, looking at it. “It’s a beautiful piece of sunstone,” she admired.

“It’s kind of a long story,” I waved it off, glancing back at Lia, now enjoying her ice cream.

“Hold on,” Jay interrupted, pointing at the other end of the room. “Is that a guitar? Do you play guitar?!”

“Yeah, I play guitar,” She smiled. “I know most of the basics. Guitar, Piano, Violin, I’m learning how to play the flute. I’ll have to play for you sometime, you know, when my voice isn’t so hacked up from song battling you,” She winked.

“As in like… play and sing?” Jay asked. “You sing too?! As in like, real, legit singing?”

Lia burst out laughing, leaning on my shoulder. “Cole, this idiot wants to know if a Marty Oppenheimer Alumni can sing! What do you think?!”

“Yes, she can sing,” I rolled my eyes at Jay.

“Does that mean you can sing too?” Jay nudged me.

“Oh, you’ve never heard him sing?” Lia smiled, turning to me, wide eyed.

“I can sing, but that doesn’t mean that I do. Not anymore anyways,” I stopped them.

The music began to switch as Lia took my hand. “That’s okay, Cole’s always been much more of a dancer.” She smirked. “Come on, this song is great for swing dance!”

“You know full well, I dropped out right before the swing dance unit,” I put my hands up in surrender.

“I don’t know, that sounds like quite a slim excuse to me,” Pixal teased.

“Oh, so you think you’re better than me?” I challenged her.

“I’m a droid, you don’t think I can’t follow rhythms and memorize a complex series of steps?”

Lia placed down her ice cream bowl and turned triumphantly towards Pixal. “Would you like to dance?”

“Of course!” Pixal smiled in my face as they moved back out towards the center of the room.

“Aw man! She slammed you!” Jay clung to my shoulder, jumping up and down.

They took the floor, moving in unison as the chorus kicked in.

I knew I was in for a ride as we

Swing to the sound

Our feet tap-tappin' and our heartbeats beatin'

“Dude, you’re not recovering from this,” Jay shook his head, watching as they spun around each other to the beat of the music.

“Yeah, Pix sure wasn’t bluffing.”

They had some great synergy too. So concentrated on the moves they were making, anticipating what the other would do next. It had been a while since I’d seen Lia dance. I had forgotten how happy it made her. It breathed life into her in a way nothing else ever quite did. Like dancing was the one thing keeping her alive, like doing anything else would just be unnatural. The way her stray hairs would fly away in the air as she spun, the way her nose would scrunch up when she smiled. Those moments when she felt so in the rhythm that she'd just close her eyes. It was all wrapping in this warm familiar comfort that I had lost to the back of my mind to years now.

Spin 'round and 'round

We got lost in the rhythm, the lights, and the crowd

“You’re so good!” Lia’s excitement caught me out of my daze. Her arms were wrapped around Pixal, who was a bit unsure of what to do.

“You’re quite talented yourself.”

“See, that’s how you dance!” She broke away from Pix, pointing at me. “You just forget how to move your feet after all these years, or what?”

“I’ve kinda been focused on other things,” I rolled my eyes.

“That’s so cool! How did you do that?” Jay marveled at them both. “It looked so choreographed and everything!”

“It just takes practice,” Lia hit him in the shoulder. “It’s really not that hard. It’s first year stuff.”

“I could teach you the basics if you wanted,” Pixal chimed in.

“Hell yes! Let’s do it!” Jay swung around me, back to the middle of the floor, Pixal following him. I leaned back on the snack table watching them. She took his hands, carefully guiding him through some basic motions, both of their eyes glued to their feet. I could feel a smile spread across my face watching Jay fumble at Pixal’s simple instructions.

“Pix is a great dancer! I was actually really surprised.” Lia sat next to me, a half empty glass of water in her hands.

“You know, if I’m being honest, it was kinda weird seeing you dance with someone else,” I chuckled.

“Yeah,” She sighed, hanging her head a bit. “I guess it would be.” Her fingers fiddled with the rim of the glass. I could tell something was off.

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked, trying to keep the tone light.

She looked up, her eyes distant. “Cole, I’ve been dancing without you for five years now.” She glanced over at me, gauging my reaction.

“Well…” I hesitated. “Yeah, that’s a good thing, right? I wasn’t supposed to be a dancer, staying would have just been a mistake. We both found our calling in life! That’s great!”

She looked at me with a blank stare. “...You don’t get it, do you?”

I looked at her a moment, trying to read what the answer was that she wanted. “Get… What? I mean, what happened, happened. Sure, it sucked to leave you behind, but no one got hurt. I’m back now, what’s the big problem?”

She looked at me for a moment, taking a deep breath. She placed her glass down on the table behind her, her eyes glazing over again as she looked at the floor.

She was thinking.

After a long moment, she closed her eyes, standing up.

“I think I’m gonna head to bed.” She started towards the back hall as I stood up, trailing her.

“Lia, is everything okay?”

“Cole, please, I can’t do this right now.” She sighed as she continued moving.

“Amelia, talk to me, please. What’s wrong?” I pleaded with her.

I was cut off as she reached her room, shutting the door on me, leaving me a little disoriented on the other side.

“Everything okay back here?” Jay asked, peaking back into the hall.

I turned to look at him, still wondering what exactly had just happened.

“I… don’t know.”

#ninjago #ninjago oc #ninjago cole #OC: Amelia #Dancing Without You #writing #birthday week

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only-in-dreamland · 5 years

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'Cuante cazzate' or otherwise known as how to get your heart stomped all over in 13 minutes or less

Alrighty y'all a quick preface. This will probably be my last season 2 analysis, since season 3 begins tomorrow, and I want to allow myself to go with the flow of this current season. Marti's season will forever hold a special place in my heart and I'll never have enough words to say about it, but for now...

The first shot of the clip, of Marti and he just looks instantly withdrawn. He's there with the boys but he's not really there you know.

'You ate martino's supplì and nuggets, his breaded olives...' - Marti not having much of an appetite clearly indicates his mental state at the moment. Yh I'm in pain.

The boys banter. I just love seeing it because we're actually seeing the boys be friends; hanging out, doing silly mundane things that whilst might not seem significant, are actually so important because we get to see the cohesion as a unit. The familiarity. The affinity. The camaraderie. It's all so substantial.

And Marti still isn't moved, his face is expressionless.

Oh gio. The way he glances at martino and ever so subtly takes him in because he can see something isn't right. He just knows, and he doesn't need to make a point of it to notice. He's so aware of his best friend that he takes note of it, perhaps for a later time.

There's a moment where gio and marti hold eye contact for a split second, and ugh it's details like this that I live for. It just highlights their friendship again and again.

Three times. Three times gio looks over at marti. Gio watches marti this time, he can see how fed up he looks and it bothers gio. He's concerned but he can't quite put his finger on it.

'Argentina, argentina!!' The way they start chanting this, trying to get though to Marti and you know what I love...is that it works. For a moment or two anyway. Because it just reinforces their authenticity as friends. To have to ability to uplift someone when they're down.

The whole montage is just gold. There's a bit where Luchino is stood in front of Marti, actively trying to cheer him up in his own silly way. They all recognise marti's mood and it just shows how attentive they are.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the physicality between all of them is so instrumental in showcasing their comfort and awareness of each other.

They are all so amused by one another, it's just pure joy watching their dynamic unfold.

Then they put their attention onto Marti,

'Now smile. Big smile!' - they want to see him happy and there's a moment where they literally lift up his smile; lifting him up if you will.

The bike ride; it almost feels symbolic that Marti was lagging behind on his own, whilst the other three were in front... Perhaps as a way to represent his isolation? Distance from the group because he hasn't shared what's bothering him? That he's alone in this secret that burdens him?

Moving on to Marti inside the club, when he spots nico on the couch it looks as if he's gearing himself up to almost confront him? The way he takes a big gulp, and puts his hands on hips...to build confidence?? He watches for a few seconds and then he nods as if confirming to himself 'i'm doing this' and then in comes Emma.

The way he's fumbling for excuses, trying to think on the spot because all his focus was on Niccolò just seconds before.

'How many fucking times can you lie? Do you realise it's 2018 and nobody fucking cares if you're gay or not?'

After what she says you can see it, all over his face, his eyes...his confidence has been completely destroyed.

The timing of when the beat drops is just brilliant; in sync with Marti. He takes a minute to collect himself and then it's as if he's shaken out of it when he realises where he is again. Remembers what he was there for and looks towards Niccolò.

You can see as Marti watches them, he just progressively loses his patience. He just looks done...with all of it. He's just found out that his secret is not so secret. It's the last thing he expected to come out of Emma's mouth and it threw him. He's off balance and seeing nico kiss maddelena was the final blow to knock him to the ground, so to speak. So he walks away

As he's walking away outside, he just looks defeated. Retreating away from Niccolò as he retreats away into his mind.

'Bro, what the fuck is up with you? Why are you being such a dick?' Gio doesn't even ask this with any aggression, just more concern and a willingness, an eagerness, to know, to understand.

'You wanna get in?' FUCK you can hear his voice is thick with emotion. He's starting to crack and Fede plays it in the most drawn out way that I'm in awe.

'All the girls you drool over and in there hooking up with seniors...So if you wanna go in there and make fools of yourselves wearing these stupid ass blazers, he's even wearing a fucking tie on his head, go ahead. Go! C'mon!'- the saddest part is that he may be calling them fools, but really he's calling himself that. He's projecting onto them because he feels played. He's the one who just went in there, looking for nico and he's come out feeling so betrayed that he just can't contain his emotion anymore.

'Go fight with your mommy. Or this time it might be your dad.' God this hit deep with Marti, and we have concrete evidence as to why. We've seen his tricky relationship with his mum, as well as relationship, rather lack thereof, with his dad. We don't just know it. We've seen it.

When Marti knocks gio to the ground, god the sound goes through me. It just feels so...loud. Also, i always felt like one of the reasons Marti walks away is because he felt ashamed of hurting gio like that. No matter the inner turmoil he was going through, you know it was never his intention for it to affect his friends. Not once.

Which just makes the fight between the boys that much more heartbreaking. You can feel the struggle, the charge between them all. The deeper the friendship goes, the more space there is for impact. And that's what you feel with this scene. It's personal. It's painful. And it's monumental.

Okay for real this is the part that no matter how many times I've goddam watched it, I will forever be broken because of it. Martino breaking down in frustation, in anguish, just...completely shattered. Screaming 'fuck off!' because he just can't take it anymore. Taking it out on the world because it's the only way he can. Fede's voice oh my god it physically causes me pain, his ability to emote through his voice alone, gives me goosebumps. Those deep, resounding breaths and the way his chest is heaving so intensely...it actually takes my breath away.

And lastly can I just point out...the sound of the train picking up, as Marti reaches breaking point; it all building to an unmistakeable climax- poetic cinema!!

#skam italia #this got very very long #it's been a while since i word vomited

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mentalcurls · 5 years

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6. Laura mi ha detto tutto

Yay! Episode 6! We’re finally getting to the real *Penetrator Chris voice* drama! This time I discuss 🐍 Marti, consent, insecurities, middle aged relatives and of course whether the episode passes the Bechdel test (not to sound like one of those clickbait headlines, but the result may surprise you!).

Bubbles! Pretty iridescent bubbles! (Let’s get excited about the small things since we’re getting into #mainagioia territory)

ok, but Marti in this scene? This is Marti pulling a S2!Gio: he notices something’s wrong with Eva, he tries to cheer her up, he cajoles her into talking to him, lets her deflect and answers her questions even if they’re out of the blue, then lets her talk when she finally confides in him

“Why do you say that?” is what betrays him, he know he knows he knowsss

I really wanna cut off those bangs though. Not even Zac Efron’s hair when it was at its peak HSM1-ishness was this annoying

oh-oh, there was an off screen fight? In which Gio gaslighted the hell out of Eva lying to her about being with his mom not Laura and calling her crazy? LudoBesse, you think by leaving it out of the final cut I wasn’t gonna get mad about it? Fuck off, I’ll have you know I’m royally pissed off about it!

“Stop it, dump him and that’s it. You can’t keep feeling like this” MARTINOOOO 🐍🐍🐍 he even makes it sound like he’s saying it for her! Honestly, this guy. He’d die a thousand painful deaths for Gio (just as bffs, aside from his crush) yet he still convinces Eva he’d kind-of-side with her in an hypothetical break up

I think what Martino does is best described as stirring shit up, then running away to watch that same shit hit the fan from a safe distance

at least he hesitates a second before dropping the “You could ask Laura” bomb

oh Silvia, Silvia. Not even one full orgasm in and already you’re talking like you’re out of a rom-com where the protagonist doesn’t want anything serious, yet with him…

orgasms and sneezing have only one thing in common afaik: they’re both controlled by the autonomic nervous system

Eleonora Sava in this scene is me and I’m her and we’re both telling Silvia off and being pissed at idiotic men who pressure girls into unsafe sexual practices

“He said he never uses it [a condom].” one sentence, three things confirmed: Edoardo always puts the burden of contraception on his female partners, he is very much promiscuous and has had unsafe sex already so he could have or carry any venereal disease yet still has unsafe sex with Silvia, Silvia gets pressured to have sex without a condom and that means the encounter was not completely consensual. Edoardo, for all that I empathized with him in the last episode, is an asshole.

I actually don’t consider him an asshole for not turning his back on Silvia when she waves at him, but I do for all the reasons I mentioned above. I’m so angry, you wouldn’t believe.

without Sana your overeager shows, Silvia, and it doesn’t do you any favors

and what prompts Silvia to put aside her resentment towards Sana? A show of wealth. Cute.

ok, honestly, those few second from Silvia’s POV on the back of the microcar

OUCH, my poor heart. I wasn’t ready to see Eva with her hood pulled up and earphones on, the throwback (flashforward, actually?) to that first clip after the hiatus where Marti is walking much like that and listening to Earl Sweatshirt 😭 except this time the one who’s not answering their beloved is the protagonist, not the love interest

Gio really slips up badly, with that mother-father thing

my heart is honestly breaking for Eva, Giovanni has called her all kind of things for thinking he’s with Laura, paranoid, crazy, out of her mind; yet she’s only amassing more and more proof that he’s lying and since he won’t tell her why, she can’t help but fill in the gaps herself; and at point her own guilt starts messing with her head and whispering that if Gio already cheated once, he might do it twice, what’s to stop him; and her insecurities come up right on the coattails of that to remind her that just because Gio chose her then, it doesn’t mean everyone else did, in fact they didn’t and there must be a reason, so maybe he’s realized she’s not good enough for him either and he’s gone back to the girl everyone sided with, the one everyone loves, including Eva herself because despite everything that’s her best friend, with whom she shared almost everything, that’s the girl who knows her and who Eva knows and loves

and I love Gio for really proving he knows Eva, he likes her as a person enough to have wanted to know and to remember what she likes; then I hate him for smiling, for forcing proximity with her, and for resorting to old tactics and kissing her to calm her down and convince her of his version. Shutting a person up by kissing her is borderline harassment, even if they’d normally consent. If it’s a girl, 99% of the time it’s also a sexist act, because it proves you’re don’t even have enough consideration for the woman to let her finish talking and listen to her arguments. Gio, why do you do this to me (and Eva)? You leave me no choice but to want to punch you.

Margot is so cuuuute I love cats

never knowing what to give guys for their eighteenth is peak italian culture

when Eva says “Un cazzo” I was 100% expecting someone to at least wiggle their eyebrows, like, c’mon!

Silvia taking every single possible chance to contact Edoardo breaks my heart

Fede would be an amazing hype woman I think, she’s just so supportive of everything that makes her friends feel good about themselves, even when it’s sending nudes to a jerk

“If we don’t tell her the truth, then who?” and that’s Sana in a nutshell, except she doesn’t consider those flimsy, useless little things called feelings: girl, I get it, but saying things in a kind way goes incredible lengths

“Eva, I’ve been at this school for three years” YES! That’s what I’ve been saying: Sana and Silvia (and to an extent Federica) know these people and their hierarchy really really well, for completely opposite reasons - one out of self preservation and near-scientific interest, the other because she’s a wannabe social climber -, but they’ve had the time and ability to find out how things work here; Eva, despite being there for seven months, has been so wrapped up in her own drama she hasn’t been observant at all and she doesn’t understand how the school is “run” and that’s a big fucking problem for her because she doesn’t form an opinion on whether or not she wants to get in with the cool kids, she just lets these girls (mainly Silvia) she’s known for such a short time drag her into it, and because she’s flailing around she makes trouble for herself. Eva doesn’t give a fuck about the Villa boys, about Incanti or Canegallo or Rodi or whoever else, she doesn’t even care about Laura as far as her popularity goes, so she literally gets into the whole Federico thing just for Silvia, with encouragement from the other girls.

my favourite part of Federico’s 18th birthday party is the presence of his relatives who are so completely out of place among all the kids dancing and will undoubtedly start dancing after a couple of glasses of spumante, the teenagers will end up dancing with them at first to make fun then give them a wide berth, until they realize after two songs they’re too old for this and go home, but still giddy af (seen it happen at all 18ht parties where there were parents/uncles/aunts etc.). In the meantime the boy//girl of the hour gets shitfaced and everyone will have to work to kind of hide how bad from the parents.

13:24 FIRST GLIMPSE OF ALICE

is the girl making the toast to Federico Maria Sorgato?? Isn’t she brunette in the episode Eva speaks to her outside school? Cause she looks pretty blonde her, but maybe it’s the lights.

oh Gio ❤️ I keep finding reasons to be mad at you but I still love you ❤️ you mago dell’amore, you ❤️ that text is so sweet, except not because the purpose of going to the party is still to please Eva, not to do something for them, it’s a concession he makes, not something he shares Eva’s desire to do, so I’m angry again. Well, that didn’t last long

I totally get Laura tbh, if there had been a swing at any of the parties I’ve ever been to, it’d have been mine all night, I love swings

ok, what is it that makes Laura look so bad in this scene? Is it the makeup? The lighting? Both? It’s just so unappealing, her face looks so drawn, all her imperfections show so much 😕

For a second, for a split second, when she says “Non so” she considers not doing this, but why should she do this for Eva? Payback time, bitch

oh, Canegallo. Enters the room speaking English, all dapper in his suit, then he does the whole worried thing and it’s fine, it’s fine for the most part, he sounds genuine; then he twirls her hair round his finger, has her turn her face and that’s it

and Eva wants it, because it’s comfort, reassurance, it’s a way to forget everything that’s gone to hell for a minute

and he looks at her to make sure, to check in! So different from that last kiss with Gio we saw. It takes 50 creepiness points away from Canegallo (he still has a lot)

then Alice comes in, just in time, and Federico doesn’t even have to lie to her! It’s all there, all true, so Eva couldn’t even disagree!

Alice is really nice, comforting a girl she doesn’t know at all while a cool party is going on, but her “When you meet the right guy, you’ll know, cause you’ll feel like you can trust him.” is h e a r t b r e a k i n g

Oh Alice. Your solution for heartbreak is getting back to the party, getting drunk and having dub con sex with older guys? Girl. No wonder you like Canegallo.

it’s so significant to me that Eva basically had the same “crying alone the meeting a girl who tries to comfort you” experience Silvia had at the Easter party in ep.1 and the first thing she does when she gets out is to look for, essentially, Silvia; and of course in both occasions she’s had a confrontation with Laura earlier and she goes home alone afterwards

Silvia is really a masochist, isn’t she? She stays right there, next to a passed out Chicco Rodi, looking at Edoardo going on with his life and making out with her former friend Sara

Eva walking home alone reminds me of 9.5 La Grotta except she’s walking with some purpose despite feeling lost, while Marti was literally wandering

she stops and hesitates when she sees Gio, cause she wasn’t expecting it at all, she isn’t ready, not now

Gio’s “T’ho detto un po’ di cazzate in sto periodo” is so reminiscent of several of Marti’s lines, especially of when he apologizes to the guys and to Emma

ok, so get Gio’s big reveal and Eva’s regret is written all over her face

I’m not even gonna talk about Gio huffing about Eva’s mention of that time he threw up on her while they were kissing. HE THREW UP ON HER WHILE THEY WERE KISSING. I just. Can’t.

and Gio brings up trust and I bet that Eva’s brain was replaying Alice’s words in her mind

“It’s you and me” 💔 (despite everything, I’m under a thousand trains for them)

Bechdel test: this episode doesn’t pass the test. The only times it comes close are when Sana arrives with the microcar and when the girls discuss Margot for a second on the windowsill, but I refuse to call either of those “conversations”.

This post is part of my complete series of meta about Skam Italia season 1. If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the other episodes, you can find the mastepost linked in the top bar on my blog under SKAMIT: EVA. Cheers!

#skam italia #eva brighi #martino rametta #giovanni garau #skamit #skamit s1 #silvia mirabella #eleonora sava #edoardo incanti #federica cacciotti #sana allagui #federico canegallo #1x06 laura mi ha detto tutto #a. writes #skamit meta

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houseofvans · 6 years

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ART SCHOOL | Q&A with Martin Ontiveros (PDX)

The art wizardry of Portland based Martin Ontiveros has appeared in various galleries, albums, posters and has even been transformed into diabolical toys and figurines. Ontiveros’s graphic ink and brush style is meticulous and bold, transforming his horned and demonic creations into fun and bad-ass pop occultism. We’re excited to chat with this ink sorcerer in our latest Art School where we talk about technique, studio days, and what is coming up for him the rest of this year.

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Introduce yourself? Hello, I’m Martin Ontiveros, also known as Martinheadrocks, illustrator and wizard. “Marty” to my closest friends and family. I live in Portland Oregon, I’m left-handed/ambidexterous and I have a large ginger cat/familiar named Zeus. Nice to meet you.

How do you describe your art to folks who have never seen it before? Pop-occultism? Creature Chic? What you might find inside an ancient tomb or temple from a previously unknown civilization.

Who were some of your early artistic influences that really inspired you to draw? It started with Star Wars in 1977, and Mad Magazine, especially the work of Jack Davis. Childrens book art by Jim Flora. Books and movies about UFOs, cryptids, phenomena, ghosts and black magic when I was a kid. Later it was Heavy Metal Magazine and the underground artists of the 60s and 70s, S. Clay Wilson, Greg Irons, Spain, etc. 80’s punk and metal pioneer artists like Mad Mark Rude and Pushead. Derek Riggs and his Iron Maiden covers.

Lots of rock album art. Fantasy/conceptual artists like Mike Ploog, Boris Vallejo, Frazetta, Richard Corben. That was all the stuff that built up the desire, but what really got me drawing were the indie comics of the 80s with people like Marc Hansen, Matt Wagner, the Pander Bros, David Boswell, Dori Seda, Mary Fleener. I really really wanted to make comics by the time I was 17-18. I’ve since discovered it’s not for me. Art of the Ancient World, Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican in particular. There’s more to this list, I’m an old man now and have seen a lot, but we don’t have all day.

What’s a day like in the studio for you? And take us through your artist process –from start to finish on a piece. I used to start work when it was already well into the evening and would go until after the dawn, but in the last couple years I’ve reversed that schedule. Now I usually get up around 4am. I still get the benefits of nocturnal studio time that way, at least until the sun is up—no one bothers me and it’s quiet. I’ve become a Daywalker—I have all of the vamipre’s strengths and none of the weaknesses.

A typical day is trying to stay focused while fending off my own distractions (I’m ADD) and steering around having to leave the house for anything, ha. I always start with a bit of doodling to warm up a little, then jot down a thumbnail sketch of whatever’s on the agenda that day—usually very small and rough, just to set the composition and borders.

Sometimes I’ll spend extra time fleshing out details on certain aspects of the drawing, say a helmet or insignia. Then I’ll figure out my dimensions and either draw to size or use my trusty proportion wheel to do it smaller if need be. Next is the hard pencil stage. I like using 2H or 3H lead which is rough on the paper but much less messy than a soft lead. I don’t work with a loose outline, I need a solid and tight map to work from and when I have it on lock, I’ll transfer it to my final surface.

That method goes for both a black and white ink piece or a painting. I’ll warm the brush up by laying our some strokes on scrap paper and when I feel like I got a grip on it, off I go. If it’s a painting, I lay all the color and shading out first, then put down the linework. And even if my pencils were tight, there’s always room for improvisation, a tweak or two, especially when I’m inking—some happy accidents come up now and then. I should mention that I sometimes have to chuck a drawing and start the process all over again, even if it’s close to completion because if it isn’t working, screw it. It seems wasteful and time consuming and I could probably avoid it by going digital, but I choose to do it old school.

What’s your tool of the trade medium-wise? And is there a new medium you’re looking to try in 2018? I swear by my brush and ink. Nothing gives me more satisfaction. The artists I’ve always admired most are handy with a brush line. Not to say I don’t like pens, it’s just that I’m not as steady using one and leave them for doodling. I love papier mache, it’s not a new medium to me, but I’ve yet to know how to make the time to do it more so let’s say that that is my goal for 2018. If there was any other medium that I’d choose to do over drawing, it would be that.

You’ve worked on many collaborations with bands and created some awesome cover art and posters. What has been your favorite collaboration and what would be a dream collaboration be? Oooh. That’s a toughy. I did a tour shirt for Mastodon this past year and I have to say that was likely the pinnacle so far. When I caught their show later, it was thrilling to see people buying it at the merch table and to know there’s maybe hundreds more out there wearing it. Dream collaboration…probably the Melvins. Or Alice Cooper? But with the Melvins I know I could just probably do me and not worry about whether or not I’m a good fit. I’m not what you would call “conventional”.

What are you listening to when you’re painting your various creatures and demons? Give us five bands you’re checking out at the moment. I listen to music when I sketch/conceptualize and switch to podcasts or play a favorite movie or show when I’m really into the process, it’s comforting to hear people talk during the heavy work for some reason. It’s another long list but some of my go-to bands are High On Fire, Sleep, Windhand, Black Cobra and Slayer. That’s if I want it crushing. If I’m doing something trippier, it’ll be Om, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Dead Meadow, that kind of thing. Podcasts are generally true crime or comedy.

What’s been the hardest challenge being an artist? What do you tell folks who want to travel down a similar path? I don’t recall the artist’s name who said it, but to paraphrase, the quote was that art can often be a dark and lonely pursuit for us. I believe he was referring more to the fact that we spend a lot of our time working in solitude which is inherent, yet it can also weigh you down emotionally. That really speaks to me, even more so because I’ve also wrestled with depression for most of my life.

Your work can be so entwined with your sense of self-worth, so I suppose the hardest challenge for me is to not let my heart sink when something I make doesn’t receive the attention I hope to get for it. People can be fickle though. I try to remember that, and move on to the next thing. With that in mind I guess I tell folks to make sure they get out of their lairs when possible and share their frustrations with other artist friends, foster a support group of sorts because it helps to know you aren’t alone out there with all these feelings. That and maintain a regular paying job when they start out, because man…it can be tough making a living at it.

In another dimension, what would you be if you weren’t an artist? I’d be that weird old sorcerer living somewhere in the woods that the villagers speak of in whispers. Benevolent, but not to be trifled with. So, not too much different from what I am in this dimension, just with blue skin, maybe.

What are your favorite Vans? Chukka Low? Old Skool? Era? (I had to look up the actual names). Basically low padded ankle with laces, and always dark colors with a black toe because I don’t like my vision being drawn down to my feet moving under me. I honestly don’t wear any other brand of kicks. I keep a pair of Slip-Ons for doing things around the house. Vans makes good jeans too.

What’s the art scene like in your part of the woods? What do you like the most about where you’re living these days? The scene that I know here is primarily illustration, at least that’s what I keep my eyes out for. Lots of sweet, supportive people without attitude and many that are good friends. There aren’t as many galleries as there used to be but there are other venues to get your work out there. I’m now in a part of SE that I’ve never lived in before, at the edge of being outside of Portland proper but only just so. It’s mellow and quiet here and most things I need are within walking distance. I got a couple stores, a good Mexican food place, a bar, you get my drift. I do wish some of my besties lived closer by though. And a decent art supply store.

Since this feature is called Art School, can you give us your most helpful art tip? This probably won’t make me popular by saying it, but learn the difference between homage and theft. Yes, it’s fun to pay tribute to an artist’s style or someone else’s pop culture/intellectual property now and then, I’ve done it, we’ve all done it, not shaming that…but the difference is, if ALL you’re doing is copying, it comes off as creatively lazy. I don’t care how many followers you may gain from it. Come on. If you’re skilled enough to copy someone else’s shit, you’re skilled enough to make up your own content. Raise the bar, people. Don’t lower it.

What’s on the horizon for 2018? New merch in my shop, a group show in Mexico City, more band stuff, my first trip to NY ever, toy releases, designs and customs, a collaboration or two, hopefully a couple of conventions later in the warm months. I’d like get back into painting on a larger scale and figure out how to take it slower in general, make my work really level up, you know? There’s always room for improvement!

Follow Martin | Website | Instagram |

#Art #Vans #Vans Art #Art School #Martin Ontiveros #Drawing #PDX #PDX ARTIST

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antiqone · 6 years

Text

My local movie theater is screening one Steven Spielberg movie a week, in preparation for Ready Player One. Tonight was Back To The Future, so my mom and sister and I went. These are things I noticed about it for the first time:

At the beginning of the movie, during the clocks credit sequence, there is a clock with a paper figure of Doc Brown hanging from the clock tower.

Right before Original!1985 Biff leaves the McFly’s after haranguing George about car insurance/paperwork, he tells Marty to “say hi to your mom for me”. Yikes.

During dinner, Lorraine actually asks George what he was doing in the middle of the road that day her dad hit him with his car. George is all “what?Lorraine, huh?? I’ve never?? Waht?? idk?? *awkward laughter* hmm birb...washing”

John Mulaney is right. The writers of this movie had plenty of opportunities to explain the nature and/or origin of Doc Brown and Marty McFly’s relationship. They never do.

When Doc begins piloting the DeLorean towards himself and Marty, Marty starts to move away from Doc, and Doc Brown gives him this crazy look like, “have I?? ever?? steered us into trouble??”

“where are they?”/“no, it’s WHEN are they?”

the Peabody family IMMEDIATELY jumping to the conclusion that an alien landed in their barn is weird because cars existed in 1955, they have a truck that we see later next to their house. they’re being over the top so that we the audience know Marty is in The Past™ now.

“Stella, another one of these damn kids jumped in front of my car” the implication is that Lorraine’s dad has hit children with his car more than once. and his go-to solution is to call his wife for help.

Marty falls a lot in this movie. and just about always face-first?! is he alright?? I think he also hits his head a lot in the other two movies. Marty should definitely see a doctor after all of this.

I really like Lorraine’s parents. They are unexpectedly nice compared to parents as portrayed by most media set in the Fifties™ and Sixties™.

“Lorraine, if you ever have a kid like that, I'll disown you” what an oddly specific thing to say unless you’re an unaware character in a time travel movie.

I just now realize how much I love Crispin Glover’s performance as George McFly what a Mess™

Doc Brown GOING TO SCHOOL WITH MARTY to help make sure his parents get together is a little weird. They weren’t even on their way to something else; Doc Brown walked out of the house with Marty to the school just to stand around and do absolutely nothing. this is also the last time he accompanies Marty anywhere in town for the rest of the movie every other hijink Marty experiences in Hill Valley 1955 surrounding George/Lorraine love drama is without Doc.

“Look, there's a rhythmic ceremonial ritual coming up” just say school dance Doc you say other normal things why not school dance??

“I'm not that kind of girl”/“Well maybe you are and you just don't know it yet” Biff is actually terrifying?? and no one does anything ever to stop him?? the whole town needs an anti-bullying seminar yikes

“Silence Earthling. my name is Darth Vader. I'm an extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan” this excellent scene was ruined for me by this post.

*Doc has made an excellent model of Main Street* omg don’t look it’s so bad it’s not even painted or drawn to full scale idek why I showed this to you it’s gross I’m so sorry. Marty: It’s good.

Lorraine explaining to Marty and Doc that she wants a man who can stand up and fight for what he wants and protects the woman he loves is such an interesting scene that I didn’t appreciate before.

the scene with Marty and George rehearsing what will go down in the school parking lot is so much more awkward than Marty’s first scene with 1950s Lorraine in bed, because in this scene Marty has to explain to his father that he’s going to make an unwelcome sexual advance on his mother so that his father can save his mother from him, their son.

some of the editing is weird: Marty is helping Doc set up equipment, Doc says he doesn’t want to have any knowledge of the future. We immediately cut to Marty at the same time of day at Lou’s Diner writing a letter to Doc?? Then we see them setting up equipment like Marty wasn’t just gone a second ago. Also this isn’t a flashback, Marty just changed clothes, helped Doc a bit, went to the diner to write, and then came back to finish time travel plans?? stuff like this wouldn’t be forgiven if it came out today.

Marvin Berry and the Starlighters beating up the bullies who called them slurs is my favorite thing in this whole movie.

“No, Biff, you leave her alone” I love an awkward fictional nerd

this isn’t a new thing I noticed but I Love Love Love George McFly punching Biff Tannen so much it’s my favorite thing in this whole movie it’s so satisfying and well-deserved 10/10

Marty: “ Oh, and if you guys ever have kids” they both look so awkward leave your cute nerd parents alone they’re fine go home Marty

Doc and Marty saying goodbye is a bit...weird. Maybe it’s just me but it feels as if Doc is kind of sad he wasn’t able to use the time machine first. I mean, he’s the one who spent his entire family fortune and 30+ years inventing it..and then his lazy teen friend (who we still don’t know why they hang out or how that started) just runs off with it. in an emergency, but still. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a bit resentful.

the Improved!1985 McFly family is nice, a little cheesy but that’s alright. What’s not as alright is that George regularly hires Biff, a man who hates him, to wash/wax his family’s cars. Right there in their yard. You know, the guy who repeatedly groped Lorraine throughout high school, going so far as to sexually assault her at a dance once. That’s the guy George is comfortable letting hang around his vehicles, house, and family.

“Roads? Where we're going we don't need...roads" aw yes the future and this time all three of them are going together this going to be so good this is my favorite thing in the whole movie.

I’m actually worried now that Steven Spielberg shouldn't release Ready Player One, is there really any way he could top this movie?

#back to the future #text #long reads #I always forget how much I like this movie #this was fun to write #i should do this more often #hannah being weird

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punmasterkentparson · 7 years

Text

Like Baby Bird

inspired by this text post because tater would.

I pulled this out of the bottom of my “unfinished” folder and finished it because I promised you guys some writing and I’m gonna deliver even if it’s crap.

(warning: it’s crap.)

edit: (ao3 link)

There’s no one else in the NHL whom Tater would rather piss off than Kent Parson. Feints and unnecessary checks and stealing Kent’s puck while saying, “You mind I’m borrow?” like he’s just swung by Kent’s place for a cup of sugar. Twice he’s gotten up in Kent’s business all through a tight game, asking “You want fight? Come on, Parson, little fight, know you want, been asshole all game, come on,” and waited until Kent has snapped, “Yeah, fine,” and tossed down his gloves, only to have Tater laugh and say, “Just kidding.” And then skate away.

Tater also snow showers Parson every chance he gets. He gets the fight he was asking for twice, but mostly he gets insults yelled at him as he ducks away.

Thirdy calls it hilarious. Marty calls it “kinda dangerous, you know he’s gonna kill you one day, right?”

Snowy calls it “the most disgusting display of courtship I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

Kent isn’t known for being a mouthy guy on the ice. In press rooms and in person he can’t be convinced to shut up, but in a game his sole focus is his team and the puck. He doesn’t have much time for chirping. Except, it turns out, in situations involving Tater.

The more Tater goads him, the more Kent Parson talks. Fast, clipped words, growing more and more eloquent as the season goes on.

But it’s the Stanley Finals where things really heat up. They go through seven exhausting, drawn out games and it is not pretty. Bodies and tempers are stretched to the limit. Tater’s customary on-ice hassling of Kent takes on more of an edge. Kent, in return, constructs elaborate chirps in reply. Tater barely has to grind to a stop nearby and send a mild puff of snow Kent’s way to get a lengthy tirade in response.

At one point, Tater elbows Kent out of the way--just a nudge, really--and says, “Scoot, peanut,” and Kent seems to lose it.

The tussle that follows is half shoving, half pissed-off yelling. The refs pull them apart and send them to the box. Tate goes in with his jersey askew and his mouth guard almost knocked out. He tries to get Kent’s attention through the glass and is treated to another tirade that he barely catches half of.

“Holy shit,” Snowy says conversationally once Tater’s back on the ice. “He just went at you. Don’t think I’ve seen a roast like that since Beiber went on Comedy Central.”

Tater shrugs. “Kent is baby bird.”

Snowy scrunches his entire face up behind his mask. “Explain.”

“Is cute when he is angry chirping but I'm not know what he's say.”

Snowy pretends to gag. "It’s Parson. Do not ever make me listen to you call Kent-fucking-Parson cute ever, ever the fuck again.”

“So cute,” Tater reiterates, and laughs when Snowy tries to push him over.

The third period is brutal. The Aces and Falconers are tied. A single point will tip the balance.

Zimmboni gets that point, right off Tater’s assist.

The clock runs down the rest of regular time and the Aces don’t get that point back. Tater hears the stadium count down the last ten seconds. Then, all he hears is five hundred fans and twenty-two Providence Falconers screaming in chaotic joy.

Eventually both teams get around to lining up and shaking hands.

Tater is still wearing an enormous grin when he gets to Kent. He shakes the man’s hand and pats him on the arm, saying, “Was good season, yeah? You and me?”

Kent looks startled, befuddled, and intently curious all at once. “I—yes?”

“Good, good. Let’s have good season again next year. You fun.” Tater pats him again and moves on down the line. He thinks he feels Kent watching him go.

The Aces leave the ice. The Falconers are awarded the cup. It is the single greatest night of Tater’s life.

Tater doesn’t expect to see Kent until the next regular season. He most certainly does not expect to see Kent sitting in the Falconers’ locker room three weeks later after a routine, low-impact skate.

Kent has one foot propped on the opposite knee and is playing with his phone. Falconers file in and do double-takes when they notice him.

“The fuck—is that Parson?”

“What’s he doing here?”

“Parson, what the hell?”

Kent doesn’t speak until Tater goes up to him, shadow falling across Kent’s body and half his face. “Kent, why you are here?”

Without looking up from his phone, Kent says loudly, “Do you know how rude it is to spend six months hitting on a guy and then not call him once the season’s over?”

Behind Tater, there’s a choking sound from Snowy.

Kent continues, “Not that you have my phone number, ‘cause you didn’t bother getting that, either. At least you didn’t ask me out with the damn cup in your hands, but still, point stands: I had to fly a thousand miles just so you could do this in person. I am so offended right now. Even Zimms and his chicken tenders had a better game plan.”

“Please don’t bring me into this,” Jack says weakly from the corner.

Kent gets up, pocketing his phone and looking up expectantly at Tater. The locker room is not quiet, since most of the guys are going about their business in a pointed attempt to ignore the soap opera in their midst. But there’s a definite atmosphere of anticipatory breaths being held.

Tater realizes that, for all that he really did spend about six months vying for Kent’s attention, he hasn’t given the actual act of getting a date with Kent Parson any concrete thought.

“You, uh,” he fumbles. “You want…have dinner?”

Kent crosses his arms. “Where are you taking me?”

“Steakhouse okay?”

What follows is the most overdone show of consideration Tater has ever witnessed. Kent is such a drama queen. It’s enticing and not a little bit hot. Tater really hopes he can get his hands on Kent by the end of the week.

Kent says, “Sure. Steakhouse is good. You’re paying.”

“Of course,” Tater agrees, overriding Snowy’s call of “Mooch!” behind him. The rest of the guys seem to take that as their cue to resume pulling off skates and jerseys at full volume. Tater speaks to Kent over the noise. “I’m shower and change, you wait?”

Kent snorts and flops back down into Tater’s spot on the bench. “Waited six damn months, didn’t I?”

Just adorable. “Yes, ptichka,” he says, and heads for the showers.

“Don’t think I won’t Google that!” Kent yells after him.

“Okay, ptichka!”

“You suck, Mashkov!”

“Swallow, too.”

Snowy cuts in, “God, both of you, shut up!”

Tater looks back over his shoulder, and catches sight of two things: Snowy’s green-faced glower, and Kent’s warm, smug grin.

Tater still doesn’t know what he’s going to do with Kent Parson now that he’s got him. But whatever happens, it most certainly won’t be dull.

#patater #alexei mashkov #kent parson #jack zimmermann #snowy #omgcp #fanfic #savvy writes #this is such crap

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pinkuboa · 7 years

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What is A Mary Sue?

Alright I keep seeing discourse on this in confessions the past week or so so let’s talk about the term “Mary Sue” and it’s brother “Marty/Gary Stu”. I’ve been on the internet reading bad fanfics for like 7 years at least so I’ll give you the low down on what it means to me when I use it.

There’s a lot of meanings to “Mary Sue (and Marty/Gary Stu) ”. A good portion of people say it means “Overpower character who everyone loves and has no flaws.” And they’re somewhat correct, but it’s a gross simplification. A Mary Sue is not just an overpowered character with a convoluted backstory. A Mary Sue is a story structure.

A Sue (a more gender neutral shortening) is the author’s spoiled child. Every character whom the audience is supposed to like loves the Sue, or eventually grows to love them. Every character the audience is supposed to hate dislikes the Sue, and is also probably satan. Not many other characters in the story get any sort of focus or development and usually have one dimensional personalities. Other characters aren’t characters, they’re plot devices that serve to either aid the Sue by giving them things the author wants the sue to have, whether it’s money, love, complements, the keys to the kingdom, or even a pony. If they’re evil, then they’re there to show how persecuted the Sue is, how tortured their soul is because of their tormentors, or because

A Sue never suffers long term consequences for their actions. They will either always pick the right choice. They kill someone who deserves it (and not a thought goes to the deceased one’s family or the family agrees with them), break the rules of wizarding school and not get in trouble, act like a huge jerk yet have tons of lovers and the respect of their superiors, eats a frickton of sweets in one setting without suffering the consequences, etc. Their flaws serve only to make them look cool. They’ll be moody broody jerks but the kind of moody broody jerk who makes cool quips and still has a posse of people who like them. They can have a self confidence problem but it only serves to make them look more humble. They can be painfully shy and overly polite but their shyness is why their love interest notices them and loves them over their terrible siblings. No flaw has consequences.

This isn’t limited to heroes either: they can kill a person or a whole bunch of people if they’re evil and never suffer anything because damn they’re too cool/smart/whatever to get caught (and you, the audience, are supposed to think so as well). Evil sues can also be redeemed easily, and everyone will be like “oh boy Mr./Ms./Dr. Sue! I instantly believe you’re not evil anymore!” and won’t go to jail or anything. Those who question the Sue’s loyalty are either proven wrong about their assumption and are won over easy or are someone the audience is supposed to hate.

A Sue has everything handed to them. They have this one unspecified quality to be the one true love to this incredibly hot and perfect character, they were born special due to a prophecy, they are discovered as the lost royalty and become rich and powerful, they just happen to be the best at what they do naturally and dammit the police chief can’t fire them for that.

A Sue doesn’t have a hard time doing anything. They can have a long drawn out fight sequence slaying a beast, or have a long drawn out talent show scene where they sing the most beautiful song in the world, but these serve to show how amazing the character is. They don’t really struggle through them, and there’s no conflict to be found. They’ll worry about them and be like “Oh no I look like a fool when I dance” but then their love interest is like “lol i got this” and then the two of them look great together dancing and show up everyone else there.

Since they don’t have any conflict in their lives aside from cardboard cutout villains (or equally Sue-ish villains), the story becomes booooriiiinnnng. That’s their biggest problem. Unless you’re buying into the idea of “I want all of this to happen to me!” and just want a mindless story, there’s no conflict or thought put into the story to keep it entertaining.

A Sue is a collection of various bad writing tropes tied together by author favoritism. The author’s love of the character turns the Sue character into a black hole, flattening every other possible interesting thing in the story. A good story focuses on making interesting stories with interesting worlds and characters that go into them, not the author binge-ing on a bunch of twinkies in written form (and they gotta have a cool fight scene! and live up to what I think is right and make fun of preps! and I want to be the best/ sweetest/ coolest/ smartest ever!) This is what separates a good Superman or Batman story from a bad one (Compare: The Long Halloween/any good Batman story and All Star Batman & Robin). It’s what separates most protagonist like Frodo from Lord of the Rings & Alice from Alice in Wonderland from Eragon & Bella Swan from Twilight.

There’s nothing wrong with writing a Mary or Marty Sue (Or Sue) when you start out. Your first 10 stories could all be 200000 word Sue stories, and that’s ok - you’re learning how to write! It’s all good. Over time, you should gradually grow to be a better writer and naturally shed Sue in favor of making characters people, making interesting plots with fleshed out conflicts, and worlds that feel like characters actually live in them. They’re not something you should worry about in the long run, unless you’re trying to pass them off as good writing.

The meaning above got lost when Shippers started co-opting the term to mean “Any woman who gets in the way of their beautiful Yaoi ship” (I saw someone call Sakura from Naruto a Mary Sue - what????), and people started using it as a term for “badly written character”, or “way overpowered character,” and even “OC I don’t like”. Tv Tropes discusses the various meanings of Mary Sue/Marty Stu/Sues, and has a little page on the story structure thing I talked about above.

So I don’t know how you guys interpret Mary Sue, but whenever I talk about them, I mean this.

#argue with me until the cows come home if you like #mary sues #writing #mary sue #marty stu #gary stu #sues #rpg maker #long post

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dearophelia · 7 years

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some episodes in particular:

- “Watergate” (dear gOD watergate; “hope you’re not expecting any heroic measures” “I’ve read your file” we have known Svetlana for fifteen seconds and she has firmly seated herself as Snark Goddess; “holy frozen bad guys” (of course it’s Maybourne, and I have seen this episode like six times and can never remember why he’s there but of course he’s there); “so it keeps perfect time but occasionally catches on fire” and honestly the whole thing about the sub being swiss; Svetlana having Emotions and getting to show them, Sam’s hand on her shoulder like Science Friends Stick Together)

- “Failsafe” (jesus lord almighty what did we to do deserve this episode we are unworthy; “i’m confident” “me too” “as am i”; “I’ve seen this movie, it hits Paris”; Jack gearing up to say something Meaningful as they’re all about to die but actually saying that it’s a poorly-designed bomb and they should talk to someone about that; everyone just being accustomed to the fact that everything goes wrong but hoping it won’t anyway; “is there a four?“; Sam’s face when Jack tells her all the wires are yellow; “if I have to say ‘what’ one more time”; this episode is a masterclass in making the foregone conclusion of Saving The Day interesting, honestly; “Carter, I can see my house”; tbh I could write a novel about how great failsafe is)

- “Nightwalkers” (this episode is so stupid I love it I love it; Sam having to keep track of two aliens who are both So Obvious; Jonas and his eating habits like dude is Righteous about the cook screwing up his hamburger and #same; “do people think I’m weird” “let’s get some lunch”; Sam’s gloriously drawn out “ohhhhhhh I wouldn’t say that” at the Reveal, like even the zat sounds exasperated; speaking of Sam she spends like 98% of this episode in civvies and it is very *fans self* like THAT TRENCHCOAT MAN THAT TRENCHCOAT AND LEATHER GLOVES AS SHE’S PICKING A LOCK)

- “Point of No Return” (it’s Teal'c in a fedora, i don’t know what else you want me to say; and then, after like 40 minutes of straight comedy, we get hit with Marty’s homeworld being total rubble and EVERYTHING HURTS IN THE LAST TWO MINUTES THIS EPISODE IS SO RUDE)

- “Red Sky” (“we have never before been visited by elves”; Jack sassing the Asgard High Council; the whole bit with Sam trying to explain physics with fruit, and Daniel asks if she’s mixing apples and you know; I Am Freyr; Sam just casually asking to borrow a missile; actual stakes and actual failure for once in this franchise)

- “Summit” & “Last Stand” (okay LEGIT FAVORITE TWO-PARTER; “Daniel Jackson, you’re a very long way from home” like can we talk about her delivery and the utter, bone-deep primal dread; all of the system lords (including all the ladies we should’ve had more of but that’s another post); the introduction of Ba'al; fuck fuck Anubis oh fuck we’re doomed; there’s DVD commentary somewhere about how Anubis starches his robes and i can never unthink that; also Jacob being crotchety, more so than usual on account of Daniel not doing his damn job)

- “Descent” (also a largely stupid episode that I love to pieces; “next time when we crash our brand new mothership, let’s crash it somewhere tropical” “actually at this depth all water would be this cold” “shallower water then”; Dad Feelings (shoutout to my phone for the autocorrect on the caps there) with Jacob; Jonas and I think this is the one with the banana and the alien conspiracy? it’s been a while)

- “The Other Guys” (CINEMATIC FUCKING MASTERPIECE; literally all of this episode, all of it; Teal'c counting how many times they’ve saved the world (eight); “look everyone, he’s got COOMBS with him”; the epitome of the Jonas Being Happy At Firsts joke when he’s smiling at it being his first time captured; just all of this episode)

- “Space Race” (I LOVE STUPID RACING EPISODES OKAY love them; Sam showing up in motorcycle gear; Sam’s literal puppy dog eyes when it turns out she might get to fly a spaceship in a fucking space race; “how many times have i told you, don’t get caught by the bad guys” and more importantly his little we have been over this gesture)

- “Evolution 1 & 2” (two lines no waiting; how to do complex backstory in three easy minutes while not dropping the action; somehow this episode makes zombie guerilla soldiers not ridiculous; the Oh Fuck Oh Fuck of seeing the mass of kull warriors; the guy’s name is Thoth and ATapps goes on for like half a minute in the DVD commentary and can’t stop laughing at how funny Thoth is to say)

- “Window of Opportunity” (Daniel, just Daniel in all of this; “maybe he read your report” and that major look of disbelief, dude took a double dose of sass pills this morning; golf pants are hilarious; “lose it. go crazy, nuts, insane, bonzo, no longer in possession of one’s faculties, three fries short of a happy meal, WACKO”; the whole recurring joke of “bad example”; Teal'c with the thermometer; and then, like, suddenly shit gets very real with Malikai’s wife and Jack’s son)

outside of seasons 4-7 most of my influence is the god of “I did not sign up for - oh wait, shit, I did”, Cameron Mitchell

* “woah, woah dude, bullets bounce”

* the way he casually gives ~~legally-required~~ fine print to the prior about the thermonuclear bomb in front of him "sir are you aware that you are within ten kilometers of this device”

* “go for the stomach, that’s where dragons are weakest” please explain how you know the weak points of dragons, shaft

* begging Sam to come back with “what if I need you to fix it because I screwed it up”

* complaining that the prior doesn’t have a good pie crust recipe

* teasing a sleeping Daniel with what I think is a straightened out paper clip

* him and Sam in “Arthur’s Mantle” poking each other to see if the other’s really there

* actually, literally any and all Sam+Cam interactions ever; bffs forever, I love them; they are legit a thesis on how to drop a years-old friendship into the middle of an existing canon

* any time he gets into a sword fight, which is more often than you’d think for a sci-fi show

tl;dr everything I know about writing I learned from Stargate

#oph texts #I LOVE THIS GODDAMN SHOW #fun fact: ''the other guys'' is the episode liv stumbles on a few weeks after she and her mom get to the citadel post-mindoir #t:stargate #find this post again

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martywurst · 7 years

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YEAR 2: The Worst Comedian (Part 2)

I had an encounter with former Comedy Store talent coordinator, Tommy, who was fired just months prior and was working on developing another home base where he could still play comedy godfather. The Vaucluse Lounge was a mere two blocks away from the Comedy Store and now Tommy was recruiting comics that were still loyal to him and putting on shows. They were calling this place Chaplin's House, but I don't think there was anything historic about it.

It really was an impressive bar/lounge, but management was falling apart. It was a ghost town. I ordered their onion rings and got a pile of American cheese on a couple of turd circles (psst, I'm not really a writer). I ordered something disgusting and got so much more.

"Ooh, that looks good, I'm gonna get that!" one comic said, pinching and stretching some cheese off my plate.

A couple of nights the place was locked up unannounced, black curtains drawn, even though a show was supposed to be going on. Headliners were bailing before their sets.

There were a couple of open mics going on there, too. Tommy would play some acoustic guitar for 30 minutes to get the room warmed up. He played the same three songs over and over. Or maybe it was just the same three chords, I can't remember. He was like one of those dudes that destroy a party by forcing us to listen to a cover of Hotel California. Strictly Hollywood Blvd quality. Then he would hang out for the mic and occasionally give advice to some lucky comic.

After one of my sets, he was suddenly next to me, talking into my ear like David Blaine.

"There's something that's still missing, but I don't know what it is."

"I'm not connecting with the audience?" I asked.

"There was just something missing. Try sitting on a stool and just saying your material, so it's not so (in-your-face gesture) forced. Your material is good, it had an intelligence and you have a good look. It's not about how you look on stage, it's about how you look on camera....really. But I think you just need to say what you have to say- I took it in. You'll get there, I enjoyed it."

Then he patted me on the shoulder and walked away.

Maybe if I worked hard enough I could become a Vaucluse regular! I honestly thought it was cool to get advice from Tommy, despite him being a reputed racist douchebag. I mean, he was once the apprentice of The Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore, so his opinion has to count for something, right? A racist's opinion is still an opinion. Plus, he really wailed on the guitar!

One night at Vaucluse I waited around for 2 hours to do a 10 minute set. That's actually a good set for that kind of wait, but this night was excruciating. There was a line-up of all male comics that had plenty to say about the opposite sex: Stories varied from "This bitch was sucking my dick," to "I wanted to give her brown eye a black eye!" and so forth. I remember hearing the bartender making pained noises behind the counter, like some victim of a stabbing. left for dead. She had to just stand there and take it...every worthless comedian. Worst of all, EVERYONE got 10 minutes. When the first 30 seconds are torture, the next 9 1/2 feel like a lifetime. When they finally got to me the host said,

"Uhh, you get 2 minutes."

I've never been that pissed at an open mic before. Mother...FUCKER. They were letting the worst people host, nothing ever started on time, the food was godawful, the bartender wanted to kill herself, and no one seemed to give a shit that the place was falling apart. I was mentally trying to stay positive and tune out all the negative shit I'd been listening to, but now I wanted to douse myself in gasoline and tackle the host into the fireplace--that would be such a great closer. My stomach was turning from the onion rings, so I opted for my shitty set instead.

But hey, it's 2 minutes so I did it. I got through a joke-and-a-half. Once I left, I cursed and muttered angrily all the way to the bus, letting the "cocksuckers" and "motherfuckers" fly.

I went home and looked at their Facebook page and saw this ridiculous post,

"Chaplin's House is being called the New Comedy Store...no joke."

Nobody's laughing.

Anyway, that place folded and Tommy moved on to another space where he still occasionally gives out his comedy pointers.

Also in my second year I was doing fewer bringer shows, but I still got roped into a couple more at Flappers. I would quickly get stressed out again and moan to my girlfriend about why I put myself through this. Just reading the emails made me want to puke:

Respond to this email with a head count of how many audience you expect so that we can properly staff the room.

It takes everyone involved to have epic shows--we do ask everyone to always aim to have at least 5 people per show. If you are unable to get anyone out please let us know and we will re-schedule you for a date that is more convenient for you to support.

Like I said before, they only want me back when I make some fucking friends!

I decided to not show up at all and go to the Rebel Bite open mic in Long Beach instead. An open mic at a pizza joint was better than doing a bringer show, at least in my head. I wrote back:

Sorry for the delay, I wanted to get a more accurate count of zero confirmed. I think my friends tapped out months ago. Let me know if you want to reschedule or give me the boot. Or I'll audition again once I have a little fanbase I can depend on instead of wasting everybody's time. Nothing personal. Thanks.

I shouldn't have felt bad about it anyway, since I bought 4 of my videotaped sets from them.

Then there was the Formosa Cafe. I did it because I was told it wasn't REALLY a bringer show...just sort of. Uggh. I won't mention the names. I can still hear the producer pretending to laugh at other people's sets--so forced and obvious, trying to get the crowd on our side. He'd be looking down at his phone and let out a

"BWAHAHAHAHA!"

Then I'd have to listen to some jerk-off host do his Family Guy impressions for 15 minutes. Then the producer would go up and do the most dated material--many of these bringer show people stick to their one routine. Anyway, what do I know, they're the ones cashing in, right?

I had friends show up for my first and second show, then the third time none of my friends came out and the producer stopped booking me. During past shows, he was blowing smoke up my ass and said all these nice things about my particular brand of humor, but he was only thinking about the head-count. He was a phony just like his forced laughter.

There were some nice moments. My blues buddy, Street Slim invited me to do a set at The Rainbow Bar and Grill, a really cool rock bar on The Sunset Strip. Just to do something outside the ring of comedians that I was usually bumping heads with felt really special.

My friend Donald and I rented out a black box theater and produced a variety show. It ran 2 1/2 hours and half the audience left, but we had a great time.

I co-produced a comedy show with Jeanne Whitney and Timika Hall at Echoes Under Sunset. We only did 3 shows, but it was a fantastic experience.

I remember bombing at the new UCB on Sunset and when I was walking back to the car, a couple I've never seen before starts yelling at me from their car.

"Marty, you were funny!"

"What?"

"We were inside."

"Really? Thanks, it felt like death in there."

"We thought you were funny."

"Working on it, working on it."

That blew my mind. Who does that? And they remembered my name!

One time they moved a Comedy Store open mic into the Main Room and after we finished our sets, Bill Burr dropped in and did 15 minutes to an all-comic crowd. It was awesome.

Another time I was waiting around for Tony Bartolone's Hat Show to start and the great Rick Shapiro was outside with Rick Wood and Jeremy Bassett. Shapiro was making fun of the Oldtown Pasadena scene and he suddenly gets a glimmer in his eye and this evil grin,

"Let's go to the Mac Store and jerk off!"

It was said with such demented glee. Later we went to get him some Starbucks and he told the barista that his name was Johnny Two Chicks. He was so excited to hear the name called out, but it didn't get the reaction he wanted.

Then there was the time that I was waiting in the green room for another possible Kill Tony episode at the Comedy Store. Dom Irrera comes in and sits down across from me. It's silent, it's uncomfortable, the guy is amazing, so I'm a little in awe. He asks me if I'm a comic and how long I've been doing it. Very friendly, but I just gave him short answers. Meanwhile, Pat Regan was on stage singing about how much he misses getting jacked off in San Francisco, and Dom and I are just sitting there while this song is in the background. Dom turns to me completely serious and says,

"This song brings back a lot of memories." I barked out a laugh.

I started making goofy set-lists and posting them online. Just a good way to vent about the shit I'd seen at open mics during the week. Here are a few of my favorites:

The usual variety of homophobic/misogynistic shit I'd hear on any given week.

My second Kill Tony appearance went a little better, but only because I managed to get a few laughs. It was a unique situation because I brought my buddy Dakota Freeman with me, but he was under 21 and wouldn't be allowed inside the club unless he was called up to perform. So I stood outside with him, listening through the door every few minutes to see if we'd get called.

About 30 minutes into the show I got called, but I couldn't open the door from the outside. For a second, the hosts thought I had flaked, but a couple of my friends were in the audience, telling them I was behind the door because I was with a minor. They opened the door for me and at this point there was some confusion because the hosts were under the impression that I was the one underage. Then when it was cleared up Tony says,

"Oh, you're hanging out with underage boys. Ok!"

Before I've even started my set, another pedophile joke had been spiked over my head. You can probably see where this is going.

I didn't gain any Twitter followers this time--in fact, I think I lost a couple. They probably thought I was really a pedophile.

Gradually, I found some open mics down in Long Beach, where I had moved in with my girlfriend. There was the SOM open mic at the Rebel Bite pizzeria, The Library Coffeehouse, Blacklight District Lounge and Makai Coffee.

Now if I wasn't feeling the LA scene that week, I had the option to hit some mics in my neighborhood. Rebel Bite, Makai, and The Library were just a mile away. Long Beach was also calmer. I could do longer sets- I did my first 15 minute set at Rebel Bite. I met some nice people. It's funny how these two coffee shops were the polar opposite in terms of an audience--take a look below.

I was also hearing some positive feedback for a change. Sometimes my conceptual ideas would play well and even if they didn't, I'd still be writing the kind of stuff I wanted to try. The support I was getting from my new friends gave me the confidence to try bigger ideas. Showing up to mics and finally having a group of friends to talk to was a nice break. I was so used to being the creeper that was eavesdropping outside a circle of comedy nerds or asking Dean Delray stupid questions in the Comedy Store hallway. Complimenting comics on their podcasts, or a joke that I liked, thinking I always had to go in with a compliment or they'd hate my guts. Then I would fuck up their name anyway, which made the compliment null and void.

I'm still learning to relax, but I'm usually amped up whenever I'm in Los Angeles. I feel the cutthroat competition and that air of judgement. Mostly because I'm carrying it around with me--turn that shit off Wurst, these are your friends! I don't have to prove anything to these comics, we're all showing up to the same mic. Charles Disney was just saying how we ask questions that we want to be asked in return,

"You got any cool gigs coming up? No? NOW ASK ME IF I HAVE ANY COOL GIGS! THANK YOU, I DO! SLEEPAWAY CAMP BABY-MARGARET CHO HEADLINING! ENJOY YOUR SHOW AT P.F. CHANG'S, YA ASIAN FUSION COMIC! "

There's usually 4-5 standard questions (How you doing, got anything coming up, you hitting another mic after this, you ever go to Marty's?) and if there's no conversation beyond that, we're not really friends. It's just surface level pleasantries for insecure comics.

Then there are just genuinely great dudes like Spencer Kalendar, who's never putting on airs and makes me feel like I can just be myself. I think the very first thing he said to me was,

"I remember you from Kill Tony, you're the pedophile guy!"

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robbieinterviews · 5 years

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“Margot Robbie, Australia’s Newest Movie Goddess”, 2014

Margot Robbie was so outrageously seductive as *The Wolf of Wall Street’*s trophy wife, Naomi (a role that earned her an Empire Award in March), that she managed to exceed the script’s hyperbolic requirement that she personify “the hottest blonde ever.” When she makes her sizzling entrance at a Hamptons bacchanal, one prurient male declares, “I’d fuck that girl if she was my sister!” Another breaks down on the spot and masturbates. Richard Curtis compares the Australian siren—who played an unattainable dream girl in his 2013 romantic comedy, About Time—to that other screen goddess Grace Kelly. And this summer Robbie is taking on the role of the ultimate irresistible Ur-female, Jane (opposite Alexander Skarsgård), when David Yates’s Tarzan begins filming in London. Martin Scorsese’s casting director, Ellen Lewis, who first brought Robbie to the master’s attention, said, “As beautiful as she is, that’s how talented she is.”

The 24-year-old actress is slightly baffled by all the over-the-top admiration. “In my big group of girlfriends at home,” Robbie insists, “I am definitely not the best-looking. I did not grow up feeling like I was particularly attractive. You should have seen me at 14, with braces and glasses, gangly and doing ballet! If I looked good in Wolf of Wall Street I cannot take full credit; it was because of hair extensions and makeup.” Robbie even downplays her seemingly innate gift for acting, which, she says, did not always bring her topmost accolades when she was growing up in the Curumbin Valley, on the Gold Coast of Australia, about an hour from Brisbane. “My school was very academic. I was up there in English. I could have done law and a number of other things. But I was only second in my year for drama.”

Even so, she had a pretty clear idea of where she was headed. Since childhood she had amused herself and her family (she’s the third of four siblings) by memorizing the films they watched on the household VCR. “My family had nothing to do with the entertainment industry. We had farming on both sides. My mother’s family raised grains and crops. My father’s grew sugarcane and mangos. So I knew more about the basics of farming than of acting. But my background was really helpful when I was shooting Z for Zachariah”—a post-apocalyptic drama to be released in 2015. “I already knew how to drive a tractor and milk cows.” The movie, for which Robbie became a brunette, co-stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, who says, “Whilst she is truly very, very funny and enormously vibrant, Margot takes the ‘doing of it’ very seriously.”

By the age of 10, Robbie was earning her own wages—polishing cutlery at a restaurant and then advancing to “chopping vegetables and waitressing.” During her last year of high school, she worked as a housecleaner. “I’ve worked three jobs at a time. I worked in a pharmacy, an office, at a warehouse, did catering. I was always trying to save up money.”

Robbie’s resourcefulness served her well when, at 17, she moved to Melbourne without professional prospects. “I was sleeping on a mattress in a shitty apartment,” she recalls. Her boyfriend at the time, a university student, worked as “a pizza boy.” Her favorite job during her early Melbourne days was as a sandwich-maker at Subway. “I was really good at it! I make a mean Subway. The trick is to spread everything evenly out and cut it so well that there is never a bad bite.” A few months into her Melbourne adventure, she announced to her Subway colleagues that she was quitting because she had landed a part on the TV series Neighbours—after cold-calling the show’s production company. Six months later, Subway hired Robbie for a commercial, and, she said, “I got paid like 20 times the amount I ever earned there.”

Neighbours—a beloved nighttime soap, running in Australia since 1985—had long been a breeding ground for the country’s breakout stars, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kylie Minogue among them. Robbie’s guest stint as bitchy bisexual Donna Freedman quickly evolved into a regular role. “Neighbours was my initiation into the industry,” Robbie says. “It’s definitely the hardest job I’ve ever had; it was boot camp. I spent so long on it. I survived three years.”

During her Neighbours tenure, she received two nominations for a Logie, the Australian equivalent of an Emmy. But Robbie had set her sights higher and farther. “I was carefully setting things up,” she said. Robbie enrolled in acting classes, concentrating on dialect coaching in order to perfect her American accent for the next move she planned, to Hollywood. She traded in a “dodgy” agent for one with Hollywood connections and thriftily held on to her earnings. “I saved up enough to get me through three years unemployed,” she says. A Neighbours co-star, Jackie Woodbyrne, has said, “It wasn’t a matter of if she would become successful, but when.”

“People ask me all the time what it is about Australia that produces so many big stars,” Robbie says. “Honestly, I believe it is a combination of things. Our education standards are quite high, but our industry is very limited. Yet we’re very aware of the industry—everyone goes to the theater, sees TV shows. The logical step is to make a move to America—America is getting the best of the best of us. You don’t leave Australia unless you are passionate. Any Australian actor who comes to America is really committed. There are no dabblers—it’s all or nothing. If you’ve worked in Australia you can’t get away with bad behavior, like showing up late. We take our work ethic seriously. So maybe that’s why we have a good reputation.”

As soon as Robbie’s Neighbours contract ended, she was on a plane to Los Angeles. She had timed her January 2011 arrival strategically, so it coincided with winter auditions for television pilots. By springtime, she had landed a role as the stewardess Laura Cameron on Pan Am, the ABC period drama starring Christina Ricci. A kind of Mad Men of the skies, the series fared better internationally than domestically and was canceled in 2012.

Robbie’s Pan Am character was a runaway bride, who, she says, “fell in love with a black guy.” In both Z for Zachariah and Focus (a romantic-comedy caper set to open in February 2015), Robbie plays opposite an older, Oscar-nominated black actor—Ejiofor and Will Smith, respectively. “Will and I spoke about this,” she says. “It’s 2014—and we’re one of the few inter-racial couples you’ll see in a mainstream film! We’re breaking that mold!” Last November a tabloid published shots of the pair clowning around in a photo booth while filming Focus in New Orleans. Smith was bare-chested and Robbie was lifting her top above her bra. She tweeted at the time, “Been working nonstop, just catching my breath. There’s absolutely no truth to the ridiculous rumor in Star mag . . . ” Robbie says today, “Everyone wants to link me up, make it seem like I have a thrilling love life. They tried to say Leo and I were a couple, too. Ideally, I’d want people to know nothing about my personal life. The truth is my love life is very dull. I’m in love with my job.” She does allow that she and her old Melbourne flame, the erstwhile pizza boy Jake Williams, are no longer together. He went on to co-found the Internet start-up Spotjobs, an Australian employment Web site. “We both went separate ways to pursue careers,” Robbie notes, “and went above and beyond what we wanted to achieve.”

Beore Pan Am was canceled, Robbie sent an audition tape to Ellen Lewis, Martin Scorsese’s casting director, without any real expectation of a response. The Wolf script had gone out to scores of hopefuls, she initially felt little sympathy for the gold-digger character, and she was ambivalent about the requisite nude scenes. Robbie had perhaps one edge over the competition: she had nailed Naomi’s salt-of-the-earth, outer-borough accent. For inspiration, she had drawn upon “my best friend from New York—a chef who grew up in Queens.” Robbie also channeled a woman from “the props department of Pan Am,” which had been shot at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “These women have huge personalities,” Robbie says. “Nothing like what we have in Australia.”

Back in 2009, during the Neighbours era, an Australian journalist asked the then 18-year-old novice what actors she would most like to meet. High on her list was Leonardo DiCaprio. Remarkably, within four years Robbie was in New York auditioning in person for DiCaprio and Scorsese, doing her very best to keep up with the actor’s “daunting” off-script improvisations and make sense of the indecipherable exchanges between the two men. Riffing on a scene in which an exasperated Naomi argues with DiCaprio’s priapic con man, Jordan Belfort, Robbie suddenly reached out and slapped the star. “We were stunned,” Scorsese recalled, “because she was as surprised as we were. But when she made that move, she claimed Naomi.” As for DiCaprio, he apparently told Robbie, “That was brilliant. Hit me in the face again!”

Under the two pros’ influence, Robbie re-discovered her knack for improvisation, unexplored since high school. Some of *Wolf’*s more memorable bits were, in fact, Robbie’s off-the-cuff contributions. She improvised, for example, the lines (both of which reverse the couple’s power dynamic) “We’re not going to be friends” and “ ‘Who?’ What are you, a fucking owl?” For the notorious nursery scene, it was Robbie’s idea to push her patent-leather stiletto into a groveling DiCaprio’s face. And it was she who boldly suggested that the dominatrix Venice should insert a lit candle between DiCaprio’s buttocks, to follow more closely the debauched autobiographical source material.

Robbie says, “Nobody else compares to Marty. I still pinch myself that I worked with this director who has been a pillar for decades and decades. I can’t believe it! It was one of the best times in my life! I’d sit down and have lunch on the set and think to myself, I’m getting paid to do this! It was insane! Pure insanity!”

Robbie—the latest mantle-bearer in a long line of extraordinary Scorsese temptresses that includes *Taxi Driver’*s Cybill Shepherd, *Raging Bull’*s Cathy Moriarty, and *Casino’*s Sharon Stone—can easily envision a future beyond Wolf. “I’m not an overnight sensation,” she says. Other upcoming films include A Bigger Splash, inspired by Jacques Deray’s La Piscine, with Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes, and an adaptation of the World War II–era novel Suite Française, with Michelle Williams and Kristin Scott Thomas. Robbie, meanwhile, would rather not return to television, for the simple reason that she doesn’t like “playing one role for a long time—I’d rather do many characters for short periods intensely.”

For now the actress has no problem turning down lucrative offers. “I will never sell my soul for a paycheck,” Robbie says. “I don’t need the money because I’m not extravagant. I share my house in London with five roommates. I take the Tube—it’s free entertainment! I intend to stay the exact same person I always was; my family and friends keep me grounded.”

Robbie’s perspective may be unusually long for an actress her age. But then the outdoorsy Australian has some experience seeing vistas from great heights. “For my 18th and 19th birthdays I went skydiving,” she says. “I wanted that to become an annual tradition. But instead I’ve been working on my birthdays.” This year proved to be no exception—she was on the set of Tarzan. And that, she’s decided, is exactly the way she likes it. “The set is still my favorite place to be. I just don’t ever want the novelty to wear off.”

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avanneman · 6 years

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American Catholics and American Jews are not happy campers. And neither, it seems, are America’s evangelicals

This conversation didn’t happen, but it could have:

Monseigneur Vivaldi: “Have you read that Pennsylvania grand jury report? Over three hundred priests accused of sex abuse! We’ve hit rock bottom! It can’t get any worse than this!”

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: “Hold my beer.”

Yes, Viganò’s now notorious letter is rockin’ the church in ways that it hasn’t rocked for centuries—that is to say, in public.

The American press, which consistently applies a “see no evil” approach to reporting on the papacy, responded to the once in a millennium news of Pope Benedict’s resignation with a “Gee, I never saw that coming” shrug, as if a champion athlete retired at age 35 instead of hanging around to the ripe old age of 38.

Underneath and within the Catholic Church itself, of course, there was an immense amount of subterranean grinding—the socio-cultural equivalent of the San Andreas Fault processing a volcanic eruption on the other side of the world. Pope Francis was greeted with open arms, outwardly—“We have a pope! We have a pope!” along with lots of talk about the canonization of John Paul II, because what’s more Catholic than a canonization, and what better way to take people’s minds off their troubles?

Well, wiseguy secularized atheists like myself were not paying much attention, but a lot of Catholics were paying attention, and the more they got to know Pope Francis, the less they liked him. Earlier this year, Ross Douthat published To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism, coming pretty close to accusing the vicar of Christ of being, well, the Anti-Christ.

“This is a book about the most important religious story of our time: the fate of the world’s largest religious institution under a pope who believes that Catholicism can change in ways that his predecessors rejected, and who faces resistance from Catholics who believe the changes he seeks risk breaking faith with Jesus Christ.”

Ross in his wrath rather reminded me of one of Melville’s Polynesians, who erects a wooden statue to pray to, earnestly seeks its blessing, and then when the god fails to come through, knocks it off its perch and gives it a few solid kicks. Ross, if God allows a bad man to become Pope, maybe there isn’t one! (God, I mean.)1

Well, Ross in his wrath was surprising enough, but the Archbishop’s assault is more than any mere Protestant could have predicted.2 Viganò’s announced goal of forcing Pope Frederick’s resignation would mean two resignations in a row. Is that any way to run the Church?

I don’t think so. I think a Catholic Church that forces the resignations of two popes in a row is not the Catholic Church. It’s something else. I’ve felt for a long time that the “European” Catholic Church in the U.S. will shrivel and the American Catholic Church will become exclusively a Latin institution. The Irish and the Italians, who have sustained the American Catholic Church throughout the twentieth century, will find they have more in common with their secularized Protestant neighbors than with the Hispanic hierarchy that is starting to emerge. However brightly the current fires blaze—and they’re certainly going to blaze brightly indeed—I think the future is already set.

Okay, that takes care of the Catholics. What about the Jews? My thinking about the Jews springs from a single article in the New York Times, “The West Bank Model Is a Failure”, a remarkably even-handed—and all the more damning for being so—account of all the faults of Israeli domestic policies as they affect Palestinians living on the West Bank. What makes this article remarkable is that it was written by Marty Peretz.

Ninety-nine percent of the American people have no idea who Marty Peretz is,3 but for the one percent who do, Marty’s name is definitely one to conjure with. For decades, Marty was the owner-publisher of the New Republic, perhaps the most famous intellectual journal in the U.S. During Marty’s long tenure, the New Republic functioned as the premiere organ of liberal neocon opinion, working against the New Left and all its works. Marty’s well-heeled arrogance and favoritism (he married an heiress but seemed to have an eye for stunning young lads) alienated everyone who didn’t make the A team.

Marty was, naturally, a vociferous supporter of the invasion of Iraq, and the multiple disasters that sprang from that corrupt enterprise helped destroy his influence among the younger generation of chin-strokers. The New Republic changed hands in 2010 and Peretz, as far as I could tell, lapsed into silence. But now he’s back, and talking about Israel as he’s never talked before. And if Israel has lost Marty, it��s lost all of American Jewry west of Orthodoxy.

The Times has published a number of articles in the past few years by American Jews deploring the ever rightward shift of Israeli policy in both religious and political affairs, leaving most American Jews feeling more and more left out. It was no secret that devotion to Israel was, in effect, a secular religion for many Jews. Now that mainstay is fading, even as the level of intermarriage of non-Orthodox Jews and non-Jews has reached 71%. Many Jews, I think, used to believe that “assimilation” was so far from being even remotely possible, however “assimilated” they might appear and behave, something so airy and light as to be a mere shadow's shadow, not worth even a moment's worry and thought. And now it seems to have happened, perhaps a decade back, while no one was looking.

But wait, there’s more bad news for the Jews: the lawsuit challenging Harvard with discriminating against Asians. However the particulars of that suit are settled, it’s a very good bet that the percentage of Asians at the Ivies is going to increase. It’s also a very good bet that the Ivies will be very, very reluctant to let the admission rates for blacks and Hispanics fall below their shares in the national population. Which means that something else will have to give, and that something else will very likely be the massive overrepresentation of Jews in those schools.

Six years ago, Ron Unz published a long study in the American Conservative, “The Myth of American Meritocracy”, accusing the Ivies of discriminating in favor of Jewish applicants and to the disadvantage of Asians. (As a Jewish graduate of Harvard, Unz was fairly well inoculated against charges of favoritism.) According to Unz’s article, about 25% of undergraduate students in the Ivies were Jewish, even though Jews constitute only about 2% of the total U.S. population. Asians constitute perhaps 5.6% of the population. In coming years, we’re likely to see the Asians take over as the “brains” of America. This will be softened by extensive intermarriage, but it will be noticeable. Without Harvard or Israel, where will America’s Jews turn?4

The real support for Israel among American voters, it seems, will rest almost entirely with the Evangelicals, who have their own troubles, #MeToo, of course, but even worse is the split caused by Donald Trump, who is giving the evangelicals more than anyone ever gave them, for a very ugly price. As a convinced secularist who does not believe any supernatural value system can ultimately sustain itself,5 I think it likely that “conscience evangelicals”, who have the stomach to see Trump as he is, will inevitably find themselves drawn away from religion towards secular liberalism, and the “true believers” who remain will grow inevitably more corrupt.

It isn’t emphasized enough how much the wrath of the Moral Majority and the other politicized evangelical groups that emerged in the 1970s was prompted by the ever-increasing efforts of the federal government to enforce the desegregation of southern schools, particularly the decision in the Carter Administration by the IRS to deny tax-exempt status to de facto segregated private schools, something Ronald Reagan promised to undo. Once Reagan was elected, one of the favorite causes of evangelicals was maintenance of good relations with our anti-communist and pro-apartheid pals in South Africa.6 While the moral fervor of many evangelicals was, and is, impressive, and touching, the intellectual substance of the faith has always been painfully thin. True believers had best prepared for a bumpy ride.

Only a month or two before the latest wave of revelations of sex abuse in the Church began to break, Ross, perhaps a little swept away by a “fabulous” Catholic-themed Metropolitan Museum of Art gala, sighed “Make Catholicism Weird Again”. I wonder if he’s still longing for the incense and bells. ↩︎

I am by background a secularized Protestant, but I’ve never believed in God and have never regretted it. Passionate atheists who “hate” religion bore me, but believers are likely to bore me even more. ↩︎

Word can’t even spell his name, which must pain Marty just a little, for he certainly fancied himself an important man. ↩︎

I believe it was Marty Peretz (or perhaps Irving Kristol or Norman Podhoretz) who “shocked” Gore Vidal by dismissing the American Civil War as “ancient history”. Asians will certainly have their own perspective. ↩︎

This doesn’t mean that Islam is going to resolve itself into a dew any time soon. A century from now, there will probably as many Muslims as there is now. ↩︎

Reagan was not pro-segregation, but he was very much pro-segregationist. He hated the American civil rights movement and had to be talked out of his instinctive support for the white supremacists in South Africa, who were, of course, anti-communist, which for Reagan the only thing that really counted. It’s to Reagan’s credit that he let himself be talked out of supporting apartheid, but far more to the credit of those who talked him out of it. ↩︎

#Catholic Church #American Jews #Marty Peretz #evangelicals

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junker-town · 7 years

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Forget San Diego and L.A., these are the StubHub Chargers

The Chargers, stuck between the city they left and a city that doesn’t want them, are finally where they should be.

T11n pronounces his name “Twin,” because he is a twin, and that’s an important part of his identity. It also means that there could conceivably be two large diehard Chargers fans barreling through this impromptu dance floor setup in the StubHub Center parking lot (and there are space considerations). He’s part of We Charge LA, one of Los Angeles’ largest Chargers fan groups, established long before the team moved. The Chargers may have an identity crisis, but T11n’s got an answer for that.

“Southern California, Boy,” he tells me. “Make sure you use that slogan, kid.” T11n explains what he means by doing some call-and-response with a nearby fan.

“What do we rep? 619, right?”

619 baby, one hundred.

“I'm 323, right?”

Yeah, that's all day.

“So what is it? Southern California. Southern California dog. Fuck LA Chargers. Fuck San Diego Chargers. Southern California Chargers, that's what the fuck the team name should be.”

A row of tailgates called Thunder Alley has fans from all over Southern California, many from San Diego, and it feels like a block party. But Thunder Alley used to be much bigger, according to Jeff Dotseth, a former pre- and post-game host on the Chargers’ flagship network. “Even on the worst days in San Diego, tailgate city would be six of these, and now it's one.”

Relocation has been costly to the fanbase. Shawn Walchef, a barbecue restaurant owner in San Diego, was near the forefront of the Save Our Bolts movement to keep the team. Most of the people who had joined him then have moved on now that the team is in L.A.

“Maybe 20 percent remains of the Save Our Bolts group. And that's pretty much the fanbase, too,” Walchef says. “I have friends, they're no longer Chargers fans. They gave me their shit. We're a Charger bar, we have Charger gear, memorabilia. People are like, 'Well, aren't you going to take down all your Charger gear?' Absolutely not.”

Walchef and Dotseth both commute up from San Diego to see the team. Walchef is a diehard among diehards — he was inducted into the Pro Football Ultimate Fan Association this year. They’re part of the winnowed but rock-solid core that still believes in the Chargers despite so many good reasons not to. The Chargers left San Diego with a whimper after accepting a deal that left neither fans, nor players, nor ownership completely happy. Walchef’s estimation is consistent: Every person I speak to says that somewhere between 70-80 percent of San Diego fans no longer support the team. The organization, meanwhile, arrived in L.A. to apathy and almost no fanfare after the Rams beat them to the market.

In many ways, the Chargers deserve this. They’ve had to strain to fill the StubHub Center, their 27,000-seat temporary home, which normally serves as the home to the MLS franchise LA Galaxy. It’s the very picture of the Chargers’ decades of uneven success and the tense relationship between fans and ownership. They are a cheap ticket in a small venue that is maybe 85 percent full and half-filled — at least — with fans of the other team.

For a team that’s no longer San Diego and not yet Los Angeles, these can’t be the Southern California Chargers, all due respect to T11n. These are the StubHub Chargers, a team borne by the players and the fans who stayed, and only them, in this space, for as long as it lasts. As ownership bides its time waiting for a new stadium, and now that so many supporters have left, the Chargers’ endless journey to find themselves continues in a strange place.

“And that's unfortunate,” Dotseth says. “When I walk through this, I see a lot of people trying to put on a brave face, but I see a lot of people who are really heartbroken that it's not the normal routine.”

Photo by Tom Antl

The Chargers had an identity crisis from the start.

No one can quite pin down exactly where the team name came from, but a tale goes that the team’s then-owner, Barron Hilton, of Hilton Hotels lineage, held a naming contest, opened a letter that suggested “Chargers,” and didn’t bother reading another. The name reminded him of the bugle calls at USC games imploring fans to yell, “Charge!” — or perhaps he liked the affiliation with the Carte Blanche credit card he was releasing at the time; it’s unclear.

A Charger was never specifically a horse or a lightning bolt, which is what was drawn on the team’s first official shield. There’s no particular reason why the team came to be colloquially known as the “Bolts.” “Thunder Alley” is only tangentially related to a name that is itself tangentially related to whatever a “Charger” actually is. To make the situation muddier, a lot of Chargers fans outside StubHub Center wear Lucha masks.

Stadiums have been the crucible for the Chargers’ troubles. Team owner Dean Spanos fought with the city of San Diego for roughly 15 years to get a new stadium built to replace Qualcomm Stadium, a place that even San Diego legend Dan Fouts called a dump. Among dozens of proposals, none were ever good enough for San Diego nor the Chargers, and eventually a long game of chicken led us to where we are now: For three years, the Chargers will play in the smallest NFL stadium since the Oakland Raiders moved out of 22,000-person Frank Youell Field in 1965.

It’s strange to think that the Chargers’ old home, Qualcomm, was once regarded as an architectural marvel. The stadium ran the gamut of bad sports stadium features: obstructed seats, bare concrete, and home team locker rooms that were worse than most of the visitors’ quarters in the NFL. However, it was also considered a shining example of brutalist architecture, a structure that conveys both strength and functionality. When it was opened in 1967, it was cutting-edge, a forerunner of the trend of multi-purpose stadiums that could accommodate both football and baseball.

Qualcomm — initially called San Diego Stadium, then lovingly dubbed Jack Murphy Stadium after the longtime San Diego Union Tribune columnist — had the largest parking lot in the NFL, which gave it an unrivaled tailgate scene, one that begat Thunder Alley. And when the place rocked, its efficient, vertical design made sure that it ROCKED. After the first game ever played there, commissioner Pete Rozelle said, “It might be the best stadium I’ve ever seen.”

There’s an easy metaphor to make here about how time makes all things obsolete, and how a deteriorating stadium mirrored the team’s own struggles. But what the team has become — 4-12 in 2015, 5-11 in 2016, and 0-4 through four weeks — has a lot more to do with Spanos. After taking over as owner for his father in 1994, the same year the Chargers made their only Super Bowl, the team quickly declined.

Photo by Tom Antl

The Chargers wouldn’t record a double digit-win season again until 2004. After a franchise-record 14 wins in 2006, Spanos fired head coach Marty Schottenheimer because of a quick playoff exit and rumored insubordination. Another decade of squandered rosters under Norv Turner and Mike McCoy have culminated in the Chargers having won just nine of their last 37 games. Since 2010, they’ve made the playoffs just once.

Spanos might have been a sympathetic figure, but he withdrew from the public eye as the team struggled and the prospects of a new stadium sank to nothing. In his place, he propped up a PR consultant, and then fans withdrew as well.

Home games came to be dominated by opposing crowds. The last game ever played at Qualcomm was an awkward and somber loss in which the team was booed. A year before, when the team was still facing relocation, the players lingered on the field, celebrated a 30-14 win with fans, and reflected on what San Diego had meant to them.

Quarterback Philip Rivers gave an impassioned farewell to San Diego at the end of the 2015 season, then couldn’t muster up the energy to do it again in 2016, admitting that the farewell had “come and gone” by that point. The weariness of the final year was mutually felt.

Two years ago, I talked to Chargers, Raiders, and Rams fans about their feelings toward their favorite teams as they threatened to move. One of those fans was Andy Glickman, a former TV writer who lived in L.A., and yet swore he would stop rooting for the Chargers if they moved out of San Diego. He followed through on the threat, and more. Now he is often actively rooting against the team.

“Maybe I was so disgruntled, even as a fan, that the groundwork was laid for being a hater,” Glickman said. “As everything kind of went on — they drafted Mike Williams, and then he got hurt, and then I laughed.”

Robert Carlson still roots for the Chargers, though he lives in the San Diego area. He worked at a healthcare company that was on the same street as the Chargers’ practice facility. It wasn’t an easy decision to stay a fan, however, and most of his friends gave them up. His father is so mad at Spanos that his relationship with his son has become strained.

“It was one of the things that we bonded over. Now it's not there as much, and it's sad,” Carlson said. “He just gets so angry and negative towards them, I can't have a conversation with him about it. It just brings me down. It stinks because I used to hang out with him every week.”

That the Chargers left San Diego specifically for Los Angeles may be the team’s most spiteful act of all. In his statement announcing his decision to relocate the franchise, Spanos used more words to praise L.A. than to say goodbye to San Diego and its fans. The Chargers made a Fight for L.A. ad to court Angelenos, an endeavor that has only seemed to be successful at alienating San Diego. Whatever the Chargers are, it isn’t the diverse group of smiling regular folks seen in the ad saying things like, “Fight for Burbank.”

“If you're from Philadelphia and I move the Eagles, and I call them the Boston Eagles, you're not going to like that,” Glickman said. “Philadelphia to Boston is what, 90 miles? That's even closer than San Diego to L.A. You wouldn't even think of doing that.

“If you're trying to court San Diego fans, then don't fucking call them the Los Angeles Chargers.”

Photo by Tom Antl

The experience at StubHub Center is, truthfully, really good. The small concourse means you can get in the stadium, get food, and go to your seats quickly. The tickets were relatively cheap for “nosebleed” seats that won’t make your nose bleed at all. Every seat leans out over the action on the field, and the worst seat might be considered mediocre at another NFL venue, but I doubt it’d even be that bad.

The PA announcer warns you before kickoff that the cannon that shoots off after every Chargers score is very loud, but — oh boy — will it scare the shit out of you when the team kicks a short field goal you were only peripherally paying attention to. StubHub can get loud, and — though, yes, as many if not more Chiefs fans showed up for the Week 3 matchup in Carson — the Chargers fans that showed up make it sound as raucous as a stadium four times its size before the opening kick.

Their excitement dies down as the Chiefs scoot out to a 14-0 lead, but that’s to be expected. No one is under any delusions that the Chargers aren’t a bad team right now. When Rivers throws two interceptions before completing his first pass, everyone acknowledges, rightfully, that he’s playing like crap. But Chargers fans are proud of their crappy team, buster. And frankly, they’re tired of how the media have portrayed the crowds at StubHub by tweeting photos of empty seats before kickoff (they’re right, those photos are unfair).

“I was watching Inside the NFL, and they were like, 'Oh it only holds 27,000, the players are used to playing in front of 70,000,’” Brett Atkins tells me. “And I'm like, You sonovabitches, you haven't even been here yet. Why don't you come down here and experience it before you start trashing it.”

Photo by Tom Antl

Sandy and Brett Atkins

Atkins and his wife, Sandy, bought season tickets. Brett became a fan because he started working in San Diego during the Chargers’ Super Bowl run in 1994. Sandy is actually a lifelong Raiders fan, but she wears a Chargers jersey nonetheless, and she cherishes her chances to study a number of NFL teams.

“Wearing a Chargers jersey as a lifelong Raiders fan, isn’t that sacrilegious?” I ask.

“No.”

“Yes,” Brett says.

“I'm a football fan,” Sandy says. “I like all of the teams. I thought the Seahawks played awesome in the preseason, and so did the Chargers. They're really good, close games. When are you going to get this chance to be so close up?”

It’s hard to coax the same vitriol for Qualcomm out of fans that media and ownership seemed to have. Shittiness can even elicit something like pride as long as it’s shared shittiness. Solidarity is forged out of trying circumstances. Nick Frost and Jeff Blauer went to Chargers games for years despite how angry the team made them, if only because they were together. They brought their sons to the Chiefs game.

“Here's my son who was conceived in old Jack Murphy stadium,” Blauer says, pointing to Kyle Blauer, who had walked up to the conversation from the other side of their car.

“What?”

“You didn't know that?”

“It was in a porta-potty,” Frost says.

They can’t deny that the Chargers have a better home right now. Frost took his father to the Week 2 home opener against the Dolphins and says that his old man was blown away.

“My dad — who had pretty good seats, he had press level seats when he was in San Diego — he sat down and went, 'man,'“ Frost says. “You're just right there. It's intimate. If we can get people to get out of their seats and cheer a little bit more, we'll be good.”

Photo by Tom Antl

From left to right, Nick Frost, Alex Frost, Jeff Blauer, Kyler Blauer

That intimacy is intentional. Soccer stadiums put fans closer to the action by design. Bruce Miller — a senior architect for Populous, a Kansas City design firm that has worked with MLS on six stadiums — explained to me that NFL stadiums need deep sidelines for dozens of players, officials and cameramen to stand and walk, so their first rows tend to be set back and up high. Soccer players, on the other hand, sit when they’re not playing, so the first row of fans can come up almost to the pitch.

“Soccer is really an incredible experience because of the fans,” Miller says. “They drive the energy in the building. They create a lot of noise. There isn't a lot of pumped in music going on because the fans are literally chanting and singing and playing drums the entire 90 minutes.”

The fans power the stadium in soccer stadiums, essentially, and they could power football stadiums if StubHub is an indication. For the start of the second half, I sneak down to the first row of the north end zone where Walchef, Dotseth, and many of the same people I had met earlier in Thunder Alley are sitting. From there, I was practically eye level with the players when they lined up on the field, and a shout away — maybe 10 feet — from back of the end zone.

Early in the fourth quarter, as the Chiefs were backed against us facing first-and-10 in a 17-10 game, the crowd was as loud as it had been at any point since kickoff. Linebacker Jahleel Addae pointed right at us — Walchef, Dotseth, Boltman, NFL Road Warrior, and me, half-assedly maintaining professional decorum — and waved his arms to implore us as we made eye contact and obliged.

Then Kareem Hunt ripped off a 20-yard gain to give the Chiefs a first down at the 26-yard line. To reiterate: The Chargers aren’t very good. But for a few moments, that was very easy to ignore, presuming it mattered in the first place. Down at the bottom, I saw fans and athletes commune without middlemen, in a space that they defined themselves.

Photo by Tom Antl

Frost says he’ll have season tickets for as long as the team is at StubHub. After that, he’s unsure whether he’ll be able to afford seats when the the Chargers move into Los Angeles Stadium with the Rams.

“I figure for three years, we're going to have a great time, and after that we're probably done,” Frost says, then points at a palm tree next to his car. “But this tree is ours. We own this spot.”

Los Angeles Stadium won’t just be a place to watch football. It’ll be part of a “sports and entertainment district” on top of the old Hollywood Park Racetrack that has been compared to an NFL version of Disney World. Around the stadium there will be a 300-room hotel, a 6,000-seat performance center, 1.5 million square feet of retail and office space, 2,500 homes, and 25 acres of parks, all on a 300-acre plot. It is by far the most expensive sports development project ever — one that, even when adjusted for inflation, could have bought Lambeau Field’s original construction costs 566 times over.

We know what the future holds. Al Michaels will fawn over the facility at some point early in the 2020 season, and then it will be fawned over again — probably by an in-his-prime Tony Romo — when it hosts Super Bowl LVI. Beyond that, you probably won’t notice that the Rams and Chargers are playing in perhaps the greatest sports arena ever built. You’ll be watching on TV, and that experience has remained largely unchanged for almost 80 years — 11 guys in one set of jerseys squaring off against 11 other guys in another set of jerseys on top of a flat green expanse.

Photo by Tom Antl

You almost certainly won’t be getting in Los Angeles Stadium. The price of tickets to an NFL game has increased by nearly 50 percent in the last 10 years, according to Statista — from $62.38 in 2006 to $92.98 in 2016 — with newer stadiums generally commanding higher prices. Last year, you could see the 2-14 49ers in two-year-old Levi’s Stadium for $139 a ticket, or the 12-4 Chiefs in 34-year-old Arrowhead Stadium for $128.

Or better, you could stay home for nothing. Los Angeles Stadium will be conveniently located 20 minutes from LAX and feature 260 suites decked in the latest in executive couture. It isn’t being built for Rams and Chargers fans. It is a $2.66 billion bug lamp for suckers.

For the Rams and Chargers, that may be just fine. They’re at one end of a transaction and that’s that. Dotseth argues that the NFL outgrew San Diego, and it’s hard to disagree: “We were not, as a community, ready to put down $25,000 for a personal seat license. We were not ready to pay $75 for parking. We wanted everything to stay 1983, and it wasn't going to do that.”

The next question is whether the NFL may be outgrowing the NFL. The Chargers and Rams have faced the most ridicule of any two teams this season for their stadium and attendance problems, but even the 49ers, owners of a state-of-the-art facility, can’t put people in the stands. The team screwed up in so many ways. To name three: It was built an hour of traffic-hell outside San Francisco; the turf was one of the worst in the league; and the designers never considered that fans might not want to sit under searing sunlight for four hours.

For decades now, NFL owners have behaved as if they were impervious to market shifts and largely stopped focusing on football as their product after they negotiated revenue sharing and a fat TV deal. The Levi’s Stadium fiasco illustrates that there is ceiling to how much fans will put up with, however — it took a while, but we found it — and it should make the league think about what the future is.

If the 49ers and their five Super Bowl titles can’t fill a brand-new, cathedral stadium, then what chance will the Rams and Chargers and their combined one championship have in a new market? And if more people aren’t showing up at games, then what will the effect be on TV viewers when the stands are empty and games even sound like no one cares?

Photo by Tom Antl

It’s time to consider what the StubHub Chargers have to say about all this. For the next three seasons, they are a fresh petri dish, an experiment in what the NFL could be if it thought about fans first. They are starting from scratch, with nothing to build a fanbase with except a beleaguered history, a cool lightning bolt logo, and the most unique stadium in the league.

The StubHub Chargers are in a place where no NFL franchise really wants to see themselves, but for the time being they are also one of the most precious things in sports: an honest-to-god underdog, a team that can say “nobody believes in us” and mean it. They are playing in Jerryworld’s diametric opposite, somehow both a product of the NFL’s empire and an affront to it.

With roughly five minutes left, the Chargers with the ball and still down 7 to the Chiefs, Dotseth turns to Walchef and says, “Hey Shawn, we’ve got Philip Rivers, five minutes, two timeouts. What more do you want?”

Someone behind him says, “If only Ken Whisenhunt was back on the sideline.”

“Give me Norv,” someone else says.

“Ryan Leaf.”

“Billy Joe Toliver.”

“Ooh, that’s a good one,” Dotseth says. Meanwhile, the Chargers get two first downs on penalties, the first when Rivers underthrows yet another pass down the sideline to draw pass interference.

I really want this weird Stubhub Experiment to work. In my mind, the Chargers are a team with squatters’ rights. They have the freedom of no equity. They abide by that set of no-rules that seems to only apply to people with nothing. And if only they could play this right, they would empower their fanbase and build a new generation of fan — because who hasn’t felt beat down and hard-lucked and hungry?

Miller, a Chiefs fan, tells me the next day he couldn’t tell the game was being played in a dinky stadium in an L.A. suburb. “If you hadn't reminded me, I would not have known it was a venue with 20,000 seats vs. 60,000,” he says. “On television it looked and felt loud, intense.”

So it seemed in-person, too, until the Chargers inevitably punted on fourth-and-21. A pair of good runs by Hunt gave the Chiefs third-and-1 when the Chargers finally took their second timeout. Chargers fans largely didn’t stay to see if they would get the stop. At the two-minute warning, after the Chiefs converted, StubHub was mostly empty, and maybe 80 percent of those left were fans of the away team.

Walchef tells me then that he never leaves a game early. He says he has seen too many weird Chargers games to possibly get up before the final whistle. And almost on cue, Hunt breaks off a 69-yard touchdown run through the biggest running lane of the day.

Walchef laughs and looks straight ahead. I ask what his expectations are now for the team, and he says “nothing.” When he opened his restaurant he stopped betting on football and the Chargers.

“Since then my relationship with the team has changed. I get the opportunity to hang out with Jeff and his kids. I get to hang out with my friends. I’ve stopped focusing on whether they win or they lose.

“But hopefully the team does start winning. And I hope when they do it’s in this stadium.”

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briangroth27 · 7 years

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Sleepy Hollow Season 4 Review

Full series spoilers…

I loved Sleepy Hollow in Seasons 1 and 2: the chemistry between Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison), Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie), Jenny Mills (Lyndie Greenwood), and Captain Irving (Orlando Jones) was infectious, the twists on American history and Washington Irving’s original story were ingenious, and the supernatural plotlines were often fearlessly bonkers in the best way. They boasted some great villains, like the iconic and terrifying Headless Horseman (Neil Jackson, Jeremy Owens, Richard Centrone, Craig Branham), the architect of the apocalypse, Moloch (DJ Mifflin, Marti Matulis, Grant Spingdale, Austin Filson), Ichabod’s lost son Jeremy/Henry (John Noble), and Crane’s wife Katrina (Katia Winter). I enjoyed most of Season 3, even if the villains were ultimately underwhelming and Abbie’s death was really poorly done; the magic was still there. Season 4 opened with an uphill battle following Abbie’s death and a complete change of scenery as the series left Sleepy Hollow. I didn’t think the show could—or should—go on. Though the series definitely wasn’t the same, Season 4 largely proved me wrong: there was still life here.

Tom Mison still seemed game to play the time-lost Ichabod as he moved to Washington DC and continued trying to acclimate to the 21st century (while maintaining his Revolutionary style, of course). His reactions to the present were as good as always and I’ll miss him now that the show has been cancelled. I thought it was smart to put him in the capital of the nation he helped found and I loved that he finally got his American citizenship in the finale. That felt truly fitting; the perfect way to end his onscreen arc (though the adventure always continues!). Yes, it also ended with his soul bartered away to the Devil, but I loved the confidence Mison exuded in that closing scene: it was just another problem they’d solve, like the kraken. Carrying on in the face of impossible odds has always been a hallmark of the Witnesses (and the best heroes), and Crane exemplified that perfectly. Ichabod as a guardian/pseudo-stepfather to Molly created some fun moments (like his soccer “battle” speech!) and brought a new side to his character, which was a clever contrast to the tragedy of being robbed of the chance to raise Jeremy. It was great to see Mison and Noble play the next evolution of their father/son relationship, even if we only got to see initial baby steps of that this year. I would’ve liked to see that develop in a potential fifth season. Mison definitely lost an incredible scene partner with Berhie leaving, but Ichabod and Jenny had great chemistry too and their friendship carried the show for me this year.

If there had to be a new Witness, I wish Jenny were the chosen one; I remember the new Witness being said to be someone from Abbie’s bloodline anyway (though I missed it if that connection was ever explained this season). Having her sister’s destiny forced onto Jenny would’ve been a strong arc, particularly as this year found her bristling under the responsibility of staying in one place for so long; she’s always been a treasure hunter and clearly wanted to get back into the field. A Witness who didn’t accept the title, even though she was already in the fight, would be an interesting wrinkle (as would Jenny living up to Abbie’s legacy, if she went all-in with the mantle). Still, I liked her investment in making sure her sister’s legacy was carried on and I love that even with Agency 355’s introduction she still held her position as the show’s occult object expert (a weak point in Season 2 for me was that Matt Barr’s Hawley seemed to largely do Jenny’s job for her). While she didn’t have a sweeping arc of her own this year, Jenny worked well as a stabilizing influence for Crane in his new surroundings, Molly in her role as Witness, and for me as a viewer; she was a steady dose of classic Sleepy Hollow as it transitioned into something new. Greenwood was one of my favorite parts of the cast and always a delight onscreen. If FOX were interested, I’d definitely be down for a Jenny Mills: Supernatural Treasure Hunter spinoff starring Greenwood!

Maybe it’s because the show nailed the character chemistry right out of the gate, but I’ve consistently had trouble accepting new cast members on this show, particularly if they’re playing roles the core four characters already held (though there were exceptions, like Zack Appelman’s Joe Corbin). I liked Agency 355’s Jake Mills (Jerry MacKinnon) and Alex Norwood (Rachel Melvin) best of the new additions; Mills as an Ichabod fanboy was fun and Alex’s “OK, the supernatural is real; makes sense” non-reaction to monsters made sense this far into the series (also given their job, even if they hadn’t encountered real proof yet). Plus, Alex’s aptitude for building arcane devices wasn’t a skill we’d seen before on the show, so it really felt like she offered something unique. They had good chemistry and their slow-burn romance was sweet, if a little well-trod. There was a problem were a few times—even if Alex discovered a map or an artifact—Wells would explain how it was used or what it led to. Why not just let her do it? I also couldn’t help feeling like we didn’t need another semi-skeptic/believer pair, especially with Ichabod/Diana (Janina Gavankar) replaying dynamics we’d already seen repeated last year to various extents with Sophie Foster (Jessica Camacho) and Daniel Reynolds (Lance Gross), and of course Abbie in the first season. This far in, did we really need three new set of eyes (four if you count Molly) on the supernatural, especially when Ichabod and Jenny could’ve served as the audience surrogates into the government’s Agency 355 and their way of doing things? Why not put Diana in 355 as well and make her, Wells, and Alex already knowledgeable about what’s really going on, and at least somewhat experienced at fighting it? Flip the setup so Crane and Jenny still bring new skills to the team, but they don’t have to retrain everyone and they’re the newbies to how the Agency deals with monsters. It already seemed like this scenario was set up in Season 3’s cliffhanger and I wonder if something changed in the development process. I also wondered why Crane had never come looking for 355 with Abbie; he clearly knew it existed in his time, so why didn’t he ever bother to see if it still did? I feel like looking for fellow soldiers in Washington’s secret army would’ve been one of the first things he did upon waking up. In any case, Agency 355 made me really wish we’d gotten an X-Files/Sleepy Hollow crossover instead of (or in addition to) the Bones one from last season.

I wasn’t a fan of how Season 3 rewrote Abbie’s Witness role to be something handed down over the centuries instead of it just being her and Crane as originally presented, mostly because it seemed to make Abbie’s look less essential/important than Crane instead of them being equals. Losing Abbie should’ve had much more of an impact beyond Crane having to protect a secret identity from the new characters early on: it should’ve weighed on him and hampered his fight against evil. A friend pointed out they also skipped over Ichabod dealing with killing Katrina (to move past an unpopular storyline?), and it felt like a similar thing happened here. I did, however, love the scene of Crane visiting Abbie’s grave and updating her on the world; I just wish we’d gotten more about what Abbie brought to the role that Molly maybe wasn’t or couldn’t yet. If I were running things, I wouldn’t have introduced a new Witness at all. Make losing a Witness a major win for the forces of evil; something they were never supposed to be able to pull off. Instead of making Abbie the latest in a long line of replaceable Witnesses, make her loss matter. Make a significant hole in the team that can't be filled by slotting in some other character as the (latest) Chosen One; not only do you honor Abbie’s sacrifice by crystalizing what made her special and important (both in terms of Abbie as a person and as a Witness), but you raise the stakes for everyone still standing.

However, this is the story they went with. As it played out, I thought making a kid the new Witness yielded a good, fresh dynamic between Crane and Molly (Oona Yaffe)—Mison and Yaffe had an easy, fun rapport—but her age and Diana’s protectiveness ultimately hampered how much she could contribute to the point where it seemed like we didn’t need a second Witness for most episodes. While Diana’s function on the team as the official law enforcement officer felt very similar to Abbie and Sophie’s (making it feel a little stale, as if they were keeping the character dynamic status quo), I liked the added wrinkle of giving her a kid to worry about, particularly as Molly was drawn further and further into the supernatural. I think Molly could’ve been special for some other reason without having to be a new Witness, but I have to admit scenes like her pulling Crane back to the real world from the Sicarius Spei were powerful. Gavankar and Yaffe felt like a real mother/daughter family unit and it felt like the writers were (successfully) going for a Sarah Connor Chronicles “I’ll fight the monsters so my kid won’t have to” thing, particularly given how the season played out. Introducing “Lara” (Seychelle Gabriel) as adult Molly was a surprising way to invert the Rip Van Winkle premise of the show with a Days of Future Past twist (and a fine full-circle connection to Ichabod’s initial time travel). I liked that Lara was so skilled at magic, but I wish her skills had paid off Ichabod and Jenny training her as a kid more directly, because having Lara eventually take the Witness mantle from Molly made all the attention paid to her feel a little pointless. I definitely wish they’d met.

I liked Benjamin Banneker (Edwin Hodge) recurring in the flashbacks and J Street was a neat idea. Banneker’s concern for everyone’s standing in the new country, not just white people’s, made for a smart reminder that as idealistic as the American values are, we were never perfect. He and Ichabod also had a well-developed friendship and I liked that Banneker’s concerns challenged Crane’s adoration of what the Revolution was building. Banneker’s presence was also a cool use of a Revolutionary figure I’d never heard of; I loved that—supernatural twists notwithstanding—you could learn new things about real history on this show. Uncle Sam (Rick Espaillat), Sacajawea (Dayana Rincon), Davey Crockett (Daniel Parvis), and Paul Jennings (Zae Jordan) were a cool Revolutionary-era Government team. I wasn’t expecting something like that at all, but it fit perfectly in with the tone of Sleepy Hollow: that they were some sort of early American supernatural Fantastic Four was exactly the kind of crazy idea the show excelled at. I would’ve liked to see more of their exploits.

Jeremy Davies’ business mogul Malcolm Dreyfuss was the season’s weakest link. He never came off as threatening or imposing in any way to me; he just seemed eccentric rather than evil. I’ve been increasingly bored with businessmen villains in superhero fare (there are other evils out there!), but more pressingly, the execution of Dreyfuss’ goals seemed so small-scale. He gains immortality, gathers his Horsemen, kidnaps the President…and then waits for the army to attack him, so he can display his power on TV? Why not attack them first? Waiting—seemingly so Team Witness could organize and mount a defense—felt contrived. It would’ve been much more dramatic if Ichabod and Co. were scrambling to catch up. I didn’t see the need to connect Malcolm’s immortality to Ichabod and Death’s first fight by adding the Philosopher’s Stone ritual either. However, it was clever that the Philosopher’s Stone made Headless weaker, allowing Crane to behead him and Headless’ part of the ritual required his return, so that’s cool. I just thought the tie to Ichabod’s death was unnecessary and a little confusing: until I read reviews of that episode, it seemed like another retcon had occurred and the Stone was what made Ichabod immortal for his sleep, not Katrina and her coven.

I initially thought Malcolm’s bodyguard Jobe was a little bland, but I liked the deeper implications that he was involuntarily tethered to this guy who’d cheated the Devil out of their bargain. I would’ve liked to see what Jobe was like when not stuck as an enforcer for Lucifer’s contracts or Malcolm’s errand boy. Is there something he could’ve done to undermine Malcolm and ensure the contract was fulfilled beyond assisting Team Witness? Did he want to? Did he have goals and aspirations of his own (perhaps ambitions to displace the Devil himself?)? I don’t think we saw enough of the Devil (Terrence Mann) to judge whether I liked this portrayal or not, but he didn’t really leave a menacing impact after villains like Moloch. I enjoyed the depiction of the entrance to the gates of Hell, but I was underwhelmed by the business office appearance of Hell itself once Ichabod and Lara got to the Devil. That’s probably intended as a connection to Malcolm, but it just came off as a metaphor that I’ve seen as far back as Angel at least; I would’ve liked a more distinctive feel to the Underworld that matched the show’s historical side. Perhaps depicting Hell as a distorted Continental Congress would’ve been more in line with the show’s roots; maybe Ichabod signing his soul away could be framed as him signing a twisted Declaration of Independence or something.

Whether it was designed to get back to the glory days of the show or not, Dreyfuss’ plan to start the Christian apocalypse Moloch failed to accomplish certainly felt like they were trying to play their greatest hits instead of striking out into new territory. I understand the impulse to go back to what worked, but playing it safe was never what made this show great. Sure, we finally got to meet the Horsemen of Pestilence (Robbie A. Kay) and Famine (Kathleen Hogan), but they didn’t do anything of note beyond their introductory episodes. I liked Season 3’s apparent idea that each season could feature a different culture’s apocalypse as the Witnesses worked through their seven years of trials; as inhibited as the Hidden One was and underutilized and rushed as Pandora was last year, at least they were something new. That shows like Supernatural and Constantine lean so heavily into the Judeo-Christian religions for their adversaries and allies also served to make returning to those standards stand out less. And hey, the US was blatantly founded without a national religion, so continuing to explore what else the world has to offer would’ve tied in nicely with the American roots at the core of the show. Since it felt like we’d been through all this before, it didn’t spark my imagination like the show had done in the past.

The callbacks to the show’s glory days that did work, however, were the returns of Headless, the series’ best, most iconic villain, and Henry Parrish. Henry being something of a better man thanks to being reconstituted from Crane’s memories was a clever way to bring him back from the abyss, both literally and morally. I wish there’d been more time to explore his new status: his resurrection is wholly original and could’ve yielded the ultimate “I’m not what my father wants me to be/thinks I am” arc. I liked that their relationship took on new levels when Ichabod sacrificed himself and briefly became the Horseman of War; I hadn’t seen that coming at all! I do wish it had lasted for more than an episode to fully explore both Crane as War and any new understanding of Henry he gleamed from the experience (that they both ended up as the Horseman of War had a nice poetic flair to it, though). I also would’ve preferred Henry become War again in a ploy to save Ichabod instead of an attempt to get his power back; he seemed to go evil again a bit too easily, and becoming consumed by the evil of War in a bid to save his father would've been tragic. I’m glad Ichabod was able to convince Henry to withdraw from the final fight, so he’s still out there somewhere.

Most of the new monsters of the week worked well. The demon John Wilkes Booth (Alexander Ward, Adrian Bond) possessed himself with and used to kill Lincoln was a nice chance to explore America's secret occult history beyond the Revolution. The Sicarius Spei (Ward), with its dream torment, was possibly the best new monster of the season, combining a creepy monster with a unique problem with personal stakes for Ichabod and resulting in the eventual resurrection of Henry. Malcolm’s former partner Ansel (Bjorn Dupaty) gaining power through the demonic sigils burned into his body was intriguing. He seemed to do more with his power than Malcolm ever did and bending the supernatural torment inflicted on him to gain the power to fight back made for an interesting, desperate anti-hero. The Barghest (Ward again; the monster was from Little Red Riding Hood) was a good demon, even if it was predictable that it had taken the place of Molly’s dad Mitch Talbot (Bill Heck). Still, it allowed for a good, well-executed opportunity to explore Molly’s family life. Similarly, Mr. Stitch (Derek Mears) was a great villain who personally affected Molly. That episode was probably the best use of a kid as the Witness, with Molly having to save Ichabod and deactivate the Vault’s lockdown protocols by herself. I liked the Hunger Demon (Ward) and its connection to the Donner party; another nice look outside the Revolution.

Less impressive villains included the Sphinx (Marti Matulis), which seemed largely limited to being an arrow-shooting deterrent rather than its own force. I was disappointed they didn’t show the Sphinx’s riddle and just had it solved offscreen; this was a chance to test the heroes' intellects rather than their physical skills in a way few villains on the show could. I'm imagining a monstrous Riddler here, with Team Witness racing to solve its brain teasers before people die (or to access the piece of the Philosopher's Stone before they die, as the case may be). The Dyer sisters (Sara Sanderson, Courtney Lakin, Kelley Missal) and their infernal machine were cool, particularly as Washington allies who’d gone bad, but ultimately I wish they’d gotten to do more. Even if they weren’t going to have the presence of Katrina and her coven, I wish the show had explored the parallel between them and Ichabod as time-lost Washington agents. The Djinn (Fedor Steer) and his Pictagram pestilence was a neat way to update the supernatural via social media stars, but he was ultimately underwhelming when it came time for the final showdown. I did like the explanation for spontaneous combustion and the tie to history, though.

Thanks to the show’s new setting, when they did go back to Sleepy Hollow, it truly felt like an event (as did the focus on the memory of Abbie in that episode). At the same time, the new DC location worked well and felt appropriate given the Revolutionary history of the show. I enjoyed the added historical facts, such as the meaning of “Colombia” in D.C. However, while writing this it occurred to me that there could’ve been a much more effective use of the DC setting: why not set Ichabod against a government perverting what George Washington set in place or at least using methods to fight the supernatural that Crane would find unacceptable? What if a demon-involved government were using the supernatural to further their own goals? Instead of a single businessman aiming for immortality and world domination, what if it was a significant portion of the government? What if after all his fighting in the Revolution and in Sleepy Hollow, Crane found out the government had teamed up with different demons a long time ago? I’m reminded by Wikipedia that Ezra Mills hinted the government division he was connected to became split in its goals and the mystery men who kidnapped Ichabod at the end of Season 3 certainly seemed to be working for the government, so the seeds were already there. A corrupt government plot would’ve paid off Banneker’s fears about how idealistic the new American government really was too. More pressingly, it would’ve truly tested Ichabod’s desire to be an American and what that means nowadays compared to the ideals of his time. Has he outlived the American Dream? They could’ve taken a page from Captain America to ask if Ichabod is still fighting for the country he thought he was, whether “his” America could be improved upon at all, and where he and the country could go from here. This line of questioning would’ve been especially timely and important now, as Ichabod is an immigrant, not an American citizen. The other characters could all be tied in easily too. How would Jenny react to knowing the system that locked her up for speaking the truth about demons was deeply involved with the paranormal all along? What happens to her black market connections if she’s tied to a government agency that wants to control the supernatural? Diana, Wells, and Alex could’ve become the Black Widow/Sharon Carter/Sam Wilson to Ichabod’s Steve Rogers as they realized how corrupt their bosses were and joined him in rebelling against their leaders. Molly could’ve been earmarked by someone in the government to be used in one of their nefarious plots, putting her in much the same danger Malcolm did. What if the show were totally bold and had Ichabod instigate a new revolution to reestablish American values (and demon-free living)? Even without a full-on revolution, Ichabod vs. America would’ve been thematically perfect and the biggest hurtle the show could’ve thrown at him after losing Abbie. Perhaps this was the plan for Season 5, since this year ended with Ichabod working for the government and threads hinting at its corruption were still dangling. Signing up with a compromised government would parallel Ichabod literally selling his soul too. If that’s the case, I wish they hadn’t waited and it’s a shame we won’t get to see it.

Despite some plot choices I didn’t agree with over the years, I still loved Sleepy Hollow and I'm sorry to lose it. It was a fun, inventive show that never feared going totally crazy with supernatural twists on historical events. That's one of the lessons I'll take from it as a writer: absolutely nothing is too outlandish if you ground it in your characters and fully commit to it. The characters, particularly those core four originals, were great and the actors were perfectly cast. Importantly, the show also featured a diverse cast of actors. Like Captain America and the National Treasure movies, Sleepy Hollow’s use of American history—and Ichabod’s reverence for the founding American ideals—made me proud of what this country was founded to be. Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of my all-time favorite stories, and this show was a great (if very lose) adaptation. I would’ve come back for a fifth season and wish we could’ve gotten more.

So long, Sleepy Hollow. It lost a step or two along the way, but when it was good, it was great.

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