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apothecarinomicon · 3 years

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Spring week 1 part 1

I’m not quite sure how to begin.

I’m not typically one for journaling but it would appear to be part of the gig, as it were. I found this book—the one I’m writing in, heavy and musty and leather-bound—sitting on the table when I arrived, open to a blank page. There are at least a thousand pages filled before it, and no matter how many blank pages I flip past this one I can’t reach the back cover without closing the book entirely.

Mòrag told me things that present themselves for investigation here tend to be worth exploring, and if my gut tells me what’s right not to stray from its guidance. But I’m getting ahead of myself—you don’t even know who I am.

My name is Fionn Gill, and I’m a witch. I know, I know, but I don’t get into all that “warlock” “wizard” shit. It’s just a way to separate and belittle the same practice based solely on the gender of the practitioner, in my opinion. My specialty lies in potion-making, though I’m not very experienced. I’ve really only just finished my training—I’m from Huntsmanland and they’re not nearly as magically-inclined there as they are in High Rannoc. This is the first part of the country I’ve visited other than my tutor’s homestead and I must say, it hasn’t made the most stellar impression.

My tutor Edith received a letter stating that services would be required in the town of Greenmoor, and since the letter didn’t specify her services, she sent me to take care of it. I don’t know if she expected it to be an indefinite position, but here we are.

I didn’t bring a lot with me—just enough for the journey. It was about all I could carry walking. I arrived in Greenmoor with just about the clothes on my back, hoping they had an apothecary of their own so I could get this over with.

I’ve never really been one for small towns, and nor do they have much love for me. I’ve always thought I was meant for adventure—movement, action, peril, all of it. Small town life just feels so… stagnant. Nothing changes, no one grows or changes or has anything interesting to talk about. It’s enough to drive you mad.

Not to mention the natural suspicion of outsiders. I could see it on Mòrag McKinney’s face, even as she greeted me at the edge of town in her official capacity as mayor. Her hair was done up in a huge bun of thick braids on top of her head—a hairstyle with a formality at odds with her armored clothing.

She seemed surprised when I told her I was the witch. That’s not uncommon—like most intellectual and healing work, witchcraft is traditionally the domain of women. Even in the relatively forward-thinking country of High Rannoc, I tend to get some variation on ‘oh, how progressive!’ when I tell people my vocation. Often if you get a man doing witchcraft, his neighbors will whisper certain things about him. My neighbors back home were whispering those things about me anyway, so that wasn’t much of a hurdle to me.

Mòrag (she insisted I call her by her first name once we’d been properly introduced) gave me a brief tour of Greenmoor. It is, to put it lightly, tiny. I’d estimate a population around fifty. Near everyone has a job that serves an internal function to the community, with maybe the exception of the innkeeper. There are blacksmiths, miners, a carpenter, a tanner… she didn’t indicate any artists or poets or anything of that sort to me, which was disheartening. Even when I thought I would only be here briefly, I was hoping to enjoy the finer things the locals had to offer. The closest this town comes is a library, but I sorely doubt they have any kind of collection of works by local authors.

Mòrag pointed out all the magical resources in town, and some of them impressed me—the lunar tower and ritual circle in particular looked useful. She did not show me any apothecary, and following her aforementioned advice, I took that to mean there wasn’t one. Can’t wait to go out and experience the joys of foraging in the wilderness myself.

Once we’d gone through the entire village, she showed me to the cottage where I’ll be staying. It’s a little ways away from the town proper, down a walking path through some trees. It’s little more than a one-room thing, with only the washroom closed off from the rest of the space. The walls and door are made of dark wood, and the outside still has bark attached in many places. The roof is sloped and overgrown with moss and ivy. Inside the main room there is a bed, a large set of shelves which ought to have reagents and potion-making materials on them but are mostly bare, and a table on which this book sits. The washroom has a tub and a latrine—no plumbing to be found. Out back sits the remains of a garden, only one plot of which looks salvageable. A ways back into the trees there’s a creek. Most of the rest of the clearing is in the early stages of becoming overgrown, with trees and bushes and flowers starting to stretch themselves out and remembering how to be wild.

Mòrag told me the witch who was here before me was a bit of a recluse. No one in town knew very much about her, and she seemed to prefer it that way. They came to her for her healing potions and never made it past small talk and kept inviting her to parties and festivals even though she never attended. And then one day nearly everyone in town woke up with a gift from her—the farmers received her animals, the barkeep her ferments, the innkeeper and bakers her crops. As the townspeople tallied their gifts they realized it amounted to nearly everything she owned. They went together to her cottage to ask her why she’d given it all away, and found her cottage—this cottage—empty. The ensuing search turned up no body, no note, not a shred of evidence to speak of. It was as if she’d disappeared into thin air. As the townsfolk talked and wondered what had happened, they quickly realized no one knew her well enough to provide any real insight. They couldn’t even come to a consensus on what her name was.

They had quickly moved on to discussing the more pressing issue: the town was lacking a healer. The general store owner had worked with my tutor Edith in years prior (Edith loved to tell stories of the time she spent pursuing the culinary arts). Thus, the letter and thus, my presence.

Mòrag told me she hoped I might be more engaged in the community than my predecessor. I decided to refrain from telling her not to get her hopes up, and instead expressed my confusion: I’d thought this was a single gig, that I was to heal someone of their illness and then leave.

She disabused me of that notion with rather more intensity than I think was warranted.

She told me that unless my predecessor reappeared, I was all they had. She said Edith had spoken highly of my abilities in her return letter (I doubted that—Edith never spoke highly of anyone). She told me I would receive a base pay of 20 silver per cure to start, and that if I did the townsfolk well and they grew to like me, they’d most certainly be willing to pay more. She told me that the folks of Greenmoor were good people, even if they were a bit disaster-prone and some of them could make good use of a little more common sense.

And, well, how do you say no to that?

When I asked where I would be getting my materials, she told me the areas surrounding Greenmoor were rich in natural resources. So it will be as I feared. I’m glad I brought my off-road boots.

Mòrag left me to get settled in and I immediately took stock. There are no reagents on the shelves (of course not! Why would there be?), but I did find a cauldron, mortar and pestle, and a copper alembic (which is used for distilling)—so at least once I have the reagents I’ll be able to do some basic cooking with them. I also found a small leather-bound book with vague descriptions of some of the areas surrounding the village. I should be able to cross-reference it with my notes on the environments where useful reagents can be found to make searching for materials a bit less painful.

I pulled a matted tangle of weeds out of the garden plot, but it looks like whatever was planted underneath already shriveled away to nothing. Well, at least the land’s clear now.

One thing that I knew I’d need if I was going to be able to handle this was a familiar. I’ve never been one for conjuration but in this case it’s an unfortunate necessity. I was supposed to be getting one within the next few weeks at Edith’s anyway, and I already knew the process. You’re supposed to have a more experienced witch observe your first time, but that’s just academic formality—there’s nothing actually dangerous about the process.

I found what looks to be a quarter cran basket (was my predecessor into fishing…?) under the bed, and set out around the property collecting small rocks and flowers and toadstools that had the right kinds of vibration. They were for use in the ritual, but also collecting them was a good start to cleaning the property up. Because if I’m going to be living here, it cannot stay looking like this.

I took the basket into the woods near the creek and laid its contents out in a circle as wide as I was tall. Before I placed each one down, I held it for a moment and asked it to help me with my task. Then, I sat in the center of my circle and closed my eyes and tried to meditate. Clearing my head has never been my strong suit, but I’m usually able to fudge the process enough to do what needs doing. This time took a bit longer than usual but eventually I managed. I felt my energy (spirit, consciousness, whatever) radiating out from me, pink and orange and bright and loud, first to the edges of the circle and then beyond. All of it asked a single question and listened for the answer.

The response came from much closer than anticipated, when I felt something small hop onto my knee.

I opened my eyes and looked down to see a frog staring back at me, blinking lazily and making small, guttural noises. Her back was green and rough and slimy. One of her eyes was milky, pointing vaguely off to the left, while the other gazed straight at me. The tips of her toes (three on each foot) edged closer to brown than the rest of her body.

Having clearly presented herself, she now asked if my gut said we would be good partners.

I’ve named her Ailean.

And now here I am, writing all of this down. I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage this every day. Whoever reads this may have to settle for a few times a week. With that said, I do think I’d like to go back and read what my predecessor wrote. Maybe it’ll give a clue as to where she’s gone, and help me escape this position sooner. She seems to have been quite the prolific writer—getting through her logs could take months, especially if the townsfolk keep me particularly busy with their various woes. I’ll have to start reading sooner rather than later.

Speak of the devil, there’s a knock on my door. It hasn’t even been a full day and I might already have my first customer. I’ll finish this later.

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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The Critic Valentine’s Day Double Feature (Pilot/Sherman, Woman and Child)

Vivia Jay Sherman! Viva Quebec! Viva Valentine’s Day! And Viva WeirdKev who as happens for a good chunk of my content payed for this wonderful double feature for one of my favorite shows. The Critic was created by Al Jean and Mike Reis of The Simpsons fame, a comedy team supreme. While I knew the two wrote for the simpsons, more on that iin a minute, I had no idea just how many classics the two churned out: There’s No Disgrace Like Home, Moaning LIsa, The Telltale Head, The Way We Was, Stark Raving Dad (Sadly tainted by it’s guest star being a horirble monster but that’s not their fault), Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington, the treehouse of horror segments The Bart Zone and Clown Without Pity (The second of which may be my favorite treehouse of horror segment), and later coming back to write the story for one of my all time favorites Round Springfield and to outright write the classic “SupercalfragalisticexpalliDOHcious”. And to his credit Jean would later go on to write some classic post-golden age simpsons episodes during his tenure as producer: Lisa’s Sax, Mom and Pop Art, and Children of a Lesser Clod, which is notable if nothing else for this gag.

So yeah the guys are legends and were right to start their own show under Simpsons producer James L Brooks over at ABC. The show followed the adventures of film Critic, Jay Sherman, a parody of film critics with high brow tastes, impossibly high standards, and a huge opinon of himself, having won the pultizer at least once. Despite this he was also constnatly spat and shat on by society, divorced, lonely, depressed and eats like a thousand pigs combined in some horrific science accident. And given the last three parts describe me, as well as my profession of b eing a critic, naturally I love the guy and this show. I’ll get into his cast as we go as the first episode does an excellent job of introducing the entire cast so there’s no sense repeating myself. But the show’s style I can and will talk about: It’s basically Golden Age, i.e. season’s 1-10, simpsons, but with more pop culture refrences and movie parodies, since the show would often feature multiple on Jay’s show coming Attractions and took place in the celebrity hot spot of new york and was a love letter to the city.. and sometimes a hate letter but only when those digs at the city would be funny, which to be fair depsite never having been to or lived in new york most really are. That’s the series key asset: while a LOT of the jokes haven’t aged well as a lot of the celbreity refrences are dated as are some of the movie parodies, most are hilarious wether you get what their making fun of or not and to me tha’ts a good parody: where knowing what their making fun of HELPS, but you can laugh regardless. The show had the charm and pace of the Simpsons while having it’s own unique style and cast that was just as charming and I love it dearly. The show sadly only lasted two seasons, with ABC canceling it after one, and Brooks having it moved over to FOX, which was a good idea and lead to what’s probably my faviorite simpsons episode, a Star is Burns. Ironically despite you know, the show being created by two simpsons writers, backed by one of their producers and perfectly in line, creator Matt Groening was against the idea, publicly ranted about it to the press, and generally was an ass about it. Look I love the guy and even Brooks, Jean and Reiss were all nice enough in thier criticsim of the guy, but sitll very much understandably pissed off. .and i’m with them.

It gave what’s again, my faviorite episode and what is not a “30 minute add” but an episode that easily stands on it’s own and also you know, pokes fun at itself for being a crossover a few times. You don’t need to see the critic to enjoy it, and episodes most iconic gags, Boo-Urns, Man Getting HIt by a Football, Senior Speilbergo, all don’t involve jay. And again the shows were not at all dismilar: While the critic was it’s own thing it still had the simpsons sense of humor and pacing so I saw it more as a petty rant against having a crossover in general more than a legit critcisim. Especially since Groening had no such complaints decades later with the family guy crossover after both shows had all tehir talent surgically removed and had the gall to NOT remove a cheap shot at Bob’s Burgers. And yes i’m still bitter about seeing that in a promo for the special, Bob’s Burgers is fantastic, to the point that now, in a fabulous case of history repeating itself, it’s got it’s OWN show like the critic made by talented former crew members using a similar but sitll throughly unique comedy style , The Great North. My point is that controversy pisses me off, and The Great North is spectacular go watch it while you read this.

So yeah the Critic is awesome, me and Kev are both fans, and there are plenty of romantic episodes abound as the show digs into Jay’s love life quite a few times and has episodes about his son’s first love, his boss finding a wife towards the end of the series, his parents rekindling their spark and in what’s easily my faviorite episode, his sister dating a grunge rocker. So there was no shortage of choices but the choice made was brilliant.. and i’m not saying that because i’m being paid to, as my review of splatter phoenix’s first episode in darkwing duck and woops should show, paying me does not guarantee that I have to LIKE what your paying me to review. But here I did and he pointed out the first episode of each season, with season two being a soft reboot that while keeping the premise and supporting cast changed a few things around and added two new main characters, and both involve jay finding a new love intrest and intorduce a lot of the cast. I found him to be right, so where we are and after the cut i’ll dive into the good and bad of both episodes and see what changed inbetween seasons.

That gag will make sense.. later. Right now it’s time for our very first episode, the show’s very first episode as you could probably tell by the title.

Pilot: The pilot starts with Jay getting touched up by his Makeup Person Doris. Jay is played by legendary comedian John Lovitz, who this show gave me a deep and lasting appreciation for. Lovitz was at the time best known for his 5 year long stint on SNL, and film wise is best known for Three Amigos, the Brave Little Toaster, The Wedding Singer and Rat Race. Sadly while I do geninely love the guy.. he has been in enough crap to destroy the New York Sewer system, as everyone needs money and sadly not everyone appricates the talents of John Lovitz like I do.

So naturally he’s also been in The Stepford Wives remake, Grown Ups 2, The Ridiculous 6, Eight Crazy Nights, North, Benchwarmers and Benchwarmers 2: Breaking Balls. Yes that’s an actual movie, though it’s already better than the first one for virtue of not having Rob Schnider and David Spade starring in it despite.. that title. The irony is not lost on me that Lovitz has essentially made his money starring in the kinds of films Jay was forced to see for his job. Still a VERY talented, very lovely man.

Before we get to our next voice actor up, no profile of Jon would be complete without mentioning that time he slammed Andy Dick’s face into a bar. To make a very long story short, Lovitz was friends with the late great Phil Hartman, who even did some voice work for this very show, whose wife who had severe drug and mental ilness killed them both. Phil had told Lovitz he saw Dick give his wife cocaine, so after Phil’s tragic murder when Lovitz and Dick ended up on the same show, Lovitz ended up exploding at the guy out of grief and blamed him for her death, but later apologized like a gentleman. Living up to his name though Dick later went up to Lovitz at a restraunt Lovitz owned and said “I’m giving you the Phil Hartman curse, you die next”. Granted he was drunk but still...

Naturally Lovitz banned the guy and Lovitz later demanded an apology when the two ran into each other when they ran into each other at Lovitz regular gig at the comed store. Dick not only refused to apologize even when Lovitz put him against a wall, but said it was because “you blamed me for her death”... which was a decade ago with change by this point, the actions of a man GREIVING for his best friend whose wife’s relapse you caused which inadveradntly lead to her and her husband’s death, and something HE APOLOGIZED FOR. Naturally Lovitz took this how you would and did what we’d all like to do in general and broke the shit out of his face and only didn’t do more because they were seperated. IN short this man is a hero and I wil lbring up this story at every opportunity. Doris was played by the late voice actress Doris Grau, a script supervisor who worked on a LOT of films as one , the most notable I could find on wikipedia being Clue. This is a fact I just learned today but boy if it isn’t neat. Grau mostly did aditional voices for shows, most notably Ducktales and the Simpsons, where she played Lunchlady Doris, and of course this show. Still she seemed like a very funny and talented woman and it’s sad she’s gone. The two start the series mostly sniping at each other and while that never ENTIRELY goes away, Doris gets more supportive after a spotlight episode where she and Jay bond and Jay thinks she might be his mom. And while she’s not this surprisingly sticks and for the rest of the series while still not above making potshots at him on occasion, she’s far more supportive. She also informs him she’s out of spray on hair “I’m bald and ugly, get more!”. This show is naturally comedy gold and a lot of it relies on Lovitz sense of timing, though the rest of the cast aren’t slouches but we’ll get to them as we go. She ends up putting a hat over him and we get our first film parody, Rabbi PI starring Anuld, which is alright. Not one of the series best but passable and gets the gimmick of having film parodies on jay’s show across, which was a nice way to set it apart from the Simpsons. Jay reviews it on the Shermometor, a gimmick jay hates and that disappeared by season 2, giving it a bellow zero to the ire of his boss Duke Phillips. Duke is one of the best parts of the show, an unhinged southren billlonare who was a modeled after Ted Turner, down to the mustache, who built up his fried chicken franchise into a multimedia congrlomorate and is also mildly nuts, though that part would be more of a thing in season 2. In season 1, he’s mostly there to make Jay’s life hell, with about half of the seasons episodes having him either fire jay or put his job in jeapordy versus 2 the next season. He’s still not unfunny, but most of his best stuff is in season 2 when Charles Napier’s allowed to cut loose a little more and the character wasn’t shoehorned into just being a clueless executive. Charles Napier is a longtime character actor who showed up in TONS of films and tv shows too many to list.. and trust me with some of the lists of credits before and after this that’s saying something, his biggest voice rolls being in this series and Men and Black the Series as Zed. But needless to say he was ALWAYS this awesome and sadly passed in 2011. Jay’s guest for the day is Valerie Fox, an up and coming actress whose first film kiss of death is coming out soon.. and whose age is an engima and it’s only a problem because if she’s 20, like the episode mildly suggests giving her starting career and her voice actress being that age, then this gets really gross as jay is 17 years older than her then. But given she looks older than that and sounds certainly older than that, i’m going more with 30, since she looks more like it, and sharon stone, who she’s mildly based on given she stars in a basic instinct knockoff and does the leg thing, was 32 at the time of basic instinct. Valerie is voiced by Jennifer Lien, aka Kes from star trek voyager who I only know about because of reviews done by SF Debris and Allison Pregler. She was the childlike love intrest of Nelix, the ship’s resident pain in the audience asses who made them BEG for early seasons wesley crusher and who once, and I saw footage this wasn’t SF Debris exagreated, lunged at a crewmate in a jealous rage, unfounded by the way since Tom was AVOIDING kes depsite being attracted to her as he just wnated her to be happy and to not mess up her relationshpi, and screamed “i’ll kill you!”. Point is she hasn’t had a huge career, but was still worth noting and does a fantastic job here. Again I did not realize she was that young at the time by her voice, and that means she did a great job.

So Jay’s smitten with her, finds her super attractive and she asks him out.. but to the show’s credit, and Jay’s he does try to rebuff her because he knows ther’es a conflict of intrest there.. but ends up giving in. However at least the show not only is upfront that there’s an issue here but that ends up being the thrust of the last act. Granted there’s still some.. questionable stuff like when she does the basic instinct leg cross and he says “can we get a shot of that”, which no.. Jay.. no you can’t. Ewwww. Seen far worse, like It’s Pat, which was a VERY real SNL sketch about people trying to guess the titular pat’s gender because that’s not creepy or invasive even for the time. And they made a movie out of it because Wayne’s World was popular forgetting that Wayne’s World, one of my faviorite movies by the way and one I need to cover here sometime this year now the thought’s occured to me, was a labor of love, with a talented director and actual ideas from it’s two leads who actually fleshed out the character versus a concept that was NEVER funny to begin with and has gotten down right horrifying with age. And wasn’t I talking about the Critic? Not the abusive jackass mind you, Jay Sherman.

Ah yes so Jay takes Valerie to a date at Lane Riche, the rich jackass where we meet Vlada, a vaugely european man whose your typical hollywood suckup. As Jay puts it in a later episode Vlada: I love you too Jay: You only love my money Vlada: That’s true but it is a love that will never die. He also naturally scoots Jay to a less nice table in the Critic’s section once Conan O’Brian shows up... which WAS supposed to be a different kind of joke, as at the time Conan was just a writer on the simpsons and SNL, but now given he has a decades long career in late night and famously said fuck you to NBC during that whole Tonight Show debacle, which netted him his own show on TBS, it comes off more as the kind of self deprciating gag Conan makes about himself. So in other words it’s actually funnier now?

As for the critic’s section that’s a part of the series I’ve neglected to talk about so let’s do that: The kind of critic Jay is, one who plays clips of the movie and reviews them.. on television. And were usually academics who looked down on popular film, the kind Siskel and Ebert popularized, and both suprisingly had a huge guest apperance in season 2 and even reviewed the show on their show. This kind of film criticism just dosen’t exist on tv that i’m aware of anymore, and mostly lives on with internet reviewers , many of whom were inspiried by critics like this, and who range from acadmeics to average joes to some mixture of both. It never went away just simply went to a younger generation. Some of which squandred it and somehow still have a career like certain abusuive jackasses i’ve mentioned enough with that one gag a few paragraphs ago. Point is it’s a much more varied and different game now so the critic ended up as one of those shows or movies where the main characters very job feels like an artifact of it’s time, like our heroes in Wayne’s World hosting a public acess show, when nowadays they’d just put it up on youtube or the entire idea of a UHF station in well.. UHF. It’s not a BAD thing, just something to note.

But the date goes well as Valerie shows she’s really into jay and even takes him oggling her in stride, though we do get an utter classic of a gag when Jay says something about women being drawn to him.. and cue an old woman asking to rub his nonexistant hump for luck “You hunchbacks are all alike”. She does so anyway to his understandable annoyance.

But the two go back to Jay’s place, talk about his acomplishments including a pulitzer and then well.. the obvious happens they go to bed together and the next day after Valerie is horrified at his just woke up fac,e he gives her an easy out but she’s fine with it. It honestly shows just how low the poor guy’s self esteem is that he just.. assumes a woman will regret having slept with hima nd walk out and while played for laughs it really gives a clear look into Jay’s mental state: He’s so full of self loathing, not helped by the world being out to get him, that it’s really oddly endearing. And VERY releatable. The two are interupted by Jay’s son Marty. Marty is played by the very recognizable and very wonderful Christine Cavanagh, who sadly passed away in 2014. She voiced Chuckie Finster, Gosalyn Mallard, Oblina, Dexter from Dexter’s Lab and the titular pig from Babe. She decided to retire in 2001, so while her career was only about a decade she made quite the impact and is sorely missed. Unsuprisingly her usual voice is perfect for the very awkward Marty, who Jay asks to tell eveyrone about the beautiful woman in his bed especially his unfaithful and utterly loathsome ex wife ardith.

This scene demonstrates two problems. The first is just the pilot as Jay’s kind of sleazy. While Jay being thirsty wouldn’t go away, especially in the episode Lady Hawke, it’d be made more awkwardly endearing. Here there are moments of him just plain being creepy like the aformentioned oggling, which while not bad in itself, if a bit awkawrd, also has him creepily muttering to himself while doing so which removes any charm or relatability and just sends it straight into needing 10 showers just to wash this scene off. The rest of the series would just turn him into a bit desperate at worst. It also explains why the only other romantic story the guy has in the season is a pastiche of misery. Thanfully this would be GREATLY adjusted next season but we’ll get to that.

The other problem is just the tone... we get a good half a minute of Marty talking about how he calls Ardith’s boyfriend “Uncle Al” because he likes him a lot.. to his dad’s face. And granted his dad is being creeptastic this episode but the early episodes just pile on the Jay hatred by the world a bit thick, to the point one episode puts him as “worse than hitler”. Granted the audience is full of idiot teens who have no idea who hitler is, and the gag is kinda funny, but it makes my point: Jay is just utterly shat on by the world, and while he does get a few wins, most are undercut by something awful and it gets taxing sometimes. The guy is just too loveably pathetic to hate, too relatable even as a teen and not snobish enough to be really loathsome or WANT to see him knocked down by the world. It’s not overwhelming enough to ruin the first season, it still has good episodes but this episode does highlight a LOT of these problems. He does get to spend the day with val though, dancing outside the trump buliding, seriously even back then he was a joke and his lack of money half the time was well known.. how did the last four years happen, and they tell each other they love each other. I’d aww if I didn’t know how this ended. So jay relates the good news of how he feels to his best friend, Jeremy Hawke, played by Maurice LaMarche. LaMarche is one of the most talented voice actors alive, a master of impersonations paticuarlly orson welles, who was naturally brought on board because they knew they were going to need a lot of celebrity voices for the film parodies and needed one or two guys to do them to keep it cheap. The guy is like most of this cast a legend in the industry, having voiced the Brain, Squit, Dizzy Devil, the Human Ton, Big Bob Pataki, Egon Spengler, Sleet, Kiff Kroker, Headless Body of Agnew, Morbo, Various other Futurama characters because that list is long, Mortimer Mouse, Blue Falcone, Father, Yosemite Sam, Vincent Van Ghoul, Doctor Doom, Abradolf Lincler, and Odval. Point is the guy has been engranged in my childhood and adulthood and will probably even after he’s gone come back from the grave to do some voices. He even got the part of Jeremy Hawke here because he happened to do a REALLY good australian accent depsite not being australian. Jeremey was a combination of paul hogan, the star of the Crocodile Dundee movies and at the time sex symbol and at this time known anti semite Mel Gibson. Obviously neither of those refrences has aged paticuarlly well, but since hollywood ALWAYS has room for a super hunk from australia, just ask Chris Hemsworth or before him Hugh Jackman, the character still works and his breakout role, Crocodile Ghandi is so ludcrious it works. I.e. a white australian man playing the mahtma and saying before he brings peace “First a tasteful shot of my bum for the ladies. Jeremy, while sometimes increidbly oblvious, is still a fairly nice easygoing guy and an extremley loveable character. And whie Jay worries about Valrie meeting him because he’s sex on a cracker she ignores him and jay gloats for a bit, paticuarlly with the great bit “take your genatalia right back to australia”. And while Jeremy’s happy for him he tries to reign Jay in when Jay talks asking her to marry him. As Jeremy later relates on Jay’s fire escape “Bubala, i’ve learned there’s two things you should never do: Marry an actress and wear blackface to the naacp image awards. Two things I found out the hard way. “

So Jay takes her to meet his parents and finds out he’s adopted.. and their also rich. Jay’s waspy parents are his cold and overly honest mother Elanor, played by Judith Ivey, his kooky dad and THE best part of the series Franklin played by Gerrit Grahm and his loving and free spirited teenager sister Margo played by Nancy Cartwright. Okay (cracks knuckles) here. we. go. Judith Ivey is a tony wining stage actress and has also directed numerous plays and is mostly known for her stage work but I know her from Designing Women where she played BJ in the last season. Garret Grahm apparently shows up in a lot of brian depalma movies, including Beef in phantom of the paradise, a lot of tv work and to my shock the asshole dad from Child’s Play 2. Another thing I genuinely love I wasn’t aware an actor or actress from this series had a part in. Finally there’s Nancy Cartwright, who you DEFINTELY know from the Simpsons, where she plays Bart, along with Nelson, Ralph, Kearny, Database, and Maggie, and Kearny. Other credits include Pistol Pete, Mindy from Animaniacs, Chuckie Finster picking up for Christine Cavanagh ironically enough, Lu and Rufus from Kim Possible. She’s a talented lady and i’m glad sh’es still around. Whew.

Okay so yeah I do love the shermans and fraknlin is again easily the best part of an already excellent series and unlike Duke that’s in full display here, with him saying, when his wife mentions they were going to give jay back at one time, “Son if I’ve said it once I said it a thousand times.. who are all you people. “ and he’d only get better. Sadly he’s NOT in sherman woman and child. Our loss really. But he’s in pretty much every other episode of season 2 thankfully and most of this season so eh, fair trade off. Also we get the classic line, after Jay says he’ll love valrie even when he’s decaying in the ground, his mom quips “Cna’t we go one meal without talking about your rotting corpse?” Though Eleanor understandably thinks Valarie is using jay for a good review. Margo suspects her of the same and takes her on a horse ride, though all she can gleam is that Val genuielly loves jay and welcomes her to the family. Jay however does decide to duck out of the inteview by faking sick, which leads to a really sweet moment where Valerie visits him and they dance, in a hilaroius but oddly sweet parody of Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and King Dork. Despite the title and the song insluting him a LOT it’s still just endearing. This is a problem but we’ll get to in just a moment WHY all these touching moments are a problem. So naturally things don’t go that well for Jay as Duke has a tape of the film sent to him “My shrink was right: GOd does hate me!”

Naturally kiss of death is bad and valrie is bad in it and Jay is left uncertain what to do, but eventually decides he has to do what he feels is right,.. though he does take a picture of her while she’s sleeping. “In case you do leave”

So in a tender and heartbreaking moment Jay is honest, the movie does suck and she’s not good but he does compliment her, for her personality not her body despite his skeevy behavior and say she could get better. Instead when he arrives home.. she dumps him to his face and leaves never to be seeen again while he assumes she’ll come back. And that’s the issue it’s GENUINELY hard to tell if we’re supposed to side with Jay. On one hand he genuinely loves her and does the right thing and on the oth er he’s kinda creepy. It’s a mixed tone that just sorta hurts thing and something the series DID fix after this, as it found a better ballance of the guy being pitable while also still being an ass and ONLY usually being punished when he does something actually wrong, the only exception being Dial M for MOther which is easily the weakest episode of the series. The episode does close on a really funny moment as Jay’s dispondent because “I’m sitting on top of a volcano of rage and I don’t knwo where to direct it”. Marty mentions a new Sylvester Stallone movie where “He plays a concert pianst who” And jay dosen’t even need the rest of that to shout “To the multiplex!” The man is back

Final Thoughts for Pilot: This episode is not bad. It has it’s flaws as I said, mostly in tone, but the series would iron that out and it’s still a great pilot that organically introduces the entire main cast in one episode and really gives us the full idea of who Jay Sherman is. It’s also REALLY funny, as the series should be and it would get better, but i’d still put it over some more awkward first episode like Letterkenny’s “No Reaosn to Get Excited”, even with it’s brilliant ending or Bojack Horseman’s first episode whose title is way too long to put here in an article that’s already long as hell about about to get longer. But like those series this pilot worked pass the awkwardness and the result is a damn good series. but if you want a better idea of what it became.. wellllllll

Sherman, Woman and Child: So yeah as you can tell JSUT by contrasting images a few things were changed up between seasons, part of it at network instance. The designs were softened , the color palette was brightened with jay being the most noticably alterted between seasons.

The execs wanted jay a bit warmer, so his face was given wider more expressive eyes and was also scrucnehd down a bit. He was also made slightly less of a jackass, with his elitisim toned down a bit and his creepeir moments gone. For instance he no longer had a split personality/imaginary secretary named ethel. That was actually a thing. It didn’t even really change Jay as a person, this very episode mentions him not liking the Lion King, and he’s still snooty, he’s jusst not as punchable about it and that was for the best. But the cringe comedy in general was taken down a peg and replaced with more fun weirdness, which wihle present in season 1 really pops more here, especially with Jay’s dad who sadly dosen’t show up in this episode, but at various points dresses up like El Kabong, puts on the mask from the mask (”He did the same thing at Nixon’s funeral”), and blows up famous works of art while babysitting. But yeah things get a bit more surreal like the simpsons from season 4 onward, ironically enough given these guys left to make their own show, and it’s to the show’s benefit.

But besides a lighter tone, they also wanted two things to hook viewers in: A permenant love intrest for Jay, and an adorable kid character. The former.. was acutlaly quite resonable, as i’td both give jay a “win” as it were, allow the cast to have another femlae character and give him someone else to confide in besides Doris or Jeremy, to give those characters a break. The other was less so and we’ll get into why when we meet her.

This episode really is a second pilot, reintroducing about half of the main cast. Marty, Elanor, Margo and as I said Franklin are all absent. But their reintroduced soon enough with the fourth episode in both broadcast and dvd order, and my personal faviorite “A Song for Margo, is entirely focused on Jay’s parents and sister, while Lady Hawke has marty breifly at the start for broadcast order and he’s in the frmaing device for Sherman of Arabia in dvd order. So the characters all get a proper reintroduction to new audiences, but it was the right call to NOT shove them into this one, still introducing new people to the new cast, but letting the two new additions to it breathe and get properly intergrated into this universe.. well more Alice than Penny but we’ll get to that. It’s part of why, besides the genuine extra coat of polish aand seasonal changes I feel this is the better episode.

So we open with Jay on his show and two parodies in a row. The first is a few good men but with Jack Nichelson making fun of Christan Slater for sounding like him even though. they honestly aren’t too similar other than both doing that pause thing a bit. So yeah not their best but the second segment makes up for it “The Nightmare Before Channukah” a parody of the nightmare before christmas that was so beautifully animated and funny, that they actually bumped it up to the season premiere. But while the parodies are good Jay’s show is once again, this happened a LOT in season one, in jeapordy, being beaten by the Benedictine monk variety hour. Which while the Bendictine Monks are VERY much an artifact of the 90′s a choir of monks that somehow went mainstream, the whole segment is so absurd and wonderful it stands on it’s own and is still funny to me in 2021. Duke comes in anda fter trying to softball things shows the change I mentioned: He’s actually sorry the show is in danger and is genuinely sincere that he’s sad he’ll probably have to cancel it versus season 1 where he was ready to cancel it what felt like every other episode. And I prefer this, where he can still mess with jay or flex his power over him, but is more cordial with the guy and it allows more jokes between the two.

So Jay’s not doing so good.. and during his crappy day he spots a 30 something woman and her young daughter struggling in the rain and stops his cab to help. And gets maced for it “MMM, Jalapeno”. Though Alice does apologize and Jay does understand as it is New York and she graciously takes the offer. It’s in the cab their properly introduced. Aliice thompkins and her daughter penny who in a great bit punches jay in the nose for not liking the lion king (”rex reed did the same thing”) and then kissing him on the nose in apology (”Rex did that too” And he acompanies them in.. and also gets conked on the head by a potted plant and put in a materinity dress.

So we get to know Alice and what her deal is: Alice was once married to and supported the career of country star Cyrus Thompkins who was.. less than subtle in his music about how faithful he was

Easily one of my favorite gags of the series if in part for Pat Overall’s delivery. So she moved from Knoxville to New York to prove to her daughter a woman can make it on her own, and proves she’s smart, talented and driven she just needs a break. She seemingly gets one in a man in a bright white outfit who says “this is your ticket out of this rundown flophouse” only for him to cheerfully exclaim “Your being evicted!”... PFFFTT. Cue where the commerical would be

So during this lull in the action let’s talk about Alice and Penny’s voice actresses: Alice is voiced by Park Overall, though for some weird reason I thought she was voiced by Hollly Hunter. Dunno why. Park is an outspoken liberal, supporting my boy bernie sanders in 2016 and in general seems like a fascenating lady. Naturally like with Jay’s parents I know her from something more oddly specific, the sitcom Reba, as I did not realize she voiced alice depsite using a similar voice for her character there, Reba’s best friend Lori Ann.. And while Park TRIED her best.. the character didn’t work out: a combination of it being simply funnier that barbra jean tried to wedge herself into the roll and the fact Reba really didn’t need a horny abrasive sidekick meant the charcter had a very short shelf life and the audience had very low patience for her. I did like her constnatly insulting Brock as he was not a good person andi t was nice SOMEONE besides Reba actually got to roast him on a regular basis.

Penny was voiced by the one and only Russi Taylor, who sadly passed in 2019. She voiced Huey Dewey and Louie, Webby Vanderquack, Minnie Mouse, Fantasma, the imcomprable martin prince...

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Among tons of smaller rolls. She’s sadly missed. We’ll get more into what they add or subtract from the show in a minute, as the next day at work Jay wonders how to help, though Duke’s interjection gives us two great gags: his “30 second workout” which involvees throwing jay around like a medicine ball and.. well this.

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The man is a legend for a reason. He earned that golden statue. So Jay TRIES slipping alice the money only to give it “To my good friend crazy postman”, and Alice refuses the money due to pride.. even if you know, she has a small child and new york is expensive but Jay finds a better solution, hire her.. even if it’d make it impossible for them to date. For all of one episode. What keeps the power dynamics from feeling EUGUUUUGGHH here is that Jay treats alice like an equal partner at work and dosen’t let their relationship really impact things outside of one episode, and dosen’t use his position to get into a relationship with her nor does she use being responsible for a turn in his fortune for hers.

And yes turn in fortune, as a makeover and a change of attidue under Alice’s direction, which is utterly amazing to watch and wow’s duke and hte audience, wins back his fans and his job is secure. Duke meets alice and we get more great duke stuff. including something truly iconic...

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I want bears who sing for me, doo dah, doo dah. But yeah things are well though Jay ends up admitting to Jeremy he can’t stop thinking about her “Her merest smile is like pedals of the empreror’s bathwater, BATHWATER I TELL YOU BATHWATER. “ So Jeremey encourages him carpe canum “Seize the dog”. He does so.. and the day but instead finds Alice with her ex Cyrus whose trying to win her back. Wuh oh. Once the asshole leaves, and agrees to give her the night to think, Alice admits the only reason she’s considering it is she has a weakness: his singing melts her like butter on a bagle (”God i’ve been in new york too long”. ) Jay tries to talk her out of it at the critics meeting for “Dennis the Meance II Society” which involves Dennis pulling a drivebye on mr wilson.. why wasn’t this the second live action dennis the meance movie? WHY I ASK YOU. But Jay gets a good idea, as Alice TRIES to tell the asshole to get to stepping (And to see penny often, she’s not a monster), he works his evil song magic.. only for Jay to undercut it with his own amazing song on acordian. “Cyrus is just a virus, he wants to tie you down while your still young. Your potetial, is what’s essential, you could someday be another connie chung!” And that ultiamtely shows WHY jay is the better man. He just wants what’s best for her and dosen’t care if it’s him, he just wants it not to be THIS asshole. He’s not even trying to win her over, which a lot of these gestures creepily lead to. He just wants to help her be who she’s MEANT to be. And that’s why this works better: Instead of a fake relationship built on lust and someone conning the other person, it’s a real one built on genuine chemistry. Also Alice you know dosen’t just.. vanish after an episode but is a permenant part of the cast. I mean she does for the webisodes but we don’t talk about those.

So our hero undercuts Cyrus one more time Cyrus: “Loverrrr, without you there’s no other” Jay: Give him a chance he’ll do your mother....

I mean he’s not worng, So Cyus is sent packing and we get a nice romantic moment between the two.

Final Thoguhts: Sherman, Woman and Child This one is truly excellent. It relaunchs the show on all cyllanders. And frankly Alice was a fine addition to the cast: her own fully fleshed out woman with her own personality outside of jay, who was tough, smart and a good counterpoint and confidant to Jay and it felt like she’d always fit. Penny on the other hand, apologizes to the late Russi Taylor who tries her best, just dosen’t work and feels ultra cloying and out of place in the series and unspurisingly is barely used after this. But overall a better pilot than the actual pilot was already pretty good and a fine pair of episodes. Check em out whenever the series eithe rgets on a streaming platform or pops back up on youtube as Sony’s struck it down... despite not putting it up anywhere i’m aware of. Seriously sell it to HBO Max or Disney I want a reboot. But for now this series is awesome check it out and until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure.

#the critic #jay sherman #alice thompkins #marty sherman #duke phillips #pilot #sherman mother and child #jon lovitz #the simpsons #mike reiss #al jean #abc #fox #animation #the 90s

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pebblysand · 3 years

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[writing rant - on the monetisation of fanfiction]

a couple of months ago, when i updated my long fic, one of the people on the comments wrote to me the nicest possible review (one of the ones that you keep in your feel-good 'saved' emails - you know the ones), which, amongst other things also said: 'If I could pay you for this...believe me, I would.'

in the moment, i kind of smiled and laughed, and thanked the person for their kind words before moving on with my life. yet, since then, i have to admit that this sentence has kind of been living rent-free in my head. i think it is also because since diving back into fandom a few months ago, i've noticed something that kind of shocked me at first: more and more fanfiction writers seem to be monetising (or attempting to monetise) their craft.

now, back when i started writing fanfic, we wrote fanfic on ffnet and livejournal. it was accepted that thou shalt never (ever) charge money for your writing or else the author and their mean, angry lawyers will come after you for damages and you will die a slow and painful death. we wrote disclaimers at the start of all of our posts and thanked the gods every day when we did not get sued.

i have seen this change gradually over the years. first, in the mid 2010s, the disclaimers went. then, i noticed that people were getting 'tipped' for fanart, sometimes even charging commission. from what i understand (though, don't quote me on this, i'm not an ip lawyer and this post is not intended as legal advice), this is because the way the concept of fair use is framed under us law makes it easier to monetise fanart than it does fanfiction. maybe this is why visual artists came first on this trend. later still (and more recently) i've noticed fanfic writers, doing the same thing.

to be fully honest, the first thought i had when i saw this trend, considering the fear of god (and his lawyers) that was instilled in me in the past, was: how on earth is this even possible? (i'll come back to that in a bit). the second, though, was: fuck, i wish i had the guts to do that, lol.

because, yeah, i will admit, the idea of getting paid for writing what i love to write does appeal, to a certain extent. i won't lie. dear fanfiction writers who've tried to do that recently: i one hundred per cent get it.

looking back at the last fifteen years, i would say that for me, writing fanfiction has been (in terms of time commitment and energy consumed) the equivalent of having an on-and-off part time job. a job that i have held for one or two years at a time, then quit for a while, before coming back to it when i needed (wanted) it again. i obviously can't realistically give you a number re:the actual total of hours i have spent at this since i started out, but i can give you an idea. recently, i started clocking my hours out of interest and calculated that a chapter of my current long fic takes roughly between one hundred to two hundred hours to produce (and they're around 10,000 words). at that rate, i'm probably working 20 hours a week-ish? sometimes more, sometimes less? something as small as a three-sentence fic (like this for instance), takes roughly two/three hours. i'll be honest, i have cancelled plans to write fic. when i'm working on a long project, i do tend to organise my life to give myself the time to write, so i opt for socialising after work during the week rather than on weekends, as i've found this is when i write best. i won't lie: it is - for me (i know some people write quicker, bless them) - a huge time suck.

so, yeah, i understand, in the capitalist society we live in, wanting to make that time count. our world has unfortunately, repeatedly taught us that time is money and getting more does seem like a nice bonus (as long as you have an audience for your art that's willing to pay, obviously). after all, year after year, i've seen a lot of my friends try and monetise their passions as side hustles, with varying success. at first, glance, i look at the time i spend on writing fanfiction and think: man, i wish i could get a bit back from that too. i couldn't even draw a stick figure to save my life but i assume that the time commitment and energy put into that kind of work is roughly similar for visual fanartists as well. i thus very much understand the sentiment, both with fanart and fanfiction.

additionally, though i appreciate this is a bit tangential, the fact that fanfiction is free, i would argue, hinders its potential to be as representative as it could be. it's a bit sad because on the one hand, the fact that it is free makes it completely accessible to the masses but on the other, it makes fanfiction quite exclusive to rich, privileged people who can afford to spend the time and energy putting content out for free. if i spend this much time writing fanfiction, just because i like it and it makes me happy, it's because my full time job pays me enough to cover my bills. if it didn't, i probably would have to forgo writing and get a proper side gig. if you look at my periods of inactivity on ao3, those also kind of coincide with the times in my life when i had to have more things going on to put food on the table.

so, now, assuming that monetisation is a thing that, as a fic writer, one might want to look at, the next question is: how do you go about monetising it? obviously, the law hasn't changed since the days where we were all terrified of getting sued (although enforcement has been quite lax over the years) so it's more about finding workarounds around the law as it is, rather than actively seeking payment for fanart.

from what i've seen: two main solutions seem to exist.

first, there's the tipping/buy-me-coffee technique. as i understand it, this involves either setting up a page on one of the dedicated websites or just putting up your paypal account link on your tumblr posts. with these links, people can then send you however much money they want (however much money they can afford/think you deserve?) on a one-off basis. they're not actually paying for fanfic because there is no actual exchange of services, it's basically like them giving money to charity, except that charity is a fanfic writer/ fan artist whose work they enjoy.

there are two main issues i see with this: one, legally, i'm not sure how much ground this actually holds. assuming you're quite prolific/successful, if every time you're producing new content, you receive dozens of tips, although you're not actively charging for your fanart, making the argument that your content isn't what these people are actively paying for seems hard. imo, the fact that this method sort of holds is that realistically, you're going to make very little out of this. even if you're really good, you might make what? a couple hundred dollars. now, sure, that's a lot of money for a lot of people but in the grand scheme of things, no one sues anyone for such a low amount. as long as you're not making 'proper' money from it, it is highly unlikely that anyone would come after you.

this being said, the second issue, from my perspective, is that this is not in any way, shape or form, a reliable income. it also does not represent, at all, the cost of the time and investment actually put into said fanfiction (or fanart, i assume). for example: if you're going to tip someone who's worked on something for, say, fifty hours, ten dollars, that's very good of you, but that isn't going to be 'worth' their time. it is only worth their time if tipping is done at as scale, which imo is quite unlikely considering you're putting your content out for free anyway. there are kind souls who will tip you, but not that many, meaning that ultimately, you're not working for free anymore, but you're still working at a huge loss.

additionally, because this income is not even reliable on a monthly/weekly basis, it isn't something that anyone can actually rely on, even if only to fund their coffee habit. it's nice to have, don't get me wrong, but from my perspective, is the legal risk outlined above worth the trouble for the $20/30 tips i'd get every once in a while - not really. such low amounts also don't help diminish the class issue that i talked about earlier. again, if you're going to spend fifty hours on something, you might as well work a minimum wage job - even that will pay you more and will be dependable.

second, there's patreon (and patreon-like sites). here, the income is monthly, people pledge on a subscription basis, which does solve the last point above. it might not be much, but at least it's regular.

the main issue i see with patreon is that it is contingent on the author providing more services on top of what they already provide. in most cases, the author will keep putting their usual content out for free + provide their patreons (depending on tiers) with more content, specifically for them. this, to me, makes this scheme even less appealing than the previous one because a) if i can't provide fanfic to potential patreons (again, you can't sell fanfic), i'm not sure what on earth i could give them (original content? that's not really the same market) and b) that's even more work on my plate. honestly, considering the amount of time i already spend writing fanfic, i have neither the energy nor the willpower to provide extra content for an amount that, regardless, will probably pay me less than a part-time job would. again, you'd have to scale this (i.e. have enough patreons) to make it all worth your while, and even in very big fandoms, even for someone waaaaay more successful than me, i doubt it would be likely.

lastly, as a side note, both of these "methods" are solely accepted if they occur on tumblr/writer's own website, rather than on the writer's ao3 page/fic. there was a post going around explaining why that is (nutshell: it endangers ao3's status as a non-profit archive) but as with all things, i seem to have lost it. [if you do have the link to that post/know what i'm talking about, hit me up and i'll rectify this]. this, regardless, supposes driving traffic from wherever you post your fics towards tumblr/your own website which, again, decreases your chances of scaling this.

so, in the end, where does that leave us?

i think, at this point, we've kind of reached a crossroad. ultimately, i see two ways to look at this:

option one: if you believe that fanfiction writers should be paid for their art, you also probably agree that the methods outlined above, while they do offer some sort of solution, are less than ideal. the ideal solution (for this option) would obviously be to allow fanfiction authors to be properly paid for the publication of their work through 'normal' publishing/self-publishing deals, without the need for a licence from the author (bar - perhaps - the payment of royalties). that would create a proper 'market' for fanfiction, treating it as any other form of writing/art form. it would mean a complete overhaul of the laws currently in place, but why not? ultimately, in a democracy, laws are meant to be changeable.

this being said, though, while my personal knee jerk reaction would be to shout 'hurray!' at this solution, i do not actually think i want this. or, maybe, only part of me does. the part of me who has been writing fanfiction for free for fifteen years is like 'hey, yay, maybe i could get paid!'. but then, there is another part of me that would like, maybe, one day, to write more original fiction (i already do a bit, but not much). that part of me is feels frankly a bit icky about giving up her ip rights.

would i be comfortable with people writing fanfiction of my original work? hell yes. that would be the dream. imagine having your own ao3 fandom, omg. however, would i be comfortable with people profiting from writing fanfiction of my work? honestly, i'm not sure. to me, the answer to that is: it depends (how much time investment was put in? how original the concept is? etc.) which, in fact, kind of brings us back to the current concept of licensing. and yes, maybe the current frame imposed by copyright law has also shaped the way i view the concept of property, and maybe i should be more of a communist, free-for-all kind of person, but unfortunately, i'm not that revolutionary.

also, and slightly tangentially, i find it interesting how profiting from fanficition/fanart is seen as more acceptable i certain fandoms rather than in others. taking the hp fandom for instance, even prior to jkr expressing her views on transgender rights, i often read things like: 'ah, she's so rich anyway, she doesn't need the money.' now, that argument has not only gained traction but is also reinforced by: 'ah, she's the devil and i don't want to fund her. it'd rather give my money to fanfic authors/buy things on etsy.'

while i completely understand the sentiment and do not, in any way, shape or form, support jkr's views, i do find that argument quite problematic. if you set the precedent that because someone is too rich, or because they've expressed views you disagree with, you don't believe that they should be entitled to their own intellectual property rights, i do wonder: where does this stop? this being justified for jkr could lead to all sorts of small artists seeing other people stealing/profiting from their original work without authorisation. 'i don't pay you 'cause i disagree with you,' would then act as a justification, with i find highly unfair. the fact of the matter is: jkr created hp. knowing that, the choice of buying hp products, regardless of her opinions is completely and entirely yours, but buying the same stuff unlicensed, from people who are infringing on her copyrights seems, to me, very problematic as this could potentially be scaled to all artists. either we overhaul the entire copyright system or we don't, but making special cases is dangerous, in my humble opinion.

option two: we choose to preserve copyright law as it is, for the reasons outlined above. this means that most people will not get paid for the content they put out and that the few that do will operate on a very tight, legal rope, and work for tips that are a 'nice bonus' but not a proper pay. this sort of perpetuates the idea that fanfiction is 'less than' other art forms, because in our capitalist society, things that don't generate money (things often made by women, may i add) are not seen as being as valuable as things that do.

for me, personally, while getting paid to write fanfiction sounds lovely (and makes my bank account purr) in theory, i think i side to preserve the current system. as an artist, i think that intellectual property protects us and our concepts from being ripped off by others, including by big companies who might find it handy to steal a design, a quote, anything, without proper remuneration. this is even more important for smaller artists who wouldn't necessarily have the means to defend their craft otherwise.

this being said, i do appreciate that it depends on why you're writing fanfiction. i think that topic probably deserves a whole different post in its own right but ultimately, most people write fanfic because it's fun. we know it's for fun, and not for profit. and if that's the case, then we're okay to receive compliments, reblogs and sometimes, for some people a little bit of an awkward tip for our work. for me, fanfic has been a space to make friends, to get feedback, to learn and to experiment without the pressure of money being involved. that's why i don't particularly mind doing it for free, and wouldn't even bother setting up a patreon or tip-me jar. i love being able to do it just for the enjoyment of myself and my five followers (lol), without worrying about scaling it, or making it profitable. not every part of our lives, not every passion has to be profitable. as we say in ireland, you do it 'for the craic' and nothing else.

this, though, as i already said, also depends on your means and level of privilege. to me, writing for free is fantastic and a bloody relief - it means being able to do exactly what i want. original fiction writing is full of rules, and editors, and publishers. in fanfic, i can write whatever i feel like, and i'm willing to forgo a salary in exchange of that freedom. again, i have a full time job that covers my bills. this does mean, though, that i don't have as much time to dedicate to writing as i would like to.

and also, the thing is: i'm a small author. i happily write in my own little niche. bar that one comment, it is highly unlikely that anyone would actually want to pay me (or even tip me) for my content. but when you look at very successful people, like the author of all the young dudes, i could see how they'd want to get paid for their art, and why they'd feel differently.

bottom line for me is: the flaws of the current systems of remuneration combined with my strong belief in copyright law as a means to protect small, original creators, means that i don't really think it would be right for me to get paid for fanfic, even if i was the kind of person who had the market for it. whilst it would be nice, this very long rant has, hopefully, explained why.

#fanfiction #writing #archive of our own #monetisation of fanfiction #fanfiction theory #this post is waaaay too long and the author regrets everything #pebblysand rants

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maiassensibleblog · 4 years

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Dear theatre people, this is what I mean when I say theatre is elitist...

(All views expressed are my opinion).

I’ve been considering whether now is the right time to post this but when theatre comes back (which it will, it must), it cannot look how it looked before. I love theatre with all my heart, it is the part of my life that heals the most. But the industry drives me crazy.

I want to address the questions: Why don’t people go to the theatre? And why don’t people care about theatre? My perspective is from a West End theatre goer who is working class, not white and not straight. I am not involved in making theatre and do not desire to be involved.

To answer this huge question, I’d like to start with two definitions:

Elitist: Relating to or supporting the view that a society or system should be led by an elite.

Inaccessible: Unable to be reached.

I often see people asking “why don’t people go to the theatre?” with only responses related to accessibility. When we talk about accessibility, we need to consider barriers such as ticket prices, geographical location and ableism. An awful lot of people are not stopped by accessibility, but they do not go to the theatre. Why? Theatre is elitist.

Elitism is the feeling that you do not belong in a space because the people who are there are different from you and often appear to think they are better than you. In my opinion, this is the reason that the general public do not care about theatre. Elitism is built into the theatre world and this has only been highlighted recently through the BLM movement (I don’t need to go into this here, you’ve all seen it).

From a personal perspective, I’m privileged to have been going to the theatre since I was tiny. We didn’t have a lot of money but my mum was really good at finding deals on tickets and I grew to love theatre more and more as I grew up. I go around once a week and see a lot of off West-end stuff. I, a seasoned theatregoer, feel elitism every time I go to the theatre. I will elaborate on these in the sub-topics below but I wanted to point out that I am somebody who is relatively confident around the elitist feeling, imagine if you aren’t. You just wouldn’t bother and that is what we’re seeing.

Tickets

The first thing I would like to discuss may seem to sit between accessibility and elitism but getting affordable tickets sits in with elitism in my opinion. I am often asked how I can afford to go to the theatre so often and my answer is always I know where to look. Why do theatres feel that it is acceptable to hide their cheap seats? The only thing that is achieved here is keeping theatre for those who know where to look.

If you have not be brought up around theatre folk, you don’t know that day seats exist. Even when theatres advertise and say something like “£15 day seats available”, people who do not know anything about theatre will not have a clue what that means. They won’t know the difference between a digital lottery and a regular in-person day seat, they won’t know how to press buy now just at the right time on TodayTix to get a rush ticket. Having cheaper options does improve accessibility but the way it has been done doesn’t serve to reduce elitism.

Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who has never been to the theatre before. They see a poster for a musical that looks amazing, they google it, they see decent seats for £100+. They decide to go for the £30 option in the Gods. They feel ripped off and don’t bother again OR they know that those are crap seats and don’t bother at all. There is nowhere on that main booking page that mentions cheaper, good seats. That is telling people that they only deserve good seats if they’re rich. That is elitist.

Image

My next two points spill into each other, but they are not the same thing. What do you think of when you think of somebody who goes to the theatre. We all just thought of the same old, white couple. They tut at young people who talk at interval? Yeah we all know the type. It’s amazing that these people, who usually have disposable income, go to the theatre and spend money there but they are coming anyway. Why are you therefore using them to advertise?

Some theatres do this amazingly (Bush, Soho, Young Vic, loves) but most don’t. Some shows have gone too far (looking at you Heathers West End transfer) but think: What is the demographic that you think would want to come, but isn’t? If you’re trying to attract non-theatre goers, they have to see themselves in those who are recommending it.

Obviously, some known reviewers have to be included to keep the regulars in but theatres must start including a wider range of reviewers, they must be open to criticism from young people, queer people, Black people... Then, they must show the faces of these reviewers in their advertising, they must include their views using their vocabulary. And once you get these voices (and start respecting them), theatres must start taking these views into account. A mainstream producer actually listening (and properly listening) to the views of not the mainstream critics? That is revolutionary. That’s showing you’re willing to change.

Etiquette

This is the big one. Theatre etiquette is elitist. I’m sure many people know what I mean by this: Hushed tones even when the show isn’t on and you’re in the bar, FOH using theatre-y vocabulary to usher people places (even things like “the house is open” mean nothing to people who aren’t in theatre), expected restraint to reactions towards what’s happening on stage. I’ve never been to a theatre that doesn’t use vocabulary that would be alienating to non-theatregoers. Only a few theatres don’t have that feeling of “we’re better than you” hanging in the air.

I have been told that I do not match up to people’s ideas of expected theatre etiquette twice outside of fandom things. I remember them both. Once, I was laughing at funny moments during a funny play. The second time I was talking to my friends excitedly at interval and had some older theatre-goers tut and ask us to be quiet (hun, it’s the interval). As I mentioned, I go to the theatre all the time, I generally conform (even when I hate it). Imagine how you’d feel if you didn’t know the nonsense rules.

The solution? Dismantle the rules.

People dismiss panto because is does this and it’s the least elitist theatre out there. Stop getting on your high horse about people openly enjoying themselves. And to those panicking, very few people are actually going to chat their way through a whole show they’ve paid money for.

We need more relaxed performances. We need more for disabled people but we also need more for young people, where they can react to what’s going on during the show and whisper to each other about it.

We need more sing-a-longs. Musicals can create an amazing fandom this way. Six is doing an amazing job because they’ve fostered this environment. Imagine a Hamilton sing-a-long. Just sit in that for a moment. Imagine a person who had never been to the theatre before and has heard a few songs of the soundtrack getting the feeling of a gig from the theatre. It’s powerful and it needs to happen.

Shakespeare

Nothing exhibits the elitism of theatre more than Shakespeare. The sheer prevalence of it. And, I’m going to say it: Nobody fully understands what’s going on.

Why, as an industry, are you all so obsessed with a sexist, racist, homophobe who died in the 1600′s? People alive today are writing plays about stories that people want to hear, in a language that people can understand. Commission them.

That is all on that.

Secrecy

There’s certainly something to be said about keeping the magic of theatre alive by keeping tricks a secret. I totally appreciate and love that about this art medium. You watch things happening in real time that look like magic and it’s beautiful.

However, the secrecy around productions has gone too far. Why are full on HQ recordings of shows being filmed for them never to see the light of day? I have seen the argument that people will not feel the need to watch the show if they have seen a recording but I have only seen that argument from people who work in theatre. Listen to the people who just go to the theatre. I don’t know what I can actually say to convince the industry of this, but theatre people will still come because there’s nothing like live theatre.

What you will do by releasing a good recording is open the show to the masses (and make money from it). You will essentially be building a fandom. People can watch football on TV but choose to pay for a ticket to go watch live because it is a different experience. People can listen to a band but choose to pay for a ticket to go to a concert because it is a different experience. It is the same thing. You honestly need to get over this because I think this is a massive reason why this elitism still exists.

Also why not release HQ footage even as a trailer? Stick it on YouTube for free, get ad revenue and advertise.

These are just a few things that need to be taken into consideration when theatres re-open. Theatre must come back better and stronger than it was before and it must get more people in the room. The people will need art.

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. - Toni Morrison

#theatre #theatre culture #west end #broadway #elitism #opinion

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curious-minx · 3 years

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The Divine Hustle

Do the hustle(!)

Working yourself to the death has never been so glamours!

To live in America is to play by the business savvy handbook. America has never been a country of a wholesome omniloving God, instead the USA has always been the land of fleeced pockets. Much of America has fetishized the concept of “Hard Work” from the Puritantical Protestants to the Bootstrap pulling fantasia sprung from the Industrial Age. Some business CEOs even go as far to reinvent history by putting the word “Hustle” into Abraham Lincoln’s mouth:

“Things may come to those who wait … but only the things left by those who hustle.”

An actual quote from our Hardest Working President Business

Yes, Lincoln the original Tall King, the first Presidential White Saviour, a Myth more than Man, the living embodiment of a Pull Yourself By the Bootstraps Aesop fable. He needed that stove pipe hat to hide his vast quantity of hustle. I can see why a Business CEO type would be tickled by this fake quote. Lincoln’s legal work had him making more money at times than that of a prominent State Governor. There are reasons why he’s a Money Man. So tell me, Encyclopedia Britannica why would Lincoln feel the drive to accumulate this money and capital? Does it stem from Abraham Lincoln’s insecurities and low self-esteem from coming from a low income background? EB offers us none such info but it does lean heavily into Mary Todd Lincoln being a questionable influence on Lincoln. The EB is quick to file MTL as being the Insane, Difficult Woman who has developed an “obsessive need to spend money.” Of course, Lincoln had to make all of this money in order to pay for his expensive crazy wife. Makes perfect sense if I am someone completely stoned and drunk from hagiography and cute, quaint reductive views of history.

Lincoln’s business savviness is made abundantly clear in his failed presidential campaign against Douglas. He published personally curated debate transcripts and his own Biography to hawk on the campaign trail. The acute self-awareness of his own remarkableness is perhaps one of Lincoln’s main shortcomings and strengths. The man worked himself into a frenzy, constantly looked emaciated and worn down, and for what? The one few times he tries to take in one of his only pleasures in life, The Arts, he gets murdered. The Capitalist Mythmakers want us to forget about all of that. Abraham Lincoln worked because he loved to work and he was a good American, therefore if you want to be a good American like Lincoln, you’ll work the Hustle.

Yes, this essay has been nothing but the ramblings of someone pretending like they know what they are talking about, but everytime I see the word “Hustle,” exclusively when it’s being used in terms of celebrating hyper capitalist America another part of me dies.

////

Wow, the people look meaningless from up here.

The New York Hustle. The Detroit Hustle. To do these hustles once meant finding a dancing partner for the night and telling the 4/4 rhythm, “4 steps are fine, but six steps are even better.” Now the New York Hustle is working three unpaid internships with the promise that a slightly underpaid gig could be on the way. All language inevitAbly changes and evolves, but that doesn’t mean I have to be okay about it. The modern hustle is the joy killer. The modern hustle is pushing and shoving fellow hustlers over the faint whiff of dining room scraps. To hustle is to continue to believe in your own self mythology so hard that you too can become your personal Lincoln. An emaciated, husk working for the Good of the Company, er, I mean Nation. Maybe a scuzzy Matthew McConaughey will give you a spin. That’s sure to make any hard worker smile before she collapses.

/////

Have you ever seen a side hustle news filler story that didn’t make you want to walk into a murky ocean’s depths? One Google “News” search of the term hustle brings up this article about a New Zealand Woman supposedly planning slumber parties during Covid times. One can only assume that this is the case because the article (sourced from the highly reputable looking Stuff.co) despite being published in February 2021 makes no reference to the pandemic. This is because New Zealand has already moved well beyond those covid days. Covid slumber party nightmares aside, the idea of hiring a professional slumber party planner in or out of Covid times is a brazenly gross idea. The extent of “planning” that should go into a slumber party is how much should you tip the pizza delivery driver, how many boxes of brownie mix, and maybe the one job I could jokingly fathom hiring a person for is choosing what regrettable movie a kid should watch at a slumber party.

Slumber parties are for children, and can easily be planned and arranged by a child. There should never be a need to outsource “Harrypotter glam” themed teepees and treats. Maybe that’s the kind of life people in New Zealand want to lead and if certain individuals want to have that ambitious drive to make a ridiculous small company they should be free to do so. The sinister creeping reality is that the standards of the Exceptional Money Making Individual are becoming the standards everyone is expected to live up to. Passion for the sake of passion, and art for the sake of art is getting the squeeze in favor of monetizing slumber parties.

Monetizing off of Twitter followers. Monetizing off of newsletters. Monetizing off of podcasts. Content creation for the sake of profit is basically the main reason the Internet exists anymore. If you have something you love to do in your life like the act of reading a book you better be willing to invest in a USB microphone and recording booth to start your audio book reading career because otherwise you’re just reading a book. You’re just playing a video game when you could be streaming yourself for all of your adoring fans and followers. I could be thinking, but instead I’m tweeting.

I do not respect the Hustle. I respect differences and a variety of lifestyles. I respect Passion and drive. I do not respect the Hustle, because the side hustle is just a full-time job the capitalist system is trying to make you consider a “side” project. One look at this exhaustive CNBC “The ultimate side hustle guide for 2021”, and what they are describing is not a side hustle but starting your own small business. They are not the same thing. A side hustle should not require an immense amount of time, personal wealth, and the possible necessity of hiring a freelancer and tax analysts to start when you are already working a full-time job and/or participating in the American Breeding Dream.

I know that I am lazy compared to many over working Americans. I am already in my late twenties and still staunchly refuse to engage in American Adult Tie Sensitive Checklist. I would like to work, truly I do. I would love nothing more than to be in possession of a job in a safe and humane company that legitimately favored Human Kindness and Decency over the Grind. Working for a company that didn’t feel like the sole purpose of its existence is to make more and more money.. I am trying to minimize. I am trying not to let other people’s perceptions clutter and crowd out my mind. I am trying to survive through this pandemic that has completely melted what little brains and physical strength I had. I will not stop trying to do the Divine Hustle.

Let’s just appreciate this blurry picture of Divine being eaten by a lobster and call it a day.

#hustle #side hustle #economy #personal essay #capitalism #employment #employee #work #america #divine #John waters #Abraham lincoln #lincoln #president lincoln

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teacherintransition · 3 years

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A Swift Kick in The Ass

The “Big Leap” or “Teacher in Transition” isn’t just a one time move that won’t ever need re-thinking… DO NOT settle in or rest on your laurels…

This gig only works if you keep challenging yourself…

“He not busy being born is busy dying…”

Bob Dylan

It is almost a year ago that I made the move; THE decision…retirement. It was a frightening series of contemplations that I worked over and over in my mind. Analysis and re-analysis, thinking what success would look like, what failure would mean; seeking advice dealing with the nay sayers that were just in my mind alone. You would not believe the entitlement to intrude that so many people think they have; it is beyond infuriating. “A person should work until at least sixty five… but a teacher is what you are … do you realize how much time there is to fill? … idle hands are the devil’s workshop (yes, I really got that one) … you won’t be able to afford it … isn’t retiring kind of selfish?” My responses followed: 1. What if you don’t make it to sixty five 2. I am a teacher and so much more 3. Yes and I’ll be filling it my way 4. Oh boy I hope so 5. Mind your business 6. Yes … yes it is selfish and we are all due that time. I could easily silence the unrequested advice with some Latin

“…vos manseritis in me, et vivat anima mea subjugale mutum animal,”

Throughout this year, I’ve shared advice regarding the best way to use time during this stage in life. The main points being: discover your loves, your skills and your dreams. I’ve never advocated throwing caution to the wind; well, maybe some, but a plan and goals were always part of the picture. With blind faith, I extolled the rewards of being able to finally pursue the dreams that were put on hold while you worked to pay bills. After a year has passed, I can deliver a verdict… it has been amazing.

Though Covid has altered everyone’s plans, for the most part, I’ve been able to accomplish many of my goals and some I never considered. My blog writing has taken off better that I expected; I’ve created a small online business and have sold more art in nine months than I have in my entire life; I’ve been published; I’ve done volunteer work for a dog rescue organization; I’m part of an international organization that promotes Scottish history; I walked 2 to 3 miles a day; I’ve tutored college students and more than these things have became accomplishments. I’ve read voraciously and during the middle of the summer, I plan to start my storytelling podcast. So, everyone lives happily ever after? …huh? …NO.

This is the trap I’ve fallen victim to recently. A satisfying retirement plan isn’t and cannot be a one and done. Yes, you must always ask yourself, “what’s next!” If you do a couple of great things and leave it at that; all you’ve done is take one more step than the guy who moved from work to the rocking chair. Like any rut or lifeless routine in life, one can easily get trapped if you’re not careful. My dalliance into despair started with a long cold I acquired during our “snowmageddon.” The cold kept me miserable for six weeks… my energy was sapped. The despair was further reinforced by the Covid rescheduling of two trips to Europe that have been in the planning for more than two years. It was the second year that Covid caused this and it was a real blow. Unbeknownst to me, I was allowing these disappointments to be excuses to slow down and feel pity. These are to be avoided at all costs… trust me, when you are the goal setter and your not setting any, things can get dreary quickly.

Without question, the benefits of being your own person can also be its drawbacks. You are in charge of keeping the ship afloat when things go wrong or they slow down. Disruptions can be more jolting when your 9 to 5 isn’t worked out for you. Ideas started slowing down and my mood took a downward turn. I could feel it … less than a year into this and I could feel the gears gumming up. It was apparent that I needed a swift kick in the posterior, the back of my front, the Gluteus Maximus, … I needed a kick in the ass! This kick would be delivered by a 4” 11’ veteran nurse of thirty three years… my wife.

There is always second guessing involved with this gig, can’t be avoided. Early in May, I was approached to apply for an Art teaching job at one of my former places of employment. Yes, I was considering… UNRETIREMENT! I spoke with my wife about it one afternoon and she hastily followed up with, “you want to do what?” Elaboration followed and was met again with, “you want to do what?” with an additional, “why are you even thinking that?” I explained to her what my mood was like of late and that I felt unfocused. Kim patiently reassured me that financially we were doing fine, but more to the point, she shared her observation that she hadn’t seen me so at ease and less stressed in many years and felt I was overreacting. To wit, I overreacted further and set up an interview. It went great, I was on my game, I still had it.

Later that afternoon, we were driving to Conroe to visit my brother and take one of our rescue dogs to a vet. Being quite coy, I revealed to Kim that I had gone to an interview and disappointment filled her facial expression. She asked, “well, how did it go?” “I killed it… it was out of the park!” She didn’t share my enthusiasm but did share some wisdom. She told me that I knew this would be tough making the change going into it and there was bound to be some rough spots. Kim was very aware that I missed my students tremendously, but she also knew how much I had accomplished. We talked on the drive down about things I had planned and that disappointment was inevitable and temporary. She reminded me that it had been a long time since she had seen me happy.

Then she did it … moved in on the power play, “haven’t you wanted to write a book?” Sheepishly I replied, “well, uh yeah … I guess.” For the rest of the drive, we fleshed out the book I wanted to write. I have started writing the book. This task wasn’t even on the radar when I thought of retiring; seven chapters and forty seven pages have been written in less than a week. It doesn’t matter if it’s not a best seller, it’s from my soul which had been darkened a bit the past few months. I knew and my wife knew I had a fire to create and she wasn’t going to let me forget. Ass kicked… in the best way possible.

Setbacks are inevitable and effort can be tough to keep going sometimes, but it’s always worth it. Whether it’s raising your kids, paying the mortgage or helping direct a lost kid, the best things in life are rewarding because of the struggle in accomplishing them. A rocking chair doesn’t require much effort keep the fire stoked.

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leverage-commentary · 4 years

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Leverage Season 2, Episode 2, The Tap-Out Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Marc: Hi, I’m Marc Roskin, Director and Producer on Leverage.

John: Hi, I’m John Rodgers, Executive Producer and Writer on Leverage. Hold on, let me open my beer. Albert.

Albert: I’m Albert Kim, I'm the writer of this episode of Leverage.

John: I'm gonna jump straight to Marc Roskin, because we are jumping straight into the action here. Marc, this is a gym, or looks like a gym, starts with a fight scene. How hard was it to find this space, and what did you do to make it shootable?

Marc: We had a handful of gyms to choose from, but what we liked about this was the elevated ring. We were able to center it in the middle of the ring and it had a good work space and of course, as you know, Dave Connell likes a lot of windows.

John: Yeah. So you're bouncing light in through those outside windows, then.

Marc: Yes. Even when we’re playing these scenes at night, we were still streaming lights in through the blinds. And as you can see, we have vertical blinds all over. We put those up as well. It just had a- also a good, central location for us to shoot in other areas as well.

John: Cool. Now this is the most involved fight shooting we did the entire year. How did you prep for it?

Marc: Well, the gentleman- the bald gentleman on the right, is Matt Lindland, who is a high school champion wrestler, college wrestler, Olympic silver medalist, and a real mixed martial arts fighter who fought in the UFC. So when we were looking to cast someone, we wanted to cast someone who knew the sport, who knew the ability, and because later on as you see our Eliot character in the ring, we wanted someone who could be safe with Christian. Because, since Christian does all his fights, we wanted someone who wasn't gonna try and show off for the camera and end up hurting one of our stars.

John: Not that Christian doesn't get hurt on a fairly regular basis anyway, but yeah, it was a nice try. And this was a really fast start. This is- you know, we bang right into the villain, we bang right into the victim. Our- this, however, was not our usual episode. Why don’t you tell us how this got started?

Albert: Well this was our- this was essentially our fight episode, our boxing episode, and except we wanted to update it, so we set it in the world of mixed martial arts.

John: To explain to people who don't know con shows, there are certain prototype con shows and movies-

Albert: That’s right.

John: The boxing con is a big one. And so we’re constantly looking at these older cons to update them and so we landed on alternate fighting. So what sort of research did you do?

Albert: That's the first thing I did. My background is in sports journalism, and so my first instinct was to start doing a lot of research. So I read a couple of books, I interviewed fighters, I interviewed promoters and managers, I spent some days in the gym.

John: You went to a gym here in LA, right?

Albert: Yeah I went to the Legends gym here in LA and spent a couple afternoons there, and talked to a lot of the fighters there. And one of the first things I learned was that, if people know the sport at all, they know the UFC and Las Vegas and things you see in pay per view, which is kind of the upper tier of the sport, but I learned that there's also this huge grassroots level of the sport, where they’re fighting in small towns all through the Midwest and everyone is out there trying it to make it to the big time. I knew right then that that's where we had to set the story somewhere, because it’s a wilder and wollier world with less regulation and more people are being taken advantage of.

John: What sort of money they fighting for at that level?

Albert: They're fighting for- if they're lucky, they're fighting for maybe two or three thousand dollars; more like 500 dollars a gig sometimes. Sometimes they work as bouncers at a club and then after they're done with their shift, they're allowed to come in and fight. It's literally a step above amateur night.

John: And this is a really nice sequence, by the way, the spin around to reveal Nate. Was it really raining? Did you get lucky or-?

Marc: No this was- I wanted to have at least one night scene in the episode.

[Laughter]

Marc: Dean gets lots of those.

John: Dean gets the- Dean cake; we've explained the Dean cake.

Marc: This was my night episode and I thought, ‘well maybe we'll have it rain, just to have some sort of effects.’ The previous shot was a stock shot and then that one I just thought it would give a nice night look to the scene.

John: And this also takes us out of our comfort zone. Albert why- what was- yeah, we’re in- where are we, Nebraska?

Albert: Nebraska.

John: We originally didn't set it in Nebraska.

Albert: It was originally set in Iowa, except Portland doesn't look a lot like corn fields and stuff, so we moved it to a slightly- we moved it to Nebraska. It's not a huge difference.

John: It's a little more mild, a little more hilly.

Albert: A little more, yeah. It's also realistic because a lot of- both Iowa and Nebraska and a lot of the midwestern states, they're really big into the wrestling tradition and that's where a lot of the MMA fighters are coming from today. And we make a point of in the episode, that the- that's where the grassroots talent is. So- and the other thing about this episode is, you know, knowing that it was gonna be set in the world of fighting, we knew it was gonna be very Eliot centric.

John: Yeah.

Albert: So this is definitely gonna be an Eliot character episode, and I remember one of the first things I talked to you about when I started working on this was, we talked about the Eliot character, and one thing I remember you saying was that Eliot is really good at the violence, but he doesn't necessarily like it.

John: No, no, the violence- Eliot Spencer is a- considers himself a negotiator, and occasionally negotiations need to be resolved with short, sharp bursts of violence. He's not a hitter- he's not a hitter by nature; he's a hitter by choice, by job.

Albert: And that immediately suggested to me this whole theme of, sort of, self control and this had to do with episode, has to do with him being able to control the violent impulses he has, as well as, you know, externally in this story, and the bad guy is someone who sort of exerts control over all these guys.

John: I would like to say, by the way, this is the perfect locked off comedy frame. The whole idea of Nate sitting there quietly; he's not even going to dignify what the kids are doing behind him at this moment, he's busy thinking. Also a lot of interesting fan mail about being trapped in Beth’s thigh grip; really, don't ever email us about that again. But this was a ton of fun. What was it like shooting this?

Marc: It was a lot of fun, but it was also helpful to explain some of the fight scenes. And, you know, to have Matt Lindland teach Beth Riesgraf how to put Christian Kane- or to put Hardison in a triangle choke hold, was very fun. And Albert and I had the experience of having Matt put us in that hold as well.

Albert: Oh man.

Marc: And I swear to god, he must have just given me five percent of the pressure in a fight; I had a headache the rest of the day.

Albert: Oh my gosh, it was unbelievable. But Beth picked it up really fast; that was scary.

John: She's got good physical- she's got good physical memory, actually, she picked up the pickpocketing really fast.

Albert: I love this shot.

John: This is a great shot now; this is the classic golf con; this is very Rockford. This is the classic Rockford, is that Jim Garner would show up as Jimmy Joe Meeker or somebody else at your celebrity play- like your bad guys place, piss him off, and then ingratiate himself and force him to seek him out for vengeance. It's a great roping technique, actually, rather than looking like your seeking him out - force him to seek you out. Now where is this?

Marc: This is at one of the golf courses outside of Portland, the Oregon Country Club. And they just opened the doors to us and we had a really good time shooting this. And fortunately for us, Brian Goodman is, I would say, almost like a scratch golfer.

Albert: Yeah, he's single handicap.

Marc: He had a really good time doing this.

John: And Brian is the main villain.

Marc: He's our main villain.

John: He’s Jed Rucker. And now, is he from LA or from Portland?

Albert: Yeah, LA.

Marc: No he- he came from LA, but he's a Boston guy; he had a really real, rough Boston upbringing.

Albert: Oh yeah, Boston.

John: Oh that's right, yeah, he came up in like the- he came up in the less than lawful element, if I remember it correctly.

Marc: Yes he did, and he's put that energy into acting and I think he handles it very well.

Albert: But he also brought a lot of grittiness to the role which was really nice.

John: Well he's one of the few physically menacing bad guys we have. Usually the bad guy has what we call the Busey, which is your sidekick meant to inflict pain or do your dirty work. While he really looks like he would be the dude driving you to the crossroads of a shallow grave.

Albert: Definitely.

John: Now it- was it raining? I mean were shooting in Portland, so...

Marc: Not at this sequence; when we get to later parts of the con, we did have some rain.

Albert: But pretty soon after we shot this it started pouring, and because- it was cold there. It was really cold out in the morning, I remember that.

John: I love the fact that Hardison, in theory, has a way to put nanites in a golf ball, just in his luggage. Or he knows hackers in Nebraska that he can get that from. You know the Omaha hacking scene, it's really, really vibrant. Good lift. Beth, as always, doing her own lifts, and this is- this is one of our few big montage sequences.

Marc: Yes.

John: Usually they are very self contained; one, two, three beats.

Marc: No, we actually went out and shot a round of golf and were able to- and Tim, who has never really played before, picked it up really quickly and developed a really good swing, and we were actually using a lot of his shots in the actual montage.

John: Now that’s cool.

Albert: Well what's funny is that he’s you can tell he's an actor, because all of his best shots came when the camera was on. Turn the camera off and he couldn't hit the ball for his- to save his life, but then once the camera was rolling, right down the middle; he would strike it.

Marc: And Brian was nervous that we were gonna ruin his swing cause we kept telling him to shank things, cause the ball was supposed to go off.

John: Yeah once you learn, you're done. And this is where- yeah this is the beginning of the montage. Now I’m gonna jump ahead cause the montage will give us enough time to do so. When you were talking about- when you were breaking this episode as a director, you knew you were gonna do that gym. Did you reference look at any specific reference materials? Did you look at any fights? Did you look at mostly MMA footage? Or what'd you- what was your homework there?

Marc: I looked at MMA footage and I also looked at some of those fights that Albert was talking about - the grassroots fights. I- you know, I'm a fan of this sport so I have been following it, and I was looking up footage, and looking up rings, and looking at the magazines as well, and just trying to study up on it as best as I could.

Albert: And you had also done all that research previously for a feature project, right? So you had all that information as well, which helped.

Marc: Yeah, so I'd been to the UFC matches; I've been, you know, to the gyms; I've been to some of the smaller venues as well.

John: I love the choice Beth always does in these scenes, is to put on a very sort of frowning concentration? Like Parker finds human tradition fascinating. Tim sank this right?

Marc: Yes he did.

Albert: Yeah.

Marc: We kept telling him to- ‘don't worry, we'll put it in CG.’ He said, ‘no I'm gonna get it, I’m gonna get it’ and he did.

John: And that is the- I don't know what number hat that is for this season; that is a really obnoxious hat, that's nicely done. Tim- I forget where it started, probably last year Bank Shot? Where we put the cowboy hat on? It just started, the shorthand for Tim’s character, which is now which hat he's wearing. Because in it- really in this one, he really is in that tradition - that Rockford tradition that we hit again in the Lost Heir Job, and that sort of big city/city slicker, just kind of weasel, that just gets under this dude’s skin.

Albert: Well this is one of the episodes where we actually take the action out of the Boston area, or wherever our team’s headquarters is, and we went- we traveled to the midwest. So part of the idea is to take our team out of their comfort zone, so they don't exactly- so they're a little uncomfortable being out of their element, and then it actually comes to play in this story. They don't exactly- they are eventually subverted because they can't really figure out the relationships in this community.

John: Well they're- well they can't cover everything, you know. And that's a big- that was a big challenge in season two, is the fact that by the end of season one, these guys had done a lot of really amazing stuff. And how do you continue to throw obstacles in their way? And so a lot of the first half of season two was: ‘okay, let's take them out of Boston; okay, let’s constrain them in time and space; alright, let's give one of them an emotional interest that derails them’. And this is really a perfect example. This episode’s one of my favorite examples from making one season to making five. Is figuring out how to take the characters out of their comfort zone in an interesting way that's still- that still tells a character story, a really good Eliot story.

Albert: Now what’s interesting in this is also that a lot of the fighters were real MMA guys that Matt actually- Lindland has a gym in Portland.

John: Oh cool.

Albert: So he brought a lot of these guys from his gym and they were background, later on they'll be in some of the fight scenes. So that was really helpful for the reality of the of the look as well.

John: Yeah, that’s Chris showing off the fact that- I forget when we told him, but we were like, ‘you got an MMA episode.’ He was like, ‘oh I gotta go train.’ He couldn't- we couldn't find him for two months.

Marc: And he thought it was gonna be in episode six or- no it’s now episode three; he's like ‘oh no!’

John: Yeah and this now- this sort of- What'd you call this? It’s kind of a gauntlet.

Marc: Yeah this is what he calls it, and this is what something I wanted to just try and do with one shot and keep everything pushing in on him, pushing in on Christian. The cars converging, everybody just converging. Just to show how outnumbered he is.

John: And it's a good cliffhanger. And yeah, Eliot's about to fight. And now the promised fight.

Marc: Exactly.

John: You know, we have made a bargain with the audience and now we're delivering unto them.

Albert: So all these guys were real fighters.

John: No stunties? Or most of them fighters?

Albert: No, they were local fighters; all local guys.

Marc: These were all local fighters.

John: That's tough, because getting fighters to throw stunt punches is tough.

Marc: Yes. And the last guy you see him fight was someone from the ultimate fighters, this guy Ed Herman. Who unfortunately lost his last fight at the UFC cause his knee went out, but he was really great to work with and train with.

John: Yeah. There's a nice cornered- cornered dog moment here where you are fairly sure Eliot will choke this dude out if he needs to. Now why don't you explain- I just said that fairly cryptically as if everyone would know. Why is it difficult to get real fighters to look good on camera?

Marc: They did- a lot of times- they just don’t- they don’t how to sell it for television, or for film. It's just- it's really about camera trickery, and where it should be, and sometimes some of these guys, they punch too fast, or too quick, and they think it's real, but it doesn't register enough; so you're always trying to tell them- I mean, I'm even telling Christian this a lot of times, dude, take 10% off so I can really see it.

John: Yeah. That’s a lot of the thing is, you know, since he does all his own stunts, it becomes a sort of a matter of pride between him and the stunt man to move as quick and fast and hard as they can. And, you know, we do have to photograph this stuff.

Marc: Well I mean, the beauty of having Christian do his own stunts is you never have to hide a stunt person when it’s Christian and-

John: You just move the camera how you want.

Marc: And he's a very fast learner. He really learns a routine quickly; he helps choreograph them, and you never- you can always tag Christians face and that's what this is about, so it's great to have the ability to keep Christian in. This is one of my favorite shots - we craned through the actual ring all the way to Rucker and Eliot.

John: You got a crane?

Marc: We had- yeah.

John: Wow, that's really nice. Now I'm gonna ask the- the controversial chicken fried steak scene was just up. We were really trying- it's interesting, we were really trying to show that Sophie was out of place, and a lot of people took it as we were making fun of food in that part of the country. And it's just interesting that as writers, you forget that the protagonist is assumed to be speaking the truth at all times in the audience members mind. When, a lot of times, for us, they're characters that we move around the chessboard; we have no problem making the characters be jerks, or selfish, or small minded.

Albert: It was in no way meant to put down the quality of cuisine in Nebraska, in Omaha, in Lincoln.

[Laughter]

John: Really, stop your angry angry tweets and emails.

Albert: Please stop the emails.

John: The chicken fried steak in the FedEx box, stop it.

Albert: I'd like it, for the record, I've actually been to Nebraska many times for my past jobs, and I’ve had wonderful meals there, including some very good chicken fried steak.

John: There you go. This- it's interesting here, Eliot, when we were writing Eliot playing the cons, he tends to- and this is a lot of Christian’s acting choice, he tends to play the character very power negative. You know, it’s a subtle thing, but he's actually the second best- Eliot is the second best after Sophie on the cons. Parker isn't comfortable enough with people, Hardison always goes over the top, and Nate is too distracted, and to a great degree, particularly in this season, really is working through his addiction to vengeance and control. And it's interesting, you know, we write these things, and the actors always put a little spin on it, but that's the spin Chris tends to put in it. Sort of hard done by jamoke.

Marc: Well what I loved about this sequence, is we just saw him kick some serious ass on a bunch of guys in a parking lot. Now he's in the lion's den, he's showing this vulnerability; it really just felt so honest and sincere.

John: He's in over his head.

Marc: Yeah.

John: He's just a guy who’s really good at fighting. And you had that great line later in the script ‘you fight like something’s trying to get out of you’. You know, that's really the dynamic of the- this episode is ‘what is Eliot's relation to violence’? You know, where you can’t be a totally sane human being to be able to inflict that amount of pain on a regular basis. But he's someone who’s very controlled.

Albert: Yeah. It was great trying to dive into Eliot's character ‘cause it's something I haven't done before on this show, and plus the person that he ends up- who plays his foil, really, is Sophie. Because she ends up becoming the natural, I don't want to say mother hen figure, but she's the one who has the serious concern for what he's going through. So they end up having some very nice moments later on.

John: Because of her discomfort with violence.

Albert: Yes. She’s- that’s the diametric opposite of how she works. She's very physically disengaged whenever she runs her cons; it's all about the artifice and the person, the personality that she's putting on. And his job for the most part is physical. And it's sort of the cross between those two worlds which makes the interaction interesting.

John: It's also a nice speech about exploitation for the guys just running these guys out on cash.

Albert: That evil speech of evil.

John: It's our evil speech of evil for this episode. Do you know that phrase?

Marc: No.

John: The evil speech of evil is- we finally came up with a name for it in the writers room. It is the speech, every episode, the villain gives to justify his world view. Wherein this world view, he's not the bad guy, cause nobody is the bad guy in their own mind. He's just gonna explain why he does what he does. And, you know, but however, as normal sane humans, we look at that and go ‘oh my god that's evil’! And it really came about because we were researching all the Madoff variations early in the season and we were reading all these justifications by these guys who ripped off 50 million to 100 million dollars and in their heads, they weren't the bad guys.

Marc: Right.

John: You know? This is also great; Parker, while Sophie cannot get into the whole Omaha scene, Parker loves it. The -

Albert: She’s got the Nebraska cap on, got the cuisine.

John: Did that start as a wardrobe thing or-? Cause I was on the set for this one.

Albert: No, I put that in the script, and we had to clear various Nebraska logos and caps and stuff like that. But that was a fun little thing just to put in the background, sort of a grace note, with Parker’s character. This is the first Eliot/Sophie interaction where we start to see what Eliot is thinking and what Sophie’s concerns are and they were great in this scene.

Marc: Really great.

John: Yeah. This is- I remember watching the dailies on this, and even the dailies, the untreated dailies, you know, we kept flipping back and forth looking at the performances. Cause these are not characters that really rubbed up against each other in the first season a lot, and they really wound up being, kind of, the anchor pair for the first half of the season.

Albert: That's right.

John: And then, sort of, you know, there was a really interesting evolution on the Eliot/Parker relationship in the second half of the season; the sort of big brother thing really kicked in there. And the brother/sister teasing really said a lot.

Albert: The other thing Gina does great here in this scene in particular, you know, I wrote the character as a sort of LA agent, very type A personality without any real specifics in terms of how to approach it as a character. And she just nailed this accent. I think it's one of the best accents she's ever done, and it sounded so natural. Like, I swear I’ve met this person before.

John: It's so hard with Gina's accents because she studies them so meticulously. We always get one of two reactions. The people who aren't from there going, ‘That feels a little over the top’. And the people that are from there going, ‘Oh my God, that's perfect’. You know, because she- what was the name of our accent person? Our dialect coach - Mary...

Albert: Mary Mack.

John: Mary Mack. Up in Portland. So we have- we have found someone in Portland, Mary Mack, was actually the voice of Wonder Woman on Super Friends.

Albert: That's right.

Marc: That's right.

John: And she does a lot of dialect work, and she happens to live in Portland, so we had a full time Portland person out there who really made life a lot easier. And Gina insists on meticulous.

Albert: Yes.

John: It was also, now we’re getting into the nuts and bolts of how you actually make money in here with the cable bill, so I know you researched the hell out of this so-

Albert: Yeah, you know, the big money in any of these martial combat sports comes from the television contracts. And the UFC, in particular, has taken advantage of the pay per view deals they have. And it's- when they started looking at numbers, it's gigantic; they make so much money off the pay per view deals, they really don't need steady cable contracts or television contracts. So that suggested to me to build a con out of that, because in any of these cons, what you're trying to do is prey upon the greed of the bad guy.

John: The bad guy- the rule we always have is, the bad guy’s undone by his own sin.

Albert: Exactly. You can't con an honest person, that's how the saying goes. So what- the basic idea of the con is to dangle the promise of huge money in front of the bad guy and let him go after it, which is basically what we're doing here.

John: Sorry we’re totally distracted by the tracksuit here.

Albert: By the Velour tracksuit.

John: I love also- I never caught the first time around when Hardison ‘white people doing white people things’ the events they've got on the-

Marc: Drunken tractor pulls.

John: Which, by the way, there was a lot of that stuff when I worked the midwest. But it's interesting about the name Triana for the teen bopper act that we wind up hijacking the concert- we steal a concert. We tried eight names.

Albert: At least.

John: We tried the most ridiculous- maybe we tried a dozen of the most ridiculous one word names we could come up with for teen acts - they were all taken; every single ridiculous name was being used by some Disney girl. So we wound up using the first name of a character in the cartoon the Venture Brothers assuming there's no possible way anyone could be using this. And now this includes- this was great. How- do we start with we’re gonna steal the truck or we look at how they were shot and then steal the truck?

Marc: Steal the concert.

Albert: Steal a concert. And again, for this I did a fair amount of research I went to one of these production trucks here in LA at Staple Center and spent an evening watching them as they produced a Lakers game, and then just picked up the way the things moved there, the dialogue, and what was going on. And I learned- and this is all true to life, that the director and the producer of these telecasts often fly in from out of town and never meet the crew, the crews are all local. So as we do in this story, you can easily bring in two people that the crew has never met and they would just listen to every word, which is how we-

John: And it's another great thing where the research just gives us- a lot of times we have these giant mountains of crime in front of us, and the research gives us this much easier version. That, you know, any- it's amazing what you can get away with in America with a clipboard and a nametag.

Albert: Yes.

John: Yes. This is another thing, by the way, whenever we burn someone who is not central to the con, we have to take at least 30 seconds to establish they're an asshole. We, a lot of times, run into trouble when writing episodes where like, we need to con this person, but they're kind of an innocent bystander, so there's always a dial of how mean we can be, but this guy’s from LA and America hates people from LA, so...

Marc: Yes, and he's yelling at the limo driver.

John: We actually at one point had him- to really scunge him up, have him asking for the local prostitutes, but luckily we didn't really need that. Corn dog. My god, does she actually eat that?

Albert: She did, and this was probably like seven in the morning; it was the first thing she was eating in the morning.

Marc: But notice how she tosses it. That was a choice Beth made.

John: Yeah.

Marc: There it goes.

John: Just, yeah, again, this is the sort of thing that I really notice during the commentaries. Beth really dials in when Parker knows she has to act like a human being and not act like a human being when nobody's looking at her. And we actually had a Parker flashback - her first concert - which we wound up cutting where-

Albert: We didn't use.

John: Which we didn't use, but it ties into another episode. But we can tell you really quickly, everyone was talking about a first concert, and everyone had a really different band they’d gone to. And Parker- the flashback was 12 year old Parker, everyone raised their hands up with the lighters and she picked the pockets as they went through. We didn't use the sequence, but the actress wound up in the Top Hat Job, and that's the little girl we buried alive.

Marc: Yes.

John: And by buried alive, I mean we just pretended we buried her alive.

Marc: Yeah I felt like I broke her little heart, she was all ready and we decided to cut it, but she got to come back.

Albert: Yeah. This is a real truck, we rented a real production truck and those guys-

John: Was it easy to rent and build?

Albert: Yeah.

Marc: Oh yeah.

Albert: And those guys in the background are- actually work in the truck, so they were familiar with all the equipment and they were in the middle of, I think this was around the NBA playoffs time, they were on their way from here to go cover a real game.

Marc: Yeah, not a lot of room to work in these trucks, for filming.

John: What was the shoot- now that’s the great thing about the RED, though. We couldn't have shot this with the genesis that things like an engine block

Marc: We were able to just put on shorter lenses; some of the pieces do move. But you can tell just some of the blocking I had to do was a little static - besides doing steadicam to bring them in and out - but I think we got plenty of coverage that really tells the story. And it was great to just have all those monitors just come to life to keep it busy.

John: Well it's real depth- it’s real depth on the set; it makes it feel real. There's actually- the first director I ever worked with told me the most important thing to do is to make sure something's going on behind the actors. That's where everyone fails - if you're making your first little indie, be aware of that. That's where everyone fails, is you forget to put action behind your actors. And where were we on this? We were outside-

Marc: We- this is one of the other reasons we chose the gym that we worked in. This was just a few walking blocks from the gym. This was a high school that had shut down and we are using their parking lot.

John: Well that's good. The children of Portland don’t need an education - we have important filming to be doing. We just actually also, that's where Gina gives a parallel version of the evil speech of evil. About how the cable companies, or the sort of teen singer industry, is exactly like fighting; it's the girl version.

Albert: Her character views the singers as products, they're not people, just the way that our bad guy sees the fighters as products.

Marc: And there's the ladder cross; you have to have the ladder cross.

John: Is there a ladder cross?

Marc: Yeah there's a ladder cross.

John: Nicely done. Did you- you had werewolves in one, didn’t you?

Marc: Yes we did.

John: You always got interesting stuff going on in the background. Where are we here? Oh, this is where they find out they can’t hack a hick. I'm trying to remember how we wound up with that being the problem.

Albert: Now this is the complication. This is before- this is when, basically, you realize, yeah, you can't hack a hick. It's nothing that they- that our team could plan for; there's nothing on the computer networks that could do, nothing they could cut off, because it's basically the bad guys henchmen calling his cousin Jimmy and finding out these people are not who they say they are.

John: They tried to get into a network that's not- that- the data is not maintained by computers, it's maintained by people. That's actually a big challenge on the show, is that when you have a complication on a show, a lot of tv shows just have it be the characters have screwed up in some way, or just some random bad thing happens. The rule we try to maintain is either they succeed too well, or there's something specific about the setting that screws them up. You know, it drives me crazy when some sort of blind anvil falls out of the sky in the middle of a show. Or in particular the characters have been dumb and failed in that way. There's an expression in television called the idiot ball, where a character will carry the idiot ball and will act- just act stupidly in order to advance the plot.

Marc: Right.

John: You know the thing here is, we have five very smart characters. This is a creepy threatening moment particularly because Gina's pregnant here. That's if you actually know that, the look of Matt about to beat the hell out of Gina is very nasty. And also you get a really scary vibe off of Goodman there.

Albert: He's a very menacing character. Going back to the other thing here you're saying, is thematically the other thing at work in the story is the idea of family, so the twisted version of family, which is where our bad guy calls his cousin Jimmy and that's what undoes their team. On the flip side, you have the father and son who are fighting for their livelihood who are the victims. And in the end what brings- what actually allows our team to complete the con is the fact that they call on one of the members of the family.

John: Yeah.

Albert: So it's all about good family/bad family and how those relationships wind through the story and this particular community.

John: You're making it sound like we do a lot of work in the writers room.

Albert: Sometimes we actually do some work on these things.

John: Not often. A lot of times it just starts with a setting. And yeah, this is where they decide to do the bluff. And this is interesting - this is another thing we decided to address this year, which is our guys swan in, they change people’s lives, they jet off. And this is one of the times we really wanted to talk about the fact that in this situation, once they’re blown, there are repercussions.

Marc: There could be repercussions. Yeah.

John: You know they're- they live ruthless lives, and a lot of this year, is about them learning the limitations of their lives. Of how the world view it’s given them. How they relate to people. They don't always understand how other people behave.

Marc: Right.

John: For example, Eliot in Order 23, Eliot just wants to beat the hell out of this abusive dad in that episode, and he just realizes it's not gonna work

Albert: Once he leaves there- he's back to his old tricks.

John: Yeah exactly, and the same thing here once they leave- you can’t stay there forever.

Albert: Right. Well Rucker, the villain here, is actually very smart. When he finds out the truth, he doesn't threaten their team; he knows that he'll never get away with that. He threatens the victims. And he knows that that's what he has control over; that they live in his world.

John: He's one of the best villains.

Albert: He was a fun one.

John: Particularly just because you really felt there’s this series of escalating moves and counter moves. The Jury Job last year was good for that - the idea that our team makes a move, the other person makes a move not always knowing, but it's a logical counter move to whatever occured. He's actually, probably one of the smarter bad guys we've had. And this is the- our traditional roundy round.

Marc: This is our roundy round.

Albert: This is the converse shot right.

Marc: Yes, towards the end of the walkaway, but this is where the plot’s taken a turn for our team.

John: Now actually, why don’t you just describe the visual? Because if you watch the episodes on a regular basis, you'll see certain techniques used at certain times.

Marc: This is one of our moves where the tables have turned and we now have to change our plan. And at that point, I changed direction because Eliot brought up the point ‘no, I’m gonna fight,’ and it changed again. So then I changed direction and, you know, it's a timing thing, and it looks like you're doing it all in one, but there are many pieces and you just have to keep score of who gets what line and when. So you really have to trust your script supervisor.

John: And also in the writers room, we try to make a point of figuring out, like, now we've done it enough times, we know how many lines each person can have, and you’ll actually see dialogue in a lot of the episodes skip one to one one to one to one cause we know we’re gonna hang the director otherwise. That's also the last time we use the overhead shot in the season. That was our family overhead shot and it's the only time that one person has walked away from it and you used it for that to isolate him.

Marc: Yes. Yes.

Albert: This is my favorite scene of the whole episode. It's the emotional climax, really, because it's the traditional- in any of these fight scenes or movies fight stories, you have the night before the fight, which is when our champion-

John: Henry the 5th. You have the night before the fight.

Albert: Rocky. All of them have the night before the fight. So this is Eliot's night before the fight where he's girding himself for battle, and everything he and Sophie have been through up to this point comes to a head here. Plus the way Mark framed this was so gorgeous. You knew it was gonna be a beautiful shot because right before the camera started rolling, you saw all these members of the crew bringing out their cell phones and just taking pictures.

John: You know it's a good looking shot when it's like, ‘I wanna remember this one’. And there is- you know, a lot of people look at this one, and Order 23, to think that maybe Eliot had been abused or something as a child, and it’s- that’s facile. This is just a guy with a relationship with violence. He's beaten up, he's been tortured, he’s a guy who has learned bad things can happen to you and this is how he internalizes it. That's a great shot.

Marc: My lockoff transition.

John: Nice. Eliot transitioning into a girl with a bikini, that’s- was that placement intentional?

Marc: The placement- no, it just worked out. It just- we just wanted- Dave Connell wanted to come up with a cool transition, and we just locked off an XD camera and just left it there for the whole shoot.

John: Now did you have a little extra prep time on this or was this the normal?

Marc: This was the normal prep time.

John: Normal crazy Leverage-

Marc: Seven days of Leverage prep time.

John: Yeah. The- now the ring collapsed at one point, right?

Marc: Yes, the ring collapsed during Eliot's fight. And- you know, we had a lot of bodies up there. You have two camera men with big long lenses, a lot of moving around, and at one point it gave out and god bless, fortunately nobody got hurt.

Albert: That was scary. It was this huge bang right in the middle of the scene. One of our cameras was right there, and it avoided him and then it was this big crease in the middle of the ring.

Marc: And fortunately our grip department was able to just pull out some speed rail and get it ready.

Albert: Yeah.

John: Yeah, cause there's no- there's not a lot of time to waste on a Leverage shoot. Now you've got a lot of, just, wild grabbing stuff-. Oh, they were re-establishing the water. And this is another nice thing, by the way. It's a nice touch, Albert, that they're not dumb enough to fall for it again.

Albert: No.

John: You know, the tough thing with writing a con and heist show, audiences have seen a lot of con and heist shows, so they're playing by a different set of rules. And they're constantly trying to outguess you, and with a lot of stuff we do is we play with the metastructure of television, what you think a show like this would do. Yeah.

Albert: Especially with a fight con, because it is a familiar story. I mean, I think anyone who's watched any of the movies or tv shows in this genre has probably seen some variation of this, so you have to assume that people know the various tropes that go into a fight con. And then what- who’s gonna be drugged, who’s gonna be knocked out, what's gonna go on. You just have to make sure you don’t over use any of those.

John: You on the crane there?

Marc: Just for a little bit. We had a crane constantly moving. We had two handheld cameras. There was a lot of dailies on this episode. There was a lot of dalies. And we also wanted to just make sure we had all of the fight covered. We needed to get the perspective-

John: And the audience members.

Marc: -from the audience members. From our victim who we saw in the opening.

John: How long did it take to shoot this sequence?

Marc: We shot this in an evening.

Albert: It was this and the opening fight all in the same day.

Marc: Yeah, we did it all in the same day.

Albert: That was a bear of a day.

John: One 12 hour day?

Albert: Yeah.

John: Holy smokes.

Albert: It was a long day.

John: Thank God I wasn't on the set for this one - it sounded brutal. It sounded unspeakable.

Marc: You know, Matt and Christian had a routine worked out, and we were able to just pick our moments of when we needed to move the camera, and really trust our operators to make sure that they got it.

John: How many operators did you have in the ring?

Marc: Two operators. At times they were both in the ring, and sometimes one was just on the sideline getting to have some foreground ropes in it.

Albert: Yeah and all those flips that you see, Christian really took those. I mean, by the end of this scene his knees and legs were just totally banged up; he could barely stand.

Marc: And Matt, of course, who, you know, did this fight numerous times and also the opening fight numerous times.

John: Yeah.

Marc: Let’s just say there was the real odor of sweat in that gym.

John: I love the hulking out moment here.

Marc: Yes.

John: Just where he just snaps. I wish we could have done the green overlay on the eyes at that point. And what's great going back and watching this again, when you watch the episode, to see how they are putting the places in the con. How this behavior has to be read both ways. We’re not usually a closed mystery. There's two types of mystery shows - closed and open. One- like Columbo was open; we knew who the killer was and how he did it - the fun was watching Columbo finding the problem you had. And closed is, you don't know who did it. Which is most television shows. We usually show the audience how the con’s gonna run, and the fun of the audience is knowing what's supposed to happen, and it going wrong - it's one of the few times this sequence could play either way. This whole act- this whole two acts, could play either open or closed.

Albert: Yeah. That's actually the trickiest part of figuring out the- making sure that if someone goes back and watches it all again, it still makes sense knowing what you know at the end, as well as what you think you know the first time through.

John: We don't do it a lot.

Albert: Yeah, it's hard; that’s why.

John: Yeah, it’s really hard cause it’s usually only have to do one or the other. You know, entire movies have made millions and millions of dollars based around doing that well once. And we can't do it all that often. And also, to a great degree, I think a lot of the fun for the audience is watching our characters do what they do. That's really cool; a skillset they don't have. And so you want to get them invested in success, you know. And this is where it all starts to go to hell in a handbasket and the alert audience. Notice that the characters are recurring from the audience. I don't know anyone who figured it out; a couple people I know figured it out because of the metastructure. They figured Eliot couldn't have killed somebody, but haven't really figured out the con at this point.

Albert: Well the traditional fight con, the way it works is- and in con terminology they call it the Cackle Bladder. That's when someone dies - or supposedly dies - to scare off the bad guy. And this is a plan that- because normally in the fight con, the way it would work, the Eliot character would be the one who would die, but we did a little flip here and they staged the death of the bad guy, which- and the only way to do that is to get the help of the cousin.

Marc: And it's something I really wanted the actors to hold on to, is that one shot of Eliot; he really feels bad for killing this guy. And there’s a shot coming up after Rucker leaves that I really wanted to get across. And I just told ‘em there's a moment where we’re gonna release the valve, and I really want to see it on all of you. And it- and fortunately it really works.

John: Now the- it’s interesting with Eliot, because once you sort of know the character, you know he wouldn't actually feel bad about killing this guy. Eliot Spencer killed people. I mean, that's something that's kinda easy to go away, because Chris Kane is a very charming actor, and he plays the character in a very charming way. But especially in the second half of the season, you really get back to the idea that Eliot Spencer is a dude with a price on his head.

Marc: Here's the moment I was talking about, as soon as Nate gives the cue.

John: And you're lining them all up for that shot. And Albert you shot that, you were up on the roof of the building.

Albert: Yeah. It was raining, it was wet, it was cold. We were up on that roof, very slippery ladder.

John: And there's sending him across the state line with various bad stuff in his truck. Who came up with the saxophone?

Albert: Saxophone was something that actually came up in the room. I wrote the flashback of her going to the pawn shop, and in the room we were just sorta tossing around what are the funny things she might buy in the pawn shop?

John: Cause Parker just wouldn't buy the guns.

Marc: No, of course not.

John: This actually really holds together, too, because the original amount he wins in the golf game winds up being the money they use to buy the guns for the frame up later. This is- if you're gonna write a Leverage spec, this is kinda the one to look at. I mean this - I'll tell ya, this one really holds together in ways that a lot of the ones- not because we don't care, but because we're 42 minutes, that you're like ‘alright we’re just gonna assume people know that this is what's going on,’ cause you know. Or even stuff we shoot that we wind up cutting.

Albert: Well I will say this, if you are gonna write a Leverage spec, you know, we say this is the room all the time - research is your friend, because it starts from there. Because once you find that world you're gonna live in and you research the hell out of it, then a lot of the details become a lot clearer.

Marc: That was the actual pawn shop owner.

Albert: Yes.

John: Was it?

Marc: Yeah, and he donated his fee to a local charity.

John: Oh that’s great; that's really nice; that's really cool. Yeah, a lot of people were like, ‘c'mon he's not in that much trouble’. You know, you cross state lines with a bunch of cash and guns, I assure you, you're not coming back for a while. Yeah, and then we establish the whole problem Hardison seemed unprepared was because the guy was crooked, which we then used for this setup. This one came together nicely. It's also- its interesting - the pairings again. Parker and Hardison - Parker is next to Hardison in a lot of shots, and there's little bits where Beth gives- has Parker give Hardison just a little reassuring look like, you know, ‘I agree with you. Everyone else thinks you're crazy; I'm here.’ It’s a way of advancing the relationship without us having to do it textually.

Marc: Right.

John: You know, and there's a great moment- there's a great moment in the finale, which- are we actually releasing these separately? Did we decide? I don't know. If you're gonna watch the finale, there's a moment where Hardison- something happens with Hardison's van and I didn't notice it the day we shot it, but Parker kisses the van goodbye. And it was- no one asked her to do it, but it was just that little thing of Parker acknowledging this was important to Hardison, and so she was gonna, you know, she was gonna make that choice. Wow it’s- I like our actors. We’re lucky.

Marc: Yeah, we had some really good local talent here as well.

John: Yeah, cause the dad was local, the son was local.

Marc: Yeah.

John: And he did all his own fighting, too, right?

Marc: Yeah I- we were gonna- I even had in the budget a stunt person to do it, and we had a stunt person there, but it he just felt that he could do it and he actually did a really great job.

John: It's pretty hard when you’ve got one of your leads doing one of the fights to wimp out and take the stuntie; it’s a lot of pressure. And this is- a lot of people ask - we’re just handing over a business. We assure you Hardison has set up a DBA, he's taking care of all the paperwork. Don't worry - these guys aren't gonna get hit by the IRS five years from now. And it's really about them trying to- again, like you said, family- family owned business trying to rebuild the local community.

Marc: Right.

John: And, you know, one family saying goodbye to the other. The key toss. I think we should make a collection of Tim’s key tosses, cause that's a little signature bit, ‘Here you go.’ Here are the bad guy’s assets to use as your own. Good makeup on Christian, too.

Marc: Yeah, we gave him a nice shiner there.

Albert: We got a lot out of this gym. We spent a lot of time in this gym; we got a lot out of it.

John: Well that's another big thing when we’re shooting in seven days is - trying to find combination locations. The combo burrito we call it.

Marc: The combo burrito, cause once you start base camp - it’s expensive.

John: Ends on a hug. That's a great episode.

Albert: That’s the Tap Out Job.

John: Thank you very much guys. That was one of my favorites of the year; that was really great.

Marc: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure shooting .

John: Anything you wanna add?

Marc: No, I really enjoyed it. Albert and I- was the second episode that I've done with Albert. In the first season I did the Stork Job, and I really enjoy having Albert there by my side. He helps me out so much, he helps the actors out so much.

John: It's a relief to have him out of the writers room.

[Laughter]

Marc: It's really a team effort.

Albert: Thanks.

John: Thank you for watching.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 2 #The Tap-Out Job #Season 2 Episode 2

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yamithediaperdork · 4 years

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Let’s all go to (baby)jail! (Miraculous ladybug and cat noir)

Nathaniel Kurtzberg yawn loudly and rubbed a eye as he finished cleaning up the main playroom. at age 16 the two time akuma villain had struggled to find then lucked into a job that would help pay for his art supplies over the summer break. at first he'd been thrilled but the truth of the matter was, while playing with the kids that came to rainbow cloud Daycare was fun, and they all loved his sketches he made for them, at the end of the day he was normally too damn tired to do any art for himself. Not helping things was the fact he was suppose to be on the afternoon shift, but one of the other workers had called in sick and as low man on totem pole, Nate got to fill the morning shift and would still have to do his afternoon shift. 'and the stupid evening shift didn't clean up before leaving, again.' he thought glumly. the only other worker on was up in the office, taking in phone calls and the like, or at least that's what Johnson claimed. Nate had a feeling the chubby slob was really just watching YouTube videos on the office computer but since he was the boss's son, there was nothing he could really say or do. all and all it was looking like it was gonna be a shit day, but straitening up and dusting off the brown slacks and white shirt that was his uniform, Nate tried to force a smile on his face. 'no sense in taking out your bad mood on the little ones.' He reminded him, looking at the clock and noting it was almost opening time. there was a heavy knock on the front door and despite the place having a no early drop off rule, Nate wasn't shocked some upper class twit would be dragging their kid by already. shaking his head and making his way to the door he opened it and took a step back in semi concern as some sort of love child between a body builder and a gorilla was standing there, glaring. "Can..Can I help you?" Nate asked, a tremor in his voice though he thought the man looked almost..oddly..familiar. The mountain of muscles made a grunting noise and then held out a letter, which Nate took with shaking hands and glanced over it as the missing link walked towards a fancy black car, leaving Nate hoping that he wasn't leaving cracks in the pavement.

' To which ever wage lackey receives this, my son had been enrolled in your little day care as out of all of the daycare's in the city, this one has the most success with it's potty training. My son despite being older then normally allowed into your daycare and into your potty training program has been allowed due to the frankly massive amount of money i have paid to brush aside all concern's. he's to be treated like any other toddler who's failed to keep his pants clean and know that while i have high hopes this will pay off, no fault will be placed upon you as the boy is simply lazy, and i suspect is doing it just for fun. PS: Don't be scared to spank him if he acts up, he's old enough to know better.

Signed Gabriel Agreste. '

Nate raised a eyebrow as he finished reading, that last name, it could really be.. and then he looked up and grinned ear to ear as of all the people he could of expected to see being enrolled in the daycare's award winning potty class, it was Mr. supermodel himself, Adrien Agreste! The Blond boy was CLEARLY not happy as he was escorted out of the car, pouting and looking down at the ground and muttering something as he was handed a large light black diaper bag with 'Adrien's diaper bag' stitched on the side in white. he was dressed in Black velco sneakers and white socks and wearing a pair of light black shorts to match the shade of his diaper bag and as Nate looked, it was clear to see the shorts were puffed out by a bulky diaper. the diaper itself was over the top of the waistband and was a cream white, it had been visible when Adrien's white t-shirt rode up for a brief second. The shirt itself amusingly had text on the front that ID'ed Adrien as a crybaby brat and while Nate couldn't make out what Adrien was muttering about apparently the gorilla had had enough and gave the blond a firm swat on his padded bottom, making the blond cry out. The gorilla pointed towards Nate and Adrien looked like he wanted to complain, but wisely kept it to himself and carried the large diaper bag (which seemed to be so loaded with extra diapers and the like it took the blond using both arms to lug it) towards the door. '...Oh..today just got a WHOLE lot better.' Nate thought. "hi little guy, welcome to Rainbow Cloud. follow me instead and we'll get you alll set up." Nate said, even as Adrien gave a dirty look.

For Adrien, his hell had started in the last two weeks in school when in the span of 3 days he'd had 6 wetting accidents and woken up having messed the bed twice. Thankfully he'd been able to cover up the accidents so no one had noticed, but naturally his father had found out about him having changes of clothes brought to him, not to mention the bed messing had been impossible to hide. A trip over his fathers knee and 20 minutes with his nose in the corner, and Adrien had been warned NOT to let it happen again or steps would be taken. the blond picked up on the threat and had nodded, promising he'd take care of it and for a day and a half, and carefully controlling his fluid intake he'd been golden. it had been during a pep rally when disaster had struck, he'd been sipping at a soda in the crowd when a loud bit of pyro had gone off and the sudden boom, and the extra bit of fluid had resulted in his flooding his pants, though since they were out in the field the urine had thankfully gone into the ground. thinking quick before anyone noticed he 'accidentally' spilled his soda on himself, soaking his pants even more and joked about his butter fingers and got permission to go and change. His father hadn't been fooled for a second, and when his bodyguard can brought Adrien a change of pants, he'd also brought him a pair of puppy print pull-ups. Knowing better then to argue the part time hero had wore the pull ups, though he could see there was no way anyone could tell under his baggy tan pants, he'd been sure the world knew for the rest of the school day. Further disaster struck on the drive home after school, his father apparently had made it clear no after school fun even if it was Friday, as they got stuck in a traffic jam. trying to ease the sense of doom, and pretty sure he was going to get anther spanking when they got home, Adrien had been watching TV in the back and munching on some rainbow chip muffins he had stashed in a compartment back there, when the urge to go number two hit him like a ton of bricks. he'd been making use of diarrhea medicine to help keep his bed clean and actually hadn't gone number 2 in the day or so as a result, but apparently he'd pushed his luck. squirming and trying to soothe the cramps, he'd begged and pleaded for his body guard to either get them out of the traffic jam, or let him out of the car to use a bathroom, but the doors stayed locked and he'd of blown his secret identity if he had just turned into cat noir and forced his way out. (not to mention he wasn't sure if the pull up would stay hidden with Cat noire's much tighter clothing, and if he was gonna fail at going poopie on the potty it was somewhat better to do it in his civilian clothes, instead of his super suit) the belt and pants had been digging in and Adrien thought MAYBE if he took them off (the back windows were tinted after all so no one could look in) that might buy him the bit of extra time he'd need, and so in just his t-shirt and puppy pull-up, he ended up kneeling on the spacious floor of the back seat, leaning on the seat with his upper half and groaning and pounding a fist, trying desperately not to fudge his pull-up. For all of 20 seconds it felt like it might of worked, then they hit a pot hole, and well that was it. game over. The boy howled and cried as he made softball sized lumps in the back of his pull-up and a rotten stench had filled the back seat. Thankfully (or more accurately, amazingly) the Pull-up hadn't leaked then he was forced to stay in his kneeling position, so that he didn't smush his smelly load and risk leaking out all over the expensive seats. Thankful for the private parking they had, Adrien had been led inside quickly and no one had seen, but instead of being given a chance to clean up he was presented to his father who had wrinkled his nose in disgust. One LONG lecture later, he was allowed to shower, then was spanked and out on time out and put in double pull-ups. For the rest of the remaining school year Adrien could of counted the amount of times he actually made it to the bathroom on one hand. Pull-ups during the day, with him having a pack at the school, and diapers once he got home. thankfully Hawk moth had found something better to do during that week then making villains as Adrien had been put more or less under lock down. it wasn't that he didn't think he couldn't of snuck away from his body guard, but there was also the fact his pants had been taken away, and he was given a pair to wear to school, and any modeling gigs he had booked. rocking the diaper and shirt look around his house was one thing, but he pictured having to turn back after fighting a villain and being stranded in down town Paris in the thick white diaper his father preferred him in. Adrien had figured this was going to be his summer, under house arrest till he could get his bladder and bowels to fall in line but his father had other ideas. "Clearly you're not even making a effort to use the washroom, from what I've seen you just sit on your behind and play your little games while stinking up my house." his father had said. "well I'm not going to let you be a lazy little potty pants and make it so i have to come home to a house smelling like a diaper pail. I've enrolled you in a daycare that will help you get back your control." "But..But..Dad you can't! I can do this! I'll fi-" "I didn't ask for your opinion on it young man, I already took care of it. you'll be going every day, Monday to Saturday, and I expect you to do your best with their 3 week potty training program. You'll either shape up and prove what I've been saying, that your just lazy and been doing this for attention and stop in short order, and then can just stop going once you've proven you can be a 'big boy.' Or you'll prove what you've been saying and you really can't help it and you'll be potty trained..again. Hopefully it'll stick this time." Shopping for the supplies had been mortifying but today as Adrien looked at the face of a semi friend, it seemed like a delight compared to the day that laid ahead of him.

"So little guy, this is the main indoor play area, though we have a playground in the back." Nate said, clearly taking delight in following orders to the letter. "and over here is a area you'll be getting VERY familiar with, hopefully to great success." Adrien followed Nate's gaze and whined loudly, it was a wall lined with 5 training potties, and had a dry erase board above each one. they had tape on them to form a grid that displayed days and times, with room for someone to draw to write something in. "Your daddy must be very eager to get you potty trained, not just anyone gets the full experience.we only focus on 5 kids at a time but if your enrolled in it, your daddy must of paid top dollar." Nate said and then gave Adrien a pat on his padded rump, making the blond sulk even more. the diaper bag had been taken from him and was over by a changing table, so his hands were free at least but all that had meant was whenever they walked anywhere Nate had made Adrien hold his hand. "I will warn you that since your technically one over the limit, you'll be waiting in line to use any potty thats free. I'll be keeping track of your potty progress for you on a card you can take home and show your daddy, so give it your best ok champ?" "..Nate come on, you know I'm not one of these little to-" Adrien said, finally having enough and turning to give the smaller boy a piece of his mind. "Before you dig yourself a nice deep hole, You should know I have full permission to spank your butt if I need to.and we've been told to treat you just like any other little guy struggling to learn how to keep his pants free." Nate said quickly. "..Of course you have. My father is a fucking asshole." Adrien groaned, rolling his eyes then yelped as a hard swat when on his padded rump. "Bad boy! no swearing! Little boys who swear and cuss get their mouths washed out!" Nate said, shaking a finger at him. a mental image of himself with soap suds around his mouth and blowing bubbles popped into Adrien's head and he whimpered. "I.I'm sorry! I didn't know." he said quickly. "...I'll let it go THIS time, but next time, they're gonna be calling you bubble breath. got it mister?" Nate asked. Adrien swallowed his pride and nodded. "right, now going on with our little tour..give me your hand little guy..that's better. anyways, over here is our arts and crafts corner where we'll-" As Nate droned on Adrien whined and found himself oddly fighting the urge to suck his thumb.

Johnson came out and met with Adrien, chuckling lots. Adrien had felt a brief hope spot that maybe he'd be looking after him but Johnson made it clear he wasn't the type to deal with dirty diapers, so he put Nate in charge of the big baby. As parents started to drop off their children Adrien found a place to try and hide for the most part, which while normally Nate would of raised a fuss and made sure he stayed where he could be seen, having one of Paris's top models in diapers and at a day care might of caused a few issues. It was easier to let him go and hide and the oldest kid being dropped off today aside from the ex model, now pamper packer, was a 5 year old so it was unlikely their parents would believe them or they'd recognize him. Still it didn't stop a few of the children from spotting him as he was hiding under one of the crib, twin brothers age 4 who peered under the crib having seen him. they were dressed in a blue t-shirt and green cover-all's for one, and a green t-shirt and blue cover-all's for the other, both sporting brown hair in mushroom cuts. "Um, Your not 'pose to be under there." blue shirt said, trying to keep his voice down low. "you'll get in trouble and lose your cookie at snack time." "Oh uh..well..I got permission from Nate so it's ok." Adrien said, which, technically was true. it wasn't like Nate didn't know where he was. "wait.." Green shirt said, furrowing his eye brows. "Your kinda..big ta be in here.. how old are you?" "oh uh.." Adrien paused, not wanting to say his real age, but needing to think of something to keep the kids from asking too many more questions. "I'm 9." he said. "hehehe ya don't hafa be shy if your hear and 9 silly. we hada this one um.. " blue shirt paused and looked to his brother for help, and green shirt leaned over and whispered in his ear. "10 year old who was here, and git this! he was here cuz he was a potty pants! me and Joshie were potty trained at -2- and this big kid wa-" "Gawy! you know you're not 'pose ta pick on big babies!" green shirt, or Joshie Adrien supposed, scolded his brother. "Aw come one, it was sooo funny! he kept going " and in place of saying it, Gary blew a raspberry. "in his diaper and bawling like a baby!" "heh.. it was pretty funny." Joshie admitted. "O-Oh yeah.. ehehe..that does sound funny." Adrien said weakly, now really hoping the boys would leave, or at least praying they wouldn't notice his bulky diaper butt. "why dun you come out and we can go and play toys. ya needa hit the toy chest fast if you wanna git a good toy." Joshie said, with Gary nodding and stoking his chin as if his twin had given sage like advice. Adrien chuckled at how cute the boys where being and seeing how the parents were starting to leave he started to crawl out sadly for our hero, the back of his diapers, just under the waistline, but on the seam, caught on a nail. So eager was Adrien to get out and show off (and maybe make this stay SOMEWHAT bearable) that he didn't notice. Had he but noticed, he might of been able to get away with just a hole in the shorts but atlas, at the high speed he was scooting out the shorts gave way to the nail like a hot knife though butter. Gary and josh both paused as they heard the ripping noise, and Adrien was blushing bad as he stood up, his hands going behind his back, feeling the slick plastic of his diaper and frantically trying to get the two sides of the massive rip together. "You uh, heh..you OK?" Gary asked, giggling a little. "Did you rip your shorts or was that like a BIG fart?" Josh asked, already holding his nose just in case. "I uh..we;ll." Adrien was very shy and found himself realizing just how much he hadn't appreciated the shorts being in tack. "He totally ripped his shorts. dun worry big kid! I got ya!" Gary said then cupping a hand to his mouth he shouted. "NATTTTE! DA NEW KID RIPPED HIS SHORTS!" Gary hollered, then gave Adrien a thumbs up. "...Oh this isn't going to end well." Adrien muttered.

End part one.

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catholicartistsnyc · 4 years

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Meet Theresa Ambat

THERESA AMBAT is a music composer, producer, and sound designer based in Seattle, WA. [website]

From Theresa:

I have my own personal music on Spotify and Apple Music and I just started doing freelance music production for film and video games. I also sometimes compose music using a programming language called SuperCollider.

CATHOLIC ARTIST CONNECTION (CAC): Where are you from originally, and what brought you to Seattle?

THERESA AMBAT (TA): I was born in Japan and moved to Washington as a baby (dad was in the Navy). Lived in a small town for most of my life, then moved to Seattle to study Computer Music at the University of Washington. I now work for a parish in the greater-Seattle area!

CAC: How do understand your vocation as a Catholic artist? Do you call yourself a Catholic artist?

TA: I'd say that I'm a Catholic who is an artist. My vocation is to be a follower of Christ, and creating music is a major way for me to do that. I'm not a praise & worship artist and my work isn't always explicitly Christian, but my work is built on the foundation that is my faith and relationship with the Lord. Everything I create is for Jesus.

All I desire is to share truth, beauty, and goodness through my art. If someone can encounter Christ through my work -- whether that be by feelings of peace and solidarity, or something as incredible as conversion of the heart -- that brings me so much joy.

CAC: Where in Seattle do you regularly find spiritual fulfillment?

TA: I was a part of a really wonderful Catholic community called the Prince of Peace Catholic Newman Center when I was in college. If you're a college student or young adult in the Seattle area, I'd highly recommend getting involved there! They've got Dominicans, tons of young people looking to explore their faith, awesome events, just overall an A+++ community. That place played a serious role in my relationship with Christ -- I don't know where I'd be without it.

CAC: What is your daily spiritual practice?

TA: I've been struggling a little bit with daily prayer habits since starting full-time work--I guess I'm still trying to figure out a good routine. But since I work at a church I have the opportunity to do a holy hour and go to mass once a week which is great. Usually when I get home I pray a rosary with my family. I've also been reading "The Mystical Journey to Divine Union" by John Paul Thomas which is about St. John of the Cross.

I found my spiritual director Fr. Marcin during my senior year of college. At the time I was making a pretty big life decision about my future: to accept a position as a FOCUS missionary or stay in Washington to further my music career. Fr. Marcin was actually the person who kept telling me I needed to find a spiritual director, haha. We already had a good friendship by then so I just asked him! In the end, I discerned that the Lord was calling me to stay in Washington to live out mission in my job/music.

CAC: Describe a recent day in which you were most completely living out your vocation as an artist.

TA: When in-person shows were still a thing, I performed for a SoFar Seattle show in January. It was my first paid gig ever and like, 20 of my friends (who are also Catholic) came. I think they filled up almost a third of the venue.

What's cool about SoFar shows is that the audience remains completely silent during your performances. No phones, no talking, people have to stay for the ENTIRE show, giving you the artist full-freedom to share your work without the fear of people not paying attention.

Before performing I talked about how I was Catholic, the ways the Lord was working in my life at the time, and how they related to my music. Being in secular Seattle, it was absolutely terrifying! But wow, I was received so well. After the show people started sharing with me how my story/music resonated with their own stories. If they were Catholic or not, I have no idea!

The Lord was SERIOUSLY present that night. All of my friends who came are incredible witnesses of Christ and it was just so cool to even see them interact with other people at the show and share Christ -- not by bible thumping or swinging around rosaries -- but simply by their presence and the joy that bleeds out of them.

Thinking back, yeah, I really wanted to share Christ with others through my music that night. But I'm now realizing how much of an impact my friends had on the show. Just imagine walking into a venue where THAT many people are striving for sainthood. The environment changes. I really felt like I was a part of the body of Christ that night.

CAC: How do you financially support yourself as an artist?

TA: I currently have a full-time job at a really wonderful parish which is my main source of income. I only started freelancing maybe 2.5 months ago but to my surprise it's been flourishing well! Creating a personal website and demo reel made it really easy to share my work with others and I've found most of my gigs through the Catholic Creatives facebook group as well as Instagram.

The biggest piece of advice I have for finding work is to use social media as a tool. Document your process on instagram, create a demo reel and put it on the front page of your website, post on the Catholic Creatives facebook group!

[Editor’s Note: Remember, you can also post in the Catholic Artist Connection Facebook group and send and find notices in the newsletter!]

I know we all cringe at the idea of "networking" but if you think about it in the lens of evangelization, it's actually quite beautiful. No, I'm not saying that you need to "convert" people in your tweets and insta posts. But just remember that very interaction you have with a person is sacred and is an opportunity to love. Even in the digital world. When people see your joy and desire to serve, they can tell you're serious about your art and will want to work with you.

In the future (maybe 5ish years from now) I'd love to make freelance music production a full-time career. I still have quite a ways to go but I know the Lord is asking me to be patient and invest in the season that I'm in now. Transitioning out of college it's very easy to focus so heavily on the far future that we miss out on what's happening right in front of us. I'm really grateful for the opportunities the Lord has given me to serve now.

CAC: What are your top 3 pieces of advice for Catholic artists post-graduation?

TA: 1. Post-graduation is REALLY hard. Especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. You're going to be told a lot of lies by Satan, but just remember that that's all he is. A liar.

Jesus? He is truth. So in response to each of those lies you might hear, just remember a truth that Jesus is telling you.

2. Invite God into your creative process! Make your work a prayer, write something in the adoration chapel, ask God what he thinks about your work, etc. I recorded my first album in front of the tabernacle and the Lord has blessed that piece of work in so many ways.

3. DO IT! Just do it. That thing you've been wanting to make for 72589247329 years, just start. It's never too late to just start. Stop letting your expectations for yourself get in the way. Stop waiting to get that "one piece of gear" that will make/break your project. God gave you a gift for a reason--to bring glory to his kingdom. Use it!

Let's be saints, together!

#Theresa Ambat #Seattle #japan #catholic #catholic artist #catholic artist connection #west coast #musician #music #sofar #sofar sounds #sofar seattle #catholic music #university of washington #newman center #FOCUS #mystical journey to divine union #st. john of the cross

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quirkykayleetam · 4 years

Text

Empty Shell

Hello! This is an entry in the Broken Pieces series. The previous piece is Kind Restraints and can be found by that title or the tags of any of the main characters.

“We have a problem.”

Special Agent Daniel Wei looked up from his desk at Morgan Security to find his boss scowling down at him. He took a sip of coffee.

“You remember that Jonathan kid?”

Daniel nodded. How could he forget?

Despite the “Security” in the name Morgan Security, most of his assignments since joining the firm eight years ago were pretty tame. Intimidation was the name of the game for the most part. Sometimes he got to make people feel safe. Those days he drank less coffee and whistled on the car ride home.

What happened with the kid...? Daniel hadn’t seen anyone hurt that badly since his time in the service. He tried not to dwell on the fact that all that damage was done a 26-year-old civilian just protecting his job, but the image of Jay’s protruding ribs still woke him up at night.

“It’s his caretaker. Apparently she ordered Jones around like a schoolboy. Spit in Wilson’s face for good measure. They’re off the case, effective immediately.”

“Who is she?”

“Some brood named Evelyn or Emily or something, though the boys are calling her something else.”

Daniel’s boss chucked. Daniel didn’t.

“Look, Wei, I know it’s not your usual gig, but this whole thing is still on a need-to-know basis. I got managers breathing down my neck that nobody else even hears a fart about what happened.”

Unceremoniously, he dropped a bundle of blue medical files on Daniel’s desk.

“As of now, you’re the kid’s case worker for the firm. You screw this up and it's your neck on the line, not mine, you hear me? The whole thing was fucked from the start if you ask me.”

Daniel didn’t hear him. All he could see were the pictures closely documenting the welts, cuts, and bruises down Jay’s left side. They must have been taken the night of his rescue sometime after Jay passed out in Daniel’s trunk.

The agent took another long drought of coffee. Apparently he was going to have more nightmares tonight.

Daniel arrived early at the hospital the next morning.

Jay was already awake. A nurse in pink patterned scrubs slowly spooned swallows of lukewarm eggs into the patient's mouth.

Daniel looked away.

He pretended it was for Jay’s sake. Being spoon fed had to be a humiliating reminder of the computer scientist’s immobilized hands.

In reality, he couldn’t handle the look in Jay’s eyes.

Jay stared unseeing at the blank hospital wall in front of them. It was as if they came back to themselves any further they’d have to feel the pain and trauma and heartbreak of everything they went through and, at least now, early in the morning, forced to rely on strangers and IVs and pain meds just to survive, Jay’s body couldn’t handle it. It reverted into an empty shell.

Instead, Daniel found the figure slumped near the opposite wall. Elizabeth “Beth” Martinez, 38-year-old Art Department secretary at Landring Community College, looked like she’d collapsed more than fallen asleep in the stiff metal chair by Jay’s bed. Her mouth hung open a little and her hands stretched out on the armrest toward Jay. A rumbled duffel bag huddled under her feet. It couldn’t have held more than two sweaters and three pairs of socks, but Beth obviously wasn’t leaving that room unless she had to.

A flurry of movement brought Daniel’s eyes back to the nurse and her charge.

“We’ve just got a new protein shake in. It’s chocolate! I know it’s just breakfast, but you need to get some meat on your bones.”

She set the brown liquid and straw within reach of Jay’s mouth, but instead of taking a sip, Jay’s eyes went wide.

Jay lashed out, spooking the nurse and sending thick chocolate liquid puddling across the tile floor. Before Daniel could blink, Beth was by Jay’s side, rubbing their back as they buried their face in her neck.

“Don’t drink it! Don’t drink it, Beth!” Jay half yelled, half sobbed.

“I won’t. I promise, Jay.”

“It...It’s poisoned. You never know how it’s gonna hurt you, but it always does. I know, I know I need it. I have to stay alive, have to keep them away from you, but I’m tired, Beth. I’m so weak and tired, I don’t know what to do…”

With gentle hands, Beth gripped both sides of Jay’s face. She moved them upward until she could look Jay in the eyes.

“Jay, when you were at Princeton and your dad died and you drove miles and miles home in your roommate’s car just so you could be there for your mom as soon as possible, were you weak for wanting to sleep when you got back?”

“N...No.”

“It’s okay to be tired, Jay. It’s like, I don’t know, warriors on watch. You’ve done your job protecting us. Now it’s your turn to rest so we can take care of you.”

Daniel Wei left the hospital without a word. He had work to do.

***

Weeks later, the agent returned to find Jay sitting at a table on the other side of the room. Their hands were still in splints. They still had dark circles under their eyes. They stared at the table like its solid plastic was grounding them.

Daniel bit back a sigh as the kid didn’t even look up as he entered the room.

Then there was a kerfuffle behind him.

“Aha!” Beth said, bursting through the door. “I finally found a nurse who doesn’t do the Chronicle Sunday crossword at ass o’clock in the morning! Jay-bird we are good to go.”

Jay’s eyes lit up as Beth smacked the paper down in front of him and grabbed another chair. For the first time, Daniel realized they were blue.

“Bet you stole it,” they said quietly.

Beth hand flew out of her purse where she was rooting for a pencil and struck above her heart.

“I am deadly offended that you would even think that I would stoop to such things, especially on the day of our Lord! I asked, thank you very much! Besides, if you’re so against stealing, maybe I shouldn’t give you your other treat…”

“You’d withhold a treat from a poor invalid?” Jay deadpanned. “Oh my poor arm.”

Beth chucked. Jay smiled.

“I know you’re having trouble with straws, Jay-bird, but I thought, maybe…”

Beth pulled a purple aluminum can out of her purse.

Jay leaned forward eagerly, but then made himself pause.

“Am I allowed to…?”

“Hell, I don’t see why not! They’re trying to get calories into you anyway that they can. Junk food is only gonna help with that!”

Beth popped the tab on the Grape Crush and stuck a straw in it, moving it toward Jay as she nudged his foot companionably.

Tentatively, Jay took a sip. Then a swig. Then a gulp that took up half the bottle.

“Whoa, slow down there Jay-bird. They will kick me out of here if you die from a sugar high.”

“It tastes like capitalism,” Jay sighed.

“And?”

“And not like hospital food!”

“Good! Then this will be the first of our illegal smuggling adventures, deal?”

“Deal.”

There was a pause as Jay savored his soda.

Daniel cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Jay,” he said. “I’m Special Agent Daniel Wei from Morgan Security. Would you mind if I borrowed Ms. Martinez for a few minutes?”

Jay looked at Beth who nodded wearily and got up to follow Daniel out the door.

***

As soon as Daniel and Beth got settled in an empty conference room, her whole demeanor changed. Her smile slid into a tight thin line and she squared her shoulders even as they fell a few inches.

“So, Agent,” she said. “When are we going to be able to get him out of here?”

“Jay’s casts home off in two weeks. If he passes all his physical examinations, I don’t see any reason for him to stay longer than that.”

“Good. And where we’re going? I assume you’ve got all of that sorted. There are a few things I’d like to bring with me, but everything else can go.”

Beth clenched her jaw as she said the words.

Daniel closed his eyes.

Here was a woman trying to hold the world together for a kid who’d completely lost his life. In the process she was losing hers too. If he made her, she would have to go back into that hospital room and tell Jay that everything was working out perfectly even if she didn’t know where they were going to be tomorrow or what Morgan Security would require of them. And she’d do it. He could see that weary determination in her deep brown eyes and he knew exactly how hard she’d come down on all of them if they pushed Jay too hard.

“We’ll continue to pay for your old apartments as long as we need to,” Daniel promised. “You’ll be able to get your stuff whenever you need to, whether that means going back yourself or letting us hire folks to get it for you. We won’t make you leave things behind. Not when they’re as important as Grape Crush.”

Beth didn’t smile, but her shoulders relaxed a little.

“As for where you’re going…”

Daniel passed a manila folder across the table to Beth.

“The firm picked out a safe house with the latest security. It’s off the grid with the best locks and monitors and motion detectors money can buy. And, for lack of a better word, it’s a bunker. I saw the place where they were keeping him Ms. Martinez. I thought Jay might prefer something more homey.”

Holding his breath, he took out another file.

“This holding just came on the market. It’s not far outside the city. You’d have to drive longer for doctor’s visits, but you’d have access to a public pool and a park a few blocks away. I made sure that it was only one story so you wouldn’t have any problems with dizziness and falling from Jay’s pain medications.”

“And it has windows,” Beth said softly.

“And it has windows,” Daniel said. “It looks like a home.”

He cleared his throat.

“There is one more thing about this property that you should know about that’s not in the papers.”

Beth looked up.

“I understand Jay has been seeing a Morgan Security psychiatrist.”

Beth almost sprung out of her chair.

“Look, I get it! You want to know what happened to him. You want him to tell you the story of every mark to make sure he didn’t tattle when they beat him half to death. Just don’t bring me into it. I’m not spying for you. I’m trying to make him better while you’re focused on your own damn pride!”

“I agree.”

“What?”

“Jay needs someone who understands what he’s going through and is focused on his recovery, not his worth to any company,” Daniel said calmly. “Next door to this address is Dr. Stephens. He’s an old army buddy who specialized in special service members and PTSD. This would not be his first time working with the aftereffects of torture. Jay might still have to meet with the Morgan Security doc for appearances sake, but Dr. Stephens has promised to see him off the books. Doctor/patient confidentiality would apply.”

That made Beth deflate completely.

“Do you really think this Dr. Stephens could help? Jay talks more in his sleep than he does in person. I still don’t know what’s going to set him off and I just…I just want him to feel safe.”

Daniel placed his hand on her, cold on the tan plastic table.

“So do I.”

***

Daniel returned Beth to Jay’s hospital room with the hope of a smile on his face. Before the could close the door, the pair started bickering about the answer to the crossword’s 27 Across. Beth held her pencil like a dagger while Jay batted at it with ineffective, casted hands. Through it all, their feet remained pressed together with comfortable pressure, reminding each other that they were there and they weren’t going away.

Like that night long ago when he rescued Jay, Daniel pulled out his cell phone and dialed Morgan Security. His boss picked up.

“No sir, there’s no problem,” Daniel said. “I just need to get a copy of the Chronicle delivered outside the city to Westover drive. Yes, this is a matter of great importance.”

Filling the “Empty Shell” square with Original Characters for @badthingshappenbingo! I think I’m setting a record for filling the most squares without actually making any of them line up lol.

Tagging the Broken Pieces Crew: (If you want to be added or taken off this list, just let me know!): @stoic-whumpee, @whatwasmyprevioususername, @whumpty-dumpty-fell-off-the-wall, @straight-to-the-pain, @castielamigos-whump-side-blog, @0idril0, @fallingstormphoenix, @whump-fantasies, @imagination1reality0, @whumpback-wail, @whump-tr0pes, @untilthepainstarts, @captivity-whump, @burtlederp, @redwingedwhump, @whumpiary, @captivity-whump, @blue-flare10

All credit to @stoic-whumpee for the idea of making Daniel a main character.

#Whump #Empty Shell #Hospitalization #Flashbacks #Hurt/Comfort #Aftermath #Jay #Beth #Daniel Wei #quirkykayleetam writes #Please pardon the language

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charlenelouise-gdc · 4 years

Photo

3.4 — FMP:

Fan Culture: FMP Development

After much thought, more research and further exercises, I came into the conclusion that I would like to pursue my third FMP idea revolving around fan culture. Even though I am passionate about all the subject areas from the other ideas and the way I plan on executing them, I feel like this is the right one to pursue at this stage of my creative career. I would like to use London as a resource to find content, as well as use the studio facilities available.

Overall, I think the project covers a topic that is both equally fun to do, but also something insightful and offer interesting commentary (on women, society and community). I like the challenge of bridging “low art” (pop music) and “high art” (documentary filmmaking). More so, documentary style filmmaking is one of my stronger skills as a creative, as proven by my FMP in Year 02, and is something I would like to build on. This project would allow me to level up my skills on this technique/style of filmmaking. I think there’s something comfortable as well as challenging in this project.

The following bellow details some development I made on the idea, as the laying foundations for the project...

RECAP FROM THE EARLIER BLOGPOST:

“Fangirl” Culture

Like I said earlier, I’ve always wanted to champion women or pursue female centric stories in my work. Out of all the things out there regarding the feminine experience, nothing speaks more of it other than boybands and fandom culture. Its always been a persistent part of girl culture; whether it’ll be a pop band or a rock band. I think this would be an interesting world to explore.There’s already a preferred narrative around fangirls - the rabid, crazy kind. Although that is true in some extreme cases, it would be unfair to only present this as the only side of the story. I would like to show the other, more wholesome side. Fandom culture goes beyond the band and the music; in fact, they are only mere catalysts. Fandom culture is ultimately about identity and community; through the band and music, many young girls across the world is given the opportunity to own something and begin to have a good sense of themselves - ultimately forming an identity. Also, its about community; they’re able to connect with others and form strong bonds simply because of the band/music. You can see this, in the queues before gigs or the excitement they discuss their favourite member. Above all, it speaks about a different kind of joy that is often belittled.At present, a lot of the coverage around fandom culture are often done by people outside the community (with negative preconceived ideas which already suggest a bias). It would be interesting to see it from the people in the community themselves. I want to give the girls the voice and and let them reclaim the narrative. Ultimately, tell it from a loving lens. Also, I believe this is quite telling on how female passion is portrayed and what is acceptable, depending on the demographic. Football fans chanting? Perfectly fine. Girls screaming at concerts? Insane. This is aligned with women’s negative and dangerous relationship with hysteria throughout history. I think there is an interesting window to explore the social implications around fan culture. Additionally, I like the challenge of taking something from pop culture and considered as low art, and give it context and background. After all, it deserves to be studied carefully as much as its high art counterparts (From Stuart Hall’s theory Representation: feminine taste = low art, Masculine taste = high art). Above all, I think it would be equally as fun as well to do. It’s would be cool to celebrate fan culture, where its alive and present. Not just through a nostalgic lens. References: BTS’ documentaries: Bring The Soul (2019), “I used to be Normal” Documentary on fangirls across the ages (2018).

FMP Development

I would still like to focus this project on BTS and their fans specifically. They’re the biggest boy band in the world right now and their fans are ones of the most active, both online and offline. I want to be able to document a part of this culture, while it is still happening and its best (rather than through a nostalgic lens). Most importantly, their work and music are monumental in many ways; they’re crossing boundaries, not only in the music but in race relations, toxic masculinity etc. Their global influence must not be undermined.

Documentary Style

For this project, I would like to mix both real life footage to stylised setting. My main point of stylistic reference is Roxy Rezvany’s “Little Pyongyang”. She used a stylised set for her interviews, while also having real life, observational shots of her interviewees natural habitat/form.

youtube

I think this would be a good technique to use for this documentary.

I would like to build my own “teenage bedroom”. After all, this is one of the main touch points for fan culture and feminine culture in general. We learn so much about our tastes right there; this is evidenced in the posters on our walls and the CDs we used to collect. This is referenced a lot in Teen/Coming of Age films. I feel like this would an interesting setting for my interviews to take place. Anyway, it would be harder to film into people’s individual bedrooms. It would make filming easier if I can take my interviewees into one place, rather than going to theirs with my crew (setting up and wrapping up in all of them). More so, I think this is a good opportunity for me to use and improve my art direction skills (see image above for reference). I would decorate the set, referencing the 90s, personalised to a Kpop fan’s perspective (see reference above).

Content

The narrative will be crafted from the content being produced; the interviews will play a crucial role into this and will be the key part of this project. From the emotions to the personal anecdotes, it all stems from this. Therefore, I need to craft the interview questions I’m going to be asking, to trigger the “right” answers or reactions. More so, I really need to pay attention on the actual filming day, so the rhythm/energy of the interview is kept and the questions isn’t answered twice/already embedded on what they formally just said. More so, a technique I was taught/learned from my old FMP was to keep silent in some parts of the interviews, as the interviewees would naturally fill the silence themselves and bring their own thoughts onto the table.

In terms of content, London is rich in terms of resources. It hosts so many hot spots for this fan culture and explore it in real life, in real time.

Some ways this can be executed:

Recall past major events (e.g. BTS Samsung AD that played in Piccadilly Circus that garnered so many fans).

Fan Hang-Out Places (e.g. Gaza cafe, specialising in Korean dessert, in Soho decorates their stores when members of the boybands and make special one-off desserts to commemorate their birthdays. A tradition among fans has then been developed where they make a pilgrimage to this place, to celebrate their favourite members’).

Replicating their steps (e.g. when BTS visited London in their last tour, they took pictures around London when they went exploring in their own time; fans replicated the pictures they took).

Regular Kpop dance classes are held (e.g. BASE studios near Vauxhall).

BTS has an upcoming tour for their latest album, Map of the Soul:7, which includes London as one of their stops. There will be fan-led events leading up to the concert to celebrate their return.

Potential Interviewees

There are few interviewees I think would be good options. Twitter was a good resource to look into, as it is one of the main hot spots for this culture to exist in. In particular, I would like to interview the following:

Lucy Ford (@lucyj_ford) - social media for Netflix

Ellie Bate (@eleanorbate) - buzzfeed reporter

Ikran (@ikran) - buzzfeed reporter

These girls are all what I call “professional fangirls”... They all have media jobs and respected in their profession, yet have unapologetic enthusiasm for BTS and their community (they have good followings on their social media too). They offer insightful but also equally fun things on the day to day through their twitter accounts; I think they would offer the same in a personal interview. Most importantly, they’re all close friends. I think they would have excellent chemistry on screen and their natural friendship would light up the interview.

I would like to interview fans too, of all different backgrounds and races, inquiring how the band has impacted their lives. I want to achieve something similar to this, but communicated in my own personal style and design (rather than the typical, point and shoot interview). The content I want to capture is definitely there (in what they’re saying, how their band affected them personally, their community)...

youtube

Note: Professionally, I would like to only involve fans who are 18 years old and above, so it doesn’t interfere with filming; if I choose people who are 16 years old, it would require a legal guardian to sign a consent form and they have to be on set as we film - this could be a lot of hassle. Even though I’m not getting a full scope of the demographic this way, I think this would be the more sensible option. In addition, I feel like leaning towards the older end will give me more articulate, in depth answers. I think it would be a good idea to contact those who already has a platform, whether its a Twitter account with a reasonable following or a Youtuber who post videos. In a way, I feel they would feel more at ease at being in front of the camera and good at expressing opinions/feelings. I feel like I would do less teasing out of information during the interview if they naturally bring the information themselves.

I also plan on getting in touch with some UK based fanbases to help me boost the idea and find people to interview. This includes:

@BANGTANUK @BTSUKUNITE @UKBTSARMATION @BANGTANSCHOLARS

____________________________________________________________

I look forward into narrowing this project further and progress onto fully forming the project. It feels very much my own and I’m ready to take care of it.

Next steps:

Create proper pitch deck to send to interviewees*

Compile list of potential interviewees and rank them

Contact and introduce myself to interviewees

Create skeleton structure of the documentary*-

Create draft for interview questions*

Run a test interview (to check which questions work)*

Refine Set Design with accurate measurements*

Prop Buying

Contact potential Builders for the set

* urgent tasks - just because the film is non-fiction, planning is required and I must recognise where the beats of the film should be. This is something I failed to do in the D&AD project. Although I am crafting a narrative from non-fiction pieces of information and is dictated by the content of the interview, I should’ve known where to place them in advance.

#FMP 2020

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kidchameleon92 · 5 years

Text

“life story” 1

i’m not going to edit this at all going along. typos, bad grammar, mistakes. doesn’t matter. this is spontaneous thought.

disclaimer: i changed the word to “spontaneous” from “spurious” which means something completely different, so the first paragraph is already a lie.

anyway, it’s been a really weird and sort of bad couple months for me. mostly in my state of mind. i feel very stuck and very immobile when it comes to my art and career. and that is having a very negative effect on my brain. even though i’m putting out my favorite songs i’ve ever written. i’ve been meaning to write for awhile. i used to post when i lived in los angeles several years ago, just journaling my day to day life. but i haven’t for awhile. i guess i also used to write in a notebook while on different tours. but i think i’ve since thrown that away or hidden it somewhere.

point is: i just want to write to get things off my mind. and hopefully, maybe, it’ll help you (if you care to) get to know me a little more and on a more personal level. even if we haven’t met. and maybe it’ll make what i make (if you care about it) mean more to you. either way, mostly, i just want to rant a bit. so, this is my life’s story. i guess.

chapter 1: kid

i was born in a suburb of the twin cities in minnesota. my parents both grew up in minnesota and lived there their whole lives (until my mom recently moved to tennessee). my mom was a mortician, and my dad was an accountant. also an alcoholic. he cheated on her and left her and i when i was one year old. i remember growing up going to stay with him on weekends, except it was with him and his girlfriend at the time. except he was drunk a lot. and would drive drunk with me (a baby) in the car. so, that’s cool. anyway, my mom was really depressed, and that was not a good time (or so i’ve heard, because i was a baby, so idk).

i stayed with my grandparents a lot, because my mom worked full time. my maternal grandparents lived on a ton of land. my grandpa and i would ride motorcycles and four wheelers and sleep in a treehouse and all that. my other grandparents lived in the same town but in a small house. i used to go up to their cabin during the summer and go fishing and swimming and boating and all that. different g-parent vibes, but loved both a lot.

anyway, when i was three, my mom married my step-dad. he is from india and has had a lot of unique and challenging experiences, so that certainly brought a lot of particular lessons and outlooks into my life. i went there once when i was about 14. it was wild. but so, yeah. that kinda solidified my family unit. my dad got remarried later on as well. but the older i got, i saw him less and less.

so ... i loved video games. i played them all the time. a big part of my childhood. mostly nintendo. explains a lot. as a kid in school (4 years public, 3 years private, 1 year home, 3 years private, 1 year PSEO [look it up]), i was never popular whatsoever. i always wanted to gain some sort of acclaim or attention from my classmates, but was pretty much always looked down on for one reason or another. i remember in elementary school, i was the kid who was literally terrified of storms. probably because i had been in a tornado when i was six. but the moment it would thunder, all the kids would look at me to see if i was gonna cry. usually, i did. and the school nurse would take me outside and we’d walk around as a sort of therapy. i guess it helped sorta. i still get nervous in storms. but i don’t cry.

i also remember a time specifically that i got made fun of for wearing a denver broncos t-shirt. this kid just railed on me because it wasn’t a minnesota vikings shirt. so, one: i don’t even give a fuck about sports. but two: it stuck with me for some reason that someone would be a massive jerk over a t-shirt of a sports team. i guess that’s just because we as humans are messed up things.

anyway, in middle school, i started becoming semi-interested in music. i listened to the radio every night, listening to the top 10 countdown of big songs from that week. kanye, weezer, the click five, black eyes peas, green day. those were some anyway. besides that, i was just listening to like kelly clarkson and relient k or something. my mom had a steven curtis chapman cd in her van i thought went hard. but i started getting into popular music around then. i also started to write my own music. i used to take piano lessons from when i was like six or seven until i was 14 or so. but after i started writing my own songs, i hated practicing assigned pieces. i didn’t care. i wanted to play my own. so, the teacher said if i quit, i couldn’t be her student again. so i did. that’s fine. she said i was her most talented student. but i didn’t work that hard. so, that goes to show that natural talent and hard work have different roles, i suppose.

chapter 2: girls and high school and such

in high school, i started LiKiNg gIrLs and stuff. i also was still not very popular. i also had started a band (with jack). i wasn’t very good, but i was just as obsessed with it as i am now. anyway, i liked this one girl from my church, and we talked all the time. but because we grew up in a pretty fundamental church culture, we weren’t allowed to date. which honestly, i fine, because looking back, no one knows what they are doing at 16 really. i definitely didn’t. i still don’t know what i’m doing. anyway ...

so, this girl and i half-dated for a couple years, and i was really clingy and annoying. but that’s just how i be. and i thought i was gonna marry her and stuff, because in a fundamental church context, you over spiritualize everything.

[[disclaimer: i am a christian, and i still go to church, but my theology and ideology on a lot of things has just evolved and changed a lot since i was young and since leaving the ultra-americanized/ultra-fundamental “christian” realm. main point being: we all are effed up bro and need saving. i’m an idiot always!]]

but now we’re back. girl “dumped” me and started dating another guy named “patrick” right after, even though she technically wasn’t allowed to date until she was 18. but apparently, she just wasn’t allowed to date me. so, that was cool. anyway, i was angsty, but then i got over it. because i was 17, so life big time goes on.

then i met another girl from canada while i was finishing school and going hard at my band stuff. we hit it off, and i started visiting her up there. and she visited me and all that. it was cool. and then all of a sudden, she really started hating me. and to be fair, i was weird and clingy and sort of a lot to deal with. but we kept dating. all the while, i was sort of leaving behind music to try to get into nursing school. yep, nursing school. but i got rejected, which is great. and so, i decided to go to audio engineering school in canada. and she was gonna go to college in the same city. this is great! so i thought. she dumped me (well, i sort of broke up with myself for her) about a month after we were living in the same city. wack. but it made me buckle down and work my ass off in school. i was top of my class one semester. yeah, i’m not that dumb. sometimes.

towards the spring of the next year, i happened to meet a girl who was at my church with one of my friends. she seemed chill. just talked a little. nothing crazy. happened to hit her up on twitter just to say hi. no intention. we talked a bit. nothing after that. then all of a sudden, a couple months later, i was tweeting about reading harry potter for the first time (note: fundamental upbringing). she happened to tweet me back about it. and long story short, we went out on a date. a sort-of-date. and what was supposed to be a lunch turned into an all day and half the night date. anyway, we got married a year later. after a lot of immigration paperwork and expenses. that’s a whole other post. that sucked. it’s a lot. and it’s why i feel bad for people who have nothing who are trying to come here to flee danger in their own countries. again, another post.

chapter 3: married, and other hard things

so, i forgot to say that before we got married, i lived in los angeles for a year after school. i was doing more sound for film work. on set stuff, post-production. got to do work with like ... james franco, matt damon, emma roberts, william shatner. some cool stuff. but jack’s old band came through on tour, and i saw two shows. and i was like ... bruh. i gotta do music, what am i doing? so, i literally moved back to minnesota within like two weeks, worked as a nursing assistant for a little bit and got married. then moved to nashville like two weeks later. i guess i could’ve stayed in los angeles. but nashville felt like the move at the time. everything happens with a purpose.

so, we moved here, and she couldn’t work for three months because of immigration stuff. so, i was like, well, guess i need a job. so, i got a job managing a home for a couple people with intellectual disabilities. it was super hard. mostly because the company was really, really bad. so, i got another job working as a staffing coordinator in an office for a home health care agency. that was a little better. still tough. but less overwhelming. a couple months after i got that job, i got an offer to go on a country tour playing bass for someone. and i was like ... well, this is why i moved here. so, i quit and went on tour. and shawna actually took my old job. interesting.

i was gone for three weeks, and it sucked and the pay was bad, but at least i was doing what i wanted. but then i got an offer from my friend to do some tech work on a much bigger country gig. i hadn’t done it before, but it was better pay and a better position. and on a bus and nice things and all that. so, i went for it. i pissed the other girl i was playing for off. but that’s show biz, baby. but like, i found a replacement for myself and paid to fly him out to her shows and stuff. so, really she won.

anyway, i toured with this other artist for four years. and i learned a lot. it was very, very challenging, both mentally and physically. and some people are just hard to work with. but i still gained so much valuable experience and insight into touring from that. i also started playing guitar for another artist who was small at the time, but has now had a couple number one hits. but his label fired me because i didn’t look country enough. we’re still homies though, so it’s literally fine. because i do indeed not look country enough.

at the same time, i was doing my own solo music and also producing and writing with and for other people. i’ve had the opportunity to write and produce for everything from independent artists to major label to billboard charting albums to whatever. songs on major television networks. i’m still very un-rich though, if that tells you anything.

but really, i just wanted to do my own music. and i literally couldn’t get it to go anywhere. i had no idea what the “secret” was. what was i missing? money? connection? power? actually probably all of that, to be honest. this industry is wacko. i was pretty close to giving up.

chapter 4: milkk

i read a satirical article on vice.com about “how to start a trendy band” or something. i thought it was funny. so, i called jack. he had just been kicked out of his old band for no reason. i was like, “bruh, let’s do this article.” and he was like, ok. so, we sort of did. and i’m not gonna go into all the early details, because i’ve done a million press interviews about how our band started. and i don’t wanna say it again. google it.

this was the first time that i actually saw people care about my music. it was a high. it was like a dream. and we hadn’t even had any big song or anything. just the fact that people were listening and engaging was mind blowing to me. but just like with anything, the more things went, the less i found satisfying. the more “likes” or “follows” on socials didn’t feel like enough anymore. the streams didn’t seem good enough. the chart positions on the debut album didn’t seem that great. the hype wore off a little after the debut album hype. and that made me insane. probably because we as humans are not built to be satisfied by the things in our life. “Vanity of vanities!” it’s in ecclesiastes. like the bible one.

chapter 5: now

anyway, that’s bad. i had (and have) let my mind convince me that i have to achieve something in order to be happy or fulfilled, when i know that that stuff will never fulfill me. i could play the biggest stadium and have the biggest song in history, but after a burst of dopamine and excitement, it would be empty. and i know that nothing here will do that. at least, that’s what i believe. my hope is outside of myself.

but that’s hard to internalize when you are so passionate about something, and have been for so long, and all you want to do is create things for other people that they can appreciate and be influenced by. but it’s probably also selfish. like i openly admit i like the idea of fame and presence. and it probably ties all the way back to wanting acknowledgement and attention as a kid, from being unpopular and ridiculed and, honestly, left by my dad. maybe i just therapied myself.

but regardless, i know i can’t put my identity in all this stuff. it’s hard, and it’s harder when you create stuff. because it’s so deeply tied to you. but it’s still not “who i am.” i know who i am and what i believe, but i’m still a mess, so i can’t enact that in my brain perfectly. in fact, far from it.

anyway. it’s late, and i’m going to post this and attempt to not worry about how it does on social media. stupid!!! i just want this out in the world for you to read. hopefully it’s helpful for you in some way. but mostly, it was just cool to write this out, for my own sake.

i’ve been blessed in some amazing ways. my family. oh, yeah i forgot that i have two kids. i love them a lot. i don’t talk about them on social media much. but they are very special to me. and we’ve always been taken care of, even when times were tight or i didn’t know when the next paycheck was coming in or i thought my wife was about to die or whatever. the Lord provided for us every time. and i am grateful to have what career i have. it may be “small” and nothing to look at by the big industry standards, but i believe in what i make so much, and i’m just grateful that anyone cares about it at all. and i will continue to do so until the day i die. because i have to.

it’s what i was born to do, for better or worse. and no one can tell me otherwise.

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brianandthemays · 5 years

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Love is a Polaroid (Roger Taylor x reader) Part 10

A/N Wow I feel like I”m finally picking up some sort of fan base for this fic! Which is fun! I really hope y’all are enjoying it! I know I’m enjoying writing it, every chapter just gets more any more fun!

Anywho I wanna actually start a spotify playlist so if you have any song ideas please send them here

I’d rlly love y’alls input so please send me some asks!

As always! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REBLOG AND SEND ME SOME ASK! IT MAKES MY DAY EVERY SINGLE TIME SOMEONE SENDS ME SOMETHING ABOUT THIS FIC AND I’D LOOOOVE TO DISCUSS IT WITH YOU!

Also! HUGE shout out to @sweet-ladyy who, with everything going on in her life, took the time to read and edit this. Y’all neeed to read Matters of the Heart it’s SPICING Up omg...

Word Count: 3.4+

Warnings: Fluff, i guess angst, its cute

Other parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

______________________________________

That was how you somehow ended up in Roger’s car, heading to his family’s home in Norfolk. You were not ecstatic about the offer at first.

“Why don’t you come home with me?” His lips were soft on your neck but that didn’t stop you from turning in his grasp and scoffing at him.

“I don’t think that's a good idea.”

But after awhile, Roger wore you down, convincing you to come with him.

“They’ll love you!” he insisted. “Think about it, just us for a week.”

You couldn’t deny that the thought of being alone with Roger in his hometown for a week was nice. But you still felt like things were moving quickly. So, you shook your head, wrapping your arms around yourself.

“It’s too soon, we’ve only been together for a few months, Roger!”

He frowned at you.

“We can go slow! We have a guest room, you can stay there!” His eyes were pleading you, his lip jutting out in a pout. “Please?”

And that was it. Now you were sitting in his passenger seat with the window rolled down and the music blaring some Fleetwood Mac song as the wind blew through your hair. Roger’s hand was clasped tightly over yours, with his thumb rubbing absentmindedly over the back. You look over at him as he drove, his dirty blonde hair was scattered in the wind and all you wanted to do was run your hand through it. He wore his sunglasses which he insisted helped him see better but you just scoffed at the fact that he bought prescription sunglasses because his normal ones made him look “like a tosser”.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” He smirked, glancing over at you. You blushed but didn’t look away. Instead you raised your eyebrows at him and squeezed his hand once before releasing it to scrambled around in your bag.

“Good idea!” You presented the Polaroid that you had snatched from his room before leaving that morning. He flashed a wide smile in your direction as you flashed the camera. “Eyes on the road.”

He grumbled at you but looked back towards the road. He flipped his hand back over, inviting you to hold onto it. You looked down at his hand an roamed over the course calluses over his fingers. You reached your fingers out and brushed over them softly. His hand was so rough from scars and scratches from various fights and gigs.

“They don’t hurt.”

You glance over at him. His mouth was skewed to one side and his head was tilted as if he were thinking. You looked back down at his hand and shook your head. Your boyfriend could not have rough hands. You reached down in your bag again and this time come up with a small bottle of lotion.

“What are you doing?” he questioned, turning his head to look over at you.

You move his face back towards the road with your hand, giggling softly. “Eyes on the road.”

He humphed but obeyed. You poured a dot of lotion over his hand and slowly start to rub it in. You moved it over each finger, making sure to fill every crack and rough spot. Roger let out a small groan at the feeling of the cool lotion over his rough hand and you smiled over at him. “Feel nice?”

“Yeah…” he responded, stretching out his fingers. You slide yours in with his and squeeze slightly. A silence fell over the two of you once again, comfortable and relaxed. It didn’t take long after that before you started to see signs and buildings leading to Norfolk. You began to feel nervous again. You were meeting Roger’s parents after dating him for 4 months. What were they going to think of you?

“Hey, relax.” Roger kissed your knuckles softly. “They’re gonna love you.”

“Are you sure this is okay? I could find a hotel nearby. I could--”

“Stop.” He cut you off quickly, knowing where this rambling was going. “You’re coming home with me and that’s final.”

You bit your lip, still feeling uneasy.

“You’re the type of girl they’ve been begging me to bring home forever,” he mentioned. “Smart, respectful… everything they wanted me to be.”

You looked over at him. Roger was one of the smartest people you knew, he just wouldn’t let himself see that. Respectful wasn’t exactly the word you’d use for him but when it came to you, he was a perfect gentleman. Well, not perfect. There were often times he would say crude things in your ear while you were in public that would make you blush, but he treated you well and never pushed you too far.

“Roger, I think you’re being hard on yourself,” you told him. “Your parents love you.”

He didn’t respond. He did, however, grip his wheel a little tighter.

Eventually, you and Roger pulled up to a house a little outside the main city. It was a quaint house, that didn’t quite match Roger’s look. But it was cute and you felt a little more relaxed in the comfortable area. You stepped out of the car and stood in the front lawn. There was a soft breeze flowing and it felt nice, it felt like home.

“Ready?”

You turned and saw Roger holding yours and his bags, smiling softly at you. You nodded and let him take the lead up to the door. He knocked on the door and came to stand next to you.

“It’s gonna be okay, love,” he insisted, placing a kiss on your temple. “Everything is going to be okay.”

A moment later, the door opened revealing a women you assumed to be Roger’s mother. A big smile broke out across her face when she saw you.

“Roger!” she cried, pulling him into a hug. He grumbled before loosely wrapping his arms around his mother.

“Hey, mum.” He kissed her cheek before pulling away and taking your hand, tugging you towards him. “This is (Y/N), remember I told you about her.”

She smiled at you, glancing up and down over you. You swallowed hard and held out your hand before introducing yourself. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

“Oh, honey, you don’t know how happy I am that Roger’s found a nice girl like you.” His mother ignored your hand and pulled you into a big hug, squeezing you tightly. You yelped slightly before hugging her back, letting out a nervous chuckle.

“Mum, please don’t suffocate my girlfriend,” he groaned, embarrassment evident in his tone.

“Oh, leave me alone, child.” She released you letting you take a few steps back. You smiled at her, letting her know you appreciated her kindness. “Now, Roger, why don’t you take your things upstairs while I introduce (Y/N) to your father.”

Roger glanced over at you, checking to see if you’d be okay on your own. You nodded at him, giving him the answer he needed before replying. “Sounds great, mum.”

She lead you inside, Roger turning right to go up some nearby stairs. You watched him go, trying to shove your anxiety down and out of your brain as you followed his mother into the living space.

“Michael, come meet Roger’s girlfriend!” she called into the house. “Why don’t you sit here while I put some tea on you.”

You nodded, sitting on the couch awkwardly, as she disappeared into the kitchen. You sat alone in the quiet for a few minutes, looking around the room. It was a nice living space with a few couches and TV sitting on a shelf. It reminded you of what you had at home and a pang of guilt shot through you. You tried to ignore it by looking over at a picture sitting next to the couch. It was a picture of a young Roger that made you smile. He was so young and wild looking. His hair was shooting in all directions and his smile had a mischievous glint in it.

“So.”

The new deep voice startled you, causing you to jump from your seat. You looked over at the new man in the room and saw him smiling at your reaction.

“Didn’t mean to scare you, dear. I’m Michael, Roger’s father.”

Your eyes widened and you stood quickly to come shake his hand. “I’m (Y/N), thank you so much for letting me stay at your house this week, Mr. Taylor.”

He waved you off, coming to sit in the cushioned chair next to the couch. “It’s Michael, Mr. Taylor was my father. And you’re always welcome here, dear.”

“Thank you,” you said you him. “Michael.”

He smiled at you, and motioned for you to sit. “So, tell me about yourself.”

You cleared your throat “Well…” desperately trying to think of something to say about yourself. “I’m studying at Ealing… for Public Relations with a minor in Design.”

“An art school!” He huffed. “Interesting. I don’t know how I would trust Roger there. Your parents must be very trusting.”

You looked down at the floor. “Actually, my parents wanted me to stay home. Didn’t think I should bother with a real job.” You laughed lightly, trying to make it seem that you’re not as nervous are you are.

“Well, then it was kind of them to pay for your college education,” Mr. Taylor responded.

“Actually, I’m paying for myself.”

“What?” Roger’s voice came from the doorway. Your head whipped up to his, your eyes meeting. You had tried so desperately to keep your family struggles away from him, it wasn’t his problem. “You’re paying for yourself?”

“Um, yeah…” You shifted in your seat. “I’m on a lot of scholarship, though. It’s not a big deal.”

He didn’t look convince, but as he opened his mouth to say something more but at that moment his mother walked in with a tray of tea and biscuits. You glanced at Michael who was staring apologetically at you. You took one of the cups of tea gingerly into your hand, avoiding Roger’s gaze. You could feel his eyes burning into your head as he wondered why you had left a major detail about your life out of your conversations.

The rest of the evening went relatively smoothly. Creating conversation easily with his parents and avoiding the subject of school and your parents all together. Over dinner, Roger keep his hand on your knee, rubbing smooth circles into the soft skin on the side. You appreciated the gesture, resting your hand on top of his.

“So, how did you two meet?”his mother asked near the end of the meal. You looked over at Roger, smiling at the story.

“Well, I had just finished visiting my sister, who goes to Poly, and I had just sat down to read my book when Roger came running around the corner being chased by some--”

Roger’s hand squeezed your knee tightly, and you glanced over at him. His eyes silently pleading you to leave out some details of that story.

“By some… friends… and he saw me and tripped,” you finished.

“Guess you could say I fell at first sight,” Roger joked, trying to take attention away from your slip up.

His mother cooed affectionately, going on about how romantic it was and how you were just destined to meet. You couldn’t help but stare at Roger, thinking about how circumstantial your meeting was. If you hadn’t been in that exact spot, at that exact time, you would never had met Roger. It made your heart ache just to think about that.

“Yeah, we really are lucky,” you murmured thoughtfully. He looked over at you and gave you a gentle smile, a similar thought probably going through his head. You turned his hand over and slipped your fingers into his, loving the feeling of his hand in yours.

“Well, you seem good for him, (Y/N),” his mother concluded finally, pushing away from the table. You went to follow her actions, beginning to pick up your plate but she took it from your hand. “Please, you’re our guest!”

“I’m going to go show her around a little bit, ‘kay mum?” Roger pushed away from the table, resting his hand on the small of your back.

“Alright, don’t stay out too late, Roger Taylor,” she commanded, putting a hand on her hip.

“Mmhmm, alright mum.” He began to lead you out of his house, back into the open air. He closed the door behind him and took a big breath.

“They’re sweet.”

“You don’t need to lie to me.”

“Roger!”

He laughed loudly, grabbing your hand and dragging you down the street. You walked closely together, your his head bent to be near yours as you chatted and laughed together. His neighborhood was very small and nothing like the city of London. You liked it though. It was a place you could imagine settling down in.

“So this is where Roger Taylor grew up,” you looked up at him, grinning widely.

He nodded, glancing around, looking fondly at the buildings. “Yeah, this is home.” He pointed at what looked like a primary school. “That’s where I played the drums for the first time. They had a little kit in the music room, and I just liked to make noise so my music teacher let me play.” He smiled at the memory. “Mum wouldn’t let me take my kits to Uni… so I just bought a new one when I got there.”

“That’s a cute image,” you commented. “Little Roger banging away at his little drum kit.”

“That’s not the only thing I can bang.” He wiggled his eyebrows at you.

“That is the dumbest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“C’mon, you walked right into it!”

The two of you continued on, him pointing out buildings and telling stories along the way. You loved hearing his stories about his childhood. All the places he got in trouble, places he grew up and learned about life. It’s weird coming to his childhood town, he was so different now, at least when he was around you.

Eventually, you came upon a bridge that was over a road next to a field of flowers. He climbed up on the railing then helped you to sit next to him. He kept his arm around you, helping you feel more stable on the railing as you leaned into him. His fingers brushed your arm softly as the wind blew smoothly through your hair.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your parents?”

You knew the question was coming but it didn’t help you feel less uneasy about the topic. You looked down at your hands, twisting your fingers around each other, leaning slightly away from him.

“It wasn’t important,” you deflected.

“Not important? Are you joking?” You couldn’t decipher his tone. Was he angry? Upset? Annoyed? Either way you felt yourself closing in again. You looked back up at him, still feeling uneasy.

“No, Roger, I’m not. You don’t need to know about my issues with my family,” you argued.

“Yes I do, that’s how a relationship works, isn’t it?” he shot back. “We have to tell each other things.”

“And how would you know how a relationship works, seeing as you’ve never had a real one.”

As soon as the words left your mouth you regretted them. Your eyes widened at your own words as you watched his shoulders deflate. He moved his arm from around your shoulder, bringing his hands to rest in his lap.

“You’re right.” His voice was quiet, and it reminded you of that night 4 months ago when you put him to bed after his fight. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, with you.” He looked over at you. “But I’m trying my damn hardest not to let you get away.”

You felt your eyes glass over as a tear dropped from your eye. Roger reached up and brushed the tear off your cheek.

“I just want to know what’s going on up there.” He taps your temple lightly, drawing a small laugh out of you. You wipe your nose, willing yourself not to let anymore tears fall.

“My parents… didn’t see the point in me going to a real college,” you began glancing over at him. He nodded, encouraging you to continue. “They just wanted me to go to some community college and get a basic education then settle down somewhere and have five kids.” You chuckled slightly at that. Imagining yourself doing just that, becoming the perfect trophy wife. “So when I told them I wanted to study Public Relations maybe minor in design or journalism. They told me that if I left, not to bother coming back.” You gauged Roger’s reaction. Confusion flooded his face, mixed with some anger so you rested your hand on his leg. “So I left. I’m on almost a full scholarship at Ealing and its grade based. Which is why I can’t afford to fail.”

“What about your sister? Isn’t she studying medicine?” He asked, his brain going through everything you told him.

“She was the oldest. She got to go to school and live her life. But my mother sheltered me. Thought I was her perfect little girl.” You shook your head. “Guess I’m just a disappointment now.”

“Hey, that’s not true.” He cupped your cheek and made you look up at him. “You’re bloody brilliant. You work so hard, and are so determined. You saw right through me the moment you met me, and had me-- quite literally -- speechless. You’re something I’ve never seen before, and everyone around you can see it.” You felt your lip quiver, as your struggled more and more not to break down right there. “You make me want to slow down and watch the world.”

You stared at him for a moment longer before leaning your forehead on his chest. He wrapped his arms back around you, rubbing up and down lightly.

“I just want to be here with you, Roger. I don’t want to think about anything else.” You kissed his chest softly. “Not school, not my shitty parents. I just want you.”

“You have me, love.” He kissed the top of your hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

So there you sat, on the railing of the bridge, wrapped in each other. You sat there until the sun went down behind the trees and the stars began to specle the sky. At that point, he helped you off he railing and guided you back to his house. He guided you up the stairs and into his guest room. He stood, leaning in the doorway watching you walk around the room.

“I’m just down the hall if you need anything,” he told you, quirking his lips to the side.

You walked back over to him, placing your hands on his chest. “Okay.”

He leaned down and pressed his mouth to yours. You reciprocated for a minute before pulling away and smiling at him. He nodded before turning and walking down the hall away from you. You watched him for a moment before closing the door and settling in.

You couldn’t sleep. You closed your eyes, tossed and turned but sleep would not come. Your fight with Roger kept playing over in your head. You didn’t know why you said those things. You didn’t know why you always shut people out. You really liked him. You were beginning to think maybe even love him, but it was still too soon. Now, Roger was the only person besides Freddie who knew about your parents. You rolled over again and looked at the clock. It had barely been an hour since you laid down. This was not going to work.

So you got up. You rolled out of bed and walked down the hall to where Roger told you he would be. You opened his door quietly, trying not to wake him. When you opened the door, he was still awake; his arms behind his head, staring at the opening door.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

You shook your head. “I’m sorry.”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “What for?”

“For what I said earlier…” You rubbed the back of your neck.

He stared at you for a moment and then rubbed his eyes. “C’mere.”

“What?”

He opened his arms, and you realize what he meant. So you obliged, crawling in between his arms. He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you tightly to his chest and kissing your forehead softly before settling in. Being in his arms felt so right, so natural and you never wanted to leave.

_______________________

I hope y’all liked it!

Tag list (SO VERY OPEN): @dove-turned-destroyer @16wiishes @angiefangirlworld-2 @queenismyrealdad @blondecarfucker @perriwiinkle @chlobo6 @wolverinesbeer @onevisionliz @catnissprior-blog @thewinchesterchronicles

#Queen #Queen x reader #Queen imagines #Bohemian Rhapsody #Bohemian Rhapsody x reader #Bohemian Rhapsody imagines #Roger Taylor #Roger Taylor imagines #Roger Taylor x reader #Love is a Polaroid

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