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johnny-and-dora · 4 years

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sunny one so true, i love you

as a long, hot summer draws to a close, jake is determined to make sure mac has the best first beach trip a toddler has ever experienced. (written for @undead-thot-hours as part of the b99 summer 2020 fic exchange, i hope you like it!) @b99fandomevents

read on ao3 -

Ideally, living in Brooklyn in the middle of the summer would be perfect. There’d be some kind of ice coffee river Willy Wonka stylez that Jake could wade into, functioning air conditioning on demand and plenty of opportunities for him to up his sunglasses game and practise some cool new moves to impress the squad.

In reality, it costs like $12 for one tiny cup of iced coffee, and the air conditioning at the precinct is constantly on the fritz. He can’t even practise any cool sunglasses moves because one of Mac’s current favourite pastimes is taking either of his parent’s eyewear and lovingly slobbering all over it. It’s kind of a bummer - but also, like everything his son does, extremely cute, so Jake doesn’t really mind. The great picture he got of Mac wearing his sunglasses makes it worth it.

It’s been a long, long summer filled with paperwork and overtime instead of getting to hang out with his beautiful family all the time, which is the real bummer. So, when Amy suggested they take advantage of their shared Sunday off to take Mac to Brighton Beach for the first time, he’d responded with trademark enthusiasm.

Which was then later followed by abject panic, because Jake kinda sorta forgot that he’s not the beaches biggest fan.

It’s not like he’s some kind of beach hater, because that’s like hating summer or holidays or fun and Jake loves all of those things. It’s just that his lasting childhood memories of the beach are less than rosy. They mostly include him getting super sunburnt, dropping his ice-cream in the sand, or getting buried alive by Gina. None of them make him feel particularly good, and he doesn’t particularly want to pass that not-good feeling down to his son by ruining Mac’s first beach experience.

So many things could go wrong. What if a seagull steals his food, or his ball gets lost at sea? What if his favourite toy gets all sandy and ruined? What if a seagull steals him, and Jake’s powerless to do anything but watch?

To cut a long week of worrying about increasingly improbable scenarios short, this beach trip has to go well. In fact, Jake’s general brain weirdness and a strong desire to be a good dad means this needs to be the best beach trip a toddler has ever experienced in the history of beach trips. It’s the least he can do for Mac.

So, he invites Charles and Nikolaj along and buys Mac a cute little bucket and spade and the four of them build a really epic sandcastle while Amy gets a rare chance to peacefully catch up on some reading. They paddle in the sea a little, Mac clinging to Jake the whole time because the water’s so cold, and Jake snaps a photo of the three of them with ice cream that is definitely lockscreen worthy. Charles even takes the kids for a bit so Jake and Amy can have some precious alone time soaking in the sun.

It may not be perfect – Mac gets very upset when he can’t see any dolphins (which Jake would be disappointed by too, to be honest) and somehow he gets sand absolutely everywhere which he’s definitely going to traipse back into the apartment. But he seems happy, and Amy is happy, and that means that Jake is happy too.

“Did you have fun today, Mac?” Amy asks, wrapping him up tight in his beach towel and trying to brush some of the sand out of his hair. Their little boy nods enthusiastically, his curls bouncing everywhere as he climbs up on to Jake’s lap.

“This is the best day ever!” He says, slightly muffled as he sticks his thumb in his mouth, and Jake’s heart swells. Mission accomplished. He looks to Amy, who’s hair is even shiner than usual as she’s bathed in sunlight, her pretty sundress flapping around her legs. She gets more and more beautiful every single day.

“Hey, Ames, you look like a mermaid.” He says, grinning fondly at his wife. He gently pokes Mac to get his attention. “Doesn’t mommy look like a beautiful mermaid, Mac? Like she could be queen of the seahorses or something cool like that.”

“I know about seahorses!” Mac pipes up, which wasn’t exactly what he was going for but endearing, nonetheless. Camilla and Victor gifted him a book about animals for Christmas last year and he’s been parroting random trivia from it for months, as if they needed more proof that he’s half-Santiago. “They live in the sea and they’re not even horses, they’re fish.” He says matter-of-factly, wriggling in Jake’s lap.

“That’s right, baby.” Amy says warmly, gently stroking his curls and grinning at Jake when their eyes meet. Their kid is going to be the most insufferable know-it-all in his class, and they’re already so proud of him.

“Hey bud, did you see any seahorses in the sea?” Jake asks (He knows it’s unlikely, but it would be super awesome). Mac shakes his head. His face falls for a second and Jake worries that he’s going to have to go on some impossible heroic seahorse quest before his eyes light up again.

“Uncle Charles and Niko caught a crab though! It was all pinchy and angry!”

“Cool, like Sebastian?” Mac nods fervently and Jake grins, humming a few notes of ‘Under The Sea’. He makes a mental note to put The Little Mermaid on as soon as they get home – it’s on theme, has a great soundtrack and won’t make any of them cry too hard, which is a win in Jake’s book.

Mac is squirming in his lap again, so Jake lets him down. It warms his heart watching his son totter about on the sand wrapped in an R2-D2 beach towel, singing ‘Under The Sea’ to himself (except really, he’s just babbling the chorus over and over again). God, he loves this kid. His dad Spidey-senses kick in when Mac bends down to pick up a pebble, though, knowing it’s probably going directly into his mouth, so he racks his brain for cool seahorse facts to try and distract him.

“Hey Mac, did you know that it’s actually the daddy seahorses that carry the babies around in their tummies?”

“No way!” Mac says, the pebble instantly forgotten, and Jake knows he will never get tired of watching his son learn new things about the world every single day.

“Uh-huh.” Jake nods, and for effect, grabs a nearby beachball and stuffs it under his T-shirt while Mac laughs. “What do you think, little man? Would I make a good seahorse?”

Mac shakes his head, grinning toothily. “That’s silly, daddy.”

Jake smiles proudly – he may be pretty proud of his many accomplishments as a highly decorated detective, but nothing makes him feel prouder than when he makes the most important, treasured people in his life laugh. “Yeah? Well, I am pretty silly. That’s like, the thing I’m totally best at and have won a lot of silly awards for.”

“And blanket forts! And storytime! You’re the best daddy!” Mac says, running up to present the pebble to him, and Jake gets a little misty. He can see Charles also getting misty out of the corner of his eye, but that’s actually pretty toned down by his standards. He accepts the pebble and bends down to pick Mac up and spin him around, the two of them laughing, and knows he has nothing to be worried about. Not even the world’s biggest seagull could swoop in and ruin this day.

Jake may be a just a little sunburnt, and his grand dreams of an iced coffee river may be unfortunately impossible to fulfil. But he’s here, with his gorgeous, amazing wife and their equally amazing son, and has to admit the beach isn’t so bad. As long as he has his family beside him, any summer in Brooklyn seems pretty much perfect.

#b99 summer 2020 fic exchange #b99fandomevents #b99 #b99 fic #jake x amy #peraltiago #my writing #shut up sian

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sambergscott · 4 years

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your son is going to love you

Summary: Peralta dads are cursed, destined to have terrible relationships with their sons. When Jake finds out *he's* going to have a son, he spirals. Amy helps.

goes without saying that if you haven’t watched 7x10 yet maybe don’t read this

She wakes up at 2am needing to pee.

She’s been waking up needing to pee a lot lately.

It’s like their baby has no respect for her sleeping pattern, perfectly honed over the years to maximise productivity, while still fitting in the full 8 hours of sleep needed a day. Their baby doesn’t care about the 8 hour recommendation, he laughs in the face of scientists. With the bad back and heart burn and constant kick, kick, kicking of her bladder, she’s averaging 4.7. She thought babies didn’t start keeping you up all night until they were born but, oh, how wrong she was.

She pats her husband to wake him up and come keep her company. If she’s awake because of their baby, then damn it, he’s going to be awake, too. But he’s not there, leaving her hand awkwardly patting a bare mattress.

“Jake?” She murmurs groggily, sitting up and switching on her bedside lamp. She’s half-expecting him to be sitting in the armchair playing Mario Party on his Switch (he has become a little bit addicted in the last few months and it wouldn’t be the first time she’s found him trying to beat Wario in the early hours of the morning) or have left a note beside her bed that he had a lead on a case and needed to go in with a scribbled ‘love you’ underneath and a lopsided heart. The armchair is empty, but there’s a light on down the hall and since there’s no way she forgot to turn it off before bed (she triple checks), she figures that it must be Jake.

Forgetting the whole reason why she woke up in the first place, she grabs Jake’s hoodie from the floor for warmth and pads into their living-kitchen-dining area. It’s the open plan-ness that made her fall in love with the apartment upon first visit and submit all her paperwork as soon as she was out the door. It’s the open plan-ness that would make the Property Brothers proud and the dumb people who go on that show foam at the mouth with jealousy. It’s the open plan-ness that allows her to see her husband straight away, snacking on the unfinished party food.

(Apparently people don’t feel like eating after a man cuts his thumb off and spurts blood everywhere. Who’d have thought?)

There’s a weird, pensive look on his face that draws her towards him.

“You OK, babe?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he responds. He pops a tomato from the salad bowl in his mouth, then another, then another.

She narrows her eyes. He never eats tomatoes unless they’re in ketchup or on top of a famous Sal’s pizza. Something is wrong.

She thinks back on their day, mentally rewinding the events from waking up to the morning briefing to their private sex reveal in the break room and finding out they’re having a boy (the empty cake box and blue frosting around Scully’s mouth was very surprising indeed). They were both floating on Cloud 9 all afternoon, came home and Zoomed the entire family, falling asleep on the couch around 9.30pm because pregnancy is exhausting.

Nothing particularly awful stands out.

Unless...

“Are you thinking about your Grandpa?”

He’d been so excited to see him again, so excited to reunite Walter Peralta with Roger, The Admiral with the Captain. To be honest, Amy was less than impressed. He’d been nice enough to her, asked her about her job, about the baby, small talked about the weather. But he never asked her about Jake, probed about the 20 odd years of his grandson’s life that he’d missed out on. Which is frustrating because she has a lot of embarrassing stories ready to tell and a whole photo album of Jake on her phone. He couldn’t care less about Roger or Jake, storming out of the sex reveal party after calling his son a screw up and turning off his phone so they couldn’t get in contact with him. He’s a selfish dick and her husband deserves better. Still, he won’t be thinking about what a monster Walter turned out to be, he’ll be finding ways to blame himself that yet another father walked out of his life again.

He nods silently and she leads him to the couch.

“Talk to me, Jake.”

He releases a shaky breath. “The Peralta’s are cursed.”

“With devastatingly handsome good looks?” She half-jokes, trying to lighten the mood. Because, hello, her husband is hot; she constantly overhears other women in the precinct talking about his glow up and it would be impossible to ignore the female attention he gets in bars and even just walking down the street before he scratches his face to show off his wedding band and wraps one arm proudly around his wife’s shoulders. She’s seen the pictures of a young Roger Peralta, too, and with that charm smile... she gets it.

“Thank you,” he smiles briefly, “but no. Peralta dads are cursed with terrible relationships with their sons.”

“That’s not going to be you,” she says without hesitation, without a shred of doubt.

“How do you know?” He launches into a scathing personal indictment that leaves his cheeks stinging with tears. “I’m immature, obsessed with my work, messy, always late. My dad was never around when I was a kid. I don’t even know what dads do with their sons! And what if it’s in my genes? To be a crappy dad, abandon my kid like a dozen Peralta fathers before me. Your parents still don’t think I’m good enough. You didn’t even like me at first. It only makes sense that our baby would hate me, too.”

“Woah, babe. Slow down. Let’s unpack that one at a time.” She wipes away his tears with his hoodie sleeve and squeezes his hand. “First of all, you are way more mature now than you used to be. We bought a family friendly Sedan. You read parenting books. You were eating fruit, like, two minutes ago.”

“Tomatoes are fruits?”

“What? Yes, how do you not - not the point.” She shakes her head. “And so what, you enjoy your job. That’s a good thing, Jake! Do you understand how rare that is? You’re doing the thing you love while providing a decent income for our family. And besides, I’m way more obsessed than you. I have FOMOW, but that doesn’t mean I won’t love our kid more than anything. And as for the messy, late thing, if I can look past it because of how much I love you, so will our son.”

“Love you, too,” he mumbles.

“Now onto your point about not knowing what dads do, that is a straight up lie and we both know it, Peralta. You’re always hanging out with Charles and Nikolaj and Lord Knows Terry doesn’t shut up about all the activities he does with his girls.”

“I know what they do when I’m around, but what do you do when it’s 5am and they won’t go back to sleep?” He frets. “At what age do you introduce them to Die Hard? In Cry Hard With A Vengeance,” he quotes the parenting book she originally bought him as a joke but has kind of become his Torah, “Bruce Willis says right away, but what if he’s not ready to understand the complex plots? What if he prefers Timothy Olyphant to William Atherton? Oh my God, what if our son doesn’t think Die Hard is a Christmas movie?”

He’s spiralling and it’s a good job he’s with the only person who can truly calm him down.

“I think Bruce Willis is just trying to promote his franchise and that we’ll be watching more Paw Patrol than Die Hard for the next few years, babe, but I’m sure when he is old enough, he will love the movies as much as you.”

“Right,” he agrees, “you’re totally right. Action thrillers aren’t very baby friendly. I’ll just watch it on mute with subtitles.”

She laughs, her eyes crinkling in the corners. She loves him so much. Which segways them nicely onto his final two points.

“My parents do love you. Sure, they’re critical, but that’s just the way they are. They’re the same way to all of us. My mom complains to everyone she meets about how I can’t cook, how Tony hasn’t settled down and made her any beautiful grandbabies yet, even Perfect David faces her wrath when he goes a week without phoning her. If the worst thing my mom has to say about you is that you’re below average in height, you’re doing OK. And as for me apparently not liking you at first, I did like you.”

He furrows his brow. “But you said you found me annoying and difficult to be around.”

“Yet I didn’t ask to switch desks, continued working cases with you and went to Shaw’s whenever I was invited.” She stares at him pointedly. “If I really found you difficult to be around, I wouldn’t have stayed. I thought you were cute and funny and good at your job and yeah, you were annoying too, but,” she shrugs, “it never put me off.”

“So what you’re saying is that you had a crush on me first,” he grins.

“No. You obviously had a crush on me back then, too. What I’m saying is that I love you, our son loves you and you’re going to be a great dad.”

He blushes, ducking his head. “My dad said the same thing. About our son loving me.”

“He’s right,” she replies. “I feel him kick every time you get home from work, every time you sing to Taylor Swift in the car, every time I mention your name. Why didn’t you believe him?”

“I don’t know, still nervous about the curse, I guess.” He twists his wedding band on his finger.

Amy bites her lip. “Are you not excited about us having a boy?”

She has to ask. His excitement looked genuine in the break room, but it’s no secret that he was hoping for a girl. A mini-Amy, he said. While she’s always been more accustomed to boys considering the Santiago’s have, like, a million of them, Jake couldn’t get over the image of a little girl in dresses and doing ballet and with long, dark hair that he eventually learns to braid.

“Of course I am,” he’s quick to assure her. “Stupid excited. Never been more excited for anything. Not even the Ninja Turtles reboot. But still... nervous.” He rubs his hand over his face, muffling his voice. “Everyone is assuming what kind of dad I’m going to be. Whether I’m going to be good at it or not. To be fair, the only person who doubted me is that murderer I arrested last week, obviously not my biggest fan. Everyone else is convinced I can do it. What if I can’t? What if I’m genetically wired to be a bad dad? What if I disappoint you and our baby and Charles who has been dreaming about this forever?”

“Jake,” she softens her voice, pulling his hand away from his face, “the fact you are so worried about being a bad dad proves that you will not be one. Nor could you ever disappoint us.”

“But you’re my wife. You have to say that.”

“I would never have married you and become your wife if I thought you were the kind of person who could abandon your kid,” she promises him. “You have been perfect so far, dealing with all the vitamins and over-scheduled sex and washing my clothes when I sweat through them and holding my hair back when I’m being sick. You’ve been to every doctor’s appointment, read every binder, bought me every weird food craving. You hang out with the bump every night, talking and singing to it. I know you’re going to be a great dad, Jake, because you already are one.”

She kisses him and it’s soft and tender and filled with love, only interrupted by the kick, kick, kicking of their son.

“Hey,” Jake says in his best authoritative dad voice/John McClane dealing with German terrorists voice (he’s been practising in front of the mirror following Bruce’s advice), pointing a warning finger at the bump. “I’m going to kiss your mom as much as I want, Peralta. I loved her first.”

Amy giggles, stroking her fingers through Jake’s unruly curls. His bedhead is always wild and it’s maybe her favourite thing in the entire world. She silently sends a message of her own to their son to inherit his dad’s hair. And eyes. And handsome smile.

He kicks again as if to say ‘OK, mom’.

And then she really needs to pee.

#b99 fic #jake x amy #my writing #let me know what you think!!!!#love love LOVED writing it

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cptnsantiago · 4 years

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safe in my arms when you finally come

summary: Amy’s afternoon between Wuntch’s funeral, a wonderfully timed meltdown, and arriving home. 7x07 spoilers.

read on ao3

Amy was frustrated to put it lightly — no matter how high she put the AC on in her car, the sweat was not letting up.

It wouldn’t be long before her entire car was flooded of her sweat. And tears, probably. This wouldn’t be a problem if her stupid body would get pregnant as easily as the rest of the Santiago clan, so she wouldn’t have to stick needles in her back every morning. It didn’t help her frustration that one of her brother’s just announced that their wife was pregnant once again, apparently a total surprise to them.

Amy just wouldn’t get that luck. She was stuck in a stuffy car with soaked with sweat hair and an empty uterus. Surely this wasn’t normal.

She had done her research before agreeing to take these fertility drugs. Possible side effects of course included mood swings, hot flushes among a host of other symptoms, but Amy couldn’t believe that it was normal to the extent of sweating through layers of clothes. It made no sense to her; how she had been taking the drug for almost a month but only now were these symptoms making themselves known?

It sends her into enough of a panic to call her doctor.

Dr. Lowe was a fantastic doctor, she had multiple awards for fertility research, so she was the best of the best and had a great instinct on how to deal with anxious women trying to get pregnant. Her voice is calming, making the loud noises of New York sound like a white noise machine as she asks Amy to describe her symptoms to her.

“Well, I’ve been sweating profusely all day, and intense mood swings, like probably an equal amount of sweat and tears all week… And I know these are normal symptoms, because as you know I did my research, Dr. Lowe, but I really can’t exaggerate enough how much sweat there was.” Amy knows she’s ranting, and probably for nothing but being told that it was completely normal.

She’d heard enough of completely normal. It was completely normal that it took so long for her and Jake to make a baby, completely normal to be sweating out of every single pore of her body and completely normal that she wants to kill the bird that just pooped on her car’s windscreen. Why couldn’t the thing that was completely normal thing in her life being the nausea she feels everyday because she’s growing a baby inside her? But no, yet another symptom of this dumb fertility drug.

“That’s definitely not normal, Amy.” Dr. Lowe begins cautiously, causing Amy’s heart rate to spike to an unhealthy level as she waits for her to speak again. “I do have an idea of what might be the problem here… Well, I wouldn’t call it a problem!”

Amy doesn’t know how to process the next words — Dr. Lowe spitting out a theory that she could be pregnant, causing her to experience double the symptoms from the medication. Amy, you might be pregnant.

The words bounce around her head for a while after she hangs up the phone. Dr. Lowe tells her she’s excited to hear back from her, willing to make time for an appointment as soon as she needs but Amy barely hears any of it as she processes those words. You might be pregnant.

For months on end, Amy had been convincing herself of symptoms that always lead her to a negative result on a plastic stick but now… Now her own doctor thinks she might be pregnant. Amy really didn’t want to face that disappointment again, and Jake. She didn’t want to disappoint him yet again. He goes on about how it’s okay, we’ll get pregnant and he’s there, always, to pick her up when she’s down but she knows how he’s feeling.

Amy can see the disappointment on her face every time she came back with a negative result, just to disguise it as fast as he could with his supportive words, but she could see it still hiding it. She sees it in the way he talks about Nikolaj, how badly Jake wants to be a dad, how badly he wanted to add a child into their family. He tries to hide his admiration of the couples with strollers on their nightly stroll together, but she can see it, because it’s exactly how she was feeling.

Every stroller, every toddler and every pregnant woman they passed just a cruel tease of what Amy apparently couldn’t have. She was bad at making babies, as much as Jake reassured Amy that it wasn’t her fault. It was almost constantly in the back of her conscience, nagging at her deteriorating patience.

She probably sits in her car for another minute longer before she resolves to go home and just rip off the band-aid and let the scab bleed all over the place. The duration of the car ride is spent debating whether to tell Jake, so he could be by her side. If she didn’t tell him, then she only had to deal with her own disappointment. An instant after that thought she had made her decision; Jake would stay in the dark for the moment.

Jake doesn’t think much of her weird behaviour when she arrives home. Probably because of the extensive knowledge of the fertility treatment that she made him read about, so he shoots her a simple smile she barely sees as she runs straight for the bathroom. Her hand moves to the medicine cabinet like clockwork, her hands shaking as she takes out the pregnancy test.

Keep your expectations low, Amy. She tells herself, but Dr. Lowe’s words ring in her ears, Take the test, it’s possible you’re pregnant and overwhelmed by hormones.

The three minutes pass slower than… Fuck, she’s too nervous to think of a good analogy. But it’s a slow moving three minutes she’s sure of. Looking down at the test sitting in the sink, Amy thinks she might pass out.

Two lines. Clear as day. Pregnant. Amy was pregnant. Her uterus wasn’t doomed to be empty forever. Jake was going to be a dad. They were going to have a baby.

The overwhelming amount of emotions she had felt all day hit her like a fucking train once. Tears were streaming down her face, her hand shaking again as she held the test in her hand and she simply forgot how to breath. She was going to have a baby with the love of her life, after months of struggle and tears, they were going to have a baby. This was her reality.

Amy doesn’t keep track of how long she spends in the bathroom trying to pull herself together, but once she pinches herself and snaps out of her emotional stupor, she’s quickly formulating a creative way to tell Jake. It takes a little while to think it through and compose herself — she had started crying again when she straightened her shirt over her stomach, remembering there was a baby in there and then again as she wondered if their baby would have Jake’s curls — but as she makes her way into their bedroom, her whole plan is thrown out the window.

Jake is cursing Wario once again, and she almost starts crying on the spot again. That man, her husband, was going to be the best dad on the planet. How she gets through telling him without crying is a mystery to her, but now their hug had moved to the bed, she lets the river flow at last. He listens to her anxieties she had been feeling that day, wiping and kissing away every single tear as they come. She does the same for him, heart swelling as his own tears of joy start to pour down his face. Amy couldn’t feel more love for this man even if she tried, his dedication was unmatched.

They come to a point where it was impossible to find the words to express how they were feeling, so outside of booking appointments and taking out her pregnancy binder with a light layer of dust on it, they mostly just smile at each other. That and kissing, there’s a lot of that. Kissing is interrupted by Charles knocking their door in the middle of the night, who makes sure to mention that he tried his best to hold himself back when he woke up and apparently just knew. But he’s respectful enough of the space they need, so he’s soon gone, and Jake is quickly back to kissing Amy.

Falling asleep that night after he talks to her flat stomach for a half hour is otherworldly. Jake makes sure to make her feel more loved than ever, through words, kisses and all. It’s not at all what she expected at the start of the week when she found out that Madeline Wuntch had died, but she couldn’t be happier with the turn of events.

They were finally getting their half-Jake, half-Amy. And as Charles had screamed, their little Peraltiago baby.

#i said i wasnt gonna do this #i have uni lectures to watch and readings to do #but i honestly dont care #THEYRE GONNA HAVE A BABY #ugh #im c rying again #jake x amy #b99 #peraltiago #peraltiago fic #peraltiago fics #amy santiago #jake x amy fanfiction #my fics

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pinkdiamondxx · 4 years

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Name 5 crushes and tag 5 people to do the same.

I was tagged by @reginaldmaudling and whoever wants do this hop in ♥️

So where do we begin 🤪

1. Tobias Menzies

No one gave you the RIGHT TO BE SO PRETTY MENZIES FUCKING STOP🥺♥️

2. Charles Edwards

HE IS JUST SO CUTE. HUSBAND. I LOVE HIM. HIS HAIR. HIS SMILE. HIS DIMPLES. CHARLIE PLS MARRY ME X

3. Declan Hannigan

Sexy biscuit munching Lieutenant has my heart ♥️ a true cryptid who only has 5 pictures on the internet for me to thirst on. Please Declan if you ever see this, SHOW US YOUR PRETTY FACE OFTEN 😭🥺

4. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Mans too pretty and I swear if y’all catch me crying for him just don’t bother 😔♥️🥺

5. Matthew McNulty

Pretty baby cow eyes and omfg his face is just SO SO SO HOT.

In conclusion, I’m thirsty 😌

#reggie you unleashed a monster #Why am I so thirsty jesus I need water #this only says 5 otherwise i could do a 10 version of this #tobias menzies #charles edwards #declan hannigan #nikolaj coster waldau #matthew mcnulty

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dunderklumpen · 5 years

Note

I’ve just downloaded the baker because of your gifs 😝 Can you recommend more ncw movies? I’ve only seen wimbledon lol

Nattevagten (1994, thriller)A law student starts working at the morgue as a night guard. As a serial killer’s victims start piling up at work, he becomes a suspect.

Vildspor (1998, drama/thriller)Ossy unexpectedly visits his childhood friend Jimmy in Iceland. Ossy carries a secret, and Jimmy is the only one he can tell. But Jimmy will not be confronted with his past, which he hides from his wife. Cue drama and Nikolaj x Nukâka tenderness.

Rembrandt (2003, action/comedy)Petty thieves accidentally steal a genuine Rembrandt painting.

Underbar och älskad av alla (2007, romcom)Isabella is a struggling actress who gets involved with fellow actor Micke, who is both painfully hot and adorable, as well as a two-timing shitstain.

Headhunters (2011, action/thriller)Art theft film #2. A corporate headhunter steals a priceless painting (it’s a Rubens this time) to support his lavish lifestyle. The painting’s owner is some kind of hot ex-military dude, who hunts the thief down. (This is NCW’s highest rated film on IMDB.)

Mama (2013, horror/thriller)Listen, idek what this is about BUT HE IS SO BEAUTIFUL I CRY.

A Thousand Times Good Night (2014, drama)A successful war photographer is forced to choose between her family and her career when her husband refuses to put up with her dangerous life any longer. The husband is unfairly hot and so dad, what can I say. 🤷‍♀️

The Other Woman (2014, romcom)This one is kinda like Underbar, except NCW’s character suffers more and it’s delightful.

3 ting (2017, thriller)Before entering the witness protection program, a bank robber demands three things from the police. The whole thing takes place in a single location and is very dialogue driven, and it’s pretty well done tbh. Also, this features a tender kiss between two hot Danes, it’s just great okay.

#fyi I'm linking to imbd don't get too excited #nikolaj coster waldau #replies #anonymous

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wackygoofball · 5 years

Note

Hey, I’d just like to thanks you for staying positive though these Braime angst times because almost all the other blogs I follow went cRAZY about him “leaving Bri for Cers” and your posts gave me new hope and reminded me of all the wonderful things that happened in that episode, so, thank you so much💗💕💕💗💕

Glad to hear it, anon!

People have their feelings, they are entitled to them, but so am I and I am a very happy customer right now because I am a thirsty bitch for drama. And we are getting it! JB being at the very center *all of a sudden* (*coughs* biggest romance of GoT/ASoIaF *coughs* *coughs*) of the relationship conflict front tells us so much more than having to feel the angst. It tells us to feel the HYPE.

They are finally where we all wanted to see them… I guess ever since Harrenhal??? One of the producers called it something along the lines of “the most reluctant romance in TV history” in his commentary on the Red Tent Scene back in season 6. And I think JB is still living up to that and it’s beautiful and dramatic and I friggin’ love it. They *are* reluctant, have been for so many seasons (books, respectively). Because they are so caught up in self-doubt and for Jaime in particular self-loathing, feeling unworthy of a good kind of life, the kind of life they wanted to have or grew to want to have, feeling unworthy of love and affection and fearing that it could never truly be reciprocated.

I could start crying at the sad beauty of this right now, but my tears can suck it because I am way too much in the HYPE.

Because yes, anon! We were given so much goodness. Brienne smiled so much. Jaime smiled so much! Can you remember the last time he smiled like that?! I mean, we are all hyped to finally see Brienne smile, but think about how often Jaime only ever had a smile to spare only for shit to hit the fan all over. He didn’t have a time to ever truly have a breather and just be happy and fool around with his brother, and he got that, and Brienne got that, too. And they shared that happiness. It was so heart-warming that I felt like Jaime, wanting to nibble off my shirt lol.

Their first time (albeit a wee bit shorter than I as a shipper would have loved it to be, but you know, wishful thinking is one thing, and the rest can be filled with smutty fanfic :) of which our wonderful fandom provides plenty!) was awesome-sauce. The glow, the tenderness, the hesitance, the awkwardness, there was a purity to this encounter that it still has me shooketh.

And even the angst-filled goodbye… LOOK AT THE GUY! LOOK AT HIS FACE! LOOK AT HIS BEAUTIFUL, GORGEOUS, HANDSOME FUCKIN’ FACE! LOOK AT HOW HE BREAKS ON THE INSIDE SAYING THOSE THINGS JUST TO MAKE SURE SHE STAYS PUT!

BTW GIVE NIK ALL OF THE AWARDS! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! THAT GUY HAS A REPERTOIR OF EMOTIONS HE STUFFS INTO THREE SECOND BIGGER THAN THOSE OF SOME ACTORS HAVE IN THEIR ENTIRE CAREER! *waves fist in the air*

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Back on topic:

Jaime has, ever since their roadtrip started, protected this woman. Nikolaj once commented about how Jaime sending Brienne out of King’s Landing back during the Oathkeeper episode was also fuelled by Jaime’s fear that Cersei may be on to something with Brienne after he saw her talk to Brienne and her walking off with a scared kind of expression (not knowing what truth bomb Cersei actually dropped on Brienne during the Purple Wedding aka that she loves him). The show changed the dress to an armor, a type of clothing literally meant to protect from bodily harm. He gave her Oathkeeper. And a squire to keep her company. Jaime has, at every step, tried to protect that woman to the best of his abilities within the constraints he found himself in. Do I believe that suddenly changed? Not for a fuckin’ second. This is Jaime Lannister as he lives and thrives. That guy is as hellbent on protecting the people he loves as Brienne is. Brienne is part of that circle, so of course he protects her, even if that means hurting her.

That is Jaime’s modus operandi alongside looking way too hot for me to handle. Or for him to handle, as last episode proved.

And just never forget him rubbing his thumb against her wrist. That shit still has me weak and whimpering at the beauty of it. That was just... poetic cinema!

The whole scene was a thing of beauty with the visual callbacks to Ned/Cat (arguably one of the few considerably healthy, longterm and strong relationships the entire series has ever seen, despite the fact that Ned was a douche sometimes - more often than not - and kept things from her that clearly made her feel shitty but that’s a topic for another day).

Brienne appearing in a robe that made her look lady-like and womanly and like a fuckin’ goddess rather than having thrown on breeches and a tunic or whatever! It made it all the more heartbreaking to have her feel that way while dressed that way because it just highlighted her vulnerability, but the VISUAL IS AMAZING AND THE NON-VERBAL CLUES THAT GIVES ARE OFF THE CHARTS!!!

Someone made that post and I am totally plagiarising this: this scene of her cupping his cheeks and him holding her wrist was a fuckin’ RENAISSANCE PAINTING. And JB is about to be REBORN. I am telling you!

Nik and Gwen acting the living shit out of themselves in that scene, giving us the rawest of emotions, acting out all with their facial expressions, with their FUCKIN’ EYES! Nik tells us all that we must know the way he looks at her!

So yeah, he ain’t a hateful man. He ain’t creepin’ back to his sister after having realized that Bri was not his jam. He’s doing what he’s always done, what he always does:

Protect, no matter the personal costs.

Not just Brienne, not just his family, it’s his finest act of slaying Aerys and thereby sending his reputation down the drain so half a million people could live that’s on the line! Those people are on the line! And Jaime is not part of that whole castle-swap game Daenerys and Tyrion are playing. If the guy has proven anything, then it is that he, despite of what he may have others believe or tries to make himself believe at times, is one of the few characters who actually give a damn on the smallfolk. He ended the Riverrun Siege without bloodshed (Jaime, seriously, revisit that scene, it’s in supercuts, you clearly got some things mixed up there, hon). He killed one man so half a million could live. It was not without purpose that Varys gave us that callback to how those people matter as much as any of them and how even someone Daenerys claimed to be so much more important because he is so clever, Tyrion, is in the end just as important as any other farmer going about his life. They deserve to live, and I think Jaime’s upset about Tyrion being like “just give him the Reach, what does it matter???” is all the more telling as it reaches beyond his personal conflict. The Reach is the center of food production and we are just giving it up to a sellsword who has no fuck-o to give about either politics or the people who live within the constraints of these? Fuck no.

Jaime wants to protect people. It’s been one of the driving forces in his character all along, even before we got to know him, when we were still led to the conclusion that he was just a douche that needed to be killed off because EVIL MAN!

Jaime wants to protect the people he loves in particular. For them, he goes extreme lengths. That was his family foremost, but that certainly included Brienne long before they got intimate. He’s cared about her for so very long. So I do not believe for a single second that he’d just... forget that, be able to put that aside. Jaime can’t.

And he doesn’t have to. He just has to see that. And Brienne will make him realize that.

Because as much as Jaime wants to protect everyone, factors are now changed. He just doesn’t see it yet.

Because this time, he is in for a surprise as there is someone who will protect him the same way he is committed to that person’s protection. And that will make the crucial difference, it already does. He never had that with his sister. She literally threatened to kill him, literally sent an assassin after him for having the *effrontery* not to act the way she would have liked, not falling in line when she as Queen demanded it. Jaime’s never had anyone step up for him the way Brienne did. Jaime never had anyone protect him that way.

She stood up for him during the trial when Tyrion failed.

She saved him and he saved her during the battle against the living dead.

She certainly had conversation with Sansa to ensure he was welcome at Winterfell.

She will stand up for her man and will protect him - from himself if she must.

“Nothing’s more hateful than failing to protect the one you love.” - she won’t let history repeat itself with the man who finally loves her back.

She will protect Jaime.

Jaime will protect Brienne.

And that is and has always been the very core of their relationship.

And that core is beautiful and pure and no angst gets between that.

Thanks for coming to yet another TED talk.

#jaime x brienne #jaime lannister #brienne of tarth #got spoilers #anon #thanks anon #wacky rambles #feel the HYPE #and feel the JB love!

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bettsfic · 5 years

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my reactions throughout the ep:

first i noticed jaime and brienne are standing together at the pyre lighting, then they’re across from each other at the feast

and then the drinking game. i just kept thinking, this isn’t happening. there’s no way they’re playing a drinking game, these things don’t happen outside of fanfic

then tyrion guesses that brienne is a virgin and i’m just. no. no this cannot be happening. this is literal, actual fanfic. i wrote this. i wrote this and i’m hallucinating it into reality. i’ve gone off the deep end

and TORMUND PUTS THE MOVES ON HER, and she slides right past him, real smooth, and JAIME STANDS UP AND PATS HIM ON THE SHOULDER. and still, at this point, i was thinking, i’m just imagining this. it’s not really happening. like i haven’t felt that kind of anticipation since the last time i hooked up with someone, and it’s been a long fucking time. these are GHOST EMOTIONS I’M FEELING

then my hopes were dashed -- maybe braime would happen off-screen, between the lines, so the lay observer would still be able to go “nah man nothing happened, the hot dude would never bone the ugly chick”

and tyrion, like the A+++ wingman he IS, pours his wine into tormund’s cup, ALL WITHOUT DIALOGUE and i hadn’t breathed in an entire minute, i was about to literally actually die from hope

then podrick’s SMUG LIL SMILE and TORMOND WEEPING “and after all that, this fucker comes north and takes her from me”

okay, okay, so now tormund sees it too, and if TORMUND sees it, surely OTHER PEOPLE SEE IT, surely i’m not going MAD

then arya GUTS GENDRY LIKE A NEWLY LEGITIMIZED FISH

OATHKEEPER OMINOUSLY HUNG BY A FIRE AND I BEGAN HYPERVENTILATING. SURELY. SURELY THIS COULDN’T BE IT. SURELY MINE EYES DECEIVE ME

“you didn’t drink” and jaime just WALTZES on in, and at this point i am sure a jet engine is going to fall on me and crush me before braime can be canon

jaime obsessed with the fact she didn’t drink when asked if she was a virgin, and her not understanding wtf he’s on about

“you keep it warm enough in here” and proceeds to awkwardly STRIP OUTTA HIM TUNIC while i sit here screaming IT’S GETTIN HOT IN HERE (so hot) SO TAKE OFF ALL YA CLOTHES

(i am. gettin so hot. im gonna take my cloooothes off)

useless dialogue “it’s the first thing i learned when i came to the north” LITERALLY NO ONE IS LISTENING BRIENNE

“very diligent. very responsible” “piss off” THERE they are

“how about tormund giantsbane?” J E A L O U S Y my braime modern au has NEVER BEEN MORE CANON

so softly: “you sound quite jealous” oh god she’s still so self-conscious, she’s like asking him, do u really like me or u lyin ? aka the way i’ve felt about this ship from the beginning

“i do, don’t i?” BITCH I CAN’T TELL IF UR ADMITTING IT OR DISGUSTED WITH URSELF

*extremely high pitched, awkward laughter* “HAHA IT’S BLOODY HOT IN HERE” first of all has anyone said the word bloody ever in this entire series?

*proceeds to awkwardly take of his own shirt with one hand* HOW DO YOU FUNCTION JAIME RODRIGO LANNISTER

briennes FACE when he starts taking off his shirt she’s like “the fuck is happening. is this sex? is this gonna be sex??” highkey RELATE to that like “wtf he’s attracted to me? since when” feeling

he BITES his lil DRAWSTRING fucking CUTE AS HELL

“oh move aside” AND SHE DOES IT FOR HIM ok ok ok at this point i honest to god think i’m having a stroke, like there’s no WAY this is the point in the fanfic where i throw my gd ipad across the room and muffle screams into my pillow while rolling around going “oh my god oh my goddd”

“what are you doing?”

“i’m taking your shirt off”

I CAN’T BELIEVE THESE MORONS

the way he LOOKS AT HER when she finally GETS THE PICTURE he’s so IN LOVE I CAN’T EVEN FEEL MY OWN FACE

she takes his shirt off and he’s so BATTERED AND BEATEN AND GOD NIKOLAJ IS SO FUCKING HOT i am too ace for this

“i’ve never slept with a knight before” this line tbh should have been “i’ve never slept with someone not related to me before”

“i’ve never slept with anyone before” YOU KNOW I HAVE TO WRITE A CODA. YOU KNOW IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. I CANNOT PASS UP CANONICAL VIRGINITY LOSS. I CAN’T

then the K I S S which was cut off FAR TOO SOON AND I AM ANGERY

(but him stand on his TIP TOES to get a better ANGLE which is 100% a nikolaj move)

we find out he’s STAYING IN WINTERFELL. i want to CHEER but i DON’T because i know there’s NO CHANCE IN HELL that will HAPPEN

“i’m happy that you’ll finally have to climb for it” god bless u tyrion

“what’s she like down there?” “that’s not your concern” ok not only do i think this is OOC for jaime “hold you down and have my way with you [sic]” lannister but also it hurts my heart he’s never been able to kiss and tell bc the only other woman he’s been with is cersei so he doesn’t even know what spilling the tea is like

“I KNEW YOU WERE FUCKING HER” god what an entrance. we stan a bamf sellsword

fast forward. jaime is staring sadly into the fireplace and HERE IS WHERE I KNOW IT’S ALL GOING TO FALL APART BUT I REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT. I REFUSED IT WOULD GO CANON AND I REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT WOULD BE UNCANON WITHIN THE SPAN OF MINUTES

[closes door] my subtitles say. CLOSES DOOR. NO FUCK U JAIME EUGENE LANNISTER

he would’ve been GONE were it not for taking 87yrs to saddle his gotdamn horse

“stay here. stay with me.” i’ve seen some shit about how it’s OOC for brienne to start crying or w/e but i’m just. nah. nah when you’ve been protecting your heart your entire life and you finally give it to someone, and they betray you, there’s nothing that can keep you from crying

“you think i’m a good man?”

here my heart was saying “mr stark i don’t feel so good” before crumbling into dust and floating on the wind

“she’s hateful. and so am i.”

here’s where my heart is really broken, because brienne isn’t just crying about jaime leaving -- she’s crying about being wrong about him, and that all her fears about him are true, and he’s leaving her after she’s finally opened up to her. that’s what pisses me off the most about this episode. i feel like so many of us have been the Good Woman to bad men, and have watched those men, after years of our emotional labor to make them better, go back to their shitty ways, their hotter women, their abusive toxic relationships.

i have never felt more of a personal divine calling to write something than this episode. i have to fix this. it is my duty to fix it. i don’t know how yet but it’s gonna happen

#got spoilers #mind my rambling #i didn't even read this over #i'm just so broken

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peraltasames · 5 years

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home is just another word for you

Pairing: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago

Desc: While moving into Amy's apartment, Jake stumbles upon the letter she wrote him while he was in Florida.

Notes: this is the first chapter of my new one-shot collection! title from ‘you’re my home’ by billy joel

Read on AO3

“Alright, this is the last box!” Jake shouts loud enough to be heard across the apartment, ripping the tape off the large cardboard box full of miscellaneous knick-knacks and items that he refused to part with. He’s positive Amy only let him keep them because she feels a little bit bad he had to give up his apartment (even though hers was the obvious choice) but the image of a Die Hard poster among her fancy china cabinets and antique furniture is just too good. Besides, they’re both excited to make it their apartment versus simply her apartment that he’s living in.

“Awesome, babe!” He hears Amy’s voice from the kitchen, where she’s unpacking his pretty limited supply of cutlery and appliances.

With the realization that he’s one box away from fully cohabiting with his favourite person in the world, Jake smiles to himself as he begins to pull random objects out of the box a little faster than he did the last few.

“Okay, magic eight ball, where should you go?” he mumbles to himself, glancing around the room at the nice, soft aesthetic Amy’s created with her choice of decor. “Yeah, maybe in a drawer for now.”

He strolls over to her desk, opening the drawer filled with documents and various writing utensils and stationery. He plops the ball in next to the stapler, his eyes barely glancing over some of the highly-organized papers and catching an envelope, mostly obscured by an insurance form, with the FBI seal in the corner.

His interest immediately piqued, he glances behind him to make sure Amy’s still in the other room and picks up the envelope, which isn’t sealed. Inside are two folded sheets of paper, the second falling to the desk as he reads the first one.

Detective Amy Santiago,

I would like to inform you that Detective Jacob Peralta is still in Witness Protection and will continue to be for an indefinite amount of time. I am unable to update you on the case, but I assure you the Bureau is doing everything we can to find Jimmy Figgis. Since it has been six months, I have decided to allow you to write a one-page letter to Jacob, which I will read to him and subsequently incinerate. Please enclose your letter in this same envelope and deliver it to the address you were given before Jacob’s departure, it will be passed on to me.

Marshal Haas

Taking in a sharp breath, he realizes what the other letter must be. Given the fact that the Nine-Nine came down to Florida to help catch Figgis only a few days after the six-month mark, she must’ve never had the chance to deliver it. His heart begins to beat faster as he reads the first line - his name, in her perfect, neat handwriting.

Dear Jake,

We both know brevity isn’t my strong suit, and since it’s impossible to fit six months into one page, I’m going to try to give you the highlights.

Charles and Genevieve adopted a four-year old, his name is Nikolaj and Charles never stops talking about him but he’s actually pretty cute. Rosa’s good, she says to tell you she nodded slightly (I assume you know what that means). Gina is...Gina. Terry and Sharon and the kids are doing well. We got a new captain today, he’s a complete idiot but at least it’s only until Holt comes back. Everyone misses you guys so much.

I’m doing okay. As okay as I can be without you, I guess. It’s really hard sometimes. It’s always hard, but some days are worse than others. I haven’t been doing much lately other than staring at the phone waiting for the call that you’re coming home. I know you’re safe there, but please don’t do anything reckless that could jeopardize that no matter how long you’re gone. I want you home so badly, but if he finds you I’m never gonna get that call. I need to get that call.

I love you so much. I love you more every single day. I worry about you constantly - please remember to drink water and eat vegetables and get some exercise. I know this must be so hard and scary for you, but hopefully it won’t be too much longer. I can’t wait for you to come back to me.

Love,

Amy

What breaks him, making him collapse into the chair beside him and sending tears down his cheeks, is not the heart-wrenching words she wrote for him months ago - it’s the faint stains on the page in the shape of teardrops.

While he was in Florida, slowly deteriorating and feeling his former self slip away along with his hope of returning home, she was sitting at this very desk crying over his absence. Missing him, worrying about him, loving him more every single day.

“You need some help finishing with the-“

He turns slightly to face the figure standing in the doorway. In pyjama shorts, a loose black tank top, and with her hair pulled back in a ponytail that’s now messy from hours of moving boxes, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Jake, what’s wrong?” She scurries over to him, frowning. “Why are you crying?”

He doesn’t realize his eyes are puffy and his cheeks are wet with tears until she’s standing right next to him, her hand cupping his face. He lifts the letter in his hand for her to see, her eyes widening as he finally looks up at her.

“Oh...”

“I never knew about this,” he chokes out, reaching out for her from where he still sits in the chair and resting his hand on her waist.

“I know,” she says, her hand moving from his face to rest on his shoulder. “We went to Florida the next day. I never delivered it.”

He nods, wiping his tears away with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Yeah, I just meant I- I didn’t know about this at all. About how hard it was for you.”

Her face, initially etched with concern, now flashes with a look of pain and loneliness at the memory of their separation. Even now, when they’re approaching the mark of him being back for as long as he was gone, he still sees this look sometimes when someone mentions Florida or WitSec in general.

“Of course it was, Jake,” she says quietly. “After I got used to being with you, not being with you wasn’t really an option anymore.”

He knows the feeling. There are too many memories clogging his brain that he wishes would fade of eating soggy burritos in the hot tub or staring at the photo of Amy in the storage unit because it was all he had.

“C’mere.”

Needing to be close to her, he tugs on her waist and turns her around so she gently falls into his lap. Her arms wind around his neck while her head finds his shoulder. He kisses her forehead for the version of himself known as Larry Sherbet, who wasn’t sure at times if he would ever be able to do that again. Larry would’ve given anything in the world to hold her like this during the hot, sleepless Florida nights.

“Thanks for coming home to me,” she murmurs, her lips pecking his collarbone.

“Thanks for waiting for me to come home,” he responds, his arms around her body clutching her a little tighter. “And thanks for being super cheesy in that letter, because I’m totally gonna bring it up all the time now.”

She slaps his arm half-heartedly, still relaxed against him. “Hey, you would’ve been cheesy too if you were allowed to write one.”

“Definitely, but we will never have proof of it,” he says, hand stroking her leg. “Unless you ask Captain Holt how many times I whined about missing you after I had downed a bottle of whiskey and he’d searched my living room for bugs and cameras again.”

He says it like a joke, but she only hugs him closer and buries her face in his neck. He supposes the thought of him drunkenly talking about how much he misses his girlfriend does seem pretty sad. It was pretty sad.

“I love you, roomie,” he murmurs.

“I love you too.” She pulls away to face him properly, leaning in for a quick kiss. “Although, we’re not officially living together until you finish unpacking that box.”

“Okay, okay, okay...or, hear me out, what if we unpack it later and have sex now?”

He looks up at her with big puppy dog eyes, employing his foolproof method of stroking her inner thigh gently with his thumb.

“Jake...I really want to get this done,” she says, but he can already hear the willpower fading in her voice.

“Does it really matter if we have sex with or without the Die Hard poster hung up?”

She bites her lip. “Well, I guess n-“

Taking that as all the approval he needs, he scoops her up and walks her over to the bed so conveniently close to them. The bed that is now their bed, in their room, in their home. He admitted to himself a long time ago, however, that home was wherever she was - specifically, in the moment that she kissed him in the back of an ambulance in Coral Palms and Brooklyn suddenly became just a place on a map.

#otp: you're not allowed to fall in love with me #b99 fic #b99 #peraltiago #peraltiago fanfiction #so my obsession w writing them has reached new heights clearly #this fic is probably gonna have like 50 chapters lmao #myfics

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carrie-organa · 5 years

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Six Crushes

Tagged by @sassbewitchedmyass who is infinitely cooler than me.

1) Adam Driver. This hulking giant has owned my heart since 2016 and no, I’m not sorry about it. God he’s so hot. Ruin me, Adam.

2) Chris Evans. The perfect combination of frat bro and sensitive artist. This is a “he could do anything he wants to me, no questions asked” kind of love.

3) Nikolaj Coster Waldau. Listen, you all know. Everyone knows. This dorky dad literally makes me smile just by existing. The purest crush I have. I would cry if I met him. Idk he’s genuinely perfect, there’s nothing else to say.

4) Sophie Turner. My chaotic good queen, myself in celebrity form, the most beautiful woman on earth. This girl is fckin hilarious, I love her so much. I will stan forever. That’s the tea.

5) Clayton Cardenas. This is for my Mayans fam. We all know how much of a loveable goofball Clayton is. He’s also super artsy and just grossly talented. Love this dude a lot, hope he stays weird.

6) Halsey. I cannot stress how much I love her. She is such a bright shining light. A three ounce can of whoop ass. Halsey could run me over with a car and I would thank her. She possesses the world’s entire supply of big dick energy.

Tagging: @angels-reyes @enigmalinetti @detectiveguapo @amaltheaisalseep

#i was tagged #about me

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three-drink-amy · 5 years

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We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

It’s Secret Santa Reveal time!

@captainswan618 It is me, your Secret Santa! I hope you’ve been having a wonderful holiday season and a fantastic end to 2018! Have a great 2019!

I hope you enjoy this holiday themed B99 fic!

The break room smelled of sweet hot chocolate as Charles detailed the plans he and Genevieve had made for Christmas this year. Slowly the rest of the squad went around the room sharing their plans for the next day. Amy had just finished telling her and Jake’s plans for their first married Christmas when Officer Lou walked into the breakroom.

As Terry poured himself a cup of coffee, he asked the officer his plans for Christmas.

Lou looked at them in surprise. “Christmas? Have you guys not looked outside?”

Rosa and Gina turned around quickly and looked out the window. “Well son of a -” Rosa said quietly.

“How did we miss a huge snow storm like this?” Jake asked to the room.

“How did Amy miss a snow storm like this?” Gina asked.

Amy lifted her arms up in defense. “It was supposed to miss the city! It was supposed to go way north!”

“So we’re...snowed in?” Jake asked sadly.

Officer Lou nodded. “It came on so fast that it seems like most of the city is.”

“Wait so we can't get home for Christmas?” Charles asked, looking crushed.

“Well it's Christmas Eve,” Rosa reminded. Maybe they’ll have things cleared by tomorrow.

“Could be worse,” Jake offered, “we could be trapped here with a bunch of lawyers like that one Thanksgiving.”

“There are two lawyers talking to one of the other detectives in the bullpen,” Gina pointed out, looking through the window.

“Way to jinx it, Jake,” Rosa said with a punch to Jake’s arm.

The squad slowly filtered out of the break room, leaving Jake and Amy alone. Jake shook his head as he watched his friends sit down at their desks to call their families. “This sucks,” Jake said quietly. Amy nodded her agreement. He looked over at his wife, a grin growing on his face.

“What are you thinking?” She asked nervously.

“Amy, you better watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout. I’m telling you why! Jakey-Claus is coming to town!” Jake sing-songed.

Amy stared at him, completely confused. “What does that even mean?”

Jake grabbed Amy’s shoulders. “Amy, I’m going to save Christmas!” He ran out of the break room without explaining any further.

It was a couple of hours later when Amy saw Jake speeding from the elevator off towards an interrogation room. She jumped up from her desk to follow him. He had just closed the door when she opened it and walked into the room. “Ames!” He screeched in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“I think the better question is what are you doing?” Amy replied quickly.

“That is need to know and you don't need to,” Jake retorted.

Amy rolled her eyes. “Even Santa has help, Jake. He has his elves. Do you need an elf?”

Jake smirked broadly. “Well, Amy, I believe I do.”

She clapped her hands together. “Great! What can I do?”

Jake walked close to her and said softly, “You can go back to your desk and forget you saw me in here.”

Amy glared at him. “Come on, man. I’m your wife. Let me in on the secret!”

“But I’m trying to save Christmas for you too.”

“Just let me help. What are you trying to do?”

Jake sighed, finally giving in. “Well I was inspired by Charles saving our wedding. It still ended up being perfect, so now I want to do that for the squad.”

Amy smiled. “That's very sweet of you.” She wrapped her arms around Jake’s neck. “And you know, you don't have to do it alone.”

He nodded, giving her a quick kiss on her forehead. “Okay, come with me, my little elf.”

Having Amy’s help worked in Jake’s favor. He had someone to distract the squad while he orchestrated the saving of Christmas. The break room was closed off from prying eyes. Amy had led the squad down to the second floor to show them something “really awesome.” Jake wondered what Amy had come up with to show them. He could guarantee it wasn’t something that was actually awesome to them.

Gina’s voice rang through the bullpen as the squad emerged from the elevator. “Really, Amy, you thought Officer Larsen’s coin collection was awesome? You thought we needed to see it?”

Jake peeked out of the window of the darkened break room. Amy shrugged in response to Gina. “It took a lot of time for him to collect those. And that’s just his work collection! Come on, Gina! Imagine the history those coins have seen! He had one from 1901!”

“Amy, I can appreciate things Gina would sneer at, but even I thought you really overhyped that,” Terry said with a disappointed look.

Jake threw open the door to the break room with a dramatic flair. “Well how about this?” he asked, motioning to the break room.

Rosa looked at the room behind him critically. “What? A dark break room? Big whoop.”

“Oh?” Jake asked, jumping over toward the plug. He quickly turned on the Christmas lights strung through the break room. “Well how about now?”

Everyone looked surprised by what Jake had done in the room. Amy smiled brightly as she walked in and looked around at the festive room.

“Jake, what is all this?” Charles asked, looking around the room.

“Look, I know you’d all rather be getting off early and going home to your families,” Jake explained, “but I figured maybe we could still have a good Christmas Eve stuck here.” He uncovered the mail cart where he’d hidden the food. Laying it all out on the table, he explained, “The bakery just down the street did not know this storm was coming and had a surplus of food that no one was going to buy. I gave them a number and they were happy to sell me everything they had so they could officially close and not have the day be a total loss.” Once all the food was out on the table, Jake turned to his friends. “Merry Chri- oh wait, one more thing.” He grabbed the last item out of his hoodie pocket and handed it over to Gina. “Back-up charger. I know your work charger is on the fritz.” Gina looked as if she could cry. Jake beamed. “Merry Christmas, everyone!”

“Merry Christmas,” they all echoed back. Terry walked forward and wrapped Jake in a big hug. The rest of the squad made it a group hug.

As he was eating a cookie and drinking some of the hot chocolate they’d made earlier, Terry said, “Aside from my wife and girls, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be snowed in with on Christmas Eve. I love all my grown up babies so much.”

“Oh, and by the way,” Jake added as an afterthought, “while Amy was distracting you and I was setting all this up, I also called around and they think the roads will be cleared for us to leave around midnight. I know it’s late but it’s better than nothing, right?” Jake said with a shrug. Then he walked to the door of the break room. “Hey everyone, free Christmas baked goods in here!”

As the rest of the officers filed into the room to get in on the food, Jake missed the looks exchanged by his fellow squad. They were all so touched by his attempts to save Christmas for them.

One Week Later

“Can’t believe 2018 is almost over. How crazy,” Charles said as he sat next to Jake’s desk. “What would you say was the craziest moment of 2018 for you?”

Jake looked over at Charles thoughtfully. “Well, I got married. That was pretty crazy. I spent a long time thinking that would never happen. What about you?”

“There was one day Nikolaj brought home a bat for a pet. That was kind of crazy. Okay, next question. What would you say was the most exciting discovery you made in 2018?”

“What?” Jake asked, a confused look on his face. “Why do I feel like you’re just trying to distract me?”

“Me? Trying to distract you? I think I need to change my craziest moment of 2018!” Charles practically yelled at Jake.

“Terry, is it finished?” Rosa called toward the copy room.

Terry strolled out from the copy room, raising an envelope above his head, Gina close behind him. “It’s finished!”

“Good, because Charles is the worst at distractions,” Rosa said with a shake of her head.

“Distractions?” Jake asked, his hands raised in question. “Why are you distracting me?”

Gina, Charles, Rosa, and Terry walked over to Jake’s desk. “Hey Amy!” Rosa yelled toward the briefing room. Amy popped her head out and followed Rosa’s motion to join them. She sat down in her old desk chair across from Jake.

“We just wanted to say a thank you for saving Christmas for us,” Terry explained. The others nodded along with him.

“Oh! Well that was nothing. You guys didn’t have to do anything,” Jake said with a shrug.

“Well yeah, but you didn’t have to do anything for us either,” Rosa reminded him. “If it weren’t for your kindness, Gina’s phone would have died and she’d have made us all miserable for hours until we got to leave here.”

“That’s probably true,” Gina agreed with a nod.

“It was very thoughtful and very moving,” Charles said, staring at Jake intensely.

“That’s funny because I was inspired by you saving our wedding,” Jake informed him. Charles looked as if he was fighting back tears.

“The point is that we appreciated it and we wanted to show you how much,” Terry continued. He held out the envelope for Jake to take. “You’re dismissed for the day. You and Amy both. We know you helped too, Amy.” Amy smiled as she walked over to read what was in the envelope.

“You guys got us a reservation at that new super nice restaurant?” Jake gasped.

“How did you even manage that?” Amy asked, aghast.

“Gina had to call in a couple favors,” Charles explained. She nodded sadly beside him.

Terry pointed to a point on the letter. “It’s been paid for too.”

“You guys, this is too much,” Jake replied, trying to give the letter back to them.

“Whatever, we’re your friends and we...love you,” Rosa said, muttering the last two words.

“Say that again!” Amy cried.

“The next time you’ll hear it will be over your casket at your funeral.” Jake and Amy both laughed.

“She’s right though, we do love you guys,” Terry said with a meaningful look. “You saved our Christmas Eve so we’re going to save your New Year’s Eve. I know you both hate working it anyway. So take this and go have a fancy meal as you toast to the end of the year you got married.”

Jake and Amy slowly agreed to it. The plan did sound pretty wonderful. They really did have the greatest friends around. The squad stood by the elevator as Jake and Amy left. As the doors were closing, Jake shot finger guns and yelled with a laugh, “Hey guys, see you next year!” They all groaned as the doors clunked shut.

Gina chuckled as she walked back to her desk. “That was actually kind of funny.”

Rosa nodded in agreement. “Yeah, but we can never tell him.”

“This is our new secret,” Charles said as he sat down at his desk. “Our last squad secret of 2018!”

Terry looked around at his grown up babies with a smile on his face. He lifted his coffee mug in toast to them. “Hey guys,” he called. They all looked over. “Happy New Year!”

#secret santa #b99 fanfiction #my writing

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Game of Thrones at 10: The Series That Changed TV Forever

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During the Game of Thrones series finale, there’s an exchange between Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister that is as much about the series’ legacy as it is the characters’ inner turmoil. Only a handful of scenes earlier, these same two men conspired to murder the woman they called their queen, Daenerys Targaryen. Now living with the consequences of that heavy deed—with Jon again banished to the white hell Beyond the Wall and Tyrion conscripted to a lifetime of public service—a tormented Jon asks his friend was it right what they did?

“Ask me again in 10 years,” Tyrion says tersely. After all these years, the craftiest of Lannisters finally has learned he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know—and who really knows how the decisions in the here and now will appear to posterity? It’s easy to speculate that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt the same way about their controversial ending to Game of Thrones. And like Tyrion and Jon, they probably could not anticipate the entire fallout that was to come.

It’s been two years since the contentious farewell to the series that defined its pop culture decade. But define it, it did. Running from 2011 to 2019, the show’s rise and fall traces eerily close to the rhythms of its era, perhaps more so than any series ever produced. It launched as the biggest gamble in premium cable history, and it ended as the most popular televised phenomenon of the 2010s. Some have argued Game of Thrones was the last of the “watercooler shows.” Even the divisiveness of its finale was monumental, shaping the next era of TV in still unseen ways. Pop culture really does live on in the realm forged by HBO’s fire and blood.

So while it hasn’t been a full 10 years since Tyrion dodged Jon’s question, a decade has passed from the moment three riders in black emerged from an icy gate, and Game of Thrones premiered on HBO. That’s more than enough time to ask what did Game of Thrones mean to us and the television landscape it shaped?

The Coming of Winter

Television was a different universe in April 2011. Netflix was still that mail rental/streaming company which didn’t produce its own content, storytelling was full of cynicism, and cable television remained king. But within that fiefdom, HBO was facing a problem: the once undisputed ruler of premium cable drama was now seeing challengers for its throne.

“HBO was still coming out of The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood,” Michael Lombardo, then-HBO programming president, told James Hibberd for Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, an oral history on the making of the series. “We were getting questions like, ‘Why did you not get Mad Men? How come you didn’t pick up Breaking Bad?’ We had been the place for all things quality drama and were looking to regain our footing. But Game of Thrones didn’t seem to fall into our category.”

In retrospect, it obviously should have. Based on George R.R. Martin’s sprawling A Song of Ice and Fire book series, the show was pitched (somewhat inaccurately) as The Sopranos meets Lord of the Rings. Martin may have written his novels to be unfilmable, but at HBO, Benioff and Weiss would create an impressive facsimile of his Westeros on a budget.

Very much a product of its time, Game of Thrones came out at the tail-end of the “antihero” era of television, the period where HBO led the way in populating TV with flawed if not outright repugnant protagonists. A reaction to television being defined by network censorship for all the decades before the 21st century, the sliding spectrum of lapsed morality between Don Draper (Mad Men) and Tony Soprano was exhilarating in its time. But unlike all those series, Game of Thrones was offering a vast tapestry of protagonists in its ensemble, which provided an even greater range of moral complexity than most popular American shows at that time.

There were fantasy stalwart heroes like Lord Eddard Stark (Sean Bean) and his oldest sons, but also enigmas such as Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), antiheroes who were introduced as full-on villains (read: most of the Lannisters), and young heroines whose nigh transcendentalist adventures belied darker traumas, such as Arya Stark (Maisie Williams). It was both of its moment and a far cry from the cynicism of other popular shows, not to mention the popular image of fantasy, which on the small screen was closer to Xena: Warrior Princess than Lord of the Rings.

“There were a fair number of reasons not to do it,” Carolyn Strauss told Hibberd about the show’s early days at HBO. As the former HBO programming president who first greenlit the Game of Thrones pilot, and then became executive producer on the series, Strauss can recall the apprehension she felt toward the idea of making a fantasy series for adults. “There are many ways a fantasy series can go south. Any show that relies on a mythology that isn’t thought out in enormous detail can go off the rails. You’re maybe good for a season or two, and then after that you start running into brick walls.”

Yet it was Thrones’ moral complexity in such a dense, heightened world that caught Strauss off-guard. “The way [Benioff and Weiss] told the story in the meeting made it sound much more involved and character-driven than I usually feel from fantasy stories. It was not good vs. evil, but characters who had elements of both things.”

That level of nuance was shocking when Game of Thrones premiered in 2011. Nowadays the series is often reduced by TV critics as being simply the show that introduced convincing blockbuster spectacle to the small screen. But in its early seasons that really wasn’t the case. While Benioff and Weiss were quietly aware of how massive in scope Martin’s novels eventually became, they sold the series to HBO as a “chamber piece,” not a symphony. It’s about intimate family drama—at least in the first season/novel—not magic and battles.

In that first episode, there was hardly an unsullied viewer who didn’t gasp when sweet 10-year-old Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) was pushed out a window by Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). The thrill wasn’t seeing dragons lay waste to armies; the excitement was found in character moments or decisions with drastic repercussions on every other scene that followed. At its heart, it was a fantasy series drenched in human psychology and human history (particularly that of the English War of the Roses), and those hooks made the eventual ice and fire spectacle that much more extraordinary five years down the line.

Game of Thrones didn’t come out of the gate as a culture defining event—its series premiere netted just 2.2 million viewers, about 1.6 million less than HBO’s similarly epic and ill-fated Rome—but like the armies of one silver haired queen from the east, it’s rise seemed blessed to gradually, and unwaveringly, build until the bloody end.

A Golden Crown

The moment that personally got me wholeheartedly invested into Game of Thrones, however, wasn’t Bran’s fall from a Winterfell tower, nor was it Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion verbally humiliating his demon seed nephew. The scene where the show fully clicked was in the sixth episode, “A Golden Crown.” Up until that moment, the series was dense on world-building and lore, but the narrative was so finely tuned, and hidden in such a tightly wound coil, that it could feel impenetrable at first blush. It also seemed to be built on a certain set of fantasy archetypes, such as the noble hero Ned Stark and the old fat king, Robert (Mark Addy).

Another seeming archetype was Viserys Targaryen, a malicious blonde-haired misanthrope played so ably by Harry Lloyd that one would recoil when he was on screen. Technically, he’s a lonely exiled prince whose family lost its dynasty. But as seen through the eyes of Clarke’s put-upon and abused Daenerys, Viserys’ younger sister whom he mercilessly abused, Viserys was really just an ugly bully. The kind you might imagine Harry Potter’s Draco Malfoy growing into, except with the creepy addition of a leering, incestuous gaze. Also like Draco, I feared Dany would have to endure his pestering for the rest of the series.

Then “A Golden Crown” occurs, and Viserys is plucked from the series like leaden dead weight. Moments before his death, Viserys has realized that no matter how much he calls himself king, no one will follow him. Meanwhile Dany has won the hearts of the Dothraki, a nomadic warrior culture. She now rules as their Khaleesi (queen) alongside Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa), the husband Viserys sold her to. Viserys expected Drogo to become his mercenary, but by episode 6, that obviously is never going to happen. So his simmering resentment seemed to suggest Viserys would undermine Dany’s fledgling power and character growth at every future opportunity. But at the end of “The Golden Crown,” the self-styled king threatens Daenerys before the whole Dothraki court, and perhaps more chillingly in Dany’s eyes, threatens to cut out the baby growing inside her womb if he does not get his way.

Drogo ultimately gives Viserys what he wants: a crown. Only it’s made from the molten hot liquid gold he’s melted down to pour on the wretch’s head. Daenerys watches the gold slowly boil before the deed is done, and she sees her brother begging for his life. But the moment he raised her hand against her unborn child, the man was already dead to her. After Viserys’ head is crushed by the burning gold running through his skull, she doesn’t even blink. Rather Clarke says with maximum disaffection, “He was no dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon.”

Tamzin Merchant Brings Back Mystery of Unaired Game of Thrones Pilot and Daenerys

By David Crow

Who are the New Characters in Game of Thrones Prequel, House of the Dragon?

By David Crow

This hard left turn in the plotting was so sudden and shocking that it signaled what the series would become: a narrative where every character’s action and decision (at least pre-season 7) had potent consequences. Narrative conventions could be cut short in an instance. In this case, it was one that left viewers thrilled, but a few episodes later the same creative instinct would shatter them when the series’ main lead, poor Ned, lost his head. Such twists led me to buy all of Martin’s books and read them within a few months.

However, there was something more unsettling about the sequence. Daenerys Targaryen, our ostensible hero in her own storyline, did not flinch or bat an eye at her brother’s demise. He was rotten to the core, but Dany was no more affected by his death than she would be at the sight of hundreds of strangers crucified along a road on her order (an event which would occur later in the series).

The ambiguity of some of these characters, including Dany who in the early seasons was initially presented as an impending threat to the Starks and Lannisters a world away in Westeros, is what gave the drama so much life. There were reasons to root for nearly every faction and reasons to have pause with each character. You knew, eventually, your favorites would be in mortal conflict. While featuring a greater array of heroes than any of the other popular cable shows of the early 2010s, Game of Thrones also wallowed in moral relativity and bleakness. In 2011, it was like a high; in 2021, that kind of televised storytelling has largely fallen out of popularity.

Thrones also had a hand in that shift.

“Tits and Dragons”

For all of Game of Thrones’ good qualities, they cannot be extracted from its sins. Ten years ago, premium cable networks indulged in heavy use of obligatory nudity (mostly of young women) to keep viewers watching. Game of Thrones didn’t invent this, but it pushed it to its limit in the early seasons, even leading to the new term of “sexposition,” which describes when a show cynically includes images of naked women, usually portrayed as prostitutes in Thrones’ case, in the background during dry exposition.

Even before Thrones ended, these elements had aged badly, and were notably toned down in the later seasons. But they still occurred, even as gags, up to and including the final year. Neil Marshall, who directed two battle episodes on the series, even recalled in 2012 a disquieting note he received from an executive on the episode “Blackwater.”

“This particular exec took me to one side and said, ‘Look, I represent the pervert side of the audience okay?’” Marshall said. “‘Everybody else is the serious drama side, [but] I represent the perv side of the audience, and I’m saying I want full frontal nudity in this scene.’”

This cavalier attitude about using (some might say exploiting) young actresses who are anxious for a job on a popular series in such a gratuitous way contributed to the creation of a new profession in Hollywood: the intimacy coordinator. The actual HBO series which finally triggered this was The Deuce, not Game of Thrones. Still, Thrones most famously contributed to that sensationalism on television. So much so one of its most lauded guest stars, Ian McShane, deadpanned the show was only about “tits and dragons.” It became the figurehead for a media culture so problematic that there needed to be a reckoning at all networks and streamers in the post-#MeToo era.

That those elements on Game of Thrones were so often used in association with rape or sexual violence has led to a long overdue reevaluation of how stories with women are told in popular media—particularly from writers’ rooms dominated by men.

In truth, Game of Thrones has a litany of fascinating and complex female characters, many of whom end up in positions of power during the final seasons despite the grueling restraints of a medieval patriarchal society. Stars like Sophie Turner, whose Sansa Stark concludes the series as Queen in the North, has argued the series is actually quite feminist in its depiction of a wide range of nuanced female leads navigating medieval misogyny. And Clarke has said the show has taught her to “embrace her feminism.”

Yet both actors’ characters were forced to endure scenes of rape and sexual assault on the series, quite graphically in Clarke’s case during the first season. Even 10 years ago, viewers were rightfully disturbed by that. Clarke’s own thoughts on the use of nudity in the first season have also evolved. These elements, which only seem more glaring to the modern eye, have inspired a shift in how all “adult” stories are told, as well as how fantasy stories and historical dramas are received by audiences increasingly critical of one-sided titillation.

Those scenes likely contributed to the fan backlash when Clarke’s Daenerys, who suffered so much early on only to remake herself as a godlike savior, was revealed to be painfully mortal… turning into the villain of her own story.

A Legacy of Conflict

Game of Thrones began as a gamble for HBO, but even in its first year the bet was paying off when the fantasy show with dragons and ice zombies was nominated for Best Drama Series at the Emmys. Dinklage would go on to win his first of four Emmys for playing Tyrion that year, and even as the show lost the top prize then, it would eventually win Best Drama Series in four subsequent years.

It’s also worth noting that Dany’s dragons were barely present in the first season. Before the 2011 finale, they were creatures of a bygone age that, we’re told repeatedly, have long gone extinct. But in the final minutes of season 1, her ancient dragon eggs hatch, and a scene of biblical import plays out when she emerges from ashes as the Mother of Dragons. With each following year, Dany’s children grew larger in size, as did the pyrotechnics they unleashed. They were not much bigger than cats when they burned down a city of slavers in season 3. By the show’s end, they were the size of 747 jets while laying waste to Lannister armies.

As the creatures grew, so did Game of Thrones’ budget and, just as importantly, its audience. No other series in the modern era grew bigger with each season, from the cradle to its grave. In an age where Netflix invented the term “binge watching,” Game of Thrones remained the rare holdout of old school appointment television, with most audiences simultaneously watching live when the episode premiered on Sunday nights. Entire cottage industries based on fan speculation were born, and reading Martin’s books like they were sacred texts with hidden meanings that only the most learned scholar could translate became a pastime.

The first season premiered with 2.2 million people watching; the final season debuted with an audience of 17.4 million viewers. The finale brought in 19.3 million viewers. By comparison, the most popular scripted drama series on network television in 2019, This is Us, was averaging around 7-8 million viewers.

Yet as its popularity grew with its dragons, so did a vocal sense of dissatisfaction. There was a confluence of factors involved, many of them having to do with showrunners Benioff and Weiss running out of Martin novels to adapt. While they had a rough outline of how the series would end, the final two seasons of Game of Thrones arguably felt at points like just that: an outline the series was hitting by bullet point in each episode, often without the intricate plotting that made the early seasons and novels so addictive.

Yet it was really only during the series’ final two episodes, as a long built-up dragon fulfilled his destiny, that the rift between audience expectation and artistic intent erupted into a social media outrage. After watching Dany’s power build and build, and spending the final seasons with her pivoting from a threat to the Starks and King’s Landing to their ally against the Army of the Dead, Dany did what the series had long been famous for: she took a hard left turn.

In the final few hours of the series, Daenerys burns down the Westerosi capital, kills tens of thousands of people, and takes the Iron Throne in fire and blood, just like her ancestors. It was not the ending audiences, including myself, wanted for Dany, and it was an ending that disappointed even Clarke. Especially Clarke.

Game of Thrones Season 8: This Was Always the Ending

By David Crow

Game of Thrones: George R. R. Martin on How Hodor’s Origin Story Was Changed for TV

By Louisa Mellor

In many ways, it is one of the most Martin-esque elements of the series’ final years. You were promised high fantasy excitement and then got the cold, harsh reality of death and suffering. The fairy tales and fables which inspired modern fantasy are often derived from uglier histories and troubling sides of human nature. This is what conquest looks like, be it by dragon or sword.

Unfortunately, the execution of the ending left something to be desired. And there are plenty of write-ups out there to unpack the problems with the final season. Nonetheless, it is fair to wonder if for the first time in the series’ whole run, the show was finally out of step with the zeitgeist, and the subversion that was celebrated a decade earlier was no longer of the moment? When the show premiered, it was a realpolitik fantasy about the corrupting influence of power and how it can be wielded. When the series ended, corrupt abusers of power were on the rise around the world. Even Martin noted it was like King Joffrey had come to the White House.

The series not only denied viewers their favorite theories for the series’ end, but also a sense of escape from a world that was feeling uncomfortably closer to Westeros than it had eight years earlier.

In its own realm though, Game of Thrones was a series that shaped the modern television landscape. Spectacle on a scale comparable to Hollywood blockbusters is now deemed as attainable by content creators with deep enough pockets. Amazon paid $1 billion for the television rights of Lord of the Rings alone. But the industry has also reacted to Thrones and the antihero era it came from with a growing sense of wariness, too.

One of Game of Thrones’ contemporaries from its heyday was The Walking Dead. As another gritty, violent, and at times nihilistic genre show that became a mainstream hit, The Walking Dead started in the same TV season as Thrones. And one of its most pivotal writers from those earlier glory days, former showrunner Glen Mazzara, recently tweeted about the change in the industry’s tenor.

“TV development today is all about optimism,” Mazzara wrote. “Buyers don’t want anything dark or bleak.” While he then went on to add that he’s nonetheless writing the “darkest [and] scariest” thing of his career, the point remains that what was once the most popular thing on television, first as austere dramas and then as gory spectacles in shows like Thrones and The Walking Dead, is out of step in a modern TV landscape that has reacted to those shows.

Ironically, genre is more popular than ever, but the moral ambiguity and relativity that attracted HBO to Benioff and Weiss’ pitch is not. Rather than antiheroes, television is increasingly dominated by good natured and heroic individuals (Marvel Studios is even making the most popular shows). Characters, meanwhile, are proactively trying to solve social problems, not reveling in how broken things are. Creative spaces are also thankfully becoming more inclusive, giving a platform to a wider range of voices, including writers’ rooms where someone might be able to say the equivalent of, “You know, maybe Sansa shouldn’t be raped by Ramsay Bolton?”

This environment is a reaction to the popularity and then backlash endured by Game of Thrones. Which means our relationship to the series is far from over, even as the show’s run becomes an increasingly distant memory.

And yet, there’s (clearly) much to be said about what Game of Thrones accomplished in its time, right down to ending the way it did. It’s hard to imagine a show becoming that popular again and existing with such artistic freedom, and for its creators to be allowed to end it where they would like. Even in the 2010s it was rare, hence The Walking Dead lumbering onto an eleventh season this fall as a pale shadow of its former self. When that series ends, it also really won’t be the end, with more spinoffs, movies, and other forms of content planned.

Under new management, HBO has signaled they’ve developed a similar temperament, even with Game of Thrones. Benioff, Weiss, and apparently Martin saw their story end exactly the way they wanted to (even if few agreed with them). But the network has announced five live-action spinoff series in various stages of development, plus an animated one on HBO Max. In the age of endless streaming content, it’s easy to imagine that every corner of Westerosi history will be explored if WarnerMedia thinks there is an appetite.

Our feelings toward the legacy of Game of Thrones have evolved over the last 10 years, and will likely continue to do so for another 10. But it was a show that hit the right beats at the right time, and changed the culture while doing so. It burned brightly and then snuffed out its candle on its own terms. You don’t have to wait a decade to appreciate how rare, and unforgettable, that really is.

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sambergscott · 5 years

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you showed me something i can’t live without

entry for the b99 summer 2019 fic exchange for @b99fandomevents. written for @dailyb99 (tumblr)/valeriee (ao3) who requested jake x amy angst after amy’s start over comment during casecation

He can’t even look at her. Once the bomb has been diffused and Pam is in handcuffs and Bruno Rojas has an increased security detail, Jake and Amy are free to go home. The car ride is awkward AF, tension thick in the air like a pea soup has descended on the city. She doesn’t rest her hand on his thigh as he drives, they don’t sing to Taylor Swift, they don’t stop at their favourite Thai take-out as they drive past. They don’t say a word until they’re inside their apartment and even then Jake mutters that he’s getting a shower under his breath, leaving her to it.

He undresses slowly, numbly, and stands still beneath the shower, the hot water burning his skin. His face is wet with tears, his mind cruelly replaying Amy’s words. Start over. Start over start over start over. With someone else. Who is not him.

He stands in the shower until the water runs cold, wrapping the monogrammed ‘Mr’ towel (a gift from Terry and Sharon from their wedding registry) around his waist. Everything is a horrible reminder of them, their soon-to-be-over marriage, as he returns to their bedroom, to the framed wedding pictures on his bedside table, the ‘Mr’ mug of coffee waiting for him.

She’s already in bed, sipping the herbal tea in her ‘Mrs’ mug, her face pale and drawn in, dark bags beneath her eyes. He immediately - guiltily - looks away, grabbing his t-shirt and sweatpants, mumbling something about changing in the other room.

He ends up on the couch re-watching Die Hard. If his marriage is over, at least he still has his favourite movie franchise. Correction: now his marriage is over.

It’s a sharp, painful reminder, a nightmare end to what was supposed to be a romantic anniversary celebration. How far they have deviated from his plan. They were supposed to be tearing each other’s clothes off by now and instead they can’t even bare to be in the same room.

His phone buzzes with a text from Rosa, informing him of how worried Amy had been when he was stuck inside with an explosive device, how much Amy loved him and that obviously she didn’t want to start over with anyone else. You two are soulmates, you dumb-dumb.

He closes his eyes and shoves his phone down the side of the cushion. It doesn’t matter what Rosa thinks. Amy said what she said. If he doesn’t want kids, she’ll divorce him.

The terrifying thing is, he doesn’t want kids. Or he didn’t. He doesn’t know how to feel anymore, his arguments against having a baby all pooh-poohed by the debate squad, his thoughts muddled by the need to do anything necessary to keep Amy. She is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He can’t lose her.

He hears shuffling footsteps make their way into the living room, his wife, wrapped in their comforter, appearing in view a few moments later. He can tell she’s been crying too and hates himself for putting her through that. But also hates her a little. Because she’s the one who uttered the words start over. This whole thing is her fault. Or Pam’s. He doesn’t even remember how this whole thing started anymore.

“Hey. Can we talk?”

“I think we’ve done enough talking for today, don’t you think?” He snaps, hating the way she visibly recoils.

“We can’t leave things like this.” She gestures between them. Things haven’t been so awkward since Florida. “My parents always said never go to bed angry.”

“Well my parents solved all their marital problems with divorce. So.”

He did it. He said the ‘d’ word. It's out there. Can’t take it back now.

“You want a divorce?” She whispers, her face crumpling.

He shrugs noncommittally. “You’re the one who mentioned starting over.”

“I said I didn’t want to. I love you, Jake. I planned to spend the rest of my life with you. But I’ve always wanted kids... and if we can’t do that together...” She breaks off, pointlessly scrubbing away her tears with the back of her hand. New ones fall anyway. “This hurts me too, you know.”

“Does it?” He asks emptily. “If it was such a dealbreaker, you should’ve made that clear before we got married. Hell, you should’ve made it clear years ago before I got so invested.”

“I didn’t think I needed to. I thought you loved kids!”

“I do. But that doesn’t mean I want my own. I love Nikolaj and Ava and Iggy, but I also love giving them back to their parents at the end of the day and being able to get on with my life.”

“And that’s your opinion set for life, is it? You’re never changing your mind?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly.

“You don’t know?” Amy repeats. “Our marriage is about to fall apart and you don’t know. Thanks, Jake. That’s great.” She shakes her head, walking away.

“I don’t know anymore because I don’t want to lose you,” he spits out. It comes out angrier than it’s supposed to, but it does the trick. She turns around. “I didn’t want kids because I was scared. I had a crappy childhood and we work a lot and I’m terrified of being a bad father.”

Her expression is unreadable.

“I love you so much,” he continues. “This life we have here... it’s better than anything I imagined. Like I said earlier, I was as sure about asking you to marry me as I was about becoming a cop. But I was still scared of marriage. Scared of ending up like my parents, alone for so many years. It wasn’t until you were walking down the shredded paper aisle that I wasn’t anymore.”

“What are you saying?” She murmurs.

“I’m always going to be scared of ending up like my dad. Just because things are scary, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do them.”

“Can I sit down?”

He nods silently, shifting so there’s room for her. She grabs his hand, lightly rubbing the pad of his thumb over his wedding band. He swallows the lump in his throat.

“I don’t want you to say these things just because you think it will save our marriage,” she says seriously. “I want you to want kids. We’re only going to end up in the same place a few years down the line if you commit to having children you don’t want. And that’s not fair on me, or you, or them.”

He thinks about it - really thinks about it. He thinks about the way his heart flips whenever Nikolaj says he loves him or when one of Amy’s nieces climbs into his lap and asks him to read a book or when Cagney and Lacey bring him cookies into work. They’re always oddly shaped and contain more chocolate chips than any other ingredient, but their little smiles light up whenever he pops one in his mouth and tells them it’s delicious. And as scared as he is, he loves the image of a mini-Amy he conjures in his mind.

“I do want to have kids,” he promises. “With you.”

Her lips twitch. “You’re sure? You’re not scared anymore?”

“I am so scared. Maybe even more now so than before,” he confesses. “But I was scared in there with Pam and I handled that. And me and you make a pretty good team, don’t we?”

“The best team,” she agrees, smiling for the first time in hours.

It’s so beautiful - she’s so beautiful - that Jake can’t help but smile back. “We can do anything.”

“We can.”

“So,” he hesitates, looking nervous again, “are we good?”

“We’re good,” she says, leaning in for a kiss. It’s soft and tender yet equal parts desperate. She giggles when she pulls away. “It’s you and I, by the way.”

All the heart ache disappears with a whoosh.

“We’ve just decided to have kids together and you’re seriously correcting my grammar?” He narrows his eyes playfully.

“Of course! I won’t have you impose poor grammatical habits onto our unborn child.”

“I love you,” he responds.

“Love you too, babe.” She combs her fingers through his damp, messy curls, biting her lip. “Want to practise baby-making in the other room?”

Jake grins. “Race you there.”

#my writing #b99 fic #jake x amy #b99 summer 2019 fic exchange #b99fandomevents #i believe i am the first to post #writer's block is finally over baby!!!!

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rodrigohyde · 6 years

Text

How Holt McCallany became a hardcore prisoner to battle Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in ‘Shot Caller’

Actor Holt McCallany is having a banner year in 2017.

The former star of FX’s underappreciated boxing drama Lights Out is getting the best reviews of his career for his work in Netflix’s crime series Mindhunter, and he’s appeared in supporting roles in two very different films: the prison-thriller Shot Caller, and the superhero team-up Justice League.

[RELATED1]

In Mindhunter, McCallany completely dedicated himself to the role of Bill Tench, the gruff, dryly funny, chain-smoking FBI agent. McCallany spent time in the gym (and at the dinner table) bulking up, adding 25lbs to his frame to achieve the less-than-legendary physique of a guy who “drinks too much, eats crappy food, is on the road 40 weeks a year, and whose only exercise is an occasional round of golf”. (He even started smoking real cigarettes.)

But Mindhunter wasn’t the only role that McCallany transformed for this year.

For Shot Caller, McCallany packed on pounds of mass and muscle to play Jerry "The Beast" Manning, who runs the Aryan Brotherhood in a prison. “The Beast,” with his heavy beard and shaved head, spends most of his time locked up in a cage, even when he’s out in the yard. (Shot Caller also stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, aka Game of Thrones’ Jaime Lannister, as a family man who turns gangster after he’s sent to prison.)

Here's a close look at "The Beast" from the film on McCallany's Instagram page:

Holt McCallany / Instagram / @holtmccallany

So yeah, it’s a far cry from the wise-cracking Tench on Mindhunter. But as with his Mindhunter role, McCallany felt the transformation was crucial for his performance.

“For me, adding that physicality gives you another element to the character,” McCallany tells Men’s Fitness. “I think, for some actors, they can let their vanity get in the way. With this character, he’s in prison, he’s the head of the Aryan Brotherhood, so what kind of a body would he have? Sure, he works out, maybe doing pushups and burpees in his cell, but he won’t have a great diet—he's eating prison food. This guy is not gonna be all cut up and shredded like it's Baywatch. That's not his life.”

[RELATED2]

McCallany wanted to have more mass than muscle, so he bulked up with a steady diet of bench press, squats, and deadlifts, while staying away from isolated exercises that some actors use when, in his words, “you’re trying to get that beautiful Hollywood torso”. That type of training program was used by Coster-Waldau, who completely transformed from his usual pretty-boy Game of Thrones shtick into a shredded, tattooed gangster. Here's McCallany:

Participant Media / Bold Films / YouTube

The climax of the film involves a showdown between McCallany’s “Beast” and Coster-Waldau’s character, an intense scene that gave McCallany the chance to show off his physical transformation. While Coster-Waldau is used to battling with a sword on Thrones, this battle was all about the brute strength of the characters going at each other in a bloody battle teased throughout the movie.

“We have this big, climactic showdown, and it’s really a brutal fight,” McCallany says. “Nicolaj gives a terrific performance, and leading into that scene, the tension and animosity has been building between my character—the antagonist—and Nicolaj’s character. It’s out in the yard under the hot sun, and it was a really intense moment.”

[RELATED3]

As someone who has spent the bulk of his career in supporting roles, McCallany was ready to bring the intensity each time he was on screen. Even though he has just a handful of scenes in the film, “The Beast” leaves quite the impression.

“People remember ‘The Beast’ because director Ric Roman Waugh really wrote him some great, intense scenes,” McCallany says. “Many times in the movie business, I've been in the situation of playing a character where I've got just a few scenes, and I need to come on and score—I’ve got to make sure I hit these, make sure I’m memorable in those scenes.”

Participant Media / Bold Films / YouTube

McCallany wasn’t the only one who jumped headfirst into creating an authentic atmosphere in Shot Caller. Waugh researched the first two films in his "Prison Trilogy," Felon and Snitch, for nearly a decade, even volunteering at California's Department of Corrections.

[RELATED4]

“I had a great experience working on this, and it really is a great movie,” McCallany says. "Honestly, I wouldn't give that endorsement to every movie I've done in my career. The cast is great; Jon Bernthal was fantastic and he really gave an intense performance, and Nicolaj was great to work with. The authenticity is there. Ric did it with Shot Caller in the same way David Fincher did it with Mindhunter. This is a movie that’s worth seeing.”

Shot Caller, directed by Waugh and starring Coster-Waldau, McCallany, Bernthal, Lake Bell, Emory Cohen, Jeffrey Donovan, Evan Jones, and Benjamin Bratt, is available on Amazon Prime, DVD, Blu-ray, and from on-demand services.

Check out the trailer below:

[RELATED5]

Movies and TV

from Men's Fitness https://www.mensfitness.com/life/entertainment/how-holt-mccallany-became-hardcore-prisoner-battle-nikolaj-coster-waldau-shot

#Men's Fitness

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egooksconnolly · 6 years

Text

How Holt McCallany became a hardcore prisoner to battle Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in ‘Shot Caller’

Actor Holt McCallany is having a banner year in 2017.

[RELATED1]

But Mindhunter wasn’t the only role that McCallany transformed for this year.

Here's a close look at "The Beast" from the film on McCallany's Instagram page:

Holt McCallany / Instagram / @holtmccallany

So yeah, it’s a far cry from the wise-cracking Tench on Mindhunter. But as with his Mindhunter role, McCallany felt the transformation was crucial for his performance.

[RELATED2]

Participant Media / Bold Films / YouTube

[RELATED3]

Participant Media / Bold Films / YouTube

[RELATED4]

Check out the trailer below:

[RELATED5]

Movies and TV

Article source here:Men’s Fitness

0 notes