#the way he looks up when sydney comes back at the end of season 1 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

miley1442111 · 1 month

Text

back to chicago part 2- c.berzatto

a/n: part 2!!! i imagined a fem reader and it's mentioned quite a few times but as usual, imagine what you like. SET AFTER SEASON 2

summary: a double date with your boyfriend at the Bear can only go well, right?

pairings: carmenberzatto x femreader (complicated relationship), platonicthe bear x reader, romantic oc x reader

warnings: general angst, mentions of mikeys death, breaking up, bad family relationships, etc.

PART 1

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You

Dinner was delicious. The conversation was good and you had almost pushed the drama of earlier out of your head. You’d stayed till close to continue the talking and only now you were packing up.

“Bug!” Richie called after you as you put on your coat. “You guys wanna have a look at the kitchen?”

John and Emilia nodded and you obliged them as Adrian sighed, squeezing your hand with his own.

“Sounds good Rich,” You agreed and Adrian helped you remove your coat, then put a hand around your waist, holding you close.

“Why do I have a feeling this will end in tears?” Adrian whispered and you shrugged.

“Nothing we can do about it now.”

You got the tour of the kitchen and truly, it was impressive. It was beautiful and clean, and you got to see everyone else. Marcus, Tina, Ebraheim, Neil, and Sweeps. You met Sydney, she seemed nice but reserved.

“This is your boy?” Tina smirked and you nodded. “He’s pretty.”

Adrian chuckled and smiled at her, “Thank you.”

Then it came to Carmy. He smiled at you as your friends introduced themselves, then wrapped you up in a ‘bear’ hug. It shocked you, yet you reciprocated all the same.

“We have some catching up to do,” he said once you pulled away. “You guys are welcome back here anytime.”

You stared at Carmen, his arm around your waist, making this choice for you. Richie led John and Emilia through the rest of the kitchen, out of earshot from your conversation.

“I should really go back with Adrian, I’m tired-” You started but Carmen cut you off.

“It’ll only be a little while, you should stay,” He smirked as Adrian’s jaw ticked.

“Yeah, you should,” Adrian said, ‘challenging’ Carmen. You rolled your eyes.

“Carmen, if you only plan on comparing dicks with my boyfriend right now, count me the fuck out. You said it yourself, we never dated. Now, if you’d genuinely like to catch up with me I’d be happy to get coffee tomorrow, but right now- I’m fucking tired. Goodnight Carmen.”

Carmen looked down, clearly embarrassed. “Coffee tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll come by at 10. Goodnight,” You left his hold on your waist and grabbed Adrian’s hand, stalking out of the restaurant.

“Well he’s a delight,” Adrian sighed, squeezing your hand.

“Yeah,” you sighed.

“I don’t want you to go see him tomorrow,” Adrian admitted, pulling you aside. You chuckled, thinking he was joking. He was never one to be possessive in any way or ask you not to wear or do things. His glaze hardened and your laughter died down.

“You’re serious?”

“Yes I’m serious! He’s a dick! You don’t owe him anything!” He whined.

“He’s practically family,” You said matter-of-factly and dropped his hand.

“Oh and look at how great the rest of your family is!” He snarked, then his face dropped as you felt the stab of deep hurt he’d just caused. “Baby, I-I didn’t mean it like that-”

“Fuck you. We’re done.”

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carmen

I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Not when I knew I was seeing you the next day. I had gotten to the Bear nice and early to do all my lunchtime prep so if our coffee dat- thing went overtime I wouldn’t be chewed out by Richie.

“Cousin!” Richie shouted.

“What?!” I shouted back, sweat coating my palms as I wrote down recipes and anticipated your arrival.

“Bugs here! Come on!”

It was 10:02. You were technically 2 minutes late. I got up and out of my office, grabbed my coat and sped to the front of the restaurant, almost tripping myself in the process. And there you stood. Angelic as ever. I had made an effort with my appearance that day, thank god. A cream sweater I’d bought in New York, dark jeans I knew you’d appreciate since you knew about jeans, and I’d washed my hair this morning and put in some products Sugar had gotten me for Christmas, though I’d already sweated it out by 10:02.

“Hey,” I smiled.

“Hey,” You sighed, clearly more sombre than I was hoping.

This was going to be difficult. “You alright?” I asked as we walked outside.

“Great,” you said, sarcasm dripping from your words. “Wonderful even.”

“What happened?” He asked, trying to hold back from the question that wanted to fall out of his mouth so badly.

“It doesn’t matter,” you laughed, but it was humourless.

“Doesn’t have anything to do with that guy then?” I had asked and you had glared at me. I sent my cheeky smile to the floor and held up my hands in surrender. “Just askin’.”

“Yeah, don’t,” We both laughed that time. It felt good. It felt normal. Everything felt right for the first time in years.

“Seriously, what is his deal?”

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You

“You mean my boyfriend?” you smirked, not telling him you’d broken up. It was quite the rash decision, something you weren’t used to.

“Yeah,” he shrugged.

“Well, he’s an accountant, we met at a jazz club a few years ago,” you explained.

“Anything else?”

“He’s nice?” you smiled. “He’s reliable.”

“Oh, so you don’t like him,” Carmen smirked and you scoffed.

“Fuck off,” you jested. “It’s complicated.”

“How? The dude is obsessed with you,” he shrugged. “What makes that complicated?”

“The fact that I broke up with him last night,” You admitted, rolling your eyes when Carmen looked at you with a wide-eyed expression. “Do not flatter yourself Carmen. He was being shitty.”

“That’s not what I was saying,” Carmen half-lied. “I just… I’m surprised.”

“I’ll probably go back later and apologise, and we’ll kiss and make up as usual.”

“This happens regularly?”

“No,” you admitted. “But he does do shitty things sometimes, then apologises.”

“Shitty like what?”

“Stuff like…” you didn’t want to tell him. “Look it doesn’t matter, all that matters is us right now,” You smiled at him. “Tell me about the Bear.”

“That shithole?” he joked and it finally made you laugh.

“Yes, that shithole.”

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

After two hours of catching up with Carmy, you started walking him back to the Bear.

“When are you heading back to New York?” he asked.

“Soon, I guess? I do have clients to get back to but… I don’t know. I love Chicago.”

“You should stick around,” Carmy smiled. “You brighten up the place.”

“I don’t know if my back will survive staying at hotels for too much longer,” you chuckled.

“Stay at mine,” he offered immediately.

“You’re sure?” You asked, shocked at his level of generosity.

“Of course. I missed you. I’ve always missed you.”

You stared at him for a moment, standing outside of the Bear. You weren’t used to this level of emotion from him. “I missed you too, Bear.”

He pulled you into a quick hug and you kissed his cheek, then walked on, much more to think about than before.

#carmy berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto x you #carmen berzatto #carmen berzatto x reader #the bear #the bear fx #carmy berzatto #carmen berzatto fluff

90 notes · View notes

hourglassfish · 8 months

Text

On Season 1, Episode 7 Part Three : Risottogate

OK look,

Go and get yourself an ecto cooler or something, cus this is long, OK? This is long.

You comfortable?

Alright, let’s go.

don't forget the Xanax!

Elevated Beef (stock)

There’s a connection drawn between Sydney and veal stock in the Bear. She spills it all over herself during Brigade. Claire interrupts Carmy purchasing veal stock for menu testing her bone broth idea at the end of 2:2. It’s an interesting ingredient to align her with: a staple of French cuisine, something you’ll find in a professional high end kitchen but not necessarily at home, a distinctive, practical component which provides a subtle, solid umami base for a range of dishes.

The first time this connection is drawn is during one of my favourite interactions: the ‘plum haribo’ story in Brigade. Marcus has decorated his work station (I love him), and despite the fact that Carmy says he’s having flashbacks (eeeeeeek), I think he is happy to see this coming together of his two worlds.

They start talking about this fancy plum dish, and a gelee component (which will reappear in Honeydew!) that had to have a very specific texture. Carmy has been talking about the dedication needed to make this dish work with pride, presenting the texture of the gelee as a huge challenge, something it took someone a year to figure out. Sydney cracks it in less than a minute. Veal fat. She knows what’s needed, and she knows why: it congeals when it’s cold. Boom!

Carmy’s response to this always amuses me. He is not…dismayed exactly. Not quite. After all, it’s a reminder of her brilliance, and also that that world is not so far away. That being said, she cuts across a punchline here; and what was a mystery to the best chefs in the world for a year is immediately obvious to her, to the extent that it’s not even really a flex on her part: she states it quite diffidently. Marcus’s gleeful ‘Mission Accomplished’ is very different from Carmy’s, which is a bit more ‘…oh.’.

On rewatches where I feel charitable, Carmy then implements the brigade cus he's been reminded that he has someone close by from that world, he has an ally that speaks his language, who is talented. On days when I feel less charitable, I combine this with him later talking her through the differences between stock/jus/demi-glace in front of Tina like an asshole, and see him handing the brigade over at that specific moment, in the specific way that he does as passive aggressive. Most days I’m with the former! Still…we’re back in the grey areas of Syd and Carmy’s dynamic. Where all the good shit is!

He's so glad she figured that out so quickly, absolutely not feeling a type of way about it, nope, not at all

I wanted to start with this story cus it opens up three things for me:

a) just a frisson, a hint, a delicious drop (!) of competition between Syd and Carmy

b) the question, beloved by fanfic writers everywhere, of what the dynamic between these two might have been if they had met in a different context.

c) a third, messier thing, about Carmy going away, tooling up, coming back and it needing to be worth something, that going way. As far as he knows at this point, It didn’t achieve what it was meant to achieve, it didn’t get Mikey’s attention. Maybe he didn’t need to leave Chicago to do it. Sydney's talent tickles that tension, as does Marcus's (trios, trios!). So what was it for? What were the past few years of his life for, if a bunch of this stuff was in Chicago all along?

Who was Carmy away from Chicago? Who is he without his family? We’ve only seen one flashback so far, very much from inside Carmy’s head. The way he tells it is very different from what we see. At Al Anon, he describes himself like this:

‘when somebody new came into the restaurant to stage, I’d look at them like they were competition, like I’m gonna smoke this motherfucker’.

But you're tall and sexy, so don't worry about it babes

Gosh. Yes Chef!

I don’t think Carmy holds anything like this level of aggression towards any of the original staff of the Beef: it would be absurd: they don’t have his training or experience. For the most part we see doing the work of pulling a team together, which explicitly involves putting that kind of competitiveness to the side.

I don’t think he has this energy for Sydney.

Not quite.

I do think it’s an important thing for us to learn about his character. I do think that we are told it at the beginning of Episode 8, after Sydney has quit, because there are ugly feelings around the risotto dish. I do think that those feelings drive a lot of how Review goes down, and that Carmy knows this.

This ferocious comparison and competition, used as a driving force, is a part of who Carmy is, and a part of the kitchens that he has come from. In another context, Sydney would have just been competition. And he’d have been trying to smoke her.

Let’s follow a humble bowl of risotto through THREE EPISODES, and about 5000 words, good GOD.

Tracing the Journey of the Risotto: Unanticipated

I tried to find appetising pics of her cooking the risotto but mostly it doesn't look very aesthetic, so here is Syd in my fave of her scarves.

A Risotto, playing on ‘tongue in cheek’ is first tentatively pitched in Sheridan, as an idea for a new menu that they have ‘spoken about’. Carmy is… noncommittal. He’s not into it, but he doesn’t say that, he just doesn’t really engage. I think there are a bunch of valid reasons to not be into it, tbh. I’ve ordered risotto to go. It’s always kind of gluey and disappointing. Sydney isn’t given a clear no, so she decides to cook it: it becomes something she has to convince him on.

He doesn’t get to try it in this episode as there are drugs to sell and about a million different fires to fight. We know that she dreams about this dish though. In this episode she talks about how thinking about her mistakes with Sheridan Road keep her up at night, but the last images of the episode are of her dreaming: beef… raspberries… cola… fire: there it is. Cola braised short rib. We’re back in the realm of deeply personal creative expression that I spoke about in part two. That anxious energy around failing with Sheridan Road? Is going somewhere else, is being transformed. This is important, and has the potential to be profoundly healing. This dish has meaning for her.

The dish returns in Ceres. Syd is an unstoppable force with the dish, and having said she wants to be listened to, is not listening to several requests from Carmy for more time. Stressful! He deals with it well, at first. He is calm, and polite and asks her to hold on. Which is not a no. But then -

‘I know everybody you used to work for, I called them before hiring you’

oooooh weeee.

There is nothing wrong with him seeking out references. His reasons are logical, and he’s transparent about them. Personally? I think it’s sensible to let employees know you’re seeking out references to avoid paranoia, but it’s not a legal requirement. People do it informally via whisper networks all the time, both purposefully and by accident. Gotta say though, the phrasing and the timing of this ‘reveal’ made me wince.

There are a million different theories of feedback, of how to give and receive it well. One argues that feedback must be asked for, accurate and measurable. If it’s not measurable, then you are nitpicking. If it’s not accurate, you’re hating. If it’s not asked for, or at least delivered in an environment where it’s anticipated, it is unlikely to be received well. Carmy, unfortunately, delivers a whopper of unanticipated feedback here: ‘me and all your old bosses (I know EVERYONE YOU USED TO WORK WITH)have been talking about you and they all agree on this flaw’.

YIKES

Would I let Syd stab me for a bowl of this? Maaaaybe. Maybe.

My reading is that he wanted to ask for her patience, and to say that his decision to pace out the changes is coming from experience, but he’s being backed into a corner, so he summons up the spectre of her old bosses for back up. Syd had opened up last episode, and is still very vulnerable about Sheridan, so he unintentionally wounds her here. We can read this in her response. He says her employers said she was smart, talented, green and impatient, she hears ‘me and everyone you’ve worked for think your business failed because you were green and impatient, that’s why you’re here, and why this dish can’t go on the menu’. This dish is getting entangled in so many other things about where they’ve come from.

He does take the time to reframe it: outlines his practical concerns, and starts to articulate that he wants to maintain calm before they make more changes -

And then Sugar is banging on the door, demonstrating his point.

At this point, Carmy is trying to build a parachute. They don’t have one when Jimmy comes to visit in Hands, but they do have one that becomes Richie’s bail by Braciole. Reserve building takes steady, dull consistency, but this isn’t communicated, and they don’t agree on a timeframe for the menu development, or even to come back to this conversation. This is small stuff, I know I sound nitpicky! But in my experience managing people, tension builds in the unknowns, in the places where there aren’t specifics, especially when you have a team member like Sydney who is ambitious and dynamic.

Sydney is firmly in the realm of the job that Carmy specified here. He is dialling business, she is doing everything else. If you’re a nerd and you zoom in on her CV, she has done menu development before. She is green, but not that green. She is impatient, but she also doesn’t have the same complicated relationship with change at the Beef that pretty much everyone else but Marcus does. The risotto is the first unofficial test of the impact of strain on their (messy ass) working dynamic, to Review’s much more official gauntlet.

Why would they write a proper CV and film it if they didn't want me to spend 5 minutes hitting pause repeatedly until I'd read it?

*squints* designed daily specials with complete creative control! At Alinea! A THREE STAR MICHELIN RESTAURANT! At the time they wrote this, it had held and retained those stars for twelve years! She is not new to this!

Tracing the Journey of the Risotto Two: Unmeasurable

They try again with the risotto later. She is a little more patient, initially. She makes the effort and he thanks her for it. He tries it, which she really wanted (surely that will convince him!), and she has modified her request, from to-gos, to trying it as a special. Her equivalent of baby steps. She listened. She’s trying. Lovely Angel and my main man Ebra come by, taste and support Carmy’s ‘tremendous’.

But here Carmy gives feedback that isn’t measurable. It’s not perfect, but he doesn’t say why, even though he knows, and it’s an easy fix! He’s nitpicking, because he doesn’t, for a bunch of practical reasons, want to put risotto on the menu, but doesn’t want to shoot her down. He asks her if she understands after she has explicitly said that she doesn’t (cus he’s not being up front), and then doesn‘t explain himself. He’s not really asking if she understands, he’s telling her to stop. It’s not really the dish that’s not ready, not really, it’s him, he’s not ready to make a new raft of changes, to think through the gap between the Michelin star excellence he has come from, and the budgetary, practical restrains of where he’s at.

I think this is really fair. Or at least understandable. Carmy just wants to catch a breath, and he has to have oversight on so many different things at once, adding something else to that must feel terrifying. But the way he communicates this shuts down and restricts: he switches the dynamic from one where they listen to each other (which requires that they both explain themselves) to one where he tells and she does. It doesn’t really give her anywhere to go, so her frustration is inevitable and also understandable. Measurable feedback! Clarity. If you don’t want risotto on the menu Carmy, rip the band-aid, and say it, and say why. Get her to work on something that is going to fit with the menu in a different way, in the way that you want, and be clear about the way in which you want to shape it!

He knows he’s not been great here. Carmy apologises for ‘being shitty’ later in the episode (as others have noted, it’s a shit apology) and he also starts his apology with ‘needs acid’ in 1:8. He knows that a lot of Review is to do with this dish.

When Carmy apologises about being shitty later in Ceres, she doesn’t mention that she put the dish out earlier. It’s framed as a little moment of.. if not revenge, then a little something for herself. I think she knows it’s not OK, not really, or she’d have mentioned it, and her face says a lot when she says it’s cool. I’m not a chef, I only ever worked FOH, but my instinct is that its dodgy and it fills me with unease. A grey area. A pop of tension.

Tracing the Journey of the Risotto Three: Hating

Whenever I think about the strikes, I think about the broader ensemble in this show.

The next time the risotto turns up, it’s being mentioned in a review. A lot happens here, so I’m gonna bullet point out all the references, then analyse some of them afterwards. I’m also gonna jump a whole bunch, cus I want to stay tightly focused on the risotto itself, and the dynamic between Syd and Carmy as relates to it:

Ebra reads the review out!

Syd has a lovely, gentle smile for Ebra as he reads it, her whole body relaxes as she taps at the tablet. This validation clearly means a lot to her. Ebra’s dynamic with both Sydney and Marcus is consistently a joy to behold. When he tells her in Dogs that she’s given Marcus a lot of confidence, she glows, and I think it’s something she really needed to hear. He’s subtle about it, but he never makes her life difficult when she implements the brigade. There’s something about the oldest member of the team, reading the review out, a little haltingly cus English isn’t his first language, that doubles down on the love that can be present in the Beef, making it all the more jarring when –

Carmy cuts across this and starts talking about the day’s opening with a ‘stop reading that shit’

Fam ‘that shit’ just described your food as elevated and elegant! In the foodie heaven that is Chicago! In your restaurant which is kind of failing! It’s your team’s first review since you’ve been there! So straight away you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, because what has got his knickers in a twist?

Carmy is justified in being pissed off about Syd’s actions here. What he is not justified in, is not finding a way to celebrate the review itself with his team, who deserve to have this moment. It’s a milestone for them to get some external validation, and the restaurant, quite frankly, needs it. A five star review! Tina squeals with delight when she hears it. Before a new program and a busy shift is the perfect moment to read this out, and go into the work feeling good. A united, gassed up team? Would have killed those to gos.

Sydney is also responsible for this messiness though. In going rogue the episode before, something which could have been about the team becomes about her in a way that is sticky, and it becomes harder to celebrate. It was not her intention, but this is the outcome.

Ebra ignores Carmy

(cus he’s redundant and white JK JK don’t cancel me)

There is a double edged shout out to the team

‘the staff moves are next level’: this is such brilliant, important feedback from a team that has had to weather so much change! Also calls back to Richie: ‘Uh oh, Sydney making moves!’ in the car in Hands.

‘The sandwiches are so delicious as ever, but the standout dish that... that, that encapsulates all, this was the risotto with braised beef. The rice was luscious with a surprising ribbon of brine running through the sauce. The chef obviously knew what she was doing’

THAT REVIEWER IS A SNITCH

Did Syd know that reviewer was a reviewer? I dunno man. Maybe! She’s Chicago born and bred, knows the food scene well. It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that she’d recognise him. Maybe she just wanted some good immediate feedback, while she was feeling shitty! Maybe all she wanted was him to send a message back to the kitchen that’s like tell Syd the risotto was great: the impact of his Review but on a much smaller, less disruptive scale.

I think it’s genuine coincidence, which unfortunately looks… not like that. The thing is: the reviewer being a reviewer isn’t what the issue is. The issue is giving food not signed off by her boss to a customer. She'd have never gotten away with that at the places where she was before. Putting the dish out is going rogue, regardless of who she gives it to. It’s not a team move. If Carmy called in her old bosses for back up, she calls in his potential new customers. Eek. EEK.

Sydney desperately tries to get Ebra to shush, to no avail

(extremely funny work from Ayo, but also he’s pissed, and she either already knows it, or already antipates it – it’s hard to get a read on how long they’ve been in and when they learnt about the review)

‘river of brine, huh?’

Carmy, you little snark!!! This is very much his wheelhouse of expressing displeasure, he loves a little jab to the emotional solar plexus. My reading of his line is that what the reviewer tried and what Carmy tried are different, because if it had a ribbon of brine in it, I think that means that there was enough acid. Syd has two dishes, and she’s specific about Carmy trying one and not the other, so my reading here is that Carmy’s POV is not only did a dish go out of my kitchen without my sign off, but it was different from the dish I was given to try. Wince. Wince, wince, wince.

Sydney and Carmy have a fucking excruciating conversation.

Just the worst.

Carmy is not happy, but feels unable to voice this in a way that seems reasonable: he’s busy and stressed about to-gos, he hasn’t moved past the unreasonable feelings of resentment and annoyance to the clarity which enables you to articulate how you feel and why, and because Syd’s gamble paid off! It’s a net positive for the restaurant so it feels counterintuitive to reprimand her, but there is a conversation they need to have. He really does not want to have this conflict, because it’s complicated, and is, like most big blow outs over something small, about so much more than a plate of risotto. He breezes over the conversation, but you can’t start with that ribbon of brine opener and then tell me shit’s not weird.

Compare this to Brigade, when Sydney is asked what’s up, and she is brave enough and vulnerable enough to be like – here are the things that weren’t OK, here are my expectations, here are my boundaries.

On the other side of the conversation, Sydney knows that she has slipped across a slightly odd boundary, but doesn’t acknowledge this. It’s good he liked it! All’s well that ends well. Right? RIGHT? But if he hadn’t? Very different conversation. It doesn’t matter who he is! He could have been anyone - someone that left a weird Instagram comment later, or someone who didn’t finish the meal and complained. Whatever the case may be, giving it to him unofficially was not an act of partnership, or listening, even if the initial communication was shitty.

She knows she’s overstepped, but she doesn’t apologise and doesn’t acknowledge the specifics of what she’s done wrong, because she does not want to have the conflict that could come out of this either. She seeks affirmations that they are OK rather than trying to actually find out how Carmy feels and why, because at this point she doesn’t really want to hear it. She is seeking this conversation out 20 minutes before open! It’s not the time for a thorny, complex discussion.

Compare this to Brigade. Carmy knows Sydney is pissed, and makes the effort to speak to her, in private, armed with the peace offering of Ebra’s Suqaar. He is very careful in that conversation to ask open questions (‘what’s going on with you? Say more?’) that enable her to respond honestly. He persists despite her having her walls up around the fact that she’s pissed. Sydney does not do this. The power dynamic makes it hard, but still. If she wants the connection needed to power reconciliation, that bravery needs to be in play.

are you sure we can't just power through this with sexual tension?

Sweeps congratulates her and tells her she’ll have to tell her dad

Hope Mr Adamu got a newspaper clipping!

Carmy says the sandwiches are totally different and the reviewer is a fucking hack. Syd looks sad.

This moment is why I opened this essay talking about veal stock. We are back in a moment with a gap between what has been said, and what has been heard. The reviewer said the sandwiches were delicious as ever. That’s not a criticism at all! These are not words that justify being called a hack! Carmy is pissed because the reviewer says they are delicious and they always have been, that Carmy has not improved on the staple that was there before him.

And that shit hurts his ego!

His whole thing was going off to learn ‘how to be better than mom and dad’s piece of shit’. We know he’s changed a bunch of things about the sandwiches. In Hands, Sydney mentions that they’ve switched to market produce, which I’m sure is not unrelated to Richie’s ‘You’ve been here for two weeks and we’ve had money problems for two weeks’ in System. In Carmy’s time there, the bread’s changed, the method for cooking the beef has changed, the way they braise onions has changed.

To that customer? Delicious as ever.It’s not a dismissal, or an insult. It is a reminder that Carmy didn’t have to leave, and go through all he went through, that there was delicious food and skills to be learned and refined without it. We know Michael was a talented chef. Even now, with all of where he’s been, Carmy cannot surpass him or his memory.

The person that does surpass that? Is Sydney. With food his palate did not deem good enough! Sydney who has not had to leave Chicago and her family. Sydney who has found a way to be creatively free, even at The Beef, in ways that Carmy has not really been able to, because his primary concern has to be money. There is understandable resentment here. But there is competition to the way Carmy cooks, something to prove, someone to smoke. There are reasonable feelings here, but some of them are really ugly, too.

Tina describes Syd as Jeff’s friend

This is a strange little line – because we know that Tina respects Syd as a chef at this point, and she doubles down on it later when she asks Syd to teach Louis skills, like she herself has been taught. So why’s it there? My feeling is that it’s there to remind the audience of what Syd and Carmy’s relationship is usually like. I wouldn’t call it friendship, I think they operate in a weird place that defies labels, but they have this synergy which drives the business. Tina evoking that in this moment draws attention to the fact that they are not in that space right now.

He's just got a very sweet face, it's hard for me to believe he's in trouble at school

Richie has a loud, performative conversation with Carmy about many things, but for the purpose of this section, he states that they don’t do risotto, asks if they’re going to, and Carmy definitively states that ‘no, they’re not going to do that’ he also repeats Syd’s phrasing that it was ‘an accident’

She stabbed the wrong ass if you ask me!

Nah, but for real, this is nasty work. I’m gonna come back to it in the next (penultimate!) bit of writing about the Beef, the Bear, Richie & Michael, Syd & Carmy. For now, I will simply say that Carmy is doing up major pass agg here, and it’s nasty to watch. He’s really, really unhappy with her, and he’s struggling to hold it in, so it’s coming out in unhelpful and unpleasant ways that feel like humiliations in front of the whole team, and punishment.

There are really valid reasons for Carmy to be annoyed and to not want to talk about it right now. The problem is that If you don’t create a pressure valve you take responsibility for, you will end up a) exploding instead (lol) and/or b) releasing that frustration in unhelpful and harmful ways.

They move towards this with their ASL sorry in Season Two. But here, Carmy says and implies a bunch of things to Richie that he needed to say explicitly to Syd two episodes ago, and two minutes ago: that he has no intention of putting risotto on the menu, and that he thinks her saying it was an accident was bullshit. He wants Syd to know it’s not OK without the hard, painful work of having to engage in conflict with her. It’s shitty.

Sweet Louis asks what a ribbon of brine is

He seems like a good boy, bring him back!

A BUNCH OF STUFF THAT I WILL WRITE ABOUT NEXT TIME HAPPENS

Richie, Syd and Carmy, it’s delicious (a nightmare).

Syd attempts a second conversation with Carmy – having vented some frustration at Richie, and seeing how her workload is piling up and becoming untenable, she is much more open here. Carmy is not.

She’s blunt – we’re not on the same page. Carmy lies and deflects – we’re good, let’s get through the shift. He has his hands on his hips, with as much of his body turned away from her as possible, during this conversation, and walks off half way through it. Even if everything had gone right, this shift would have been a nightmare for Syd.

Everything is awesome!

The penultimate mention of the risotto is here. There is very little I can say that has not been brilliantly said by eatandsleepwell here - https://www.tumblr.com/hourglassfish/726487509540962304/eatandsleepwell-melonatures-this-one-second?source=share so I’m gonna link it.

That’s the last we hear of risotto for now, other than a quick reference to Syd as an arrogant and condescending ribbon of brine from Richie later. It doesn’t turn up on the tasting menu at the Bear, where it defo feels like a riff on risotto could have replaced one of their pasta dishes. That switch from rice to pasta feels pointed.

Spaghetti

Let’s treat The Beef as a character. If Sydney’s ingredient motif is veal stock, then The Beef’s is that family spaghetti.

Cheap and simple. Fucking delicious. Makes no sense and shouldn’t work, but was somehow the best seller on the menu. Distinctively Italian. Stuffed full of drug money(!). Always, always presented at the table with love, like a gift. You can elevate it if you want, but the fact of the matter is that even at its very best, it’s only gonna hit so hard cus it reminds you of simpler times, like the ratatouille (that is not a ratatouille!) from the movie Ratatouille.

Carmy rejects that meal at the top of the series. It ‘doesn’t make sense on the menu’, so he doesn’t care that people loved it. So far, so EMP. When he starts to cook it in episode one, it feels like a relenting to Richie’s bullying, and him throwing WHAT WE NOW KNOW WAS PROBABLY A FEW THOUSAND DOLLARS in the bin at the end of the episode feels like this exhilarating rejection of mediocrity. They change the lines for System, but in the pilot, Carmy literally cannot make the spaghetti, that last lesson from Michael is a real missing puzzle piece.

In Braciole, when he gets the recipe, he goes to cook it, for family. It’s really nice, that scene, feels comparable to Sydney making omelette. It’s quiet, and Carmy seems content, if wistful. The pork instead of beef panic of earlier is put to the side for now. The previous day, Carmy has gone to Al-Anon and confessed, unburdened himself. Then followed two quiet days and a blue hued night of atonement: he reaffirmed his commitment to Richie, paying his bail and keeping watch all night, gave Tina the night off, apologised to Marcus and acknowledged that his behaviour towards Sydney wasn’t acceptable, as well as speaking to her about her dish, like an adult. Carmy has to do all of this before he finds the money, before he gets the validation that he’s really longing for from his brother.

JAW getting his Emmy, his Golden Globe, his SAG Award, his Bafta, his future Oscar Winning role.

If The Bear at its core is about grief, and the void that Michael’s death leaves, then one of the big journeys of Season One is the subsequent death of the Beef, ready for its rebirth as The Bear in the following season. Review is the short sharp stab to the gut, of Sydney leaving, and taking any hope that it can be reformed as is, with her work. I don’t think the nature of a puncture wound, and the shortness of that episode are unrelated.

Braciole is more of a death rattle: Jimmy’s debt keeping them trapped in shitty work they don’t want to do, situations that spiral out of control and descend into violence, their parachute turned to bail money. But Michael wanted more for his brother than that, and he has left him a foundation. He does not have to burn the place down, there need not be smoke and hellfire. There’s another avenue for rebirth, one where ‘set this place on fire’ does not have to mean an insurance scam, but instead can mean an ignition of all their ambition and dreams.

To get there there has to be an ego death first, a moment of hubris that gets our protagonists fresh, and clean, so they can move to the new. Sydney sees and experiences the worst of herself (more on this in the final part!). Richie gets stabbed (more on this in the next part).

Carmy? Carmy has to encountera crisis where not only could his training not save him but many of the lessons he learnt while he was away and his reasons for going in the first place actively made the situation worse, and those that had faith in him and his preferred system turned away from him, deeply hurt. His ego gets in the way of connection, and it shatters the partnership that he needs to make it all work. He is clinging to old ways of being that has not served him, but he needs to move forward into what is new. And he does.

Well.

He tries.

SMDH

WHEW

Another long one, sorry fam. I’m almost there though. Am I sorry? No, I’m grateful if you read it, and I hope you enjoyed it.

I hope I’m pulling this together coherently, that I’m showing a sort of throughline to the way I view Episode 7. I don’t think Sydney is perfect! I do think her walking out is narratively and politically (the show wants better for the workplaces its drawn from) necessary, and I hate, hate, hate the simplification of that decision to ‘he shouted at her so she bailed’. Please, you can’t think this show is well written and think her decision is as simple as that, it doesn’t make sense. That exit is crafted so that it is inevitable, there is a movie’s worth of build up to it.

We’re looking at Richie, Syd and Carmy next time, fam. I am trying so hard to cut it down cus it’s currently sat at 15,000 words, but I’m gonna try really hard to edit down, OK? I’m gonna try really hard.

I can’t respond but I value reblogs and comments so much!

This is part of a five part series! You can find the rest here:

Expect More: Syd and Carmy's relationship,

I know you'll be listening: Marcus, McDonald's and Freedom

Risottogate

Hiring New Fucking Broads: Syd, Richie and conflict;

"That's Not You" The Moment Syd Walks Out

#the bear #carmy berzatto #sydney adamu #the bear meta

125 notes · View notes

canonicallyobserving911 · 1 month

Text

Several Sentences Sunday

Fanonwriter2023 on AO3

Where CANON and FANON collide!

Season 7 FANON Speculation: Buddie Multi-Chapter Fanfic - Hiatus Reading: “I’m still in love with you but... I needed to learn how to love myself too!”

Chapter 26 will be posted soon.

This is an EPIC LOVE STORY!

Currently 25 chapters completed: 973.1K Words; Rated: Mature

One chapter will be posted at a time.

{Previous snippet linked here}

___________

I'm excited to finish writing Chapter 26 because at the end of Chapter 25, the Diaz family had just returned to the U.S. and after they made it home, Eddie checked his voice mail and there was a message from his cousin about an attempted delivery of a SpedEx package for Buck. Buck had no idea who it was from and he worried about it all weekend into the New Year.

They attended Maddie's and Chimney's New Year's Eve party which turned out to be an engagement party for them but they told their found family they got married while they were in Italy and that Buck adopted Chris on Christmas morning. Everyone questioned them regarding why the didn't tell anyone about their nuptials but they reassured them they're going to have a vow renewal ceremony in May of 2024 so they can all celebrate with them. But they didn't tell them they put a bid on a house in Italy and they aren't planning to until they believe the time is right.

On January 2nd, Buck accepted the package from the SpedEx delivery driver and after he opened it and viewed the contents, he collapsed and became unresponsive and unconscious right after Eddie entered the room.

___________

Here's another snippet from Chapter 26 and it's more of Eddie's 9-1-1 call with Linda.

___________

‍“Eddie! Listen to me. I know it’s hard but I need you to remain calm. Are you listening?”

He is but right now, he’s focused on Buck’s angelic face and to him it looks like he’s sleeping but he knows he’s not. As his mind starts to spiral, he thinks of all the years they have yet to live along with the plans they have set for their future. They’re supposed to travel the globe together so they can walk on sandy beaches in Hawaii, travel to Alaska in the dead of winter while it’s 40 degrees below zero, take a ship to Antarctica so they can see the penguins and he hasn’t mentioned it yet but he wants them to go to Sydney, Australia. He knows they have spiders so big they’ll make them leave but he believes as long as he’s there with his husband, they’ll be ok.

The panic in his chest tries to escape his lungs for the fourth maybe even the fifth time but he swallows and forces it to go away until he can deal with it sometime later. When he realizes he’s been quiet too long, he replies, “Yes, I—I’m listening.”

“The 141 is still stuck on the interstate but I’ve dispatched another RA unit that’s closer and they’re in the adjoining subdivision. Their hospital transport got cancelled and they just notified dispatch they’re on their way back to their station but I’m sending them to you. You should hear the sirens any second.”

He nods even though she can’t see him, then replies, “Ok, but… please, please tell them to hur—ry.”

“They’re coming as fast as they can. Stay on the line with me, ok?”

“Ok.” He responds as his mind spirals at 100 mph and it’s in a tug of war with his heart because his instincts are telling him it’ll be better for him to wait for the RA unit because the closest hospital is about 10 minutes away and since the I-110 is backed up on both sides, it’ll take him twice as long to drive there and it’ll be even longer if he has to take the streets.

“Eddie?”

“Hmm?”

“I need you to keep talking to me. You said he’s unresponsive?”

“Yes!”

“Does he have history of a heart condition?” She knows the answer but she has to ask him for the recorded line. She was at work the night Buck got struck by lightning and even though she didn’t take the 9-1-1 call, the entire dispatch center was on full alert when Captain Nash explained they had a firefighter who had been struck and they were three minutes out from the nearest hospital.

“Yes, he—he was struck by lightning last year and he—he…” He stops talking because he’s on the verge of hyperventilating and the panic lodged in his throat is attempting to claw its way out but he inhales a big gulp of air and breathes past it, then he continues. “He died for—three minutes and seventeen seconds. That’s how long his heart stop—ped… I know be—because I counted.”

“Don’t worry Eddie, the 128 is enroute and I’m being told by the paramedic on duty they just entered your subdivision.”

Eddie’s crying and he knows it but he doesn’t care. He emphatically admits, “He… can’t—go… he’s my heart, my every—thing!”

Linda can hear the pain in Eddie’s voice and she wants so badly to be there for her friend. So, she looks at Sue, who's listening in and gets the nod she was waiting for then says, “It’s ok Eddie. Just listen to the sound of my voice. Everything is going to be ok. Can you hear me?”

“Yes—yes… I can year you. How much lon—ger before they’ll get here?” He asks through broken sobs.

“They should be there in less than one minute. Do you hear the sirens?”

Can Eddie hear the sirens or is he too distraught? 👀

Will Buck make it to the hospital or will he leave Eddie all alone? 🥹

___________

This is an EPIC LOVE STORY!

Fic Summary: Months after Buck and Eddie were hit by the same lightning strike; they’re still struggling with the aftermath of it. But before they make their love confessions, they’ll spend time getting to know themselves as individuals first. Eddie learns to enjoy the simple things in life as he participates in activities on his own and with new friends while Buck learns the rest of the 31-year-old deep dark family secret about his conception and birth. Their journey to forever is still a work in progress but once they finally admit they’re in love with each other, everything that follows their love confessions will be cataclysmic.

__________

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1 - Eddie makes a new friend while Buck receives devastating news regarding the sperm donation he made for Connor and Kameron.

Chapter 2 - Buck does a lot of research to learn more about the abnormalities found in his red blood cells and Eddie starts a new therapy journey that’s all about him and not the traumas he’s experienced.

Chapter 3 - After more than a month, Buck and Eddie finally spend time together outside of work but it doesn’t end well and they part with a lot of uncertainty regarding their places in each other’s lives.

Chapter 4 - Eddie has a few realizations about his life which causes him to consider moving back to El Paso, TX while Buck continues to be reminded of his past which causes him to take an impromptu road trip across America.

Chapter 5 - Both Buck and Eddie have difficult conversations with their parents and Buck finally learns the truth behind the reason why his mother despised him while Eddie finally tells his mother about the way she tries to control him.

Chapter 6 - More than two weeks after Buck pushed Eddie away after suggesting they needed a break; Eddie decides to try again. Eddie’s there for Buck when he’s at his worst just like Buck was there for him when he was at his worst and he won’t let Buck give up.

Chapter 7 - After Buck’s mental breakdown, Eddie has his back the same way Buck had his when he had his own breakdown more than a year ago. They share several vulnerable and emotionally intimate moments with one another and they begin to realize their small, sweet and caring gestures matter just as much if not more than any grand gesture ever could because these are the foundations of a long-lasting love relationship.

Chapter 8 - Buck, Eddie and Chris all have their own therapists and during their sessions, they reflect on their pasts while they’re in the present so they can prepare for their future together as a family.

Chapter 9 - Buck and Eddie are there for each other when Buck has to testify as a witness during the trial. But by the end of it, they’ll both realize their individual and shared traumas are going to keep resurfacing until they talk about them, deal with the fact that they’re in love with one another and face the fact that they can’t live without each other.

Chapter 10 - As Buck and Eddie finally begin to confront their past traumas, they realize how much they need each other to fill in the gaps of their memories. Additionally, the universe screams at them for what appears to be the one hundredth time so Buck can realize he doesn’t have to ‘find it’ because he already ‘made it’ and Eddie’s reminded tomorrow isn’t promised and he doesn’t have to die alone if he doesn’t want to.

Chapter 11 - A “virga” or dry thunderstorm is in the forecast but once the rain starts, the thunderstorm happening outside won’t be able to match the storm brewing inside between Buck and Eddie. It’s the universe’s final scream and when the tumultuous winds begin to blow, they’ll have one last chance to hold onto everything they’ve built over the last six years or they’ll lose it all forever.

Chapter 12 - Buck and Eddie have always shared a deep physical attraction and an emotional intimacy that’s unmatched but now that they’re in a relationship, they’re learning how to navigate the romantic intimacy they’ve been waiting for six years to explore. The love they have for each other is a once in a lifetime, soulmate, love of their lives type of love that transcends space and time.

Chapter 13 - While navigating the newness of their romantic relationship, Buck and Eddie take advantage of every moment they spend together. As their individual lives, people from their pasts, time constraints and the possibility of losing each other again make attempts to interrupt and interfere with their journey to forever, they love, care for, support and hold onto each other even tighter to withstand it all.

Chapter 14 - Buck and Eddie can see the lights at the end of the tunnels regarding the results of Buck’s Cancer Screening along with everything else they’re dealing with. But are the lights they see exits to the tunnels or are they headlights on different runaway trains that are speeding towards them in an effort to interrupt their forever?

Chapter 15 - Buck and Eddie have known they were exactly who the other one wanted in a partner since they met six years ago when they agreed to have each other’s backs. They’re in a romantic relationship, they’re both preparing to ask the other one to spend forever with them and by the end of the seventh week into their relationship, together they will plan their most important and greatest adventure for their future.

Chapter 16 - As Buck and Eddie begin to prepare for their marriage ceremony that will take place in Rome, Italy in December 2023, they start planning their first international adventure as a romantic couple. Even though Chris is still the only person they’ve told about their relationship, several people who know them have already witnessed the love they share and as the days continue, others will witness it too.

Chapter 17 - As Buck and Eddie get closer to departing Los Angeles for their international adventure, a moment in time will remind them; life is fragile, tomorrow isn’t promised and every second of everyday should be cherished because everything can change in an instant. The result of that realization will cause them to hold onto each other even more.

Chapter 18 - As Buck, Eddie and Chris prepare for family gatherings before and during the Thanksgiving holiday, the “Santa Ana Winds” start to blow and all sorts of expected and unexpected familial drama ensues.

Chapter 19 - As Buck and Eddie get closer to their wedding day, the universe begins to align everything so that some of their parent and children's relationships are strengthened while others come to an abrupt end.

Chapter 20 - With only 14 days remaining until Buck, Eddie and Chris depart Los Angeles, CA traveling to Rome, Italy, for their first family adventure, an early morning conversation about “tying up loose ends” helps Buck and Eddie realize there are still several things left unfinished on their ‘To Do’ lists. The question is will there be enough time to complete all of them?

Chapter 21 - Buck, Eddie and Chris are finalizing their ‘To Do’ Lists, double checking their itineraries and packing their suitcases in preparation for their trip to Europe so they can board their flight that departs Los Angeles, CA on Friday, December 15, 2023 at 3:25PM.

Chapter 22 - While Buck, Eddie and Chris spend the first 8 days of their European family adventure in Italy, their primary reason for going will be fulfilled as well as several others they hadn’t considered or anticipated.

Chapter 23 - As the Diaz Family continues their Italian family adventure, they’ll say, “Ciao” or hello and goodbye to a lot of things almost immediately after they become an official and legal family.

Chapter 24 - After Buck, Eddie and Chris arrive in London, England on December 24th; the Diazes immediately start preparing to spend their first family Christmas together. During their stay, each of them will hear a few choice words that will be the life raft to get them home to complete their searches to be seen and to be found.

Chapter 25 - After spending more than two weeks in Europe, Eddie, Buck and Chris are back in Los Angeles and they’re getting ready to attend Maddie and Chimney’s New Year’s Eve party. During the event, they have plans to make two surprise announcements but the question is, who’s really going to be surprised, the Diaz family or their found family at the 118?

Chapter 26 - Will be posted soon.

__________

Read chapters 1-25 are available on AO3.

Continue reading on AO3

Chapter 26 will be posted soon.

#buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #christopher diaz #the buckley diaz family #buckley diaz family #The Diaz Family #ao3 fanfic #buddie fanfic #911 fanfic #911 abc #911 on abc #Fanonwriter2023 on AO3 #Chapter 26 will be posted soon #Several Sentences Sunday #Seven Sentences Sunday #buddie wip #“I'm still in love with you but... I needed to learn how to love myself too!”

32 notes · View notes

cosmic-light-fics · 10 months

Note

I just watched the last episode of season 1. And I can’t help but wonder why does Carmy text Syd BEFORE opening the letter Michael left to him ?????

Hello! Sorry it's taken me a while to answer this, I wanted to give you my thorough interpretation of why Carmy texted Sydney first.

It's one of the biggest head scratchers of the season, and I'm not entirely sure my response will cover the entire scope as to why Carmy delayed opening Mikey's letter to him in order to text Sydney. For me, a sizeable part of the answer lies in the way Carmy dealt with his personal problems throughout the whole season.

He's been rightfully called out as avoidant when it comes to addressing other people's emotions, even his own. In the beginning of the season, it is stressed that he is avoiding his sister Natalie who has been trying to reach him ever since he took over The Beef. He won't stop working to acknowledge the feelings he has of losing his brother, but he's trying to be open to it. That's why he winds up going to the Al-Anon meetings. At first, he doesn't speak. He's only at the meetings to listen. But towards the end of the season, when he finally has his big speech, we see Carmy finally ready to talk about Mikey.

Now, how does this relate back to Sydney? I think the glaring thing about their connection is that he is always honest and open with her. Whenever he is upset, he tells her why. Whenever she's upset, Carmy tries to understand why. He always apologizes to her after a dispute and asks if they are okay, if she's okay. I think she's the only person at the restaurant that Carmy's felt comfortable enough to tell about his Al-Anon meetings. There is an implicit trust and respect Carmy has with Sydney (something that steadily grew over the course of the season), and that type of trust bypasses his avoidant tendencies, but not completely.

When he reaches his boiling point in episode 7 and lashes out at Sydney, I think he was too consumed with the to-go disaster to fully grasp what he'd done to drive her away. Sydney put up with a lot of shit that whole season, but the thing that completely pushed her over the edge was Carmy's behavior. And he knew that. But there is some time that passes from Sydney quitting to him finally texting her. In that little pocket of time is his avoidance. This is the first time in the whole season where Carmy doesn't apologize to Sydney in the same day. He avoids contacting her right up until the moment he is about the open Mikey's letter. Even when Tina asks what time Syd would be coming to work, Carmy avoids telling her that Sydney quit, almost like he doesn't want to acknowledge that truth.

Carmy finding Sydney's notebook before Richie gives him Mikey's letter is the catalyst that breaks his avoidance. The truth is plain in his eyes as he looks down at her braised ribs and risotto recipe. He deeply, deeply cares for her as a person and highly respects her as a chef. And I believe undoubtedly that being confronted with something so personal of hers was the wake up call for him to own to his awful behavior.

So when it gets to the scene where we are all expecting Carmy to open Mikey's letter and he doesn't, instead choosing to text Sydney, I believe that the moment shows how the connection he has with Sydney bypasses his avoidant tendencies. He's scared and not forthright with her at the beginning of his texts ("No acid") because he is still not sure how to be completely open, but texting her is the biggest step of him reaching out first to someone he really cares about.

Also, I must add that narratively speaking Carmy already atoned with Mikey at the beginning of the episode in his Al-Anon speech. If he'd had the letter before the speech, I don't think he would have texted Sydney first. And it's hinted throughout the last episode that Sydney was heavily on his mind (ex: a clip of him yelling at her when he's having his panic attack, "you're dressed like Syd," and him staring into her little notebook like it was her soul).

I hope this long ass post makes a little bit of sense. I'm not that great at putting all my jumbled thoughts together cohesively. The biggest thing I wanted to impress upon in this answer to your question was Carmy avoiding the people he cares about, avoiding the emotions that come with being open, and how Sydney is the one person he can't seem to hide from. He always wants to be open with her, he doesn't want to avoid her, even if that means getting out of his own way.

#i could go on about this for hours #thank you for the question tho I really enjoyed finding the thread of my answer #the bear fx #carmy berzatto #sydney adamu #the bear #the bear spoilers #the bear hulu #carmy x sydney #carmen berzatto #sydcarmy #mikey the bear #sugar berzatto #natalie berzatto #richie jerimovich #tina the bear

124 notes · View notes

ncisfranchise-source · 5 months

Text

NCIS: Sydney wrapped the first half of its freshman season by shedding light on Special Agent Michelle Mackey’s tragic past — yet in doing so left us with at least two burning questions.

In the course of investigating this week’s case, Mackey made no secret of the animus she felt toward a POI — Frank Doherty, a onetime petty officer who, decades ago, had abandoned his post.

Toward episode’s end, when Mackey and J.D. unsuccessfully leaned on Doherty to detail his role (or lack thereof) in the murder at hand, a frustrated J.D. bailed on the interrogation. Mackey, alone now with Doherty, shut off the interrogation room mic, as he asked if she, as a helicopter pilot, had ever killed someone, and looked in their eyes while doing it.

Mackey proceeded to detail how she, while a member of Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 169, was stationed in Khost, Afghanistan, several Christmas Eves ago. When three young soldiers wandered off base and wound up on the wrong side of the border, Mackey disobeyed a direct order to stand down and instead grabbed a gunner and a corp man and took flight in a chopper.

The three soldiers were found and scooped up, but the chopper came under fire on the way back to the border. Heavy with fuels and the extra bodies, Mackey’s bird was none too nimble so she could only bring it in for a hard landing a few miles from base.

“The three guys went home to face the music,” she related. “My two went home in body bags.”

Question No. 1, coming out of this sobering share: Why did Mackey mute the mic, leaving J.D. and Evie oblivious to her tragic past?

“She’s a woman who has built a career on being strong and having an armor, and leading with that strength,” NCIS: Sydney star Olivia Swann told TVLine. “I think that, in her mind, showing any sign of vulnerability to her team would change their view of her. She doesn’t think would be helpful for her role as a leader.

“She’s protecting herself but also protecting her team,” Swann continued, “because when you’re out in the field, when someone knows a weakness it shifts their behavior.”

Also, “No matter how close I think we’ve seen [the merged NCIS/AFP team members] start to become, she’s a very guarded person and, I think, finds it difficult to trust people,” says the English actress.

Yet while we now know what defied order led to Mackey facing a court martial, as DeShawn told Evie in the series premiere, Mackey was eventually found not guilty. Question No. 2 is thus: How could that be?

Swann — who told TVLine “we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface” of what she has been told about Mackey’s backstory — affirmed that the question surrounding the court martial outcome is indeed “very interesting, and I can’t wait for whatever episode it is that that comes out, where we find out the whole story.”

#ncis sydney #interview

4 notes · View notes

madame-r · 1 year

Photo

Currently watching Sanditon Season 3 after catching up with the first two seasons.

It’s actually not that easy to find contents or analyzes about this show. If you have some, please send them my way. I won’t dive too deeply into Sanditon myself, but here is my quick take on it.

*SPOILERS*

❤️ What I like :

The Original Soundtrack

Ruth Barrett did an amazing job in Season 1. Here is an interview which dives into her process as a composer.

The Overall Aesthetic

I am not immune to a slick take like Emma (2020) which is visually stunning, but I’ve noticed that my taste in period drama movies and tv shows leans toward a more naturalistic look.

Yes, Pride & Prejudice (2005) atmosphere, especially the cinematography by Roman Osin, ruined me.

Georgiana Lambe x Arthur Parker

It’s refreshing to see a friendship between a woman and a man for once. They balance each other out with one who can’t escape people’s scrutiny and the other being constantly overlooked.

Esther Denham x Clara Bereton

The Frenemies. Somehow despite their antagonistic relationship and their twisted behavior, at the end of the day, they have each other’s back. I want more women’s solidarity in stories.

James Stringer

Second lead syndrom ?

Sydney Parker’s death

Not that I wanted him to die but I enjoy the fact that they didn’t brush it under the rug and showed how this event affected his entourage.

Charles Lockhart

I didn’t see that twist coming. I was sad because I love him and his dynamic with Georgiana and Arthur. But I enjoy hating him while re-watching the show.

They did his character a disservice by bringing him back in the third season. It doesn’t ring true to me. Despite himself, I believe he caught some feelings for Georgiana and Arthur along the way.

Samuel Colbourne

I may have a thing for dark hair light eyes men ? Well, he is definitely less boring than his brother.

❌ What I don't like :

Basically? The romantic relationships.

Charlotte Heywood x Sidney Parker

Alright, yes the sexy low voice of Sidney works on me too. But what’s left when you go beyond physical attraction between them ? A man who belittles Charlotte at every turn.

It’s infuriating how many times she apologizes to him when he just barely apologize to her once.

To put a spin on his love declaration : I do not think that Charlotte is her best self with Sidney.

Esther Denham x Lord Babington

The man wore her down and for him, no means yes. Dude, let the woman become a rich heiress and decides what she wants in life. And the all thing about wanting a baby because it’s what Lord Babington deserves ? It reaaally rubs me the wrong way.

Charlotte Heywood x Alexander Colbourne

Oh the all “let’s hook up with my boss” thing. Charlotte wants to financially sustain herself but tried to be a governess once and then gave up ? Sure, she had to stay in Sanditon for the sake of the show’s name but still...

Also, Alexander is boring because he acts like a male lead, brooding, playing with dogs and riding horses but he is not fleshed out. And how many times can he change his mind in less than ten minutes ? Seriously ?

Too bad, I was really curious about the Colbourne household life. Mrs Weathley is such a mood.

And again : what’s left when you go beyond physical attraction between them ?

#Jane Austen #Sanditon #1800s Book #19th Century #England #Andrew Davies #TV Show #Period Drama #Historical Fiction #Historical Drama #Costume Drama #Blablas

1 note · View note

hangmanshoney · 1 year

Text

I posted 6,349 times in 2022

14 posts created (0%)

6,335 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@peakyrogers

@aayla-securas

@babyrooster

@karihighman

@unicornships

I tagged 659 of my posts in 2022

#glen powell - 261 posts

#top gun maverick - 117 posts

#i love him your honor - 99 posts

#jake hangman seresin - 82 posts

#tom cruise - 70 posts

#chicago fire - 37 posts

#pete maverick mitchell - 37 posts

#miles teller - 36 posts

#criminal minds - 36 posts

#chenford - 33 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#the hoco one was a little tricky since her last scene is the 'what the fuck' one but she's blurry af so i had to choose a different scene...

My Top Posts in 2022:

Okay so I’m a literal bag of emotions rn and tumblr is my unfortunate sounding board, so ima get all this out in one and then ima shut up & go back to just reblogging others until I can control myself again😂 okay? okay. Buckle up.

I know Fire can be heartbreaking & unexpected but that ending was just evil and purely-for-shock value-cruel. Like I know killing off characters for advancement is nothing new here but the way they did that was just so mean to me - I am literally still shaking about it.

And PD?! I cannot believe they think that episode (no matter how incredible the acting) comes anywhere close to the ending / write off that Jesse deserves after dedicating himself for the last 9 - ALMOST 10 - WHOLE SEASONS to this show! And as for that giving justice to his character, show me WHERE?! Because all I saw was so many ooc choices, all to get out of a shitty situation that inevitably led to a complete decimation of years of character development / growth & him being written out in the most confusing af way, as an attempt to keep it even loosely linked to the jay we know and love.

I don’t even know how to feel rn.

I am fuming. Like so, indescribably angry.

But i’m also so proud - of Jesse - of his acting & his hard work & how he’s handled this whole shit show of a situation.

(EDIT - also incredibly proud of hanako’s acting in tonight’s fire ep! If I didn’t already love both Evan & hawkami in general, so much, her performance alone would’ve broken my heart tonight anyway, because my god that girl was good🙌)

And I’m obviously gutted. So completely & utterly devastated.

Honestly do not know if the shows will even sit right with me after this let alone be watchable.

Ima need a minute.

45 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

okay so I know we’re all feeling that chief hawkins is basically the CF writers attempt at a temporary roadblock on the road to getting violet & gallo back together (aka a repeat of granger & sydney on the road to brettsey) , but I’ve come to the annoyingly unsurprising conclusion that im basically in love with him and ngl ima probably throw a fit if they use him suggesting distance from violet as a way to write him out😒😂😩

48 notes - Posted January 13, 2022

Jay running after Hailey running after the suspect?!

If that isn’t THE EPITOME of “I’m going where you go” & “I’d follow you anywhere”?!?!

CANNOT. DEAL.

49 notes - Posted February 24, 2022

can we just talk about:

Hailey’s sheepish but knowing “Are we all checking on me now?”

And Jay & Kev’s exchange of looks before a simultaneous “Yes”

!!!!

Like, yes baby, that’s what happens when you scare the crap outta your unit (protective partner slash husband included) by jumping in the river after a car & then barely take a second to breathe or get checked out before you dive into investigating it.

Gonna give your team and the whole fandom a freaking heart attack😩😂

82 notes - Posted February 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Is it just me, or does this particular chicago wednesday feel like an utter shit show and it’s not even over yet?!

Like i literally feel like I’m watching the entire one Chicago universe implode before my eyes and the writers expect us to be happy about it or at least just move past it & keep watching?!

From that unbearably cruel fire ending to seeing jay turn into the one thing he’s always hated & said he wouldn’t become right before they write him out - I literally cannot think straight besides the sheer heartbroken anger fuelling me rn.

My brain is freaking scrambled and I honestly cannot see how these decisions are gonna get them anything but a loss in fanbase?!

MAKE. IT. MAKE. SENSE.

128 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

0 notes

mrsgiovanna · 2 years

Text

Spending New Year's Eve with team Bucciarati

Listen, I'm feeling really soft and self indulgent, have these HCs of how I think NYE would be with each one of the Bucci gang members

Buon Capodanno 🌟🐞🕊

Warnings: none, only fluff

Bruno Bucciarati

New years eve with Bruno goes one of two ways, but ultimately always ends with the most tender kiss at the stroke of midnight.

Option 1 would be at a secluded corner/ private lounge of one of Naples finest jazz clubs. Impeccably chosen food and drinks accompany the soft jazz music playing in the background.

He would definitely ask you to dance between courses and would time it so that your last dance for the night syncs with the count down, kissing you just as the the count down hits 1.

Option 2 would be a dinner in his yacht. I feel he's still fond of the ocean even after he joined Passione.

All your favorites would be laid out, but you both would be in a more relaxed setting so you'd be dressed more comfortably. You don't mind though, it's a joy to see Bruno with his hair down and the lighter hue his eyes take on when he's in this lighthearted mood.

You'd spend the time reflecting on the year while nestled in each others arms, it's chilly out, so you're both huddled under some blankets, not really keeping track of the time. Your indication of the fact that new year has dropped is the stunning firework display you can see in the horizon, prompting you both to kiss, continuing to revel in each other's company.

Giorno Giovanna

Giorno's plans for you either involves some travel or an elaborate well-planned evening at the villa.

Watching the fireworks display from the Eiffel tower from your luxury penthouse in Paris or the Sydney Opera House depending on what season you're both looking to experience, Giorno will make it happen for you. He wants to create wonderful shared experiences for the two of you so be prepared to be wowed regardless of where you find yourself.

He works hard for most of the year and sees this time of the year as time devoted to just the two of you and the rest of your loved ones, so expect him to be extra affectionate and reflective of the year that was and hopeful for the year to come.

If you'd rather stay at the villa, rest assured that his staff will take care of all the preparations, making sure your glasses are full, the food is perfectly made and the courses are well timed. Weather permitting, Giorno will transform the a little area either in the beach or the balcony into an enchanted alcove for the two of you.

At the stroke of midnight, he'd have a few meaningful fireworks released, and similar to Bruno, you both would kiss and spend the time nuzzled in each other's arms, him placing small kisses to your fave and nestling his head on your shoulder.

He is definitely going to let you know how much you mean to him and how grateful he is to be ringing in the new year with you.

Leone Abbacchio

One of the most memorable places to spend NYE with Leone is at the Teatro Ala Scala in Milan to watch one of the wonderful concerts.

He really appreciates the wonderful music and enjoys seeing you all dressed up, limned by softer lighting in the balcony seats of the theater.

Afterwards he'd protectively drape his arm over you or simply just hold your hand and you'd casually stroll back to your hotel room.

If you both wanted to stay in Naples though, he'd take you to one of the many open air concerts or the Teatro San Carlo and then you would meander your way toward the promenade to watch the stunning firework displays at Castel dell’Ovo.

All in all, he wants to spend this time with you, his persona in Passione is different, allowing you to see facets of his personality that were well hidden, and so on times like this, his focus shifts to you and his own happiness.

Guido Mista

Put on your dancing shoes and sexiest outfit because there's no doubt that you and Mista are painting the town red.

Expect a night of crawling Naples most elite clubs and lounges.

Mista's fun loving nature really comes through during this time of year, he's an astute gangster most of the time who isn't going to be shy about enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Confident himself, he's proud of you as well and wants nothing more than to show you off while having the time of his life. There's no room to be a shrinking violet with Mista, and somehow his infectious laughter and charming personality, he draws out your more outgoing traits as well.

Will use his influence to get you into places that are at capacity and probably already has his private areas booked out and waiting for you both.

At the stroke of midnight this man is breaking out the Cristal, to Mista, life is something that is meant to be celebrated and its never more apparent than in those moments with him.

Pannacotta Fugo

Fugo's celebrations would be steeped in appreciating culture.

Think a traditional dinner, perhaps after going to one of the many concerts that are taking place at the piazza or spend the night at one of Naples wonderful rooftop terrace cafes.

If neither of you are up for going out, he would find it just as precious, if not more so, if you both had a quiet night in

It's not mmediately apparent but he loves warm domestic moments with you. His home life was rather cold and unforgiving, with adults that were very overbearing so when he experiences the safe, living environment you provide for him, he has ti have more moments like that.

As with the other members of Passione, his schedule is insane, so he covets time he can get to spend with you.

He'd help you with making dinner, soft music playing in the background, and you'd spend the rest of the evening watching old movies and chatting until midnight.

Using whatever you're drinking to toast with, he'd say something sweet, albeit a bit cheesy at midnight before you kiss and then go back to cuddling thereafter.

Narancia Ghirga

Any date with Narancia is fun, he has this natural ability to draw out the fun aspects of any situation as just one of his many charms.

He'd excitedly hype up his plans with you without divulging the details for days on end until it finally arrives.

For new years eve, he'd come to pick you up and would start off with a dinner date and similar to Mista, would take you to various places, exploring the best that Naples nightlife has to offer.

He prefers places with an upbeat vibe and open air dance floors and would have a few places in mind for you both to go to.

He prefers to have a few moments alone with you as the midnight approaches and would pull you towards the roof terrace to get the best view of the fireworks that dot the Naples skyline.

Would kiss you as soon as the countdown ends and hugging you from behind, you two would watch the fireworks silently appreciating these moments with each other.

Bonus: Trish Una

New years eve with Trish would be spend rubbing shoulders with Italy's elite.

When she's not on tour, she spends her free time with you, and thus, being available to spend the holidays with you is a rare treat for her.

Her new years eve plans involve an exclusive invite to a private shindig hosted by one of her producers and its natural that you would go as her date.

She would likely get like you guys to go in complementary outfits as you will likely be photographed by the paparazzi

Even though her attention will always beckoned for, she will steal moments away for just you two, and make sure that you two are together and the first person each other sees in the new year.

384 notes · View notes

blushinggray · 3 years

Text

Free! The Final Stroke screeching/reaction (spoilers)

AHHHHH I JUST WATCHED THE FINAL STROKE MOVIE TODAY IN THEATERS ON PREMIER DAY AND IT WAS LAKSJDFOAIFJWOEI to summarize it all, it was Very Gay, which was to be expected but they DID NOT have to get so freaking extra with it 😩😩😩

much screaming and many spoilers ahead

FIRST OF ALL, KIRISHIMA NATSUYA: HE WAS SO FUCKING HANDSOME DAFKJOIEFJOSIDJF. SO HANDSOME. SO HANDSOME AND STUPID AND OVERLY FRIENDLY AS WE LOVE HIM TO BE ALKDSJFOAIEW.

he was in the film for a total of maybe 5 minutes altogether, which was kind of a lot bc the film kind of was just putting all the characters back in for the sake of putting them in imo? for the fans, lol. so everyone could see their faves. and in these five minutes that he appeared, our mans:

bragged about his little brother he's so proud of

got laughed at by nao for being natsuya (aka dumb and straightforward) as usual

trained with sousuke (he was hanging out in the same pool with him, nao, and makoto to train and aid in sousuke's rehab training)

got a call from ikuya after the international swimming competition in sydney!!!! in that same cafe he's always at!!!! and he was with nao at the time he got the call. casual and cool as always, being the cool big brother or whatever. he ended the call with a curt, "you got it. see you. don't catch a cold."

HE WAS HANGING OUT AT CAFE MARON WHILE THEY WAITED FOR THE SYDNEY COMPETITORS TO COME BACK TO JAPAN. HE WAS BEHIND THE COUNTER WITH ASAHI (WHO WAS HOLDING BABY TSUKIMI IN A CARRIER ON HIS CHEST!!!!!) AND HE THREW HIS ARM AROUND ASAHI AND WAS GETTING SO CLOSE LIKE ALKSDJFAOIEJAOEI. I have absolutely no clue what he was saying at the time bc i was too busy freaking out and trying to hold in the sounds bc the theater was so quiet. but his GODDAMN FACE. HE WAS SMIRKING. SO HANDSOME 😩😩😩😩😩😩😩

and of fucking course, they were all out together at a restaurant when the sydney competitors came back, and he was like, "wth no one else is drinking alcohol tonight?" and nao was like "ofc not haha" AND YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

HE FUCKING FALLS ASLEEP AT THE TABLE AFTER DRINKING AND EVERYONE IS SURROUNDING HIM AND PATTING HIM LIKE "dude..." and ikuya is sitting there like, omg can't believe this mess is my brother....

i thought that just might be his last scene in the film but then we show back up to the kirishima household and natsuya is eating some sort of luxury holiday(?) bento and ikuya is like "aren't you gonna save any for me?" and natsuya's like "of course not. this is for me, you gotta wait until next year xD" and then ikuya just fucking SNATCHES up several different foods and stuffs his face with all of them and natsuya starts arguing with him over them laskjdfoawiefjao where was this brotherly affection all this time?????

and then cut to a few seconds later, natsuya's bumming in his room on the floor like in s3 when ikuya comes in and tells him about his new future goals and alskdjfaoei brothers sharing their ambitions together 😩😩 WHAT IS GOING ON. EVERYONE GETS ALONG SO WELL NOW???

NEXT: we'll go back to the beginning i guess lmfao but they're preparing for some sort of university festival

we start off with an easily misunderstandable shoujo-style situation where asahi is talking to ikuya like, "i know it's your first time... you don't have to be nervous. i know you can do it." and ikuya's like "no! i can't 😣" like the tsun he is backed up against the wall. and then it turns out they're trying to make a mille feuille cake.... but everything he's made so far looked like crepes

and for some damn reason, KISUMI comes outta nowhere into the kitchen and is like "ooooh what's this? a mille feuille cake? although they all look kinda like crepes haha ^^" and then ikuya RUNS THE FUCK OUT OF THE KITCHEN, yelling, "i told you i couldn't do it!!!" like the fucking tsun he is... and asahi is yelling at kisumi like "why did you just say that!!!" and starts rubbing his knuckles into kisumi's head and kisumi's just laughing like, "oh did i do that hehe"

and for some reason... seijuurou is working at the booth in his speedo and swim team jacket. i mean i'm not complaining but sir.... PLS TAKE MY MONEY AND GIVE ME YOUR FAT OCTOPUS BALLS. (he literally started a batter mixing competition with hoshikawa inside the booth, like what are they even doing in the same booth???)

then rin and sousuke show up to ikuya, asahi, and hiyori(?)'s booth, and they're offering them the crepes and then they get into a conversation about smth that leads into them showing the embarrassing photos they have of each other?????? like ikuya has a pic of rin in his maid costume for some reason??? (tho it isn't shown) and rin shows an embarrassing pic of ikuya he has in his phone that he got from natsuya???????????? and then ikuya starts chasing after rin yelling at him to delete it lasdkjfoaei

and then haru is off to the side selling ugly ass bird mascots again lmfao. bc ofc he is. love that weirdo

BUT THE REAL KICKER HERE IS KINJOU!!!!!!!!!!!

APPARENTLY, HIS VILLAIN BACKSTORY COMES FROM HIS CHILDHOOD CRUSH (/exaggerated) ON HIYORI ALSKDJFOAIE WHAAAT. apparently he was that annoying kid in the playground who would go up to hiyori and bother him bc he wanted a friend. bb hiyori was literally like "why are you even talking to me so much?" in his sandbox. and bb kinjou is like, "well there's gotta be smth you like, right? what is it?" and hiyori's like "well i feel kinda happy when i'm swimming... :)" as images of ikuya flash into his mind, that gay ass

BUT KINJOU'S GAY ASS EYES START SPARKLING TOO AND THEN HE'S LIKE "I GOTTA LEARN WHAT THE BIG DEAL ABOUT SWIMMING IS" and he runs home, begs his brother to take him to the pool. but next time he brings his swimming stuff with him to the playground, hiyori isn't there anymore and apparently he left for america at that time (or smth). so poor baby basically got ghosted

but hiyori still knows him when they're older!!!! kinjou shows up when they're throwing out the trash after the uni festival and calls out to hiyori to taught him (which is where that bullying preview scene came from i guess) and alkfjeoiaejoaifj omfg it's like that estranged childhood friends (sorta) trope but it'll never go kinjou's way bc hiyori is and will always be in love with ikuya 😔

kinjou would make such a good yandere tho!!!! he has a feral expression on a few times throughout the movie, and during a race he gets super competitive mid-race and... ngl he was kinda sexy 😳 i'm actually kind of surprised by how taken i was with him in this movie. doesn't help that he's unfairly handsome and his hair looks fucking amazing. i MAY OR MAY NOT be exploring this man in the future..................

i also found the ending with haru pretty interesting!!!! it kind of hints at neurodivergence? smth along the lines of disassociation or multiple personalities? (guess 50% off was kinda right on that end lmfao).

he gets obsessed with beating albert wahlander, which is the most fired up i've ever seen him (to the point of almost hurting himself) and then the shadow or whatever effect albert has on haru kind of just overtakes him and pushes haru out of his own body in a way... it doesn't make sense to describe it this way, i know, but haru is literally watching himself say hurtful things to his friends while being overtaken by this... albert obsessed persona?

it's so interesting to see haru being the one obsessing over someone instead of the other way around for once!!! at the end of the movie (after all the credits) haru says the same thing he once said at the beginning of season 1? about how "at age 5, you're a prodigy. at age 15, you're a genius. at age 20(?), you're average." and this is def gonna be explored/concluded in the second part of the final stroke movie so i'm excited for that!!!! april 2022 come at me!!!!

there were SOOOOO many other things going on, plot wise and fanservice wise, and ofc kyoto animation was fucking TOP TIER SHIT. all the water effects... there was a shot where haru was looking at his reflection in the water and they make a drop fall and spread and shake his reflection in the waves and it was lafkjsefoiaeja fucking glorious. the soundtrack was lovely too. there was a RADWIMPS-esque beginning song and a sexy ass electric guitar buildup for kinjou (which may or may not be contributing to my growing obsession with him...)

AHHHH!!!! it was so good and everyone was so cute and handsome and gay and funny. we literally see every single character we've met before in some way, shape, or form lmfao. i might just go back to the theater and watch it again on one of the upcoming holidays this week.... SO GOOD. SO GOOD.

I LOVE ALL THESE GAY SWIMMING BOYS SO MUCH 😩😩😩

#free!#free! the final stroke #misc

38 notes · View notes

scullysflannel · 3 years

Note

top 5 moments of your favorite shows that make you go *cat biting the wire*

this is impossible, I love it

1. paige getting off the train, the americans, “START” — the finality of it makes me wild. it’s the split-second decision that you know is going to change your whole life. she’s never going to see her parents again! they’re never going to see their daughter again! and this is what philip and elizabeth deserve, even if it isn’t what we want for them. they have to face the truth that their kids were born to be a lie. their love for their kids was tragedy, not redemption. they could break away from the job in the end, but the job WAS their kids, too. what all the international intrigue comes down to is a family split apart by secrets. greatest tv finale of all time.

runner-up: developing paige’s photos in the garage in “darkroom.” I love paige making her parents face what they’ve done. twist that knife, babe.

2. “we fucked up with nora,” the leftovers, “the most powerful man in the world (and his identical twin brother)” — (suicide tw) the entire concept of this episode makes me feel like I’m chewing a live wire: kevin going back to purgatory (if that’s what it is), jumping between two versions of himself, the burdened leader and the killer, denying until this moment that he is both of them. he can’t see himself clearly until he accepts that he has a death wish. and the root of his problems is that he pushed love away. by extension that’s the root of the world’s problems, because everyone has a death wish. the fact that the leftovers visually manifests a world destroyed by the inability to love in the image of a man cutting open his own chest, splattering his white suit in blood, while “god only knows” is playing — it’s visceral, it’s hyper-literal. emily nussbaum wrote that the leftovers “erased the line between personal and global annihilation.” you do understand.

runner-up: kevin singing “homeward bound” in “the prodigal son returns.” oh to be a fly on the wall of the writers’ room when they dreamed up purgatory karaoke.

3. “there has to be an end, scully,” the x-files, “requiem” — she’s pregnant with his baby and they have no idea. hello! the thing about this scene that really makes me unhinge my jaw is that mulder and scully know the right thing and can’t do it. they should walk away, but they aren’t ready to. there’s something similarly screwy in each of them, a dedication to the work that makes them hurt themselves. maybe the choice they’re presented with is impossible, because what good person could walk away willingly after what they’ve seen, but it’s still inherently destructive. the one catch is that if they had gone back to oregon together, maybe they would have been able to save each other. but maybe not. the flaw in mulder and scully is the same as the flaw in the show: getting stuck in routine, still doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. and for this one scene they admit, and the x-files admits, it’s not worth it.

runner-up: “there are other fathers” in “never again.” as discussed.

4. kim scheming under the sheet, better call saul, “something unforgivable” — the intimacy and romance of plotting to ruin your old boss’s career! what gets me about the scene is the merging of innocence and danger. I love the cut to kim and jimmy looking sweet under the bed sheet, like it’s a blanket fort, but what kim is baring to jimmy is the darkness in her. when she says she’s just playing, she wouldn’t really take howard down in order to get paid, it’s only a test to see if he bites (haha unless...). she’s thought about this, and she likes it. there’s something radiant and scary in her. @iconicscullyoutfits said in the tags that “moral descent is quiet,” and that’s what I love about the whole show. moral descent starts with caring a whole lot.

runner-up: kim and jimmy throwing beer bottles in “the guy for this.” it’s a sign of what’s coming: they recognize a shared rage in each other. jimmy tempts her, but kim acts first.

5. sydney ripping into vaughn when he asks if she’s okay, alias, “the two” —the season 3 premiere of alias rewired my 14-year-old brain. I just thought she would say she was okay when her ex-boyfriend came by to check on her, because I thought that was what women had to do: say we’re fine. but she's not fine, and she says so. the whole life she used to have before is gone, including her relationship with vaughn. and now he comes by the office to see if she’s okay? the way she rips into him is so satisfying to me; it’s everything I’ve ever wanted a woman to say to a man who asks how she’s doing. “you didn’t come here to see how I am. you came here to see how you are... what you came here for is closure, and there is not a chance you are getting that from me.” I think I have most of it memorized. she refuses to minimize her feelings for his comfort. split my idea of how to live in the world wide open.

runner-up: sydney finds out she’s been missing for two years in “the telling.” cliffhanger of all time.

#anon #unhinged responses I spend hours on while my inbox backs up and I ignore my work #the americans #the leftovers #txf #bcs #alias

69 notes · View notes

yuraimi-lee-bunny · 3 years

Text

GRAY’S CHARACTER ANALYSIS PART III. AMNESIA AND IT’S FUTURE CONSEQUENCES

Hello! Once again: sorry for the lateness 8'D. My work, some illustrations and personal matters have slowed me down again. The good thing is that there is nothing that can be intervened and this week I will be able to go faster with the writing of my analysis. Thank you very much for the continued support you have given to the previous two parts, and I hope you like this one too!

PS: My analysis will continue as normal, I will not mention anything about the recent interview with the show runner of the series. Perhaps that will be done at the end of the analysis or a separate post, by the time Gray's analysis is complete. Besides that I have already been giving my views on what Duane said about Gray. For the moment I just want my analysis to be about everything that I captured and analyzed before the interview.

Here we go!

Goodbye (for now) to Gray/Crackle, and let's say hi to Graham!

As we know, Crackle had all his VILE-related memories erased, and he’s now a happy civilian at his previous job as an electrician at the Sydney Opera House. On a mission to Australia, Carmen finds him but he doesn't recognize her.

Carmen doesn’t understand how it happened and why VILE did it, but for his sake, she prefers to get away from her, because she doesn’t want to complicate the new beginning that Gray/Graham has now in her life.

To be honest, I don't have much to analyze in depth about Gray in these chapters where he has amnesia, even so, there are several points to highlight about him that speak more about his personality in this episode:

1.- When he taking out Carmen with her phrase "No wristband, no backstage access", I think I can safely say that he’s committed to his job, whatever it is. (as an electrician and also a VILE agent)

2.- He has great self-confidence and temperance for having invited Carmen for a coffee, a girl he barely knew but who shows that he has a slight attraction for her.

3.- Well, let's say that this confirms that he likes to be somewhat "naughty" and daring with his actions.

4.- I may be exaggerating here, but I think that with the previous points that I have said, this can also count: It seems that Gray is a punctual person. He arrived before Carmen. (He’s very punctual or he was very excited about the "date")

Ep.6 S1 served as a small introduction by Gray, or rather now Graham, of how now he has amnesia, he doesn't remember anything about VILE, or Carmen, a whole year "disappeared", as well as the decision of Carmen about being away from Gray so as not to complicate his life. Leaving a slight reminder of "you'll still see him again" for us.

Which did happen, in Ep.7 of S2. In addition to the fact that again there are some data that show about his personality, this time the episode left some clues that it was happening to him and the future that would hold him in the following seasons.

1.- It seems that he was serious that this place is his favorite coffee shop, and it seems that he likes coffee.

2.- That tranquility is to be admired. The girl he invited for coffee who looked like she had dumped him, and there wasn’t a hint of anger/resentment/indignation in him. Again, like when they first met: as if nothing had happened. I love that about him. And he continues to correct Carmen about his name. He is Graham, not Gray (not Crackle). It seems somehow that he cares about being told by his respective name, as if the subject of his "identity" is important to him. We will move on to that later.

3.- Can we look this screenshot for a moment, please? Leaving aside the “Red Crackle” feeling that can emerge at this time for many (myself included), I want to talk about the fact that there continues that communication with only the look that they have always had.

The first two chapters of the series showed you several scenes of how Carmen and Gray just by looking at each other communicated what they thought, they knew they wanted to say to each other. I mention this because to me, these glances between them were purposely done with the following objective: Yes, Gray will have had his VILE memories suppressed, but body memory is another matter, the subconscious is something that NOBODY can handle or manipulate. Gray's body responded to Carmen's glances subconsciously, the body responded because of body memory, because it already has that mechanism in the presence of Carmen.

4.- There is a theory/belief that a few weeks ago they shared which if I can believe it 50/50 because it sounds valid. In summary. Since Gray is an orphan, Carmen knew that by mentioning that she runs an international charity for abandoned children, he would not refuse. Because she knows he's an orphan, and it seems that somehow, Gray has had a mark on it. She left you the link.

5.- Again, maybe I'm exaggerating, b Gray/Graham seems to have very good manners.

6.- He likes Rock. (And before I thought it was a slight preview of Carmen's next cappers, but it was only an idea *sobbing*)

7.-

This scene causes me a little laugh because of a personal event and because it shows an interesting side of Gray/Graham:

- Personal event: Several friends and I were watching the episodes of the second season on the day of its premiere, when arriving at this scene, a friend said "Well of course, he will have amnesia but he isn’t stupid" I laughed uncontrollably, and in part, he had a bit of reason.

- This scene in addition to putting tension at the moment because Graham did something that wasn't in Carmen's plans, it shows how Gray/Graham is someone who needs answers/explanations when he something doesn't understand, or when he thinks they lied to him and he just goes to look for them. Because if he were too passive or behaved, he would have stayed to follow orders. Another thing he could do is just make judgments from his perspective, regardless of reality. But no, he stood up, and he couldn't wait another second for the answers. The truth is something that matters to him. And I think he's also somewhat rebellious. He makes sense because throughout the series it's noticed as if he wants/needs something, certainly does what he needs to do. I consider him too independent and confident that he can achieve it.

8.- His peculiar expression of surprise: Crikey.

9.- Another reminder that his subconscious and unconscious have memories of what he lived in VILE.

10.- Beautiful Red Crackle scenes that in addition to adding feeling, actually matter a lot for Gray / Crackle's empathy in the future, but that will be for part 4 of the analysis.

11.-

…Seriously Gray? EXCUSE ME Graham. SERIOUSLY? You fell, you could have hit severely or even broken something, Carmen cares about you, and instead of saying "I'm fine" do you say "It's Graham"?! ... Seriously he cares a lot about the name and identity.

As you can see, in this episode there was more about Gray and his personality, but it also hinted that there are still vestiges of memories in the back of his mind of that year in VILE and of having been Crackle. It's very curious about how Graham trusts Carmen so much, I think I know the reasons behind it, the first is because he has an attraction towards Carmen, but the most important are two: the first is because he already knows more about her, because Carmen had the confidence to ask him for help in one of his missions and to tell him in some way what she does. The second reason, again: his subconscious. As I mentioned in the previous analysis parts, Gray appreciated Carmen very much, and although before he could mistake it as "loyalty" and see her as her family, he still appreciated her very much. Her subconscious, her body, her instinct is still there, so I don't hesitate to defend her when she was in trouble with Neel. (His desire to help Carmen was greater than the "great memory and liking" he previously had for Crackle Rod.)

And well, now, let's move on to two last things before ending this episode:

1.- ACME is targeting Gray. Once again, we were told that it would not be the last time we would see him. More events awaited him.

2.-

This phrase left me so thoughtful when I watched it. It left me thinking TOO MUCH.

It left me pondering that phrase so much because I didn't understand why that mattered so much to him. We talked about how Gray/Crackle came into VILE, he agreed to be a villain, he basically agreed to be "bad guy" And now that he has amnesia, he cared about being on the right side. Which I didn't understand because Crackle's memory had been "erased". He had only "eliminated" him the whole year that he lived in VILE, just that. Doing that doesn't change his morale, because Gray had already arrived at the "Vocational School" with his morale of wanting to steal, he was already ambitious before joined to VILE. Which had me very intrigued, believing that something had happened to Graham, in that period of his "normal life" that had made him reconsider his morals and that now he wanted to do something good. I expected everything, whatever, except the change in morals. And so, wild first 5 minutes from S4 comes...

... are you telling me that EVERYTHING Gray thought, did and said in his state of amnesia... WERE LIES!?

I really couldn't believe it and that puts an absolutely huge twist on Gray's arc. Although my boyfriend and I are with a certain difference in perspective to what Maelstrom said:

When he mentioned “suppress the criminal impulse” to me he meant that VILE changed his morale, that they basically took away that “evil impulse” so that he wouldn’t be caught again by the law should it happen at some point. Ensuring that with memory removed and morale changed, VILE was safe.

My boyfriend on the other hand, interpreted it that they only took away the "desire to steal", nothing more. His morals, his beliefs, everything about him remains the same, except wanting to steal or do something criminal. Believing that in reality, Gray is a good person, since before entering VILE.

The perspective of my boyfriend is interesting to me and that is why I want to share it, to know what you think, and also mentioned it because this perspective will be taken up again in part 4 of the analysis.

And here concludes the third part! I hope you liked it. Parts 4 and 5 will be a bit long because it’s the most dense and symbolic part of Gray to analyze, but at the same time, they will come out on time faster, it may be that in the following week both parts are ready and published. Regards!

Part. I Introdution

Part. II Empathy vs Ambition

Part. III Amnesia and it’s Future Consequences (HERE)

Part. III.5 Graham Calloway: The Walking Enigma

Part. IV Integrity At a high (and unfair) price

Part. V The final decision and a new beginning

Plus 1. Gray and his strange habit of explaining things

Plus 2. Crossover: Sabrina And Gray: New Beginning

Plus 3. Crossover: Hawk/Eli and Crackle/Gray: Redemption

#carmen sandiego #graham calloway #red crackle #carmen sandiego netflix #graham crackle #carmen sandiego 2019 #eve's analysis #graham #gray #crackle

111 notes · View notes

miracleonice87 · 3 years

Note

Mat with “Are you cold? Let’s cuddle, it’ll make you warmer.”

The last autumn request for now 🎃

_____

October 1 was one of your favorite days of the year. It marked the true start of two of your favorite seasons — Halloween and hockey.

With only three days before the Islanders’ regular season would begin, and since the boys had the night off, you and some of the other WAGs you were close with decided to throw an impromptu Oktoberfest celebration at Matt and Sydney’s. Syd ordered takeout from a local German restaurant and the rest of you brought along your favorite fall desserts and adult beverages. The night would be a low-key end to the summer and a kickoff to the organized chaos of the season.

You sat around the fire pit with the girls, sipping your favorite cider that Mat had picked up from a brewery on his way home from practice, and you found his gaze across the backyard. He stood with a beer bottle in his hand, circled up with Tito, Casey, and Marty, though he was too focused on you to be mindful of what they were saying. You smiled at him softly, and he couldn’t help but mimic your warm expression, sending a wink your way. You were lost in your own little world until, just as Tito nudged Mat playfully and knowingly to bring him back down to earth, Sydney’s voice shook you from your own thoughts.

“So, how’s school going, babe?”

Your head snapped in her direction and she followed your stare to the object of your distraction. Looking back at you from Mat, she chuckled and shook her head, and you felt your cheeks heat up from being caught and decided to move on.

“School is good,” you answered matter-of-factly, referencing your masters program, folding your hands around your glass. “If all goes as planned, I’ll be done in December.”

Sydney’s eyebrows shot up and Megan and Kristy clapped lightly as you looked down bashfully. You rolled your eyes and breathed a chuckle, putting a hand up and jokingly acknowledging their round of applause.

“And… other things…” Kristy questioned in a singsong tone. “Other things are going well, too?” You tried to hide the smile creeping onto your cheeks by pressing your lips together, but it burst forth anyway, along with a joyous giggle.

“Yeah,” you concurred airily. “Yeah, other things are good too. Really good.”

“Personally I think our little Maty boy is just waiting for her to finish school before she gets a rock,” Syd quipped from behind her wine glass, taking a long sip as she smirked at you. You widened your eyes and popped your jaw at her, shaking your head in disbelief. Though, you shouldn’t have been surprised, as there was nothing that Syd and Marty loved more than chirping you and Mat about your relationship and when he was going to “close the deal,” in Marty’s words. In fact, Mat was getting much of the same ribbing across the lawn, though you didn’t hear it.

“Syd, stop,” you warned, not sounding as firm as you’d intended to because nervous laughter had escaped your lips along with those words. “You’re bad.”

“Maybe, but she’s also probably right,” Megan offered with a giggle.

“Guess we’ll find out, huh?” Kristy added with a grin.

“Oh, speak of the devil!” Sydney exclaimed, focused behind you, as you felt something being draped across you. You touched the fabric to your shoulder and glanced up to see that it was Mat, covering your bare shoulders with his army green jacket. You beamed up at his adoring expression, taking your hand in his.

“Hi,” you greeted. “Hey, you,” Mat muttered, squeezing your hand. “Marty’s gonna start a fire,” he told you as the rest of the guys made their way over to your group.

“Oh, awesome. Sydney’s gonna start a rumor,” you retorted loudly, sticking your tongue out at her as she scrunched her nose at you.

“Wait, what?” Mat asked with a chuckle as he looked between the two of you, nudging your knee with his to get you to stand. You obliged and snickered. “Oh, nothing,” you lied.

As Mat took your place in the oversized Adirondack chair, he pulled your hips down to sit in his lap once he’d gotten comfortable. You pulled his jacket tighter around you as you sat on the edge of the chair between his knees. Mat squeezed your upper arms and smoothed his hand over your hair. Absentmindedly, as the two of you sat listening to your friends instruct Marty on how best to light the bonfire, Mat pulled tendrils back softly and let his fingertips linger along your jaw and neck, making you shiver.

“Are you cold?” Mat asked softly behind you, his deep voice only adding to your shuddering. You looked at him over your shoulder, nodding, though you both knew that the autumn air wasn’t the only thing giving you a chill.

“Let’s cuddle, it’ll make you warmer,” he suggested, curling his index finger and closing one eye, coaxing you to come closer him. You, of course, gave in, scooting further back on the chair and leaning your back against his chest, his arms immediately wrapping you up from behind. You both sighed contentedly as the flames began to rise from the fire pit before you.

“I love fall,” you mused after a moment of watching the fire pop and flicker. Mat chuckled and kissed the top of your head, knowing your affinity for the season better than anyone.

“And I love you,” he retorted. Your head fell to his shoulder and you looked up at him in amusement.

“That was cheesy,” you murmured, his pretty eyes meeting yours once more. You kissed the underside of his jaw lightly and added, “But I love you, too.”

#writing prompts #my writing #prompt list #mat barzal #mat barzal writing #mat barzal blurb #mathew barzal #mathew barzal writing #mathew barzal blurb #hockey blurb #nhl blurb #nhl writing #hockey writing

164 notes · View notes

freeseafirefly · 3 years

Text

Ob[li]vious (RinHaru fanfic)

Since I'm back to the fandom after a 7-years-hiatus (not that i ever stopped loving these idiots) and have just learned some exiting things like a new movie coming out on the date Harurinralia episode aired, RinHaru advertizing Tokyo Olympics merch etc, you can imagine what an emotional mess I am rn. Also, i've rewatched the anime and read some things i haven't yet read (like Season 1 novel), and all the feels are so fresh as if i'm back to 2014 T_T Thank you, Free!, for being my time machine. Thank you, RinHaru fandom, for being strong over the years, I love you all sfm T_T

Anyway, there's probably tons of RinHaru Olympics fanfiction (gonna catch up on it), but I couldn't help it once my head started imagining this. It's nothing much, no plot and non-native engrish, but i want to contribute something to this fandom, too. Also, it's probably a parallel universe cause it's Sydney Olympics. Idk. I just wanted it all in one :)

Read on AO3 or under the cut

“Haru…!” Rin chokes out as he claps his hand against the wall and watches the familiar slender shape cleave the air over his head, all in one heartbeat that seems like eternity.

It’s the same as in elementary school. The same as in the second grade of high school. As in a number of dreams Rin had over the years. The same, yet much, much louder.

...The crowds on the stadium lose their minds as Haru slices his way through to the end of the pool, a ferocious underwater lightning that seems to warp space and time themselves, and the moment he touches the wall the world goes white with noise.

Shining.

It’s the shining of the Olympic Gold.

Rin drifts back to reality, at least some limited version of it, to the feeling of Haru's body crushing against his in a stormy hug, and they're both screaming, God knows what, just as the rest of their relay team and the Olympic Sydney and probably the whole freaking world right now.

And Rin can almost process it, flashing before his eyes in an almost coherent sequence of images: years of ups and downs—Haru—their best team—his father’s proud shadow—Haru’s laughter—Japanese flags everywhere— But for an endless moment, the spinning world freezes, and it’s only him and Haru. Alone. They’re together in this place of dreams, right on the spot where Haru broke out of his shell and found his passion, eyes shining and wings unfurled; and Rin can barely breathe as he squeezes him in return, something irrepressible exploding in his chest. And Haru laughs , all tears and sweat and dripping water that leave a salty taste on Rin’s lips because at this moment, it seems only natural to press a kiss to the side of Haru’s neck and then breathe out: “We did it, Haru! We fucking did it...!”

He doesn't think about how gay it must look, and he doesn't have the time to, actually, because the next moment the world picks up full speed, and it's not just him and Haru but their whole team in a jumbled heap of dorks going nuts on the poolside because they have the fucking right.

The locker room is a mess, too. They sing and shout something jolly and off-key and victorious, kiss their gold medals, drink non-alcoholic beer because some of the guys still have races tomorrow, but Rin is still drunk and he can’t quite feel the ground under his feet. They have to sober up a bit for some government officials to congratulate them on the phone with high words about the honor of Japan and the historical achievement; then for the press to ask them some obligatory, obvious things. What do you mean what I’m feeling right now? I am HAPPY! What? Me kissing Haru? Of course I would kiss him all over again because WE FUCKING DID IT! Hey, Haru! But Haruka is not by his side as he’s probably answering some stupid questions, too, and Rin just laughs, blows kisses into the camera I LOVE YOU ALL! and rushes back to hook himself into the jumping circle of his precious teammates, coaches and staff, and sing the hymn once again.

The emotional burnout afterward is real. They walk down the street in deafening silence, he and Haru, just two ordinary guys in their everyday clothes as if they weren't THE BEST IN THE WORLD mere minutes ago. Hell, they still are. Rin can barely keep in the giggles that are bubbling in his chest. He feels like they’re some galactic heroes in disguise. It’s freaking awesome.

Haru is silent, though, probably still not quite back to it, or maybe he’s just being Haru again. Rin leaves him be.

Sydney fusses around them, colorful and bright, all dressed in olympic yet still the same familiar Sydney that once broke his bones and watched him drown with these bright cold eyes. Yet Rin loves Sydney. Look at me now, he thinks proudly. Look at me.

But Sydney doesn’t care to look, too busy in its daily routine, too large. They could’ve just taken a taxi to the station, but somehow, without sparing a word, they both decided it’s a walk. Sometimes Rin wonders if they’ve already reached that level of synchrony where they just don’t need words. It’s been years, after all. Mostly spent apart, but still. It’s not so hard to read Haru when you know him through. Not hard at all.

Yet now, he keeps dead-silent, and keeps not looking at Rin, and Rin begins to feel uncomfortable.

Is it that kiss, after all…?

Rin tries to think back, through his most recent memories which are a mashup of the wildest moments of his life, back to that moment. And his body immediately flushes with heat from the vividness of it.

...Haru’s skin is silky and smooth, and his wet hair are soft between Rin's fingers. Haru’s hands are squeezing Rin so tight there must be bruises on his back. Haru’s taste is… Haru-like. Rin can still sense it on his lips. He sucked it in too hungrily, absolutely in a non platonic way. At the mere thought, a sweet wave washes through his body from head to toe, making his every nerve buzz. Rin chokes on a breath and stumbles.

“Fuck,” he murmurs.

Haru flinches slightly but still doesn’t look his way.

The reality begins to sink in. Rin is an idiot.

It does look gay. Totally.

Rin sees the photos on their train ride—mostly the screenshots various people mailed him—when he jams a cap over his hair and fishes his phone out of his pocket, absently going through his inbox. All the messages are a crazy mess of emoji and caps YOU DID IT WERE SO PROUD OF YOU and they all end up mentioning that kiss. Rin curses under his breath and switches his phone off.

Shit.

And of course, of course where they have to be heading now is that exact same room in that same freaking hotel because Haru called Rin on the night before their flight and said he must book it.

That was a joke, moron! Rin palmed his feverish face, for once relieved they're talking on the phone, no video.

Yeah, I figured, Haruka said, and Rin registered—or imagined?—notes of sadness in his voice. But I thought it's a nice idea for a good luck tradition…

How is it a good luck tradition if we can't stay there before the tournament? Rin moaned, because obviously, they would be living and training with the national team in the Olympic village, what is this airhead even thinking?

Then we'll stay there afterward, Haru said matter-of-factly. It's the intention that matters. Book it.

It won't be available anyway, Rin sighed with exasperation.

Do it, Rin.

And just like that, Rin succumbed and went on to book the damn room, his face hot and his heart jumping and missing beats. Because it’s one thing when it's a mistake, and it’s a whole other freaking thing to do that on purpose, clicking all the OK buttons under the "1 double bed" "ensuite bathroom" shit and the pictures of the said bed and the said bathroom behind the glass.

And of course, of course it just ought to be available for that exact date. Holy fuck.

There would be times when Rin would seriously consider confessing. He would even go through the most romantic places in his head and compose the most perfect, totally non cliched lines. In his imagination, it would all be sakura petals and city lightscapes, breathtaking views, fancy restaurants with the best mackerel dishes and—if he let his imagination wander off further—private pools and night beaches. He knew it obviously wasn’t a good idea, but he also knew he would jump into it someday. Probably. When they’ve achieved their dream and he’s desperate enough and—

And what? Haru—suddenly—likes him back?

Rin knew Haru liked him, probably even loved him, but not in that way. Obviously not in that way.

...But now, just like that, everything is out in the open, and there’s no meaning in confessions anymore. Rin clenches his sweaty hands as panic begins to engulf him, slowly like a tide.

They walk the last stretch past the quay, and somehow it feels so nostalgic as though they used to live here, not spent a couple of nights some years ago. The city skyline across the water is drowning in the purplish haze of the evening as the night draws closer. So does their destination. Rin feels nausea tugging at his insides.

His voice is a crack as he finally braces himself and says, “There on the poolside... Sorry. I lost it.”

It does not rip through the thick silence between them. Somehow, makes it even heavier.

...This is not how Rin pictured their post-victory evening. In his thoughts, it would be a blur of merry partying involving blissful laughter and bright sparkles in Haru’s eyes, as well as touching words of eternal friendship, team spirit and camaraderie; and the most intimate feeling of love finally intertwined with the joy of the achieved dream would be only for Rin to bask in, drown in, his deepest secret. It was never supposed to confuse and burden Haru. It was never supposed to come out for the whole world to behold.

Now, it must be all over the news. A spur-of-the-moment Olympic coming out... The Japanese Team lets passion speak after the dramatic victory... The Pride Flag rises high in the Olympic Sydney... Rin hisses under his breath.

He's fucking ruined it.

“It won't happen again. Ever,” he finds it important to add. Like it somehow can turn back the tide, fix things and make Haru—along with the rest of the world—just forget.

“Eh?” Haru's voice comes barely audible through the thick beats of pulse in Rin's ears, and the sound of his steps halts.

Haru...halts.

Rin flinches and turns around.

“Ever... Again...” Haruka's lips move without producing a sound. He still doesn’t look at Rin. The bangs fall over his eyes like a shadow.

Rin is confused.

...until something rings alert in his memory. It was one of Rei's talks while Rin was teaching him swimming on the evenings. “...He had been out of it ever since that loss to you. And in the Regionals, it's like he finally collapsed. ‘Will I never swim with Rin again...?’ He seemed devastated.”

Rin was... shaken once again by Rei's revelation. "I won. It means I don't have to swim with you ever again. Ever." He never knew his words had affected Haru that much back then.

It was another grain of hope, another detail Rin attached to his imaginary “signs puzzle”, too eager and incautious. He knew it was a bad idea, he fucking knew it right from the start, and today it finally overflowed, breaking through the barrier of his self-control.

“Ever. Again.” Haru repeats in a firmer voice, his lips twitching in a scoff. And when he raises his head at last, his eyes are a flash of blue blazing Rin’s heart: “Are you chickening out now?”

Rin gulps. Heat flushes the back of his neck. “I’m not...! It’s my fault, ok. You don’t have to comment on it to the press. Just tell them they can go to hell. I’ll do the explaining.” It’s my fault. You shouldn’t be dragged through that shit. You can’t let it affect you, Haru…

“Rin.” He still can’t read through the calmness of Haru’s voice, and maybe even Makoto wouldn’t. “It is you who cares about these things. I never did.”

...and Rin feels all the air being squeezed out of his lungs. He’s back to that horrible, devastating moment in the dark changing room when Haru yelled at him almost the exact same words, “What future? What dreams? It’s you who cares about these things! I’m not like you...!”

Rin forces air back into his lungs. Now, Haru seems rather steady. It is Rin’s voice that trembles as he says, “Like hell you don’t care… wasn’t it you who stopped in the middle of the pool once because of all the pressure?”

“It wasn’t because of the pressure,” Haru denies right away. "It was because I couldn’t understand why I must feel pressured. I just wanted to swim. Not to please the public.”

“You mean… This thing now doesn’t bother you either?”

“Why must it?”

Rin chuckles as he exhales, “Right. You’re the guy who would undress in the middle of a shop to dive into an aquarium, after all…”

Rin's knees almost give out with relief. He’s been an idiot to fear that Haru may leave this path—the path he’d once chosen and never wavered since then—just because of some stupid public scrutiny. And no, Haru's also wrong, because this shit doesn't really bother Rin on itself—but only as far as it affects Haru.

Haruka just nods seriously, his eyes—deadly focused blue lasers—never leaving Rin’s. “If this issue is settled, let’s talk about the important stuff. You kissed me, Rin.”

“I-I thought we’ve just been talking about it,” Rin says in a small voice, panic returning and hitting him like a wave. Right. Publicity is one thing; but what happened between them still stands, and it can't be brushed away just like that. “Haru… I’m sorry. I was carried away by all the feels. It's nothing. It’s not like I… want anything, you know…” he trails off.

Breathe, Rin. Just breathe.

“So, you are chickening out. Even with the gold medal on your chest.”

“I’ve said that I’m not!” Rin clenches his fists in desperation. "God, what do you want me to say now? The obvious? Wanna laugh at my misery...?” No, Haru wouldn’t laugh, he would feel guilty and sad, like that winter when they were 13, and it’s even worse. “Want it to ruin everything we’ve achieved together...?”

“Ruin?” Haru closes the distance between them in a few firm steps like he means it, and halts only when they’re inches apart. Are they being too loud...? Right, they’re still on the quay… Rin backs off until his ass bumps against the railing. But Haru probably wants to push him into the water because he closes those last inches, too, and presses their foreheads together. “Ruin...like this?” his breath soughs across Rin’s parted lips, “—or maybe like this?” And then it’s not just air, but a touch, too. Hot, angry, gentle, wet, greedy— short. Too short. “You’re such a drama queen, Rin.”

...Passers-by continue walking past them as if the world hasn’t just shaken and ground to a halt. Nobody even looks their way. Ok, this is Sydney, not Iwatobi, not like it’s too big of a deal here, two guys standing like this on the quay and— wait, what…?!

“Haru… Do you… too…”

“Obviously. I do.”

“Since when…?”

“Since forever. I thought you knew.”

“Me? Knew…?” Rin barely recovers enough to peel his hands off the metal and clasp them on Haru’s forearms lest he disappears, and everything is another dream, and Rin is the biggest idiot again. “How on earth? Why couldn’t you just say anything?”

“...wasn’t sure you feel the same,” Haru grumbles.

“Oh? Wasn’t it obvious ?” Rin asks in a mocking voice.

“It kinda was.” Haru is still agonizingly close, just enough a distance to look into each other’s eyes, yet he keeps glancing down at Rin’s lips, and each of these glances releases a jar of butterflies in Rin’s stomach. “You’ve been staring at me with these lovestruck eyes since elementary. But it also could have been that you’re just an idiot, so.”

Rin digs his nails into his skin, outraged but too messed up to come up with a witty response in a second, since another second Haru adds, his voice soft and suddenly not so confident anymore: “Anyway... I was afraid to screw up everything, and before the Olympics, too.”

“Now who is the drama queen?” Rin whispers, tentatively sliding his hands up Haru’s arms, sensing goosebumps popping up under his fingertips.

“It’s still you,” Haru smiles and kisses the tear off Rin’s eyelashes.

I want to add the hotel part, of course, once i finish it. So, let me know what you think about it so far! Love you all <3

#rinharu #harurin #rin matsuoka #nanase haruka #sharkbait #free!#free! fanfiction #my fic

21 notes · View notes

glimmerofawesome · 3 years

Text

This is Sam Kerr: A superstar with elite sport in her blood

In the white-walled hallway of the Kerr residence in Perth, Roxanne Kerr has a framed photo of the moment her daughter’s image was projected onto the sliding-shell roof tiles of the Sydney Opera House. In the darkness, the profile of an airborne Sam Kerr sails above the waters of Sydney Harbour, backlit by triangles of yellow and green to celebrate Australia’s successful World Cup 2023 bid.

“Your daughter’s on the Opera House — how is that?” says Roxanne, dreamily.

The family treasure it all the more because through it, they glimpse Sam as she was when, aged eight, she walked through some hills and decided that if the other kids were rolling down, the least she could manage was a backward tuck. “And she just taught herself,” says Roxanne. “It amazes me that she can still do it at her age. It shocked me. The first-ever time she did it for the Matildas, she didn’t land properly, but now that’s all people want to see.”

Yet her daughter is just like every other, in that she often neglects to keep her parents in the loop. Roxanne is used to seeing Sam stare back from banners in Australian shopping centres. Normal, too, are the texts from family and friends captioned: “Look who I’ve bumped into.” But the small matter of her springing from the side of the continent’s most iconic building slipped Sam’s mind, as did her international debut in Canberra in 2009.

“She loves us to travel and watch her games, but she doesn’t like a lot of fuss,” says Roxanne. “She didn’t even tell us that she was going to get a cap. She never tells me anything because she’s too embarrassed, too shy. I have a friend who cuts out every single newspaper article. She must have seen the Opera House on Facebook.”

Roxanne called Sam, who said, simply: “It’s nice, isn’t it, Mum?”

You wonder if Kerr Junior would describe winning the Champions League today (Sunday) in the same terms or if she’ll be able to muster any words at all given her manager at Chelsea, Emma Hayes, spent the hours after reaching the final in a haze of joyful tears.

Her itinerant career comprises a shower of titles from three continents, her spell at Chelsea — where she is understood to be earning £500,000 a year — providing more than half the silverware. Previously, she would play in the US over the summer and then, come October, return home to Australia to compete in the W-League. Success against Barcelona today would yield her sixth winners’ medal for Chelsea in 497 days, having made her debut on January 5, 2020. It would also make her the third Australian to play in a Champions League final, close to two years on from becoming the first to score a World Cup hat-trick. Fewer than five Australians have ever represented either senior Chelsea team.

Kerr (right) celebrates the Fran Kirby goal that sealed Chelsea’s 4-1 win over Bayern Munich and fired them into the Champions League final (Photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

From her car in Perth, where she has run on her lunch break, Roxanne tells The Athletic how she found out her daughter had signed for Chelsea. She and Sam’s grandmother, Coral, had flown to Chicago, where Kerr was racing towards the NWSL Golden Boot, and entered her apartment to see a blue Chelsea shirt. “And nobody was allowed to know because she didn’t want it out before Chelsea announced it,” she says. “I was very excited, because I love London. I thought I would have had four or five trips by now.”

Kerr’s arrival on UK shores garnered unprecedented media attention — photographers were docked at Heathrow to capture her wheeling her way through international arrivals and followed her all the way to the waiting black cab — and this season’s Women’s Super League Golden Boot has left her and Hayes vindicated after a tricky first few weeks; not that there was ever any real doubt she would come good, but only this season has Kerr been able to show us the full contents of her armoury.

“I’m so happy for her,” says Roxanne, “because she didn’t score in those first couple of games and she’s so used to scoring. Every time she spoke to me, it was about the cold — she really struggled with that. We watched every game and she was nearly there, but I could see that she was beating herself up a little bit.” Kerr’s mum doled out the usual pearls of wisdom: “You’re trying too hard and it will come.”

“She wasn’t putting away goals that she normally would do with the eyes closed. I think she was just so nervous. But once she got that first one, you knew that it would start happening because she gets a rhythm and a confidence, and she’s happy.”

On current form, a third Ballon d’Or nomination feels inevitable. Her closest rival is Chelsea team-mate Fran Kirby, though it is a stretch to say the pair are in competition, they have instead glided through the season with their irresistible glee and elan, combining for 52 of the club’s 120 goals.

The moment it clicked for Kerr was when, after months of being assisted by Kirby and a year on from her Chelsea debut, she was finally able to return the favour as her strike partner scored four against Reading in January. “From then on, I was like, ‘OK — this is going to become something now. I’m going to make it my goal to not only get goals off Fran, but to help her score’,” she said. “When we play fast football, no one can keep up with us.

“When you give the ball to Fran, you know you’re going to get it back. Whether I’m making a run to take a defender away or making a run to get the ball, it’s always easy to play with her because she’s so unselfish. I don’t even have to look. I just know that Fran’s going to be there. It looks telepathic.”

Perhaps they were fated to play together. Maybe there is an alternate universe in which Kirby and Kerr never met. It could easily have been this one; 14,528 km separate Kirby’s birthplace in Reading from Kerr’s in East Fremantle, Western Australia. Kerr might never have picked up a football — she began her sporting career, famously, as an Australian Rules player until the opportunities in that sport dried up for girls when she was 12 — were it not for a visit to her cousin’s house shortly after quitting her first love. She initially refused a trial for the state side. Roxanne recalls the coach telling the family Sam was the first person to ever say no to him.

A young Kerr adorns the programme for the 2006 Qantas National Youth Championships for Girls

Then there was the injury in 2015: a Lisfranc fracture, where the metatarsal bones are dislodged and the foot, to put it simply, falls apart. Or, in Roxanne’s words, the bones “spread like there’s no support. It really can be career-ending”.

It nearly was for Kerr, whose Olympics dream was left hanging by a thread. She had a plate fitted in her foot and the Australian Olympic Committee wanted her back for their Olympic qualifiers in Japan. Roxanne drove her to the local park and would “video her running so they can see how she was, and I could just tell that there was no way she was going to get there. She always says, ‘I don’t realise how much I love football until something like this happens’.” Kerr made it to the Olympics though, later saying: “I had many conversations crying on the phone to Mum, telling her I didn’t want to do it any more.”

And there is the fact that Sam might not have ended up in Australia at all had her ancestors not upped sticks decades before she was born.

Roxanne’s father hails from Cork in Ireland — born in 1931, he recently turned 90, making him the oldest of 101 (yes, 101) grandchildren — and her mother’s side are from England.

Kerr’s grandmother on her maternal side was the only child of six to be born in Australia as both families emigrated by ship — “It took forever and I suppose half of them were convicts,” says Roxanne — landing in Freemantle, near Perth, with a £10 stipend.

Many who made the journey to Australia in the early 20th century were British migrants seeking a more prosperous life in another part of the Empire. After the First World War, Australia sought to expand its population in the event of further conflict and its government offered assisted passage, jobs and land grants to potential arrivals.

“Fremantle is where the heart of football is,” Roxanne adds.

On Baal Street, Palmyra, tucked behind spindle-fingered trees, stands the russet silhouette of the Sunlight Bakery. It is a museum now, due to restoration by the local council circa 1988, and you wonder how many of those who walk between the shelves lined with pewter kettles and ersatz bread know it was run by Kerr’s great grandparents in its heyday.

“They used to deliver the bread by horse and cart,” says Roxanne. There is a photograph in the State Library of Western Australia of a horse, Barney, guiding a rickety cart with “Bakers” painted on one side in white. Roxanne’s father became a sheet metal worker, helping build the now-demolished railway lines along the south.

Roxanne’s great grandmother purchased huge plots of land and gave them to her 14 children as wedding presents. Back then, Roxanne’s parents were allowed to keep racehorses in their back garden. Her uncle, JJ Miller, won the 1966 Melbourne Cup — the country’s most famous horse race — on a horse called Galilee. Her cousin, David Neesham, represented Australia in water polo at three Olympics and was inducted into the Water Polo Australia Hall of Fame in 2010. Her other cousin, Danny, is 73 and still riding horses, making him, Roxanne claims, “the oldest jockey in Australia”. There are “probably about 10 Australia Rules footballers” in the family, Roxanne says, including her father, some uncles and her son Daniel — Sam’s brother, 10 years her senior. Her husband, too.

Maybe such a sprawling family — Roxanne is one of 10 children — was always, by the law of averages, bound to spawn some sporting talent. The introduction of Sam’s father, Roger, makes the gene pool more enviable still, and there can be few families, barring the Osmonds and the Jacksons, with as many Wikipedia pages between them.

Born in Calcutta, Roger’s English father was a featherweight boxer for Bengal and his Indian mother played basketball. India had just gained independence from British rule: Coral Kerr, his mother, worked for a British paint company and his father, an Anglo-Indian, on the railways. Amid the violence of India’s final partition, they moved to Australia. The original plan had been to move to Melbourne but doctors warned that Roger’s father would struggle with the cold. They arrived in Perth when Roger was 10.

His and Roxanne’s introduction was something of a meet-cute. “He lived around the corner from me and I was riding past on my bike and we had a little bit of an altercation because of his dog,” she recalls, “My friend said one day, ‘Would you like to come and meet these really nice people that just moved over here?’ and it was him. I’m like, ‘These are the people we had a fight with last week!’”

They flew Coral back to India for an Anglo-Indian reunion and learned that she’d had an ayah, or a nursemaid, as well as “someone to sweep the floor, someone to walk the children to school, someone to take the children at lunch. She got taken to work every day and came home and everything was done, so she never learned how to do anything”. Aged 28, Coral then arrived in Australia with no domestic skills. “She went to the butcher and she bought sausage meat to make mince curry,” says Roxanne.

Roxanne’s uncle Michael was a professional Aussie Rules footballer and Roger moved in opposite.

“He grabbed Roger and took him to football, and something clicked,” says Roxanne proudly. He played more than 100 times in seven years of professional football. The highs and lows of his playing, and later coaching, career informed Roxanne’s handling of Sam as her daughter’s career lurched from fledgling to its apogee.

“Once you get up there, people just want to knock you down, but we don’t take much notice of it,” says Roxanne. “I would say to someone, ‘You think it’s OK for us to criticise my son or my husband and my daughter, but if I said something about your child, you’d be upset. What’s the difference?’. ‘Oh, yours are professionals’.

“I don’t think it gets any easier or harder. You just learn more, that this is the way it is.”

The Kerr family, with Sam pictured left, dad Roger (back row, left), brother Daniel (back row, middle) mum Roxanne (front row, second from right) and grandmother Coral (right)

One needs a human touch to raise two children embedded in elite sport, especially when Roxanne was en route to New Zealand and received a phone call from a coach to say that Sam was out of sorts. She was missing her school ball for her training camp. By then, she had already missed so much, so the federation sent her home the next Friday and Roxanne drove her to town on Saturday to pick out her dress.

“It was hard at the beginning because they travelled so much,” she remembers. Kerr had travelled with the Australian national team since she was 13 and was in her late teens when she moved to New York, the family separated by an ocean, an equator, 18,690km and a 12-hour time difference.

“Parents used to say to me, ‘How do you do it? I cry when my son goes on school camps and your daughter’s going halfway across the world?’ I’m like, ‘Just something you do’. I worry but I’m never going to stop them living their dreams. Sam doesn’t worry much about anything but she reckons I start crying before we’re 20 minutes out from the airport. Every time she dropped me in America, she’d say, ‘Bring the tissues because Mum will be crying the whole way there’. But she doesn’t.”

The Kerrs have a routine for big games: time difference permitting, the family convene at Roxanne’s house and they watch Sam play over dinner, surrounded by their nephews and niece.

A first-leg deficit meant Chelsea had to score twice at Kingsmeadow against Bayern Munich to progress to this Champions League final. The second leg earlier this month was locked at 2-1, the only scoreline that would bring extra time, for 41 minutes. “I was like, ‘They have to score this many goals’,” says Roxanne. “I never thought they would. I was so nervous, and I’ll be like that on Sunday. I won’t be able to sleep.”

The final will be shown at 2.30am in the Kerrs’ part of Australia.

Roxanne has predicted a 3-1 Chelsea win in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, but she lives in dread of a penalty shootout. “I’ll probably get up at one o’clock and walk around for an hour and a half, waiting for the game,” she says. “They’ve done us proud just getting there but now you want them to go all the way. I’ll set my alarm and we’ll all get up and watch it.”

There will be few complaints, you feel, at the early start if Kerr and Chelsea become European champions tonight.

#sam kerr #chelsea women #chelsea fcw

26 notes · View notes