Rebecca Ferguson sits across from me before her photo shoot with The Envelope. Her sandy blond hair is loosely tied back and she’s wearing an oversize comfy flannel shirt with dark trousers. Between us, two laptops — a virtual setting — but the accomplished actor makes it feel as though you are in the room with her. The same can be said for Juliette Nichols, the emotionally conflicted character she portrays in the gripping Apple TV+ dystopian drama “Silo,” where civilization has migrated to a massive underground bunker.

“Her vulnerability was the most important moments for me because the strengths of the character are uninteresting — they are already shaped,” she says. “What I found interesting is why she is uncomfortable with people, why is she scared when people are too close.”

Ferguson, who also serves as an executive producer of “Silo,” found her answer in Juliette’s heartbreaking childhood. At 13, she loses her mother and younger brother before running away from her father (Iain Glen) to the down deep of the bunker to apprentice in the mechanical department. “I studied a lot of grief and trauma because she loses her mom at an early age. When we understand this character, she is very lonely,” says the Swedish native. “Her trauma, it’s nearly claustrophobic and weighs you down, which I tried to embody in her when people get too close. It’s like this injection of fear.”

Juliette’s discomfort around others is put in the spotlight when she’s plucked by the powers that be to fill the role of sheriff following the death of the former top officer (David Oyelowo). She accepts, on the condition that she can fix the failing generator down below before something catastrophic occurs. The sequence that unfolds in the third episode, directed by Morten Tyldum, is a master class in edge-of-your-seat drama that culminates in a character-defining moment — one that sees Juliette standing alone in thought after the successful repair. “There is so much layered in that moment. All these juxtapositions of ‘I need to fix this, but if I fix this, it means I will also have to leave my people, and if I hadn’t fixed it everyone could have died.’ And all the trauma she’s gone through, it’s all compartmentalized into a moment of now what?” 

Sheriff Juliette steps in wanting to find the truth behind the death of her boyfriend, George Wilkins, an unsanctioned anthropologist of ancient artifacts — such as a Pez dispenser. “The contrast was so important to find,” Ferguson says of the series showing them in happy times in flashbacks. “For me, it was important to find the quirks and the fear. She is worried about him going on his extravagant journeys because she’s afraid to lose him. There’s this child in her, a vulnerability; her hair is different, her clothes are different, there’s a softness. The dynamics are so real — we practiced them a lot. Those scenes are the moments that defibrillate another feeling where you can slow your heart rate and you can fall in love with two people.”

As Juliette investigates George’s death, labeled a suicide though she suspects otherwise, she begins to uncover bigger mysteries within the silo and its leadership. “What I love about this show is that the audience is figuring it out with the character,” Ferguson says. “There are secrets and astronomical complexities in this world, but you’re getting to unravel them one-on-one with a character who is trying to solve one murder that leads into bigger questions and bigger lies. That’s what’s so exciting.”

When the pressure of the new uniform begins to mount, Juliette contemplates returning home to the depths of mechanical. But longtime friend Walker (Harriet Walter) persuades her otherwise, saying, “Love had you doing the right thing and now anger is making you give up.” Ferguson remembers first reading the scene and thinking it was too sentimental. “Something can read differently on the page, but then we sat down and someone said this is one of the most pivotal, most important moments for Juliette’s journey. It’s the change in realizing this is not a story just for her selfish needs. This is a moment where it’s about the bigger picture. It’s about doing the right thing. It’s really a beautiful and powerful moment for her.”

When asked if she thought of Juliette as a savior, Ferguson demurs, saying, “I don’t think I was supposed to look at her that way. It would have made her a hero in her journey and that’s not interesting. She doesn’t start off as a hero. She’s powerful and a bit of a badass, but she has vulnerabilities, grief and fear. That’s what’s interesting. Juliette is constantly faced with hinders, and every time she solves something, another hinder, it’s like building a bridge and it falls and you have to build another one and another one. She doesn’t give up.”

i love how things that went unsaid in all the other arcs, the things that if said wouldve changed so much, was finally just...said. acknowledged. the love and need to protect and the confusion and anger and trying to stick it out with each other even when feeling so alone, always coming back... it stopped the cycle, and i am so glad for it.

i wish we got to see more of sarah's blackness in the show, even within her mixed identity, even if it was lukewarm and barely there. i feel like we missed out on seeing her style her hair, on learning about her natural texture and keeping it up, about going to the beach or to the pool, or even showing us a bit of her homelife.

i wanted to see her play with dolls as a kid and watch vh1, burn cds and learn how to cook. maybe it would've been whitewashed and bland and serve no narrative purpose to the story, whatever, but i feel like if they can have a mummy episode they can make sarah black.

x

keeping up with awards season has truly turned me into such a vitriolic and bitter person i think the academy should explode and there should be no survivors

The MTO of Princess Ribbon Decoration has to be a bad joke. I can not fathom how someone would be willing to spend more than 600€ on a dress with lace that looks like it's been ripped off from cheap curtains.

Did I miss "back from the war" recreation or is that not happening

OK so i've been meaning to address this for a while because it’s actually something i've been genuinely annoyed/sad/upset about; my original plan to recreate the post was to go to riot fest & have someone take pics of me during MCR live in person (caption wouldve been something like ‘when will mcr--omg they;re Back from the Warfdskns’ lol idk). i ended up 2nd row from the barrier & i was like OMG bc i didn’t expect to get so close & i was like ‘WOW these r gonna b such GR8 PICTURES!!i;m so lucky!!this is gENIUS!’ & so my plan was literally going according to/even better than planned right?? i mean the fact that i was ~a few feet away from the stage n was ~1.5hrs away from seeing mcr LIVE??? my plan was going along SUSPICIOUSLY well..everything was falling into place TOO perfectly...it was almost to good to be true right??? IT WAS. everything went to shit & my plan fell thru during the last band before MCR when my body suddenly fell victim to the effects of being crowd crushed for >7 hours straight; i experienced syncope & was pulled over the barrier & out of the pit by security.

sooooo, you didn’t ‘miss’ anything; the post was supposed to be recreated at the concert, but the universe pulled an uno-reverse on me when it remembered i’m on the universal ‘Do Not Ever Allow to Be Truly Happy’ list lol. i meant to post an update abt my failed plan afterwards, but tbh the actual event in itself made me wanna fr kms, and i felt even guiltier/worse for being unable to fulfill my promise to u all bc i fr planned on recreating it at the concert. 'ok but u were still at the concert after u got pulled out’ ok physically yes but mentally N-Ooo. due to the hypoxia (lack of blood blow/oxygen to the brain) i’d obtained secondary to being crowd crushed PLUS the psychological trauma of being removed against my living breathing dying will from the pit (btw the psychological trauma has nothing to do with being crowd-crushed but im not gonna get into that turmoil rn lol), i was stuck in an altered mental state for the remainder of the concert. i was dissociated for mcr’s entire set until i woke up the next morning & it took ~3-4 days for my body to fully recover from the physical trauma of being crowd crushed.

i still plan on recreating the post eventually, but tbh it’s not rlly my top priority atm bc 1) i still can’t come to terms w/ the fact i lost my 1 n only chance to experience MCR live & 2) imo seeing MCR live was the perfect opportunity to recreate the post & that clearly didn’t work out for me sooo now i have no idea how else i can top that idea :( .

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twitter and tiktok lgbts seriously need to learn to shut their fucking mouth and get educated on shit before they open it I am dead serious queer theory is not a fucking toy you can pull out as you please everytime something doesn't agree with you personally godddddd

Happy birthday! I have a bit of a strange question but it is Eiffel-related so:

How much (if any) of his personality do you think would be intact post-memory wipe? (Not in the sense of how much would he choose to keep, I mean what parts of him would the memory wipe not get rid of, given that it didn’t wipe his muscle memory, knowledge of English, etc)

this is such a difficult question because, like... as much as i like to speculate about it, there's no real answer re: what wolf 359 defines as "memory" in the first place. like you said, he remembers so much stuff that should be tied to memory - not just his knowledge of english but like, broadly... the concepts and context and consequences for those words and the things he encounters. he understands the weight of what he did back on earth, etc. and that makes the line of "memory" and "information" kind of fuzzy, in a whole bunch of different ways that would also apply to, like... what part of "personality" is inherent, and what part is determined by things we'd classify as memory? how much of personality is flexible and relational, anyway?

and we don't have much to go on re: how he behaves post memory wipe, either, like... there's not much of the show after that; we don't see him in Situations (tm) at all. and he might have different reactions to similar things, depending on other factors, even with his memory! but, like... there's not much to compare or contrast.

with that said: so much of how eiffel communicates is filtered through pop culture - it's not even on purpose, that's just... how his brain works, how he makes connections. everything else aside, i think it's completely understandable he would seem quieter if the primary framework he communicates through is suddenly no longer accessible to him. even if he doesn't consciously know what he's missing, there has to be a gap between what he intends and what he can say, and that has to be frustrating. the context is different, but when he's feeling bad for himself around constructive criticism and doesn't make any pop culture references for a week - that's similarly "uncharacteristic" in how unusually quiet and reserved he seems. for perspective.

short version: "personality" is hard to define, but i think whatever makes eiffel "eiffel" is still intact, whatever that means. i think he still remembers how he feels about things, on some level, even if the memories those feelings are attached to are inaccessible. i think he probably either has or will develop the same values and preferences and sense of humor and annoying habits, but even if his interior world is very similar to what it was before, people might think he's different because he can't communicate those ideas the same way, and that potentially creates a feedback loop where he also feels he must be different than he was. but, over time... i mean, i do think eiffel will get his memories back at some point, but even before that... i think just being exposed to stuff will gradually lessen that gap for him anyway.

horrible: the guy you hate wrote a really fucking good story you really thoroughly enjoyed

okokokok i raise you teresa reading sense & sensibility honestly!!! elinor pushing through grief and loss and hardship with no ability to take up a sword and change her circumstances, and the drama of marianne being taken advantage of for having the courage to love freely…. i think she’d wanna gut mr willoughby tbh!!

Teresa reading any of the JA novels tbh!! But YES S&S is a fantastic one! I think as an older sister too (at least, that's my headcanon- Vivar mentions her sister, Maria, and in the books it's Ramon, so I say Teresa is the eldest child/sister, and I say she has both siblings!) she can really relate to Elinor- she has to take care of her family first, to put her own emotions and heartbreak aside, especially in times of great change and tragedy. She has to be the strong one. Teresa would definitely see herself in Elinor, and though I don't talk about her a lot because there's nothing about Maria in canon and she's basically a blank slate, I think Maria being like Marianne is a great dichotomy between the two.

I always thought of Maria being the baby of the family, so she gets away with a little more than Teresa did- she's also the youngest daughter, and while Teresa probably has a little more pressure to marry well, Maria more than likely doesn't. Maria can be a romantic, to chase after who she wants, though I like to think she's a little more airheaded than Marianne, less bold, but just as excitable. That one scene in the 1995 P&P with Lizzie and Maria Lucas makes me think of their relationship- Teresa guiding and teasing the overly worried Maria. "Mariah, this is your trunk and these are your gowns. You may arrange them in any way you wish- Lady Catherine will never know!" Also that scene where Mariah tells Lizzie to hurry downstairs and does a little spin- that seems like a thing Maria would do! Excitable and fun and so young.

And YES she would want to gut Willoughby for being such a rake and a terrible person!! Especially for knocking up a 15 year old and leaving her to fend for herself!! For the heartache he put Marriane through as well. Teresa understands the economics very well and knows that love sometimes isn't enough to make a relationship work- money is just as important. But it doesn't stop her from breathing a sigh of relief when Marianne dodges a bullet when he leaves her. Sam and I like to think Sharpe gets P&P for her and they read it together, and when they go to Yorkshire and meet a George Wickham they look at each other like 😳😳😳 mr willoughby and wickham found dead more news at 11

finished the succession finale. its royver

Twitter users have learned the term "weaponized incompetence" and of course are using it wrong and it's pissing me off. The latest example of "weaponized incompetence" is a husband who decided to make crescent rolls but didn't realize he needed to roll them up so he made large crescent chips instead. Literally just a mistake. Y'know. Those things people make?

Another recent example is someone's fiance being asked to clean up hot sauce. Now this could certainly more likely actually be weaponized incompetence! The very slow movements very much says "look at me do this and fail. You should just do it next time, it's easier." But you know what it also very much says, something that is just as likely? The movements are slow because it's more than he expected and he's trying to figure it out. I struggle with this, and have gotten better with practice, but what else are you supposed to do? Sometimes there's a puddle of something and you put a paper towel on it and it absorbs but is not nearly enough. He specifically examines how full of hot sauce it is after the first soak and how much more there is. And when he starts smearing it around...how else are you supposed to avoid that? It's still cleaning it so long as the smears aren't left behind

As I said, weaponized incompetence or someone genuinely trying are both likely there. The thing is, I'm not making assumptions about it. And neither should other people. Those types of slow, unsteady movements as I figure things out are extremely common for me. I am autistic and have struggled to process physical tasks (how to accomplish things that require my body to move in a certain way, including running and jump roping etc. didn't learn how to jump rope until I was 18) my entire life. This is how I figure shit out. If someone assumed me literally doing my best to complete a task was weaponized incompetence, I'd be pissed. In fact, that happens all the time!

My mother, while I was growing up, pretty much weaponized weaponized incompetence, without using those words. She would ask me to do something. I, being an autistic child, would try my best. I'd fail or do a poor job because I'm a child. She might try a few more times with me but because I didn't get it instantly or it struggled to click she'd visibly get mad at me and tell me not to bother and that she'd just do it instead. As I got into my teens she accused me of doing things badly on purpose so I wouldn't have to do it, when the reality is she just gave up on me and asked me to do things less and less frequently with age. Then at around 16, and ESPECIALLY 18+, she started expecting me to do ALL kinds of things. Saying "you're an adult, you should know this". How? Adults know the things they do because they have experience. I don't. I've had to play such hard catch up for everything I've missed because people (not just my mom) find it easier to not bother with the disabled child.

I'm not saying the man in that video is autistic, or anything else! But what I said brings another point into play: he's an adult and simply doesn't know how to do it. That's a problem! Now why would he be an adult incapable of doing what should be a simple task he should have already learned? He wasn't taught. It reminds me of the guy who got a ton of shit online because his mom did his laundry for him all his life so when he first lived out of the house (I think with a roommate) he had to learn how to do his laundry. He wasn't refusing to do his laundry, he wasn't whining and complaining about it, he was just texting a friend about it. It would be a problem if he didn't bother to learn. If someone is LITERALLY TRYING TO LEARN HOW TO DO SOMETHING it's not weaponized incompetence! I don't care how old they are!

And honestly it does play into the whole "the patriarchy is bad for men too" situation. If a man doesn't know how to do something, such as laundry or cleaning up spills, as an adult because those jobs were always deferred to women, he is now incapable of caring for himself when alone. And then when with someone else, accused of weaponized incompetence when trying to learn by people learning new words to run into the ground. Or once again, maybe it's not a situation where he didn't learn because the women specifically always did the cleaning, he just generally might not have been taught. I don't know!

The very point I'm trying to make is that you can't make those kind of assumptions based off of a short clip, or a picture, of someone doing something poorly. Even if there's a CHANCE it could be weaponized incompetence, it is so BEYOND horrible to go on and on about how it HAS to be weaponized incompetence because no one could be that stupid. It feels awful to be a disabled person seeing people being mocked and called abusers for making the same kind of mistakes you've made. It feels awful to see something, think "oh I've messed that up too", and then see 50 different comments about how it has to be weaponized incompetence because no one could be THAT stupid

Can we please stop forgetting the existence of disabled people and people with generally different life experiences than you, thanks. There's a huge difference between weaponized incompetence and learning (or someone doing the best they can and being physically unable to do things more efficiently because of being disabled)

When you finish reading a novel and it's like

I JUST READ A FIC WHERE MY FAVORITE SHIP WAS KINDA IMPLIED I'M OVER THE MOON