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chronicfandombrain · 2 years

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Byler vs Destiel (Why I have hope for canon Byler after getting baited by Destiel)

Why compare Byler and Destiel at all?

So, the first thing you’re probably wondering about is why the heck I’m writing this meta in the first place. Stranger Things and Supernatural are wildly different shows, aren’t they? Well, yes, yes they are. However, there are some key similarities that I’ve noticed surrounding Destiel and Byler now that ST season 4 has come out and Byler has gotten big. I thought it would be interesting to explain my reasoning in continuing to hope for canon Byler despite having been thoroughly let down by Spn in regards to Destiel.

2. First things first: a quick rundown of Destiel.

If you’ve watched spn you can skip this part. I’m assuming most Bylers have not watched Spn because Stranger Things is a widely popular and acclaimed show while Spn is… well, let’s say more of a cult classic with a niche audience. Supernatural is a Monster of the Week show created by Eric Kripke, which originally began airing all the way back in 2005 (I was 2 yrs old.. gotdamn) and ran for 15 seasons total, ending in 2020. Destiel is the wildly popular ship of repressed bisexual monster hunter Dean Winchester and gay angel Castiel. If you were on Tumblr anytime around November 5th of 2020 you probably remember Spn fans freaking the hell out and filling everyone’s dash with memes, and you have probably received some sort of important news about world events in this delightful format.

This was a result of the airing of Season 15 Episode 18, aptly titled Despair, in which Cas confessed his love for Dean and then immediately fricken died, never again to be seen on screen. Many fans (myself included) were hopeful that Cas would come back in the finale and Dean would reciprocate the confession. That… did not happen. Instead Dean got impaled on a giant nail and died, without his love for Cas ever being confirmed. Without even his bisexuality ever being confirmed (despite bi Dean having been hinted at before Cas even joined the show). Fans were understandably upset about this.

3. Okay, so, what are these aforementioned similarities between Destiel and Byler?

There are some obvious ones, like Spn and ST both being monster shows, but mostly I’ve noticed some Dean & Mike parallels, Will & Cas parallels, and parallels in the ways the ship is perceived by fans. To be clear, I don't think these parallels are intentional on the part of the Duffers, but I think they're worth examining anyway. I’m going to start with Dean and Mike, because that’s where I feel some of the similarities are the strongest. In the interest of comparison, I’m going to look at this through the lens of bi Mike, although obviously gay Mike is a valid interpretation with a good amount of evidence as well (see the byler google slides). Some strong arguments for Destiel and Byler on the sides of Dean and Mike are their reactions when their best friends are in danger, missing, or dead/presumed dead.

(Dean looking for Cas after he goes missing in purgatory)

Okay, I can't find any gifs for this one which is criminal tbh, but just pretend you're looking at a bunch of gifs of season 1 Mike telling everyone over and over that they need to look for Will/find Will.

(Dean falling to his knees after Cas dies in front of him)

(Mike when they pull the fake Will out of the quarry)

(Dean tells Cas he needs him while Cas is being controlled by heaven and forced to attack Dean, this breaks Cas out of his brainwashing)

(Mike tells Will asking him to be his best friend is the best thing he's ever done, interrupting Will's possession enough that he can get a message out)

(Dean reuniting with Cas after he goes missing in purgatory)

(Mike reuniting with Will after he goes missing in S1)

Seeing some similarities? The deeply repressed bi character who only expresses how important their friend is to them when something terrible is happening or has happened? Also, frustratingly, when said friend is possessed or missing and can't hear them. (Yes, both Cas and Will have been possessed and then brought to their senses by a coded love confession from the other half of their respective ships…)

Beyond that, much of the speculation around Mike and Dean by fans comes from body language, specifically micro-expressions and lip-glances.

(This one's a destiel classic)

(the tension is so bad in this one that it's lowkey uncomfortable to look at)

(the infamous triple take)

Mike and Dean are also the characters who are more widely perceived as straight by the general audience, with hints to their bisexuality (or possibly homosexuality in Mike’s case) being subtle enough that you only really catch them if you’re looking for it.

(ah, bi lighting.)

(the one way sign pointing to the closet in Mike's room)

(Dean panics in bisexual)

(okay Mike no one said you weren't....)

Let’s move on to Cas and Will. These are characters who are canonically gay (or bi maybe for Cas?? Idk they’re pretty unclear about it in the show! Most people say gay so I’m going with that for this post) and canonically in love with their best friends. These are the characters who are more obvious to the GA, and are often painted in a light of unrequited love. Their love is also shown in a more narrative way, mostly through intentional writing choices rather than through body language and things that could be chalked up to acting choices. Cas’s love for Dean comes through very clearly in his character arcs, as he betrays heaven for him (multiple times) and allies with their enemies in an attempt to protect him (multiple times) and sacrifices himself for him (multiple times).

(The angel Metatron taunting Cas)

(Cas leaves Dean in purgatory to protect him)

(Cas sacrificing himself to the Empty (superhell) to save Dean. Yes the Empty looks like black goo and not a tunnel of fire.)

Will’s character arc in season 4 is pretty much entirely about his feelings for Mike, and specifically him, you could say, sacrificing his feelings for Mike in order to make Mike happy by keeping him and El together.

(pain)

The natural conclusion that you would come to for the narrative arcs of both of these characters, suffering in supposed unrequited love, is a resolution in which their love is returned. However, this didn’t happen in Supernatural. So why do I think it will happen in Stranger Things?

Looking at all of these similarities felt disheartening to me at first. I only got into the Byler after the end of season 4, and I was almost immediately struck by how familiar the situation felt to me. It was incredibly reminiscent of being a Supernatural fan during the airing of Season 15: reading meta after meta filled with evidence for a Destiel endgame, everyone hyped up and so convinced it would go canon, people jokingly calling themselves delusional for expecting the natural resolution of a story-line that had been dangled in front of them for eleven long seasons. But I have a lot of faith in Byler, even after being let down by the Spn finale, and here’s why.

4. Main character Will Byers vs fan favorite Castiel

Are you ready for even more supernatural lore? Again, you can just skim this if you’ve watched spn. The character of Castiel is introduced in Supernatural Season 4 Episode 1: Lazarus Rising. Funny thing about Cas—he was only supposed to be on the show for like three episodes! Cas’s story-line was actually supposed to go to another angel character, Anna. Due to some actor drama or something Cas replaced Anna and got her story-line. And fans LOVED Cas, so much so that when they tried to permanently kill him off in Season 7, ratings dropped so low that they decided to bring him back. The interesting thing about Cas and Destiel is that it was pretty much all accidental, at least at first. It was much less about genuine writing choices, and much more about insane actor chemistry and casual ship-baiting by the writers. Destiel was a ship that started off without much canon basis, but over the next eleven seasons became more and more textually supported until the writers had pretty much no choice except to address it. This was due to a lot of things: changing show-runners, changing writers, and the actors themselves becoming more open to the possibility of the ship. If you want a full explanation of how Supernatural accidentally trapped themselves into telling an epic gay love story, I would highly recommend this video:

youtube

However, despite the wild popularity of Cas and Destiel, Cas never gained the true main character status of Dean and Sam (Dean’s brother). While Dean and Sam both appear in almost every episode of Spn, Cas disappears for episodes at a time and often only appears for the particularly plotty sections. While I think the changing writers and show-runners allowed for Cas to become more valued in later seasons, his character often gets sidelined in favor of the brothers.

So, let’s now contrast this with Will Byers. Will is definitely one of the main characters of Stranger Things—his disappearance is the inciting incident of the series, and his possession is one of the biggest plot points of season two. While he has been less central to seasons three and four, there is always time devoted in the show to his character, and for the past two seasons his arc has mainly dealt with him struggling as a closeted gay teenager in the 80’s, and him feeling sidelined by Mike with his relationship with El. Unlike Castiel, Will was always meant to be a main character, possibly the main character when you consider that the Duffers originally planned to kill El in the season 1 finale. Will being gay was also planned from the beginning, with hints going all the way back to the first episode. Stranger Things is also known for including a lot of foreshadowing, references, and parallels for watchful viewers to pick up on and analyze. Nothing about Will’s character is accidental, and that gives me hope that he will have a satisfying conclusion to his character arc. Which leads me to my second point—

5. Stranger Things is a really good show. Supernatural… is a mixed bag

To be honest, Supernatural is a mess of a show. It changed show-runners like every four seasons, the writers got switched out a lot and the quality of the writing varies drastically between episodes, plot points were recycled, narrative and character arcs were abandoned, everyone dies and comes back to life multiple times, half of it is shitty filler, and like twice a season there’s an episode so incredibly good it keeps you coming back for more. In short: Supernatural is made for TV. Now, I don’t want to get into my personal vendetta against long-running network television shows, but basically I think that having to crank out a new episode of a show every week for years reduces the quality of that show drastically. Things work best when they have a clear beginning and ending, and they know how they’re going to progress from point A to point B. Not to get off topic, but this is why I absolutely love the Mike Flanagan Netflix shows (Hill House, Bly Manor, Midnight Mass), and why I’m actually glad that Hannibal was forced to wrap up in three seasons. The longer a show is, the more chances it has to fuck up the characters and the plot progression. Stranger Things is right in that sweet spot—I think that it will tell exactly the story it wants to tell, no more and no less. Stranger Things is generally a much higher quality show than Supernatural, and I trust it much more to properly handle its characters and relationships. Supernatural, in my opinion at least, made a massive mistake in killing all the main characters in the finale when all of them had pretty much spent 15 seasons suffering and struggling to survive. The only satisfying conclusion to those characters would have been to see them finally allowed to be happy and peaceful and together, regardless of Destiel. I seriously doubt that the Duffers would ever make this mistake, especially as they have already stated that they’re not Game of Thrones and don’t intend to go grimdark and kill all their main characters. I think that Stranger Things intends to give the characters (and audience) what they want—I think at the end of the day the ST kids will all end up happy and safe. And the way they have set this up, there really isn’t a lot of opportunity for happiness for Will without Byler.

My S5 endgame predictions are pretty much: Byler happens, Max wakes up and Lumax get to go on their theater date, El breaks up with Mike and gets to spend more time with Max (the happiest we’ve seen her is with Max), and Dustin has a big brother little brother moment with Steve that will make me cry (I know people think Steve will die in S5 but honestly I think after Eddie there’s no way they would kill Dustin’s big brother figure TWICE, that would be too cruel to his character). I think Stranger Things wants these characters to end up happy, and I trust them to fulfill the narratives that they’ve been building since season one. Will and El as characters have suffered so much, and I don’t think that they will end up in the same crappy patterns they’ve been repeating for seasons now when those patterns obviously need to be broken in order for them to be happy.

In conclusion: despite the similarities I see between Destiel and Byler, I’m pretty confident that Byler is endgame and will succeed where Destiel (and Spn as a whole) failed, because ST is a well-thought out, high quality show, and Spn was a dearly beloved mess. This is my first time writing meta, so I’m sorry if anything is confusing! I’m also admittedly not the best at media analysis (it did take me four seasons to pick up on Byler), so if any of my fellow Byler scholars would like to chime in and interpret these findings further, that would be very welcome! Thanks for reading! (:

#byler #byler meta #byler vs destiel #long post #Youtube

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peony-pearl · 2 years

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I really wish I could go back and experience Avatar with fresh eyes. But I’m also glad I was exposed to it when it first aired.

I vaguely remember some advertising for it’s premiere and, at the time, I know I was in deep with my Kingdom Hearts hyperfixation. The first Avatar episode I saw was the day after prom in my Junior year when a girl in the friend group I was in turned on a rerun in April or May 2005. For some reason my mind is convinced the episode was Cave of Two Lovers, but it hadn’t aired yet. I’m not surprised I can’t remember the episode because at the time I was eyeballs deep in heavy OCD symptoms and kind of in the early stages of a huge mental breakdown haha. I’d had visible OCD symptoms for years but had no idea I had it; then barely a month later I was hospitalized and diagnosed because of my intrusive thoughts and ruminations. It kinda sucked lmao.

Over the next couple of years I was exposed to Avatar mostly because of my Uncle. He adored the series. He was an avid cartoon fan who loved art and comics and drawing and had the bones of one of his own comics but became ill and passed away before he could finish it. I appreciated Avatar for what it was, but didn’t really have the heart to get invested. There was a point that I did make an oc and drew some art and wrote a bit but it lasted like maybe 2 weeks tops. 2005-late 2007 was a minefield period of time that was mixed with me trying to reconfigure my whole personality (right around the time I turned 18 so THAT was good timing) and trying to enjoy the things I loved before my breakdown. I was desperate to be who I was before everything happened.

However, I did keep up with the series after moving to another state and the third season began airing. I remember watching Day of Black Sun and then the finale. I just kept up with it out of interest. Then years went by and I finally started moving forward. I found new interests that helped me become creative again, all while making the painful realization that my mental health was a permanent thing after believing I had ‘conquered’ my OCD. I also unknowingly had ADHD, which I was finally diagnosed with this year, which exacerbates my OCD and intrusive thoughts and ruminating.

Years went by, I went through college, I’ve had so many different jobs, I paid off my student loans late 2020 and then in 2021 my mental health got so bad again I finally sought out therapy for the first time in ten years. I started taking medicine for depression and mood swings. Almost all I was doing was working. I lived with my parents, which wasn’t a bad thing; but the strict schedule and my night shift meant I had little chances of doing much, and I gained weight from stress eating for dopamine.

Then almost a year ago I moved out for the first time; hence my DBZ hyperfixation. I wanted some nostalgia, and I’d had a 2 year period where that series was my bread and butter in 2002-2004. However, I moved again earlier this year, and at first it was all about adjustment; but I was beginning to realize I just didn’t do anything. I still have that issue. But in trying to wonder what it was exactly that I wanted or didn’t want, I started to realize if I’m going to live, I may as well start seeking out things to do.

I was tired of just existing, so I finally set up violin lessons, and I’ve been attending them weekly (save missing one here or there) since April. I’ve learned what I have the power to do, even if I often lack the motivation and drive. I’m becoming more and more content, even if there are the off-times when things are iffy.

I was absolutely not expecting my re-introduction to Avatar to be a gifset of Iroh threatening Zhao in the Spirit Oasis; a scene I was unfamiliar with. I think I had watched the series on Netflix some years ago, but again, I’ve lacked the commitment to it. The punch of that scene with a character I had associated with benevolence after being lukewarm towards the series intrigued me, and I fell down the rabbit hole lol

And I’ve realized that, after getting older, the show is actually a lot more meaningful; and after stumbling upon a gifset of Iroh’s quote ‘Life happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not’; that hit me. That was exactly what I’d started trying to live by over the past couple of months. Zuko’s strive to figure out who he wants to be hits home too, as I often struggle, even at 34, with what I want or who I want to be. (granted, I need to find a new therapist but that’s another story lmao)

After seeing all this merch pop up and be like ‘oh yeah Avatar that’s a good show’ and being disconnected, I now adore it. I know the bones of it but I’m still learning all of the smaller details and worldbuilding and lore. I’m a newbie but at the same time I know what it is and watched the premieres of The Awakening, The Day of Black Sun, and Sozin’s Comet.

I’ve always appreciated the series for it’s creativity and how it avoided talking down to it’s audience (yeah it had kid moments but it was a Nickelodeon show). And even as an adult so many messages ring true. I definitely put it on the same page as Gargoyles (because 1. I’m biased and 2. both are intricately woven stories that treat it’s audience as adults; I wish Gargoyles had gotten the same closure Avatar did, but for what it is it’s still an amazing show and I’ll always adore it and I’m so glad a show like Avatar did get it’s story completed for the most part)

And yet it’s Iroh’s line ‘whatever you do to that spirit, I’ll unleash on you tenfold’ is the one that kind of brings tears to my eyes; because it rings of conviction and fortitude to do the right thing, and is what brought me back to a little piece of fandom that, even if I already know all of the twists and turns and spoilers, was there for me to pick back up on when I needed it and to help me continue to move forward.

#atla #this is sentimental and cheesy but #at times I wish I could go back to truly feel all of those huge moments in the show #and yet #sometimes I know that if I wasn't already familiar with it it would take me FOREVER to watch it #because I'm horrible at getting into new things #so I am grateful for my familiarity with it #back when it premiered #I watched Crossroads of Destiny without seeing the whole series leading up to that moment so yeah #I missed out on that crucial emotional moment #but ah well #it's still very well written and doesn't miss the mark

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truglori · 3 years

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Sneaky Link 🔗

Synopsis: Black Reader and Eric find each other online!

Pairing: Erik Stevens x Black Reader

Warning: Language, Smutt, Raw sex

Flopping on the bed Y/N found herself bored for the fourth Friday night in a row. This was supposed to be the season of hook ups and living her best carefree lifestyle that she had planned out but yet is was the exact opposite. Being on summer break from college Y/N had to come back home with the schools being closed. It was something she dreaded.

Home for her wasn’t the best place to be. Between her judgmental and nagging parents and older brother, Chris, Y/N was ecstatic when she discovered that she would be going to a school that was over three hundred miles away. Being four hours away gave her enough freedom knowing that she didn’t have any one breathing down her neck or snitching to her parents about whatever she did. With it only being her sophomore year Y/N loved the college lifestyle.

Getting up she went to her window to open it and put in her square fan. Her air conditioner that she always kept in her room was now being used by her brother so she had to settle for this. Turning the knob she felt the warm cool breeze coming through and taking up the room. Walking back to her bed she logged into her laptop going onto the web browser. Clicking the history she found the website she was searching for and tapped it.

Quick Link popped up on her screen. It was a site that allowed people to meet and chat with other people. Even though Y/N has been going on it for weeks now back and forth, she never met one person that she has chatted with yet. She was okay with talking to them online and even over the phone but the thought of seeing them in person scared her. With all of the Lifetime movies and ID channel she would watch, doing something as small as meeting up with them could be dangerous.

Y/N scrolled through her recent messages. She had over ninety-nine notifications. She knew that she wasn’t going to reply to them all, only the once she found cute. It was like a broken record being played. They all inbox her with the same messages, hey sexy! Y/N rolled eyes at the un-originality. To her it seem like the guys didn’t even try to put in any effort.

Tapping on the keyboard she began to text back the handful that she found attractive when she got two notifications. Hurrying up her sentence she exited out of the chat and clicking on her new direct messages.

HandsomeAssNigga👅- Y/N, what in the hell is yo ass doing on this shit...10:35pm

HandsomeAssNigga👅- And I know you still online. I can see the green bubble by ya picture...10:36pm

Y/N squinted at the name. Who the hell was this texting her like they knew her? The question alone made her stomach flutter at the idea of getting caught on a dating site by someone she knew or knew her. Clearly this person recognized her enough to boldly message her. Clicking on their username she went to their page. Her heart stopped and thighs clenched at the same time.

It was Erik fucking Stevens aka her brother’s childhood best friend. Chris and Erik were the same age and only three years older than Y/N. Growing up Y/N stayed crushing on Erik. It was his braids that he rocked back in the day that had her drooling over him but also how nice he was to her. Y/N remembered the time when she was a freshman in high school and Chris and Erik were both Juniors she would always get a ride with them every morning in his 2005 Honda Accord. He would steal glances at her through his rear view mirror that only she would catch but to afraid to ask him about it.

There would be times that she would find underwear from a girl tucked under the backseat. Y/N heard about the rumored that went around the school that Erik was a player. An experienced one at that. He was grown before his time and with the way the lucky girls who had a chance to sleep with him describe it, he gave dick like he was a grown man as well.

Hearing that did nothing but spark the flame that she felt about him. She wanted to experience it herself. But being the quiet and timid person she was then, she never did. It wasn’t until Y/N went to college where she lost her virginity her freshman and started having sex on the regular with her ex who was also her first. From the first few times they did it, she could never cum from penetration. Y/N thought it was normal and that every girl dealt with it until she shared a few stories with her friends and they would tell her about the way their guys would make them squirt.

Squirting was something Y/N always wanted to do but could never achieve with her guy. She loved feeling him inside of her stretching her open but he was a quick pumper. He came too fast for her and couldn’t last long enough to get her to nut. So after every session she would take her bullet and tortured her clit until she felt her cream escaping her hole. Not having sex since the last time she was at school had Y/N body extremely horny and hot and ready like a little ceasars pizza.

Clicking through his pictures had her clenching her thighs. After he graduated high school, the graduation was the last place she seen Erik. She wasn’t even sure if Chris and him were still close friends. But what she could say is that he grew up very nice. He now had dreads that hung over his eyes with a clean shape up to top it off. His teeth pearly and white accompanied by gold canines he was wearing in every other picture and last but not least his body was everything. Standing at 6’3 and looking like a solid 215 from her view Erik was fine as fuck.

Giggling and embarrassed with herself she replied back.

BlackBeauty- Erik omg...this is so embarrassing. How did you find me?...10:40pm

Biting the nail on her thumb she waited for him to answer her. To her surprise he wrote back fairly faster than what she expected.

HandsomeAssNigga👅- Noticed yo little ass on the explore page. I know you not on here meeting with these wack ass niggas...10:42pm

She laughed re-reading his message. To her it sound like it was possessive but she didn’t want to over think it.

BlackBeauty- Never!! I am not stupid. I haven’t met one person yet...10:44pm

Hitting the send button she rolled her eyes noticing herself getting desperate from his attention.

HandsomeAssNigga👅-Okay bet! I don’t wanna have to fuck you up youngin 😈...10:47pm

Biting her lip, she stared down the emoji. She wondered what that meant. She wondered in what way did he meant when he said he would fuck her up. At this point Y/N was dripping between her thick thighs.

BlackBeauty- What about you? I know you out here fucking these bitches you meet on here. Don’t lie lol...10:49pm

Y/N didn’t want to seem nosy, she was just trying to make conversation.

HandsomeAssNigga👅- Damn you cuss now? And second of all don’t be worried about what I do with my dick. I’m grown and that’s different...10:51pm

Bringing a hand down to her covered pussy Y/N caressed it. The warmth coming through her panties and cotton shorts. She didn’t know what it was but the way he was responding had her feeling a type of way. She wasn’t the shy young girl anymore he used to know and she wanted to make that clear.

BlackBeauty- I’m grown too Erik 💦...10:53pm

Her heart beat sped up when she sent the text not knowing how he was going to respond.

HandsomeAssNigga👅- To who? I know ya young ass ain’t out here fuckin yet. You was too shy for that last time I saw you. Even if you was, I know you ain’t getting know real dick...10:55pm

HandsomeAssNigga👅- What’s that emoji supposed to represent? Ya pussy or sum shit? Let me find out Y/N 👿...10:56pm

There goes that little devil that had her questioning herself again.

BlackBeauty- I get dick on the regular. Good dick! And yes Erik that emoji reps my pussy. Same young pussy that’ll be too wet for you to handle! I’ll have you drownin in my shit...10:59pm

Y/N could always talk a good game online. It was where she could be get as nasty as she wanted without actually putting in work. The guys who would hit her up loved her foreplay that she had spit over the internet and she was fortunate enough where they never pressed her to meet in person.

HandsomeAssNigga👅- Bring that pussy here and I’ma show you if I’ll drown in it. Stop fucking playing with me Y/N if you not gonna pull up. I don’t do this back and forth teasing shit. You tryna do a Sneaky Link or what?...11:02pm

Checking the hall Y/N seen that the lights were off. Her parents were most likely sleeping and Chris always worked Friday nights. This was the perfect time and opportunity to leave. She would have to sneak the keys from the key holder and use her dad’s car to get to his place. Y/N didn’t do this on the regular but because it was Erik she was curious. She wanted to see for herself if all of the rumors were true. Y/N was going to fuck him tonight.

BlackBeauty- Send me the addy..I’m on my way...11:04pm

________

After showering and preparing for her dick appointment Y/N successfully snuck out of the house. She put his address in her GPS. It was a twenty minute drive to get to his apartment. Putting the car in park and turning it off, Y/N felt the butterflies in her stomach grow while walking into the building. Taking her phone out she went to his message and looking up the apartment number he gave her. Apartment 3B.

Knocking on the door. She held her hands together tightly. She was beyond nervous and rethinking her decision as her heart kept thumping. She couldn’t believe that she was really going to go through this. After so many years of fantasizing about him in her room she was finally going to see the real thing. Y/N only wondered if it was as good as she hoped.

The door swung open showing Erik sipping on a glass of dark liquor. In nothing but a tight wife beater that clung to his chest and his sweats that hung low Y/N could see the print poking through so visibly. It looked like he was free balling it.

“Damn ma. You wasn’t lying about getting grown. You look good as shit.” Erik sipped from his glass. He stepped aside inviting her in.

Y/N smiled softly going inside. She only took a few steps in and stood to the side waiting for him. She heard the door lock behind her as it caused her to gulp hard on her spit.

Erik eyed her with his low eyes. He chuckled seeing that she was clearly nervous.

“So that’s ya thing?” His voice was low and deeper than what she remembered.

“What’s my thing?” Her soft voice speaking up.

“Talking shit online but quiet it person.” He stated putting her on the spot.

Y/N smacked her lips and rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She turned facing his livingroom.

“Nah ain’t no whatever. What’s good ma? Where that big girl energy go?” He walked up behind her pressing his body into hers. The hand that wasn’t holding his cup wrapped around her waist gripping the small pudge on her stomach.

Y/N shivered when she felt his dick on her ass. Her assumption was right. He wasn’t wearing any underwear beneath his sweats. She could feel the coldness of his chains on her shoulder when he leaned on her due to her only wearing a tank top. She grabbed his hand, not pushing him away but holding on to him.

“I’m here aren’t I?” She gazed at him over her shoulder.

He smirked at her smart remark. “You need anything before we start? A drink, blunt, something to help you calm ya scary ass down.” He teased.

She pushed his hand from around her waist and folded her arms. “I’m not scary Erik. If I was I wouldn’t be here.”

“Then why you barely saying shit?” He licked his lips.

Y/N shrugged. “It’s just been a while since I saw you. You look...different.” Playing with her diamond earning, she occupied her fingers.

“I may look different but I’m still the same Erik that used to jack ya brother up every time he fucked with you when no one was looking. Ain’t shit changed about me ma so you can relax. I’m tryna take care of you tonight.” He spoke stepping closer.

They were now face to face. Y/N’s frame staring up into his 6’3 one. When she would inhale she could smell his expensive cologne mix with the Hennessy he’s been sipping on since she got here.

“Okay.” She answered with a bite of her bottom lip.

Erik groaned at the action. Both of his hands behind his back now, he bent down to her level to meet her halfway. “C’mere.” He demanded a kiss with messy dreads hanging over his eyes.

Meeting him where he was, Y/N listened giving him one. The taste of the dark liquor transferring over to her taste buds from his tongue invading her mouth. The warmth of it made her melt under him and causing her head to lean back. She was already growing weak just from the kiss.

Erik reached behind her slapping her ass and gripping it with his free hand. “Fuck you doing all that for and I ain’t even do shit yet.” He spoke against her lips peaking through his eyelids.

“Hurry up then daddyy.” Y/N whined.

“That’s my name for the night? I like that shit.” He walked them backwards until they reached his room which wasn’t far away from the front.

Placing his glass down on his dresser he lifted her up by her thighs, picking her up. Y/N squealed from the unexpected action. She held onto his neck hoping he wouldn’t drop her. Erik chuckled playing with her ass cheeks before laying her down on the bed gently.

“You sucked dick before...miss grown?” Bringing his hand down, he massaged his print through his sweats.

Leaning up on the palm of her hands, Y/N nodded answering yes. She did it plenty of times with her ex, who she could make cum quickly off of head alone but the way Erik was grabbing his tool made her think differently.

“So what’s up then? Come show me what that mouth do?”

Kicking off her sandals Y/N got off the bed. His eyes stayed glued to her. Getting on her knees in front of him she tugged the sides of the grey sweats and pulled them down to his mid thigh. His dick sprung out almost hitting her in the face had she been centimeters closer.

Long and thick was what it was. A beautiful smooth brown texture covered his heavy package. Y/N felt her mouth watered thinking about how her cream and juices would look being all over it. This man was truly blessed and so far proving the rumors to be true.

Erik twisted his hips side to side wagging it in front of her. He lifted the wife beater up and tucked it under his chin so that he can get a good view.

Grabbing the base of his length Y/N eyed it. She was trying to figure out ways to be able to swallow this monster without choking. Sticking her tongue out she tapped his tip against it. A string from her saliva on her tongue being attached to his head every time they separated. With her prior experience and watching porn she grew to have her own technique.

Y/N allowed the spit to build up in her mouth when she sucked on his tip. No nigga likes dry head and she wasn’t going to start giving it today. She wanted it to be extra sloppy for Erik. Tightening her jaws she went up and down on his dick. Taking only about four inches of him and using her spit to stroke the rest of him. With just the little bit of his length she was able to take she could already feel him reaching her back.

“Fuck that throat feel good. Shitt!” Erik groaned gripping her tight kinky curls and putting them into a ponytail. He tilted his head watching her go stupid on his dick. He sucked in his lower lip when she began to swivel her head around.

Long drips of spit went falling down on her black tank top. Erik’s eyebrows scrunched up the moment he felt her take his balls in her mouth and suck on them lightly while stroking his tip. His stomach started to tighten and his toes dug into his carpet. This girl was trying to take his soul the way she sucking him up.

“Man whatchu doing Y/N?” Erik asked amazed, closing his eyes for a second. He couldn’t remember the last time he had head this good.

“I’m showing you that I’m grown daddy.” She answered coming up.

Now both of her hands were focused on playing with his balls while she sucked his tip and some of the few inches she was able to reach. Her eyes stared into his not stopping at all. She had him right where she wanted him. She could tell from the way his breathing sped up that he was getting weak and ready to bust a nut. Y/N tightened her suction to make it happen when she felt him pull her off by her hair.

Erik took one hand gripping her spit covered chin and tilted her head up to look at him. “Fuck is you doing sucking my dick like that ma? You tryna make me hold you hostage for the whole night?” He asked seriously.

Y/N giggled. “I just wanna make you cum Daddy.” She reached for his tip and gripped it making him jerk forward.

Erik smacked his lips annoyed that she had him feeling like sensitive. “Chill with that. Let me fuck you first before you suck this nut out.”

Helping her up and placing her back on the bed Erik slide off her biker shorts tossing them somewhere. Underneath them she had on some cotton hipster panties with little rainbows spreaded everywhere. Erik laughed when he seen it.

“Why you wearing shit like this ma?” He teased stepping out of his pants and getting on the bed.

“Because it’s cute. Why you worried about what I’m wearing instead of taking them off?” Y/N mocked his question.

Erik smirked bringing his hand up to the piece of cloth and ripping them straight down the middle and threw them on the ground. A gasp left Y/N lips as she was shocked from him doing that. Slapping his forearm, her lips went into a pout becoming upset.

“Erik, I just brought those two weeks ago.” She smacked the hand that was rubbing her thigh.

“You said to take them off. My bad. That’s the way I usually do it.” He lifted her legs by the back of her thighs while he consoled her as a distraction.

Y/N was frustrated at the fact that he ripped her new panties but also that she wasn’t going to have any to wear back home after this link.

“I don’t care how you do it, you shouldn’t have- ohh shiitt!” Her rant was cut off with the sound of moans leaving her mouth.

Holding her legs by the back of her knees Y/N glanced down to see Erik flicking her clit. The tip of his tongue felt wet and firm, in a good way. She really started to feel it when he took one hand and spread her phat pussy lips. Now her clit was out in the open and more accessible. Erik’s eyes met hers through his dreads when his lips wrapped around her bud and began to suck.

“Mm fuck...daddyy!” The sensation had Y/N’s hips thrusting to meet his vacuum like suction. So powerful and wet.

“I want you to cum on this fuckin tongue!” His words were muffled by the lips of her pussy surrounding his but it was enough to reach her ears. Taking a hand he smacked her outer thigh making his demand clear.

Her warm and slick juices ran out of her opening. It was something about the way he commanded her to nut that made her wetter and willing. Y/N liked to be dominated. Lifting up the tank top and pulling it up to her chest she tweaked and flipped her nipples adding to the stimulation. For her the feeling of having her nipples played with while getting her pussy ate made her orgasm a hundred times better.

“Eat this fucking pussy b-babyy-“ She whimpered feeling a tear slide down the corner of her eye.

Even though he noticed it, Erik didn’t stop. The juices that he caught in his mouth made it hard. He loved a good tasting ass pussy. Y/N definitely had one. Moving his assault from her clit he put his tongue in her tight opening. He began to fuck her with it. Erik put his hands under her ass cheeks and got a good cuff before bringing her back and forth on his stiff tongue. With the way her legs were still in the air he could see Y/N toes curl the second he started the action. She began leaking so quickly. Erik chuckled inwardly when he felt her walls squeezing on him.

“Mhm.” He moaned teasing her.

Y/N was cumming from the second time just off of his mouth alone. She reached down to rub her clit while he stuck his tongue deep inside her. She ain’t never got head this good before back at college. Her thighs began to shake as she felt another mini orgasm hit. Her pussy growing sensitive and overstimulated.

Grabbing his dreads she lifted his head up. “Daddy you was eating my pussy so good. Fuckk!” She moaned with a quiver in her voice.

“Now I’m bout to beat this pussy up real good too. Turn around. I want that ass from the back.” Erik barked getting on his knees.

Swiftly taking off her tank top, Y/N turned around like he said and got on all fours. She felt a firm smack to her right ass cheek. Moaning she rocked back and forth and twerked each cheek individually. Y/N looked over her shoulder behind her seeing Erik watching her move it so effortlessly. His hands went up to her waist and pulled her closer to him. Now she could feel her mound rubbing against his bare hard rock hard stick.

“Doing all this ass shaking, you better not try to run from the dick. I don’t want none of that.” He gripped a cheek spreading it watching her pussy lips follow.

“I’m not gon run daddy..I promise.” She reassured him softly.

Erik gripped the base of his length. Smacking it against her her clit he played with it for a while to warm her up. When he heard her moaning and seen her backing up against him he knew she was ready. Erik sent a drip of spit on the tip of his dick and rubbed it over it with a free hand. He teasingly dipped in and out of her tight hole. Y/N pussy was tight as fuck and he knew he had to work his way in. Getting deeper and deeper with each inch her warm wet walls clung on to him.

“Ooh fuck!” Y/N eyes closed not expecting him to feel like this. Erik was stretching her pussy out. Her arms sprawled out in front of her gripping his sheets.

“Tight ass pussy you got. What happened to getting dick on the regular? Hmm?” Holding her down by the small of her back Erik made her arch deeper as he stroked her slick walls.

Y/N’s mouth couldn’t close or make a sound. From the position he had her in she couldn’t move or run if she wanted to. Pinned down and made to take it. Erik was dicking her down. His heavy fat dick busting her pussy open and touching her stomach. Fuck that. He was putting it in her chest. Y/N reached behind her to hold on to his wrist while he pounded her pussy with precision. Her face smashed into the bed. His dick was too good for her.

“Ooh baby... Daddy don’t fuck me like this!” She shouted not knowing what she was saying. Y/N didn’t want him to stop but she couldn’t handle the pressure he was putting on her bladder.

Erik didn’t have just a big dick that could stretch a pussy out. He knew how to fuck with it. When he stroked he didn’t use his whole body he worked his hips and that’s what drove bitches crazy about him. Erik would fuck like he was trying to make a baby.

“I thought you came here to get fucked?” He asked lifting off her. He bended one knee and balanced his weight on his foot pressing it into the bed. His hand wrapped around her throat as he caught a rhythm making her throw it back on him.

The sound of skin clapping filled the room. Y/N’s arch was now the deepest it’s ever been with Erik choking her from behind and making her head tilt up towards the ceiling. Cramping in her stomach let her know that she was about to break. She was finally about to cum from penetration alone. His curved tip would press on a spot she didn’t know she had there causing her legs to convulse. Her whimpers and moans only encouraged him to keep doing what he was doing. Which was tearing her pussy up.

“Shiitt!!” She cursed grabbing onto her titty to have something to hold on.

Erik bit his lip seeing her ass tremble from her orgasm and feeling her squeezing his dick with a vice grip. He slapped her left cheek before pulling out to flip her over on her back. Looking down at his meat it was covered in her creamy juices. His dick jumped at the sight.

“Good ass pussy.” He mumbled in a trance.

Using the weight of his hips he thrusted finding his way back inside of her. The warm wet tunnel closing in on him. Erik lifted up the wife beater that was still on in the mist, and brought it up under his chin tucking it to move it out of his way. His hands found the back of her thighs and pinned them against her chest. He began stroking and getting deeper from the angle.

Being trapped from his hold that he had on her, the only thing Y/N could do was bring her hands to his hips trying to interrupt his movements. Y/N didn’t like this feeling. He was going too deep. Deeper than what she was used to. Shaking her head from side to side she pushed at his hips that only kept going due to her weak and trembling arms not being able to produce enough strength.

“Move ya fuckin hands.” He demanded while keeping his steady stroke. Erik cussed under his breath hearing the smacking sounds coming from her hole that could be mistaken for a pot of mac and cheese being stirred. That’s how good Y/N pussy was.

Her tight walls gripped his dick. Erik looked between their bodies watch the beautiful art being made. Her pussy following him whenever he pulled out to the tip just to be sucked back in. Pussy as good and wet as hers always got him to bust hard. He was close. Leaning down to her neck he kissed and sucked her skin while having her pinned down taking his length. Erik felt her walls slick up and knew she was about to nut again.

“Let that shit go mama.” He whispered in her neck.

Y/N’s nails scratched against his back. Her eyes wailed up with tears feeling the pressure in her stomach building up. She lost count of how many times he had made her cum tonight but she knew she was grateful and only prayed that this wasn’t the last time she got dick this bomb.

“Unhh.” She couldn’t produce any words. Her toes curled as she gazed at the ceiling feeling her body shake.

“There you go.” He pecked her neck.

Erik talked her through her nut while he continued to chase his. It wasn’t long before he felt his dick throb and grow inside of her. Pulling out he climbed on top of her holding his body up with one hand pressed into the bed as he stroked his dick with the other. Y/N opened her mouth and sucked his tip. She could feel his seed spilling on her tongue and traveling down her throat. She wasn’t usually a swallower but the way he had just fucked her he deserved to have his dick milked.

“Ahh shit!” Erik cursed caressing her jaw as he watched her suck him dry. She was cleaning both her juices and his nut off of his dick.

A popping sound escaped her mouth when she released him. Y/N’s body couldn’t move as she laid back staring at him with disbelief. Erik caught her face expression.

“What?” He asked standing on the side of the bed.

“Nothing. It’s just the rumors that I heard about you were all true. You do give some good dick.” Turning to lay on her side Y/N smiled.

Erik laughed. “Yeah well I could say the same about you.”

Her brows knitted in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Little birdy that goes to your college told me about how good ya pussy was. Had to find out for myself.” He smirked at her.

“Erik what are you talking about?” Y/N sat up.

“I’m talking about your ex that you fuck from time to time is my second cousin. Nigga couldn’t stop running his mouth about you. Small world ain’t it?”

He paused watching the confusion clouding over her face. “Besides why else you think I had hit you up tonight? It damn sure wasn’t to reminisce over the past.”

Taking off the wife beater, Erik leaned down to kiss her lips before walking away.

______________________________________

Please excuse any mistakes!

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supernaturalkickparty · 3 years

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I've been seeing people post what Carry On means to them but I'm gonna dial it back and bit and put what SPN as a whole means to me. Kinda long and idk how to post things under a cut so sorry guys.

Ok so September 2005. It was just 2 days after my 17th birthday, I was miserable, I was home alone, and I was bored. So I'm channel surfing and I caught it just as Mary went up in flames. I was like whoa, ok what's up.

Needless to say by the end of the pilot I was hooked.

Now for me that was my escape from the abuse at home, the bullying at school, the depression, the everything that I was going through. For that one hour a week I was part of a world where these brothers were going through so much and I wanted/needed to know more. I needed to see how it ended. Then All Hell Breaks Loose happened and I lost my collective shit. How could Sam die? How can these brothers who just started to be close again lose one another?

God the emotions of it all, the ups and downs the brothers went through. If I didn't have cable i would often wait to catch the reruns whenever we did have cable and I would watch all the time at the gym. Honestly that was maybe the only time I willingly went to the gym.

2015 I met my husband, we started dating and I found out he had never seen supernatural. Found out the hard way as we watched The Werther Project for the first time and he asked me what the show was about. That night we started watching from season 1 and he continued watching until he caught up. When he wasn't working he became my spn watch buddy.

2017 and 2018 I had miscarriages that landed me in the hospital and in bed for a good while. The show in all it's SamandDean codependency helped me out in the sense of I got lost in my fictional world. For an hour I was caught up in whatever was going on and I forgot it all.

Very late 2019 I finally carried a pregnancy to term and I had my one and only child. The pandemic happened and all I had were my shows to keep me sane while I was navigating mommyhood. Spn's fuckery(affectionately) helped remind me what I enjoyed as a person before I became a mom, the codependency reminded me why I love the show in the first place. The two awkward brothers who caught my attention.

Then season 15 came around, it was hit and miss on some parts and I don't want to get into that, overall, it was memorable because me and my husband watched it together while I had a baby on my tit. As Carry On played out, the toddler was dead asleep, latched on to my boob while I watched the episode play out. The domestic!chester's, the brothers having a routine and just going to a pie festival and having a good time. That 5 years down the road after they last saw Chuck and they still chose one another. That no matter what they still and will always choose one another.

I was a wreck as the fight scene broke out. I was always a wreck if there was a fight scene. When I saw the rebar I remember looking at my husband and saying "please god no." As I clutched my baby. When I saw Dean actually land on the rebar, god I cried so ugly. I squeezed the toddler and tried hard to cover my mouth and hoping me crying wouldn't wake him up.

Dean's declaration of love to Sam. The fear of Sam turning him away. For 15 plus years he held onto that fear. "I love you so much my baby brother." The needing assurance from Sam that it was ok to let go. Sam not sure how to live at first without Dean, Dean not giving a single fuck about anyone in Heaven because Sam wasn't there. He drove for what I'm guessing is 5 minutes heaven time to what was the rest of Sam's life.

The bridge scene. All was right in the world because Dean had Sam and Sam had Dean. The soulmates were reunited and it was finally perfect.

Now I know some people didn't like the finale and ok that's cool. But I loved it. It wasn't necessarily a happy ending but it was because in the end it was just Sam and Dean. The show began being about two brothers and it ended being about the two brothers. The ending was perfect because Sam and Dean had each other.

Supernatural meant the most to me because from a 17 year old teenager who grew up close with her siblings to a 32 year woman with a husband and kid and still very close with her siblings, it reminded me time and time again, family was everything because Sam and Dean were their own family. And at the end of the day, family, however your family is(friends,siblings,etc) that's what counts.

#carry on anniversary #carry on anniversary week #supernatural #spn #carry on #spn finale positive

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calzona-ga · 4 years

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She might change her mind; she certainly has before. But midway through an interview, Ellen Pompeo casually drops the bomb that after more than 360 episodes, the upcoming 17th season of “Grey’s Anatomy” may be its last.

“We don’t know when the show is really ending yet,” Pompeo says, answering a question that was not at all about when the show might end. “But the truth is, this year could be it.”

Pompeo has played Meredith Grey — the superstar surgeon around whom “Grey’s Anatomy” revolves — since its start. The show, created by Shonda Rhimes, premiered on ABC on March 27, 2005, and became an immediate, noisy hit. Since then, for a remarkably long time in Hollywood years, the drama has been among the most popular series on TV, even as the landscape of television has changed seismically. At its Season 2 ratings height, the program drew an average audience of 20 million viewers. And all these years later — in a TV universe now divided by more than 500 scripted shows —“Grey’s” ranks as the No. 1 drama among 18- to 34- year-olds and No. 2 among adults 18 to 49. In delayed, multiplatform viewing, Season 16 averaged 15 million viewers.

Strikingly, technology is such that teenagers who were born when the show premiered, and later binged “Grey’s” on Netflix, watch new episodes live with their parents. The series has spawned two successful spinoffs for ABC, “Private Practice” (which ran from 2007 to 2013) and “Station 19” (which enters its fourth season this fall). “Grey’s Anatomy” has been licensed in more than 200 territories across the world, translated into more than 60 languages, and catapulted the careers of music artists — from Ingrid Michaelson and Snow Patrol to Tegan and Sara and the Fray — whose songs have played during key emotional sequences.

In its explosive initial success, “Grey’s Anatomy” was an insurgent force in popular culture. The Season 1 cast featured three Black actors — Chandra Wilson, James Pickens Jr. and Isaiah Washington — as doctors in positions of power at the Seattle hospital where the show is set, and Sandra Oh played the ambitious intern Cristina Yang, who would become Meredith’s best friend. For the women characters, the “Grey’s” approach to sex was defiant and joyful, starting in the pilot with Meredith’s one-night stand with Derek (Patrick Dempsey), who turned out to be one of her bosses at the hospital.

Rhimes presented these images to the world like they were no big deal, when in fact, nothing like “Grey’s” had ever been seen on network television. Krista Vernoff has been the “Grey’s Anatomy” showrunner since Season 14, as anointed by Rhimes, and was the head writer for the first seven seasons. She remembers the moment she realized how radical “Grey’s” was — a medical show driven entirely by its characters instead of their surgeries — as she watched an episode early in Season 1. “My whole body was covered in chills,” Vernoff recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, we thought we were making a sweet little medical show — and we’re making a revolution.’”

Still, no one expected “Grey’s Anatomy” to become the longest-running primetime medical drama in TV history, outlasting “MASH” and “ER,” the previous record-holder. Since 2005, “Grey’s” has inspired countless women to become doctors, and along the way, its depiction of illness has even saved a few lives. The show has remained popular through three presidential administrations, the Great Recession, tectonic shifts in how people watch TV and two cultural reckonings — one feminist, one anti-racist — that demonstrate how ahead of its time “Grey’s Anatomy” has always been.

And they’re not done yet. When Season 17 premieres on Nov. 12, “Grey’s Anatomy” will tackle the subject of the coronavirus as experienced by the doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial, all while filming under strict COVID-19 protocols. The season is dedicated to frontline workers. And Pompeo, a producer on “Grey’s” — whose Meredith has removed a live bomb from a patient’s body, was in a plane crash, was widowed after Derek died in a car accident, was beaten nearly to death by a patient and, in a separate incident, actually did die briefly after a ferry accident — is intent on making the show top itself once again.

“I’m constantly fighting for the show as a whole to be as good as it can be. As a producer, I feel like I have permission to be able to do that,” Pompeo says. “I mean, this is the last year of my contract right now. I don’t know that this is the last year? But it could very well could be.”

Pompeo has been refreshingly transparent about her fight to become the highest-paid female actor on television, having detailed a few years ago how she negotiated a paycheck for more than $20 million a year. She clearly knows what she’s doing with these frank pronouncements as well.

As Pompeo laughs over the phone from her car, she says in a near shout: “There’s your sound bite! There’s your clickbait! ABC’s on the phone!”

The “Grey’s Anatomy” team — led by Rhimes and executive producer Betsy Beers — created the first season in a vacuum, because the show did not have an airdate. The 2004-05 season was a comeback year for ABC because “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost,” both of which debuted that fall, became phenomena — not only ratings successes but also watercooler events.

But at “Grey’s,” Rhimes was getting noted to death by network president Steve McPherson. According to Vernoff, McPherson — who resigned in 2010 under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations — stonewalled with “pushback every step of the way,” as ABC’s then- head of drama, Suzanne Patmore Gibbs, fought for the show. Vernoff was close with Patmore Gibbs, who died in 2018, and recalls her talking about her clashes with McPherson.

“He just didn’t get it; he didn’t like it,” Vernoff continues. “Honestly, I’m going to say, I don’t think he liked the ambitious women having sex unapologetically.”

Wilson, when she was cast as Miranda Bailey on “Grey’s,” was a New York theater actor (“Caroline, or Change”) relatively new to series television. But she was well aware of the network’s issues. “We took a creative break around the Christmas holiday, which to me meant ‘Oh, we’re out of a job.’”

Pompeo was frustrated: “Once we finally got an airdate, two weeks before that airdate they wanted to change the title of the show to ‘Complications.’”

In an email to Variety, McPherson disputed these assertions, saying, “I made the original deal with Shonda. I developed ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ at the studio. I picked it up at ABC.” He praised Patmore Gibbs, and added, “As for defaming me again and again, I don’t know what to say other than it’s sad that anyone feels the need to spread lies about me.”

Yet there was so little faith in the show that the writers were asked to clear out their offices when they finished the season. But to Vernoff, who had clicked right away with Rhimes, the early episodes had “felt like a labor of love.”

And it was worth the battle. “We fought for the right for Meredith and Bailey to be whole human beings, with whole sex lives, and not a network TV idea of likable,” Vernoff says. “You might not have been likable, but now you’re iconic.”

As far as the medicine went, the cases were often ostentatious. “Every kind of crazy accident that had ever caused terrible harm to any human ever, that was our homework at night,” Vernoff says. It was up to Zoanne Clack, an emergency room doctor-turned-writer, to be a sounding board in the writers’ room. She began as the only doctor on staff during the first season, and is now an executive producer. “What was interesting was that the writers don’t have those boundaries because they don’t know the rules, so they would come up with all of these scenarios, and my immediate thought was like, ‘No way!’” Clack says. “Then I’d have to think about it and go, ‘But could it?’”

When the program finally premiered — on a Sunday night after “Desperate Housewives” — to massive ratings, it was a shock to the cast and crew, given that they had shot the first season under a cloud, Pompeo says, adding, “So the fact that the numbers were that huge the first time we aired was a big f–k-you to McPherson!”

With Season 2 now a given, everything changed, Vernoff says: “It was like a hurricane-force gale, and everyone was just trying to hold on.” They had made 13 episodes for Season 1, airing nine of them and holding the final four for Season 2 — Meredith finding out that Derek was actually married (to Addison, played by Kate Walsh) had felt like the perfect finale. But upon the writers’ return, Vernoff says, the feeling was “Holy s—. We have to make 22.”

The entire cast — mostly unknown actors like Katherine Heigl as the sunny Izzie Stevens, T.R. Knight as the chummy neurotic George O’Malley, and Justin Chambers as the troubled, secretly vulnerable Alex Karev — had become famous overnight. For Wilson, whose Bailey was the stern teacher the interns called “the Nazi,” it was a new experience. “Folks were scared to talk to me, like in the store or in the Target — people would just kind of leave me alone,” she says. “It was like, ‘What’s going on?’”

According to Vernoff, “Paparazzi were following the cast to work — it was wild.”

The mid- to late-2000s were the height of glossy gossip magazines such as Us Weekly (and its copycats), as well as the inception of TMZ and Perez Hilton as celebrity-hounding, news-breaking forces that fueled (and soiled) the fame-industrial complex. The cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” was firmly in the sights of these new, often toxic forces in media.

Pompeo says the cast was so talented that it “was all worth it” — but yes, the transition to stardom was hard for the group: “At the time, it was just a real combination of exhaustion and stress and drama. Actors competing with each other — and envious.”

Heigl, Knight and Isaiah Washington all went through press cycles that made the show seem scandal-prone. To rehash it all now seems pointless; you can look it up. Washington was fired in June 2007. Knight and Heigl asked to be written out of the show preemptively, in Seasons 5 and 6, respectively.

Vernoff and the other writers were watching the internal messes unfold. They had to deal with how the fallout affected the show’s plot, as when Washington was fired just as Burke, his character, was about to marry Cristina. “When word comes down that an actor is leaving the show, and what you’ve got scripted is a wedding …” Vernoff trails off, laughing.

“There was a lot of drama on-screen and drama off-screen, and young people navigating intense stardom for the first time in their lives,” she continues. “I think that a lot of those actors, if they could go back in time and talk to their younger selves, it would be a different thing. Everybody’s grown and changed and evolved — but it was an intense time.”

Pompeo doesn’t want to talk about what happened with individual actors from the show, because when she has in the past, “it doesn’t get received in the way in which I intend it to be.” But she does make a point about the way television is produced. “Nobody should be working 16 hours a day, 10 months a year — nobody,” she says. “And it’s just causing people to be exhausted, pissed, sad, depressed. It’s a really, really unhealthy model. And I hope post-COVID nobody ever goes back to 24 or 22 episodes a season.

“It’s why people get sick. It’s why people have breakdowns. It’s why actors fight! You want to get rid of a lot of bad behavior? Let people go home and sleep.”

Debbie Allen would eventually be Pompeo’s savior in that regard, but that was years away. Allen — an actor and a dancer — began her directing career when she was on the 1980s TV series “Fame” as a “natural progression” because, she says, “I was in charge of the musical numbers, and so many directors didn’t really know how to shoot them.” She went on to be a prolific director and producer, most notably overhauling NBC’s “A Different World” after a tumultuous first season. As a fan of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Allen wanted to work on the show, and in Season 6, she was hired to direct. To prepare for it, Allen shadowed Wilson, who had been tapped to direct by executive producer-director Rob Corn. (“He came to me and said, ‘You should direct,’” says Wilson, who has now helmed 21 episodes. “And I said, ‘OK.’ Because I didn’t know what else to say.”)

Directing that sixth-season episode led to Allen’s fruitful relationship with “Grey’s.” In Season 8, Rhimes wrote Allen into the show to play Catherine, a star surgeon, a love interest for Richard Webber (Pickens) and the mother of Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams). Ahead of Season 12 in 2015, Allen became the show’s EP/director. Her duties included hiring all of the directors, weighing in on scripts and casting, and, as Allen puts it, “minding that people feel good about themselves.” Several years before the revived #MeToo movement would lead to calls for systemic changes behind the camera in Hollywood, Allen set a goal of hiring 50% women directors. She also increased the number of Black men who directed “Grey’s” during her first season as executive producer, among them Denzel Washington. (When she sold him on it, she recounts, he said to her, “I’m going to say yes, Debbie Allen.”)

Pompeo and Allen are close. Allen began her new role the year after Dempsey left, “at a time when we were really broken,” Pompeo says. “And so much of our problems were perpetuated by bad male management. Debbie came in at a time when we really, really needed a breath of fresh air, and some new positive energy.”

Pompeo continues with a laugh: “Debbie really brought in a spirit to the show that we had never seen — we had never seen optimism! We had never seen celebration. We had never seen joy!”

According to Pompeo, Allen began advocating for her to have more humane hours — Fridays off (Pompeo: “And I was like, ‘What? What? Fridays off?’”) — and for the show to shoot 12-hour days maximum, and ideally no more than 10 hours (Pompeo: “And I was like, I love this woman.”).

Allen speaks affectionately about her bond with Pompeo. “Coming out of Boston, she’s so earthy and real in a way that you might not know,” Allen says. “There’s a sisterhood between us — I guess you would say it’s almost a Blackness that exists between us. And she’s part of our tribe.”

Allen has been a key member of the “Grey’s Anatomy” brain trust since Season 12, and two seasons later, Vernoff returned to run the show. She’d left at the end of Season 7, consulted on “Private Practice” for a few years, and then went to Showtime’s “Shameless” for five seasons. As her contract was set to expire, Rhimes asked Vernoff to lunch, and told her she wanted her to take over. “It felt like she was saying, ‘Hey, our kid needs you,’” Vernoff says.

Before accepting the offer, Vernoff had to catch up on the show. She had always written “Grey’s” as a romantic comedy, and what she saw on-screen during her binge was dark as hell — especially after Derek’s death. “If this show that you are currently making is the show that you want ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ to be,” she recalls telling Rhimes, “I am, in fact, not the right writer for it.” But Rhimes was insistent, saying it was time for a change after the mourning period for Derek.

Vanessa Delgado, who started as a production intern during the seventh season and has worked her way up to being lead editor and co-producer, says the show’s trajectory shifted when Vernoff came back — it was a return to the original, saucier tone of “Grey’s.” “We changed the music completely,” Delgado says. “The dialogue felt lighter and more fun, and wewere having fun again.”

That lightness will be difficult to maintain this year, of course, when, as Allen puts it, “COVID is No. 1 on the call sheet right now.”

Vernoff at first wondered whether “Grey’s” should ignore the coronavirus, thinking the audience comes to the show “for relief.” But the doctors in the writers’ room convinced her this wasn’t the time for escapism, saying to her, “This is the biggest medical story of our lifetime, and it is changing medicine permanently.”

When they’ve had doctors and nurses come speak with them this season, Vernoff says, “they were different human beings than the people we’ve been talking to every year. And I want to honor that, tonally. I just want to inspire people to take care of each other.”

Pompeo, who is not shy about offering criticism, sounds positively enthusiastic: “I’ll say the pilot episode to this season — girl, hold on.

“What nobody thinks we can continue to do, we have done. Hold on. That’s all we’re going to say about that!”

Pompeo has a few more months before she decides whether she wants to continue — and as Rhimes and ABC have made clear in recent years, the show will likely end when she leaves. “I don’t take the decision lightly,” Pompeo says. “We employ a lot of people, and we have a huge platform. And I’m very grateful for it.”

“You know, I’m just weighing out creatively what can we do,” she says. “I’m really, really, really excited about this season. It’s probably going to be one of our best seasons ever. And I know that sounds nuts to say, but it’s really true.”

Vernoff doesn’t worry about the creative well drying up. “We’ve blown past so many potential endings to ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ that I always assume it can go on forever,” she says.

And Wilson knows how important “Grey’s” is to its audience, in that the characters have essentially become people who “live in their house.” As one of only three actors who’ve been on “Grey’s” since the beginning — the other is James Pickens Jr. — Wilson is in it until the end: “In my mind, Bailey is there until the doors close, until the hospital burns down, until the last thing happens on ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ That is her entire arc.”

Whenever the show does conclude, part of its legacy will be about the talent it launched into the world, beginning with Rhimes, who will soon release her first shows for Netflix, after her company, Shondaland, made a lucrative deal with the streamer in 2017.

But it will also be about the characters of “Grey’s Anatomy”— mostly women and people of color — who are trying to make the world a better place as they find friendship, love and community.

“The show, at its core, brings people together,” Pompeo says. “And the fact that people can come together and watch the show, and think about things they may not have ordinarily thought about, or see things normalized and humanized in a way that a lot of people really need to see — it helps you become a better human being. If this show has helped anybody become a better human being, then that’s the legacy I’d love to sit with.”

#grey's anatomy #Ellen Pompeo #chandra wilson #Debbie Allen #krista vernoff #season 17 #variety #news

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Pandemic in Pop Culture Trends

https://ift.tt/32wrfZT

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic was both a universal and incredibly personal experience. While not everyone’s life in the first year of the pandemic looked the same, there have been some common joys, struggles, and tragedies. And there have been stories that have helped get us through the first year of pandemic. The global COVID-19 pandemic is not over, but it has hopefully reached a turning point. Multiple vaccines protecting against the worst of the virus have been developed and have begun to be (unevenly) distributed around the world, with Israel, the U.K., Chile, and the U.S. currently with the greatest percentages of their populations having received at least one dose. As we hopefully move into a less deadly phase of the pandemic, we’re taking a moment to look back at the TV series, games, movies, and other pop culture moments that brought comfort, distraction, critique, and catharsis for many in the pandemic’s first year, as well as some of the major trends and news stories that shaped the industry itself between March 2020 and February 2021.

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March 2020

NBA To Suspend Season Following Tonight's Games pic.twitter.com/2PTx2fkLlW

— NBA (@NBA) March 12, 2020

The NBA Suspends the Season (March 11th)

Many use the NBA’s March 11th announcement that the 2019-2020 season would be suspended until further notice as an unofficial start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The season would continue four months later in the “NBA Bubble,” but no one could know what the future would look like, only that things were indeed very serious for the billions-dollar professional basketball and media industry to shut down.

Everyone Watches Contagion

Though Steven Soderbergh’s pandemic thriller came out in 2011, Contagion jumped from Warner Bros.’ 270th most digitally rented movie in December 2019 to their second most rented one in February, and that trend would only continue into March. As the pandemic continued, we would see audiences turning towards more “escapist” fare, but, in the early days of this international crisis, people turned towards this matter-of-fact, fictional imagining of how a global pandemic might play out to help process their new and frightening reality.

Movie Theaters Essentially Go Dark

In addition to the immense loss of human life the COVID-19 pandemic has caused, there has also been an economic cost that will no doubt continue to impact human health and livelihood in the coming years. On March 17th, the movie theater chains Regal and AMC announced their temporary closures, an early sign of just how bad the pandemic would be for the movie theater business.

Movies in Theaters Begin Going to VOD

With movie theaters closed, studios needed to get creative about how best to distribute their movies still “in theaters.” Universal Pictures was the first to make the decision to move its new releases to a video on-demand model, bringing The Invisible Man, The Hunt, and Emma to VOD on March 20th.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is Released (March 20th)

On March 20th, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Nintendo Switch, allowing players (most of whom where stuck at home) to digitally move to an island and nurture their own community. The fifth game in the Animal Crossing series, New Horizons would go on to major commercial success. It broke the console game record for most digital units sold in a single month, became the 15th best-selling video game in history, and the second best-selling game of all time in Japan. It was also the most blogged-about subject on Tumblr in 2020!

Tiger King Drops on Netflix (March 20th)

Netflix remains the largest streaming service worldwide, with over 200 million global subscribers and roughly 74 million of those subscribers in the U.S. Because of this, when a Netflix Original becomes a hit, it usually becomes a major part of online discourse, especially in the United States. This was the case for Tiger King, the true crime (and truly wild) documentary series that dropped on Netflix on March 20th. With most watchers stuck at home, the online discourse around the show felt even more intense than usual. For a few weeks, you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a Tiger King meme.

April 2020

Quibi Launches (April 6)

While not necessarily pandemic-specific (did Quibi ever really stand a chance?), 2020 saw the launch (April 6th) and death (December 1st) of Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-form streaming platform that squandered $1.75 billion in investment capital and star power like Sophie Turner, Kiefer Sutherland, Idris Elba, Chrissy Teigen, Karlie Kloss, and Laura Dern before bowing out in December.

Trolls World Tour Becomes First Movie to Break Theatrical Window (April 10)

Remember when it was radical for a movie to break its theatrical window? Yeah, that was in April, when many media professionals were shocked with Universal’s decision to release Trolls World Tour, the computer animated musical comedy sequel to 2016’s Trolls, as both a limited theatrical release and via video on demand services. The move led AMC Theatres to temporarily announce that they would no longer be distributing Universal films, but the two companies quickly came to an agreement shortly after.

Extraction was a Thing (April 24)

Honestly, every week in 2020 felt like its own lifetime. Remember when Extraction, the Chris Hemsworth-helmed action-thriller, became the most watched original film in Netflix’s history? Directed by Sam Hargrave and written by MCU vet Joe Russo, the film follows a black ops mercenary who must rescue the kidnapped son of an Indian drug lord in Bangladesh. As self-reported by Netflix, the movie was watched by 99 million households in its first month of release.

May 2020

TikTok Pops

TikTok was already firmly a thing heading into 2020, but the pandemic was when more people found it—especially the olds… by which I mean millennials. In October 2019, TikTok had almost 40 million U.S. users (and 507 million global users in December 2019). By June 2020, that number was at almost 92 million in the U.S. (and 689 million globally by July 2020). This was part of a larger trend over the course of the pandemic that saw people spending more time on their mobile devics than ever before: According to a report from mobile app intelligence agency App Annie (via Social Media Today), by the end of 2020, Americans spent more time on TikTok than they did on Facebook, and the average American now spends more time per day on their mobile device (4 hours) than they do watching TV (3.7 hours).

Avatar: The Last Airbender is Released on Netflix (May 15th)

In many ways, the pandemic has been an accelerant of global processes, and this applies to pop culture as well. While we were already seeing the rise in more foreign-language TV, including anime, and the return to some major nostalgic properties due to broader and easier accessibility because of platforms like Netflix, the pandemic really ramped that process up. When all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender became available on Netflix in May, the American animated TV series that originally aired on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008, was discovered or re-discovered by millions of viewers, becoming one of the top Tumblr fandoms of 2020. It was indicative of a larger trend of old shows becoming new again through release on major global streaming platforms.

Avatar: The Last Airbender – What Can We Expect From the New Avatar Studios?

By Shamus Kelley

Avatar: The Last Airbender Co-Creators Exit Netflix Live-Action Series

By Shamus Kelley

June 2020

Buffy Lands on All4 (June 1st)

In a year where what’s old was necessarily new again, all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer came to UK streaming platform All4, and were broadcast on E4 every weeknight at 11pm. Elsewhere in the UK streaming market, the BBC iPlayer saw its best-ever quarter from April to June with 1.6 billion requests, an increase of 59% on the same quarter last year (according to a BBC press release).

Staged Premieres (June 10th)

As it became apparent that TV and film production would not be going back to normal anytime soon, many creators got, well, creative and began making things in lockdown. One of the best and most high-profile examples was BBC’s Staged, in which David Tennant and Michael Sheen play fictionalized versions of themselves, trying to rehearse a performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author via video chat, alongside director Simon Evans. The low-budget, high-charisma series is filmed in the actors’ real-life homes but, unlike some celebrity efforts during the pandemic (see March), strikes the right tonal note in relation to its subjects’ privilege.

July 2020

Ray Fisher Speaks Up About Alleged Abuse on the Justice League Set (July 1st)

Actor Ray Fisher raised his voice on July 1st in a tweet, calling out director Joss Whedon for alleged abuse on the Justice League set, and WB execs Geoff Johns and Jon Berg for “enabling” that alleged behavior.

Joss Wheadon’s on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable. He was enabled, in many ways, by Geoff Johns and Jon Berg. Accountability>Entertainment

— Ray Fisher (@ray8fisher) July 1, 2020

Later, in December, Fisher would add WB exec Walter Hamada’s name to that list, following a December 11th announcement by WarnerMedia that their investigation connected to Justice League “has concluded and remedial action has been taken.”

Hamilton Blows Us All Away (July 4th)

One of the deepest cultural cuts during lockdown was the necessary elimination of live, in-person theater, which is probably one of the reasons why Hamilton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning stage musical that originally came to Broadway in 2015, made such a splash when it became available in its filmed format via Disney+. Even without a pandemic, Hamilton (and all Broadway theater) is only accessible to a select group of people, making the addition of the pop culture phenomenon in a more accessible form so very important.

From Bridgerton to Hamilton: A History of Color-Conscious Casting in Period Drama

By Amanda-Rae Prescott

Movies

Hamilton: Thomas Jefferson Controversy Explained

By David Crow

Host Becomes the Most Zeitgesty Movie of 2020 (July 30th)

Another particularly impressive entry into the “filmed from lockdown” genre that sprouted up during the first year of the pandemic was British found footage horror film Host. Written and made over 12 weeks in a pandemic and based around a haunted Zoom call, few pandemic-made stories managed to nail the balance between both frighteningly topical and escapist quite so well.

The NBA Bubble Begins

Professional sports went into their bubbles, aka tightly controlled settings in which pro sports players live, practice, and play their respective seasons—to varying degrees of success. The NBA’s Disney World bubble went into effect on July 22nd for exhibition scrimmages, before launching into the final eight games of its regular 2019-2020 season and then the 2020 NBA playoffs. Twenty-two of the NBA’s 30 teams were invited to participate and ended the bubble in October with no recorded cases of COVID-19 amongst its participating players. The MLB bubble was… less successful.

SDCC @Home: WTF Was That? (July 22)

San Diego Comic-Con is one of the most important and lucrative pop culture events of the year, bringing hundreds of thousands of people into downtown San Diego to celebrate and discuss some of the largest franchises in the world. SDCC was one of the many in-person conventions that attempted to transfer its programming online in 2020 and… it didn’t really work. Part of the fun of Comic-Con is in the excitement of the crowd and the exclusivity of the events. (Though not on Thanksgiving, thank you very much.) There is nothing quite like getting to be part of a major Hall H announcement, and watching via video chat is just not the same.

August 2020

Tenet Comes Out in the UK (August 26th)

In what was largely a year without theatrical cinema in the U.S. and the U.K., a brief respite in COVID-19 cases and therefore lockdown meant a proper theatrical release for Christopher Nolan’s latest in August 2020. Sci-fi blockbuster Tenet hit U.K. theatres on August 26th, bringing in $5.3 million domestically in its first week of release and marking the first major studio release since the pandemic began.

American Sports Leagues Go on Strike to Protest Jacob Blake Shooting

Many professional sports in the U.S. came to a temporary halt when some players and teams refused to take the field or court following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black American who was shot in the back and paralyzed by a police officer in front of his sons on August 23rd in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The incident re-ignited ongoing protests over racism and police brutality, with which many players and teams stood in solidarity. The NBA, WNBA, MLB, and MLS all postponed games as players protested Jacob Blake’s shooting.

Chadwick Boseman Passes Away (August 28th)

In a devastating loss to American culture, Chadwick Boseman, the star of Black Panther and many other films, passed away due to complications from colon cancer, a condition with which he had been living and working since a 2016 diagnosis. Boseman was one of the most successful Black actors and creators working today.

“He … knew that his voice was now strong and people were listening and paying attention,” wrote Kelley L. Carter in The Undefeated. “And he knew that even as this moment was victorious, Hollywood still needed to be called to task on the things that make this industry problematic, even as it was in the infant phases of creating a groundbreaking blockbuster with a mostly Black cast.”

September 2020

Tenet Flops in the U.S., Hollywood Abandons Ship for Fall 2020 (September 3)

While Tenet may have been a hit in the U.K., the Nolan blockbuster flopped upon its release in the U.S., where many theaters remained closed or empty through the summer and fall. The film would make around $58 million in the U.S. and Canada, prompting Hollywood studios to further push back major releases slated for the fall.

Mulan Becomes First Disney “Premier Access” Release (Sept. 4)

After several pandemic-caused release delays, Disney’s much-anticipated, live-action adaptation of Mulan became the first “Premier Access” release for Disney+, causing a bit of a stir. In the U.S. and in some other markets, Disney forwent releasing Mulan in theaters, instead offering a “Premier Access” window on Disney+ that viewers could access for an additional fee of $29.99. While the film received middling reviews from western critics, it was not received well in China. Additionally, a #BoycottMulan movement, which started out as a response to social media comments star Liu Yifei made in support of the Hong Kong police in their (sometimes violent) suppression of pro-democracy protestors, gained some traction in the lead up to the release.

Movies

How Mulan Maintains The Animated Film’s Queerness

By Natalie Zutter

Movies

Mulan: Disney Plus Grosses Exceed $200 Million? (Report)

By David Crow

I’m Thinking of Ending Things Makes People Go “Whaaa?” (Sept. 4)

As our Rosie Fletcher wrote in the “Ending Explained” for I’m Thinking of Ending Things: “[this story is] a movie, and a book, which really requires you to watch/read twice to actually fully understand.” It’s a gloriously confusing movie, and many in September dove right into the mystery chiller adapted by Charlie Kaufman from a novel by Iain Reid. As Fletcher put in her review, the film is “a perfect storm of philosophy, ambiguity and wankery.” What’s not to love?

October 2020

Trial of the Chicago 7 Debuts on Netflix (Oct. 16)

However you may feel about Aaron Sorkin, the man knows how to make a taut political drama. Trial of the Chicago 7 is a dramatic retelling of (as it says on the tin) the 1969-70 trial of the Chicago Seven, a group of anti–Vietnam War protesters charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The movie has an all-star cast of dudes, and is both written and directed by Sorkin. It made many critics’ best-of-the-year lists and made a cultural splash when it dropped on Netflix in October, after a summer of American and global protests ignited by the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans.

Borat 2 Makes (a Bigger) Fool Out of Rudy Giulilani (October 23rd)

Rarely do the paths of pop culture and politics so explicitly intersect as they did in Borat 2. The mockumentary comedy sequel came out in October, in the long, plateau-ed height of the lead up to the presidential election, and featured a scene in which Republican politician Rudy Giuliani puts his hand into his trousers in front of actress Maria Bakalova, who is impersonating a conservative journalist. While Giuliani attempted to spin the event in both the lead up to and following the release of the film on Amazon Prime, Sacha Baron Cohen told Good Morning America in an interview after the film’s release: “It is what it is. He did what he did.”

Movies

Maria Bakalova is Ready to Do Borat 3 in ‘Five Minutes’

By David Crow

Movies

Borat 2: Sacha Baron Cohen Reveals Dangerous Deleted Scene

By David Crow

The Queen’s Gambit Turns Everyone into a Chess Player (Oct. 23)

Odds are that, in October 2020, you either knew someone or were someone who watched The Queen’s Gambit and then fell hard into the world of chess. The Netflix period miniseries tracks the highs and lows of fictional chess prodigy Beth Harmon (the brilliant Anya Taylor-Joy), from her upbringing in a Kentucky orphanage in the 1950s to her time at the top of the competitive chess world in the 1960s. In its first month of release, The Queen’s Gambit became Netflix’s most-watched scripted miniseries, and sent chess set sales soaring—yet another sign of just how commercially and culturally powerful Netflix has become.

November 2020

PlayStation 5 Alleges Launches, But No One Can Get Them (Nov. 12)

Even if you aren’t a gamer, you probably heard about the release of the PlayStation 5. Though the PS5 technically became available in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North America, Singapore, and South Korea on November 12th (and worldwide a week later), the limited supply of the console made it almost impossible to find.

As Matthew Byrd wrote in his November article on the subject: “We know that the initial PS5 shortage can at least partially be attributed to a shortage of the console’s chips (as well as distribution and manufacturing problems caused by the complications related to the COVID-19 pandemic), but as we’re already seeing in Europe where some who pre-ordered a PS5 were warned they may not receive their console until 2021, Sony faces some notable additional issues moving forward.”

This is partially a story of supply and demand, and the growth of gaming in general. According to a report by market researcher SuperData (via Venture Beat), the game industry grew 12% (to $139.9 billion) in 2020, with console games revenues up 28% from 2019. While growth is expected to be slower in 2021, as fewer people will hopefully be stuck at home, more people than ever are gtting their story fix in the world of gaming.

Games

PlayStation Bets on Big Games as Game Pass Slowly Wins a Console War

By Matthew Byrd

Games

Why PlayStation Store Closing on PS3 Should Matter to You

By Matthew Byrd

December 2020

WB Announces HBO Max Release Hybrid Model (Dec. 3)

In a move that seems to be paying off, in December, Warner Bros. announced that it would be moving to a release hybrid model through 2021, putting its entire 2021 film slate on HBO Max. As David Crow explained in our film section: “The move will put all 17 of WB’s scheduled 2021 films on a ‘hybrid’ model where films will premiere on HBO Max the same day as their theatrical release in the U.S. Technically speaking, the films will still be playing in theaters, particularly in international markets without HBO Max as a streaming option, but for the first (and most lucrative) month of their release, they’ll also be available on WarnerMedia’s streamer.”

People Actually Get to Play Cyberpunk 2077, Immediately Realize It’s Broken (Dec. 10)

Hooboy, Cyberpunk 2077. In December, after literal years of anticipation, CD Projekt released action RPG video game Cyberpunk 2077 to disastrous results. While the narrative and design of the game is ambitious and has its rewards, the rollout was plagued by performance issues (particularly in the console versions) that led to player backlash and actual lawsuits.

Games

Cyberpunk 2077 Lawsuits Explained

By Matthew Byrd

Games

Cyberpunk 2077 Roadmap Proves the Game Should Have Been Delayed to 2021

By Matthew Byrd

The Mandalorian Finale Breaks the Internet (Dec. 18)

Um, spoilers.

The second season of The Mandalorian may not have technically been the most-watched series of 2020, but it certainly felt like the most-talked-about, proving that, even in the era of streaming, there’s still such a thing as appointment television. This all came to a culmination with The Mandalorian Season 2 finale, “The Rescue,” which featured an appearance from Luke Skywalker himself.

Could Durge’s Star Wars Return Lead to a Role in The Mandalorian or Book of Boba Fett?

By Joseph Baxter

How The Mandalorian Challenges Star Wars’ History of Bad Dads

By Lacy Baugher

Wonder Woman 1984 Premieres (Dec. 25)

Wonder Woman 1984 dropped on Christmas Day in the United States, and quickly became the most-watched straight-to-streaming title of 2020 (knocking Disney+’s Hamilton out of the top spot), despite its middling reviews. In the U.S., it would be the first of WB’s “hybrid model” releases, getting a simultaneous release in theaters as well as on HBO Max.

Movies

Wonder Woman 1984 Star Connie Nielsen Defends Patty Jenkins’ Vision

By Don Kaye

Movies

Does Zack Snyder’s Justice League Set Up Wonder Woman 3?

By David Crow

Bridgerton Gets Saucy (Dec. 25)

Bridgerton, Netflix’s deliciously addicting period romance based on the Julia Quinn novels, also dropped on Christmas Day, and went on to become the streamer’s most watched series ever, reaching #1 in 76 countries. The Shondaland produced drama made leading man Regé-Jean Page a global star, so much so that the announcement that he would not be returning for Season 2 (as each season focuses on a different romantic pairing featuring a member of the Bridgerton family) into a bit of a meltdown. Bridgerton has already secured another three seasons—a post-Season 1 announcement that is unprecedented for a Netflix original.

Why Bridgerton Had to Let Regé-Jean Page Go

By Amanda-Rae Prescott

Will Bridgerton Become the Next Game of Thrones?

By Kayti Burt

Soul Brings on the Feels (Dec. 25)

Called Pixar’s “most ambitious movie in years” by Den of Geek film editor David Crow, Soul was another Christmas release that brought solace to people stuck at home, many without their families, for the holidays. Directed by Pixar vet Pete Docter (Up, Monsters, Inc., Inside Out) and co-directed by Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami, Star Trek: Discovery), the film follows middle school music teacher and pianist Joe Gardner as he seeks to reunite his soul and his body after they are accidentally separated, just before his big break as a jazz musician.

January 2021

The Little Things Kicks Off WB’s 2021 Film Slate on Streaming (Jan. 29)

Fans of crime thriller and/or Denzel Washington and Rami Malek flock to HBO Max and theaters for the hybrid release of The Little Things, the first of WB’s planned 2021 slate.

Movies

The Little Things is Better Than a Seven Copycat

By Don Kaye

Movies

The Little Things and the Mystery of Denzel Washington’s Character Explained

By David Crow

February 2021

WandaVision Ensnares Us

Stop hogging the zeitgeist, Marvel!

In February, Disney+ released its first MCU show, WandaVision, and it broke the internet. The miniseries, created by Jac Schaeffer and starring Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, wowed audiences with its clever use of the sitcom format and superhero tropes to tell a story about grief that, for all of its fantastical elements, was oh so relatable.

How WandaVision’s Doctor Strange 2 Connection Evolved

By Joseph Baxter

WandaVision: The Unanswered Questions From the Marvel Series

By Gavin Jasper

Judas and the Black Messiah Debuts (Feb. 12)

Daniel Kaluuya and Lakith Stanfield lead an all-star cast in this 1960s period piece that follows the real life story of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton, who was the victim of a targeted assassination by the FBI. In a year that saw an increased mainstream awareness of Black trauma, the Oscar-nominated Judas and the Black Messiah shone a cinematic light on yet another state-led historical injustice against Black Americans.

Charisma Carpenter Speaks Her Truth

In February, actress Charisma Carpenter came forward with allegations about Joss Whedon’s alleged abuses of power during her time on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, inspired by Ray Fisher’s own efforts to seek justice and systemic reform for Whedon’s alleged behavior on Justice League.

My truth. #IStandWithRayFisher pic.twitter.com/eNjYcJ6zwP

— charisma carpenter (@AllCharisma) February 10, 2021

— Ray Fisher (@ray8fisher) July 1, 2020

Pokemania Returns

Many older millennials have spent their time during quarantine reconnecting with their childhood faves. This culminates with a massive renewed interest in Pokemon cards to the point where McDonald’s Happy Meals with Pokemon cards as toys sell out instantly.

Sponsored

Why Pokémon Has Endured For 25 Years

By Alec Bojalad

Did we miss anything? What have been the stories and pop culture trends that have helped get you through the pandemic so far? Let us know in the comments below.

The post The Pandemic in Pop Culture Trends appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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obsessivedilettante · 4 years

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20 in 10: A Drama Retrospective

Since I’ve been all quiet on the drama front this year because of life reasons, I thought it would be fun to go back and pick out 20 of the most memorable dramas of the last decade. Maybe not necessarily the best dramas or even my favorites (although some are!), but two dramas each year that were somehow notable moments in my drama-watching timeline.

2009: Gateway Drugs

Boys over Flowers (KBS)

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good drama. It is not one I think I can ever really rewatch (although I will happily revisit the 2005 Japanese version, and I had a hellava fun time watching the latest Chinese version). But! It was the first kdrama I remember watching, and the first step on the slippery slope of eventually becoming a Drama Addict. I mostly remember it being crazy popular on places like mysoju (RIP), and so I checked it out due to curiosity, and the rest, as they say, is history. Or, should I say, almost paaaaradise!

You’re Beautiful (SBS)

This one I also watched because it became crazy-popular online, and curiosity got the better of me. I really didn’t know much about k-pop prior to dramas, so I had no idea until after this drama that k-pop was more about pretty people in crazy fashion, dancing in syncopation in bizarrely lit rooms, rather than playing instruments. Because it was thanks to this drama that I got my crash-course on k-pop as a phenomenon -- both the fandom side, and the crazy things that artists have to go through to claw their way into the public’s view (nevar 4get the glorious ramen dance). Since Angel was a group that played instruments, and Hongki and Yonghwa were also from groups that played instruments, I assumed that all kpop were groups that played instruments. Oh, sweet summer child...

But it did get me started on my k-pop journey, first falling in love with FT Island and CNBLUE, before falling into the rabbit hole of the other prominent groups of the day. (SNSD! The Wonder Girls! Super Junior! DBSK! SS501! Kara! 2PM! 2AM! Shinee! BEG! Epik High! U-KISS! All the debut groups, like 2NE1, MBLAQ, B2ST, 4Minute, f(x), T-ara, After School... basically 2009 was a magical year in k-pop.)

If I had just watched Boys Over Flowers, I don’t know that I would have become a Drama Addict. But You’re Beautiful pushed me closer to the edge, with the zany humor of the Hong Sisters (and the desire for a pig-bunny of my own!). It would really be Coffee Prince that would push me over the edge, but that aired in 2007 so it doesn’t count for this list. But I had to mention it anyway, because, well, it’s Coffee Prince and where my love for Handsome Oppa began.

2010: More Than Candy

The Woman Who Wants To Marry (MBC)

A lot of the dramas I watched at first had that typical “Candy” character, the poor-but-scrappy girl who would somehow be saved by the guy and become the Cinderella she never knew she wanted to be. So it was a delight when I encountered women who were not only older than high-school-age or early twenties, but in their thirties, with rich full lives! Plus, this was one of my earliest introductions to the concept of the “noona romance” (a concept that I’ve since heartily embraced, of course). I started it primarily because Kim Bum was my favorite of the Flower Boys, but I stuck with it because I fell in love with the women (and I still have a girl-crush on Bu-ki).

Harvest Villa (tvn)

This show is insane. But in the good way, the way that the writer intended, and not in the “are a bunch of monkeys typing this script?” train-wreck way. There was basically no buzz about this show, and I feel like I somehow accidentally stumbled over it, but it was love at first sight. I’ve never forgotten the late hours binging it, being so sucked into the story that I absolutely had to finish it as soon as I could, disappointed that there wasn’t more of it to enjoy when I finally finished, bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, but satisfied.

I then later gobbled down this writer’s next drama, and her next drama, and the next, until everyone else finally realized thanks to Signal that Kim Eun-hee was as amazing a writer as I kept insisting to anyone who would listen (aka no one).

2011: To Binge or Not To Binge?

White Christmas (KBS)

I did not watch White Christmas in 2011. I actually watched it in 2013. I was always a steadfast binger, preferring to wait until the buzz about a show would sway me into spending my precious free-time watching something that would be worth my while (not that my drama choices were always good, but at least I tried to avoid the duds). I still prefer to binge, since waiting weeks for new episodes is vaguely frustrating when I want to know what happens next, right now! Plus, I’m very good at forgetting that I’m watching a show in the week-long wait for new episodes, and then just... never picking it back up again.

Despite watching White Christmas a couple years after it aired, it remains one of my favorites, and one I love to rewatch, even though I’ve already experienced whodunnit cliff-hangers and psychological rollercoasters. It became a tradition of sorts here on tumblr for a bunch of us to rewatch it over the holiday season -- alas, I haven’t joined in that tradition for the past couple of years, but I hope that somewhere in this blue hell hole that there are a loyal few keeping the tradition alive.

At least we have this drama to thank for bringing us all the model-actors that were new and clueless in White Christmas, but would later go on to be leading men in their own right. Of course, some of them haven’t exactly made the best drama choices (*cough*SungJoon*cough*), but then there are others (*cough*SooHyuk*cough*) that I’m impatiently waiting for to pick up a new drama so I can see those post-army abs.

Tree With Deep Roots (SBS)

This is the first drama that I recall live-watching. I vaguely remember regretting it at the time, since it was agony waiting for new episodes, but it was also fun to have a week to speculate and ponder the show. And what a beautiful show to ponder! This was also one of the few sageuks I actually watched, being generally intimidated by anything longer than 16-20 episodes, and my historical knowledge was a little shaky (before embracing my inner nerd and diving into mundane historical stuff just so I could better understand whatever drama I was watching at the time).

I don’t think I intended to continue live-watching shows, preferring the ease of binging at my own pace and schedule. But that was when I was still a casual, innocent addict, and not someone who would eventually make dramas a huge part of her life.

2012: The Joy of Overthinking

Gaksital (KBS)

Having had a taste of live-watching, I started to live-watch enough dramas to the point where I began to make notes about the premiere weeks. It was only a couple at a time, and binging was still my preferred way to watch, but now I was delighting in being part of the fandom, sharing in speculation each week, posting my thoughts on dramas and analyzing them to my heart’s content -- even though I knew no one except me would read my ridiculous essays.

But I started to feel more comfortable sharing my opinion with the world, interacting with fandom and not merely content to be a consumer, but gradually becoming a producer as well.

Reply 1997 (tvN)

This is it. This is when I went full-on Drama Addict. This is the tipping point from casual fan who quietly kept to herself, to becoming someone who stood on the mountain top yelling about ALL THE DRAMAS ALL THE TIME. I began to interact with other fans! To swap theories and share squee-worthy moments! I even watched episodes RAW just because of how desperate I was to know what happened, and even though the Busan accent stumped me more than once, it made me realize that my casual study of Korean was something to take seriously since I understood more than I gave myself credit for.

It was also the first time any post I made got more than a handful of notes, since I’d mostly hovered in the “less than 10 notes per post” category at the time. I was so proud of myself back then!

(This drama also notably marks the start of my Hoya obsession, which continues to this day.)

2013: Tumblr Friends (and Foes)

Flower Boy Next Door (tvN)

Having made myself comfortable on tumblr as a Drama Addict, I then discovered some other dedicated fans -- many of which I still follow to this day and who are now just a permanent part of my dash, no matter what their current interests may be -- in the FBND squad.

But I also discovered Kim Seul-gi as the Webtoon Editor (who I still love and adore and continue to use as my avatar), and her adorable romance with Dong-hoon remains one of my forever OTPs. As much as I enjoyed the drama romances, I’d never fallen so deeply for one to be so obsessed by it as I was Webtoon Editor and Dong-hoon. And tbh I still am. They’re just so adorable and pragmatic and she buys him a bag. Ugh. I love her so much, you guys.

Heirs (SBS)

Ah, yes. This hot mess.

I don’t know what possessed me to live-blog each episode. But I did. With snarky commentary and terrible screencaps. And suddenly I went from maybe 200 followers to over a 1000. That was a total shock! I met a lot of people because of that (and made some friends, as well as a few enemies who didn’t appreciate my opinion of certain characters), and ensconced myself as part of the drama-blogging crew.

It was from this that someone suggested I apply to be a minion at Dramabeans. Back then, I had a lot more free time than I do now, and I was watching a lot of dramas that Dramabeans didn’t cover, and wished they did so I could read more opinions about those shows. So I thought, “Eh, why not? It can’t hurt to submit something because the worst that would happen is I’d waste their time making them read my take on episode 10 of Let’s Eat.”

I fully expected them to turn me down. No one was more surprised than I was when I found myself agreeing to dive into the world of recapping.

2014: It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

Trot Lovers (KBS)

Recapping. It seems so easy when you’re reading the recaps. But actually creating them is a bitch. Hours out of my life were spent on this disaster of a trope-laden show with no plot. This was the third show I worked on for Dramabeans, and I hated it to the point where I seriously considered handing in my notice. (Immediately following up this show with the mediocre My Secret Hotel certainly didn’t help matters!)

However, it turns out that what I actually hated was being forced to watch a terrible rom-com and pretend to come up with insightful-or-at-least-neutral thoughts about it (since we were still new and couldn’t go full-on snark yet).

Misaeng (tvN)

This is what saved me. Being given the chance to immerse myself in such a unique, ponderous, thoughtful show restored my faith in dramas and the drama community. I loved spending hours on this show, soaking up all the little details, and then sharing that love with the world.

Misaeng made dramas magical again.

2015: Fight Me

Valid Love (tvN)

Realizing that I only seemed to enjoy rom-coms at arm-length, I discovered that my tastes often ran counter to the general drama-viewing public. Not all the drama-viewing public -- I’m not a “not like other fans” kind of fan -- but enough that I began to realize the whether a drama was popular or had good buzz was not necessarily the primary reason to watch it.

I began to have more faith in my own taste, based on past experiences with various writers and directors. Even if the premise (or first couple of episodes) seemed kind of weird and out-there, I at least wanted to give these artists the benefit of the doubt that I would enjoy their work, like I had previously.

So many people seemed to hate Valid Love, but I adored it. Still do (and still desperately wish Kim Do-woo would come out with a new drama -- it has been too long, writer-nim!). There were a lot of opinions about this show, even among people who seemed to enjoy it, but I vividly recall having to repeatedly insist that it wasn’t about the romance and argue that the knee-jerk infidelity-is-BAD opinions should make space for something more nuanced.

Ho-gu’s Love (tvN)

DramaFever was a pretty great site. It brought together so many drama fans and gave them a place where they could legally (and without fear of downloading random viruses) watch dramas to their heart’s content. Yes, there may have been some lingering resentment that they were the primary reason that so many amazing other sites were shut down (RIP mysoju and daebaeksubs), but dramas were more accessible than ever!

Eventually, DramaFever started to sub shows themselves and upload them weekly (instead of just using fansubs and uploading older dramas), and while they weren’t the best translations, they were at least better than machine translations from the Chinese subs. As I became more and more familiar with Korean, I found myself more likely to migrate to Viki since I liked the extra detailed translations. I could get the gist of a show without any help -- I wanted to instead delve into the nitty-gritty of the language.

But I never really hated DramaFever or felt they were particularly awful. Until they mistranslated something so terribly that it changed the entire meaning of a scene and ruined people’s perception of a drama, forcing me to continually defend the true translation.

That was the molehill I died on that day, and never again did I touch DramaFever. I feel bad that it eventually got unceremoniously shuttered. But I don’t think I’ll ever forgive them for the “condom” incident.

2016: Free Solo

Dear My Friends (tvN)

For two years I’d been happily working on one episode a week, sharing a show with someone else, until I was asked if I’d like to tackle a show by myself. I wasn’t sure how I could handle it, but I had the time in my schedule so I said, “Sure, why not?”

I was originally going to recap Another Oh Hae-young, but there was a last-minute switcheroo, and I’m so incredibly glad because this is perhaps my favorite recapping experience of all time, even more so than Misaeng. There was something so special about the luxury of having an entire show to myself, especially one with such a fantastic cast of characters and thoughtful themes. I didn’t have to try and figure out if I agreed with another person’s take -- it could all be my opinion.

Is that arrogant? Perhaps. But it was also therapeutic, as it reminded me once again how incredible and amazing dramas could be, and the privilege I had to share such an exquisite and thought-provoking drama with the rest of the world.

The Good Wife (tvN)

Surprisingly, this was what I had really wanted to recap that year, and the true reason I got Dear My Friends, since it aired just prior in the same time-slot as The Good Wife. I was desperate to have this show, willing to do anything to get it because I needed to see Jeon Do-yeon back on the small screen, to see Yoo Ji-tae smolder, to know how Korea would adapt such an ambitious show.

And I wasn’t disappointed! This is, perhaps, my favorite adaption of another work of art that I’ve seen in dramaland. It remained true to Korean sensibilities, but it also properly felt like The Good Wife. The cast was phenomenal. The costumes were exquisite. I wished I could spend more time in that world.

But I was also thankful, because without The Good Wife, I would have never have had Dear My Friends.

2017: Serial-Killers Are Cool

Voice (OCN)

I can’t remember how I got assigned to this. Maybe it was a scheduling thing. I do know that I really, really wanted it, since it would be Handsome Oppa’s first drama appearance in three years.

But it started me down a road of recapping a lot of serious and serial-killer-centric shows. Except for the times when I’d beg for a break and tackle something lighter, I was generally assigned the darker mystery shows with meaty plots, since apparently I had a knack for condensing complicated shows into something that made sense. (Also literally darker, and I eventually learned to automatically brighten every screencap I posted. You’re welcome.)

Not only did I love working on something with Handsome Oppa, I also had fun recapping the start of what would eventually become OCN’s stock-in-trade -- creepy serial killers. At the time, Voice shattered OCN’s viewer ratings (which would then be shattered again and again as more people would tune in to OCN shows). But Voice really helped put OCN on the viewership map -- as well as catapult Handsome Oppa into the public eye and lead him to a path of getting to choose whatever script he wanted to work on.

(Okay, maybe I made that last bit up, but he did begin to garner a larger following and remind everyone that just because he was gone from dramaland for so long, he hadn’t lost his acting chops -- or charisma -- or cheekbones.)

Black (OCN)

Oh, this show. It was basically my whole life while it was airing (well, the non-day-job part of my life). Each episode was over an hour long and jam-packed full of details that were pertinent to the story, and I had to somehow condense that all into 3000 words or less (I was not always, ah, successful...). It felt like I was back in recapping bootcamp, but the dial had been turned up to 11.

I’m weirdly proud of what I produced (although you’ll never get me to reread my old work). It was one of the most challenging shows to work on, but in the good way, not the Trot Lovers way.

Until the ending, that is. Sigh. That ending will live in infamy. I still, to this day, will get a few comments on the finale from people who watched it on Netflix, went searching online for an explanation of the end, and then discovered that they were not alone in being confused by the utter wtf-ery of the last twenty minutes.

2018: Fighting For My Love

Misty (JTBC)

So, Dramabeans kind of disappeared for a few months. Well, the site was still live. There were a handful of recaps. But... it basically just... stopped.

Those of us on the other side know about as you do as to why that happened. Minions are kept in the dark just as much as anybody, it seems. All we knew is that we weren’t being assigned anything and we seriously wondered if the site was going under, since adsense has become worthless these days.

But Mary and I kept talking about how much we adored Misty and were sad that we couldn’t talk about it with the world (and convince them to watch it with us), so we pleaded and begged and got the go-ahead to do a kind of chatty “open thread” which has apparently been a spring-board format for other shows. We didn’t get paid for this, and we were totally fine with that. We just wanted to provide some kind of content (while swooning over Kim Nam-joo’s pantsuits!).

Let’s Eat 3 (tvN)

This was my first real assignment after the dead period, and I once again got to do full recaps (with pay!). I started watching, thinking I’d merely tolerate the show (since I loved the first season vastly more than the second season), but it turned out to be my favorite of the three. Plus it felt fortuitous that the series I had submitted my application would be a series I’d work on four years later.

Sometimes it’s nice to spend time with a character you met years ago, to see them grow, to see how they became what they became. Drama trends (and love interests) will come and go, but Goo Dae-young’s love of food (and love of explaining the proper way to eat food) will never change. It was a really comforting drama for me to spend my summer on, and I’ll remember it fondly, even if I’m forever sad that it had to suddenly wrap-up two episodes early.

2019: Ten Years Later

Item (MBC)

This was the Trot Lovers of 2019. It was a nonsensical disaster.

I also had the added chaos of my real-life job -- one very different from the one I had when I was working on Trot Lovers -- as it began to increase exponentially in responsibilities and in stress. I reached a breaking point where I began to hate opening my computer where I’d have to spend hours attempting to explain a show that I wanted nothing to do with. I was miserable and depressed and couldn’t do it anymore. I never before asked to be taken off a show because I hated it so much, but there’s a first for everything.

Her Private Life (tvN)

I actually haven’t finished this show -- I’ve yet to watch the last two episodes. But I’m including it because, well, I didn’t finish any other show in 2019 except for Item.

As some of you may know, this has been a difficult year. It started with the unexpected stress of my job, when we suddenly lost one of our directors who passed away, and another director was let go (in a complicated situation that is ongoing, but the important thing is that it was during our busiest time when we really couldn’t afford to lose anyone), and another director left for a different job and I was basically the one to pick up all the pieces she left behind. It was exhausting and we were all past the breaking point but somehow miraculously holding it together.

I was looking forward to finally getting a much-needed vacation in September, and then, well, you all know how that went: the first night, on our layover in New Zealand before what was supposed to be three weeks in Australia, my father was taken to the hospital, and then, two days later, he passed away. Life has gotten even more chaotic and stressful and bizarre since then.

So no, I haven’t finished this drama, but it was one of the most wonderful moments of the year for me, watching this fizzy rom-com with my favorite actor, where he got to be charming and handsome and charismatic and finally kiss the girl he loves and have her love him back (and not die or be dumped, as he had been in so many dramas that had gone before). Lion Oppa was everything my heart could desire, and living in his world helped me endure the insanity that I wish I’d known would seem so much more tolerable than what would eventually befall.

Her Private Life reminded me of when I first fell in love with dramas ten years ago, when I would giggle and be delighted by the charming nonsense on screen -- of beautiful people falling in love and fighting against the obstacles between them (some more ridiculous than others, perhaps, but there are always obstacles), and ending up happily ever after. Pure escapism, of the frothiest kind.

A Drama-filled Decade

So, after ten years of dramas, what is the takeaway? What have I learned?

I suppose I’ve learned to trust my instincts and put more faith in writers and directors than actors. That analyzing dramas is fun, and it’s even more fun sharing it with others, and sometimes even more fun if you get paid to do it -- but everyone eventually reaches a breaking point. That I’m too earnest and optimistic to embrace a life of snark. That I want every drama to be good but most of them aren’t, except sometimes they are. That I’m not even sure which genres are my favorite; I just know what I don’t like.

That dramas are best as escapism, and not as work.

I don’t know how many dramas I’ll watch in 2020. I haven’t paid any attention to what’s airing, and I’m okay with that. Perhaps I’m entering a new phase in my life, or perhaps I just don’t have the capacity to escape right now.

But I am pleased to have had dramas in my life, and to have eventually made them my hobby. I’ve met a lot of amazing people and made some genuine friends through a shared love of dramas (or, at times, a shared hatred). I’m honored that all of you are still here and following me, even during this period of fandom silence.

May 2020 treat us all better, and may Kim Do-woo finally write another script.

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carat82 · 4 years

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Each year we the audience are presented with a plethora of shows that hope to secure a faithful audience in hopes of being good enough to be renewed. And each year we fall victim to at least one show that we came to love but sadly did it make the cut to come back the following season( Forever anyone? Timeless?) We are disappointed to say the least and utter a few choice words at the network that shattered our hopes of seeing our characters come back and entertain us for an hour each week.

This year however was different.

The fall of 2018 told us that an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sanditon would premiere the following year. I was intrigued but at the time went on with my life and forgot about it. Then came the summer of 2019. An ad somewhere popped up about Sanditon. I pulled up the trailer on YouTube and right after sought out how I could stream the show ( I live in the US and really hate waiting months for shows to air here). So by the time I found it the first 3 episodes had aired. Needless to say I was hooked! Every Sunday I anxiously waited until the stream was available around 7ish and let myself escape to the world of Sanditon and all its glory. I watched by myself ( not really the hubby’s cup of tea) wishing my mom lived closer so that we could watch together. I laughed, squeeled, and cheered as the storyline lead us along Charlotte’s journey into Sanditon. At the time I did not have Twitter account but I wanted to see the reaction to the show. So I looked up the official account, waited on baited breath for the teasers that would get released thoughtout the week, and read all the comments from the fans without interacting with anyone. This made it so much more enjoyable as I could “experience” the show with others! So when our hearts were broken with Charlotte on the cliff tops in EP 8, we had each other to rant, rave, and cry to. But also hope. And belief. This was a JA story after all. And Davies had given us outstanding adaptations of not only Austen but Dickens as well( Little Dorrit I’m looking at you!). I mean this was the man that gave us Colon Firth’s Darcy... in a clinging wet shirt no less! So of course he would have to finish the story in a second season. Yes,he gambled but surely the network would NEVER not renew something created by him?! Or leave JA’s unfinished novel, oh I don’t know... UNFINISHED?! I mean that would be network suicide right?! But as time went on and there was no confirmation about a S2 we began to get worried... and then panic set in. And so I felt compelled to create a Twitter account and fight along with the Sanditon Sisterhood, as someone had named them, to convince ITV to renew another season. I have NEVER before felt this compelled to add my voice to a shows renewal. But that just speaks to the fantastic writing of this series. Through this interaction on Twitter and then the Sanditon FB fan page, I learned much more about the show-it’s writers, cast, and crew. The amount of talent that put this production together is truly remarkable! So as days turned into weeks then a month or so I had tweeted and retweeted alongside my sisterhood my thoughts, feelings, and desires to see S2 come to fruition. And then it happened. Our worst fear.

The “announcement” that ITV would not renew for a second season. So again we the audience found ourselves victims of the network and their archaic ways of measuring the success of a series-Viewing numbers on the night the episodes air. Because we the audience watch shows the same way we did 10-20 years ago right?

I clearly remember the nights Alias aired. ( 2001-2005) Mom and I would watch faithfully each week. If the phone rang it was not answered. No-I was watching my Sydney Bristow kick butt and no one was allowed to interrupt that time! And it was on a night I was always home, so no need to record and watch later. But as time went on and our lives began to change,so did how we watch TV. No longer did we need to make sure we were home to watch a show or worry if we forgot to set the timer to record our show, we could stream it later and watch the whole season at once when it was CONVIENTIENT for us! Yay!! I could make entertainment fit my schedule. I could watch when I WANTED to. However like anything that seems to good to be true -there was a catch. Those types of viewing do not count for the network airing your show. Nope. Nada.

While media and streaming platforms keep advancing, we the audience (and our favorite shows) are held to a rule that is no longer applicable. We are punished for not capitulating to a newtworks old fashioned way of measuring the popularity of a show. So YT videos promoting the series, social media interactions, and streaming have no value in the eyes of many networks.

Yet this is exactly how we experience our shows in 2019! Heck we now have the ability to interact with the shows actors and some even reply back ( Jack Fox we love you!❤️). Sadly ITV saw no relevance in this. Only immediate viewing numbers counted. Viewing numbers that were counted against a terrible release date(bank holiday in the UK so many were naturally on holiday.) and a less then stellar promotion of the series. Still many tuned in and fell in love with Sanditon. I could go on and on about the terrific acting of the cast, the original music, character development, cinematography... but that is not the purpose of this blog. It is this-

Let us as the audience tell you by more then one measurement how much we love and support a series. Stop living in the past and embrace a new way! Get in touch with your audience and quit being tone deaf. We are your customers! We are your promoters! Give us the chance to show you our love for your shows! #renewsanditon #sidlotteforever

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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 5 years

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Supernatural stars cover EW to celebrate 300 episodes (and an epic reunion)

Samantha Highfill

January 16, 2019 at 12:00 PM EST

“REUNION TIME!”

Jared Padalecki is making an announcement. It’s early December, and he and his Supernatural costar Jensen Ackles are preparing for their final two days of filming the 300th episode (Feb. 7) as demon-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, respectively. As they walk onto the Men of Letters set on a rainy Thursday, they come face-to-face with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a personal friend and the man who brought Papa John Winchester to life in the show’s pilot (and left the show after season 2). “It’s the culmination of 300 episodes,” Padalecki says of Morgan’s return. After all, John’s disappearance kick-started the brothers’ road trip.

“DAD’S ON A HUNTING TRIP, AND HE HASN’T BEEN HOME IN A FEW DAYS.”

Standing in his little brother’s college apartment, Dean Winchester first uttered those words in the pilot, and in doing so, launched Supernatural’s — and the brothers’ — first big mystery. “I had a good feeling about the show just reading the pilot,” Ackles says. “It had grit, the characters were well-written, and the story had miles to go.” Although he couldn’t quite predict how many miles the journey would be.

Supernatural premiered on The WB in 2005 and has since become the longest-running show in The CW’s history. The idea was simple: two brothers hunting monsters from urban legends, the kinds of things you’d hear about while sitting around a campfire. Bloody Mary? They killed her. Hook Man? Yep, him too. But it didn’t take long for the writers to understand that they might have to broaden the scope of the show if they wanted to get 20-plus episodes (much less 300). “We quickly realized that [conceit] would run out in a hurry, so even early on we expanded our horizons of what the show could be,” executive producer/co-showrunner Robert Singer says. But just how far could they stretch? And would they even get the chance?

Despite surviving the 2006 WB–UPN merger that created The CW, it took years forSupernatural to land on solid ground. “Bob Singer and I were fighting for the show’s survival at the ends of the first three seasons,” says creator Eric Kripke. “We’d have a meeting with the network that we informally called the ‘explain-why-we-should-give-you-another-season’ meeting.” And yet there was something about those conditions that felt right for a show about two humans trying to save the world from superhuman forces. As Dean recently said in a season 14 episode, “Impossible odds—feels like home.” But the land of impossible odds isn’t simply where the show (and the Winchesters) lived in those early years. It’s where they thrived. “In the beginning we almost mischievously wanted to see what we could get away with,” Kripke says. “There weren’t a lot of genre shows on The CW. It was mostly Gossip Girl and 90210. We were always like the goth kid at the back of the class that no one really wanted to pay attention to. So on this little weird horror show, we really got to push some boundaries that hadn’t been attempted in TV. There was no one saying, ‘That’s too crazy.’” So they took risks. They wrote a Groundhog Day-style episode called “Mystery Spot” that saw Dean die more than 100 times in one hour. They created “Hollywood Babylon,” an episode where Sam and Dean investigated a haunted horror-movie set. They produced “Ghostfacers,” an episode shot to look like a reality show about ghost hunting. “We always felt like we were on tenterhooks a little, but it helped us in a way,” Singer says. “We said, ‘If they don’t like us, let’s be bold.’ ” And in season 4, they made perhaps their biggest, boldest decision yet: They introduced angels (and therefore a much more religious story line) into the fold, which Singer identifies as the show’s biggest turning point. “I was concerned that would be a bridge too far,” Padalecki says of the angelic decision. “I wondered, ‘Are we going to turn o a lot of the people that came here to watch a scary movie?’” Kripke himself had fought the idea for years, until a pre–season 4 epiphany came to him while he was washing his face, of all things. “I realized the supernatural world was unbalanced,” Kripke says. “There was only evil. So I walked in the writers’ room on day one of season 4 and said, ‘Okay, there’s going to be angels…but they’re dicks!’”

Thus began what Kripke, who’s since created Revolution and co-created Timeless, still believes is one of the best hours of television he’s ever written: the season 4 premiere. “Lazarus Rising” introduced Castiel, the show’s first and longest-lasting angel. “Right before my scene, [then writer] Sera [Gamble] said, ‘Your life is about to change,’” remembers Misha Collins, who plays Castiel. He adds with a laugh, “I was like, ‘You’re so full of yourself.’” But Collins’ life did just that when he shifted from being a guest star to a series regular as his character survived multiple deaths — and even a brief stint as God — to become someone Sam and Dean consider family. “Angels completed the mythology,” Kripke says, and with them, the show was able to build to what writer-turned-showrunner Gamble refers to as the “regularly scheduled apocalypse” at the end of season 5. It was good versus evil. Michael versus Lucifer. Dean versus Sam. And for a while, everyone believed it was the end of the show. But when the network gave them a renewal for season 6, the writers were left to figure out what the heck comes after an apocalypse. The answer? Anything they wanted.

“A benefit of genre is we have such a huge runway in terms of ‘anything can happen,’” then writer and current co-showrunner Andrew Dabb says. “A medical show is limited in the scope of what they can do. We’re not.” So the next few seasons saw Supernatural push even more boundaries, with alternate realities, meta episodes (“The French Mistake,” anyone?), and new villains. That’s not to say everything worked, but that’s the beauty of a long-running show with a devoted audience — everything doesn’t have to work. “Fans would forgive sins of certain episodes because they love watching Sam and Dean,” Singer says. Because saying Supernatural fans like Supernatural is like saying Dean likes pie. It’s not about liking it. It’s about loving it. “I don’t think we have casual fans,” Singer says. “They live and breathe this show.” The #SPNFamily gathers all around the country (and globe) for multiple conventions each year, and every July they ll the largest venue, Hall H, at San Diego Comic-Con. It’s those fans who are devoted to Sam and Dean, even when their Impala might take a wrong turn. “The show’s ability to evolve and adapt is what’s led to it lasting 14 years,” Dabb says, adding, “Theoretically there are still a bunch of Leviathan out there running around that we never dealt with, but we don’t talk about that.”

Limitless options and viewer forgiveness aside, there is one rule the show has to follow — outside of standards and practices, that is. “I credit Bob Singer for instilling from very early on the idea that the show can go anywhere as long as the characters stay true to themselves,” former showrunner Jeremy Carver says. “The core of the show is the bond between the brothers.” With Sam and Dean as its foundation, the show can make episodes like season 11’s “Baby,” which was shot entirely from the perspective of the Impala, or season 13’s “Scoobynatural,” an animated crossover with Scooby-Doo and the gang. “One of the fun takeaways of watching Supernatural is that if you can imagine it, there’s probably a little town somewhere in America where it’s happening,” Gamble says. “It’s unlike any other show, really, in the history of American television.” And 14 seasons in, it’s still finding ways to surprise fans by, say, bringing John Winchester back.

“DAD?”

Standing next to his little brother in the Men of Letters bunker, Dean can’t believe what he’s seeing. This time he’s not enlisting his brother to find Dad, because Dad has come to them. And he hasn’t changed much. His beard has more gray in it and his face is thinner, but it will surprise no one that John comes back with a rifle in his hand. (Sorry, Walking Dead fans; the rifle came before Lucille.) But John isn’t the only one who’s changed. Standing across from him, Sam and Dean are no longer the kids who crammed toy army men into the ashtray of the Impala, or even the young men who went looking for him in the pilot. They’ve grown up. Their lives, quite simply, have changed. The same can be said of the actors themselves. In fact, Ackles is currently two years older than Morgan was when he filmed the pilot. “That’s how full circle it all is,” Morgan says. “Like a father would be, I’m very proud of the guys. It makes me get choked up because they’ve done so well here. Episode 300? That’s unheard of.”

As for how John comes back, let’s just say things get weird — don’t they always? — and there’s an altered reality at play. “Our guys are put in a position where they essentially can have a wish granted,” Dabb says. “They’re actually expecting something else, but [John’s return] comes from a place of want by Dean. The need for closure is really what brings John back into their lives.” But John isn’t the only person who comes back into their lives. As with any altered reality, not everything changes for the good. Without getting too specific, whatever brings John back also causes the return of Zachariah (Kurt Fuller), the no-BS angel who saw Sam and Dean as nothing more than thorns in his side. (Like Kripke said, angels are dicks!) Speaking of angels, this reality also affects Castiel in… certain ways. This time the boys are dealing with a different (though not entirely unfamiliar) version of their friend.

But for Morgan, who’s been asked for years about returning, it has always been about bringing John back in the right way. “The relationships between these three men were so open, so if I was going to come back, it would be nice to have some closure, especially with Sammy,” Morgan says. And before the hour’s over, both boys will get a moment alone with Dad. “This episode gives Sam a chance to forgive,” Padalecki says. Ackles adds, “For Dean, the whole episode is a dream that he doesn’t want to wake up from. But he knows he has to.”

Back in the bunker’s kitchen where Padalecki declared “reunion time” just hours ago, Sam and Dean are sitting around a table sharing a bottle of whiskey with their father and catching him up on everything he’s missed. Yes, they’ve saved the world (more than once). Yes, Lucifer has a son. But most important, John’s late wife, Mary — the woman he spent his life trying to avenge — is alive. Right then Mary rounds the corner for the moment she never saw coming, but in a strange way has always been waiting for. “Everything’s right in the world in this bubble of time,” Samantha Smith, who plays Mary, says of the couple’s reunion. “It’s very romantic.”

But as the Winchesters know a bit too well, all good things must come to an end. And when this is said and done, Sam and Dean will return to their life, driving down crazy street next to each other. Because despite the show hitting 300 episodes, nobody’s ready to call it quits just yet. “I don’t think we’re ready to throw in the towel,” Ackles says. “We’ve still got a little gas in the tank.” Put another way, Sam and Dean still got work to do.

#long post #spn spoilers #spn 300 #spn 14x13 #entertainment weekly #spn cast #good dabb #kripke #spn

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queen-of-deans-booty · 6 years

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Like A Date?

Characters: Jensen Ackles x Reader, Jared Padalecki

Word Count: 1,966

Warnings: Just fluff

Request #1: Hello. I have a request. I was wondering if you could write a Jensen x Reader fic that the reader is really quiet and shy, kinda nerdy and a senior in college or something and she works at a small library? Maybe at a Con Jensen meets her (circa season 9/10. Jensen’s best years in my opinion 😍) and he starts to like her. And maybe he keeps coming back and trying to talk to her and finally he asks her out and she blushes a lot and is really shy but says yes.

Request #2: If your requests are open, I’d like to request something please. Can I get a Jensen x Reader where the reader is really shy and nerdy. She like, owns a bookstore and she is quiet and soft spoken. Jensen walks into her shop one day or something and is drawn to her or something? (Imagine he never met Danneel or they’re divorced). Whatever happens for the rest of the fic is up to you. Thanks in advance! If you don’t do it I understand.

Summary: All you ever wanted was to go to a Supernatural convention. You never thought the first time you met Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki would be in the tiny bookstore you worked at.

Author’s Note: This is unbeta’d and any and all mistakes are all on me.

Feedback the glue that holds my writing together

Tags at the bottom

One of the things on your bucket list was to attend a Supernatural convention. All you wanted to do was meet Jensen Ackles and your life would be complete. You’ve had a crush on the man since Supernatural first aired on TV. For almost 14 years, you’ve wanted to go to conventions and to meet the cast, but you never could.

You were a college student and your student loans were piling up. Plus, on top of that, you managed your own bookstore. You loved reading and always have since you were a child. You had a mountain of books in your dorm, but it was never enough for you. When you were in class, you were at the bookstore, managing it.

The owner was always out of town and basically left the store in your hands. You wanted to own it one day but that was a dream for another day. When you were in the bookstore, you felt most at peace. You were such an introverted person, you never really went out and hung out with friends. You liked hanging out with your fictional friends, always curious to find out what they were up to and what kind of adventures they were going on next.

Your roommate knew the kind of person you were but that never stopped her from trying to get you to go out with her and make new friends. You loved her and loved her for trying but you were happiest by yourself and that’s the way it’s always been.

You were shy, not good at meeting new people, and felt most like yourself when you were working at the store. It’s what you did every weekend instead of going out.

One of the things you loved most about the bookstore was its location. It wasn’t too far from campus but far enough where you got people from the city. You got a lot of people on Saturdays, but it was mostly quiet on Sundays.

Sundays were our favorite day at the store because you got to read when no one was in there. It was mainly just you working the whole store but sometimes, the owner would send help every once in a while. It was a small store, so it wasn’t hard managing it all by yourself. People knew where things were and usually didn’t bother you until they checked out.

This particular Sunday was dead, and you were sitting in the front of the store, watching Supernatural panels instead of reading. Sometimes, you liked to watch the panels of Jensen and Jared because it makes you feel like you’re really there with them. You always watched a new panel of theirs, always hoping that one day, you would be able to go to one.

The bell on the front door rang but you didn't bother looking at who walked in. Everyone who did know you and what you did when no one was around so they usually didn’t bother you until they needed to check out.

You continued to watch the panel and watched Jensen and Jared joke around on stage, being oversized children. You loved how goofy they were. You watched as Jensen started a dance competition on stage and started dancing crazily. You laughed loudly, snorting a little bit at the end. He was so funny and could always make you smile.

“What are you watching?” You heard someone say. You thought they were ready to check out, so you paused the video and put your phone down before answering.

“Just a Supernatural panel.” You smiled before looking up. Your mouth went dry and your eyes widened a bit. All you could do is stare at the man you looked up to since 2005. Jensen peered over the counter and looked at your phone screen that hasn’t gone dark yet. He probably wanted to see which panel you were watching.

“Oh, yeah, I remember that. Long time ago but good crowd.” He said, smiling at you.

“Jay! They have a Supernatural Monopoly game!” You heard Jared’s voice come from the game section of your store. Jensen turned around to see his best friend hold up the board game before shaking his head. You couldn’t speak, you could barely breathe.

“H-hi.” You wanted to mentally slap yourself for being so shy in front of him but that was the only word you could get out.

“Hey, how are you?” Jensen couldn’t stop smiling. When he walked into the store and heard you laugh, it was one of the best things he’s heard from a stranger. When he went to conventions, all he heard is people cheer and laugh but when he heard your laugh, he was immediately interested in you. When he saw you, he thought you were very beautiful and needed to get to know you.

The only reason he came into this store was because he and Jared have a layover in your town before going back to Texas and Jared wanted a book to read to pass the time. So, they asked around and everyone pointed to this store.

“G-good, how are you?” You stuttered.

“Better now. Jared wanted to find a book to read before we head off to Texas. You mind helping us?”

“Yeah, sure, what are you looking for?” You asked, shyly pushing a strand of hair behind your ear.

“Jared!” Jensen yelled, turning to look at his friend. “What are you looking for?” Jared popped his head up above the shelves before making his way to you and Jensen. Man, he was even taller in person. All you could do was stare at him and hope you didn't look like an idiot.

“I don’t have any particular book. What would you recommend?” Jared asked. You bit your lip before getting off your chair. You walked around the counter and motioned for them to follow you. Jared began to follow you and Jensen started to follow but found himself looking at your phone which was still paused on the video. He thought for a minute before following you and Jared.

“I’m a big reader myself and I always get lost in these books. They’re thrillers and they’re really good.” You said, pointing to your favorite section.

“Great, thanks.” Jared smiled before looking at the books. You looked at Jensen before nodding and walking back to your spot. You looked at your phone and sighed, knowing you weren’t going to be able to watch Jensen and Jared on stage when they were literally in your store.

“So, have you ever been to a convention?” You looked up and saw Jensen leaning on the counter. You bit your lip again and looked at Jared who had a couple of books in his hands. “Oh, don’t worry about him. We’re going to be here for a while. He can’t make up his mind.”

“Oh, okay. Uh, no I haven’t… been to a convention. I want to. They look fun.” You blushed, feeling intimidated by Jensen’s green gaze.

“That’s a shame, I would have remembered someone like you.” Jensen flirted with you. You let out a breathy chuckle and looked down shyly.

“Okay, I am torn between these two books,” Jared said, walking over and interrupting whatever you and Jensen had. You looked up and even though you were staring at Jared, you could see Jensen’s gaze directed towards you from the corner of your eye.

“That’s a tough one because they are both good books. Like, really good. I’ve read them both at least twice.”

“Then I’ll get them both.” Jared smiled before putting them down. You nodded and rung up the book, telling him his total. Jared got out his card and you ran it through before bagging the books and putting the receipt in the bag.

“Thank you,” Jared said with a smile before walking away from the counter.

“What’s your name?” Jensen asked, looking into your eyes.

“Y/N.” You whispered.

“I hope to see you again… Y/N. Beautiful name, by the way.” Jensen winked before leaving the store with his coworker. What the fuck just happened?

A week went by without another sighting of Jensen or Jared in your town. You never forgot that day, always replaying it in your head. You could never forget the way Jensen looked at you, spoke to you, even smiled at you. Everything seemed person, like a dream and you kicked yourself every day for not getting a picture, at least. Only you knew what happened and right now, that was good enough for you.

You were in your store again, reading this time but you couldn’t concentrate on the words in front of you. Ever since Jensen, your life has been a mess. It was like you couldn’t do anything right because all you were thinking about was Jensen and the way he presented himself to you.

This man was going to be the death of you and you were okay with that.

The bell rang, signaling someone was inside your store but you barely heard it with everything going through your mind.

“Isn’t that one of the books you recommended Jared?” Your head snapped up when you heard his voice. You couldn’t believe he was standing right here in front of you. You didn’t know why Jensen was back or what he was doing in town, but you had to have a picture and your mouth blurted the question out before your mind could stop you.

“Can I have a picture with you?” You immediately blushed once the words left your mouth. You never did this because you were so shy and asking for a picture was one of the things you were most scared of since you never wanted to bother them. Jensen just laughed but he nodded.

“Sure.” He smiled, and you would have just melted right then and there but you got up before you could. You walked around to the front of the counter and got out your phone, getting the camera open. Your hands were shaking involuntarily, and Jensen saw this. He just chuckled and gently took the phone from you before pulling you in close.

His arms wrapped around your waist and you could feel the heat from his hand spread throughout your body, eventually settling on your neck and cheeks. You smiled at the camera and Jensen took the picture before giving your phone back to you.

“T-thanks.” You stuttered.

“Look, I hope this isn’t too forward or anything, but you busy tonight?” You just stared into his eyes, hoping that whatever he was asking you wasn’t a joke. Was he asking you on a date? Was Jensen Ackles, the man you looked up to, asking you on a date?

“No, I’m not busy.” You found yourself answering.

“I am in town for a few days and I don’t know it all that well. Wanna keep me company while I try and figure out what to do?” Jensen chuckled, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

“Like a date?” You whispered, not expecting him to hear or answer you.

“Like a date.” Jensen smiled, getting some of his confidence back. You bit your lip and thought about it before nodding shyly.

“Sure. I mean, yes, I would love too. This town might seem boring at first but there are fun things to do around here.” You smiled.

“Well, I now have the perfect person to show me these things.”

“Yeah, you do.” You joked, and he just laughed, spending more time than usual in the bookstore, getting to know you better than even your roommate. You never thought you would meet Jensen Ackles this way, but you were glad Jared was such an avid reader or else you may not have ever met Jensen.

The Queens:

@mogaruke @whit85-blog @inlovewithbja @spn67-sister @kdfrqqg @jarpadandjensenaremyheroes @roxyspearing @mishamigose @cobrakai1967 @essie1876 @crispychrissy @jerk-bitch-and-an-angel @starswirlblitz @untitled39887 @ta-n-ja @notnaturalanahi @tahbehonest @posiemax @vonthesupernaturalwriter @li-ssu @just-another-winchester @obsessivecompulsivespn @emoryhemsworth @newtospnfandom @jessikared97 @wh1sp3r1ng-impala @charliebradbury1104 @shaym-rassu @thing-you-do-with-that-thing @kristaparadowski @bloodyvoodoo @jadalecki-jackles @likiyoshi-lijie @skybabydead @jae-sch @notmoose45 @the1younevernotice @heyitscam99 @lifelovelaughangell123 @jennferjareau @crazyspn67 @speakinvain @nunnallynara @gh0stgurl @spnbaby-67 @internationalmusicteacher @teamfreewillsstuff @internationalmusicteacher @crankthatcastiel @rhiannonj79 @calaofnoldor @untitled39887 @team-free-gallagher @your-basic-potato @lostnliterature @superkrazy04 @alexwinchester23 @lonelycaffeinateddreamer

The Dean Beans:

@akshi8278 @mega-mrs-dean-winchester @winchesterandpie @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester @carribear31 @dont-you-dare-say-misha @oreosatmidnight @not-naturalfangirl @iam-a-cutiepie @kristendanwayne @milo-winchester-4ever @jensenackesl @codyshany316 @helllonearth @juniorhuntersam @pouterpufftrain @ruprecht0420 @carriemichelle2012 @sandlee44 @gucci-daddario @kukindukin @starry-chaos @05spn18 @my-wayward-heroes @baconlover001 @supernatural-teamfreewillpage @onlydeanandjensen @expectosel @redsalv20 @dragonrider10 @designcted @xxtheoutsidersxx @dean-winchesters-bacon

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writingguide003-blog · 5 years

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10 Years Later, Here's How The Writers Strike Indelibly Changed TV

New Post has been published on https://writingguideto.com/must-see/10-years-later-heres-how-the-writers-strike-indelibly-changed-tv/

10 Years Later, Here's How The Writers Strike Indelibly Changed TV

In late 2007, “How I Met Your Mother” co-creator Craig Thomas faced an unusual situation. After penning the script for Episode 11 of the CBS comedy’s third season alongside fellow creator Carter Bays, he found himself handing off the pages they’d written. The scenes were to be filmed without his presence on set — or any of his writing staff, for that matter.

“We tried to get the script as tight and manageable as possible with the knowledge that there would be no writers on set to punch up any of the jokes or fix any of the words,” he explained. “At a certain time of the night, we just had to hit send and the script went to our producer and director and we said, ‘Have a great shoot week. We’ll be picketing outside of the lot.’”

Thomas and Bays were two of roughly 12,000 TV and film and television writers who were striking on behalf of the East and West unions of the Writers Guild of America, a walkout caused by stalled negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that all but ground scripted television like “HIMYM” to a halt in late 2007 and 2008. (Members of HuffPost’s union are represented by WGA East.)

The organizations were in the midst of negotiating a new three-year contract. But after the AMPTP, the trade association affiliated with corporations like CBS and NBCUniversal, failed to meet the demands of the guilds, writers embarked on a 100-day stalemate.

During that time, guild writers no longer took work. In terms of television, that meant there were no new scripted episodes available for the networks to air besides those commissioned before the strike. More than 60 TV shows shut down as a result, and ratings and ad sales plummeted. By December 2007, most scripted series were off the air and not set to return for months. The CW’s “Gossip Girl” and “One Tree Hill” faced shortened seasons; NBC’s “Heroes” only completed 11 episodes of the 24 expected for Season 2, and was off the air for nine months; the third season of Fox’s “Bones” was cut short as the show went on a four-month hiatus. Late-night programming all but disappeared (until hosts like Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert fought to return without writers citing the financial struggles of their non-writing staff), and award shows like the Golden Globes were canceled.

In total, the strike cost the state of California over $2 billion and 37,700 jobs, according to nonprofit economic think tank the Milken Institute.

For a show like “HIMYM,” the prospect of a lengthy pause was daunting.

“Everyone had to stop [working] and that was scary, as the show was just gaining some momentum,” Thomas said.

CBS Photo Archive via Getty Images

Neil Patrick Harris playing Barney Stinson on a 2008 episode of “How I Met Your Mother.”

But there were larger interests at stake.

Audiences used to watching movies in theaters and TV at designated times in their homes were getting acquainted with a new kind of viewing experience: streaming video. Industry experts at the time predicted that so-called “new media” content ― shows and movies distributed online or viewed on computers, cell phones and other devices ― would eventually supplant DVDs in terms of profits. (Spoiler alert: They did.)

Initially, the big studios ― MGM, Sony, Warner Bros. and Disney, among others ― took home most, if not all, of the profits of this “new media” content; the WGA had no formal agreement with the companies on how to compensate writers for this kind of online or on-demand distribution. So when it came time to renegotiate a contract in November 2007, this issue was key.

According to the WGA, the AMPTP began negotiations by offering paltry residuals for new media and expressed a desire to deny the guilds future jurisdiction over scripts written for the internet. And the group felt as though it had no choice but to strike.

“It was one of the most important strikes of the new century to date,” Lowell Peterson, executive director of the WGA East, told HuffPost. Although Peterson was not a part of the WGA East until after the strike ended, he was interviewing for the role of director during the walkout and was in communication with leadership throughout the entire process. He witnessed the picketing firsthand and considers the strike to be “the first major labor action of the digital age.”

“This was a bunch of employees confronting the impact of information technology and digital technology on their way of living, and that was something that resonated very deeply across the labor force and the labor movement,” he said.

The strike officially ended on Feb. 12, 2008. The guilds won a piece of digital revenues and established a percentage payment on the distributor’s gross, and shows like “HIMYM” resumed with their writing staff in tact.

“Our perception was that it was very successful,” Peterson explained. “That as a result of the strike, the guilds were able to win jurisdiction and residual payment terms that otherwise simply wouldn’t exist. It looked like a great victory.”

But, it wasn’t an easy road. Not only had writers been out of work, they’d returned to an industry indelibly changed by their fight.

Jeff Vespa via Getty Images

Entertainment news anchors Lara Spencer, Brooke Anderson, Jim Moret, Giuliana Rancic, Dayna Devon and Mary Hart at The 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards Announcement at the Beverly Hilton on Jan. 13, 2008, in Beverly Hills, California.

The Rising Tide Of Reality TV

While scripted television series were forced to take a hiatus during the strike, this was not the case for reality TV shows.

Once pre-strike commissioned episodes ran out and fictional series were on lockdown, broadcast and cable networks clamored for any original content they could find to fill their schedules. As a result, some industry watchdogs connect the writers strike with the boom of reality television, considering more than 100 unscripted shows ― from competition shows to dating shows to life improvement series ― either debuted or returned during that 2007-2008 season.

However, Eli Holzman, the current CEO of The Intellectual Property Corporation and the creator/developer behind series like “Project Greenlight,” “Undercover Boss” and “Project Runway,” has a slightly different take on the strike’s impact on reality TV. He believes the explosion of unscripted television in 2008 was a long time in the making.

“Nonscripted TV was on the march really from the early 2000s, with the advent of ‘Survivor,’ ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ and ‘Big Brother,’” Holzman explained. “The genre came into its own and it mirrored the trajectory and growth of cable, and commissioning increased each year. Yes, the strike was one important factor in that. But to me, slightly less important than the growth of cable and the audience’s embrace of the genre.”

As Holzman described it, scripted television was in the doldrums beginning in the mid-aughts. Viewers, he said, were bored with the slog of too-similar sitcoms, cop dramas and medical shows. From 2005 to 2007, for example, “American Idol” reigned supreme while the high-rated “Grey’s Anatomy,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “House” eventually slipped below “Dancing with the Stars.” According to Holzman, audiences craved a fresh start. Cue the rise in reality television projects, which hit their stride in the 2000s. They peaked in 2015, when 750 nonfiction programs (350 of them brand new) aired on cable.

“Suddenly, this genre — Oh my god, all these people are going to get left on an island with nothing and they have to vote each other off, and someone is going to win a million dollars? ― was new and different and we wanted new and different versus a copy of a copy of a copy,” Holzman said. “The strike is an easy moment to look at when suddenly we all became aware of a change that was going on that maybe we hadn’t noticed before. But that change was happening on its own.”

WGA East’s Peterson agrees with him.

“I would not say that reality TV was created by the writers strike. I would say that more people watched it because there was nothing else on,” he added, noting that reality TV was simply “the only alternative, other than reruns,” for networks to air in lieu of their regularly scheduled programming.

Still, Holzman admits the strike did help to advance certain reality programs. “Project Runway,” for instance, aired its fourth season from November 2007 to March 2008 and earned pretty solid ratings for Bravo. The finale roped in 6.1 million viewers in the 18-49 demo when Christian Siriano won. Later in 2008, Lifetime took over the series and ratings increased by nearly 30 percent. Episodes of NBC’s “Biggest Loser” moved from a one-hour slot to two in order to fill primetime space. CBS aired its first, and last, “Big Brother” winter season. “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” began its reign on E! “American Idol” capped off a historic season in May 2008 with 31.7 million finale viewers, helping Fox become America’s most-watched network for the first time ever.

“As the strike wore on, the [reality] business was robust,” Holzman reiterated. “As a typical Hollywood producer, I thought I was just really talented [Laughs]. I didn’t realize I was potentially riding a wave. I thought, ‘I’m so good at this! This is so easy!’ That was genuinely my impression, and I didn’t realize we were in the midst of what was going to be a boom.”o

Indeed, when guild writers returned to work, reality TV was no longer just a cloying trend. Thomas admitted that, as a scripted TV showrunner, it wasn’t easy to watch reality programs top the ratings week after week from there on out.

“I remember being really stressed out in the first couple of years of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ because we were losing to a reality show all the sudden,” Thomas recalled. “That show ‘Deal or No Deal’ was this huge sensation and we were like, ‘Oh man, we’re losing to suitcases of money being opened up!’”

Brian To via Getty Images

Eli Holzman.

The ‘Death’ Of The Baby Writer

There were other long-term effects of the strike, though, not just for veteran writers, but aspiring ones, too.

About 20 years ago ― a decade before the writers strike ― a handful of these promising writers’ assistants, or “baby writers” as they were sometimes called, were working with Holzman at Miramax Television on a Kevin Williamson project called “Wasteland.” The show, about a group of post-college pals, aired only three episodes in 1999 before ABC canceled it. But out of that particular wasteland came a crucial opportunity. Since the studio heads were still required to fulfill the 13-episode order for foreign buyers but no longer felt pressure to deliver top-level content, aspiring young writers were given the chance to pen the remaining scripts for the series.

“We were in a blowout game where you take the kids off the bench and you put them in because it doesn’t matter,” Holzman told HuffPost. “One of those writers’ assistants was Damon Lindelof, who would go on to create ‘Lost’ and has obviously had an extraordinary career. Here’s a voice that, because of that flourishing ecosystem, was able to be identified, nurtured and grown, and his writing was then brought to all of us: the audience.”

Unfortunately, the months of foot-dragging from AMPTP negotiators in 2007-2008 messed with that flourishing ecosystem, Holzman says, dismantling a once healthy community that fostered creators of all ranks.

“As the strike and the decline in commissioning wore on, the people who maybe had previously been a rung or two up the ladder were willing to take a job and come back at a lower level, a lower rate. If you’re running a show and have to staff it, you have the ability to hire a kid who’s promising but never done it before or someone who’s really competent and is going to take a pay cut to work at that level. You’re almost crazy not to hire that more seasoned person. So, that baby writer pathway into the business went away,” he said, “and that was tragic.”

Then-“baby writer” Nick Bernardone, however, was one of the lucky ones. “I got my first job as an office production assistant on ’30 Rock’ [in 2008] by literally walking into the office at the exact right time and asking if they needed someone. It was one in a million timing,” he told HuffPost. “The answer was something like, ‘Usually, this would be insane … but can you start tomorrow?’”

After working alongside the likes of Tina Fey, Bernardone went on to become a member of the writers’ room on her Netflix series, “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” He insists he wouldn’t have gotten the gig had he not worked similar jobs on shows like AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and Netflix’s “Bloodline” in the interim.

Thomas and Bays also entered the business relatively easily. They were hired as writers for David Letterman just a few months after graduating from Wesleyan University in 1997, well before the strike. And they opted to pay it forward.

“Through the run of ‘How I Met Your Mother,’ we promoted several of our writers’ assistants, mostly post-strike,” he said. “One of them was Matt Kuhn, who ended up being a writer on the show for the entire rest of the run after a couple of seasons as a writers’ assistant. We did the same thing with Craig Gerard and our personal assistant, Matt Zinman ― we promoted them to be full writers on the show for many years. And in the last couple seasons we promoted George Sloan.”

These days, Bernardone, who’s been nominated for four Emmy awards, believes breaking into the business is all about who’s willing to give you a slice of the pie.

“If someone likes an aspiring writer’s stuff, they’ll do their best to get them hired,” he said.

As unreliable as it might be, it’s a practice Holzman believes is necessary.

“It’s really important to nurture a new crop, a new generation of storytellers every year, because it takes a long time to get there and it takes a long time to learn your craft,” he said. “It’s like a bad year for grapes — in 10 years, we won’t have that vintage.”

Brent N. Clarke via Getty Images

Creators of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Carter Bays (L) and Craig Thomas attend the 12th Annual New York Television Festival held at Helen Mills Theater on October 24, 2016 in New York City.

The Streaming Pathway To Prestige TV

Beyond the birth of the reality television boom and the increase in obstacles for up-and-coming writers, the strike ushered in an era that the guilds and industry insiders always expected: the era of streaming TV.

In 2007, Netflix was on an upswing. The company had launched in 1998 as a mail-order competitor to the then-popular but ultimately terminal Blockbuster, which rented out VHS tapes, DVDs and video games to the masses largely via brick-and-mortar stores. By 2005, 35,000 different films were available through Netflix’s subscription service; they reportedly shipped out 1 million DVDs every day. But soon enough, Netflix went the way of the internet, allowing its subscribers to browse through and watch films and shows by streaming them straight to their devices. By 2008, it had already identified its video-on-demand platform as the future. By 2013, Netflix had 27.1 streaming customers in the U.S.

Today, the company has more than 100 million subscribers.

In Thomas’ eyes, the writers strike was a pivotal turning point for the digital revolution helmed by Netflix, Hulu and other platforms. When the WGA refused to negotiate a contract without new media residuals, it signaled to the AMPTP and the entertainment industry at large exactly how powerful streaming services could be.

“We had front-row seats to this huge change, and I credit ’How I Met Your Mother’s success a lot to the influence of Netflix,” Thomas said. “The popularity of Netflix started to get so much bigger and in those next couple of seasons, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ got onto Netflix and was very, very popular on there. [It] enabled all these new fans to binge the first few seasons and catch up and we saw ratings on live TV, on CBS, bump up because of this streaming service.

“That was part of what the strike was about: making sure writers were fairly compensated for work that wasn’t created for Netflix but got on Netflix,” Thomas continued. “Right away, we saw how important that side of things would become ― even with helping shows do better on network TV.”

And as platforms like Netflix grew and enhanced, so did original content, leading to, as Thomas put it, the rise of prestige TV. Sure, standout shows like “The Sopranos” and “The Wire” predated the walkout, but he believes writers had “firmer ground” to work on following the strike and were able to experiment with a plethora of innovative scripted series in ways they weren’t able to before ― knowing that they have the option of pitching their shows to multiple networks, premium channels and streaming sites.

“It’s certainly true that for a while people were more worried that what we did was hand the industry over to reality TV, and that definitely has not happened,” Peterson added. “What we’ve seen since the strike is an enormous explosion of high-budget scripted television. Reality definitely supplanted scripted for a while but in the 10 years since the strike, scripted has just expanded beyond anyone’s dreams.”

Were writers brainstorming the next decade of prestige TV while on the picket line years ago? Although Holzman doesn’t know how many successful TV scripts were created during on-strike downtime, he believes there were ideas brewing.

“It’s not likely they were stockpiling scripts for things that weren’t commissioned, but were they writing for themselves and creating things? I’m sure. Just because Picasso goes out of fashion, I don’t think he stops painting. Similarly, if there isn’t a market for writers work, I don’t think that means that they cease to write. I wouldn’t be surprised if some great stuff originated during that time period.”

Thomas can vouch for that.

“Everyone had in the back of their head, ‘What if this goes on a really long time? What if our show goes away after this?’ You never relax. You have to prove yourself and fight for it, so you take nothing for granted,” Thomas said. “So I think everybody had a little panicked thought about what to do next. ‘Should I be thinking about possible alternative shows or features for after the strike?’ It was definitely a moment.”

Today, the effects of on-demand viewing are still a major concern for the WGA East and West.

“On-demand viewing seems to be supplanting virtually everything else, and that has changed the way our members do their work,” Peterson said. “It’s changed the nature of the shows. No one is constrained to, ‘It’s 8 o’clock on Wednesday, I’m going to watch CBS now.’ People watch what they want, when they want, and that’s given our members enormous opportunities.”

Handout via Getty Images

Bruce Miller accepts the award for Best Television Series, Drama for Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” in January.

In the spring of 2017, WGA and AMPTP negotiations once again hit a snag over issues of compensation related to new media.

According to Peterson, there were a few things that drove it, including the fact that average TV earnings were increasing, due in part to things like decreased costs as the average television season became shorter. Tens of billions of profits were not being shared with writers.

“We had this enormous ‘yes’ vote authorizing the committee to call a strike,” Person said of the 2017 negotiations. “I think it was 96.3 percent yes, which is really an affirmation that members were ready to take action.”

After threatening a walkout, the AMPTP agreed to some of the guilds’ demands, likely with knowledge of what another writers strike would do to its industry. The guilds made gains across the board, added funding to their health plan and increases in subscription TV residuals, high-budget SVOD residuals, and, for the first time ever, residuals for comedy-variety writers in Pay TV. Now, writers for late-night and shows like “SNL” could see payment for content that’s re-aired on subscription sites or the internet. The unions also pushed to restructure compensation terms for writers of shorter seasons, making sure creators saw a piece of the studios’ profits.

“The Writers Guilds East and West are committed to the possibility of striking if that’s what it takes to win gains for our members, and we make sure that’s clear to the AMPTP when we sit down with them,” Peterson said. “The studios and networks know that we mean it and will do it if necessary, and that’s a lesson from the 2007-2008 strike.”

Holzman, for one, is glad another strike didn’t happen.

“The macro feeling across the industry was a strike will be bad because if we’re looking at leisure activity and how people are spending their leisure time. Television has competitors in a way it never had before in the form of the internet and mobile,” Holzman said.

“We’ve seen, and continue to see, an enormous migration of advertising dollars out of proper television — cable, broadcast and otherwise — and onto the web,” he added. “There was a sense that a prolonged strike may result in the audience declining, which it has been anyway. Maybe if there wasn’t great TV being produced, maybe the audience wouldn’t come back. I think that was a collective fear shared by both the producers and the writers, which encouraged them to find common ground to avoid another strike.”

“It could’ve been quite bad,” he added.

Or good, if you consider the past.

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bluestar22x · 5 years

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Supernatural And Me

On a personal level, it is really fitting that Supernatural is going to end Spring 2020.

That spring I will be preparing to finally graduate college and get into my dream career field - taking care of sick animals (as a vet tech). When Supernatural ends, my career will begin.

Supernatural has been with me since I was 13. I entered my teen years and became an adult watching this show. And it will end when I’m finally, truly, on my own, paying all my bills like a proper adult.

It made me want to reflect on the evolution of my relationship with the show, how it’s changed my life, etc. So below the cut is more if you’d like to read about it. Warning: It might be slightly long. ha

Back in September 2005 when I was 12 going on 13, I saw a promo for Supernatural. I don’t remember much about the promo except it looked creepy and not being a horror fan (I still hate most horror movies to this day) I paid little attention to it. When I found out my parents were watching it, I didn’t ask to stay up later to watch it with them (It aired past my bedtime back then!). I didn’t want nightmares!

But Spring 2006 I ended up needing to stay up to study for a test and my parents had the show on in the living room. “Dead Man’s Blood” was on (though I wouldn’t know the episode name until a couple years later). I tried not paying attention to it, but I did watch bits while studying, and it peaked my interest.

So when I was bored in my room one night, and I stumbled onto the airing of “Devil’s Trap” I watched the episode. It was good - I was interested. I decided to stick around for at least 1 more episode to see who would survive the car crash.

Fall 2006 the Season 2 premiere airs, and I decide I’m in. I’m sticking with the show. Dean’s hot and I want to see how Sam and Dean handle their dad’s death.

From then on I loyally recorded the show every night it aired when I wasn’t allowed to stay up late so I could watch it the next day. I spent Season 2 falling in love with Dean’s character, the brothers’ close relationship, the Impala, the Classic Rock music, and the show in general. I rewatched my favorite episodes via the recordings and I found youtube and began watching fanvids. And when it was over, I bought the Season 1 and 2 DVD sets and FINALLY watched all of Season 1 - bingeing all 22 episodes in 2 days.

Season 3 was the 1st year I really sympathized with Sam - I cried when he said he just wanted Dean to be his brother again - because I wanted Dean to act more like himself too. I cried again with him when he lost Dean on Wednesday in “Mystery Spot”. It became the 1st Sam episode I replayed a ton because I felt Sam’s pain. The finale was very upsetting for me, a total Dean girl at the time, but I also loved it for Bobby’s “family don’t end with blood” speech (I began to really love his character that day) and the singing scene (I love Bon Jovi) and knew they had to bring back Dean somehow.

The summer before Season 4 I found the SPN fandom - I found the CW lounge (a long dead website made by the CW for fans to discuss their shows) and I found SpoilerTV. I began reading fanfics fans wrote on the lounge site. I made my 1st online friends - one of which I still talk with to this day (though she no longer watches the show).

The 1st Comic Con sneak peek I watched was of Dean digging himself out of his grave. I was so excited to see him alive. I quickly got into the habit of watching sneak peeks and reading all the Spoilers that existed for the show. I became a Spoiler Addict.

I was so excited about Castiel’s introduction. An angel on one of my shows - I was gleeful about it. I prayed he’d stay good (but I could sense he’d be a friend from the start) and he’d stay alive. I was of course, not disappointed. I was so in love with Cas’s Season 4 and 5 scenes. His friendship with Dean was the best part for me at the time. My 1st fanfic on fanfiction net was about Cas pulling Dean out of hell. I joined a new website with my fan friends, a more private website, and I became known as DeanCasLover or DCL - my account name on the sites I went on most.

Then Kripke left the show. And slowly through the years I lost my love for it. The writing didn’t always feel right. It felt more flawed - less satisfying than under Kripke. The more the job of showrunner changed hands, the worst it got.

Bobby died (a death I still consider a mistake to this day). Most of my friends left the private website we were on and dropped the show. My parents had quit watching seasons before. I got busy with college and read and wrote less fanfics. I read less spoilers. I stopped buying the seasons as soon as they came out. I stopped doing “marathon watches” of the previous seasons. I checked for fan videos less often. I began getting increasingly more annoyed with certain parts of the fandom. But I was still very deeply in love with the characters. I hung on, refusing to give up the show.

August 2015 I joined Tumblr for another show (Dominion - another angel show, shocker). I wanted to collect the gifs for that show and I did. November 2015 I reblogged my first Supernatural gifs. It didn’t help keep me interested in the current season (Season 11). I lost so much interest it took me nearly a whole summer to watch the last 3 or 4 episodes of Season 11. But when I was done, I was drawn back in.

Season 12 was a mixed bag for me. I struggled to watch it as much as I did during Season 11. Only certain enjoyable episodes and some stand out scenes kept me going. I was still a very much troubled fan.

Season 13 saved my love for the show. Jack saved me from quitting. His relationship with Sam was the best part of the season for me along with his story in general. I love him so much. I love them so much. While I hated how Dean acted in the 1st half of S13, it allowed me to see Sam. Really see him. And I finally became a true fan of Sam too. I embraced our similarities. #SamIsMe is one of my favorite tags now. I look at the gifs I tagged under it fairly often. I even became a fan of Sam and Cas scenes.

While Season 13 and 14 have been far from perfect in my eyes, I have learned to appreciate what I still love about the show - the characters that make up Team Free Will 2.0, and the moments between them that I adore.

I will miss the show after Season 15 ends. The problems I had with the writing in the later years never changed how I felt about the show in general, how I felt about the characters.

The show’s seen me through so much. My depressing times in middle school when I was bullied, the high school years that dragged by despite enjoying it for the most part, and my college years of fighting to keep up my grades. Whenever I was down, I often thought to myself “at least your life is not as bad as Dean and Sam’s - you can get through this” and I felt better. lol

Supernatural’s even taught me a few things. The one that stands out to me most was mentioned earlier, and was spoken by my “Uncle Bobby”:

Family don’t end with blood.

#Supernatural #Get To Know Me 2019 #SPN Fandom #Supernatural Series End #SPN Season 15 Talk

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imjustthemechanic · 5 years

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Our Own Demons

Part 1/? - A Bolt from the Blue Part 2/? - A Different World

What if Tony Stark really were the villain of the Marvel universe? How would that work? Tony himself is about to find out, as he battles his inner demons (and some outer ones, too) across a multiverse of infinite possibilities.

The first thing Tony thought of was what the mysterious JANIS had just said: one hundred and seventy-eight Tonys Stark in the US. It could be a coincidence… but now that he thought of it, this man also kind of looked like Tony. His hair was a bit shorter, and showed the gray Tony dyed out. He didn’t have the beard, although he hadn’t shaved in a day or so, either. The nose was similar, and the furrows in the forehead, the eyes… he was about as tall as Tony would be without his lifts…

No, that was ridiculous. Tony shook his head, trying to clear the idea out of it. He’d seen some bullshit in his life, what with the Viking gods and the fire people and the Hulk, but those were one thing. This was something else entirely. There had to be a better explanation than that somehow there were suddenly two of them and one dressed like a slob.

“What’s your date of birth?” Tony asked.

“May twenty-ninth, 1970,” the other replied immediately. The wrench was slowly coming down, but he still looked terrified – and now very confused. “What’s your middle name?”

“Edward,” said Tony. He cocked his head, looking for the little clue that would tell him this was a trick or a dream or an illusion. Something. “Parents?”

“Howard and Maria,” said the other. “Ex-wife?”

Ah, there it was. Tony exhaled. “I’ve never been married,” he said.

The other went tense again, redoubling his grip on the wrench until his knuckles went white.

Tony rolled his eyes. That did it – he had to get out of his. “Will you just… I can’t talk to you when you might whack my head off at any moment. Here.” He approached cautiously, moving slowly and keeping his hands where the other could see them, and gently peeled the man’s fingers off the wrench and laid it down on a tabletop. “There. Better?”

“Who are you?” the other man asked. He unhooked his glasses from his shirt and put them on, then squinted in apparent disbelief of what he saw through them. “My evil twin?”

“I’m pretty sure I’d know if I had a twin, evil or otherwise,” Tony said.

“Evil mirror universe counterpart?” the other tried. He took the glasses back off and started cleaning them on the hem of his shirt, as if that would help somehow.

“That’s… wait, what makes you think I’m the evil one?” asked Tony, frowning.

“You’re the one with the goatee,” the other pointed out.

“Spock was the one with the goatee, and he was the mirror universe character who wasn’t evil,” said Tony.

“That’s what my wife told me when I tried to grow one! She said I looked like evil-Spock!” the other declared. “She wouldn’t stop making fun of me until I shaved it!”

Tony held up both hands. “Stop!” he ordered, “I don’t have time for this. I have to get Pepper.” If this man were Tony Stark in any sort of meaningful way, he would understand that.

“Pepper?” the man asked with a frown. “What… I don’t know if you realize this, but you literally appeared out of nowhere a minute ago.” He pointed to the wreckage of the suit, its pieces warped and its paint discoloured by… whatever had happened. “Now you’re worried about seasoning?”

That settled it. “I have to go,” Tony repeated. He spotted the door next to the sofa – there was a poster hung on it, a reproduction of one advertising a car race in Monaco in 1936. Tony went and tugged on the handle, but found it locked. “Would you mind?” he asked the other.

The man stared at him a moment longer, then threw up his hands. “Just… just open it, JANIS.”

There was a clunk, and the handle turned.

Tony didn’t spend a lot of time looking where he was going on his way out. He thought a couple of people might nodded or waved to him, but he ignored them, marching up the stairs and down the unfamiliar hallways until he found a sign that said To 45th Street. He followed that, and then paused for a moment before opening the door under the glowing red exit sign. What would he find out there? A mirror universe where east was west and up was down? A world ruled by Loki and the Chi’Tauri, or a nuclear wasteland where nobody had gotten rid of the nuke? Tony shut his eyes and took a deep breath, and pushed the door open to reveal…

East 45th Street, exactly as he remembered it. There was the Helmsley building across the road. On his left was the Starbucks and on his right was the Wells Fargo, and if Tony turned around, the building he’d just come out of would be Avengers Tower. He was right back where he’d started.

It was a great relief, but it didn’t last. When Tony looked up for confirmation, he got a nasty surprise. The building behind him wasn’t Avengers Tower at all. It was the old hexagonal skyscraper that had been there in 2005, the one he’d torn down to replace with something that would add a little more interest to the skyline. Tony shut his eyes and shook his head, then looked again. The view did not change.

His heart, which had so recently risen, sank again. Maybe he was hallucinating. Or maybe he’d somehow gone back in time… but no, that didn’t work. Tony had never worked on suits in the Tower basement, and even if he had, he’d definitely have remembered being visited by his future self. Maybe the other had been right when he’d suggested this was some kind of alternate universe. Maybe it was all a bad dream, something his brain was making up to save him the terror of hitting a cornfield while wearing a nonfunctional suit.

“Excuse me!” A woman pushed past, trundling a big wheeled suitcase. “I’m late!”

That was enough to bring Tony out of his moment of shock. He stepped out of the way to let her pass, then glanced up at the building again before straightening his jacket and heading back indoors. None of this mattered – he had to call pepper. If Tony had slipped into an alternate reality, maybe talking to Pepper would make that clear. And if he hadn’t, then he would at least know she was all right.

The first time Tony had ever used a pay phone in his life was when he’d called Pepper at Christmas to let her know he wasn’t dead. This time at least he was indoors and warm as he found a bank of phones in a corner of the train station and put a quarter in. Like the Helmsley Building across the street, the inside of Grand Central Station looked reassuringly familiar – right down to the details of damage from the Battle of New York. The wall and the roof had been patched up, and the terminal was crowded with commuters, but there was still scaffolding up and shops closed, and areas roped off as too dangerous to enter. Tony could even still see the dent in the masonry where the Hulk and thrown Thor against the wall.

He dialed Pepper’s number.

“Please pick up this time,” he murmured as he punched the buttons. “You have to have heard something by now. Please.” If she didn’t pick up this time, he decided, he would damned well hitchhike to California if that were what it took. One way or another, he was going to track her down and make sure these nut cases in whatever was left of SHIELD didn’t touch her.

The phone rang once.

It rang twice. Tony bit his lip. Please. Please!

It began to ring a third time – then there was a click, and a cautious, “hello?”

All the weird things that had happened in the past half hour were forgotten when Tony heard Pepper’s voice. He was so relieved he nearly cried. Whatever else was going on, Pepper was safe. “Pep, it’s me,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I am,” she replied. “Is something wrong?”

“Is something… yes, something’s wrong!” Tony told her. “Aren’t you watching the news?” How could she not know? Pepper was usually better-informed than that – sometimes better-informed than Tony was. Even if she had other engagements, she ought to have heard something.

“I haven’t noticed anything,” she said, worried. “What’s happening?”

“Long story,” Tony replied. “Short version is that SHIELD’s full of Nazis and they just tried to kill everybody we know. You and I,” he added, “are getting out of here. You were right. We’re leaving the country, immediately and indefinitely. I’m gonna deal with this, but I need to know you’re out of harm’s way.”

A few seconds went by in silence.

“Who is this?” asked Pepper.

“What? It’s me, Pep,” he insisted. “It’s Tony.” This was wrong. This was even more wrong than what had just happened in Washington. Maybe even more wrong than finding a beardless version of himself threatening him with a pipe wrench. Pepper Potts couldn’t possibly just not know that it was Tony who was calling her, not in any reality.

“I thought it was,” she said. “What are you talking about? I’ve got the news on now and I don’t see anything about SHIELD.”

“Washington!” Tony insisted. He was starting to feel ill. “Where are you?”

“I’m in my office,” she replied, as if he ought to have known that. “Where are you calling from?”

“Pay phone in Grand Central,” said Tony. “Oh, shit. Okay, let me explain.” How he was going to explain something he didn’t understand, he wasn’t sure, but he had to try. “Something weird is going on. I was flying out to California to get you when I… I don’t actually know what happened, but I ended up back here and there’s a guy who looks like me in the basement.” Why was he telling her that? Did he thought she would have an explanation for it? “I’m going to figure this out,” Tony promised. “Whatever is going on I will figure it out and fix it, but first I have to know you’re okay.”

“Tony,” Pepper said gently, “I’m honestly not finding anything about this. Are you sure it wasn’t, I don’t know, a dream or something?” She was quiet for a moment, then asked, “did you go home last night? Or did you sleep in the lab again?”

Tony leaned on the phone booth wall and shut his eyes. She thought he was crazy. Nothing he’d just said had made any sense to her at all and she thought he was cracking up. Maybe she was right. Tony stood there silently for a moment, then set the receiver back in the cradle. This had to be a bad dream.

“Okay,” he said aloud to himself. “Let’s assume that I am in an alternate reality, and that I have somehow arrived at a point in my life where alternate reality seems like a reasonable hypothesis.”

If that were true, then the Pepper in this world was all right, but the Pepper back home might still be in danger. He had to get to her, but to do that he’d need to figure out how he’d gotten here in the first place. As it was, he didn’t have enough information to do that. He could remember the suit systems going nuts, then pressure, then falling, but nothing in there told him what had actually caused it.

“I need a drink,” Tony decided.

He pushed himself away from the phone and walked up the length of the terminal until he spotted a little independent coffee shop. Tony felt as if his brain, confronted with a problem unlike anything he’d ever faced before, had simply stopped and would need a shot of something to get it going again. Alcohol would be preferable, but coffee would do.

He ordered it black and extra strong. The barista, an elderly fellow with a mustache and big square glasses, smiled sympathetically as he poured it for him. “Looking sharp today,” he observed. “I like the beard.”

Tony glanced down at what he was wearing, then at the barista again. “Thanks,” he said, and then something about the way the man talked made him ask, “do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do,” he scoffed. “You’re Tony. You’re in here all the time. Are you supposed to be in disguise or something?”

I’m undercover,” Tony told him.

“Uh-huh.”

The man – his nametag said Stan – hadn’t yet told Tony how much he owed for the coffee. Tony tossed a twenty on the counter and let him sort it out. “How long would you say we’ve known each other?” he asked.

“A couple of years, I guess,” Stan said. “Why?”

“Just curious.” Tony stuffed his change in the charity box on the counter and tried to think what he could ask this man that might tell him something useful. He supposed there was always the obvious. “Does the name Iron Man mean anything to you?”

Stan grinned. “That was on Jeopardy the other night!” he said. “The fourth track from Black Sabbath’s 1971 album Paranoid: what is Iron Man!” He looked very pleased with himself.

Tony stared at him for a moment. “Is that a joke?” he asked. There was a suit here – the other him had been working on a suit. There had to be an Iron Man!

“No...” said Stan. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “I’m fine.” Funny… that was the most common lie he told, and right now it was less true than ever.

#fanfic #tony stark #iron man

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genderonthescreen-blog · 5 years

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Queer Representation: How Can We Get The Gays to Watch Our Movie?

The Vito Russo Test is the queer equivalent to the Bechdel Test (which tests the representation of women in films). It was created by GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and is used to test the representation of LGBTQ+ people in film. The way a film passes the test is if there is an “identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender” character who isn’t defined by their sexuality and/or gender identity, and who is significant to the plot. Despite the fact this test is quite easy to pass, most films do not. Out of the 109 films released by major studios in 2017 only 14 had LGBTQ+ characters in them (that’s 12.8%). Gay men are the most represented out of those 14 films (64% or 9 out of the 14 films feature a gay man that pass the test) while trans people are the least represented in 2017 (zero out of the 14 films featured transgender characters). These numbers are insanely low, and shows that there is a clear problem with the representation of LGBTQ+ people in films.

But, even in the movies that feature LGBTQ+ characters, how well are they being represented, really? Films like Call Me By Your Name (2017), Carol (2015), Blue Is The Warmest Color (2013), and Brokeback Mountain (2005) have all been praised as iconic queer movies with great representation, but how great is this representation? Right off the bat you can see that all of these characters are white. Not a huge surprise when it comes to Hollywood, considering how bad they are at representing people of color, but, still, not all queer people are white, obviously—Marsha P. Johnson, anybody? How about happy endings? Shouldn’t queer people be allowed to see a relationship like their own end happily? Well, it seems not. In Call Me By Your Name, they break up; in Blue Is The Warmest Color, they break up; in Brokeback Mountain, they break up and one of them dies (the good-olde “bury your gays” trope https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/06/30/queerbaiting-bury-your-gays-tv_a_23005000/ )! Carol seems to be the only one that has a semi-happy ending. Although, Therese (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) do breakup at one point, at the end of the film it is implied that they get back together. An implication is a we can get apparently. Oversexualization is also an issue. All of these movies have semi-graphic sex scenes in them, with Blue Is The Warmest Color’s sex scenes are borderline pornography—and definitely from the male gaze. Now, sex isn’t the problem here, if a director wants to show two characters getting it on, they very well should be allowed to do so! The problem is that the only kind of movies that are popular and feature queer people at the forefront are romantic dramas (usually tragic) that are very heavy on the sexual discovery. This would be fine if there were just as many goofy LGBTQ+ romantic comedies or action movies with queer leads as there are LGBTQ+ romantic tragedies.

Now, that’s not to say things aren’t getting better! With the release and success of Love, Simon in 2018, a romantic comedy about a teenage boy coming out as gay, things are, hopefully, starting to look up. However, there has recently been a new disturbing trend when it come to LGBTQ+ representation in films. A film will announce that there is an “openly gay” character in their movie before the film is released. Thus, attracting a large queer audience that is sorely disappointed when they realize “openly gay” actually means “not openly gay at all.” Take Beauty and the Beast (2017) for example. Before the release of Beauty and the Beast, Dir. Bill Condon announced that there was going to be an “exclusively gay moment” (WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?) in the film involving LeFou (Josh Gad), Gaston’s groveling sidekick. Fans were obviously excited! But, when the movie came out, what we got was very a stereotypical depiction of a gay man (who is supposed to be crushing on Gaston?), and one moment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sadujj45Y90 blink and you’ll miss it) where LeFou accidentally starts dancing with another man and… that’s it—wow, how groundbreaking.

While there is at least a small moment in Beauty and the Beast, other films that use this tactic to get a more diverse audience don’t even bother following through. Before the release of the much anticipated Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan announced that Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) is pansexual. This revelation prompted fans to go crazy, but when the movie came out there was nothing, besides some semi-flirty lines and an “implied” romantic relationship with a droid (okay…), explicit in the film that showed Lando’s pansexuality. Some people (https://lwlies.com/articles/queerbaiting-solo-lando-calrissian/ ) are calling this trend, a new from of queerbaiting, and going by the definition (“the practice of hinting at, but then not actually depicting, a same-sex romantic relationship between characters in a work of fiction, mainly in film or television” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queerbaiting ) I’m have to agree. Except, this kind of queerbaiting is almost worse because the “hinting” starts before the film comes out. Therefore filmmakers are literally using a the possibility of a potentially queer character as bait to get more LGBTQ+ moviegoers into their theaters.

There are other, less nefarious, examples of this kind of queerbaiting. Tessa Thompson, who plays Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok (2017), made a post on twitter before the film came out about how her character is bisexual and how she wanted that to come through on the big screen. However, she was quick to add that Valkyrie’s sexuality is never explicitly shown in Thor Ragnarok (https://www.avclub.com/thor-ragnarok-ultimately-cut-the-one-scene-that-confir-1820047758 check out this article). It’s clear that Thompson wan’t trying to get more LGBTQ+ people to see Thor Ragnarok, she was just trying to spread the word about her character’s sexuality—Valkyrie is canonically bisexual in the comic books.The character of Albus Dumbledore, the grandfatherly headmaster of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter film and book series, could also be another example of this kind of queerbaiting. However, unlike all of the other examples, Dumbledore’s sexuality was revealed by author JK Rowling after the release of the last Harry Potter book in 2007 (https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=3755544&page=1 check out this article from that year talking about it). Dumbledore’s sexuality was never explicit in the Harry Potter books or movies, but recently Rowling has started another film series that takes place in the Potter universe (but during the 1920s) called Fantastic Beasts. Before the release of the second installment, it was announced that Jude Law would be playing a young Dumbledore in that next film (Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald), and people began to ask if Dumbledore’s sexuality is going to be addressed in these films. Not much was said by Rowling, but before the movie was released Dir. David Yates said Dumbledore’s sexuality is not “explicitly” shown in the film. Fans were obviously upset be this—myself included. However, after seeing the movie, I feel like it’s safe to say only a person in serious denial would claim that Dumbledore is straight after watching The Crimes of Grindelwald. There isn’t anything “explicit” in the movie (Dumbledore doesn’t say “I’m gay” or kisses a man) but the relationship between Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, the antagonist of the series and Dumbledore’s ex-lover, is shown or alluded to in in more ways than one—not explicitly telling the audience about his sexuality is in character for Dumbledore, who has always been secretive. As a fan of Harry Potter and the Fantastic Beasts films, I hope in future installments Dumbledore’s sexuality will be more explored—and it should, especially since the main antagonist is his ex-boyfriend!

Queer representation is important. The constant censoring of LGBTQ+ people and relationships in media needs to end. It’s often said that this kind of censorship is to protects kids from exposure to “inappropriate” content. News flash, there are kids out there who are queer! (Because queer people have always been queer.) I remember when I was a kid how big of an impact seeing queer characters and couples in film and TV were for me. Seeing characters like Tara (Amber Benson) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer made me feel like I wasn’t alone and that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. Even though queer representation in film is still lacking it’s getting better, and it’s getting even better on TV shows! The Legend of Korra, and Steven Universe are two kids shows that feature LGBTQ+ couples. Sense 8, Orange is the New Black, Queer Eye and Black Mirror (specifically season 3’s episode San Junipero) are all Netflix original series that have great LGBTQ+ representation and/or are LGBTQ+ centric—trans characters played by actual trans actors? YES! Things are looking up and I have high hopes for the future when it comes to queer representation.

Check out these cool sources!

https://lwlies.com/articles/queerbaiting-solo-lando-calrissian/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/01/disney-launches-first-exclusively-gay-moment-beauty-beast/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2018/05/17/lando-calrissian-pansexual-solo-star-wars-reaction/620566002/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/movies/jude-law-dumbledore-gay.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/glaad-report-hollywood-is-failing-lgbt-characters-in-its-movies

https://books.google.com/books?id=AoQrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT143&dq=the+vito+russo+test&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj25Yj_oaDfAhXwx1kKHZODBU0Q6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=the%20vito%20russo%20test&f=false

https://www.glaad.org/sri/2018/vitorusso

https://www.glaad.org/sri/2018/overview

How about this cooler bibliography!

https://books.google.com/books?id=UWtECwAAQBAJ&pg=PT203&dq=queerbaiting&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJ6M3zzprfAhWu11kKHT6ZAcwQuwUIMTAB#v=onepage&q=queerbaiting&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=f6YwSZlsyJMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lgbt+film&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjprcyuz5rfAhXSq1kKHbkGAzgQuwUILTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=jI_IHFUidlwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lgbt+film&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjprcyuz5rfAhXSq1kKHbkGAzgQuwUIUTAH#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=ROhSbOQIzmYC&pg=PA31&dq=the+hays+code&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6tc3zzJrfAhXIqFkKHaOoAUQQuwUITDAG#v=onepage&q=the%20hays%20code&f=false

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/we-need-to-talk-about-lgbt-representation-apparently_us_5a3d4dede4b06cd2bd03da68

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0HsPIquRmc

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/05/22/lgbt-representation-in-hollywood-has-somehow-got-even-worse/

Photo credits go to Netflix.

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romcomathon2016 · 6 years

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Fever Pitch (USA, 2005)

Happy April, Romcomathon readers! In honor of the official start of baseball season, we bring you Fever Pitch, one of our personal faaaaves. #fenway opening day is thursday! #let’s go red sox

Predictions: Native Bostonians + romcom aficionados = obviously we don't need to MAKE PREDICTIONS ABOUT THIS MOVIE. This film is our destiny, and if you don't know what we're talking about, you should (first watch the movie and then) read about its making on Wikipedia, and how that coincided with THE MAKING OF BASEBALL HISTORY!!!! (This was before the 2004 Red Sox began betraying us left and right with their political tweets. A simpler time.)

Plot: Jimmy Fallon is a math teacher and, more importantly, a lifelong Red Sox fan. Is "fan" even the word? The Red Sox are this man's religion. Meanwhile, Drew Barrymore's religion is work. They meet one day when he brings some students to visit her office -- she does something math-related -- and start dating, despite Drew Barrymore having some reservations. (Apparently, teachers aren't successful enough?? Also, her friends are convinced he will turn out to be a psycho or something, because he is 30 and not yet married.)

Things more or less go swimmingly. Jimmy Fallon is very nervous to reveal to Drew Barrymore his love of the Red Sox, but she takes it in stride, even though his love of the Red Sox is, lbr, weird. He essentially lives in a Red Sox gift shop, and she is somehow able to casually joke about this and not run out screaming in horror. Apparently, she is appreciative of the fact that he's passionate about something, and is glad that he'll have something to do while she's working all the time, because she works all the time. Sure, sure. A match made in heaven! But then, baseball season actually begins.

For a while, they do a good job of balancing their relationship and their competing needs, and Drew Barrymore manages to accommodate the Red Sox schedule while making all their social plans. Eventually, however, this wears on her a bit, and she begins to wonder where Jimmy Fallon's priorities really are. After a series of incidents, they break up.

Everyone is sad. Jimmy Fallon makes an attempt to win Drew Barrymore back, but she a) does not believe that his priorities have really changed and b) is just too sad, you guys. So sad. So heartbroken. More on this later. Jimmy Fallon, desperate to ~make a change in his life, decides that there's nothing left to do but sell his season tickets to prove his love. SEASON TICKETS TO THE RED SOX, GUYS. And they're really good seats. Like, REALLY good seats. He must really love Drew Barrymore. MAN. Drew Barrymore finds out about this from her friends and, touched/horrified, rushes to stop him. Unfortunately, she cannot call him on the telephone like a normal person, because Jimmy Fallon doesn't have a cell phone (?!?!). Thus, she is forced to GO TO FENWAY and run across the field, in a truly absurd yet delightful scene, and they reunite in front of thousands of Red Sox fans and a handful of security guys.

Also, the Red Sox win the World Series, ending an 86-year drought. #IMPORTANT

Best Scene: Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore genuinely have a lovely, normal-feeling relationship for a lot of this movie. They have charming scenes together in the park, charming scenes together at their homes, and charming scenes together at Fenway. We enjoy all of these charming scenes. Special shout-out to them dancing to "Sweet Caroline."

Worst Scene: Ummmm. When Jimmy Fallon arrives to pick Drew Barrymore up for their first date, she is unfortunately vomiting all over the place. It's actually a quite charming and funny series of scenes that follows, but sigh. Always vomit. All the time. This is one of Kat's favorite movies (she went through a Drew Barrymore ~phase), and yet it is blighted by vomit.

Best Line: Most of this movie is pretty well-written, charming, funny, etc. Hard to choose! But one of our personal favorites is maybe when Jimmy Fallon is in the park, listing for Drew Barrymore all the things he likes about her, and mentions how sometimes she talks out of the side of her mouth, "like an adorable stroke victim." This is so specific to Drew Barrymore that we have always wondered at what point in the process this line was written.

Worst Line: "Ben, I just got so hurt. Really hurt. And sometimes...when that happens -- something inside just shuts off." -- Drew Barrymore, in the doorway of her apartment, when Jimmy Fallon is trying (and failing) to win her back. So...much. Just terrible. It's funny, this line isn't actually that bad, in the grand scheme of romcoms, but for some reason it really sticks with us. Perhaps it's just so awful compared to the rest of the movie?? Whenever we are talking about Worst Lines or cringing about uncomfortable, over-the-top things people have said in films, this line always comes up.

Highlights of the Watching Experience: Remember that period of time when Drew Barrymore was in, oh, every romcom known to man? An excellent period. At some point (probably during/post- Kat’s aforementioned ~phase), we watched every single one of these films, and this is DEFINITELY the one in which she has the best hair. Until the late 2000s, her hair was not utilized well in the majority of her body of work. But she looks great in Fever Pitch! Also, Alex does not understand why so many people are determined to have Gatsby-themed birthday parties. Like...do they not know how that book ends?

How Many POC in the Film: LOL. Jimmy Fallon maybe has one or two friends of color, but they do not speak. Well, it's Boston. Sounds about right. :|

Alternate Scenes: This film is perfect, except for that one line. Kat can even live with the vomit situation, which is saying something. We'd also be interested in a spinoff film about Drew Barrymore's assistant, who seems to be an excellent assistant.

Was the Poster Better or Worse than the Film: Worse. The poster is, like, fine, although it does make it seem like maybe this movie is about Jimmy Fallon's...baseball aspirations?? and his supportive lady friend, Drew Barrymore. We would almost certainly watch that film, but we might find it hard to believe that Jimmy Fallon is a professional ballplayer...

Score: 8.5 out of 10 Green Monster smooches. It's so nice these two weirdos found each other.

Ranking: 8, out of the 130 movies we have now watched.

#fever pitch #jimmy fallon #drew barrymore #2005

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