#I made this back in like November and have still only watched S1 because I am bad ar watching things. Need to watch more

[paula-dot-jpg]

Walter White's social media break

#my art #artists on tumblr #clip studio paint #digital art #csp #breaking bad #shitpost art #walter white #jesse pinkman #I made this back in like November and have still only watched S1 because I am bad ar watching things. Need to watch more #fun fact when i was making this i too was taking a social media break. it was my way to cope

[thealogie]

I'm sorry but I'm about to treat your ask box like a confessional.

You kind of deserve it, though, because due to your Sherlock rewatch posts I've been forced to remember that 1. Sherlock is a show that exists and 2. that I wrote Sherlock fanfic when I was 13... about SHERLOCK and MOLLY.

In my defence, I was a deeply deeply deeply repressed bisexual who hadn't realized it yet - so all of the obvious and insane gay stuff between Sherlock and John just completely sailed over my head. Also propaganda worked really well on me as a child - so basically I was the ideal viewer for Moftiss lol. There'd be scenes where people mistook Sherlock and John for a couple and I'd go 'huh that's kind of strange that keeps happening' but then it would be played off as a joke and I'd go 'oh yes of course, silly me! Gay people only exist as the punchline! Sherlock and John would NEVER be interested in each other that way. I can't believe anyone would ever think that haha.'

Flash forward to 2017. I'm 17 years old. I've kissed other women by now and have had my brain chemistry rewritten by copious amounts of slash fanfiction. Still young, but wiser to the ways of the world than I once was. The last time I watched Sherlock, I had been 14 years old. Sherlock season 4 airs. I watch it with my mom. It's so bad my brain immediately initiates a trauma response and wipes all memory of Sherlock away. This continues for years. The only times I remember Sherlock exists is whenever I joyfully watch hbomerguy's Sherlock Is Garbage video while I'm knitting or painting or something. Also whenever I have to type in a password for an account I made when I was 13 - because my go-to password was 'SHERLOCKED' back then, unfortunately.

Flash forward to now. I'm 24 years old. And I start seeing your posts about Sherlock. Like a sleeper agent, it awakens something in me. Yesterday, I spent a perfectly good Saturday - one I could have spent doing literally anything else - reading Johnlock fanfiction. I am suddenly re experiencing the show through new eyes, seeing all the queerbait I never did before. Getting hate-crimed on the daily. I'm thinking about Sherlock at work, at my adult fucking job. I'm watching scenes from the show on youtube in my office, quickly and guiltily clicking away whenever a coworker comes to chat. I am considering doing my own rewatch. I am realizing for the first time that John and Sherlock were literally in love. It's the only lens through which you can view the show and still have it be somewhat enjoyable. They literally put Mary in a wedding dress shooting Sherlock in his mind palace on TV. I feel like I'm having a religious experience, I feel like I'm insane, I feel like I'm 13 again. This is all vaguely November 5th-ish for me lol.

Anyway. I just thought you should know the impact your rewatch is having on the population. Sorry for the novel in your inbox. I've been desperately trying to find my old Sherlock x Molly fanfic to read for the lols but I think I deleted it off ffnet. I am both having the time of my life while also desperately hoping I forget Sherlock ever existed again soon. So, basically - thank you/curse you for this.

This is perhaps the best ask I’ve ever received?? I converted a sherlolly shipper in the year 2023? Listen I’d never wish a season 4 rewatch on anyone but I would highly recommend watching s1-2 and the wedding episode for a truly out of body experience. I felt more strongly about this show/ship than any other in my life and it was STILL worse than I remembered

[tbyfandoms]

Alone | Sebastian Kydd x Reader

Pairing: sebastian kydd x f!reader

Word Count: 2.3k

Summary: when delivering her annual thanksgiving tradition cookies, y/n discovers just how alone sebastian has been feeling, and she’s determined to help fix that

Warnings: mild swearing

Masterlist | Ask/Tell/Request

A/N: per usual i’m rewatching the carrie diaries, so now my head is swimming with fic ideas for my favorite guy, sebastian <3. every time i watch the thanksgiving episode in s1, it makes me sad about how alone sebastian really was half the time. he just wanted his family to care for and love him. i know it’s nowhere near thanksgiving, but when the writing urge calls, i can’t help but write. also i’m going to try and revive the sebastian x reader tag because when i tell you there’s next to nothing there. I’m glad there’s so many fics for austin, but what about my man seb? hopefully this encourages people to watch the carrie diaries if you haven’t already! anyways, enjoy and lmk what you think! :)

Everything was perfect. There’s nothing quite like a Thanksgiving dinner spent with family, friends, and good food. It’s true the holidays can get a little crazy, especially when it comes to family, but for once everything turned out wonderful. You spent the day with the people you love most and luckily the kitchen didn’t burn down when you were trying to cook the turkey. Honestly, that’s all you could’ve hoped for.

There was one person missing from your group though, and that was none other than Sebastian Kydd himself. You had invited him over the day before, but he told you how his mom was coming over and they were gonna have a real family dinner like they used to. He was so excited and you couldn’t help the way it made your heart swell. He deserved to finally have some family time, you know how much he loves his parents, even if sometimes they don’t always show it in return, so you understood completely that he wouldn’t make it.

One thing you know he can’t miss out on though, are your Thanksgiving cookies! Every year, without fail, it’s tradition for you to make the most delicious batch of cookies shaped as turkeys and dish them out to all your friends and family. You always get so happy when November hits and everyone starts asking you about them, even if Thanksgiving is still weeks away. It makes you feel good to see others happy with something you made, so you don’t mind at all making them each and every year.

You’ve just finished your latest batch, made special for Sebastian and his family, and are placing them carefully in a cute holiday tin you have left over from last year. While digging around for the tin earlier you even found a festive bow to put on top of it. It’s not much, especially not compared to what Sebastian is used to, but it’s something and you know he’ll appreciate the fact you even thought of him.

With a hum of content, you place the lid on the tin and wrap it with the bow, loving how it looks once you’re finished. Grabbing the gift, you make your way to the front door and put on your coat and shoes, knowing there was no way you were going out there without them. Given how cold it’s been outside lately, winter seems to be fast approaching this year.

The drive to Sebastian’s is quick, but soothing. The roads are practically empty, people tired from the day’s festivities and no doubt winding down for the evening. The lights hung up on the houses you pass by spark joy and a sense of comfort within you, there’s no feeling quite like it.

When you pull into the Kydds’ driveway, you instantly take note on how dark it seems inside the house. You know Sebastian’s most likely here, considering his car is still parked out front, but the only indication of occupancy seems to be the porch light being turned on. It’s strange, but you shake the feeling. His family is probably just in the back room where Sebastian likes to hang out. After the big meal you’re sure they had, there’s no doubt they’d want to sit comfortably in there.

Grabbing the cookie tin from the passenger’s seat, you step out of the car and lock it before making your way to the front door. Reaching out, you press the doorbell and wait for someone to come and answer it. A smile breaks out on your face when you see Sebastian through the window, making his way to the door.

It’s dark out here, the sun having set ages ago, but there’s no mistaking the way Sebastian’s blue eyes shine as he takes in your presence once he opens the door. Your cheeks flush in response.

“Hey, Y/L/N! What are you doin’ here? Come in,” he says, quickly making room so you’re able to go inside.

Stepping out of your shoes, you start to unbutton your coat as you make your way towards the back room. “I know you said your mom was coming over and you wouldn’t be able to stop by, but I couldn’t let you go without some of my world famous Thanksgiving cookies! I know you must be busy so I won’t stay long but-”

Rounding the corner, you stop dead in your tracks. In the place where you expected to find Sebastian’s family, his mom at least, you find nothing. The couch is empty, as are the two chairs on each side of the coffee table. It’s quiet, the only sound coming from the tv where the recap of today’s football game is playing.

Peeking into the Kitchen on your left, you hope with all you’ve got that Sebastian’s mom is just in the kitchen, refilling her wine glass or somehow striking up the strength to do the dishes on her own for once.

Nothing, not even a dirty dish is in sight. Did Sebastian even have dinner?

Turning towards the boy in question, you can immediately tell by the look on his face tonight did not go the way he had hoped. You sneak a glance at the bar cart and try to hide your frown as you see a used cup and a half empty bottle of liquor.

You fight back the sting of tears in your eyes as you picture Sebastian sitting in here drinking, alone, on Thanksgiving when he should be surrounded by his family.

“W-where, uh,” you clear your throat, trying to keep it together. “Where’s your mom? Did she leave already?” Please say yes, please say yes, please say-

“No. In order for her to leave she had to have been here in the first place.” The blonde lets out a scoff and shakes his head. He gives you a smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes as he grabs your coat from you, placing it on a nearby chair. “It’s fine, honestly, nothing new.”

Sebastian moves to sit on the couch and you waste no time in following him. You set the tin down on the coffee table and turn towards him, already feeling the anger bubbling up inside you over what Sebastian’s family has done to him yet again. “No, it’s not fine, Sebastian. Your mom promised you she would be here and she should’ve been. It’s not right.”

Blue eyes meet yours and you watch as Sebastian contemplates something before starting to nod his head. “You’re right, it’s not fine. It sucks. You know I actually thought she was gonna make it this time, for real.”

Rubbing a hand down his face, Sebastian sighs before pinching the bridge of his nose. You can tell in his tone, in his actions, that he’s really disappointed. It’s sad to say he’s gotten used to it over the years, but when it comes to holidays, it hurts a little extra.

“Where’d she jet off to this time? Let me guess; Aspen? Palm beach?” A small laugh escapes Sebastian’s lips. He hates the fact this is so typical of his mother that it’s so obvious to you she’d leave at the drop of a hat for some dazzling destination, but at the same time he’s grateful for it. Grateful he has someone to confide in, who understands him and sees past the bullshit reputation he’s got going for him. To everyone else he’s Sebastian Kydd, but to you he’s just Sebastian.

“Saint Bart’s actually. Guess she got an offer from Lucas she couldn’t refuse.” Blue eyes roll before settling back on yours. You can see the sincerity in them as Sebastian goes to speak again. “I know it’s cheesy but I always really liked Thanksgiving. Used to go to my cousins house in Jersey, play touch football, eat too much.”

Sebastian looks away from you, letting his eyes fall to his lap as he thinks back on the fond memories of what his life used to be like.

“That sounds really nice, Seb. That’s the kind of Thanksgiving you should have. That’s the kind you deserve.” Your voice is soft, earnest. You tilt your head to try and catch his gaze again, it doesn’t take long for him to look up. He could never not look at you for too long.

“Is it crazy that I sometimes think the money ruined everything? My mom stopped talking to her brother, so I never see that side of the family anymore. She got her new boobs, and nose, and seems like a whole new brain. It’s like she doesn’t care about things like Thanksgiving anymore.” The boy sniffs and it’s obvious how hurt he is over all of this, obvious how much he still cares about holidays and his family, even if his mom and dad have tried to change that.

“You do, though. And that’s great that you still care, it’s important. No matter how much your mom changes, or your dad, I know you won’t let that change you. Won’t let them change the good heart I know you have.” Sebastian smiles at you, a real genuine smile, but you can still see the sadness in his eyes, the pain.

“You always know just what to say, don’t you?” He whispers. “It’s too bad this good heart couldn’t change the fact I’m alone on one of my favorite holidays of the year.”

Instantly, you reach out and grab the blonde’s hand, wanting to ground him, wanting him to know you’re right here. “Hey, you’re not alone. You never were. As long as I’m around I won’t let you celebrate another holiday like this, not ever. You deserve to be surrounded by people who care about you, who love you.” Your breath hitches in your throat, but you quickly move past it, a faint blush coating your cheeks. “It’s not fair that your mom does this to you and expects you to be okay with it, for it to be normal. I know no one’s perfect and things happen, but no one should be left alone during the holidays, especially not by their parents.”

You can’t help the tear that slides down your cheek. Flashes of today flooding your mind. The good time you had, the laughs, the food, the comfort. All the while Sebastian was home alone with no one to give him comfort. No apparent warm meal or source of humor. Just disappoint of his own mother not showing up once again.

“Hey, hey, hey, don’t cry! Please don’t feel sad over this, I’ll be fine, really.” Sebastian moves closer to you, his hand reaching up to cup your cheek and his thumb wiping away the stray tear. “You know, I was sitting here, just thinking, and I realized you were the person I really wanted to see. I knew I could talk to you and you’d get it. Sometimes I feel like you’re the only person who really understands me. Who actually listens and doesn’t just jump to conclusions like everyone else in this town. I hope you know how much that means to me, how much you mean to me.”

Your heart soars at Sebastian’s confession. All you wanted was to let the boy know how much he’s cared for, how much he matters, and that he isn’t alone even if it may seem like it. If the look in his eyes indicates anything, you think you did a pretty good job.

Bringing your hand up to graze Sebastian’s face you smile before whispering, “I hope you know how much you mean to me, Kydd.”

A beat of silence passes between you, a look of pure bliss evident on both your faces, a million unspoken words being exchanged. Suddenly, Sebastian’s face is inching towards yours and you don’t think for a second about moving away. You accept the connection of his lips with yours wholeheartedly.

Sliding your hand to the back of Sebastian’s head, you let your fingers tangle in the waves at the base of his neck. The feeling of this moment is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. Sebastian’s full, pink lips are warm and soft; his scent enveloping the two of you, making you want to be even closer than you are right now.

Needing a breath of air, you break apart, soft pants coming from both you and Sebastian.

“So, world famous cookies, huh?” The blonde huffs out and you laugh while leaning your forehead against his.

“Yep, they’re shaped like turkeys too.”

“Oh, well these I have to try.” Sebastian gets up from the couch and you watch as he grabs the tin of cookies from the table. The smile and evident boost of happiness exuding from the boy makes you feel better, that maybe now he believes a little bit more that he does have someone who would choose him over a vacation any day.

“C’mon, Kydd, let’s get a drink for those cookies.” Standing, you go to move past Sebastian to get to the kitchen, but you stop when you feel him grab your hand.

“Thanks for coming, Y/N.” There’s a shy smile on his lips, and you can’t decide if it’s just the low lighting but you swear you can see a faint red tint on his pale cheeks. You know it’s not easy for Sebastian to be vulnerable, he doesn’t do it often, but when he does you know he means it.

“Anytime, Sebastian.” Taking a step towards him, you reach up and plant a quick kiss on his cheek, basking in the warmth of his skin on your lips. “Did you eat?You got any fruit and whipped cream, maybe some marshmallows? I don’t know how to make much but I can whip us up a mean ambrosia salad.”

Sebastian laughs and shakes his head as he follows you into the kitchen, a full range of groceries available for you to make whatever you please.

“Sure, sweetheart. I like ambrosia salad.”

#sebastian kydd #sebastian kydd x reader #sebastian kydd x y/n #sebastian kydd x you #sebastian kydd imagine #sebastian kydd imagines #sebastian kydd fanfiction #the carrie diaries #austin butler #austin butler x reader #austin butler imagine #austin butler fanfiction #austin butler x you #austin butler x y/n #austin butler imagines

[kedreeva]

Steve gets to have the talk with Jonathan that he wanted to have at the end of S1

I know who sent this one, and I know why she went on anon, and I SEE YOU, SUNSHINE.

collected on AO3

-----

It doesn’t take long for Steve to feel out of place in the too-bright waiting room. He’s exhausted and achy and still reeling from spinning his entire life hard 180 degrees only to find himself in utter freefall. He’d already had his own injuries looked at and been told to have someone keep an eye on him for his concussion, but there was no one at home, so he’d collapsed into the nearest unoccupied chair.

But now the lights are too bright and the kids had all shot up to see their friend when he woke up, and the adults had either gone with them or disappeared for business, and Steve finds himself once again alone. The silence - or near-silence anyway - is nice, but every time the dying light down the hall flickers, his heart kicks his ribs and he’s right back in Jonathan’s living room. He’s watching the girl he loves point a gun at his face while his misconception of the world as a safe place falls apart behind her.

He heaves himself to his feet, and heads for the door.

The chill November air greets him sharply, and he welcomes the way it braces him. He doesn’t go far – not supposed to be alone – just leans against the cold bricks of the front entrance to take a few deep breaths. He closes his eyes, head tipping back against the stone.

The door opens to his right, and he hates the way his hands twitch for a weapon, so he sticks them in his pockets as Jonathan joins him. He doesn’t know what to say, how to break the ice; he’d broken too much already in the past 24 hours. How can the knowledge of what he’d said live right there beside the knowledge that he’d lay down his life for this boy without a single thought? Sorry isn’t big enough to bridge the gap he'd made between them.

“How’s your brother?” he says, because he has to say something or he’ll crawl out of his skin and they’ve had enough of that tonight.

“Alive. Happy to see his friends,” Jonathan says, not looking over as he leans back against the wall now that he’s had an invitation. He puffs out a laugh. “Maybe not as happy as the kids were to see him.”

Steve manages a thin smile around the shards of his heart. He cannot imagine having friends that care that much, the sort that would go to the ends of the earth for him, that would burn it to the ground to save him. Tommy’s loyalty ended at a single rejection.

Jonathan may have rightfully kicked Steve’s ass, but he’d also taken his hand. He can still feel the gut-pull shiver of Jonathan demanding jump and his own instant and unthinking obedience. He can still see the flicker of lights through the window. He can still hear his one, crystal thought: he can’t leave them.

Not Nancy. Them.

“They’re good kids,” he says quietly. “Your brother too.” His breath twists up in his lungs as his face pinches up. “Look, I uh- I shouldn’t have said what I said about him. Or you.”

Jonathan remains quiet, not looking at Steve for so long that Steve nearly opens his mouth to continue the apology he’d gone there to make, but Jonathan beats him to the punch again. “It was pretty shitty of you. Honest, but shitty.”

“It wasn’t,” Steve says, and then quickly amends- “Honest, I mean. That’s why- I don’t know, dude. Maybe you knocked some sense into me. I was being a huge dick to you because I couldn’t handle my own problems.”

“King Steve has problems?” Jonathan asks, though it sounds more like a barb than a question.

Steve pulls a hand from his pocket to run it through his hair. “I guess,” he says with a little shake of his head. “I don’t know what it is about Nancy. It’s like… she’s the first person that’s ever looked at me like she just… expects me to be a better person than I am. And the crazy thing is, when she looked at me like that, I wanted to be, I just… I didn’t know how. I either had to climb up to her level or drag her down to mine and when I saw I saw the two of you, I was just… I dunno. Furious.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Jonathan says. It’s not the truth, Steve knows; or at least, it’s not the whole truth.

“It was, but that’s not- that wasn’t it. I thought it was, but it wasn’t,” Steve admits. It feels weird to say it aloud. “I thought I was mad that she… would come down to my level, I guess? After I let myself think… it doesn’t matter. And I was mad at you for… I dunno. Being the reason.”

“Nothing happened, Steve,” Jonathan says, a little hotly.

“That’s not true,” Steve says. “I mean, yeah, okay, you two didn’t screw or whatever, but… something happened. She went to you for help. Not me. Or, y’know, it’s- it’s worse than that. She did come to me, and I was too much of an asshole to help her. I was too worried about my dad’s opinion. He’s not even- It’s stupid. I should have helped her sooner. I was furious at myself for not listening to her. I should have.”

Jonathan doesn’t argue that, and Steve tries again to pull the knife of the realization from his gut, but it doesn’t move. She’d needed help, and he’d walked away, and he’d gotten exactly what he’d deserved for it. He’d gotten off easy, looking back.

“Well, you can’t go back,” Jonathan says, almost as if he’d read Steve’s mind. “None of us can, after this. There's only forward.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. He’s going to try to get back to normal, or make a new normal at least. He’s going to make sure they think this is over, and then he’s going to do his level fucking best to forget any of this ever happened.

Almost any of it, anyway. Maybe not the part where he's trying, now.

“I’m sorry,” he says, trips over the words in his rush to make good on his decision. “I meant- I meant to say that, before. It’s why I… came over to your place. I wanted to apologize. Even before the monsters.”

He’d wanted to apologize once the monster had gone, but Nancy had rushed them into the cars and told him to meet them at the school gymnasium, and then they’d been so frantically trying to find where the kids had disappeared to that nothing had even been explained until they finally sat down at the hospital. Steve still isn’t sure he totally understands, but he’s not sure if there’s explanation missing or if it’s the concussion talking.

“I already… told Tommy and Carol off, that bridge burned pretty goddamn quick. I cleaned off the theater sign. I was coming to apologize to you, and then I was going to see Nancy, and apologize to her, too,” he adds, remembering the speech he’d thought about the entire drive out to Jonathan’s house. “I want to do better. I messed up and I don’t know if I can make up for it, but I want to do better.”

“Okay,” Jonathan says. Simple as that.

“Okay?” Steve echoes dumbly.

Jonathan shrugs and pushes away from the wall. “Yeah. You want to do better- okay. But, I’m freezing my ass off out here. Come back inside.”

Jump.

Steve pushes away from the wall, too, and follows him inside.

#stranger things #steve harrington #jonathan byers #stonathan #stranger things fic #my writing #askbox prompts #*glee* #https://archiveofourown.org/works/42173625/chapters/107960376

[shippingfangirl013]

Stranger Things S5 Conglomerate Twelvegate Theory (Part 1):

Because I have no clue what to call this and it’s basically a massive convergence of all the gates/theories into one?

@chirpsythismorning and I had to solve Twelvegate to figure out the rest and… I think we stumbled across the answer just off of rambling… and playing ping-pong with ideas…

This also heavily pulls from Stranger Things parallels to Back to The Future Parts I & II (because re-watching my favorite trilogy helped me to figure out the timeline for Stranger Things).

If you do NOT want spoilers for S5, I suggest you do not read any further.

Because… this is… a doozy. And likely has some MAJOR spoilers, we’re just good at playing detective and dedicating a little too much time to this show.

———————————————————

First, we have to go back to season 1. . .

So, when we first meet the original four kids in the Party, they’re playing D&D. Will knows that he has to roll a 13 or higher here. Will is under the steps, crawling to find the d20.

This is the ORIGINAL timeline. We don’t know much more about the timeline other than seeing 2 minutes into the show. Will is still 12 years old and has a watch on, but we never get a close-up of the watch.

We’ve got a pizza one box, and two regular Coca-Cola cans… okay? Keep that in mind, it’s important later on.

When the Tv flickers, that’s Vecna using his power, likely to alter memories or the timeline/reality itself.

Right after this instance?

We get this scene:

Now, why would Will go from knowing that a 13 counts and is high enough to take out the Demogorgon, to asking if a 7 is high enough? If a 7 counts, right after the TV flickers?

Also, notice that Will is standing framed with the two coke cans and pizza one box behind him. That yellow and blue pen is important too.

(I play D&D, most times, anything below a 13 or 14 is a bad roll and you take a lot of damage. It all depends on if your Dungeon Master wants to be forgiving or not. )

So, the first 3 minutes of season 1, is the original timeline (Timeline A) differentiating/being altered; I say this because, we don’t know anything about that point in time aside from our main Party playing D&D in Mike’s basement.

A key factor here that Jo mentioned while we were talking, is that we don’t see Hopper, Joyce, Lonnie, or Jonathan during the scene in Mike’s basement. We only see Will, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and briefly, Karen.

Timeline A is altered at 8:15 pm on November 6, 1983.

Each point after the TV flickers is a part of Timeline B. But I think Will actually cast protection on the extended party; El, Max, Lucas, Dustin, Mike, Jonathan, Joyce, Hopper, possibly Murray, and maybe on the others’ families.

But Timeline B was Henry altering the timeline, creating a new reality for our cast of characters. (Putting them in a silly little play, perhaps?) Henry stole Will's powers when Will was kidnapped; but what powers could Will have that Henry needs to re-shape the world?

Time-altering powers and creation powers.

Here's the thing, Henry can manipulate what others see, he can manipulate and alter memories, and it is very likely he was able to take Will's time-altering powers while Will was trapped in the Upside Down. Henry is easily able to use time travel powers to his advantage.

But. . . Henry CAN'T create something out of nothing; as evidenced by his using others' memories to make them see what they fear. He can re-shape the particles that made up the Mind Flayer, however, Henry cannot create to the extent that Will (an artist!) is able to. This is how Will is able to do things like cast Fog Cloud in S2. In S1, Will's True Sight is used.

(I'll come back to this later, because this is literally going to be like a 10-part theory, which may literally just be 100% spoilers)

Timeline B is an altered reality; Henry gave our cast of characters new roles to play. Not just anyone though, primarily: Joyce, Jonathan, Will, El, Hopper, Terry, Sarah, and Diane.

(You may be wondering why I mentioned Sarah, Diane, and Terry; I'll get to that in a bit, if not in this one, then in part 2.)

Joyce is the ex-wife of Lonnie Byers and she is Will and Jonathan's mom. Hopper is the small-town police chief who moved back to Hawkins after his divorce from Diane, and the loss of his daughter Sarah. Terry Ives is El's mama, and Eleven is the girl with powers that escaped from Hawkins Lab. Basically, the events of S1 equate to an altered timeline, or therefore, are the repercussions of an altered timeline.

Timeline A still exists after the original event that alters Timeline A to create the altered reality in Timeline B.

The event that alters Timeline A is an occurrence on the day of Will and El's birth. Henry swaps the families of Joyce and Hopper's twins.

Henry went back in time after taking Will's powers in S1, to alter the timeline, by swapping El and Will at birth in the hospital, so that Will and El (011 & 012) grew up together in the lab, never knowing that they are twins. Will grows up with Lonnie Byers as his father, El grows up in the lab, and Hopper lives in New York for seven years and has a family with Diane. Henry alters Terry Ives' memories and scrambles the signals in her brain via Brenner.

In this altered timeline that is Timeline B, El was taken by the lab at birth, and El's Mama is Terry Ives. Will's mom stays the same, but his father (and Jonathan's father) is changed to Lonnie Byers.

In Timeline A, El was kidnapped first in 1976, and Will was taken second in 1978.

In 1976, there was a drowning at Sattler's Quarry. Seven years prior to 1983; now, for a while, I thought that might be Will, but that didn't add up.

El was taken first at five years old, by the lab. . . on her first day of kindergarten. . . which is why Mike found Will alone and scared on the swing set. El's disappearance was covered up as a drowning in the quarry in 1976. This is why El is paralleled with Maria from Frankenstein (1931) in season 1, with Nancy's pink dress, because Maria drowns in a lake after trying to play a game with Frankenstein's monster.

Now, Will was also kidnapped and taken to the lab in Timeline A, but this gets a little harder to figure out how Will got there in the first place. I think Lonnie has something to do with it, because there are one too many instances of Will being paired with trunks, and we see Jonathan check for Will in Lonnie's Oldsmobile in season 1. However, I'm not 100% certain about that and I will update this if I find anything that changes my thoughts on that.

I know that Will had to have been taken to the lab around 1978, at the age of 7, if he and El were not taken at the same time in 1976. This means, that Will's kidnapping was covered up as a death, (maybe a death from a fatal illness?) that was then altered by a character with the ability to fabricate fake memories. . . shifting the death of a son, to that of a daughter. Sarah's death is the cover-up for Will being taken.

Jonathan doesn't remember much of this either, he would have been 8 years old when El was kidnapped, and 10 years old when Will was kidnapped; if we go off of El being taken at the age of 5 and Will being taken at the age of 7.

1978 is an important year in Timeline A. This is because in Timeline B, it is the year that:

Lonnie took Jonathan hunting at 10 years old

Terry was electrocuted/had her signals scrambled

Sarah dies

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -

Another thing that I need to address, is Hopper's role in Timeline B.

In 1983, when Hopper calls Diane, he’s wearing his blue flannel… just like how Max’s mom wore a blue flannel in S4…

(I have seen almost every character in the Byers-Hopper family in a BLUE FLANNEL, the only one I haven’t found in a blue flannel (without a jacket over it) is Jonathan.)

But, we see Hopper calling Diane, and then we hear a baby crying in the background. We assume that after 7 years she has moved on… but what if this woman was never Hopper’s “Diane” anyways?

We KNOW that the phones are important. We also know that the lab/Russian government are always listening in on phone calls- since season 1! So, this “Diane” woman that Hopper called was someone from the lab or someone trying to keep the truth from spreading.

Because, I went back to S3, and found this:

This is the only line that says [Diane] in the closed captions. I’ve looked through a few other shots, and the only other shot similar to this is when Hopper is watching Magnum P.I. and a little text comes up saying that the show is playing. They usually do not specify which character is talking in the tv shows with brackets - it just shows the dialogue on screen.

Hopper got incredibly drunk that evening, but the point I’m making here, is that Joyce is Diane.

Hopper’s wife, Diane.

(He never says ex-wife in season 4. He says: “My wife Diane, she wanted a baby,” )

So. . . This means that Henry has had a hand in every little kettle he could get his hands on after he nabbed Will’s time powers.

I doubt that Hopper going to Vietnam was influenced by Henry in any way, but I know that everything else we are shown is influenced by him.

I was trying to piece this all together, and after going through and making a timeline, I think I’ve got how it all lays out - at the very least, I know where the timeline that was altered. At most, I think I have a large surprise that will come up in S5 pinned down.

My focus when pinning the timeline down, was actually on Hopper and Jonathan.

In S1, Joyce tells Lonnie that Jonathan has wanted to go to NYU since he was 6 years old. Now, Jonathan would have been 6 years old in 1974, because he was born in 1968.

I couldn’t figure out why Jonathan would want to go to NYU unless:

- his parent(s) went there / one of his parents went there / something happened to make him want to go to NYU.

NYU is such a specific school, and it is mentioned once in S1, then rarely brought up again. Even in S4, Jonathan was just planning to go to the same college as Nancy, if he was accepted.

It made me think about how Hopper was in NY for seven years. . . And it took me a while to figure this out.

So, Hopper goes off to fight in the Vietnam War when he is 18. The Vietnam War goes on from 1955-1975. This means that Hopper was in Vietnam possibly from 1960 to 1970 at the latest. However, according to the ST Wiki, Hopper met Diane in 1965. . . (I am taking this with a grain of salt), because if this is the case, then Hopper could have been in Vietnam at any point in time between 1960 (when he was 18) to 1970.

But if you do the math from when Sarah was born, if Hopper met Diane in 1965 (and they began dating that year), and Sarah was born in 1971, then Hopper only knew Diane for five years before Sarah was born. Now, we know that Sarah dies in 1978, from cancer. . . and from that 1983 phone call to Diane (counting backward 7 years), Hopper would have been in NY from 1976 to 1983. . .

Another thing is, in Season 1, Hopper says that he has been in Hawkins for 4 years from the point that we meet him in 1983.

1983 - 4 is 1979 -> the year of the Hawkins Lab Massacre. . . so, why would Hopper (as a police officer) not know about that? I know, the lab is secretive and whatnot, but you would assume in an emergency situation, they might call in backup.

1979 is also the year that Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin had their Elder Tree campaign. . . (and I'm not quite sure if Will was there depending on the timeline and how things may have worked out).

And then I started to question just how much inspiration could have been taken from Back To The Future?

The Answer? Quite a bit of inspiration was taken from Back to The Future.

Marty's family is made up of his parents (George & Lorraine), his older brother (Dave), his older sister (Linda), and himself (Marty).

This is apparently an important enough movie for the Stranger Things plot that it is heavily referenced with wardrobes and it is even shown on the big screen in S3. (There is more significance here, but I'll explore that in a later part).

At the beginning of the scripting process for Back to The Future Part II, the creators were thinking of having the roles of Marty McFly Jr. and Marlene McFly set as Twins.

And in S4 of ST, we can see quite a bit of twin imagery throughout the season, in reference to Will and El. (again, I will post more in a later analysis, I don't want this to get too long).

If we go off of the basis that Henry/Vecna/001 stole Will's time powers, then we can assume that the second timeline that was generated from the changing of a fixed point in time (an origin event - in this case), changed other things throughout the seasons in Stranger Things.

Think about it, Henry could have easily gone back in time and replaced Hopper (being Jonathan, Will, and El's father) with Lonnie.

He could have manipulated Joyce, Hopper, and Jonathan's memories if the memories were STILL left AFTER the timeline was altered, making them forget that their family of 5 had ever existed in the first place. Swapped Will and El at birth, putting them in the lab or arranging for them to be taken by Brenner, and then, he could have later helped Will escape the lab massacre. . .

One last thing to address;

The Mind Flayer and why Will was possessed in the first place. . .

If Henry cannot create, then he needs Will alive to utilize that power. Henry may not have been strong enough on his own to manipulate Will into doing his bidding, but working with the Mind Flayer to get what he wants?

Therefore activating Will as the spy, taking El out of the way by using a distraction (making her focus on Max? Knowing that her weakness is the people she cares about - because he's already done this once before with the Lab Massacre by killing the other lab kids?), and getting what he wants?

The Mind Flayer literally looks like the strings attached to a hand for a wooden string puppet. . . (think Pinocchio if you need a visual)

The Mind Flayer possessed Will so that Henry/Vecna/001 could manipulate and bend the final puzzle piece to his will.

(and that's why, I think in S5, we're going in with a bang... because I think that El and Will have been Vecna'd in S4; they have been falling into Henry's traps since S1.) (I'll explain more of this in Part 2 or 3 because again, this is super complex and took me about a month or longer to compile all of the evidence)

So, in short, Henry/Vecna/001 truly has been moving our characters on the board like chess pieces. . .

(this is going to have like 3 parts explaining the theory itself and then like 20 posts of evidence all linked under a masterlist once I have the time to set that up.)

#stranger things 4 #stranger things 5 #stranger things theories #willel #wonder twins #twelvegate #stranger things #will byers #will byers has powers #eleven hopper #el jane hopper

[exuberantocean]

I posted 8,845 times in 2022

506 posts created (6%)

8,339 posts reblogged (94%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@fabulousvelociraptor

@managerie76

@hacash

@1989nihil

@nerdswithanxietysaywhat

I tagged 1,902 of my posts in 2022

#ted lasso - 450 posts

#mash - 161 posts

#cats - 150 posts

#jason sudeikis - 106 posts

#star trek - 97 posts

#ofmd - 81 posts

#sga - 78 posts

#my writing - 53 posts

#fanfic - 52 posts

#theodore lasso - 42 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#he should be smushed between beard and rebecca on a couch with a cup of hot chocolate (with marshmellows) watching well loved romcoms

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Ted Lasso is so relatable because he’s literally like “I can’t handle my own issues, so I’ll avoid them by handling everyone else’s.”

Never before have I felt so called out yet so seen.

122 notes - Posted October 12, 2022

#4

Ted Lasso very pointedly does not do redemption arcs.

A redemption arc features a character’s atonement for their mistakes and misdeeds.

Rebecca very clearly does some horrible stuff in the larger part of S1.  You love her, I love her, but it’s undeniably true.  She tries to ruin AFC Richmond and the lives of everyone who works there (probably what, 50-75 people would at AFC Richmond?) with the hopes of causing her ex-husband “as much pain and suffering” as she felt from his abuse and cheating.  That’s 50-75 people who could lose their jobs, which which would ripple on to affect their families.  That could end the careers of many if not most of the players.  That’s not even counting the disappointment of the fans losing the team that she just run into the ground.

And she focuses on doing this through Ted, a man she barely knows.  If those pictures she had taken made the papers, it could have destroyed his marriage (she didn’t know it was failing at this point but even if she did, that doesn’t mean it was any less bad).  It would have hurt Keeley and Jamie too.  Her attempt at getting a hit piece written on him was also cruel.  Maybe pulling Jamie as a step below in scale (it was less of a personal attack at least) but it still hurts Jamie a great deal (more so than Ted actually).

If the show was about Redemption, Rebecca is not redeemed.  She has done no acts of atonement.  No public confessions, no acts to make up for the damage she did or attempted.

What we do see instead is a show with, what I feel is, a more realistic and better arc.  Accountability arc we can call it.  You realize you fuck up.  You apologize for the fuck up to those most affected, and you move on.  You try to do better.  This is what we see Rebecca do.  She apologizes to Ted and Higgins (I still feel Jamie should be apologized/told why he was traded back).  She moves on trying to be a better person than she was.  

And that’s really the best you can do in life sometimes.  There isn’t always a way to redeem ourselves of our past sins in most cases.  We can’t always make up for the way we hurt others.  But we can hold ourselves accountable and then work to move through the world in a kinder, carefuller way.

This is why I think we won’t see Nathan redeemed, but we will see him learn to hold himself accountable and do better.

130 notes - Posted February 3, 2022

#3

Elizabeth:. We have an emergency situation.

John: *Strapping a nuke on his body* On it already.

167 notes - Posted November 8, 2022

#2

Okay imagine you’re just hanging out, being the top life form in your environment with the rest of your species, when it comes to your attention that a particular species of ant not only evolving at a remarkable rate, but also spreading everywhere.  I mean all over the freakin’ place.  And you can tell, at some point in the still distant future, it will evolve to a point that it’ll be a potential threat or rival to your own species.

So your like “Hm...we should check this out.” So you get a guy.  This guy, he’s a bit of a dick but maybe this will keep him out of your freaking hair for a bit - so you have this guy set up some sort of test, like a trial, to help learn a few things about how you should proceed with this species going forward.  Like, should you wipe them out now before they get too powerful?  Should you confine them a localized environment and stifle their progress?  Should you just let them continue to spread and evolve?  You got to figure this out, right?  And if nothing else, you’d get this asshole out of your hair for a minute which is good because he’s always making a fucking mess of things.

So you send this guy out and he comes back and it turns out one of the ants seduced him by accident.

This is what qcard is like to the Q.

178 notes - Posted August 9, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

"Well, I play a jerk, so it's really easy to approach that yet again. It's not difficult," de Lancie recently said of reprising Q. "It was nice to do. It was not difficult to bring it up again. We all play pretty close to who we are… at least I am. The material had a lot of the same vibes about it… The intentions are still the same. I'm still Picard's main squeeze. And I'm pushing."  X

Update: Jean-Luc’s asshole boyfriend’s back in town.

214 notes - Posted January 19, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

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

[lorenlily]

What are your thoughts on doctor who? Never seen the show but all I know is time travel

well since you haven't seen the show I can't really elaborate on all my thoughts because spoilers but it's a good show it's good sometimes it's GREAT sometimes it's just no don't do that then it's good again and I'm very very excited for the new special and series

i've watched it since nuwho started back when the first episode rose aired in 2005 so there have been many times where it's just been an event the kind you had to be there the feeling of certain moments have always stuck with me so i'm always gonna watch it always looking forward for it just a massive constant in my life and its really enjoyable (definitely not sad or heartbreaking it's definitely not traumatised me at all hahahahahahahaha)

since you haven't seen it and incase you do want to watch it i'll just give you a rundown of it below (although something's aren't necessarily the full truth because spoilers)

so it's a BBC show originally from the 90s then it stopped and they decided to revive it back in 2005 and it's been going strong ever since (there's been 13 seasons and many many specials) this year in november it's the 60th anniversary since the first episode aired!!

so it's about the doctor, who is a timelord from a planet called gallifrey and he steals a tardis to go travel in time and space, he generally travels with a companion who's human and wherever he goes there's always some kind of danger

as a timelord he doesn't die he regenerates into a new version and that was the appeal really and why its gone on for so long because you could change actors and still be doctor who

(but a timelord has only 13 regeneration cycles before he actually does die die)

so when they revived the show in 2005 they made the premise that it's still the same doctor just a new regeneration (it was the 9th one) but what had happened was a great time war in which gallifrey and the timelords were all destroyed so now the doctor is the last of the timelords

so with doctor who you have the seasons and then christmas special which is generally when the regeneration happens (sometimes there's other specials too)

I would say you have to watch in order but you can categorise the show into different eras based on the actor playing the doctor and the showrunner at the time

Christopher Eccleston = S1

David Tennant = christmas special, S2, christmas special, S3, christmas special, S4, christmas, few other specials, then christmas and new years 2 part special

^ this is the rtd era (russell t davies) who was the showrunner and oversaw the story

Matt Smith = S5, christmas special, S6, christmas special, S7, ‼️, christmas special

Peter Capaldi = S8, christmas special, S9, christmas special, S10, christmas special

‼️ is the 50th anniversary special which was a crossover of david tennant and matt smith

Jodie Whittaker = s11, new year's special, s12, new year's special, s13, 2022 specials

^this is the steven moffat era as he was the showrunner

and now rtd is back as showrunner so for 2023 we're gonna have the 60th anniversary special which brings back david tennant and then in 2024 there a new series with ncuti gatwa as the doctor it's very exciting!!

^this is the chris chibnall era as he was the showrunner

OH there have also been spin offs so there's:

the sarah jane adventures 😭 its about sarah jane and her son and she's a companion from the 90s (same actress) they did a crossover during david tennant era but she sadly passed away so the show stopped

there's also torchwood which is based in cardiff and it features a team by captain jack harkness (companion from season 1) it was good then it wasn't but it might be getting a revival

and there was class it was one season I forgot what it was about lol but I remember liking it

making a list of the companions is even longer so I'm gonna stop here but if I've confused you I'm sorry pls come back and I'll answer anything I can or if you want any trivia lol that too :)

#the 60th anniversary is in november so you kinda have until then to watch it all if you wanted #but im not a binger myself tbf #what becomes of curious minds* #nonnie :)

[harrycrozby]

I posted 6,450 times in 2022

That's 3,044 more posts than 2021!

171 posts created (3%)

6,279 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@sweetoothgirl

@emziess

@prideandprejudice

@edwardslovelyelizabeth

@sugarplumsfairy

I tagged 6,447 of my posts in 2022

#photography - 1,465 posts

#stranger things - 860 posts

#bridgerton - 688 posts

#s4 - 527 posts

#bridgerton s2 - 502 posts

#stranger things s4 - 481 posts

#movies - 420 posts

#dune - 325 posts

#dune 2021 - 316 posts

#timothee chalamet - 299 posts

Longest Tag: 130 characters

#i'm going to be grateful forever to denis villeneuve that he cast tim as paul and how because of it he brought me tim into my life

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

See the full post

193 notes - Posted October 24, 2022

#4

Nicola and Luke via their stories (4/4/2022)

When the actors are shipping their characters as a couple themselves and are also promoting #polinweek to supprt their fans. - What is there more to dream of and hope for then having such actors to portray your fave characters ❤.

213 notes - Posted April 4, 2022

#3

See the full post

302 notes - Posted November 16, 2022

#2

See the full post

317 notes - Posted July 20, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Ohh my, this season was a let down. Damn. I wanted to love or at least really, really like it...

But after watching - and skipping many minutes of each episodes because I wasn't interested in so many of the side plots - I'm so sorry that I have to say this and it's not because the season was so different from s1, how in general the story was told.

I have expected something more, something different.

There is too much of everything and too less of everything at the same time. Does that make sense?

Why so many side plots? Why that Featherington side story? Why adding so much drama? Wasn't there enough?

There was not enough time for Kate and Anthony themselves in their own story, instead of making them marry at the end they could have gotten married the same way, without showing us, but after that at least how their life together looked like. This I like/ love you but can't be with you took far toooo long!

I also dislike many of the changes, they just don't feel right. Yes, I know that adaptations differ from books, but why the drama between Pen and Eloise? Why does Eloise have to know?

Honestly, that's such a major change! For Pen's and Colin's story cause he is the one who finds out and who wants to protect Pen and she was able to keep that secret for a decade, that fact is an impotent part of their story, know they took this away from them. And Pen and Eloise not being friends anymore? They were the (almost) only good thing in this season.

At least we got some Polin scenes. At first I wasn't sure what to think of them. Colin still seems to be slow on the uptake, but fine if Pen is only a friend for him. Ok.

But then the more time past by, you could feel that somethings changed. Colin always had that way of looking at Penelope, for example when he arrived back home after his trip and Pen was there with the whole family. But at some point it was like he was looking at her differently, as if they made some baby steps forward.

Hope they won't be ruined when Colin finds out what Pen did, if Eloise will tell him, if - well we don't know that. So let's hope she won't.

364 notes - Posted March 25, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

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

[patricksmorch]

Woods to play in the Bahamas his first competition since the Masters | Golf

Woods to play in the Bahamas, his first competition since the Masters | Golf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUFmzkN2zvQ Tiger Woods showed he could walk four days while caddying for his son. Now he has decided he is fit enough to try to play. Woods announced on social media Saturday he will be playing in the Hero World Challenge, which starts Nov. 30 at Albany Golf Club in the Bahamas. It will be his first time competing since he withdrew before the third round at the Masters after battling the wind and cold while playing on his injured right leg. His TGR company announced his decision to take a sponsor exemption. The 20-man field is for the top 50 in the world ranking, though the tournament host — Woods — is exempt. Woods had said in an interview with The Associated Press last week, when discussing his ownership of a team in the tech-driven TGL league, that his right ankle is pain-free after being fused in a surgery in April following the Masters. “My ankle is fine. Where they fused my ankle, I have absolutely zero issue whatsoever,” Woods said. “That pain is completely gone. It’s the other areas that have been compensated for.” He compared it with when he had fusion surgery on his lower back. He said the L5 and S1 vertebrae were fine. “But all the surrounding areas is where I had all my problems and I still do,” he said. “So you fix one, others have to become more hypermobile to get around it, and it can lead to some issues.” Woods recently caddied for his son, Charlie, at the Notah Begay III Junior Golf Championship, sparking speculation that he was close to playing again. Woods will be playing the Hero World Challenge for the first time since 2019. The holiday event was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then he badly damaged his right leg in a February 2021 car crash outside of Los Angeles that threatened to end his career. He returned a year later at the Masters and made the cut, and he played in two more majors, including what figures to be his final appearance at St. Andrews in the British Open. He has said his tournament play would be limited, and he played only the Genesis Invitational at Riviera, which he hosts, and the Masters this year before having surgery on his ankle. Woods has not won since the Zozo Championship in Japan in the fall of 2019, the year he won the Masters for his 15th major. The Hero World Challenge is 72 holes with no cut. Visit the WeShow Football store: https://www.youtube.com/weshowfootball/store LIKE our videos? Please SUBSCRIBE here 👉 https://www.youtube.com/weshowfootball?sub_confirmation=1 to support our Channel 👍 #WeShowFootball features previews, reactions and behind-the-scenes footage from Europe's elite football competitions. For more international sports news content, visit SNTV at http://www.sntv.com via WeShow Sports https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5yB3mDwRyLNeRvfCSdKMeg November 21, 2023 at 04:00AM

#WeShow Sports

[abigailnussbaum]

The Umbrella Academy, S2

I was pretty underwhelmed by the first season of The Umbrella Academy, and if it weren’t high summer with hardly any new TV to be seen, I might not have bothered with the second one. But to my surprise, season 2 of The Umbrella Academy is a massive - and, to my eyes, deliberate - improvement on the first. It’s not great TV by any stretch, but it’s engaging and fun to watch, and you find yourself caring about the characters and wanting to follow along with their story, all things that the dour first season failed to achieve.

My fundamental problem with the first season of The Umbrella Academy is that the show failed to convince me that its core family was worth saving. The basic premise of the show - seven superpowered children raised by an abusive tyrant who saw them purely as instruments to be deployed, and played psychological games intended to grind down their independence and prevent any chance of their feeling a stronger loyalty to one another than to him - is obviously a rich and evocative one (albeit also one that requires a depth and complexity of writing that very few superhero shows evince). But the premise of the first season - the surviving Hargreeves children, reunited at their father’s funeral, have to find a way to overcome their differences and move past their difficult upbringing or the world will literally end - kept bumping up against the simple fact that I didn’t want this family to endure. The Hargreeves were so mean to one another, and seemed to have so little affection for each other, that I couldn’t make myself believe they wouldn’t be better off just going their separate ways.

The show itself seemed to realize this, because it ended the first season with the Hargreeves’ dysfunction and inability to honestly address how badly they’d mistreated one another ultimately being the cause of the apocalypse, and with the siblings deciding that their only possible course of action was to reset their lives and rebuild their relationships from the ground up. It was the show tacitly admitting that the Hargreeves family was unsalvageable, and while that’s a bold storytelling choice, the writing just wasn’t there to support it. I finished the first season feeling rather fatigued with both the story and the characters, and uninterested in watching them relive their lives.

The second season feels like a soft reboot of that premise. The trip through time on which the first season ended is retconned - instead of sending their consciousnesses back to their childhood selves, the Hargreeves instead end up as their own adult versions in the early 1960s. The apocalypse they fled 2019 to avoid and were hoping to prevent by reliving their childhoods and repairing their relationships from first principles is essentially forgotten. Instead the Hargreeves focus on preventing a different, new apocalypse scheduled for November 25th 1963, and once they succeed at that, 2019 is altered in unspecified ways that prevent the end of the world from happening.

Most importantly, the Hargreeves suddenly feel like a family. A dysfunctional family, to be sure, whose members have to figure out how to relate to one another now that the abuser who shaped and poisoned their relationships is finally gone. But there is a suddenly a lot of affection between the siblings, even if most of it is expressed through teasing and needling at one another’s weaknesses. In S1, the Hargreeves felt like people who genuinely had no interest in knowing one another. In S2, they feel like people who don’t know how to relate to each other, but want to figure it out.

You see this in a lot of other things that the second season does to respond to frequently-voiced complaints about the first season. In S1, everyone hated how domineering Luther was and how badly he treated Vanya, so almost the first thing he does in S2 is apologize to her for his failings as a brother, and acknowledge that a large portion of the fault for her breakdown falls on him. Everyone was a bit weirded out by the Luther/Alison ship, so it gets barely any play in S1 (though with a bone thrown to the shippers right at the end). Everyone was charmed by Klaus and Diego, so they both get major storylines (and Diego, in particular, is softened and made more vulnerable, the better to take advantage of David Castañeda’s charisma). Everyone wanted more of Ben, so he becomes more vocal and even gets to interact with characters besides Klaus. Everyone got tired of Alison namechecking a daughter that we had no intrest in, so she barely comes up even though Alison is not only separated from her by a distance of sixty years, but last saw her in a world that was being destroyed by a meteor impact. And everyone came away from the first season saying “no way Vanya is straight”, and lo, she is not straight.

It’s an approach that you see in other Netflix shows - Stranger Things, in particular, is practically defined by its responsiveness to audience complaints, with each season overcorrecting in the direction of whatever reaction was most loudly expressed over the previous one. Ideally, you’d want showrunners to have a strong enough sense of their characters, story, and world that they don’t need the audience to function as a cowriter, but in the case of The Umbrella Academy, these changes are mostly to the good. I might have liked the darker story the show seemed to be telling in the first season, about a group of abused children who genuinely don’t like each other but also can’t relate to anyone outside of their family, but the writing wasn’t there for it. The lighter, softer version of The Umbrella Academy delivered by S2 actually works, so the show should stick with it.

It certainly helps that the second season shoulders several topics that I wouldn’t have expected the show to be able to address with any amount of grace. I have to admit that I cringed when I realized that Alison, trapped in the South in the early 60s, had joined the civil rights movement, because superhero stories do not have a great track record dealing with social justice, much less real-world movements. But the handling of this issue ends up being smarter and more effective than I could ever have hoped. It’s still a side-story to the main event of preventing the end of the world, but in the scenes and episodes that do place it front and center, the show is unflinching. The depiction of the lunch counter protest that Alison and her group organize, and of the vicious hostility they encounter for such a small, simple demand, is unsparing. It establishes both the depth of the hatred and violence that the protest arouses, and the impossibility of resisting “peacefully” against a system the views any assertion of your humanity as an act of violence.

I was also a bit concerned over the placement of Alison, in particular, at the center of a story like this. Obviously, as the only black member of the Hargreeves family, her experience in the 1960s would be unique, but she’s also a character who has been established as being too powerful for her own good, and having abused her power in order to dehumanize others. Placing her in a situation where she is being dehumanized because of her race felt like creating a fruitless tension, where Alison might feel reluctant to use her powers despite the fact that she is all-but powerless against the greater system of white supremacy. But again, the season manages to thread the needle, showing both the allure and the limitations of Alison’s mind control abiliites in the context of Jim Crow. I didn’t love the implication that Alison would almost immediately start misusing her powers once she decided to use them to open doors that racism had closed to her, but the show also makes it clear that her anger is justified, and her targets deserving.

By the same token, I heaved a great sigh when the season introduced Harlan and I realized that he was neuroatypical, because it felt almost inevitable that some aspect of the strangeness that follows the Hargreeves around would result in him being “cured”. But that didn’t happen! The season treats Harlan like a valuable and loved person who doesn’t need to become more “normal” for his life to be worth living. And though he does end up needing to be cured, it’s not of his autism, but of whatever Vanya does to him when she saves his life. I kept expecting the the moment when Harlan would turn to his mother and start speaking, and the fact that the season kept refusing to go there feels almost miraculous.

So yeah, the whole thing feels like a breath of fresh air, and as if the people at the helm are thinking a lot more deeply about their story, what works in it and what needs to be changed for it to work, than I would have said at the end of the first season. It’s still not an amazing story (part of the reason we’re able to spend so much time on subplots like Vanya’s romance with Sissy, Klaus’s cult adventures, Alison’s activism, or Diego and his conflicted relationship with Lila, is that the spine of the season is fairly perfunctory) but it does enough with the characters that I found myself genuinely interested in their relationships and eager to see how they would develop. I’m not used to shows rebuilding themselves like this, and it’s refreshing to see that even in the streaming era, that can still happen.

#the umbrella academy

[zathuraroy5]

Supernatural Rewatch : 1x1

Disclamer: Got into supernatural in my early teens, I think the first three seasons were already out. We bought all the dvds as they came out until season 7. I think once we caught up to the first three, we watched some on tv, but we mostly watched them through the dvds. At season 7, I got a bit tired of the leviathan plot, so I took a break, but never went back into it because I started university in 2012.

I used to read some fanfic (mostly TMNT and… *shudder* twilight), but never got into Fandom proper until mid 2015 in the Hobbit fandom. Was stuck in bagginshield hell for a while, then drifted into different ships in the MCU, then of course Good Omens, then the Witcher, then… November 5th happened. (Also love love love Critical Role but not actively in fandom because I’m super late)

I grew up in a small hockey town. And I was a very oblivious teenager. Think Castiel is oblivious? He understood innuendos faster in two years than me in my 5 highschool years. Ace spec will do that to you. And so before 2015, I did not have my Queer goggles on. (can’t believe it’s only been 5 years…) Now, as we all know, I can’t take them off since they’ve been on. 

So now we come to nov.5th. Tumblr broke under the shock of Canon Confession. Now it’s december 29th and I’m still spireling in a pit of nostalgia, angered at the finale that I never watched, newfound Feelings and despair for a ship that’s 12 years old. I’m so late it’s not even funny. But now that I have my goggles on… I really want to rewatch it. I know a lot of it is bullshit. But I want to get in the hivemind of the Secret Good Supernatural. And I want to put those 6 years of schooling to good use. So I will attempt an analysis (read: rant) of Supernatural with my new 2020 vision (hah) and the osmosis I gathered from tumblr gifs and metas. I also watched Dylan is in trouble on youtube where he watched the first and last episode so I have that in mind.

Expect a lot of swearing and incoherence but hopefully good insight. 

(oh god what am I doing)

S1:E1

First impression: baby J2!!! My god they look young. And Jensen is about the age I am now and I’m just like 0.0 How is he so fucking pretty I can’t. Also I love how they’re using their normal voices, like ever since Jensen made a comment that he and Misha were having a competition on who can go lowest range I can’t not notice it.

Now more technical (ish). I do miss that more Horror/thriller vibe they had in the first few seasons. Like yes please I miss that monster of the week. That opening sequence is killer. But 1) I am almost positive that it’s the same actor for John that is standing over the crib as Yellow eyes. Like it’s the same profile? And they probably didn’t have anyone picked out yet, so they just shrouded him in shadow. Also 2) they probably didn’t have the whole backstory written out yet, but now that we know more about Mary, like SHE WAS A HUNTER, HOW DID SHE TAKE THOSE SIGNALS LIGHTLY. Flickering lights? weird noise feedback? Come on girl. (in hindsight, I think she was willfully oblivious, because… she just DID NOT want that life)

Dean is awfully loud when he breaks into Sam’s appartement and I’m almost convinced it’s on purpose to wake him up. Also kinda weirded out by how he talks to Jess but 2005 Misogyny™ I guess.

So many Iconic lines in the first episode, already ­«driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole» and «Jerk, Bitch». Like they already have the Siblings Trolling Each Other energy it’s fucking great.

The police having the journal is some serious shit, that could have gone sideways really badly. 

…. How did Dean know to come back when the fire started? Was he just in the street? And he saw the fire?? They never answered that. Like he had left…

Anyway I don’t think I have much more to say except Episode 1 is a great attention grabber. 

some tags: @adhdeancas, thank you for being my scream buddy while I rewatch, @lobotomycas, your posts are hilarious, @elizabethrobertajones, cause I thought you might be interested, @livebloggingmydescentintomadness, I’ll only tag the once cause I don’t want to overburden but at least here’s the first one :)

I’m gonna tag these “spn rewatch” with the episode for anyone else interested. I have a good backlog at the moment so I’ll try to have one post a day. For however many days I keep doing this.

#spn rewatch #1x1 #rant #spn #here we go

[andrea-lyn]

@bellakitse tagged me in this and I think I need to do this for my own reminder that I don’t suck and I’ve done some good things. 

rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world. tag as many writers/artists/etc as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

so in the last year, I’ve written 600k - the majority being RNM, with some H50 and Magnificent Seven in there for good measure. of the last year, I’m proudest of these five:

1. No Love Like Your Love - Michael/Alex, an AU in which Michael is a space prince who comes to live on earth when he’s sixteen and falls in love. @hazel-athena is the reason this exists because I was sitting in my hotel room in Franz Josef after 1x12 and I just wanted Michael and his Mom being royalty and Alex being their human puppy. It was going to be a 6000 word thing and then I expanded a little, then more, and then more, and...well, it’s one of my happy feel-good verses and I love it

2. die knowing your life was my life’s best part - post 1x12 canon compliant gen - hey remember that room in Franz Josef? I also wrote this one there, while weeping, and writing a coda after I watched it in that glorious place. Looking back, a LOT of my fic was either conceived or written on that trip, which sort of ties it together with that amazing time in my life. ANYWAY, this one was just a coda about Alex and Michael’s mother and the concept of MIchael being loved, and I am proud of it because it made me weep

3. every traveler, please come home - Michael/Alex, Max/Liz, Isobel/Rosa - it’s groundhog day, but when I took it on, I knew I wanted to do something different and I loved the idea of the people in the loop with you also remembering after, but also the parallel timelines. I also wrote this one post s1 finale and wanted some catharsis

4. The Tale is The Same (Told Before, Told Again) - McDanno - I can’t believe I finished this one. I had the plot for YEARS and I still was getting comments asking for another installment in the supernatural verse and I knew I wanted to do a Doris story, but I was out of the fandom. I wrote this one back in November of 2018 and was polishing it off but I am so proud that I got it finished and managed to write 25k in a fandom I just wasn’t in anymore

5. cheating and putting my current WIP: no regrets if we walk this new road - s1 RNM rewrite with Michael/Alex, Max/Liz, Kyle/Isobel. Remember when I wanted someone else to write a role swap where Max and Kyle swapped roles? Ha, joke’s on me. This isn’t necessarily the ONLY s1 rewrite I have (there’s another I have where Noah isn’t the antagonist and there’s another regular who is an alien committing the murders and anyway, that’s a whole other story I won’t write). but I’m proud of this because it’s very pod squad balances in a way No Love wasn’t and I loved giving Michael, Max, and Isobel all happy endings

Tagging @aewriting @queersirius @myrmidryad @hazel-athena @unbreakablejemmasimmons @lire-casander @manesalex @insidious-intent and anyone else who wants to do this

#fic #meme #works

[xsecretblastsx]

1x09 - Blair Waldorf must pie!

Once again this took way longer than I wanted to. I guess it has a lot to do that this part of S1 is full of episodes that I loved and also are kind of important so I just feel that I have to be really in the mood to watch them with my full attention. 

Anyway, enough about me, here’s the recap for this one after the break. 

Thoughts I had while watching the episode

Loving the flashback of Serena in her wild days and Blair looking after her.

This flashback kind of messes up the timeline though. Because we’re told Serena was gone for a year, but that’s clearly not the case here.

Dan get’s to be Serena’s knight in shiny armor, great. To bad for him she was wasted.

How long ago was it that Blair’s dad been gone? Probs like quite a few months and he hasn’t come to visit her?

I mean I get that Dan is pissed with his mom, but that guilt comment was harsh

Harold Waldorf’s pumpkin pie, I don’t know if anyone has read as much fanfic as I have but this pie, is quite the celebrity.

The oh so casual mention that Blair takes Lexapro :/

Serena trying (and failing) to be casual when asking what Chuck’s doing today.

I think this is the first time that Serena (and later Nate) point out that Chuck and Blair are friends, considering they all were, this must mean that they were somehow closer friends.

This fight is such a clear example of how Blair and Serena go from besties to enemies in 5 seconds flat. 

This one though is kind of funny to me in the way Serena’s like “I won’t judge” and then does exactly that.

Somehow Blair I don’t believe you when you say you don’t like Chuck’s natural musk, just a hunch.

I kind of feel Serena’s way of aproaching this topic was not the best, though to be fair Blair’s also really hard to approach. 

Lilly how much I missed you last episode

Seeing Llily, Eric and Serena in Chinatown is giving me life for some reason

So by thanksgiving sophomore year Blair was already in recovery from her ED, she was really young when she started then.

Wow, “not this one Harold, we have to go together” this line implies so much and I can’t believe I never noticed before

Blair sending Nate to deal with Serena it’s interesting, because I wouldn’t imagine her being naive enough to not noticed Nate’s interest in Serena, granted she trusted them, but still

 I love Dorota, always there for Blair, always loyal.

The mood at Nate’s thanksgiving dinner is so misserable.

Lily, Allison’s and Rufus faces are priceless. Let the drama begin!

“Oh the blond you stalk at school” really they told us and we didn’t listen!!!

Not that didn’t earned herself the harsh comment but, “he didn’t left us, he left you” kind of made me feel bad for Eleanor

Forget it, she was really insentive, and Blair’s face when she grabbed that pie is just heartbreaking.

I can’t believe I forgot about her throwing up incident after that dinner with Nate in the pilot... like wow.

Do you need to go with her? sorry Allison

This dinner is hilariously akward. Sorry Jenny, but I don’t think that song was about your mom.

This is one of my favorite Serante scenes, it’s so them.

Honestly this show needed more flashblacks. I love knowing more about their friendship pre series.

Nate thinking of calling Blair and then Serena, and realizing he can’t is the first time I think he truly gets how he really messed it up

It’s so weird now to see Blai’rs bathroom with the door conecting it to the other room.

Allison calling her character in a play Milly in reference to Lily sheds a bit of ligh in Dan’s abbilities in naming characters. 

The captain reached rock bottom, poor Nate. 

I wonder though if Anne was the one with the money, and yet Nate’s last name is prestigious, does that mean The Captain family had lost their money at some point and the only thing that remain was their last name?

I should have mentioned it before but Blair looks incredibly pretty this episode, and the dress is one of my all time favorites.

“But we’re not related” give it time Dan, give it time

Hi Cedric.

“Only a woman that had satisfied her sexual appetite in her youth could have married some of your step fathers” auch

And so Rufly ends... for now

Eleanor talking about the divorce paper and how she feels and how she acted because of it, reminded of a certain scene in S5. Blair’s truly her mother daughter.

The end of that flashback felt so much like this is why they say ignorance is Bliss. Except for Serena things are better for her now.

The New York setting makes this show even more awsome, that shot with the Bridge and the Manhattan skyline in the background while Dan’s family is having a merry old time is gorgeous.

So this episode was so good, it gave a lot of background information and added much more depth to some of the main characters, particularly Blair. But also Nate. I was really suprised by the amount of stuff I didn’t remember about this particular episode, so in that sense this feel like this is the episode I’ve enjoyed the most during my rewatch.

Having a flashback was easily the best part of this episode in the sense that it gives us a clear idea of how things were before the series and how disaster was brewing just beneath the surface. What a diference a year makes.The previous thanksgiving was at the height of Serena’s wild days, and it’s sad to see how her life was pretty much a never ending haze of parties and alcohol, she may be acting goofy but it’s an empty happiness and it let’s you feeling like this is the only way she can deal with her life. And always looking after her is Blair.

The Blair of a year before seems really happy, she’s on the road of recovery from her eating disorder, her parents are together, her mother is showing actually some concern for her, and Nate is still a loving boyfriend. And yet in many ways this is all a lie. Her parent’s marriage is just a charade, Eleanor’s comment asking Harold not to go after Roman, is so telling and it makes me wonder how long did Eleanor knew her husband was gay? that must have been such a burden for her, and it’s probably the reason why she was so focused in her work and wanted everything else to be perfect, in some ways it also explains her treating of Blair, wrong as it was.

Also the timing of this makes me kind of mad at Harold, he’s always comes across as the nice good parent, but this episode makes it really obvius how much his absence hurt Blair. Think about it. When the show starts it’s established that a few months before Harold had left his wife and the country in favor for a life in Paris with another man. So considering that november the previous year (only a year before the current episode)  is the first time Harold hears about Roman this means he decided to leave his family for a guy he had just meth a few months before, I guess he must have really fallen in love and really quickly, and I understand his need to live a free life, but what a shock it must have been for Blair and how unloved she must have felt that his father was leaving her in New York with a mother that was incredibly hard on her, for a guy he just met. And this at a time when she was still recovering.

There’s also the Nate-Serena-Blair issue. At some poing after Thanksgiving, the Shepperd Wedding happened, which means like I mentioned before that Serena was gone less than a year, and the way Blair encouraged Nate to help her with Serena means that even if she may have suspect Nate’s interest in Serena she still believed that Nate did love her and that Serena would never do that to her and therefore she wasn’t worried about it. Blair doesn’t trust easily and in this case she did and it end ups with her being betrayed, and yet it was a long time coming. Just as I mentioned in previous recaps that there was lowkey something to Blair and Chuck’s friendship, the same can be said about Nate and Serena, I don’t like to mention at least not much future events in these recaps but really compare this scene of Nate and Serena goofing around in the bathroom with any of their scenes in the second half of S3 and they’re really similar, same vibe and chemistry. Nate and Blair goodbye at the end of the flashback even if he gaves her a kiss and calls her sweetheart, seems so lacking in comparison to his previous moment with Serena, and yet Blair smiles and it’s really happy about her life.

So all of this shows how much she had been hurting at the start of the show, her father gone, her best friend gone and a distant boyfriend who by this point couldn’t hide his interest in Serena coming across by how afected he was by her absence, and when the show starts it gets even worse. All the flashbacks of Blair dealing with food and even throwing up once when she was trying to forgive Nate his infidelity show us the depth of her problems and suffering and helps us to understand her so much more and feel for her. And in her moment of weakness she calls Serena, the fight at the star of the episode was a way of letting us know that in some ways Blair hasn’t let go completely of her betreyal and yet how easily their dissagrements go out of the picture the moment they really need each other, is such a deep friendhip, and yet how conflicting it must be for Blair to love and need so much a person who in many ways is a reminder of how things have gone wrong in the last year.

That is the crux about their friendship, they’re both there for each other when it really matters but it’s undenaible that they have hurt each other deeply, even without meaning too, Serena is a the root of some of Blair self steem issues, is not her fault but it has done Blair incredibly damage, at the same time Blair may be always there for Serena looking after her, but she’s frequently incredible cruel with her at times without a real reason beyond a missplaced sense of hurting her too, which causes scenes like their fight this episode where Serena tries to be a friend, becomes a little judgy and Blair overreacts and Serena understandably fights back... it’s a really complex relationship, and one of the aspects of the show that make’s it stand out. 

Lastly, this episode is a good reminder of how ultimetly Ruflly and Derena can’t really function at the same time without it being weird for everyone involved, it also establishes the similitudes between both relationships, a warning of how things could end for Dan and Serena if they’re not careful, and this is only the start. Nate’s storyline this episode was super sad, last episode had him standing up to his parents, this one finally gets him to have some honest conversations with them, and while it hurts is nice to see him finally get to that moment. It’s a moment of real growth for him. It also gives some interesting background to his family history, about how Anne’s family (the Vanderbilts) are the real force behind his family life, the house, his father job... everything was given by the Vanderbilts. It makes me wonder a lot about the Captain’s family, and his history with Anne: did the captain came from a family with a prestigious  Last name but that had lost their money at some point?, or was he an upstart? I can’t see snobish Anne falling in love with a nobody, but who nows. 

Also, not that noticible at this point of the show beyond the paralles between Dan & Serena and Rufus and Lily, but in the last two episode some scenes of Eleanor and the captain had reminded me of future scenes and situations and Nate and Blair having similar reactions. Anyway I love this episode, the then and now, and how much more there is to these characters. 

Random bits:

This is the first direct mention of Blair having an eating dissorder (not sure though, this is why I wanted to be faster with these recaps, so I don’t forget details)

Dorota’s wearing a themed apron, how cute

First mention of the Snowflake Ball, I like consistency hahaha.

Nate’s house look lovely, not sure if these are the real interiors of the house, probably not, but I did read somewhere the house used to be on rental? can’t remember.

There was a picture behind Jenny while they were having dinner of a kid wearing a suit, I know the cast used some actual photos of the cast as kids, so I don’t know if the kid is Penn but god the kid is so cute.

I’m not a New Yorker, but that place where Dan and his family are playing it’s really changed now isn’t it? There’s this guy called Action Kid in youtube and he was amazing videos about New York, and of this location in particular if my memory serves me right. 

And because we rarely got to see Serena in her wild days, I feel I should end this post with just that. 

#gossip girl #gossip girl recap #gossip girl rewatch #1x09 #blair waldorf must pie

[papermoonloveslucy]

MARY WICKES

June 13, 1910 - October 22, 1995

Mary Wickes (nee Mary Isabella Wickenhauser) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to parents who were theatre buffs. A smart student, Mary skipped two grades and graduated from High School at age 16. In college, she majored in English and Political Science, though shifted her career goals to acting at the suggestion of a professor. 

Wickes’ first Broadway play was Spring Dance in 1934, acting alongside Phil Ober, who married Vivian Vance in 1941. Her second Broadway role was in Stage Door (1936) although she was not asked to repeat her role in the 1937 film. One of the RKO contract players cast in the film version was Lucille Ball. 

In The Man Who Came to Dinner, her seventh Broadway show in 1939, she played Nurse Preen, a role she repeated in the 1942 film, her Hollywood debut. She did the role twice more on television in 1949 and 1972. During her busy film and television career, she often played prim, professional women, secretaries, nurses, nuns, and housekeepers, who made sarcastic quips. She left Broadway in 1948, and did not return for another 30 years. 

Wickes did not do nearly as much radio work as many actors in Hollywood did, probably because she was busy on Broadway, but she did act opposite Lucy and Desi’s friend and house guest Orson Welles doing radio plays for  the “Mercury Theatre” program. She was also sometimes heard in the 1950 series “Crime Does Not Pay.” 

On December 19, 1949, in a one-hour live “Studio One in Hollywood” presentation on CBS (a weekly anthology series), Mary Wickes became the first actor to play Mary Poppins, almost 15 years before Julie Andrews immortalized the magical nanny on screen. 

Lucille Ball and Mary Wickes were more than just co-stars. Wickes was a close personal friend to Lucille Ball, who often went on vacation with the family.  According to Ball’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz, Wickes was her mother’s most constant friend throughout her life.     

Wickes was actually a regular on television a couple of years before Lucille Ball, as part of the cast of “Inside U.S.A.” (1949-1950).  Lucille Ball guest-starred on the series in November 1949. The show was done in New York and Lucy was delayed in getting to the studio for rehearsals, so Mary Wickes was asked to stand in for her. When she finally arrived, Lucy observed Wickes and was impressed with her work. They were friends from then on. 

A year later, Ball joined her film co-star Bob Hope on his television show, “The Star Spangled Revue”, which also featured Mary Wickes. 

In February 1952, Ball hired Wickes to play one of her most memorable characters, Lucy Ricardo’s ballet mistress, Madam LaMond, on “I Love Lucy.” This would be Wickes’ only performance on the series. 

Although she did not return to “I Love Lucy”, Wickes still maintained a relationship with Desilu, appearing on 21 episodes of “The Danny Thomas Show” from 1956 to 1958. She played Danny’s no-nonsense Press Agent, Liz O’Neill. 

At the end of the first season of “The Lucy Show,” however, Wickes returned to Lucy’s TV family. In her first appearance, her character actually used her birth name, Mrs. Wickenhauser in “Lucy and the Runaway Butterfly” (TLS S1;E29) in 1963. 

A few months later, Wickes is back. This time as Frances, one of Lucy’s friends, at the start of season two, which was shot (but not aired) in color. Fran takes the role of Charmian, opposite Lucy’s Cleopatra, at the Danfield Community Theatre. 

Fran was also a member of the Danfield Women’s Auxiliary Fire Department, alongside Lucy and Viv. So when they form a softball team, Fran and Audrey (Mary Jane Croft) also get involved. 

Fran’s final appearance finds her and the other volunteer fire fighters taking life-saving courses in order to impress Mr. Mooney and the bank trustees to save their brigade.  When that fails, Lucy sets a small fire in the bank, intending to be the hero and put it out - but naturally the plan fails. 

When the series re-set the action in Los Angeles, Fran was left behind, and Wickes instead appeared as a series of different characters, starting with Lucy’s Aunt Gussie, in “Lucy and the Sleeping Beauty” (TLS S4;E9) in 1965. The dozing beauty of the title is not Wickes, but guest star Clint Walker. 

In 1966, Lucille Ball’s favorite game show, “Password”, hosted not one, but two ‘Lucille Ball & Friends’ weeks!  Mary Wickes played during the November week. When Mary Wickes learns they are playing for money, she says “We have to give it to Lucy and Gary.”  Lucy says “That’s not true!”  Lucy and Mary win the second game in 28 seconds.

In 1967, Wickes returns to “The Lucy Show” to play Mrs. Winslow, a mother in urgent need of a babysitter.  Lucy answers the call, not knowing her little ones are actually chimpanzees!  Oh, and there’s a baby elephant, too! 

A few months later, when Robert Goulet guest stars, Wickes plays his frazzled assistant, Miss Hurlow. With Goulet having three personalities, it’s no wonder she’s frazzled. 

On her final “Lucy Show” appearance (her 8th), Wickes plays another eccentric aunt of Lucy Carmichael’s, Aunt Agatha, a mystery guest who comes to visit  and makes turns Lucy’s life upside down by making her take part in her strenuous health and fitness routine. 

Once Lucille Ball re-boots “The Lucy Show” as “Here’s Lucy” there is an attempt to make Wickes into a recurring character. She plays Isabel, a secretary in the same building as The Unique Employment Agency.  

The attempt only lasts two episodes, however: “Lucy Goes on Strike” (HL S1;E16)...

...and “Lucy Gets Her Man” (HL S1;E21). Wickes only has 40 seconds of screen time at the very start of the episode. Mary Jane Croft joined the show shortly afterwards as Mary Jane Lewis, serving much the same function. 

A few months later, however, she was back. This time returning to her nurse’s uniform she filled out so expertly in The Man Who Came To Dinner (inset photo), to play Nurse Hurlow in “Lucy and Harry’s Tonsils” (HL S2;E5). Perhaps coincidentally, Wickes uses the same surname she used as Robert Goulet’s secretary on “The Lucy Show.”  Perhaps it was the same woman who got fed up with the craziness of show business and went into nursing?  Or, more likely,  the writers just ran out of names!

For the first time, Wickes’ character doesn’t have a name, but she gets most of the laughs, as the personal care attendant of a germ-phobic little old lady with a gigantic diamond that needs cutting. Wickes spends most of her screen time spraying everyone she meets with an aerosol disinfectant!  Wally Cox plays the nervous jeweler. 

Wickes then gets into a habit she finds hard to break, when she plays Lucy’s sister-in-law, Sister Paula, in “Lucy’s All-Nun Band” (HL S4;E8) in 1971. Although Wickes only played two nuns on the big screen, in The Trouble with Angels (1966) and Sister Act (1992), both films had sequels where she reprised her roles. 

“Women like me. They think I'm wholesome or something.” ~ Mary Wickes

At the start of season 5, with Lucille Ball / Lucy Carter’s leg in a cast, she naturally returned to her whites to play Nurse Sylvia Ogilvy in both “Lucy's Big Break” (HL S5;E1) and the next episode, “Lucy and Eva Gabor are Hospital Roomies” (HL S5;E2).  The two episodes are both linked by Lucy’s recovery in the hospital. 

In “Lucy Plays Cops and Robbers” (HL S6;E14), Wickes plays Violet Barker, Lucy’s neighbor. Her husband is played by sitcom veteran Al Lewis of “Car 54″ and “The Munsters”. They are part of Lucy’s neighborhood watch group. The surname Barker will also be used for Lucy’s character on her final sitcom, “Life With Lucy.”  

In her final appearance on the series, Wickes goes to the old west when Lucy is elected honorary sheriff of a one-horse town called Cartridge Belt. Wickes plays Clara Simpson, the town philanthropist. 

In the last episode aired of “Here’s Lucy” there is a character named Mary Winters, a character written to be played by Mary Wickes, or at the very least, with Mary Wickes in mind. The role was filled by a very Mary Wickes-like actress, also named Mary, Mary Treen. 

Lucille Ball and Mary Wickes collaborated one last time on television in “Lucy Calls The President” a 1977 TV special that reunited Lucy with many of her favorite supporting cast members. Wickes once again plays Lucy’s aunt, Miss Millie Baker.  The special has the Whittaker family rolling out the red carpet because they believe that President Jimmy Carter and family are going to visit! 

Life after Lucy included appearing as a recurring character on “The Father Dowling Mysteries” from 1989 to 1991, as well as her film roles in Sister Act and Little Women. 

In 2013, Steve Taravella wrote a biography of Wickes titled Mary Wickes: I Know I’ve Seen That Face Before. 

Mary Wickes died of complications following hip surgery on October 22, 1995, aged 85. She made a $2 million bequest in memory of her parents, establishing the Isabella and Frank Wickenhauser Memorial Library Fund for Television, Film and Theater Arts at the Washington University in St. Louis.

“I love playing good comedy with a heart, comedy which touches the audience.” ~ Mary Wickes

#Mary Wickes #Lucille Ball #I Love Lucy #The Lucy Show #Here's Lucy #TV #The Man Who Came To Dinner #Stage Door #Broadway #film #character actress

[backofthebookshelf]

105 Hill Top Road

Let’s start with a timeline (does a timeline make sense, given that the place is now officially a "rip in reality"? Who knows??):

1891 - purchased by Walter Fielding (earliest records the team could find) (allllllso this is about a year after Millbank Prison was demolished, so presumably around the time when the Magnus Institute is looking at moving to its current location) 1923 - house inherited by Alfred Fielding (I'm not gonna put money on whether Walter died or just changed his name because he got too old to be believable any more) 1957 - house inherited by Raymond Fielding (just a couple of years before this: Mary Keay has recently acquired the skin book; Wallace Turner recently gave his statement about the Risen War) "early sixties" (no firm date given: forty-odd years ago from 2005, at age fifteen having been born in the forties) - Ronald Sinclair moves into the halfway house run by Raymond Fielding; Fielding appears to be about thirty, which is 100% meaningless. Every Sunday they go to church (sure they do) and then have dinner in the basement around a table covered in twisting lines two and a half to three years later, mid-winter: Agnes arrives at the house, age ten or eleven eight to ten years later, early seventies: Raymond Fielding disappears

(1972, Rosa Meyer makes her statement about being watched. 1973, James Wright takes over as Head of the Institute.)

1974: five-year-old Henry White goes missing; the house burns with no signs of life. Only remains found were Raymond Fielding, a badly charred skeleton missing its right hand circa 1990: Something Happened to disrupt the ritual that the Lightless Flame blames on Gertrude (almost twenty years before Gertrude disrupts the Last Feast, which sure sounded like the first time she’d done it on purpose) 1991: Agnes Montague starts frequenting the Canyon Cafe

(1994, Jurgen Leitner’s library attacked and destroyed)

1996: Ivo Lensik's father dies of the Spiral after spending years obsessed with fractals

(’96 is also the year Elias Bouchard becomes Head of the Institute)

2001: Adelard Dekker traps the not!Them in the table of twisting lines 2005: Graham Folger has the table of twisting lines in his flat, says he bought it at a secondhand shop in Oxford "during his student days" (he's been attending colleges here and there since late 2001); it's missing the box in the center

(January 2006, Adelard Dekker finds evidence of the Extinction in the experience of a researcher in Garland Hillier’s flat)

autumn 2006: Jack Barnabas dates Agnes Montague mid-November 2006: Ivo Lensik is called in to assist on the construction of a new house at Hill Top Road; meets a young Raymond Fielding on the third night on the job, Fielding disappears with a smell of burning and a scorch mark on the floor November 23, 2006: Father Edwin Burroughs visits the house to do a blessing (attacked by fire, tells it "I am not for you. I am marked," (presumably by the Spiral) but it doesn't stop until); Ivo Lensik pulls down a tree in the yard: "very large and very dead" with "old, black scorch marks...curling up from the base of the tree." When he attacks it with a crowbar it bleeds; when he pulls it down he finds underneath a six inch square box belonging to the table of twisting lines; inside is a fresh green apple which explodes into spiders. Lensik smashes the box. Agnes goes on a date with Jack Barnabas. Just after dark she staggers in pain, makes an emergency phone call. "She said something about a tree falling, and that they had to finish something. Then she hung up. She leaned on my arm as we walked back to her flat. I'd never been there before, but it was clear she couldn't make it unassisted." Agnes Montague found hanged in her flat in Sheffield, with Fielding's hand tied to her waist, tissue decay indicating it died the same time she did. Since Lensik's statement was made [as of season one, late 2015], two families have lived in the house November 30, 2006: Eugene Vanderstock makes his statement (139)

(January 2007, Mikaele Salesa gives a statement as recompense for an accident with a Slaughter artifact he sold the Institute, though he thinks the employees should have known better) 

(sometime between July 2008 and early 2009, Mary Keay succeeds at her ritual with the skin book)

April 23, 2009: Anya Villette is hired for a cleaning job at a newly-constructed house at Hill Top Road. She sees a tree in the garden, "still bare from the winter" with eight branches that looked like they were reaching for her. She has a vision of standing under the tree and it grabbing for her. When she's finished with the rest of the house she goes into a basement that wasn't on the floor plans. In it she sees a foot-wide gap, and in it "those eight spindly arms reaching up to pull me in," and then she wakes up sitting in a chair in the house. When she gives her statement on April 22, 2009, she says that this was two weeks ago and she's never heard of the Magnus Institute before. 

(June 2009, Jason North runs afoul of the Desolation in Loch Glass, recognizes Gertrude from her picture there)

(October 2009, the Worker-in-Clay departs for Sannikov Land)

late spring 2016: Breekon & Hope deliver the table of twisting lines to the Magnus Institute (along with the web lighter) - Jon recognizes it from the statements, asks if there was a box with it February 16, 2017: Jon takes an axe to the table of twisting lines, releasing the not!Them

Supplemental details: Jon is very skeptical of Lensik's statement in 008 but acknowledges that there are some corroborating details (unusual for early S1 Jon) Martin discovered the statement of Anya Villette (114) and Jon says that Hill Top Road is "a thread that's been nagging at me for a while." They can find no evidence that Anya Villette exists. The house has no current owner [as of late season 3, July 2017]. Jon also says: "I've half a mind to just go down and have a look at it myself, but... I don't know. Ever since it first came up I've felt like it would be... just a very bad idea." Probably! They've been trying to identify an owner for the place for over a year and have made no progress.

#the magnus archives #tma spoilers #i know there are complete timelines out there #but there's SO MUCH happening i find it easier to put together individual ones #gonna use this as a reference when i start dumping theories #hill top road

[water-hates-learning]

nobody knew (and nobody knows)

Crossover with The Magnus Archives podcast because this idea has been bothering me for a while now so I finally just wrote it. Whatever. Not my best work.

Mild spoilers for the end of S1 of The Magnus Archives. Takes place after episodes 39/40 of the podcast. Also contains headcanons, lots of swearing, and the implication that the main EW boys don’t follow the standard laws of time and space. Post The End EW time.

In other words, this is bullshit.

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Case number zero-one-one—"

“Six-six-six.”

“Mr. Ritehill, please.”

“Whatever.”

“Statement of Thomas Ritehill, regarding an…unusual trip taken by himself and his companions in January 2007. Statement—” 

“And the shit in 2014.”

“[sigh] Regarding the trip in January 2007 as well as the disturbances on 31st December, 2014. Statement taken direct from subject, 14th November 2016. Interview conducted by Johnathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Before you begin—why are you just now giving a statement?”

“’Cause a bunch of shit went down and somebody needs to hear about it. M’friends don’t wanna talk about it. And if I have to sit on this bullshit by myself anymore I’ll explode.”

“Right. Erm. Statement begins.”

“…now?”

“Yes, now.”

“[mumbling]…can’ believe you’re using a damn tape recorder…what year is this…[sounds of container being unscrewed]”

“Mr. Ritehill—”

“Call me Tom, god. And let a man have his damn vodka. Holy shitake on a sled, lemme just. Fuck. Okay. So, back in 2007, the four of us were bored, right, and Tord—this is when that commie fuck still lived with us—Tord—”

“Full names, please.”

“Christ, okay. Tord Lesion said we should go to Hell. So we did. Just the tourist route, ya know, got to see our personal hells and shit. Won’t bore you with the details. So yeah, me, Tord Lesion, Edd Golding, and Matt Harvice took an elevator to Hell, had a good time, got some souvenirs, and came back. Whatever.

’Cept when we were leaving the…the devil holding the door for the exit said they’d see me in six months. And it was like, haha, mate, yeah, sure, whatever, funny joke. I didn’t mention it to the guys and I didn’t think about it again. Couple months later, Edd’s digging a hole in the back garden and comes up with this door all covered in symbols ‘n stuff. And we’re all a buncha dumbasses so we go down it. Deal with some Indiana Jones traps, beat off a killer mummy, find a mysterious treasure box—you know the drill. So Tord opens the box and then…I dunno. Everything went dark.

If you ask any of the other three, they’d probably just tell you that I was unconscious. They said there was nothin’ in the treasure chest but I’m pretty sure the jackasses kept it for themselves and didn’t tell me. Probably for the best; I just woulda spent it on alcohol.

Anyway, from my perspective, we fell down a hole. When Tord opened the box, the floor dropped out from underneath us and we fell into darkness. I couldn’t see or hear the others, I was just falling in darkness. Or maybe floating. I dunno. Kinda…felt like forever and no time at all. I know that doesn’t make sense but you lot probably hear shit like that all the time. So I’m floating there and it’s dark, pitch black, but I can still see my hands in front of my face, like there’s a light shining only on me but there isn’t a light. Kinda like how someone looks when they stand in front of a black backdrop; the background’s all dark but they’re, like, normally lit or whatever.

And I wasn’t really scared ‘cause it’s not the weirdest thing that’s happened to me. I was just kind of waiting for something to happen. Because something always happens.

Didn’t have to wait long.

I felt something slide its hands around my neck from behind, felt its fingers on my windpipe, its thumbs at the base of my skull. I kind of expected it to be cold, like icy or something. But they were hot, like someone with a fever, uncomfortable. Made my skin prickle. It said…something. Couldn’t tell you what it was now, only have the vaguest sensation of—of a voice, talking to me, right in my ear, hot breath on my skin. I kept thinking I could see it moving out of the corner of my eye but if I tried to turn my head to look, it would start squeezing my neck until it had cut off my air supply.

Sometimes I think I can remember that it had promised me things. Sometimes I think it might have said something about a fight or a war or something. A lot of the time I pretend the whole thing was because I was blackout drunk. But I know that last bit’s not true because I hadn’t been drinking that night. And I wasn’t too worried because, I mean, weird stuff happens to the four of us all the time, stuff that no one even remembers. We’ve been through…three? Zombie apocalypses now? Hell, Matt’s led one of them. All of us have died and come back to life. And—and the thing is, right, the thing is that no one else remembers it. I’m pretty sure there’s stuff that’s happened that we don’t even remember. Tord said somethin’ once about crossing time lines or some shit but I dunno about any of the string theory, philosophical bullshit.

All I know for sure is, that night, in the black that wasn’t dark, with this thing’s hands around my neck, a demon crawled inside me.

A demon crawled inside me and it lives there and it’s so. Fuckin’ angry. Or maybe I’m angry. I don’t know for sure anymore, it’s been too long.

But—[container unscrews, long pause]—mm, anyway. The thing with its hands on my throat somehow—it somehow pries my mouth open. Gets its fingers between my teeth and wrenches my jaw apart so hard it aches. And then there’s this…this purple thing. It looks darker than the black but it’s purple and maybe that’s just because it’s beyond human comprehension or some shit. Hell if I know. It got closer and closer and for the first time in there I was scared. I was fucking scared and I thought—I don’t know what I thought, all I remember for sure is this—this blinding panic. This kind of raw, mind-numbing terror that made my heart beat so hard it hurt and it was hard to breathe and all I could hear was this rushing sound in my ears as this—this cloudy purple thing got closer and closer. I tried to get away but I couldn’t move, I could only sit there and watch.

And it—it…it just…”

“Mr. Ri—sorry. Tom. Do you need a break? We can take a moment to—”

“No. If I don’t…if I don’t say it now—if I leave this room—I’m not comin’ back. And I gotta get this out. [a deep breath, let out slowly] Just…remembering it now…it still scares the shit outta me.

So this cloud thing…it…crawls inside my mouth. And I can feel it. It tastes like…like how ash smells? Or maybe like someone filled my mouth with ash. And embers. Because it was hot and it didn’t exactly burn, it was just—like that moment when you drink some coffee and it’s still hot but not so hot you burn your tongue but still hot enough you gotta sip it. You know what I mean?

And I can feel it s-sort of wr-wriggling…wriggling and squirming to get inside me and I’m t-trying to push it out with my tongue or—or close my mouth or something. Anything to keep this thing out. B-but it keeps flopping around and pushing itself inside my and I’m—I’m ch-choking on it, gagging, and I think I was crying and trying to scream and this thing—[gagging sound]”

“Tom—”

“N-no, no, stop, shut up, let me just—finish. Okay? Don’t! Don’t fuckin’ touch me! I’m fine! Just let me give my damn statement and get out of this place. It smells like death in here.”

“I…I apologize. Please continue.”

“It went down my throat. I could feel it sliding down my throat, feel it under the fingers of that thing that still held my mouth open. It was lighter than candyfloss but I felt it like I’d swallowed a chunk of bread without chewing it enough. It was gross and it was horrible and it was terrifying and I don’t think I’d wish it on anyone. Even that bastard Tord.

And then it was just…done. The hands were gone, the cloud thing was gone, and I was laying on the couch in our sitting room, gasping at the ceiling. Edd was the only one in there, watching the telly. Said he was too tired to carry to my room and then laughed at me for passing out. Maybe I shoulda said something then, should have told him what had just happened, what I’d seen. But I didn’t. Instead I ran to the bathroom and threw up. And it just never came up again, never had a reason to say anything. I kept getting distracted by things.

I didn’t know what had happened until the end of December, in 2014.

You remember that year? It was really wet. Kept raining but we hardly got any snow. Freezing cold but just…no snow, not really, nothing that really stuck.

Anyway, Edd had been on the roof fixing the satellite dish during a rainstorm. He ended up having another dick measuring contest with one of our neighbors, Eduardo. Um, I dunno his last name, actually. Var…something. Var…there was an “L” in there somewhere. Sorry. Can’t remember. Eduardo had this, like, “alien” satellite or something and I guess it was radioactive or whatever. Anyway, he and Edd both ended up with superpowers for 24 hours and I can see by the look on your face that you think I’m takin’ the piss and I swear to fuck I am not. You can look up the incident report yourself, probably. But I bet the coppers only wrote something about property damage due to gang violence or some bullshit. Might be pictures our there somewhere but I dunno how to find them. I’m afraid I’d see myself if I did.

So Eduardo punched me, like, three blocks. Should have killed me. Instead it just…it felt like something clicked into place. And I remembered that demon that had shoved its way down my throat. It was like it had been waiting for this.

It hurt, that first time.

When your body’s stretching and your muscles are tearing and your skin is warping and your bones are snapping and cracking and breaking into new shapes. It hurts like a son of a bitch. I wanted to die. But mostly I was just angry. I was so fucking angry.

Don’t remember much while I was…changed. Flashes of stuff; tearing through building, smashing cars, attacking Eduardo and Edd. I think I might have ate someone. I try not to think about it.

Eduardo hit me with something, some kind of energy beam, I dunno. Sent me flying and ripped that smoke right out of me. I remember it flying away, remember the feeling of it ripping out of my throat and tearing off into the night.

But whatever it had done was kind of…stuck to me, I guess. I can still turn into a monster. Almost did when Tord showed his damn commie face again and blew our house up. You can look that up too. 27 Durden Lane. Nothing but a crater now.

[a pause, sounds of container unscrewing, another pause, the thud of a fist hitting the table]

And the only fuckin’ reason I’m telling you people this is because—fuck it, you probably already think I’m insane—there’s some kind of big…bad thing on the way. Fuck if I know. Just. I just…feel it. Can smell it. Or something. Taste it like some dry fuckin’ rum in the back of my mouth. Maybe the world’s ending for real this time. Maybe everyone will actually remember it. I don’t know.

But this place fucking stinks like a bunch of rotten bodies, like that musty attic stench with dead bugs everywhere. And you don’t believe a damn word I’m saying because you think I’m just a drunk. Ha. I can’t even get drunk anymore.

Whatever. Believe what you want. We went to Hell and I’ve got demon powers. The end.”

“…right. Um. Is the whole…demon powers the reason why your eyes are like…that?”

“What? No. This is just ‘cause my mum’s a bowling ball. They’re hollow. See?”

“O-oh my god. State—statement ends.”

[click]

“I will admit I am…extremely skeptical of Mister—of Tom’s statement. It sound positively ludicrous, the delusions of a schizophrenic at their worst, I’d even hazard. I’d disregard his statement entirely if not for the visceral reactions he showed to some of his own words—though that only proves that he believes they’re true.

But his eyes…Christ, I’ve never seen anything like that. He could obviously see but they were just. Black pits in his head. Gone. He stuck his fingers in them. Not the worst thing I’ve seen, all things considered, but one of the most…disturbing? Uncomfortable, may be the better word.

Tim was able to find a police report on the incident at 27 Durden Lane on 13th March, 2016. It was written off as an accident but with some additional digging he managed to find…more. The rubble and blast patterns look more like they were caused by external explosions. Tim says it looks like a bomb went off. Or several bombs. The neighbor’s house—the residence of one Eduardo Varela, Markus Barnes, and Jonathan Rees—also sustained serious damage. Jonathan Rees reportedly died at the scene due to serious injury.

Martin managed to dig up a few photos from the incident in 2014. Most of them aren’t the best quality and it’s hard to tell what’s happening except for bright flashes of green. But one very clearly depicts a monstrous shape, as big as a building it looks like, with horns on its head. It’s hard to tell in the photograph but it appears to be purple. There was a reported explosion in a local park around the date Tom Ritehill claims he transformed into a monster, and there is a crater there from the police report. But that’s all the evidence we can find to support his…stories.

We tried to get into contact with Eddward Golding and Matthew Harvice but neither of them were very forthcoming. Edd Golding declined to comment altogether and Matt Harvice was…he was difficult to talk to. It was as if he kept losing his train of thought. I doubt he would make for a reliable source.

There was also an attempt to contact the individual Tord Lesion but none of the information we were able to find was up to date. The only thing Tim managed to scrounge up was an old wanted poster,  several months out of date, with Tord Lesion’s image on it. He appears to be in a military style uniform with a shotgun. If Tom Ritehill’s claims that Tord is starting a personal army are to be believed, then I suppose this would be a reason to trust his word. Maybe.

[sigh] I suppose we could investigate these claims more in the future. Though I am very much inclined to ignore them.

End recording.”

[click]

“Supplemental.

It just occurred to me that it’s been very nearly four months since the incident with Jane Prentiss. This place has been scrubbed within an inch of its life, nearly burned with chemicals, steamed so badly that it made my eyes water with the lingering chemical smell when I finally came back from leave. It’s been so thoroughly cleaned that a blind dog trying to sniff his way out would have run into the walls.

And yet…and yet Thomas claimed he could…he could smell the death. He said…dead bugs. Specifically dead bugs. And decay. And I can’t…stop thinking about those tunnels…and what could still be down there.

…end supplemental.”

[end of tape]

#8ball fics #i don't feel very confident about this writing to the point where i almost didn't post this