here we go again! tinsel chapter 8 (the anthology) is here.
@carsonshaws
produced the hell out of this one, would still be 15k words back, writing three words at a time and spiraling if not for her constant intervention
*Dead To Me spoilers*
what I can’t get over is that the ending just returned the characters to their pre-series status quo. Jen is with a man raising kids in a heteronormative nuclear family; Judy is all alone in tragic circumstances. what was it all for Elizabeth????
imagine if greta had given carson that haircut and co-wrote her letter to charlie and then they got put on separate teams. just like ‘gonna kick start your gay awakening and the demise of your marriage…ok byyyyye’
tinsel chapter three DID in fact beat the season two renewal! that victory is a mixed bag! chapter is 16k words this time, the perfect length to read in a never ending queue for concert tickets. produced as always by
@carsonshaws
.
i know i’m stoned and also just generally in this mindset because of all the broad city talk, but that whole thing about prince charles saying he wants to be reincarnated as camilla’s tampon feels like something ilana would’ve said sincerely to abbi.
tinsel chapter six is up! unreasonably, it ended up being 25k words, so i can only apologize. brilliantly produced as always by
@carsonshaws
. can't wait to hear what everyone thinks! also, the rating has changed.
Greta Gill cannot promote Chapter 5 of tinsel due to the SAG strike but here it is anyway! It's another long one! Produced by the indispensable
@carsonshaws
per usual! Can't wait to hear what everyone thinks!
one small thing I really like is that greta going off with that guy in the bar isn’t treated like something she should apologize for…as soon as carson asks her directly about it, she just matter of factly owns it as necessary to her own safety.
thinkin and thinkin about jo telling greta she’s not being careful with carson, then greta saying it was when she and dana fell in love that they stopped being careful.
tinsel progress update: since the writer’s strike ended, i’ve had a lot more work and much less time for writing than I have in several months. apologies for the long wait, but the new chapter is still very much in progress, and will be my main focus on my days off this week!
hi this is the most invasive fandom i have ever laid eyes on. and tbh that says a lot, I’m old in fandom years.
you’d think that podcast interview d’arcy did about aspects of modern fame being terrifying would have made people reflect but. not around these parts, clearly.
personally can’t get on board with the “better than nothing” & “we’ll take what we can get” mentality re: ALOTO rumors. i’d rather them leave season one to stand alone than make a lesser, extremely constricted version.
tinsel, chapter seven, finally across the finish line (a fortnight after we polled about it, but still) and formidably produced by
@carsonshaws
as always.
make sure you read the author's notes! as always, endless thanks for sticking with us
re: tinsel chapter delay: work has been nuts since the writers strike ended, family stuff going on is taking up a lot of time, and I had to do unexpected revisions on a horror script a friend is hoping to shoot this year…but! it’s 21k words so far and slowly progressing
tinsel chapter two is up! gretson old hollywood au, now looking like it's going to be five parts total. decided
@carsonshaws
most appropriate title is "producer" of this fic to encompass the wide swath of her contributions.
@izzyymotleyy
This is kind of my issue, Judy is a co-lead, but with this ending, she feels like a tool for Jen’s story. Her own isn’t satisfying. She didn’t need to be alone and dying - or absent at all - to make a point of how she affected Jen for the better.
hey there! sorry to be annoying and address this when I’m not tagged or anything, but someone sent me the thread and because Greta’s man hating lesbian status is very important to me, I do want to at least address that decision specifically. (1/7)
urgent need to discuss carson on the practice field saying she’s selfish like her mother, and greta later telling her “everyone’s looking out for number one…except you.”
now that we’ve updated tinsel, i can finally share my best christmas gift from
@carsonshaws
all real vintage matchbooks from los angeles locations on our list for the fic. usually framed on the wall, but the shadow box reflection made it hard to get a good photo.
ALOTO fandom has been so lovely and positive so far, and it'd be cool if we continued that by not amplifying Bad Takes. I get the impulse, esp re: lesbian erasure, but scrolling the tl you'd think a major publication put out a think piece, not that one account said something dumb
stoned and writing tinsel and sometimes writing this fic is just trying to turn the hypothetical d’arcy performance in my head into words
having that thought probably means i’m too stoned to keep writing tinsel
@Sapphosfruit
@gretsons
I’m getting back to the writing, but also working really long days at the moment, so I can’t be too positive and reassuring about the exact timeline, but I’m definitely re-committed to finishing it.
thinking about jo and greta as literal children together is a whole whole lot. growing up together with greta being jo's sense of safety and jo being greta's sense of self?? or something???
Apologies for suddenly taking a ~stance~ on the drama, but as someone who's been writing fanfic for way too long: it's the nature of fan works that total originality is the trade off for having a built in audience who already love the characters we're borrowing (1/5)
tinsel - a greta/carson golden age of hollywood au. chapter 1/4 is posted, more detailed summary below. big ups to
@carsonshaws
for the cover image and general consultation/editing.
#leagueoftheirown
#gretson
tinsel right now for me is greta’s “who could ever leave me darling, but who could stay?” versus carson’s “i did not have it in myself to go with grace”
Again, sorry for the thread three days later, really not trying to reject all criticism, but the idea that I had Greta privately involved with a man with no thought behind that does bother me. And since it’s a public critique of the fic, I figured it’s okay to respond.
the way my my aunt is forever convinced Elf is my favorite christmas movie due to disproportionate holiday viewing during my ill advised “zooey deschanel phase” a good seventeen years ago.
No director has made me feel as represented onscreen as Ol Parker. Imagine Me & You? Character taking one look at Lena Headey and realizing they’re gay. Ticket To Paradise? Character agreeing with everything Julia Roberts says and telling her she’s perfect every five minutes.
the things greta went through in carson’s dream…babe i’m so sorry she did that to you i’m sorry you had to kiss that man even as a manifestation of someone else’s subconscious
I don’t need to go into all of that here. I’m okay with people disliking her there. This AU lends itself to a more toxic Greta, because the old studio system was toxic: she’s on drugs and not eating enough and her life isn’t really her own even with the fame and money.
A threesome is also a safe way to be with a woman at a wild Hollywood party without that being an indictment of her sexuality. Greta as a famous person has a harder time feeling out potential partners because the incentive to out her, a star, is even higher.
nerdy Old Hollywood talk: obviously Greta’s films are fake, and her existence technically makes this an AU version of film history (sorry to Bette Davis, Greta stole one of her Oscars) but the stable of MGM talent is attempting accuracy, as is the portrayal of the studio system
Contractually, they have no choice. For Greta in this world, under contract since age 18…she’d rather do quickie sexual favors than be married off, the risk of which was even higher if you were suspected to be queer. Greta being known to sleep with male producers benefits her.
It’s not insignificant that the man in this scene is said to be an MGM producer. Ana’s flippant comments in ch2 about the casting couch of Old Hollywood are very based in reality. For stars like Greta, they were forced into relationships and even married off to other stars.
ok REAL. i love gg but i remember thinking during our quarantine binge that their period typical gay jokes had a different flavor than most period typical gay jokes. it was like the sherman palladinos considered the supposed existence of gay people the peak of absurdity
There is something both uniquely feminine but deeply ungay about Gilmore Girls (as much as I love it, it’s not gay culture) and I think that’s kind of rare. Like I genuinely don’t think ASP has many close gay guy friends in her circle. I mean the hats!
@Sapphosfruit
@gretsons
It is not, but I definitely assume most people already have ha. There were a lot of factors for why I kind of stepped away from it, but I just finished a reread and some outline tweaking (1/2)
especially because ALOTO is a show with a pretty sprawling scale: two main characters in two different worlds, plus a large ensemble. at only five episodes and lowered budget, there’s no way a lot of the cast ends up waaaay underused.
Finally, laying claim to MULTIPLE future ideas feels extra unfair, especially when there's only so many popular movies in the subgenre we seem to be working with...but if ideas are being used on purpose to target someone who was just tweeting about their excitement, that sucks.
@izzyymotleyy
jen may have been our entry point, but judy is still a co-lead and she matters as an individual character. the core of this show is the love between the two of them, and judy deserved to evolve from that relationship, too.
@izzyymotleyy
such as, maybe, after experiencing unconditional love and a sense of family for the first time in her life, she could have had a stronger sense of self worth and knowing she deserves love and support instead of choosing to die alone as if she'd otherwise be a burden.
i also want to nicely say that we do know greta is toxic and it’s very much on purpose! a big part of this fic has ended up being about what it’s like to love an addict (albeit one in extreme, traumatizing 1943 circumstances!)
got blocked but we literally said non flash photos are allowed at ucb. have only been talking about video. I have two recent tweets explicitly stating that. If someone could let august know that’d be great.
We’ll get more insight into Greta’s thought process going forward, including about the third door on the right…obviously she’s been kind of enigmatic to Carson and they’re now at a point where they can talk about more frankly so
This! I think what I really can’t get over from a writing standpoint is suddenly treating Judy like a side character???? Egregious no matter what, but especially at a time when you’re putting her through THIS storyline.
to be clear I was totally kidding about it being a smau VERSION…that obviously wouldn’t work because of the lack of social media.
really do wanna make some fake letterboxd reviews though. there would be a dozen five star reviews of Mary and Madeline that just say “Harold…”
still in a real “if I loved it less I’d be able to talk about it more” place with aloto. somehow exceeded my unreasonably high expectations and already means a whole lot to me.
some thoughts on carson/greta. a lot of canon gay rep these days that wants to be ‘cute and sweet’ above all else. fluff gets prioritized over complexity & we get sanitized Good Rep™️ that’s in 0 danger of getting called toxic…but it’s also not all that interesting (1/4)
imagine trying to call me out for hypocrisy because I have an improv photo in my header, and then acting like it’s a ridiculous thing to clarify that I never had an issue with pictures.
would also love to see where I was “fucking fuming”. pretty sure I used the word “bummer”
the “there’s no being careful with you” scene is essentially Greta saying that she is so in love with Carson it’s terrifying, because that love is dangerous in a very real way.
yes. even though it’s hard to tell through her struggle sometimes, greta is deeply in love with carson. she tries her hardest to give carson her clearest moments, but she has a lot of demons she’s desperate to numb out.
Re: Tinsel update, dumb editing issue has been found and fixed but if you read the 'dental offices and salons' sentiment in two different sections kindly pretend you didn't thankssss
to add to this, it’s also a valued principle of ucb improv shows to only exist in the moment, and it bums me out that people aren’t actually respecting the craft of what they’re seeing and are clearly only there for more stanning material.
just thinking about how it’s against the rules to film at ucb, and improvisers often ask to not record because it’s unpredictable, but now that’s just ignored because fangirls think they’re entitled to document d’arcy from every angle for twitter clout
everyone say happy birthday to
@carsonshaws
, pictured here wearing only one hat when she actually wears many: my best friend, producer, writing partner, hairdresser, edible dealer, and many other roles that have nothing to do with me at all!
you won’t catch me saying anything negative about james marsden’s emmy nom because in my mind that has nothing to with Dead To Me, and is simply a belated but well deserved nod to his incredible work as Criss Chros on 30 Rock
“You think they seemed sisterly?”
MARY & MADELINE (1937), about a friendship between two women, paired MGM stars Greta Gill and Katharine Hepburn in what is now considered a cult classic in the LGBTQ+ community.
In honor of TINSEL chapter 3 by
@gretagills
#ALeagueOfTheirOwn
*watching Sleepless In Seattle*
mom: oh I forgot roseanne was in this.
me: that’s rosie o’donnell
mom: but wasn’t she roseanne barr?
me: …roseanne barr is roseanne barr
We're borrowing characters. We're borrowing premises. That's totally normal. But it feels unfair to get possessive of those ideas when we're all in the same sandbox playing with the same toys anyway. (4/5)
when we write about greta as like a STAR with insane screen presence we sort of think of julia roberts in pretty woman, nicole kidman in moulin rogue, and kate winslet in titanic. with other actresses, it’s not so much the person that inspires us but their performance.