❤️💖❤️

I just noticed that Nicole RTed this article. Honestly, as hurt as I am by Abbie’s death, I am SO proud of Nicole for standing up for herself and her craft. She really deserves so much better than what the TPTB of SH gave her and it’s so inspiring to me that she was willing to give up what- from the outside may have seemed like a secure job- because she was able to recognize her own worth. Go Nicole!

They are just too adorable. 

More thoughts

I posted this at Project Fox in the hopes that maybe they’d listen. I know. Crazy, right?

But I needed to do it for myself.

Interested to know all your thoughts, too. :)

I have thought about this a lot and I wanted to post an opinion here in the hopes that maybe someone at Fox would actually listen. Perhaps a futile hope, but one I wanted to attempt.

A lot of people are upset about the treatment of Nicole Beharie and the character, Abbie Mills, and how she represented a viewpoint of a severely underrepresented population in American TV. And I am fully sympathetic to that viewpoint, even if I can’t fully understand it, being a Caucasian woman myself.

I don’t want to address that here. What I want to do is to address the problem with the writing and direction of the show.

I’ve got 20+ years of experience in writing, in a myriad of forms. And I understand that television writing is a group effort with a lot of creative control over a script being out of the hands of any individual writer. Raven Metzner intimated as much himself in one of his interviews.

However, there needs to be someone at the helm with whom the buck stops–who has a definitive, overarching view of the overall narrative and where the story is headed.

And that, right there, is what the problem is with Sleepy Hollow.

The original fans of the show tuned in due to its crazy premise of a time traveling Ichabod Crane fighting monsters, in particular, the famous Headless Horseman, with the modern day police officer, Abigail Mills.

The second season tampered with what made it successful. It stymied the action by coming to dead halts in the narrative. Emotional problems for the Crane family became the focus of the story. So the fans who came for the romp with monsters and who weren’t interested in emotional drama left.

And what you were left with were either (1) fans of emotional drama who liked Katrina and the romance with Ichabod or (2) people who came for the relationship between Ichabod and Abbie–whether they wanted them together romantically or not.

These fans were your base.

And season 3’s removal of Katrina, Henry and Frank Irving took a lot of those characters’ fans with them. So you’re left with people who have stuck with the show only for Ichabod and Abbie.

Season 3 didn’t bring back the comic book boys because the mythology was suddenly changed. The Headless Horseman was captured. The definition of witnessing was retconned. The history of Ichabod Crane was retconned and ruined by having him have romps with Betsy Ross during the time period where he should have been in love with Katrina. Those creative choices made certain that the fans who watched the show for those reasons had no reason to return.

Season 3 had basically nothing happen. Interesting characters and mythology would be introduced, only to be destroyed in the next episode. The villains provided no real menace and lurked around doing nothing. The week to week episodes came off as if they reflected arguments in the writing room where one writer would attempt to push a certain aspect of the show forward–an Ichabbie moment, or a well written history moment or a particularly fleshed out B plot–and then, the next week, the next writer would gleefully stomp on what the previous writer had attempted to do.

It came off as incredibly disjointed and unprofessional. And it seemed as if it was an adage of too many cooks spoil the soup.

The only reason people remained is because of the talented ability of Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison to elevate the material and to find moments that rang true for the characters and kept the fans on the edge of quitting staying.

So to kill off Abbie Mills completely demolishes what is left of the show. The relationship of the two characters is the binding of the story. Without that binding, the book falls apart. It cannot survive.

The failure of the writing staff to understand that is what has killed the show. Whatever backstage arguments there were, and believe me, we know there were, are irrelevant to that fact.

A fourth season for Sleepy Hollow reincarnated as a historical X-Files would have to find a completely new audience.

The genre audience is small–and well networked. And no sane fan who reads the history of Sleepy Hollow and what terrible things they did to the mythology, the characters, the actors and the fans is going to touch the new season with a ten foot pole.

And the remaining fanbase died when Abbie did.

It is time for the creative people on Sleepy Hollow and the financial people at Fox to acknowledge the mistake, let the actors and crew free to find other work and cancel the show.

It is not saveable.

So many media creators don’t realize they have incredible power.

They think it’s a game. An entertainment. A trifle.

They don’t see that they make the world. They give people hope, despair, a reason to get through one more week. They give us a chance to see ourselves – emotionally or physically – on screen.

They think their vision matters more than the people who watch. Who pay them their salaries. Who care until it hurts.

I think my finale takeaway to the Sleepy Hollow writers is this: You mattered to people.

Maybe you thought your show was stupid. But God, it mattered.

And you hurt people tonight. And with your casual cruelties to Nicole over the last two seasons. 

Whether it’s The 100 or The Walking Dead or Sleepy Hollow, what we see on our screen matters so much. 

Maybe it’s just a job to you. But you are causing true harm. 

Catharsis

Fandom: Sleepy Hollow Genre: Dark Humour Words: 780 Summary: Tom Mison seeks revenge for the maltreatment of Nicole Beharie. Extension of this post.

It’s the first day of filming for season 4. Raven Metzner sweats around his gross neckbeard in the Georgia heat as he goes through the scripts, trying to find any and every situation where he can put Jenny and the new ~awkwardly cute white girl~ witness into miniskirts. He nods a hello to Tom Mison as he passes by, then stops short as he feels cold steel slip between his ribs.

“Nicole Beharie sends her regards.” Mison whispers in his ear.

In L.A., filming her new TV show where she leads as a man-eating mermaid, Nicole smiles.

Keep reading

Abbie Kisses Someone Who Isn't Ichabod

This should have been the season when Sleepy Hollow went over the top with fan service and absolutely bending the fuck over backwards to show how much they loved the fans for sticking with them through that disastrous season 2 even if it still ended on a more serious note.

Just goes to show they didn’t really get what happened wrong with the show and were too arrogant to course-correct.

All that extra negativity over every small detail has deterred me from engaging with the fandom as a whole. I know the writers have messed up but the last episodes have been interesting and even then it's impossible to please everyone.

and that’s a shame, really. i mean… i’ve been in this fandom almost from the very beginning. i’ve made some pretty good friends in it, too, like… best friends. so i’m grateful for just that. i love these people.

but i do get it. it’s annoying. and it’s tiring. and it’s discouraging. to come up in here after what i think is an awesome episode to gush and squeal and instead have to block half the posts in the tag or on my dash… it’s like being a kid in a birthday party with a cute balloon and some asshole poking it with a stick until it pops. 

and it’s like. i see articles about how sleepy hollow is so bad now and i’m like

tbh, i don’t trust anyone who saw s2 and can say that with a straight face. it is objectively false that s3 is worse than 2.

does the show still have flaws? sure. the monsters are pretty hit or miss, betsy ross is still inexplicably a thing, and sleepy hollow the town still feels more like a stage than an actual town since they categorically refuse to build it up with people who are not victims of the week. but just in s3b–just since we’ve been back–we’ve had:

character development for abbie up the wazoo

team b having just as much time apart from team a to feel like their own people and not plot devices (granted the balance is off sometimes but nowhere near the flustercuck that was pushing jenny and frank away to focus on clifford the big red fail)

sophie, who is amazing and lovely

actual progress on mythology-building. like, the hidden one is a bag full of dicks and pandora needs to shank him and take her rightful place as queen but their backstories were super interesting and the twist they put on the pandora’s box story was cool and something i’d never seen before

joenny. i like them together and apart so i’m adding it, idgaf. their relationship does seem to leap forward jerkily at times, but they’re cute together and i’m not rooting for them to fail

a crane who is neither an asshole nor a buffoon

progress toward canon ichabbie that has been inexorable. that’s not me being some naïve dope. every single episode since the midseason premiere has made sure to built up the emotional connection between crane and abbie–and not just wrt to the witness bond, i’m talking crane the man and abbie the woman. even when they’re apart the show makes certain to point out that they should be together. explicitly and implicitly. 

so to see all that glossed over because ichabbie isn’t fucking yet is… frustrating. because even if you’re watching for just them, you’re getting stuff! good stuff! but nope. let’s wallow in negativity forever because goffman was a blind dipshit.

goffman is gone.

s1 was only doubleplusgood in the first half and it’s not coming back (plus it had its problems, then, too).

the headless horseman turned into a pile of shit and the show is better without him.

the show has moved past frank irving. headcanon him happy with his family and just let it go.

does it suck they’re gone? yeah, a bit. but the show isn’t broken because of it, and it’s silly af to act like it is. 

to clarify: not wanting to participate in renewal campaigns or polls or whatever because we’ve been burned before is fine. totally cool. understand completely. but to actively hope it fails or to pick apart the show to where the whole thing is bad because ONE THING hasn’t happened quickly enough to suit you is clownish bullshit. it just is.

so yeah, i completely understand you not wanting to engage. i wish we were in a place where i could tell you to engage anyway because it’s fun, but it hasn’t been, really. not lately. truthfully, every day i think about joining you and just tracking tags and reblogging gifsets and basically writing off fandom completely.

but.

i will say that there are still good people around. if you like, i’ll point you to a couple, even. just know you’re not alone in your fandom fatigue, nonny bunny. not at all.

First season in

And to be honest I thought I won’t be able to ship them because of Cranes wife, but after those words in episode 6 it was ON!