This Is The One That’s Bad And The Only One That Will Contribute Directly To My Dropping A Show From

It’s not just that they killed Joe, it’s that they killed Joe after shoving Joenny down our throats for so many episodes (at the expense of Ichabbie) and without using his character to reveal any more about Sheriff Corbin and his past with the Mills girls.

Yay!

Sleepy Hollow 3×11 “Kindred Spirits”

Ichabbie - Sleepy Hollow Season finale [X]

Sleepy Hollow

I don’t care if Sleepy Hollow gets a 4th season. If Nicole Beharie/Abigail Mills isn’t back I won’t be watching.

This is perfect.

Thoughts on Sleepy Hollow’s “Dawn’s Early Light” episode

If Sleepy Hollow is going to connect Danny’s emotional manipulation to covert emotional abuse then I will say season 3 of Sleepy Hollow transcends mere entertainment. At first glance, Danny’s character seems like a nice guy, but his comments and behaviors throughout the session belie a sense of entitlement to Abbie’s affections and attention that goes beyond him just being her boss. He appears to be the model of a “nice guy;” that is, the guys who like to think they are nice but who actually don’t respect their partner’s independent interests. Abbie is one of my absolutely favorite heroines ever written. To show that even a “tough person” like Abbie can get caught up with one of these “nice guys” would be such an amazing statement about the reality of emotionally abusive relationships.

Danny has literally done nothing but try to control Abbie through swinging from charming, flirty, nice-guy behavior to guilt trips and yelling at her since she got back from the catacombs. Even before she disappeared, his behavior toward her in “This Red Lady from Caribee” showed his true feelings toward her as a person who should exist at the mercy of his whims loud and clear. Recall, the wasp sting only revealed the person’s deepest fears; it did not create those fears. When Daniel Reynolds says, “you just can’t see what you do to people,” he’s actually blaming Abbie for his not being able to get over her emotionally. Even prior to that in the car, he accuses her of manipulating him likely due to his being threatened by her having some emotional pull on him.

The Hidden One is the clear, stereotypical abuser: narcissistic and completely unapologetic. He resorts to physical abuse the second his significant other withholds information from him. He even revels in his ability to punish her physically. This is the person who would brag to his friends about “putting her in her place.” If Pandora is killed at the end of the session due to her leaving him, it is a direct mirror to the fact that many women who leave their violent partners are in the most danger after they leave. That is when most victims of abuse are killed.

Daniel Reynolds is a much more insidious abuser. He’s the man who thinks he would never abuse his romantic partner. His abuse is completely unintentional, subconscious. That is why the victim would likely take a much longer time to recognize the abuse. His emotional manipulation is firmly grounded in his internal beliefs of superiority over his partner and his entitlement to be treated as such. Many people have mentioned how he is keeping secrets from Abbie but is constantly snapping at her and making her feel guilty for keeping secrets from him. That, my friends, is not just a red flag; it is a glaring “exit” sign. Anyone who feels entitled to their own secrets while belittling someone else for theirs is not someone to partner with on a professional level, much less a personal one! The sad fact is, it’s working. Abbie thinks all the strain between Danny and her is her fault. Abbie tried to tell him she needed time after coming back and asked him to be patient with her. That is what he’s now using as ammo to convince her she’s being unreasonable toward him. How many times has he said, “I’ve been more than patient” to her? (And what does that phrase even mean? How can a person be more than patient? You either are patient and respectful or you’re not.) That’s the magic of this type of abuse. It saps the victim of a sense of agency and leads them to doubt their own emotions and actions. This is the same objective as the more stereotypical abuse profile of The Hidden One, but most people outside of the relationship would only see the attractive, charming Danny who genuinely insists he’s only looking after Abbie’s best interest—that he (and likely only he in his mind) truly loves Abbie. Basically, Danny is Abbie’s Katrina. All of his actions have come from a place of selfishness—including kissing her!

Crane, on the other hand, never pushed Abbie or insisted Abbie be anything to him after her return from the catacombs. He respected her wishes every time she said she needed to do something even when he was disappointed—like after he slaved over that lovely meal she rejected. He never put his disappointment on her like it was something she needed to fix. He doesn’t blame or guilt-trip. He is there when she needs him but also respects her emotional boundaries. He helps her the second she lets him know what she needs from him. He is the model of a person so secure in himself that he would never feel threatened by Abbie. He revels in how capable she is. He has shown himself to be the very example of the “Love passage” from 1 Corinthians, which I post here because I think it is one of the greatest definitions of love, not out of an interest in pushing religion onto anyone in anyway:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Crane won’t confess his feelings toward Abbie until she has worked through her feelings for Danny not because he’s cowardly. Far from it! He would never want his emotions to either cause Abbie strife, internal conflict, or to feel pressure from him. He would never want to inadvertently coerce her into anything. This is made abundantly clear when he seriously would go along with her desire to not return to the catacombs even if it means the world is destroyed! Crane would rather die at Abbie’s side than cause her additional pain.

Along the lines of Crane’s beautiful speech on art, art doesn’t only entertain; it inspires us and helps us to understand what is the best humanity has to offer. If this is what the creators at Sleepy Hollow are getting at with the revelations in seasons 3 and the Abbie and Danny dynamic, then seriously, this will go down as one of the greatest works of art in my mind.

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. 

a moment of silence for nicole beharie, stana katic, katie cassidy and all the other ‘leading ladies’ who got screwed over by the network/showrunners

I love their… completely platonic relationship…

So this is it. The trending time is 3hrs. Why such a long trend?

Abbie’s death and our disappointment deserve a much longer time.

this is also a protest against Abbie’s treatment, not a memorial

this treatment is systemic and there are media projects featuring black female leads coming down the pipe, everyone needs to know that they can no longer do this easily and quietly

Why deserves instead of deserved?

 Abbie Mills Deserves Better is a classic tag for this fandom. Under the Abbie Mills Deserves Better tag we did so much. Forced a course correction in S2,got characters and storylines that were dragging the show down booted, and even got a show runner replaced.

In hindsight we understand it was already too little, too late, but its a powerful tag for us and we’re sticking with it. 

The trending period is three hours. The goal is to disrupt the tags and make as much noise as possible for as long as possible. We want to force them to deal with us just like we did before. 

I know some of you are depressed. You gave your all and no longer see a point, but there is point. Our Abbie deserves this, we deserve to do it for her. She was unique in all American television and now she’s gone. We cannot allow her to go quietly or peacefully into the night. We cannot allow them to say what they did was meaningful or right when we know it was wrong. 

To quote Zora Neale Hurston, “If you are silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you liked.” That is what they are trying to say about Abbie right now. 

We must have the final word, we must shout the truth for all to hear, Abbie Mills Deserves Better! 

We’re also inviting other fandoms and ships to participate with us. 

100:

I love the fact that some of you have reached out to us, and are asking about what happened and in turn I took a moment to read up a bit on the recent death of the character Lexa. We definitely have something in common both of our groups were promised representation, both shows used our needs and our interests to string us along and in the end the promises were betrayed in an all too familiar pattern. 

Your hours long twitter trend was amazing and we’d appreciate your help with the trend.

WestAllen,Olitz,Richonne and fam:

There is a lot of overlap. I watch The Flash, I’m still a Scandal viewer, I watched Merlin, some of you ship  Richonne, some of you watched True Blood, Doctor Who, some of you watched Person of Interest. 

We’ve all felt and experienced this before, its all too familiar and while Abbie was unique she had something very important in common with Martha Jones, Nyota Uhura, Queen Guinevere, Joselyn Carter, Michonne and too many others to name right now. I hope whether you watched Sleepy Hollow or not we can count on you show up and help us trend just like you know you can count on us, because this is for Abbie and all of you and all of us.  Let’s send Abbie Mills out with a bang not a whimper.