For the handful of people who've seen and enjoyed Soderbergh's Black Bag, I can recommend The Agency, a slow-burn, Fincher-lite, post-Nokiawave spy series from Paramount+. Released late last year to middling reviews, it was buried like an unsanctioned op, but offers plenty to admire. The stellar cast includes an Alien: Covenant reunion, with Michael Fassbender as a CIA spook and Katherine Waterston as his former handler. Jeffrey Wright, Richard Gere, and Dominic West round things out, pushing gravitas to the upper range of safe limits.
Conversely, if you've seen and enjoyed The Agency, run don't walk to Black Bag.
• history & lit student - lover of classics & period dramas!
• things i reblog are my favourite shows and/or inspirations for fics that i write (these will be tagged)
• i write fanfics and have done since 2018! some of the older ones i wish i could forget, but alas.
• my current favourite shows/films include; 1995 pride and prejudice / sas rogue heroes / ripper street / bbc sherlock / the hollow crown / dunkirk / 1917 / war & peace bbc / atonement / the imitation game / jane eyre 2011 / poldark / the white queen & princess / the spanish princess / becoming elizabeth / world on fire / jamaica inn 2014 / bridget jones / the outrun / about time / la bête
• i have also been making video edits since 2018, on various editing accounts that still exist somewhere in the internet ether!
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ships/characters i have written fics about:
- richard iii/anne neville (twq/the sunne in splendour) [5]
- elizabeth bennet/fitzwilliam darcy (largely 1995 version & book) [2]
- morwenna chynoweth/drake carne (poldark) [2]
- jane eyre/edward rochester [1]
- helen graham/gilbert markham (the tenant of wildfell hall) [1]
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Back to writing this absolute maximalist fic with @kloperslegend
She's an overthinker, she's still a runner...
Beatrice feels a bit like a caged animal after meeting her mark… attempts at tension relief inside to varying degrees of success
Beatrice found herself pacing the staged, but relatively bare, North Carolina apartment.
Circling.
Couch. Living room. Kitchen.
Bedroom. Kitchen again . Porch. Living room again.
Penduluming through the apartment as something in her refused to settle. Part of her was trying to blame it on the location. Unfamiliar. Different.
It wasn’t that the apartment they set up for her wasn’t nice. It was—very nice, considering how expensive rent was nowadays. The furniture was seemingly expertly staged by someone who knew the finer points of interior design—nice and aesthetically pleasing but not too expensive to blow her ‘grad student’ cover story. It wasn’t necessarily to Beatrice’s tastes—but who was she kidding? Her house in Southern Pines wasn’t overly personalized either—much to Chelle’s dismay—but even as a minimalist Beatrice felt there was barely anything in the Durham apartment that belonged to her. And something about that just… tweaked her the wrong way.
So it wasn’t a place that made her comfortable, but ironically enough Beatrice was used to that. And it was nice. Even if Beatrice recognized the quality wasn’t for her , per say. The agency likely had several of these apartments set up for use at any given notice—she was just surprised one of them happened to be in Durham, North Carolina of all places.
Apparently “the CIA is everywhere, Cap.” Mary had patted her on the shoulder as she opened the apartment up to Beatrice's surprise. Even if Beatrice knew very well that “everywhere” shouldn’t technically be the U.S. The law said they were prohibited from acting on US soil—Not that Beatrice wanted to get into an argument about the finer points of US Constitutional Law with anyone over the matter, though she supposed that instinct did bode well for her cover.
The important thing was, there were loopholes.
Loopholes she would be exploiting soon enough if everything went to plan.
The “suspected terrorism” loophole? It was a stretch, but there was no doubt Primeiro Comando da Capital posed a threat. Especially now that the PCC was dipping their toes into arms trafficking. So the “intelligence gathering on a foreign national for the purposes of national security” loophole? Ding. Ding. Ding.
No. If she was being honest with herself, she knew why she was so irritable, why the spare decor was undeservedly receiving her ire.
It was because her team, at least at some level, still didn't trust her.
It had been days now since Beatrice’s first contact with Ava. They returned to the states two days following their ‘ meet cute’ as Mary had taken to calling it— “how professional,” Beatrice grumbled as she received a variety of curt nods and pats on the back from members of her new team. It was mostly a precaution to keep her cover but also served to make herself potentially available if Ava reached out again. They’d arrived early yesterday morning, jet-lagged and pretending not to be with copious amounts of caffeine (Beatrice had decided to steer clear of the other beverages when they boarded the flight back).
But when they landed at the Fayetteville FBO and piled into two SUVs—Were they walking cliches right out of a James Cameron movie? Yes. Did Beatrice have some sense of pride that she was with the ‘cool kids’ of Special Activities now? Also yes—Beatrice was told to go with Superion, Mary, and Shannon, who she learned rather quickly was the Team Lead. She didn’t think anything of it until they were turning the exact wrong direction out of the airport to return to Fort Liberty—a drive Beatrice had made enough times she might be able to do it with her eyes closed; a drive she’d actually made with at least one eye closed returning from some assignment at some ungodly hour on four hours of sleep in as many days.
Beatrice knew she had a cover. She knew, in theory, things would be happening to solidify said cover while they waited to hear back from Ava. However, she had not expected to be deprived of her nearby home in Southern Pines when that happened. It seemed… impractical at best.
However, Superion was very clear: she was not to return to her own home, nor go anywhere near Fort Liberty, and as much as possible she should avoid places she previously regularly frequented. Which shouldn't be a problem because Durham was nearly two hours north anyway.
It was overkill. That’s what she would have said had anyone asked. Internally, though, it stung.
Did Superion expect either Ava or her father to, on a whim, waltz down from New York where they were on holiday (and enjoying it if Ava’s messages and occasional photos were any implication), simply for an extended shopping trip in Durham, a college town of a city with population of a measly 200,000?
Obviously not. Superion might be cautious, a good trait for a leader to have, but she wasn't stupid. Locking Beatrice away like this wasn't because she actually thought she was in danger: it was because somehow, somewhere, Beatrice had fucked up in her eyes.
What the fuck had she done to make her team decide she needed to handled with kid gloves?
Why this beloved comedic actor may have a long future with Marvel.
So TFATWS spoilers and possibly “Black Widow” spoilers.
I kept seeing people saying Madame Hydra is in “Black Widow” and I was like “who says?” And finally I got to listen to the podcast that covers it.
Basically Vanity Fair says they knew about JLD’s casting for awhile. At least since 2019, when they mention an interview with her at the end of Veep.
Originally she was going to pop up in a post credits in “Black Widow” with Yelena Belova. The VF writer says it’s unclear if that is still in the cut that will come out later this year. (Aka your screencap of Wikipedia saying she is in “Black Widow” will not convince me it’s true yet since they can easily change a short post credits sting.)
They are setting her up as a “Dark Nick Fury”.
Which is cool. I can’t wait to see JLD and SLJ go head-to-head. Also kind of excited to see more spy stuff because maybe Sharon and/or Yelena could be in it too. I love my spy ladies.
I am also pretty disappointed with Tumblr. Seeing some people mad that JLD is playing “Madame Hydra” when there was already a Madame Hydra on Agents of SHIELD.
I had to look it up because, guys, that show was not good. I’m sorry. And that version seems to be based on Ophelia (Viper) not Val!
You’re going to turn your nose up on an ELEVEN-TIME EMMY WINNER portraying “Dark Nick Fury” Val because you’re attached to a different Madame Hydra?
When Natasha first meets people she tails them for a little while to see how they act when they think no ones around (she also does this when she’s bored) and she’s successful with everyone except for Peter because of his Spidey sense, but Peter let’s her trail him because he knows it makes her feels safe until one day like a week in he’s walking in the park and he sees the most adorable dog and out of no where just goes “Nat, Nat look how cute this little pupper is” and she just stands there stunned for like a solid minute before just turning around and walking away. Now everytime she’s board she’ll specifically try to tail Peter and every time he lets her think she got away with it for a couple hours until just making some random comment addressing her.
“Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.”
Limited Hangout: ‘Wow, what’s that?’ Navy pilots report unexplained flying objects
