Is Dan ever going to find out that Mr Brookheimer changed his mind about him? And, I guess as a follow-on question, would it matter to Dan at all?
(I am feeling a little better, but still definitely sick, which is not fun!)
It's interesting that you asked this because originally, when I was drafting Amy and Dan's conversation in the kitchen after they've "reunited", I did have Amy tell Dan what she had learned about her dad's opinion of him. But I ended up getting rid of it because it felt a bit too emotionally charged and it got them too off track from other things I needed them to talk about. This kind of surprised me, because it indicated that Dan and Amy cared more about this than I thought.
So I guess my answer to the second part of the question is that, when he isn't emotionally wrecked, no, I don't think it would matter to Dan, and I don't think it matters much to Amy, either. But in this fic they are *both* very emotionally wrecked--Dan is insecure, Amy is feeling guilty, they've both acted out in less than mature ways, and when I originally had Amy bring it up in the kitchen, they had just been incredibly vulnerable with one another emotionally (and physically). So, while I was drafting the conversation, it was something that actually required more processing and involved some natural knee-jerk defensiveness on both their parts, and there just wasn't time to unpack it. But I think in a few days he'll be fully back to normal, totally certain of his place in Amy's life and thus much less interested in Mr. Brookheimer's opinion. Now I just have to decide if he's going to find out in the course of the fic or not...
As for Amy, for all her angst in this fic about her parents' opinion of her life and career choices, I hope it's clear that her emotional spiral is tied mostly to losing her father so suddenly and unexpectedly, and having to deal with the trauma of all she never got to say and share with him. She made her decisions freely and, most importantly, she was happy with them. But we know from canon that she has always been susceptible to her family's judgment, especially when she's forced to spend a lot of time with them. So while I think knowing that Mr. Brookheimer's opinion of Dan changed does make a difference to her while she's in the midst grieving, it's not the *main* thing that sends her back to Dan.
Love BMTL, you're a brilliant fic writer <3. In the BMTL world how did Amy tell Dan she was pregnant with Cassie? Was he the first person she told once she knew? What was his immediate reaction?
Hi! BMTL actually takes into account seasons 1-6 of Veep--I started the fic during the hiatus between seasons 6 and 7--so the scene at the end of the S6 finale is part of BMTL-Dan-and-Amy's history. A lot about that scene doesn't make sense in the context of S7, considering how drastically the show rebooted itself and ended up treating Amy's pregnancy. There's also quite a bit of...distance between the Dan in that scene (and S6 more generally) and the Dan in BMTL. S6 Dan, with his jokes about Amy not having a vagina and only having sex once a year (a line that originally written into the pregnancy reveal scene), doesn't really resemble BMTL-Dan, who watches The Lion King with his daughter and begrudgingly babysits Sophie's kids. But I've always felt (and hoped) that the characters in BMTL resemble more their Iannucci versions, especially Dan.
I do have the "prequel" to BMTL vaguely sketched out in my brain, basically the alternate-universe version to Veep S7 and Selina's last presidential campaign...it's safe to say that while Dan's immediate "fuck, I thought everything was starting to turn around" reaction to Amy's pregnancy exists in both universes, his behavior (and Amy's) in the weeks and months after is significantly different. I think a lot of viewers' issues with the Dan/Amy abortion storyline had less to do with the fact of the abortion and more to do with the fact that both characters (but especially Dan) were written to act in ways that literally make no sense, even with the heightened Arrested Development vibe that the show was going for in that last season. In contrast, the BMTL equivalent of Veep S7 would see Dan and Amy dealing with the pregnancy in a way that actually makes sense for two human beings with a complicated emotional relationship and who don't like talking or thinking about feelings. They struggle to figure out what they mean to each other, what they want from each other, and how the impending baby will or will not change their relationship. As suggested by the S6 scene as written, Amy is especially preoccupied with trying to keep Dan at a safe distance, while Dan has grasped the magnitude of what's about to change in their lives but isn't quite sure what he wants to do about it. It's definitely still a messy and really rough, intense time for both Dan and Amy, with a lot of horrible fights, just without the twisted emotional abuse of S7.
Thanks so much for the BMTL question! They provide inspiration to get started on the next chapter 😉
another bmtl question... if cassie begged for a pet would she get one? they would provide great social media material lol
Hahaha, I have actually thought about this, Anon, and I have decided Cassie never gets a pet, and it's something she ends up holding against her parents later in life. Cassie would be responsible enough to look after an animal on her own with proper supervision, but I think Dan and Amy just have absolutely zero interest in having to care about another living thing in the house besides their daughter. They would always use their busy careers and how much time they spend on the road as an excuse. Plus, having something in the house that would shed all over Dan's suits? No thank you. And unbeknownst to Cassie, of course, her father is canonically a dog killer (at some point Amy finds out about this and is suitably horrified), and so a dog is just never really on the table no matter how hard she begs for one. And by the time she's no longer being dragged out on the road all the time on some campaign, she'll be in high school and then Amy and Dan will use the excuse that she's heading off to college soon as an excuse to not get her a pet because then they'll be stuck watching it. So, no pets for Cassie. Probably the first thing she buys when she goes to college is her own little aquarium to stick on the windowsill of her dorm room.
We know Cassie is interested in animals and the environment from her love of nature documentaries, and I could see her lobbying throughout her childhood/adolescence for various types of pets. I think she would ask for a dog most consistently, but also like a typical kid she'd ask for whatever strikes her interest at whatever time (one of those super large rabbits, a chinchilla, some fancy exclusive aquarium fish...). I also see her bonding with the pets in her friend's family...I have this idea that maybe her childhood best friend has a big fluffy dog and they always take it for walks in the humid DC summer evenings. Also, because she can't have a pet, I see her insisting on having a lot of plants in her room as a teenager, because they are technically living things but not *sentient* the way animals are. I don't see Cassie as a particularly rebellious child, but insisting on having a lot of plants in her room feels like something that would simultaneously confound and slightly annoy her parents. She would always leave super detailed instructions for the housekeeper regarding the watering.
Not to be a morbid weirdo, but sometimes I find myself thinking about how Dan would react if Amy passed away, or vice versa. How do you think that would play out?
Eeeek, Anon, you sent this in weeks ago and it took so long to get around to it! I'm sorry! It is such an interesting question and obviously my blog is very much a place where people to come be morbid weirdos about their ships.
I answered a similar question to this years ago--something about how BTML-Amy would react if Dan ended up in the hospital--and as usual my answer comes down to context. Is this, like, Amy dying suddenly and their relationship was never consummated and now Dan can never tell her what she meant to him? Or one of the two passing away at the age of ninety-five after a long and happy partnership? Somewhere in-between? The range of possible situations is pretty wide, so it could play out a lot of different ways. The only headcanon I won't negotiate on is the fact that Amy dies before Dan. Karmic retribution for him being such a dickhead.
In general, the rules of the Veep universe are such that the characters aren't really conceived to deal with major loss--I'm basically writing a whole fic that explores this idea, albeit in a much more emotionally driven approach than the show ever would. If we're talking strict canonical Dan and Amy (S1-S4, of course, we're excluding the Mandel years here) and the loss taking place within the world of the show the way we see it as viewers--all workplace based, characters defined by their relationship to Selina as VP/POTUS--I think the simple answer is they would repress all their feelings and become even more obsessed with work. Dan would act out in one spectacular meltdown à la his S3 breakdown(s)--go off on someone at work, get sent home, mope and drink too much and not shower and fuck around for a week and then go back to work and never mention Amy's name again. He would settle down eventually with some DC socialite and forever be spectacularly uninterested in her. Amy allows herself even less of a valve for her feelings than Dan does--I can see her trying to pretend everything was just normal and fine and that Dan was just a colleague who died in an unfortunate accident, and getting even more manic and obsessive by the day until she snapped and had a screaming fit in the parking lot, à la Elizabeth Holmes at the end of The Dropout. Both of them are too power hungry to allow a loss like this to derail their careers or life goals.
If we're talking BMTL-Dan and Amy, there's a lot more room for nuance. If Amy died and left Dan with a young Cassie to raise all by himself, he would obviously be devastated and be pretty non-functional for a few weeks, outside of caring for Cassie. Trying to manage the grieving process for her would totally overwhelm him, since he'd be a mess himself. Not to get too dark, but it would be a grieving experience that would fuck them both up pretty badly. Depending on how old Cassie is, it would be something that either draws them closer together immediately or pushes them apart for a little while--I could see them both wrapped up in their own worlds as they get through the months/years after Amy's death, Dan obsessed with working, Cassie with school and her friends. But even in that situation, they would eventually become incredibly close again, because this is my alternate universe and Dan could never be emotionally estranged from Cassie too long.
Dan would probably eventually hire a live-in housekeeper of some kind, like a comforting Chessy-from-the-Parent-Trap woman so Cassie has someone to talk to about puberty and boys and deal with domestic stuff that Dan has no interest in. I think he'd probably never remarry and just enjoy the status of being a hot widower the rest of his life--return to his pre-Amy sexual habits, but keep it all very separate from his home life with Cassie. It's a cliché, but she would be the number one girl in his life.
However, I think it's more likely in the BMTL universe that Dan and Amy live a long and happy life babysitting politicians, raising Cassie, and bickering nonstop, as opposed to Amy dying early in a tragic and unexpected accident. In that case I still think Amy dies first, and Dan doesn't last much longer without her.
If you're caught up on BMTL, you may have noticed that in Amy's most recent chapter I slipped in a moment where she temporarily steps into her mother's shoes and tries to envision what it would be like if she had to plan Dan's funeral. I can tell you that there will be a similar moment in the next chapter of BMTL, where Dan imagines himself at Amy's funeral.
Finally, if you're interested in a fic that addresses your question, the final chapter of @thebookofmaev's fic Behind the Scenes explores Dan and Amy's relationship post-S7 from Dan's point of view (definitely a more bittersweet read, what with the S7 of it all, but like everything @thebookofmaev writes it's very well written and absorbing!)
Since you're writing a long form romance centered on Dan/Amy, do you think that they're a couple for whom a conventional Happily Ever After sort of ending is viable? Tbf they are married with a kid to begin with in BMTL, so an emotional resolution is the only kind of conclusion that makes sense, but is that realistic for the characters you've written?
Also great job on the fic, as ever. Chef's kiss world building
Hi! This is such a great question and I’m sorry it took me so long to get around to answering it! I wanted to give it the attention it deserves…it’s a surprisingly complex subject. And thanks so much for the kind words about Bring Me to Light. I hope you enjoyed the latest chapter!
The way I look at Dan and Amy vis à vis a conventional happily ever after—whether in my own fic or just as a viewer pre S7—is that it was something they were going to back into without really looking too closely at it, by virtue of their attraction to one another and because of the political and professional benefits they derive from their closeness. Living together or getting married is something they choose because the alternative—not being together—is no longer viable for either of them, but they can’t express that so they have to justify it in terms of work and ambition. “Well we’re working together all the time so it just makes sense for me to move in…” The way Dan and Amy’s relationship is presented by Iannucci in the first four years of the show, I think that emotional pathway seems pretty plausible for both of them.
In the BMTL prequel that exists in my head, and that I’ve alluded to in the fic with a few flashback scenes, that’s how I’ve imagined their relationship developing…Dan unofficially moving in, deciding they need a bigger place for “reasons”, giving Amy a ring not in a formal proposal because that will make them seem more attractive as potential home owners…he does all those things because he doesn’t want to be without Amy (or their daughter) but he’s much more comfortable talking about all of it as decisions that make them both look good professionally and socially, keeping the feelings out of it.
This raises the question though of what is a “conventional” happily ever after? And can such a thing exist in the Veep universe? I’m assuming what you meant in your ask is something not far from what BMTL is exploring—Dan and Amy married with a house and a kid and joint bank accounts and all the social pressures and benefits that accrue to them because of those things. I think what’s interesting is that both Iannucci and Mandel’s versions of Veep actually kind of confront this question where Dan and Amy are concerned, but in different ways. Iannucci’s Veep, much more so than Mandel’s, it is actually concerned with social convention and the unspoken rules of polite society that bind its characters, including what young, ambitious men and women like Dan and Amy “should” want. He presents Dan and Amy as both largely uninterested in the social conventions of patriarchal normalcy, albeit for different reasons, and then implies that this is what draws them to one another. But also because his version of Veep is much more grounded in the humdrum minutiae of everyday life—and because there are multiple jokes around Dan and Amy involving parenting and babies and what it means to have a personal life in DC—it’s not hard to envision Dan and Amy trying to navigate some version of social domesticity in the background of the show, whether that’s in the form of an accidental pregnancy or a reveal that they’re sleeping together and Dan’s basically moved in. That’s their version of a happily ever after—it might be “conventional” from the outside, sure, but on the inside they are still very much Dan and Amy, pushing against those parameters even as they are also drawn to one another.
Meanwhile Mandel basically made the white picket fence happily ever after concept explicit within the world of the show, by having Amy basically propose such a future to Dan once she becomes accidentally pregnant with his child. In Mandel’s view, however, this is the only way a couple can be “together”, because I guess he’s still stuck in the 1950’s, and Dan’s rejection of that idea is framed as a judgment on Amy’s value as a woman. Now, if Amy in Iannucci Veep ever seriously suggested to Dan that they settle down in a nice house and make raising their baby their first priority and start taking multivitamins every day I guarantee that version of Dan would have equally run for the door (although he would not have slept with a nineteen year old on the way out). But he would have done so for very different reasons than Mandel’s sex-psychopath version of the character, and I also think he would also make his way back to Amy eventually. Of course Iannucci-Amy would never have suggested such a thing, so it’s kind of a moot point. But I do think it’s interesting how both versions of the show actually do engage with the idea of a “conventional” happy ever after via Dan and Amy, just in very different ways.
In some ways BMTL is my response to both versions of the show, where (I hope) Dan and Amy resemble their S1-S4 characters much more but the story builds off plot developments from the Mandel era of the show and a lot of the action does take in place in these very intimate domestic spaces that Mandel claimed Amy wanted with Dan. I guess my answer to your question (after all this rambling!) is that yes, I do see a conventional happily ever after as a possibility, but only on the outside, because those conventions bring a lot of professional/political benefits that Dan and Amy (especially Dan) would be attuned to. The actual romantic “happy” part doesn’t register with either of them.
(And it goes without saying, if any readers out there have asks about Dan and Amy (and Cassie’s) journey before BMTL, please feel free to send them in!)
When do you think Dan and Amy lost their virginities?
Hi Anon,
What a question!
There’s the joke in S6 where Dan says he hasn’t slept with a woman over thirty since he was fourteen “and that was only for the grade”, implying that as a thirteen and fourteen year old, he was sleeping with his teachers. But…I don’t find sexual abuse of minors to be a very funny topic, so I’m discounting the joke as a real fact about Dan. (I also think, in comedy, there’s a bit of a…flexibility in the relationship between jokes and canonical facts about the characters…sometimes jokes are just jokes even within a heightened comedic universe. A certain joke fills a specific purpose in the particular moment of a scene, but it’s not exactly…binding as a canonical fact and it doesn’t have to make logistical sense within the world of the show. Am I making sense here? Forget it for now…)
Anyway, Dan was definitely in high school, and I do think he was probably on the younger side when he lost his virginity, sixteen, fifteen if I’m being cynical. In my experience, men who can detach from the concept of sex the way that Dan can tend to have lost their virginities at a fairly young age. Similarly (based on conversations with previous male partners), if puberty is good to you as a teenage boy…it kind of goes to your head, and you want to capitalize on it.
As for Amy…it’s harder to make a guess, partly because Dan is so heavily tied up in how the show frames Amy’s emotional world, and partly because Amy goes through a clear emotional journey in the show that affects how she views sex and relationships. In my typical analytical mode, I propose that we have to examine Amy’s sexual experiences as presented in the show, that are not related to Dan, in order to make an educated guess about when she lost her virginity.
But first, some baseline things about Amy: she’s guarded (up until she’s not), she’s cynical about everything, she thinks she’s smarter than everyone, she’s a workaholic, and she’s not confident in how she looks. Just based off that, I don’t think she’s a super sexually active person outside of relationships with people she deeply cares about (or claims to care about), and she does not prioritize creating those relationships over her professional life. She did not have sex with the first guy to smile at her in high school, and she does not have sex with just anyone, just because they are there. Moreover, she spends a decent part of the show in the company of a man she is deeply attracted to and it takes her approximately four years to communicate (verbally) that she’d be interested in having sex with him. Even with her guard constantly up around Dan, even considering their past, that’s a pretty significant accomplishment (and considering their relationship in S4...it almost doesn’t make sense). The point is…sex is not just sex with Amy. She can’t just go out and meet someone and have a satisfying one-night stand. She’s not emotionally built for it.
Amy has two primary Not-Dan love interests: Ed and Buddy. Both of them, I would argue, are actually not that into Amy as a human woman, the way Dan obviously is. I think it’s made fairly clear, if subtly so, that Ed is very interested in Amy’s connections to the Vice President of the United States, and the party’s likely next presidential nominee, and his interest in her waxes and wanes accordingly. And Buddy is into Amy as some kind of dirty sex fantasy—he wants her to act angelic in public and then “filthy” in the bedroom because he gets off on it, but only according to his desires and needs (and when that negatively impacts Amy’s attraction to him, he blames her. Ugh, Buddy is the worst and he was always the worst, the second they showed him reacting to Amy’s cursing my alarm went up.)
Similarly, I would also argue that Amy is not interested in these men primarily for who they are as men, but what they represent: a chance at the domestic stability that society and her parents are always telling her she should want, plus somewhat regular sex, even if it’s not great sex. This suggests that Amy tends to think about sex for what it means as a relational connection, and not a primarily physical one. Unlike Dan, Amy does not detach her emotions from her sexual experiences. Notably, she is also dating Ed/about to date Buddy when she sleeps with both of them for the first time, which implies that she’s not that into casual sex as a thing. There needs to be some kind of emotional connection that promises to lead somewhere—even if it’s not a very deep one, and even if Amy is making up the connection to herself because she desperately needs to feel better about her life, thanks to everyone else being mean to her. (Poor Amy.)
(The difference between Ed and Buddy is that Amy dates Ed at a point when her relationship with Dan is actually pretty solid—he’s basically asking her out after work and dropping hints she should leave Selina with him—and Amy goes for Buddy after Dan has hurt her deeply (and after she gets kicked off DC’s hot list). Consequently, I think sex with Ed was far less an emotional experience than it was with Buddy. And I don’t mean that the sex was fantastic and romantic with Buddy (it wasn’t), I just think that Amy “invested” a lot more emotionally into the experience…like at least Buddy, for a little while, made a decent show of caring about her as a person and did not have sex with her sister.)
So, all that being said…I think there are two likely options. She had sex for the first time in high school, probably because she felt pressured into doing so (not necessarily from the guy), either with a boyfriend or some other guy she had feelings for. The experience wasn’t great, because #highschool, and it probably affected how she approached the possibility of sex for quite some time afterwards. Or, she had sex for the first time in college, after a lot of her peers had become sexually active, because it took her until then to find someone with whom she felt a deep enough emotional connection.
Anna Chlumsky has said she always thought Amy might have had an affair with a professor, which I think is fairly plausible, based on her need to please and her emotional loyalty to “authority” figures in her life. But I doubt it was her first sexual experience.
what are dan and amy’s favorite sex positions with one another
Anon, I think some things are really best left to the individual’s imagination 😉 And I’m a lot better at writing sex scenes than just talking about them, lol. There is more to come in Bring Me to Light, and I also have an idea for a S5 fix-it fic that right now is mostly just Dan and Amy hooking up in Nevada.
I’ll just say this for now: Dan is *very* into Amy’s dominant side and I also think they’ve had sex with both of them watching tv. Imagine that how you will.
It’s obviously not canon, but I kind of love the idea of high school senior/college freshman Amy getting an internship in some low level position in Selina’s office and Selina overhearing her saying something smart and being like, “who is this kid?”
I’m sure it happened along those lines somehow, Anon! I mean, how else could it have happened? She might not have been an intern or specifically eighteen, but it’s very likely that a young Amy was in a lower-level position in Selina’s office and stood out somehow to Selina. Amy would not have the requisite experience to (seriously) apply for a senior job in Selina’s Senate office. She was either passed on to Selina through some other politician’s recommendation (unlikely, because who would part with Amy?), or she caught Selina’s eye and Selina promoted her.
Although…more and more, I have been thinking that whatever Amy must have done to stand out to Selina, it must have involved emotional labor of some kind, rather a display of her intellectual prowess. She showed herself willing to manage Selina’s emotional needs in a way that perhaps other minor staffers would have balked at. She was in the right place at the right time when Selina needed something, some emotional refuge, when she needed someone to protect her emotionally or do some emotional dirty work. I could see it being Andrew related, considering how disdainful and suspicious Amy is towards him. And maybe Gary wasn’t there and Amy stepped up.
Frankly, S6-S7 Gary would not have let anyone get close enough to Selina for her to rely on them as intimately as Selina relies on Amy in the earlier seasons of the show. Moreover, S6-S7 Selina would not have ever allowed a younger woman into her inner circle, not to mention one who looks like Anna Chlumsky. (This is the problem with the later seasons, certain personality traits of the different characters become far too parody-esque for genuine, meaningful relationships between them to be believable…)
