Good Girl

Although my tripod German Shepherd, Sunny, and I spent our first canine academy class in time out, I learned a lot more than resentment.  

I seem to be reprogramming my own brain. 

The secret that the instructor told us we would all forget about is this:

Controlled

Frequent

Positive

Exposure

It's a formula I latched onto immediately because it's one I've always wished people would use on ME.

I don't learn or perform well when I'm stressed.  When I'm anxious my brain shuts off.  When I'm sad and defeated I go completely numb.

Of course I can shake that stuff off, but it takes valuable time and energy.  It costs me. 

I always wondered why we don't teach people using more Yeses than Nos.  Affirmatives work better.  I WANT to do the thing right, so why are you slapping me when I do it wrong?  Then I have to recover from the slap.  I would learn faster if you just told me when I'm doing it RIGHT.

But here's a thing I learned a long time ago-most people don't really know what they're doing.  And then they take it out on the people they are teaching.  Teaching is just abuse clinic a lot of the time.  Just torturing people for fun and profit.  It's not about learning at all.

Despite decades of that shit, I'm starting to treat myself the way I'm training the dog-with rewards.  She likes praise.  I like praise.  I can praise myself when I do something well.  This was one of the cardinal sins when I was growing up in rural New England (the saying was, "Don't start thinking you're somebody,") but it works.  If it works on Sunny, it will work on me.

I'm my own dog.  And it's making me happier.

Goals For Season 5

1.  Restore Anna by telling of her recovery, while at the same time allowing her to advance in character, to grow as that lion-hearted, spunky girl we loved, to allow her to be realized in strength and bravery and spirit and the character flaws of impulsiveness (NOT related to anything in Season 4) stubbornness and complete indifference to other people's opinions (this is also a strength).

2.  Restore Bates as that great guy that we loved in the first three seasons by restoring his honor and his standing as a social being and even further him by deepening his background and his range of emotion.

3.  Restore the romance for Bates and Anna.

4.  Set up the spin off, Bates and Bates.

5.  Allow Robert to grow by hitting a core value of his character that inspires him to get past his fatalism and his narrow-mindedness.

6.  Allow Violet to become vulnerable in a new way that brings her closer to the family.

7.  Allow Edith to become a "modern",  successful woman and also to be truly accepted by the family.

8.  Allow Thomas a new lease on life and a new purpose as a grey character, who will also be a recurring character on Bates and Bates.

9.  Allow Tom to move on but also stay at the estate.

10.  Give Daisy a new life.

11.  Give Patmore a boyfriend and some respect.

12.  Give Carson a new purpose and Hughes and Carson the romance they're finally ready for.

13.  Complete Mary's character curve while allowing her to give Anna and Edith each their due.

14.  Allow Isobel to move on and do more good works while marrying into the upper class.

15.  Use Cora as a likable device, and that's all.  Because she's used that way already.

16.  Dispose of Rose, but have a little fun with it. I detest Rose and all of her dresses, too.

17.  Bring the estate into the "present" day with hopes of survival.

My season 5 will get the family all home together on the estate, Thomas living a glamorous new life in London generating plots for Bates and Bates, Daisy off to the farm with a prospect, Isobel traveling the world doing good works and Bates and Anna starting a new life as hotel-owning investigators.

Scripts will be in script format following the guidelines for a 60-minute drama; this may mean I post them in PDF format.

Why Post Fanfic Here?

This is a project born of shrieking rage, devastating, heart-shredding pain and the hunger for bloody vengeance.  But I won't get to indulge any of those feelings for real, so my revenge will be on the pages.

Like a lot of people, I got drawn into Downton Abbey, particularly by the story of Bates and Anna and by the mastery of Brendan Coyle and Joanna Frogatt.   I got drawn so far in that the "controversial" plot turn of Anna's rape gave me PTSD, sleeplessness and depression.  It also left me with a knowledge of my lifelong commitment to speaking out against the crime no matter how unpopular it makes me.  You'd think it would be OK to not like rape, but just try that some time.

I needed to right a slew of wrongs that offended me in Downton Season 4 including story turns, changes in characterization and the ultimate offense of insulting an audience by promising them the rape was for the purpose of "exploring the damage" and then not exploring the damage, but turning "the damage" into a murder mystery. 

In the next posting I will list the goals I have for writing a season that will never get made or seen, and why it was important enough to me to spend months of my life writing it.