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"method actor" dvd commentary
>ok if my next post isn't ausgp travel log you all have legal permission to kill me. dead
>this is my last Pittpost i prommy
method actor / da pitt (5.2k, t)
the funny thing about watching the pitt finale is that i was like haha someone should write a whitsantos gaylesbian solidarity roomies fic 🧡 as a JOKE and then 15 minutes later she walks in on him in his hospital room and i was like Omfg . i love weird unlikely friendships reinforced by canon and i love outsider pov fic so immediately i was like i want a fic where whitaker keeps being subjected to santos's messy lesbian love life / her revolving door of hookups and 3some with garcia/ellis and him being like It's cool 👍 I'm An Ally but also dying a little bit inside when he accidentally sees way more than he really wanted to of the surgical resident he's lowkey terrified of.
ANYWAY. so that was the first immediate thought but of course i'm a santos fan and i love her soooo so much and i couldn't pass up the opportunity to write a character study... U kno me and u kno i love a character study. of course i've been ranting about her in meandering posts but i wanted to flesh out her backstory with bits of implied canon + my own personal fun headcanons for the sake of fanfiction, and explore the potential depths this could bring to her relationships with the other med students and residents in the pitt.
i didn't really include anything about her contrasting arc to langdon because of where this takes place in the immediate aftermath of s1, since per the creators langdon won't be reinstated until s2 with the plot point being that s2 is his first day back from his leave/rehab, so it seemed kind of forced to introduce any real scenes about him. also another bit of backstory from isa briones/official media that isn't included in the show itself is that she was specifically a competitive gymnast when she was younger, which i feel inherently informs SO much of her mentality and i really wanted to make it a thematic undercurrent of the entire fic and her development as a "team player." or... i guess not really necessarily a tangible development, but like an exposition of her preexisting attitudes toward what being a team player means from her experiences in a complex environment wherein the function of a team is structurally and forcibly extremely different.
i feel like........ i have this hypothetical backstory in my mind for her LOL i see trinity as coming from a pretty affluent coastal city, imo she's giving very socal filipina with catholic parents and i was really intrigued by her conversation with mel regarding her relationship with her mother and how she wouldn't want her within 150 miles of her workplace. i kept thinking of like... how she grew up in such a competitive environment, and i think it's very much implied from briones/the show creators that her friend must have been one of her teammates and her abuser was probably part of their coaching staff or something vaguely reminiscent to the nassar case, especially because she's around that age range (as an intern, assuming she progressed in a fairly standard fashion through medical school, she would be around her mid to late 20s which is how old a lot of the victims are). of course i'm not saying the show is trying to link her specifically to this situation, but i wouldn't be surprised if they were anecdotally inspired by the power imbalance present in a lot of these young athletes' lives and how little autonomy they're awarded when constantly being monitored and micromanaged by adults who are supposed to have their best interests at heart, but more than often act out of greed and selfishness because they can do so easily without facing any repercussions.
my view of trinity's mom is that she wouldn't really be like... a momager, but i think she'd have high expectations for her because they're both hardwired to seek excellence and there's no room in her perception of her daughter's life for failure, and ofc it's such a massive social/financial/academic investment to have a daughter competing in gymnastics at a high level that stopping at anything would immediately be viewed as a personal shortcoming. i think that's... where the tension kind of comes from with trinity and her mom, and ofc i'm coming at this with a very like Asian Mom Trauma lens LOL which i'm not saying is what the show writers have even bothered to consider at all, it's just for MEYE trinity santos mommy issues fanfiction, but again i think the tension comes from like, her mom perceiving trinity only for what value her achievements can bring to her, which means there's this unspoken sense of like... How could you let something like that (no matter how fucked up and terrible and traumatic) stop you from fulfilling your responsibilities? and in my narrative it's like trinity feels that resentment and judgment from her very strongly and it's part of why she has such a fucked up time with authority and a negative/defensive reaction to mentioning family because even if her mother wasn't at fault for what happened to her, the person who could have protected her still did nothing to reassure her emotionally after the fact, and in a way actually kind of blamed her for her ignorance and susceptibility. so there's this very big tension where they're not really People to each other and simply stuck in an emotionally dangerous feedback loop. i also hc her mom/parents as being rich but her parents as separated LOL this is Backstory to my fic that isn't even canon it's just how i imagined it when writing this narrative... hence the "dirty money" is an amalgamation of things, money from the settlement/case/lawsuit/whatever came of the situation, and then also her mom and absentee dad/child support etc. again this isn't canon i just think it's fun and enriching to my personal enclosure
anyway i really love... like, how effortlessly whitaker foils santos in a way that's actually emotionally rewarding. whitaker to me is such an enjoyable character because the writers did a good job of foreshadowing his situation early on (i don't have $50 to bet, stealing the extra sandwich from the food cart, etc.), and of course it highlights the significance of him joining the street team with such eagerness. i think even in just 24 hours, whitaker also learns a lot about actionable empathy and recognizes his own situation in a lot of his patients and how the only thread that separates their situations is his tether to the hospital and its resources. i think a lot of people forget that the season is only one shift sometimes when they talk about "character development" or their narrative arcs, because a lot of santos's personality is imo already there from the get go and the writers' job is instead to reveal her depths over the course of these cases and her interactions with the other residents as we chip away slowly at her defensive armor, but i think there is a very natural and slight progression in terms of how they learn to look out for other people with less abrasiveness/assumption. so these aren't total overhauls of their characters, but they're still changes that are fun to play with in fanfiction.
> also you're a team player until someone tells line... i think i really wanted to drive home that like, to trinity, keeping a secret (on a team/organizational level) got her best friend killed. like objectively, even if there are a lot of unanswered specifics to the situation, they were put in a predatory situation and had their voices withheld and somewhere along the line she lost her friend to this. and of course this isn't to say that langdon's situation is ~~~morally~~~ comparable, because that's not the point, but there is an ethics committe you report to as a medical practitioner and i do think a large part of her anxiety comes from like, the uncertainty of his actions and who will eventually be hurt by them. and i do think in her mind it's an inevitability, and of course in the end she's right because he IS a liability and he needs to be held accountable, but you can see given her past/how she wasn't looked out for by the adults responsible for her/how she may or may not have been believed or had her trauma validated by her loved ones in her childhood, why this situation would be significant to her on another layer.
i also think a lot of being an athlete is like... you spend so long working up your Mentality and very much embody yourself as a machine/vessel/means to a result in a way that kind of detaches you from the Everyday Person, especially when you're putting in hours and hours into your sport as a young child and missing out on benchmarks and milestones normal kids are hitting. which is what i mean with the dissection line, because i feel like.... i think even independent of what's happened to her, trinity as an athlete was probably always very self-critical and analytical—it's where her Sherlock attitude and medical prowess come from because she loves to break down a problem! only for years her own body and limitations WERE the problem—so when you're a child in this deeply myopic and cutthroat environment, you never think that you could be vulnerable to manipulation. because you already understand yourself SO much on a level no one else can. i think it's just a very strange headspace and it explains a lot of why trinity is like... so weird and reactive and idk
the scene with javadi is like TT___TT i think truly the writers don't want us to think of victoria and dr. shamsi's relationship as unsalvageable. i think victoria is very sheltered and young and her mom is suffocating her, but i don't think this is the endgame of where their dynamic is at... but i can't help but want to contrast her with trinity and what she went through, because i kind of see them as having similarish backgrounds—upper class/affluent parents with sky high expectations and prodigious dedication to their passions. dennis's background is completely different from anyone on the show, mohan has unrelated daddy issues/was inspired very clearly by that medical trauma, and everyone else is a lot older and has their own nuanced backgrounds. so i do think that victoria and trinity are the most like... failgirl daughters adjacent, but the difference is that victoria's never had her worldview shattered and is still operating in the bubble of her upbringing. which is why i love their convo about Pimping out her mom and trinity being like okkieee that sounds kind of dirty sowwy :3c because i think she kind of rushes into the conversation like surely you have a weird/awkward/parasitic relationship with your mom and wdym not everyone is like this with their parents? so trinity sees part of her younger self in victoria but obviously there are a lot of major nuances that reflect the breakdown in their conversation.
also the point is that TRINITY SANTOS IS SO KIND. AND HER HEART IS SO BIG... and she feels an innate need to protect people in vulnerable situations. and she's always been like this.....
also perlah and princess are her aunties fr T__T
oh and i love garsantos so much because santos clearly has mommy issues that rub off on the dynamic but also like... i think garcia genuinely relishes that santos is a little piece of shit and a troublemaker and obviously there is initial tension from the situation with langdon, but i don't think in the long run that this will ever be something that's genuinely held against santos, so it's like... idk. i think the point of garsantos is that there's so much immediate interest in her potential, and santos soaks up that attention/interest in her because she wants so badly to be seen for what she CAN do. and i think there's this really unspoken, underlying tension where it's like she's bad with authority and she doesn't want to be taken advantage of, but i find the back-and-forth between her and garcia really like... kind of open and honest in a fun way? like they're both assholes but that's what makes them work, and they don't shy away from being kind of scathing around each other.
anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
i luv u trinity santos..............
>this is my last Pittpost i prommy
method actor / da pitt (5.2k, t)
the funny thing about watching the pitt finale is that i was like haha someone should write a whitsantos gaylesbian solidarity roomies fic 🧡 as a JOKE and then 15 minutes later she walks in on him in his hospital room and i was like Omfg . i love weird unlikely friendships reinforced by canon and i love outsider pov fic so immediately i was like i want a fic where whitaker keeps being subjected to santos's messy lesbian love life / her revolving door of hookups and 3some with garcia/ellis and him being like It's cool 👍 I'm An Ally but also dying a little bit inside when he accidentally sees way more than he really wanted to of the surgical resident he's lowkey terrified of.
ANYWAY. so that was the first immediate thought but of course i'm a santos fan and i love her soooo so much and i couldn't pass up the opportunity to write a character study... U kno me and u kno i love a character study. of course i've been ranting about her in meandering posts but i wanted to flesh out her backstory with bits of implied canon + my own personal fun headcanons for the sake of fanfiction, and explore the potential depths this could bring to her relationships with the other med students and residents in the pitt.
i didn't really include anything about her contrasting arc to langdon because of where this takes place in the immediate aftermath of s1, since per the creators langdon won't be reinstated until s2 with the plot point being that s2 is his first day back from his leave/rehab, so it seemed kind of forced to introduce any real scenes about him. also another bit of backstory from isa briones/official media that isn't included in the show itself is that she was specifically a competitive gymnast when she was younger, which i feel inherently informs SO much of her mentality and i really wanted to make it a thematic undercurrent of the entire fic and her development as a "team player." or... i guess not really necessarily a tangible development, but like an exposition of her preexisting attitudes toward what being a team player means from her experiences in a complex environment wherein the function of a team is structurally and forcibly extremely different.
i feel like........ i have this hypothetical backstory in my mind for her LOL i see trinity as coming from a pretty affluent coastal city, imo she's giving very socal filipina with catholic parents and i was really intrigued by her conversation with mel regarding her relationship with her mother and how she wouldn't want her within 150 miles of her workplace. i kept thinking of like... how she grew up in such a competitive environment, and i think it's very much implied from briones/the show creators that her friend must have been one of her teammates and her abuser was probably part of their coaching staff or something vaguely reminiscent to the nassar case, especially because she's around that age range (as an intern, assuming she progressed in a fairly standard fashion through medical school, she would be around her mid to late 20s which is how old a lot of the victims are). of course i'm not saying the show is trying to link her specifically to this situation, but i wouldn't be surprised if they were anecdotally inspired by the power imbalance present in a lot of these young athletes' lives and how little autonomy they're awarded when constantly being monitored and micromanaged by adults who are supposed to have their best interests at heart, but more than often act out of greed and selfishness because they can do so easily without facing any repercussions.
my view of trinity's mom is that she wouldn't really be like... a momager, but i think she'd have high expectations for her because they're both hardwired to seek excellence and there's no room in her perception of her daughter's life for failure, and ofc it's such a massive social/financial/academic investment to have a daughter competing in gymnastics at a high level that stopping at anything would immediately be viewed as a personal shortcoming. i think that's... where the tension kind of comes from with trinity and her mom, and ofc i'm coming at this with a very like Asian Mom Trauma lens LOL which i'm not saying is what the show writers have even bothered to consider at all, it's just for MEYE trinity santos mommy issues fanfiction, but again i think the tension comes from like, her mom perceiving trinity only for what value her achievements can bring to her, which means there's this unspoken sense of like... How could you let something like that (no matter how fucked up and terrible and traumatic) stop you from fulfilling your responsibilities? and in my narrative it's like trinity feels that resentment and judgment from her very strongly and it's part of why she has such a fucked up time with authority and a negative/defensive reaction to mentioning family because even if her mother wasn't at fault for what happened to her, the person who could have protected her still did nothing to reassure her emotionally after the fact, and in a way actually kind of blamed her for her ignorance and susceptibility. so there's this very big tension where they're not really People to each other and simply stuck in an emotionally dangerous feedback loop. i also hc her mom/parents as being rich but her parents as separated LOL this is Backstory to my fic that isn't even canon it's just how i imagined it when writing this narrative... hence the "dirty money" is an amalgamation of things, money from the settlement/case/lawsuit/whatever came of the situation, and then also her mom and absentee dad/child support etc. again this isn't canon i just think it's fun and enriching to my personal enclosure
Another lifetime ago, Trinity's mother taught her all about making sinigang, adobo, lechon kawali. They would stand over the wok watching the oil sizzle, or side-by-side letting their elbows touch as she rinsed the rice and dutifully accepted freshly-peeled cloves of garlic to cut. Sometimes Trinity thinks those were the only times her mother ever really liked her. That it might have been the only thing actually holding them together.
A week after Pittfest, her mom texts her to ask, Are you staying out of trouble?
It's probably not meant to be an accusation, or even some fucked-up form of admonishment, so she doesn't know why it feels that way. It's probably the closest thing to expressing concern her mother will ever learn.
anyway i really love... like, how effortlessly whitaker foils santos in a way that's actually emotionally rewarding. whitaker to me is such an enjoyable character because the writers did a good job of foreshadowing his situation early on (i don't have $50 to bet, stealing the extra sandwich from the food cart, etc.), and of course it highlights the significance of him joining the street team with such eagerness. i think even in just 24 hours, whitaker also learns a lot about actionable empathy and recognizes his own situation in a lot of his patients and how the only thread that separates their situations is his tether to the hospital and its resources. i think a lot of people forget that the season is only one shift sometimes when they talk about "character development" or their narrative arcs, because a lot of santos's personality is imo already there from the get go and the writers' job is instead to reveal her depths over the course of these cases and her interactions with the other residents as we chip away slowly at her defensive armor, but i think there is a very natural and slight progression in terms of how they learn to look out for other people with less abrasiveness/assumption. so these aren't total overhauls of their characters, but they're still changes that are fun to play with in fanfiction.
Reciprocity is a mere phantasm in Trinity's mind. The idea boggles her; unsettles her. Trinity's got a mother who funded her way through med school but has never, in all her twenty-seven years of existence, said three simple words to her. A mother who couldn't even muster an I'm sorry when her best friend needed a way out the fucked-up hand they were dealt, whose mouth could only ever form the ugly jagged edges of an I prayed for you.
Not all wounds scab over. She didn't have to go to med school to find that one out.
> also you're a team player until someone tells line... i think i really wanted to drive home that like, to trinity, keeping a secret (on a team/organizational level) got her best friend killed. like objectively, even if there are a lot of unanswered specifics to the situation, they were put in a predatory situation and had their voices withheld and somewhere along the line she lost her friend to this. and of course this isn't to say that langdon's situation is ~~~morally~~~ comparable, because that's not the point, but there is an ethics committe you report to as a medical practitioner and i do think a large part of her anxiety comes from like, the uncertainty of his actions and who will eventually be hurt by them. and i do think in her mind it's an inevitability, and of course in the end she's right because he IS a liability and he needs to be held accountable, but you can see given her past/how she wasn't looked out for by the adults responsible for her/how she may or may not have been believed or had her trauma validated by her loved ones in her childhood, why this situation would be significant to her on another layer.
Perhaps this was her undoing. That from a young age she held an awareness so sharp she imagined herself untouchable, thought her own metaphysical dissection so meticulous it denied any further prying, any rotten intention. Surely she, in all her self-flagellating glory, could control her own pain. It was hers, after all. Hers to inflict. Hers to take. She'd worked too hard to cede access to the driver's seat.
She could keep a secret. Just one little secret. Couldn't she?
When she'd gone to Robby, she wonders whether he'd been able to smell the desperation buried beneath her hesitance, the overwhelming stench of decaying need giving itself away. Believe me, believe me, believe me. It's all she'd ever wanted. Maybe no one had to die this time.
i also think a lot of being an athlete is like... you spend so long working up your Mentality and very much embody yourself as a machine/vessel/means to a result in a way that kind of detaches you from the Everyday Person, especially when you're putting in hours and hours into your sport as a young child and missing out on benchmarks and milestones normal kids are hitting. which is what i mean with the dissection line, because i feel like.... i think even independent of what's happened to her, trinity as an athlete was probably always very self-critical and analytical—it's where her Sherlock attitude and medical prowess come from because she loves to break down a problem! only for years her own body and limitations WERE the problem—so when you're a child in this deeply myopic and cutthroat environment, you never think that you could be vulnerable to manipulation. because you already understand yourself SO much on a level no one else can. i think it's just a very strange headspace and it explains a lot of why trinity is like... so weird and reactive and idk
the scene with javadi is like TT___TT i think truly the writers don't want us to think of victoria and dr. shamsi's relationship as unsalvageable. i think victoria is very sheltered and young and her mom is suffocating her, but i don't think this is the endgame of where their dynamic is at... but i can't help but want to contrast her with trinity and what she went through, because i kind of see them as having similarish backgrounds—upper class/affluent parents with sky high expectations and prodigious dedication to their passions. dennis's background is completely different from anyone on the show, mohan has unrelated daddy issues/was inspired very clearly by that medical trauma, and everyone else is a lot older and has their own nuanced backgrounds. so i do think that victoria and trinity are the most like... failgirl daughters adjacent, but the difference is that victoria's never had her worldview shattered and is still operating in the bubble of her upbringing. which is why i love their convo about Pimping out her mom and trinity being like okkieee that sounds kind of dirty sowwy :3c because i think she kind of rushes into the conversation like surely you have a weird/awkward/parasitic relationship with your mom and wdym not everyone is like this with their parents? so trinity sees part of her younger self in victoria but obviously there are a lot of major nuances that reflect the breakdown in their conversation.
also the point is that TRINITY SANTOS IS SO KIND. AND HER HEART IS SO BIG... and she feels an innate need to protect people in vulnerable situations. and she's always been like this.....
also perlah and princess are her aunties fr T__T
oh and i love garsantos so much because santos clearly has mommy issues that rub off on the dynamic but also like... i think garcia genuinely relishes that santos is a little piece of shit and a troublemaker and obviously there is initial tension from the situation with langdon, but i don't think in the long run that this will ever be something that's genuinely held against santos, so it's like... idk. i think the point of garsantos is that there's so much immediate interest in her potential, and santos soaks up that attention/interest in her because she wants so badly to be seen for what she CAN do. and i think there's this really unspoken, underlying tension where it's like she's bad with authority and she doesn't want to be taken advantage of, but i find the back-and-forth between her and garcia really like... kind of open and honest in a fun way? like they're both assholes but that's what makes them work, and they don't shy away from being kind of scathing around each other.
anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
i luv u trinity santos..............