What are some of your best and worst Brettsey moments?

What are some moments that inspire you to write or make you write because things need to be changed?

What are some storylines you wish the show had exploded with Matt and Sylvie as individuals and Brettsey?

Or times when the writers could have gone deeper?

Is there anything you want to write but feel apprehensive about or feel like you can't get it right?

Now that the Caseys have left Chicago I can answer this one. 🥺 Been saving it.

It’s so hard to narrow down BEST moments. I love the “You’re a little extra that way” conversation, Sylvie’s confession of feelings from 9x16, their love scene from that same episode, the first kiss in 9x02, and the eye contact at Molly’s from 9x02 as well. There’s more but those are the first ones that come to mind. Of course now I have to consider the BEAUTY that was their wedding ep which gave us SO MUCH. Their vows were perfect. Making out in the turn out room, also perfect. Sylvie escaping/running for her life and Matt tackling the guy and holding Sylvie for dear life after, again perfect.

As for worst, I’d say anything out of character. Matt’s 10x22 “I don’t know” always makes me mad because there’s no way someone who loves Sylvie as much as he does wouldn’t reassure her in that moment. The way the break up was orchestrated in 11x01 with Sylvie comparing her relationship to Violet’s or Stellaride’s or even Kyle’s, Matt and she not talking for two weeks — all of it felt forced and weird. Sylvie doesn’t normally compare herself to others like that and Matt wrote Sylvie a LETTER and put it in the mail in S10 when they kept missing each other. I’d say those.

I think a lot of what inspires me to write is less things that need to be changed and more things that need to be explained. Like the break up in 11x01 and Matt’s “I don’t know” in 10x22. Both those things made me want to dig in and take something that feels OOC to me and elaborate on it. That happened to me in S9 a lot. I wanted to really explore their perspectives, thoughts, traumas, and emotions in a way TV just doesn’t have a lot of time to do.

The biggest one for me is the trauma that resulted from Arnow. Matt’s guilt over Sylvie being hurt and Otis. Sylvie’s grief over losing Otis and exploring that grief as part of the reason she didn’t realize things with Kyle wouldn’t work sooner than she did. I feel like there was some excellent material there that could have been mined for them. The other one, that I was convinced the show was saving for the dating Brettsey era that we never really got, was meeting Brett’s birth father. After everything she went through with Julie, how would that go? Would he be as lovely as Julie was? How would Matt help her through it?

Times when the writers could have gone deeper for me is always going to be exploring trauma. I wanted to know more about Matt’s relationship with his dad. We saw Nancy and we heard about his dad from her but what were Matt’s memories like? How did he remember him? Also why didn’t Christie share Matt’s opinion on their mom or see the abuse? Was their dad partial to Christie? And for Sylvie, I wanted to know more about Harrison and Hope and how that dynamic shaped a young Sylvie. Harrison and Hope were clearly the gaslighting types and if those people were her childhood best friend and high school sweetheart then there must be more emotional abuse that she didn’t reconcile until after they were gone. I also would have liked to have actually met her parents or her brother.

As far as things I want to write but can’t, I have had an idea for a regency Brettsey AU FOR YEARS. I am not great with historical fiction/romance though so I’ve never seriously attempted to write it. But man do I want to. I think it would be full of so much yearning and tenderness.

Hopefully I answered all the questions you had! I LOVED THESE QUESTIONS. My favorite part of writing fanfic of these two is trying to get inside these people’s heads. They’re complicated and loving and generous but also have experienced great tragedies and faced abuse from people they loved. The fact that they find solace and safety in each other is breathtaking to me and so well deserved.