#also shout out to my brother - my biggest critique - and telling it like it is that that looks Nothing like tear :')

[eizengard]

Tales of Femslash Week 2021 Day 7 - Free-for-all day

Well this marks the first time I’ve made it through all 7 days of a prompt week!! For this day I tried to think of what other weather I wanted to see, so enjoy the windy skies! 

Its Tear and Natalia, if you squint

[sokkascroptop]

traitor. (sokka x f!reader) pt 11

part 1 | part 10 | part 12

A/N: I’m over here like, “how to write Sokka and Y/N simping over each other, but like lightly simping?” Also, I guess we learn some more about Y/N family? 

Y/N thought back to when she learned how to use a sword. She was young when her father told her she needed to choose something to master. If she couldn’t train to be a firebender, she was going to train to be something. She’d picked the sword because she’d seen him practice with her two older brothers in their courtyard, and spirits, she just wanted to make him proud for once. She worked nonstop and became the best she could be because there was no margin for error. Failure wouldn’t be tolerated.

“And this is supposed to train me how?!” Sokka asked. His arm dropped six inches. Y/N lifted it back up so it was even with his shoulder and straightened out his elbow more. 

“Holding my sword out straight for hours will not only show me that you have the dedication to learn but it will also help you build up strength.” 

“Hours,” he echoed. 

“Look, if you don’t want to do this, that’s fine!” Y/N started to walk away. 

Sokka grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around. “I’ll do it. I’m not happy about it. But I’ll do it.”

Sokka widened his stance and looked out over the water as he settled in. Y/N joined Toph in leaning up against the railing. “Is this really something that your teachers made you do?”

Y/N thought back to when she learned how to use a sword. She was young when her father told her she needed to choose something to master. If she couldn’t train to be a firebender, she was going to train to be something. She’d picked the sword because she’d seen him practice with her two older brothers in their courtyard, and spirits, she just wanted to make him proud for once. She worked nonstop and became the best she could be because there was no margin for error. Failure wouldn’t be tolerated.

“The sword was much lighter but yes, Father said it was essential that I show my commitment.”

“Sounds like a nice guy.” Y/N didn’t miss the sarcasm in Toph’s tone. She also couldn’t refute it. He wasn’t a nice guy, and he was a worse father. 

---

Half an hour and Sokka’s arm was shaking, Y/N could see it from across the deck. 

“Tired yet?” she asked. Even though it was still morning, the sun was blazing. A drop of sweat dripped down his face and the tip of the sword dipped before he corrected it. “Nope,” he grunted. “Just peachy.”

“Sure. Let me know when you’re done?”

“What?!” the sword dipped again. “I thought you were the one telling me how long I was doing this.”

“I never said that.”

“But… that’s what you meant right?”

Y/N shrugged. And Sokka didn’t move. 

“How long has he been at it?” Katara asked as she sat down next to Toph and Y/N. She handed them each a bowl of rice and smoked fish. 

“Three hours,” Toph said around a bite of fish. Katara’s eyes widened in disbelief. “And whenever Y/N goes to check on him, his heart races like he’s afraid she’s going to make him do something else ridiculous.”

“Hey!” Y/N protested. “It’s not ridiculous. He’s training.” Even Y/N couldn’t keep a straight face while saying it. She hopped to her feet and approached Sokka. 

“There it goes again!” Toph yelled.

Y/N ignored her. “You hungry?” she asked Sokka. 

Sokka’s arm seemed to tremble a bit more. He forced a stoic look across his face. “Nope.”

“Are you sure?” Y/N asked. She picked up a piece of fish with her chopsticks and held it out. “If you’re so adamant about holding the sword, I can feed you lunch, if you want.” 

An expression that Y/N didn’t recognize crossed his face and for a moment she thought he was actually going to say yes. But then he looked over her shoulder. “I’m good.” His voice was strained. 

“Oh, for spirits sake, Sokka put the sword down and come eat!” Katara called from where she was sitting. 

Sokka looked back to Y/N, his bright blue eyes drilled into her own. She held his gaze longer than necessary, because this was more fun than she had anticipated. And then Y/N realized what was happening. He was waiting for her to say something. Her stomach flip-flopped.

“Put down the sword,” She murmured. 

She flinched when the blade clattered to the deck and her reverie broke. Sokka’s arm hung limply at his side and he collapsed on one knee. “Tui and La, that was the worst thing I’ve ever done!” He fell sideways on the deck and rolled onto his back. “My arm is numb. I can’t feel it. Is that normal?”

Y/N picked up her sword and examined the edge for nicks. “Sure.” 

He leaned up and snatched the bowl of food from Y/N’s hands. 

“Hey!”

Sokka balanced the bowl on his stomach and shoved the biggest piece of fish in his mouth. “I desermph it!”

“You didn’t have to hold it that long!” Y/N exclaimed. “I told you, you could stop anytime you wanted to!” 

“I thought you were joking!” he shouted back. 

Y/N turned back to the girls. “Is he always this dramatic?” She asked.

“All the time.”

“Always.”

“I am not dramatic!”

---

“No. Do that move again. Your shoulder is flying open too far. You’re leaving yourself vulnerable.” Y/N poked Sokka in the stomach to prove her point. 

Sokka did, lunging forward with his sword but keeping his shoulders turned inward. He looked towards Y/N for any critique. 

She leaned back on the rail with her arms crossed. “Much better.”

Sokka grinned. “Can we spar now?” He was always tired of just practicing new moves. He wanted action. 

Y/N unsheathed her sword. “If we’re careful. Katara nearly killed me when I cut your arm last week.”

They’d been at sea for a few weeks now. Sokka and Y/N practiced every morning and every evening on the deck of the Fire Nation ship. There wasn’t much else for them to do but spar which meant that Sokka was learning a lot, and learning it fast. Only last week had she started letting them use real swords though; Sokka had taken a Jian sword similar to Y/N’s from the ship’s armory. In the weeks before, they had just used broken broom handles to make sure no one got hurt. After days of splintered hands and bruises all over from the “beatings” he said Y/N gave him, Sokka begged to use swords. With great reluctance she’d said yes, as long as he made sure he listened to her. It was an extra precaution for Y/N too, she was worried that if something happened to Sokka, they’d throw her overboard. 

“Arm up, yes!” Sokka parried as Y/N thrusted her sword. She ducked under his sword and landed a punch to his side. “Gotta be faster though!”

She quickly backed away smiling as he caught his breath. “Was that necessary?” He asked with his hands on his knees. 

“Absolutely. How else will you learn?”

Y/N waited a beat before she threw an overhand cut that Sokka blocked, reflexively. He swept at her in a long arc that she knocked away easily. They danced in a few lazy circles, blocking and striking before Sokka got bored. He moved to disarm Y/N, twisting the flat of his blade under her wrist. And lucky for him, she didn’t expect it and the pressure caused her to drop it. He let the point of his sword fall just beneath her chin. 

Sokka’s eyes widened. “I won!” 

Y/N pressed the flat of his blade between her two palms, moving it away from her face and kicking him in the wrist. The sword dropped from his hand as he sucked in a sharp breath. She swung the blade up and caught it by the hilt. She dragged her leg behind his and shoved him to the ground. He fell hard on his back and she pressed a knee to his chest. 

“What did I say about being cocky?”

“It gets you killed,” Sokka grumbled.  

“It looks like you lost!” Bato shouted from where he and Hakoda watched from across the deck. Hakoda laughed loudly and then said something unintelligible that sent them both into fits of laughter. 

She moved off of Sokka’s chest and helped pull him to his feet. She held the hilt of his sword out to him and retrieved her own from the deck. “Again?”

“Will you please let me win one so my dad and Bato will stop making fun of me?”

Y/N looked over at the two men, who were just getting over their fit of giggles. Momo was perched on the chief’s shoulder and Hakoda reached up to pet his head.

She smiled at Sokka softly, he grinned back. 

“No.”

Sokka’s face fell. “Oh come on!”

---

Y/N leaned her back up against the railing of the ship as she watched Sokka put his Fire Nation armor back on. She bit back a laugh as he slid his helmet on over a fresh bruise on his forehead. He caught her anyways. 

“Yeah, thanks for that!” He kicked the bottom of her boot. 

“Sokka, I told you I was sorry! If you’re in a high bind like we were you need to expect that the other person is going to hit you with the hilt to knock you down.”

“It hurt.”

Y/N nodded. “Yeah, I know it does. And I’ve had much bigger people do it to me so you should be happy.”

Sokka sat next to her and tapped her foot with his. “Thanks for teaching me.” He said that a lot. Y/N was pretty sure there wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t say it. 

His face was covered by the helmet. It made it easier to talk to him when he looked like a nameless, faceless Fire Nation soldier. “Oh you know. The price for my life,” she sighed. 

“You know that’s not how it is anymore, right?”

Y/N blinked up at the sky and fiddled with the clasp to her Fire Nation cape around her neck. It was dark and the air was humid. “It’s going to rain.”

After a minute, Sokka looked away from her and looked up too. 

Just then, there was a crash on the deck. Sokka and Y/N both jumped to their feet and went running towards the sound. 

“Twinkle-Toes, that’s got to be you!” Toph exclaimed. They all created a semi-circle around the airbender, who stood hunched over with Momo on his back. The lemur was furiously licking the side of his face. Y/N was surprised to see the Avatar's head covered in dark brown hair.

“Aang, you’re awake!” Katara moved to embrace him in a hug. 

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I feel like I’m dreaming.”

“You’re not dreaming! You’re finally awake.” She promised. 

Sokka brushed past Y/N to hug him as well. “Aang, good to see you back with the living buddy.”

“Sokka?” Aang muttered. And then he fainted.

---

After making sure Aang woke up okay on the deck, Sokka nudged Y/N and walked her back to her room for the night. 

“So, he’s awake.” Sokka said. Y/N didn’t meet his eyes; just looked back down the hallway to the staircase that would take you above deck. “I’m sure Katara will tell him everything. Nothing to worry about.” Then he did something unexpected. He placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Don’t worry about it,” He repeated. 

Y/N shook her head, at a loss for words. Sokka had never initiated contact with her when they weren’t sparring. In fact, he actively avoided it. 

“Training tomorrow, before breakfast?” he asked. 

“Yeah.” And then he was gone. Back down the hallway to his room. 

Y/N closed her door and leaned up against it. She was worried. And somehow Sokka had figured out exactly what she was anxious over. Being on the ship with Aang unconscious was one thing. They had nothing better to do other than stay and let him heal there. But now that he was awake, he, Toph, Katara and Sokka were going to complete their mission to save the world and there was no place for Y/N in that story. Her point of leaving was never to join the Avatar’s mission, that just happened to be a side to the same story. 

And she was sure the others didn’t want her to join either. It didn’t matter how nice they were to her, or how friendly her and Sokka had gotten over the last few weeks; she was still Fire Nation. And she wasn’t one of them.

A knock at the door startled Y/N. “Come in.”

---

A/N: I think this might just be my first official cliffhanger!! We got some fightin’, some Sokka, we even got our Boy Aang back!! The next part will be a little short, but very important for Sokka and Y/N’s development. 

Taglist: @myexgirlfriendisthemoon​ @reclusive-chicken-nugget​@astroninaaa​ @aangsupremacy​ @beifongsss​ @crownofcryptids @welovediaaxx​ @littlefluu​ @lozzybowe​ @thebluelcdy​ @ohjustlookalive @sugarmoongey​ @fanficdepot​ @teenbiology​ @13-09-01​ @riespage​ @davnwillcome​ @naanlianid​ @creation-magician​ @lunariasilver​ @vintagerose1014516 @bcifcng​ @rockinearthbending-marauders​ @francesciak​ @thia-aep​ @aphrcditeee​ @milk-n-cheese​

[lovelylogans]

love light gleams

previous chapter | chapter six | next chapter

part of the wyliwf verse.

the sideshire files | read my other fics | coffee?

warnings: food mentions, complicated parental relationships, teenage emancipation, emotional abuse, mentions of being disowned, mentions of transphobia and homophobia, classism, mentions of past underage drinking, crying, religious content (church, going to confession), remus cameo, mentions of choking/killing someone, something similar to the canon “have you thought about killing your brother?” monologue, please let me know if i’ve missed anything!

pairings: gen 

words: 57,686

for the second time in as many days, patton wakes up on his own, not because of logan crying.

it’s weirdly disorienting.

patton sits up, rubbing his eyes. even without his glasses, he can see that the bedroom door’s ajar, and the soft murmur of talking.

“—interesting take, interesting take. you ever thought about telling your dad all this?”

a rush of baby noises before virgil even finishes his sentence, and patton smiles, reaching for his glasses.

after ensuring he’s rolled up virgil’s hilariously massive sweatpants, to make sure he won’t trip, he shuffles to the door, poking out his head, enough to see virgil cradling logan with one arm and putting dough in a pan with another.

logan made another few sounds that might have been passable syllables.

“yeah, i figured,” virgil says. “seriously, though, i get your critiques of capitalism, trust me, i follow you, but i think the capitalism’s part of the fun of it. i mean, granted, you aren’t really old enough to appreciate presents yet, it’s part of the whole object permanence thing, you’ll love it, it’s a kick.” 

more babbling.

“huh, impressive,” virgil comments. “i’m surprised by the well-researched views you’ve got on this whole thing. you might wanna write a thesis on that part about material exchange and consumption having adverse effects on the moral character of society, i think you’re really onto somethin’ there.”

“how much of me not understanding what you’re saying is because i need caffeine?” patton says, lifting his glasses up so he can rub at his eyes with his fist. “please say all of it.”

“sure, all of it,” virgil says. “plus, i’m pretty sure the baby’s outsmarting me.”

“yeah, he has a habit of doing that, being nearly two months old and all,” patton says. “logan okay? was he crying?”

“nah, just, y’know,” virgil says. “woke up and heard him getting a little chatty, so i figured i’d keep the little guy company while i was prepping the cinnamon rolls, so he wouldn’t cry and wake you up. that okay?”

“yeah, that’s fine,” patton says. “i should take him before he drools on the dough, though.”

“probably a good idea,” virgil says, and he hands over logan. patton quickly scoops him up in his arms as logan makes a noise of protest. 

“aw, s’okay,” patton murmurs, shifting him, and logan settles. “can’t believe that you let me wake up on my own again.”

“christmas miracle?” virgil suggests, and patton blinks.

“what?” virgil says.

“it’s christmas,” patton realizes. “oh, my gosh, it’s christmas.”

“yeah?”

“it’s christmas morning,” patton realizes, looking down at logan’s face. “oh, my goodness, logan! it’s your first christmas!”

logan considers this, before he offers a few choice noises, and patton laughs, feeling giddy.

“christmas, logan! christmas! oh, you’re gonna love christmas, there’s the presents and the food and spending time with—” patton falters, before he forces himself to plow on, “ everyone! it’s christmas !”

logan’s apparently worn out verbally, so patton just goes for a kiss on the cheek and shifts his stance, giving virgil his best, winning grin.

“you know what would be a great present to kick off christmas morning?”

“your caffeine dependency is horrible,” virgil informs him.

“c’mon, please?” patton pleads, and tilts logan toward virgil for optimal visibility. “look at that faaaace.”

“one day, showing off logan’s little baby face isn’t going to work for getting things,” virgil says.

“which is why i’m maximizing it now,” patton says. “look at this face, that relies on me to care for him, and—”

“shameful,” virgil teases.

“have i said please yet?” patton says. “‘cause i could definitely say it again.”

virgil wars with himself, before he slumps, sighing. “ fine. i’ll put this in the oven and get a pot started.”

patton cheers, before he settles at the kitchen table. 

“you aren’t having all of it,” virgil says.

“uh-huh, sure, ‘course,” patton says happily. “what time’s everyone coming over?”

“pretty soon, actually, i was gonna come in and wake you if you didn’t, y’know, wake up,” virgil says. “my parents are gonna be here first, i think.”

patton nods, absorbing this, before logan starts fussing much more audibly and patton’s distracted enough to get back on his feet and walk, bouncing logan in hopes of calming him; it’s the most fail-safe option, he’s discovered, to keep walking and moving with logan. for whatever reason, logan doesn’t really like being still. he guesses if he couldn’t really move himself around he probably wouldn’t like being stuck in the same place staring at the same things either, so he can’t really blame him. 

patton paces around the kitchen, murmuring soothingly to logan and patting his back. the coffee machine is running and the scent of cocoa and coffee is starting to permeate the air; virgil is making sure all the cinnamon rolls are in place before he sticks them in the oven; the sun is shining weakly through the window, and it’s christmas.

patton almost can’t believe it. christmas. on one hand, it was christmas already, but on the other—it was finally christmas. this year had been the longest of his life. he has a feeling seventeen’s going to be a lot less chaotic than sixteen.

but then, he is walking a crying baby around someone who had been a stranger’s kitchen, and emancipation papers to file, and a job at the inn, and a town full of some of the kindest and weirdest people he’s ever met. and if the past year has taught him anything, it’s that all of his life plans are pitched out the window, so maybe he shouldn’t really theorize.

instead, he focuses on logan. who seems to be quieting down with the circles patton is walking around the kitchen, patting logan lightly on the back all the time and bouncing slightly every couple steps. so instead he focuses on the sensory things; the smells of coffee and chocolate and cinnamon, the light of the sun, virgil poking around his fridge and checking timers and, at long last, pouring him a mug of hot cocoa/coffee.

he holds out the mug for patton to snatch on his way by, and he says a cheery “thank you!” and downs the biggest mouthful he can manage as quickly as he can, murmuring soothing words to logan the whole way.

not long after that, patton can distantly hear the jangling bell of the diner, and virgil glances toward the door, taking a few steps automatically, before he glances at patton.

“um. d’you wanna—?”

“i’m not really dressed,” patton says awkwardly, sticking out his leg to show off how virgil’s sweatpants are already unrolling. “besides, i gotta, y’know. baby. plus i’ll keep an eye on the food.”

virgil gives him a wary glance.

patton grins a little sheepishly, before he promises, “i’ll give a shout if any timers go off or things start smoking, how about that?”

virgil accepts that with a nod, before continuing to plod his way out of his apartment, down the stairs, to, presumably, see his parents, and patton then rushes over to the coffee pot and pours himself the biggest refill he can get away with.

what? he’s sleep-deprived! he has a newborn! it’s christmas! 

he gulps quite a bit down, too, before logan starts fussing—”don’t tattle on me to virgil!” patton whispers to him—and patton has to resume walking in circles.

he only takes a couple more turns around the kitchen by the time he hears footsteps on the stairs, and greets mr. and mrs. danes with a sunny smile—he hopes it says please forget the breakdown i had last night, i’m fine now.

“merry christmas!” he says instead.

“merry christmas, patton!” meredith says, equally bright and cheerful, mark echoing her. “i brought your sweater.”

“oh, thank you!” he says, and steps forward to take it automatically, before remembering he’s supporting a baby over his shoulder with one arm and using the other hand to hold caffeine. “um—”

“i can take him,” virgil volunteers. “you should go get dressed.”

“oh!” patton says, “uh, sure.”

and, holding his breath, hoping that logan won’t cry, he sets the mug on the table and slowly initiates the passing of the baby, and—

nope, logan immediately starts wailing louder. patton automatically reaches to take him back.

“i can keep walking with him,” virgil volunteers, “you can go get dressed.”

he isn’t really sure how to phrase walking away from my baby while he is crying for me is violating every instinct i have, but logan’s tiny arms seem to reach for him and that pretty much immediately seals the deal, so patton goes ahead and takes him back. logan quiets, just a bit, sniffling in patton’s ear, and patton grimaces apologetically at virgil.

“sorry, i just—”

“he’s a baby,” virgil says with a slightly awkward shrug. “he wants his dad, it’s fine. we can try again when he’s calmed down a bit.”

patton nods, and meredith smiles at him, just a bit, before setting his sweater on the kitchen table.

“right here, when you want it,” she says, before she turns to virgil. “how are things going?”

“ingredients are mostly downstairs,” virgil says. “i’m making the cinnamon rolls now, though.”

“i can smell them,” mark says, punctuating his statement with a big sniff. “anything we can do to help?”

“i’ll just,” patton says, “um,” and steps back into the living room, far away from the kitchen and anything he could possibly do to ruin the food.

and also to have more room to walk with logan. that too.

it takes that batch of cinnamon rolls coming out of the oven and another batch going in and being nearly done for logan to quiet completely, and patton slowly inches his way back into the kitchen.

“ready?” virgil asks, turning.

“yeah, thank you,” patton says gratefully, and initiates the passing process again, and this time, logan takes it much better, settling in virgil’s arms with something like a coo.

“hey there,” virgil murmurs, grinning at the baby. “there we go, i know, i need some time to calm down too, sometimes,” and then he redirects his stare at patton, the smile still clinging to the corners of his mouth. “go ahead, take all the time you need. there are clean towels under the sink if you wanna shower or anything.”

patton hesitates. that does sound really tempting. there’s a clawfoot bathtub that had been dumped in the poolhouse, and that’s what he usually uses to bathe, even though the temperature can barely get past lukewarm no matter how high he turns the “warm” faucet. he usually just takes the quickest bath he can manage, usually finishing it off before the bathtub can even fill halfway. maria’s offered him the use of one of the showers in the inn, the same way she’s been offering him a room, but he just kind of feels weird about bathing at work. a hot shower sounds like heaven.

“you’ll shout if he needs me?”

“i’ll shout if he needs you,” virgil promises.

patton grins, before he reaches for his abandoned mug and chugs down the rest of his cold hot cocoa/coffee, saying “thanks!” before he snatches the sweater off the table and heads straight for virgil’s room, practically giddy.

funny how much things he’d taken for granted back at his parents’ are such a huge deal to him now; sleeping in a bed, taking a shower, an afternoon watching tv or taking a nap, having money to burn with no worries about budgeting. he’d never had to think about those things as luxuries before.

weird. strange.

patton would think more about it if he wasn’t excitedly turning the water in virgil’s shower as hot as it’ll go.

it nearly burns his fingers, so he, reluctantly, turns the heat down just enough so that it would be on the side of scalding that he could actually stand, and he gets in the shower with a smile on his face that’s probably a bit too enthusiastic for something as basic as a hot shower.

patton uses the washcloth he’d taken from virgil’s stash of clean towels and scrubs himself until he’s pink, a combination of the heat and the non-scented body wash that virgil has in his shower; he rubs shampoo into his hair, scratching and digging his fingers into his scalp; at one point, he just stands with his eyes closed in the shower, savoring the water pressure and the heat and the clean scent of the steam and the way his muscles relax and loosen.

he eventually shuts off the shower, reminded of his son and the cinnamon rolls and caffeine and general christmas cheer that are probably waiting for him, and steps out of the shower to get dressed. he towels his curls dry and combs his fingers through them (he should know by now that they’re basically uncontrollable.) he brushes his teeth with the spare toothbrush he’d used the night before, getting all minty-mouthed and fresh. he even uses a bit of the lotion virgil has, rubbing it on his hands and the dry spots on his elbows and ankles.

he gets dressed. he polishes his glasses on his t-shirt before he pushes them onto his nose, getting rid of the last of the steam that clings to them, and wipes clear a little path in the mirror, too, taking away the last of the fuzziness that was obscuring him before.

he stares at himself in the mirror; bags under his eyes decreased a little bit, hair a bit of a mess but when wasn’t it, really, sweater big enough that it obscures his chest but doesn’t drown him in the fabric. worn-in, comfortable jeans.

he feels brand-new.

⁂

virgil squints at the coffee pot. it’s lower. he knows it’s lower. and yet—

“what do you mean?” patton says, blinking at him all fake-innocent, holding logan in one arm and using the other to hold his third cinnamon roll in one hand.

“you snuck a refill.”

“i have no idea what you’re talking about,” patton says, widening his eyes to make them seem doe-like and innocent.

“you’re going to get an ulcer one day,” virgil decides, pouring a mug for his mom, which she accepts with a poorly-hidden smile at this exchange.

“if you say so,” patton demurs, and looks down at logan. “don’t you think virgil is being silly, lo? isn’t he so silly?”

“—and you won’t be able to say anything as i stand over your hospital bed and say i told you so.”

“if you say so,” patton repeats, except this time is distinctly more sing-songy, and virgil narrows his eyes at him even as patton pops the rest of the cinnamon roll into his mouth.

“hark!” mark quips, from where he’s stationed at the kitchen window. “our children approach.”

“that’s our cue!” meredith says cheerfully, standing up. “gotta make sure none of you take a peek to see if santa’s come yet.”

“mom,” virgil begins, trying not to sigh, because seriously, it’s been at least a decade and a half since any of them have believed in santa.

but patton’s making a dramatically excited face at logan, saying, “santa, logan! yay santa! can you say santa?” despite the fact that virgil knows that patton knows that logan probably won’t be talking for another year, give or take.

and so virgil’s parents depart, to guard the presents and make sure that “santa” has brought things from the north pole, despite the fact that the only one of them who could probably be young enough to believe in santa is still working on important things like object permanence, and rolling onto his stomach on his own, and, like, laughing.

patton looks up at him, smiling. “do you think you’re gonna get what you want for christmas?”

“i barely have any idea what i wanted for christmas,” virgil says honestly. “books, probably. cooking stuff. maybe some stuff for my apartment, since it’s pretty, y’know.”

“bachelor pad-y,” patton suggests, and virgil snorts.

“stuff-inherited-from-family-mostly, yeah,” he admits. it’s probably obvious with the mismatched furniture, the old couch and bed and coffee table. “thrift store, too.”

patton nods, absorbing this, before he says, “oh, shoot!”

“what?” virgil asks, but patton’s brow is already creased in concern, worrying his lip.

“i forgot to ask your mom to get your christmas present from my room!”

you got me a present? virgil nearly asks, barely noticing the jangling of the bell downstairs and the beginnings of conversation between his parents and his siblings, before he realizes they’d probably be repeating the conversation they had on his birthday, before he catches on and says, “oh, hey, patton, it’s okay, you can give it to me later.”

“i just— shoot,” patton repeats, frowning harder. “i mean, it-it’s not much, but—”

“it’s great,” virgil says. “i’m sure it is, but, really. you can get it to me later, i’m not gonna be mad or anything.”

“you’ve been so nice to me and i just forgot,” patton says.

“it happens,” virgil says. “i mean—think about it this way. you’ve already given me a gift within the past week, and you’re gonna give me another one… whenever you come by the diner next. you’re good, you’re covered.”

patton hesitates.

“we can blame logan, if you want,” virgil offers, mostly joking, and leans so he can stare logan in the face. “i can’t believe you haven’t gotten a job yet just to get me presents, you two-month-old baby.”

patton laughs, probably just to be nice, before he stares even more sheepishly at virgil. “i—still. sorry.”

“it’s okay,” virgil says. “accidents happen.”

“virgil!” he hears freddie shout. “bring me the cinnamon rolls, i want a billion of them!”

virgil rolls his eyes, before he gets to his feet. “duty calls.”

“i’m not far behind her,” patton says, leaning to snatch another cinnamon roll before virgil picks up the plate and gestures.

“shall we?”

patton goes to grab logan’s diaper bag, before he falls into step behind him and they both plod down the stairs.

freddie nets virgil in a hug, which, virgil notes, and seemingly patton does too with a poorly-stifled snort, is a blatant excuse to snatch the entire pan of cinnamon rolls away from virgil, immediately shoving one into her mouth whole.

“winifred jane danes!” mark scolds, even in the midst of a laugh himself. “stop that, you’ll choke!”

freddie says something—probably some kind of quip or comeback—but it’s stifled by the food, and virgil takes the opportunity to snatch the cinnamon rolls back, dropping them on a table, about to start lecturing her, before—

“oh, let’s not,” meredith says merrily. “go on, kids, go on, dig in, grab some rolls! the faster you eat, the faster we can open presents!”

“i can’t believe you’re undermining my parenting like this,” mark says, jokingly pious, over the sound of the four other danes siblings (and patton, doubling back for even more) and virgil shuffles out of the way—the benefit of being the sibling who makes the meals means he gets first pick—which means he’s perfectly situated to watch everyone else get their fill.

it also means he’s perfectly situated to watch patton turn, maybe to talk to him or his parents, before he falters at the sight of the christmas tree, the color wheel of presents.

including the two new slivers of bags and boxes, wrapped prettily in sky blue and indigo.

patton stares for a few seconds. his brow furrows, confused. and then, almost like he doesn’t mean to, he reaches his hand to touch the sky blue material of his sweater, bunching it in his hand, even as his brow furrows more and more.

virgil, sensing another crying session in making, feels his stomach plummet and quickly takes a few steps closer; his mom mirrors him, crowding in on his other side.

“i,” patton says. his voice quavers, and he takes in a shaky, gulping breath. “did you…?”

“it’s christmas,” virgil says gruffly. “you didn’t really think we wouldn’t get you anything for christmas, would you?”

“but i,” patton says, and his face crumples as he looks to virgil’s mom. “but i didn’t get you anything.”

his mother looks startled at this, just for a moment, before she puts a hand on his shoulder.

“you’ve given us your presence,” she says, voice quiet, so that virgil’s breakfasting siblings won’t overhear. “and time with a relatively newborn baby.”

patton makes an alarmingly creaky noise, which means that logan makes an alarmingly creaky noise, sensing that something’s wrong, and virgil panics, just a bit, because hearing logan scream and knowing he can’t do anything about it is possibly one of the worst feelings in the world.

“you’re sixteen,” virgil says roughly. “you’re sixteen. okay? you’ve had a rough year. you’re a good kid. you deserve christmas presents without any strings attached.”

patton inhales deeply and presses his fingers under his eyes, like the pressure will be enough to stop the tears. 

“but i—i couldn’t even remember to bring your present—”

“and that’s okay,” virgil says firmly. “you’ll bring it next time you come to the diner, that’s fine.”

“—i didn’t even get you anything,” patton says to his mom, watery. “and you’ve been so kind to me, i—”

“that’s okay,” meredith says. “hey, that’s okay. your presence is enough, just like i said.”

“but—”

“it is enough,” meredith says quietly. “look. giving presents makes you feel good, right?”

patton nods, curly hair still damp around the edges flopping into his eyes.

“ so,” meredith says. “you’re letting us get that feeling. that’s a nice present, wouldn’t you say?”

patton hesitates, clearly warring with himself, but then—

“and you’ll let us hold the baby, as long as he doesn’t cry? we’re all vaccinated and i want my children to practice for—”

“ no grandkid talk,” virgil grumbles, which makes patton sniffle and smile.

“well…. okay,” he says, before he says, “i’m going to send you something for your birthday, though.”

“well, i’ll have to do that too!” meredith says cheerfully. “when’s yours?”

“january 15.”

“no way,” meredith says.

“what?”

“mine’s january 16!”

and, almost as suddenly as it started, patton’s closeness to tears has abated as he and meredith discuss the various merits and drawbacks of a january birthday, patton’s well-trained ability to small talk and his genuine, enthusiastic interest in getting to know people shining through, distracting him, and virgil breathes a soft sigh of relief. 

no more crying on christmas. patton shouldn’t have to feel like crying on christmas. it’s christmas.

so virgil turns, and moves to get another cinnamon roll, before—

“what was all that?”

virgil scowls at silas, almost out of habit, before he takes his chosen cinnamon roll off the tray.

maybe it was the cinnamon roll that silas’ hand was closest to, and maybe silas scowls right back, but hey, virgil made it, he gets first dibs.

“patton was a bit emotional about christmas presents when he didn’t get anyone but me anything,” virgil says curtly.

silas hums.

“silas, i swear—”

“hey, if you don’t get snappy with me, i won’t be snappy with you,” silas says, putting up his free hand. “christmas is the time of truces and all that.”

virgil stares at him for a few more seconds, evaluating the validity of this, before he allows a jerky nod and turns away from him.

just in time to see patton unearth logan from his chest carrier, and to see his mother coo down at his sleepy face.

“give him a couple seconds, he just needs to wake up a little so he doesn’t panic when we pass him over,” patton murmurs, and his mother laughs, staring down at the baby with soft eyes.

god. his mom really wants grandbabies.

virgil thinks, as he stares at patton and his mom, smiling together down at logan, that patton and his son are probably a pretty good interim patch for that particular desire.

thank god, he thinks. it’s not like he’s about to have a kid anytime soon.

  “okay, who’s santa this year?”

“it was us last year, i think,” essie says, patting annabelle’s knee. “so that means…?”

“i gave up my turn,” silas says, because silas can kind of be a grinch, “so—”

“me!” freddie sings, launching herself from the booth. “okay, light blue patton, dark blue for the baby?”

“that’s the one,” mark says cheerfully, who is now taking his turn holding the baby, and he looks absolutely delighted that logan was comfortable enough to fall back asleep in his arms.

“and everyone else’s is normal,” freddie says, before gathering an armful of purple boxes and bags and cheerfully dumping them at virgil’s feet.

“thanks, fred,” he says dryly. “sure hope there wasn’t anything breakable in there.”

freddie ignores him. virgil has the feeling that she’d be flipping him off behind her back if their mother wasn’t sitting right next to him.

“so, um,” patton says uncertainly, from where he’s hovering right next to virgil’s dad in case of Random Baby Meltdown Time, “how do you guys usually do this?”

“pass them out in order, tear them open in chaos,” annabelle informs him. 

“there is no order,” essie says at the same time, and patton nods, absorbing this.

“right,” he says, “okay,” and accepts a load of indigo presents with a thank you to freddie and a glance at logan, just to check that he’s still okay; virgil’s dad transfers logan to his carrier, so he doesn’t get jostled during the whole gift-opening session.

freddie continues passing out presents as quickly (and carelessly) as she can—gold for mom, silver for dad, green for wyatt, red for essie, pink for annabelle, black for silas, yellow for freddie, purple for virgil—and as soon as the last present is placed in the pile by patton’s feet, freddie immediately tears into her nearest present with a vicious, vociferous glee.

and the rest of them are off.

with five kids (and, now, five kids, a fiancée, and a friend with a baby) it had always taken way too long to go in order, one-by-one, and so it became the norm that as soon as whoever was santa that year opened their first present, the rest of them had free reign to open their presents as quickly or as slowly as they would like.

it would probably shock no one that most danes’ favored quickly.

soon, the diner was overrun with the sound of ripping wrapping paper and crumpling tissue paper and exclamations of “thanks!” whenever they saw what they got, and who they got it from, and leaning around people to offer hugs or more specific comments.

virgil looks up in the midst of ripping some shiny purple wrapping paper off a box, to see patton, frozen, with his hands on the first box he’d gingerly picked up, staring at the chaos.

for a second, virgil thinks he might be overwhelmed; they can be noisy when they’re all jammed in together like this, with an occasion as exciting as christmas presents, and patton hasn’t exactly had an easy past couple of days. or an easy past year, for that matter.

but patton’s eyes dart over to look at virgil’s parents: his mom, in the middle of squeezing freddie into a hug and then giving her a soft, joking punch for the gag gift that freddie must have gotten at some kind of godawful tourist trap, virgil isn’t even really sure what it is but whatever it’s supposed to be probably shouldn’t be sequined and glow-in-the-dark; his dad, pulling free a cookbook from the bag he’d been hurling tissue paper from just seconds earlier.

and then patton beams, and tears the wrapping paper off the nearest sky-blue box with a satisfying rrrrrrrriiiiip!!!

virgil grins down at his own box, and resumes opening his own gifts, that warm, sentimental feeling blooming in his chest that he only really gets around christmas.

⁂

later, patton remembers logan’s first christmas mostly in snapshots; golden, precious memories that he’ll cling to for years, the kind of memories he knows will be cherished even before he’s finished living through them.

he eats his weight in cinnamon rolls, and then doubles it in ginger snaps. 

he helps virgil and silas and wyatt cart up virgil’s new furniture; virgil’s particularly protective of the framed nightmare before christmas cross-stitch, moving it over seven times (silas counts) before he carts it off to his room to decide where it’ll go later, when all of them are out of the room (“it’s not like any of you are interior designers,” virgil grumbles after this, probably annoyed by their constant recommendations, but really, moving it seven times?!)

he remembers the danes’ immediately clearing the easiest path for him to step into virgil’s room as soon as logan starts crying, and they all seem eager to lend a helping hand if he needs one; especially virgil and his parents, but the other siblings too. which patton appreciates, he really does! it’s just that he doesn’t think logan’s quite ready to learn how to do a baby cartwheel yet, like freddie’s offering.

virgil’s mother gets a new camera that morning from virgil’s father, and spends the rest of the day breaking it in; a lot of those are of logan (“baby’s first christmas!” she says, “you’ll want these for later!” which patton certainly is not contesting) but everyone gets their photo taken a lot, too. patton’s already gotten a promise from mrs. danes that she’ll send him a copy of virgil, so heavily dusted with flour that it makes him look like a ghost, after freddie got it in her head to storm into the kitchen and start a food fight when the culinarily-inclined danes siblings were tucked away for far too long, shouting about family time!

he teaches essie how to finger-knit a braided row that might become a blanket, later, sitting side-by-side on the couch, as freddie and annabelle both try to teach logan how to roll over on virgil’s new, fluffy, gray rug, as logan sits in his carrier and gnaws, slobbering, on his new jupiter teething toy. he’s about two months away from all that, but hey, if they’re dedicated to teaching him, maybe logan’s a quick learner.

virgil teaches him how to know when to flip a pancake, and sure, sometimes his pancakes are very pale, and sure, sometimes they’re very dark, but hey, at least patton knows how to keep an eye out for the popping air bubbles at the edge of the batter now!

meredith sits with him on the couch, a hand on his shoulder, watching fondly as all of her children bicker over the latest results of their card game and patton’s sitting with a snoozing logan in his arms, and says, “it’ll all go by a lot faster than you could ever guess, you know. cherish it.”

but mostly, patton remembers a lot of laughing, and the fighting being mostly joking in nature and never very serious, and no stilted small talk or muffled gossip or terrible catered food or itchy tulle dresses or ill-fitting suits or the desperate urge to steal a bottle of merlot and sneak out onto the balcony with christopher. he remembers the warmth of his sweater, and the look on each of the danes’ faces when logan seems to consent to being passed around with minimal complaining (except for screaming when silas holds him, but he’s easily enough calmed when patton picks him back up.)

and patton remembers this too.

they’re all sitting in the living room, waiting for the last of their christmas breakfast-for-dinner to cook, and he and the danes’ are all gathered in the living room; patton’s just finished a session of tummy-time with logan, so logan’s cuddled in his arm, eyes hazily lidded, like he’s about to drop off for another nap, but not quite sleeping yet.

the danes’ are all talking about family stories in the past, and patton is hopelessly trying to map out their extensive family tree in his head; virgil’s mom is the youngest of four girls, and virgil’s dad is the youngest of nine, so patton has absolutely no chance of keeping uncle marco or great-aunt maud straight in his head, he really doesn’t, unless someone wants to hand him a visual aid or something.

currently, the conversation’s centering around a great-aunt winnie; freddie’s namesake, apparently.

“—never got an ounce of common sense in all her life, but god, the woman was funny,” meredith finishes.

“aw, it passes down to winifreds through the generations,” silas says, and freddie reaches over to smack the back of his head, grinning despite herself.

“shut up, silas.”

“yeah, shut up, silas,” virgil echoes, grinning. “it’s not freddie’s fault that our parents cursed her with that name, it’s not like they have a very good track record with naming.”

“virgil!” meredith gasps, jokingly offended, which would probably be more effective if all five danes siblings hadn’t sounded off in noisy agreement. patton directs his smile down at logan, lest meredith try to net him to her side, because, well. the names they’d given all their children were nice names, of course, it was just… they were certainly all choices.

“he’s right, mom,” essie agrees, smiling up at her mom apologetically. “i mean, he has the most cause to complain, so—”

except virgil hisses at her, and patton looks over at them curiously.

“you do?”

“he doesn’t know?” silas says gleefully.

“i mean, well—” virgil says, fumbling.

“—’cause, i mean, virgil thomas isn’t so bad,” patton says, glancing out at the rest of them. “that’s the pattern, right, an, um… unusual name first and a real normal one in the middle? uh, like winifred jane, right?”

“okay, see, what i said was,” virgil says, clearly scrambling. “i like that yours and logan’s middle names are thomas, i wish mine was too, that’s why it was my confirmation name, so—”

“your middle name isn’t thomas?”

“absolutely not,” freddie says, absolutely mirthful. “it’s, like, one billion times worse.”

“— but,” virgil says, “thomas is my confirmation name, which is what i told you, and also what i prefer, because what they gave me—”

“they’re noble names!” mark says, which would probably be more convincing if he wasn’t fighting his own smile.

“ names?” patton repeats. “you’ve got two middle names?”

virgil grumbles into his glass, something like look at what you’ve all done, and patton looks at him quizzically.

virgil lets out a long, slow sigh. “you have to promise not to laugh, and that you won’t tell anyone.”

“i won’t,” patton vows loyally.

“my name,” virgil says, sighs again, and continues, “is virgil tringad luigi danes.”

patton blinks. and then he presses his lips together for a moment, but he can’t help the way the corners of his lips twitch up.

“you said you wouldn’t laugh,” virgil says, offended.

“it’s a hilarious name,” freddie says.

essie, pitying, pats virgil on the shoulder. “it is a pretty funny name, virge.”

“luigi,” patton manages to say, when he’s pretty sure he won’t burst into giggles just from opening his mouth. “like. like from—”

“ don’t,” virgil groans.

“like from mario?!” he says, and presses a hand over his mouth before he really starts laughing at virgil.

this very obvious ploy doesn’t work, because virgil turns his disgruntled gaze back to him, before—

“like luigi, my grandfather,” mark corrects, before he smiles, too. “and, yes, also like mario.”

“you hate me,” virgil grumbles to mark and meredith. “i mean, seriously. tringad?”

“it means fair town!” meredith protests. “you couldn’t exactly be virgil sideshire luigi, could you?”

“you hate me.”

“oh, bunny, of course we do,” meredith says. “that’s why we fed, clothed, and housed you for eighteen years, before eventually passing the family business down to you. i mean, clearly, it sounds like your father and i loathe you.”

“oh, yeah,” virgil continues to mutter, “there’s wyatt james and esther marie and silas matthew and winifred jane, and then i, virgil tringad luigi—”

and that’s what tips patton over the edge, the laughter bursting out of him before he can even try to stop it. virgil’s betrayed face almost makes it funnier; it’s the kind of laughter patton couldn’t stop even if he’d been trying (and he had been trying!) but once it explodes forth, it feels so good and so right that he wouldn’t even try to stop, and it’s the best kind of laughter, belly-aching and breathless and making his cheeks hurt, he hasn’t laughed like this since god knows when and that makes it all the better, all the more that he wants to laugh, and then—

and then, the most beautiful sound that patton’s ever heard.

logan’s laughing. a beautiful, bubbly, precious little baby laugh, eyes crinkling up, smiling up at patton, laughing with him, and it shocks patton into laughing right along with him, sure that his smile is splitting his face, because his baby is laughing.

“he’s laughing,” patton says in disbelief, and lets out a breathless exhalation, looking up at the rest of the danes’. “logan’s laughing!”

“logan’s laughing!” virgil cheers, any betrayal over patton laughing at his name forgotten, and meredith says, “his first laugh?” as mark says “congratulations!” and patton looks down at logan in his arms, reaching a hand to tickle a little bit at logan’s belly, so blinded by his smile and maybe happy tears that he can only see logan’s smiling, perfect face.

“laugh for your papa, honey!” patton urges, gently tickling his belly. “go on, baby, laugh!”

and logan does, and it’s so beautiful, so precious, and patton is euphoric, letting out a laugh with him that might be a sob, disbelieving and overjoyed as the rest of the danes’ provide a delighted cacophony in the background that logan seems to turn to to listen, before looking up at patton and laughing again. his son’s first laugh, happening in his arms, surrounded by people who support him, and one of his best friends, and—

and it’s the best christmas present he’s ever gotten.

⁂

logan’s tuckered out from his first laugh and his second laugh and the third and fourth and on and on until patton lost count, because each and every danes made their very best attempt to make him laugh, with none as successful as virgil, and patton treasures every single one, because his baby. laughing.

the first outward expression of joy, other than laughing. a huge step toward his own expression as a person. 

it’s perfect. logan’s perfect.

patton rubs at his aching cheeks, still smiling, as he slowly steps back from logan napping away in his carrier.  

logan sleeps on, and so eventually patton turns his back on him, approaching the diner’s kitchen.

“anything i can help with?” he asks, even though it doesn’t seem necessary; the danes’ are all a well-oiled machine, all seemingly used to their jobs preparing their massive breakfast-for-dinner.

meredith glances out at the kitchen; virgil flipping pancakes, jostling elbows with silas frying bacon at the same stove; essie checking biscuits set out to cool; freddie and annabelle laughing as they cut fresh fruit; wyatt scrambling eggs; mark flipping waffles out of the iron with professional efficiency.

“how about,” meredith says, clearly struggling to come up with a job that didn’t really require cooking that hadn’t already been taken.

“i could set the table?” patton offers, and she smiles at him in relief, clapping him on the shoulder. 

“yes! set the table. um, plates are there, silverware should be—”

“over in the basket,” virgil says, “we moved ‘em,” and meredith nods.

“ma’am, yes ma’am,” patton says, and goes over to gather an armful of plates, a handful of already-napkin-wrapped silverware.

his parents would probably be aghast that he was eating off plastic plates, with durable forks, for christmas dinner. patton pushes the thought of his mind, like he has been for the nearly two months he’s been gone, but strangely, it hurts less.

like a bruise that’s starting to heal.

patton can only hope that pattern continues, but he decides to focus on setting down plates and silverware, instead.

he ends up filling pitchers with juice and hot cocoa/coffee and regular coffee and water, too, before the danes’ all come to finish their own jobs and cart out platters and platters of food; hashbrowns, eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy, fruit, pancakes and waffles—it’s a veritable feast, and patton’s mouth is watering just looking at it.

virgil pushes a mug in his hands, and patton’s about to thank him until the smell hits his nose.

“this is decaf,” he says, holding it back out for him.

“ how,” virgil says disbelievingly. “i poured it when you weren’t looking!”

patton grins at him. he could tell him it’s the smell—decaf always smells different than fully caffeinated—but he’s having too much fun showing off that he knows it’s decaf before it even touches his lips to consider that, yet.

“i know all,” patton says, making his tone aloof and mystical, so that virgil snorts at him.

“okay, well, you should still drink it.”

“it’s christmas!” patton says, aghast. 

“it’s dinnertime,” virgil says.

“i’m not seeing your point,” patton says, and virgil sighs.

“look,” he says. “just… drink the decaf, as a christmas present to me. just the reassurance that i’m trying to keep you from tossing and turning all night.”

patton hesitates, staring at him, before he sighs.

“i’m not going to like it,” patton grumbles.

“i’d never expect you to,” virgil says, a laugh in his voice. 

all the rest of the danes’ have started filtering in from the kitchen, carting the last of the plates; virgil sees them, and ducks into the kitchen to help. patton deliberates going, too, except annabelle starts chatting with him about logan, his favorite topic of conversation, so he’s a bit distracted.

the scent of fresh-baked pastry and apples and cinnamon brings him to a pause, staring at the plate that a familiar pale hand sets down in front of him.

they’re not apple tarts. the ones at his parents’ party are twisted to resemble little roses with perfectly spiced, perfectly baked, perfectly cubed apples in the center, overlaid with an elaborate, perfect lattice. perfect, perfect, perfect; just like everything else is supposed to be, at a sanders party.

these are more like mini apple pies. unassuming and simple—a crust rolled over the top with an x cut into the center, the edges clearly pressed down against with a fork. not at all uniform, or particularly picturesque. not perfect.

patton finds himself getting choked up anyway.

  “i couldn’t, um,” virgil says, and coughs. “i couldn’t find a recipe for apple tarts, this is the closest i could get, but i hope—”

“i love them,” patton says, cutting him off, and if his voice a bit more watery than usual virgil doesn’t comment on it. “i-i love them. i just— thank you.”

it still doesn’t feel like enough, thank you, he means, it doesn’t feel like enough to tell virgil for everything he’s done for patton, for logan. it’s so thoughtful, and such a sweet gesture, to bring the part of christmas that patton’s been audible about missing that virgil could conceivably bring to patton. and he did.

he gave patton presents, and comfort, and the opportunity to get to know his family, and the closest thing he could get to apple tarts. apple tarts, patton’s favorite christmas tradition. right here. in addition to a welcoming, kind family, and presents, and providing the impetus for his son’s first laugh—

it’s not enough. it feels like it might never be enough.

virgil settles in beside him, the rest of the family all sitting down, still laughing and chatting, reaching for platters and starting to pass them up and down the table.

“what are friends for, right?” he says quietly. 

patton tries to swallow down the lump in his throat, and tries to smile at virgil. virgil smiles back at him, soft, and understanding, and patton thinks that maybe he doesn’t really have to say anything at all.

he plucks one of the apple pies. it’s still hot enough that it feels like it’s burning the tips of his fingers as he drops it on his plate. he cuts it, and the scent of apple and cinnamon comes through even clearer. he lifts a heaping forkful to his mouth, blowing out a breath in a futile attempt to cool it, before he eats it, savoring the flavors dancing on his tongue.

it tastes like christmas.

⁂

virgil’s stretched out on the rug, lying on the ground with a hand on his stomach. everyone else has claimed most of the furniture, similarly food-stunned and lazy.

“so i guess people don’t want to make dessert or anything, then?” his mother teases the whole room, only to be met by a chorus of groans that virgil only ever really hears on thanksgiving, or christmas, or the random weekends where they’d all decided to try out a variety of new recipes for the diner and gorged themselves on it and all of its subsequent, experimental variations.

everyone is sleepy, and quiet, and content. virgil’s content.

essie and annabelle slumped against each other, legs tangled together as their feet are propped up on the same (new) ottoman; silas is on the other cushion of the loveseat next to them, close to nodding off; wyatt and freddie are sitting together on the couch with their parents, deep in a game of go fish; patton’s flopped out on his belly, not far from virgil, along with logan, who’s having some tummy time. some classic christmas music is playing in the background.

it’s been a good christmas, a great christmas, even; he’s gotten presents to help make the apartment look a little less barren and a little more homey, patton and logan had a good day, he got to spend a lot of time with his siblings and his parents and his future sister-in-law. and, considering that his dad’s nodding off on the couch right now, it means that christmas is winding down.

there’s always this strange feeling that virgil gets, right before he goes to sleep on a holiday, or after a really good day. sometimes, he feels like he’s so hyperaware of everything that could go wrong, that when days turned out as close to perfect as they could—like today—it felt bittersweet, that such a good day had come to such a satisfying closing, but at the same time, thinking about how quickly things were changing, everything that could happen, and he’s almost a little afraid, every birthday or christmas or thanksgiving or family weekend, that it’ll be the last one like this, the last one where he and silas won’t fight, the last one where they’ll all be together like this, the last time it’ll go well.

he knows how unlikely he is that that feeling is right, but, well. anxiety. it tries to convince him that it’s right all the time. and it is, in a way; logan’s never going to be this little again, for a holiday like this. essie and annabelle will get married, and grow out of their honeymoon phase. freddie might be whisked off to paris or cairo or london or tokyo with her intention on running away to the circus. wyatt might drown himself in work and not escape from the operating room. silas might get bitterer, and bitterer, and his parents’ constant reassurances that they’d grow out of whatever rivalry they’ve got going would be wrong.

his parents are getting older, too. there are more gray hairs at his father’s temples than there were when they moved away. and that’s going to keep happening, and soon, it won’t just be gray hairs.

virgil shakes himself, and rolls over, enough to come face-to-face with logan. logan’s enough to jolt him out of that particular line of thought; it’s hard to think about aging and all the scary things that comes with that when he’s staring a baby dead in the face.

“oh, hey,” he says. “‘sup, buddy, you kinda zoomed on over here, or did i just roll real far?”

“you rolled real far,” patton says, amused. “logan’s not due to start crawling until about may or june.”

virgil makes a noise of understanding, before he says, “yeah, probably too much to expect to get two major milestones on one day, huh?”

logan babbles at him in agreement, and virgil smiles, offering him a finger to grasp and slobber on.

“yeah, it would,” he murmurs to him. “one’s just fine, though. good job on that. laughing’s awesome, you’ll love it.”

“yeah, he will,” patton says, beaming at logan, lightly rubbing his back before propping his chin on his hand. he had a look on his face; he wasn’t smiling as widely as he had been, when he was talking to logan, and, weirdly, it strikes virgil that he might not be the only one with a case of holiday melancholy.

of course he wasn’t, virgil scolds himself a moment later. jesus, if anyone was afforded a case of holiday moodiness, it was patton, who had just gone through his first christmas without his parents, knowing full well that he was going to take steps to face a lot more than just christmases without them. 

virgil’s so entrenched in this line of thought that it’s almost jolting when his mother says, “well, it’s probably time to head back to the inn.”

“oh!” patton says, surprised, and virgil carefully takes his finger back from logan, who seems to pout at him, but doesn’t start crying, which is really the best he can hope for. he manages to push himself onto his feet.

the goodbye hugs pass by in a rush; it’s not their last goodbye hugs—they’re all coming to the diner tomorrow for a goodbye breakfast—so they’re quick, everyone eager to drop into bed and sleep off their food comas. 

“patton, do you want to walk back with us?” his mother asks. “since we’re all walking the same direction.”

“oh, no, that’s okay,” patton says. “i thought i might, um. help virgil pick up a little.”

virgil looks at him a little strangely; they’d washed all the dishes, and really, the only picking up that needed to be done was putting pillows back on their proper couches, and throwing away the last of the plastic cups people had been sipping wine and beer out of. nothing really intensive, and, honestly, nothing that couldn’t wait until morning.

“plus, um, i figured i’d make sure logan’s all good before the walk back,” patton says, adjusting logan a little so that virgil’s mom could coo at him—it’s a grade-a diversion tactic, virgil has to admit, just showing off the baby.

fine, it’s worked on him before, he isn’t heartless, it’s a baby, and more than that, it’s logan.

“all right, well,” she says, floundering.

“it won’t take very long,” patton says, “i just don’t want you to wait very long, or anything.”

“oh, that’s not a problem,” she says briskly. “i can just make sure—here, i’ll pick up in here, you two take the kitchen, we’ll be done. before you know it.”

“okay,” patton says. 

they go into the kitchen. it really is just throwing away crumpled napkins and dumping discarded drinks into the sink before sorting it into trash and recycling, but patton seems strangely fidgety, changing the way he’s holding logan about five times.

“you okay?” virgil asks, once that they’ve cleared up everything.

patton clears his throat, adjusting his grip.

“i just,” patton says, and takes a deep breath. “i think i want to call my parents.”

virgil stops in his tracks. “oh,” he says, and he’s sure he sounds a little strangled.

“not, like,” patton says, and lets out the breath. “not the house, i don’t think i could handle—um, i think i might leave a message on my dad’s machine at work. no chance of anyone answering, but… but i can still say merry christmas, and tell them about meeting up after the new year.”

“meet up?” virgil repeats, striving to keep his voice neutral.

“i should at least,” he says, and swallows. “i think i should at least tell them about the emancipation thing to their face. right? i’d want someone to tell me about that, so i just—i don’t want to blindside them, that’s all. i think i’ve done enough of that.”

“you didn’t,” virgil starts, before he stops, and says, “are you sure about this?”

“yeah,” patton says. “yeah, i’m sure.”

“okay,” virgil says. “do you want—i mean. should i go in the other room, or—?”

“no,” patton says, then, “i just—i want you there. we could step onto the balcony maybe?”

virgil nods. 

“it’s just,” patton says. “i—i dunno. it feels… wrong, i guess. to not at least try to talk to them. it’s christmas.”

virgil lets out a sigh. because, well. he may hate emily and richard sanders, but if it’ll make this kid feel better about the christmas he’s had…

well, who is he to stop his friend from feeling better?

[bellesbooknook]

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This review can also be found on my Goodreads as well as my WordPress blog

When I first started looking up 2020 book releases, this book was one of the first ones I saw, and I immediately gravitated toward it. A YA contemporary in which two queer teens set off on an epic summer road trip bound toward Pride? This sounded exactly like the kind of queer novel I’ve always wanted to exist, plus an indie movie that I would instantly watch. So I was immensely thrilled when I got the opportunity to read an early copy of what then became one of my most anticipated reads for 2020. 

Unfortunately, in the end—and it actually pains me to say this—I felt very let down by this novel.

First off: Positive Things!

I loved that this book was essentially a love letter to LGBTQ+ history and why we have Pride today. I absolutely loved Shirley and Babs as characters and what they represented. The older generation who were a part of history when queer folks were not as accepted and needed riots and underground bars in order to carve out a space in the world and make their voices heard. This is a part of history that they feel should never be erased, that the new generation of queer folk should know about. At the same time, they also recognize that the community is constantly changing, and with that so is the language. Shirley and Babs very much represent bridging the gap between the old and young generations of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as reminder that no matter how you identify, the LGBTQ+ community should always feel like family, like a place where you can feel safe and accepted.

My Critiques

I guess my biggest critique in regard to this novel is that I felt I was sold a very different story from the one I actually got. From the synopsis, we’re led to believe this novel centers around a summer road trip to Pride—you need look no further than the cover to see that even it invokes this kind of story. In actuality though, most of the novel takes place at the summer cabin belonging to Mark and Talia’s grandmother, with the first chunk of the story basically consisting of Mark and Talia puttering around the cabin, and Talia constantly getting after Mark for being irresponsible and blowing off his chores. They spend a lot of time at the lake before the roadtrip even enters the story, and when it does it feels like it’s over in a matter of pages. I feel like the roadtrip element of the story was so oversold for this book, and for what we were actually given I couldn’t help but think, Wait, was that… was that the road trip?? Seriously misleading synopsis, seeeerious letdown.

Another issue that kept me from enjoying this book was the fact that...there wasn’t really any one character who I genuinely liked. Neither protagonists, Mark and Talia, are super likable, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to care about either of them as the story went on.

Mark, for one, is a pretty selfish, irresponsible character through the entire novel. He cares so much about going to Pride for his own reasons, completely neglecting everyone else and their needs in the process—including his kid sister. I’m not even kidding when I tell you the amount of danger he puts his little sister in, all because he cares more about going to Pride. After their car breaks down, they hitch a ride from a complete stranger, drive into a big city they don’t know, where they proceed to hang out at another stranger’s house filled with people. Then when Mark’s mom pulls up in her car to pick them up, Mark literally tells his sister he owes her one, then runs away in the opposite direction and leaves her standing by herself on the doorstep. Needless to say, Mark is pretty immature. And not the best big brother, either...

Talia, on the other hand, particularly rubbed me the wrong way. She’s a typical social justice bully. And by that, I mean she carries herself as the “perfect” social justice advocate who feels the need to educate everyone at any chance she gets, not necessarily out of good intentions but just so that she can feel superior to them, because they’re just not on her level. She almost seeks out any opportunity to call anyone out for even the tiniest things, regardless of whether she’s on their side or not:

“Paige,” says Talia, “remember what I said about outing people?”

“Yes,” Paige says, “and I’ve thought about it. I don’t like that rule. It’s totally fine that Mark is gay, and if it bugs anyone, that’s their problem.”

“Yes,” says Talia, “but that’s not really the point. I think—”

I cut her off. I don’t have the energy for one of her political debates. “It’s fine, Talia. I don’t care if she outs me.”

“You’re pretty privileged to feel that way,” she says.

This moment especially irritated me. So for one, you’re overstepping boundaries and telling other peoples’ children how to behave (and toward their own sibling) when that’s not your role or your place to do that. And two, the fact that in one instance you’re allegedly standing up for Mark and fighting his battle for him—which I feel like is almost just as bad as outing a queer person..?—and then the second that he calls you out and says, “No, it’s okay, I’m totally cool with it,” you instantly whirl around and start a separate argument with him. So let me get this straight, you don’t want anyone to out Mark because that’s problematic. But then, Mark isn’t allowed to have any say in being okay with it anyway, because he’s… too privileged? Sounds more like Talia herself needs to learn boundaries, to step down, and to not shout over other queer people to satisfy her own self-righteous, social justice complex.

And the hilarious thing about this is: Talia isn’t perfect, either. There are countless times in the novel where she herself even admits that she still has a lot to learn, she still makes a lot of assumptions and oversteps. There’s even a point in the novel where she expresses her frustration over having to live in a society that creates a gender binary system where everyone’s put into boxes and no one understands what it’s like to live as nonbinary (like her partner) and have everyone assume your gender for you. Yet… she does this exact thing.When she first meets up with Erin and their friends, she instantly refers to several of them as “she” and “her” and “girl” without even thinking whether they identify that way.

Essentially, Talia expects and demands perfection from everyone else, yet she herself doesn't even match up to her own expectations. She’s willing to give herself the benefit of the doubt for not always knowing everything, yet she doesn’t give anyone else permission to have these learning experiences themselves. What I see in Talia’s character is also what I see in a lot of internet discourse and what truly irks me about “callout” culture and aggressive social justice policing in online spaces. People who use their own knowledge as a weapon rather than as a tool to initiate communication, empathy, and understanding.

Final Thoughts: I went in fully wanting to love this book for what it is: a celebration of queer youth, of Pride, of embracing who you are. And in many ways, this was that. At the same time though, there was a lot that I wanted this book to be but found it lacking, and by the end I was just very underwhelmed. Again, I really wish that the story had centered more around a road trip and to have it be more than...like, five pages.

Even the “family drama” that was also part of the plot was pretty underwhelming, and for how much it was built up over the course of the novel, by the time we reach the big reveal—the looming question of why Mark and Talia’s parents haven’t spoken in years—I just thought, Wait, that’s… that’s it? That’s the whole thing?”

Ultimately, I just wanted so much more from this book than I was given.

* * *

So, that concludes my full review for When You Get the Chance by Tom Ryan and Robin Stevenson. Let me know down below: What are some 2020 releases that you're looking forward to this year? I'd love to hear!

Until next time!

[musicalgeek24601]

Winchesters in Stars Hallow

       Sam and dean were teens when they first ventured into the beautifully unique town, yet simple town of Stars Hallow. It was a small town in Connecticut, just outside of Hartford. The town had a vintage, almost cute look to it. Every inch of the town was clean and surrounded with people who all seemed to know one another and who seemed overly content with their town. The houses were big and the flowers were in bloom.

       “who the hell would want to live here? This place looks like it never came out of the 40s.” Dean commented. He was 19 at the time dressed in Metallica shirt and a leather jacket, jeans and worn out work boots. “this place makes me want to puke, we need to get in and out of here as soon as possible.”” Dean continued.

Sam was 16 at the time, his eyes had been focused on the book he was reading. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans. As he looked out the window, he sighed and slumped in his chair. Great another case. He thought. More mindless killing, more monsters and another chance for dad to critique everything I do.

         “I don’t want to be here anymore then you guys do.” John spoke.  “But Annie said there was a case here, she said it seemed like vampires. 13 people were murdered within 3 weeks, the blood was drain from the victims’ bodies and all of them had weird markings on their necks. Annie and her daughter are scared they might be next.”

          “since when do you care about Aunt Annie?” Dean questioned. “the two of you haven’t spoken to each other in about 15 years and now were racing off to go save her and her kid.”

           “there still family, Dean. I may not get along with her, like I used to, but I’m not going to let them die if I can stop it.”

Sam looked at his brother and father with confusion.

          “who’s aunt Annie?” Sam asked. “and why have I never heard about her before?”

            “She is my younger sister.” John revealed. “after your mother died, Annie moved in with us for a few months and helped me to take care of the two of you. she was living in jersey at the time and she dropped everything to help me. But I started to research about demons and hunting them, I got the idea to try and eliminate the creature that killed your mother. I told Annie what I wanted to do and I asked her if she could take care of you guys on her own while went hunting….it didn’t go over well with her. We got into a huge fight. She was convinced that I was crazy, she said it wouldn’t work, and if it did I would get myself killed. She told me I was acting recklessly and selfishly…she claimed I was so focused on revenge that I was putting what I wanted before what the two of you need. When I refused to see things her way, she left town and never spoke to me again. Well that was, until last night when she called my cell phone.“

            “well she wasn’t wrong.” Sam mumbled.

            “I did what I had to in order to protect you boys!” john shouted.  “there are monsters in this world and they are merciless! They would kill you without even thinking about it! What kind of father would I be if I didn’t teach you how to defend yourself against them!?”

           “That’s not the point!” Sam argued. “You put us in danger every day! you make us travel across the country risk our lives to save people we don’t know! what kind of father forces his sons to hunt down these monsters!?  We never had a choice, it was this or nothing! We’re not even searching for the demon that killed mom anymore! we haven’t had a lead on that in years! So, what’s the point of all this? To kill all the monsters? To save all the people? It’s not going to happen! More and more of these creatures keep turning up and new demons are made. We keep going back to the same states even the same towns. Wouldn’t it have been better to have normal lives? To have a home, friends, a high school that we stay at for more than a year. ”

        “This is who we are, this is what we are meant to do. We are saving lives, we are helping people! I didn’t force you to join the hunt, I recall you begging to hunt with us. When I left you alone and dean and I would hunt. You were miserable! You had no friends, no hobbies. You were desperate for some kind of excitement.”

           “I was kid back then, I didn’t know what I was getting into!”

            “shut up! The two of you!” Dean shouted. “You guys are always at each other’s throats! For once I’d like us to just go on a hunt without you two arguing over the same shit!”

John parked the impala in front of Luke`s diner and gets out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Sam and dean follow after John. then the three sit at the counter. Luke, a man in a red flannel shirt and a blue baseball cap comes out of the kitchen. He had dirty blonde hair and brown eyes, he looked to be in his early 30s. he walked over to the Winchesters with a notepad in his hand.

          ”are you guys ready to order?” Luke asked.

           “yeah we`ll get two burgers and a salad. “ John replied.

Luke wrote down there order on his notepad.

            “alright. Anything else?” he asked.

            “yeah. What do you know about the deaths around here?” Dean asked.

Luke raised an eye brawl.

            “the deaths? People get really old and then they die. Not much else to tell.”

              “no, I’m talking about the 13 murders that happened in only 3 weeks.” Dean replied.

   Luke laughed.

               “look, kid. I don’t know where you think you are? But nobody in this town has enough of a mean streak to kill anyone, let alone 13 people. The only people that die in this town are the elderly and even they take their sweet time with it.”

    John goes into his coat pocket and takes out his fake FBI badge and shows it to Luke. The boys take out there badges as well.

               “we are federal agents we know for a fact that there has been strange murders here.” John exclaimed. “we aren’t some reporters looking for a story or curious customers. We are here to do a job. Were here to fix what is going on here and all we want is some answers. Your shop is in the center of town. You must have heard or seen something.”

               “there was no attack!” Luke yelled. “ trust me I would know! I live in this town, and people love to gossip here! So if there was an attack, it wouldn’t be a secret! Everyone would know! Also for your information there hasn’t even been any attack even remotely fitting your description anywhere in this state! If there was I’m sure it would have been cover on the news or in the paper, but there is nothing about any of that. Oh and I can tell those badges are fake. Look I don’t know if your insane or pulling some kind of prank but if you don’t want me to call the police, I would advise you to get out of my diner.”

              Meanwhile as john was speaking with Luke, Sam began to watch a beautiful girl as she entered the diner. She had straight long light brown hair and big blue eyes. her skin was pale and her name was Rory. He watched as she walked past him and sat next to a women in her 30s with dark brown hair and the same blue eyes. the two women chatted and eventually some local boy, who had previously tried flirting with the mother, tried the same tactic with the daughter. Which ended in wise cracks and the local boy’s extreme embarrassment. Sam smiled he could tell by just watching her that Rory was a funny and down to earth girl, he liked that.

          “Sam, Dean. Let’s go.” John spoke.

        Just then a women walked in. she had her thin blonde hair in a ponytail and had dark brown eyes. she was dressed in a blue sweater, a white denim jacket and black jeans. Around her neck she had a white scarf. Holding hands with the women was a little girl with short blonde hair, dressed in a purple shirt with a pink coat and jeans. The little girl had a smile on her face and chubby cheeks, she looked no older than eight. The women smiled as she spotted John and the boys.

         “john!” the women called out waving her free arm. The women and her daughter rushed over to the Winchesters. Her smile grew bigger as she came closer. She hugged John tightly. “I didn’t think you guys would actually come! This is so exciting!”

     “of course we`d come, you said-“ John began to say.

But Annie wasn’t listening, she was already hugging Sam and Dean. Both boys gave their father a look of discomfort and awkwardness.

          “it’s so good to see you boys! the last time I saw the two of you was when you were babies, and now look at the two of you are men! We have a lot to of catching up to do!”

She hugged them again.

         “come sit and we`ll all chat.” She said with a smile as she made her way to an empty table.

           “this girl is out of her mind.” Dean whispered to Sam.

Sam nodded.

            “I think that’s a requirement to live here.” John commented to Dean.

But the three Winchester men followed Annie and sat down with her.

          “Annie! Focus!” John shouted.

Annie turned her attention to her brother.

          “You said that you were in danger.” John told her. “Annie, what’s going on? “

         “oh…well I kind of…just said that to get you here.” Annie admitted. “I knew you wouldn’t come if I had just asked, I knew my only chance of getting you here was to lie. But I do need your help, it’s just not a monster thing.”

John rolled his eyes and looked at his sister with anger.

                “then what is it?” John asked, his voice stern.

          Annie began to sob.  

             “John, I know we haven’t been close in a really long time. But you used to be someone who I was always able to go to when things went wrong in my life. So, I’m asking for you to help me or tell me what to do…. I really need you now.”

       Annie and John were ten years apart. The two shared the same mother, but different fathers. But there mother raised the two children together on her own. As kids John and Annie had always been close. John was always there to protect his odd little sister, who constantly was getting picked on. She didn’t like to stick to what was expected by society, she liked to move to her own beat. She was loud and outgoing and always was drawn to the strangest people. But she was kind, she had one of the biggest hearts. Annie sometimes had relied on John to be her friend, sometimes he`d be someone to protect her, then other times they`d be foes who would argue over foolish things. But as he looked at her crying, he knew he needed to be there for her. So John hugged her, then looked at his sister with compassion.

            “whatever is going on, I’m here for you. I’ll do whatever I can to help you, Annie.”

        She smiled slightly and wiped the tears from her cheek.

              “my husband left me a few months ago. now it’s just me and Clare on our own. I had been able to work and get as much money as I can. But it is not enough and I can’t take on any more hours because I must take care of Clare. The bills have started piling up now and I’m behind in rent. I just can’t do this on my own…maybe you guys can stay in town for a while and help me out, maybe watch her for a couple hours while I take on more hours or even a second job.”

              “or I can just give you some money. Wouldn’t that be easier?”

Dean and Sam watched as the scene unfolded. It was odd for them to see their father be nice or encouraging to anyone, he was never that kind of person toward them.  But Dean knew how it felt to have a sibling to look out for and the need to protect them at all cost. Dean understood why his father was doing all this.

               “no! I know where you get your money and I don’t want to be a part of that.” She told him. “you have all those credit card schemes you pull, I’m not taking a chance with that.”

He sighed.

               “well I don’t want to see you work yourself to death. I know the kind of person you are, and you`ll regret It if you’re working so much that you don’t see your kid.” John spoke, he thought for a moment. “how about this....me and the boys will stay in town and work ordinary jobs and we`ll give you the money we earn.”

                “how about half, so then you can have some for you and your boys.”

                “you got yourself a deal.” He smiled and she smiled back.

                “thank you.” she spoke.

      Annie leads the Winchesters back to her house. It was a big blue house on peach street with huge backyard. The home was two stories tall and as they walked in the home had a country style look to it.

      “home sweet home.” Annie spoke. “the guest room is down the hall, we only have one but we have a camp bed that I can move in there, obviously there is already a bed in there, and the couch pulls out into a bed so one of you can sleep there. Clare and I have rooms` upstairs.”

John nodded. Annie ran her figures through her hair, not knowing what to say next, a rare case for her. She looked at the boys and noticed Sam was the only one carrying a bag.

    “so do you have more bags in the car? I can help you bring them in if you`d like.” Annie offered.

John smirked.

       “we just have the one bag, we travel light.” John replied.

       “well I better get ready for work, I got to head out in a few hours. But if you`d like I’m sure Clare would be happy to show you guys around town. “

        “that would be good we can start looking for jobs anyways.”

         “I think Gypsy at the auto shop place is looking for full time workers, and there are a few places in town looking for part timers.”

       “sounds good.”

Annie walked toward the stairs then turns back towards her brother.

          “thanks again, John. It really means a lot to me.” She spoke. Then headed up stairs.

John gave her a slight smile.

Clare lead John, Sam and Dean over to Gypsy`s shop. As they walked down the streets of the town people took notice of the outsiders.

         “what’s wrong with these people? Why are they all staring at us?” dean asked angrily. “it’s like they’ve never seen another person before.”

Clare chucked.

       “Stars Hallow doesn’t get many get many tourist, thought Taylor would say otherwise, the only people who come into town are those who live here or the typical relatives of towns members.” Claire explained. “but everyone is really nice here, once you get to know them. I spent my whole life here, eventually everyone becomes like family. everyone around here watches out for one another and befriends everyone.”

        “that’s pretty cool.” Sam replied.

they waited for Gypsy to come out with applications, Kirk, a skinny 30 year old age with blonde hair walked over to the family.

         “do you know where Gypsy went? My mother wanted me to pick up her car for tomorrow.” Kirk spoke.

          “she just went inside the garage to get applications for a job.” Sam spoke.

           “oh your looking for jobs! I can help you with that I have 32 jobs in town. There really easy to get around here and you really don’t need any experience. Although experience would be best, my mother once got a job at Miss Patty`s working as an assistant yoga instructor and as she tried to do this one move she got her legs stuck over her head for a week. I had to help bath her for a week.”

Sam, dean and Clare were trying very hard not to laugh.

          “that’s awful, kirk. How did they fix her?” Clare asked.

           “lots of medication and physical therapy.” Kirk replied. “The medication made her loopy though she was convinced that she was queen Elizabeth and began demanding things like crumpets and fine tea. She wouldn’t leave the house without a corset, do you know how hard it is to find a corset for 58 year old women.. very hard.”

Dean turned toward his father with a look of disgust and discomfort.

         “how long are planning on making us stay here?” Dean whispered to his father.

          “just until we can get her back on her feet.” John replied. “…so probably about a month at the least.”

            “a month?!” dean shouted with shock.  “Are you serious!? Come on! We’re wasting our time here! Do you know how many cases were gana miss by staying here? Everyone looks at us around, like they know we don’t belong. I feel like if a cat got stuck in tree that would be the most interesting thing that ever happened here. Its creepy everyone is so happy and friendly. It’s not normal.”

 Sam chuckled at the irony of that statement.

        Gypsy made her way out of the auto shop and began talking to John and Dean about a job. Clare suggested that Sam might be able to fight a part time job at Doose`s market. They two made their way to the town square where all the shops and stores were located. As they walked in Sam saw Rory again. She was chatting with her friend, Lane. Lane was a Korean girl with big glasses and always seemed to be dressed like a punk rocker. Sam hid behind a nearby shelf, wanting to observe the type of girl Rory was.

     “what are you doing?” Clare asked. Looking at Sam as if he were insane.

      “shh.” Sam whispered. “I don’t want her to see me.”

       “who? The Asian chick?” Clare whispered back. “you don’t have a chance with her, her mom doesn’t let her date anyone that isn’t Korean.”

Sam sighed.

       “no, the one that the Korean girl is talking to.”

 Clare smiled as if she heard the juiciest secret.

          “oooh you like Rory!” she shouted, with a devious grin on her face.

           “Clare. Shut up.” He whispered.

           “Sam and Rory sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” Clare sang aloud.

As Rory looked toward them, Sam quickly pulled Clare behind the shelf. Clare grinned, Sam rolled his eyes.

      “didn’t you say we had to find some guy named Taylor about the job? How about you go look for him.”

         “I`m not the one looking for the job.” Clare replied smugly.

         “I’ll give you a dollar, if you go look for him and leave me alone.”

            “make it five.” She demanded.

          “deal.” He replied as he reached into his wallet and handed her the five. she took his money and walked over to another part of the store. He watched Rory for a bit, trying to think of something clever to say to her. She was so smart and yet also odd, which liked about her. He noticed Rory struggling to get a can off one of the top shelves. He took a deep breath and decided to swoop in to help her. He walked over and took the item she was reaching for and held it out to her. She smiled and took the can from his can.

      “thank you.” she spoke.  “you know they really should put those on a lower shelf, they’re going to lose a lot of business this way.” she commented a bit awkwardly.

Sam chuckled.

          “I agree, it’s not every day that someone freakishly tall will come to the rescue.”

She smiled then laughed.

            “so, are you from around here?” Sam asked.

             “yeah I lived in Stars Hallow my whole life. My mom and I love this place, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.” She replied. “so, are you visiting someone here or are you moving in?”

               “umm…. its undecided at this point.” He lied. “my family is visiting my aunt and were not sure if we are going to stay or not.”

                 “well I can show you around, if you want- “

                   “Rory!” a raspy voice shouted. they turned to see a short heavy set middle aged women with blonde curly hair and brown eyes coming their way.

                    “Rory!” the women called out again. “your never gana believe what happened. I let your mother watch my cat for 15 minutes while I went to get groceries. My husband just got home and he said the cat is acting all crazy now! I don’t understand it; your mother is like poison to animals. Now I got to get the cat its medicine while I’m out.”

                 “oh, I’m sorry to hear that, Babette.” Rory replied. Suddenly Rory`s phone began to ring.

                “it’s my mom, she is probably wondering where I am. I should head home.” She spoke. She turned to Sam. “it was nice talking with you.”

Babette looked Sam up and down.

                  “you must be one of Annie`s nephews.” Babette commented. “She was talking about trying to get her brother and his kids to come into town. Didn’t think it would actually happen, she has been talking about getting you guys here for years.”

                “really?” he questioned.

 Babette nodded.

                “oh yeah. She always talks about how much she missed her family, her and her brother used to be real close. She has a lot of wacky stories that she tells about the two of them, her and her brother got into all sorts of trouble as kids. Anyways tell me about you? what’s your name? Annie said she had two nephews, where is the other one? How long are you staying?”

He looked at Babette with a look of confusion. What was with all the questions? He thought. Where should he even start?

           “my name is Sam, my brother`s name is dean. My dad and my brother are looking for jobs at the auto shop. But I’m not I`m not sure how long were staying.”

Babette`s phone rang.

           “hold on, Dean.” She said to Sam, clearly having had mixed up the names.

           “oh, I’m not- “

             “I’m coming home right now! I promise!” Babette said into the phone. She looked over same “I`m sorry, got to go. My cats need me right away! I`ll see you soon, dean.”

As Babette leaves, Sam could hear snickering from behind him. He turned and saw Clare standing there.

                “well looks like your Dean now, unless you want to go around correcting the whole town.” Clare told him. “Babette is the town gossip, she talks to every single person she sees. Each person she will tell the latest news to, which today will be your family`s arrival. When she talks about how she met you, and most likely describes you, she`ll be calling you dean. This is a small town her gossip travels fast, it’s probably already too late to fix it.”

         “come on news can’t travel that fast.” Sam corrected.

Suddenly Miss Patty and Kirk enter the market and pass by Sam.

          “hi dean.” Kirk spoke while passing by Sam.

            “hi dean.” Miss patty called out, as she passed him too.

Clare chuckled.

            “I told you.” Clare said to Sam.

       A month later. Annie was starting to get back on her feet, she could get enough money to settle her debts. John and Dean were already sick of Stars Hallow and were eager to leave. But Sam was different. He liked the people of Stars hallow, he liked the kindness and quirkiness of the people. But most of all he had fallen in love for the first time. He had been dating Rory for the past month and he didn’t want to leave her. he was convinced she was perfect and that he was the love of his life.

            “I’m not leaving!” Sam yelled at his father, as the two men stood in the middle of the living room. “I`ll live on my own if I have to. I`ll get a job or even two, but you can’t make me go with you!”

              “I`m your father, I can do whatever I want!” john replied coldly.  “You wanted to be a part of this hunting life, now you have the responsibility to do your job and hunt with us!”

              “I`m sick of hunting!” Sam yelled. “I`m tired of all this crap! I`m done with monsters and spells…I don’t want this life anymore! I want to be normal! I want to go to school with the same kids for more than a semester! I want to live in a house and neighbors and friends! I want to have a real job where I can earn money!”

             “well you don’t have a choice! You’re a hunter and that’s what you will always be! There is no way out and no way around it! Once you’re in it you’re in for life! I don’t care that you hate this job, or even if you hate me. But you’re a hunter and that’s your life now.”

Sam rolled his eyes, then looked at his watch. He then grabbed his bag from the floor and quickly walked to the front door.

         “where are you going?” John shouted.

         “I have a group project with some kids in my class, so I’m meeting them at the school.” Sam murmured. Then exited the home and made his way toward the town.

              Sam waited at the bus stop for Rory to get home from school. He sat on the bench reading the latest novel that Rory had suggested. His father didn’t know about Rory, he made sure of it. He was consumed with the idea that if he told him, he would make them leave as soon as possible. John had always thought his sons that `you can’t make friends or start relationships in their line of work, because people will get hurt. ` but he couldn’t help how he felt, from the moment he saw Rory he knew he was in love with her.

    As she got off the bus, he couldn’t help but stare. She had gorgeous blue eyes, straight long brown hair and a face that always seemed to have a smile.

      “hey Dean.” She called out to him, as she waved her hand happily.  

Sam walked over to Rory and hugged her tightly, then kissed her lips. she smiled at him and looked into his eyes and passionately kissed him back. the two held hands as he walked her back to her house.

         “dean, can I ask you something?” Rory asked nervously.

         “sure, what is it?” he replied curiously.

         “well we have been going out for a long time now, it’s been almost a month. You have met my family…..but I haven’t met any of your family.”

        “Rory, we’ve talked about this,” he reminded her. “I just don’t think you meeting them would be a good idea right now. There is a lot going on with them right now.”

        “I know you keep saying that!” she replied irately. “But it makes me feel like you are embarrassed of me or something?”

        “no, that’s not it!” Sam assured her. “you’re the greatest thing that ever happened to me. But I just don’t want…. I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of freak or hate me because of my family.”

  She looked at him confused.

          “why would I think that?” she asked.  “My family is far from normal, and you don’t think any less of me.”

          “of course. but you don’t understand-“

          “just consider it, it really would mean a lot to me.” Rory plead.

   Sam sighed.

           “alright, I’ll ask them.”

to be continued....

[gyrlversion]

When YouTube Reactions Stop Being Polite And Start Getting Real

Like cats with strings, days at the zoo, and bedroom sing-alongs, Youtube reactions videos are about as old as YouTube itself. For the past 10 years, the genre has maintained a relatively consistent look and feel, even as the platform around it evolved into the second-largest site in the world. Now, change seems to be catching up with it. Slowly but surely, over the past two years, YouTube reaction videos have been taken over by the pros. Lawyers, doctors, plant experts, and folks of seemingly every other kind of occupation are reacting to videos related to their line of work. Want to watch a Wiccan react to a YouTuber becoming a witch for a day? You can. How about a magician critiquing beginner magic? Or a music producer swooning over the harmonies in “Bohemian Rhapsody?” Those are available, too.

Professional reactions aren’t feats of filmmaking, editing, or artistry. Instead, their crowning glory is having breathed new life into one of YouTube’s oldest and most consistent pillars of content. Data confirms that professional reactions are having a moment: YouTube searches for videos with the term “react” in their title are the highest they’ve been since 2014 — the starting point for available data — and searches for videos with both “real” and “react” in their title (as in “Real Engineer reacts to The Big Bang Theory”) saw their biggest week in five years this past January.

Around the birth of YouTube, before video editing services were widely available, reaction videos were limited to home videos of children gleefully ripping open Christmas presents or reacting to The Scary Maze Game. As time went on, editing made it possible to superimpose videos on screen, alongside the reaction, allowing the viewer to watch them simultaneously.

For the most part, reaction videos on YouTube showed regular people reacting to mainstream movies, television, viral videos, fails, and memes. Anyone could react to anything, no expertise necessary. Over time, some channels attempted to set themselves apart with video titles like “dad reacts,” “couples react,” or even “Black guy reacts.” The Fine Brothers, the pre-eminent pioneers of the react genre, were granted trademark registrations for “Kids React” in 2012 and “Teens React” and “Elders React” in 2013 before eventually spinning out “Adult,” “College Kid,” “YouTuber,” and “Celebrity” react series as well. The new wave of professional reaction videos have taken inspiration from those series titles, adding “real” or “expert” to an occupation as a way to legitimize their content, as in “real chef” or “dinosaur expert.”

All reaction videos, professional or not, tend to stick to the same standard set-up. The reactor sits in front of a laptop computer or looks off-camera to a large monitor, positioned to one side of the screen to allow room for a video inlay in post-production. They press play and the reaction begins, with the audience at home following along through that little video-inside-the-video. The reactor adds commentary, sometimes pausing to complete longer thoughts before moving on.

But where reactions by non-professionals tend to be structurally loose and emotionally unbridled, pros take on a more constrained air of authority. They quibble over small details, and assert their expertise by recounting their own experience on the job. Their familiarity with the topic adds new dimensions to the viewing experience, which is especially effective in giving new life to classic movies or television shows that have been etched into the pop culture zeitgeist.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when reactions got professional, but it was likely sometime in 2016. In November of that year, Wired uploaded a video that featured dialect coach Erik Singer analyzing accents in Hollywood films. The video, “Movie Accent Expert Breaks Down 32 Actors’ Accents,” was a hit and Wired expanded the series to include four more videos with Singer, in addition to the reactions of other professionals like a lawyer, a hacker, and the CIA’s former Chief of Disguise. Since then the format has absolutely exploded, with Buzzfeed, Glamour, SELF, New York Magazine, GQ, INSIDER, and countless independent YouTube creators making their own videos of experts reacting to or reviewing scenes from television and movies.

It was a video from the Wired series, ���Surgical Resident Breaks Down 49 Medical Scenes From Film & TV,” that prompted Dr. Mikhail “Mike” Varshavski D.O., known to the Internet and his patients as Doctor Mike, to consider the reaction format for his channel. Doctor Mike began making videos on YouTube in April of 2017 out of frustration. In 2015, Buzzfeed had written up his Instagram profile, telling readers “You Really Need To See This Hot Doctor And His Dog.” After that Doctor Mike says that “what seemed like 1,000 other outlets” wrote about him, too, fascinated by the “paradox of seeing a good-looking doctor who is also practicing in real life.” People named him “sexiest doctor alive.” This exposure helped him attract more than one million Instagram followers, but he felt that his attempts to post “meaningful content” about medicine on the platform were futile. He saw YouTube as the right venue for educating a young audience.

Over the course of Doctor Mike’s first year on YouTube, his videos about medical myths and how to get the right amount of Vitamin D had attracted more than 380,000 subscribers to his channel. Still, he wanted to reach more people. While watching Wired’s video, a reaction struck him as a great idea. He had seen the success of a video he made comparing his life as a doctor to the portrayal of doctors on TV and decided to lean in to mainstream media’s depiction of him as “real-life Dr. McDreamy,” the fictional doctor from Grey’s Anatomy. In April 2018, he uploaded “Real Doctor Reacts to GREY’S ANATOMY,” which showed him watching the TV drama for the first time, pausing to provide his thoughts on when it was stretching the truth. The video was an immediate hit, with several million views in the first few days, and his follow-up videos reacting to The Good Doctor and House M.D. were similarly well-received. It was the spark his channel needed; less than one month later, he hit one million subscribers.

Inevitably, not everyone believed he was for real. Doctor Mike sees 30-40 patients a week in addition to writing for the American Academy of Family Physicians and making regular appearances on the Fox Business Network and various morning shows. Despite all this, he is still asked if he really practices medicine. Brad Mondo, a hairdresser with a popular series called “Hairdresser Reacts,” has fielded similar doubts from viewers. He no longer works day-to-day in a salon, but has seen strangers on Reddit talk about looking up his license to verify that he is qualified to be styling hair. That strikes him as silly. “What would be the point of me faking it?” he muses.

By the time Mondo hit upon his “hairdresser reacts” series, he had been creating content on YouTube on-and-off for about 10 years. As a teen, he “was obsessed with YouTube,” he says, but was never able to consistently attract an audience. Plus, he wanted to be a hairdresser, so he stopped uploading, went to school, and worked at a salon for a few years. When he returned to YouTube in 2017, he still struggled to find his footing. As a teen, Mondo had been a fan of the Fine Brothers’ React videos and recalled that one of his favorite creators, Elena Genevinne, had crudely bleached her hair on camera several years prior. On a whim, Mondo sat down to film his reaction to Genevinne’s video and posted it to YouTube with an innocuous title he can no longer recall. It blew up. A few days later, to increase the video’s already impressive traffic, he changed its name to “HAIRDRESSER REACTS TO AWFUL DIY HAIR COLOR! [sic]”

The series changed his life. In the two years since posting that first video, his channel has gained more than 2.7 million subscribers and he now owns his own hair care brand, XMONDO HAIR. He has diversified his channel content to include makeovers and reviews, but his reactions are more popular than ever, consistently pulling in between one and two million views each, despite the fact that they follow the same basic format as the original. Sure, Mondo has upgraded his bedroom to a shiny studio set-up and is noticeably more comfortable and charismatic on screen, but he is still sitting at a desk and reacting to a hair care fail. And viewers still eat it up, more than 100 reactions later. He thinks people even upload their own hair care fail videos to YouTube in the hopes he will find them and include them in a video. During a recent reaction, he was visibly delighted when a young woman attempting to dye her hair a neon yellow-green shouted him out. “Brad Mondo is crying,” she giggled as she applied dye to her roots. “Aww, hi Amy!” he smiled, “You’re in one of my videos now!”

Reactions from professionals can also add new layers of interest to pop culture touchstones we already love. Doctor Mike says people click on his video because they’re fans of Grey’s Anatomy, but end up sticking around for his commentary. It’s one of the reasons he doesn’t “want to let the hot doctor thing go” yet. “I can wear a flashy suit, be funny, be flirty, do something that’s going to get people watching [because] it means that I can be honest with the medical information, because I myself am the scandal.” At the end of the day, despite the detailed breakdowns of medical terminology he provides while reacting, “it doesn’t feel like you’re learning,” he says. And, for Doctor Mike, that’s kind of the point.

The honesty that Dr. Mike claims to bring to his videos may be the most compelling component of professional reactions. Experts provide a satisfying palate-cleanser to the unchecked proliferation of opinions online. In a “post-truth” world, there’s some relief in sitting down to watch a reaction based in fact and experience and grounded in authority. At the same time, reactions help us feel more connected to experiences we all share. A 2011 New York Times article summarizing the merits of reaction videos said that watching them not only allowed us to “vicariously recaptur[e]” the “primary experience” of our own reaction to something, but also reminded us of “the comforting universality of human nature.”

In a now-deleted video from 2016, the Fine Brothers said that they hoped that reactions they produced on their channels would “live on forever as a time capsule [that] people can look back on to see what various generations were saying about the culture and issues of our time.” It’s a grand vision for a genre a little over a decade old, but even Mondo is thinking that far ahead. He says he is happy to give his audience what they want for as long as he can. “I’ll be milking Hairdresser Reacts until the day I die!”

By Elizabeth De Luna

The post When YouTube Reactions Stop Being Polite And Start Getting Real appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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[junker-town]

Tiffany Hayes won’t be the WNBA’s best-kept secret for long

Tiffany Hayes of the underestimated Atlanta Dream isn’t a Batman or Robin. She’s just damn good.

You’ve probably never heard of Tiffany Hayes — and she knows it. Even within the WNBA, she doesn’t command the attention her play deserves.

“I wouldn’t mind being Batman, but Robin is something that I’m just used to. That’s the role I’ve been playing my whole life,” says the 28-year-old shooting guard. “Maybe that’s why I’m always underrated and getting looked over.”

In high school, “Tip,” as her friends called her, was on the best team in the state. College scouts came to see her teammates and became enamored with her all-around game. At UConn, she won two national titles alongside Maya Moore and Tina Charles, whose shadows loomed so large that Hayes fell to the second round of the WNBA Draft. Now she’s with the Atlanta Dream, a team written off year in and year out due to their lack of starpower.

That hasn’t stopped them this year, though. They earned the No. 2 seed and a double bye, and now are locked in a 1-1 series with the Washington Mystics for a chance to reach the WNBA Finals.

Hayes, the eternal sidekick, has become the team’s centerpiece, but she still can’t seem to shake her Robin status. Her stats aren’t as gaudy as peers like Liz Cambage and Breanna Stewart and she’s not an endless highlight reel like Diana Taurasi or Delle Donne, though Hayes’ mean left-right cross has been known break Skylar Diggins’ ankles.

The same trait that made the Dream such an unlikely threat also makes Hayes one of the league’s best kept secrets: balance. Now that they’re finally center stage, it’s becoming obvious to the rest of the league that she’s the perfect star for a team without stars. Instead of a signature move or otherworldly skill, Hayes’ biggest strength is not having a weakness.

NBAE/Getty Images

Tiffany Hayes (center) admits she’s “used to” playing the sidekick role despite producing like a star.

The day Tiffany Hayes found out she hadn’t been selected for the 2018 WNBA All-Star Team, she made Sportscenter thanks to this half-court buzzer beater. She’d been an All-Star in 2017 and set a goal to repeat that honor in 2018, but was the only top-20 scorer in the league to miss out.

“I’m not going to make it a goal of mine again,” she says now. “Just going to do whatever my team needs me to do to get wins, and if it happens it happens. If it doesn’t, then I won’t be hurt about it.”

Her snub added insult to injury for the Dream, who were predicted to be a non-factor in preseason rankings (the league’s own site picked them to finish ninth). They missed the playoffs in 2017, which led to them hiring a new coach in Nicki Collen and a new GM in Chris Sienko, as well as making a number of roster changes.

As it turned out, the most important moment in the team’s transformation happened the season prior. Early in 2017, Angel McCoughtry, the team’s only Olympian and All-Star, announced she was sitting out the WNBA season to rest. McCoughtry’s absence meant Hayes, the player so used to being overshadowed, had no choice but to get in the mix. That shift continued to impact her play even after McCoughtry returned at the beginning of this season.

“She got more comfortable being assertive,” says Amber Smith, an assistant coach at the University of Kentucky who was also on Hayes’ high school team. “She can guard your best player and she can drop 30, but now she’s actually making those kinds of plays more often.”

When describing how exactly Hayes has elevated her play — and what exactly makes her play distinctive in the first place — it’s tough not to resort to cliches. She’s the team’s leading scorer at just over 17 points per game and a threat on both ends of the floor, but the Dream aren’t exactly an offensive powerhouse. Despite their standout season, few picked them to advance to the WNBA Finals, especially with McCoughtry out again, this time with torn knee ligaments.

But those who’ve watched Hayes play her whole life insist we must look beyond the numbers to those oft-lauded intangibles.

“She’s more or less a casualty of the general overlook of the WNBA.”

“When it comes to stars, we generally overindex for the things they do well, and we underplay their deficiencies,” says Rashad Tyler, an assistant coach with the Winter Haven High School Blue Devils (Hayes’ former team), and her former trainer. “But with a player like Tiffany, I’m aware of the lack of deficiencies. She’s going to make a good team great. Your defense is going to get a little bit better, your passing is going to get a little bit better. It’s easy for me to understand why you win with players like her.”

Hayes is a hard worker without being a basketball obsessive (look for her at Dave and Buster’s on Wednesdays, when it’s half-price). She’s serious and even workmanlike: Collen calls her a “cog,” and ESPN analyst LaChina Robinson says she’s the Dream’s “motor.” But when necessary, she can serve up flash and passion as easily as she steps back to facilitate for others.

“I think she’s more or less a casualty of the general overlook of the WNBA,” Tyler says. “Most of its stars were established long before they got to the league. Is some of the lack of appreciation for her because of her lack of publicity prior to going pro? Because it couldn’t be her game.”

NBAE/Getty Images

Hayes and college coach Geno Auriemma at a Team USA practice. Auriemma said Hayes was “maybe the easiest recruit that I’ve ever, ever, ever had.”

Basketball was a family affair for Hayes growing up in Lakeland, Fla. She shot hoops with her brother in the driveway and loved playing with the boys, but it was her mom who pushed her to reach her WNBA potential. Ms. Jenny Hayes played basketball through high school and college, and still coaches at Lakeland Senior High School. Whenever her elder son, eight years Tiffany’s senior, praised Tiffany’s ability, Ms. Jenny would issue a stern warning:

“I told [him], don’t mess with me until she’s ready,” Ms Jenny recalls. “Once I start working with her, I’m not gonna treat her like a kid, I’m gonna treat her like an adult.”

Tiffany was deemed ready when she was around 10, so Ms. Jenny started a youth team and she coached her daughter through middle school. Tiffany’s talent was obvious — ”She would come to my high school practice, and pretty much out shoot some of my high school kids,” Ms. Jenny remembers — but her mom made sure to develop her work ethic. Ms. Jenny showed up to practice early, so Tiffany had to be at practice early. Since they were both at the gym anyway, drills inevitably followed. To this day, Tiffany still hears her mother’s voice in her head every time she gets the ball, shouting “Look up!”

After practice came homework, and then a pre-bed routine of sit-ups and push-ups. “She would say, ‘Ma, are you serious?’” says Ms. Jenny, laughing (Tiffany insists now that the pushes to practice and work out never bothered her).

Her mom would tell her about all the other millions of girls trying to get where she wanted to go: the WNBA. They were all going to practice, but the ones who did extra work were the ones who’d actually make it. Plus, Tiffany needed to be twice as good as everyone else so no one could accuse Ms. Jenny of favoritism.

By the time Tiffany was in high school, letters from colleges started coming, so many that they didn’t fit in their mailbox. Even as state titles, the Florida Miss Basketball title, McDonald’s All-American honors, and more proof of her skill flooded in, her actual game was hiding in plain sight. During Hayes’ senior year, her high school coach LeDawn Gibson told The Ledger she had one critique of Hayes’ play: sometimes she was too unselfish.

But when legendary UConn coach Geno Auriemma saw Hayes, he knew she possessed something unique. It was the perfect match.

“It wouldn’t be a stretch for me to say that recruiting Tiffany Hayes was maybe the easiest recruit that I’ve ever, ever, ever had,” Auriemma writes in an email.

The year she started college was the same year Elena Delle Donne rocked the women’s college hoops world by electing to leave UConn before even playing a game. Without Delle Donne, Hayes was her class’s best player, even though she knows that wasn’t the plan. She was a four-year starter and won two titles, but she’s still not etched in UConn lore the way her more famous teammates are. On the team’s Wikipedia page, her name appears exactly once, in passing.

“Right away as a freshman, she showed all the things that she’s showing now, and that doesn’t happen very often,” Auriemma writes. “But the whole four years she was here, she was kinda under the radar.”

In retrospect, the fact that she wasn’t able to win a championship for the team as its star (in 2011 and 2012, the team lost in the Final Four) ultimately impacted her WNBA draft selection. Hayes remembers sitting in the ESPN studios, located a stone’s throw from her vaunted alma mater, bewildered as the first round of the 2012 WNBA Draft passed her by. She was ultimately picked No. 14 by the Dream, which she now says is a blessing in disguise because Atlanta is the closest WNBA city to her family. Eight of the players picked ahead of her no longer play in the WNBA.

“She played with so many great players [at UConn] and when she was drafted in the WNBA, I thought someone had a steal,” Auriemma writes. “Somebody got her and they probably don’t even know what they’ve got.”

NBAE/Getty Images

Hayes and the Atlanta Dream continue to disrupt the WNBA’s hierarchy.

Defining Hayes’ place in the WNBA’s hierarchy like how figuring out how the Dream fit in the league’s postseason: neither resembles the competition. The Dream’ style isn’t always pretty -- they have the WNBA’s best defense and its third-worst offense.

“They’re not a hot offensive machine that space the floor and pass well and all that stuff that people love to watch.” Robinson says. “But the disrespect has to stop because they’re winning. They’re beating your pretty little team.”

Tiffany Hayes and the Dream don’t need to be famous. They just want to be respected. And whether that recognition ultimately comes, Hayes will keep playing. Her goal isn’t to be Batman or Robin, but to refine her own game into the stuff of basketball history books.

Or, as she says: “You don’t have to be a household name to be considered good and to get what you deserve.”

[theconservativebrief]

Culture, especially popular culture, always has some relation to the conditions that surround it, and these days, there is no shortage of music that reflects our economic reality.

But that reflection isn’t always quite what you’d expect. During the Great Depression, which saw widespread homelessness and US unemployment reaching 25 percent, popular films showed the very rich drinking cocktails in formal dress; cheery songs like “Pennies From Heaven” charted. And in the post-2008 decade of recession, instability, and income inequality, blockbuster acts spent a lot of time telling us the incredible time they were having.

The real story of the past decade has been harder to hear. A decade ago, as some Americans remember all too well, the US economy began to crumble, and took the rest of the world’s markets along with it. First housing prices started to slide, revealing a nation caught in a deflating real estate bubble. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers came next.

The cascade of damage was worldwide, but it took on an especially fierce pitch in the world’s largest economy: Beginning in late 2008, the US was losing more than half a million jobs a month. By 2009, the Great Recession’s first full year, national unemployment reached 15 million people, or 10 percent — the first double-digit rate since the early 1980s. Trillions of dollars of wealth disappeared from the economy, and 4 million Americans lost their homes in just two years.

Meanwhile, the nation’s biggest songs in the year after the crash were numbers by Flo Rida, Chris Brown, and Coldplay that had little to do with economic strain. It takes any cultural form — movies, books, visual art, whatever — months, sometimes years, to respond to social, political, or economic change. But pop music has less lag time than most other genres.

(In previous centuries, folk songs about hangings or train crashes could appear almost instantly. And it wasn’t for nothing that Public Enemy’s Chuck D once called hip-hop black America’s CNN.)

By the end of 2009, though, the biggest-selling singles were songs like Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” and various party-hearty numbers by the Black Eyed Peas. And so it went, into the teeth of the recession.

Lady Gaga performs “Bad Romance” during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards on September 13, 2009. Christopher Polk/Getty Images

Popular music, of course, becomes popular partly because it takes people away from their lives. Be it the blandness of affluence or the pain of personal difficulty, there has always been an element of aspiration and fantasy to popular culture.

But from Woody Guthrie singing about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression’s devastations in the 1930s to rock and soul bands of the ’60s and ’70s writing about war and civil rights to British punks shouting about unemployment and the working class to rappers spitting about injustice and racism, popular music has always also delivered social critique — much of the time including economic issues.

What we see in the decade following the 2008 stock market crash, though, is a relatively tame popular music world in which best-selling artists and left-of-the-dial “alternative” musicians share an apparent lack of interest in the nation’s economic state.

“Most people in the mainstream music world — whether it’s pop, indie, or country — don’t want to offend any of their fans,” says Margo Price, a country singer-songwriter who has been outspoken about economic structures. “Their big labels don’t want them to, either.”

After the pain of the ’08 crash, the nation experienced an economic recovery that shifted a massive amount of income from the poor and middle class to the very rich. The big banks got bigger; huge bonuses returned. Just two years after the crash, the nation’s Gini coefficient, the standard measure of wealth distribution, was at 46.9, making the US among the most unequal of modern democracies.

We can call the past 10 years the decade of inequality. So what, then, does the music of inequality sound like?

Part of the paradox here is simply that monetary wealth gives musicians — at least, the tiny minority experiencing material bounty — something to sing about.

Musicians are not unique here: In the years since the Reagan administration, a reveling in what used to be called heartless materialism has become de rigueur. (The shift in personal style from an old-school rich man like Warren Buffett, who made his early fortune in the 1950s, to Donald Trump, a product of the gilded ’80s, is hard to miss.)

Artists singing about how much wealth they had accrued fit cleanly into a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous culture. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Marvin Gaye were filthy rich, but it’s hard to imagine them crooning about their money and mansions. Nor can we imagine Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, or Liz Phair posing in a bath of diamonds, as Taylor Swift does in the 2017 video for “Look What You Made Me Do.”

Many of the songs about luxurious possessions and lavish lifestyles — the sonic equivalent of Keeping Up With the Kardashians — are the descendants of “Mo Money Mo Problems,” the 1997 Notorious B.I.G. song. But in many cases, there seem to be no serious problems besides having too many women or possessions to choose from.

Notorious B.I.G. performs at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago in September 1994. Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

“When inequality is high, it’s driven by the superrich, because [the poor] can’t go lower than zero,” says Keith Payne, a University of North Carolina psychology professor and author of The Broken Ladder, a recent book on wealth disparity. “People feel poorer but aspire to higher standards. This leads to a risk-taking kind of life: People are more likely to gamble, play the odds, use drugs or drink, commit crimes. It also orients people to the very wealthy as opposed to the poor.”

These are the classic tropes of hip-hop, a musical style that, Payne points out, surged in ubiquity in the same years as the rise in inequality. A mixtape of conspicuous consumption and runaway consumerism could be assembled from songs like Post Malone and Ty Dolla Sign’s “Psycho” (“got diamonds by the boatload!”), Lil Uzi Vert’s “Money Longer” (“money got longer, speaker got louder, car got faster”), and Lil Pump’s “Gucci Gang” (“Spend 10 racks on a new chain / My bitch love do cocaine.”)

The style became so ubiquitous that the satirical trio the Lonely Island parodied the genre of gold-plated gloat with “I’m on a Boat,” a 2009 rap song featuring T-Pain that makes “yacht rock” numbers like Christopher Cross’s 1980 hit “Sailing” look modest and egalitarian.

More cutting is Lorde’s 2013 song “Royals,” which seems to be aware of how mismatched the music is to the times: “But every song’s like gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin’ in the bathroom / Bloodstains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room / We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams …”

Lorde performs “Royals” onstage for the 56th Grammy Awards on January 26, 2014. Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Part of what looking across the genres shows you is that the big-selling, celebrity-driven mainstream of just about every style of music offers very little social or economic critique. If that’s what you’re looking for, look to the edges.

Mainstream country music, a genre rooted in the rural red-state South, is no stranger to poverty or songs about risk-taking. But it very rarely deals with inequality, says Payne, a native of Kentucky. “The only economic theme is, ‘We grew up poor, but we didn’t know it at the time, and now we’ve got everything we need.’ That’s the theme of countless country songs,” he says.

The country songwriters interested in exploring economics more assertively don’t find a receptive industry, whether radio, country labels, or other gatekeepers. “They are so scared of coming out on an issue that offends Trump America,” says R.J. Smith, a music journalist and author of a recent biography of photographer Robert Frank. What you get, instead, is “good short story-ish songwriting about how people are living, but with little sense of why poverty happened.”

To the extent that there’s been a consistent protest, it comes, curiously, from the fringes of country. Despite its recent political and cultural conservatism, country has been the music of the poor and working class since the days of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. And the alt-country movement, which has co-opted the folk tradition, continued the grit and social criticism of the old days after the big-hatted mainstream moved into formula and political reaction.

This has led to what we could call empathy songs and plutocrat songs: The empathy song looks at the plight of someone crushed under the economic wheel, sometimes speaking in his or her voice; the plutocrat song is typically more overtly political, targeting the damage done by the very rich.

Honorary Americana artist Billy Bragg (who is British but has made several albums of Woody Guthrie’s music with alt-country pioneers Wilco) began performing Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home” after the ’08 crash. (The song is explicitly class-based, describing a “rich man [who] took my home and drove me from my door.”)

And Margo Price’s songs are among the strongest economic critiques post-Great Recession: Numbers like “Pay Gap,” “About to Find Out,” and “All American Made” (“And I wonder if the president gets much sleep at night / And if the folks on welfare are making it all right”) sometimes combine feminism with scenes from the class struggle.

Veteran singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III worked in a vaguely country-folk tradition with his 2010 album, 10 Songs For the New Depression. The songs alternated from despairing to lighthearted (the number “House” is both), and name-check Alan Greenspan and John Maynard Keynes. (One cheeky number is called “The Krugman Blues.”) Peter Himmelman’s “Rich Men Rule the World” is a brutal song in the same vein.

Loudon Wainwright III performs in Copenhagen in December 1976. Jorgen Angel/Redferns via Getty Images

Two classics from the edges of country actually predate the Great Recession, perhaps because the rural South never quite caught the postwar boom like the rest of the nation did. James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make It Here,” from 2005, tells of a struggling, wounded Vietnam veteran, empty storefronts, a failing bar, and the pinch of a stagnant minimum wage. (The novelistic vision is appropriate for the son of Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry.) And while their most recent album is more about race and politics in general, Drive-By Truckers’ 2005 album, The Dirty South, is a forceful look at American poverty and inequality, highlighted by the song “Puttin’ People on the Moon.”

“In our hometown,” Drive-By Truckers leader Patterson Hood says of Florence, Alabama, “the economy collapsed in the early ’80s: During the so-called Reagan boom years, we were like Flint, Michigan. They closed the Ford plant, and there was a domino effect.”

Along with the songs of the late Merle Haggard, Bruce Springsteen’s work serves as a template for bands like the Truckers. The Boss has written some of the best work about the way economics shapes and limits lives — songs like “My Hometown” and the Dust Bowl-inspired Ghost of Tom Joad LP. He has not quite matched these since; his energies have largely been elsewhere. But the 2012 Wrecking Ball LP, with songs like “We Take Care of Our Own” and the Wall Street-dissing “Death to My Hometown,” is a solid stab at addressing what much of the country has been through.

And while the late, great soul musician Charles Bradley largely sang about racism and his personal travails, his “Why Is It So Hard,” from 2011, may be the single most emotionally powerful recent song about poverty and income inequality.

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Hip-hop, too, gets more political and anti-capitalist around the edges. The Coup, the Oakland hip-hop group led by Boots Riley, released a 2012 album called Sorry to Bother You, which would eventually lend its name to the new breakout movie. The album takes a far-left stance on issues of economics and inequality, heavily informed by Riley’s communist beliefs, with songs like “Strange Arithmetic” (“Economics is the symphony of hunger and theft / Mortar shells often echo out the cashing of checks / In geography class, it’s borders, mountains, and rivers / But they will never show the line between the takers and givers”) and “WAVIP” (“I am with the people on the bottom, fella / We gonna riot, loot, rob till we rich as Rockefeller”).

Meanwhile, much of mainstream hip-hop went from fierce anti-racist politics, decades ago, to celebrations of hedonism. Music historian Robert Fink of UCLA points out that in the years after the stock market crash, the nation experienced its first black president, who was widely popular, especially with black people. When Obama was replaced with a man with a reputation for antagonizing black people, alongside a rash of police killings of young African-American men, politically minded hip-hop and R&B artists increasingly focused their attention on Black Lives Matter and related movements, rather than economics.

“I can’t think of a single hip-hop song about people getting subprime mortgages or that kind of thing,” Fink says.

“There is very little in the mainstream music business about economic hardship,” says music historian Ted Gioia. “Are Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift trying to shake things up?” Some artists sing about race and gender, he says, but economics has largely been overlooked in the slick and commercial pop mainstream.

Gioia characterizes the lip service the music industry pays to social issues as a decades-old problem: MTV and the rest of the business largely slept through the AIDS crisis in the 1980s; this time, Gioia says, economic inequality has become the forgotten issue.

But some artists have made an end run around these forces.

One of the most realized looks at the Great Recession and its discontents may not be a political piece of hip-hop or an angry piece of outlaw country, but rather a musical. Hadestown was an off-Broadway “folk opera” in 2016, relocating the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in a post-apocalyptic Great Depression with a wink toward the present. It’s based on an album by folk singer Anais Mitchell that includes contributions from Ani DiFranco, the Haden Triplets, and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon.

Finally, there was a four-disc compilation in 2012 called Occupy This Album: 99 Songs for the 99 Percent. The styles and quality range quite widely, from Michael Moore singing Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” to songs by Yoko Ono, Toots and the Maytals, and Nancy Griffith. (The video for “United Tribes,” a song by Thievery Corporation with rapper Mr. Lif, captures the energy of the movement it emerged from.) Still, it’s hard to miss that many of the songs are old, or only obliquely related to Occupy itself.

One reason songs about the recession and inequality are hard to find may be psychological. The Brooklyn musician Pauline Pisano lost her job as a web designer when the recession hit, and has struggled financially since. But it wasn’t until an NYU course and an exposure to the books of David Graeber that she focused on economic matters and the corrosive effects of debt. (“I feel like the people who cheated won,” she says now. “And for the people who played by the rules, the rules changed.”) She’s since led a musical tour of the South talking to people across the political spectrum about the subject, and her work has been politically energized.

“I was hit by the recession very heavily — why didn’t I put that in my art?” Pisano asks. “Maybe I thought, ‘This is just the way things are.’”

As crucial an issue and as destructive a force as inequality is, it’s not a natural driver for songwriting. “Inequality is the ultimate abstraction,” says Keith Payne. “Art is not typically about abstractions — it tends to be about concrete images. Inequality is neither wealth nor poverty, but the distribution of resources. And who wants to sing about that?”

One glaring irony here is that the past decade has also seen the vast majority of musicians struggling even more than they did previously: The collapse of the sale of recordings has made most of them all too aware of income inequality, especially when they compare themselves to one-percenters of the past (the Eagles) or present (Lady Gaga).

Alan Krueger, President Barack Obama’s chief economist, gave an important speech about the way the winner-take-all economy devastated many rock musicians in 2012, and there are few signs that the musical middle class has been restored.

The larger issue here — the lack of genuinely popular songs about the biggest economic event since 1929 — is pop culture’s claims of being a democratic art. What if popular music does not really express and describe what the mass of Americans is experiencing? And in an era when the phrase “check your privilege” has become commonplace, does it matter if the biggest hits are being made, in many cases, by fantastically privileged people?

Taylor Swift, for instance, comes from a long line of bank presidents; her father relocated to Merrill Lynch’s Nashville office and later bought a share of a record label to help her career. (See also “Uptown Funk” producer Mark Ronson, from one of Britain’s wealthiest families.)

”If it becomes clear that our popular culture is a rich kids’ project, it loses its legitimacy,” UCLA’s Fink says. “Even more than in Britain, we have Horatio Alger pretensions here.” Once we get a sense that our popular culture is the preserve of the very rich, it’s not quite “popular” in the democratic way we typically use the term.

But it also may be that the unpopularity of a president who himself comes from the plutocrat class will finally focus musicians and their handlers on inequality and other pressing issues. “I think that we are living in a very dangerous time,” says Price. “People as a whole are distracted by social media, celebrities, unattainable wealth.”

But things can change, and Price believes they might: “We’re in a turning point right now, and musicians and visual artists have a chance to move mountains with their words. If they would only use them.”

This article was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Original Source -> How music has responded to a decade of economic inequality

via The Conservative Brief

[the-bulletproof-heart]

Underrated Movies of 2017

Hello folks! We are approaching the end of another year and this brings one of my favorite year-end traditions-- end of the year movie lists! My best-of list will be coming soon, but I doubt it holds that many surprises. This was a phenomenal year for film and I suspect my favorites will be similar to most everyone else’s. In the meantime, however, here’s a list of films that I felt fell off the radar in some way during 2017 that might be worth seeing. Some of these are guilty pleasure movies, some of these I believe are legitimately good, but all of them I found enjoyable in some way.

Colossal

This is one of the first movies I saw this year that I full-on loved. It’s a very unique idea and pays fun homage to kaiju films while also telling an interesting and empowering story about a relatable female character. It was advertised as a comedy, and while there are funny moments it is really more of a drama, but the story here is so good I would definitely recommend it regardless. A general warning, this film does deal with the topic of abusive relationships, so if that kind of thing is triggering you might want to avoid this one. But aside from that, if you enjoy films about female characters, particularly characters who are relatable and flawed, this is definitely something you’ll want to see. As of right now, Colossal is available to watch on Hulu.

Raw

This may have been my most anticipated movie of the year, and I was not let down! Raw is a gripping roller-coaster of a film, and another must-see for anyone who enjoys watching female-driven films. Female sexuality and the general female experience are major themes in this film. Every emotional beat is flawless. It’s even more impressive to think that this was director Julia Ducournau’s first feature-length film! I look forward to seeing more from her in the future. A content warning for this one: it does contain some graphic scenes dealing with cannibalism, so if that disturbs you I would steer clear. Otherwise, it is a magnificent horror film! Raw is currently available on Netflix.

The Florida Project

I’ve spotted this on quite a few year-end lists, but I feel like the general public might not be aware of it and I doubt it will get much awards attention, so I’m going to include it on my list of underrated films. The Florida Project is a delight to watch. The cinematography is very tasteful and colorful and the child actors are incredibly engaging. This film so easily could have fallen into depressing “poverty porn” territory, but it doesn’t, largely thanks to being told through a child’s perspective. Some of my friends were divided on the ending, but I personally thought it was fitting. This is currently still in theaters, but once it gets a dvd/streaming release I would encourage more people to see it.

Happy Death Day

This one falls slightly into guilty pleasure territory, but I would still defend it as a legitimately good film. Regardless, it is a total joy to watch. Forget endless sequels and remakes, THIS is the kind of slasher film I want to see more of. The idea, while maybe not the most original, is still pretty creative and is definitely taken advantage of to provide some fun setups. There are some laugh-out-loud hilarious moments in this film. It’s goofy and cheesy in all the best ways, but it does have a nice character arc on top of that. Even if it doesn’t have the biggest budget or most complex story, it is clear that effort was put into making this movie. Don’t expect anything revolutionary, but I’d still recommend it. Watch this with a group of friends expecting something kind of cheesy, and I guarantee you will have a good time.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

This is perhaps one of the most overlooked films on this list, which is a real shame. It tells a very interesting story behind the history of the Wonder Woman comics, while also telling an incredibly sweet romance featuring a polyamorous relationship, something still very rare to see on screen. Anyone who is interested in comics history or positive LGBT representation should definitely check this out!

A Cure for Wellness

This is a true guilty-pleasure pick for me. Yes, it’s cheesy, stupid, long, and a bit annoying at times, but I’ll be damned if this wasn’t still a ton of fun to watch. The cinematography is gorgeous and it lends itself well to creating a delightfully creepy atmosphere. The story combines a sort of mad scientist plot with old European folklore to create a great horror story. Some major content warnings for this film, however: there is a rather graphic rape scene (which happens to also be incest... yeah that was not fun to watch) and some other graphic violence. I totally understand if this is not for everyone. I definitely had my problems with this movie, but overall the atmosphere was just too good that I ended up still enjoying it quite a bit.

The Great Wall

There was a bit of controversy when this came out over allegations of white-washing. While people were understandably upset, the film actually addresses it. It’s directed by a Chinese director (who happens to be one of my favorites) and the theme of the story is basically a critique of western values, using the white lead as a stand-in for white audience members who might need to hear these criticisms. There is no white savior element here. While this still might not be for everyone, I feel the subject matter was handled tastefully enough. There are some stunning action sequences, as one would expect from Zhang Yimou. If you like action films, I’d definitely recommend this.

XX

This movie did get a lot of attention this year, but much it was negative. I’ve seen youtube videos and reddit posts haling this as “the worst horror movie of all time” and to be honest I’m a bit baffled by the negative reception. As someone who literally runs a blog dedicated to reviewing every horror film on Netflix, I assure you there are far worse horror films out there (if anyone truly believes XX is the worst, I dare you to try to sit through The Midnight Meat Train or 13 Cameras). On the other hand, perhaps the negativity surrounding this film isn’t that surprising after all when you take into account that it was directed entirely by women. Now to be fair, I don’t think the negative reviews are entirely due to sexism, but it is curious that this film got such vitriolic reviews when there were lots of other horror films of equal or worse quality this year that didn’t garner the same amount of negative attention. At any rate, personally I found XX hit or miss, as I do for most anthology horror films. It’s made up of four shorts. Two are bad, one is good, and one is brilliant. Honestly I’d recommend watching this for the last short alone (titled “Her Only Living Son”, even if you don’t watch the film I’d highly recommend trying to find this short). Overall the film is about the quality you would expect from a horror film on Netflix, but there are some good moments that make it worth watching if you’re a horror fan.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

I’m not even going to lie, this is a total guilty pleasure. I’m not even going to try and defend this film, because much of it is pretty darn bad. The acting is terrible and the plot has some truly bizarre detours and SO many unnecessary moments. But man is it fun to watch! I’m a real sucker for big sci-fi films, the weirder, the better. I mean, what other films this year feature a subplot where a girl has to stick her head up a jellyfish’s anus to find her lost friend, or Rihanna playing an alien named Bubble (who also gets an entire dance number)? I had a blast watching this. If you like fun, dumb sci-fi, definitely give this a watch.

Killing of a Sacred Deer

I almost didn’t include this, but I liked it well enough that I feel it deserves a shout-out. I’m trying to keep my list to mainly optimistic films, but I figure everyone needs some dark comedy every now and then, and this film delivers. I was’t as keen on The Lobster, this director’s previous film, but Killing of a Sacred Deer hit enough of the right chords with me that I really enjoyed it. It’s funny, well-shot, and has excellent pacing. Some people might be thrown off by the bizarrely dry acting, which is intentional and adds to the film, but can certainly be off-putting if you are not expecting it. If you saw Mother! and thought it was too on-the-nose, you might enjoy this a lot more as it is way more subtle. It’s not my favorite from this year, but I think it still stands up as an engaging and well-constructed film.

And there you have it! There are some I have yet to see (special shout out to Brisgby Bear, which I have not seen but my brother did and said he recommends it-- I trust his judgement!) but for now these are some highlights that might be worth visiting before we start a new year full of new movies. If anyone has any recommendations that aren’t on this list but you feel got overlooked, let me know! I love to find new things to watch.

[dutch-rub]

To My Dem Friends,

If one reads my previous note to my Democrat friends, I said who the Democrats pick as Democratic National Committee Chair (DNC) will have an enormous effect on 2020. I thought the Dems were being total nut jobs to put Ellison in that role. He is so divisive and will never build support in middle America. Yet he might win.

The last debate was today and it was less political than the Grammy Awards. It's too bad no one watched. You really need to watch this 15 second clip. It's exactly what I said even down to the bathroom example. 

The sad part is when I say it Dems thought I was being 'smug.' But when a gay DNC candidate says it it's 'wisdom.' Ditto for my advice to not get too cocky about Clinton winning when MSM media had her at 85%. Oh well.

I hope I've earned the ability to make this next statement (that might also initially come off as brash as the previous two). How did I know these things and 90% of the Dems did not? Let’s face it. I never had a high IQ and now with so many meds my IQ is likely average...if not lower. 

Answer: the main-stream-media really, truley is biased as all Hell. When Dems are watching or reading the news it’s only reaffirming what they want to hear. They think "It's on CNN and the NYT, so it must be true." Not necessarily. What they say might be true, yet the other side is not lied about, it’s just never even mentioned!

Ironically, biased MSM has actually hurt the Dems. It leads the left into a false sense of security. Then they wonder why they are in tears after election day. 

Dems take FOX pundits and use them to stereotype FOX News is ludicrous. I'll bet most Dems think Bill O’Reilly is a news caster. When Brett Baier was doing the news he was awesome. No snark...ever. He asked brutal questions to every guest. Face it, the only time liberals see FOX is when a pundit on MSNBC or Comedy Central take a clip and mock it. 

No snark. I wonder if the Dems realized that FOX News has more viewers than MSNBC, CNN and Headline News...combined, they might have not been counting chickens.

BTW, do you know how many Dems get their ‘news’ from Comedy Central and Colbert? They think that angle is true! Reason #28 why Dems lost.

Liberals have to ask themselves; Do I want to feel reassured or do I want to win? If you want the truth, ask me. I'll point you to the legit news sources. I’ll tell you if I think the GOP is off in the weeds. I didn’t vote for Trump .The articles might even be from the NYT...but articles that were printed on page B-17. (See the bias? They can say “we covered it.”)

I despise Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel but when he's right he's right. He hates moral victory speeches and doesn’t attend. He’s one of the few who knows they actually hurt the party. Want to win, read that link. And since Dems are becoming quite good at moral victory speeches these days, maybe I should buy that Domain Name. (OK, that was snark).

This DNC election next week will be so telling for you.

Another enormous story that is never covered in the news most liberals read. The immigrants in Europe refugees have been a disaster. All the liberals are making the biggest Mea Culpa of their careers. Politicians that outright mocked Poland for not taking more 'refugees' have pulled a full 180. Uber liberal German Chancellor Merkel (Obama’s mini-me) now is offering refugees cash to 'willingly' go back!!! How is that not news?

Oh, it’s from Breitbart so it must be fake...right? Did you check the sources that were linked in the article? Probably not. If so, you are making my point for me.

Since I have you this far out of your comfort zone, I might as well spill all the beans. 

The vast majority of these refugees are single males 20-40. Mmmm. Many of these ‘refugees’ are the same people who made their own country so bad that those citizens are now called refugees. Say what?

And now some German towns can't even have co-ed swim because of real mysoginy. Women are second class to these men and therefore, have the right to abuse them. If you deny that then you really have no idea what these Muslims believe.

Democratic women don't think a housewife in Indiana knows the hypocrisy of how the women's marches look the other way on this? Big error. Or the hypocrisy of the co-leader of that group not admitting Sharia Law is an atrocity against women?

How can Bill Maher be so brilliant to Dems...except when he's concerned that Muslims are different. He points out that a large mass of Muslims haven't assimilated into one country in 1,500 years. They demand everyone else assimilate to them. (Look at Europe right now!). Maybe Bill Maher’s advice should be heeded? He’s certainly not a hater.

How about if we cut right to the heart of it. If a traditional Muslim family moved in next door with female's faces covered anytime they are outside the home, would you allow your elementary school-aged daughter to play over at their house and hear how women are to serve men? Your daughter is single digits. Think before you answer. 

Muslims don't move here to become Americanized. They move here to get us to be like them. Not one other immigrant group has ever come to America with that goal. Let that soak in. Eery other group has come here to work hard, be free, and support the American dream. And we never asked any of them to deny their heritage....just respect ours.

I realize this is a tough one for many people to accept. MSM doesn't cover how bad this has gone in Europe. Muslim boys don't want to shake female teacher's hands. Luckily, some of Europe (finally) saw it for what it is and are demanding they assimilate or they can't stay! Netherlands now leaves the towns to determine if they are trying to assimilate. How is their Dutch coming along? Are they trying to know their neighbors a bit. Are the kids at least trying some after-school activities like soccer?    

But why haven't you heard of these stories? (not rhetorical).

Is demanding English be spoken in schools to the best of one's ability really racist? If an American on vacation gives birth to a child while in Europe, is it racist of that country to not give that baby immediate citizenship? If yes, it appears ALL of Europe is racist then. Who knew? We've been told by Dems they Europeans and Canadians are so 'advanced' than us stupid deplorables. (Dems laughed when Clinton said that of all Trump supporters. As an objective person I could not believe she said it!).

They’re on the coast. They hear news they want to hear and read the news that quotes people that think like they do. Many of you are in the thick bubble of Seattle and the Bay area bubbles...but you still think everyones think like you do. You have no idea what is happening in States you call the "fly-over states."

Fly-over States. Do they even hear themselves? That is so incredibly arrogant. It’s as bad as deplorable. The Dems did just that...flew over them thinking they didn’t matter. Yes, our self-talk matters. 

The Great Land of Myopia 

Democrats actually believe the "Women's March" was a 'grass roots movement' and represented all women. It wasn't an anti-Trump march funded by George Soros. Most Dems don't even know who Soros is...but they can tell me all about the Koch brothers.

And Dems wonder why Trump is picking the Supreme Court to last almost half a century.

If you want comfort and slow death, keep it up. If you want to win, then have a genuinely more liberal outlook. Be tolerant of other’s views. (The irony is so rich those words deserve a new font with drips rolling off).

Just scan the headlines on DrudgeReport.com once a day. Don't codemn Drudge as they simply aggregate news. Read what news organization wrote the story. It will blow your mind what stories are buried deep in the paper. Ditto for Zerohedge.com if one can look over all the finance news. (I give full credit to ZeroHedge contributors, not me, for letting me see the POTUS race was going to be fricken close).

Watch 13 Hours. Watch Ruby Ridge. They are not what you think.

Seeing liberals trying to teach people like me the Constitution is both thrilling and a bit humorous. Please read it. It's what our country is founded on. It's sad it only matters now. Admit it, Democrats mocked people who quoted the Constitution. But now it's their saving grace. 

If we can agree the Constitution is our rule-book, we’ll be more than fine.

Dems, want to help your party? Do not allow them to quote the Constitution and then not allow someone to even speak...let alone at a college campus no less! Or shout someone down. That makes Dems look like such losers to middle America. Because that's what a loser of a debate would do....stop debating.

Conservatives openly critique GOP all the time! Did you know there is a sub-group caucus in the U.S House called the Freedom Caucus? They battle old school GOP almost weekly. That's why they win!

The Dems shout down anyone who does not tout the party line, and that line is issued from the few elites. Notice Dems are run by the 1%. The irony continues. And the Dems get trounced in State legislatures and Governorships. 

If Dems want to win, they will tell the LGBTQ group to zip it and take a back seat. The Dems kow-towed to them and even let them tape tampons on GOP legislatures doors. I'm sure my 75 year old ‘Kennedy-Democrat’ mother was super proud of her party that day.

You let yourself be hi-jacked as no one had the courage to speak up. And why would they speak up? Their political career would be over within days. 

LGBTQIA...really? Every time Dems add a letter they lose one Senate, two Governorships, and 10 House seats. Can we stop already?

I've wanted to say this for a long time. Both parties have some real losers. But notice how quickly GOP gets out the garrote and gets them removed. While the Dems let them hang around forever. Please explain how the Dems even let Anthony Weiner back into his DC office after his sexting scandal? If that were a GOP he’d be told “We’ll mail you your personal belongings.”

The answer is the same people who defend movie directors who are rapists say "Well that's not as bad as when GOP Senator was looking for hookups in a bathroom stall."

The difference is one was removed from office that same day by his own party.

Have some standards that Democrats in ‘fly-over states’ will respect. 

If someone is defending Anthony Weiner, defending the IRS taking sides, defending the media for not telling both sides, defending the decision to allow only five security service (not even soldiers) to protect a United States Ambassador on 13 acres, in a country that was so dangerous that every other country in the world removed their ambassadors....that party will lose again and again...

Stop blaming the GOP, admit you’re in a bubble, stop the moral victory hoopla, and start winning. Rahm was right.

(the links are very relevant to prove that point)

[night-unfurls-its-splendour]

The Critique of Manners Part IV

~Or~

A Very Amused Review of Emma (1972)

One doesn’t really know where to begin with this one. I’ve watched a few of these 70’s/80’s period drama adaptations, but I’ve never written a review for one. I think the tricky thing is it doesn’t feel fair to judge them against more recent adaptations because the approach and quality are so very different to modern television making.

But people do. I’m sure it’s different for people who grew up watching these, who are just used to them and their objectively terrible, stagey quality and can look past that particular weakness on the sheer power of nostalgia.

So I’m going to try and find a middle-ground here where I ignore the stagey and obviously dated aspects and judge it primarily on its value as an adaptation – is it faithful to the book?

Let’s dive in.

Cast & Characterization

Normally I would start with Emma and Knightley but this time I’m gonna switch it up a bit and do them last because… well we’ll get there in a bit.

Let’s start instead with Mr. Woodhouse. I have to say, I kind of like this take. The 1996-7 and 2009 adaptations all kind of went for the same type of older man: a bit stout, or in Michael Gambon’s case… however you would describe Michael Gambon. With Donald Eccles, however, this version goes for a rather more frail looking Mr. Woodhouse; in fact to compare him to any recent Mr. Woodhouse, I suppose he comes closest to Bill Nighy (although the general characterization is of course very different.)  He’s a ridiculous but lovable soul who seems always, of course, worried about his own health and comfort, but in his own selfish way, concerned for his friends and family as well. My only complaint is that maybe they over-utilized him.

I thought the casting of a plump Mrs. Weston (Ellen Dryden) was an interesting choice, and definitely different from other versions. Her acting was actually really good too.

I wasn’t quite so pleased with the characterization of Mr. Weston, on the other hand. I have huge issues with this script vis-à-vis the men, but Mr. Weston and Knightley in particular. The problem with Mr. Weston is how he’s written as just verging on uncouth at some points. There are way too many rustic contractions here: “Ain’t I looking well too, Miss Emma?!’ “’Ark at that eh? The sly young rogue!” “Oh I think it looks tolerably gay and festive, don’t it?” and then just throwing himself back on the grass and chortling when Emma makes her fateful Box Hill faux pas? Like, what the hell? I’m not saying he shouldn’t use a few casual contractions (“How d’you do?” for example) but he seems almost like a positive country bumpkin and I don’t think it’s appropriate; he doesn’t talk like that in the book and I’m just all-around not here for it.

Constance Chapman, a well-respected character actress of the time was cast as Miss Bates, while Molly Sugden, of Are You Being Served? fame was WASTED in the bit-part of Mrs. Goddard. If you ask me, they should have swapped this casting, since I think Sugden, an outstanding comedienne, could have done so much more with the Miss Bates role than the usual wittery-old-lady style chattering Chapman delivered.

Mr. Elton was played by Timothy Peters (Right) and was, eh, adequate. They did slime him up a bit by having him over-eagerly offer to fix Emma’s bootlace, which she points out isn’t entirely appropriate for a man to do, especially the vicar and it’s pretty funny; but other than that, he has all the appearance of being a pleasant young man, as Mr. Elton should – becoming less pleasant as the story progresses.

One John Alkin (left) played Mr. Robert Martin, and he, too, was adequate. There’s not much of him and, since Mr. Martin wasn’t one of those characters this version decided to approach more three-dimensionally, there’s not much to say about him. 

Frank Churchill is… OMG IT’S PRINCE HARRY FROM BLACKADDER!

Ahem. Yes, Robert East (BETTER KNOWN AS PRINCE HARRY FROM BLACKADDER) plays a very agreeable (and smarmy, but not too smarmy) Frank. I think honestly this is as good as this part could get in the 70’s, although at 29 he was a little too old for the part.

John and Isabella, in an interesting (?) casting choice, were played by brother and sister duo, Yves and Belinda Tighe. I actually really liked Yves’s John Knightley (he’s actually one of the more handsome John’s, in a 70’s kind of way; for note-taking purposes I have nicknamed him “Not-Harrison-Ford”), but his sister as Isabella seemed kind of old and had just a really annoying voice. Also she doesn’t look at all like Doran Godwin, and Emma and Isabella are supposed to look somewhat alike.

The real casting stand out for me in this version is Fiona Walker as Mrs. Elton, although she too was a little old for her role, I’ve said before that there are no bad Mrs. Eltons (only bad accents) and she just absolutely nailed the insufferable chatter to a definitive standard (until the recent adaptations – 2009 onward).

I did however, get the feeling in this version that they kind of wrote in a through-line where Mrs. Elton is putting the moves on Mr. Knightley (to the point where they actually wrote out Mr. Elton from scenes he should be in) which was one of those unnecessary deviations which made me raise an eyebrow and also was just… weird.

Now my question is – why do all of the young women in this series kind of look like evil dolls?

Debbie Bowen, from a strictly book accuracy perspective is one of the most accurate Harriet Smiths I’ve seen – in fact we don’t get another this accurate (to my way of thinking) until Louise Dylan in 2009, who fits roughly the same model (fair and shapely). Its Bowen’s acting I don’t like, but I know that in the 70’s, this kind of simpering acting for this kind of character was just unavoidable. It was the style at the time, so I’m cutting her a break critically; but the performance just doesn’t cut it for me.

This Jane Fairfax (played by Ania Marson) is not my favorite interpretation of this character. At first I thought she was going to be alright, but in her first scene she bursts out and actually shouts in frustration at her chattering aunt (which she has some basis for, I’ll admit, since Miss Bates, in her muddle-headed way, could very well have unwittingly spilled the beans about Jane and Frank) but this is far more feeling than we should even have a hint of from Jane at this point. The whole reason Emma doesn’t like Jane (other than the fact that Emma is an attention whore and Jane steals her thunder by being so admired and accomplished) is because she’s timid and demure and reserved.

But the biggest problem I have with this Jane is that she can’t even fucking sing. I know they write it away as her having a sore throat (Which I think is a pull from a different part of the book?) but this was just egregiously bad to me. This is the only time in the series they show Jane singing so it’s never actually established that Jane really is more accomplished than Emma (although they don’t show Emma herself singing or even playing at all either.) Could the actresses just not sing well so they decided to write around it? You could have dubbed it; you had that technology in the 70’s!

OK. Now it’s time to talk about Doran Godwin. I’ve never seen her in anything else so I don’t know if it’s just that she can’t act, but I have no idea what she was going for with this portrayal of Emma, and this is something so consistent and unique to her that I, for once, can’t justify blaming it solely on the director because you can’t direct crazy-eyes. They just happen; and they happen A LOT in this series.

I’ve struggled to find the words to sufficiently describe my feeling about Doran Godwin’s facial expressions and her acting in this adaptation. In my ribbon rating notes I think I describe her as a “witchy automaton”? I stand by it. Every time she talks to someone her eyes go very wide and she sort of looks like she’s trying to hypnotize everyone in Highbury. The effect is just absolutely inhuman. I never thought I’d ever see anyone with more patently crazed Crazy-Eyes than Timothy “Crazy-Eyes” Dalton – but man, Doran “Hypno-Witch” Godwin just stole the prize. Perhaps she escaped from the set of a Doctor Who? telling of the story where Miss Woodhouse has been replaced by an android.

You have scenes such as this in episode 2 , where Harriet is trying to get Emma to acknowledge Mr. Elton calling after them as they walk past the vicarage, and Emma ignores her by mechanically continuing to talk, looking straight ahead with laser focus. Of course, Emma is intentionally ignoring Harriet because she wants Mr. Elton to follow them, but that wasn’t quite apparent to me until the end of her ramble – which I had assumed she was forced to complete due to some directive in her programming. I have more to say on her characterization, but we’ll get to that in a dedicated section of the review.

John Carson might actually be one of the better Knightley’s, but I’m sorry – at 45 he was just too old. This is something you can play around with in other characters (Mr. Weston and Miss Bates after all, have no stated ages in the book) but not only do we know how old Mr. Knightley is in the book, they state in the show that Emma is 21 (Doran Godwin was actually 28) and that Mr. Knightley is sixteen years older than her – 37 or 38 – and John Carson is CLEARLY no 38. This obviously-over-forty appearance does have an effect on how I view his banter with Emma, and it’s more avuncular than the older-brother feel that Mr. Knightley and Emma should have.

Whether by direction or actor’s choice, Carson’s Mr. Knightley speaks in a way that just doesn’t feel period to me. He has a very sort of 20th Century, stock British, hearty-good-fellow manner, that dates this adaptation pretty badly and feels old-fashioned (but not in a Regency/Georgian way) even in the 70’s.

Sets & Surroundings

Normally at this point in the review I would talk about the British manor houses and estates used and how they measure up to the book descriptions but the publicly funded BBC ran on a much tighter budget in the 70’s (apparent in the production values and number of obviously bad takes that they just decided to leave in, in everything they made) and as such they couldn’t afford to film in and rent out large estates quite as much, so this has the trademark 70’s/80’s BBC sound-stage quality of all of their other productions of the period. That said, this production actually has some of the better sets I’ve seen and that’s saying something, for being made in the 70’s. The walls didn’t actually shake when doors were closed, and it didn’t feel as stagey as some other Austen serials of the time. (This doesn’t improve the very “on-cue” acting in the series, but I have to give credit where it’s due.) I believe they may used a real manor house for the exterior of Hartfield (and not a landscape pastel) and maybe some of the interiors too? I can’t say for sure, and I would love to tell you what house and where it is but I can’t find any credits on it. I’ll just say that I think it’s very suitable and leave it at that.

Costumes

Much like today, the BBC almost exclusively used, re-used and rented costumes for their period productions. Almost every costume in this series was also used in the 70’s and 80’s BBC productions of Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Pride and Prejudice (P&P being the overwhelming common denominator – almost every one of Emma’s evening dresses and pelisses was seen, primarily on Caroline Bingley.) Some of the shawls have been picked out in BBC Austens as recently as 2008.

For being made in the 70’s the costumes in this production are really kind of nice. They don’t date themselves too badly. The ones that do feel 70’s retro, in fact, were mostly styles borrowed from period accurate fashions that just happened to coincide with contemporary 70’s tastes, and which aren’t often used in Regency costumes today because, well they don’t coincide with our modern tastes. For the most part, they look well-made (although some of them do have that stiff, dingy polyester look to them and there are definitely some plastic pearls here and there).

I’m quite pleased with the silhouettes which don’t suffer from Square Bust/Boob Droop syndrome the way the 1980 P&P does. All of the assets seem to be lifted and shifted in the right places.

Daywear

I like Emma’s blue day dress the best of all her day-wear looks. It’s a rich color and has pleated cups (Also on her white day dress) which is a style I really love.

Emma wears the gauzy… let’s be kind and say ivory instead of “Yellowish” ruff during the day A LOT (Emma Pic 2). It’s a popular look on Jane Fairfax too (Jane Pic 2) and I just… I don’t like it. Not that it’s not period appropriate (because it unfortunately is) it just makes them look like Dr. Seuss characters to me, especially worn with short sleeves which is something these dramas do a lot and I hate it. It just makes the person in question look very awkwardly disproportionate to me, especially because. if they had long sleeves to go with it (which would be more correct from a historical authenticity standpoint) it would even it out so much better. Compare Jane and Emma to see what I mean. The single layer ruffle (Emma Pic 1) is much more agreeable to me. (I wanna point out that Jane wears the same green dress without any partlet or undersleeves for strawberry picking at Donwell, which is blatant Eveningwear-For-Daywear™ and looked really out of place since everyone else was wearing day-appropriate attire).

Emma’s wider, cuffed, long sleeves and Mrs. Elton’s puffy segmented Renaissance sleeves are exactly what I mean about period accurate styles that suit the 70’s in a way that they just don’t jive today. Even Harriet gets some.

Mrs. Elton Orange ™ is another crayon color Crayola should consider I think.

Harriet gets stuck with a lot of brown outer wear but her day clothes are otherwise pretty nice. I especially like the ivory and blue number (Bottom right) and her white day dress with blue accents (Top right) which I think is the nicest thing she wears in this whole series. 

Evening Wear

Emma’s evening wear confines itself pretty exclusively to cool purples and blues except for her white ball gown. I find this interesting because other versions tend to dress Emma in warmer colors and pinks (As I’m very partial to purples and blues, I love all of them). I can’t say it’s inconsistent with Emma’s cold characterization in this version. Mrs. Weston’s evening gowns are uniformly amazing. I especially love her blue party dress, which is my favorite in the series.

Both of Harriet’s party dresses are characteristically pretty and girlish. The pink is a bit fussy for me but I love the blue one (which has a lot more detail but I couldn’t get a full length shot of it.)

I’m pleased that Jane is given a bit of a break from the Jane Fairfax Blue ™ trope with her evening wear. She has one light blue evening gown and gets a few green numbers, most notable being her mint ball gown. Her beige party dress is absolutely tragic though.

Mrs. Elton’s evening color seems to be chartreuse (Which I think was also the case in the ITV version? ITV fans back me up.) Her black overlay/spiky number is iconic of the Austen Bad Girl, but her ball gown is a bit disappointing in its simplicity to me.

I would love to have seen a full length shot of Isabella’s black and purple number because I have a suspicion THAT would have been my favorite but I just can’t make out enough detail on it.

Zig-zag patterns on the skirt are a huge theme in this version, which is so of the period. Mrs. Cole (shout out to another future Are You Being Served? familiar, Hilda Fenemore) looks straight out of a fashion plate in her dark green party dress, which has (drumroll please…) a padded hem! 

Outerwear

This version has SO MANY PELISSES AND REDINGOTES. Are they all nice? No. No they are not; I particularly hate Emma’s fugly salmon number that she wears for Strawberry picking/Box Hill. Mostly because she looks SO over-dressed compared to everyone else who’s wearing loose fitting light clothes (except Jane, who’s wearing an evening dress). Just looking at her makes me hot. I’m also NOT a huge fan of her pink winter cloak. The one trimmed with… faux ermine? One can only assume. It looks awfully tacky.

That russet pelisse tho! This is one of my all-time favorites. It’s SO. PRETTY and so detailed (See this number on Jane in P&P ’80). I think her gray fur-trimmed pelisse is pretty fabulous too, but I do not like the hat she wears with it. The brim is kind of a funky shape to me.

I know I’ve criticized brown before, but I do like it in moderation and this version is astonishingly brown-free for being made in the 70’s, so I really like her red/brown velvet spencer, especially with the cream dress and gloves, and her hat has some amazing decoration.

Jane and Mrs. Weston are the only other characters who get pelisses/redingotes. I’m not a fan of Mrs. Weston’s fuchsia number, and while I like Jane’s, it does put itself solidly in the Jane Fairfax Blue™ category.  

Harriet gets pretty much only one form of outer-wear, her brown school cloak (a different brown school cloak from the one in the ‘97 version, in case you were wondering) and while it’s pretty dull, it’s hardly unexpected. Here it is paired with her rather ugly blue bonnet, with yellow ribbon. The bonnet features heavily in this episode.

To be honest for the most part I totally forgot about the… 

because a lot of it is very standard. No dandy standouts here, but overall it’s pretty okay and I’m really pleased to say that there are no bib-cravats. That’s not usually so much a problem in Regency Era stuff (Since ruffles were going out at around this time), but you can really distinctly see that the ruffles (where ruffles there are – usually on older men which is good) are part of the shirt and distinctly separate from the cravat. Also there are LOTS of high collars and they’re not comically high to the point where they get wrinkled, like they were in Emma. (2020), so points for that also. These are the screencaps I gathered going back over it for posterity.

Mr. Knightley doesn’t really get a lot of cool outfits. His best is his purple velvet evening jacket which somehow manages to not look ostentatious (but is his only dress jacket), and his gold-topped Prussian boots (which you should just be able to see bottom right.) The worst though… I’m sorry, (looks up costumer’s name) Joan Ellacott – do you really expect me to feel the weight of Emma’s cock-ups when Mr. Knightley is rebuking her in such a cartoonishly proportioned top hat? It’s like being scolded by the Mad Hatter. All of the men’s hats are pretty flared in this series too, and I’m not totally sure but, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that flared top hats are not right for this period?

I think Mr. Weston only has one day outfit (which, in keeping with his characterization is pretty farmer-chic) and one evening outfit. Frank’s dark green day-jacket is a pretty standard look on him and I don’t think we get a fresh look until his fabulous blue jacket/yellow waistcoat combo that he wears for Strawberry Picking/Box Hill. I believe his evening jacket is also dark green but it was tough to tell. Again I think he has only one set of evening-wear. I would expect Frank to have more, since he’s such a dandy.

Mr. John Knightley doesn’t have much to write home about in terms of evening kit, but DAYUM, his blue traveling coat is DOOOOOPE. 

Let’s Talk Script

This adaptation was directed by John Glenister and Dramatized by Denis Constanduros.

Now I’ve seen a lot of positive reviews for this on IMDB calling it the… let’s see here… “The best Emma I’ve ever seen” and “The most true to the novel”… *Takes off spectacles and sighs heavily* I’m afraid I have to disagree. Several people also really love Doran Godwin’s Emma (We’ve already gone over why I don’t, and I have also seen reviews that name her and her lack of charisma as the main sticking point preventing them from really enjoying it, so I’m not alone). I’ve also heard it described as “sensitively handled” “Intimate” and “The most faithful to the spirit of Austen” and so forth, and again maybe it’s that prejudice against the stagey production and… no there’s definitely some other reason I have a problem with this version.

Let me make this clear – I don’t totally hate it, and I’m not here to shame the people who really love this version. Once again – if this version gives you what you want from the story I think that’s great for you. I, myself, like it pretty well and I think it’s one of the better early BBC Austen serials. It’s certainly not boring; but I do want to go over some of the changes that were made and choices in the script.

Some of them aren’t really that egregious, but they’re annoying in that I think they didn’t need to be made and don’t really add anything. Characters being added to scenes where they didn’t need to be and written out of scenes where their presence was missed. Like writing Mr. Elton out of Box Hill (And really the whole second half of the series, to facilitate Mrs. Elton flirting with Knightley), and adding Miss Bates into the after-dinner scene, I think at the Randalls Christmas party? I’m sure this was done for expediency but you have six episodes. It’s not as though you’re strapped for time.

Particularly praised, as far as I’ve seen, is the scene at Christmas when Knightley and Emma make up after their argument over Harriet. It takes place in the nursery, which I suppose isn’t an unreasonable place for Emma to be fawning over her niece (in the dramatization she seems to have been feeding the baby, where in the book she is playing with her). The book doesn’t specify where the scene takes place, although I assumed it to be a downstairs room, and I’m not sure that it’s entirely appropriate for Emma and a man (even one connected to her family through marriage) to be alone in an upstairs room together with the door closed and no more chaperone than a baby. But in spite of this, perhaps inappropriate, level of privacy, the scene feels less intimate to me than the book, where in the course of the conversation, where Mr. Knightley takes the baby from Emma “in the manner of perfect amity” and holds her himself and it is very adorable and sweet. In the dramatization, Knightley sort of just stands next to Emma’s chair and leans down a bit. After this conversation in the book, John comes into the room to talk to George, while in the show Emma puts the baby in the cradle and they leave the room to go downstairs.

But there are more outstanding changes that just feel wrong to me. When confronting Emma about her meddling in Harriet’s response to Mr. Martin’s proposal, Constanduros changes “What is the foolish girl about?” to “What is the stupid girl about?” it’s not that big a change, but it makes Mr. Knightley sound unnecessarily mean.

I’ve already mentioned the, er, additions regarding Mr. Weston’s dialogue and Mrs. Elton, and Jane shouting at Miss Bates; but by far the biggest, worst additions were made with Emma. The worst, I think, is the handling of this scene in Episode 4 when Harriet is feeling heartsick following Mr. Elton’s marriage.

And for those of you who don’t wanna follow the link, here’s a transcription:

Emma: Now Harriet! Your allowing yourself to become so upset over Mr. Elton’s marriage is the strongest possible reproach you could make to me!

Harriet: Miss Woodhouse –

Emma: Yes it is! You could not more constantly remind me of the mistake I made, which is most hurtful!

Harriet: Oh Miss Woodhouse, it was not intended to be!

Emma: I have not said “think and talk less of Mr. Elton” for my sake, Harriet, because it is for yours I wish it. My being hurt is a very… secondary consideration, but please, please Harriet, do learn to exert a little more self-discipline in this matter.

Harriet: {Looks down} Yes, Miss Woodhouse.

Emma: We are all creatures of feeling; we all suffer disappointments, it is how we learn to suffer them that forms our character. If you continue in this way, Harriet, I shall think you wanting in true friendship for me!  

Harriet: Oh, Miss Woodhouse! You, who are the best friend I’ve ever had? Oh what a horrid, horrid wretch I’ve been!”

Emma: Oh now Harriet – (She’s gonna console her now, right?)

Harriet: Oh yes, I have, I have!

Emma: Harriet, control yourself! (ha ha bitch, u thought) Now, you will tie your bonnet, and you are coming with me to call on Mr. And Mrs. Elton at the Vicarage…

Harriet: Oh, Miss Woodhouse –

Emma: Yes you are! And I’m sure you will find it far less distressing than you think.

Harriet: Oh, Miss Woodhouse, must I?

Emma: Yes, Harriet; but you may borrow my lace ruff if you wish.

Harriet: Oh may I, Miss Woodhouse? Oh, thank you!

(Look how evil she looks! She looks like she’s planning on baking Harriet into a pie!)

While this scene is in the book and much of the dialogue is also from the book, it’s the lines that were added that stick out to me. Emma does tell Harriet that her allowing herself to become upset over the Eltons is a reproach on Emma more than anything else and reminds her miserably of the “Mistake [Emma] fell into” but from this point, the script takes a left turn from the firm but kind appeal to Harriet to move on for both her happiness and Emma’s own comfort, to a far more manipulative strain.

Even after Harriet apologizes, she goes from simply appealing to Harriet to let herself move on, to basically telling her that she’s a bad friend. She treats Harriet like she’s unreasonable for feeling this way, where in the book Emma is very understanding and feels that “she could not do too much for her; that Harriet had every right to all her ingenuity and patience…” and only after Harriet goes all afternoon with Emma soothing her and no improvement in her spirits does Emma take any kind of reproachful tack whatsoever.

    In this scene, Emma says that her own happiness is a secondary consideration (this is stressed much more in the book) but from the way she says it, it seems more like she just wants Harriet to shut up about it rather than actually meaning it. (This is a very prominent example of Emma’s not seeming to really like Harriet at all in this version, only tolerating her presence.)

AND THEN she does something which Emma in the book most certainly did NOT do and forces Harriet to come with her to visit the Eltons, as if to put her on the spot and test how good a little friend she will be. I can’t express how disgusted I am by the changes and interpretation here. This is the culmination of the general through-line of Emma’s manipulative characterization being taken to an extreme. She looms over Harriet sounding, by turns, like a school marm and a saccharine nanny. She’s like a (very) low budget version of Tilda Swinton as the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia. 

My question about all of these changes is simply: Why? They don’t improve the story or the characters. They’re not big, but a lot of them just strike me as weird and unnecessary, but I guess there’s no accounting for artistic license.  

Final Thoughts

So is it a faithful adaptation? I often find this a more complex question to answer for myself than one would think, since inflection and line delivery and even, at some points, intention behind what the characters say tends to be up to the interpretation of the person reading the book.

Is the dialogue faithful? Other than the many changes I’ve mentioned (and the numerous cuts and edits I didn’t – and besides no screenplay can be 100% faithful), for the most part yes.

Are the characters accurate to description / faithful in their portrayal – again this tends to be subjective and opinions vary. In my opinion, Emma is not. I’ve mentioned that Knightley is too old, and Emma not only seems more intentionally manipulative than I believe she’s meant to be, and also just does not seem 21. She acts and looks like a much older woman, especially when preaching at Harriet) but she’s also very gawky, and Emma is supposed to look very healthy and glowing.

So my book accuracy rating meets in the middle at a 4.5. It’s NOT the most faithful adaptation I’ve seen, nor is it the most fun or the most intimate, but it’s not totally a travesty either and there are good things in it, even with a robot witch playing the main lead.

Ribbon Rating: Tolerable (43 Ribbons )

Tone: 4

Casting: 5 (Witchy automaton Doran Goodwin plays opposite avuncular good-fellow John Carson. Fiona Walker stands out as Mrs. Elton.)

Acting: 5 (Doran Goodwin is by turns crazed and mechanical with some momentary touches of what might be actual emotion. Raymond Adamson way over-acts Mr. Weston as a hobbeldy-hoi, verging on uncouth.)

Scripting: 4

Pacing: 4

Cinematography: 4 (A bump up from the usual 1 or 2 for TV dramas of the time. Surprisingly less stagey than expected.)

Sets and Settings: 5

Costumes: 7 (Very clearly of the 70’s but drawing on perfectly accurate styles that jived well with contemporary taste)

Music: 1 (Plinky, poorly played piano music. Only used for intro and outro I think? Jane Fairfax can neither play nor sing.)

Book Accuracy: 5 (They changed a lot of small details. Lines are changed unnecessarily (Calling Harriet “Stupid” rather than “Foolish” – Why?) Mrs. Elton seems to have a thing for Knightley? People present when they shouldn’t be, others absent when they should be present, again without any apparent reason.)