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jamiedodgerart · 7 years ago

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the fade is a liar sometimes

aka, a really long post about how mal hawke survived dragon age inquisition. warning for big but kinda vague spoilers for dai and mentions of alcoholism

ok full disclosure i dont know how he survived the fade. but im thinking the nightmare like. didnt wake back up in time to block the way through the portal, and so never caused the Do I Kill The Warden Or Hawke dilemma. cos. that was kiiiiiiiinda bullshit.

i had to pick between alistair and mal. and i really didnt want mal to be actually really dead bc at the time of here lies the abyss he’d be in a really shitty place, mentally, and i didnt want him to just! die! without resolving that! so i gave canon the finger and concocted a convoluted plan to give mal a better ending

background, after the events of da2, he ended up leaving kirkwall and fuckin’ around in the woods for a bit. i imagine he was helping refugees get out for a little while, until anders showed up and convinced him to help groups of renegade mages/circles on the verge of winning their independence. at this point he was pretty sick of the world at large, didn’t know what he wanted or where he was going to go next, and let himself be (guided? directed? pushed around?) by anders, drinking himself into oblivion and generally feeling like garbage. he fell out of contact with most of his remaining friends and began convincing himself that he was guilty for the explosion, by trusting anders (he’d suspected something was wrong with the ingredients anders was asking for and confronted him about it, but trusted him and helped him by distracting the grand cleric)

i rambled about this on my private twitter but mal and anders... ended up not being a great fit for one another and past me said it better than present me can

eventually, the inquisition came into being and grew in power. anders, still being a wanted man and mal too by association, avoided the inquisition’s patrols pretty easily. but stories started to spread about the inquisitor and his... particularly creative justice. see, pica really likes choices that have some poetic irony to them that also focus on rebuilding (he had alexius work for the mages, stuff like that), generally avoids executions, and is pretty chill with mages. the inquisition is also independent of any government, really, and is about as impartial as you can get in thedas. so when mal gets word from varric that corypheus is back, a problem, and something they need mal’s help with (that is also, in his professional opinion, his fault), he gets an idea.

he heads to skyhold, meets pica (who read the tale of the champion, asks varric questions about it constantly, was expecting a hero, and was not expecting the hero to be a depressed alcoholic) and iunno here lies the abyss happens with the aforementioned edit of no one important dying (i guess i could kill alistair and preserve a kind of important turning point in pica’s character with an added bonus of giving mal another thing to have survivor’s guilt about but i dont think i could go through with it. imagine the emotional toll. pica could get that change some other way anyway) mal by this point has gotten to know pica fairly well and has found what he’s heard to be true, and gives him a proposition

(i would like to add now that while ive read asunder, until i looked it up just now i didn’t remember where it sits in the timeline relative to da2, and it wasnt super clear to me just how much each of the two events affected the mage/templar war. so some text in sketches might be inaccurate, historically)

so you can imagine that anders is Pissed Off by this development, but justice is kinda like

cos like. pica Is a real actual authority figure. who is down to dispense some quality justice esp re mages. and is coming at it from a “yo i know you meant well and you did kinda have a point but you also killed a lot of people so there does have to be Some kind of consequence of that”

(but neither of them are at all happy with mal turning them in)

anyway the trial ends up including a full investigation of the events in kirkwall, as well as the events at the spire (cole, rhys, and evangeline all give their testimony) and it’s more a straightening out of what was up with the whole start of this shitshow anyway, cos the confusion and misinformation about it is probably the worst part.

pica finds anders guilty and sentences him to community service, which a lot of people disagreed with. pica thinks it was a GREAT IDEA though because that community service comes in the form of anders teaching the inquisition mages about healing magic!! something that anders is good at, loves doing, and can actually help people with!! why are we still fuckin about with herbs when there’s magic!!!!! this also has the added bonus of making mages less scary to the general populace- chuckin’ fireballs is a lot more alien and intimidating than healing up a broken arm, yknow? it can help mages seem more human and good for society than they were, separated from the public in towers.

anders is still a prisoner, though, which hes super not happy about, and part of his sentence is also that dagna gets to study him. he and samson are in grudging solidarity in the face of tolerating her extreme cheerfulness. and maybe he gets a cat too. i wonder if he and samson could talk about how shitty the chantry is re: lyrium addiction in templars? its obvs not on the scale of mage shittiness but it could be an interesting discussion

see in the grand scheme of things mal really didnt do all that much. he was duped by a lover into doing something he 100% would not have done if hed known what was actually going on. i feel like the most anyone could bust him on was aiding and abetting. and maybe helping hide an apostate. mal was found, as pica informally put it while distracted by looking at a transcript of a kirkwall templar’s testimony, “kinda guilty? just like. if ur asked to help blow up a chantry dont do it again” but cassandra elbowed him really hard and he said “look ok your sentence is, fuck, i dunno, work for the inquisition. what do you wanna do”

that was not what mal was expecting and he didnt have an answer. and pica looked at him and said “ill give you some time to figure it out, ok. just. take care of yourself, man. u look like shit” which got him another elbow, which he returned to cass with equal force

anyway. mal is now officially Not Guilty in the court of the law. which fuckin sucks bc that assessment does absolutely NOTHING to stop his shit brain from keeping being guilty about everything. so he tries to quit drinking, fails, and just has a rough time in general, while also sometimes visiting anders in prison. which probably really doesn’t help.

ENTER WARDEN-COMMANDER OF FERELDAN, MADRANA “MAD” TABRIS, AND HER PARTNER/GF/ADULT SUPERVISION EMMARIE “EMMY” COUSLAND

(you may also know mads as hester, as i called her in previous playthroughs. hester’s not a really elfy name and shes grown far enough away from her namesake that i felt a change was warranted. also emmy was created by @1500birds. i love her)

thats them (mads then emmy) so mad tabris, legendary fighter, unkillable blight-ender, bather in darkspawn blood, and general bottle covey is looking for a challenge. its been like ten years since shes had an actually hard battle to win and she’s near skyhold, and she’s heard that mal hawke, another legendary fighter, is also in the area. oh and some cadash guy. hes apparently good too. also, she’s looking for some way out of the whole grey warden death sentence thing. shes not keen on dying unless she’s killed, ydig, and apparently skyhold’s doing a lot of groundbreaking research these days

she and emmy swing on in to skyhold and finds that hawke is, well, a mess

important background. mads is not good at dealing with other peoples’ emotions. so shes not really equipped to deal with this. emmy, however, is kind, has nerves of steel, loves to help people, and is Very equipped to deal with this. and so the two of them adopt mal. (even though hes older than both of them.)

theyve got really, really different ways of trying to help mal. emmy is a great listener, and understands survivor’s guilt and the lost-all-my-family brand of trauma pretty well. she helps him sort through all the shit that’s happened to him and offers a lot of support. and hugs. by god shes a hugger. also theyve got a symbiotic cuddling relationship bc emmy is always cold and mal is always warm, so they platonically nap together sometimes. mads is unfortunately too wriggly and pointy to be a good cuddler :’( she squeezes in the mix sometimes anyway though and it’s uncomfortable but nice

mads’s method of helping mal is in her area of expertise: getting out pent-up negative emotion by fighting. for a long time, mal has internalized a lot of shit, and mads is really good at annoying him into either yelling or punching out that shit. shes doing it out of concern for his well-being, she swears, and not because she takes joy in pissing people off. she does but thats not the point. it’s not a perfect strategy but it does help a lot

unfortunately for her, sometimes mal can be downright vindictive when drunk and angry, and can hit on the few things she’s insecure about

(i would really love to make a post about mads sometime, cos she ended up being a lot deeper of a character than i originally intended. i really just wanted a really sharp angry lady who fought with the subtlety of a brick to the face, and ended up getting that plus bravado covering up a whole host of insecurities. i feel like i should finish dao before writing it up though ahah)

(what mal said is also not totally accurate- mads cares very much for emmy. but yknow how when things get heated it doesn’t really matter if they’re really accurate anymore- they just have to be close enough to get a reaction, ydig)

anyway! the two of them together help mal get his life back in order- he cuts down and eventually quits drinking, starts taking better care of himself, and gets more of a handle on life. i guess you’re probably wondering where varric is, right around now. so am i mal pushed away a lot of people close to him after da2, including varric. but varric kept looking out for him (lying to cassandra to protect him, using his network of contacts to keep an eye on where he and anders were operating). when mal comes to skyhold i think he’d try to avoid varric out of guilt- yknow how when it’s been a really long time since you’ve talked to someone, and you know you should have called them back, but you never did, and they kept asking how you were, and you want to be in an actually good place before you call them back, but shit keeps happening, and it’s been like two years since youve said anything to them, and then you see them and do some serious acrobatics trying to stay out of their sight so you don’t have to confront their honest interest in your well-being that they have no right to still have after so long with no word from you, and you have to make it seem like you havent been avoiding them because that would be rude, and really it’s just easier to be constantly vigilant of where they are and make sure youve got plausible reason to be leaving casually yet quickly

well mal did that. emmy had to physically bar his way from escaping a room once when varric came in, and dragged him by the scruff of the neck to talk to him. varric was painfully understanding and ended up hitting it off nicely with emmy

so! someday mal gets a job. specifically, pica gives him one. because he still owes the world some community service. with his experience as a hunter and highwayman, he becomes a scout!

whoaaa color

more specifically, mal becomes a... specialized type of scout. some idiot who shall not be named but whose name sounds a whole lot like pica cadash gave him command of a small squad of scouts, heavier armored and armed than average inquisition scouts but not heavy enough to count as infantry soldiers. their job is to dismantle highwayman and rogue mercenary bands, in whatever way necessary. so! originally this was supposed to mean sneak attacks on their strongholds or whatever, but mal talked with him about his own experiences with crime (mostly that most people in his crew back then were in it out of necessity, and needed money to support family) and the squad kind of became. really heavy recruiters. it became kind of a joke that the inquisition would take anyone- and they would! practically any skillset could be used in an organization as big as the inquisition, and at this point it was still growing

like. barely any exaggeration here

so that’s where he is pre-trespasser! thank u for reading and if youve got questions or want to learn more PLEASE ask i lov my ocs and love talking about them

i want to add that in @1500birds‘s latest playthrough (miranda trevelyan, a pro-chantry mage cullenmancer) mal rags on cullen endlessly

that was supposed to be the playthrough where he survives the fade, but then bran realized that miranda would kinda hate mal and would 100% leave him behind

#dai spoilers #dragon age #mal hawke #madrana tabris

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relationshipadviser-blog · 6 years ago

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Esther Perel: 'Fix the sex and your relationship will transform'

New Post has been published on https://relationshipqia.com/must-see/esther-perel-fix-the-sex-and-your-relationship-will-transform/

Esther Perel: 'Fix the sex and your relationship will transform'

Esther Perels breathtakingly frank therapy podcasts Where should we begin not only make for juicy listening, theyve revitalised the stale private lives of millions. Miranda Sawyer listens to the psychotherapist

Passion has always existed, says Esther Perel. People have known love forever, but it never existed in the context of the same relationship where you have to have a family and obligations. And reconciling security and adventure, or love and desire, or connection and separateness, is not something you solve with Victorias Secret. And there is no Victors Secret. This is a more complicated existential dilemma. Reconciling the erotic and the domestic is not a problem that you solve. It is a paradox that you manage.

Ooh, Perel is a great lunch date. All psychotherapists are, in my experience, but shes particularly interesting. Sex, relationships, children; she covers them all in the two hours we spend together. But also collective trauma, migration, otherness, freedom all the good stuff.

Perel is a practising couples and family therapist who lives in New York. Aside from her clinical work she counsels around 12 couples or individuals each week she has two best-selling books: one about maintaining desire in long-term relationships (Mating in Captivity), the other about infidelity (The State of Affairs). She has released two fascinating podcast series, called Where Should We Begin?, where listeners get to listen in on real-life couples having therapy with her. The podcast is where I first came across her its won a British Podcast Award, a Gracie Award in the States and was named as the Number One podcast by GQ.

On top of all this, she hosts workshops and lectures as well as the inevitable TED talks, one of which has been watched more than 5m times. I went to one of her London appearances earlier this year. Alain de Botton was the host and he introduced Perel with quite some hyperbole, calling her one of the greatest people alive on Earth right now. (Perel dismissed this afterwards, though she likes de Botton: He put me on such a platter.)

Esther Perel sometimes sings to her clients; she tells them off quite a lot, especially if they think sex should come naturally. Photograph: Jean Goldsmith for the Observer

The reason for Perels popularity is her clear eye on modern relationships. She says, rightly, that we expect much more from our marriages and long-term relationships than we used to. For centuries, marriage was framed within duty, rather than love. But now, love is the bedrock. We have a service model of relationships, she says to me. Its the quality of the experience that matters. She has a great turn of phrase: The survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple. Divorce happens now not because we are unhappy, but because we could be happier. We will have many relationships over the course of our lives. Some of us will have them with the same person.

For a while, Perel wasnt taken particularly seriously by the therapist community: she tells me that when Mating in Captivity came out in 2006, it was only the sexologists that thought it was great. This is because her thinking went against long-established relationship wisdom, namely that if you fix the relationship through talking therapy, then the sex will fix itself. Perel does not agree. She says that, yes, this might work, but I worked with so many couples that improved dramatically in the kitchen, and it did nothing for the bedroom. But if you fix the sex, the relationship transforms.

We meet in a boutique hotel in Amsterdam, where Perel orders her food in fluent Dutch. She has a light Belgian accent (she says boat for both), and she wears some delicate gold jewellery, a bit like the Indian hath panja, on her right hand. (Both of these seem to excite American journalists, along with Perels good looks. A relationship therapist who you might fancy, shocker!)

We begin talking about her podcast series. Its an astonishing listen, partly because you get to earwig other peoples problems (always great) and partly because Esthers methods are so flexible: in the first series she got one young woman to wear a blindfold while her partner inhabited a more assertive sexual character, which he did by speaking in French. She sometimes sings to her clients; she tells them off quite a lot, especially if they think sex should come naturally: Who the hell told you that BS?

Series three, released next month, is slightly different to the last two. This time round Perel very deliberately chooses couples at different stages, because she wants to show an arc of a relationship, all the way to its end. Also, she says, I wanted to bring in the way that relationships exist in a larger, social, cultural, context. That context often gives a script about how one should think about suicide, about gender, about divorce and so forth. So we hear from a young couple coping with enforced distance in their relationship: one is US-born and the other is Mexican, without a US visa. Another is a mother and her child, who does not identify as either gender. Another couple, with a young child, have divorced, but seem to get along much better now: why?

Perel finds her podcast therapees via her Facebook page: they apply in their thousands. Her podcast producers sift through, using guidelines that Perel suggests them: this time round she knew she wanted to cover infertility and also suicide. Then theres a lengthy pre-recording interview process where its explained to the couples that, yes, this really is going on air and, yes, they might be recognised (from their voices; theyre anonymous otherwise). Are you OK in understanding that your story will become a collective story? You will be giving so much to others, as well. Its not just for you, actually. And then they have a one-off session with Perel for three to four hours, edited down to around 45 minutes for the podcast.

She loves the format. The intimacy of it, the private listening of it, the fact that you dont see them, thus you see yourself. You hear them but you see you. It reflects you in the mirror. But also, surely, its quite exposing for you? Oh yes. People can come and hear me give a talk, but theyve never seen me do the work and you cant talk about what you do. But when you write a book, that is the first part of exposure. Then comes TED and the podcast. If you ask, What does Perel do? My colleagues know how I do.

Perel is 60 now; I wondered how she found being a relationship therapist when she was younger, in her 20s. Werent clients put off by her youth? Actually, Ive always found that the age of the clients goes up with me, she says. It mirrors. I dont know why. She doesnt think lived experience is necessary, though sometimes she wonders how she had the chutzpah to counsel parents before she became one herself (now she has two grown-up sons; shes still married to their dad, Jack Saul, who is a professor and an expert in psychosocial trauma). But then I have worked a lot with addiction, and Im not an addict.

Interestingly, she came to therapy via drama. Drama and collective trauma. She was the second child of Polish Jews who came to Belgium as Holocaust survivors (Perels first passport was a stateless passport of the UN). In Belgium, they became part of a community of 15,000 Jewish refugees.

Loss, trauma, dismantlement of the community, immigration, refugees All these themes that I observe in the world today, were basically mothers milk to me, she says. Everybody had an accent, a good number of people had the number on their arms. There were no grandparents around, there were no uncles. Its all I knew. Its different than if it was just your parents. Its every home I went to. One of Perels earliest memories is of card games where her parents would talk of a friend, and someone would say, casually, Ah, he was gassed, he didnt make it.

Perels parents had her older brother in 1946, then she came along 12 years later. This was not uncommon. When people came out of the camps, the first thing they did to prove that they were still human was to have a child. They waited to get their periods back, and then they had a child. But then there was a gap of 8, 10, 12 years before they had another. Perel thinks this was because the parents needed to establish themselves in society. Hers ran a clothes shop in Antwerp. The family lived above the shop. They spoke five languages: Polish, Yiddish, German, French and Flemish. Every evening they watched the news in German, French and Flemish, to get a good all-round view.

Divorce happens now not because we are unhappy, but because we could be happier: Esther Perel. Photograph: Jean Goldsmith for the Observer

As a teenager, she was interested in psychology, mostly because she hated the strictness of school. She read Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child-Rearing, about a British school run like a democracy, and from there she moved to Freud. I was interested in understanding myself better and in people around me. People dynamics. I was quite melancholic and I was often wondering, How does one live better? How do you talk to your mother so she understands you better? Id say the primary ingredient I had was curiosity. I was a massively curious person I still am. She was also a good listener a confidante for her friends. I tell her she would have made a great journalist, and she agrees: That would have been my other career.

After school she went to study in Jerusalem, a university course that combined French linguistics and literature. More importantly, she developed her interest in theatre, which had begun in early adolescence. I assumed she was an actor, but shes talking of improv and street theatre, with puppets, of all things. Big ones, you hold them on two long high sticks, or I did hand puppets. She liked the immediate contact with people and gradually, she found herself merging these skills with her studies, doing theatre with gangs,with street girls,with Druze,with foreign students. At one point she went to Paris to study under Augusto Boal, who created the Theatre of the Oppressed. He would stage fake crises in everyday situations: actors pretending to have a physical row on the Metro, for instance. Perel found it interesting to see which passers-by would get involved and which would turn away.

She moved to New York to do her Masters. She specialised in identity and immigration How is the experience of the migrant different if it is voluntary migration or forced migration? and in how minority communities relate to each other. She led workshops for what were then called mixed couples: interracial, intercultural, interreligious. I knew the cultural issues. I knew how to run a group. I dont think I knew much about couples dynamics.

Around that time her husband, who is a few years older than her, suggested she might enjoy systemic family therapy. I ask what this is. For a long time when people looked at a problem, they thought the problem is located within the person, says Perel. But systemic family therapy thinks that a family, or a relationship, is made up of interdependent parts. What is the interactive dynamic that preserves this thing, that makes this child not go to bed? That makes this man never get a job? That makes this son be such a nincompoop? How is the family system organised around it? You need two to create a pattern, or three or four or five.

Its interesting how therapy has trends, I say, and how those trends manifest themselves in actual life. Couples therapy goes in parallel to the cultural changes and the expectations in a culture, says Perel. During the 1980s her married clients didnt come to her because their sex life was bad, they came because of domestic violence or alcoholism, not because we dont talk any more. Back then, the shame was to get divorced at all, even if one half cheated; now its not to get divorced if one half cheats. She saw clients having problems with infertility, the changing role of women and daughters, the Aids crisis. In the 90s, single mothers, blended families, gay couples with kids. Todays problems, she says, are often centred around people marrying later, after a sexually nomadic youth. Also, modern fatherhood dads wanting to be more involved in childcare and monogamy versus polyamory. Straight couples are becoming more gay, gay couples more straight.

The obvious question, of course, which she has been asked many times, is how Perels own relationship works. She doesnt like to give too many details, but what she does say is that she and Saul give each other a lot of freedom If youve had an interesting life, you have more to bring back, something that energises the couple and that they renegotiate their relationship as it changes. At the moment her husband is entering what she calls a third stage, and he wants to paint more. This means he will be away from New York a lot, while she is usually in New York or travelling herself. We need to, once again, come up with a new rhythm of how we create separateness and togetherness. Its a fundamental task.

She wants others not to copy her own relationship, but to use her work as a way to better their own relationship for themselves. And plenty do. Just the other week a young woman came up to her and asked for a selfie. She said, My boyfriend listens to you all the time, and he comes home and he says, Have you listened to this episode, we need to talk? The podcast is a transitional object, a bridge for conversation. Like a teddy bear that you hold and you say: Its OK, dont be worried.

Like when couples talk through their dog, I say.

Yes, she says. There is such disarray and such hunger about getting help on how we manage our relationships today, on navigating the challenges For the first time we have the freedom of being able to design our relationships in a way that we were never capable of doing before, or allowed to do before. So, I dont give the details of my relationship. Instead I will give you the tools to come up with your own thing.

Season 3 of Esther Perels Where Should We Begin is available exclusively on Audible from 5 October

Try this at home

Three ways to change the way you think about your partner at home

Pay attention to what is important to the other What happens in a couple is that we often give to the other what we want them to give to us. If somebody is upset, you dont talk to them, because when you are upset you like to be left alone. It isnt necessarily what they need.

Roles are often patterns rather than habits If you really want the other person to take out the rubbish, you have to be able to spend two weeks not doing it. You dont say anything. You just wait until the other person finally notices it. When youre not there, the other person sorts the bin. They can do it. Its just that when youre there theyd prefer not to.

Women are not less interested in sex than men, theyre less interested in the sex they can have What makes women lose that interest? Domesticity. Motherhood. The mother thinks about others the whole time. The mother is not busy focusing on herself. In order to be turned on you have to be focused on yourself in the most basic way. The same woman whos numb in the house gets turned on when she leaves. She doesnt need hormones. Change the story.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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amazingviralinfo · 7 years ago

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The acclaimed showrunner/director behind ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘The Avengers’ on his Save the Day PAC designed to get young people out to vote—against Trump. ">

Joss Whedon has always been with her, so to speak. On top of being raised by a hard-core feminist, he was bullied relentlessly during his formative yearsthe sorry plight of the androgynous ginger kidand thus identifies with the helpless, the disenfranchised.

He attended Wesleyan University, a bastion of feminism (Michael Bay be damned), and his first writing gig was for the woman-fronted sitcom Roseanne. Heck, his dad was a staff writer for The Golden Girls.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Whedon has long harbored a predilection for female protagonists, from the titular ass-kicker in Buffy the Vampire Slayer to The Avengers Black Widow. And now, the filmmaker is doing everything in his power to help another intrepid, resilient woman triumph against the forces of toxic masculinity: Hillary Clinton.

Its fitting that instead of facing off against a man, she is facing off against maleness, says Whedon. She is campaigning against the male idall the worst of toxic masculinity in this country. This huge fart, this empty skin thats filled with gaseous hate, is a kind of Halloween monster of man.

The Halloween monster of a man hes describing is, of course, Donald J. Trumpa real-estate heir turned punchline-happy reality-show host turned Republican nominee for president of the United States. Whedon recently launched the super PAC Save the Day in order to encourage people, particularly the young and impressionable, to register to vote. And make no mistake about it: They want these registrants to vote against the orange guy with the tiny hands.

Save the Day kicked things off with a bang. Its first PSA featured stars like Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo urging American citizens to register to vote, with wry self-deprecation and the promise of a nude Bruce Banner. Its since gone viral, garnering 7.5 million YouTube views and counting.

Whedon was inspired to start the anti-Trump PAC through a combination of what he calls angry writers syndrome and the Democratic National Convention, where, following the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails, many Bernie Sanders supporters believed the party conspired against their candidate.

They were so fractious, recalls Whedon. Before Michelle Obama spoke and made everybody feel better, the Bernie bros were yelling, Lock her up! and I thought, Oh my godwe could hand Trump this fucking election if we dont get our shit together. So I thought, well, Ive never had the means to do this and the time, but I do now, and therefore I have an obligation to. As late in the game as it is, Im just putting the pedal to the metal.

Since its Sept. 21 launch, Save the Day has produced eight shorts, the most recent of which is The Youth, a cheeky piece featuring comedians Bill Hader and Nicole Byer that pokes fun at how adults tend to pander to millennials by trying to speak their language. All it took for Whedon to secure all the stars for his PSAs was to askas well as a little help from his talent agency, CAA. Nobody said no, says Whedon. Everyone who we were able to get ahold of was game.

The 52-year-old filmmaker is not just an acclaimed TV showrunner and filmmaker, but also a total news junkie. Whedons first celebrity autograph came from John Chancellor, the longtime NBC Nightly News anchor. He and his mother watched him every night.

Trumps frequent criticisms of the mediathat its rigged against him and doesnt give him a fair shakeseem particularly ridiculous to Whedon, given that the blustering presidential candidate, who was caught on tape bragging about sexual assault (and was subsequently accused of sexual assault or harassment by 11 women), is best pals with CNN boss Jeff Zucker, who keeps a framed Trump tweet in his office, and has been propped up by the gossip rags and cable news channels for decades. This is a guy who used to masquerade as a publicist named John Miller in order to brag about his sexual conquests to the tabloids.

All his criticism of the media is incredibly hypocritical, self-serving, and unreal. He is a creation of the media, says Whedon. The only person whos ever really come out against him is him. All these mean ads hes complaining about from Hillary are just him talking. And they wouldnt put Bernie on the air, and they air him and his rallies for hours every day. The media has helped him at every step, and they let him play the part of the crass, lovable rich-guy figure. Well, it turns out hes not fucking lovable! And the person who revealed that was him. The least interesting thing about the rise of Donald Trump is Donald Trump, he continues. Whats great is, A) the hypocrisy that the GOP has descended into is being exposed by their Frankenstein creation, and B) conversations about race, immigration, sexism, and misogyny that were not taking place have begun to take place on a national scale, which is great.

One of the more prophetic Save the Day videos was Fraud Squad, a bit about a team of voter-fraud investigators (played by Minka Kelly and Anders Holm) who are left with nothing to do because, well, voter fraud is by and large a myth. A 2014 study found that out of approximately one billion ballots cast between 2000-2014, there were only 31 incidents of possible voter fraud. So Trumps incessant whining that the election is rigged against him due to widespread voter fraud is not only falseits dangerous.

That scares me honestly more than anything else hes ever said, claims Whedon. We made this video months ago, and the voter-fraud thing was very much about people paying attention to who was really trying to make voting difficult. We made this before Trump started saying, Lets monitor the polls and make sure no ones getting in who shouldnt. Thats terrifying as well. I almost changed the script to reflect that. But the fact of the matter is voter fraud is a GOP creationthat they can disenfranchise the poor and people of color.

Whedon is referring to North Carolinas Republican-pushed voter-ID laws, which were recently found by a federal appeals panel to be the most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crow that targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision who largely voted Democrat.

They say elections are rigged to distract people from the fact that theyre rigging them, says Whedon.

While Whedon acknowledges that the rise of Trump and his army of acolytes isnt due to just racism in people, and that theres a sense anger and fear about the economy and the way the world is changing, he also believes the GOP has been sowing these seeds for yearsfrom the Southern strategy all the way to the birther movement.

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Honestly, my favorite thing about all this was what they said on Saturday Night Live when they were doing Romney, says Whedon. He said, We in the GOP we do not say racist and sexist things; we imply them subtly over decades and decades of policy. So theyve been sowing these seeds, and then theyre like, Hey! Where did this guy come from?!

[Mike] Pence is just terrifying. I think Trump picked him because nobody would ever assassinate Trump. It would be the worst thing that could happen, he adds of Trumps incredibly homophobic running mate. People forget that the GOP fell out with Trump because he wasnt conservative enough. Forget the fact that hes just a racist, sexist horror whos trying to incite violence in order to clinch his bid for power, there are people here who are running for office who are worse. They really lost touch with their constituency. They went to the fringes and found the dreck of political humanity.

Whedon has been a Hillary Clinton supporter for quite some time, and thinks the unflappable former first lady, senator, and secretary of State is just the person to defeat Trump come Nov. 8.

Shes fought longer and harder against very unfair odds than anybody I have seen, he says. I do think she has a real chance of slaying what is an actual beastand then she can spend the next eight years dealing with amazing misogynist obstructionism, the way Obama got to do with eight years of amazing racist obstructionism.

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Thursday, December 13, 1979

2 PM on a cold, rainy afternoon. I felt good today even though I didnt sleep very well last night. But I got out of the house this morning at 7 AM and drove to the Junction; because of the LIRR strike, theres no alternate parking.

Getting a seat on the train, I arrived at SVA around 8:30 AM. I entertained my class by reading them my own stories and Crad Kilodneys, and when they enjoyed them, I felt good about it.

On Tuesday were having a party; I can do the final grades this weekend, and then Ill be free of responsibilities.

Theres much to dislike about this city, yet I feel an overwhelming affectionate loyalty to New York. I cant imagine any other place making me feel this good.

I guess its like the old house in Brooklyn: I miss it terribly. I imagine coming home in the middle of the day, walking in to the hustle and bustle of Maud cleaning, Mom putting away groceries, Jonny working out to loud music in the basement.

Sometimes I feel like looking back six months and wondering how it got to be this way. If Mom and Dad hadnt moved, I probably would have gone to Albany; I wonder how I would have liked it.

There are moments I cant believe Im living alone in New York City in 1979. It definitely feels like the end of the decade. The Iranian crisis seems to drag on monstrously, as if the hostages will never be released.

What if Im going to die with the decade? I think Id die happy. I accomplished a lot more than I ever thought I would. If I die, Ill be leaving something behind: a book, lots of stories, my diaries, memories of a lot of people.

Lets just put it this way: Im prepared to die, but Im also prepared to live. God knows what my world will be like in another ten years, but Im certain its going to be an interesting time.

Perhaps many people would say I lived a sheltered life, that Ive missed so much and at times I feel that, too but on the whole (are we getting really banal here?), Ive enjoyed myself enormously.

Maybe one day Ill look back on this particular time with nostalgia, the way I now look upon my undergraduate days. I can always talk about the time I lived like a pauper in Rockaway, just on the verge of success.

I finished reading The Glittering Prizes; I loved it and identified like mad with its protagonist, Adam Morris, the writer who finally makes it and yet doesnt make it.

One day I may be pretty rich, and I predict I wont be happier at that time than I

Dont get me wrong: Im still very scared about the future. But somehow, at least right now, it doesnt matter so much what happens to me.

Monday, December 17, 1979

9 PM. Its so cold I cant think of anything else. Theres absolutely no heat and the wind-chill factor is six below zero. I dont know how Im going to get through the night.

I have on thermal underwear and a bathrobe, and Im under three blankets and a heating pad. The wind is racing through my apartment. Even my diary is as cold as ice. God knows how Ill sleep tonight.

All I can think about it is that in a week Ill be in Florida. I feel miserable right now, unable to enjoy even the good things that happened today. Ironically, they passed a rent fuel-pass-along increase today; Ill be damned if Im going to pay it.

Damn landlords! They suck. How many people all over New York must be freezing like I am because of their landlords stupid greed. I just want to get out of New York.

Today I definitely decided that I must be out of here as soon as I can. Ill take any job out of town, and if I dont get one, Ill move in with my parents. Living alone in New York sucks.

Hell, today I was videotaped for a PBS documentary, was invited to read my fiction at the University of Louisvilles Annual Conference on 20th Century Literature, got a letter from John Gardner praising me for my writing, found a press release from Taplinger containing great quotes from reviews, and got a letter from Susan Fromberg Schaeffer telling me to hang on.

Can I hang on? Not much longer. Im wildly unhappy.

I suppose thats narcissism. Maybe Im wrong. I probably am. Still, I know what it feels like to go to bed cold and to feel as though life isnt worth living. My problem is that I know that life is worth living: I see people who lead satisfying and comfortable lives, but Im just not among them.

People like Roger Weisberg, the PBS producer, or Gregory Jackson, the host of the program who interviewed me: theyve made it. They can take time out

But they dont live the lives that more unfortunate people do. They ride taxis and dont have to wait an hour for a subway to get from Columbus Circle to Washington Square, the way I did.

I hope my interview does some good, but I doubt it will, for there will always be greedy people like Fabrikant making money off others misery. Fabrikant was evil; my landlord is evil; they are banal, but then you know Hannah Arendt.

Someday, if I survive, a lot of good is going to come out of this pain. Still, on the whole, it would be better not to have to go through this.

Hell, this is not the diary entry I wanted to write. I would have liked to give detailed descriptions of my day with the TV crew of From Back Wards to Back Streetsand write about my feelings about the nice mail I got today.

But the mail uppermost in my mind are the bills. Im almost to the point where I cant think about art because my necessities arent provided for.

Tuesday, December 18, 1979

The heat finally did come on late last night and I did sleep fairly well. This morning I found I had a flat tire, so I took the subway to school: four different trains in the rush hour, and I was still half an hour late to SVA. We had a so-so party; most of my class went to a better one next door. I showed up with my fly open, which sort of set the mood for the day.

It was freezing again. When I got home, I called the AAA, and when they came, they inflated my tire, and I went to buy a new one: another $57 gone.

The toilet stopped up, and Tom, the Irish handyman, came up and fixed it. He said my bed was in bad spot between the two windows, and so we moved it. After Tom left, I rearranged the other furniture for half an hour, but finally I think Ive got it the way I want it. It does feel warmer this way.

At SVA, I handed in my grades, and so for the next six weeks I am a free man! Ive decided not to do the textbook job, as it just isnt worth the hassles to be paid so little.

The item was called The Wrath of Fred, and referred to me as playful prankster Richard Grayson. (I like that, I must admit.) It was about Silverman and NBCs peacock getting their feathers ruffled by my joke about drafting him for President.

It was quite sympathetic to me, who was portrayed as a nice pract

On Saturday, Marie told her that Melvin mentioned reading about me and seeing my book in the window of the Waldenbooks on Wall Street. Among people who know me, Im sure, Im being talked about.

Susan Schaeffer wrote that with your writing ability and genius for publicity, youll make it. Pack a box lunch. Besides, she said, I should get some satisfaction knowing that every success I have just makes Baumbach madder.

I do like Susan. Shes recommending me to Yaddo and MacDowell.

And did The Conference on 20th Century Literature in Louisville wants me to read Nice Weather, Arent We. I think its worth it for me to go. Ill

Mom and Dad said theyll pay for my fare, and there should be a small honorarium. I just want to go to a place where Ill be treated with respect, so Ill go to Louisville at the end of February and hope it will be a good experience.

Wednesday, December 19, 1979

10 PM. Last night I finished Scott Sommers Nearings Grace and was very impressed with it. Its a novel that worked totally for me; it was quite moving.

Moving the bed was the smartest thing I ever did, as I didnt freeze last night and slept well. It felt luxurious to lie in bed all morning, especially on a snowy day like today. I spent the morning in my underwear, cleaning, exercising, taking care of correspondence, watching game shows, and just enjoying my freedom.

Too bad about the snow, but I didnt really have to go anywhere. About three or four inches fell, and it was slippery, so I decided not to drive and went to Kings Plaza by bus.

Back home, I did the laundry, read the papers, made dinner. When Mom called, I managed to sound less depressed than I had during our last conversation. In five days Ill be in Florida for what will be both a homecoming and a visit.

Ive been living on my own for two months now, a fact which still amazes me at odd moments. Today, for example, I was putting a new roll of paper towels in the thingamajig in the kitchen when it suddenly struck me: I have my own apartment.

Friends are very important; I feel closer to Alice and Avis and Ronna, all of whom I talked to today, than I do to any member of my family. Yet theres something in a family that friends cant duplicate.

Gee, Im starting to get nervous about flying. Last Saturdays anx

Especially after the past few days, I need a warmer climate, and I need a respite in order to marshal my resources for what I dont know, but Ive gone through so many changes that I need to rest up and take stock.

1979 has been the year I finally took risks. My book was published, and I became something of a celebrity. I moved out on my own. My parents moved to Florida. I began therapy again. I taught another six college classes and earned more money than I ever had though not enough, certainly, for me to support myself comfortably.

Will I ever stop being so frightened? I feel a need to shiver, to be held by someone wholl tell me that its all going to be all right. How about my trying it myself? Richie, everythings going to be all right.

(Convincing?)

Thursday, December 20, 1979

4 PM. It will be dark soon. This is a very strange time in my life; I feel as though Im going through new experiences all the time. Now that Im free of school, I have time to reflect on all the changes.

Ive been annoyed by the artificial parts of my body in need of repair: my capped tooth and my left contact lens. But I want to postpone work on t

Maybe Im placing too much hope on this trip. Twenty-five days in Florida is not going to change my life. In a month, Ill be back here and there still will be two months of winter to get through and Ill have a hectic schedule teaching, and no doubt Ill be miserable again.

I dont have much to look forward to. But slowly my life is changing. The accumulation of publicity is working. Every day I meet someone or hear of a third person whos seen my name in the papers.

Last night Pete Cherches said that Bruce Chadwick exclaimed that Id gone out of kilter because my name is in the Post every other day.

Is there any point in it? I think so. The point is I need an escape hatch from a dull, impoverished existence. Im aware that my playful prankster activities are moronic, but they do seem to have value in the eyes of the media and hence the public.

That Ive become a minor celebrity is actually a sad commentary on the times: people are so starved for gossip, trivia and weirdness.

But writing, after all, is the important thing. Today my story, Douglas,

But Im finished with that stage of my career. I need to go on to something new. I know Ive been saying that for a year and a half, and in all that time, Ive written almost nothing. Yet I am a writer, and eventually Ill find what needs writing about.

Last night I called Ronna to say goodbye. She said that Susan and Evan saw the two copies of Hitler in Waldenbooks at Kings Plaza and looked through them (of course they didnt buy).

Evan told Ronna that she should get a good libel lawyer. What an asshole he is: he and Susan are little people living little lives. Susan must hate me

As Crad Kilodney says, You should take satisfaction where it comes because theres not much of it around.

So I have no money, but I did fulfill my dreams. I know this must sound pompous Im sure Ronna would say it does but I dont care anymore. After all, this is my diary.

This morning when he phoned, Josh said hes sending out rsums again. What a drag. I cant take this adjunct business for another year; forgive me, Father, if I think Im too good for it.

Tomorrows the shortest day of the year, but then the days start to become longer, and in Florida it gets dark later. The driving wasnt too hazardous

Since neither Marc nor Avis can drive me to the airport, I guess Ill have to take a cab: The guy whos driven everyone to the airport all these years finally gets to go somewhere on a plane himself and theres nobody to take me.

My Wizard Owl air freshener is staring at me questioningly.

* 11:30 PM. What is it that impels us to live? The cockroach that kept escaping me today had whatever it is. And I, for the moment, have it, too.

I’ve just trudged up the block: a desolate winter landscape of dirty snow and ice melted and refrozen. Yet I looked up, and surprisingly, the stars were out, very bright and numerous. Orion’s belt looked so sharp, I felt it was

This evening I went to dinner at my grandparents’. Their kindly questions, as usual, had obvious answers: When you put the laundry in the machine, did you put in detergent, too? When you made eggs, did you clean the skillet? God bless them.

Grandpa Herb will be 76 today, in a few minutes, when it’s the shortest day of the year and the start of winter. On Monday night, my grandparents will have been married fifty years.

When I returned from my grandparents, I decided to do some phoning. I reached Elihu just as he was going out. Scott Sommer hasnt been home for days. Gary wasnt in, nor was Mikey.

I decided to call Evie Wagner; I had passed the old block today when I went to Deutsch Pharmacy to get myself enough Triavils to last me through Florida.

To pass the time, I called Mrs. Judson. Wayne answered and said he had to wake up his mother anyway.

Mrs. Judson told me theyve extended her unemployment benefits, and in January the government will begin retraining her, perhaps as a keypu

The leather industry in this country is dying; Mrs. Judsons boss had to go out of business.

Maybe it will come back one day, she said. Who would imagine that at 56, Im going to learn something new?

We had a great conversation, and then I put in my lenses and drove into Brooklyn for the wake, which was in a giant funeral parlor on Bay Parkway.

Lou and Ev

Her father-in-law died on Tuesday night, a week after an apparently successful hip operation. Mr. Bisogno lay in the open coffin, his hands folded around a rosary; he looked very serene.

Jerry seemed very upset, of course. But he was gracious enough to introduce me to his sister-in-law Louise, the playwright who eit

Shes a lovely woman, slim with blonde frizzed hair, green eyes and age lines that show character.

She told me how she and her husband began by taking teleplay writing courses at The New School.

Louise has been working as a social studies teacher in Westchester, but now CBS has offered her a job writing a long form story for their soaps. She wants to make the sho

Herb Brodkin wanted her play on abortion and euthanasia, and theyre working on a deal for it to appear on a TV network.

Louise told me that at her age, she feels she has to make up for lost time. But I think she must have more discipline than young writers; moreover, shes suffered and survived I can see that in her face.

I was so taken with her that I stayed until the funeral parlor closed.

Then me who knows Brooklyn like the back of his hand got abs

Still, I loved driving around Brooklyn on a (now) winter night. It made me feel .

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