Paternity

[B1ue]

Before we run further rampant with speculation, as far as I can remember, Tim's correct. Jeanine was pretty normal, albiet a bit pressured with having someone like Will on her hands, until her life basicly exploded at her.

Edited September 12, 2012 by B1ue

[rjo]

I remember the conversation between Brad and Jeanine a few books back. Brad wanted a relationship like JP had with Isidore. Jeanine thought of herself as hired help. Brad has a very forceful personality ( much more forceful than JP). He has tried to tone it down. I agree that it wasn't until after Tiffany found that Jeanine slept with Cody that the troubles began (Tim was 100% correct). Why has it got this bad? Jeanine's insecurity in the family (not married to Brad), Tiffany not forgiving her, Cody not stepping up as Maddy's dad (like Wade has done), and JJ playing her against Will. All these could had pushed her over the edge. Hopefully, now Will and her can rebuild their relationship, it will be much harder to do than the relationship between Brad and Will, but in the CAP world anything is possible. Look at Brad's redemption.

Edited September 12, 2012 by rjo

[methodwriter85]

I don't think Cody not stepping up as a dad has anything to do with it, though- I think Jeanine pretty much sees him as a sperm donor, and Cody hasn't done much to dispel that notion. I did not think a 30-year old circuit boi would be into being a dad, and I was right. The other factors, I agree with.

 

I think being the Star Figure Skater's Mother gave Jeanine a sense of identity that she likely hasn't really had in the face of Brad basically treating her like the nanny all these years, and everything rested on making sure that JJ stays the figure skating star. Anything that could keep JJ from succeeding became something to squash quickly, and Jeanine got to see Will as an obstacle to JJ's path to stardom.

Edited September 12, 2012 by methodwriter85

[rjo]

I agree with you 100%. The point with Cody was unlike Wade who has Tiffany's back. Jeanine doesn't have that type of support. If I remember right a cheerleader Mom did some pretty weird things in the past. What is odd is that the win at all cost attitude is something that both Brad and Jeanine share. What is even more sad is that in business it is exceptable.

[methodwriter85]

That's the interesting thing about Will's characterization- he bluffed but I think at the end of the day, there's no way Will would have gone through with the nuclear option. If Brad had called Will on his bluff, he probably would have backed down because I don't think Will has Brad's "win at any cost" characteristic to him, whereas you can tell that JJ does. That's probably why Will identifies so much with Wade, while JJ identifies with Matt- Wade doesn't have the mentality of doing anything you can to win, because all of the backstabbing in politics disgusted him. Meanwhile, Matt is an alpha male jock with a strong need to win, and I think that's why JJ got drawn to him- they're both people who will do anything to win without really considering the consequences.

[naaz]

Still, Will is a teenager, and I hope that however changed Brad has been nowadays, he wouldn't risk Will going on a rampage.

Are there anybody else thinking we're getting a chapter every 6th day now?

[Westie]

As an aside, has anyone else noticed that Paternity just became the most reviewed story ever at GA?

[sat8997]

I did notice...about a week ago.

[mmike1969]

No pressure right Mark? Lol

 

[Daddydavek]

Hooray, hooray! Chapter 65 is up and those of us in end-stage CAP withdrawal got our fix!

 

All Hail our esteemed author/CAP creator Mark Arbour on a nifty chapter that showed Brad really does get it concerning his relationship with Will.

 

Unfortunately, JP must be feeling fairly frustrated. After criticizing the family for infighting, it erupts again while still at table. Darius, JJ, Will, Robbie and also a few others may find their Christmas stockings a little lighter this year.

 

Thanks Mark for another interesting chapter!

[PrivateTim]

Cool chapter... can't wait for the sabbatical to end.

[centexhairysub]

I really liked the new chapter. We got to see at least partially the steps that Brad went through to reach his decision about Will's future. I was glad that we got some idea of how he came to that suprising decision. This is the first time in a while that we saw how Brad's therapy has made a real difference in how he relates to others.

 

JP made this great speech that should have given everyone a roadmap on how to come together; then all hell breaks loose just a few minutes later. I know Robbie and JJ missed the speech but someone should have headed them off before it reached that level.

 

Does Darius seem lost to anyone else? It's like he made this great decision to really help out that deserving kid get into the Naval Service Academy; then he just seemed to lose his way. Is there something more going on there then we realize?

 

Great chapter to keep us on pins and needles Mark, hope the sabbatical is going well and you are getting some much needed down time.

[Daddydavek]

Above post: "Does Darius seem lost to anyone else? It's like he made this great decision to really help out that deserving kid get into the Naval Service Academy; then he just seemed to lose his way. Is there something more going on there then we realize?"

 

Good point!

Edited September 29, 2012 by Daddydavek

[PrivateTim]

Does Darius seem lost to anyone else? It's like he made this great decision to really help out that deserving kid get into the Naval Service Academy; then he just seemed to lose his way. Is there something more going on there then we realize?

 

Sorry to be a cynic, but I think Ella had more to do with his decision than altruism.

[Canuk]

well , it looks like JP's statement at the beginning of dinner was to no purpose! they are all one hell of a mixed up family!

[methodwriter85]

Sorry to be a cynic, but I think Ella had more to do with his decision than altruism.

 

I'm starting to think that Darius is regretting that decision and tying himself so tightly to one girl. I always appreciated the fact that Mark DIDN'T have Brad and Robbie decide to go to the same colleges back during Be Rad- it always pisses me off when in real life and reel life people decide to give up the college of their dreams for a relationship. I knew a girl who turned down a full-ride at Columbia for a guy, and of course it didn't work out for her. If the bond is as tight as you think it is, it can stand being separated in college. That's why I love that JJ is a guy who's going to be completely focused on his career, not someone who goes crazy in romance or anything like that, like his brothers got.

 

Anyway, I really loved the end conversation- Darius's estrangement from both of his brothers is completely believable, as well as the idea that Jeanine was just never as close to Will as she was to Darius and JJ. I loved the call-back to If It Fits- but it kind of make me think...what happened to the 13-year old Darius that had a way with words and could have argued his way with an attorney? He wasn't book smart but Darius was people smart...so where did that guy go?

Edited September 30, 2012 by methodwriter85

[Mark Arbour]

I posted something similar in the reviews regarding Darius, but I'll do that here too. Darius' world has completely transformed, and he's probably very confused. He's dealing with college, and with having this serious girlfriend, which is a big enough challenge. Then to top that off, his whole family in Malibu has pretty much gone off the deep end. His mother, who he's very attached and loyal to (we assume), is nuts. JJ is still the same, but annoying as hell. Will has stopped being the little brother who worships the ground Darius walks on, and is now challenging Darius physically and emotionally. I think if I was Darius, I'd spend most of my time sitting there, just blinking at these crazy idiots.

[methodwriter85]

That does make sense. I remember my transition to college was really emotional and hard to deal with and I did a lot of things I wish I hadn't, like riding around in cars with people who were drunk. It is a confusing time- to go from being a senior who understands everything about his high school world to then being a nameless face in a crowd of new people who don't know anything about you. Especially when you factor in that Darius did his education at Malibu Middle and High School, which means that he also went to high school with a lot of people he had gone to middle school with. It's got to be a shock to go from being around the same people for 6, 7 years and then switch to being around thousands of strangers.

 

If we're going with how Will's being written, he's going to clash majorly with his water polo coach because sports teams don't exactly encourage independent "I'm doing my own thing" thought. Which actually would be pretty interesting. Although if Will's only an okay player and just doing it to get into the pants of other water polo players, he probably won't clash that much with his coach- coaches only really act like hardasses with the really good

players. It depends on if Will's meant to be a star player like the way Matt is, or if Will's meant to be serviceable player like Wade is.

 

As for JJ and his annoying ways, I can't help but cringe and remember that I could be equally that bitchy when I was 14/15. I think when JJ transitions into senior level figure skating and has to contend with the likes of Evengi Plushenko and Johnny Weir, I imagine that some humility will be made.

 

Finally, I appreciated that we didn't get the obligatory "Let's have the past protagonists and main characters show up!" deal that we always get when Thanksgiving and Christmas hits in CAP. I mean, I mean, it's nice to see the past characters once in awhile, but to do it every time the story hits Thanksgiving or Christmas kind of gets gratuitous, especially since we haven't skipped a Holiday season in CAP since 1998. There's so much tension with this family that having past players like Marcel or Lou show up instead of the people that are really involved with the current story would have been really superfluous.

Edited September 30, 2012 by methodwriter85

[PrivateTim]

His mother, who he's very attached and loyal to (we assume), is nuts.

 

Isn't Jeanine his nanny? I mean, yeah she raised him, but wasn't his mother was the crazy Shulter/Crampton lady who was doing a Persian guy?

 

If we're going with how Will's being written, he's going to clash majorly with his water polo coach because sports teams don't exactly encourage independent "I'm doing my own thing" thought. Which actually would be pretty interesting. Although if Will's only an okay player and just doing it to get into the pants of other water polo players, he probably won't clash that much with his coach- coaches only really act like hardasses with the really good players. It depends on if Will's meant to be a star player like the way Matt is, or if Will's meant to be serviceable player like Wade is.

 

You really do not understand the water polo world especially the elite level and you really don't understand the world of elite prep schools or the Menlo School wp coach specifically. Water polo isn't like football, baseball, hockey, etc. The athletes are very different, the coaches are very different and the environment is very different.

 

Given Will's size and athletic ability he would be an instant star in the sport, especially at the age group level. He would dominate his fellow 14 year olds.

 

Beyond the differences of water polo to other sports, a lot of water polo is about the comraderie of the sport because of the amount of time you spend with each other (11 months of the year essentially). Will, looking for friends to replace Ryan and maybe John will like his team mates and want to please them and fit in.

[methodwriter85]

Good points, Tim. I know what the environment is of an elite charter school, but not that of elite prep schools. We all have our worlds that we understand- you understand elite private schools; I understand the environment of mid/late 2000's colleges as well as performing arts schools and math/science charter schools. We've even got someone who understands the world of competitive figure skating and has been consulting Mark on how to write JJ's figure skating drama. How great is it for Mark that he's able to incorporate the viewpoints of people with a myriad of experiences and perspectives into giving CAP a sense of what the mindset was for a given era?

 

Isn't Jeanine his nanny? I mean, yeah she raised him, but wasn't his mother was the crazy Shulter/Crampton lady who was doing a Persian guy?

His biological mother was Bitty, but Jeanine pretty much has acted as Darius's mother since he was 3 because Bitty was caught up into the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980's. That's actually been a pretty consistent thread throughout all of the CAP- it's not blood that makes a family, but how you interact with each other. Which makes it all the more interesting that Jeanine is so close to her adopted sons but can't stand her biological one.

Edited October 1, 2012 by methodwriter85

[methodwriter85]

I was thinking about the chapter again, and another thing I really liked about this chapter was the observation that while Brad and Will are both control freaks, Brad's a control freak about other people, while Will's only really a control freak about himself. I thought that was a pretty astute distinction, and one I can see- going back to Be Rad, you can tell that Brad really, really liked bossing people around, and that was evident in the way in which he ruled Gunn High School's social scene. Whereas Will is just about doing his own thing and not being told what to do, and as such he doesn't really try to control other people the way his dad does.

 

I really like how Mark's given Will a lot of similiar Brad qualities, because nature does set a lot of traits, but at the same time, Will hasn't felt like a redux of Be Rad. That was my biggest fear going into the Will stuff- that Mark would just recycle Brad's storylines with younger models like long-running showrunners tend to do. But Mark hasn't done that, and I'm really glad that he's creating different dynamics for this generation than he did for Brad's. I like that Will isn't about being a Tryant Social King like Brad, or a fashion plate like Brad, and even the touch that Will is more of a math/science kind of guy while Brad was written as being strong in English/history. (I would bet that Will likely got that from Jeanine, which would probably piss him off to think that, LOL.)

[Guest Spyder]

As an aside, has anyone else noticed that Paternity just became the most reviewed story ever at GA?

 

Are older popular stories reflected accurately in that tally? When I saw the above, curiosity made me look at Dom's stories. I find it hard to believe that the review counts on Desert Dropping (45 reviews), The Long Way (23 reviews), In the Fish Bowl (13 reviews) and The Other Side of Me (4 reviews) are accurate reflections of those stories - especially given their popularity.

 

IIRC, ratings were lost when the site was "transformed" and stories were moved in 2010 - were reviews as well?

[Mark Arbour]

Are older popular stories reflected accurately in that tally? When I saw the above, curiosity made me look at Dom's stories. I find it hard to believe that the review counts on Desert Dropping (45 reviews), The Long Way (23 reviews), In the Fish Bowl (13 reviews) and The Other Side of Me (4 reviews) are accurate reflections of those stories - especially given their popularity.

 

IIRC, ratings were lost when the site was "transformed" and stories were moved in 2010 - were reviews as well?

 

You're absolutely correct. In fact, it took a while, IMHO, for the review system to catch on. That means that stories posted before the big 2010 conversion will show lower readership and review totals. I personally think that if the system had been in place when Dom had started posting, he'd have the most read stories and he'd have the most reviewed stories.

 

That being said, it has affected most of us who have been here for a while. CJ's "Circumnavigation", for example, which is in excess of 100 chapters, would probably have a lot more reviews, and even though it's already the most read story on GA, I think the margin would be much larger. I also think that both "Millennium" and "Bloodlines" would have a lot more reads and reviews.

[mmike1969]

Of course that new tally does not reflect rhe decent authors that was on GF that have left either.

[Mark Arbour]

BTW, for those of you wondering when the next chapter of Paternity will be posted, it should be within the next few days.