methodwriter85

Mark's been incredibly respectful about portraying mental illness, and he really takes our input. I remember there was this storyline in Bloodlines, where Cole had tried to kill himself. Originally, Cole was just going to go back to his dorm afterwards, but having experienced something along the same lines, I knew there was no way that Cole would be allowed to live on campus without having demonstrated to residence life that he is no longer a threat to himself and the community. I insisted on this, and Mark worked out the great little storyline of Cole living at Escorial for a quarter. I spent my 22nd birthday in a psychiatric care ward, getting treated for suicidal ideation. I had what amounted to a complete nervous breakdown at the end of 2007, and it took me until the summer of '08 before I lifted out of my depression. It sucked to go through it, but in the end I think the experience made me think a lot about how I interact with people, the kind of relationships I chose to have, and what I needed to do in order to make sure I never get like that again. Five years out from that experience, I haven't had anything remotely close to that kind of prolonged depression again, and I think it's because I forced myself to go to the bare studs to figure out why my thought process was the way it was. I also had an incredibly good therapist. Mark did a fantastic job recreating what that kind of environment is like. It'll be interesting to see if JJ will have a permanent recovery from his depression, or if he'll have more occurences. I think a time that would be ripe for it would be late 2005/early 2006, when there's going to be enormous pressure to medal at Torino. JJ would also be vulnerable to tabloids looking for dirt, and there's definitely a lot of material there, starting with how he was concieved. I can already hear Johnny Weir calling JJ the "incest crackwhore baby." Shane's loss probably creates a void in the fictional West Coast junior figure skating scene, which means that JJ will probably have a chance to step up and try to fill it. I thought Shane served as a cautionary tale to JJ about what could happen to him if he made his life entirely about figure skating and had no real identity outside of being a figure skater. It'll be interesting to see, a few years down the road, how JJ's processed all the stuff that's happened to him. I think what happened to him between the summer of 2000 and this point will take him years to fully process and heal from. It kind of felt like Mark took JJ, who had been the last "innocent" one in his generation because of his delayed adolescence, and just smashed all that to pieces. It's definitely dramatic and I thought the storylines were good, but man, I wish JJ'd been able to hold on to his childhood for just a little longer than he was able to. It's not like he's John or Will, who had basically grown out of being one- JJ's was just taken from him before he was ready to let go of it.

You really should Red-box The Perks of Being A Wallflower, if you haven't already. You will come out of the experience absolutely adoring Charlie/Logan Lermann. What a beautiful and talented young man.

I remember you and I kicked around the idea of Shane killing himself, and I gotta say, it was very well-done. I had a friend(he wasn't a close friend, but he was my science partner sophomore year) who killed himself during the summer of '09. I didn't know about it until around September/October, when I noticed his dad was asking people for remembrance stories about Billy on his Facebook. We had this mutual friend, who basically told me that he jumped off a bridge the summer after he failed to graduate from college. I was so shocked- this was a guy who had gone in front of a crowd sophomore year and tried his hardest to pull off a stand-up comedy act. (Not entirely successful, but I thought he had major guts for doing it.) Billy was going to be a school teacher, if I remember correctly. It's still pretty hard to think about all the potential life experiences this guy gave up...I mean, he was only 22. There's so much he's missing. I think you've done a good job of capturing those emotions. I also loved you played JJ's breakdown- he's feeling like shit, but sometimes you've got to tear everything down to the studs before you can rebuild. I loved, loved, LOVED that Will and JJ finally had a bit of a tussle- not a full-blown fight or anything, but I thought they were overdue for a scuffle, and I loved Will realizing that JJ is actually much stronger than he looks. Finally...Lark being Jeff's dad. Good on the people who guessed that. It's not a legacy character, so to speak, but it's always nice when Mark brings in characters that have connections to other characters.

Chapter 99 -When Will reads what he realizes is Shane's suicide note. "Asleep" by The Smiths Thank you, Perks of Being A Wallflower for this one... -When Will tells JJ about what happened to Shane, and JJ breaks down. (reprise)

It was pretty popular during the fall of 2000. It was during 2000-2001 that it seemed like N'Sync was eclipsing BSB's popularity, if I remember correctly. Then 9/11 came, and people were no longer in the mood for boybands...they didn't come back into style until the Jonas Brothers in the mid/late '00s. Although the Jonas Brothers really weren't in the vein of the BSB/N'Sync/98 Degrees type...the first really big boybandin that vein to break out close to that level would be the whole One Direction thing. 2001 was actually a much better year for music than 2000 was, and I'm pretty excited about soundtracking a new year for the next story. Some tracks from '01 that I'm eager to use include: Probably one of my favorite "graduation-themed" songs. It's just too damn cute. Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz God, this would have been soooo perfect for the Millenium scene where Brad wrecks Robbie's car. Unfortunately, that scene took place in 1999 so I couldn't use it. Missy Elliot was flying high this year, and I remember after this song, slang was influenced, to people saying things like "get my math on" and the like. And it's a pretty safe bet that I'll be able to find a spot for "Get Your Freak On." I remember we were a school dance showcase...I'm not sure if this was fall '01 or spring '02, but this 7th grade girl put on a performance to this song. And let's just say that her moves quite matched what this song is about. I'll never forget after the performance, when everyone was back in our science class and couldn't stop talking about how slutty this 7th grade girl's moves were. I'm not a huge fan of her now, but I loved her when she first came out. This kind of music- straight up soul- just wasn't around much during the boyband vs. Puff Daddy era. Alicia Keyes was such a breathe of fresh air at the time. What a great dance track. I can totally picture an 17-year old Blue boogeying down to this at the local gay club.

The other thing I liked? Matt and Wade saying "partners", not "husbands." In a couple of years, you'd start to hear that terminology change- I think when Will settles down he'd considered his guy a "husband", but it was much more common to hear that term back around 2000. Back when I was 14, I was at a summer camp, and I asked my two male camp counselors if they were "partners". I was such a dick at that age. LOL. Maybe not next story...but Wade and Matt have some serious issues to work out when they graduate from college in 2002. Did you notice that they never really did have that conversation about what happens when their Stanford years are over? Or not. It all depends on what Mark wants to do with them. This really could work as their "happily ever after"...of course, when you have a happily ever after, it's hard to do another story with them unless you wreck it, like what Mark did with Brad and Robbie for Millenium. I'm not sure how receptive the fandom would be, though.

I have a tendency to throw tantrums at times. I think that's a character trait of mine that Mark wrote subconciously into JJ. My bad. Anyway, Mark, what a nice way to resolve Wade and Matt's relationship woes. Of course, they've got the major question on the horizon of what happens after their '02 graduation from Stanford, but that can wait for another day. I like that Wade is considering helping JJ...it's important that they get along, because if JJ's going to be coached by Tiffany, Wade's going to need to be comfortable with JJ.

I thought that was a great way to finish off the relationship issues between Matt and Wade. Great happy ending. I'm not sure I ever see Wade and JJ being best friends, but I think they'd get to a place of understanding each other. If Tiffany's going to be JJ's coach, JJ and Wade will need to get along.

Chapter 98 -When Matt officially commits himself to Wade.

Rebecca Black's Viral Hit Turns Two I remember whenever I was having a really bad day, I felt fantastic when I would rush home and watch , and just laugh and laugh. "Partying, partying, yeah!"

Thank you. That was exactly what I was trying to say. I tried to stress again and again that I don't think Brad's unintelligent, because he clearly is. I'm just saying that we haven't had a protagonist who's been an academic since JP, and it looks like we might wind up getting that with Will, which is pretty cool. I'm basing this off of Mark's comments about how JP sees in Will a kindred spirit in terms of their pursuit of knowledge.

They've managed to raise 2.4 million so far. So it's a go. Woo-hoo!

The first two seasons of Veronica Mars was head and shoulders above what was airing on the UPN, and I'm including the 6th and 7th seasons of Buffy.

Hey, Rob Thomas (the creator of Veronica Mars) launched an official kickstarter campaign to try and raise money to make a Veronica Mars movie. Veronica Mars, if you don't remember, was a short-lived t.v. show about a teenaged sleuth from the Greater San Diego area, probably one of the most intelligent teen sows I've ever seen. Pretty cool. I hope they can pull it off.

I have a thing for Max Thieriot because of The House at the End of the Street, so I'll totally watch. Freddie Highmore was Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Aaron Eckhart as the surgically altered Lark a.k.a. Scott Slater? He's definitely one of those smoking hot middle-aged guys, and he looks like someone you could picture as being a blond California surfer. Aaron basically looks like what an Abercrombie model who kept his looks up would look like at middle age.

I'm just baffled by the response I got, because I did not think it was offensive thing to say someone is not an academic, because by the technical sense of the word, Brad is not. After JP, the only actual academics we've had in the story were Whist and Max. I didn't say Brad isn't smart, or that only academics are intelligent. I mean, seriously, did I say anything that could be construed as offensive? Because that's how I felt about PrivateTim's response- like he was pouncing on me for saying something offensive, and I really can't fathom how or why anything I said was offensive. That's why I'm really confused here.

I'm basically in-between being a student and really starting on that career path. It took me seven years to finish undegrad and grad school. I count my two years of grad school as being the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. And yeah, there's the academic world, and then there's real-world knowledge. You're talking about real-world knowledge that Brad has gained in being a CEO, which is not the same as academia. I was trained to be a public historian, which means that I'm supposed to serve as a mediator between the Ivy Academic Towers, and the public at large. I learned both academia and real-world knowledge as a result. I get what both sides are like, and I don't think either side is superior- they're just different. I was in no way dogging Brad. I'm just saying that he isn't an academic, and since he isn't publishing articles or teaching kids in an academic environment, it would be a pretty fair assessment for me to make. That doesn't mean I think for a second that he doesn't have a lot of knowledge or could have done that field if he had wanted to.

It's going to be interesting to see what things will be like when I'm in my early 40's and Tet's in his mid-30's, and gay marriage in the U.S. has become more of a given. I wonder if the 40-something/50-something guy you see prowling the bars is going to become less of a common sight. As for me, I'm basically celibate. I've had periods of sexual activity and they were fun, but I decided at one point that I felt like hook-ups were pretty empty and not really worth it. Sometimes it's frustrating, and there are times where I just can't stop thinking about sex, but eh, it always passes.

Damn, I was hoping that you were going to just stick with the flippant response. Now I'll be serious. I'm more responding to Mark's comment in reviews that he thinks JP sees in Will a kindred spirit in terms of their thirst for knowledge. Not that Brad's a dunce in any way shape or form, but other than attending Princeton, we haven't seen much in terms of Brad being an academic. Of course, I am in no way saying that someone who's not an academic can't be smart, because Brad is. He's just not someone who made the choice to dedicate their living to the grooming and pursuit of esoteric knowledge. He could have if he wanted to, I'm sure, but he didn't make that choice. I'm just saying that I know it's nice that with Will, we seem to be getting a little bit of the "Academic" part of CAP back in the series. The caps were more about how it's frustrating that you seem to disagree with everything I write, and I was responding in a way I would have when I was 15 and in a flame war on a discussion board. Sometimes I can be a little stubborn if I believe I'm right about something, and feel frustrated if I'm not getting the last word. That was rather regressive of me. Sometimes I feel like you just keep chipping away at me on this board.

Yeah. "Raw deal" makes sense, but the "raw" thing feels off. Mark, is it possible that this is slang you used with your friends back when you were young in the 1980's and it's just not the kind of 80's slang that carried over to the next generation like awesome did? I'm honestly pretty curious about where you got "raw" from, and why you have the characters using it a lot.

There's a huge difference between having friends that want to hang around you because you're considered The Shit and live in the Colony, and having friends that want to be around you because they're genuine friends, especially when we're talking about middle school/start of high school. Most people don't have their life-long friendships set at 13 like Andy Sharpe in Cross-Currents did. Just because Will is an affable kid doesn't mean he's got a ton of genuine friends, especially considering that Will during the time of Poor Man's Son was pretty bad at judging people. Jason is someone that we were lead to believe that Will had been friends with his whole life, and then Jason generally ditched Will after they started high school because he didn't want, for whatever reason, to be in the same group, and because Will attached himself at the hip to Ryan. I don't think his bullshit detector really developed until sometime after he got back to school, and he decided to forego making shallow friendships in favor of Marie's approach, which was to find quality people that weren't shallow fakes like Carter's crowd, or were generally fair weather friends like Ryan and Shiloh's crowd. If Will doesn't feel like he's got a lot of genuine friends from HW aside from maybe Ryan and Alistair, I think it's because he doesn't have a lot of genuine friends aside from Ryan and Alistair. You also gotta factor in that Will has been pretty preoccupied with his family issues, and when you're 14 and in high school, friends tend to expect a lot of loyalty and a lot of hang-out time. Will also seemed to focus a lot on hanging out at parties with the Stanford crowd, and other than the float trip, he didn't interact that much with HW kids who weren't Alistair and Ryan. My guess is that Will was viewed as a cool guy who was hot, but since he was gay girls didn't have much use for him, and since he wasn't hanging out after school all the time, guys didn't see the point in continuing to invite him over to play video games. Will is kind of like that freshman who only really hung out with upperclassmen, and then looked around and realized he wasn't all that bonded to people in his class. I'm loving Marie. You can see where she's Claire's daughter, but you can also see where she's very much NOT the well-heeled debutante that we all know Claire was in 1982. As for the drinking thing, I thought it was reflective of the times. In the 1970's, when JP, Isidore, and Sam were raising their kids, there was much more of a relaxed atmosphere about drinking. Colleges had on-campus bars, the drinking age was 18 in many states, and the average legal blood alcohol level was .15. I've also gotten the impression that teen drunk driving accidents hit their peak in the late 1970's. That's probably a big factor in two things that happened- the raising of the drinking age in all states to 21 by 1984, and the rising of the driving age from 16 to in some states being 17 or 18. I know that in Delaware, at some point the age for driving permits raised to 15 and a half, then went to 15 and ten months, with the license age raised from the 16th birthday to 16 and a half, and 16 and ten months. I think in Mark's generation, it was common that you could just drive off in your car for your 16th birthday, but I don't think that's true anymore. Although lucky for these guys, they have a chauffer so it's not that big of a deal for Will that he won't get his license until junior year.

Yeah, I loved the locking the gates and them being incredibly firm on no one being allowed to drive after drinking was a really nice ode to what happened to the family in October of 1980. I liked Will kissing guys openly at the party...I remember when Mark was writing party scenes for Be Rad, I thought it was odd that he didn't show two girls kissing each other to try and turn the guys on. That was such an integral feature of my observances at parties. He replied that girls didn't kiss each other at (straight) parties in 1980, and I'm betting that sure as hell didn't happen with two guys, either. By 2000, you definitely had girls kissing each other at parties, mostly to get the guys turned on and get a crowd around them, and a couple of years later, you'd start to see guys kissing each other at parties, although not to the same degree. That the kissing happened (but there was somewhat of an negative reacton) showed the transitioning going on in the first half of the new decade...gay guys were comfortable enough to kiss at parties because they're not worried about getting bashed, but at the same time...you didn't have a crowd of girls clapping and cheering them on while taking video to post onto YouTube, which became a thing during the second half of the 2000's. Finally...9 months, 11 days remain...

Chapter 97 -When the gang parties it up to celebrate the New Year. -When the gang welcomes in 2001. I'm going to admit, I get chills watching this. These people look so happy and hopeful about the coming new year of 2001, and for 3,000 people, this will be their last New Year, and their lives are to end in an unimaginably violet, unprecedented way. -When Will has fun macking on guys at the party.

Well, this is a generation of guys who grew up when there were openly gay celebrities like RuPaul, Elton John, Melissa Etheridge, Ellen Degenres, etc etc in the 1990's. There were books like Heather Has Two Mommies getting published when they were children.They're too young to really remember the AIDS epidemic, which did cause a lot of homophobic backlash in the 1980's and early 1990's. The internet began to rise when they were in middle school, which allowed them to get support and make connections to people who were like them. When they were in middle school/high school, gay civil unions were allowed in Vermont. By the end of their teen years/early 20's, gay marriage was allowed in Massachusetts. This is in pretty stark contrast to Brad's generation, when being gay was literally equated with "Got Aids Yet?" It translates to having a generation of young gay men who were much more open about being gay than in previous generations, and at younger ages, with people coming out not just in college but in high school and even middle school. (I came out when I was 15 and started making my first gay friends in 9th grade.I think for older guys, that would seem awfully young.) Instead of cocooning themselves in gayborhoods, they felt comfortable and safe enough to be openly gay with their friends, which in turn means that more straight guys have had openly gay friends, or at least absorbed the message that it's politically correct to be tolerant of gays. (Which is something that really didn't start getting pushed until the 1990's.) That in turn means that these straight, or mostly straight, guys felt more comfortable exploring the other side of themselves, whether it's just harmless flirting to full-on sexual encounters with other men. I think there's even a little bit of difference between people Matt and Wade's age (born circa 1980) and Will's age (born in the mid/late-80's.) I remember talking once to JWolf, the author of The English Year and The List. He had a hard time understanding Andy's angst in Cross-Currents. (And to be honest, so did I when I first read it.) And I think the reason why he had a hard time understanding Andy's angst was because he had never absorbed the kind of inner-homophobia that Andy had, because JWolf grew up with messages that were fairly positive about gay people. Adam Phillips and JWolf grew up in roughly the same area, with roughly the same kind of white suburban middle class background, but there's about a 9-year difference between them, and that seems to have made a big difference. And in turn, I've noticed differences between my peers and the current college kids, born in the early 90's, who are even less homophobic than my peers were.