methodwriter85

Would it really be just Claremont, though? Prop 8 does happen in California, and from what I understand, was driven and funded by the conservatives in places like Orange County. THAT will piss off so many CAP characters. '08 is going to be an insane year for Mark to cover. The decade in general is insane. These characters really have no clue. My guess would be that Ace and Claire are going to be Bush supporters, but Claire will then get eventually turned off by the evangelical undertones of the administration. Mark really can't ignore religion once the CAP characters are under the Bush administration. It's plays too big of a role in what kind of legislation gets passed and just the general undertone of the country. As for Iraq, I think JP's going to be absolutely frustrated that JJ and Will's high school/college friends are going to be more interested in Facebook/Myspace, updating their Ipods and freak-dancing to the Black Eyed Pea's at parties than they will be in protesting the war.

Particularly after dealing with the death of their beloved war hero son, Aaron. It makes total sense. Which again makes me think that 9/11 and the Iraq War are going to have some pretty interesting effects on the broader soap canvas. You just know that Darius is going to get crap from the closeminded people in Claremont for looking middle-Eastern, and some of the Hayes should enlist, and at least a few people are going to jump on the religion bandwagon. Reverend White is going to get total mileage out of 9/11, and the political climate is going to veer very sharply towards the right because of who got Bush into the White House.

double-post

Baptist? That seems really off for the area. I'm going to fanwank that the Hayes were originally Methodist, which is why they used to attend church with the Schluters and the Cramptons, but then switched over to Baptist after Aaron "died".

Holy flashback, right? It's been weird setting back my pop clock to when I was 14. The main thing to note about the year was that the pop girls and boys were going strong, Eminem was the emerging prince, and the Latin Pop explosion was still going. And leather/pleather pants were very popular. I want to use "Breathe" by Faith Hill, but I'm not really sure that fits any of the relationships I'm seeing in this one.

Happy birthday. Welcome to your twenties. Soooo much better than being a teenager.

See, I would have pegged the Hayes family as being Irish Catholic, but then Mark wrote that they went to church with Steven Hayes, so they couldn't have been. I think Methodist is most likely for them.

I hit about two Marg's and six or seven glasses of Yuengling. I like my alcohol tolerance low. Massachusetts passes gay marriage his senior year of high school. That'll be huge. (There was also the gay scandal in NJ, but I'm not sure how many jokes were being made about Governor Jim McGreevy in California, however.) There was also Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and of course, the O.C. God, I can't wait for '03-'04!

The WTC Plaza: From what I gathered, the WTC Plaza was a really popular gathering spot to listen to musicians and such. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvVxXaJT4yo&feature=related Watch at the 2:56 mark. It's absolutely eerie.

You may be angry at her, but for the sake of your kid, I would say you shouldn't drop her stuff into a pile on the floor. At least pack her stuff up. She's doing her best to move on and I think she at least deserves the courtesy of having her husband/long-time boyfriend pack up her stuff so she can move out.

Some other differences between Will and Brad: 1. The internet. Don't underestimate it. Regular kids Will's age would have been on the internet by middle school, but I'm betting he was surfing on Windows '95 at the age of eight. Will's generation is right on that edge of people who can remember a pre-internet time, but just barely. I think I was about ten the first time I went online. Later on, I'm betting that Will's going to be on Facebook and uploading videos to Youtube. I think at this point though, he's just going to be on LiveJournal. 2. Cell phones. I'm betting Will got his first cell at 12, although it's possible he might have gotten his earlier. I bet he doesn't know how to dial a rotary phone. (I don't, either. LOL.) 3. Hip-hop. The HW video I posted of these rich white kids blaring "Paper Planes" by M.I.A. in their expensive white SUV? Pretty dead-on. Hip-hop has a HUGE influence- even if you're not listening to it personally, hip-hop is the main music played at parties and it influences the way people talk and dress. As Adam Phillips once put it to me, "everyone wants to be black." LOL. It's a definite far cry from the ultra-preppy, whitebread early 80's that Brad was influenced by. There's a movie called Havoc with Anne Hathaway that address the whole "rich white kids trying to be black" deal. And Alpha Dogs, but it does in a much more subtle way. 4. Gay rights. Will's at the point now where civil unions in Vermont are a possibility. It's not on his radar yet, but civil unions/marriages are becoming a possibility for him. That's going to be a HUGE influence on him. I do think that in this story, Will felt like more of a Brad redux, going into Poor Man's Son, but when Mark got Will off of the stripper pole and actually displaying personality instead of being a 13-year old sexpot, he started feeling a lot less like a Brad Redux. It helps that Mark doesn't seem to be trying to set Will up with a Hayes boy. I actually like Tony, but of course the age and distance thing will be difficult. As a random, I got coerced into singing "I Touch Myself" at karoke last night. It made me think of Mark...

I DO think it would be interesting to see how Brad would deal with a child who got very religious. Which is actually pretty true for this generation- I've met more than a few Christian-types in my day, and I'm thinking 9/11 played a pretty important factor in getting people to follow religion more. And JJ is in more of a conservative environment with the figure skating community- he certainly would be encouraged to go to church and talk about how God got him through his tough, preemie orphan life.

Right. I didn't say that they wouldn't be Anglican- I'm also saying that it makes sense that they didn't jump to one of the other religions after Evangelicalism hit the country in the mid-18th century and again in the early 19th century. That's why I guessed the Danfields were a Tidewater Tobacco colony family that made their money in the 1700's, who then diversified into other investments after the Virginia soil went belly-up, not a Cotton-Plantation family. I'm betting someone in that family was clergy who was instrumental in setting up William and Mary. It would also make sense that was an indeed an anti-slavery sentiment in Virginia, because of the fact that the soil wasn't suited to cotton-growing. The Tidewater Tobbacco areas of Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware were never quite as virulent in slavery values as had states that had raised themselves around labor intensive crops like cotton and such. I was just questioning if they would actually be East Coast Brahmins, which is based around Boston. The Danfields feel less like a Massachusetts Bay colony family who then migrated to Virginia and more like one of the Founding Families of Virginia. I think that it'd be more likely the Cramptons who developed from the Boston Brahmins- a branch moved off to Ohio after the territory was opened up in the 1780's. The Schluters are the French ones, right? I would guess they immigrated to the country in the late 18th century during the French Revolution, eventually winding up in Ohio.

Right about the poetic license. The drama of JJ and Will interacting in school together seems too good to pass up. I've seen it time and time again- when you've got two siblings in the same grade or just one grade apart, there's a bitchy competitive vibe with one another that you don't see when siblings are farther apart in age. Irish twins are either the best of friends or the worst of enemies. I can see JJ as an actor in New York City, too. It'd be funny if, instead of getting a Manhattan penthouse like you think he would, JJ gets a loft in Williamsburg and becomes a hipster. It's absolutely hilarious whenever I run into people from high school who were clean-cut in high school and now they're totally hipster. They really are the yuppies the 2000's/2010's. Maybe JJ can wind up at Tisch onces he finishes his skating career? It's not like he'd have to worry about paying for it.

Congrats, Andy and Mike.

In terms of point-of-view, Private Tim brought up an interesting point about Will: By having the Cramptons/Schluters at the kind of income level he's had them reach since the 1960's, Mark's essentially created a generation of characters- Darius, Will, JJ, Marie, John- who've been sheltered in a total bubble and have never known any kind of deprivation or discomfort. When you had JP and Steven growing up in Claremont during the 1930's-1950's, they had to interact with kids who weren't like them, and they weren't in the kind of rich privileged bubble that the current generation of kids have grown up in. They all had happy childhoods, and in Will's case, they grew up in an environment and time where it was okay to be homosexual. And as PrivateTim said, even the economic troubles of now are not likely going to touch the CAP characters, so they'll continue in that happy bubble. How do you keep narrators who can get what they want with a phone call or charge card interesting and relatable? There's only so many times that reading about fancy trips, fancy cars, and fancy clothing can be interesting, and at 11 stories and counting, CAP really needs to change it up to keep things from feeling repetitive. Having Gathan in the story seemed like a solution to the lack of narratives from diverse backgrounds, but...for whatever reason, it didn't quite work. It's why I'm hoping that 9/11 and the Iraq War is really going to shake these characters up, because frankly, reading about people who get whatever they want in life and never hear the word "no" will be a big zzzzz.

See, I had read that scene as Brad not knowing what Darius's grades were, until I re-read it again. Whoops. You're still not weighing in on whether or not JJ would actually be a good fit for Harvard-Westlake given the amount of school he needs to miss, Tim. By nature of the smaller time jumps, we have to see more of these guy's school days. Hell, JJ might still be in college right now. Interesting to see how JJ will balance a school like HW with being a professional figure skater.

I was aware of that. But then you made the comment about how academically oriented the family is, and that none of them would let JJ slide. I'm saying that it's not a given they'd be watching carefully over JJ's grades, and that it would be an interesting storyline if Brad and Jeanine do get called in by Harvard-Westlake because his grades are starting to slip because his focus is entirely on skating. JJ's looking at missing at a minimum 5 weeks of school during the 2000-2001 school year, and going by what JCashell said, I'm not sure how much that would fly. At the same time, I do like the idea of having Will and JJ go to school together...but I'm not sure how realistic it would be for JJ to actually attend Harvard-Westlake if he's missing 5-6 weeks over the school year. I'm just trying to figure out what kind of arrangement they'd do to make it so that it's okay for him to miss that amount of school. As for JJ's idols, I'm assuming right now it'd be Evengi Plushenko, who didn't seem to fit that much into the academic mold. (Don't quote me on this.) Prolly some other Russian skaters. Daisy? Your take?

Were twins, in any event. Billy's been dead for 20 years in CAP World. I suppose that Jeanine and Tiffany's kids will be like treated like twins, even though they're actually not.

I think we estimated Darius's GPA as being somewhere around the 3.2-3.3 range, which probably would have been acceptable in 2000 since Darius's SAT was high. Plus I'm sure some strings got pulled. The point is that Brad didn't even know what Darius's grades were, which would contradict your idea that the parents would be so on top of what their kids are doing that JJ would never be allowed to slide. Jeanine doesn't even seem to want JJ to attend school so he can pursue the Olympics full-time, and Brad's occupied with Will and Robbie's occupied with work. And none of them seem all that academically pushy with their kids. I think Claire and Jack would be, but not really Brad and Robbie. In Millenum, Jeanine flat-out wanted JJ to drop out of school and focus on his career. I was kinda surprised that Brad and Robbie didn't seem to mind that much, but it kinda fits into their whole "whatever which way they roll" deal they have with their kids. I think if JJ wound up dropping out and getting his GED at 15; it could create some interesting issues with JP, who would likely be pissed at Brad and Jeanine for letting him do it. And I'm sure JJ's getting pressure from his coach to drop school and get a full-time tutor.

I'm hoping that the coming events of the decade do manage to shake these kids up a bit, especially if/when they have friends who go off to Iraq. At the very least, some of Gathan and Ella's friends are going to go. Since Darius has never met an enemy, I'm betting he'll be friends with at least some of them. It'd be a total zzzz to read about people who live in a bubble where everything's easy and they have nothing to worry about. So what's your thoughts on the JJ situation, Mark? How do you think Jeanine would deal with the situation? Is JJ going to HW using tutors for the 5 or so weeks he misses or is he just going to get tutored? He just might be the first person in his family to get a GED instead of a diploma. LOL.

I think the initial problem I had with Will was that he didn't feel like a real person- he felt more like some hot piece of ass character that we were supposed to lust over. And I'm sorry, even though he looks like a 17-year old green-eyed Sean Faris, I'm just not going to get into the sexual adventures of a 13-year old. Recently, however, I think the character's become better fleshed out. I still don't think he can fully narrate a story yet, unless Mark jumps the story to 2003, but I think we're at least two stories away from '03.

I was under the impression that the Paris plot happened because of the fact that Will generally doesn't have any worries or such in his life, and it'd be boring to follow someone who gets everything he wants in life with no problems. On the other hand, with JJ, there are plethora of issues to mine. There's being a baby born to a crackwhore who was screwing her uncle. There's being short and picked on. There's being the middle child with Darius the Social Butterfly and Will the guy everyone likes while never quite feeling like you get enough attention.There's being in a sport that requires you to look like a perfect, sexless angel and to essentially trade in your childhood for a shot at Olympic Gold. I LOVED that it took fourteen years in CAP time for Jim to get called out. It'd be interesting to see JJ deal with all this stuff, when he's about 20 in 2006. There's so much stuff for Mark to mine here without even having to come up with anything- it's all there organically. Back to the Will vs. Brad- I like that Will's not Mr. Fashion Plate the way his dad is. I like that there's more of a laidback look in how he dresses, and that he cares more about the environment. I also love that he's never going to know what it's like to be in the closet. I was never really in the closet either- and I'm starting to get how rare that is/was- but it's great to have a character for whom there is no coming out angst to deal with because there was never a closet to deal with. Cross-Currents is realistic, but there are guys who never had an issue with their sexuality, and I'm glad to see that being relfected here.

You mean like how Brad was so on top of what Darius was doing that he didn't know that Darius had grades so bad that he resorted to going to Santa Clara University? They totally allowed Darius to slide. In any event, it WILL be interesting to see how JJ will try and juggle a school as demanding as Harvard-Westlake with a sport as demanding as figure skating. Unless, of course, the plan is that JJ will get a tutor. I do kinda want to see Will and JJ together at school, though. Will should be fine; I'm not sure the kind of time committment that HW seems to want from their students would be all that realistic from JJ. They might make an exception, though.

Mark's been open about his issues with figuring out how to write Poor Man's Son, and has taken a break to focus on his real life and also what he wants to do with the direction of the story. Paya made two interesting points that made me think about the hard roadblock that Mark's hit. I think these are two pretty good points, and highlight the problem of transitioning. Mark is at the point where he's trying to transition the story from Brad's generation off to Will's generation.The problem is that right now, Will is 13/14 years old. The bulk of that generation is 13 to 14 years old now. While Will does seem like a cool kid for the most part and I enjoy him, he still feels too young to fully narrate a story because when you are 13, you just can't see beyond your own front door. Even when you're a cool 14-year old, it's still a really awkward age, and I'm not sure how much appeal there is in reading about the sexual misadventures of a 14-year old. The obvious solution would be doing a time jump to when the kids are older, but Mark seems really reluctant to do time jumps- notice how for the last couple of stories, the time jumps have never been more than maybe 5-7 months- we're not even getting full years anymore. The last significant time jump we had was between If It Fits(1995) and Bloodlines(1998). And I can't blame Mark for not wanting to skip over 2001, which is going to be a huge year. But to be honest, I do think not having the big time jumps does hurt the story- not just because the potentional narrators are staying little kids longer, but because cramming in all these events with the family in such a short, dense amount of time takes away an organic feel to the flow of the story. The short time jumps doesn't give time for things to develop effectively off-screen. For example, we knew from Be Rad(1980) that Sam and JP were finished. By 1985, Sam had started a family in St. Louis and had two toddlers. The four-year time lag between Be Rad, which ended in June 1981, and Man Motion, which starts in January 1985; made those developments pretty believable. But if we're checking in on the family every couple of months, it's harder to believe that big developments like that could have happened without us knowing about it. One of the best things about each time jump was Mark explaining why things had changed, what had caused them to change, and what the new family dynamics were now. When we're only seeing things jump a few months ahead, we're losing that aspect of the story. Anyway, the solution to the narrator problem was at first having Matt Carrswold and Wade Danfield- they seemed like the placeholders until Will was old enough to handle his own story. Then there was having Brad go off on a mid-life crisis, which worked. But...I don't know...Poor Man's Son has been an introductionary story, and with any transition there's going to be issues. I enjoy Gathan, but I get why people have problems with him. Like I enjoy Will, but I get why people have problems with him. And Paya's right- there's a relative dearth of narrators, especially legacy characters, for Mark to chose from, unless he decides to jump the story from 2000 to 2003-2004. There is no way that JJ or John Hobart could handle a turn at narration, at least not while they're still pre-driving age. Darius being straight pretty much seems to preclude him from ever getting a shot at narrating. Kevin(Sergio) could possibly work, but I don't get the feeling Kevin is the type of character that could lead a story. I don't think the problems with Poor Man's Son are insourmountable, but it has been interesting to see what happens when you're hitting a transition period in your writing. I have full faith that Mark will work out these problems, though, and continue with some great soap.