methodwriter85

I really am overjoyed in hearing about people who work hard to become good parents, particularly gay parents, because of my own parental issues that have plagued me into adulthood. However, after some thought, I realized I don't want kids of my own. I like being an uncle and being able to play with the kids for a little bit, but also being able to give them off to the parents when I get tired of being around them.

With the exception of Zach, I don't really see anyone in Generation 4 that would worry me. I remember people thinking that JJ's bitchy attitude might be indicative of sociopathic tendencies, but JJ really isn't anything you wouldn't come across in the performer world. When '06 fails to yield him gold, I'm thinking JJ will go on a journey of self-discovery that yields some badly needed maturity and perspective. Finally. Remember, these kids are on average 13 to 14. Is there any guy who DOESN'T look back on what he was like in the early stages of high school and cringe?

Hmm. I don't know. Isn't Darius supposed to be much swarthier than that, so much so that people think he's Spanish when they first meet him until they realize that he's half-Israeli? This guy looks too pretty and whitebread for Darius, I think. Just my opinion, of course. I do like the look a lot.

It's a trip reading old blogs. I wonder what your friends would think if they discovered you were secretly an online author of a well-regarded gay family soap opera saga. I think I'm glad I never really had to deal with being confused or straddling both sides of the fence, when it comes to sexuality. It's made it so much easier. You really make appreciate how fortunate I am in that regard, Mark. Thanks.

Well, I guess Will is glad he decided not to move to Paly and attend Gunn High.

I watched it a few times. The eye-candy was nice, but I couldn't stand the characters, save for maybe Emmett. In terms of gay characters, my favorite portrayal would be David on Six Feet Under. In terms of man-flesh, nothing really beat watching Oz. I remember sneaking viewings of that show whenever we got the previews. Christopher Meloni has a great body. LOL.

I really liked John dumping Will. It felt realistic- an average thirteen year old would be freaked out by the intensity that Will has, and would realize that they can't just have a fun friendship that includes sex. Will at times feels way too mature, but John does feel very much like a 13-year old boy, albeit a very bright one. Besides, what would Mark be able to write for Will if Will was settled into his "forever" relationship at 13? There's a reason why Brad and Robbie didn't get another story until Robbie had his mid-life crisis. Nice, stable relationships are wonderful, but kinda boring to read about. LOL. Upthread someone mentioned Max as a good guy for Will, if it weren't for Will being so young. I'm pretty sure it's inevitable they'll hook up because Mark believes that every teenaged boy must have sex with an experienced middle-aged person, and I would much rather Will get with Max than get with Cody. However, I think since Will has a similar personality to Brad, he'll be like Brad in finding that he wants a challenging guy as his eventual life partner. Max is just too agreeable. I think Tim is the right kind of guy for him- the milder personalities they have work well together.

Chapter 21 -When Will and John talk about his experience with Gustave. Big Empty by Stone Temple Pilots -When JP has the obligatory "don't end up like Jeff' speech to a younger Hayes guy. -When John breaks up with Will, and Will decides to make it easy on him. I think "Ashes to Ashes" is the theme song for JP whenever he decides to talk about Jeff. LOL. Anyway, the Sugarcult song is something I discovered doing the music. I love it when I discover songs I like from an era that I hadn't heard of before.

That's why I like doing it. I like reminding people of where they were they heard a particular song, and what their life was like at the time a song came out. Doing all this 2000 stuff makes me remember when I was 14 and full of middle school angst.

Have you ever heard of Chad Everrett? That man is in his 70's and I'd still do him. Anyway, happy birthday JP. (God, I feel like a Harry Potter fan here.)

Happy birthday.

Well, yeah. That's so you can hear me better when we talk.

Come on, you guys didn't really think Mark would kill off Brad, did you? That'd be about as likely as Mark having one of the characters prevent 9/11 from happening. (It's about 13 and half months away now.) Brad is the character that is, personality-wise, the closest to Mark. It's why he's so good at writing Brad, and why Be Rad had many elements of Mark's bio story in it.

Well, as much as I've bitched about 2000 era music, there is some really good stuff coming out. It's just not like 2003, which was a really amazing year in music. Thankfully it coincides with the summer of JJ and Will's senior year of high school. I've been really wanting to use that pick at some point. Were you familiar with this song? I always like it when I pick something that someone really likes but had never heard of before.

I don't have a father, and I don't plan on becoming one, so Father's Day is somewhat meaningless to me. Still, it's great to see people who do have that kind of relationship with their dad. I tried having you as a surrogate dad, but then I realized you were more like the zany young uncle I never had. You're a little too young to be a dad to me.

Chapter 20 -When Will gets rescued. I FINALLY had a place for this song. Yay! -When Gathan and Kristin talk about what going off to college means for their relationship. "Don't Tell Me" by Madonna I remember when they were playing this song for the promos for season 4 of Dawson's Creek..."Her Choice Changed Everything". God, the cowboys in this video were sexy as hell. Are all cowboys this sexy, Blue? Maybe I SHOULD start listening to country. -When Will tries to process what happened to him.

Yeah, but it was usually stupid stuff like getting teased by a senior, not knowing who to sit with at lunch, or getting lost the first day. The real drama is in 11th/12th grade, when everyone's driving, people are dealing with questions of what they want to do they want to with their life, the pressure of getting into college, and people are trying to wrap up in their high school experience as satisfactorily as possible. Mark's got a point. I think the only one is this generation who'd join a frat would be Darius, and that's only if he doesn't wind up in the military. Possibly John, if he doesn't wind up in college lacrosse. Will I could never see joining a frat, because he comes off as more of an introverted person and kind of private, and I just can't see him in a frat house. He'll party a little in college, but I don't see him as a future party animal. JJ's too prissy to ever get involved with a frat. However, I could see JJ trying to join a frat as a way to compensate for not being popular in high school, but ultimately not getting through the pledging process because he's so prissy. He'd need a big personality change for him to ever be a frat kid. I don't know if I'd call Will the Alpha Male of this generation of kids. He's well-liked and respected by people, but Will doesn't really seem to have the aggressive instinct that most Alpha Males I know have. And he's more of an introvert and pretty low-key compared to the Alpha guys I know; I don't see him as a guy that interested in leading or being powerful. I see Generation Four(or Three, if you count JP and Stefan as Gen 1) as being more of a team-oriented entity, with Darius, JJ, and Will having equal say over everything, and no one really deferring to any one person. That would fit with what we know about this generation, because this generation of kids were raised to be team players where everyone gets a ribbon for participating.

Gustave was such an idiot. If he had been able to tame his addiction to young boys, he very likely would have been set for the rest of his life had he helped them out. I'm glad Gustave was evil, though. I liked being surprised because I thought he was going to turn out to be good like everyone else thought. One thing that surprised me, though- if Gustave likes young boys, why would he have been that interested in Will? Isn't Will written as looking more like a 16-17 year old, and therefore with a more mature body? I mean, I guess he knew that Will was 13, but his body is clearly more mature than 13, and I would have thought that'd be a turn-off for a pedobear. I realize that Gathan has to take a backseat right now, but I really do hope that when the school year starts we'll see more of Gathan in Stanford dealing with his issues and Will kinda settles back into being the b-story. This is called Poor Man's Son, after all. And to be honest, there just isn't that much drama you can mine with people in 9th grade as opposed to the kinds of drama that college freshmen can get involved with. Maybe Gathan could pledge a frat? We've never seen that before.

Chapter 19 -When Will overhears Gustave's nefarious plans for him. "Lullaby" by The Cure -When the gang deals with the kidnapping in various ways. -When the gang tries to find Will and Brad, and Will's childhood innocence is officially ended. Are you happy that I added some techno, Blue? I hope you're pleased. I do think Eminem and Moby were the best things going for music in 2000. They're bright spots in an otherwise "meh" year for music.

So, yeah Tim...if John does decide on a place like Johns Hopkins, the fact that lacrosse is a more popular sport there would be an added bonus. If he wants to pursue it on a collegiate level, that WOULD be a legitimate reason to leave California. Kinda like the reverse of why Will would want to stay in California for the surfing. Anyway, interesting point about Jack and Claire's finances, Blue.I never would have thought about them not having as much money. You're right; they wouldn't. They would be more on the terms of "affluent", like Sandy and Kierstin Cohen on the O.C. The O.C. God, I can't wait until the show hits in 2003. It was such a huge show in terms of impact on the youth culture of this country. It was one of the few teen dramas I've ever seen where straight jocks would admit to watching it.

Does this mean we're going with the Menlo School for John Hobart, Mark? We really ought to have down where he's going to school if he's going to be the main protagonist's boyfriend, and a legacy character at that. Plus, I read that Menlo has a 9th grade lacrosse program. I'm betting that the school lets 8th graders play on freshman varsity teams. That was true for the school that people in my school had to play for. Therefore, John being a lacrosse player in middle school is more likely if he goes to school at Menlo. Lacrosse is more a "new" sport in the West, it seems. Maryland and New York seems to be where lacrosse is the biggest at. It's not that big of a sport in California. John being in 8th grade but trying to play for a high school sports team makes it more reasonable why he skipped the beginning of the trip, because he needed to be extra good to make that team and prove himself despite being one of the "babies" of the team.

Of course, you've got to remember we're talking Gunn High School, which from what I've read still has pretty damn good academics. I'm assuming that's where Ella is going to go for her final year. I think Menlo seems like a pretty good fit for John Hobart, and I like how they seem to have a strong emphasis on the arts as well as the academics and sports. And it's a middle school/high school, so the continuity is nice to have. Anyway, the lacrosse should look good on John's resume when he applies to Johns Hopkins for fall '05. It's the state sport, you know.

That's true to the kids I knew in high school. My high school was connected with a math and science charter school, and they were notoriously hard on their students. I mean, you would see kids with so much books they had to bring home, their backpacks were looked bigger than they did. The use of coffee, caffeine pills, and Adderall were pretty rampant. I would imagine that this would be the kind of environment that John Hobart would find himself in- with Jack being a doctor and Claire being Claire, I can't imagine anything less than those kind of expectations. They wouldn't be jerks about it, but I would imagine that Claire and Jack would have NEVER put up with the kind of lackadaisical that Darius had about college. Claire and Jack seem like the kind of parents who would have had their kids using Muzzy and fretted over what pre-school they got into. I would think that John is already working on his college resume, hence why he's working with lacrosse. I would imagine he's going to work with SADD for his volunteer credit hours. I kinda find it amazing some times that my high school years('01-'05) overlap with Blue's high school years('98 to '02), but your high school years ('07 to '11) seem to gibe more with what I've seen. In Blue's time, it just seemed like the whole getting into college process was so much easier. Meanwhile, I knew Honor Society students who were getting rejected from their first and second choices.

I think for 2000, and in middle school, it would be more likely Ritalin. And you're right that it would be more junior/senior year, not 8th grade/freshman year. I just want it to be 2003 already in CAP land. God, they're moving slow. LOL. The point I'm making though is that Addy gets abused by people who don't actually have ADD. That was pretty widespread. I remember in college, I knew girls who were trading their Adderall for either money or favors. Kids would crush them up and snort it so they could get through finals week. It was also a popular way to keep the weight off. I think people in Adam Phillip's generation used Ritalin to the same effect, in terms of snorting it to get high. In middle school, it was mostly just pot and booze. Although I'm sure kids were raiding their parent's medicine cabinet for stuff. Oxycontin- that's another big one. And Jack being a doctor, I imagine John would have easy access to getting that kind of stuff. But again, you're right that it would be more of a late high school/ early college thing. My college friend Sam was one of those guys who could experiment with all kinds of drugs yet experience no adverse effects from it. I'm thinking Will would be similar. Not too sure about John and JJ, though. JJ screams, "future painkiller addict."

Considering that Will is a cool, laidback Golden Boy with a fairytale childhood who will never have an issue with being gay like the other protagonists you've had, it makes sense that you'd come up with other ways to give him issues. I would say having him stress out about high school and getting into college would be something else to do, but that doesn't jibe with what we know about Will- he's one of those guys who's going to be able to get high constantly yet still pull an A average and get into a really competitive university. I'd save that for John Hobart. I think John will be part of that cohort of kids who live on Adderall to get that academic edge. Adderall is way too huge for Mark to ignore by the time we get to Will's college years. It's almost to the 2000's what coke was to the '80's. Even models apparently use Adderall instead of coke now to stay thin, because Adderall doesn't cause bloat like coke. I mean, seriously, people passed around Adderall like candy during finals week. I wanted to go on it my senior year of high school because it seemed like it was working well for like two kids in my class, but my mom wouldn't let me because she'd seen all those panicky Dateline specials from circa 2004 that depicted Adderall as addictive as crystal meth.