methodwriter85

This is an actor named Diego Tinoco who starred in the Netflix series On My Block. He was born (and presumedly?) raised in Anaheim, California. I just love listening to his soothing SoCal accent! The California "slur", as I call it, is really pleasant to listen to in my opinion. I kind of thought of Diego as a Alejandro fancast, but he's a bit too short and bulky for what I pictured. I pictured more along the lines of Manu Rios from Elite as he looked at the 2022 Met Gala.

Mark's official Elizabeth Danfield fancast is Devil Wears Prada era Meryl Streep:

He is. I believe Patrick is 28 years old.

I don't think Will has to follow rules that normal people have to.

I've told this to Mark but he absolutely excels at writing strong matriarch characters, especially the antagonists

He's legally not a minor, though. That's the point of emancipation. He can work and do business dealings as if he were an adult, because he legally has been since he was 14. Also, it's Will. Will doesn't see limits, only challenges to overcome.

Hey, as an aside, I'd like to point out JWolf's An English Year for you to read if you haven't already. If you like pointing out how awful Brad is, trust me, you're going to have a FIELD day with Corbin!😀

Oh, right, the racist Orange County Republican one. I think my OG fancast was Clark Kent's dad from Smallville, as he looked at the time he did it. John Kent looked gooooodddd those first couple seasons of Smallvile. Definitely DILF material. I pictured the pleasantly handsome All-American Guy with a charming facade hiding a really rotten person underneath.

Travis would have been conceived in July 1985, which does fit into the Man In Motion timeline. Remind me who Miram Barnes is? I'm intrigued by the Jake Pike idea. He would have been 16 in 1985, so old enough to have a kid. Maybe he was a Cabana pool boy at the country club that the Buck family went to. Richard Crampton being Travis's father would be hilarious. Do Will and JJ know that Richard Crampton is JJ's half-brother? I know that Matt and Wade know this.

You should make him Richard Crampton's son. That would be hilarious.

Robbie had back to back flops as a producer, and turned down American Beauty, which had massive awards buzz around it and only cost 15 million to make. He's in a pretty raw place. As an aside, I got to see American Beauty around spring 2000 (I was 14 so I had to wait for it to be on video- remember those?) and I LOVED that movie. It was recommended to me by a guy who was the editor of my middle school newspaper. Blanking on his name but it's kind of funny in retrospect that a 13-year old boy would watch American Beauty because he had to have been taken by his parents. LOL I had such a crush on Wes Bentley in this movie. Too bad he had a serious drug problem for a decade, but he did manage to recover his career. American Beauty works well as a reference because the movie is about a man going through a mid-life crisis who fixates on youth, which happens to Robbie as well.

Life can be like that, though. Do you know how many guys I knew had the names Stephen, Justin, Mike, Chris, and Brian? I lucked out because my name was mildly trendy for the 1970's to the 1980's but very unpopular before and after those decades. So I generally don't run into that many people with my name unless they're a Gen Xer or an older Millennial like me.

Cody is the first major Gen X character we get in the series. JP and Stefan are Silent Generation, while Brad and Robbie are younger Boomers.

Mark really cranked out the earlier books fast and furious. More recently he's been taking time with them, and the books are usually much longer as well. There are pros and cons to both approaches, but overall I do think you can tell that Mark puts in a lot more time with his later books than he does with the original ones. I liked seeing the evolution of how his writing changes. Here's a bit of behind the scenes trivia- for several books afterwards, Mark did not want to do a book that was longer than the original CAP story. I believe he breaks that with Bloodlines because as Mark put it, "This isn't the St. Louis Gateway height cap. I can make longer books." And he did!🙂

JJ is such a fun and cheerful character. Maybe JJ will become a Disney sitcom star or something! You're absolutely right but...artistic liberty here. We gotta go with the more dramatic option. That's what they basically did with the foster/adoption storyline of Deja on This Is Us where her bio mother just shows up at the house trying to take her back.

They had to clean things up a bit once

Just as a reminder, my Mary Ellen fancast is Stereotypical Barbie. That is one hundred percent an outfit I could see Mary Ellen actually wearing. This feels like it would be Mary Ellen's idea of a Jackie O outfit.

Since this is clearly going to be a spoiler...

Well hey though, Brad and Robbie are going strong after about 9 years of commitment to each other. I'm so glad they were able to thwart Bitty with Stefan's help.

I remember really liking the Brian reveal scene. Goddam though, these people run into secret family doppelgangers a lot. LOL

Cody is an empathetic person who can read people very well. Brad is...not.

LOL true that. I figured it would happen around 2008 because that's going to be an interesting year for finance bros like Matt.

So on Sunday I went to the bench dedication ceremony that my friend's Steve family threw for him. I was hoping there would be at least one college friend showing up, but it was just me. Steve's parents actually came from New Jersey but they decided to move to the University of Delaware area about six years ago. It was a really interesting experience- the bench is in a park that was built on the site of a dorm that was next to the dorm that I used to visit a lot because Steve was an RA there. Both of the dorms (Rodney and Dickinson) were these standard issue 60's dorms that managed to stay open all the way up to about 2015. Rodney became the park with the retention pond, while Dickinson became the site of new student apartments. I managed to hold it together until I realized that the bench is basically in view of this railroad underpass that you had to go through in order to get to Rodney and Dickinson if you were coming from the rest of the campus. There was this sidewalk that paralleled the train tracks that would take you to Rodney, and then Dickinson. I cannot tell you the amount of times I walked under that underpass in order to hang out with Steve in that dorm. I kept looking at that underpass, and then I started tearing up as I kept getting flooded with the memories of a friendship that I thought was going to be lifelong but I only got to have 6 years of. After the ceremony I wound up going to the parents house, where they were having a luncheon. The family was pretty welcoming and I stayed for about three hours. I wound up having a talk with Steve's dad and Steve's brother. Steve's brother looks so much like him that it was kind of hard to not be reminded of him. There was this bit where I told Steve's brother that I think it was an interesting coincidence that his parents moved to where Steve went to undergrad and he replied "It's not a coincidence" in a way that just reminded me so much of how Steve would talk. (The brother's voice was not quite the same, so it wasn't too freaky on me, but still.) Steve's dad, his brother, and I basically sat on a bench in the backyard that they put Steve's name on and had a conversation about our mutual grief for Steve. I get the feeling that Steve's dad wanted to talk to Steve's college friends because that's a part of Steve's life that he wasn't there for. Steve's brother asked me if I would be interested in spreading a part of his ashes on their family property farm. I think I will take them up on that offer, but only if I can get Ian (our mutual friend) to be there. Ian unfortunately lives in the Midwest and wasn't able to come out for the bench ceremony. When I decided to leave, he wound up giving me one of Steve's pocketknifes. Steve collected them. I remembered that, and took one, and then I took off. It was a good experience. It felt a bit like a redo of my experience in 2014, when I tried to attend Steve's memorial but a lot of crap went down so it didn't go the way I wanted it to. This redeemed it for me, honestly. I do wish I had actually known people there, but there were very welcoming regardless and I'm glad I did it. Later that night, I wound up going to the Riverfront in Wilmington and silently watched the water, remembering my friend. I started crying and playing the song "Pursuit of Happiness" by Kid Cudi, which was so who Steve was. I've moved on, but that loss will always be with me. And that's okay.

Oh, you're right. I was worried about nothing. 😉 You gave Matt and Wade their happily ever after and I totally trust you won't explode it up. Totally.

Dolph Lundgren is 65 and just married his 27-year old bride who was his personal trainer. LOL My Lou fancast is Matt Bomer. *sign* What a hottie.