Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 32

RECOMMENDED READING: “Too White Bread for This Shit: Race and Racism in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Urban Fantasy Series”

As a former LKH reader, I was absolutely blown away by this article by Stitch over at Stitch’s Media Mix. Because I started reading the books when there were only five out, there is so much I forgot between books and seeing it all together in one place was shocking. I think you guys will find it really interesting.

What I Did On My Broken Brain Vacation

Hey everyone! I wanted to have a Buffy recap done this week, but it didn’t pan out. I’m not pushing myself hard on anything right now, which is like…mildly panicky for me? Because I don’t know how to be when I’m not working from the moment my eyes open to the moment I drag my ass to bed at night?

The truth is, I’ve been doing the bare minimum. Which isn’t great because I have a deadline coming up for Where We Land and I’m definitely not going to make it (the release may be postponed, we’ll see what happens and how much padding I built into the schedule), but right now I just feel like I absolutely have to take it easy on myself.

So, I’ve been making art. For example:

And

and also

and now I’m working on an oil painting that has sparked a huge fight between me and my teen son about whether or not my use of negative space is “wasteful” or not.

The negative space is part of the damn piece. When it’s finished, I’ll show it here and everyone can debate whether or not it’s “wasteful”.

This is why educating children is a bad idea, by the way.

Any how, I just wanted to update everyone on what’s going down on my end. I know some people were freaked when I said I needed to reconsider my career or whatever. I should have been more clear with my hiatus announcement. I needed to restructure and reprioritize, not sit and think about whether or not I should still write and blog. But it’s not like I can just quit my job and be an artist and live off wishes and dreams. This ain’t an episode of House Hunters.

So, things on the blog might be slow for a while. Drunk Tarot keeps on happening (it’s moved to Twitch) and I’m still writing, just more slowly than I used to. Which is already slow, but I can’t let that shit stress me out. Right now, the most important thing I can do is focus on myself. I’m getting into a good place and things are going dandy.

Although I am, perhaps, inhaling too many various fumes.

Before I end this, I want to put in a product plug that is in no way sponsored. I paid for this product myself and it’s the best money I’ve ever spent. It’s Ranger Multi Media Matte and it is like…the most supernaturally amazing glue/sealant I’ve ever found in my life. Those metal and crystal embellishments on the spirit board? They’re not going anywhere. That whalebone charm (legal whalebone, it’s an antique pendant that was a gift from my mother-in-law years ago, the whale has been dead a long time) is glued to glass and I’ve wrenched on it and wrenched on it to make sure it won’t pop off. I don’t know what it’s made of, but if you work in mixed media, you have to have this product plus, a little goes a very long way; I sealed the spirit board and planchette, did other gluey stuff with it, and I still have half of a 3 oz. jar left. Again, I say, mixed media artists, get some of this if you don’t already have it. It’s a game changer.

Going Forward

I don’t want to rehash this forever and ever, so I’m choosing to post this on Friday rather than on Monday, so everything is contained within one particularly bad week. Then next week, things can be positive and happy and shiny and new.

On Saturday night, I was not acting in my right mind when I deleted my earlier post and tweets and apologized for the harm I caused the subject of the article. I was at the beginning of a serious mental health crisis, manic, paranoid, and out of touch with reality, and I assumed responsibility for a situation that I did not cause. I retract any statements made over the weekend and hope everyone will substitute them with these, instead.

I will not back down from my condemnation of the other author’s behavior. I’m also not going to use her name or my old one. In fact, I would prefer if, from now on, people never mentioned either to me again. I would ask, with full respect to the transgender community and apologies for borrowing your term, that everyone treat my old name as if it were a dead name and consider the psychological harm that hearing it or seeing it in print does to me before you use it.

It wasn’t about a first name. Jennifer was the most common name for girls in the United States in 1980. I have never felt harmed by not being the only Jennifer in the room. I’m mildly surprised when I am the only Jennifer in a room. During my first years as author, another Jennifer, Jennifer Rardin, had a vampire series out as well. I never felt harmed by the existence of her name nor her books.
It wasn’t about a last name. The last name isn’t common, but it isn’t entirely rare. There is a woman with my exact same birth name, down to each and every letter, who lives in my area. With the exception of the time we both used the same credit union and they accidentally merged our accounts, I have never felt harmed by sharing a name with her. I have been online friends for years with a woman whose name is the other spelling. She is also a writer but in an entirely different field. I have never felt harmed by sharing a name with her.
It wasn’t about a cover. My book Such Sweet Sorrow has a cover that is extremely similar to Lia Habel’s Dearly, Departed. We have joked about it and even posed holding the “wrong” book on Instagram to promote an event we were attending. As far as I’m aware, she doesn’t feel threatened, jealous, or abused as a result, and that feeling is mutual. We’ve known each other for years and it’s never been a point of contention between us.
Coincidences happen. In 2006, my debut novel, Blood Ties Book One: The Turning came out at the same time as Lori Armstrong’s Blood Ties. We were seated beside each other at the Romantic Times convention book signing. I did not feel threatened, jealous, or abused as a result. There are hundreds of romance novels titled Boss or [verbing] The Boss or even, yes, The Boss. I have never felt threatened, jealous, or abused as a result. I am not a person who gets upset at small coincidences. In fact, I usually give people the benefit of the doubt.

It’s when a pattern of behavior emerges that I find it more difficult or sometimes, like now, even impossible, to extend that benefit. The name alone is not an issue. The cover alone is not an issue. In fact, those two things are the most minor of the allegations contained in the article; I found myself sitting here saying, “Jesus, at least it was just my name. It could have been way worse.” Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And hypocrisy; I can state with absolute certainty that if debut author J.S. Ward wrote about two demon-hunting brothers who criss-cross the midwest in a classic car and occasionally hang out with an angel and God himself, but claimed to have never seen Supernatural, they would be roasted like a squirrel on a gas-fired grill.

I have been accused of “blaming” my mental health issues on the other author. I have never done so. I have stated that the situation has, historically, exacerbated my symptoms. I have been in and out of psychiatric treatment since the second grade. This situation didn’t make me crazy and I’ve never said: “this author made me mentally ill.” She could come to me tomorrow, look me in the face, say, “My name is Martina Horowitz and I did this to you intentionally,” and I still wouldn’t blame her for the fact that I’m mentally ill. Because that’s preposterous. The situation has been detrimental to my already poor health and I’ve been honest about that as part of my ongoing attempts to be transparent about mental health issues and what I experience as a result of them. Whether the actions that caused the situation were intentional or not, I own my experiences and I am not obligated to minimize or dismiss them.

As a result, I’m going to be taking some steps to protect my health.

Removing myself from the romance “community” on social media for as long as I deem necessary. Note: this doesn’t mean I won’t write anymore. I’m going to keep writing and publishing, just like I have been. It’s my calling, and I won’t allow it to be taken from me. But I won’t be engaging in any other “issue” in the community. Plainly put, it’s because it’s been made clear, through the words and actions of several of my colleagues, that I am not a part of the community. So, when I see people shouting their heads off over the latest drama, I won’t be lending my voice to condemn or support. I had already scaled back my involvement after the Fiona Haskins incident and my overall health and productivity improved, so it won’t be difficult to let it go the rest of the way. I do, however, want to point out that we didn’t adequately mock Jimmy Thomas for comparing himself to a cheetah.
Unfollowing, blocking, or muting people on social media if they express support for or promote the author. Again, sounds harsh. Sounds like I’m saying, “You have to pick her or me!” Nope. Not at all. What I’m saying is, anything to do with this woman can trigger my depression, anxiety, OCD, imposter syndrome, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. You could be the most awesome person in the world, but I still have a duty to care for myself first. If I unfollow you or block you or I don’t respond to you and you think it’s because I muted you? It might not be personal at all or me hating you or something you said. It might just be necessary. You have a right to do whatever you want to do and again, it’s not personal at all and I don’t expect anyone to swear their allegiance to me. It’s protection for myself, not a comment on your value as a person, an attack on you, or what I think of you.
Unfollowing and muting anyone who attends or promotes the author’s conference. Again, this is not personal and I’m not issuing an ultimatum. Cons are expensive and they’re necessary to further your career and broaden your readership. I don’t expect anyone to suddenly cancel their plans or scrap their promo. I simply have to minimize (hopefully eradicate) my awareness of her existence if I’m going to continue to do the job that I am good at and that I was put here to do. I cannot allow this person to take up space in my head that I need to create my own, authentic work. I want everyone to succeed, but I want to continue to succeed, too.
No longer attending or participating in conventions or events. The fact that my brief interaction with one author led to her claiming familiarity to try to gain control of the narrative on Twitter, and another brief, professional interaction between myself and the subject of the article was used to suggest I’m not allowed to have or express my own anger over the revelations in that article have convinced me that it’s simply not in my best interest to socialize in those types of situations. I’ll still do things for libraries. Obviously. I’m not a monster.

Does this all seem extreme? Oh well, I guess? Does it seem like I’m threatening to take my toys and go home? Okay, if that’s how you’d like to frame it. But what this really is about is the deep sense of betrayal I felt when these allegations, which would have buried an author of lesser standing, were brushed aside, while the person who exposed them was crucified. That article revealed years of gaslighting, not just from the author but the industry and my own brain. And it was dismissed as unimportant. A non-issue. And loud voices behaved as though it was my job to stay quiet, push down my pain, and even apologize.

I do not owe strangers the comfort of my silence. But I also don’t owe anyone my anger. So, this, and not my deleted post, should be considered my last words on the subject from here out. I’ll see everyone on Monday.

Hiatus

I will be taking the next week off from blogging and social media to focus on my mental health and consider the future of my career. Nightmare Born will still update on Tuesday.

My Official Statement On Coincidences

On Friday morning, author Sarah Christian released a story about author Jennifer L. Armentrout, titled, “Coincidences”.  The article concerned a recent cover reveal for Armentrout’s rebranded series, which is headed to the Chapters app. The cover looks strikingly similar to the cover of Nightmare Born, my serial on the Radish app.

I’ve spoken before about what a strange coincidence it was that Armentrout’s name and my birth name were so similar. In speaking about it, I’ve given her the benefit of the doubt and asked others to do the same. There were a few developments over the years that made me less willing to defend her. I will readily admit that in recent times, I have not been kind in private. But I haven’t gone public with those unkind thoughts because I still felt, as a result of years of gaslighting by industry professionals and even from myself, that it was just an unfortunate coincidence.

I will let you come to your own conclusions after you read Christian’s article; for me, this number of “coincidences” is damning enough to convince me that, no, my bad feelings about this situation were not wrong. In the interest of transparency, I think it’s important to add:

On Thursday, I was made aware of the cover situation by a reader.
On Thursday evening, I was informed by Christian’s critique partner that an article was being written.
I did not read an advanced copy of the article, nor did I participate in the writing of it.
I never communicated with Christian directly until after publication of the article this morning.
I gave serious thought as to whether or not I should comment on the article at all and decided, in light of the other revelations in it, that I was entitled to have my say.

This will be the last time I address the subject here on my blog. I do not wish to be contacted by or on behalf of Armentrout, her publisher, her agent, or her friends. There will be no smoothing over or working it out, and certainly, no retracting of any statements I’ve made today or in the future.

I do not wish to know Armentrout’s response to this situation. There is no justification for any of the allegations in the article that would change my mind, anyway.

I know we have mutual friends. I have heard from some of you how “confusing” this is, how you don’t know what to think, how the whole thing is “bizarre” and you’re sorry this “happened” to me. I can’t tell you what to think, what to support, what to promote. But I want to make it clear that nothing “happened” to me. This was something that was done to me, just as it was done to the creators whose work was lifted wholesale. We were all made stepping stones on someone else’s path, without our permission. Regardless of your choices, I will defend you if it is done to you, too.

I am thankful in the extreme to Sarah Christian. I absolutely know how terrifying it can be to write anything less than glowing praise about a mega-popular, mega-powerful author. I know how easily a career can be threatened or damaged, and the fact that she stuck her neck out for me and the other creators in the article is beyond commendable. If anyone sees her on the receiving end of abuse over this, give me a heads up. I’m great at swinging at pitches headed for someone else.

Now, I will spend my weekend the way I spend most weekends: sleeping in and sleeping well, with a clear conscience and utter faith in my own abilities and talents.

The Big Damn Writing Tracker 2: Return Of The Big Damn Writing Tracker

It’s almost 2019, everyone. Time to start setting those goals for the year!

Caitlin Doughty of Ask A Mortician fame announced last week that 2019 would be her “year of ambition.” And I was like, right on, I want it to be my year of ambition, too! And then I was like, wait. I’m always ambitious. It’s like…the organization and goal setting and shit that I’m bad at? And then I get to the end of the year and go…holy crap. Holy crap, I don’t remember doing anything this year.

One thing that has always helped me is keeping track of my progress on goals. Duh, Jenny, everyone likes to see a visual representation of their measurable progress. I know, I know. But sometimes, we actually need people to remind us of this. In 2019, let me be your reminder, oh Trout Nation!

Years ago, I made a very simple spreadsheet I called The Big Damn Writing Tracker, and I shared it with you all. It included all sorts of inspiring quotes from successful people…many of whom revealed themselves to be racists, sexual predators, anti-semites, homophobes, and general trash in the intervening years. So, I decided it’s time for an update. The Big Damn Writing Tracker 2 is just like the Big Damn Writing Tracker, but without the quotes and with a whole new sheet for tracking your progress on individual projects.

You can download the Big Damn Writing Tracker 2 here. Don’t have Excel? No problem! Download the file and you can import it into Google Drive. Just create a new spreadsheet through Google Sheets, click on the file menu,  select import, and the Big Damn Writing Tracker 2 will fill itself in. However, in the Excel version, the formula cells will be locked, but in the Google Sheets version, they won’t be. So, be careful not to erase or re-enter anything in the formula boxes. If you’re working on Excel, this won’t be an issue; you won’t be able to click on any protected cells.

And hopefully, I didn’t accidentally leave my own information plugged in.

I also created a video that is a little hard to see (sorry), so you’ll probably want to embiggen it. I apologize that the CC are only half-corrected; I had some computer issues crop up while I was about two minutes deep into the CCs. The rest of them are unedited YouTube garbage and I’m super sorry about that.

 

I hope this helps everyone and I also hope that this blog will remain on schedule while I struggle with this whole computer thing! Cross your fingers!

Jealous Haters Book Club: Beautiful Disaster Chapter Three, “Cheap Shot” or “It Doesn’t Stand For Students Against Drunk Dancing, You Irresponsible Fucks”

A quick note before I start the recap proper: I notice that a lot of people in the comments will say stuff about how terrible it is that I’m enduring this book. Please, don’t worry about that. Nobody has a gun to my head forcing me to write these recaps (although sometimes I’d get them done faster if that were the case). The Fifty Shades of Grey series really did take a toll on my mental health, culminating in me noping the fuck out of Grey. But there were a lot of factors at play at that moment in my life, in my industry, and in pop culture overall that contributed to that. When I blogged Fifty, it was inescapable. So, I’d put in eight hours on a recap, go get on social media and everyone was discussing it, try to watch TV and there were ads for it, interviews with the “author”, eventually there were movie trailers, and if I opened my inbox there would usually be forty to fifty emails about whatever piece of breaking news had developed about it. Fifty Shades of Grey wasn’t just in the zeitgeist, it was the zeitgeist, and it was the inescapability coupled with the mindless proselytizing about how it was going to fix women’s sexuality forever that drove me into the ground.

Beautiful Disaster was never, and will never be, as relentlessly famous as Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s steeped in misogyny, the plot is unbelievable, the writing is atrocious and the characters are intolerable, but that’s all this experience really has in common with Fifty Shades.

Plus, this isn’t a four-year undertaking. I’m sure as hell not going to read all the other Beautiful books.

So, chins up, everyone, don’t worry about this taking any kind of mental toll on me. I’m actually really having fun on this one, just because it’s riding the line of hilariously bad/infuriatingly stupid that makes it easy to mock.

That said, this “fun” recap has all sorts of rape discussion in it. Heads up.

We open the chapter with Finch and Abby sitting outside the dorm, talking about his weekend conquest, whom he’s just using for free drinks. Finch being the only gay character in the book, I can’t quite tell if I should be offended at the stereotype of the gay man who dates shallowly or grudgingly admit that I’ve had exactly the same conversation with my friends, both gay, queer, straight, or otherwise. This actually makes me like Finch a lot. He seems like the most real character in the book, for who among us hasn’t let a person we’re not super interested in take us out for a night of partying we can’t afford?

Not just me and my vapid, horrible friends, right?

Travis walks up and asks America if she needs a ride.

“I was just going in,” I said, grinning up at him through my sunglasses.

Your sunglasses go on your eyes, Abby.

Travis asks if Abby is staying with him that night. And she says yes, but she has to grab her razor and Travis says he’s glad because her scratchy legs have been bothering him.

Finch’s eyes bulged as he gave me a quick once-over, and I made a face at Travis. “That’s how rumors get started!” I looked at Finch and shook my head. “I’m sleeping in his bed…just sleeping.”

Um.

How long has this whole thing been happening? I’m having difficulty with the timeline. First of all, if Finch is talking about the weekend, is that a signal that a weekend has passed? What about the party that Parker said was that weekend? Did Abby go to that?

Second, it sounds like Abby has spent more than one night with Travis. How long have the boilers been broken? And, as everyone pointed out in the comments last week, why the hell can’t Abby stay home and shower in the gym or another dorm? This college presumably charges for residency. That’s pretty standard across the entire country. There would be some very angry students and parents making phone calls that could heat the water themselves if the boilers were broken for a week and no other accommodations had been made.

But Abby has to stay with Travis.

She has to.

Let’s point out that yet again, Travis is crossing a major boundary. He knows that Abby doesn’t like people to think they’re together. Yet there he is, making a comment to someone else that implies that they are. He tells her not to be mad because he’s just kidding. I think I’ve made my stance on “just kidding” pretty clear before: it’s not “just kidding” if what you’re saying is hurtful or intentionally manipulative in a way that you know crosses boundaries. See also, that horrible friend I had who’d mock people to their faces about being fat, then tack on, “Just kidding!” so they felt as though they couldn’t stick up for themselves. That’s exactly what Travis is doing. He’s crossed a boundary with Abby, he’s done something he knows she doesn’t want him to do, then he tries to make her out to be humorless and terrible for sticking up for herself. Case in point:

“Everyone already assumes we’re having sex. You’re making it worse.”

“Who cares what they think?”

“I do, Travis! I do!”

The only thing we can really conclude from this is that while Abby doesn’t want people to think they’re having sex, Travis clearly does. Why? Because we’ve already seen how dismissive and disdainful he is of women. He doesn’t want anyone to think he treats them like people. If he’s friends with Abby and not fucking her, he considers her a human being. That damages his reputation.

Of course, this entire conversation takes place as Abby brings Travis to her dorm room, packs an overnight bag, and leaves with him carrying it for her. So like, can we discuss your careful avoidance of the rumor mill, Abbeline?

“It’s not funny. Do you want the whole school to think I’m one of your sluts?”

Interesting. Abby doesn’t want people to think of her the way she thinks of literally every other woman in the story. I mean, maybe she doesn’t think that about America, but we’re only in chapter three. I’m sure there’s gonna be something that makes America a cheap tramp before the end of the book.

Travis frowned. “No one thinks that. And if they do, they better hope I don’t hear about it.”

You literally. Just. Implied. That the two of you. Were having. Sex. You wanted Abby’s friend to think you were sleeping together.

And let’s just point out yet again the way that Travis and Abby discuss the women Travis sleeps with. Abby has so much open derision for them, but not for Travis, who is engaging in the same consensual sexual activity that they are. And Travis does, as well. Moreso, even. He apparently hates the women he sleeps with. So…why is he sleeping with them?

You wanna know who isn’t going to become clingy, Travis? You wanna know who isn’t going to try to leave a number or tame you? A Fleshlight, that’s who.

Travis holds the door for Abby, but she stops suddenly and he walks into her.

I flipped around.

This is just a fucking bizarre way to imply turning, whirling, or facing someone. Flipped is what you do end-over-end in gymnastics. Flip is what you do to a card or to your buddy who’s the President of The United States and you gotta get your ass out of some jail time. Flip is just not the word to use when you mean “turn around.”

“Oh my God! People probably think we’re together and you’re shamelessly continuing your…lifestyle. I must look pathetic!” I said, coming to the realization as I spoke. “I don’t think I should stay with you anymore. We should just stay away from each other in general for a while.”

Again…how long has she been staying at this place?!

I took my bag from him, and he snatched it back.

“No one thinks we’re together, Pidge. You don’t have to quit talking to me to prove a point.”

We engaged in a tug-of-war with the tote, and when he refused to let go, I growled loudly in frustration.

Let me consult my red flag checklist here…oh, there it is! Controlling someone’s money/possessions in order to control them. I even highlighted it. Whaddayaknow?

He walked to the parking lot, holding my effects hostage.

So, once again, we’re reading a book in which the heroine is describing a behavior with negative words that indicate an abusive situation or action, but doesn’t apparently feel the behavior is abusive? I learned from Fifty Shades of Grey that this is an indication that the author doesn’t consider it abusive, either. Just frustrating, in a sexy banter kind of way, like when Christian refused to let Ana decide when and what to eat. The heroine finds it annoying, but ultimately not so annoying that she would label it as toxic. Which, you know. It is. The litmus test for these authors as to what is and is not abuse seems to be whether or not the heroine ultimately gives up.

“I’ll fix this, okay? I don’t want anyone thinking less of you because of me,” he said with a troubled expression.

Those other sluts, I don’t care about. But you, Abby “Abracadabra” Abernathy…you’re magical.

This is an interesting line, though. It suggests that Travis feels he’s the one causing the women he sleeps with to lose value, while Abby continues to insist that they had no value, to begin with.

Travis’s idea for “fixing” any misconception that Abby is sleeping with him is to go out to a bar with her.

“Think about it. Me, drunk, in a room full of scantily clad women? It won’t take long for people to figure out we’re not a couple.”

Except for the part where what she expressed worry over was people thinking you were a couple and you’re openly running around on her.

I rolled my eyes and climbed onto the seat, wrapping my arms around his middle. “Some random girl is going to follow us home from the bar? That’s how you’re going to make it up to me?”

“You’re not jealous, are you, Pigeon?”

“Jealous of what? The STD-infested imbecile you’re going to piss off in the morning?”

First of all, there is nothing dirty or shameful about having a fucking disease, no matter how you got it. A disease is a disease, not an indication of morality. This is something our culture has a really difficult time grasping because we spend so much time in death denial. But if Abby is so convinced that any woman who has casual, consensual sex is riddled with Whore Pox…why doesn’t her derision extend to Travis? His sexual policy seems to be “as much as possible, with as many partners as possible, no repeats.” She knows this about him. She has no idea how much sex the women are having. Just that they’ve had sex with Travis.

I can’t get my head around it. Having sex with Travis is an indicator of low morals and bad health, but Travis himself is moral and healthy?

Travis laughed, then started his Harley. He flew toward his apartment at twice the speed limit, and I closed my eyes to block out the trees and cars we left behind.

That’s it. I asked my pseudo-brother if I can share pictures of the injuries he sustained in a motorcycle accident he had while driving at a safe and responsible speed, wearing personal protection equipment, and he’s going to send some of his favorites for a later recap. There has yet to be any mention of helmets in this book, let alone gloves or any leather gear. We’re supposed to find this cool and sexy, but there is nothing sexy about what happens when you hit that pavement, even at a “safe” speed.

Thank god the author finally lets a character remark on how seriously irresponsible this behavior is:

After climbing off his bike, I smacked his shoulder. “Did you forget I was with you? Are you trying to get me killed?”

…in order to set up a clumsy sex joke:

“It’s hard to forget you’re behind me when your thighs are squeezing the life out of me.” A smirk came with his next thought. “I couldn’t think of a better way to die, actually.”

It’s funny because they both could have actually been killed. Oh, no, wait, I mean, it’s funny because he swore that he’s only interested in her as a friend and he wasn’t ever going to pressure her to have sex, but now he’s making it clear that sex is still very much on the table whether she’s comfortable with that or not.

At the apartment, America and Shepley’s plans kind of merge with Abby and Travis’s plans, so they’re all going to go out together.

I was the last one in the shower, so Shepley, America, and Travis were impatiently standing by the door when I stepped out of the bathroom in a black dress and hot pink heels.

Yes. You read that correctly. Three people stood outside the bathroom door and waited for this big reveal.

America whistled. “Hot damn, Mama!”

And then the whole bus clapped.

I smiled in appreciation, and Travis held out his hand. “Nice legs.”

He said, like how a male friend would say to a female friend he’s not interested in having sex with ever. You know. That way. The way that respects the boundaries of the female friend who has said she doesn’t appreciate those comments.

We were far too loud and obnoxious in the sushi bar, and had already had a night’s worth to drink before we stepped foot in the Red Door. Shepley pulled into the parking lot, taking time to find a space.

And now we’re driving super drunk! That’s awesome!

I want to take a minute here to address a comment someone made on a previous recap about it being believable that a restaurant would serve alcohol to underage people because I can see where it would seem like something that happens often. So, obviously, I can’t speak to every single bar or restaurant in the country, but I did go to high school in a city that had three colleges. Alcohol was on extreme lockdown. No business wanted to risk losing their liquor license or incurring fines that could potentially force their closure. Establishments that were noted for their popularity among the college crowd were scrutinized especially closely. As I said, I can’t vouch for everywhere, but I find it unbelievable that a restaurant in a college town would take that big a risk.

But it doesn’t matter because Abby “Cashmere and Goodness” Abernathy has a fake ID. Travis compliments her and America on how great the fakes are, and Abby makes a weird comment:

“Yeah, we’ve had them for a while. It was necessary…in Wichita,” I said.

What’s with that suspicious pause?

America then makes a comment about having connections and Abby having old friends, which Abby quickly shuts down. So, we’re suffering from first person POV “big secret” syndrome, just like in Apolonia. Abby can have a “big secret” and that big secret can absolutely be kept from the reader. But it doesn’t make sense for her not to immediately think of why she doesn’t want America to continue going on about her connections. If you want a character to keep a big secret, write them in third-person; if we’re riding around in the character’s head, we know what the characters know. Abby isn’t going to vaguely shut the whole conversation down without having a reason and thinking about that reason.

Plus, in a story as convoluted as this, knowing Abby’s motivation would probably make her slightly more likable. She’s completely unlikable, don’t get me wrong. But if there’s past trauma or something and she’s had to remake her life in the image of a judgmental little brat, can we at least know why?

Then again, it didn’t work for Apolonia.

Inside the club, they do more drinking and then America and Abby dance before even more drinking. Remember, they’re already drunk from dinner when they show up to the club and start doing shots.

An excessively voluptuous platinum blonde was already at Travis’s side, and America’s face screwed into revulsion.

“It’s going to be like this all night, Mare. Just ignore them,” Shepley said, nodding to a small group of girls standing a few feet away. They eyed the blonde, waiting for their turn.

“It looks like Vegas threw up on a flock of vultures,” America sneered.

Jesus Herbert Walker Kristofferson. Why is America so pissed off about the presence of other women in the story, now? It’s bad enough we’ve got Abby playing the body police about the “overly voluptuous” woman, but America has to throw her two cents in? No wonder she and Abby get along so well. They both hate every other woman on the planet.

Travis lit a cigarette as he ordered two more beers, and the blonde bit her puffy, glossed lip and smiled. The bartender popped the tops open and slid the bottles to Travis. The blonde picked up one of the beers, but Travis pulled it from her hand.

“Uh…not yours,” he said to her, handing it to me.

Is this really the fantasy? Watching a man treat other women like shit to emphasize how special you are? This is so fucked up. “My worth can only be measured in how much another man will shun other, less worthy females.” The Evangelical Christianity growing on this like mold is just…my god.

Of course, Maguire has been caught favoriting rightwing tweets–including one about not believing Dr. Ford during the Kavanaugh hearings–so I’m so fucking shocked about all of this bullshit.

My initial thought was to toss the bottle in the trash, but the woman looked so offended, I smiled and took a drink. She walked off in a huff, and I chuckled that Travis didn’t seem to notice.

She almost threw a perfectly good beer in the trash because a woman touched the bottle. That is level of misogyny we’re at. Women can’t touch the packaging of a beverage she’s going to consume.

“Like I would buy a beer for some chick at a bar,” he said, shaking his head. I held up my beer, and he pulled up one side of his mouth into a half smile. “You’re different.”

Yeah. You’re Not Like Other Girls, Abby. We know this because it’s pointed out at least once on every page.

Abby raises a toast to “being the only girl a guy with no standards” wouldn’t sleep with. Remember, she doesn’t want to sleep with him and she doesn’t want him to think of her as anything other than a friend, but she does desperately want him to want to fuck her and his constant sexual comments and open invitations just aren’t enough to satisfy her ego.

This heroine isn’t infuriating at all.

Luckily, Travis sets the record straight.

“First of all…I have standards. I’ve never been with an ugly woman. Ever.

Not according to Abby. Every single one of the she-demons who has seduced you into the ravenous maw of her plague-ridden vagina has been “too” something instead of the beautifully “cashmered” Pentecostal ideal.

Second of all, I wanted to sleep with you. I thought about throwing you over my couch fifty different ways, but I haven’t because I don’t see you that way anymore. It’s not that I’m not attracted to you, I just think you’re better than that.”

I’m imagining him literally throwing her over the couch, into the crack between the back and the wall.

Stay there, Abby.

This entire book so far has been one giant parade of Travis constantly telling Abby that she’s better than every other person, while Abby has offered up like two lukewarm defenses of him to people who don’t seem to really matter to her in the narrative. It’s almost hilarious how one-sided the worship here is. We’re supposed to believe that Abby is slowly falling for Travis (as slowly as she can in three chapters) because she sees that he’s really a wonderful person underneath his shitty behavior. Instead, we’re reading about Abby slowly falling for Travis because he uses that shitty behavior to make her feel superior to other women in a way that soothes her aching lack of self-esteem. This is going to be the most co-dependent, toxic, fucked up relationship in history: one partner needs to be reassured that she’s the best, the other wants to bask in the glow of a person he’s sure he doesn’t deserve.

Travis gets Abby onto the dance floor and they start grinding on each other in a totally platonic way.

Travis had me in a near panic with the way he pressed against me. If he used any of those moves on the couch, I could see why so many girls chanced humiliation in the morning.

He cinched his hands around my hips, and I noticed that his expression was different, almost serious. I ran my hands over his flawless chest and six-pack as they stretched and tensed under his tight shirt to the music. I turned my back to him, smiling when he wrapped his arms around my waist. Coupled with the alcohol in my system, when he pulled my body against his, things came to mind that were anything but friendly.

It was such a good idea to go out to the club to prove to everyone that you have no sexual interest in each other. You’re pulling this off, for sure.

So, while they’re dancing and doing more groping, Travis does this:

When I felt his lips and then his tongue against my neck, I pulled away from him.

Abby storms off and gets another beer. Remember, she showed up to the club already super wasted, did shots, now this is beer number two within two songs of each other. That’s the time period specified: One beer, two songs, another beer. That she slams half of before the following conversation, by the way. We’re reaching Anastasia Rose Steele levels of alcohol tolerance.

“You think that this is going to change anyone’s mind about us?” I said, pulling my hair to the side, covering the spot he kissed.

He laughed once. “I don’t give a damn what they think about us.”

Okay, but she does. You’ve already had this conversation numerous times, and the entire point of going out was supposed to be to prove to the world that you’re just friends. Right now, it seems pretty clear that Travis went out with Abby in the hopes that she’d get drunk and give in.

I pulled away from him. “Don’t. I could never get drunk enough to let you get me on that couch.”

Guess you don’t have to worry about being friends anymore. Damn. It is so hard to recap a book when you hate both the main characters. Like, Fifty Shades Of Grey made me at least feel kind of protective of Ana sometimes? Like, I would read it and go, okay, she’s obnoxious but at least she’s not as bad as him. These people are equally bad. They hate women exactly the same amount, they’re deceptive about their intentions toward other people, and neither of them can figure out if they want to fuck the other one or just be friends. That’s it. They’re the same damn character, expressing their awfulness in different ways.

You know what hasn’t happened in a while? Misogyny. Were you afraid it wouldn’t show up again? Worry not!

His face twisted in anger, but before he could say anything, a dark-haired stunner with pouty lips, enormous blue eyes, and far too much cleavage approached him.

Cashmere Magoo whipped out a ruler and measured, damn. Ma’am, I’m sorry, that’s far too much cleavage. It’s not up to code. I’ll have the fire marshall breathing down my neck if you’re walking around like that.

This book has a minimum of two slutty slut slutskis per chapter for Abby to sneer at. The most present fantasy element in this book is pleasure derived from devaluing other women.

This won a Goodreads reader poll for best YA of the year when it was published.

“Well, if it isn’t Travis Maddox,” she said, bouncing in all the right places.

He took a drink, and then his eyes locked on mine. “Hey, Megan.”

No, her name is Abby.

“Introduce me to your girlfriend,” she smiled.

You can’t smile a sentence.

Travis tipped his head back to finish his beer, and then slid his empty bottle down the bar. Everyone waiting to order watched it until it fell into the trash can at the end.

And then the whole bar clapped. Honestly, I do hope they make this into a movie, so we can see this scene, specifically. I cannot wait to hear the unintended laughs at how cliche and stupid it is.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

He grabbed Megan’s hand, and she happily traipsed behind him to the dance floor. He all but mauled her for one song, then another, and another. They were causing a scene with the way she let him grope her, and when he bent her over I turned my back to them.

There isn’t just a lack of self-awareness on the part of the character here, there’s a lack of authorial awareness of the narrative. Just paragraphs ago we had Abby and Travis on the dancefloor doing the exact same thing, but Abby never acknowledges this. It’s okay for characters to have thoughts and actions that are a little hypocritical. You just have to examine them, and Maguire never does. We don’t get any of Abby’s thoughts regarding the fact that she knows what it’s like to get caught up dancing with him or wondering if that’s how she was acting, herself. And yeah, those lines of thinking can (and in this book, would almost certainly) veer into piles of internalized misogyny, but the fact that there’s no comparison of the two situations at all is just lazy writing. It’s almost as though the author and the character both expect us to be on Abby’s side by default and no further effort was required.

Both have really overestimated their skill.

A man comes up and talks to Abby, asking if she’s watching her boyfriend grinding up on this other chick. Which, remember, was the exact opposite of what Abby wanted to happen. It was, in fact, the specific thing she was trying to avoid. She’s finishing off another beer:

I barely tasted the last two I had put away, and my teeth were numb.

It’s been a few songs, so are those an additional two? Are we up to shots and four beers after arriving at the club already drunk?

But the guy, Ethan, offers to buy Abby another one, and she says yes. They talk about the fact that Ethan just graduated from “State,” which is an hour away, but his sister goes to Eastern.

I pulled the gloss out of my pocket and smeared it across my lips, using the mirror lining the wall behind the bar.

This is what happens when you try to put on lipstick in a far away mirror when you have alcohol poisoning.

Now, let’s discuss the fact that lip gloss has already been coded slutty in this chapter. But again, Abby does it, it’s okay. Because even though she’s doing the same things the other girls are doing, she’s Not Like Other Girls.

“That’s a nice shade,” he said, watching me press my lips together.

I smiled, feeling the anger at Travis and the heaviness of the alcohol. “Maybe you can try it on later.”

Right then, Travis shows up and steps between them, asking Abby if she’s ready to go. When she pushes him away and says no because she’s talking to someone he asks if she knows the guy. She introduces them.

“Travis Maddox,” he said, staring at Ethan’s hand as if he wanted to rip it off.

Ethan’s eyes grew wide, and he awkwardly pulled back his hand. “Travis Maddox? Eastern’s Travis Maddox?”

Bringing back a recap classic.

Travis isn’t just the star of Eastern, but his legend has passed to another college an hour away?

“I saw you fight Shawn Smith last year, man. I thought I was about to witness someone’s death!”

IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE A SECRET FIGHT CLUB! SECRET! WE’VE HEARD ABOUT HOW SECRET IT IS! HOW ONLY THE FRATS KNOW ABOUT IT AND THEY KEEP EVERYTHING SO SUPER DUPER MOTHER FUCKING CHOCOLATE COATED DONKEY STABBING SECRET! BUT THIS DUDE FROM A COLLEGE AN HOUR AWAY HAS NOT ONLY HEARD OF TRAVIS, BUT HE’S ACTUALLY BEEN TO ONE OF THESE SUPER EXCLUSIVE FIGHTS NOGODDAMNBODY KNOWS AGODDAMNBOUT?

Travis glowered down at him. “You wanna see it again?”

And then Ethan gets scared and leaves.

We followed America and Shepley to the car,

For more drunk driving, presumably.

and when Travis tried to grab my hand to lead me across the parking lot, I yanked it away. He wheeled around and I jerked to a stop, leaning back when he came within a few inches of my face.

“I should just kiss you and get it over with!” he yelled. “You’re being ridiculous! I kissed your neck, so what?”

Yeah, Pidge! He only badgered you into going out to a club, got you drunk, kissed you without permission, got humpy with a girl to make you jealous when you rejected him, threatened to murder a guy for talking to you, then grabbed at you and shouted in your face that he should kiss you without your permission again. Get over it.

Abby reminds him that she’s not his fuck buddy and he says:

“I never said you were! You’re around me 24-7, you sleep in my bed, but half the time you act like you don’t want to be seen with me!”

“I came here with you!”

“I have never treated you with anything but respect, Pidge.”

*deep breath*

Brace yourself, guys.

*taking another deep breath, I center my being and link to the vastness of the cosmos, mysterious fount of the universal consciousness that binds us all. I am one with all of being. I am eternal. I am prepared.*

This guy.

This fucking guy.

Just like with that last fucking guy, Travis’s behavior isn’t about his male ego taking a hit. No, obviously not that. It’s about Abby’s safety.

“Do you know who Ethan is?” he asked. When I shook my head, he leaned in closer. “I do. He was arrested last year for sexual battery, but the charges were dropped.”

So, are you in the bar, letting the bartender know? There were a lot of other women in there, assuming they haven’t mindlessly followed you into the parking lot like the cousins on Katamari Damacy when you hold down the square button.

I crossed my arms. “Oh, so you have something in common?”

There’s a clean shot, right there.

Travis’s eyes narrowed, and the muscles in his jaws twitched under his skin. “Are you calling me a rapist?” he said in a cold, low tone.

I pressed my lips together, even angrier that he was right. I had taken it too far.

He kissed you and licked your neck without permission, then grabbed you and yelled in your face that he intended to do it again. Now, he’s displaying signs of barely controlled violence at the suggestion that his actions violated consent.

You didn’t take it too far. Travis Maddox has 100% raped someone before.

“I’ve been drinking, all right? Your skin was three inches from my face, and you’re beautiful, and you smell fucking awesome when you sweat. I kissed you! I’m sorry! Get over yourself!”

That’s a lot of extraneous words to say, “You were asking for it.”

You may have fallen off a ladder, hit your head, and come back to this recap with no memory of what you just read, so if you’re thinking that Abby is going to continue being mad at Travis, let me just warn you.

She does not.

His excuse made the corners of my mouth turn up. “You think I’m beautiful?”

So, she laughs while he yells and glares at her and calls her a pain in the ass and says she’s making him crazy. But they laugh about it together, so it’s sexy. You know. How it’s sexy when a guy yells at you after doing all that other shit but he makes it okay because he thinks you’re pretty. It’s sexy in that way.

They drive drunk to the apartment (all of them are described as “stumbling” by the time they get back), and Abby showers for the second time that day. This book should be called THE SHOWERING. Then she wears Travis’s shirt and boxers to bed.

I crashed into the bed and sighed, still smiling at what he’d said in the parking lot.

The part about how you should get over non-consensual touching, or the part he shouted in your face about how he should do it again because you asked for it?

Travis stared at me for a moment, and I felt a twinge in my chest. I had an almost ravenous urge to grab his face and plant my mouth on his, but I fought against the alcohol and hormones raging through my bloodstream.

Wow. How can you resist him? When he’s so hot. And sexy. And treats you with such respect.

“I know I’m drunk, and we just got into a ginormous fight over this, but…”

“I’m not having sex with you, so quit asking,” he said, his back still turned to me.

But that’s not what she’s asking for, and she’s horrified at the suggestion. She just wants to snuggle with him.

He relaxed one hand against my back, and the other on my wet hair, and then pressed his lips to my forehead. “You are the most confusing woman I’ve ever met.”

It just dawned on me how often “you’re confusing” is used in romance novels. I’d bet money I’ve used it before. But reading it here, my reaction was, “She’s not confusing. You just don’t listen.” And really, that’s probably the case in every single romance novel that has used that line as a compliment. Including mine, if I’ve done it.

So, Travis tells her that she should be thankful to him that he saved her from a potential rapist and that she needs to be more careful so she doesn’t get raped in the future. Because the guy who just rationalized why it was okay for him to violate her physical boundaries is definitely the dude who should be running an impromptu class on sexual violence awareness. Abby asks him to hold her until she falls asleep.

“I should say no to prove a point,” he said, his eyebrows pulling together. “But I would hate myself later if I said no and you never asked me again.”

I absolutely hate that this good line is in this shitty book.

There’s a section break and Abby wakes up to find Travis clinging to her. Much in the way Bella woke up to Edward holding her in Master Of The Universe, but again, I have no proof this was inspired by that.

The lines were becoming blurred, and it was my fault.

No shit?

Shepley is the only other person up, and he decides to have a heart-to-heart with Abby about Travis:

“I don’t know what’s going on with you and Travis, but I know that he’s going to do something stupid to piss you off.

He said, after an entire chapter of Travis doing stupid shit that pisses Abby off. Detective Shepley is on the case.

It’s a tic he has. He doesn’t get close with anyone very often, and for whatever reason he’s let you in. But you have to overlook his demons. It’s the only way he’ll know.”

“Know what?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at his melodramatic speech.

“If you’ll climb over the wall,” he answered simply.

What wall? This metaphor only makes sense if you start out with it. Like, if you said he puts up walls. You’ve jumped from “demons” to “wall” so fast, this could be a conservative political rally.

Travis gets up and mentions to Abby that he knows her birthday is coming up and it’s the “last stand” of being a teenager. Oh my god. We might get an actual age.

Just not in this chapter.

Travis reveals that his birthday is on April Fool’s Day, which makes sense because he’s a fucking joke, then they work out who’s driving Abby to campus and the chapter is over.

So, the end of this chapter is fully not necessary, but I think what’s happened is that Maguire has taken the classic, “Don’t end a chapter with people going to bed” advice and run too far with it. It’s perfectly okay to end a chapter with people going to sleep or starting one with characters just waking up. You just can’t do it with every single chapter. In this case, the ending of the chapter would have actually been stronger if it had been with Travis agreeing to hold Abby while she slept. The waking up and talking about mundane shit like birthdays undercuts the tone the author was trying for. And Shepley’s little speech about Travis’s demon wall? That could have come at another point.

Not that it would have made the book any better, but still. Any improvement. At this point, I’ll take anything.

Jealous Haters Book Club: Beautiful Disaster chapter one, “Red Flag” or “No shit, ya think?”

Well, here we are again. I guess it must be fate, etc. I was going to try to make that into a Peter Cetera joke but I couldn’t ultimately make it land. I’m almost 100% sure that half my readership wouldn’t get it, anyway, because I am a thousand years old. And I am also 100% likely to have made that joke before.

We find ourselves at the beginning of yet another Jealous Haters Book Club selection. Now, before we get started, I would like to remind everyone reading this that I did not pick this book. The people of Trout Nation nominated and voted for it. I am putting this disclaimer here because someone warned me that the author has diehard fans who will come in droves to attack me, but honestly, do any of the big name pioneers of New Adult romance even have diehard fans anymore? Not even the E.L. James devotees are a mobilized army anymore. And aside from James, a lot of the New Adult authors who dominated the lists four years ago aren’t even hitting #1 in their very specific Amazon categories. New Adult isn’t dead (at least, I hope, because that’s what I’m writing next), but it’s not breaking down walls the way it did once upon a time. I can’t imagine these authors wield the same influence they once did.

Anyway, as I said, I really don’t like this author, her clique, or anybody having anything to do with her, but this wasn’t my choice. Especially after reading one of her other books. That said, I went into this trying hard to be objective. Almost contrarily so. Because so many people insisted to me over the years that this book is terrible, I was sure they were all exaggerating.

So far, it’s looking like I’m super wrong.

Let’s get into the first chapter, which yes, really is titled “Red Flag.” So, at least the author appears to be cognizant of what she’s doing.

Does that make it worse?

Everything in the room screamed that I didn’t belong. The stairs were crumbling, the rowdy patrons were shoulder to shoulder, and the air was a medely of sweat, blood, and mold. Voices blurred as they yelled numbers and names back and forth, and arms flailed about, exchanging money and gestures to communicate over the noise.

So, this where we join the story, with our heroine, Abby, following her friends, America and Shepley, though this environment. Someone gets on a bullhorn and says:

“Welcome to the bloodbath! If you are looking for Economics 101…you are in the wrong fucking place, my friend!

Good, because if I paid for Econ 101 and it was held in a moldy basement full of screaming people, I would be very put out.

If you seek the Circle, this is Mecca! My name is Adam. I make the rules and I call the fight. Betting ends once the opponents are on the floor. No touching the fighters, no assistance, no bet switching, and no encroachment of the ring. If you break these rules, you will get the piss beat out of you and you will be thrown out on your ass without your money. That includes you, ladies! So don’t use your hos to scam the system, boys!”

It’s not misogynist to refer to women as hoes if you’ve got an equal opportunity policy on physical assault.

Shepley shook his head. “Jesus, Adam!” he yelled ot the emcee over the noise, clearly disapproving of his friend’s choice of words.

Dude, why are you friends with someone who threatens to beat up women and calls them hoes? Also…why is the heroine of this novel friends with a guy who’s friends with a guy who threatens to beat up women and calls them hoes? Is this the red flag?

Abby notes that she’s wearing a pink cashmere cardigan and pearl earrings, so she looks really out of place at fight club this week.

I promised American that I could handle whatever we happened upon, but at ground zero I felt the urge to grip her toothpick of an arm with both hands. She wouldn’t put me in any danger, but being in a basement with fifty or so drunken college boys intent on bloodshed and capital, I wasn’t exactly confident of our chances to leave unscathed.

What do you mean, she wouldn’t put you in danger? A basement full of drunk college boys is danger. Let’s note the toothpick-arm here. I have this wild feeling that there will be a lot of subtle criticism about the bodies of women who are not the heroine throughout the book.

After America met Shepley at freshman orientation, she frequently accompanied him to the secret fights held in different basements of Eastern University.

To keep the fights so super secret, you guys, the location is only ever announced an hour before the fight starts. But it can’t work too well…

Because I ran in somewhat tamer circles, I was surprised to learn of an underground world at Eastern; but Shepley knew about it before he had ever enrolled.

Like, how secret is this club, really? I’m not trying to be nitpicky on the second page of the book, but come on. It’s super, intensely secret, but people know about it before they even set foot on campus?

While we spent all of Apolonia wondering if the heroine was immortal or not, I’m going to spend this entire book wondering what year of college all these people are in. I tried to do the math, but…

Travis, Shepley’s roommate and cousin, entered his first fight seven months before. As a freshman, he was rumored to be the most lethal competitor Adam had seen in the three years since creating the Circle. Beginning his sophomore year, Travis was unbeatable.

Okay, setting aside for the moment that “lethal” means students have died at these underground fights that are super secret and haven’t been found out yet, I wanna try to put all this stuff together. In the first chapter, the ages of these characters are never made remotely clear.

We know that:

America met Shepley at freshman orientation.
Travis either started fighting seven months before he came to college or seven months before this scene is taking place.
Adam created the circle three years ago.
Travis is at least a sophomore.

We don’t know:

If America is still a freshman or if Shepley was a freshman when they met at orientation.
Whether Travis just started fighting seven months ago and therefore was a freshman seven months ago but is now a sophomore.
What year Adam is on.
No, seriously, how old is anyone here?

And in case you’re wondering, it doesn’t get cleared up in this chapter.

The first fight is between a “star varsity wrestler” who for some reason is willing to risk injury in a skeezy underground fight, and Travis ‘Mad Dog’ Maddox, who is introduced with an instruction manual:

“[…]Shake in your boots, boys, and drop your panties, ladies!”

Ahem, I believe you mean, “hos”.

The volume exploded when Travis appeared in a doorway across the room. He made his entrance, shirtless, relaxed, and unaffected. He strolled into the center of the circle as if he were showing up to another day at work. Lean muscles stretched under his tattooed skin as he popped his fists against Marek’s knuckles. Travis leaned in and whispered something in Marek’s ear, and the wrestler struggled to keep his stern expression.

And then they just started fucking right there on the moldy basement floor.

No, but wouldn’t that be more interesting?

Marek stood toe-to-toe with Travis, and they looked directly into each other’s eyes.

“DIRECTLY INTO EACH OTHER’S EYES?” I THOUGHT WE LEFT THAT IN HANDBOOK FOR MORTALS!

Honestly, though, any book I read now, if it says anything about looking right at or directly into someone’s eyes, I just lose it.

The guys start fighting and the crowd gets wild, but Abby can’t see anything, so she starts pushing right to the front. Or, encroaching upon the ring, as the charming Adam might call it. She finally gets close enough to watch all the action, and Travis, who has until this point been raining blows on the other guy, throws an elbow into the dude’s nose.

Blood sprayed my face, and splattered down the front of my cardigan.

Well, there’s a meet-cute I’ve never seen before.

Marek fell to the concrete floor with a thud, and for a brief moment the room was completely silent. Adam threw a scarlet square of fabric onto Marek’s limp body, and the mob detonated.

Is…is he dead?

My eyes traveled upward; jeans, spattered with blood, a set of finely chiseled abs, a bare, tattooed chest drenched in sweat, and finally a pair of warm, brown eyes. I was shoved from behind, and Travis caught me by the arm before I fell forward.

“Hey! Back up off her!” Travis frowned, shoving anyone who came near me. His stern expression melted into a smile at the sight of my shirt, and then he dabbed my face with a towel. “Sorry about that, Pigeon.”

There it is. The first occurrence of the nickname that got mentioned about twenty-six thousand times in the nominations. Because so many of you absolutely hate it, I can’t wait to find out why he chooses that name for her.

As long as we’re on the subject of “red flags,” can we talk about the fierce protectiveness coupled with instant familiarity here? It would be one thing if Travis had shoved the person who bumped into her. Hell, if a guy threw a punch in a bar fight to protect a woman being harassed, I’m all over that. Good job, guy. But Travis is standing here giving her a pet name and getting physically aggressive with anyone who comes near her in what has been described as an intensely crowded space.

Remind you of any other character I spent four years of my life complaining about?

Travis tells Abby that her sweater looks good on her so it’s too bad it got ruined, and America shows up to call her friend an idiot. Shepley tells Abby that she shouldn’t have been there but like…bro. You brought her there.

America takes Abby straight to the ER for prophylactic vaccinations due to all the blood that splashed in her face. Nah, they just go straight back to Abby’s dorm room.

America followed me to my dorm room and then sneered at my roommate, Kara.

Now, there’s nothing here that establishes why someone would sneer at Kara. All she does is see her blood-spattered roommate and say, “Gross.” And she wears glasses and doesn’t seem overly invested in Abby’s life. But none of that happens until after the sneer, which goes unremarked upon in both dialogue and narrative. Are we supposed to just assume Kara sucks?

The next day, Abby and Shepley and America are at lunch with a bunch of Shepley’s fraternity brothers and some football players.

Some of them had been at the fight, but no one mentioned my ringside experience.

Uh, the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club, Abby. That’s pretty common knowledge.

So, then Travis comes in:

He was followed by two voluptuous bottle blondes wearing Sigma Kappa Ts. One of them sat on Travis’s lap; the other sat beside him, pawing at his shirt.

Even if I had never read Apolonia, this would be, you guessed it, a red flag. Like, one they would put up on the beach to warn you that the water has been contaminated with medical waste and internalized authorial misogyny.

“I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth,” America muttered.

I think I actually used the gif of that line from Dodgeball in my Apolonia recaps.

The blonde on Travis’s lap turned to America. “I heard that, skank.”

America grabbed her roll and threw it down the table, narrowly missing the girl’s face. Before the girl could say another word, Travis let his knees give way, sending her tumbling to the floor.

“Ouch!” she squealed, looking up at Travis.

“America’s a friend of mine. You need to find another lap, Lex.”

The line forms here, ladies. No shoving.

I seriously can never understand what authors are trying to prove by showing the male love interest treating women like total crap. This isn’t a Jamie McGuire thing. This is a genre-wide issue in which some romance authors are apparently so threatened and insecure on their heroine’s behalf, they have to make it a point to create fictional women to abuse through the hero. And this is supposed to make the hero more attractive to the heroine and the reader. These blondes don’t even have names until one of them gets dumped on the floor by the hero (to show us his good taste? I guess?). That’s how disposable they are. They’re just a tool for the author and reader to act out their own insecurities about other women.

And it works, because after a few paragraphs:

Travis smiled at me win what I assumed was his most charming expression. He oozed sex and rebeliousness with his buzzed brown hair and tattooed forearms, and I rolled my eyes at his attempt to lure me in.

Even though Abby is seeing through his tough guy act, she’s still considering him sexy and viewing his bad behavior as a mating dance.

America mentions that Abby is her best friend, and Travis is like, since when do you have a best friend, and America says:

“Since junior year,” she answered, pressing her lips together as she smiled in my direction.

So…does she mean junior year in high school? Or are they in their fourth year of college? We still have no idea what age any of these people are. They’re between eighteen and twenty-two, I guess? Honestly, I’m not usually this hung up on the ages of characters in books. Sometimes, it just doesn’t matter. But freshman, sophomore, and junior have now all been used as time markers without any context. It troubles me.

Travis sits down by Abby and calls her “Pigeon” again and she doesn’t like it, so obviously he’ll keep doing it through the rest of the book because men doing things you ask them not to is such adorable behavior. He introduces himself and she reminds him that she knows his name already.

“Don’t flatter yourself. It’s hard not to notice when fifty drunks are chanting your name.”

And when people all over campus seem to fawn over him. I honestly couldn’t tell you the name of one person I went to college with that I didn’t know before I went to college. I think there was a girl who wore really thick eyeliner in one of my classes? And her hair was always pulled back way too tight? That’s it. That’s all I’ve got from college. There was a sign language interpreter named Sue, I remember her. But yeah. If you’re a big enough deal that you’re known all over campus for how amazing you are, I’d say you’re pretty amazing.

Also, I’d say that your fight club isn’t as secret as you think it is.

My biggest issue here is with the fact that Abby is meeting Travis, the cousin, BFF, and roommate of her friend, Shepley, for the first time. You’d think they would have run into each other socially since they travel in the same circle and he’s the big man on campus. How is this the first time they’ve ever spoken? When did Abby become friends with Shepley? Was it through America? They all seem to be in the same general group of acquaintences.

He laughed again when I glared at him. “Those are some amazing eyes, though,” he said, leaning just inches from my face. “What color is that, anyway? Gray?”

Do we have a hard time with our colors, Travis? How are you with shapes?

I didn’t like the way it made me feel when he was so close. I didn’t want to be like the scores of other girls at Eastern that blushed in his presence.

There we go. Not Like Other Girls.

America tells Travis not to even think about trying anything with Abby, to which Shepley says:

“Baby,” Shepley said, “you just told him no. He’s never gonna stop, now.”

Wow, the title of this chapter was not fucking around, huh?

Travis calls Abby “Pidge,” so that’s three times in the scene that he calls her a name she doesn’t want to be called and of course we’re meant to interpret this as sexual tension. Then, he whispers something in America’s ear before he leaves.

A few more girls followed behind him, giggling and running their fingers through their hair to get his attention. He opened the door for them, and they nearly squealed in delight.

Look, more silly girls for us to judge! I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but it’s important for you to know that this isn’t going to stop like, at all. For the entire book.

After this scene, I’m really not understanding the vibe. Nobody really seems to like Travis. His best friend whom he is also related to basically described him as a sexual predator. Abby thinks he’s sexy but he refuses to use her name. Are we supposed to find him sexy here? Or am I just assuming we are because this is a romance? She honestly doesn’t seem to like him, so at least we’re a step up from Fifty Shades of Grey here?

I also don’t understand how these characters are in college. Everyone seems to have lunch at the same time, they’re all throwing food (America throws her roll, Shepley throws a french fry), and again, it’s weird that the entire campus knows and is obsessed with this one specific guy.

But anyway, America says:

“Oh, no. You’re in trouble, Abby.”

Why is Abby in trouble? Because Travis told her to bring Abby to his apartment. And it’s apparently just a given that she’s going, as she has been summoned. But Shepley warns her not to fall for Travis (also apparently a given) because it could cause problems between him and America.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Mare. Do you know how many times he’s screwed things up for me because he one-nights the best friend? All of a sudden it’s a conflict of interest to date me because it’s fraternizing with the enemy. I’m tellin’ ya, Abby,” he looked at me, “don’t tell Mare she can’t come over or date me because you fall for Travis’s line of BS. Consider yourself warned.”

So, Travis is violent, treats women like shit, and carelessly sabotages his friend/cousin’s relationships out of pure selfishness. What do they get out of associating with him? Why does anyone admire and want to be around him?

You don’t get all flustered when you talk to me, and you don’t try to get my attention.”

No, she’s actually discouraged your attention. You just didn’t get the hint that it wasn’t a seduction strategy. She tells him it’s not a ploy but he argues that she wouldn’t be there if she didn’t like him.

“I didn’t say you’re a bad person. I just don’t like being a foregone conclusion for the sole reason of having a vagina.” I focused on the grains of salt on the table until I heard a choking noise from Travis’s direction.

His eyes widened and he quivered with howling laughter. “Oh my God! You’re killing me! That’s it. We have to be friends. I won’t take no for an answer.”

I’m pretty sure that if someone is going to howl with laughter, it should be in response to something that’s genuinely funny. A lot of times, authors (myself included) will include laughs when something is mildly funny or it’s just amusing or what have you. But howling with laughter is pretty extreme, so something has to be…funny. For that to happen. And make sense. If they’re in their twenties, just saying the word “vagina” shouldn’t be a cause for hysterics.

“I don’t mind being friends, but that doesn’t mean you have to try to get into my panties every five minutes.”

“You’re not sleeping with me. I get it.”

She doesn’t even speak again before he says:

“You have my word. I won’t even think about your panties…unless you want me to.”

I rested my elbows on the table and leaned into them. “And that won’t happen, so we can be friends.”

An impish grin sharpened his features as he leaned in a bit closer. “Never say never.”

He won’t try to get into your panties every five minutes. He’ll try to get into your panties five times in one minute. He’s efficient!

Abby asks him a little about himself and we learn that Adam gave him the nickname “Mad Dog,” which he doesn’t appear psyched about.

His short answers were beginning to bug me.

She has literally only asked him one question.

He tells her that he’s a Criminal Justice major, but momentarily gets distracted by the entire Eastern soccer team, all of whom seem to be laughing about something inappropriate. He tells Abby that despite his tattoos and the fighting, he’s never gotten into any trouble. His mom died when he was a kid (where have we heard that before?) and that he has four brothers, Thomas, Taylor and Tyler (who are twins), and Trenton. They’re all tattooed (except Thomas), and they all seem to have grown up in a Lord of The Flies-type situation where it was all violence, all the time.

Finally, Travis is so visibly annoyed at the soccer players that Abby demands to know what it is they’re talking about.

They’re laughing about me having to take you to dinner, first. It’s not usually…my thing.”

Weird, I read a book about another guy like that. But I’m glad we didn’t let too many pages go by without being reminded of how much pussy Travis crushes on a daily basis.

The conversation turns to Abby. She hasn’t declared a major, but she’s probably going to go with Accounting. She’s from Witchita, just like America is, so that solves the junior year mystery. And she came to Eastern to get away from her parents.

“What’s with the third degree?” I said. The questions were drifting from small talk to personal, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.

He’s asking you the exact same types of questions you asked him. And you were annoyed that he wasn’t more forthcoming. Again…just like another character I know.

Several chairs knocked together as the soccer team left their seats. They traded one last joke before they meandered toward the door. Their pace quickened when Travis stood up. Those in the back of the group pushed those in front to escape before Travis made his way across the room.

Yeah, get out of here, soccer team. Only Travis “Mad Dog” Maddox gets to demean women!

Abby tells Travis that she chose Eastern as a school because it “just felt right,” and he agrees, and the chapter is over.

So, this is what we’re into here. A Fifty Shades of Grey college AU starring Travstian and Anabby.

I’ll just fire up the wood chipper and climb on in.

The Big Damn Angel Rewatch S01E05, “Rm with a Vu”

In every generation, there is a chosen one. No, shit. Wrong show. What am I supposed to do, now? I guess I’ll just have to recap every episode Angel with an eye to the following themes:

Angel is still a dick.
Cordelia is smarter than everyone.
Sex is still evil.
Sunlight isn’t nearly as dangerous as it was in Sunnydale…
…but its danger is certainly inconsistent.
Vampire/demon rules aren’t consistent with the Buffyverse.
Xenophobia and cultural stereotypes abound.
Women are disposable and unrealistic.
Vampires still @#$%ing breathe.
Some of this stuff is still homophobic as fuck.
Blondes, blondes everywhere
Smoking is still evil.
A lot of this shit is really misogynistic.
Some of this stuff is ableist as fuck.
Some of this shit is still racist as fuck.

The Big Damn Angel Damsel In Distress Counter: 8

Have I missed any that were added in past recaps? Let me know in the comments.  Even though I might forget that you mentioned it.

WARNING: Just like with the Buffy recaps, I’ve seen (most) of this series already, so I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So a blanket spoiler warning is in effect.

We open on Cordelia unconvincingly complaining about the quality of some trash bags. She’s reenacting an audition she went on. A blonde wearing skin-tight leather got the part. Maybe I’m in a grumpy mood, but I just feel like that’s a lazy joke. And to be honest, some of the jokes on this show about actresses and what they’ll do for a part strike me in a super gross place now that we know Joss Whedon was using his shows as an extramarital dating service.

Doyle unconditionally supports Cordelia in her acting efforts but suggests she should answer the ringing phone. As does Angel. Because it’s her job. The answering machine picks up to reveal it’s just someone calling Cordelia to chat about how things are going in her life. Cordelia is fine with letting the machine take it because she isn’t interested in a long conversation about how nothing has changed and she’s still not successful.

Doyle is really into Cordelia. He clumsily tries to pick her up by offering to let her “get a night away” from her shitty apartment by staying with him. She (rightfully) rejects him with trademark Cordelia brutality (that’s my girl) and leaves the office. Dejected (because for as much as I love Doyle, he’s the Nice Guy in this show), he goes into Angel’s office to get intel on her. Angel is, of course, brooding. This time, he’s brooding over an old book, though, so that’s a nice change. Doyle asks about the woman who called and left the phone message, and Angel says:

Angel: “I think she’s one of Cordelia’s group. People called them the Cordettes. A bunch of girls from wealthy families. They ruled the high school. Decided what was in, who was popular. It was like the Soviet secret police if they cared a lot about shoes.”

Ha ha, get it? Because teen girls are vapid harpies who only care about shoes! (#13)

Also, I don’t remember anyone ever referring to Cordelia and her friends as the Cordettes. Where the hell is that coming from? And while I’m sure some of this knowledge came from Buffy complaining about them, the fact that Angel knows this much about the goings-on at Sunnydale High is pretty creepy. In two ways. The first one is obvious: why does he have and retain this much knowledge about teen girls and what they’re doing in high school?

The second is a little more unsettling: in scenes between Angel and Buffy on the original show, the relationship between the two of them didn’t seem…statutory rape-ish. Angel came across as an early twenty-something and Buffy, though a teenager, came across as a mature partner most of the time because we saw them interacting in life-or-death situations in which they were equals in a world that isolated both of them from other people. Buffy’s teen vulnerability was expressed to her friends and Watcher, but when we saw her with Angel, she was the Slayer, even when she let her guard down emotionally. Now, we look at this scene, with a noticeably older David Boreanaz, in a show with a more mature tone, mocking the teen society he learned about from…his teen girlfriend. This tiny little throwaway exposition about Cordelia casts the Buffy/Angel relationship in a totally different light. We saw Angel get freaked by Buffy’s notebook doodles in one Buffy episode, but that was because it seemed to jar him into the realization that she wasn’t aware that their love was doomed. But that was a plot point that was explored and somewhat resolved. Here, it’s just like, “Oh yeah, I remember all this stuff about Cordelia in high school because I was dating a high schooler and I was fully aware that she was a normal high school girl even though she was also the Slayer.”

So, Angel fills Doyle in on how Cordelia was rich but she’s not anymore, and he says she’s doing okay just as we cut to Cordelia arriving home to her apartment with flickering electricity and sputtering brown water from the taps. Oh, and enough roaches to film a reboot of the final fight scene from The Craft. In desperation, she calls Doyle, who can’t answer the phone because there’s a demon lurking in his apartment.

After the credits, we learn that Doyle owes the demon money. Doyle tells the guy, yeah, I’ve got your money and ends up clocking the demon in the face with a dresser drawer before he runs out of his apartment.

Back at Angel’s place, classical music is playing on a gramophone. I call bullshit on Angel’s musical tastes here. Unless he’s trying to be a stereotypical spooky TV vampire, why would he be listening to “Ode to Joy”? It doesn’t really go with his character; the Angel we saw as a human was into bawdy songs in taverns and stuff. But whatever. The better to brood to, I guess.

Angel is in the shower, and he rushes out to get the door.

Hang on.

I guess I never really thought about it, but would vampires have to shower? Do they get B.O.? Oily hair? How were they showering at the factory on Buffy? Or later, how is Spike showering when he lives in the crypt? Also, how is Angel going to get his hair just right after his shower? He can’t see in a mirror. I have so many hygiene-related questions.

Anyway, he opens the door and is immediately trampled by Cordelia, who has all her stuff packed up and ready to move in.

Cordelia: “My apartment! It’s like the barrio or the projects or whatever! And I live there! I am a girl from the projects!”

We’re going to add another number to our list here: #15: Some of this shit is still racist as fuck. Because here’s the thing: Cordelia could have easily said, “My apartment is full of roaches.” But she didn’t. She said her apartment is like living where Latinx and Black people live, and it’s unthinkable that she should have to live like Latinx and Black people. And this line was written for a character we’re supposed to like. We’re supposed to shake our heads and go, “Oh, that Cordelia! So dramatic, but we love her!” and just ignore the fact that she just flat-out stated that it’s unacceptable for her to have to live like working-class minority populations.

She goes on about the roaches and the water quality and demands that Angel smell her B.O. while he stands there, naked, wet, and confused. Then she announces that she’s just going to have to live with him indefinitely until she finds an apartment. She tells him to bring her stuff inside and that he can either give her the couch or the bed depending on which he “feels good about,” then heads directly to the bathroom for a shower. The master manipulation here is incredible.

So, here’s another weird time skip issue. Cordelia left the office while the sun was up. By the time she got home, it was dark. When she called Doyle, it was dark at his house, too. Then, she goes to Angel’s house after not being able to reach Doyle. In this next scene, Doyle arrives at the office during the day. He even checks his watch, so that we can see the big bruise he got fighting with the demon:

As you can see, it’s ten in the morning. So, when he goes downstairs and finds Cordelia fresh from her shower, in a robe, hair completely wet…

How long was her freaking shower?!

Anyway, as I said, Doyle has just walked into Angel’s apartment to find Cordelia fresh from a shower, and Angel wearing boxers and an open robe. And the dialogue doesn’t help:

Cordelia: “You ever get that feeling like you just can’t shower enough, like something’s happened and you’ll never be clean?”

Angel: “You got peanut butter on the bed.”

Oh, okay. So maybe Cordelia took more than one shower? But she doesn’t seem like the type who would dry out her skin like that.

Cordelia goes to check up on the peanut butter situation, and Doyle confronts Angel about “swooping in” on the girl he was “wearing down.” Doyle, you’re not winning a lot of points with Jenny in this episode, just to warn you. He also inadvertently describes Cordelia as “scraps” when he suggests Angel should refrain from romantic entanglements to give ugly guys a chance.

Honestly, only in Hollywood could a character look like Doyle and be considered the ugly guy.

But it’s the implication that because Doyle likes Cordelia, he deserves to have her regardless of the numerous times she’s rejected him is just…ugh, it’s so Nice Guy. I would give Doyle a number of his own, like I did with Xander, but sadly he’s only in like the next five episodes or something. So, we’re going to slap this with another #13.

Angel reassures Doyle that nothing happened and all is forgiven, etc. Doyle asks Cordelia if anyone has called recently looking for him, and she’s like, yeah, some guy from “your part of England” called and I gave him your address. Which leads to a spat between them when Doyle suggests Cordelia dropped the ball by not telling him who called about him. His excuse is that he didn’t have time to straighten up his apartment, but Angel points out the busted up hand.

There’s a passage of time cross-fade, which is a little odd, and Doyle finds Cordelia in Angel’s kitchen, ripping up the linoleum because she wants to see if there are hardwood floors under it. You know. Like you do in someone else’s house without permission. And not in a corner or somewhere it’ll be hidden by an appliance. Just carve up a section right in the middle of the floor, Cordelia.

As for basically moving in, Cordelia has already set out her trophies and tiaras from high school, as well as her diploma, which is a nifty little callback:

That’s a nice touch.

Doyle: “It’s good, though, you can look back. I never look back.”

Cordelia: “Look back at what?”

So, Cordelia is very much still thinking that the stuff she did in high school is still her life. Which explains why her inability to impress at the level she used to is such a blow to her ego. Now, I’m not saying that she’s egotistical for not wanting to live in a roach-infested apartment. It’s the fact that she’s isolating herself from people she used to care about so they don’t know she’s living in a roach-infested apartment that’s egotistical.

Angel comes downstairs and tells Doyle that a “big guy” is waiting upstairs for him, so Doyle tries to flee out the back. The “big guy” is a ruse and Angel is waiting to catch Doyle. Reluctantly, Doyle explains to Angel that he owes money to people and he’s not getting paid money he’s owed, so he can’t pay the people he owes. Angel suggests a trade: if Doyle gets Cordelia the hell out of Angel’s apartment, Angel will take care of Doyle’s demon problem.

Cut to Doyle and Cordelia touring a tiny, moldy apartment, a cult-housing scenario with mandatory changing and no bathroom walls, and a nice place with a sweating, leering landlord who reassures her that he’s the only person with a key to the apartment. Cordelia finally relents and asks Doyle to get her an apartment through one of his connections.

Meanwhile, at Doyle’s apartment, a demon attacks Angel and we cut away. So. That’s an interesting choice.

A rental agent shows Cordelia and Doyle a beautifully furnished, sunny apartment that Cordelia loves. There’s lots of space and even a formal dining room. Which leads Cordelia to ask what’s wrong with the place. Fair question, considering how nice it is and it’s apparently in Cordelia’s price range. The rental agent tells her there’s nothing wrong with it, but the old tenant broke their lease the week before and the place is a bargain. Doyle says Cordelia will take the apartment and she immediately talks about removing a wall.

California people, seriously, are apartment rental agreements that liberal? Will they let you remove whole walls? Because here in Michigan, you hang a picture and the landlords are like, “THAT THUMBTACK IS DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY EVICTED AND WE WILL SEE YOU IN COURT!”

Well, not my landlords. My landlords are awesome. But in apartment buildings, remodels would not fly. I was stunned when a friend’s complex allowed her to paint the walls.

Anyway, I support the “get rid of the wall” plan because this looks like a building code violation:

After the commercial, we’re back to Angel beating up that demon. Coincidentally, back during the PNR/UF boom in the 00’s, I read a book where the first line was about the hero and a monster crashing through the heroine’s skylight, and the phrase, “and began to beat off the demon” was in there and I laughed so hard I couldn’t finish the book. Like, there was no way I would take anything seriously now that I had this image in my head of a demon hunter hero or whatever tumbling into the heroine’s apartment and then vigorously jacking off a demon right in front of her. It holds the record for the fastest I’ve ever DNFed a book.

Anyway, the demon tells Angel he works for a dude named Griff and that since Doyle hasn’t paid up money, he’s just going to kill him. Angel points out a pretty big flaw in that logic since if Doyle is dead, Griff still doesn’t have the money. He promises he can get Doyle to pay up.

In Cordelia’s new apartment, poltergeist activity is going on. A radio comes on and plays “You Always Hurt The One You Love” (I think it’s the Eddy Arnold version). Drawers in her dresser open and an invisible force rummages through Cordelia’s clothes. Then, a shadow stands over her bed and a woman’s scratchy voice demands to know why Cordelia is there and says it’s better if she’d never come. Cordelia startles awake with the radio still playing.

At the office, Doyle is complaining because he’s still going to have to pay the money he owes Griff. Hello, Angel got this demon to stop tracking you to murder you. But okay.

Doyle: “I mean, I don’t have the money. And you can’t get blood out of a stone.”

Angel: “They can get blood out of you. There’s a price on your head, Doyle. They weren’t even looking for money anymore.”

Finally, Doyle thanks Angel for saving his life, and Angel is like, okay, it’s intervention time. He asks Doyle why he chooses to live the way he does, and Doyle explains that it stops him from getting his expectations up. But he won’t divulge what happened in the past to make him not want better for himself.

He also says that Cordelia is a bright spot in life (awww) and her happiness over the apartment is a bright spot, too (aww) and she’s going to be grateful to him for a long time (…uuuuuugh). So, apparently, Doyle found the apartment for Cordelia to get her to sleep with him.

I was almost 100% sure that Joss Whedon must have written this episode himself, but this was Jane Espenson’s doing. Why did you make Doyle an even worse Nice Guy than usual, Jane? Like, he’s almost OOC in this. Doyle in any other episode would have stopped at her being a bright spot.

We cut to Cordelia’s apartment right from his line about being grateful. Her glass of water on the bedside table is boiling, her bed is levitating, and even though she keeps yelling about not being scared, she’s petrified. Morning comes and she tries to convince herself that everything is hunk-dory, but…

When Cordelia moves a chair in the living room, the chair moves back. When she tries again, it slams into the wall and smashes, and a phone cord and a blinds pull snake around her arm and leg. Angry and frightened, she shouts at the ghost:

Cordelia: “You know what? I get it! You’re a ghost! You’re dead! Big accomplishment! Move on! Do you see a light anywhere? Go toward it!”

Wind starts to blow packing material around and Cordelia has had it. She challenges the ghost to do its worst, but a knock at the door causes all activity to cease.

Angel and Doyle are standing outside her door…because #4. Seriously, it’s sunny as hell. How did he make it from the sewers or tunnels or whatever and up to her covered entryway? Anyway, they’ve brought her a cactus as a housewarming present. She doesn’t want to let them in…despite Angel being a vampire standing out there in broad daylight. But since she told him before she got the apartment that he could come over, he’s invited into her house now.

Cordelia: “What? I didn’t even have a place then. These rules are getting all screwed up!”

Thank you! That’s what I’ve been saying!

While Doyle and Angel poke around the apartment, Cordelia desperately tries to hide evidence of poltergeist activity happening all around them. They’re so impressed with how great the place is, they’re totally oblivious. But the ghost is set on them knowing she’s there. After throwing a trophy to finally get their attention, she makes the word “DIE” appear in dripping blood on the wall. Cordelia argues with Doyle and Angel as they hustle her out:

Cordelia: “I am not giving up this apartment!”

Angel: “It’s haunted.”

Cordelia: “It’s rent controlled!”

Doyle: “Cordy, it says ‘die’!”

They tell her they can talk about cleansing the apartment and laying the ghost to rest, and finally manage to wrestle Cordelia out of the house while she shouts at the ghost.

Cordelia: I’ll die before I give up this apartment! I’ll die!”

And the ghost responds in a sickly sweet mom voice:

Ghost: “All right, dear. If that’s what you think is best.”

Back at the ranch, Doyle is researching property records on the internet, trying to find information on why the apartment could be haunted. Angel tries another approach.

Angel: “You know, this really is just a place to live.

Cordelia: “No, it’s more! It’s beautiful. And if it goes away, it’s like…”

Angel: “Like what?”

Cordelia: “Like I’m still getting punished.”

Angel: “Punished? For what?”

Cordelia: “I don’t know. For how I was. For everything that I said in high school just because I could get away with it. And then it all ended and I had to pay. But this apartment, I can be me again. Punishment over! Welcome back to your life. Like, like I couldn’t be that awful, if I could have a place like that. It’s just like you.”

Angel: “Looking for redemption.”

Cordelia: “Um, I meant because you used to have that big mansion.”

Doyle finds a record of a Maude Pearson who died in the home. And Angel is like, “How did you get that?” because the writers are determined to make him seem just like your granddad trying to figure out the AOL.

Angel says it doesn’t make sense for Maude to haunt the house because she died of a heart attack, not from something violent. But Cordelia insists that the old lady smell in the apartment is proof that it’s Maude who’s tormenting her. Angel warns that a cleansing spell isn’t easy and there are some ingredients–like bile–that they probably can’t get their hands on. But of course, Doyle has a bile guy.

Angel decides to go to Kate for advice and tells Cordelia to stick around until he gets back.

Next, on: Jokes That Haven’t Aged Well…

Cordelia: “Little old lady ghost. How come Patrick Swayze’s never dead when you need him?”

Eeeeh yoy.

After a passage of time, Cordelia gets a call from Angel, who tells her to meet him at the apartment because he’s found a solution to the haunting problem. When she gets home, it seems like there’s no one there. Then Angel calls her to the bedroom. And he’s not in there. Ghost Maude is, though, and she’s been imitating Angel’s voice to lure Cordelia into her trap. Because apparently, Ghost Maude is a Yautja. She’s also protective of her son, and warns Cordelia that she should have stayed away.

At Kate’s office, two actors with zero chemistry try to telegraph the fact that they’re going to be love interests later and it doesn’t work at all. But Kate is able to get a file on Maude Pearson’s death because it was investigated as suspicious. Maude lived with her son and didn’t like his fiance. When Maude died, both her son and his fiance skipped town and were never heard from again. They realize that Maude’s murder has gone unavenged and look in the police database for suicides connected to the address. There have been several, all of them women.

Angel calls the office and gets Doyle, who’s just come back with the bile. He tells Angel that Cordelia isn’t there and plays the answering machine message with Ghost Maude’s Angel impression on it. Angel tells Doyle that he wasn’t the one who made the call and they spring into action.

In the apartment, Ghost Maude verbally abuses Cordelia:

Maude: “You’re not good enough for my boy. This will never be your home.”

Cordelia: “This is my home. My friends will come here–”

Maude: “You don’t have friends. Why would anyone care about you? Nobody really cares. You don’t deserve to live here. You don’t deserve anything.”

So, she can strike right at the heart of her victims’ insecurities. That’s something.

As Doyle and Angel race to the apartment, Angel explains that because Maude’s murder is unsolved, she’s attacking innocent people as vengeance and making it appear as though they committed suicide.

Sure enough, Ghost Maude continues to taunt Cordelia about how no one cares about her while hanging her with a noose made from electrical wire. She nearly dies, but Angel and Doyle burst in and get her down. Cordelia is (understandably) traumatized beyond helpfulness at this point, so it’s up to Angel and Doyle to do the spell on their own. As they begin, the poltergeist activity gets worse and Ghost Maude keeps verbally abusing Cordelia to keep her helpless.

And wow. She is helpless.

I feel like Cordelia was done dirty in a lot of ways by this show, but this part is just flat out inconsistent with her character. She sobs hysterically, babbles incoherently, and mumbles that she can’t help with the spell over and over. And I guess if this was like, an evil ghost possession power or something, but it’s literally just a dead woman saying mean things to her. She has come back from so much worse than mean words in the past. And yes she feels low. But the Cordy the audience knows isn’t going to just give up and die.

Luckily, Angel is there to save her. Good thing she’s already been added to the damsel in distress counter. Angel grabs her and tells her she has to toughen up and fight the ghost, and he drags her into the magic circle. She’s so inconsolable and useless that they decide to abandon the spell altogether and run. But when they open the door, three demons are waiting for them with guns drawn.

Thanks a lot, Doyle.

After the commercial break, Angel reminds the head demon that he’d agreed to let Doyle pay the money back. The demon is like, well, I changed my mind without any clear motive or indication that this might happen in the course of the story. Ghost Maude is pissed off and appears behind them, shouting that she doesn’t want any more people in the apartment. The demons try to ignore her because she’s just a ghost and therefore not scary to them, just kind of obnoxious. But one of them tries to fire a gun at her, which is like…you guys. You’re demons. You should know better.

A massive fight breaks out between Doyle, Angel, and the demons (though one runs away). Ghost Maude is furious at the way her home is getting wrecked up, so she shoots knives through the air at them and pushes Cordelia into her bedroom so they can have a nice little demoralizing chat away from the silly menfolk. Cordelia promises she’ll leave the apartment, but ultimately ends up on the floor sobbing again.

Maude: “I knew you were trouble from the start. I’m surprised that my son didn’t smell the stench of poverty and failure on you. I can.”

Cordelia: “I’m sorry.”

Maude: “You better be sorry. You stupid little bitch.”

And then Cordelia looks up like, okay, that is the last straw.

Cordelia: “I’m a bitch.”

Ghost Maude tells Cordelia to hang herself with the bedsheets, but Cordelia is like:

Cordelia: “I’m not a snivelling, whiny little cry Buffy. I’m the nastiest girl in Sunnydale history. I take crap from no one.”

Maude: “You’re going to make yourself a noose and put it around–”

Cordelia: “Back off, Polygrip! You think you’re bad? All mean and haunty? Picking on poor, pathetic Cordy? Well get ready to haul your wrinkly, translucent ass out of this place because lady…the bitch is back.”

So, IDK if it’s so great to have Cordelia fall back on insulting Buffy to build herself up. I mean, Buffy got emotional and stuff, but it’s not like she never got anything done. And Cordelia was just unable to stand up because she was so sad about being poor, so…

While the fight rages in the other room and Doyle and Angel get rid of the demons, Cordy tells Ghost Maude to get the hell out of her house, and her anger causes Ghost Maude to suck backward into the void. Or something. Cordy emerges from her bedroom and Angel and Doyle are both like, yay, the ghost problem is over. But Cordy is possessed. Her eyes are all milky blue. She grabs a lamp and starts chopping away at that wall she didn’t like, pounding right through the masonry underneath to reveal…

The episode flashes back to Alive Maude bricking her tied-up son, Dennis, into the wall while he begs for his life and “You Always Hurt The One You Love” plays in the background. She tells him he’ll never be able to leave her now. Satisfied with her work, Living Maude says:

Maude: “This hurts me more than it hurts you.”

And she’s kind of right because she clutches her chest in agony and doubles over and dies on the floor, leaving Dennis trapped and suffocating

Back in the present day, Cordelia, Angel, and Doyle watch as beams of ghostly light form around Dennis’s skeleton and become a big skull. While Ghost Maude begs for mercy, the Dennis ghost blasts his mother presumably into hell.

Cordelia: “I knew I didn’t like that wall.”

Later, at Doyle’s place, he’s fitting three shiny new deadbolts to his door. Angel asks if he’s really going to live the way he does. Angel offers his help, but only if Doyle eventually shares the truth about his life. Doyle promises that he will, someday.

With the ugly wall gone and replaced with fancy Roman columns, Cordelia is finally confident enough to call her high school friends. She’s on the phone boasting about her great apartment…and her roommate, whom she never sees. Her can of rootbeer slides across the table and she pauses to scold “Phantom Dennis”, who pushes the can back. Then he turns on the TV and has to be reprimanded again so Cordelia can continue her mean gossip about the people in Sunnydale.

I really love this episode, despite the flaw in the demon’s motivation for killing Doyle. It’s awfully convenient that the demon or Griff or whoever decided to change his mind for no stated reason just so demons could show up at a place they’ve never been before and which isn’t technically connected to Doyle in order to maintain the at-least-two-fights-per-episode quota. But I like Phantom Dennis. I’m glad he’s there. And I’m glad to see Cordelia feeling like she’s been un-punished and then immediately forgetting whatever life lesson she was learning. I don’t know why, but that brings me comfort. It feels like the old days.

But the biggest question from this episode is: if Dennis’s fiance disappeared…what happened to her? Did Maude kill her? Is that something we’re just supposed to accept without any mention in the dialogue? The holes in the plots are starting to make this season resemble Swiss cheese. And not any Swiss. Like, Lorraine cheese.

I think it eventually gets better though. I hope.

 

A Bewitched Musing/Trout Nation crossover video

Hey there, friends! This video is part of a series I’ve been putting a lot of work and planning into. And while it’s not exactly the type of content that you come to Trout Nation for, this particular meditation technique is one that has helped me immensely in my writing. So, if you’re not totally averse to New Age stuff and you’ve been looking for new creativity boosting or mental health managing skills, this might be something you’d want to check out.

More information in the video!