Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 67

#LegionXIII Rome Watch-Along S02E02: “Son of Hades” or “The Angry Hour”

I’m back from my Troutcation hiatus! And you’ll note that this post is happening on a Saturday. That’s because I told Bronwyn and Jess that I couldn’t do a #LegionXIII post this week, because I was still on blog vacation. And they were like, “That’s over on Friday, bitch. We’re moving the post to Saturday.”

Quick rundown of the episode: This is the episode where everyone is angry, and everyone deals with that anger in their own, immensely self-destructive ways.

Vorenus’s little “got your head!” trick with Erastes Fulman last week has led to total chaos on the Aventine. Rival gangs are killing each other in the street, and old ladies are warning people away from the Vorenus house. Even Eirene has had it with Vorenus’s shit. She’s worried that she’ll get pregnant with a monster baby if they’re living in a house with a decapitated head just rotting on the floor.

Antony has to meet with Cleopatra, and Atia is not a fan. She doesn’t have a lot to worry about, at the moment, as Cleopatra is in Rome looking for money for her son, Caesar’s heir. Considering the fact that Caesar’s actual heir, Octavian, can’t get one red cent out of his inheritance as long as Antony controls it. When Cleo tells Antony to declare Caesarion Caesar’s legitimate heir, Antony tells her to go fuck herself, and they do not part on good terms. He still has to have dinner with her at Atia’s house, though.

Titus Pullo goes to Mark Antony to ask him for help with Vorenus. Pullo actually describes Vorenus as having “gone awry”, which is my favorite way anyone has ever described a breakdown. I’m going to call all my breakdowns “going awry” from now on. Antony goes full-on Tough Love Jen on Vorenus (Bronwyn knows what this means) and tells Vorenus to either commit suicide or clean up the Aventine and get the gangs under control, since he created that problem.

Speaking of creating problems for one’s self, Antony tells Atia that Cleopatra isn’t really hot or anything, she’s just really plain and mousy. So when Cleo shows up at Atia’s dinner looking hot as fuck, it’s clear that Antony is doing that thing where guys downplay the hotness of a girl they might end up cheating on their girlfriend with later. Queen or not, when Cleo leaves the party, Atia has some words for her. One of them is “trollop”.

Also at the party? Servillia, who has been forced to come to keep up political appearances. Unfortunately, keeping up appearances means that she has to stand there and take all of Atia’s gloating apologies and publicly accept her offer of friendship. Atia cannot, however, murder Servillia as she had planned, so she sends Timon off to his pointless story about his life that goes absolutely nowhere. Basically, it all boils down to Timon is Jewish, but not Jewish enough for his brother, who’s like, some kind of super pious political agitator. This storyline will go nowhere and add nothing to the overall season.

Concord, who is basically the goddess of getting along, is in charge of a parlay. All the rival gang leaders meet with Vorenus, who tells them that he’s in charge now. Nobody wants to commit any kind of violence or anything in front of the statue of Concord, so they don’t attack Vorenus for talking some shit about them and bossing them around. But the thing is, Vorenus doesn’t give a shit about Concord. He talks about sodomizing Concord, then smashes the statue all to pieces in front of the horrified priests and gang members. Then he tells everyone that he’s a son of Hades, and they’re kind of like, okay. We have to do this, because this guy is dangerous.

Back at Atia’s house, a lot of shit is going on. Antony and Atia are fighting about whether or not he fucked Cleo, Octavian and Antony are fighting over Octavian’s money, and Octavia has literally no fucks left to give. She just eats fruit salad and ignores everybody’s drama. Good choice, Octavia.

The thing Octavian wants to do with his money is give away the money Caesar pledged to the plebs. But Antony thinks that’s stupid, so he’s not going to give it to him. Octavian tells Octavia that he plans to take control of Rome from Antony, and she doesn’t take it real seriously.

Pullo warns Vorenus that fucking around with the gods is probably not the best idea. And this is coming from a dude who sat in a sinking boat and told the sea god to suck his cock. But you know what you shouldn’t do, Pullo? Employ some rough-around-the-edges-but-smolderingly-sexy woman to manage the prostitutes in your new mafia brothel.

The news reader guy announces that yay, the plebs are getting their money, and Antony and Atia are freaked the fuck out. They get even more freaked out when Octavian tells him he borrowed millions of whatever denomination of money they use. Shit gets super violent in one of the most uncomfortable scenes I think I’ve ever seen on TV, and Antony nearly kills Octavian. When Atia leaves the scene with Antony, leaving Octavian on the floor, he decides to say fuck it to everyone in his family and runs away to Agrippa’s house. On the way, they pass a wagon full of slaves. And inside are Lyde and the children, alive after all.

My favorite part of the episode: It’s a toss up between Vorenus trashing the sacred statue, the smooth transition between Cleopatra’s double slap of Antony, and Cleo’s expression when she recognizes Titus Pullo.

My least favorite part of the episode: The introduction of Gaia, for reasons that will be clear as the series goes on. But most of all, the introduction of Timon’s story. The reason I dislike it so much is that so much screen time is invested in it, with such little payoff. I will be annoyed by this until the end of the show. I also find that after seeing a full season of Timon killing Atia’s enemies to get the opportunity to fuck her, it’s very difficult to give a damn about him once you find out he’s got a wife and kids he’s deserting to pull all this shit all the time.

Favorite costume: This is such a mob meeting, there’s even a guy in a track suit and gold medallion:

Team Atia or Team Servilia: Atia. She threatened the queen of Egypt, over a guy. That is some brass.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet: 

Dear Mom,

Sorry you’re a bitch.

Love, Octavian #LegionXIII

— Dylan Bimberg (@dylanbim) March 15, 2016

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? 

If Bronwyn grows her hair out, I will help her make this hair style. Because I guarantee she covets it.

Guess Jess’s head canon. Two key points for Jess in this episode: When Mark Antony steps up real close behind Vorenus and tells him that he’s his master, which launches yet another ship for the Jarmada (if it hadn’t already sailed), and she got a scene wherein Pullo tenderly cared for Vorenus by shaving his face for him. So much HoYay in this episode!

Now go check out Bronwyn’s and Jess’s posts, and join us Monday at 9 PM EST for season two, episode three, “These Being The Words Of Marcus Tullius Cicero” . Tweet to #LegionXIII to join us!

Troutcation Hiatus

This week, and probably next week, I’ll be on hiatus. Why, you ask? Well, the good people at Apple Vacations wanted Mr. Jen and I to check out their service and the Secrets St. James resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica. We’ll spend three nights there and report back about Apple Vacations and Secrets St. James and various vacation-type whoo and rahs, in a series of compensated, but objective, posts.

In other words, this is quite a bit like that time I reviewed sunglasses for this blog because it meant I got to keep the sunglasses. And like the time I agreed to wear clothes and jewelry exclusively from ModCloth for the Steve Harvey Show and then I got to keep the entire wardrobe they sent me. I’ll take the free stuff, but I’ll always be honest with you about the product (in the case of the ModCloth thing, I told you the god’s honest truth by looking amazing in their clothes).

Since I have to get many ducks in several rows before I leave, both personally and professionally, and since I will probably be too sunburned to move by the time I get back, I’ll be taking a little break. Expect lots of pictures, and hopefully some great stories about snorkeling.

So, I will return, and when I do, we’ll all be ready for a new Apolonia recap, another chapter of my Patreon serial, and two #LegionXIII posts to make up for the ones I’ll miss.

Have a great couple of weeks, you wacky kids ‘ya.

 

#LegionXIII Rome watch-along, S02E01 “Passover”

Quick rundown of the episode: Because this show is incredible, season two starts directly where season one ended, with Caesar dead on the senate floor. Brutus is traumatized as fuck by the horrible thing he just did, but his horrible mother is like, that’s my boy. And speaking of dead on the floor, Vorenus is still cradling Niobe’s dead body. His kids and sister-in-law come home and find him violently shaking his “grandson”, and he realizes that his entire family has been in on the lie. He beats Vorena the Elder, curses her, and spits on her, then throws a curse on everyone just to be thorough. Then he staggers into the street, where some old guy headbutts him into unconsciousness. Meanwhile, Mark Antony has to run from murderers, and Posca has to try and get Caesar’s body through Rome for a proper burial or whatever.

Timon goes to Atia with a bunch of men to try and protect the house, and she’s super happy to see him. He’s feeling pretty heroic, until Mark Antony shows up in a full-on fury, and Atia is all, thank god you’re okay. Sorry, Timon, it ain’t never gonna happen. Antony wants Atia and Octavia and Octavian and Calpurnia to leave the city, but Calpurnia isn’t fucking budging. She wants the will read and all the funeral stuff wrapped the fuck up. But when they find out that Caesar has named Octavian his heir, shit gets complicated. The city isn’t celebrating the death of the tyrant, Mark Antony points out to Servilia and her little band of murder plotters. Octavian has figured out a really bad loophole in the “murder Caesar” plan, which means he gets to keep all the money Caesar left him. If Caesar was a tyrant, all his senate appointments are void, because they were unlawful acts of tyranny. So they’ll have to have general elections. Since the conspirators have a lot to lose if that happens, they’re forced to step back the whole tyrant thing and enter into a truce with Antony, who then uses Caesar’s funeral to whip up a lot of pro-Caesar sentiment.

Pullo and Eirene get dirt married, even though he murdered her boyfriend. Their honeymoon is cut short when they find out that Caesar is dead, and then things get real unromantic when they return to the Aventine to find that Niobe is dead and Vorenus’s kids are missing. Erastes Fulman took them. Vorenus and Pullo kill all of Fulman’s men and hold Fulman hostage long enough to learn that he raped the children, murdered them, and threw them in the river. Vorenus decapitates him and carries his severed head like a bowling bag through the Aventine.

My favorite part of the episode: When Calpurnia spit in Servilia’s face, and then spit in her face again. Oh, also, when Brutus says to Servilia, “You too, mother?” What a fucking amazing choice that line was.

My least favorite part of the episode: I really didn’t enjoy the fact that, after Antony has raped a slave, they depict her as looking all sexy and satisfied.

Favorite costume: Atia’s funeral outfit, because she looks like an Aerosmith video girl in 1997. 

Team Atia or Team Servilia: Team Atia. She’s the mother of the richest man in Rome.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet: 

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS????? #LegionXIII

— Bronwyn Green (@Bronwyn_Green) March 1, 2016

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? Bronwyn has massive hair envy, so I know Atia’s long in-mourning hair had her gnashing her teeth with jealousy.

Guess Jess’s head canon. Oh man, I know for a fact she’s a sucker for strong, wounded male characters being healed emotionally and physically by another strong male character, so the Vorenus/Pullo arc is really hitting every branch on the slash tree for her at this point.

Now go check out Bronwyn’s and Jess’s posts, and join us Monday at 9 PM EST for season two, episode one, “Passover” . Tweet to #LegionXIII to join us!

The Big Damn Buffy Rewatch S03E03, “Faith, Hope, and Trick”

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone puts her dry cleaning in the laundry by accident way too often. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
All the monsters look like wieners.
If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
Angel is a dick.
Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
Science and technology are not to be trusted.
Mental illness is stigmatized.
Only Willow can use a computer.
Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.
Cheap laughs and desperate grabs at plot plausibility are made through Xenophobia.
Oz is the Anti-Xander
Spike is capable of love despite his lack of soul
Don’t freaking tell me the vampires don’t need to breathe because they’re constantly out of frickin’ breath.
The foreshadowing on this show is freaking amazing.
Smoking is evil.
Despite praise for its positive portrayal of non-straight sexualities, some of this shit is homophobic as fuck.
How do these kids know all these outdated references, anyway?
Technology is used inconsistently as per its convenience in the script.
Sunnydale residents are no longer shocked by supernatural attacks.
Casual rape dismissal/victim blaming a-go-go
Snyder believes Buffy is a demon or other evil entity.
The Scoobies kind of help turn Jonathan into a bad guy.
This show caters to the straight female gaze like whoa.
Sunnydale General is the worst hospital in the world.
Faith is hyper-sexualized needlessly.

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: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it. 

I’m so excited about this episode! So excited! Because it’s femslash time on Buffy, my friends. Yet another of my ships glides into the harbor.

The episode starts with Willow coming to grips with the fact that, as seniors, they can leave school for lunch. Nobody seems to go too far, though. They just cross the road to go to the park and eat. Willow freaks out that maybe the permission they have been given is part of an elaborate trick, and someone will be waiting to bust her for cutting class, so Xander and Oz have to pretty much bodily carry her off campus, to where Buffy is waiting with a picnic. Since Buffy’s boyfriend is, you know, in a hell dimension, Willow and Oz and Xander and Cordelia decide not to be too couple-ish in front of her. Joking about the fact that she’s been expelled from school doesn’t seem to be off limits, though.

As far as boy trouble goes, Willow has the solution to Buffy’s wealth of it:

Willow: “Ooh, Scott Hope at eleven o’clock. He likes you. He wanted to ask you out last year, but you weren’t ready then. But I think you’re ready now. Or, at least in the state of pre-readiness to make conversation or to do that thing with your mouth that boys like. Oh! I didn’t mean that bad thing with your mouth, I meant that little half-smile thing…you’re supposed to stop me when I do that.”

Oz: “I like when you do that.”

Scott Hope walks by and says hi to Buffy, initiating the dance of teen longing that dictates all high school relationships. Willow is super excited, and asks if everyone thinks it went well.

Cordelia: “He didn’t try to slit our throats or anything. It’s progress.”

As always, Cordy has a point.

But Buffy doesn’t want to date, she wants to do normal stuff. Which, as Willow points out, could also be dating. Then Xander calls Buffy a slut in jest, and she hurts him. Good job, Buffy.

Buffy: “All right, yes. Date. And shop and hang out and go to school and save the world from unspeakable demons. You know. I wanna do Girly stuff.”

#GirlyStuff

Cut to Happy Burger, where a guy we will eventually know as Mr. Trick arrives in a limo orders a pop (I guess it’s a soda, if they’re in California) and monologues to an unseen passenger about how great Sunnydale is. And I’m going to reproduce that monologue here, because it’s fantastic characterization:

Mr. Trick: “Sunnydale. Town’s got quaint. And the people? They call me ‘sir.’ Don’t you just miss that? I mean, admittedly, it’s not a haven for the brothers. You know, strictly the caucasian persuasion here in the ‘dale, but, you know, you just gotta stand up and salute that death rate. I ran a statistical analysis and hello darkness. Makes D.C. look like Mayberry. And ain’t nobody saying boo about it. We could fit right in here. Have us some fun.”

Within seconds of introducing the character–and before we even know his name–we know what we need to know about Mr. Trick, just from a few lines of very well-characterized dialogue. He’s evil, he’s smart, he values things being done a certain way, and because of those, he’s dangerous. In fact, when the cloven-hoofed passenger he’s talking to corrects him and says they’re only in town to kill the Slayer, Mr. Trick agrees, but tacks on that they should also be looking at the big picture. Mr. Trick is Big Picture Evil, on a show where so far, there’s been a lot of characters who aren’t. If that’s not a trope already, it should be.

Another thing I like about this little speech is that he calls out the extreme racial homogeny of the town, as well as the fact that nobody either notices or gives a shit that their town is overrun with vampires. The show still fulfills #12 plenty of times over the course of its run (just having a black character slyly acknowledging the absence of people of color in the town doesn’t magically solve the problem of not casting people of color), but it’s nice that someone actually notices what most of us were already thinking.

In case we didn’t understand that Mr. Trick is a vampire, he pulls the drive thru guy out the window and eats him as they drive off, the poor dude’s kicking legs still hanging out of the car.

After the opening credits, Buffy is at the Bronze, dancing with Angel while Oz, Willow, Xander, and Cordelia watch blankly. Buffy’s claddagh ring falls to the floor, and Angel picks it up, giving her an angry glare. She tries to apologize for killing him, and blood spreads over his shirt before it’s revealed that his face is that of a rotting corpse.

Obviously, it’s a dream. The “it’s a dream” thing gets kind of overused in this season. Actually, in this show. I should have been keeping track, now that I think about it. I know Buffy has prophetic dreams and such, I’m just saying that dreams show up a lot. There are at least two whole episodes specifically about dreams.

Joyce and Buffy go to Snyder, who tells them that Buffy can come back to school if she passes tests for the classes she failed the year before, that she has to get a letter of recommendation from someone who isn’t Giles, and that she has to be evaluated by the school psychologist. Joyce points out that Buffy’s return really isn’t conditional, since he has to educate all minors by law. A point that Buffy can’t just let go:

Buffy: “So, let me get this straight. I’m really back in school because the school board overruled you. Wow, that’s like having your whole ability to do this job called into question, when you think about it.”

Joyce: “I think what my daughter is trying to say is, na-na-na-na-na.”

Then the secretary buzzes Snyder and tells him that the Mayor is on the phone, and Snyder looks freaked out.

Meanwhile, in the library–holy shit, is that weed?

I mean, I don’t think it’s weed. But I do think Giles probably needs to take the edge off, occasionally.

Anyway, I think it’s probably pretty irresponsible to leave all sorts of witchy-looking herbs out where anyone can just see them. Or grab them and use them for evil. This is Sunnydale, after all.

Willow observes that Giles makes a weird clucking noise when he’s angry. Unfortunately, he overhears this, because he’s crouched behind the counter. Giles tells Buffy that they need to do a spell to make sure Acathla is contained, and in order to do the spell he has to know exactly what happened when she defeated Angel. He asks her a few questions, and she gives him only very basic answers before she runs off to take a makeup exam.

Willow wants to help Giles do whatever spell he’s going to do about the Acathla, but he warns her that you don’t mess with magic (“Don’t Mess With Magic” is a track from Anthony Head’s latest album. See what I did there?). She assures him that she hasn’t done anything major since she failed at the spell to restore Angel’s soul. She asks Giles if he’s mad at her, and he tells her that if he were, he’d be making a clucking noise.

At the Bronze, some people are on the dance floor. And guess what! GUESS YOU GUYS GUESS WHAT!

It’s Faith! It’s Faith! And here’s a super neat trick, you guys. The fade in here is a wipe from right to left. The first face we see, closest to the camera, is Faith. But she hasn’t been introduced as a character yet. At this moment, she’s basically an extra, bopping along in the crowd.  This episode was directed by James A. Contner, who also directed some other amazing episodes, like the season six finale “Grave” and season five’s “The Replacement”.  This is a pretty amazing intro to Faith, even if it’s pre-official intro. Viewers might not realize it when they watch this scene for the first time, but by having her show up as the first thing on the screen, she sticks in your memory subconsciously.

Buffy and Oz and Willow are hanging out in a part of the Bronze I don’t think we’ve seen before. It’s better lit and has couches. Scott Hope shows up, because Willow told him Buffy would be there. The fact that Scott admits he came there to see Buffy specifically, and isn’t super high pressure about it (when he asks her to dance and she’s reticent about it, he just says that he’ll be around, and if she wants to dance, she can come to him), makes me really like Scott. Unfortunately, I’ve seen some fans describe him as the weakest Buffy love interest. Considering the guys she actually hooks up with, Scott is a dream.

Cordelia points out Faith on the dance floor and refers to her as “Slut-o-rama.” (#6) This show is pretty unfair toward Faith in terms of painting her as the opposite of Buffy, in large part due to the fact that Faith is more sexually assertive and unashamed of her sexuality. Considering all the other ways Faith differs from Buffy, this wasn’t strictly necessary. Because of this, I’m going to make a new number for our list. #32: Faith is hyper-sexualized needlessly.

Cordelia also points out that the guy dancing with Faith has some really outdated moves. As the two of them leave the club, Buffy realizes that the guy is a vampire. As she tries to follow the couple, she runs into Scott, who mistakenly assumes she’s there to take him up on the dance. They share an awkward exchange before Buffy and the Scoobies head outside, expecting to find a dead girl and a vampire. Instead, they find the should-be-dead girl beating the ass-end of a vampire. She already knows who Buffy is, and introduces herself as Faith–all the while wiping the alley with the vampire.

Oz: “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say there’s a new Slayer in town.”

Faith dispatches the vampire with Buffy’s stake and saunters off.

Cut to the Bronze, where Faith is telling the group all about how she saved a bus full of Christians from some vampires while buck naked.

Xander: “Wow. They should film that story and show it every Christmas.”

Faith goes on to ask Buffy:

Faith: “Ain’t it crazy how Slaying just always makes you hungry and horny?”

Buffy responds timidly with something about low-fat yogurt, because Buffy is the pure good-girl now. In less than a minute, Faith’s sexuality has already been presented to the audience as over-the-top and “slutty”.

Cordelia figures out how Faith became a Slayer: When Buffy died, Kendra was called, and when Kendra died, Faith was called. There are now two lines of Slayers. Faith tells them that her Watcher went on a retreat, so Faith ran away to Sunnydale to meet Buffy. Though she asks Buffy to regale them with her tale of using a rocket launcher, Xander interrupts Buffy to ask Faith to regale them with more stories of her nudity. Oh, and he’s behaving this way while sitting right next to his girlfriend, who is demonstrably furious about it. (#5)

Cordelia: “Xander. Find a new theme.”

Faith asks Buffy what her toughest kill was, and of course Buffy immediately flashes back to Angel. Instead, she starts to tell a story about The Three, those demonic bounty hunters sent after her in season two. And she’s yet again interrupted, this time by Oz, who at least has a higher stakes reason for doing so: he’s worried about whether or not Faith will kill him for being a werewolf. She says as long as he doesn’t attack her, they’re “Five by five,” which is the first occurrence of what might be the single most obnoxious character catchphrase since Steve Urkel’s “Did I do that?”

Faith figures she and Buffy are going to have a great time Slaying vampires together while their Watchers are gone on this retreat. But Giles wasn’t invited to go on the retreat, and he’s pretty bitter about it.

Giles: “It’s a great honor to be invited. Or so I’m told.”

I continue to be baffled by the Watchers. I think I’ve mentioned before how odd I find it that there are so many Watchers when there’s only ever one Slayer. It sounds like the position is hereditary, since Giles said in a season one episode that he wanted to do something else, but this was his duty. So, let’s assume there are multiple Watchers because there are multiple family lines, and also so they have spares if something happens to Donald Sutherland. But that doesn’t explain why, if there’s one single Slayer, they would send a guy they clearly don’t think much of to train her. If Giles isn’t good enough to go on this retreat, why is he good enough to be the Watcher? Of all the members of the Watchers’ council, isn’t his position arguably the most important?

Faith says Giles would be bored by all the stuffy old Watchers, and Buffy wonders if Faith actually paid attention when she introduced them.

Faith: “I’ve seen him. If I’d know they came that young and cute, I’d have requested a transfer.”

Buffy: “Raise your hand if ‘ew’.”

Okay, this is adorable. Xander is disguising his hand raising, but look at Willow:

She is not raising her hand any time soon.

Now, I hated, and I mean fury-of-Hera, turn-people-into-animals-and-shit hated the comics, and never kept up on them. But did Giles and Faith ever hook up? It seemed like that might be the way the story was going when they were doing that whole My Fair Lady, George Bernard Shaw thing and she was wearing fancy dresses that made him clean his glasses.

Giles is flattered by Faith’s evaluation, but there’s Slayer stuff that’s more important. Buffy asks Willow for help studying for a make-up test, but Willow and Xander have moved on to the shiny, new Slayer, even pressuring Buffy into invited her to dinner. When they’ve gone, leaving Buffy and Giles alone in the library, he asks for more details on what happened with Acathla, but Buffy blows him off again, saying that she has tests and things that are more important.

Willow and Xander show Faith around the school, highlighting all the areas where they nearly died. Faith asks them why Buffy is so uptight, but before they can give her an answer, she goes to get a drink from the drinking fountain. Cordelia comes up and overhears Xander talking about Faith. Cordy asks Xander why he’s so into Slayers, and suggests she should dress up like one, a suggestion he wholeheartedly embraces. When she’s finished getting her drink, Faith bumps into Scott and introduces herself. Which is not great, because Buffy sees the two of them flirting. To make matters worse, Willow even suggests to Buffy that Faith and Scott should hook up.

Why are Buffy’s friends being such absolute dicks in this episode? Willow even tells Buffy that she needs to have more fun, even though she knows what happened to Buffy in the last season, and that she recently ran away almost twice because she thought her friends didn’t need or want her. Now they seem to be doing their best to make sure she knows that they’ve found an updated model. In fact, it feels like “The Gang Become Jerks” could be the title of the whole season.

In some shadowy lair (like vamps do), cloven-hoof vampire is talking with Mr. Trick, and still not seeing the big picture. Mr. Trick is trying to set up a global human-trafficking network for vampires to buy victims, but all cloven-hoof guy wants is to kill the Slayer. But he hasn’t come to town looking for Buffy; the fact that there’s already a Slayer in Sunnydale is news to Mr. Trick. Apparently, Faith fucked up cloven-hoof vampire’s face and eye, and he wants her to pay. And it’s like, chill, dude. You were ugly already.

At the Summers house, even Joyce is more interested in Faith than in Buffy. She asks Faith about being a Slayer (something she hasn’t really taken an interest in discussing with Buffy), and suggests to Buffy that Faith is more positive–and therefore a better Slayer–than she is. Buffy goes with Joyce to the kitchen, where Joyce continues to sing the praises of Faith:

Joyce: “I like this girl, Buffy.”

Buffy: “She’s very personable. She gets along with my friends, my Watcher, my mom…look, now she’s getting along with my fries.”

Joyce: “Now, Buffy…”

Buffy: “Plus, at school today she was making eyes at my not-boyfriend. This is creepy.”

Joyce: “Does anybody else think Faith is creepy?”

Whoa there, Joyce. Turn down those gaslights. Buffy’s feelings are not decided by committee, and if she’s feeling displaced in her own life because of Faith’s arrival, that’s her thing. You might not agree with it, but you don’t get to force her to feel something else. (#3)

One good point Joyce has, though, is that with two Slayers in town, Buffy doesn’t have to do all the Slaying on her own. Which is good, right? Because Buffy doesn’t actually want to be the Slayer, right?

This episode is one of the first indications we have that Buffy is starting to accept her role as Slayer and that she’s beginning to view it as her identity. When she’s not the only Slayer anymore, she begins to feel overshadowed. I think this is pretty healthy, though I’m not a mental health professional. I just think it shows growth on Buffy’s part.

One thing Buffy never mentioned to Joyce?

Buffy: “Mom, the only way you get a new Slayer is when the old Slayer dies.”

Joyce: “Then that means you…when did you die? You never told me you died.”

Buffy: “It was just for a few minutes.”

Joyce: “Oh, I hate this. I hate your life.

Buffy: “Mom, I–”

Joyce: “Look, I know you didn’t choose this, I know it chose you. I have tried to march in the Slayer pride parade, but…I don’t want you to die.”

I know we’ve hotly debated in the comments whether or not being a Slayer was equated to being gay in the series. I just want to file “Slayer pride parade” as another point on my side of the argument. Whether or not Slayer = Gay stands up as a good analogy doesn’t negate the fact that the writers were clearly pushing that narrative.

Because her mother is distraught, Buffy comforts her and then goes out patrolling. Faith points out that they’ve gone down the same street twice, to which Buffy snaps that vampires will rudely ignore that fact. Faith is pretty patient with Buffy’s attitude. Until she’s not.

Faith: “You’ve been doing this the longest.”

Buffy: “I have.”

Faith: “Yeah, maybe a little too long.”

In their argument, Faith brings up Angel, and Buffy loses her mind. She’s going to wipe the floor with Faith, until vampires show up. Instead of taking them on as a team, Buffy throws Faith into the dirt. While Faith pummels a vampire (rather than staking him to end the fight), another grabs Buffy and says something vampirish about living and dying. It’s clear that Faith and Buffy have vastly different slaying styles, with Faith preferring to be as violent as possible, while Buffy prefers the efficiency route. Buffy is complaining about this to Giles the next day at school. He tells her that he’ll try to contact Faith’s Watcher, and asks Buffy if she could tell him anything about the vampires who attacked them the night before.

Buffy: “The one that nearly bit me mentioned something about kissing toast. He lived for kissing toast.”

Giles: “Do you mean Kakistos?”

Buffy: “Maybe it was taquitos. Maybe he lived for taquitos.”

Giles tells Buffy that Kakistos is Greek for “worst of the worst”. Which I think is actually correct, as a Kakistocracy is a government run by the worst possible leaders. See also: The United States after January 2017. Giles also says that Kakistos has cloven feet and hands because he’s so old. I don’t quite get that logic, but whatever. Buffy points out that it’s weird how this ancient vampire and his vampire minions show up at the same time as Faith:

Buffy: “Giles, there are two things that I don’t believe in: coincidence, and leprechauns.”

Giles: “Buffy, it’s entirely possible that they arrived here by chance, simultaneously.”

Buffy: “Okay, but I was right about the leprechauns, right?”

Giles: “As far as I know.”

Buffy: “Good.”

Can I just say how much I love the fact that there are numerous spooky-wooky creatures in the reality of this show, but leprechauns don’t exist?

In the hallway, Buffy runs into Scott. He tells her he’s not going to keep bothering her, but invites her to a Buster Keaton film festival, because he’s just as pretentious as Angel Chase inviting Jordan Catalano to go see The Bicycle Thief. This time, though, Buffy accepts. Scott has, for some creepy reason, decided to get Buffy a present. It’s a ring he bought at a retro shop, which he believes to represent friendship. Yup, it’s a claddagh ring, identical to the one Angel gave her. Buffy drops the ring and rescinds her acceptance of the film festival date, and Scott tells her he understands. Giles, having viewed this exchange from afar, comes to see if Buffy is okay, but she won’t talk about what happened. Instead, she asks if he contacted the Watchers. Turns out, Faith’s is dead.

In a dirty motel room, Faith is arguing with the dirty front desk guy about the eighteen dollars she owes him for the night. She manages to flirt her way out of it, for the moment, just before Buffy shows up to ask her what’s up with this Kakistos guy. The second Faith hears that he’s back in town, she starts frantically packing. Buffy asks if Faith plans to leave and stick Buffy with the ancient vampire problem.

Faith: “You don’t know me, you don’t know what I’ve bene through. I’ll talk care of this, all right?”

Buffy: “Like you took care of your Watcher? He killed her, didn’t he?”

Faith: “They don’t have a word for what he did to her.”

Buffy tells her that if she runs, Kakistos will come after her. But he doesn’t need to, because he’s already standing outside the door. Faith has a total meltdown; this is finally something that cracks her tough-girl disguise. She and Buffy run to temporary safety, where Faith tells Buffy that she saw Kakistos kill her Watcher, got scared, and ran. Buffy tells her she did the right thing, since the job of the Slayer is mostly just not getting killed. Buffy figures they have good odds going two against one on the guy. But Kakistos has hearded the Slayers into his nest, where they have to take on other vampires, as well. As they fight–and multiple lower-level vamps get dusted–Mr. Trick looks on, commenting to another vampire:

Mr. Trick: “If we don’t do something, the master could get killed. Well, our prayers are with him.”

And then they leave. Because Mr. Trick sees the big picture, as he reminds us with his retreating dialogue.

When Buffy tries to stake Kakistos, it’s impossible. He’s too old, it’s like giving him a splinter. He jokes about needing a bigger stake, so Faith gets one. A big ass, pointy-ended beam that’s about as wide as he is. She jams it through him and poof. Buffy asks Faith if she’s hungry, and she responds that she’s starved. They walk off screen together, to have sex in one of my fanfics where they’re both eighteen.

The next day, in the library, Giles tells Buffy and Willow that the council approves of Faith staying in Sunnydale under his supervision until a new Watcher is found. Buffy admits that she was kind of wrong about Faith. Buffy gets that Faith went through a lot, and that dictated her behavior and attitude, but that she ultimately faced the bad thing that happened to her. Which prompts her to tell them:

Buffy: “Angel was cured.”

Giles: “I’m sorry?”

Buffy: “When I killed him. Angel was cured. Your spell worked at the last minute, Will. I was about to take him out, and, um, something went through him, and he was Angel again. He-he didn’t remember anything that he’d done. He just held me. Um, But it was, it was too late, and I, I had to. So I told him that I loved him, and I kissed him, and I killed him. I don’t know if helps with your spell or not, Giles.”

Giles tells her that it will, and a horrified Willow tells her she’s sorry, but Buffy tells them it felt good to get it out. She leaves the library, and Willow once again begs to let her help with the binding spell on the Acathla.

Giles: “There is no spell.”

His only goal was to get Buffy to face what had happened to her. So, he is a good Watcher, and the council can stuff it.

Buffy tries again with Scott, apologizing for why she reacted the way she did and asking if he would give her another chance. He says he’ll have to think about it, walks away a few steps, and comes back immediately to accept. They plan to go out that night, and Buffy is all bouncy, bubbly Buffy again.

Until we cut to the next scene, where Buffy returns to the mansion where she killed Angel. She goes to the spot where she killed him, whispers a good-bye, and places the Claddagh ring he gave her on the floor. She leaves to the sad Buffy/Angel music, and the scene fades out. We fade back in on the ring, which begins to vibrate. A portal opens up and Angel falls, nakedly, onto the floor.

#30

Cut to end credits.

So, the uncritical Buffy fan in me loves this episode, because what makes this season great is the dual Slayer plot. Also, the femslash potential. The pop culture dissectionist in me can’t ignore the overarching antifeminist themes and illogical world building. In this case, the uncritical fan wins. I heart this episode, incredibly hard.

State Of The Trout: Reading Challenge Accountability, Audiobook News, and more Afflicted

Hey there everybody! I have some news, but first I want to let you in on how my PopSugar reading challenge is going!

So far, I’ve completed the following items on my list:

A book written by a celebrity: Why Not Me?, Mindy Kaling. Whoo boy. This book was something else for me. While Kaling writes a lot about struggles I’m never going to have to deal with (striving to succeed as a dark-skinned Indian woman in a world where so many doors are closed to anyone who isn’t white), I empathized a lot with her fears about success being snatched away, professional envy, and the overall feeling of the title–why not me? This book came at a time that was so awesome. I was down in the dumps after hearing about yet another incredibly bad book becoming a blockbuster, and hearing someone as successful as Mindy having similar doubts and fears as me (despite our personalities being so vastly different), sprinkled in with hilarious anecdotes about what it’s like to work in Hollywood (my favorite? A cringe-inducing story in which she spouts off about anti-vaxxers in a room full of them and tries, unsuccessfully, to dig her way out of a hole that only becomes deeper), really lifted me out of a bad depressive episode.

A book with a blue cover: Truthwitch, Susan Dennard. I saw a lot of bloggers fighting over ARCs of this book, and in my experience, books with that amount of prolonged hype don’t live up to expectations. But I decided I would read it because it sounded like an interesting premise, the author is from Michigan, and I met her on a plane and she seemed pretty cool. It not only lived up to, but exceeded the hype. It’s a YA traditional high fantasy in the vein of A Song of Ice and Fire. Set in a world on the brink of war as the terms of a peace treaty are set to run out, politics and magic mingle freely. The main characters, Safi and Iseult, are “theadsisters” of vastly different backgrounds (one is a poor girl from a racial group closely resembling the Roma, the other a noble woman used as a pawn in her uncle’s political machinations). Their only ambition is to be able to live their lives together, while outside forces pull them apart. The system of magic in the world building is awesome, and the storytelling is as cinematic as George R.R. Martin’s. I recommend this book so hard, I have to restrain myself here from blurting out the whole story like a second grader giving a book report. “And then…and then…and then…” Seriously, it’s that good.

A book about a culture you’re unfamiliar with: Craving Flight, Tamsen Parker.  I picked this book because it’s a BDSM erotic romance about an Orthodox Jewish couple. How do you not pick up that book, right? I know basically nothing about Judaism, other than the dietary restrictions, so it was interesting to see how a convert struggled to fall in line with expectations and custom as opposed to how members of the community from birth viewed their way of life. At the same time, I felt like the book was too short to include all of that and present a believable romance. I would have loved to get the hero’s side of the story; he’s a widower who, despite his family’s objections, marries a woman his family doesn’t approve of. He also just happens to be a Dom, and it’s clear that this was a role he had with his late wife. But very little of that is explored, and that’s a fascinating idea to me. How does this man, whose late wife was his last sub, feel about moving on to a similar sexual relationship with a stranger only three years after her death? Plus, I thought the romantic resolution was rushed, and the lack of safe words or discussion of safety of any kind in the bondage scenes bothered me. That aside, this was a good read. Just not the OMGYOUHAVETOREADTHISRIGHTNOWITSTHEMOSTAMAZINGBOOKEVER book I was promised when people recommended it to me. Still, I liked it enough that I wish it would have been longer.

That’s it for my reading challenge news for now, so on to the rest!

Are you in the mood for something to watch? Cinema Tyrant has come up with a list of the ten best French movies available from Netflix.

Audiobook news! My recent re-release, Bride Of The Wolf, will be getting an audio version. More information to come on that one. It will be produced and narrated by two-time Earphone Award winner and 2013 Audie nominee, Tanya Eby, who has narrated books by Lisa Kleypas, Susan Mallery, Debbie Macomber, and Nora Roberts. So I know this book is in good hands.

New installment of The Afflicted. Another chapter of my historical horror serial is up at Wattpad. You can read it here.

Talia Jane, Millennials, and Extremes

The social justice hot topic of the moment in the United States comes to us straight from the the most hated generation to come of age since the cast members of Reality Bites could afford health insurance. As someone born in the tail end of Gen X, I have to say that I am grateful to Millennials for distracting the Baby Boomers from us, much in the way Ian Malcolm led the T-Rex away from Sam Neil and those kids in the overturned Jeep. I feel for you, Millennials, as most Gen Xers spent their early twenties similarly disparaged by a generation who continues to insist that if they could buy a house with cash at age twenty-four (when the average new home cost roughly $30,000.00), then so too should a Millennial be able to afford a new house in their twenties (despite the current price for a new home resting somewhere around the $200,000.00 mark). As someone whose Boomer in-laws gifted my husband and I with a book titled You’re Broke Because You Want To Be when we’d just lost our house, I keenly understand the frustration felt by a generation being held to wildly outdated standards.

And it’s clearly that frustration that led Talia Jane to write “An Open Letter To My CEO“. In it, Jane describes the extreme poverty she and other employees of Yelp, an internet company that enables anyone with a smartphone to become a pro-am food critic, experience while trying to live in the San Francisco area on a $12/hr salary. The responses to the article are divided into two camps of extreme opposites, with one side viewing Jane as a working class hero exposing the truth about wage inequality, and the other side painting her as a spoiled Millennial brat who doesn’t want to work hard to get ahead in life. Even fellow Millennials have roasted her, like Stephanie Williams, who boasted about her ability to overcome the same circumstances through hard work and commitment that sounds an awful lot like a combination of luck and privilege that Jane doesn’t share.

After seeing people I know, from every age group and walk of life, weigh in on Jane’s piece, I began to wonder if I was the only person standing firmly between those two unforgiving poles. Is it possible to view wage inequality and poverty as serious issues affecting our country, especially our youngest adults, while at the same time finding it difficult to praise Jane or her letter?

When I read Jane’s piece, I was with her on her overall point: if a company chooses to operate their business out of what is known to be the U.S. city with the highest cost of living, it should be obligated to pay its employees a living wage. I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting Jane should simply move to another city. It seems a simple solution, but on an annual salary of $24,000.00, the costs of moving would likely set her back even further. I’ve seen plenty of accusations of entitlement on Jane’s part–”just because she wants to live in the Bay area doesn’t mean she just gets to if she can’t afford it!”–but very few calling out Yelp. If we’re talking about entitlement here, doesn’t it stand to reason that the company that showed a $32.9 million net income last year should be the ones doing the moving? Is it not a gross display of blatant entitlement for a company to ask its employees to simply be grateful for their meager paychecks so the company can occupy desirable real estate? Since it began, Yelp has only shown a profit in 2014. Their revenue was down in 2015. If it’s too expensive for Talia Jane to live in San Fransisco, then can’t the same be said of Yelp?

On the other hand, the job Jane had with Yelp, while not paying a living wage, included benefits that many post-college jobs don’t. For example, the free food that starving employees ravaged. Jane’s complaint about these snacks not being stocked on the weekends likely seemed the pinnacle of entitlement to readers who not only don’t have break room food to scavenge, but who also watch their children go hungry on weekends because the only meals they get are their free–and meager–school lunches. I’m reminded of the woman I worked with at McDonald’s, who would take her free break meal home in her purse and divide up the medium fries and six piece nuggets between her two kids, while she went hungry. She was eventually fired when she was caught eating breakfast food she’d been asked to throw in the trash during changeover. Almost every working- and middle-class American has a story like that to share, either of their own experiences or someone else’s, so it’s no wonder that Jane’s complaint of not receiving the free food due to her on weekends was met with an extreme response.

Her Instagram account received similar criticism. Since January, Jane has posted photos of homemade cupcakes garnished with fresh mint and sliced fruit, expensive bourbon, and a steak dinner she made for a friend. The backlash against her was such that her Instagram account is now private, but someone was so irritated by the images that directly contradicted her claims of hunger pains and an all-rice diet that they now host screenshots of images taken from her account on thatsalotofrice.com, the domain name itself a withering condemnation. Jane has since explained that many of the meals pictured on her Instagram were given to her, and that she only posts positive images to her account. Who among us can say that we’ve never used social media to make our lives seem more pulled together or glamorous? If that’s one of Jane’s sins, it’s minor at best.

I bristle at the assertion that people living in poverty don’t deserve “luxury” items. Only five years ago I sat in the parking lot of a pawn shop, sobbing, because my engagement ring would fetch only $35.00, but it was a $35.00 that could feed us for several days. While I ultimately held on to the ring–damn my sentimentality–I came home to find that a politically conservative relative had made a passive aggressive Facebook post, cryptically alluding to this family she happened to know who claimed to need food stamps, but whose children had electronic devices. The devices she referred to had been given to my children by my mother-in-law for Christmas; that we couldn’t find it in our hearts to snatch them away from our kids so as to be poor correctly was considered a moral failing.

I don’t fault Jane for keeping her expensive bourbon; I do fault her for not making her Instagram private before she started this internet firestorm. By not doing so, the self-righteous arbiters of what strangers should be spending money on have further ammunition with which to discredit all poor people everywhere. The people who fully believe that poverty is simply living it up without obligation. The senators who insist that welfare and food stamp recipients should only eat rice and beans, rather than spend the tax payers’ hard earned dollars on steak and lobster (while cleverly ignoring the fact that, as government employees, the tax payers’ hard earned dollars are paying for every politician’s steak and lobster). Jane’s intent may have been to expose the reality of poverty, but she greatly exaggerated her circumstances by claiming that she’s only eating rice and barely staving off hunger pains. “Most of the food I eat is free from the break room or occasionally gifted to me by friends who can actually afford groceries,” would have been honest and less damaging to the coworkers who struggle right along with her. One wonders what will become of those break room goodies now that she’s revealed that employees routinely take them home at the end of the day.

Others have criticized Jane for her reckless actions, which resulted in her termination. Numerous unemployed people have criticized her for throwing away a job that “anyone” would be happy to have. Obviously, Jane was not happy to have the job; she had to know that the outcome of not only blasting the company CEO on Twitter (going so far as to suggest he fire her), but writing a scathing viral blog post, would end with unemployment. That’s her choice to make, but it is an objectively foolish one. If Jane was starving on $12/hr, how will that situation improve on $0/hr? She announced the news of her firing with handy links to places where people could send her money. It’s a shrewd choice; she’s already made more money by capitalizing on her viral fame than she would have in a month at Yelp, and this experience may lead to job offers that suit her better. But it’s hard to fault people for being cynical when one of Jane’s infamous Instagram photos is a text in which she bemoans the fact that she doesn’t have a big enough internet presence to induce people to send her money for nothing. While money-for-nothing is the dream of every American, it’s also the allegation made by those aforementioned enemies of the poor, who will now seize on Jane’s words as “proof” that all Millennials and all impoverished people are secretly lazy and horrible, and who could fix their circumstances entirely with bootstraps and elbow grease.

Further fueling that cynicism is Jane’s complaint at learning she would have to wait a year before being considered for a promotion. Of course that’s going to be met with scoffs and eye rolls. But at the same time, attacking Jane for getting a “useless” degree should be met with equal measures of disdain. Outside of STEM and medical fields, not many people find themselves in jobs directly relating to their college majors. Working at Yelp was probably not covered in Jane’s studies, but she landed the position, anyway. She’s obviously capable of finding employment despite the egregious burden of her “useless” college experience.

Does Jane’s original letter raise salient points about wage inequality in the United States? Absolutely. Does she still come off as entitled and dishonest about her circumstances? I think she does. Are all Millennials likewise exaggerating and embellishing valid complaints for dramatic effect? No, but if you’re one of the Gen Xers or Baby Boomers who eat up every click-bait article confirming that wrong opinion for you, your mind is already made up on that point. But can we move past the ideology that if a person is right about something, it automatically means their motives were righteous? Or that a person has to have righteous motives to point out what should be obvious in the first place?

Criticism of Jane’s piece shouldn’t be seen as an automatic denial of the serious economic failings in our country. But it’s entirely possible to point out the areas where Jane is right without making excuses to defend all the places where she’s wrong. Am I saying that Jane has no right to complain about her circumstances when there are other people in worse situations? No, that’s a silly belief for people to ascribe to, as there will always be someone who has it worse, and who may not be in a position to speak out against the inequalities that are holding them down. What I’m saying is that while it may seem that Jane has made heroic overtures in the battle for socioeconomic equality, uncritical defense of her open letter only advances Jane and destroys the credibility of other Millennials struggling to clear the poverty line. “See?” deniers will say. “None of them are really poor. And they clearly don’t need food stamps or student loan forgiveness when they can just make a GoFundMe.”

Millennials are no better or worse than Gen Xers or Baby Boomers. Just like Monica Lewinsky is not every Gen Xer and Jeffrey Skilling is not every Baby Boomer, Talia Jane is not every Millennial. She’s also not the poster child for every impoverished worker in America, nor should she be. Until we’re willing to have nuanced conversations about the realities of poverty and the people affected by it, we won’t see any headway in correcting our attitudes toward it. That means that we must accept that if poor people can be as hardworking and honest as a rich person, then they can also be just as opportunistic and bend the truth as much as a rich person. Either way, no one deserves to struggle the way so many struggle in a nation that prides itself on its economic superiority. Not Talia Jane, and not anyone else, regardless of which generation they were born into.

Yes, there really is.

The Kalamazoo Building (Photo: Jill M. Barry)

If you tell people you are from, or live near, Kalamazoo, Michigan, the response is usually, “I didn’t know that place existed for real.” That’s probably because “Kalamazoo” is a weird word, and I believe Bugs Bunny once took a wrong turn on his way to a carrot convention there. Glenn Miller made the town famous with the song “(I Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo)”.

If you’ve ever lived, worked, or even just visited Kalamazoo, you know the town slogan: “Yes, there really is a Kalamazoo!” Located exactly halfway between Detroit and Chicago, the city got its name from the Potawatomi people, whose name for the area was “boiling water”. I know this because it’s engraved on a lovely fountain on the downtown mall (the first pedestrian mall in the country). The fountain features a lovely bowl of gently burbling water at about chest height; I once got my friend Warnement to lean down to read the inscription, then used both hands to force the water out and over his head. He retaliated by later pushing me into the much larger fountain in Bronson Park.

Bronson Park (Photo: Jill M. Barry)

Every year, the park is turned into a Christmas wonderland (and the fountains are drained of water, making it a much safer time of year to go there with pushing-inclined friends), with each tree draped in lights. When I was a child, my grandparents would bundle me up and take me out to see the decorations, including the now retired Frosty the Snowman and giant candy canes. My friend Jill Barry got engaged under those same candy canes (we posed for her wedding pictures in front of the Kalamazoo sign downtown). Once, she and I saw a man wearing what appeared to be a suit of Christmas lights riding a bicycle (also covered with Christmas lights) through downtown. He turned off the street and headed into the park, and, being the holiday season, we knew we had no chance of finding him.

I met Jill and Lisa and Anna, my twenty-plus years BFFs, when I started as a freshman at Hackett Catholic Central High School. Living in my rural town twenty miles outside of the city, Kalamazoo was the place for me, where I spent much time roaming around with my friends and visiting the local coffee shops, Fourth Coast and Boogie’s. Boogies had a wall you could write and draw on in their loft; Fourth Coast stank of cigarettes and you could always find a game of hearts. My first date was at the now-torn down movie theatre at the West Main mall; my first backseat adventure with a boy was in the driveway of the Soccer Complex.

Me and Jill Barry in the gym at Hackett, with Jill’s inflatable skeleton, Beauregard. I’m on the left. (Photo: Anna Walls)

My first apartment in Kalamazoo was in a basement on Rose street, where people would routinely knock on our ground-level kitchen window and inquire as to whether Ray-Ray was home. I don’t know who Ray-Ray was, but he was popular. The location was great for me, as it wasn’t a very long walk to the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre, where I played Annelle in a production of Steel Magnolias, and a milkmaid in Oliver!. Over the years, my involvement in Kalamazoo theatre included stage roles and tech jobs at both the Civic and The Whole Art, the former a grand 1920s building with a resident ghost, the latter a black box with leaky basement dressing rooms cordoned off with sheets and laundry lines.

First Presbyterian Church (Photo: Jill M. Barry)

Kalamazoo was a great place to live as a young adult. Being irresponsible and flaky as I am, I had jobs all over the city. Mostly retail and food service, briefly at Borgess hospital (where my first novel, Blood Ties Book One: The Turning was inspired) and a nursing home. My move from Rose street to Nichols and West Main necessitated a lot of bike riding to get to the two jobs I needed to keep my $500 a month second apartment at The Landings. I’ll never forget the morning I finally managed to ride my bike all the way up the unbelievably steep Westnedge hill without stopping; a guy slowed his car, opened his window, and shouted encouragement at me all the way.

World Of Shoe, the now closed store with the best name ever (Photo: Jill M. Barry)

Now that I am a boring adult, Kalamazoo is the place where I go to concerts at venues like The State Theatre, or where Mr. Jen and I go on dates. Our son attended preschool and kindergarten at St. Augustine, which, despite its spelling, is always pronounced “August-IN” instead of “AugustTINE,” and to which we add the ubiquitous Michigan possessive ‘s. Mr. Jen works in Kalamazoo. Many of our friends still live there.

Over the weekend, a mass shooting took place in Kalamazoo. A man drove around the city, indiscriminately killing people in their cars between picking up Uber fairs. Seven people were killed, ten were injured.  Most were women and children. I guess, considering the climate of the United States with regards to gun violence, it was only a matter of time before it happened close to home. But I’ve made this post not to talk about the tragedy, but to share just a handful of my memories of the city, and show a side of Kalamazoo that is both weird and wonderful. A city where the local library once had a real mummy in a sarcophagus just kind of sitting out in the children’s reading room (the mummy was later moved to the old Kalamazoo Valley museum upstairs, and later to the new museum; they made an episode of Reading Rainbow about her). A place brutally hit by an F3 tornado in 1980, and which later adopted the tragedy as a point of pride, going so far as to host a semi-pro football team called the Kalamazoo Tornadoes. The birthplace of Gibson Guitars and the Checker Taxi. One of the most important craft beer scenes in the U.S., where many restaurants offer their own microbrews, and home of Bell’s brewery, known world wide for its Oberon, Two Hearted Ale, and Hopslam beers. A college town that can claim alumni Tim Allen, Terry Crews, Bruce Campell, Marin Mazzie and Luther Vandross (Western Michigan University), as well as Steven Yeun, Selma Blair, and Ty Warner (Kalamazoo College), among others.

It will continue to thrive and survive, and be the place that nobody thinks is real. But yes, there really is a Kalamazoo, and it is so much more than one horrific Saturday reported in the media.

Jenny Reads 50 Shades of Midnight Sun: Sunday, May 22, 2011 or “I’m not sure this whole day-by-day instead of chapter numbers thing is practical PART ONE”

Since the original intended release date of Fifty Shades Darker the movie has come and gone, news is starting to roll out about the sequel. Dakota Johnson wants Jamie Dornan to take it all off, full frontal style, and though she may just be joking, it does seem only fair. Major roles have been cast, including Kim Basinger as Elena Lincoln, and filming is apparently underway. They’re going to do the final books in the trilogy back to back, and are now describing them as “thrillers” and talking up how “scary” they’ll be. I think we all knew it was going to be scary, just not in the way the studio is hyping it.

Now, let’s all place our bets on whether or not the final book will be split into two unnecessarily dragged out pieces, in keeping with the Twilight rip-off theme.

If you’re reading along with my Fifty Shades of Grey recaps, this chapter will cover chapters eight and nine.

Also, CW: There’s like, a lot of gross pedophilia vibe in this thing. Although at this point, everyone should just assume that all content warnings ever apply to this stupid fucking book.

Also, Also: Welcome to yet another enormous chapter that I’ll break up into parts, since nobody at the publisher could be arsed to.

This Day In History: There was a huge rash of tornados across the midwestern United States. Seriously, it was a fucking mess.

Because E.L. James has never met a chapter she couldn’t begin without someone waking up, we start here:

I wake with a start and a pervading sense of guilt, as if I’ve committed a terrible sin.

First of all, Christian Grey can’t possibly feel remorse for his actions. Or, wait, he does. Just not for the actions he should actually feel guilty about. I’m happy to see that the protagonist being absolutely shocked to find that they haven’t died in their sleep is going to continue in this book. So many of the chapters in Fifty Shades of Grey begin with someone waking up like that.

Is it because I’ve just fucked Anastasia Steele? Virgin?

Underline = Italics

Can you just imagine Ana’s business cards?

ANASTASIA STEELE

virgin

I check the radio alarm; it’s after three in the morning.

What the fuck is a radio alarm? Do you mean a clock-radio? I’m getting my bad books confused here, and thinking, “Well, since Grey is an alien who speaks Ahnktesh, obviously he wouldn’t know that.”

Ana sleeps the sound sleep of an innocent. Well, not so innocent now.

Does naive and oblivious not count as innocent? Serious question.

I could wake her.

Fuck her again.

There are definitely some advantages to having her in my bed.

Grey. stop this nonsense.

Fucking her was merely a means to an end and a pleasant diversion.

Okay, but…isn’t sex always a means to an end? You’re like, “I’m horny and I want to get off. So let’s have sex.” But framing it that way still sounds incredibly creepy and skeezy.

I close my eyes in what will probably be a futile attempt to sleep. But the room is too full of Ana: her scent, the sound of her soft breathing, and the memory of my first vanilla fuck.

Boo. Why is it necessary or important for Christian to be a “virgin” when it comes to sex without kink? I get that his introduction to sexuality was through Elena, and it was BDSM. But knowing that he never once thought to try having sex without kink involved goes against the characterization of Christian Grey as being sexually adventurous and imaginative. Did it just never occur to him to have sex without the props? Has there ever been an instance (in an elevator, perhaps) when he’s wanted to have sex and there just wasn’t time for a good, thorough spanking? Does he carry a blindfold in his pocket?

Visions of her head thrown back in passion, of her crying out a barely recognizable version of my name, and her unbridled enthusiasm for sexual congress overwhelm me.

Not many people know this, but Sexual Congress is the title of Mitch McConnell’s smooth R&B album.

Fun Fact: at least two tracks are just improvised throat clearing and false claims of bipartisanship.

So, all ripping on the GOP aside, what is Christian Grey really saying with this “sexual congress” bullshit?

He’s never pleased a woman in bed.

No, seriously. The things he’s describing as this new and powerful experience? Just somebody getting off. Ana’s POV is that of a person who’s never had sex before, so we know that she has no frame of reference as to whether he’s actually good in bed or not. So we hear from her, “Oh my god, he’s making me feel things I’ve never felt before,” which is like, duh, she’s literally never felt any of this before, and him going “This was my first time having vanilla sex and it was so incredible, she was moaning and stuff, this is totally uncharted territory.”

Way to unintentionally write your sex god hero in such a way that his own POV makes it clear that he’s never been good in bed before, E.L..

Miss Steele is a carnal creature.

She will be a joy to train.

My cock twitches in agreement.

Is your cock also into dehumanizing women based on their response to physical pleasure, or is that just your brain doing that? I want to know how much blame I can place on your cock.

Christian gets up and takes care of the condoms, which is great, because I thought before that he just left them for the cleaning lady. I am placated now. He refers to his dresser as a “chest of drawers”, yet another instance of archaic/not-typically-American language, and goes downstairs because he’s thirsty. He gets a glass of water and checks his email:

Taylor has returned and is asking if he can stand Charlie Tango down. Stephan must be asleep upstairs. I e-mail him back with a “yes,” though at this time of night it’s a given.

Wait, the helicopter pilot and the bodyguard have been waiting around this whole time? I hope the engine wasn’t running.

Back in the living room I sit down at my piano. This is my solace, where I can lose myself for hours.

I just want to bring up a point I think I made in the first set of recaps, which is that between all of his hobbies–piano, gliding, helicopter piloting, sailing, hiking–, where the hell is he finding time to become a bajillionaire?

When I want to forget everything, this is what I do.

I thought that’s why you went hiking. Or kickboxing.

Ana comes into the room and apologizes for disturbing him, and he points out that he’s the one playing piano in the middle of the night, so who is disturbing who?

“That was a beautiful piece. Bach?”

“Transcription by Bach, but it’s originally an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello.”

“It was exquisite, but very sad, such a melancholy melody.”

Just two normal American twenty-somethings talking the way the average American twenty-something talks. Why do Christian and Ana always sound like really snooty extras on an episode of The Nanny where you just know that Fran is going to do something that doesn’t fit in?

Melancholy. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has used that word to describe me.

“May I speak freely? Sir.” Leila is kneeling beside me while I work.

“You may.”

“Sir, you are most melancholy today.”

Actual Photo of Leila

In other news, we’ve learned that stilted dialogue is sexually transmitted.

They go back into the bedroom:

There’s blood on my sheets. Her blood. Evidence of her now-absent virginity. Her eyes dart from the stains to me and she looks away, embarrassed.

“Well, that’s going to give Mrs. Jones something to think about.”

She looks mortified.

You think maybe? You made her embarrassed about being a virgin, told her she was a problem that had to be fixed, and now you’re pointing out that your housekeeper, a total stranger, will now know of her terrible shame.

I’m about to give her a short lecture on how not to be ashamed of her body, when she reaches out to touch my chest.

Fuck.

I step out of her reach as the darkness surfaces.

So look. I know that for many, many people, it’s much easier to say “you should do/feel this way,” to someone else than it is to apply it to themselves. But it’s funny when it’s so clearly juxtaposed in text.

I also like how he’s just got a “short lecture” in his back pocket at times like this. I assume the longer lecture requires a white board.

“Get into bed,” I order, rather more sharply than I’d intended, but I hope she doesn’t detect my fear.

Yeah, it’s way better for a person to think you’re angry with them for no reason than it is for them to know about one of your boundaries.

 Her scent fills my nostrils, reminding me of a happy time and leaving me replete…content, even…

Mommy is happy today. She is singing.

Singing about what love has to do with it.

And cooking. And singing.

My tummy gurgles. She is cooking bacon and waffles.

They smell good. My tummy likes bacon and waffles.

They smell so good.

Three things:

1. Ana smells like bacon and waffles. 2. We’ve arrived at the starting line of what will be a creepy Oedipal marathon. 3. E.L. James has never known severe poverty. It’s either bacon OR waffles, not bacon AND waffles, and hardly EVER bacon.

Christian wakes up and realizes the bacon smell in his dream is from actual bacon. He goes to the kitchen to find:

There’s Ana. She’s wearing my shirt, her hair in braids, dancing around to some music. Only I can’t hear it. She’s wearing earbuds. Unobserved, I take a seat at the kitchen counter and watch the show. She’s whisking eggs, making breakfast, her braids bouncing as she jiggles from foot to foot, and I realize she’s not wearing underwear.

Good girl.

Just in case you were thinking, “I don’t know, Jenny, it seems like you’re reading a lot into the pedophile vibe here,” let me offer up another birthday cake corner piece-sized lump of reinforcement:

She looks even younger in her braids.

He thinks this, by the way, after a paragraph in which he describes her clumsiness as “arousing”.

Ready for another Fifty Shades of Greatest Hits?

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

“Very.” And I’m not sure if it’s for breakfast or for her.

Christian asks her if she wants music on so she can keep dancing, and she gets embarrassed.

With a pout she turns her back on me and continues to whisk the eggs with gusto. I wonder if she has any idea how disrespectful this is to someone like me…but of course she doesn’t, and for some unfathomable reason it makes me smile.

I’m sorry, Chedward, I didn’t realize you were the pope. She’s making you breakfast, but she’s not following the proper protocol by averting her adoring gaze from you. You know how Queen Elizabeth II would handle this? Fisticuffs.

Sidling up to her, I gently tug one of her braids. “I love these. They won’t protect you.”

Not from me. Not now that I’ve had you.

Christian sets the table and thinks about how weird it is that he’s doing that, because normally his submissives do all the chores on the weekend. So basically this whole BDSM thing is a way for him to avoid shelling out weekend pay to his housekeeper.

There’s a few paragraphs about making coffee, pouring orange juice, getting Ana tea, how lucky it is that Christian put teabags on his shopping list, and Ana, seeing the tea, says:

“Bit of a foregone conclusion, wasn’t I?”

Which I don’t understand. I don’t drink much tea, but I have it in my house. That doesn’t mean I’m preparing to fuck the next tea drinker who happens to stop by.

Unless it’s Giles, but I assume I don’t have to point that out by now.

I add her self-deprecation to the list of behaviors that will need modifying.

At what point does the list of things Chedward doesn’t like about Ana become longer than the list of the things he does like about her? I mean, so far, the only things he’s liked about her are that she’s clumsy and she looks like a preschool version of his mom. As a businessman, why isn’t he running a cost and benefit analysis here?

In keeping with the torturous-pain-of-deflowering theme, Ana winces when she sits down.

“Just how sore are you?” I’m surprised by an uneasy sense of guilt.

The fact that he’s surprised to feel guilty about hurting her should have been enough for the publisher to go, “You know, Erika, this is not painting Christian Grey in the sympathetic light you had hoped.” But obviously they don’t say that, because she might throw a chair at them.

Yes, it’s just a rumor, and probably (definitely) not true, but it is my favorite probably-not-true rumor about E.L. James.

Chedward’s sense of guilt is fleeting, as his selfishness reemerges and the world is right once more.

I want to fuck her again, preferably after breakfast,

Why not during? Multitask.

but if she’s too sore that will be out of the question. Perhaps I could use her mouth this time.

I just thank the lord that he bestowed alternate fuckhole options when designing the human body, lest Christian Grey lack a place to deposit his seed.

Ana asks if Christian just planned to commiserate with her, and he’s like, no, I was wondering if we could fuck some more, but first, he orders her to eat.

I take a bit of my breakfast and close my eyes in appreciation. It tastes mighty fine.

I reckon E.L. James thinks “mighty fine” is a totally normal thing people who are not ranchers or hillbillies or cranberry farmers say.

Ana asks Christian what he wants to do sexually, and he says oral, .

“That’s if you want to stay.” I shouldn’t push my luck.

“I’d like to stay for today. If that’s okay. I have to work tomorrow.”

“What time do you have to be at work tomorrow?”

“Nine.”

“I’ll get you to work by nine tomorrow.”

I just want to make sure, because it’s not totally clear here, does Ana work tomorrow? Does she work at nine? Nine on what day? Yesterday? Oh, no, tomorrow. Sorry, I was confused because it was ambiguous. But just to check one last time, is it tomorrow? Does Ana work tomorrow? At nine?

“I’ll need to go home tonight–I need clean clothes.”

“We can get you some here.”

Or–and this is a radical notion if ever I’ve proposed one–you could take her home, like she’s asking you to do.

“I need to be home this evening.”

Boy, she’s stubborn. I don’t want her to go, but at this stage, with no agreement, I can’t insist that she stay.

Even with an agreement you can’t insist that she stay. Holding someone in your private residence against their will is illegal, even if they sign a non-enforceable sex contract with you.

Christian tells Ana to eat, and she says she’s not hungry.

“I told you, I have issues with wasted food. Eat.” I glare at her. Don’t push me on this, Ana. She gives me a mulish look and starts to eat.

I will glare at you because you do not share my psychological hangups. This is unacceptable to me.

So, she starts to eat, and he thinks about how novel it is to meet a woman who doesn’t automatically do whatever he says. I wonder how many of his submissives, assistants, housekeepers, basically any woman, spit into his food because of that exact attitude.

He tells her that after he cleans up the kitchen, they’ll take a bath together.

And I can test her oral skills. I take a swift breath to control my instant arousal.

Nothing gets me hotter in the pants than treating sexual acts like a pop quiz I haven’t studied for.

Ana gets a phone call, and she goes to answer it.

As she stands against the glass wall, the morning light silhouettes her body in my white shirt. My mouth dries. She’s slim, with long legs, perfect breasts, and a perfect ass.

I know that a lot of you hate the term “Mary Sue,” because it’s applied unfairly and to female characters when “Gary Stu” rarely is. I know that it’s used to dismiss the OCs written by teen girls out of hand. But I truly do believe that despite the unfair way it’s applied, the term is useful in literary critique.

For example, right the fuck here.

How many times so far has Christian described how physically perfect Ana is by taking inventory of her body parts? She’s always perfect, an awe-inspiring beauty. And by no means is a romantic hero recognizing that the heroine is beautiful, or complimenting her, a bad thing. But just like in the original series, we hear all the time about how thin Ana is, about how flawless her skin is, how perfect each body part is. And it’s multiple times in every scene they have together.  Sometimes, it doesn’t even make sense. We already know that Ana is skinny. If the description was written, “silhouettes her slender body”, it’s an adjective. But “She’s slim, with long legs,” etc. is presenting the information as though it’s new, as though we haven’t read it about a thousand times already.

We get it.

Christian hears Ana say something that makes him aware that she’s talking to Kate, and that’s just like, unacceptable.

She turns away and a moment later hangs up, then walks back toward me, her hips swaying in a soft, seductive rhythm beneath my shirt. Should I tell her what I can see?

What happened to “don’t be ashamed of your beautiful, perfect, body that is slender and has CURVES IN ALL THE RIGHT PLACES IN THE GRAND TRADITION OF POORLY WRITTEN FANFIC”? Is she supposed to be modest and freely display her nude body for your pleasure? This is going to be some trick to pull of.

Ana asks Christian what the NDA she signed prevents her from talking about.

“Well, I have a few questions, you know, about sex. And I’d like to ask Kate.”

“You can ask me.”

“Christian, with all due respect–” She stops.

Don’t stop, Ana. Never stop. Also, don’t say “with all due respect” to someone who can’t even grudgingly bring himself to respect you.

Ana tells Christian she won’t tell Kate anything about the Red Room of Pain, she just wants to talk to Kate about practical sex stuff. But Christian is more hung up on her perception of his kink:

“It’s mostly about pleasure, Anastasia. Believe me. Besides, your roommate is making the beast with two backs with my brother. I’d really rather you  didn’t.”

I cannot for the life of me figure out why it’s so damn important to the narrative of the story that Ana not be allowed to talk about sex with her best friend. I know people have varying comfort levels. For example, I will get done having sex with Mr. Jen and immediately text Bronwyn Green about it. And Mr. Jen rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t really care. There are times when he says not to tell her stuff. Mostly, he doesn’t want me to show her any of his dick pics. Which is a shame, because he took a really hilarious one where he took a dick pic on his phone, then held up in front of his dick, then took a picture with my phone, then lined that one up, and I took a picture with my tablet, so it’s like this dick pick of a dick pick of a dick pic in a dick pic, and it’s so cool and I can’t show Bronwyn and that eats me up inside every. single. day.

I lost track of what I was talking about. Basically, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for Chedward to say, “I’d rather you not talk about the BDSM stuff with Kate, because that’s private.” I don’t think it’s reasonable to demand she not talk about sex, even to ask questions in the abstract, with anyone else. Especially when she’s so inexperienced. Isolating her from further information is just him grooming her to agree to do stuff she’s reluctant to do. After all, if she talks to Kate, Ana might find out that she can say no to things or that it’s okay to just not like some sex acts.

Christian can tell that Ana wants to ask him something, but she’s too embarrassed. So instead he asks her to stroke his ego. He wants to know what she thought about the night before.

Our whole deal could hang on her response.

“Good,” she says, and gives me a soft, sexy smile.

It’s what I want to hear.

Why is that an internal thought? It reads like narrative.

Note that Christian appears to feel that if she liked sex with him the night before, that basically means she’s going to be cool with BDSM.

Christian tells Ana that he really liked having “vanilla” sex with her, but probably just because it was with her. How romantic.

And that’s where I’m going to break up the chapter. Join us in the next section, where they take a bath and Ana does a blowie.

Legion XIII Rome watch-along S01E12: “Kalends of February” or “This is like when I made them watch Game of Thrones”

Let me tell you a story, gentle reader.

Once upon a time, I convinced Jess and Bronwyn to watch Game of Thrones. I had already seen the series through its fourth season. So when season three rolled around, I savored their tears and horror like the finest of wine.

That same thing happened this week and it was glorious.

Quick rundown of the episode: Titus Pullo wakes up in the hospital to find out that he’s famous in Rome. He thinks he better cash in on that, and despite being slashed all to hell and back, tries to ride for the city.

The Vorenus family visits the farmland they’ve just been granted, and as part of some kind of weird Roman blessing, Lucius and Niobe totally bone on the ground in front of their kids. When they get home, they find out that Pullo has returned. Nobody is thrilled to see him, least of all Eirene, who decides to murder him in the night. He wakes up and tells her it’s cool if she kills him, but Niobe stops her and tells her it’s stupid to murder him because she’d get caught. Instead, Niobe lets Eirene take over care duties for Pullo, which ends up with him eating an impressive quantity of spit.

Pullo eventually finds a way to escape from the Vorenus household in the hope of cashing in on his fame. But he’s not very famous, and when he brings a woman back to the apartment, he feels bad, anyway. He eventually tells Eirene that he’s going to go to some shrine to ask for forgiveness. He asks Eirene if she thinks the gods will forgive him, and she’s like, whatever, they do what they want. But he invites her to go to the shrine with him, anyway. She follows him out of the city, but not like, in a “let’s travel together” way.

Caesar decides it’s a super idea to make a bunch of Gauls and Celts senators. And people are not happy. So instead of disciplining Lucius Vorenus, Caesar is like, hey, you should be a senator. So that means you need some OJT. Just follow me around. All the time. Definitely do not leave me even just to go to the bathroom. But his wife is still pretty freaked out when she has a bad dream about birds.

Servilia and Brutus have gone full-on serial killer, praying in front of a wall of death masks, asking their ancestors for special murder powers or something. But they don’t need them; Servilia remembers the secret Octavia managed to get from Octavian, about how Lucius Vorenus believes his wife’s son is his grandson. They can use that information to distract Vorenus and get him away from Caesar for long enough to assassinate him.

Senate is going to be in session, so Caesar, flanked by Lucius Vorenus, heads through town. Servilia’s slave stops Vorenus and whispers something in his ear. And it totally works; he takes off back to his house, leaving Caesar unprotected.

So, then you know what happens in the senate. But while it’s happening, Servilia has invited Atia over to hang out. Octavian has gone with his mother. In the senate there a stabbing frenzy and a whole bunch of blood and a really gruesome scene that once again makes me suspect that the sound guys blew through at least thirty percent of this shows budget just buying melons to stab. But basically, it’s brutal, and they hack Caesar to fucking death and it’s awful. But it’s Brutus who delivers the death blow (obviously), and they forgo the “Et tu” line. Mark Antony arrives too late and wisely backs out of the senate slowly, but he gives everyone a hardcore murder glare.

Vorenus wrecks up their house while Niobe screams and asks what’s going on. She admits the kid is hers, and tells him that she thought he was dead. Which, you know. Honestly, how do you not forgive that? While Vorenus contemplates killing Niobe, or maybe himself, it’s hard to tell, Niobe tells him it’s not the kid’s fault, then throws herself backward off the balcony, spitting her melon all over the courtyard. But it doesn’t make a melon sound, because at this point the melon budget was all used up. While Vorenus cradles Niobe’s dead body in his arms, her son walks in.

Servilia gloats about her triumph to a near-catatonic Atia who doesn’t have a single card left to play. Servilia tells Atia that she’s not going to kill them specifically that day, but she is going to enact this long as fuck revenge on her. Atia keeps her shit together, but just barely.

The episode closes with Pullo doing his penance at the shrine, while Eirene watches and, judging from the hand-holding into the sunset that precedes the end credits, forgives him for that whole “you murdered the man I love” thing pretty quick.

My favorite part of the episode: The entire last quarter of it. It’s so tense. Obviously almost everyone watching this knows how it’s going to end for Caesar, but the first time I watched this, I freaked out the moment the guys stopped Mark Antony from going into the senate. I was so caught up in the show, I completely forgot how shit was going to go down. I looked at Mr.Jen and said, “OHMYGODIT’SGOINGTOHAPPENRIGHTNOW!” And I still feel that way, every single time. It’s just as shocking on the tenth viewing as it was on the first.

My least favorite part of the episode: I loathe the way Niobe dies. You know from the second you see her breastfeed that baby at the beginning of the season that some bad shit is going to go down, but I just…ugh. Things were going so well for her and Vorenus.

Favorite costume: They really let Eirene shine in this one. Specifically, her hair:

Team Atia or Team Servilia: Have to give it to Servilia this week. Calling someone to your house so you can watch their reaction to their family member being murdered and their place in society dashed all to hell and back is the coldest thing imaginable.

Until next season.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet: 

@Jenny_Trout @Bronwyn_Green I fear this. #LegionXIII

— Jessica Jarman (@jessjarman) February 16, 2016

Also:

Jesus, Grandpa! What’d you read me this thing for???? @Jenny_Trout #LegionXIII

— Bronwyn Green (@Bronwyn_Green) February 16, 2016

I drink the TV induced tears of my friends like fine wine.

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? Honestly, I think she’s with me on Eirene’s hair this week.

Guess Jess’s head canon. First of all, it’s good to see the boys together again. Vorenus is going to need someone to lean on now that tragedy has struck.

Now go check out Bronwyn’s and Jess’s posts, and join us Monday at 9 PM EST for season two, episode one, “Passover” . Tweet to #LegionXIII to join us!

Come look at this cute dog!

Are you in the New York-ish kind of area? Because this little buddy:

is looking for a forever home. Yes, I tricked you into looking at an adoption post. I lured you in with the cute dog hook.

That’s right, this adorable little guy wants to be in your heart forever and ever. Right now, he’s living with some foster people. But look at his face. He wants to love YOU.

His foster family says:

His name is Arnold, and he’s one year old. Jess and I are watching him for a while to help with his leash training and his manners training (he is neutered and housebroken, as Jess reminded me). But he is a love who wants to be your dog.

After he got settled at our place and comfortable, he showed that he wants to learn and be a good boy. He quickly learned to sit and wait for his food, and to wait before he enters the apartment. At first, he’d jump up to say hi, but he’s learned those aren’t good manners, and he’s now doing better.

On walks, he’s doing a very good job already with learning to heel, and he’s been a conscientious walker! He still pulls to go and see dogs, but we’re working with him to move away from that behavior.

He’s very snuggly and very playful, but also very gentle to his friends. Even when we’re playing tug of war with his chewie rope, he never nips or bites.

In short: this dog is awesome. You want this dog. He will be your best friend.

Look at this big stupid smile:

 

If you’re interested (or you know someone who is) and want to get in contact with Arnold’s foster family, please email me at the address on my contact page, and I’ll put you in touch with them. I assume no responsibility for any other part of the process, I’m just the middleman.

And yes, I do have a soft-spot for this dog because he looks just like mine. I really can’t be blamed for that, can I?