Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 68

State Of The Trout: BRIDE OF THE WOLF and a new multi-author newsletter and Facebook group

Good Tuesday, everybody!

Quick announcement for romance/erotic romance readers: S.A. Price, Milly Taiden, Julie Morgan, Bianca Sommeland, TJ Michaels, Tilly Greene, Diana Castilleja, AD Roland, Marianne Morea, Sasha White and I have formed a multi-author mailing list and Facebook group where you can get news about our new releases and other authorly goings-on. It’s a great way to check out what’s happening and maybe find some new authors you might like. You can join the brand new Facebook group right here, and find information about the newsletter there, too.

BRIDE OF THE WOLF IS BACK!

My 2011 novella, Bride Of The Wolf, is available again! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance with shape shifters, historical romance with paranormal elements, or romances with disabled heroes, this book should be right up your alley.

 

Betrothed to the heir of Lord Canis, Aurelia finds herself thrown to the wolves. The Canis Clan are no ordinary warriors, but beasts raging beneath the skin of men. Their name chills the heart of every man in Britannia, though the heart of one maiden may be saved… 

Once a mighty warrior in high esteem among the Clan, Sir Raf Canis knows all too well the dangers Aurelia will face in her new role as Lady of Blackens Gate. Tasked with the humiliating errand of delivering his brother’s intended, Raf instead finds himself fighting for her life–and falling into an impossible love that he cannot deny. 

Content Warning: This book contains ableist language and attitudes in the context of its historical setting, as well as mentions of suicide, which may be triggering or upsetting to some readers. 

Amazon

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Fifty Shades of Friendship and Raw, Pounding Togetherness

Today is Valentine’s Day, the day when we celebrate love and romance and, if numerous shadowy complications hadn’t arisen for the embattled franchise, a day when we we should have been not enjoying ourselves at a hate screening of Fifty Shades Darker. But we live in a cruel world in which we were robbed of that outcome. What do we do in the meantime?

We watch Fifty Shades of Grey together.

Here’s how it works:

You download this MP3. It’s me, watching the movie and making frustrated, disbelieving comments about how stupid it is. To be absolutely clear: this is not a Wizard People, Dear Reader version of Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s not a MST3K style parody. It’s just me, watching the movie, complaining, making snarky asides, and at one point rolling a j and toking up while doing those things. Think of it as a DVD commentary made by someone who not only was never involved with the project, but who also holds said project in the highest contempt.

You somehow procure the unrated version of Fifty Shades of Grey. You can either buy the DVD or the streaming video, or do that thing I’m never supposed advocate on my blog ever, because it makes me just as bad as a war criminal or something. But you know what I’m totally not driving at. Whatever method you choose, just make sure that you’re using the unrated, extended cut.

Start the MP3 when when the Focus logo starts to fade. The Focus logo has a little two-chord tune, and as soon as it ends, the logo begins to dim. If you hit “play” on the MP3 right then, the movie and the MP3 should exist in beautiful harmony together.

And that’s it. The experience of viewing Fifty Shades of Grey as though I were in your home, loudly bitching about pretty much every scene (although there are times when I get caught up in actually watching it, because I’m trash).

Have a happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!

#LegionXIII Rome watch along S01E11, “The Spoils” or “An Officer And A Gentleman”

Quick rundown of the episode: Pullo has become a the happy humming murderer, in the employ of Erastes Fulmen. He’s spending his days basically murdering and getting high. Meanwhile, Vorenus is doing his magistrate duties, which clearly bore him. A friend from the XIII is back in town to cause trouble. And basically everyone feels the Vorenus family has forgotten that they didn’t used to have such a nice apartment with so many slaves, including the soldiers who served with Lucius, who now want a reward from Caesar for helping make them emperor.

There is a lot of controversy over a new chair Caesar bought. Oh, and the fact that he’s now officially dictator for life. There are drawings all over the city of Brutus stabbing the shit out of Caesar, and basically all Brutus’s mother’s friends are like, “You probably need to stab Caesar.”

Atia throws a party, and Caesar invites Niobe, who shows up in a dress Atia describes as “vulgar”. The shine is coming off the whole “my husband, the magistrate” thing for poor Niobe.

Pullo murders a guy in broad daylight and gets caught, so he ends up on trial. Which isn’t great, but there’s nothing anybody can really do about it, since the guy he murdered is openly anti-Caesar, and if Octavian or Vorenus or Caesar himself intervened, it would look like Caesar is getting his fingers into the criminal justice system to off his political enemies. Pullo’s lawyer is crap, so he’s condemned to the arena. At first, he refuses to fight, but the gladiators provoke him by talking shit about the XIII. Then he becomes an absolute killing machine. Vorenus watches tearfully from the sidelines, until it’s pretty clear Pullo isn’t going to beat the final boss. Vorenus charges into the arena, finishes the boss battle, and helps Pullo out.

Caesar decides that since Brutus is depicted as his assassin on literally every wall in Rome, maybe it’s a good idea to send Brutus to Macedonia. They have a huge fight, and Brutus tells Caesar there’s no way he’s going to be sent away to Macedonia for a year. He goes home and tells him mom that, yeah, it’s time to kill Caesar.

My favorite part of the episode: How does one even get over Vorenus storming into the arena to rescue Pullo? Or the pain on Vorenus’s face as he’s watching his friend somehow manage to take on gladiator after gladiator.

My least favorite part of the episode: Brutus’s turn to the dark side (or light, from a certain point of view). You know it’s coming, but I felt like Brutus’s arc didn’t get as much attention from the script as other characters did, and his is arguably one of the most interesting storylines in the show. I wish we could have seen his motivation develop more gradually, and in more than one or two scenes per episode.

Favorite costume:  Niobe’s dress. I don’t see what’s wrong with it, either.

 

Team Atia or Team Servilia: Atia, because she’s banging James Purefoy again, which makes her the winner, no contest.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet: 

What was said (I think):“they see my wretched name”

What I heard: “They see my erection” #LegionXIII #Misheard

— Jessica Jarman (@jessjarman) February 9, 2016

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? I don’t know that she would steal any of these costumes, necessarily, but I’m betting she covets many of the fine textiles in this family portrait:

Guess Jess’s head canon. The Jarmada sailed, every ship with its sails unfurled, during the arena scene and Pullo’s subsequent rescue.

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

Jealous Haters Book Club: Apolonia chapter 18

Sorry for the lapse in recaps. I hope you found something just as boring and frustrating to read in the meantime. Shall we get right to it, then?

I found myself in Wonderland, a place where the impossible wasn’t pretend anymore. A time when death was temporary and believing that humans were the only intelligent beings was nothing less than arrogant. Secret government organizations and spaceships. The end of the world.

If only the reader had been likewise plunged into this fascinating new world. Alas, we’re still at the radio station.

When I peeled my eyes open, it was the first time that my dreams were more realistic than real life.

Your dream was literally everything happening in your real life.

Benji is doing the lay-all-over-the-heroine-like-a-blanket thing popular in so many NA novels these days, and the aliens are all up and working on getting the radio station going. Rory asks how things are progressing.

“Almost there,” Apolonia said, a trace of a smile on her face.

“Would you care? If we were blown to smithereens?” I asked and immediately regretted it. “Wow. I don’t even know why I said that.”

That’s why.

Cy makes a remark to Apolonia about how Rory loves danger, and Apolonia says “clearly,” and they’re both smiling at each other about it, so like, they’re making run of Rory right in front of her and it’s about time Apolonia got to do that. Rory asks if everyone is in a better mood because they got coffee or something, and Tsavi says they’re in a better mood because they’ve been watching Rory and Benji cuddle on the floor.

So, first of all, weird. Second of all, they’re probably actually happier because Rory was unconscious for a few hours and they didn’t have to be around her.

My cheeks instantly set fire. “Glad we could entertain you.” Embarrassing, yes, but it was good to see Apolonia and Cy in a better place.

Is it, though? Is it really, Rory? This book seems to be narrated by one of those people who decides that they don’t like the past anymore and they don’t want to be held accountable for it, so they just pretend it never happened and think that will fool everyone else into forgetting, too. We have been here from page one, Rory. We know for a fact that you don’t want Apolonia and Cy to be in a “better place.”

Dr. Z wakes up and farts and Apolonia looks at him in disgust, but I can’t tell if it’s from the fart or because we’re going to find out that Dr. Z was part of the Majestic all along later or whatever. It seems like that foreshadowing is way too subtle for this book. They talk about transfiguring the signal to a microwave frequency or or something, but Rory is, as usual, not involved:

I had been sick and cold since we’d arrived at the radio station and hadn’t eaten any real food in almost twenty-four hours. I was happy to let them figure it out.

What happened to not needing food because of your eternal sadness? I thought stress made you not eat, and you’re under a hell of a lot of stress, or should be, by now.

Here’s a problem: the second more aliens were brought into the story, Rory became superfluous. What has she done, since Apolonia showed up? She’s hidden behind a desk, she’s blacked out and needed healing, she’s puked everywhere, now she’s too sick and tired and hungry to participate in the major plot elements. Rory needs to be able to do something, anything, to advance the plot. She needs some kind of ability the others don’t have, or at least be involved in what’s happening to make the action move forward. This is the girl who ran into an alien space ship under attack because she thought she could help. Now she’s like, “Eh, let them do it.” That doesn’t exactly make for compelling reading. So, Writing Tip: actually make your protagonist a part of the action. Don’t let them stand back while everyone else does the interesting things.

“The moods seem strangely upbeat,” Benji said quietly.

“Last night’s spooning likely satisfied the warrior princess that I wasn’t after her fiancé.”

“Oh. So, they’re engaged?”

“Allegedly.”

She’s so glad to see them in a “better place” that she’s insinuating she has doubts as to their engagement.

She tries to change the subject by asking Benji for some water, and he hands it to her, pointing out that she does need people.

“It’s not a good thing.” I glanced at Cy. “As you can see, they just leave.”

What a shitty thing to say to Benji. First of all, Cy has done nothing for you, other than get you involved in this bullshit to begin with. He even withheld information that would have kept you and Dr. Z safe. Seriously, all Cy had to do was tell his long, drawn out alien parasite monologue to Dr. Z in the first place, and Dr. Z probably would have believed him. Cy caused this entire problem. Second, Benji has betrayed his own family and a scary government agency to protect you. You didn’t ask him to, but he did. You know how he feels about you and you’ve told him you return those feelings. And you’re still going to sit there and be like, oh, poor me, my space boyfriend is leaving me?

Oh my god, Benji is Mickey and they’re trapped in an eternal goodbye scene at Bad Wolf Bay.

Benji asks Rory if he’s earned a first date, and she says no, because she fucks on the first date. So, we’re back to “I’m too tough for you,” Rory, then? I need to put on a helmet if we’re going to whip back and forth like this.

Rory goes off to sulk about how shitty everything is for her, because we haven’t done that in a while:

Any moment, Cy and the professor would make the magic connection to allow Apolonia to make contact with her father. They would save the world without anyone knowing. Hamech would float down in his king-sized space module and pick them up. They would locate the rock and then dispose of it at the Bad Rock Disposal. Cy and Apolonia would be married quickly after that–however long it took them to get home–and they would have two-point-five beautiful and hostile alien babies.

Dr. Z would go back to campus and find something else to obsess about. Benji would go back to living alone at Charlie’s–unless he kept the cat–and I would keep being Dr. Z’s research assistant…and maybe even grow out my hair. Maybe.

Gosh, I hope we find out. So far, Rory’s indecision about her hair is the most fascinating thing happening in this chapter.

How could we experience something so life-changing, only to return to our mundane existence? Although, maybe it was more likely that the professor, Benji, and I would be arrested and sent to federal prison, but not before Apolonia’s daddy blows us all to hell.

Well, you wouldn’t have to worry about prison, then, would you?

For some strange reason, I was more okay with the latter. I glanced over at Benji. No, it wouldn’t be okay. Maybe it just made more sense for something bad to happen to me.

That. I vote for that ending.

Dr. Z gets the microphone working, and Cy starts speaking Ahnktesh into it, but that’s the exact moment a bomb or something goes off and suddenly soldiers are shooting at them.

Tsavi was already outside, using her strange weapon to take out the knees and shoulders of the soldiers shooting at us. She grabbed my arm and pulled me across the alleyway to the next building. It was still dark in the early hours of the morning.

Benji stayed behind, trading punches with a soldier and finally getting him on the ground. I glanced back, pulling away from Tsavi, to see Benji grab the soldier’s weapon and then run to catch up. By the time he joined us, the ringing in my ears was beginning to subside. Tsavi was barking orders at Benji, who was holding an AK–47 as if he’d held one since birth.

Have I complained about the guns in this book yet? I feel like this is something I would have complained about, if it had already been mentioned. The U.S. military doesn’t use AK-47s. I’m sure if someone went digging, they could find evidence of them being used at some point in time (I guess some soldiers had them in Vietnam), but we use M-16 and MK types.

Writing Tip: Now, let’s look at those last two sentences:

By the time he joined us, the ringing in my ears was beginning to subside. Tsavi was barking orders at Benji, who was holding an AK-47 as if he’d held one since birth.

This is something I have to keep a sharp eye out for when I’m editing my work. I tend to do the “ing” dance. Everything is happening. So, let’s rewrite this to make it read a little differently:

By the time he joined us, the ringing in my ears had begun to subside. Tsavi barked orders at Benji, who held an AK-47 as if he’d held one since birth.

Do you see the difference? In the first example, the actions take a backseat to the subjects of the sentences. This is a form of passive voice known as “past continuous”.  Passive voice isn’t necessarily evil (though a lot of writing tutorials will tell you differently), but it doesn’t have any place in an action scene. I don’t care what Tsavi was doing. I want to know what Tsavi did. Because what she was doing seems a lot less urgent compared to what she did.

I’m not a natural teacher, so let me try it this way. Imagine your friend calls you up, and she’s pissed off at someone at work. She starts the conversation all, “First of all, let me tell you what this bitch did.” Oh shit, that bitch did something. What did she do? What’s going to happen next? Is your friend going to get fired or possibly arrested? Should you make popcorn? Now let’s imagine your friend calls you up and says, “First of all, let me tell you what this bitch was doing.” Oh man, I still want to know what this bitch was doing, but since “was” has become involved, it sounds like the action has been at least partially resolved or has ceased, and some of the urgency has been removed, since the bitch is no longer doing it.

Hope that helps.

Benji, Tsavi, and Rory are separated from Dr. Z, and they have to make a run for it. Benji shoots a guard, and Rory thinks:

He looked less like the Benji I knew and more like the soldiers I saw in the Nayara.

Which originally made me think, “What? the soldiers you saw in the Nayara were dead in piles,” and then I was like, “Oh, you mean the soldiers who followed you onto the Nayara. Got it.”

Italics = underline, you know the drill.

“Your dad taught you how to shoot one of those?” I asked.

“He taught me to shoot a lot of things,” Benji said so quietly  that it was barely audible.

If you’re not a reader in the U.S., you probably won’t get how not-weird or suspicious it is that Benji’s dad taught him to shoot a rifle. And that’s what an AK-47 is, it’s a rifle. In theory, if you can aim and shoot any rifle, you can fire an AK-47. And a lot of us in the U.S. know how to shoot a rifle, and were taught by our parents. It is what it is, but I’m usually thrown off by how surprised characters in movies, books, and television shows are when they see that someone else knows how to shoot a gun. It’s a fairly common skill here. If Benji were able to clean, reassemble, and load an AK-47 blindfolded, I might be like, “Wow, something is fishy,” but it doesn’t strike me as something all that unusual if it’s just “I picked up this gun and shot it.”

“You didn’t bring us out here to kill us, did you?”

Benji stopped and looked down at me. “What?”

“We’re separated from the others. You could kill Tsavi and me, and you could tell them any story you wanted.”

Do it, Benji. For all of us.

“I’m sorry,” he said, frowning, “but what’s it going to take for me to dig up that seed that Cyrus planted? Do you honestly think I could ever hurt you? Kill you, Rory? Seriously? That hurts.”

I looked down at his rifle. “You’re carrying a huge, crazy-looking gun. You took out a highly trained soldier to get it. I don’t know what to think, except that there’s a whole side of you that I don’t really know at all.”

Oh my god, why are we doing this again? Okay, Rory. Let’s look at the facts:

FACT: I still don’t think you’ve told Benji about what happened to you and your family, so it’s not like he’s the only one hiding a past.

FACT: Cyrus was a frigging alien on a mission to steal your boss’s space rock, but you trust him unconditionally despite the fact that he’s put you in danger by withholding that information.

FACT: Benji has killed one soldier, while Apolonia has killed many, and you still trust the aliens more than you trust Benji.

FACT: In any other piece of media this formulaic and cliche-ridden, the killing of one of his father’s soldiers would be proof of loyalty to the audience and the other characters.

But don’t let that get in your way of hurling unnecessary drama into a flight sequence and bogging the whole goddamn thing down.

Benji searched my eyes for a moment and then touched my face gently. I opened my mouth to speak, but he put his mouth on mine, slow and tender. His mouth was warm and soft, exactly the way I remembered. He pulled away, touching his forehead to mine. “You know me. I’m the guy who’s been following you around, gladly taking your crap for two years. I’m not any different, except maybe not as pathetic as you thought.”

I shook my head, but the rest of my body was frozen. “I never thought you were pathetic. Too happy, yes.”

“Too happy?” he said, raising one eyebrow.

“Annoyingly so.”

He grinned. “Maybe it was just being around you.”

Tsavi sighed, clearly uncomfortable witnessing our exchange.

Alternate theory: Tsavi remembers the danger you’re all in and is just as frustrated as the reader that, once again, what should be a high-tension action scene has been interrupted so Rory and Benji can have a serious talk about their relationship and come to a resolution that will only last until the next time they have the same serious talk about their relationship.

Luckily, all the fighting happened while we were watching a repeat of The Rory Doesn’t Trust Benji Romantic Dramedy and Musical Variety Hour, so anything interesting is over and we’ve missed it. Tsavi tells them:

“Okay, you two. It’s time to circle back. I haven’t heard gunfire in a while, and I just saw a fleet of military Humvees driving east.”

Tsavi knows what a Humvee is? Also, Tsavi has a concept of direction on an alien planet as described by their magnetic poles? I thought she was a ship doctor. Their training must be really thorough.

They head back to the radio station:

More people were in the street, looking stunned and confused, pointing at the hole in the KIXR building.

Tsavi stopped and climbed into the backyard of a house sitting across from the radio station. There was no car in the drive, and the lights were dark.

Raise your hand if you thought this radio station was way out in the middle of nowhere, then went back and looked for a description of houses and things nearby it, only to come up empty. It’s in the middle of a neighborhood? They drove there in a bright orange Mustang that’s still parked there. Benji went out and got snacks. Did they think no one would notice they were there? I was thinking this was some radio station way outside of town in a field or something.

Benji goes to his car to check for GPS devices (should have done that earlier, genius) and bombs.

“I don’t believe it,” I said, seeing the ugly, smelly cat. It was rubbing against Benji’s green sneakers, which were poking out from under the Mustang as he searched the underbelly of his car.

“Wasn’t the cat inside when they blew up the front half?” Tsavi asked, bewildered.

I wasn’t even going to make a nine-lives reference. It was too easy.

Now, before you go, “WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE FUCKING CAT AGAIN!” like I was, Benji comes back to tell them:

“No explosives. I did find a tracer though. That could explain how they found us.”

“Could?” It “could” explain how they found you?

Anyway, the cat actually does serve a purpose to the plot, as Benji also found some string and secured the tracer to the cat, instead. They meet Cy, Apolonia, and Dr. Z at the car, and Dr. Z is injured now. So, he’s old, he’s tired, and he’s injured. The liabilities on this guy keep stacking the fuck up. Let’s get rid of him already.

Dr. Z and Tsavi sat in the back. Apolonia sat on Tsavi’s lap, and I sat on Cy’s lap while Benji drove. Benji didn’t seem happy about the new seating arrangement at all, but Cy and Apolonia weren’t comfortable with the lap situation. Tsavi paled when we suggested she sit on Cy’s lap, and there was no way I was going to plant my ass on Apolonia’s thighs.

I AM SO GLAD I KNOW WHO FEELS WHAT WAY ABOUT WHOSE LAP THIS IS REALLY GOING TO BE PERTINENT INFORMATION WHEN WE REACH WHATEVER DOESN’T HAPPEN IN THE NEXT CHAPTER.

So, the radio station has been a bust (good thing we wasted a whole chapter there!) and the only other radio station is on campus.

Cy thought for a moment. “We are running out of time and options. We still don’t know where the specimen is, and Hamech could be heading toward the Nayara at any moment.”

…then why didn’t you leave someone to wait at the Nayara? Someone who can explain everything. Someone like, I don’t know, Tsavi and Dr. Z, who both have very little to contribute to the group?

Rory suggests they go to the warehouse where the soldiers took Cy, in the hopes that they’ll have equipment they can use to contact Hamech.

“What if you’re wrong?” Cy asked. “What if we get there, and they’ve gone? That’s not exactly a plan.”

What if you get there and they haven’t gone? So much of this plot hinges on the government agency being as stupid as the ragtag band of heroes. The entire military isn’t going to abandon a black ops site to go running after six people. They’re going to send some soldiers after them and leave the others to protect the warehouse. So I don’t know what, exactly, they plan on doing when they get there, but I do know (thanks to a reader email) that when they arrive there will be another beautiful woman for Rory to hate, so stay tuned.

Re-release news and cover reveal: BRIDE OF THE WOLF

Some of you have asked about a few of my past releases that aren’t available for purchase anymore. Well, that’s because the publishing rights for some of my novellas have reverted to me, and several of them will be re-released as refurbished self-pub titles.

The first of these is Bride of the Wolf, a paranormal historical romance, which releases Tuesday, February 16th:

Betrothed to the heir of Lord Canis, Aurelia finds herself thrown to the wolves. The Canis Clan are no ordinary warriors, but beasts raging beneath the skin of men. Their name chills the heart of every man in Britannia, though the heart of one maiden may be saved…

Once a mighty warrior in high esteem among the Clan, Sir Raf Canis knows all too well the dangers Aurelia will face in her new role as Lady of Blackens Gate. Tasked with the humiliating errand of delivering his brother’s intended, Raf instead finds himself fighting for her life–and falling into an impossible love that he cannot deny.

Bride of The Wolf will be available on Amazon and Smashwords on Tuesday, February 16th, other retailers to follow.

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#LegionXIII Rome watch-along, S01E10 “Triumph” or “It’s hard to come up with funny titles when everything is so goddamn grim”

Quick rundown of the episode: In a final bit of humiliation, Cicero and Brutus go before the senate and say Caesar should be declared emperor of Rome. And Caesar is like, “Cool, thanks. By the way, if any of you fuckers step out of line again, I’ll murder you.”

Servillia is still recovering from the brutal attack by Atia’s men, and Atia stops by to pretend to care and to call Brutus a coward. Also, to invite Servillia to sit with the family at Caesar’s triumph. And Servilia plays the game right back, asking where Octavia went and why. Octavia has joined a cult that encourages self-harm, since, you know. Her girlfriend of two years tricked her into incest. Octavian shows up to take Octavia home, but she doesn’t want to go. This is only the latest incident in which Octavia is made to do something she doesn’t want to because her family’s public appearance is more important than her happiness.

Speaking of people not wanting their kids to be happy, Servilia continues to passive-aggressively remind Brutus that he should have killed himself rather than submit to Caesar. She starts a little book club of traitors with Quintus Pompey and Casius, and even writes a treasonous pamphlet in Brutus’s name. Which, you know, isn’t a great idea. Servilia isn’t so much concerned with restoring the Republic as she is getting back at the Julii, which Brutus points out. But it’s cool, Caesar is fine with Brutus, probably because he recognizes Servilia’s writing after eight years of corresponding via scroll.

Lucius Vorenus has started his political career, and he’s not really very good at it. Posca is trying to do a kind of Pretty Woman thing, trying to turn a soldier into a magistrate, but Niobe isn’t as good at handling the people as Vorenus is. Also, there are hired goons willing to remove hecklers, like at a Trump rally. Pullo, meanwhile, is going through the unemployment blues. He’s been told he can’t march in Caesar’s triumph, which is kind of shitty seeings as how he basically saved Rome and stuff. But he’s got a plan. He’s going to win Eirene’s heart by buying her freedom from slavery, and then he’s going to marry her.

Caesar’s triumph is a big deal. Everyone gathers in the forum to watch Caesar ride in on a chariot with his face all painted with blood, and hey, remember Vercingetorix, king of the Gauls? He’s been in prison this whole time. They tart him up and trot him out to be executed in front of the cheering, happy crowd. If you want to know how they execute him, ride in the backseat of Bronwyn Green’s Saturn Ion with the seatbelt on. That, but then you just get left to rot in the town square.

Pullo buys Eirene’s freedom and goes back to the Aventine to give her the good news and a brand new dress. She’s as happy as he expected her to be. As is the man she’s in love with, another slave in the Vorenus household. Hearing this, Pullo snaps and smashes the guy’s head into a column over and over until he kills him. While Eirene screams and Niobe tries to comfort her, Vorenus scolds Pullo for scaring the children and destroying Vorenus’s property. Vorenus feels disrespected, and he and Pullo nearly come to blows (not that kind, Jess), and Pullo leaves. In a tavern, Erastes Fulmen approaches him and offers him a job, which, you know, is probably not a great offer to take.

My favorite part of the episode: It’s a very small moment, but when Vercingetorix’s body is dumped in the garbage, a small group of Gauls take quietly from the city and build a funeral pyre as a proper sendoff.  It’s pretty touching.

My least favorite part of the episode: Eirene’s screaming after Pullo kills her boyfriend. I dreaded it on this rewatch, and even watching the episode again to write the summary, I muted it. That actress is amazing, because those screams have haunted me since the first time I saw this air on HBO years ago. Like, this scene is Adriana-getting-dragged-out-of-the-car-on-The-Sopranos level haunting for me.

Favorite costume: 

Team Atia or Team Servilia: Servilia. She wrote political propaganda to attack her former lover, and is cooking up a campaign to destroy his whole family. I admire her dedication.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet:

Trump: “I’d like to see Vorenus’ Roman birth certificate.” #LegionXIII

— Gabriel Fortin (@gfortin_05) February 2, 2016

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? Niobe’s blue stola:

Guess Jess’s head canon. I feel like she’s probably looking forward to the comfort side of some hurt/comfort.

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

 

a lower-case rebuttal

Whether you’re hoping to see Hillary Clinton march gender equality right into the Oval Office, or you’re waiting for Bernie Sanders to lead us into the post-capitalism future of your dreams, there is one undeniable fact about this election cycle: Hillary Clinton is the target of a lot of misogyny. From the predictable jabs your drunk uncle makes at the family reunion–”She’ll get the P.M.S. and invade Russia and then we’ll all get nuked!”–to the media’s insistence on running only photos with the harshest lighting in an effort to point out that, yes, she has indeed aged much in the way human women tend to do, we’re making damned sure that for every step Sanders takes, Clinton must take two.

Are we on the same ground here? We’re all in agreement that there is, indeed, a gender bias working against Clinton? Okay, good. And Courtney Enlow agrees with that, too. She even wrote a think piece about it: An All-Caps Explosion of Feelings Regarding The Liberal Backlash Against Hillary Clinton. In it, Enlow points out the frustration many women feel about the current campaign. While Donald Trump’s loud, rude, and obnoxious schtick is charming to some (probably equally loud, rude, and obnoxious) voters, it would be a turn-off coming from Clinton. While Sanders can take the stage in an ill-fitting suit, wild hair, and a scowl, Clinton could be fresh out of that Stepford Wives machine and still be criticized for showing too much toe-cleavage, or not enough toe-cleavage, or whatever could possibly be used to detract from her physical appearance and turn our minds away from her as a politician. Enlow is absolutely right, there is a double standard at work that means Clinton must take great pains to appear calm, rational, and mildly appealing.

Enlow stated at the outset of her piece that she feels this race is “very, very personal,” and I agree. I also feel that this race is very, very personal, at least where one part of Clinton’s record is concerned. It’s actually the part that Enlow is very quick to dismiss criticism of:

YOU DON’T LIKE THAT SHE HAD CERTAIN NOW-UNACCEPTABLE POLICIES BACK IN THE ’90S? HEY, I GET THAT THAT SHIT SEEMS LIKE LAST WEEK, BUT IT WAS ANOTHER GODDAMN WORLD ENTIRELY. I GET THAT WE ALL THINK WE’RE THE UNIVERSE’S BESTEST HUMANS BUT MOST OF THIS COUNTRY JUST LEARNED TRANS PEOPLE EXIST, LIKE, YESTERDAY. LET’S NOT PRETEND WE’VE ALL BEEN THE MOST INCLUSIVE PROGRESSIVE SUPER-COOL PEEPS FOR LIKE A THOUSAND YEARS NOW. PROGRESSIVE MEANS JUST THAT–PROGRESS. SHIT THAT WAS A BIG GODDAMN DEAL AT THE TIME IS NOT COOL NOW. PROGRESS. IT’S FUCKING SWELL.

The problem with her “certain now-unacceptable policies back in the ’90s” is that they aren’t from the ’90s. See, back in 2004 (or as we apparently describe the ’00s now, the ’90s), Clinton was fine with the definition of marriage as one man, one woman, stating:

I believe that marriage is not just a bond, but a sacred bond between a man and a woman.

She called those marriages a “fundamental bed-rock principle.” At the time, she was opposing a constitutional amendment that would prohibit same-sex marriages, but in her remarks she carefully positioned herself as not defending marriage equality, but the sanctity of the constitution as a living document. She took great pains to assure us all that she, personally, did not support same-sex marriage. In 2006, Clinton felt that marriage equality wasn’t a federal issue, and should be handled by individual states. In a 2008 Human Rights Campaign questionnaire, she reasserted her opposition to a federal decision on marriage equality, once again saying that it was a state-level decision. She also said:

I support full equality of benefits, rights, and responsibilities for individuals in

loving, stable, same sex relationships and in principle, I would like to see federal

benefits extended to same sex couples that meet certain standards. I would need to

examine the feasibility of implementing such a provision and look forward to

working in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign and others in the gay

rights community to determine the best path for realizing this goal.

Remember, in 2008 the only “certain standard” that needed to be met for a man and a woman who were married to claim spousal benefits or “responsibilities” was to be married, which Clinton opposed. She needed extra hoops to prove the legitimacy of same-sex relationships, but only after she decided wether those hoops were feasible. This system of hoops appears to be so complex that it would have to be assembled by committee.

It’s been a long time since 19902008, though. People grow, and people change. But usually when they do it, they can pinpoint a reason or reasons why their thinking changed, and admit that they were wrong. In 2014, Clinton sat for an interview with Terry Gross on NPR. Clinton was candid when it came time to scrutinize her vote in favor of the Iraq war, saying that she was wrong, and explaining that she didn’t want to voice that for fear of dishonoring the soldiers on the ground in the conflict, soldiers she had helped put there. When it came time to talk about marriage equality, however, she stumbled. While she easily accepted responsibility for the lives impacted by her Iraq war vote and offered reasons why she did not publicize her conversion, she could neither admit that she was wrong on marriage equality, nor explain why her views had “evolved.” That word came up a lot. Usually, we see “evolved” used as part of an explanation (“the giraffe’s long neck evolved from a need to reach leaves on higher branches”), rather than an entire explanation. But Clinton has none, and that her evolution seemed to take place conveniently in time for her next presidential run has left some members of the LGBTQA+ community (myself included) skeptical as to her sincerity. That doubt was certainly not dismissed by her campaign’s celebration when individual states’ same-sex marriage bans were overturned by the Supreme Court:

Our new favorite map. RT if you live in a state where marriage equality is law. pic.twitter.com/7GlCwCJHyg

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 26, 2015

There was no acknowledgement that her political position seven years earlier was the position that the Supreme Court had just struck down. Just a quick jump to pride, as though she’d been there for the fight all along, when in 2014 she described her “evolution” to Terry Gross as something akin to being caught in a riptide and simply embracing the inevitability of being swept out to sea.

Enlow goes on to say:

AND IF YOU COME AT ME FOR EVEN ONE GODDAMN SECOND WITH A “YOU JUST LIKE HER BECAUSE SHE’S A WOMAN” I WILL DESTROY YOU WHERE YOU STAND. I LIKE HER! I LIKE HER POLICIES, I LIKE HER PLANS, I LIKE WHAT SHE STANDS FOR, I LIKE THAT SHE’S GROWN AND EVOLVED AS A HUMAN AND POLITICIAN! I LIKE THAT SHE WAS FOR MANY OF US MY AGE ONE OF OUR FIRST ROLE MODELS OF A SMART, PROFESSIONAL, KICKASS WOMAN AND THAT SHE ISN’T AFRAID OF THE WORD “FEMINIST” AND I’M SICK OF HAVING TO APOLOGIZE FOR LIKING HER, FOR HAVING TO QUALIFY AND SEE YOUR SIDE AND RESPECT YOUR OPINION WHEN I FUCKING DON’T AND YOU FUCKING DON’T RIGHT BACK. I LIKE HER!

AND MOST OF YOU LIKE HER POLICIES AND PLANS TOO BECAUSE A) THEY’RE BASICALLY FUCKING OBAMA AND B) THEY’RE NOT THAT FUCKING DIFFERENT THAN FUCKING BERNIE.

I sympathized with the first sentence so much. I, too, am tired of being told that my choice in this race comes down to Hillary’s gender. Women are being pushed into either defending their choice to vote for Hillary or defending their choice to not vote for Hillary. It’s about one thing, and one thing only, from both anti- and pro-Clinton voters, and that thing is feminism. So I understand Enlow’s frustration there. What I don’t understand is her framing of how we should exercise our choice as voters. Clinton and Sanders are very similar in policy on the big issues, that’s true. But Enlow seems to be asking us why, if the two candidates are so similar, aren’t we choosing the one who is a woman?

Well, for me, and for some other LGBTQA+ folk out there, our question is why, if the two candidates are so similar, should we choose the one who spent two decades reminding us that we’re second class citizens and striving, unapologetically, to make that a reality? Why, if the two candidates are so similar, would we choose the one who can’t account for her evolution of feeling toward marriage equality, but very much insists it has nothing to do with politics?

IT IS ABSOLUTELY GUT WRENCHING THAT THIS BADASS, IMPORTANT WOMAN HAS BEEN DIMINSHED AND WRITTEN OFF AND HATED HER WHOLE CAREER, HER WHOLE EXISTENCE AS A PUBLIC FIGURE.

Hillary Clinton has absolutely faced an uphill battle through an endless landslide of sexist bullshit, and the battle isn’t over. But Hillary Clinton is a rich, straight, white, cis woman battling through a landslide on a mountain that isn’t even on the map for anyone who isn’t rich, straight, white, and cis. For all that Enlow insists that Hillary has been forced to “play the game” because no other options were available, she overlooks the myriad privileges Clinton started out with, and the advantages she gained through policies she publicly supported (some of which were signed into law by her husband). Policies that made damn good and sure that people who aren’t rich, straight, white and cis had a much steeper hill to climb, with a landslide four times larger than the one she faces now.

The choice of Enlow and other women to unapologetically ignore that reality is theirs; I certainly don’t have the energy to stop them. And Enlow’s piece is not an outlier. Since the beginning of this race there has been a simmering antagonism on feminist social media that slyly insinuates, but stops short of outright declaring, that votes for Sanders are votes against all womankind. Those of us who aren’t voting for Clinton are naturally feeling belittled, silenced, and patronized by that discourse. If Enlow and other feminists want us to believe that their votes are not swayed solely by the fact that Hillary Clinton is a woman, then they must extend that same courtesy to women who don’t support her. It’s not some weird cocktail of internalized misogyny, lust for free stuff, and total political ignorance that’s making some of us turn away from Clinton. It’s Clinton herself.

Legion XIII Rome Watch Along S01E09, “Utica” or “Everyone Who Wasn’t Terrible Is Terrible, Everyone Who Already Was Is Worse”

Quick rundown of the episode: Things open with elephant tragedy, and then it just gets worse from there. Cato and Scipio off themselves in the desert, and I marvel at the casual attitude the Romans have to suicide. News of their deaths apparently have reached Rome, since Caesar, Anthony, and Brutus enjoy a play about it.

Well, Brutus doesn’t seem to enjoy it, but. You know. He’s also living with his mom, who thinks he should have committed suicide rather than come home.

So anyway, Caesar is back in Rome. Everyone is back in Rome. It’s been two years, and when Vorenus gets back, he finds his apartment is tricked out with new decor and four slaves, and his wife an entrepreneur who owns a butcher shop with her sister. Pullo is happy to see Eirene, who now speaks Latin. Which, you know, for the purposes of the show is English but with a German accent. Vorenus and Pullo go to work in the butcher shop, where Vorenus runs afoul of the local mafia. So Vorenus has to send his kids to the countryside to avoid them being raped and murdered, and he waits with Pullo and Niobe for Erastes Fulmen (who’s basically the Godfather) to come start some shit.

Octavian is back in Rome, too, which gives Servilia a plan. She’s pissed off that she has to make nice with Atia and Caesar at social functions, so she leverages her on-going love affair with Octavia to find out stuff about Caesar. First, Servilia just asks Octavia to find out whether or not Caesar has the affliction Octavian said he does. Instead, all Octavia can find out is that Octavian helped torture and kill Vorenus’s brother-in-law. Servilia suggests that Octavia sleep with Octavian to find out what’s up with Caesar, and she convinces Octavia to do it by telling her that Atia killed Glabius.

While Vorenus and Pullo wait to fight Erastes Fulmen, somebody else shows up. It’s Caesar, with a job offer: magistrate of the lower Aventine, which is like, the neighborhood where Vorenus lives. So when Erastes shows up to kick some ass, he sees a lot of soldiers waiting, and decides to leave it for another day. But this brings up another problem: Pullo feels pretty unsuccessful next to his friend who’s come home to find himself flush with cash and a new job in politics.

Octavia does manage to seduce Octavian, who knows the whole time that she’s trying to get something from him. So basically, he fucks his sister knowing it’s a transaction, and shames her for it afterward. Atia finds out her kids have committed incest and she freaks out, like people generally do. It’s actually kind of nice to know that there is some upper limit to how fucking terrible she is. I mean, it’s pretty high up there, but at least it’s there. Octavia tells Atia she did it because Servilia told her Atia killed Glabius. And Atia swears on a bunch of gods that she didn’t, because Atia apparently figures she can talk her way out of shitting on the gods, too. We already know she totally killed him.

Pullo comes home drunk and tells Eirene a story about how she reminds him of his mother. Then he rapes her, because she’s a slave and can’t consent to his advances. She clearly is not into him.

It’s Yom Kippur and Atia’s man, Timon, who is Jewish, is out to get a job done. A job he’s clearly not okay with being a part of, either because it’s a religious holiday, or because it’s fucking terrible, or both, considering his religious conviction storyline in season two. Anyway, in retribution for Servilia tricking her kids into incest, Atia has her men attack Servilia’s litter, strip her, and cut off her hair before leaving her in the street.

And this whole time, Vorenus’s kids are like, fleeing to the country, thinking their parents are dead. Which nobody really mentions at all.

My favorite part of the episode: Caesar is a giraffe murderer.

Caesar: “It is the height of four men, with a long neck, like a goose, spots like a leopard, and the speed of a horse.”

Brutus: “I don’t believe it. A new chimera.”

Caesar: “I assure you, it is quite real. With any luck you might see one at my triumph. I’ve been trying to bring one over for months now, but the wretched creatures keep dying on the way here. They do not like the sea.”

My least favorite part of the episode: I know it’s HBO and everyone is terrible, but Pullo drunkenly raping Eirene is so disheartening for me. Especially when I know what happens next week.

Favorite costume: This a twofer:

Here’s why I like this so much. It looks a little gray in the screencap, but Octavia is wearing pale lavender here. Throughout the episode, she’s wearing purples of various shades. Now, she’s committed this terrible crime against nature as a means of a plot. Now, what’s Atia wearing? Ding ding! Purple. Octavia has become Atia, and the purple clothes have foreshadowed this for the entire episode.

Team Atia or Team Servilia: Team Atia. First of all, fuck Servilia for stringing Octavia along for two years only to use her as a weapon. Second, the revenge Atia plots against Servilia is ruthlessly cruel, to the point that Atia could be running the Roman mafia, and to be quite honest, I admire that kind of hardcore cruelty in a historical woman character. I didn’t know anything about the importance of a Roman woman’s hair, but apparently it was a BFD. As in, women had busts of themselves made with interchangeable wigs. As in, there are tons of surviving sculptures showing women doing their hair, so centuries later we know that they spent a lot of time on it. So Servilia having her hair cut was the ultimate attack, probably just as bad as being stripped naked in public.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet:

I feel like “concentrating on poetry” is Roman version, of “But, mom! We’ve got a gig!” #LegionXIII

— Bronwyn Green (@Bronwyn_Green) January 26, 2016

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? This might be the “safe” choice, but I know that Bronwyn is a) a sucker for green, and b) a sucker for girdles.

(Sorry for the low quality, my internet was sporadic when I was trying to do these)

Guess Jess’s head canon. Jess was sadly absent this week, but I’d like to think it would involve that scene where Pullo is naked and oily.

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

 

The Big Damn Buffy Rewatch S03E02, “Dead Man’s Party”

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone ordered way too many Girl Scout cookies this year. 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.

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. 

Buffy’s back home, unpacking in her room, and she doesn’t look happy about it. She goes into her mom’s room, where Joyce is hanging something up:

Joyce: “We got a very exciting shipment in at the gallery. I, um, thought I’d hang a few pieces in here. Cheers up the room.”

Buffy: “It’s angry at the room, Mom. It wants the room to suffer.”

“You have no appreciation of primitive art.”

And you have no clue on how to be a good parent, so I guess you’re both even, huh?

So, let’s talk about this mask in relation to #17 and #12. Joyce says the mask is Nigerian. Okay, but it’s like, supposed to be a tribal mask, right? Which tribe? Nigeria has a ton of people in it, and I’m going to assume that because of this, indigenous cultures are probably as diverse there as indigenous cultures in North America. Just a quick Google check said there were over three hundred distinct tribes in Nigeria alone. When a season four (equally problematic) episode involved the Chumash people, the tribe was specifically mentioned, and was geographically correct. So, North American indigenous peoples get their own distinct identities, but not indigenous African people. It’s just “Nigerian.” We run into the same issue later with the First Slayer. She’s just “African.” So we’ve got the entire plot of this episode hinging on some scary, foreign culture that doesn’t even get a specific name (#17), but we also have the added flavor of knowing exactly why that dynamic exists and persists with regards to American perception of African countries (#12).

So back to the episode. Buffy wants to go out and find Willow and Xander, but Joyce is understandably gun shy. Still, she says she wants to put the whole thing behind them, and lets Buffy go out.

Cut to Buffy, walking alone and sad down some alleys. She runs into a shadowy figure, which is Xander, you can tell from his ears, but it’s supposed to be like, a tense moment. Buffy steps on a can to get his attention, and he whirls around, ready to stake her. He’s stunned to see her, but what could have been a touching reunion is interrupted by a vampire bursting out of a crate.

They’re apparently shipping vampires into Sunnydale now.

Buffy and Xander fight the vampire, while over a walkie-talkie Cordelia reveals Xander’s embarrassing handle: Night Hawk. Seriously, that’s the name they picked for Xander’s super awesome vampire hunter name.

Oz, Willow, and Cordelia run in to help, and to be fair, until they’re all knocked down in the alley and Buffy stakes the vamp herself, they’re doing pretty good for humans against a creature of the night. While they’re all sprawled on the concrete, Buffy greets them with “hey, guys,” and the opening credits roll.

The Scoobies immediately take Buffy to Giles’s house:

Buffy: “You know, maybe it’s too late. Maybe we should just come back tomorrow. What if he’s mad?”

Xander: “Mad? Just because you ran away and abandoned your post and your friends and your mom and made him lay awake every night worrying about you? Maybe we should wait out here.”

Buffy knocks on the door, and when Giles answers, he’s just as stunned as the rest of them were. Xander tries to joke, because he’s a jackass, and Giles shuts him up. Then just says, “Welcome home, Buffy.” Which tells us, the viewer, what we already know: Giles isn’t mad at Buffy. He’s just glad she’s back.

Oz: “Hey, so you’re not wanted for murder anymore.”

Buffy: “Good. That was such a drag.”

I love the understatement here, as well as the easy way the narrative moves along without lingering on the question of what will happen to Buffy now that she’s back and was a fugitive at the end of last season. There’s no need to explain why Buffy’s been cleared of the murder charges. There will have been an autopsy on Kendra, that sort of thing, and evidence that comes to light or what have you. Since this isn’t Law & Order (donk donk) we don’t have to know all those details. Those aren’t what’s important. Which is a good tip for your writing; if something is important, but you can plausibly gloss past it, go ahead, if it feels realistic or the reader/viewer can put the pieces together in their minds.

As the kids talk, Giles goes to the kitchen for tea. He stops for a minute to listen to them, and does this:

I love this Giles moment, because it not only shows that he missed Buffy and is relieved at her return, but it’s very clear that he’s missed the sound of these goofy, obnoxious kids that drive him crazy all the time with their inane chatter. Now they’re all together again, and things are right in his world.

But for some reason, he wears a tie even when he’s just sitting around at home.

Xander asks Buffy to tell them what she’s been up to, but Giles thinks she probably needs some decompression time. He’s right; she’s not interested in telling them what happened in L.A.. In fact, I’m not sure she ever does, that I can remember. I guess I’ll find out as the season goes along.

Buffy compliments the gang’s Slayer abilities, and they tell her they’ve actually managed to take down six out of ten vampires. Which is pretty impressive. And none of them died in their failed attempts, so that’s also impressive. They offer to take over vamp dusting duties for a while, but Buffy says she wants to get back to her normal life. When she suggests they all hang out the next day, everyone is busy, but Willow reluctantly says she’ll change her plans. Giles reminds Buffy that she’s still expelled from school. Buffy says that her mom is going to see Snyder, and she’ll definitely be returning to Sunnydale High.

But when we cut to the next day, in Snyder’s office, his answer is a definite no. Joyce tells him he doesn’t have the right to keep Buffy out of school, since all the charges against her were dropped:

Snyder: “I have not only the right, but also a nearly physical sensation of pleasure at the thought of keeping her out of school. I’d describe myself as ‘tingly’.”

Snyder is the best non-supernatural villain on this show. He’s so much fun to hate. He cites Buffy’s penchant for violence, property damage, and her horrible grades as enough to keep her from re-enrolling, and suggests she look into a career in fast food.

Buffy and Joyce leave, but not before Joyce threatens to go “all the way to the mayor” to fight for Buffy’s rights. Snyder smirks and says:

Snyder: “Wouldn’t that be interesting.”

Season two had several moments of foreshadowing regarding the mayor, so the viewer gets the idea that maybe there’s something up that we need to worry about there. Snyder bringing up this line is more foreshadowing, and really neatly reminds the viewer of all those past moments when the little weasel mentioned the mayor.

Joyce reassures Buffy that everything is going to be okay, they could send her to private school. Buffy recoils at this idea, and suggests homeschooling, to which Joyce answers that they’ll work something out. She drops Buffy off at the Espresso Pump. This is the first appearance of what will become a new and often used setting in seasons three and four, and to a lesser extent, seasons five, six, and seven. Buffy waits for Willow, who doesn’t show.

When Buffy gets home, she runs into an art-teacher-looking lady, Pat, coming out of the house. Pat is Joyce’s friend from book club. She tells Buffy that she’s glad she’s home, since Joyce was so torn up about Buffy’s disappearance.

Inside, Joyce tells Buffy that Willow tried to call to tell her that she was “hung up”, but that she didn’t leave a message. Joyce suggests inviting the whole gang over for dinner, then tells Buffy that she already did, so basically it’s on. She sends Buffy to the basement for the “company plates”, where Buffy finds a dead cat. Like you do, in your basement. Thanks to the internet, I know that finding random cats in one’s house is pretty common, but this episode has baffled me for years. How the fuck do you not smell a dead cat rotting in your basement?

Buffy and her mom bury the cat in the yard:

Buffy: “Next time, I get to pick the mother-daughter bonding activity.”

Joyce: “Do you want to say something?”

Buffy: “Like what? Thanks for stopping by and dying?”

Joyce: “How about, um, goodbye, stray cat who lost its way. We hope you find it.”

Because there’s nothing more comforting than being compared to a rotting stray cat.

In the night, the mask in Joyce’s room does this:

Which is probably not a great thing for it to be doing. Meanwhile, outside, the dirt on the cat’s grave starts moving, and the zombie cat claws its way up, very much alive.

I wonder if the two things could be related.

Buffy dreams that she’s walking through the entirely empty halls of Sunnydale high. When she reaches the courtyard, Angel appears. Buffy tells him that she’s afraid, and he responds that she should be. Buffy’s alarm goes off, and it is the most annoying alarm anyone has ever heard.

You know, I vaguely remember Buffy having that cool moon and stars horoscope alarm clock in her room before. That had a nice beep. Why not use that?

In the kitchen, Buffy’s just trying to get some breakfast while Joyce goes on and on about school. She’s been on the phone to the superintendent, and calls Snyder a “nasty little bigoted rodent man.” I’m not sure where bigoted comes in, but she says it. You know how people (usually people who’ve just put their foot in their mouth when commenting on one or more oppressed groups) will say, “I don’t see color, I hate everyone equally”? I feel like Synder is possibly the only person I could actually believe that of.

But I still like him way better than this Snyder:

This is the Snyder I want to see eaten by a giant penis monster at the end of season 3.

Joyce also mentions that she checked out a private school for girls:

Buffy: “So now it’s jackets, kilts, and no boys? Care to throw in a little foot binding?”

Joyce: “Buffy, you made some bad choices. You must might have to live with some consequences.”

I’m so torn on this one. Because while the side of me that firmly believes Joyce is to blame for Buffy running away (you know, on top of all the other circumstances), Buffy is being a whiny little brat here and then makes a crack about having to “ride the little bus”, so I think she does need to be called on how melodramatic she’s being. Comparing private school to foot binding? Come on, Buffy.

That said, Buffy didn’t actually make any bad choices. She didn’t have any choices. She was wanted for murder but had to run from the police to stop her evil ex from destroying the world. She couldn’t have gone home even if she’d wanted to, because the cops were after her. And one thing I wish they would have explored more was if there would have been a consequence to people finding out she’s the Slayer. Joyce was ready to tell anyone and everyone, and probably would have if Buffy had turned herself in. We wouldn’t have known it at the time, but there is a big, shadowy organization rounding up supernatural creatures. Telling local law enforcement that Buffy is a Slayer would likely not gone well for her.

Anyway, Joyce opens the kitchen door and in runs the should-be-dead cat. She and Buffy look at each other in horror before we cut to Giles at the front door, bearing a cage. The cat has conveniently run into Joyce’s bedroom, where Giles notices the mask. He comments on it, and Buffy interrupts the discussion of ancient art that’s about to ensue by reminding Giles that they need to research zombie cats. Giles reminds her that she’s not allowed on school property. He tells Buffy he’ll call her as soon as he has an idea what’s going on with the cat

In the library, Oz gets up close and personal with undead Garfield:

Oz: “It looks dead. It smells dead. Yet it’s moving around. That’s interesting.”

Cordelia: “Nice pet, Giles. Don’t you like anything regular? Golf, USA Today? Anything?”

Giles: “We’re trying to find out how and why it rose from the grave. It’s not as if I’m going to take it home and offer it a saucer of warm milk.”

Oz: “Well, I like it. I think you should call it ‘Patches’.”

You can’t see it well here, but Oz is wearing blue nail polish. In the mid-to-late 1990′s, previously scarce nail polish colors like blue and black and gray were suddenly everywhere, leading to more guys painting their nails. It was a novelty thing that seems to have faded out; I don’t see it in the wild as much anymore. But at the time it was like, “Oh my god, our generation is so hip and amazing.”

Baby boomers had Woodstock, Gen X had dudes wearing nail polish. What a time to be alive.

Willow reminds everyone that they’re supposed to be going to Buffy’s house for dinner, and that they should all help out and bring things, which quickly devolves into them turning the dinner into a party, because they don’t want to face actually having to talk to Buffy. Giles says he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to involve a band and a whole bunch of people, but he’s overruled by the social anxiety of four teenagers. As they discuss things, Giles flips right past a page in his book that bears a picture of the exact mask he just saw at Joyce’s house.

At dinner time, Buffy’s setting the table with the company plates, which basically should have been thrown in a garbage fire because they were near a dead zombie cat, so I’m glad they don’t actually eat off of them. The doorbell rings, and it’s Pat, Joyce’s friend who looks like she’s about to lead a workshop on some culturally appropriative workshop about spirit guides at a new age store whose logo is supposed to be a butterfly but suspiciously looks like a lavender vulva.

No, seriously, tell me she doesn’t:

Buffy asks if she wants to see Joyce, then shouts a panicked “MOM!” up the stairs, the way we all do when our parents’ friends want to interact with us. The next guest to arrive is Dingoes Ate My Baby, who ask where to set up. Buffy is confused.

The party is in full swing, leaving the Scoobies to do their own thing and generally ignore Buffy, as they planned. Buffy tells Willow she’d rather it was just the the gang, not this huge rager, but Willow acts like she can’t hear her. So Buffy drags Willow off to ask her if everything is okay between them. Willow insists it is, but immediately runs off again.

In Joyce’s room, the mask does its glowy-eye thing. Elsewhere in Sunnydale, a seemingly dead accident victim lying in the road amongst police and EMTs suddenly opens his eyes.

At the party, Xander and Cordelia are making out. Buffy tries to sneak past them, but Xander says it’s great that so many people are there to welcome her back. Buffy points out that many people at the party don’t even know her, but Xander and Cordelia get too caught up in talking about how hot it was to kill vampires together, and they start making out again. Buffy, sensing her presence is no longer needed, leaves them to it.

In the emergency room, a burn victim has just flatlined. The doctor declares him dead, and the patient sits up. The sound of attacking ensues.

As Buffy grows increasingly suspicious of the motive of the party, she walks past some dudes who appear to be smoking weed. They’re talking about how the party is for a chick who just came back from rehab. I’m not sure they understand how rehab works. In the kitchen, Joyce and Pat are getting loaded on clear alcohol and talking about how Joyce is coping with the return of her runaway daughter:

Joyce: “Really? I’m…I don’t know. While Buffy was gone, all I could think about was getting her home. I just knew that if I could put my arms around her and tell her how much I loved her, everything would be okay.”

Pat: “But?”

Joyce: “Having Buffy home, I thought it was going to make it all better. But in some ways, it’s almost worse.”

And this is what Buffy overhears.

Now fully convinced that everyone was happier without her, Buffy goes to her room and starts packing her bags to leave again. As the mask glows, zombies from all over Sunnydale are beginning to converge on the Summers house.

Giles finally gets back to that page about the mask. He tries to call Buffy, but the stoned guy from before answers the phone. He doesn’t even know who Buffy is. He actually answers the phone, “Party villa, can I rock you?” which is officially the way I’m going to answer the phone from now on. The guy is too messed up and interested in people doing shots to bother with Giles’s phone call.

So, here’s another thing that I think pretty well qualifies as #3. There are teenagers having a huge, loud party with free flowing alcohol and at least one loady smoking up in the living room. Joyce, you are the parent. It is your job to make sure there isn’t like, underaged drinking and drug use going on in your house. But you’re too busy talking to your pottery teacher friend about how awful it is to have your daughter safe at home to even notice that all this is going on.

Upstairs, Willow catches Buffy packing and flips out. Buffy says she’s trying, that Willow doesn’t know how hard things are for her, and that everyone was doing fine when Buffy was out of the picture. Willow just wants Buffy to talk to her, but Buffy points out that Willow has been avoiding doing just that. And while I normally love Willow, she is super selfish in this scene:

Willow: “This isn’t easy, Buffy. I know you’re going through stuff, but so am I.”

Buffy: “I know that you were worried about me–”

Willow: “No, I don’t just mean that. I mean, my life. You know? I’m having all sorts of…I’m dating. I’m having serious dating, with a werewolf. And I’m studying witchcraft and, and killing vampires, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about all this scary life stuff. And you were my best friend.”

Okay. So, you’re dating. That’s hardly as big a deal as being suspected of murder and having to kill your own boyfriend. You’re studying witchcraft and killing vampires, and you didn’t have anyone to talk to? Not, you know, Xander or Cordelia or Oz or Giles? Giles is like, the number one most perfect person to talk to about your teenage witchcraft, because he definitely has experience in the teen witch department. Meanwhile, Buffy had literally no one, and now she’s come back to a life she’s been cleanly cut out of. It’s one thing to be angry with someone for running away; that’s totally normal and understandable. But maybe instead of going, “Hey, here’s how your sudden disappearance affected me,” Willow could have actually asked Buffy about why she left and what she was going through. But she doesn’t. She gives excuses for why she couldn’t do that, why it’s Buffy’s fault that she couldn’t, then basically calls her a neglectful friend.

Giles is on his way to the Summers house, and he’s had just about enough of Joyce (and it’s only episode two of this season), compelling him to utter one of the most famous and often-quoted lines of the entire series:

Giles: “Unbelievable. Do you like my mask? Isn’t it pretty? It raises the dead. Americans.”

He’s so busy bitching about the whole zombie mask thing that he accidentally hits a pedestrian. He gets out of the car to check on the guy, only to find that it’s a zombie. It grabs Giles, and other zombies are shambling his way.

In Buffy’s room, Willow is still on the whole I’m-not-going-to-be-at-all-forgiving-or-understanding kick, when Joyce comes in. So now Buffy has two people, who are supposed to care about her and who have been acting like they don’t, yelling in her face and telling her how terrible she is. Overwhelmed, Buffy runs downstairs.

This is such a weird story to share, but I have to. I used to know this person who, in hindsight I realized, took every single part of their personality and made all their decisions based on some kind of jumbled pastiche of entertainment stuff they liked. And I’m not talking about when people are really, really into a movie and they quote it all the time, or you think of them and go, “Oh, Mike. The Star Wars guy.” I mean like, I’m almost 100% sure her divorce was the result of her wanting to live out The Last Five Years. She was super toxic, beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. I should write about her sometime, but nobody would believe me, she was that bad. Anyway, when she got upset about something, anything, she would do the whole I’m-so-overwhelmed thing almost instantly, and she would do it in this super precise imitation of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s delivery of her “Stop it, please, I don’t know, I can’t” etc. lines from Buffy. Just watching this scene gives me this hard physical reaction because of that. My neck is doing a thing. A terrible, terrible thing.

Joyce, empowered by the schnapps she drank earlier, lays into Buffy, bringing the house party to a screeching halt as party goers find themselves trapped in that most awkward of teen situations: being at someone’s house while they fight with their parents:

Joyce: “You can’t imagine. Months, of not know. Not knowing whether you were lying dead in a ditch somewhere or, I don’t know, living it up?”

Buffy: “But you told me! You’re the one who said I should go. You said if I leave this house, don’t come back. You found out who I really was and you couldn’t deal, don’t you remember?”

Joyce: “Buffy, you didn’t give me time. You just dumped this thing on me and you expected me to get it. Well guess what? Mom’s not perfect, okay? I handled it badly. But that doesn’t give you the right to punish me by running away.”

Buffy: “Punish you? I didn’t do this to punish you.”

Xander: “Well you did. You should have seen what you put her through.”

Buffy: “Great, thanks. Anybody else want to weigh in here? How ’bout you, by the dip?”

The “you by the dip,” by the way, is Jonathan, a recurring character whose importance throughout the show continues to grow all the way into season seven, where his blood is used to open the seal of the Hellmouth, setting in motion the major arc of the last season. We’ll talk about this more as the recaps continue, but I just wanted to point out that he’s still consistently showing up since his first appearances last season.

I also think it bears mentioning that the actor who portrayed him, Danny Strong, adapted the screenplays for both parts of Mockingjay and also co-created the series Empire. So, good job, Danny.

Xander: “You know, maybe you don’t want to hear it, Buffy, but taking off like you did was incredibly selfish, and stupid.”

Okay, so while we’re trapped in this shit show of blame, can I point just one teeny thing out, here?

Nobody has asked Buffy why she ran away.

Which Buffy points out:

Buffy: “Okay, okay! I screwed up! I know this. But you have no idea! You have, you have no idea what happened to me or what I was feeling.”

Xander: “Did you even try talking to anybody?”

Buffy: “There was nothing that anybody could do. Okay? I just had to deal with this on my own.”

Xander: “Yeah, and you see how well that one worked out. You can’t just bury stuff, Buffy. It’ll come right back up to get you.”

So, Buffy didn’t try talking to anybody. She’s there now. She’s been there. And not a single one of her friends or her mom has wanted to talk to her about running away. Not even Giles, who is arguably the only person in Sunnydale who could possibly understand how horrific things could have gotten inside Angel’s house of torture and demon conjuring.

Let’s just examine the actions of the characters in the season two finale, shall we? Willow, knowing full well that Buffy is headed over to kill Angel, decides to try her spell, anyway, because as we will see throughout the series, Willow is rarely as concerned with the outcome and ramifications of her spells as she is with the ego boost she gets from just seeing if she can pull them off (#4). Xander, knowing that Willow is trying to do the spell, tells Buffy to kill Angel, anyway, a decision that is probably equal parts “If I tell her, she might endanger herself and the world waiting to see if the spell worked,” and “I hate Angel anyway and with him out of the picture I might win a prize.” (#5) And Joyce told her daughter to never come home (#3). So I’m really confused as to why Buffy’s actions were considered selfish here.

Xander’s last line about not burying stuff annoys me in two ways: one, it’s the Scoobies who have been trying as hard as they can to avoid one-on-one time with Buffy so that they don’t have to talk to her–something they continue to insist that they want to do–, and it’s a cheap set up for a cutaway to Giles fighting the zombies. Under other circumstances, the line might be clever, but here it just feels like, whoa, dude. Humor? Not appropriate right now.

Giles fights off the zombies and manages to get back inside his car. As the undead hoard beat on the windows and roof, Giles realizes that he’s dropped his car keys outside. Bemoaning his stupidity, he hurriedly hot wires the car. To which he says:

Giles: “Like riding a bloody bicycle.”

So, on top of this being yet another example of weird skills Giles has that go pretty much unremarked upon in the series, we’re meant to infer that Giles has also hot wired cars many times.

This is exactly why we need a spin-off show about Watchers. At this point, I don’t even care if Anthony Head is involved. I just want to see what the fuck they’re teaching at the academy.

Back at the party, Buffy points out that she couldn’t actually talk to Xander, anyway, since he was so anti-Angel in the first place. Xander replies with all the grace and tact that one would expect of him:

Xander: “Look, I’m sorry that your honey was a demon, but most girls don’t hop a Greyhound over boy troubles.”

Thanks for proving her point, dickhead.

Cordelia even calls him on this:

Cordelia: “Time out, Xander. Put yourself in Buffy’s shoes for just a minute, okay? I’m Buffy, freak of nature, right? Naturally, I pick a freak for a boyfriend, and then he turns into Mr. Killing Spree, which is pretty much my fault–”

Buffy: “Cordy! Get out of my shoes.”

Even though she’s doing it in an extremely Cordelia way, Cordelia does have a point. Nobody has tried to sympathize with Buffy at all.

What I find interesting is that they’re talking about demons (which, granted, could be taken figuratively) and killing sprees (a little less likely to be interpreted as a figure of speech), and there’s absolutely no reaction from the other party goers. Probably because of #26, but it could also be because they’re trying to figure out an escape plan.

The fight continues, with Oz stepping in to try to calm the situation. Actually, if anyone could be a good mediator here, it’s Oz. He’s a supernatural creature himself, and has had to deal with the fallout from that, but he was also probably worried about Buffy in her absence. This entire episode could have just been Oz counseling everyone calmly through this.

Willow: “No, let ‘em go, Oz. Talking about it isn’t helping, we might as well try some violence.”

And on cue, zombies burst through every ground-floor window of the house.

Willow: “I was being sarcastic!”

The zombies don’t seem to be of the people-eating variety; they bust in and just start fighting and breaking necks. Joyce asks if they’re vampires, and after Buffy stakes one and nothing happens, it’s apparent that they are not. Which means all the staking the other Scoobies are doing is also not working. They try to wrestle a zombie outside, while Pat is dragged off, screaming, by another one.

Willow, Xander, Joyce, and Buffy run upstairs, just like Cici in Scream 2, but this time it’s obviously going to work out better for Sarah Michelle Gellar. They find Pat unconscious in the hallway, but it’s only after they wrestle her into Joyce’s bedroom that they realize she’s dead. As they try to keep the zombies out of Joyce’s room, where they all seem to be headed, the mask falls off the wall and Pat’s eyes open.

Downstairs, Oz and Cordelia emerge from their hiding place to find a mostly empty house. When Giles appears around a corner, they nearly kill him with ski poles by accident. Then Oz says:

Oz: “Looks like the dead man’s party’s moved upstairs.”

OMG THEY SAID THE TITLE OF THE THING IN THE THING!

Giles tells them that the zombies are after the mask in Joyce’s bedroom, which is tied to the zombie demon called Ovu Mobani, or “evil eye”. Just for shits and giggles, I looked up Igbo and Yoruba to English translators and learned that Mobani means basically nothing in either and Ovu means “moss” and “youth” respectively. I don’t know how accurate that is, but I had to be a pedant, as it is the nature of these recaps. It could mean evil eye in another language used in Nigeria, I have no idea.

Anyway, the mask, when put on by a zombie, makes the zombie into the zombie demon itself. Which isn’t awesome, because Pat is like, thirty inches from the mask. She gets up, shoves Joyce, and puts the mask on.

This is the part of the crystal healing workshop where I usually skip out.

Demon-Pat’s main power seems to be super strength and eyes that blind you like a camera flash. Buffy pushes her out the window, and they both tumble into the backyard while Joyce bludgeons the living ass out of a zombie with a baseball bat. I like that Joyce’s home defense system is a baseball bat.

Battling with a zombie on the stairs, Giles tells Oz to go to Buffy and let her know that the source of the demon’s power is its eyes. Oz makes it out there just in time to see Buffy stab “Pat” in the eyes with a shovel. Because Buffy isn’t stupid, Giles. Once Pat is vanquished, all the zombies disappear. Oz, in his Oz way, tells Buffy:

Oz: “Never mind.”

In the aftermath, Joyce asks Buffy if this is what she usually does, and Buffy assures her that this was pretty tame. Then everyone hugs, and all is forgiven, still without anyone asking Buffy a damn thing about why she disappeared. Let’s just ignore this, they seem to say with their embracing arms, and move on. Giles, looking on, seems just as confused as I am.

It’s daytime again, and Snyder is in his office, getting ready for a meeting with the mayor. Giles pays Snyder a visit, attempting to reason with him about Buffy returning to school. Snyder won’t budge, and says Giles can take it up with the city council. Giles fires back that he plans to take it up with the state supreme court, which…you know, Giles, you can’t start with the supreme court. You actually do have to start with the school board, sue them, and go from there. But whatever. Giles tells Snyder that if Buffy isn’t allowed back at school, he’ll make life difficult for Snyder in a professional capacity. When Snyder still isn’t swayed, Giles grabs him by the tie and shoves him into a filing cabinet, all with a very threatening, very cheerful smile.

At the Espresso Pump, Willow is telling Buffy about her progress with witchcraft, and forgives Buffy for running away.

Buffy: “You’re really enjoying this whole moral superiority thing, aren’t you?”

Willow: “It’s like a drug!”

Buffy: “Fine, okay. I’m the bad. I can take my lumps…for a while.”

This devolves into a playful exchange of sometimes misogynist insults, and the episode closes with everyone still blaming Buffy for running away.

Okay, it might seem like I’m being hard on everyone here, and not taking into account how worried people are when someone runs away. Having witnessed and experienced the fallout of a young relative who ran away for just a few days, I can only imagine that a loved one going missing for months is an even more hellish nightmare. But in this episode it wasn’t a case of Buffy just running off because she was sad or mad. She ran away because she was told she didn’t have a home anymore. She felt responsible for the deaths of Angel and Ms. Calendar, and she’d endangered the lives of her friends just by being around them. To Buffy’s mind, being close to her friends would hurt them. She was facing a murder charge, and had no idea that she’d been cleared. Support from her mother was no longer an option. Buffy did what she thought she had to, and her hand was pretty much forced.

The fact that her loved ones knew this, and either wouldn’t acknowledge it or, in Joyce’s case, flat out disavowed any responsibility, makes this episode pretty hard to watch. The only real support Buffy gets from anyone is from Cordelia and Giles, and they’re mostly silent on the subject.

This episode is one I don’t rewatch often, because it bums me out.