Ally Writes

"Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder." ― E.B. White

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Election Day Thoughts

I posted this earlier today on Facebook and Twitter, but thought I’d share it here, too. So, for what it’s worth, here are my Election Day thoughts:

I know it can be tempting right now to say that the country now needs to unite, to set our differences aside and come together under the chosen president. And I’m sure sentiments like that are said with the best of intentions. But I think it’s important to remember that half of the country is in mourning right now. And when someone is grieving, the best, most respectful thing you can do for them is to sit quietly and listen as they pour out their fears and sadness, their confusion and anger.

This election is not like other elections, and there are a number of reasons for that. For starters, we were saying goodbye to President Barack Obama, a man whose own election eight years ago was historic and ground breaking. A man who inspired hope in so many Americans. A man who epitomized relationship and family goals along with First Lady Michelle Obama. This First Family – this incredibly beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful family – showed the black men and women of this country that they are valued and that this country that they were forced to bleed and die for belongs to them, too.

This election was different because we saw a woman have a real, very likely shot at the presidency for the first time ever in history. She was a real woman who came with flaws, but who also came with a list of qualifications a mile long. In less than 100 years, women have gone from having no vote and no voice in this country to having the chance to cast their vote for an extremely qualified woman. This was a moment in history that had never happened before, but will hopefully happen again, and with different results.

And then there is Donald Trump. A man with no political or military background. A man who infused hate throughout his campaign with half-formed thoughts and run-on sentence sound bites. A man who gleefully talked about sexually assaulting women, and who spewed lie after lie about minorities and immigrants; whose rhetoric was not based on statistics or facts but on fear, frustration, and hate. A man who went on to win the Electoral College, though it appears not the popular vote of the people.

In 2016, half of America voted for a blatantly racist, sexist, and bigoted man to rule the free world, while the other half of America wept. Less than 100 years after women earned their right to vote and less than 150 years after black men did, America elected someone who has proven time and time again that he is not fit to be our president.

But he is our president now. And that revelation – and the shock and anger and fear that comes with it – will take some time to work through. And by ‘time’ I don’t mean a day or a month or even the next four years. Because Americans didn’t just turn out to vote for a man this election. Americans voted for an ideology. And for the half of the country that did not vote for Donald Trump, the popularity of that ideology is cause for mourning.

We mourn because the country is not united, and it is not safe. It is not safe for minorities. For immigrants. For women. For our LGBTQI friends and family members. The vote yesterday not only reinforced the disunity that has been churning for so long, but gave it legs and gave it legitimacy. And it is a disservice to your fellow Americans to expect them to buck up and perpetuate a false notion of unity just because you don’t feel comfortable with or can't understand their anger, their hurt, their fear, and their feelings of betrayal.

So, I implore you: before you open your mouth or start typing on your keyboard announcing the need to unite and respect our new president – a man who has shown no respect to anyone else – just be still. Be still and listen. This country and this vote has taken away so much from so many – don’t take away one’s right to grieve and be angry and be sad and process these results in their own way and in their own time. Give your fellow Americans that much.

[allywritesstories]

On the second week of The Bachelor, the group dates have started, and so have the insecurities.

A few of us Just About Write staffers discuss The Bachelor, Season 20, Episode 2.

[allywritesstories]

All's fair in love and war... and behind the scenes of The Bachelor. Monday night was the first night of our hero Ben's journey to find his wife, and it started off with a chicken enthusiast, a tiny horse, and a unicorn.

Me and a few other Just About Write staffers discuss Week 1 of The Bachelor, Season 20.

[allywritesstories]

The hour has come for everybody, for all institutions of the public sector and the private sector to work to get rid of racism. And now if we are to do it we must honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been disseminated all over our nation. One is the myth of time. It is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice…. There is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I am sorry to say this morning that I am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme rightists of our nation—the people on the wrong side—have used time much more effectively than the forces of good will. And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, 'Wait on time.'

Martin Luther King, Jr., "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution (March 31, 1968)" in A Testament of Hope

[allywritesstories]

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Excerpt from "Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community" (1967)

[beyonce-knowles-carter]

Coming in 2016

[allywritesstories]

YES.

[allywritesstories]

Scandal Episode Six Review: You Got Served

You know Olivia’s desperate when she calls in Leo to be her fixer. Scandal was off and running this episode with Leo trying to work his brand of fixer magic, and Olivia arguing him every step of the way because well, she’s Olivia.

Leo is trying to do damage control to Olivia’s image and prepare her for the impending congressional hearing that’s on the docket because a merry band of senators (including First Lady/Senator Mellie) is actively working to impeach Fitz.

Can I just say what an idiot Fitz is? He gets all haughty and self-righteous with David Rosen. “I haven’t done anything wrong!” he exclaims, like we haven’t been watching this show from the get-go. Fitz, I would count all the ways you’ve done wrong but we’d be here all night long. So, I’ll just mention how you KILLED a Supreme Court justice because she was going to expose that you hadn’t actually been voted into the presidency by the people! Okay, and one more: you shot down a plane of innocents! Now I’m done.

So, while Mellie is giddily helping to get Fitz impeached, Leo is trying to make Olivia look like a woman of the people. This was not his first plan. He had wanted to spin it as a true love story, where Olivia had fallen head over heels in teenage oozy love with the president. But she wasn’t having it, so instead he has to spin her as a woman who doesn’t have closetfuls of designer clothes and subsists on popcorn and wine alone.

Meanwhile poor Mellie’s euphoria at divorcing Fitz and stealing his presidency is short-lived because she’s asked to step down from the judiciary committee. You know that pesky conflict of interest issue. So she decides to let the bomb drop that Fitz gave Olivia that gorgeous gold and diamond ring. The family heirloom ring, passed down from his grandmother. And the press goes wild. Impeachment proceedings are looking promising now.

So, now Olivia’s forced to use Leo’s original spin plan even though she’s not entirely comfortable with it. When she appears on national tv to discuss the affair, she drops some serious truth. “I wish I’d never laid eyes on him.” They’ve been showing that clip all week in previews, but I was really assuming that it was a clip out of context just to entice us to watch. But it turns out it was totally in context and that is exactly what she says and what she means. She wishes she never laid eyes on him because then they wouldn’t have fallen in love. She wouldn’t have fallen for a married man and found it impossible to fall out of love with him. She delivers what is probably the most heartbreakingly real, true to self, monologue of the series and it was achingly beautiful.

For one brief moment, it seems like these two love birds might actually be home free, but then the whole issue of Olivia’s kidnapping last season and the fact that the president went to war for her comes up. Apparently, the judiciary committee got their hands on some transcripts of conversations between Fitz and the CIA director that discuss it in great detail. Or at least enough detail that Fitz being impeached for going to war for his mistress becomes a very real possibility.

So, of course, the only thing to do now is for Fitz to go groveling to Cyrus and get him to come back. Fitz almost ruins it all of course, because, well, he’s Fitz. He starts out disingenuous but Cyrus sees right through the nonsense and calls Fitz on his BS. That leads to a really touching moment when Cyrus basically tears Fitz apart by telling him all the ways he carried him for the past 17 years of his political career. But Fitz has moves too, and he pulls out all the ways he noticed Cyrus over the years, all the times he saw how Cyrus carried him, and that his biggest mistake was forgetting that Cyrus is family. Cue the waterworks! Cyrus is crying, Fitz is crying, I’m crying, the whole of the Twitterverse was crying. So many moments crammed into 43 minutes.

So, Cyrus is back, Elizabeth North is out, Olivia and Fitz are headed for a blissful ever-after (maybe?), and we have to wait until next week for more!

A few honorable mentions of the episode:

-That crazy lawyer that Fitz hired on David Rosen’s recommendation. She flung so many zingers at poor Abby and Elizabeth North that I’m surprised their heads didn’t explode.

-Marcus Walker. Seriously. Can I just stare at him all day? What a beautiful, talented man. More of him, please.

-Jake’s new/old love interest who pulled no punches when Olivia showed up all doe-eyed at Jake’s door looking for advice. “The TV does you no favors,” she says, smiling benignly and walking away sipping her coffee while wearing Jake’s button-down shirt and presumably nothing else. Claws are out, ladies. It’s gonna be an interesting season.

[allywritesstories]

Blindspot Episode Five Review: Split the Law

This week’s episode began with a reminder of why I have a morbid fear of taxis – because you may just be kidnapped by the CIA and tortured. But enough on that minor plot point.

So, Kurt Weller, being all giddy and over-zealous with the fact that Jane’s DNA matches his missing childhood friend, Taylor’s, invites Jane over for a very awkward dinner with himself, his sister, and his sister’s son. Jane understandably freaks out and leaves abruptly. It was kind of a jerk move to begin with for Weller to be forcing the Taylor identity on her anyway, especially considering that episode four cliff-hangered with the fact that Jane’s dental information shows that she may in fact not be Taylor after all.

But he’s believing what he wants to believe, which actually works to his advantage in terms of character development in my mind. I mean, he’s starting to seem almost human now instead of the wooden robot I’ve grown accustomed to. Not saying he’s totally won me over yet, but he has been growing on me over the past few episodes.

Meanwhile, Jane delivers one of the best lines of the show so far to Weller: “I see the way you look at me, and I don’t know how to be this person that you lost.” I think my heart broke a little on that one.

We also learned this episode that Weller is a terrible hostage negotiator. Negotiating for the release of hostages in what seemed (on first appearance) to be a bank heist, is not his strong suit, as a good majority of the hostages got killed. Granted, this wasn’t really his fault, since it wasn’t really a bank heist, but still. He should definitely stick to sulking and skulking about with big guns rather than the parts of his profession that require conversing.

There was a really intense stand-off between the FBI and the CIA this episode and we find one of the Weller’s team members is trading secrets to the CIA for cash. Oooh intrigue. The CIA deputy director is of course a horrible bad guy intent on taking Jane out (he almost assassinated her this episode), but the FBI and its assistant director has her own secrets too. So, it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out and just how many of both agencies secrets are tattooed on Jane’s body.  

Overall, this episode was a lot of the same as we’ve seen so far with this show. Tension is mounting on the team as everyone’s conflicted about what to do with Jane, Weller’s getting far too close to her and not thinking straight, and Jane herself continues to be a very inked enigma. Or the “illustrated woman” as the creeper CIA guy called her. But I like my nickname better.

[allywritesstories]

Scandal Episode Four Review: Dog-Whistle Politics

So, the past three episodes of Scandal have felt like one, very long, very drawn-out culmination in what finally happened this past Thursday. I kept waiting for something substantial to review in this three episode to-be-continued-esque arc. Sure, all of these episodes contained the usual witty zingers, unrealistically fast-talking OPA-ers, and plenty of drama, but nothing was really happening.

Okay, yes, in episode two (aptly titled “Yes”), Olivia finally admitted to the press and the world that she and Fitz were having an affair, after spending the entire episode literally running away. And with Jake no less. Poor Jake. Can I just say how unfair this has all been on him? Obviously, he’s the better man than Fitz and I will be over the moon with happiness when Olivia finally realizes he’s the one for her. Which I hope will happen soon. But probably won’t.

Honestly, episode three was entirely forgettable. It was just 43 minutes of dealing with the aftermath of Olivia’s confession, all her colleagues freaking out, and the White House trying to figure out how to spin this. Abby’s angry because Olivia lied to her, and now Abby’s job is on the line and she looks like a fool in front of the press because while she was denying the affair and trying to coordinate an elaborate sit-down interview between the mousy Anderson Cooper wannabe and the President and First Lady, Olivia’s telling all. Well, not all. Just the one word, but it was a powerful word that really slapped Abby and Abby’s ability to do her job in the face. But not to worry, by the end of the episode, Olivia and Abby have hugged it out (figuratively, of course), and Abby is throwing Olivia under the bus as the official White House spokesperson, with Olivia’s blessing that this is the right route to take.

This leads us to episode four, entitled “Dog-Whistle Politics,” where finally something happened. OPA finally got its act together and started defending Olivia to the press, going on every talk show and news outlet and slamming them all for their bigotry-laded, racist remarks against Olivia. In what was the highlight of the episode for me, OPA officially hired Marcus Walker to join their team, and I am so happy we’ll be seeing more of this guy. The actor playing him, Cornelius Smith, Jr., is brilliant and clever, and making him a regular cast member is pretty much the best thing ever.

Quinn’s attempted recruitment of Marcus to OPA was hilariously abysmal and made for some great television too. She basically channeled Harrison (RIP, dear Harrison), and almost verbatim delivered the same flashy Gladiator speech to Marcus that Harrison delivered to her in the series premiere. It backfired spectacularly though, and Marcus delivered a great anti-Gladiator speech right back at her. Of course, he ended up joining the team anyway, as we knew he would, but he’s doing it on his own terms which is going to lead to some interesting drama later this season no doubt.

Episode four culminated in the President walking hand-in-hand with Olivia out of her apartment and taking her to dinner, much to the shock of everyone. Mellie, meanwhile, is busy plotting his impeachment behind his back.

Another important part of this episode was Jake rediscovering a particularly interesting love interest in Paris, who he was “married” to (or at least undercover married), and whom he had thought dead. I have really mixed feelings about this love interest. On the one hand, I firmly believe Jake and Olivia should be together, but on the other hand, I’ve hated seeing Jake pine away for Olivia while she clearly wants Fitz, and Jake being reduced to a bit of a puppy when she’s around. So, having someone else catch his attention while Olivia’s predisposed with the subpar Fitz isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Overall, I’ll be really glad when this particular segment of the Fitz-Olivia story arc is over, and we can get back to where Scandal thrives: with the crazy, twisty antics of Olivia’s clients at the forefront of each episode. And of course, hopefully, with Olivia finding her way back to Jake. But I might just be dreaming on that one.

[allywritesstories]

Blindspot Season 1, Episode 2: A Stray Howl – Review

It’s nice to see Blindspot and its main characters starting to settle into their own in this second episode after a shaky premiere that left a lot to be desired.

Though this was another action-packed episode complete with car chases, lots of gunfire, and some pretty traumatic explosions, the emphasis this week was on character development.

Agent Kurt Weller, whom I griped about last week, got his own little backstory, and it was nice to see the actor start to sink his teeth into the role. I wouldn’t say this was a complete 180 from the pilot, but there was definitely some nice character growth going on. Last week, Agent Weller was wooden and non-responsive. This week, that hasn’t gone away, but they have added another layer to him.

It seems that his childhood friend, a little girl named Taylor, went missing when they were ten years old. Weller’s father was blamed for the kidnapping/disappearance of this girl, and Weller’s been estranged from him for some time now, also believing his father responsible.

This episode centers around Weller’s belief that Jane Doe is in fact his missing childhood friend, Taylor. He’s basing this fervent belief on the fact that there is a scar on the back of Jane’s neck that matches a scar Taylor had, and also “her eyes are the same.” Well, that’s not a lot to go on, but he feels, he knows, that it’s her. We end the episode with Weller’s boss letting him know that she’s sent for Taylor’s case file so they can compare DNA. Of course, this leads to a question: they supposedly already searched all known databases for Jane Doe’s DNA and came up empty… if she was in fact the missing Taylor, they would have already found this match, right?

All in all, this seems a good way for them to set Weller up for disappointment when it turns out she is not Taylor after all. Or, even more likely knowing how writers of these shows operate, she IS Taylor but the DNA was switched out so they’ll think she’s not, only to find out she is during sweeps week or the finale.

But back to Weller’s progression as a well-rounded character. We got to see a bit of a humorous side this episode as he made fun of his sister for her lack of skills when it comes to making breakfast foods. We got to see a bit of a tender side as he interacted with his nephew. And we got to see what appeared to be some deep pain and emotion as he recounted memories of his missing childhood friend, and the burden he’s felt since her disappearance. There were even some moments where he seemed to be holding back tears. It was a nice start, and I hope the show creators continue to give him these moments so the audience can start to believe he’s a real character and not a wooden cut-out just filling space.

Jane Doe goes through some nice character development of her own this episode, though she didn’t really need as much on this front since Jaimie Alexander is everything and her skills sucked you on from the first moment. Her memory continues to come back in fragments and as this happens, she struggles with wondering who she was before. What if she was a bad person? What if she did something unforgivable, as one of her new memories seems to suggest? Jane Doe grappling with this fear leads to several sweet interactions with Weller who, already convinced she’s Taylor, firmly tells her she’s a good person, no matter what she’s remembering.  

I still wish they’d stop showing us Jane’s naked body revolving around in a life-size scanning machine during each episode. I mean, we get it, you had to scan her whole body to get photos of the tattoos for analysis, but we’re not going to forget you did that. You really don’t have to keep showing that over and over. We also won’t forget how beautiful she is, so stop reducing her to an object, and let’s get on with the plot.

They also spent a good amount of time this episode setting up tensions between the agents assigned to Jane Doe’s case. Weller is all for bringing her into the field with him (though he should really stop leaving her in stair wells, because for the second episode in a row, that seems to be where she gets in the most trouble). Whereas, other agents on the team are less inclined to utilize Jane, or to even pursue decoding the tattoos for fear it’s a trap.

I find myself actually looking forward to next week’s episode after watching this one. Despite the continued ridiculousness of the plot, and my hesitance about Weller, it’s shaping up to be a fast-paced show with an interesting, if not totally believable, plot.

[allywritesstories]

Blindspot Series Premiere Review

Let me start by saying there are a number of things to dislike about Blindspot, the plot holes the size of Detroit potholes and an emphasis on striking cinematography to distract from the lack of intelligent dialogue are among my top complaints. And yet, Blindspot possesses a certain je ne sais quoi that pulls you into the ridiculous story line and leaves you wanting to know what happens next. Even if you hate yourself for it.

We start with an abandoned bag in Times Square that has a tag labeled, “Call the FBI.” The beat cop that discovers it does just that. Cut to Times Square evacuated and one lone bomb squad dude approaching the bag by himself. Just as he’s about to open it, the bag opens from the inside, and a very tattooed, dazed, and confused lady (our main character) pops out. Can I just say that for how disoriented she was, she sure managed to get herself out of a zippered bag like a pro. Having never been put inside a zippered duffel bag myself, I can’t speak to how difficult it is or is not to get oneself out of this predicament, but I would think (especially because we find out later she has also been heavily drugged and has no memory), it would be pretty darn difficult. But I digress.

One of the big selling points of this show (at least in the network and show’s creators’ minds) seems to be the need for our main character (played by the amazing Jaimie Alexander who you may recognize as Lady Sif in Thor) to be completely naked an extraordinary amount of the time. I mean, we get it. She’s tattooed from neck to toe (her face is remarkably tattoo-free), and these tattoos play a vital role in the shaky plot, but come on guys. One can only hope that she’s allowed to wear more clothes as the season progresses and that Jaimie Alexander’s stellar acting ability and the complex character she’s impeccably portraying become the main focus rather than her body.

We meet our other lead character, FBI Agent Kurt Weller in a scene that serves no other purpose than to show off his awesome tough-guy-ness. In this scene, we see him raiding a house where multiple women (one pregnant) and a baby are being held captive by a man who’s shouting at them in an alcoholic/cocaine-induced rage. Agent Weller, along with a few other nameless agents, saves the day and then this scene and these distressed women dissolve into nothingness as we then spend the rest of the episode following Agent Weller and our tattooed Jane Doe around. It’s one of my biggest annoyances and, more importantly, evidence of poor storytelling when a scene like this, which doesn’t further the storyline one iota exists. There are a thousand ways to show us Weller’s brawn, brains, and braveness (if he even has the latter two), without having to stoop to a rushed scene that doesn’t lead anywhere.

I’ve never seen Sullivan Stapleton (the actor playing Agent Weller) in anything before so it’s hard for me to say whether the entirely underwhelming Weller is the fault of the actor or the writers. His monotone, flat-affect responses to Jane Doe, to the fact that she has his name tattooed on her back, to everything he encounters in this episode, would make him intensely unlikeable if he wasn’t completely forgettable.

Meanwhile, Jaimie Alexander is thriving in the role of Jane Doe, despite the ridiculousness of the plot she’s been given. She’s a striking actress, but it’s more than just her obvious beauty. The intensity with which she has dived into this role is captivating and she pulls you along for the ride. Her facial expressions are unnerving as her character battles against frustration at having no memory, pain because of the fresh tattoos all over her body, anger at being poked and prodded by the FBI, and surprise as pieces of who she is begin to surface. I started watching thinking, “she’ll always be Lady Sif to me!” but after one episode I’m like, “Lady Sif who?” She is Jane Doe. Her fragility and helplessness as a woman with no memory are perfectly counter-balanced by the fact that she’s a martial arts phenom, multi-linguist, the only female Navy SEAL ever, and all around badass.

So, though I maintain a high degree of reservation about this show, and hope the creators have some really clever ideas up their sleeves to bind up these gaping plot holes, I’ll keep watching. At least for now. If only because Jaimie Alexander is a goddess and I’m unabashedly hoping Jane Doe ends up killing Agent Weller off before mid-season.

Alisa Williams is a writer, reader, and parent to two 70-lb rescue pups. She serves as Spirituality Editor at SpectrumMagazine.org, blogs at AllyWritesStories, and tweets at @AWWritesStories.

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Scandal Season 5 Premiere Review - Mutually Assured Destruction

With the shocking (happy?) ending of the season 4 finale, it was no surprise that Shonda Rhimes hit the ground running with the season 5 opener of Scandal. For those of us that spend the entirety of Thursday evenings in Shondaland, it meant we had no chance to breathe until the clock struck 11. I mean, seriously, I think someone needs to do a study of the number of real life heart attacks that occur during #TGIT.

The Scandal premiere centered around a Princess Diana/Kate Middleton/Grace Kelly-esque storyline (heavy on the Princess Di). We meet Princess Emily, “America’s Princess,” who has a seemingly fairytale life, married to the Prince of Calidonia. In typical Shonda fashion, we get just a glimpse of this princess (enough to make us fall in love with her, too), before she’s killed off in a tragic car accident.

In the one scene where Princess Emily is alive and well, she has a pretty great run-in with Olivia and Abby in the bathroom where she overhears Abby talking about her.

Abby: “You know whose life I need? Princess Emily’s…She was a human rights lawyer, and now she gets to wear diamonds on her head. On her head, Liv.”

Olivia: “I think I’ll stick with being me.”

Abby: “I wonder what that life is like? You know, one day you’re a regular person and the next day you’re the most famous woman on the planet, and only because of who you’re in love with. Suddenly, that’s all you are…”

Side note: This, of course, is all foreshadowing what we have in store this season between the President and Olivia who have finally stepped out of the shadows into the sun. Well, sort of.

At this point, Princess Emily walks out of a bathroom stall, though how she and her poufy princess dress fit in there to begin with, I’m not sure.

Abby stops talking as Princess Emily emerges.

Princess Emily: “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to ease drop, it’s just people get weird when they see me, so I just, I was just going to try and stay in there until you left but then you started talking about me and I thought you’d want to know I was in there.”

These lines are delivered without a trace of anger or malice. Princess Emily’s earnestness comes through and you immediately feel for this girl. Abby apologizes and rushes out, and that leaves Olivia and Princess Emily. The Princess immediately recognizes Olivia, who apologizes again on Abby’s behalf, to which Emily replies:

“Oh, I’ve gotten used to it. For most of the world, I’m not a real person anymore. I stopped being a real person for people the moment the world found out I was marrying Richard. To them, I’m not human, I’m just a spectacle. And I don’t think they would say half the things they say if they knew they were hurting an actual person. Do you?”

This is our only glimpse of Princess Emily as a real, live person, but like I said, it’s enough to make us fall in love with her. Over the course of the episode, the fairytale that was her life unravels and we see a real girl with real issues – she was having an affair with her bodyguard, her mother-in-law (the Queen of Calidonia) had her murdered (of course it was the mother-in-law). And though the Princess was married to a man who was head-over-heels in love with her, she wasn’t happy. As the Queen states later, “He loved that girl. Worshipped her. Blindly. She could do no wrong where he was concerned.”

This seems both romantic and sad, and eerily echoes Princess Emily’s earlier words. After all, a woman who can do no wrong in the eyes of her husband isn’t a real, flawed human being either.

The moral of this episode seems to be “fairytales aren’t real and there is no happy ending.” As I mentioned above, I think we’ll see this play out over the course of the season in the relationship between Olivia and Fitz which, as the episode closes, is leaked to the news media with evidence this time in the form of photos.

I for one, really hope Olivia can kick her Fitz habit this season. She deserves better than Fitz, who though he has his moments, has proven himself a coward in every romantic relationship he enters into. He’s been a coward in his relationship with Mellie, though she’s always had his back in her own way. He’s been a coward with Olivia, continually regulating her to the shadows, making and breaking promises, and trying to tell her what she can and cannot do in her life and her job. And he was a coward with that intern from season one who he slept with and discarded (though she did get a golden retriever out of it, so there’s that), and who was then murdered, which he never seemed particularly torn up about.

So, here’s hoping that by the end of season five, Olivia and Jake have reunited. #TeamJake all the way, baby.

A few other honorable mention relationships:

I’m beyond happy that Quinn is back in the land of the white hats, even if hers is a little tinged and bloody now after traipsing through the dark side. Sometimes you have to leave the family to find yourself, and Quinn has really grown into her own which is great to see.

In one of the ending moments of this episode, Huck turns up on Jake’s door asking for his help, and that is going to create an interesting dynamic this season. Huck has relied on Olivia and only Olivia for so long to fix him, and she’s great at it, but she can’t this time. She’s battling her own demons (*cough cough* Mr. President), and her brokenness is preventing her from helping lead Huck back into the light. But I think Jake is more than up for this job. After all, he and Huck aren’t all that dissimilar. They are both B613 survivors. They would both die to protect Olivia. They both try really hard to be good (and fail at it a lot of the time).

Elizabeth North is racking up so many enemies it’s hard to know who will be her downfall this season, if she has a downfall at all. That woman is power-hungry and cunning, and she’s not afraid to destroy anyone standing in her way. Her vicious take-down of the First Lady was one of the best moments of the episode:

“First, let’s be clear. You did not do anything for me, you did that for you. You only ever do anything for your own benefit. Second, you didn’t take me in. I was your prisoner, I was your puppet, I was your bitch. Third, your payment, was that I got you elected. You are sitting in that chair, in this office, a United States Senator because of me. That is how I repaid you. Forth, one can only be betrayed if there’s loyalty first. I was never loyal to you, and you were never loyal to me. I don’t think you’ve ever been loyal to anyone. So, when I made my move on the ladder of political success all on my own, I wasn’t even thinking about you. Because you don’t matter to me. And now you also don’t matter to the most powerful man on the face of the earth. But guess who does. Me.”

I do miss Elizabeth North’s epic hairstyles of last season though. She’s growing it out and it’s all soft and wavy, which is in stark juxtaposition to her sharp and savvy personality.

Lastly, the Mellie/Fitz relationship seems to have finally hit its breaking point. Fitz served Mellie with divorce papers (apparently when you’re the leader of the free world, you get to serve your own papers). He was pretty much as vindictive as possible, serving them right after her swearing in as junior senator of Virginia, and delivering this particularly caustic diatribe after she says she’ll never sign, “You have so many qualities I despise, but I do admire your brilliance. So, do the math, Mellie. Fighting this, fighting me, will mean both of us deploy every weapon in our arsenal. Every lie, every secret…mutually assured destruction. We’ll be ruined. Now me, hey, I’m a war hero, governor, two-term president, my bucket list is done. You? Your biggest accomplishment so far is waving and smiling… You’ll sign.”

Mutually assured destruction will definitely be a major theme this season. Mellie/Fitz. Fitz/Olivia. Elizabeth North/the White House. I can’t wait to see who survives…and more importantly, who doesn’t.

Alisa Williams is a writer, reader, and parent to two 70-lb rescue pups. She serves as Spirituality Editor at SpectrumMagazine.org, blogs at AllyWritesStories, and tweets at @AWWritesStories.

[allywritesstories]

That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it....I had never understood what 'despair' meant, and I am not sure that I understand it now, but I understood that year.

Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That

[allywritesstories]

To Jon Stewart: Thank You.

I was 14 when The Daily Show with Jon Stewart began. Old enough to be interested in politics, but not yet old enough to know what effect politics really had on my daily life. Jon Stewart showed me that. He helped me learn to think critically and that even the most complex idea can be understood with the right teacher and a little effort on my part. He taught me that it is okay to find humor in tragedy, but that sometimes setting aside the jokes and buffoonery to poignantly express your frustration and anger is the best course in a situation.

His authenticity and understanding of the issues at hand could not be masked by the “fake news program” he hosted. And though he and Comedy Central described it as such, the word “fake” couldn’t be less accurate.

For those of us in the first wave of Millennials, Jon had a particular appeal. We grew up in the internet age – instant information (if not necessarily knowledge or wisdom) at our fingertips. We are a sarcastic and perhaps jaded group. We have always known there to be more to a story than what our teachers or pastors or parents tell us. And with a few key strokes, we had the proof.

Perhaps it was our cynical, “don’t take anything at face value” approach to life that first drew us to Jon Stewart. We came for the laughs and the caustic diatribes, but it’s not why we stayed. We found in Stewart a witty older brother, a wise and wizened father figure, and an ally in our fights for social justice. It’s not just that Stewart got us, it’s that he respected us as equals when so few adults did (or do). He didn’t just expect us to rise to our potential – he worked under the assumption that we had already risen. And in so doing, we did.

The Pew Research Center reported back in December 2014 that young adults were getting a significant amount of their news from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. That same report mentioned that we are more informed on news and politics and have a better understanding of complex issues (like Super PACs) thanks to these satirical news outlets. The American Press Institute has reported similar findings.

I think even Millennials were a little surprised by the findings in these studies. I know I was. But we shouldn’t have been. For all Jon’s direct attacks on Fox News and its ilk, his greater victory was the sneak attack against ignorance and complacency. He has led the charge on creating an entire generation of well-informed individuals who can speak articulately and express their views with authenticity (and just a touch of sarcasm).

An entire generation owes Jon Stewart a debt of gratitude as high as bull$h!t mountain. We wish you hadn’t left The Daily Show – that you could stay with us for another 16 years and another 16 after that. But we know that you can’t, and we understand. And you don’t need to worry about us. Even though we didn’t want you to go, it’s okay, because we’re ready. We just spent 16 years at Jon Stewart’s School of Zen, and we’ve graduated with honors.

So, thank you, Jon Stewart. I know you’ll probably never see or read this yourself, but even so, the gratitude I feel bears saying and repeating: thank you. I’ll end by quoting your own words: “Nothing ends. It’s just a continuation. It’s a pause in the conversation.” We’ll pick up our half of the conversation now. You’ve given us a voice to do so. And we are eternally grateful.

Alisa Williams is a writer, reader, and parent to two 70-lb rescue pups. She serves as Spirituality Editor at SpectrumMagazine.org, blogs at AllyWritesStories, and tweets at @AWWritesStories.

[thetinhouse-deactivated20180604]

The Middle of Things: Advice for Young Writers - The New Yorker

As you age, you’ll notice that time is the weirdest thing in the world, that surprises are relentless, and that getting older is not a stroll but an ambush.

[veggieblt]

So I was walking around campus and I found this on the sewer drain outside my dorm.

[mickey-magical]