Summer Reading; CF UPDATES!!!!!!!!!

Had such a pleasantly wonderful day today!  It was the last day of the most insufferable portion of my job; I had the afternoon off from work; I visited my dear, dear friends and had a fucking blast; got to indulge in my favorite coffee; recieved a generous, kind gift from a new friend and colleague; and made a healthy and tasty dinner (with some help from the Roche Bros. ready-to-go food...).

The gift I recieved was a mystery novel intended for summer reading, because SUMMER IS COMING (unlike in one of my new favorite shows where WINTER IS COMING)!!!!!

So, in the spirit of gifting reading materials for summer pleasure, I have plenty of new (or, rather, new-to-the-blog) Cedar Falls!!

For your reading pleasure:

Fucking Early -- takes place early in the morning after where we left off with The Dinner Epilogue. A G&M

Mr. & Mrs. Nolan Delaney-- we take a break from the Jonah Delaney clan for a bit and delve a little further into Nolan's life with these next vignettes.  This one is a sexy little throwaway, but I simply love it, it makes me feel giddy and sexy and makes me love these characters to pieces!

Love at First Sight-- Now go BACK IN TIME and see Nolan when he's first met the woman of his dreams.  See Also a younger Jonah and a toddler Viola.  It's like, you want it to be creepy, don't you?  Like, you're just waiting for something inappropriate to happen. lol.

Love at First Sight; Nolan--  See how Nolan Met Zahra!  Hearts hearts hearts.

Love at First Sight; Zahra-- Girl likes Boy.  Super fun!  I adore Zahra.  She is so sassy!

After the Eight Am-- Back to the present with a Maggie and Grey Scene.  The adjustment to married life ain't gunna be so easy for these two!

After the Eight AM; Vamanos-- Grey is trying, he really is, but...

Wedding Planning-- Some more Avalon... and some over-sharing! lol.

Happy Summer!  Lots more forthcoming, so get yourselves up-to-fucking-date!!

***Holy Cedar Falls Update!!!***

The refrain so familiar to those in the theatre, that it has become slogan-ized on t-shirts, stickers, mugs, and pins!

Okay folks, I am about to enter Hell Week #1 of my spring.  Break a leg, right?  Keep your fingers crossed.

You may not be seeing alot of me. 

So, to tide you over, check out the CEDAR FALLS BLOG, and get some pleasure reading done!  There are TWELVE, count 'em, TWELVE installments of FAMILY DINNER.  Velvet arranges a little getting-to-know-you for the newly weds, and we see the evening from multiple perspectives and characters.  Fun Fun.

Um, they are numbered, so I'd go in order, were I the reader. 

Starting with ONE, in the usual fashion!

ENJOY!!

(incidentally, I have a few faves, but I especially love the idea of gross-out chicken covered in vignette # 12, as well as the engagement story, awww.)

and even worse than regular rehearsal...

Magnets too, apparently!

Oh my!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

NEW CF

Hi!  I am super excited to keep this rolling, so here are a few more Cedar falls updates.

Some backstory on JOnah and Viola in Principal Delaney;  (He's our PAL, remember that old spelling trick? lol.)

Tensions crop up in a recent flashback with Nolan and Grey just after Nolan has figured out just who is wooing Maggie in She's A Good Girl

Back to the honeymoon with Catholics and Croissants ~ one of the author's favorite vignettes, btw.

And another guilty pleasure Author fave is the sex scene in this glimpse into The Other Woman (and learn more about our favorite Villain), the infamous heiress Threnody Aschere in Nature Versus Nature; In Her Sights.  I know we haven't seen alot of Ms. Aschere, but this peripheral character is lurking, watching, and likely to play an interesting role.  She seems to exist to fuck things up for folks, lol.  We shall see.

Happy Reading.

Um.  Is anyone following?  Can anyone let me know if the jumping around in time and character and storyline is fun or if it is just confusing?  Keep me posted.

~Beth

Photo Blog

Every now and then I like to do a photo heavy post.  I wonder if I should make this a weekly tradition; a phot installment.  my voice through visual representation.  

Meh.  

maybe I'll just do it whenever I please.

Like today!

This week I've been collecting images as I research and poke around for my cedar falls writing.  As you know, everyone in Cedar Falls has secrets, and many of those secrets are of a sexual nature.  Affairs, infidelity, deviances, fetishes, illegal acts, immoral acts, betrayals, deception--- ahh, all the scintillating. scandalous, salcious things about the sex act.  

Well, i got to thinking how very universal this is.  We all tend to feel like, in the moment, that we are the only ones experienceing it.  Like it is new, or special, or unique; but if we are to be perfectly frank and utterly post-modern about it:  It's all been done before.

It is timeless.  It is universal.  It happens.  It has happened before, it is happening now, it will happen again ad infinitum. 

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in writing that I can't remember why my characters are making these awful choices.  Or I get so detached from reality that I have to, like, remind myself of the pain and shock and betrayal one would feel to discover a partner's infidelity.  Or the guilt one partner may feel over 'fucking up' and sleeping with someone else (i won't say 'by mistake', but by lapse of judgment?  or in a moment of weakness?).

I puzzle out, on an almost daily basis, whether or not people can love more than one person truly.  If someone who is having an affair can also be committed to their spouse and marriage.  If kinky fetishes that are extra-marital are compulsions or fundamental needs or just for funsies.  

now, I don't have answers, oh hell no!  Lol.  I have opinions, many of them, and I have history and human nature to look to for inspiration and motivation and interpretation, but no answers.  

So, from time to time I do provocative google image searches to serve as writing prompts or to refresh the page of my imagination, if you will.  

For your enjoyment, and maybe a sneak preview of some themes\storylines that will be wandering into Cedar Falls before the end, please to enjoy-- the photo blog!

This was a post secret I grabbed ages ago because it so completely summed up my Velvet character in a nutshell.  I am also enamored of the mis-spellings on post secret cards.  Halfs instead of halves.  Plus I am a sucker for a redhead...

I love every fucking thing about this image.  The color, the tone, the questions!  It reminds me of Jonah velvet and Viola, but it also makes me want to write a hundred other stories too!  LOVE LOVE LOVE!

Heeeheehee.  Kids are a-DOR-able!

Decisions, decisions, right?

yup.  So fun.

whaaaaaaaaaat???? so weird I couldn't NOT love this.

Would you want to fuck a guy who hides under a rug?  Just sayin...

Twix.  WTF?  Is the wife frigid?  Is that what I'm to gather?  Or am I overthinking a fun twix ad?

I dig these old pulp fiction novella covers!  Look at the tagline above the title!  Brills.

Fucking Brilliant.

The Romantic Infidelity.  I'd bet there's fog and a train station and a solitary tear down a dewy cheek.

I guess we're meant to understand that they're having an affair by the level of enjoyment they are experiencing?

Teen Group Sex! 

 

 

 

So Fucking Cute!!

Lol.  My fave. 

*Update*

* My friend Adam pointed out that putting the word UPDATE on things makes them seem wayyyy more interesting and imperative, so I went and did that!*

It has been a while, what with building a website and a summer theatre camp and directing three plays and working three jobs, but I have finally updated the Cedar Falls blog. 

I figure most of any new readers should have had time to catch up, right? 

Here are the three new vignettes:


So Are You In Love?
Velvet and Grace
Girltalk

These vignettes wrap up the flshback sequence where, um, velvet meets grace.  Or, well, more importantly, i suppose, we meet the character of Grace and establish her backstory with Jonah.

My instinct is to flash forward to the present again with something Jonah & Viola, but, alas, I don't have anything like that written just now, and am in no place to be writing new shit, so I think it'll be back to Maggie & Grey, who are about to go a-honeymooning. 

As Cedar Falls is a constant work in progress, I think I'm going to relax a little about the 'order' things need to go in.  It was a suggestion, and not  bad one at all, but, see, if I'm not done there is just no way to have a solid 'order', so why kill myself trying to figure it out?  Maybe one day, when\if I ever write all the vignettes I need\want to write, maybe when that dy comes I'll sit down and organize these bad boys into the most effective line-up, but for now?  I'll do my best to group things by theme or event and whatnot, but just embrace the skipping around in time.  Just fancy yourself a Scott Bakula, look in the mirror and say 'Oh Boy' and then jump in with both feet.  And if you have any questions or concersn or confusion?  PLEASE please please don't hesitate to ask!!  I'm your stogie smoking hologram with the brooklyn accent and the crazy little bee-boop handheld device that seems to constantly be on the fritz.

Ok. Went a lil nuts with the quantum leap references there for a hot second.  Apologies.  Man I loved that show.  Anyway, seriously, any questions\confusion, ask me.  A writer LOVES to tlk about their writing.  Alot.  For Real.  So.... yeah.

um.  is anyone reading it?  Just curious...

Red Haired Man

 

Found this cool pic in a google image search and it reminded me of good ole Cedar Falls!  Have you been keeping up with your trashy fiction reading?  I encourage you to check it out!

Good Things/ Everyone Has Secrets

I want this week to be over.  It is going to feel like the longest effing week.  Tomorrow night I look forward to seeing old friends, reuniting the PM productions gang!  On Thursday night I look forward to the Pigeon Holiday Potluck, but for goodness sake, I have to work a whole full long ass day right before both those fun gatherings, which makes me a lil grumpy.

I also just got off the phone with a couple of loan places and that makes my seriously consider learning how to tie a proper noose with my adorable pink scarf.

So I thought I'd blog about something that makes me happy, to cheer myself and get me through the rest of this day! 

Aaron.  Yeah, pathetic, right?  I know.  But He is great in so many ways, and I feel so blessed to have him.  We went out with a gift certificate to Not YOur Average Joe's last night, had ourselves a pitcher of Sangria and some apps, then headed over to the movie theatre to see the new TRON film (which I enjoyed despite myself.)

He is awesome pants.  A great date, a great friend, and really good company.  In the car I got to discussing my writing.  I said: "I have a dilemma and I need your advice."

And he was game.  I laid out my problem.  It's about the fire that killed Nolan & Jonah's parents.  I have long suspected that this fire was not the accident it appeared to be.
But.  Was I ready for the implications?

Aaron was so funny and great helping me work through my qualms about who started the fire, why it happened, and how it all went down.  He approved heartily of my decision to make this Caleb's big secret, and he's on board with the vision I have for Nolan too.  He says he wants me to finish the Jonah story so I can focus on Nolan.  I told him it doesn't really work like that. But he likes what I have going with everyone.  He told me he loved the idea, the rule, the caveat that Everyone in Cedar falls has a secret.  He says it seems so simple, but that it's really great fun and gives the writer so much to play with and propts so many ideas inside him. 

The praise felt damn good.

He has definite opinions on how Jonah's storyline should wrap-up, but he is a different visionary than I am, and I'm afraid I just can's leave Jonah paralyzed but alive for the rest of his days, no matter the poetic justice of it.  I just have other plans for the fella.

He also helped me make a final decision on the Vaughan Grey questionable paternity thing.  I think I'll insinuate and hint at and toy with the possibility, but in the end I think it is important that Jonah has really really committed incest, no ifs and or buts.  Father-daughter incest, not half-brother\half-sister incest. 

I am still pussying out on the Maggie\Grey soryline, but I don't think it can be helped.  They are following the romance novel trajectory, and in order to feel satisfaction I think I just gotta give them a happy ending.  I feel fiercely protective of them for some reason.  I will make their ride as bumpy as possible, but in the end I want to give them peace.

I know, I know.  Peace is boring.  I guess we'll see.

Poor Ben and Avalon, they're in a pickle.

And velvet.  Sheesh.

And then I have this wild plot development with Jonah and grace and Velvet that I'm not one hundred percent sure I'm behind. 

But it was really awesome to have aaron's help and advice.  I used to be able to bounce ideas off my bestie D, but the poor woman is one busy chica, and naturally fictional towns have taken a back, back, back seat to all the other things she has going on in her amazing world of motherhood, wifehood, studenthood, and personhood!


AND, just to let everyone know, I've sorta popped Nettie's cherry!  I have started using her to write vignettes!  I haven't actually completed one on her yet, but I've started two juicy ones.  Maybe today I will post the very first partial vignette I wrote on her, for your viewing pleasure and as a celebration of breaking-her-in!!
It is the beginning of a nolan Delaney stroyline and it was written the very same night that Aaron served as my brainstorm partner.  You will see a bookend piece with this theme a little later on, something I've written but can't post just yet.

This takes place when Nolan is younger.  Before he meets Zahra. 

Thanks Nettie, for proving every bit as easy to write on as my big lappy!

And keep in mind, folksicles, that this is in a very rough state :)

K, enjoy the first fruits of my labor with Nettie!

*************

Everyone in Cedar Falls had secrets.  Maybe no worse than anywhere else, maybe no better, but everyone had secrets in the sleepy little community of means, and somedays it seemed to Nolan Delaney that he knew far too many of them.

Colonel Jarrod sent money to the family his wife didn’t know about over seas, the one he’d made and abandoned when he was a general enlisted man.  Father Devereaux stole money from the collection boxes to buy shots at the Harp and Fiddle.  Mrs. Cashman was accustomed to providing oral sex for a better rate on her car insurance.  Principal Fredricks was a closeted lesbian afraid to come out for fear of losing her job and her children.  Luis the busboy stole items from people’s coats and purses—not for money but for the thrill of it.  Shauna the travel agent booked herself in rooms next to the attractive male clients she served when they traveled to tropical destinations, and would almost always arrange a way to get them into bed—married or not. 

The pharmacist was hooked on pain pills, the nurse at the elderly home was repulsed by dementia and depends.   The couples therapist was a swinger, the police chief was a racist.  The butcher was a money launderer, the baker used undocumented aliens in her shop, and the candlestick maker, or the owner of the candle shop that is, repackaged cheap foreign-made products and called them artisan organics.

Nolan Delaney was a bartender, the kind you read about or see in the old films.  He was the sympathetic ear with the down-to-earth advice and the locked lips.  He had the kind of smile that made you like him, the kind of personality that made you trust him, and the kind of ready empathy that made you pour out your deepest secrets as he poured your booze.  He was a bartender, but more than that, he had become, somehow, the chief confessor for a town brimming with sordid little secrets and sinister sins.  

He made you feel as though he didn’t judge, as though he didn’t condemn.  He never cringed when you finally got it off your chest.  He never pulled back in horror or clammed up.  He remained a friendly face and a shoulder to lean on, so long as you hadn’t done something too terribly heinous.  He was sympathetic and discreet, but he was also highly moral and good.  

But he’d only ever gone to the authorities with information once or twice.  The once when he thought he knew where that missing girl was being held (nobody would have suspected the Oncologist, and it was with a great deal of skepticism that the police even followed up on Nolan’s lead, but it saved a girl’s life and laid to rest a few missing person’s cases to boot.); And the only other time was with the sleaze who had a penchant for forcing his ‘dates’.  Everybody knew Nolan Delaney wouldn’t keep his lips sealed for anyone who hurt women and children.  

But for most things he was as good as a vault; lay your burden down and trust that it would be secure, so long as it resides in Nolan Delaney.  He’d urge husbands to go back to their wives, but he wouldn’t blab about the infidelity.  He’d encourage the suicidal to seek help, but he’d never whisper a word about their darkest weakness.  He’d point women to the best places for care when they found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, or if they were afraid to leave the boyfriend or husband that was hurting them.  He’d more often than not convince petty thieves to do right by their victims and even on a few occasions to turn themselves in.  He counseled alcoholics, drug abusers, gambling addicts, sex addicts, and lesser degenerates of all shapes, sizes, and sorts.

He was the kind of fellow who had help lines and emergency services on speed-dial, who knew the names of reliable clergy from most major religions, who had a couch to spare on those nights when some lonely soul had no place else to go.  He was the guy who gave you the courage to come out, or to propose, or to finally quit that job you hate.  He’d buy you a round for your promotion, your graduation,  and the birth of your child.  He was well liked, reliable, and remarkable in his ability to carry on as though he wasn’t carrying little bits of his neighbor’s crosses.  Singular in his ability to smile and nod at you the night after he’d seen you at your worst, your most vulnerable, your most shamefully embarrassing, smile and nod and treat you as though none of that awful human foible mattered one bit to him, and none of it would come back to bite you.

EXCITING!

FUCK YEAH!  BAM!  and WHAM-BAM!

I am so FUCKING EXCITED right now I can't even capitalize my text enough to properly express it!  No interrabang does it enough justice!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

So I started blogging, as you may have read, to help cultivate a voice and then actively encouraged others to do the same.  My friend D, for instance, has one of the most unique voices and perspectives that I know!  It tickles me pink everytime she posts another entry!  be it lengthy or succinct (my favorite shorty was probably the one entitled 'Wetty') it is always, always, pure Danielle and for that it is brilliance!

Anywhooooo.  I started this Cedar Falls bullshit and the idea was sort of a sand-box!  The only rule to come play is:  Everybody has a Secret (inspired by Frank Warren's Post Secrets, and also, I'm not gunna lie, a little by the House tagline: Everybody Lies... lol.  Oh, speaking of, is anyone going to watch that new show that looks awful\delicious, Pretty Little Liars?  I think I'mma give it a try this week!)

So I start with trash in a hot tub and high dudgeon and shit, and then one morning I visit Danielle at the Palace and she's all like:  "Hey, I had the craziest dream and now I have the best idea for a story for Cedar Falls..."  YUP!  How phenomenal is that?  She tells me her idea and I almost come in my pants I'm so excited!  She is a natural storyteller-- her story lines and plans for her characters are delicious and murky and full of intrigue and complexities that I never, never, never could have dreamed up and I am so fucking excited!

Right off the bat she was super encouraging about this endeavor, about my writing fiction or just blogging, and for that I can't thank her enough!  Then she starts talking about how some professional authors sort of do this thing where they'll write books in other authors' series.  I'm not familiar but Danielle reads all the time so I take her word for it.  Like, especially in mystery or murder series' I guess?

So together we birthed the notion that other people should try writing vignettes and stories for CF.  AWESOME SAUCE RIGHT?!?!?!

So she did and they rocked my fucking socks off!  Visit them here, here, and here!  BAM!

So then HER ENTHUSIASM and provocativeness encouraged others!!  What?!  Woot Woot!

And today I am super pleased as punch to have you peep Guest Author 'Papi's awesomely gritty, visceral crime fest, and another installment from D which literally had me squeeling with excitement!! 

PLUS  reading those two made Aaron want to write another vignette for the story line he started about the disturbingly wholesome father-daughter murderer duo Walt&Clancy!  So he started that last night and it is already delicious!  

AND Andrea and I have decided to do a writing activity which may or may not be Cedar Falls related, where we send each other a first-line story starter and then run with it.  I started mine last night and am excited to finish it because it takes me out of the Delaney web of intrigue and, well, when you see the first line I think you'll know why I was so excited to write it! LOL.  Mine will still take place in Cedar Falls because, well, why the fuck not?  I'll post it as soon as it is done!  And Andrea?  Well, that's up to her, though I must say her near-daily blog is wicked fun, so can she be persuaded to share her fiction??  We won't force her, it's great enough that she's trying this experiment, but let's all cross our fingers that she'll surrender the mpiece up into the blogosphere for our greedy eyes!! :)

So the other person who shuld be contributing is EMMY, because, I know she's busy, but that girl has got a fertile and fantastic imagination and what a story teller!  So let's all get on her case to get writing.  I liked the story about the creep who hangs out outside the movie theatre Emmy.  You know what I mean. LOL.

And JULIA!!  Who has enough hilarious and entertaining real-life stories to write her fucking memoirs NOW-- YOU should do this!  You are wildly creative, inventive, and your voice, be it in acting, choreographing, directing, song-writing, or through your passion\art of PHOTOGRAPHY, your voice is soulful, penetrating, wise and whimsical.  Know what?  If I had to tell you to start somehwere I'd tell you to go out and take photos of random people, go home, look through them, let your imagination run wild and then start writing for someone you've captured in a picture.  That's a drama activity I'd do with students.  Give it a try!  Hell, I want to write for that gorgeous couple at the airport.  damn- they are right out of a movie, especially the way you shot them!!

And KIM?  Are you out there?  Write, Woman. We both know you have stories BUSTIN to get out!!

And Kerry?  Part of your new life really must include blogging\live journalling again, and maybe for fun you could write some intrigue for CF?  Maybe a piano teacher who has a dark secret... lol  or a Massage Therapist with a romance plotline?  Who knows?

So, YAY to taking the time to be creative, have fun and tell stories.  I feel like flying or jumping or skipping or orgasming!  LOL.  Sorry, how'd that last one slip in there?  whooopsie...

But really.  This is awesome and though I know Yelling and Papi will likely soon have to curtail their creative writing due to Baby's impending arrival, ( I lost my bet-- I was SURE she'd be born of Father's Day!) I hope they can still find some time to sneak off and get-out all their creative, disturbing, exciting, intruiging thoughts for all of us to read!

So to the writers out there and to those of you who think you aren't writers:  Get to writing bitches!  This shit is wicked fun and it's summer, for god's sake!  Get an idea and just START!  Remember, it isn't about perfection, DON'T get hung up on where the story will end up, just start TELLING IT!!

I still have no clue how my Jonah\Viola\Vaughan story is going to end, but that doesn't stop me from having a fucking blast with it!

Oh, and thanks again for being awesome!

Like Shakespeare and Soap-Operas

Hey folks.  So we all know that I started this Cedar Falls venture with no roadmap, no plan, no real goal in mind other than to have fun, tell stories, explore characters and experiment.

And I have done that.  I am still doing that.  I get an idea for a vignette, or a scene, and I try it out.  See how it goes.  I'm having fun.

However I have oticed that storylines are starting to pool and coalesce around major events which is interesting to me since I had no fucking plan to do this.  But planned or not a storm is coming and I can almost feel it building like the sucking vacuum of a huge wave, building momentum and getting ready crash into shore.

Like Shakespeare and Soaps the biggest of the big events seems to be the wedding.  High drama.  And on the road to Avalon's wedding (and the aftershock wedding that I have planned), there are all these other milestones and events that successfully gather folks together, force plot lines to mingle and character's lives to overlap.  Plus people dress pretty.

And this realization is still sort of hitting me, because the story began for me at the wedding party of Velvet and Vaughan where she finds him fucking another woman in the hottub, so... damn.  Or, as shakespeare might day: Damn.  (Damn's a word that doesn't really go out of fashion...)  Plus there's all the marriage drama with Maggie & Grey and the other quintessential plot happening for soaps (more than billy shakes) which is MAMA DRAMA or baby controversies.  I haz sum.

So far we, the reader, knows the paternity of all the babies... but the town doesn't... and maybe we need a mystery baby that we don't even know the paternity of?!?!?!?  We shall see.  Then the DNA evidence can get mixed up and hearts will get broken and... ahhh soaps.

My very favorite Shakepeare play actually centers around a Mamma Drama.  The Winter's Tale opens up on a seemingly happy domestic scene-- King Leontes and his Beautiful Queen Hermione are entertaining their good friend the neighboring King Polixenes  (Great names right?  So leave me alone about Velvet). 

Now Leo and Polix are like BROTHERS!  They've been besties since they were kids, being neighboring royalty and all I guess, and the play opens and the atmosphere is very like "Oh hahahahah, funny funny, jokey-jokey, so good to have you visiting, yay us."  So then Hermione, (who is like 9 months pregnant and a little sassy) and Polix are like "Let's all go in to dinner My Lord"  and Leo's like: "Yeah, be right there, you two go on ahead, I'll catch up!" Smile, wave, smile wave and then...


WHAM!  He wanted to hang back a mo just to talk to US the AUDIENCE about the fact that he suspects his wife is a cheating whore.  YUP.  First five minutes of the show he turns to us and is all like:  My wife is prolly sleeping with my best friend, I have no PROOF but I just bet she's sucking his cock, He's been sluicing her sewers behind my back (there's some great fucking imagery.  He calls his wife, the QUEEN a fucking 'hobby horse', eyebrow raising shit.  I'll post one of his disgusting asides down the bottom so you can see what I mean.), and guess what?  I don't even think the kid she's preggers with is my baby!

Ok, so scholars and theatre folk have long debated about this cold open.  Like, WTF?  Who are we to believe?  The queen seems nice, maybe a teensy bit flirty, but she just seems like a great gal we'd all like to be friends with.  And Polixenes doesn't say or do anything at all untoward- he seems like he's just a great guy, but who is our protagonist?  Who's the one we get to talk to, who's side of things do we hear?  Fucking Leontes.  And he is SO CONVINCED of her treachery, he is like CERTAIN that she's a slutbag, and he's really flippin convincing to listen to.  As an audience member you're sitting there second guessing and feeling all embarrassed like:  "Whoaaaah.  Holy shit, are you sure?  Hermione?  I've met her, she seems nice... are you sure?  Ohhhhhmannnnnnn.  well, maybe I hate her now.  Tramp."

Anyway now we're looking at her and everything she does with a stink-eye and Leontes tells his servant to go fucking POISON his besty, but luckily that guy has an attack of conscience about regicide and spills the beans to Polix who is like "I'm audi 5000" and books it back to his country where his wife has had a baby and no one can poison him.  Like 'ghouls' in tag I guess.

So the sudden and hasty departure of King P seems to solidify the treachery in King L's mind and he has his wife thrown in fucking jail (or 'gaol' as it is written in shakespeare's day) for adultery and condemned to death as soon as she drops the baby.  It's bad PR to execute a preggo I guess.

So she had the baby, stands trial, professes over and over her absolute innocence, but he's like "Nah"  and sentences her to death, but she collapses and 'dies' before she can be killed anyway.

My favorite Shakespeare lady of all time PAULINA, she's sort of a royal advisor, she brings the baby to Leontes and tries to get him to admit that the kid is his.  "The very copy" of him, but even though everyone is like: Dude, she totally looks like you, King Leo is like "FUCK THAT NOISE" and he condemns the baby to death on foreign soil.  He's like, "Bring the kid to her real father's country and maybe he'll take her in" wah.

In the midst of all this hubbub his first born son, who's like five, dies because of all this stress.  So now we're maybe 30 minutes into the play and we've got attempted regicide, defacto infanticide, sudden-child-death-syndrome and the "death" of queen hermione.

At this point these two royal messengers run in and are like "Oh, My Lord, we've returned from the Oracle, we've got the answer to the question you sent us with..."  Yup.  If King Leontes had just WAITED A FUCKING MINUTE for KGB to text him back, he'd have realized that he was a total fucking toolbag.

What'd the oracle have to say?  Hermione was a true and faithful wife.  Polixenes was a true and honest friend.  The paternity test came back positive for Leontes and leontes is a crazy fucktard.  Oh, and the country is going to suck it hard core until the 'daughter that was lost, again is found'.

Hmmm.  Where can this play go, one wonders.  Leontes immediately feels like a total douche and vows to mourn his wife an daughter for the rest of his life and Paulina's like "Good.  I'mma stick around and MAKE SURE YOU DO THAT."  She basically becomes like the daily reminder of his terrible, greivous mistakes and crimes and he keeps her around because he seems to get-off on self flagellation.

Fast forward 16-18 years and we are in Bohemia, where Polixenes is king.  His son has fallen in love with a beautiful peasant girl.  Awww.  Love.  But Polixenes finds out and he's like:  "No fucking way, no son of mine will ever marry a peasant, you can only marry a princess!"  

Of course the girl he's fallen for is the little lost baby that was left to die, but she was taken in by a peasant farmer so viola, she lives!  And she's a smart cookie too because she refuses to give it up to the prince unless he marries her, and as history has taught us, men do crazy shit for unattainable poon, so he decides they must flee the country and go beg the help of the neighboring king LEONTES.

So They get there and Paulina KNOWS, she takes one look at the girl and KNOWS, which is fortunate because LEONTES takes one look at the girl and is like: "Whoa, she's fucking gorgeous... She's like perfectly beautiful... I've kinda got a semi in my kingly britches right now..."  And Paulin'as all:  She's too young for you and besides you don't deserve her because you are a douche who killed his whole family over nothing.

Then, in one of the most bizarre shakespeare endings of all time Polixenes comes over to collect his son and he's still pretty pissed about Leontes' trying to have him poisoned so that's an AWKWARD meeting after all these years and Paulina is like:  Hey, before you all figure this shit out let's go look at my new statue that I have.

What?  Yeah, that's most people's reaction.  Even in the play.  But for whatever reason everyone's like: "Sure, we'll go check out your awesome statue (crazy lady)" and they do.

So Paulina has ostensibly had the sculptor make her a life-sized statue of queen Hermione, but not how she was at the time of her "death", but how she might look if she were alive today.  Yeah.  So she's aged beautifully, about 16-18 years, right?

And Leontes is transfixed!  He's like we all are at Madame Tussaude's.  He's like: "It looks so REAL!  I can't believe it isn't REAL!  I mean it looks ALIVE!  I feel like I can even see her BREATHING..."

Marvelous.  So Paulina, being THE SHIT, is like- "Well if you promise not to fuck things up ever again, and if you promise not to ask me how or think too hard about it, I will make my statue come to life for you." 

So Leontes, after having atoned for 16-18 years is like :Yeah, OK, do that... (remember that Paulina has been essentially cock-blocking him for two decades, no whores, no pleasure, nothing, so a life-sized blow up doll is looking like the fucking golden ticket right about now.. He wanted to put the moves on his long lost daughter not three scenes ago...)

So Paulina whispers some magic words and the statue, um, begins to breathe, and is Hermione as if she'd never, um, 'died'.  And They realize the girl is their long lost daughter so Polixenes is like, "oh, ok, then if she's a princess, fine, my son can marry her."  And they all lived happily ever after (except for the guy who got killed by a bear, but that's not relevent here I think).

Yeah.  So scholars debate whether or not we are supposed to believe in magic there at the end or if we are to believe that Paulina is one clever bitch who hid the queen away and preventd the king from ever moving on until they found the daughter that was lost, and once they had her back Paulina was like, "ok Hermy, get your statue clothes on and let's do this thing!" and thus the big 'come up and look at my statue' scene.

Being a feminist I tend to lean toward the wisdom and power of women rather than the fantastical "I had a statue made and can also make it come to life if I try real hard..."

But what evs.  I'm not sure where I was going with that, other than maybe to promise myself not to end Cedar Falls in such a ridiculous way.  But that begs the question: will there be an end?  I honestly don't know.  I kind of enjoy the perpetuity of the world we've set up, the open-ended sand-box nature of the thing.  I want to see Maggie & Grey's kid as a grown up, uou know?  I want to see if Vaughan Grey really raises Jonah's incest baby and how that all turns out, so I'm not sure about any specific ending, though I obviously see certain story arch coming to natural closure along the way.  And that's how it is with Soaps.  Storylines come and go but the town remains and there are always new intrigues to be delved into, new charachters to stir the proverbial pot, new avenues to explore.

I just don't anticipate I'll end with a statue coming to life.  Though that is my very favorite Shakespeare play.

I think I should mention, for the record, let the record reflect, if you will, that I very nearly decided to go for my master's degree in Shakespeare Studies.  I don't regret not doing so, specifically, because I loved my entire emerson expreience, but I kinda wish I had gotten to spend two-three years living, breathing and easting the bard.  I would very likely be the smartest shakespeare person you know.  Lol.  Maybe someday I'll persue that degree afterall.

So look forward to events coalescing and converging in the near future!  YAY!

************

Leontes to the audience:

There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm, (He's talking to you kid!)
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence (Sluiced is a wet, yucky, slimy word for sexy stuff)
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by  (hope he wore his rubbers...)
Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't  (Sir Smile, I love it. Hey Mr. Smiley ou fuck my wife?)
Whiles other men have gates and those gates open'd,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair  (Wow.  his wife's Vajayjay is his gate that has been opened against his will... yikes a roni)
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for't there is none;  (Don't feel bad guys, most wives are cheating whores.  what can you do? am I right?  You feel me?)
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly; know't; ("No barricado for a belly" roughly translates as: nothing you can do if your wife decides to let guys be spermin' up in her...)(also, I like this original use of "Know it!" priceless.)
It will let in and out the enemy (In and out and in and out-- the actor should definitely play up the sexual rhythm of this line.  It should sound like what in and out means.)
With bag and baggage: many thousand on's  ("Bag and baggage" can really only mean the guy's balls and his bastard seed.  Graphic right???)
Have the disease, and feel't not. 

Awesome sauce right?  Leontes definitely has his mind in the gutter folks!  And I love how he baically looks at all the men in the audience and is like:  You see it right?  My wife's a whore, right?  But I'm not the only cuckold here- look at your lady, I bet she fucks other dudes.  Yeah, she prolly does.  Women are sluts and they'll open their cunts for any tom dick or Sir Smile.

So, thanks Bill, for the soap opera!