Skipped a Prompt Today to Write About Tara...

[chicating]

From BTVS
The power isn’t the only thing that lets Tara know she’s different, though she is very careful to float flowers and herbs under her mother’s protective and affectionate eye. Later on, in the sixth grade, she wonders if it’s the same power or a different one that makes her flutter with something besides envy when pretty, blonde, Charlotte Crowe has a cousin that sent her an expensive bathing suit from Florida. Char was always something to look at, but now Tara feels something drop out of the pit of her stomach that she doesn’t think the other girls notice. She is too shy to ask, though, even though they used to be close in the early grades, being such a small class. Other students don’t notice Tara in school, but her teachers have sometimes: The careful yet beautiful drawings in her notebooks, too meticulous to be called doodles, too lightly regarded by their artist to appear in the school magazine or Culture Night.
Tara’s father thinks any talk of her being gifted and talented is demonic, too, and the polite wall of resistance Tara herself puts up when asked to do a solo sometimes causes Mrs. Magnuson,choir instructor to three schools in their district, to lose more sleep than all the miles she puts on her Ford Escort. “You have a gift,” the teacher prods, trying to be gentle, but she had a lot of voice lessons and is twice Tara’s age and has still never managed the clear, pure sound that comes from Tara McClay’s mouth. “a God-given gift. It would be a sin not to use it.”
“That’s not what my father says,”Tara shrinks into herself again.
“Fathers don’t know everything,” Mrs. Magnuson said, and Tara looked delighted. The choir instructor knew better than to push, though. Sometimes parents moved rather than answer questions about their kids, even ones about their talents. Over the years, she wondered if she’d done the right thing.

Comments

Oh my goodness

[karlht]

Oh, this is lovely and evocative. Just a glimpse of the Tara we know, in possibility.

I met Amber Benson, very briefly; she came to BayCon in 2015 as a special guest. She's impossibly wee; I've never met Ms Hannigan, but she must be tiny even by television standards, to make Ms. Benson look so tall next to her. The Tara in my head is taller and heavier than Ms. Benson, and more desperate to avoid being perceived.

Fathers don't know everything, indeed. Well done.

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

Wow, they must be part fairies... I don't think I'm a huge person, but definitely more substantial than that!
I think every class has a girl like that...maybe not a young witch, but one who keeps her light under a bushel(Maybe because she's not safe at home...)
Glad you liked this...I was sort of afraid the choir teacher walked away with this in a bad way--I didn't revise much.

Re: Oh my goodness

[karlht]

The power of of women noticing and supporting each other never fails to amaze and delight me. Removing the male gaze is damn near impossible in this culture, but ... yeah, it doesn't happen enough, in fiction or in life.

I had a plot-bunny about a week back that could have come out of my own teenaged past, but I'm not sure I could write it, even now. I was a boy who noticed girls, who wanted to be social with girls, who didn't quite want to be one of the girls, but didn't quite _not_ want to be one of the girls. If I had not been in the South in the 70's, I think it would not have taken a large cultural shift to open my mind to the possibility of being trans. But I really just didn't have the vocabulary.

Anyhow, the plot bunny had to do with a young gender-ambiguous protagonist working through the differences among crushes, romantic feeling, profound admiration, and desire to emulate one's older peers. It was a complicated journey for me even without throwing gender identity into it -- one line kept rolling around and around in my head: "I don't know whether I want to take you out for movies and ice cream, or just sit here and hold your hand and listen to you talk all night."

I'm rambling again. I really liked the piece.

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

I think maybe a lot of us do that(Or else we are melding more again)
Although I'm not sure I ever thought of being a guy more than thinking it's fun to be a ballsy male *character*...people have told me in groups that I'm "good at writing men," but I've stopped being complimentef by it cause sometimes it's a code for "God, you're vulgar..."(Which they say as if it's a bad thing.)
I think, in my own case, I admire the social freedom men still have...so maybe I'd like to be like that, without being one. There might be a male *side* in here, but he doesn't really want to drive.
maybe being ignored by boys when I was younger(except my uncle and having a brother) even though it hurt my feelings, helped me to develop.

Re: Oh my goodness

[karlht]

Yeah, admiring the social freedom that men get by default makes a lot of sense to me. I don't feel like I've made a lot of use of it for myself, but I think my life would be pretty different if I didn't have it.

Yeah, you write a very plausible McNulty. In fact, since I read your Jimmy before I ever saw him on screen, I think yours is my default for him. And I don't think I've ever seen you use vulgarity where it was uncalled for -- I can't really throw stones there, since I've been too sweary for the adults around me since I was about nine.

I don't think my feminine side as such really wants to drive; it's more a case of my masculine side would like to feel safe being a lot, lot softer by default. But I've seen what happens to men perceived as soft in tech settings, and ... yeah, I don't think I can put myself through that.

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

Wow, that's such a strange compliment, but at the same time, an honor. I'm proud. I relate to Jimmy for being too smart for most rooms he's in, but kind of self-loathing too.(Although he actively courts his own destruction in ways that I might never...I do feel that I get it.)
Yeah, sorry, hon...wasn't sure how to write about wanting to be a guy, as not-a-guy, in more than a transitory way. More than wondering what it'd be like to have my friend's parents, or...

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

I'm pleased that you share your soft side with me(and I hope when we've talked about it, I don't bring up bad memories...inadvertently, but even accidents hurt.)
I like it, even if sometimes it has made me concerned for you.

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

Some thoughts about McNulty, on video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85FzjM-GkCk
I didn't used to swear...not sure why it mattered...some teachers calling it "poverty of expression' etc, perhaps. No longer believe this across the board...Deadwood, for instance, is very earthy and all that, at times, hard to watch, but parts of it are fucking beautiful, too. (My mother always swore, some but not like on the Wire, though.
Comparatively, I came to it late, but I've made up for lost time, maybe like a motherfucker. Ha ha.
One of my first words was 'Asshole!" though. Maybe it was more like a long...latency period.

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

I think you told *me* that once...I mean, before we decided to be in each other's virtual business all the time.

Re: Oh my goodness

[karlht]

It wouldn't be the first time my brain has re-used a plot bunny.

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

Maybe you're lucky...your brain has *themes*.(And what sweet and tender ones they are!) I fear that mine is some kind of giant junk drawer that I just pick through all the time.

I'd almost feel as comfortable wishing you a Happy Father's Day as either of them(Though don't worry...I've never stopped thinking of you, well, That Way,) but in terms of being supportive and nurturing my self-worth and all that, you would have it all over the two men whose jobs that was supposed to have been...and let's not gloss over how it took two guys to make up one role...part "It Takes A Village" and part "Painfully Inadequate"--they're both insane, it's scabbed-over, but...
But I know that's a sore subject for you, too. So have a beautiful Sunday, dear.

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

I was very flattered. You make me aware what rotten and inattentive listeners most people are(Including me, sometimes, I'm sorry to say)

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

I was flattered. I wonder what it would be like to write what I do if everyone paid as much attention as you.

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

Sometimes I think Amber would have been a big star in my mother's era...she kind of has that Herbal Essences, Katharine Ross thing going on...maybe I think that more because I can be Mama's Little Throwback, too.

Re: Oh my goodness

[karlht]

She does, and she has that lively intelligence and wit behind her eyes. I think the shift to directing was good for her, at least for a while; she was plainly not being intellectually challenged by the acting, at least in the roles she was being offered.

I was glad to meet her, and wherever she is and whatever she's doing, I hope she's thriving.

Re: Oh my goodness

[chicating]

Maybe it's better to be the artist...not the canvas.

Something McNulty Did That I Could Probably Do To Myself, If I Worked His Job...

[chicating]

In Season Two of the Wire, Jimmy and Bunk get called out cause this freighter has a cannister full of dead female bodies in it(Probably trafficking or some scam where these young women think they're gonna be models or some shit---forgive my just laying it flat on the table that way, but unlike on most shows, what happens to these ladies isn't really the point. They are almost a macabre MacGuffin) The point for Jimmy is that nobody knows where these women come from or who they are, right? But the way the thing was floating in the(harbor? bay? I've clearly flunked geography...anyway, on one side, it's Baltimore's case, and Jimmy's problem, and on the other side? Maybe the state police, so it wouldn't be Jimmy's problem at all.
But it's not conclusive, so Jimmy does *current* research and proves that this no-win case is theirs.
Pissed off his boss, too.
Somehow I related to him for that.

Re: Something McNulty Did That I Could Probably Do To Myself, If I Worked His Job...

[chicating]

And when I say "Not his problem," I mean, literally, that he could shrug, walk away and be like "sucks to be you." when the state guys show up for the fifteen foreign Jane Does.

But he doesn't want to leave the job undone that much...that's why "giving a fuck when it ain't my turn" got, and remains, on most of my profiles.(Except, of course, unlike Jimmy, I'm culturally presumed not to have much of a turn at anything, especially at midlife, now that Getting Better All the Time is most assuredly off the table.) Which I am still supposed to feel lacking about, even though insurers wouldn't pay to sustain that pointless passion, and even if we had the money, therapists would rather do other, surer things--I've asked, over the years. Even the crunchiest ones never wanted a long-term patient over, say, thirty...therapy sucked, I don't know what I was thinking of, except that an occasional article would fill me with naive optimism of some sort.

Honestly, I never went out looking to be an iconoclast or rabble-rouser or anything, but "cute kid," my last, and most extremely socially-approved role within the stereotype, only lasts so long, assuming, as I know you definitely would, and I haven't always, that I ever fit into it. I've told you about the friends and family I knew that are determined to stretch that fabric past its limits.

Re: Something McNulty Did That I Could Probably Do To Myself, If I Worked His Job...

[chicating]

Under the stereotype, I get to be a failure who somehow is not sad about it. No wonder I went looking around...I don't even think my brother even really understands that.