#for that “being closeted is logical and not an issue of bravery” part

[gayofthefae]

"The van scene is just for Will's plotline it doesn't affect Mike" what if I said the opposite was true. What if I said it did not serve as a climax for Will because he had already demonstrated an ability for honesty, vulnerability, and the self-assurance required in his confrontation of Mike in episode 2. What if I said that it only served his story as an inciting incident for the Jonathan coming out scene - a scene which, as I've said before, was the actual climax of his season arc, which was about his queerness, not Mike.

It is a setup for Mike, we know that, but it also doesn't really directly serve Will's arc at all. It is a self sabotage - setup for season 5, but something we already know him to do. It is a transition point for Mike. And it is the straw that breaks the camel's back for Jonathan. Besides that, it speaks directly to the audience at best. But it does not serve Will. He gets nothing truly off his chest because he is not unburdened - if anything worse off because he gave up his hope, he doesn't teach us things we couldn't otherwise deduce, and it moves him no internally closer to closure.

The speech only serves for Mike to react to and Jonathan to witness (and the cinematography reflects that). The following scenes reflect that too. The only scenes of importance in either plot following that are Will's scene with Jonathan and Mike telling El he loves her. Both directly tied to the speech, Mike's more textually, and no independently actionable resolution for Will.

This was the post but I had more thoughts, per usual

Will has a theme of unactionable resolutions. In episode 2 he is honest and from there the ball is in Mike's court. His most actionable plot is the painting, which he has demonstrated the vulnerability for already but the self-prioritization required is not a line he as a character is willing to cross, something that isn't a character flaw in need of resolution given what he logically believes the effects would be. The ball is in Mike's court from the beginning and remains there. And will remain there. Will had no arc necessity to confess because not confessing exposed no character flaws (shoutout to the writers for not presenting choosing to remain in the closet as a character flaw!!!). He was put in a helpless position of heartbreak and sadness and, like all of us wanted for him, wanted to do something about it, wanted to be able to do something about it, so he tried, but ultimately realized that the risk outweighed the reward, and the cost of the reward (El) would outweigh it anyways. That is logical. He is logical. He does everything logically. He is helpless this season. And he wants to believe he isn't, and we want to believe he isn't, but he is. Because the ball is in Mike's court. It was then and it is now. And it has been since the Snow Ball, really.

Because in December, 1984, after Will's perpetual but logical inaction towards a relationship, Mike took action against one. And since, it has been his job to undo, and his job to communicate contradictory to his actions that he wants one. Inaction does not require a solution unless it is representative of a problem to be solved. Will's is not. Mike's problem is he takes protective action impulsively when he gets scared that ultimately traps and harms him and others. Mike's problem is not inaction either. If they had stayed silently pining 13 year olds forever it would not have been a character flaw on either of their parts. But Mike took unnecessary - understandable, but unnecessary - action in the eyes of the plot. One can debate whether he did it in December 1983. Or whether he did it in July 1985. Or whether he did it in March 1986 when he ignored Will, because silence is not inaction if it as an active change. But no matter when it became an unnecessary choice,

The ball is in his court because it was never in anyone else's. The ball is in his court because Will never stepped foot on a court. Will isn't playing the game, he didn't pick up a ball. He sat in the stands and watched. In March 1986, he moved to the bench and Jonathan saw him but still, he never stepped foot on the court. He was never playing the game. (Apologies. This isn't a stupid sports game)/ref.

The ball is in Mike's court because as far as actionable plotlines reflecting internal growth go, Mike and Will's relationship is and always has been Mike's plot. Will's is allowing himself to take up space; he's getting closer, and allowing himself to have Mike will be the ultimate demonstration of that, just not its purpose. But Mike's is Will.

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Ey, so, what happened is that I posted a Schitt's Creek fic late last night and went to bed.  Then I overslept and went to work and then went straight to some family stuff after work, so by the time I checked up later this afternoon, there were not only comments, but also Discourse in the Comments – enough Discourse in the Comments that I decided that in addition to staying up late tonight to answer individual comments (which is a great problem to have! Fuck sleep, moar comments!), I should probably Address the Discourse in one go so I wouldn't have to repeat myself quite so much.

This is, arguably, a big mistake, since at the end of the day, people feel however they feel about the story, and they're certainly entitled to their feelings.  For the most part, my chosen medium for self-expression is fiction, and I figure that if I failed to express myself adequately in the fiction, too bad for me. But what the hell, it's Pride and I like to hear myself talk, so if there is anyone who has questions or weird feelings about the choices I made in this story, I'm making this bit of my Writing Process transparent for you, so you at least know why I did what I did.

The gist, for onlookers, is that there's a moment deep in the middle of this David/Patrick story where Patrick says David is bisexual and David goes along with that, which rang false to some people because elsewhere in canon, David's father describes him as pansexual instead, and we generally assume – and I also assume! – that he does so because that's the label David prefers.

I feel like the easiest first layer of this to peel off is that, yes, Patrick is wrong.  Patrick – a deeply closeted small-town boy with few or no close ties to The Community – hears his friend and co-worker talking about relationships with men and women, and he thinks to himself, “Oh, okay, he's bisexual, then,” because to most of the world, that's what bisexual means.  I think he would have no reason to second-guess himself on that, or wonder if there's another term that David prefers.  Patrick literally doesn't know enough about this issue to know that he might be wrong about it.  What Patrick thinks he understands, he doesn't fully understand, and that's intentional, because the whole story is about Patrick being in this “messy middle part,” where he kind of doesn't know the rules and doesn't get things right.

That, I think, came across clearly to most readers, but there was still this question of, well, couldn't I have written David correcting this mistake, at that moment or somewhere else in the story, so that the reader would understand that I know Patrick is wrong and that I, personally, am not condoning the general practice of disregarding people's chosen labels.

And of course I could have.  I didn't for two reasons, one of characterization and one of theme – but that's not an objectively correct choice, it's just the choice I made in service of this particular story.  A different writer could have gone a different route and written a different story, and maybe that would've worked just as well!  But it wouldn't have been a good call for this story.

First, just as a basic point of characterization, it's my take that David Rose actually doesn't feel strongly enough to object.  We don't ever see him identify as anything – we see him talking freely about past experiences, but the one and only time he's called on to explain what he is to someone else, it's the scene while shopping with Stevie where (albeit through the lens of what I still feel is a somewhat labored metaphor), he gives a version of Ye Olde “I don't like labels” speech.  To me, David is a pretty recognizable type: he thinks of himself as liking lots of stuff and free to do what he likes without being boxed in by other people's opinions, and he's carried forward with the exact same attitude he deployed when he came out to his parents: “I'm doing this, deal with it.”  So even though I was aware, and I knew the reader would be aware, that Patrick was wrong, my thought on what seemed natural to David as a character was that I didn't really see him caring about the issue enough to derail what was actually going on in that conversation.  That's my read on the character, and it may not match yours; that's fine, it doesn't have to.

However, characters aren't real and don't make decisions; writers do.  It would be absurd for me to say, “Well, this is out of my hands, obviously it would happen this way, because Characterization.”  I could have structured the whole scene differently, and I didn't.  Instead, I wrote a scene where, arguably, a personal of marginalized identity is mis-labeled and doesn't seem to mind that much, and I think one fair response to that scene is to say, Maybe don't volunteer to write scenes that work out that way, when instead you could write in such a way as to demonstrate that you're on the side of not mis-labeling people of marginalized identities.

I did volunteer to write that scene, because I do think this story required that scene.  When David says, “It's okay if you are, too” – even though he knows full well that it's not true – what he's actually saying is, “If what you need right now is a label for yourself that's factually wrong, I'm giving you permission to use it.”  David is not bisexual and neither is Patrick.  This is a scene where David explicitly gives Patrick an exit route if he needs one, where David is actively prioritizing being protective and comforting with Patrick over requiring Patrick to tell the truth.  It's an act of generosity on his part, and it's an act of bravery on Patrick's part to refuse it. It's a brief exchange, but it's absolutely central to the moment Patrick is at, where he can't say true things yet but won't say false ones anymore, and the moment completely relies on the reader understanding that this word they're talking about – “bisexual” – is a dishonest word in this context.  They're discussing whether or not it's okay to be dishonest, and David's take is “sure, if you need that, then do it” while Patrick's is “that would be going backwards and I'm not letting myself down like that.”  David and the reader know that it's a dishonest word in both cases, while Patrick only recognizes that about himself, because again, there's a lot that Patrick doesn't know yet.  He's just now learning.

I write a lot of scenes that are “two people in a room talking,” and if done badly, those can be excruciatingly dull.  I don't like dull; I like writing things that feel taut and have forward motion and tension, because I think that's what makes a scene memorable.  So every time I sit down to write yet another “these two dudes are going to be in a room talking for a while” scene, there are questions I ask myself about what's happening here and why it should happen, because otherwise I'm violating the first and only law of fiction, which is Don't Waste Your Reader's Fucking Time.

The first question is: what's the premise here?  What's the situation that confronts these characters, that they're going to be responding or reacting to?  And the other question is: how are they going to respond and react to that situation in two productively different ways – ways that are in conflict or incompatible or in competition?  If I know what's going on, and I know how these two people are seeing it differently and making different arguments about what should happen next, there's a natural tension of competing agendas that wants to resolve itself at the end, or carry over to the next scene.

In “1001,” my premise is: Patrick is undergoing a process of transformation with regard to his sexual identity that takes time and doesn't really proceed linearly and logically.  That's what's happening.  The way he's responding to that is, he's frustrated and embarrassed, because he feels like he's failing to master this situation, like it's getting the better of him no matter how he tries to set rules for it.  The way David is responding to the premise is, he's trying to curb and mitigate these ways that Patrick is judging  himself harshly, trying to get Patrick to accept that the middle is just messy and things will be a mess until they aren't anymore.  Patrick is facing a challenge, and they're ultimately in an argument about whether or not Patrick is failing it.

That's why I wanted Patrick to be wrong about certain things – I wanted him to authentically be kind of messy, which shows up in little ways from how he can't get the till counted and he can't say gay and he can't put his finger on the song he's thinking of, and not yet speaking the insider-language fluently is part of that.  But more importantly, that's why David's reaction couldn't really involve correcting Patrick's use of the insider-language, because the whole meaning of the story is that David is actively refusing to agree that what's going on with Patrick right now is a problem that needs correcting.

A startling number of writing issues are actually philosophical issues, and this is probably one of them. Like I said, fiction is my main medium for telling people what I think about the world, and the role that I have David playing in this story, as the older, more experienced queer person, is what it is because I have been the older, more experienced queer person trying to figure out how to help someone who's brand new to everything – and what I've come to believe through these experiences is that while there is a time and a place for educators, for being the person who says “actually, that's not quite right, we say or do this instead of that,” the on-the-ground reality is that if people are still in a state of extreme vulnerability and self-doubt, they have a far, far greater need for people who will affirm them rather than instruct them.

Someone in Patrick's place, who is stuck between an old belief and a new self, who feels like they're failing and floundering, who thinks it's easy for other people and hard for them because they're messier or more broken or more cowardly than everyone else, deserves to be received with compassion and told that messy is fine, not knowing is fine, this process is normal and they are fine.  The story I wanted to write was about David giving that grace and spaciousness to Patrick, and it ended with Patrick accepting it at least enough to say “this will just take care of itself if I give it enough time” about the song thing, which stands in a bit for his problem-solving approach to the whole situation (because then we know as readers that when he finds the “best song” he's unlocked the whole thing, and we know that's coming, just like David told him the end would come).  It's my opinion that having David double back, at any point in the story, and say “actually, that's not quite right, you should have said this instead” would have fatally undermined everything about the alternative argument David is presenting about the nature of Patrick's situation.  Patrick is the one who worries about getting this right; David is the one who wants him to be okay with being wrong for now.

And like most writers, when I set up those dueling arguments, I am actually coming down on one side or the other by the end: David's side.  I didn't have David correcting him because I think David wouldn't correct him, but even more than that because I think the nature and structure of this story makes it ethically right for David to hold back from correcting him.  I think he's the one being the hero here, by accepting Patrick's messiness and imperfection and just taking the approach of, yeah, it's all new, it's tough going, but even though you don't feel fine right now, you are fundamentally fine.

You as a reader don't have to accept that moral argument.  You can think it would have made David a better person to model a commitment to truth, to set a higher standard and ask Patrick to live up to it.  That's okay!  It's totally fine to be like, “I see that this writer wants me to feel one way about this, but actually I just don't, I think that's dead wrong.”  Other writers are going to tackle stories about what it feels like to be part of Patrick's coming-out story, both in his role and in David's role, and those writers can and should make their own best arguments, in stories that are built to be about whatever they want to say about coming out.  Those stories will just be different from mine, which is great, that's what having a voice as a writer means – that you're thoughtfully constructing stories in ways that express how you see the world, not how anybody else does it.

And if you read “1001” and you cared enough about it to have an opinion, I genuinely appreciate your time and the thought you put into it.  Thank you.

[freelancer-chronicles]

There was a knock on the door. Startled awake, Pirndel rolled over abruptly in his tiny cot, and would have smashed his face against the stone wall had he not already covered it with plush fabric. Anticipating disaster was his chief expertise.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Sentinel Brin. There’s been an accident.”

Of course there has, he thought.

“We— we need the ladder. You’re the only one with the key to the shed. Hurry. Oh and, uh, there’s a fire, too.”

Of course there was!

PEEPS!!!! 

(edit: whole thing below the cut)

For Pirndel Blatch, the Season of Skulls presented a different kind of horror. From the random bones scattered about, to the ill-attended bonfires, to the green mist of unknown composition that obscured the many tripping hazards, it seemed that everywhere in Tarsis there was an accident waiting to happen. As Fort Custodian, Pirndel was a stickler for safety—obsessed even.

He was the middle child of fifteen, all alive. People said it was miraculous, but the Blatch family knew better. “The world was too dangerous not to be careful,” his parents said, and it was only through unrelenting attention to safety that they had all survived.

There was a knock on the door. Startled awake, Pirndel rolled over abruptly in his tiny cot, and would have smashed his face against the stone wall had he not already covered it with plush fabric. Anticipating disaster was his chief expertise.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Sentinel Brin. There’s been an accident.”

Of course there has, he thought.

“We— we need the ladder. You’re the only one with the key to the shed. Hurry. Oh and, uh, there’s a fire, too.”

Of course there was!

Pirndel scrambled to his already booted feet and threw a light tunic over his nightshirt. This was precisely why he never slept without at least something on no matter how hot it was. And it was. Hot. He had appealed to have the holiday bonfires limited to outside the Fort walls. “But fires are fun!” everyone said. Pirndel wondered how seemingly smart people could be so blind to obvious danger.

“We’re heroes who are almost killed on a daily basis. Pretty sure we can handle the ‘dangerous’ Fort,” they scoffed.

Nobody listened.

In fact, although Pirndel Blatch knew what he was talking about, it seemed to him that the more thoroughly he explained an issue, the less they listened. That couldn’t be right, though—it just wasn’t logical.

You know who people listened to? A Bard.

Pirndel dreamt of being a Bard. Bards were beloved. Bards gathered crowds wherever they went.

Often he would go to gatherings where stories would be recited or songs would be performed. He’d sit at the back, his eyes wide, mouth involuntarily agape, drenched in sympathetic sweat. He marveled at how a Bard could hold the room’s attention. The crowd. Bards had gifts that the crowd appreciated. Pirndel’s heart swelled. He longed for that.

After the performance, he’d dry his damp hands and applaud with the crowd. Then the stage would be open for anyone to tell the audience a story.

Next time, he thought. To date, he never had.

Pirndel arrived in the courtyard to find exactly the kind of accident that made him fume. A Skulls reveler, wearing a mask with tiny eye slits and having drunk too much, had tripped on a cord obscured by green mist and pushed over a table that was placed too close to the fire, which tipped over a Sentinel guarding the fire (who was thankfully in a Ranger javelin). No one was hurt, but the impact had caused the fire to leap up into the colorful flags above.

Get the ladder.

He carefully dashed to the maintenance closet, key outstretched. Although no one made him, he ran fire drills such as this on a weekly basis. Often, he was the only one who attended. If he could trust people not to “borrow” his stuff, he wouldn’t have to place it under lock and key, which would be the safest option. However, a locked-away ladder was preferable to no ladder at all.

He quickly surveyed the area for a solid surface to place the ladder’s feet. “Cobblestone will never be a friendly platform on which to build ladder safety," he’d often say. This ladder was partially his own design, notably the part that made it extremely stable. He’d cleverly used a gyrostabilizer from a spare Interceptor to nearly eliminate any wobble.

He leaned the ladder against the wall and began to climb. He was over halfway up when he noticed that the Sentinels who were spotting him had moved off to the other side of the courtyard and were now in the middle of an intense conversation. He scowled. No one listens. As he climbed higher, he could feel the heat of the fire and sweat began to burn his eyes. It ran down his nose and pooled into a salty coating on his lips. He hated that. It was natural, to be sure, but it still made him shiver in disgust—and with that, the ladder began to tip.

The gyrostabilizer was failing! Perhaps the green mist of unknown composition was causing it to malfunction. He didn’t have a second for further theorizing—as the ladder slipped out from under him, he grabbed the flaming banner.

Pirndel felt certain that he had the makings of a Bard.

Although he was an obviously talented maker and fixer, most of his private time was spent reading. No one might suspect it to look at him, but he could recite many stories by heart.

In his room, Pirndel would stand in front of a portion of stone wall that he had polished so that he could see himself, and practice. He made sure that his eyes sparkled and that his gestures were suitably emotive and precise. He always felt content with the result.

At night, as he drifted off to sleep, he imagined his future. He imagined standing in the courtyard surrounded by Sentinels and Freelancers, merchants and regulators, children sitting rapt at his feet.

Listening.

“Don’t go, Pirndel!” they would shout. “Tell us more about the dangers of standing water! We could listen to you talk about guardrail maintenance for hours!” And so, he would. He would!

Hanging from the banner high enough that to simply let go would cause extreme physical trauma, Pirndel assessed the situation. The banner would hold his weight for now, he knew, because he’d been the one to hang it. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw an escape!

Hand over hand, slowly and methodically, he moved along the banner. Luckily, he’d thought to make the banner out of high-tension, non-flammable material—expensive, yes, but anyone with eyes who looked up at this moment would see how right he’d been. The flags sparked and burned, but the wire held tight.

When he reached the optimal spot, he set the banner swinging toward the nearby building. With perfect timing, he flung himself forward and landed on an exposed support beam. He found he’d judged the momentum very well. Smoothly pushing off from the beam, he leapt and grabbed a drain pipe with his strong, callused hands.

Here he noted that the parging, which wasn’t visible from the ground, had begun to crumble. He made a mental note to fix it. “Falling parging could absolutely take out a child’s eye,” he huffed.

He swung gracefully once around the pipe and dismounted with a backwards somersault onto a balcony below.

Meanwhile, the small fire had begun to spread.

Pirndel stood in the corner of the crowded room. He nervously flipped his lucky crystal over and over between his fingers. He knew in his heart that no one in the room was more qualified to be a Bard.

“Prindel Blartch?”

“I’m Pirndel Blatch,” he croaked.

He made his way to the front of the room. Sweat dampened every part of him.

He stepped up onto the presentation platform… which wobbled. Of course it did.

How long had it been this way, he wondered. Repairs not made promptly always become worse, increasing the danger exponentially. Lazy people are fond of sticking folded-up paper under a wobble. Those kinds of half-measures baffled and infuriated Pirndel. He made a mental note of the platform’s composition and the fix required. He also noted large slivers waiting to impale the unsuspecting sandal wearer. Plus, there was that creak, or maybe it was a squeak, that certainly should be fixed at the same time…

The crowd was staring.

Ahem.

He gulped and began a riveting story that Madam Chronicler had recommended as a captivating combination of intrigue, bravery, and great heroics—a guaranteed crowd pleaser.

This crowd, however, did not seem pleased. They were listening, that was true…

He blanked. He “umm’ed”. He coughed. He forgot the part about the battle with the Urgoth Chieftain and had to go back. He knew this! Why had his excellent mind left him now? Left him to suffer?

From the outside, it hadn’t looked this hard.

“The end. Thank you.”

As Pirndel bowed, the wobbly platform pitched him awkwardly sideways, and he stumbled quickly to the exit.

At home, he lay on his cot and, with one small tear of rage and humiliation trickling down his face, he recited the whole story to himself. Perfectly. Not that it mattered.

The fire was now leaping toward the scaffolding outside the Hall of Heroes. Pirndel sprinted across the rooftops. Luckily—or with expert foresight, one might say—he’d anticipated how disastrous a fire in the construction area of the great hall would be and had placed cisterns, buckets, and pulleys at the ready.

Pirndel directed the few citizens below to get water from the fountain, which he pulled up to the now growing fire. Even with the help of small the crowd, it seemed hopeless. Was the green mist of unknown composition somehow stoking the fire? He would have to do an assessment tomorrow…  Then he had an idea.

“Hey you! Sentinel!”

The group of Sentinels were directing the crowd and couldn’t hear him.

“Damn those helmets,” he muttered, “so unsafe.”

No time to lose. Pirndel ran to the edge of the platform where he could just reach the end of a still-smoldering banner. He pulled a knife from his tunic and placed it in his teeth. He reached out, grabbed the banner, hacked at the cord, and swung across the courtyard to land in front of the startled Sentinels.

“We need to freeze that fire!”

“What?”

“FREEZE IT!” he pointed. “Can any of you do that?”

Without further hesitation, two of the Sentinels looked up and blasted the fire (and much around it!) from where they stood. It was a disastrous mess, but the fire was out, thanks to the ice sigils on their weapons.

The crowd erupted in applause, surrounding their Sentinel heroes with high-fives and glowing congratulations. Out of breath and relieved, Pirndel stumbled over to the fountain and sat gingerly on the edge. He looked around at the burned and frozen destruction. That was a job for tomorrow. His cot was calling. He pushed himself to standing with his blistered hands, and turned to walk home.

“Hey! Hey custodian! Where are you going?”

He turned around. Everyone was staring at him. Everyone.

“Bed?”

The crowd chuckled and nodded.

“Understood, said the Sentinel. But first, come here.”

Pirndel hesitated.

“Okay, I’ll come to you!” She crossed the courtyard in a single bound and, before he knew it, Pirndel was above the crowd, perched on the shoulders of two javelins holding him high.

“This is an accident waiting to happen,” he blurted by reflex.

People came out onto their balconies now—finally—to see what the commotion was.

He waved slightly. Shyly. The crowd applauded.

He boldly threw his arms into the air. The crowd cheered. They cheered.

Finally, the Sentinels placed him back on his feet. Then, as quickly as it had started, it was over. The courtyard was empty, save for the two guards who continued to watch the bonfire that had caused all the problems. Pirndel looked at it with chagrin and walked home.

Back in his room, he sat on the edge of his cot. He caught his reflection in the polished wall. He was smiling. He crossed his arms behind his head, laid back, and stared at the ceiling, feeling content and hopeful.

His eyes finally grew heavy and Pirndel Blatch drifted off to sleep, where he dreamt of daily fire drills and standing room-only safety meetings.

Special thanks: Ryan Cormier, Mary Kirby, Jay Watamaniuk, Karin Weekes

[biofunmy]

I Love My Jordans, But Nike’s Collaboration With Colin Kaepernick Rings Hollow

As a young person, I was taught to dress from the head down. Some of this was due to religious reasons — I was raised as a Muslim who was expected to wear somewhat traditional Muslim attire. Before I picked my day’s clothing, I had to put on a head covering — generally a kufi. From that, a full outfit would spring forth, complementing whatever colors the head covering was. My mother sewed all of my kufis and most of my clothing, so I at least had access to a closet overflowing with colors, if nothing else. This is what my family was financially capable of.

Because I didn’t grow up in a household where we could afford sneakers — particularly expensive sneakers — I often found myself wearing a single pair all year round, mostly a black pair, without much ceremony. They were shoes that could be kept clean all year round with minimal effort, even with the unpredictable weather swings of the Midwest. Because I went to schools where sneakers were a type of currency I didn’t have, I began to imagine them as a core part of an outfit, a piece of the puzzle that could distract from any other fashion shortcomings. I worked to save enough money to purchase a pair of black and red Jordan 14s right before the summer of my junior year of high school. It didn’t occur to me that no one at school would get to see me wearing them brand-new out of the box. I simply wanted access to that which I hadn’t had access to.

I own far more sneakers than I should now, with more disposable income, more physical living space, and far fewer restrictions on my clothing style. Now I dress from the feet up. I shop for clothing with the sneakers I have in mind first. Everything else I wear is an accessory in service of the sneaker. There are many reasons for this, but the most prominent reason is that for me, the feet are where the performance begins. I am not always confident in my body, and I am not often confident in the things I cloak it in. I am not often confident in my walk, or the things that come out of my mouth, but I can place firm confidence in what I put on my feet. It’s all a trick, this performance of sneakers that I have become so invested in — a game of drawing enough attention and conversation to a single place, long enough to sell someone on the other parts of myself that are less immediately striking.

To engage in this requires cognitive dissonance. Or, at least, it requires me to make peace with the manufacturing of sneakers — or at least the conditions under which some employees are forced to labor in the name of a company’s production. The vast majority of my sneakers are made by Nike, or under the Nike umbrella (Jordan, for example). I wear no pair out to the point where it can’t be passed down to someone else. I donate pairs, often to make room for other pairs. I’ve convinced myself that this is doing enough good in the face of the relentless capitalism that leads to poor labor practices. It isn’t, surely, but in order to engage in this level of performance, I have to reason away some of the more shameful aspects of a product’s creation.

It is another day on the internet and people are setting things on fire. Or cutting them to pieces, or gesturing at inanimate objects with their middle fingers. Earlier this week, Nike made Colin Kaepernick the face of its new ad campaign, culminating in a commercial starring Kaepernick that was released on Wednesday afternoon and will air during the NFL’s opening game tonight.

The tagline of the campaign is “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The text is laid over a close-up shot of Colin Kaepernick’s face, stoic and determined.

There is no reasoning with the people who claim to be burning Nike items in protest of Nike giving Kaepernick a campaign. The people are still upset about Colin Kaepernick, still bellowing about his protesting the flag and the anthem and America’s troops, despite the fact that they surely know — or have at least heard or seen — the reasoning for his protest outlined by Kaepernick himself, as well as other NFL players who support him. Perhaps the people even know that a donation of their Nike apparel may aid an underserved community.

There is something visceral about setting fire to your belongings as a way of showing disgust. It is an immediate way to not only demonstrate to an audience that you don’t care about the material loss of an object, but also show that you are willing to engage in a violent act against your own property to nail the point home. It makes for delicious drama, sometimes for both sides of the debate. Singer John Rich of country music duo Big & Rich, for example, posted a photo on Twitter on Monday of his soundman holding the severed tops of two Nike socks. The soundman is a former Marine, and in a fit of rage at the Kaepernick news, he cut the Nike swooshes off of his own socks. There are those who view this as righteous and patriotic, and those who find it comically foolish, but the performance serves the general idea: to pull eyes away from the greater, more complicated questions raised by a corporation like Nike endorsing an activist like Colin Kaepernick, and pull eyes toward the fireworks of public disavowal.

As to those questions, I thought Nike’s gesture rang hollow, even as I watched the commercial with its stark and inspirational imagery of athletes overcoming odds, laid over Kaepernick issuing directives about achieving that which seems impossible — and even as I smirked at the news of Nike planning to run the commercial during the NFL’s opening night on Thursday. Nike’s aim feels rooted specifically in another branch of performance: the performance of discussion. Discourse isn’t always profitable in the immediate short term (for those interested in the numbers game, Nike’s stock fell 3% on Tuesday) but stakes its hopes in controversy expanding and extending beyond a week, or a month. Much of the discussion remains surface-level, though, revolving around the publicly appealing aspects of it and not how Nike reckons with its being the official brand of the NFL while leaning fully into a campaign with a player blacklisted by the NFL. If a corporation takes enough sides, there is no longer bravery, just simultaneous echoes of meaningless banter while profits ebb and flow.

The thing is, though, that Colin Kaepernick is only controversial because the people opposed to him haven’t the imagination to see him as a complete person. Nike’s ad asks its viewers to believe in something. Kaepernick chooses to believe in a more egalitarian society in which systemic racial imbalances and injustice are, at the very least, challenged. He’s backed that up, donating over a million dollars to charities since September 2016. The belief that Colin Kaepernick is controversial exists only because we are in a country where iconography can be valued more than the people living under it. What he’s asking for isn’t particularly uncommon, though the actions he’s taken (both in protest and in donation of time and money) are.

I don’t know what, if any, hand Kaepernick had in the direction of Nike’s ad or its messaging. Ultimately, when it’s all said and done, I’m most thrilled to see him continue to access platforms that might lead some people to the work he’s done. But, on its face, the campaign feels like a performance to appeal to Colin Kaepernick as merely a controversy machine.

I will not be setting any of my Nikes on fire, and I will certainly not be cutting up any clothing. I am not on the side of those who would burn their own possessions in the name of this, or in the name of anything. I grew up too poor to do anything but cling to what I’ve earned, even if I’ve earned an unnecessary abundance of it. I cling to my sneakers, those in protest of Nike cling to their ideologies, and Nike itself clings to a desire to be part of a national conversation. And it’s all an attempt to compensate for some absence — be it of confidence, of logic, or of brand accountability. If there is one thing we all have in common, it’s that we understand what it takes to draw an eye elsewhere, even if only for a moment.●

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Jeff Schmalz- An Inspiration in the Face of  a Crisis

      It takes a special kind of bravery to report and research a disease as you are actively dying of it. Jeffery “Jeff” Schmalz possessed this bravery. Schmalz was a New York Times reporter who wrote political articles until the rise of the AIDS crisis. 

      AIDS, an acronym for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, first appeared in 1981 and displayed symptoms of a type of rare lung infection. It was given the name AIDS by the CDC on September 24th of 1982, and went on to devastate many families and communities. AIDS begins as HIV, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, and is incurable. At the time, there was no way to put the virus at bay before it could progress to AIDS. 

      Needless to say, this disease swept through the United States, although perhaps San Francisco and surrounding areas were hardest hit, and journalists were at the forefront providing the latest news, updates, and obituaries. One of these journalists was Jeff Schmalz. Before the crisis struck, Schmalz remained closeted from the newsroom management which included homophobic executive editor Abe Rosenthal. 

      The town of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania served as the town where Schmalz was born and raised. He grew up with his mother and his sister Wendy Wilde past the age of two, as his parents divorced. His father, an alcoholic, died when Schmalz was just a teenager, which prompted him to qualify for a fatherless son scholarship which allowed him to attend Columbia University in 1971. 

      Interestingly enough, Schmalz studied economics and considered attending law school before he eventually began working at the New York Times at age eighteen as a copyboy. He grew to love this job, and after he was promoted to the position of copy editor he dropped out of Columbia to work at the Times as a full-time job. 

      Schmalz became part of the national staff in 1988, and there he worked as bureau chief in Miami. Two years later, he returned to New York as deputy national editor. To preserve his position, Schmalz remained closeted from most of his superiors. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, coming out as gay at the Times resulted in at least some sort of punishment or setback. This occurred to Schmalz in 1983, after he was diagnosed with AIDS and his secret was out. He was passed over for an important promotion and instead was given an entry-level reporting job that he had accumulated far too much experience to logically do. However, Schmalz did come out to his colleagues and those below him, including journalist Samuel G. Freedman. As he wrote in his article “The Man Who Transformed How The New York Times Covers the Gay Community”, “Jeff gave me a field assignment. I would cover the Gay Pride Parade. I understood his agenda right away. Already in my brief time on the Times, Jeff had told me he was gay, the first person in my life to make such an admission. Somehow, in spite of my overall ignorance, he’d sized me up as someone capable of being sensitized to the reality of gay existence and of doing some small part to personally improve the Times’ coverage of it.”

      On December 21st, 1990, Schmalz experienced a grand mal seizure while sitting at his desk and editing an article. His left eye had been twitching for weeks, and he had been experiencing vision problems. Accounting it to stress, he took ten days off and went to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands to relax and hopefully cure his eye twitching. The twitching didn’t stop, and shortly after he returned to work he had the seizure. Many people from the newsroom rushed to his side, and Dr. Lawrence Altman was called from the science desk to assist the situation. 

      A month later, Schmalz tested HIV-positive. His body had already been destroyed by the virus, and his T Cell count measured just two. At first, it was believed that he could be affected by toxoplasmosis, which is a deadly brain infection. A spinal tap showed no instance of this infection, and the doctors decided that they wanted to perform exploratory brain surgery. It turned out that he had a fatal brain disease known as Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy. This is when he informed the paper of his condition, as he himself said, “I just went in and told them that I had AIDS.” He had a warm friendship with Max Frankel, and he said that “Max cried. Lelyveld cried. They were just so deeply and genuinely moved. They told me that the Times would do anything it could. Historically, the Times has always rallied around employees who are sick and has always treated people exceptionally well, including people with AIDS.” 

      Shockingly, Schmalz responded well to Azidothymidine, also known as AZT, and became healthy enough to return to work by 1992. He began by covering the 1992 presidential election and eventually began to report on AIDS. In his article “The Prism of AIDS”, published in December of 1992, he wrote, “Now I see the world through the prism of AIDS… I feel an obligation to those with AIDS to write about it and an obligation to the newspaper to write what just about no other reporter in America can cover in quite the same way.”

      When Schmalz interviewed people affected by AIDS, he informed them that he had it as well. “To be sure, that is an interview ploy; I'm hoping the camaraderie will open them up,” he wrote. “But there is more to it than that: I want them to take a good look at me, to see that someone with full blown AIDS can carry on for a while, can even function as a reporter. Much of the time, it works. Their faces light up. There is hope.”

      In his last three years of life, Schmalz pressed the Times to change the way that they covered members of the LGBT community and, most specifically, gay people. As Freedman wrote, “Jeff burned for the Times to cover gay people and issues in a way that wasn’t exotic or judgmental, and he knew the newsroom politics well enough to recognize that such change would not happen easily. Young, straight, sympathetic reporters like me were Jeff’s stealthy emissaries.” He also wrote about how the Times forbid the use of the word “gay” in all instances except as part of direct quotes. 

      Near the end of his life, Schmalz utilized dark humor to describe his condition. When his declining T Cell count reached the single digits, he joked about naming them. He used his disease as a tool to bring attention to it and to put a human face to it, instead of just lines of words covering pages that describe the deaths of thousands upon thousands of multifaceted people, many in the prime of their lives. “I have a voice that needs to get out now,” he said, “AIDS is not just a disease. It is a revolution in your life.” 

      On November 6th, 1993, Jeffery Schmalz died at the age of thirty-nine in his home where he resided in Manhattan. He leaves behind the legacy of promoting tolerance and acceptance in the New York Times, and providing a voice to those who suffered alone during the crisis. He was a major journalist and was at the face of the crisis via journalism.

     In December of 1992, in a personal article, he wrote, “To have AIDS is to be alone, no matter the number of friends and family members around.”

Citations:

Frankel, Mark. "When Gay Journalists Were Closeted: A History of AIDS Coverage at 'The Times'." Columbia News. Columbia News, 23 Dec. 2015. Web. 11 Sept. 2017. 

http://news.columbia.edu/content/when-gay-journalists-were-closeted-history-aids-coverage-times

Freedman, Samuel G. "The Man Who Transformed How The New York Times Covers the Gay Community." Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review, 30 Nov. 2015. Web. 11 Sept. 2017. 

https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/jeff_schmalz_sam_freedman_new_york_times.php

Martin, Justin. "Remembering Jeff Schmalz, Who Reported On AIDS While He Fought The Disease." KERA News. KERA News, 30 Nov. 2015. Web. 11 Sept. 2017. 

http://keranews.org/post/remembering-jeff-schmalz-who-reported-aids-while-he-fought-disease

Meislin, Richard J. "Jeffrey Schmalz, 39, Times Writer On Politics and Then AIDS, Dies." The New York Times. The New York Times, 06 Nov. 1993. Web. 11 Sept. 2017. 

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/07/obituaries/jeffrey-schmalz-39-times-writer-on-politics-and-then-aids-dies.html

Signorile, Michelangelo. "Out At The New York Times: Gays, Lesbians, AIDS And Homophobia Inside America's Paper Of Record." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 28 Nov. 2012. Web. 11 Sept. 2017.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/new-york-times-gays-lesbians-aids-homophobia_n_2200684.html

WNYC. "Dying Words: The AIDS Reporting of Jeffrey Schmalz." WNYC. WNYC, 14 June 2017. Web. 11 Sept. 2017.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/dying-words-aids-reporting-jeffrey-schmalz/