Oh, this one hurts! (That's a good thing.) Where is Rich taking Little Gray Eyes? Lana's trying to pull a full-on Daytona here but it looks like Junior's trying, anyway. It's interesting that Mary's the only woman who ever wrongfoots Val; I don't know if it'd be a good or bad thing, for her to realize that. But is she having a boy or girl? And what did you name the babies?

Patience, patience, patience...

Ah, yes, your questions all deliberately left unanswered for now but I will say that the babies do have names! Even baby boy, though Candy was in no condition to claim him just yet (so Rich beat her to it). And Mary is having twins, she just doesn't know it, so they all refer to "the baby", singular.

My initial idea, long before I even played the round, was to see Mary shift out of "Cinderelly" right into another fairy-tale...but the only song I know off-hand from Disney's Snow White is "Heigh-ho" so not much to work with there. Still, Lana's vanity is a real issue. If she actually knew about Mary and Val? I can't imagine. But I think intentional cruelty from Lana would be ultimately less effective than her current casual variety.

Mary gets too lost in Val's power to hurt her to notice her own influence, which is a very good thing for Junior.

I think, in the long run, it would be a good thing; but the way Mary is, if she ever realizes she has the power to hurt back it would terrify her into paralysis for a little while, at least. But she has begun to find her spine, anyway. Now if Junior will only locate his...the sooner he does, the less likely she is to give him up as a bad job.

And of course the thing Val's most afraid of is that she'll figure out exactly how weak she makes him; how much of the worst of what he's done to her stems directly from avoiding situations in which he'd have to tell her No to her face, and might not be able to. There's a deep well of stubbornness in Mary - a survival trait of the meek - that could, with sufficient motivation, allow her to use that knowledge. And a good thing, too, or she wouldn't have hung on long enough to tell him about Candy. But it's easy to see why he hasn't wanted her to bring that stubbornness to bear on him.

I did know she was having twins - you've featured that cheesecake prominently enough - but that first comment is always written in a fugue of processing and it's easy to brain burp. A boy and a girl would be nice - I always like to get girls with the father's features and boys with the mother's, myself. No hope of Junior's recessives trumping Mary's brown/black/brown/dark blue, though, so that's something else to possess my soul in patience about. And I'm a little afraid we won't find out where Little Gray Eyes is in Part Two, either!

Watching The Mating Season (circa 1950 movie with Gene Tierney) that I've seen half a dozen times I've just noticed the main male character's name is Val while his rival is called Junior. Even if I hadn't seen it before it's easy to predict that Junior loses.

But Widespot Junior, at least, isn't an idle, drunken playboy (the movie character kinda had more shades of Rhett). On one hand, he's been waiting for the chance to prove himself so he's really working hard in the store but, on the other, he still hasn't earned a proper name yet, he is very much still "Junior".

Mary is stronger than she knows but if their home situation was them living with her family, her mother, she'd be struggling just as much if not more to come into her own (and hey, the meddling mother living with the newlyweds issue is another parallel to the film!)

Nope, no little blonde babies for Lana to dote on, though. Didn't stop her choosing a favourite. If it weren't for the Ottomi this would be a very raven-haired generation up and coming. I can't wait to see what they're all going to look like, I'm especially curious to see if baby boy's big grey eyes will shrink and get all beady--but it'd be so funny if he'd end up with eyes like Lana's!

He could very easily end up with Lana's eyebrows - my iteration did. Which means my Rich can't operate on the assumption (as some people's clearly do) that of course Candy's baby is his child, not his grandchild. So let's hope the gray eyes aren't contradicted by any other features, for baby's sake and Candy's.

Though I'm afraid the fact that the opening scene has to be a flashback and Candy's been gone for months after the baby must've been born, with no one having seen her, must mean that Rich's writing this one off and starting a new one - it's one of the courses of action he was mulling over in his last update, after all. At least he didn't abort the first one, but that cardboard box does look a lot like abandonment.

And speaking of paternity assumptions - it is perfect that Valentine assumes that he's responsible for Mary's second pregnancy as well as her first. All the babies in town are belong to him - it's only natural! He carries it well, but that is a mighty big ego on him.

Since I know she can only get pregnant on her own lot, and presume that if you'd gone to the trouble to enable Valentine to do it we'd have more foreshadowing (and why would you feel the need to make any more Harts anyway?), I assume he's wrong - but I doubt he'll believe it in his heart till he sees some of Junior's features on Mary's children. It must've made the moment Mary caught him with Lana about twenty times worse for him, because that would've been about twenty times worse for her.

By the way, it was nice seeing Rhett cheerily running errands for Sandy. If you told him he was comic relief he'd resent it, but by Widespot standards he's got it pretty good at the moment, and that makes me glad to see him. And he wouldn't hate knowing that he makes a woman smile.

Ever since I read this yesterday morning I've had the urge to go play my own Widespot, where I can make everybody be happy because other people are exploiting the drama potential for me, and just turn aging off and watch them not being miserable. I did open up the Harts briefly last night, to check and make sure they were safe where I left them.

Oh, those eyebrows! When Dixie and I were playing around with Lana's makeover, I quickly found out that it didn't make a bit of difference what brow options I clicked, that strip is what it is. And I get the feeling Junior's genes overall will be pretty strong, although for right now the twins look like the swimming in the Lands' end of the gene pool. But faces will explode and we'll really see what's what come bday time...of course, you've yet to be introduced at all. Must try to carve out some time to get started on the next part.

As for Rich, he sticks to a plan, a version of his own eyes peering back at him mattered not so long as there was more than one way the child could have come by them.

Val, indeed, has got quite the solid ego on him. There will definitely be more Harts since I don't imagine his kids are done making more, and Goldie hasn't even gotten started yet, but he is mistaken. It was an educated guess, though; the last time Mary came around 'sinnin' in the daytime' wasn't long before she got together with Junior.

There will be more Rhett, even though this is not his round. Wonder if he'll still make you smile? (Insert evil Rich grin.) (Actually, I'm pretty sure the Rhett effect will be much the same as always, laughter and head-shaking. At least, that's how it goes on my end.)

I was just thinking that as much as I'm a sucker for happy endings, nice & tidy, you probably couldn't tell from this! but it's good to know they're all living fulfilled and happy somewhere :-)

Yes, please, carve out time as soon as ever you can. You need to prioritize your creative endeavors. For your own sake of course. This request is entirely altruistic. :)

Sorry on the eyebrows. I love pushing around sliders that other people leave alone, and on Lana's brows I forgot to implement the last step my plan for keeping them in line with what the market would bear without losing my style by getting the face the way I liked it and then moving the most extreme features a click or two back toward the middle. The basic idea was that Lana and Rich's eyebrows would be opposites of each other.

What, Rhett screws up next update? I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked. Hey, he could start the Widespot Weekly News and his editorial in each issue could be titled: "How I Screwed Up This Week and Why It's Not My Fault." Maybe people'd start telling him stuff if he had a press pass.

You're a long way from an ending, happy or otherwise, yet. Got to get through the misery first. My own Widespot is far from conflict-free, because that would be boring; but I do have Mary and Valentine in a place of cheerful equilibrium where the serious problems are in abeyance or exterior to them. They're both ignoring the fact that he's going to leave her a widow before her time. Their arguments are over things like his getting underfoot when she's trying to clean ("I didn't marry you for a housekeeper! I married you to pay attention to me!") and her insistence on adhering to a budget. And Candy is living with her son in Bigg City, writing romance novels and dating Junior, but she is not ever living under the same roof as Rich and Lana, no way no how. I've seen too many iterations of Candy getting downright abused in the Mannsion, and Lana scares me as much as Rich does. I think my Junior's going to get out from under in time - I'm rooting for him to, anyway.

And I have great hopes for your Junior. The big questions are, does he have the mental and moral stamina for the long haul? and How will he react when he finds out Mary's been keeping secrets from him?

It's easy to overlook Mary's fault in all this, but her avoidance of confrontation has led her to be less than honest with those she loves most. She never explicitly told Val what she wanted or expected of him; passed up a perfect opportunity to tell Junior about her history with Val when they talked about Junior's history with Candy; has never trusted anybody enough to confide in them even though Dixie and Penny, at least, would be both sympathetic and eager to help. This has bitten her before and it's going to keep chewing - until, as you say, she learns to speak up.

Candy writing romance novels is hilarious. I've seen some reference to that on your tumblr but I never noticed, is Junior actively involved with his son? So far he's looking to be a doting parent, although Lana tries to beat him to the care-taking (with whatever baby Mary's not tending). Very: "oh Junior, hand it over, let me show you--this is how you feed/burp/change a baby". Like she would know. Junior was reared by the nanny. (Or nannies. I'm pretty sure more than one quit, or were fired, probably for making eyes at Rich.) And considering that she easily put 2 and 2 together when news trickled out that Candy was missing while insisting on keeping mum and knowing pretty well what her husband is capable of...Lana's definitely not a woman to turn one's back on (she gets stab-by) but she's also great comic fodder. Ironically, because in the heat of the moment she's not capable of Rich's restraint.

Mary doesn't really think things through, she lives by her feelings and so often they seem to be telling her "hush up", like a gut fear of revealing herself. She's forgetting that her secrets aren't actually secret: Candy knows. And Rhett, too, from the way he was ribbing his Pop. And probably Goldie although Mary's secrets would be safe with her.

I doubt even a press pass would do much toward inspiring confidence in Rhett, unless there are those who secretly want their stories randomly redacted to make him look good (to himself, at least).

Yes, time for story-making and for more playing, I need that! I'm just itching to show what all happens.

Your Junior is doting on the twins?! Wow, that really gives me hope for him - as a generally rule, Junior and Candy are in a dead heat for Worst Parent in Widespot.

Usually Candy comes out a little the worse - as a parent, Junior makes an excellent big brother - but, presumably because he's never lived with one, my Junior pays child support, canoodles Candy, and acts like Arden doesn't exist. It's not because she's blocking him, either - she's had him over regularly, and the first time he came handed the baby to him, but it's never taken. He's never interacted with Arden without some exterior pressure, has never rolled a want about him (Rich has); and Arden reciprocates by ignoring him or competing with him for Mommy's attention. It might be different if they lived together.

In other people's hoods he has a tendency to live with folks he can let the onerous bits slide onto, but he's always up for the fun stuff. This is especially true if Mary moves in. If Candy moves into the Mannsion, Rich and Lana wind up raising the first kid, and spoiling it just like they spoiled Junior.

Candy consistently passes childcare off to other people in every iteration, but she got suddenly more hands-on in my hood when she realized Daddy was going to give in and marry The Queen of Hick. She even potty-trained Arden autonomously and then emptied the chair, which is highly unusual. I'm usually too much on top of directing the potty-training to see that happen autonomously. And she and Arden have a you-and-me-against-the-world vibe in their Bigg City apartment. I think she doesn't find babies interesting, but then they turn into people and she likes them. Besides, Arden's male.

Poor Mary. You've really brought out the dark underbelly of Beulah's parenting style there - it's like Mary barely thinks she has a right to her own feelings; or at least that they're not of any interest to anybody else. It's part of my Valentine's Philosophy of Women, that they all have one thing they try to cover up about themselves, convinced it's ugly, and it's always the one thing that makes them most adorably distinctive, as far as he's concerned. Which is good for him. Convince her that you love her buck teeth, or her crooked nose, or whatever it is, and she'll love you forever. (He explained this to Rhett and I realized he's right! All generalizations are false, but think about it - isn't it true more often than not?) Mary and Penny intrigued him from the start, because Penny doesn't have anything like that, and Mary's whole self was like that till Val took her in hand. Yet my Mary at least had Penny to confide in, because Penny is interested in everything about everybody and they grew up together. Yours suffers a lot for lack of a confidante.

It probably doesn't occur to Mary that Valentine's children would ever gossip about their Pop - it's their secret as much as it is hers and his. And she's been right, hasn't she? Which might have made one of them into someone she could talk to, except for Candy hating her, Goldie being so young, and Rhett being Rhett.

Which reminds me - Sandy's single appearance in this episode. It's a poignant picture all on it's own (Sandy didn't have anybody supporting and reassuring her when she had her baby!); but it also raises the question of whether Sandy's in on the secret now. She has no particular reason to care, except insofar as it affects her own and Proxy's standing in the house, which it doesn't visibly. And she doesn't, at the moment, have anybody to gossip to. But sooner or later, she will; and not caring also means she has no reason to suppress anything she knows, or thinks she knows.

You're not the only one with that itch. Scratch, please.

Doting may be too strong a word but he does seem amused by the fact that they exist. 'I did that? Both of 'em? Cool!' It's an interesting contrast to Rich's urgency about his own Mannpower in this department. (Pride and vanity...Rich and Lana really were a perfect couple.)

Candy self-sufficient is such a wonder to me. Writing books and running shops and things, I think if my Candy got a glimpse of these alternate universe versions of her she'd think they must've lost the touch, havin' to do so much. Her Pop's threat that she'd have to start earning her keep, like Rhett, wasn't anything she took to heart. The pregnancy put him off but otherwise they were poised for a real battle of wills. Doesn't help that the current employment options are a joke, nothing like what she could get up to in the city! But Rich would've made a willing sugar daddy if it came to that and there was Junior, too...if she hadn't gotten caught.

I can see where motherhood or a genuine threat of being broke could be the making or breaking of Candy but being Rich's 'houseguest' has detoured her character development. And so far as autonomous oddness goes, the first thing Candy did after being transferred to minimum-security in the master bedroom was drop down on hands and knees to scrub D.D.'s pet bed when Rich expressed his disgust at the stench. More thoroughly broken in than he anticipated perhaps.

Like Sandy, Candy also gave birth alone. Something she absolutely didn't want to do (not alone and not lucid, if she could help it). They're both in unfamiliar situations so secrets might be useful currency to have, if not to spend.

That philosophy of Val's, very sly! Better than the opposite approach, though: convincing a woman that you're the only one who could ever love her despite her 'obvious' imperfections. But I can just see Rhett fumbling with that advice, there's a possible future scene where he tries to back-pedal rudeness into charm but it could be even funnier to think his rudeness was a clumsy implementation of Valentine's advice. But, hey, how are you s'posed to compliment her flaws without first drawing attention to 'em? One could let her be the one to bring it up but he doesn't have time for all that.

Edited 2014-05-16 09:40 pm (UTC)

"Dumbass, can't you read body language at all? She already knows what she doesn't like." Leading directly to the even more disastrous conversation with the woman who slouches to de-emphasize her bosom because she is so sick of the D-cup being the only thing a man sees...

Yeah, Rhett'd be an even worse fool than he is to ignore his Pop, but there's no getting around the fact that Val's trying to explain something that's as second nature to him as breathing; or that there'll often be a basic disconnect between what Val's giving advice on and what Rhett's wanting advice for. So when Val's explaining how to establish intimacy, Rhett's listening for how to score.

I think mine's Philosophy is a post hoc formulation - because he never met a homely woman. I figure he got bored of all the Face 1 & 2 groupies he met out there and started gravitating toward women with something that took them off the belle curve. The fourth or fifth time he said: "Why do you cover up your smile? That's a world-class smile!" or "I can't get over how cute your nose is" and discovered that he'd just complimented the feature that had them considering plastic surgery, he realized that he was on to something; but the attraction was genuine, or it wouldn't have worked. Ultimately everybody learns the most from their partners, anyway, if they're willing to pay attention and take their lumps, and so it will be with Rhett, too, if nobody shoots him first.

It seems to me Valentine's habits are betraying him repeatedly here. Not surprising, given that he formed the habits in a much bigger, more populated world, while in an emotional partnership with Angel, and in an environment where innocence doesn't survive long. Until he gets his reflexes retrained, he's going to keep hurting Mary, and himself. I don't think he even realized he loved Mary, till he worked it out on stage that last time together, a day late and a dollar short - not how he's accustomed to arrive.

Don't count Candy too broken yet - her neat points tend to assert themselves when she's bored or stressed; and the moment her restrictions are loosened is the psychological moment to plant the idea that they aren't even necessary. Cleaning Doomsday's bed looks like a pointed message - "See, I'm so far from rebelling that I'm even subservient to the cat!"

I have found her to be an excellent judge of her own best interests, and surprisingly discreet. I've had Junior throw several parties involving volatile mixes, and apart from the time she attacked Mary (Mary won) she worked them like pros. She's caught Rich with Lana, she's caught side dates with other side dates, she's caught Sandy with Hamilton, but nobody has ever caught her with anybody, no matter how thick the opportunities clustered.

My Candy has gotten to mature in a relatively secure environment - say what you like about the Harts, they don't kick their own out just 'cause they screw up - while yours is having to do so under terrible conditions, but that doesn't mean she's not developing. She's lazy, and unwise, but I don't think she's stupid. Though it hasn't been hard to convince Rich that she is, since she's an opportunist, not a schemer. It wouldn't be a surprise to me if she's the instrument of his downfall, eventually.

And I think I'll forgive her if she's a less than stellar mother to the kid Rich has presumably got her incubating now.

Edited 2014-05-18 12:46 am (UTC)

Gah, so much is happening! Another brilliant chapter that has left me hanging for more!

:-D Glad you liked it! There is quite a bit going on here, isn't there? Babies and betrayals and revelations...(Oh, my.) But that's kind of the running theme of Widespot, come to think about it.

The plot thickens...

Another great update! I can't wait to see what Rich will be doing next.

Thanks! That's got me wondering now, whatever would Rich do if he actually retired? Would he become even more of a menace with extra time on his hands or would he lose his edge? Nope, that's not a risk he'd be willing to take. On with the machinations! :-)

Ew Rich! He's really kind of horrible in this update. That kind of guy that you love to hate. ;)His cat on the other hand was extra cute in the pictures this time.
For each update everyone gets if not another layer so at least more chiselled out. I didn't get at first how spunky Penny is, but that's my opinion. Even loveable Mary has more sides to her than one might think at first.
As per usual your deco and eye for details amazes me.

What happened to the baby?? Can't wait for part 2.

Ah Rich. I'm certain there is a line he wouldn't cross...I just don't know what it is. Doomsday is quite the attention-seeking kitty, but she's also a pro, her antics all timed to perfection it seemed. Perhaps that's the line, "detonating" her if the time ever came would probably present Rich with an actual moral or, at least, emotional dilemma.

Penny has definitely got spunk, more on that when her round comes up.

Details aren't always my strong suit, particularly visual details, so it pleases me to hear you say that. There was one I added that I didn't think anyone would actively notice but it needed to be there--the slit on the top of the box the baby's in to show it isn't sealed. Whatever did happen to the baby he is still breathing...

My my! :O What a seat edger! For such a small town, such BIG scandals going on ^^;;;

Oh yes, there is quite a lot going on out there in the middle of nowhere! The most scandalous (as always) presented courtesy of Rich Mann :-D