Day 4: 8,007 Words

Today was a day where I advanced the plot in no way, but had a great time doing it. Thanks to a lot of copying and pasting, I was able to centre all of my 2,000 words today on the Celebrity Feud Support Group. I'm delighted with it.

David Boreanaz and Taylor Kitsch were both in Jackie’s Place. At the same time. Boreanaz was pretending to focus intensely on the coffee dispenser, but his eyes were clearly darting over at Kitsch, who had casually taken off his shirt and was lounging sideways in a booth. The pair appeared to have reached an uneasy détente.  

Abigail dragged her eyes away from Kitsch’s washboard abs—that you could grate cheese on, if you wanted to (and she did)—to notice the other members of the assembled group. It was quite a group. She could easily pick out Vin Diesel’s bald head, sneaking a second stale muffin. Even more absurdly, Sylvester Stallone and Richard Gere were sitting at a table, making uneasy conversation over beers. Abigail wondered what support was being offered that could bring this absurd group together.  

James van der Beek pulled Abigail out of her reverie.  

“I’m excited about the ideas we came up with today, Abigail. Please excuse me, the Celebrity Feuds Support Group needs me.” 

Abigail’s face clearly revealed her obvious surprise. 

“The what?” she said, before she could stop herself.  

James, with patience, began to explain. 

“Everyone knows that in my most famous role, that of Dawson Leery, I was well known for my character’s feud with his former best friend, Pacey Witter, played by Joshua Jackson, over the love of Joey Potter.” 

“Well yes, of course!” Abigail replied.  

“What people might not know is that being one side of this feud, even though it was fictional, took a significant toll on me. I just felt so sad being separated from my best friend, over a girl!” 

James began to visibly choke up. Abigail wasn’t quite sure what to do. Should she pat his shoulder? Offer her condolences? She settled on awkwardly doing nothing. 

“I vowed, after an especially heated scene with Jackson, to do everything in my power to prevent feuds from ever happening again. I am especially concerned about celebrity feuds, since celebrities are so misunderstood and the goings-on of those fights are covered so insensitively by the media. So, I started the Celebrity Feuds Support Group. It’s a nonjudgmental and safe space where one or more participants in a feud can get together to air their grievances and mend bridges.” James looked so proud. Abigail was proud of him, too. 

“That sounds like a very… worthy cause?” Abigail finally said, phrasing it as more of a question than she had hoped she would.  

“Thank you. I’m very proud of the work we have done,” James said, beaming. “We worked extensively with Taylor Swift and Katy Perry and ultimately solved their feud. They’re great friends now,” James said happily. 

“What about her feud with Kanye West?” Abigail asked. James’ smile dimmed. 

“We worked tirelessly with Kanye to resolve their feud. I thought we were making great progress, until Kanye decided to publicly release doctored recordings to make it seem as if Taylor to his unsavoury lyrics in ‘Famous.’ She didn’t, and we knew we had to step in. We ended up releasing the real recording of the phone call, revealing that Swift had not agreed and that it was Kanye who was the snake, not Taylor!” James said. 

“That was you? Wow!” Abigail was amazed. 

“Sometimes you have to take sides in a feud,” James said darkly.  

Abigail tried, in vain, to come up with a response.  

She looked around at the assembled group again. She understood why Kitsch and Boreanaz were there, of course. She was very happy to hear that they were working on resolving their conflict in an appropriate manner. It was also obvious why Vin Diesel was there. He was involved in a very public feud with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, which had led to them refusing to appear in any more Fast and the Furious films together. The Rock had gotten out in front of the narrative by talking publicly about how much of an asshole Diesel had been while filming The Fate of the Furious.  

More recently, Diesel had tried to regain control of the feud by claiming that the issue had actually been that the Rock wasn’t a very good actor, and that he hadn’t liked Diesel’s methods as one of the producers on The Fate of the Furious to try to draw out a better performance. This had only made matters worse for him; no one believed him, not to mention that everyone likes the Rock more anyway. This was an especially bitter pill for Vin Diesel to swallow, since he had been acting for much longer and no matter how hard he tried, he could not rekindle early 2000s successes.  

The Rock had then delivered a crushing blow by revealing that their discord had actually began when Diesel was trying to talk about liminality on set to sound smart, and the Rock had told him that he was using the term incorrectly.  

“During liminal periods of all kinds,” the Rock had explained, holding a finger up didactically, “social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt. The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.” 

It was days before Diesel would show his face on set again. 

Abigail felt pleased that the two appeared to be working on their feud, or at least Diesel was. She hoped that the Rock would be seen around Jackie’s Place sometime soon.

Oh, and if you're interested in why Stallone and Gere were there, the truth about their feud is even better than what I ever would have made up: 

"I was eating a hot dog and [Richard] climbs in with a half a chicken covered in mustard with grease nearly dripping out of the aluminum wrapper," Sylvester said in the same interview. "I said, 'That thing is going to drip all over the place.' He said, 'Don't worry about it.' I said, 'If it gets on my pants, you're gonna know about it.' He proceeds to bite into the chicken and a small, greasy river of mustard lands on my thigh. I elbowed him in the side of the head and basically pushed him out of the car."