Entry tags:

story: the thing with feathers

Fake News: The Thing With Feathers, Chapter 9
Title: The Thing With Feathers, Chapter 9
Fandom: The Daily Show/The Colbert Report
Rating: PG
Words: ~1800
Disclaimer: Two.

For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.

And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.

Notes: Makes reference to this 2003 interview.

For the full table of contents, click here.

The Thing With Feathers
Chapter 9


(there.)


The real Jon had never been good at acting out fights. Even when Stephen was in-character, being as obnoxious and abusive as he could stand to be, and Jon put on that hangdog look he did so well, every heart in the audience swelling in sympathy -- even then, a second later Jon would laugh, and the spell would be broken.

He was a terrible actor because he was terrible at faking emotions, of any type. He was a bad romantic lead because he was uncomfortable with kissing his co-stars, and he was a bad scary villain because he couldn't feel proper anger at the people playing the heroes, and he was bad at faking fights with Stephen because the concept of the two of them fighting was so absurd that he couldn't keep a straight face for long.

But when Stephen thought back to all the obnoxious things he'd said in-character during their staged interactions -- My show is clearly more important than your show; I had another of those dreams where I had to do one of those stupid toss things; coming up next, meaningful commentary and un-stupid analysis; what self-loathing host of an alleged 'news show' cries himself to sleep at night? -- and then looked at the version of Jon sitting across from him and thought of him just taking it--

His stomach coiled.

Oh, there had been allusions to worse behavior off-camera, sexual harassment, gross negligence, all sorts of things; but these were vague references. Maybe in this universe they, like his references to his family, were not what they seemed.

But the verbal abuse of Jon had been played out on-screen in agonizingly minute detail.

"Why do you put up with it?" he whispered, anger -- at his character for doing it, and at himself for making it possible -- leeching the volume out of his voice. "How can you stand him?"

"But you play him," said Jon weakly. "You should understand better than anyone. How could you do that if you don't have any sympathy for him?"

"I -- it's comedy -- the comedy comes from the fact that he's such a screwed-up, unlikeable person -- I mean, I know he has his problems, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a complete bas--"

"Wait," said Jon, with surprising firmness. "Before you finish that, please remember that you are talking about my friend."

Stephen remembered it, and checked himself.

"He's a ... jerk," he amended, "and self-centered, and obnoxious, and he's amazingly flawed, and I know this for a fact because we write him that way."

"But don't you write us as being friends, too? Why do you do that?"

"Honestly? I think it mostly works because my Jon and I are friends underneath the roles, and our chemistry comes through. And because he's so good at playing straight man."

Jon started. "Isn't he?"

"Isn't he what?"

"...Straight," said Jon after a moment's hesitation.

"Oh! No, it's a comedy term, it means he's the normal one reacting to all the absurd things I do. Nothing to do with sexuality. But it's only funny because it's not real, which brings me back to -- why do you put up with it? How can someone like him have a friend like you?"

"But I don't understand the question," protested Jon. "People like him -- they're the people who most need friends like me!"

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---------------------
(here.)


It wasn't his office. How had he missed it before? It was so obvious. Not enough stars or stripes in the decor, for a start.

But the more he looked around, the more he found other differences. He found a change of clothes, neatly folded, and it wasn't a designer suit or even decent pants, just a generic T-shirt and chinos. The bottom drawer of his desk wasn't locked, which worried him until he opened it and found nothing but a stack of boring old papers. And on the desk itself...

Photos. Photos of a woman who looked just barely familiar, as if he had known her at some point but lost touch long ago. Photos of a not-quite-teenage girl, grinning, who looked exactly like pictures of his sister Margo at that age. Photos of two boys, one who had the strange woman's eyes set in a laughing face, and one who had a smile that he couldn't place, but he knew, he knew he had seen it before.

And then he found the group shot. They were standing in front of the fairy-tale castle that led to the Magic Kingdom, the kids wearing mouse ears, the woman holding the younger boy in her arms; and next to her, with his arm around her shoulder, was Stephen.

But it wasn't him. The man in the picture was in another generic T-shirt; he hadn't paid attention to the angle of his head, so the wonky ear was glaringly obvious; and he was grinning, not the authoritative smile that Stephen worked so hard on but a silly, face-splitting grin, the kind of grin Stephen had tried to avoid since he had realized how dorky it looked in his seventh grade school picture.

The smile of the little dark-haired boy was, in miniature, exactly that grin.

This is the version of me who owns this office. The version of me who belongs here. Only he's married, really married, and he has kids, kids who look like him.

And he doesn't have dirty pictures in a locked drawer, not even pictures of women. He's straight. He's happy.

And, oh God, I left my pills on the set.


---------------------
---------------------
(there.)


The outburst seemed to throw Stephen for a loop. He opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

"This world," said Jon after a moment, "it's more complicated than you expected, isn't it?"

Stephen laughed dryly. "You can say that again."

We've been arguing past each other, thought Jon. We started from completely different assumptions. Here's the point we've been missing.

"You pretend to be the Stephen I know--" (my Stephen)-- "but you play him as this one-dimensional comedy character. And he isn't. To us, he isn't."

"He isn't all one-dimensional," admitted Stephen. "We've given him some backstory, some complications..."

"No, listen, it's even there in the basic idea. You said he was a stock character. How did you describe it?"

"Uh ... well-intentioned, poorly-informed, high-status idiot?"

"That's the one. And the first part of that, the first, is 'well-intentioned.' He doesn't do things to be cruel. He does them because he thinks they're the right thing to do -- or, worst-case scenario, because he doesn't realize that they're the wrong thing to do. He's badly informed, but that doesn't make him a bad person."

He paused. "Is this making sense?"

"Perfect sense. It's a great description of the general idea. But he's more than that, he's a takeoff on the loud conservative pundits -- he's angry, constantly, for no reason, just for the sake of being angry."

"You really think there's no reason?" asked Jon.

They had entered the city now, and there were lights and signs and multicolored billboards casting odd patterns of shadow on Stephen's face.

"Why?" he replied, as a stripe of green light passed over his forehead. "What do you think?"

Jon had never discussed this with anyone. Not his co-workers, not his friends, not even his wife. It was the only way to be absolutely sure that it would never get back to (his) Stephen. But his Stephen was gone, lost, worlds away, and there was no telling when (if?) (when) he would return.

"What I'm telling you now," he said, "it doesn't leave this car. It's strictly between us. You understand?"

"I won't breathe a word. I promise."

"All right."

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes.

"He is angry," he said, "because anger is the emotion of defense. When anger doesn't work, he goes for pity, which is sadness, crying. But they're all just defense mechanisms, to shut off how he actually feels about everything. He builds these walls to keep himself from showing his true emotions, because he's afraid they'll be seen as weaknesses.

"And he's so insecure about those emotions that he projects that onto everything around him; he thinks he's under attack from the whole world. He -- listen, he put baby carrots 'On Notice' because he claims they're 'trying to make him gay'. He feels threatened by baby carrots. To be defensive with an outlook like that -- it exhausts him. It's killing him by inches.

"He needs someone who won't put any pressure on his defenses. Someone with whom he can really feel safe. A friend who will let him be angry, or pitiful, or just plain wrong, without trying to change him. Because without that, he will never believe that anyone could accept him the way he is -- I mean the real him, the one under the shell.

"I catch glimpses of that Stephen, every once in a while. He's insecure, and he's scared, and he's lonely, but he cares about people, and he wants to do the right thing. He's a good person. He just doesn't know how to let it out."

He opened his eyes.

The Stephen next to him was staring at him with a look of such intensity that for a second Jon thought it was his own Stephen, not the mild-mannered moderate who played that role for the camera.

"What you said about anger and defense," he whispered, "where the hell did you get it?"

"I was a psych major. I guess a little of it stuck with me ... is that what you mean?"

"No. No, it's not. The way you put it -- it's something I said in an interview a couple of years ago. Almost verbatim."

Jon smiled. "Talking about your character? Then you do understand him!"

Stephen shook his head. "Not about my character."

"Who, then?"

"Me."