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tbehartoo · 3 years

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Bursting Bubbles

My piece for @thedjwifizine that can be found here. It's full of great art and stories. Check it out!

...

Nino looked up into the scowling face of his favorite seatmate.

“Here you go, Bubbles,” she said as she thrust a mango bubble tea into his hand. “One special of the day from The Boba Bar.” Her other hand slapped a small card onto his sheet music. “And here’s your other three week’s worth of drinks.”

“Aw, Alya you didn’t have to do this,” he held up the card. “This,” he grinned as he took his first sip of the drink, “you definitely needed to do.”

“Well you won the bet fair and square,” Alya huffed as she plopped down into her seat. “You really could find a way to get a harpsichord to sound rockin' when you DJ’ed Kim’s house party.”

“Scoops, I’m surprised you could doubt me,” Nino held a hand to his heart. “It’s like you’ve forgotten that music is my life.” He grumbled toward the music piece he’d been assigned, “It’s not like I’ve spent nearly three grueling years learning this European centered musical theory or anything.” Looking at her smirk he added, “Or that I’d hardly be the first person to experiment with combining old instruments to new music.” He thought for a moment before adding, “Or old music to new instruments.”

The next week it was Nino placing a gift card on Alya’s notepad.

“Your payment for getting me those sources for my music history essay, m’lady,” he said as he bowed to her.

“Nino, what-” she asked as she looked at the card “-what is this?”

Nino felt his face warm up, but he sent a shy smile in her direction as he sat down. “You were saying, the other day, that it’s been forever since you had a mani-pedi, but that they weren’t in your budget at the moment so I figured I’d get one for you as thanks for saving my bacon. I didn’t have time to track down those translations of medieval manuscripts for that Music Development in the Dark Ages assignment, but you did it without my asking.” He grinned at her, “You really took some pressure off of me and I appreciate it.”

She looked at him, back at the card, and back at Nino.

“I don’t remember saying that,” she murmured.

“You were picking at your nails because the color was coming off and said that you’d need to see if Marinette was free for a girl’s night so you could get her to do your nails again,” he said as he started to root around in his bag.

“That was two- three weeks ago?” she said, thinking out loud. She looked at him, but he was obviously avoiding her gaze. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”

His head tucked between his shoulders, a turtle pulling into its shell.

“It was easy to remember,” he said. “You had that sparkly red polish. It really drew in the eye. I remember thinking that you had the perfect hands for playing the piano right before you said it.” He quickly looked away again.

Alya was quiet for a moment before smiling up at him.

“That seems like a really nice compliment coming from a musician like yourself,” she reassured him. She looked back at the card. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this place.”

“It’s, uh, one of the local beautician schools,” he told her. “You were right about mani-pedis being a bit pricy, but my cousin is going there to learn to cut hair, and she said the girls in the nail class are crazy talented and eager to get someone not a relative to paint on, and it only costs about a fourth of what the pros charge.” He shrugged. “This way you can have like half a dozen manicures for the price of one.”

Alya lunged at him and caught him in a tight hug.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” she cried before releasing him. “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“Miss Cesaire, if you are quite done groping Mister Lahiffe I’d like to start the class,” the voice of Doctor Agreste cut through the lecture hall and every head snapped toward them.

Alya’s face was nearly as warm and red as his own.

“Yes, sir,” she squeaked as she pulled her arms back to her side.

“Now if we may?” the professor’s curt voice took control of the class.

“Groping,” Nino mumbled. “He calls one little hug groping.” He pulled out a composition that Madame Mendeleiev had assigned just that morning. “I’d like to show him groping.”

He was startled out of his grumbling when Alya whispered, “Me, too.”

Only three more weeks and I’m out of this class and I never have to see this man’s stupid face again, Nino thought to himself. At least after today it’s just student presentations before the final.

They had finally reached the Contemporary Era and the man was butchering even the easiest movements! And don’t get him started on the composers. He’d wasted over half the lecture trying to explain that Richard Wagner wasn’t really an antisemite, but that Nazi sympathizers, mainly Adolf himself, just liked his music so much and thought it expressed National Ideals perfectly! The man wasn’t even a composer in Contemporary times!

And that just served to take time away from some real pioneers of the era like Laura Anne Karpman whose music can be found literally anywhere. Or what about Meredith Monk who includes operas amongst her compositions, since Doctor Agreste seemed to be hung up over Wagner’s damn Ring Cycle. Of course he didn’t mention Yihan Chen the brilliant Chinese pianist and composer. And though the man would fawn and dote on child prodigies like Wolfgang Mozart all day, he wouldn’t give the time of day to “Bluejay” Greenberg who could hear several compositions in his head at the same time and then be able to write them with minimal correction.

Just, UGH!

Nino was done with this entitled little man and the racist ideology he’s attempting to spread about. He was certainly spreading something, but it smelled more like fertilizer than anything else to Nino’s mind.

He could tell that Alya was concerned about his agitation, he’d been clenching his pencil so hard he heard it crack, but he refused to look in her direction. She had a great talent for sniffing out these kinds of things and if he looked at her right now, he’d probably see his frustration reflected on her face and do something dumb- like start an uprising in the middle of class. He really couldn't afford to take this class again.

As soon as they were out the doors Alya started ranting about how it was obvious that Doctor Agreste didn’t even bother to check Wikipedia for sources. She made her opinion known that the good doctor didn’t like the era because more people were included in writing and performing it rather than just white, Western-European men who were either wealthy or had wealthy patrons. And stopped mid rant.

Nino looked at her and watched as Alya got an idea. By the look on her face it was a genius idea: an Evil and Genius idea if the cackle was anything to go by.

“Whatever you’re planning, I’m in,” he declared.

“I haven’t even told you my idea yet.”

“I can tell by your expression alone that it’s going to be the best idea ever,” he said with a smirk. “So want to let me in on our plan?”

She explained her idea and Nino’s eyes lit up.

“Oh, that man is going to regret crossing paths with us,” he chuckled. “Can you come over tonight? I’ve got plenty of stuff we’d need for the music portion of the presentation.”

She shook her head. “I need at least one day to fact-check my notes and another to find accurate sources. Are you busy Saturday?”

Nino thought for a moment. “I’m free in the morning, but I have a wedding I’m playing for in the evening.”

“Okay that gives me a little more time for research.” She smiled up at him. “So, Saturday morning we’ll meet up to pull things together?”

Nino nodded in agreement.

“Great,” she said, “That’ll give us Sunday to type up the report and Monday to practice for our presentation on Tuesday.”

“Tell me the truth, Alya,” Nino looked at her, “Is this too much? Are we crazy to put together a spite presentation in one weekend? At the end of the semester?” He brushed a bit of her hair out of her face and tucked it carefully behind her ear. “You already have so much to do for all your other classes. I don’t want this to be something that stresses you out or makes you do something that hurts you.”

Alya reached up and patted his cheek before replying.

“Nino this is going to be so much fun that I doubt I’ll even notice how much work it is,” she grinned at him fully. “I might pull an allnighter here or there, but I promise you that I’m taking care to not do too much. I wouldn’t have suggested this if I didn’t think we could do it.”

He held her gaze for a moment then sighed.

“Okay, let’s ruin this man’s whole career.”

She laughed loud and pulled him toward the school’s cafe. Obviously this called for copious amounts of snacks and his precious bubble tea.

Tuesday dawned bright and clear. A perfect day to teach about the subtleties of Contemporary music while simultaneously displaying the ignorance and prejudice of the most hated music teacher on campus. Nino sipped at his Thai tea with coffee pudding as he contemplated Alya’s plan of attack. It was a nice simple plan, but it needed something. Seeing a familiar outline hurrying across campus brought a smile to his face. The final nail in Doctor Agreste’s coffin just made itself known. He hurried across the quad to see if he could catch up with Madame before she reached her office.

An hour later he stood at the podium inserting the thumb drive into the computer for the projector.

“Good morning everyone,” Alya began. “As you all know we’ve had to jump over and through many musical ages and movements. That meant we had to skim through a lot of really interesting information. Nino and I decided to do a little bit of music through the ages for the Contemporary Era for you all. Now, get ready to get funky!”

That was his cue. He started the Powerpoint and Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” began to blast from the room’s speakers while Elmer Fudd stabbed a spear into the ground singing, “Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!”

“Welcome to Neoromanticism,” he called to those present.

The presentation went off without a hitch. Madame Mendeleiev had managed to slip in before their presentation and had stayed to the end of class. It was with great delight that Nino watched the Dean of the Music Department approach Doctor Agreste and congratulate him on the quality of his students’ final presentations. She even approached Alya and complemented her on the amount of research she’d done to be ready for the day. Then she turned to him.

“An adequate presentation, Nino,” she said with no trace of humor in her words. “Your compilation was a little heavy on the electronic music and light on the serialism, but I suppose that’s only to be expected with where your interests lie,” she paused, “and in light of the time constraints.”

He gulped and nodded his head. He knew she’d pick up on that.

“Please, send me a copy of your presentation at your earliest convenience.”

His eyes snapped up from the floor to meet hers. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining the slight upturn to the corners of her mouth or not, so he chose not to comment on it.

“I think I might incorporate it into my opening lecture next semester,” she remarked so offhandedly that Nino was sure he was hearing things. “It’ll be an excellent introduction to modern music for the freshmen.” She nodded to him before moving off to catch professor Agreste on his way out the door.

Alya was grinning from ear to ear and practically vibrating where she stood. He turned to her and had a fraction of a second to brace for impact as she’d thrown herself in his direction. Her arms were around his waist as she pulled him into a hug. He returned the hug with matching enthusiasm.

“We did so good!” she squealed.

He looked down into her grinning face and returned the smile.

“Hell yeah, we did,” he replied. “This calls for a celebration.” It was only then that he realized he still had his arms around her shoulders. Then again she was still holding on to him. He pulled back but kept hold of her hands. “I know you have another class in an hour, but do you want to go get boba to celebrate?”

She smirked up at him. “Only if you’ll let me treat you to dinner at Sabine’s tonight.” She looked to the side as she added, “And then we could go check out that concert in the park you mentioned yesterday.”

His mouth suddenly went dry. That sounded a lot like an actual date. Like a real date with this girl he knew he’d started crushing on some time this semester. What else could he do?

“Sounds great, but you have to let me bring pizza and dessert to our study date on Thursday night.”

Her laugh sent a tingle down his spine. “It’s a date!”

#miraculous ladybug #djwifi #alya cesaire #nino lahiffe #alya x nino #thedjwifizine #my writing

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dweemeister · 3 years

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The Five Pennies (1959)

Anyone with a passing interest in American music knows about Louis Armstrong, even superficially. The New Orleans-born cornetist/trumpeter/singer was a central figure of jazz music. His influence on the genre gifted him a popularity not afforded any other black artist in a segregated American popular culture. Armstrong’s renown saw him land numerous film roles – typically playing himself or a jazz band leader – such as Cabin in the Sky (1943); New Orleans (1947); and Hello, Dolly! (1969). He appears as himself, too, in The Five Pennies (1959), a film based on the life of a real-life cornet player. But The Five Pennies concerns not Armstrong, but a white contemporary in Red Nichols. Nichols, played by the effervescent Danny Kaye in this film, might not have been as virtuosic as Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke, but he was a fine cornetist. For a time in the late 1920s and early ‘30s, he was hailed in Europe as the greatest living jazz cornetist – but only because the records of his African-American counterparts were not yet widely distributed across the Atlantic. Once European jazz fans were more exposed to the numerous black jazz greats, they turned on their regard for Nichols as quickly as they had built it up.

We first find Nichols (Kaye) moving to New York City in the 1920s, hoping to break through in the Big Apple’s thriving jazz scene. In what is probably a dramatization by director Melville Shavelson, Nichols receives that break during a Louis Armstrong show he attends. There, he meets and will later marry Willa Stutsman (Barbara Bel Geddes; in this film, Willa is a singer but was in actuality a dancer). The two are deeply supportive of the other, and will have a daughter named Dorothy (Susan Gordon as a child; Tuesday Weld as a teenager). In New York, Nichols will put together a band that may contain some familiar names to jazz aficionados: himself, pianist Arthur Schutt (Bobby Troup), clarinetist/saxophonist Jimmy Dorsey (Ray Anthony), drummer Dave Tough (Shelly Manne), and trombonist Glenn Miller (Ray Daley). They call themselves the Five Pennies in a sly nod to Nichols’ surname (five pennies equals a nickel), and the quintet tours the United States. At the height of the band’s popularity, Dorothy contracts polio. Nichols, unable to balance the demands of touring with the Five Pennies with the attention his daughter requires, has a crucial decision to make.

Danny Kaye’s comedic and musical abilities are the stuff of legend, in addition to his holding the distinction of being the first Ambassador-at-Large for UNICEF. In The Five Pennies, the audience saw glimpses, for the first time, of Kaye in a more dramatic role. This is not to say there aren’t any signature comedic moments by Kaye – far from it. In the film’s second half as a musical life wears down on Red Nichols, Kaye transforms from a dainty, energetic, and outgoing fellow to someone inhabiting weariness and harboring deep conflicts within his soul, disallowing anyone outside his family to look within. Any such transformation necessitates an actor who can believably and naturally transition between the two halves – and Kaye does just that. His expressive face helps to exaggerate emotion when needed; the studied change in his gait from the film’s first to second halves is something I never expected from him. Those only familiar with Kay’s comedic roles are in for a surprise – a pleasant one – in The Five Pennies.

She never really received top billing in her work nor was she primarily an actress in film, but Barbara Bel Geddes provides ample support for Kaye in this movie. The sincere, not showy, relationship between Willa and Red Nichols always feels authentic. Nichols spends most of the film reveling in his musical life; thus, Willa, as played by Bel Geddes, is responsible for much of the work here. Bel Geddes’ understated performance is wonderful complement to Kaye’s, and it only deepens my wish – when also considering her performance in one of my favorite films, I Remember Mama (1948) – that she starred in more movies alongside her accomplished stage career.

So while The Five Pennies might possess great performances, those performances are also what makes the film tolerable. It runs into trouble with an inert screenplay by Jack Rose and director Melville Shavelson (Rose and Shavelson also wrote 1955’s The Seven Little Foys and 1958’s Houseboat) from a story by Robert Smith (1952’s Invasion, U.S.A., 1953’s 99 River Street). Thus, The Five Pennies is a standard biopic about dreams deferred because of familial love, and it fails to distinguish itself when there is no musical performance on-screen. Too often I found myself wanting the film to hurry up its exposition so that Danny Kaye or Louis Armstrong could perform (Kaye’s cornet and trumpet playing was dubbed over by Red Nichols himself, but Kaye spent months learning the cornet so that he could accurately mimic the correct fingering) the next number. But Rose and Shavelson dedicate sufficient time to pore over Willa’s diagnosis of polio and how it irrevocably changes her life and those of her parents. This could easily have been maudlin, yet Rose and Shavelson provide enough space for this development without too much self-pity or undeserved inspiration.

Whether with or without lyrics, original or adapted material, there is music aplenty in The Five Pennies. Familiar songs such as “When the Saints Go Marching In”, “My Blue Heaven”, and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” are all given jazzy renditions – and though it might not be as popular as those aforementioned songs, Louis Armstrong’s rendition of “(Won’t You Come Home) Bill Bailey” at the speakeasy in the film’s concluding minutes is a musical highlight. Armstrong, as always, is a joy to watch while in his element. Despite given relatively little to do in The Five Pennies, Armstrong brings the best with the provided material. The moody lighting often employed during the speakeasy and nightclub scenes adds to the unique ambience of the performances. There are a handful of original songs in the film, all composed by the eminent Sylvia Fine (Kaye’s wife, who always tailored her compositions to suit her husband’s singing abilities and musical style). Kaye’s novelty songs are not to everyone’s tastes (certainly not mine), but they are not prominent in The Five Pennies.

“Lullaby in Ragtime” is not even remotely related to ragtime, but it provides Kaye a tender lullaby, the likes of which he excelled in. It is an easygoing, heartwarming tune that boasts beautiful two-voice counterpoint. The film’s title song appears on a sleepless night for young Dorothy – yet another lullaby! Backed by orchestra, it is short, sweet, lovely. However, it is not the last performance of “The Five Pennies”. Do you recall the two-voice counterpoint mentioned earlier this paragraph? Sylvia Fine composes a third lullaby and combines all three lullabies into an incredible rendition of three-voice counterpoint – “Lullaby in Ragtime” (the best of the three), “The Five Pennies”, and Louis Armstrong with “Goodnight – Sleep Tight”. With amateur musicians, this is a difficult musical feat to pull off. And though they were professional actors, it is a great accomplishment to sing this successfully alongside Louis Armstrong: Kaye could not read music (yet Kaye, through observation and close listening, was masterful at internalizing rhythm and expressing his own musicality) and Susan Gordon was no older than ten when this scene was filmed.

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The Five Pennies is one of several jazz musician biopics released during the Hollywood Studio System (see: 1945’s Rhapsody in Blue, 1954’s The Glenn Miller Story, 1956’s The Benny Goodman Story, etc.), but probably one of the least-known. That is almost certainly due to Red Nichols’ obscurity to even casual jazz fans today. Nichols did resume his touring career and revive the Five Pennies – its original members had long departed for their own storied careers – following his service as an industrial worker during World War II. But he never again reached the popular heights that he achieved prior to the mass distribution of jazz records featuring African-Americans performers in Europe. For Louis Armstrong, he remains a highly recognizable, central figure in the genre decades after his passing.

This decent film adaptation of Red Nichols’ life up to that point is perhaps not the best introductory film to Danny Kaye (I would recommend one of his comedies like 1955’s The Court Jester), but it is ideal for his fervent fans and those seeking any depiction of jazz figures in American cinema.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#The Five Pennies #Melville Shavelson #Danny Kaye #Barbara Bel Geddes #Louis Armstrong #Harry Guardino #Bobby Troup #Susan Gordon #Tuesday Weld #Sylvia Fine #Robert Smith #Jack Rose #Red Nichols #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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kingjasnah · 4 years

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Is there the full list of brandersons favourite games reposted somewhere?

i dont think so? or not that ive seen. u can literally just sign up for the newsletter on his website but screw it ill just post them for u. it sure was a TRIP scrolling past these to get to the interlude though. undertale is on this list.....im shakign at the thought that adolin was based off ff10 tidus but i cant get it out of my head now

#10: Katamari Damaci

I love things that make me look at the world in a new way. Katamari did this in spades. It is an imaginative, bizarre vision with unique gameplay. It is like nothing else in the world and I love it for all its strangeness and occasional lack of gameplay polish.

I was transfixed the first time I played it, and have looked forward to it being remade and rereleased on multiple different consoles. I love the cute—and somehow creepy at the same time—storyline. It feels like a fever dream more than a game sometimes, and is probably the closest I’ll ever get to understanding what it’s like to do drugs.

#9: Undertale

This is an oddball on this list because I think it’s the only game that is not a franchise from a major studio—but is instead an indie game, which I believe was originally funded on Kickstarter.I loved how this felt like a novel as much as a game. It was one person’s vision; a single story told really well, with a huge amount of personality. The humor was just my kind of wonderful/terrible, and I was instantly enamored with the characters.That probably would have been enough, but it is a nice deconstruction of video games as a medium—and has not one, but multiple innovative gameplay mechanics. Together, the package left me enamored. This is a work of genius that I feel everyone should at least try, even if it ends up not being for them.

#8: Fallout: New Vegas

I have played all of the core Fallout games, and I was one of the (it seems few) who was really excited when it moved from turn-based tactics to first-person shooter. While Fallout 3 was good, it didn’t have the charm of the first two.New Vegas delivered on everything I was hoping to see. The charm was back, the writing sharp, the quests imaginative. The gameplay was engaging and branched in a variety of directions, the gunplay was solid, and the atmosphere immersive. I of course love the first two games in the series—but New Vegas combines everything I like in gaming into one package. (As a note, I own the Outer Worlds, and am looking forward to digging into it. Consider this item on the list a recommendation of other Obsidian games—like Knights of the Old Republic Two—regardless of genre, as I’ve found them universally to be superior to their contemporaries.)

#7 Super Mario World

When I was eleven, I flew (alone, which was very exciting to me) from Nebraska to visit my uncle Devon in Salt Lake City. Before I left, my father gave me $200 and told me to pay for my own meals while on the trip—but of course, my uncle didn’t allow this. At the end of the trip, I tried to give him the money, which he wouldn’t take.I mentioned my dad would take the money back when I got home, but that was okay. Well, my uncle would have none of that, and drove me to the local mall and made me spend it on a Nintendo Entertainment System. (This uncle, you might guess, is an awesome human being.)Since that day of first plugging it in and experiencing Mario for the first time, I was hooked. This is the only platformer on the list, as I don’t love those. But one makes an exception for Mario. There’s just so much polish, so much elegance to the control schemes, that even a guy who prefers an FPS or an RPG like me has to admit these are great games. I picked World as my favorite as it’s the one I’ve gone back to and played the most.

#7: The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3)

I kind of miss the golden age of adventure gaming, and I don’t know that anyone ever got it as right as they did with this game. It is the pinnacle of the genre, in my opinion—no offense to Grim Fandango fans.This game came out right before gaming’s awkward teenage phase where everything moved to 3-d polygons. For a while after, games looked pretty bad, though they could do more because of the swap. But if you want to go see what life was like before that change, play Monkey Island 3. Composed of beautiful art pieces that look like cells from Disney movies, with streamlined controls (the genre had come a long way from “Get yon torch”) and fantastic voice acting, this game still plays really well.This is one of the few games I’ve been able to get my non-gamer wife to play through with me, and it worked really well as a co-op game with the two of us trying to talk through problems. It’s a lovingly crafted time capsule of a previous era of gaming, and if you missed it, it’s really worth trying all these years later. (The first and second games hold up surprisingly well too, as a note, particularly with the redone art that came out a decade or so ago.)Also, again, this one has my kind of humor.

#6: Breath of the Wild

I never thought a Zelda game would unseat A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda, but Breath of the Wild managed it. It combined the magic of classic gameplay with modern design aesthetic, and I loved this game.There’s not a lot to say about it that others haven’t said before, but I particularly liked how it took the elements of the previous games in the series (giving you specific tools to beat specific challenges) and let you have them all at once. I like how the dungeons became little mini puzzles to beat, instead of (sometimes seemingly endless) slogs to get through. I liked the exploration, the fluidity of the controls, and the use of a non-linear narrative in flashbacks. It’s worth buying a Switch just to play this one and Mario—but in case you want, you can also play Dark Souls on Switch... (That’s foreshadowing.)

#5: Halo 2

Telling stories about Halo Two on stream is what made me think of writing this list.I’m sometimes surprised that this game isn’t talked about as much as I think it should be. Granted, the franchise is very popular—but people tend to love either Reach or games 1 or 3 more than two. Two, however, is the only one I ever wanted to replay—and I’ve done so three or four times at this point. (It’s also the only one I ever beat on Legendary.)It’s made me think on why I love this one, while so many others seem to just consider it one of many in a strong—but in many ways unexceptional—series of games. I think part of this is because I focus primarily on the single-player aspects of a game (which is why there aren’t any MMOs on this list.) Others prefer Halo games with more balanced/polished multiplayer. But I like to game by myself, and don’t really look for a multiplayer experience. (Though this is changing as I game with my sons more and more.)I really like good writing—which I suppose you’d expect. But in games, I specifically prefer writing that enhances the style of game I’m playing. Just dumping a bunch of story on me isn’t enough; it has to be suited to the gameplay and the feel of the game. In that context, I’ve rarely encountered writing as good as Halo 2. From the opening—with the intercutting and juxtaposition of the two narratives—to the quotes barked out by the marines, the writing in this game is great. It stands out starkly against other Halo games, to the point that I wonder what the difference is.Yes, Halo Two is a bombastic hero fantasy about a super soldier stomping aliens. But it has subtle, yet powerful worldbuilding sprinkled all through it—and the music...it does things with the story that I envy. It’s kind of cheating that games and films get to have powerful scores to help with mood.The guns in Two feel so much better than Halo One, and the vehicles drive far better. The only complaint I have is that it’s only half a story—as in, Halo 2 and 3 seem like they were one game broken in two pieces. And while 3 is good (and Reach does something different, which I approve of in general) neither did it for me the way Two did, and continues to do.

#3: Final Fantasy X

You probably knew Final Fantasy was coming. People often ask if the way these games handle magic was an influence upon me. All I can say is that I’ve played them since the first one, and so they’re bound to have had an influence.On one hand, these games are really strange. I mean, I don’t think we gamers stop quite often enough to note how downright bizarre this series gets. Final Fantasy doesn’t always make the most sense—but the games are always ambitious.Ten is my favorite for a couple of reasons. I felt like the worldbuilding was among the strongest, and I really connected with the characters. That’s strange, because this is one of the FF games without an angst-filled teen as the protagonist. Instead, it has a kind of stable happy-go-lucky jock as the protagonist.But that’s what I needed, right then. A game that didn’t give me the same old protagonist, but instead gave me someone new and showed me I could bond to them just as well. Ten was the first with full voice acting, and that jump added a lot for me. It has my favorite music of the series, and all together is what I consider the perfect final fantasy game. (Though admittedly, I find it more and more difficult to get into turn-based battle mechanics as I grow older.)

#2: Bloodborne

Those who follow my streams, or who read other interviews I’ve done, probably expected this series to be at or near the top. The question wasn’t whether Souls would be here, but which one to pick as my favorite.I went with Bloodborne, though it could have been any of them. (Even Dark Souls 2—which I really like, despite its reputation in the fandom.) I’ve been following FromSoftware’s games since the King’s Field games, and Demon’s Souls was a huge triumph—with the director Hidetaka Miyazaki deserving much of the praise for its design, and Dark Souls (which is really just a more polished version of Demon’s Souls).As I am a fan of cosmic horror, Bloodborne is probably my favorite overall. It really hit the mix of cosmic and gothic horror perfectly. It forced me to change up my gameplay from the other Souls games, and I loved the beautiful visuals.I am a fan of hard games—but I like hard games that are what I consider “fair.” (For example, I don’t love those impossible fan-made Mario levels, or many of the super-crazy “bullet hell”-style games.) Dark Souls is a different kind of hard. Difficult like a stern instructor, expecting you to learn—but giving you the tools to do so. It presents a challenge, rather than being hard just to be hard.If I have a problem with Final Fantasy, it’s that the games sometimes feel like the gameplay is an afterthought to telling the story. But in the Souls games, story and gameplay are intermixed in a way I’d never seen done before. You have to construct the story like an archeologist, using dialogue and lore from descriptions of in-game objects. I find this fascinating; the series tells stories in a way a book never could. I’m always glad when a game series can show off the specific strengths of the medium.In fact, this series would be #1 except for the little fact that I have way too much time on Steam logged playing...

#1: Civilization VI

This series had to take #1 by sheer weight of gameplay time. I discovered the first on a friend’s computer in the dorms my freshman year—and I can still remember the feeling of the birds chirping outside, realizing I’d been playing all night and really should get back to my own dorm room.That still happens, and has happened, with every game in the series. I have a lot of thoughts on this series, many of them granular and too specific for this list. (Like, it’s obvious AI technology isn’t up to the task of playing a game this complex—so could we instead get a roguelike set of modifiers, game modes, etc. to liven up the games, rather than just having a difficulty slider that changes a few simple aspects of the game?)I’ll try not to rant, because I really do love this game series. A lot of people consider IV to be the pinnacle of the series, but after V unstacked units—and VI unstacked cities—there was no way I could ever go back. If for some reason, you’ve never played this grand patriarch of the 4X game genre, it’s about starting with a single stone-age settler who can found a city—then playing through eras of a civilization, growing your empire, to try to eventually get offworld with a space program. (Or, if you prefer, conquering the world.)It’s a load of fun in the way I like to have fun, and I feel like the series has only gotten better over the years. My hat is off to the developers, who keep reinventing the series, rather than making the exact same game over and over.Now, about that request for difficulty modes...

there are runner ups but for the sake of anyone whos on mobile and cant get past a read more (first of all omg im SO sorry) ill refrain. anyway he thought WHAT loz game was the best before botw?

#mix between HARDCORE judgement and like. yea. yea ff10 was pretty good wasnt it #but i dont think its anywhere near the best of them #long post #im read mores dont work imm so fucking sorry this is so long #MOST of these games are good its just so wild its so wild its SO wild #asks #Anonymous

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frankiefellinlove · 4 years

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This is it! The whole article where John Landau writes that Bruce “is the future of rock n roll”. Long but so worth the read, to see that quote in context.

GROWING YOUNG WITH ROCK AND ROLL

By Jon Landau

The Real Paper

May 22, 1974📷

It's four in the morning and raining. I'm 27 today, feeling old, listening to my records, and remembering that things were diffferent a decade ago. In 1964, I was a freshman at Brandeis University, playing guitar and banjo five hours a day, listening to records most of the rest of the time, jamming with friends during the late-night hours, working out the harmonies to Beach Boys' and Beatles' songs.

Real Paper soul writer Russell Gersten was my best friend and we would run through the 45s everyday: Dionne Warwick's "Walk On By" and "Anyone Who Had A Heart," the Drifters' "Up On the Roof," Jackie Ross' "Selfish One," the Marvellettes' "Too Many Fish in the Sea," and the one that no one ever forgets, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave." Later that year a special woman named Tamar turned me onto Wilson Pickett's "Midnight Hour" and Otis Redding's "Respect," and then came the soul. Meanwhile, I still went to bed to the sounds of the Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" and later "Younger than Yesterday," still one of my favorite good-night albums. I woke up to Having a Rave-Up with the Yardbirds instead of coffee. And for a change of pace, there was always bluegrass: The Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe, and Jimmy Martin.

Through college, I consumed sound as if it were the staff of life. Others enjoyed drugs, school, travel, adventure. I just liked music: listening to it, playing it, talking about it. If some followed the inspiration of acid, or Zen, or dropping out, I followed the spirit of rock'n'roll.

Individual songs often achieved the status of sacraments. One September, I was driving through Waltham looking for a new apartment when the sound on the car radio stunned me. I pulled over to the side of the road, turned it up, demanded silence of my friends and two minutes and fifty-six second later knew that God had spoken to me through the Four Tops' "Reach Out, I'll Be There," a record that I will cherish for as long as [I] live.

During those often lonely years, music was my constant companion and the search for the new record was like a search for a new friend and new revelation. "Mystic Eyes" open mine to whole new vistas in white rock and roll and there were days when I couldn't go to sleep without hearing it a dozen times.

Whether it was a neurotic and manic approach to music, or just a religious one, or both, I don't really care. I only know that, then, as now, I'm grateful to the artists who gave the experience to me and hope that I can always respond to them.

The records were, of course, only part of it. In '65 and '66 I played in a band, the Jellyroll, that never made it. At the time I concluded that I was too much of a perfectionist to work with the other band members; in the end I realized I was too much of an autocrat, unable to relate to other people enough to share music with them.

Realizing that I wasn't destined to play in a band, I gravitated to rock criticism. Starting with a few wretched pieces in Broadside and then some amateurish but convincing reviews in the earliest Crawdaddy, I at least found a substitute outlet for my desire to express myself about rock: If I couldn't cope with playing, I may have done better writing about it.

But in those days, I didn't see myself as a critic -- the writing was just another extension of an all-encompassing obsession. It carried over to my love for live music, which I cared for even more than the records. I went to the Club 47 three times a week and then hunted down the rock shows -- which weren't so easy to find because they weren't all conveniently located at downtown theatres. I flipped for the Animals' two-hour show at Rindge Tech; the Rolling Stones, not just at Boston Garden, where they did the best half hour rock'n'roll set I had ever seen, but at Lynn Football Stadium, where they started a riot; Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels overcoming the worst of performing conditions at Watpole Skating Rink; and the Beatles at Suffolk Down, plainly audible, beatiful to look at, and confirmation that we -- and I -- existed as a special body of people who understood the power and the flory of rock'n'roll.

I lived those days with a sense of anticipation. I worked in Briggs & Briggs a few summers and would know when the next albums were coming. The disappointment when the new Stones was a day late, the exhilaration when Another Side of Bob Dylan showed up a week early. The thrill of turning on WBZ and hearing some strange sound, both beautiful and horrible, but that demanded to be heard again; it turned out to be "You've Lost That Loving Feeling," a record that stands just behind "Reach Out I'll Be There" as means of musical catharsis.

My temperament being what it is, I often enjoyed hating as much as loving. That San Francisco shit corrupted the purity of the rock that I lvoed and I could have led a crusade against it. The Moby Grape moved me, but those songs about White Rabbits and hippie love made me laugh when they didn't make me sick. I found more rock'n'roll in the dubbed-in hysteria on the Rolling Stones Got Live if You Want It than on most San Francisco albums combined.

For every moment I remember there are a dozen I've forgotten, but I feel like they are with me on a night like this, a permanent part of my consciousness, a feeling lost on my mind but never on my soul. And then there are those individual experiences so transcendent that I can remember them as if they happened yesterday: Sam and Dave at the Soul Together at Madison Square Garden in 1967: every gesture, every movement, the order of the songs. I would give anything to hear them sing "When Something's Wrong with My Baby" just the way they did it that night.

The obsessions with Otis Redding, Jerry Butler, and B.B. King came a little bit later; each occupied six months of my time, while I digested every nuance of every album. Like the Byrds, I turn to them today and still find, when I least expect it, something new, something deeply flet, something that speaks to me.

As I left college in 1969 and went into record production I started exhausting my seemingly insatiable appetite. I felt no less intensely than before about certain artists; I just felt that way about fewer of them. I not only became more discriminating but more indifferent. I found it especially hard to listen to new faces. I had accumulated enough musical experience to fall back on when I needed its companionship but during this period in my life I found I needed music less and people, whom I spend too much of my life ignoring, much more.

Today I listen to music with a certain measure of detachment. I'm a professional and I make my living commenting on it. There are months when I hate it, going through the routine just as a shoe salesman goes through his. I follow films with the passion that music once held for me. But in my own moments of greatest need, I never give up the search for sounds that can answer every impulse, consume all emotion, cleanse and purify -- all things that we have no right to expect from even the greatest works of art but which we can occasionally derive from them.

Still, today, if I hear a record I like it is no longer a signal for me to seek out every other that the artist has made. I take them as they come, love them, and leave them. Some have stuck -- a few that come quickly to mind are Neil Young's After the Goldrush, Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, Van Morrison's Tupelo Honey, James Taylor's records, Valerie Simpson's Exposed, Randy Newman's Sail Away, Exile on Main Street, Ry Cooder's records, and, very specially, the last three albums of Joni Mitchell -- but many more slip through the mind, making much fainter impressions than their counterparts of a decade ago.

But tonight there is someone I can write of the way I used to write, without reservations of any kind. Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock'n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.

When his two-hour set ended I could only think, can anyone really be this good; can anyone say this much to me, can rock'n'roll still speak with this kind of power and glory? And then I felt the sores on my thighs where I had been pounding my hands in time for the entire concert and knew that the answer was yes.

Springsteen does it all. He is a rock'n'roll punk, a Latin street poet, a ballet dancer, an actor, a joker, bar band leader, hot-shit rhythm guitar player, extraordinary singer, and a truly great rock'n'roll composer. He leads a band like he has been doing it forever. I racked my brains but simply can't think of a white artist who does so many things so superbly. There is no one I would rather watch on a stage today. He opened with his fabulous party record "The E Street Shuffle" -- but he slowed it down so graphically that it seemed a new song and it worked as well as the old. He took his overpowering story of a suicide, "For You," and sang it with just piano accompaniment and a voice that rang out to the very last row of the Harvard Square theatre. He did three new songs, all of them street trash rockers, one even with a "Telstar" guitar introduction and an Eddie Cochran rhythm pattern. We missed hearing his "Four Winds Blow," done to a fare-thee-well at his sensational week-long gig at Charley's but "Rosalita" never sounded better and "Kitty's Back," one of the great contemporary shuffles, rocked me out of my chair, as I personally led the crowd to its feet and kept them there.

Bruce Springsteen is a wonder to look at. Skinny, dressed like a reject from Sha Na Na, he parades in front of his all-star rhythm band like a cross between Chuck Berry, early Bob Dylan, and Marlon Brando. Every gesture, every syllable adds something to his ultimate goal -- to liberate our spirit while he liberates his by baring his soul through his music. Many try, few succeed, none more than he today.

It's five o'clock now -- I write columns like this as fast as I can for fear I'll chicken out -- and I'm listening to "Kitty's Back." I do feel old but the record and my memory of the concert has made me feel a little younger. I still feel the spirit and it still moves me.

I bought a new home this week and upstairs in the bedroom is a sleeping beauty who understands only too well what I try to do with my records and typewriter. About rock'n'roll, the Lovin' Spoonful once sang, "I'll tell you about the magic that will free your soul/But it's like trying to tell a stranger about rock'n'roll." Last Thursday, I remembered that the magic still exists and as long as I write about rock, my mission is to tell a stranger about it -- just as long as I remember that I'm the stranger I'm writing for.

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peanutparade · 3 years

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Someone asked me what my process was, and I’m not sure I gave her a satisfying answer in the PM, so here I will attempt to explain how I make a game from start to finish.

*Please note the the drafts above are not for the same story, but for the purpose of illustration.

**Also please take this advice with a grain of salt. I’m not a published author (though I do know a bit about the publishing industry), and I’m definitely not a perfect writer. This is my process, and the things I try to keep in mind when I’m writing, and you may find this advice to be complete garbage.

Step one: Get an idea for a story. I can’t really give any tips on how to go about doing this. I tend to take inspiration from other works of media (classical literature is my favorite, though I have taken cues from more contemporary sources as well).

Step two: Consider who your characters are going to be. It’s okay if you only have one or two characters in mind at first. I’m pretty utilitarian about my characters, so most of them don’t get created until step three.

Step three: Open a word document and just start typing shit out. (I use Google Drive so I can access it from anywhere, and for another reason which I’ll get to later.) Don’t stop to think, don’t even breathe. Just type. Any idea that comes into your head goes in the document. Some of it won’t make sense with everything else, some of it will contradict other things, some of it will be vaguely defined. You will fix that later. This is the most important part (especially the way I write), because it’s where you’re going to get an idea of how your story starts and how it ends, as well as cement your cast of characters. If you need a scene where your main character goes to a lighthouse, then you know you’ll also need to come up with a lighthouse keeper (see my comment above about being utilitarian with characters. I’m no authority, so if you do things differently, that’s fine, but I don’t like making characters that don’t serve a purpose).

Step four: Annotation, annotation, annotation! (This is the other thing I use Google Drive for, as it has a comment feature that I heavily rely on.) Go through all your scribbling and make notes for yourself. Be a little hard on yourself here, because this is the part where you’re going to try to make everything you’ve written in Draft 1 cohesive. This will be a long process, as you need to think about how all of this is connected, as well as think about what sort of arcs your main characters are going to go through. I read somewhere once that ALL of your characters have to go through an arc, but that’s a bunch of wacky nonsense. Some characters are minor characters, and thus do not require depth. The only character arc that MUST be included is the main character’s arc. Remember: character arc ≠ character motivation. ALL major characters (protagonist(s), love interest(s), villain(s)) MUST have motivation for what they are doing. The motivation doesn’t have to be anything too complex, just so long as the audience understands why the characters are doing what they’re doing. (Minor characters with motivation can make the world feel more real and lived in, but they can also make the story feel bogged down. Brevity is key here, and sometimes less is more.)

Step five: Draft 2 All of that plotting you just did? Throw it away! Just kidding, don’t actually throw it away. BUT you’re going to rewrite your plot outline, tidier this time, and only refer back to Draft 1 when you get stuck. Feel free to come up with new ideas during this time; Draft 1 is not your story’s final form. If you think of scenes or quotes, feel free to include them in this draft, but you’re mostly just outlining right now. (As you may notice in the image above, Draft 2 is also subject to annotation.) Draft 2 is where you should be solidifying the themes of your story. Character arc(s) should tie into and support this theme. This is also the draft where you should be catching any plot holes (especially if you don’t have an editor/beta reader), as once you’ve begun actually writing the story, any problems here will only compound as you go.

Step six: Write the story It’s pretty straightforward. Follow Draft 2 (and any additional annotations you made on Draft 2), and go scene by scene and write. I never skip around, as it makes it hard to keep track of what characters know at what time, but I know of authors that do skip around, and they seem to do okay. You’ll have to figure out what works best for you.

Step seven: Edit, edit, edit! Aside from the obvious (typos and spelling errors), look out for:

Scenes that are too long or too short. Counterintuitively, these may be the result of the same problem: a lack of purpose. Ask yourself, “Does this need to be here?”

Long-winded info dumps. Consider the old adage, “show, don’t tell.” Whenever information can be conveyed through action or reaction, write it that way. If you can convey two things at the same time (i.e. something about a character and also something about the world--bonus if these two things are actually unrelated to each other), do it.

Information that your audience wouldn’t logically have being the key to resolving the plot. Especially in sci-fi and fantasy stories, if the conclusion of the story relies on knowing something--even if it’s something that the characters all know--you need to make sure your audience also knows this, or else they will be frustrated. Keep in mind the Rule of Threes.

And that’s the story portion done. If you’re making a visual novel/dating sim, there are other steps you need to do. (I usually do this stuff while writing the story so it doesn’t get tedious, but if you’re hiring people to do this other stuff, you should probably have the writing done ahead of time. If you’re hiring writers to help you, you should have Draft 1 done, at the least. Your writers can probably take it from there.)

NOTE: Any job you don’t do yourself is something that will cost you money. If you can find other aspiring creators to volunteer their time to your project, good for you, but please do not approach anyone directly unless you plan to offer to pay them (”for exposure” is not payment).

Step eight: Character sprites Major characters are going to need to be represented visually in your visual novel (go figure!), so... draw some people? I know some people make character design sheets, but I just jump right in, and then later, make microedits to the sprites as the mood strikes me. The design sheet thing is probably a smarter way to do it. I use photoshop, and I would strongly encourage keeping hair, clothing, and facial features on separate layers until you know exactly how you plan to code them into your game.

Step nine: Backgrounds Same as the sprites, except places instead of people. I’m bad at this, so I have no right to give anyone advice. I use a 3D interior design app to create a guide for what I want rooms to look like, and then I use that to get my vanishing points and furniture sizing right. This method is 50% tracing, 50% wishing I was dead. I do not recommend it.

Step ten: Audio If your game will have voice acting, get that together now. If you’re composing your own music, you’re more talented than I am. For my first game, I utilized royalty free options (incompetech and bensound), but now I hire a composer (I do still supplement my soundtrack with royalty free options if it’s for something inconsequential). I don’t use many sound effects, but when I do, I just look for free options online.

Step eleven: Coding I use Ren’py because it’s free and easy to learn (provided you don’t want to do anything too complicated). There are tons of resources online to teach you how to use Ren’py, both from official sources and unofficial sources. I’ve never posted in the forums myself, but the people there seem very kind and helpful if you get stuck. (If anyone wants to see how I code, specifically, I’ll do a Part Two for it, but I have to warn you that my games are the coding equivalent car repairs done with bubblegum and duct tape.)

Step twelve: Playtesting Make sure your game works. It’s pretty straightforward. You can even recruit some guinea pigs--I mean, friends to help you. (I don’t have any friends, so I do this part on my own.)

By this point, a year or so will have passed (give or take, depending how long your game is, how much time you have to work on it, and how much of the work you plan to do by yourself), and with any luck, you’ll have a game! Posting your game on itch.io is free, but putting your game on steam will cost you $100.

Like I said to the person on patreon who originally asked me about my process, making a visual novel is a lot of work, but I encourage everyone to at least try it and see if you like it.

I look forward to hearing your stories! ♥

#peanut parade #peanutparade #peanut parade games #indiedev #gamedev #writing #visual novel

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arecomicsevengood · 4 years

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Quarantine Movie-Watching Journal, Continued

Throughout all this quarantine time I’ve been chronicling my watching movies, I’ve also been reading books, but have had assorted troubles on a level that seems close to basic comprehension, or just getting on their wavelength. Part of this is having a certain tendency towards the difficult or avant-garde in terms of what I think is “good,” but also wanting things to make sense or have a certain level of clarity: It’s maybe a difficult balance to strike but I don’t know, plenty of books pull it off, I have plenty of favorites. Nothing I’ve read recently has really been hitting, the only thing I’ve found compulsively readable is Virginie Despentes’ Vernon Subutex series, which I would hesitate to recommend as I also think they’re kind of bad. I want clarity on a certain level, and mystery on a deeper one; a lot of things essentially get the formula backwards, and feel incredibly obvious and free of ideas while employing obfuscatory language. (This isn’t to say I like “straightforward” prose, the “mystery” I’m referring to is basically created as an act of alchemy when language is functioning on its highest level, and insight, mood, imagery, and motion are all generated simultaneously. This isn’t “plain speech” I’m describing, but it doesn’t short-circuit the brain’s ability to make sense of it.)

In watching a lot of older movies I find that one of the things that help them maintain a level of interest is I possess a certain confusion about their cultural context. Even if something is a perfectly straightforward mainstream entertainment, there is still a sense of confusion or mystery about it, where you can follow it perfectly, but don’t necessarily know where it’s coming from, so it’s unclear where it’s going. In contrast, watching modern movies, especially more mainstream things but also, generally speaking, everything, I feel like not only do I know exactly where it’s coming from it’s also aggressively spelling everything out, as if to avoid moral confusion. This is also combined with a certain aggressiveness to the editing, so even as everything too fast-paced on certain level, it also ends up being too long, because it needs to fit in a certain level of redundancy. Older things tend to have a greater degree of storytelling clarity that’s also premised on a higher level of trust in the viewer’s ability to intuit things. Maybe there’s also a greater level of reliance on a set of semiotic devices that we’ve become more critical of over time, but what’s emerged in their absence feels more self-consciously insistent.

Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig

After watching this I looked up on IMDB to see what Gerwig is up to now and she’s slated to direct a Barbie movie? I hate this era, where success doesn’t lead to any actual clout to make important or interesting work, but instead forces artists into these traps of economic contract where they service a trademark. Also this movie is kind of weird because all these actresses are in their twenties but I think are meant to be playing teenagers for most of it? Or even younger? This movie basically feels like it is meant to be for children but is given this gloss over it to maybe seem appealing to young adult modern feminists but it doesn’t really seem like it would be except to the extent they’re indulging a youthful nostalgia.

Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

I’ve been wanting to watch Decker’s last movie Madeline’s Madeline because a lady I met and thought was cute has a small role in it. I guess all her movies are about artists and performers? I like that this one seems capable of depicting a fiction writer without just presenting their work as autobiographical but I guess that’s because it’s, you know, a real person whose story is being told. Elisabeth Moss is pretty good as Shirley Jackson. Jackson acts real weird and petulant and destructive and I sort of went in feeling like she would be depicted as a manipulative monster, but watching it I felt like it was probably well-researched and accurate to how she was but not in a way that makes me dislike Shirley Jackson — but also I do like destructive difficult personalities and I think that’s basically a fine and acceptable way for artists, or anyone, to behave. I still don’t think this is really a good movie, Shirley Jackson is not really the lead but more like the only interesting character: She’s got an obnoxious and self-satisfied husband, but the movie is more about this couple that moves in — a woman who’s pretty dull is the focal point, and her husband is boring, and manipulative too, albeit in a very commonplace way. Pretty average.

The Predator (2018) dir. Shane Black

A movie about how people with Asperger’s are the next step in human evolution that nonetheless uses the r-word slur to describe them, filled with some of the most generic actors imaginable. I like Shane Black movies as much as the next guy, but am indifferent to the Predator franchise. Maybe because, despite the R rating, they really do feel like they’re made to sell toys, like so many cartoons of the eighties? I hope the sequel the ending transparently sets up never gets made.

The Lighthouse (2019) dir. Robert Eggers

Wasn’t able to finish The Witch and I stopped and started this one a few times. Tries to avoid accusations that “all these modern horror movies are dumb as shit” by not being a horror movie but it also isn’t really anything else — Not funny enough to be a comedy nor evocative enough to be an art movie. Sort of like High Life in the sense that Robert Pattinson isn’t actually good in it but maybe it’s surprising that a mainstream actor would be in a “weird movie,” but he doesn’t really have to do anything in either, at least as far as building a character goes. It’s underwritten enough he might not even know how to read. Willem Dafoe is ok as a guy doing the sea captain voice from The Simpsons.

The Whistlers (2020) dir. Corneliu Poromboiu

Contemporary crime thing that vaguely reminded me of all the other post-Tarantino crime movies made in the past 25 years that I don’t really remember, particularly the ones in other languages. This one’s got characters learning a whistling language to communicate in a way cops will just thing is birds. Also a semi-complicated plot, told non-linearly. The female lead also pretends to be a prostitute and has sex with a criminal dude so the police watching him with hidden cameras don’t figure out what she’s up to, although, if I understand the plot, I’m pretty sure they work it out anyway.

Pain And Glory (2019) dir. Pedro Almodovar

This one stars Antonio Banderas, is pretty plainly autobiographical, being about a filmmaker approaching the end of his life -- Penelope Cruz plays the mother in flashbacks that are then shown to be a filmed recreation as an autobiographical work is begun, which is the sort of twist that could seem corny but isn’t. The film has a weird/interesting structure, the slow revelation of details from the character’s past forming a narrative a film can be made of eventually but before that there’s this totally separate story involving an actor, heroin use, and an ex-lover. That stuff’s good but also it sort of wraps up halfway through. Like, a bundle of narrative threads culminate, and then the film keeps going, to eventually tie up other bits that seem incidental. Maybe this would be fine in a theater but streamed at home I got a bit anxious. Penelope Cruz made me think “I could watch Vanilla Sky” but it turned out I can’t, it’s unwatchable.

High Heels (1991) dir. Pedro Almodovar

I love Almodovar, my stance has been that there’s a degree of diminishing returns the more of his work you see but it’s been years since I’ve seen one of his movies, and at this point I remember very little of any of them. This one’s on Criterion as part of a collection of films with scores by Ryuichi Sakamoto — Sakamoto’s not my favorite member of Yellow Magic Orchestra but he’s certainly an adept talent, and this one operates differently than I’d expect from him, most of the music feels saxophone-led, sort of in a jazz vein. Obviously you can compose for this instrumentation but yeah, not what I’d expect. The movie itself is pretty solid: bright colors, some melodrama, a ridiculous twist, a sense of humor which feels both over the top and somewhat deadpan. A woman’s mother returns to Spain after close to a lifetime away, she ends up sleeping with the daughter’s husband, he turns up dead, the daughter reveals he killed her stepfather as a child. The movie is primarily about the daughter’s yearning for the approval for an emotionally distant mother, at one point she summarizes the Bergman movie Autumn Sonata for her, but Almodovar is gayer and more sexually perverse than Bergman. so it’s less dour than I’m maybe making it sound. At one point the daughter is wearing a sweater with the pattern of the Maryland flag on it? But the credits reveal all her outfits are by Chanel.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) dir. Volker Schlondorff

The score is closer to what I would expect from Sakamoto here, in a martial/industrial vein, though not exclusively. Stars Natasha Richardson, and her performance feels related to what she did in Patty Hearst — a depiction of a woman shutting down parts of herself for the sake of her own survival, displaying inner reserves of strength through the appearance of submission. This seems a lot better than the current Hulu show, although I think it’s largely dismissed? It’s been a while since I read the book so I can’t remember how many liberties it takes. Obviously there remain traces of an exploitation bent in a weird way, through depiction of women in dehumanized sexual contexts but I feel like this movie is good at depicting competition between women in the context of a rigged patriarchal system.

Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence (1983) dir. Nagisa Oshima

Never seen any of Oshima’s films, despite the allure of explicit sex in an artsy context. This has Sakamoto in it opposite David Bowie. There’s a lot of English language being spoken in a thick Japanese accent. David Bowie plays a prisoner of war Sakamoto, as a military officer, falls in love with and tries to keep from harm, his score does the heavy lifting of highlighting these emotions. Was not super-into this movie but it’s always interesting to think about how popular YMO were, and if these are the type of faces you enjoy looking at you can do that. Sakamoto’s got a weird hairline. The movie is fine considered in the context of like, 1980s movies (not my fave decade) that are period military dramas (not my favorite genre) and exist in this Japanese film context that is neither super-insane and exuberant in its style nor is it super-austere and minimal.

A Farewell To Arms (1932) dir. Frank Borzage

Very well-shot piece of romance, starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, in an adaptation of a Ernest Hemingway novel I don’t remember whether or not I read in high school. Hemingway didn’t like it, maybe because there were a lot of changes, which confuses the issue of whether or not I know the source material further. I don’t like this movie as much as I liked History Is Made At Night but it makes a lot more sense as a narrative, easily reduced to a bare-bones plot: He’s in the army, she’s a nurse, people don’t want them to be together during World War I, he ends up deserting to be with her. Feels lush, romantic, dreamy and swooning, but I feel like the strengths are more in the cinematography than the characters — the leads are fine enough, though not super deep, beyond the depths of their love, but the supporting cast is a bit dull.

War Of The Worlds (2005) dir. Steven Spielberg

Feel like I had heard this one was good? I appreciate Tom Cruise in the Mission: Impossible movies, and Spielberg some of the time I guess. This is a blockbuster that feels post-9/11 in a way where I wonder what a post-Corona thing would feel like — feel like it would shy away from away from a lot of spectacle or something but probably I’m wrong about that. So this one focuses on a parent and his children making their way across an increasingly demolished landscape to make it to the other parent, alien monsters are in the way, kinda just seems logistically weird or like the premise of the quest is unsound given the stakes should probably just be survival? But maybe this is post-covid thinking of how such a thing would operate — the disaster picture with a “human element” to focus the narrative on is a decades-old form and one I don’t really get down with nor do I think is generally considered to age well - i.e. I don’t remember growing up with The Towering Inferno being on TV.

My Twentieth Century (1989) dir. Ildiko Enyedi

Weird Hungarian movie where like… angels/stars observe? As two twins are born in the late eighteen-hundreds and go on to have separate lives? One as an anarchist, the other as like a party girl type who seduces rich men. The latter gets more attention than the former. Sort of a fairy tale atmosphere, which makes the explicit sex scenes awkward. There’s also a scene where a guy gives a sexist lecture about how women should be allowed to vote even though they have no sense of logic and are obsessed with sex. He draws a dick on the chalkboard and talks about how women can’t understand beauty since they are obsessed with erections which are disgusting. Not really sure what it adds to the movie as a whole since I’m not sure which one of the two characters played by the same actress is meant to be watching it, but it’s funny. A lot of things are confusing about this movie, but it’s still sort of interesting and therefore worthwhile I guess. Apparently the director has a new movie on Netflix — I don’t have Netflix at the moment but might get it for a month or two in the future to catch up on assorted things like Sion Sono’s The Forest Of Love and the David Lynch content.

His Girl Friday (1940) dir. Howard Hawks

not into this one. Rosalind Russell wears a cool suit at first though. Features the thing where a male romantic lead (Cary Grant) is openly manipulative but it’s sort of viewed as fine and funny because the woman in question is confident and modern, which kinda feels like a fascinating view into the gender dynamics of the time, although I don’t think it works as a comedy as far as me being able to figure out what the jokes are. The journalists getting caught up in crime intrigue plot is cool though, that kind of feels like something that always works.

Lured (1947) dir. Douglas Sirk

Kind of have no idea why I watched all the older Douglas Sirk movies on the Criterion Channel at this point, even the ones I liked I don’t think I liked that much? This one stars Lucille Ball, who I don’t love. Other movies I watched recently that were partly comedies and partly suspense things worked better than this. This one’s about attractive young women disappearing and Lucille Ball getting hired by the police to be an undercover detective. She ends up finding love, but then the man she gets engaged to is framed for murder by the actual killer. Features scenes where the police (led by Charles Coburn, who’s fine in this) talk about how crazy Baudelaire was. Wouldn’t recommend.

Far From Heaven (2002) dir. Todd Haynes

Not sure I have any strong feelings towards Todd Haynes, but it seems likely I might end up watching a bunch of his movies eventually. This came out in high school, and I had no interest in it, but I’m more charitable towards the whole fifties melodrama thing it’s paying homage to now. Julianne Moore stars as a woman whose husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay and repressing himself via alcoholism, who strikes up a friendship with her black gardener, (Dennis Haysbert) which scandalizes her neighbors. The moments Moore and Haysbert spend together are maybe the most interesting - particularly them going to an all-black restaurant - but the aspect of them being watched and judged feels more cliched. Similarly, the stuff about Dennis Quaid’s homosexuality is most interesting as a lived-in thing, and his drinking, hitting his wife, etc., is less so. The veins of sensuality running through the movie are richer than the plot structure that unites them. This might be one of the things that makes Carol a superior movie.

The Violent Men (1955) dir. Rudolph Mate

This stars a bunch of people I don’t like — Glenn Ford, Edward G Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck is fine in other stuff but boring here. Dianne Foster plays her daughter, and that’s the meatiest role basically- she gets to denounce violent men. This is a western about a guy being pressured to sell his land for cheap. Criterion Channel programmed this as part of a series called “western noir” and I don’t know about this stuff. Foster’s character is definitely the most interesting part — her parents are essentially these gangsters running the town, her teen angst feels like it stems from an inherent morality and disgust with them. Stanwyck is cheating on Foster’s father (Robinson) with a guy I think is his brother who also enforces the violence. The mom tries to kill the father, and then is herself killed by a woman in love with the person she’s sleeping with, so the daughter, you would think, would go through a gamut of emotions. But she’s a totally secondary to Glenn Ford’s male lead, who she ends up riding off into the sunset with — he initially was involved in a relationship with a woman who didn’t care about his inherent morality in favor of a materialism, but she just sort of gets dropped from the narrative at a certain point. The movie really tries to play it both ways with regards to the violence, but I feel like that’s pretty common actually: While I feel like today the title might primarily be intended as an indictment, it also feels like at the time it was very much the sales pitch to the audience.

Shane (1953) dir. George Stevens

Classic western, about homesteaders just trying to live who end up needing to get in gunfights with people who want their land. Jean Arthur plays the wife and mother, which is why I sought it out (especially sicne she had established rapport with Stevens) but she’s barely in it. The titular Shane is a good dude who wanders through and ends up helping them out. The kid’s infatuation of Shane is really annoying to me personally. I love how this has two big fist-fights though, the second of which is a They Live style thing, a conflict between friends that becomes incredibly drawn out. The first fight is also just incredibly brutal and well-choreographed, probably the high point of the movie.

Cast A Deadly Spell (1991) dir. Martin Campbell

TV movie made for HBO with very Vertigo Comics energy, I started off thinking “this is dumb” but very quickly got on its side. It’s a riff on HP Lovecraft mythology set in a 1940s Los Angeles where everyone uses magic except for one private detective, whose name is Harry Lovecraft. Pretty PG-rated, some practical effects (not the best kind, more like gargoyle demon creature costumes I assume are made of foam), and a pretty easily foreseeable “twist” ending where the apocalypse is averted because the virgin sacrifice just lost her virginity to a cop. Not actually that clever but clever enough to work and be consistently enjoyable. Julianne Moore plays a nightclub singer. My interest in this is brought about because there’s a sequel (where I guess the deal is the detective does use magic, and no one else does) called Witch Hunt starring Dennis Hopper and directed by Paul Schrader.

Jennifer’s Body (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama

The climax of Cast A Deadly Spell shares a plot point with this, which I think is being reevaluated as a “cult classic” to what I assume is the same audience that valued the Scott Pilgrim movie: People ten years younger than me who think it’s charming when things are completely obnoxious. A lot of musical cues, all mixed at too loud relative to the rest of the audio, bad jokes. This tone does help power the whole nihilistic, I-enjoy-seeing-these-superfluous-characters-die aspect of the plot but the sort of emotional core of the horror is less present. This movie is basically fine, by lowered modern movies standards, but it’s perfectly disposable and not really worth valuing in any way. I watched Kusama’s movie Destroyer starring Nicole Kidman a year ago and don’t remember anything about it now.

Dead Ringers (1988) dir. David Cronenberg

Rewatch. I think for a while I would’ve considered this my favorite Cronenberg but nowadays I might favor eXistenZ? Jeremy Irons in dual roles as twin brothers, with different personalities, but who routinely impersonate each other, and whose lives begin to deteriorate as a relationship with a woman leads to them individuate themselves from each other. They’re gynecologists, and the whole thing is suffused with an air of creepiness. There’s this sense of airlessness to the movie, a sense of panic, which is present incredibly early on and just sort of keeps going, getting weirder and more uncomfortable as you become accustomed to it, that feels like a sure sign of mastery. I’m fascinated to think about how watching it in a crowd, or on a date, would feel. Most movies don’t operate like this.

Imagine The Sound (1981) dir. Ron Mann

Mann is the director of Comic Book Confidential, which I saw as a middle schooler. This is a documentary about free jazz, featuring interviews and performance footage. Paul Bley and Cecil Taylor are both shown playing solo piano, which isn’t my favorite context to hear them in. Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp say some cool stuff, there is some nice trio footage of Shepp with a rhythm section.

Born In Flames (1983) dir. Lizzie Borden

Easily the best movie I watched for the first time in the time period I’m covering in this post. I heard about this years ago but only seeing it now, when it feels super-relevant. It is shot in New York in the eighties, features plenty of documentation of the city as it was, but in the context of the movie, there has been a socialist revolution ten years earlier, and this film then documents the struggle of the women, particularly black women, who are slipping through the cracks, and fighting for the ongoing quest to make a utopia, but exist in opposition to the party in power. While focusing on black women, there’s also plenty of white women, also opposed to and more progre.ssive than the people in power, but that are having their own conversations which are very different. There’s also montage sequences of women performing labor that cut between women wrapping up chicken to close-ups of a condom being rolled onto a erect penis. The title song is by the Red Krayola, circa the Kangaroo? era where Lora Logic provided vocals. So yeah, this movie rules! It would be a good double-feature with The Spook Who Sat By The Door, though in a film school context, or a sociology context, you would need to do a great deal of groundwork first. Could also work as a double-feature with The Falls for how what you are seeing is the aftermath of a great sociological reshaping realized on a low-budget. I think I put off this movie I think because I was skeptical of the director’s self-conscious “artist’s name” but it turns out they got it legally named as a young child.

State Of Siege (1972) dir. Costa-Gavras

Also really good! Better than Born In Flames when considered in terms of its level of craft. Would make for a fine double feature with my beloved Patty Hearst. Tightly structured over the course of a week, leftist terrorists kidnap an American and interrogate him about what exactly he’s doing in their Latin American country that’s being run by death squads. He denies wrong-doing, but basically everything he’s done is already known to them. This exists in parallel to police interrogations of leftists. Pretty large scale, tons of characters, some basically incidental. Screenplay’s written by the guy who wrote Battle Of Algiers.

Olivia (1951) dir. Jacqueline Audry

French movie sort of about lesbian love at an all-girl’s boarding school that’s weird because everyone seems like they’re feeling homosexual love, but just for one instructor who eggs everyone on. Everyone acts weird in this one, basically. There’s a lot of doting. The atmosphere is pretty unfathomable to me. Chaste-seeming in some ways, but also like everyone is being psychologically tortured by being subject to the whims of each other, but also just rolling with it in this deferential way. Seems like it could feel “emotionally true” to a lesbian experience but only in highly, highly specific circumstances?

Lucia (1968) dir. Humberto Solas

Good score in this one, which is not that much like I Am Cuba but I feel obligated to compare them anyway - both are from Cuba and use this three-story anthology structure. All the stories in this movie revolve around different women named Lucia, in three different, historically important, time periods. The first is about a woman who falls in love with a man from Spain, during the time of Cuba’s war of independence, he says he doesn’t think about politics, but this is one lie among several. This ends with brutal sequences of war. The second takes place under the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. The third takes place post-revolution, and is about a literacy coach teaching a woman to read and write under the eye of a domineering chauvinistic husband. As with I Am Cuba, it is the very act of considering these three stories together that brings out their propagandistic aspect, and makes them feel less like individual stories. They’re all beautifully shot, although it’s less in less of a show-offy way than I Am Cuba.

Mr. Klein (1976) dir. Joseph Losey

This one’s got a cool premise- About an art dealer, played by Alain Delon, who is buying art from Jews at low prices as they leave occupied France quickly, but who then starts getting confused for another person with the same name as him, who is Jewish. Gets sort of Kakfa-esque but also remains grounded in this world where there are rational explanations for things. (at least as far as the holocaust is rational) So the line gets walked between bits that feel vaguely verging on nightmare but also sort of maintain the plausible deniability of belonging to the waking world, of a paranoia for something the exact scope of which remains unnamed. Ends with Klein as one of many in a trainyard full of people being sent off to concentration camps, which to me felt sort of tasteless, as a large-scale recreation, but that feels deliberate, as a way of offsetting the scope of the film being primarily focused on one person, whose relationship to the larger horror, before it affected him, was parasitic.

Husbands (1970) dir. John Cassavetes

Not into this one. The semi-improvisatory nature of the dialogue never coalesces into characters that seem to have a real core to them, there’s always just this sort of drunken aggression mode. What even is there to these characters, besides the aggression they treat women with? What separates them from one another, makes them distinct entities, beyond the sense they egg each other on?

Casino (1995) dir. Martin Scorsese

Rewatch. Joe Pesci plays the violent Italian guy, Robert De Niro plays the level-headed Jew, Sharon Stone plays the blonde who gets strung out on drugs. Three hours long to contain everyone’s arcs, but also sort of feels like it neatly has act breaks at pretty close to the hour marks, while also telling this pretty big historical sweeping piece about how corporate control comes to Las Vegas, the notion that “the house always wins” but even the individual whose job it is to run the house is himself situated inside a larger house. Both here and in Raging Bull, De Niro plays a character whose third act involves trying to be an entertainer for reasons of ego, and it’s so weird. Yeah, a great movie, one of the few that the reductive view of Scorsese as “someone who just makes mob movies” applies to, I have no opinion on whether it’s better than Goodfella or not.

Blue Collar (1978) dir. Paul Schrader

Not great. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto co-star. Sometimes feels like maybe it’s meant to function partly as a comedy but doesn’t. It’s also mostly a crime movie, about people working at an auto plant who decide to rob their union’s vault. They end up not making any money from that robbery, but the union can claim insurance funds, so they get to benefit while the working men continue to be shafted, worried about the consequences of what they’ve done. Kotto dies, and Pryor and Keitel are turned against each other by circumstance, which the film tries to play off as being about the divisions among people that keep the working class weak. I definitely feel like the Schrader oeuvre begins with Hardcore.

Mona Lisa (1986) dir. Neil Jordan

This ends up kind of feeling like a lesser version of Hardcore, with British accents. Bob Hoskins, out of jail, starts driving for a prostitute, they dislike each other at first, but become friendly. She asks him to track down a younger girl she was friends with, who a pimp has gotten strung out on drugs. (Hoskins is also a father to a daughter, though his relationship with the mother is strained from having gone to prison.) Hoskins’ character isn’t that interesting and the film revolves around him, the female lead is more interesting but deliberately removed from the larger narrative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good Neil Jordan movie.

The Untouchables (1987) dir. Brian De Palma

Rewatch. Great Ennio Morricone score in this one, a real reminder of a different era in terms of what constituted a blockbuster or a prestige picture. David Mamet provides the screenplay. De Palma is pretty reined-in, while Mission: Impossible is an insane procession of sequences of top-notch visual storytelling, the most De Palma trademark thing here is a first-person perspective of a home invasion scene, watching Sean Connery, that ends up being a deliberate choice of a limited perspective to surprise as he gets lured to his death. I feel like there’s a straight line between this movie and Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990), but obviously what that line runs through is the reality-rewriting effect of Tim Burton’s Batman.

Pulp Fiction (1994) dir. Quentin Tarantino

Rewatch. Can scarcely comprehend how it would’ve felt to see this in a theater when it came out. I watched it the first time in college on a laptop and headphones and it blew me away, even after years of a bunch of it being referenced on The Simpsons and everywhere else. I haven’t seen it since. Rewatching is this exercise in seeing what you don’t remember when everything’s been processed a million times. Feels like Tarantino’s best screenplay due to its construction, more so than any dialogue, which is obviously a little in love with itself. Samuel Jackson wears a Krazy Kat t-shirt after his suit gets covered in blood. Quentin Tarantino casts himself as the white guy who gets to say the n-word a bunch.

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featherymalignancy · 5 years

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CHAPTER ONE—In Vino Veritas: A Nessian Story

“In wine lies the truth”

Summary: Nesta Archeron is convinced she has everything she wants: a law degree from an ivy, a prestigious job, a gorgeous boyfriend, and excellent taste in wine. However, when she wanders into her local wine vendor and meets a handsome stranger unafraid to play her quick-witted games, she begins to wonder if the life she’s built is really the one she wants.

Cash Kahukore worked his entire adolescent life to become a sommelier, ignoring the slurs his mixed heritage have always earned him as he fought his way to the top. However, after five years abroad buying for Michelin star restaurants and dealing with rich white assholes, he’s grown bored with his life. When a gorgeous lawyer comes in to his uncle’s shop one afternoon, he immediately recognizes a worthy opponent in her. Undaunted by her sharp tongue and possessive boyfriend, he’s determined to be her friend, and—as time goes on and their circumstances change—possibly something more.

This a prequel to Navy Suits and Chelsea Boots that takes place three years before. If you love Elriel (and don’t mind finding out how this story ends) check it now.

Also, check out the masterlist for In Vino Veritas HERE!

Announcements: I know some of you are going to see and and worry “BUT WHAT ABOUT LIKE A LONELY HOUSE??” It’s coming, I swear. I was just really jammed up working on it and this was a way to relieve the brain bleed that LaLH was causing. But seriously, don’t panic, it’s coming. I know I’m not nearly as prolific as some of the more popular writers in this fandom, but I swear it’s because I’m just trying to get it right. Okay, now on with the show!

Chapter One: Cheval

Nesta Archeron had worked hard to get to where she was. She’d helped raise her sisters before putting herself through college and law school, and as a young associate she’d stayed at the office long after her contemporaries gone home. As a reward for her sacrifices—and the success they’d awarded her—Nesta always treated herself to the best of everything. She wore the best clothes, dined at the best restaurants, and—of course—drank the best wine.

That’s why she only ever bought from Merchant of Vino. Sure, it was a stupid name, but she’d done her research, and it was undoubtedly the best wine vendor in the Bay Area. They sold all her favorite Napa reds, and the owner was a man named Devlon who knew his stuff and never tried to look down her blouse.

Nesta was a person who thrived on routine—on ritual—and going to Merchant had become one of her favorites since arriving in San Francisco the previous year.

That was, until the day said ritual was disrupted.

It had started out like normal: she got out of court in the early afternoon and battled traffic to North Beach, already considering what she would order. She hadn’t bought Spring Mountain in a while, and after the day opposing counsel had given her, she was in the mood for something thorny.

The quaint little bell dinged when she stepped inside, and she took a minute to admire the familiar racks before glancing to the bar...

She frowned.

“You’re not Devlon,” she said in greeting, and the man behind the counter—who looked to be in his late twenties— glanced up from the where he’d been shelving bottles and laughed.

“Very astute; I’m not.”

She crossed her arms across her chest. She didn’t like to be teased. She felt a stab of annoyance when he reached up to shelve a final bottle and she caught a glimpse of his ridged stomach and the making of an Adonis belt, visible above the waistband of his low-slung Jeans. She especially didn’t like being teased by attractive men. As an attorney, she got enough of that in her day job.

“I’ve never seen anyone else work here,” she clarified.

She didn’t bother to sound polite, but if her tone bothered the stranger,he didn’t show it.

He only shrugged, gesturing she take a seat in one of the well-loved leather barstools before leaning his forearms on the counter. They were as corded as the rest of him, and covered with what she recognized as Māori tattoos.

“Then I guess it’s your lucky day: I know more about wine than Dev could hope to learn in ten lifetimes.”

When she only responded by pursing her lips, the stranger’s grin widened. Nesta fought not to admire him as leaned a fraction closer.

With long hair tied back in a bun at his crown and heavy gold hoops in his ears, he was nothing like the clean cut and classically-handsome guys she usually went for. Still, she couldn’t deny he was rather devastating.

He was tall and broad, his powerful chest and tapered waist cutting an inherently masculine silhouette which—much to her chagrin—Nesta couldn’t help admiring.

His bronze skin and glossy dark hair spoke to the island heritage his tattoos had already hinted at, and his eyes…

Nesta didn’t want to dwell on how much green they had running through the ribbons of hazel, or how they glittered as they continued to study her.

She sniffed and glanced down to adjust the watch at her wrist, if only to escape the fact she’d been checking him out, hard.

“That’s a rather lofty assessment,” she said finally.

He shrugged.

“It’s true.”

“Jury’s still out,” she shot back.

He gave a throaty laugh, taking the opportunity to look her up and down. However, it wasn’t in the leering way she’d grown accustomed to, as if she were a cut of expensive meat. He seemed to be taking her measure instead. From the way he smiled—teeth diamond bright against his full lips—it was clear he’d been satisfied by what he’d found.

“Challenge accepted. I’m more than happy to blow your mind, free of charge.”

She snorted, ignoring the potential double meaning. This felt dangerously like flirting, and if there was one thing Nesta Archeron never did, it was flirt.

“You really think I’m that easy?”

His grin widened, and she rolled her eyes. Okay, fine, she’d walked into that one. Still, she wasn’t one to back down from a challenge, and everything about this guy seemed to suggest he’d be a worthy opponent.

“Okay, maestro,” she said, setting her bag down and finally taking a seat. “If you’re so smart, pour me a glass of something you think I’ll like.”

He considered, biting his annoyingly-plush lower lip as he surveyed her again. It was more openly appreciative this time, but still never strayed below her chin.

“What do I get if I guess correctly?”

She gave him a deadpan look, the kind her male colleagues had suggested could melt flesh from bone.

“A tip.”

He bubbled his lips in dismissal.

“Woman, I don’t work here for the tips. I’d rather have your name.”

She considered, hating how much she was enjoying this. It had been ages since she’d had a decent sparring partner.

“Fine,” she said. “But know that if you’re wrong, I’m not giving you either.”

He only laughed before grabbing three glasses from where they hung on the rack and lining them up on the bar top between them.

“I’ll take my chances.“

He glanced back at her, drumming his fingers against his lips as he considered. He then pulled out three bottles, a white and two reds. When he’d poured a taste in the first two glasses and two fingers-worth in the third, she frowned.

“This is cheating.”

He only laughed again, eyes alight beneath his devilishly arched brows. They made him look dangerous in a way Nesta refused to admit suited him.

“Trust the process,” he said, gesturing to the glass of white.

“Now, this is what you think I think you like: Rombauer Chardonnay out of the Napa valley. Aged in French oak with notes of vanilla and an earthy, buttery finish. Too rich to make a good sipping wine, but still an inexplicable go-to choice for mansplainers trying to impress their female friends.”

He paused to give her a roguish smile, which she rewarded with a shrug. He was right; she hated buttery chardonnays, but it was still what men always assumed she’d want.

He swished the the Rombauer before swallowing the small measure in the glass and moving to the next, a plum-colored red.

“This is what you think you want: Nickel and Nickel Cabernet. It’s complex and beguiling and just the kind of fleshy, bold California red a power broker like yourself is conditioned to love.”

She ignored the jab and picked up the glass, bringing it to her nose. She was greeted with the smell of dark berries and cassis, and it made her mouth water.

“You should have quit while you were ahead,” she said, throwing back the small measure and letting the taste envelop her palate. “Far Niente is one of my favorite vineyards.”

He just smirked, gesturing to third glass.

“Not so fast, because this is what you actually want. Chateau Cheval Blance from the St-Émilion appellation in France. A light structure, perfect in its tension between floral and mineral notes. Truly, this is terroir at its finest.”

She gave him a tight smile.

“I’m not a Old World wine person,” she said, pushing the empty Cabernet glass towards him in silent request he refill it. “Better luck next time on the tip.”

He responded by pushing the French blend towards her instead.

“Humor me.”

She pursed her lips before picking up the glass. She could smell dark cherries and wood smoke, and something floral that she couldn’t place but that was all the more tantalizing for its elusiveness.

Begrudgingly she took a sip, and it was an effort not to let her eyes roll back in her head. It was silky, but not in the cloying way that Chardonnays sometimes were, and the flavor seemed to blossom, sweet plum giving way to dark berries and something earthy that had her toes curling in her expensive Louboutin heels. Truly, she wasn’t sure she’d ever tasted anything so divine.

He studied her reaction before flashing a wicked smile and leaning in.

“So what’s your name, Gorgeous?”

Struggling to compose herself, she hastily set down the glass.

“I have a boyfriend,” she snapped.

The man seemed undaunted by her declaration though, and if he noticed her sudden unease, he didn’t comment. Instead, he re-filled her glass before pouring one for himself.

“I have no doubt,” he said, touching his glass to hers so the crystal sang. “But that isn’t what I asked.”

She watched him as he took a sip, his throat working as he swallowed. Good Lord, he was handsome.

She mentally slapped herself. She had a boyfriend, and perfect taste in wine aside, she shouldn’t be indulging this stranger in whatever game he thought he was playing. Tomás would be furious if he found out.

This in mind, she settled for scowling.

The stranger laughed.

“It’s not like it matters,” he said, twirling the stem of his glass between long fingers. “Unless you’re a drug dealer who plans to pay cash for the case of Cheval of you are so obviously going to be buying, I’m going to see it on your card anyway. Besides, no one likes an oath breaker.”

She took another sip of wine to hide her smile. They weren’t flirting, she assured herself. They were just...talking. Talking was perfectly innocent. Tomas couldn’t get angry at her for talking.

The man waited, and eventually she relented.

“Nesta.”

“Nesta...?” He prompted, and she rolled her eyes.

“Nesta Archeron.”

He extended a hand.

“Cash.”

“Please tell me that’s a nickname.”

He only laughed in response.

“Are you always this charming, Nesta Archeron?”

His hand remained between them, and after a beat of hesitation she took it. A jolt of electricity shot up her arm the minute they touched, and she found herself fending off a flush as she tugged her hand back. Still, they remained close. Closer than she knew she should allow, even as she failed to pull back to a safer distance.

He watched with keen interest as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear before meeting her gaze again and saying, “yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, it’s a nickname. Cash is short for Cassian, though I don’t think anyone’s actually called me that since my mom died.”

A pang hit her, a familiar ache that still wrenched at her ten years later.

Without fully understanding why she was doing it, she blurted, “my parents are dead, too.”

He frowned for the first time since they’d met.

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

It was an automatic response, the one she always gave to avoid people asking more questions. It didn’t feel like a long time ago, though. At least, the pain hadn’t dulled the way it should have. Some night she still caught herself wishing her mother were there to tuck her into bed.

“I’m still sorry,” Cash said, brushing her ring finger with the tips of his.

It was a feather-light touch—a gesture of comfort and solidarity—but it still had Nesta’s stomach knotting. She pulled her hand away and he didn’t fight her on it, glancing up to give her a soft look instead.

“I know how hard it is, being on your own.”

Nesta bristled.

“I’m not alone. I’ve got two younger sisters, and my—“

“—boyfriend,” he said, leaning back even as he smirked. “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten.”

She couldn’t help it; this time, she flushed. However the look gave her said he had no intention of pushing the issue.

She imagined what Elain would say were she there, and she grit her teeth before forcing out, “I didn’t mean to imply that you—“

“Don’t apologize,” he said, eyes glittering as they skated over her face again. “Beautiful girl like you, it...wasn’t a bad assumption. Still, you have nothing to worry about from me, I promise.”

She nodded, surprised to find a twinge or disappointment. She attempted to bury the feeling by shouldering on.

“So where is Devlon?”

Cash shrugged, folding his toned arms across his chest in a gesture his white T-shirt struggled to accommodate.

“He had to go back home to handle some stuff and I’d just gotten back to town, so I told him I’d watch the shop for awhile.”

“How long will he be gone?”

Cash grinned, taking another sip of wine.

“Sick of me already, Archeron?”

She only pursed her lips in response, and he laughed.

“I didn’t ask. But long enough that you’ll get to see me again, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

His grin was a slash of white across his tan face, and she looked away to avoid blushing again. This was definitely too close to flirting for Nesta’s comfort. One more glass and she might—

“I should go,” she said abruptly, draining the last of her wine. “It was nice meeting you, Cassian.”

She picked up her bag and was halfway to freedom when he laughed.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

She turned back, and he gestured to the racks of wine all around them. When they made eye contact, his grin grew wicked.

“Or did Dev already tell you his gorgeous nephew was taking over the shop, and you just came to check out the goods yourself?”

She grit her teeth, trying not to admire said...goods, especially the ones she could make out through his thin t-shirt and fitted jeans.

“You’re an ass,” she growled, stalking back towards him.

“C’mon, you love it.”

“Don’t make me gut you will my shoe. It’s impossible to get blood out of suede.”

He only laughed.

“Why do I get the sense you’d actually do it, too?”

“Because I don’t make idle threats,” she snapped.

“I’ll believe that,” he said, eyes alight. “Alright, enough teasing, then. What are you looking for? Besides the Cheval, obviously,” he added, winking.

She debated ordering three cases of Nickel and Nickel just to wipe the smirk off his face. However, she quickly decided it was an exercise in futility; he’d know why she was doing it, and the Cheval really was too divine to pass up.

“Yes, you insufferable bastard, I will have a case of the Cheval.” When he grinned in reply, she added, “And a bottle of Ferreira Garrafeira.”

He gave a low whistle.

“That’s expensive stuff. And I thought you said you didn’t like Old World wine?”

“It’s not for me; it’s for Tomás.”

She could decide if she felt pleased or guilty when his smile slipped a fraction before recovering, too bright to be wholly genuine.

“Ah. the famed boyfriend, I presume. He’s certainly got...interesting taste.”

When she bristled, he went on hurriedly.

“In wine! Obviously his taste in women is...” he trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish laugh.

“Yes?” She said archly, not wanting to admit how much the comment had stung.

With sisters like Elain and Feyre, Nesta was used to being dismissed as the frigid, uptight sister. It didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

However, Cash wasn’t looking at her in that way men often did, as if she were some poisonous insect he was afraid might sting him. His expression softened.

“Impeccable,” he finished, and it was so unexpected she flushed.

He cleared his throat before going to the computer behind the bar to consult the shop’s inventory.

“We don’t have the Garrafeira in right now, but I can order it for you. The Cheval is in the back.”

“Don’t worry about the port,” she said, regretting the outburst now. “He’ll—live.”

Cash turned, brows furrowed.

“Are you sure? I can—“

“It’s fine,” Nesta repeated. “Thank you.”

Cash nodded and disappeared into the back before reappearing with a wooden crate a minute later. The strain of holding it was doing glorious things for his arms, and she cleared her throat.

“Thank you,” she said, making a great show digging in her bag for her wallet to avoid looking at him again.

“Where are you parked? I don’t want you snapping your neck walking on those pencils you’re calling shoes.”

She pursed her lips.

“You’re hilarious. How much do I owe you?”

However, he was halfway to the door already.

“I have a friend who distributes for Cheval. This one’s on me.”

“No!” She called, following after him. “Cassian, come back! I don’t need your charity!”

Cash turned to smirk at her over his shoulder.

“With that handbag? I’d say not. Besides, this isn’t charity. It’s...an investment.”

She scowled at this, and he gave an exasperated laugh.

“Don’t get thorny on me, Archeron. I just meant—“ he broke off, laughing again. “Think of it as a perk for being a regular. Buy ten cases, get one free.”

“This isn’t Jamba Juice,” she said, deadpan. “And I don’t like owing people.”

“Look,” he said. “I wasn’t lying about my friend being a distributor. It’s not going to cost the shop anything. Now, where is your car? I think my arms are going numb.”

She bit her lip, debating what this might end up costing her. She didn’t believe in “free”, and she didn’t like feeling like she owed someone; she’d had enough of that from people when she’d been taking care of her sisters after their parents died.

Then again, she’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested in him...like that, and she’d certainly bought her fair share of wine here over the last few years...

“Fine,” she said, gesturing to her Land Rover. “But take this, at least.”

She pulled out a fifty from her wallet, and Cash rolled his eyes.

“I’m not the pizza delivery boy; I don’t want a tip. Just, promise not to call me Cassian again. That’s all the payment I require.”

She didn’t move, the bill still outstretched. He heaved the crate into her open trunk before shutting it.

“I swear to god, woman, put that away before I shred it to ticker tape. I don’t need your charity, either.”

She relented with a huff, and he laughed.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I should be the one thanking you,” she admitted, and he smiled, leaning against her car.

“No one is stopping you.”

She grit her teeth, irritated and flustered in equal measure.

“Thank you,” she finally managed. “For the wine.”

“‘And for blowing my mind’,” he prompted, and she flipped him a foul hand gesture, civility forgotten.

“If you think that’s all it takes to blow my mind, you have a lot to learn about women.”

He bit his lip, eyes full of amusement as he peeled himself off the car.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said, flashing her a quick wink. “Until next time, then, Nesta Archeron.”

She opened her mouth to retort, but for once words failed her. She instead stood, gaping like a landlocked fish as he sauntered around her and back into the shop.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cash was distracted for hours after Nesta Archeron left. Even as he met with reps and worked on organizing his uncle Devlon’s pathetically arcane inventory system, he found his eyes kept wandering to the door, as if she might come sauntering back in. Damnit, why hadn’t he told her the Cheval was out of stock? Then at least he would have had a guarantee of seeing her again. Depending on her drinking habits, it could be months before she came in again. Fuck, he was so stupid.

Not that it mattered, really. How many times had she managed to force her boyfriend into the equation? Twice? Three times? Definitely enough that he knew he should get the message. And he understood; he really did. Like all guys his age, he’d been raised on a steady diet of “if she’s not interested, try harder”. It hadn’t been until he’d gotten into his twenties that he’d realized how fucked up that was. When women said no, men needed to respect that and not keep pushing.

The problem was that despite all the clumsy mentions of her boyfriend, she’d still stayed when she easily could have left. Besides, if she thought he hadn’t seen her checking him out, she was insane. Not that he blamed her, obviously. If he was a woman, he’d want to fuck him, too.

Before he could catch himself, his lizard brain was imagining what being in bed with her would be like. His pulse thrummed. It wasn’t so much the idea of sleeping with her as it was imagining what a courtship like that would be like. She was definitely hot, but her body had nothing on that gorgeous brain. It was clear she was a woman of supreme intellect; he’d have to seduce her mind if he ever wanted to earn something physical.

It was the kind of intellectual challenge he craved, and one he hadn’t had in ages before she’d come in. He wanted someone who could dish it back, and Nesta Archeron clearly knew how to give as good as she got.

His phone rang, and he glanced at the caller id before huffing and picking it up.

“If you’re calling to ask if the shop has burned down yet, the answer is no.”

His uncle Devlon laughed.

“That place is the closest thing I’ll ever have to a wife; I just want to make sure you’re treating her right.”

“I’ll show her a good time while you’re away,” Cash promised, pouring himself a glass of a new Rioja the rep had dropped off that afternoon.

“Don’t make sex jokes about my baby,” Dev said. “And stop drinking my merchandise!”

“I’m not!” Cash said, setting down his glass. “Relax, old man. And is Merchant your wife or your baby? You should probably decide; you’ll freak people out if you keep using them interchangeably.”

“Very funny, wise ass. How’s it being back?”

“This place hasn’t changed a bit in ten years,” Cash said, looking around appreciatively. “But you need to get a decent table in here so you can host tasting. Why didn’t you call my friend Az like I told you to? He does gorgeous work.”

“You must think I’m a lot richer than I am,” Dev said. “I’ve seen his designs; you think I can afford a ten thousand dollar table?”

Cash rolled his eyes.

“He said he’d do it at cost. Why are you being so stubborn?”

“I’m not going to prey on your fancy friends. Tell him thank you but I can’t swing it.”

“Fine.”

Dev sighed.

“Why do I feel like you’re just going to do it anyway?”

“Because I’m as stubborn as you. How’s Koro?”

“Not a spry as she used to be, but she’s managing just fine. She wants to know when her favorite grandson is coming back. She says the Ritz on Maui is looking for a sommelier.”

“Tell her my days of working for rich white assholes is behind me,” Cash said.

Dev considered.

“You could open your winery here, you know. Volcanic wine is popular with the haoles.”

“Didn’t I just say I was done with rich white assholes?”

“Fine, fine.”

There was a pause in which Cash weighed his options before he added in what he hoped was a casual tone, “If I said the name Nesta Archeron, would that mean anything to you?”

“The lawyer? Sure. She comes in about twice a month. Nice girl, once you get past her prickly side. Why?”

Cash swirled his wine.

“Just wondering. She came in today.”

Dev gave a gravelly laugh.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree. She’s got a boyfriend.”

“So I’ve been warned. Have you met him?”

“She’s brought him in once or twice. Portuguese dude.”

“Nice?”

“Not particularly. He’s very possessive of her. Really rubbed me the wrong way.”

Cash felt a prickle of irritation himself. What was a brilliant, fiery woman like Nesta Archeron doing with a controlling prick for a boyfriend? She should be with someone who respected that sharp tongue, someone who could—

“Don’t even think about it, Cash. She’s one of my favorite customers. I don’t want you to scare her off with your panting.”

“I don’t ‘pant’. Also, can you blame me? Man, those legs, and her eyes—“

“I mean it,” Dev interrupted, voice firmer this time. “If she brought up her boyfriend, it means she wants you to fuck off.”

“I’m not going to bother her. I was just....curious.”

“Well don’t be. That creepy boyfriend will nail your balls to the wall if he finds out you’re trying to move in on her.”

“I respect her choices, but I don’t give a shit about him. He can suck my co—“

“I think you’d better accept that no one in that relationship wants your tiny pecker.”

“Tell that to the way she was looking at me today.”

“Just because you’ve got a cute ass doesn’t mean she likes you.”

Cash groaned.

“Fine, forget I said anything.”

Dev chuckled.

“Don’t be sulky. I’m sure there’s plenty of women in the Bay Area that would be happy to take her place.”

He was right, but somehow it didn’t make Cash feel any better. There was no shortage of beautiful women in San Francisco, but none of them interested him quite the way she had. There’d been no denying the wrenching disappointment when he’d realized she wasn’t single. Then again, had he really expected someone like her to be? And she was lawyer to boot. He gave a huff of amused appreciation. He should have known.

“Right,” Dev said, interrupting his reverie. “Well I just wanted to check in, sounds like everything is fine there. I will tell Koro you said hi. Remember, I’m charging you for any of my wine you drink.”

Cash snorted.

“You’re getting a level three somm for free. I’ll drink all the wine I want.”

“Fair enough. Take care of yourself, pōtiki. And no more hitting on my customers!”

“I wasn’t—“ Cash began, but the line clicked off, and he swore, even has he caught himself laughing a little.

He’d been second-guessing the decision to come back from London since he’d arrived two weeks ago. Today, for the first time, he felt he was exactly where he was meant to be.

He’d thought he might owe Nesta Archeron another case of wine for that, boyfriend or no. He just hoped she wouldn’t make him wait too long for the opportunity.

Next Chapter

taggings some interested parties!: @katexrenee @mariamuses @theovogkaaunt @bookofmaas @goldbooksblack @dreamerforever-5 @willsrune @rhysanoodle @queen-of-wings-and-fire @wesupremeginger

#Nessian #nesta x cassian #Nessian AU #cassian x nesta #featherywrites #IVV

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yourkeeperoftherunners · 5 years

Text

Your Favorite? [1]

Plot: AU You’re part of the exchange program group from another country attending a Semester Abroad for university credit in Australia. The other students have been welcoming and friendly since you’ve arrived. You fell in with three students but two of them may like you more than just as a friend. So the big question they have for you is: who is your favorite Aussie?

Rating: PG (Light language, crushes, friendly competition)

Characters: University Student!Christopher (Bang Chan), University Student!Felix, University Student!Rosé, Foreign Exchange Student!Female Reader, plus mention of other members.

Notes: This was inspired by another event during the time I hosted Australian exchange students in high school. We all attended a party with the hosts and exchange students and a mutual friend of the girls I hosted tried to get me to say he was my favorite Aussie. (One of the girls I hosted, plus another exchange student shut him down quickly to save me from awkwardness, but it was funny.) In this story, I’m focusing only on the Aussie line from Stray Kids and BLACKPINK. (I know there’s two other idols who are from Australia but I’m not as familiar with them and I wanted to keep it focused on these three.)

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“I need to study with you for the next exam,” Rosé sighed as she moved her bag higher on her shoulder.

You swiped her test from her hand and took a quick look. “The grade’s not that bad Rosie – it’s better than the class average!”

“But it’s still not as high as I wanted it!” she pouted. She puffed her cheeks out like a chipmunk and you laughed, before passing the test back.

“She’s storing nuts again,” a warm voice teased from behind.

Both of you turned to see it was Christopher, another student in your year, who was studying Music Production. Rosé scowled at the comment and nudged Christopher in the arm, which prompted him to fake being hurt.

“Y/N, she’s hurting me!” he whined.

Rosé shot him a look and gestured to his impressive biceps. “I didn’t elbow you that hard! Besides, you’ve got muscles.”

“Blame Han – he called you Chaemunk,” Chris whispered, pretending to nurse his arm.

“Come on you two, knock it off,” you said, shaking your head. “Can we talk about anything else that doesn’t involve Contemporary Literature?”

Christopher straightened up and came around to your other side. He tilted his head and shared that his roommate was hosting a party this weekend.

“Which one? Han or your exchange student roommate Changbin?” you asked.

“Han of course,” Christopher confirmed. “Binnie’s going to be there too, but he’s a bit shy.”

You raised a brow and Rosé explained that she heard the last party Chris was at got shut down by authorities. He held his hands up and insisted it wasn’t his party.

“Ladies, I was an attendee the last time!” he protested. “I make sure we respect the neighbors, don’t let the underage ones drink, and everyone is safe.”

“Sorry Chris, but Rosie and I already made plans,” you shared. “Plus I promised Lix I’d beat him in a round of Mario Party.”

“Lix? You mean Felix Lee?”

“Yeah I call him Lix sometimes,” you clarified. “Maybe we can grab lunch or coffee next week?”

“Oh um, course!” he said as you neared your dormitory. “Well, see you.”

---------------------

“You’re moping because of Y/N, aren’t you?” Changbin asked him in Korean. He had taken a break from messing with a track he was composing and saw Chris was glumly looking through his phone.

“Huh? Um no, no! Binnie, I’m bored, that’s all!” Chris insisted. He tried to turn his phone off, but Changbin already noticed that Chris was scrolling through your Instagram.

“You’re Instagram-stalking her,” the roommate noted with an amused look. “Look, why not ask her on a real date?”

Chris put his phone face down and sighed. In theory, he should have pucked up the courage to tell you that he thought you were cool. You completely defied his expectations of someone from your home country and he liked spending time with you. The semester was starting to fly by and eventually, you’d be leaving Australia, possibly for good. But he hated the thought of putting himself out there, only to end in rejection and losing a good friend in the process.

Changbin took a seat next to the other male and folded his hands on the counter. He looked around the kitchen and sighed.

“I get...that you don’t want to scare her off,” he said, “but I think you’re going to hate yourself if you say nothing.” He looked over his shoulder at Chris and asked if you were coming to Han’s party.

Chris shook his head and revealed that you already made plans with Rosé and Felix this weekend. Changbin nodded to show he understood and tilted his head as he thought for a moment.

“Maybe next weekend or after class? If you’re worried, maybe do something lowkey, like coffee or ice cream?” he suggested.

---------------------

“Buh bye Loser!” you taunted as you steered your character past Felix’s. You pressed your controls to make your car jump a bridge in the mini challenge, and whooped when it landed safely on the other side. Your car was moments away from the Finish line when Felix’s car landed behind yours.

You hunched your shoulders forward as you steered the car, trying to keep the gap between your car and his. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Felix poking his tongue out through his lips as he concentrated on the path to the Finish line.

You bit your lip as some boulders rolled across your path and you made swerving maneuvers and some jumps to avoid them. Felix hit one and groaned loudly as his car spun out of control, hitting another in the process. This gave you enough time to push forward and have your avatar cross the finish line.

“YES!” you cheered, throwing your controller down.

Felix huffed as he put his down a bit roughly on the couch, shaking his head. “That’s not fair!”

You whirled around and grinned, leaning over to rumple his hair. “Tough luck Lix – I said I wasn’t going easy on you.”

Felix managed to keep the pout on his face, chewing on his bottom lip slightly to hide how much he liked your fingers running through his hair. He knew the gesture was done in a friendly, almost sibling-like manner, but he wished you see that it was only a year gap between the both of you.

“Okay, what’s the punishment for losing?” he deadpanned.

You shook your head and told him that you weren’t putting him through a punishment. “You said we should hang and try to beat each other in games, so that’s what we did,” you reminded him, resuming your place on the couch. You smiled softly and thanked Felix for inviting you over. “I really needed to stop thinking about my classes and tests and do something mindless but fun. Thanks Felix.”

He softened his expression and nodded, allowing a brilliant smile to spread across his face.

“Of course,” he replied.

---------------------

“You’re not paying for mine!”

Chris smirked as he slid in front of you and passed over money for your coffee and pastries to the cashier. “Too late.”

“I’ll pay you back,” you insisted as you grabbed your cup and plate with the choux bun.

He shook his head and declared it was his treat. You sighed, thanking him as you carried your things over to a table by the window. He followed with his cup and some napkins and forks.

He had taken Changbin’s advice and asked if you wanted to check out this trendy dessert cafe in town after both of you were done with class. It was lowkey and this way he could gauge your feelings for him before pouring his heart out to you.

“Classes going all right?” he asked as he sank into his seat.

You nodded as you put the choux bun in the center of the table, indicating that you could share it with him. He passed you a fork and some napkins, prompting you to take the first bite.

You stabbed your fork into the pastry and picked up some of the shell and the creme filling. He watched as you tried your bite, then flashed him a thumbs up.

“You should take Han here – this is really good!” you said.

“Maybe I will,” he mused before taking some of the pastry to try. “Everyone missed you at the party this weekend.”

“How crazy did it get?” you asked before taking a sip of your coffee.

Chris finished his bite and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Actually it wasn’t bad! We did offer a few drinks, but everyone knew to be respectful of the neighbors. Craziest thing that happened was Han had to kiss some girl because he lost at Suck and Blow.”

“Anyone he was interested in?” you asked.

Chris opened his mouth to reply, but was startled by someone tapping on the glass. You turned your head and smiled when you saw it was Felix, accompanied by his friend Minho. Both boys waved to you before entering the cafe and making their way to your table.

“Perfect timing!” Felix remarked as he wrapped his fingers around his messenger bag strap. “Minho was looking for you, Chris. Said he’s struggling with his Japanese homework.”

Minho nodded as he came up beside Felix and produced a test. “Sorry hyung, but I know this grade’s not good enough for my mom – I’m doing extra credit homework to make up for this. Can you help me now?”

Chris resisted the urge to sigh, silently wishing that the universe would just work in his favor for once. He plastered a small smile on his face and motioned for Minho to follow him to another area of the cafe. Felix mouthed a thank you to Chris, before asking if he could try the pastry.

“Ask Y/N – it’s hers really,” Chris said before guiding Minho to a quieter area.

Felix pointed to the plate and you told him to have some. He grinned as he sank in Christopher’s chair, putting his bag down on the ground. He reached out and broke off a piece, placing it in his mouth.

You pointed to the corner of his mouth, noticing he had some cream on the corner. He accepted a napkin from you and wiped it off.

---------------------

Han

Y/N!! You missed my party. :( Sent 16:32 PM

Y/N

Sorry Han! Maybe next time? Sent 16:36 PM

Han

How about game night tonight? You, me, Chaemunk, Felix, Chris, Binnie, and Minho? Sent 16:38 PM

“May I get you ladies anything to drink?” Han asked after you and Rosé arrived.

“Water,” you both replied.

“That’s it?” Han asked with a pout.

“No drunken Truth or Dare,” you warned him. “I came to play games, not get so wasted that I can’t remember making out with someone.”

“We’re not drinking either!” Felix called out as he leaned to the side, trying to see who joined. Minho mimicked his movement, holding up a soda can.

“Hey, I’m not either!” Chris protested as he showed his water bottle.

“It’s just Han who wants to,” Changbin remarked with an amused smile.

Han shook his head and insisted that he’d forgo alcohol tonight too. “I only wanted to make the offer in case.” He pulled out two water bottles and passed them to you and Rosé.

You opened yours and took a sip, while Rosé asked where the restroom was. Changbin rose from his seat and pointed out the directions to the bathroom. She thanked him before excusing herself.

Han cracked open a soda and took a long sip from it. He sighed, putting the can down on the counter. “So Y/N, your semester here’s almost over,” he noted.

Your shoulders slumped and you sighed, glumly recapping your water bottle. You had tried not to think about it, since it meant you would be going back to your university and leaving all of your wonderful new friends behind. Sure there was social media where you could keep in touch and you could always try to save money to visit them, but it wasn’t the same. All of your little spots to visit with friends, the sights you’d see on your walks to campus or days off, they would be very different once your semester ended.

“Yeah I guess it’s coming up really soon,” you said. “I was having a good time that I didn’t realize it was almost over.”

Felix looked over at you and Chris threw Han a look for dampening the mood. Han shrugged as he took another sip from his can. A ghost of a smirk appeared on his lips as he asked, “So, out of everyone you’ve met...who’s your favorite person?”

You blinked at the question and looked around at all of the people in the room. Changbin spoke up and added that you shouldn’t count him in the possible list of people.

“I’m an exchange student too,” he reminded you. “I think this is more for the local students. So to rephrase Han’s question: who is your favorite Australian friend here?”

You uncapped your water bottle and took a sip from it, trying to delay your answer. It didn’t seem fair to pick just one of them – all of the people you met were wonderful in their own way.

“Well technically I’m not from Australia and Han isn’t either,” Minho added with a thoughtful look. “So, is Chris-hyung, Felix, or Rosé-noona your favorite?” He took a sip from his soda can and smirked, looking at Felix, then Chris.

You slowly swallowed the water you were drinking, not daring to look at either of the guys named. Picking one of them wasn’t going to be fair to the other and honestly, both of them were great. You liked Chris who was easy to talk to and a good listener. Felix had a warm, friendly personality and you always had fun with him.

“Um can I pass on the question out of courtesy to everyone?” you asked in a small voice.

The guys looked at you in confusion, then Han began talking, with Minho adding over him that you had to pick one. Changbin rolled his eyes and shook his head at Minho for starting trouble. Chris sighed as he tried to get Han’s attention.

“HEY!” Felix yelled. This made Han and Minho stop talking and everyone turned their attention to him. His eyes met yours and he leaned forward in his seat slightly.

“Y/N, we can handle this,” he said.

Chris nodded as he stepped forward, putting his water down as he walked closer. He flattened his palms on the counter and tilted his head. “We’re all adults here – no one’s gonna get their feelings hurt,” he reassured you.

You closed the water bottle again and looked from Chris to Felix again. For once, you wished you had said no to Han tonight. Sure both of the guys might be okay with you picking one person, but you knew one of them would be hurt if you showed favoritism toward the other.

“So honestly Love, is it me?” Chris asked with a sly grin.

You blinked and Felix rose from his seat, making his way to the same counter where the elder boy stood. He propped his elbows on the counter and rested his chin cutely between his hands.

“Sorry Chris, but I think I’m her favorite – you know with all of the fun games and excitement I have to offer in my room,” Felix chimed in. “She does love her Mario games.”

“Guys look, I –”

You felt someone wrap their arms around you and you turned to see it was Rosé, squishing you in a cute side hug. She flashed you her cutest smile and you couldn’t help but smile in turn.

“Sorry guys, but it’s me!” Rosé sang.

#Stray Kids Bang Chan #Stray Kids Felix #BLACKPINK Rosé #BLACKPINK AU #Skdz AU #Stray Kids AU #Stray Kids imagine #BLACKPINK imagine #Park Chaeyoung #Bang Chan #Lee Felix #Felix Lee #yourkeeperoftherunners original #number 2775

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wingedfabray · 6 years

Text

White Horse

Tagging: @classicallyclarington & Quinn Fabray When: February 14th, 2018 Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art What: Hunter and Quinn discover what it means to be stuck. Warnings: None.

Hunter smiled cuttingly as he stared outward, beyond the threshold of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the cooling twilight of the glistening New York City night. He stood up straight, shoulders broad, head level under the weight of his Ice King crown. Underneath the crown of polished jewels, he wore a suit the color of pine needles, trimmed to perfection, and he stood behind the heavy front doors of the Romanesque museum in the middle of the foyer. He had sent a white horse to Boreas Park to bring his intended to the site of their first Valentine’s day together, which was, technically, supposed to be unavailable to the public at such an hour. Lucky for us, Hunter thought, Claringtons and Fabrays are not the public.

Quinn arrived at the Met Museum on a white horse, more than a little bewildered. There hadn’t been much explanation, when the valiant steed had arrived at the Boreas entrance and a riding helmet had been passed along. She’d briefly pat his nose before doing the only obvious thing to do, and mounting up. Shoe-clad hooves had made a typical clop-clop sound as they pulled to a stop in front of the museum, expectedly devoid of people, as it was supposed to be closed. But apparently she shouldn’t take anything at face value, because the doors easily gave to her eager hands. She pulled the helmet off, looking around the blessedly-empty space, breathless until her eyes landed on Hunter. God, if he hadn’t been pulled from a magazine. The ice crown glimmered in the museum lighting, the suit was the perfect cut. As always, he was Hunter Clarington. Nights spent together hurting, and this felt more familiar than any of that ever would. This felt like why they were together. Her smile matched the bright lights reflecting off his perfect crown, “Mr. Clarington. You never do anything halfway, do you?”

Hunter Clarington grinned sideways as Quinn entered. The image of her, stepping through the grand romanesque threshold was an image he knew he wouldn't soon forget; the symmetry was pleasing and the subject lovelier still. He made his way toward her with another crown in his hand, and very gently fixed a few strands of hair which had fallen out of place from the ride over before setting the crown evenly on her head. "Do I really have to answer that question?" He quipped, grinning still, and leaned down to kiss her cheek before sliding a hand along the small of her back and guiding her over to where his enchanted rowboat, filled with cushion on the inside of the shell, was hovering three or four feet above the ground. "Well, Happy Valentine's Day, my lady. Should you like to tour your domain?" He asked well and proper, offering a hand to help her into the boat.

Quinn shook her head, what could be construed as an affectionate sigh slipping past her lips. It was so typical of him to go as extravagant as possible, and she should have expected no less. There was something about the way he said ‘your domain,’ with his grin, and that Aether-damn boat. It felt like the first time he’d shown up on her doorstep, and she’d stumbled getting in. “Why thank you.” She took his hand, using the leverage to make a much more graceful entrance than she had over a year before. Once safely inside, she returned the kiss to his cheek with a smile before taking a seat amidst the cushions. “How on Earth did you manage to book the entire Metropolitan Museum…” She managed breathlessly after a moment.

Hunter Clarington waved her off with a laugh, smooth and low as he took his suit jacket off from around his shoulders to better free his arms to row, "I know a guy," he whispered, teasing. He always knew a guy. Momentarily, he moved forward to fit his suit jacket around her shoulders. His eyes locked with hers as he did so, powerfully. He still wasn't quite adjusted to romance in the way he supposed he should be as a subject to betrothal, but fixation - that was a state he knew well and dwelled in often. After a moment, he glanced down again, to pour a glass with a rich red wine, "This is a Spanish Merlot. 1938." He explained as he lifted the bottle, and handed her the glass. Then he moved back to take the handles of the oars and, sinking the blades into the thin air, propelled them forward to the galleries, drifting. It was like a dream.

Quinn pulled the suit jacket tighter around herself, momentarily caught as Hunter held her gaze. There was something there, something different and charged. She hadn’t realized she hadn’t taken a breath since he’d leaned forward to place the jacket around her shoulders until he broke the moment by handing her a glass of wine. Her breath left her in a huff that she hid behind a generous gulp of a wine that should most definitely be sipped. It was rich and old and felt too-hot settling in her stomach. “Hunter…” She started, rough, but didn’t finish. It took a moment of gliding through the air, and another much smaller sip of the wine before she could put words to her thoughts, “You’re…ridiculous, sometimes, but I quite enjoy it.” The theme of honesty that they’d established late one night under the effects of a truth sticker had stayed with her, even then.

Hunter Clarington chuckled softly as he rowed, through the winding walkways of the Egyptian wing. If he wasn't such a skilled oarsmen, he likely would have knocked over and destroyed several priceless artifacts, but he was nothing less than cool and controlled when it came to his bladework. "Hunter Clarington, ridiculous. I have never heard that before." He said, glancing back her way after having taken a look at their course. His face broke into a grin, revealing his jest, and he glanced back again. "I have to admit, I do exhaust myself. It's difficult to imagine how I'm going to top this next year."

Quinn was watching his arms, glass halfway to her mouth, when he glanced back at her. If she were anyone less composed, that would be the moment she shook herself out of it, but she only allowed an easy grin, and did her best to play it off. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Hunter. You don’t always have to top yourself. Not…” With me, but she trailed off, because that wasn’t necessarily true. She was still Quinn Fabray, she still expected and adored grand in a way it seemed only Hunter could understand. “Not with this, at any rate.” She looked around at Ancient Egypt. This wasn’t how she would usually peruse a museum. Quinn was borderline obsessive over details; history had long been one of her favorite subjects. Displays passed by with every easy stroke of the oars, and she could only catch brief glimpses of the placards and informational screens. She looked back to Hunter, and thought of the words, “Next year. Next year, I can be the one to plan the Valentine’s Day agenda.”

Hunter Clarington 's eyebrow quirked, for a moment, when he thought he caught Quinn staring at his arms, muscles engaged with each stroke. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen that look before. It immediately surprised and amused him. At her suggestion, he chuckled and nodded approvingly, "As difficult as it is for me to relinquish control in most situations, I am going to hold you to that." It was then that he checked the oars in the still air, bringing their boat to a slow, gliding halt as they pulled up alongside the ruins of a remarkably large ancient temple, inside of which were mountains of cushion and blanket, velvet and silk, obviously contemporary, but still fitting. "This is the Temple of Dendur. It was an ancient Egyptian temple, commissioned by the Emperor Augustus and built by Petronius, the Roman governor of Egypt in 15 B.C." He exposited, eyes tracing over the monument. Two thousand years. He wandered, briefly, which Clarington it was who lived and breathed two thousand years ago. And which Fabray. Briefly, it overwhelmed him. Perhaps visibly so. He swallowed, "Just 15. The people who first entered this temple were so close to God in time and space that they must have," He swallowed again. He never invested his time and energy into religion, before. Before. "Felt it." He finished. "We can sleep here if you want. Should we take a detour?"

Quinn looked to the Temple, eyes tracing the columns, and the old tan stone, lost somewhere in the reverence in Hunter’s voice. There was something about ancient things that made everything feel so much bigger than herself, than that moment. They were part of something vast and so, so important. It was almost hard not to feel small, inconsequential, despite how much their families fought to be everything. She tore her eyes from the temple to look at Hunter once more, eyebrows lifting, one hand falling to point at the Temple of Dendur, “There? We’re sleeping there?” Aether, he had gone all out. And staying, staying felt different, somehow. This wasn’t an evening out anymore.

Hunter Clarington "There," Hunter confirmed. He climbed out of the boat carefully and extended a hand to Quinn to help her out as well, before lifting their picnic case from among the cushions in the boat. Everything that had ever happened in the history of time and space had let up to this moment, this Valentine's day with one Quinn Fabray. It was empowering to say the least. "Where Kings and Queens have laid their feet. I only thought it natural." He hummed, smiling winningly as he attempted to lighten the weight of history on their backs, "I had evening clothes packed for the both of us. Obviously, I don't know what you're accustomed to wearing at night, so there are a few options. You know, I didn't realize how much work a lot of Achilles' errands were, I'm an unnaturally demanding person."

Quinn took Hunter’s hand as she stepped out of the boat – Lucy, she reminded herself, briefly thinking of their first date and Hunter all but confirming her suspicions about the boat’s name – but her eyes never left the temple. He was saying something about kings and queens and evening clothes that she half-absorbed, appreciating the levity but focused on the history. She’d once told Puck she wanted to teach, that history classes were her favorite and if she could spend her life learning and teach others, that would be enough for her. “I’m sure what you picked is just fine.” She finally offered, looking to Hunter with a smile; it was a genuine smile, one of the very few that reached her eyes. One hand wrapped around his forearm, and she leaned forward to press a quick kiss to his cheek. “You’ve done perfectly, Hunter.” She said quietly, before pulling away. “Now, what can I do to help?”

Hunter Clarington pressed his lips together as he closed his eyes against the touch of hers on his cheek, chuckling softly. This was a new custom. Lips. After almost a year of witty, subdued banter, breathless moments of conscious ladder-climbing, now they used lips. He considered that this was perhaps the first time she'd kissed him for something other than a mere greeting, but remembered her lips brushing his forehead that night after New Year's. He tucked that away, and, turning to look at her with his the corners of his mouth still turned up, his eyes full of something warm and somewhat dazed, lifted the bottle of the Spanish red, "Well, you can help me finish this wine, for one. Would you like to get comfortable before or after dinner?"

Quinn looked to the bottle, then to Hunter, catching on something in his gaze; he never ceased to surprise her. The image she’d grown up memorizing, that picture of crisp suits and smiles that were only directed at just the right person, had blurred and sharpened and blurred far too many times since Hunter Clarington had waltzed onto campus. She felt so different than she had then, but then she wondered if he did, too. Even with the Met rented out for a private party for two, and a bottle of fine wine in hand, Quinn felt a world away from fifteen, a new name on her lips and the world spread in front of her. Her gaze flicked to their accommodations for the night, then back to Hunter, “Wine and dinner first sounds lovely.” She offered an arm, “Shall we?”

Hunter Clarington took her arm in his own in a single crisp movement, face fixed on hers for several moments before turning forward toward their destination. He thought that the twitch of his eyebrows in those few moments of looking at her must have given away his confusion, in some capacity, at the unfamiliar feeling twisting in his chest. Leading her over to the middle of the temple, he offered a hand to help her to the ground as he opened and began to unpack their "picnic" case. He rather disliked the word picnic. It sounded like quirky peasant terminology; but now was neither the time nor place for that. No, now was strawberries. Chocolate cake. Caprese salad. Melon and prosciutto. Tuna tartare. All the good art that ever was made, and her. "I thought I might have overstayed my welcome as far as bacon goes," He explained, pouring himself a glass of wine, and gesturing his glass toward Quinn's, "To..."

Quinn ’s lips twitched into a smile as Hunter pulled the items out of the basket. Of course, it was everything she’d expect to find at a luncheon, mid-spring with sundresses and hats with broad, floppy brims. The fruit looked fresh, and she was beginning to feel something almost familiar. But it wasn’t, all at once; she looked to Hunter with his glass raised towards hers, and she thought perhaps unfamiliar wasn’t as bad as she’d always feared it would be, and better yet with someone to share it. She raised her glass, “To us. To another year to come, and every adventure it might bring.” It had been just over a year, since Hunter had spoken with her father. One year. She tapped her glass lightly against his, and took a long pull.

Hunter Clarington nodded, a very pronounced nod, just one, and echoed her. "Us," He agreed, taking a long sip from his own glass. It was exquisite wine, and although he was trying these days to indulge less in self satisfaction, well... he'd had to admit, he'd done an excellent job. He turned her words around in his head as he drank. Another year. More adventures. Aether God, more adventures. All the terrible adventures they had been through in the past year, and still it made him smile to think on it. Strange. More wine. He took a melon and prosciutto skewer from the dish and handed it to her before taking one himself, and falling backward onto multitudinous cushions, "All of the food you see before you was made completely help-free. One hundred percent Hunter Henry, so do be kind with your facial and verbal reactions." He chuckled, and ate.

Quinn set the glass down in favor of the skewer, musing momentarily over how close prosciutto was to bacon, before deciding that was hardly a thought worth mulling over. More importantly, Hunter had assembled the entire dinner himself. The thought was both flattering, and curious. Achilles’ death had brought many changes, and Quinn knew the nights spent with Hunter afterward had only been the beginning. The loss had sparked much more in Hunter than she’d expected. His speech had been…something else entirely, both inspiring and terrifying. She’d wanted to shake him and hug him all at once. “If it tastes half as good as it looks, you’ve nothing to worry about.” She twirled the skewer before taking a bite; it was hard to go wrong with melon and prosciutto, and Hunter hadn’t. The moment stalled as she took another drink of wine, musing. “Have you…enjoyed doing things for yourself, Hunter?”

Hunter Clarington awed, and turned to lounge on his side. He lay with his legs stretched and his elbow propping him up, lazily taking food and wine as his eyes grazed over the minute details of the Temple of Dendur. "I'm glad you like it," He smiled, in the midst of hording sliced strawberries to his side of the cushion layout. At the accompanying question, he shrugged halfway and nodded a bit, "I do, the better part of the time. I actually find laundry fairly relaxing. Of course, a select few... fans of ours have figured out my laundry schedule and I tend to come back home with a few more bras than I left with." He laughed, taking another drink, "Some things are unpleasant, but overall, I think it's an improvement. Perhaps next year I'll be diplomatic like you, take a roommate. Can you imagine the poor kid who gets told he has to room with Hunter Clarington? I'm very intimidating, you know, and /very/ specific."

Quinn watched Hunter lay back, picking up her wine glass once more without a second thought. He looked casual yet composed, in a position she’d never quite imagined. How he managed to command a room even so grand and ancient as the one they were in, while lounged back and hoarding strawberries was a skill to be admired. Not that she felt she was below such things herself; she sat with her legs folded beneath her, skirt neat, a Fabray to the last, but comfortable nonetheless. “You? With a roommate? They wouldn’t last a week.” She laughed lightly, pulling some of the strawberries he’d stolen back towards herself. “I highly recommend the solitude, to be honest. It’s been…quiet at Boreas, now that my room is empty.”

Hunter Clarington hummed and nodded, "Not terribly quiet, I hope." He remarked, although still chuckling softly at the idea of himself attempting to share a space with another. As much as he did think he was growing, that was still more or less out of the question. Then again, he would have something close to a roommate after school, assuming Quinn Fabray would want to move in with him. He recalled telling her long ago - perhaps a year by now - all about how Lawrence and Cressida were prepared to move out of the Clocktower and leave it to them should their engagement go to plan; and, well, today more than ever it appeared as though it was going to plan. "Do you always want to live in New York?" He asked, lifting himself to sort their entrees. The tuna towers were tedious to say the least, and immaculate to say the most, "Well, New York is two different worlds as well, I suppose, between the city and upstate. But do you think you'll always live here?"

Quinn paused at the question, twirling a strawberry between her fingers, watching the way the leaves curled. Her father wanted her to take his place. It was going to be Francine – beautiful, elegant Francine – before Quinn had decided she was going to enjoy galas over books. It happened over time, earning a place at Russell’s side. Then he scratched Frannie’s name from the ballot, and Quinn knew exactly where she was sat in her ancient family’s line of succession. It all stood to reason that she’d inherit the family home; a portal from Lake George to the UMC had been set up generations ago. Then there was Hunter, and the clocktower that overlooked the city lights. She was expected to stay in New York, but…she looked up at Hunter, the smile on her face less bright then it had been moments before, but all grace nonetheless. “New York and Lake George, respectively. There’s nowhere better for someone who works within the UMC, is there?”

Hunter Clarington raised his glass to that, "There's nowhere better for anyone", he offered, enjoying the crisp sound of the clink of champagne glasses before taking a long, slow sip, "Except, of course, when less than strictly legal matters presume to transpire. Then New Jersey is the ideal. It doesn't count if it's in New Jersey." He chuckled, and tipped his glass up again in wordless reverence for the suburban repository of greed and lust and wrath. "I just mean I think I'd like to pass a few years in Italy after a well deserved retirement. Perhaps the rolling green hills of Scotland," He tried on the accent for size: "Ah was aye partial tae th' lallans". He knew immediately that it was a mistake, and cringed a little at himself.

Quinn breathed in, a quick burst unconsciously. Whatever shadow had plagued her smile only moments before lifted a bit. “Italy is beautiful.” She said on a breath. There was a distant memory of baptistries at night, of songs and angels echoing off turquoise domes, and that feeling of being whole and real for the first time in centuries. “The art and history is…” For the first time, she wasn’t sure she was putting on much of a show in front of Hunter Clarington. The feeling was curious, but not altogether unwelcome. “Uh, astounding, honestly. Scotland is beautiful, as well. I quite enjoyed Poland, and Norway; traveling has a way of reminding you how new our home country is.” She looked up, confidence easily restored. “You’ll have to brush up on your accents, should we settle in Scotland.”

Hunter Clarington chuckled, feigning a detrimental blow with the palm of his hand clapping over his right breast. It made a nice sound, muscle beneath the open instrument. He sat up from where he was reclining with his champagne, "If it comforts you, I don't imagine we should ever settle. Sure, we'd have places here and there, but our drive is to roam. To consume. And be subjected. Become intoxicated by the crisp summer air in Florence only to just hardly survive a Russian winter." He mused, draping a fur blanket from the mountain and pulling back to see her in it, head tipping to the side, "As long as the Earth and stars can stand it. Until the Prodigal Son returns." He considered momentarily how much he did enjoy dressing people up. Should his career path ever derail... then he added: "We don't have to go Russia."

Quinn smiled softly. It was warm and comfortable wrapped in fur; it made everything seem simple and easy. How Hunter knew that never settling was what she’d really wanted, she wasn’t sure, but then maybe it wasn’t about him knowing at all. Perhaps it was simply that they wanted the same things. She catches his hand in a gentle hold, the blanket of fur draped loose around her shoulders. “Please, Mr. Clarington, who are we, if we’re not brave enough to conquer even the harshest winters? We can’t skip Russia.” Her smile hints at teasing, but she doesn’t look up from the way his fingers look in hers. “Besides, with this blanket, we’ll be just fine.”

Hunter Clarington was charmed, of course, by her simple elegance, her reverent grace, and he had been all night long. However, when she caught her hand in his own, his eyebrows wrinkled together and his jaw relaxed momentarily from a half-sideways smile. Their fingers lock together nicely, the way he supposes it should be, in such a way in fact that he would suppose even Blaine Anderson could approve. His thumb glides over her knuckles once, then twice. It feels almost involuntary. It feels like instinct, shifting under his skin from the experiences of milennia of Bloodlines before them, practicing infatuation. Is there ever a moment he feels better known than when Quinn Fabray swears to stand with him in the Siberian snow? Before he finds the restraint to stop and use his words, his unoccupied hand grasps the side of her face very gently, his fingers sliding along her upper neck beneath her hair until his thumb stops in front of her ear. His eyes meet hers, searchingly, for just a moment before he leans in to press his lips against hers. It's over in an instant, experimental and chaste, but he lingers there close that they might brush together again.

Quinn had time to say no. His eyes searched hers, and it would have been a matter of blinking, the smallest shake of her head. But his thumb traced her knuckles like he knew every one, and his fingers were gentle and soft and easy despite all of Hunter’s sharper edges. He was right there she didn’t shake her head, she didn’t pull away. The space between them closed, and it was half her own fault, her body leaning forward, her head tilting up to meet him like a dance as ancient as the magic between them. It’s over before it registers, but he doesn’t pull away and she notices. It’s only natural for her hand to wind behind his neck, her fingers to splay into soft brown hair, to gently tug him back to her.

Hunter Clarington felt the corners of his lips turn up into half a smile as they found Quinn's again, his eyes sliding shut at the tug of his frame toward hers. It's ridiculous how aware he becomes of his own weight, of his breath and hers when they're kissing. It's just a slide of lips, firm but plush. His hand squeezes hers very gently when all the little atoms in his fingers come back to life from the flushed stillness of a first kiss, but he brings her hand up to rest on her shoulder so he can hold her just a touch closer, his palm sliding along the small of her back. His weight shifts forward with the motion. He wonders who Quinn practiced kissing on in her adolescence. Did everyone have kissing trainers? Was that just him? He steals just one more kiss before he pulls away, just hardly an inch, and convinces his eyes to meet hers. "Our lives are gonna be so cool," He chuckled in earnest, a touch breathless, "You um. Feel like New York. Swell of the Hudson in the morning. Grand Central Station after rush hour. The ancient glory of the Metropolitan." Was that hot? Brody would think that was hot. /Don't think about Brody./

Quinn feels the space between them, when he pulls away; inches between breaths, centimeters between her chest and his, none between their fingertips, intertwined tightly. He talks of rivers and cities that move, describing a feeling both abstract and so concrete. She feels just left of it, whatever it is he’s tumbling through. This wasn’t real. This was something that made her daddy smile, the final victory after years of making herself into something right. But then it was the two of them sharing covers and wiping away tears. Then it was the two of them versus the rest of the world. Then it was them, one whole, their fingers interlaced and their lips sliding together and it felt so real it ached. Her thoughts turned over his words and she laughed lightly, forehead falling onto his shoulder and a smile on her lips. Her hands fall to his waist and she squeezes gently. “You’re ridiculous, Hunter Clarington.” And he is, but he’s so much more than that, and she almost wishes she could forget. Almost.

Hunter Clarington hums and smiles as she falls into him just slightly, hands on his waist, head on his shoulder. His head turns in small degrees and he kisses the top of her head, lingers just a second as his hand slides across her back so he can stabilize himself, and his wine glass beside him, once more. Staring ahead, he chuckles at her refrain; his utter extravagance seems to be a topic of conversation they return to often. He doesn't mind. "I am /not/ ridiculous, I am just tipsy, and wearing a crown, and you look no less than compelling in fur, and /we/ are much better at kissing one another than I anticipated," He tells, and he imagines the quirk of her brow at that little admission from where her head is resting. /Oh, like she hadn't thought of it/. That amuses him too. He is suddenly very... well, tickled, by the state of things. Delighted, perhaps. For the first time in a little while. "Which is a win, if you do end up stuck with me." He teased, body relaxing as a breath of revelation moved through his chest.

Quinn felt Hunter relax against her, but caught on the word ‘stuck.’ It settled in her throat, and she wondered, not for the first time, at how accurate it might be. He was light and easy in a way she never thought they ever would be. It was never supposed to be like this. She hadn’t counted on liking him. Even so, it was hard not to think about how she fit against him, and the difference between something pre-determined, and something organic. Her heart stuttered and thumped and she closed her eyes against the thought, but couldn’t quite shake it. Her smile was easy when she leaned back again, her hands tightening against his hips before releasing as she slowly put inches between them. She picked up her glass, and held it out in front of her. “Cheers to being stuck. Happy Valentine’s Day, Hunter.”

Hunter Clarington chuckled under his breath as he raised his own glass, clinking it against Quinn's. There was a certain security in being stuck, the stagnancy of it. It was a promise that they were already well adjusted to what was to come, and in the deceptively gently February snow, Hunter could be well beyond glad for that. There must have been something in his eyes that turned serious for just a moment, just long enough before he assumed the comfort again. "To being stuck," He whispered, "Happy Valentine's Day, Quinn."

#paras #p: white horse #vday2k18 #classicallyclarington #// pretend this isn't two months too late

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davidschnuckel · 4 years

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New Glass Review 41

August 21, 2020

Juror’s Essay (first draft from mid-March 2020 )

As part of the deal in serving as a guest reviewer for New Glass Review 41, there's a lot of writing that follows the actual selection process. And I was most excited about engaging it. The task of writing 25 short blurbs to contextualize the selections I had made within the issue and a short essay in the back was not a chore, but a pleasure. But a challenge, for sure. Although I love writing - and see it as an opportunity to articulate things I sense, but don't know how to say - these New Glass Review tasks were a challenge for me. My mind is cluttered and busy...so being clear with words is a challenge. I have to take the long way when talking ideas or observations out to finally find the things I want to communicate and how to communicate them...so keeping to word counts is a challenge. And, of course, knowing that these writings would go down in print means that these words will be permanent and forever an extension of me...so having this overwhelming sense of vulnerability in mind when putting pen to paper was a challenge. I learned a lot in writing for the Review. And I learned that the way I would normally approach writing blurbs or essays do not translate well for all writing-based scenarios. For instance, the fact that I couldn't assume the reader knows glass and its terminology the way I do hadn't been a reality on my radar. The fact that there are different tiers of reading comprehension of those who engage this publication hadn't been a reality on my radar. The fact that there would be a lot of readers whose primary language is not English hadn't been a reality on my radar. The fact that my thoughts are not as clear to others as they seem to be for me OFTEN hadn't been a reality on my radar. In turn, the editing process was rigorous...and to accommodate all these things (and others like them) was an informative part of the process for me. I'm grateful for the experience of going through revision after revision with Silbert. It has made me a better self-editor in my writing ever since... In fact, I knew going into my first draft of the Juror's Essay that there wasn't much space available for it in the publication...it was crystal clear that the essay would need to be capped off at 500 words. Which isn't much. Especially for a rambling essayist such as myself. So, as a starting point, I allowed myself to write and write and write everything that was on my heart and mind regarding the jurying process, things I was paying attention to within the field over the past year (as both artist and educator), and where the moment might suggest where the field is going. I permitted myself to open the valve entirely and empty everything I wanted onto the page...just to see where it all landed. And then from there, rule number two would be to chisel it down in a smaller second draft (which was still huge) and then an even smaller third draft (which was still too big). The fourth draft was whittled down to 1000 words and was the one submitted for Susie Silbert's review and edits...which, of course, had to get chopped down even more. Ultimately, the essay that i drafted first back in mid-March was roughly 3300 words...which is not even close to the 500 cap I was required to abide by. A classic Schnuckel move. So the Juror's Essay of mine you may have read in New Glass Review 41 is the surviving content to a much larger piece that was simply too big to fit. Below is the draft of that essay in full...for better or for worse. In it you'll find grammatical mishaps and misspellings. You'll run into a handful of clunky spots. You'll find the occasional derail or two (or three). But you'll also get access to a broader consideration of my role and my perspective as a visiting selector to the Review than what the content in the publication would indicate. Please read in good health. And I mean that...especially as we linger even still within a global pandemic...

* * * * * * There were two things that really came into focus for me during the jurying experience for New Glass Review 41: that the contemporary glass field is still so, so very young in its development and still so, so very small as an international cohort. So young and so small, in fact, that anyone has a chance to have impact on its trajectory. And, in turn, anyone has a chance to be recognized within it. And I thought about things like this as I engaged my review process. In turn, it is important for me to indicate that my selection process was not in pursuit of supporting submissions that I necessarily “liked.” That wasn’t a metric for me. I didn’t approach this as a process of highlighting what I prefer or what I personally relate to in glass making and/or glass thinking, but as an effort to keep an eye out for submissions that represented an interesting quirk, conversation point, or important contribution to the field in this time and place with what work had been submitted. To assist that mission, I made the effort to only support submissions from artists who had not been recognized within the past 3 issues of the Review. Although difficult to pass by notable work by makers and thinkers I deeply admire in holding to this 3-year rule, it was important for me to use this opportunity to put my initials behind artists on the outer margins of our field who are enriching this moment that I didn’t want to get overlooked. Aside from that caveat, the work I responded to didn’t follow a uniform logic. In fact, the work I stand behind within this publication reflects many contradictions with one another. For instance, now looking back at my selections, I’m noticing a draw to ideas that implement polished excellence as a means to challenge those very things; but I’m also noticing a draw to ideas that rely on raw, loosely guttural methods of questioning, too. I’m see moments where I’m drawn to ideas where artists know glass so well that their effort to break its rules speaks of something provocative in equally spectacular fashion; but I’m also seeing moments where I’m drawn to ideas where the artist comes to glass formally untrained and, in turn, enables something accidentally innovative because of it. I found resonance and strength in quiet gestures. But I was also captivated by efforts where spectacle intersected with smart. It seems that I’m just as much a proponent for work that transcends glass making protocol as I am work that purposefully distances itself from it, dismantles it…even displaces it. Whether put forward as a visually complicated installation of things or a singular art object, these are just some of the various camps and categories of work included in the publication that compose the spectrum of what captured my attention. Even as incongruent as my selections seem to be with one another, however, I do sense one common denominator... If there is a tie that binds all the submissions that I connected with most it would be that each work collectively grounds itself in the present, but not without a recognition of the histories it extends from…and, in turn, presenting themselves as unexpected starting points to new trajectories and future advancements to both glass making and glass thinking. Some of my favorite moments in the field right now reside in work and research that doesn’t involve glass within its resolve, yet is manifested through ideas related to glass process and/or materiality. In a piece pursued from the hot shop assistant’s perspective, Josie Gluck illustrates this in pyrographic prints composed by the cast-off bits delivered for avolios in the production of stemware. The repeated gather and delivery of glass for the avolio serves as a method of mark-making in an abstracted gesture of cartography. The bit is discarded after delivery onto paper, falling however and wherever it might upon it. The measured and mechanically repeated step of the avolio process for the gaffer lends way to a wide variety of chance-based, combustion-prompted imagery for Gluck after the bit has been cast away. In an entirely different way, Shari Mendelson illustrates an interesting relationship to glass in considering it as a conceptual propellant culminating in a body of non-glass work. In this case, historical referencing and trompe l’oeil direct Mendelson’s upcycling of discarded plastics littering her neighborhood into exquisite deceptions of just about any vessel we’ve ever seen housed within the Greek, Islamic, and Roman chapters of an art history book. Conceptual parallels run abundantly within this glass-adjacent work between her objects and those of historical standing; parallels between materiality and making processes between glass and plastics; parallels navigated between commercial manufacturing and the independent making practice. In turn, this work holds a lens to ideas of the remnant and serves as a gesture to redirect the destiny of industrially-produced plastics from contemporary litter-hood towards one of the contemporary artifact. The many ways in which glass is being engaged directly right now that appeals to me mostly culminates in work that poses questions, not work that gives answers. Even when work relies on text and the literality of common phrasing. David Fox navigates abstracted ideas about language and coherency where words reveal themselves in a peculiarly glass-centric way; ways in which the hand-torch serves as pen and borosilicate tubing serves as page. Although invisible to the human eye, the memory of the written message is rendered visible through remembered strain and stress when subjected to a polariscope. What is said is much more conceptually layered than it lets on. And what is unsaid is mysteriously just as expressive and articulate. Previous performance work by Kim Harty that translated the glass objects catalogued in the publication of Old Venetian Glass (1960) through slow-exposure light drawings of them is re-contextualized in her 2019 exhibition Memoria Technica. A conceptual work of translation in 2015 begets even further translation within the past year – perhaps even coming full circle – in the effort to give selected light drawings a tangible life in thingness again under two fronts: in one, the digital hand meticulously renders a 3D print of the drawn vessel. In the other, the human hand attempts to recreate the drawing in the hot shop. In Harty’s case, historical glass is the pivot point in this continued exploration of mimicry by memory through various translation tactics in studio. In another instance where performance art intersects with glass practice, Judith Roux navigates an interesting angle to the notion of participatory work in The Space Between Us – My Warm Breath on Your Hands. A humble sheet of sandblasted glass serves as a translucent divide between the performer and the unsuspecting audience participant holding it. Efforts by the performer to expel hot breath or to lick the porous surface are in the hopes of establishing visible access to the participant on the other side – a perfect stranger – who is powerless to help as their side is still glossy and transparent. As a work that is one part messy, one part sexual, one part jinxed, and all parts vulnerable, Roux’s integration of glass is a very simple component to a provocatively ambitious interactive work driven by notions of desire and connection. It should be mentioned that as I write this essay for the Review, it is late March of 2020. I am quarantined here in the US, as is most of the world. The jurying process for this publication was just a hair over a month ago and yet the current day-to-day conditions of a COVID-19 reality make it seem that those few days spent in Corning were a lifetime ago. In this moment studios are shut down. Schools have gone online. Grocery shopping now gives us anxiety. Some of our jobs are now done from home. Some of us are now unemployed. Exhibitions have been postponed. Exhibitions have been cancelled. Summer programming at various summer-based glass institutions are up in the air. Some of us are sick. Some of us are scared. It’s a lot. And the level of uncertainty regarding just about everything as we move further and further into a life contextualized by a pandemic is the space where I’ve been writing this essay within. Writing this piece for the Review has given me an unexpected sense of calm. It has allowed me to dwell in the past tense; to write about an incredibly fulfilling and informative professional experience as a juror this past February in a time when life was what we’d describe as “normal.” (And to dwell in the past tense at the moment is an unexpected perk of this required writing, for sure.) But the quiet, the solitude, and the almost inactive status of a making practice while in quarantine has given me many moments of pause to consider the impact of this moment of lockdown on the future trajectory of glass. Both short- and long-term. For those of us who identify as artists who engage a practice where glass is a major component of our creative output, we know that we are a very high-maintenance kind of practitioner. Our making is based on a very hands-on, tactile working experience with material; one that is as high-maintenance as we are. Glass is a substance that relies on a very specific set of resources like specialized tools, equipment, and facility spaces to make the magic happen (…or the mess that may or may not lead to said “magic”). There are some of us who are self-sufficient on the resources front; those of us who have our own gear and our private studios and spaces to fill the time in quarantine with continued artistic output. Kudos to you. Go forth and slay. But there are perhaps a greater number of us who relied on having access to spaces and studios that have been closed down and, as part of the residual effect of the national lockdown, finding ourselves deserted as glass practitioners. In turn, I think about what kind of glass practice could be happening if a field like ours is cut off from the studio resources we typically rely on to conduct our work. Maybe some of us have been locating areas in our glass practice that could step in and take priority with what we know we can do from home: conceptual development through reading and research, formal development through drawing or digital rendering, writing, resume updating, or website redesign to name a few. Maybe some of us are locating alternative ways of creatively relating to glass without being able to “make” with it: maybe through capturing moments of glass-like phenomena through items found around the home with our phone or tinkering with glass-related processes that translate well in the kitchen (i.e. casting objects in ice in the freezer). Or maybe as one door closes another door opens; maybe some of us will be redirecting our expertise as makers into unanticipated career paths as published writers, sponsored podcasters, digital curators, or digital workshop teachers. But maybe some us just can’t right now, allowing ourselves to sit in a creative holding pattern until brighter days… It is no doubt that as glass-specific people, some of us being denied access to our usual resources can be seen as a real deal-breaker in our creative development and output. But, as a closeted optimist, I see this lockdown as a glass-making equivalent of constrictive writing. How many ways can those of us glass folks up for the challenge cultivate some sense of critical engagement with glass in this current moment of constriction and uncertainty? What innovative projects might accidentally be developed in response to some of us who feel shipwrecked and stranded? How far off the beaten path of conventional “glass practice” will those things take us? …and how could these constrictive gestures possibly change everything we thought we understood glass, glass making, glass teaching, and glass learning were all about? It’s a thought ripe with many yet-to-be-discovered solutions to the question as to how a glass artist maintains a practice – and a relationship with glass – when stripped of access to both a studio and to a material while under lockdown. Whether this is to be something short-term or long-term, it’s safe to assume that we’ll all come out of this COVID-19 experience as different makers and/or thinkers. Some of our evolutions may be enriched by this moment and its many limitations. Some may suffer. Some may cease altogether. My heart does break for those in our field whose livelihood relies entirely on orders, exhibitions, fellowships, teaching, and residencies that are now cancelled or put on indefinite hold; opportunities that were needed to keep their head above already turbulent waters whose sole occupation is that of an independent artist. But as I wrap up this essay, looking out my window into an overcast day in late March of 2020, I catch a tinge of hope for what might possibly turn out to be one of the most interesting moments within our field at the hands of artists, educators, and students who are naturally wired to make good use of a bad situation; folks with a knack for finding opportunity in limitation. I’m curious how sudden studio abandonment might possibly cultivate some sort of unforeseen innovation within our field. In whatever way that might mean... So, to bring back around the Review, I’m curious how this moment might rub off on the international glass field for those game to play along in this confined creative space we find ourselves in. I’m curious how this moment will be archived in the upcoming New Glass Review 42...hoping that, regardless of whether or not we are possibly STILL under quarantine through next February or not, the publication will still continue. If so, I’m curious about the contextual framework of how the Coronavirus impacts the work created within the dates of eligibility for the next issue. I’m curious how it will impact what work is submitted to the Review…and how diversified the notion of glass practice will manifest itself in those submissions through works which may have nothing to do with glass literally, but extend from glass figuratively through non-glass materials and methodologies. I’m curious what jurors will be invited in knowing that the game might’ve drastically changed because of the pandemic directly and indirectly; that a year in glass production not only may have been significantly affected by the virus by the time the call for applications roll out, but perhaps redefined “glass production” in ways that transcend glass, glass making, and glass art as we’ve previously defined those things as. I’m curious if the jurors will be chosen not only for their respective expertise, but the eyes to potentially see “glass” in a highly abstracted or figurative sense in the case that a lot of us within the field might be tasked to reinterpret a glass practice through non-glass means. I’m curious if that’ll even be allowed. I would hope so, and if true, I’m curious not only about what would be submitted, but what kinds of non-glass-but-glass-like work would be seen as fit for inclusion... But beyond the notion of being a resourceful artist under quarantine or speculating on the next issue of New Glass Review as influenced by the pandemic, I’m curious how COVID-19 will impact our various practices once life gets back to normal. And, for now, I still assume it will. Whether we flatten the curve or a vaccine is approved or a cure is discovered, I wonder what happens when we can return to the studios we were separated from and the equipment, tools, and materials we used to know and work with so well. Do we still make the things we make? ...like nothing happened? Have our questions changed that motivate our practice in the time away? As technicians, how rusty will we be? What will our bodies and hands forget? What of our processes will be remembered? Will I ever put my mouth to a blow pipe ever again? What will these small malfunctions hinder us from doing? …but what could they possibly enable instead? I expect that we will not be the same artist we were before the pandemic global hold, but, if we choose to stay the course, we will still be artists nonetheless. Ones who were forced to take an interesting detour from what we would normally do and, quite possibly, gaining new recognition in a practice that deviates from what we were originally all about or normally known for. There’s something kind of magical in anticipating just what that might be or how it might unfold. After all, an artist isn’t defined by what one can do, but how one can adapt. And, quite honestly, the job we as artists are truly tasked with is to make something meaningful out of any given moment, whether that be with things or circumstances. Especially in the thick of inconvenience… Just how long will we be on lockdown? …and how will we facilitate some sort of pro-active effort to continue evolving our practice and relationship to glass in this moment? ...a moment when our usual resources just aren’t available? Time will tell. And who knows…perhaps this solitary life and livelihood will be lifted a week or two after I submit this essay to Silbert in early April. Perhaps this moment is just a tiny glitch within the calendar year and we will all look back on it relieved that it was so short lived…almost as if it were only a bad dream. But maybe it’ll last the rest of the year. Or longer. Yikes. Regardless, I suppose this is a long way of saying that I hope some of us provide models of innovative response to a constricted glass practice due to this global hiccup when included in New Glass Review 42. I am so, so honored to have participated in the 41st issue of New Glass Review. I’ve studied the publication since first submitting to it back in 2002 and have thumbed through issue after issue many times over in my 20 year relationship with glass. I have been a student of its structure, its tradition, and its annual mission to observe and archive a year’s worth of advancements to the field. I’ve even made the trek to the Rakow many times over just to look into the work that didn’t get in within its archives…even when submissions were only accepted in slide form. For I know the sting of the Review’s rejection; applying 15 years in a row before knowing what acceptance feels like. Only to have the legacy of rejection pick back up the following year (and has continued up to this present moment). I know that the Review is a public and permanent document that some people place a lot of personal and professional currency in by being published within it. I also know that it warrants a lot of doubt, cynicism, and/or objection directed at the jurors by those who didn’t. All this is to say that, ultimately, I knew (and know) the weight of this responsibility that I took on as a juror to lend my voice and my perspective in making selections for it this year. And I took the honor seriously. In hopes of gracefully winding this essay down, I want to publicly acknowledge the leadership of Susie Silbert in guiding us jurors through the process as being so effectively and efficiently on point. It is important for me to be a mouthpiece to the broader glass community in saying that the organization, preparedness, and support of The Corning Museum of Glass staff was truly the epitome of professionalism and excellence in this experience. Thank you Silbert and All for this opportunity to bear witness to the most under-acknowledged aspects of this annual forum. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes before, during, and after the selection process that is thoroughly unknown to almost the entirety of our international community. Your dedication in facilitating it in the way that you do is both efficient and masterful…and I am humbled to have been a witness to it. Although the world primarily sees the New Glass Review as but a competition, the time spent behind the curtain confirms that it is better described as an annual act of care than an annual contest. The field owes you a lot of kudos and gratitude in orchestrating this huge annual undertaking.

-David Schnuckel (DS)

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callmestp · 6 years

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Tagged?

Tagged by @glassestouchdown. Thanks for considering me! It’s been ages since I’ve been tagged on anything (big surprise there), and I like thinking up answers to the questions.

Rules:

1. Post these rules

2. Answer the questions given by the tagger

3. Write 11 questions of your own

4. Tag 11 people!

1. If you could change just one thing about the world what would it be? To take some lyrics from the Creed song “Higher”: “The only difference is to let love replace all the hate.” And that would be it. Christ asked his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who would injure or persecute them (Matthew 5:44). And 1 Peter 4:8 states that love covers over a multitude of sins. Many other problems in this world, I feel, would be resolved in a few generations if people stopped their hate and loved instead.

2. Name a song that regularly gets stuck in your head. A song that has been stuck in my head lately is “Come for Us” by Evan Wickham. You can listen to it here: https://youtu.be/Jen0s9V4e5Y A friend of mine called the melody “majestic” and I’m inclined to agree.

3. What was the last movie you watched at the cinema and what did you think of it? That would be “American Made,” starring Tom Cruise. I was surprised to find out that it was based on a true story. I had known of the historical events mentioned in the film -- the drug cartels in Colombia, the Sandinistas in Central America and the Contras fighting against them -- but didn’t realize there was one person who was getting involved in all those areas.

4. If you could take some time off and just go study in a foreign country for a while, what would you study and where? I had to think about this one for a bit, but then the answer hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. If I could go abroad to study something, it would be to Israel, especially Jerusalem. It’s such a hub of cultures, and it’s steeped with history, Biblical and otherwise. Part of the reason I would go, would be as a pilgrimage to see the places where Christ lived and taught, and where he met His end.

5. What’s a skill that you don’t have at the moment that you would like to have? There are several ways I can approach this question. I can think of it in terms of a skill I would like to have but don’t really need, or a skill I really ought to have. In terms of a skill I’d like to have, I’d like to know how to play certain instruments: a steel guitar, a steel drum, and a church organ. In terms of a skill I ought to have, it would be public speaking. (It’s difficult for me to think up responses on the fly, making spoken conversation awkward for me.)

6. Who is the first fictional character that you felt really connected to, and who you still feel connected to today? It’s possible that there may have been someone different when I was younger, but in terms of what I can remember today: Sonic the Hedgehog was a video game character I connected to, from the first time I played one of his games, ca. 1996. Without saying any words, I saw someone with a sense of adventure, traveling all over the place, fighting for what he thought was right. I’m still a fan of the franchise and I still enjoy Sonic, but with all the other characters that have since been added to the cast, I adore the ancient Tikal the Echidna. She was a girl after my own heart: spiritual, compassionate, nurturing, almost motherly.

In terms of something a little more contemporary, I quickly gravitated to Toriel Dreemurr in the 2015 video game Undertale. I saw an older woman with a good heart, compassionate, protective (almost to a fault), left alone to wither away in the Ruins with only a few small monsters for company. I felt so bad when I had to leave Toriel behind, and nearly cried when she hugged me and walked away. Thankfully, in the Pacifist story arc, she got a chance to fulfill her dream of becoming a schoolteacher.

7. Are there any particular types of stories that you find yourself always drawn towards? I enjoy mystery stories, trying to piece together the clues before the protagonists can. I also really enjoy underdog stories, where one or more “small time” people work to achieve what others would have dismissed as impossible. These are probably why I love the movie Zootopia so much.

8. If you could meet a fictional character and spend a day with them, who would it be and what would you do together? To build upon my answer to question 7, I would like to meet and spend a day with Judy Hopps from Zootopia. Though the movie shows a bit of her back story, I’d love seeing a day in her life right now: how things are going with her partner Nick, how she’s treated by Chief Bogo and the other cops at the ZPD now that she’s definitively proven her worth, and how she spends her free time away from work. I’d also ask for more of her back story: exactly what age she decided she wanted to be a cop, what she did in pursuit of her dream between ages 9 and 24, and whether she’d have done anything different with her life if she had the chance.

9. What are three things you would never want to go without? Family, the Bible, and a means to connect with other people.

10. List three things about yourself that you take pride in. I hesitate to use the term “pride” because, while it’s good to have a moderate degree of self-esteem, runaway pride can be one’s downfall. But in terms of things in my life that I’m glad are true:

A. I earned my Professional Engineering license in 2015. By far, that is my crowning achievement in my career. I’ve been wanting that ever since I was in college, and I put in the long hours for 6 months, studying for that eight-hour exam. And I certainly make use of that license in my job, though sometimes I get the feeling that it’s being taken for granted.

B. Since 2011, I’ve been able to express my ideas through creative writing. If I remember right, I’ve completed 11 fan fictions (plus one currently in progress). The writing has gotten progressively better (and usually longer) with every new story I compose. Regrettably, I’ve made little progress in this area during 2017, for all the other demands being made on my free time.

C. I’m glad that I’m at a point in my life where my circumstances are stable enough that I can help out others in need, whether that’s offering my time or my financial resources. For years, my sister has come to me for help on her university coursework, and this week, I learned that she trusts no one else (not even her own classmates) to give her advice and support she needs to succeed. I suppose I’m a victim of my own success, but still, for someone to actually say that I am valued that much...

11. What are you looking forward to in 2018? I am looking for a change in my life for the better. As of right now, every day, my evenings and weekends are occupied by one of three things: I’m either working late into the night (as part of my job’s on-call rotation), filling out applications for a new job, or helping my sister. If I was to get a new job -- and by tomorrow, I pray that some very good news is coming my way -- it would remove two of those three drains on my time. Thinking more long-term, moving into a new apartment closer to where (I hope) my new job is located, because this apartment has all the memories associated with my current employer. And maybe I can even work on other areas of my life I’ve been neglecting: finding friends, maybe even getting into a relationship.

The following questions are what I’m writing for this assignment.

1. If you could change one thing about yourself, whether it’s your body, your mind, or your life, what would it be?

2. (This is a morbid question, but it’s been on my mind since All Saints’ Sunday) If you died tomorrow, who do you think would attend your funeral? What do you think people would say about you, good or bad, if they were being honest?

3. Name your favorite thing about where you live right now. This could be in reference to your actual dwelling place, or the geographic location thereof.

4. What was something you had said or done when you were younger, that you now look back on and cringe?

5. Name your favorite hobby, and briefly explain what got you interested in it.

6. Your Tumblr blog: how’d you come up with the name? How long have you maintained it? Have you ever moved or changed names on Tumblr, and if so, what was the reason?

7. Christ Jesus once said that wherever your treasure lies, your heart will be there also (Matthew 6:21). What is it that you treasure most in your life?

8. If you could step into the life of any other person, living or dead, for 24 hours, who would it be, and what would you do with the time?

9. Describe your preferred platform for video games. Why do you prefer that platform over others?

10. If you had the option to be born into any time period, any place, where/when would it be and why?

11. What would be your thoughts of a world where humans co-existed on Earth with some sort of non-human sentient beings? They could be existing Earth species (feral or anthropomorphic), they could be extraterrestrials, or they could be non-organic robots.

Usually, for me, the most difficult portion of this activity is finding people to tag. On Tumblr and elsewhere, I tend to be a dead-end for most content. I don’t follow many blogs. Many are run by bots, and the ones that aren’t, I don’t know their authors personally. The only blog I follow, whose author I know, would be @glassestouchdown, and for that, all she would have to do is answer my written questions. Of course, anyone reading this, who follows my blog or otherwise, is welcome to try this themselves.

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traditional-with-a-twist · 7 years

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Socratic Method

Day 5 - College AU

After two days of research and compilation, Izzy was finally composing the email containing his most relevant results, when his phone went off. He sighed when he saw the caller ID. Sorry, Matt, you’ll have to wait a little longer… “Hello, Mother, do you need something?” She knew he was working tonight, so it had to be urgent...

**********

Well, he wasn’t wrong.

“But I don’t know anything about Russian literature, Mother!”

“Oh, Izzy, you’re so smart; I know you’ll think of something brilliant. Please do this for your mother? I couldn’t find anyone else on such short notice. I just hate to cancel class. My poor students will be so disappointed. And I simply must be there for my dear friend. We’ve known each other since we were children, and this is her only daughter…”

It wasn’t as if he could say no when she asked like that. A two hour seminar on War and Peace was hardly a strain on his resources for his real studies, after all, and Matt had almost cut him out of the project when he’d suggested getting help, so his mother had no idea about the extra demands on his time. It was inconvenient, but he’d manage somehow.

Izzy almost didn’t bother with research. After all, it was halfway through the semester; surely even undergraduates would have learned enough about the Russian literature they were reading by now that there would be no point in trying to catch up in less than twenty-four hours. He would just have to make his mother’s apologies and explain that he was merely there to moderate the seminar’s discussion and record it for his mother, so the pace of the course would not slacken too much by her unexpected absence this week. He didn’t need to participate and he would surely only embarrass himself if he tried.

This decision carried him through the completion of his email and a few rabbit trails before a thought struck him. Why hadn’t he seen it before? This was an opportunity! Izzy scrambled to find the relevant files on his computer and opened them all at once. After he’d started the print queue, he navigated to his favorite journal repository to do a little last minute investigating on Tolstoy. All of a sudden, he couldn’t wait to oversee his mother’s seminar.

***************

The bemusement on the undergrads’ faces when he rushed into the room, barely on time, didn’t faze Izzy at first. He was too busy stacking his printed notes as they’d been somewhat jumbled in his bag on the way over. This topic would likely be a bit divergent from whatever discussion his mother had been leading, but her students would surely appreciate the expansion of their knowledge base. He opened his laptop and began to read his prepared introduction.

“….and so, I will be overseeing today’s dialogues, taking notes on your contributions and reporting them back. Therefore, please report your last names before any statements.” An audible creak rustled through the students’ chairs. Izzy paused, tilting his head, but he forged on when no further response was forthcoming. “I have prepared a series of questions concerning the material to help direct the conversation. To begin: War and Peace is somewhat unusual among fiction for the time in its free intermixing of both imagined characters and actual historic personages. It raises the question of whether such a writing style allows the reader a more vivid view of the historical world the author portrays.” Izzy looked at the front row expectantly, fingers poised over his keyboard to note which students contributed the most.

The silence stretched for one minute, and then two. Izzy frowned and looked at his notes, revising the questions in his head. “To put it another way, every book is a window into a certain reality as envisioned by the author. Does a greater correspondence with the mutually experienced reality of history allow readers to experience fictional realities more fully?” He could see the students in the back exchanging glances. Perhaps this group would be unhelpful after all.

Finally, a girl in the back raised her hand. “Ummm, Ikusawa. It may have mattered to Tolstoy’s contemporaries, but I don’t think all that really makes a difference these days.”

The hand of the boy next to her shot up. “Shibayama. I agree! There’s no difference between made-up people and dead people to those of us who are reading this stuff today.”

“Hmmm… Any other thoughts?” Izzy prompted the class. To his regret, his question only prompted a cascade of students falling over themselves to jump on the bandwagon. He cast his eyes upward to the clock on the opposite side of the room. He only had himself to blame for raising his hopes….

Another hand waved in his peripheral vision. He nodded at the exchange student, who’d been outed by her exceptionally pale blond hair and foreign features. “Pasternak! I have a question… This class, we are reading a translation of Voyná i mir. So it is not only the vision of Tolstoy we read but the translator, also?”

Izzy’s fingers froze on his keyboard. The translator… Of course! Any changes to the text could have an impact on the result… The transformation wrought by a translation would hardly be negligent. There had been foreign books among the possible suspects. He couldn’t wait to share this breakthrough with Matt. His mouth finally caught up with his racing thoughts.

“That’s a fascinating question, ummm...” He fixed his gaze on the girl.

“I am Sonya Pasternak,” she announced, giving him a bright smile. She pointed back at him. “And you are the professor’s son, Koushiro Izum—oops.” She covered her mouth with one hand, blushing.

“Ah, yes, Sonya.” For some reason, his mouth was suddenly dry. “Th-thank you for your question. I would agree that one should certainly take the translation into account when considering the text. Could you, uh, perhaps say more on the subject?”

She tilted her head, her smile faltering. “I do not know how to explain the difference but it is different what I read in Russian. The pictures of the…..you say… world?” She gestured, but Izzy could not begin to guess what she was miming. Still, even what little she said confirmed that pursuing this avenue of inquiry could be fruitful.

“Incredible…” he breathed. Murmurs from the other students broke into his thoughts. “Ah, yes! Unless anyone had anything else to contribute to this particular subject, we can move to the next question—” The sighs of relief left no question of the students’ feelings on that and killed the last of Izzy’s aspirations for getting any more insights here.

Still….

***********

“Thank you so much, Izzy. You’re a wonderful son, you know.” He couldn’t help but smile at his mother’s voice. “You’ve helped me so much. I’ll certainly be back in time for next week’s meeting, so you won’t have to take the time again. I do hope that it wasn’t too much trouble for you.”

“Oh, no, of course not, Mother.” Izzy adjusted his headset so she could hear him better, suddenly nervous. “I would greatly appreciate if you could do me a favor in return.”

“Oh, Izzy, you know I would be happy to. What is it?”

“Well, one of your students--” He paused to clear his throat. “I was particularly intrigued by her comments during the discussion, and I was hoping that you might help me arrange a time to converse—”

“Izzy!” Why did she sound so delighted all of a sudden? “If I had guessed…Tell you what, sweetheart, as soon as I get back, I’ll offer to host a dinner for the seminar students. You’ll have plenty of time to talk to her then!”

“Well, that sounds agreeable.” He didn’t know why he felt that this conversation had derailed when his mother was only acquiescing to his request.

“I would never want to rush you in these things, Izzy, but I’m so very happy! You’ll have to tell me who it is right away! What’s her name?”

“It’s Sonya Pasternak.” He was definitely missing something here. Hadn’t she said she would just invite the whole seminar? Perhaps she wanted to account for logistics. It would all be rather pointless if that particular student had a scheduling conflict.

“What a good choice! She’s lovely, Izzy. I’m sure you two will hit it off.”

“….What?”

“Sorry, darling, I had better go now! My friend is calling me for something. I’ll call again soon! And you can tell me everything when I get home!”

Izzy stared blankly at his computer screen as the call disconnected.

#digiotpweek #Digimon #izzyxsonya #crackship #battlecrown #college au #Also this is totally part of a larger story in which Izzy is not actually the main character #Three guesses who is

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houseofvans · 7 years

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Sketchy Behaviors | PACOLLI (San Francisco,CA)

Working as a producer in MTV Brazil, self taught artist Patricia Colli (Pacolli) started out hand drawing her own calendars and silk screening her own shirts. Making her own way through a mostly male dominated São Paulo art scene, Pacolli's natural creativity, unique eye for color and composition, and ear for the lyrical made her work stand out from the rest. Not only did her colorfully spastic, psychedelic, and angsty work catch our eye, but also her “go-getter” attitude and DIY ethic which permeates in everything she does: from silk screening her own gear, self publishing her zines, managing her online shop, High In The Bay to the recent opening of her new art space–Bendgy in Brazil. We got to chat with this chill artist about her new space Bendgy, her artistic processes, and about the magic of zines.

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Keep calm, read on!

Introduce yourself My name is Patricia Colli, but people call me Pacolli (it doesn't really have a funny story behind the name, it was just my first email because i wasn't much of a Patty and I had a band with my friend Ronaldo who introduced me to everyone as Pacolli, eventually I stopped fighting it and embraced it, it's like a one name thing like Cher and I like Cher). I'm 35, born in São Paulo (Brazil) and I live in San Francisco, California with my husband and also artist Mildred.

What’s the first thing you remember drawing? How did you first get interested in art and making art? I remember drawing a house in the hills when I was in school and the teacher said that wasn't really good, I went to an italian catholic school in Brazil and they were not a fan of arts. Maybe that's why I started, in a very shy way, to go around it and start drawing all the time. I didn't like school from day one so I started drawing during classes to escape from it. In 7th grade I started drawing the guys that my friends and I had crushes on and passing them during class, we would laugh so much because the drawings were really sketchy and they were all about skipping class to go see them and skipping class to go to concerts, getting fake IDs and being crazy, recklessly teenagers!I always kept something like a sketchbook journal through the years and eventually they started to become zines, and then t-shirts...

What’s your artistic process like? Do you keep a sketchbook or doodle everywhere you go? I do keep a sketchbook with me at all times, and I make a lot of lists of things to draw. I also write down funny/interesting things I heard or read somewhere. I like to take my time to come up with an idea and daydream as much as I can about it before doing it. I like the process of coming up with something and letting it reveal itself as I go on. It's like finding something about yourself there.

How did your life go from drawing as a hobby to drawing as a career? I used to work on MTV Brazil as a producer and I used to make my own calendars with a big drawing on top, my co-workers used to make copies of those to use them too... I thought it was cool that people liked it but I never thought I could do this for a living. A couple years went by and I started screen printing some t-shirts and got invited for a fashion art show in Antwerp (Belgium). It was funny cause I started being asked to participate in art shows and collaborative zines in Europe but never in Brazil, so it was like a fun side gig to me. Eventually I started getting some freelance illustration/t-shirt design gigs/art shows in Brazil and abroad and gave up my tv job, started traveling where my art was taking me and it took me to San Francisco where I am since then.

What are some of the hardest challenges you have faced as an artist and how did you overcome them? It was hard to manage the ups and downs of the job and understand that's how it goes, sometimes you get called to make a bunch of shows and gigs at the same time and sometimes it feels like there's nothing happening for months to end... so I like to make things happen when I have these slower times, experiment different mediums, collaborate with other artists, start a new personal project and be productive. It's important to keep a perspective about those things and to not compare your path to anyone else cause that won't help. I tend to get anxious if I don't have projects lined up, but if there are no opportunities you have to create them yourself.

You have some many various types of characters – heart shaped people, coffee cup personalities to rabbit / cat people. What’s the inspiration behind some of them and do they all sort of have personalities? I guess I see faces everywhere lol, drawing humans is challenging! I make myself laugh sometimes when I'm drawing strange creatures that don't exist doing humane things, it's like it's ok for them to look a bit off because there's nothing to compare them to, you know? I like drawing these characters with human feelings but not in a human form because it's more fun and freeing. Sometimes I make these creatures inspired by my friends, I drew the album cover for my friend's band Polara and we used to drink so much coffee all the time, I thought the best way to go about was to draw a bunch of espresso coffee cups dancing like crazy and dizzy bumper cars cause that's how you feel listening to their music after all that coffee!

It’s always really cool to see you printing your own stuff from shirts to stickers When did you first start silk screening and printing your own things? Has the process evolved for you? I had some friends that screen printed t-shirts and I knew the basic process of doing it, so one day I decided to try one myself and I fell in love with the process and results. It was like playing with stamps all over again (I played with stamps and stickers my whole childhood). Since I was self taught in a way, I didn't know what I was doing...so I started to print things a bit different, not doing the same image over and over. I got a small squeegee and I took my time printing each drawing at once and composing a different story behind each tshirt. I became a screen hoarder!, I never throw them away (unless if they're clogged but I don't let it happen much) and bring them from Brazil - i know, it's crazy! I found my happy place doing these 1/1 prints, it gives me new ideas every time I'm printing, I see new possibilities and experiment without fear, it's very calming and exciting at the same time.

How many zines have you self-published? How did you first start creating your own zine? I self published six zines so far, my intention was to publish at least one every year but I've been slacking on that goal. I had too many sketchbooks full of drawings, my friends would tell me to do something with them and I was always shy and a bit embarrassed about sharing personal things, one of my friends called me out that all I like a lot from other artists are personal and maybe embarrassing things lol.. so yeah I had no excuse anymore! Reading Jeffrey Brown, Vanessa Davis and Esther Pearl Watson really encouraged me to make my own zine at that time! They're work is very personal and it was definitely an inspiration to me!

What is it that you love so much about zine culture? I think it's a very specific kind of subject that you couldn't find anywhere else (before the internet got huge). I started reading music zines about underground indie and punk bands. I think I still see it in the same way, a place to put on specific things you don't find anywhere else. I'm really into checking out the paper and print style, small editions with something handmade or hand drawn on it always get my attention. They're hard to find these days! Fun Chicken (the online shop from Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson) have really cool zines and I'm always checking Fudge Factory Comics (Travis Millard's online store) cause there's always cool zines. Well everything they have is amazing!

What have been some of your favorite collaborations? What do you enjoy most about them? I collaborate a lot with my husband, he's been making art and zines for a long time too and every now and then I'll sneak one of our collabs in my zines and vice versa. It's important to have some intimacy with whoever you're collaborating with so you can say what you really think. It's fun to do it and I always learn something from the experience.

Is there a medium you want to try and haven’t? What is currently your favorite medium and why? I got a wood burner from my in-laws last christmas and I haven't tried yet, it's sitting next to me and I'm very excited to try it out.I really like painting with acrylics and india ink on wood panels, there's so many possibilities and room for trial and error.

What are your top 5 artistic influences, past and contemporary? When I saw Dan Clowes comics for the first time, it changed my life! The way he draws and portrays the world was so new but so familiar in a way... he's a huge influence to me because it sparkled my interest in expressing myself through drawing. The same happened when I first saw the art of Clayton Brothers, I realized art could be so cool!! Their paintings and drawings blew my mind, I have never seen anything like that... I remember trying to like mainstream art like Picasso and Mondrian but I truly didn't have an emotional connection to any of these guys, I knew that I felt different when I saw Clayton Brothers in the cover of Juxtapoz in 2004. It was hard to find this kind of art in Brazil, and still is! Keith Haring went to São Paulo in the 80's and painted murals, he was on the tv and I thought he was such a cool guy. My mom gave me a calendar with his drawings on it and I loved it and kept it for years! Same thing happened when I discovered Warhol, his persona was always intriguing to me and it made me like his art even more. I grew up watching and reading Peanuts, so I don't think I can leave Charles Schultz out of this list. I don't separate comics from art, they have the same impact for me. I love his ability to create his own world and still being completely relatable, it's also kind of simple but extremely complex at the same time.

There’s an autobiographical nature and intimacy to a lot of your works because they come from feelings and experiences you’ve had or gone through or thought. Can you talk a little bit of maybe you’ve used some bad experiences in your life to create art from that has been maybe therapeutic? I feel like since my first sketchbooks were sort of journal like, that I've always had this relationship with drawing and letting emotions out... and it's therapeutic, cheaper than therapy as I always say! It's hard for me sometimes to not let it out, so I don't hold back anymore. It's funny cause the more embarrassed I am of something ultra personal that I drew, the more I get people to write me and say they really liked it. My first two zines were miserably sad ("I thought it was a love story" and "Mad for Sadness") I didn't know what to do with myself so I put together a zine with all those feelings. It kept me busy, which is usually a great thing, and a few years later I got emails from these teenage high school girls from San Francisco telling me their teacher showed my zine in class (!!) and they thought it was a good way to survive a heartbreak. I thought it was so sweet! I never thought about it before, you know? Sad things will happen anyway but how you deal with them is up to you.

What common misconception do you think folks might have about being an artist or making art for a living? I think the internet makes things look easier and more glamorous than they really are. I grew up seeing cartoonists drawing and being a bit miserable like Robert Crumb. Have you seen the documentary "Crumb"? I knew it wasn't easy being him and doing what he was doing, maybe it made me have even more respect for his work. He never tried to portray any glamour about being an artist and I think it's more like the real thing. These days people don't care for struggle, they seem to always want the easy way and that's not how art goes most of the time so I think it's funny and sad in a way. People rip off your work and forget you're a human too, trying to survive in this messy world.

What do you do to overcome those days when nothing you’re making is turning out right? What do you like to do in your off time? I like to read books when I don't know what to do with myself, it helps me to shift the focus and get into something else than my own drama. It helps me with anxiety and always sparks new ideas. Going to concerts and playing drums are my other escape tools for living a better life, music is magic... the power of live music is amazing, going to concerts is one of my favorite things to do!

Tell us about your recent trip to visit Brazil. When you lived there, you used to do some events called Bendgy. Can you tell us how they came about and how your recent visit went? I lived in São Paulo for 28 years, it's a huge city with a lot of cultural things happening all the time, the pace of the city is maddening and it's hard to keep focus sometimes, but regardlessly it's where i'm from and I love it! I started throwing an art party/concerts in my apartment when I started to make tshirts around 2006-2007. It was a very low profile thing, just for friends and just for fun... i didn't wanted to reach out to places that already existed and try to sell my art because it was weird... so I started something unpretentious to do what I was doing and that's Bendgy!It was an art party with a concert Saturdays afternoon in my apartment, i would sell beers, vegan sandwiches and tshirts. A lot of my friends are musicians so I wanted to have a band and we would support each other, it started getting bigger and I was scared of the risk of being kicked out of my apartment for the loud noise and amount of people coming in...I threw a few Bendgys at my friends places and eventually my dad moved out of his house and it was empty for a while, I started throwing bigger concerts there and it was so much fun!

How is Bendgy now? I just came back from SP and it was a long process but now Bendgy is a real art space, I got a great staff and we open every Saturday! We're having an international art show called "Hit the ground running" with the art of Albert Reyes, Jason Vivona, Jeff Roysdon, Mats!?, Mildred, Michael Hsiung (you!) and myself! In addition to the art show, there's a zine/print/tshirt/stickers shop and we have more affordable things from all the artists in the show and from other great artists from the US, Argentina and Brazil. I'm stoked that it turned out the way it did! It was so much hard work putting it together, I thought I was going crazy.. i felt like Donal Duck, but it was worth it!I book every band and make almost every flyer for it, so it's like I'm there but I'm not.

During your time living in São Paulo, Brasil, what was the art scene like? It was most like an all boys club to be honest. Graffiti and pixação (São Paulo style of tagging) were the underground art that I liked but always made by guys, some really talented ones too! Like, Os Gemeos still blow my mind and were always a reference for me to what brazilian art is, even though they are more respected as artists outside Brazil. I think they're a good example, for some reason Brazil doesn't cherish their own artists until someone else says it's good. It needs a foreign stamp of approval that always made me bored about it because there's so many great artists there!

Who are some artists in Brazil you admire? and why? I love Stephan Doitschinoff's art, he creates his own world and he is very focused on being true to who he is. His work has always been an inspiration to me on how to do things, if there's not a scene for what you're doing you create the scene!

Throw a zine fest or an art party, and make no excuses for not doing things. People tend to complain there's not enough opportunities there, but i feel like it's also in our own hands to make things happen and not just wait for someone to invite you to be part of something. Jaca is another extremely talented artist living in São Paulo, he is super humble and not really into posting his art online. He doesn't need no approval or applause and I love that! He looks inside himself and his works reveal that to us, it's very inspiring! He will have a solo show at Bendgy in July and I can't wait to see what he's going to do.

When did you start your online store High in the Bay? The products on there are all hand made by you in SF? What’s it like keeping your own shop? I started High in the Bay with my husband, Mildred, when I moved to SF in 2010 to make it up for the fact that I couldn't do a Bendgy here (i would have been evicted right away) so we did an online store.We do carry zines from other artists that we like and sometimes we make collaborative zine packs so people get to know other things than our own work, they get to see what we like! I brought some books, prints and zines from an amazing artist from Argentina called Tomás Spicolli, his work has been a big influence to me so I was very happy to have his art at Bendgy and soon at High in the Bay. It's important to learn to manage something even if it's an online shop, so then you get the grip of it and can do things better in the future, I used to work at Needles and Pens and I learned a lot from them on how to do things, it really helped me when I was doing Bendgy and High in the Bay.

You done a lot of cool art for bands! What has been your favorite collaboration? Thanks, man! I have to say I've been lucky to have worked with cool people, like I told before the Polara album cover was a cool one, it's coming out sometime this year in Brazil. All the bands were really cool to me and we became friends, I did a tshirt design for Josh Berwanger Band a few years ago, it had a funny request "draw Patrick Swayze in Road House"! And there was another album cover i did for Swivs that was so much fun to do, his music is so good!!

Give us your top 5 bands or tunes while creating? How does music influence your art? I'm very into the new Afghan Whigs album called "In Spades", and all their music really. It's one of my favorite bands ever, I have drawn so many of their lyrics consciously and unconsciously!I just came back from a concert last night in Oakland from another favorite of mine, The Magnetic Fields. They're great and i came back from Brazil earlier just to see them, love everything that Stephin Merritt does, forever and ever.I'm very into the same bands for the longest time, I love the Ramones, Pulp, Os Mutantes, Cypress Hill, Tupac, Jonathan Richman, Spaceman 3... my music taste is all over the place!Music is a major influence to me, since I was a kid my best friend was not my pen but my radio.

What are your favorite Vans? how would you describe your personal style?Ok, there was a limited edition Lo Pros Saddle shoes that was SO cool! I have a photo of me wearing it, cause i wore it all the time! I'm a Hi Top girl, black and white or just white ones, love those!

What’s the best and worse advice you’ve gotten about art? Best advice is to work hard and be true to yourself, sounds cliche but it's the truth.Worse advice is when people told me I had to go to art school, it might work for some people but it wasn't for me...

What’s on the horizon for the rest of 2017? There's one big project that i'm super excited about but can't talk about it yet... And there will be lots and lots of cool art and live music happening at Bendgy!

Follow Pacolli Website: http://www.pacollipacolli.com/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/pacollionline Shop:https://highinthebay.bigcartel.com Bendgy: www.instagram.com/bendgysp

#Art #Sketchy Behavior #Interview #vans art #Pacolli #San Francisco #bay area art #vans girls

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thecatwhosleepsin · 7 years

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[Book Review] Sad Girls

Sad Girls by Lang Leav

Genres: Fiction, Young Adult, Contemporary

Date Published: May 30, 2017

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing

Pages: 320

Rating: 2/5

Youth is wasted on the young.

I can’t say I had high expectations for this book.

Over the stretch of time that has lapsed between her last and latest publication, my senior writing peers have taken up the responsibility of removing Lang Leav from the immeasurably high pedestal in my heart. I fell in love with her first book, you see. Love and Misadventures became my holy grail in poetry when I read it when it was first published. Her points when it came to love and loss was so acute, she put stars in my eyes.

after that, I bought more of her books as soon as they were published (despite the obvious hole it left in my wallet). The magic of her words slowly faded. I know where her words were coming from, but I’m not that sure if she was writing for herself now. That’s how I felt after Lullabies, Memories, and The Universe of Us but I brushed the thought the instant it came to mind and thought,

Nonsense. I’m reading too much into it. All writers struggle to write for themselves to justify the truth they know and want to impart.

But deep inside I still asked myself,

Is her poetry the only poetry I know?

And it was true, I never knew the classics. Name one famous dead poet and I wouldn’t even have a clue.

But let’s put aside the matter of my doubts regarding her credibility as a poet, let’s talk about her new book.

In the dying embers and blackened twigs of a ravaged forest, who could distinguish where the first spark was lit? Only the arsonist knows the exact location on which the first match was struck.

It is Audrey Field’s final weeks in school when she shatters the already precarious nature of her life and of everyone she knows with a single, repulsive lie. It leads to a dangerous chain of events -the death of her melancholic classmate Ana, the start of her breathless panic attacks, her best friend Candela throwing her life away, the spark of an ill-timed romance with Ana’s enigmatic boyfriend Rad, and the revelation of a deadly secret.

“I think it’s because we romanticize the past. We give it more than it deserves.”

Sad Girls revolves around writers, the mass effect of uttering a thoughtless lie, the value of friendships, the meaning of true love, freedom, finding one’s place in the world, heartbreaks, (wasting) second chances, dreams, uncovering false appearances and the significance of the truth -which brings me to my admission that I didn’t quite like this one.

Audrey is one of the biggest reasons. You could imagine my incredulity upon finding out what kind of horrible lie that caused, not only hers, but everyone’s lives to fall apart. INCEST. Between her classmate and her OWN father. No lie is more disgusting and I couldn’t believe she said it, so casually and I quote, earnestly to her best friends (one of which was Ana’s close friend), just for the heck of it and didn’t even bother to take it back right then and there. No sane person would ever do that, and I felt that the remorse and guilt that attacked her until the end of the novel wasn’t enough punishment for her ridiculous tongue.

There were handful of times where her words went far out of line. She also didn’t endeavor to completely mend her rocky relationship with her mother. She surreptitiously sneaked around her boyfriend’s back to hung out with the boyfriend of the sad girl whose demise was brought upon her revolting lie. She wasn’t the least honest about her obligated relationship with Duck to him, to everyone and to herself.

There were also a lot of loose ends to tie up. Like the ambiguity of Candela’s relationship with Ana.

Candela:

“I know what you’re implying about me and Ana, and do you know what? It’s none of your fucking business.”

Ana (about Rad):

I know he thinks he’s in love. But he has no idea what love is. Not yet anyway.

So, it’s safe to assume that Ana wasn’t really in love with Rad, and Candela saw her as more than a sister figure from the way she got into a bad crowd, resorted to drugs and became highly sensitive when anyone brought her up. Seeing how intense her grief is, affection for her deceased close friend is definitely possible since Candela’s first fling was also a female, and maybe, Ana also reciprocated her feelings since she had a picture of her in the locket she immensely treasured (enough to be used as a bookmark). Most likely Rad had suspected it, knew it wasn’t him in her locket all along and only looked inside for confirmation and to appease Audrey’s suggestion.

If Duck’s man periods level on extremes (pitiful Audrey putting up with every single one of it), he becomes downright terrifying in post breakups, especially when he’s drunk. He was blinded by love (obsession?) for Audrey, and it was almost touching until he raged in front of her window, his chivalry evaporated into thin air.

I wanted to see more of his character development from when Audrey broke up with him because no matter what, even when there were several moments where I adored his tenderness and sweetness, his lasting impression was a psycho (from his bipolar mood swings), even after he found a new girl and quoted to Audrey,

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Also, WAS I THE ONLY ONE WHO ABSOLUTELY ADORED GABE? I mean, he was the normal one out of all Audrey’s love interests. Optimistic and funny, he was a ball of sunshine and he deeply respected her boundaries as well, completely unassuming and only acting upon his feelings as long as Audrey allowed it. Bittersweetly, he chose to let her go, wishing for nothing but her happiness.

“I don’t think I can do the friend thing. Not with you.”

HE WAS SUCH A KEEPER. AUDREY, YOU IDIOT. YOU MISSED THE ROAD TRIP OF YOUR LIFE.

Rad, on the other hand, was your typical enigmatic hottie with heterochromatic eyes which only intensified the mystery that veiled around him. Witty and well-acquainted with the woes of a writer, he charmed his way to Audrey’s broken, guilt-ridden heart.

From the start, I was always skeptical about him. Initially, I thought that his refusal to talk about anything regarding Ana, his easygoing attitude and his desire to frequently spend time with Audrey were commonplace actions of one who was grieving the death of his love. I believed he was trying to move on from her by ignoring the fact, but it was so much more. He was trying to bury the guilt —through writing, finding someone new, ripping a suicide note from his girlfriend’s diary and keeping it, maybe to convince himself that she wanted the accident.

He was the most cowardly of all the characters in Sad Girls, I concluded. The only answer I could piece together from his inhumane decisions was that his mental health degraded during his relationship with suicidal Ana. It’s toxicity retained in himself and jumbled up the meaning of what’s right and wrong. I mean, after unintentionally killing your own lover and staging it as suicide, guilt was bound to eat you up and squeeze the truth from you. But his conscience didn’t work or maybe, it was long dead anyway. He had no decency, even continuing his life, pursuing his aspirations and a girl who was obviously taken. (She matched his standards —sad, lonely and broken.)

Though the book ended on a really disturbing note, I could say Audrey and Rad were perfect for each other, running away from the grave sins they had committed to start over a clean slate, neglecting their conscience, fulfilling their dreams like the past was just nothing and Audrey leaving her doting friends in the dark.

Two wolves bound to devour each other alive.

The liar and the killer. Bonnie and Clyde. Harley and Joker. Bring on the titles.

And before I come into a conclusion, let me express my rage: WHY DID MY CINNAMON ROLL FREDDY HAVE TO DIE? WHY DID SWEET SWEET LUCY HAVE TO BE MISERABLE? THEY’RE THE MOST DESERVING COUPLE WHEN IT COMES TO HAPPINESS, WHY BREAK THEM APART? The truth will come out eventually. No need to destroy the most lovable (and cheesiest) couple in the book.

Sheesh. My gut was right when it was feeling uneasy as I went through Lucy’s odd mini-speech:

“But he was my first real boyfriend. I don’t have anyone else to compare him with. What if he isn’t the love of my life and I’m just sticking with him because I’ve never known anything else?”

There you go, Lucy.

In Sad Girls, Lang Leav skirts through sensitive subjects with the aloofness and subtlety of a freight train. But I greatly appreciated her raw tribute to writers.

“But I don’t think all writers are sad. It’s the other way around —all sad people write. It’s a form of catharsis, a way of working through things that feel unresolved, like undoing a knot. People who are prone to sadness are more likely to pick up a pen.”

As a debut novel, it wasn't so much of an okay shot, but I would’ve loved it more if she imposed the writing style she uses when composing prose. Despondency, Dead Butterflies, Rogue Planets, The Professor and Three Questions were some of my favorites. Years back when I first read them, I believed I was given a glimpse of how she would write her novel in the near future and I was considerably excited. Now, it’s not that she disappointed me. It’s just that somehow I just knew it would come to this and it’s okay. I’m a patient girl. She will overcome herself, especially when everyone is given chances and has the right to use them (excluding Audrey and Rad though, unless if they did it the right way).

I am always rooting for my childhood favorite and I hope to see her considerably grow in the next years to come. Meanwhile, let me say:

My youth (and money) is wasted on this book.

This has been a quite long review, and I thank anyone who has spent time to read my thoughts!

And one last thing, Ana’s notion of love, though maybe solid truth to others, will continue to haunt me:

The truth is, everyone wants to believe they’re in love but no one really is. So to all the girls out there who are stuck between two minds about some stupid crush, I have news for you. If you have to wonder, if you have to question what you feel, then deep down you actually don’t give a shit. As for the rest of you who don’t get it, welcome to the club. If you know what it’s like to want someone so much you would kill for them. If you know what it’s like to feel someone so deep under your skin you would sacrifice everything to protect them —even if it screws up your own moral compass so you can’t see right from wrong. If you’re like me, then let me leave you with this: That’s what love is. Don’t let them tell you any different. Don’t tell yourself otherwise.

#lang leav #sad girls #book review #contemporary #fiction #romance #mental illness #young adult

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writingguide003-blog · 5 years

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Music for Writers: Nadia Sirota At An 'Incredible Point'

New Post has been published on https://writingguideto.com/must-see/music-for-writers-nadia-sirota-at-an-incredible-point/

Music for Writers: Nadia Sirota At An 'Incredible Point'

“It’s kind of incredible to be at a point in your life where people let you do what you want to do.”Say to anyone following contemporary classical composition and performance. They’llknow Nadia Sirota.

And we couldn’t have a more fitting opening to the 2016 season of #MusicForWriters than this globe-trotting violist’s arrival as curatorand lead performer inSymphony Space’s week-long Fuse Project residency, opening tonight (1 February) and running through Friday. Details of the residency’s extensive programming are below.

And all of this is being produced in partnership with Q2 Music, New York Public Radio’s pivotal contemporary-classical free 24-hour Internet stream of live and recorded music of living composers, led by the tireless Alex Ambrose.

It’s there, in fact, that you’ll hear Sirota’s much-applauded Meet the Composer series of in-depth looks at some of the biggest names in all of today’s music: John Luther Adams, Andrew Norman, Donnacha Dennehy, Caroline Shaw, Marcus Balter, Meredith Monk, Kaija Saariaho, Ingram Marshall, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Nico Muhly. (More #MusicForWriters pieces relative to this group: Adams, Saariaho, Thorvaldsdottir.)

And it’s on Q2 Music’s global feed that many of us first heard Sirota. In my case, it was in the darkening autumn of a career assignment to Denmark. Asthe twilight of 2009 closed in on Copenhagen, I heard Sirota from New York City, daily discussing and presenting highlighted recordings of contemporary classical musicas I wrote. From the majestic foundations laid by Philip Glass, John Adams, and Steve Reich to the reachy experimentation of Caleb Burhans and Paola Prestini, Sirota was talking us in, explaining, connecting, pointing up how one artist was affecting another, and howa“new music army” was “rising” to seize the imagination of a world increasingly open to greater modern range than pop.

Sirota, then already known as one of the most adventurous figures in several of the lead ensembles, was beginning to define with Q2 Music how the contemporary classical scene works, how respectful of its roots these artists are, and how much promise lies in a new golden age of composition that speaks with such resonance to authors, in particulara world of musical colorists and textural genius that can stop a sensitive writer in her or his tracks. Welcome to really good, new music.

In addition to her residency this week, Sirota is working on a new album for release from Bedroom Community and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s new recording initiative. She and Muhly are in the fundraising stage for the CD, which will feature the American premiere at Detroit of Muhly’s , written for Sirota, and two so-far unreleased Muhly works: his which Sirota tells me is “the next installment in a decades-long collaborative project between the two of us”and Muhly’s heart-wrenching (their first work together), which is to be recorded in a new arrangement by Christ Thompson of Alarm Will Sound.

Is she busy?

Well, that’s another hallmark of Sirota’s way of living and working. As Delta Air Lines’ new slogan might have it, “there’s no stop in her,” just go.

I recommend that you hit on this video of Sirota’s performance with the DSO of Muhly’s new and listen as you read some of her comments from our conversation. The concerto isan essential new statement of both Muhly and Sirota’s maturing artistry, soaring with the wonderment that Muhly’s intelligence brings to the stage and jagged with the muscular, incisive attack that hallmark’s Sirota’s viola mastery. Muhly’sconcerto,conducted by music director Leonard Slatkin, sets off the DSO’s forces with profound grace and is replete with Muhly motifs the composer’s fans will love spotting. Sirota has never sounded better.

‘What I Was Actually Doing Was Writing’

We start our conversation with an assessment of how far Sirota has come in her career as performing artist, journalist-commentator, and curator. And she gets quickly to something journalists understand: the mixed blessing and curse of being someone who interprets (or reports) other people’s work for a living. And authors will understand the kind of discovery moment she mentions: “What I was actually doing was writing.”

Thought Catalog: How do you see the way things are going now in your career, Nadia, with your new residency starting, the Detroit premiere such a success, and another album in the offing?

Nadia Sirota:I’ve felt a string of grateful feelings about all this. Intermingled with incredible terror at what I’ve wrought upon myself. It’s all very, very cool.

As a musician, you spend so much time working on other people’s projects. And I love working on other people’s projects. I love figuring out how to realize what other people have going on in their brains. That’s why I love working with composers, and it’s something I’m very good at.

But all of a sudden, right now, I’m working on a whole bunch of personal projects in a row, and I’m grateful I can do that.

There’s something to be said for both types of things. On some level, I can throw myself into somebody else’s brilliancethat’s a role I feel very comfortable with. All of these projects have come up because of this, and it’s really very gratifying.

TC: Gratifying, sure, but this is a lot of work, this residency in which you’re putting together all these artist who work with and around youfour evenings of music in a single week.

Sirota: It is a lot of work, but what’s interesting is that this residency is the kind of work I’ve actually trained for on some level. It’s something I know how to do.

By contrast, the funny thing about the radio show [on Q2 Music] is that it took me a really long time to realize that what I was actually doing was writing. I’d been in complete denial aboutthe writing element of that.

In fact, even the way I draft the show: I’ll just make a little note on my phone and I’ll read it off of my notes app. It’s only later when I’m redoing all the voice-overs that I’ll realize that I’ve written about 16 pages. Which is a complete funny thing for me. There’s always a moment in my head when I’m, like, “This is not what I do,” even though it’s something that I do.

So what’s cool about this residency is that it what I do, it’s the kernel of what I’m passionate about. Obviously, it’s tiring and complicated with a lot of moving parts. But I like those parts.

TC: And when I look at the residency, what I see is you programming a festival. That takes the mind of an impresario.

Sirota: I think that’s probably true. The way I went at it is, “What is the music I’d like to see? And who are the people I’d like to have in the room?” There’s a community aspect here.

One of the coolest things about being a traveling musician is that you have this sort of nomadic tribe of people you keepencountering in the strangest places. It’s all these different festival environments, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, you!” We’re friends but not like friends who are connected to a specific city or place.

And one of the loveliest things about this residency is I’m bringing people from Iceland, from England, from Canada. People I really love and can rely on and am inspired by. I’m bringing them here to New York, to my home turf.

TC: What’s the funding behind the residency at Symphony Space? I know that the residency falls under the aegis of the Composers Now Festival, and there’s support for the Dennehy evening from the Isaiah Sheffer Fund for New Initiatives, right?

Sirota: Right, and Symphony Space has this fantastic artistic director, Andrew Byrne. He has an interesting and exciting vision for how that space can serve the community. The fact that he let me do this speaks very highly to his taste. [She laughs.]

It’s interesting that in the United States of America, this is how it works [in terms of private fundraising with comparatively little public subsidy]. But it also points to how there’s an incredible amount that you can do if you can find someone to believe in it.

TC: And did you use your usual approach to commissioning to get Donnacha Dennehy to write for you?

Sirota: Donnacha I met when he was doing a residency with Alarm Will Sound three or four summers ago. I heard him for the first time, and thought, “Well, this is my favorite music ever.” And I promptly did my thing, which is later at the bar, I commission people when they’re at their most vulnerable and then follow up. [Laughs.] He was immediately excited about this idea of doing something with the viols da gamba. [Bass viols with a similar range to that of the cello.]

So now that piece, is the centerpiece of the whole residency, And we recorded it before we had any idea how to play it, which is an interesting process. It ended up being scored for 11 bass viols and four violas. So we recorded that all with multi-tracking between me and Liam Byrne. The bass viol is a good bit lower than the viola, but the quality of sound on it, on the viol da gamba is so bright. It’s got thisincredible bright weirdness of texture and color. So the lowest instruments in the piece are so bright. And the highest pieces, the violas, are so dark and mellow. I’ve just never hear color like that before.

The other thing he has in this piece, which is very typical of Donnacha is slipping back and forth between just intonation and equal temperament. You get the idea you’re looking through this kaleidoscope and all of a sudden everything seems clear and then it twists. It makes sense and it’s logical, but it’s not quite the same thing.

TC: And yet he never loses you. That’s what I love about Dennehy’s music. Like Nico [Muhly], he remembers the listener and brings us along. They leave us enough for us to hang onto.

Sirota:And you know that it’s hard to play but it’s worth it, and you know why you really have to make it work.

TC: And speaking of what you have to do to make it work, I have to remind you before I let you go of my favorite tweet. It’s from 2010, the Fourth of July, and you were playing an outdoor concert. The , no doubt. Here’s your tweet:

Enjoying Deep Woods Off as hair product.

nadia sirota (@nadiasirota) July 5, 2010

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Events In The Sirota Residency At Symphony Space

Tonight, Monday, 7:30 p.m. Eastern

Sirota is joined by Liam Byrne on viol and a four-viol consortDoug Balliett, Gabriel Cabezas, Loren Ludwig, and Zoe Wiesswith Alarm Will Sound’s Chris Thompson on percussion and a vocal trio: Jamie Jordan, Kirsten Sollek, and the inimitable Mellissa Hughes. The program will delve into the Renaissance music that has influenced both Sirota and her close friend, the composer Nico Muhly, featuring music of Alexander Agricola, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and more:

by Muhly

by David Lang (a world premiere commissioned by Symphony Space)

for three singers, viola, cello, and percussion by Lang (the US premiere)

Tuesday (2 February), 7:30 p.m. Eastern

Sirota welcomes her collaborators yMusic, one of the New York scene’s best-known contemporary ensembles, in a program to be announced from the stage and includingworks specially written for this eclectic sextet by:

Son Lux

Sufjan Stevens

Marcos Balter

Judd Greenstein

Andrew Norman (our #MusicForWriters interview with Norman)

Thursday (3 February), 7:30 p.m. Eastern

Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry joins Sirota onstage for some of his and Bryce Dessner’s (#MusicForWriters interview) most compelling work, including:

Parry’s for viola (a New York premeire)

and other selections from Parry’s

Dessner’s for viola

Friday (4 February), 8 p.m. Eastern

A world premiere of Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s is the centerpiece of this special evening that also features Muhly, Byrne, Balliett, Byrne, Ludwig, Weiss, and others onstage with Sirota for:

A selection of music from the Icelandic collective Bedroom Community (the recording seat of Sirota, Muhly, and many more of the most acclaimed artists working today in contemporary classical)

Dennehy’s (world premiere, the work is co-commissioned by Symphony Space and the Irish Arts Center; #MusicForWriters on Dennehy)