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regular-nessian-trash · 4 years

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It’s Vegas, Baby - Chapter III

Summary: We learn a bit more about Nesta and Cassians backstory’s, and we see a friendship begin to bloom between Nessian.

TW: Assault, Drugs, Drinking, Rape

A/N: yaaay i finally finished this chapter lmao hope yall enjoy

Nesta was humming along to the tune of Bad Reputation by Joan Jett while getting ready for work. Even though her coworkers were a pain in her ass, she loved her job. She could still remember the day she met Rhys, not knowing that his family would become her own. She thought he wouldn’t know much about hiring employees -considering when she applied for the job, the actual title was “Classy Go-Go Girl”- so she was going to try and smooth talk her way to a bigger salary. He saw right through her, though, and offered her the job for the original salary. She scoffed at first, but because money was tight for her and Feyre she took the job. Not that she would ever say it out loud, but being hired by Rhys was the best thing to happen to her and Feyre. They had moved to the city after she had escaped Tomas and by the time he had found her she was already doing so well in the city and they didn’t need his money to survive. She was free. But of course, all good things must come to an end. Tomas started saying she owed him for all the years of protection and street cred she got from dating him. That was when he had started coming to her place of work and harassing her. She couldn’t do anything about it, though. He had made a name for himself on the streets. That was why she had fallen for him. He had the whole bad boy thing going for him. And if Nesta was anything, she was a romantic. He had her hooked on the whole bad boy act. Never. Again. In all the romance novels it’s cute, but when you actually experience it first-hand… “Hey, Nessie? I’m heading to The Court now. You almost ready?” Mor questioned, interrupting Nesta's train of thought. The Court is what they all called Rhys’s club. It was actually called The Night Court, but their group was all about nicknames. “Yeah, I’m almost ready!” Nesta called back while she slipped on her dirty white high top Chuck Taylors. The shoes she had to wear for work were so uncomfortable, so she put off wearing them until the absolute last moment, usually right before she clocked in. Sure she looked like the star of a kids T.V. show from the 2000s in her dress and converse, but at least she was comfortable. Nesta quickly ran to the elevator with her heels in hand just as Mor stepped in and was about to let the door to the elevator close. Nesta was about to yell at Mor to stick her hand through the doors when Mor just smirked and let them shut. Nesta quickly hit Mor's contact on her phone and called her. “Hey, Nessie! I noticed you looked a little sleepy, so I thought you would wake up a little standing around waiting.” “I hate you. I will stand here and wait for the elevator and never will I ever hold the doors for you ever again.” “Really, Nessie? You are the most over dramatic person I have ever met.” “You love it.” “Apparently, so does Cassian.” “Mor-” Morrigan hung up, giggling. Nesta pressed the elevator button for what seemed like the thousandth time. She was so grateful to hear the ding, and when the doors opened she practically jumped in. After checking her phone, she realized if she drove like a madwoman on the highway she would still be late. Damn her and her nostalgia. The elevator doors opened revealing a guilty-looking Mor waiting by the car. That guilt quickly morphed into a smirk when she saw Nesta's annoyed smirk. “Thanks for making me late, asshole.” “No problem, bestie! Besides, Rhys won’t fire you. If he does, we can all disown him! Except maybe Feyre. She will probably be on his side.” “Let's just go.” ~~~~ Cassian was pacing the floor of the staff room. Nesta was late. She was never late. Something happened to her and he was willing to bet those assholes that harass her every week had something to do with it. He had to call the police. He had to do something. Cassian pulled his phone out, ready to call someone when he was interrupted by Rhys. “Hey, Cass? Nesta’s gonna be late today, Mor just called saying she made Nesta wait for the elevator for, like, five minutes. You can stop pacing. Damn, you’ve got it bad.” Rhys walked away giggling like a middle schooler. “Hey! I don’t have a crush on Nesta, you bastard!” Cassian yelled after Rhys. “Well, I would certainly hope not! That would ruin our group dynamic!” Mor yelled at Cassian, with Nesta hot on her heels. “Says the girl who came up with the ship name Nessian. I still think it should be Cesta, by the way.” Cassian quips. “Well, Cesta sounds stupid. Mostly because a cesta is a type of basket.” Mor replies, before leaving to go get a drink. While all this was going on, Nesta was putting on her heels and getting ready to go out and get people to buy more drinks. Before she left, though, Cassian tried to think of something to say to her. “So, Nesta, still single?” Damn. He was an idiot. Why did he ask her that? “So, Cassian, still a grade-A asshole? Because don’t think for one second that you could get in my-” “Sorry! I’m sorry! Jeez. I was just making small talk. Apparently, you are, but I already knew that. Considering the way you blush at the mere thought of me.” Cassian finished with a smirk, making Nesta's blood boil. “The only reason I blush in your presence is because your insufferable male ego takes up so much space that it gets too stuffy and difficult to breathe whenever you get close to me!” “So you admit being close to me makes you blush?” Cassian wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Ugh! Goodbye, you impossible prick.” Nesta walked away, Cassian watching her back the whole time as she began talking to the patrons. ~~~~ Nesta could feel Cassian watching her as she spoke with all the customers. Surprisingly, Tomas and his lackeys didn’t show up. Maybe he was finally leaving her alone. Nesta was so deep in thought that she barely heard all the sexist remarks coming from one table in particular. It seemed to be full of a bunch of rich kids. The tips would hopefully be good. Nesta made her way over to the boys, and barely registered the look in their eyes. She was used to it by now. What Nesta was not used to was how forward they were. “Hello, darling. We’ll have three whiskeys, neat.” “I’ll make sure to let one of the waiters know, darling.” Nesta hated these guys already. Misogynistic pigs. She put on her overly sweet smile and walked away. She went to go find Mor, knowing that Rhys wouldn’t get mad at her. “Nessie! How’s work? Wait, don’t tell me. Those guys you were just talking to asked you to get them their drink.” “Yep. Honestly, Rhys should have thought about what customers would think if he had girls walking up to tables, talking to them.” “Between you and me, I think he only created that position because he had a crush on Feyre and she told him you were job hunting.” “Honestly, that’s probably true. Cause Feyre was the one to tell me about the job after she met Rhys at the coffee shop.” “Okay, well I gots to go party for a bit. Come see me after your shift is over!” “Bye, Mor!” Nesta walked away and noticed one of the guys, the one who ordered the drinks, was waving her over. Great. She sighed and tried to walk as slowly as she could, without it seeming obvious. “Hello, boys. Is there something I can help you with?” “Why don’t you sit down with us. We can have a bit of fun.” “No thank you, I’m working right now.” “C’mon! We don’t bite! Unless you ask…” The guys sitting with him started snickering, that was when Nesta decided she’d had enough. “Sir, if you don’t start to respect my answer to your question I will have you and your boyfriends escorted out by security. Don’t make me say no again.” She tried not to flinch when he stood up close to her, she could smell the alcohol on his breath. They must have been bar hopping if he was already this drunk. She turned to walk away when suddenly there was a hand grabbing onto her ass. She was about to tell him off, but he roughly grabbed her face and smooshed his mouth against hers. She pulled away, gagging. Tears stinging her eyes as she was brought back to the night she broke up with Tomas. The sound of ripping clothes filled her ears. The pure undiluted rage in Tomas’s eyes when she pushed him off her. Suddenly, Cassian was there calling her name. She could see Mor pushing through the crowd that had gathered around her, repeating the dumb nickname she gave her. And on the floor, unconscious, was the guy who assaulted her. Oh, gods. Assault. It was happening again. She must have been pure evil in her past life because she had no idea what she had done in this life to deserve all this bad karma. “Nesta? Nesta, please, answer me. Nesta?” That was Cassian's voice. Cassian. He was here. “Take me home, Cassian. Please.” She cursed herself for sounding so weak. “Of course, Sweetheart.” He didn’t say his little pet name the way he usually did though. He sounded concerned. They walked out to Cassain's car in silence. Nesta couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. She let them fall freely as she stepped into Cassian's car. Too shaken up by the whole experience to care if he thought she was weak. “Nesta, I know we aren’t the best of friends, but I want you to know I’m here for you. I may not know what it’s like being a woman, but I didn’t have the best childhood. I know abuse, so if you ever want to talk, call me. Based on your reaction, this wasn't the first time.” “My ex-boyfriend.” “What about him?” “He tried to rape me when I broke up with him. He was abusive. So I left. He caught me leaving with my suitcases, though. He got really mad and pushed me into the wall and started to taunt me. Telling me I’d never make it without him. That I needed him to survive. That Feyre needed him. Elain needed him. I pushed him off me, but he just pushed me harder into the wall and ripped my clothes off. Then I tried to run again, but he punched me. We got into a fight, but I managed to hit him over the head and run. Feyre was waiting for me in her car, and we both just drove.” “My birth mom was a druggie. She got pregnant from some guy she couldn’t remember. She used to hit me and tell me she wished she got rid of me. I still have a scar on my arm from where she put out her cigarette once when she was pissed at me. Then, one day she overdosed and killed herself. I was thrown into the system. That’s how I met Rhys and Azriel. In highschool, Rhys’s mom fostered me. Then she started to foster Az.” “I’m sorry you had to go through that with your birth mother. My mom died when I was young, and my dad lost his job a couple of years later. Feyre began working because Elain wished to go to college. That was when I started dating that guy. He knew we were in deep shit, so he started paying for everything for us. He even paid for Elain to go to college. The only thing is, now he seems to think we owe him for all the stuff he did for us.” Nesta didn’t know why she was telling Cassian all this. He was just so easy to talk to. “Damn. What an asshole.” “Yeah… Looks like we’re here. Thanks, Cassian. Truly.” “No problem. It’s not like we’re going to get fired for ditching.” “True… Hey, do you wanna come up and maybe watch a movie or something? If not that’s okay too! You don’t have to...” “Hey, Nesta, as long as you have popcorn and Dirty Dancing I’m in.” “Lucky for you, I have both of those. Also, Dirty Dancing is one of my favorite movies so we would have been watching that anyway.” “Well, Sweetheart, you’ll be pleased to know that Dirty Dancing is my favorite guilty pleasure movie.” ~~~~ Mor pulled up at their apartment complex, not expecting to see Cassian's car parked in one of the visitor spots. She stepped into the elevator, eager to see Nesta. Cassian had whisked her away to his car before she got the chance to see if she was alright. Once the doors of the elevator had opened into their penthouse, first Mor noticed that Dirty Dancing was playing on their flatscreen. Then Mor noticed that both Nesta and Cassian were cuddling on the couch, fast asleep. Mor quickly took a picture then snuck into her room. She could talk to Nesta about what had happened at the Court tonight tomorrow. For now, she decided to just let the enemies to lovers trope play out.

#A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas #nesta archeron/cassian #feyre archeron/rhysand #feyreandnestaarebffs #alternate universe modern #archeron sisters #enemies to best friends #bestfriends to lovers #pov multiple #nessian #mor and nesta are besties #slow burn #very slow #kinda angst #kinda fluff #dirty dancing #Feysand

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ghostmartyr · 6 years

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SnK 106 Thoughts

PATION

What a mess.

In Yu Yu Hakusho, the antagonist of one arc is a man who used to have the protagonist’s job. He’s described as a character who sees things in black and white. When he’s confronted with the grey of the world, he snaps and ends up with a lot of new voices in his head. One of the descriptions of him and his journey is that such a pure soul, once touched by corruption, is destined to turn entirely dark.

The individual describing this finds it enthralling.

Eren’s friends appear a touch more against it.

I’m really tempted to just say, “and then Eren ruined everything,” and stop typing, because every time I try to form deeper thoughts, it feels like that summary would save everyone a lot of time. Mostly me. It’s also more amusing than addressing exactly how he’s ruined everything, because yikes.

As a deep appreciator of the themes I believe this series holds most dear, I like this chapter.

As a deep appreciator of Eren pre-timeskip... ahaha tfw Armin is an audience surrogate. Geez.

This is a sad chapter. Yes, that gets its own sentence. It will possibly get its own sentence multiple times, because it is the most accurate statement I can make about what’s going on in this awful world.

I think I said once or twice (a month) that my problem with the Marley chapters is that there was no hope for the stars of it. The Warriors, even if they were to succeed, are pawns in a system that doesn’t care about anything but bleeding them dry of every use it can before it cannibalizes them. Month after month, we saw good people growing up in an evil world that would corrupt even the best of their intentions.

That is a depressing setting to spend a year in. Everything about it makes you start seeing nothing but trains in each glimmer of hope down the pit. Part of why I wanted to get back to Paradis so badly, besides cast preference, was that Paradis still has the concept of hope.

Yeah, it’s a concept that is largely built on sacrificing many, many lives, but when they think that they’re dying to leave a better world behind, where less of them are eaten alive, they’re not wrong. Their view of the world is horribly incomplete, and deliberately so until they dismantle the worst of their government, but the lies that build the foundation of their world are not self-perpetuating.

People on Paradis can move forward, and make the decision to try to blow up the brick wall they run straight into. In Marley, those brick walls have been arranged as a rat maze for Eldians to run.

Now we’re back with people trying to change the world for the better. And the odds are bleak. The first conversation Hange and Yelena has lays it out nicely: Paradis is not built for the kind of war waiting on their doorstep.

The wonder in Yelena’s eyes at these professional titan slayers is a beautiful sight to behold. No other group on the planet has fought these monsters so successfully, and other countries are still a few technology upgrades away from being able to say the same.

Human v human combat on a large scale, though? That is the one thing they’ve never really dealt with. They’ve lived in fear of it at times, when their walls started feeling like the cage they were, but it’s not a thing they’ve concentrated on.

Compare that to literally the entire rest of the world.

Paradis fights giants.

But like. Non-figurative ones.

This applies that same fundamental to a very different environment, and it’s no surprise that the enormity of that ask has led to some sad places. There’s a reason not everyone joins the Survey Corps. There’s a reason, before RAB show up, people wonder why they even need the Survey Corps.

Fighting impossible odds is a fruitless endeavor, from many perspectives. The will to keep with it is hard to harness. A lot of the people we have still fighting have been given some very rough shoves into it.

Wanting better for a world that doesn’t think it needs to change is challenging. It’s been challenging from the beginning, but with the setting expansion, we’re back to fighting giants.

What this chapter illustrates fantastically is which members of our cast are still dreamers. From the start, the Scouts have been full of crazy outcasts who shoot for the moon. Even Erwin, the guy thought to be the most rational of them, starts out as a starry-eyed kid. These people don’t just believe in eventual victory; they believe in the world that victory can create.

There’s an entire ocean out there. Volcanoes. Glaciers. Armin makes this point really, really easy.

There are trains. Zeppelins. You can fly through the air without 3DMG. Guns that fires multiple shots are commonplace. Ports. More foods than you could ever imagine.

You can see so many soldiers light up this chapter. For a year, they’ve known about the outside world. They’ve known they’re hated. They’ve known this is a serious fucking problem and oh no.

Then they hear about what else is out there, and it’s like they’re all little kids reading illegal library books. Yelena looks at Titans and the Scouts with awe. Hange is thrilled by every new word Onyankopon and Yelena share. Sasha experiences seafood. Nicolo’s first understanding of the demons of Paradis as people comes from experiencing Sasha. Armin and Mikasa can talk about the Marley soldiers they’ve come to know with a smile.

Enter the Eren of it all.

His name is Eeyore now.

In the beginning there was darkness. Eren, he of ferocity and indignation, brought a spark to everyone he met. Before Trost, he inspires an entire squad to ditch their original reasons for joining the army and follow the insane dreamers. He brings Mikasa a reason to fight. Just by being a good friend, he helps his country find its true ruler. After the serum bowl, he has no trouble believing that Armin, his best friend, is worth every bit as much and more as Erwin.

He vows to become humanity’s hope. Again and again, he confronts challenges no one’s ready for, and he removes the question of his ability in favor of always taking the next step forward. Do or do not, there is no try, and he always chooses to do.

They’re surrounded by all sides. Walls have been replaced by ocean. There are enemies out there. They aren’t ready for them. They need to be ready.

Eren’s only moment of hope this chapter is when Zeke’s plan is proposed. The plan to scare the world into leaving them alone long enough to live. Eren talks about a destructive force smashing everything underfoot, and his eyes light up.

It isn’t a seashell. It isn’t a train. It isn’t lobster tail. It’s power.

When Yelena’s boat comes in, he’s angry. They can’t do anything. They’re helpless. He wants to be able to do something before they’re all wiped out.

Zeke brings him that.

Everywhere in this damn chapter, Eren’s eventual isolation on Marley is illuminated. He’s kept marching forward, just like they all have, but unlike the rest of them, he does it without faith.

“If we don’t fight... we can’t win.”

“If we win... we live.”

Mikasa’s side comes first. Eren doesn’t bother reaching that point.

I don’t know that Eren knows what living means anymore. For Mikasa, it’s her family. For Connie, it’s his friends. Plenty of characters have things or people that light up their world, and they dream of the day when they’ll be able to enjoy that light without danger encroaching.

Eren’s powers start out as a symbol of hope. It’s appropriate, then, that he’s lost his. Fight, fight, fight, but what for?

Heck, even his decision to hide Historia’s possibly significance originally came from a human place. A day or so after watching Armin die, he can’t do anything but reject the possibility of sacrificing another friend.

A year later, Eren doesn’t even flinch when he discusses that motivation. “I will admit that it was a thoughtless decision.”

(Sidebar:

Am I seeing things, or does Eren look a lot like Frieda there? I mean yes, the hair length, but the way the framing is done, his bangs are cut off, letting it match up more closely to Frieda’s style, and their pupil/iris style has always been similar. I ask rhetorically because Eren has Frieda’s memories, and on the topic of Historia, that feels very relevant. Please be intentional and not an optical illusion.

Let Eren be Historia’s big sister 2k18. He has at least two voices in his head who adore their baby sisters, give me this.)

Historia might not be Armin-Mikasa tier of friendship, but she doesn’t need to be (and hell, she’s the one witness to him begging for death; I’d call that a bonding experience (...actually, based on where things were left on Historia’s side, Eren is her best friend, and wow is that not a good spot to be in (go find Connie, Historia; he’s down a bestie))). Eren loves his friends. That is perhaps on a top three list of important Eren traits. Trost is basically a giant introduction arc, and a primary point is Eren’s rock-solid faith in Armin, his bestie.

Eren loves his damn friends. It was not a thoughtless decision to hide the risk to Historia; it was him being at the end of his tolerance for anything coming even close to hurting one of his people. It was a bad decision, and everyone should be very annoyed with him for not letting it enter the think tank for a whole year, because hey, maybe we don’t want to turn the reigning monarch into a titan, but experimenting with blood magic might be useful just a little don’t you think kind of.

Dumb decisions do not equal baseless ones. Eren being comfortable writing off his concern is a very bloody red flag.

At one point, the threat to Historia mattered to him (which, again: Eren, they were not going to turn the reigning monarch into a fucking titan on a whim).

At one point, working together with his friends as a team mattered to him.

At one point, the ocean could bring a light to his eyes.

Now, everyone around him is on board with chasing freedom. He isn’t chasing it with them. He’s chasing the win. What comes after that, who knows, but he can’t find out until he wins. That’s what matters. His buddies can talk all they want about making friends and life being better, he’ll be busy practicing his aim.

Eren.

You and Reiner need therapy.

Seek. Help. Stop murdering children and go find Mikasa and ask for a hug, because she’s probably the only one who might go for that at the moment and you need one. Well, maybe your brother might too. You know, that guy who will spend the last year of his life receiving death threats from Levi every single day.

This is a very nicely constructed chapter, and for once it makes me happy that Armin likes playing narrator. ...Even if I think I’m supposed to care that he’s addressing his narration to someone. And I don’t. I really don’t. Please don’t ask me to.

But yeah, coming back to Armin, who gives birth to Eren’s dream, at the obvious death of it, is a great format. Eren was right during serum bowl. Armin’s never lost sight of the ocean. Armin has always dropped into moodiness fast, but he doesn’t get lost in it. He’s sensitive, but nowhere close to fragile.

He’s as lost as everyone is with this, so he does the sensible thing: he goes to someone who must have known what it’s like to bear a burden like this. Annie can’t talk back, but Armin knows her experiences well enough to go to her anyway.

When Annie’s a giant, looking down at the tiny ants of the Survey Corps, she spares his life. She kills plenty of people (funny how insignificant that feels nowadays...), but Annie, in an impossible situation, finds room to let her heart stop her from destroying everything.

Armin destroys everything. He doesn’t see a face and pause. He walks, and buildings fall, and people die.

I think Armin’s always seen something of a kindred spirit in Annie. She’s a fighter, but she’s also a thinker. Most of the things she says have an ocean of depth to them, and I think that Armin is someone who appreciates that. Now that he knows what it’s like to kill huge numbers, feeling like he has to, it’s no surprise that he’s reaching out to her.

Especially since his best friend is unrecognizable right now.

I hope it won’t stick, but... the assault on Marley was horrific, and even if the same choice would have been reached regardless, Eren’s actions guaranteed devastation. Armin’s Paradis’ most destructive weapon right now. His best friend abandoning them turns him into a mass murderer.

That is not a small thing. And part of why it hurts so much is that Armin thought he understood his best friend better than anyone. He’s known Eren for years. He’s previously been a staunch shipper of Mikasa and Eren, but he still puts his understanding of their guy over hers. Before this.

Eren’s not who he used to be. No one is, but Eren’s trials have broken him into something his friends don’t trust, and don’t know how to trust.

“I wonder if... just maybe... there could have been a different path. I keep on coming back to that.”

There’s good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for. What they’ve got to worry about is how much of that good their fight will destroy before the end.

This is a sad chapter.

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 106 #Eren Yeager #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #tl;dr #chapter post

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michaelfallcon · 5 years

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Cill Fisher: The Sprudge Twenty Interview

Priscilla Fisher (Photo courtesy Priscilla Fisher)

Our coverage of the Sprudge Twenty interviews presented by Pacific Barista Series continues this week on Sprudge. Read more about the Sprudge Twenty and see all of our interviews here.

Nominated by Grant Gamble

Cill Fisher is the co-founder of Floozy Coffee, an Australian coffee roasting and retail company based in Newcastle, New South Wales.

More information about Cill from Floozy Coffee’s website:

“Cill has a background in economics and women’s advocacy, and recently earned her Master’s in Economic Development based on a systematic review of women’s land rights in the coffee sector. Cill was invited to be a guest speaker at Beanstock Coffee Festival in Canada in 2018 to discuss inclusivity in the sector and has since been featured as a speaker at a number of other industry events promoting the role of women in the industry.”

“Floozy was founded in 2017 as a response to male bias in the coffee sector. Coffee roasting is male-dominated worldwide, as is the entire coffee supply chain. Cill and Kmac work to highlight and support female producers at origin, encourage other women coffee roasters, promote and train female baristas and coffee shop owners, and contribute to future gender disaggregated research within the sector. Floozy’s goal is to promote and advance the women in coffee, showcase the talents of the ladies in the industry, and train up future generations of badass coffee chicks.”

Floozy is at the forefront of fusing specialty coffee culture with feminism and social enterprise. Proceeds from both retail and wholesale coffee sales at Floozy have supported a range of women-centric charities and groups in its two years of operation, including the IWCA, SameCup, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and Carrie’s Place. Floozy’s coffee program highlights the work of emerging coffee producers worldwide, with a focus on women-owned coffee projects. Their coffee ships worldwide.

What issue in coffee do you care about most?

When my business partner Kmac and I decided to start Floozy, it was in response to the underrepresentation of women in coffee roasting. As we got deeper into our business, we discovered that gender inequality in the coffee sector was a major problem at all levels of the coffee supply chain, not just in roasting. At the core of my business and my academic work is the central theme of women’s empowerment. Floozy is focused around the empowerment of women in the coffee chain through purchasing and representation, and my research is concerned with understanding the tools and resources necessary for women in coffee to be able to empower themselves. Both of these aspects of my work contribute to a greater goal of achieving gender equality in the coffee sector.

What cause or element in coffee drives you?

My background is in women’s rights and economic development, so the persistent gender inequality at all levels of the coffee supply chain is definitely what gets me out of bed in the morning.

What issue in coffee do you think is critically overlooked?

Since writing my Master’s thesis on women’s land rights in the coffee sector, it has become really apparent to me just how little we know about the rights and roles of women in coffee producing countries. So much of what we “know” about women in coffee stems from some really outdated and statistically invalid reports. There is a dire need for some quality research into women’s contribution to the coffee sector to better inform the way we purchase and consume coffee.

What is the quality you like best about coffee?

For me, coffee has always been less about the actual drink and more about the people behind it. The people who make coffee are my favorite kind of people.

Did you experience a “god shot” or life-changing moment of coffee revelation early in your career?

Less “god-shot” more “god-barista” (if that makes sense which it probably totally doesn’t). First, my dear friend Clive in Armidale, who got me to cut down from a large skinny cap with two sugars to a large flat white. Then Kmac and Hal in Newcastle, who got me interested in the world of specialty coffee and trained me to order small flatties. And of course, Jacob and Peter at the Coffee Collective in Copenhagen, who introduced me to the magical world of filter coffee, tasting notes, brewing methods, and all that jazz.

What is your idea of coffee happiness?

Being able to spend time alone with a good book in a cafe that feels like home.

If you could have any job in the coffee industry, what would it be and why?

Obviously I love what I’m currently doing with Floozy, so that. I’d also love to get more involved with research, and will be kicking off a PhD next year.

Who are your coffee heroes?

When I first decided to be a coffee roaster, Talor Browne was the only female coffee roaster I knew of. I think she’s amazing and she has inspired me a lot on my journey, and I would totally say that she’s one of my heroes. Kmac is obviously one of my coffee heroes as well. She’s the one who sucked me into this industry in the first place! And of course my partner, Grant, whose passion for coffee is literally unparalleled (ask anybody).

If you could drink coffee with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Steffen Altmann, my behavioral economics professor from the University of Copenhagen. This man taught me the meaning of good research, and how to truly think critically. I’m sure I owe him a coffee or two.

If you didn’t get bit by the coffee bug, what do you think you’d be doing instead?

Before I accidentally became a coffee roaster, I was going down the path to be a behavioral labour economist. Sounds kinda boring in retrospect.

Do you have any coffee mentors?

I accidentally found myself a coffee mentor in Chris Tellez. We became besties when his cafe, Show & Tell (Kitchener, ON, Canada), bought our coffee. I flew over for a visit, we got matching tattoos, and now we chat almost every day about the struggles and triumphs of running a small business and everything in between. The first thing I see every morning when I wake up is a sign that reads “What Would Chris Tellez Do?”—powerful words to live by! Haha no but seriously the dude’s amazing and I look up to him a lot. That’s why I nominated him for the Sprudge 20!

What do you wish someone would’ve told you when you were first starting out in coffee?

I’m so stubborn that honestly it wouldn’t have mattered. I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way but had plenty of wins too. I think the most important thing is just not to take ourselves too seriously. And that excluding someone or looking down on them for not being Melbourne-enough is actually not that cool. We all belong in coffee, whether we know everything or nothing.

Name three coffee apparatuses you’d take into space with you.

If I can afford to go to space I can probably afford to commission a Kalita 155 in pink. And maybe my Loring. And a Nespresso machine for when things get desperate.

Best song to brew coffee to:

The Crazy Frog by Axel F or anything by the Dixie Chicks. Duh.

Look into the crystal ball—where do you see yourself in 20 years?

I haven’t even been in coffee for two years yet, so seriously, who knows!

What’d you eat for breakfast this morning?

I only eat breakfast on my days off, and they’re pretty rare, but it was super nice to actually have breakfast cooked for me by my boyfriend today! Otherwise it’s normally a flattie followed by too many cups of batch brew.

When did you last drink coffee?

Earlier today!

What was it?

First was a fun Colombian by our friends at Morgon Coffee Roasters in Sweden, and then a French press of Floozy Daddy Issues I found in the back of my cupboard that was roasted almost two months ago. (Side note: how many other coffee roasters out there forget to take coffee home with them?!)

Our coverage of the Sprudge Twenty interviews presented by Pacific Barista Series. Read more about the Sprudge Twenty and see all of our interviews here.

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.

The post Cill Fisher: The Sprudge Twenty Interview appeared first on Sprudge.

Cill Fisher: The Sprudge Twenty Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

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shebreathesslowly · 5 years

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Cill Fisher: The Sprudge Twenty Interview

Priscilla Fisher (Photo courtesy Priscilla Fisher)

Our coverage of the Sprudge Twenty interviews presented by Pacific Barista Series continues this week on Sprudge. Read more about the Sprudge Twenty and see all of our interviews here.

Nominated by Grant Gamble

Cill Fisher is the co-founder of Floozy Coffee, an Australian coffee roasting and retail company based in Newcastle, New South Wales.

More information about Cill from Floozy Coffee’s website:

What issue in coffee do you care about most?

What cause or element in coffee drives you?

My background is in women’s rights and economic development, so the persistent gender inequality at all levels of the coffee supply chain is definitely what gets me out of bed in the morning.

What issue in coffee do you think is critically overlooked?

What is the quality you like best about coffee?

For me, coffee has always been less about the actual drink and more about the people behind it. The people who make coffee are my favorite kind of people.

Did you experience a “god shot” or life-changing moment of coffee revelation early in your career?

What is your idea of coffee happiness?

Being able to spend time alone with a good book in a cafe that feels like home.

If you could have any job in the coffee industry, what would it be and why?

Obviously I love what I’m currently doing with Floozy, so that. I’d also love to get more involved with research, and will be kicking off a PhD next year.

Who are your coffee heroes?

If you could drink coffee with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

If you didn’t get bit by the coffee bug, what do you think you’d be doing instead?

Before I accidentally became a coffee roaster, I was going down the path to be a behavioral labour economist. Sounds kinda boring in retrospect.

Do you have any coffee mentors?

What do you wish someone would’ve told you when you were first starting out in coffee?

Name three coffee apparatuses you’d take into space with you.

If I can afford to go to space I can probably afford to commission a Kalita 155 in pink. And maybe my Loring. And a Nespresso machine for when things get desperate.

Best song to brew coffee to:

The Crazy Frog by Axel F or anything by the Dixie Chicks. Duh.

Look into the crystal ball—where do you see yourself in 20 years?

I haven’t even been in coffee for two years yet, so seriously, who knows!

What’d you eat for breakfast this morning?

When did you last drink coffee?

Earlier today!

What was it?

Our coverage of the Sprudge Twenty interviews presented by Pacific Barista Series. Read more about the Sprudge Twenty and see all of our interviews here.

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.

The post Cill Fisher: The Sprudge Twenty Interview appeared first on Sprudge.

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/the-funny-thing-about-rachel-brosnahan/

The Funny Thing About Rachel Brosnahan

There’s a moment in the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel when the title character, a 1950s housewife turned up-and-coming stand-up comic, has to work a new type of room. Until now, she’s peddled her jokes mostly to pals at parties and small crowds at the cramped Gaslight Cafe—manageable groups, filled with friendly and slightly drunk faces. This time, though, she’s up against her biggest audience yet—an awareness that hit Rachel Brosnahan, who embodies Miriam “Midge” Maisel with an almost eerie precision, like a particularly sharp punch line. “As I got up onstage to perform that scene,” she says, “I realized that it was also bigger than anything that I was used to. And then I had the realization that it’s only going to get bigger and bigger—and more and more horrifying.”

Brosnahan is laughing when she tells this story, but she’s at least slightly serious about how scary it is for her to do comedy—even now. That’s because, as she’ll tell you herself, Brosnahan is emphatically not a comedian. She is, however, an actress—old-school, Method-trained, perhaps just the teensiest bit Type A. As a kid, she spent hours crafting a PowerPoint presentation in hopes of persuading her parents to let her get a dog. And as a 28-year-old, she channels that same energy into research. While preparing to play the title character in Amy Sherman-Palladino’s criminally charming comedy, Brosnahan didn’t just immerse herself in the work of Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller and Jean Carroll and Carol Burnett. She also made a habit of attending open mikes, so-called “bringer” shows, where wannabe comics must deliver a certain number of spectators if they want to secure a spot onstage.

Brosnahan didn’t get that dog until right before she went to college, but the care she took for Mrs. Maisel paid off immediately. The series, which Amazon has already renewed through its third season, is delightful, a candy-colored screwball throwback that easily stands out among television’s dour biggest hits (Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, HBO’s Westworld, FX’s dearly departed The Americans). Season One debuted last November 29; less than two weeks later, the series earned two Golden Globe nominations, for best comedy and for Brosnahan’s performance. It won both. At the Emmys, it will compete with 14 nominations, including outstanding comedy series and Brosnahan for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series.

Photograph by Erik Madigan Heck. For additional information, visit vf.com/credits.

All that, and Brosnahan still hasn’t performed stand-up outside the confines of a soundstage. “I think that would prevent me from ever being able to do this job,” she says. “I’d be so traumatized.” Instead, when she goes to comedy shows, she dedicates herself to being the world’s most supportive spectator. “Having even had a taste of what it’s like,” says Brosnahan, “I am the one laughing the loudest at everybody’s jokes in the back, because I want them to feel seen and heard and encouraged.”

That’s true even when the comedians are practiced and the environs are significantly slicker. Case in point: this breezy June night, when she’s taking a break from Mrs. Maisel’s corsets and tongue-tripping monologues to catch a show at Caveat, a surprisingly roomy basement venue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Once, Midge Maisel may have visited this neighborhood to hunt for Judaica and discounted leather goods; now it’s a yuppie paradise where Russ & Daughters will add a schmear of goat’s-milk cream cheese to your everything bagel for just $4. In her jeans, leather jacket, and subtly chic gold-framed glasses—a far cry from Midge’s nipped waists and full, rustling skirts—Brosnahan fits right in.

“I’m late to every party. But when I arrive, I arrive.”

When comedians Dave Mizzoni and Matt Rogers take the stage, Brosnahan is the first person in the crowd to jump to her feet. (She’s not just being nice; the three of them went to N.Y.U. together, and other friends are in the audience tonight as well.) She laughs gamely and generously as the evening unfolds, even on the occasions when Mizzoni’s and Rogers’s very targeted references—the name of this program is “The Gayme Show,” and its tagline is “Exactly what you think”—whiz right past her.

Spending 16 hours a day surrounded by Eisenhower-era culture doesn’t leave a person much time to study the complete works of Frankie Grande (Ariana’s brother) or prolific YouTuber and Taylor Swift bestie Todrick Hall—or even to keep up with old co-workers. At one point, an extended riff on the new Ryan Murphy drama, Pose, ends with a pointed crack about series regular Kate Mara. Until she hears the joke, Brosnahan has no idea that Mara—who, like her, was a regular on House of Cards—is appearing on Pose or that Pose has already premiered.

“I don’t have a TV,” she says with a sigh. “I am living in 1957.”

If she woke up one morning and decided to become an expert on the life and times of pop-star-adjacent Instagram stars, though, there’s no question Brosnahan would excel. She may not be as brash as Midge Maisel, who memorably finishes her first impromptu stand-up performance by exposing herself to a crowd of roaring Beatniks, but she’s nearly as self-assured, and every bit as capable. She’s subverted expectations on bigger stages than this one, after all.

“I’m late to every party,” Brosnahan says by way of apology to Mara. “But when I arrive, I arrive.”

Before she read the Mrs. Maisel script, Brosnahan was planning to turn away from TV and toward theater and film. After, there was no question that Midge had to be hers.

Photograph by Erik Madigan Heck.

Objectively speaking, Brosnahan is being modest. She certainly didn’t arrive late to Hollywood: even before graduating from N.Y.U., in 2012, she was steadily booking bit parts on Gossip Girl, The Good Wife, and In Treatment. The roles were small but professional all the same, as essential to a budding acting career as a one a.m. open-mike slot is to a would-be Sarah Silverman.

“I’ve played Eating Disorder Girl, Girl, Call Girl—many types of girl,” she says, laughing. “That’s my type, all types of girl.” It’s a few hours before “The Gayme Show,” and Brosnahan is picking at a giant slice of carrot cake. Crowds of pastrami-seeking tourists have foiled our original plan to visit Katz’s Delicatessen; instead, we’ve settled into a squishy booth at the self-consciously retro Remedy Diner, a dead ringer for the vintage greasy spoons where Midge Maisel and her curmudgeonly manager, Susie (Alex Borstein), talk set lists over coffee and French fries.

Simple as these starter characters were, Brosnahan was savvy enough to see their value. Being last on the call sheet allowed her to listen, and observe, and take risks in a low-stakes environment before returning to the safe space of N.Y.U.’s Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute—where she could “ask questions, and study, and try to get better. And then try it again.”

As her undergraduate career wound to a close, Brosnahan’s persistence led her to the ultimate “girl” role: a throwaway part in the first two episodes of a new political drama called House of Cards, that of a nameless prostitute. Her handful of lines included uninspiring utterances like “Excuse me” and “I mean, I’m kinky, but I don’t know if I’m the girl you’re looking for.”

Former show-runner Beau Willimon saw potential in Brosnahan’s raw, arresting performance and her immediate chemistry with actor Michael Kelly, who plays pathologically loyal future White House chief of staff Doug Stamper. Soon, he expanded Call Girl into a proper part, one that had an arc and a backstory and a name. One that would, a few years later, earn Brosnahan an Emmy nomination for outstanding guest actress in a drama. Kelly, who received his first Emmy nomination the same year, credits her work with elevating his own.

“I was sitting at the lunch table when Beau said, ‘I think we got to give you a name,’” Kelly recalls.

The one Willimon settled on, funny enough, was “Rachel,” which inspired some mild protest from Brosnahan: “I was like, What?! Why?! That’s so fucked up!”

“Rachel was not afraid to not fall apart. She was not afraid to be angry and to stay tough.”

It was, as was Rachel the character’s sorry existence, which began when she was caught beside a drunk-driving congressman and ended, two seasons later, in a shallow grave somewhere in the New Mexico desert. (No wonder Amy Sherman-Palladino likes to classify Brosnahan’s pre–Mrs. Maisel parts as “the girl that someone’s tied up and thrown in the back of a van.”)

But House of Cards also offered another education for Brosnahan—taught her the ins and outs of having a significant part on a prestige series at the dawn of the peak-TV era—and gave her an outlet to display the dark side of her sense of humor, if only among her peers when the cameras weren’t rolling. She and Kelly, her most frequent scene partner, grew close enough that even filming her final moments ended up being a blast; scroll back far enough on her Instagram, and you’ll find a sweet snapshot of the two of them contentedly spooning in the dusty hole that will eventually house Call Girl Rachel’s lifeless body.

Then there’s the matter of Fake Rachel’s dead-eyed head, a silicone model designed solely to be buried. “On my phone somewhere, there are some pictures of Michael and Beau and I making out with Rachel’s head,” Brosnahan says, sounding simultaneously sheepish and proud. “It’s really—it’s dark.”

Though she couldn’t have known it at the time, this was also decent practice for Mrs. Maisel—whose surface whimsy conceals more than a hint of bleakness. The series begins at the end of an era for Midge Maisel—née Weissman—who has spent the entirety of her young life meticulously ticking every box on a very strict, self-imposed rubric for feminine success. She’s a Bryn Mawr graduate with an alabaster complexion and a 25-inch waist; she’s given her husband, the feckless but amiable Joel (Michael Zegen), two children, a boy and a girl. She’s secured the community’s most prominent rabbi as a guest for her upcoming Yom Kippur break-fast. If there were any justice, Midge would spend the rest of her days tending to her picture-perfect family, indulgently accompanying Joel on his jaunts to Greenwich Village comedy clubs until the two of them got old and gray and ditched Manhattan for Longboat Key.

And then Joel delivers his sucker punch. “I just don’t want this life, this whole Upper West Side, classic six, best seats in temple,” he tells Midge, after an embarrassing attempt at delivering his own jokes at the Gaslight. Oh, and he’s also been sleeping with his secretary, a skinny shiksa named Penny Pann. Sherman-Palladino and her husband and collaborator, Dan Palladino, asked every actress they considered for Midge to read three scenes in their audition, including the big breakup.

“Most of the actresses, great actresses, came in and broke down—fell apart, as sometimes you will when somebody walks out on your life,” Sherman-Palladino says. “And Rachel was not afraid to not fall apart. She was not afraid to be angry and to stay tough. Because the thing about that scene is it was not there to show her vulnerability. That scene was there to show that pain brought out the comic’s voice.”

Brosnahan in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Photograph by Nicole Rivelli/©Amazon/Courtesy of Everett Collection.

Photograph by Sarah Shatz/©Amazon/Courtesy of Everett Collection.

Sure enough, shortly after Joel up and leaves—packing his things in Midge’s suitcase, a final insult to injury—Midge ends up back at the Gaslight, sloshed on kosher wine, and wanders onto the stage. Before she knows it, she’s telling a roomful of strangers every sordid detail of her wrecked marriage, but sculpting the story so it sounds amusing rather than pathetic. She heckles one dim-witted audience member; she interrupts her stream of consciousness to talk real estate with another. In the midst of explaining why she made a perfect wife, she announces that there’s no truth to “all that shit they say about Jewish girls in the bedroom᠁ There are French whores standing around the Marais district saying, ‘Did you hear what Midge did to Joel’s balls the other night?’ ” She doesn’t stop until the police show up to book her for public indecency and performing without a cabaret license, and even they can’t keep her from landing one last zinger as she gestures toward her exposed breasts: “You think Bob Newhart’s got a set of these at home? Rickles, maybe!”

The performance is spontaneous and exhilarating and very, very funny, everything that Joel isn’t—and from the moment she grabs the mike, it’s clear that both Midge and the actress playing her are going to be big, bright shining stars.

Sherman-Palladino, still best known as the creator of the fast-talking, culturally omnivorous Gilmore Girls, has no shortage of colorful descriptors for her newest muse. In her eyes, Brosnahan is simply not human: “She’s a space alien, or she’s some sort of magical creature, or—I believe I’ve described her before as a Tolkien character. She’s just, she’s just kind of not of this earth.” Then again, Brosnahan’s appeal as a performer may be even more elemental. “She’s a very smart girl, and she understands things—which is 90 percent of the job.”

Born in Milwaukee and raised in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Brosnahan was a shy and serious kid who spent much of her time immersed in fantasy—Harry Potter, Roald Dahl, the kiddie adventure novels of Enid Blyton. During the summers, which she spent with her mother’s family in England, she’d work her way through an entire carry-on bag filled with books before replacing them all with new volumes for the trip home.

Her family, she says, tends more toward the athletic than the arty. (They obviously have a creative side as well; one of her father’s sisters was the designer Kate Spade, who died in June.) Brosnahan herself is a snowboarder as well as a former high-school wrestler—a fact that greatly amused Sherman-Palladino—but also fell for acting at an early age: “Something about the transformational process just felt magical, like a lot of those books.”

It’s easy to picture Brosnahan as a thoughtful little bookworm, a Hermione Granger type with a slightly morbid edge. Even now, she speaks with the careful deliberation of someone who values and understands the weight of words; her diction is flawless, with crisply pronounced consonants and no trace of a midwestern twang. “You work with her on set, and then off set you’ll kind of chat with her—and then you’re occasionally reminded that she’s 28 years old,” says Dan Palladino. Sherman-Palladino had a rude awakening along those lines when she told Brosnahan that she resembled a more smiley Tracy Flick: “She’s like, ‘Who’s that?’ I’m like, ‘Election?’ She goes, ‘What?’ And I’m 100. I’ve officially—I just turned 100.”

“I’ve played Eating Disorder Girl, Girl, Call Girl—many types of girl,” Brosnahan says of her early roles.

Photograph by Erik Madigan Heck.

So perhaps it comes as no surprise that Brosnahan wasn’t the most obvious choice to play Midge, a gregarious macher who speaks as quickly as, well, a woman dreamed up by Amy Sherman-Palladino. David Oyelowo, who played Othello to Brosnahan’s Desdemona in New York Theatre Workshop’s 2016 production, said in an e-mail that his co-star was worried about Mrs. Maisel initially because she didn’t consider herself to be funny. (“She is of course saying this while we’re taking silly selfies backstage just before I had to go onstage and murder her,” he added.) Brosnahan isn’t even Jewish—though Highland Park itself was Jewish enough, she says, that she’s been to “hundreds of Bar Mitzvahs, Bat Mitzvahs. I could maybe Bat Mitzvah you.”

Going into her Mrs. Maisel audition, though, Brosnahan had two things working in her favor. The first was that she’d recently finished playing a Jewish wife and mother with a well-to-do background and an enviable wardrobe on the little-watched but very good WGN America drama Manhattan, set within the desert compound where American scientists raced to design and build the first atomic bomb. Sam Shaw, that show’s creator, remembers that Brosnahan originally wanted to play the role of physicist Helen Prins. She worried that Abby Isaacs, the part she ended up getting, “would become Wife No. 3, like signing on for seven years of making crudités or something,” he says. But while Abby was not the show’s lead, she wasn’t a background character, either. The part gave Brosnahan an opportunity to imbue a woman of a bygone era with real depth, and to learn how to navigate restrictive, period-appropriate shapewear. (“I have learned so much about undergarments,” she says, deadpan. “And I truly don’t understand how anybody survived the 50s.”)

The second thing working in Brosnahan’s favor was that she wanted the part of Midge Maisel. Like, really wanted it, maybe more than anything since her parents got her that dog. Before she read the Mrs. Maisel script, Brosnahan was planning to turn away from TV and toward theater and film. After, there was no question that Midge had to be hers. She’s the kind of character, Brosnahan says, that “I often don’t see represented on television—somebody who is unapologetically confident, who has an innate sense of self-empowerment, who isn’t afraid to pat herself on the back for accomplishing goals. And who’s unapologetically ambitious.” While Midge is charming and lovable, she’s also superficial and flighty and a breathtakingly terrible mother who measures her baby’s forehead when she’s worried it’s getting too big; a flawed, recognizably human person, rather than a plucky proto-feminist who conforms precisely to 21st-century ideals.

That’s catnip for a determined young actress—and for a viewing audience beaten down by a news cycle of ever mounting tragedy and violence, not to mention a TV landscape dominated by dreariness. Even the comedies sharing Emmy space with Mrs. Maisel (Atlanta, Barry) are as likely to punch viewers in the gut as they are to make them laugh. “It’s a pretty shit time to be alive, and this show’s like a little ant moving a rubber-tree plant,” says Alex Borstein, who plays Susie, the wannabe agent who persuades Midge to pursue showbiz in a serious way. “You want to see these two people succeed. It’s a breath of fresh air.”

That was especially true in November, when the series debuted its full first season just as the #MeToo movement was reaching its zenith. It was a moment when every Twitter refresh seemed to expose a new, horrifying story of sexual misconduct. And then came Mrs. Maisel, a burst of cleansing light—colorful, fast-paced, sunny as an old-fashioned musical, but without anyone breaking into song. Ironically, it’s one of the only female-oriented shows that was green-lighted by former Amazon Studios head Roy Price before he resigned last October, after being accused of sexual harassment himself. (Price has not commented on the allegations.) Though there’s some darkness at its core, Mrs. Maisel is, above all, the jubilant story of a talented woman who works hard, triumphing over the odds and her mediocre loser of a husband. It is, as Brosnahan points out, partly a fantasy. But what a fantasy.

Though there’s some darkness at its core, Mrs. Maisel is, above all, the jubilant story of a talented woman who works hard, triumphing over the odds.

Photograph by Erik Madigan Heck.

It’s impossible to know to what extent Mrs. Maisel’s exultant reception has been affected by fortuitous timing. Brosnahan grows more thoughtful than usual when asked whether she believes it was, noting that the show’s story would be inspiring no matter the surrounding context. But possibly, she continues, Mrs. Maisel had an even greater impact because it debuted at a time when “we’re talking about women finding voices they didn’t know they had,” and—her words coming faster now, and more emphatically—“young people finding voices they didn’t know they had. This is a theme of the moment.”

Brosnahan has given a lot of thought to The Moment and, more specifically, to its momentum—how her industry, and all industries, can parlay this surge of righteous anger into lasting change. Though she’s never been a particularly active social-media user, she’s backed away from Twitter, she says, “because it just feels like we’re all shouting into a vacuum, and I’m trying to focus more on taking those active statements out of Twitter and into the real world.”

As her star rises, Brosnahan has also found herself being more careful about the things she posts online—for practical reasons, as well as the understandable desire to keep her private life private. “As somebody who’s always felt like a pretty open book, I find myself being very protective of whatever the elusive real me is,” she says. Famous performers sometimes become celebrities first and actors second, a fate that would have robbed Brosnahan of her prized ability to disappear fully into a role. (That said, she does have a very cute Instagram largely devoted to her dogs: a Shiba Inu named Winston and a pit bull named Nikki.)

Brosnahan doesn’t just hope to keep her on-screen options open. She’d love to do another play in the near-ish future, to produce, to direct. She wants to see and make more stories that focus on the nuances of female friendship, like one of her current favorite shows, Issa Rae’s Insecure. She’s already developing a pilot with a couple of friends, one that focuses on young people in politics. Brosnahan doesn’t plan to star in the show, but perhaps it’ll be a stepping-stone to the next phase in her career—just as those “girl” parts led to House of Cards led to Manhattan led to Mrs. Maisel.

As of now, Brosnahan’s success hasn’t had a hugely measurable impact on her day-to-day life. She can walk her dogs in broad daylight without being swarmed; she can laugh at a comedian’s joke about Oprah without anyone around her recognizing that she actually knows Oprah. (Or at least said hello to Oprah from the stage after winning a Golden Globe.) The biggest shift, she says, is that people finally know how to pronounce “Brosnahan.” But if she keeps climbing the way Mrs. Maisel’s heroine certainly will, all this could change as well.

Remember, she admires Midge for being unapologetically ambitious. And when asked if she’d describe herself the same way, Brosnahan doesn’t hesitate: “Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah!” Then, after a brief, perfectly timed beat, the TV comedian turns to the magazine reporter and nails another punch line: “How about you?”

Clothing by Valentino; boots by Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood. Throughout: hair products by Bumble and Bumble; makeup by Chanel; nail enamel by Zoya.

Get Vanity Fair’s HWD Newsletter

Full ScreenPhotos: Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and Her Many Hats

January 7, 2018

Hats off to the Sherman-Palladinos, husband-and-wife writing team.

Photo: By Kevork Djansezian/NBC/Getty Images.

January 10, 2013

A top hat in her Bunheads days.

Photo: By Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images.

March 19, 2012

With Sutton Foster on the red carpet for Bunheads (hence the angelic blue bow, we assume).

Photo: By Heidi Gutman/Getty Images.

November 13, 2017

The higher the top hat, the closer to god.

Photo: By Steve Zak Photography/Getty Images.

November 09, 2017

And still squarely in Dickens’s world.

Photo: By John Stillwell/PA Images/Getty Images.

April 21, 2003

A rare sun hat in her Gilmore Girls days.

Photo: By Mathew Imaging/Getty Images.

May 24, 2017

And an even more rare tan hat on the set of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Photo: By Bobby Bank/Getty Images.

PreviousNext

January 7, 2018

Hats off to the Sherman-Palladinos, husband-and-wife writing team.

By Kevork Djansezian/NBC/Getty Images.

January 10, 2013

A top hat in her Bunheads days.

By Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images.

March 19, 2012

With Sutton Foster on the red carpet for Bunheads (hence the angelic blue bow, we assume).

By Heidi Gutman/Getty Images.

November 13, 2017

The higher the top hat, the closer to god.

By Steve Zak Photography/Getty Images.

November 18, 2016

On the Netflix red carpet for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Recall the fantastical dance number in the last episode of that season, where top hats had an important role.

By Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images.

October 29, 2016

Moving into Dickens territory here.

By Emma McIntyre/Getty Images.

November 09, 2017

And still squarely in Dickens’s world.

By John Stillwell/PA Images/Getty Images.

April 21, 2003

A rare sun hat in her Gilmore Girls days.

By Mathew Imaging/Getty Images.

May 24, 2017

And an even more rare tan hat on the set of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

By Bobby Bank/Getty Images.

Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/08/rachel-brosnahan-cover-story

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endlessarchite · 6 years

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Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta

It’s becoming almost a tradition now… whenever I visit a DIY pal at their home, I seem to want to get my hands dirty by helping them with a project. In this case… very dirty with Saving Etta!

If you haven’t been following along with Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl and her Saving Etta project, you’ll see lots more info on that below. But first, I’m going to start from the beginning on what prompted my trip to visit her and the other (non-old-house-filth-covered) fun we had with Sandra from Sawdust Girl too! Consider this post a play-by-play on what it would be like to tag along with the three of us for the weekend.

Being a DIY or remodeling blogger is… a weird job, to say the least. Between photography (which takes a little getting used to — trying to remember to stop, take off your safety gloves for a photo while there’s enough light, get back to work — it really takes time to “train” yourself to do it!), planning your schedules, getting things just right on social media so it reaches people, the actual writing, time for labor/the work itself, maintaining a website, finding appropriate sponsors (and saying no to all of the bad ones), negotiating contracts and conference calls with brands, editing photos, improving your skills on all of the above through training classes, styling interiors, making sure you aren’t a total moron with building codes and remodeling skills, etc….

…basically, it’s a lot to get. If you’re lucky, you can hire out some of these things, but many of us (like me) do a little bit of everything by ourselves. And no one really gets that quite like another remodeling blogger, especially the mentorship aspect of it. That catching up and camaraderie and sense that they go through similar obstacles is very comforting. But we also don’t live near each other and we stay immersed in our own to-do lists 24/7, which is why Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl and Sandra from Sawdust Girl and I (and others) have begun to make more effort to see each other in person at least once a year. Unlike the go-go-go agenda of attending a conference (like Haven and early next year I’ll be going to a woodworking one), this kind of get-together is more relaxed. We still work (I even brought a project of mine so I could use one of Brittany’s tools to meet a deadline this past week), but it’s also full of great memories with some close friends.These two ladies not only do the blogging juggling act like I do, they also raise families and are beginning their own restoration/flip houses, and I’m soooo excited to see them advancing to bigger and more amazing things. Being friends with people you consider your mentors is a really incredible thing, and I feel very blessed I get to call these ladies my friends.

As I said, I was in the middle of a project (or eight) but we’d been planning this trip for a few months, so I simply packed up the most urgent project with my luggage on Friday afternoon and hit the 5 1/2 hour road trip to visit Brittany at her home. I’d never actually been to her house before (our group trip last year was actually to a beach with Leen from Sand Dollar Lane and Karah from The Space Between who couldn’t make it this time, unfortunately). So, it was quite a treat when you feel like you’ve visited someone else’s home many times via the web and then actually step foot inside. Her house is much bigger than I thought, and her craft space is no joke one of the most organized places I’ve ever seen that also happens to have glitter inside of it (trust me, that’s no easy feat). Still, despite her fantastic hospitality, the real star for me was her pup, Bandit. Just… he’s so damn sweet and I adored him from the moment we met.

All of the hearts for this sweet pup. <3 <3 <3 (photo: Brittany)

Sandra arrived first, so once I got to Brittany’s, we immediately sat down on Friday night to just talk blog, life, projects, etc. before hitting the hay.

Saturday: Just for Fun

The next morning, I got up uncharacteristically early to knock out a few emails and photo edits until the house started stirring. We then tuned in to another online pal of ours (Youtuber and seasoned DIY pro, April Wilkerson) to see her pilot (House Hacks) on HGTV. After sending her some quick goofy videos letting her know we were watching, we then made a late breakfast, talked projects, and came up with our game plan for the day.

The first place we stopped was Brittany’s house project, which she has nicknamed “Saving Etta” — an old home that is in such disrepair, you really should go watch her Facebook live video of mine and Sandra’s reactions as we walked around for the first time! She also shared with us the future plans, the layout, and what the upper floor will look like once added (so cool!). If anyone can bring back this home’s former glory, it’s definitely Brittany. It looks incredibly scary at this stage, but I was incredibly excited at the entire idea of eventually taking on an old home myself. I’d need to get a contractor’s license (probably) for such a thing, but for now I’ll live vicariously through her updates (btw, Sandra also has her own project house she’s working on, which you can see right here).

Next, we were all in need of a caffeine boost and stopped by Sola Coffee… a local place that also gave me a lot of DIY ideas to ponder over (I’ve been brainstorming a way to make my own curtain rods throughout the house but wanted a unique twist, and I think I’ve found it!).

After visiting a small pop-up market (where we ran into Liz from My Grandmother’s Old Singer — hi!!) and lunch at Relish, we then spent the late afternoon shopping around for holiday decorations and hugging giant apes at Homegoods.

Back at Brittany’s for the rest of the evening, we chose to take it easy with some pizza and painting, but we needed to do a little DIY first. Brittany found a gift at Homegoods she wanted to hack (it came on really cheap wood and she wanted to beef it up with some of her own scrap), while I took the opportunity to work on the woodworking project I’d brought with me. Thank goodness for friends with band saws!

If you think I’m shallow enough to quick-edit my double chin from this photo, you’re absolutely right. ;)

Sunday: Getting to Work

It’s no surprise that a weekend like this one was going to go by quick, so I finished up a few more steps on my project after breakfast while Sandra got packed up to head back home. Originally I’d planned to stay an entire extra day, but I’d gotten some news about a delivery I would need to be back at home for, so Brittany and I tried to make the most out of the rest of the afternoon by working on Etta:

I’ve never worked on a house with this much demo, and despite my experience in repairing drywall, the whole lath-and-plaster thing was a big change, too. And HEAVY!

But we managed to knock out the rest of the job in one of the first rooms to take out the lath and plaster, preserve as many of the original baseboards as possible, and clean up the debris — giving me a deeper appreciation for what Brittany has in store with the rest of the house. Phew!

As soon as I got back to Brittany’s, my project had finished drying and it was time to head home. I did a quick change and hopped in the car, spending the next 5 1/2 hours singing to a road trip playlist and being grateful I actually remembered to take a few photos of the trip.

I needed the whole next day to recover, and I doubt that was just because of the time change! Maybe next year, we’ll actually sit down a little more (but then again, that wouldn’t really be what we enjoy).

DIY remodeling is hardly glamorous.

How was your weekend? Work on anything special? P.S., I’ve got a NEW ROOM I’m getting started on that I need to show you a “before” tour of soon and the reveal of that project I mentioned is going live on the 11th, so check back in soon!

The post Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

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Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

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endlessarchite · 6 years

Text

Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta

It’s becoming almost a tradition now… whenever I visit a DIY pal at their home, I seem to want to get my hands dirty by helping them with a project. In this case… very dirty with Saving Etta!

All of the hearts for this sweet pup. <3 <3 <3 (photo: Brittany)

Sandra arrived first, so once I got to Brittany’s, we immediately sat down on Friday night to just talk blog, life, projects, etc. before hitting the hay.

Saturday: Just for Fun

Next, we were all in need of a caffeine boost and stopped by Sola Coffee�� a local place that also gave me a lot of DIY ideas to ponder over (I’ve been brainstorming a way to make my own curtain rods throughout the house but wanted a unique twist, and I think I’ve found it!).

If you think I’m shallow enough to quick-edit my double chin from this photo, you’re absolutely right. ;)

Sunday: Getting to Work

I’ve never worked on a house with this much demo, and despite my experience in repairing drywall, the whole lath-and-plaster thing was a big change, too. And HEAVY!

DIY remodeling is hardly glamorous.

The post Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

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endlessarchite · 6 years

Text

Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta

It’s becoming almost a tradition now… whenever I visit a DIY pal at their home, I seem to want to get my hands dirty by helping them with a project. In this case… very dirty with Saving Etta!

All of the hearts for this sweet pup. <3 <3 <3 (photo: Brittany)

Sandra arrived first, so once I got to Brittany’s, we immediately sat down on Friday night to just talk blog, life, projects, etc. before hitting the hay.

Saturday: Just for Fun

If you think I’m shallow enough to quick-edit my double chin from this photo, you’re absolutely right. ;)

Sunday: Getting to Work

I’ve never worked on a house with this much demo, and despite my experience in repairing drywall, the whole lath-and-plaster thing was a big change, too. And HEAVY!

DIY remodeling is hardly glamorous.

The post Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

0 notes

endlessarchite · 6 years

Text

Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta

It’s becoming almost a tradition now… whenever I visit a DIY pal at their home, I seem to want to get my hands dirty by helping them with a project. In this case… very dirty with Saving Etta!

All of the hearts for this sweet pup. <3 <3 <3 (photo: Brittany)

Sandra arrived first, so once I got to Brittany’s, we immediately sat down on Friday night to just talk blog, life, projects, etc. before hitting the hay.

Saturday: Just for Fun

If you think I’m shallow enough to quick-edit my double chin from this photo, you’re absolutely right. ;)

Sunday: Getting to Work

I’ve never worked on a house with this much demo, and despite my experience in repairing drywall, the whole lath-and-plaster thing was a big change, too. And HEAVY!

DIY remodeling is hardly glamorous.

The post Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

Visiting Raleigh with My Remodeling Besties — and the HARD Work of Saving Etta published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

0 notes