#kristina writes tiny stories
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1.holy shit ayesha i just found your blog after what, six, seven years? i don't know when/if you'll see this but i was this tiny thirteen year old on tumblr, absolutely goggle-eyed over jily and everyone within the jily fanfic circle (what was it called? you guys had a name im sure). i'm 18 and in my first year of uni rn, and it just struck me how time really FLIES. i was feeling a little low and impulsively decided to binge jily fanfics (something i havent done in close to half a decade) and it
2. all just came flooding back. the amount of time i spent reading jily fic! staying up till 4am writing my own terrible stories on the back of my school notebooks! some of the happiest, most creative years i've spent have been with you guys tbh, soaking in everything. i'm so delighted your blog's still up - it's like a small pocket of my girlhood, a window into the past. much much love and i hope you're doing well. (we never talked or interacted much, but i held you in very high esteem). <3
Omg, this is such a sweet message to receive! Similarly, I did spend a lot of my teenhood in that HP/Jily space. I'm so glad that the conversations and space were a happy place for you!! It feels like such a creative whirlwind and wild time in retrospect, and especially where now I don't really feel the connection to HP itself anymore, I am so glad to have had created some good memories with wonderful people.
Hahaha, I can't say I ever particularly felt connected with a group name myself (aside from Brorgy, shout-out to Katie, Kristina, and Todd), but I do still have 'never be royals' and 'moviepaloozaparty' in my tracked tags, in the remnants of group chat names from that time.
I'm glad that my blog can serve as that window. Time really does fly; this blog has been up for ten years. I definitely still hang out on the internet and share interests; they're just a bit different now! I think I'll always love this kind media engagement and creative outlet. I'm very flattered that any of it has made an impact.
Congratulations on being in your first year in uni. Hope it goes well for you! Much love to you, and thank you for sharing such a lovely sentiment. <3
#anonymous#asks for ts#i think this is part of why i don't change my url! it's like part of my name now and how my friends may know me
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Jiujiu Gets A Puppy
Wei Wuxian wants to get Jiang Cheng a gift.
He’s trying to be brave, okay? And no one can be afraid of dogs forever. Have you SEEN puppies?
There’s now a part 2! Mao’er Makes A Friend
Read more Kristina Writes Tiny Stories
“Please don’t make me do this. I don’t want to do this.” Wei Wuxian knew he was whining and hoped it worked.
It did not.
“This was your idea,” Lan Zhan reminded him implacably. He continued to move up the stairs at an unnecessarily brisk pace, in Wei Wuxian’s opinion.
“It was a terrible idea. Why do we let me have ideas?” Wei Wuxian tugged Lan Zhan’s sleeve.
“It is a good idea. A kind and thoughtful idea because you are a kind and thoughtful man.”
Instead of pausing, Lan Zhan moved his arm around Wei Wuxian’s waist and propelled him forward.
“That’s not true. Ask anyone.”
Finally, Lan Zhan stopped. “Wei Ying. Do you truly want to leave?”
The genuine concern in his voice made Wei Wuxian feel guilty. He switched tactics.
“Why do I have to do it myself? Couldn’t we just have Jin Ling pick one out and send it to Jiang Cheng with our compliments?” He thought this was a particularly good plan, but Lan Zhan shook his head.
“Jin Ling said if you pick it out yourself, you will be less likely to be afraid when it grows up.”
“What if I’m afraid of it now?” The whining was back, and this time he actually meant it. The thought of going near a slobbering toothy monster weighed like a heavy stone in his gut.
“Wei Ying.” This time Lan Zhan’s voice was soft and soothing. He took Wei Wuxian’s hand and pulled him up the last stair. “They were only born a week ago. Jin Ling says you will be safe.”
Wei Wuxian snorted. “What does he know? He’s a child.”
“Thanks, da-jiu.” The young man striding toward them had a frown on his face. “Now I am sorry I left the rest of my dogs inside.”
Attempting to distract Jin Ling from that terrifying thought, Wei Wuxian laughed and bypassed propriety, folding his nephew into an enthusiastic hug. Jin Ling accepted it for a brief moment, having learned it was hopeless to argue, before pushing Wei Wuxian away.
“Come on, then. Even you can’t hate a newborn puppy.”
Wei Wuxian hesitated, but his traitorous husband followed Jin Ling across the plaza, and eventually Wei Wuxian had to jog to catch up.
To his surprise, they didn’t go to the dog yards behind the stables. One of the first things Jin Ling had done after officially being named the Lanling Jin zongzhu was to start getting dogs. It had seriously made Wei Wuxian doubt his nephew’s sanity, but he had to admit, it was nice of Jin Ling to build the low, tidy buildings to keep the dogs when Wei Wuxian visited. The gesture had made for a peaceful three years of visits.
Instead, they headed through one of the inner courtyards of Lanling Tower to the guest quarters that were set aside for his and Lan Zhan’s use.
“We can only stay for a few minutes. They’re too young to be away from their mother for very long and I thought you’d rather not encounter a full grown dog,” Jin Ling explained as they entered the room, and Wei Wuxian looked at him suspiciously, the words sounding a bit too much like mocking.
There was a huge wooden box in the center of their room and it was making noise. A squeaking noise. Wei Wuxian decided he would be fine here by the door, but he didn’t get a choice.
“I know you’re rolling your eyes,” he complained when Lan Zhan tucked an arm around Wei Wuxian’s elbow and dragged him forward.
“Da-jiu, just sit here,” Jin Ling said, gesturing to a wide cushion on the floor. “I’ll bring you a puppy.”
“Lan Zhan, just sit here,” Wei Wuxian said, gesturing to the cushion, and without rolling his eyes, Lan Zhan did, letting Wei Wuxian settle in front of him.
He knew it was foolish, to be a grown man afraid of dogs. He had fallen from the sky into hell. He had died. He had watched so many people he loved leave him and yet it was always the sound of barking, the expected flash of teeth, the feral eyes that made reason abandon him. He scooted backward until he ran into Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan.
He repeated the name over and over in his head, a calming mantra, while he watched Jin Ling. His nephew’s face looked completely different crouched next to the box. He was softer, his mouth tipped in a sweet smile, and Wei Wuxian could suddenly imagine him as a toddler. Or a child, being handed his first dog by his uncle, and Wei Wuxian was suddenly sorry that it hadn’t been him.
And then Jin Ling was sitting in front of him, and Wei Wuxian felt Lan Zhan’s steading hand in the middle of his back.
“Their eyes are just starting to open, but this one’s hasn’t yet,” Jin Ling told Wei Wuxian, holding out his cupped hands.
Wei Wuxian didn’t really want to touch it, but he couldn’t help it. It was so small, it could hardly be called a dog at all. It made a strange grunting noise when he touched its nose, and he jumped, looking at Jin Ling with worry.
“Is it okay? Should it make that noise?”
Jin Ling was clearly making an effort to be patient. “She’s fine. She’s just a baby. Puppies are hungry all the time, so anytime you touch their face, they think you’re going to feed them. I’m going to hand her to you now, okay? Please don’t drop my puppy.”
Oh, that was a bad idea. That was a much worse idea. He tried to say no, but Lan Zhan interrupted him.
“Hold the puppy, Wei Ying, and I will hold your hands.”
Jin Ling slid the puppy into Wei Wuxian’s cupped hands, supported by Lan Zhan’s hands, and it made the noise again, this time accompanied by wiggling on his palms like a fat furry fish. He could feel her tiny toes digging into his skin, but it didn’t hurt, just tickled. He looked at Jin Ling, who was hiding a smile.
Wei Wuxian held the puppy up a little higher and peered into her black and white face. As Jin Ling had said, her eyes were closed, and her ears were barely even triangles. She had a pink nose with a black smudge under it, right above her frowning mouth.
“She has eyebrows,” Wei Wuxian said in surprise. “And a mustache.”
Lan Zhan moved his hand to pet the puppy’s back and she squirmed again, grunting and crying, tracking the touch with her wobbly head. Wei Wuxian felt Lan Zhan’s delighted inhale, and he gave in a little. He was not going to admit out loud that the puppy was cute, but she was. She was very cute. He wanted to sniff the puppy and pet her nose again, but before he could make a complete fool of himself, Jin Ling moved to take her back, returning her to the box.
“Well, da-jiu? Still scared?”
“They grow up,” Wei Wuxian argued, without answering the question. “They grow up and bite.”
“Not if you raise them well and give them love,” Jin Ling retorted. “Only if you starve them and treat them badly. Are you planning to starve and abuse the puppy?”
Wei Wuxian glared at Jin Ling, who glared back before raising his eyebrows and laughing.
“You like her! Da-jiu, I’m proud of you. Come look at all of them.”
He was being condescended to by a child, Wei Wuxian thought, but he didn’t resist when Jin Ling grabbed his hand and dragged him over to the box to stare down at five wriggling potatoes. They were all different colors, from the black and white one he had held to one that was almost completely white. One rolled on its back, exposing a spotted belly, and it snorted irritably until Jin Ling turned it back over.
“Next time you come, you can pet one of the other ones. They should all have their eyes open by then. Hanguang-Jun, will you make sure he comes back every week until they’re ready to go to new homes? It should be about four months.”
“Four months?” Wei Wuxian yelped, but Jin Ling would not be dissuaded.
“Four,” he said firmly. “They’ll be weaned and trained by then. I won’t let you give one of my dogs to jiujiu until it’s been properly trained.”
“I always knew you’d be a tyrant,” Wei Wuxian muttered, following Lan Zhan back out into the courtyard.
“Well, then you shouldn’t have saved my life,” his nephew reminded him cheerfully.
Wei Wuxian turned to grab Jin Ling’s arm, remembering something serious. “Jin Ling, don’t tell Jiang Cheng. If...if I can’t do it...when they get bigger...I don’t want him to be disappointed.”
Jin Ling looked at him with his mother’s face when he patted Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. “I won’t. But you won’t disappoint him.”
It was daunting to have Jin Ling have such faith and trust in him, and Wei Wuxian took a deep breath.
“Fine. I’ll be back.”
Wei Wuxian was quiet on the walk back down the tower stairs and when they got to the bottom, Lan Zhan stopped him, angling his head curiously, waiting for Wei Wuxian to say whatever it was he was thinking.
“Do you really think this is a good idea? Or will it just remind him of all the dogs he couldn’t have because of me?”
Lan Zhan’s forehead creased in consideration, and Wei Wuxian loved him for taking his question seriously. “Yes. It is a good idea. Moving forward is a good idea.”
When Wei Wuxian still didn’t look convinced, Lan Zhan sighed. “Do you want to walk or fly with me?”
The question got the response it intended. “Fly, please.”
“Does flying with me make you happy? Or does it remind you of all the times you could not?”
Wei Wuxian narrowed his eyes. “Well, it didn’t until now,” he grumbled. “Fine, you’re right. It’s a good idea. Are we still going to fly home?”
In answer, Lan Zhan pulled him onto Bichen and Wei Wuxian wrapped his arms around Lan Zhan’s waist, resting his head on his shoulder.
“Are you proud of me too?” he whispered, not sure if Lan Zhan would hear him, but of course he did. He always did.
“Of course I am. I always am.”
And that was enough.
#the untamed#the untamed fic#wangxian#wei wuxian#lan zhan#jin ling#dogs#puppies#cql#kristina writes tiny stories#chen qing ling#mdzs#mo dao zu shi#i drew that puppy#jin ling is a crazy dog person#this is what i would do with my life if i became rich and powerful at 16#dogs dogs dogs#so many dogs#jiang cheng#lan wangji#wei ying
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Kristina Wong Is At It Again: A Critical Analysis of “Kristina Wong For Public Office”
This show highlights a change in New Play Development that can’t be erased.
@mskristinawong
By Ricky and Dana Young-Howze
@CTGLA
Review 143
Some are born to greatness, some achieve greatness, and some find themselves on the ballot of a local election after a psychedelic trip courtesy of a certain edible. Kristina Wong went on a long journey that resulted in her getting elected to a public office in Koreatown and it was an equally long journey to get to this show in the Kirk Douglas Theatre. It has everything: lights, sound, a cameraman getting his cardio in and you could never tell that the first time we saw this show it was in her tiny Koreatown apartment streaming to audiences across the nation.
Kristina Wong takes us on this road trip where she’s talking about the problems of American society and the ridiculousness of American Politics right now. By talking about these ridiculous politicians she also highlights the importance and the urgency of the problems we face as Americans. Who is going to fix them? No one else but Kristina Wong.
When we interviewed Kristina Wong about her show “Kristina Wong For Public Office” she had so much to say about all it took to get her show to be performed in a theatre as close to live as humanly possible. A quote that stuck with me that I’m going to paraphrase is “theaters are asking themselves are we really TV studios now?” I thought this dovetailed perfectly with what Kristina said in her show about politicians and artists changing roles. I thought to myself, “Did artists and theaters switch roles too?”
We are now living in a world where artists can be trying out their performances at home and delivering definitive works from their living rooms. You don’t need a theatre now to do the hard work of approving or developing your play. However it came with a downside. Kristina told us she couldn’t even get a review of her show while it was playing in her home and thanked us for our thoughts on the show. Now streaming her show from the Kirk Douglas Theatre we have found that she has gotten notice from some great publications. She’s starting to get the praise she deserves for all of the hard work we recognized when she was streaming live from her house.
Theaters really have turned into these hubs that can amplify the message and send it out to their audience and across the nation to new people. This journey that started as a frantic run around Kristina’s kitchen and moved us to tears turns into a cartoonish deep dive into the crazy soul of an artist/activist throughout the seats of an empty auditorium and on a stage adorned with a set that used to grace her living room. Theaters like Center Theatre Group now have to take on the job of making this happen and creating a platform to create the marketing, reach, and facilities that artists can’t always create themselves.
What does this mean. Well it all goes back to a maxim that Kristina has told us and has started teaching to others. “Your house becomes your dramaturge.” Whatever you’re home looks like and whatever happens becomes part of the story. However I think that we can go even further than this. I think that the development process this show represents is creating a new path for New Works to be developed and given their first production without ever having to get an approval from a bigger theatre company. Now this new process has become your dramaturge. This is also a genie that will not go back into the bottle. Kristina represents hundreds of artists that will be performing or presenting shows in venues just like this and getting reviews in the New York Times. The reason all this happened is that they picked up a camera and a ring light and figured out how to stage this show in their bathroom.
Kristina’s chaotic energy rang true in the auditorium because she had been running around her house for a month. She was eating breakfast, watching TV, appearing on interview panels looking at that set 24/7. During a talkback of her house show she talked about turning all of her lighting changes into changes of location in her house. Now she’s still running around the Kirk Douglas Theatre even though she has the lighting changes she was lacking because she tried it for a month and it worked every time.
Like I said this is a movement that is not going away. As more and more artists can write and develop their works in the low risk environment of their homes, get paid, get press, and all without having to ask a theatre administrator for permission the more people will pick this path. This is the future of new play development and it is up to venues to find out what makes them competitive in this world where they are desperately trying to keep the lights on. They need to find and recruit these artists and amplify their work knowing that the artists will return the favor and more. Kristina Wong shares her show often and that only means more press for the Center Theatre Group and hopefully more artists like Kristina making art in their venue.
Choose Kristina Wong for Public Office by getting your tickets HERE
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Hi there, my name is Nicki and I have the privilege of raising four beautiful children with my amazing husband, Asif. We are a family on a journey, in the process of getting from where we are to where we want to be. Our story is rich, filled with both high triumphs and deep dark pits. I have known that we will write about this adventure “someday,” when we have arrived at the place of our dreams, when we have achieved our goals, when we are finally “there.”
BUT, as time goes on, I am realizing that the powerful part of our story is the struggle, the loss, the hopelessness that we have experienced and still are trudging through at times. I once heard that when we tell our own story, no matter how raw or painful it may be, we then get to decide the ending, because we have taken ownership of it. Not telling our story makes us the victim of someone else’s narrative and keeps us stuck. With that in mind, I am choosing to write now, knowing that as a result, I will get to choose the ending. So here goes. . .
First, I want to welcome you into our beautiful home, which I am so grateful for. I really want you to feel like a guest in my home, so please imagine you’re here as I describe it:
My Dream Home
We live on 8 acres of land in a beautiful modern farmhouse with an open floor plan, 5 bedrooms, and 3 bathrooms. The sunlight streams in through our huge windows and we are far enough away from our neighbors that I don’t even have to close the curtains at night. My mostly white kitchen is spacious, with plenty of counter and cupboard space (gorgeous marble counters, to be specific), two ovens that I frequently bake in, and a large fridge filled with healthy food. Together as a family, we care for a flourishing garden, adorable miniature goats, chickens, barn cats and 4 dogs. I love every season in our home. The summers are spent mostly outdoors - in the pool swimming, on the deck grilling and eating, and in the backyard exploring. The fall is full of yard work and playing in leaf piles, followed with campfires in the evenings. The winter is cozy as we cuddle up in our living room by the fireplace and enjoy looking at the beautiful white world outside. And spring is spent planting our garden and cleaning up the yard in anticipation of the summer. We thoroughly enjoy taking care of our home and it is a bright, peaceful and joyful place.
What I just described here is very, very real in my mind. In my imagination, I experience every nook and cranny of this home: I feel the warm grass under my feet when I’m outside in the summer; I smell the baking of Christmas cookies in my convection oven in December; I hear the joyful sounds of my kids running around, playing freely; I taste the large meal I’ve prepared for our family and the extended family that has come for dinner; and I see the bright, open living space, filled with the furniture and colors that I love: a bit of mid-century modern, mixed with a dash of farmhouse style, sprinkled with turquoise, green and yellow accents. This is My Spacious Place. This is my home.
Where We Really Live
However, if I were to tell you about where I actually live right now, it is indeed quite far from this vision, this dream. . . no, this PROMISE of a home I just described.
Right now, our family of 6 with our 2 large, high-energy dogs, lives in a tiny, second-story, 1 bedroom apartment with no yard. And in fact, the 1 bedroom doesn’t even have a door on it. Nope, we’ve hung a curtain in the doorway of the room where our 4 children sleep every night. We have no real beds in this apartment, the kids roll out sleeping bag-type pads every night (except for the 2-year-old who is still in a crib) and Asif and I pull out part of our handy Ikea couch to transform it into a “bed.” This room is our “living room” by day and “bedroom” by night.
Our tiny kitchen has less than 3 feet of real counter space (about 1.5 feet on either side of the sink) that we supplement with more Ikea furniture: 2 mismatched wooden islands against the wall. We eat meals at our small, 15-year-old kitchen table (also from Ikea!) and share one bathroom and a shower. We don’t even have a bath tub for our young kids.
We have a room that used to be some sort of “porch” or maybe a 3-season room at the front of the apartment. It has no heat, but we need every bit of space we can get so we use an electric heater to heat this room in the winter and we endure the heat in the summer. We call it the playroom - it’s where the toys are and it’s also where I homeschool our 3 school-aged children. Thankfully, we have a large attic space where we can store stuff and I actually keep a majority of toys up there, rotating them occasionally to keep it interesting for everyone.
The kids clothes are kept in yet another piece of Ikea furniture, a cube-shaped bookshelf unit. Their clothes are in the boxes that fit into the cubes and that shelf is in the “living room.” Asif’s and my clothes are in a “closet,” that is actually just a section of the bathroom that we installed a couple of bars in for hanging clothes from.
Walking On Eggshells
Additionally, we live above 2 businesses - one is our own business, Asif’s photography studio, and the other is an architect’s office who has been there for over a decade. He had a very bad relationship with the previous apartment tenant who was a woman with her older daughter and several small “yippie” dogs. She was too loud for him. She, the single woman with a daughter who was in school 5 days a week, who was probably often working herself, was too loud.
And now we live here - we, who have 4 kids under the age of 10 who are pretty much home ALL day. We, who have a 2-year-old who jumps instead of walks to get around. We, a family who is naturally loud when we’re happy and mad, of which both emotions are expressed dozens of times daily between the 6 of us. We, who don’t have several yippie dogs but rather 2 big dogs who love to wrestle in the living room, right above the architect’s office and bark at passing dogs. And to someone working downstairs, apparently even a normal footstep quakes in such a way that whomever is listening can’t help but tense up and anything beyond that makes one think the ceiling is going to collapse.
This man has clients come to his place of business and here we are, where our every-day life is causing him to appear unprofessional. He has banged on the ceiling and yelled multiple times to get our attention, Asif and he have had several tense discussions, and ultimately we know that we need to do whatever it takes to keep everyone quiet. But that’s not easy. So we block off half of our already small apartment every weekday during the architect’s work hours to keep anyone from even walking over the main part of his office. It’s helped keep the peace so far, but we are certainly “walking on eggshells” every. single. weekday.
What a contrast from the dream home I described at first. Quite the opposite pictures. But do you know what’s crazy?? In the midst of this one-bedroom apartment living situation, I actually find the same peace, joy and brightness that I envision in the promised home that is to come. And believe it or not, I have come to see this as my spacious place.
And what exactly that means, is another post.
IMAGE CREDITS:
Philipp Reiner - Unsplash
Josh Hemsley - Unsplash
Kaleb Tapp - Unsplash
Kaluci - Unsplash
Rex Pickar - Unsplash
Kristina Flour - Unsplash
#hope#longingforhome#stillbelieving#spaciousplaces#dreamhome#smallbeginnings#struggle#dontgiveup#onmywayhome#believe
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Everyone needs to have Maja Kristina on their radar immediately. She is an incredible artist that is straight out of our pop dreams. Her whole self-titled EP is absolute perfection. Maja has released the song ‘Jessica’ off her EP as a single, and she couldn’t have made a better pick. ‘Jessica’ is a new take on a breakup song that we hope to see much more of. It’s written with the mindset that the person that cheated is at fault, not the person they cheated with. That is the mindset everyone needs to have! Maja sings, “Cause she seems really nice, and I think in the end, Me and Jessica could be friends.” We love to see women lifting up other women, instead of adding to the teardown. It’s a breath of fresh air. Normalize shaming cheaters, but not other manipulated women. [via The Honey Pop]
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Lucia & The Best Boys have shared a new video for ‘Forever Forget’. It’s a cut from the band’s recent EP The State Of Things, it arrives alongside the news that their upcoming support tour with Dream Wife has moved back to 2022. Speaking about the video, director Rianne White says: “'Forever Forget' is a landscape of a feeling. Lucia and I wanted to create a piece of choreography that exists in a solo otherworldly space shaken up by an unsettling sensation of feeling trapped. Guarded by multiple camera perspectives, this movement sequence is shattered like a mirror into pieces and dominated by a blinding sensation of overwhelm, refracting the internal electricity of the brain into view. This video is a portrait of inner turbulence, liberated by Lucia’s untamed and magnetic expression of self. Frontwoman Lucia Fairfull adds: “The 'Forever Forget' video concept has kept completely true to the meaning of the song, 'Baby you've taken me to higher places. It hurts if it's just in my head', is the first lyrics of the chorus. The video portrays this with an other-worldly head trapped space, along with the choreography expressing a state of wanting to escape your own mind and thoughts. The lyrics throughout speak directly about wishing you still had what you once did, but having to face the reality that it is no more, and then trying to erase the memories from your head and move on. Making videos has always been one of my favourite parts about being an artist and over the last year I’ve really detached myself from the idea that I need to be perceived in a certain way and have enjoyed being more adventurous with Visuals. I have imagery almost as soon as Ive written a song so bringing it to life, and creating different characters to go with them is something I really feel helps to get across what I'm saying. I couldn't have brought these ideas to life ('Perfectly Untrue' & 'Forever Forget') without Rianne and Furmaan, and can’t wait to make more with them.” [via Dork]
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Foxes has returned with news of her forthcoming EP Friends In The Corner, alongside sharing new cut 'Kathleen' to accompany the announcement. 'Kathleen' is Foxes' first release of 2021, and follows December's 'Hollywood', which will appear on her upcoming EP alongside last year's 'Friends In The Corner', 'Love Not Loving You' and 'Woman' singles. The new track is produced by Courage (Stormzy, MNEK, Ray BLK) and Charlie Hugall (Halsey, Florence and the Machine), and is an ode to her grandmother Kathleen. Foxes, real name Louisa Rose Allen, says of the single, "My grandma, Kathleen, has always given really good advice so on one visit I thought, ‘why am I not recording this?’. A couple of weeks later in the studio I happened to be going through my voice notes of random melodies and lyrics I’d saved and stumbled across her words of wisdom and within 20 minutes we’d written it with all her advice from the notes. I kept that exact recording of her talking at the end of the song. I don't think I’d be a songwriter without her." She adds, "For me, 'Kathleen' closes the chapter of the last year. Focussing on creativity during lockdown has been essential for me – it’s given me so much strength and positivity. Almost without realising, I ended up writing a whole new album. The new songs have a really different energy and need to exist together as a record. But first I need to release 'Kathleen' as it’s such a special song for me and just seems so right for now. It felt right to wrap these songs up together as an EP before the new album gets released later this year." [via Line Of Best Fit]
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The Sydney-based three-piece Middle Kids release the cinematic title track and video from their hotly anticipated second album, Today We’re The Greatest, out now via Lucky Number One. 'Today We’re The Greatest' features a heartachingly beautiful performance from lead singer Hannah Joy and showcases the juxtaposition of her compelling songwriting. The grandiose and romantic notion of the song’s title is offset by the repeated refrain “life is gory and boring sometimes” which both closes the song and also the album – reveling equally in the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. About the song, Hannah explains: “This is a simple song of people being TINY and our lives being FLEETING but in that we are EPIC and GREAT. It’s finding the beauty and majesty of the every day. Therein lies life and meaning. LIFE IS GORY AND BORING SOMETIMES: it’s both hectic and mundane and we have to accept both.” 'Today We’re The Greatest' is accompanied by a stunning music video directed by W.A.M. Bleakley and filmed on the Kiama costal path in Australia.
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Pacific Northwest native pop singer ALITA has released her new music video 'I’m Not Your Mother'. The video is a 50's inspired homage to empowerment and subverting antiquated gender roles. It was co-produced by ALITA & Zach Nicita (VERITE, Anne Marie, MS MR), and co-written by ALITA & Grammy-award-winning songwriter Jesse Saint John (Lizzo - Truth Hurts). “I wanted to create a visual world that put the song into a little more context," exlplains ALITA. "The song has a lot of classic & almost retro influences, from the old movie voices of women to the genre-blending pop, r&b, soul production. I wrote, ‘I’m Not Your Mother’ as a reflection on my own relationships, but I also know how shared of an experience this is for so many women. I see it every day in my friends' relationships, in my own family dynamics, in media. It’s constant. So we pulled in moments from old movies & tried to sprinkle in some history into the song as well. For the video, I wanted to honor the sonic storytelling with an exploration of the modern and classic roles women play. I wanted it to be a little weird & left of center, so there’s a lot of strange Easter eggs throughout the video. We’ve evolved as a species over the years, thank God, but instead of women being expected to be a homemaker, for example, there’s still this expectation for women to take care of and take responsibility for the men in our lives. It just may look a little different than it did 50 years ago. The application has changed, but the subtleties and impact remain. My goal was to tip my hat to that in the video, and just make something that looked nice.”
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Glüme's Instagram bio reads "Walmart Marilyn," offering a succint intro to the LA-based artist's DIY approach to old school Hollywood glamor. She recently signed to Italians Do It Better, making her label mates with Chromatics and Glass Candy with whom she shares a penchant for bittersweet and melodic synth-pop, the perfect backdrop for a struggling ingénue. This week she debuts 'What Is A Feeling,' taken from her forthcoming debut album The Internet, due next month. 'What Is A Feeling' was written after Glüme, who has the rare heart condition Prinzmetal angina, was informed that her emotional health was starting to affect her physical condition. Over a chugging bassline and drum claps she questions the very make-up of her existence, asking questions including "What makes me work?" and "What makes me hurt?" Not even a doctor's orders can keep her away from temptation though, with the chaos of conflicting feelings tied up tight in the song's restrictive confines. “I had a doctor once tell me my feelings were doing my heart more harm than good," Glüme says via email. "I left wanting to completely disassemble my emotions and throw them in the trash. I studied emotions from physical and philosophical perspectives to see if I could outsmart them. But feeling less wasn't an option.” The Internet is out on April 30 via Italians Do It Better. [via The FADER]
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Singer, songwriter, and producer ZAND is known for their uniquely brash brand of self-described ugly pop, and the iconic look that accompanies it is almost as distinctive. New single 'Bald Bitch' is ZAND’s most compelling earworm yet, its crunchy synthesised bassline driving beneath Blackpool accented pseudo-rap and the buzz of an electric razor. It’s the fourth and final cut to be lifted from last year’s Ugly Pop EP. ZAND isn’t afraid of controversial subject matter, with previous singles tackling topics such as misogyny and the stigma of sex work. 'Bald Bitch' is no exception to this trend, with ZAND squaring up to and superficial detractor chosing to comment on their appearance. 'Bald Bitch' is the next installment in the story of an artist who refuses to cow to convention. [via Line Of Best Fit]
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Korean-American musician Jessi says she hopes her new song ‘What Type of X’ will inspire listeners to be “more confident”. The singer-rapper noted that “the most crucial thing” for her is self-love and how important it was for ‘What Type Of X’ to reflect that. “I am a woman of strong mentality and for me, loving myself is the most crucial thing. If you do not love yourself, nobody will do so. On top of that, you have to be surrounded by people who give off positive vibes,” she said. “Through the song, I want to tell people to be more confident and hope they remember that being different is not wrong.” Jessi co-wrote ‘What Type of X’ with Psy, who is the head of her agency P Nation. Psy. She shared that the lyrics were originally written in English before Psy helped to translate them, adding that the duo “did not argue as much as we did in the past while working together”. The singer also noted that, compared to her previous releases, she did not have as much time to prepare for this comeback. Calling herself a “perfectionist”, Jessi added that she feels like she is not fully ready to perform the song on stage yet, although she says she’s “quite content with the single’s quality”. [via NME]
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Newcastle-based trio Cat Ryan have shared the official video for their latest indie-pop stunner ‘Mary Shelley Song’. The band has this to say on the clip: “Our film student friends, Briana and Gabi offered to film a music video for us and it was the first opportunity we’d had to film a professional kind of video. The first thought I had was to have a film noir style video. I think Lucas came up with a loose storyline and the idea to have it in reverse. We all quite liked the idea of a murder plot and with some tweaking of the narrative and, with the help of Briana and Gabi, the ideas came to life.”
#videos of the week#maja kristina#lucia and the best boys#foxes#middle kids#alita#glume#zand#jessi#cat ryan
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Voluntary Vocabulary #1
All the words I didn’t know but wanted to learn while reading: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.
1. “The baby was exigent.” p.7 - (adjective, formal)
pressing, demanding.
2. “So skinny, she was more eel than nixie.” p.9 - (noun)
(in Germanic mythology) a water sprite.
3. “Antoinette sent away for proselytizing tapes and listened to them with huge earphones and an 8-track beside the pool.” p.13 - proselytize (verb)
convert or attempt to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another.
4. “He loved the uselessness of all the effort, the ephemerality of the work.” p.20 - ephemeral (adjective)
lasting for a very short time.
5. “If her were near Gwennie, they’d already have exhausted every mode of intercourse he knew of, even the apocryphal.” p.24 - (adjective)
of doubtful authorship or authenticity.
6. “During the day, high clerestory windows shifted light one to the next.” p.28 - (noun)
the upper part of the nave, choir, and transepts of a large church, containing a series of windows. It is clear of the roofs of the aisles and admits light to the central parts of the building.
7. “She stood upon the balcony, inimically mimicking him hiccuping while amicably welcoming him in.” p.35 - inimical (noun)
tending to obstruct or harm; unfriendly; hostile.
8. “They had begun to accrete stories between them.” p.40 - (verb)
grow by accumulation or coalescence.
9. “The apartment in the West Village with its perfect garden, tended by that British harridan from upstairs, whose fat thighs, even now, were among the tiger lilies in the window.” p.41 - (noun)
a strict, bossy, or belligerent old woman.
10. “You know Kristina from our class? Inky hair and, well, zaftig.” p.51 - (adjective)
(of a woman) having a full, rounded figure; plump.
11. “What’s the word? Eldritch.” p.54 - (adjective)
weird and sinister or ghostly.
12. “Side by side, Arnie was the pneumatic before and Chollie the punctured after.” p.60 - (adjective)
containing or operated by air or gas under pressure.
13. “He felt a vertiginous awe.” p.69 - (adjective)
causing vertigo, especially by being extremely high or steep.
14. “...and Lancelot had twisted entirely around by the time his right shoulder hit the edge of the stair and he was looking at his ostensible pusher looming out of the dark cave mouth at the top...” p.99 - (adjective)
stated or appearing to be true, but not necessarily so.
15. “His footsteps rocked some locus of pain in Lancelot.” p.99 - (noun)
a particular position, point, or place.
16. “He couldn’t climb the stairs to the rehearsal space, and it would be an abuse of power to make his dramaturge carry him...” p.100 - (noun)
a dramatist; a literary editor on the staff of a theater who consults with authors and edits texts.
17. “A fillip of interest down in his always interested fillip.” p.104 - (noun)
something that acts as a stimulus or boost to an activity.
18. “So until my benighted bones knit themselves to a semblance of solidity, I shall exercise my right to intoxication and bile and mooning.” p.105 - (adjective)
in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance, typically owing to a lack of opportunity; overtaken by darkness.
19. “He was ridiculous. Lugubrious and pretentious at the same time.” p.106 - (adjective)
looking or sounding sad and dismal.
20. “Most sensible epistemology I’ve ever heard.” p.110 - (noun)
the theory of knowledge, especially with regards to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation in what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.
21. “’Medieval Madonna,’ he said. ‘In gouache. Haloed in gold leaf.’“ p.114 - (noun)
a method of painting using opaque pigments ground in water and thickened with a gluelike substance.
22. “‘Brank your tongue, witchy-wife,’ he said.” p.119 - (noun)
a torture device used on women who were found guilty of being noisy, prone to arguments or gossip.
23. “He’d visited his alma mater for a lecture, and the dean had stood and, among other encomiums in his introduction, mentioned that Lancelot’s family had donated the dormitory to the school.” p.121 - encomium (noun)
a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly.
24. “If there was perfidy, it had the stamp of Antoinette all over it.” p.122 - (noun)
deceitfulness; untrustworthiness.
25. “He regarded Lancelot for a caesura and finally relaxed into an off-kilter smile.” p.124 - (noun)
(in Greek and Latin verse) a break between words within a metrical foot.
26. “Leo walking to dawn over the cold seabird ocean, the fresh berries and goat-milk yogurt for breakfast, the tisanes of his own herbs, blue crabs in the black tide pools, going to bed with the whipping winds and rhythm of waves against hard rock.” p.125 - tisane (noun)
an herbal tea.
27. “Perhaps his rangy body had finally gotten the exercise it needed, especially in light of his enforced celibacy.” p.131 - (adjective)
(of a person or animal) tall and slim with long, slender limbs.
28. “Last light of day flaring through the window, illuminating the pellucid skin, the fair eyelashes.” p.137 - (adjective)
translucently clear.
29. “In the deep night, the ice had descended, coating the fields and trees as if in epoxy.” p.141 - (noun)
an adhesive, plastic, paint, or other material made from a class of synthetic thermosetting polymers containing epoxide groups.
30. “Like a mountaineer, he grimped his way hand over hand back onto the porch, into the house, and lay exhausted on the floor, breathing heavily.” p.141 - grimp (verb)
climb.
31. “He met the boy at the kitchen door, silently opening it to him, and though there was an unspoken interdiction against their touching, Lancelot couldn’t help himself.” p.144 - (noun)
the action of prohibiting or forbidding something.
32. “Go presses her ear to the side of the cave, and the lights illumine a chorus of diggers in hard hats who have emerged.” p.156 - (verb)
light up; brighten.
33. “Minerva garrotes Aphrodite with a laptop charger.” p.160 - garrote (verb)
kill (someone) by strangulation, typically with an iron collar or a length of wire or cord.
34. “And because the morning was glorious, brimming with chill wind and neon-pink bougainvillea light...” p.162 - (noun)
an ornamental climbing plant that is widely cultivated in the tropics. The insignificant flowers are surrounded by brightly colored papery bracts that persist on the plant for a long time.
35. “’She’s creating life itself, not just a simulacrum.’” p.165 - (noun)
an image or representation of someone or something; an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute.
36. “The phone made an ignominious bleep and died.” p.166 - (adjective)
deserving or causing public disgrace or shame.
37. “The traffic was terrible and he was nearly hit by a peloton of cyclists, three semitrailers, and a man driving a Segway in the dark.” p.172 - (noun)
the main field or group of cyclists in a race.
38. “He came into the bathroom in the middle of Mathilde’s ablutions and sat on the side of the tub.” p.187 - ablution (noun)
the act of washing oneself (often used for humorously formal effect).
39. “He is deformed, crooked, old and sere.” p.192 - (adjective)
(especially of vegetation) dry or withered.
40. “Light sparked at the edge of his eyesight, which usually augured migraines.” p.200 - augur (verb)
(of an event or circumstance) portend a good or bad outcome.
41. “Without compunction, he could roll his body on the sea of theirs like a dog rolls on fresh new grass.” p.203 - (noun)
a feeling of guilt or moral scruple that prevents or follows the doing of something bad.
42. “He counted a slow thousand after the last and looked to see the trail from the moon extruded out of the stopped water, the sand torn up in one long line.” p.203 - extrude (verb)
thrust or force out.
43. “He looked at her, beamish, teetering.” p.216 - (adjective)
beaming with happiness, optimism, or anticipation.
44. “She rode at the head of a shining line of black limos like the head raven in a convocation of blackbirds.” p.219 - (noun)
a large formal assembly of people.
45. “‘Yeah, well, Bridget is to dating Lotto the way a remora is to dating a shark.’“ p.224 - (noun)
a slender marine fish that attaches itself to large fish by means of a sucker on top of its head; it generally feeds on the host's external parasites.
46. “She felt the joy even through the tiny irritations, the sand flies that bit and the cold that soaked to her bones and the sharp stones on the Maine beach that split her hallux open like a sliced grape and made her limp back to the house they’d borrowed for their wedding day.” p.227 - (noun)
a person’s big toe.
47. “Their separate selves had elided.” p.228 - elide (verb)
join together, merge.
48. “Lotto, who was always as labile as a preteen, drove and, hearing a sweet song, burst into tears.” p.228 - (adjective)
liable to change; easily altered; of or characterized by emotions that are easily aroused or freely expressed, and that tend to alter quickly and spontaneously; emotionally unstable.
49. “Before her rose the Cranach diptych, Adam and Eve with the long thighs, tiny heads, huge feet cold at the knuckles.” p.228 - (noun)
a painting, especially an altarpiece, on two hinged wooden panels that may be closed like a book.
50. “Her car hit the culvert, brushed up the embankment, vaulted a barb-wire fence, somersaulted.” p.234 - (noun)
a tunnel carrying a stream or open drain under a road or railroad.
51. “The heifers had moved off, were watching from the shelter of wind-block lindens.” p.234 - linden (noun)
a deciduous tree with heart-shaped leaves and fragrant yellowish blossoms, native to north temperate regions.
52. “In the demotic, in the key of bougie, it’s the promise of love in old age for all the good girls of the world.” p.235 - (noun)
ordinary colloquial speech.
53. “Their body like knobby sticks wrapped in vellum.” p.235 - (noun)
fine parchment made originally from the skin of a calf.
54. “She went off to school and delighted in neatness, the pens with their cartouches, graph paper, the cleanness of orthography.” p.240 - cartouche (noun)
a carved tablet or drawing representing a scroll with rolled-up ends, used ornamentally or bearing an inscription.
55. “She went off to school and delighted in neatness, the pens with their cartouches, graph paper, the cleanness of orthography.” p.240 - (noun)
the conventional spelling system of a language.
56. “In the spring after her eleventh birthday, Aurélie came home and found her grandmother in déshabille on the bed.” p.240 - (noun)
the state of being only partly or scantily clothed.
57. “The boy who sold gas at Stewart’s, with his downy moustache and ability to pump for hours like a lonely derrick on the dry Texas plains.” p.242 - (noun)
a kind of crane with a movable pivoted arm for moving or lifting heavy weights, especially on a ship; the framework over an oil well or similar boring that holds the drilling machinery.
58. “...a semi-famous poet she and her husband had known from the city, who’d come up to visit her on an impulsive hajj of Lotto grief.” p.242 - (noun)
the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that takes place in the last month of the year, and that all Muslims are expected to make at least once during their lifetime.
59. “She felt ursine. Norwegian.” p.247 - (adjective)
relating to or resembling bears.
60. “American education being what it is, her teachers took her rococo sentences to be evidence of a prodigious facility with language that she didn’t actually have.” p.261 - (adjective)
extravagantly or excessively ornate, especially (of music or literature) highly ornamented and florid.
61. “Her uncle looked ill in the golden light, as if his skin were candle tallow, half melted.” p. 263 - (noun)
a hard fatty substance made from rendered animal fat, used in making candles and soap.
62. “In the kitchen, there was a fruit salad macerating in its own juices.” p.275 - macerate (verb)
(especially with reference to food) soften or become softened by soaking in a liquid.
63. “Something hot in her began to cool and, in cooling, began to anneal.” p.275 - (verb)
heat (metal or glass) and allow it to cool slowly, in order to remove internal stresses and toughen it.
64. “’An efficacious solution to all of your problems,’ he said.” p.285 - (adjective)
(typically of something inanimate or abstract) successful in producing a desired or intended result; effective.
65. “She began to run down the packed dirt lane in its blaze of white sun, her legs swinging good-bye, good-bye, to the ruminants in the Mennonite fields, the June breeze, the wild blue phlox on the bank.” p.286 - ruminant (noun)
an even-toed ungulate mammal that chews the cud regurgitated from its rumen. The ruminants comprise the cattle, sheep, antelopes, deer, giraffes, and their relatives.
66. “She began to run down the packed dirt lane in its blaze of white sun, her legs swinging good-bye, good-bye, to the ruminants in the Mennonite fields, the June breeze, the wild blue phlox on the bank.” p.286 - (noun)
a North American plant that typically has dense clusters of colorful scented flowers, widely grown as a rock-garden or border plant.
67. “When she modeled, she pretended to be the kind of girl who felt insouciant in bikinis, who was glad to show her new lace brassiere to the gaping world.” p.287 - (adjective)
showing a casual lack of concern; indifferent.
68. “She came downstairs to find that God had chewed the kitchen rug, had left a mess of urine on the floor, was looking at her with a bellicose light in her eye.” p.288 - (adjective)
demonstrating aggression and willingness to fight.
69. “She looked at him, the leonine hair with the gray temples, the magnificent forehead, the soft full lips.” p.294 - (adjective)
of or resembling a lion or lions.
70. “What people loved most about her husband was how mellifluous their own voices sounded when they echoed back.” p.306 - (adjective)
(of a voice or words) sweet or musical; pleasant to hear.
71. “For two weeks she perseverated, and at last she went to see him.” p.308 - perseverate (verb)
repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased.
72. “He was on a hospital bed on the deck outside his apartment. All copper and topiary and view.” p.308 - (noun)
the art or practice of clipping shrubs or trees into ornamental shapes.
73. “It felt like a slow death of debridement, tiny constant bleeds.” p.327 - (noun)
the removal of damaged tissue or foreign objects from a wound.
74. “He’d left his money to a home for indigent mothers.” p.329 - (adjective)
poor; needy.
75. “’Chthonic,’ he said, booze letting loose the pretension at his core, which she still found sweet, an allowance for the glory.” p.330 - (adjective)
concerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld.
76. “’Oh, you dirty autodidact,’ she said, ‘It’s pronounced Ser-see.’“ p.334 - (noun)
a self-taught person.
77. “During the years when Lotto felt as if he were getting to be good enough and secure enough, even when he was working constantly, his plays all being published, productions all over the country steadily increasing so that they alone provided a comfortable living, even then he was gadflied by this Phoebe Delmar.” p.334 - gadfly (noun)
an annoying person, especially one who provokes others into action by criticism.
78. “This character was always played in a terrifying mask, the fixity of which made the soft-spoken character all the more powerful.” p.335 - (noun)
the state of being unchanging or permanent.
79. “’I can tell you better than anyone in the world, much more than this bombastic self-petard-hoisting leech of a critic, that you are not overrated.’“ p.336 - (noun)
a small bomb made of a metal or wooden box filled with powder, used to blast down a door or to make a hole in a wall; a kind of firework that explodes with a sharp report.
80. “‘Ever bigger. Ever louder. Jostling for the highest perch in the hegemony.’“ p.342 - (noun)
leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others.
81. “When Eschatology was performed for the first time, Phoebe Delmar loved it.” p.343 - (noun)
the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.
82. “And then she stood and walked into town, and stopped at the Caffè Aurora for cannoli and coffee, and was at Lotto’s room with two aspirin and a glass of water and the food when his eyelashes gave a little flutter and he looked up from whatever dream - unicorns, leprechauns, merry forest bacchanals - to see her sitting beside him.” p.347 - bacchanal (noun)
an occasion of wild and drunken revelry.
83. “Only a painting ripped from a glossy magazine, Andrea Celesti’s Queen Jezebel Being Punished by Jehu, the lady defenestrated and being gobbled by dogs.” p.349 - defenestrate (verb)
throw (someone) out of a window; remove or dismiss (someone) from a position of power or authority.
84. “There could be no second act in this little bed play of theirs, just a reprisal of act one, with the characters reversed, no thrilling, messy denouement, and frankly, she wasn’t at all sure what she felt about sticking her face in some other lady’s bits.” p.358 - (noun)
the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
85. “Classical composition, three bodies in a dark room, one pouring some unguent from a vase, one sitting, one speaking.” p.362 - (noun)
a soft greasy or viscous substance used as an ointment or for lubrication.
86. “Naugahyde recliners; a bestiary of modern American life flashing on the television.” p. 367 - (noun)
a descriptive or anecdotal treatise on various real or mythical kinds of animals, especially a medieval work with a moralizing tone.
87. “Keeping the old dream moribund with these infusions of acting; the old self she thought dead still secretly alive.” p.385 - (adjective)
(of a person) at the point of death.
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ES Spectre 2.0 Chapter 5-1
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January 2020
Waking up in a new decade with David Bowie watching over me.
Well, we slept in a Bowie-themed hotel room. Still, good omens, eh? Snuggling with Andre, going wild on the hotel breakfast. Walking down to the city in the sunshine. Climbing up to the castle grounds. Sitting by the river, his head in my lap. I loved everything about it. The sun, the water, playing with his hair.
Watching the entire first season of Spinning Out in one go (Bipolar disorder AND figure skating? Yes please!) Ordering in surprisingly good vegan pizza (for future reference: Tony's Pizza Catania).
Making delicious sour and spicy coconut soup. And my first sourdough bread. And vegan blood orange raspberry cake. I'm seriously considering a career change. I would love to spend all day in a kitchen, preparing food in peace and quiet.
Robin Sloan's novel Sourdough. It's about baking, human connection, foreign scripts and cultures, etymology, escaping the life that doesn't make you happy. I liked it a lot. The author even invented an entirely new language / type of music for the Mazg, a fictional maritime nation from somewhere around eastern Europe. A short passage I liked (Louis is presenting her bread in the Ferry Building): Seven judges sat in a line at a long table, our women and three men, swaddled and comfortable, wrapped in scarves and caftans. Plain fabris, generous cuts. They had different-colored skin and different-colored hair, but they shared a satisfied plumpness. It looked like a committee of harvest gods drawn from all the pantheons. All except one, seated at the end of the table, who seemed less Demeter or Dionysus, more Hades. Her hair was shiny and slicked back; she wore a slouchy black leather jacket over a shimmering black T-shirt. Maybe she was the token goddess of death, and also of street fashion. Welcome, the gods murmured together. What do you have for us today?
Andre making pancakes for me. Flipping them in the pan with one hand. Perfect party trick.
Dreaming more often. About a dog losing its forelegs. About a surgeon hitting on me after telling me I had a tumor. An adventure story featuring picking locks, drugs, spiders, sailing and pirates, foreign countries and weird characters. A cruise through Russia, headed to St. Peterburg. The feeling of a school trip on a boat with bunk beds and all, watching the night sky through the ship's roof. Incredible darkness, sparkle, almost like fireworks.
Meeting Maxim's wife Kristina at an ice hockey match. I really like her. She's a violinist and pianist. And someone who can discuss the concept of art while watching a sports game. Nice.
The very best breakfast option: apple cinnamon porridge with berries, hemp seeds, flax seeds, cacao nibs, some nuts.
A sunny Sunday. Sitting outside café Münchner Freiheit eating beetroot and poppyseed ravioli with Bibi after seeing Ronja Räubertochter at Residenztheater.
Returning to SAUNA for the first time in years. I forgot how much I like that club. It's hot, it's full, it's fun. Tom and I felt like employees because we ended up taking care of everyone's coats.
Kristen Roupenian's short story collection Cat Person. I'm usually not a huge fan of short stories but hers were entertaining, so weird, something completely different.
Learning about the Swede Hilma af Klint, possibly the first person (woman) who created abstract paintings; even before Kandinsky.
One Friday morning I saw a driver's ed car from my home town in front of Villa Stuck. And I could've sworn that it was my old teacher getting into that car even though it was a different company's. I actually dreamt about Mike that night. Taking me to work, watching me drive through a crazy city with Indian cult dances, a festival, a vegan buffet at the education centre; making me compete with another student, a girl from the US? Such a lovely, creative and colourful dream. Also: I think I'm deeply influenced by father figures. It's a thing. My old German teacher. Manu's dad. Now Mike. Huh.
Having friends over. Playing the CAT game!
Talking to Sarah about how teachers ship certain students / think they should be together. Waking up with an idea. Suggesting to do some matchmaking for Valentine's Day.
Kanzi apples. Crisp, sweet, fruity. Delicious.
Meeting Lorena from Argentina. She's my language tandem partner since I just got serious about learning Spanish. I've started using Duolingo again and I got some exercise books, too. El gato bebe la leche!
When I just feel the urge to create something. Which could be a drawing in my sketchbook or getting out of bed to make a yeast dough to be turned into pizza later...
Learning about daisy chains. A daisy chain is a number of computers or pieces of computer equipment or software that are connected to each other in a series. But they totally took this figure of speech from the necklaces everyone used to make from daisies as a child!! I love how something as charming as that describes such a technical concept.
Lena writing me another letter. Her husband is an astro-physicist so she told me how the usually very bright star Betelgeuze just started getting darker and darker which could mean that it'll explode soon and create a supernova! Which is crazy. It will be visible for weeks here on Earth and you need to protect your eyes because the brightness would hurt your eyes.
That woman with the supervillain eyebrows I saw on the tram one morning. She just looked evil even though she had her eyes closed and all her face muscles relaxed.
Lorena and me teaching each other dirty words in Spanish/German at the library.
Playing with acrylic paint, creating a marbled effect. Building a castle out of clay.
That dream about an underground river in a fascinating cave system with amazing rock formations and an eerie glow. Walking along a long, narrow pontoon over a big lake in the darkness. Fishing remnants of dead people out of the water (like my grandma's finger). Somehow I consulted my mother and her neighbour Maria about this. So many stars. Both settings reminded me of places I've seen in Mexico. Later there was a bit about time pressure and a bathtub full of blood and paint.
Meeting Luise, Laura's tiny dachshund puppy, for the first time. She kissed me. With tongue. Obviously. At Laura's party I talked to some of her friends and Patrizia's boyfriend. I accidentally got really drunk and went home early.
Sex Education on Netflix. Gillian Anderson just got more attractive with age. How is that even possible? I love her outfits but also how the costume designers dressed Jackson's mums. Great style!
Listening to music with Frank. Making anagrams with Scrabble tiles for each other. Listening to music, slightly high.
A pub quiz Monday with Margit, Dennis, Marina, Steffen and his weird girlfriend. (Semi-)friendly banter and an honorable third place. I just love spending time with these guys.
Anne's facial expressions in the graphic novel version of Anne Frank's Diary.
Cooking lunch together and watching Little Joe at Arena Cinema with Lena.
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Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017
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Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017
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2017 has been a pretty great year for Serious Eats. We’ve broken traffic records left and right, we’ve been lucky enough to hire some amazing new colleagues, and we’ve managed to crank out some top notch recipes, techniques, and features, all while juggling a host of different complicating factors—three babies were born (!), one of the head honchos got married (!!), and half the office got addicted to a silly trivia game on their iPhones (!!!). Here are some of our team’s favorite pieces of content from the year.
East, West, Then Backward: Falling for Groundnut Soup in Ghana
[Illustration: Laura Freeman]
A study abroad trip to Ghana leaves a student of color feeling profoundly othered, withdrawn from both his fellow travelers and the community he’d hoped would embrace him. The significance of food, family, and mealtimes courses through each juncture of the narrative—and lands the reader with an incredibly delicious recipe for peanutty, meaty groundnut soup.
It’s a moving and beautifully composed piece, but it’s the author’s powerful honesty and introspection that make this piece such an engaging read. Sara’o Bery is a longtime friend, which doesn’t always bode well for a joint professional undertaking, but in this case, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have played a part in giving this piece an audience. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor
Read the full story about Ghanaian groundnut soup »
Grilling With Vinegar
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
I have a lot of reasons to pick Michael Harlan Turkell’s summertime series on grilling with vinegar as my favorite post(s) of the year. First, selfishly, because it meant that I got to hang out with him multiple times throughout the summer as we worked our way through his recipes, using a grill we’d set up on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Standing in the sunshine and drinking cold beers with a friend while grilling up a storm is about as good as my job gets. But on top of that, I just love his recipes: He has so many creative, unexpected, and goddamned delicious ideas for how to use vinegar in grilled foods. There are the burgers spiked with Japanese black vinegar, dripping with melted cheese and slathered with a black olive mayo; there’s the tart and herbal chimichurri sauce spooned not onto the obvious steak but sweet and plump grilled squash instead; a Spanish-inspired grilled scallion and endive salad topped with a creamy, nutty, and spicy sauce; and—who can forget—grilled peaches on grilled poundcake with a perfectly sweet-sour cider-caramel sauce that should be a classic all on its own. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director
Read our full series on grilling with vinegar »
Cheesy Bread Is Absurdly Good, No Matter What You Call It
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Writing a post about cheesy bread could so easily become, well, cheesy. But Sohla’s cheesy bread post was so full of easy-to-digest, cheese-filled wit and wisdom I almost forgot it was about one of my favorite snacks in the world. Her post had me at the second line: “In our wedding vows, my husband promised to have and to hold and to always keep the fridge stocked with three varieties of cheddar.” She makes baking them sound like the easiest thing in the world, and for an unconfident baker like me, that is incredibly reassuring. And when you get to the end of the post, be prepared for one of the great visual kickers in Serious Eats’ eleven-year history. Thank you, Vicky Wasik. —Ed Levine, founder
Dive into the cheesy bread experience »
The Definitive Guide to Eggs
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
When I first started at Serious Eats earlier this year, the team was deep in the throes of developing The Definitive Guide to Eggs, a.k.a. “The Egg Page.” It was a gargantuan effort of collecting techniques, creating guides to the different shapes and sizes, decoding the terms and labels you find on the carton…the list goes on. It was perhaps the best way to get to know my new team. From the videos produced by the culinary and visual teams, to the user-friendly experience designed by our dev team, to every quick-hitting blurb written and edited by the editorial team, everything came together in a smart and savvy product. I’ve come to learn that such a product is standard at Serious Eats, thanks to the talented folks I get to call coworkers. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media editor
Explore the Serious Eats Definitive Guide to Eggs »
Chaat Your Mouth: How to Make the South Asian Street Food at Home
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
I love how Sohla’s recipes often start with a story. From the first line, you’re with her in that airplane cabin hurtling its way towards Dhaka, tightly packed in with relatives and strangers alike passing the time by flinging heated opinions to and fro on what constitutes the best chaat, where to get it, and even when to consume it to mitigate the effects of certain digestive ailments. It sets the scene for how you should think about chaat: as a chaotic, beautiful mess of personal preferences synthesized and represented in a dish. It’s customizable, highly subjective, and somewhat hard to pin down, but Sohla does just that. She hands you the essential components, a roadmap to the key flavor profiles, and a dizzyingly detailed but comprehensively clear breakdown of the adjustments you can make to create a satisfying version of your own. My favorite part? How she describes kala namak, personified as a condiment with attitude that lends the dish’s foundational chaat masala spice blend “a bossy bit of savory funk.” Lyrical genius. —Marissa Chen, office manager
Read all about chaat »
Staff Picks: Our Favorite Fictional Foods
[Illustration: Katie Shelly]
Spending hours of my day geeking out with my coworkers about the most fantastic scenes of food and drink from our favorite childhood books and movies isn’t what I’d call “work.” Neither is having a serious discussion over whether the two pizza slices in the Saturday Night Fever illustration should be neatly stacked or remain slightly splayed, and whether the central figure was adequately representative of Tony Manero. Neither is eagerly, secretly reloading comments once the piece was published to see who out there might have been fascinated by some of the same things we were as kids. Writing and editing this post was delightful proof that nothing unites like youthful nerdery. —Miranda Kaplan, editor
Check out our favorite fictional foods »
How to Make a Mixed-Green Salad Like You Actually Care
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
The state of salad in this country is a sordid mess, and the problem starts with the greens. Take a stroll down the salad aisle in any supermarket and you’ll see stacks upon stacks of prewashed stuff—salad mixes and plastic clamshells filled with insipid “baby” lettuces—as if all good taste had been sacrificed to the great god of Convenience. There is a reason bottled salad dressing is so aggressive, so cloyingly sweet: Good greens don’t need much more than a little acid and good olive oil, or a light vinaigrette. Daniel offers up what might seem like remedially simple advice in this post, but it’s advice that is sorely needed. Salad shouldn’t be a chore to make, or to eat; salad should be celebrated, from the moment you purchase the greens until you finish your plate. All it takes is a little care, a little inspiration in the supermarket aisle, a tiny wee bit of patience once in a while, and you’ll be surprised at how much you look forward to the salad portion of a meal. —Sho Spaeth, features editor
Read more about how to step up your salad game »
The Best Things I Ate in Japan
[Photographs: Daniel Gritzer]
I’ve never been obsessed with the idea of seeing (or eating my way through) Japan. I love traveling, sure, and Japan is on my list, but it was never particularly high on my list until I edited Daniel’s essay on his favorite bites from a visit there. This is not a travel piece, not a series of restaurant reviews, and not a primer on Japanese foods that are uncommon in the West, but it includes elements of all three, and the result is a low-key window into the country’s cuisine that makes it seem simultaneously more approachable and more exciting to me than before. It just might convince you that blowfish sperm is a thing you want to put in your mouth. —Miranda Kaplan, editor
Join Daniel on his culinary adventure through Japan »
The Food Lab: How to Make Kickass Quesadillas
[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]
Kenji’s “Kickass Quesadilla” post is probably the one I used the most this year. There are three recipes attached, but let’s be honest, you don’t need them. If you’re anything like me, your quesadillas are rarely pre-planned beyond gazing into your fridge and realizing you have tortillas, cheese, maybe some random leftovers/vegetables/pickles, and a strong desire not to go outside. That’s really all you need to make a good quesadilla, but if you read Kenji’s tips and apply them, you’ll almost certainly make a great one. —Paul Cline, developer
Check out our quesadilla pro-tips »
The Pho I Lost
[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]
I have the pleasure of sitting next to Sho at the office. While I sometimes jokingly refer to him as the office curmudgeon, he has come to be a good friend and I appreciate how discerning he is about pretty much everything. I think this friendship really developed after I read his story about pho, taste memory, and his mother. I admired the courage (and ability) it took to write about and share the feelings and memories he describes. And the fact that he can eat two bowls of pho in one sitting (and do that every day for two-and-a-half weeks) is just…well, that’s something to respect. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director
Read about Sho’s long-lost pho »
For the Most Flavorful Piña Colada, Freeze Everything
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
The piña colada is one of those things—like pasta —that is surprisingly hard to get a good version of when you’re eating out. Growing up, the PC was a special-occasion drink and my mom’s go-to at our family’s Italian weddings. That’s where I first had one, at around 12 years old, when she ordered a small (not virgin) one for me—God bless European parents. I love Daniel’s story because the big tip—to freeze everything—is that one little step that can make your shopping trip to buy coconut cream worth it. Trust me, I made several batches of these while testing blenders and it works. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet, with clean, creamy coconut and pineapple flavors, and just the right amount of rum. —Sal Vaglica, equipment editor
Learn how to make piña coladas like a boss »
What Is “Traditional” Soju?: A Spirited Debate
[Photograph: Emily Dryden]
I like to think I know a little bit about Korea: I’ve had Korean friends my entire life, I’ve been there more than a few times, and my father has lived in Seoul for close to a decade now. So I also thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about soju, the nation’s ubiquitous and beloved liquor. When we got the pitch for this piece, what struck me most wasn’t just my own ignorance about soju’s long history (I am never, ever surprised by the depths of my ignorance); it was how little had been written about the liquor anywhere else. This was an untold story in English, one that we were in a unique position to be able to offer a wide audience. Add to that the fact that in delving into the story of what “traditional” soju is, Josh managed to weave into the narrative much of what makes South Korea such a remarkable place—its ultra rapid industrialization and modernization, its skyrocketing cultural capital—and I can say without a doubt that it was my favorite feature of 2017. It was a privilege to publish it. —Sho Spaeth, features editor
Read more about soju »
How Oreos Got Their Name: The Rise of an American Icon
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Nothing grabs my attention more than the thrilling histories behind iconic foods. Lucky, that’s Stella’s forte, as she dives deep into the corporate intrigue and betrayal behind the beloved biscuit. Walking down the snack aisle has never felt the same after reading about the cutthroat cookie war that culminated with Oreo taking the throne. I’m eagerly awaiting the movie adaptation. —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor
A rich and totally unexpected look at the origin of Oreos, by the one and only Stella Parks. I am lucky enough to work with Stella once a month, where I have the pleasure of witnessing her deep knowledge base and attention to detail first-hand. It’s front and center in this piece, as is her intense curiosity about all things pastry-related. Her approachable and snarky style makes it all the more enjoyable—phrases like “they might as well have told Oreos to get off their lawn” pepper the piece throughout. Humor aside, it’s a zippy and fun exploration of a history you never knew you wanted to know. —Natalie Holt, video producer
Get the full history of Oreos »
A Losers’ Thanksgiving: No One Knows Your Name (But All Are Welcome)
[Illustration: Alex Citrin]
This story had me hooked from the get-go and held me straight through til the end, a tale of frozen misery, daring hope, social ambition, and conquering life with pie. —Stella Parks, pastry wizard
Read Sohla’s heartwarming holiday tale »
Obsessed: A Man and His Mold
[Photograph: Chris Anderson]
Man, Rich Shih is smart. And he’s passionate as hell. His responses to the interview questions in this article are so in-depth and intelligent that you might think they were heavily edited, but I had the pleasure of meeting Rich (and making miso with him) in the office, and he really is that knowledgable. And that knowledge is built on a fervent curiosity. This isn’t his day job—it isn’t even related—but he is all-in on his koji project, devoting years to researching and experimenting with the stuff. I can attest to the results being delicious. The article is also accompanied by gorgeous photographs of close-up mold spores and fermented products. Kudos to Sho and his wonderful “Obsessed” series about the passionate amateur and professional foodies of this world. —Tim Aikens, front-end developer
Catch the koji bug, right this way »
For the Lightest, Crispiest Granola, Grab the Buttermilk
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
When Stella told me she was developing a granola recipe to shoot on her next trip up to NYC, I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean, granola is great and all, but why would I spend the time making it when I can easily pop into my corner grocery store and grab any of the 10 varieties they have in stock at any given time? And then I ate it. And then I ate MORE of it. And then I took the entire jar from the photoshoot home and finished it in less than a week. This is the most addictive snack I’ve ever had. And it’s granola so…it’s good for you…right? I made it a few weeks later when my craving kicked in. It’s definitely a labor of love, but well worth the effort! —Vicky Wasik, visual director
Find out what makes Stella’s granola so great »
The Best Chicken Pot Pie, With Biscuits or Pastry
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Chicken pot pie is one of those recipes I’ve always been too intimidated to tackle; all my life I’ve resorted to frozen Marie Callender’s. Don’t get me wrong, those frozen pies are still delicious, but when Stella came out with her savory pie, it gave me the confidence to give it a try. Who knew making the roux would turn out to be so easy? I also love having the freedom to add whatever fillings I want, and it’s now a crowd favorite among my friends and family. I even got my roommate to give it a try, too, which means double the pot pies at home! —Vivian Kong, designer
Dig into some chicken pot pie »
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Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017
New Post has been published on http://cucinacarmela.com/staff-picks-our-favorite-posts-of-2017/
Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017
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2017 has been a pretty great year for Serious Eats. We’ve broken traffic records left and right, we’ve been lucky enough to hire some amazing new colleagues, and we’ve managed to crank out some top notch recipes, techniques, and features, all while juggling a host of different complicating factors—three babies were born (!), one of the head honchos got married (!!), and half the office got addicted to a silly trivia game on their iPhones (!!!). Here are some of our team’s favorite pieces of content from the year.
East, West, Then Backward: Falling for Groundnut Soup in Ghana
[Illustration: Laura Freeman]
A study abroad trip to Ghana leaves a student of color feeling profoundly othered, withdrawn from both his fellow travelers and the community he’d hoped would embrace him. The significance of food, family, and mealtimes courses through each juncture of the narrative—and lands the reader with an incredibly delicious recipe for peanutty, meaty groundnut soup.
It’s a moving and beautifully composed piece, but it’s the author’s powerful honesty and introspection that make this piece such an engaging read. Sara’o Bery is a longtime friend, which doesn’t always bode well for a joint professional undertaking, but in this case, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have played a part in giving this piece an audience. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor
Read the full story about Ghanaian groundnut soup »
Grilling With Vinegar
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
I have a lot of reasons to pick Michael Harlan Turkell’s summertime series on grilling with vinegar as my favorite post(s) of the year. First, selfishly, because it meant that I got to hang out with him multiple times throughout the summer as we worked our way through his recipes, using a grill we’d set up on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Standing in the sunshine and drinking cold beers with a friend while grilling up a storm is about as good as my job gets. But on top of that, I just love his recipes: He has so many creative, unexpected, and goddamned delicious ideas for how to use vinegar in grilled foods. There are the burgers spiked with Japanese black vinegar, dripping with melted cheese and slathered with a black olive mayo; there’s the tart and herbal chimichurri sauce spooned not onto the obvious steak but sweet and plump grilled squash instead; a Spanish-inspired grilled scallion and endive salad topped with a creamy, nutty, and spicy sauce; and—who can forget—grilled peaches on grilled poundcake with a perfectly sweet-sour cider-caramel sauce that should be a classic all on its own. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director
Read our full series on grilling with vinegar »
Cheesy Bread Is Absurdly Good, No Matter What You Call It
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Writing a post about cheesy bread could so easily become, well, cheesy. But Sohla’s cheesy bread post was so full of easy-to-digest, cheese-filled wit and wisdom I almost forgot it was about one of my favorite snacks in the world. Her post had me at the second line: “In our wedding vows, my husband promised to have and to hold and to always keep the fridge stocked with three varieties of cheddar.” She makes baking them sound like the easiest thing in the world, and for an unconfident baker like me, that is incredibly reassuring. And when you get to the end of the post, be prepared for one of the great visual kickers in Serious Eats’ eleven-year history. Thank you, Vicky Wasik. —Ed Levine, founder
Dive into the cheesy bread experience »
The Definitive Guide to Eggs
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
When I first started at Serious Eats earlier this year, the team was deep in the throes of developing The Definitive Guide to Eggs, a.k.a. “The Egg Page.” It was a gargantuan effort of collecting techniques, creating guides to the different shapes and sizes, decoding the terms and labels you find on the carton…the list goes on. It was perhaps the best way to get to know my new team. From the videos produced by the culinary and visual teams, to the user-friendly experience designed by our dev team, to every quick-hitting blurb written and edited by the editorial team, everything came together in a smart and savvy product. I’ve come to learn that such a product is standard at Serious Eats, thanks to the talented folks I get to call coworkers. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media editor
Explore the Serious Eats Definitive Guide to Eggs »
Chaat Your Mouth: How to Make the South Asian Street Food at Home
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
I love how Sohla’s recipes often start with a story. From the first line, you’re with her in that airplane cabin hurtling its way towards Dhaka, tightly packed in with relatives and strangers alike passing the time by flinging heated opinions to and fro on what constitutes the best chaat, where to get it, and even when to consume it to mitigate the effects of certain digestive ailments. It sets the scene for how you should think about chaat: as a chaotic, beautiful mess of personal preferences synthesized and represented in a dish. It’s customizable, highly subjective, and somewhat hard to pin down, but Sohla does just that. She hands you the essential components, a roadmap to the key flavor profiles, and a dizzyingly detailed but comprehensively clear breakdown of the adjustments you can make to create a satisfying version of your own. My favorite part? How she describes kala namak, personified as a condiment with attitude that lends the dish’s foundational chaat masala spice blend “a bossy bit of savory funk.” Lyrical genius. —Marissa Chen, office manager
Read all about chaat »
Staff Picks: Our Favorite Fictional Foods
[Illustration: Katie Shelly]
Spending hours of my day geeking out with my coworkers about the most fantastic scenes of food and drink from our favorite childhood books and movies isn’t what I’d call “work.” Neither is having a serious discussion over whether the two pizza slices in the Saturday Night Fever illustration should be neatly stacked or remain slightly splayed, and whether the central figure was adequately representative of Tony Manero. Neither is eagerly, secretly reloading comments once the piece was published to see who out there might have been fascinated by some of the same things we were as kids. Writing and editing this post was delightful proof that nothing unites like youthful nerdery. —Miranda Kaplan, editor
Check out our favorite fictional foods »
How to Make a Mixed-Green Salad Like You Actually Care
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
The state of salad in this country is a sordid mess, and the problem starts with the greens. Take a stroll down the salad aisle in any supermarket and you’ll see stacks upon stacks of prewashed stuff—salad mixes and plastic clamshells filled with insipid “baby” lettuces—as if all good taste had been sacrificed to the great god of Convenience. There is a reason bottled salad dressing is so aggressive, so cloyingly sweet: Good greens don’t need much more than a little acid and good olive oil, or a light vinaigrette. Daniel offers up what might seem like remedially simple advice in this post, but it’s advice that is sorely needed. Salad shouldn’t be a chore to make, or to eat; salad should be celebrated, from the moment you purchase the greens until you finish your plate. All it takes is a little care, a little inspiration in the supermarket aisle, a tiny wee bit of patience once in a while, and you’ll be surprised at how much you look forward to the salad portion of a meal. —Sho Spaeth, features editor
Read more about how to step up your salad game »
The Best Things I Ate in Japan
[Photographs: Daniel Gritzer]
I’ve never been obsessed with the idea of seeing (or eating my way through) Japan. I love traveling, sure, and Japan is on my list, but it was never particularly high on my list until I edited Daniel’s essay on his favorite bites from a visit there. This is not a travel piece, not a series of restaurant reviews, and not a primer on Japanese foods that are uncommon in the West, but it includes elements of all three, and the result is a low-key window into the country’s cuisine that makes it seem simultaneously more approachable and more exciting to me than before. It just might convince you that blowfish sperm is a thing you want to put in your mouth. —Miranda Kaplan, editor
Join Daniel on his culinary adventure through Japan »
The Food Lab: How to Make Kickass Quesadillas
[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]
Kenji’s “Kickass Quesadilla” post is probably the one I used the most this year. There are three recipes attached, but let’s be honest, you don’t need them. If you’re anything like me, your quesadillas are rarely pre-planned beyond gazing into your fridge and realizing you have tortillas, cheese, maybe some random leftovers/vegetables/pickles, and a strong desire not to go outside. That’s really all you need to make a good quesadilla, but if you read Kenji’s tips and apply them, you’ll almost certainly make a great one. —Paul Cline, developer
Check out our quesadilla pro-tips »
The Pho I Lost
[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]
I have the pleasure of sitting next to Sho at the office. While I sometimes jokingly refer to him as the office curmudgeon, he has come to be a good friend and I appreciate how discerning he is about pretty much everything. I think this friendship really developed after I read his story about pho, taste memory, and his mother. I admired the courage (and ability) it took to write about and share the feelings and memories he describes. And the fact that he can eat two bowls of pho in one sitting (and do that every day for two-and-a-half weeks) is just…well, that’s something to respect. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director
Read about Sho’s long-lost pho »
For the Most Flavorful Piña Colada, Freeze Everything
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
The piña colada is one of those things—like pasta —that is surprisingly hard to get a good version of when you’re eating out. Growing up, the PC was a special-occasion drink and my mom’s go-to at our family’s Italian weddings. That’s where I first had one, at around 12 years old, when she ordered a small (not virgin) one for me—God bless European parents. I love Daniel’s story because the big tip—to freeze everything—is that one little step that can make your shopping trip to buy coconut cream worth it. Trust me, I made several batches of these while testing blenders and it works. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet, with clean, creamy coconut and pineapple flavors, and just the right amount of rum. —Sal Vaglica, equipment editor
Learn how to make piña coladas like a boss »
What Is “Traditional” Soju?: A Spirited Debate
[Photograph: Emily Dryden]
I like to think I know a little bit about Korea: I’ve had Korean friends my entire life, I’ve been there more than a few times, and my father has lived in Seoul for close to a decade now. So I also thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about soju, the nation’s ubiquitous and beloved liquor. When we got the pitch for this piece, what struck me most wasn’t just my own ignorance about soju’s long history (I am never, ever surprised by the depths of my ignorance); it was how little had been written about the liquor anywhere else. This was an untold story in English, one that we were in a unique position to be able to offer a wide audience. Add to that the fact that in delving into the story of what “traditional” soju is, Josh managed to weave into the narrative much of what makes South Korea such a remarkable place—its ultra rapid industrialization and modernization, its skyrocketing cultural capital—and I can say without a doubt that it was my favorite feature of 2017. It was a privilege to publish it. —Sho Spaeth, features editor
Read more about soju »
How Oreos Got Their Name: The Rise of an American Icon
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Nothing grabs my attention more than the thrilling histories behind iconic foods. Lucky, that’s Stella’s forte, as she dives deep into the corporate intrigue and betrayal behind the beloved biscuit. Walking down the snack aisle has never felt the same after reading about the cutthroat cookie war that culminated with Oreo taking the throne. I’m eagerly awaiting the movie adaptation. —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor
A rich and totally unexpected look at the origin of Oreos, by the one and only Stella Parks. I am lucky enough to work with Stella once a month, where I have the pleasure of witnessing her deep knowledge base and attention to detail first-hand. It’s front and center in this piece, as is her intense curiosity about all things pastry-related. Her approachable and snarky style makes it all the more enjoyable—phrases like “they might as well have told Oreos to get off their lawn” pepper the piece throughout. Humor aside, it’s a zippy and fun exploration of a history you never knew you wanted to know. —Natalie Holt, video producer
Get the full history of Oreos »
A Losers’ Thanksgiving: No One Knows Your Name (But All Are Welcome)
[Illustration: Alex Citrin]
This story had me hooked from the get-go and held me straight through til the end, a tale of frozen misery, daring hope, social ambition, and conquering life with pie. —Stella Parks, pastry wizard
Read Sohla’s heartwarming holiday tale »
Obsessed: A Man and His Mold
[Photograph: Chris Anderson]
Man, Rich Shih is smart. And he’s passionate as hell. His responses to the interview questions in this article are so in-depth and intelligent that you might think they were heavily edited, but I had the pleasure of meeting Rich (and making miso with him) in the office, and he really is that knowledgable. And that knowledge is built on a fervent curiosity. This isn’t his day job—it isn’t even related—but he is all-in on his koji project, devoting years to researching and experimenting with the stuff. I can attest to the results being delicious. The article is also accompanied by gorgeous photographs of close-up mold spores and fermented products. Kudos to Sho and his wonderful “Obsessed” series about the passionate amateur and professional foodies of this world. —Tim Aikens, front-end developer
Catch the koji bug, right this way »
For the Lightest, Crispiest Granola, Grab the Buttermilk
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
When Stella told me she was developing a granola recipe to shoot on her next trip up to NYC, I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean, granola is great and all, but why would I spend the time making it when I can easily pop into my corner grocery store and grab any of the 10 varieties they have in stock at any given time? And then I ate it. And then I ate MORE of it. And then I took the entire jar from the photoshoot home and finished it in less than a week. This is the most addictive snack I’ve ever had. And it’s granola so…it’s good for you…right? I made it a few weeks later when my craving kicked in. It’s definitely a labor of love, but well worth the effort! —Vicky Wasik, visual director
Find out what makes Stella’s granola so great »
The Best Chicken Pot Pie, With Biscuits or Pastry
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Chicken pot pie is one of those recipes I’ve always been too intimidated to tackle; all my life I’ve resorted to frozen Marie Callender’s. Don’t get me wrong, those frozen pies are still delicious, but when Stella came out with her savory pie, it gave me the confidence to give it a try. Who knew making the roux would turn out to be so easy? I also love having the freedom to add whatever fillings I want, and it’s now a crowd favorite among my friends and family. I even got my roommate to give it a try, too, which means double the pot pies at home! —Vivian Kong, designer
Dig into some chicken pot pie »
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he gets under your skin
Yay the Lan Zhan/Wei Ying “While You Were Sleeping” AU is FINISHED!! Just in time for Valentine’s Day!
🚉 85k words, Rated M (VERY M at the end), set in 1997/1998 Chicago, Illinois.
💍 Through a series of unbelievable and inexplicable events, Wei Ying gets accidentally engaged to the wrong Lan.
🌲Surprise! He spends a lot of time foolishly pining. Double surprise: so does Lan Zhan.
❤️ Fate has to help
🎵 It gets a helping hand from beautiful music, adoring family, and friendship.
With a side of ChengQing, soft Lan Qiren, Wen Ning being A Good Boy, Lan Family Feels, Jiang siblings, and a whole lot of classical, jazz, pop, grunge, and Pirates of the Penzance.
Read it on AO3 HERE!
#the untamed#cql#mdzs#mo dao zu shi#wei wuxian#lan wangji#wangxian#chengqing#nielan#while you were sleeping au#lan family feels#jiang siblings#kristina writes tiny stories#not so tiny at all#fic rec#mdzs fic rec
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New Post has been published on http://www.cooksutopia.com/staff-picks-our-favorite-posts-of-2017/
Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017
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2017 has been a pretty great year for Serious Eats. We’ve broken traffic records left and right, we’ve been lucky enough to hire some amazing new colleagues, and we’ve managed to crank out some top notch recipes, techniques, and features, all while juggling a host of different complicating factors—three babies were born (!), one of the head honchos got married (!!), and half the office got addicted to a silly trivia game on their iPhones (!!!). Here are some of our team’s favorite pieces of content from the year.
East, West, Then Backward: Falling for Groundnut Soup in Ghana
[Illustration: Laura Freeman]
A study abroad trip to Ghana leaves a student of color feeling profoundly othered, withdrawn from both his fellow travelers and the community he’d hoped would embrace him. The significance of food, family, and mealtimes courses through each juncture of the narrative—and lands the reader with an incredibly delicious recipe for peanutty, meaty groundnut soup.
It’s a moving and beautifully composed piece, but it’s the author’s powerful honesty and introspection that make this piece such an engaging read. Sara’o Bery is a longtime friend, which doesn’t always bode well for a joint professional undertaking, but in this case, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have played a part in giving this piece an audience. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor
Read the full story about Ghanaian groundnut soup »
Grilling With Vinegar
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
I have a lot of reasons to pick Michael Harlan Turkell’s summertime series on grilling with vinegar as my favorite post(s) of the year. First, selfishly, because it meant that I got to hang out with him multiple times throughout the summer as we worked our way through his recipes, using a grill we’d set up on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Standing in the sunshine and drinking cold beers with a friend while grilling up a storm is about as good as my job gets. But on top of that, I just love his recipes: He has so many creative, unexpected, and goddamned delicious ideas for how to use vinegar in grilled foods. There are the burgers spiked with Japanese black vinegar, dripping with melted cheese and slathered with a black olive mayo; there’s the tart and herbal chimichurri sauce spooned not onto the obvious steak but sweet and plump grilled squash instead; a Spanish-inspired grilled scallion and endive salad topped with a creamy, nutty, and spicy sauce; and—who can forget—grilled peaches on grilled poundcake with a perfectly sweet-sour cider-caramel sauce that should be a classic all on its own. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director
Read our full series on grilling with vinegar »
Cheesy Bread Is Absurdly Good, No Matter What You Call It
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Writing a post about cheesy bread could so easily become, well, cheesy. But Sohla’s cheesy bread post was so full of easy-to-digest, cheese-filled wit and wisdom I almost forgot it was about one of my favorite snacks in the world. Her post had me at the second line: “In our wedding vows, my husband promised to have and to hold and to always keep the fridge stocked with three varieties of cheddar.” She makes baking them sound like the easiest thing in the world, and for an unconfident baker like me, that is incredibly reassuring. And when you get to the end of the post, be prepared for one of the great visual kickers in Serious Eats’ eleven-year history. Thank you, Vicky Wasik. —Ed Levine, founder
Dive into the cheesy bread experience »
The Definitive Guide to Eggs
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
When I first started at Serious Eats earlier this year, the team was deep in the throes of developing The Definitive Guide to Eggs, a.k.a. “The Egg Page.” It was a gargantuan effort of collecting techniques, creating guides to the different shapes and sizes, decoding the terms and labels you find on the carton…the list goes on. It was perhaps the best way to get to know my new team. From the videos produced by the culinary and visual teams, to the user-friendly experience designed by our dev team, to every quick-hitting blurb written and edited by the editorial team, everything came together in a smart and savvy product. I’ve come to learn that such a product is standard at Serious Eats, thanks to the talented folks I get to call coworkers. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media editor
Explore the Serious Eats Definitive Guide to Eggs »
Chaat Your Mouth: How to Make the South Asian Street Food at Home
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
I love how Sohla’s recipes often start with a story. From the first line, you’re with her in that airplane cabin hurtling its way towards Dhaka, tightly packed in with relatives and strangers alike passing the time by flinging heated opinions to and fro on what constitutes the best chaat, where to get it, and even when to consume it to mitigate the effects of certain digestive ailments. It sets the scene for how you should think about chaat: as a chaotic, beautiful mess of personal preferences synthesized and represented in a dish. It’s customizable, highly subjective, and somewhat hard to pin down, but Sohla does just that. She hands you the essential components, a roadmap to the key flavor profiles, and a dizzyingly detailed but comprehensively clear breakdown of the adjustments you can make to create a satisfying version of your own. My favorite part? How she describes kala namak, personified as a condiment with attitude that lends the dish’s foundational chaat masala spice blend “a bossy bit of savory funk.” Lyrical genius. —Marissa Chen, office manager
Read all about chaat »
Staff Picks: Our Favorite Fictional Foods
[Illustration: Katie Shelly]
Spending hours of my day geeking out with my coworkers about the most fantastic scenes of food and drink from our favorite childhood books and movies isn’t what I’d call “work.” Neither is having a serious discussion over whether the two pizza slices in the Saturday Night Fever illustration should be neatly stacked or remain slightly splayed, and whether the central figure was adequately representative of Tony Manero. Neither is eagerly, secretly reloading comments once the piece was published to see who out there might have been fascinated by some of the same things we were as kids. Writing and editing this post was delightful proof that nothing unites like youthful nerdery. —Miranda Kaplan, editor
Check out our favorite fictional foods »
How to Make a Mixed-Green Salad Like You Actually Care
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
The state of salad in this country is a sordid mess, and the problem starts with the greens. Take a stroll down the salad aisle in any supermarket and you’ll see stacks upon stacks of prewashed stuff—salad mixes and plastic clamshells filled with insipid “baby” lettuces—as if all good taste had been sacrificed to the great god of Convenience. There is a reason bottled salad dressing is so aggressive, so cloyingly sweet: Good greens don’t need much more than a little acid and good olive oil, or a light vinaigrette. Daniel offers up what might seem like remedially simple advice in this post, but it’s advice that is sorely needed. Salad shouldn’t be a chore to make, or to eat; salad should be celebrated, from the moment you purchase the greens until you finish your plate. All it takes is a little care, a little inspiration in the supermarket aisle, a tiny wee bit of patience once in a while, and you’ll be surprised at how much you look forward to the salad portion of a meal. —Sho Spaeth, features editor
Read more about how to step up your salad game »
The Best Things I Ate in Japan
[Photographs: Daniel Gritzer]
I’ve never been obsessed with the idea of seeing (or eating my way through) Japan. I love traveling, sure, and Japan is on my list, but it was never particularly high on my list until I edited Daniel’s essay on his favorite bites from a visit there. This is not a travel piece, not a series of restaurant reviews, and not a primer on Japanese foods that are uncommon in the West, but it includes elements of all three, and the result is a low-key window into the country’s cuisine that makes it seem simultaneously more approachable and more exciting to me than before. It just might convince you that blowfish sperm is a thing you want to put in your mouth. —Miranda Kaplan, editor
Join Daniel on his culinary adventure through Japan »
The Food Lab: How to Make Kickass Quesadillas
[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]
Kenji’s “Kickass Quesadilla” post is probably the one I used the most this year. There are three recipes attached, but let’s be honest, you don’t need them. If you’re anything like me, your quesadillas are rarely pre-planned beyond gazing into your fridge and realizing you have tortillas, cheese, maybe some random leftovers/vegetables/pickles, and a strong desire not to go outside. That’s really all you need to make a good quesadilla, but if you read Kenji’s tips and apply them, you’ll almost certainly make a great one. —Paul Cline, developer
Check out our quesadilla pro-tips »
The Pho I Lost
[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]
I have the pleasure of sitting next to Sho at the office. While I sometimes jokingly refer to him as the office curmudgeon, he has come to be a good friend and I appreciate how discerning he is about pretty much everything. I think this friendship really developed after I read his story about pho, taste memory, and his mother. I admired the courage (and ability) it took to write about and share the feelings and memories he describes. And the fact that he can eat two bowls of pho in one sitting (and do that every day for two-and-a-half weeks) is just…well, that’s something to respect. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director
Read about Sho’s long-lost pho »
For the Most Flavorful Piña Colada, Freeze Everything
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
The piña colada is one of those things—like pasta —that is surprisingly hard to get a good version of when you’re eating out. Growing up, the PC was a special-occasion drink and my mom’s go-to at our family’s Italian weddings. That’s where I first had one, at around 12 years old, when she ordered a small (not virgin) one for me—God bless European parents. I love Daniel’s story because the big tip—to freeze everything—is that one little step that can make your shopping trip to buy coconut cream worth it. Trust me, I made several batches of these while testing blenders and it works. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet, with clean, creamy coconut and pineapple flavors, and just the right amount of rum. —Sal Vaglica, equipment editor
Learn how to make piña coladas like a boss »
What Is “Traditional” Soju?: A Spirited Debate
[Photograph: Emily Dryden]
I like to think I know a little bit about Korea: I’ve had Korean friends my entire life, I’ve been there more than a few times, and my father has lived in Seoul for close to a decade now. So I also thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about soju, the nation’s ubiquitous and beloved liquor. When we got the pitch for this piece, what struck me most wasn’t just my own ignorance about soju’s long history (I am never, ever surprised by the depths of my ignorance); it was how little had been written about the liquor anywhere else. This was an untold story in English, one that we were in a unique position to be able to offer a wide audience. Add to that the fact that in delving into the story of what “traditional” soju is, Josh managed to weave into the narrative much of what makes South Korea such a remarkable place—its ultra rapid industrialization and modernization, its skyrocketing cultural capital—and I can say without a doubt that it was my favorite feature of 2017. It was a privilege to publish it. —Sho Spaeth, features editor
Read more about soju »
How Oreos Got Their Name: The Rise of an American Icon
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Nothing grabs my attention more than the thrilling histories behind iconic foods. Lucky, that’s Stella’s forte, as she dives deep into the corporate intrigue and betrayal behind the beloved biscuit. Walking down the snack aisle has never felt the same after reading about the cutthroat cookie war that culminated with Oreo taking the throne. I’m eagerly awaiting the movie adaptation. —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor
A rich and totally unexpected look at the origin of Oreos, by the one and only Stella Parks. I am lucky enough to work with Stella once a month, where I have the pleasure of witnessing her deep knowledge base and attention to detail first-hand. It’s front and center in this piece, as is her intense curiosity about all things pastry-related. Her approachable and snarky style makes it all the more enjoyable—phrases like “they might as well have told Oreos to get off their lawn” pepper the piece throughout. Humor aside, it’s a zippy and fun exploration of a history you never knew you wanted to know. —Natalie Holt, video producer
Get the full history of Oreos »
A Losers’ Thanksgiving: No One Knows Your Name (But All Are Welcome)
[Illustration: Alex Citrin]
This story had me hooked from the get-go and held me straight through til the end, a tale of frozen misery, daring hope, social ambition, and conquering life with pie. —Stella Parks, pastry wizard
Read Sohla’s heartwarming holiday tale »
Obsessed: A Man and His Mold
[Photograph: Chris Anderson]
Man, Rich Shih is smart. And he’s passionate as hell. His responses to the interview questions in this article are so in-depth and intelligent that you might think they were heavily edited, but I had the pleasure of meeting Rich (and making miso with him) in the office, and he really is that knowledgable. And that knowledge is built on a fervent curiosity. This isn’t his day job—it isn’t even related—but he is all-in on his koji project, devoting years to researching and experimenting with the stuff. I can attest to the results being delicious. The article is also accompanied by gorgeous photographs of close-up mold spores and fermented products. Kudos to Sho and his wonderful “Obsessed” series about the passionate amateur and professional foodies of this world. —Tim Aikens, front-end developer
Catch the koji bug, right this way »
For the Lightest, Crispiest Granola, Grab the Buttermilk
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
When Stella told me she was developing a granola recipe to shoot on her next trip up to NYC, I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean, granola is great and all, but why would I spend the time making it when I can easily pop into my corner grocery store and grab any of the 10 varieties they have in stock at any given time? And then I ate it. And then I ate MORE of it. And then I took the entire jar from the photoshoot home and finished it in less than a week. This is the most addictive snack I’ve ever had. And it’s granola so…it’s good for you…right? I made it a few weeks later when my craving kicked in. It’s definitely a labor of love, but well worth the effort! —Vicky Wasik, visual director
Find out what makes Stella’s granola so great »
The Best Chicken Pot Pie, With Biscuits or Pastry
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Chicken pot pie is one of those recipes I’ve always been too intimidated to tackle; all my life I’ve resorted to frozen Marie Callender’s. Don’t get me wrong, those frozen pies are still delicious, but when Stella came out with her savory pie, it gave me the confidence to give it a try. Who knew making the roux would turn out to be so easy? I also love having the freedom to add whatever fillings I want, and it’s now a crowd favorite among my friends and family. I even got my roommate to give it a try, too, which means double the pot pies at home! —Vivian Kong, designer
Dig into some chicken pot pie »
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New Post has been published on http://cookingtipsguide.com/staff-picks-our-favorite-posts-of-2017/
Staff Picks: Our Favorite Posts of 2017
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2017 has been a pretty great year for Serious Eats. We’ve broken traffic records left and right, we’ve been lucky enough to hire some amazing new colleagues, and we’ve managed to crank out some top notch recipes, techniques, and features, all while juggling a host of different complicating factors—three babies were born (!), one of the head honchos got married (!!), and half the office got addicted to a silly trivia game on their iPhones (!!!). Here are some of our team’s favorite pieces of content from the year.
East, West, Then Backward: Falling for Groundnut Soup in Ghana
[Illustration: Laura Freeman]
A study abroad trip to Ghana leaves a student of color feeling profoundly othered, withdrawn from both his fellow travelers and the community he’d hoped would embrace him. The significance of food, family, and mealtimes courses through each juncture of the narrative—and lands the reader with an incredibly delicious recipe for peanutty, meaty groundnut soup.
It’s a moving and beautifully composed piece, but it’s the author’s powerful honesty and introspection that make this piece such an engaging read. Sara’o Bery is a longtime friend, which doesn’t always bode well for a joint professional undertaking, but in this case, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have played a part in giving this piece an audience. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor
Read the full story about Ghanaian groundnut soup »
Grilling With Vinegar
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
I have a lot of reasons to pick Michael Harlan Turkell’s summertime series on grilling with vinegar as my favorite post(s) of the year. First, selfishly, because it meant that I got to hang out with him multiple times throughout the summer as we worked our way through his recipes, using a grill we’d set up on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Standing in the sunshine and drinking cold beers with a friend while grilling up a storm is about as good as my job gets. But on top of that, I just love his recipes: He has so many creative, unexpected, and goddamned delicious ideas for how to use vinegar in grilled foods. There are the burgers spiked with Japanese black vinegar, dripping with melted cheese and slathered with a black olive mayo; there’s the tart and herbal chimichurri sauce spooned not onto the obvious steak but sweet and plump grilled squash instead; a Spanish-inspired grilled scallion and endive salad topped with a creamy, nutty, and spicy sauce; and—who can forget—grilled peaches on grilled poundcake with a perfectly sweet-sour cider-caramel sauce that should be a classic all on its own. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director
Read our full series on grilling with vinegar »
Cheesy Bread Is Absurdly Good, No Matter What You Call It
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Writing a post about cheesy bread could so easily become, well, cheesy. But Sohla’s cheesy bread post was so full of easy-to-digest, cheese-filled wit and wisdom I almost forgot it was about one of my favorite snacks in the world. Her post had me at the second line: “In our wedding vows, my husband promised to have and to hold and to always keep the fridge stocked with three varieties of cheddar.” She makes baking them sound like the easiest thing in the world, and for an unconfident baker like me, that is incredibly reassuring. And when you get to the end of the post, be prepared for one of the great visual kickers in Serious Eats’ eleven-year history. Thank you, Vicky Wasik. —Ed Levine, founder
Dive into the cheesy bread experience »
The Definitive Guide to Eggs
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
When I first started at Serious Eats earlier this year, the team was deep in the throes of developing The Definitive Guide to Eggs, a.k.a. “The Egg Page.” It was a gargantuan effort of collecting techniques, creating guides to the different shapes and sizes, decoding the terms and labels you find on the carton…the list goes on. It was perhaps the best way to get to know my new team. From the videos produced by the culinary and visual teams, to the user-friendly experience designed by our dev team, to every quick-hitting blurb written and edited by the editorial team, everything came together in a smart and savvy product. I’ve come to learn that such a product is standard at Serious Eats, thanks to the talented folks I get to call coworkers. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media editor
Explore the Serious Eats Definitive Guide to Eggs »
Chaat Your Mouth: How to Make the South Asian Street Food at Home
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
I love how Sohla’s recipes often start with a story. From the first line, you’re with her in that airplane cabin hurtling its way towards Dhaka, tightly packed in with relatives and strangers alike passing the time by flinging heated opinions to and fro on what constitutes the best chaat, where to get it, and even when to consume it to mitigate the effects of certain digestive ailments. It sets the scene for how you should think about chaat: as a chaotic, beautiful mess of personal preferences synthesized and represented in a dish. It’s customizable, highly subjective, and somewhat hard to pin down, but Sohla does just that. She hands you the essential components, a roadmap to the key flavor profiles, and a dizzyingly detailed but comprehensively clear breakdown of the adjustments you can make to create a satisfying version of your own. My favorite part? How she describes kala namak, personified as a condiment with attitude that lends the dish’s foundational chaat masala spice blend “a bossy bit of savory funk.” Lyrical genius. —Marissa Chen, office manager
Read all about chaat »
Staff Picks: Our Favorite Fictional Foods
[Illustration: Katie Shelly]
Spending hours of my day geeking out with my coworkers about the most fantastic scenes of food and drink from our favorite childhood books and movies isn’t what I’d call “work.” Neither is having a serious discussion over whether the two pizza slices in the Saturday Night Fever illustration should be neatly stacked or remain slightly splayed, and whether the central figure was adequately representative of Tony Manero. Neither is eagerly, secretly reloading comments once the piece was published to see who out there might have been fascinated by some of the same things we were as kids. Writing and editing this post was delightful proof that nothing unites like youthful nerdery. —Miranda Kaplan, editor
Check out our favorite fictional foods »
How to Make a Mixed-Green Salad Like You Actually Care
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
The state of salad in this country is a sordid mess, and the problem starts with the greens. Take a stroll down the salad aisle in any supermarket and you’ll see stacks upon stacks of prewashed stuff—salad mixes and plastic clamshells filled with insipid “baby” lettuces—as if all good taste had been sacrificed to the great god of Convenience. There is a reason bottled salad dressing is so aggressive, so cloyingly sweet: Good greens don’t need much more than a little acid and good olive oil, or a light vinaigrette. Daniel offers up what might seem like remedially simple advice in this post, but it’s advice that is sorely needed. Salad shouldn’t be a chore to make, or to eat; salad should be celebrated, from the moment you purchase the greens until you finish your plate. All it takes is a little care, a little inspiration in the supermarket aisle, a tiny wee bit of patience once in a while, and you’ll be surprised at how much you look forward to the salad portion of a meal. —Sho Spaeth, features editor
Read more about how to step up your salad game »
The Best Things I Ate in Japan
[Photographs: Daniel Gritzer]
I’ve never been obsessed with the idea of seeing (or eating my way through) Japan. I love traveling, sure, and Japan is on my list, but it was never particularly high on my list until I edited Daniel’s essay on his favorite bites from a visit there. This is not a travel piece, not a series of restaurant reviews, and not a primer on Japanese foods that are uncommon in the West, but it includes elements of all three, and the result is a low-key window into the country’s cuisine that makes it seem simultaneously more approachable and more exciting to me than before. It just might convince you that blowfish sperm is a thing you want to put in your mouth. —Miranda Kaplan, editor
Join Daniel on his culinary adventure through Japan »
The Food Lab: How to Make Kickass Quesadillas
[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]
Kenji’s “Kickass Quesadilla” post is probably the one I used the most this year. There are three recipes attached, but let’s be honest, you don’t need them. If you’re anything like me, your quesadillas are rarely pre-planned beyond gazing into your fridge and realizing you have tortillas, cheese, maybe some random leftovers/vegetables/pickles, and a strong desire not to go outside. That’s really all you need to make a good quesadilla, but if you read Kenji’s tips and apply them, you’ll almost certainly make a great one. —Paul Cline, developer
Check out our quesadilla pro-tips »
The Pho I Lost
[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]
I have the pleasure of sitting next to Sho at the office. While I sometimes jokingly refer to him as the office curmudgeon, he has come to be a good friend and I appreciate how discerning he is about pretty much everything. I think this friendship really developed after I read his story about pho, taste memory, and his mother. I admired the courage (and ability) it took to write about and share the feelings and memories he describes. And the fact that he can eat two bowls of pho in one sitting (and do that every day for two-and-a-half weeks) is just…well, that’s something to respect. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director
Read about Sho’s long-lost pho »
For the Most Flavorful Piña Colada, Freeze Everything
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
The piña colada is one of those things—like pasta —that is surprisingly hard to get a good version of when you’re eating out. Growing up, the PC was a special-occasion drink and my mom’s go-to at our family’s Italian weddings. That’s where I first had one, at around 12 years old, when she ordered a small (not virgin) one for me—God bless European parents. I love Daniel’s story because the big tip—to freeze everything—is that one little step that can make your shopping trip to buy coconut cream worth it. Trust me, I made several batches of these while testing blenders and it works. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet, with clean, creamy coconut and pineapple flavors, and just the right amount of rum. —Sal Vaglica, equipment editor
Learn how to make piña coladas like a boss »
What Is “Traditional” Soju?: A Spirited Debate
[Photograph: Emily Dryden]
I like to think I know a little bit about Korea: I’ve had Korean friends my entire life, I’ve been there more than a few times, and my father has lived in Seoul for close to a decade now. So I also thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about soju, the nation’s ubiquitous and beloved liquor. When we got the pitch for this piece, what struck me most wasn’t just my own ignorance about soju’s long history (I am never, ever surprised by the depths of my ignorance); it was how little had been written about the liquor anywhere else. This was an untold story in English, one that we were in a unique position to be able to offer a wide audience. Add to that the fact that in delving into the story of what “traditional” soju is, Josh managed to weave into the narrative much of what makes South Korea such a remarkable place—its ultra rapid industrialization and modernization, its skyrocketing cultural capital—and I can say without a doubt that it was my favorite feature of 2017. It was a privilege to publish it. —Sho Spaeth, features editor
Read more about soju »
How Oreos Got Their Name: The Rise of an American Icon/h3>
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Nothing grabs my attention more than the thrilling histories behind iconic foods. Lucky, that’s Stella’s forte, as she dives deep into the corporate intrigue and betrayal behind the beloved biscuit. Walking down the snack aisle has never felt the same after reading about the cutthroat cookie war that culminated with Oreo taking the throne. I’m eagerly awaiting the movie adaptation. —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor
A rich and totally unexpected look at the origin of Oreos, by the one and only Stella Parks. I am lucky enough to work with Stella once a month, where I have the pleasure of witnessing her deep knowledge base and attention to detail first-hand. It’s front and center in this piece, as is her intense curiosity about all things pastry-related. Her approachable and snarky style makes it all the more enjoyable—phrases like “they might as well have told Oreos to get off their lawn” pepper the piece throughout. Humor aside, it’s a zippy and fun exploration of a history you never knew you wanted to know. —Natalie Holt, video producer
Get the full history of Oreos »
A Losers’ Thanksgiving: No One Knows Your Name (But All Are Welcome)
[Illustration: Alex Citrin]
This story had me hooked from the get-go and held me straight through til the end, a tale of frozen misery, daring hope, social ambition, and conquering life with pie. —Stella Parks, pastry wizard
Read Sohla’s heartwarming holiday tale »
Obsessed: A Man and His Mold
[Photograph: Chris Anderson]
Man, Rich Shih is smart. And he’s passionate as hell. His responses to the interview questions in this article are so in-depth and intelligent that you might think they were heavily edited, but I had the pleasure of meeting Rich (and making miso with him) in the office, and he really is that knowledgable. And that knowledge is built on a fervent curiosity. This isn’t his day job—it isn’t even related—but he is all-in on his koji project, devoting years to researching and experimenting with the stuff. I can attest to the results being delicious. The article is also accompanied by gorgeous photographs of close-up mold spores and fermented products. Kudos to Sho and his wonderful “Obsessed” series about the passionate amateur and professional foodies of this world. —Tim Aikens, front-end developer
Catch the koji bug, right this way »
For the Lightest, Crispiest Granola, Grab the Buttermilk
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
When Stella told me she was developing a granola recipe to shoot on her next trip up to NYC, I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean, granola is great and all, but why would I spend the time making it when I can easily pop into my corner grocery store and grab any of the 10 varieties they have in stock at any given time? And then I ate it. And then I ate MORE of it. And then I took the entire jar from the photoshoot home and finished it in less than a week. This is the most addictive snack I’ve ever had. And it’s granola so…it’s good for you…right? I made it a few weeks later when my craving kicked in. It’s definitely a labor of love, but well worth the effort! —Vicky Wasik, visual director
Find out what makes Stella’s granola so great »
The Best Chicken Pot Pie, With Biscuits or Pastry
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]
Chicken pot pie is one of those recipes I’ve always been too intimidated to tackle; all my life I’ve resorted to frozen Marie Callender’s. Don’t get me wrong, those frozen pies are still delicious, but when Stella came out with her savory pie, it gave me the confidence to give it a try. Who knew making the roux would turn out to be so easy? I also love having the freedom to add whatever fillings I want, and it’s now a crowd favorite among my friends and family. I even got my roommate to give it a try, too, which means double the pot pies at home! —Vivian Kong, designer
Dig into some chicken pot pie »
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Huaisang’s Hit List
or, how I learned to stop worrying and love my cursed dick
Technically Huaisang never slept with Wen Chao, just...spent a few minutes extricating himself from what turned out to be that awful murder-tortoise cave adventure. And anyway, it doesn’t matter because Wen Chao wasn’t on The List. The List was the problem. Is the problem.
Remember that Top Cultivator’s list? You know the one, the one where the Twin Jades were the two most eligible cultivators and Wei Wuxian was ranked higher than Jiang Cheng?
Yeah, that was Huaisang’s fault. But no one regrets it more than he does.
Except maybe all the dead people.
Read more Kristina Writes Tiny Stories
Notes:
Sort of explicit, and there’s definitely some terribly silly cursed sex acts.
If you want to read it on AO3 instead, you can do that too!
Many thanks to @coslyons and AO3′s mongrelmind and effienell who probably will regret being tagged. Read their fantastic work instead of this absolute travesty.
⟹ ⟸ ⟹ ⟸ ⟹ ⟸ ⟹ ⟸ ⟹ ⟸
In hindsight, Huaisang should have realized way before the Wei Wuxian Incident that he was cursed. But to be fair, people die all the time.
He should know. He has personally killed eight people with his cursed dick.
“So,” Jiang Cheng says, hands tucked under his head, staring up at the sky, “You’re telling me that everyone you have sex with dies. And therefore, you must be killing them?”
“More or less, yes.”
“Isn’t that a little…” Jiang Cheng pauses and kicks the water his feet are dangling in, apparently trying for once in his life to be tactful, which makes Huaisang even more miserable. If Jiang Cheng is being tactful, it must be the end of the world. “Conceited?”
Huaisang pulls another leaf off the branch he is mutilating. He really doesn’t think he’s ever been conceited. Conceited would imply a lack of justification, and he is quite sure he’s right about this.
“A-Cheng, I have evidence. Hard evidence.”
Jiang Cheng chokes a little, and Huaisang glares at him. “Could you not? This is serious. I am never going to have sex again.”
Jiang Cheng chokes again, this time gasping with pained laughter, and Huaisang throws the branch at him. “Fuck you a-Cheng.”
“Thank all the gods you never have!” Jiang Cheng is howling now, curled in a ball and wheezing, and Huaisang has never been so insulted in his life.
Huaisang gathers what remains of his dignity and stands. He doesn’t care how beautiful Lotus Pier is in summer, or how many different shades of pink the flowers blanketing the lakes are, or how wickedly indulgent the sun feels through only two layers of robes, he is going to walk back down this dock and leave.
“Oh sit down, you big baby.” Jiang Cheng grabs the hem of Huaisang’s green robe. “I know you’re just dying to tell me about your ‘hard evidence’ and as much as I would rather rather erase all knowledge of your sex life from…”
Jiang Cheng's utter inability to disguise any thought he has is a gift, Huaisang thinks. Not only does it mean that in almost twenty years, Huaisang has never lost a game of weiqi, it also means he knows the moment it occurs to Jiang Cheng exactly what he means. Or rather...who.
“You. Did not. Fuck. My brother.”
Huaisang glares at a pair of ducks flying noisily overhead—those bastards were probably using their wings to escape awkward conversations—and silently bemoans his sudden and inexplicable flirtation with honesty. Why precisely had he wanted to share the details of his humiliating curse with Jiang Cheng? He frowns down at Sandu Shengshou’s tight, angry slash of a mouth, crackling dark eyes, cheekbones that could slice open his fingers if he ran them over the ridges…
Oh yes. That was why.
“Well, not first,” Huaisang says, deciding that if he’s in for a piglet, he’s in for a hog. “What happened first was Wen Xu.”
Jiang Cheng rolls into the lake. Huaisang is speechless. As rude escapes from his presence go, it is unprecedented. Wen Xu only snuck out of the window.
⟹ ⟸
Huaisang wasn’t biting his lip because he was nervous. That would be preposterous. He wasn’t a virgin after all. But he had also never picked anyone up in a tavern...well, certainly not a tavern in Hejian...okay, definitely not anyone at a tavern in Hejian as spectacularly handsome as the man whose name he couldn’t recall and really didn’t care about currently stripping in front of…
He lost his train of thought when—what was his name...Yang...Tian...something about the sun—threw his undershirt on the ground and looked expectantly at Huaisang, flexing the outrageous muscles on his chest just enough to make Huaisang’s blood boil. Yes, oh yes, he was definitely going to bite Sun Man right over the top of his left nipple immediately. And then he was going to make Sun Man beg for mercy. He stepped forward, his mouth stretching wide in a practiced seductive smile, and everything went wrong.
Sun Man stepped forward too, eyes closing, an arrogant tilt to his mouth. Huaisang tried to avoid the kiss—who kissed a stranger in an inn?—but he avoided to the left, and Sun Man lurched to the left. Like a slow motion fall off a cliff, they crashed into each other, arms and legs flailing everywhere. Sun Man’s head smacked into Huaisang’s chin, and worse, Huaisang’s knee collided with the soft—well, not that soft, some distant, smug corner of his brain noted—flesh between the man’s legs. He grunted in pain, grabbed Huaisang, and they fell on the floor in a fairly uncomfortable heap.
Fuck. Well, there goes that, Huaisang thought. Another thrilling night listening to da-ge rant about the damn Wen dogs loomed in his future.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Sun Man said immediately, sprawled on top of Huaisang, and Huaisang realized he meant it, judging by the considerably less soft space between his legs that was currently pressed against Huaisang’s hip.
He cheered immediately. Sun Man liked being hurt. It wasn’t a great start, but he could work with that.
Yes, he thought, as he slapped Sun Man hard on his spectacular ass and Sun Man let out a hearty moan, he could work with this.
Later, history books would describe da-ge as glorious in battle, cutting through the Wen army to the Wen heir, knocking the arrogant smile off his face and the man off his horse, laughing when he begged for mercy and dismembering his body as a lesson to the others, all to the triumphant cheers of the combined army.
What the history books did not mention was da-ge dramatically throwing the head on the ground at Huaisang’s feet in the music room.
“I will take his head to Xichen,” da-ge announced proudly, and Huaisang winced. How could anyone be so bad at romantic gifts?
He looked down despite himself—it had been almost a week since da-ge had thrown a Wen body part on the floor—and gasped.
Huaisang tried to look away from Sun Man in time but in the grand tradition of brothers everywhere, da-ge was unfailingly observant at the worst possible times.
“Huaisang, what did you do?”
Nothing, Huaisang thought, snapping his fan open and trying to blink the hysterical laughter away. Just spanked the daylights out of Wen Xu the night before he died. Just made him cry and climax and collapse in snoring exhaustion before Huaisang had a chance to finish any kind of reciprocal satisfaction, the bastard. And then just watched him climb out of the window before dawn. He sighs. What a wasted night.
“Nothing, da-ge. It’s just...he’s leaking on the floor.”
Da-ge grunted and rolled the head out of the room with his foot.
“I was expecting it to last longer, honestly,” da-ge said, and Huaisang thought, me too. “He seemed spent before we even started.”
Huaisang covered his giggle with a sympathetic cough. “How disappointing for you, da-ge.”
“The thing is,” da-ge continued, eyes sharpening in a very worrisome way. “I noticed a distinctive shade of lip color on his neck, right before I separated it from his body. Almost...like...the mauve you’re wearing right now.”
“This is raisin,” Huaisang snapped before he could help himself and then cringed. He was in so much trouble.
But instead, da-ge sank into a chair laughing. “You could have just drugged him, Huaisang. You didn’t have to fuck him. Next time, tell me before you decide to single handedly give our enemy the serpent’s kiss?”
Huaisang decided to take credit for the tactical fucking, but did not want to be assigned any future war jobs, hand, blow, or otherwise.
“I am not having sex with any more Wens,” he said virtuously, sitting in a chair across from his brother. He did not appreciate the roar of laughter.
⟹ ⟸
“Oh gods, how many more Wens did you have sex with?” Jiang Cheng demands, wringing out his dripping hair next to the hearth fire in the kitchen. “The whole army? Wen Ruohan? Truly, you are the unsung hero of the Sunshot campaign. We should have made you chief cultivator.”
“First of all, I would be a phenomenal chief cultivator, thank you.” Huaisang throws a towel at Jiang Cheng, whacking him on the side of the head, but Jiang Cheng just grins charmingly, the wretch. “Second of all, none of course.”
Technically he never slept with Wen Chao, just...spent a few minutes extricating himself from what turned out to be that awful murder-tortoise cave adventure. And anyway, it doesn’t matter because Wen Chao wasn’t on The List. The List was the problem. Is the problem.
Jiang Cheng twists his hair into a knot on the top of his head and starts stripping off his wet clothes.
“Okay, so then you slept with my brother?”
Huaisang slumps in a chair and stares at the carved ceiling, not looking, not looking, not looking. Pretty, he thinks, focusing very diligently on the wood. It looks like a giant lotus flower.
“No, only the number sixes at first,” Huaisang mumbles, wondering if the splotchy paint marks on the carving are actually tiny lotus flowers. If so, he really has to admire how committed the Yunmeng Jiang are to the aesthetic.
Suddenly Jiang Cheng’s face is next to his face, his hands on the arm of the chair, and he looks angry again. Wet and angry. Like a scandalously unrobed cat that just crawled out of a well—Huaisang fumbles the metaphor, too distracted by Jiang Cheng’s chest.
“Are you talking about that plague of a ‘most eligible cultivators’ list? If I ever find out who ruined my life with that list, I am going to tie them to something very hard and beat them within an inch of their life,” he growls, and Huaisang is afraid he might be a little turned on by that. He tries something. A sort of experiment.
“I made the list.”
Jiang Cheng turns white, the blood draining instantly from his face. His eyes widen, his nostrils flare, and Huaisang decides that yes, indeed, he is terrified and aroused. He really does learn something new about himself every day.
“You asshole,” Jiang Cheng hisses. “Why?”
“I don’t remember,” he lies. “Maybe I was bored. Maybe it was a list of people I wanted to be friends with.” It was certainly not a list of people he and Meng Yao had wanted to see naked. Not at all.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t move. If anything, his nose gets a little closer to Huaisang’s nose. Tantalizingly within biting distance.
“It was a sex list, wasn’t it,” he accuses, entirely unfairly in Huaisang’s opinion. But then he frowns. “Your brother was on that list. That’s...a bit much, even for you.”
Huaisang sticks out his tongue, almost licking Jiang Cheng. Wisely, Jiang Cheng jumps back, protecting his precious nose with his hand.
“Okay, that was Zewu-Jun’s fault! He found out that da-ge wasn’t on the list and he looked so sad. You know how he is! ‘But Mingjue-xiong is so handsome and kind. Why wouldn’t he be considered the most eligible cultivator? You know I have no interest in such worldly things, but oh, woe, life has been too cruel to my dear, dear friend Mingjue-xiong.’” Huaisang knows he does a killer Lan-zongzhu impression, and Jiang Cheng’s mouth twitches at the corners.
“Fine. You didn’t fuck your brother. Good for you. Go ahead, tell me who you did kill. Since I apparently can’t stop you.”
“I didn’t know I was doing it, a-Cheng. I wouldn’t kill people on purpose.”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t hesitate to reassure him.
“Of course you would.”
Huaisang is friends with Jiang Cheng for this exact reason: because he is the kind of friend who would steal chickens and bury bodies with you and not judge or ask questions.
Jiang Cheng freezes, closes his eyes, and asks a very judgmental question. “Don’t tell me you were responsible for Jin Zixuan too?”
Huaisang winces. “Not...only.”
⟹ ⟸
“So you’re second cousins,” Huaisang asked, drinking another cup of the finest wine he can afford, and staring at Jin Zixuan’s increasingly handsome face, already a work of art.
Naturally, it was the other one who answered, because nothing was easy today except for Huaisang.
“No, his mother’s sister’s husband’s sister is my mother. They were married in the same ancestral hall as my mother’s brother’s wife’s brother, though, and....”
Huaisang didn’t give two fucks about Jin Zixun droning on about his relations, but he liked the flush on Jin Zixuan’s cheeks when he caught Huaisang staring at him. He’d had two bottles of wine, and he seemed to be one of those drunks who got quieter and quieter until he fell over. Huaisang wanted to catch him.
He had found Jin Zixuan in Yudao Tang, looking at the map of the Sunshot Campaign without da-ge, and although he was fairly sure it was innocent, he was also fairly sure da-ge would absolutely qi deviate if anyone touched his little metal horses and toy soldiers. He was just going to shoo him away, but Jin Zixuan, the third most eligible cultivator, had given him A Curious Look, and Huaisang had shifted tactics with a military precision he thinks would even have impressed his da-ge.
“You’ve been working so hard, Jin-gongzi,” Huaisang said, testing out Jin Zixuan’s bicep with a soft and gentle squeeze that lingered long enough to promise something hard and rough. “Let’s go share a bottle or two to loosen up for the night.”
He hadn’t even realized the other one was there.
“You’re too generous Nie Huaisang! We accept your offer,” crowed the unwanted Jin, whose name Huaisang was unwillingly informed was Zixun.
So now Huaisang was sitting in an inn in Hejian trying to get Jin Zixun pass-out drunk faster than Jin Zixuan. It wasn’t working. The man had a hollow leg. Possibly two hollow legs. Definitely a hollow brain. But then he felt a hand on his knee, and Jin Zixuan was looking at him from under eyelashes as long and thick as butterfly wings.
“Would you like to leave?” he asked quietly, and Huaisang could not have been more relieved than if he had been plucked from the coils of a liangren she.
“Yes please,” he whispered under Jin Zixun’s droning. “You go first. I’ll follow.”
Jin Zixuan stood gracefully, only swayed a little, and was up the stairs before Jin Zixun had completely explained the intimate details of his mother’s sister’s son’s wedding tea service. Huaisang endured the description of osmanthus cakes for two whole minutes before he laughed loudly, interrupting Boring Cousin.
“Stop! I need to relieve myself and I can’t bear to miss one single detail! Wait right here and I’ll be back.”
Jin Zixun looked disappointed to be robbed of an audience even for a heartbeat, but he stayed, and Huaisang fled.
He found Jin Zixuan waiting in the doorway of his room, and he didn’t waste another second. Pushing Jin Zixuan onto the bed, Huaisang practically launched himself at the man, kissing him viciously, thrilled when Jin Zixuan groaned and locked his hand around the back of Huaisang’s head. He looked rumpled and flushed, and he tasted like heat and honey. Absolutely delicious. Huaisang didn’t understand why Wei Wuxian didn’t like Jin Zixuan. Probably because he’d never bitten the skin at the base of his throat or heard how sweetly he moaned when Huaisang got his pants down and started to stroke him, sliding his hand expertly along the smooth curve.
“There you go sweetheart,” Huaisang encouraged, when Jin Zixuan reached between Huaisang’s legs and finally wrapped those long, thin, elegant fingers around his shaft. He was exactly what Huaisang had hoped: beautiful, strong, and eager, if a little unskilled.
And then Huaisang heard the worst sound he had ever heard in his life.
“Fuck, this is hot,” Jin Zizun slurred from the door. “I want to join.”
⟹ ⟸
“And then he did, a-Cheng,” Huaisang whines, taking a bite out of the dumpling Jiang Cheng hands him. “It was the worst.”
Jiang Cheng looks unsympathetic. “Oh, I’m sorry, are you done detailing how you fucked my brother-in-law and his abhorrent cousin to death? I tuned out somewhere around the extremely comprehensive description of my sister’s father’s daughter’s husband’s dick, which I could have lived my whole life without hearing.”
“You asked,” Huaisang points out.
“‘Yes’ or ‘no’ would have been sufficient,” Jiang Cheng retorts.
Huaisang hadn’t considered that.
“Oh. Um, yes. I was responsible for Jin Zixuan. And Jin Zixun, although I didn’t mean to be. And...um...Ouyang Xi and Yao Shui. They were both number sixes. Ouyang Xi was the only girl I ever put on the list. Remember her? She was amazing.”
Jiang Cheng sits back, thinking. “Wasn’t she taller than Hanguang-Jun?” When Huaisang nods, Jiang Cheng whistles appreciatively. “Oh yeah, I remember her. She was something. I can’t even be mad about that one.”
He seems to realize how that sounded and shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous. You aren’t killing people. They died in the war. They died because they were assholes. They died because people die. That’s not proof.”
Huaisang does not want to tell him about Wei Wuxian, but Wei Wuxian is proof.
“It was twice with Wei Wuxian. And he died twice. Once his heart. Once his life. That’s when I realized, and that’s when I stopped having sex.”
Jiang Cheng’s mouth drops open a little and he stares at Huaisang, obviously dumbfounded, probably horrified. Finally, Huaisang thinks, Jiang Cheng doesn’t have anything sarcastic to say.
“I am so mad at you right now,” he finally replies, and Huaisang shrinks. “Once you realized, why the fuck didn’t you sleep with Hanguang-Jun? You could have made my life so much easier. Gods, Huaisang, you are never thinking about me.”
Huaisang’s mind spins futilely, a dog chasing its tail, but he finally processes Jiang Cheng’s sparkling eyes, the slightly raised left eyebrow, and the extremely provoking way he is biting his lip as “teasing.” Huaisang expects his eyes to stop there, but the traitors keep going, looking at Jiang Cheng’s muscular chest, disappointingly garbed in dry clothes, his long legs stretched out in front of him…no! Focus on being truthful! His mind—okay possibly not his mind—objects to both truthfulness and not ogling Jiang Cheng but he perseveres.
“You...you aren’t angry? About Wei Wuxian?”
Jiang Cheng shrugs. “He’s alive now. What can I change about the past? And I’m not sure I want to hear any,” he pokes Huaisang in the chest, “ANY details about whatever you two did.”
Huaisang thinks about Wei Wuxian at sixteen, full of sunshine and curiosity, kneeling in front of him in the woods behind Cloud Recesses, and he thinks of Wei Wuxian during Sunshot, his jagged edges so beautiful and sharp, begging Huaisang to tighten the rope a little more, hurt him a little more, distract him a little more.
“Nope, nope, see, that face is exactly what I don’t want to hear,” Jiang Cheng interrupts. “Not a word, Huaisang. Not a word.”
He leans forward and pours more wine into Huaisang’s cup. “Look, just stop making the list and you’ll be fine. You can go back to doing whatever, whoever, you want.”
“I did! I haven’t been in charge of the list for years! For a while, no one was updating it, and then I handed it over to Jingyi, oh, about a year before Wei Wuxian came back, but...it still works.”
Jiang Cheng’s eyes roll back so hard, so long, Huaisang hopes they get stuck. “I assume you know because you tested it personally. I compliment the rigorous dedication to checking your theory, Huaisang.”
Huaisang sniffs. That poor Zhao girl (an exceptional number seven—Huaisang couldn’t argue with Jingyi’s taste, at least) had died horribly, he thinks, falling from her sword after a tragic mid-air goose collision.
“Well, I had to check, because…” If he is ever going to face a consequence, Huaisang thinks, today is the day. “For once, I wanted to use it.”
And then he waits for the dao to fall.
⟹ ⟸
Huaisang had planned of course, planned for years. Found evidence. Found witnesses. Found proof. But nothing was as good as a sure thing. So he would do this distasteful thing to ensure that no matter what happened, no matter how it happened, his plan would succeed.
Winning was so close he could taste it, like salty tears, like bitter fruit. It was a taste he remembered well.
“San-ge,” he sobbed, drinking his wine and immediately burning off the alcohol, “I just don’t know what to do. I’m going to die alone.”
Jin Guangyao, who Huaisang never thought of san-ge in his mind anymore, looked a little annoyed, but Huaisang poured him another cup of Emperor’s Smile, and his brother’s murderer relaxed.
“A-Sang,” he said in a patronizing tone, as though he was so much older and more mature than Huaisang. “We can visit another matchmaker and try again.”
“Noooooo,” Huaisang wailed. “I just can’t. It won’t help. You must have advice. What can I do to make a woman love me?”
There it was. The flinch. Huaisang loved the flinch. The flinch was winning. He gleefully drove the sword in deeper.
“Oh no, I’m a fool,” he moaned, with a dramatic sniffle, drying his tears and touching the back of Jin Guangyao’s hand, the lightest feather, only the tip of his finger grazing one knuckle. “I’m being selfish. This is such terrible timing, with everything that’s happened. I’m just so lonely. I miss…”
Huaisang sighed and turned away morosely, watching Jin Guangyao out of the corner of his eye. He really wasn’t as good at hiding his reactions as he thought he was. For instance, he bit the inside of his lip the way he always did when he was thinking of the past. And his eyes shifted to the right the way they always did when he was about to lie, so Huaisang beat him to the punch, pouring more wine. Four bottles down.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure you never think about...well...you know.” He let his eyelashes flutter. Jin Guangyao looked a little alarmed, so Huaisang ratcheted the flutter back to a flicker. “But it was the best time of my life,” Huaisang said with a wistful jab, adding a twist of longing, and the thrust hit home.
“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, sounding a little like he was drunk and a lot like he was weakening. “That was a long time ago.”
Huaisang was aware. He was aware that Meng Yao was never on The List, so sleeping with him never counted. He was aware that it was, perhaps, a bit callous to put a man whose wife died two days ago on a list of most eligible bachelors but he is Jin-zongzhu and chief cultivator. It would honestly be a crime not to include him.
“Maybe...maybe tonight I could help you and you could help me? Think of it as therapeutic catharsis, a-Yao.” Huaisang suggested, this time touching Jin Guangyao’s knee, and, when he got no objection, sliding his hand up further.
This is no worse than Su She, he reminded himself. Actually, a lot less worse, he decided, remembering the flash of raw meat that was Su She’s chest with a repressed shudder. He definitely can’t think about that, or he won’t even be able to coax The Cursed One into working order.
“Sang-er,” Jin Guangyao whispered, and Huaisang knew he’d won.
In more ways than one.
⟹ ⟸
Huaisang can’t tell what the look on Jiang Cheng’s face means.
“Ha!” Jiang Cheng shouts, and then tips sideways onto the couch laughing.
No, laughing is a polite word for polite people. Jiang Cheng is braying, quite a bit like Wei Wuxian’s donkey. It is frankly, very unbecoming behavior for a sect leader.
“You sound like Lil’ Apple,” Huaisang says crossly, and Jiang Cheng laughs harder, falling on the ground at Huaisang’s feet.
“You named your dick ‘The Cursed One’? No wonder it hates you. I’d hate you too. Here’s a suggestion. Try naming it something nice!”
“Oh, like ‘Princess?’”
Jiang Cheng shuts up.
But not for long. Never for long. The only person who shuts up less than Huaisang is Jiang Cheng. Huaisang considers himself a model of restraint compared to Jiang Cheng.
“What if you just kiss someone? Does that kill them?”
Huaisang eyes Jiang Cheng suspiciously, but he is sitting up, not laughing, and looks genuinely curious.
“My lips aren’t cursed.”
Jiang Cheng nods slowly. “That makes sense.”
“It does?”
“Not really, but I’m trying to be supportive of your bout with insanity. What happens if you have sex with people who aren’t on the list?”
“Nothing. But I never know who is on the list anymore. Jingyi and Sizhui are very protective of it. I don’t think they trust me not to tell anyone they write it.”
Jiang Cheng gives him a disbelieving look. “I can’t imagine why.”
Huaisang can’t either. It is a very unfilial lack of faith in his well-proven ability to keep secrets.
“Well, I guess if it’s the only way you’ll ever have sex again, I’m willing to sacrifice myself,” Jiang Cheng announces, holding out his arms and wiggling his hips suggestively. “Come and get it, Huaisang. I’m sorry, but this is your best, no, your only option.”
Huaisang kicks Jiang Cheng’s foot viciously. “You are so mean, a-Cheng, and it doesn’t help, because you’re still on the list, okay? Stupid Jingyi and his stupid crush. You’re number three now.”
Jiang Cheng grins so broadly, Huaisang hates him. Hates him a lot. Stupid, vain, irritating Jiang Cheng. He can’t remember why they’re friends. He can’t remember why he likes him.
“That’s so sweet! I knew I liked that kid for a reason. I should invite him over for tea sometime.”
Huaisang pops to his feet. “You go right ahead. I’m leaving.”
As fast as a striking snake, Jiang Cheng sits up and grabs Huaisang around the waist, pulling him down, startling a squeak out of Huaisang as he lands on Jiang Cheng’s lap.
“You idiot,” Jiang Cheng tells Huaisang fondly, tucking his hair behind his ear. “Have you ever tried having sex with anyone on the list who isn’t a fragile flower? Or who thought you were worth risking a little death for? Maybe you aren’t cursed. Maybe you just have terrible taste.”
He kisses Huaisang, so gently and tenderly, eyes closed, nose rubbing Huaisang’s cheek, and it is nothing like Huaisang expected, but it does feel a little like something breaks. Maybe it’s the curse. Maybe it’s the brittle ice around his heart that formed when da-ge died. Whatever it is, he can’t be bothered to think about it. He kisses Jiang Cheng back with everything he’s wanted to say since the day they met.
“Wait!”
Jiang Cheng wrenches away and glares at Huaisang. “Number three? Three? I can understand two, because ugh, Xichen, but who else could possibly be more eligible than me?”
“Cheng-gege, I’m probably just remembering wrong. You know how I am with details. I’m sure you’re second,” Huaisang soothes, wanting to return to the kissing part without having to tell Jiang Cheng that er-ge had put his foot down a long time ago about being on the list. It is actually his nephew who is number two and Ouyang Zizhen who is number one. He doesn’t think Jiang Cheng will see the humor in it.
“That’s true, you do have an atrocious memory,” Jiang Cheng grumbles. “For instance, you seem to have forgotten that you spent the entire afternoon detailing your exploits with half the cultivation world.”
Huaisang’s thought process is somewhat compromised, and he can’t make himself connect Jiang Cheng’s words with the feel of his hands, those wide, strong hands cupping Huaisang’s ass.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, tipping his head back and letting Jiang Cheng nibble a path down his neck. “They were all terrible. I do not recommend any of them, especially not the dead ones.”
Jiang Cheng laughs, a rumbling sound that makes Huaisang’s fingers fumble at the lotus clasp on his belt.
“I didn’t hate it, but we’re going to start a new list, Sang-er, called ‘Huaisang’s Best Sex,’ and I am going to be the ony person on it,” Jiang Cheng informs Huaisang, biting his earlobe.
“It’s not…” Huaisang kisses Jiang Cheng’s exquisite collarbone, having cleverly freed him from his robes, “...a list if…” Huaisang wraps his arms around Jiang Cheng’s neck and rocks against him, “...there’s only one person on it.”
With a growl that might be hiding a laugh, Jiang Cheng flips Huaisang onto his back and grinds against him. “Stop arguing, Sang-er. I am busy writing my name on your new list, and I expect it to take the rest of the night.”
Now that he thinks about it, Huaisang decides, lifting his hips so Jiang Cheng can pull off his pants, it’s really a brilliant idea. The best idea Jiang Cheng has ever had. Jiang Cheng’s mouth engulfs Huaisang’s very much forgiven dick, and with a gasp and a moan, he vows to henceforth let Jiang Cheng have all the ideas.
⟹ ⟸
Huaisang stretches like a cat in the morning, as pleased with himself as the sun is to rise, and stares down at Jiang Cheng’s unfairly beautiful face. Last night, Jiang Cheng had seemed very determined to break the curse, or break Huaisang’s back, and Huaisang isn’t surprised that he’s still asleep. With one finger, Huaisang traces the line of Jiang Cheng’s jaw and leans down to kiss his cool, smooth lips.
Cool lips.
No.
No!
Huaisang flails out of the bed, scrambling backward, falling, shaking his head as though not looking directly at Jiang Cheng will change what he felt.
He knew he should have listened to his gut and not his traitorous, evil dick.
“No no no no no no,” he chants softly, like it will make Jiang Cheng any less dead if he says it enough times.
And then a ton of rocks falls on his head. He is in the Jiang zongzhu’s bedroom with a dead Jiang-zongzhu. The self-preservation instinct that has kept him alive this long kicks him in the ass. He hurries to Jiang Cheng’s side of the bed and rolls him over, tucking the blanket around him like a mushu pancake. First, roll up the body, he mutters to himself. Then, dump him in the lake. Then, run away. This would be easier if he had someone to help. Like Jiang Cheng.
He stops and frowns. Is that…
The rolled up blanket shakes and Huaisang leaps back, clearing the entirety of the lotus-shaped rug—gods, they are devoted to that theme—and landing on a chair as far away from the undead Jiang Cheng as possible.
The wildly panicking rabbit in his head only slows its escape as he recognizes the sound from the bed.
Laughter.
Fucking laughter.
Fucking Jiang Cheng rolls himself out of the blanket. Not dead.
Not yet, at least. Huaisang is formulating some very definite ideas on how to change Jiang Cheng’s living status right now.
“Your face! You should see your face. I swear, I will cultivate immortality just so I can remember this moment for a thousand years. I never thought there would be a reason to use my qi to slow my heart rate like that but I was so wrong. You were going to dump me in the lake!”
“What is wrong with you!” Huaisang shouts. “I thought I’d killed you!” He stalks over to Jiang Cheng, intending to make his assumption reality, but Jiang Cheng wraps his legs tightly around Huaisang’s waist and kisses him soundly.
“I don’t die easily, Nie Huaisang. Not for you, not for anyone. Besides, I’ve waited too long for you to figure out you’re in love with me. Now, come back to bed, and I’ll let you try to kill me again, as many times as you want. If you’re very good, maybe Princess will return the favor and try to kill you too.”
Dammit, Huaisang should have known he’d like the name. He’s going to be stuck calling Jiang Cheng’s dick Princess forever.
He grins and shoves Jiang Cheng backward, straddling his waist, and the aforementioned Princess twitches enthusiastically. Forever is a nice amount of time, Huaisang decides, and Princess is a small price to pay for forever.
#the untamed#cql#mdzs#mo dao zu shi#jiang cheng#nie huaisang#sangcheng#nie mingjue#jin guangyao#the untamed fic#I don't even want to tag the other people#wen xu#jin zixun#jin zixuan#there was a cursed idea#and then a cursed fic came out of it#it is quite silly but#not gonna lie I do sort of love the way it came out#kristina writes tiny stories
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So I started a Nielan story based on a Twitter chain about warlord Mingjue being given war bride Xichen.
What do you think? Wanna read the rest? Got any opinions on how I should post it (I mean, I’ll post it on AO3, but it seems like it would be fun to share here too—it’s just really long)?
Soaring, Carried Aloft On the Wind
#the untamed#cql#mdzs#nielan#nie mingjue#lan xichen#nie huaisang#mo dao zu shi#wei wuxian#lan wangji#soaring au#chen qing ling#wangxian#kristina writes tiny stories#this is a hilariously NOT tiny story#it is so long#i wrote a language for it#conlang#important notes: they are not barbarians or savages#the beifeng are entirely fictional and not even remotely based on a real civilization#as The Doctor said *lots of planets have a north*#the untamed fic#the untamed au#tell me if you see typos#but this IS a wip...it’s not finished yet#wip wednesday#on friday
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