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eoieopda · 1 year

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redamancy (knj)

redamancy (n): a love returned in full

Kim Namjoon wasn't known for making wise decisions. He acted first and, on rare occasions, he asked questions later. The path he'd taken so far was left broken behind him, but the light at the end of that tunnel sure looked a hell of a lot like you.

Pairing: Kim Namjoon x Reader Type: One-Shot - sequel to lacuna Word Count: 5.5K Content: Established relationship AU; fluff but some angsty bits, i guess?; pov switches; smut (18+ - MINORS DNI) p in v pentration, shower sex, unprotected sex, multiple callbacks to lacuna, and a gratuitous cameo. A/N: Please read "lacuna" before proceeding! This is a sequel/epilogue, so the context is important. No spoilers, so my actual note will be at the end :) Listen to the playlist here! Tagging: @borahae-k @i-purple-buff-bunni @pamzn @myimaginationsrunningwild @nonbinary-demonbrat @yoongiphoria @bangtansmauyeondan @goddessjichu @ggukkiereads @dearly-somber @jihopesjoint @indgio @junsai-tree @persphonesorchid @mgthecat

Namjoon tucked his black marker into the pocket of his joggers with a sigh.

With the last box labeled, all he had to do was shove it in the corner with all his other possessions. In an instant, he could make it all the movers’ problem instead of his. He hesitated, though, and he didn’t know why.

That’s a lie, he thought, he absolutely knew why. It just felt so fucking childish to mourn a piece of real estate the way his heart seemed so inclined to. It was especially odd in his case because there were only fleeting moments where this artfully decorated apartment felt like a home; and not a museum he’d gotten locked in after failing to adhere to business hours.

There had been a lot of upheaval since he woke up in Yoongi’s guest bedroom with your bare body nestled against his. This was to be expected, after all. He’d blown up his life a year prior and just recklessly, maddeningly continued to set fire to the rubble. Now, he had to glue the pieces back together carefully.

What he broke could absolutely be rebuilt, but those cracks would still be visible, even once they were mended. The biggest of them — the nimbostratus cloud looming over that guest bedroom — was your impending flight back to Los Angeles, and the home you still had there.

Loving you was easy; it always had been. The logistics of loving you, however, had historically proven to be anything but.

Before you left, you said the pieces of your joint failures fell down like confetti. In reality, tying up all these loose ends felt more like cleaning up glitter. Reminders of his mistakes stuck everywhere. No matter how hard Namjoon swept, he always missed a spot. They stuck to him, catching the light.

This move was your clean slate.

If someone were to invade his brain now, they’d undoubtedly be alarmed by the tornado of nostalgia tearing ceaselessly through his thoughts. As it twisted, it uprooted everything and subsequently dumped it all in cardboard boxes. Namjoon was the spinning cow added for cinematic value, hanging on for dear life.

A hand clapped on his back, knocking him out of his thoughts and back into that empty bedroom.

“End of an era, eh?” Yoongi asked with his mouth still pressed to the lip of his coffee cup. He took another large gulp despite the scorching heat of its contents and he didn’t flinch.

“Yeah,” Namjoon conceded. It was a one-worded answer, but it spoke volumes. He didn’t need to look at Yoongi to see if he heard them all. The squeeze on Namjoon’s previously smacked shoulder indicated that he did.

This was where Namjoon decided that he loved you, not even four hours after meeting you. You looked at him then like no one ever had and he heard that cinematic record scratch. Then, the internal narration chimed in to give away the plot — that you were it for him.

Looking over the now-bare hardwood floor, his mind conjured you like a hologram: love-drunk in the corner, wearing his t-shirt and nothing else, serenading him with Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know?” and using an empty soju bottle as a makeshift microphone.

He could hear it now and it gave him the same feeling he had then, like he was on an upswing and he would never come back down. He could hear himself, too, blushing red in the present at his past admission.

“I think I love you,” he’d said it so fast because it already felt like a reflex. A knee-jerk reaction that he couldn’t stop, so bat-shit and embarrassing because he’d only met you a few hours earlier.

Presently, he pictured your coy smile in that moment — the first time you’d graced him with it — and remembering your response had him warm all over.

“How sure are you? Enough to wager on it?”

“At least seventy-nine percent sure,” he’d responded immediately, which would become a habit of his, and relished in the way your eyes twinkled. So, you loved it when he’d buy into a bit — noted. He’d continued, no longer shy, “And yes, I would. All in.”

He could nearly feel the way your touch sparked against his hand once you’d skipped back and crawled over the mattress to settle in front of him. He’d prayed to a god he didn’t believe in that you’d do it again, and again, and again, running so eagerly into his arms.

“Then let’s make a deal, Joonie,” you’d smirked.

It was the first time anyone had called him that without being swiftly punched in the arm. It was the best that stupid nickname had ever sounded, coming out of your sweet mouth.

You’d tilted your head to the side and hummed with a thoughtful finger tapping at your chin, “Two years. If in two years’ time you realize that you were right — and you’re one-hundred percent sure — you’ll win a prize.”

He’d put his hand out to shake on it, but you’d swooped in with your fingers sliding through his hair. You’d kissed him instead and, against your soft lips, he’d mumbled, “Deal.”

Namjoon could’ve stood in that bedroom all day, watching the montage of you that somehow flickered against the bare white walls.

Yoongi seemed to sense this, though, and he intervened. After all, that’s precisely why Namjoon had brought him along: to keep him from getting lost on Memory Lane.

With a gentle pinch at Namjoon’s elbow, Yoongi nodded his head towards the doorway, “Movers will be here in ten. Anything left to pack?

Namjoon initially shook his head, but then he remembered. Fuck! Thank god — or whoever — for Yoongi, who stood there wide-eyed as Namjoon jerked forward and flew out the door.

He dashed to the kitchen and grabbed the only thing still there: his grandmother’s tea pot, bearing intricately painted cherry blossoms. He cradled it in his arms like a child on his way back to Yoongi, who was still standing where he was left. Still wide-eyed, too, like not enough time had passed for him to blink.

“I need you to keep track of this,” Namjoon confessed as he held out the teapot, “I know me and I know that I’ll break this if I’m the one responsible for it. Just — just don’t open it, okay?”

Without batting an eye — or heeding Namjoon’s words in any way whatsoever — Yoongi pulled off the lid and glanced inside. There was no change in his blank face, merely a tiny flex of his eyebrow that Namjoon just barely caught.

True to form, Yoongi asked no questions. His only response was, “You’re right. You would absolutely break this.”

Namjoon would’ve rolled his eyes if he wasn’t so distracted by his own pulse hammering away in his ears. “Right,” he muttered weakly.

“Ready to kiss this place goodbye?” Yoongi changed the subject after noticing how flustered Namjoon had become. He was alarmingly perceptive even when he wasn’t actively working to uncover Namjoon’s secrets.

Namjoon was — and wasn’t. He didn’t know how the fuck to feel, finishing a chapter so conclusively. In the past, all his endings had been ambiguous. They faded out, for the most part, so subtly that he didn’t notice right away.

All but one, that is.

Yoongi studied Namjoon’s face for one silent moment before landing a weightless punch on his bicep. His knuckles barely brushed him, but Namjoon felt it through his shirt, through his muscle, down to his bones. Then, without any response from Namjoon, Yoongi offered him a moment alone.

The apartment door clicked shut behind him. Though inherently quiet, it echoed loudly through the hallway and reverberated through every naked room on its way to Namjoon. As he stood there, silent and solitary, he realized how much he truly hated that sound. What it represented.

“So, is this it, then?” Your face told him that you knew the answer before you asked; but that you simply didn’t want to accept it.

He’d never seen you cry, save for the moments you laughed so hard that your eyes couldn’t contain your mirth. During sappy movies, maybe, but never because of sadness. Never because of him.

Namjoon had to stuff his hands in his pockets to keep them from reaching out to you.

He looked down at his shoes, nudged the rubber toe of one into the rug, then glanced back up at you. It was becoming increasingly impossible to look at you, but it felt so foreign not to.

He’d seen true sadness before — not from you, not until now — but your expression communicated something even deeper than that. Devastation, maybe? Whatever it was, it mingled with your mascara and spilled over your cheeks.

“I think it has to be,” his voice was thick when he replied, and it was a miracle he’d gotten the words out at all, “If you’re going to get everything you deserve in this life — everything you’ve worked so fucking hard for — I can’t be the thing that stands in your way.”

You were crying so hard that your sobs made his chest ache.

“I wanted all of it with you, Joonie, so badly,” You whimpered, then you wiped your leaking eyes on the excess sleeve clutched tight in your fingers, “I need you to know that. If we could’ve found a single way to make this work, I —“

When your voice gave up, his took over. “I know, baby,” and fuck, now he was crying too, “I would’ve lassoed the fucking moon for you if it could’ve made a difference.”

It hit him like a bullet train when you said it. As if you’d ever needed to ask.

“Can you kiss me one last time before I go?”

So, he did. Hard. And then, when you walked away, he let you.

Click.

Namjoon stayed frozen, staring into space, until he heard the movers clambering over the threshold.

You’d never seen more paperwork in your life.

Flipping through the binder, you were even more likely to stroke out than you were to get a paper cut. The sheer number of words made you dizzy; an insurmountable mountain of hangul. An avalanche, ready to overtake you.

After reading and signing for what felt like forty years, complaining all the while, you began to wonder: At what point would your brain simply give up and forget how to read as a form of protest? The thought was tempting — forgoing literacy entirely just to avoid this drawn-out task.

“I don’t understand,” you muttered, turning yet another page. You’d written your initials so many times that they stopped looking like real letters.

Maybe your brain was losing its capacity for language.

Jinseo furrowed her brows with such conviction, you could see them knit together in your peripheral vision, “I don’t know how much clearer I can make it. I’ve explained the terms to you no less than five-hundred times.”

You set down your pen and sat up to meet her exasperated eyes with a smirk, “No, not that. Your unsolicited lecture on contract law has me bar-exam ready.”

Jinseo’s mouth dropped open, always dramatic but never truly offended. You clarified, “I don’t understand why I can’t simply write smell you later on a post-it note, sign that, and be done with it.”

“Oh, I don’t mind all the time this is taking you,” Jinseo swapped out her shock for a wolfish grin, “It’s all billable, baby.”

At this, you rolled your eyes, but you couldn’t contain your laughter, “Unnie, don’t I get the friends-and-family rate?”

“Friends and family don’t forget the guacamole, sweet bean,” she chided you with her fork pointed teasingly at you.

With your attention finally secured, the fork directed your eyes down to the admittedly lackluster burrito bowl you’d traded for legal advice. Oops.

“You get what acquaintances and hot, divorce-seeking strangers get.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Me another margarita,” she purred. With a wink, she lifted her not-yet-empty glass from the table. “And when you’re done breaking up with Big Hit, you can talk me up to the owner of your new label.”

You slumped back in your seat while feigning hesitation. Sucking a breath in through your teeth, you sighed, “Yoongi? Well, I don’t know… He’s married to his work.”

At this, Jinseo quirked an eyebrow. “Did you not hear me about the whole hot, divorce-seeking strangers thing?”

“Menace,” you giggled.

Your laughter petered out too soon and an unexpectedly heavy silence settled between you and the only friend you’d successfully kept in the whole of California. In all of the United States, really.

You didn’t want to say it, but you couldn’t keep it in, either: “I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Jinseo, dropping her chin to rest on the heel of her hand, smiled with only half her mouth. She paused before admitting, “I don’t know what you’d do without me, either.”

Your instinct was to cry, but you’d never hear the end of it if you did. Jinseo, like you, seemed to develop contact dermatitis when confronted with vulnerability and affection. Instead, your friendship was grounded in playful smacks to the arm and glances nobody but the two of you could decipher.

For this reason, you picked your pen up off the table and gestured to the page before you. “You’re sure that catch you on the flip-side, nerds, won’t hold up in court?”

“If you really want to fuck around with Bang PD, I suppose you’ll find out.” She shrugged, then she winked again.

You didn’t, for more reasons than one. The most recent of those was the grace and understanding Bang Si-Hyuk had shown you when you raised the idea of leaving his label. The heaviest of them was the simple fact that you owed him everything — your career, your success, and most of all, the family you’d found through him.

In your best friend, who you’d never have met without Si-Hyuk's help in breaking through the American market. She was your lifeboat in a lonely, intimidating sea of unfamiliar people, customs, language, and food.

In Yoongi, the illustrious Big Hit producer who collaborated with you during the wild hours you kept, no matter what time it was on his end. He was your parachute, saving you quietly and without fail, through every leap of faith. He kept you company when you left Korea — then he started a company to bring you back.

In Namjoon, whose release party changed the trajectory of your entire life. His role could never be adequately described in any words — in any language.

A lighthouse, maybe, guiding you through jagged rocks to shore.

Or a cabin in the woods that you never expected to find, but that held you warmly when the trail ahead couldn’t be found in the dark.

More simply: he was everything.

“Where’d you go just now?” Jinseo’s sudden statement made you jump. There was a muffled knock when your kneecap collided with the underside of the table.

You blinked over at her and watched as her pursed lips curved into a smile. Your instinct was to keep your sentimental nonsense to yourself — after all, this wasn’t goodbye in any way that mattered. The two of you would stay in constant contact, visiting one another at any and every possible opportunity.

Why did you always try to eulogize what wasn’t dead yet?

Again, Jinseo surprised you. “You do know how proud I am of you, right?”

She snorted at your bemused expression: wide, watery eyes sitting between raised eyebrows and a mouth that was neither closed nor fully open.

Just as quickly, she course-corrected, resuming her abnormally solemn tone. “You do hard things every damn day and you always get out of bed the next,” Jinseo continued.

Apparently, her margarita’s rim demanded more than table salt; it wanted tears, too.

“You’re brave as hell — braver than me, that’s for sure. You jump because you know you need to; and I sit on the ground because I’m too afraid of heights.” She reached across the table and gave your hand a squeeze, “And your survival rate, despite it all, is one-hundred percent.”

You wiped furiously at the tears streaking through your foundation. Everything you needed to say to her was communicated with a shared glance, like always. Your friendship was telepathic; it would endure regardless of distance.

What you said out loud earned you the belly laugh you loved so much:

“Imagine what you would’ve said if I remembered your guacamole.”

Namjoon wouldn’t normally use the word giddy to describe himself. Even at his most excited, he was able to maintain some ounce of chill — the tiniest fraction of composure, whether he truly felt composed or not.

Then again, he’d never experienced this level of exhilaration before. Not when he was signed, not when he released his first track, not even when he was nominated for a Grammy.

In a matter of minutes, your plane would land at Incheon and his whole damn world would resume its intended orbit. The tectonic plates would shift back where they belonged; and every natural disaster he’d set loose inside himself would finally — after all this time — subside.

Though he wasn’t the one who left, it felt like his homecoming, too. Even in Korea, surrounded by everyone and everything he’d always known, Namjoon’s recent existence was nomadic. He bounced between surface-level relationships and sleepwalked through events that should’ve mattered; never allowing himself to feel connected to any of it.

Namjoon was a comet — arriving quickly and on fire, then disappearing just as fast. He was ready to stop being temporary, so long as you became permanent, too.

It was that dream of roots that had Namjoon refreshing the flight-tracker once an hour for the thirteen you’d spent in the air. He watched that tiny, animated plane inch closer while your estimated time of arrival began to look more and more like the one on his watch.

When they finally matched, Namjoon slammed his hand down on the steering wheel of his parked car and shouted to no one but himself, “Yes!”

There was an old woman — why did she look so familiar? — glaring at him through his passenger window. He might’ve scared her with his sudden display, but Namjoon couldn’t find a fuck to give. He was too busy grabbing the carefully curated bouquet off the seat to his right, then clambering out of his own.

It was a confusing assortment, and not necessarily a beautiful one. Instead of a single phrase, Namjoon’s choices communicated paragraphs; combining every type of flower he’d ever given you on this very same sidewalk. If you were anyone else, you might take this eyesore and dump it immediately in the nearby trashcan — but you weren't anyone else.

The first addition was white camellias, matching the ones you received after your first flight home. Like they did back then, they confessed how much he adored you from the start. Then came pink roses because he loved you happily, softly, despite the distance.

On your third arrival home, he gave you baby’s breath. Those delicate petals commemorated the pieces of himself that went missing when you went away; all falling back into place the second he saw you again. White tulips followed, begging forgiveness for the increasing time you spent apart and how little you’d get to spend together on that fourth trip.

For this trip, the last you’d ever make alone, he added bridal wreath.

Namjoon read it somewhere recently that this plant was virtually impossible to kill once it was established. It could survive just about anything and remain beautiful despite its hardships. Like the shrub he’d clipped it from, he’d withstand everything with you.

The fondness he radiated must have summoned you because, after ten minutes of scanning the out-coming crowd, he finally saw you. There you were, shuffling on travel-weary legs, with your signature, mint-colored headphones; and your self-congratulatory boba.

Unfortunately, you didn’t see him — miraculous, given the way he was waving his arms like a fool and shouting through cupped hands to get your attention. Instead, your sleepy gaze fixated squarely on your phone.

You must’ve assumed that this arrival would be like the last one.

Before you could summon an Uber – definitely not another taxi – Namjoon dug his own phone out of his jacket pocket. He struggled to text with one hand occupied by his bouquet, so he took the easy way out.

[To: Jagi 🤫] 👋🏻

Your gasp came before he could look back up at you, but he heard it loud and clear. When his eyes found you again, he watched in slow motion as your beloved boba fell out of your hand and clattered against the sidewalk.

The sound of plastic hitting pavement was the starting whistle. Now, you were off to the races.

With shocking speed, you leapt over the spilled tea and flew towards him like your Prada backpack came equipped with rocket boosters. At that cost, anything was possible. He managed to catch you in his arms without losing a single petal.

Once he had you, he kissed you like it was the first time: shy to start, growing increasingly desperate with every passing second. With your arms linked in their rightful place around his neck and your lips so warm against his, he wondered how many times he could shout I love you without saying a word.

Panting, you eventually pulled back with lips pink and semi-swollen from the urgency of it all. You sighed if you weren’t the breath of fresh air, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Namjoon repeated with a chuckle, grinning like a fool.

Though he didn’t want to, he let you slip out of his arms to your feet. After all, he couldn’t complete your airport ritual unless your hands were free. He swallowed hard and tried his best not to blush when he held out the bouquet.

It felt like he was gifting you his whole, beating heart instead.

You froze once the flowers transferred from his hand to yours.

Immediately, his pulse began to race. If he was still holding that massive bouquet, he would’ve beat himself over the head with it. Once again, Namjoon had overthought everything and analyzed a simple task to death.

But your pupils dilated ever-so-slightly when you looked back up at him with swimming eyes. He should’ve known you’d remember. Given you long-due credit for the way you always made him feel seen.

You reached up and did what you’d only done once before — in a dark hallway, five months earlier. Your gaze followed the tip of your thumb as it swiped gently over his bottom lip, and you smiled.

“Say less, Joonie."

After picking you up from the airport, Namjoon promptly whisked you away to the apartment you’d both recently closed on. As a life-long renter, leaving town more often than staying, it was your first major purchase. It was also your first joint purchase.

The old you would’ve been terrified of killing these two, deeply committal birds with one stone; but the person you were now didn’t bat an eye.

What was there to panic over, anyway? It felt right because it was.

Given your exhausted state, the tour was brief. You spent it all clinging to Namjoon’s back like a jetlagged sloth in a tree, but your excitement was evident despite the mumbled voice that expressed it.

If there was any moisture left in your worn-out body, it would’ve left you in tears when you saw the combination of your respective design styles incorporated so perfectly throughout the space.

The items you’d shipped internationally arrived before you did. Namjoon seemed to know without asking exactly where you’d choose to put them. Your kitschy trinkets didn’t look stupid next to his art collection in the way you thought they would. Even more shocking was the way your eccentric, eclectic taste meshed seamlessly with his modern neutrals.

Your home with him was a mirror, reflecting the very specific way you each provided what the other lacked.

And he’d handled it all himself, taking the daunting task of unpacking off your plate so you could finish your chapter in Los Angeles.

Though he wasn’t physically present for the hours you spent making plans with Yoongi — or the hours you spent explaining those same plans to Bang Si-Hyuk — you felt him. He listened to every complaint and over-caffeinated rant. He gave you patience, reassurance, and equal enthusiasm in return.

Because you loved him, you could do hard things.

You could navigate the nightmare realm that was moving internationally. You could join your friend in doing what neither of you had ever done before — creating your own label, then your own studio — while you were still stuck on the other side of an ocean. You could move back home without your tail between your legs, feeling like you’d failed to hack it alone.

You didn’t fail. You simply realized – much later than you should have — that any path worth taking was one you walked with Namjoon.

When the tour concluded, you fell asleep — at three o’clock in the afternoon — in his arms. When you woke up six hours later, he was still holding you. That is, until you lurched forward and spun around in a frenzy.

“Joon!” Your exclamation was interrupted by a yawn, but that didn’t undermine the urgency. “Were you trapped under me this whole time? Oh my god, you missed dinner. Aren’t you thirsty? I’m a monster —”

Namjoon’s entire face crinkled up under the force of his smile. His laughter twinkled in his eyes, too, and threatened to spill out. You stopped rambling mid-sentence and released your death grip on his hand so he could wipe the mirth from his cheekbone.

He was still chuckling despite the horror on your face.

“What?” You asked incredulously, though you were starting to giggle, too. “What’s so funny?”

The more he laughed, the more you did. It was a cycle, certainly, but far from vicious. Was this the kind of life you got to live now? One so perfect that endless laughter — caused by nothing in particular — echoed through every room?

His hands cupped the sides of your face and guided you towards him. Still smiling, you were both catching your breath when his forehead came to rest against yours. Nose tips bumping into one another, he hummed contentedly, “You just sat alone on an airplane for thirteen hours, jagi. If I get to be your pillow for even half as long, you won’t catch me complaining.”

You kissed him automatically; a reflex your body had acclimated to without requiring your brain to prompt it. It was brief, but you had all the time in the world to kiss him again. For now, you wanted to stare at him for as long as it took to prove to yourself that you weren’t simply dreaming.

“Hang on,” Namjoon said suddenly. He kissed you before you could pout and then he rolled off the side of the bed. He held one finger up as he stared intently back at you, “Don’t move, okay?”

After all that time sitting still with your body pushing against his bladder, you assumed he was headed for the adjoining bathroom. He wasn’t; he rushed right past it and disappeared out your bedroom door. You listened to his footfalls against the hallway floor until he was too far away to track.

What on Earth was he doing?

You sat there cross-legged in a pool of sheets for several minutes. One eyebrow raised in confusion while your gaze stayed locked on the doorway. It still managed to surprise you when he reappeared — not just because his arrival was sudden, but because he was holding his grandmother’s tea pot in his hands.

Is that why you didn’t hear him jogging back? Because he was moving at a snail’s pace, protecting that floral-printed ceramic like his life depended on it?

You opened your mouth to speak, but he cut you off with the same finger he’d pointed at you earlier. Namjoon ignored your furrowed eyebrows, crossed back to his side of the bed, and crawled back into the space he’d left behind. While your eyes darted between him and his tea pot, his never left your face. Uncharacteristically quiet, taking deep, measured breaths.

No, really — what on Earth was he doing?

“I can tell by that look on your face that you have no idea what the hell is happening, but hear me out, okay?”

He waited for you to nod before continuing slowly, “I overthink things. Sometimes, it ends up fine, but it usually doesn’t. I try to think before I act, then I think instead of acting — I don’t want to do that now.”

Namjoon paused for a moment, finally glancing down at the tea pot cradled in his hands. “I asked Yoongi to hang on to this during the move because I break things. I never mean to, but for some unknown reason, all that over-thinking doesn’t make me careful. I ruin things far too easily and I hate that about myself —”

“Joon,” you frowned. Placing a hand on his bouncing knee, you begged him to look up at you. “You don’t ruin things —”

He shook his head, stopping you from continuing. You’d never seen him look so determined. “I do, but that’s not the point I’m getting at.”

He shot you a tiny smile as if you were the one deserving reassurance. “I let you go when I didn’t want to, let this thing we built fall to pieces. The timing couldn’t have been worse, either — now I’m late cashing in.”

“Cashing in?” Clearly, you'd lost the plot.

Namjoon laughed, “Two years. You said to give it two years and if it turned out that I was right, I’d win a prize. It’s been a little bit longer than that, but I'm one-hundred-percent sure.”

Oh.

You'd replayed that night over and over in your head since it happened. Really, you should’ve caught on immediately; but you thought you were the only one carrying that memory around like a torch.

Did he really remember that conversation after all this time? Some silly, inside joke that you made after only knowing him for a few hours?

Namjoon took the lid off the teapot and set it down softly on the nightstand behind him.

“It took me too long to realize it, but it’s you — you're the prize. I don’t want to orchestrate some ridiculous, dramatic gesture because this is us. It feels exactly like it did that first night, when I took this bet in the first place.”

His hand dipped down into the tea pot. When it re-emerged, he was holding a small box made of exquisite black leather. You started crying in the split second it took him to open it. He was blinking back tears of his own when he flipped it around to show you its contents.

“I’m all in if you are.”

Namjoon was a lot of things, but he wasn't a quitter.

After he slid that ring on your finger, neither of you could keep your hands to yourself. Like history repeating itself, he loved every inch of you on every goddamn surface in that apartment.

In the bed he'd wake up in, next to you, for the rest of his life. On that bright yellow couch you loved so much; the kitchen counter he'd have to clean before making too big of a breakfast for you in the morning. When you christened every other room, the pair of you retired to the bathroom.

Initially, your goal upon entering the shower wasn't sex. In fact, it was to soothe your exhausted, sweat-slicked bodies before collapsing onto fresh sheets and a re-made bed. If you thought you were tired before, you'd sleep for a week now. Every part of him ached in the best way, so he'd welcome the opportunity to rest for several days at your side.

But then he smelled your shampoo — vanilla and honey — and it flipped a switch in his fucked-out brain. The warm water spilling in rivulets over your soft skin pressed the issue; and so did that diamond sparkling up at him through the steam.

He didn't follow you in here to fuck you, but he'd be remiss if he let the moment slip down the drain with the suds.

Experimentally, he pushed your hair away from the back of your neck and brought his lips to the space he'd cleared. Watching your slow inhale, he lingered there for a moment to gauge your reaction. Your head tilted slightly to the side; he considered it an invitation. In lieu of an RSVP, he sent his tongue in a short, languid line.

The moan he coaxed out of you was quiet, but despite the falling water, it reverberated across the glass walls and tile. You followed up with a sigh, leaning your head back against his chest as his mouth moved to claim the side of your neck.

"Shit," you keened with your eyes closed, "We're never leaving the house again, are we?"

Namjoon hummed as he flicked his tongue over your earlobe, "Outlook not so good."

As expected, you caught his reference immediately. You wobbled as you laughed; his arms snaked around the curves of your waist to satiate his need for closeness and his desire to keep you upright. "Mr. Kim, certified genius, is now citing the Magic 8 ball?"

"It's the poet laureate of our generation, Mrs. Kim."

Even if you didn't whimper at the utterance of your future name, Namjoon still would've repeated it over and over again. A mantra, an invocation manifesting a long life in which you matched. So, he did say it again, whispering it into your flesh as his hands slid up your torso.

Mrs. Kim, Mrs. Kim, Mrs. Kim.

Given what they'd been through over the past several hours, he treated your nipples with the utmost care and reverence. Sensitive thing that you were, even his feather-light touch had you mewling. Fuck, he loved that sound.

"Baby?" Your voice was barely distinguishable from an exhale, but that perfect softness hit him hard, "Please."

Your wish was, is, and always would be his command.

Namjoon worried about your trembling legs, so he chose the first solution that came to mind: he turned you gently around, kissed you deep, and lifted you off your feet. As always, you molded so easily against his body. You legs wrapped around him in tandem with your arms.

Carefully, he rested your back against the stone wall and adjusted his grip so that his arms slotted under your thighs. “This okay, Mrs. Kim?" He asked.

Your answer came in the form of your hand dipping down and guiding the tip of his cock to your entrance. He followed your lead, leaving both of you to moan when he entered you.

Like a glove, you enveloped him completely. He'd never believe that you weren't destined to fit together like this. Out of every person, in every timeline, he was the lucky bastard meant for you.

Unlike the previous rounds, this was slow. Deliberate, not underscored by some carnal desire or desperate need to reclaim lost moments. He took his time grinding himself into your unimaginable warmth because he now had it in spades. Namjoon refused to let a second pass without cherishing it fully first.

Your head dipped back against the cool stone, allowing you to tilt your jaw upward. Placing a kiss at the column of your throat, he pushed himself deeper into you.

Breathy moans thanked him wordlessly for his fluency in your body's language. Namjoon had studied religiously to learn your unspoken cues, so your raised eyebrows and closed lids foretold your orgasm before your velvet walls clenched around him.

"Fuck, Joon," you cried out as you shook in his arms.

Your little whimpers lured him to the edge; your tightened grip on his shoulder pulled him off behind you. As he spilled himself inside of you, he screwed his eyes shut and nestled his face into the crook of your neck to muffle his chest-deep groan.

After several moments of silence, you shifted. He rolled his neck to move his head further down your shoulder. From this vantage point, he gazed up at you — the only thing worth looking at, all he ever wanted, the one he got to keep for good.

With a kiss left at his temple, you murmured, "I'm glad you took it back."

"What?" He asked quietly, searching your flushed, smiling face for answers.

"All the love I have for you. I know where to put it now."

A/N: aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH IT'S FINALLY HERE! i cried like a bitch baby when i was writing this - even more so when i finished writing this (aka now) - because this lil series takes up my whole heart. i buried so much of myself in lacuna, so this was my attempt to plant flowers in the achy bits, lol. i left lots of easter eggs, so i'd love to know what you find! also, yes, i did write my damn self into this one. hahahah. lacuna was largely autobiographical (except the namjoon part, obvi) so it felt right to fictionalize myself as the person saying what i would've wanted to hear back then.

i'd love to know your thoughts, so please please please let me know either by replying, reblogging, PMing me, or dropping a line in the ask box.

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grison-in-space · 3 months

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This is a bit of a subjective question but since I am potentially getting my first dog later this year (application in, but no deposit taken or breeding confirmed) my question is: when do I start getting Dog Things?

Sounds like you're getting a puppy, yeah? Bearing in mind that Matilda is my first planned* puppy as an adult, and that as far as I'm concerned you can do anything you want forever...

....advice under the cut, alongside this photo of tiny Benton, on the theory that puppy photos are always welcome.

A lot of timeline things will come down to how communicative your breeder is. For example, I contacted Tilly's breeder about a year before I expected to reasonably bring home a puppy, and she briefly and with some excitement tried to convince me that it was a good idea to take home a very promising puppy she had who was about six weeks old at that time; after some time to think we all agreed that this wasn't a great idea--and then I re-made contact when the next litter on the ground was about ~3weeks old, then finalized which puppy was going to be mine at about 5weeks. There's going to be a lot of flux and "well maybe but--" stuff in your life until you have a puppy born and on the ground who is definitely going to be yours, and your timing decisions for stuff are going to be influenced heavily by your breeder, which in turn is going to be inflected by the culture of your breed. ( @kangals for example recently took home Kepler with what, two weeks of notice once a breeder had been identified?) Some breeders are better about letting waitlisted folks know when there's a litter actually on the ground than others, and it's wise to expect a certain amount of messiness about that. Historically I have purchased puppy gear in a mad scramble immediately after confirming that there is a puppy happening--sometimes with puppy actually in hand as I do so. Nothing wrong with that, but if you WANT to be assembling things for yourself in advance...

In my experience, you will want a crate in hand by the time baby is home. Depending on how much cash and/or desire for nice things you have, you might want to look into crates that are also interior decorating or storage. We bought and assembled one that could double as an end table pretty much as soon as we were certain there was definitely a puppy coming home, because my bedroom is otherwise essentially wholly taken up by the bed and I needed a place to store a puppy that also offered a certain level of space for detritus like my glasses.

If space and/or Niceness is not a premium, wire crates work perfectly well and take about two seconds to set up nicely. Some of these advertise that they come with a divider so that your puppy doesn't take advantage of all the space to use as a toilet; I have never once used one of these for that purpose, but I have mostly had medium sized puppies. I do like having a door on both a narrow and a wide end. I like to put a waterproof crate pad and some remnant scraps of flannel in a puppy crate to start and go from there: dogs in my house lose "bed" privileges if they destroy a bed or crate pad, but I find that crate pads are a little less tempting to destroy than a bed with raised edges. I also find that the flannel scraps let them get out the itch to dig and shove things around without actually tempting destruction too much.

You will want to have chews around for teething when puppy arrives. Which chews you feel most comfortable with are up to you. I have not personally had any problems with rawhide, so I usually offer a mixture of rawhide rolls, "himalayan yak cheese" chews purchased in bulk, and a variety of higher-value faster-to-destroy chews. I have exactly one dog ever give even the tiniest of shits about a Nylabone, and it's Matilda, and I have never had a dog willingly chew a Benebone. I find that both the length of time the chew lasts and how motivated the puppy will be to chew are highly dependent on the puppy; some dogs seem to like more "give" and others simply hit anything that isn't quite hard (e.g. antlers) like a buzz saw. Your breeder will have some insight on what works for their dogs. Chews do lose their luster eventually, so I would aim to purchase those within about a month of estimated puppy arrival if you don't have a dog around currently.

You will also want to purchase training treats as well as kibble within that one-month window. I like Pet Botanics, but any semi-soft treat small enough for puppy mouths will do. (The size of your puppy will inflect this somewhat: I recently watched a handler of a tiny Miniature Dachshund puppy struggle a little with training because she'd brought only his kibble he eats for meals to catch his attention with, and that is just not interesting enough for classes). I also often offer cat treats in my rotation: Temptations are pretty popular with dogs, too, and so were tiny freeze dried shrimps intended as cat treats. If you have a small breed, cat treats are often a better size for your puppy than treats intended to be consumed by a large dog. I also heavily recommend Crump's Naturals for folks with small breed puppies; they're just freeze dried beef liver cut up real small, but it's very nice not to have to crumble it yourself.

If you want to do training classes, now is the time to find out what options are available in your area. My experience has been that you want to get your puppy on a waitlist for those as soon as you know a) the puppy definitely exists and b) when the puppy is coming home. You should expect to have the puppy at home for about a week before classes can start, to adjust to living with you, but it's good to have all your ducks in a row ahead of time, and in the past few years it's been hard to predict demand for dog training in the wake of COVID.

You should expect not to keep your puppy's puppy collar, leash, and potentially harness forever as puppies grow like weeds, so it's okay if there's a range of fits for those. Your breeder may send you home with a collar and leash--Matilda's did--but if you have something cute you want to daydream about, now's the time!

*We've had Benton from puppyhood, but he was adopted in the middle of COVID when I was in thesis hell and essentially insane, and it occurred to @coffee-mage-sans-caffeine that the single upside of COVID is that they could get a sport prospect and get to play with Doing Dog Stuff, since now we had all this new quarantine time. We had to get a puppy because Tribble is a cranky dog selective ass, and we wound up somehow getting approved by a deeply dubious rescue lady to adopt the first puppy we applied for.

#dogs #advice

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joanquill · 4 months

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Reader with a Tattoo, Piercing (+ other details) Headcanons with Albert and Sherlock

How Albert and Sherlock would react to the reader having a tattoo, piercing, glasses, and long, wavy, thick hair in a braid.

Albert James Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes

A/N: The request had specific details, so I apologize for the title and the summary; I wasn't sure what to put on it :') Also, I forgot to say the Valentine's event is open ^^" you can check the rules here ^^ Tag/s: Fem!Reader, Headcanons, Long Warning/s: Historically inaccurate

Now, judgemental and prying eyes are nothing new to you.

Whether it's because of the spider bite piercing on the left side of your lips, the color on your nails, or the moon and star tattoo on the right side of your neck, you can see them wherever you go.

You never really care what others think, knowing better than to stick your nose in other people's business.

If you're lucky, the most people do is stare at you like some attraction.

The worst is when someone tries to call the cops on you for being a criminal just because of your tattoo and piercing.

Luckily, your bangs can shield some curious eyes, and your long braided hair could hide your tattoo somewhat from the distance.

Because of the harsh greeting you always receive when you go out, you usually keep to yourself, ignoring the public as you just keep living your life.

Albert James Moriarty

When Albert met you, you were a date to some noble, a target, moreover, showing you off like a trophy or exotic pet.

Your long, thick, and wavy hair was now tied to a braided bun, showing off your tattoo and piercing with your nails decorated in your favorite color.

It piqued his interest how you wore a piercing and sported a tattoo but questioned how you knew the noble you were with, knowing nothing of his connections to you.

He could tell you weren't enjoying the party with how the others reacted.

Asking you invasive questions, trying to touch your piercing and tattoo, and giving backhanded compliments.

Albert managed to help you, pulling you away from the public eye and leading you to the quiet gardens, letting you breathe for the first time that night.

You sincerely thanked him, unsure what you would have done if your temper got the better of you.

He planned to leave you alone that night or at least put some distance between you two, seeing as how you were bombarded with questions as the crowd got way too close for comfort.

But you insisted for him to keep you company, just in case some other party guests tried to disturb you.

Seeing as you could have some information on the target and he is curious about you, he agreed.

Apparently, you had no connection to the target before this night.

He found you while you were out and suddenly asked you to be his date, saying he would catch the eye of nobles with you on his arm.

And you only agreed because he only paid a hefty sum of money on the spot.

However, Albert warned that the noble has a history of buying women he found interesting, only for those women to disappear suddenly.

Seeing as how you almost lost your life tonight, you again thanked Albert but assured him you could fight, showing the pistol and dagger you hid underneath your dress.

Albert's smile slightly widened before going back to normal, growing more interested in you.

You spent the rest of the night talking to each other, avoiding your date, who apparently has a packet of sleeping drugs in hand, confirming your suspicions.

During your conversations, Albert noticed how your values aligned with theirs.

Your weaponry skills, which you happily showed to prove him wrong when he teased you, demonstrated to be quite handy for their cause.

And you seemed to have the determination they look for to change this cruel, unfair world.

When the party was nearly ending, Albert offered to bring you home, making sure you were safe before he and his brothers could take care of the target.

The next day, Albert told his encounter with you to his brothers, also catching their interest.

Seeing as you could be an ally, William orchestrated a test for you, and you passed.

Since then, you have been part of their group.

Your job in the group was to be Albert's partner in gathering information and fighting.

Slowly but surely, Albert fell in love with you.

Spending time with you, getting to know you better, watching you slowly come out of your shell, he knew he wanted to be by your side as his actual lover.

He even found you wearing glasses to be cute.

It wasn't hard to tell as well.

Everyone knew Albert held you in a special place in his heart, making sure you were unharmed and away from the judgemental eyes of high society.

Sherlock Holmes

As for Sherlock, you two met coincidentally.

He was out getting groceries (after John's constant lecture on responsibility and Miss Hudson's deadly glare) when he saw you buying some food.

He saw you from the corner of his eye and immediately became intrigued.

This man has no shame as he approaches you, giving a nonchalant hello as he introduces himself and offers his hand.

You hesitantly shook his hand, giving your name as he stared at you for a few seconds.

"Huh... Never seen decorated nails on a lady before," he grinned as he held your hand up, making you pull it back.

"W-What are you-"

"-Let alone ones on hands capable of handling a sword and a gun," he grinned as he leaned down to your height, making you turn away and fix your glasses.

"And a piercing and a tattoo on exposed skin..." he continued his deduction as he looked at you with curious eyes.

"Tell me, miss... did you do all this yourself?" he asked as he brushed off your braid, exposing your neck tattoo.

You quickly hid it again and looked at him with furrowed brows, baffled and shocked at the man's character.

You excused yourself, hurriedly walking off, but Sherlock followed you, asking questions that hit the mark or just pure curiosity.

"I'm guessing from the state of your glasses you don't wear them often,"

"Tell me, why a star and a moon specifically?"

"How did you get your nails decorated?"

This went on for a while until you stopped and glared at Sherlock, politely telling him to leave you as you held back your irritation.

Sherlock nonchalantly brushed it off, saying he just wanted to know more about you.

"All right... Now listen here-" you angrily pointed at him, making him grab your hand and inspect your finger.

"I see... You use flowers for dye..." he muttered as you pulled back your hand, dusting it off.

"I think I can make a better polish..." he added, making you freeze as you looked at him.

"Here," Sherlock took out a pen and paper and wrote down his address, "Come to this place next week at noon... Don't be late," he gave you the note as he waved goodbye, leaving you in bewilderment.

Despite your better judgment, you found yourself standing in front of 221B Baker Street.

And just like he said, Sherlock made some nail polish that was shinier, better color, and lasted longer than the ones you already own.

You asked why he would make them, and he shrugged and said he thought the material could help with his job.

After that, you would visit his place from time to time, growing to like his company.

Until one day, you found yourself visiting him every day, even coming to investigations with him and John.

Sherlock would even scold you if you would arrive later than usual.

You'd never admit it, but you were truly glad Sherlock approached you that day.

Sherlock doesn't know it himself... but he would start looking for you and craving your company.

Your relationship was more platonic at the start until it started growing into something more without him noticing.

Even John noticed his best friend's change of behavior, but Sherlock would rather die than admit he's fallen for you.

...Well, not before you admit your feelings for him.

#yuukoku no moriarty x reader #moriarty the patriot x reader #albert moriarty x reader #sherlock x reader #albert james moriarty x reader #albert james moriarty #albert moriarty #ynm sherlock #sherlock holmes #headcanons

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horrorlesbians · 8 months

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can HGTV give Christine McConnell a show already? I'm tired of all the popular interior and home decor trends. can victorian gothic antique realness come the mainstream. can not ruining antiques and historical homes become mainstream. can this be mainstream without all fast furniture brands creating shitty "victorian" furniture to fit the demand. i hate white kitchens and grey houses and not doing anything fun with your house because of "resale value". I'm gonna explode

#🦌

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hometoursandotherstuff · 10 months

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I don't know what to think about this renovated 1890 Victorian in Dayton, Ohio. On one hand, I love what they did w/the decor, but on the other hand, it's no longer an historic Victorian. It has 4bds, 2.5ba, & has a sale pending for $950K.

This is the new entrance hall. So, you would have no idea, walking in here, that it's an 1890 Victorian.

The new sitting room. Okay, I do like the ceiling. It appears that the room layout was definitely reconfigured.

Here's another sitting room with an exposed brick wall painted white and a funky mural going up to the ceiling. Those look like new modern windows over by the window seat.

This house was gutted. Look at those 3 greenhouse windows. There's a new door to the patio, ultra modern walls, ceiling, and floor.

This, I hate. They put a hi-end stove in the middle of the floor w/o an exhaust hood.

Cool fridge is tightly fitted into the wall. There's no space for air to flow around it.

Eat-in kitchen places the table in front of the patio. Instead of standard cabinetry, there's a tile wall with one long "sideboard" style cabinet and a wooden countertop that looks more like living room furniture.

Outside the kitchen is a coffee bar setup.

Ultra modern guest powder room.

The TV room also has new windows.

The original architecture remained, but it was completely modernized. The original molding was replaced, too.

New walls, new molding, space reconfigured to make a sort of pantry and laundry room.

Gone are any traces of the original stairs. Note the Lucite bannister.

There's a family room up here.

Bedroom with a retro vibe.

Main bedroom. Clearly all fireplaces were removed from the home. In the bedroom, a retro style yellow model decorates a corner.

Sometimes, when you knock down walls, it appears that more, smaller ones emerge to create a maze-like effect.

Completely modernized shower room. Do you think that where the shower is, was where the original claw-foot tub once sat?

The old tub was replaced by this sunken one. It places the toilet and plant in a precarious position, especially if you're feeling a bit tipsy.

A smaller, 3rd bedroom or home office with a bold graphic.

Attractive checkerboard patio out by the pool.

The yard from above.

Looks like there's an industrial type business next door.

At night you can see the new clear glass windows.

#renovated victorian #victorian reno #houses #house tours #home tour

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homomenhommes · 3 months

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … 17 March

In a notable book on Irish gay history Terrible Queer Creatures Brian Lacey presents some evidence that Saint Patrick may have had a long term intimate relationship with a man:"St. Patrick himself may have had a relationship tinged with homoeroticism. Tirechan, a late seventh century cleric who wrote about St. Patrick, tells the story of a man Patrick visited and converted to Christianity, who had a son to whom Patrick took a strong liking. Tirechan wrote that "he gave him the name Benignus, because he took Patrick's feet between his hands and would not sleep with his father and mother, but wept unless he would be allowed to sleep with Patrick." Patrick baptized the boy and made him his close lifelong companion, so much so that Benignus succeeded Patrick as bishop of Armagh."

Going backwards in his life, I have seen elsewhere a report* that after his escape from slavery and return to Britain, he supported himself by working for a time as a prostitute - yes, good old Patrick sold sexual favours.

Does this sound far fetched? Not if you consider the historical realities of the time. Patrick's home was in Roman Britain. Throughout the Empire, prostitution was an entirely acceptable way for men or women in desperate circumstances to make a living. Consider also his likely experience as a slave. In both Roman and Greek society, as well as elsewhere, it was assumed that one of the duties of a slave, particularly if young or attractive, was to provide sexual services on demand. Ireland was not under Roman rule, but there is no reason to suppose that the conditions of slavery were notably different. (Lacy shows in his book that in pre-christian Ireland same sex relationships were accepted and respected.)

There is another reason, though why we as queer Catholics should look to Patrick as a role model, regardless of his own sexual history, a reason which goes to the heart of his mission.

In Faith Beyond Resentment, theologian James Alison observes that in the Gospel story of the healing of the man possessed by demons, Jesus instruction to the man after healing was to "Go home," that is, back to the community which had tormented and rejected him, back to his persecutors.

This is what Patrick did. Having escaped from slavery and returned to his original home, he responded to what he saw as a call to return to the country of his captivity, to go back to the land of his tormentors - and convert them.

*In a comment to an earlier posting of this piece, theologian John McNeill has said that the book with this story was How The Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill, who claims "Patrick paid for his passage back to Ireland by servicing the sailors on the boat."

1913 – People around the world know Clay Shaw (d.1974) as the only person ever tried for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Most, however, do not know that he was a highly decorated war hero, a prominent New Orleans businessman, a French Quarter preservationist, a valued civic leader, and, from age sixteen, a successful playwright.

He was also a homosexual in a time and a place that viewed homosexuality as abhorrent, immoral, and criminal. In that society, gay people, particularly prominent citizens like Clay Shaw, were compelled to remain closeted and were extremely vulnerable.

When he was five he and his family moved to New Orleans. At Warren Easton High School, Shaw's one-act play "Submerged," which he wrote with a classmate, won a state playwriting contest. Seventy-five years later, it was still being produced by high school drama clubs.

When World War II began, Shaw enlisted as a private in the medical corps. Soon commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant, he was appointed to the staff of Brigadier General Charles O. Thrasher, directing supplies for the million men who crossed the English Channel in the D-Day invasion.

For his role in liberating France from the Nazi occupation, Shaw was awarded the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit by the United States Army and the Croix de Guerre by the government of France.

Discharged from the Army in 1946, Major Shaw returned to New Orleans. Shaw was hired to launch the International Trade Mart, whose dual objectives were to sell American products abroad and to increase foreign trade into the Port of New Orleans.

At his retirement, the City of New Orleans awarded him its highest honor, the International Order of Merit, in appreciation of his many contributions to the city.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a blue-ribbon committee to investigate the assassination and to report its findings to the American people. Headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, it became known as the Warren Commission. The Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, but a large portion of the population felt that they had not presented the whole story.

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison saw in the Kennedy assassination his opportunity for fame. He announced that the Warren Commission had deliberately lied to the American people, purposefully covering up a conspiracy. Garrison proposed variously that the conspiracy was hatched by the C. I. A., the F. B. I., the military-industrial complex, Cuban Communists, and Lyndon Johnson and Texas oil barons.

But Garrison needed a theory that allowed him jurisdiction to prosecute, so he came up with the idea that the conspiracy was planned in New Orleans, and the assassination was a "homosexual thrill killing." He told a journalist, "They had the same motive as Loeb and Leopold when they murdered Bobbie Franks in Chicago."

On March 1, 1967, Jim Garrison arrested Clay Shaw and charged him with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. Garrison knew Shaw was gay, but the general public did not, though soon Shaw's homosexuality was exposed. The discreetly gay Shaw was soon described as a sadist as well as a homosexual.

The trial finally began in early 1969. Garrison produced witnesses who swore that they saw Shaw plotting to kill the President. As the trial progressed, however, it became clear these witnesses were nothing more than an odd assortment of crackpots and toadies whose stories were incompatible with each other.

The jury took less than an hour of deliberation to return with a verdict of not guilty. The date was March 1, 1969, exactly two years after Shaw's arrest.

Two days later Garrison re-arrested Shaw, this time charging him with perjury. It took another two years, and the last of Shaw's retirement savings, finally to get the United States Supreme Court to order Garrison to stop persecuting Clay Shaw. By this time Shaw's resources were depleted, and he had to return to work.

The strain of the five-year ordeal took its toll on Shaw's health. He died of lung cancer on August 14, 1974. He was 61 years old.

The experience of Shaw is a telling reminder of the vulnerability of closeted gay men and lesbians in the pre-Stonewall era. Precisely because of his homosexuality, Shaw made an inviting target for the machinations of a ruthless politician.

1938 – Rudolph Nureyev, Russian-born dancer and choreographer (d.1993); Nureyev became the most famous male dancer in the West before he was 30 — and the most publicized. His influence on the world of ballet changed the perception of male dancers; in his own productions of the classics the male roles received much more choreography. Another important influence was his crossing the borders between classical ballet and modern dance by performing both. Today it is normal for dancers to receive training in both styles, but Nureyev was originator, and the practice was much criticized in his day.

Nureyev by Richard Avedon

Famously well-endowed, his sexual life was the stuff of legend - the gay playboy of the western world. But he also enjoyed several long-term relationships - he spent the early 60s involved with an older Danish dancer named Eric Bruhn (1928-1986) but their relationship had suffered from something of a 'Star Is Born' nature as Nureyev's career rocketed and Bruhn became an alcoholic. In the 1970s, he had a long relationship with Wallace Potts, a director and archivist; and in 1978 he met a young dancer named Robert Tracy, who moved into his New York apartment and stayed for fourteen years until he was evicted, complaining that he had been treated `like a lackey'.

That he partied everywhere and was photographed partying everywhere was as clever a manipulation of the press as Diaghelev's successful attempts to get the public to focus on Nijinsky's considerable crotch. "We want Rudy," the fans screamed, "especially in the nudi!" It was all part of the show. So when Dave Kopay, an athlete of a different sort, casually mentioned in his best-selling autobiography that Nureyev visited Gay bars, no one particularly cared. The Celebrity Register had already printed the peculiar warning of an English friend: "I told Rudy he can be as naughty as he likes, but if he isn't more careful, they're going to find him... some morning in an alley in Soho, his head laid open with a lorry driver's spanner."

When HIV-AIDS appeared in France in about 1982, Nureyev took little notice. For several years he simply denied that anything was wrong with his health: when, about 1990, he became undeniably ill, he is said to have attributed these to other ailments. He tried several experimental treatments but they did not stop his deteriorating health. Towards the end of his life, as dancing became more and more agonizing, he resigned himself to small non-dancing roles. At the urging of Fonteyn, he had a short but successful conducting career, which was cut short due to health problems.

Eventually, he had to face the reality that he was dying and he won the admiration of many of his detractors by his courage during this period. The loss of his looks pained him, but he continued to struggle through public appearances. At his last appearance, a 1992 production of La Bayadere at the Palais Garnier, Nureyev received an emotional standing ovation. The French Culture Minister, Jack Lang, presented him with France's highest cultural award, the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He died in Paris a few months later, aged 54.

1961 – Alexander Bard, born in Motala, Sweden, is a Swedish artist, music producer and philosopher.

Bard began his musical career in 1982 with the single "Life in a Goldfish Bowl" released under the name Baard, a synth-punk fusion project he had formed together with two female striptease dancers.

He has since claimed that he spent the Baard years living as a male prostitute in Amsterdam.

Bard later had some minor success as Barbie, which saw Bard in drag singing dance-oriented pop. After abandoning work on a second Barbie album, he formed Army Of Lovers with two of Barbie's entourage, Jean-Pierre Barda and La Camilla. Army Of Lovers had over 20 Pan-European hits, the biggest being "Crucified", "Obsession" and "Sexual Revolution", while their presence in the US and the UK was limited to repeated club chart successes. They released five studio albums, made over 20 high-camp music videos, and became phenomenally successful across Eastern Europe, before Bard disbanded the group in 1996.

Army Of Lovers have later earned a widespread iconic status in the gay culture, often referred to as a perfect example of the postmodern take on the ideals of camp.

Bard is a self-proclaimed bisexual libertine

youtube

1968 – Two drag queens known as "The Princess" and "The Duchess" held a St. Patrick's Day party at Griffith Park, a popular cruising spot and a frequent target of police activity in Los Angeles. More than 200 gay men socialized through the day to protest entrapmentand harassment by the LAPD.

1969 – Alexander McQueen, British fashion designer, born (d.2010). Born in the East End of London, the son of a taxi driver, McQueen started making dresses for his three sisters at a young age and announced his intention of becoming a fashion designer. McQueen left school at 16, landing himself an apprenticeship with Savile Row tailors Anderson and Shepherd, then working for Gieves & Hawkes and the famous theatrical costumiers Angels and Bermans.

Alexander McQueen's early runway collections developed his reputation for controversy and shock tactics (earning the title "enfant terrible" and "the hooligan of English fashion"), with trousers aptly named "bumsters", and a collection entitled "Highland Rape". It has also been claimed that he was on welfare and that he needed to change his name for his first show so that he could continue to receive benefits.

Some of Alexander McQueen's accomplishments include having been one of the youngest designers to achieve the title "British Designer of the Year", which he won three times between 1996 and 2003. He was also awarded the CBE, as well as being named International Designer of the Year at the Council of Fashion Designer Awards.

December 2000 saw a new partnership for McQueen with Gucci Group acquiring 51% of the company, and McQueen serving as Creative Director. Plans for expansion have included the opening of stores in London, Milan, and New York, and the launch of his perfumes Kingdom. January 2006 heralded the birth of McQ - Alexander McQueen - a denim based ready-to-wear line (womenswear, menswear and accessories).

In summer 2000 McQueen married his twenty-four-year-old lover George Forsyth, a documentary filmmaker. The ceremony, which took place in Ibiza on a yacht owned by a friend of supermodel Kate Moss (who was also bridesmaid), was covered by the press in much the same way as any other celebrity wedding. The relationship however did not last.

Alexander McQueen was found dead at his London home on 11 February 2010. McQueen hanged himself after taking a mix of cocaine, tranquillisers and sleeping pills. He was just 40 and days away from presenting a new collection in Paris.

1970 – Steven Fales is a classically trained playwright and actor who has gained broad recognition in both the theatre world gay community and the LDS community for his award-winning one-man play, Confessions of a Mormon Boy.

The first reading of Confessions was at the Sunstone Symposium in Salt Lake City in 2001. He has performed the play off-Broadway (under director Jack Hofsiss) and across the United States and internationally at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and London's West End. He uses his experiences to help others to reclaim spirituality and his work is his contribution to helping end spiritual abuse and violence in churches, mosques and synagogues. The book 'Confessions of a Mormon Boy: Behind the Scenes of the Off-Broadway Hit' was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Before becoming a solo artist he performed in Shakespeare and musicals in regional theatres across America.

'Confessions of a Mormon Boy' is Part One in 'The Mormon Boy Trilogy.' Part Two and Three are called 'Missionary Position' and 'Prodigal Dad.' Mormon-American Princess is his cabaret act and deals with the subject of narcissism. It premiered in San Francisco and has played Joe's Pub, New York City. Other solo shows include 'Conversations with Heavenly Mother: An Uncommon Diva', 'Joseph III', 'CULT!', and 'When All Else Fales.' He is a leader in the solo performance genre and is the founder of the Solo Performance Alliance.

Fales was born in Provo, Utah and raised in California and later Las Vegas, Nevada. He first trained at the Boston Conservatory on scholarship and after serving a two-year mission for the LDS Church in Portugal transferred to Brigham Young University where he received his BFA in musical theatre.

"Mormon Boy" chronicles Fales' heartbreaking journey from being a devoted, sixth-generation Mormon and father of two to coming out as gay and being excommunicated from his church.

He lives in Salt Lake City with his two children where he exports his work from the Rocky Mountains to Los Angeles, New York, and London. He is the former son-in-law of celebrated Mormon writer Carol Lynn Pearson and former husband of actor/writer/producer Emily Pearson.

Below he performs his song "Mormon Boy":

youtube

1970 – On this date the film-adaptation of Mart Crowley 's groundbreaking gay play, The Boys In The Band, premiered in New York City. 40 years later, a new documentary, Making The Boys about the making of this play and Mart Crowley's career opened in NYC.

"Making The Boys" is a new documentary about the history surrounding the groundbreaking play:The Boys in the Band. On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Gay Rights Movement, the film explores the drama, struggle and enduring legacy of the first-ever gay play and subsequent Hollywood movie to successfully reach a mainstream audience.

Written by Mart Crowley, The Boys in the Band ran for over 1,000 performances off-Broadway and was later made into a feature film. It was one of the first pieces of popular entertainment that centered on a group of gay characters. Set in a New York apartment, The Boys in the Band is about a group of gay men getting together for a birthday party. The dialogue is biting and acerbic, and doesn't shy away from presenting characters that fall into stereotypes.

The most interesting thing about "Making The Boys" is that it isn't afraid to confront the controversy that has surrounded the play since its first performance in 1968. One of the subjects interviewed is the playwright Edward Albee, and he doesn't have that many positive things at all to say about the show. As the gay right movement built momentum during the 1970s, many began to resent negative portrayal of gays in the play and subsequent movie. Beloved by some for breaking new ground, and condemned by others for reinforcing gay stereotypes, The Boys in the Band sparked heated controversy that still exists four decades later

1972 – On this date John Waters' Pink Flamingoes was released. A star is born...Divine!

Gately (R) with Andrew Cowles

1976 – Stephen Gately (d.2009) first found fame as second lead vocalist with Irish vocal group Boyzone, who in the late 1990s were the most successful boyband in the UK, bridging the gap between Take That & Westlife.

Enjoying a string of number 1 singles and albums and successful tours, they were at the height of their fame when, in 1999, Stephen discovered that a national newspaper was planning to out him. He made the decision to tell his own story first and went public in The Sun newspaper - a brave choice in the, even now, surprisingly closeted world of pop music. Already out to friends, family and the other members of Boyzone, the fans attitude to their idol remained unchanged.

Stephen Gately had a short and relatively successful career as a solo artist, but being solo after Boyzone left him depressed and missing his bandmates. He eventually moved more succesfully into musical theatre, his roles including Joseph in Joseph & the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and the child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in London's West End.

At the time of his tabloid coming out Stephen Gately revealed that in 1998 he had started a relationship with Eloy de Jong, who had been in the Dutch boy band Caught in the Act. Stephen and Eloy split up in 2001, however.

After remaining single for a while, Stephen then started dating internet businessman Andrew Cowles, who had been introduced to him by Elton John and David Furnish.

Having only been dating each other for a matter of months, Stephen and Andrew held a commitment ceremony in a wedding chapel whilst on holiday in Las Vegas in 2003. On 19 March 2006 Stephen entered into a civil partnership with Andrew in a ceremony in London.

In 2007 after months of stories and rumours it was finally confirmed that Boyzone were to reform with the original lineup, making their debut reappearance for the BBC's Children In Need in November 2007. In 2008 the reformed Boyzone released a cover version of Tom Baxter's song Better, the video for which broke new ground by showing Gately with another man rather than the female models his straight bandmates apeared with, becoming probably the first mainstream pop video by a boyband to reflect the true sexuality of its members.

In October 2009 Stephen Gately was in Mallorca with husband Andrew, where they owned a holiday apartment. After going out for drinks on Saturday, 10 October the pair returned to their apartment with a man they had met in a club. Eventually Gately was left to sleep in the living room and was discovered in the early hours of the morning by their guest not moving and seated strangely; he immediately alerted Andrew Cowles that something was wrong. Stephen Gately was dead. His completely unexpected death at the age of 33 - and as his career with Boyzone was flourishing once again - came as a huge shock as the news quickly emerged.

A post mortem examination in Spain established that Gately died of natural causes.

#Youtube

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reticulating-splines · 1 year

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Sears Home no. 115

A humble starter home based on the 1908 catalog home from Sears.

Sears Modern Home no. 115

This modest Edwardian era-Gilded Age starter home is based in plans, price, and appearance on one of the earliest Sears kit homes, the 1908 #115. Sold from 1908-1942, Sears Modern Homes were ordered through mail-order catalogs to be shipped by rail to buyers, who would assemble them by hand. Like Ikea, but for affordable housing. These houses were marketed to the growing American middle class and helped to popularize the latest technologies in home building, such as balloon frame construction, plumbing, electricity, and heating.

This lot includes:

4 bedrooms

2 baths (none in the original plans which is why they aren't labeled on my poster)

Parlor, Kitchen, and Pantry, as well as two covered porches

Unfurnished and Unfinished to fit price

20 x 15 lot size

$21,914 simoleons - or around 725$ adjusted for inflation when I built it in 2021. The dollar simoleon has depreciated more since then so it's not priced as historically accurate anymore :( Better value for your sims though!

Packs Used- packs in bold are essential:

Cottage Living, University, Cats & Dogs, Get Together, Vampires, Jungle Adventure.

This build was mostly made with base game materials, all packs used were for decoration only. No CC used.

Patreon Download (free)

#the sims 4 #sims 4 build #sims 4 historical #sims 4 historical build #sims 4 history challenge #ts4 starter home #sims 4 edwardian #ts4 build #reticulated builds #ts4 1900s #unfurnished build #i built this when I was still learning TOOL and it shows #ts4 cc free #sears home

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resetting37 · 6 months

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Funerals in Evelow

hi !! I have not done a world building wednesday segment in a long time ! but I am back, and I wanted to talk about how (most) funerals go about in Evelow, the primary setting of my story.

I'm going off of this prompt, and just answering the funeral and death related questions. Death is (unfortunately) not that big of a plot point in my story, but it does come up, especially at the beginning ('wait, there's a timeline to this nonsense ???')

How is a funeral held? funerals are held actually around a month after the death. However, if it was a terminally ill person or someone whose death was predicted to be coming, then it may be a lot sooner. This is because funerals are planned very slowly and time is taken to decide on tomb arrangements, location, scripts, etc.

(If you're wondering if the attendees are looking at a super decomposed body or if the embalming methods are hella advanced, um, both ? The decision to embalm does have to happen early on, but some people believe that the decomposition makes mourning more effective. Others want to look at their loved one as they remember them. Also, Evelow is the city that has advanced genetic therapy, so some cell manipulation is complimented with the chemicals to preserve the body longer. Freezing is also done, but don't forget to thaw them out in time ! sheesh.)

So after all the planning, people must register to attend or else they cannot enter. (If the dead person was apart of the planning before their death, then they can make their own invitation list.) This is because there are strict arrangements and many people have duties within the ceremony.

The funeral begins at the burial site. (Unless there were wishes to be buried in secret !! In that case, it can be anywhere. We'll talk more about burial sites in the next question) Everyone in attendance is expected to have a turn at saying something publicly to the dead person. You can technically opt out, but you'd have to be a sobbing mess in order to avoid the stigma that comes out of attending a wedding and not having anything to say about the dying person.

There is a scribe present who records everything. Everything written down will be put into a book(let; depends how much was said) and that book will be attached to the burial site. This is so anyone who visits in the future can read the book that talks about them. Evelow greatly values historical texts and recording everything, so remembering passed people in this manner is appropriate.

So yes, funeral ceremonies can last a very long time. This is why they take a long time to plan. If anticipated, intermissions can occur. There have been occurrences of them lasting days. Fatigue is expected. But many times, people want the funerals to last, so they'll accept the fatigue.

What happens to the body after someone has died? So yeah, bodies are buried ! Usually. Really depends on the person. Preferably in a casket because of the stigma Evelow has against the natural world. In fact, it's more labor-induced to bury them without a casket. To get approval on open burial (i.e. just burying them as is. no coffin or cardboard box or anything) the ground has to be tested for toxicity and purified. In general, the ground is fine.

If you have made recognized achievement within Evelow, then you can be nominated to be buried in the inland garden. The garden is what surrounds the temple and even has statues and other highly decorated tombs. The council has to approve this. And given that most of the figures here are either past councilmen, emperors, etc. It's kind of an unfair little secret club.

So where are people usually buried ? Usually at the home of a loved one or a place significant to them. So yea, there's just little books scattered across Evelow being like "hey this person was buried here, want to read what others said about them ?" (if it's a public place, it has to be approved, blah blah) If there's no designated location, there's a mass graveyard on one of the far reaches of Evelow. It's very large and there are lots of people buried there, but many people try to avoid this fate. There's another stigma behind being "buried in the graveyard."

I don't think they call it a graveyard, just the burial ground (that's 'the' not 'a'.) Though some people like to be metal and call it the "land of the mournless" which brings me to the next question

How do people mourn? There's A LOT of mourning involved in Evelonian deaths. No celebrations (unless you despised the person lol) not even to be happy that they lived a good life, etc. (Which is kind of why cloning is a thing in this city. It's very much not a common thing, but man, some people don't want to die, is there harm in preserving yourself in some manner ?) So yeah, it ties with the desire to record everything as mentioned above. There's a lot of value in preservation in Evelow, so to lose a person ??

Which is why it's considered very important to spill your heart out when it's your turn to speak at the ceremony. You have to say it all, so it'll be recorded and kept by the body forever ! So much so that loud crying is encouraged. (Which I'll give credit to Evelow for that, good for them. However, this also means that if you're not publicly mourning someone, people might take that as you not caring about them. Which is fine if you're not close to them, but you know. People have to be mindful of that.)

What is consider an appropriate amount of time for mourning? However much time you need ! There's no obligation to be like "okay this person died a year ago, time to move on" you can mourn as long as you like. Of course, this can be harmful when it comes to the mourning person's health, but people are welcome to continue mourning while going on their daily lives so that the mourn does not consume them.

What color is used for mourning and funerals? Okay, so as of now, many colors have the same symbolism in Evelow as they are how I'm familiar with ? I should change that (at least to a degree, since I am also an artist and I like to consider color theory) but I do want to keep black as the symbol for death and decay and mourning. And since death is feared in Evelow, then everyone wears black to a funeral.

People are supposed to wear their heaviest garb, wear custom made attire, and go all out for the ceremony. The more extravagant you are, the better (which means that I should redesign the camryns outfits as shown above, it was their mother that died ! We shouldn't able to see these guys under all the veils and cloaks !! Um. remind me to draw that sometime.)

"You mean people are supposed to wear layers of black drapery and attend a multi-hour-sometimes-days-long ceremony ??" Yes, it's supposed to be exhausting.

•

Okay so that's about the end of my ramble ! I should talk a little on how funerals and death is seen in other places like Recom and especially Dile. Dile was where Audrey grew up and when her parents died, she was kind of alone in her mourning. So when she goes to Evelow and sees people acting like it's the end of the world to see their loved ones die, Audrey's like "finally, someone who gets me."

also disclaimer I'm not implying that I think this is the right way to go ! this is just how Evelow does it. And not even everyone in Evelow. It's considered controversial to show any happiness behind a death, but some people are pushing back and insisting on celebration of life, and that death is such a regular part of the life cycle that it should be properly incorporated into people's lives, and not seen as this tragedy for all cases of it.

#world building #okay I'm gonna go ahead and post this now since it's past midnight and you guessed it. wednesday !#I should make world building wednesday part two: color symbolism #but I can wait for the morning. (or next week)

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allproducts81 · 27 days

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A Legacy of Patriotism on Display: A Review of the Patriot Legacy Poster

I recently had the pleasure of acquiring the Patriot Legacy Poster, and it has quickly become a cherished addition to my home. This beautifully crafted artwork goes beyond simply being a poster; it's a captivating visual journey through American history, celebrating the enduring spirit of patriotism that continues to shape the nation.

Celebrating Iconic Leaders:

The poster features prominent figures like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and John F. Kennedy. Each portrait is rendered with meticulous detail, capturing the essence of these historical giants. The selection itself is well-chosen, highlighting presidents who championed liberty, democracy, and equality – core values that continue to define the American identity.

A Visual Journey Through History:

Beyond the portraits, the poster subtly incorporates historical imagery that complements the central figures. In the background of Lincoln's portrait, for instance, you might see a subtle nod to the Emancipation Proclamation. These subtle details add depth and encourage exploration, sparking conversations and igniting a sense of curiosity about the stories behind the imagery.

A High-Quality Keepsake:

The Patriot Legacy Poster is clearly crafted with the utmost care. The use of premium materials ensures vibrant, fade-resistant colours, making it a piece that will retain its beauty for years to come. Whether displayed in a classroom, home office, or a place of honour in your living room, the poster is certain to be a conversation starter.

More Than Just a Poster:

The poster transcends the boundaries of mere decoration. It serves as a constant reminder of the sacrifices made by those who came before us, the ideals they fought for, and the legacy they left behind. Looking at the poster inspires a sense of pride in one's heritage and motivates the viewer to uphold the values that have made America great.

A Highly Recommended Addition:

In conclusion, I wholeheartedly recommend the Patriot Legacy Poster to anyone who appreciates American history, cherishes the spirit of patriotism, or simply enjoys high-quality artwork. It's a visually stunning and informative piece that will not only enhance your space but also serve as a source of inspiration and a reminder of the enduring legacy of America's patriots.

#poster art #poster design #graphic design #artists on tumblr #artwork #poster #Patriot Legacy Poster

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udo0stories · 2 months

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New York City is the most iconic and most visited city in the United States. With its distinctive skyline, diverse neighborhoods, world-class museums, incredible Broadway productions, and melting pot of cultures, NYC attracts millions of visitors each year. (It’s also the place I call home.) New York City is huge. I mean, ten million people live here. Where do you stay when you’re here? There are so many hotels to choose from. To help you plan your visit and narrow down your options, here’s my list of the best hotels in NYC: 1. East Village Hotel Located in the East Village, my absolute favorite neighborhood in NYC, this boutique aparthotel is run more like an Airbnb than a traditional hotel. You get sent a code before arrival to check in, and there’s no staff or restaurant on site (though an outpost of The Bean, a popular NYC café, is right downstairs). The studio apartments are designed to reflect the neighborhood’s bohemian spirit, with contemporary artistic décor, beautiful exposed brick walls, and lots of natural light. The kitchenettes include a stovetop, refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, and silverware. Rooms include comfy pillowtop beds, showers with good water pressure, a flatscreen TV, and complimentary bath products. Everything is pretty compact, but in an area with few hotels, this is one of the best-value spots. Stay here if you want to be in a central location with tons of great restaurants and bars at your fingertips. 2. The Marlton Originally built in 1900, this historic boutique hotel in Greenwich Village has been home to many of the area’s bohemian set, including one of my favorite writers, Jack Kerouac (he even penned a few novellas here). I like that the hotel’s extensive renovations still kept its classic aesthetic. The beautiful interior has a stately feel, with ornate moldings, herringbone parquet floors, and vintage furnishings like brass light fixtures, ornate rugs, and custom-made furniture. The staff are super friendly too. The rooms are pretty small, but well designed to make use of the space. They come with flat-screen TVs, comfy beds with plush bedding, wardrobes, minibars, and marble bathrooms. The Marlton is also home to an excellent bar that serves incredible cocktails, and there’s a complimentary breakfast available too. I think it’s the best value for your money in the area. 3. Vocabulary: The Franklin This three-star hotel is in a 19th-century brownstone in the Upper East Side, the neighborhood I live in (if you see me, say hi!). The rooms here are simple, but the hotel has some great perks, like a free 24-hour espresso bar and a standard late checkout time of 12 p.m. The restaurant is currently being renovated, so there’s no breakfast available on-site, but there are tons of places just steps away. The rooms are decorated in a minimal (but cozy) style, with white-painted chandeliers and cute original art. All rooms come with large TVs and comfy pillow-top mattresses, while their larger rooms come with a desk and easy chair. Everything is newly renovated, and the glass-enclosed showers have excellent pressure. The location is great too, as it’s on a quiet, leafy street close to Central Park and Museum Mile. 4. Hotel Indigo This four-star hotel is dedicated to supporting local street art and artists, and you’ll see plenty of their work throughout the building. The rooftop bar, Mr. Purple, is a favorite among locals for fancy cocktails, and on the weekends, the area turns into an upscale club. (Because of that, it’s a 21+ hotel.). There’s even a heated pool on the rooftop too. The rooms boast hardwood floors, bold artwork, and floor-to-ceiling windows with impressive views over the city. All rooms also include Keurig machines, desks, and a minibar (for which you get a $20 USD credit). The bathrooms are large, beautifully tiled, and feature rainfall shower heads. While there’s no breakfast served on site, you’re just steps away from tons of great eateries open at all hours. Overall,

I think this hotel is the best place to stay if you want to experience NYC’s legendary nightlife. 5. The Standard The Standard is one of the best hotels in the city (I think this East Side location is even better than the one in the Meatpacking district). The bar serves some of the best drinks in town and is usually always packed with NY’s fashionable set. There’s a café where you can get breakfast in the mornings too. The recently renovated rooms are gorgeous, decorated in a minimal design with bright pops of color and lots of natural light thanks to the floor-to-ceiling windows. They’re pretty big too, especially by NYC standards. All rooms at this four-star hotel feature plush beds, fluffy down pillows, huge flatscreen TVs, Bluetooth speakers, cozy bathrobes, work desks, and stocked minibars. The bathrooms are spacious, with tiled walk-in showers and organic designer toiletries. You’ll also get complimentary access to the nearby Crunch gym (in case you want to work off all the delicious food from the plethora of nearby restaurants). 6. The Library Hotel Everything at this four-star hotel is book-related. Each of the ten floors has a different theme, and all of the 60 rooms have dozens of books that fit within that theme (the hotel has a collection of over 6,000 books!). There’s also a Reading Room lounge with work desks, cozy nooks for reading or writing, and 24/7 coffee, tea, snacks, and drinks. Guest rooms are a good size (for NYC) and feature rich wood furnishings in a sleek, contemporary design, with plush bedding, minibars, flatscreen TVs, desks, and luxury bath products. There’s also free breakfast, a rooftop terrace with a bar that serves literary-themed drinks, and really helpful staff. It’s a quiet respite from an otherwise busy and loud neighborhood. Stay here for a unique experience that’s close to major tourist sites like Times Square, the Empire State Building, and Grand Central Station. 7. The Sherry-Netherland Located on Fifth Avenue, right across from Central Park, this ornate five-star hotel is housed in a stunning Beaux-Arts building. The lobby boasts vaulted, painted ceilings and custom-made chandeliers, and the elevator even has a white-gloved operator, just to highlight how upscale this property is. The property’s Italian restaurant serves breakfast in the mornings, and there’s a fitness center available too. The spacious rooms are elegantly decorated, with mahogany desks, tasteful art on the walls, and large marble bathrooms. All rooms include flatscreen TVs, luxury bath products, complimentary soda, mineral water, and chocolates, and daily newspaper delivery. This is the place to stay if you want to splash out on a classy and timeless NYC hotel experience.

#Beautiful #Destinations #Discover #Travel #Vacation #City #Hotels #nyc #unitedstates #usa #York

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omegasmileyface · 3 months

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Vital tenets of media depicting space travel

it's big. everything is SO far apart. a lot of beloved space media doesn't give you any sense of vastness and desperate farness. desolation. i still love them, but its very important to me. if youre making a space journey, the distance should be mind-bogglingly farther than you can imagine, and uncomfortably long in waiting times. this can expand to other, less literal parts of your story. scales human minds can't easily comprehend.

things that are almost like home... almost. historically, i think of planets that looked suspiciously like SoCal and aliens that looked suspiciously like humans due to limitations in effects in film and TV, but today we see this more in ideas like parallel universes and convergent evolution. when you travel, you often come across something that reminds you of home, but with something a little off. these coniferous forests look like back in the rockies, except there are trees I've never seen before where the spruce and tamaracks should be. this culture has a "let's eat dinner together" tradition just like mine, but everyone is sitting on the floor. it's almost familiar enough to feel like you know what you're doing.

relating space travel to a historical parallel. i think if you were creative enough you could subvert this, and "reflect the past in the future" is a core idea of sci-fi in general, but like... Firefly works really well because it uses the moral values and story themes of Westerns, yeah? and you don't have to go all in like they did, but think to yourself "what were humans like in times of far travel and expansion? can i draw inspiration from Polynesian sailing culture? or Chinese train lines? would humans react to the back-and-forth shipments of resource ships more like they did to British commerce sailing or to USAmerican trucking?

number 3 above should help define your aesthetic. i am a strong believer that sci-fi aesthetics should have some thought behind them. dont just make things blue-and-white LEDs and sleek plastic Apple™core futurist because you can (or just because it's a nice shorthand for the imperial bourgeois, though that can absolutely be an influencing factor. because i agree). would touchscreens be practical or not on this ship? would things be dirty due to a rushed, uncaring labor culture, or clean due to strong health infrastructure, or somewhere in between because it's just home? is the equipment uniform because it's part of a single government program, or all over the place because everyone does it, or a mash-up of the two because there are strict tech requirements to make it work and it would fuck everything up if you deviated a little but you decorated on top of the necessities?

BE FUCKING WEIRD. space is weird. look if you want to get some kind of social commentary across or be lauded as Perfect you should probably follow everything i said above and also carefully think up a scientific system where everything you mention is consistent and you very carefully don't mention anything that wouldn't be consistent. if that's where you want to go, godspeed. i liked Ender's Game as much as the next youngest child with an abusive brother. BUT don't be afraid to be camp. break rules (my rules, others' standards of the genre, the laws of physics, your own previously-established rules) when it's fun. make things stupid and pretty for no reason. assign numbers to things that could never ever make sense. even the most serious of space travel stories do well with a scene or two where Someone Gets Space Madness or A Wormhole Appears And Everybody Gets Genderbent or We Need To Have An Alien Fashion Show To Afford Repairs or what have you

refuse to make up your mind on whether space is magic and gods are real or not

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a-smol-frost-birb · 1 year

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It's Pigeon Appreciation Day so you know what that means: Pigeon Facts!

June 13th is Pigeon Appreciation Day. Historically pigeons have served humans as sources of food through their meat and eggs, as war animals much like horses and dogs, as means of communication, and were once widely kept as racing pigeons in coops on large city buildings. They were released in large numbers from their coops when pigeon races lost popularity/profit which contributed to the eventual high population of these feathered friends we see today.

In the 18th Century, due to it's great value and part in the making of gunpower, King George I/II (not 100% which sorry) of England declared that pigeon poo was property of the Crown. I'm not shitting you. ;)

Kept as pets, Pigeons are very affectionate birds and make much less noise compared to birds such as Parakeets or Macaws. No noise complaints from the neighbors, or any bleeding eardrums! ;) Pigeons are about as smart as a three-year-old, so they can learn simple tricks, too.

There are several pigeons who are decorated war heroes (if not "officially", they are heroes in my heart)! Notable examples are Cher Ami who you can find at the Smithsonian Museum in the "Price of Freedom: Americans at War" exhibit in Washington DC, and White Vision, Winkie and Tyke who received the PDSA Dickins Medal established in 1943 by Maria Dickin. It's awarded to animals that showed "conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving or associated with any branch of the Armed Forces or Civil Defence Units". White Vision, Winkie and Tyke are the first recipients of this medal; they are just 3 of the 32 total pigeons (last I checked) who have ever been awarded this honor!

In 2001 on March 24th, Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks accidentally hit a flying bird from the pitcher's mound with a fastball during a spring training game against the San Francisco Giants. The speed of the fastball was unknown (ball needs to reach home plate in order to tell), but it was certainly fast enough to prove fatal for the bird, the incident was also caught on camera. Not the first time it's happened in baseball, but it might be the most famous example. (From photos I've seen of the Giant's player who picked up the bird and brought it off the field, the bird was an unlucky Mourning Dove who was just flying in the wrong place at the wrong time.)

The famous Serbian American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla had an odd affinity for pigeons during his lifetime. He often took sick and injured pigeons back to his home to nurse them back to health, and regularly spent hours the park each week feeding them. He even kept the windows open to his hotel suite so they could visit him, including one white female pigeon. "I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman ... As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.”

#on this blog we love and respect pigeons #I wrote these up kinda quickly so i wouldn't forget to post this sorry for any typos or mistakes!#pigeon appreciation day

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romanov-ramblings · 2 years

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Sometimes searching in Russian really does pay off when you least expect it haha. Here is a lovely article published back in 2004, and authored by Mme. Iraida K. Bott, the Deputy Director for Scientific and Educational Work for the journal "Antiques, Objects of Art and Collectibles" which was active from 2002-2015. Every manner of antique and archival material is discussed through-out the magazine's publication. In the 16th Issue, back in April of 2004 the magazine published an article entitled: DISCLAIMER: I do not know Russian, this was translated using a translator so I apologise for any errors. ^_^ "Tsarskoye Selo furniture by F. Melzer and N. Svirsky." The article itself goes into detail about the History behind the furniture which decorated the rooms of the Alexander Palace which were lived in by the Imperial Family. "From the beginning of the twentieth century we are only one century, but in the palace meetings Petersburg remained, paradoxically, much less subjects of the time, than, say, the end of the XVIII or early XI centuries. However, the paradox can be explained quite simply: interest in subjects of the era of historicism and modernism appeared in our country only in recent decades, but still earlier than the opportunity to freely study the objective world of imperial palaces and the artistic preferences of their owners. By this time, revolutions, wars and ideology destroyed much that had, if not artistic, then memorial value, so important for the preservation of historical memory. In this respect, the last house of the last emperor of Russia is interesting - the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, a kind of repository of information about time and people, which ceased to exist during the Great Patriotic War. Only those items taken out for evacuation, and therefore preserved individual items, as well as the memories of the owners and eyewitnesses, archival materials and photo chronicles, allow, albeit sketchily, to reconstruct the subject environment, undoubtedly interesting for the historian. I would like to note that the furniture , which was perceived as a utilitarian component of the room, was especially damaged from all the decoration of the palace chambers . Indeed, the residential and ceremonial interiors of the palace included not only specially made items, but also samples of mass production of the capital's factories. Perhaps that is why in the post-revolutionary years, furniturethey were distributed from the Alexander Palace to various state institutions and practically were not evacuated during the war years. Today we evaluate time and its material monuments in a different way. We are interested in both works created according to the projects of architects for a specific interior, and serial products produced by leading domestic manufacturers. It is important to note that many of the similar items are found in homes and on the antique market today, so information about the furnishings of the Tsarskoye Selo palace can identify unnamed objects that exist. From 1905 to August 1917, the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo became the favorite home of Nicholas II and his family. The emperor was born in the Tsarskoye Selo palace and retained his love and affection for this place throughout his life. Here in 1894, shortly after the wedding, he brought Alexandra Fyodorovna; the young married couple stayed in the rooms of the left wing where Nikolai Alexandrovich spent his childhood. By the next stay of the royal couple in several rooms of this half, they made repairs, put in order the furniture that was here during the time of the great-grandfather of Nicholas II . Perhaps, taking into account the Empire style of furniture, in the corner living room of the left wing, where Nikolai and Alexander stayed for the first time, they installed Karelian birch doors, borrowing them from the former rooms of Nicholas I, and, in accordance with them, according to the drawings of the architect of the Tsarskoye Selo palace administration S. A. Danini (1867-1942), FF Meltzer's firm made two glazed cabinets, also from Karelian birch. Furniture created in the 1820s for Nikolai Pavlovich according to V. Stasov's designs in A.K. Tour. The decoration of the premises of this wing continued in the following years, in connection with this, in 1896, the name of the manufacturer N.F. Svirsky appeared in the palace documents for the first time, who became the supplier of the court under Alexander III and worked a lot for Nicholas II. At the request of Alexandra Feodorovna, this metropolitan master was entrusted with "making furniture for a bedroom and a ladies' dressing room, with a bathtub and a water closet cladding" "according to samples and outline tracing papers brought by Her Majesty from abroad." In the late 1890s, Svirsky's factory delivered several more items and sets of furniture to the palace: an icon case for the bedroom of the senior princesses, possibly according to the drawing of the already mentioned S.A. Danini, a corner sofa in the Louis XVI style - for the Empress's Corner Drawing Room, furniture with painting and gilding - for the Portrait Hall (ill. 1, 2). For the same interior, Svirsky made six chairs "carved gilded wood, in the style of classicism, imitating the Jacob chairs," repeating the forms and decor of the living room set by J. Jacob from the Arabesque hall of the Catherine Palace, transferred to the Alexander Palace at the request of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna. Small carved gilded tables with round and rectangular white marble countertops were made for the Empress's Corner Living Room at the Svirsky factory in the Louis XV style, the base of which was decorated with garlands hanging from bows, with bucranium heads - a typical classicist motif. Graceful legs ended with hooves and were connected by a beautifully shaped prong with a chiseled vase in the center. These objects are examples of exquisite stylization, in which one can see the hand of a skilled draftsman, whose name has not yet been established (ill. 3). The attention and interest in the historical setting, characteristic of the last owners of the palace, was probably due to the architectural design of the ceremonial halls, which corresponded to the solemn and elegant classicist decoration. From the correspondence of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, it became known that the nature of the interiors was largely determined by the artistic inclinations of the hostess, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. As Yuri Kudrin notes in the book “Empress Maria Feodorovna Romanova. Diaries. Letters. Memories "(M., 2000), in January 1896, after visiting new apartments in the Winter Palace, Maria Fedorovna, criticizing the taste of her daughter-in-law, in particular, wrote:" .. they [Nikolai and his wife - IB] had the unfortunate idea of choosing an Empire style, which I hate to such an extent that for me it's just ah, and I would not want to live there for anything in the world. Hopefully, this will all look better over time as everything here is replenished and settled. The main thing is that they like it: Alix loves this terrible Empire style, and since she will live here, everything is done according to her taste, and she is very happy. " In 1909, "... The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna deigned to choose a drawing marked with a red cross, and ordered chairs for tables in the round hall of the Alexander Palace to be made from it," where the family usually gathered during ceremonial breakfasts. 48 beech chairs, covered with enamel paint and decorated with gilded Empire decor, were made according to the design of the architect Danini at the factory of F.F. Melzer. The appearance of these objects in one of the most elegant halls of the palace not only testified to the fashionable retrospective direction in Russian art of the 1910s, but was dictated by the interior architecture and decoration of the hall. It is interesting to note that two sketches were presented to the Empress for consideration and approval, of which the crowned customer chose, it seems, the best option (ill. 4, 5). For many years, the artistic tastes of the last Romanovs were usually scolded in our country. Indeed, the residential apartments of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna did not differ in sophistication of decoration and were "saturated ... with items of factory production, characteristic of the industrial-capitalist class," as the curator of the palace-museum V.I. Yakovlev wrote in 1928. However, it can be assumed that for Nicholas and his family, the comfort and warmth of human communication were more important than fashionable and elegant decoration, to which little attention was paid. Suffice it to recall that the interiors in the Winter Palace were designed only for the wedding, and the living rooms of the Alexander Palace, which became a favorite home, were created in two stages - in the 1890s and 1900s, and for two decades they practically did not change (Fig. 6 , 7). Nevertheless, today it is difficult to deny that the best architects and leading metropolitan masters of their time worked at the order of the imperial family, and such interiors, II in Aleksandrovsky, - among the best interiors of the turn of the century. The most significant works in Tsarskoe Selo are associated with the names of the already mentioned FF Meltzer and his brother RF Meltzer. For the right wing of the Alexander Palace, which became the residential half of the royal family, according to the designs of the court architect , the decoration of all residential and ceremonial premises was created at the factory of the court furniture supplier. Work here began in the winter of 1896, and in the first year of their stay in the palace, the new owners were content with the furnishings preserved from the previous owners. If pieces of furniture appeared here, then those that were not specially created, but were selected from those offered by the manufacturers. So, in 1895, from the supplier of the imperial court and the court of the Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, K. Greenberg, who had been manufacturing furniture for the Alexander Palace during the reign of Alexander II , in the Bedchamber of Their Majesties they purchased “ furniture at agreed prices, painted with lacquer paint in tones ", upholstered in chintz with a pattern -" on a white background, round medallions of flowers. Judging by the small number of items indicated in Greenberg's account, as well as by the mention that at the same time in the Bedchamber “the old furniture was painted again with lacquer paint in tones,” the manufacturer only supplemented the existing decoration of the room, updated for the stay of the royal couple (Fig. 8). The products of Karl Greenberg 's small furniture and upholstery workshop, in which 30 apprentices and five apprentices worked in the 1880s, was awarded a medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 and the Big - a silver medal received in 1885 from the city of St. Petersburg - “for a very good furnishing and upholstery work ”, Greenberg supplied and refurbished furniture in the palace for several decades. Large ash wardrobes with sliding doors for the wardrobes of the Emperor and Empress, two of which have survived to this day, were made by him in the 1890s. By September 1896, in the Alexander Palace, in addition to Opoch-valna, the Rosewood drawing room and the Lilac study (room " mauve ") were ready for the Empress's half, the Restroom and the Study for Nicholas II . The decoration of these rooms was created at the factory of FF Meltzer according to the designs of the architect RF Meltzer, who included 10% in his brother's estimate documentation - “for drawing up drawings and technical supervision of painting, plastering and stove works”. The volume and terms of the order are impressive: for the Lilac office alone, the factory produced more than 30 pieces of lacquered furniture, and, as FF Meltzer wrote in his commitment, “the deadline for the execution of the main aforementioned works, including drawing up drawings, patterns, models, is 2 1 / 2 months". At the same time, Melzer not only made furniture, panels and “veneered pianos in the style of a room,” but also put tagans, lighting equipment, fireplaces, fabrics on walls and window fittings. The short terms of execution of the order were due to the large and well-established production and the use of proven samples of serial production, distinguished by high quality, in the furnishing of the imperial palace. The furniture of the created interiors fit quite well with the historicism style of the 1890s - this is the furniture of the "third rococo" of the Lilac office, the "peasant chairs" of Nikolai's study, two "richly carved" armchairs " Renaissance " made of walnut and chairs "a la Chippendale" Libraries and the State Office of Nicholas II , supplied by Meltzer's firm in 1896-1898 (ill. 9-13). Among the best works performed in 1902-1903 by the "duet" of the Meltzer's in the palace are the state rooms of the royal couple - the Maple Drawing Room of the Empress and the New Study of Nicholas II , in which mahogany furniture , ceramic fireplaces from Vienna, marble columns on mezzanines made by Duckerhoff & Neumann from Nassau. Meltzer put in the Emperor's Cabinet plafonds "with variegated glasses in tiffany soldering", sconces "with tiffany tulips", lamps over a round table and billiards, and 8 glasses "motley tiffany soldered for transoms." Similar equipment and more than 40 pieces of built-in and free-standing furniture were made for the Empress's Maple Drawing Room (Figures 14-18). In 1903, Melzer completed a large amount of work in the children's rooms, the corridor and the Corner Room of the upper floor, for which the furniture made of ash and oak was painted in ivory and maple green. In the rooms of the emperor's children, objects were painted in ivory and decorated with pink, blue and green stripes, combined with the Chin designs on the walls and draperies on the windows. At that time, white painted furniture was in vogue: in 1895, on the name day of Grand Duchess Olga, sister of Nicholas II , the imperial "gave her various white furniture covered with beautiful chintz"; painted objects were also in the Empress's purple study. Some furniture today, items from the rooms of the imperial children can be seen in the collection of the State Hermitage, in pre-war photographs, watercolors of the 1930s, and on projects by the architect of the court office, Danini (ill. 19). Among them is a drawing of a dining room wardrobe designed by him in the 1900s, and a drawing of an icon case for the heir's bedroom. The children's dining room - an almost square room with two windows to the park - was located above Alexandra Feodorovna's service quarters. As in other interiors, its walls were covered with an English chin, which the empress considered a hygienic material suitable for children's apartments. In the dining room there were: a dining table, a sideboard, several side tables and Viennese chairs with overhead cushions. It is interesting to note that the chairs were of different heights - in accordance with the age and height of the Grand Duchesses. Danini also belongs to the project of the icon case for the bedroom of Tsarevich Alexei, made at the Melzer factory. “A cabinet with six compartments with closed cabinets in the lower part, painted in ivory and decorated with twisted columns and flat carvings, was located in the corner of the room and was filled with icons of the“ new letter ”in vestments or frames, as well as images, crosses, etc. porcelain with Easter eggs. The same icon cases with icons were in the bedrooms of all the august children (ill. 20, 21). All work in the Alexander Palace from the first years of the imperial couple's stay in it was carried out under the supervision of Alexandra Feodorovna. The Empress approved the samples of the carpets; at her request, a fireplace was made from green majolica tiles in a nickel-plated frame in the ladies' dressing room; lamps of her choice were installed for electric lighting, and even samples of bronze handles for doors and windows were submitted to her; fulfilling her desire, Danini was instructed to write, according to the available samples from Darmstadt - the empress's hometown - wallpaper for the upper floor of the left wing of the palace, etc. Alexandra Feodorovna lovingly landscaped her house, using all the technical achievements of that time to create coziness and comfort. So, for example, in 1897 the Empress ordered “in their Majesties' own chambers and in the rooms of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. This house was filled with things that reminded the owners of private and official events of their lives, favorite books and photographs of relatives and friends, it smelled of flowers, which Alexandra Fyodorovna loved very much, the House in the Alexander Palace pleased the family of Nicholas II and, leaving it early in the morning on August 1, 1917 years, they hoped to return to Tsarskoe... This, however, did not happen, and the history of the palace after the Romanovs turned out to be as tragic as the fate of its last inhabitants, and the preserved objects still cannot return to their historical places."

#alexander palace #tsarskoe selo #gmz tsarskoe selo #magazine article #furniture #antiques #imperial russia #romanov #russian article

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