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filmnoiress · 5 months

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favourite books you read this year? least favourite?

this got so long lol

favourites:

the blood of gods by conn iggulden: this author is very hit or miss for me but thankfully this was a hit! conn iggulden is never better than when he's writing about a sickly little guy <3 he takes historical liberties but he explains where and why in his author's note so i don't really have a problem with it

the facemaker by lindsay fitzharris: lindsay's back and covering even more fascinating surgical history! this time the story of dr harold gillies' groundbreaking work in wwi

the escape artists by neal bascomb: world war i! prison break! really well written! what more could i want!

also augustus by anthony everitt, agent josephine by damien lewis, the race for timbuktu by frank t kryza, moscow nights by nigel cliff, tommy douglas by vincent lam

romantic outlaws by charlotte gordon! such an incredible book i couldn't put it down. mary wollstonecraft and mary shelley were both such fascinating women. every single man in their lives was a demon

rick mcintyre's alpha wolves of yellowstone series: ahh what an incredible series. dynastic drama romance betrayal tragedy family grrm WISHES he could write anything as good as this saga. every single book made me cryyy😭favourites were probably the first two but they're all great

bonfire the chestnut gentleman by susan raby-dunne: i thought this was a really charming book told from the pov of a horse in the first world war, the horse basically has the voice of a stuffy old english gentleman which was so cute

no man's land by wendy moore: such a good book about a military hospital from the first world war (shocker) run entirely by women

through a window and in the shadow of man by jane goodall: i's jane goodall's chimps it's my entire life of course i was going to love these

armadale by wilkie collins: WOOO my man wilkie off the SHITS this book is WILD you know you're in for a wild ride when 35 pages in there are five characters with the exact same name

the confidence men by margalit fox: absolutely bonkers true story of two first world war pows who escape a turkish prison camp by pretending to b psychics. insane

shadow of a doubt by diane negra: really liked this analysis of the movie! i didn't agree with all of her arguments but

crossing hitler by benjamin carter hett: great biography of hans litten makes a great companion piece to babylon berlin

last train to memphis by peter guralnick: this really was an excellent first half of a biography. elvis' life moved so quickly and he became a star so young that it's kind of no wonder he basically lost his mind later on and it's only amazing he held it together as long as he did

dust by arthur slade: this one was for a younger audience but i think it holds up for adults! horror set on the canadian plains during the great depression! what more could i want!

the troop by nick cutter: this was sooo disgusting gooey wet body horror <3 loved it

edit: something wicked this way comes by ray bradbury how could i have forgotten this one! what a great companion piece to carnivale!

as many liars by douglas smith: absolutely insane true story of how the pc party of manitoba installed puppet candidates in several ridings to split the ndp vote in the 1995 provincial election! literally insane that i had never heard of this before. remember you can never trust the conservative party!

carnivale and the american grotesque: wonderful collection of essays about the show, great companion piece, you can really tell the authors love the show

the time traveller's guide to regency britain by ian mortimer: ahh what a lovely informative book. it really felt like the author was taking your hand and leading you on a guided tour of regency britain

wounded by emily mayhew: actually the last book i read that i loved this year, i'm doing this out of order, but yes i loved this! each chapter focuses on a different person on the journey of the wounded in the first world war at least for the british, starting at the front and ending in the hospital

flowers for algernon by daniel keyes: saving this book for last because no book has affected me like this yet. book of the year for me

least favourites:

the sleepwalkers and children of wrath by paul grossman: i was just so disappointed in these because i found both of these really well written in the beginning but by the third act they just go completely off the rails :( novels set in the weimar republic be good challenge

the great stink by clare clark: idk where to put this one. i really didn't think this was a good book and i didn't like how it was written but then there was a twist literally on the very last page that gagged me completely so idk.

the man who walked backward by ben montgomery: ugh i had so many problems with this book and its subject don't get me started. actually do the title and intro make it seem like our subject is a sort of quirky but lovable idiosyncratic person who took a different approach to surviving the great depression and it made all the difference :) when the book makes clear he literally just decided to abandon his wife and kids-as the sole breadwinner of the family-in the middle of the great depression to go walk around backwards??? we read about his wife sending him letters on the road begging him to send money back to his family but he never did and his response was always to chide her for not thinking of his expenses and how hard he's working...but he was looking for advertising for his reverse walking stunt the entire time so clearly he was hoping for money from this. you couldn't have sent any back to your family? then it turns out he might have been smuggling drugs the entire time???

the devil's playground by craig russell: mr russell i loved your last book what is this. this wasn't scary, the characters were flat, iou could see the twist coming a mile away (compare that to the devil aspect when i had NO idea it was coming), and such a waste of a great setting (1920s hollywood silent horror film set!!!)

1794 by niklas natt och dag: listen i remember how gross and indulgent and misanthropic the first book was. but this book is so ridiculously over the top about it (like that female character who literally exists just to be tortured b the author). and at least the first book was about a compelling case and had Thee character in cecil winge. no one is comparing in this one. such a disappointing sequel

the wasteland b w. scott poole: ugh. this book has such an awesome premise (exploring how wwi influenced horror cinema!) but it's so bad. the author has the weirdest gaps in his research, each chapter is supposed to be about its own subject but they all blend together, and as much as he reiterates his thesis statement on literally every single page he never actually delves into what that statement means or is clear on what the thesis is! are you saying the first world war influenced horror films just in the decades immediately following it or all horror to come? but actually i'm not too mad at this book bc reading it was frustrating but it also just became a very productive exercise on what not to do. i absolutely could have done better

the house of whispers by laura purcell: another disappointing follow up to the silent companions from purcell. this wasn't scar, there was no dread, it was so slow, so many random aspects that never came together, unlikable characters. smh

shadows on the mountain by erin hunter: me when i read a book by the warrior cats lady and she does her weird warrior cats thing: :O no one @ me ik this is for kids i just wanted to read a novel about apes :( there's no need to add all this weird mythology literally the animal behaviour is mythology enough

#asks

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briamichellewrites · 5 months

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Kevin was visiting Bria with Howie. She was sleeping, so they were in the cafeteria talking. He admitted that they had slept together the day of the accident. They were also engaged in a sexual affair. Howie thought something happened between them because they became close very quickly. He didn’t hate him for it. The reason why he was telling him was because he couldn’t live with him not knowing. He thanked him for being honest with him.

Were they dating? They had gone on a couple of dates, but they weren’t officially dating. He liked her and wanted to make her his girlfriend. What he was waiting for was the right time. Kevin made sure he knew what he was getting himself into. She may never be able to be independent. Rather, she would need around-the-clock care with nurses coming in and out of her home.

He wouldn’t blame him if he wasn’t ready for that, though he shouldn’t walk away from her. She needed him as a friend. He could be that for her. Yes, he did think about what he was getting himself into. It wouldn’t be a normal relationship. He would have to take care of her. With that in mind, no. He didn’t want her to believe there was a romantic relationship between them. Instead, he was happy to remain in her life as a close friend.

He felt guilty because he loved her and it wasn’t her fault. Kevin thought she would understand. If he needed help talking about it with her, he recommended having Mike there because he knew her better than anyone. He would do that.

Mike was invited to join them when he got to the hospital. After hearing about the conversation, he fully agreed that Howie should not feel obligated to be involved in a relationship he wasn’t ready for. He also felt that he should continue to be involved in her life as a friend and support system. That he would do. Maybe she could watch them rehearse or something. She would enjoy that.

She would also enjoy going on errands with him. What about church? He didn’t know. She might be interested. Even though she wasn’t religious, she would respect that he was. He would ask her if she was interested in that. She didn’t have to participate, she could just listen. Kevin thought they should all research Lou Gehrig’s disease, so they could know what she would need help with. Yeah, they would do that. She was at risk of being diagnosed with the disease.

The more they learned, the better they could help her. Would she go into assistive living? Mike shook his head. No, he could see her wanting to stay at home. It was familiar to her and she would want to keep her cats. They could ask about water exercises to help her muscles. She had an indoor swimming pool. Even just sitting with her in the shallow end would probably be a good idea.

They would probably have to buy a life jacket for her. Mike was thinking about talking to her about filing to become her conservator. He looked into it. It would mean he could make decisions for her, talk to doctors and nurses; and pay her bills. In the worst-case scenario, he legally couldn’t do anything because he was just a friend. That would be a great idea. Since they already had a friendship, he could prove he wasn’t doing it for the money.

He would let her have a say in what happened to her, of course. Maybe he could also have his parents sign on too. She knew and trusted them. They could be on call if he was on tour or otherwise unavailable. Howie’s sister died from Lupus in 1998, so he had some experience with having a loved one with an illness. As did Kevin. His father died from cancer in 1991.

Mike expressed condolences to them. Thank you. When they got back, she had woken up after a short nap. Her eyes lit up when she saw the three of them together. They smiled at her, as they came over to her bedside. Howie held up her letter board for her. She spelled out their names. Yes, that was correct! How was she doing? A-w-a-k-e. Awake. P-a-i-n. Pain. H-e-a-d. Head. Did her head hurt? Yes. Kevin volunteered to get a nurse.

Mike thanked her for telling them. A nurse came in and examined her. How bad was the pain? They translated for him. The pain was mild. He would get some Tramadol. Thank you. Mike took her hand and rubbed it. The nurse would make the pain go away. She looked at them. Her mouth wanted to move, but her brain didn’t know how to make it happen.

The nurse came back with a bag of medication. He hooked it up to her IV. It was a small dose since it was a powerful opioid. It would take a little bit for it to work. T-h-a-n-k y-o-u. She was very welcome. If she had any other pain, even if it was small, she should tell them. It could mean something was going on. She moved her fingers to give a thumbs up. Okay. While they continued talking to her, she felt her pain going down. B-e-t-t-e-r. Better. Good! They were happy to hear it.

Paris, what you did will affect me for the rest of my life. I had a brain hemorrhage that I needed surgery to repair. I also had surgery to remove excess fluid in my heart. You chose to use drugs and then get behind the wheel of your car. You could have killed me or someone else. It was not an accident. I hope the judge gives you the sentence they feel is appropriate for you. You will be able to walk away from this, while I will need around-the-clock care for the rest of my life. I will never be able to live the life I once did and it’s because of your selfish decision. While I have forgiveness in my heart, that is all I am willing to give you. I hope when you close your eyes at night, it’s me that you are haunted by.

Paris pleaded guilty in court. She was sentenced to drug counseling, community service, and probation for two years. It was a slap in the face for Bria. Mike attended the hearing. He had a prepared statement that he and Bria had written together. Before the judge handed down her sentence, he went up to the podium and read it out loud. The media was there taking notes on everything.

He was devastated and angry when he heard the verdict. Bria deserved so much more. Paris would be able to do things she couldn’t. It was a joke. How could the judge look at her charges and not see how serious they were? He wanted to cry because he was so angry. This was not justice. But, he bit his tongue. It was not the time or place to get upset. Kathy and Richard were there for their daughter. They should be at the hospital visiting Bria.

While walking out, he couldn’t even look at them. They called out to him. He took a deep breath before turning around. How is Bria? He shook his head to control his emotions. How was she? She was trapped inside her own body. They would know if they visited her. Where was she? She was in the intensive care unit of Cedar Sinai Hospital.

When he got back, she was talking with Kevin and Howie while using her spelling board. I am sorry. Howie thanked her, though he had already forgiven her. When they saw him, they noticed the look on his face. It wasn’t good news.

What happened? He told them everything. They were as upset as he was. He took her hand and kissed her forehead. She looked at him with sadness. He rubbed her hand and he told her it was okay to cry. With tears going down her face, they let her cry. It was so unfair. He wiped the tears from her face. She tapped at the piece of paper, so Kevin held it up. T-h-a-n-k y-o-u. She was very welcome.

@zoeykaytesmom @feelingsofaithless @alina-dixon @fiickle-nia

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lookwhatilost · 1 year

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i wanted to write a while back about the weird right wing funhouse mirror conceptualization of "free speech". specifically the kanye's shitshow of a media tour at the end of last year, and the self-evidently bad idea to run walker. but now i've had more time to think about it. and i have some time to scribble it down. enjoy a take that has been sitting in the freezer for two months.

when jane coaston was still writing for vox, she used to talk a lot about guardrails in a political movement or social institutions. and i think she's dead on with this – it's especially important if you believe in free speech, and if you don't want a sort of heavy-handed set of rules driving your beat, to exert some kind of guardrails and discipline.

kanye west is not a deep thinker on public policy issues. it's not who he is. he was a celebrated recording artist and sometimes fashion entrepreneur. so you have to ask yourself when you're deliberately taking on somebody, "do i want to hold this person up as the representative of my movement? is this somebody who people in my cause should care a lot about with what they have to say?" you have to think about why you want to do that.

the best reason to draw a celebrity entertainer to a political movement is because that person is making a really banal point that has almost no content to it. like, think taylor swift saying she believed in marriage equality, or katy perry endorsing hillary clinton. we want their large fanbases to hear these analytically simple things. the whole kanye thing just kind of reeked of this... desperation to own the libs by finding a black person to say something provocative about race? and with so much interest in that, that you don't pay any attention at all to questions like "does he know what he's talking about?" or "does this person have any information at all?"

something similar happened with herschel walker where he'd say things that conservatives would want to hear, but would shy away from a lot of uncomfortable stuff, like paying his ex girlfriend's abortion tab or holding a gun to his wife's head. and the argument conservatives made when the audio of that was leaked was "herschel is being smeared! there's an interview where she says she's forgive him for that behavior!" i mean, it's a salient fact in his history that this is something he did, which he admitted to, and he has a bit of a history with this violent behavior against women. so if you want to hold up an example of The Libs are Attacking Somebody, maybe you shouldn't pick the guy who had a gun to his wife's head? same with the guy who's spouting antisemitic stuff.

if i were to ask someone like tucker carlson what he thought about affirmative action, he'd probably tell me "well, i'm concerned that we're diluting important meritocratic qualities in pursuit of diversity." but then you look at how the conservative movement structures, well, itself, they wanted walker to run against warnock. they wanted kanye to counter BLM. they're reaching for people who aren't at all informed about public policy. the state of georgia is not at all lacking in regular politicians that don't have the scandals that dogged walker and can speak coherently about issues. even if you set the scandals aside, he's up on a debate saying "people with diabetes just need to eat better". so, no type 1 diabetes exists? it's dumb, and it's sort of a gaffe, but he's also a football star with no background in politics at all in a state that's historically been very republican. why did you pick him?

it's, like, it's getting lost in the weeds with someone's personal draw that no one ever stops to think, "wait, why the fuck are we interviewing this guy?"

it's baffling that alex jones still brought kanye on infowars and elon gave him his twt back after the red wave that never happened. you'd figure that if you were a right winger, this would be a wakeup call that it isn't politically working out for you to have your face of your movements to be Some Guy.

but then again, they might be backed into a corner, because they've leaned so far away from policy in their political strategy. "so what do you guys plan to do about the debt ceiling?" "blue lives matter!" "wtf?"

#politics n culture

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nim-lock · 2 years

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The absolute DELIGHT I experienced when I realized Boot was in the fic u and Nemo collabed on was astronomical. WHAT is the fire breathing snake friend he has with him in the fic!!! do they have a name? I would love to hear more abt boot, especially abt the reptiles he takes care of!! How’d he come into possession of some of the hero’s he has? (Rescues? Gifts? just found one while on a planet and it decided to tag along with him?)

sorry for all the questions, boot is just rlly neat and I love that he’s into reptiles!! Where does he keep his reptiles? some are BIG, where does he get the space for enclosures? (I’m probably overthinking this-space reptiles probably need different things than earth reptiles, but a water monitor gets abt 6ft if it’s a male, and needs at least 8x8x8 enclosure which is a lot of space!! I just think itd be so neat to see his collection, kinda like those “reptile room tour!” Videos on YouTube)

ok sorry for rambling, please say hi to ur shrimb for me, I’m giving them all little kisses

Hello! Ahh thanks for your enthusiasm about Boot xD I think he works as a wandering employee of some wildlife conservation groups. Most animals that have sentimental value to him are collectively owned/cared for, like the relationship folks may have with a library cat. There are also those who'll be released back into the wild, so he appreciates his time with them, and fully expects to never see them after (he's happy for them; he hopes they have a good life). He keeps photos of them on his wall. Boot tends to keep his lizard Greebi with him, with a few smaller herps in enclosures in his room.

Have not thought deeply into the fire breathing snakes yet :-0

#hrmmm reptile room....#I don't think he has one that belongs To Him alone; but he definitely helps maintain some wherever he's workin #clone trooper boot #asks

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lea-andres · 2 years

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While we're all talking family lore, and it'll actually start to come up in the next chapter of When the Day Met the Night, let's talk that Tangle and Jewel origin story I think I've hinted at a couple times on here.

So, Tangle and Jewel have known each other FOREVER. Their parents were good friends with each other before either girl existed, so naturally when both girls were born they ended up growing up together. When Tangle said in WtDMtN she can't even remember when she first met Jewel because they were both so young, she wasn't exaggerating: These two have been together since they were in diapers. And these two have ALWAYS been "ride or die" for each other. Tangle's always known and trusted Jewel's got her back, and Jewel's always known and trusted the same of Tangle. Nothing will ever get between these two.

Now, Tangle is practically canonically a lesbian, and Jewel I've described as being a "disaster pan" SEVERAL TIMES now. They've never been romantically interested in each other, but when they were both young and questioning their sexualities, they did some... experimenting together when they were younger. They were each other's first kiss, for example, upon other things.

Part of the reason they did this instead of seeking answers elsewhere was because both sets of parents were very... conservative people, and both girls would've been lectured and punished for having these kinds of thoughts and attractions if they'd gone to them (and they feared their parents would find out if they tried to turn to anyone else for answers.)

Tangle's parents eventually became aware (or, probably more likely, it got to a point they could no longer deny it) that their daughter was the living stereotype of a homosexual, and disowned her when she was 7. Jewel's parents then attempted to force their 8 year old daughter to end her friendship with Tangle. So Jewel told her parents that she and Tangle were lesbian lovers who had been having a passionate love affair for YEARS... And got herself disowned too. (This was not true, obviously, Jewel pretty much just said it knowing she'd get disowned too, but Jewel will stick by Tangle's side no matter what.)

Jewel's estranged aunt (she wasn't fond of the rest of Jewel's family and didn't associate with them often) ended up taking the girls in, and they lived with her in the flat above her art studio/art shop in Spiral Hill. She let the girls get up to pretty much whatever the hell they wanted, leading to their many "Tangle gets herself into trouble and Jewel gets her out of it" adventures.

Jewel's aunt died when they were 13/14, and left Jewel the building the flat and the shop were in in her will. Jewel was not an artist, so it couldn't be an art shop anymore, but she loved rocks and minerals, and she and Tangle had built up a sizable collection of them during their adventures, so they converted the shop into the Mineral Museum.

Jewel's been a permanent resident ever since, but flatmates have varied over the years. Tangle lived with her for a long time, and Whisper (and her Wisps) joined them there eventually as her and Tangle's relationship started to get serious. After a couple years, Tangle and Whisper eventually moved out into their own place (not because of Jewel or anything, this was when the talks about marrying and adopting kids started getting REALLY serious)

Light spoilers for WtDMtN and its sequel, but eventually Jewel becomes aware Team Hooligan were just living out of the Marvelous Queen (and taking shifts sleeping while driving around or just parking somewhere secluded and sleeping when they couldn't get a hotel room or something) and practically FORCED Bark and Bean to move in with her. Bark eventually gives Jewel Puck the Chao when Mina and the Hooligans start going on tour so she wouldn't be lonely while he and Bean are away, and it's been the four of them ever since. (Well... not entirely true. The Catalyst Event to CS91 shook up who was living there for a time, but I'm not going to explain why or what changed. 😈)

Oh, also sometimes Tangle and Whisper's kids (Briar the Squirrel and Ivy the Sugar Glider, yes the sister finally got fully workshopped YAY!) stay overnight with them too. While Jewel was teaching Ivy how to glide, Ivy actually stayed with them for a couple months, hence why she's closer with Jewel and Bark (especially Bark, she ADORES her Uncle Bark so much 🥺) than Briar is.

#jewel the beetle #tangle the lemur #whisper the wolf #bark the polar bear #bean the dynamite #sonic headcanons #lea's ocs #puck the chao #briar the squirrel #ivy the sugar glider #cs91 au

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purpletaecup · 4 years

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6 ☾ these echoes of laughter fade into a distant memory

note: fully written chapter again this time, with social media half chapters coming later this week! this chapter is mainly Yoongi and we see a little bit of his side and how he felt in the past and how he feels in the present. not edited, wanted to post this before the concert so we can all cry together!

rlly important note: i suggest you guys listen to nineteen by hayley williams because i basically base this whole story off that song (and some chinese webnovels i read lmfao). It’s one of my favorite songs ever and it hurts a whole lot. I wish i could experience how I felt when I listened to it for the first time again. As always, feel free to vent/rant and tell me your theories about how the story is going to go! let’s cry together :’)

final note: IM SORRYYY FOR THISSSS don’t hate me pleaseee

word count: 2,523

That night, Yoongi slept in your hospital room. The emotional weight of everything that had happened had kept him nailed to the chair beside your bed. The smell of the air after the rain permeated into the room and reminded him of the day that his lawyer delivered the divorce papers to you, who was alone at home and probably waiting for him. Looking back at it, maybe it was an impulse decision that he made due to the frustration and exhaustion that your marriage caused him. He grew weary and waking up in the morning felt like a chore. You were distant, he was distant and both of you were living lives going in different directions. But you loved each other, and for a while, he thought that could be enough. Evidently, it wasn’t. He doesn’t regret the divorce because in the end, he thought he was doing what was best for the both of you. He knew how tired you were and how you felt being around the people in his life. He felt the same way with the people in yours. Everything about your lives clashed and he thought that divorce was the best solution for both of you to become happy again. He wasn’t getting any younger, but you were still very young and you could still find someone who could love and cherish you better than he could.

He didn’t regret it.

He didn’t.

Or at least that’s what he keeps telling himself. He didn’t regret it. He couldn’t regret it. But remembering how you looked when he came home that night breaks his heart to pieces. Your pale and shivering figure crying by the front door and the way your trembling hands shook him off when he tried to help you up. It was a sight that would remain ingrained in his mind and his heart forever. When you two finally made it inside your house to sit on the couch, he fully expected you to shout and scream and throw a tantrum about the divorce papers. He did not expect the quiet sobs that wracked your figure, or the broken “why are you doing this?” and finally the resignation in your voice when you told him you’d sign it. He remembered, at that moment, that he began crying too. He walked over and sat next to you and took you in his arms like you were his whole world even though he knew he had just ruined yours. With his head buried in your damp hair and neck, he whispered a million apologies. Sorry for breaking your heart. Sorry for wasting your time. Sorry for not knowing how to love you properly. Sorry for not trying.

These apologies meant nothing to you. They were nothing compared to the pain you had endured to be with him, to love him. He didn’t know that. For the last months of your relationship, he didn’t know who you were and that’s what pushed him to get the divorce. You were a shell of the woman you were when you two first met. Your smile didn’t make butterflies appear in his stomach anymore and your laugh didn’t make his heart flutter like it used to. It wasn’t the same anymore. You were both different people, changed people.

In the midst of this change, he was introduced to Yura by Jungkook. A model he worked with a couple times and a really nice woman. Beautiful, even. Almost as beautiful as you, he had thought when he first met her. Jungkook pushed and pushed for him to hang out with them and the rest of the guys and the more he saw Yura, the more he talked to her, the more he began to like her. She reminded him of you when he first met you.

You were 19 and he was 23 and you were modeling at the same set he was supposed to shoot at an hour later. He came early to help the staff prepare for his music video shoot and hopefully talk to the director but he had ended up watching your shoot for most of the time until it was his turn for the set. The people around you liked to say that Yoongi fell in love with you at first sight. He often refuted that it wasn’t at first sight because he wasn’t the type of person to fall in love because of how someone looks. In private, he told you that he fell in love with you at first smile, first laugh. The sight of you laughing genuinely in the middle of hydrangeas and baby’s-breath enchanted him so much that he remained rooted to the floor for the remainder of your shoot.

The laughs and the smiles were Yoongi’s favorite. You were the most beautiful person he’d ever met. You are still the most beautiful he’d ever met, but perhaps it was the exhaustion of life that wore the both of you down. What had started as a beautiful, youthful romance filled with picnics in meadows had ended with divorce papers on a rainy day in September.

These are the thoughts that followed Yoongi to sleep that night.

☾

[nov. 10, 2020]

The same thoughts haunted him day in and day out ever since he left that next morning at the insistence of Jungkook and Taehyung. He spent 4 days on his own, working and living his life but only on the surface. Conservations with people, including his friends, remained minimal. He couldn’t stop thinking about your broken and bruised body laying in the hospital bed, and he was anxious for the news of you waking up but none had come. He received no calls from the hospital since he left, and Taehyung said that visiting was meaningless unless the doctor told him new information.

Yura told him, verbatim, “I understand that you’re worried about her safety, but the doctors said she would be fine. She’s your ex-wife, I get it, but she’s not your responsibility anymore.”

In a way, she was right. But he couldn’t help but feel sick at the thought of leaving you all alone there. He knew it was hard for Jin to come out because he was incredibly busy with work, and when he wasn’t traveling for his job, he lived too far from both of you to ever accompany you in the way that you needed. In addition to that, he had no idea what happened to you and your mom. The last he heard, which was when you were still married, you were on speaking terms with her and there wasn’t a problem between the two of you. At least not that he knew of. Namjoon was on a book tour and Jimin was constantly booked due to his dance career. In any case, you had no one here. Yoongi was all you had and that was evident in your unchanged emergency contact list.

After Yura had said that, he felt uneasy being around her so he told her that he truthfully couldn’t stand to just move on with his life while you were practically lifeless in the hospital, and if that was a problem with her then maybe they should just take a break from each other. He kept telling himself that he really liked Yura and he wanted what she could give him, but he couldn’t ignore the four years that you two spent building a life together. Especially not now that you were pregnant, a fact that he had kept hidden from Yura.

When he thought about the pregnancy, everything else seemed to melt away. Despite the circumstances, the news of your pregnancy made him happy. Extremely so, albeit a little scared as well. He wondered how long you had known, and if you were happy or scared.Or what if you didn’t know at all? As far as he could tell, you weren’t showing. There was no sign of a bump on your little belly, but the doctor’s words were irrefutable. There was a baby growing in there. A baby that was half you and half him and that thought of that made him smile like he hadn’t in a long, long time.

That night, he dreamt about a little girl with your eyes and your smile and a nose that resembled his. A laughter that reminded him of yours echoed in those dreams.

☾

[nov. 11, 2020]

Pleasant dreams faded into a pleasant morning as Yoongi woke up much earlier than he was used to and felt better than he had in ages. He spent some time by himself before his phone was bombarded by phone calls and text messages from the group chat with the boys asking him when he was coming for work.

As he saw the sun take its place in the blue skies and white clouds, he decided that the day was too beautiful to waste on a day in the company. 5 days passed since your accident and he thought it was time to go back to the hospital and see how you were doing. Of course he wasn’t expecting any changes to your condition considering he hasn’t gotten any phone calls from the hospital yet, but he thought it might make him feel more at ease to sit next to you.

On his way to the hospital, he stopped by the flower shop you often went to, the one next to the park with the yellow flowers that you liked so much. The woman at the front, whose name was Yerin by the looks of her nametag, recognizes you immediately.

“Mr. Min Yoongi? How can we help you today?” She asks, immediately standing up straight at your intimidating presence.

“Just here to get some flowers.” He replies nonchalantly.

Yerin runs around the counter to stand in front of him.

“Is there anything specific you’re looking for?”

“No, not really—wait a second, that flower right there. Give me a bouquet of those.” He says, pointing to the bunches of purple flowers hiding behind Yerin.

She turns to see what he was pointing to. “Ah, purple lilacs. Okay, I’ll put it together for you really quick!”

He saw her go around the many shelves of flowers to what he assumed was the back inventory of the shop and didn’t see her come out until a couple of minutes later. In her hands was a beautiful bouquet of the purple lilacs with white baby's-breath. His eyes softened at the sight of the white flowers. The sight was familiar to him.

“That would be 25,830 won.” Yerin handed the bouquet to him and smiled.

He handed her 35,000 won, murmured his thanks and left. Once out of the shop, he was hit by the bright sunlight and couldn’t help looking over to the park. Kids were running around while their parents watched them on picnic blankets.

Warm and sunny days like this reminded him of you. Spending your days in the sun, laying on a picnic blanket and eating fruits, was your very existence.

He spends only a few moments admiring the scenery of people enjoying the weather before he makes his way back to his car and to the hospital. When he arrives at your room, nothing has changed except for the fact that your skin has regained a bit of its color and the bruises began the healing process.

Yoongi sets the flowers down on the table beside your bed. He moves the chair from the wall to the side of the bed so he could sit right next to you. His heart almost stops when he sees your face. It seems like the nurses changed the bandage on your head as the bandaging was noticeably lighter, but he could still see a bit of blood seeping through. The bruises on your arms and everywhere alarm him but he knows that you’re okay and you’re healing and that’s enough for him. It’s enough to know that you were alive and going to be fine.

His eyes trail down to your stomach and he lets it linger on them for a long time because he takes your hand in his and takes a deep breath. Two months ago he could have never imagined that this is where he would be right now. Two months ago, both of you had walked away from your marriage and Yoongi honestly thought that you two may never have crossed paths again despite his thoughts going to you more often than it should be. Now, two months later, you were divorced and pregnant with his child. His eyes continue to stare at your stomach, still flat and showing no signs of carrying a second life, and he resists the urge to caress it. You weren’t conscious and even if you were, would you allow your ex-husband to feel your stomach like that? No, probably not.

And that’s when he felt a twitch in his hand, not coming from his own. He looks down to see your fingers moving just barely. His first reaction was shock, then anxiety. He didn’t know what to do and the shock of your movement paralyzed him. It was only when he felt another movement, stronger this time, that he felt the need to press the call button to alarm the doctors and nurses. You were moving, which meant that you might be waking up.

The moments pass quickly and slowly at the same time. The doctors barely made it in time to see you flutter your eyes open and groan with a broken voice. Yoongi looked down at you, still holding your hand. You blinked your eyes multiple times. The light was too bright to take in all at once. He squeezed your hand at the relief he felt in seeing you wake up.

“Yn, how are you feeling baby?” He couldn’t help the pet name that came out of his mouth. You looked so vulnerable and fragile that it came out on instinct.

Yoongi waited for a reply for a little bit but heard none. The doctor came around to stand next to you.

“Miss Yn? Can you see us? Hear us?” he asked.

You nodded slowly, wincing at the pain in and on your head.

“Where m’I?” You attempt to speak out, but it comes out broken and croaky.

Yoongi is glad to hear your voice, to hear you talk for the first time in so long.

“You’re in the hospital right now, you were in a car accident but you’re okay now baby. How are you feeling?” He couldn’t help but ask.

You craned your head towards him, blinking furiously with your eyebrows furrowed. Confusion marred your features. Yoongi was scared that you finally realized he was here, with you, and would kick him out at any chance. He was scared that you were going to kick him out of you life before he could ever see the baby that you had made together, but this fear of his could have never prepared him for the next words to come out of your mouth.

“Who are you?”

☾

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vintagedolan · 3 years

Text

hiraeth part four - magnanimity

Koa almost didn’t make it to her senior prom.

Not the day of though. No, Kahua was waiting patiently by the door ready for her to come around the corner from her small bedroom in her dress, right on time.

That dress - that was the reason she almost didn’t go.

It wasn’t anything that special, really. It was a light green that complimented her rich skin tone, hugged her in all the right places and made her feel confident from the moment she tried it on in the store with her friends.

The price tag had her putting it right back onto the rack, trying to convince herself it wasn’t as pretty as it really was. So she spent the rest of her shopping trip in the clearance section, trying to look at the various colored fabric through her rose colored glasses that she used to get through most of her days.

When she got home, her father was waiting for her with the widest smile on his face. In his hands, was the tip jar from the boat. Nahele had decorated it when he was younger, and the paint was faded on the outside, the shaka barely even visible. But Koa wasn’t looking at the glass. She was looking through it, at all the small crumpled bills that filled it up to the brim.

“I’ve been saving them. I wanted you to be able to get a nice dress for your dance.”

She’d never seen the look of pride in his eyes shine so bright.

She took the jar with tears in her eyes, and that was the day she swore she’d never accept a gift so big again.

But Grayson Dolan didn’t know about that. In fact, he didn’t really know anything about her, other than the fact that she was late.

Quietly on his phone, without a mention to anyone else, he checked the bus routes. 10 minutes behind schedule.

Sure enough, at 11:10 Koa was at the gate, waiting for him to let her in. Her hair was frizzy again, and she seemed even more nervous and frazzled than the last time she was there. She had a notebook tucked in her arm, with three different colored pens shoved in the spirals.

He opened the door for her, and she stepped into the air conditioning with a deep breath of relief.

“Sorry I’m late. Before you start telling me how much you hate me, can I use your bathroom?”

Grayson knew why she needed it; he knew why she took her bag with her too. He almost said something but he bit his tongue, rolled his eyes a bit at her dig and pointed her to the guest bathroom in the hall.

He wasn’t supposed to know. In all honesty, the fact that he did know was creepy, even though he hadn’t meant to notice the box in her hands at the bus stop. So instead, he leaned up against the island and waited for her to come back, running over what he wanted to say in his head.

She came back out quickly - she’d pulled her hair up into a bun, with a few stray curls falling down around her temples. He couldn’t tell if it was black or dark brown in the lighting of the kitchen, but it complemented her tan skin well as she settled into one of the chairs.

“Alright, lay it on me, what’s up.” Koa opened up her notebook and picked out a black pen, clicking it open before she looked up.

Grayson had forgotten his question.

“Do you want - uh, are you thirsty? We’ve got uh -” He walked over to the fridge to stall, opening it up to realize that they definitely needed to go to the grocery. “Uh, we have water. That’s it though.”

Koa raised an eyebrow, but bit her tongue. “Yeah, water would be good. Thanks.”

He poured her a glass, sliding it across the counter.

“We’ve got straws too, if you want. Reusable though. Save the turtles.”

“Spoken like a true marine conservationist.” In that moment, Koa thought of home, and her father, probably out prepping his boat for a morning tour.

The silence was thick, and she sighed as she put the straw down into her glass.

“Grayson.”

“Hmm?”

“You wanted to have a meeting. So... you gonna tell me why I’m here?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, and then he relaxed his shoulders.

“I was a bit of a dick to you the other day. And I wanted to apologize for that. That’s not who I am, and you didn’t deserve that. So, sorry.”

The knot in Koa’s gut loosened just a fraction.

“Accepted. I get that it’s a big ask, having someone write a book about you.”

“Yeah, I’m still not thrilled on the idea. But I should have at least given you the chance to pitch your idea for it before I shut you down. I’ve had that done to me, and it’s shitty. So I guess I’m wanted you to come over so I could hear your pitch.”

Koa froze.

She hadn’t really thought that far.

“I... well I didn’t really make a pitch. It’s not really supposed to be a me thing. It’s an us thing. I’m just here to put what you want into a book... into book form. If that makes sense.”

“Yeah no, I get that. Guess we’ll have to see if Ethan’s got any ideas cause I haven’t really thought that far.”

Silence fell again, and their eyes met. She looked just as nervous as she had sitting at the bus stop, and it made Grayson frown.

“It sounds like you care about the environment, you know, with all this.” Koa picked her straw up and let it clink back down.

“That’s an understatement,” Grayson chuckled, scratching at the back of his neck. But he soon realized his joke didn’t land, his eyes going a bit wide. Had she not seen any of their podcast videos on veganism? Conservation? What about all the posts on their instagrams?

“You really don’t know anything about me do you?”

It came out stronger than he meant it to, and he wished he could take it back.

“Well you haven’t really given me the chance to get to know you. But that’s something else we could write about. Boundaries.”

Sledge rounded the corner with his tail wagging and a squeaky toy in his mouth, bringing it up to Koa and dropping it by her feet. She smiled down at him and picked it up, wiggling it around and faking him out a few times before she tossed it down the hallway.

“I guess this wasn’t the most productive of meetings. If you wanna write a book about twins, you kinda need both parts huh.” She laughed to herself, patting her legs until Sledge came back to her. She ruffled his fur, watching his ears flop around in the most adorable way.

It made Grayson smile - it was the first time he’d heard her laugh. It was deeper than he expected; a peaceful sound.

“Yeah, I should have thought about that. I appreciate you coming though, I know it’s not easy for you to get out here. I was actually gonna ask you about that.”

She stopped petting the dog for a moment, brushing her hair behind her ear so she could see him.

“What do you mean? Ask me about what?”

“I was gonna talk to Ethan about it first, but I’m sure he wouldn’t care. If you wanna borrow a car while you’re working with us, that’s fine. I mean, you’d have to pay for gas and stuff but it would make it easier for you to get from your place to here.”

She sat up slowly.

In the back of her mind, she heard her brother. He was one of the only people who ever really got to see her so angry. If he were there, if he could see her face, she knew how he’d describe her. Pele. The Hawaiian goddess of lava, fire.

You knew better than to anger her.

Koa felt it bubbling up inside of her, a mixture of hot anger and burning embarrassment that tinged her brown skin pink all the way to her ears.

“I don’t need charity from anyone, especially not you.”

Grayson balked, and then he was backpedaling.

“Koa, I didn’t mean it like that. That’s not what I meant, I just wanted to help. I... I saw you at CVS the other night, at the bus stop.”

“Oh so you’re stalking me now? Great. Awesome. Not creepy at all.”

“No, it was just - I was at Monty’s, I just wanted to make sure you got on the bus okay. They aren’t always the safest, and-”

“I handled myself just fine before you, I sure as fuck don’t need a man looking out for me. I can take care of myself.”

“Koa, please-”

She was already packing her things, shoving her pen behind her ear and snatching up her notebook as she headed for the door.

Ethan appeared around the corner of the house, his smile radiating towards her through the front door.

When she swung it open, he was beaming.

“Hey you! I didn’t know you were gonna be here today, what’s up?”

“I was just leaving.”

His smile disappeared quickly, and his eyes flickered to Grayson automatically.

“Oh? Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine. Next time you schedule a meeting, give me a 15 minute arrival window. My ride isn’t the most reliable.”

“Uh... what?”

She felt her tears prickling behind her eyes against her will, nose burning hot deep in her nostrils as she fought them.

“Just ask your brother. He can tell you all about it.”

#hiraeth #sweet stupid boy ugh

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imjustheretoseetheprivateblogs · 3 years

Text

planceNSFWevent Wednesday, September 8th — “experimenting”

This is probably the filthiest thing I’ve ever written and finished to date. So a word of warning; all characters depicted are not only over 18 but married (take THAT conservatives!). There is assplay involved it this so watch out.

On an unrelated matter, I now declare next week to be planceNSFWevent redux, so I’ll be posting the rest at my leisure.

I hope you enjoy @chanceplanceromance

New night came once every three months. To keep their marriage good and spicy, like that book Keeping it Up had read, experimentation should be a consideration. Among the examples provided on page 320, chapter 7, ‘discussion of relevant events during sex could provide a welcome respite from the hot and heavy recreation of married partners’ was listed.

So far, it didn’t seem to hurt or help the (very good blowjob) Pidge was giving him.

“All I’m saying is—hnnngh!—Leon’s a good boy. We should give him the benefit of the doubt… hold on Pidge, stop, I don’t want to cum yet.”

Pidge withdrew, wiping her lips with the back of her hand and looked up at her husband.

“I do give him the benefit of the doubt, Lance,” she said, sitting up on her knees, “but he’s being disruptive in school.”

“Well, we were disruptive in school… could you hand me the lube. You said you wanted to try anal tonight.”

“We?” Pidge asked, handing him the bottle from the night stand.

“Alright, I was disruptive in school,” Lance said, squeezing the contents of the bottle into his hand, “But summer school? Come on, Pidge, that’s a little harsh don’t you think?”

“He has to learn.” Pidge said with a roll of her eyes.

“But summer should be a time of freedom!” Lance said as he got himself ready for their experiment, “A time to run in the surf, sleep beneath the stars, and check out how sexy girls are when they wear that one swimsuit with the shorties.”

“Lance, that’s what you like to do in summer.”

“And you still look amazing in that one swimsuit,” Lance said, rising to his knees, a tender look in his eyes that made Pidge want to melt.

“C’mon, Candela,” he said, pumping himself, “show me that sweet papaya.”

Pidge smiled, turning around so he could see the playful expression she wore.

“You have to let me get ready first, remember?” she said, wiggling her hips in a way that he felt in every part of his body.

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

For two whole minutes, Lance watched as his wife took breaths deep enough to make her shoulders rise and fall, his eyes languidly tracing the freckles of her back, from her perfect plump little ass to the dip of her spine to her rising and falling shoulders to her hair and back down again.

He continued to stroke himself, occasionally applying lube while letting his mind wander to images of previous experimentation.

Semi-public sex when the two had been crammed together in a London tube on Pidge’s last lecture tour and only her overcoat had protected them from the gaze of passengers as he’d fingered her, kissing and whispering to her how brilliant and desirable she was.

Pidge plugging him with a dildo while she’d pressed hot open mouthed kisses from his lips to his stomach had brought him to climax surprisingly fast, before she’d even reached her intended destination. That had actually been the inspiration for trying this, actually.

And now that he thought about it...

“What’re you planning, Alvarez?”

A devious smile turned up one side of Lance’s mouth.

“Me? Nothing at all my beautiful wife.”

With a generous squeeze, Lance doused his index finger with the lube.

“I only live to please you.”

Lance’s hand snaked across Pidge’s bottom, caressing it before moving onto his intended destination.

Tenderly, adding more lube as he went in to ease his entrance, Lance inserted his finger into his wife’s rectum.

The sound that followed was one he hadn’t really heard from her.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked unsure.

“No, it’s fine Lance.” Pidge turned back to look at him and the look in her eyes bordered on cross-eyed pleasure, an expression that had Lance swelling with pride at being able to inspire it.

“Just let me… let me get used to it.”

Lance leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lips.

“Anything for you, my little Pidge.”

Lance continued to kiss and caress his wife with his lips and one hand while moving the single digit inside her with small gestures, all while Pidge continued to ready herself for what was to come.

“Mind if I take a taste?” Lance breathed against her lips, “and you can say no. I won’t mind. Mr. Green Paladin lives to please his lady.”

“So nasty,” Pidge said, licking his lips, “Let’s wait til next time. I think Mrs. Blue Paladin is ready for that thick Cubano dick.”

Lance caressed her lips with his free hand as he removed his finger from his wife, and Pidge suckled the thumb as he rose back up to former position, adding more lube before placing his member at the ready.

Then came the slow entrance.

What followed was almost a blur to him.

Words like “wow”, feelings of pressure from inner walls, holding his wife’s hand, her swearing, saying “slower”, him going slower, and finally Pidge uttering “stop”.

Lance pulled free from her, collapsing on the bed, not quite spent, but breathing hard. Pidge crawled up beside him, laying her head on his chest. He wrapped his arm around her in response.

“Did you cum?” Lance asked.

“Yeah. That was… holy crap.”

“Holy crap good or holy crap bad?” Lance asked.

“Good, but really tough,” Pidge said, “I think we should save that for special occasions. But the fingering was nice.”

“Would you like some more?” Lance said. He was still hard, after all.

“I think I’m spent for the night,” Pidge said, a yawn punctuating her point, “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Lance said rising, “I can finish in the bathroom.”

Pidge smiled.

“I hate that you’re leaving, but I love to see you go.”

With a smirk, Lance cocked his hip to the side and walked with as much runway swagger to the bathroom as he could muster.

“I’ll be back in the time it takes to orgasm,” he said, “sleep tight, Mrs. Blue Paladin.”

Pidge yawned and pulled the covers up over herself.

“Good night, Mr. Green Paladin.”

#My Writing #PlanceNSFWevent #Plance #Pidgance #It's lemon scented #I finished this first then worked on the others #That's writing for ya

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

Text

Treat Your S(h)elf: I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide To Wine, by Roger Scruton (2009)

You could say that wine is probably as old as civilisation; I prefer to say that it is civilisation, and that the distinction between civilised and uncivilised countries is the distinction between the places where it is drunk and the places where it isn’t.

- Sir Roger Scruton, I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide To Wine

When I first got talked into investing in the dreams of my two cousins and their French families to continue to manage an old French vineyard I thought of Roger Scruton’s book. I already had this book on my shelf alongside his other works. Re-reading it nudged me to take a risk and go for it.

For one I have always loved wine and have drunk it from a very early age. Secondly what could be more cultured or civilising than to marry body and mind through the palate of philosophy and wine?

And finally, and perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to escape the madness of modernity - as well as make peace from war as a British combat veteran of the Afghan war by not so much as coming home but finding a new one - by getting back into nature with hard honest graft on the land that Mother Nature blesses. All of this I found especially appealing.

Of all the things we eat or drink, wine is without question the most complex. So it should not be surprising that philosophers from Plato and Socrates onwards to our contemporary times have turned their attention to wine: complex phenomena can lend themselves to philosophical speculation.

Wine is complex not just in the variety of tastes it presents – ‘wine tastes of everything apart from grapes’, I once heard a crusty old French vintner say – but in its meaning. Only the most woodenly literal-minded would deny that wine has a meaning: in its history, its role in human social life, in religious and other ceremonies. Though they drink it copiously over dinner at High Tables in their Oxbridge colleges, academic analytic philosophers do not spend as much time as they might in this kind of investigation of meaning or significance of wine – what we might call a phenomenology or a hermeneutic investigation.

Of course, there are more narrowly phenomenological questions which wine raises.

How do vintners or winemakers manipulate the underlying biochemical material to create the kinds of taste which they intend their wine to have? Does the ‘terroir’ of a wine really make a difference to taste, and if so how? What is the basis of evaluative judgements about the quality of a wine?

Arguably only those who actually make the wine and those who are life long wine connoisseurs can conceivably answer that on some experiential and technical level. But these are not the only philosophical questions in this area: the hermeneutic questions have their place too, in an understanding of the phenomena.

Sir Roger Scruton’s 224 page book is about the hermeneutics of wine rather than its psychology or phenomenology more narrowly conceived. Scruton, the late great conservative philosopher, is that rare breed who comes closer than most to bridging the gap between the grass roots and the High Table in answering such mysteries. The result is an engaging, insightful, informative and (in parts) a very funny book. It is immensely readable, more in the anecdotal style of Scruton’s England: an Elegy (2000) or On Hunting (1998), than his more heavyweight philosophical works, such as The Aesthetics of Music (1997), Sexual Desire (2004), Beauty (2009), and his writings on Wagner and high culture. He does often come across as curmudgeonly, but his (written) relations with women, music and poetry are very delicate and tender. And so it is with his love affair with wine. It is indeed a very personal book and its is warmly personable, like the man himself, and it contains so much of Scruton’s distinctive wit and intellectual personality, it ought to be of interest not just to wine enthusiasts (whom Scruton likes to call ‘winos’) and philosophers but also anyone curious enough to understand the place of wine in our world civilisation.

The first and obvious thing to say about Scruton’s book is how the title of the book is of course a play on words. It’s a playful wink to Eric Idle’s “Philosophers’ Drinking Song,” in which the Monty Python cast, lightly disguised as a group of Australian philosophers all named Bruce, list the world’s thinkers from a drinking standpoint. This includes the couplet slightly amending Descartes’s proof of his existence: “And René Descartes was a drunken fart / ‘I drink therefore I am.’”

The pun on words is Roger Scruton’s way of taking the Monty Python couplet seriously. After all Descartes was a serious man and though he was born in Touraine, the rich French wine region, did probably not drink much. He treats all this as a paradox that G.K. Chesterton might well have toyed with - that is, as a truth standing on its head to attract attention - and examines the drinking of alcohol as a way in which human beings learn more about each other, fellowship, some of the deeper realities, God, and not least themselves.

In this Scruton is a wise philosopher who teaches us how wine cultivates our moral virtue and our civilisation. He encourages us to recognise that stream of liquid descending from our pursed lips into our throat as the red or golden chord that runs from heaven to earth, and binds everything in-between into a cosmic whole. Wine both reflects and helps constitute our participation in all strata of reality, and points the way to our redemption, divine or otherwise.

In Scruton’s Prelude (a musical term, of course) where he quotes Emerson “who commends the great wino Hafiz [a Persian poet] in the following words: “Hafiz praises wines, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and sympathy with every form of beauty and joy.” This is echoed in Scruton’s terms that “by thinking with wine you can learn not merely to drink in thoughts, but think in draughts. Wine, drunk at the right time, in the right place and the right company, is the path to meditation, and the harbinger of peace.”

The book is divided into two parts, labelled ‘I drink’ and ‘therefore I am’ respectively. The second part of the book is more strictly philosophical - Scruton starts it with the nice conceit that ‘therefore I am’ contain the whole of philosophy, each word standing in turn for reason (therefore), consciousness (I) and being (am). But arguably wine and Scruton enthusiasts will probably get more out of the first part.

The first chapter is a nice description of his own discovery of wine as a young man. Warmly written, the chapter is devoted to his friends who made him “fall” for wine (or is it he who made them fall?) and his acquisition of a 1945 Château Lafite, “the greatest year from the greatest of clarets”. His first memories are happy ones of his mother’s home manufacture of elderberry wine in a post-war England where the French (and Spanish and Portuguese) grape had not yet “conquered the suburbs.”

“For three weeks the kitchen was filled with the yeasty scent of fermentation. Little clouds of fruit-flies hung above the jars and here and there wasps would cluster and shimmer on the spilled pools of juice.” Other Englishmen of Scruton’s generation will recognise and sigh at this description as many fathers - including my own - made his own beer and wine from motives of both fun and economy.

Thus ill-equipped, Scruton goes to university ignorant of the rich variety of wines available even then to an English wino. At Cambridge and, later, in Paris, a succession of tutors, patrons, and friends not only introduce him to a growing list of wines but also teach him how to drink them. Some of the wines he is given are complex and expensive Burgundies, others cheap French supermarket vin ordinaire.

But Scruton discovers that all have certain inherent qualities that an educated palate can discover by drinking them attentively and appreciatively. By learning their provenance and history, he enriches his knowledge of the locality that produced the wine — and he can imagine (I would like to believe this is so) that he can glimpse the character of the local people in the wine itself. He learns finally that certain wines go with certain things, not merely certain foods, but certain occasions, certain friends, certain thoughts, even certain topics of conversation. He becomes a wino.

When in his early middle years, Scruton buys a farm in southern England, he discovers to his delight an array of homemade-wine equipment, identical to that of his mother’s elderberry experiments, on the kitchen floor: “I listened to the bubbles as they danced in the valves, and studied the wasp-edged puddles on the tiles. I had come home.” Yet it is a different person who comes home. Scruton celebrates his good fortune not with elderberry wine but by opening and drinking in quiet happiness a treasured bottle of Château Lafite 1945 that had accompanied him in the long wanderings now ended. For, by this time in his life, Scruton is a confirmed Francophile in his drinking tastes.

The chapter ends on a remark concerned with the “new habit, associated with American wine critics like Robert Parker, of assigning points to each bottle” which should not only be “viewed with nothing but contempt” but also compared to “assigning points to symphonies, as though Beethoven’s 7th, Tchaikovsky’s 6th, Mozart’s 39th, Bruckner’s 8th all hovered between 90 and 95.

Perhaps his second chapter ‘A Tour de France’ is the best one. This is a very personal, but informative and interesting, guide to Scruton’s favourite French wine regions. starting in Burgundy, down to the Rhône Valley, the Pyrenees and ending in Bordeaux with T.S. Eliot’s description of a spiritual journey that applies equally to a journey through wine:

We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring

 Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

With much reason, Scruton does not think very highly of blind tasting: “To think that you can judge a wine from its taste and aroma alone is like thinking you can judge a Chinese poem by its sound, without knowing the language.” I let out a whoop of appreciation when I read this. In one clean swoop he casually casts aside the resultant snobbery that comes from the ritualising and self-importance of blind tasting events.

I think blind tasting whilst sincere is also an exercise in showing off. I’m not saying people don’t have a nose for wine or can tell certain elements but blind tasting is not the best way to truly appreciate the full complexity of wine. Indeed in my embryonic wine making experience (by watching my cousins and the managers on our vineyard) I would say terroir is perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of wine making and it determines the difference between good wine and a bad one.

It’s great to read that Scruton defines himself as a terroiriste. Not the French word for a terrorist! But a believer in the French word, terroir. It is derived from the Latin word terra meaning earth or land. It’s a word coined by the French to express a wine’s sense of place. There is no English equivalent for this word. It was originally used to distinguish the wine making practices of old world wine. In other words terroir is how a particular region’s climate, soils and aspect (terrain) affect the taste of wine alongside the traditions gone into producing the wine. Some regions are said to have more ‘terroir’ than others. Johan Joseph Krug (1800–1866), the famous champagne producer, once suggested that “a good wine comes from a good grape, good vats, a good cellar and a gentleman who is able to coordinate the various ingredients.” No trace of terroir.

But I think Krug is wrong and vintners as well as the wine industry as a whole have come to the same realisation of the importance of terroir. Back in the 1980’s, many of these ‘terroir-driven’ wines were actually affected by wine faults including cork taint and wild yeast growth (brettanomyces). Vines thrive in a range of soil compositions from highly draining granite and schist based soils to limestone and clay and vines, in turn, react to these different soils in different ways. And on top of the differing soils, certain areas of the world have such unique combinations of geology and topography that interact with specific sun exposures that the resulting wines have distinct characteristics that cannot be found anywhere else.

Nowadays terroir is used to describe practically every wine region. Because much of European wine (old world) is steeped in tradition it is easier to get a sense of terroir. It’s a bit harder in a place like Napa or Sonoma (new world) because of the looser laws that govern winemaking but younger winemakers are coming around to the idea of terroir and trying to express the land. But certainly in France today vintners - as they come to increase their geological knowledge and environmental understanding and find ways to marry that to their unique artistry and craft - have realised the unique role terroir plays in the wine making process.

The next chapter looks at wine from “elsewhere:” Here Scruton looks at the Middle-East where wine was born; Greece where Bacchus, Dionysos, and more importantly, Eros used to hover; the United States; Australia, New Zealand and their misspelling of Syrah as Shiraz, the Iranian city of poets, gardens, nightingales and last but not least, wine; a few lines on South Africa, then Italy, Romania and Spain. But “travel narrows the mind, and the further you go the narrower it gets. There is only one way to visit a place with an open mind, and that is in the glass”.

Scruton had already warned the reader in the previous chapter not to read the “elsewhere” chapter: “After punishing body and soul with Australian Shiraz, Argentine Tempranillo, Romanian Cabernet Sauvignon and Greek Retsina, we crawl home like the Prodigal Son and beg forgiveness for our folly. . . [Bordeaux] is the wine that made us and for which we were made, and it often astonishes me to discover that I drink anything else.” I rather fancy he is being tongue in cheek here.

This is for the “I drink” part of the book. Its author then moves to the “therefore I am” part which often needs much deeper philosophical knowledge than perhaps than even your average educated layman might have some difficulty having if they are not versed in a basic understanding of aesthetics as philosophical discussion. But here his aim is to rescue wine from the philosophers and the so-called wine experts.

To those who have never been captivated by the complexity of wine and the way it is bound up with western civilisation, a book on the philosophy of wine might be dismissed as the typical product of conservative snobbery and elitism. But this would be a mistake. Scruton is not a snob about wine (nor, for that matter, about anything else). On the contrary, one of the strongest themes in his writing is his deep love of the everyday, of the simple pleasures of society as he imagined it once to be, where people were at one with the land and with the traditions of their culture. According to Scruton, this is something that (although it probably never existed) should be open to all, but which is being destroyed by the march of modernity. (In a nice aside, he asks: ‘Who am I to stand against the tide of history? Come to think of it, I am the only person I know who does stand against the tide of history’.)

In passing, Scruton evokes the great philosopher Avicenna who lived in Isfahan (Persia) during Islam’s Golden Age (980–1037 AD); he was a wine aficionado who recommended drinking at work defying “the Koranic injunction against wine, citing it as an example of sloppy reasoning,” that does not take into account whether it is a small or a large amount. Scruton (p. 133) also points to the fact that “in surah xvi, verse 7 of the Koran wine is unreservedly praised as one of God’s gifts. As the prophet, burdened by the trials of his Medina exile, became more tetchy, so did his attitude to wine begin to sour, as in Surah v verses 91-92. Muslims believe that the later revelations cancel the earlier, whenever there is a conflict between them. I suspect, however, that God moves in a more mysterious way.”

Scruton is very quite skeptical that the vocabulary used by so-called experts to describe wine is of much help: “If I say of a wine that it has a flowery nose, lingers on the palate, with ripe berry flavours and a hint of chocolate and roasted almonds, then what I say conveys real information, from which someone might be able to construct a sensory image of the wine’s taste. But I have described the taste in terms of other tastes, and not attempted to attach a meaning, a content, or any kind of reference to it. The description I gave does not imply that the wine evokes, means, symbolises or presents the idea of chocolate; and somebody who didn’t hit on this word as a description of the wine’s flavour would not show that he had missed the meaning of what he drank or indeed missed anything important at all. Our experience of wine is bound up with its nature as a drink [which] endows wine with a particular inwardness [and] intimacy with the body [that is not] achieved by any smell, since smell makes no contact with the body at all, but merely enchants without touching, like the beautiful girl at the other end of the party. . . Nothing else that we eat or drink comes to us with such a halo of significance, and by refusing to drink it people send an important message —the message that they do not belong on this earth.”

Again, I found myself saying amen to that.

The good part of the second part is Scruton trying to make a case for the cultural uniqueness of wine. In one sense, Scruton is right to do this: it is undeniable in many parts of western culture, wine has played a unique role in religious and social rituals, which no other drink has. But he can push his point beyond plausibility when he attempts to argue that because of the qualities of wine itself – and what it is to drink it properly – nothing else could play this role (more on this later).

The argument starts well, with a very illuminating discussion of the distinction between the various ways in which a substance can intoxicate. There are those that merely stimulate without altering the mind (like tobacco, for example). Then there are those which have mind-altering effects, but whose consumption itself brings no plea- sure (e.g. heroin). The third category contains those things which alter your mind and bring pleasure in their consumption: cannabis and forms of alcohol other than wine are his examples. Wine, Scruton argues, is in a fourth category of its own: here the alteration of the mind is internally related to the experience of consuming it.

These distinctions are very useful, and the distinction between the third and the fourth category is subtle but certainly real. It relates to the question of what non-human animals can and cannot do. Scruton makes the nice observation that an animal cannot savour wine (or any- thing else). In being able to savour or relish the taste of wine, a person no more separates out the effect of the wine from its taste than they can separate the meaning of a piece of music from its sound. Although one would not realise this from reading the thousands of words that are written daily about wine, wine would not be the drink it is if it did not intoxicate.

The last two chapters deal respectively with wine and whine, and being and bingeing. Though Scruton has something to say in favour of Puritanism, he castigates the ease with which “puritan outrage [and in particular, prohibition, but also sexual behaviour] can be displaced from one topic to another, and the equal ease with which the thing formerly disapproved of can be overnight exonerated from all taint of sin.”

He vehemently protests against “the humourless mullahs,” and the misuse of drinking, but also rejects the idea that fermented drinks are just shots of alcohol, and insists on their social functions across civilisations and time: “The burden of my arguments is that we can defend the drinking of wine, only if we see that it is a culture, and that this culture has a social, outward-going, other-regarding meaning. . . When people sit down together sipping drinks, they rehearse in their souls the original act of settlement, the act that set our species on the path of civilisation, and which endowed us with the order of neighbourhood and the rule of law.” But he has not much against drinking alone, and ends with a few words from the Chinese poet Li Po (700 BC), the same poet whom Mahler used in his Lied von der Erde (though in a very approximate translation):

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees; I drink alone, for no friend is near. 

Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,

For he, with my shadow, will make three men.

Scruton points out in several brilliant passages, the prohibitionist, like the modern day Islamists and moral police in the West and the all too familiar binge-drinker are alike in their ignorance of the virtue of “temperance.” They can envisage no stopping place between abstention and alcoholism. Their absolutist logic, he argues, is like objecting to a first kiss on the grounds that it will one day lead to a divorce. And neither can really understand drinking for any reason other than to get drunk.

Scruton confirms the wider value of temperance in our lives: “Virtue should be cast in human form if it is to be humanly achievable. Saints, monks, and dervishes may practice total abstinence; but to believe that abstinence is the only way to virtue is to condemn the rest of mankind. Better to propose the way of moderation, and live thereby on friendly terms with your species.”

As it happens, the occasional bender may actually have therapeutic qualities in moderation (i.e., if indulged in infrequently). George Orwell, who can hardly be accused of lacking a puritanical streak, thought that people should get drunk every six months or so. The experience, he thought, shook one out of one’s regular complacency and could be compared in this to a weekend abroad. Certainly it very often produces a feeling of greater humility in those who can remember what happened. Yet getting drunk is something that most drinkers do very rarely, if at all.

Changing our mood and outlook is a very different matter. Under the influence of a moderate amount of alcohol, our inhibitions are loosened. Shy people become bold, the tongue-tied talkative, the dull lively, the unimaginative fanciful, and the isolated social. (Even “mean drunks” usually start the evening in festive and forgiving mood.)

That last loss of inhibition is the most important because it promotes the fellowship that is the basis of a decent society. Not all intoxicants perform this vital function. Cannabis and similar drugs tend, if anything, to imprison the taker within his own consciousness (however expanded it may seem to him in his dreams). Except for those who lose themselves in alcoholism (and consequently become asocial in their attempts to deceive others about their condition), however, alcohol is a profoundly social drug. At the same time, not all varieties of alcohol are equally social in their effect. This thought leads Scruton to narrow somewhat the scope of his enthusiasm. Having rejected teetotalism, he continues: “The real question, I suggest, is not whether intoxicants, but which. And - while all intoxicants disguise things - some (wine preeminently) also help us to confront them by presenting them in re-imagined and idealised forms.”

Scruton makes a fascinating and intriguing point related to our historical relationship with the vine to make wine the highest ideal form. He claims that wine derives from a crucial historical transition in our relation to the earth – when human beings settled, put down roots and stopped being mere hunter-gatherers. In a memorable phrase, Scruton claims that in this way wine celebrates ‘the earth itself, as the willing accomplice in our bid to stay put.’ But of course one could say similar things about distilled spirits and beer. Such drinks are not made in such an incredible variety as wine is, but Scruton’s point is not about variety but about the intrinsic and relational qualities of the drink itself.

In the end, one cannot help feeling that he is relying a little too much on the sheer panache of his writing to help his argument bounce along: ‘Wine is not simply a shot of alcohol, or a mixed drink. It is a transformation of the grape. The transformation of the soul under its influence is merely the continuation of another transformation that began maybe fifty years earlier when the grape was first plucked from the vine.’ Wine is a transformation of the grape, to be sure. And the mind or soul is transformed in its consumption. But these two transformations are so very different that it is hard to see what can literally be meant by the one being the continuation of the other.

In fact, Scruton’s view is not just that wine is unique as a stimulant, but that it has to be drunk in a particular way in order for the harmony of taste and intoxication to take hold. It is not hard to agree with Scruton’s argument that there are more or less civilised ways of drinking wine. And this part of his thesis is very plausible: ‘The burden of my argument is ... that we can defend the drinking of wine, only if we see that it is part of a culture, and that this culture has a social outward-going, other-regarding meaning. The new uses of wine point towards excess and addiction: they are moving away from the old way of drinking, in which wine was relished and savoured, to the form of drinking typified by Marmeladov, who clutches his bottle in a condition of need.’

However I still found all this a tad unconvincing in that he makes a case that only the savouring and relishing of wine can play a central cultural role as opposed to other spirits - think of Scotch whisky for the Scots and beer for much of Northern Europe or even tea(!) for the English. So my apologies to Roger Scruton but I remain sceptical of his argument that of all stimulants, wine is uniquely civilising, however much I want it to be true.

I think Scruton is also wrong to despise cocktails. A well-made cocktail is as complex a set of taste experiences as a good Bordeaux. A good-strength cocktail is the perfect prelude to the theatre, giving one exactly the right lift to help the play to entertain, but not suppressing one’s appetite long enough to spoil a post-theatre dinner. It can be the booster rocket that starts a convivial evening. But the cocktail has its limits. The alcoholic strength of most cocktails reduces their usefulness both as an aid to sustained fruitful conviviality and to the kind of imaginative introspection that Scruton thinks necessary for a happy life.

That aside, Scruton knows that the best (including Li Po’s poetry) should be kept for the very end. The bouquet (of the wine, but in French the word is also used for the finishing of a firework) comes with the Appendix: What to drink with what, though here the second what does not stand for food, but for philosophers. This part of the book I very nearly coughed up my wine as I found it terribly amusing to pair a suitable wine, as one would with food, to a philosopher one might be reading.

St Augustine: Drink a glass of Moroccan Cabernet Sauvignon, though “the City of God requires many sittings, and I regard it as one of the rare occasions when a drinking person might have legitimate recourse to a glass of lager [which I did in Odessa, while reading Scruton], putting the book to one side just as soon as the glass is finished” [which I did not do, since I had three glasses, each of which containing half a liter].

Francis Bacon: “Any discussion of his insights should, I think, proceed by the comparative method. I suggest opening six bottles of a single varietal—say Cabernet Franc- one from the Loire, one from California, one from Moravia, one from Hungary, and if you can find two other places where it is grown successfully you will already have given some proof of the inductive method—and then pretending to compare and contrast, taking notes in winespeak, while downing the lot.”

René Descartes: “As the thinker who came nearest, prior to the Monty Python, to stumbling on the title of [my] book, Descartes deserves a little recognition. . . He has ended up as the most overrated philosopher in history, famous for arguments that begin from nothing and go nowhere. I would suggest a deep dark Rhône wine [that] will compensate for the thinness of the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza: “The last time that I understood what Spinoza meant by an attribute it was with a glass of red Mercurey, Les Nauges 1999. Unfortunately, I took another glass before writing down my thoughts and have never been able to retrieve them.”

Immanuel Kant: “And when it comes to [his] Critique of the Judgment, I find myself trying out [several wines], without getting any close to Kant’s proof that the judgment is universal but subjective, or his derivation of the ‘antinomy of taste’— surely one of his most profound and troubling paradoxes, and one that must yield to the argument contained in wine if it yields to anything.”

Friedrich Nietzsche: “Although we should drink to the author of The Birth of the Tragedy, therefore, it should be with a thin, hypochondriac potion, maybe a finger of Beaujolais in a glass topped up with soda-water.”

Edmund Husserl: “I recommend three glasses of slivovitz from Husserl’s native Moravia, one to give courage, one to swallow down the jargon, and one to pour over the page.”

Jean-Paul Sartre: “Sartre’s great work of philosophy, L’être et le néant, introduces the Nothingness that haunts all that he wrote and said. . . If ever I were to read Sartre again, I would look for a 1964 Burgundy to wash the poison down. Small chance of finding one, however, so there is one great writer whom I shall never again revisit—and I thank God for it.”

Martin Heidegger: “What potion to complement the philosopher who told us that ‘nothing noths’? To raise an empty glass to one’s lips, and to feel it as it travels down—noth, noth, noth, the whole length of the tube: this surely is an experience to delight the real connoisseur.”

In conclusion I really enjoyed reading this book (again and again).

This is a wonderful book for anyone who loves wine and wants to try identify what, in all its complex connections with so much of what is valuable in civilisation, might be special about drinking it. I think he does a wonderful job in looking at the philosophical and religious questions related to wine, from the Koranic injunction against alcohol to the true nature of temperance. These questions take us far from the vineyard at times, making excursions into terroir as different as Wagnerian music dramas and the philosophical nature of smells. His arguments as well as his beautiful prose are fresh, original, teasingly provocative, but also joyous.

This book is only about 224 pages but fun to read either in one sitting or dipping in and out at pleasurable intervals.

There are pages of useful advice on what wine to buy that are also glimpses into what to look for in the wine. I think his recommendations are good ones even if he leans too heavily into French wines. As someone who co-owns a vineyard I can say with reasonable confidence that I know my French wines but also wine from South Africa but confess my ignorance of wines from the new world such as California or Chilean wines. But I see that as an opportunity to discover rather than stay in my comfort zone. Here Scruton gently prods you along to do just that.

As an aside Scruton, who never shies away from his staunchly conservative Tory beliefs, perhaps forget to mention one juicy vignette in that Karl Marx’s political and philosophical ideas were probably inspired by wine. Indeed Karl Marx’s family were the happy owners of a vineyard in Trier, a small affluent Rhineland city, on the rolling hills of the Mosel River Valley. The family sold it due to hard times. Then as now these vineyards of the Mosel Valley remain mostly small-scale, are still known for their fruity white wines, and especially their lemony Rieslings and agrotourism. It seems the politics of wine (tariffs and import taxes) played a larger role in the history of leftist thought than their quaint appearance might suggest. In the early 1840s, the economic struggles of these very vineyards inspired Marx to criticise the draconian Prussian government - and in the process, some historians argue, begin developing the theory of historical materialism for which he is best known. In fact there is a delightful book I can recommend written by Jens Baumeister called, ‘How Wine Made Karl Marx a Communist’ (2018) if anyone is interested in reading more about that.

Of course it’s always hard to know how seriously one is supposed to take Scruton in some of his more extravagant comments in the book, like many things he says in his other books: ‘you could say that wine is probably as old as civilisation; I prefer to say that it is civilisation, and that the distinction between civilised and uncivilised countries is the distinction between the places where it is drunk and the places where it isn’t.’ His desire to outrage and court controversy rises to the surface, and can result in some of the funniest moments in the book. But as with everything he writes, some of Scruton’s claims must be taken with a pinch of salt or more appropriately, with a glass of claret.

Indeed I prefer to picture his words as if he was one’s old and familiar drinking companion sitting on weather beaten leather chairs and making provocative but teasingly good natured remarks out of a desire to amuse rather than to be boorish or loutish. Indeed this book is best enjoyed with a glass of wine on hand whilst sitting on a comfy old worn out leather chair curled next to log burning fire as the light dims outside.

I would whole heartedly agree with Roger Scruton that wine is a “drink that causes you to smile at the world and the world to smile at you.” Instead of imprisoning you inside a solitary introspection, it takes you out of yourself - and your ideas with you - to mingle with others and their ideas. Wine is therefore a voyage of discovery - and rediscovery - in many senses. And for this I can happily raise my own glass and say amen to that.

But what glass of wine would I raise when reading Scruton’s own book?

Well, one bottle won’t do. So temperance is out of the window then - sorry Roger. You will need a good French Sauternes or Barsac (preferably 2014) with the nostalgic autobiography, a finely bodied Bordeaux wine (I would go with a more complex wine from Saint Emilion) with the philosophy section of the book, and a champagne (of course) to drink with the philosophical jokes towards the end of the book.

Oh go on then, finish off with a tipple of Cognac before bed time, I am sure Scruton wouldn’t begrudge anyone that pleasure.

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waywardwrestlewritingwaif · 3 years

Text

The Call of the Wild Woman

Just some fluff featuring the green-haired goddess of NXT.

Pairing: Shotzi Blackheart x OFC

Word count: 2,412

Content advisory: brief sexual references, language

The first time I met Shotzi, I instantly liked her. We shook hands and she gave me this smile that made me feel like I was having a great day, even though there hadn’t been anything exceptional about it to that point. I was a little overwhelmed with all the people I was meeting, trying to get a sense of their look, their personality, their character, but I knew from our introduction that I was going to remember her for years, even if I never saw her again.

Of course, Shotzi’s a memorable person. Tall, tattooed, pierced and sporting that incredible acid green hair, it would be hard not to remember her. But I felt like I’d remember her vivacious eyes and confident smile just as much as the things that made her stand out from a mile away. My whole first day getting led around the performance center, I found my eyes drawn back to her whenever she appeared.

I had just been moved to NXT to take over as their chief makeup artist. I’d been working on Raw for close to a year when the position opened up and I’d been so excited and nervous about whether I’d get the job that I felt as if I’d barely slept for two months. My boyfriend and I actually broke up while I was waiting to hear back and I hardly noticed. We’d been struggling since his work had moved him out of state, and things had just sort of ended like a wave washing over a sandcastle. I wasn’t bitter but I was lonely. And that, along with my desire to show that I could run a team in high pressure situations, meant that I threw myself headlong into the new job. I tried to keep some time to see friends but work seemed more rewarding.

By the time I’d been there a few months, my circle of friends was largely made up of coworkers. There were always birthdays or barbecues or other things going on, and it was fun to be able to dish about work without having to explain a lot of background detail. I was enjoying myself. But, yeah, I was definitely lonely.

I dropped a couple of hints here and there that I wouldn’t mind being fixed up with any single male friends and a couple of the women made suggestions. A couple of the men did too. But none of it went anywhere. I was too busy and too awkward to make a first move and if any of the suggested bachelors ever thought to check me out on social media, it never resulted in a phone call.

Shotzi was always one of my favorite models. I loved transforming her from the natural beauty she was to the wild child who appeared on tv every week. And while we’d talk about work, she also had the greatest gifts as a storyteller, and the crazy stories to complement her skills. She’d been raised around bikers and conservative immigrants at the same time. She’d worked as a late night host for a horror movie tv broadcast before she became a wrestler. It was like she’d been born to perform and had found a way to do so while still being herself.

I found myself sitting at home, always alone, watching the silly and shocking horror movies she’d recommend to me, or tracking down music by bands she’d mention or whose shirts she’d wear. When she’d worked on tv, she’d developed a loyal following of teenage boys and girls who used to do everything from message her begging her to go out with them to sending her love letters and poetry to showing up outside the station in the hopes of meeting her. It sounded both creepy and sad but I sympathized a little with her starry-eyed fans. She was a kind of dazzling whirlwind of a person and, indeed, I was dazzled by her.

One day, I’d showed up at work after a particularly inauspicious Tinder date. The guy had picked me up for what was supposed to be coffee and a walk but had insisted that we stop by his friend’s place so he could get some pot. The three of us shared a joint and I assumed we were about to leave when another joint appeared. Being a lightweight, I declined but the two of them proceeded to smoke it themselves. Then the friend’s roommate came home from band practice. She pulled out her bong and that was getting passed around while she played us the hour-long piece of meandering prog that they’d created that day. All three of them seemed really entranced by what they could hear in the music, which I was pretty certain they were imagining.

About an hour later, my date and his friend started playing video games. I quietly tried to suggest that we leave and at least grab that coffee because I was clinging to the hope that maybe the guy, who was way cuter than I’d counted on, might have some redeeming qualities. He assured me we could leave in a minute. He and his friend were completely absorbed in their game, while the roommate randomly started telling me about how her mother had given birth to her at a Grateful Dead concert in the eighties, after following the band on tour for years. She didn’t seem to care much if I responded and would focus entirely on her phone every minute she wasn’t speaking.

Eventually, the roommate had begun to complain loudly that she was hungry and the guys agreed that we should order pizza. I handed over some money and advised them that I was a vegetarian, only to be surprised by a pizza that arrived looking like it had been fished out of a trash can, topped with pepperoni and cheese. I knew the place they’d ordered from and some quick math in my head made it clear that I had paid for basically all the pizza. They assured me that I could just pull the pepperoni off.

I was about to leave but my date insisted that we could head out in a few minutes to find me something I might actually want to eat. He was cute enough that I‘d agreed to stay just a little longer. A few more guys showed up to buy pot. Then friends of the roommate‘s had shown up with beer and put the stereo on so loud I thought the ceiling might cave in. I ended up leaving at eleven without even saying goodbye. When I got home, I realized that I‘d lost my house keys and had to ask a neighbor to help me break into my apartment.

I told this story to my coworkers to a chorus of loud “nos'' and peals of laughter. Others shared some bad date stories but this one did seem pretty dire. Everyone commiserated and it did make me feel better, like the night hadn’t been a total washout because I had a good story to tell and, as a couple of the girls pointed out, dates I had in the future were likely to seem pretty good in comparison.

“You should have taken some of the pot!” Shotzi exclaimed to a round of agreement.

“I wish I’d thought of that.”

It was a few days later that I was prepping Shotzi’s makeup and I noticed that she was a bit quieter than usual. She wasn’t unfriendly but there was something off.

“You ok?” I asked quietly, sweeping my brush out to give her the perfect cat’s eye flip.

“Yeah, I’m great.”

She didn’t sound great, or at least not in the enthusiastic way she usually did. I felt my neck getting tense as I tried to lead the conversation for the first time, knowing I wasn’t nearly as good at it as she was. I didn’t want to push her to tell me what was on her mind and at the same time, I felt like my forced smalltalk was probably grating on her nerves. I wanted to be entertaining but I lacked the stories and the flair.

Finally, when I announced that I was finished, she stood up just a few inches from me. I expected her to tell me to wish her luck, which I always did, but she didn’t move, her bright eyes focused on mine.

“Do you want to go out some time this weekend?” She asked.

“Like, hang out? Sure.”

She shook her head. “No. Do you want to go on a date with me?”

I sucked in a sharp breath, not knowing quite what to say. I fell back on the default. “Um, I don’t actually date women.”

“Oh.” She looked sad for the first time and a little surprised. “I’m sorry, I read some singles wrong. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything.”

“Not at all. I mean, it’s no big deal. I just… you’re gorgeous. I’m just not…”

“It’s fine,” she insisted, extending a hand as if to pat my arm but withdrawing it before she did. “Please, forget I ever said anything.”

Of course, I couldn’t forget that. In fact, I couldn’t even get it out of my head. I’d always dated men. I’d known women who were bisexual and lesbian but none of them had ever expressed an interest in me and I hadn’t found myself attracted to them. But Shotzi was attractive. She was stunning. And the more I thought about that first reaction I’d had to her, the more it seemed similar to the way I’d reacted to men I’d been involved with in the past. I just hadn’t noticed the similarity because she was a woman and I wasn’t into women.

But maybe I was into one woman.

She stayed friendly with me, although she didn’t linger as long in the makeup chair regaling me with tales of her rock ‘n’ roll childhood or films that had made her who she was. I hadn’t even realized that she had been lingering before. I just thought we’d been having great conversations. We had been having great conversations. Had I been sending the wrong signals?

I knew that I had marveled at how beautiful and unique she was. I’d gushed, really. But I’d been so floored by her that I felt like I had to let off some steam in the form of compliments or I’d never be able to focus on anything else. That didn’t change after the “asking me out” incident. The fact that I couldn’t release any of my thoughts made it harder to think about anything. I’d see her and I’d spend ten minutes feeling like kind of an idiot, then half an hour thinking about her chatoyant eyes, about the perfect heart shape of her face, or her full lips.

It was a few weeks later that I caught myself staring at her from the safety of the shadows while she prepared to go out for a match. I’d often stared at her body and I figured that it was because she had the kind of body that every woman wanted to have: perfect curves, toned limbs, smooth skin… Looking at her in that moment, though, I wasn’t so sure about my motives. Was I wishing that I had those taut thighs or was I wishing that I knew what it felt like to drag my lips along them, to feel her shudder at the sensation of my breath on her sensitive flesh?

Her match was thrilling, as her matches almost always were. She was whipping around the place looking completely out of control, although we all knew she wasn’t. The more danger she put herself in, the more she seemed to glow with internal electricity. It was no wonder that the company was already treating her like a star. You’d have to be dead not to get drawn in by her. But it occurred to me as I watched her that I was more drawn in than others.

When I saw her come backstage, I retreated to my makeup room and counted down what felt like enough time to allow her to unwind, shower and change before I made my way over to the locker room.

“Hi there,” I greeted her, a little shyly.

She glanced up and gave me a big smile while she patted her hair dry.

“Hey you.”

“So, if the offer is still open, I’d like to say yes.”

She arched her elegant brows and gave me a coy smile. “Now what offer would that be?”

“If you still want to, then, yes, I would like to go on a date with you.”

“Interesting,” she drawled. “What brought about this change of heart?”

“You did.”

She bats her eyes and points theatrically at her chest. “Moi?”

I couldn’t help but smile. The light in her eyes told me she was happy but she still wanted to make me work for it a little. Fair enough.

“Ever since I met you, I’ve found all these things- movies, music, all sorts of stuff- that I just never thought of checking out because I either didn’t know about them or because I just never thought I’d be into them. And the more I think about it, the more I think that I might have made a lot of decisions about what I like just because it was what I saw everyone else doing.”

“Well that’s cool, but I’m not a movie or a book.”

“No. You’re this incredibly cool, funny, exciting, sexy person who I love being around and who has me thinking about all sorts of things I hadn’t considered.”

“Ok. How would you feel about a midnight picnic at an old shack I found near the river?” She grinned.

“Will you hold my hand if I get scared?”

“I promise.”

I gave a little laugh and stepped closer to her, cupping her cheek in one of my hands and marvelling at how perfectly it fit there. Unable to resist the temptation, I leaned in and pressed my lips softly against hers. And immediately, a delightful shiver ran through every part of my body.

When we separated, she gave me an almost coquettish smile and laced her arm through mine, steering us out of the locker.

“You know,” I mused, “you don’t seem really surprised by this.”

“I’m not,” she responded with a wink. “I knew you’d come around.”

#shotzi blackheart imagine #shotzi blackheart fanfic #nxt imagine #nxt fanfiction #wrestling fanfiction #wrestling imagine #wayward wrestle writing

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hanneswrites · 3 years

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miles away

Pairings: Hakuba Saguru/Kuroba Kaito

Rating: T

Word Count: 1.1k

Summary/Tags: Kaito’s touring Europe and misses Saguru. Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling. (cw for anxiety)

My @dcmksecretsanta gift for @faenova!

[Read on Ao3]

---

Kaito woke to an empty hotel bed, sheets cold and crisp beside him, and sighed. He rolled over onto his side and pulled the blankets tight over him, trying to will himself back to sleep. The clock read 3:14am, green light piercing through the pitch-dark of the room and making his eyes ache for a brief moment before he snapped them shut. And he tried, he really did try to go back to sleep. But the bed was so cold without Saguru cuddled up next to him and entirely too large without him flopped over half of it. Hell, he even missed how he would always hog all of the blankets.

Kaito groaned and pulled the covers up over his head. It wasn’t like this was his first time going out of town by himself. He used to travel all the time - visiting his mom in LA, touring all over Europe, even doing an odd show or two over in the U.S. But this time, for some ungodly reason, it was different.

He missed waking up to his partner, missed seeing him heading back in from his morning run, missed sitting at their tiny kitchen table and sipping coffee before they had to head off to work. It was only the third day of his trip, and Kaito was miserable. The next three weeks of traveling was looking more daunting by the minute, and he could feel his chest tighten at the thought of not seeing him for another three weeks.

Kaito checked the clock again - 3:17am. 3:17am in London was equivalent to a little past noon in Beika. Saguru would probably be holed away in his office if he hadn’t been roped into a case yet.

Kaito sighed and took his phone off the nightstand, swiping away a variety of unimportant notifications before unlocking it. His background photo was a picture of them on the day they bought their condo, and Kaito smiled just a tiny bit before clicking on his contacts app and promptly dialing Saguru’s office number.

It rang once, then twice, and the answering machine picked up, giving an automated message about Saguru being out of the office. Maybe he’d finally gotten tired of Kaito calling him at all hours of night and day. Kaito sighed and locked his phone screen, rolling over to bury his face in the hotel pillows that were way too soft to be comfortable.

After what felt like an eternity, Kaito lifted his head to check the clock again. 3:20am. It had only been three minutes. He unlocked his phone again and checked his messages - the last one from Saguru had been received roughly 7 hours ago. Saguru had texted him to wish him a good night before Kaito went to bed, even though it was roughly 5am in Beika at the time. It did warm his heart just a little to know that Saguru had woken up early just to text him good night, particularly because Saguru would generally scoff at the idea of getting up any time before 11am.

With that thought at the forefront of his mind, Kaito buried his face back into the pillows and eventually fell back into a quiet, restless sleep.

Kaito woke the next morning to a very low phone battery because he’d forgotten to plug it back in when he went back to sleep the night before and a good morning text from Saguru. A good morning text that he’d received at the exact minute his alarm went off, which made Kaito smile despite himself. The image of Saguru also missing him and counting down the minutes until he knew he’d be awake warming his heart.

Kaito shot back a text, asking how his day was going, and set about getting ready for his day.

Eight hours and three shows later, Kaito was starting to get a bit worried that Saguru hadn’t texted him back yet. He’d called once in between his second and third show and now that the fourth show was almost starting, with no text or call or anything of the like from Saguru, Kaito’s nerves were on edge. And his phone was dying. And he’d forgotten to pack his phone charger.

The set manager called his name and Kaito begrudgingly sent one last text to Saguru before switching his phone off to conserve the last 5% of his phone’s battery, and started toward the closed curtains.

It had been 12 hours now. Kaito turned his phone over in his hands as he sat in the back of the taxi that was taking him back to his hotel and tried to remind himself that Saguru was an adult with a job that demanded a lot of his attention. Solving murders and burglaries and the like. But he usually at least kept him updated. Unbidden, thoughts of Saguru being hurt on a case or worse, sprung into his mind and Kaito twisted his fingers together, anxious to get back to his room and plug in his phone. He took in a deep breath as the taxi pulled in front of his hotel.

He paid the cab driver and made his way up to his room, his dead phone sitting like lead in his back pocket as he opened the door. Immediately, he became aware that there was someone else in the room and he flattened himself against the wall. Someone was in his hotel bed, but it was too dark to make out who they were. Kaito tried to run through who it could possibly be - a rival, a detective who’d figured out he was Kaitou Kid lying in wait, a random lost stranger?

The person occupying his bed propped themself up on their elbow to look at him and then promptly flopped back down.

“Are you going to come in?” A voice that sounded a lot like Saguru’s asked. Kaito shut the door and hurriedly shucked off his bag and shoes.

Saguru smiled when Kaito joined him under the covers and twined their fingers together between them. He said nothing else.

“What are you doing here? Are you alright?” Kaito’s anxiety still thrummed through him and Saguru chuckled, brushing his thumb lightly over Kaito’s knuckles to sooth him.

“Jet lag.” Saguru murmured.

“Why--”

“Missed you,” Saguru breathed and pulled him closer, wrapping his arms around him, “Do you realize you called me 15 times on Tuesday? Thought you might have missed me too.”

Kaito wanted to say something else, but as he fell into the warmth of the bed and Saguru’s embrace, his eyes started to droop, the anxiety that had been coursing through him all day settling down and leaving him exhausted.

Kaito sighed, a fond smile crossing his face as he curled up into Saguru’s chest and closed his eyes. They would work this out in the morning.

#sagukai #hakukai #dcmksecretsanta2020 #dcmksecretsanta #dcmk fanfiction #1k #giftfics2020 #dcmk

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sinceileftyoublog · 3 years

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Indigo De Souza Interview: Compassion for Different Modalities

Photo by Charlie Boss

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Calling from her home near Asheville, North Carolina earlier this month, singer-songwriter Indigo De Souza is getting ready to go on tour behind her terrific sophomore album Any Shape You Take (Saddle Creek). Like everyone, she’s anxious about navigating the current COVID-19 landscape, but how she and her band adapt to a live performance and play the multi-dimensional songs that make up the record seems to be of little concern. I guess if I was as talented as De Souza, I wouldn’t be worried, either. Released last month, Any Shape You Take is a stunning series of ruminations on love and relationships, platonic and romantic, that span a number of years in De Souza’s life. Raised in a conservative small town in North Carolina by a mom who was an artist, De Souza doesn’t shy away from the fact that her family did not fit in. At the encouragement of her mother, she leaned into her artistic visions, making music as early as 9 years old, releasing her first EP in 2016.

After self-releasing her (very appropriately titled) first album I Love My Mom in 2018, De Souza signed to indie stalwarts Saddle Creek, who rereleased her debut and supplied her with the means to craft a much larger-sounding follow-up. Working with prolific secret weapon co-producer Brad Cook, her first proper label release occupies an incredible amount of genre territory. “This is the way I’m going to bend,” announces De Souza on auto-tuned synth pop opener “17″ before, well, bending in a number of different directions. “Darker Than Death” and “Die/Cry”, nervous songs that were written years ago, sport fitting build-ups, the former’s slow hi hats and cymbals giving way to jolts of guitar noise, the latter’s jangly rock taking a back seat to yelped harmonies. Songs like “Pretty Pictures” and “Hold U” reenter the dance world, the latter an especially catchy neo soul and funk highlight, a simple earworm of a love song. In the end, whether playing scraped, slow-burning guitar or rubbery keyboard, De Souza’s thoughtful and honest meditations center the emotionally charged album, one of the very best of the year.

De Souza takes her live show to the Beat Kitchen tonight and tomorrow night (both sold out) with Dan Wriggins of Friendship opening. Read our interview with De Souza about the making of Any Shape You Take and her songwriting process.

Since I Left You: On Any Shape You Take, there seems to be a good mix of folks you’ve worked with before and folks you’re working with for the first time. What did each group bring to the table?

Indigo De Souza: Brad Cook was co-producing. It was my first time working with a producer on something. That was crazy. He was very supportive of everything and very encouraging. It was nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of who wanted to encourage my vision. I also worked with Alex [Farrar] and Adam [McDaniel] from drop of sun studios in Asheville. They’re both just so sweet and talented. They were engineering but also helped with production as well. I ended up getting really close with Alex, and me and Alex finished out the album together doing vocal overdubs and random overdubs. It feels like he did a lot of production on the album and was a star for me in the process. They were all great to work with. It was interesting to me to have so many people working on the album.

What I realized after the fact, [though], was that it was kind of distracting for me to have so many brains working on it. It taught me I actually feel very confidently about my vision for songs, and I can trust myself to have ideas for my own songs. I think I was scared going in that I was going to come up blank in that scenario because it was such a high-pressure thing, getting on a label and making a high-production album. But I definitely thrived in the space. It was really fun.

SILY: It shows in the finished product. There are so many different styles and subgenres within the record. Do you listen to all the types of music that show up on this record?

IDS: Yeah, for sure. Mostly, I listen to pop music and dance music. That’s probably my most daily genre. I don’t listen to a lot of music daily, though. I listen to music probably a couple times a week when I’m in the car, but it’s so random, and the genres I listen to are pretty random. It depends on my mood. I think when I’m writing, it’s the same way, whether I’m writing a poppier or rock-based song. They’re different moods for me.

SILY: How do you generally approach juxtaposing lyrics with instrumentation?

IDS: With writing, it’s different every time the way they fall into place together. I do notice that one of the more common ways it happens is I’ll be going about my day and hear a melody in my head and start humming it and realize I’m making it up, that I have no record of it before. I’ll start attaching feeling to the melody, depending on what I’m feeling, and at first I’ll be singing gibberish with the melody, but I’ll usually get some headphones on and plug into the computer so I can sing into a microphone. I’ll mess around with the melody and sing random words until something true to me kind of sticks. That’s usually how it goes. Sometimes, I [do] sit down and it comes out in one breath, like the song is already written in my mind.

Honestly, it’s so normalized how songwriting is. It’s such a strange, magical thing that people can write songs that have never been written before. [laughs]

SILY: Thematically, there are a lot of songs on Any Shape You Take where you’re feeling doubts about a relationship, like on “Darker Than Death”. Someone’s feeling bad, and you’re wondering whether it’s you making them feel bad. And on “Die, Cry”, you sing, “I’d rather die than see you cry.” On the other hand, there are some songs like “Pretty Pictures” where you know your place more within the relationship, and you know what’s eventually gonna happen to it. How do you balance those feelings of doubt with knowing what’s gonna happen?

IDS: It’s funny, because the first two songs you mention were written a very long time ago when I was in the only very long-term relationship I’ve ever been in. I was very confused in that time and was having a hard time in general with my mental health. “Pretty Pictures” is the newest song on the album, a last minute addition because another song we had on there didn’t really fit. We looked through my demos folder and chose “Pretty Pictures”, the most recent song I had written at the time, and recorded it for the album. They’re totally different times in my life, and how you said it is definitely how I was. There’s a time I was more confused, and now, love is more simple in my life, and I can process things and see how they are, have compassion for different modalities.

SILY: I love the line on “Way Out”, “There are no monsters underneath your bed, and I’ll never be the only thing you love.” It’s a very logical statement in the face of unbridled emotion that can make you think illogically. Is that contrast something you think shows up throughout the record?

IDS: Within love, over time, I’ve realized that there’s not one person for anybody. There’s a lot of fluidity in the ways people can feel towards other people. That line is definitely a nod to allowing people to love many other people and not taking it personally.

SILY: From a singing perspective, you have a lot of different vocal stylings on the record. I found it interesting you led it off with a track where you’re super auto-tuned. Can you tell me about that decision?

IDS: “17” originally was this demo I made in 2016 or 2017. It was a very old demo. In 2018 or so, I brought the demo to my band at the time, and we created a live version of that song that was nothing like the recording that you hear. The recording was so weird and had a lot of auto-tune and higher-pitched and lower-pitched vocals. We had a live version we played for a while that’s on Audiotree. Whenever we were recording Any Shape You Take, we started to record it the live way and realized it wasn’t feeling right. We listened to the old demo, and it gave this wake up kick to everyone. We got excited by how the demo sounded because we hadn’t heard it in so long. We realized we wanted to record it based on the demo. So that song sounds very similar to the way the demo originally sounded.

SILY: What’s the story behind the album title?

IDS: There are so many layers to the album title. [laughs] It came to me mostly because the album takes so many musical shapes but also so many emotional shapes. It feels like a lot of the themes in the album are about change and acceptance of change and acceptance of a full spectrum of feelings of pain and grief and allowing people to take many forms. It was mainly inspired by the fact that I’ve taken so many forms in my life and am witness to the way changing forms yourself can either push people away or pull them in closer. I’ve always been so appreciative of the people in my life who allow me to take so many different forms and are still there to witness and care about me, whether we’re close to each other or far away. That’s the main reason I wanted to call the album Any Shape You Take. The most beautiful kind of love you can have is allowing someone to be themselves and shift in and out of things freely.

SILY: Is your live show faithful to the studio versions of the songs, or did you have to learn how to adapt the songs to the stage?

IDS: A lot of them sound very similar to the recording. We’ve been having so much fun practicing them and playing them live.

SILY: Is there one in particular you’re most looking forward to playing?

IDS: I love playing “Bad Dream”. That’s just a crazy song to play live because it’s so loud and rowdy. [laughs]

SILY: You have that falsetto in the middle of it, too.

IDS: Yeah. It’s so fun.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, reading, or watching lately that’s caught your attention?

IDS: I’m excited that one of my favorite authors, Tao Lin, just put out a book I haven’t been able to get fully into. It’s called Leave Society. I just got it in the mail last week. Other than that, I’ve just been so, so busy with interviews and work on the computer and with my manager, staying on top of this crazy shift happening on top of my life. I haven’t taken in a lot of media. I was just watching Love Island recently because I wanted to shut my brain down. Somebody was telling me about Sexy Beasts last night, which sounds insane. I’m excited to watch that.

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