#Renée ate that shit

[local-witch-of-mn]

So I learned the power of Renée Rapp when I went and saw Mean Girls(2024) and I'm now writing a Sapphic Regina George fanfiction and it being slightly toxic relationship of her being sweetly mean

[unvolver]

That's what I really like about your art, your use of shadows portray their ambiguity towards themselves and each other. We are all heroes in our own minds, so everything we do is justified to ourselves even tho outside observers don't agree. John & Paul were both too selfish to accept each other's whole selves and so it all broke apart. They put themselves first and refused to acknowledge the needs of the other. Funnily enough this seems to happen in reverse where they started out more accepting but then as fame ate away at them they became more judgmental and harsh to each other. "What have you done for me lately?" That's why I love the tender strangulation painting & the one where Paul is gripped in the act of conception while sitting on John's member. Those two paintings really capture their dynamic in a way I haven't seen before.

Christianity is built on a strict vertical pyramid hierarchy. It attempts to level the field a little bit with the presence of Christ but Christians insist on enforcing the hierarchy instead of accepting His lessons into our souls. Jung wrote that his main beef with Christianity was that it was static and didn't evolve its myth. It impresses its followers with the need to stay stagnant hence why so many Christians are frightened of change and why it's so easy for Christianity to traumatize regular people. I experienced that myself, I won't burden you with the details but I don't go to church anymore because of it.

I've only just started studying Buddhism but it seems to me that Buddhism is actually very similar to the internet: the hierarchy is horizontal, not vertical. Christianity has a massive emphasis on legalism and bureaucracy and who has power over who/personal status which is why John and George rejected it. Whereas on the internet, anyone can and will talk back to you and your credentials don't mean shit especially you're a credentialed person high on the vertical hierarchy and you get caught making a mistake. Your place in the pyramid does not protect you on the internet, you have to prove yourself everyday.

Buddhism strikes me as similar in that yeah mutual respect is a requirement but there's not as much emphasis on status and everyone has something to learn and something to teach, there are Masters but they're trying to nudge you towards independence instead of forcing their opinions on you. Everyone is trapped in the cycle and all we can do is help ourselves and each other try to climb out rendering us all on the same miserable plane. Meanwhile the churches desperately want that pyramid back to ensure suffering and resent the internet for destroying it.

I would even go so far as to say that the Beatles are popular because they operate on a horizontal hierarchy where they busted up the vertical pyramid if western music classes (classical at the top, rock and roll underneath the bottom) and then refused to become kings, staying in touch with their roots as much as they were able. They remain relatable and thus not only did their music continually renew itself, they also busted up their own vertical pyramids with each new album. Quite an event in human history, eternally tragic that Jung did not live to give us his personal take on them.

John&Paul may have survived if they had approached their relationship with the same horizontal mindset they took to their music. Instead verticality and status obsession resulted in mutual resentment and misunderstanding which destroyed them. Very sad state of affairs and a cautionary tale for us all.

first off, thank you so much! i try to make my art purposely ambiguous because i want to see what type of story people can come up or infer from it. i’ve always been inspired by surrealist artists (i did a master study of salvador’s dalí’s most famous work) and have done callbacks to rené magritte’s work as well, i was very happy when i learnt of paul’s admiration for his art.

on my lenmac depictions on my art, again i’ve always been fascinated by the less savory parts of their relationship. my art has sensual / erotic themes but it’s not for the purpose of sexual arousal which i want to make clear. i was so frustrated when my artwork was accused of being pornography when it’s not. (not demeaning any creatives who make artwork for such purposes) but it felt like it was missing the point of what messages and themes i portray in my work. i have people who see these artworks as intimate and sweet, people who see it as sensual and erotic, i welcome all interpretations except accusing me of sexualizing lenmac just because. i’m really honored i could bring something new to the table in depictions of them, its the least i can do. but basically with my art i want to push boundaries but it’s not shock content for the sake of shocking the audience, i want to show a part of their relationship that people don’t really do in visual art.

regarding the topic of religion: from my experience of my upbringing in a buddhist household, there really is less of an emphasis of being controlled by a specific temple or like a person. there’s the dalai lama but that’s one sect of buddhism, my family follows mahayana buddhism so obviously there’s no reason to follow him. though, i noticed there’s a false perception that buddhism is always progressive and inherently better than christianity. my mom is a devout buddhist, but is conservative in her other beliefs. violence in myanmar and sri lanka have been perpetrated and justified by buddhists for the sake of religion. (both of these events are too complicated for me to explain fully) but my point here is that buddhism isn’t a perfect spiritual escape that most people perceive it as to be. back to my own personal experience, i remember in a conversation with my therapist my therapist who has the same ethnic and religious background as me talked about how buddhists parents tend to be conservative and harsh on their children for no good reason at all.

also i feel like people don’t really see a difference between hinduism and buddhism either, even i struggled a bit with seeing a distinction since there are similar beliefs but the caste system. converts and outsiders (like the beatles) aren’t really taught this part of the religion so it makes me think about the issue of hierarchy between john and paul and the whole india trip fiasco. i wonder what would of happened in a universe where the beatles decided to go the buddhist spirituality route instead of hindu.

[malusienki]

IL TROVATORE [sorry. i just had to use this awkward ss i got of renée fleming because i always expect her with met broadcasts]

the opening scene was a BOP ngl.

leonora!!!!! and i forgot the other woman’s name (ines?)

sondra’s voice is so pretty holy shit

SHE JUST RAN AT INES? HELP?

she ate that UP!!!! GO SONDRA!!!

GUYS WHAT

?!?!?!!?? THIS IS ACT ONE GUYS PLEASE

AND THEYRE SWORDFIGHTING NOW???? HOLY SHIT

… well. act 2 now. i am nervous.

OH I RECOGNIZE THIS [also a banger]

disrespectfully i do not like him. at all.

awh :((

FUUUCK OOOOFF BRO

sick ensemble ofc

that’s acts 1 & 2!!! gonna take a quick break before 3 & 4 :] I LOVE THIS SO FAR i am loving a TON of verdi operas [looks at don carlo specifically]

[teacup-crow]

Maybe, Maybe, Maybe

Fun bit of survivors’ guilt for @badthingshappenbingo, based pretty heavily off Don’t Poke the Bear and Variations on a Theme. Post-finale.

They take it in turns to keep watch for when he wakes up: Doug, Reneé, Isabel, first names still such a novelty. Just his luck, he opens his eyes to the impassive face of Captain Lovelace.

“Hi, dickbag. Sore head?”

“Unnnnhh…” he whines as if he’s lying under a ton of rocks rather than a cosy quilt on Renee’s living room floor. His face is a patchwork of bruising. “Aspirin?”

She takes pity, and passes him two and a glass of water. The sitting up takes longer than he thought it would.

“You look terrible. Lucky for you, Renee makes a mean chilli con carne. Never would have guessed she could cook.”

“No thanks, I should, should be going-”

“You need food in your system, that’s non-negotiable. First thing’s first, though, you’re having a shower, and you either go willingly or get dragged bodily, because you goddamn stink. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” he mumbles automatically, and he remembers the Colonel - Warren? Was it on a day he could call him Warren? - once saying something similar and his head pounds. ((“mr jacobi, of all the irresponsible, stupid shit i have seen from you this really takes the-“))

“Bathroom’s on the second floor, just past the master bedroom. Dominick put a pile of clean clothes in there before he left for work. And it’s Isabel, okay? Not sir. Not Captain. Never again.”

***

“Who did this to you?”

He grips his mug of sweet tea like it’s thousand dollar whiskey. He’s still ashen. “I did this to me.”

“You beat the shit out of yourself? Okay, yeah. Don’t buy that one.” Isabel repeats the question. “Who did this to you?”

“Just some guys I pissed off. I don’t know how many. I don’t know who. Happy now?”

The room goes silent. Isabel continues:

“And did you go provoking them deliberately?”

Not for the first time, Renee wonders whether they should have included Doug in this little intervention. He’s been through so much just like the rest of them, but he doesn’t know it, and he’s clearly freaking out at the situation.

“Why would he want something like that to happen? He looks terrible!”

“I don’t know, Doug,” Isabel says levelly. “Care to answer, Jacobi?”

He’s not on a first name basis, apparently.

“Not… I didn’t... no. No, no, no. I was too drunk and… picking fights, but suddenly there were too many of them, okay? But I got out. And if I want to drink then that’s my own problem, so thank you for the hospitality but-“

Renee cuts in there. “When you drink yourself into a stupor, get attacked by a gang in a back alley, and stumble into my doorway at 0300 hours after six months of radio silence, it becomes our problem.” Her look of pity makes his stomach churn even more than the chilli did. He breathes in, hold, out; in, hold, out; in-((alana’s breathing technique and why why why is she everywhere in everything why does he have to see her out of the corner of his eye when it’s been so long he can’t properly remember her face-))

“Fine. What do you want from me?”

“You are a good man and you saved every single one of our lives and we need to understand why you’re so intent on throwing yours away.”

Jacobi starts laughing then, guttural laughs that worsen the ache in his head and bones but he can’t seem to stop them. “...me? I’m a good man? Oh my God, Lieutenant, that’s hilarious. Give us another.”

“You need to take this seriously! This is a form of self harm! You could have died!” Isabel is pacing up and down. She and Renee do good cop, bad cop like it’s a professional sport.

“Boo fucking hoo. And the world would forever be worse off for my passing.”

Isabel stops, and turns back towards him with some heat in her gaze. “I have lost too many crew members who deserved to die far less than you do. Okay? Is that what you want to hear? Do you need me to reconfirm that you are a an asshole? Do you need to hear about how Fisher, and Hui, and Fourier, and Lambert were all far better people than you will ever, ever be? Or will you accept that you are good in there? That deep down you’re on the right-“

“We burned their letters.” He’s staring at the duvet he’s wrapped in, running his finger over the flowers on the pattern. “Okay? Still think I’m a good person?”

“...wait. What?” She laughs a little, in shock perhaps. “But you told me…”

“I told you what I needed to tell you to make you trust me. We burned your crew’s letters. Lambert’s… I remember those especially. His hands were shaking really hard when he wrote them, weren’t they.”

It’s not a question.

Isabel stops pacing, and Jacobi grins again but it doesn’t reach his bruised eyes when he looks up at her. “More than mine, even. You could tell he was sick. They didn’t make any sense. We laughed at them. The irony of a Communications Officer who can’t communicate. Are you listening to me? We read their letters and we burned them and we laughed about it-“

Renee loses her softness. “Jacobi, that is enough!”

Isabel has a hand on her chest as if something has hit her there. She counts to ten in her head, ((fisher’s technique to try and stop her fighting with sam, never worked but still stuck in her head, or this copy of her head, or whoever she is now-)) and leaves the room.

They hear her slamming drawers in the kitchen.

Doug glances at Jacobi and shakes his head, before hurrying after her.

“How could you,” Reneé says. “How could you.”

“I don’t know. Will you let me go and ruin my own life now?”

“Never,” she replies. “Because, God help me, you’re still a member of my crew.”

At that, his eyes prick with tears he can’t explain. He rolls over on the air bed, and closes them.

***

“Lovelace?” Jacobi finally makes himself walk into the kitchen, grimacing like each step is on hot sand. The words are monotone. “I’m so sorry. What I did and said is... inexcusable.”

“Nope. That’s too large a word for your vocabulary. Come back to me with an apology Renée didn’t script,” Isabel snaps, going back to scribbling in a sketchbook.

“Look, I’m not much good at this-“

“You’re telling me.”

“I’m… really used to people yelling at me and hitting me until they feel better. Or you can shoot me if you like!”

“Jesus. Well, I am not about to do that to ease your guilt. You look like you’d snap if one more person poked you. So apologise properly.”

“I’m sorry…”

“For?” Isabel prompts over the top of her book.

“I’m sorry for burning your crew’s letters.”

“You did what you were ordered to do. It is what it is. I’m not condoning it.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Jacobi realises she’s waiting for him to continue. “And… I’m sorry for bringing it up. That was… needlessly cruel. It sucked.”

“It really did,” she replies, putting the book down. “Tell you what: that sounded somewhat genuine, and Goddard brought out the shit in all of us. You look so pathetic, I’m going to forgive you. Not because you deserve it, but because I don’t bear grudges. Not anymore.”

She holds out a hand, and he shakes it. “Thank you.”

“Wow. That actually hurt for you to say.”

Jacobi nods. He sits down across from her at Renée’s huge darkwood table, and thinks about how she and Dominick must have bought this when they moved in together with plans to have people over for dinner every other night. Maybe even plans to have kids.

He wonders if Dominick ate at it alone while his wife was gone.

“So, you gone on that holiday yet?”

“No, actually. I’ve legally been dead for about seven years, so getting a passport is proving pretty tricky.”

“I can imagine.”

“Where have you been, anyway? We tried to get into contact with you. We drove down to your old apartment - got your address from the Goddard database - but it was cleaned out.”

Jacobi looks sheepish. “Yeah, well, I’d mostly been staying at Alana’s for the last few years or overnight at… yeah… so I’d not been a very good tenant and turns out they took ‘lost in space’ as the perfect opportunity to kick me out. So I’ve been sofa to sofa, on the streets a bit-”

“For heaven’s sake, Jacobi. We would have helped you, you stupid asshole! All you had to do was ask and you could have stayed here! Renee and Dominick would probably even let you have a cheese collection or whatever the fuck it was.”

“Guess the amount of drinks it takes for me to lose my pride is somewhere over eighteen?”

“How do you have a functioning liver?”

They sit in an almost comfortable silence for a few minutes, Isabel reopening her sketchbook.

“I never knew you drew.”

“You never knew me outside of a life-threatening situation.” Isabel sighs, twists the pencil between her fingers. “I don’t think I did. Before. The old ‘me’, I mean. But I was bored and I can’t get a job because of the ‘being dead’ issue, so I thought I should take up a hobby or something. Might be therapeutic. I’m not very good at it…”

“Can I see?”

“I, uh,” Isabel suddenly looks uncertain. “I drew her. Maxwell. I drew everyone, actually. Are you sure you want to look?”

“Yes.”

He leafs through the pages, at first simple doodles before branching into full portraits. Eiffel, upside down and smoking a cigarette. Hilbert, looking troubled at a shadow behind him he can’t quite see. Two ghostlike figures in lab coats staring out at the star, the man with a prophetic terror etched on his face - must be Isabel’s old crewmates. Mr Cutter smiles up at him with far too many sharp teeth in sharper lines where the pencil was pressed far too hard and he turns the page quickly. There’s Kepler, mid-whiskey speech and it almost stops his heart. He pauses. Maxwell.

In the picture, her eyes are shining as she stares at Hera’s console, fingers nothing more than a blur - the three-day stint she spent trying to get the AI online. Aside from the orange and blue of Wolf 359, elsewhere in the book Isabel has barely used colour, but here the room is bathed in a serene green light from the screens. Behind Maxwell, Jacobi sees himself, little more than a stocky, sketchy outline, waiting for her to finish.

He looks so proud of her.

He looks so… content.

After staring for a long moment, Jacobi closes the book and hands it back. “Thank you.”

“You can keep the pictures of them, if you like,” Isabel offers, but he doesn’t know whether he would like, so he says:

“Tell me about your crew.”

“What?”

“Your old crew. Tell me about them. Was Lambert the one staring at...?”

“No. No. No, that was Kuan Hui, our senior astrophysicist. He was whipsmart and funny and fearless, until the time Goddard Futuristics played around in his brain, stretched out his perception of time. He was completely alone in the dark for two weeks. His smile never really reached his eyes after that.”

Jacobi sips tea awkwardly, even though it’s cold.

“Something like that, it stays with you. At least he had Fourier, though.”

“That’s the woman behind him?”

“Junior physicist. Victoire Fourier had eyes like stars. Cleverest person I’ve ever met. She played six instruments, spoke four languages and she had the most gentle soul. She used to read to Hui when he got sick with Decima. Coughed up every organ in his body. I thought it would break her, but she was made of stern stuff. She vanished off the space station in the final days and I still don’t know what exactly happened to her-”

“I… do. If you want to know, I mean.”

Isabel shakes her head. Then pauses. Then shakes her head again. “I get the feeling whoever is to blame is long gone.”

Jacobi shrugs. “Who else?”

“Well, there was Mace Fisher. Fisher… Fisher died because of me, not Goddard Futuristics. Asteroid shower tore him from my hands. He had a boyfriend waiting at home. He was sensitive, sensible, grounding. A real older brother type. I- I didn’t deal particularly well with his death. Well, you know that much.”

((Pill popper!)) Jacobi gulps more cold tea.

“And Lambert?”

“Sam Lambert. Officer Samuel Lambert had a stick up his ass. He was whiny, and authoritarian, and he treasured his copy of Pryce and Carter more than Reneé and Kepler combined did. He drove me nearly insane, and I drove him likewise. The best second in command you could ask for. A damn good man. Sam got sick after Hui, so we knew what was coming. What it meant. He was brave, though. At first.”

((“C-Captain, please shoot me, please, it hurts, it hurts, Captain, please, I just want it to-”)

She falters.

“Lovelace?”

“Yup?”

“You know, it’s not even really about the Hephaestus. I keep… it’s insane, but I keep thinking about… I was an explosives guy for the Air Force. Before Goddard. A trigger failed and two men died. Andrews and Sullivan. I haven’t thought about them in years and suddenly-“

“They’re everywhere?”

There’s a sudden understanding between them.

“They’re everywhere. Them and Maxwell and Kepler. They’re in mirrors, in the back of my brain, around corners.”

“Flashes of them.”

“And if you just reach out far enough, maybe-“

“Maybe-“

“Maybe.”

((let’s go be monsters)), Jacobi’s brain echoes. He grits his teeth.

“Did it stop for you? When does it stop?” He finds himself asking. Isabel doesn’t answer.

[anthropwashere]

deadfic: she sang to me a language strange 2

More deadfic for @goodintentionswipfest but this time some of y’all might recognize this one! I cut out ~2k of language strange when I posted it because it was even more of a hot mess than the rest that I just didn’t have the energy to wrangle. Now I have an excuse to still throw it in your faces with virtually no editing! 

Behold yet more bad times for Ed in the terrible werewolf AU (tw cannibalism, imprisonment, and a whole heck of mileage out of the word “fuck”). The key difference between this chunk and the previous chunk is in the pacing.

(Apologies for the bad Google Translate French. Again.)

(part 1)

=

A guard comes by with a bowl of mush, barks something at him but he doesn’t care, he refuses to care. The guard leaves. He doesn’t look at the bowl even though his stomach is a knot of nausea and hunger and he’s so fucking thirsty, he just wants a glass of water but he can’t remember the last time they gave him anything to drink.

The guard comes back with another guard, no, two more guards from the smell. They’re laughing. Oh, good, great, this’ll be fun. Can’t they just, fuck, give him a day or whatever amounts to a day down here? He’s tired, he’s so tired. He’s digesting the parts of Renée Poirier he didn’t throw up. Just stop, go away, let him rest.

One of the guards bangs on the top of his cage and they all laugh when he flinches. Another one must bend down because his rough voice is too close to the bars when he asks, “Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas, loup garou? Vous sentez-vous malade?”

He bares his teeth. Loup garou. Wolfman. They think they’re so goddamn funny.

They ask him again if he’s feeling sick, bang on his cage, ask him if he’s just feeling down, aw, poor wolfman, poor stupid Amestrian dog, is he sad? They heard him and the bitch chatting, does he miss his new friend? Well he shouldn’t have gone and killed her, eh? God, but the mess he made of her, makes a normal man sick it does! Like he enjoyed it—

“Shut up,” he snarls, or he means to say it in Amestrian but it comes out as nothing but a warning rumble deep in his chest. His teeth are too big again, too long, too sharp. How did Heinkel deal with this shit? How did any of them? They’d all always seemed so—controlled. Calm, cool, collected, whatever the fuck, the guards are banging on his cage more and it’s hard to think, harder than usual, what’s even fucking usual anymore. 

He curls up tighter, tries to calm down. Normal man, he thinks scathingly. Fuck off with that. The guards are all bargain bin chimeras too. They look human, sure, mostly, but their eyes shine wrong and their teeth are too sharp. Little tells that used to raise the hair on the back of his neck when he was still human. Now he knows better. Now he knows the guards were all changed as a precaution, otherwise one wrong move and any one of the prisoners could take a bite out of them. Even the playing field.

He can’t deny he wouldn’t be tempted to, if it were an option. He can’t deny he’s tempted to bite one of them anyway, never mind the hell they’d give him after. He has no idea if it’s something he would have thought of when he was human or if this is that fucking animal instinct Darius always loved to harp on about. He doesn’t know which is worse or which is more comforting. He just wants the guards to leave. They’re clearly not taking him anywhere, otherwise they wouldn't have started messing with his shackles, choking him, yanking on his bad leg, shit like that. They’re just here for a laugh. There’s nothing more obnoxious than guards with time to kill until their shift’s over.

One of them declares that the reason he made a mess all over the floor must be that he doesn’t know. The other two are astounded, my god, surely he must? Surely the Amestrian dog’s not so stupid as that? Wasn’t this one supposed to be smart, isn’t that why the brass wanted him so bad? How could he not notice something so obvious? Not used to good cooking, one of them suggests, and they all howl with laughter and start to rag on bland Amestrian cuisine for a minute, which, whatever, they can do whatever the fuck they want so long as they leave him out of it. 

Of course they don’t though. One of them pulls on one of his chains and he snarls, snarls louder when they pull harder. “Regarde moi,” the guard snarls back. 

They all know he understands them. His mistake. He should have realized the advantage he’d have if they thought he couldn’t string more than a where’s the bathroom together. Ah well. If wishes were horses, they'd end up as chimeras down here too. He doesn’t roll over—they’ve all driven that joke into the ground—just cranes his head over his sore right shoulder and bares his teeth up at them. He’s pretty sure that’s something he would have done as a human. It’s a mean comfort.

The nearest guard’s fangs dimple his lips when he smiles. He’s got old scars across his jaw and one cheek, like claw marks. Now there’s a fucking idea. The guard asks him if he’s stupid and barks laughter. 

“Stupid enough to get caught by you, I s’pose,” he says in Amestrian, because he doubts they can string even a where’s the bathroom together in his language. Either he’s wrong or they just don’t like his tone, because the guard yanks on his chain again. They’ve got him by the right arm and his shoulder throbs and threatens to pop out of the joint again. Fuck them, fuck the bastard who cut out his prosthetic clavicle, fuck the alchemists for not giving him a new one along with the leg they gave him, not like he wanted it but—fuck, fuck—

The guards laugh raucously above him. Fuck them. Fuck. Fuck. Ow.

“Regarde moi,” the guard says again, rattling the chain a little. Not enough to hurt, just enough to remind him who’s in charge. Ha. Like they ever give him a chance to forget. 

He glowers up at him and the guard asks if he really doesn’t know. “Sais quoi?” He grits out, exasperated. Just spit out whatever bullshit and leave him alone.

The other two guards are grinning too. The one on the left grins wolfishly, open mouthed with his too-thin tongue lolling. Must be the one not talking as much. 

The nearest guard yanks on his chain again and asks him what he thinks he’s been eating the whole time. He looks at him, baffled. What the hell did that—

Quicker than he can react the guard sticks his hand through the food slot and upends the bowl of mush in his face. He yelps, splutters, room temperature broth and soft meat clumps and cold potatoes and stringy gray vegetables spilling in his eyes and soaking his hair. He can’t see well enough to dodge the guard’s rough fingers, shoving something—meat, definitely meat—into his mouth. He bites down but the guard’s quicker; he only bites the meat, feels no satisfying—horrifying—crunch of bone. He swallows so he can snarl, but the guards all laugh and the nearest one says, “Tu as mangé du la chimère.”

He stares. They’re making even less sense than usual, and that’s saying something. He knows he fucking ate a chimera, he knows, he knows, he knows. Her name was Renée Poirier and she was a wolf like he’s a wolf, which is to say they aren’t wolves at all but they’re not human anymore either, and she’s not anything but past fucking tense because he killed her and ate her, and he killed her and ate her because the alchemists did—something—to him that made him want to kill and eat her. So what is this guard playing at?

“Je le sais,” he says, wary, flinching when the guards all laugh again.

“Non, non,” the other guard says, the one who doesn’t laugh like a dog. “Now.”

He shakes his head, not understanding—

—but he does. 

The lumps of meat on his chest, on the floor of his cage, in his stomach—they came from another chimera. Someone like him. A person. They’re feeding him people, they have been the whole time and he never knew, he never knew all this time he’s been eating—he’s been cannibalizing—

“No,” he whispers. “No. You’re lying—”

“Not a lie,” the second guard says, grinning crookedly. “All eat the same. Always.”

The guards bark laughter one last time and then finally, they leave. 

He shies away from the clumps of meat cooling in his cell, curls up tightly in as close to a corner as his chains allow. No, he thinks—begs. No. They’re lying. All this time, trapped down here in this freezing hell, weeks or months, his life sustained day after day by the other—no. No. It’s wrong. They’re lying. They have to be. Just another ugly trick. Please.

Time passes. The mush caught in his tangled hair cools and clots. Nothing fresh is brought, no one comes to bother him at all. He doesn’t eat no matter how much his stomach growls. They lied. He knows it’s a lie—but what if it’s not? What then? He gets so hungry. He’s so tired. But he can’t. He can’t eat. Someone will come for him. They have to find him. Soon. Please. S'il te plaît. They’re wrong. They lied. Please.

=

He hears the bitch before he smells her, and he smells her before he sees her standing in the open doorway of the narrow little room his cage is kept. He growls and doesn’t mind the purely animal sound that bubbles out of him. She’s the one who made him this. It’s her bite on his leg that made him this. 

The bitch sighs. “The guards say you are not eating.”

He growls louder, deeper, rolls onto his hands and knees—grinds his fangs together to keep his pained yelp unuttered when his left knee hits the cold metal too hard—and glares a challenge at her. He sets the scrap of humanity left to him aside, folds it up small and hides it away where she can’t set her teeth to it. She doesn’t deserve to see it when she’s the one who did this to him.

“You need to eat,” she says. Yeah, she would say that. Pretending like she cares about his well-being when she’s the one who tore him open to allow his humanity to bleed out. Look at him, he growls. Fucking look at this hobbled, toothsome thing he’s been reduced to. It’s all that’s left of the man he was, and it’s all. Her. Fault. Fuck her. She’s proud of what she did to him. Never said it plainly but he can smell it on her. Pride in a job well done. What a bitch.

“Fine,” she says. “Don’t eat. I don’t care. Die and be done with it.”

He cackles, high and shrill. “Yeah? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

She bares her teeth—too long, too sharp—in a humorless grin. “I would. My superiors would not, however. They have high hopes for you, Fullmetal.”

“That’s not my fucking name.”

“What horrid language. You never fail to disappoint.”

His skull grew faster than the rest of his face so he can’t really grin back, but whatever face he’s managing to make at her is a nasty thing if her own expression’s anything to go by. Then again she always has this look about her like she just stepped in dogshit. Maybe that’s just how the other alchemists put her back together, he doesn’t know. 

The bitch takes her left hand out of the pocket of her white coat. She’s got a syringe full of something clear, something slightly tinted green. He’s seen it twice before, but both times he was more animal than person, more eager to bite than to ask questions. This is the first time he’s been sane enough to wonder what the fuck it is.

“You need this,” she says. “You will die without it.”

He laughs, loud and barking, pitching higher into a howl that sets off the other wolves that aren’t wolves on this floor. He hears their manic fear mirroring his own and finds relief in it. He’s not the only one down here like this, this half-thing, this twisted up monster, this chimera full of teeth and fury hungry for the excuse to bite. He grins wolfishly, slitted eyes and bared fangs. “Fuck you,” he says, and finds gladness in the unhappy curl of her mouth.

“You’ll eat,” she says, brandishing the bowl of mush in her other hand that may or may not be chopped up people-chimera. “You’ll take this,” she says, brandishing the syringe so it catches the light spilling in from the hall. “ You’ll accept both or you’ll die.”

“Fuck you,” he says again. “Go take a flying fuck over the goddamn moon.”

Her snout—nose, she’s got a nose, she still looks human enough for a nose, she’s got better control than she does and fuck her for that too—wrinkles. She walks into the room and he snarls louder, feels hackles rise all down his spine, feels his bones creak and muscles strain. He doesn’t want to change but he fucking hates her enough to make the pain worth it. She closes the gap anyway, cold and confident and just out of reach of his paws—claws—whatever. She slides the bowl of mush over, just outside the narrow gap in the bars of his cage. She holds up the syringe, twists it between her fingers. Her fingernails—no, sharp enough to be called claws—tick and tap carefully against the glass.

“I mean it,” she says. “You need this. Every six days, the same as me. Seven days, you’ll start to go insane, almost as much as you did in the pit—” He flinches. She grins. Bitch. “Eight days, your body will start to tear itself apart. The shape you’re in? You won’t live nine days. This is not a threat. It’s fact.”

“Yeah?” Hard to talk with how long his teeth have gotten, how long his snout’s grown. He growls low and knows she’ll understand him. There’s a fine line between personhood and the monster she made him, and monsters can all understand each other just fine. “And I’m supposed to believe you?”

“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” she replies. “They’ll show you the truth of this, if you survive the pit.” 

He flinches. She grins. 

She pulls something out of the other pocket of her coat, a thin wooden shape with curving pale carvings. “You take your dose, or I get a guard to come in here and blow this.”

He squints at the wooden shape until it makes sense. It’s a whistle.

Le sifflet, the dark shape of the thing that used to be Renée Poirier whispers in his memory. His memory fractures, splintered by a high, thin scream of noise and pain that tore the scrap of his humanity, that last bit of him that can still call itself Edward Elric-Rockbell, out of the beast and left it to hang.

The bitch grins wider. 

He shakes his head, shrinking back until his spine is pressed painfully against the bars nearest the walls. “You’re lying.”

“Of course not,” she says. “The truth is far more useful.”

White grins in white spaces. Yeah. Isn’t it just.

“Tell me what’s in the syringe.”

“It’s necessary.”

“Fuck you. What’s in it? What’s it gonna do to me?”

She sighs impatiently. “Consider the fact that you are dying as we speak.”

[stupidinspadesconstantine]

Starter for @vulptexvenator​

[Continuing on from this here, with a small time jump]

John has made a mess of Renée’s carpet with all the chalk dust and he’s pretty sure that he will pay for that, but this will be worth the bollocking if it works like it should.

The foxes have been watching him rather bemused all this time as he’s traced out lines and symbols with the ground up chalk and herbs. It’s taken him days of research to work out what it was that Rip ate to trap him in his fox form and to locate the correct book with the reversal spell to free him from the substance’s effects. If Jonas was given the same thing whilst he was a captive of the hunters then hopefully he’ll have two former foxes sat in the middle of the circle. It would explain why Jonas hasn’t shifted back at all during the time he’s been here.

He has left some human clothes just outside the circle. Just a sweatshirt and trousers for Rip (lent to him by Chas so probably huge on Rip) and the same for Jonas, although these were taken from Geraldine’s wardrobe and the sweatshirt is pink with rabbits on it. It’ll have to do until something better can be found for both of them.

He sits cross-legged on the floor, resting the backs of his hands on his knees, palms up and index fingers touching thumbs, he tries to find his centre. He closes his eyes and lets his magic pool in the centre of his chest. He breathes.

“I call upon the man inside this creature. I call upon you to show your true form.”

“Adesto itaque homo, me auxilium contra irrumpentes spirituales nequitias, et fac victoriam.”

His eyes fly open, although John is barely aware because the spell is taking over its own working now. His eyeballs burn with magic and he catches a glimpse of his own reflection in the mirror on the dressing table opposite. His eyes literally appear to be on fire. It doesn’t hurt but it isn’t exactly a pleasant sensation either.

“I release you from your bonds. I return you to balance within yourself. I give you freedom once more.”

“Adesto itaque homo, me auxilium contra irrumpentes spirituales nequitias, et fac victoriam.”

The chalk and herbs are floating about an inch from the floor now and then they begin to whirl into a cyclone of bright gold magic. Finally the magic discharges itself into the foxes, and John feels the change in the air. The trapping force is gone. Rip can shift back now, but the spell needs a final push for security. John is tiring, but he holds up his hand towards the foxes.

“I call upon the man inside this creature. I call upon you to show your true form.”

And that is it. The final traces of the bonds of the substance is gone, John can feel it.

The light leaves John’s eyes, and he slumps sideways, just catching himself before he topples over. He clenches his eyes closed on the ache there and the sudden tiredness that using powerful revocation spells always produces. There is a metallic tang in the air that John knows signifies a spent magical force. The spell is done, and his eyes hurt. Tears spring up to relieve the ache and he blinks through them, trying to focus on whether there is a fox or a human in the room with him.

The larger blur is definitely pink, but the smaller blur still looks pretty fox coloured.

John sighs.

“Shit. I must have fucked up somehow. Sorry, mate. Just let me get my breath back and I’ll...” he feels a wave of dizziness wash over him. He has to take a deep breath and lean forwards, arms on his knees. “I’ll have another go.”

There is definitely something about doing spells on Rip that screws with his magic and makes all the after effects worse. This doesn’t happen normally.

[brightly-painted-canvas]

hey!!! i loved the hogwarts!au and i couldn't help myself. do you have more headcanons? like subjects they like the most or excel at? the "blood status" (muggle-born, half-blood or pure-blood)?? or the things the school remember them for (like i picture babe never being able to remember the password of their common room... bc chaos child)? thnks! it was GREAT!!

Hey! I’m finally getting back to you.

I’m always thinking about this au in the back of my mind so here are some other headcanons and replies to your questions:

- yes of course Babe forgets the password to the Gryffindor’s common room. He usually argues with the Fat Lady about knowing the password and just not remembering it right now until someone comes to the rescue (usually Bill Guarnere going ‘What the… Babe? Seriously? AGAIN?’ all the time)- once it was Malarkey’s turn to get the Hufflepuff’s sequence of taps on the barrels wrong (he was high on a sugar rush after a trip to Hogsmeade) which resulted in him, Skip and Penkala running around the basement corridors drenched in vinegar- talking about sweets: you wanna buy Liebgott’s silence? Give him chocolate frogs (procedure tested and approved countless times by George Luz)- favourite subjects: it’s no secret that most Slytherins excel in Potions, but Toye, Snafu and Hoosier are also top DADA students (and professor Speirs would never admit it not even under torture - except he maybe mentioned it to Lip one or a thousand times already - but deep down he’s proud of his little snakes);Sledge and Christenson are History of Magic maniacs, so much that professor Haldane already suggested them to pursue a career as historians and won’t shut up about their brilliance ever (and there’s just so much ‘I wish I could just adopt them’ talk Hillbilly can take before he attempts to strangle him with some dangerous plant he keeps in the greenhouse);everybody loves studying Cares of Magical Creatures mostly because everybody likes professor Lipton so much. Top students of this course are Tab, Bull and Webster (the latter mostly interested in aquatic creatures);everybody, on the contrary, hates professor Sobel with a passion and professor Sobel seems to reciprocate the sentiment. When first year students have their first flying lessons and come back with a month long suspension per person, you can hear principal Sink’s enraged “SOOOOBEEEEEEEEEL!” resonate all around the castle;once the students managed to lure professor Sobel inside the Forbidden Forest with the help of Luz’s favourite voice modifier spell, convincing him it was an order from minister of magic Horton. Sobel got chased out of the forest by the centaurs. Legendary.Transfiguration is not an easy subject, but professor Winters manages to keep it interesting and everyone is glad for it. It’s also common knowledge he might look stiff and serious but deep down he’s a softie who dotes on all his students equally;(your theory about professor Dike never showing to classes and the students predicting his absence all the time without fail? Brilliant. Perfect. Outstanding.)more under the cut!

- blood status: I haven’t thought much about it, but I think I’d love if the students where all mixed up and didn’t care one bit about their friends and classmates being muggle-born or half-blooded or pure-blooded… the common sentiment is ‘eh guys we’re all in this together: I don’t care if magic has been running in your family for ages or if your father is a muggle train conductor, if you got Potion notes you’re not sharing with the rest of us you still a hoe’;yes, even in Slytherin there are mixed-blooded students and no one gives a shit (especially because you wouldn’t mess with, say, Snafu mentioning he’s the son of a witch and a muggle or him and Liebgott would immediately swing their clubs at you) (you would also be hit with Lieb’s club if you called Webster a mud-blood so just… don’t) (rule number one: don’t be an asshole about blood status)- tiny digression about ships: Burgie falls in love with the school’s librarian the day he finds out he forgot to do his Ancient Runes homeworks and sprints to the library looking for cheat sheets Leckie has mentioned existing… he ends up without the cheat sheets (’Bob why the hell would you suggest me to get things that are in the restricted section? And how do you know what’s in there in the first place?’) but with a date;speaking about Leckie, he and Vera have been neighbours and friends since the day they were born but he never showed to her the letters and poems he’s written all through his life about how much he’s in love with her. Until one day Webster accidentally publish one of them on the school’s newspaper. Vera eventually figures everything out and they get together (Webster may be scarred for life by their first reactions at his mistake but no one really cares anyway);speaking of Webster, he and Liebgott have got the most excruciating and annoying ‘odi et amo’ kind of relationship the school can (or can’t, depending on opinions) handle: they’re always arguing, but they’re always together;the only other couple that match their weird display of affection are Sledge and Snafu… sometimes they get along perfectly well, some other times Eugene has to hide in the Gryffindor’s common room to escape Snafu’s teasing or absurd requests (’Look at ma eyes, Sledge! I’m dying!’ ‘Shut up Shelton, you just ate a weird flavoured Bertie Botts’ bean!’);everyone is convinced miss Lemaire (a part-Veela from Belgium) and ‘Doc’ Roe are a couple until at a Christmas dinner Renée invites her girlfriend. After confirmation that the nurse apprentice is single, everyone (but especially Guarnere and Buck) try to play matchmaker between him and Babe. It’s soon obvious that they are extremely difficult subjects to match (cute, oblivious and awkward being the main issues);there’s not really a ship going on between Lena and John, it’s just that John ships himself with Lena so much. He’s the ultimate fanboy (hope he succeeds in asking her out!);on nights when Nixon wanders around the school completely shitfaced, he usually talk to the castle’s ghosts about his unrequited crush on Richard Winters. On nights when Dick finds Nix sleeping on the floor of the main hall and has to drag him back to his room, the ghosts just shake their heads and go ‘unrequited love my long dead ass’;as an unwritten rule, it’s not allowed to talk about how professor Speirs and professor Lipton have been (legally!) married for years.As always, there are more to come!Let me know if you have other questions or requests :)

[lobsters-on-their-heads]

OB Rewatch: Guillotines Decide

Pretty sure I used this shot for my first watch review, as well. It’s just too good.

You can read my first watch review, in which I wonder about Delphine’s shirt and her purpose at Rachel’s hotel, here: https://lobsters-on-their-heads.tumblr.com/post/163602794911/guillotines-decide

I loved

Cozy domestic Cophine. We need more of that.

Delphine getting a compliment from Siobhan in front of four members of clone club, including Cosima.

Both shots of Delphine in the hallway

Dude. DUDEEEEE, check it out! Delphine has the same gray shoulder bag here that she has in the elevator scene with Rachel in 2x10.

Since we know she didn’t take it to the island with her, I like to think Cosima got it from her apartment or something and saved it. There’s a ficlet idea in there somewhere.

Felix seeing Cosima again for the first time since she got her cure.

Adele - “Are you gonna get dressed?”

Sarah - “I am dressed.”  #relatable 

Speaking of Adele, I love her calling out Sarah. “She's thinking about your brother. Are you?” Because of course Sarah can't be happy for Felix for a day.

Delphine and Felix – a pairing we need to see WAY more of, as well. “I don't know Felix, maybe it's because we are up to something.” Indeed.

This shot. Look at those puppy eyes:

Felix's transition from reacting to Sarah's news about Ferdinand to shoving her into the gallery. Because he was totally right, it wasn't the time to be talking about any of that shit.

I usually hate watching people in embarrassing or cringe-worthy positions, but I LOVED seeing Ferdinand when he realized the flashdrive was empty.

Siobhan being such a mom at Felix's art opening, cheering the loudest, taking pictures or videos or both. Siobhan is the perfect example of a supportive parent of queer kids.

I did love Felix's Galaxy of Women speech. (And here’s a shameless pitch for the fic named after it: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11836590 )

Siobhan, regarding Rachel, to Ferdinand, “She just.. wasn't that into you.”

The scene at the laptop, even without knowing that Tat wasn’t supposed to cry. (also interesting to note that it’s Delphine’s laptop, not Cosima’s)

I liked

Kira's shirt has a great message for a show about clones.

Nice to have Gracie saying “after they cut out her tongue,” as Helena scraped her butter knife against the edge of the plate. It’s the little details that make this show so great.

Donnie offering Ezra a glass of champagne and then, realizing he didn't have any more, offering his bearded companion a napkin.

So, the “You own me” line. I am totally okay with it ON THE CONDITION that these two have had a long conversation prior to this scene in which any “ownership” or “belonging” is completely, 100% mutual. Like, Delphine said something about Cosima owning her or some shit like that, so it's bidirectional. Otherwise, it's terrible phrasing considering Cosima's issues with ownership at Dyad.

“I smell Neo shit!” oh, Helena

I didn’t like

I didn't need the drawn out scene of a doctor sewing up Rachel's eye. She could have just as easily collapsed in front of the elevator, then woken up bandaged. It was gore for the sake of gore, not for any kind of character development.

The opening scene lacks any sort of cliff-hangey punch to lead up into the credits.

There was a editorial or directorial slip when Felix starts off talking to Cosima about why she can't come, whichall people will be there, and then “you can totally come later if you want,” and then SARAH answers, “I do wanna come.” Sarah, no one asked you.

And Gracie's still around. It would have been better to have the scene with her and Helena first, and then show Mark on the island AFTER Gracie tells Helena that he's dead.

Don't like Siobhan brushing Sarah aside, especially since it was, I believe, JUST last episode that Siobhan was getting ready to storm Dyad with a couple of hand guns. I mean, she finally does say, “You're right, we can't stand down,” but it's very dismissive.

I don't like the line “it made me sick to work with the man who killed MK.” Just rubs me the wrong way. Not the sentiment, but the placement. Up until that point, as far as the audience was concerned, Delphine might’ve had no idea MK ever existed. And anyway, Delphine had reason to hate Ferdinand without knowing about MK (though poor MK’s situation certainly ratchets up the hatred). Plus, it’s a character stating their feelings rather than showing them.

Hell-Wizard as DJ / rapper was... fine, I guess. It didn't excite me nor upset me, but it was interesting to see a guy who's a security guard / comics shop owner and is also a DJ. But then, we just don't know Hell-Wizard very well. I do think the little rapping set was just there because someone wanted to give Calwyn Shurgold some screen time. It did not do much for me.

Felix fucking interrupting Cophine. Can these two have an on-screen conversation that doesn't get cut short, please?

I really didn't like the extended, dramatic shot of Siobhan getting the flowers ready and writing the letter. Siobhan’s death would have carried a huge emotional impact no matter how they did it, but these scenes are just ham-fisted.

Other notes

Starting shot = closing shot

I'm not sure I would recognize a kid who looked just like my mom did at 11. Not immediately like Kira does. But then, Kira had a bit of a head's up, perhaps.

It must have been really amusing for Siobhan to hang out with Charlotte, even for a moment, having known Sarah at that age. I have a feeling it would have been a trick getting Sarah into pigtails like that, though.

Look at this living space:

Three lamps 

old school radio (seriously, I think my grandparents had that radio when I was born) (no wait - actually it's a record player, and I hope it's the same one from the yurt in 4x09 and that Delphine just fucking took it with her when she went to Sardinia / Geneva)

a mysterious wall-door

swoopy bookends

candles (obvs)

fucking peacock feathers. 

But I LOVE Delphine's outfit here. I love it more than what she wears to the art opening and more than most of what EBro wears to fancy events and photo shoots.

They MUST have fucked before this scene. There's no way in hell Delphine would be this calm about Cosima's touch and proximity unless that itch got good and scratched. (Also, shameless plug for my first ever fic, Talk to Me: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11697588 , which takes place the day before this scene)

I know Cosima's looking at Delphine's mug of tea or coffee or whatever, but she is ALSO looking at Delphine's crotch, and smiling.

Hilarious, if kind of odd, that Felix addressed Sarah and Siobhan as “North American Scum.”

They have 144 doses of the inoculate ready to go in this episode. Just for, like, future reference.

Delphine's boots go over her knees. Women's fashion confuses me. Her coat is hot, though.

Adele says “We spiked our Glühwein with vodka” like that isn't something Swiss people would also totally do. Okay, they might use amaretto or something instead, but whatever.

For just a hot second I thought that was René Auberjonois from Star Trek: DS9. It isn't.

Both a like and a dislike, so here: I thought the concept of the clone swap as part of the show was clever, and very tongue-in-cheek. I have no idea how he'd replicate that anywhere else, or if it's even worth trying, which makes it strange when Ezra says it'll work in New York. Also, Alison (the first clone we see in this little line up) is super awkward, and it was hard for me to watch again.

Felix, you know damn well how Cosima feels about being shoved in front of a group of people. At least this time she doesn't have to give a speech.

Rachel thinks that Ferdinand “really loved” her. How sad is that?

Gracie didn't deserve to die, but I'm not upset about losing her. I'm more upset that Helena had to witness another murder.

I have questions

Was Sarah not informed of Felix's return? Or did she just forget? His art gallery opening must have been advertised, so it's not like anyone was keeping his presence in the city a secret.

“We bought a shit mountain of cheese.” God bless Adele. I want her in more of my fic. Let me find a way to make that happen. However, could they really bring cheese so easily through customs? Or did Adele mean that they bought it AND ate it in Switzerland?

What the hell order of nuns is Sister Irina in?

I don't know much about gallery openings, but are they usually set up, like, a few hours before the actual opening? Especially considering that Felix JUST got back, and before he left that was entirely his apartment.

When and how did Delphine learn about MK's death? For that matter, how did she learn about MK? Did Felix fill her in in Switzerland?

Where will Delphine and Cosima put that painting that Delphine bought?

Van Lier says they're no longer taking direction from Mr. Westermoreland. Which leaves the question, who is in charge? Who are they taking direction from?

Where is Siobhan's backup? Where's Benjamin? Why doesn't she call in some people to help her deal with Ferdinand? Hell, why not tell Art? I can understand her not telling Sarah. Did she call Delphine to give HER a head's up? I mean, I guess Ferdinand doesn't know about the Rabbit Hole? But still, I feel like Ferdinand would be pretty keen on fucking up Delphine's shit, too.

I don't know much about gun shot wounds to the chest (left ventricle, specifically), but... can people really hold conversations after being shot that close range in the heart?

I would’ve liked to have seen

Everything I wrote in Talk to Me - Cophine talking about everything that happened. I want to see them talking afterwards, too, about everything. They love each other, let’s fucking show it.

Ferdinand and Delphine left the hotel room together. How did THAT little hallway trip go?

I need to know how the hell Felix and Colin got back in contact. They are NOT over things, and their last meeting certainly ended on a sour (and slippery) note.

MAJOR missed opportunity not showing us Delphine watching Cosima dance. She wouldn't have needed to be in the main shot – she could have just been off to the side, looking all happy and puppyish.

[bbclesmis]

The Telegraph: Dominic West: 'Colette's husband smoked and had sex three times a day – it makes our vegan times look dreary'

When Dominic West was cast opposite Keira Knightley in Colette, to play the limelight-stealing first husband of the not-yet-famous French novelist, it was during his stage run of Dangerous Liaisons at London’s Donmar, playing a wicked libertine of quite another époque.

“I tend to get villains these days,” West muses, sinking back affably in a hotel armchair. To viewers of the BBC’s new Les Misérables, the remark may seem puzzling: after all, it’s not the obsessive Javert he’s playing in that six-hour, song-free version of Victor Hugo’s novel, but Jean Valjean, one of the most unambiguous heroes in world literature.

The 49-year-old Yorkshireman admits it was a refreshing change – if probably a one-off – to be offered such a morally upstanding assignment. Willy in Colette and Valmont in Liaisons are more like bread-and-butter characters; throw in his small-screen infidelities in The Affair, which has one last season of grubby intrigue to shoot, and he’s the actor most likely to be glared at on the street as an incorrigible philanderer.

Beyond turpitude, though, he spots something else these parts have in common: we watch him outmanoeuvred by the women he assumed he could possess.

“That does seem to be a theme in my career – being matched by stronger women. Which is probably the theme of my life, too. I've got five sisters, and three daughters! I’m the go-to guy for playing the male foil, I suppose.”

When did this shift to bad guys occur, if it was even really a shift? “You reach certain waypoints in your career – well, I played lovers, and now I play villains, and dads! A while ago, I played Iago, Fred West and some other horror, all in the same year. I must have a funny look in my eye? I don't know what it is. But I suppose the Devil's always got the best lines. They're more interesting to play, really, especially if you can play against the evil.”

Colette is being marketed around Knightley, by and large. This seems eminently fair: as a writer and actress in turn-of-the-century Paris, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette spent way too much of her career living in the shadow of her ruthless, slave-driving publisher – also her husband, known to the world as “Willy” – to be co-credited on her own biopic with anyone else.

Still, it’s West who snuck his way into a BIFA nomination, for best supporting actor, while Knightley was crowded out. The film relies for nuance on his refusal to monster the character. He concedes that it’s not the most flattering role. “I had three different fat-suits and an appalling walrus moustache!” But in West’s hands, an odd sympathy emerges for Willy, despite all his terrible behaviour – locking Colette in an upstairs room to write, cheating on her incessantly, and eventually selling off the rights to her novels.

Show more

“I thought he was obviously an exciting guy to be around,” West says. “And a total shit, and a narcissist, and an exploiter. But she was with him because he was this incredible force of nature, really, and a sort of bon viveur catalyst to quite a lot of very good writers. I did, even at the end, have a sympathy for this Salieri figure, who realised, having been so famous, that he would only ever be remembered as Colette’s former husband. Which is ironic – no one's ever heard of him now. And if they have, that's the only reason.”

First hatched as an idea 15 years ago, Wash Westmoreland’s film has been an arduous one to get made. West mentions this slow gestation to explain how tentatively the dial moves, in terms of getting stories told about women’s creative achievements. Just five years ago, Knightley was essentially playing sidekick to Alan Turing in The Imitation Game; now it’s her turn to play the genius.

West sees it as “rather serendipitous” that so much discussion about women’s agency – not to mention male abuse – started to happen as the film got made. There’s a striking parallel, I point out, with the role Glenn Close plays in The Wife – as the true brains behind the operation in another literary marriage. “I bet that’s a commonplace story,” he agrees. “Misapplied acclaim. It’s interesting that George Eliot had to change her name to a man's to get published. But then, so did JK Rowling. Doesn't change much, does it?”

 As a true-blue fan of The Wire, I couldn’t possibly interview West without touching on his lead role in that series. You could argue David Simon’s Baltimore-set, 5-season HBO epic changed everything for the actor in 2002, but you’d be wrong, because it took about five years before anyone even saw it.

West, a dabbler in Hollywood back then, was deep into his “lovers” phase – he’d been an alcoholic boyfriend to Sandra Bullock in 28 Days, a jazz-age lothario shot dead by Renée Zellweger in Chicago, a caddish colleague to Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile. He was usually the debonair party animal you had to get out of the way so the film could carry on.

And then a tape he’d recorded as a joke fell into Simon’s hands. “It was just an astonishing piece of luck,” he reflects, “because in spite of myself, I landed the lead part in the best TV show of all time!”. This casting fluke lets him lampoon himself so perfectly it’s hard not to laugh. “I spent an awful lot of time trying to get out of it! I was always saying, ‘Oh gawd, not another season.’ Mainly because I was away from home, from my young daughter. And also because no one seemed to be watching it.”

Jimmy McNulty, an alcoholic cop struggling with child support and unstable relationships, was the show’s weary constant. West’s crumpled humility gave the show a relatable centre, but it finally paid him back: the slow-trickle recognition of Simon’s sensational achievement has let everyone involved live in its afterglow.

“I wouldn’t have watched it, had I not been in it,” West admits. “My daughter told me the other day, ‘Yeah, I watched it, it's very dated, dad.’ I don't think it is, though! It's been the gift that keeps on giving.” Michael B. Jordan, now a superstar after the Creed films and Black Panther, got his break there as a tragic 16-year-old drug dealer called Wallace. “I directed him in the last season, now he’s the king of Hollywood,” West remembers.

And there was Idris Elba, as kingpin-cum-politician Stringer Bell. “What happened to Idris? I don't know what happened to Idris. Has anyone heard of him since?! It was perfect. I think he knew it was perfect. He came in, blazed it, and got out. The rest of us felt slightly like journeymen, supporting these celebrity cameos.”

West socks over this kind of self-deprecation with reliable verve. He gallantly assumes it was his dancing, not Knightley’s, which led to a polka sequence being cut from Colette. “She’s pretty easy to spark off,” he says of his co-star. “And she's certainly easy to fall in love with. I had one particular scene where I'm in despair because she's leaving me, and that was a piece of cake.”

Colette was just a 19-year-old Burgundian country girl when she met Willy, 14 years her senior, and was swept off her feet. When West talks about their vigorous sex life, which branched out to multiple partners in Paris – and some they shared – there’s a hint of performative envy to his routine. “Considering what he drank and ate and smoked every day, he was also having sex three times a day. I mean, people did that, in those days. They make our vegan times look so dreary!”

Meanwhile, his approach to tackling the almost dauntingly virtuous Jean Valjean was to find the weakness in the man. “He's so obviously someone overcoming his shortcomings. Which is the only chance any of us get to be heroes. Quite apart from all the acrobatic saving of kids that he does, his great thing is redeeming his flaws, or his dark past.”

It’s an effort for us both not keep calling it Les Miz. Wasn’t he at all disappointed that he never got to belt out “Two-four-six-oh-OOOOONE!!” in his beefiest Old Etonian baritone?

“I was disappointed, but I think everyone else was relieved! I wondered where the songs were, actually. I kept trying to sing and they kept stopping me.”

Les Misérables continues on BBC One on Sunday at 9pm. Colette is out in UK cinemas from January 11 (x)

[sexydeathparty]

The Funniest Tweets From Parents This Week

Kids may say the darndest things, but parentstweet about them in the funniest ways. So each week, we round up the most hilarious quips from parents on Twitter to spread the joy.

Scroll down to read the latest batch, and follow @HPUKParents on Twitter for more!

Coaxing one piece of costume jewelry at a time off my toddler as she sighs and weeps like a disgraced aristocrat pawning her jewels to save the family estate

— Kaitlyn Greenidge (@surlybassey) January 31, 2022

4yo: Mom found this house and no one was home there, so we just went in. Him: You... just went in? 4yo: Yeah. Just looked around at their stuff. (A museum. I took them to a museum.)

— Renée Agatep (@GoingByRenee) January 29, 2022

I woke up, saw my toddler’s shadow, and predicted 6 more cups of coffee.

— Jessie (@mommajessiec) February 2, 2022

I told my 6 yo we were having sandwiches for dinner. He told me he did too much homework to be eating a sandwich for dinner. 💀💀💀🤣🤣😂

— Mom | Sleep & Wellness (@themultiplemom) February 2, 2022

Sorry I’m late for work. The sidewalks were lava again -my 5yo if she had a job

— Randi Lawson (@RandiLawson) February 2, 2022

I just want to have the confidence of my kid answering “I know, I know” before immediately forgetting what I just said.

— mark (@TheCatWhisprer) January 30, 2022

You can spend five minutes trying to fish the egg shell out of the pancake batter, or, and hear me out, you can leave it and tell your kids it’s good luck to get the pancake with the eggshell

— Real Life Mommy (@reallifemommy3) January 30, 2022

parenting is hard but so rewarding! like this morning I told my three year old “I love you honey” and she looked up at me with her sweet little face and said “I don’t love you. i only love daddy, and dinosaurs.”

— ely kreimendahl (@ElyKreimendahl) February 2, 2022

Parenthood is mostly wanting to sleep. But before you can, you have to make sure other people who never want to sleep fall asleep.

— A Bearer Of Dad News (@HomeWithPeanut) February 3, 2022

Babies love to sweep everything off the tray of their high chair onto the ground while yelling at everyone in sight, like tiny angry police captains from crime shows.

— NicholasG (@Dad_At_Law) February 1, 2022

*Joins Facebook moms group for support. Stays for the fights.

— MommyCocktail (@MommyCocktail) January 31, 2022

kids are oblivious to everything but let ‘em find a takeout bag in the trash: WHEN DID YOU GO TO MCDONALDS??????????

— LibertyLayne (@LibertyLayne01) February 3, 2022

“Why did I even have a birthday then?!” -my 5yo upon learning he would not immediately begin kindergarten

— uri5el (@zebrasyndicate) January 31, 2022

My son's friend took out the garbage for me because he "noticed it was full." Looks like I do have a favorite child.

— KJ (@IDontSpeakWhine) February 1, 2022

my kids, who HATE mushrooms, onions, and celery just ate the veggie pot pie i made chock-full of them… lesson number 156: kids are full of shit

— That Mom Tho (@mom_tho) January 30, 2022

When grandpa asked my 4yo what he wanted to be when he grew up, I was not expecting the answer to be “a cat”

— Kevin The Dad (@kevinthedad) January 30, 2022

My 14 yo just told me I was embarrassing her. We were the only two people in the room. Parenting achievement unlocked.

— Upside Dad (@UpsideDad) February 3, 2022

parenting involves spending a lot more on phone chargers than i had anticipated

— Vinod Chhaproo (@Chhapiness) February 1, 2022

My kids finding Cotton Eyed Joe on Alexa and declaring it a new favorite must be some karmic recalibration for my past life bullshit.

— CynicalTherapist (@CynicalTherapi1) February 2, 2022

7 told me today that my hair looks like I have "thousands of spiderwebs" coming out of my head, how's your day going?

— AparnaRC (@Wordesse) January 31, 2022

Parents be like, “No you can’t have candy for breakfast!” and then give them lucky charms instead. It’s my husband. He’s the parent.

— Satirical Mommy (@SatiricalMommy) January 31, 2022

I should have known I was in for a rough afternoon when my child described her drink as “too soggy.”

— Evangeline Provost (@evangeline_dawn) February 1, 2022

Child (10): Why do people like to eat chili in the winter? Child (8): Because they’re cold and then they can fill their blankets with farts.

— DonutHawk (@StruggleDisplay) February 3, 2022

can u believe its only 10:20a? this is to people w a child in their house

— Chelsea Peretti (@chelseaperetti) January 30, 2022

Related...

This 5-Minute Full-Body Workout Is Designed For Busy Parents

The Funniest Tweets From Parents This Week

These Drawings Capture The Magical, Fleeting Moments Of New Motherhood

from HuffPost UK - Athena2 - All Entries (Public) https://ift.tt/mpEsDgv via IFTTT

[easyfoodnetwork]

Inside David Chang’s New Memoir

David Chang on “Ugly Delicious” | Courtesy of Netfix

10 telling quotes from “Eat a Peach”

David Chang is one of the most influential restaurateurs of this century, a position he regards with no small amount of trepidation. And in Eat a Peach, Chang’s first memoir, the chef wrestles with his success as he chronicles his rise to prominence and the fame he’s experienced since. The beats of the book will be familiar to those who have followed Chang’s career, and much of it reads as if Chang is responding directly to those same people, critics included.

Chang gives the behind-the-scenes play by play for each of his restaurant openings, from growing pains at his first restaurant, the East Village’s Noodle Bar, to the “art project” that was fast-food, fried chicken restaurant Fuku, to his regrets around Momofuku’s critically panned Italian restaurant Nishi. He addresses his reputation for anger in the kitchen, the fallout from the shuttering of beloved food magazine Lucky Peach, and that time he reduced Bay Area cuisine to figs on a plate. He also lays out his struggles with mental health, including a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and examines the ways in which this fact of his life is linked to his mistakes as well as his undeniable ascent in the restaurant world.

Here are some of the highlights:

Eat a Peach is available now on Amazon and Bookshop.

On his management style at Noodle Bar:

“I didn’t know how to teach or lead this team, but I was getting good results. My method, if you can even call it that, was a dangerous, shortsighted combination of fear and fury. My staff was at the mercy of my emotional swings. One second, we were on top of the world. The next, I would be screaming and banging my fists on the counter. I sought out and thrived on conflict. My arrogance was in conflict with my insecurity. Our restaurant was in conflict with the world.”

“I never resolved any conflicts between staff. On the contrary, if I heard that two cooks weren’t getting along, I’d see to it that they worked together more closely. That was one surefire method, I told myself, to ensure the place had a pulse. You could feel our anger the second you walked through the door, and that was exactly how I wanted it.”

On developing the Momofuku style:

“Roll your eyes all you want. God knows it sounds clichéd. But at that time most chefs in America were giving their customers different food than they were eating themselves. What we ate after service was uglier, spicier, louder. Stuff you want to devour as you pound beer and wine with your friends. It was the off bits that nobody else wanted and the little secret pieces you saved for yourself as a reward for slogging it out in a sweaty kitchen for sixteen hours. It’s the stuff we didn’t trust the dining public to order or understand: a crispy fritter made from pig’s head, garnished with pickled cherries; thin slices of country ham with a coffee-infused mayo inspired by Southern redeye gravy. My favorite breakthrough never made the cookbook: whipped tofu with tapioca folded in, topped with a fat pile of uni. So fresh, so cold, so clean, and so far outside of our own comfort zone. There were so many ideas on the menu that we’d never seen or tried before. The only unifying thread was that we were nervous about every single dish we served.”

On success:

“The only benefit to tying your identity, happiness, well-being and self-worth to your business is that you never stop thinking about it or worrying over what’s around the corner. If I have been quick to adapt to the changing restaurant landscape, it is because I have viewed it as a literal matter of survival. I have never allowed myself to coast or believed that I deserve for life to get easier with success. That’s where hubris comes from. The worst version of me was the one who, as a preteen, thought he had what it took to be a pro golfer. I believed my own hype and was a snotty little shit about it. The humiliation and pain of having it all slip through my fingers is something I’d rather never feel again. And so, I choose not to hear compliments or allow myself to bask in positive feedback. Instead, I spend every day imagining the many ways in which the wheels might fall off.”

On the demise of Lucky Peach:

“For anybody who thinks I didn’t feel a responsibility to the magazine, or that Lucky Peach wasn’t tied into the very heart of my own identity, let me explain something to you. To this day, it’s still something journalists ask me.

“You know what the name Momofuku means?

“It means ‘lucky peach.’”

On embracing his role as chef and restaurateur:

“All I ever wanted was to be normal, to think normal. I’m not a naturally loquacious person. I’m not outgoing or inclined to be a leader. I’m a wallflower. It’s been like that since I was a kid. For the majority of my life I was somewhere between ashamed and afraid of my Koreanness. I wanted not to be me, which is why drugs — both illicit and prescribed — appeal to me.

“The restaurants changed all of that. When I started Momofuku, I killed the version of me that didn’t want to stick his neck out or take chances. Even at its earliest larval stages, when it was more theory than restaurant, Momofuku was about carving out some sort of identity for myself. It would be my way of rejecting what the tea leaves said about me.

“Work made me a different person. Work saved my life.”

On rage and his diagnosis of bipolar disorder with “affective dysregulation” of emotions:

“Dr. Eliot describes it as a temporary state of psychosis. I can’t tell friend from foe. It’s as though I’m seeing the world in different colors and I can’t switch my vision back. It doesn’t only happen at work, either. I will lose it at home, which is horrifying. I lose all sense of what’s real and wish the worst on people I love most. My wife, Grace, tells me that when I’m angry, I seethe with such intensity that it can’t simply be emotional. It’s like I’m an animal registering dagner. There are times when Grace and I will be arguing and she’ll plead, ‘Hey, I’m on your side, I’m on your side.’ It will take hours for me to hear her.”

“I hate that the anger has become my calling card. With friends, family, my co-workers, and the media, my name has come to be synonymous with rage. I’ve never been proud of it, and I wish I could convey to you how hard I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve been entrenched in a war with my anger for many years.”

On his place in the world:

“‘What the hell is going on?’

“I call my friends and ask this all the time. They’ve heard me complain over and over that I have a problem accepting reality, because there’s no way I deserve the kind of good fortune I’ve had. I used to call it imposter syndrome, but now I understand it better as survivor’s guilt. All these people around me have died — literally and figuratively — and I’m still here. It truly feels like surviving a plane crash.”

On his first restaurant flop:

“I was on the verge of getting back on my feet after a very bad year, but the reviews of Nishi knocked me flat on my back again. I’m hesitant to admit this, but having to live through it a second time when The New Yorker published its profile of Wells put me in a bleak state of mind. I’m embarrassed that I let criticism affect me so intensely, but I felt closer to suicide in that periodthan I had in years.”

On being a part of the boys’ club:

“I’m literally one of the poster children for the kitchen patriarchy. In 2013, Time magazine put a photo of me, René Redzepi and Alex Atala wearing chef whites and satisfied smirks on the cover of their magazine and called us ‘The Gods of Food.’ I didn’t question whether any women would be included in the issue’s roundup of the most important chefs in the world because frankly it never occurred to me to ask. Even years before #MeToo started in earnest, the backlash to the all-male lineup was swift and deserved.

“At the time, I thought the point was about representation: there should be more women chefs covered by the food media, just as there should be more people of color. But no, we’re talking about something much more vicious. It’s not just about the glass ceiling or equal opportunity. It’s about people being threatened, undermined, abused, and ashamed in the workplace. It’s embarrassing to admit how long it took me to grasp that.”

On blindspots:

“Even this book, written with the benefit of greater knowledge and better perspective, is still riddled with problems. I’ve talked a great deal about the importance of failure as a learning tool, but it’s really a privilege to expect people to let us fail over and over again. There are too many dudes in my story in general, and you can still see my bro-ish excitement when I tell old war stories. Almost all the artists and writers I mention are men, and most of the movies I reference can be found in the DVD library of any frat house in America. It’s my truth, which is why I’m leaving them in here, but I wish that some of it were different.”

Disclosure: David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2RaDQMs https://ift.tt/3hhFoPk

David Chang on “Ugly Delicious” | Courtesy of Netfix

10 telling quotes from “Eat a Peach”

David Chang is one of the most influential restaurateurs of this century, a position he regards with no small amount of trepidation. And in Eat a Peach, Chang’s first memoir, the chef wrestles with his success as he chronicles his rise to prominence and the fame he’s experienced since. The beats of the book will be familiar to those who have followed Chang’s career, and much of it reads as if Chang is responding directly to those same people, critics included.

Chang gives the behind-the-scenes play by play for each of his restaurant openings, from growing pains at his first restaurant, the East Village’s Noodle Bar, to the “art project” that was fast-food, fried chicken restaurant Fuku, to his regrets around Momofuku’s critically panned Italian restaurant Nishi. He addresses his reputation for anger in the kitchen, the fallout from the shuttering of beloved food magazine Lucky Peach, and that time he reduced Bay Area cuisine to figs on a plate. He also lays out his struggles with mental health, including a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and examines the ways in which this fact of his life is linked to his mistakes as well as his undeniable ascent in the restaurant world.

Here are some of the highlights:

Eat a Peach is available now on Amazon and Bookshop.

On his management style at Noodle Bar:

“I didn’t know how to teach or lead this team, but I was getting good results. My method, if you can even call it that, was a dangerous, shortsighted combination of fear and fury. My staff was at the mercy of my emotional swings. One second, we were on top of the world. The next, I would be screaming and banging my fists on the counter. I sought out and thrived on conflict. My arrogance was in conflict with my insecurity. Our restaurant was in conflict with the world.”

“I never resolved any conflicts between staff. On the contrary, if I heard that two cooks weren’t getting along, I’d see to it that they worked together more closely. That was one surefire method, I told myself, to ensure the place had a pulse. You could feel our anger the second you walked through the door, and that was exactly how I wanted it.”

On developing the Momofuku style:

“Roll your eyes all you want. God knows it sounds clichéd. But at that time most chefs in America were giving their customers different food than they were eating themselves. What we ate after service was uglier, spicier, louder. Stuff you want to devour as you pound beer and wine with your friends. It was the off bits that nobody else wanted and the little secret pieces you saved for yourself as a reward for slogging it out in a sweaty kitchen for sixteen hours. It’s the stuff we didn’t trust the dining public to order or understand: a crispy fritter made from pig’s head, garnished with pickled cherries; thin slices of country ham with a coffee-infused mayo inspired by Southern redeye gravy. My favorite breakthrough never made the cookbook: whipped tofu with tapioca folded in, topped with a fat pile of uni. So fresh, so cold, so clean, and so far outside of our own comfort zone. There were so many ideas on the menu that we’d never seen or tried before. The only unifying thread was that we were nervous about every single dish we served.”

On success:

“The only benefit to tying your identity, happiness, well-being and self-worth to your business is that you never stop thinking about it or worrying over what’s around the corner. If I have been quick to adapt to the changing restaurant landscape, it is because I have viewed it as a literal matter of survival. I have never allowed myself to coast or believed that I deserve for life to get easier with success. That’s where hubris comes from. The worst version of me was the one who, as a preteen, thought he had what it took to be a pro golfer. I believed my own hype and was a snotty little shit about it. The humiliation and pain of having it all slip through my fingers is something I’d rather never feel again. And so, I choose not to hear compliments or allow myself to bask in positive feedback. Instead, I spend every day imagining the many ways in which the wheels might fall off.”

On the demise of Lucky Peach:

“For anybody who thinks I didn’t feel a responsibility to the magazine, or that Lucky Peach wasn’t tied into the very heart of my own identity, let me explain something to you. To this day, it’s still something journalists ask me.

“You know what the name Momofuku means?

“It means ‘lucky peach.’”

On embracing his role as chef and restaurateur:

“All I ever wanted was to be normal, to think normal. I’m not a naturally loquacious person. I’m not outgoing or inclined to be a leader. I’m a wallflower. It’s been like that since I was a kid. For the majority of my life I was somewhere between ashamed and afraid of my Koreanness. I wanted not to be me, which is why drugs — both illicit and prescribed — appeal to me.

“The restaurants changed all of that. When I started Momofuku, I killed the version of me that didn’t want to stick his neck out or take chances. Even at its earliest larval stages, when it was more theory than restaurant, Momofuku was about carving out some sort of identity for myself. It would be my way of rejecting what the tea leaves said about me.

“Work made me a different person. Work saved my life.”

On rage and his diagnosis of bipolar disorder with “affective dysregulation” of emotions:

“Dr. Eliot describes it as a temporary state of psychosis. I can’t tell friend from foe. It’s as though I’m seeing the world in different colors and I can’t switch my vision back. It doesn’t only happen at work, either. I will lose it at home, which is horrifying. I lose all sense of what’s real and wish the worst on people I love most. My wife, Grace, tells me that when I’m angry, I seethe with such intensity that it can’t simply be emotional. It’s like I’m an animal registering dagner. There are times when Grace and I will be arguing and she’ll plead, ‘Hey, I’m on your side, I’m on your side.’ It will take hours for me to hear her.”

“I hate that the anger has become my calling card. With friends, family, my co-workers, and the media, my name has come to be synonymous with rage. I’ve never been proud of it, and I wish I could convey to you how hard I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve been entrenched in a war with my anger for many years.”

On his place in the world:

“‘What the hell is going on?’

“I call my friends and ask this all the time. They’ve heard me complain over and over that I have a problem accepting reality, because there’s no way I deserve the kind of good fortune I’ve had. I used to call it imposter syndrome, but now I understand it better as survivor’s guilt. All these people around me have died — literally and figuratively — and I’m still here. It truly feels like surviving a plane crash.”

On his first restaurant flop:

“I was on the verge of getting back on my feet after a very bad year, but the reviews of Nishi knocked me flat on my back again. I’m hesitant to admit this, but having to live through it a second time when The New Yorker published its profile of Wells put me in a bleak state of mind. I’m embarrassed that I let criticism affect me so intensely, but I felt closer to suicide in that periodthan I had in years.”

On being a part of the boys’ club:

“I’m literally one of the poster children for the kitchen patriarchy. In 2013, Time magazine put a photo of me, René Redzepi and Alex Atala wearing chef whites and satisfied smirks on the cover of their magazine and called us ‘The Gods of Food.’ I didn’t question whether any women would be included in the issue’s roundup of the most important chefs in the world because frankly it never occurred to me to ask. Even years before #MeToo started in earnest, the backlash to the all-male lineup was swift and deserved.

“At the time, I thought the point was about representation: there should be more women chefs covered by the food media, just as there should be more people of color. But no, we’re talking about something much more vicious. It’s not just about the glass ceiling or equal opportunity. It’s about people being threatened, undermined, abused, and ashamed in the workplace. It’s embarrassing to admit how long it took me to grasp that.”

On blindspots:

“Even this book, written with the benefit of greater knowledge and better perspective, is still riddled with problems. I’ve talked a great deal about the importance of failure as a learning tool, but it’s really a privilege to expect people to let us fail over and over again. There are too many dudes in my story in general, and you can still see my bro-ish excitement when I tell old war stories. Almost all the artists and writers I mention are men, and most of the movies I reference can be found in the DVD library of any frat house in America. It’s my truth, which is why I’m leaving them in here, but I wish that some of it were different.”

Disclosure: David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2RaDQMs via Blogger https://ift.tt/3m9eNHM

[purplesurveys]

229

What are you doing to improve or maintain your health currently? Well my scoliosis is getting worse by the day, so I keep myself from slouching and being in any position that strains the part of my spine that bends. Gabie also lent me an anti-slouching thing that I have to wear and tighten around my shoulders and back. It has nothing to do with scolio, but it helps tons. ^To add to that, what are some other things you could be doing? The doctor I went to before suggested swimming laps, but I’ve never done that ever since I had the checkup. I also want to get a second X-ray checked since I’m positive my spine has gotten worse since May 2016. How much do you currently weigh? It’s usually in the 87-95 lbs range. How much do you want to weigh? I’m okay with that, even if it’s underweight.

Do you ever look at someone's social media posts and feel a little jealous? Yeah, a little. But it’s envious, not jealous.

^If so, why is that? They have all these luxuries and get to go to all these places and I’m stuck at home with a mom that routinely yells at me. Idk but for me those social media posts are a bit of a trigger so I mute those people for a bit until they’re done. What book(s) are you currently reading? None. What chores did you do today? It’s pretty early in the day and I haven’t even gotten out of bed yet. What chores do you need to do? The only thing I’m in charge of is wash my own dishes so I’ll be doing that once or twice today. What are you wearing currently? A blouse and some shorts. Do you like how your hair looks today? It’s just bed hair. It’s alright. Are you on a diet? Nope. List 10 of the prettiest people you know or have met. Gabie, Michelle, Gabe, Ate Nica, Ate Jane, Audrey, Gabie, Gabie, Gabie, and Gabie? List 10 favorite girl's names. Isabela, Renée, Olivia, Arden, Audrey, Mia, Ava, Charlotte, Noelle, Harper. We’re going out of bounds here but Paulette, Lily, and Julianna are all lovely too. List 10 favorite boy's names. Joaquin, Franco, Miguel, Luis, Gabriel, Pio, Santi, Javier, Lorenzo, Matteo. Do you think you are attractive? I think I’m okay, but I’m not gonna go ahead and call myself attractive... Do you have anyone you can trust? Of course. What are some things you plan to do tomorrow? I said yes to a Christmas party tomorrow so I’ll be there, but before that I’ll stop by the mall to pick up Gabie’s gift. She’s been wanting Life Is Strange, so I coordinated with her dad in secret–he’ll be getting her a new PS4, and I’ll take care of her first video game on it. :) Are you behind on things? Usually on gossip, yeah. Do you take time to rest? More than anything. HAHAHA What health problem are you struggling with currently? Mental health and scoliosis.

What does your heart long for? Right now it just wants a long-ass Christmas break just hibernating in my room. No plans, no outings, no interruptions. What are you learning? I’ve recently learned that I increasingly hate the holiday season with every year that passes. Do you take life day by day? Only when I’m at my worst and have to keep a daily progress/track of myself. Otherwise, I’m too impatient for taking things day by day. Have you been struggling with bitterness lately? Not at all, there’s nothing to be bitter about. Do you have a lot of questions? As a journalism major? You bet. Is it snowing where you live? No and it never has. Do you watch the snow fall? I totally would if it snowed here. List 10 fashion trends you like. Too much work. List 10 fashion trends you dislike. See above. I don’t even actually remember enough trends to make a list of 20, so. Are you ready for Jesus to come back? I’m not Christian and I really don’t like celebrating Christmas. Do you believe that Jesus lived and is returning? I believe in neither. What's your current favorite Bible verse? None of them. When was the last time you went to church? Two weeks ago. I got to skip last week’s since I was being initiated for my org and I had never felt so free. Are you spiritual? No. Have you ever experienced anything supernatural? Like one small instance in my aunt’s house once, but as I said in my previous surveys I like to think it was just my grandfather fooling around with the door. Do you believe in spiritual gifts? No. Do you believe in callings? No. If so, do you know what your call is? Nothing religious, definitely. What superpower do you wish you had? Time travel is all I desire in this brief lifetime. What superpowers, if any, DO you have? I can whip up a 5-6 page essay assignment in 30 minutes to an hour depending on how much I know about it. I can also procrastinate every single pending thing on the last evening and turn it from chicken shit to chicken salad, but college has since taught me it’s SOOOOOO much better to do everything earlier, so that’s a superpower I haven’t been using much. Do you have too much clutter in your home? No, my mom hates clutter more than anything. Have you ever tried weed? No. Have you ever considered smoking pot and then decided not to? Never considered it even once. It just never seemed appealing to me so I never bothered with it, simple as that. Have you ever smoked a cigarette? Never. Now that I strongly dislike, since I have my own experiences from it. If you were rich, would you get a professional photoshoot done? Absolutely. I can be extra sometimes too. Do you own slipper socks? Nope. What's your favorite Christmas carol to hear playing when you're shopping? Anything by Michael Bublé, really. Do you stalk anyone on Facebook? I don’t. Stalking just feels weird to me, especially if it’s a stranger or a relative of someone I know. Have you ever completed a 30 day photo challenge? No but I used to do the themed 30-day challenges when they used to be a thing on Tumblr like seven years ago. Have you ever taken a photo every day for a year? No. I should probably do that. ^If not, would you ever want to try that? Totally. Have you ever thought about what your new year's resolution will be yet? I don’t do resolutions. I can always start on a new habit tomorrow if I wanted to. Do you get enough exercise? I get zero exercise. Are jeggings your favorite pants? Never had a pair but they sound kind of uncomfortable to me, being that I hate leggings. Do you have way too many photos stored on your computer? No. I actually make it a point to not put photos or videos or anything on my laptop since I don’t want it to become to full and then slow down and have it die. I only have school stuff on my Mac so like PDF files, Word files, e-books and all that boringness. Do you take a lot of selfies? I took an average of 0 selfies this 2017, that should tell you something. What is something that's a mystery to you? The rest of the universe. Do you have any painful memories? My entire life has been just an accummulation of painful memories. Do you pray? No.

In what social class are you? I guess I’m in the middle. In what social class to you wish to be? Indifference. Do you ever imagine that you are English royalty? HAHAHAHA yeah on a sucky day I like to think I’m secretly one then they’d whisk me away from everything and I never had to worry about a thing again. Do you have any English ancestry in you? Zero English blood. What is the origin of your last name? It’s Spanish and Portuguese. What is the meaning of your first name? It means bright and shining.

^Whatever it is, do you feel that it fits you? Other people can answer that for me. Do you ever multi-task? Yes. Are you multi-tasking right now Nope.

[brianwnemeth]

How things work out.

I love that feeling of fear in the throat. No being in control in situations that could be deadly; my life not in my hands thrills me. Such as the taking off and landing of a plane, being over 900 feet in the air in a small elevator climbing upwards, and free falling. That sense of fear when I cannot not govern the decisions on life and death is almost empowering.

But this story is of another type of fear.

Last week, I was in Paris for about 8 days. It was a lovely time. But that first night was a bit frightening, or rather that next morning. In fact that night before was great. Landed smoothly, headed to the hotel, unpacked, and went out for duck and wine and beef tartar. Then back to the hotel (I don’t sleep on planes) took a nap, woke up, ate crepes and hit the streets of Paris all night drinking and eating while making new friends. As I lay back in my hotel bed, although a very small room with a toilet I had to sit sideways on, I thought my first night in Paris couldn’t have been better. That shit was splendid but what happened morning time was shit.

I set an alarm and woke up around 8am a little groggy. Stretching and yawning and tasting copper dryness in my mouth I pulled back the sheets. Stroked my legs while sitting up and felt a pinch on my ankle, a quick scratch handled that and I motioned out of bed. But then I stopped. I returned my hand back my left leg and sense a few uneasy bumps where I scratched. I looked down and under my ankle saw a bed bug.

A bed bug.

For me, the sense of fear and dread and disappointed all hit at once. I didn’t touch the sheets, I left everything as it were, took a picture and got clothed. I went down to the front desk explained what happened and the head of housekeeping came to inspect. She said no words to me, looked at the little red criminal who had been feasting on me and carefully rolled it into a napkin, then walked out of the room. At this moment I knew I had been slightly defeated. I was going to be a bit off the rest of the trip knowing these minuscule vampires would be getting at me at night in bed and in my psych during the day. After a few minutes of not hearing anything from reception I went downstairs and was met with sincere apologies. I was offered free breakfast and was asked to wait while they cleaned the room. Not wanting the same room I asked if they could move me to something else. They obliged. But was told that I needed to wait until those guests checked out and the room was cleaned before they could accommodate me. So I went out all morning until mid-afternoon still feeling that cognitive itch all over my body and wondering what slab on skin would be eaten next.

When I did arrive back at the hotel, I was given a room on the first floor. Sort of disappointed being so close to the reception and bar area, I just wanted to get into the room and inspect it myself. When I first opened the door I went straight for the bed taking off the sheets and looking along all the seams of the mattress, nothing. When I finally reassured myself everything was okay, I looked up and saw how stunning my new room was.

It had a balcony that overlooked a fountain, and a beautiful large bathroom with a tub peering at gorgeous windows that opened up into a court yard. This room was a mini piece of Paris all to myself. It wasn’t a hotel room anymore, but a scene from a René-Xavier Prinet painting. Damn, I was happy as fuck.

And having to deal with a bed beg and a few following nights dreaming about them got me here. So it all worked out, fear and all.

[easyfoodnetwork]

David Chang on “Ugly Delicious” | Courtesy of Netfix 10 telling quotes from “Eat a Peach” David Chang is one of the most influential restaurateurs of this century, a position he regards with no small amount of trepidation. And in Eat a Peach, Chang’s first memoir, the chef wrestles with his success as he chronicles his rise to prominence and the fame he’s experienced since. The beats of the book will be familiar to those who have followed Chang’s career, and much of it reads as if Chang is responding directly to those same people, critics included. Chang gives the behind-the-scenes play by play for each of his restaurant openings, from growing pains at his first restaurant, the East Village’s Noodle Bar, to the “art project” that was fast-food, fried chicken restaurant Fuku, to his regrets around Momofuku’s critically panned Italian restaurant Nishi. He addresses his reputation for anger in the kitchen, the fallout from the shuttering of beloved food magazine Lucky Peach, and that time he reduced Bay Area cuisine to figs on a plate. He also lays out his struggles with mental health, including a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and examines the ways in which this fact of his life is linked to his mistakes as well as his undeniable ascent in the restaurant world. Here are some of the highlights: Eat a Peach is available now on Amazon and Bookshop. On his management style at Noodle Bar: “I didn’t know how to teach or lead this team, but I was getting good results. My method, if you can even call it that, was a dangerous, shortsighted combination of fear and fury. My staff was at the mercy of my emotional swings. One second, we were on top of the world. The next, I would be screaming and banging my fists on the counter. I sought out and thrived on conflict. My arrogance was in conflict with my insecurity. Our restaurant was in conflict with the world.” “I never resolved any conflicts between staff. On the contrary, if I heard that two cooks weren’t getting along, I’d see to it that they worked together more closely. That was one surefire method, I told myself, to ensure the place had a pulse. You could feel our anger the second you walked through the door, and that was exactly how I wanted it.” On developing the Momofuku style: “Roll your eyes all you want. God knows it sounds clichéd. But at that time most chefs in America were giving their customers different food than they were eating themselves. What we ate after service was uglier, spicier, louder. Stuff you want to devour as you pound beer and wine with your friends. It was the off bits that nobody else wanted and the little secret pieces you saved for yourself as a reward for slogging it out in a sweaty kitchen for sixteen hours. It’s the stuff we didn’t trust the dining public to order or understand: a crispy fritter made from pig’s head, garnished with pickled cherries; thin slices of country ham with a coffee-infused mayo inspired by Southern redeye gravy. My favorite breakthrough never made the cookbook: whipped tofu with tapioca folded in, topped with a fat pile of uni. So fresh, so cold, so clean, and so far outside of our own comfort zone. There were so many ideas on the menu that we’d never seen or tried before. The only unifying thread was that we were nervous about every single dish we served.” On success: “The only benefit to tying your identity, happiness, well-being and self-worth to your business is that you never stop thinking about it or worrying over what’s around the corner. If I have been quick to adapt to the changing restaurant landscape, it is because I have viewed it as a literal matter of survival. I have never allowed myself to coast or believed that I deserve for life to get easier with success. That’s where hubris comes from. The worst version of me was the one who, as a preteen, thought he had what it took to be a pro golfer. I believed my own hype and was a snotty little shit about it. The humiliation and pain of having it all slip through my fingers is something I’d rather never feel again. And so, I choose not to hear compliments or allow myself to bask in positive feedback. Instead, I spend every day imagining the many ways in which the wheels might fall off.” On the demise of Lucky Peach: “For anybody who thinks I didn’t feel a responsibility to the magazine, or that Lucky Peach wasn’t tied into the very heart of my own identity, let me explain something to you. To this day, it’s still something journalists ask me. “You know what the name Momofuku means? “It means ‘lucky peach.’” On embracing his role as chef and restaurateur: “All I ever wanted was to be normal, to think normal. I’m not a naturally loquacious person. I’m not outgoing or inclined to be a leader. I’m a wallflower. It’s been like that since I was a kid. For the majority of my life I was somewhere between ashamed and afraid of my Koreanness. I wanted not to be me, which is why drugs — both illicit and prescribed — appeal to me. “The restaurants changed all of that. When I started Momofuku, I killed the version of me that didn’t want to stick his neck out or take chances. Even at its earliest larval stages, when it was more theory than restaurant, Momofuku was about carving out some sort of identity for myself. It would be my way of rejecting what the tea leaves said about me. “Work made me a different person. Work saved my life.” On rage and his diagnosis of bipolar disorder with “affective dysregulation” of emotions: “Dr. Eliot describes it as a temporary state of psychosis. I can’t tell friend from foe. It’s as though I’m seeing the world in different colors and I can’t switch my vision back. It doesn’t only happen at work, either. I will lose it at home, which is horrifying. I lose all sense of what’s real and wish the worst on people I love most. My wife, Grace, tells me that when I’m angry, I seethe with such intensity that it can’t simply be emotional. It’s like I’m an animal registering dagner. There are times when Grace and I will be arguing and she’ll plead, ‘Hey, I’m on your side, I’m on your side.’ It will take hours for me to hear her.” “I hate that the anger has become my calling card. With friends, family, my co-workers, and the media, my name has come to be synonymous with rage. I’ve never been proud of it, and I wish I could convey to you how hard I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve been entrenched in a war with my anger for many years.” On his place in the world: “‘What the hell is going on?’ “I call my friends and ask this all the time. They’ve heard me complain over and over that I have a problem accepting reality, because there’s no way I deserve the kind of good fortune I’ve had. I used to call it imposter syndrome, but now I understand it better as survivor’s guilt. All these people around me have died — literally and figuratively — and I’m still here. It truly feels like surviving a plane crash.” On his first restaurant flop: “I was on the verge of getting back on my feet after a very bad year, but the reviews of Nishi knocked me flat on my back again. I’m hesitant to admit this, but having to live through it a second time when The New Yorker published its profile of Wells put me in a bleak state of mind. I’m embarrassed that I let criticism affect me so intensely, but I felt closer to suicide in that periodthan I had in years.” On being a part of the boys’ club: “I’m literally one of the poster children for the kitchen patriarchy. In 2013, Time magazine put a photo of me, René Redzepi and Alex Atala wearing chef whites and satisfied smirks on the cover of their magazine and called us ‘The Gods of Food.’ I didn’t question whether any women would be included in the issue’s roundup of the most important chefs in the world because frankly it never occurred to me to ask. Even years before #MeToo started in earnest, the backlash to the all-male lineup was swift and deserved. “At the time, I thought the point was about representation: there should be more women chefs covered by the food media, just as there should be more people of color. But no, we’re talking about something much more vicious. It’s not just about the glass ceiling or equal opportunity. It’s about people being threatened, undermined, abused, and ashamed in the workplace. It’s embarrassing to admit how long it took me to grasp that.” On blindspots: “Even this book, written with the benefit of greater knowledge and better perspective, is still riddled with problems. I’ve talked a great deal about the importance of failure as a learning tool, but it’s really a privilege to expect people to let us fail over and over again. There are too many dudes in my story in general, and you can still see my bro-ish excitement when I tell old war stories. Almost all the artists and writers I mention are men, and most of the movies I reference can be found in the DVD library of any frat house in America. It’s my truth, which is why I’m leaving them in here, but I wish that some of it were different.” Disclosure: David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2RaDQMs

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/09/inside-david-changs-new-memoir.html