#masterchef contestant reader

[drvscarlett]

Let him cook

Charles Leclerc x Masterchef contestant!reader

Series Part: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

A/N: Got this idea because the masterchef trophy is similar to the Australian GP trophy. This is going to be a series

Charles_Leclerc posted a new photo

liked by CarlosSainz55, PierreGasly, and 365,000 others.

Charles_Leclerc Add professional chef to the list

User1 aint no way you cooked this

User2 nice try Charles but we all saw that pasta video

CarlosSainz55 mate drop the # of the private chef you hired, these look delicious

Charles_Leclerc I told you that I made this myself CarlosSainz55 Lies!!!!

PierreGasly since when did you learn how to make coq au vin???

Charles_Leclerc not you too PierreGasly you should invite me sometimes so I can judge your cooking

Y/NCooks posted a photo

YNCooks last date night before i enter masterchef australia. credits to the boyfriend for the lovely photos

Friend1 Y/N i know this is your dream for a while now. I hope you win. We will cheer for you our next masterchef australia!

YNCooks awww stop! ur making me cry

User1 OMG she is finally competing, goodluck Y/N!

User2 Y/N always talk about how its her dream to enter masterchef, I'm gonna watch it everyday and hope she wins it!

User3 Goodluck Y/N! I hope you become the next masterchef australia!!!

Mystery Box challenge episode

There was a building reputation in the kitchen that you are one of the strong homecooks of the season. After winning the past 2 mystery challenges, you were extremely determined to do well and seek for a third streak. The mystery box today was all about italian cooking, a cuisine that you have been comfortable due to the close ties of your boyfriend being signed to an Italian team.

"And what do we have here with you today Miss Y/N" Matt Preston asked as he approached the work table together with George Colambris "You seem rather comfortable and in your own zone. Its like an ordinary Tuesday date night"

You gave a small chuckle with that mention "That's actually pretty on point of you to say as Tuesday is my date night with the boyfriend"

"Ah so maybe that's why you are so inspired because you are in love"George teased.

"Well I have to admit that there is a little pressure to do well in this challenge or my boyfriend's family will get mad at me"you quipped back a reply.

The judges suddenly leaned a little interested to learn more about your personal life, "So your boyfriend is italian?"

"He is not but he might as well be. He spends a lot of time there"

"It must be hard to not see him a lot since you are here competing" Matt says

"It's a price we are willing to pay. He has been supportive of my dream as I am with him" you gave an encouraging smile as you continue to chop the sweet potatoes.

"We hope to meet that boyfriend of yours because he is one lucky man because that dish looks delicious!" George says before they left the station.

Somewhere in Bahrain, Charles Leclerc is grinning upon watching the replay of the episode. He was beyond proud of what you have achieved as a contestant in MasterChef. He wished that he could do more to express his support towards you but you have an agreement with him to keep things lowkey for the meantime. It was a reasonable decision as he didn't want to overshadow your career but it was nice to know that you two are a private thing but never a secret.

He was so engrossed to repeating the boyfriend clip that he didn't notice that Carlos snuck up beside him.

"What are you watching there?" Carlos asked his teammate

"Oh its nothing" Charles says as he immediately exited the Youtube app "I didn't notice you there, you scared me"

"If you weren't too into your phone then you would have noticed me calling you" Carlos explained "What are you watching on your phone that got you smiling like that?"

"Nothing, I just saw an ad"

"Hmm sure an ad" Carlos was pretty sure that Charles was watching MasterChef but he couldn't care anymore to ask which country because there was too many so he decided to just let it go "Cmon Fred is asking for us, were late for a meeting"

"Carlos! Why didn't you start with that?"

Cake challenge

You were exhausted because you spent the early hours of the morning watching the Jeddah GP. It was a thrilling race to see Charles bag his first podium of the season so you can say that its worth it. Besides, you were able to talk to him after the race so it sweetens the deal even more.

Filming begun for MasterChef and the judges brought out balloons for the mystery box challenge.

"Your challenge today is to make the most imaginative and creative birthday cake that you ever had" Gary explained "The pantry is filled with all the cake flavors you can ever imagine so be creative and show us what you've got"

Baking has never been your strongest suit. It was all about precision and measurements as small increments can make a huge difference. Today, you were determined to do well and you wanted to use the podium finish of Charles for the cake.

It was a struggle to bake the cake, cool it, and pipe it in under 60 minutes. You felt the pressure getting under your nerves as your hands started shaking when you were piping the cake details with 10 minutes left. There was a sigh of relief when you finished just 5 seconds away from the judges calling the time.

There were plenty of beautiful cakes in the room so it was a shocker for you that the judges called you in front to present your cake.

"Judges what I have for you today is a three layer cake with the raspberry,almond, and pistachio with chocolate to seperate the layers and a lemon buttercream frosting."

"You told us you can't bake, that seems like a lie" George says as he cuts through the cake "Look at that layers"

"The layers are actually inspired by the italian flag, its an homage to the boyfriend. Its actually a cake that I made thinking about him" you explained.

"That is simply gorgeous. The cake is very moist and the balance with the flavors is that its not too sweet or nothing overpowering. Your boyfriend is a lucky lucky lucky man to be baked a cake like this" George complimented.

"Does your boyfriend cook?"Matt asked as he took a bite

"Oh God no. I have to cook or else the kitchen will be on fire"you laughed "But I can't drive so maybe that's his payback"

"You seem to show the beautiful dynamics of your relationship when you cook something inspired by him. I wish you two the best" Matt's genuine comment was a heartwarming moment.

Its unfortunate that you didn't win this challenge but you were able to showcase your support for your boyfriend.

Melbourne GP meets MasterChef

This was another challenge as you were elected as a team captain for the second team challenge. You were extremely nervous when you were transported with your team mates from the blue kitchen to an unknown location. It was even more nerve-wracking after you've realized where you are.

"Welcome to the Albert Park where the Australian Grand Prix is underway for this weekend" Matt introduced "Your challenge is to prepare two dishes: a pasta and a fish dish to be served to the talented drivers in Formula 2"

There was a little sigh of relief as you were dealing with the Formula 2 drivers. It was a lot of weight on the shoulder if you will be serving food to your boyfriend.

"The practice sessions will be starting in a few minutes. You have 90 minutes to prepare your dish and an hour to serve them"

All you know was that you started organizing the team to put them in charge of the dishes that you will be making today. You cross your fingers that the color red brings luck to your team today.

Meanwhile, the paddock was buzzing with cameras and Charles immediately noticed that there were some new film crews around the Formula 2 drivers. His eyes did a double take after he recognized the face of three familiar judges he often sees on MasterChef Australia.

"What's going on? Isn't that MasterChef Australia judges?" Charles quizzed

"That's MasterChef Australia, they have this team challenges and they will be feeding the Formula 2 drivers" Silvia answered as she was informed earlier that morning about the extra exposure in the paddock today.

"Why Formula 2? Why not us?" Charles whined

"If you want then you could go ask Ollie for food" Silvia suggested

That sets a lightbulb moment for Charles as he excused himself to talk to the young driver. He will not miss the opportunity to taste the cooking of his secret girlfriend and support her in doing her craft.

It puzzled Ollie Bearman to see that Charles has been looking for him once the practice session was over. He was even more confused by his request.

"So you want me to get you food?" Ollie asked "Doesn't Ferrari have a catering?"

"Its not just food, its the MasterChef Australia food" Charles explained without giving out too much information "I just love the show okay?"

"You can come along, I'm sure they don't mind" Even better.

So here is why you were genuinely surprised to see that Charles Leclerc is walking inside the MasterChef tent with a red and blue plate in his hand. He was grinning wildly as if he was a kid on a sugar rush.

"Ohmygod we are serving food to Charles Leclerc!" one of your teammates whispered.

"Hi goodafternoon! What's the dish for today?" he asked politely.

"Well we have a pan fried cod with a pea puree and then some green grapes some fennel over there and then for the pasta lemon ricotta and beet tortellini" you answered as the team captain "We hope that its up your liking"

Charles gave you that smile that seems to light up the whole room, "I look forward to it, thanks!"

Its moments like this that you wish that you could reach out for him but you understand that its not yet the time. Its nice to see the support that you have for each other even though its all in private and away from the eyes of the media.

"Goodluck on your race Charles!"

There was a smile on both of your faces as you both continued to go chase your dreams.

[missimaginx]

CARBONARA | KA12

pairing: kimi antonelli x f!girlfriend!brazilian!reader

plot: where kimi is a bit too much of a perfectionist when it comes to cooking.

warnings: narrated in first person (reader’s pov); female reader; brazilian/non-italian reader; pre-established relationship; Kimi being a little too obsessed with Italian cuisine; possible grammatical errors; english is not my first language :).

a/n: images taken from pinterest. this has been in my drafts for weeks 🙃 i didn't know if i wanted to post it or not, but I'm so happy with kimi’s pole 🥹 so i hope you like it. i got the whole recipe from the internet and yes, it's definitely different from the brazilian one, so i apologize if something is wrong or completely irrelevant 😘 (wc: 1k)

remembering that this is just fiction, all the people portrayed here have their own personalities and their own relationships.

The kitchen clock showed a little past five in the afternoon when Kimi announced, with all the seriousness in the world, that today he was the chef. And not just that—he was going to teach me how to make the real carbonara, “the ceal way,” his words, not mine.

And of course, I said yes. Not just because I loved carbonara too — even though I grew up with the Brazilian version that used heavy cream — but also because watching Kimi being all meticulous in the kitchen was a show in itself.

By that point, the Antonellis’ kitchen was a complete mess. Not a war-zone kind of mess, but a domestic, adorable chaos, where flour, grated cheese, and scattered peppercorns shared space with dirty spoons, a chopping board, and… Kimi. The very spirit of an Italian chef chasing a fifth Michelin star embodied in an eighteen-year-old boy who looked like he was taking this as seriously as he would a race weekend qualifying.

I was leaning against the kitchen counter, wearing a red apron with white polka dots that made me look like a 1950s housewife, watching Kimi move around the kitchen with the same agility and precision he had on a racetrack. But instead of finding the best racing line, squeezing the most out of the car, and managing tire wear, Kimi Antonelli was wearing a blue polka-dotted apron—matching mine, obviously—while choosing ingredients, repeating the recipe to himself every five minutes to make sure he didn’t forget anything, and slicing the bacon with almost comical precision.

“Now you,” he said, handing me the knife. “Same thickness and size.”

“Yes, chef.” I replied, straightening up and mimicking the same tone the contestants on cooking reality shows used.

I lowered the knife onto the slab of bacon, slicing my first cube under Kimi’s watchful gaze.

“That’s crooked,” Kimi murmured automatically, hands behind his back like a MasterChef judge, leaning in to examine my cutting board.

“You’re joking,” I looked at him, mock-offended. “I’m pretty sure I know how to cut bacon,” I muttered, turning back to the board and slicing another piece.

Beside me, Kimi gasped. He actually gasped. Like I had just sliced off one of his fingers or something. I looked at him and saw the most shocked and horrified expression I’d ever seen on his face. Well… maybe not the most. His reaction when I once told him it’s common in Brazil to put ketchup on pizza was still worthy of a horror movie.

Slowly, like he was about to disarm a bomb, Kimi reached out and took the knife from me. Still visibly shaken.

And I didn’t know whether to feel offended or burst out laughing.

“First, let’s start with the basics,” he said, sliding the cutting board closer to him… and further from me. “It’s guanciale, not bacon.” He pointed out, seriously… deadly serious… staring straight into my soul.

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing and just nodded, trying to match his seriousness.

“And second… this is terribilmente crooked,” Kimi said, pointing with the knife at the only two pieces of ba— guanciale I had cut. “It needs to be the perfect size and thickness so it doesn’t burn, but still gets crispy,” he explained, going back to cutting with the same intense focus as before… and officially taking over my task.

“You said I could help,” I muttered, crossing my arms and narrowing my eyes at him.

Kimi finished slicing the guanciale cubes in seconds. Practice really does make perfect. And as much as I hated to admit it, I could tell that two of the pieces were slightly uneven and larger than the rest… but only if you really squinted.

He picked up the board with the cubes and used the knife to slide them into the hot skillet… looking even more like a renowned, skilled and smug chef.

“I also said that if you wanted, you could just stand there… looking all gorgeous and perfect while watching,” Kimi said, flashing me that smile he knew exactly what it did to me. That cute smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and made me forget everything.

I felt my traitorous cheeks heat up and my heart race. The butterflies in my stomach came to life, and I tried my best not to show any of it.

“But I want to help,” I answered, keeping my expression as serious as I could.

Kimi saw what I was doing… and also saw I was failing miserably, because he just kept smiling and stepped closer, bending slightly to reduce the height difference between us, bringing his face closer to mine and… giving me a quick kiss on the lips, completely catching me off guard.

“You look so cute when you pout…” he murmured, brushing our noses together and smiling again…

God, that smile.

His scent…

Focus, Y/N!

I shook my head quickly, trying to ignore how fast my heart was pounding in my ears and how suddenly weak my knees felt.

“Kimi!” I protested, pushing him away, but he didn’t even flinch. He just laughed and stepped back on his own.

“Alright, alright,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender with a playful look on his face. “Come on, you can take care of the guanciale.”

Kimi handed me the spoon he was using to stir the guanciale in the pan. I took it and smiled triumphantly, making him laugh. I moved closer to the stove and was instantly hit by the delicious smell of the meat frying perfectly in the skillet.

“Alright,” Kimi murmured, positioning himself behind me. His chest against my back. The warmth of his body against mine. He placed his hand over mine on the spoon, and for a second, the slight jolt from his touch almost made me drop it. “Are you sure you still want to help?” he whispered in my ear, then chuckled softly.

That teasing tone — even laced with that voice — snapped me back to reality.

“I’m sure.”

Kimi chuckled lowly and placed a quick, sweet kiss near the shell of my ear as a truce. I smiled, satisfied, and focused on my task. The meat sizzled in the pan, turning golden, and the smell was almost too good to be true. Kimi guided my hand, showing me how to stir the guanciale properly, and once my amateur technique seemed to finally meet his standards, he stepped back just enough to let me take over — but stayed close enough that I could still feel his warmth… and his eyes on me.

“Now, we can turn off the stove and let the residual heat do the rest,” Kimi said, and I turned the knob, extinguishing the flame. “And now, we move on to the sauce.”

I stayed there, watching every detail he pointed out. He explained how the fat from the guanciale would be used in the sauce, how the residual heat from the pasta would cook the egg yolk and cheese mixture… And then he stopped everything, grabbed a little box from the back of the fridge, and looked at me seriously.

“Special cheese?” I asked, curious, stepping closer.

“Family secret,” he replied proudly.

I raised an eyebrow, crossing my arms, intrigued.

“Family secret?”

Kimi nodded, unwrapping a piece of cheese carefully covered in parchment paper.

“Parmigiano is great. Pecorino, perfect. But this one…” He held up the cheese like he was presenting a sacred relic. “It’s a special, artisanal type.”

I stepped closer, fascinated. “And you’re just showing me? Your family’s secret?”

“Of course. You’re going to be part of it.” He said, as if it were obvious.

As if I’d asked something like “is the sky blue?”

As if us was a certainty.

And hearing that made me freeze for a second. My heart stopped. And then, of course, took off like it was racing off the grid.

Kimi blinked, realizing what he’d just said. His face turned as red as a tomato. His hand went up to scratch his neck and almost dropped the cheese.

“I mean… one day… if you want, like, someday, no pressure, you know? Not that I’m—”

I stepped closer, got on my tiptoes, and kissed his cheek, cutting him off.

“Then I better learn this right, don’t you think?” I smiled, making no effort to hide the heart eyes I probably had. “If I’m going to be part of the Antonelli family, I can’t mess up the family recipe.”

Kimi looked at me for a second, surprised by my response… and then smiled. A tender, half-relieved, half-in-love smile. The kind that melts away every doubt in the air.

We finished the recipe together. Kimi guided me as we mixed the yolks with the cheese and pasta water until it became that silky, golden cream. We tossed it with the pasta — al dente, of course — and topped it with the crispy, glistening guanciale. A final sprinkle of the secret cheese, and it was done.

We sat on the back porch with two deep plates and two glasses of red wine he’d discreetly “borrowed” from his dad’s cellar. The golden hour light bathed everything in a warm glow. Kimi still insisted on repeating three more times that this was real carbonara. I just laughed, shook my head, and told him fine — but deep down, I already knew.

This might not have been the carbonara my mom used to make.

But it was definitely my favorite now.

Because of the taste, of course.

And also because of the chef’s smile beside me.

[marsplastic13]

'Complicated' (Part 2) - Kaz Brekker x reader

Idea - Kaz Brekker hires a prostitute to overcome his touch aversion, and be a better man for Inej, but things take an unxepected turn.

Pairing: Kaz Brekker x Prostitute!Reader, (had to use y/n because I'm bad at names)

Genre: modern AU, slow burn

word count: 5.5k

notes: please let me know what you think <3

Finally, a couple of days later, Inej arrived in Ketterdam. Kaz waited for her at the harbor, hoping she would throw herself into his arms and that he could finally hug her tightly. Instead, their greetings were far more reserved, though her wide smile still managed to warm him up in seconds.

She had many people to see, so they didn’t have the chance to be alone until late at night. When they finally had a moment together, they settled on his couch to watch a movie. Kaz desperately wanted to show her the progress he had made, but he felt a familiar sense of hesitation.

After battling with himself, he finally removed his gloves, meeting her surprised gaze as he slowly reached for her hand. Inej's eyes lit up, and Kaz couldn't suppress a small, satisfied smile.

During those days, they managed to stay closer than they had ever been before. Inej divided her time between her place and his, and their evenings together became a cherished routine.

One night, they watched the Masterchef finale on his bed. Inej lay with her head in his lap, and Kaz gently caressed her hair. y/n had been right— Inej was loving it. Kaz didn’t think much about y/n, except occasionally when he caught her Instagram stories. He had considered writing to her to comment on the winner of the cooking competition, as they had both been rooting for the same contestant. Kaz had his phone in his hand, while the other was scratching Inej’s head. She made a satisfied hum, closing her eyes, distracting Kaz from his thoughts about y/n. He tossed the phone away, focusing entirely on Inej.

A few days later, Kaz received a notification of a picture from y/n. It was a photo of different shades of nail polishes. He chuckled, circled the one he liked, and sent the picture back. “What’s that smile?” Inej asked, surprised, from the other side of the table where they were having lunch.

“Jesper sent a stupid thing,” Kaz lied effortlessly, though not without a pang of guilt. He felt a momentary sense of relief that Inej hadn't probed further, but the guilt lingered, gnawing at the edges of his contentment.

Kaz couldn't escape the irony of his situation. Here he was, trying to overcome his touch aversion with a prostitute, someone paid to be physically close to him, while desperately wanting to be intimate with Inej, who was going around the world saving girls from being sold as prostitutes. The contradiction gnawed at him, twisting his gut every time he thought about it. How could he reconcile these two opposing realities?

Inej had dedicated her life to freeing those trapped in the same circumstances that had led Kaz to y/n. She was a beacon of hope, a relentless force for good, while Kaz's actions seemed to undercut everything she stood for. The more he pondered this, the deeper his guilt grew. It wasn't just about the physical interactions with y/n; it was about what those interactions represented. He was using someone else to cope with his trauma, someone who might have been in a position similar to the girls Inej fought so hard to save.

Kaz found himself replaying his conversations with y/n. She had been understanding, patient, even kind. They had laughed together, and she had helped him in ways he hadn't thought possible. Yet every time he saw Inej's face, radiant with purpose and conviction, he felt like a fraud. How could he face her, knowing the truth?

***

Inej found out about the chocolate and wine tasting thing and thought it would be hilarious to go to make fun of the people there. They were enjoying the experience, their laughter a shared secret, when he spotted y/n entering the restaurant, her arm wrapped around a guy. It was the same guy from the club—the one she had said she stopped seeing because they weren't compatible.

As she scanned the room, y/n's eyes locked with Kaz's. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, hoping she wouldn’t approach. But she did, her face a mix of shock and recognition. She made her way to their table, her expression quickly morphing into an enthusiastic smile.

"I'm so sorry to bother you, I'm such a fan! I watch all of your TikToks," she said to Inej, her voice bright and sincere.

Inej stood up, her smile as warm as ever. "Thank you! It's always nice to meet a fan," she replied, extending her hand.

They chatted for a bit, with y/n telling Inej how her videos had inspired her to take up pilates, which was only half-true. y/n had actually taken up the sport because, as she had once humorously told Kaz, a client had requested an intricate position, that she accurately acted out for him, that resulted in her pulling a few muscles, forcing her to stay in bed for days.

"Can you take a picture of us?" y/n asked, handing her phone to Kaz. His heart pounded as he took the phone, trying to maintain a neutral expression. As he snapped the photo, his eyes fell on y/n’s hand resting on Inej’s shoulder, her nails painted the color he had chosen. It took all his self-control not to react.

"There you are, always running around with this one," said the guy, approaching them and wrapping his arm around y/n’s waist. "Baby, that's Inej Ghafa!"

"Oh right, the girl you yap about all day?" he laughed, pulling her close.

"I don't yap," she pouted playfully.

"Sure you don't," he said, kissing her pout.

Kaz couldn’t figure out what he was feeling. He wondered how much time they were spending together and didn't like how carelessly the guy was able to kiss her. He wondered if she still tasted like cherries.

"I'm sorry for the interruption," y/n said, pulling away from the kiss. "It was really nice to meet you, Inej."

They walked back to their table, the guy's hand slipping from her waist to rest on her ass, guiding her to her seat. Kaz's jaw tightened, and he forced himself to look away. The rest of the evening was uneventful, and fortunately, y/n and her companion were out of his sight.

As Kaz and Inej returned to their conversation, his thoughts kept drifting back to y/n. The guilt gnawed at him, and he couldn't help but wonder how Inej would react if she knew the truth. Would she understand his reasons, or would she see it as a betrayal? The irony of his situation was inescapable—trying to overcome his touch aversion with a prostitute, while being with someone who fought against the very thing he was exploiting.

***

A few days later, Inej had to leave again, promising to return in a few months. Kaz stood at the harbor, watching her ship prepare to depart. He managed to brush his lips against hers for the briefest moment, and she smiled widely at him, her eyes full of warmth and promise. That smile stayed with him, a bittersweet memory as he watched the ship sail away.

Each time Inej left, Kaz felt an embarrassingly deep sense of loss, a hollowness that settled in his chest. Jesper, ever the loyal friend, had to break into his house just to convince him to show up at work. It had become a routine, a cycle of anticipation, brief happiness, and then the inevitable slump into solitude.

During the weeks Inej had been with him, Kaz had experienced a closeness he hadn't thought possible. They had shared quiet moments on his couch, watched movies, and even engaged in playful banter about the contestants on Masterchef. It was during those moments, when he held her hand without gloves or caressed her hair as she rested her head in his lap, that he realized just how far he had come. But it also made him think about all the things he still wanted to try, the progress he wanted to make.

The weeks with Inej had stirred something in him, a desire to push further, to explore more. He wanted to test the boundaries of his progress, to see if he could translate the tentative intimacy he had shared with Inej into something more confident. So, he decided to book y/n for the first free time she had.

***

“Hello, lovebird,” she smirked as she opened the door, making him enter her room. “How was girlfriend-time?”

Kaz rolled his eyes at the nickname but couldn't help the small smile tugging at his lips. “Fine.”

“Anything interesting to tell?” she asked, sitting on the bed and patting the space next to her. Kaz hesitated for a moment before joining her.

“Well, uh, I held her hand, scratched her head like you suggested, thanks for that. And we kissed.” He felt a bit guilty discussing these intimate moments so casually, as if they were just part of his homework.

Her eyes sparkled with intrigue. “Let's talk about this kiss,” she said, leaning in closer. Out of habit, she climbed onto his lap, her arms bare and exposed. Kaz hesitated, unsure of where to place his hands, before slowly resting them on her covered thighs.

“Well, it was fast and light,” he admitted, feeling the familiar awkwardness settle in.

“Don't minimize it, Kaz! It's wonderful! Bet you got all sorts of ideas,” she grinned, nudging his nose with hers playfully.

“Kind of,” he laughed nervously, the warmth of her proximity making him slightly more at ease.

“So? What do you want to do next?” she asked, her voice softening as she sensed his unease.

“I was thinking of sticking with making kisses bearable, and then, since summer is coming, it’s time for more skin exposure.” It still felt strange to talk about these things as if they were just mechanical actions, devoid of the emotional weight they carried.

“Rock my world, Brekker,” y/n murmured as she rested her head on his bicep. The position was perfect for a kiss, her head angled just right. Kaz leaned in, brushing their lips together. He repeated the motion several times, leaning in, pulling back, lingering a second longer each time.

"You're cute when you're focused," she commented, making him shake his head and laugh nervously. Kaz could feel her breath on his mouth, and it felt oddly normal. He wanted to deepen the kiss but felt embarrassed, so he moved to her cheek instead.

“Can you… can you kiss… me?” he stammered, feeling the prolonged contact start to make him dizzy. They swapped positions, and Kaz found himself resting his head on her lap. “Stop me whenever you want,” she said before kissing his forehead.

Kaz released a shaky breath, nothing ever feeling better than that small kiss. y/n continued, leaving a trail of tender kisses around his face. “This is so sweet I could cry,” she whispered at a certain point.

“Please don’t,” he laughed, blushing.

He felt particularly good, encouraged by everything he had managed to do with Inej and ready to push his boundaries further. y/n passed her hand through his neatly combed hair, raising his head to kiss the corner of his lips. Kaz felt the familiar anxiety rise, but his starved body craved more, so he didn’t move. He stood still as she kissed his full lips, but he stopped her hand before she could cup his face.

Kaz held her hand to his chest as if it were as his life depended on it while she urged him to deepen the kiss. He forced himself to let her in, feeling her tongue searching for his. His body tensed, but she murmured against his lips, “Breathe, Kaz.”

He took her advice, trying to steady himself. When their tongues touched, he felt a wave of nausea, but she was quick, distracting him with her hand still in his hair. y/n kept teasing him, never fully kissing him. His body was torn between fear and newfound desire. At some point, he couldn't take it anymore. Kaz tangled his hands into her hair and pulled her in for a deep kiss. He let himself feel their tongues sliding against each other. In that moment, the entire building could go up in flames and he would have preferred staying there, burning alive, instead of leaving her mouth. Her cherry lip balm was intoxicating. 

He felt her hands on his chest and cursed himself for not being able to telepathically tell her to let her hands slip to his neck and pull him closer. The kiss went on, and he was unable to let go, feeling as though he could drown but nothing bad would happen as long as her lips were on his. A small moan escaped her mouth, and Kaz was pulled back into reality so violently that he had to get up.

He grounded himself by pacing around, releasing heavy breaths. “That… was a great kiss,” she commented, nodding. Kaz was unsure if she was talking to him or to herself. 

Kaz stopped pacing and leaned against the wall, trying to regain his composure. The intensity of the kiss had left him shaken but also strangely satisfied. He looked at y/n, who was still sitting on the bed, her lips slightly swollen from their kiss. He couldn’t help but wonder what Inej would think of all this, but he pushed the thought aside, focusing on the progress he had made.

Only in that moment did Kaz realize how his body had reacted to the kiss, feeling his face change shade with embarrassment. “Well, must've been good even for you,” y/n remarked, letting her eyes linger on him. “Come on, there's no need to be ashamed. It's natural,” she shrugged, offering a reassuring smile.

“I'm not... uhm, used to this,” Kaz admitted, sitting in a chair far from her and avoiding her gaze.

“I am, so don't worry, lov— Kaz,” she corrected herself, sensing his discomfort.

He continued to blush, silently praying for his body to calm down. “We have some more time, can we just... talk?” he asked, trying to shift the focus away from the lingering awkwardness.

The girl nodded, seeming relaxed as she settled back into the chair. “So, you're back with that guy?” Kaz asked casually, hoping to steer the conversation into more neutral territory.

She wrinkled her nose. “I just wanted to eat chocolate, drink wine, and have sex,” she shrugged nonchalantly. “I mean, he couldn't make me come even if his life depended on it, but his—”

Kaz interrupted her quickly, feeling uncomfortable with where the conversation was heading. “y/n, oversharing,” he remarked with a hint of exasperation.

“Sorry, sorry,” she snorted, realizing her misstep.

“Why do you keep going out with him?”

“Not everyone finds the love of their life on the first try, Kaz,” she replied with a shrug. “Some of us have to go on bad dates and have bad sex.”

Kaz never explicitly thought of Inej as the love of his life, but he had never entertained thoughts about anyone else either. The idea of her potentially leaving him someday made his stomach sink, a feeling he wasn't accustomed to.

“See you Wednesday?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant despite the knot in his stomach.

“I haven't told you? A client is taking me away for a week,” she replied, a mischievous grin spreading across her face. “He has, like, a lawyer conference or something. Can't fucking wait. Five-star hotel and all. He's promised me spa treatments, fancy dinners, and shopping. It's going to be awesome.”

Kaz studied her smile, suddenly realizing that she probably had some form of relationship not just with him, but with other clients as well. The thought unsettled him deeply, stirring a mix of jealousy and discomfort he hadn't anticipated. He couldn't shake the image of her with other men, indulging in luxurious trips and intimate moments, all while maintaining a professional demeanor.

Deciding it was time to go, he stood up abruptly. His mind was racing with conflicted thoughts—feelings of possessiveness he hadn't known he harbored, mixed with a stark reminder that their interactions were transactional at their core. As he made his way to the door, he struggled to maintain his composure, his gaze lingering on her for a moment longer than intended.

***

Kaz kept watching her Instagram stories, each post depicting scenes of luxury and leisure—tanning by a pool, sipping cocktails at parties, early morning runs at sunrise, and romantic beach strolls at sunset. It baffled him why he felt such a surge of anger. They didn't know each other well; she never shared personal details. Yet, there he was, on a lonely Sunday night, a bottle of alcohol his only companion, staring at another picture of her in a stunning dress against a breathtaking backdrop.

The alcohol only fueled his frustration. How could she just leave, especially when he felt they were making progress? In a moment of impulse, he opened his banking app and took a screenshot of a money transfer ready to be confirmed—3000 kruge. 'Come back?' he typed beneath the screenshot, hesitating momentarily before hitting send.

The next morning, the hangover hit him hard, along with the realization of what he had done. Regret flooded in as he replayed the scene in his mind. Sending money felt like a desperate move, one that exposed his vulnerability more than he was comfortable admitting.

Throughout the day, he constantly checked his phone, hoping for a response that didn't come. He cursed himself for acting on impulse, for letting his emotions drive him to such a reckless gesture. Deep down, he knew it wasn't about the money—it was about wanting her presence, her company, even if it was just for a fleeting moment.

As the day wore on, he wrestled with conflicting emotions—anger at himself for being so impulsive, frustration at her for leaving without a word, and a gnawing sense of loneliness that seemed to deepen with each passing hour. 

***

Kaz sat in his car beneath her apartment building, grappling with embarrassment over his drunken text. He stared at the glowing screen of his phone, contemplating whether to turn the car around and head home. He knew he should, but something pushed him to go upstairs despite the awkwardness he felt. His injured leg throbbed uncomfortably with each step, almost as if it, too, protested the decision.

Entering her apartment, Kaz settled onto the familiar couch, listening to the sounds emanating from y/n's room until it was his turn. As they settled on her bed, y/n kept her arms crossed, her expression expectant, while Kaz avoided meeting her gaze.

"Kaz, what was that?" she finally asked, her tone a mix of curiosity and concern.

"y/n, I don't know. I was drunk and..." He trailed off, unsure how to justify his actions when even he didn't fully understand them.

"Kaz, if you're catching feelings for me..." she started, but he cut her off firmly.

"I'm not," he asserted, though his words rang hollow in his own ears.

Her gaze softened, and she reached out, her hand finding his. "If that's the case, you shouldn't be embarrassed. What we're doing is... intimate and sweet. It would be normal to mistake it for something more."

"I'm not doing anything, just a drunk text," Kaz repeated, the words feeling inadequate even as he said them.

"If you ever do, you have to let me know," she said softly, her thumb brushing against his hand. "You gave me your first proper kiss, Kaz. It's normal to be confused."

"I'm doing this for my girlfriend, who I love very much," he replied hastily, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

"I know, but if it makes you uncomfortable, we shouldn't see each other anymore," she replied, her voice tinged with understanding.

They spent the next hour making out, Kaz finding it difficult to let go of y/n's hair. He wanted to explore more, but it all felt too overwhelming. y/n tried to touch his arms and chest, but he had to stop her before it became too much. He managed to leave a few chaste kisses on her neck, but when she tried to reciprocate, he almost lost control, so they focused on their lips and faces.

y/n shamelessly moaned into his mouth, and even Kaz couldn't help but let a few sounds escape his lips. Just as the intensity between them peaked, a hard knock on the door made them spring apart, the first time they had done so in many minutes.

"y/n, you're late!" one of her roommates protested from outside, breaking the charged atmosphere.

They looked at each other with wide eyes, suddenly aware of the time. Kaz checked his phone and realized he was supposed to have left thirty minutes ago. A nervous laugh escaped them both, neither daring to meet the other's gaze.

"I should go," Kaz finally said, shifting uncomfortably and avoiding eye contact. "I think I need a minute," he added, his face flushing with embarrassment while y/n smirked, a hint of satisfaction in her expression.

Kaz insisted on leaving extra money for the additional time they had spent together. "There's no need to, we got carried away," y/n protested, but Kaz was resolute.

"Does this happen often?" he asked curiously, a cocky smile playing on his lips.

"No," she admitted quietly.

"Then take these," Kaz said firmly, leaving the money on her desk before swiftly exiting the apartment, the weight of their encounter heavy on his mind as he made his way back to his car.

Kaz entered the Crow Club, his mind heavy with the events of the previous hour. "You are so late, Brekker," Jesper commented, raising an eyebrow. "I had to say you had the flu."

Kaz shrugged, collapsing into the chair next to him. "Where were you?" Jesper pressed, a suspicious edge to his voice.

"I had stuff to do," Kaz replied casually, pulling out his phone to reply to the messages from Inej that had accumulated throughout the day.

Jesper leaned in, sniffing the air. "Why do you smell of cherries?" he asked, his nose crinkling as he leaned closer.

Kaz shoved him away, hoping to sound convincing. "I don’t smell of cherries. What the fuck?"

Jesper narrowed his eyes, not easily fooled. "Are you cheating on Inej?" he asked abruptly, his tone sharper than usual.

Kaz's heart skipped a beat. "What? Jesper, come on. I can’t even touch people," he said, avoiding Jesper's gaze.

Jesper hummed, skepticism clear in his expression. "You’re weird, man. I’m telling you. And you've been acting stranger than usual lately," he added, his eyes searching Kaz's face for any signs of deceit. "Your clothes, they don't look like you've been working. More like you've been... elsewhere."

Kaz shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I had things to take care of. It's not what you think."

Jesper's eyes narrowed further. "And what am I supposed to think, Kaz? You're disappearing for hours, coming back smelling like cherries, and acting all shifty. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were up to something."

Kaz's mind raced, trying to find a plausible explanation that would satisfy Jesper's growing suspicion. "It's complicated, Jesper. Just trust me."

Jesper crossed his arms, not letting it go. "Complicated how? You're not giving me much to trust here. You owe me more than just 'stuff to do.'"

Kaz clenched his jaw, feeling the pressure of Jesper's scrutiny. "I'm handling things, okay? Personal things. It's nothing you need to worry about."

Jesper's eyes stayed locked on Kaz, clearly not convinced. "Personal things, huh? Well, I hope for your sake, and Inej's, that whatever you're doing is worth all this secrecy. Because if it blows up in your face, don't say I didn't warn you."

Kaz sighed, the weight of Jesper's suspicions adding to his already heavy burden. "Noted, Jesper. Noted."

Jesper watched him for a moment longer before shaking his head and walking away, leaving Kaz to his thoughts. The encounter left Kaz feeling even more unsettled, the realization that he was not only lying to himself but also to his closest friends gnawing at him. He needed to get a grip on his emotions and focus, before everything he was working for crumbled around him.

***

He didn't see her at the Crow Club on Friday night, and it made him restless. He had seen from her Instagram stories that she was heading out. Did he hope she would show up at his club? Maybe. Was he glaring at the entrance, waiting for her? Absolutely.

As he changed spots, he saw that she posted another story. It took all his strength to wait a few minutes before looking at it. She was tagging the Emerald Palace. The only things preventing Kaz from throwing his phone against the wall were the facts that he was in public and that his phone was already hanging on for dear life.

He decided to turn his phone off for the night, and probably for the next 24 hours. If anything in her stories suggested that Pekka Rollins was her client, he knew he would lose it completely. A drunk text begging her to come back would be nothing compared to what he might do.

As Kaz tried to focus on his work, his thoughts kept drifting back to y/n. He wondered if she thought about him at all during her time with other clients. He hated how possessive he felt, knowing that he was just one of many in her life. He couldn't stand the idea of her being with Pekka Rollins. The thought of her in his arms made his blood boil.

Kaz replayed their conversations in his mind, trying to understand his feelings. He knew he was doing this for Inej, to be able to touch her and be with her without fear. But every time he thought about y/n, it felt more complicated. He didn't want to admit it, but there was a part of him that enjoyed their time together, that looked forward to it. The intimacy they shared, even if it was paid for, was something he had never experienced before.

The next night, Kaz found himself distracted at the Crow Club again. He couldn't help but check his phone, even though he had promised himself he wouldn't. When he saw no new notifications from y/n, he felt a mix of relief and disappointment. He knew he shouldn't care so much, but he did. He needed to keep his emotions in check, for Inej's sake and for his own sanity.

He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the tasks at hand. There were deals to be made, plans to be executed. But even as he immersed himself in work, a part of him remained tethered to the thought of y/n, wondering what she was doing and if she thought about him at all.

***

Kaz and y/n were on her bed, as usual. She was wearing only a bra and panties, and he was trying to let his bare hands wander around her body. He managed to touch her arms comfortably enough, but any other place still made him flinch. They were talking about the latest episode of a show he had made her watch. Well, he had annoyed her so much that she finally gave in and started it. He had tried the same with Inej, but his girlfriend had dropped it after the pilot.

“Kaz, you’re tickling me,” she laughed, trying to squirm away.

“Oh, am I?” he teased, pushing his boundaries only for the sake of making her contort and laugh.

“Please, Kaz, I can’t breathe,” she kept trying to escape him, but apparently, his demons could stay at bay if it meant annoying her. Kaz kept tickling everywhere he could reach, pulling her back against him when she managed to get too far away.

“Safe word, safe word,” she screamed playfully, and he finally stopped. They were both shifting like fools, with Kaz almost pinning her in a corner between the wall and the bed. He was on his knees, his bad leg screaming at him, while she was on her back, half-seated, half-lying down. One of his hands was still on her hip. He squeezed it softly, as if trying to test his boundaries even more.

They were both catching their breaths, and Kaz did everything he could to keep his eyes on hers, without letting them wander over her exposed body.

“You can look if you want,” she said, as if reading his thoughts, batting her lashes and shifting position to lie down better.

“I don’t want to—”

“To what? Make me uncomfortable? I’m a whore, Kaz.”

He didn’t want to do it, but in the end, he was just a man. Kaz let his gaze study her curves, which until that day he had tried so desperately to ignore. He felt a strange mix of guilt and curiosity. His eyes traced the lines of her body, lingering on the soft rise and fall of her chest, the gentle curve of her waist. He couldn’t deny the attraction, the pull he felt towards her, and it unnerved him.

His thoughts raced. What was he doing here? Was this really just about getting comfortable with physical contact for Inej’s sake, or was there something more? He had always prided himself on his control, his ability to stay detached and focused. But here, with y/n, he felt that control slipping away. Was it the intimacy they shared, or was it simply the fact that she saw him, really saw him, in a way that no one else did?

As he continued to study her, he felt a pang of guilt. Inej was the one he loved, the one he was doing all of this for. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was betraying her somehow, even though there was nothing truly romantic between him and y/n. It was confusing, and Kaz hated feeling confused. He was used to having a plan, a clear path, and this situation was anything but clear.

Her allusive smile drew him back to the present. She seemed to sense his internal struggle, and instead of pushing him, she just lay there, allowing him to take his time. He appreciated that about her, the way she seemed to understand without needing an explanation.

His hand was still firmly on her waist, and y/n raised a foot, getting it close to his face. He chuckled, trying to grip her ankle, but she kept pulling away. After a few tries, his leg decided to give up, and a sharp pain made him hiss and lose his balance, falling on her.

Kaz could feel her breasts pressed against his chest. He became painfully aware of how much skin was touching him, and he silently thanked Ghezen that he was still clothed. y/n saw him pale. “Kaz, it’s okay. It’s just us.”

The word “us” made him feel worse than her skin. For a second, his gaze fell on her lips. What did “us” even mean in this context? They weren’t a couple, and yet there was an undeniable bond between them. Did that make him unfaithful? Or was this just part of the process, a necessary step on his journey to being with Inej in the way he wanted?

“Great kiss moment,” she assured him, uncertain if he was about to throw up or skip that step and die directly on her.

Surprising both of them, he leaned in, leaving a small kiss on her lips before raising himself up from her body. He sat back, his breathing uneven, and rubbed his aching leg absentmindedly.

She watched him carefully, her expression a mix of concern and curiosity. “Kaz, you’re making a lot of progress. You should be proud of yourself.”

He nodded, but the turmoil inside him was far from settled. The lines between his goals, his feelings for Inej, and his unexpected attachment to y/n were blurring, and he didn’t know how to navigate them. “Thanks,” he muttered, looking away.

Kaz hesitated for a moment, gathering his thoughts before speaking. "I wanted to ask you to try something, but I get it if you say no, it’s weird," he began.

"Tell me," she shrugged curiously, her gaze fixed on him.

Kaz exhaled deeply, bracing himself for the impending embarrassment. "With Inej, we never share a bed. I usually sleep on the couch when she’s at my place, and I wanted to—"

"Sleep with me?" she cut him off, her eyebrows raising slightly.

He nodded silently, watching her reaction closely.

y/n considered it for a moment, her expression thoughtful. "It’s a bit weird," she agreed after a pause, "but I’ve done weirder shit for sure."

"Are you sure you’d be okay with it?" Kaz asked cautiously.

"Yeah, say when," she replied casually, with a hint of a smile.

[read-and-write-]

13, 16, and 66?

Thank you for asking! c:

13. What's a common writing tip you almost always follow?

The most common tip of all: Show don't tell, I try to follow it as much as I can, I believe in how much more powerful it is to let the reader know through actions how a character is feeling rather than telling them outright.

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

Nine, according to my fun spreadsheet that I now have, all in different states of nurturing from actively writing to "i had a vision and wrote three lines"

I recently plotted a MasterChef Celebrity AU, that goes next on my list after figure skating is done, where Henry is a contestant and Alex is the host and long filming days inevitably push them together.

66. How do you deal with writing pressure (i.e pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc.)?

My approach is I pretend I do not see, I know this things exist and in the end they affect me but I try to avoid paying much attention to them in order to get things done, and I try to be very understanding of the reasons why something happens i.e why i stopped writing something, why i drop out of a fest or ask for more time because the deadline is approaching, etc

[Get to know your fic writer!]

[angywritesstuff]

Feeding the U.S Army

summery: You’re a Masterchef contestant, and during the team challenge you and your team have to cook for 100 army men. Easy right?

Pairing: Captain Syverson x reader

Warning: very bad english, no proof-read. ENGLISH IS NOY MY FIRST LANGUAGE SO IF THERE ARE ANY MISTAKES I’M SORRY.

I don’t even know what this is but I hope you like it

Masterchef! You had just passed the last selection and finally were going to cook in the Masterchef kitchen.

You didn’t really know what you were expecting when you send in your request to partecipate to the new season of Masterchef, the only thing you knew was that you loved cooking.

You had started cooking when you were really young: you were only eight when you helped your mom baking your dad’s birthday cake for the first time and you hadn’t stopped ever since.

It could seem strange for some people but, growing up in a farm, it was normal for anyone to help as much as they could: you had started with tidying up your room, you had learnt how to collect the eggs from the chicken goop first things in the morning, you had gone with your father to take care of the cows; but as soon as you and your family had found out how much you enjoyed spending your time in the kitchen, that had become your kingdom. You still helped with any other task if help was needed, but most of the time everyone left you do what you did best and what you loved the most: cooking.

So yeah.. you loved cooking: you cooked when you were happy, wou baked when you were stressed, you cooked when you were stuck in your own head, you went to the kitchen when you needed a moment to yourself knowing that very few people had the guts to follow you in your place in the house. 

Anyway the idea of participating at Masterchef first come out while the previous season of the show was on air: you were in the kicthen (surprise surprise!), you were preparing everything for that night gathering; your father was keeping you company while preparing a fruit salad (the only thing you had given him permission to touch, he had pretended to be fed up with your behavior but you both knew it was just for show). You were talking, the tv was on in the background when a new episode of Masterchef had began and your father had stopped answering your question.

“Dad?”- you had asked while still chopping the onions; there was so much to do in so little time you didn’t have time to pay attention to what your father was doing

“You are so much better than him”- your father hadn’t been making any sense

“What are you talking about?”- you had taken your attention from the onions to finally look at your father

“You should try and get on Masterchef”- your father had insisted still looking at the screen where Joe Bastianich was talking to a man in a black apron.

“You’re crazy”- you had simply said before getting back to your cooking. 

You hadn’t talked about it again that day, but the idea had lingered with you and even though you had kept your thoughts to yourself, your father knew you better than anyone else, so one day you had found the Masterchef application on your bed with a post on it 

‘I know you can do it honey- dad’- the post had said 

You had had a lot of fear: the fear of dissapoint your family, the fear of being on national television, the fear of leaving your family that needed your help at the farm every day, the fear of not suceeding, the fear of not being good enough,the fear of not pass even the first selection. Your father had come to your help once again “Honey the only way you could lose is if you didn’t even try. What’s the worst that could happen? that you don’t get in? Who cares? You will always be our favorite chef”

Your father’s words had been the push you needed, so you had send you application and when you had been called for the selection you had been excited.

You had survied the first couples eliminations and now you were going to be the captain of your team, the red team, in the first team challenge and you were scared shitless: not only you could go home if you made any mistakes, but the future in the competion of your team mates depended on you too, and as if that wasn’t enough you had to feed one- hundred army man. So yeah you were panicking and trying not to show it because you needed your team to trust you and to be calm enough to serve good food.

You took a deep breath and focused on what the judges Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich and Aaron Sànchez were saying.

“Each  team will have to devise a menu that includes a protein, two vegetable and a sauce”- Joe said

“Now remeber, at the end of the day one of you will be eliminated and this will be last time he will be cooking in this competion”- Gordon’s words kept your anxiety spiriling but you tried to keep your focus- “All right, are you guys ready? let’s go”

You and your team sprinted as soon as Gordon had done talking. Once what you wanted to cook had been decided, you gave a task to each and everyone of your team mates and you all started cooking.

Managing between doing your own prep and making sure every team member was doing ok and didn’t need your help, wasn’t easy but you made it; the judges tasted your dish after half an hour and, aside from some suggestions to make it better, they liked it.

So you were on cloud nine: the judges liked the dish your team had devised, your prep had gone alright, your team was doing ok. But then service started and YOU PANICKED: you had to serve 100 army men and women and you had no idea how to prepare 100 dished that were perfect and that looked all the same. Your team was looking at you for direction but you had no idea what to do: you had never worked in a restaurat, none of you ever had, and when you cooked for your family gathering everyone made their own dishes, you were so out of your comfort zone. 

And that’s when things started to go even worse: service had started, the army men and women had arrived and had a very clear view of your stations, you had no idea how you wanted to plate the food and Gordon Ramsay came to you and he didn’t look happy.

“Red team come here, all of you, RIGHT NOW! We need a system, your tray is cold, the food is cold, I’m not letting you serve fucked up food. Take your food back in, warm it up, warm your tray. Y/n come here. YOU ARE THE TEAM CAPTAIN, SO FUCKING WAKE UP, DECIDE HOW YOU WANT YOUR FOOD ON THE PLATE AND START A PRODUCTION LINE. RIGHT FUCKING NOW Y/N”- Gordon pratically screamed in your face, you knew he just wanted to make sure the food that came out was perfect, he only wanted for you guys to succeed, but you had never liked when people screamed in your face even if you knew they didn’t mean any harm. Your eyes watered but you weren’t going to cry, you were going to do this, but when you thought things couldn’t go any worse..... you found out you were obviously very wrong.

“HEY! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?”- a voice boomed behind Gordon and once you raised your gazed to see what was going on, you saw a mountain of a man, dressed in uniforme, coming towards you.

It was clear not even Gordon knew what was happening

“Can I help you, sir?”- Gordon asked, you couldn’t sure but his voice sounded a little bit unsure

“You wanna help me, why don’t you start by not screaming at a woman?”- the army-man’s voice was much calmer now but he wasn’t any less intimidating. Gordon didn’t know what to say and you knew it, so you took a step forward

“It’s really not a problem.. ehmm”- you read the name of the man on his uniform - “Captain Syverson, sir. Chef Gordon was just giving me a pep talk, everything is good. We will be serving you your food very soon”

As soon as you had started talking the man’s eyes had moved from Gordon to you and for the first time, since he had come over, you noticed how bautiful they really were. His eyes had become gentler when he had started looking at you, you had almost shivered when his attention had been on you and you only.

“Mhhm”- Captain Syverson said like he was still assessing the situation before deciding - “You can called me just Syverson”- he said before turning around and going back to his men.

You stood there for another second, all eyes were on you and you were sure your cheeks were burning

“Back to work guys”- you said. There was no way you weren’t sarving your best food to that hunk of a man.

Everything had gone smoothly after that, you had felt eyes on you some time during service but every time you had looked up you had never been able to pin point who was looking at you, so you had always gone back to work.

Once the judges had annouced your team had received 70 votes against the 30 of the other team and you had won you couldnt’ been happier, you had been sad for the contestant that had had to leave the show, but it was a competition and that was how it worked.

You were still celebrating with your team when you heard someone clearing their throath behind you

“Hello”- captain Syverson was behind you

“Oh Captain, hello”- what was happening?

“I thought I told you to call me Syverson, or Nathan if you prefer, but none on that Captain crap”- his raspy voice was doing things to you that shouldn’t be possible when you had just met the man.

“Right. Was everything ok with your food?”- you asked because why would he be here, if not because there had been something wrong with his food

“The food was amazing, you’re a fantastic cook, sugar”- he said and your cheeks burned once again at the name. What was this man doing to you

“Oh thank you, it was a team effort”

“Well you are the team captain, so I think you deserve some credit, sugar”- he said before looking back where a man was calling for him - “I need to go, but I really hope to see you again sugar”- he winked at you before leaving.

“uh”- you stood there staring at his back not sure of what had happened.

Everyone had joked about what happened between Gordon and the captain for the rest of the season, but you hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the man that had screamed at Gordon Ramsay (GORDON- FUCKING- RAMSAY) for you.

The competition had gone on and without even knowing how you had arrived to the grand finale and to your surprise YOU HAD WON!

So yeah when you sent your application for Masterchef you didn’t know what you were expecting, but in the end it was clear you had left the show with so much more you had even though you could win.

liked by masterchefus, gordongram and 234,567 others

itsMeYN When I sent the application for Masterchef, because my father conviced me to, I never thought I would even passed the first selection, let alone win the finale. This journey has given me so much, I learnt from every single one of the other contestat, some of which have become really good friends. I don’t even know how to start thanking the judges, Gordon, Joe and Aaron, They have taught me so much and always known when I needed a nudge to wake up and start believe in myself. Thank you, thank you this competition has given me so much 

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yourmominsta I’m so proud of you honey 

jennifer So happy for you, I was rooting for you since the first episode

haley234 Congrats! can we please talk about the team challenge with the army man ;)

austin  Oh my god! that episode was the best, that army captain was totally hitting on her

felicity Does Captain Syverson have instagram? Please does anyone know?

austin I dont think so, I’ve been looking for him too

rachel  Guys I was watching her story the other day and I swear there was a very familiar scratchy voice in the backgroud

yourbestfriend Oh my god... @itsmeYn I think you got busted

itsmeYn @yourbestfriend shut up

haley234 wait what

liked by masterchefus, gordongram, yourbestfriend and 345,678 others

ItmeYn Had the pleasure to dine at @gordonndram restaurant, and wasn’t that an experience. Also I think the second meeting between Gordon and at certain someone went a lot better

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austin “Certain someone”... yep she is totally dating Captain Syverson. Is it normal being so obsessed with the idea of them together when I have only seen 5 min of them together on tv?

haley234 Same sis, same.... and maybe it’s not normal but who cares

gordongram We still yelled at each other so I wouldn’t say it went so much better

itsMeYn “We” is the key word here, you yelled at Sy too, i think it’s mostly out of love now 

austin Sy... I repeat she wrote Sy... My ship is real

Yeah Masterchef had given you so much…

Masterlist

All around taglist: @jwspiter​

Henry Cavill and characters taglist: @xxxkatxo​ @mansaaay @thorins-queen-of-erebor​ @maan24​ @grounded-in-light​ @omgkatinka​  @xprettyqueenx​ @marytudorbrandon

[yourssinfullyquiche]

Pudding au caramel

Here's a short headcanon on Victor which I had in my notes a few months ago. Victor's sarcasm always makes me laugh because I can relate to it to a certain extent.

This was partially based on true events😉

Victor x reader (You)

WC: 444

Beta: @playheej, @litteidiot

Warning: Pure sweetness to entice your heart!❤️

Enjoy!

Both of you were watching MasterChef — a show that both of you have come to love. Of course, the first time you made him watch, Victor was all: “It’s a waste of time. If you didn't pay attention to this much nonsense, you could've accomplished something good by now. Like finishing that report, which is due tomorrow."

After much playful banter and coaxing from you, he finally caved in and it has since become a tradition to watch together; evidently because the show revolves around food and your darling husband is the best cook in the world (even if you don’t directly praise him,,, it’s not like he doesn’t know, in fact he mercilessly teases you about it).

You definitely love that show, not only because of the delicious food which leaves you always getting pampered with more desserts from Victor (even though he refuses at first,, not that some cajoling wouldn’t help) but also because you enjoy watching him trash the contestants for their ‘uncalled’ decisions.

“Is he stupid? How does he think it’s going to set in 8 minutes? Even with a blast chiller it’s impossible; it’s a mousse for god’s sake”.

Contestant in the show: “...and I ran to the chiller and got out the mousse. Ughhh, it hasn’t set yet. I’m devastated...!”

Victor: “You think.”（；¬＿¬)

It’s nice watching the spectacle before you, especially when you’re not the victim of his effortless sarcastic remarks.

The sad part came — the contestant eliminated today was Jess. Her kindness magnetized everyone and they all had such a close bond together — all the other contestants started sobbing.

Your eyes start glistening a little too and you try to stop it; you avoid eye contact with Victor knowing full well how he’d react — but it was too late.

“Dummy, are you crying” followed by a deep silky chuckle.

Oh shit.

“Well..so what if I am!?...She was good!”, you avoid Victor’s gaze and try leaving the living room to your huge bathroom.

Victor stops you by grabbing your hand and forces you to face him.

“Look at me.”

“No! I know you’re going to mock me”

He pulls you down and hugs you from behind.

“Look at me.”

“What!” ಠಗಠ

“Dummy, you know she’s good, yes it’s sad but this will be the stepping stone towards her success…

“Hmm...I know,” you smile while kissing his jaw.

“The pudding must’ve been cooled already ,” Victor eyed you with a kittenish look.

(ෆ’∀’ෆ)

As the both of you head into the kitchen to savour the creamy caramel pudding, Victor thought to himself that life would be dull without his dummy.

Delve into my world

[heechulhamster]

Stubborn and Stupid - Chanyeol

PARK CHANYEOL x Reader

College AU!, Angst, Fluff (Yes, here I am again with my Angst fics)

Somehow, loving him was all you knew. Your love for him was already innate to your being, a part of your identity, the only thing you know is right. And you are willing to wait for him. But does he want you to wait for him?

I listened to Bestfriend by Rex Orange County while writing this! I realized that it’s kinda similar.

4554 words

____

It wasn’t a good day for a fight. I mean, technically in your moral code no day was ever good nor bad enough to cause a messy confrontation. Yet here you are, in a locker room confined enough to cause cause claustrophobia in front of one of the feistiest people in campus. Well, the adjective was subjective as she usually seems friendly to the people she wants to be seen with. But obviously, you’re not among those people.

It was already unoften for you to be in a fight, moreover to actually cause the fight. Yet that was exactly what happened here.

“What are you standing there for? I thought you were brave enough to start a fight? Cat got your tongue?” Yeseul mocked you.

Yeseul is the girl he likes, or currently pursued considering the kind of guy Chanyeol is. And Chanyeol is, well, the man you loved to say the least. He’s always been the man you loved and you’ll continue loving.

Chanyeol is your childhood friend, you lived next door to each other. Your parents were close knit friends and you were bound to be one too. Except for the fact that as early as when you were 9, the friendly touches and hugs you and him shared weren’t too friendly in your perception anymore. Each connection lingered, the feeling of his skin on yours sent shivers to the farthest reaches of your veins. It was with him where you experienced the wonderful blossoming of a young heart’s first love. And he was your first heartbreak too.

You were too obvious, the red tint that painted your face when you hung out. The sudden awkward air that envelops the two of you whenever he’s around. It was like red paint on your forehead, ready for him to read, “IM MADLY INLOVE WITH YOU PARK CHANYEOL!” Not a lot changed since then, and you don’t know if it’s for the best or for the worst. You still were extremely close friends, despite your openness on your admiration for him. It was good that he didn’t see the need to avoid nor drop you, but it’s also sad that he always seen you as a friend, and only that.

The actual change of dynamics between you came during the latter part of high school. When the Gods of puberty hit Chanyeol pretty damn good. His lanky physique turned into that of a Greek deity. Every head turned to Chanyeol’s way whenever he walked down streets, hallways, or corridors. And eventually, you two just fell apart as friends. It was all too common of a teenage story, two best friends falling apart due to the imbalance of popularity and diverging interests.

But you stayed madly in love with him. Which got you in this situation.

“Try and cross me again…” Yeseul started and tugged your hair that was tied on the back of your head. You quickly retaliated and pushed her to the locker behind her, an action that caused a large thud.

A large figure suddenly casted a shadow towards the both of you. You quickly glanced at the locker room door and there he was, the root and main cause of all of this, Park Chanyeol.

“What the fuck?” As expected of him, he quickly rushed to her side and his hands reached out her back that collided with the lockers.

Yeseul, like an Oscar award winning actress, almost instantly cried and pushed her face onto the nook of Chanyeol’s neck as he consoled her. And with the glare he was giving you, you knew what his perception of the situation was - that you’re the evil one in this scenario. So you didn’t even bother to speak up, hurriedly grabbing your bag from behind and walking away from the ill fated room.

Since the last years of High school, you and Chanyeol haven’t been in the best of terms. Enter college and you were nothing more than one of his admirers, one with deeper feelings and more vibrant past with him. You’re still there for him, occasionally giving him gifts just because you wanted to and it felt right. You still supported him in his basketball games, still attended the dinners and parties his parents invited your family over. There were times that you’d catch up, usually during the few periods of his life that he didn’t have a girlfriend nor he was pursuing someone. But as soon as the missing slot in his life becomes filled up again, you quickly fade from his radar. Yet you’re still here, supporting and caring and loving him. Because loving him was always a feeling you didn’t hold back. To you, despite everything that happened - or the lack of any happening between you and Chanyeol, he still deserved all the love you could ever give, and more.

You had no other classes for the day, so you’ve decided to just go home and chill away all the negativities that filled your mind. You didn’t even think about Chanyeol would make out of the situation, your image to him had long been a done deal. He probably thinks that you attacked Yeseul in jealousy - which isn’t the case.

The contestants on the current season of Masterchef and their mouthwatering dishes was all in your mind as you lounged in your living room. But that peace was abruptly cut off by three knocks on your door.

“Care to explain to me what was that scene earlier?” Chanyeol blurted out as soon as you opened the door. To which you just let out a sigh.

“Do I really need to explain? I bet she told you all the right things already.” You answered in sarcasm.

“Yeah, apparently you heard her talking about me in the cafeteria and just threw a jealous fit on her.” He just towered over you as his hands rested over the door frame.

“Of course she told you that.” An unimpressed laugh came out of your mouth. “And you believed her.” -a declaration rather than that of a question. “You really believed I’d do something like that, didn’t you?”

“That’s why I’m asking you to explain!” Chanyeol lifted his hand and slammed it back on the frame in frustration. “You can’t just go and claim me as yours just because you’ve been crazy about me for the longest time. That’s just so fucking stupid of you, (Y/N.) Can you please stop annoying the hell out of me everytime?”

And that just took out the last straw of your patience and understanding.

“You know what, Chanyeol? Yes I’m so fucking stupid, man maybe I’ve got no wits at all for staying and loving you despite all the shit you’ve put me through all these years! Maybe I’m the one who’s stupid because I’m the only one who stayed for you, right? If I was smarter, I would’ve moved on a long time ago and went for someone better, not someone who treats me as shit as you do.” You snapped at him, which you almost quickly regretted as you saw the wide gape his mouth formed into. You’ve hurt his ego, for sure. But it’s a fair game as he hurt your feelings, one that he’s been doing for a good amount of time now.

Silence enveloped the two of you. You’re already thinking of apologizing, saying you didn’t mean anything in what you’ve said. But what’s done is done, words have been spoken and emotions have already formed.

“If it helps you to understand, yes I’ve heard her talking about you. But it wasn’t simply just a jealous fit. She talked about how she’ll only entertain you to get close to Seokjin in the basketball team. So being the stupid ass that I am that’s been crazy for you in the longest time, I fucking defended you for an awaiting heartbreak.”

You were protecting him from something he kept on doing to you for years. So much for being stupid.

“I’m…” That’s what’s all that escaped his mouth.

“Get off the porch, Chanyeol. Go take some rest. Don’t worry this will be the last time I’ll be annoying the hell out of you. Good night.” You wanted to say the common ending to your talks, you wanted to tell him that you love him despite knowing that you won’t get anything in return. But you just kept your lips closed and shut the door.

You remembered all the time you told him how much you love him. How you opened the deepest realms of your heart, letting him see how much you felt. How you’d look in his eyes as if it was the very vestibule of all the wonders of life, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You knew he didn’t see the same, that your eyes were just two of the hundreds that gaze at him at the same way.

You didn’t expect anything, in contrary to the popular belief in your college that you’d kill in cold blood to get Chanyeol to woo you back. You just loved him because that’s what you feel. You didn’t bother to restrain yourself on the wonderful feeling of adoring someone. Loving him felt right, as if it was something you were fated to do all your life. You just wanted Chanyeol to be happy and supported him in every step and action that was needed for him to achieve that - even in the cost of your own.

It was in the senior year of high school when he cried on your shoulder the whole night over the cheerleader who dumped her just because he didn’t have a nice car. How you caressed his back infinite times before the wells in his eyes finally stopped and just surprisingly leaned in and kiss you. You didn’t talk about it afterwards as it seemed that he didn’t even planned on remembering how he left you breathless and blushing after your first kiss.

Freshman year of college saw the night where you were both drunk, not enough to pass out but intoxicated enough to not decide properly. He brought you as a date to Jongdae’s party, one of his new friends with the same major. One drunk decision led to another and you just woke up holding each other close, both as naked as the day you were born and only clad in the thin blanket he had in his room. But then again, nothing changed between the two of you. You’re still madly in love with him, with only more reasons to hold on. And you were still his friend when it’s convenient, and a little bit something more when he needs to - but you were never his lover. Never the only thing you ever wished to be.

“Do you still love me?” He asked while you were both in the dusky path of a dream as you both lay on his bed. Another night where Chanyeol needed someone for assurance, he needed someone to be there, someone to fill his needs, and you were always the willing participant in his games. The willing recipient of his touch that failed to find a home, because it never wanted to go home to you.

“Of course I do.” You answered nonchalantly.

“How come?” His grip around your waist tightened as your back leaned on his chest while you laid on your side. Chanyeol’s breaths lightly fanning your hair due to the proximity of the both of you.

“I told you I’d love you until I can. I’d love you as long as I can feel. I’ll love you until you tell me you don’t want my love anymore.”

He never told you that he didn’t want you. Not unlike the others who he was quick to decline, the hearts that he didn’t even think twice to break. With you, it was like he was more careful. Maybe due to the reason of your long history, the friendship that you’ve built that has been slightly tarnished by immature teenage priorities. Or maybe there was something more, the one you silently hoped for.

You’ve told him before that he could reject you when he feels it right to do so. That you’d stop and drop every hope you have in your heart the moment he asks you to. But he never did, not once did he ask you to stop loving him. And nights like those where he held you close and kissed you as if he loved you back made you think that maybe he actually did. The nights where it felt as if he actually made love to you. Maybe he just couldn’t admit it to you, but maybe there’s a bit of love in his heart that sang to you. Because he never showed otherwise.

Yes there were times where he didn’t reach out because he had an ongoing thing with other girls. One of the endless sparks he experienced that were quick to die down. But even so, after those adventures, he’d always come back to you. You’re always the one he whispered sweet nothings to when he was broken. You are his constant light that never gave up on him even if he kept being blinded by sparks.

Chanyeol was all gentle and good with you, until today.

“Can you please stop annoying the hell of me everytime?” Pierced your heart like a pigeon shot in its flight.

Because you annoyed Chanyeol. Everytime. It came from his very mouth.

Was this the sign for you to stop?

A month elapsed since Yeseul grabbed your hair and you glasly pushed her hardly towards a cold locker. A month since you last talked to Chanyeol. Since that night, you’ve decided to stay away. To let him keep his silence and sanity, void of your incessant chatter, void of your love that he said he found annoying. You wanted him happy, and if that happiness means you steering clear of him - then so be it.

It was a good month for you, honestly. With checking up on Chanyeol’s happiness out of your daily agenda, you focused on yours. It was in that timespan where you realized that you relied a lot of your plans in accordance to Chanyeol’s path. You had an opportunity to go to a University in the city but declined when he told you that he wanted to spend college with you. That you’ll be a piece of home in the new waters you two will tread. An offer that you all too willingly obliged to.

A month was something wonderful for you to work on, for you to find out what you really wanted. Things that weren’t involving Chanyeol.

Over the span of your short life, you also tried and date others. You attempted to feel the same way you feel with Chanyeol. Maybe another hand can fill the gaps of yours and you’ll feel as whole as you did with him.  Perhaps you’ll see the same sparks in others’ the way Chanyeol’s make you feel. His large, dark, luminous eyes that never fail to behold everything about them. But nothing was ever the same. Nothing surpassed the way he could make you feel, despite the fact that he took the least effort in making you feel loved.

Today, it felt as if all the powers of universe and fate conspired to get you to talk to him again. You’ve already thought of watching his game tomorrow, a feat that you’ve never failed. But now, your parents asked you to give a shirt of his that got caught up in the laundry, for a reason you fail to decode. But nevertheless, you couldn’t reason out of it. And you knew that there would still be eventually a point where you need to talk to him.

If there was a competition or a national recognition for the dumbest people of all time, you could be one of the hall of famers. You just couldn’t stop yourself taking an extra step and baking a batch of his favorite cookies. You thought of it as a peace offering, despite the fact that the last meltdown between the two of you wasn’t your fault. It was his favorite, the boy needs a power up snack for the nearing basketball tournament.

Even you found yourself annoying.

With the box of cookies in your bag and his shirt too, you walked towards the campus basketball court after classes. You used to go here often, watching him train and even bringing food for Chanyeol as you knew training can be gruelling. Some of his team members even dubbed you as his “pseudo girlfriend.”

You’re stopped on your tracks when someone called your name on the lockers just behind the court. You looked at the source and saw a familiar face, he’s part of the team, you think.

“Hey, coming for Park again?” To which you just answered an ample smile.

“When will you ever learn that you’re not his type? Maybe you should go out on a date with me instead. How about that?” The way he wiggled his eyebrows tormented your eyes and caused disgust to form in the pits of your stomach.

“Sorry, not interested.” You tried to smile sweetly and attempted to walk away and towards the court where you hope to find Chanyeol.

“Stop being so dense, will you? I’m doing you a favor. Chanyeol will never love you. You’re not even half as pretty as Yeseul nor any of his exes. You have no right to be picky.” You didn’t even bother to look back, you just close your eyes on the harsh truth that he spoke.

You thought about just walking away and back home when you heard a sudden rambling on his direction before you could even walk. It’s Chanyeol, who just seemingly went out of the shower with his hair wet and towel draped over his shoulder, and the distasteful man now leaning on the wall with his hand over his nose.

“Learn to mind your own damn business the next time, fucker.”

The next minutes are a vague whirlwind of spontaneous happenings. You remembered Chanyeol grabbing his bag and basically dragging you out of the court, then out of the campus. Eventually bringing you to his car and eventually driving the both of you home. Now you’re in your kitchen, nursing the red bruises on his right wrist with an ice pack.

“I thought he just look like a rock, never thought his face would be hard as one too.” He said when he hissed as you damped the ice over his hands. “Why were you even there earlier, you done being mad at me?”

You laughed at his choice of words and his tone.

“Mom just asked me to give this shirt of yours, got mixed up in the laundry yesterday.” You put down the icepack to grab the shirt from your bag.

“Hey are those cookies for me?” Chanyeol almost instantly noticed the familiar box that you laid on the table in search for his shirt. Like a child that’s excited for a new toy.

“Yeah, I should’ve given it earlier. It’s not warm now, you still up for it?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely. Your cookies never gets old for me.” He opened the box and took one in a bite. “This would heal me better than ice ever will.”

You just watched him in wonder, how childlike he is. Maybe it’s that period again, where you’ll act close and cherish each other. The times where he suddenly remembers that he has you.

“And for the record, I was never mad at you.” You suddenly spoke out.

“Hmm? Really? I thought you were mad at me for what I said that night. Which makes sense because I was a flat out asshole. I’m sorry.” He held your hand with his bruised one. A gesture that suddenly made you feel warm.

“No, it’s more of…” You struggled to compose your sentence with his hands on yours. “I just didn’t want to annoy you anymore.”

“Aish, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything on what I said that night. Can we forget about it?” His grip on your hand went tighter. And all you could answer was a nod.

“You didn’t have to punch him.” You said as you put back the ice pack on his fist.

“That asshole deserved it.”

“I mean, he’s not all wrong.” You whispered, wishing that he did not hear your surrender.

“What do you mean he’s not wrong? I swear to God you’re so much better than all of my exes. Sometimes I think they’re all just passing fancy to me. But look, whose hands am I holding now?” Chanyeol’s grasp tightened again. Your mind was entangled in a haze of surprise, shock, and failure to process his words. You tried your best to shake it off, remind yourself that it was all part of the vicious cycle of the game you all too willingly agreed to play with him. The cycle of you loving him and him consuming that love and needing you, a simple concept of supply and demand.

“I wasn’t talking about that.” You put your gaze away from him, afraid of the truth his eyes will speak as you know it would be multitudes louder than his words.

“What?” He asked, and you put your head down. “No, tell me. What?”

“He wasn’t wrong…” You couldn’t bring yourself to look at Chanyeol. “That you won’t love me… that I have no right to be picky.. And that I should stop.”

You felt his hand detach from you, and your heart sank. Was this the answer that you’ve been waiting for? The rejection you’ve been anticipating? The only knife that will cut the thread that’s what’s left of you holding on to him?

“I swear I’m going to punch that motherfucker another time the next time I see him.” You’re shocked at his sudden display of anger as he loudly dropped his swollen fist on the table. You reacted in a haste as you grabbed it and put over the ice again.

“You’re going to hurt yourself-” He didn’t even let you finish when he spoke again.

“What if I could?” You slowly lifted your face to meet his eyes. Hoping to see insincerity, that he was joking, but he was painted of perseverance and eagerness. “What if I could love you?”

“You could do a lot of things, Chanyeol. But not all the things you could do are the things you want to do.” You mumbled without removing your eyes on his.

“What if I want to?”

“Do you?” A newfound courage pushed you to asked the question you’ve been too scared to ask. Does Chanyeol want to love you? Does he have any desire to reciprocate your feelings in any part of his heart? But it was time for him to answer, and it was time for you to know. You couldn’t just keep on holding a torch for him all these years, you couldn’t keep on waiting without knowing if you were even actually waiting for something.

“I’m gonna need time to answer that.”

“No, I’m going to need your answer now. I’ve loved you since we were 9, Yeol. I think thirteen years is already an enough amount of time to think if you want someone or not.” You pulled your hand away from his grasp. “Now, have me or lose me, Chanyeol.”

He just stared at you, his youthful eyes spoke of confusion. His lips agape, deprived of the answer you’ve been waiting for.

“I’m going to need an answer before I leave, Yeol.” You declared you stood up and walked towards the sink.

“Leave to where?” He just trailed you with his head, not moving from his seat.

“I’ve been offered an internship. It will be good for my growth. It’s only two months but I’m already so excited for it, Yeol. I’ll get to widen my horizons, my world, maybe even move on.” You looked back at him and smiled a modest one.

“From me?” He just stared at you as you filled the now emptied ice bag with more ice again.

“Probably. That’s why I need your answer now.” You walked back and sat on the chair once more. “Yeol, I’ve loved you for as long as I could remember. I’ve let you define me for so long. Remember when we we’re 7? I was known as Chanyeol’s bestfriend. In high school I was known as the girl who had a crush on you. Even I don’t know myself anymore, I only know you. Loving you has been my identity now, maybe I need to know who I am without you.”

“I remember when Sooyoung told me that maybe why you can’t fall inlove with me was because there was no one to fall in love with. That I don’t even know who I am. And it’s true. Somehow it feels like all these years all I am was a vessel of love for you, and it’s not healthy. For both you and me.” You continued.

“This is a great opportunity for me, Yeol. For me to know myself, my real dreams, what I want.” You explained.

“What you want…. Would that still include me?” Chanyeol suddenly asked.

“Do you want to be?” You asked back to him.

“Yes. I don’t know what I’d do without your love. It’s been part of me, it’s something I’m used to.”

“You’re used to it, but do you want me to love you?”

“I want you, your love, and I want to return it too. I just don’t know how to show it. Maybe I’ve been in love with you too but I’m too dumb to recognize it. I don’t know.” Chanyeol scooted closer to you and held both of your hands in his. “It would be selfish for me to ask this, but please don’t stop loving me. Trust me, I love you too. But I just suck in showing it, or recognizing it. Maybe I have too much pride to admit that to myself, to everyone, to you, that the one I’ve been looking for is all you. Please, don’t move on from me. I just… I just need time to be better at this.”

“We have plenty of time to figure things out, Yeol. Maybe when I come back, we’re both in a better place and better state of mind, right?”

“I love-” Chanyeol started but you were quick to hush him with your fingers.

“Not just yet, Yeol. Take your time. I want to hear it from you when you’re sure, okay?” He nodded.

“But I need you to hear that I promise to be better when you come back. To give you everything you deserve that I failed to do before. Because I need you, and I want you to stay loving me. I don’t know anything else. And it would be my biggest mistake if I let you go.”

“I told you, Chanyeol. I’m not going to stop loving you unless you ask me to.” You pulled one of your hands from his hold and caressed his cheek.

“Then please, (Y/N). Continue on loving me, and don’t you ever stop.”

[serkewen12]

Something There Part 7

Annnnnd I’m back! Here we go lovelies! I really hope you enjoy and I’m so sorry about the long wait!

Pairing: Thomas Jefferson x Reader

Word Count: 3431 (I know it’s shorter than normal, it felt like the right place to end the chapter)

(Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four) (Part Five) (Part Six)

Tag List: @imagineham @musicalmoriarty @la-frenchiest-frite @imaginebeinghamiltrash @wolfphantom-m @daveedish @shamagangster @secretschuylersister @love-doesnt-discriminate @icanneverbesatisfied @getupoffathathang @withthatbitch @marquiis-de-la-baguette @consumed-by-musicals @drugsdiggs @hamfan22 @lawliette1031 @hamfamhamfam @y-lue @chloehamiltonn @patron-saintof-sluts @hanakatsumi @americanrevelation @ginnemer @mofoing-democraftic-republican @stone0502 @merrahonthawall @miightymiighty @mysterywriter36 @iknowthekoolaidflavor @lafislife @canadian-hufflepuff @librarychild @gingerpatchkidd @kimmy-h-life @imreallyfredweasley @parksxo @ccecode @spn-applepie-imagines-deactivat @panromantic-rose @axreblogs @thepaddyb @thats-so-riah @fangirl11032001 @nadialinett14 @cookiepie111 @stress-and-obsess @louisianaspell @herfirstrefrain @astudentsnightmare @secretfanficreader @pumpkjnspjcebreeze @sangshit @thatpunkrockfandomchick

Angelica had never left an event so quickly in her life. Lafayette nodded with understanding as she had kissed his cheek before hailing a cab. Angelica called (Y/N)'s phone multiple times with no response, she tossed her phone in her bag with an angry huff.

"Damn it! What the hell happened back there? I'm sorry but can you please drive a little faster? This is an emergency."

When the cab pulled up in front of the Schuyler home she rushed up the walk way and when she reached the porch she stopped in her tracks. (Y/N) was sitting on the top step with her knees pulled up to her chest with tears cascading down her cheeks. She was slowly pulling bobby pins from her hair and throwing them into the yard. 

"Oh sweetie..." Angie said as she slowly approached her. (Y/N) jumped and quickly started wiping the tears off her face. 

"Angie! I'm sorry... I didn't want to go home. I knew he would go there to look for me. I'll pick up the bobby pins," she said as she started to stand up.

"You sure as hell will not," Angelica snapped," Come on let's go inside and get you cleaned up."

You followed Angelica into the living room and sat on her couch. You stared at you hands as she sat next to you and looked you over. You must have looked like a disaster, mascara running all over you face and your hair half out of the up-do Peggy had worked so hard on. You felt your bottom lip start to quiver and a familiar burn in the corners of your eyes as tears threatened to start flowing again. No... no... no more tears. 

"What happened? You ran out of there so fast and did I see you slap Thomas?" Angie questioned.

"Alex was right about everything," you whispered.

"What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean Alex was right?"

"About Thomas..."

"What did I tell you about letting Alex ruin this for you girl? Thomas..."

"THOMAS DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ME!" 

Angelica jumped back slightly at your outburst. You took a shaky breath to calm yourself down.

"I heard him," you whispered, "I heard what he said to Aaron. He told... he told him that he needed to be quiet because he had worked so hard to earn my trust and then he told him that he would use me in any way that he pleased..."

Angelica gasped and wrapped her arm around your shoulders tightly as your tears started flowing again.

"I'm so stupid Angie... I just... can I stay here for awhile?"

"Consider it done. I'll go get the spare room set up and grab you some pajamas."

Angelica hurried up the stairs to find you a change of clothes leaving you to wallow in your thoughts. Your phone buzzed continuously in your bag causing you to frown as you fished it out. Texts from Alexander, Hercules, Lafayette, and Thomas were coming in over and over. Asking you what happened, asking where you had went, if you were okay, and the ones from Thomas begged you to let him explain and to answer your phone. You had ten missed calls. As you held it your phone lit up with an incoming call. Thomas. You glared at the screen and swiped to red circle and quickly shut your phone off then tossed it across the couch.

You slowly made your way up the stairs and found Angelica finishing making the bed in the spare bedroom. She looked at you and gave you a small smile, which you tried your best to return. 

"Eliza is on her way home and she will most likely have Alex with her," Angie said with concern.

"I don't want to see him. I don't want to see any of them. I don't want to hear all the "I told you so's"," you said as you sat down on the bed. 

"I will make sure that he leaves you alone. Here are some pajamas, just lay down and get some rest," she said as she left.

Angelica had successfully kept the boys at bay with a lot of help from Eliza. You didn't wake up until almost noon the next day. All of the crying and stress had collapsed down upon you and when you woke up your body felt stiff and heavy. Quietly you made you way across the hall into the bathroom, not wanting to alert the sisters that you were awake because you didn't feel like talking to anyone. Looking into the mirror you let out a small sigh. You had mascara smudged half way across your face, your hair was tangled and sticking out in all directions, your eyes were still red and puffy, and you knew you were going to have dark circles after scrubbing off the make up. I'm a mess.

Stepping into the shower you winced as the water stung your skin. You had turned it up higher than you usually did but your aching body needed it. The water running against your skin brought the smallest amount of relief. The lump in your throat was starting to return as you rinsed the shampoo from your hair. 

"I'm not going to cry...I'm not," you whispered to yourself.

Your mantra had failed and you sank to sit in the tub and let the water wash over you. A million questions swirled in your brain. 

"How could I let this happen? Damn it I promised myself I would keep my guard up..." you seethed through your tears.

You sat in silence as you thought over the events from the last three months. How did he manage to weasel his way into your heart so effortlessly. Then again this is my fault... I was the one who thought it would be funny to prove Laf wrong. Who's laughing now? That son of a bitch most likely. No matter how many times you thought over every dinner, every meeting, every text message, he had never shown a single sign. Now it was too late and the damage was done. I love him.

"I was ready... this was supposed to be it. I wanted to tell him," you sobbed. 

You thought about how you had defended yourself and your relationship with Thomas to your friends. They had been so against it and angry, sure they had said they were going to give him a chance, but you knew better. I bet they can't wait to tell me how they were right about him. Alex and his smug grin he gets whenever he is right floated through your mind and it made your scowl. Alex knew you were in love with Thomas and you didn't want to think about what he might say to you now. 

Thomas's voice echoed in your head, all the nice things he had ever said, his laugh, that tone he got when he was alone and only talking to you. You willed yourself to forget all the things that had seemed so sincere, all the things he had said that made your heart race. You tried to will yourself to hate him, but instead you found yourself hating how much you loved him even after what had happened. 

"What do I have to do (Y/N)? How can I ever make you see?" 

"You don't have anything to apologize for." 

"You called me Thomas. You've never called me Thomas before."

"Listen to me, you are going to look amazing. You are the most beautiful person I've ever seen."

"Maybe I should talk to him... let him explain. No, no, no this is exactly the kind of bullshit thinking that lead me to trust him in the first place. He showed me his true colors and there isn't anything else I need to hear," you scold yourself. I love him. Loved him... no... no matter how much I try... I love him.

It had been three days and you had still refused to turn your phone on or talk to anyone except for Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy. Angie and Eliza had been doing everything they could to help comfort you. They had run off Hercules and Alexander again this afternoon. Peggy on the other hand was ready to commit homicide.

"I'm serious (Y/N) I've watch a lot of 48 Hours Hard Evidence and I'm pretty confident that I could get away with it," Peggy said between bites of ice cream.

"I don't want Thomas dead," you said quietly.

"Why? He deserves it for what he did! I can't believe him," Peggy complained.

"Because I love him Peg. Damn it.. loved him. Who was it that said I was crazy for being worried? Who was it that said Thomas would never do anything when I said I was worried? Oh that's right it was you!" 

"I know and I'm sorry."

"I need to go home," you said.

"Why? I thought you wanted to stay here until you were ready."

"I need my own clothes," you mutter, "I don't really want to leave... but I need my stuff if I'm going to stay here."

"I can go get you some of your stuff," Eliza said as she came into the living room.

Eliza had been gone for almost an hour. You were beyond thankful to her for offering to go get you your things. She had taken a list your wrote out and promised to do her best to find everything. When you offered to go with her she insisted you sit back down and relax. Peggy had gotten up and headed upstairs leaving you alone in the living room. You flipped through the channels on the television and stopped on The Food Network. Masterchef was on, usually seeing one of your favorite shows would have brought a smile on your face, but not today. You frowned as memories of all the times Thomas and you had lounged on the couch and debated about the contestants. Quickly switching the t.v. off you put the remote down and crossed your arms and focused on the flames dancing in the fireplace.

"He's even ruining my favorite show," you lamented.

"Hey (Y/N) I'm back," Eliza said as she walked in pulling a rolling suitcase behind her.

"Thanks so much," you reply gratefully as you sat up.

You started digging through the bag looking for a new pair of pajama pants and Eliza slowly sank down onto the couch. There was an envelope in her hands and she looked nervous as she turned it in her hands.

"What's that?" You asked.

"It was stuck to your door when I got there," Eliza said carefully as she handed it to you.

Looking the envelope over you saw that it was blank and opened it, Thomas's handwriting was immediately recognizable. His elegant script was unmistakable as your eyes quickly scanned the beginning of the letter. The familiar lump in your throat returned as you read his plea for you to return his calls, to say anything just so he knew you were okay. He wants to know that I'm okay? How the fuck does he think I am?! The sound of paper crinkling as your hands tightened around the edges of the letter permeated the air. For the first time your despair gave way to anger as you shot off the couch and crossed the distance to the fireplace.

"(Y/N)?" Eliza questioned.

"That bastard wants to know if I'm okay? IF I'M OKAY?! HOW THE FUCK DOES HE THINK I'M GOING TO BE AFTER WHAT HAPPENED?" You shouted as you looked one last time at the letter before throwing it into the fire.

Eliza came up and stood next to you and watched as the paper curled in the flames and his carefully written words turned to ash. You trembled slightly as rage coursed through you.

"He thinks he can just write me a pretty letter and I'm going to come crawling back? Like that will erase what I heard him say..." 

Eliza nodded in agreement, "I hope that he burns."

The clock showed 8:20 am when you finished getting dressed. You knew you couldn't hide forever and you had to return to class. 

"I'm fine. It's going to be fine," you said to yourself.

Slowly you piled your textbooks and papers into your bag. You were forever grateful that Angelica had made sure that you knew the assignments you had missed over the last week and you were pleased that at the very least you weren't behind on homework. There was enough to worry about when you thought of returning to the university without having to be bogged down with past due work. You slipped on your flats and snagged your phone off the charger before heading down stairs.

Before you had made it halfway down the stairs you stopped when you heard Angelica's voice and she sounded irritated.

"I already told you not to come here Alex," Angelica snapped.

“I know, but I'm worried. She hasn't answered any calls or texts and now she has missed a whole week of school," Alex reasoned.

"We are all worried, but (Y/N) will come back to school when she is ready."

"At least let me see her so I can let the guys know how she is," he begged.

"I promised her that I would keep you all away..."

"It's okay Angelica," you said as you walked down the rest of the stairs.

Angelica turned around quickly and looked at the backpack in your hand and back to your face and frowned. She came over quickly and looked concerned.

"(Y/N) what are you doing?"

"I'm going to class today," you said simply and you spotted a smile spread across Alex's face.

"Are you sure? Honey it's okay to wait a bit longer. If you aren't ready, you shouldn't force yourself," she said.

You pulled her into a hug and walked towards Alex, "I'm not sure if I'm ready, but I am sure that hiding here isn't going to solve anything. I'll see you later Angie."

Alex walked beside you as you went down the street and seemed to be at war with himself trying to figure out what to say. 

"So..."

"So?" You questioned without looking at him.

"How are you?"

"How do you think I am Alexander," you deadpanned.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not exactly."

"Alright then..." Alexander trailed off.

Nervous energy coursed through you as you walked closer and closer to the door of your first class. Alexander hadn't left your side for the entire journey across the campus. Slowly as you walked into the classroom you were almost scared to look up at the row where you knew Thomas sat. He was always there early, being the damn over achiever that he was.

"Well at least you won't have to stress about homework," Alex said cheerfully, "You're welcome by the way."

"Oh please what do you want? A metal? We both know Eliza rode your ass about making sure to tell her what the assignments were," you groused.

"That's beside the point," he argued as he pulled out his notebooks.

As you pulled out your books you turned and threw a tentative glance over your shoulder. Thomas's desk was empty, but it didn't take you long before you made eye contact with James. He tried to give you a sympathetic look, but you only glared before willing back around. A frown marred your features as you stared at your desk and mulled over Thomas's absence, it was a relief if you were being honest, but at the same time the familiar feeling of concern was trying to weasel it's way into your head. Thomas wasn't one to miss classes, even when he was sick he was usually there looking like death warmed over. No, nope, it doesn't matter. (Y/N) pull yourself together... he just broke your heart, he doesn't deserve an ounce of your concern.

"I had to present our debate project all by myself!" Alexander ranted dramatically as you both sat at your normal lunch table with Hercules and John.

"Oh please, it's not like you don't love to show off," you scoffed earning a laugh from Herc.

"Yeah Alexander, you are basically the biggest mouth in the school, I highly doubt you had an issue debating all on your own," Herc said.

"Soooo what was the outcome of the debate?" You asked throwing Alex a look.

"I won of course."

"Then what the hell are you bitching for?"

"Because I can," Alex complained.

You rolled your eyes and dipped your fries into ketchup. Alexander spoke quickly as he gave a play by play of how the debate had gone. John shook his head as Alex waved his arms as he angrily complained about being insulted. 

"Where is Thomas? I noticed he wasn't in class today," you commented absentmindedly.

Looking up from your food you saw all three men staring at you looking surprised.

"Who gives a shit," Herc bit out.

"Yeah (Y/N) why does it matter?" Alex asked.

"I don't know. I guess I was just thinking out loud..." Why did I say that? 

You frowned at the fact that you couldn’t stop thinking about him after everything that had happened. In the back of your mind the phrase surfaced again, you love him. God damn it!

"Well you won't have to worry about him, " Hercules commented, "I had a little discussion with him about staying away from you if he knows what's good for him."

"Are you serious?" You snapped.

"Oh shit..." John said. "What?" 

John pointed behind Alex and you felt yourself stop breathing for a moment. Thomas was standing not far off staring at the table like he had seen a ghost. James was standing next to him and looked concerned as he realized you had seen them. You tried to pull the best glare you could muster but it just wasn't working. You weren't ready. He was standing there with that magenta sweater you loved so much and sadness marred his handsome face. You felt a hand on your arm and quickly looked away and saw John holding out a napkin. Your plan to be strong had crumbled and tears were flowing freely instead of the glare you so desperately wanted to send his way. 

"I need to go," you said in a rush as you grabbed all your things.

"(Y/N) wait!" 

You ignored them as you rushed away from the table and towards the street to head home. You wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there. I wasn't ready... Angrily you wiped away tears as you headed towards Angelica's.

"(Y/N)!" 

James's voice rang out behind you and you prayed that he was at least alone. You didn't want to face Thomas and look weak. Stopping and slowly turning around you felt a small amount of relief when you saw him by himself hurrying to catch up to you. He began to cough a bit as he finally reached you and you reached out concerned that he was going to have an attack.

"James what are you doing?"

"I... I had to talk to you," he said as he calmed his breathing.

"I don't want to hear it," you snapped and began walking again. I know it isn't his fault... but then again how the fuck can I know that he didn't know what Thomas was up too. They are best friends after all.

"Please! Please hear me out," he pleaded, "You need to talk to him! He is a wreck! I've never seen him like this..."

You felt something snap as you whipped around and shoved a finger into James's chest, "OH HE'S A WRECK? HE IS A WRECK? WHAT ABOUT ME JAMES?!"

James shrunk back slightly, "I know what he said hurt you and he is an idiot, but I think there is more to what..."

"NO! There isn't a damn thing more to what happened! I should go talk to him? I don't fucking think so."

"He is miserable. He has barely leaves his house! I don't know what to do," he said desperately.

"Well he should of fucking thought about that before he did what he did! He can go to hell! The both of you can just go to hell!" You shouted as hot new tears streamed down your face before storming away leaving James staring at the ground.

[easyfoodnetwork]

Even in a Pandemic, Death Is a Popularity Contest

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The food media paid scant attention to the Indian-born chef and restaurant owner Garima Kothari when she was alive. That lack of coverage has extended to her tragic death.

This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to voices@eater.com.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began earlier this spring, the Indian-born chef Garima Kothari saw business at her Jersey City restaurant, Nukkad, evaporate overnight. Yet she found little time to despair. Instead, she strategized.

She started selling DIY dosa kits. She tried curbside deliveries. She offered discounts. When we spoke over the phone on April 9, Kothari said that her numbers continued falling, yet she tempered her concern with hope. She laughed nervously when I asked if she feared that the restaurant, just five months old, would have to close for good. “I hope not,” she said. “I have plans.”

Just two weeks later, on the morning of Sunday, April 26, Kothari died in an alleged murder-suicide at the hands of her partner, Man Mohan Mall. She was 35. According to the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, authorities discovered Kothari with multiple upper body injuries in the apartment the couple shared, eventually concluding that her death was a homicide. A day after her death, an autopsy revealed that Kothari was five months pregnant.

I had spoken to Kothari as part of my reporting for a short piece on the impact of COVID-19 on small, immigrant-owned restaurants. Though our conversation only lasted nine minutes, Kothari talked candidly about the challenges of operating a tiny, newer restaurant that focused on Indian cooking, which still struggles to gain high regard in America despite the valiant efforts of gifted chefs. She had applied for many relief funds and grants, but feared that the nature of her restaurant, coupled with its relative infancy, would make capital elusive. “For a very small restaurant like mine, especially a restaurant that’s not doing Italian and French food, I don’t know if I will ever get a single penny,” she told me.

Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember?

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the food and restaurant industry has stretched digital food publications thin, forcing journalists to dedicate all their resources to coverage of a rapidly shifting landscape. Stories that seemingly bear no overt relation to the pandemic — like, say, Kothari’s brutal death — have consequently fallen by the wayside. Such circumstances may explain why the tabloid and celebrity media covered the death, but few food publications in the country dignified Kothari with so much as a blog post, barring a short article on Tuesday morning from Grub Street (owned by Eater’s parent company, Vox Media).

But the response to Kothari’s death raises enduring questions: Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember?

Kothari’s death may be the first time that readers will hear about her, an embarrassing truth that suggests her demise will eclipse her accomplishments. She bid farewell to the life of investment banking in her native India (she’d later call the corporate world “too cold”) after realizing her life’s great love was food. In 2010, Kothari entered MasterChef India, making the top 15. Following that experience, she decamped for Paris and attended Le Cordon Bleu, where she received her pastry diploma in 2013. She then moved to America, working as a pastry chef in Jacksonville, Florida, before heading north to New Jersey in 2015. Kothari managed her own catering and events business; she was also an occasional writer, having contributed to such sites as Food52, the Kitchn, and the Michelin Guide.

Coverage of Kothari was so scant in her lifetime that some may reason that she wasn’t yet “famous” enough, that her restaurant was too young, to justify immediate reporting on her death. This argument is precisely the issue at hand, one that exposes the inherent bias of a food media whose narrative gaze skews towards white, materially advantaged, cis male chefs, who also tend to have aggressive public relations teams that help to guarantee media saturation. Such privileges also dictate access to capital, like the kind Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park has gotten from American Express. Without them, few aspiring restaurant owners stand a chance of catching the mainstream food media’s attention.

Given the sheer number of restaurants that open each year, and the fact that Jersey City is flush with Indian restaurants, you may wonder what made Kothari’s restaurant so special. At Nukkad, she was trying to do something different with her native country’s cuisine; she saw street food through the prism of her own nostalgia, filtering childhood staples through the culinary techniques she’d picked up throughout her career. This approach resulted in dishes like butter chicken mac-and-cheese and pizza dosas filled with mozzarella, as well as fare one might consider more typical for a nominally Indian restaurant, such as idlis, chaats, and biryanis. Kothari didn’t care about being slapped with the dreaded “fusion” label, much less about the distinctions between north and south Indian cuisines. Like many chefs before her, she worked strenuously to push people past their worn perceptions of Indian cooking, and fought this battle in a highly individualistic way.

Viewed from a purely editorial standpoint, in other words, Kothari’s approach to food — and her winding path to it — made her a compelling character who should have been more famous prior to her death. But she operated at a distinct disadvantage within the restaurant world as a condition of her womanhood, her race, and the fact that she was not born in America. Her creative impulses, like the self-described “Indian soul food” she cooked, likewise put her on the fringes of the industry. In death, food journalists have further pushed her to the margins.

As such, Kothari’s case speaks to a rot in food coverage that existed long before the pandemic illuminated its fissures. While American food publications are infatuated with celebrity, they too often seem to impose a higher barrier of entry for figures like Kothari, an immigrant woman of color who didn’t quite have the resources (nor, eventually, the time) to become a media darling.

What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death?

Critics may gripe that I’m reading these outlets in bad faith (or that Jersey City is too far from the food media’s pulse in New York City, but I’d point to stunningly consistent coverage of its critically acclaimed pizzerias). They may also charge that such intense scrutiny is unwarranted at a time when a pandemic has food journalists operating under unprecedented duress. But the muted response to Kothari’s death reveals a fundamental imbalance that Grub Street’s Chris Crowley illustrated in his sensitive piece on the April 1 death of Jesus Roman Melendez from complications of COVID-19. Melendez was a long-time cook at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Nougatine — the “backbone” of the restaurant, as Crowley wrote. In eulogizing Melendez, he gave flesh to a man who’d usually remain nameless in stories of Nougatine’s success, and simultaneously questioned the mechanics of a food media that deifies a man like Vongerichten.

Crowley’s posthumous profile of Melendez feels exemplary because it’s an outlier, pointing toward a future for food journalism that honors talents who so often remain unseen. But a piece like his shouldn’t be so unique. Two weeks elapsed between Melendez’s death and that piece’s publication; once the wound of Kothari’s loss begins to heal, I hope that other outlets will make room for a story that gives Kothari similar narrative consideration, framing her not in terms of erasure but instead focusing on what she achieved. Letting her story dissolve into the ether would merely confirm the anxieties Kothari expressed to me about the eventual fate of Nukkad: a fear that gatekeepers would look right past her.

It’s no secret that the press has unique power to mold public opinion and inform our ideas of who we consider to be stars worthy of respect. Just last year, the editor of a major newspaper’s food section asked me why I’d pitched a profile of a small restaurant owner in Bushwick when I could write about a more established name like Nigella Lawson. The question revealed this publication’s reactive, not proactive, default posturing. So I now find myself wondering if the food media’s commitment to the status quo will continue, despite how unsustainable the pandemic is revealing that to be?

In an ideal scenario, publications will emerge from this pandemic with greater sensitivity for the stories of restaurant owners like Kothari who suffered acutely as a result of the pandemic’s financial strains. To be fair, scores of food journalists are already doing this work, and no longer just at smaller and/or more regional publications. Such coverage should appear with even greater consistency in mainstream, national publications. But in a more likely (albeit cynical) scenario, these outlets may very well continue to give real estate to the blandly familiar cabal of well-funded celebrity chefs, figures who’ve become poster boys of this uncertain moment for American restaurants.

What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death? It shouldn’t have taken some arbitrary metric of success, be it a James Beard nomination or a profile from the New York Times, for writers to extend her the very basic courtesy of aggregating an article about her death. Such anointments have more to do with access than intangible variables, like talent and dedication. Those prerequisites shouldn’t determine whether a woman who devoted her life to food gets a fair remembrance.

Mayukh Sen is a writer in New York. He has won a James Beard Award for his food writing, and he teaches food journalism at New York University. His first book, on the immigrant women who have shaped food in America, will be published by W.W. Norton & Company in fall 2021.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2WguReL https://ift.tt/2WeLwQ5

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The food media paid scant attention to the Indian-born chef and restaurant owner Garima Kothari when she was alive. That lack of coverage has extended to her tragic death.

This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to voices@eater.com.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began earlier this spring, the Indian-born chef Garima Kothari saw business at her Jersey City restaurant, Nukkad, evaporate overnight. Yet she found little time to despair. Instead, she strategized.

She started selling DIY dosa kits. She tried curbside deliveries. She offered discounts. When we spoke over the phone on April 9, Kothari said that her numbers continued falling, yet she tempered her concern with hope. She laughed nervously when I asked if she feared that the restaurant, just five months old, would have to close for good. “I hope not,” she said. “I have plans.”

Just two weeks later, on the morning of Sunday, April 26, Kothari died in an alleged murder-suicide at the hands of her partner, Man Mohan Mall. She was 35. According to the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, authorities discovered Kothari with multiple upper body injuries in the apartment the couple shared, eventually concluding that her death was a homicide. A day after her death, an autopsy revealed that Kothari was five months pregnant.

I had spoken to Kothari as part of my reporting for a short piece on the impact of COVID-19 on small, immigrant-owned restaurants. Though our conversation only lasted nine minutes, Kothari talked candidly about the challenges of operating a tiny, newer restaurant that focused on Indian cooking, which still struggles to gain high regard in America despite the valiant efforts of gifted chefs. She had applied for many relief funds and grants, but feared that the nature of her restaurant, coupled with its relative infancy, would make capital elusive. “For a very small restaurant like mine, especially a restaurant that’s not doing Italian and French food, I don’t know if I will ever get a single penny,” she told me.

Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember?

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the food and restaurant industry has stretched digital food publications thin, forcing journalists to dedicate all their resources to coverage of a rapidly shifting landscape. Stories that seemingly bear no overt relation to the pandemic — like, say, Kothari’s brutal death — have consequently fallen by the wayside. Such circumstances may explain why the tabloid and celebrity media covered the death, but few food publications in the country dignified Kothari with so much as a blog post, barring a short article on Tuesday morning from Grub Street (owned by Eater’s parent company, Vox Media).

But the response to Kothari’s death raises enduring questions: Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember?

Kothari’s death may be the first time that readers will hear about her, an embarrassing truth that suggests her demise will eclipse her accomplishments. She bid farewell to the life of investment banking in her native India (she’d later call the corporate world “too cold”) after realizing her life’s great love was food. In 2010, Kothari entered MasterChef India, making the top 15. Following that experience, she decamped for Paris and attended Le Cordon Bleu, where she received her pastry diploma in 2013. She then moved to America, working as a pastry chef in Jacksonville, Florida, before heading north to New Jersey in 2015. Kothari managed her own catering and events business; she was also an occasional writer, having contributed to such sites as Food52, the Kitchn, and the Michelin Guide.

Coverage of Kothari was so scant in her lifetime that some may reason that she wasn’t yet “famous” enough, that her restaurant was too young, to justify immediate reporting on her death. This argument is precisely the issue at hand, one that exposes the inherent bias of a food media whose narrative gaze skews towards white, materially advantaged, cis male chefs, who also tend to have aggressive public relations teams that help to guarantee media saturation. Such privileges also dictate access to capital, like the kind Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park has gotten from American Express. Without them, few aspiring restaurant owners stand a chance of catching the mainstream food media’s attention.

Given the sheer number of restaurants that open each year, and the fact that Jersey City is flush with Indian restaurants, you may wonder what made Kothari’s restaurant so special. At Nukkad, she was trying to do something different with her native country’s cuisine; she saw street food through the prism of her own nostalgia, filtering childhood staples through the culinary techniques she’d picked up throughout her career. This approach resulted in dishes like butter chicken mac-and-cheese and pizza dosas filled with mozzarella, as well as fare one might consider more typical for a nominally Indian restaurant, such as idlis, chaats, and biryanis. Kothari didn’t care about being slapped with the dreaded “fusion” label, much less about the distinctions between north and south Indian cuisines. Like many chefs before her, she worked strenuously to push people past their worn perceptions of Indian cooking, and fought this battle in a highly individualistic way.

Viewed from a purely editorial standpoint, in other words, Kothari’s approach to food — and her winding path to it — made her a compelling character who should have been more famous prior to her death. But she operated at a distinct disadvantage within the restaurant world as a condition of her womanhood, her race, and the fact that she was not born in America. Her creative impulses, like the self-described “Indian soul food” she cooked, likewise put her on the fringes of the industry. In death, food journalists have further pushed her to the margins.

As such, Kothari’s case speaks to a rot in food coverage that existed long before the pandemic illuminated its fissures. While American food publications are infatuated with celebrity, they too often seem to impose a higher barrier of entry for figures like Kothari, an immigrant woman of color who didn’t quite have the resources (nor, eventually, the time) to become a media darling.

What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death?

Critics may gripe that I’m reading these outlets in bad faith (or that Jersey City is too far from the food media’s pulse in New York City, but I’d point to stunningly consistent coverage of its critically acclaimed pizzerias). They may also charge that such intense scrutiny is unwarranted at a time when a pandemic has food journalists operating under unprecedented duress. But the muted response to Kothari’s death reveals a fundamental imbalance that Grub Street’s Chris Crowley illustrated in his sensitive piece on the April 1 death of Jesus Roman Melendez from complications of COVID-19. Melendez was a long-time cook at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Nougatine — the “backbone” of the restaurant, as Crowley wrote. In eulogizing Melendez, he gave flesh to a man who’d usually remain nameless in stories of Nougatine’s success, and simultaneously questioned the mechanics of a food media that deifies a man like Vongerichten.

Crowley’s posthumous profile of Melendez feels exemplary because it’s an outlier, pointing toward a future for food journalism that honors talents who so often remain unseen. But a piece like his shouldn’t be so unique. Two weeks elapsed between Melendez’s death and that piece’s publication; once the wound of Kothari’s loss begins to heal, I hope that other outlets will make room for a story that gives Kothari similar narrative consideration, framing her not in terms of erasure but instead focusing on what she achieved. Letting her story dissolve into the ether would merely confirm the anxieties Kothari expressed to me about the eventual fate of Nukkad: a fear that gatekeepers would look right past her.

It’s no secret that the press has unique power to mold public opinion and inform our ideas of who we consider to be stars worthy of respect. Just last year, the editor of a major newspaper’s food section asked me why I’d pitched a profile of a small restaurant owner in Bushwick when I could write about a more established name like Nigella Lawson. The question revealed this publication’s reactive, not proactive, default posturing. So I now find myself wondering if the food media’s commitment to the status quo will continue, despite how unsustainable the pandemic is revealing that to be?

In an ideal scenario, publications will emerge from this pandemic with greater sensitivity for the stories of restaurant owners like Kothari who suffered acutely as a result of the pandemic’s financial strains. To be fair, scores of food journalists are already doing this work, and no longer just at smaller and/or more regional publications. Such coverage should appear with even greater consistency in mainstream, national publications. But in a more likely (albeit cynical) scenario, these outlets may very well continue to give real estate to the blandly familiar cabal of well-funded celebrity chefs, figures who’ve become poster boys of this uncertain moment for American restaurants.

What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death? It shouldn’t have taken some arbitrary metric of success, be it a James Beard nomination or a profile from the New York Times, for writers to extend her the very basic courtesy of aggregating an article about her death. Such anointments have more to do with access than intangible variables, like talent and dedication. Those prerequisites shouldn’t determine whether a woman who devoted her life to food gets a fair remembrance.

Mayukh Sen is a writer in New York. He has won a James Beard Award for his food writing, and he teaches food journalism at New York University. His first book, on the immigrant women who have shaped food in America, will be published by W.W. Norton & Company in fall 2021.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2WguReL via Blogger https://ift.tt/2SqNTyd

[drvscarlett]

Let Him Cook (COMPLETE)

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x Masterchef! reader

Summary: Charles Leclerc is infamous for his pasta video and has been rated as a chaotic cook numerous times. Surprise surprise, Mr. unlucky has a secret girlfriend bonus points she is a masterchef contestant.

EP01.

where Charles and Y/N are private but never secret with one another.

EP02.

where Charles supports Y/N in her masterchef journey.

EP03

where Y/N secures a new plate and Charles is up late.

EP04

where Y/N and Charles lets the world in to their relationship.

EP05

where the world sees how Charles progressed in cooking and Y/N guiding him.

EP06.

where the drivers interact with Charles and Y/N's relationship.

Author's note: Quite happy with this series. Another series produced out of my love for another niche of mine. I will probably add more drabbles when I feel inspired again but this story is complete!

[saoirse-a-k]

Books read in June 2017

Doom Patrol: Brick By Brick— Five stars

I keep seeing people suggest this as a jumping-on point for Doom Patrol but I’m honestly not sure it’s a particularly good one. If you are new to the series and read this without context, I hope you enjoyed it, but personally I enjoyed it specifically for the new light it brought to concepts from earlier Doom Patrol books, particularly Grant Morrison and Keith Griffen’s runs on the team.

The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood — Four stars

A book you kind of have to take with a grain of salt. McLellan will suggest something that #may# have happened and then continue on from that supposition as if it’s an obvious proven truth. Specifically focuses on Dietrich and Garbo; other women float in and out of the narrative as they float in and out of the orbit of one or both of the lead players.

Chameleon Moon — Four and a half stars

The only thing that lost this book points is how infodump-y the worldbuilding exposition was. Just because you have a character with plot-relevant amnesia doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have other characters clunkily explain everything to him. Otherwise, a lovely SF story about finding and protecting your chosen family and I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Interim Errantry — Four stars

Even after I had read the Christmas and Hallowe’en stories I somehow wasn’t expecting the third (basically novel-length) to be a Valentines Day story! I have to admit I spent years pretty resistant to the idea that Nita and Kit would end up in a romantic relationship. It just seemed so obvious and boring and bought into the ‘boys and girls/men and women can never be Just Friends’ Thing. But everything Duane has done with the characters since they did start sort-of-dating has been adorable and charming and true to their established characterization.

Romancing the Inventor — Four stars

Sweet f/f romance. Lots of fun easter eggs for people familiar with the rest of Carriger’s work; hopefully enough to be intriguing but not confusing to a new reader. As a long-time reader, I found it very rewarding to finally see Mme. Lefoux get her happy ending!

Boy and Girl Wonders: Robin in Cultural Context — Five stars

This book was initially released at the height of my Batman fannishness and was pretty formative in how I think critically about these characters and concepts. I revisited it out of nostalgia and hoping to kind of ‘turn my brain off’ with a beloved reread and found that much of Mary’s argument still holds true today even though the Batman comics landscape has changed so much. In the years since this was first published I’ve written academically about Batman comics a few times and from that perspective, I am in awe of Mary’s ability to condense complex continuity and explain it to a presumed-non-Batman-cognizant-reader, something I personally found very difficult to do.

My Boyfriend’s Back — Two and a half stars

I was hoping that this book would be about the POV character learning to love and accept his monster boyfriend and helping him recover his memories. Unfortunately, instead the book posits that the only way they can be happy is if they’re both equally monstrous, which I personally find much less interesting. The world building seemed kind of flat, like it wanted to be Harry Potter but also wanted to exist in a world where Harry Potter was a pop-culture phenomenon and couldn’t quite balance having it both ways. By far my favourite parts of this book were the ghost girl and the creepy doll.

Space Battle Lunchtime, vol 2 — Five stars

I can’t even be coherent about how much I love this comic. The quick elevator-pitch-style description of the previous volume was “first human contestant on Space Masterchef”; volume two ups the stakes with romance, cannibalism, and high-speed chase scenes, while remaining as adorable and hilarious as ever. Seriously please read this book.

[theflavorfulroad]

Mexican Gorditas

Hey, fellow travelers! I'm back again with another new recipe, just in time for Cinco de Mayo. Today, I'm going to teach you how to make gorditas, tasty little Mexican morsels that have few ingredients but are big in taste.

Now, what exactly a gordita is and how it is prepared varies greatly depending on where you are in Latin America. There are some gorditas that are more like pitas or puffy tortillas that are on the stove top and then are split open and stuffed with a variety of fillings. There are other gorditas that look more similar to tortillas and are not stuffed, but have toppings placed on them after cooking. There are even other gorditas that are more similar to empanadas and are stuffed before cooking and then deep fried.

The gorditas that I will teach you how to make today are something of a cross between a tortilla, an American biscuit and an English muffin. This style of gordita is very similar to some varieties that are traditionally prepared in the northern states of Mexico. My gordita recipe is made with a mixture of all purpose flour and Masa harina (corn flour) along with a little salt, water and baking powder. They are cooked on the stove top and will inflate while cooking. This makes them perfect for stuffing with any kind of filling that you wish. Refried beans, guacamole, shredded chicken or pork, ground beef, salsa... the possibilities are endless.

These gorditas cook up in less than 10 minutes and are an excellent quick breakfast or great addition to any meal. And what's even better is that you don't need any oil to cook them. While some recipes for gorditas are either deep fried or fried in lard or oil, my recipe is simply cooked in a nonstick skillet on medium-high heat. If you want to have gorditas that are golden brown, you can use one to two teaspoons (about 5 - 10ml  ) of olive oil, but that isn't required.  

So what do you say we head on over to the kitchen and whip up something good?

                                                 Ingredients

1 cup (100 g) Masa harina (see footnote 1)

3/4 cup (100 g) all purpose flour (I use enriched and presifted)

salt to taste (I like to use about an 1/8 teaspoon for myself)

3 teaspoons (12 g) baking powder

about 3/4 cup + 1 tbsp (175 ml) warm water (see footnote 2)

1 - 2 tsp (5-10 ml) olive oil (optional)

                                                Instructions

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the Masa, all purpose flour, salt and baking powder until well Incorporated.

Pour in about half the amount of water and begin to mix. Continue to mix while gradually adding more. You'll want to stop once you get a dough that has the texture and consistency of Play-Doh, not too dry but not too wet.

Break off pieces of dough and shape into balls about 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) in diameter. Using your hands or a glass, slightly flatten the balls. You'll want the gorditas to look like small fat pitas:  you don't them to be as flat as a tortilla, at least not for this recipe.  Leave them to rest on a large dish.

Preheat a large nonstick skillet on medium-high heat. Once the skillet is hot, place the gorditas inside, keeping them spaced  apart from one another so they're easier to turn. Cook gorditas for about 3 - 4 minutes per side. You want the gorditas to be slightly brown and blistered on each side. Once the gorditas are done cooking, transfer them to a dish and allow them to sit for about 2 - 3 minutes, until they cool slightly. Using a fork, slightly split open the  gordita and stuff with filling of choice.

                         Makes about six 2 1/2 inch (6.5 cm) gorditas.

                                                      Notes

My gordita recipe is partially adapted from a recipe made by former MasterChef Season 4 contestant Adriana Guillen. my recipe is essentially the same as hers, except I use slightly more flour and less baking powder. 1. Masa harina is a type of flour made from ground corn that is commonly used in Mexican cooking. You can find Masa harina in Mexican grocery stores, as well as in most chain supermarkets. You can even find small bags of it at some dollar stores in North America. There's one particular chain where you can get a small bag of Masa for just a dollar. My American readers will probably know which one I'm referring to. ;-) Let's just say money grows on it.

Masa harina is much different in texture then cornmeal, so I would advise against trying to substitute cornmeal in place of it.

2. As with most recipes for bread or any kind of recipe that requires you to make a dough, the amount of water given is very suggestive. I've learned in the last few months while making various kinds of traditional Sicilian breads that depending on where you live in the world, the amount of water needed in bread recipes varies wildly. The amount I've listed is a rough estimate based upon my own experience.

When making any kind of bread or similar recipe with water and flour, it's a good rule to start with about half the amount of water given and to gradually add the rest in small increments. Depending on where you live, you may or may not need extra water. It's better to start with a dough that's too dry and to work your way up from there then to end up with a dough that's too wet and difficult to work with.

[northgeorgiasportsman]

21 Things To Do in Dallas This Week

Justin Timberlake is returning to the AAC on Thursday night. email Print Article

AA

Wednesday

Need a ladies night? Or a men’s night? Or just a night to get totally wasted and scream and holler when you see men taking off their clothes? Chippendales is coming to town just in time for bachelorette party season. Or a way to unwind after the stress of the holidays? Or it’s cold outside and you miss the sight of shirtless men? Whatever floats your boat or makes you hoot and holler, see it all (well, mostly all) at 8 p.m. Wednesday at House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St. Tickets start at $25 at livenation.com. Paige Skinner

Thursday

Rover Dramawerks picked Muriel Resnik’s Any Wednesday for its 19th season opener, which you can catch at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday at 221 W. Parker Road, Suite 580, Plano. Playgoers 55 years ago (any readers still around?) may remember the play on Broadway with Sandy Dennis and Gene Hackman. Jane Fonda starred in the movie. Familiar plot: Married business tycoon visits mistress in office-paid-for apartment every Wednesday. Complications ensue when client and tycoon’s wife mistakenly get sent to the apartment. Carol M. Rice directs Mark Massey, Jade Reyes, Eddy Herring and Lucia Welch. For info and tickets, roverdramawerks.com or 972-849-0358. Thursday and matinee tickets are $18; others are $24; teacher/student/senior, $20. Reba Liner

It’s been about eight months or so since Justin Timberlake appeared in town, gracing the same American Airlines Center stage that he will again command Thursday night. Such is the magnitude of his star power. After all, there are very few artists who could return to the same scope and size of venue in such a short time. On that last appearance, JT took the sold-out crowd on a journey through his vast solo catalog of hits, enthralling the audience with his slinky dance moves, buttery smooth falsettos and charmingly, magnetic charisma. His shows also skew heavily toward the mom demographic. Much chardonnay will be sold and much is likely to be spilled as the gaggle of 30- and 40-something ladies will undoubtedly raise their glasses high in the air as they swoon and sway to his every move and note. If you’re there, feel free to join in. If you’re not in attendance, your social media feeds will keep you updated minute by minute. 8 p.m. Thursday, American Airlines Center, 2500 Victory Ave., $49 and up at ticketmaster.com. Jeff Strowe

Toro y Moi, along with Neon Indian and Washed Out, was a forerunner of the chill wave movement about a decade ago. But, like many in the scene at that time, he’s moved on from the sound, as is evident in his new album, this year’s Outer Peace. One critic described the album as "new disco," while others label it as a funk album rooted in the present. 7 p.m. Thursday, Granada Theater, 3524 Greenville Ave., sold out. Diamond Victoria

Friday

Ella is a girl with a dopey fairy godmother who “blesses” Ella with obedience, which means whatever anyone tells her to do, she does. Even worse, she ends up with a stepmother and stepsisters who know about her quirk and are happy to take advantage. Throw in a handsome prince and adventures with ogres and magic, and you have a twisty retelling of Cinderella. See a song-filled version of Gail Carson Levine’s Newbery-honored fractured fairy tale as the Dallas Children’s Theater stages Ella Enchanted: The Musical at 5938 Skillman St. Friday’s performance is at 7:30 p.m., and the show runs through Feb. 24. Tickets, $15-40, can be found at dct.org. Patrick Williams

Did you know that comedian Iliza Shlesinger got her start here in Dallas? You didn’t? How dare you call yourself a resident! Shlesinger was born in New York, but she grew up in Dallas and took her first steps onstage as an improv comedian before heading off to college and a lucrative stand-up comedy career. She returns to her homeland for a show at The Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm St., at 7 p.m. Friday. Shlesinger cut her teeth in stand-up at The Hollywood Improv and quickly caught on with her unique take and skill. She found fame as the first female comedian to win the NBC reality competition Last Comic Standing and began regularly touring theaters across the country and the world. Tickets are between $32 and $209 depending on available seating and can be purchased at theatredallas.com. Danny Gallagher

There is a story behind Amaluna, the Cirque du Soleil show making a stop at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, 1000 Lone Star Parkway. Here goes: Queen Prospera rules over a magical island populated by all women until a group of men wash ashore shipwrecked. Her daughter … OK, look. It’s Cirque du Soleil. You know, lots of brightly colored leotards and amazing acrobats dangling from straps above the audience, flying through the air launched from seesaws to the sound of mildly weird new-agey music. There are two shows Friday, at 4:30 and 8 p.m. Adult ticket prices start at $63, with discounts for children, and an assortment of special packages are available at cirquedusoleil.com. The circus continues with shows until March 3. Patrick Williams

As do many institutions at their silver anniversary, sports-talk station KTCK-AM 1310 and 96.7 FM “The Ticket” is getting nostalgic for the 25th iteration of its signature P1 fan festival. Along with celebrity guests Troy Aikman, Jay Novacek and Daryl “Razor” Reaugh, Ticketstock 25 has a Ticket Time Tunnel, where Tier One hosts discuss the history of the station in panel discussions, and there’s an interactive Ticket Hall of Fame with memorabilia, audio, Marconi Awards and retro Ticket merch. As usual, the Timewasters will perform Saturday at 6 p.m., this year from a greatest-hits set list, with Fox 4 sports anchor Mike Doocy — the ultimate good sport and straight guy during his frequent guest-hosting appearances — as emcee. Ticketstock 25 is Friday and Saturday at the Plano Event Center, 2000 E. Spring Creek Parkway. Doors open at noon both days and admission is free. Visit theticket.com for the full schedule of on-air roundtables and gotta-be-there-to-hear-’em Ticket Time Tunnel panels. Jesse Hughey

In the sage words of the world’s pre-eminent British girl band: spice up your life. Winter doldrums be damned, things are getting hot at ZestFest Jan. 25-27 at the Irving Convention Center, 500 W. Las Colinas Blvd. This three-day celebration of all things bold and piquant is packed with cooking demonstrations; celebrity chefs like Jon Bonnell, Eddie Deen and MasterChef champ Shaun O’Neale; gourmet vendors to help you level up in your own kitchen; live music; plus food samples and beer tastings aplenty. For those of us with stomachs of steel and something to prove, there’s a jalapeño-eating challenge and the annual “Atomic Wing” contest. Pack your antacid and plan a full day on Friday from 1 to 6 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Admission is $15 at the door, though kids 10 and under get in free. For more info, check out zestfest.net. Jennifer Davis-Lamm

Creator and headliner of last year’s inaugural I Am Dallas Hip Hop event, Mozez Tha Great performs his long-awaited EP Undefined in its entirety as part of a stacked bill at The Prophet Bar on Friday night. Mozez has gone through his fair share of setbacks over the years regarding his music career. A few years ago, Undefined was ready for release, but when an engineer who was commissioned to mix and master the album took off with Mozez’s money, its completion got delayed. Catch Mozez along with several other of Dallas’ best up-and-coming hip-hop artists. With Lou Charle$, Mokah Soulfly, Smoothvega, Drama Tha King and Raw Elementz, 8:30 p.m. Friday, The Prophet Bar, 2548 Elm St., $10. Diamond Victoria

Thursday is on a small run of dates where they play two of their classic LPs, Full Collapse and War All the Time, front to back. Though they have a rather extensive back catalog, these are the two records that changed their fortunes and gained a huge audience. The first night — Friday night — is devoted to Full Collapse, the record that broke the band out of the New Jersey scene and into the national spotlight. The next night is devoted to War All the Time, the major-label debut that brought the band to larger acclaim. Normally shows like these happen in New York, LA or Chicago, so Dallas is very lucky to have these dates. Thursday is not really an active band as compared with the 2000s, so you should strongly consider going if you’ve never seen this powerful and legendary band before. 8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Jan. 25-26 at Trees, 2709 Elm St., $29-$36 at ticketfly.com. Eric Grubbs

Saturday

Sport is “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment,” according to the Google search we just did. By that definition, cheerleading is 100 percent, no doubt in anyone’s mind, a sport. Backflips are physical. Somersaults must be learned and perfected. And competitive cheerleaders, well, compete. See them do that Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 26-27 at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas, 650 S. Griffin St at National Cheerleaders Association National Championships. Tickets start at $20 at eventbrite.com. Paige Skinner

Finnish vocal ensemble Rajaton joins the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the music of megastar pop group Abba, who are enjoying a much deserved critical reconsideration. Expect orchestral renditions that shine new light on the Swedish artists’ soaring, emotionally raw classics, including “Mamma Mia,” “Waterloo,” “Dancing Queen” and more. There are three performances: at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Jan. 25-26, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 27. All performances take place at the Meyerson, 2301 Flora St. Tickets start at $20. More info at mydso.com. Jonathan Patrick

The Boy Who Would Be Captain Hook is a funny and moving play about a boy who was born without a right hand. When doctors fitted him with a prosthetic hook, he was sidelined at recess until the other kids asked to play Peter Pan with him. Of course, he played Captain Hook — until he grew tired of it. The Boy Who Would Be Captain Hook takes a look at David Harrell’s childhood living with a disability as he tells the story of how he wished to change his own narrative and not be just the boy with a hook. The play is at 3 p.m. Saturday at Charles W. Eisemann Center, 2351 Performance Drive, Richardson. Visit eisemanncenter.com for more information and tickets ($25). Paige Skinner

KNON is the nonprofit, listener-supported community radio station that has been showcasing the blues in DFW for 20 years. From the up-and-coming, 11-year-old Jack Barksdale to headliners like the award-winning blues elders in Gregg A. Smith and the Blues Revue Band, the 20th annual KNON Blues Festival will be two days packed with Texas talent. Before hosting festivals, KNON released compilations of blues music from all over DFW. The radio station has brought blues a long way over the years and shows no sign of stopping. The festival will be held at Poor David’s Pub, where blues has been put on display in Dallas for over 40 years. Keeping up with what is seemingly a festival tradition, Dickey’s Barbecue will be available for $10 a plate. 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 26-27 at Poor David’s Pub, 1313 Lamar St., $20-$150 at eventbrite.com. Jacob Vaughn

Blake Ward is one of the busiest DJs in Dallas, with four different weekly events and recently having taken up the management of his new Four Four Booking agency. He has a long-standing Saturday night Glamorama gig at Beauty Bar. As far as promotion goes, Ward is relentless, a perfect example of how to connect, inform and grow a DJ audience. 9 p.m. Saturday, Beauty Bar, 1924 N. Henderson Ave., free. Wanz Dover

Sunday

International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Name doesn’t ring a bell? Then mark the day with a visit to the Dallas Holocaust Museum and Center for Education and Tolerance, 211 N. Record St., Suite 100. Remember, those who forget the past are … well, just doomed. The museum is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, and admission is $10 for adults, with discounts for kids and seniors. Find more information at dallasholocaustmuseum.org. Patrick Williams

Monday

Who doesn’t love The Bachelor? You? OK, no one asked you. Jeez. Well somebody loves it, because the entire franchise has spanned more than 40 seasons and people keep watching. This season, four Dallas women are vying for virgin Colton Underwood’s love and cherry as America watches. If you don’t have anyone to watch it and cringe over it with, then head to Steam Theory Brewing Co., 340 Singleton Blvd., Suite 100, at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 28, to bond with fellow Bachelor lovers at the Bachelor Nation Watching Party. Visit steamtheorybrewing.com for more information. Paige Skinner

Tuesday

Namo in West Village, 3699 McKinney Ave., is hosting a sake-tasting class from 6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. Those attending will get six hand rolls matched with sakes from TYKU Sake, whose reps will be on hand to tell you what to look for in the traditional Japanese wine made from rice, water, yeast and koji (a kind of mold used in Japanese cuisine). Tickets are $50 at eventbrite.com. Patrick Williams

Wednesday

The Disney empire is a vast, all-encompassing thing. They’re the masters of the Ice Capades, one of the biggest names in Broadway and have a virtual lock on the kids pajama market. Now, their reach expands to the world of a cappella singing. Yep, the domain once reserved for Ivy League a-holes in striped jackets is now replete with mouse ears: meet DCappella, Disney Music’s a cappella super group. Assembled by Deke Sharon, who’s like the Lou Pearlman of the a cappella world, these seven men and women don’t need backing instruments. It’s just their sweet, sweet voices and sculpted eyebrows up onstage, belting out all your favorite Disney tunes at Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie, 1001 Performance Place, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 30. Tickets to see the Disney-fied vocal acrobatics are $19.50 to $54.50 at axs.com. Jennifer Davis-Lamm

In Incognito, playwright Nick Payne tells three different stories to better explore the human mind. One is about Thomas Stoltz Harvey stealing the recently dead Albert Einstein’s brain. The other is about a man named Harvey undergoing brain surgery, and the third is about Martha, a clinical neuropsychologist making some changes in her life after her marriage falls apart. See the play Jan. 30 through Feb. 23 at Bryant Hall, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd. Tickets start $25 at secondthoughttheatre.com. Showtime is 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Paige Skinner

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[mulgasuk]

Get a loaf of this... Woking Food and Drink festival is back!

The Borough’s biggest free-to-attend event, Woking Food and Drink Festival, is set to deliver another magnificent mezze of culinary delights from Friday 31 August to Sunday 2 September 2018 inclusive.

In its sixth consecutive year, the triple award-winning, three-day festival promises to serve up a mouth-watering menu of foodie and family activities, including live cookery demonstrations, talks from local food and drink experts, hands-on cookery workshops, over 80 trader stalls selling local and regional produce and signature dishes, live entertainment and more!

At the heart of the festival in Jubilee Square, celebrity chefs and Surrey’s top culinary talents will display their top-drawer skills and Michelin star flair in the Tante Marie Culinary Academy Theatre.

International Emmy nominated Ching He Huang will demonstrate her style of modern Chinese cooking and talk about her seven best selling cookbooks.

Adding another winning combination to the theatre line up will be BBC MasterChef Champions, Kenny Tutt and Saliha Mahmood Ahmed, who respectively triumphed over tens of contestants in front of millions of TV viewers.

Kenny, a bank manager from Worthing, was crowned MasterChef Champion 2018 following his final three-course meal which impressed judges, John Torode and Gregg Wallace, who described his food as ‘restaurant-style perfection’ and ‘make-my-heart-thump fantastic’.

Flying the flag for Surrey, Lorna Gangotra Nanda (local food business owner and one third of The Gangotra Sisters, winners of BBC2’s The Big Family Showdown 2017), will be joined by her sisters, Bobbi and Monika, to demonstrate why they’re nicknamed the ‘spice sisters’.

Representing the best of Surrey’s local culinary talent will be:

Dougie Balish, Head Chef at the Michelin Star The Tudor Room at Great Fosters, Egham

Steve Drake, Chef Patron of Sorrel, Dorking

Fernando Stovell, Director and Chef Patron of Stovell’s, Chobham

Dan Britten and Jimi Mistry, chefs and pop-up restaurateurs

Jack Sturgess, owner of Bake with Jack

Simon Taylor, Head Butcher and owner of Surrey Hill Butchers, Oxshott

David Frear, Patissier at Le Papillion, Woking

Steve Tremblay, private chef and caterer

Senior instructors from Tante Marie Culinary Academy.

As well as the high-quality artisan stalls and jam-packed line up of demo chefs, visitors also have the opportunity to get stuck in to a smorgasbord of foodie and family activities, including: Tante Marie cookery workshops for adults and children*, Magimix masterclasses*, bite-size talks hosted by a range of local producers and gastronomic experts, celebrity book signings, live musical and street entertainment.

Taking family entertainment to stratospheric heights will be Stefan Gates, The Gastronaut! The popular BBC2 and CBBC presenter is well known for his energetic, funny, amazing and explosive live shows, including creating plasma in a microwave, custard-powder flame-throwing and more!

Hosted at the Rhoda McGaw Theatre on Saturday 1 September, the two live shows* promise to be an out of this world experience for the whole family! Tickets can be booked closer to the event at www.atgtickets.com/woking

Talking about Woking’s flagship foodie event, Cllr Colin Kemp, Woking Borough Council’s Portfolio Holder for Cultural and Community Development, said: “This popular, free-to-attend festival is the most anticipated event of the Celebrate Woking calendar. It not only delivers three days of deliciousness, it’s also an educational and immersive experience for visitors who want to learn more about food and local products.

“This year’s chef line up is also not to be missed. From Michelin Starred chefs to MasterChef Champions, we’ve got a stellar line up of celebrity and local culinary experts. And, best of all, these live demonstrations are free to watch!”

Woking Food and Drink Festival has experienced phenomenal growth year on year since it was founded by Woking Borough Council in 2013. Voted ‘Best Local Food Event’ in Surrey 2015, 2016 and 2017 by the readers of Surrey Life, it has attracted incremental visitor numbers per year with in excess of 100,000 people in attendance in 2017 and 2016.

More details and further festival goodies will be announced over the summer months via the website www.wokingfoodfest.co.uk and on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @WokingFoodFest.

Woking Food and Drink Festival 2018 is sponsored by Woking Shopping, Magimix, Tante Marie Culinary Academy and Celebrate Woking, and supported by #WeAreWoking and Headline Design and Print.

from Woking Borough Council Latest News https://www.woking.gov.uk/news?item=00005B0E9246.A20DBC27.00006410.0001

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Bad Genius: Knowledge Maketh Money

(Warning: This post contains some spoilers for the movie).

Knowledge is defined as the skills and information that is gained through experience or education. There are endless things in the world that we can fill our minds with. We can explore the world and use what we have learned to make daily tasks more interesting or easier. It is essentially one of the greatest tools for success when used right.

We see much of this show by Lynn in the movie, Bad Genius.

Just in case you haven’t watched the movie. Here is a very short summary of the movie:

Lynn is a genius in her studies. She initially gave answers to her friend, Grace, during a test. She then gets roped into a whole scheme of charging students to help them cheat in their exams. It eventually reaches the level of an internationally standardized entry exams called the STIC exams (something like the SATs) where she makes millions.

In other words, Lynn uses her brains to earn money.

Now, while most of us want to become millionaires, we do not encourage or condone the act of cheating to do so. However, we have plucked out some nuggets from the movie which we want to share with you.

1) Knowledge Trumps All

The British Library: Second largest library in the world (Picture Credit: The Malaysian Times)

Remember those days of trying to squeeze a semester or a years’ worth of information in a day before exams? I’m sure that most of us have. At some point you probably said “why do I need to learn how to calculate x(2x – 5) = 2x – 1”, and then you realized you needed it to become an engineer, a researcher or a pilot.

But enough of conventional reasoning (at least to me). We know that to become a doctor you need to know biology and to become a lawyer, you need to study law.

But let us look at something different, cooking. Contestants on MasterChef are often presented with very common ingredients like potatoes. Each contestant somehow comes up with unique dishes while we sit at home thinking of frying them into French fries. Not forgetting that none of them are professional chefs.

Expanding your knowledge allows you to create many opportunities and advantages. Just like Lynn, she started with knowledge based on academics and learned how to run a business (sort off). You and I may not become the best at one thing but there is a quote which I find really powerful. That is:

“Jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

2) The Smarter You Are, The More Shots You Call

Princess Leia: One of the top rebel leaders in Star Wars. (Picture Credit: The Daily Mail UK)

Remember how you thought “nerds” were always at the mercy of “bullies” in high school? Well, that is the total opposite in the working world. As commonly quoted, knowledge is definitely power. It is even recognized and thought as one of the main sources of power in management studies (Expert Power).

However, do not fully assume that all smart people are guaranteed success and power in life. Having knowledge is one thing, applying it is a whole different topic.

Anyway, as someone new or a fresh grad in a company, you often start at the more basic ranks in a company. From there you work your way up and you learn things. As you learn things (and work hard), you slowly find yourself becoming a leader. So long as you have people working for you, you are a “leader”.

At this point, you are looked up to as a leader because you know what to do, when to do something and some best practices. You can share all you’ve learned with your juniors and know how to do it because you were once in their shoes.

In the case of Lynn, she knew what the people wanted and she knew how to use that to her advantage. She knew students needed answers and she knew Bank needed the money. So she leveraged on that to earn money.

Knowledge is a powerful tool. In a business, knowing and keeping up with societal trends, expectations, and wants can help a company grow. You give the people what they want, you build up your reputation and you grow.

3. Keep Calm and Think

Breath and then think (Picture Credits: HundredMelanie on Deviant Art)

You feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, breathlessness, and franticness. Then suddenly you see your life flash before your eyes! (Too much drama). These are all common symptoms of stress.

When you are stressed out, everything seems like it is out of control. You will not be able to focus and that is when you struggle.

Imagine having to complete a task for your colleagues in 30 minutes but have to do it discreetly while your boss walks around. That is what Lynn did. With what time she had left, she did her best to stay calm. She finished up the second exam paper set and got the answers to her “friends” just in time.

Imagine if she had lost her cool and went berserk. She would not have finished the task. Life is often full of stressful situations. How you and I choose to react to it makes a world of difference. If you can collect your thoughts, you can overcome those situations.

Some tips to help you would be to get enough rest (whether at night or in between tasks) and to remember to breathe properly.

Here are some really helpful tips to help you cope with stressful situations.

4) Knowledge is a Game of Business

The Evolution of Phones (Picture Credit: Easy Technology Now)

I want you to take a few seconds to focus your attention on the device you are looking at right now (your phone or pc). Now think about how you can access the internet and do so many other things. Finally, think about how many different companies have basically earned money from you.

Most people would always think of ways to earn money. In Bad Genius, Lynn saw an opportunity to make money off helping others cheat.  She knew what they wanted, and she found a way to deliver it (from flying to Australia, texting in toilets and making fake puke).

The world we live in revolves around knowledge. We read, we learn, we experience and then we develop (well some people do). On your phone, you are already unconsciously supporting a whole bunch of companies. From your telco provider, internet service provider, companies advertising through games or YouTube videos and so on.

All these companies were started by someone (or a few of them) who had an idea. They had a lightbulb moment and then they researched and developed something. And now they are making money off you or the products and services you use.

How many of us really thought it’d be possible to make face-scanning a feature to unlock a phone? Or even simpler, designing a mechanical pencil with weights in it (a “shaker”) would make a world of a difference when people used it.

A little bit of interest and knowledge somewhere could lead to something new. I personally love going back to food the industry. At how something small like adding coloring to food inspired interesting creations like the rainbow grilled cheese sandwich (which was a thing at some point).

New ideas can be born from even the most basic of knowledge in something.

Concluding Thoughts

Once again, knowledge is important. It can be hard to find inspiration now but do not be discouraged. Life is an eternal journey of learning. You might find something that inspires you along the way. You might even become the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.

Never stop learning, and never feel disheartened if someone claims to know more than you. We each have different interests, but should not limit our learning to that one area. Go explore the world (or the internet) and discover new things. Knowledge is not limited to anyone.

I conclude with this one key message to everyone out there:

You should keep learning new things and expand your knowledge. Find something that you are truly passionate about or are inspired by and work more on that. Leverage your personal interests and knowledge and grow!

All the best in your future, dear reader.

The post Bad Genius: Knowledge Maketh Money appeared first on The Techy Hub.

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[stacks-reviews]

Must Reads Part 12

Happy Friday everybody! This week we have children made of snow, a mysterious spaceship that has done nothing for three years, a feminist anthology, and more! 

--Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean by Kirsty Murray “Little Red Riding Hood is a teen who wears a protective suit and has to fend off a very human wolf. Girls and boys walking to school band together to turn the tables on catcallers. A MasterChef contestant goes time-traveling to secure fresh ingredients for her famous recipes. This collection of feminist fantasy and science fiction stories weaves together impossibilities, dreams, and ambitions to reimagine what girls - and boys - can be. Award-winning Australian and Indian authors worked together and separately to create stories that bridge continents and will inspire readers to open their minds and take a fresh look at the world we know. Travel to outer space with a boy who’s a space miner; find yourself cast adrift and rescued by a pirate ship manned by women; get lost in an eerie airline terminal where your mirror image - a perfect version of you - wants to suck you in. Every story in this collection will take you far from the everyday, to push past boundaries and explore new possibilites. When you eat the sky and drink the ocean, you embrace the world and are connected to all humanity.”

This anthology caught my eye because of the beautiful cover. And after reading the description on the jacket I knew I had to have it. I do own it but I have not had an opportunity to read it yet. Some of the stories are comics and at least one of the stories is a screen play.

--Iron Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill and illustrated by Iacopo Bruno “In most fairy tales, princesses are beautiful, dragons are terrifying, and stories are harmless. This isn’t most fairy tales. Princess Violet is plain, reckless, and quite possibly too clever for her own good. Particularly when it comes to telling stories. One day she and her best friend, Demetrius, stumble upon a hidden room and find a peculiar book. A forbidden book. It tells a story of an evil being - called the Nybbas - imprisoned in their world. The story cannon be true - not really. But then the whispers start. Violet and Demetrius, along with an ancient, scarred dragon, may hold the key to the Nybbas’s triumph...or its demise. It all depends on how they tell the story. After all, stories make their own rules. Iron Hearted Violet is a story of a princess unlike any other. It is a story of the last dragon in existence, deathly afraid of its own reflection. Above all, it is a story about the power of stories, our belief in them, and how one enchanted tale changed the course of an entire kingdom.”

There is a short preview up on Goodreads which I really liked. I really like how the story flows in that preview and its voice. The preview follows the storyteller of the kingdom as he recounts what Violet was like as a child and how she captivated the people with her own ability to tell engaging stories. It ends with how she meets her first friend, Demetrius. 

--The Riverman by Aaron Starmer “’To sell a book, you need a description on the back. So here’s mine: My name is Fiona Loomis. I was born on August 11, 1977. I am recording this message on the morning of October 13, 1989. Today I am thirteen years old. Not a day older. Not a day younger.’ Fiona Loomis is Alice, back from Wonderland. She is Lucy, returned from Narnia. She is Coraline, home from the Other World. She is the girl we read about in storybooks, but here’s the difference: She is real. Twelve-year-old Alistair Cleary is her neighbor in a town where everyone knows each other. One afternoon, Fiona shows up at Alistair’s doorstep with a strange proposition. She wants him to write her biography. What begins as an odd vanity project gradually turns into a frightening glimpse into a clearly troubled mind. For Fiona tells Alistair a secret. In her basement there’s a gateway and it leads to the magical world of Aquavania, the place where stories are born. In Aquavania, there’s a creature called the Riverman and he’s stealing the souls of children. Fiona’s soul could be next. Alistair has a choice. He can believe her, or he can believe something else...something even more terrifying.”

This is going to be a surprising dark children’s book (or so I assumed it is classified based on the characters ages) if what is mentioned in the first chapter is anything to judge by. It starts with talking about lost children either due to them running away, bad custody battles, or being taken by strangers. Alistair remembers his towns lost boy by the name of Luke, who’s body Alistair unknowingly finds after he had been missing. He just didn’t realize it at the time until years later. 

I’m already hooked. After that opening Fiona asks Alistair to pen her biography. And at first he says yes but then changes his mind. In part because it worried him and although not expressly stated, it could be because everyone thinks Fiona is strange and she does not appear to have very many friends. And it hints that she may be the next child who disappears in their town. It sounds like an enjoyable, dark read. And I’m sure there is an even darker story going on below the surface and I’m going to guess that the more terrifying truth Alistair will believe is an abusive household. I could be going way off rails here but it is what makes the most sense to me if the gateway isn’t actually real. What better way to escape that reality than by creating a world for yourself?

--The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey “Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart - he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone - but they glimpse of a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place, things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.”

Based off the Russian fairy tale Snegurochka or The snow maiden. I really want to read this on a purely nostalgia reason. Someone at work showed me this book and it immediately reminded me of a children’s book my grandparents owned about an elderly couple who made a little girl out of snow. The girl lived outside in a snow bed and made friends with all the other children. But once summer came she left and the couple were heartbroken until the next winter when their snow daughter returned home. I then told everyone at work about it and hunted down the one I remembered at my grandparents house. It was The Snow Child retold by Freya Littledale and illustrated by Leon Shtainmets.

In this book here, the couple believe that the little girl living in the woods is the child they made out of snow (in the children’s book the child is actually snow, in this rendition that is not the case). Or so the wife believes as she is familiar with the fairy tale as it is mentioned in the book. I doubt that the little girl is really made of snow. She was probably left to fend for herself for one reason or another. Regardless, I never expected to find a full length novel of a children’s book I had read long ago. I did not even know that the book was based off a Russian fairy tale back then. My grandma let me have the children’s book and it is now sitting in my room on a safe shelf. I was not the first to read it and I am pretty sure I wasn’t the last. 

--The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette “The world changed on a Tuesday. When a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts, everyone realized humankind was not alone in the universe. With that realization, everyone freaked out for a little while. Or, almost everyone. The residents of Sorrow Falls took the news pretty well. This could have been due to a certain local quality of unflappability, or it could have been that in three years, the ship did exactly nothing other than sit quietly in that field, and nobody understood the full extent of this nothing the ship was doing better than the people who lived right next door. 

Sixteen-year-old Annie Collins is one of the ship’s closest neighbors. Once upon a time she took every last theory about the ship seriously, whether it was advanced by an adult, or by a peer. Surely one of the theories would be proven true eventually - if not several of them - the very minute the ship decided to do something. Annie is starting to think this will never happen. One late August morning, a little over three years since the ship landed, Edgar Somerville arrived in town. Ed’s a government operative posing as a journalist, which is obvious to Annie - and pretty much everyone else he meets - almost immediately. He has a lot of questions that need answers, because he thinks everyone is wrong: the ship is doing something, and he needs Annie’s help to figure out what that is. Annie is a good choice for tour guide. She already knows everyone in town and when Ed’s theory is proven correct - something is apocalyptically wrong in Sorrow Falls - she’s a pretty good person to have around. As a matter of fact, Annie Collins might be the most important person on the planet. She just doesn’t know it.”

The first four chapters of this is available to preview on Goodreads. It is very detailed like the description here. I didn’t mind it. I liked the voice it was giving the book and it really gave me a feel for what Sorrow Falls is like. Everyone so far seems pretty laid back and friendly despite the fact that there is a spaceship right outside of town. 

I really want to read this because it makes me think of Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel (which was really good and is actually one of the few reviews I have written so far). Although the whole world knows about the alien object from the start and that this is classified as a teen book. And also makes me think of just a little bit of the great animated film, The Iron Giant. And as for theories. After reading the preview I’m guessing that either Annie is an alien from the ship but currently doesn’t remember it for whatever reason. Or the whole town is nothing but aliens forgetting what they are to better blend in with the populace.