#people being sweet to inex

[inexplicifics]

"Must Brave the Thorns" is actually one of the best-paced pieces of literature I've ever read. It's so mathematically satisfying - I can tell exactly where one arc has ended and the next begins, the b-plots are present but they never overwhelm the main story. Just... bravo, seriously.

*rolls around in beautiful compliment gleefully*

Thank you so much! I am extremely proud of Must Brave the Thorns, and I am so pleased that it is satisfying to read!

[catscraftsandcommentary]

Witchers Meet Fangirls

(Stick with me, this'll be a little long)

Not to sneak into @inexplicifics Accidental Warlord AU with more headcanons, but what if Jaskier wrote some super sweet love songs about some of the long standing witcher couples - Cedric and Axel, Merten and Leocadie, Gweld and Serrit, Keldar and Ivar, etc.

I mean, Inex already mentions him writing a comic love song for Gweld and Serrit about a wolf wooing a serpent. ("The Red Wolf and the Serpent" from the end of Chapter 1, Into the Light out of Darkness - the one where they conquer Redania, free Aren and the mantikittens, and bring Aleksander/Sasha back to Kaer Morhen.)

And THEN, Yenn publishes the love songs abroad - as she's been doing with his other songs - and people being people, some of the younger folk are like "aw, how cute, I ship it!" And since witchers travel - and can request to be on patrols with their mates - those new fans of witcher couples might someday get to MEET their new favorite ship!

From a human point of view, you've been listening to all these lovely romantic ballads about a love that lasts centuries, through monsters and wars and standing up to your own brothers, and then! Then! One of those couples! Walks into your village!

(And they're just as sweet and fierce and in love as the songs all claim, aaaaaw!)

From a witcher's point of view, the songs are sweet, but the way people stare now is...a little creepy. And follow them around. And titter. Gods, the giggling, WHY.

Cedric and Axel haven't had this much trouble finding a quiet spot to screw in decades. Everyone keeps smiling at them!

They reach a town where there will be a festival in a few days, and far from being run out of town (pre-Ard Carraigh) or mostly ignored (recent years), Cedric and Axel are asked to be the special guests.

What. The. HELL.

...apparently it's a love festival, and having a couple whose love has lasted many years adds a greater blessing to it, or something. They just get special seats and food and drinks and more people cooing at them all day. Because they've been in love almost two centuries, which is twice the length of any previous couples they had preside over the festival.

And then a priestess asks if they'd like to renew their vows and lead the villagers who are participating in renewing theirs, and the two Cats are like "...vows. What? We're witchers. We don't MAKE vows, we just pick someone. And if they like us too, then we stay together."

But they think about it, and really...it's not such a bad idea. Maybe not to make the vows to any gods, but to declare publicly that this person is yours, and you theirs, by your own choices, forevermore.

(Also, as chaos loving Cats, if their example pushes any other lovers among the witchers to marry their beloveds...then why not? It'll be fun to see if Geralt, Eskel, and Jaskier ever marry publicly.)

[sacrifice-7]

Plot

Industrialization has taken over. Smog invades everyone's lungs. People are worked to death. That's not the point. We're focusing on a much, much more specific issue.

Inex, a depressed young man, is constantly having nightmares of his own death. He has as long as he can remember.

Working a dead-end job at a gas station, things change when Fale, a man so sweet he'll rot your teeth, gets hired. Fale quickly starts to cling to Inex.

Sola, his liscenceless doctor, certainly isn't helping at all. In fact, he seems to be clinging on more as well, and those meds Inex takes seem to be making things worse.

Play through the last week of Inex's life, and try not to die horribly.

This isn't love, nor is it romance, just the story of a lamb being sacrificed.

[theurbanologist]

A Conversation about “Dining Out in Boston”

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea that you can know a city through its food, eateries, and unique culinary ways. Boston is certainly a city known for its restaurants and foodways and I’ve always thought it deserved a scholarly look at these matters.  My friend Jim O’Connell recently published “Dining Out in Boston” (University of New England Press), so I reached out to see if he could respond to a few questions. 

He took his time and crafted these thoughtful replies.

What brought you to this particular project?

I have always been fascinated by restaurants and the experience of dining out. As an historian and urbanist, I have wanted to know about the history of restaurants. A few years back, I discovered a trove of historic menus from the 1820s through the 1970s in the library of The Bostonian Society. After poring through this menu collection, it struck me that I could put together a history of Boston’s restaurants by tracing the evolution of menus over time. It became apparent that different eras offered different types of dishes. Menus tended to offer a standard set of dishes, though they changed from era to era.

As I delved into Boston’s restaurant history, I realized that it has been completely misunderstood. It is not simply “the land of the bean and the cod.” Nor is it “cold roast Boston.” Boston has a lot of really good food and interesting restaurants. The conventional histories of American restaurants in general have focused on the restaurants of flashy New York, sybaritic San Francisco, or Creole New Orleans. Some writers have argued that New York is representative of the rest of the country because every conceivable type of food has been available in that city. Although Boston’s gastronomic reputation has not been as celebrated as these cities’, its long-standing and inventive restaurant culture provides singular insights into how have Americans dined out.

Boston has had a reputation for good dining dating back to 1793, when Julien’s Restorator (the original French name for restaurant) opened as America’s first true restaurant.  Over the decades, the city pioneered many features of American restaurant life, opening some of the first hotel dining rooms, oyster houses, ice cream parlors, tearooms, ethnic restaurants, the twentieth-century revival of traditional New England dishes, student hangouts, and contemporary locavore and trendy foodie culture. With all this, Boston has had a rich culinary story well worth exploring.  

During your research, were there any favorite restaurants that emerged? Were there dishes that struck you as particularly appetizing? Were there dishes that seemed particularly repugnant?

The first thing that struck me about Boston restaurants in the 19th and early 20th centuries was the encyclopedic range of the menus. The most astonishing everyday menu was served by Young’s Hotel (1860-1927). Its menu took up 15 pages and included 27 oyster dishes, 14 clam dishes, 24 soups, 38 salads, 27 preparations of sweetbreads, and 57 steak dishes. Spaghetti could be served Napolitaine, Pièmontaise, Parisienne, Sicilienne, or Italienne. Game dishes included English pheasant, English plover, Scotch grouse, and Philadelphia squab. You could even order marrow on toast, deviled roast beef bones, pig’s feet, and crackers and milk. Fine dining meant having the largest selection of dishes. Young’s would have been quite a place to dine.

Even before the Civil War, hotel dining rooms were offering a cornucopian selection. At the Adams House, head waiter Tunis G. Campbell recorded the recipes for the extensive bill of fare in Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers’ Guide (1848). Campbell was a free black man, who was an ardent abolitionist and who later served as a state senator in Reconstruction-era Georgia, before being driven out by the Ku Klux Klan. Campbell’s Adams House guide listed dozens of preparations for roast, broiled, fried, and stewed meat dishes; meat pies, oyster patties, croquettes, fritters, stews, salmis, and hash; and soups and sauces. Desserts included tarts, dumplings, fritters, trifles, and puddings.

Probably the most extravagant dining ever to take place in Boston took place at the 19th-century banquets, which were usually held in leading hotels like the Parker House, Tremont House, Revere House, Hotel Brunswick, and Hotel Vendome. Prodigious feasts became a prime form of entertainment for the city’s clubs that met in hotels and restaurants. The Gilded Age was notable for its “conspicuous consumption,” and rotund bellies signaled that one had “made it.” Meals could consist of ten or more courses with matching wines, Madeiras, punches, and cordials.

The earliest printed menu in America that I have discovered was for an 1824 public dinner given for the Marquis de Lafayette at the Exchange Coffee House. The menu described a three-course meal. The first course comprised 25 dishes split between fish and boiled and roast meats and nine French-named dishes. The second course included 11 dishes, which featured such game birds as woodcock, pigeon, and snipe, as well as lobster fricassee and calves feet. The sweet course included orange cream, puddings, pastries, custards, and ice cream. Diners could sample any of these dishes. This menu set the banquet standard for the rest of the century.

The climactic course was usually an array of game birds. For example, the Annual Target Excursion of the Charlestown City Guard, held at the National House in Charlestown in 1854, provided a vivid example of such a game dinner. After taking its annual ceremonial target practice, the Charlestown City Guard dined on roast turkey, chickens, capon, mongrel goose, mongrel ducks, tame ducks, black ducks, red head ducks, brant, widgeon, and teel. Also on offer were prepared fowl dishes that included turkey in oyster sauce, duck and olive sauce, potted pigeons, and bird pies. Lubricated with various wines, beers, and cordials, such a repast was a form of high entertainment, which gourmands of today can only dream about. Those meals will never be experienced again.

We hear a great deal about where the well-to-do ate in your book. Was it much harder to find information about the everyday eateries?

By the mid-19th century, working people ate in inexpensive oyster houses, lunchrooms, and saloons. They basically wanted to grab a bite when at work or away from home (they might also pack a lunch). No matter what their class, unless they were poverty-stricken, everyone would eat out sometimes. Oyster bars, like the Union Oyster House (called Atwood & Bacon in the 19th century) were fast-food eateries, serving plates of oysters and clams and bowls of oyster stew. Cheap eating houses served plain meat and-potato dishes, various pies, and the old standby crackers and milk. “Beaneries” specialized in baked beans and brown bread. Around 1900, cafeterias, such at the Waldorf and Hayes-Bickford, sprang up to serve cheap, quick meals. Cafeterias and lunch counters met their demise in the 1970s with the rise of McDonald’s and similar fast food chains.

It should be noted that the proto-type for the affordable family restaurant was invented in Quincy—Howard Johnson’s. Howard Johnson opened his first ice cream stand in the Wollaston section of Quincy in 1925 and served “28 Famous Flavors,” pioneering the concept of multiple flavors of high-butterfat premium ice cream. When he opened his first full-service restaurant, in Quincy, in 1929, he featured such New England staples as “tendersweet fried clams,” Boston baked beans, Welsh rarebit with bacon, and frankforts grilled in butter. Mr. Johnson exported these concepts and dishes across the country.

Was there anything particularly surprising about the emergence of ethnic restaurants and foodways throughout the Hub?

By the 1890s, ethnic restaurants were becoming established in Boston. With the influx of immigrants, American restaurant cooking began adopting ethnic dishes. French cuisine was long the gold standard, which was adopted by fashionable hotels and restaurants across the country. During these years, German restaurants, led by Jacob Wirth, made their way into the mainstream. Other ethnic groups and their foodways were less readily assimilated. Their restaurants, at first, tended to cater to immigrant communities, but some soon became popular with the broader public. Restaurant offerings evolved dramatically at the turn of the century, with ethnic foods becoming part of the dining experience.

In 1916, the Boston Globe reported that foreign restaurants had expanded significantly, reflecting the impact of immigration in the intervening years. Of the city’s 1,816 eateries, 1,006 had foreign-born owners. The Globe commented: “No one can complain that Boston is not a city of cosmopolitan food, for about the only varieties of victualer not doing business here are a native Hottentot and an Eskimo.” There were 218 Russian-owned restaurants, lunchrooms, and delicatessens, most of them serving kosher cooking; next came Greek (211), Italian (108), Armenian (49), German (43), Syrian (24), French (23), Chinese (21), and Austrian (14). There were even Albanian, Cuban, and Japanese restaurants. Most of these restaurants served a mix of ethnic dishes and American food to attract non-ethnic business and achieve some form of assimilation. Ethnic restaurants did not set out to provide food that authentically replicated that of the old world.

A large mainstream audience for ethnic restaurants developed in the 1970s, when American dining tastes expanded way beyond meat-and-potatoes in search of novelty and foreign authenticity.

Today we see the emergence of food on or near the sidewalk with food trucks and carts. Did you see much evidence of food wagons in your work? As a follow up: Do you have a favorite food truck?

I don’t think that food carts were a big part of Boston’s eating experience Maybe it was because of the bad weather, but most inexpensive eating was done inside—at lunch counters, cafeterias, etc. I think that the recent wave of food trucks is a good development, and I seek them out around the downtown. Roxy’s Grilled Cheese is one of my favorites.

In your time in the Hub, have you developed a nostalgia for a restaurant that is no more? What made it unique in terms of experience, dishes, and the like?

Bailey’s Ice Cream Shop provides my Proustian recollection. My mother introduced me to Bailey’s on Temple Place when I was a kid. It was magical, better than Howard Johnson’s or Friendly’s. Bailey’s, which opened as a candy shop, in 1873, was famous for sundaes with fudge sauce overflowing onto a silver-plated saucer. A soda jerk would place a six-ounce scoop of ice cream in a five-ounce dish and poured 1 ½ ounces of hot fudge or hot butterscotch over the top. Then a customer might request a dollop of whipped cream or marshmallow with a sprinkling of nuts. Bailey’s thrived at Temple Place, Harvard Square, Wellesley, and Chestnut Hill right up until 1989. Nothing replaced Bailey’s lavish nineteenth-century ice cream parlor style, but it has had many successors in creative ice cream-making, ranging from Steve Herrell’s and Toscanini’s to Emack & Bolio’s and J.P. Licks.

For the visitor who might be looking for segments of Boston’s restaurant-going past, can you recommend a few spots to experience these historical moments and culinary experiences?

About the only places to get a whiff of the 19th-century style of dining are Durgin-Park, Union Oyster House, and Jacob Wirth. To experience a somewhat different take on historical culinary trends, I would check out Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury, which was one of dozens of neo-traditional New England inns that flourished between the 1920s and 1960s. They were special occasion, white tablecloth restaurants, where diners dressed up. Along with the Wayside Inn, the Colonial Inn (Concord), Wellesely Inn, Hartwell Farm (Lincoln), and Toll House Inn (Whitman) were leading restaurants of their day.

Longfellow’s Wayside Inn is one of the few survivors of this type of dining spot. The Wayside Inn claims to be the oldest operating inn in America, having been founded as Howe’s Tavern in 1716. In 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gave Howe’s Tavern a new prominence when he set his poetry collection “Tales of a Wayside Inn” there. One of the book’s poems was “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Auto magnate Henry Ford purchased the inn in 1923, playing up the inn’s historical connections. The Wayside Inn still serves such dishes as “traditional” Yankee pot roast, roast turkey with cornbread and sausage stuffing and giblet gravy, deep dish apple pie, and “homemade” Indian pudding.

Such dishes do not just carry on 18th and 19th-century cooking, they also reflect early 20th-century efforts to preserve the rapidly fading past in a movement referred to as the Colonial Revival. Until then, restaurant menus did not explicitly feature traditional New England dishes. Menus simply read “clam chowder,” “boiled dinner,” and “baked beans.” Only by the 1920s did restaurants start serving “New England clam chowder,” “Boston baked beans,” “Yankee pot roast,” and “Boston cream pie.” Such dishes may sound like clichés, but they’re harder to get these days than fish tacos or kale salad.

[inexplicifics]

i feel like such a greedy little goblin, like you have given us SO MUCH, over half a million words in the AWAU alone!!! but yet i am still so eager for more, always more. like, i just love the day to day and character growth and relationship building between all your characters, it warms me so much. i've also been reading since i think around when you were midway through publishing with a conquering air, and i read everything you write. i love you so much inex, thank you so so much (and though i know it probably must at some point, i hope the AWAU never ends)

Thank you so much for your delightful compliments! I am glad the AWAU continues to bring you joy!

After Flung to Catch a Star, there will be at least two short fics set the same winter (possibly more, depending on the Horde o' Plotbunnies), and then the Progress, and then I actually know how the series ends. But it's going to take us several hundred thousand more words to get there, I expect.

[inexplicifics]

The worst part of weekends is no updates 😔 the best part of Monday is yes updates!!!!!

You know, "you make me look forward to Mondays" may be the highest compliment a writer can be given!

[inexplicifics]

Hello! I’d love to be added to the Accidental Warlord fan map - I’m generally in Carmel, California. Thank you so much for sharing that series - reading it and listening to AceofTiger’s podfics of it have brought me so much joy and relief for the last, what, two years? I’ve been slowly making my way through it and rereading as I go, and though I’m not there yet seeing your updates on Flung to Catch a Star always makes me smile. So again, thank you. I’d love to send you a virtual hug, if you want one, or else perhaps some virtual fresh made bread. Certainly won’t beat Julita’s, but it’ll be made with smiles nonetheless.

Hello in Carmel!

I'm very glad you're enjoying the series, and I will gladly accept virtual hugs and/or virtual warm bread. I hope you like Flung to Catch a Star when you get there!

(Aren't Ace's podfics wonderful?)

[inexplicifics]

With Tenderness and Nobleness truly is my comfort fic, out of every fandoms I read in. I’ve genuinely lost count of how many times I’ve reread it 😍 so I just wanted to pop by to say thank you!!

Thank you so much! I am very glad to provide comfort fic!

[inexplicifics]

I just wanted to stop in and say how much fun it's been to be able to follow your writing for almost 4 years now! I think I first discovered your works right when the last couple chapters of With a Conquering Air were being uploaded and even though I haven't read much fic in recent years, it's always been fun to periodically check on your profile and read through the updates! Checking in today just in time to see another live series go up is such a cozy feeling now and I so look forward to coming back to visit for the next three weeks ! :)

It's really impressive how much writing you've put out and I so appreciate how positive and safe your blog always is to visit. I hope you're having a great day!

I am very pleased that my fic still brings you joy, even after four years!

And thank you; I try to make my spaces on the internet as warm and welcoming as possible, and I'm very glad to hear it works.

I hope you like the rest of Flung to Catch a Star - and the rest of the AWAU to come!

[inexplicifics]

Have you seen @ pjxckson's art of Aiden inspired by your fics, its amazing!

I also want to add that your fics are beautifully written, enough so that it's like watching a film with how perfectly descriptive it is.

I have seen that art, and it is in fact amazing!

And thank you so much - I am delighted to hear my fics feel "watchable"!

[inexplicifics]

After re-reading the Accidental Warlord AU in its entirety for the first time in three years (and for the first time in recommended reading order), I am absolutely astounded how fast rhose 500k (!!) fly by and how little they feel like actually 500.000 words. That's a good thing! Thank you so much for shaping a new fandom within this fandom, thank you for writing this massive masterpiece and for creating all those lovely OCs whom I adore. Thank you for everything, Inex.

Thank you for reading and re-reading my work, and for saying such kind things! I am so glad you like my fic, and delighted that half a million words goes by quickly and entertainingly!

[inexplicifics]

Sometimes I truly wonder what sort of magic you put into your writing to make me like reading the sex scenes in your fics! Like, that's something that I've always routinely skipped or just sort of skimmed over in fiction, usually i tend to lose interest around the time that dicks or cunts become relevant, it's just not my thing. But reading your fics, hell, suddenly I find myself actually enjoying reading those parts??

(Still, though, thank you very much also for the courtesy of telling in author's notes where the smutty stuff begins and ends so that I have the option of easily skipping past it if i like)

My smut is 90% Emotion by Volume, which I think helps.

I'm honored that you find it appealing, and I'm glad that noting its location helps.

[inexplicifics]

hi inex, i've been reading accidental since the 3rd chapter of the original came out. i'm sure you already know this, but it is absolutely staggering how many other fanfics you have managed to inspire. you should be incredibly proud of yourself and the work you have produced. lots of love!

I am regularly astonished, deeply flattered, and incredibly touched by the sheer number of fics inspired by mine. It is genuinely the greatest compliment I could ever receive, to know that my work has made other people want to make things - fic, art, music, anything. It humbles me and fills me with pride.

[inexplicifics]

hi! ive read the AWAU three times now and love it more and more each time. i just wanted to thank you for giving us all this. (also currently crying because i was reading flung to catch a star but AO3 is down so now im even more in suspense)

I'm so glad the AWAU brings you joy!

And thank goodness the archive came back up. Digital infrastructure is a little scary when you think about it.

[inexplicifics]

I am LOVING FTCAS so much! Morvran putting in the work to change! Cahir! Ciri growing up, she's gotten so *big* since she was a menace hiding in chimneys! And one really funny thing I've noticed is that the comments will talk about something, and then the next chapter addresses the exact thing. You're a good writer who can leave the audience anticipating something and then pay it off well! That's so cool!

Eee! *happy wiggles*

I really do like having people going "ooh what if THIS happens" and knowing that it's going to.

And the amount of engagement I get in the comments, and here on Tumblr, really does sustain me. I love knowing people are excited to see what happens next.

Thank you!

[inexplicifics]

*sets out a pile of dandelion greens and strawberries for the plot bunnies, and a cookie for Inex*

I and the bunnies appreciate this a great deal.

(I might steal some of their strawberries.)