#recording drink recipes I run across for future use

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Types of Love

{ Albedo x reader } (1523 words)

Even though your position within the Knights of Favonius isn’t one with a bright title as your job was merely to gather the needed ingredients for various investigational needs, you were nevertheless happy to be a part of it. 

Since your tasks are greatly around gathering and exploration, it isn’t anything too surprising for your relationship with the chief alchemist and captain of the investigation team to be close. It was common for him to drag you along to the magnificent yet deadly temperatured white scene of Dragonspine on a perfect Thursday. 

“Say, what is the ingredient you need this time?” 

“The scarlet quartz. It’s ability to maintain warms despite it being a crystal is truly interesting. A little further in investigation and we might turn it into something to help our future journeys here.” He said it with his usual tone while walking up the mountain to our camp. Surely it will be a lie if you say you aren’t taking a liking to this popular alchemist, but at the same time, something kept interrupting those words from revealing themselves. 

The sky had started to turn dark yet the camp was at least still ten minutes away, despite making numerous runs around this area and fully prepared for each, the cold still manages to slip through jackets, sending a shiver down your body. 

The boy had noticed your reaction to the sharp climate and decided to silently place his coat over yours. 

“But-” 

“I’ll be fine. You seem a little tired from your tasks previously, ignoring human temperature maintenance at this state will cause sickness.” And you could only nod to his statement. 

“Actually, I...have a certain matter that I hope you would help me with.” 

“Sure, what’s it about?” 

“Emotions, various distinguishing between emotions to be exact. I admit I might not be the most professional when it comes to human feelings, so I do have some questions on some reactions I have when I meet a certain few.” “Hm, I might not be the best to ask though.” 

“I understand, though I would like to know your opinion on these cases.” 

“...Okay then.” After finally reaching the camp, managed to gather some of the quartz that he needed, cooked up some soup as he started his experiment once more. 

“Should we start?” 

“Here’s your jacket-” 

He only stepped closer and held your hand within his. After knowing that your body has still yet to recover from the freezing coldness, his eyes expressed worry before grabbing his coat and placing it on you once more. 

“I should make a potion for you, just in case…” You could hear him talking to himself as he walked back to his table. Before you could stop him, he had already finished the creation. 

“Here, take this warming bottle, it should provide enough heat for your body to regain maintenance under the weather. And here’s a potion, you should drink it if you feel any uncomforts.”

“T-Thanks, you don’t have to do too much for me though.” 

“I wanted to.” 

There was a silence between the two before you decided to continue the previous topic. “Let’s start?” 

“Alright.” He sat down beside you, somewhere not too close and somewhere not too far, just the enough distance for you to tense up and him to laugh at your reaction. “This first subject, whenever I meet them I get a very warm feeling. The feeling of the need to protect them and to make them smile even if it was to act out of...order and control. And when they made the right decision, I’ll feel glad for the troubles that they didn’t cause-, um, the peacefulness that we get to keep.” 

You thought for a while before answering. “Hm, that’s...love, I think. I’m not so sure, but it could be connected to the caring that you have for the one and how you might feel proud if she grows in her decision making.” 

He hm in response, slightly amused at you taking seriously the emotional words he used which yet so confusing, “You certainly do possess a skill that’s worth investigating.” 

“Me?” 

“Indeed, what you’ve said was quite the fact. I do care and would be proud to watch Klee grow,” he said. “And this word, love, is a complicated one, isn’t it?”

“It is, so to be more specific, your love for Klee is the family kind of love.” 

“Hm, interesting.” He replied while taking a few notes from your explanation before continuing. “Then what about the second subject? Whenever I meet them, I feel as if I was being understood in the field of alchemy. The work that they’ve done is not quite yet at an extraordinary level, but the determination they have for the topic is admirable. I enjoy researching alchemy with their help and the progression they’ve made to where they are today was nevertheless impressive. Even off work, their suggestion for taking a leave was...amusing. I recall once they suggested investigating the crabs near the Falcon Coast.” 

You can’t help but giggle at the fact that observing crabs is a good way to relax, which gives the chance of the slight blush on the boy, upon hearing your soft sounds echoing the area, to go unnoticed. 

“Friendship,” you said, trying to take a pause from laughing. “The feeling you feel is probably the friendship, which you could also classify it as a kind of love I suppose. The feeling of being understood through the same interest, the respect you have for one another, and the carefree side that you tend to present to them is a form of trust. I’d say you are good friends with them, am I correct?” 

“Precisely, but the usage of the word friend still confuses me. But in this case,Sucrose...then I guess we’re good friends, huh.” 

“Sucrose?! Was she the one who made that suggestion-” And you couldn’t help but started to laugh again, it really was nothing new for the alchemists to misunderstand the definition of ‘relaxing.’ 

“What do you think about it though?” 

“About what?” 

“That plan, the crab and Falcon Coast one.” 

“Oh, I think it was worth investigating, since crabs themselves might have some connections to a few recipes that I want to improve.” And you could only sigh at the boy who relates everything to work. 

“...You did mention you feel confused by the word friendship?” 

“Ah yes,” He said before glancing away, “I feel like there’s something more to this feeling.” 

“...Is that so.” 

It made your mood die down a little as your grips tighten around your knees, embracing for whatever he had to say. It was perhaps, Sucrose, the one he adores and not you. The thought of them being together, walking onward for a future that’s made for them was indeed an warming sight. But this bittersweet feeling just won’t go away. 

Your focus landed on a plant beside some documents on the desk, a slight unusualness of it being present on this specific place as if it was something special, given from someone important. You shake your thoughts away, however, clearly he views you less than her.

Your admiration for him had already lasted for some time, but will the bud bloom when the spring comes?

“Does the emotion of friendship include an increase of heart rate?” 

“...no, not usually.” 

“Hm,” he said, continuing to record it down. “Then does it include the desire to hold them close?” 

“...no.” 

“Or signs of redness across ears and cheeks?” 

“no.” 

“Or the desire to protect them, be with them, and spend time with t-them till the end?” 

“no, no, and no.” 

He silently put down his pen and the paper before turning back to you. You could feel his sight, but you weren’t brave enough to maintain any sort of connections at the moment. 

“Is it not friendship that I’m feeling?” 

“...No.” And you started to explain. “It’s love, romantically. Your hope to be sharing the same future with the one you adore the most, the desire to be by their side whenever and wherever, the need of protecting and the signs of blushing shows how you treat them differently from the rest.” It hurts every inch of your heart to explain, but it was still done for his sake. “It’s love, the romantical kind of reaction.” 

“I see.” he said before standing up, giving his hand to you. “Then I suppose I’m in love with you, (Y/n).” 

“Wait-”

“Yes?”

“Is it not Sucrose that you love? But I thought-” 

“You even said it yourself. It was only friendship between her. That description of emotion made me wonder about my feelings toward you. Turns out, it was as expected.”

“So you planned this all along just to-”

“Yes.” He looked at you with his shimmering teal eyes gazing into yours, as you see his smile that’s not noticeable, but compared to his usual expression was too shocking to be ignored. 

“I planned this all along just to confess to you, correct.” 

In the end, the flower did bloom in the coming spring.

[lightsandlostbells]

wtFOCK season 3, episode 1 reaction

So! It’s a million years too late, but I decided to talk about wtFOCK season 3. 

I had fairly positive feelings about S1 of wtFOCK. It was the scrappy underdog of the Skam remakes, in a way, and what it lacked in polish, it made up for authenticity. I was very willing to overlook its flaws because of what I perceived as genuine attempts to connect with teenagers. I was really, really holding out hope that future seasons would improve on its flaws. And ... well. (Disclaimer: I still haven’t seen S2. Sorry! I just failed to keep up with all the remakes and S2 is my least fave so I didn’t feel that motivated to make it a priority, even though I did like Zoë a lot in S1.)

Heads up - I didn’t care for this season. A lot of people did, and I would never, ever want to ruin someone’s enjoyment of something, even if I personally didn’t like it. So please take this as a warning that I have a lot of negative things to say, and don’t read if it’s going to harsh your buzz for a pairing or a story that you deeply love. However, I didn’t want to just be grumpy and angry the whole time, so I tried to think of constructive ways to fix certain problems I had with this season. No guarantees that they’re satisfying solutions, but it was an interesting exercise.

Also, I didn’t watch this in real time, and I paid barely any attention to fandom reactions and/or drama, so it’s very possible that I am missing context, or that pacing issues didn’t register with me quite as strongly, etc. If one of the actors ate a live dolphin on Instagram, and then got into a fight with fans on Twitter about their right to eat live dolphins, and now fandom has canceled the problematic dolphin-eating actor, I legit do not know, do not come at me if I’m like “This actor is doing a good job” with “Wow, didn’t know you stanned dolphin-eaters??? YIKES.” Honestly, for the purposes of just grading this season on a storytelling level, I would prefer not to know anything about the cast or crew unless it directly has an impact on the show itself.

Clip 1 - House party

OK, I did like this flashy intro shot, immersing us in the Wild ‘n’ Crazy Teen Party of Wild ‘n’ Crazy Youths.

Amber rejecting every dude in site … When Will Gay Vilde Rise. (I know there have been some f/f storylines in the remakes, but if there’s one involving an actual Vilde, please let me know.)

Luca saying “We’re not walking around in a high school drama” - you can hear the rimshot.

I do like the transition from the party up to the bathroom, that’s a cool shot. wtFOCK’s directing so far is more ambitious than it was in S1.

Robbe is clearly a mess and they acknowledge his problems at home right off the bat.

We go back downstairs. wtFOCK’s version of Magnus knocks his drink on Amber and she gets pissed. She gives him the finger and he falls in love. Still a better love story than S3 Daphne/Basile.

It’s a small point, but I don’t get why we didn’t get this moment before jumping up to the bathroom with Robbe and the others? It would be a far smoother transition, just on a practical level and also in the sense of fully immersing us in Robbe’s POV after a quick update with the other characters.

Belgian Magnus joins the guys in the bathtub and announces he’s in love. They roast him when they find out it’s Amber and start talking about hot chicks. Moyo starts grilling Robbe about his type of girl, in a crass, sexual way.

This is honestly not a bad start to Robbe’s story at all. Robbe is clearly more reluctant to get into his interest in girls than Isak was - Isak was more fuckboyish from the start, Robbe seems like he’s about to start squirming and doesn’t really give an answer to Moyo’s questioning. Which is fine! I think it’s fine to start off the POV character at different stages of performing heterosexuality, as long as it’s taken into account in the writing of the character’s whole arc. The fact that the boy talk is so crude and sexual just ramps up Robbe’s alienation.

I swear, I will never understand how the girls in this scene just go into the bathroom and pee in front of strange boys … like maybe I am just a ~prude but that seems like a recipe for disaster and I would not trust those little fuckers to not be secretly recording me on the toilet.

Her peeing is kind of a power move, like marking her territory.

Also L M A O at Robbe starting to flirt with the girl while she is pissing … like now this comes off as a kink thing. OK, Robbe. Jokes aside, this gets across the same meaning as the scene with Isak: he starts to flirt with her because he was encouraged by the other guys.

Uh, flush the toilet, lady. And use some TP.

Now this version of Emma seriously radiates some Natalie Portman in The Professional vibes.

She orders him to stand up and then starts kissing him. I get way less of a vibe of Robbe’s mad game with women (like how Isak negged Emma into kissing him) and more like this girl is the love interest out of an indie romcom, all mysterious and spunky. She kisses him like once after taking his jay and then leaves. The boys all crack up. Moyo tells Robbe it’s his responsibility to get the weed back which lmao, no it’s not, all you assholes were there and could have intervened.

This scene is perfectly fine and even effective! Not entirely the same vibes as OG, but it still has a purpose and some obvious cause-and-effect, and there are some nice stylistic choices.

Clip 2 - Party pt. 2

Robbe is now making out with mystery girl. We already have a divergence in characterization from OG. Isak was being performative about making out with Emma and shut it down once the guys left. Robbe is making out with this girl because he wants to be straight, I guess? If it’s not to appeal to his friends, it’s likely that this is for himself. Again, I have no real problem with this change if it’s incorporated into Robbe’s overall arc and characterization. My thing is, if you’re writing this scene, do you realize the differences in characterization? Or do you think this is interchangeable from what happened with Isak? The latter is where you run into problems, because then the writing shows lack of nuance. I bring this up here because, well, you can guess how I feel about later events. 

Luca seems rather aggro about the mystery woman, which I assume is because she still has the hots for Robbe?

It makes me laugh that we got this first-person POV as Robbe leaves through the garage, because of the “Smack My Bitch Up” song being played in the last clip (the song had an infamous music video, banned from MTV in the ‘90s, that was from a first-person POV). But again, WTFock is trying harder with the cinematography and direction, good for them.

Robbe ditches the cops by jumping on the bike with Belgian Emma. OK, I get it, Belgian Emma is too cool for school. 

I have kinda mixed feelings on that, actually. I mean, I’ll be honest - I don’t see why any Emma has to be made into someone more palatable. Definitely don’t demonize her or present her in a misogynistic way! She deserves sympathy and dignity as much as any character on a Skam. But … it’s fine if she and the Isak aren’t like, amazingly compatible except for his sexuality. The Even character is supposed to be the one who really shakes up the Isak’s world! The Isak is supposed to be lost and confused and drifting and then Even comes in and is someone he can really open up to. Not just because he’s another guy who’s into guys, but because Even’s personality meshes with Isak’s so easily while still challenging him and introducing him to new things. In a way, it does kinda diminish the effect of the Even if the Isak meets ANOTHER mysterious stranger who’s an awesome person. Or at the very least, it lessens the feeling of the Isak’s detachment from everything.

And again, this could work if the writing realizes it. You can totally craft a subtly different arc from the pieces of Isak’s season. It’s just that (speaking from the future) I do not feel this is what happened.

Clip 3 - Tagging time

I don’t think it’s necessary to break up all the parts of a longer scene/set piece into a bunch of different clips. If you start a scene at 16:00, it’s OK to have the clip take place over several hours. You don’t need to chop it up unless there’s a reason why this pacing might benefit the story. Honestly, if you’re watching in real time, I think this method is often less effective at building tension/emotion/etc. But wtFOCK is not the first remake to try this tactic.

... this part where Robbe and Noor put on masks sure hits differently in 2020.

Belgian Emma’s name is Noor and she takes him to a warehouse, or something? It’s very secret and Cool Kid. And IDK, it’s fun, but again… I think making the Emma that much of a fun mysterious cool exciting person is very much diminishing the effect of Robbe’s isolation. We had a good start with establishing that alienation while he was in the tub, but now his reactions to her rad hipness feel way too sincere and act against the major character conflict of his season. He seems nervous to go with her, but not because he’s with a girl, just because it’s a risky scenario.

Noor hands Robbe a spray paint can and leads him to tag a wall. There’s  a guy taking pictures. So I’m assuming one of the guys in masks is the Even? The POV seems to shift to the photo guy briefly, like we’re seeing Robbe through his eyes. And even though I’m not a fan of POV breakage, I do think this is a cool way to introduce the Even without really introducing him, you know? If that’s him. (EDIT from the future: Ummm, so that wasn’t Sander, right? I’m rewatching and it doesn’t look like him. Soooo that part has even less relevance than I originally thought. Got it.) (EDIT from the future beyond the future: @hellswolfie tells me that this actually was Sander, so I am just bad at recognizing people, lol.)

Robbe and Noor take off their masks briefly to kiss. Uhhhh, did the scene really just … cut off there? Because L M A O what a weird choice. We don’t get to see what Robbe creates on the wall, which could be a great way to establish his character, AND we end with him on a smiley, contented note which does not boost his POV at all. It legit just makes him seem like a guy who’s into this girl, and sorry, even if that’s his public persona at this point in time … that’s not what we, the audience should be getting at all. 

Clip 4 - Boy squad morning after

Robbe skateboards to meet up with the guy squad. Again, the directing is far better IMO than in S1.

Robbe got the weed back so that conflict is over, I guess.

He gets a call from his mom and stops laughing with the guys and gets serious. He walks away to take the call. Then he starts to open up to Jens about his mom freaking out, and then Moyo spots some girls so they all ditch Robbe to go chase girls, and WOW, Jens, please turn in your Jonas card. 

Don’t love that we didn’t hear his mom on the phone. There’s no reason not to let us hear what she’s saying since it would be in Robbe’s POV AND as it turns out, they just tell us about the situation with his mom right off the bat, anyway, so it’s not like there’s much point in hiding it. 

This was effective in a sense to establish how girl-crazy his friends are, as well as setting up Robbe’s isolation, which I was worried wouldn’t come across as strongly after meeting Noor. But I think they could have NOT mingled in his mom issues to make this part more effective. Like if the goal was to show more of Robbe being alienated because he’s gay, then that’s not entirely successful, because there are non-gay reasons why Robbe wouldn’t join his pals on the girl chase. I mean, even a horny hetero Robbe might not want to chase girls with his bros because talking to his mom is a downer, so it’s not necessarily because of his sexuality. Plus he just found a girl he liked in Noor, so apparently, he’s not on the prowl. What this part IS communicating that the Belgian guy squad doesn’t have much interest in their friend’s family struggles, which ... ehhhh, maybe not great in the grand scheme of the storyline? These guys can be flawed, for sure, but we do need them to care about Robbe’s well-being. And Robbe tried to open up here, so the flaw is not in him, it’s in his friends. I’m going to let it slide because Jens was offering to help Robbe in the first clip, so it’s not like he’s been a totally insensitive friend this whole time. 

Clip 5 - Phone call from Robbe’s dad

Noor jumps on Robbe and they make out. She shows him the garage and they talk about the tagging world or w/e. Again, not sure why they are portraying Noor as like … a legit love interest. I don’t get much of a sense of discomfort from Robbe. Isak was just not into Emma and was uncomfortable when his bathroom flirting came back to haunt him. And I don’t think it’s TERRIBLE not to follow that route, but you can’t just make this huge change if you don’t account for it in future episodes and Robbe’s overall arc. (EDIT from the future: Which I don’t think they do, otherwise I wouldn’t care.) Every scene should count in furthering Robbe’s character, especially this early in the season where we’re just getting to know his particular struggles. If Robbe is trying to convince himself to like girls, then I want to see definite vulnerability in how that’s portrayed.

I blame the directing/writing more than the acting for the lack of discomfort, since I sensed Robbe’s lack of comfort just fine in the bathtub scene.

Makeouts get interrupted when Robbe’s dad calls. Again, not sure why we aren’t hearing both sides of the conversation? Because we’re in Robbe’s POV. Why wouldn’t we hear them? This seems like they just want to create some suspense or mystery over the situation with his parents. But it’s perfectly possible to do so while still letting us in on the phone calls. In fact, it’s arguably more intriguing to let us listen to some phone calls where we get some vague details but nowhere close to the whole story. It’s not like Robbe’s dad is going to explain the whole situation to his son in an exposition dump. We can get some crumbs to tease us, while still keeping us in Robbe’s POV and not feeling like the show is cutting corners.

Robbe gets mad at his dad and tells Noor he needs to be alone. Closeup on Noor as Robbe walks away. OK … why? Why on her and not Robbe when it’s his POV? Why the focus on Noor’s feelings when we really need to be establishing our protagonist’s mindset in the beginning of this season? I’m not saying her feelings don’t matter, I’m saying that well, this isn’t her story. It would be better to see Robbe’s pained reaction as he leaves.

Clip 6 - Robbe’s dad drama

Jens comes running up while Robbe is being sad. Robbe says that it may be necessary for him to stay with Jens because Robbe’s mom has been committed to a mental health institution and Robbe doesn’t want to stay with his dad. Ah, so I guess we’re hearing that right away. Which honestly makes not hearing his phone calls to his parents even funnier - like you lock us out of his POV arguably for the suspense, but then you end the suspense anyway by just telling us what happened a scene or two later? All right. I guess there’s suspense in that we don’t know exactly what’s up with the mom, mental health-wise, or the root of Robbe’s problems with his dad.

It occurs to me that maybe they just didn’t want to hire people to voice Robbe’s parents? Or put in the time to film both sides of the conversation? I have a hard time believing either of those because it’s so lazy, but. 

I mean, just turn the phone conversations into text conversations if you’re not going to let us listen to Robbe’s parents on the other end.

They go and play football without really resolving the situation. Sad music plays while Robbe joins in. Also, someone was calling Robbe, and I assume it was his dad, but it’s not shown.

These clips are VERY short and choppy so far. You could easily combine the last two, so Robbe is with Jens instead of Noor when he gets the other phone call from his dad, leading into this conversation.

We know immediately about Robbe’s mom’s situation instead of it being a mystery, like with Isak. Which, again, isn’t inherently wrong, but then I want them to DO SOMETHING with it. 

Clip 7 - Jens and Jana

Oh hey, Jana got her braces off! IDK if that happened last season or this one, but it was something I liked, seeing a teenage girl with braces on a teen drama. That rarely happens unless it’s a joke or a plot point.

OK, they really need to film Robbe’s phone so I can actually see who’s calling…

Jens tells Jana about Robbe’s parental situation. I’ll note that first she asks if something’s up with Noor, so news of the Robbe/Noor relationship must have traveled really fast since they’ve only just gotten together. Like Robbe and Noor are clearly dating, going off Jana’s comment, and not just hooking up. Then Belgian Magnus wants to know about hooking up with Amber. Meanwhile Robbe is having a conversation off screen with his dad? Guess it wasn’t important!

And that’s the problem, obviously. It’s his POV season, anything you decide to show SHOULD be important to his storyline. 

Also … it’s fine that we’re focusing on Robbe’s shit home life since that’s relevant to his story, but almost nothing in these clips has set up Robbe’s attraction to men, and only slightly his lack of interest in girls, which was negated by him seeming very interested in a girl afterwards. And knowing how long this season takes to get going with the Even character, it’s a pretty glaring omission.

So we don’t see Robbe’s phone call with his dad, but he gets snappy about it when Jens asks. One of the boys (I can’t tell who) says that Robbe’s on his period.  Gonna be real, I don’t care for this squad so far. 

What was the point of this clip? We already know Robbe is having problems with his dad, which is the most relevant part to the plot here. We shouldn’t be wandering from Robbe’s POV so much, but even taking that into account … we already know Belgian Magnus likes Amber, so that’s not necessary to establish. And we didn’t need to see Jens tell Jana something we already know. I assume he tells her so Zoë can find out and offer a room, but there’s no reason to see Jens tell Jana this, so. Filler clip. 

Clip 8 - Zoë and Robbe at the lockers

Yeah, Zoë offers Robbe a place to stay here, but again, we didn’t need to see the news travel down the Jens-Jana pipeline. It could have been condensed more efficiently.

Robbe doesn’t want to because he says his dad wouldn’t approve. Zoë says she hopes things get better with his mom and Robbe at first snaps and tells her to leave it, then says thanks. This is an actual good interaction, writing-wise, kudos.

I liked Zoë a lot in S1 and I like her here again. I really should watch her season despite my Noorhelm allergy. The scene of them kinda smiling at each other across the hallways reminds me that this is probably the strongest relationship in the whole season, tbh.

Why was this clip so short? So many of these clips could have been combined into one. I mean, Zoë could have said, “I heard from Jana who heard from Jens...” without us needing the previous clip. Although, did Robbe really want anyone else to know about his home life? Lol @ Jens just blabbing Robbe’s private business.

So I guess they didn’t set up the Eskild situation in S2 that would lead to Eskild offering Robbe a place to stay? 

Clip 9 - Robbe gets roommates

Robbe is in Zoë’s room. He sees her “everyone you know is fighting a battle” quote next to the mirror, which is a detail I actually quite like in context with the rest of this storyline and Even’s condition. It’s a good Skam thesis overall.

I guess Zoë met with Robbe’s dad. Zoë calls him a tough cookie. Robbe doesn’t want to speak to him. They bond a little over their parental problems. Again, a nice detail.

Belgian Eskild appears and teases Robbe a little before announcing that Robbe’s dad has agreed to let him stay in the flat. Yay!

Oh, so Senne is staying there, too? At least they didn’t do a pointless Noorhelm breakup in this version.

Milan (the Eskild) tries to go in for a hug and Robbe isn’t cool with it, so at least that’s something with Robbe’s issues with men. (I think? The thing is, Robbe also does not really know Milan, so it’s not as weird that he’s not ready to be affectionate with a near-stranger.)  (EDIT from the future: Keeping the S2 almost-kiss that’s referenced in the next clip in mind, I can rationalize this moment as a continuation of that awkwardness from Robbe’s POV.) 

They chat with Lisa (Linn) who wants to direct Robbe on what he is and isn’t allowed to touch in her room, heh.  Milan and Zoë have cute interaction, and Robbe looks happy. I do like the flatmate vibe so far, they seem fun.

Clip 10 - Robbe and Milan

Senne and Zoë get cute. I haven’t seen S2 so I can’t give my opinion on their version of Noorhelm, but I did think a few things about them were less creepy in wtFOCK’s S1 than in OG. Milan talks about how they’re a Disneylike couple and Robbe laughs.

Then Robbe apologizes for something that evidently happened in S2, where Milan tried to kiss Robbe at a party? Again, I didn’t see the scene. Milan says he’d never try to do that. He offers Robbe a hug, which he accepts - tbh I don’t know if Robbe SHOULD accept based on where he is in his character arc, maybe he should have more skittishness? But it’s a nice character moment, at least. They really have to make up for lost time with the Robbe-Milan relationship, so I can get that they need to establish some closeness fast.

Not being in the wtFOCK fandom, I kinda wonder if there was backlash to that scene from before and this is damage control, LMAO.

I feel like you could’ve tweaked this to be more representative of Robbe’s issues, like have him stress here that he’s not gay, because it’s a sweet scene but again, I don’t feel like this episode built up Robbe’s internal dilemma very well. You could make this not just about smoothing over whatever bump there was in this relationship, but also about setting up some internal tension with Robbe’s sexuality issues. Multi-tasking - it’s great!

EDIT from the future: OK, I tracked down the S2 scene, and yeah, while it illustrates some of Robbe’s internalized homophobia, I really think you needed to carry this through to this clip. Because that was a very public situation, and they made a point of emphasizing onlookers’ reactions. I feel like you need to show that Robbe’s internalized homophobia isn’t just about external reactions, but internal struggles, because ... so far, that’s what it is? Like what is he doing with Noor otherwise? 

Clip 11 - Housewarming party

Party is underway. Yasmina is there and is friendly with Robbe. It sounds like they’re working on a school project together. Aaron (Magnus) and Moyo are talking about hot chicks again.

Noor arrives and the boys tease Robbe about how far he’s gone, Robbe looks pretty chill and happy until Moyo says Robbe’s getting laid tonight and you can see the nerves and reluctance take over. Okay! A character detail that actually works for his arc! Yes!

Partying, makeouts with Noor … sorry but they are wasting a lot of time with this relationship. ROBBE ISN’T INTO HER. Here’s the thing: I don’t want to demonize any of Evak’s female “love interests,” right? It’s pointless anyway because Evak is the endgame pairing, Sonja and Emma aren’t “threats” in the end, but also because they’re not bad people just for wanting to date these two guys who happens to want each other instead. And I think you can do interesting things with Sonja and Emma as characters. I’ve read Sonja fanfic that’s really good!

But when it comes down to it … this is not the story of Robbe/Noor, and there’s a point where it feels like there’s too much development for something that is really intended to be a speed bump in Robbe’s journey. 

I guess it’s a pet peeve of mine when gay stories devote a ton of time to het relationships, to the point where it begins to overshadow the main gay relationship. Love, Victor did this to an absolutely ridiculous degree. (I actually made notes for Love, Victor reactions, but hesitated to post them because 60% consisted of me typing I DON’T CARE ABOUT THESE STRAIGHT ROMANCES.) And I GET it, this is an experience many gay kids go through in their coming out journey, but also, less charitably… you don’t need het romance to dominate everything. You don’t need to make this about how a gay person being gay hurts a straight person. I genuinely appreciate that once Isak kisses Even, it’s fucking over with him and Emma, that plot thread is done. 

Anyway, Noor tells Robbe he’s so fucking hot and Robbe looks more uncomfortable, moreso when she wants to see his room and he goes off like he’s headed to Mordor.

Aaron checking out Amber … okay, again with all the het. I don’t care!!! This is not important right now!! 

Noor pushes Robbe onto the bed, ugh please don’t have them Go There.

She takes off her top and Robbe touches her boob like he’s sticking his hand into a porta-potty. We see his discomfort so at least this part is effective and relevant to Robbe’s arc. Noor is taking off her bra when the boys come into the room, wanting the weed. Okay, you dumb fucks, you’re teasing your bro about getting laid and yet you think it’s cool to enter his room when he’s with a girl? I mean, that’s a lucky break for Robbe, but his friends are extra stupid.

The mood is killed, Robbe goes hunting for weed. Episode ends.

HOW I WOULD REWRITE THIS EPISODE:

Lmao, some of my changes sounded a lot like “be like OG Skam S3.” Because Skam S3 was well-written and made sense. But I tried to think of edits that worked with what wtFOCK was presenting, not just repeating OG.

(I’m also repeating a few things in this section that I said above, btw)

While this episode doesn’t make me angry or anything, it’s got a serious problem with dithering. The first clip is a solid start to the season, but afterwards, so many of these clips feel like filler. There’s a lack of substance to them. It was hard to write about them because they ended up feeling like two minutes of nothing. 

Did we need to see repetitive mentions of Robbe’s troubled relationship with his dad? No, it’s an important plot detail but we could have established that more concisely in fewer clips. Did we need to see the process of how Robbe comes to stay with Zoë, Senne, and Milan? No, not really. Or at least not dragged out over at least three clips. 

I don’t feel like I’m in Robbe’s head to the extent that I should be  so far. Some of this is because the show just flat-out locks us out of his POV, like not showing the phone call in the Jens-Jana clip. But a lot of it is also because of the narrative dawdling. There’s just not as much to analyze unless I bring in Skam season 3 and project what we know about Isak onto Robbe. And that’s not a good way to adapt a story.

The framing of Robbe/Noor needs to change. Combine the bathroom intro with the aborted sex scene - the boys are sitting in the tub, teasing Robbe about getting laid, so he makes out with Noor and they go into a bedroom where he’s clearly not into this, and then Moyo and Aaron come in asking for weed because Robbe still actually has the weed from the bathtub at this point. Or do what Skam France did (can’t believe I’m referring to Skam France) and have the arrival of the cops interrupt the makeout/sex session and Robbe takes his cue to exit.

But frankly, it’s not great to have Robbe acting or looking too cozy with Noor, like this is a legitimate romantic arc except when it gets to the sex. The point is that this isn’t a romance. Even if you want to show some cuddly, non-sexual scenes with Noor, you have to show more of Robbe’s reluctance and fear throughout. 

Show Robbe’s fucking phone conversations with his parents!!!! Good Lord. He’s not ordering a pizza. These are important aspects of his story. Capitalize on that family tension, show us what a bad place Robbe is in at the start of this season. 

Now, about the lack of Even in this episode. Not introducing Even is a bold move, but not necessarily a smart one. Even’s introduction in Skam is not just the intro of “the love interest” - he’s the catalyst for almost everything in Isak’s story. Consider that in episode 1, Isak is seen mostly unhappy and bored - he’s distraught after kissing Emma, he’s checked out of his friends’ lunchtime girl talk, he zones out staring at his teacher’s boobs, he doesn’t want to be at kosegruppa. Isak is actually very passive and just going through the motions, doing what people tell him to do. But once Isak meets Even at kosegruppa - well, that’s when Isak wakes up. In the next few clips, we see Isak taking action. And sure, they’re small actions, searching for Even online, watching the Even video over and over, asking Vilde if there will be more kosegruppa meetings. But we can see that Isak now cares about something, he’s paying attention. Of course, Robbe’s story doesn’t have to follow the same arc. However, it does the season a huge benefit to get him intrigued by something at this point, so we the audience are not just sleepwalking along with him for a few episodes.

There’s also just the simple fact that we have only 10 episodes to establish a love story and make us care about the Even character, and it’s a very risky move to waste too much time. If you are really killing it with the rest of Robbe’s arc, this could still work, but ... well, that’s not what’s happening here.

If they didn’t want to full on introduce the Even directly, one thing they could do is subtly and indirectly find ways to include him in the narrative and create some mystery. Let’s say Robbe sees the Even’s artwork somewhere and is like whoa, that’s cool, and we can tell that it resonates with him. Or he admires Even’s graffiti, or it makes him laugh, whatever. Basically Robbe has some kind of emotional reaction to a thing the Even has created or done, which helps to set up that relationship even before we officially meet the Even.

If we want to add a little more, perhaps Robbe sees a mysterious dude in a mask tagging a wall, but they get interrupted by the cops or something and have some kind of brief but intriguing interaction with each other, and Robbe’s like, who was that guy in the mask? Or Noor takes Robbe to the tagging place, the police/security bust them, Robbe and Noor get separated, and Robbe gets helped out by the Even so he can escape. So it’s an important moment, lots of adrenaline, we can frame it like there’s a sudden ~charge~ between them (ooOOOooo the Even helped Robbe stand up and their hands touched like this was a fanfic, etc.), but he doesn’t learn Even’s name, maybe he doesn’t even see his face because Even has a mask on, so Robbe spends part of the next few episodes trying to figure out who that guy is, casually asking Noor if she knows a guy like that, keeping his eyes open. Maybe we have some fakeouts where Robbe thinks he sees the Even again but it’s just a false alarm. He’s on edge, eager to know more about that mystery guy, and so are we. Bam, we have “awakened” Robbe from his deep sleep. 

If you’ve seen Netflix’s The Get Down, there’s even a scene like this where Jaden Smith’s character gets caught tagging by the cops, he runs and flees with another young dude, and they have a moment where they recognize each other as graffiti artists they admire. While watching that scene for the first time, without any context or spoilers, without even knowing if there would be LGBT content in that show, I immediately thought, “This guy is his love interest.” Not even because it was overtly romantic. Because the way it was written and shot told us that this meeting was important. Because they had an instant connection. Something similar could have worked for Robbe and his Even. But in any case: it would have been best to establish something between those characters, even if it wasn’t an “official” introduction.

Stop focusing on Aaron/Amber when it’s not in Robbe’s POV. Reverse the scene at the beginning with Aaron videotaping and Amber getting spilled on. She gets pissed, he falls in love, and then we follow him upstairs and we meet the boy squad. That is a very obvious, very clean transition that doesn’t interrupt Robbe’s POV as it technically hasn’t started yet. So IDK why they didn’t do that, lmao.

Some changes with the Milan relationship:

Tweak the apology scene to be more representative of Robbe’s issues. Have Robbe apologize while still stressing that he’s not gay. Have Milan be chill and not question that statement, but maybe Robbe is so defensive that it comes across as unconvincing. 

Then have Milan be the one instead of the boys to interrupt the Noor almost-sex scene. Milan wanders in acting drunk, haha Milan, he’s wacky. Robbe doesn’t realize it (though the viewers do if they’re paying attention) but Milan is only pretending and is “subtly” rescuing Robbe because he realizes, based on the earlier scene, that Robbe might be struggling with his sexuality and he wants to give him an escape option. (Although I still think it’s best to combine the not-sex scene into the opening clip, but this could work, too.)

Basic questions we need to be asking, clip to clip: what is the conflict? Where is Robbe’s head right now? Why is this scene necessary? How did this scene come to be - what’s the cause and effect here? How does it advance Robbe’s story? Is it redundant? How do we tell this story in a narratively economical manner? 

[athingthatwantsvirginia]

The Steinbeck Agreement

PART TWENTY-THREE OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: discussions of familial physical/emotional abuse please read with caution, serious angst, anxiety about future, plentiful pop culture references

Word Count: 6K

Summary: Ella makes some major changes in her life, and Jess reluctantly returns to town for his mother’s wedding.

The afternoon light streamed golden through the diner windows as Liz and Luke came in, Ella leaning on the counter with her sketchbook in front of her. Too enveloped in the drawing of a field of murderous daisies, Ella didn’t even register what they were talking about until she heard them mention her name.

“...maybe Ella could do it,” Liz said, tilting her head at the young woman with dark eye makeup and EAT ME printed across her shirt.

“Hm?” Ella asked, looking up from her sketch with furrowed brows.

Luke rolled his eyes at her distracted nature. Ever since she’d moved out of her childhood home, she’d been in a worse mood, focused almost solely on her terrifying drawings. He’d had to tell her a couple times to make sure to keep the sketchbook off the counter when there were children present.

“Be a flower girl,” Liz said, a big, dreamy smile on her face. She was dressed in a long, floral red dress. “Most of the Renaissance fair crowd doesn’t have small children. But if we’re gonna have a wedding, we’re gonna have a real wedding. Can’t be a wedding without a flower girl.”

“Sorry, whose wedding?” Ella asked, straightening up and raising an eyebrow.

“Mine, sweetie.” Liz had a high, wispy voice that reminded Ella of the fairies she used to imagine playing in her mother’s garden. “We’re having it right out in the square next week. It’s gonna be beautiful, all our Renaissance fair friends will be there, and it’ll have this great medieval theme! And you could be the flower girl!”

“Oh, I don’t…” Ella began with a shy smile, but Liz only waved a dismissive hand at her, continuing.

“I can loan you one of my fair dresses,” she said excitedly, not picking up on Ella’s doubtful expression.

“Yeah, Ella. You can finally perfect your whole Bride of Frankenstein look,” Luke teased. His expression was far more pleasant than Ella could have predicted. Happy. Happy, in its simplest form, looked so strange on Luke. The past few months had seen the true finalization of his divorce and his having to watch Lorelai date some rich snob from her father’s company. But the news seemed to brighten his mood inexplicably. She was sure the laughter at her expense wasn’t exactly a drag on the day either.

Rolling her eyes, Ella shot him a pointed glance. “Y’know, you would be lost without your best waitress.”

“I’m quaking in my boots. Besides, I’ve got Lane working for me now, anyway.”

Though she narrowed her eyes at him, she could think of nothing more to say. He was right. She would never quit on him. The diner was more of a home to her than anywhere else in the world. Hell, it had almost single-handedly fed her during the worst few months of her life. Along with Lorelai’s frequent feasts of junk food.

“I can just see it, Ella! It’ll be so much fun and you’d look so beautiful!” Liz exclaimed, grabbing one of Ella’s hands in a pleading gesture.

Biting the inside of her cheek, Ella did her best to protest. She still wasn’t Liz’s biggest fan, despite wherever it was that she stood with Jess. The alcohol, the neglect. But Luke seemed not entirely angry about the match, especially considering his view on TJ when the two had first been introduced back in February. And Liz’s smile was so large, so radiant. Her eyes were desperate and almost kind. Heaving a huge sigh, Ella nodded. Luke was much more than her boss. And he gave a smile so rare when she agreed. She would do it for Luke, she decided. In fact, it was the least she could do.

.   .   .

Sat on the lumpy couch in Lane’s living room, Ella found herself smiling just a touch. The band, finally named Hep Alien, was getting better with every practice. Though the room was piled high with dirty clothes and video game equipment, and it remained cluttered no matter how many times Ella tried to clean it up, she was beginning to get more comfortable. Her king mattress was so old anyway, and sleeping on the plaid couch wasn’t much different. As she had run from the only house she had ever known, she’d packed as much as she could into her station wagon, which had once been her aunt Julie’s. It wasn’t like her old room fit much anyway. Mostly, the backseat was filled with her records, books, clothes.

Loud music making her ears ring, she sketched Lane behind the drums, living the way she had always wanted. As fun as it was watching band practice nearly every night, Ella was eager for her summer classes to start. If she played her cards right, she could graduate a year early with art as a minor. Ella’s mind drifted to the night she left, the day after she finally finished her first year of college. And, over a modest celebratory dinner, the conversation had drifted, as it always did, to the future.

.   .   .

two and a half weeks earlier

Tugging with one hand at the ends of her hair, Ella felt an odd mixture of distasteful nostalgia and happiness in her stomach. The lasagna tasted exactly as her mother’s had, and Ella knew Fiona had followed the recipe, scribbled in the back of the ancient cookbook, exactly. But she would keep quiet. Fiona truly seemed proud of her, beaming and giving her a hug the moment she walked through the door after work. Slowly, very slowly, Ella was beginning to accept it, the motherly love. Though occasionally it still rubbed her the wrong way, it didn’t send her spiralling into anger and melancholy as it once had.

And it wasn’t as though Fiona was a bad person. She had a sunny disposition, glossy hair, expressive eyes. Ella could understand how her father would want to marry her. But she was just too unlike her mother. Would never understand Ella the way her mother had. It still felt like bizarro-world when Fiona tried to give her advice or compliment her on her piano skills. But she could manage dinner every once and a while, and accept pride in her academic accomplishments. She was on the Dean’s List, after all.

Adam pushed his food around his plate as he spoke. From the glances they’d shared, Ella could tell he tasted the same memories from childhood she did.

“We’ve still got about a month, but I really think we can get first place,” Adam said of his mathlete competition. His voice had gotten deeper, and he was finally growing taller. Ella could tell he would end up looking a lot like Noah.

“That’s great,” Jake said, nodding with a half-smile.

“Really is,” Fiona echoed, grinning widely.

As silence fell on the four of them, forks scraped on the Corelle plates and throats were cleared. Awkward silences had quickly become staples of family dinners. Eventually, Jake began twisting his wedding ring and looked straight at Ella, who sat at his left side. The light in the peach kitchen was bright despite the cloudy darkness outside. The May evening was humid and buzzing with cicadas.

“And what about you, Ellie?” Jake asked.

Looking up carefully, Ella put down her fork and faced him. “What about me?”

“Do you have any prospects for the summer? Besides the diner?”

She shook her head. “No. Unless Patty needs me to fill in. Might start painting more. I’m thinking a small easel would fit pretty well near the window in my room.”

Narrowing his eyes doubtfully, Jake tilted his head slightly. “I don’t know. Seems like a waste of money.”

“Why?” she asked instantly.

“We don’t have to discuss this now,” Fiona interjected patiently.

Adam looked down at his plate as he ate.

Jake breathed a frustrated sigh through his nose. “You’re majoring in history. You’re living with us for at least three more years. I don’t think now’s the time for pipe dreams.”

“Hm,” Ella nodded, giving a thin, vicious smile. “It’s funny you say that. When mom was alive, you always thought I should put as much time into my art as she put into her music.”

“You were a kid. Things change. The best you can hope for is being a history teacher at Stars Hollow High, and you have to be happy with it,” Jake explained with cold logic in his voice. His eyebrows were raised in condescension.

Ella’s cheeks heated up. “Oh, so all this time you’ve just been humoring me? Telling me I had talent?”

“Not exactly. But you’re not O’Keefe, either.”

“Never said I was,” Ella snapped, standing up from her seat. “I can't do this right now. I’m buying my fucking paint, dad.”

“Hey!” he shouted, rising from his own seat and following her as she stormed into the living room towards the hall entrance. “Don’t you use that language with me, young lady!”

“Why not?! Might as well let you know how I actually talk if you’re gonna let me know how you actually feel!” she yelled back, gesturing wildly with her hands.

Jake rolled his eyes at his only daughter. “Toughen up, Ellie! You’ve only got so much time on this earth and I’m not gonna watch you waste it on your doodles!”

“Oh, and lecturing about the revolutionary war in the town where I’ve always lived wouldn’t be a waste?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“At least you’ll make a living! You’ll still be around people who love you, who take care of you. You’ll always be near us,” he argued.

Ella let out a bitter, humorless bark of laughter. “People who take care of me?! I’ve been taking care of you for almost five years! All of you! Especially you! When mom died, I was the one who fed us, I was the one who cleaned and tried to cook! And you did fuck-all except drink and lie around crying!”

Eyes darkening, Jake took a step closer to her and she immediately recoiled. “I lost my wife. You will never understand that!”

“I lost my mother!” she screamed, hands clenched at her sides, so hard her knuckles turned white. Angry tears snuck up on her eyes but she swallowed them back to the best of her ability.

“If I’d have known how much you’d bitch about helping out, doing what a daughter should, I never would’ve let you take that job at Luke’s!”

“Doing what a daughter should?” she asked immediately, eyebrows shooting up. Her jaw was set firm with tension.

Fiona appeared from the kitchen behind her husband, putting a hand to his shoulder. “Baby, let’s just all take a minute to cool down.”

“You brother and I needed you and all you could do was complain!” he roared.

Ella scoffed. “You needed me? You needed me to keep you alive long enough for you to find a new wife to coddle you and baby you and cry with you when you told her about your tragic high school sweetheart! Why do you think she hates you, huh?”

Her stomach did a flip when she saw the hurt on Fiona’s face from the corner of her eye, but a fire burned so hot inside her, and she couldn’t keep her words contained any longer. She’d tried to play the dutiful woman of the house long enough.

“Do not talk about my marriage!” Jake warned. “It’s none of your business!”

“Of course it’s my business! It’ll be my business when I have to pick up the pieces once she leaves you!”

“You have always been such a little brat! You were a nightmare to raise for me and for Sophia!” A vein had popped out in his forehead, and he shrugged Fiona’s touch from his shoulder.

“Fuck you!”

Crack! Ella seemed to hear it before she felt it: a sharp, searing pain as his open palm struck her cheek. It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in so long, not since she was ten and had mouthed off at the dinner table. A sinking feeling struck her stomach as silence filled the room. Because she suddenly discovered she had always been expecting it. Always knew it would happen again, someday, somehow. And she’d been almost surprised he hadn’t smacked her in the months following her mother’s death. But, the levee had to break. It always did.

She brought a hand to her stinging flesh, and her father stopped in his tracks. Remorse washed over his features and he went to reach out for her. Flinching away from him, Ella felt her fingers grip at her necklace.

“Ellie, I’m so sorry, baby. I told you not to use that language with me. And you know how my old man was about-”

“No,” she said softly, shaking her head. “No.”

.   .   .

The final, strong bass note of the White Stripes song Hep Alien played broke her from her memories. She could see the dull sky as she packed up her car the best she could, the night crossing over into morning as she offered Adam a quick goodbye. He’d been upset, but also somewhat calm. And when he’d come to visit her a week later during one of her shifts at the diner, he told her he had always known Ella would leave. From the first night after their mother had died, he’d known. Though he knew it was fruitless to try and convince her not to feel guilty, Adam had told her not to worry. He could handle home on his own, he was confident. He’d never been slapped. And they were both smart enough to understand why.

And when she’d come to Lane in the early hours of the morning, still painfully holding back her tears with the entire contents of her life parked out on the street in the station wagon, she knew everything would change. Lane had welcomed her with open arms, of course. Had seen Ella cry for only the third time in all their years knowing each other. There was something so sweet about her new freedom, but a heaviness still sat in Ella’s heart. Constant guilt and fear for Adam, heartache over her mother, who she still missed everyday. And she felt so lost, it was all-consuming. She didn’t know what the next step was. Would she still be able to pay for college? Would she ever speak to her stepmother again? Would she even stay a history major, if she was lucky enough to continue her education? She had never been more glad for Luke’s, and for her friends. There were few comforts in her life, continued existence as a waitress, or knowing Adam was only a few blocks away in case something ever happened. She clung to the only constants left for dear life. She’d been dreaming of leaving the house for so long, but it managed to be even harder than she thought it would be. A gloomy cloud had been hanging over her for a few weeks, as she walked through her existence with an aimlessness she had never known before.

Clapping some, Ella offered a big smile and watched as Zach, Gil, and Bryan began to talk amongst themselves about the new tattoo Gil had shown up to practice with. Lane excused herself from the conversation only because of the temptation. She wanted a tattoo, really did, but didn’t want to increase the chances of her mother disowning her any more than she already had. Instead, she came to join Ella on the couch, plopping down and putting an arm around her friend. Ella kept her smile and rested her head against Lane’s shoulder. Since moving in, Ella was reminded every day of what a wonderful person Lane was. They came from such different worlds, but never judged each other, always took care of each other, helped each other with their respective escapes. Working together at Luke’s had been even more fun than Ella could have ever imagined. It was a welcome end to the long, lonely year after Jess’s departure, just she and Luke sulking around together. There was a place for sulking, but the time for it seemed to be coming to an end.

“You guys were fucking great,” Ella said, then gestured down to the picture she had just drawn. “You’re a regular Meg White up there. Really.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Lane chirped, beaming with pride.

Snorting a laugh, Ella put the sketchbook aside and bit back a yawn. “Don’t I know it.”

“Hey, are you okay?” Lane asked, brows furrowing.

It almost made her want to laugh. Over the past two weeks, Lane had asked her that question more than had once seemed humanly possible. “Yeah, Lane. I’m fine. Just a long day. Got roped into being a flower girl.”

“What?”

“Yeah, Luke’s sister. Liz. Have you met her before? You weren’t working at the diner yet the last time she was in town,” she said tiredly.

“No, I haven’t,” Lane replied. “Jess’s mom, right?”

“She is indeed.”

“And why exactly are you filling what is traditionally a role for a girl in pigtails and Mary Janes?”

Blowing out a sigh, Ella shook her head slightly. “I don’t even know. She just sort of told me...didn’t exactly ask. It’s next week in town square, so there’s not enough time. And Luke really seemed like he wanted me to and I just...I don’t know. Maybe she’s a witch.”

“Always a possibility,” Lane nodded, going along with the bit as she always did. “And have you heard from Jess lately?”

Again, Ella shook her head. “He still doesn’t have an actual phone number, and now I don’t either. Not optimum communication conditions.”

“Yeah, that’s not ideal,” Lane said, commiserating.

“I wish it had crossed my mind, but I moved out in about forty-five minutes,” Ella said, fiddling with her necklace.

A guilty look painted her features. But she’d only been out of the house a little while, maybe he hadn’t called.

“Do you think he’ll come for the wedding?”

Ella scoffed. “Not a chance in hell.”

.   .   .

“Are you sure I can’t help with anything else?” Ella asked, arms crossed over her chest.

Her chewed pencil sat behind her ear, and her hair fell in a loose, hasty braid over her shoulder. One of her booted feet tapped constantly against the tiled floor, and she smoothed over her blue skirt every few minutes. And she only looked half as stressed as Luke. The wedding was in two days, and nearly everything had been dumped on him. As a consequence, Ella had been dealing with the diner business while Luke argued on the phone with vendors who could give him the proper medieval food and decor.

The midday lull had finally come, and Lorelai stopping in was sure to bring a little sunshine. Though she had been pretty overwhelmed herself, lately. The new Dragonfly Inn opening was only weeks away.

Luke shook his head at Ella when he’d finished giving Lorelai the rundown of the week’s events. “Not right now, kid. That was the last call I had to make. At least for the time being.”

“Just say the word,” Ella shrugged, finally letting herself relax a touch, leaning her forearms onto the counter.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So, am I caught up on everything, then?” Lorelai chimed in, brows raised and eyes expectant.

“Yeah, I’d say so…” Luke began, but the bell over the door jingled.

A familiar scowl appeared in the diner’s entrance, and Jess trudged up to the counter with a finger pointed at Luke. “I’m not paying for a motel, so I’m stayin’ with you!”

Lorelai gasped dramatically and narrowed her eyes at Luke. “Liar!”

As he passed on his way to the stairs, Jess gave Ella a curt nod. She reciprocated, but felt unnerved by his demeanor. Was it shy? Was it angry? It certainly didn’t seem pleasant. They hadn’t spoken in nearly three weeks, the longest time since he had first run away to California.

“I didn’t think he was coming,” Luke muttered, watching Jess disappear up the stairs. A wistful, fond smile crossed Luke’s lips. “I went to see him in New York.”

“You did?” Ella asked, brows furrowed.

“Yeah. It was a total pig sty and he may or may not be a drug dealer. But, hey, at least he came,” Luke said, shaking his head in a mixture of amusement and wonder.

Sighing through her nose, Ella looked down at her feet and bit at the inside of her cheek. Her gaze focused on nothing in particular, thoughts swimming around and colliding with each other inside her already crowded mind. “Yeah. At least. I’m gonna take my ten minutes. That alright?”

Luke was busy, back to his banter with Lorelai, and only gave a half nod her way. She snickered at how enveloped in each other the two of them were. Without much effort, she slipped behind the curtain and climbed up the stairs unnoticed. Nerves coursed through her, and her heart sped up in her chest. She gave two short, harsh knocks on the window of the shabby apartment door.

After waiting a moment and receiving no response, she rolled her eyes to herself. Who was she to be nervous? He was pretty much her best friend, besides Lane. And she hadn’t done anything wrong. With a new, determined quality to her steps, she walked through the front door and found him just where she expected, on his old bed, nose already buried in a book.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she plastered on a confident smirk and sat down on the end of the bed. She recognized the book instantly, her own copy buried in the pile of belongings in her car: Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck.

“The only author we could ever agree on,” she said, eyeing the book though Jess still hadn’t lifted his head.

“Pretty much,” he replied flatly, biting at his bottom lip as he focused on the words in front of him.

Sighing shortly through her nose, Ella turned to face him fully, sitting criss-cross applesauce on the familiar brown afghan. Jess unconsciously brought his feet in closer to make room for her, his knees up in the air, blocking her view of his face slightly. But she could see his hair, longer still and without any gel.

“See you’ve completely ditched the pompadour look,” she muttered. “Couldn’t handle being mistaken for an Elvis impersonator any longer, huh?”

“My God, you should do stand-up,” Jess said dryly, eyes widening in feigned amazement as he kept reading.

Shaking her head slightly, Ella let a harsh chuckle escape her lips and furrowed her brows at him. “Out with it, jackass.”

“Hm?” he asked dismissively, taking a pencil from his pocket to underline a phrase.

Ella pursed her lips in frustration. “Well, it’s obvious you’re pissed. I say we skip the passive-aggressive theatrics and you just spill it. But, hey, this is a democracy. You also get a vote.”

Rolling his eyes, Jess finally shot a glance over his knees. Heaving a sigh, he shut his book and tossed it into the open duffel bag on the floor next to the bed. In one swift movement, he mirrored her sitting position and tilted his head at her in askance.

“Have you been doing a lot of hard partying lately? Really taking advantage of this college thing? Or have you been avoiding my calls?” he asked, though he wasn’t angry, despite the sarcasm. There was a defeated tone in his voice which surprised her; almost disappointed.

Biting the inside of her cheek, she gave another small shake of her head, and she spoke firmly. “Well, first of all, I’m not required to take your calls. I asked you to call me because you fucked off to California without telling me and I wanted to make sure you hadn’t been serial-killed.”

Jess gave a begrudging nod, almost preparing for a dressing down.

“But, no, I haven’t been avoiding your calls, alright? Paranoid much?”

He scoffed, but she cut him off before he could retort.

“I moved out.”

Immediately, his eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You did?”

She nodded. “Yeah. About two weeks ago. Wasn’t exactly seamless, and I bet my dad will disconnect my old line at some point. I’ve been staying at Lane’s with her and the band. They don’t have a phone yet. And you change your number pretty much every week, so it’s not like I could let you know.”

A smile crossed his features. “I’m...that’s great, Eleanor.”

She snorted a laugh of disbelief. “Yeah, it’s so great living out of my car and sleeping on Lane’s forty-year-old couch.”

Jess shrugged. “Gotta start somewhere.”

“I guess.”

He looked flabbergasted. “I’m so proud of you.”

A blush heated her cheeks and she chuckled breathily in confusion. “What?”

“For moving out. I mean, I can’t imagine it was a quiet affair,” he said, face falling slightly.

Again, she shook her head, glancing down at the space between them on the comforter and clutching her necklace. “No. It wasn’t.”

“What happened?” he ventured without hesitation, searching her face and exposed arms for any yellowed bruises or healing cuts. Sometimes, he could give even Ella a run for her money when assuming the worst.

Ella shrugged noncommittally, throwing a glance down at her watch, then facing him again with a small smile. “Long story. I’ve only got a couple minutes left on break. You gonna be in town for a little while?”

“Until the minute the wedding ends.”

“Okay, we’ll find some time to catch up,” she said, smirking. “Luke tells me you’re a drug dealer now. You’ve gotta let me in on all your behind-the-scenes Scarface facts.”

Jess rolled his eyes. “God, Luke is such a drama queen. I’m a messenger.”

“Nice cover. Very convincing.”

“Don’t you have coffee to pour?” he shot back, defensive.

Snickering, Ella rose from the bed, smoothing down her skirt and apron. “Whatever keeps the guilt at bay, tough guy.”

“G’bye,” he muttered, grumpy, as he settled back against the wall and picked up his book again. But, just before Ella reached the door: “What time are you off, Eleanor?”

“Six-thirty. Luke’s closing up early to play wedding planner,” she said, hand poised over the doorknob.

Jess chuckled. “Pizza at Antonioli’s tonight?”

“Sure. I even promise not to wear a wire.”

The pillow Jess had thrown barely missed her as she exited the apartment, laughing under her breath.

.   .   .

Sighing softly, Ella ran the key along the chain of her necklace and looked down at the half-eaten pizza crusts on her paper plate. The old wooden table in the pizza place was slightly sticky, and carved with the names of various people and couples who had shared a pie there before. But, they could watch the Stars Hollow evening turn from golden to blue as the sun went down, sitting by the front window. Jess had to leave by eight, and it was half past seven by the time the stars came out. Summer had almost come, and the days were long and bright with sunshine. Chilly breezes swept past at night, but it was getting warmer still.

“So...yeah. It only took me about forty-five minutes to pack everything up. Didn’t realize how little stuff I had until I could fit almost everything in my trunk and back seat,” she said, a small, humorless smile on her face.

Jess nodded, rolling a balled-up napkin absently in his hand as he listened, his face stony. “Was it just yelling? Or did he hit you?”

Breathing another long sigh through her nose, Ella bit the inside of her cheek. “Just once. He just slapped me once. He told me not to swear at him, but I-”

“Eleanor,” he interjected, voice firm but gentle. “Once is way too much. Even a slap. It’s way, way too many times.”

She only shrugged. “I know. I mean, of course I know that. It’s just…”

Again, he nodded wordlessly. Jess knew what it was like to have a parent, or a step-parent, who used hurt as a tool. And he knew the confusion. Sometimes monsters wore masks. She didn’t have to say anything more.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Ella shook her head. “It’s not your fault. And I’m moved out now, Jess.”

“Right...and I meant what I said. I’m so proud of you, Stevens.” Jess reached hesitantly across the table, and took her free hand in his. Gave it one squeeze.

She flashed him a tiny smile, squeezed it back. Then she disentangled their fingers and tucked her hair behind her ears, clearing her throat and straightening her back. The severity left her features, a new, mischievous twinkle lighting up her hazel eyes. Her chest was less heavy, and she was glad he knew. Glad he could understand with so few words.

“Proud of you too, Mariano. This time, I didn’t have to watch you step out of a sheriff’s car when you got to town,” she smirked, picking up one of the crusts and taking another bite out of it.

He frowned. “Ugh, please don’t mention Andy Griffith. That car is my property. The only reason I even called Luke after I got to Venice was to ask about the car and he-”

Still chuckling, Ella raised her hands in surrender, cutting him off. “White flag.”

Jess offered a sardonic, lop-sided smirk. “And, believe or not, Luke will be the sanest person at the bachelor party tonight.”

“Why are you even going?” she asked, brows furrowed as she took a sip of her water, ice melty from time and the May heat seeping through the splintered wood of the front door.

Shaking his head, Jess glanced down at his watch and noticed he had only ten minutes before he and Luke would have to hop in Luke’s ancient green truck. “I don’t know. Luke mentioned me not wanting to go to Liz, and then she spent thirty minutes babbling until she finally wore me down.”

Pursing her lips, Ella nodded. “Yeah, she’s very persuasive.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re looking at the flower girl,” she admitted, gesturing to herself.

He laughed breathily. “No way.”

“Yep. I’ll be there in the renaissance dress and all. Though, Lorelai said she would make some alterations for me. I’m going over to her house in a little while to sort out the whole corset situation.”

Jess snorted another chuckle. “Good luck.”

“Right back at ya, Mariano,” she teased. “Where on earth would TJ want to go for his bachelor party?”

“It’s a cliché I’m sure you’ll be able to guess on the first try,” Jess said with a dejected frown.

After only a moment with brows furrowed, realization flashed across Ella’s eyes and her expression turned to one of disgust. “Ugh, Jesus. A strip club?”

“I know,” he grumbled. “Believe me, I’ll be there in silent protest.”

“Mouth off to one of the owners if you get the chance, would you? For me?” she asked.

“Will do.”

.   .   .

“I don’t hate my mother,” Jess grumbled to Luke, rolling his eyes slightly.

He ran a hand through his messy hair, crossing his leather-clad arms. Maybe he should’ve known he would get into a fight with TJ at some point, considering his history with Liz’s past boyfriends and husbands. All it had taken was TJ hitting the Austen novel out of his hands, as he read begrudgingly in the low-lit strip club. And they’d come to blows. And Luke was pissed. They were sat down at a table in Luke’s, the diner completely dark glowing only from the streetlamps and twinkle lights in the square. All the chairs, save for the two they sat in, were stacked up on the red tables. Luke was interrogating Jess about why he’d come for the wedding anyway, if he was so mad about it. As if he hadn’t stormed into Jess’s apartment trying to convince him to come only a few days earlier.

“You don’t?” Luke asked, eyebrows raised in expectation. “Then why did you come, anyway, if you’re so against your mother finding happiness? And it’s pretty clear you hate me.”

Jess sighed heavily at Luke’s dramatics. “I don’t hate you. I came here because of you.”

“Stop that,” Luke scolded in disbelief.

“You said it was important to you. Remember?” Jess asked, voice tight with annoyance.

“I didn’t think you were listening.”

“Oh, I was listening.”

Luke stared at his nephew for a long moment, leaning back in his chair. “So, you don’t hate your mom. You don’t hate me. But, really, all it took was me coming to New York to yell at you?”

Sighing, Jess said nothing. His lips were set in a thin line, and he averted his gaze from his uncle. He ran a hand over his mouth.

Eyes widening, Luke cracked a knowing grin. “You came because of Ella? But, you haven’t been together in...what? A year?”

Jess gave a sheepish nod. “Yeah, but, we still talk every couple weeks. She didn’t tell you?”

Luke snorted. “Well, I remember her chewing you out that first time you called. Telling you to let her know you were alive. But I didn’t know you were really talking.”

Running a hand over his mouth again, Jess gave another nod.

“So?” Luke asked, prodding. “Why’d you need to come here...if you call so often anyway?”

Jess bit at his bottom lip, squirming under the questions. “Since she moved out, she hasn’t been picking up. I didn’t know what happened. I wanted to...make sure. Because…”

“What?”

“I think...I mean...I’m in love with her, alright?” Jess spit out, an anxious bite in his voice.

Luke’s eyebrows shot up, and a flabbergasted look formed on his face. “Wow!...You think you’re in love with her?”

Jess shrugged. “Pretty sure. But, I’ve been thinking that since I was seventeen. And she doesn’t believe in love, anyway.”

Scoffing, Luke shook his head. “I know she says that, but it’s crap. What do you love about her, Jess?”

“Excuse me?” Jess asked, brows furrowing.

Luke rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Jess, I think it’s great that you know how you feel. And like I said earlier, I’m not gonna keep trying to change you. You are who you are. And Ella is who she is. If you’re gonna tell her how you feel, you have to do it carefully. And you have to be sure. So, tell me what you love about her.”

Scowling, Jess looked long and hard at his uncle. “What, do you wanna hold hands and skip afterwards?”

“Do you want to do this right or not?”

Finally, Jess relented. “Okay. Fine. I love that she...she’s so passionate. About everything. And she talks with her hands. And she eats peanut butter right out of the jar when she’s sick. And she hums while she works, without even realizing it. She..she cares so much about her friends and her brothers and her aunt and...I don’t know. She does everything for other people. She doesn’t think she’s a people person. But she really is. Even the way she talks to customers...you can really see it.

“And she’s such an amazing artist. She can feel art. And music. I’ve never met anyone else like that before. I can talk to her for hours...or not say anything at all. I miss her when she’s gone. Everything is...just better when I’m with her.”

When Jess looked up again, he found his uncle with a smug smirk. As Jess was speaking, his eyes had taken on a far-off quality. And though he didn’t want to be talking, his lips had started to curl upward at the corners anyway. Just from thinking of her. Luke recognized everything in Jess’s expression.

Jess shook his head slightly, jaw tense, embarrassment swirling in his stomach. “What?”

“Nothing,” Luke said lightly, almost mocking. “I’ve just...never seen that look on your face before.”

Rolling his eyes again, Jess scoffed angrily.

“Alright, alright,” Luke said, fighting off good-natured laughter. “Open two-way communication is the foundation of love…”

[queen-scribbles]

One word writing prompts, #7. melody

Oh, boy, this was fun. And it only got better when I remembered Troy Baker can sing. :3 Set maybe a month or two post-Nathema Conspiracy.

It was always a good sign when Jaaide was humming in the morning. She was a morning person both by nature and lingering habit, but humming meant it had been a good night. In other words, no nightmares. Given that Theron knew they’d dogged her sleep more often than not the past year or so, that thought put him in a much better mood than he usually was pre-caf.

He still wanted caf, of course, he was just… happier than he’d been in a long time. A realization that made him smile as he cracked one eye open to scan the room(habit). Jaaide wasn’t hard to find; slouched in one of the comfy chairs that flanked the couch, feet braced against the low table and one thumb idly rubbing along her cybernetics as she perused the datapad propped up by her knees. It was so casual, so comfortably normal, the gratitude he was here to see it made something in his chest clench.

Jaaide reached the end of the song and paused for the moment before starting to hum another one. So a very good mood, then. If anyone deserved it, she did. Theron sat up and stretched, running one hand over his hair. He’d have to decide soon if he was keeping the… new look, or letting it grow back. But he had a couple more days for that. For now, he could sit it bed and enjoy the fact his better half(much as she might argue the title) was in such a good mood that she was humming.

And humming something he knew, Theron realized after just a few bars. It wasn’t one he expected Jaaide to know, but she’d been full of surprises the entire time he’d known her, this shouldn’t really, well, surprise him. Habit had him filling in the words, even half awake, he’d heard it so many times.

‘…baby, I assume, that you always knew the recipe, is simply me and you. Love leaves you blind, Baby, you can read my mind, All that’s been left unsaid… You know the score, what I’ve been waiting for-’

He didn’t realize he’d started actually singing until Jaaide’s humming trailed off and she turned to look at him with a sheepish smile.

“I was trying not to wake you,” she said apologetically.

Theron wrinkled his nose and scratched the back of his head. “You didn’t, I don’t think. Guess I was just ready to get up.”

Jaaide chuckled and dropped her feet to the floor, letting the datapad slide onto the table. “Or, even when you’re asleep, some part of you knows when the caf in ready.”

He grinned and let his arms rest over drawn-up knees. “Or that.”

She winked as she stood and headed for the caf dispenser. “Don’t worry, I made enough for two.”

“Smart woman,” Theron teased, climbing out of bed and following her over. He held on to his curiosity long enough for her to fill two mugs and pass one to him before asking, “So where’d you hear that song?”

“I… don’t remember,” Jaaide said with a one-shoulder shrug as she retreated to the couch. “Why?”

Theron joined her, grinning when she immediately turned sideways and draped her legs across his lap. In some ways she was very predictable. “Just surprised you know it.”

“It’s not as if the Empire is a hermitage, Theron,” she retorted, amusement clear in her voice as she looked at him over the rim of her mug. “They do have culture. Including music.”

He gave her knees a light, playful shove. “I know that, Arien. Just…  That song’s something of a… niche? classic from when my parents woulda been kids; the duo who recorded it never gained much popularity beyond the Core, that’s why I’m surprised.”

“How do you know it, then?” Jaaide asked playfully, following the question with a long sip of her caf. “If it’s so niche.”

“Worked an op based out of a throwback-themed cantina,” Theron replied, taking an even longer sip of his caf at the memory. “Rookie assignment, y’know how it is. Place played that song roughly once every kriffing hour, every single day, whole time we were there. It’s engraved in my brain now; I hear it I can’t help but fill in the words.”

“On that note”–both smirked at her unintended pun–”I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sing before.”

He snorted softly. “Do I apologize for the oversight or for breaking that streak?”

Jaaide shook her head, leaning forward to set her mug on the table. “Neither, really. You don’t owe me a complete revelation of you talents, Theron, but you are good.” She laughed. “And I’d bet even better when you’re fully awake and doing it deliberately.”

Theron groaned theatrically and shifted his grip on the mug to one hand so the other could rub up and down her shin. “Why do I sense a karaoke night in the Alliance’s not-too-distant future?”

“Hmm, because you’re a smart man,” he laughed. “However, if you’re not comfortable with it being a public affair…” She curled her legs back and shifted so she was sitting closer. Close enough enough to lightly run her fingers over the nape of his neck, trailing up into his hair. “We could make it just the two of us.” A self-deprecating smile curved her lips. “Though my singing is more likely to emotionally scar you than anything…”

“Turnabout’s fair play,” he muttered glibly.

Jaaide’s hand stilled and she shot him a reproving look. “Theron.”

“What?” Theron said, taking another drink of his caf. “One of us has to hold on to what I did for a bit, and since you don’t want to, I’m happy to volunteer.”

“No, we don’t.” Her thumb brushed absently over his skin as she held his gaze.  “I forgave you.It’s in the past, let it stay there.” She smiled playfully and kissed the tip of his nose. “I’m in much too good a mood to have that conversation again right now.”

Theron chuckled and reached over to brush her hair back from her face. “What about one about how incredible you are?”

Jaaide giggled. “That one I’ll have, but later. I need to go meet with Sana Rae; there were some logistical things she wished to discuss about the Force Enclave.”

“Oh, alright,” Theron sighed in exaggerated disappointment, tugging her closer to kiss her forehead. “I guess I wait til later to reel off my list of reasons you’re amazing.”

“Mm, there’s a list now,” she teased.

“A very long one,” he riposted. “Go do your Commandery things and I’ll share it with you later.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Jaaide said playfully, stealing a real kiss before she pushed to her feet.

She was humming the song again as she left the room.

————————————-

The song is Whatcha Gonna Do, which is actually from Agent Carter(I’ve had it on the brain recently, which led to the incredibly dangerous mental image of Jaaide and Theron in 1940s-era clothes. But really, there’s few things better than combining elements from two of my favorite spy couples :P).

[maneatingbadger]

'By the way, just what is a phroso?' One ounce ginger syrup, one ounce lemon syrup, dash of rum, dash of bitters, one egg, phosphate to taste, shake over cracked ice, strain, serve with nutmeg.

William Least Heat-Moon, River Horse: The Logbook of a Boat across America

[podmusical]

The Ballad of GG Scrumptious, Part 1

Credits and Lyrics for Episode 7 of Days of Future Fuzz

starring:

“Narrator” - Jordan Gelber Golden George Scrumptious - Andrew Radford Butler

written by Jonathan A. Goldberg music by Matt roi Berger

recorded, mixed and edited by Marcus Bagala and Will Melones

NARRATOR

Oh hello there, what’s that?  You want a story?

Something real and true, but perhaps, too, allegory?

Oh well, let me see, let me see, let me have a drink

And think up a story worth your time - let me think-

Ah! I’ve got it, and it’s got it all!

A hero and prophecy, a warning, a fall

A promise, a history - hidden, but crucial

And a secret you’ll never guess - though maybe you will

I think you look smart, I mean, you came here to me

When you needed some fun - that’s as smart as can be.

So what do you say?  Let me lay out the scene

Let’s start at the beginning, the best place to begin:

Born beneath a lard-shaped star

The moon was in the House of Starch

(The house, by far, the fattest -

Like being born in a fry basket)

His mother labored in great pain

16 lbs, this fellow weighed

And his eyes shown like a grease stain

Skin glowed like a casserole fresh made

His mama named him Golden George

Papa Scumptious was overjoyed

Said “we’ll call him GG for short.”

He was in the kitchen by age two

Cooking breast milk cheese fondu

Had his mama spooked - but one taste she knew:

Her boy cooked naturally

Over time his talents grew

And his confidence grew too

Said he would shape the world of food,

Fast and Casually.

He sang:

GOLDEN GEORGE

My gifts know no restraints

Soon all the world will know my name

My gift to all shall be

An escape from drudgery

Via culinary artistry.

NARRATOR

So how do you like him? Guess he’s our hero

The boy with a wish and a gift… and an ego.

But this amico was on to somethin’ -

The world is bitter and cold and troublin’

But nothing’s so warm as something straight out the oven

And filling you up and giving you comfort

Adjusting your dials and pushing all your right buttons.

So why not toot his honker when he’s so much to offer?

Food and drink HEAL - and this boy was a doctor

But he needed more than a gift or a wish

He needed more than an ego - he needed a DISH.

GOLDEN GEORGE

It’s time to make my fortune

So let the world prepare

I’ll save their mouths from boredom

All other chefs beware!

I’ll keep the oil flowing

I’ll keep the oven hot

I’ll find the dish that shows them

What I’ve got!  Yeah!

Teryaki steak tips!

Buttered sweetbread fries

Cheese-laced onion blossom

Ranch on the side

Now, here’s my masterpiece! It’s

Piled high with 7 cheeses

What taste, what artistry

Baked Macaroni - I’m a genius!

NARRATOR

And though it sounds simple, and maybe you laugh

That macaroni pasta put GG on the map

That macaroni pasta was better than yours by half

His use of thousand island dressing WAS astounding

Over seven layers of cheeses, french AND italian

And one that might be Russian but ain’t NO body telling

Mm mm!

See, the recipe’s a secret, and GG’s smart to keep it

Cuz everyone wanted what that bastard was selling

The momentum of this dish on every wish list

Was enough to propel him to the highest echelon

Of chef’s and give him what they all were eyeing:

FRANCHISING!

But as GG sat in his kitchen, in Centralia New Jersey

Sizing up contracts, showered in glory

He felt a worry, an itch left un scratched

He was lost in the dark, lost his spark, all seemed black.

Something ached in his twice baked heart

Tho his macaroni was a work of art

All that work felt artless heartless

See, at the top, the drop’s all you got left

Now, his hostess was a beauty queen

Named Melanie Marie Manzine

Triple M saw GG’s depression

And so she pulled him near to tell him:

TRIPLE M

“I watched you build this place -

The joy that played across your face.

Why not give everyone

A taste thereof

Fill your menu with that joy and fun.”

GOLDEN GEORGE

Fun?  Yeah,

NARRATOR

thought GG,

GOLDEN GEORGE

that’s the one!

The ingredient I had, but since had shunned

I’ve been so high on my own hot air

I’ve lost the fun that got me there.

Food should always be fun!

It’s entertainment for tongues!

That was obvious once

But I was blind I was dumb

As to what I’d become!

Goodbye to former pursuits!

Better to give and include!

Without further ado, I present you

A place where the food can always lighten the mood

The all new GG Scrumptious, where fun is always on the menu!

NARRATOR

Well, you can guess what happened next

Oh, you can’t?  Well here it is:

GG rethought the plot of his vocation

He let go of the top and focused on elation

The silly joy and fun of stuffing your face and

Drinking your weight in

Milkshakes and

When his restaurant reopened after a short renovation

It was a success!  He was met with adulation,

And opened up franchises in 7000 plus locations!

GOLDEN GEORGE

GG Scrumptious, where fun is always on the menu!

NARRATOR

And he married his muse! Yes he truly fell for

That clever, wild woman who’d been running the door.

Triple M and double G had their lives intertwined

By a wild west rabbi named Tex Rubenstein

Beneath a papermache macaroni

In the most beautiful mixed-denominational ceremony

GOLDEN GEORGE

Finally everything is right

I love my work, I love my wife

This is more than I ever could have hoped for

TRIPLE M

[Crying]

GOLDEN GEORGE

What’s this?  My love, why do you cry?

Tell me and I will make it right!

There is no worry we’ve in sight

TRIPLE M

“GG, I’m pregnant!”

NARRATOR

What?  You don’t feel the tension?

Yes of course a child’s a blessing

It’s just - oh, I get the impression

You’re missing a key component to our hero’s depression.

So, for a second let’s leave the present.  

It’s time for a little history lesson…

Long ago when the world was young

When the restaurant game had not yet begun

Casual eateries didn’t exist

And the only fast food was that you couldn’t catch

If early man sought something good to eat (yeah!)

He’d best fall down on his knees and pray to the gods of drink and feast.

It was the perfect way,

And would still be today, but…

A lesser god of feast was this gal Edesia

Ha - your face betrays you never heard the name.

You missed nothing if you never met her

Though she thought she was an up and comer in game

She made a plan to be

The greatest god of food and drink in history

She’d show humans the holy ways

And thus secure their love and praise

Till the end of days

Well she didn’t wait more than a thousand years

When a man hit bottom and her chance appeared

A failing chef named Ray of the Romulus line

Stumbled in and begged at the foot of her shrine

He wanted fame and a chance to succeed

He was a fine mix of talent and greed

She saw her play

And she didn’t delay

Gave him a vision:

Her, descending on the gravy rain.

The salty brown drops

Washed his pain away

And she offered him the deal

That saw the world changed

In her vision, she said to him:

EDESIA

“Oh Ray unknown, how your talent and your pallet go to waste

As well you know, Gods tip the balance, and in their talons grip your fate

In this market how can you make

Your name known?  Oh no!

But I’ve a deal that, if you should take,

Your fame will grow, and grow, and grow!

I see your wonder, see the hunger in your eyes

With my secrets you’ll stun ‘em be their culinary prize

All that I charge of you

Is never have a child - your praise alone is mine

Yes, no children shall you bear

Though many will you claim as hairs in time

Yes the king of food for all your days

The people will taste and they will praise

O’er all you’ll reign, you’ll not be done

You’ll rise so long as the sun has rays

You’ll rise so long as the sun has rays

You’ll rise so long as the sun has rays

And only set when the Rays have son.”

NARRATOR

You’ll rise so long as the sun has rays

And only set when the Rays have son.

Well Ray thought that sounded mighty fair -

A heavenly answer to his despair.

He bowed in praise, swore his faith blindly

Which, for gods, is legally binding

Ran down to town to his deep fried peacock eye food cart

In an hour he’d sold out, he was the talk of the town, his food a work of art!

And it grew and it grew and it grew and it grew

And Ray learned the secret that the Gods all knew

And he used them to create a new empire

Food that’s fun served fast, with cheer

Paired with a casual atmosphere

Fills all with food, yes, true, but too - delight!

People could not get enough

They came to get their faces stuffed

How nice! … for Ray…

The gods of food and drink were forgot

Edesia too, it seems her plot

Backfired.

And Ray looked down over all he commanded

By his death, to 1042 locations had he expanded

And as the ages changed, so did Ray’s descendants menus

As they took the empire to new, exciting venues

The Visigoth Grill, Crusader’s Crudo

Pita the Great, Dynasty Noodles

The Original Scythian Style Pub

Bennigans, Arby’s and Stubbie’s Subs

Mongol Flay It Yourself Easy Horse

And on and on til present day, of course.

And the most powerful chain on down that line

Was the Ray’s Pizza Franchise

Featuring Real Ray’s, Original Ray’s, Real Original Ray’s

Famous Ray’s, Infamous Ray’s and Ray’s of other Names

From the first Ray’s cart, this chain had continued

And you could still order peacock eyes off the secret menu.

And they ruled all the franchises with an iron fist

Ah - but how did Ray’s have heirs, if Ray’s never did have kids…?

Listen to this:

Oh it was all part of Edesia’s promise

Which was so poorly thought out it was almost comic

The contract was written up by the best lawyer of the time

Marcus Legislatus, and the print was very fine

As his wife had written it all by hand

And Marcus had married the most beautiful cricket in all the land!

But we don’t have time for that part!

What matters is the deal at this vile contract’s heart:

The Ray to Play Stipulation…

…which stated

That any chain restaurant whose owner mated

Forfeited their first born child to the Rays

Or they handed in their restaurants - either way, they all paid.

And the chains turned over became the Ray’s

And the children turned over - well, the Ray’s they became

Many chains tried to avoid this doom:

Ray Kroc hid his son in a Grimace costume

Papa John put Baby John in a basket of reeds

Dave Thomas sent Wendy to live in a tree

But each was found out, and each child was claimed

And through old, evil magic, was changed to a Ray…

Mama chef, papa chef, RUN! Hide your child away.

Look how the Rays come, on the 5th birthday of,

Oh!, what you most love, they’re gonna take away, and,

Oh!, what you most love -They’re gonna make a Ray.

They’ll file in, eat up all that you’ve got

And you must feed them your best - whether you wanna or not.

Then when they’re done - oh! - that’s when you give ‘em either

The first child of your blood, or all of your franchises

All that you’ve built, oh!, is it worth the pain

Worth all the guilt - oh - to see your child a Ray?

Many parents chose of course their child to keep

But many a chef was overcome with greed

And that’s how the Rays stayed on top of the game

And that about brings us up to date.

So now you may be keen

To the fear that chilled GG

When Mel

Said that she was with son…

All he’d made, all he’d created

Was to crumble lest he gave their

Son…

What was to be done…

GOLDEN GEORGE

My dear please dry your tears

You’ve nought to fear for our son’s life…

Let the Rays take all I’ve made,

I promise I won’t contemplate

The trade of child for franchise…

NARRATOR

Well, Triple M was overjoyed

But you and me, we know our boy

GG’s not the sort

To sell himself short

He doesn’t give - he takes!

And he’d fight, he might even tempt fate…

Sure he’d changed his ways,

But to give up everything he’d made?? it-

Was a thought that repulsed him, everything he hated.

Well GG Jr came short months later

And his parents love - well, it couldn’t have been greater

And though GG’d been conflicted on what was to be done.

He’d greatly underestimated how much he’d love his son.

GOLDEN GEORGE

Feel how his smile calms me

See how his hands are strong

He’ll be flipping frying pans before too long!

God, he’s such a nat’ral!

See him with that spatula!

One day all that I’ve made will be… no…

NARRATOR

Yes…

And two weeks before lil G turned 5

A letter came in the mail, said “It’s Time.

We march your way in 14 days.

Prepare our feast.  Signed, the Rays.”

Outside there was a storm, but there was a knock at the door

GG turned and saw dripping on his floor

A chef, clad all in mauve

How’d the man get inside?  GG worried this was bad

But the chef simply smiled and acted as if he had

All the answers in the world.  And GG eased, suddenly calm.

He offered the Mauve Chef a drink, but then the chef dropped a bomb:

He looked GG in the eye

And the Mauve Chef said:

MAUVE CHEF

“I can save your son

Save all that you’ve done

But you must be brave,

No matter the pain

And do as I say.”

To be continued…

[halfway-happyyy]

Home is...

AN: Been real heavy on the soft Bill feels recently. Hope you enjoy!

Musical inspiration: Home, Gabrielle Aplin

One never really gets used to it do they? That vastly empty feeling that sidles into the hollow of your heart, the one that matches your barren bed so perfectly. If you reach your hand to his side of the mattress, an indentation of where his body has lied for the past few months, still lingers there. It’s not warm to the touch like it would have been an hour ago, but it’s a painful reminder of what you put yourself through every few months. It’s worth it in the end though, isn’t it? Just to feel him next to you, to feel him inside of you. It’s worth it because even though he’s gone for nine months out of the year, he comes back.

He comes back every single time, and for you… that is enough.

Bill leaves everything he needs for a flight on his bedside table the night before he goes. His burgundy passport, tattered and utterly worn down from years of use sits haphazardly on the edge of the mahogany table. You close your eyes and try to block it from your minds eye, but to no avail. There is a finality in the air tonight; no wine bottles waiting to be opened because he can sleep in the next morning, no late night spooning leading to slow, sleepy sex. Bill will board a 7:30 am flight to London tomorrow to begin production on a film he is exceptionally excited about. You’re sat the edge of your bed, peering out the darkened window. Raindrops fall in droves from the sky, creating lined patterns down the glass panes. You watch them race each other, each droplet replaced by another as soon as it hits the sill. “Something’s bothering you.” It’s a statement more than it is a question, Bill’s delicate voice cuts through the imminent stillness.

You shift slightly from your position to throw a glance over your shoulder. “Why do you insist on referring to yourself as baseless?” A cold silence follows this question, and you know it’s because he detests traversing the terrain of this particular subject. “I’m not trying to put you on the spot here,” You murmur. “But I’d like some sort of a half assed explanation.” It’s scathing, but you’re sick of this beating around the bush.

“Can you at least look at me if we’re going to have this conversation?” Bill spits out, and it causes your heart to sink. Regardless, you avert your gaze to his. “I am baseless. I’ve been baseless for the past six years. Sweden is my home, yes, all of cousins, my mother, my sister… they all reside there. But I’ve never really allowed myself the luxury of calling one, singular place home. I don’t know if it’s for me. It’s certainly not how I grew up; our time was constantly divided between Sweden and different movie sets across the world. You know this.” His gaze is sharp and accusatory and you really never meant for this to be any more than a simple discussion. “If this is an issue about me not openly admitting that you and I live together…”

You roll your eyes, despite the fact that it absolutely makes Bill’s blood boil. “It’s not. But once in a while it would be nice if you could at least attest to the fact that when you are here, it is a home. It is our home.”

 Bill shrugs his shoulders and lifts his hands into the air, his eyes wide. “Why does it matter if I refer to this place as home or not?” His voice drops an octave, becomes just a little softer. “Home… is wherever I’m with you. We could live in a fucking box somewhere with no heat, and I’d still be happy as a pig in shit because I was with you.”

You sigh heavily, and lift yourself from the bed, padding over to the top to remove the covers so that you can slide in. It’s an argument you’ll never really win, because he’ll never admit it but Bill doesn’t do commitment the way normal people do. He’ll fly you to Sweden for Christmas to ask you to be his girlfriend, sure, heck he’ll even pick out a puppy with you… but ask him to move in with you? Forget about it. “What are you so afraid of?” You ask quietly. Bill peels the shirt from his body and tosses it into the hamper in front of the bed.

“I don’t favor the idea of being tied permanently to one, fixed abode. It’s as simple as that.” He shrugs and pulls pack the covers in his side so he can slide in as well. Bill settles onto his back, his hands clasped together against his stomach, green gaze fixed to the ceiling above him.

You pick at a miniscule piece of lint on your comforter absentmindedly, attempting to mull over your next sentence carefully. “Could it be because you’re afraid you’ll miss out on seeing other countries and cities?”

Bill opens his mouth to say something, hesitating before he speaks. “I act on movie sets for a living… I have no trouble travelling to and exploring other cities.” He doesn’t mean for it to sound patronizing or cocky, but it does and it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. “Why is this such a big deal to you tonight?” 

Again, you elicit another heavy sigh and scrub the palm of your hand down your face. “It’s not a huge deal, Bill. It was a simple question that required a simple answer and honestly… I’ve just arrived at the conclusion of you not being able to commit to a home with me. I’m not upset about it in the slightest; god knows I knew what I was getting into when you and I first started seeing each other.” It’s not a fight; you and him have had far worse rows in the past. Fights that ended in shattered glass, broken hearts, and saltwater… So much saltwater. Tonight was much more different from past nights, there was no screaming, no tears from either of you. You both knew tomorrow was coming faster than either of you would like, and it was certainly not how you intended to spend your last night with him. You let the silence settle around you; it’s not uncomfortable or permanent, it just is. Bill turns on his side, props his elbow up under his chin. He’s thinned out over the past few months, his cheekbones prominent in his ivory skin. His red full lips are slightly chapped from the cooler weather, and the dim light from the rainy day outside casts his features in the most charming glow. His piercing eyes, dark and viridian glimmer before you, and it catches the breath in your throat. “You look incredibly ugly right now.” You whisper, small smile tugging at the corners of your lips.

Bill cocks an eyebrow at you, catches site of your coy smile and lets out a small laugh, which then turns into something loud, and rolling and you can’t help but laugh yourself. Seconds later, the pair of you are in hysterics, Bill’s silent laughter, causing his shoulders to quake at breakneck speed. You’re gasping for air, and when you finally get a good gulp in, Bill pushes himself towards you, and finds your hand under the weight of the duvet. He interlocks his long fingers with yours and bends his head to press a chaste kiss to your cheek. “Home,” He murmurs, bringing your hand to his lips. “Is coming back here to you after a long three months. Home is cooking dinner together, trying new recipes and drinking new wine. Home is shower sex resulting in some interesting injuries…” You giggle at this. “Home is laying my head next to yours at the end of the day. Home is hearing your voice through the crackle of the telephone wire when I’m three thousand miles away.” Bill presses dozens of small kisses to your knuckles. “They tell you not to make homes out of people, but they never tell you what to make homes out of when you’re on movie sets 276 days a year. You are my home. I’m never going to be ashamed or embarrassed to say that.”

And on the eve of Bill’s imminent departure, with the frayed passport next to his head, full of stamps and stories and people and memories, that singular affirmation is enough.

“What about that one?” You asked, pointing excitedly at a house yards from the vehicle you were currently in. The Swedish countryside blew past your line of vision in a blur, causing you to beam brightly.

Bill’s gaze travelled from the road, to the house you were gesturing to. “Too small.” He simply murmured.

“Too small?” You asked in awe. “How big of a house do you want?”

Bill chuckled at this and tapped the steering wheel beneath him to the beat of the Swedish pop song currently playing on the radio. “Gotta beat the old man’s record, don’t I?”

“Like bloody hell, you do!” You laughed loudly and literally shuddered at the thought of pushing more than eight children from your body.

“What about that one?” Bill asked, and the only reason you looked up was because his voice carried a sense of genuine interest. It was breathtaking in every way imaginable. It was white all around, large glass windows adorned the perimeter of the two-story building and it had a porch on the second landing. It carried with it an immense sense of charm; you didn’t think you’d ever wanted abandoned your life as you knew it to move into a home more. Beautiful white-paint ornately carved wooden pillars provided the support for the second landing. In a flash, you could see yourself with Bill there; early mornings spent together on the porch, coffee cup wedged within your grasp and late nights entertaining friends and family members in the kitchen. “Looks like it’s for sale.” Bill’s voice flooded your reverie and brought you back to earth.

“It’s beautiful.” You sighed breathlessly, watching its view dissipate from site in the rearview mirror. 

You had first laid eyes on the house seven months ago when you were in Sweden with Bill for a few weeks. You had pushed it to the very back of your mind, but like most things it managed to find its way to the forefront every now and then. You found yourself wondering what it would be like to bring children up there. You wanted a home in which they could run wild and free, naked and entirely content. You envisioned a life for your future children much different than the life you were accustomed to as a child. Mostly, you just wanted to build something special with Bill, something real and tangible and explicitly genuine. 

“I’ve got a surprise for you.” It’s been two and a half months since you’ve seen Bill in person. Not the longest you’ve ever gone (four months) but he arrives home tomorrow morning and you think you feel him smiling on the other end. 

“Honestly I just want to see your face. Nothing else matters to me.”

It’s early when Bill arrives home the next morning; the sun has yet to rise and you’re still wrapped up in a tangle of silken bed sheets. You feel him before you physically see him. He’s entirely too cold but he presses his lips to your temple regardless. You stir against the touch, ultimately choosing more sleep over the current interruption. He stays relentless though; pressing kisses up and down your face, over your closed eyelids, over the bridge of your nose, over your chin. “Wake up baby girl…”

Your eyes slide open at this, a small sleepy smile evident on your features. You open your arms wide for a hug, which Bill obliges happily.

You yawn sleepily and a reach a hand up to cup the side of Bill’s face, “Come to bed, my love.” He’s about to protest, but he simply gazes at you and nods his head, removing himself from your hold to slide into bed next to you. Bill’s passport is the first thing that catches your eye the next morning, as its out and sitting right where it normally does before he jets away. It causes you to close your eyes and swallow hard. You’re about to turn to Bill to say something when another thing catches your eye. It’s small and shiny and you strain in the dim light of your room to make out what it is. You reach a hand over to it and savor it within your grasp. Its small shape and metal teeth tells you it’s a key right off the bat. This is even more unsettling because you had given Bill a key to your apartment two years into dating.

“It’s a key, darling.” Bill murmurs sleepily, circling his arms tighter to your waist. “We got the house in Sweden.”

You don’t think you’ve heard him right, so you position your head closer to his mouth. “Pardon me?”

Bill smiles against your forehead. “We got the house in Sweden. I would’ve been here a week ago but I needed to go and sign the rest of the papers, get some last minute time with the lawyers.”

Bill holds you tight to him, brushes a stray piece of hair from your face and gazes at you intently. “I know this is a huge surprise for you, but after a lot of careful thought and consideration and late nights speaking to Sam… I came to the realization that this is what I want. And if that entails building a life with you in Sweden, I’m the luckiest man on earth. Home is and will continue to be… anywhere you are.”

“‘Cause they say home is where your heart is set in stone

Is where you go when you’re alone

Is where you go to rest your bones

It’s not just where you lay your head

It’s not just where you make your bed

As long as we’re together, does it matter where we go?”

[marketing-physics]

The Bullwhip Effect: The #ChickenSandwichWars and the Supply Chain

What is the Bullwhip Effect and what does it have to do with the best chicken sandwich? Not long ago, many of us witnessed a social media phenomenon when Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen introduced a new chicken sandwich. Things got out of hand when Chick-Fil-A responded resulting in a huge social media battle that became known as the #ChickenSandwichWars.

Chicken Sandwich Wars, You Say?

For those of you that may have missed this, back on August 12th Popeyes introduced a new fried chicken sandwich with brioche bun, pickles and sauce and issued the delicious looking tweet shown above on the left.

According to Reuters, this launch went generally unnoticed until Chick-Fil-A, not to be outdone, issued a reply by tweeting Chick-Fil-A’s fried chicken sandwich recipe as “the original.” (The tweet on the right.) Chick-Fil-A would have been better off leaving it alone as Popeye’s responded with another tweet that effectively put Chick-Fil-A (at least in terms of social media activity) out in the pasture with their famous cows.

In all, the back-and-forth of social media netted Popeyes a bunch of free publicity. How much? According to the Reuters article, Apex Marketing Group estimated that the social media response earned the equivalent of more than $23 million of ad exposure for Popeyes.

It also created a big problem for Popeyes – they had a run on chicken sandwiches that spread across the country and, ultimately, they ran out of them. Restaurants posted signs such as “Be back soon.” Even weeks after the storm.

So, What’s This Bullwhip Effect?

For most people this social media war was the end of the story. But, as an interesting article in Freight Waves by Brian Aoaeh points out, the social media frenzy  just scratched the surface. This run on Popeyes’ chicken sandwiches created huge supply chain problems due to what’s known as the “Bullwhip Effect.”

According to Wikipedia, the bullwhip effect is a distribution channel phenomenon in which forecasts yield or lead to supply chain inefficiencies. It refers to increasing swings in inventory in response to shifts in customer demand as one moves further up the supply chain. The concept first appeared in Jay Forrester's Industrial Dynamics (published in 1961) and thus it is also known as the Forester effect. The Bullwhip Effect was named for the way the amplitude of a whip increases down its length. The further from the originating signal, the greater the distortion of the wave pattern. It’s a supply chain where demand forecasts create supply chain inefficiencies.

The Freight Waves article does a great job in describing what happened to Popeyes with this run on chicken sandwiches. It lists the ingredients for the sandwich (chicken, bun, pickles, sauce) and then poses the question of what’s involved in making all of those ingredients. Each of these ingredients take time to produce and forecasting demand requires planning. Chickens have to be eggs then hatched, matured and processed. Wheat has to be grown, milled and made into buns. Cucumbers have to be grown and pickled. Sauce requires eggs, oils and other ingredients. The supply chain can’t simply push a magic button and instantly produce an unlimited supply of these ingredients and deliver them to each restaurant. It takes time to adjust supply.

The problem for Popeyes is that they couldn’t predict this spike in demand. There’s no way they could have known that a run-of-the-mill tweet would lead to a social media frenzy and garner 87,000+ Retweets and 325,000+ Likes on Twitter (as of the last time I checked and that doesn’t include all of the other tweets associated with #ChickenSandwichWars). There’s no way their supply chain could quickly respond to this, so they ran out of chicken sandwiches.

Aoaeh states “The discrepancy between the instantaneous nature of demand for, and consumption of, the sandwich and the amount of time that it takes upstream suppliers to produce the chicken, eggs, flour, pickles, mayo and oil required to make the sandwich is what leads to the bullwhip effect.”

So, Popeyes probably increased orders but it takes time for the supply chain to respond. And keep in mind, their suppliers have multiple customers to attend to as well. They’re not going to short McDonalds or Burger King just because Popeyes needs more supplies.

According to Aoaeh, there were other problems that were created by the bullwhip effect:

· Other menu items were being ignored because everyone wanted the chicken sandwich. As such, ingredients for the other sandwiches may have gone to waste.

·  If you’re geared up to make 25 sandwiches an hour and all of a sudden demand is 200 an hour – even if you have the ingredients to make them – the staff/operations aren’t likely set up to handle that level of demand. This leads to…

· An exhausted and demoralized staff who a) can’t keep up with demand and b) likely have dozens to hundreds of unhappy customers screaming at them.

Does the Bullwhip Effect Happen in Other Supply Chains, Like Fresh Produce?

As noted above, it takes a while to produce a cucumber that can be turned into a pickle. You would expect that demand for pickles would be fairly consistent from year-to-year and month-to-month. There’s no way to accurately predict a run on pickles.

So let’s take a look at celery? According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, California produces 80 percent of the nation’s celery. The report states “Unlike lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower, there has never been a fast increase in celery production.” People eat celery sticks, put celery in Thanksgiving turkey stuffing and use celery in salads at about the same rate from year-to-year. Not very exciting.

Well, not very exciting until people discovered the health benefits of celery juice.

According to Future Market Insights, “The juice extracted from the celery is considered to be highly nutritious with essential vitamins, acids and nutrients. Furthermore, celery juices are anticipated to be beneficial in controlling blood pressure, fighting with cancer, neutralizing acidity, treating inflammation as well as post workout drink. Celery juices when added with other juice types can be considered as dynamic health drink for its rich health benefits.”

As a result, all of a sudden in 2019, people can’t get enough celery. The problem is, the growers didn’t expect this spike in demand and, since you can’t simply snap your fingers and make instant celery, prices skyrocketed. According to the USDA, the price for a carton of celery went from $20 in January to over $60 in April 2019…it tripled. In April of 2018, a carton of celery sold for $8 to $12 per carton.

An article in The Packer goes into more detail and attributes this wild spike in demand to a health guru:

Tim Ross, director of regional sales for Duda Farm Fresh Foods, Salinas, Calif., said April 4 that demand has been fueled by a popular personality touting the benefits of celery juice.

So-called “medical medium” Anthony William in May is set to publish a book, “Celery Juice: The Most Powerful Medicine of Our Time Healing Millions Worldwide.”

“We’re being told to be prepared because he’s already on the top seller list with preorders (of the book),” Ross said.

Some consumers are actually buying celery by the case, Ross said, following William’s advice to drink 16 ounces of celery juice each morning on an empty stomach.

So, what will growers do in response? They’ll plant more celery, of course.

But, the Future Market Insights article also states that, what may ultimately restrain the demand for the global celery juices market is: the side effects associated in some cases with the celery juices. The skin problems occur due to the presence of a substance called psoralen present in the celery juices, which might affect the demand of celery juices. Furthermore, in some of the cases recorded in the recent year consumption of celery juices by particular individuals have excessively lowered the blood pressure posing serious health hazards, which is expected to negatively popularize the product, restraining the demand of the global celery juices market.

Most likely, the increase in demand will be met with an increase in supply to the point of oversupply, leading to decreasing prices and, ultimately, food waste when there’s a glut of celery on the market.

And that is the bullwhip effect for the fresh food supply chain.

[writtenwordsoffic]

In Your Head - Part 12

Jughead Jones x Reader

Masterlist

Reader: Y/N

Brother: Y/B/N

Word Count: 4,912

Summary: You are almost 3 months into a relationship with Jughead Jones. You are going through a tough time being too much in your head as the anniversary of “that night” comes closer. Jughead can sense something is wrong.

Warnings: Features sexual content, as well as a rape flashback, sexual abuse and parental abuse. Please don’t read if easily triggered.

Jughead’s POV

She was just twirling in front of me. “Cemetery Gates” by The Smiths was playing and she was lightly singing to the music, dancing to the beat while cooking. I was in awe of this woman. How could she not know how beautiful and enchanting she was?

The kitchen started to smell of garlic and chicken, and the aroma filled my nostrils. And while we were down here because my stomach couldn’t stop growling for food, I can’t help think of some future like this with her.

She was practically gliding across the kitchen, knowing everything she needed without looking at a timer or a recipe book for that matter. She was relaxed in her surroundings, something I had only seen from her face a handful of times - as it was usually when she was just around me.

The smile wouldn’t lift from my face as my eyes followed her. Her in all of her gleeful dancing.

The music stopped as the phone that had been playing was now signaling that someone was calling. She lightly looked at me while pressing a finger to her lips, signaling for me to remain silent. I nodded.

Her whole demeanour changed. Her body tensed up and gave a small breath before answering the phone.

“Hey”. “Yep”. “How is it so far?” “Just making something to eat”. “Alright”. “Yep, I will”. “Bye”.

She tapped the screen to hangup. Her body slightly relaxed again as she went back to her playlist. Now choosing The Thermals.

She looked up to my eyes. My face still in awe of every slight movement of hers.

Y/N POV

“That was just my Dad just checking in. So…how hungry are you? I was thinking of just making an entire pan of them…..”, you looked to his face as he didn’t respond. “Juggs?”

He blinked. “Yeah sorry. Whatever you want to do is fine”.

You gave a smile. “There’s a wall of movies in the den. Go find something”.

He was shouting random suggestions now, all of which were movies you knew he had seen before. “What’s Empire Records!?”

“If you don’t know what that is then we’re watching it!”, you gently shouted back. “That’s possibly one for the best underrated 90s movies!”

The enchiladas were essentially done now as they just needed to cook in the oven for a good 20 minutes. You put the pan in and shut off your music.

Jughead appeared while reading the back of the case.

“Why do you know movies I’ve never heard of? This is blasphemy you know…”, still looking at the case while walking up to me. 

“It just means I’m cultured”, you gave a smile. “You know we still haven’t done foreign films yet”. 

“So…Breathless?”, he was curious in what you were suggesting. 

“Ha. While a classic, I was thinking Run Lola Run”, you were coy again. 

He threw his hands up in the air, “That’s it. I give up. You’ve won!” 

You giggled, “won what?” 

“You’re now the movie buff of Riverdale”, his hands were relaxed now. 

“Oh come on. You easily know the 70s better than I do. As well as classic horror. How about a tie?”, you held out your hand. 

He gripped your hand while bringing your body closer to his. One arm was now going behind your back while his other hand went to the side of your face. He brought you in for a kiss, one that got deeper with every slight movement. “Alright, a tie then”, his lips parted yours and all you saw was a smile. “How much longer?”, his eyes drew to the oven. 

Your head turned back and you saw the timer, “14 minutes”. 

“Alright then”, he gave a shrug and then proceeded to lift you over his head then dipped you on to the couch. His arms reached to your hips and you thought he was diving in for another kiss, instead he began to tickle you all along your stomach. 

“Ah! Jug! No!” You couldn’t stop laughing. “Please!” 

“Nope. I’ve got 14 minutes”, he kept tickling. 

The movie had ended and your legs were drawn over Jughead’s lap, he had been playing with your ankles for a while. “The music was really good in that”, he was watching the credits roll. 

“I have the soundtrack here somewhere”, you got up to the house collection and began to look for it. You heard a vibration coming from Jughead’s phone. It wasn’t even 8 yet. You still had an interesting feeling of freedom. “Who’s that?”

“The gang. They want to do a movie night in the school. Veronica apparently wants to be a little rebellious and didn’t feel like clubbing. They invited us…”, he wasn’t sure if you wanted to go or not. 

“Do you want to?”, your question was genuine and met with a smile. 

“Well I wouldn’t mind being in the school and maybe seeing if Betty and I could finally get our hands on Jason’s file”, you could tell his mischievous curiosity was taking over. 

“If you want to then”, you gave a nod. 

“You sure?”, Jughead seemed eager with phone in hand. 

“Well, I got you tonight here and all of tomorrow and tomorrow night and I still get to be with you at the school…so yes”, you gave a smirk. 

“That’s a lot of having”, his tone became a little sexual in disguise. 

“Yeah well, I figured since we seemed to be enjoying it so far…” Your words dissipated as in your mind you hoped the closeness with him felt as good as it did to you. 

“Enjoying it?”, he set his phone on the couch as he made his was towards you. “Y/N. Not only have I been enjoying the physical feeling of having you, but what you do with my heart, makes me feel love for someone I never could have known. You are amazing, and I just want you to see that. In any way I can”. 

You almost teared up in his words, that were so sincere. His hands were now at your hips. He dived in for a kiss, that was gentle and pure. 

“Come on. We should clean up before we head to the school”, you motioned to the fact you were once again wearing his flannel with some comfortable bottoms. 

“Alright. But we’re continuing this tonight”, he kissed you one more time after giving you smirk. 

“I love you too by the way”, the words came out as your lips parted. 

“I know. And I’m lucky for it”, he grasped your hand before tightening his grip showing affection. 

“Veronica, shhhh”, you were trying to keep her calmed down. 

“How do you know how to do this?”, you turned your eyes back to your boyfriend as he was playing with the locked door from a side entrance of the school. 

“I lived here, remember?”, his eyes motioned to the inside. 

“Ow!”, Kevin anguished in pain. “Betty! Get your foot off me!” 

“Shhhh!”, now Archie was making sure they were quiet while you gave Kevin a slight glare. 

“Sorry…”, Betty said in a quiet voice. 

“Why are we doing this again?”, Valerie had chimed in with a hushed tone.

“Because we’re rebels”, the words escaped Veronica’s mouth with glee. 

Your ears heightened in a little fear, and you swear you could hear a noise that came from outside the school. “What was that?”, you once again made sure your voice was hushed. 

“That would be the door unlocking”, Jughead stood proud as you all began to enter, you entered last. Jughead gave a slight bow, “Ma’ lady”. You giggled while giving a quick peck to his lips before hurrying inside. Jughead followed making sure the door stayed unlocked. 

You all stepped quietly even though you knew no one would be in the building. Betty and Jughead knew they were going to make their way to the Blue and Gold room. As they had a key for it and it had a projection screen. You all entered in, moving around chairs and such while Jughead hooked up his laptop slowly going towards netflix. Archie made sure the blinds were all closed before grabbing Valerie’s hand and sitting with her on the floor. 

Your ears moved again as you swear you heard a slight laugh coming from the outside. You asked again, “did anyone hear that?” They all shook their heads in a no. You thought you just had nerves on a whim entering the school at a time like this. You dismissed it. 

Jughead peered up to look at you and then towards Betty. Kevin was pulling snacks out of his bag, while he caught the subtle look. “Oh, gooooo. We all know why you guys came”. Jughead gave a small laugh while Archie gave a nod. 

“I’ll be back in a little bit”, he grasped your hand and brought you in to a quick kiss before you sat down. Betty gave you a smile and a slight wave as your rested downwards on the floor. 

Veronica threw a crumpled piece of paper at you. “You guys are too cute”. 

“Yeah yeah…”. 

Several minutes had passed as you were in a few scenes into Casablanca. You slightly got up from the floor while Archie looked up to you rising. “I’ll be back, just going to go to the bathroom real quick”, Kevin gave a nod while Veronica’s eyes were still on the screen. 

You slowly made your way down the hallway as you glanced at the school in the dark. Shadows and light clouds in the sky had Illuminated parts of it. You heard a slight shuffling noise but just assumed it to be Jughead and Betty. 

You swung the door open as it made a tap behind you of it closing. You reached to flip the switch to the light and then you heard the voice behind you. “Well gee Y/N, if I had known you were here I would have made a hustle from the field sooner”, your body shuddered while you turned around. There was Chuck, a little unsteady in his stance as he towered over you. 

You could barely get out any words, “W-what are you…” 

“Drinks with the team on the field. A common pass time. Although, I’m more curious in passing time with you”, he made his was towards you as you backed against a wall of the room, staring at the door in front of you. You thought he was drunk enough you could make a run for it, you decided to take the leap and try to make it for the door. 

He grasped you by your hips and pushed you back, “woah woah baby, I’m just trying to be friendly”. 

“Just let me go Chuck, there’s people here”, you made your eyes towards the door again. 

He slightly shrugged while walking towards you again, you could feel your body ready to freeze. “That’s never stopped us before Y/N, and the last time was well worth it”, he was hovering over you now. 

You could feel his breath stinking with alcohol, you tried to make a dart again to the door. He pushed you back into the wall, you gave a slight yell of “no!”. 

“Oh come on baby, you should know the rules by now. If I want you, I get you. It will be worse if you try fighting it again”, his hands were on your arms grasping them. You could feel your body freezing while your mind was racing. No, not again… 

His lips went to your neck and you tried to push him off of you, he grasped you by your neck and pushed you towards the wall, fingers to your throat. “I said don’t do that”. 

His other hand was making your way up your shirt, “get off of me!”, he got angry and pushed you against the tile wall and your head hit the back of it while he used the hand from your throat to muzzle your scream. 

“If you want it rough, I’m going to give it to you rough”, he tore the neck of your shirt while grasping for a breast, his other hand on your mouth still. You tried to kick him, the second he dodged, he grabbed you by the arm and threw you against the sink. The side of your head hitting part of it while your body hit the floor. 

He moved his body on top of yours as you felt blood rushing. He grabbed for your mouth again while you were attempting to make another scream. “I told you. DON’T do that”. He socked you in your stomach with his fist as he made a reach for your pants. His hands started to travel while your screams were silenced by his hand. You tried closing your eyes, knowing you didn’t want to remember this. 

You heard the door swing open and someone had tackled down Chuck. Chuck pushed him off and before he reached to punch, “you lay a hand on me and I will tell my father EVERYTHING!” Chuck gave a glare to you as you were heavily breathing, gasping for air, tears falling down your face in a flood. Chuck looked back to Kevin and made his way out. You could hear his footsteps running.

Kevin dived down to you, “Y/N, are you okay?”, his voice was gentle now. No words were coming out as you were still crying, heaving for breath. “Can you get up?”, he grasped your hand while staring at the side of your head. You gave a slight nod. 

You calmed down your crying and all you felt was a reflex in disgust. You ran towards the nearest toilet and heaved a liquid out. Your stomach still hurting in pain. You heard Kevin grabbing a paper towel and water wetting it. He came to you in the stall, pushing the damp paper towards the side of your head. You reached for some toilet paper cleaning up your mouth. 

“Are you alright? Did he…”. 

You shook your head, “you stopped him before that”, you finally found your voice. You looked to his eyes, “thank you”. 

“Do you want me to call my dad?”, concern and care was only in his eyes. You thought about it for a second and decided it wasn’t worth it. Chuck would still live in this town no matter what and not much would happen to him. And you knew your parents wouldn’t support you in a matter the drew attention towards them. 

“No.” 

“Do you want me to take you back to the room?”, he reached for your hand again. Everyone there had knew about Chuck except Valerie, but you knew Archie being the way he is he probably said something of what happened to you to her by now. You nodded. 

He grabbed your hand making sure not to grasp your arms that were starting to bruise, they were still beating red. “Careful”, he grabbed you and had you shift your weight to him while slowly walking down the hallway. He looked in all directions making sure there wasn’t anyone else lingering around. You made your way to the somewhat lit room and Kevin opened the door in front of you.

“Hey, where have you been we’ve….”, Jugheads eyes made it your body and the smile that you saw for a split second was gone. He lept up from the floor immediately as everyone else had eyes on you, both Archie and then Betty rising from the floor. Jughead ran towards your body, reaching for an arm. “What happened?”, his face was in a mild horror as his eyes looked to you and then towards Kevin. 

The rest of them were standing now and all made their ways towards you, Valerie standing a little behind Archie. Jughead sat you down in a chair as you flinched in slight pain. Betty raced towards the first aid kit in the room grabbing a small rag from the box. “Here, keep pressure on it”. You had almost forgotten your head was bleeding. 

“I’m…I’m okay”, your words were unsteady again. Jughead had only concern in his eyes while grasping your hand, kneeling before you on the chair. 

“Who did this?”, his eyes glanced to Kevin first and then back to you. 

You were fearful in your words knowing the rage that was about to jolt from Jughead. “He was here. Drinking with some of the team…”, your eyes looked towards the hallway. 

Veronica got closer to you, grasping your other hand. “Chuck?”. 

You gave an unsteady nod as your body was still shaking. Anger had fueled both of them but they were still trying to comfort you. Jughead looked down knowing you wouldn’t want to look at him if the answer to his question was yes. “…did he?” 

You shook your head no and you saw a little relief in everyone’s faces. “Kev stopped him before he could”, you motioned towards Kevin’s eyes. 

Betty raised a question while looking out into the hallway, “is he still here?!” 

“No, I scared him off. He ran”, Kevin interjected as he could tell you needed a break from talking. 

Jughead looked towards Kevin’s eyes, his hand still grasping yours, “thank you”. 

Archie still seemed too stunned for words as he was now looking in the hallway with Betty. Your eyes made your way towards Valerie’s as it looked she was just trying to give you a reassuring nod. 

“What do you want to do honey? We can call Kevin’s dad or your parents…”, Veronica tried asking as you cut her off her words. 

“No. I just want to go home”. You were more definite in those words than you had been in any others in the last few minutes. 

Jughead nodded as he and Veronica slowly helped you rise on your feet. Jughead paused for a moment reaching for your jacket to cover you up. “What do you want us to do?”, Betty grabbed your hand as Veronica had finally let it go.

You paused. “Just all come with me?”, you wiped the remaining tears off of your face as you looked towards everyone. 

Archie finally spoke, “If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do”. 

Valerie finally chimed in, “I don’t have to…”. 

You cut her off, “It’s alright Valerie. You too, if you want”. She gave a nod. 

The group and you had finally made it to the front of your house. You got your keys but Jughead took them while slowly releasing your body. He turned the key and put the lights on. Everyone slowly walked in. 

“Are your parents home? Your brother?”, Kevin interjected into the silence. You shook your head. 

“My parents are in Vegas and my brother’s at his friends house for the weekend”. 

Veronica gave a slight nod. “What do you want honey?” 

“Just make yourselves comfortable in the living room”, you motioned in front of you. “There’s some leftovers from earlier in the fridge and drinks and stuff”, you had finally gained back your words from shock. “I’m going to need Jughead’s help upstairs for a bit”, he nodded while you and him slowly walked towards the stairs. “Just put on something. You guys can sleep here if you want”. Archie gave a nod as if you were giving him orders like a Sargeant. Kevin gave a smile while holding your hand for a bit and then releasing it. 

Jughead slowly helped you up the stairs. “Where do you want to go?”, Jughead made sure he was carefully leading you. 

“The bathroom, but I can walk”, you tried giving him a slight smile. “Can you grab me some clothes out of my room?”. He gave a nod while giving a kiss to your temple as you made your way to the bathroom slowly. 

You turned on the light and stared into the mirror for a minute. There was a slight mark on your neck and your head had stopped bleeding. The gash being hidden a bit by your hair. You looked at your arms raising the sleeves and saw some slight purple hand marks, you thought at least that could have been worse. 

Jughead made his way back into the bathroom after giving a slight knock. “You want me to start the water for you?”, his eyes motioned to the shower. 

You nodded. “I want his smell off of me”, you felt as if you could still feel his saliva on your neck. He gave a slight grunt but it changed to a reassuring look. “Can you help me?”, you motioned to your clothes. He nodded. He started the water and then came back to you. Slowly lifting your shirt off. Then your pants.

“Can you step out okay?” You nodded using his shoulders as a steadiness for your body. You reached for your bra’s clasp but gave a slight twinge. “I’ll get it sweetheart”. He removed it and you turned your body slightly and could once again see a stream of bruises on your back. These ones were higher up, closer to your shoulder. “You okay love?” You nodded and gave Jughead a peck on the cheek as you took your panties off and he helped you into the shower. 

“I’ll just be a minute if you can have a towel ready”, you were just trying to make it through a small list in your head. You slowly washed yourself off with some soap barely cringing when the water hit your head. You turned and saw the razor in the shower caddy, you paused looking at it for a moment and then shook yourself out of your thoughts. You finished and turned off the water. 

You drew the curtain back and were welcomed by Jugheads face with a towel ready for you. He slowly began to dress you as you remained quiet, replaying what had happened in your head. Your body felt a little better as you were trying to get yourself out of your mind. “You want to go downstairs or to your room?”, he had finished dressing you in something comfortable. 

“Downstairs”, you gave a breath. “Thank you”. 

“For what love?”, his eyes met yours as he was opening the door for you. “Being you. Perfect”, you gave a smile and kept your eyes on him. 

“You’re sure you are alright?”, he made his voice quieter now. 

“I promise Juggs. It’s not that bad. I’ll be okay”, you tried to reassure him with a smile. He was starting to slowly lead you again, “It’s alright, I can walk”, you gave a gentle grasp on his arm and grasped your hand into his. You gave a smile. 

“Alright", he gave a nod and finally gave you a smile back. You made your way downstairs as you could hear a conversation underfoot that stopped with you coming into the room with Jughead. Betty stood up so you could both sit together on one of the couches in front of you. You gave a smile and a nod. You relaxed your body slowly trying not to hit the top of your back too hard. 

“What do…”, Veronica’s words were cut off by you. 

“I just want to sit and have our marathon”, you gave a sincere look to everyone in the room. You heard a slight rumbling noise from Jughead’s stomach and he had an embarrassed look on his mouth. Faces around the room gave a slight chuckle. “And order some pizza apparently”. They all gave a smile. 

Archie turned on the tv, “So netflix or….?” 

“There’s a wall of movies in that room”, you made a motion and both Archie and Kevin got up to find a movie together. 

Betty made a look to your eyes, “did you want to talk to anybody about this?” You shook your head. 

“Really I’m okay. A little bruised, but I’ll be alright. I’m just grateful Kev was there”, you motioned your head to the other room. You wanted to get the conversation off of the event of the night. “So who’s staying?” 

 Kevin and Archie had made their way back with Dodgeball and you could see they were trying to pick a movie to get everyone in a better mood. “Well I am. I’ve never been here and it seems nice”, Veronica chimed in while understanding you wanted the conversation to change. 

“Count me in”, Kevin raised his hand slightly. 

“I’m going to go home later if that’s alright…”, Valerie made a look to Archie. Archie gave a nod to her as did you. 

“I think I’m going to go home too since Jughead is here with you but I’m up for pizza”, Archie gave you a smile and you returned it. 

“I already texted my mom and she’s good with me staying the night”, Betty gave a slight motion to her phone. 

“Thank you”, you gave a glance to everyone and in that moment it was if they understood.  

Some empty pizza boxes were still on the counter and Archie and Valerie had left a few hours before. You sat up from Jughead’s embrace and looked to see your friends asleep under blankets in the room. Kevin was asleep on the floor closest to the TV while Betty and Veronica shared a couch and blanket with each other. Each one on opposite sides of the couches arm. You turned your body a little and felt Jughead’s body jump. His eyes immediately went towards you. He carefully grasped your hip, “you okay?”, he looked up and down. 

“Yeah. Come on, let’s go upstairs”, you whispered making sure not to wake anyone up. Jughead still with tired eyes nodded and softly made footsteps with you up the stairs. You looked down to your friends happy to have people that cared about you to help you through this. It was night and day to almost a year previous. 

You grabbed Jughead’s hand in tow of your room. He gently removed his shirt while making his way to the bed. He placed his beanie on your desk. His eyes went back to you. “You sure you’re alright sweetheart?” 

“Yeah, I’ve got you”, you made a smile while joining him under the sheets. He grasped your body making sure not to touch you in certain places. “Jughead?”

“Yeah?”, his eyes were just on you. 

“Can you kiss me?”, you paused in your words. He seemed a little questionable. “I just don’t want his lips to be the last…” 

He seemed to understand as he gently grasped your neck and began to kiss you on your lips. It was gentle, sweet and gave your mind a rest. He left your lips now trying to take the seriousness away. “You know, if you just wanted me to kiss you, I would have done it sooner”. He gave a slight smirk. 

You gave a giggle. “Yeah well didn't want everyone watching”, your mind drew back to Chuck on you. 

“Y/N. Do you need anything?”, his eyes were concerned again. 

“No, just you. I’ll be alright. I just…”, your words trailed. 

“What?”, he was being quiet as were you making sure you weren’t going to wake anyone. 

“I just wish this night went the way I had planned it. Tomorrow just you and me right?”, your eyes were filling a bit with water. 

“Of course. But if you need some time until we…connect again, that’s alright. We can take some time….” 

You cut him off, “no. I want the weekend I planned with you. Even if a derailed one”, your voice became stern. “Is…is that okay?”. 

He gave a smile while tenderly holding your body. “I just don’t want to hurt you”.

“I know. But you never will Jughead. I’m okay. I’ve been through worse”, your words drew back a bit. 

“Yeah but I wish you hadn’t gone through worse”, his eyes looked up to the ceiling now. 

“You know”, you took a breath, “It’s only a little longer in this house and then I can get out of here. I’ve thought about asking my brother if he would want to live with me. The second I turn 18 anyway…” 

“What about school?”, his hand was holding yours again. 

“Wherever it is, I’ll make it work. As long as he wants to live with me. Otherwise I’ll just escape this house the second I can”, you waited for a response. 

He gave a slight gulp, “am I in this future?” 

You turned back to his body, “as long as you want to be”. 

“I’d like that”, he paused. “When you were in the kitchen today, dancing - I don’t think I had ever seen you so relaxed and happy for so long. I just kept thinking how we could have a place together and you could be like that all the time…”, he bit his lip a little hoping he wasn’t saying this out of turn. 

“I’d like that”, you paused, “No, I love it”. You were hesitant as you were about to say something you hadn’t told him before. “I feel like I’m home when I’m with you. In a certain way, since we met….”, you felt a little embarrassed. 

He made sure you were looking into his eyes, “You’re my home too Y/N. I love you”, he once again brought his lips to yours slowly. He parted your lips and began to make sure you were both comfortable in the bed. 

“I love you too”.

[notyoureverydaycircumstance]

Kim’s List

Finish more than half this list before I’m 55

Attend a session of R.E.S.T. (Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy)

Visit Toad Rock Motorcycle Campgrounds and sleep in a bus

Visit Ainsworth hot springs

Take a nap under a cherry blossom tree

Skydive alone

Hang-glide

Jump down a waterfall taller than a pine tree

Spend a week surviving off the land in a forest, jungle, or tropical island

Rent an island

Send a message in a bottle

Go to a theme park & ride EVERYTHING (KID SHIT INCLUDED)

Swim with dolphins

Have a bonfire on a beach

Go spelunking

Learn Morse Code

Learn to drive stick-shift

Climb a mountain

Ride in a hot air balloon over some place beautiful

Learn how to sail a boat (Tie the ropes, steer, ready the sails, everything)

Make a snowman family, carrot noses and all

Visit my childhood homes

Blow glass

Create a family crest or symbol

Make a candle

Write a few books (Children’s book, Novel, & Short Story & Poetry book)

Publish at least one book

Design & sew a dress from scratch

Start a flash mob

Choreograph a new type of classy, celebratory dance

Learn a different song on 10 different instruments

Write, perform, record, and publish an original song

Ride a mechanical bull in heels

Set a world record for hula-hooping

Throw beads at a Mardi Gras festival in New Orleans

Learn pole dancing and do it well

Try acupuncture

Sit with monks in the Himalayas

Get glamour photos done

Get a palm reading

Spend a week travelling with Gypsies

Learn archery and own a self-bow

Build a tree-house and sleep in it for a week

Partake in a food fight

Pick fruit straight from the tree and make a pie

Complete a 1000+ piece jigsaw puzzle

Have a collection of something meaningful and beautiful

Mentor someone for a year

Help someone check something off their bucket list

Teach someone a new language

Plant a tree in every country I live in

Spend a week naked

Go a week without speaking

Write a letter to my future self

Go to a meditation retreat

Learn to swordfight

Survive at paintball

Fly in a helicopter

Visit each continent & do something memorable there

Go on a train ride to a different state or country

Go to the top of a lighthouse

Spontaneous road trip from beach to beach!

Sleep in a haunted house

Throw a dart at a map and just go

Touch the pyramids

Visit a ghost town

Make daisy chains with someone I love

See Aurora Borealis with my own eyes

Ride a horse bareback through the wilderness

Vacation at Niagara Falls

Eat a famous dish in the country it originated from

Finish the Walk Of Faith in the Tianmen Mountain

Explore the Galapagos Islands & photograph 50 kinds of wildlife

Click a padlock in Via Dell’Amore and throw the key into the water

Give a memorable speech about something important to me

Photograph a beautiful sunset in 50 countries/states

Hear Andrea Bocelli sing opera in Milan with my dad

Make a wish in the Fontana di Trevi in Italy

Float in the Dead Sea

Hike through a famous forest/trail (Maybe the Inca Trail?!)

Make it to the top of Sigiriya Rock in Sri Lanka

Release a floating lantern in Thailand

Climb mount Kilimanjaro and sing “Africa” by Toto before climbing back down

Attend 5 events or festivals around the world

Spend time at a hostel in the 5 countries/states I most want to live in

Own an exotic pet

Learn welding

Help change someone’s life

Run a marathon with someone

Ice skate on a frozen lake at midnight and recreate the scene from ESotSM

Play in a rugby match

Go deep sea diving

Get good at skiing

Try an extreme sport

Make a piece of furniture out of hand-collected wood

Send a thank-you letter to someone from my childhood

Send a bouquet of flowers to a stranger

Sell everything (minus things of sentiment) and start over

Volunteer at a prison

Spend a day at a nursing home playing games

Volunteer reading to kids

Say something inspiring to a stranger on public transportation

Send hand-written letters to a pen pal I’ve never met

Buy a drink in a cafe for a stranger

Paint a mural in a public place

Learn to travel by the stars, then spend a night walking with their guide

See penguins in their natural habitat

Give a public speech in front of 100+ people

Throw a mega party

Learn how to play the harp, and own one

Take dance lessons with someone else

Learn 10 classic dances

Learn a martial arts practice

Be on the news (for something good)

Experience the four seasons in a foreign place

Provide support and kindness for someone in a hospice

Make a kite from scratch and fly it in a famous place

Fold 1,000 origami cranes for someone

Start a movement for something I believe in

Have a picnic somewhere incredible

Learn sign language

Go exploring underwater in Tulum, Mexico

Go backpacking in Galicia, Spain

Photograph beautiful monasteries

Hammock under palm trees on a beach

Visit Venice, Italy and Maldives before they sink

Go on the 10-Night Walk and meditate in The Alps before they melt

Snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef

Conquer something in my way

Visit Machu Picchu in Peru (and play the song Machu Picchu by The Strokes)

Earn an award

Catch fireflies in a jar and write a poem by their light

Jog through a misty night

Design and build my own home

Witness a meteor shower

Bury a time capsule with sentimental objects

Open said time capsule in 20 years

Go white water rafting

Meditate by Gandhi's tomb and thank him for his words

Go ziplining in a jungle

Ride and sing to an elephant

Plant a rooftop garden

Make a family heirloom by hand

Create some new family traditions

Go to a drive-in movie dressed in 50’s style clothes

See Led Zeppelin live

Build an igloo and sleep in it

Get a henna tattoo in India

Study herbology and learn how to make medicine in the wilderness

Save someone’s life

Have 15 INCREDIBLE stories to tell by the time I’m 35

Drive all the way across an international highway

Collect sand in a jar from 50 beaches

Inspire and support someone and watch them do something great

Write a letter to an inspiring famous person

Name a star

Have $1mil in savings

Have a paint fight

Wingsuit fly

Photograph a different stranger’s smile every day for a year

Take photos with a polaroid for my kid’s baby books

Have a new years jar of happy memories written on little slips

Get certified in something useful

Do something memorable with someone I just met

Build a blanket & pillow fort in a hotel

Take a homeless person out for a meal

Give my grandkids advice

Make 10 good new habits

Break 10 old bad habits

Collect leaves in a journal from every place I visit

Pet a raccoon

Participate in GISHWHES

Participate in a community event

Perfect a pie recipe and teach it to someone else

Fill a pool with floating flower candles

Swim in Puerto Rico at midnight with the bioluminescent plankton

[ilovingcollectiongalaxy]

Paola Velez was in Orlando when, one day in February, her phone started blowing up with a string of OMGs. Washingtonian had just dropped its annual top-restaurants issue. The D.C. magazine named Kith/Kin, Kwame Onwuachi’s standard-setting Afro-Caribbean restaurant where Velez was the executive pastry chef at the time, to the No. 15 spot—which was great, but not the source of the barrage of messages from friends and family. Unbeknownst to Velez, Washingtonian put her on the cover. “I was shell-shocked,” she says. “They usually reserve the cover for someone like José Andrés. My parents were blown away that in their lifetime someone like me could be on that cover.”

The following month the James Beard Foundation named Velez a semifinalist in the Rising Star category for chefs under 30 years old, the award Onwuachi had won the previous year. Yale hosted her for a talk with their food sustainability program. And Kith/Kin was busier than ever. “Everything was really cool, then COVID hit.”

Hector Velez

The Pivot: “My gears shifted 100% to make sure my staff was taken care of,” says Velez, who was furloughed from Kith/Kin. “I was working behind scenes to make sure there were no hiccups with their unemployment, even though I was going through the same process myself.” Navigating the red tape of the process, Velez realized “this gap in the restaurant industry where the undocumented workforce—the backbone of our workforce—didn’t have access to help.” Though they pay the same taxes, undocumented workers are not eligible for the same benefits, like unemployment or stimulus checks. So Velez organized a pop-up donut shop, Doña Dona, with Daniella Senior (Colada Shop) and raised $1,100 for Ayuda, a local organization that provides legal, language, and other services to immigrants. “It wasn’t a small amount of money—I mean, if I lost $1,100, I would be very upset!—but it wasn’t enough for real change.”

Bakers Against Racism grew out of this desire to do more. In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, Velez teamed up with fellow D.C. chefs Willa Pelini (Emilie’s) and Rob Rubba (Scrappy’s bagel pop-up) and worked out some straightforward math: If they could organize 80 bakers to sell $1,200 each through a decentralized bake sale, they could raise $96,000. Rubba designed the graphics, and within one hour of Velez posting on Instagram, 500 participants had signed up.

By the end of the bake sale, which ran June 15 through June 20, the collective had swelled to 2,400 bakers from all across the U.S., London, Berlin, Paris, Mumbai, Australia, and beyond. They raised over $1.6 million for hundreds of organizations impacting Black communities, from the Okra Project to Black Girls Code to a program making surfing more POC-inclusive in Nova Scotia.

Hector Velez

The Future: While Bakers Against Racism may hold another bake sale soon, the platform has shifted into introducing “Black [bakers] and people of color who are in the industry that you might not know.” From the exposure, Velez says, “These businesses have seen their sales increase so much they were breaking records in a pandemic. We hope we can maintain that momentum, sharing the love.”

Meanwhile, Velez has decided not to return to Kith/Kin—Onwuachi is also leaving, he recently announced—instead jumping across town to be the executive pastry chef at sister restaurants Maydan, which recently opened for outdoor dining, and Compass Rose, which has been doing take-out through the pandemic. It’s encouraging that a respected restaurant group is committing in a big way to pastry, a department that’s often considered expendable, in these screwed-up times.

For Velez, the work continues. “Until we get the proper [federal] help, the restaurant industry is going to be hurting for a long time,” she says. “Many industries around us have gotten bailouts, but the culinary industry is not getting the same treatment. You rely on us to celebrate and live a good life. Our hope is that society really understands the value we provide.”

You rely on us to celebrate and live a good life. Our hope is that society really understands the value we provide.

Chef Paola Velez’s One-Bowl Chocolate Cake Recipe

Makes 2 (8)-inch round cakes

225 grams all-purpose flour 275 grams granulated sugar 11 grams baking soda 1 gram Diamond Crystal kosher salt 55 grams cocoa powder 135 grams olive oil 154 grams Greek yogurt 1½ eggs ¾ cup brewed espresso or coffee 1 gram vanilla extract ¼ tsp nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 360°F. Grease the sides and bottoms of two pans. Line the bottoms with parchment paper. Add all the ingredients to a large mixing bowl and stir well until completely combined. Divide the batter between the pans and bake 25 to 30 minutes or a cake tester comes out clean. Cool completely, run a knife around the inside of each pan, and carefully invert to remove each cake. Cut into slices and serve with dulce de leche ice cream.

The post The Pivot: How Chef Paola Velez Is Shifting Gears During the Pandemic appeared first on Men's Journal.

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[carlosgranjas]

There are too many dangerous

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Environment Canada reports, strengthening low pressure centre over Minnesota this morning will track across Northwestern Ontario this afternoon and towards James Bay by late Friday.

[richmeganews]

Can Kamala Harris Win?

So here’s the plan:

Kamala is going to walk up to Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ from the left. At 12:50 p.m., Rodney Scott will greet her. She’ll enter through the side door and order at the second register, from the woman in the red shirt. Kamala, Scott, and Maya Harris—that’s Kamala’s sister and campaign chair—will sit and eat. Kamala will then exit through the front door and walk around back to look at the smoker. She’ll reenter through the front, cross the dining room, and exit through the side door to take reporters’ questions.

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Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog, on the corner of King and Grove Streets in Charleston, South Carolina, is perfect—the kind of fast-casual, deeply American spot almost any voter can get behind: local pit master anointed by Anthony Bourdain, outdoor seating under tasteful white Christmas lights, wooden tables with wrought-iron legs, red stools. In the hour leading up to Kamala’s arrival, men walking and biking slowly down Grove Street give way to police cars, followed by unmarked cars. At T minus 10, the campaign’s 23-year-old South Carolina communications director, Jerusalem Demsas, asks, “Can we get Rodney out here?” She places Scott, handsome and regionally beloved, on his mark to the left of the door. After Demsas leaves, Scott mutters, “People with warrants must be running off the block.”

It’s all happening before you can even see her, so thick and aggressive is the press: the 20-plus reporters with TV cameras, boom mics, lenses larger than some dogs. Kamala shakes Scott’s hand; touches his arm; smiles her big, open, I-am-so-happy-to-be-with-you-right-now smile. She’s shorter, even in heels, than one expects. But she’s magnetic, authoritative, warm—leaning in, nodding, gesturing with both hands, moving those hands from a voter’s biceps or shoulder to a position of deep appreciation over her heart.

Kamala wends through the scrum of press, makes her way to the counter, and finds the woman in the red shirt, who happens to be Scott’s wife. Kamala greets her with a two-handed clasp (a simple shake would come across as too formal and masculine). Then, right there, a decision needs to be made on the fly: What is Kamala going to order?

Kamala Harris—the Democratic presidential hopeful and 54-year-old junior senator from California—is a prosecutor by training. She knows well that any misstep, anything you say or do, can and will be held against you. Her fundamental, almost constitutional, understanding of this has made her cautious, at times enragingly so.

Harris’s demographic identity has always been radical. She was San Francisco’s first female district attorney, first black district attorney, first Asian American district attorney. She was then California’s first female attorney general, first black attorney general, first Asian American attorney general. She was the second black woman, ever, to win a seat in the United States Senate. But in office, she’s avoided saying or doing much that could be held against her. As attorney general, she declined to support two ballot measures to end the death penalty. She declined to support making drug possession a misdemeanor. She declined to support legalizing pot. She declined to support a ballot measure reforming California’s brutal three-strikes law. The point is: She had power. She kept most of it in reserve. More important than fixing the broken criminal-justice system, it seemed, was protecting her status as a rising star. She had earned that reputation by the time the first major profile of her was written: San Francisco Magazine, 2007. The article also described her as “maddeningly elusive.”

It takes Harris a minute, but she decides on a pulled-pork sandwich, with corn bread and collard greens, and a banana pudding to split with Maya. They sit and eat, ignoring the two dozen recording devices in their faces, talking about Scott’s vinegar-based BBQ sauce and his recipe for banana pudding—good territory for Harris, as she’s a serious cook. Nearby, there are a few appalled customers, including a family that has driven 40 minutes to celebrate the father’s birthday and has no idea what’s happening, no idea even who Harris is, and would just like this rugby squad of reporters to move aside long enough for their son to refill his drink. But for the most part, the patrons are dazzled by Harris, whose star quality drew 20,000 people to her kickoff rally in Oakland. The dynamism she displayed there made the event feel like a cause, or a concert—Kamalapalooza—and gave her campaign significant momentum. (Laurene Powell Jobs, the president of Emerson Collective, which is the majority owner of The Atlantic, has provided financial support to the Harris campaign.)

After 15 minutes, right on schedule, Harris sets down her napkin and walks around back. She takes some photos near the smoker with Scott’s family and looks deeply into the eyes of his adorable 10-year-old son. She tells him she’s giving a speech later and she’d like him to let her know what he thinks of it. Then she walks back through the restaurant and exits, as planned, through the side door so she can gaggle with the press. (NB: Gaggle is now a verb in American politics, meaning “to answer questions shouted at you by a group of reporters.”)

Here, again, Harris is graciously, militarily on point. All good politicians stick to a script, but Harris speaks like a woman who knows that facts are ammunition. Everything you say can and will be used against you. Just this week she’s been in the weeds, so to speak, with Reefergate, a kerfuffle that arose when Harris was asked on the Breakfast Club radio show what music she’d listened to when she smoked pot in college and she said Tupac and Snoop Dogg. Social media erupted with gotchas, as those artists didn’t release songs until after she’d graduated.

Harris’s spokesperson said that she’d been answering a different question, about the music she listens to now, but even so The New York Times, The View, MSNBC, and Fox & Friends all picked up the story. Harris’s own father, who is Jamaican, flamed her on Jamaica Global Online for insinuating that she supported legalized pot because she was Jamaican: “My dear departed grandmothers … as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker.” The uproar caused the former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau to flip out on Pod Save America: “Donald Trump is president … We cannot be talking about this fucking shit again with the Democratic candidates.”

Harris on the trail in South Carolina. Once a stiff and guarded campaigner, she’s learned how to radiate warmth. (Phyllis B. Dooney)

But Harris, today, gaggling, is in top form: We don’t need a tragedy to enact commonsense gun reform. This economy is not working for working people. Every American needs a path to success. We need to speak truth. If Harris’s campaign has a mantra, that’s it: truth truth truth truth truth. She delivers her talking points while dressed, as she always is, in her uniform of dark suit, pearls, black heels. I know—you think I shouldn’t be writing about her clothes. But the clothes themselves are a smart, cautious play, one that Hillary Clinton, frankly, could have benefited from. If you wear the same outfit every single day, pretty soon the haters will run out of snarky things to say about your appearance and move on.

[Jemele Hill: Kamala Harris’s blackness isn’t up for debate]

Among Harris’s core traits, arguably her Shakespearean-tragedy trait, the one so central to her character that it has the potential to lift her to the highest post in the land but could also take her down, is her discipline. It is what has allowed her to play the long game, to protect her future. It has also infuriated constituents over the years who wanted Harris to take a stand and fight for them today, not when she reached a higher office. Yet Harris, on the trail, seems bolder than she has in the past. She’s declared that she’s for reparations, for the Green New Deal, for decriminalizing sex work and legalizing pot. She comes across as a woman who is cashing in her chips, taking all the political and social capital she was safeguarding for all those years and putting it on the table, declaring that her moment is now. She’s a black female prosecutor; we have a racist, misogynist, possibly criminal president. All of that caretaking of her political future—what was it for if not this?

By Harris’s side, on the road, is not her husband, Doug Emhoff, a Los Angeles lawyer she married in 2014, but her sister, Maya, who was a top policy adviser for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and, before that, the vice president for democracy, rights, and justice at the Ford Foundation and the executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. When the world is following you with boom mics and long knives, Maya told me, “it’s good to know there are people with you 100 percent. Ride or die. Not going anywhere.”

Harris’s parents, Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris, met in Berkeley, California, in the early 1960s, in the civil-rights movement. They’d both come to the United States to study at UC Berkeley: Shyamala, at age 19, from a Brahman family in India, to pursue a doctorate in endocrinology and nutrition; Donald, from Jamaica, for a doctorate in economics. As with almost everything else in her life, Harris has a set of stock stories she tells about her upbringing, all of which are laid out in her heavily vetted, surprise-free memoir, The Truths We Hold, which was released two weeks before she announced her candidacy. (The big vulnerable reveal in it is that Harris had to take the bar exam twice.) As a girl, she loved the outdoors; her father yelled at her, “Run, Kamala! As fast as you can. Run!” Her mother sang along to Aretha Franklin; her dad played Thelonious Monk. They divorced when Harris was 7. Before that, the family attended protests together. At one, Harris, a toddler, started fussing. Her mother bent down and asked, “What do you want?”

Harris said, “Fweedom!”

Shyamala, the daughter of a diplomat father and a mother who educated fellow Indian women about birth control through a bullhorn, was barely 5 feet tall, and formidable. She was supposed to return to India for an arranged marriage. She refused. “She had literally no patience for mediocrity,” Maya said. Her outlook was: “Be your best. If you’re going to do something, be the best. Work hard, the whole way.” En route to becoming a prominent breast-cancer researcher, she raised her girls primarily as a single mother. She took Harris with her to her lab when necessary and directed her to wash test tubes. She covered the kitchen in their small apartment with waxed paper and made lollipops and other candy. If she bought gifts, she set up a game in the style of Let’s Make a Deal. What do you want—Door No. 1 (the bedroom) or Door No. 2 (the kitchen)? Inside, the girls would find a blue bike with tasseled handlebars or an Easy-Bake Oven. In Harris’s telling, Shyamala didn’t coddle. If her children came home from school with a problem, she would ask, “Well, what did you do?,” in order to push them to solve it themselves. She raised her daughters in the black community, taking them to Berkeley’s black cultural center, Rainbow Sign, where Maya Angelou read poetry and Nina Simone sang. In 1971, when Harris was 7, Shirley Chisholm dropped by. She was exploring a bid for president.

When I asked Maya about her relationship with her sister, Kamala raised her eyebrows and cocked her head, like, This had better be good. “Well, she’s a big sister and …” Maya paused and turned to Harris. “Are you going to qualify that?”

Harris, laughing, declined. So Maya continued: “She was protective … Maybe just a liiiiiiiittle bossy.” If there was a problem in the schoolyard, Harris would assess the situation and make sure Maya was okay. The two organized a children’s protest to overturn a no-playing policy in their apartment building’s empty courtyard. Do I even need to say it? They won.

When Harris was in middle school, Shyamala took a post at McGill University and moved with her daughters to Montreal. Harris attended high school there. At Howard University, in Washington, D.C., she chaired the economics society, argued on the debate team, and pledged the AKA sorority, the first black sorority in the country, whose alumnae show up at Harris’s campaign events in force, dressed in AKA pale pink and green, a squadron of extra aunts. At UC Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco, Harris “found her calling,” as she writes in her memoir, and decided to become a prosecutor.

This was not an easy sell for her parents. Shyamala believed, as Harris writes, that America had “a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice.” Among Shyamala’s closest friends was Mary Lewis, a professor and public intellectual who helped lead the black-consciousness movement in the Bay Area. Donald Harris, meanwhile, had become an economics professor at Stanford University, the first black man in his department and one of about 10 black faculty members total. He was a left-leaning iconoclast who wrote and taught about uneven economic development around the world, particularly across racial lines, long before many Americans had ever heard the phrase income inequality. Colleagues found his progressivism threatening—he was called “too charismatic, a pied piper leading students away from neoclassical economics,” in The Stanford Daily.

Yet growing up at protests, Harris writes, she’d seen the mechanics of fighting for “justice from the outside.” That dynamic did not appeal to her. She wanted insider power, establishment power. “When activists came marching and banging on doors,” Harris writes, “I wanted to be on the other side to let them in.” Shyamala interrogated this logic. As Harris says, both in her book and in speeches, “I had to defend my choice as one would a thesis.”

It was the choice of a woman who likes control. Even sitting with Maya, post-barbecue, in a corridor of a black church in South Carolina before a town hall—when Harris is laughing and slightly slouched in her chair, seemingly relaxed—she’s a woman who maintains a tight grip on the narrative. No detail is too small.

“I stay with her a lot when I’m in D.C.,” Maya says, trying to tell me a story about how Harris likes to take care of people. (I experienced this myself. I showed up that day with a cough, and Harris instantly offered me cough drops and green tea.)

Harris corrects Maya, quietly but firmly: “Always.”

“Always … almost always,” Maya says. “Okay, mostly.”

Harris stands her ground: “Always.”

Maya—a Stanford Law School grad and one of the youngest people ever appointed dean of a law school—drops the point.

Harris will talk about cooking, specifically and in great detail, if you ask her. She’ll even get out her iPad and show you the recipes she’s marked from The New York Times’ cooking section, which she reads in the campaign van, after events, to relax. Chicken Cacciatore With Mushrooms, Tomatoes, and Wine—what’s oppo research going to do with that? I can tell you that her go-to dinner is roast chicken and that she’s cooked almost every recipe in Alice Waters’s The Art of Simple Food. In the kitchen, she’s a fundamentalist. “Salt, olive oil, a lemon, garlic, pepper, some good mustard—you can do almost anything with those ingredients.”

But turn the discussion to this moment in her life, to taking her shot—how she’s going to both protect this opportunity and go all out; where the line is between being too cautious and too open—and the specificity disappears. First she pivots away from caution. “I wouldn’t say cautious as much as smart. We have to be smart. We have to be strategic.” (This is a favorite move. For more than a decade Harris has talked about being “smart” on crime rather than “tough” or “soft.”) Then she turns to truth. “We have to speak truths, and in speaking those truths, some people are surprised that I’m actually saying that on a stage … So we have to push it.”

Lord knows we are all desperate for a president who values truth. But that wasn’t what I was getting at. There are a great many truths in the world. I wanted to know which ones were on her mind. Where is she going to be bold? Where does she feel she needs to hold back?

[Read: How Kamala Harris is running against 2020 democrats]

“I guess a lot of how I decide [what to] talk about is based on what people tell me they want to discuss,” Harris says. “Not so much what they want to discuss as what are the concerns for them.” This is going nowhere. “Certainly I do think in specifics. And when I’m in a smaller group where there’s more latitude to have a real conversation …”

I have limited time. I drop the question and move on, which of course was Harris’s goal.

Harris at her law-school graduation in 1989, with her mother, Shyamala Gopalan (center) and her first-grade teacher, Frances Wilson. (Courtesy of Kamala Harris)

It is truly a shame that Shyamala Gopalan isn’t here for this—her two daughters together, Kamala running for president of the United States.

She died 10 years ago. She had colon cancer, and when the end was near, Harris visited her in the hospital while running for attorney general. “She was starting to tune things out. She’d stopped watching the news and reading the paper, which was so unlike her, and she was tired. She was sleeping a lot. And I was with her in the hospital. I was sitting next to her—here’s the bed,” Harris says, motioning to her side, “and she was turned that way. We were just spending time together. And she said, looking away, with her eyes closed, I’m sure: ‘What’s going on with the campaign?’

“I said, ‘Well, Mommy, they said they’re gonna kick my ass.’ My mother leaned over and looked at me and had the biggest smile. Just the biggest smile on her face.”

Harris laughs. I ask what the smile meant. She says, “Bring it on. Good luck to them.”

America—at least the blue parts—came to see Harris as its potential savior in June 2017, when she questioned then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the Russia investigation. Sessions sat at a desk before the Senate Intelligence Committee, his mouth pursed in a boyish smirk, his white hair looking as though his mother had combed it for him, Harris regal on the dais above. Here was a man thinking he was going to get away with something, as he nearly always had. Then, in view of the world and this very smart black woman 18 years his junior, he began to realize he was not.

Harris, detailed notes in hand, had no patience for his “I do not recall”s and his long-winded responses to run out the clock. She just calmly and repeatedly demanded an answer to her question: “Did you have any communication with any Russian businessmen or any Russian nationals?” Her mental clarity was terrifying.

Sessions broke down after three and a half minutes. “I’m not able to be rushed this fast!,” he said. “It makes me nervous.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, in September 2018, cemented many Americans’ belief that Harris was the woman to go after Trump. “Have you discussed [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller or his investigation with anyone at Kasowitz Benson Torres, the law firm founded by Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal lawyer?”

Harris—who, like any good prosecutor, knows not to pose a question to which she doesn’t already have the answer—asked this nearly verbatim six times, shining a hot and unflattering spotlight on Kavanaugh, who responded, in order, as capillaries appeared to burst all over his face:

1. “Ah …”

2. “I’m not remembering, but if you have something …”

3. “Kasowitz? Benson? …”

4. “Is there a person you’re talking about?”

5. “I’m not remembering, but I’m happy to be refreshed or if you want to tell me who you’re thinking of …”

6. “Do I know anyone who works at that firm? I might know … I would like to know the person you’re thinking of.”

Harris then said, “I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us.” Finally Senator Mike Lee of Utah raised an objection and stalled her line of questioning.

Historically, the prosecutor’s office has been a hard place to run from on the left. You will never really be the progressive. By definition, you are defending the state. On the stump, Harris reframes her prosecutorial role: “My whole life, I’ve only had one client: the people,” which sounds nice coming from the mouth of a public servant. What voter is not for that? Yet when Harris entered a courtroom stating that she was there to argue “for the people,” she was not the voice of the underdog. She was the voice of enforcement, the voice of the law.

As California attorney general, Harris referred to herself as the state’s “top cop.” (Sasha Arutyunova)

Jeff Adachi, the city’s longtime elected public defender (who died of an apparent heart attack at age 59 not long after I interviewed him for this article), met Harris when she was a first-year law student at Hastings. “Did she always have the charm and ambition she’s known for today? Yeah,” he told me. Adachi was “a little surprised,” he said, when Harris aligned herself “with law enforcement and wanting to put people behind bars,” because “we had probably talked about politics before and she was always seen as more of a liberal progressive.” But there were very few prosecutors of color at the time, and very few women, and, Adachi said, the prosecutor path was “seen as a stepping stone to do something bigger or greater.”

When Harris ran for district attorney, in 2003, she challenged Terence Hallinan, her former boss, from the right. He was entangled in Fajitagate, a preposterous scandal that involved three off-duty police officers beating up two residents and then demanding their takeout fajitas. The public saw the department as an unprofessional and incompetent bunch of good ol’ boys. (Hallinan had a low conviction rate, and he did not help his reputation when he handed members of the Fajitagate grand jury a blank indictment form and asked them to fill in the names of the officers they thought should be charged.) Harris enlisted her mother to stuff envelopes and brought an ironing board to neighborhood campaign stops, to use as a portable table. She wasn’t a natural. She felt awkward talking about herself with strangers.

She’d had a much-discussed relationship with future San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who was 31 years older and estranged from his wife. Brown was a local kingmaker. Still, Harris did not assume that he would anoint her. During the campaign, her longtime mentee Lateefah Simon took a BART train into the Mission early one weekday. “It’s, like, 7:30 in the morning—legit,” she told me. “I’m coming up the escalator and I see Kamala Harris, by herself, in a suit at 16th and Mission.” The intersection then smelled like feces and was filled with drug dealers. Simon looked at Harris like, Are you stupid? What are you doing here, dressed like that, when people are still high from the night before?

“I’m trying to win this race!” Harris told her.

“She had on pearls!,” Simon said.

Once in office, Harris got straight to work cleaning up Hallinan’s mess. She painted the office walls, which no one had done in years. She replaced the jam-prone copy machine. If staffers tried to leave for the evening before Harris thought they should, she shouted, “Well, I guess justice has been done! Everybody’s going home.”

She endured one major scandal, over a rogue tech in her crime lab. The tech stole cocaine and mishandled evidence, which was bad enough. But then Harris, likely thinking she could address the issue quietly, failed to follow procedure and inform the defense lawyers in the cases involved. One thousand cases had to be thrown out.

Nevertheless, in her first three years as DA, San Francisco’s conviction rate rose from 52 to 67 percent. She even created a new category of crime—truancy—and punished parents who failed to send their children to school. Then, as now, no one contested the link between high-school graduation and a person’s future in a well-paying job as opposed to jail. Harris still talks about this. She stirs outrage at America’s collective failure to invest in the education of other people’s children, often citing the statistic that nearly 80 percent of all prisoners are high-school dropouts or GED recipients. But is arresting a mother whose life is so frayed that she can’t get her child to school the best way to set that child on the path to success? Many, particularly in the black community, answered no. They still do. “Identity politics is stupid,” says Phoenix Calida, a co-host of The Black Podcast, “if you’re not going to enact identity policy.”

Harris ran against the death penalty, and, in what was arguably the first and last truly controversial decision she’s made in her political career, she stuck to her position and did not seek capital punishment when a San Francisco cop was killed in the line of duty several months into her tenure. The pressure to reverse her campaign promise was intense. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who’d served as San Francisco’s mayor from 1978 to 1988, chastised Harris for not doing so at the slain officer’s funeral.

Still, Harris kept her promise—and paid for it. No police union endorsed her for 10 years. One plausible read of her political history suggests that this experience, less than a year into elected office, taught her to fear and avoid taking a stand.

Harris calls herself a progressive prosecutor, which she’s not, though she did lift up individual lives. She started one of the first prisoner reentry programs in the country, Back on Track. It helped young, first-time drug offenders find jobs and services and earn high-school degrees. But Back on Track served only 300 people; Harris never took the program to scale. She also mentored young women, among them Lateefah Simon, who went from being a high-school dropout to becoming a MacArthur genius-grant winner in 10 years, which has got to be a record.

Simon now runs the Akonadi Foundation, in Oakland, dedicated to eliminating structural racism. The two met when Simon was 22 years old, with a 4-year-old daughter. At the time, Harris was running a child-exploitation task force; Simon showed up at a meeting to advocate for young women who’d been trafficked by pimps and then charged with prostitution instead of being treated as victims of rape. Harris listened to Simon, recognized her intelligence, and took her potential seriously. “I was like, Who is this woman? No one listens to us,” Simon told me. “People hate us. We’re garbage, in policy and in public.”

Harris helped Simon raise money and throw events for her organization. She insisted that Simon enroll in college, and when Simon said that was impossible—she was already working and raising a daughter alone—Harris talked about Maya, who’d had a daughter herself at age 17 and then graduated from UC Berkeley and Stanford Law School. The powerful, polished black woman who believed that Simon could be a powerful, polished black woman too blew Simon’s mind: “This was before Olivia Pope!” But Harris’s role as DA took some getting used to. “Why would you want to do that?” Simon asked. “I so deeply knew what was happening with girls in the system, and the DA was our nemesis. The DA and the pimp, right? The DA and the pimp.”

Harris’s race for California attorney general was extremely tight—so tight that her opponent, Steve Cooley, gave a victory speech on Election Night, which he had to retract the next day. She campaigned as a progressive, figuring, perhaps, that many people think they support criminal-justice reform more than they actually do. “They like these talking points and these platitudes,” Phoenix Calida says. Let’s be smart on crime. “But her tough-on-crime policies—nobody’s really gonna complain, because they feel safe.”

Harris’s record in that office is marked more by what she didn’t do than what she did. She did not support a ballot initiative reforming California’s three-strikes law, which incarcerated people for life for petty crimes (an interesting family moment, because Maya, while working at the ACLU of Northern California, had championed a proposition to take three strikes down). She did not join the fight against solitary confinement. She did not support two state ballot propositions to end the death penalty (and when a federal court in California struck down the death penalty as unconstitutional, she appealed the decision). She did not support legalizing pot. She did not advocate for reopening several high-profile cases, including a capital one widely suspected to have resulted in a wrongful conviction. She did not prosecute Steven Mnuchin, the CEO of OneWest Bank and Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary, for more than 1,000 foreclosure violations. She did not take an aggressive stance on officer-involved shootings—most notably, she did not endorse a bill requiring independent investigations of them and declined to use the power of the office to investigate the killing of Mario Woods, who was shot 26 times by five police officers in 2015.

Harris has since taken strong progressive positions. But some of her constituents still feel burned. “California has had the most police killings, and we haven’t had any officers ever charged,” Tanya Faison, the lead organizer for Sacramento’s Black Lives Matter chapter, told me. “That was on her watch.” Sure, “it would be beautiful to have a black woman as the president,” Faison continued. But “it doesn’t matter if you’re black or not if your policies are not for black people. And her policies are not supportive of black families.”

To be fair, while in office, Harris did institute implicit-bias training for police officers. She did test a large backlog of rape kits. And she did negotiate well with the nation’s five largest mortgage firms in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. She walked away from an offer of $4 billion of debt relief for California homeowners and called Jamie Dimon, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase. She told him his side needed to come up with more money, much more. She ended up with $20 billion.

She won her Senate seat on the night Trump was elected. By then Harris was walking the line she’s on now: using “fearless” as a campaign slogan despite letting fear stop her from taking positions. Trump has been a productive foil for her, highlighting the value of her legal training, casting her discipline as flattering and calm rather than pinched and nervous.

In Washington, she hasn’t done much—let’s be honest, who in the Senate has in recent years? She introduced a few bills: one, with Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, to study reforming the cash-bail system; another, with 13 Democratic colleagues, to begin addressing the high mortality rates black women face in childbirth. She also introduced, with fellow Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker and Republican Tim Scott, a bill to make lynching a hate crime. This last one was classic Harris: tough on crime, seemingly progressive, entirely risk-free. It passed the Senate unanimously.

By 4:30 p.m., 1,000 people had packed into the gym of Charleston’s Royal Missionary Baptist Church, where the scoreboard read 2020 and AKA sorority sisters rolled in wearing full pink-and-green dress uniform. They are not even a little ambivalent about their candidate. She’s theirs; they love her. Who among us hasn’t been scarred by an early humiliation and retreated from hard decisions? They asked where the reserved AKA section was.

Backstage, Harris chatted her way through the photo line, a mainstay of the contemporary American political campaign: local officials and other VIPs get what is basically a school photo with the candidate—in this case, next to a state flag, backed by a royal-blue drape. She has an amazing ability to focus on the person right in front of her, even as a large and impatient crowd claps and shouts “KA-MA-LA” for her to come onstage.

“I ate with Rodney Scott today, so I’m happy,” Harris announced to cheers when she finally appeared. Microphone in hand, she slipped into a subtle southern accent. “We have to restore in our country truth and justice, truth and justice,” she said. The crowd, right there with her, called out: “Amen!” “That’s right!”

This Charleston event was a 1/20th-scale model of Harris’s campaign-kickoff rally in Oakland. There, Harris had clapped along with her 20,000 supporters as she made her way to the podium. Just the sight of a strong female candidate who was not Clinton came as a relief. Many Democrats remain traumatized by 2016, the matchup of a deliberate and dutiful woman, straining to mop up all messes, against an impetuous, state-trashing bully. But in dropping her guard a little, Harris has been trending away from Clinton and toward Michelle Obama—adopting a persona that’s less programmed, hipper, and more relaxed, all of which is more likable. Of course, we care intensely about likability, especially in our female candidates, so perhaps shucking the appearance of restraint is a prudent A-student decision as well.

Harris’s campaign is shorter on specifics than Clinton’s was (perhaps, again, in reaction to Clinton). It’s shorter on specifics than some of her fellow 2020 candidates’ campaigns, though she did lay out, in her Oakland speech, a basic platform, designed to appeal to a liberal base, not attract independents: Medicare for all; universal pre-K and debt-free college; a $500-a-month tax cut for low-income families; women’s reproductive rights; a path to citizenship for immigrants.

Then, at minute 32 of the speech, in a moment that managed to be both subtle and shocking, Harris addressed the thing almost nobody wants to say but everybody who is close to Harris thinks about: her personal risk. “As Robert Kennedy many years ago said, ‘Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.’ He also said, ‘I do not lightly dismiss the dangers and the difficulties of challenging an incumbent president, but these are not ordinary times, and this is not an ordinary election.’ ”

That line passed, and Harris moved on to pablum like “Let’s remember: In this fight we have the power of the people.” But Harris is a target. She knows it. Reports of hate crimes increased 17 percent during Trump’s first year in office. In late February, a Coast Guard officer was accused of plotting to kill Harris, along with 19 others, including journalists, activists, and Democratic politicians. The very fact of her campaign, Harris standing out there every day before crowds of thousands, presenting herself to the American people—some of whom will merely dissect her record; others of whom will see her female body and her brown skin, and want her dead—is bold and brave. “Through her career it’s been a very serious thing,” Harris’s close friend and adviser Debbie Mesloh told me. “She and I talked about it [regarding] Obama … The first day he had Secret Service. The first time I saw him in a bulletproof vest.” Even at the relatively small book talk Harris gave at the cozy Wilshire Ebell Theatre, in Los Angeles, a security guard stood behind her, not even off in the wings, visible to the audience the whole time.

After Harris finished speaking in Oakland, her family joined her onstage: her husband, Doug, who is white; her sister, Maya; Maya’s husband, Tony West, who is black (and currently the chief legal officer at Uber, formerly the third lawyer from the top in Obama’s Justice Department); Maya’s daughter, Meena; Meena’s partner and children. The family is beautiful and the family looks like the future—and not the future in which white nationalists win.

Alumnae of the AKA sorority, which Harris pledged at Howard University, turn out to her campaign events in pink-and-green dress uniform. (Phyllis B. Dooney)

It’s hard not to be ambivalent about a cautious person, particularly a person who has been working for you but holding back, saving for the future. In truth, it’s hard not to feel ambivalent about all the candidates. There are so many contenders, more of them popping up like white-haired crocuses every day. One is too old. (Well, two are too old.) One’s too mean to her staff. One said she was Native American and she’s not. One Instagrammed his trip to the dentist. So many Americans have conflicting desires for this election. They want a transformative leader who will push this country forward. They want a rescue, a captain to steady our faltering ship of state and restore the rule of law. Most of all, they want a winner—whoever that is, just tell them, they’ll vote that way. They want a sure thing. They need a sure thing. And then they feel scared and frustrated by all the options, because that’s not how the system works.

Among the many lines Harris offers on the stump is: I intend to win this. You don’t quite expect to hear a woman say that. But Harris has become very good at tapping into the emotions of a crowd of Democrats and delivering what they want to hear. The 2020 Democratic National Convention is 15 months off, though. Over the next year, the campaign is sure to get ugly—Trump hasn’t even given Harris a nickname yet. I asked her whether she thought that, as a black woman, she had an extra-narrow lane of acceptable behavior to maneuver in. “I don’t think so,” she said. Then she downgraded that sentiment. “I hope not.”

Has the United States dealt with its own racism and misogyny enough to elect a black woman president? There’s little rational basis for saying yes. But there was little rational basis for believing that a man named Barack Hussein Obama could win the White House either, let alone a huckster named Donald Trump.

That Friday night, on the 110-mile ride from Charleston to Columbia, South Carolina, Harris read recipes online. She flagged one for salted-caramel cookies and emailed it to Lily Adams, her communications director, who happens to be former Texas Governor Ann Richards’s granddaughter. (Adams later laughed and said, with genuine affection, “When do you think I’m going to bake these? I’m going to New Hampshire with you on Monday.”)

In the morning Harris, Maya, and Adams, and the whole rugby team of journalists, met up on Columbia’s Lady Street—yes, Lady Street—for some retail politics. First stop was Styled by Naida, a vintage-clothing store run by Naida Rutherford, who grew up in the foster-care system and was homeless before she steadied herself economically by hosting stylish garage sales. It was another ideal campaign stop: Rutherford, the success story, helped Harris pick out a hat and a black belt. Then, as Maya paid for the items, Harris noticed a brightly colored sequined coat, a chessboard of turquoise, purple, yellow, green, and sky blue. The jacket was just about the furthest fashion choice imaginable from Harris’s standard dark blazer. Still, Rutherford, a good saleswoman, encouraged Harris, a good candidate, to try it on, and Harris did. She looked in the mirror, the hoard of journalists to her back. “This really would be perfect for the Pride parade,” she said.

A nice, unguarded human moment. The jacket was way too big, and she’ll almost certainly never wear it anywhere but the parade. But you’d have to be a monster—and a tone-deaf politician—not to want to support Rutherford. Harris bought the coat.

That afternoon, Harris held another town hall, this time at Columbia’s Brookland Baptist Church, and sitting in her car in the church parking lot, waiting for the doors to open, was 77-year-old Gladys Carter. Carter had fought in the civil-rights movement. She was heartbroken and horrified by the turn her country had taken with Trump’s election, and she admired how Harris had handled Kavanaugh. But she had questions about criminal justice. “Some African Americans in my circle of friends have expressed concern about her actually imprisoning a lot of our people, more so than she did the others,” Carter said. “They say they have to really think hard before they’re able to trust her. She’s got to prove that she’s willing to come out and do some things differently.” At the same time, Carter felt that Americans have deeper, even more pressing problems—namely, our dangerous, lying president. Maybe a tough female prosecutor is our best hope. “This country has been controlled by white males for how many years? The way things are right now—they screwed it up.”

Harris made it home for dinner with her husband that evening. She slept in her own bed, in her own house, where she likes to relax by curling up on the couch in her sweatpants and reading more recipes. But by that night, social media had pounced on her brief moment of spontaneity, making fun of her sequined jacket, her amazing technicolor coat, harping on how stupid and frivolous it is for a woman to be trying on clothes on the presidential campaign trail.

It’s not easy out there. You can’t expect much forgiveness on Lady Street. Yet Harris, as ever, is playing the long game. She often repeats her most succinct one-line pitch to prospective voters: “We’re going to need somebody who knows how to prosecute the case against this president.”

She packed a bag for New Hampshire: all dark suits.

This article appears in the May 2019 print edition with the headline “Kamala Harris Takes Her Shot.”

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Rupert Hill - former Corrie actor on his new venture at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre - Recipes, restaurant reviews & celebrity chefs

Rupert Hill - former Corrie actor on his new venture at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre

PUBLISHED: 00:00 06 October 2017

Rupert Hill and Goska Langrich

He’s an actor and a pub owner so who better to take over the restaurant at the Royal Exchange Theatre? Rupert Hill is more than ready for the challenge, as Janet Reeder discovers

Who better than an actor to transform a theatre restaurant, and not any old thesp but one who has a track record of producing award winning bars in the city?

Take a bow Rupert Hill. The one time Corrie heartthrob has raised the curtain on his recent production The Rivals, a bar and venue at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre.

It’s a long-overdue make-over that aims to transform the vast space at one of the city’s most iconic theatres into something a little bit special and Rupert is having to pinch himself after he and business partner Goska Langrish were handed the opportunity by the Royal Exchange Artistic Director Sarah Frankcome.

‘A 15 year tenancy had come to an end and they knew they wanted something different,’ says the 39-year-old whose portfolio includes the Castle Hotel and Gullivers in the Northern Quarter, the Eagle in Salford and Bakers Vaults Stockport, all run as limited companies with different partners.

Rupert Hill and Goska Langrich

‘It had been run by an external company but they wanted more of an internal partnership and because I own a few different pubs and am also an actor, Sarah suggested me.’

‘Exciting’ is a word Rupert uses a lot in relation to the venture, not least because it presents an opportunity to create a culturally significant venue as well as one devoted to good food, good drinks and good times.

‘We are going to be doing so many events and artistic endeavours. That’s part of the appeal for us,’ says Rupert.

‘The space is enormous and there’ll certainly be some live music. I have already secured some really special events which I can’t talk about as they haven’t been finalised. That side of it appeals to me. I very much want this to be a partnership, even to the point that if the theatre isn’t being used we may be able to take it over for en event.’

Originally from Southampton, Rupert lived in London for 10 years but reveals he had something of an epiphany after coming up to Manchester for his Coronation Street role as Jamie Baldwin.

‘I immediately felt like this was home. As soon as I got here it was very, very profound,’ he admits. ‘I do love London as well but when I got here I opened a pub with a mate of mine and then we were in a band together, then we could open another pub and win the best roast dinner in the Observer Food Monthly Awards and it felt just like a city where things could happen. Whereas London felt like a series of doors closing in your face - in Manchester it always feels like someone is opening another one for you.

‘I never imagined in my wildest dreams I would be running the restaurants and bars at the Royal Exchange Theatre and they came to me. It just blows my mind.’

Of course he still gets recognised as a former Coronation Street star in spite of having had numerous acting roles and forming his own production company.

‘It’s about eight years since I did Coronation street but people still recognise me,’ he laughs.

‘It’s really strange. I am always shocked about that.

‘I’m very grateful though. I’ve got to say I’ve had a lot of work off the back of it. It’s just that you can’t fathom the impact it makes on people. Sometimes people come up to you who are quite young recognise me and I’m like “Eight years ago you must have been a child”.

‘I feel a bit bad because when I first left I almost came across like I didn’t like being there but I did. It was just that I’d spent my entire 20s working in two different soap operas, Family Affairs for Channel Five and then Coronation Street, so I think I went a bit stir crazy and so when I left I think it may have come across that I was being ungrateful and aloof about the whole thing and I really wasn’t I just needed to re calibrate myself.’

He has another thing to thank soap stardom for and that was meeting his wife, actor 38-year-old Jenny Platt who played barmaid Violet Wilson in Coronation Street. Following their marriage at the Parlour in Didsbury, which Rupert helped to launch, the pair now live in Chorlton and have two daughters Matilda aged seven and two-year-old Eliza.

He also has his own production company, making his own films and as well as a couple of shorts made an entire feature film on a budget of just £1,000.

‘It was shot over 10 days and is called Leather Bird. I had a great cast of actors. I had Philip McGinley who is in Game of Thrones, Matt Steer who was in Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet, my wife Jennifer Platt who’s currently in Versailles and Graham Hawley, who has just done Peaky Blinders and is actually performing in Our Town (the Royal Exchange’s current production). Everyone worked for free. It was a real labour of love for everybody and turned out really, really well.’

For now, his acting career has been put on hold while he gets The Rivals in shape for its new future.

The look is lots of reclaimed wood, walls adorned with theatrical posters and pictures, they’ve created a cellar for proper beer and have installed a proper PA system. There’s even an indoor ‘beer garden’ in the space outside the restaurant.

‘It would be really nice that, after the shows it could become a late night drinking den where audiences and actors are mingling with each other and the music is turned up a bit and the lights are turned down a bit,’ he says.

‘We intend to be open all the time whether there’s a play on our not. That’s the plan. This period now in August is called the dark period and we want this to be the last dark period there ever is here.’

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范文：About Starbucks Coffee

Introduction of Starbucks’ history and expansion

1.1 Company snapshot

Starbucks Corporation is an American coffee shop headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1971, it quickly grew to an international firm with more than 23,000 locations in the world. In 2014, the revenue was 16.447 billion USD, with 3.081 billion USD operating income. The total assets was 10,752 billion USD and total equity was 5.272 billion USD. The firm also has many well-known brands as subsidiaries such as Ethos Water, Teavana, Evolution Fresh, and etc. Nowadays, Starbucks does not only sell coffee, but also sells desserts and other kind of drinks. Other related products such as cups and mugs were also found on Starbucks’ shelves. It has definitely became one of the most famous coffee shops all over the world.

1.2 Initial growth period

On Starbucks’ official website, the corporate set its goals to be: share great coffee with their friends and help make the world a little better. The firm has operated strictly according to their goals. That sentence was true when the first Starbucks opened in 1971 and, amazingly, it is still true today. I will first give some background history of Starbucks. The firm opened its first shop on Pike Street in Seattle, Washington. Today if you visit Seattle, you will still see many people lined up in front of the first Starbucks shop to buy souvenirs and to feel the culture of this leading coffee shop in the world. The visitors can buy cups with a logo different from that on the other cups if you bought the coffee elsewhere. To own a cup from the first Starbucks in the world had a special meaning to many coffee lovers in the world. Although the first shop was quite small in terms of area, quickly developed and opened other shops. In 1981 Howard Schultz, the first Starbucks chairman and chief executive officer first walked into the Starbucks store and was attracted immediately by the coffee ever since his first visit. In 1983, Howard traveled to Italy and brought exotic feelings and added romance to making his coffee. It was also in that year that Starbucks started to profit. In 1987, the original owner sold Starbucks to him and then Starbucks coffee quickly began to expand. In the same year, Starbucks opened its first store outside of Seattle at Waterfront Station in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Chicago, Illinois. In the late 1980s, even though the initial economic downturn occurred when the company expanded into the Midwest and British Columbia, the company was not affected much and still profited. In the early 1990s, Starbucks travelled into California. By 1989, 46 stores existed across the Northwest and Midwest and Starbucks was roasting over 2,000,000 pounds (907,185 kg) of coffee annually. From that time Starbucks coffee accomplished a great achievement in that it shifted the store’s purpose into not only a place to drink a cup of coffee, but also a place for communication and relaxation. The way how Starbucks provided a comfort place for people to rest or chat switched the traditional concepts of a coffee shop and connected the idea of communication with a cup of coffee. It is nowadays very common to see people bringing a laptop and siting at Starbucks to work or a couple of people sitting around a table to have a meeting.

1.3 International expansion

From the 1990s and onwards, Starbucks moved from the initial expansion period to the international expansion era. In 1991, Starbucks opened its first licensed airport store in Seattle Sea-Tac International Airport. A few years later, in 1996, the first Starbucks store outside North America was opened in Tokyo, a sign of Starbucks officially entering into the international arena. After two years, Starbucks expanded into the British market. According to New York Times, Starbucks accomplished this move by acquiring the British firm named Seattle Coffee Company using 83 billion USD. Starbucks soon changed all the designs of the store and started to operate under its name. In September 2002, Starbucks opened its first store in Latin America, in Mexico City. Currently there are over 500 locations in Mexico. Up until today, there are more than 27,000 stores the world. About one third of the shops were open in a foreign country and the expansion speed of the firm was amazing from 1987 to 2007. Records showed that on average, two more locations were opened around the world daily. In April 2003, Starbucks complete the purchase of Seattle’s Best Coffee.

On April 15th, 2003, the president of Starbucks said that Starbuck corps will acquire hometown rival Seattle Coffee Co. from its parents company by paying 72 million USD cash in exchange for its stocks. This deal not only added 150 more new stores to Starbucks, but also added the wholesales business to the business operations model. The Chairman of the Starbucks coffee Howard Schultz said “Acquiring the Seattle's Best and Torrefazione brands provides us an opportunity to launch the next phase of our specialty coffee growth”, and that “Both SBC and TI offer superb specialty coffees that are distinct from Starbucks flavor profiles, these brands will allow us to satisfy the desires of consumers with an affinity for the smooth flavors of SBC coffees and distinctive Italian recipes of Torrefazione Italia coffees, while focusing on expanding the demand for these types of specialty coffees.” As for the motivation for the acquisition, the management team believed that this move could better serve their customers. Different people have different tastes and some people may like the Seattle Best’s coffee smell. After Starbuck acquired Seattle Best, it can make the coffee flavor of Seattle Best to satisfy those customers who was used to the taste of Seattle Best. Starbucks can also attract more customers. Management believed that due to the large acquisition cost, the profit on the income statement may not look as attractive in the short run as in the long run because in the long run, the benefits of the acquisition will become more apparent. In September 2006, Starbucks’s competitor, Dietrich Coffee, sold its own retail store to Starbucks Coffee. Dietrich Coffee, based in Irvine, CA, was the first coffee house in Orange County when it was first established in 1983.

In 2003, Starbucks Company began to expand into the market of South America, it opened the first store in Lima in August 2003. After five years, Starbucks purchased the manufactory of Clover Brewing System in order to introduce the new coffee system, the “fresh-pressed” coffee system, they began testing this system at several Starbucks locations in Seattle, California, New York and Boston . In my opinion, this acquisition was very important to Starbucks since the customers are demanding more and more. They not only need a cup of high-quality coffee, but also want to receive their coffee as soon as possible and is often impatient to wait. The Clover Brewing System has given an opportunity for Starbucks because they own a technology that can increase the efficiency of coffee brewing significantly. This innovative machine has proven to be popular since Starbucks started to use the machine in its stores. Howard said “Strategically, this acquisition will demonstrate our commitment to provide Starbucks customers with individual brewed cups of the rarest and most exotic Starbucks coffee using the Clover brewing system.”  

1.4  Treating the customers

After the improvement of the coffee system, in the same year, Starbucks started a community website called “My Starbucks idea”, a website designed to collect suggestions and feedback from customs so that they could further expand the business and grasp a bigger share of the market. However, under the fierce competition, “How to keep your customer?” is the most important problem that Howard considered. Therefore, to encourage customers to continue to shop at Starbucks, a loyalty program was introduced for registered users of the Starbucks Card, which is just a simple gift card at the beginning. This card could offer many privileges such as free Wi-Fi internet access, no charge for soy milk and flavored syrups, and free refills on brewed drip coffee, iced coffee or tea. Today Starbucks is still energetically promoting the rewards program, for example, once you brought a cup of coffee, you will get a star reward and once you have enough stars, you could use them to change a cup of free drinking. Those sales-promotion program really helped Starbucks to attract a lot of potential customers and keep those customers for the long term. In order to provide Starbucks cards to users in a quicker, easier and more economics way, Starbucks launched the beta testing version of the mobile app in 2009. The App has a similar function to the Starbucks card, which also allows you to store money in the app so that you can buy items without carrying cash or credit cards in the future. I believe that it is an extraordinarily clever decision because it not only provided more convenience services to the customers, but also collected a great amount of money to Starbucks when customers deposited their funds into Starbucks. The shop can then utilize those money to further develop their business, make more investments with more sufficient funds. From 2012 to 2015, Starbucks continued to expand and opened its first store in many different place such as Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Williamsburg. In this year, Starbucks announced that it will enter Italy, which is the 24thcountry in Europe and the first shop might be opened in Milan by 2017.

2. Organizational structure

When Starbucks was only funded in 1971, it adopted a business strategy of differentiation in selling only unique coffee beans in the American market to attract more customers since other shops do not sell this kind of coffee. During the first year that Starbucks opened its business, the company quickly opened six shops. However, at that time, the founders did not want to expand Starbucks further because the primary purpose for them to open Starbucks in the beginning was to spread the culture of coffee. They were worried that more shops would render Starbucks too commercialized and deviate from their initial motivation for building Starbucks. So back then, the organizational structure for Starbucks was fairly simply, with three co-founders and each in charge of management, operations, and sales. There is also a finance and accounting department to take care of the accounting books for the firm. Their immediate juniors were the six shop managers who were in charge of the daily business activities in their different shops.

In 1987, the current chairman Howard Schultz acquired Starbucks from the three co-founders and strived to expand this shop from Seattle to all over the USA. To better develop the firm, Howard Schultz recruited more talented men, complicated the organizational structure and outlined the specific roles for everyone in the firm. Howard Schultz divided the firm into three different division, business analysis department, business expansion department, and the research and development department. The business analysis department determined the plans for future expansion and the business expansion department turned those plans into action. The R&D department was in charge of innovations, creating new kinds of products, and the quality control of the products. Apart from this, each different department is separated into different teams so that the works can be further specified. For example, in the business analysis department, there is a team in charge of expansion plans, and also there is a team for asset management. There is a team of HR, and there is an accounting specialist’s team. In the R&D department, teams were broken down by different kinds of products that they sell: drinks, and desserts. In the business development department, some were in charge of communications while others were in charge of the supply chain. There is a manager for each team so that the manager can report any problems to the seniors, give any feedback to the juniors, and carry out specific plans.

In 1996, Starbucks was not satisfied in only leading the American coffee culture, instead, they turned their views into the world. The organizational structure shifted as the goals of the firm changed. The three departments expanded into seven different departments: the finance department, the international retail department, the supply chain and operations department, the worldwide public affairs department, the legal and corporation’s affairs department, the HR department, and the North America Retail department. There are also sub-departments under the seven major department. For example, there is a marketing department under the North America retail department. There is a coffee department under the supply chain operations department. There is the CSR and the legal department under the legal and corporation’s affairs department. The chart of the organizational flow is shown as follows:

3. The marketing strategies and models of Starbucks

From 1971, it only took 45 years for Starbucks to transform from a small café in Seattle to a global corporation, which owns an enormous amount of chain cafés all over four continents. In China, Starbucks takes even lesser time to develop its brand into a symbol of trendy style. Nevertheless, the café market in China was relatively mature long before Starbucks had entered. Before Starbucks, there were many dominating café brands such as UBC Coffee, Manabe Coffee and etc. Therefore, the question arises, what kind of marketing strategies and models did Starbucks, as a late-comer, use to survive and to rapidly expand in an existing market? I believe we can analyze this question from four aspects.

3.1 Cooperation and investment model

Starbucks would implement different cooperation and investment models flexibly basing on the given market condition around the globe. Similar to McDonald’s and its global expansion, Starbucks started its multinational business a long time ago by promoting three types of business structures: Co-partnership Company, License Agreement, or Sole Proprietorship. Starbucks’s expansion strategies on opening new cafés are very flexible, due to the fact that it adjusts its cooperation model to adapt the particular market. There are mainly four types of cooperation models: 1)the parent firm owns 100% shares. The shops in the UK, Thailand, and Australia, etc. all follow this model. 2)The parent firmowns 50% shares. Shops in Japan, Korea and etc. follow this model. 3) The parent firm has only a limited amount of shares, around 5%, such as shops in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Hawaii, and Shanghai before the capital increment. 4) The parent firm does not own any shares and authorized another company to operate in their local market . Those shops were common in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Beijing. Although Starbucks has different cooperation partners around the world, all of them are operating for the same brand. One of the advantages of this plan is that the firm ensured that operations are done all at the same time around the world while also specializing and using different strategies for different markets. When looking for a partner, Starbucks developed a strict selection of criteria such as the reputation of the partner, the ability to control quality and whether can use the Starbucks standards to train employees. Currently, Starbucks has three partnerships in China: Beijing Mei Da Coffee Co.ltd, who is the agency for northern China, TaiWei Uni-President Enterprise Corporation, the agency for southern area of China such as Shanghai, Suzhou. The right of agency for others southern area of China was given to a company in Hong Kong. It was due to such flexible investment strategy and cooperation model that the parent firm not only maintained an optimistic attitude to the Chinese market, but also increased their shares from 5% to 50%. It was shown that the parent firm has paid more attention on Chinese area and they might be increasing the investment again in the future.

3.2No franchises

The policy for the past 30 years for Starbucks had been to operate under wholesale stores instead of franchises. They were very strict in following this global rule because they believed that this is essential to keep the brand image and quality of their products and services. Analysts said that in China, had Starbucks allowed individual franchises, they might be growing at a much faster speed. However, at the same time, the quality might be compromised. They believed that franchises are aimed more at making money rather than running a business. Apparently for Starbucks, the unity and quality is more important. For wholesale stores, the parent company has some control while for franchises, the shop managers has more power. This can create more conflicts of interest. Starbucks emphasizes the importance of quality service. For example, they are willing to expense more wastes just to provide the clients with the best coffee. If it were a franchise, the shop manager might be more interested in keeping a low cost to generate more profit at the expense of comprising the quality of the coffee. Another reason for Starbucks to not to incorporate franchises is that franchises may encounter more legal problems and more legal professionals needs to be involved to solve those kind of problems. So Starbucks strictly forbids franchises.

3.3Marketing and advertising

Starbucks also believes that their shops themselves are the best advertisements. Although Starbucks does not spend much on publicly advertising the brand, they are good at marketing. Instead of putting up advertisements and encounter the high fees associated with this process, Starbucks marketed itself through the positive feedbacks of its old customers. When the high product and service quality left a good impression on the old customers, they will tell their positive experience to the others. As a result, more and more customers are attracted.

3.4  Sales characteristics

Starbucks emphasis on how to treat each and every single customer well. They claim that they will only serve one customer at a time and brew one cup of coffee at a time. To maintain a long term relationship with the customers is one of the key reasons for success for Starbucks. In order to provide the best service to the clients, Starbucks trained its employees well with communication skills, coffee brewing skills, and etc. to meet the different demands for different customers. From the moment a client entered into the shop, the employees started to treat them with smiles. When I entered Starbucks, all of the employees can calmly tell me all about a certain kind of coffee. When I ask them more questions about coffee brewing, they can always give me satisfactory answers. Starbucks would also hold regular meetings for the employees to exchange ideas and techniques about coffee brewing. Those kind of meetings and forums not only enhanced the employees’ technical knowledge, but also strengthened the relationship between the employees and their boss.

Starbucks also emphasizes the environment with which the customers drink the coffee. Their stores were also famous for the unique light color, music, and design. Starbucks provided a flexible place for customers to relax and chat. For example, one can move most of the desks and tables around so that they can sit wherever they want. What is more, Starbucks is also keen to listen to more feedback from the clients. Using ways such as traditional message books or the modern electronic apps, they provided places for the customers to leave their comments. Then they will improve according to those advice because they aim at serving the customers well. By increasing the customer’s level of satisfaction, Starbucks attracted new clients and kept the old clients.

3.5  Store designs

Starbucks encourages each store to have unique designs on top of keeping the overall style similar. At the headquarters in the US, Starbucks has an office for designing and hired designers to decide how the shops would look like . They would take into account the local culture in which the cafe is based and find the best way for Starbucks to be involved into that area. For every new cafe opened, they would take pictures of the street that could reflect the local culture. Then those pictures are sent back to the headquarters in the US for those designers to find the best way to incorporate a new Starbucks into the local area. Starbucks believes that an appropriate environment also enhances the experience for a client when drinking coffee

3.6  High quality services

On top of high quality coffee that they sale, Starbucks is also famous for the high quality services that they bring. The employees would not only provide you with professional knowledge about coffee, welcome you with warm smiles, but also gives you a free environment to do whatever you want. They turned Starbucks into a place for social and communication instead of just drinking coffee. The high quality service is also reflected in how they differentiated their product to suit the local customers’ demands. For example, in China, the Chinese definitely has different tastes than the Americans. To provide the best service for the Chinese, Starbucks provided local Chinese food and Chinese tea to better suit the customers. In addition, they would also sell cups and mugs with specific cities to stimulate the incentives for customers to consume and feel more involved with the Starbucks culture.

4. SWOT analysis

4.1Strengths

a. Brand image

Starbucks has become the world-wide famous cafe. Whenever people think about a coffee shop, they think about Starbucks. With 36.7% market share in the US and stores in four continents and over 60 countries, Starbucks is definitely one of the top brands of coffee in the world. When it opens new stores in small and rural cities, its brand name is one of the biggest advantages because so many people have heard about the name before. Many people will even be attracted to enter just because they are Starbucks. Whenever people gather, meet, or wait for each other, Starbucks is definitely one of the first names that will come to their mind.

b. Aesthetic appeal

As we have said before, Starbucks provided us a place not only for drinking coffee, but also a place for communication and relaxation. The environment it provided for us to do whatever we want is also one of the reasons why we wanted to go there. Whenever we needed Wifi, we would often look for a Starbucks nearby so that we can connect to the web. When we are tired of walking, we can simply go to a nearby Starbucks, enjoy the quiet environment and the beautiful music. Also, there are so many shops that we can easily find a cafe in only a couple of blocks. I have often seen students doing their homework in Starbucks or business men doing their business using their laptops at Starbucks.

c. Employee welfare

This is also a strength for Starbucks because if the employees are satisfied, they will be more willing to serve for their firm, thereby bringing a better experience for the customers. With more revenue generated, the employees will be paid even more. Thus, there is a positive cycle. Starbucks, on top of the training that they provide as we have discussed more, also provides the employees stock options and retirement benefits. It was rated as the top 100 firms where workers want to work for by Fortune Magazine.

4.2 Weaknesses

a. High expansion rate caused service quality and brand image to drop

Although we said that Starbucks did not aim to expand so quickly and wants to preserve the product quality over high expansion rates, in some countries, due to the local economic environment, Starbucks still did expand too fast at a price of compromising the quality. For example, in China, a country where rivalry and expansion has become a central idea deeply ingrained in players of the food industry, it is hard to maintain Starbucks’ original motivations and incentives. To cater the fast economic development in China, Starbucks quickly expanded and opened too many shops. Sometimes two shops were opened too closely to each other, resulting in direct competition between Starbucks stores. Another problem that came with the fast expansion is that they needed much more employees to work at the shops. However, the training is not catching up with the speed of new employees. In addition, some stores started using machines instead of coffee brewers to make a cup of coffee. Although machines are faster and costs less, they are still not as good as human in terms of making coffee of the same taste and high quality. However, one of the primary reasons for many old clients is to experience the handmade coffee. No matter how good your machine-made coffee is, many old clients did not like this change. As customer loyalty wavered, the brand image is affected and the sales declined.

b. Decreased product quality

While it might be easier to ensure high product quality in the domestic market, it is often harder to keep a high product quality in some overseas areas due to the longer distance from the key management persons and the local culture for some countries. For example, in countries such as China, where product quality is often a problem for the food industry, can Starbucks be different from the other firms are still sell the food without chemicals and poisonous additives? The problem is that the answer is negative. In 2005, the Chinese food “moon cake” made by Starbucks China is found to have a level of bacteria higher than the benchmark. Even in the US, Starbucks was found to add cochineal as the red food dye and caused allergies. More than 6500 people advocated for Starbucks to stop using the red food dye because it would cause serious effects for those people allergic to asthma. Examples such as those two were found online. Although Starbucks had relatively few problems with product quality, only one problem could negatively affect the brand image of Starbucks heavily. If Starbucks continue to be found with problems of food security, this will be an important weakness for the firm.

4.3 Opportunities

a. Innovation into new kinds of products

On top of making high quality coffee, Starbucks also has the option to diversify its products and make other kinds of drinks just like how it introduced the Chinese tea into the Chinese markets. Especially nowadays Starbucks has not only become a place to drink coffee, but also a place for relaxation, people who does not drink coffee also enter the shop for its environment. For those kind of clients, Starbucks has some non-caffeine drinks. However, it can further develop by innovating and thinking about other kinds of drinks, especially in countries where coffee culture is not such so prevalent. As long as Starbucks keep in mind that they should keep the high quality of products they serve, and that other products does not overtake the position of coffee, they are try some new products. Also, since Starbucks sells mugs as a souvenir, I believe that they can also produce other kinds of things as souvenirs because quite a lot of people like to collect those.

b. Technological innovations

With the fast growing technology nowadays, Starbucks can also take advantage of the technological advance. For example, Starbucks also the mobile app that allowed the customers to d e points. I believe that the app can be expanded even more to include other features. For example, what if people can order with the app and have the coffee sent to their home and office? In countries of extreme weather, people are often lazy to get outside and purchase. For those people who simply wanted to drink coffee instead of wanting to enjoy the environment, Starbucks may consider the option of delivery.

4.4 Threats

a. Huge Investment pressure

The first threat is that Starbucks has to face the huge investment pressure to open new stores. For example, in China, since Starbucks enter into the Shanghai in May 2000, Starbucks nearly open a new store every month and encountered over 30 million RMB a year for those new stores. In order to attract customers and build the high-quality brand, almost every singer store of Starbucks is opened in the prosperous area of Shanghai so that they had to pay a large amount of money for rent every mouth. Therefore, rental pressure is one of the major part of investment pressure of Starbucks. What is more, the Chief Executive Howard Schultz announced that “Seattle-based coffee giant's plan to open 500 new stores in the Chinese country every year for the next five years.” and it will operate at least 3400 coffee shops in China by 2019. That represented a 70% increase from the number of stores in 2000. If this plan is really carried out, the fixed cost of each store’s decoration is around 300,000 USD. Under this calculation, the high investment caused could be a threat.

b. High retail price in overseas market

The price of a cup of Grande brewed coffee in US is 2.65 USD. However, when this amount is transferred into the local currency, Starbucks may be charging a few too high for the local consumers, especially in countries where the average spending on food is much lower than that in the US. In countries such as China, the high price made Starbucks less competitive to local stores, especially in cities where the overall income for the residents is not high. The problem is that Starbucks did not actually need that much cost to produce a cup of coffee in China, yet they are selling the coffee for such a high price so that the price can be comparable with the US retail price. By analyzing the 2013 annual report, I discovered that although Starbucks increased its costs overseas, they also reaped a much higher profit margin in some countries. For example, the cost in Asia increased by 22% while the revenue increased by 0.1%. The operating profit margin in Asia in 2013 was 32%. However, in EMEA, the operating profit margin was only 1.9%. This figure indicated that in some areas in the world, Starbucks is charging too high a price. Although they are profiting now, this is a threat because the price of an item cannot forever be significantly higher than the intrinsic value of the item because arbitrage opportunities exists this way. The current profit margin could be explained by the high economic growth rate in some Asia countries. However, if the trend does not persist for the long term, Starbucks cannot forever make arbitrage profits by price differentiation.

c. Limited target customers in overseas markets

Anther threat is the limited target customers that Starbucks have in some overseas market. Due to cultural differences, some cultures were not accustomed of coffee or did not drink coffee from the beginning. For example, in China, the ancient Chinese did not drink coffee and it was not until the recent twenty years did coffee became popular in the Chinese culture. China, as one of the largest markets in Asia, has seen the problem that only youngsters drink coffee and visit Starbucks. From 2010, Starbucks sold some Chinese teas in their local shops. However, that was not enough to attract those who originally do not drink coffee. In China, the sales mainly depend on the group of people who are young and more open to new tastes, or those who came back from the western world and is used to drinking coffee. Although this number is increasing, it is still only a small percentage of the entire Chinese population. The reason why I categorized this problem as a threat is that even though the problem is not significant right now, the taste of the young customers in China may be changing fast. The trend in China is that whenever there is a new product, the youngsters change frequently and is less likely than the elders to be loyal to one brand or one particular kind of drink or food. So to solve the problem of limited target customers in some overseas market, Starbucks may have to think more about this issue.

5. Porter’s five forces analysis

5.1 Threat of new entrants

I would say that the threat of new entrants is moderate because the industry is a monopolistic competition and the barriers to entry is not that high. The core technology, making coffee, is not something secret and can also be learned by other firms. However, with more and more competitors, the overall industry profits will be driven down to a certain level that some firms not operating well will have to exist the market. For the long term, the threat of new entrants for monopolistic competition is generally considered moderate.

5.2 Threat of substitutes

I would say that the threat of substitutes is high because there are many places to go instead of cafes and there are many kinds of drinks that can be consumed instead of coffees. Unless people are very loyal to coffee and really needs coffee to bring them energy, they can easily switch over to other caffeine drinks that gives them power such as Coke. For cultures such as China, people can also drink tea to bring themselves a lively day. For those who buys desserts from Starbucks, they can also buy it from shops such as Einstein Bagels if all they wanted was a small dessert since they are hungry. People can also go to McDonalds for light food and for a place to rest when they are tired on the streets. As a result, Starbucks has many different kind of substitutes.

5.3 Bargaining power of buyers

The bargaining power of buyer is low because there are many buyers in the world and nobody is strong enough to influence the entire industry. Since the sales of coffee depends more on quantity instead of unit price, each single buyer can only make a tiny amount of difference when purchasing a cup of coffee. I would say that the sensitivity to coffee price is moderate. Since the price of a cup of coffee is not high, even if some people are short in cash, or when the price of coffee increases a little bit, it does not influence the sales of the coffee that much.

5.4 Bargaining power of suppliers

The bargaining power of suppliers is also low because there are many places where Starbucks can receive their coffee beans. They can also switch the suppliers without encountering too much switching costs. Since Starbucks has a large size and can operate at a large scale, they will more likely to encounter increasing returns to scale.

5.5 Competitors

The amount of competition in the industry is high because there are many other international coffee brands. For those who are loyal to one specific brand, then this does not matter. However, there are many people who does not care which type of coffee that they drink. They care more about the geographical convenience or price difference. If they live close to a Pacific Coffee, then they may consume there every day and it does not matter how high the product quality of Starbucks is. Since Starbucks is one of the leaders in the industry, more other brands will set their development goals targeted at how to beat Starbucks. For example, in China Starbucks is considered very high end, so some local coffee shop may lower the price and target those customers at the middle to low end. So how to differentiate itself from the competitors is important for Starbucks.

6. Recommendations

6.1Control growth rate, grasp core competency

As we have analyzed above, Starbucks is starting to loose loyal clients due to the decreased product quality. So I suggest that Starbucks can control the pace with which they grow so that they can make sure their product quality before expanding blindly. The firm should provide sufficient training for the employees so that they can bring the customers a good experience. When innovating with their products, be sure to add the Starbucks culture into those new products and to incorporate the local culture so that the customers will be dragged closer to the firm. Since the high product quality is what customers liked about Starbucks, the firm should emphasize more on the quality to attract new customers and to win back old customers.

6.2Maintain the brand image and focus on customers

The main purpose of controlling the growth rate as I said in 6.1 is to maintain the high quality of the products. When the products were delivered in lower quality, customers lose their confidence with you and they will not purchase your product again. When they share their negative experience with the others, the others also start to lose confidence in you. The brand image that was build little by little through mouth will also be destroyed with those clients. When another problem comes with quality, Starbucks should not only have a stricter governance system, but also use appropriate public relation methods to maintain the brand image. The way how you communicate with the customers and how you left your image with the customers is one of the most important things for a firm to thrive for a long time.

6.3 Increase the influence of the firm in the society

Starbucks is actually doing very well in this aspect in that it emphasizes on environmental protection, recycling cups, saving the water, and performing community services. I just want to emphasize that this is a very important aspect of running the business because it will change how the customers think about you. More customers will be attracted to you by your contribution to the society. Also, it is a great way to market yourself if the firm holds some activities related to contributing back to the society, sponsors some activities that protects the environment and etc. With those actions, the firm can build a better public image in front of the clients.

6.4 Embrace competition and look for partnerships

Starbucks has outperformed its competitors by its unique operations and sales business models. The company culture is also important in its contributing to its success. However, I believe that in the future, merely high product quality is not enough under the more and more fierce competition and the competitive environment. Look at how Coca Cola had partnerships with McDonalds, Nestea, P%G, and Disney in the US and you will see that finding strategic partnerships is also important for a business to thrive. Starbucks can also consider strategic mergers and acquisitions, both vertical and horizontal mergers, to expand itself and become more competitive in the market.

7. Forecasting the future

7.1 Past financial statement analysis

To better forecast the future, we must always first analyze the past. This snapshot was taking from Starbuck’s 2015 annual statement. It showed the key financial data for the past five years so that we can see what the growth trend is like over the past five years. We can see that the net revenue have been increasing steadily. However, the operating income fluctuated in 2013. Apart from that year, the operating income also exhibited a stable growth trend. Without looking further at the details, we can conclude that the operating income is also doing well with only one year where the data is peculiar. The earning per share, due to the fluctuation in operating income, also dropped to a low level in 2013. Luckily, the figure also came back and surpassed its 2010 level in the recent two years. The fact that the cash dividend has been stable growing constantly is a good signal to the investors because they will get the message that the firm is doing well financially and will be more willing to invest in this firm. The capital expenditures was also increasing steadily, a sign that the firm is actively growing its capacity. A rough look at the balance sheet also showed that the firm has been growing in size. The capital structure has been kept relatively constant. The equity to assets ratio have been about 50% throughout the past five years. However, the long term debt to asset ratio have increased significantly over the past five years, suggesting that the firm is leveraging up even more to take full advantage of any growth options. This might be a good signal and might also be a bad signal. It is good to see a firm actively expanding and using up the opportunities by leveraging up. However, high leverage also meant that the risk might be more significant. It is also known that the long term debt is more risky than short term debt. So the firm has seen an increase in risk over the past five years.

7.2  Analysts’ forecasts

From the Market Watch website, we can see that most of the analysts recommended a buy option for the Starbucks stock and only a few analysts recommended the hold option. None of the analysts said to sell the stock. This means that in the future, the financial performance for Starbucks is estimated to be positive. From the NASDAQ website , we see that the restaurant industry is forecasted to grow at 10.2% while Starbucks is estimated to be a 19.86% earnings growth. This means that Starbucks is performing well above the industry. The price to earnings ratio is consistent with the industry average, at 29.7, according to the NASDAQ website. The consensus earnings forecast is 1.58 for 2015 and 1.89 for 2016. The PEG ratio is 1.63, which means that the price to earnings ratio is greater than the growth rate. This is also consistent with the growth strategy that we analyzed earlier in this paper: it is better for Starbucks to follow a moderate growth pace and concentrate more on product quality.

8. Conclusion

In conclusion, we can see that Starbucks, as the leading firm in the restaurant industry, has a long history, unique sales and operating strategies, high governance standards, strong financial performance. Both the Porter’s Five Forces’ analysis and the SWOT analysis indicated that the firm is in a strong position in the industry. The future financial forecast also suggested that will thrive in the future.

I believe that with the strong brand image, the high market share, and the positive customer experience, even though that Starbucks has seen some negative comments from clients in these couple of years and some fluctuations in the financial statements, it will be able to recover because it is such a strong brand. In some places Starbucks has even become another word for the word “coffee”. I wish a prospective future for this company.

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