#that was awesome i love rose being a complex figure when hes growing up in her shadow and being her legacy

[ironmanstan]

Ill forever be mad ab the pink diamond reveal tho btw

[tumblingxelian]

The Fraught Family Ties of the Rose-Xiao Long Household:

Sorry for the ramble, I wanted to share something born of a discussion I had with someone regarding the canonical relationship on the Rose-Xiao Long sisters & their father figures.

So, I often find Tai (& Qrow) propped up as good father figures who maybe just had some moments of weakness but either got better long before canon or during the show and who are super close with Ruby & Yang with very healthy relationships.

Given possibly my most popular post, (Yang & Ruby's childhood) I don't think this is a universal stance, certainly not these days, and I don't think its well supported in canon either.

This doesn't mean that love isn't there, but love and resentment can live in the same house and the Rose-Xiao Long household is far more complex than I think people give it credit for.

Now, some will probably highlight positive tones and references in the early volumes, but here's the thing. A child growing up around something can get used to a lot. Ruby & Yang are clearly very used to Qrow stumbling home utterly wasted, even carried by strangers and needing to take care of him. This is normal to them and neither show any resentment towards it until on their last nerve.

That is to say, Ruby and Yang are fine with Qrow's drinking and smile through it, riiiight up until they themselves are on the edge of snapping real hard over things such as in V6.

Neither of them express their trauma like say, Jaune does, who tends to be quite open with his resentment and prone to lashing out. The sisters smile through it, they may express frustration or anger at other things, but not their loved one's, which makes it easy to pretend everything is cool and normal.

Hell, keeping things light with humor is explicitly noted to be how Yang copes and Ruby is shown consistently beginning to show sadness before quickly bottling it up up. This is just how they handle negative emotions they cant comfortably express.

Thus, while Ruby expressing frustration at Yang giving Tai like advice in V1 doesn't indicate hostility, nor does her being all smiles around his presence in V3's opening indicate everything is super awesome.

After all, things are good at that moment, but let's take a look at the end of V3.

Tai is clearly worrying and trying to fuss over Ruby. But she is very neutral on the whole thing, mostly just trying to get intel on what the fuck happened from him and not being remotely upset when Qrow makes him leave. She show's a bit more vulnerability around Qrow, but is still very focused on the practical questions of what happened.

Its only when she's alone with Yang, that Ruby really becomes expressive with her emotions and more to the point, shows outright uncertainty in what to do. This leads her to being shocked when Yang is in no fit state t provide her with the guidance and support she clearly craves and expected.

Ruby also specifically addresses her letters to Yang and broadly speaking doesn't really seem to think about Tai all that much. Again I don't think she dislikes him, but given she openly acknowledges Yang as the one who raised her & Yang herself noted she had to keep the family together...

Well, I think that Ruby doesn't really perceive Tai as a parent, strictly speaking. In the sense that I don't believe she views Tai as someone to go to for comfort or advice or guidance.

He's her dad and she loves him, but he's less of an adult to her than Yang was. In that same vein Qrow is a Huntsmen, her mentor and uncle yes, but the former I think inform her behavior with him more than the latter.

Now, let's also compare Tai and Yang's relationship a little.

We know Tai taught her how to fight, but he doesn't show any real understanding of how her Semblance works or her fighting style given she has utilized plenty of blocks, dodges and clever strategies in the first three volumes. What's more him critiquing her for fighting that way and making it her fault when he taught her feels suspect to me.

(I would note it was Yang who realized Ruby needed CQC help before anyone else, so she clearly thought deeply on this stuff.)

But beyond that, we see Yang is heavily isolated, both from how the camera work frames her. But also because she us housed in a guest room and that Tai, while obviously unhappy about what happened overall seems far more focused on Ruby in terms of trying to provide some care. What's more, when she's clearly distressed he walks away and leaves her to stew.

Yang's shown still doing lots of work around the house, despite everything and his efforts to 'help' her are all about getting her back into the fight over worrying for her safety like he did Ruby.

This is a big thing for me, Tai was clearly deeply upset when Qrow wanted to speak to Ruby alone and terrified when she left.

Meanwhile when it comes to 'helping' Yang its all about getting back into the action and going after Ruby. He doesn't seem to mind the idea of sending her into danger.

Then there' show he hypocritically dismisses her trauma and depression while at the same time diminishing her maturity despite him having left her to raise Ruby and keep the family together.

He also makes his help for her conditional on her no longer "Moping" while its her teachers who barely know Yang that provide actually useful guidance on healing.

When alone he also frames 'caring for her' IE letting her live in the house and take care of herself, like its this heavy burden that is keeping him from Ruby.

This is despite the fact he ultimately does not go after Ruby.

You can claim its a budget thing the show we have is the show we have. Thus, he sends her off to parent Ruby instead of himself. Also Tai outright compares Yang to Raven despite them being radically different and honestly Ruby being a lot closer to even the positive traits he ascribed to Raven.

Thus I think there's an element of projection that leads to Ruby being preferences between the two but also Tai having come in too late to really be seen as the parent he wants to be perceived as.

Now, let's look at Qrow.

Both sisters are clearly used to him staggering or being carried home drunk and needing to take care of him, meaning they have been doing this since childhood.

This would have a hugely negative impact on their mental wellbeing and impact how they perceive him.

Beyond that, I am unsure how close he even is to Yang outside the superficial. Some of that may indeed be down to time, but there have been periods where they could have shown a deep bond and its not manifested.

When Yang is framed, her team, two of whom have only know her for a few months and have plenty of trauma that would make them rightly suspicious choose to believe her and sympathize with her.

Qrow meanwhile says she is either lying or crazy and does not express much in the way of real empathy or trust.

Rather than showing an interest in maybe trying to resolve the issue or help her through decides that maybe directing her to Raven might help. He obviously cares, but generally never shows much of the same concern or affection for Yang that he does for Ruby.

Granted even then Qrow requires caretaking from both his nieces.

What's more he often tethers Ruby to Summer. So while his mentorship of her does let her be a little more vulnerable with him than Tai its still an unbalanced relationship.

However outside of that, Qrow's generally fairly good with Ruby and her influence on him seemed to be the primary thing that stopped him drinking. He also shows a great deal of faith in her in general, though how much of that is projection likely varies.

But he mentored Ruby so its natural they are maybe a little closer.

Still, I think Ruby & Yang held Qrow in higher regard, at least as a Huntsmen than their father, there's a lot of baggage to the relationship at a minimum.

I also think Ruby & Yang's lack of communication seen in later volumes is sort of reflective of the families unhealthy dynamics evolving between them.

Yang being forced to raise a sister two years younger than her is already a heavy burden on both of them. Yang from having to step up and fill the roll of an adult as a child & Ruby because no matter how hard Yang tried it as never gonna be perfect but she couldn't exactly complain about it either.

So both just sort of smiled through the pain as they grew and came out fairly functional and happy if carrying a lot of baggage beneath the surface. This is why both respond to grief and trauma in a similar manner, pushing the issues down until they explode or collapse. It was how they got by.

They were also extremely close, for all that Yang talked of Ruby maybe trying to branch out onto other teams, she instantly tried to seek her out in the Emerald Forest, saved her a spot in the auditorium and generally tried to assist and advice her along with expressing great pride in her.

Ruby bore with with a mixed degree of playfulness and teen like annoyance, while still wanting to cling to Yang. She was also very comfortable early on with expressing her concerns around Yang, such as with Blake being so stressed and not knowing what to do about it & seemingly had total faith in Yang's ability to resolve things.

As previously outlined, when Ruby was seeking comfort and guidance after the Fall of Beacon she went to Yang and was shocked when Yang couldn't provide her what she needed and quickly began separating herself, clearly deeply impacted.

Yang remained the center of her homeward focus after that fact and when Yang returned she was able to express vulnerability with her.

Briefly.

However, Yang soon showed that her recovery was not as complete as she wanted to project and again Ruby was at a loss for what to do with a Yang who is upset.

Keep in mind she's entirely capable of comforting a drunk, hung over or otherwise very upset Qrow, but the prospect of comforting Yang leaves her shuffling nervously outside the door while Weiss helps her.

Ruby's perception of Yang seemed to have put her on something of a pedestal in the way a lot of children do their parents where its hard to start seeing them as a person.

& When Ruby did start seeing Yang as a person, her complexes regarding leadership caused her to see Yang as someone who needed protection.

This caused her to freeze Yang out of her issues, we see this with her rejecting Yang's efforts to comfort her in V8, responding instead with sullen silences or sharp emotional jabs to try and make Yang go away.

Yet at the same time, she didn't entirely try to keep the façade up, perhaps in part because she couldn't.

I also think there's a part of her that sort... Expected Yang to know what to do and to say for her even though Ruby has changed as a person and is no longer communicating clearly like she used to.

Which then causes her to resent Yang for not being able to say the right things and provide the right assistance like she did when they were kids. Even though Yang doesn't know how Ruby feels their relationship has changed and can't know with Ruby actively avoiding acting in a manner that would elicit her concern.

Basically, this is an extremely messy family.

It has four actual adults, the most competent of whom martyred herself. One of whom left because she couldn't handle it and two of whom failed when put to the test.

This left the role of grown up in the room to Yang who had to keep the family together and raise her sister. While Ruby had to basically become the least troubled child possible to make this easier on them all.

Raven cutting herself out of their lives and her ties to Yang, while Summer being a beloved martyr seems to have also rippled down to their kids.

With Yang almost being like the black sheep of the family. She's the one they expect to do something immoral or "crazy' and generally expected to take care of herself and Ruby without any kind of acknowledgement or significant assistance.

Meanwhile Ruby is regarded as a sort of proto Summer, this beacon of purity, which leaves Tai over protective but ultimately inactive leaving the task of helping her to Yang. With Qrow expecting the world from her which just applies more pressure.

I do think everyone of them love each other, but I also think there's also a lot of resentment, frustration and projection going on here, with many utter failures of parenting. These ultimately caused the families relationships to never developed into what they should be and are instead leaving them in an odd sort of limbo; with a lot left unsaid and unhealthy.

[lafayetteworld]

Robin 2021

Okay, so it's been a while since I've been actively posting on tumblr, mainly because I haven’t had time. That being said, the commentary I am about to make on the Robin 2021 series is not meant to offend anyone and while I am particularly critical, I also acknowledge that some people genuinely like it/prefer the direction its's going in. And that's fine. But I did want to break down why I feel the current series is just 'meh' to me at the moment and it’s not necessarily because Damian is potentially being shipped with a newly introduced character.

Please be aware, that there are lots of spoilers. 

So, to start off, I am a big fan of the older Batman and Robin (2009) series, where Damian had partnered up first with Dick and later Bruce (2011). I do no think they are flawless, certainly. I think, in particular, the Nobody plot - excluding of course the interactions between Batman!Dick and Robin! Damian which are gold - was very good. In just a handful of issues, I think we were offered a great insight into Damian's character and how layered he is. 

My first thoughts when I heard about Robin 2021, based on the announcement: Damian will follow his own path, for some reason he retains the Robin moniker which is weird but okay, it does seem like something he'd do I suppose. He will participate in mortal kombat-sort-of-tournament, which will showcase his abilities and in the process, 'he will seek his own destiny' (which I believe was a line used in the actual announcement). The reason he wants to win? Initially, it appeared to be only because he wanted to prove to be the world's best fighter -- which by the way, how is only a tournament of this level only coming up now? Anyways, ignored that. Not a big deal. The idea of watching Damian fight different opponents was appealing either way.

The art of those comics is perhaps nowhere as striking/appealing as Robin 2021 and there's certainly not as many elements to it, but there was just something about it. I stopped reading comics after, for reasons I can't recall but I do remember finding out that Damian was killed off sometime after. I was super heartbroken over it but luckily I found out about it right around the time DC decided to bring him so really I had to wait a short while to see the little shit being Robin again.

I am not as familiar with the arc on Alfred's death but I know Damian watched what was basically his grandfather figure die in front of his eyes. How it was addressed after was rather poorly and that's a discussion for another time, just as it is that hot mess of Gleason's Titans.

 My hopes may have been too high in thinking we will be offered the introspection we'd seen in Batman and Robin, or him deciding what type of vigilante he wants to be. Like who remembers Damian admitting 'sometimes I don't know who I am or what I want' or him saying he does not wish to be like Nobody. That was so poignant.  

First issue of Robin 2021 was a disappointment. I know that there's a lot of damage to the character that had to be addressed but why did he die from like the beginning? Why is it the first thing we see is the author's OC defeat him? I mean, we really didn't need that to find the tournament's rules. Anyway, I was so sold on the art that I could have overlooked all that, except then the art became inconsistent so.....

Do I think Flatline's design is awesome? Yep. Do I like that she is potentially a badass female fighter? Sure. Do I like her abilities? Somewhat? They haven't been explored that much. But to me, having an OC appear out of nowhere and kill the character I was hoping to watch mature/develop is a bit underwhelming. Then, we start getting references of how poetic it is that Damian may fall in love with the first girl that kills him. I thought it was funny at the beginning but subsequent issues only seem to point that actually, the author does want to use Flatline/romance in this journey of growth that Damian is undergoing. I mean, we really shouldn't be romanticizing that she killed him? The girl is serious about winning too. That she caught him off guard is actually rather awesome but I don't think it had to mean anything more than Damian meeting a potentially dangerous fighter and that he needs to be less reckless.

Damian is a pretty complex/difficult character with a lot to figure out. Why does he need a girlfriend? Why can't he have friends that helps him grow or mentor figures? Him and Rose have such a great dynamic, for example.

I see a lot of people saying 'well, he's a teenager boy so it's normal'. Yeah of course it is. But why can't it be the opposite? Damian isn't a normal teenager. Out there, may be teenagers who feel the same. They don’t care about this stuff. 

It is so frustrating, and underwhelming. Not because there's anything wrong with Damian having a crush. Not because there's necessarily anything wrong with Flatline. But because there's no need.

Why is it just because he's a teenager he has to have a romantic interest? If romance is introduced in a plot, surely it doesn't have to be just because 'he's a teenager'. And if he does, why does it have to be an OC that hasn't been explored very well? Flatline could be a seriously cool character without needing to be a romantic interest for Damian and vice versa, Damian has so much to figure out on his own. So for me it's not the shipping that’s an issue, it’s the reasoning and how it may perpetuate clichés when there’s other angles that could be explored. 

Also, why the hell is Alfred used to drive Flatline's likeability? If Alfred is Damian's guilt manifesting, then that's actually Damian thinking that?

'I like this one, Master Damian.'

Seriously. I really hope we end up finding out that was tied in with Flatline's ability or something. So, Williamson won't explore Damian's guilt over Alfred but he'll give us a panel where Alfred (or a manifestation of him) is basically giving his thumbs up for his OC. That doesn’t sit well with me. Not so early in the series, anyway. 

Why is this whole manga thing keep coming back? Yes, Damian reads manga. I loved this addition and I think it's great that Williamson actually brought it in. The fact that it was Flatline who found it seems cliché. And no, I don't think it's a parallel between the shojo manga characters and them two. I really hope that particular manga has a deeper meaning than that. The fact that we keep seeing the blood sprayed (or is it cuts? not sure) on it does seem to hint at that.

There were some good moments. Damian and Dick. Basically every single interaction between Damian and Ravager. The whole Damian and Conner could have been developed better, because it seemed rather sudden they had a heart to heart when Damian can be such a distrusting little shit. Damian reuniting with Goliath.

Why is it that we're five issues into this series and it's all over the place? I don't dislike it. The art is great, although there's so many inconsistencies. But it's been super hard to feel in any way about it other than just 'meh'.

Issue #6 was boring. I didn't mind Flatline and Damian analysing other fighters, it was interesting actually, but that it's still being framed as heading towards a romantic relationship is so.....well, eugh.

Overall, I just don't feel there's enough...substance? Damian does interact with a wide variety of characters and there are a lot of things going on - batfamily searching for him, Ra’s Al Ghul (which was funny yet so odd the way he was characterized), the whole tournament and magic island, so on.

Flatline is not the issue for me, but rather one part of why the series has not managed to appeal to me. I do feel there's a bit too much of her. Or rather, there's not enough of her as a character and too much of the whole 'they're teenagers so they'll have to end up having a crush on one another because he's a boy and she's a girl who literally stole his heart'. Like, I wouldn’t mind having Flatline or other fighters background explored, just to see the types of people they are and so on. 

I wish there'd more of Damian's inner thoughts too. If not that, then give us more fights. Not just snippets. It's a tournament. Let's see how badass they all are. Damian’s fight scenes in #6 were beautiful but brief. I hope the next issues will give us more of that.  As someone who does like Damian x OC fics, I can’t blame the author for wanting to hype their own OC, but I am also a great fan of friends to lovers, slow burns, friendships can be just as great as romantic relationships, of taking the time for mental/emotional growth. 

Anyways, if you've made it to the end of this commentary, I applaud you. Once again, if you do like the whole Damian x Flatline thing, that's cool. I don't, but I do understand to an extent why people find it appealing. And if you think the Robin 2021 series is amazing, then I am happy for you -- I wish I could be this enthusiastic about it.

P.S just saw the cover for issue #7 or is it #8 ? I think I may cry.

[rosereview]

Favourite Webtoons Part 2

Okay so since the first part didn’t have every single one that I loved, I decided to make another part and I’m sure I’ll do more in the future. So here again are my favourite Webtoons and if you’re interested in more, here is my part 1 of the list. 

KillMax by Kennycomics & SilentMaru

KillMax has such a cool concept and beautiful visuals that I instantly loved it. Sadly it was slow going for the creators getting pages out and now they are on hiatus getting ready for season 3, but I really think it is worth the read. It was hard to remember certain things because of the large gaps between getting pages out but I reread it multiple times and that in itself was very enjoyable so I do recommend. It’s about a witch girl who gets famous on the internet which grabs the attention of witch hunters and I love the badass-ness of the main female character and also male lead as well. So if you like strong female characters, then definitely give this a read because you will not be disappointed. 

Siren’s Lament by instantmiso

This was the first completed Webtoon I’ve read and I loved it so much it’s crazy. The only problem is that I am so sad it’s done! I wish I had more because I loved the characters so much and the art style is so beautiful (like all of the Webtoons I’ve talked about so far). This story is a romance with a love triangle where somehow you are always rooting for all three of them to be together because as a group they are just absolutely adorable. The concept is that the main lead is turned into a siren but only gets half of the “curse” from the siren guy she kissed so they have to figure out why it happened that way. The whole plot was beautifully done and like I already said, all of the characters are so likeable and all of their relationships are adorable but still complex, so I highly recommend. 

To Love Your Enemy by Jungyoon & Taegeon

This one I recently started and it is very cute and fun to read. I don’t think it’s my favourite Webtoon ever, but it updates twice a week which is wonderful, and the beginning for me was very solid. It’s also a romance with the trope of fake relationship + hate to love, and I think that was my favourite part— the two characters falling in love with each other. But now that the story has progressed so much I don’t really know how I feel about the whole romance aspect of it. I think now it’s just that I’m anxious for the characters because (SPOILER, although it’s a romance so not really a spoiler because we all know what happens) they are together and I want them to stay together. Once romances get to the point of the two leads getting together, the next big storylines and plot points are the drama of them trying to stay together and that’s a little nerve racking further in this Webtoon. But I still do enjoy it very much. Also forgot to say what it’s about, but it’s about a girl that worked in a pyramid scheme (I think) finally gets out of it and goes to university where a guy there knows who she is and hates her for what she’s done, but then she starts a rumor that they’re together and it goes from there. 

Men of the Harem by Alphatart & Yeongbin

Another one that I started recently and which doesn’t actually have a lot of pages out is Men of the Harem, which I am loving so much! This one was recently started so a lot of the story foundation is still being made and the real drama hasn’t started yet, but the potential for this story is very promising. It’s a fantasy that has our lead becoming the Emperor for her kingdom and she surprises everyone by wanting to create a harem of men instead of being a normal female emperor and having only one male consort. Honestly I just love that concept in and of itself and the story so far has been delivering in the best way possible. I love that we have a strong female ruler that breaks the rules of being the stereotypical girl and makes the power move of having her own harem. So if you’re into that then you’ll love this Webtoon.

The Advanced Player of the Tutorial Tower by Bangguseok Gimssi & Omagam

This one was also started recently so there aren't many pages out but it is really good so far. It’s about our modern world being overrun by monsters and people have to start fighting them to stay alive. But there is also this tower that randomly selects people to complete it where they either die or defeat all the monsters inside alive and become monster fighters/hunters in the real world to protect the normal citizens. There is a lot more to it than that but that’s the bare bones, and the main character was put into the tower when it first appeared and completed it but was never let out until 12 years later, so he’s now the most powerful monster hunter guy in the world. I love having a main character that is all powerful because I always love seeing the bad guys underestimate them and then get destroyed because they’re so cocky. So if you like action (and I think this is actually the only non-romance Webtoon on either of my lists) then you’ll love this one. 

The Remarried Empress by Alphatart & Sumpul

Another strong female lead in a patriarchal fantasy setting with romance and drama created by the same creator as Men of the Harem. This one updates twice a week and is so good it’s crazy! The main character is the Empress of this kingdom because she had an arranged marriage with the Emperor, but they were always good friends growing up so it’s supposed to be all good. But then dummy Emperor dude goes out and gets himself a stupid mistress who ruins everyone’s day and who has an agenda of her own. This one does get you really angry at certain characters but you also fall in love with the lead so much it’s worth it. Also her new love interest is absolutely great, so read it for that reason too! But yeah, if you like fantasy, fantasy politics, drama, romance, and magic then check this one out. 

Unholy Blood by Lina Im & Jeonghyeon Kim

The last one I want to mention is this one, Unholy Blood, which is a vampire Webtoon that is such well developed plot/world building-wise that I think it’s worth it just for that reason. The main character lives in a world where there is a vampire disease that is running wild in the form of crazy vampires turning humans and killing them on the streets. Because of that the world lives in fear with a curfew and the police are doing all they can to destroy the vampires, but they have their claws in every part of society. The main character has some traumatic stuff happen to her which makes her have to go find all these evil vampires responsible and kill them. It’s very action packed with a tiny bit of romance later on, but like I mentioned already, it’s the whole world, concept, and plot that makes me love it coupled with awesome badass characters as well. 

The concludes my second list of recommendations and favourite Webtoons. I hope some of these interest people and make them want to read them or just get on the Webtoon app and check out some other stuff because these creators really deserve the support. 

Until next time!

~Rose Reviews

[justjessame]

Starting Over Chapter 33

Waking up in Bucky’s arms was something that I truly wanted to get used to - And the way he was grabbing me a little tighter as he woke up, snuggling deeper into my neck and shoulder, kissing his way to full wakefulness, I had a feeling he was all in.  

“Morning,” I murmured as his kisses grew less drowsy and more hungry.  Biting my lip, my back arched so I met his heat, and then I was rolling over my hands searching for his neck as our lips were meeting - magnets, tongues tasting one another and I really liked our new normal. 

Bucky’s teeth nipped at my lower lip as he slid into my warmth, giving me the freedom to make those noises that he’d told me he loved hearing.  He didn’t need to help my legs find purchase around his hips, his left hand was planted on the mattress beside my head while his right was sliding through my hair.  

“I won’t break,” I promised, reminding him that he could control it, that he had before - that the bruises that came weren’t unwanted or unmanageable.  

A small shift and his left hand was on my hip, holding me steady as the tempo took on a less leisurely pace.  His mouth returned to mine, and then he rolled, putting me above him - his idea of a compromise, but I rocked against him and he growled, making me smile against his lips.  Both of his hands slid up my body, along my sides and then, skin and metal, both were cupping my breasts and I broke our kiss as I gasped at the duality of it.  Our eyes met and I watched as he finally seemed to grasp it - that I loved ALL of him.  He shifted and my back met our mattress and our lips were pressed together as his hands, both of them, slid down my body to move my legs back into place around his hips.  And then they rose along my body again, and I felt certain, as we moved together - that Bucky understood that I wanted ALL of him all the time.  

Breakfast was - different.  When we were in Louisiana we ate at the diner, well we did when we managed to get out of bed in time.  We’d only had breakfast once before he’d gone off to be a hero before that - So this was a different situation for us.

“Sit,” he pushed me toward my kitchen table and I raised an eyebrow.  “Please?” He softened it with a kiss on my nose and holding out my chair.  

“Are you actually planning on cooking breakfast or are you just going to hand me leftovers from Romeo’s?”  I asked, watching as he walked back to the fridge in his t-shirt and boxers.  “I’m fine with either, by the way, I just want to know what to expect.”  I didn’t want to give Bucky a complex, hell half the time I ate leftover whatever for breakfast.  

“Hush,” he shot me a look over his shoulder and I contemplated telling him to forget breakfast, I’d rather just have another order of him, heavy on the protein. Dear GOD, what was he MADE of?  I watched as he took stock of my fridge’s contents.  “I think you have everything I need -” He started pulling out stuff, carton of eggs, milk, cheese, some veggies that I fucking hoped were still edible - “Where do you keep your bread?”  

“If it’s still good?”  I pointed to the breadbox.  He nodded.  “There should be some English muffins in the pull out drawer in the -” he went back to the fridge and gave a little woot of excitement.  “The butter is in there too.” I added helpfully.  I watched him pull both out.  “I’m guessing we’re having an omelet?”  

He hummed, moving with more confidence through OUR kitchen now that he saw that I was at ease with him using it.  He found a frying pan, a spatula, a whisk, a knife - which he did a flip with that made my clean panties grow slightly damp doing - a bowl.  I watched as he worked, thinking that he moved like a dancer, silent, but also effortlessly.  He had the omelet going to almost finished before he popped our English muffins in the toaster.  He knew what he was doing, I’d give him that.  

“Should I ask how you know how to do this?”  I asked, moving over to wrap my arms around him from the back and pressing my cheek against his spine.  

His hands covered mine and I heard his contented sigh because my ear was so close to his skin.  “It’s not really classified information, Brooke.”  I chuckled.  “Omelets, toast?”  He shrugged.  “Everyone’s gotta eat, right?”  

I nodded, snuggling into him, breathing him in.  “Yeah, but it’s not fair if you’re good at EVERYTHING, Bucky Barnes.”  That got him laughing.  “I’m sure you’re going to say Steve would tell me ALL the things you’re NOT good at, but he’s not here, and Sam is not really unbiased.”  

“Guess not,” his hands moved and I knew he was flipping our breakfast.  “Gonna let me go so we can eat?”

“No,” I murmured.  “But I’ll unwrap my arms while we eat.”  

First of all, Bucky Barnes can freaking COOK.  Who knew? Well I do NOW.  That omelet was amazing and I seriously considered forcing the cooking duties on him from that moment on, but then I thought that would be a shitty thing to do - so breakfast was his from that moment on when he was home - because I think we both knew that he’d eventually be called back to duty.

Second of all, we had a reprieve from Connie, but that wasn’t gonna last forever. In fact, it barely lasted a full 24 hours once I got to our house.  We finished breakfast and my cell phone gave the alert that I had a text, then it rang because she has all the chill of a house on fire.  

“Hello, Connie,” I had her on speaker and I knew she knew it.  “I haven’t read your text yet, so let’s hear it.”

“Just checking to see if you two are doing -” she sounded like she wanted gory details of how the two of us were doing, had done, would be doing soon, and if there was a video just in case my memory was lacking.  “Oh -” I heard Joey’s voice in the background, squinting I wondered what fucking time it was.  “Joey wanted me to ask, before he runs out to work, do you guys wanna come over tonight for a tiny get together?”  

“Tiny?” My eyes were narrowed at the phone and Bucky’s were wide.  “How tiny, Connie?”  

“Oh, you know, just some of the old crowd.” She was being a little too vague for me.  “We’re so excited that you’re being more social that we wanted to celebrate.”  I looked up at Bucky and he was grinning. 

“And I’m sure it has NOTHING to do with one Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes moving in with me, right?”  Bucky looked like he might end up cracking a rib soon from holding back his mirth, go figure.  “Why don’t you ask HIM if he wants to attend this ‘tiny get together’, Connie?” 

The phone went so silent I had to check to see if Connie had disconnected our little chat.  I could see the seconds ticking by that proved she was still on the call - biting my lip I shared a look with Bucky.  

“Do I get an invite?”  Bucky had joined me at the counter, having loaded the dishwasher with our breakfast dishes, and clearly wanting to poke at my best friend as much as I did.  “Or is this an ‘old gang only’ kind of shindig?”  

His arms went around me and he was staring down at me, lips quirked in a grin that I mirrored as we waited for Connie to regain her ability to speak.  “No,” I snorted and Connie groaned.  “I mean, it’s not just an old gang thing - fu-” I heard her cover the phone with her hand and I knew she was promising her little mafia shakedown princess to put some cash in the swear jar after nearly dropping the f-bomb.  “Yeah, Bucky, of course you’re invited.” Connie came back on the line and ALMOST sounded normal - almost.  “I mean, if you’re not busy - doing Avenger type things.” Her voice faded toward the end and I swear both Bucky and I could FEEL her burning blush from her house.  

“Wow, yeah,” Bucky’s laugh lines were in full force around his eyes and his teeth gleamed in a full grin.  “Sounds great, Connie.”  I shook my head, I’d rather eat paint.  “We’ll be there.”  

I rolled my eyes, but he convinced me with a soft kiss.  Fine, I’d give in graciously - for HIM.  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I murmured when I pulled back.  “I guess we’ll be there.”  

Connie gave an ungodly squeal and I considered a pitstop by the church to ask if the priest would come with - just in case she needed an exorcism.  “Awesome!  You’re gonna have so much fun seeing everyone - AND meeting everyone, Bucky!” She started talking a mile a minute and I felt my head spinning while I tried to keep up.  Jesus.  I finally cut in to remind her that Bucky still had to unpack and I had to - well I had to do THINGS.  “Right, of course - Just come around 6, ok?”  I assured her we would and then told her I loved her, while doubting the force of my affection as I hung up.  

“She’s excited to have you back,” Bucky soothed, seeing how exhausted I felt after the call.  “Steve was like that too - sort of.”  He squinted, thinking back.  

“Yeah, I have a feeling that he was a little less bouncy while he had you locked down in that vise, Buck.”  He chuckled.  “But, since we are now being forced to spend the evening with my -” I swallowed hard.  “There is something I want to show you BEFORE you unpack.”  

He looked down at me with curiosity, but also trust.  Good, because what I was going to show him wasn’t BAD.  Grabbing the keys to the shed, I pulled him out the backdoor.  “You got something creepy in your shed, Brooke?”  He was teasing, but I wanted to show him the car - and I also wanted to offer him something else.

[bi-lullaby]

I loved your last rankings so much that I'm sending you another fun (?!) challenge! How would you rate all these male GA characters from your favorite to least favorite, no ties allowed? :) Alex, Derek, Richard, Mark, Owen, Jackson, Burke, George, Andrew, Linc and Ben? Good luck, and as always, feel free to include your reasons why because I love your answers!

Ohhh boy you give me life with those asks! Here we go:

1 - As no surprise to anyone: Alex. My baby had the best character development I’ve ever seen, really, brcaus ewhile it was huge, it was also paced and believable and stabilished and non-linear. He was a huge asshole with a concealed heart of gold in season one. In season 15, he’s a golden boy with a concealed asshole side, and the growth/diminishment of those sides weren’t always inversely proportionate, but adjusted to what each characteristic was brought out more by his surroundings/worked more on by himself. Also, he’s the person that has stuck with mer for the longest and through the most, which would put him in a high place in this list even if he wasn’t my favorite on his own. I also adore how, thematically, he’s so moved by the women in his life (bot just the romantic i terests while we are at it) for the betterment of himself and hsi ways. It’s not like Owen’s “I’ll need her to take care of me emptionally and shape herself to my desires so I can be in a good place, it’s recognizing those positive influences in his life and trying to emulate them/work with them/learn from them. Also about his theme, itms less the worn-out “guy is validated in being an asshole bc he had a tough life” and more “guy learns that his tough life doesn’t mean he gotta act like an asshole”. I love this character so much, ugh.

2 - Ben. A freaking Disney prince would be a sleeazy douche in comparison. I was so weirded out when Shobda decided to give so much focus to this random-ass character, then I was really turned off by his storyline with the cutting people open and all that (not necessarily because I thought he was wrong, I just felt the storyline was handled awkwardly and made him sound pelutant and irresponsible instead of a promissing, if stubborn, future surgeon. I’ve yet to watch Station 19, but this angel with a scalpel and a fire hose for wings deserves his own goddamn spin-off, for sure.

3 - My baby Andrew. Yeah, he is not that developed, has been inconsistent, his change from “freaking out over Maggie being his boss” to “marvellung at Meredith’s every movie even though she’s kinda even more his boss because she owns the hospital” was... A B R U P T. But I really enjoy this new Andrew - as a side note: I could not care less for him during the whole Sam storyline, he seemed like a toned down Jonhy Bravo - He’s smart and sweet and funny and worships Mer like the Wonder Woman she is. His relationships with Arizona, Amelia, Jo, Carina and now Alex need more screentime because they’re great (or have the potential to be so). He’s competent and brilliant and selfless (dropping the charges on Alex even if he was completely in the right, taking the blame for mer now) and so tender (his absolute gentleness in peds, taking care of Amy after the operation, being a moody, emotive boy because he lost his love instead of a macho men...). The future holds great things for him, and I’m excited to watch them unfold!

4 - Not on your list but I love: Tom. Boy is he nice. As I was figuring out this order, I realized he reminds me a lot of my favorite character (Dean Winchester) - or at least what I think Dean would be if he was older, richer and lived without the Supernatural World and so many traumas. His talk to April was so moving and I felt it really helped. He doesn’t stand on a moral high horse: He does what he thinks is right and damned be judgment. He’s empathetic, he’s romantic, he treats Teddy RIGHT. He deserves to have his own storyline and be more developed and show us kore of his awesomeness.

5 - Jackson. As I said in my ships rating answer, I’ve only started to care for him recently, but I really do care. He’s not a character I’d, like, write fic about, or long rants and meta, but I love his sibling-esque relationship with Mer and his relationship with Maggie and the way he connects with his mom and how this spoiled, immature transfer with something to prove became a respected, innovative surgeon and father who’s secure of himself and ready to explore different paths and ways and worldviews. I just wish him, and the Grey’s fandom, would be less defensive about the callout of his privileged life. Like. I’ve seen people write paragraphs upon paragraphs about how Maggie was a bitch for calling him privileged. And he is (for his hoards upon hoards of money growing up). That’s not too hard a concept to grasp. Plus, it’d be nice if he could treat Maggie as less of a consolation prize/second chance. Just because faith (or lack thereof) was a source of tension in his previous marriage, and he feels like changing that would have made everything better, doesn’t mean the same applies to his current relationship, or that Maggie is the one who should change -he learned, learned, and is back in square one seeing only his side of it - I really hope this season treats him more kindly and gives him happiness and peace!

6 - Richard. I love him for his parental-and-ish relationships, specially to Maggie, Mer and Jackson, but to Bailey and Callie too. That’s my favorite aspect of him, watching those gives me a nice, warm feeling in my tummy and puts a smile on my face. There’s some aspects of him I find either boring or unpleasant, and I think it’s kinda annoying how him retiring has been a theme/conflict since, like, season one, and fast-foward ten years and he’s basically an entity at the hospital. Like? What? Was the point? You’ve waisted my time? For nothing? But he’s a solid, reliable character you can’t really hate and who brings more good than bad to the show by far. As a side note: one day I will yell at him for his treatment of Maggie after she talked about HER OWN HISTORY and he basically called her a mistake (although he apologized pretty soon and she forgave him so so will I).

7 - Mark. He was great and all that, but never sparked that love some characters did. I was sad when he died, I loved his scenes and relationships, I just am not invested in him. Plus the immaturity in his relationship with Lexie pisses me off a bit, as does his “man whore” personality.

8 - Link. Genuinely love him, he’s been nothing but sweet and kind and fun and helpful this entire time! I cheered for Merlink sooooo much imat first, and I really wish their friendship will be developed! Him and Jo are everything I never knew I needed. He has no arguable flaws besides being so sculped it freaks me out a little bit, but he isn’t higher up in my rank because there isn’t much material for that yet, but expect a climb as he becomes more and more regular.

9 - Burke. He was kinda sweet and did a good thing for Cristina (the hospital). He was also manipulative and arrogant and voundary-crossing in their relationship. I might like him better if it was bot for Burktina, but we will never know.

10 - Owen. Toxic as fuck, annoying, controlling, disgusting. Those are all things that very much apply to Owen in a lot of situations. Screaming at Cristina for “murdering their baby”? YIKES. Big no no. He was not suited for romantic relationships at all and I wish the show would realize that and allow him that space and breathing time without being stuck in a complicated relationship with loads of baggage or a love triangle. Because that’s my whole thing about him: I believe he has room for growth. His relationship with April is pretty amazing, he was always so considerate and gentle with her, all the time, and I want to see more of that bond. He loves kids and can be really good with them, he has a lot of things to work out with the traumas of his father’s death + war + his sister’s story. Why not focus on that? Why not show him growing and processing and bettering himself and living up to the potential he has? I feel like they gave the all the wrong romantic storylines to the character who’s otherwise really good and that’s such a shame because I really enjoyed him at first. Lets see what happens from now on, and if he gets a dose of tv’s “heterosexual love and a nuclear biological family solve everything!” medicine or if this is a turning point for him.

11 - Derek. He never really had any appeal to me. Not his face, not his personality, not his storylines or plot points pr the actor. That’s reason enough for him to rank low, but I also think he had some really bad traits. He was arrogant and condescending and had a God complex and was sexist and pushy and just not great for the people around him. Exploiting Amy’s addiction being outed to steal surgeries? Refusing to give Mer credit on their clinic trial? Putting ultimatums on his girlfriend that she either has to be ready for a full, committed relationship or end things, then call her a slut when she sleeps with other guys after they broke up? Cheating on Addison after deciding to work things out? Stringing mer and addie along? Not saying he was married in the first place? Pushing Mer’s boundaries after she was clearly uncomfortable with having slept with her boss? Refusing to have an inch of empathy for Mer’s action regarding the trial despite her complicated history with the people she was trying to help (who were her friends, actually?)? Telling his depressed girlfriend that she should be concerned the happiest part of his day was flirting with another girl from the bar? Ratting out on Richard to the board because he wanted the spot? Not acknowledging Mer’s trauma after the shooting? Kissing nurse Rose while building the dream house? Kissing his student while being married in NY? Pushing his wife to move and saying his career was more important than his after he had compromised on letting her shine? All things that, isolated, can even be understood on context and “everyone makes mistakes”, but that when put together, make it pretty clear it’s a pattern of someone with very little regard to the people around him. Was he a good surgeon? Yeah. Great father as well. He also had some interesting relationships and iconic scenes, truly, I can recognize that. I hurt for the people he loved and left behind (and I genuinely think he loved them and meant well), but he himself I don’t miss at all.

12 - I think George is the clearest contrast between how old greys handled matters of sexism and gender and sexuality and how it does now. He was such a sleazy nice guy at times, it is unbearable to me. And he ranks lower than Derek because A) His relationships also bored me while Derek’s could pique my interest at times, B) There’s no talk about his mistakes. Remember when he (in his own words) took advantage of Meredith being on a terrible, delicate, vulnerable place (still hiding her mother’s Alzheimer’s and seeing a person be blown to pieces and being dumped by who she thought was the one and being rejected by her father for the second time after seeing him for the first time in tweenty years) and, knowing that she was not interested in him, pursued her, then after she started crying because of the literal pile of shit she was having to carry around (and still trying to preserve his feelings), got mad at her and everyone sided with him? It baffled younger me to bits that what Mer had “done” was so terrible, it has not stoped bafflinn me in the years that have passed since. Can you imagine any of the girls crying during sex because they’re so overwhelmed and feel like that’s a mistake, and the guy freaks out on them and they’re instantly ostracized by the narrative and characters? That’s essentially criticizing her for the right of saying no, of stopping when she doesn’t want to continue, of not giving away her time and feels just because a goofy guy who is her friend feels entitled to them. That’s the word: entitled. He literally says he “saw her first”. How’s that not Nice Guy 101? I would understand his ego being bruised, but the guilt tripping and the bitching and the fact none of that is treated as a fucking creepy thing? Yikes. Also how he treated Callie, who deserved so, so much better. And even Olivia who was perfectly lovely and did nothing wrong besides having sex with more than one guy without breaking either of their trusts because she wasn’t in a relationship with any of them. Did he do some good things? Sure did! Joey’s surgery costs being cut, helping Bailey give birth, some of his interactions with patients were really sweet, and he died giving his life for someone else. It’s just that consequence-less sexism and entitlement that never gets adressed and gets treated as not only valid, but right, that makes him go rom unappealing to downright hated for me. Better left in the past where people can misplacedly idolize him!

Thank you so much for asking, I love those thought-inspiring asks! <3

[bulmavegotaku]

Tropical Island- FYDL Cool for the Summer Day 1

Darcy was antsy.

Partly, it was because the trip in the jet had been wrong. It was too silent, too still. Yay for the advances in modern technology, but to Darcy travel meant loud noises and strange and sudden vibrations, and obnoxious people with children spreading their trouble and misery around to everyone.  This was not that.

It might also have had something to do with the fact that Jane had kept a death grip on Darcy’s hand the whole time. Not because Jane had a fear of flying, or was hung up on the same qualms that her assistant/Intern/Best Friend Forever was suffering from. No, Jane’s pincer-like gasp of Darcy’s fingers had more to do with the fact that she had watched Darcy turn to dust, back in the Very Bad Time. Since the Avenger’s and crew had defeated Thanos and Fixed All the Things, Jane had stuck by her side, touching and checking on Darcy with  a frequency and a ferociousness that was sort of endearing, but also growing old.

She got it. She did. If the roles had been reversed and Darcy had had to watch Jane crumble to dust… well. She wasn’t sure she could have kept it together and worked to save the day, the way Jane had. Without Jane, she wouldn’t be there at all. None of the dusty ones would be.

Squeezing her friend’s hand, Darcy tried to convey all the gratitude she felt. Gratitude for Jane the Brain and her brilliant !Science, which helped bring them all back, gratitude for Jane insisting that Darcy be whisked away with her when the media frenzy had turned manic and dangerous, gratitude for Jane caring about her so much and wanting to make sure she was still there, still alive…

It was silly to be feeling so anxious, when she was getting an all-expenses paid, extended vacation to where ever the Avengers and Friends were hiding out and recovering from their epic Space crusade. If anyone deserved a little peace and quiet, it was the people who had saved the world, hell, the universe!

She was lucky to be here. In all senses of the word here.

There was a quiet hiss and then the smallest of bumps, more felt than heard, and then the back of the jet cracked open, spilling brilliant, blinding sunlight onto Jane and Darcy.

“We’re here!” called a friendly voice from the cockpit, as the clinking of metal restraints being released heralded the appearance of a cheerfully grinning Hawkeye. He’d been the one to retrieve them from the roof of the apartment complex where they’d been trapped by a horde of people demanding answers about the return of the people that had been dust in the wind for so many years.

Darcy undid her own belt and stood to stretch, relieved to have an excuse to get her hand back. “Where’s here, exactly?” she asked, having been kept in the dark on this very secret, very hush-hush, very need to know only escape attempt.

The ramp finished lowering at exactly the right moment and Hawkeye, (“Just call me Clint”), gave a well-timed flourish. “Welcome to Paradise, ladies.”

They had landed on a large cement pad, surrounded by lush jungle and verdant wildlife. Through the tops of the trees, Darcy could see the tips of roof-tops for what could be an entire village of villas. Down a small hill off to the left she could see white sand and the reflection of light off of water that appeared crystalline blue and green. There was a flash of movement and she looked up in time to see the last flickers of refraction as a shield dome filled back into place over what Darcy surmised was the entire island, if it was in fact, an island.

“Dude. I didn’t pack my suit,” she moaned and heard Clint chuckle as he pushed past her, carrying their meager luggage.

“Stark was pushing for nude beaches,” he tossed back over his shoulder, “but luckily Pepper won that argument and made sure to have plenty of clothing and equipment options for all the refugees. She’ll get you kitted out.”

The two women stood, looking mildly stunned as he marched off with their things, following a stone paved path toward the buildings in the distance.

“Wait!” Jane lurched after him, her stupor broken first. “Equipment? Does that mean there’s a lab set up here?”

Clint laughed again. “Sure, Doc.”

Darcy watched them vanish into the down a path to the right, and then turned to take the path towards what she thought would be the beach. She needed a moment to process, and the lure of the waves she could here thrumming quietly in the distance was mesmerizing.

It was a short walk, maybe a hundred yards or so through densely packed groves of coconut and banana trees with fruit hanging overhead, looking ripe and like the perfect excuse for her homemade piña coladas, and then she broke through the tree line onto the beach proper. It was like something from a scenic beaches calendar. For a moment she was afraid she’d fallen asleep on the jet ride and was dreaming this kind of perfection.

She stripped off her boots and socks and rolled up her jeans as far as they would go. The air was warm and humid, but there was enough of a breeze coming up off the water that it didn’t feel stifling. Scrunching her toes into the sand as she walked towards the water, Darcy felt all her earlier anxiety fall away.

This was so awesome! This was utterly and completely amazing! This was-

Definitely a Dream.

As if the scenery couldn’t get any better, Darcy felt her eyes widen about six sizes as a figure rose from the water in front of her. Dripping and golden, and rippling with the kind of muscles that typically needed airbrush assistance to make real, Captain America lifted his head above the waves and shook out his hair as he started stalking purposefully out of the water and onto the beach.

“Holy shit,” Darcy whispered and dropped her boots as she lost all finger strength.  “This isn’t real. I’m asleep and drooling on Jane’s shoulder right now.”

The Captain caught sight of her then and his steps faltered. She raised a hand and gave him a small, self-conscious wave. After looking her up and down briefly, he finished his trek to the spot where his towel and things were laid out in the sand. He grabbed the towel and quickly rubbed himself down before looping it around his shoulders and walking over to where Darcy stood, still gaping and staring like a giant weirdo.

“Hello, I don’t think we’ve met. You are?” he asked politely, extending a freshly dried hand in her direction.

“Oh, uh…” Darcy stammered and then closed her eyes, forcing her brain to restart and her verbal skills to return in time to make a mostly coherent reply. “I’m Lewis. Darcy Lewis. Dr. Foster’s assistant.” Her hand was small in his as they shook, the coolness of the water still on his skin making her have to fight down a shiver.

“Clint’s back, then?” he asked, recognition and relief evident of his features as his careful suspicious melted away.

“Just now. He took Janey up to show her the new digs. She was particularly pleased to hear about the possibility of science,” Darcy informed the glistening Hero, jabbering away to cover how surreal and up-heaved this whole situation was making her feel.

The guy nodded, pulling his hand back. “I know the type,” he muttered, giving her half a wry smile. “Not you though?”

“Me?” she sputtered. “Nah, I just wanted to take in the view before getting settled.” Cringing inwardly at how suggestive that sounded she gestured towards the water and made a concentrated effort not to stare at the glorious man nipples perking at her at just about eye level. “I’ve always loved the ocean,” she added, sort of lamely.

Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice her awkwardness, or at least he wasn’t acknowledging it. He just turned to look back at the water and nodded again.

“Yeah. Me, too,” he said with a contented sigh.

They stood in silence, companionable and still as they both gazed at the sparkling water and frothy white waves as they curled and crested towards them.

Paradise indeed, Darcy thought.

She could get used to this.

[janephillipsblog]

One Yellow Rabbit’s 33rd Annual High Performance Rodeo

This year I decided to sign up as a volunteer, mostly as an usher, for the High Performance Rodeo which is a three week long international theatre festival, hosted by One Yellow Rabbit. I takes place here in Calgary every January and this year it was the 33rd year. I signed up for a lot of shows right away as the spots fill up fast.

Just before the festival began, I attended a volunteer session. Though I was late (my acting class ran over time), it was great as they went over all the shows (I found more that I wanted to see – somehow I had missed that Scott Thompson of Kids in the Hall was part of the line up), gave out door prizes (I was not lucky that day) and there were complimentary drinks and snacks (including wine and beer).

My first usher shift was on the second day of the festival, January 10, and was for Pearle Harbour’s Chautauqua. It was sold out, so I almost did not get to see the show, but in the end there was room for the volunteers. Billed as “Part Cabaret, Part Tent Revival, All Drag”, this show was a unique, intimate and interactive experience created and performed by Justin Miller as Pearle Harbour, an all-American gal and World War II stewardess. I loved its originality and the pace of the show kept the audience engaged throughout. I was so engaged that when I left the tent, I forgot I was an usher with a duty to pick up empty cups around the seats. Oops!  

My second usher shift was on January 11 and was for How to Self-Suspend, written and performed by Mx Katie Sly. The piece promised to be provocative, thought-provoking and boundary pushing. We ushers were told that people may need to leave the space at some point (a few did) due to the subject matter dealing with trauma, abuse, pain, and sex. How to Self-Suspend is a performed memoir following Mx Sly escaping an abusive childhood in Montreal through to the discovery of their sexuality, gender-fluidity and eventually wholeness within themselves in the rope bondage scenes of Toronto and Vancouver. Mx Sly is a compelling storyteller who I found very likeable, which for me made the difficult subject matter easier to handle.

After a four day break I returned to the Rodeo to usher for Live Your Prime, with Damien Frost by the One Yellow Rabbit ensemble featuring Denise Clarke, Andy Curtis and John Murrell. This was a very fun and light-hearted show about an older man who had rose to fame starting with his book “Live Your Prime” and who now tours the country as a self-help guru with his son, Damien Jr. and wife, Darlene, a family who on the surface look like they have life figured out, but perhaps all is not what it seems. I loved the staging and the limited use of three, brightly coloured armchairs to create the various scenes. At the end of the festival, there were books for sale, including a lot of scripts by Canadian playwrights. With too many plays to choose from, I stuck this “non-fiction”. I bought copies of “Theatre of the Unimpressed” by Jordan Tannahill and Denise Clarke’s “The Big Secret Book”. After the festival, I got the chance to attend a talk at Poole Lawyers with Denise Clarke and so I got it signed there. Denise’s talk was about the book, Damien Frost, her life and One Yellow Rabbit which was very interesting and inspiring. My friend Denise (too many Denises!) and I had a nice chat with her afterwards too.

Crawlspace, written and performed from Karen Hines, was brilliant. The play is an account of her true- life real estate nightmare in 2006, after she purchased a tiny house in Toronto. Throughout the play, I empathized with Karen on many levels. Having worked as a REALTOR® now for nearly 12 years, I know that a real estate transaction really is all about caveat emptor (buyer beware). I have my own dead animals in houses stories (luckily not in my own residence) and I know the stressfulness of having to deal with pests and problems with the home (in my case, due to my own neglect). I also completely felt for Karen as she described how the home put her tens of thousands of dollars in debt and the traps that credit card companies created with their ever-increasing credit limits. Very inspiring and to think I almost didn’t get to see this play: first because the usher shift I signed up for was cancelled, then I was put on as an ambassador but this week warned that because it was sold out I would probably not get to see the play. I ended up doing coat check but there was room for all the ushers to watch the show so I was thrilled.

My fifth show to volunteer at was God’s Lake presented by A Castlereigh Theatre Project and Sage Theatre at the Pumphouse Theatres. The play, a work of documentary theatre, featured four actors playing members of the remote fly-in community of God’s Lake Narrows, Manitoba, following the murder of a young 15-year-old girl. The script is taken verbatim from actual interviews conducted in the community in 2017. I found this a raw and emotional piece and through the words of the community, it brought an understanding of the complex issues of life on the reserve and perhaps began to answer questions as to how a First Nations community can be torn apart by the cold-blooded murder of one of its youth. At each performance of a show during the High Performance Rodeo, a territorial acknowledgement of the Treaty 7 region is given and for this one, it was by a First Nations Elder. The performance ended with an Honour Song in which we all rose to our feet and then a short speech by the Elder indicating that as with a ceremony it is time to leave those negative thoughts with the Grandfathers and Grandmothers.

The sixth show for me was bug presented by the Manidoons Collective, written and performed by Yolanda Bonnell. The performance took place at the West Village Theatre in Sunalta and I loved how the stage was set up as if in a gathering with the audience all around. This one-woman performance was about indigenous women navigating addiction and inter-generational trauma. I found Yolanda Bonnell to be an extremely compelling and unique storyteller. At times, the story she wove was in places hard to watch and all emotional, however not without humour.  

Into the final week of the Rodeo and the first show of the week for me was Café Daughter by Kenneth T. Williams, presented by Alberta Theatre Projects, starring Tiffany Ayalik and directed by Lisa C. Ravensbergen. Inspired by the early life of The Honourable Dr. Lillian Eva Quan Dyck, Café Daughter is a coming of age story about a young woman of mixed heritage (part Cree, part Chinese) growing up in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s. Filled with humour, though in parts it was emotional, I felt that this show was amazing and so well done. Tiffany Ayalik, as the sole performer, commanded the stage not only as the main storyteller, Yvette Wong, but also as all the other characters in Yvette’s life. Her physicality was awesome and I was in awe of how she smoothly transitioned between all these characters and brought them all to life.

Hammered Hamlet was a completely different experience. Presented by The Shakespeare Company and Hit and Myth Productions at the Legion, three out of the five actors downed four shots of whiskey before the show with the encouragement of the audience. This show was a total riot – what a great way to present Shakespeare! The show was supposed to only be 90 minutes with the intermission and ended up being more than two hours! I actually wished I hadn’t ushered for this one, as I think it would have been more fun to watch after a couple of drinks.

And now for something completely different…….Cow Love! Created and performed by Federico Robledo and Nanda Suc for the Société Protectrice de Petites Idées from Guingamp, France, this was 50 minutes of offbeat physical comedy. It combined acrobatics, dance, slapstick and pantomime and was thoroughly enjoyable to watch.

Macbeth Muet played at the Pumphouse Theatres on the same days as Cow Love. As both were only about 60 minutes long and both works of physical comedy, the plays were scheduled so a patron could watch them on the same night if they wanted too. As an usher, I watched them on different nights. For Macbeth Muet¸ I knew, when I was instructed to tell people that the show contains eggs and blood, that we were in for treat. Created by Marie-Hélène Bélanger, Jon Lachlan Stewart, and of course, the Bard himself, this was unique retelling of the Scottish Play without spoken words and with only two actors (Jérémie Francoeur as Macbeth and Clara Prévost as Lady Macbeth) with some help from some homemade puppets. Another steller show that I have been lucky to attend and I loved the soundtrack.

A about this time in the festival, the days are starting to meld together. A couple that came to see Cow Love on the evening I ushered for Macbeth Muet, I recognized, but thought they had attended the previous evening’s performance of Cow Love, when it actually was from Hammered Hamlet which was earlier in the week. They also were at Après de Deluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues when I was ushering for that.

The last show, for me, of the Rodeo, was Après le Deluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues, created and performed by Scott Thompson. Originally a regular Kids in the Hall character, it was a real treat to get to see it live. The Kids in the Hall was a show I got into as a teenager when I first arrived in Canada and Buddy Cole was one of my favourite characters. This show was definitely in my top three shows and as I type, my face still hurts from smiling and laughing so much. Just over halfway through, the microphone decided to play up, but Scott incorporated it in to his act. It was Buddy Cole that was having mic issues and being driven insane with sounding like he was speaking into a tin can. In the end he took off the mic (you don’t really need it anyways in the Big Secret Theatre).

After the show, Scott and his team were having a drink at the Laycraft Lounge next to the theatre as well. I thought about approaching him just to say how much I enjoyed the show, but I was too shy and just headed home with the books I had bought, though I didn’t realize I had left behind my water bottle until the train was making its way through downtown.

And so that was my first experience of the One Yellow Rabbit High Performance Rodeo. What a fantastic, but busy, three weeks. I did not see every show that was a part of the festival and there were some recurring events that I did not experience this year such as the 10-Minute Play Festival and The Veronicas (an award show where everyone wins). Of the shows I did see, I did not see one bad show, they were all unique, well done and fabulous to watch. I loved how some shows – How to Self-Suspend, Crawlspace and Bug were examples of how artists had “taken their broken heart and made art”. Generally, I was most impressed with the one-person shows, with the performer’s ability to command the space and keep the audience engaged the entire time. My top three shows for this year’s festival were Café Daughter, Après le Deluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues, and Crawlspace.

I am already excited about next year!

[ashencreature]

Needless to say, when I made Ella back in June, I wasn’t expecting her to get very many partners or last as long as she has! I’m still convinced most of y’all are lost, but as a thank you for being here, I’ve thrown together a bias list of my favorite people under the cut. Thank you guys so so much for sticking around, loving my little sunshine child, and helping us grow and develop together! <3 <3 Without many of you, neither of Ella nor I would be here today! Also keep your eyes open for another surprise coming up soon. 

Section 1: The lights of my life

Aka My absolute favorites who I am keeping forever

@personnages - Lynna, you’re basically the reason I got into rping in the first place! The last 5 or 6 years have been pretty rough for us both, but we’ve stuck through them together and I hope we continue to for a long, long time in the future! I love you so much and you’re without a doubt one of my best friends! 

@annastrxng & @ladyangelaliberty - Lyssa and Angie, oh my gosh I don’t even know where to start! The three of us have also had a pretty rough last few years. But we’ll always have each other and our trip to Hershey to look back on! I miss our all night video chats and talking almost every day. But I love the two of you very much and I’m always gonna be here prodding you to look after yourselves, like a big sister should. 

@ithilwcn - Ayla!! Time sure has flown by, hasn’t it? I know I can be a pain in the ass at times, but you’re always there to listen and keep me company and I love you to death for it?? I love each and every one of your characters and writing with you! Don’t ever change.

@tulog - Ran, gosh, we’re getting to be such fossils, aren’t we? In all seriousness, though, idk where I’d be today if you and Wu hadn’t given me a chance with Wen/Ellie waaaay back in the NRP days. I still adore everyone who was in the group, even if we don’t talk much anymore, or at all. You guys truly are my family and I’ll love you all the rest of my life. 

@nogoodnessimproveme - Ari is literally my favorite Adam ever?? No lie I was intimidated when we first met just because you were so fantastic and I’m an awkward little potato. But you’re for real one of the sweetest people ever, and I would go to war for you ok? I’m so proud of you, and give Stella a big hug for me!

@i-want-adventure / @kit-itskit - Meghan was another one who intimidated me with her awesomeness. We don’t talk much anymore, but I know you’re busy and you have to look after school and yourself first, especially with how bad the last year has been. I hope things get better soon! Your Belle and Kit will always be near and dear to me for helping me find so much with my own Belle and Ella. You’re great and you can fight me!

@charmingisms - Tara is another phenomenal Kit! She’s so true to his charm and sweetness and just the way that he adores Ella. Every time I get a reply from her, I’m grinning like a fool. I wish we talked more ooc, but I adore seeing you!

@ncvcrlctgo - Milla is, I swearm my favorite Ella that I’ve seen so far. I can’t even hold half a candle to her, and the fact that she actually wants to write with me is mind boggling? I love talking with her ooc and plotting things, and just laughing in general. If I ever make it to Brazil we totally have to meet up!

@thewonderingsorceress - Ella is such a great oc! Her character is so complex but true and effortless, and my Ella adores her. And she’s the sweetest person ooc as well. I love chatting ooc and venting about problems. 

@innocentmanwithabounty - Rose is such a darling, and Vin is the cutest thing ever? I’ve never really been big on the old west genre, but Vin is literally to sweet to resist? He’s such a gentleman and all of my girls that he’s met so far adore him. I can’t wait to see what comes for him and Ella!

@safeinmyheartjxr - Allie! From the moment you first messages me about making Miles, I knew we’d be close. I’m super protective of you, and anyone that messes with you has to go through me first! I know things are rough rn with school, but I’m always here if you ever just need to talk. We don’t even have to be writing, ok? I’m always here. 

@villagebeauty - I miss Sam! Her Belle was so sweet and fantastic! And she was such a doll to  talk to ooc. I hope everything is going well for you, darling! 

@roastytoastyprincxss - Amy is such a great Nuka, like?? My inner child just squeals every time I see her on my dash because I feel like I’m watching the movie again. Not to mention, he and Ella are the cutest thing ever! Our poor babies! They’re gonna say screw everyone that hurt them and make it on their own!

@avaloranxchancellor - Raven is such a doll! I don’t know like anything about Elena, Avalor, or Esteban, but I adore him anyway? He’s so polite and gentlemanly. And how protective he is of Ella is the sweetest thing. God knows my poor girl needs it! I can’t wait to see what else we can come up for for them!

@smallmeanssafe - PAPA!!! XD The best Maurice right here, ok? Ella, Belle, and I all adore writing and talking with you, darling!! Plus, I love hearing your ideas for fics and how to make our poor little family suffer. 

@mcrmaidscales - Foxxy is such a great Ariel! I haven’t gotten that far into OUAT yet, sadly. But I can definietly hear the cartoon Ariel coming through in her writing. If the show is anything like this, I’ll love her! Plus like I love her and Ella’s friendship? They’re so supportive and caring, and like sisters should be. Give me Ella being friends with more princesses! I want it! 

Section 2: I just wanna love you

Mainly those, partners and not, I don’t know very well, don’t speak to that often, or just love in general.

@asktheprinceofdarkness - Maddy was so understanding of the fact that I know absolutely nothing about KH, and I’m glad that she was willing to overlook that because Xeha with Ella is so cute. I get the feeling he doesn’t trust easy but the fact that he does her is just the cutest thing!

@mostpeculiarmademoiselleetmsieur - Caity is another fantastic Belle that I’ve looked up to for a very long time! It was amazing getting to write with her on my Belle, and I just want to thank her for giving me a chance and tell her to never change and keep writing no matter what because she’s amazing! 

@the-one-true-queen / @forgottenroyal - Jessi and Alice are fantasic? She’s one of my favorite Ocs that I’ve come across in my like 6 years on Tumblr rping. She’s so well developed and natural, and I’m jealous honestly??

@ellasmxther - Oh gosh where do I even start? When I made Ella, I honestly wasn’t expecting to find either of her parents, or if I did, I figured they’d all be inactive. And when Tara followed me, I had a mini heart attack. I love giving Ella and Elias a chance to spend time with their mom, and hope we get to do more stuff in the future!

@findthebxrd - Ok, talk about screaming! When I first found out there was a Dug blog, I’m pretty sure I cried because Dug is the best, and everything about this is just too precious, too pure, and too perfect. I love having Ella interact with him as a puppy and a dog, and I can’t wait to see how it goes with him as a human! 

@imthelcstprincess - I’ve seen and followed quite a few Rapunzels across my blogs, and Lissa is a great one. She gets the innocence and carefree part of her nature with ease. Plus like I love her fcs! AnnaSophia is perfect for younger Punz, and I honestly wouldn’t have pegged Taylor as being older Punz, but I dig it in a way??

@whatshouldbedone - Kira is another amazing Ella that I can’t believe followed me, and another of my favorites! We don’t write together, although I’d love to! I hope everything is going well for you, dear, and your hiatus is the break you need!

@askjoeharper - Jenny and I haven’t written together other than Joe and Ilse, but she’s very sweet and he is a precious little dear! I honestly couldn’t get through Tom Sawyer, but I adore Joe and I would love to write with both of them again.

@riisingfromashes - Annie is such a sweetheart! I love that her muses are all so different and they all seem amazing! Belle loved Antoinette. I’d love to write with her again as well!

@princebete - Honestly another fantastic Adam that I’ve admired for years! I’m so glad to see that they’re still around and haven’t given him up! Seeing them on my dash is just such a great thing, and I always smile!

@fatherofnarnia - I miss Lina and would love to get to write with her again as well! Her Aslan is fantastic and I’m honestly blown away by how she’s able to do it. 

@sweepthecinders - Aurélie is precious and Ella totally wants to take her under her wing. She’s such a well developed OC and a precious little one! Plus like, writing little kids is hard? But they do it fantastically well! 

@wcnderment - I’ve only interacted with them briefly for Aurora, but I loved it! Her fc was perfect! And she was so sweet how she looked after Ella. I’d definitely love to write with them more! 

Section 3: Those I admire from afar

Mutuals I’d love to interact with and adore seeing on my dash

@flxbber @demoliticnist @scoobydudee @notgettingawaythistime @riffrcffed @prince-kivuli @skidrowflorist @thedonewithsleepingbeauty @gliitchiing @do-i-win-yet @minamxrray @wcstenra @heavensliight @adolescentmxrmaid @sncwkissedqveen @notalone-butfree @ncturebcy @thiingmabobs

[faithfulnews]

The Inexhaustible Poetry of Lawrence Joseph

The Inexhaustible Poetry of Lawrence Joseph

By Anthony Domestico

March 17, 2020

                          …So many selves—

the one who detects the sound of a voice,

that voice—the voice that compounds

his voice—that self obedient to that fate,

increased, enlarged, transparent, changing.

                            —from “Woodward Avenue”

All poets have many selves; all non-poets do, too. But the selves that constitute the poet Lawrence Joseph are particularly numerous and peculiarly unlikely in their combinations.

Lawrence Joseph is a Detroit poet. (For decades, his father and uncle owned and ran a grocery store, which they inherited from their father, on the corner of John R. and Hendrie.) He’s a New York City poet. (He has lived in Battery Park, a block from Ground Zero, for twenty-six years. After the September 11 attacks, he couldn’t locate his wife, the painter Nancy Van Goethem, for more than twenty-four hours.) He’s an Arab-American poet. (His grandparents were among the first wave of immigrants from Lebanon and Syria to Detroit in the 1910s.) He’s a leftist poet. (“Eyes fixed on mediated screens,” he writes in “Visions of Labor,” “in semiotic / labor flow: how many generations between / the age of slavery of these States and ours?”) He’s a Catholic poet. (Or, as he prefers, a poet who is Catholic—one who has been, as he announces in the very first poem in his very first book, “appointed the poet of heaven.”) Perhaps most interestingly, he’s a lawyer-poet.

Lawrence Joseph (Courtesy of FSG)

This last compound identity distinguishes Joseph from almost every other great American poet (almost: there is also Wallace Stevens). For nearly fifty years, Joseph has led two distinct professional lives—one legal, one poetic. Since 1987, he has been on the faculty at St. John’s University School of Law in Queens, where he serves as Tinnelly Professor of Law and teaches courses on torts and compensation, labor and employment law, and law and interpretation, among other subjects. Before coming to St. John’s, he taught at the University of Detroit and clerked for Justice G. Mennen Williams of the Michigan Supreme Court. He has given papers at (and been the subject of) legal conferences, and he has published essays with decidedly unpoetic titles: “The Causation Issue in Workers’ Compensation Mental Disability Cases: An Analysis, Solutions, and a Perspective” in the Vanderbilt Law Review, for example. David Skeel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, writes that “Joseph has explored the increasing, though awkward and at times unreflective, recognition of subjectivity in Supreme Court opinions.” As Skeel told me on the phone, “Larry’s perspectival opinion has won the day.” He’s an important figure in the growing field of law and literature.

Yet since 1983, Joseph has also been publishing books of poetry that, in their formal control and moral witness, match anything published in the past half century. In March, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems, which gathers together poems from five previous collections. The range of Joseph’s writing, in this book and throughout his career, is awesome. His language is streetwise and philosophical; his forms are by turn intensely compressed and exhilaratingly expansive.

Joseph’s 1983 debut, Shouting at No One, included Detroit geographies (Van Dyke Avenue, “UAW Local 89,” “the Church of I AM”) rarely encountered in American poetry. These early poems have short lines and long stanzas. They’re concrete, imagistic, and condensed, displaying, as the poet Toi Derricotte told me, a real “knowledge of the complexities of Detroit.” (Derricotte is herself a Detroit native who went to school near the Joseph family store.) Though Shouting at No One is primarily a Detroit book, it was published two years after Joseph had moved to New York City. With each subsequent collection, Joseph has expanded and continued to intensify his vision. The first poem in Curriculum Vitae (1988) takes place “in New York City, / during the nineteen eighties,” and the collection, though it often returns to Detroit, looks increasingly to Manhattan’s flow of capital—and to those left outside the flow, abandoned by the economy and the city: “I watch // a workman standing on the pier, looking / across at the coast turning toward // the Narrows, his hands bandaged, / victim of a work accident // who doesn’t know what to think / or what to do and hasn’t enough // to buy himself something to settle his mind.”

In his next book, Before Our Eyes (1993), Joseph includes both his first poems about America’s wars with Iraq, and an increased sensuousness. Here are that book’s first, painterly lines: “The sky almost transparent, saturated // manganese blue. Windy and cold. / A yellow line beside a black line, / the chimney on the roof a yellow line / behind the mountain ash on Horatio.” In 2005’s Into It, the language opens up even more, accommodating terms from the realms of law and political economy, especially in poems dealing with the September 11 attacks and the second Iraq War. Some of the poems get prosier; almost all find beauty “in the midst of delirium.” 2017’s So Where Are We? takes on America’s endless wars, both foreign (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria) and domestic (the financial crisis, both its cause and effects).

Joseph’s poems map American violence in its diverse forms. They examine the physical violence of American empire: “Behind / the global imperia is the interrogation cell.” They chart the moral violence of the American economy: “Capital capitalizes, / assimilates, makes / its own substance.” And they note the connections between the two: “the blood money in the dummy account / in an offshore bank, washed clean, free to be / transferred into a hedge fund or foreign / brokerage account, at least half a trillion / ending up in the United States, with more to come.” A Certain Clarity measures and pushes back against the pressures of our time. Joseph has lived in New York City since 1981, for years by the Brooklyn Bridge and now for years by Wall Street. He has lived, in other words, at the center of American culture and capital, and his poems, as they stroll from Fulton Street to Pearl Street to Peck Slip, register the workings of American power in all its forms.

Yet Joseph is also an aesthete—“I’m not a pseudo-aesthete,” he told me, laughing: “I’m a full-blown aesthete”—as the righteous anger of his prophetic vision is matched by the sumptuousness of his language. Each of his poems finds its meaning in and through form: the various shapes his stanzas and sentences take, their shifts in cadence, tense, and register. “I believe that poets have to—perhaps above all have to—love sound,” Joseph has said, and his love of sound and color comes across in every poem. He has spent most of his life living alongside water—the Detroit River, the East River, and the Hudson—and A Certain Clarity contains one riverine observation after another. His poems often describe the changing light over water: “Pink above the Hudson / against the shadows lingering still, / the sky above an even blue and changing / to a pale gray and rose”; “This light is famous, / its sad, secret violet, and, this evening, / West and East rivers turned into one.”

When I asked Joseph about how his two lives—the life of the lawyer and the life of the poet—fit together, he quoted Wallace Stevens. “One is not a lawyer one minute and a poet the next,” Joseph said, quoting a 1942 letter Stevens wrote to Harvey Breit. “I don’t have a separate mind for legal work and another for writing poetry. I do each with my whole mind, just as everything that each of us does we do with our whole minds.”

The poet is concerned with many things: perception and meditation, the social and the soul. But the poet is concerned above all else with language: pressurizing language, perfecting and condensing and enlarging it. The poet is, to quote Marianne Moore on Stevens, “a linguist creating several languages within a single language.” So is the lawyer. James Boyd White, a legal scholar often cited as the founder of the law and literature movement of which Joseph is such an important part, has argued that judicial language should strive for “many-voicedness.” That’s a good description of the polyvocality of Joseph’s verse, which channels Gramsci and Melville, the union hall and the lecture hall, lyrical rhapsodizing and rage-filled cursing, often in the space of a single stanza.

“Reading, teaching, tens of thousands of cases, writing and teaching sets of facts, which are stories, narratives, rooted in every dimension of social reality has greatly expanded my range of language,” Joseph told me. It’s also attuned him to power and its perversions: “Being a lawyer has intensified my moral awareness of evil.” What better training for the kind of poet Joseph has always been: looking outward to the world and inward to the soul, finding a language for both.

***

  ‘I’ve lived in the language and theology of Catholicism since I was a child,’ Joseph told me.

                     … Baptized

in the one true church, I too

was weaned on Saint Augustine.

—from “Curriculum Vitae”

“All poems,” Joseph told me, “come out of experience,” and his poems often point back to his own biography in refracted, transfigured form. “The ‘I’ in a poem can never be identified with the poet’s empirical self,” Joseph said, quoting the critic Michael Hamburger. “The ‘I’ in a poem conveys a great many different gestures, of a great many different orders.” This is true for all poets, and it’s certainly true for Joseph. But it’s also true that a great many of Joseph’s poetic gestures have arisen from his interesting and complicated life.

Joseph was born on March 10, 1948 in Providence Hospital, a Catholic hospital located on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. His parents were also born in Detroit; so were his many aunts and uncles (he counts twenty-six first cousins); and so was his wife, Nancy. Both his parents attended Catholic schools—his father on Detroit’s West Side, his mother on the city’s East Side. So did Nancy. “I’ve lived in the language and theology of Catholicism since I was a child,” he told me.

Detroit’s history in the twentieth century is the history of many things: of big industry and mass production; of labor and capital; of Motown and modern jazz; of professional sports (it’s one of the few cities that has had franchises in all four major sports) and political upheaval (the 1967 riots; the city’s recent bankruptcy). All of these have touched upon Joseph’s life in one way or another. He’s worked summer jobs in factories. He’s listened to, and written on, Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson. Knowing I’m a Red Sox fan, he told me that he will never forget the heartbreak of the Tigers losing the pennant to Boston on the final day of the 1967 season.

Detroit’s twentieth-century history is also the history of Arab Americans. Immigrants from Lebanon and Syria started settling in the Detroit area in small numbers in the 1870s. By 1951, three years after Joseph’s birth, about 50,000 people of Lebanese and Syrian descent lived in the city. Joseph’s maternal grandfather was born in Damascus and baptized into the Melkite rite. His paternal grandparents were born in Lebanon, as was his maternal grandmother, all baptized in the Maronite rite.

In a poem from Curriculum Vitae (1988), Joseph metaphorically crystallizes his Arab American Detroit: “Lebanon is everywhere / in the house: in the kitchen / of steaming pots, legs of lamb / in the oven, plates of kousa, / hushwee rolled in cabbage, / dishes of olives, tomatoes, onions, / roasted chicken, and sweets.” Inside the house, there’s warmth and love. Outside the house, the speaker witnesses the effects of industrial capitalism and racialized violence: “‘Sand nigger,’ I’m called, / and the name fits: I am / the light-skinned nigger / with black eyes and the look / difficult to figure—a look / of indifference, a look to kill.”

Joseph was baptized at St. Maron’s, a Maronite church in Detroit, as were his two brothers and one sister. “I’ve never not believed in God,” he told me. He remembers attending daily Mass from the first through eighth grades, “following along, from fourth grade on, with the St. Joseph Daily Missal, which included the Ordinary of the Mass in both Latin and English, and also hundreds of pages of the Liturgical Calendar and a ‘Treasury of Litanies and Prayers.’” He was confirmed at the age of ten and began serving Mass in the sixth grade. “I memorized the Baltimore Catechism,” he writes in “Curriculum Vitae,” “I collected holy cards, prayed / to a litany of saints to intercede / on behalf of my father who slept / through the sermon at seven o’clock Mass.” (From 1960 on, Joseph’s father worked as a meat cutter at A & P, in addition to helping his brother man the store, often working twelve hours a day.)

When he was almost four, Joseph’s family moved to Royal Oak, near Woodward Avenue and Twelve Mile Road, four miles north of Detroit’s 8 Mile Road boundary. They were parishioners at the Shrine of the Little Flower, located a few blocks from where they lived. Built in the 1930s, the Shrine is known in part for its Art Deco style but mainly for its patriarch, Father Charles Coughlin—the Jew-baiting talk radio priest who is the forerunner of much that is most toxic in our own political moment. Coughlin started off as a New Deal populist, preaching Leo XIII and Pius XI’s social encyclicals, before turning to anti-Semitism and flirting with outright fascism in the late 1930s and early ’40s. Joseph described Coughlin to me as “a progenitor of right-wing Catholicism that espoused a fascistic Catholic Corporate State.” Joseph has been describing and denouncing this strand of God-talk for years: “Thugs, / thugs are what they are, false-voiced God-talkers and power freaks / who think not at all about what they bring down.” Joseph’s family were Democrats. He delivered Detroit’s morning paper, the liberal Detroit Free Press, from the age of eleven to eighteen. (When Joseph met Nancy, she was working as an artist at the Free Press.)

His father’s grocery store, called Joseph’s Market, was in a rough neighborhood. Joseph’s uncle had his throat slashed at the store in the 1960s. When Joseph was twelve, his father, Joseph Joseph, taught him how to recognize the signs of heroin addiction. In “By the Way,” the poet remembers his father shot by a heroin addict in 1970: “The bullet missed / the heart and the spinal cord, / miraculously, the doctor said. / Everything eventually would be all right. / The event went uncelebrated among hundreds / of felonies in that city that day.” From an early age, Joseph walked and drove the streets of Detroit, looking and listening and jotting down notes. In high school he caddied, and in college he washed dishes and delivered pizzas and, during summers, worked in factories. Every Detroit street, he told me, contains some sensuous memory. The city is for him a metaphor and a body—a geography that is physical, spiritual, imaginative, and economic. “In Joseph’s Market on the corner of John R and Hendrie,” he writes in an early poem, “there I am again: always, everywhere, // apron on, alone behind the cash register, the grocer’s son / angry, ashamed, and proud as the poor with whom he deals.”

***

  Joseph isn’t sentimental about our long-since departed manufacturing economy. He knows that capital has always thrived by exploiting labor.

         Two things, the two things that are interesting

         are history and grammar.

         In among the foundations of the intelligence

         the chemistries of words.

         —from “When One Is Feeling One’s Way”

After attending the Jesuit University of Detroit High School, where he studied Latin and Greek, Joseph enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1966, where he took part in the antiwar movement and, in the winter of 1967, wrote his first poems. That July, while he was working at General Motors Truck & Coach in Pontiac as a dry sander, the Detroit riots occurred. Looters hit Joseph’s Market: “Take the canned peaches,” Joseph imagines his father saying as he drives away from the store. “Take the greens, the turnips, / drink the damn whiskey / spilled on the floor.”

At Michigan, Joseph studied with the poet Donald Hall, writing a paper on Vorticism (there’s the modernist influence) and an honor’s thesis on “Swinburne’s Poetic Technique” (there’s the interest in aestheticism). He won a fellowship and studied English at Cambridge University in England from 1970 to 1972, obsessively reading Albert Camus, Simone Weil, Eugenio Montale, John Berryman, and many others, translating St. Augustine’s De Trinitate, and writing poetry all the time.

Joseph told me that he realized in 1966, while an undergraduate, that he would write poetry for the rest of his life. He realized in 1972, while at Cambridge, that he would “have a professional life as a lawyer, and not as a professor of literature or creative writing.” This decision was no doubt informed by his background. He was “raised to be a lawyer,” he says: his uncle John founded the first Arab-American law partnership in Detroit, and Joseph was a skilled debater for all four years of high school. “I wanted the freedom to write what I wanted,” he told me. “I didn’t want what I wrote, and the pace that I needed to write it, economically dependent upon my profession.” So he enrolled at the University of Michigan Law School in 1973 and began a successful legal career. In that same year, he met Nancy. In 1975, Joseph moved to Detroit to live with her at the Alden Park—a Tudor apartment complex on Detroit’s East Side, on the Detroit River, next to the United Auto Workers’ Solidarity House, four or five miles from downtown and near where his maternal grandparents lived.

As one who has never received an MFA or taught in an MFA program, Joseph is a relative rarity in the poetry world. “I was always attracted to the margins,” he told me. He counts many poets as friends, but poetry isn’t his only interest. Sometimes, Joseph’s life outside of poetry can be felt in his command and poetic repurposing of legal language: “After I applied Substance and Procedure / and Statements of Facts,” he writes in “Curriculum Vitae,” “my head was heavy, was earth.” Here is a sestet from “On Peripheries of the Imperium”:

Conflated, the financial vectors, opaque

cyber-surveillance, supranational cartels,

in the corporate state’s political-economic singularity

the greatest number of children

in United States history are, now, incarcerated,

having been sentenced by law.

Due to his legal training, Joseph knows the language of power. He sees its victims and its victimizers; he sees its intended and unintended effects. As the legal scholar Frank Pasquale writes in a recent essay, Joseph’s poems “reveal patterns of power and meaning in the world by exploring the ramifications of critical terms.”

The law has influenced the diction of Joseph’s poems. It has also influenced his formal decisions. “Law’s aesthetic-formal-rhetorical dimensions,” he wrote to me, “asking questions, cross examination, argument, have greatly broadened the transitional rhetoric in my poetry.” Anyone who has read Joseph will know how often his poems shift: cutting between temporalities and locations; juxtaposing different languages that come from different social spaces. He’s also an interrogative poet. One recent poem memorably, horribly begins, “Technically speaking, / is a head blown to pieces by a smart bomb a beheading?”

Reading A Certain Clarity in its entirety, an argument about American political economy emerges. We have moved from “mass assembly based on systems of specialized / machines operating within organizational domains” to the flim-flam of leveraged buy-outs and “techno-capital.” Joseph isn’t sentimental about our long-since departed manufacturing economy. He knows that capital has always thrived by exploiting labor, polluting workers’ bodies and poisoning our environment. (For decades he’s been writing about what economists call “negative externalities” and what Pope Francis describes as the plundering of creation for profit.) But he’s horrified by the speed and unreality of our current finance economy—unreal except in its devastating effects upon those not in power: “Narco-capital techno-compressed, / gone viral, spread into a state of tectonic tension and freaky / abstractions—it’ll scare the fuck out of you, is what it’ll do, / anthropomorphically scaled down by the ferocity of its own / obsolescence.”

***

  You can’t budget a half hour for a phone call with Joseph. You can’t even confidently budget an hour.

Who talks like that? I talk like that.

         —from “Who Talks Like That?”

Anyone who has met Joseph will tell you he’s a conversationalist, his talk intelligent and intense, kind and brash. He confides, cajoles, improvises. A normal conversation with him moves rapidly between politics and poetry, history and aesthetics. He quotes Gertrude Stein and Walter Benjamin from memory. He seems to know the news before you know it. Conversation about poetry isn’t chit-chat for him; it’s a game with high stakes. “Some sort of chronicler I am,” he has written, “mixing / emotional perceptions and digressions, // choler, melancholy, a sanguine view.”

As I’ve discovered, you can’t budget a half hour for a phone call with Joseph. You can’t even confidently budget an hour. Recently, my wife walked into the kitchen and started talking to me while I was on the phone with Joseph. She thought I’d been off the phone for fifteen minutes; I’d just been listening in awe to a peroration on William Barr, Steven Bannon, and other Catholic Trumpists.

A conversation with Joseph keeps going as long as it needs to keep going, driven by an intellectual and linguistic energy that seems inexhaustible. “There’s a headiness to talking with Larry,” says the law professor David Skeel, who has written on Joseph’s work and maintained a friendship with him for years. “It’s intellectual, it’s head-spinning, it’s exhilarating. It’s like you’re entering into another dimension, with an entirely different intensity.” Skeel first reached out to Joseph when he was clerking for a federal judge and happened upon a poem referring to the “Uniform Commercial Code.” They would often meet in the West Village at the recently closed Cornelia Street Café, where their conversations would swing from poetry to the law and back again.

Joseph has distinctive conversational patterns. “But that’s the game,” he often says, whether he’s talking about electoral or literary politics. He doesn’t pull punches when discussing politicians or writers he sees as serving and lusting after power—for him, one of the cardinal sins. He doesn’t have false humility, either. As the writer and former Farrar, Straus and Giroux editor Paul Elie put it, “He’s modest and open. He also knows he’s a first-rate poet.”

To talk with Joseph is to be shown a complex but precisely mapped social network. He knows a lot of people—in the legal world, in the literary world (Joyce Carol Oates is a good friend), in the Catholic world, in the Detroit world, in the New York City world—and he knows who those people know, and where they went to school, and when they became who they are. He pays close attention to the literary landscape. He described himself as often working as a kind of middleman—putting one person in touch with another, helping his students or fellow writers. “I suppose that’s the Levantine in me,” he joked.

Everyone I spoke with stressed Joseph’s intellectual and personal generosity. When Elie was working on his book Reinventing Bach, Joseph read the manuscript in its entirety and offered a single sentence insight—“What is music and how are you making it in this book?”—that helped shape the revising process. He has offered Skeel advice for years—taking him out for coffee when Skeel was a junior law professor, reading and commenting on Skeel’s writings on law and literature. There are countless young writers, myself among them, who have been helped in ways big and small, public and more often private, by Joseph’s attention and care.

***

  Joseph thinks of himself as writing one long poem across many books. It’s a book on war, but also a book on love.

                                       … Peck Slip

  to Water Street to Front Street

to Pine, to Coenties Slip to Pearl

  to Stone Street to Exchange Place,

the light in majestic degrees.

           —“A Fable”

Joseph moved to New York City in 1981 and has lived there ever since. For years, he lived steps away from the Brooklyn Bridge in a co-op he rented. In 1994, he and Nancy moved to Battery Park City, where they still live on the thirty-third floor of a rent-stabilized apartment building. From Joseph’s study, he can see the Hudson, Ellis Island, and the ever-expanding skyline of Jersey City. He’s a few blocks away from Zuccotti Park, the site of the Occupy Wall Street movement; he’s even closer to the World Trade Center.

On a blustery February afternoon, Joseph and I walked around his neighborhood together. Joseph loves to walk—Elie said that they’ll often meet for coffee only to stroll around Manhattan together for hours—and his poems offer readers an imaginative introduction to his various neighborhoods: “Water Street, // South Street Seaport, seated outdoors, late June, / early evening, strips of bright silver-pink clouds, // trio of bass, keys, drums; or, let’s say, / Water Street, Bridge Café, that February // gray winter day, table in the back, near / the window, up along Dover the Bridge.” In real life, I had barely set foot in the area. As a reader of Joseph’s work, I’d spent ages there.

We walked and talked for several hours, frequently stopping on benches to look at the water—first the Hudson, then the East River. Several of the locations, restaurants and landmarks mainly, were familiar to me from Lawyerland, Joseph’s formally sui generis nonfiction novel that captures how lawyers talk (boisterously and endlessly) and what they talk about (power). Joseph is an inveterate note-taker. Most lawyers are, he told me. No matter where he goes, he has Post-its with him so that he can jot down an image or scrap of overheard conversation. When the weather is nice, he frequently reads and writes in the many parks surrounding his apartment, with the skyline behind him and the water before him.

Lower Manhattan is haunted by many ghosts, some literary (it’s the place of Melville’s birth—Joseph brought me to the spot), some political (Alexander Hamilton is buried at Trinity Church), and Joseph’s recent work grows out of this place where, as Elie put it to me, “literature and the hurly burly of politics meet.” Of course, the area around Joseph’s apartment is most haunted by September 11, 2001—a national trauma that was also a personal one for Joseph. That morning, he took the subway to St. John’s and learned about the first plane hitting the tower when he got to work. He tried to get in touch with Nancy. The phones didn’t work. No one could tell him anything, and the area around their building was cordoned off. It was more than a day before he was able to find her. She had been in the apartment the whole time.

It took two years before Joseph could write about the event. In a way, his entire legal and poetic careers had been preparing him to respond imaginatively to the attacks. For years, he’d been writing about downtown Manhattan. For years, he’d been writing about American empire, the “millions, millions / plunged and numbed by dreams of blood.” For years, he’d been writing about terror and violence and power. “And then you add the Arab thing,” as he puts it in an essay.

In Into It and So Where Are We?, Joseph speaks of war with ferocity and precision. The title poem of So Where Are We?, made up of twenty-two unrhymed couplets, begins by bearing witness to the forms of violence that constitute our national landscape: America’s foreign wars that are so frequent and widespread that it is often difficult to keep them straight (“What year? Which Southwest Asian war?”); the financial speculation that harms the economy and the lives of those who participate in it; the scope and velocity of destruction that dwarf the human scale: “The point at which // a hundred thousand massacred / is just a detail.”

How should we meet such injustices—the specific acts of violence that can so easily be ignored or elided? Joseph suggests an answer in the final movement of his poem, where he shifts from the Federal Reserve, a space sacred to capital, to the Church of the Transfiguration:

Ten blocks away the Church of the Transfiguration,

in the back a Byzantine Madonna—

  there is a God, a God who fits the drama

in a very particular sense. What you said—

  the memory of a memory of a remembered

memory, the color of a memory, violet and black.

  The lunar eclipse on the winter solstice,

the moon a red and black and copper hue.

  The streets, the harbor, the light, the sky.

The blue and cloudless intense and blue morning sky.

By the end of the poem, we are in a different realm—not just in spatial terms but in formal terms as well. When describing the violence against which this poem sets itself, Joseph writes predominantly enjambed lines, running the second line of a couplet into the next stanza: “a tangle of tenses // and parallel thoughts.” In doing so, he finds a formal analogue for the kind of blurring and bleeding, the erasure of difference, that his poem represents.

By the poem’s end, though, this muddle of tenses and stanzas gives way to something cleaner, clearer, more precise. We move from enjambments to end-stops; from abstractions to particulars; from an inability to locate ourselves in time and space to concrete images of the natural and the human-made that are located precisely. Color and detail enter into the poem. Distanced analytical vision gives way to sensuous vision—those blues and reds and coppers. We end not with our thoughts about the things of the world but with the things themselves. This formal shift marks a kind of moral shift in the poem, too: justice and love arise from an encounter with the individual, with a refusal to fall into reification. As William Carlos Williams, one of Joseph’s poetic lodestars, put it, “No ideas / but in things.”

To greet violence with justice and love, Joseph suggests, is to display this kind of vision: exact, precise, and particular. And it is no accident that this shift toward the exact, precise, and particular comes about after the poem encounters the Church of the Transfiguration. We might say that the poem is itself transfigured after this encounter: it shines forth with the repeated Marian blues of the last line, with the hues of city and sky. Joseph writes that the God of the Transfiguration, Christ, is “a God who fits the drama / in a very particular sense.” By this he seems to mean that Christ fits our human drama because of how he suffered, because he too was attuned to injustice and suffering. But Christ also fits our drama in a very particular sense because of his incarnation into the world of the senses. The Transfiguration shows the human and fleshly made radiant with divinity, just as Christ’s life tells the story of the transcendent made concrete.

As we talked around lower Manhattan, we talked about many things: the future of the church and the past of the city (many of Joseph’s sentences began, “That building used to be…”) and the manic, improbable American present. Joseph is often righteously angry at where we are as a country and as a species. As he said to me, “The planet is being pillaged, and, with impunity, laid to waste by capital, by an unfettered greed for money that rules our entire socio-economic system.” But in the time we spent together, our eyes and conversation kept coming back to the water and the winter light reflecting off its surface.

Joseph thinks of himself as writing one long poem across many books. It’s a book on war, certainly. But it’s also, to quote his poem “On Nature,” a “book on love.” A Certain Clarity registers, without flinching, America’s current hellscape: “violence from the terror felt, // violence in the suffering, violence / in the mind, collectively modified.” We need poets to confront such violence, and Joseph has been doing that for years. But A Certain Clarity doesn’t end with war. It ends, as so many of his poems do, by looking toward the water and the sky that he loves:

         So what more is there to say? Many times

                  the mass of the sun, solar masses

         spiraling into spacetime, radiating

           energy in gravitational waves, the edges

         of the islands soft in the black-gray sky,

           on this side of the Battery, near the ferry,

         a small bird’s footprints, here, in the snow.

           New moon, mauve cloud, sea level

         higher than normal, the harbor again,

           green and gray, punctuated by waves

         lashing about. Thickening, the mists,

           this early morning; repeated, sounds

         of foghorns we hear from afar.

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[wineanddinosaur]

Wine 101: Sangiovese/Chianti

This episode of “Wine 101” is sponsored by Brancaia. At Brancaia, we perceive the work in the vineyard as a flow of energy that must be respected to the highest degree. Rooted in the bold super Tuscan movement that forever changed Italy’s winemaking culture, the wines of Brancaia blend local grapes with international varieties, bringing a decidedly modern touch to a centuries-old wine region. Today, Brancaia embodies a passion for terroir and dedication to artisan techniques, producing elegant, complex wines with a strong Tuscan identity. Brancaia Winery: Resist the usual.

Click the link below to discover and purchase wine brands discussed on the Wine101 podcast series. Get 15% OFF when you purchase $75 or more. Use coupon code “wine15” at checkout: www.thebarrelroom.com/discover.

In this episode of “Wine 101,” VinePair tastings director Keith Beavers discusses the origins of Sangiovese and Chianti. Beavers discusses the history of Sangiovese from its origins in Tuscany, as well as its many nicknames. However, what listeners will learn most about is Chianti, the popular wine made from the Sangiovese grape.

Beaver explains how Chianti came to be a central winegrowing region in Italy, dating back to the 18th century, and how it rose to popularity in the 1970s — appearing in popular films such as “Shaft” and “Silence of the Lambs.” Further, Beavers explains the emergence of the Chianti Classico DOCG in the late ‘80s.

Tune in to learn more and become an expert on Sangiovese and Chianti.

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Keith Beavers: My name is Keith Beavers, and I think I’ve watched all of HGTV. Like, all of it. I need something else.

What’s going on, wine lovers? Welcome to Episode 19 of VinePair’s “Wine 101” podcast, Season 2. My name is Keith Beavers. I’m the tastings director of VinePair. Sup?

Chianti and Sangiovese. Oh my gosh. You know it from a movie, from life as an American, and from loving Italian wine. Let’s talk about it.

OK, so we did an episode on Tuscany last season. It was to get a nice, rounded idea about Tuscany, and in that episode, we talked about Sangiovese and we talked about how it’s different. It produces different styles of wine, depending on where it’s growing in Tuscany. It’s a very interesting variety, but it’s not an interesting variety in that it mutates and it clones itself and all this stuff. No. What’s unique about Sangiovese is that there are really two kinds of Sangiovese. There’s Sangiovese Grosso, a big fat grape. Then, there’s Sangiovese Piccolo, a little grape.

The majority of the wines that we drink come from Sangiovese Grosso, the big fat grape. But the thing is, Sangiovese Grosso grows throughout Tuscany, but the people who produce wines from that grape call it something different, even just in Tuscany itself. In Montalcino in Tuscany, they call Sangiovese Grosso, Brunello. In the town of Montepulciano, where they make Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, they call it Prugnolo Gentile. And in the Tuscan region of Morellino di Scansano, they call it Morellino. It can be confusing. I know I say it a lot in wine. It can be confusing. Why is wine so confusing?

Well, the thing is, wine is ancient. Oh my gosh, it’s so ancient in so many cultures, townships, and communes throughout Italy, throughout the world. All the synonyms for the grapes, it’s just insane. The thing is, during feudal systems and sharecropping, there is pride in all these towns. It seems to me that they name the grape, and they could care less whether another town calls it something else. This is what they’re going to call it. And that’s just how this works throughout the history of wine in general. In Tuscany, it’s a little bit crazy because it went from one town to the next. Sometimes the variety that’s being used is the same variety but has a different name. And it can be crazy.

Just like other old varieties like Pinot Noir, Sangiovese is thought to be ancient. The first documentation of Sangiovese is from a treatise on the viticulture of Tuscany in 1600 by a dude named Giovan Vettorio Soderini. In it, he says, “il sangiogheto, aspro a mangiare, ma sugoso e pienissimo di vino” which generally means “the Sangiogheto, bitter to eat but juicy and venous.” This is the first documentation of Sangiovese but it’s really the first documentation of the synonym of Sangiovese.

The story goes that, in the region of Emilia-Romagna, which is north and east of Tuscany, there is a town called Rimini. Just outside of that town is a mountain called Montegiove. And in the foothills of that mountain was a — wait for it — monastery! Yep, the monks. And here, the monks were making wine. And the wine they made, they called vino, which basically just means wine in Italian. When asked what this wine was, they thought for a second and they said “sanguis Jovis”, which means the blood of Jupiter. Sangiovese came from that.

Eventually, it’s thought to be also a reference to the blood of Jove. Sangiogheto is a synonym of whatever happened there. Sangiovese isn’t only important in Tuscany. This whole story happened in a region just outside of Tuscany. Sangiovese is really the workhorse of central Italy in general. In Umbria, it is blended in a DOC or a wine region called Montefalco. It’s often blended with a grape called Sagrantino, a very big, powerful variety that softens it a little bit.

In the region of Le Marche, there are two very well-known red wines there, Rosso Piceno and Rosso Conero, and they are also Sangiovese, blending with a grape called Montepulciano. Not the town, but the grape. It’s also being used more and in Lazio, which is where Rome is. And here’s a fun little fact, if you guys ever come across Corsican wine — yeah, we should sometime do an episode on Corsican wine. It’s pretty cool. They make wine from Sangiovese there. But there they call it Nielluccio. Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s good and it’s awesome. They do great rosés with it, too.

Now every town, every region that produces wine from Sangiovese is awesome. Everyone has their own unique spin on this variety. It’s beautiful, and that’s all in the Tuscan episode. Yet, what you and I know more than any other wine made from Sangiovese in Italy is Chianti. This wine has had a presence in our culture for a long time. I remember as a kid, in the early ‘80s, going to this Italian restaurant with my parents. They loved it so much, it was called Mom and Pop. They had basket wine bottles. They’re called fiaschi. There were Chianti bottles with the baskets on them, and that was the candleholder.

Even as far back as the ‘70s, it made it into film. You have “Shaft,” an amazing film. When Shaft goes in to talk to the local Italian crime boss, the dude is sitting there sipping on a nice Chianti. I mean it was a basket wine, but in the ‘70s, it was considered good stuff. Of course, we had to get this out of the way: “A census taker once tried to test me. *I ate his liver with fava beans in a nice Chianti” — creepy murder doctor Hannibal Lecter, “Silence of the Lambs.”

Yeah. I don’t know where you are in age or pop culture, but that scene is one of the most famous scenes from the movie and one of the most famous scenes in film history. And what’s really interesting is in the book, he has this fava beans with the liver, with an Amarone, which is actually a red wine from the northern part of Italy. But because Chianti was so ingrained in our minds, the people writing the script decided to put Chianti in there instead of Amarone so we would be familiar with it. Sure enough, that line is basically timeless.

And even though we, in the United States, have had an intimate relationship with Chianti for such a long time, it still confuses us. It’s confusing because, guys, Chianti is complicated. It’s really complicated. If I had an entire episode to tell you the history of this place, it would blow your mind.

The city of Florence, which is very close to the Chianti wine region — which we’re going to get into in a second — I think between the 14th and the 16th century was the center of the world. This is where the birth of the Renaissance happened, some of the most famous glassmakers in the world were in Florence. The stories, the history, and the documentation are pretty immense. Just the story of Florence and its history with its rival city just to the south, Siena, includes Chianti and the wines from this region. These are awesome stories for another time because we’re here to talk about wine. Let’s get deep in the hills of Chianti and understand this place.

In the center part of Tuscany, there is a major town called Florence, which you guys all know. And then south of that city is a city called Siena. Between the town of Florence and the town of Siena, are these mountainous hills there called the Chianti or the Chianti Hills or the Chianti Mountains. It’s thought that viticulture goes all the way back to the Etruscans, which came before the Greeks. Actually, the Greeks came to Italy, and they saw the Etruscans. The Etruscans freaked out the Greeks because of their hedonism. It’s wild. I just wanted to tell you about that.

I mention the Etruscans because I’ve always been so fascinated with the word Chianti, in that I don’t know what it means and it’s very hard to figure out what it means. The only thing I could really find is that the Etruscans are thought to name this area, Clante. I don’t know what that means, but Clante? Chianti? It makes sense. If anybody knows any Italian etymologists that can help me out, would be awesome. However, the word Chianti first shows up in documents in the late 1330s. That seals the deal for Chianti. Well, the name at least because this document doesn’t name wine so much, it just calls this area the Chianti Hills.

By the 18th century, this area was known for wine. There are three townships in the Chianti Hills: Castellina, Radda, and Gaiole. At this time, Chianti was applied to these three townships. Also what’s interesting is these three townships are under the jurisdiction of Florence, and they formed what was called the League of Chianti, which was a guard against the town or city of Siena at the time. There was a rivalry, and a pretty storied rivalry at that. If you remember in the Portugal episode, we talked about the Douro Valley and how it was one of the first attempts at demarcating or creating some controlled appellation because of the popularity of the wine to combat fraud and to maintain the authenticity of the wines coming out of that region because of all the money that was being made there.

This is the same thing that happened in 1716 in the Chianti Hills. The three initial townships — Radda, Castellina, and Gaiole — were demarcated as Chianti, the wine-growing and winemaking region, by Cosimo III, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. In these hills with high-ish elevation in this very well-known famous soil called galestro with some limestone and clay, there’s a short list of native varieties that are being used to make wine around this time — most of them red, some of them white, often blended together for red. You had Sangiovese, there was a grape called Ciliegiolo, which is actually related to Sangiovese. Also, there is a grape called Mammolo and a grape called Canaiolo. Those are the red wine grapes. For white wine, there’s a group called Trebbiano, which is all over central Italy, and a grape called Malvasia, which we’ve mentioned before in other previous episodes.

There wasn’t a rhyme or reason and there weren’t any rules or regulations. Toward the end of the 19th century, there was this dude named Baron Bettino Ricasoli. In 1872, he wrote a letter saying that he had synthesized 10 years of experimentation. And what he’s found is that the Sangiovese grape is the best grape to use as the base of the Chianti blend. For aging wines, he found that Sangiovese’s aroma profile and its vigorous acidity, blended with a little bit of Canaiolo, was the best way to make age-worthy Chianti. For younger wines, he kept that little formula going, but he thought, “You know what? Add a little bit of Malvasia. Add a little bit of white wine. It really is nice.”

This formula or this idea caught on. And basically, this guy — and his family still makes wine to this day — is the inventor of modern Chianti. From the 18th century to the 1930s, this is what Chianti was: three townships basically carrying the Chianti name, but it’s spreading out more and more. People started to adhere to this new Chianti formula. The identity of Chianti was coming into itself. By the 1930s, this wine was becoming very popular, so the Italian government decided they were going to extend the Chianti zone. They’re going to name different subzones to capitalize on what was happening here. And to the dismay of the original townships, the government extended these subzones to basically surround the original area.

To this day, there are seven of them. Chianti is the prefix, and then the geographical location comes after that. I’m not going to get into all of them, but I’m going to name some of them right now so you can get a sense of them. Colli Fiorentini, Rufina, Montalbano, Colli Aretini, Colline Pisane, and Montespertoli. And you’ll often see it on the wine label. It’ll say Chianti in big letters, and underneath it it’ll have the geographical location. This extends the Chianti zone to about 40,000 acres, give or take. It’s a very large area.

In the 1960s, when Italy was creating its own appellation-controlled system that was based on the French appellations system, they went to Chianti and they saw how popular the ricasoli formula was. When they gave Chianti its DOC, that is the blend that became a regulation for Chianti: Sangiovese, Canaiolo, and Malvasia. They also added other varieties in there: Mammolo, Ciliegiolo, and also Trebbiano. With such a large area and with some economic troubles in the region, the trend of Chianti wines went towards quantity, not quality. Of course, there was quality being made during this time, but until the early 1980s, it got pretty bad as far as people taking advantage of a good thing. The famous Fiaschi basket wine we see in “Shaft” was eventually seen as just not very good wine. It was very thin. There was a lot of white wine in it, and it was giving Chianti a bad rap. To this day, Chianti basket wine is mainly known as a candle holder. Am I right?

And it wasn’t only basket wine that was compromised. There was a lot of wine coming into the United States and just being distributed throughout the world in which the quality wasn’t there.

In 1984, the government said “OK, we’re going to elevate the Chianti region from a DOC to a DOCG. We’re going to have stricter rules put in place. Now, we’re restricting the amount of white wine you can use and doing all these things to make sure the quality of Sangiovese is sound.” And I gotta say, they made some good decisions.

From 1984 on, Chianti really began to improve. But we have to think about that original township area. Remember I said, to the dismay of that area, all these other little sub-zones were created? Well, they’re still pretty mad. Or should I say, the quality-minded winemakers in the area were mad. This initiated what was called the Chianti Classico 2000 Project, which was a project of studying the soils and all the things in that center heartland, that area that started it all.

In 1996, that area of Chianti became Chianti Classico — its own DOCG, its own autonomous wine-growing region, not a subregion of Chianti. For the longest time, it was just a subzone. It was called Chianti Classico as in, this is where it all began. It was part of the seven subzones that were created in the 1930s, but it was considered Chianti Classico. It didn’t really have a geographical name to it. Now, Chianti Classico is its own thing. It’s made up of about nine communes. I’m not going to list the communes here because it’s not that important. I mean, the communes are important, absolutely. But for you as a wine buyer and consumer in the United States, the communes are not something that’s going to help you find wine, because the Chianti Classico region does not allow for the communes to be put on the label. You’re just going to see Chianti Classico. I’m sure the communes are somewhere in the small print on the back label. Also, something to know is that Castellina, Radda, and Gaiole are still part of the center of Chianti Classico.

Wine-wise, what is Chianti? Chianti is basically two appellations. You have the heartland of it all where it all began, the Chianti Classico zone. It’s its own zone. It has its own rules. They tend to be a little more strict than the larger Chianti area. Then you have the larger Chianti DOCG. That Chianti has seven subzones that have actual geographical names attached to the Chianti word. Outside of that area is just Chianti proper. If you see a wine that just says Chianti on it, it’s coming from anywhere outside of these zones, but it’s still in Chianti. And whether you’re in Chianti proper, geographical Chianti, or Chianti Classico, Sangiovese is the primary variety used in the blends.

In international varieties, which are basically French varieties — Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot — they’ve always been allowed in the Chianti region. And for a long time, they were being used not heavily, but they were used to attract the American palate. In addition to that, using significant oak exposure to get that vanilla spice thing going. That trend is starting to dip a little bit. We’re starting to see more older varieties being used in the blend and less Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, even in the smaller amounts. We’re starting to see wines with less oak influence coming out of Chianti. That’s really where Chianti began. The wines of Chianti are red with a medium-bodied perception. They are tangy with great acidity, and that’s what Sangiovese wants to give you. Then, you put a little Canaiolo and Mammulo in there, and it gets a little bit earthy. It makes for an amazing food wine. Steak Florentine with Chianti? Just forget about it!

In Chianti proper, they still blend a little bit of white wine into their wine sometimes. It’s winemaker to winemaker, whatever they want to do. You won’t see white wine being blended into Chianti Classico anymore. They outlawed that stuff.

And even though there’s so much more to talk about — diving into the Classico communes, diving into the geographical areas, getting a little more history going, getting a little more context of things — this is just your roundabout Chianti 101. Now you can get a good sense of what you’re drinking, what you’re looking at, and not feeling too overwhelmed. Because man, Chianti is complicated.

@VinePairKeith is my Insta. Rate and review this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from. It really helps get the word out there. And now for some totally awesome credits.

“Wine 101” was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big ol’ shoutout to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin for creating VinePair. And I mean, a big shoutout to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of VinePair, for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast. Also, Darbi Cicci for the theme song. Listen to this. And I want to thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new everyday. See you next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article Wine 101: Sangiovese/Chianti appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-101-sangiovese-chianti/

[johnboothus]

Wine 101: Sangiovese/Chianti

This episode of “Wine 101” is sponsored by Brancaia. At Brancaia, we perceive the work in the vineyard as a flow of energy that must be respected to the highest degree. Rooted in the bold super Tuscan movement that forever changed Italy’s winemaking culture, the wines of Brancaia blend local grapes with international varieties, bringing a decidedly modern touch to a centuries-old wine region. Today, Brancaia embodies a passion for terroir and dedication to artisan techniques, producing elegant, complex wines with a strong Tuscan identity. Brancaia Winery: Resist the usual.

Click the link below to discover and purchase wine brands discussed on the Wine101 podcast series. Get 15% OFF when you purchase $75 or more. Use coupon code “wine15” at checkout: www.thebarrelroom.com/discover.

In this episode of “Wine 101,” VinePair tastings director Keith Beavers discusses the origins of Sangiovese and Chianti. Beavers discusses the history of Sangiovese from its origins in Tuscany, as well as its many nicknames. However, what listeners will learn most about is Chianti, the popular wine made from the Sangiovese grape.

Beaver explains how Chianti came to be a central winegrowing region in Italy, dating back to the 18th century, and how it rose to popularity in the 1970s — appearing in popular films such as “Shaft” and “Silence of the Lambs.” Further, Beavers explains the emergence of the Chianti Classico DOCG in the late ‘80s.

Tune in to learn more and become an expert on Sangiovese and Chianti.

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Keith Beavers: My name is Keith Beavers, and I think I’ve watched all of HGTV. Like, all of it. I need something else.

What’s going on, wine lovers? Welcome to Episode 19 of VinePair’s “Wine 101” podcast, Season 2. My name is Keith Beavers. I’m the tastings director of VinePair. Sup?

Chianti and Sangiovese. Oh my gosh. You know it from a movie, from life as an American, and from loving Italian wine. Let’s talk about it.

OK, so we did an episode on Tuscany last season. It was to get a nice, rounded idea about Tuscany, and in that episode, we talked about Sangiovese and we talked about how it’s different. It produces different styles of wine, depending on where it’s growing in Tuscany. It’s a very interesting variety, but it’s not an interesting variety in that it mutates and it clones itself and all this stuff. No. What’s unique about Sangiovese is that there are really two kinds of Sangiovese. There’s Sangiovese Grosso, a big fat grape. Then, there’s Sangiovese Piccolo, a little grape.

The majority of the wines that we drink come from Sangiovese Grosso, the big fat grape. But the thing is, Sangiovese Grosso grows throughout Tuscany, but the people who produce wines from that grape call it something different, even just in Tuscany itself. In Montalcino in Tuscany, they call Sangiovese Grosso, Brunello. In the town of Montepulciano, where they make Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, they call it Prugnolo Gentile. And in the Tuscan region of Morellino di Scansano, they call it Morellino. It can be confusing. I know I say it a lot in wine. It can be confusing. Why is wine so confusing?

Well, the thing is, wine is ancient. Oh my gosh, it’s so ancient in so many cultures, townships, and communes throughout Italy, throughout the world. All the synonyms for the grapes, it’s just insane. The thing is, during feudal systems and sharecropping, there is pride in all these towns. It seems to me that they name the grape, and they could care less whether another town calls it something else. This is what they’re going to call it. And that’s just how this works throughout the history of wine in general. In Tuscany, it’s a little bit crazy because it went from one town to the next. Sometimes the variety that’s being used is the same variety but has a different name. And it can be crazy.

Just like other old varieties like Pinot Noir, Sangiovese is thought to be ancient. The first documentation of Sangiovese is from a treatise on the viticulture of Tuscany in 1600 by a dude named Giovan Vettorio Soderini. In it, he says, “il sangiogheto, aspro a mangiare, ma sugoso e pienissimo di vino” which generally means “the Sangiogheto, bitter to eat but juicy and venous.” This is the first documentation of Sangiovese but it’s really the first documentation of the synonym of Sangiovese.

The story goes that, in the region of Emilia-Romagna, which is north and east of Tuscany, there is a town called Rimini. Just outside of that town is a mountain called Montegiove. And in the foothills of that mountain was a — wait for it — monastery! Yep, the monks. And here, the monks were making wine. And the wine they made, they called vino, which basically just means wine in Italian. When asked what this wine was, they thought for a second and they said “sanguis Jovis”, which means the blood of Jupiter. Sangiovese came from that.

Eventually, it’s thought to be also a reference to the blood of Jove. Sangiogheto is a synonym of whatever happened there. Sangiovese isn’t only important in Tuscany. This whole story happened in a region just outside of Tuscany. Sangiovese is really the workhorse of central Italy in general. In Umbria, it is blended in a DOC or a wine region called Montefalco. It’s often blended with a grape called Sagrantino, a very big, powerful variety that softens it a little bit.

In the region of Le Marche, there are two very well-known red wines there, Rosso Piceno and Rosso Conero, and they are also Sangiovese, blending with a grape called Montepulciano. Not the town, but the grape. It’s also being used more and in Lazio, which is where Rome is. And here’s a fun little fact, if you guys ever come across Corsican wine — yeah, we should sometime do an episode on Corsican wine. It’s pretty cool. They make wine from Sangiovese there. But there they call it Nielluccio. Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s good and it’s awesome. They do great rosés with it, too.

Now every town, every region that produces wine from Sangiovese is awesome. Everyone has their own unique spin on this variety. It’s beautiful, and that’s all in the Tuscan episode. Yet, what you and I know more than any other wine made from Sangiovese in Italy is Chianti. This wine has had a presence in our culture for a long time. I remember as a kid, in the early ‘80s, going to this Italian restaurant with my parents. They loved it so much, it was called Mom and Pop. They had basket wine bottles. They’re called fiaschi. There were Chianti bottles with the baskets on them, and that was the candleholder.

Even as far back as the ‘70s, it made it into film. You have “Shaft,” an amazing film. When Shaft goes in to talk to the local Italian crime boss, the dude is sitting there sipping on a nice Chianti. I mean it was a basket wine, but in the ‘70s, it was considered good stuff. Of course, we had to get this out of the way: “A census taker once tried to test me. *I ate his liver with fava beans in a nice Chianti” — creepy murder doctor Hannibal Lecter, “Silence of the Lambs.”

Yeah. I don’t know where you are in age or pop culture, but that scene is one of the most famous scenes from the movie and one of the most famous scenes in film history. And what’s really interesting is in the book, he has this fava beans with the liver, with an Amarone, which is actually a red wine from the northern part of Italy. But because Chianti was so ingrained in our minds, the people writing the script decided to put Chianti in there instead of Amarone so we would be familiar with it. Sure enough, that line is basically timeless.

And even though we, in the United States, have had an intimate relationship with Chianti for such a long time, it still confuses us. It’s confusing because, guys, Chianti is complicated. It’s really complicated. If I had an entire episode to tell you the history of this place, it would blow your mind.

The city of Florence, which is very close to the Chianti wine region — which we’re going to get into in a second — I think between the 14th and the 16th century was the center of the world. This is where the birth of the Renaissance happened, some of the most famous glassmakers in the world were in Florence. The stories, the history, and the documentation are pretty immense. Just the story of Florence and its history with its rival city just to the south, Siena, includes Chianti and the wines from this region. These are awesome stories for another time because we’re here to talk about wine. Let’s get deep in the hills of Chianti and understand this place.

In the center part of Tuscany, there is a major town called Florence, which you guys all know. And then south of that city is a city called Siena. Between the town of Florence and the town of Siena, are these mountainous hills there called the Chianti or the Chianti Hills or the Chianti Mountains. It’s thought that viticulture goes all the way back to the Etruscans, which came before the Greeks. Actually, the Greeks came to Italy, and they saw the Etruscans. The Etruscans freaked out the Greeks because of their hedonism. It’s wild. I just wanted to tell you about that.

I mention the Etruscans because I’ve always been so fascinated with the word Chianti, in that I don’t know what it means and it’s very hard to figure out what it means. The only thing I could really find is that the Etruscans are thought to name this area, Clante. I don’t know what that means, but Clante? Chianti? It makes sense. If anybody knows any Italian etymologists that can help me out, would be awesome. However, the word Chianti first shows up in documents in the late 1330s. That seals the deal for Chianti. Well, the name at least because this document doesn’t name wine so much, it just calls this area the Chianti Hills.

By the 18th century, this area was known for wine. There are three townships in the Chianti Hills: Castellina, Radda, and Gaiole. At this time, Chianti was applied to these three townships. Also what’s interesting is these three townships are under the jurisdiction of Florence, and they formed what was called the League of Chianti, which was a guard against the town or city of Siena at the time. There was a rivalry, and a pretty storied rivalry at that. If you remember in the Portugal episode, we talked about the Douro Valley and how it was one of the first attempts at demarcating or creating some controlled appellation because of the popularity of the wine to combat fraud and to maintain the authenticity of the wines coming out of that region because of all the money that was being made there.

This is the same thing that happened in 1716 in the Chianti Hills. The three initial townships — Radda, Castellina, and Gaiole — were demarcated as Chianti, the wine-growing and winemaking region, by Cosimo III, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. In these hills with high-ish elevation in this very well-known famous soil called galestro with some limestone and clay, there’s a short list of native varieties that are being used to make wine around this time — most of them red, some of them white, often blended together for red. You had Sangiovese, there was a grape called Ciliegiolo, which is actually related to Sangiovese. Also, there is a grape called Mammolo and a grape called Canaiolo. Those are the red wine grapes. For white wine, there’s a group called Trebbiano, which is all over central Italy, and a grape called Malvasia, which we’ve mentioned before in other previous episodes.

There wasn’t a rhyme or reason and there weren’t any rules or regulations. Toward the end of the 19th century, there was this dude named Baron Bettino Ricasoli. In 1872, he wrote a letter saying that he had synthesized 10 years of experimentation. And what he’s found is that the Sangiovese grape is the best grape to use as the base of the Chianti blend. For aging wines, he found that Sangiovese’s aroma profile and its vigorous acidity, blended with a little bit of Canaiolo, was the best way to make age-worthy Chianti. For younger wines, he kept that little formula going, but he thought, “You know what? Add a little bit of Malvasia. Add a little bit of white wine. It really is nice.”

This formula or this idea caught on. And basically, this guy — and his family still makes wine to this day — is the inventor of modern Chianti. From the 18th century to the 1930s, this is what Chianti was: three townships basically carrying the Chianti name, but it’s spreading out more and more. People started to adhere to this new Chianti formula. The identity of Chianti was coming into itself. By the 1930s, this wine was becoming very popular, so the Italian government decided they were going to extend the Chianti zone. They’re going to name different subzones to capitalize on what was happening here. And to the dismay of the original townships, the government extended these subzones to basically surround the original area.

To this day, there are seven of them. Chianti is the prefix, and then the geographical location comes after that. I’m not going to get into all of them, but I’m going to name some of them right now so you can get a sense of them. Colli Fiorentini, Rufina, Montalbano, Colli Aretini, Colline Pisane, and Montespertoli. And you’ll often see it on the wine label. It’ll say Chianti in big letters, and underneath it it’ll have the geographical location. This extends the Chianti zone to about 40,000 acres, give or take. It’s a very large area.

In the 1960s, when Italy was creating its own appellation-controlled system that was based on the French appellations system, they went to Chianti and they saw how popular the ricasoli formula was. When they gave Chianti its DOC, that is the blend that became a regulation for Chianti: Sangiovese, Canaiolo, and Malvasia. They also added other varieties in there: Mammolo, Ciliegiolo, and also Trebbiano. With such a large area and with some economic troubles in the region, the trend of Chianti wines went towards quantity, not quality. Of course, there was quality being made during this time, but until the early 1980s, it got pretty bad as far as people taking advantage of a good thing. The famous Fiaschi basket wine we see in “Shaft” was eventually seen as just not very good wine. It was very thin. There was a lot of white wine in it, and it was giving Chianti a bad rap. To this day, Chianti basket wine is mainly known as a candle holder. Am I right?

And it wasn’t only basket wine that was compromised. There was a lot of wine coming into the United States and just being distributed throughout the world in which the quality wasn’t there.

In 1984, the government said “OK, we’re going to elevate the Chianti region from a DOC to a DOCG. We’re going to have stricter rules put in place. Now, we’re restricting the amount of white wine you can use and doing all these things to make sure the quality of Sangiovese is sound.” And I gotta say, they made some good decisions.

From 1984 on, Chianti really began to improve. But we have to think about that original township area. Remember I said, to the dismay of that area, all these other little sub-zones were created? Well, they’re still pretty mad. Or should I say, the quality-minded winemakers in the area were mad. This initiated what was called the Chianti Classico 2000 Project, which was a project of studying the soils and all the things in that center heartland, that area that started it all.

In 1996, that area of Chianti became Chianti Classico — its own DOCG, its own autonomous wine-growing region, not a subregion of Chianti. For the longest time, it was just a subzone. It was called Chianti Classico as in, this is where it all began. It was part of the seven subzones that were created in the 1930s, but it was considered Chianti Classico. It didn’t really have a geographical name to it. Now, Chianti Classico is its own thing. It’s made up of about nine communes. I’m not going to list the communes here because it’s not that important. I mean, the communes are important, absolutely. But for you as a wine buyer and consumer in the United States, the communes are not something that’s going to help you find wine, because the Chianti Classico region does not allow for the communes to be put on the label. You’re just going to see Chianti Classico. I’m sure the communes are somewhere in the small print on the back label. Also, something to know is that Castellina, Radda, and Gaiole are still part of the center of Chianti Classico.

Wine-wise, what is Chianti? Chianti is basically two appellations. You have the heartland of it all where it all began, the Chianti Classico zone. It’s its own zone. It has its own rules. They tend to be a little more strict than the larger Chianti area. Then you have the larger Chianti DOCG. That Chianti has seven subzones that have actual geographical names attached to the Chianti word. Outside of that area is just Chianti proper. If you see a wine that just says Chianti on it, it’s coming from anywhere outside of these zones, but it’s still in Chianti. And whether you’re in Chianti proper, geographical Chianti, or Chianti Classico, Sangiovese is the primary variety used in the blends.

In international varieties, which are basically French varieties — Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot — they’ve always been allowed in the Chianti region. And for a long time, they were being used not heavily, but they were used to attract the American palate. In addition to that, using significant oak exposure to get that vanilla spice thing going. That trend is starting to dip a little bit. We’re starting to see more older varieties being used in the blend and less Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, even in the smaller amounts. We’re starting to see wines with less oak influence coming out of Chianti. That’s really where Chianti began. The wines of Chianti are red with a medium-bodied perception. They are tangy with great acidity, and that’s what Sangiovese wants to give you. Then, you put a little Canaiolo and Mammulo in there, and it gets a little bit earthy. It makes for an amazing food wine. Steak Florentine with Chianti? Just forget about it!

In Chianti proper, they still blend a little bit of white wine into their wine sometimes. It’s winemaker to winemaker, whatever they want to do. You won’t see white wine being blended into Chianti Classico anymore. They outlawed that stuff.

And even though there’s so much more to talk about — diving into the Classico communes, diving into the geographical areas, getting a little more history going, getting a little more context of things — this is just your roundabout Chianti 101. Now you can get a good sense of what you’re drinking, what you’re looking at, and not feeling too overwhelmed. Because man, Chianti is complicated.

@VinePairKeith is my Insta. Rate and review this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from. It really helps get the word out there. And now for some totally awesome credits.

“Wine 101” was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big ol’ shoutout to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin for creating VinePair. And I mean, a big shoutout to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of VinePair, for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast. Also, Darbi Cicci for the theme song. Listen to this. And I want to thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new everyday. See you next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article Wine 101: Sangiovese/Chianti appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-101-sangiovese-chianti/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/wine-101-sangiovesechianti

[samiliart]

The Last Jedi: Review (Spoiler Alert)

Watched the Last Jedi, FINALLY

The movie was definitely original, but while it took really courageous leaps at new ideas, it had its feet stuck in the status quo of movies. It failed to ‘kill the past’--instead, it became a confusing mash of weird stuff.

From the very beginning, the movie seemed oriented towards the no-good-no-evil standpoint of the world. Luke teaches Rey on all the failings of the Jedi Order, while Kylo Ren and Rey share Force video calls and grow to understand one another. Rey is ‘good’, but she’s drawn to the darkness. Kylo can’t bring himself to kill his mother. Luke, a ‘legend’, was the one who brought about Ben Solo’s turn to the dark side. The lock-picker(who, by the way, was so very conveniently placed), even lays it out directly--that there’s no good, no real bad. Everything is complicated, and it’s extremely compelling to watch.

But after Kylo Ren kills Snoke Darth-Maul style, he offers Rey the opportunity to lead the universe together--no Jedi, no Sith, no rebels. And after all that Rey has heard and seen about the Jedi not being so good, she sides with them anyway. She gives him a blunt ‘no’ (not even a little hesitation?!) and runs back to the rebels. And in the end, Luke Skywalker was still the infallible hero, the inspiration, the ‘Jesus’ figure.

So good and evil aren’t that far apart? Or good trumps evil in the form of a little boy Force-ing his broom to his hand? The movie just slaps all the complexity in the face with an ultimate good ending and undoes all the pioneering ideas that made it so unique.  

The movie also has a take on ‘heroism’. Poe charges forward to take down the Dreadnaught, downing nearly the rebels’ entire fleet in the process, and he is reprimanded by Princess Leia and downranked. Finn tries to sacrifice himeself to destroy the cannon, and Rose stops him, saying one of the most confusing dramatic lines ever--isn’t Finn saving the people he loves by throwing himself in the cannon? He could possibly have saved everyone, or at least bought them time. But when it is Captain Huldo’s turn to be the hero, no one and nothing stops her, and the act of ‘heroism’ she performs--sacrificing herself and destroying the flagship with the cruiser at lightspeed(honestly, why did no one think of doing that before? sooo awesome) is allowed and praised, even though there was no apparent reason for her to stay on board(no autopilot, anything?). Leia tells Poe that acting the hero isn’t always the way to go, which is a pretty original message to put in a movie franchise that was built on heroes as well as hope, but Captain Huldo just shoots that message down too with her own badassery. Is Star Wars sending a feminist message now? If so, great, but it’s messing up the logic of the entire movie. 

Aside from the major themes, there are also a lot of points that really tick a person off. Captain--Commander?--Huldo, for some reason, refuses to tell Poe her not-so-amazing-but-feasible, actual plan, causing him to send Fin and Rose on an ultimately useless mission to find a master lock-picker(And you’re telling me the rebels have never found the need for one on any of their earlier missions?). The major alien planets, like the gambling planet, are so much like Earth I had to check to make sure I was watching the same movie(horse racing? couldn’t you find some other, more interesting spectacle?) Why is Snoke so useless and dies so melodramatically? Finn and Captain Phasma are still completely wasted(absolutely no character growth from either of them). And Yoda can summon lightning, along with a lot of other unknown Force-tricks that appear in the movie, which is interesting but messes up a lot of what was in place in the universe originally. 

And the awful, awful Marvel-style humor. Gosh. Destroying dramatic shots for the sake of comedy(Luke throwing away the light saber; Shirtless Kylo) is what I had reserved for Marvel. Seeing it in Star Wars is confusing and foreign and feels completely WRONG.

And mom jokes? Seriously?  

I think Rian had a good original vision for this movie, but he tied up the story in the simplest, fastest, and worst way possible. Maybe they thought the audience couldn’t handle all the complicated themes they were sending out. Maybe they thought Star Wars should appeal to the large general public who were all fawning over the new Avengers Movie. So it became a big distorted mash of dramatic lines, amazing fight scenes, special effects, and themes that are constantly undoing themselves. The movie kind of lost itself by the time it ended.

I still had great time watching it, but I think I would have anticipated the next movie more if they had gone along with the complexity they once had. Now, with that sort of ending... I hope Rian will still continue to be ‘unpredictable’, but next time, all the way.

(06.09.2018)

[withallthingslove]

can i ask ur thoughts about tlj? i'm curious

Under the cut cause spoilers

The first time I saw it I left the theater not even sure if I liked because so much happened I couldn’t process it. But after seeing it a second (and third time) I’ve got a grasp on it now. 

Overall, I really liked it. I think it does a good job balancing old stuff while trying to severe ties with the past and create something new. The cinematography was beautiful and the space battles and effects seemed a lot better in this one. Especially when Holdo crashed through the first empire ship. Wow. Music was also pretty solid thank you John Williams. 

Luke: Mark Hamill was amazing in this movie. I was blown away by his performance. I know he wasn’t thrilled with Luke’s story line but he still managed to kill it. I’ve read a lot of reviews by adults who say Luke becoming disillusioned with the world and wanting to just give up is pretty accurate for growing up, and the only thing I disagree with is that I don’t think Luke would ever have it in him to consider killing Ben. This was the person who literally never gave up on Vader despite his horrendous crimes and the fact Vader tried to kill him multiple times. And then Ben is vaguely dark/emo/angsty and Luke’s first instinct is to kill him? I don’t buy that. But everything else about his story line I liked, and him dying while watching the sunset after coming to peace with everything made me cry. 

Leia: RIP Carrie Fisher. She was also amazing in this and I was happy to hear she wrote most of her lines including the reunion scene between her and Luke. I’m happy the movie showed Leia was equally as force sensitive as Luke and that she is essentially a mother figure to Poe. 

Kylo Ren: Adam Driver deserves all the awards. I don’t know how he is able to capture all of Ren’s complexities, but he does. I really really liked Kylo Ren after this movie, because he was even more complex in this one than TFA. The scene where he can’t bring himself to shoot Leia really hit me and was one of my favorite moments from the whole movie. It’s really interesting to see his relationship with Rey develop; it’s obvious they are two sides of the same coin. I love the scene where he kills Snoke just because it echoes the scene from Return of the Jedi, which is my all time favorite. I love that he turns back into a whiny brat after Rey rejects him because he thinks the visions really were conceived by Snoke, only to realize he messed up with the last force vision. It’s obvious that IF he is going to get a redemption arc, it’s going to have to be because he wants to save himself. If Han, Luke, Leia, or Rey can’t get him to turn, no one can. So if Ben Solo is going to truly come back and be redeemed, it’s going to have to be because Ben Solo saves himself. 

Rey: I was impressed with Daisy but not blown away. I would say her performance was at the same level as TFA, but not better. But also not worse. I’m really interested to see where her arc goes in the next one, and hopefully she doesn’t listen to Kylo and she realizes she IS somebody, even if her parents were nobodies. She’s Rey and she’s perfect. My favorite moment of hers was when she legit reaches out with her hand and Luke tricks her with a plant that it’s the force, and when she lifts the rocks to save everybody. So precious. I’m not disappointed with her parents being nobodies, I think that sends a good message that it doesn’t matter if she isn’t related to anybody, she’s special on her own. Though part of me feels like it could not be true, or maybe her grandparents or important, who knows. 

Poe: I wanna make out with Oscar Isaac. Bad. The first time I saw this movie I didn’t like his arc that much and he came across as a bit of an asshole, but now I appreciate it because it shows he has a lot to learn, but can learn and use life lessons to make good decisions in the future. Also he’s gay for Finn. And I’m glad they moved the cut scene with meeting Rey from TFA to this one so we could see them interacting. 

Finn: Sigh. John Boyega is so good and I like Finn as a character, but he definitely had the weakest story line. I loved his interactions with Poe and Rey, but hated everything with Rose. It just felt so forced and unnecessary. The Canto Bight scenes dragged on for me. I’m glad he got to confront Phasma and also step up from being someone who is always running away to someone willing to put his life on the line, but that’s about it.

Rose: I went into the movie wanting to like her because Kelly Marie Tran seems awesome, but I just didn’t. I think she did the best with what she had, but a lot of her lines came across as forced to me. Which is probably the writing and not her. Honestly, I feel like her saving Finn would have been more impactful if she had died. And that kiss was super weak and awkward. The second time I saw it some little boy sitting behind me went “ew” so I know I’m not the only one who thinks that. 

Other thoughts

Still love the dynamic between Hux and Kylo

The porgs actually weren’t annoying and the fish ladies on the island were precious.

I didn’t like Holdo that much the first or second time I saw it but did the third. 

I wish Chewie could have played a bigger role

Halfway through when I saw it the first time I started really missing Han Solo and got real sad for a few minutes

[ladylaffnsun-blog]

Today has been a pretty awesome day after a pretty awesome weekend! I don’t know where to start with all the awesome stuff that we did and how things keep getting better each day. I truly do believe it’s not just a state of mind, it’s the attitude, it’s the heart, the spirit as well. I made the decision to really focus on being positive & not allowing the negative into my entire life, in fact, I avoid all negativity and all drama. It’s not wanted here in my life by any means. I really enjoy the peace that I found in my life.

My weekend began on Friday and so I got to spend it alone, until Ron got off work. I paid for my blog upgrade on WordPress & worked on my blog a bit, I did some upgrades to it as far as colors and such, I even wrote a blog entry to kick this off. I was pretty motivated on Friday, so I was able to write with a clear head as well as relax. I think I may have even done a YouTube video.

Saturday, Ron and I got up and made the decision to go to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, if you have never been, it’s an experience you need to make, it’s worth it. For Arizona and Mexican residents you get a $5.00 discount off the entrance fee, it’s open at different times throughout the year, just check the link above and you can see rates and times. Ron and I will be getting a membership this year, that we get in free and can have three guests come in with us, as well as many other perks of membership. Now, the desert is where I find peace and true solace, I love being in the desert, it’s the majesty of the land that gets me. As you can well see from the photos below, I am truly in love with the desert landscape, it’s peaceful, it’s quiet and it’s calm. This is where I can ground and center myself, it’s where my spirit not only soars, it also starts to rest peacefully, I go into a totally and complete state of zen.

Ron and I were taken a different route than we are used to going, instead of going down Speedway, my Google Maps took us around the traffic and around the city, which was nice and peaceful for driving. The U of A had Spring Fling which apparently is the biggest  and one of the oldest (43 years) fairs run by students in the United States, that will something we do next year. We had so many choices of things to do this weekend, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum won out though, due the fact that both Ron and I needed to be grounded, we need peace and solace in our lives, this is the place to be for that. We made our way to the museum, parked and walked to the entrance, which by the way is a long walk considering where we parked, I have a Fit Bit so I am trying to get back to walking. Once we paid, we headed off on paths, where it seemed no one else was, you can see our first video we here on my YouTube channel. What is truly amazing is that this is an outside adventure, with very little indoor things to do, so be sure to bring sunscreen, lots of water, good walking shoes (not flip flops, you are walking in the desert), a hat and comfortable clothes.

We had to joy of seeing so many animals, a few that we wanted to see didn’t come out as it was getting too hot (92) and the time of day is the time they rest. The other animals though were just exciting for us to see.

We have a grey fox, road runner, chuckwalla, prairie dog, burrowing owl and a Mexican wolf, just to show a few of the great animals and critters we got to see, the best part is coming up here though!!

We pet STINGRAYS!!! Yes, we pet them & loved every minute of it. Did you know Stingrays offer good healing medicine? Don’t believe me? Well, they do, they offer each of us a message in this healing that they give us.

“Stingrays may be telling you to not overreact to your emotions, to calm down and wait before reacting. Stingrays maneuver themselves quite well despite their size and shape and they tell us to also carefully maneuver the complex emotional waters of our inner world.

Balance and restraint are strong themes of this totem animal. When it appears to you; consider your actions carefully and allow your intuition to guide you rather than raw emotion.

Perhaps now it would be wise to stay under the radar a bit and not make a scene as you figure out your next move.” Courtesy of Totem Wisdom.

You have to remember too that our desert offers some beautiful as well as interesting plant life. We are one of the few places that saguaro cacti grow, we have prickly pear cacti, cholla, mesquite, creosote, palo verde, agave and many other plants and trees.

We were at the museum about 4 1/2 hours, we saw all we could see, I put in almost all of the 10,000 steps for the day, yet we were both sunburned (forgot the sunscreen oops) and very hungry. As we drove home, Ron looks at me and says “Call New York Pizza, order a small pizza, extra cheese with mushrooms, lightly cooked, we will eat there.” So, I call our favorite pizza place and off we go to eat our late lunch, early dinner, that was all we ate all day. I don’t eat when we go off into the desert much, the heat makes me get sick, I just drink water like crazy. After eating, we came home, walked Chloe our red heeler (you will meet her later) and just sit for a few minutes, Ron turns to me to say “How many steps do you need now?” I say “Um, 2,400 more.” Off we go to Park Place Mall to do our final walking around, now if you have never had a Fit Bit charge, let me warn you when you hit the goal, your arm buzzes.

In the process of walking the mall, I got stopped at Bella Pierre kiosk, I let the young guy show me the cool colors of eye shadow as I had no makeup on at all. He ended up selling me a new eye shadow which I love love love!! We went into all the stores and I made mental notes of where I am going to be shopping when I get paid again or each pay week (I get paid weekly). After the mall, we went home, I showered to get the dust of the desert off of me, I had to work the next day and be up at 5 a.m., by the time I went to bed it was 10:30 p.m.. It was a great day!!

Yesterday I worked, well trained, I work from home so it’s nice, however I still get up like I go into a brick and mortar office. After all, I am in essence still in brick and mortar (winks). I got up at 5:30 a.m. instead of 5 a.m. like I am used to, I raced around getting ready for work. I work from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. at this time, my schedule will change next week, I also get one week day off and one weekend day. It’s pretty nice. I have to work this way due to the fact that my immune system is not 100%. That story will be for another time.

After work, Ron colored my hair from blonde to PINK!! Yes PINK!!! I love it, we used Clairol Flare Me hair color in Rose to the occasion on the bottom and Make me Blush pink on top with a few wisps of blonde. I think he did a great job of it, this is Ron’s first time doing two colors like this. This is my first time having PINK hair! This is a huge bold statement for me! One I honestly love. In the pictures below, I have on Rodial smokey eye pen in black lining my eyes, Urban Decay Midnight Cowboy as a base on my eyes, followed by Bella Pierre Sunset on the lid, Douccc freematic eye shadow Marisa in the crease and Tarte Tarteist Black with The Balm Mad lash Black on my lashes. My blush is Pacifica Wildrose. I don’t have foundation at this time, I will looking for BB cream instead, as it’s almost summer here and foundation is not good in summertime, then again I will be tan soon.  Most of my makeup, I get through Ipsy, which only costs $10 a month and you get great makeup to use!! I love it!! As Ron and I put it, the sexy diva witch is back in the cottage!!

Now to get working on the wardrobe and we are all set. That will come with time, as I am learning to be fine with my body and stop body shaming myself. I have come to the conclusion that I am no longer 20 something and I may never be a size 2 again, I am happy being a size 14 right now. I really do feel good in my skin and I do not look like a “typical” 46-year-old woman.

Now we are up to today, the pictures to the right are me today!  Makeup on, dressed, hair done a bit different, I curled it with a curling iron after blowing it out. I went to training and showed off my hair, everyone was loving as much as I was. Now, here is my exciting news for today!! I went to my morning break like I usually do, started to make a cup of coffee in the Keurig, I looked outside and there was my 23-year-old step daughter Samantha, long story short we had a bad falling out years ago and don’t speak, yet we live in the same apartment community 10 apartments from each other, something told me to go speak to her. I hesitated at first, then I went down the stairs of our apartment barefoot mind you, walked to the parking lot where she was and told her I want to make amends. Well, the response I got was NOT at all what I expected, let’s just our short 10-minute talk ended in tears, hugs and an agreement that neither want drama or negativity and we both want to make amends and heal. I came up the stairs on all time high, I have carried a huge burden, a huge weight on my shoulders and on my heart for too many years (5 years), it was lifted.

The rest of day just went so smoothly, in fact, on my latest knowledge check, a quiz we take before the big exam, I scored 100%. My day has been incredible today and I had to share this awesome, power and positive news!!

I am telling you it’s all in the attitude and mindset that you carry. What you put out there you get back.

One last thing I want to share:

I am that woman who has always cared what others thought, I was raised in a family where appearances were everything! That has changed for me! I don’t give a monkey’s butt what others think now as this is MY life and no one has to live it but ME! I love who I have become! I am strong, brave, intelligent, beautiful and passionate, not no one, not anything will ever take that from me! I am that woman who has walked away from those people, who really showed her true unconditional love, because I never really knew unconditional love from the people who should have given it to me. I always felt I didn’t deserve it or that the love I was receiving wasn’t real, there had to be strings attached to it. This has changed!! I accept love from those who love me. I am the woman who doesn’t believe in herself as I have always been told how unwanted, unloved and worthless I am. That has changed too, I am know I am worth of love, deserve love and am deeply loved by the right people. I know that I am wanted too. I know I am worth so much and deserve to be happy.

I am also that woman who would always give of myself without asking for anything in return, I would allow others to drain me and take from me. That has also changed. Now I put myself first, I take care of me. I know how to say NO now! I have my boundaries and if you cannot respect those boundaries, well have a nice life! This year I am realizing what and who I need to stop holding onto. It’s funny how going through a life threatening, near death experience can change someone. I think that this was meant to change me, to teach me a valuable lesson about life.

  Attitude Is Truly Everything Today has been a pretty awesome day after a pretty awesome weekend! I don't know where to start with all the awesome stuff that we did and how things keep getting better each day.

[izloveshorses]

Alrighty so while I’m thinking about it here’s basically every element from Beauty and the Beast that I adored

can I say how surreal it was to be in a theater packed with young girls of all ages wearing yellow dresses with their Belle barbies 

not to mention all the adults and people my age who’ve been singing Be Our Guest for eternity were all so excited 

it was almost like when The Force Awakens came out and Star Wars was alive again and everyone, old and new generations of fans, gathered together.... ya know what I’m talking about? where everyone in the room is buzzing with anticipation

the CGI wasn’t as terrible as y’all thought, y’all need to have a little faith sometimes lol

the casting was excellent!!

i know people have mixed feelings about Emma Watson playing Belle but I honestly wouldn’t have casted it any other way. She’s always been a women’s rights activist, a bookworm and a thinker, and a strong role model for young girls. and her favorite princess was always Belle I mean come on. and her singing voice was so incredible!! that was what I was most looking forward to in this movie and it did not disappoint

she also said in a buzzfeed interview that she imagines Belle would open the Beast’s library to the public and start a school!!! How rad is that?? HEADCANON ACCEPTED 

shout out to Dan Stevens for waltzing in 10 inch stilts while wearing a 40 pound body suit 

ok Luke Evans and Josh Gad must’ve thought they were in Dirty Dancing because they had the time of their lives

and Luke was pretty attractive. just sayin

overall, the cast was really diverse! not one but two interracial couples! and in general there were a lot of poc in the village featuring a wonderfully sweet librarian dude

Everything about Belle’s character was fantastic I’m not kidding

i think the town had such a consistent routine that she could precisely time when the morning rush started?

despite the village blatantly gossiping about her she was still so nice and polite to everyone

so??? much??? sass??? it was unreal??? When Gaston asked why she wouldn’t go out to dinner with him he assumed she had plans but she was just like “No...” and she didn’t even explain further how freakin savage she shot that boy down

(a few more examples bc this girl was on fire) “Why would I be startled? I’m talking to a candle” and “Is that a joke? are you making jokes now?” and my fav “’Maybe you just haven’t met the right man?’ ‘It’s a small village Gaston, I’ve met them all’”

this is Elizabeth Bennet level Jane Austen would be proud

they touched on how women were expected to have kids in their late teens/early 20s and she’s like “screw that” yeah girl smash that patriarchy

how on earth did it take me 17 years to realize she’s considered odd because she’s the only literate girl in the whole village???????? how did I, a history buff obsessed with the French Revolution, never make that connection before???? this isn’t specific to the new film but still I applaud it good job disney

she was an inventor!!! i don’t know if i’ve ever been happier than when i saw her solving equations and tinkering and making a washing machine so she can read and get chores done simultaneously. emma totally had something to do with this decision absolutely no doubt

she doesn’t ride her horse sidesaddle and that was like a huge faux pas for ladies back then (again, smashing the patriarchy one step at a time)

SHE WAS TEACHING ANOTHER SMOL GIRL HOW TO READ!!! THAT’S SO IMPORTANT AND PRECIOUS I’VE BEEN UNABLE TO THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE SINCE THAT MOMENT

she planned to escape the castle from the beginning and was really creative about it, and no matter what she always found some sort of weapon lying around lol (a random stick, a chair, a pitcher Belle what would you do with that) but she was always prepared to defend herself with somewhat of a plan and attempt at thinking ahead

She was really curious about the curse and asked questions about it to figure out this mystery herself

she was always problem-solving and trying to find a solution to situations and that was so cool girls need to see that strong female leads aren’t always the ones that can fight, but girls with wit and bravery

there was lots of nice background info on characters that otherwise wouldn’t exist, like Belle’s mom’s death, why Maurice chose to stay in that boring village and Adam’s dad being a jerk and turning him into a monster (no pun intended)

Mrs Potts giving us a reason why the entire castle was cursed, not just Adam. They didn’t do anything to stop Adam’s dad from corrupting him and man that’s some heavy stuff

I feel like each character, especially the servants, were so much richer and stronger and more complex, and the stakes were higher bc each time a rose petal fell they became less and less human

even the enchantress had a name and she was gorgeous?

they went pretty dark in this one... like something caused that tree to fall in Maurice’s path and back into an upright position. the wolves wouldn’t cross the gates because of some boundary. the way the whole castle shuddered with each drop of a pedal. i could go on... and the added character depth really helped that dark stuff too

THE MUSIC!!!! WAS SO GOOD!!! I’ve had the album on repeat for.... four days now and I’m not sick of it yet?? please send help

seriously, they did an amazing job. it was perfectly balanced w both old an new songs, and neither of them overshadowed the other. each song got it’s spotlight, they honored the old ones while including new original ones that were awesome (cough forevermore cough cough)

Gaaaaaastonnnnnnnnnnnn omg that sequence was awesome. honestly i think everyone in the theater tapped their foot when he was stomping and dancing on the tabletops

Belle was really good too to me because i’m a nerd for that set design

Days in the Sun is extremely underrated!! but yes, Forevermore is breathtaking it’s growing on me more and more each day

lots of rotating cinematography and spinning i’m a nerd i love it

the costume and set design.... holy crAP it’s stunning

i read somewhere that Belle’s casual getup has large pockets for her books and she has part of her skirt pinned up so she can ride Philipe easier and that’s beautiful

each scene was packed with tiny details that most movie makers overlook and I’m so impressed???? not just visually but there were so many sounds that truly made it feel real like in the village I’d occasionally hear a crying baby or a dog barking or just constant chatter and that’s stuff you’d expect to hear in a crowded village square

the little twinkling lights during the ballroom dance was probably my favorite i may have cried

No one ever say anything bad about Belle’s dress again IT WAS SO GORGEOUS it floated across the floor like a bundle of sunshine

and there were so many details in that scene? did anybody notice her gold earrings she wore they were wonderful

her hairstyles throughout the whole movie were so cute (esp at the end with that updo!! and that pretty flower dress I need it)

the historical accuracies??? unreal??

so much baroque architecture with all of the elaborate gold designs ahhh i love it

half of it looked like a rococo painting, the other half a neoclassicism painting

girls weren’t allowed to be educated so that’s why Belle was hated so much--and so cool--and ohhhh my mind is blown why did i not understand this until now

lol a giant chunk of France was illiterate at the time too so LeFou realizing that halfway through trying to spell Gaston was hilarious

actually the mob song in general is scarily accurate. what starts with a small discomfort turns into irrational fear which turns into extremism in crowds and they did the stupidest things like “hey there’s a monster that we’ve never seen or heard of and it’s never attacked us before but LETS KILL IT” seriously the French loved mobs

they included a lot more intimate moments w Belle and the Beast to build up their relationship more carefully 

Belle almost in tears when she was in that library because honestly same girl

my favorite moment in the entire movie, although small, was when they were in the library during “Something There” and she just kept grabbing book after book and he was walking behind her holding this massive stack that was so cute

honorable mentions: when the Beast shook his head like the horse omg. and I freaking cackled when he threw that giant snowball at her face

when they were in Paris, and Belle figured out that her mother died of the plague and she said “let’s go home”

she just rode off while still wearing her ball dress

“no time to change gotta go save my pa i’m keeping this btw”

and then she strips down to her undergarments because they’re about to go after Adam and that’s the final straw nobody messes with him under her watch she has to save him and, sorry, but she won’t let a big bulky dress get in the way of that despite how beautiful it is

Belle participated in the climax fight scene she was not taking any of Gaston’s crap

and then Adam was like “stay there I’m coming” and she completely ignored him so she could step in if he needed her

“I am not a Beast”

the transformation scenes were amazing

LeFou’s character arc was surprisingly great! and I support him and his boyfriend

that one growl at the end... you know the one... I’m very confused why was that so sexy is that bad

there were so many moments where i got goosebumps and sudden tears from the swelling of the orchestra or a certain chilling line and i was just so moved by this movie

in every showing that i went to there was a massive applause from the crowd and i love it you deserve it disney

I'm running out of adjectives

There was hardly an aspect that I disliked. Maybe more of Mrs Potts would’ve been nice, maybe Belle asking Adam to grow a beard was a little strange, maybe Ewan could work on his French accent a little more (don’t get me wrong I love this man but it could use a little more work... other than that his acting was superb). my complaints stop there! I honestly loved this film so much and I’d been pumped since I first heard about it back in 2015. It didn’t disappoint! that means a lot coming from a person who had insanely high expectations for it.