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tkapuckit · 3 years

Note

24, 28, 34 from the fluff list (you can pick just two of them if all three doesn't work so well)

24. “this reminds me of you”

28. “can I stay here tonight?”

34. “why are you wearing my sweater?” “because it smells like you.”

A/N: hiiii everyone! Thank you to those who sent in some requests from this list:)

let’s pretend this takes place during no covid. I hope you enjoy and please let me know if you catch any mistakes!! this one also turned out longer than i expected but oh well!

You and Matthew were best friends. You have been for years, ever since you met him in Calgary when he first started playing there. You were inseparable. Everyone would always ask if you were dating because most of the time, wherever Matthew was, you were only a few steps behind and vice versa.

Matthew had a day off before a big battle of Alberta game tomorrow night so the two of you decided to go out in the evening and adventure around downtown Calgary.

Your evening was slowly coming to an end after you two had enjoyed a nice dinner out on a patio together, watching the life of Calgary all around you. “Matthew, you really need to be given more days off so that we can do this more often.” You lean into him as you walk on the sidewalk past a bunch of small shops. If we’re being honest here, you two had definitely had some drinks. Maybe a little too much, but you both figured you were still sober enough to walk back to your apartments. “you know it isn’t up to me when I get days off, y/n.” Matthew laughs out, allowing you to link your arm through his to give each other some more balance. “well I know that but wouldn’t it be nice if you could just hang out with me all the time- OH MY GOD!!” you exclaim, Matthew quickly turning his head to you to see what had caught your attention. You had started to drag him to a store window to look at something on the other side of the glass. The store was closed and dark inside but enough light from the outside world allowed you to still see what was inside and what had caught your attention so much that you nearly gave Matthew a small heart attack. “look how cute that mug is!!” you say pulling on Matthews sleeve and pointing through the window. There sat a mug that read, “#1 hockey player (ask anyone)”. “this reminds me of you.” You smile up at Matthew. He was already looking down at you with a gentle smile back.

You swear that in that moment, time stood still. You don’t know if it was the alcohol in your system or the energy of the city moving around you, or the fact that you were standing so close to your best friend, but you’ve never felt more comfortable and warm. You could have kissed him. You wanted to kiss him. Just before you could do anything, Matthew let out a deep sigh saying, “okay drunky, let’s get you out of the streets and back to my place.” “you’re drunk too don’t just put this on me.” You say back to his comment, only a little disappointed that nothing did happen just then. “yeah you’re not wrong but you’re much worse than me drunk.” He replied, reaching for your hand to hold as he continued to walk forward. “whatever.” You reply, allowing him to drag you along.

You make it back to his apartment in silence the rest of the walk. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, it was nice. Walking along with your best friend, watching everything and everyone around you. You didn’t miss Matthew looking down at you a few times during your walk and smiling to himself though. That put a warm feeling in your stomach.

“hey Matty, can I stay here tonight?” you turn and ask him after entering his apartment. “y/n, that was my plan the whole time. Did you think I would let you walk another two blocks on your own to get to your place?” he laughs, taking your coat from you to hang in his front entrance along with his. “Thank you,” You smile at him. “I’ll get you a glass of water and some Advil because I don’t want to deal with hungover y/n tomorrow morning.” Matthew tells you as he walks towards the kitchen. “You know where everything is, go get ready for bed.” He calls back to you. “Jheez don’t you ever sound like my mom. ‘go get ready for bed’.” You mimic, heading the opposite direction he is, towards his room. You hear him let out a laugh from the kitchen. “I don’t sound like that.” He yells loud enough for you to hear.

You opt in wearing one of Matthews giant hoodies to bed instead of the clothes that you have left at his apartment throughout the time of knowing each other. You didn’t realize how nervous you all the sudden felt to be sleeping in the same bed as Matthew. It’s not like you haven’t done it before, every time you stay the night its always in his bed. “you’re definitely overthinking this, it’s the alcohol in you.” You say to yourself quietly. “what did you say?” Matthew says from the door, startling you. “nothing I was just talking to myself.” You respond, brushing him off. You sit down on the side of his bed, and he hands you the glass of water and Advil he brought you. You thank him before he says, “why are you wearing my sweater?” Matthew asks, grabbing at the material of the sweater on your body as he stands above you with his own water and Advil in hand. “because it smells like you.” You admit. “it smells like me?” he questions, walking over to the other side of the bed to crawl in next to you. You nod, a smile growing on your face. “and sleeping next to me isn’t enough of my smell for you?” he asks, pulling you closer ad getting comfortable under the blanket. “I like to be engulfed in your smell is that too much to ask for?” you tell him, laying your head onto his shoulder. “No, I don’t blame you, I know I smell good.” Matthew replies, placing a kiss on your hairline. For the second or third time that night, that feeling of warmth entered your body again. You knew it was because of Matthew. You loved being with him, being around him. He was your best friend, but you knew you felt something more for him.

At that moment, you lift your head from his shoulder and look up at him. “you ok?” he asks. “Kiss me.” You say looking into his eyes as you watch his pupils expand, eating up the sea blue of his eyes, even in the dim lighting of his room. “Kiss me, Matthew.” You say again before you grabs your face with both hands and collides your lips with his own. “Thank god you feel the same way,” he says after you both pull away. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for forever.”

#matthew tkachuk #matthew tkachuk imagine #matty tkachuk #matthew tkachuk imagines #calgary flames

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demialwrites · 4 years

Text

It Will Be Okay - Zhongli

I need more covid 19-related comfort. I don't even know how you guys who work are dealing. I'm struggling just at home!!

A novel disease swept through Liyue harbour. Everyone was on edge constantly, living in fear of being infected. Those who were, were bedridden for weeks. It brought productivity to a halt and some of those at the top of government squabbled over whether to let no shipments through or only a few. A couple--fools, you'd say--said let business run as usual. Those with the final say chose to slow business to a trickle. You happened to have one of the jobs that couldn't be abandoned. Even if you didn't, you would still be exhausted. You were tired from being afraid, tired from looking at other people being tired, and tired from the increased workload. Going to bed, your sleep was restless and stressful. Bad dreams came almost every night. Soon you were a zombie, going through the motions and taking what little joy you could from a favourite snack and your family. You couldn't see your friends and went straight home from work to avoid any crowds. Tonight, however, you found an empty spot up some of the stairs that had the red railings. The café had shut down but there was enough light to hang out nearby. The sun had set early and the soft light of the moon was calming. A few stars even twinkled. You barely registered that you were nodding off before you fell asleep.

You woke to see the moon, still. Except you weren't leaning on the red railing anymore. It was something warm and hard. Trying to move, you found you were stuck in place, even when pushing against whatever was around you. "Hmmm. You're awake," rumbled a deep, serene voice. You really should be panicking. Really! But the voice was soothing and even. Its qualities conveyed, Everything may not be okay but it will be. Not with words but you'd take it. The warm and hard holding you shifted and circled. It was too rough and pulled at your clothing, so you squirmed and protested. The movement halted. "I forgot my scales were rough. Allow me to fix that." The movement started up again but in different directions. You braced yourself on those scales the voice mentioned. You could see what surrounded you now. Gold glinted gently in the moonlight. You pushed on the surface and it gave under your fingers like the extra weight you put on recently. A dark brown snout, yellow eyes, followed by the rest of a head, came into view. You knew those branch-like horns! "Rex Lapis!" you blurted. "I am not Rex Lapis." The dragon spoke without moving its mouth. "My name is Zhongli. I saw you fall in the middle of the city. You were asleep so I didn't wake you." You stayed there, confused. If not Rex Lapis, then who? "I brought you to the cliff," he continued. "It's one of my favourite views. My body will shield you from the ocean wind. If you keep pressing on my stomach, it will tickle though." You jerked your hand away. "Don't worry. If you want to go home, I will let go of you. However," Zhongli hesitated, tilting his large head. "Being here reminded me of a great battle that took place..." His voice drifted at the end and hinted there was more if you wanted to hear it. He waited for a reply with an almond-shaped yellow eye fixed on your face. Maybe you should have said no and demanded he released you but you wanted an excuse to forget about the mess that Liyue was for now. Also, who would turn down a bedtime story from a dragon?! "...and then?" you asked. Zhongli snuffed through his reptilian nostrils. He seemed pleased. He launched into a story back when Rex Lapis battled a sea monster. You thought it was strange that this dragon knew a detailed story about the geo god after the denial. You listened, doing your best to imagine everything he told you. It was difficult. Not because he was a bad story-teller but because you were still tired and his voice was still soothing, forcing you slowly down into slumber. Even more so when he hit a stride with his words. He continued to slowly spin the ancient tale even when you closed your eyes and let your cheek fall to his soft belly. Zhongli eventually noticed your even, deep breathing. Keeping a close eye on your fragile body, he carefully arranged his long, snake-like body so that it hugged you on all sides and supported your head. He could feel your abdomen expand when you breathed. He dared squeeze a bit tighter and faintly felt your heartbeat. Relaxing again, he inwardly repeated the promise that he would do his best to protect the people of Liyue, even if he wasn't their god anymore. You woke up annoyed that you left the window open last night to let the bright sunlight in. Blinking away the sleepiness, you remembered where you actually were. But gone was the dragon and in his place was a dragon-like man. His features were the same colour scheme as the dragon so it was easy for you to make the connection. Plus, he held you as he did the night before, just with arms. Strangely, you felt as secure in these arms as you did when you had been wrapped in a dragon's long body. He was still bigger than you but decidedly more human-shaped. He gazed off into the distance, unaware that you were looking up at him with your mouth hanging open. It did give you time to look him over. The hard scales from last night apparently trailed up his body to his cheeks because they glinted in the morning sun as clouds passed by. He dipped his chin thoughtfully, bringing your attention to the branch-like horns still on his head, just smaller. Seeing a handsome blend of man and dragon was fascinating. It took a lot of effort not to reach up and rudely run your fingers along his scales. His grip tightened slightly and he looked down. Your eyes met and you discovered that his eyes were a unique blend of the yellow eyes he had last night and brown. He dipped his chin, staring at you more closely. You recoiled, like you had been caught doing something naughty. That caused him to smile gently. He helped you to your feet while you tried to feel that Zhongli's appearance was normal. That it was normal to have a snake-body trailing behind him. A quick transformation back to completely dragon and he set to work trying to convince you to let him carry you back to the city on his back. You glanced over the side of the nearby cliff, which was steep, and promptly agreed. You climbed on and hesitantly gripped his horns. He didn't protest and instead glided smoothly down the mountain towards the wooden docks of the harbour. After stepping awkwardly off Zhongli, you turned to glance around and see if anyone had noticed your arrival. You turned back to find a handsome, slickly-dressed man, patting his clothes down with brown gloves. The rest of his outfit matched, brown and gold. He definitely looked richer than you, and normal-sized. After fussing some, Zhongli looked up from his clothes at you. You looked away quickly, fearing he might think you were checking him out again. "The dockworkers are still asleep at this hour," he informed you. "Are you uncomfortable after I took you away from your bed last night? The least I can do is walk you home." He politely gestured for you to lead the way. As if the man wasn't clearly above your status! You weren't aching at all but you felt like if you said goodbye, he might vanish, never to be seen by you again. "O-okay." You led him in the direction of your apartment, purposefully slowly. Your tiny place probably cost less than his clothes. The mysterious dragon-man distracted you from your anxious thoughts by stopping to check a tea house for some tea leaves, saying that he should also treat you to some tea. After politely declining, he insisted. You didn't feel like you could say no, especially since he had some tidbits about each kind of tea that you were happy to absorb. He seemed to have a tab running with the shopkeeper because he purchased some tea without handing over any mora. Again, Zhongli stopped to get each of you a pastry to match the tea. He said, with a strange amount of authority in his voice, that the pastries he got matched the tea perfectly. He said nothing about your cheap apartment while inside. He then coaxed a tea that was so lacking in bitterness from your tiny kettle on your tiny stove that you swear it tasted sweet. You sat at your table, red-faced and embarrassed, that such a man was making you tea. He never said a thing about it. He only brought up anything slightly related when he picked up a cheap knickknack decorating your table. "I have never seen these before," he muttered to himself, then placed it back. He said that with such a lack of judgment that you finally started to feel at ease. You were first to sip the tea. Praise burst from you, causing him to smile gently as he was cradling his teacup to his lips. He seemed to be pleased that you enjoyed the tea as much as he did. The pastry was also a hit with you. It was as perfect as he said it would be. Teatime with Zhongli was relaxing and you didn't want it to end. You began to prod him with hesitant questions about things you thought he might know about. It was like poking a hole in a water balloon; information flowed out and didn't stop flowing the more you asked. He didn't deflate and run out of things to say but you did discover that you were late for work, judging by the angle of the sunlight out the window. Thankfully, the pastries had been eaten and the tea was cold by then. Zhongli insisted on talking to your boss about your being late. You didn't know what he could do but it couldn't hurt. Money talked in Liyue and his clothes screamed lots of it. To your astonishment, Zhongli was able to distract your boss from her scorn with his disarming confidence and good manners. She forgot all about your lateness. All she did was ask later where you got this new friend. And also, can we sell the funeral parlor he works for some of our goods? A funeral parlor? Who is this man? You thanked Zhongli for the tea and pastries. He thanked you for the good company, which made you blush. He told you to drop by his place of work when you next brewed that tea, as he had left the rest of it at your apartment. He promised to bring more pastries. You agreed immediately, forgetting to ask exactly who he was. You watched him leave, swearing you would find the courage somewhere to follow up on your agreement. You don't break agreements in Liyue. Months later, the city was still in semi-shutdown. You had taken to sleeping in. Your new boyfriend, Zhongli, was not happy with staying in but he was happy to be with you. In his hybrid state, he held you from behind his arms with his tail was wrapped around your leg. Warm and cozy. You both lay in his bed, because his sheets were tough enough to not be shredded by his scales and also...it was so much nicer than your bed. It made you smile just being here. "We could get takeout and dine at the peak of the mountain of your choice," he suggested. Not even opening your eyes, you replied, "Later. Lunch, maybe?" He hummed. A minute passed. He insisted, "I will tell you a secret if you accompany me for breakfast." You opened your eyes and rolled over onto your back. His tail uncoiled and settled loosely over your ankles. You knew him by now. If you agreed, it was a verbal contract that he would take seriously. "It had better be a good secret. A juicy one." "You agree to my terms?" A teasing lilt in his voice. "Yes." "...I used to be known as Rex Lapis." You flew up from the bed into a sitting position. "I knew it!" "Hmmm. Why didn't you tell me?" "I thought it would be rude. You're so polite." "Well, now you know and now we can have breakfast." He pulled himself to sit at the edge of the bed so that his tail hung off the side. It soon became legs. "Bring your wallet, Dear." He waved dismissively.

#zhongli x reader #gender neutral reader #comfort #fluff #my shit #long post #genshin #genshin impact

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tilbageidanmark · 3 years

Photo

Movies I watched this week - 39

I spent over 50 (!) hours on the sofa this week, (enjoying myself 85% of the time)...

Sløborn, an ominous Danish-German TV pandemic series, very much like Soderbergh’s ‘Contagion’ and in ‘Black Mirror’ style. Normal life of a small island community between Denmark and Germany breaks down and completely collapses when it is hit by a lethal bird flue like virus.

It was extremely prescient, as it was shot in 2019, before Covid! Conceived as Si-fi, it looks today like TV, because the series was able to capture everything that happened around the world after January 2020 in accurate details.

With Roland Møller (of ‘Riders of Justice’). 7+/10

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My introduction to “The grandmother of The French New Wave”, Agnès Varda (Hard to believe that I never saw her films before!):

✳️✳️✳️ “Inspiration, Creation and Sharing...” Varda by Agnès, my first Varda is her last 2019 auto-biography, in which, at 90, she shared footage and stories from her life and work. The first sample clip (of meeting her Uncle Yanco in Sausalito) won me over, and the rest convinced me to catch up on everything I’ve missed through the years. What a wonderful artist!

✳️✳️✳️ Cléo from 5 to 7. A feminine film about female identity - a new favorite! A beautiful singer must wait 2 hours for the results of her cancer tests. With a magnifique mid-film scene (at 0;38) of the heartbreaking chanson 'Sans Toi', marking the beginning of her quiet transformation.

✳️✳️✳️ Vagabond, a story of a lonely, young woman, an unapologetic drifter, unglamorous, aimless, independent, desperately lost. Dark and nonjudgmental exploration of the refusal to conform to anything. 8+/10.

✳️✳️✳️ (For Sammy - Per our conversation). The Gleaners and I, "The eighth best documentary film of all time”, per ‘Sight & Sound poll. Derived from the famous painting by Millet. Simply wonderful!

✳️✳️✳️ One Hundred And One Nights, 100 year old Michel Piccoli “Monsieur Simon Cinema”, hires a young girl to reminisce with about the history of cinema. An unsuccessful Meta-film that nevertheless is a love letter for cinephiles. Populated by 3 dozens of Who’s Who of French (and World) stars, playacting in this symbolic, Fellinisque fable that draws upon the classics. Mastroianni, Depardieu, Belmondo, Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Anouk Aimée, Fanny Ardant, Gina Lollobrigida, Jane Birkin, etc, etc..

(Photo Above).

✳️✳️✳️ The Young Girls of Rochefort, the wonderful, colorful, sentimental musical by Varda’s husband Jacques Demy, with the most beautiful woman in the world and her sister. Romantic eye candy set to music by Michel Legrand. A year later Deneuve would do Belle de Jour, and Françoise Dorléac would die in a car accident, 8+/10

✳️✳️✳️ Even better, The Young Girls Turn 25, Varda’s 1993 behind the scenes documentary and return to small town Rocheford, to show how it changed the town and left an impression. 9/10

“...The memory of happiness is perhaps also happiness...”

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The other Jacques Demy modern opera The Umbrellas of Cherbourg knocked me over all over again. Catherine Deneuve’s angelic beauty in this film made me cry for the duration like a baby. And not only at the train station when they say goodbye forever.

10/10

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Night moves, a tense thriller by Kelly Reichardt, about three radical environmentalists who blow up an Oregon dam. Slow and tense, and like her ‘First Cow’, watching it filled me with constant, low-level anxiety. The off-screen sabotage is placed at the exact mid-point of the movie: The first half is the preparation for it, and the second half shows the aftermath of the act. 7+/10

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2 unexpected Small Town gems by Miguel Arteta:

✳️✳️✳️ The good Girl, an odd and surprising mismatched romance between 30 year old Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhaal (22) as employees of a Texas big-box store that is always empty. Her voice-over reminded me of True Romance’s Alabama Whitman. 7/10

✳️✳️✳️ Ed Helms, a sheltered insurance salesman from the backwaters of Wisconsin, goes to an convention in the big city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The nearly conventional story arc has some genuinely heartfelt funny moments. With Maeby Fünke, as Bree the prostitute and Sigourney Weaver as the ex-teacher he balls. Also a surprising drug party, where he smoke crack cocaine and loves it. 5+/10

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Same theme of people prostituting their own ‘morals’, the notoriously-prudish 1993 Indecent Proposal didn’t age too well. “Billionaire”-porn that asks the question ‘How much would you pay for one night with Robert Redford?’ Gratuitous semi-naked Demi Moore included.

Related: “Stop hitting the button!”

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Wildland (Kød & blod = Flesh and blood), an uncomfortable and claustrophobic Danish gangster thriller about a 17 year old girl who moves in with the criminal family of Sidse Babett Knudsen, her estranged aunt. 6+/10

“For some people, things go wrong before they even begin”

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Jim Jarmusch‘s Broken Flowers, a touching road film with Bill Murray, as an old ‘Don Juan’ who receive a pink, unsigned letter from an old lover, letting him know that he has a 20 year old son he never knew about.

Loveliest film of the week.

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The 2 films directed by Tom Ford:

✳️✳️✳️ A single Man, a sad and lonely gay professor, closeted in 1962 Los Angeles, is preparing to kill himself with a gun, after his boyfriend / love of his life had died in a car accident. Mute and haunting aesthetics in the fashion designer’s debut film, based on a Christopher Isherwood novel.

The ‘Stormy Weather’ dance scene between Charley and George. 8/10

✳️✳️✳️ Nocturnal Animals: Amy Adams is an unhappy owner of a fancy art gallery who receives a disturbing book manuscript written by her ex-husband, which symbolizes their relationship 20 years prior. Rarefied visuals and distinctive style.

Starts with an astonishing scene of obese old ladies dancing naked at Amy’s gala event. Michael Shannon rules as a dying Texas detective! 6+/10.

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Jean Vigo’s 1933 classic Zero for Conduct was so blatantly anarchistic, it was immediately banned in France until after WW2. In silent film style, it tells about a group of mischievous kids who rebel against the authorities of their old-fashioned boarding school. Part-inspiration for Truffaut's 400 Blows.

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Anatomy of a murder, Otto Preminger’s 1960 courtroom drama, with opening credits by Saul Bass. Crisp black & white cinematography, and with rape victim Lee Remick playing it as an outgoing loose girl of ambiguous morals, a modern floozy. 7/10.

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Blush, a wondrous, spectacularly-animated, wordless short by Joe Mateo. What starts as a riff on ‘The Little Prince’, ends up like the opening montage from ‘Up’. The obvious realization that this is a personal metaphor makes the story even deeper.

I watched it twice back to back. 10/10

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If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast - 95 year old Carl Reiner asks a bunch of charming nonagenarian friends how they manage to live so well for so long. Their answers may (not) shock you...

Spry Dick Van Dyke (92) and half-his-age wife end the film with a lovely rendition of “Young at heart”

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Hi-school-level adaptation of Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the 21st Century. A breezy discussion of how slave economy and colonialist military repression 300 years ago turn into extreme capitalism of inequality & tax-avoidance today. America is now similar economically to what England was in the early 1800s. A tiny percentage of society controls almost all its wealth. (Full text of the book here).

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Ride the eagle, a flat new indie about a guy whose estranged hippy mother leaves him her cabin at the lake when she dies, but only if he complete a certain list of tasks. Could be so much better, but the actor playing the guy was just so terrible. Unlike JK Simmons who had a small role. Best detail, when he discovers that all the cabinets in the house are full with pot.

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Old, my first, (and possibly last), M. Night Shyamalan. The seductive premise of a secluded beach at a fancy tropical resort that ages everybody who comes there, turns into an unconvincing Twilight Zone bore.

...”(Gurgling sounds)”...

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First watch: I never saw (any) Planet of the apes before, and in spite of my misgivings, gave it a go. 100% anthropomorphic, it couldn’t visualize a universe different from the American mindset of that period. Preachy and very Rod Sterling-like. "It's a madhouse in here”. Pass!

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The latest Veritasium YouTube video about bowling current technology. Always interesting.

- - - - -

Throw-back to the art project:

Planet of the Apes Adora.

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(My complete movie list is here)

#movies

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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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No “wine-ing”: a season of ice and fire

A lot of you dropped very kind messages about my well being and I’m happy to say that my recovery from Covid is firmly on track and I’m close to full strength again. My exhaustion and tiredness has thankfully been ebbing away. I’m back running my daily 5 km before I start my work day and cycling to get back to full fitness.

So I managed to escape Paris before the travel lockdown and curfew was imposed before April 26. I’m a country girl at heart and I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable in big cities. I love Paris but I also get tired of it quite easily. So I headed to the chateau vineyard where I thought I could complete my recovery from my Covid illness and work remotely (the work never stops) without too many distractions.

Unfortunately - or fortunately as I prefer to see it - I was mud deep in trying to rescue our wine harvest for 2021 as frost struck over a few nights that left us reeling, and left much of the country’s wine growing region devastated. No region of France was spared as French wine producers fought valiantly over several nights to stop the frost from letting the buds finally come out to sprout. Wine makers fought with everything they could think of, and in the end resorted to fire to keep the temperature warm enough for the vines to survive the cold snap. It was a spectacular sight all across the horizons of many French wine growing regions including ours.

I’m just thankful to be there at the right place and the right time to help out.

I enjoy coming down to our chateau vineyard as it’s a welcome contrast to the busy city life of Paris. I just couldn’t wait to get dressed up (or dress down?) in tatty old clothing, rolling up my sleeves, and getting my hands dirty with any physical chores to do around the vineyard. I always have this urge to make myself useful instead being stuck behind a desk, bored to death in Zoom call meetings. I was looking forward to running and cycling in the open country air to bust a gut or two.

Mostly though I was looking forward to enjoying home cooked country food, be in the fun company of my two Anglo-Norwegian cousins and their French families, and together we’d be preening over the first shoots of the forthcoming wine harvest for 2021.

It is always an emotional moment at this time of year when we see in the vineyards the glistening tears of the vines (‘les pleurs’) that tell us that the new vintage is underway. As the temperatures rise so does the sap in the vines and where the pruners have trimmed the end of the branch, we see this beautiful sight that reassures us – telling us whatever happens, nature continues. The baby buds are beginning to come out timidly but soon the stark branches of the vines will be green again as these fragile leaves unfurl in the spring sunlight.

Back in 2020 many vintners (winemakers), not just in our region but across the whole of France, were unsure what 2021 would bring. Would 2021 be a challenging vintage or an easy one full of sunshine? With the growing season starting so early, the first hurdle - and one of the most crucial - is the fear of late frost. It seems to be more and more of a problem in recent years, this late frost burying any new growth like a fast moving avalanche. For many vintners they have 2017 written into their hearts in painful tears when frost devastated any hope for a healthy harvest and for some even brought financial ruin.

For me - at the time - it was a rude introduction to the vicissitudes of the wine making business by two wine loving cousins co-owning and co-managing an old family owned French vineyard. Family fortunes rise and fall according to the harvest. All the blood, tears, and sweat poured into running an efficient high yielding grape vineyard comes to naught when you realise that you are not the master, nature is.

The risk of frost has increased in recent years due to global warming, which does not just warm but makes the climate more erratic and temperatures more extreme. Good news for the moderately temperate climate for our wine making region where hotter drier summers have produced a string of good recent vintages (2015, 2016, 2018, 2020). But the negative side of this is that frosts have become more common right up until the end of the usual cycle – last year it was on 6th May.

Except this year, 2021, now looked like 2017 because of the devastation of continued frost on the vines. In talking to the French family of my cousin’s French wife, who have faithfully made wine for a few generations they ruefully pointed out past bad frosts. Apparently 1956 was legendary with a very cold winter frost some minus 20 °C following a warm period when the sap rose from the roots into the vine foot and branches. It killed the vines. The last disastrous late spring frost before 2017 was 1991. It seems to be striking significantly every two years now and a every year to a degree. Who would have expected the devastation again this year, 2021 some forty years on.

This year, particularly around April 7th and 8th, brought despair to vignerons right across France from Champagne to Cognac, Burgundy to Bordeaux as thousands of vineyards’ new growth was obliterated by frost (resulting in zero yield for harvest 2021). There may be some new growth and some secondary budding but this is a repeat of 2017 (if not worse) and few were able to harvest any grapes worth speaking of.

My cousins had been in contact with friends and other peers who are wine makers in other regions (friendships are built at trade shows overseas and other association events) and in totality the picture appeared bleaker than previous years. The scourge of frost had been catastrophic. Around half of the vines in Burgundy have been damaged, according to local producers. Some vineyard owning friends in the Inter Rhône region told us that the whole of the Rhône has been hit dramatically and that some plots are affected 100%.

According to the CNIV, the official French council for wine appellation, the frost has affected 80% of French vineyards. We already know that we will have a very low harvest in 2021. Nearly all French wine growers have just suffered a dark week in April.

It’s not just wine growers but fruit farmers too. It’s been like winter coming in spring. Below-freezing temperatures in the Drome and Ardèche regions of central southern France have led to fruit farmers losing up to 90 percent of their kiwi, apricot, apple, and peach harvest. Even in Bordeaux the severity of the frost damaged the growth on fruit trees such as apricots, peaches and nectarines, and field-crops such as rapeseed and sugar beet.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. How does one protect the vines from frost?

There have been a variety of ways vineyard owners have been dealing with the problem of frost. There’s no one size fits all and the solutions are often handicapped by the size of one’s vineyards, financial resources, and manpower.

Two solutions in fighting frost have been aeolian wind turbines and air fans. It takes the warmer air from higher up, and pushes it to the ground. These machines can raise temperatures by up to 2C. The problem is that some of these wind turbines and air fans are permanently set so they can only be set in one direction whilst others one can wheel around to move the air and stop frost settling. Both are very expensive solutions and the cost may outweigh the gain.

Air heaters are another solution. No less expensive though. One of our vineyard owning neighbours wanted to use paraffin fuelled heaters. But he said he would have needed 4,500 paraffin-fuelled heaters to cover all his 15 hectares at a cost of nearly €50,000 for the two worst nights, and even then growers it would protect only the vines for his finest wines.

Some of the vineyards also launched helicopters to fly above their vineyards, a method that can help to prevent frost by encouraging warm air to circulate. In effect they push the cold air around so that it does not sink down to the ground causing its damage. I was all for this solution as I’m an ex-army helicopter combat pilot and so I felt my old training could be put to use in civilian helicopters. But we ruled this out once we did the maths. At about 1600€-2000€ per hour one can only fly from 6am but this is the coldest time when the sun comes up. At best the helicopter’s range of effectiveness was a mere 10 hectares. So you don’t get more bang for your buck. But that didn’t stop some vineyards that we knew doing exactly that. These were corporate owned vineyards who tend to be well heeled and can afford to spare no expense.

There are less expensive solutions but are more costly in terms of manpower.

Some vineyards used water sprinklers, allowing a fine coating hitting sub-zero temperatures as the ice acts like a mini-igloo and protect it from outside colder temperatures.

Conversely, vineyard owners hit upon another relatively low cost solution of using candles. They usually last 12 hours and so in effect can be used for the two crucial nights of severe frost. We calculated that at 10€ a candle you would need 300 for one hectare alone. Of course the chief problem is that they need to be lit by hand and hope the wind was kind.

For the biodynamic wine producers they fell back on organic solutions. They sprayed their vines with a spray composed of pectins from apples which is supposed to lower the temperature around the vines. More common and perhaps more effective was spraying vines with Valerian to give the vines some added fortification to survive themselves.

By far the most common response by vineyard owners to combat the frost was to burn fires by burning hay bales amongst the vines. The smoke causes a blanket which heats up the atmosphere. In the old days I was told they actually burned rubber tyres! For it to have any chance of being effective you have to be aware of wine direction and make sure the bales are in the right places. It also helps if your neighbours do the same.

Speaking for our chateau vineyard, we had to make tough decisions to see how our chateau vineyard could combat the frost and minimise the damage to the future harvest. Although I own a small financial investment stake in the vineyard I have always deferred to my two cousins who actually run the vineyard with their married partners on a day to day basis. It’s their life long passion and I’m happy to play a small part in getting my hands (literally) dirty in building something from the soil up and for purely selfish reasons, just love being so close to nature itself. The fact that the French family of one my cousin’s wife - they actually owned the land and were reputable wine makers for generations - added invaluable weight to the wisdom of any decision making we had to do.

We sat around the kitchen table and talked through our options whilst nursing a glass of wine from a past vintage. My cousins and their kids especially thought I was a weirdo - they’re probably right! It’s not that I enjoy it (the mud, sweat and lack of sleep etc) but it was the challenge that really got me energised. If it’s a forlorn battle against the odds that’s when I really come alive. So I was quite jolly and full of vim whilst those around me were bleary eyed and groaning for bed and a hot shower as we were out in the fields in the dead of night. We ran it like a military operation - thanks to me ha! - I put everyone on detail and even the small kids saluted and got to work on their task. We made sure we had hot soup and beers constantly on tap for our staff and workers to take a food break and take a breather. Not that they needed motivating. Every one of our staff and also volunteers worked bravely to limit the damage.

So in the end we fell upon a series of actions which indeed many of our immediate wine making neighbours also followed suit. We sprayed, we watered, we burned. We tried everything to save our vines from further damage from frost.

We concocted an organic solution that had thyme, oregano, and wild sariette to which we added valerian and meadowsweet and a dash of yarrow and horsetail as well as honey; all of which help the whole organic solution to work. In effect this helps the vine to prepare for ice, by changing the composition of the sap a little, by enriching it with sugar. The infusion is then sprayed onto the vines at least 24 hours before the first freeze is forecast. The solution only works if the temperatures stay just below freezing but no lower, at around -2C or -1C maximum. With this solution on the plants, we could increase temperatures by 1-2 degrees. If it drops even lower, to around -5C, as we had in 2019, it’s not enough. It might save some plants, but not all.

We soon followed with watering the vines using our irrigation system we had on hand. It was labouriously time consuming.

When it was clear that this wasn’t going to work out because of the severe temperature drop we fell on fire as the saving solution.

It was all hands on deck as we also roped in some volunteers to help us start small controlled fires amongst our vines. We burned straw bales and piles of wood in very large jerry cans to save what we could. The aim was to create a blanket of smoke so that when the sun came up it didn't burn the vines because of the humidity. One vineyard neighbour of ours actually used a flame thrower and lit more than 700 small fires but had to start all over again because the fires didn’t last one night.

This was our experience too. We had a lot of hectares to cover and so little man power and so we just worked around the clock until we were able to light fires and keep an eye on them should they go out. We ran between the selected vines to make sure the fires remained lit throughout the night starting around 2am to 6am. I don’t think any of us had more than a few hours sleep over a crucial 48 hour window. We took turns to cook for everyone and made sure everyone was well fed on home cooking as well as hot showers and adequately winter clothed. I’m used to being sweaty and getting by on little sleep from my army days but it’s a measure of how far I’ve succumbed to civilian life that even I found it a little hard going.

I’m not very good at lighting fires as I tend to over compensate on the fuel lighter and I feared that I would burn the whole vineyard down by trying to start a small controlled fire. I got singed here and there but nothing to complain about. Others were just marvellous in their work ethic and shared bonhomie as we tried to save our vineyard. One person on our staff did get singed with flames and in his case we rushed him to hospital with minor third degree burns. We all felt like roasted chestnuts standing between the small fires. But what a spectacular sight the landscape was with all these lighted fires. This wasn’t just our vineyard but all across the landscape of neighbouring vineyards. It looked as if the whole region was on fire. It was quite hypnotising to look at. As to its effects, it’s harder to discern. I do know that even cities of Lyon and Bordeaux had a layer of smog that was visible to others from far away.

Looking back it was both exhausting and exhilarating to experience such a time. It’s the kind of rite of passage that either breaks you or makes you. For us it certainly brought us all together more tightly than before. With our neighbours too there was a collective sense of togetherness and rather than act selfishly or just worry about our own fortunes, neighbours lent a hand towards each other in terms of equipment, expertise, or voluntary labour.

Perhaps the more wealthy chateau vineyards’ expensive techniques were able to save their best vineyards but most who could afford creating smoke blankets from burning hay bales – they were no match for the frost with temperatures down to minus 5 in some areas. Hopefully insurance had been taken out, which involves a substantial expenditure each year. We are fortunate to have insurance and the damage done to our vineyard has been mitigated to some extent. But I do know for instance that many are not insured against the effects of frost because of the cost of the coverage and many French wine producers were already struggling financially.

It was reported that many chateau vineyards in lesser known areas (Castillon, Bourg, Blaye, Côtes de Franc, Graves, Satellites of St Emilion) who could not afford these payments and who played ‘Russian roulette’, this year lost for perhaps for the last time. For them it’s personally heart breaking. For French wine making it’s a cultural tragedy. It’s hard enough for small independent vineyards (often run by families or young couples with a dream) to survive - the economies of scale as well as being aggressively overshadowed by the high volume output and superior marketing power of wealthy corporate owned vineyards - but never really expected nature, or vicissitudes of global warming, to make it that much more harder to make wine.

Unlike Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhone valley, in the Champagne region, we heard that not many Champagne wine producers didn’t even bother fighting the frost because they thought it would have done little good. One of the reasons why so few people engaged in frost protection in Champagne is these wine makers have as their biggest buffer against frost is their Individual Reserve (RI). In case appellation requirements are not met in the vineyard, they can draw from it.

Indeed with sales still stagnating and small yield expectations, growers may have to dip in the RI because frost season is not over till after the Saintes Glaces, a period in the middle of May after which frost generally doesn't appear. But not every vineyard can do that.

To their credit, perhaps recognising the commercial and cultural role French wine has in daily life and international prestige, the French government had agreed to step in to help. President Emmanuel Macron tweeted a picture of a candle-lit vineyard and promised that help was on the way, “À vous, agriculteurs qui, partout en France, avez lutté sans relâche, nuit après nuit, pour protéger les fruits de votre travail, je veux vous dire notre soutien plein et entier dans ce combat. Tenez bon ! Nous sommes à vos côtés et le resterons.” (“To you, farmers who, throughout France, have fought tirelessly, night after night, to protect the fruits of your labour, I want to give you our full support in this fight. Hold on tight! We are by your side and will remain so." )

To that end President Macron has declared an "agricultural disaster" and Prime Minister Jean Castex has promised that the government will provide emergency relief to those who were affected. He has also removed the limit on the amount of financial compensation that can be provided. It said it would help the smaller independent vineyards and co-operatives with tax breaks as well as pushing banks and insurance companies to help out. It’s unclear if any of this will come to pass or indeed what effect it might have in the short and long term. We shall see.

It’s been estimated that at least a third of French wine production worth nearly € 2 billion (£ 1.7 billion) in sales will be lost this year. It's another blow for France's wine industry whatever assistance is given. The French wine industry has already been dealing with the knock-on effects of the Covid pandemic, with decreases in restaurant orders due to the country's series of lockdowns. Independent producers have been hit hard by the cancellation of wine fairs due to Covid. Then there have been the effects of the tariffs that former President Donald Trump imposed as a result of assorted disputes between the administration and the European Union. In late 2019, Trump hit French wine with a retaliatory 25% import duty, a cost increase that the Economist says contributed to a 14% drop in French wine exports in 2020. Last month in March, the United States and the EU announced a four-month suspension of the tariffs.

But that doesn't necessarily help winegrowers right now - especially since a significant percentage of this year's crop may already be lost. Tradition has it that it is well into May before vine growers can sleep easy without worrying about the risk of further frost damage.

Even though we did our best to save our vines we couldn’t save all of them and even had decide which ones to forgo even trying because we lacked manpower and resources at such short notice. I heard someone amongst ourselves say losing the vines that one has cultivated so lovingly was like the loss of a family member. It may seem puerile, but that is close to what many feel. Perhaps only winegrowers can understand this sentiment, but they have found themselves out in the vines in the morning with tears in their eyes. I’m not one for sentiment and displays of emotion but even I was a little moved to see the heart break in tear filled eyes of some of the older generation who have for decades given their sweat and tears to tilling the soil. We did our best to console one another and remarkably in that crucible we experienced together we all became closer.

What is clear is the tradition of wine - beyond national politics and international trade disputes - is under long term threat from something much more existential. There is a saying amongst the older generation of wine makers in our fertile wine making region who say, ‘wine history is climate history’. Wine making is about the vines, the ‘terroir’ (a French way of saying the earth or the soil), but also the climate. Nature is very much the master and wine makers are but humble servants of the soil. For those who don’t believe in climate change or think it’s overly dramatised by scientists or worse, a hoax, then I would say wake up and smell the coffee. Climate change is real as any wine producer or arable farmer will tell you. Wine can make you do or say many things, but it won’t ever make you tell a wilful lie.

The French wife of my cousin, whose family the vineyard had been for several generations, told us that the wine harvest time used to span her grandfather’s birthday - September 28 - but now, the bustle of harvest is over and cleaned up in time for his birthday party - that’s two to three weeks earlier than when her grandfather used to make the wine. As she memorably put it, things are “bien cramées” (really screwed up).

All of this means that wine producers will have to change their ways as the climate changes. All the measures taken to combat frost were in reality delaying tactics to fight a losing battle with the climate. The wine industry, not just in France but around the world, needs to evolve if it is to face up to increasing climate challenges. This might include planting more weather-resistant vines that flower later, and are therefore less vulnerable to late frosts and cold snaps.

Wine, in France, is built into the fabric of the culture. The many variety of grapes across the wine growing regions indigenously grow and adapt to the precise climate conditions of the region for centuries. Winemakers know the growth stages intimately: the look of the vines before they bud; the look of the vines as they mature over long seasons; and the fat, sugary, fragrant curve of the grapes when they’re ready to be made into wine.

That harvest point is crucial. Too long on the vine and the grapes have too much sugar in them, meaning the wine will be more alcoholic—not the subtle feel most winemakers in the region care for. Too long, and the acids that give wine some of its feel in the mouth may disintegrate. Not long enough, and they might not have developed the right balance of fragrant chemicals that give the wine its characteristic flavours.

Winemakers keep careful track of harvest dates, with some regions have records stretching back to the Middle Ages. In the 1800s, scientists and historians realised that those careful records could be used to keep track of how the climate in different parts of Europe has changed over time.

Grape harvest date records are the longest records of phenology in Europe. There are hundreds of years of records of what the summer temp was like, and we can use them like a thermometer.

Grape harvest dates reflect the temperature the grapes have felt over the course of the growing season, from about April until they’re picked. If the spring and summer are hot, the grapes mature faster and need to be picked sooner. If they're cool, the opposite is true.

Climate historians started to pull together ancient information from other sources, too. They matched up the patterns in the grape harvest data with records made from tree rings and the length of glaciers in the Alps. They used records like those to figure out that much of central Europe warmed up during the Medieval Warm Period, from around 900 to 1300. It had cooled down during the Little Ice Age, from about the 15th to the 19th centuries.

The historians saw that over the past few hundred years, temperatures wobbled around, skewing warm for short stretches and cooling down in others. But overall, climate rocked up and down around a fairly consistent average value - until recently.

Wine is first and foremost an agricultural product. The grapes used to make it are grown and harvested with intent to be fermented. This means that wine production is vulnerable to the effects of climate change from the tangible health of vines to the taste and quality of the finished bottling they create. So for this reason, all winemakers see themselves as being on the front line to see what happens with the weather, with the climate. The fluctuations we have today are more significant than any time before.

If you don’t believe any of this or think wine producers are exaggerating the dangers, then taste your wine the next time you open a bottle. The chances are it has a high alcohol content. This is no accident. Because of the changes in temperature world wide, the alcohol content of wines has bumped up from about 12% in the 1970s to about 14% today. Of course that number varies from region to region and is also due to the wine maker’s preference. But a large part of it is because grapes are maturing faster in the heat. The more sugar they accumulate, the more of it is converted to alcohol during the winemaking process.

Warming has also caused the boundaries of viable growing area to swell. Typically, successful vineyards have been found between 30 and 50 degrees latitude. But as global average temperatures continue to climb, the most ideal areas to plant are moving farther from the equator. Now, areas as far up as the island of Föhr and Stargarder Land in Mecklenburg, at the tip-top of Germany, are legally permitted to produce table wines. Belgium, whose vinous history has been overshadowed by its beer culture, quadrupled production between 2006 and 2018; it’s forecasted to become a champion, alongside Finland, Sweden and other boreal climes. Shockingly, even England has also successfully entered the modern fine wine scene.

With better wine from regions we know and new wine from previously uncharted areas, it may appear the wine world is becoming better off. In truth, however, this is a thin silver lining to ever-worsening viticultural challenges.

If the growing season becomes too hot, fruit will push through its life cycle too quickly and characteristics like tannins and anthocyanins, the compounds responsible for giving grape skins their colour, won’t develop properly. Muted acid and increased alcohol levels are also possible and often undesirable.

Variations between daytime and nighttime temperatures are in jeopardy as well. In warmer growing regions, that difference can be crucial to achieving freshness and encouraging certain flavour and aroma development.

Intense heat or too much direct sunlight can lead to dried fruit notes or create flabby and dull wines. Fruit that’s left too long on the vine can be damaged from sunburn or may simply shrivel. Vines may just shut down to protect themselves.

This is already happening in some places. Wine growers in northern Italy have already seen sunburnt crops with increasing frequency. The summer of 2019 in Southern Australia was the hottest since national records began in 1910, and it ushered in an 8% loss of white wine varieties, with Chardonnay dropping 12% to its lowest yield in the past five years. Growers in Priorat, Spain, reported devastating vine damage, scorched leaves and desiccated grapes when temperatures shot up to a record 107.6˚F.

Climate change is complicated, however, and, even though temperature is the most influential factor in overall growth and productivity of wine grapes, there’s more than rising mercury to think about.

Winter, and all of its prescriptions, is one of those other things. We typically talk about warming, yet, freezes during the winter or extreme frost in the spring don’t go away. They may become less frequent, but potentially more severe. A decrease in regular winter frosts may also encourage the spread of pests and insect-borne diseases that would normally die off during cold seasons.

Moisture is pivotal. Too much rain approaching or during harvest can lead to watery grapes and a weak vintage. Similar to mild winters, damp, soggy and humid conditions open the door to a variety of pests, fungi, mildew and disease pressures.

All of these intricacies and others work in conjunction with temperature to dictate what vines can successfully grow where and for how long—and all are increasingly unpredictable or totally upended in the face of climate change.

The people who grow, make and sell wine are tuned in to these nuances.

A greater number of producers are rethinking canopy management, vine trellising or pruning techniques, developing cover crops and extensive shading methods, increasing vineyard biodiversity and finding ways to reuse water.

Still, there are some challenges that cannot be overcome.

In the future, I expect growers to struggle with maintaining varieties in certain regions without major interventions. If they don’t make major changes, wine producers will see declining yields - already seen in Europe - and declining quality as the varieties become increasingly mismatched to the climate.

Producers have begun grafting new rootstocks and experimenting with different grapes. In South Africa, Vinpro, aided tests of drought-resistant varieties including Assyrtico and Marselan, for example. Australian producers have tried Italian grapes like Fiano, Vermentino and Nero d’Avola that thrive in warmer settings.

In Old World regions, where grapes and blends may be prescribed by law, the idea of swapping plantings is monumental.

Bordeaux is one such place, and, at a 2019 General Assembly meeting, it finally relented. The Union of Bordeaux AOC and Bordeaux Supérieur winemakers unanimously approved a list of seven “varieties of interest for adapting to climate change”: Arinarnoa, Castets, Marselan, Touriga Nacional, Alvarinho, Liliorila and Petit Manseng.

The approval of these new plantings signals just how committed the region is to preserving the future of fine wine.

Each of the various tactics being implemented worldwide take lots of time, tests and research. Some experienced wine producers think it would take about 21 years to change course because of how long it takes to plant vines, grow grapes, and then create and age a wine; finding sustainable farming practices for a plot takes trial and error.

Further, the methods being devised now may not be applicable down the road. Though there are several models in use to try and predict changes, they are attempting to track a nonlinear problem that’s dependent on a range of forthcoming scenarios.

Basically, the only thing we do know for certain is that it will get warmer, and that we may be able to anticipate that heat before it hits us.We have to be asking what we can do now to preserve the integrity of the grapes and vineyards we work with and look for where our opportunities are to continue making wine. The one line that works for everyone is to cut carbon emissions, that is the emergency action that needs to be taken.

We’re all starting to see this and we’re all affected. We know we can’t turn it backwards, and we’re not even sure we can slow it down. But we have to try.

Think on all this the next time you take a sip of wine.

#wine #vineyard #frost #climate change #environment #economic disaster #harvest #france #bordeaux #bourgogne #champagne #weather #wine business #personal #personal pics #family

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activelytaemin · 3 years

Text

growing pains [lee taemin]

◇ lee taemin x fem! reader

angst-ish? | college!au | non-idol!au

warnings: mature language, unedited

2.0k April 8th, 2021

everything written in this story is completely FICTION. i personally do not believe that this story aligns with any of the idol’s real lives. ultimately, this story is not meant to intentionally defame any idol in any way.

chapter one [congratulations, but not really]

Dear {Y/N},

Congratulations! I am pleased to offer you admission to the University of California, Riverside for fall 2021.

the golden word congratulations lit up y/n’s eyes as she screamed falling into her brother’s arms. tears emerged from her eyes realizing that she would finally leave the colorful city of busan for the sunny shores of california; this was a cultural reset that guaranteed her an infinite amount of memories to come.

“i did it! jimin, i studied so hard”, she sobbed, grasping onto his slim frame. “it feels worth it like—“, she paused to wipe her tears with her sleeves, “all my late nights, immense sacrifices, and good grades have made this worth it.”

jimin rolled his eyes playfully and lightly pushing her off of him. “yeah, of course you made it in”, he scoffed jokingly, “we’re a family geniuses. you weren’t raised to be a dumbass.” he ruffled her hair before y/n grabbed his wrist.

“i guess that’s why both of my brothers are stuck here—“, y/n held his hand lovingly before sarcastically stabbing his back, “especially the one named park jimin, he didn’t get accepted into any ivy’s or safety’s. now he’s stuck going to an online university.” she released his hand before smiling to truly appreciate him, “but all jokes aside, i couldn’t have done this without you.”

her mind wandered to the thought of sunny california. the excitement built up in her like air filling a balloon. there were nerves trapped within because this sense of curiosity and control was foreign.

would there be snow?

what types of people would there be?

how perfect does my english have to sound?

there were several wonders because south korea was engrained to her memory. for the past eighteen years, korea was her home. there would be no more hanboks on seoullal, honorifics for friends, and (most importantly) her beloved family. without her family, she wanted to venture on the outside on her own. yet, there would always be a yearn for the feeling of home. the universe finally served her freedom on a platter. she could finally leave the nest to fly.

was she ready for it?

“y/n, don’t forget that you won’t be alone. taemin goes to riverside too”, jimin’s loud mouth interrupted y/n’s thoughts. soon enough, all her freedom had crashed and burned. she was caged once again.

her imagination was left to torment her. when she heard his name, a roaring fire lit up within her because of her discomfort; the fire will never go out.

scars can heal, but y/n’s are deep as ever. like an evergreen, scars can everlasting.

“taemin—i thought he was in new york?”, she questioned with a sense of worry. “i haven’t seen him since he graduated, and i don’t really like him at all. are you guys still friends? ”, an awkward laugh slipped out. she was quite uncomfortable at the mention of taemin, and her confession proved it all.

there was something about taemin that irked her soul. whether it was the memory of his being or thought of him physically, taemin would forever be an uncomfortable and undesirable person to talk about.

she remembers the day taemin walked in and out of her life.

it seemed so sudden.

he never wanted to cause pain, but he left her with the sharpness of his trauma. whatever was rooted in his cruel being had isolated her from her well being.

it was one thing for taemin to make y/n happy in secrecy. however, y/n had to suffer in secrecy once taemin had walked out because nobody knew the depth of her adoration for him.

jimin groaned before taking a deep breath to keep his composure. “one, taemin has been my best friend since 2015. two, he had to transfer because he had a change of mind—”, he let out a brief laugh, “well, that’s what he says—and three, it’s him or mom watching you.”

he was taken aback by her dislike for his friend. in his mind, he believed that y/n would be quite fond of a familiar face. however, he let it go believing it was just another “girl problem.”

little did he know, taemin was a disaster that filled y/n’’s life with hundreds problems.

jay-z once said, “i got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one.” for y/n, taemin was the 99 problems and she was “the bitch.”

the seriousness in jimin’s tone was irritating to y/n, almost strangle-worthy. he doesn’t understand her dislike for him. in fact, he has a “bromance” with taemin.

to others, taemin is a cool and collected young man that seemed shy to the world while being confident to his friends. jimin often saw his confident side, and that allowed jimin’s mind to feel as if taemin was heavenly.

to jimin, taemin had an aura about him that he couldn’t explain. it drew him in.

maybe it was because he was simply older than jimin. or, he could’ve just been build with extra charm.

as much as y/n didn’t like jimin’s praise for taemin, she didn’t want her mom babysitting her because she is simply too grown to have her around. sometimes mother’s can be suffocating; they can control many aspects of your life. it was a valid fear for y/n to have, and she was scared that jimin was going to follow in those footsteps.

jimin didn’t know any history between taemin and y/n. he doesn't know she constructs taemin to be evil because he took advantage of her innocence. sadly in her heart, she believes the thought of him is bad for her health because he hurt her.

taemin is a monster. an emotionless, compassionless man who does not know how to love.

but, everyone is naive because they don’t understand his evil like y/n does.

taemin does put up a front to the world, while y/n gets to see all of him at her own risk.

“i love mom, but you’re right”, she laughed in agreement. for jimin’s sake, y/n lied to him and herself, “i’ll take taemin any day.”

“yeah, but don’t forget to wear a mask. nobody wants covid in the states. you don’t have insurance”, jimin scoffed before y/n hit his back playfully.

jimin yelped in pain, “literally what the fuck? you’re a demon.”

september 20th, 2021

the plane to california was unbearably long and did not comfort her senses. although she did not mind wearing a mask, the uncertainty of her health on that flight kept her up the full thirteen hours. everyone was spaced out, but the enclosed space made her claustrophobic. normally, her senses are grounded. however, the pandemic blows everyone out of proportion and brings out a little bit of paranoia as well.

y/n was wearing a pink surgical mask to contrast with her plain wardrobe. before she left for california, she chose a long black coat, oversized uc riverside hoodie, and black jeans with her basic converse. she was trying to blend in with every other college freshman on move-in day.

a memory flew into her mind. while on the plane, the remembrance of what home felt like tugged at her. the pain of missing someone never settled inside of her; the feeling was foreign because the past experiences weren’t genuine. or maybe, she is uncomfortable with missing someone or something because of insecurity within.

before y/n left, her mom hugged her tightly before sending her off with tears; love can be unconditional when it comes to your family. on the other hand, y/n heard jimin laugh at his mom while giving a wave goodbye; hiding your worries with comedy makes you more worried at times. jimin was obviously good at hiding himself, but he made himself overly awkward this time.

when she knew she was saying goodbye, y/n didn’t feel anything because leaving was thought out to be normal. her mind didn't think her immigration would be sad. it was surprising to see her mother sad, but also the uncomfortable atmosphere jimin brought.

a ding from the intercom sounded off, “we will be beginning our decline to los angeles. the fastened seat belt sign is now on for your personal safety. please remain seated during this time”, the voice was followed by another ding via the intercom.

as the plane began its descent, y/n gripped one of her armrests while closing her eyes. sadly, the feeling of traveling alone was brand new, not in a bad way. perhaps, the butterflies her stomach arose because she was going to be around a familiar face that makes her uncomfortable.

y/n wishes to hide away the memories of the two of them as if their world's never collided. in her mind, lee taemin was just another problematic teenage memory to get rid of

in summer 2018, the air was different. it was heavy, and the atmosphere was lethargic. in the moment, y/n felt specifically upset as if the universe decided to rip out a significant amount of reality; the universe ripped something out, indeed.

lee taemin, long-term lover, graduated early behind her back. suddenly, he is getting up to leave for new york.

“i can’t believe you are leaving for college already”, her teeth bit her bottom lip before she felt his warmth encase her. tears were pouring down her face while creating a hurricane of bleeding makeup and anger. “you can’t keep doing this to me. you told me no more fucking secrets!”, she gripped onto his waist before silently crying into him.

“i think you knew that this was bound to happen”, taemin brought a hand to her face, caressing her cheek to wipe away the tears. “the only difference between you and i is that we’ll be boarders apart.”

“i didn’t know this was your plan. you just dropped this huge ass bomb on me today!”, she aggressively pulled his hand down to suddenly push him away. “taemin, this isn’t just about you. my love for you is real.”, she took a breath to let out a sarcastic laugh.

“i love you”, her heart ached saying those words. more tears came out of her eyes before she quietly croaked out with a general shakiness in her demeanor, “do you feel the same way at all?”

taemin shook his head, scoffing slightly. he grazed the back of her hand with his lips. no words were exchanged between them.

y/n was standing there confused, waiting for him to say something. even if the words were, "i don't love you."

however, his response never came, and his thoughts seemed distant. it was like taemin resisted y/n's desire and compassion for him.

the silence between the two filled the air. it finally hit her that his love was no longer apparent, and his place in their relationship became nonexistent.

just like that, taemin walked out the door breaking y/n’s heart as if it was glass. from her eyes, it truly didn’t feel as if he gave a damn to begin with.

it was unreal, but most definitely her reality.

in her mind she is screaming because taemin makes her feel alive in the worst way possible. he is unbearable to think about because he is a reminder of everything that has gone wrong with love.

he is only a distant memory that she wishes to burn.

fuck love.

but most importantly— fuck you, lee taemin.

#lee taemin #taemin x reader #shinee #shinee x reader #lee jinki #lee jinki x reader #kpop #kpop x reader #kim kibum #kim kibum x reader #choi minho #choi minho x reader #fanfic #ffs #kpop ff #super m #super m x reader #taemin #kpop writing

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hopevalley · 3 years

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Season 8, Episode 11: Changing Times

Well, as it turns out, my second Covid vaccine kicked me down hard. After sleeping for quite a long time, though, I’m tired of sleeping and ready to try and get this write-up done.

Surprisingly, or...perhaps not so surprisingly, I don’t think I have that much to say about last night’s episode. I think we’re just too close to the finale for me to feel “safe” in guessing/hoping for anything in particular.

Let’s hit up the plot points like before:

The Triangle

Carson & Faith

Rosemary’s Purpose

School District Problems

Jesse’s Disappearance

The Triangle

I’m probably one of the few people who liked Nathan who felt like the whole beginning scene was super weird and uncomfortable. Homegirl held his hand for one second in the last episode and now she’s going to warm his serge by the fire (while he just stands there awkwardly??? He could have done that himself while she got him some tea or something idk) and then dress him???

I think we’re meant to see that as her going back to...I don’t know...old habits die hard or something? But she was barely married for any time at all and it’s been three years since Jack died. No way would she be so far into those old habits that she’d fall back into them with Nathan lmao.

Like, it’d be a REALLY GOOD PLOT for a character who had been married for years and lost a spouse (cough Abigail cough) but considering the circumstances it felt like a cheesy fanfiction! I wanted to like it, but I just felt weird about it. Tonal whiplash out the wazoo.

Especially when we had to watch Lucas drive by and see Nathan’s horse at Elizabeth’s house.

Lucas sadly watching Elizabeth talk to Nathan was also awkward, but at least it gave him the courage he needed to break things off with her.

You’d think I’d have a lot to say about the triangle, but I’m saving all of that for some kind of...post-season discussion. Who is she going to pick? Nathan seems like the most logical writing choice, but it could yet be Lucas. I genuinely don’t care who she chooses so long as she picks someone.

Carson & Faith

I like to hate on these two a lot, so you might be surprised to know that I’m enjoying their storyline. I’ve criticized this series over and over for never bothering to portray realistic relationships and one thing I can say about Faith and Carson this season is that things actually feel...plausible.

I also appreciate how they try to tie Carson into the town a bit more: he talks to Henry and Minnie and even Lucas trying to figure things out! It makes perfect sense to me; how do you choose between someone you care about/the potential life you could make with them, and a career that you’re really and truly passionate about?

This is the most interesting Carson has been since Season 5.

Anyway, the pudding scene was genuinely funny, and a great way to break up the stress that I’m sure we were all feeling about his impending proposal. Faith’s reaction to thinking he might propose was...pretty telling. I really wish they hadn’t saved so many dangling plotlines to solve in the final episode, though. I was hoping Faith and Carson’s storyline would be fully figured out in the penultimate episode so that we could let him go (or whatever) in the season finale. It just seems to me like it would be a good, smooth ending for them.

Also, for what it’s worth, they tried doing this kind of plot with Frank in Season 5, but it was rushed and pulled out of thin air; he’d never shown an inclination toward pastoring toward dying children in the past and it was clear that they just needed to write him off the show. With Carson, this sort of plotline works VERY well; he was a surgeon, and he was passionate about it, but that passion took a hit when his wife needed surgery and she died on the table under his hands. He’s had some time to move on from that and process his feelings, so it makes sense that he’d find that passion again. I just wanted to point this out because it’s interesting how well it works for Carson and how...well, not-well it worked with Frank. I really felt like with Frank, it was just a storyline that could have been given to anyone with the same success rate, whereas with Carson they took a look at the character and what we already know of him, and built the storyline specifically for him. That’s good writing, babes!

Anyway, Carson trying to propose in the vague hope that Faith will come with him, even knowing she doesn’t want to leave Hope Valley, is pretty manipulative and awful, but it really goes a long way toward making his character feel like an actual person. Like yeah, he does actually want the best of both worlds. Do you blame him?

Rosemary’s Purpose

I know a lot of people are really into this storyline but I found it boring. The only good part was when Lee called the other desk in his office “hers.” Everything else just felt like a bit too much to come to the conclusion that she should run a paper. We already had her “advice” column in the paper and it was...amusing while it lasted, but eh. I just don’t see good storylines coming for her from this angle, especially when they went the route of her finding out she wants to start the paper back up to share information with the town. Are we really going to trust Rosemary’s integrity when it comes to writing news stories, especially when MOST of the time the things she’ll be allowed to write about are, you know, who grew the biggest cabbage? It makes me dread the potential for Round Two of Nosy Rosie.

I dunno. I used to really like Rosemary but this season’s been pretty rough on her character. Good for you for wanting to find your passion career, but most of us work so that we can eat, not for a fun way to pass the time and stay busy. :/

School District Problems

Mr. Landis is right and Elizabeth is an idiot. Sure the school board is being assholes for no reason (as if they’d care if one blind child was sitting in a classroom in one western town lol), but Elizabeth’s really going to dismiss his concerns about how she can juggle the added work necessary to teach Angela while also keeping up with everyone else?

It sucks that Angela will get left out, but Elizabeth should be working with Mr. Landis to come up with a plan to teach Angela without sacrificing the education of her other students. Better yet, she could rely on her friends for advice. Like Rosemary.

Still no apology there...

Anyway, a projected 100 new kids? That’s outlandish. The only way that will happen is if they open a factory in Hope Valley, and even then it could take years. I MEAN, WHERE IS THE HOUSING GOING TO BE FOR ALL THE ADULTS THAT WOULD GIVE YOU A HUNDRED NEW STUDENTS LOL. I think we have to assume the plotlines are connected.

I also find it hard to believe the board would care about Elizabeth being certified to teach Angela. Where else is she going to get an education? It’s 1918 in the middle of almost nowhere???

This show drives me nuts with its attempt to be a “Frontier Show” while also shying away from the characters actually being stranded/cut off from society at large. You still had unlicensed teachers teaching in western towns in this time period because nobody cared!!!

ANYWAY, if Union City was like 3 miles away I could see them trying to combine schools. But it isn’t. So.

I dunno. I hate this plotline. I feel like they stole it from a better show (Road to Avonlea, where the bigger school was just a few miles away and it made sense to consider combining the schools for a better education system for the students as one-room schoolhouse teaching was proven to be less effective) but didn’t bother to consider any of the logistics of the storyline.

Maybe it’s my passion for education and history that makes me hate it, though. I know too much to find this storyline believable. I should also mention that I haven’t enjoyed Elizabeth’s role as teacher for a very long time. (I think they suck at writing Elizabeth as a teacher.)

I’m just not interested in wherever this is going to go because I can’t imagine it’ll have a lasting impact.

The only good thing I can say about the whole plotline is that I REALLY LIKED HOW BILL CAME OUT OF IT. I think he’s the only person who knows how to speak to Elizabeth. She struggles with blunt honesty at first, but ultimately tends to appreciate it, and that’s pretty much what she always gets with Bill. Also, the scene where he shuts her down didn’t make her look stupid, either (just worried/anxious), so I could appreciate it.

Jesse’s Disappearance

I couldn’t care less about this plotline if I tried. Jesse’s gone missing in the mountains before (was it last season? I don’t even remember because I didn’t give a damn about it then either) so this felt like a multi-reused plotline...for the same character, no less.

It’s also poorly implemented. Why doesn’t anyone else care about Jesse? Why is Clara pouring her heart out to Lee while her friends are failing to support her in the slightest? Why should any of us care when we know he’ll be fine?

It just feels so forced for the sake of drama, and it’s made 10x worse because there’s too much else going on at the same time.

Also, how convenient that they have to tell us how hard-working and dedicated Jesse is to his work to force this plot to even make sense... C’mon, he has never been a particularly dedicated to work. They just needed to explain why he would have left the car so that he could be “missing.”

Boring. I also don’t care that much about their “stolen” money.

The only good thing in all of this is seeing how soothing of a voice Lee actually has.

The best parts of the episode:

Henry calling Florence “Flo” GOT ME. It was so surprisingly cute???

I love Bill, and he really came out of this episode looking great! Finally, it seems they’re done writing him as a grouchy old man who hates everyone! In this season (and particularly in this episode), he is allowed to be capable, smart, helpful, loyal, and in possession of a great deal of integrity. I couldn’t believe that guy tried to bribe the judge in town right off the bat lmao...but the way Bill handled it felt very in character—very reminiscent of him from S3 or 4. He never shuts things down immediately, preferring instead to get more information to use against his, erm...opponent. Should he need it, of course. I was really happy to see him written well in this episode.

HENRY’S LETTER FROM HIS SON. STARTS OFF WITH “DAD,” AND SAYS PS. I LOVE YOU AT THE BOTTOM. Good for Henry.

Fiona’s backstory! Finally, we get some FIONA LORE. Neat.

PUDDING HANDS CARSON.

#when calls the heart

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sleekervae · 4 years

Text

The Neighbour [0.3]

Something was irrevocably different with Remington; Emerson picked it off right away. On an early Tuesday afternoon, with the air thick and humid and the sun beating down like a plague (no pun intended), Remington was fussing over himself more than usual. He had changed out of four or five different outfits, playing with his hair, and was it appropriate for him to wear makeup? Eva hadn't seen him with it on, yet. No, it was probably best to keep it casual for now. Then again, he had a fantastic highlight that worked absolute magic under the sun...

It was around eleven thirty when Remington finally came down, dressed down but still presentable in a simple pair of ripped skinny jeans and a t-shirt. Emerson and Shy were sat on the couch as they watched Netflix, Pepper situated between them. Remington stopped short when he saw the pair cuddled up on the couch, he smiled deviously.

"Eugh! You guys are so flippin' cute it's gross!" he gushed, putting on his diva voice.

Shy chuckled softly, "Hi Rem,"

Emerson's attention diverted to his older brother, intrigued to see him all ready to go out somewhere.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Coffee with Eva," Remington replied simply.

"The neighbour with the cat?" Shy said.

"Yeah," Remington nodded, "Emerson tell you she gave us a loaf of bread last week?"

"He did," she smiled, "Poor thing, I felt for her. She looked so flustered at the pool,"

"Well, moving is a bitch already. Throw in Covid 19 and you got a real thorn in the ass," Emerson said, then turning back to his brother, "You gonna' be social distancing?"

"We're going to drink our coffee and walk around in the park," Remington replied, "She works from home anyway,"

"So, who asked who for the coffee?" Emerson asked.

Remington shrugged, stopping at the hallway mirror to fix his hair again, "She brought up how she hasn't had a chance to get around the neighbourhood, so I offered, she accepted. She has our vinyl too,"

"Which one?" Emerson asked.

"Boom Boom Room,"

"Side A or B?"

"A,"

"I'd approve either way,"

Shy couldn't help but subconsciouly squeeze Emerson's arm, a glimmer of excitement bursting behind her eyes, "So, she's a fan, too?"

"Took her a minute to figure it out. Didn't even bring up Em or Seb, so clearly she pays more attention to me," the blonde smirked.

Emerson glowered at his brother, "Yeah, yeah, go for your cup of fuck-off-ee," he grumbled.

Across the street, with her room strewn in discarded clothes that just didn't make the cut, Eva finally felt confident standing in her denim skirt and black tee. On any other day she'd have paired the ensemble with her pleather jacket, but it was too damn hot out. Even with the window letting in a cool breeze, the air was uncomfortably humid. What did she expect when moving from the Emerald City to Los Angeles?

Eva made sure to close and latch the window shut before she left, not eager for Pluto to go off on another reign of terror. Stopping to grab a fresh face mask, her phone suddenly began to vibrate in her purse. She figured it might have been Remington sending her a text, but the screen flashed to the Blocked Caller ID. Eva rolled her eyes and denied the call.

Stepping out into the humidity, Eva waved her hand over her face as she stepped out of the complex courtyard, just at the same time Remington was locking the door to his house. As soon as she caught his eye, he was all smiles.

She was glad to see him; a little relieved, even. He looked cool, cool enough to appear on some grungy magazine cover. All he needed to complete the look was a cigarette and maybe a skateboard, too. The messy blonde hair, the glimmer in his eyes brought back the warmth she associated with his presence and as she came to meet him at his car, his spicy cologne danced up her nose and imprinted itself in her olfactory memory.

Remington had never been more wary of how his hands shook, his left hand he stuffed into his jean pocket and the right he gripped his car keys with a vice-esque grip. He found himself mesmerized briefly by the fit of her skirt, her black t-shirt tucked in smoothly but not too tight to over expose her figure, but just enough to give Remington an idea. Her short brown hair fell delicately over her face, one side pushed back behind her ears and exposing her stormy blue eyes to the sunshine. She was the embodiment of innocence and grunge wrapped into a perfect five-foot-six package.

"Glad you didn't stand me up," he grinned.

"Well, I kind of happen to live right over there," she drawled, pointing to her balcony, "It'd be kind of awkward and hard to hide if I tried,"

"You look really nice," he nodded after a brief moment.

"So do you," she agreed with confidence, "Where we off to?"

There was a forested park not far from where they lived. Despite the pandemic, the fields were filled with older kids playing games of soccer and basketball, there were vendors out trying to sell their ice cream, a couple girls were scattered across the grass and sunbathing. It almost all seemed so normal, if not for the fact that the kid's jungle gym had been fenced off so no child could climb upon it.

The pair walked side-by-side, him with his iced black coffee and her with a green tea frapp -- no whipping cream. The gravel path they walked was shaded by a canopy of lush green trees, providing some relief from the hammering heat. Remington kept his gaze locked on her, worried to miss a moment where she'd crack a smile or briefly run her tongue over her lips. Her fingers appeared so dainty yet he could spot the small calluses at the middle joint of her thumb, and some paper cuts on her middle and index fingers.

"So, how does a ghostwriter get hired?" Remington asked, "Do you just openly advertise 'hey! If you're a lazy author, come hire me'?"

"No," Eva shook her head with a giggle, "I used to write articles for the newsletter at my college, and then a friend of mine forwarded me an email about a client who was looking for a ghostwriter. I didn't know much about it but the money was pretty good. It was a grant application for requesting financial aid for survivors of residential schools,"

"Sounds depressing," Remington said.

"It was pretty heavy shit," Eva admitted, "But, I did get fifteen-hundred for a six page application. Well worth it, I'd say,"

Remington blew an impressed whistle, "So you make pretty good money off of this?"

"Let's just say my student debt has decreased significantly since I took up the profession," and she took a brief sip of her drink.

"You ever publish anything under your own name?" he asked, "Eva Kuznetsov is a cute pen name. Evelina sounds more mature, though..."

Eva shrugged, "I think about it sometimes... but it's just easier to write under someone else's name and let them have all the glory. Say, if they happen to do something stupid to forever tarnish their career, that won't come back to bite me in the ass,"

Remington smirked, "Like a particular fantasy author who's made some pretty heavy comments concerning the trans community?"

"Let's not even talk about that, my heart still breaks when I think about it," Eva sighed, "To answer your question, however, if I got confident enough I may try to publish something in the future,"

"What else do you like to write?"

Eva opened her mouth but closed it quickly, pressing together her petunia pink lips as she visibly swallowed whatever words were about to pass through them. When she looked up at Remington again, his brown eyes dark like soaked coffee grinds that sent her into a caffeinated headrush. What would he think if she actually told him...

"I write poems, some short stories," she somewhat lied.

Remington's smile grew wider, mischief glimmering over his face like light beams reflecting over windchimes in a saturated dusk, "You hesitated just now," he spoke curiously, "What else do you write?"

Eva glanced down at the ground, a nervous giggle bubbling out and knocking the air out of her lungs, "Okay listen, don't judge me, it's just a hobby of mine,"

"Oh God!" Remington gasped, "Do you write porn?"

Eva laughed again, her pale cheeks flushing in red, "Well... I do happen write some naughty shit... in my fanfictions,"

Remington stopped dead in his tracks, taken aback by her answer. He totally thought she would say something along the lines of erotic fiction on a platform like Literotica. For understandable reasons, he had some mixed emotions about fanfictions.

"What kind of fanfiction?" he asked, somewhat bordering on the third degree.

"... Um..." she glanced at him again, the smirk on his lips compelling more giggles to burst from hers. She pressed her hands together over her nose and mouth, and Remington laughed as well.

"Okay listen, I promise," he put his right hand over his chest, "I promise I will not judge you for whatever smut you write for whoever," he assured her.

"It's not... yeah, I guess it kind of is," Eva chuckled nervously, "I usually write for stuff like Criminal Minds, but more lately I've gotten into writing for Euphoria..." she trailed off, timid as she waited for his response.

"Alright, that's actually not bad," he nodded, "I'll be honest, you didn't strike me as somebody who write fanfics,"

Eva glanced timidly at her scuffed sneakers, kicking up pebbles and dust, "Are fanfic writers supposed to look a certain way?"

"I don't know, actually," he simpered.

"I don't tell a lot of people that I do it, mainly because their first impression is either 'what the fuck' or 'OMG we should collaborate' and I'm just like," she hung her head back, "Nooo!"

"You're more of a soloist then a team player, then?" he teased.

"Let's just say I tend to work better alone," she replied, shrugging her shoulders as though the comment should mean nothing. But Remington found it odd that Eva was out here all on her own, never brought up her friends or family. He didn't see many personal effects in her apartment, neither.

"Is that why you're out here by yourself?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" she replied.

"Well... don't take this the wrong way, but I haven't really seen you with anybody. You don't talk about your friends or your family,"

Eva shrugged again, "They're all back in Seattle. Besides, opportunity was drying up over there and I just wanted a fresh start," she said, "Besides, Pluto's my friend,"

"Well, that's a given," he replied, "Are your parents up in Seattle?"

"My dad is," she nodded, "I don't know what my mom's doing," Remington's silent was her cue to go on, "I um... we haven't really spoken, her and I,"

"You have a falling out?" he asked suddenly.

Eva glared down at the gravel again, "You can call it that. She's a pilot and she's always flying, and so you know, I never really got to see much of her growing up. And then, she suddenly shows up for my college graduation and expects us to be one big happy family, like she has it in her head that she can make up for all the birthdays and shit she's missed. And I just didn't know what to say to her. I don't know who she is, but she's my mom," she glanced up at Remington again, "And I don't know why I'm telling you all of this,"

Remington wasn't bothered by her unloading, it seemed as though Eva needed to get things off her chest more than she realized. Her smile was sardonic and her voice petty like a comedian on stage, putting on the brave 'I don't give a fuck anymore' face.

"I find sometimes it's easier to unload to new people then it is to your friends," he said, "What does your dad do?"

"Chem professor. Which is ironic because I seriously sucked at chemistry," she replied.

"Show me a kid who didn't struggle in chem, honestly," he said, "But do you get along with your dad?"

"For the most part," she chuckled, "He's still confused as to why I choose to write anonymously, but that's his problem. What do your parents do?"

Remington chewed on the inside of his cheek, "My mom's kind of like our manager. Does a lot of production and behind the scenes stuff. And I haven't seen my dad for nearly twenty years,"

Eva was silent for a moment, studying him. He spoke with a firm grin, yet still trying to shadow that flicker of sadness within his face.

"So we both have parental issues... that's nice to know," she put on a teasing grin, "Maybe that's why we make such good friends?"

Remington swallowed thickly, "So, you are indeed confirming we are friends?"

"I am," she smiled, "It'd be nice to have whatever few I can scrape up,"

"That fact that you also live across the street means that you're now stuck with me," Remington grinned with pride.

"True," Eva hummed appreciatively, taking another sip of her drink, "Somehow, I don't think I'll mind, though,"

When Remington drove her home she gave him a sweet and polite goodbye, a hug which made his confident exterior falter for a second long enough for her to witness it through the flush in his cheeks and his lack of response. His words tripped over the length of his tongue when he tried to flush out a proper goodbye and he felt his hands began to quiver again.

And when he went to open his door, he took one last glance. The small brunette turned at the same time and met his gaze, but he was too far away to hear her sharp inhale. And when he finally went inside he fall back against the door, staring into space with the biggest grin he'd had on since... well, he couldn't remember when he last felt so excited.

#remington leith #Remington Leith imagine #palaye royale #Palaye Royale imagine #Palaye Royale fic #sebastian danzig #emerson barrett #boy bands #band imagines #band imagine blog #original story #original female character

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mysticm3ss · 4 years

Text

a new home | jumin x fem!mc

words: 1.8k

warnings: references to covid-19. also inaccuracies probably, idk how south korea is handling the outbreak, i’m just using my own experiences bc that’s what i know and writing this was more of a therapy for me than anything else.

summary: you’re staying with jumin during the covid-19 quarantine. he’s down. you comfort him. that’s it folks

i never ever thought i’d be writing a jumin fic without a prompt but i had a dream last night and it made me hella soft for this man so i had to write about it! apologies if his characterisation feels off at all, i don’t normally write much for jumin.

__________

“Thank you so much for letting me stay, Jumin… with everything happening, I… I don’t think I can handle being totally alone when we go into lockdown. Are you absolutely sure I’m not imposing?”

Jumin hums in amusement at your fretting, shaking his head. “I’m certain. I’d never wish for you to feel so lonely indefinitely, MC. You’re more than welcome to stay until all of this blows over, and for as long as you’d like afterwards. Besides,” he reasons, “it might be nice to have some company.”

“You’ll never know how much I appreciate it,” you sigh, tension draining from your shoulders as you set your suitcase at the foot of the spare bed. It’s covers are dark blue, sleek, not a hint of lint clinging to the soft fabric.

“It’s nothing. Make yourself at home—you’re welcome to anything in the penthouse. We’ve plenty of food, though I’m afraid the chef won’t be able to cook for us until this situation is resolved. My apologies.”

“Oh, Jumin, I assure you, that’s fine. I like cooking, anyway.”

A smile tugs at the corner of Jumin’s lips. “Perhaps you’d allow me to try your cooking at some stage, MC. You’ve got me curious.”

You laugh, and Jumin’s responding smile has your stomach fluttering and your heart melting like warm honey. The amusement reaches his eyes, and their grey depths gleam silver in the soft glow of the bedroom light. You wonder if this is the first genuine smile of his you’ve seen, and you berate yourself for the burning of your cheeks. The mere curve of a mouth shouldn’t elicit such a response—he didn’t even show teeth, for God’s sake…

“I’m sure we’ll have plenty of opportunities for that.” You manage to suppress the tremor in your tone, and your fingers fiddle anxiously at your side, the pad of your thumb rubbing anxious circles against your forefinger.

Jumin chuckles. “I’m sure we will. I’ll allow you to settle—I’ll be in my office, should you need anything.”

As he leaves, you swear you can see the trace of a blush on his cheeks.

Ignoring the unreasonable stammer of your heart, you half-heartedly begin to unpack. Toiletries in the ensuite (is that really a marble bathtub?!), a few clothes in the closet, a sentimental soft toy by your pillow. Floor to ceiling windows look out to the sun dipping below the city, and you watch the few people who dared venture outside scramble to return home, their arms loaded with grocery bags stuffed with toilet paper and non-perishables as the fading light stains them blood red. You’ve never seen the city so quiet.

You jump as something brushes your leg, and you glance down to see Elizabeth the Third rubbing against your ankle. She headbutts your hand as you extend it to her, leaving stray white hairs clinging to your skin. They’re finer than silk, and just as soft.

“She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

Jumin’s voice drips with affection as he scoops up the cat in his arms and sits by your side, the bed dipping beneath his weight. Elizabeth settles into his lap, face buried in his Amarni suit as she purrs contentedly. He strokes her fur with long, slender fingers, and you look up to see his magnetic eyes searching yours for a response.

What was the question, again?

“R-right.”

Jumin smiles again, and it has your knees weak. There’s a reason it’s his face plastered across magazine covers, and not his father’s.

“Let me cook for you tonight. What would you like?”

“Oh, anything is fine…” you’re quick to assure him. “Whatever you feel like making.”

Jumin considers for a moment, eyes flitting to the window as the last streaks of sunlight fade into darkness, broken by the glittering of city lights. He licks his lips in thought, tongue catching between his teeth. You swallow. Hard.

“I should call the chef and ask for recommendations,” he concludes, nodding to himself. “I’ll leave you be.”

The bed springs up as Jumin gets to his feet, immediately lamenting his absence as he walks to the door. Elizabeth, having moved a few moments ago, blinks slowly at you before stalking after her master, the tip of her tail flicking in contentment as she leaves.

You look back to the city, though your attention is stolen as your phone vibrates in your pocket. Dragging it out, you smile as you see a notification from the messenger, immediately opening it.

707: Hey hey! It’s MC!!

707: I heard from a little birdie that you’re living with Mr. CEO-In-Line!!!

ZEN: She’s what?!

ZEN: MC, you need to leave!!

ZEN: We’re going into lockdown, you can’t be trapped alone with him and that furball!!

ZEN: Quick!!

ZEN: Do you need me to come rescue you?!?!

MC: Haha it’s okay, Zen, I decided to stay here for a while. I’d get too lonely trapped in my apartment by myself, and there are some issues with rent…

707: Ooooh, Jumin and MC, sitting in a tree…!

ZEN: MC, you could’ve stayed with me!! I… don’t have much in the fridge, and… the spare room is only small, but…

MC: That’s very sweet of you, Zen, but I’m fine here. I promise.

ZEN: Okay… but if he does anything…

MC: I’ll let you know if I’m uncomfortable, okay? Thanks for looking out for me.

707: Soooo, now that that’s settled… are you sleeping in his room with him…?

You flush at Seven’s insinuation, shaking your head to yourself to clear the onslaught of inappropriate thoughts that had involuntarily clouded your mind.

MC: No!! I’m in a spare bedroom!!! We’re just friends!!

MC: I should go now, anyway. Jumin’s in the living room, I’ll go hang out.

ZEN: Okay… be careful!! Bye, MC!

[ZEN has left the chat room]

707: lol ok have fun lovebirds, get it on you two!!

[707 has left the chat room]

Shaking your head fondly, you set down your phone and get to your feet. Walking to the living room, you pause outside the door at the hard tone of Jumin’s voice.

“Yes, I realise what it looks like, but as I said, the tabloids are not my concern. She’s staying here, arrangements have already been made. As I see it, this is no more an issue to the company than your plethora of lovers. I wish you and your latest both luck in the quarantine.”

Jumin’s cold tone falls into silence, and you hesitantly step into the room to see Jumin sitting at the edge of the couch, his eyes closed and head tilted down as he shakes it to himself. A heavy breath falls through his nose.

“Is… everything okay?”

He looks up immediately, clearing his throat as he straightens his posture. He smiles demurely, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yes, of course. I was just speaking to my father… is everything to your liking?”

Chewing your lower lip, you hesitantly take the space next to Jumin. His body radiates warmth, the fresh scent of his cologne wafting in the space between you. From all of your interactions in the messenger, you’d sometimes forgotten that Jumin was a real, flesh and blood human being; warm skin despite the coolness of his tone, with feelings that brewed beneath it, under the expensive suits and shoulders burdened with inherited responsibility.

“Yeah, everything’s great… is everything alright with your father? You seem upset…”

Jumin’s jaw twitches, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “I’m fine,” he replies coolly, an emotionless smile etched over his features. In this moment, he resembles more a mannequin, or perhaps an android, than a human. His face betrays no hint of feeling.

“I know you’re not.”

Jumin falters.

There it is again. That undeniable, profound humanity.

You see it in the tremble of his lip, the swift droop of his eyes, the shaky breath that he tries so hard to contain. The fist he rests on his knee clenches briefly, and you tentatively rest your hand over his.

He stiffens at the skin-to-skin contact, looking at you in vague disbelief as you offer a sympathetic smile. “Talk to me, honey.”

Jumin’s eyes widen at the endearment, and the reply that follows is so soft, so timid, that there’s a pang in your chest at the sound.

“...how?”

You squeeze his hand. “Just… tell me what’s going through your mind. Sometimes it helps to share.”

He hesitates. You backtrack.

“There’s no pressure if you don’t want to… just know that I’m here whenever you do.”

Jumin shakes his head. “It’s not that… I suppose I just… don’t know where to start. All of my thoughts are so… tangled, that… I’m not sure I can unravel them.”

His voice breaks, and so does your heart.

“Jumin… can I hug you?”

His eyes widen again, but eventually, he nods.

Your arms close around him, your grip loose at first, giving him room to pull away should he so choose. He doesn’t. Though his body is stiff at first, he finally sags against you, breathing ragged as his head falls into the crook of your neck, skin on skin, hot and soft. You run your fingers through his hair as you hear Jumin inhale sharply against your shoulder. You feel the heave of his chest, feel his eyes as they squeeze shut, feel his fingertips digging into the softness of your waist as he clings to you helplessly. Idly, you wonder how long it’s been since he’s been held, since he’s been soothed. Your heart aches at the likely answer. You don’t dwell on the thought.

“You’re okay,” you whisper against his temple. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

With another shaky breath, Jumin pulls away. His hair is messed, his suit disheveled, and his eyes alight with a vulnerability that seems so foreign and yet so normal—so painfully human. His breathing comes in soft exhales through his mouth, and his gaze is tender as he drinks in the sight of you, as though he were a parched man and you were fresh rain.

Jumin raises his hand to your cheek, his thumb smoothing over the skin, marveling in the softness and the blush that rises to your cheeks. He doesn’t say anything, simply leans in close. You feel his breath on your lips, and the hairs on your arms rise as his mouth meets yours.

The kiss is slow and a little clumsy; you can feel your heart slamming against your ribs as he draws you in closer, clutching you desperately as he breathes you in. Your hand slides around to lay against his neck, and he continues to cup your cheek, eyes closed as he melts into every movement of your mouth against his.

When he pulls away, your cheeks are aflame, and his ears are scarlet.

“My apologies, I shouldn’t have…”

“Don’t apologise.” Your words come as a whisper, though more eager than you’d intended. You’re met with a gentle smile that makes your heart glow, and again, he leans in to kiss you.

__________

thanks for reading! if you made it this far, why not reblog or reply letting me know what you thought? ❤

#mystic messenger #mysme #jumin han #jumin han x mc #juman han x reader #mm #mm fanfic #mysme fanfic #jumin #jumin x reader #mm jumin

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starship-squidlet · 4 years

Text

As You Like It: Chapter One

Story Summary: Modern/Theatre!AU. Jack Kelly and Crutchie Morris finally make it to Santa Fe, where they find employment at the World Theatre. There they meet a diverse cast of characters who rapidly become friends and family, making Santa Fe into the home they've always longed for.

Chapter Summary: Jack and Crutchie arrive at the World, where they meet the rest of the crew.

Word count: 4,058

Warnings: none (a few swear words I guess tho?)

A/N: Hey, y'all! So, I'mma say it now: 75% of the reason I wrote this story was for catharsis. It's absolutely based off of my current job in a theatre, as well as past jobs in other theatres, and I miss my job SO MUCH as we've been laid off for 6 months now thanks to COVID, and won't be back before January at the earliest. I miss my job and all the people I work with, so I decided to write a story about it, and projected it onto my current obsession: Newsies. Is Elaine a self-insert? Pretty much. Are the characters of most of the boys more based on the guys I work with than their actual depictions in media? Generally. But this was a lot of fun to write, and made me feel better about life. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Disclaimer: I don’t own Newsies or any of the characters you may recognize from it, but I do own this story, Elaine, Alden, Alan, etc. Cross-posting to ChocolatteKitty-Kat on AO3 and FFnet.

Tags: @the-cowbi

Next chapter: Chapter Two

“The World Theatre,” Jack murmured, squinting up at the metal sign shaped into the words, mounted over the door of the auspicious building. The World looked significantly newer than many of the other buildings they had passed on the drive in, but had also clearly been built in some kind of older or more traditional style than most of the other new buildings they had seen in the city.

“We finally made it.”

Jack glanced over at his passenger. His best friend and honorary little brother, Crutchie, was leaning forward as far as he could, straining against his seatbelt to take in as much of the huge building as possible. He didn’t spare a glance to Jack, focused entirely on the view in front of them. Jack smiled to himself and turned off the engine. “We sure did.”

“Come on, Jack,” Crutchie laughed. He leaned back far enough to unfasten his seatbelt and reached for his crutch and the door at the same time. “How long have you been wanting to move to Santa Fe for? And now that we’re here, I’d swear you want to go back to New York already.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I miss the pollution. Don’t go anywhere.” Jack grumbled as he undid his own seatbelt and clambered out of the van. The old-as-heck fifteen passenger had only cost him a few hundred dollars—to purchase. Repairs since then had totaled in the thousands, and Jack truly regretted not just spending more up front for a vehicle in better shape. Despite all odds, however, the piece of garbage had carried them both all the way across the country, and even loaned her converted back section—the first thing Jack had done was rip out all but one row of seats—as a temporary living space for the journey. The outside of the van had at some point somewhat recently been white, probably, but was now mottled with so many colors, between coats of paint, scrapes and scratches, and even a few rust patches and strips of duct tape—not to mention dried mud and more—, that Crutchie jokingly called its color “abstract art”. Somehow, this all seemed appropriate, though. Jack made his way around the van to open Crutchie’s door, and offered his arm up to his friend.

“Jack, I don’t need help,” Crutchie rolled his eyes. He slipped his right arm into his crutch and braced the other on the door before sliding off the seat to land on his left foot on the asphalt.

“Yeah, tell that to your arm and knees,” Jack eyed a nasty scrape along Crutchie’s forearm. “I don’t want you falling again. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life.”

Crutchie laughed and gave him a playful shove. “I fell one time. How many dozens of times have I gotten in and out of this car? And I fell once. It happens. It would probably happen even without this thing.” He waved his crutch to illustrate his point. “Anyways, the only reason I fell was because it was raining. The door was wet and my hand slipped. But, right now, it’s completely dry, so I’m perfectly safe.”

Jack rolled his eyes and shut the van door. “Sure. I get that. But I still worry.”

“Since when are you my mother?” Crutchie laughed, poking Jack lightly in the side, his eyes crinkling up as he beamed up at his friend. “Come on. We’ll be late.”

Jack rolled his eyes, locked the van door, and followed Crutchie up the low stairs to the door of the World. Inside, the air was cool, a blissful respite from the aggressive heat outside, and Jack paused a moment to take in the theatre lobby. To either side, wide staircases with more low-rise stairs wound up a full flight to small side balconies, then continued up another whole flight to a wide balcony that spanned almost the width of the room. In front of them was a long counter with a handful of people behind it, all in smart uniforms of white button-down shirts, blue ties that matched the theatre’s logo perfectly, and black vests.

“Good morning!” one of the uniformed clerks called. “Can I help you?”

“Hi,” Jack jogged up to the counter. “I’m Jack Kelly. That’s Charlie Morris. We’re supposed to start work here today. Uh, we’re supposed to see Hannah Martin?”

“You can have a seat over there, and I’ll call Hannah and let her know you’re here,” the clerk smiled cheerfully, pointing at an uncomfortable-looking couch by a wall to the left, underneath a sign with an arrow indicating the direction of a women’s restroom.

As Jack and Crutchie took their seats on the couch—which proved to be even more uncomfortable than it looked—the clerk picked up a phone and spoke quietly into the receiver. The lobby was quiet overall; the only sounds were the soft voices of the three clerks speaking into their headsets, clacking of keyboards as they typed, and the almost imperceptible whir of the air conditioning system far overhead, ever present behind the sounds of the clerks.

After a few moments of awkward silence on Jack and Crutchie’s part, a woman appeared at the top of the stairwell across the lobby from them. She made it halfway down before spotting them, then waved and smiled. “Jack and Charles? You can come on up.”

They stood up and headed for the base of the stairs, but a psst from one of the clerks caught their attention. “There’s an elevator under those stairs, if that’s easier.” He pointed to a small sign under the stairs the woman—presumably Hannah—was standing on.

“Nah, we’re fine,” Jack smiled.

“But thanks!” Crutchie called over his shoulder, already well on his way to the stairs, which he navigated easily, hopping up on his good foot, while Jack trailed along behind, constantly worried that Crutchie would land wrong and fall back down the stairs. Not that that had ever happened, of course, but Jack still worried. Hannah led them up the second flight, and through an unassuming door—labeled ‘offices’— off to the right, next to a small set of elevator doors. Inside, they smiled politely as they passed a middle-aged woman seated behind an impressive, L-shaped wooden desk. Hannah led them around a few small cubicles, constructed by low temporary walls, to a pair of folding tables surrounded by folding chairs.

“Sorry, the conference room is in use today, so we’ll have to use these,” Hannah chuckled a little too loud as she took a seat, gesturing for the boys to do the same. “Alright. I just have some final paperwork for you to sign, mostly about benefits and such.”

For the next few hours, Hannah walked them through quite a few different documents, mostly, as she had said, about insurance and benefits. She explained each document thoroughly before handing it to them, and answered any questions that they had before moving on to the next item. She split the completed papers into two stacks, which grew steadily as they went through each item. “Okay, I think that’s it!” she said finally, offering a bright smile. “These are for you”—she handed them each a blue-green folder—“Inside I have copies of our employee handbook and all of the documents you’ve just signed, for your records. Do you have any more questions?”

Both Jack and Crutchie shook their heads.

“Excellent!” Hannah smiled. “I’ll call backstage and have someone come up to walk you back. Or, actually…” She trailed off as a door, somewhere on the other side of the cubicles and unseen from where they were sitting, opened and a pair of loudly-chattering voices burst into the still quiet of the room. “Elaine?”

The voices quieted for a moment.

“Yeah?” a voice responded hesitantly.

“Can you come over here for a moment, please? We’re at the break tables.”

There were a few murmurs, one sounding suspiciously like good luck, before another door opened and closed, right around the same time a face popped around the cubicle corner that blocked the break tables off from the rest of the room. “Hi, Hannah,” the young woman to whom the face belonged chirped brightly, stepping fully out from behind the wall. She was small, with long, dark hair, and oversized green glasses.

“Hi, Elaine,” Hannah smiled warmly. “These are our two new hires for the crew. Would you mind taking them backstage with you?”

“Sure,” Elaine smiled. She waited as the boys stood up and headed towards her, then led them out of the offices. “Hi, I’m Elaine,” she turned to offer them a bright smile over her shoulder.

“I’m Jack Kelly, and this is Charlie Morris,” Jack replied, leaning around Crutchie to shake Elaine’s hand when she offered it.

“Wow, New York,” Elaine laughed. “Sorry, that probably came out wrong. I grew up in Boston and PA. It’s been a while since I heard a full-bodied New York accent on anyone around here. Well, besides Spot.”

“Spot?” Jack arched an eyebrow.

“Our house manager,” Elaine explained. “You’ll meet him sooner or later. Oh, do you want to take the elevator?”

“Stairs are fine,” Crutchie shook his head, already starting to hop down them. Jack hurried after him, even though he knew that his friend had an even easier time going down stairs than up them. Elaine bounced along behind them, her curly hair bobbing with each little hop down the steps.

“So, if you’re from the east coast, how did you get all the way out here to New Mexico?” Jack asked as they made their way down the double flights of stairs.

“I could ask you the same question,” Elaine teased. “My brothers are performers, and I used to be too. We moved around a lot for a few years, but decided to stick around Santa Fe, at least for a little while. We like it here.” She shrugged. “Your turn.”

“Jack’s always wanted to come to Santa Fe,” Crutchie said over his shoulder, hopping off the last step. “Never said why, though.”

“Yeah, well, I just kind of picked the furthest place I could think of at one point when I was a kid and promised myself that someday I’d get there,” Jack squirmed uncomfortably at the attention, and Elaine’s piercing gaze.

“Fair enough,” she shrugged. “Hey, Tommy, hey, Dutch!” she waved and grinned at two of the clerks behind the front desk. They waved back, and the one who had greeted Jack and Crutchie earlier offered them a second wave. Elaine led them through the spacious lobby, past a gift shop, located behind the front desk, and a concession stand, tucked into the wall by the theatre doors. She threw the double doors open dramatically, and the boys followed her into a small, unlit anteroom. The doors were about halfway closed when she flung open a second set of doors.

These doors opened into a wide room, full of arched rows of padded seats, with gently-sloped aisles leading down to a four-foot-high stage. “Welcome to the World Theatre of Santa Fe,” Elaine grinned, stretching out her arms and spinning as if to show off the huge room. “Seats about sixteen hundred; the booth for the sound and light ops is back there”—she pointed—“and, if you follow me, I’ll show you backstage.”

They trailed along behind Elaine as she made for the stage, then went up five steps built into the side of the stage, next to the wall. They walked through the side stage area, past a rail with several pegs with ropes tied to them. After that, they passed through a door, where they saw a small alcove with several washer and dryers set up in it—along with:

“What is that smell?” Jack nearly gagged.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot to warn you,” Elaine said breathlessly, already on the other side of the machines. “Something in the system backs up and, uh… yeah. That. Trust me, it’s worse when you’re the one standing there for the whole show.”

She led them up another long stairwell—Jack would have guessed it was a triple flight, if he wasn’t so winded by the top—and into a long hallway. “It’s technically lunchtime for crew, but I think I should take you to see Weisel first. I’m sure he’ll have something to say to you…” she trailed off, glancing down the hallway, then grabbed Crutchie by the arm and pulled him into a small, dark room off to the right, beckoning Jack to follow. “Just as a… heads up: Weisel’s a jerk. Like, obviously there’s at least one of those everywhere you go, but Weisel is his own special breed. He sucks, but he’s good at faking nice, so people tend not to notice, at least not straight off. Just don’t let him see if he gets to you. And he’ll probably be nice to start off with, anyways.”

She led them back into the hallway. “Okay. So that’s dressing room five. This is Spice’s office—don’t ever go in there unless you’re invited—and that’s the sewing room… men’s bathroom… cutting and receiving rooms for costumes, and Weisel and Medda’s offices.” She pointed out each room as they passed, stopping in front of the one she had named as Weisel’s office. “All that’s down that way is the rest of the dressing rooms. And that hallway leads to the green room and elevator.” She knocked on the door to Weisel’s office, opening it far enough to poke her head in when a response came. “I’ve got two new hires from Hannah, Mr. Weisel,” she said cheerfully. “And I need to clock out for lunch.”

“Oh, come in.”

“Cool. Mr. Weisel, this is Jack and Charlie.”

Elaine opened the door and slipped into an oversized computer chair, her fingers flying across the keys of the computer at the desk as she logged into it. The boys squeezed in behind her: the office was narrow, barely six or seven feet wide. The two “desks” were actually a wide counter built into the wall, two workspaces divided by a fancy copier, each with a desktop tower and monitor. At the back desk sat an older man, with salt-and-pepper hair—more salt than pepper—and a thoroughly displeased, unshaven face. He looked the two boys up and down, his face darkening further as he took in Crutchie; Jack instinctively wanted to step protectively in front of his friend, but couldn’t fit between Elaine’s chair and Crutchie to do so.

“Hannah said she hired two new crew boys for me,” Weisel turned back to his desk and took a bite of a sandwich, chewing slowly as he swiveled back to face the boys. “So, do either of you have any theatre experience?”

“No, not so much,” Jack said. “We just needed jobs because we were moving out here, and this is what was available. But I’ve done plenty of physical labor, and that’s what she said to expect, so I’m sure I’ll be able to sort it out quick enough. And she said something about… a spotlight operator or something for Charlie?”

“Yeah, yeah, the spot op position,” Weisel nodded, turning back to his sandwich. “Not sure what I’m going to do with him for builds.”

“Charlie, have you ever done any sewing?” Elaine piped up from the computer, where she was effectively trapped by Jack and Crutchie squashed behind her. “Wardrobe always needs help, and even if you haven’t, I don’t mind teaching. We never have enough hands to do all the little things, like buttons and hooks and name tags.”

“Alright, you can have him,” Weisel shrugged. “Next cue-to-cue they run, you can take him up to spot and teach him the follow spot.”

“Okay,” Elaine chirped. “Since it’s lunch now, do you want me to take Jack and Charlie downstairs and introduce them to everyone?”

“Sure, whatever,” Weisel waved his hand dismissively. “Jack, you come find me after lunch, and I’ll get you started. Elaine, you can take Charlie.”

The boys squeezed out of the little office and Elaine followed them. “I’ll show you downstairs, but I have to grab my lunch first. Do y’all have food?”

“Ah, no, we were gonna run out and grab something,” Jack said.

“Well, you don’t have much time for that right now,” Elaine said. “There may be a lot of places to eat around here, but it can easily take well over half an hour to get through them, plus driving back and forth, and we have less than forty-five minutes till we have to be back. But don’t worry, there’s some leftovers from the last concert in the fridge in the green room. Just follow me.”

Jack and Crutchie followed Elaine first to the sewing room, then to a large room, painted sage green, which she called the green room. “When we have concert tours in, we set up their catering in here. The upstairs staff usually eats in here on non-concert days, but Sarah—the other dresser—and I prefer to go downstairs and eat with the crew. Better company.” She opened the door to a tall, industrial-looking stainless steel refrigerator. “Here, there’s a bunch of stuff leftover from the concert the other day.” She produced a half-empty deli tray, along with some other food, and set it on one of the two long tables running through the center of the room, and grabbed some bread from a windowsill next to the fridge. “I know sandwiches aren’t much, but, hey, it’s free food. And way easier and faster than going out for lunch.”

The boys made their sandwiches in silence while Elaine microwaved her own lunch—“Quinoa with black beans, Ragu, and a little bit of cheese. It’s like spaghetti, but better!”

“It doesn’t smell better,” Crutchie wrinkled his nose.

“Yeah…” Elaine sighed, looking sadly into the container. “But I guess that’s the trade-off.”

Once they were done with the food, Elaine helped them load it back into the fridge and took them back out into the hallway. “Elevator,” she said as she punched a button on the wall. “It’s four flights to the basement, and I have bad knees. I try and take the stairs at least a few times a day, but my legs won’t let me all the time. Lunch is when I give myself a break.”

The elevator was painfully slow, and creaked alarmingly as they rode it down. “I don’t trust that,” Jack arched an eyebrow and stared up at the roof.

“Well, I’ve only heard of it getting stuck once, if that helps,” Elaine laughed.

When they reached the basement, the doors slid open—groaning as they did—and a wave of stale but cool air that smelled like beef hit them. The basement walls were made of white-painted cinderblocks, while the floor was the same painted grey concrete that the cavernous upstairs room behind the stage—where the washers and dryers were housed—had, although less stained and cracked. Elaine led them around a corner, past chain-link-fenced cubicles stuffed with fake Christmas greenery, and up to a small room created by two half walls, and an L-shaped row of old lockers, many of which were covered back and front with stickers advertising tours that had (presumably) come through the theatre in the past. There were three tables packed with folding chairs, on top of a filthy, old rug. In the back of the “room” were a small, free-standing sink with just enough counter space for a dish-drying rack, an ancient refrigerator with a freezer on top, and a rickety table with a microwave, old drip coffeemaker, and boxes of plastic cutlery and paper plates. On the back wall was a wide half-white, half-cork board; on the whiteboard side was scrawled, in faded green and red dry-erase marker,

DEFINITIVE LIST OF THE TOP 10 DISNEY ANIMATED MOVIES EVER:

Tangled The Lion King

Aladdin

Great Mouse Detective

Moana

Mulan

Sword in the Stone

Black Cauldron

Robin Hood (should be #2 but whatever)

Cinderella II

Lion King 1 ½

There were also several notes and arrows drawn on the board, seemingly trying to correct whoever had initially written it, but Jack and Crutchie didn’t have time to take those in—in fact, they barely had time to take in anything else, because as soon as they rounded the corner created by the lockers, they were met by a deafening cheer of “ELAINE!”

Elaine jumped, nearly dropping her container of quinoa-spaghetti, and yelped. “Dear lord, boys, don’t scare me like that!”

“Look, we fixed your list!” a voice laughed.

“You didn’t fix it, you made it wrong!” Elaine cried. “The Lion King SUCKS, and is definitely not the best animated Disney movie ever!”

The room immediately dissolved into chaos, each of the dozen occupants yelling over one another, mostly about the movies they felt should be on the list. Elaine set her food down on the nearest table and waved her arms. “Everyone, SHUT UP!”

The room slowly quieted, the shouting replaced largely by laughter.

“Come on, boys, we have to make a good impression on the new guys!” Elaine yelled over the continuing noise. That shut the boys up, and they turned their attention to Elaine. “Thank you!” She grabbed Jack’s arm and pulled him forward. “Everyone, meet Jack Kelly, and that’s Charlie…”

“Morris,” Crutchie stepped forward and waved his crutch, his other hand full with his sandwich plate. “But you can call me Crutchie.”

“Sure,” one of the boys laughed.

“Weasel has officially given Charlie to Buttons and Snipe as their new follow spot op”—

“You mean you’re bailing on us, Elaine!?” One of the boys in the back cried.

“Not by choice, Snipe,” Elaine retorted. “By decree of Weasel. Anyways, we always knew this day would come, especially after Barb and Carla quit. But don’t worry, I promise that I will miss you terribly.”

“Yeah, right,” the boy rolled his eyes. “You’ll forget about us in a week.”

“Five days, max,” Elaine said. “Anyways, Jack is on run crew with the rest of y’all, so be nice to him.”

“We’re always nice,” the boy in front of Elaine leaned his head back and batted his eyelashes.

“Sure you are,” Elaine laughed, rolling her eyes and giving him a playful shove on the shoulder. “Jack, Charlie, meet the crew boys.” She pointed to each person in turn as she introduced them. “Race is our deck chief—which basically means he’s in charge backstage, second only to Weasel—and he runs the fly rail. Albert is regular run crew, like you, Jack. Buttons is our L1, which means that he runs the light board and supervises the spotlight operators, namely you, Charlie, and Snipe over there. Elmer here is our A1, which means that he runs the sound board and heads up audio. Finch is the A2–a.k.a. Elmer’s backup and runs the backstage board—, and Henry is the A3–Finch’s backup. Mike and Ike over there are the twins; they’re run crew, and don’t worry about trying to tell them apart, because they’re always switching places anyways and still answer to the wrong name if you use it. The last two over there are Jo-Jo and Romeo, also run crew. And that’s Sarah! For concerts, she’s the hospitality coordinator, and she works wardrobe and dresses for our original shows.”

“And what do you do?” Crutchie asked as they squeezed into the last open seats at the same table as Elmer, Finch, and Sarah.

“Elaine does everything,” Elmer laughed.

“My title is production assistant,” Elaine said. “That just means that, yes, I do everything. I’m mostly a stitcher and dresser, at least for original shows. For concerts, I run for the tours and back Sarah up on hospitality. I also swing in for spotlight, and I’ve even done run crew a few times, and I’m the only person with experience with wigs so I do that, and I help Weasel out with props. But mostly I swing dressing tracks and spot op.”

“Swingers have the most fun,” Elmer teased.

“Gross,” Elaine rolled her eyes, but smiled despite herself. “Speaking of bad jokes, Finch, you wanna hear one?”

“No,” Finch groaned.

“What does a boat do when it doesn’t feel good?”

Finch glared at her.

“It goes to the dock!”

Sarah covered her mouth to hide a smile, and Elmer snorted into his water bottle.

“Thank you,” Elaine beamed.

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melvillaa · 4 years

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An Ode to 2020

Not really sure why I’m awake right now. If this was pre-marriage, I would have taken out my laptop to start typing, but it’s not and Bri is knocked tf out, so here we are. I guess this is the ode to 2020 post that I’ve been meaning to annotate for a while now.

This has been the most transformative year of my life. So many changes in more ways than one. Way more ways. Try like 20. A lot of crying (which I never do.... or maybe i just don’t admit to, lmao), a lot of introspection, a lot of uncomfortability (is that a word?), and a lot of change. A whole lot.

The year started off with optimism and ended with the same notion. Full of hope and wonder for the year set before me, I couldn’t wait for 2020 - it was supposed to be the year all my dreams came true.. and in a weird way, it was! It was the year I got married to the love of my life(!!!!!!), reached 5 years at my corporate job, relocated to a new home in a new city and area code. It was all that - but it wouldn’t be my life if it wasn’t that, plus a little pizzazz, lol.

It’s hard for me to give myself grace. Truly I think I am the hardest on myself. Always empathetic of others and their experiences, but always giving myself the short end of the stick. Living in a pandemic has been wild - but living through my huge life changes in the middle of a pandemic has proven to be even more wild. As a person who doesn’t necessarily love change, I’ve struggled to give myself grace in the midst of the huge life changes I’ve experienced. I’m damn proud of how far I’ve come and how strong I’ve been to withstand the trials that I battle without me really saying a word to a single soul. As a person, me typing this stuff out is me telling the world my story - even if no one reads it. This year changed my life.

Marriage.

I became a wife and entered the covenant of marriage. It really is true that you enter into a marital bliss that is full of love you don’t experience until you get married. It’s unlocking a next level of your relationship and discovering a new version of yourself ... yourself plus another human. There really are different levels of love that you are surprised to find out that you are capable of. It’s different than just being in a relationship with one another. Now we’re bound to each other under a different covenant - before the eyes of God, our family, our friends and the law. It’s weird filling out paperwork and realizing that legally I am no longer a Villaflor. Well technically I’ll always be a Villaflor (Melanie Rose Villaflor Argamaso to be exact, okurrrttttt). I stepped into this role of being a wife and all the “responsibilities” that came with it and also fully embraced the fact that I have a person to do life with who loves me more than himself, who is always thinking of me, always taking care of me, always looking out for me, and who genuinely takes responsibility for me. It’s weird. It’s things I knew of during our relationship, but in marriage it’s somehow personified.. magnified. Marriage is so cool. Maybe it’s cool for me because there’s been such an emphasis and importance placed on it ever since I was a little girl. Bri and I didn’t have the “modern relationship” where we lived together prior to marriage. Yea we slept over and had our own respective places, but to really enter into marriage where everyday it’s me and you, and we have a whole ass home and life together is really wild. I love it. Doing life with Bri is me truly seeing that this man really would give me the world if I asked for it. Anything I could ever want or need, he fulfills it. Everyone always asks me what I’ve learned about him since we got married, or what’s something new about Bri that I’ve discovered ... one thing is that this man and his hobbies are unmatched, bro loves him some cars, any moving vehicle really, lmao. But mostly, I see his heart. He always wants the best - for me and for himself and anyone he cares about, sometimes to a fault when he can’t attain perfection but so badly wants to achieve it. But most times he can .. and then some. I’ve never met someone so naturally good at so many things. Tactically advanced, street smart as hell, a risk taker with the ability to fix just about anything, a people person with an infectious personality who could probably resell a piece of lint if he had to. We’re a family now. A little family of two but we’re both at a place where we really wouldn’t mind unlocking another level of love if it were time to. (He asks me for a “grey” from @greyandmama on IG almost weekly 🥺🥴😂).

Wedding.

It seemed like I waited so, so long for our wedding - for it to come and go like the wind. But instead of a nice sea breeze, it came and went like a tropical storm (... literally 😂but more on that later!) I remember being so excited on New Years Day at the start of 2020 ... the anticipation of our wedding in the next five months and really the start of all of our wedding festivities would begin within the next month ... or so I thought.

I remember hearing about the coronavirus making landfall in the US around the holidays in 2019 and it was already steadily spreading across the US, but not quite as widespread as it currently is. I was going on a work trip to Florida towards the end of January and I remember wearing a mask in the airport and on the flight and I conducted my usual Lysol-ing of my entire space. Everyone was looking at me like I was insane but I really didn’t care, haha. A flight attendant asked me why I was wearing a mask and I replied that I just wanted to stay healthy for my family. (...Still true, lol.) I had no idea at this moment how significantly the coronavirus was going to disrupt our world, how normal mask wearing would be, and how disinfectant wipes would soon be the most prized commodity in 21st century homes.

February came like a rush - I started designing our wedding invitation suite which was something I had literally dreamed about. I had a vision from the very beginning and new exactly how I wanted everything to look down to the postage stamp. It reinforced a love for stationery design that I knew I had, but damn was I proud of the finished product. I was so meticulous about everything - from the fonts I used, the colors and hues of the paper, the thickness of the paper, the envelopes, the ink I used. It was so intricate, but it was the most fun I ever had while designing something. It didn’t feel like work at all, but it was pure love that I poured into those invitations. Bri’s bachelor party happened in early March and my bachelorette in Chicago (!!!) was supposed to happen at the end of March. The boys went to Jacksonville, Florida and were able to stay with Bri’s old roommate, Ace in his beautiful home. Coronavirus cases were on the upswing, especially in Florida and Atlanta. I was so freaked out. N95′s were no where to be found, but since Bri is a painter, he was able to score some through work. He wore one on the flight and literally got light headed due to lack of oxygen, lol. He had the time of his life in Florida while I poured my whole self into our invitations, lol. And as soon as the boys got back, the US started to shut down.

Everyone began to work from home and businesses started closing up shop. Star couldn’t make it to my bachelorette, so she schemed her way into getting me to pole dance with all the girls, hahaha. It was literally the night before everything was supposed to shut down. No indoor dining or bars were going to be open at midnight the following Monday, so I was super thankful that I was able to have a mini bachelorette experience in our own little backyard.

It was an anomaly to fly anywhere and airports became ghost towns. Each day we got a little closer to my bachelorette and myself and the girls were so excited. Itineraries were made, bickering ensued, flights were purchased, I bought outfits for every outing (... so much white, lol) Literally the only thing left for us to do was to actually fly to Chicago. Probably a week to a week and a half before we were supposed to fly out, Chicago issued a stay at home order and everything shut down. We had to make the difficult decision to cancel my bachelorette trip to Chicago and try to rebound and think of a plan B. The girls were so gracious. I’m so thankful for all the work they put in to try and make things work out for me. We tried to do a weekend trip to Ashville, NC but everything was so risky and there was so much unknown at this point. Covid mandates varied from state to state and things were quite literally changing by the day, the hour even. It just didn’t work out. Till this day I’m sad that I didn’t get to have the full bachelorette experience, but I’m still so, so thankfulI for my friends and the work that they put in to make everything feel as normal as possible.

Home.

Careers.

Relationships.

Ok I’ll reflect on these things later. I’m sleepy, lol.

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loptgangandi · 5 years

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OH BOY GUYS HAVE I GOT A MUN-DAY STORY FOR YOU

( tl;dr I was refused entry into my mom’s home country, spent the night in an airport terminal during a pandemic, made friends with the son of one of my mom’s colleagues who just so happened to be in the exact same situation because the universe has a sense of humor, and was eventually allowed into the country because I had understood the regulations properly and the border guards had not.)

So it all started on Thursday, when my mom -- an epidemiologist working on COVID -- told me to come home ASAP because Switzerland (where she lives) was about to close its borders and had already restricted entry to anyone from neighboring states: first Italy, then Austria, Germany, and France as well.

I had already booked tickets for early April, so I called the airline, and they helped me rebook for the end of March -- the earliest I could come without paying huge fees.

Cut to Friday. I wake up to 4 missed calls and a zillion texts from my mom informing me that she had booked me on a flight for the following day -- Saturday.

With a layover in Germany.

As I had spent a good 40 minutes the previous day on the phone trying to avoid layovers in France and Germany, I was a little miffed. And worried. But the airline had assured my mother that: a) the new restrictions on Germany wouldn’t go into effect until Sunday, and b) since airport terminals are international territory, I technically would not have actually been in Germany. After some deliberation, I agreed to come home immediately. As in, Saturday. As in, the next day. The 21st. A day before Switzerland’s travel restrictions on Germany were supposed to go into effect (according to the airline, and I’m not sure what their source was).

You might already see where this is going.

I arrived at Frankfurt airport after a frankly very surreal trip -- both the flight and the original airport, which was a ghost town -- and was told by the gate agents that I couldn’t board the plane because Swiss border control would refuse me. After a bit of back and forth -- during which I switched from English to German, which got them to be a bit more helpful -- they realized that yes, indeed, citizens and residents of Schengen countries (excluding Germany, France, Italy, and Austria) were exempted from the border restrictions. This included me, as I’m a resident of Sweden.

They let me on the plane, but I was seriously worried -- because given the general environment of confusion, I had no faith that Swiss border control would know more than the Frankfurt gate agents. You’d assume they’d be informed on some things, but lets face it -- uniformed and armed people tend not to be very good at subtlety and legal minutiae, so who could know.

The one thing that can be said for the overwhelming, anxious rage I felt when the Swiss border control told me I couldn’t enter the country was that it absolutely K.O’d the part of my brain that tends to overthink my language skills and inhibit my ability to speak languages I’m not fluent in -- and I made my case in very good French. I have never spoken French so well as when I was talking to the cop I’d been palmed off to and explaining to him why I was right and they were all wrong. My mom also insisted on talking to him, and after some hesitation -- which probably had less to do with touching my potentially virus-infested phone and more to do with being on the receiving end of a middle-aged mom’s wrath -- he took the call. I offered to put it on speaker and hold it so he wouldn’t have to, but he took the phone, and argued with my mom all the way through the airport.

He seemed basically sympathetic and like he wanted to help, but his mantra was always the same: “I have my orders, I don’t know anything beyond what I’ve been told and I can’t disobey my orders.” He told mom the name of the organization to call to help out with this, but didn’t have a number for them, and couldn’t provide any other support. He was polite enough, but “polite” wasn’t going to get me home.

Where it got me was locked down tight in the airport international terminal with 10 other people who have also been turned away.

Luckily, the terminal is massive, so there was plenty of room to maintain distance.

The cops assured me that they would handle my suitcase and took my documents -- passport, Swedish residency card, and boarding passes from my trip (so they could make my flight reservations, they said, but there was probably more to it) -- and left me there.

An international airport at midnight during a pandemic is pretty much the definition of a liminal space. Every other seat in the gate waiting areas had a strip of red and white police tape running over it, back to front, and tied off at the top of the seat back to ensure that people would maintain proper distance and not sit next to each other. The music was on at a volume that, during the day, was probably appropriate to be unobtrusive over the ambient sounds of a living airport, but which in a locked-down terminal was unbelievably annoying. The lights were dim enough that there were still dark corners, and you could look around without your eyeballs melting out of your face. The only sounds (apart from the music) were the hum of the vending machines (our only food and drink options until the cafe opened at 5:30 the next morning) and the soft shuffling of people trying to get comfortable and get some sleep on the rock-hard, probably COVID-contaminated seat rows.

We were given nothing. No hand sanitizer, no water (apart from what you could buy from the vending machines), no blankets or pillows. Nothing. We had access to bathrooms with hand soap, but you had to touch the dispensers with the heel of your hand. The paper towel dispensers also weren’t automatic, so you had to touch them to get the paper towels out. There was one janitor who came in around 1 AM to clean the whole terminal, which obviously wasn’t sufficient.

I’m tough. I’ve been in some incredibly crappy situations, and at least we were warm and safe inside, and I wasn’t physically uncomfortable. I had some money to buy water, food, and later in the morning, coffee, and I figured out how to wash my hands without touching anything. But the fact that we were left in an almost certainly contaminated public space with no precautionary measures and no support for an extended amount of time -- 9 hours in my case -- was absolutely infuriating. And dangerous. And I am almost definitely going to get sick, probably because of that.

Which only made me more determined to get home. If I was going to get sick, I was going to do it in a place where I could be taken care of and nursed back to health, instead of someone else’s apartment where I just rent a room and would have had a much larger radius of contamination (my landlady/flatmate has kids and grandkids and is still going to work).

The issue, as the immigration cop had told me, came down to the fact that I had flown in from Germany.

Even though I hadn’t set foot on German soil, I had been in a German airport, and that was apparently enough. If I had flown in from any other Schengen country (apart from France, Austria, or Italy), I could have entered with no problem, since I have Swedish residency.

There was an obvious loophole there: while Sweden had no flights to that city for the following day (Sunday), Netherlands did. Brussels and Czechia did.

So while my mom contacted the immigration authority in Bern, I booked a refundable flight for 9 PM Sunday evening from Amsterdam to my mom’s city, and would request that they send me to Amsterdam instead of Stockholm. The plan was basically to make a big loop and enter through a country they deemed acceptable. The irony wasn’t lost on me -- that I would risk further contamination by city-hopping in order to loop around and end up back where I started -- but the police had prevented me from just getting into my mom’s car and self-quarantining at her apartment, which had been the original plan, so I didn’t have much of a choice.

All that was left now was to wait -- in a non-sterile, contaminated airport terminal playing the most mediocre pop album-filler of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

The only thing that made it bearable was that I made a friend.

Around 1 AM, a 20-something Japanese dude in dress pants and a polo shirt shows up on our side of the terminal from the opposite end, wanting to know if we were also bothered by the music and if he should call someone about shutting it off. He wouldn’t bother if it was just him, so he wanted to see if it was collective. I agreed, and after a few failed attempts, we miraculously managed to reach someone who said they would do what they could to turn off the music.

We got talking (and moved away from the people trying to sleep), and it turns out that it’s a small world and we were in an even smaller city, because our mothers work in the same department, were extremely close colleagues about 10 years ago, and still work together occasionally. I immediately recognized her name.

Turns out, this dude and I had both gone to school and done the IB in the same city. We both have moms working on COVID, dads living in our countries of origin (Japan for him, US for me), and younger sisters. He had also been turned away, despite having documentation that should have given him leave to enter. So there we were, stuck in that situation together, waiting to be deported and with our passports held hostage by the authorities.

We talked for six straight hours about every topic we could think of. Travel, food, relationships, siblings and family in general, COVID, electric cars, how our respective countries are reacting to COVID, racism and xenophobia (worsened by COVID -- he had an example from that same day), bosses and managers and how our offices are (and, in my case, had been) run, the pros and cons of wearing medical masks if you’re not showing symptoms of COVID, dry hands from all of the washing to avoid COVID, politics, our respective cultures and business cultures, depression and mental illness, natural disasters we had lived through, etc. “Ah fuck I’ve got COVID in my eye” became a bit of a running joke throughout the morning, as we became increasingly tired and our eyes increasingly dry, prompting runs to the bathroom to clear them out and wash our hands. We had both basically resigned ourselves to catching it -- it was just a matter of trying to pass it on to as few people as possible, preferably 0.

Around 7 AM, my new friend -- let’s call him Mike -- points out that a guard is making a beeline towards us, and he’s not holding his passport. I look, and it’s mine, and I prepare myself to argue for them to send me to Amsterdam instead of Sweden. He tells me he had just come over to see me and make sure that I was still there (??? he had my passport where was I going to go??), and he would be back in 15 minutes to let me know whether or not I could enter Switzerland.

I was completely baffled, because that option hadn’t even crossed my mind. I had been operating 100% on the assumption that I was going to be put on a plane. And Mike was happy for me, but also pretty miffed, because they had already booked a flight for him but our circumstances were pretty much identical. He had documentation proving extenuating circumstances, and I have Swedish residency and never set foot on German soil. The only difference between us is that he’s Japanese, and I’m white. I agreed that it was almost definitely a xenophobia thing, and told him that if I got in, I’d vouch for him.

15 minutes later the cop (this one was very compassionate and borderline sweet compared to the ones we’d dealt with the previous night) comes back and tells me I could go through. I gather my stuff, and explain to him about Mike. The cop looks puzzled, but promises that he’ll make some calls and try to sort it out, and I should come with him. He takes me through to get my suitcase and escorts me to the exit, where he welcomes me to Switzerland with a big smile.

I called my mom and settled in to wait for her to pick me up. Ten minutes later, Mike tells he’s also been allowed through. My mom (who had literally rolled out of bed in her pajamas, thrown on a coat and shoes, and jumped in the car) and I offered him a ride, but he had called his mom immediately and she was coming to get him. I didn’t see him again -- my mom arrived before he came through -- but we’ve been in touch, and both of us got home safe.

Now my mom and I are completely self-quarantined with the cats, and honestly, it’s wonderful. We’re not leaving the house except for the occasional walk. I slept 12 hours last night. My mom is plying me with tea to make sure I’m hydrated as we wait for me to get sick, and I spent the 6 hours recording this whole nonsense saga for posterity.

tl;dr I was refused entry into my mom’s home country, spent the night in an airport terminal during a pandemic, and made friends with the son of one of my mom’s colleagues who just so happened to be in the exact same situation

#ooc tag #| cryptid spotting || (mun-day)

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Sunday, February 20, 2022

Travel’s Back (Worldcrunch) Coming off the worst crisis in tourism history with a $1.3 trillion revenue loss in 2020, last year continued to offer up one grim prediction after another for the travel industry in the face of COVID-19. Some economists predicted several more years of hardship before a rebound, while others even questioned if a full-scale recovery would ever happen, as people across the globe were reevaluating whether much of their travel was really necessary. And yet today, all signs point to travel not only recovering in full, but being ahead of the curve of other industries. Following two years of losses, Airbus posted a record profit of 4.2 billion euros in 2021. The European aircraft giant expects that momentum to continue, predicting this week that it will deliver 720 commercial aircraft in 2022. And it’s not just aircraft orders, which tend to anticipate future demand: online lodging app Airbnb is also booming, announcing this week it expects current-quarter revenue between $1.41 billion and $1.48 billion—higher than analysts’ estimates of $1.24 billion—as bookings are projected to exceed pre-pandemic levels and hit record gross value. Surveys indicate that 2022 will be a year of over-the-top travel and bucket-list experiences.

Canada police clear Parliament street in bid to end siege (AP) Police aggressively pushed back protesters in Canada’s besieged capital on Saturday, towing away trucks, arresting dozens of protesters and finally retaking control of the streets in front of the country’s Parliament buildings. Scores of trucks left under the increasing pressure, raising authorities’ hopes for an end to the three-week protest against the country’s COVID-19 restrictions and the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The street in front of Parliament Hill, the collection of government offices that includes the Parliament buildings, was the heart of the protests. It had been occupied by protesters and their trucks since late last month, turning into a carnival on weekends. Canadian authorities also announced they had used emergency powers to seize 76 bank accounts connected to protesters, totaling roughly $3.2 million ($2.5 million U.S.). On Saturday, they also closed a bridge into the nation’s capital from Quebec to prevent a renewed influx of protesters.

The lights are flickering on the U.S. electrical grid. (WSJ) And it likely will get even less dependable, a Wall Street Journal review of federal data shows. In 2000, Americans experienced fewer than two dozen large, sustained outages, but 20 years later, that total shot up to more than 180. The disruptions can be blamed on aging transmission and distribution systems, extreme weather stressing the grid and a shift from coal, nuclear and gas-fired power plants to solar and wind.

Americans are fleeing to places where political views match their own (NPR) There’s a private Facebook group with nearly 8,000 members called Conservatives Moving to Texas. Three of them are sitting at a dinner table—munching on barbecue weenies and brownies—in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. None are vaxxed. And they love it here. “As soon as I drove into Texas, literally, as soon as I could get into the state and stop at my first truck stop for gas it was, like, ‘This is wonderful,’ “ says Lynn Seeden, a 59-year-old portrait photographer from Orange County, Calif. America is growing more geographically polarized—red ZIP codes are getting redder and blue ZIP codes are becoming bluer. People appear to be sorting. “We felt very out of place and very uncomfortable at times,” says Tiffany Wooten, a 43-year-old stay-at-home mom whose family recently relocated from conservative Indiana to liberal Austin. “We were looking at blue cities because we wanted to be with our own people.” The national real estate brokerage, Redfin, predicted that in 2022, “people will vote with their feet, moving to places that align with their politics.”

Protests grow in Puerto Rico amid demands for higher wages (AP) Shrill whistles mixed with drums, tambourines and the clacking of spoons on pots as public employees shut down streets in Puerto Rico’s capital Friday to demand better pay and pensions. The crowd shimmied and clapped as demonstrators held up signs reading, “Fair wages now!” It’s a call that has echoed across Puerto Rico in recent weeks as government employees and supporters take to the streets. Legislators are the only public workers who have an automatic cost-of-living increase for their salaries. Most of the U.S. territory’s other public employees have not gotten pay raises in more than a decade—sometimes two—as the cost of living has risen and the island has suffered a lengthy economic crisis and a government bankruptcy in the aftermath of deadly hurricanes, earthquakes and the pandemic. Power and water bills are nearly 60% higher in Puerto Rico than the U.S. average. Groceries are 18% more expensive than on the mainland, although health care and housing costs, among others, are lower, according to the island’s Institute of Statistics.

Western Europe cleans up after storm leaves at least 12 dead (AP) Crews cleared fallen trees and worked to restore power to about 400,000 people in Britain as Western Europe cleaned up Saturday after one of the most damaging storms in years. At least 12 people were killed, many by falling trees, in Ireland, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Named Storm Eunice by the British and Irish weather services, and Storm Zeynep in Germany, Friday’s storm was the second to hit the region in a week. A gust of 122 miles an hour (196 kilometers an hour) was provisionally recorded Friday on the Isle of Wight. If confirmed, it would be the highest ever in England. Hurricane-force winds begin at 74 mph.

Even Denmark gets a Snowden scandal (Worldcrunch) It was Jane Austen, back in 1816, who wrote that “every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.” That neighborhood is getting quite a bit bigger these days as our digitized lives and economies extract ever-deepening rivers of private data from the daily lives of citizens. What does “spying” actually mean when technology and our daily habits make surveillance not only ubiquitous but touted as a key condition for both our private and collective security? A prime example has arisen in Denmark over a wiretapping and internet surveillance scandal, in which Danish authorities reportedly allowed Washington to use their data to spy on European politicians—including former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But what mostly drew the ire of Danes following the revelations was the indication that Danish citizens were likely spied on as well, as part of the secret wiretapping deal. Copenhagen daily Politiken interviewed exiled U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden who said the U.S. wants Denmark’s data not because it’s an enemy, but “to maximize its power and influence in all corners of the world. So it is also their job to understand Denmark, the Danish government, and the hierarchy in your military.”

Ukraine fears (Bloomberg) President Joe Biden said U.S. intelligence has prompted him to believe that Vladimir Putin has decided to attack Ukraine, and that a new invasion including a strike on Kyiv could come within days. “We believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people,” Biden said Friday from the White House. The U.S. said Russia has massed as many as 190,000 personnel in and around Ukraine, including Russian-backed separatists, in what it called the most significant military mobilization since World War II. Leaders of separatist forces in Ukraine’s east have said they are sending children, women and elderly to Russia, a move NATO allies said may presage a false-flag event to cover a Russian invasion (Moscow has denied planning either action, or a massive cyberattack this week the U.S. contends the Kremlin was behind). The Ukrainian military said the rebels have accelerated shelling along the so-called contact line while the rebels accused the military of attacking them, which Kyiv has denied. In addition to conventional, live-fire exercises with Belarus along Ukraine’s northern border, Vladimir Putin has ordered drills of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces this weekend, including ballistic and cruise-missile launches.

Bots and Fake Accounts Push China’s Vision of Winter Olympic Wonderland (NYT) Inside the Potemkin village of China’s propaganda, the Winter Olympics have unfolded as an unalloyed success, a celebration of sports and political harmony that has obscured—critics say whitewashed—the country’s flaws and rights abuses. At Beijing 2022, the hills are snowy, not brown as usual this time of year. A Uyghur skier is the symbol of national unity, the tennis player Peng Shuai just a curious spectator. Athletes and foreign journalists praise the polite volunteers and marvel at the high-speed trains and the robots that boil dumplings and mix drinks. While China’s control of what its domestic viewers and readers consume is well established, the country has spread its own version of the Games beyond its borders, with an arsenal of digital tools that are giving China’s narrative arguably greater reach and more subtlety than ever before. With bots, fake accounts, genuine influencers and other tools, China has been able to selectively edit how the events have appeared, even outside the country, promoting everything that bolsters the official, feel-good story about the Winter Olympics and trying to smother whatever doesn’t. “For the Chinese Communist Party, the Winter Olympics are inseparable from the broader political goal of building up the country’s national image,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, a monitoring organization. Referring to the country’s leader, he added: “This is what Xi Jinping has called ‘telling China’s story well.’”

As Gale Made an Extreme Sport of Heathrow Landings, He Called the Plays (NYT) As a winter gale with 70-mile-per-hour wind gusts tore across the British Isles on Friday, the government warned everybody to stay inside. But one man, Jerry Dyer, ventured out to a blustery field at the end of Runway 27L at Heathrow Airport to capture live footage of planes trying to land in the howling storm. Within minutes, Mr. Dyer’s YouTube feed, Big Jet TV, had gone viral, drawing nearly 200,000 people who hung on every word of his breathless play-by-play. Within hours, he had become a media sensation, pulled out of the enthusiastic, if obscure, subculture of plane spotters to do interviews with the BBC, ITV and Channel Four. “Easy, easy, easy,” Mr. Dyer said, coaxing down an Emirates A380, as it bobbed and wove in the treacherous crosswinds, its wings flexing and flaps moving up and down to keep the giant aircraft steady. “Look at the outboard ailerons, man,” he said as it landed with a puff of smoke from its tires. “And she’s down.” “Go around!” he shouted as a Qatar Airways A380 aborted its approach and climbed back into the clouds, engines screaming. The plane made a second failed attempt, eliciting another whoop from Mr. Dyer. On its third attempt, he offered to buy beers for the Qatar pilots if they landed the plane. They did. There was no shortage of earthbound upheaval from the storm known as Eunice. The authorities issued the first-ever red weather warning for London. Winds shredded parts of the roof of the O2 sports arena. Video showed pedestrians being blown into the street in a London neighborhood. Flights and trains were canceled while broadcasters showed obligatory pictures of waves crashing into sea walls. And yet, it was Mr. Dyer who caught the public imagination. For anyone who has ever suffered through a bumpy landing, his images were occasionally terrifying. Some planes landed at an angle and swung around sharply as their tires gripped the tarmac. Others thudded down or alighted unsteadily, their wings dipping. For a few particularly stormy hours, about a third of the planes were forced to abort their landings, or in aviation parlance, to do a “go around.”

#headlines #news

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rauthschild · 4 years

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Biden Cyberattack Threat Against Russia Followed By Destruction Of Largest European Data Center

By: Sorcha Faal,

A concerning new Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today first noting the cyberattack threat made by Supreme Socialist Leader Joe Biden against the Russian Federation, that President Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to by declaring “This is nothing but international cybercrime”, says before any more of these types of threats are made, Biden would do well to focus his attention on the SBG2 Data Center and its over 30,000 computer servers in Strasbourg-France—with particular attention being focused on the total fiery destruction of this largest in Europe data center yesterday that cut off service to nearly all of the world’s most popular websites—the cause of which has yet to be determined.

While the ashes of this vital Western data center are still being sifted through, troubling new articles are appearing like “Joe Biden Is The Commander In Hiding”, “Mexico Alarmed As ‘Migrant President’ Biden Empowers TRAFFICKERS By Encouraging Illegal Immigration” and “Military Agrees To Keep Thousands Of National Guard Troops At US Capitol For Weeks To Protect Corrupt Democrats Who Are Terrified Of The American People”—the latter of which was responded to by top Republican Party leader US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who grimly observed: “I'm extremely uncomfortable with the fact that my constituents can't come to the Capitol...With all this razor wire around the complex, it reminds me of my last visit to Kabul...I just checked earlier this morning and there are no serious threats against the Capitol...It looks terrible to have the beacon of our democracy surrounded by razor wire and National Guard troops”.

With it being easier for Americans to visit the Kremlin than their own capitol city, the terror being exhibited by socialist Democrats against them is justified after they slammed these citizens yesterday with a COVID stimulus price tag of $17,000 per person and $69,000 per family—further slammed them with $60-billion in new taxes they secreted into this bill—also saw socialist Democrats sneaking into this bill an $86-billion bailout for corrupt union pension funds—though for the true horror of what’s just happened sees it being explained in the just published Wall Street Journal article “The Progressive Democratic Steamroller”, that, in part, reveals:

The $1.9 trillion spending bill is only a taste of what’s coming

One lesson from the Covid non-fight is that there are no Democratic moderates in Congress.

The party base has moved so sharply left that even swing-state Members are more liberal than many liberals in the Clinton years.

Democrats lost not a single vote in the Senate and only one in the House. The fear of primary challenges from the left, which took out House war horses in 2018 and 2020, has concentrated incumbent minds.

A second lesson is that President Biden is no moderating political force.

Democrats in the House and Senate are setting the agenda, and Mr. Biden is along for the ride, and the media are marching in lockstep support of whatever Democrats want.

Confirming this analysis of what is soon to come were socialist Democrats in the US House this week passing the most radical pro-union labor bill since the 1935 Wagner Act that would erase right-to-work laws in 27 States—that was quickly joined by warning articles appearing like “Here Come Trillions More: Biden Will Unveil "Next Phase" Of COVID Response On Thursday”—sees socialist Democrats advancing their bill to strip the American people of their gun rights, which caused Republican Party leader US Congressman Chip Roy to declare: “The Government Is Never Going to Know What Weapons I Own”—and most ominously sees socialist Democrats advancing their law to destroy the entire election system so they can never lose, which Republican Party leader US Senator Mike Lee describes as “Written in Hell by The Devil Himself”, and his sounding the alarm about socialist Democrats if this bill ever passes: “They Could Remain In Power For Decades”.

All of which leads to one wonder why these Americans can never remember their own history, specifically because everything these socialist Democrats are doing now they did in the 1960s—which was when radical socialist warmonger President Lyndon Johnson led his socialist Democrats in the remaking of their nation into what they called the “Great Society”—which in reality led to the socialist destruction of mainly minority families who were forced to become wards of the state for generations, but remained loyal Democrat Party voters as was intended—saw these socialist Democrats enacting their Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ensure their grip on total power—saw these socialist Democrats enacting their Gun Control Act of 1968, that they copied verbatim from the gun laws enacted by Nazi Germany—then saw these socialist Democrats enacting their Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, which expanded the American police state and filled up to overflowing its nation’s prisons.

As socialists have always done, this radical remaking of America in the 1960s was only able to be accomplished by keeping its citizens’ attention diverted by actual war and the threat of war—the first accomplished by the Vietnam War, and then second by the Cold War—saw Republican Party leader President Richard Nixon ending the Vietnam War, after which the socialist Democrats drove him from power—then saw Republican Party leader President Ronald Reagan ending the Cold War, which is why he’s still reviled by socialist Democrats.

A history if fully understood by Americans would show them why President Donald Trump absolutely had to be driven from office by any means possible—and with this now being accomplished, once again sees these socialist Democrats remaking America again like they did in the 1960s, to include them preparing to use war and the threat of war as a distraction—which is why a new military airfield is rapidly being built on a highly strategic island in the Red Sea in reach of the entire Middle East—is why a nuclear armed US aircraft carrier group is rapidly deploying itself in the Mediterranean—is why the US and NATO are unleashing their dangerous new strategy against Russia—and is why the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson said this week “China looks like it is planning for war”.

Unlike in the 1960s, however, both Russia and Communist China are prepared for the false flag event these socialist Democrats will use to ignite this war—though the same cannot be said about the American people, none of whom remember Operation Northwoods, which was the 1960s socialist American government plan to fake terrorist attacks on the US that President John Kennedy refused to allow, then saw him being publically executed—and if remembering, would see them trembling in fear because these are exact same socialist forces back in total control of their nation. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]

The burnt out ruins (above) of Europe’s largest data center is what 21st Century warfare looks like…

…and neither President John Kennedy nor President Donald Trump is around to prevent what everyone knows is going happen next.

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soundsosweeet · 4 years

Text

okay so this is just a rant and i’m posting here bc the least amount of people know about my account lol so feel free to skip (it’s more for myself anyway bc it’s so hard for me to discuss with other people since my sister is home all the time)

so i guess this all started this summer (well not technically but that’s when things started to actually happen)... we have a family groupchat on imessage with me, my sister, and laura’s (my sister’s partner) family (laura is white and so is her immediate family...) and this past spring it was brought to the gc’s attention by my sister that people were basically stocking up on guns and ammo as a response to covid by trump supporters bc he called it the china virus. laura’s dad, of course, who tries to avoid conflict at all costs, tries to change the subject to be more lighthearted and one of his other children, laura’s younger sister notices this and acknowledges it in the gc. later on that morning, my sister made a very important observation and brought it to the gc. i have pointed out before that 3 out of 5 children in this family are with asian people to laura and she expressed that the thought didn’t even cross her mind. the other two siblings are 1) not in a relationship and 2) with another white person. anyway, how do you not notice something like this?? something so blatantly obvious. and it’s not like they all JUST got with these people. they’ve been together and/or married for YEARS.... anyway my sister basically said all of this in the gc, and pointing out how laura’s dad was trying to deflect and change the subject. she pointed out how it must be easier for them to not talk about racism, esp towards asian people. laura kinda backed her up but of course, the bare minimum support. she never says anything to her family esp her parents about anything serious ever. unless my sister points it out to her bc laura is just so oblivious. they’ve been together for what like 17 years and my sister only started to speak up about her negative experiences with laura’s parents a few years ago but she has had to endure racist comments a lot over the years. she has told me this and has expressed her frustration to me about laura and her family. i think she started to talk to me about this bc she knew that i’d understand and she wanted me to help her put these things that she was feeling and experiencing into words that would help laura and her family (mostly her parents) understand what they’ve been saying to her these past several years at times were very offensive. going back to the story in the gc, laura’s younger sister backed up their father and was basically trying to say that he wasn’t trying to go against my sister at all, he was just trying to avoid the subject bc of very stupid reasons in my opinion, she said her father was trying to “steer the conversation away from stockpiling ammunition and general doomsday predictions. This is undeniably bringing out the worst in humanity, but we as a family don’t need to be feeding each others’ fears about it.” like okay.... i’m sorry you’re uncomfortable???? but my sister is right. they never talk about these things (as expressed by laura after having to be asked by my sister) and they need to. it’s long overdue. this was the first part of laura’s sister’s message to the gc in response to my sister, before what she said about steering the convo away from the guns and ammo: “We’re all frustrated right now and it is boiling over. Racism is unjust and sometimes fatal and it’s absolutely justified to be mad as hell about all of this. And you’re right that sometimes we all avoid the topic of race and racism because we can’t find the right words to skillfully address them or we just don’t try hard enough to. I’m very saddened to hear that on top of everything else, some people are having to fear racially motivated backlash right now and in general.” i really don’t think they’ll understand or ever truly try to understand.. they don’t even want to talk about it!! that’s where my other frustration comes in. with laura. i get that in her own way she’s been trying to help my sister and get her family to talk about all of this but in my eyes, it’s not enough. my sister always raves about how laura is this nice, caring, and understanding person. but i feel like that only is true for things that are directly related to her, or things that are only within her comfort zone. and this kind of conversation, esp with her family, outside of her parents, is outside of her comfort zone. she has also expressed that doing these kinds of things (like having serious conversations) brings her great anxiety which is understandable, but in my eyes, she is using her anxiety as an excuse rather than an explanation. idk if that makes any sense but in other words, i feel that she is using the anxiety that this situation brings her as an excuse not to talk about it or have the least amount of involvement in it. but my sister believes that she is the key to open up the conversation that needs to be had, with her family. i think my sister is right. look how quickly they shot my sister down. they’re not going to listen to her. but they will listen to their beloved daughter. so she needs to create that bridge. and she says that she is trying and i guess she is but i feel like again, it’s bare minimum, if that really. anyway after that comment by laura’s sister, my sister left the gc and the convo in the gc was normal by the next day. same old lighthearted photos and comments and white people humor that i never seem to understand. and just recently, laura’s dad added my sister back to the family gc like WHAT LMAO. i just don’t get it. i mean i guess i do bc to them it doesn’t directly affect them, so they don’t care as much but fuck dude, like this family’s shit!!!! i hate it here lol.

related but also different story, time, place, etc. so we’ve been living in this house for about 6 months now. this city, as big and diverse as it is, we i guess got stuck around literal trump supporters lol like just my luck really. how do we know that?? well when i look at all the wifi networks, “Trump 2020″ comes up as an option. and it is still there even though he lost. anyway. another example, well idk if they’re trump supporters but i’m making an educated guess bc our neighbors across the way have this huge lit up US flag. like it’s the US flag made up of lights and they turn it on every evening since we got here.... in september. idk how long they had it up before we moved in but man, it’s literally been up and lit every night since we moved in in september like ???? i thought they would take it down after christmas like bc it would make sense, bc they were gonna take down their christmas lights anyway but nope. they took everything else down but the flag!!!! not our whole neighborhood is like that though, or it doesn’t seem to be. you know those yard signs (i know this is bare minimum too but it kinda gives me hope after the whole wifi and flag thing) that are like “love is love, black lives matter” and all that?? omg i found it, it’s this:

anyway so i see these around too, in addition to american flags and shit. but i was walking my dog one day in broad daylight, i think it was like around 3pm. i was on my own street like on the way home, and i had just crossed the street bc we live on a main street i guess and there are a lot of side streets, so i was just crossing one of the side streets but still stayed on the same side and everything. this car pulls up to the stop sign that i just passed, and by back is facing them, and this guy that sounds about my age like early twenties maybe a bit older was like “HEY LADY WHY ARE YOU WALKING YOUR DINNER. WHY IS THE DOG EATER WALKING HER DOG. WHY ARE YOU WALKING YOUR MEAL.” and just a bunch of variations of essentially the same thing. i know they were trying to get me to turn around when they just kept on going, repeating basically the same phrase. the guy even yelled at me to turn around but i didn’t. the whole time i was looking forward and just kept walking. i also believe he was in the passenger seat but that’s just the way the car was facing like the passenger seat would’ve been the closest to me. i think i heard whoever was in the driver’s seat like chuckling after the guy’s first sentence. i was so scared. i was so scared they were gonna follow me home. i was almost home like i was already on my street!! luckily they didn’t follow me home, and they turned left after they were done harassing me. if they turned right though, then i would’ve been even more scared that they would stop the car and try to hurt me. this old guy who was in front of his house heard everything that happened though and i think saw the guy who was yelling at me and the car that they were in. as i was passing his house, he asked me if i was okay, and of course i lied and said “yes i’m okay, thank you” and kept walking. what else was i supposed to do. idk. i rushed home after that though. this car even drove by me and stopped just ahead of me and i thought they came back but i think they were just lost bc as i was approaching the car, they drove off, probably looking at directions or something. so how this is related to what i was talking about at first... laura told her family about this. her parents and her younger sister (the one that defended her dad earlier). all they had to say was “i’m sorry that happened to you” essentially. like i grocery shop for her parents bc they’re old and you know less exposure and i don’t mind it at all, but anyway when i was dropping the groceries off at their house, laura’s mom asked if i could talk for a minute on the porch and i said yes and she was basically like “laura told me about what happened to you last week” and i was just like “oh” bc i knew that laura told them but i wasn’t expecting either of her parents to actually talk to me about it bc ya know like they always try to avoid talking about serious shit. but she was like “i’m so sorry that happened to you. that’s horrible. there’s still terrible, incredibly racist people out there.” and i was like yeah bro i know in my head lol like ???? there have been many incidents recently that are much worse than mine surrounding asian people esp the elderly, and she never mentioned any of that. just what happened to me. idk it just bothers me that they only really “care” when something happens. i mean they never actually do anything after the fact but they only say shit like that or wanna talk about it when something bad happens to me?? fucked up.

also just some other problems i have with laura (i’m copy/pasting from my notes app lol and adding stuff to it if i feel like it needs more context or whatever):

(i guess this is more about my sister and laura’s relationship and not just laura...) how do express that i’m not part of their relationship. ofc i wanna help my sister bc i know she has a hard time explaining these kinds of things bc she’s explicitly told me and bc i know she’s had to keep quiet or felt like she’s needed to keep quiet for a long time but i’m not part of their relationship. i shouldn’t have to be this person in the middle trying to relay what my sister is feeling to laura so that it’s clear and easy to understand for her white ass fucking brain. bc also the truth is that laura should already know. she’s only ever been with women of color that i know of and i know she’s not oblivious about the history this country has with people of color. she must know something at least but when it comes to her family making weird remarks about asians, she either doesn’t catch it or doesn’t defend my sister. only recently has my sister been comfortable telling laura that these things happen, that she feels uncomfortable with some of the things laura’s parents say whether they’re directed at her or not. and my sister even left the family groupchat bc she tried to say something to the whole family specifically something laura’s dad said about asians being targeted for “causing covid” (not just her parents but the extended family, two of her siblings are also with asian people) but got a negative response (from her dad and her sister) and so she felt the need to leave. they’ve been together for so long like 17 years?? and all of this is just being addressed now but my sister feels that laura isn’t doing enough to make her parents understand the things that my sister has gone through throughout her life and the racism she’s faced and now the heightened amount of racism other asian people are facing. and she’s also scared bc she’s not straight, obviously she’s with laura but laura’s white. and ofc she’s not straight either but she’s still white and that will always come first bc it’s what people are able to see. so when my sister is “being paranoid” about the people who live around us finding out about them because laura’s parents want to give them my sister and laura’s info just in case something happens, laura can’t quite explain my sister’s reasoning to her parents the way that she wants her too. she thinks that laura is sugarcoating these things for them and she doesn’t know why - does she think they won’t understand?? is she just protecting them?? who tf knows. but my sister knows for sure that if they aren’t told straight up why my sister is so scared, then they’ll never understand and they’ll keep trying to do things like this. and ofc i get why my sister is scared, ofc i don’t fully understand but i can imagine why.

also i just believe that laura is ignorant (and chooses to be). which really sucks, again bc from what i know she has only been with women of color, her ex and my sister. at least those are the only two relationships that i’ve heard of. but i know she also graduated undergrad with a degree in sociology. i know times have changed and that she might not have learned all of the things that i have learned in my sociology classes but fuck man. she’s really gonna limit herself to learning about these things in a classroom esp when we already know our education is targeted towards and favors white people (esp back then, like early 2000s)?? yikes. i don’t understand how one who is not only with someone esp for this long but also got a degree in this kind of stuff just isn’t interested in keeping themselves informed and educated. like just bc you’re with a person of color doesn’t just give you this pass or all the knowledge that you need to know bc guess what, my sister doesn’t even understand all the things that we do (like at this summer, at the peak of the blm protests, my sister asked me “what about asians, why aren’t people talking about how asian people have suffered during the pandemic”). but i know my sister is at least kinda trying. she reads things every day to keep herself informed and also attends virtual discussions. laura does not. my sister has even told me. she works and that’s it. and she says that she understands that laura has anxiety and that these sorts of topics make her really anxious. but i think she’s just scared. i mean i don’t want to undermine her anxiety at all. that’s not what i’m trying to do. i just think that she’s using it more as an excuse rather than like an explanation, if that makes any sense. i just don’t know what to do bc this really frustrates me. and i feel a lot of pressure bc my sister has no one else to talk about it with. and i obviously want to help her and she talks to me bc she knows that i know these things and can help her put these things into words for her so that she can explain everything to laura. but laura gets reeeeeally defensive. and that’s also really annoying. she just shuts down and closes herself off. bc it’s like she doesn’t even try to understand and that’s what i don’t understand about her and this whole thing about her being “nice” and supportive or whatever. this is what my sister has told me and my cousins. that laura is the nicest person in the world. and she’s the one who has told me many times that “anyone can be nice.” and i’m not saying that laura isn’t nice, bc i think she is but i still think that she keeps that kindness and generosity and caring/compassion within her own circle. like she doesn’t necessarily try to do anything for people that aren’t directly within her circle of things she cares about or directly relates to her. she will only donate to organizations that she has a connection to but not the ones that don’t necessarily relate to her like literally anything that involved black people this summer. it didn’t even seem like a possibility to her. it just angers me so much that she’s painted as this really nice, caring person but she doesn’t even care enough to really understand her own partner’s struggles and stand up to her parents for her when she needs her to without being asked. i know it takes time to notice these things especially as a white person bc it’s not really stuff they’re used to noticing or whatever but shit. it’s the least she can do. really. like it’s about time.

and an update from the present bc the points i made above were from january (right after the incident walking my dog). laura has a new position now at work. she’s the temp assistant nurse manager bc someone left so they asked her to take on the position. she’s only temp bc she technically could be the permanent one but she doesn’t want to do it since they apparently don’t do as much hands-on patient stuff and that’s what she likes to do i guess. it’s more paperwork i believe than she’s used to with her regular position. anyway, before she took on this new position, my sister told me she talked to laura about how even before, she didn’t really help around the house at all. like she’d come home after work and just sleep or dick around. meanwhile, my sister also works all day, cooks, cleans/does laundry (for the house but also her own AND laura’s which i’ve told her more than once is ridiculous.. that she does laura’s laundry), does grocery shopping, etc. like basically everything else, in addition to me, bc i also do a lot of stuff around the house. i also cook, i clean, and i take care of the dog, and go grocery shopping w my sister too sometimes. but the only thing laura really does (and she doesn’t even do it anymore since she started with this new position) was walk the dog. truthfully, i haven’t had the courage to go out again by myself to walk the dog since that happened to me. and i feel like i eventually will but idk. so my sister basically told her if you take this position, you need to promise me you’re gonna try even harder to help me/us around the house. bc her shift time has also switched like instead of coming home around 8pm, she now gets home around 3pm, so much more daylight and time in general to be helping around the house. but guess what. nothing has changed. i haven’t spoken to my sister about it or how she feels, whether or not she thinks that laura is getting better about helping around the house but at least imo, nothing has changed. if anything she sleeps more bc she gets up so early for work now so she naps when she gets home, and nothing gets done bc she has such a hard time getting up after she takes a nap. annoying.

and an addition to what i was saying about how laura completely shuts down when we talk about her and her family, like how they don’t do shit about anything: when we were talking a couple weeks ago about what happened last spring in the family group chat, laura said that she had texted her sister about the situation to get her honest opinion about what happened and ask her why she responded in the way that she did (defending their dad). my sister and i kept asking laura to tell us exactly how their convo went. and she would look at her phone and tell us pieces. i could tell she was leaving stuff out bc while she was looking at her phone, she’d pause and not say anything, as if she was reading and not tell us bc it would upset us, and then continue on a couple seconds later about the stuff she thought was okay to say. she just didn’t want us to shit on her sister. i could feel it. i even asked her if i could just read the text convo rather than her “reading” it to us, bc she wasn’t actually reading everything and i thought it would be easier than her trying to explain everything they had already talked about. she hesitated then said no, she didn’t want me to read. my sister asked why and she just stayed silent. laura always says that she says to her family and feels that she “just wants to open up a conversation.” okay then what is this?? she’s not even telling us everything!! my sister asked her again why she doesn’t want us to read the texts. she asks “are you afraid we’ll get mad at her (her sister)??” and laura replies yes. my sister says why?? give us a summary of what she said if you don’t wanna read word for word. laura says her sister is just defending their dad and is angry towards my sister, targeting her anger towards my sister bc of what she said in the gc. laura’s sister feels that my sister was specifically targeting her anger at their dad at the time and she was still mad about that. do you see what i’m saying?? this family is fucked. laura does not want to open up a conversation from what i’m seeing. when we’re against her and her family, she doesn’t wanna talk. if we wanna talk generally about racism and homophobia, she’s okay with it. how can you say you wanna “open up a conversation” and not converse or only talk about the stuff that isn’t as difficult to talk about???? but my sister tried to get laura to tell us more by adding that if she told us, we could help her formulate a response she can send to her sister to help her understand where my sister was coming from. laura still refused to tell us. and i still haven’t seen those texts yet and i don’t think i ever will. and i don’t think laura will even talk to us about their conversations anymore. she’s too scared. and that’s all i can think of rn lol. i might update this later but yeah..

#mine

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