#we see this kind of straight coding most obviously in shows like modern family i think. it's just... dumb.

[non-un-topo]

"#saying it now though: if they make joe and nicky fight bc they can't come up with an interesting side-plot for them -#- then i am throwing hands"

GODDDD, this. I was kind of wondering if greg would go in that direction after the interview quote of him saying that they do have arguments, but that has evolved into full-blown fear after that RIDICULOUS lacus solitudinis story (ie: the straightest, laziest writing ever); if they do fight in TOG 2 i hope it 1) is minor 2) is well-written (i've read well-written arguments between them in fic - it IS possible!!) 3) doesn't revolve around freakin' BOOKER (🙄🙄🙄)

Yep, this is a real fear. ;_; I'm so with you though, like if they do write in some conflict I hope it's just done well and doesn't feel tacked on or unnecessary. Obviously they fight sometimes (I mean they killed each other sdfgds and their relationship has spanned over 900 years), but I don't think we're all asking for much when we just want to see a genuinely happy gay couple stay happy (and see them communicate or resolve in healthy, non-toxic ways!!). There are all sorts of interesting things they can do with Joe and Nicky's side-plot that doesn't wind up reducing them to some pointless hetero-coded drama. Let's cross our fingers and hope for the best!!

And you're right, there are so many well-written fics in this fandom that address conflict between Joe and Nicky and how they ultimately resolve it in healthy ways. If the movie disappoints, at least we have our peers. ;;;

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Fantasies, dreams and desires, ideas of normalcy and fears of difference. A slightly queer reading of 15x14

Mrs Butters is a delightful character who is built to parallel so many things in the show. She occupies perfectly the semantic sphere that the narrative has crafted around Dean’s desires; also, you know, cake.

We could talk for days about the significance of food and drink in Supernatural. One of the biggest themes that run through the entire show is hunger (or thirst) and food is very often a symbol for an emotional need of sorts. Supernatural draws a lot folklore, and human stories have always used symbologies that put together food, desire, love, sex, family, goodness and darkness and all those human experiences.

We have discussed the shit out of every instance of food in the show, analyzed parallels to other stories and fairytales, scrutinized queer-codings and subtexts, got called nasty names by impolite people accusing us of saying that a slice of baked good means Dean likes sitting on dicks. So, yeah, I’m not gonna start explaining everything from the beginning. Let’s jump to the parallels.

- The comfort food. Motherhood, hugs, and the past that can never return: the ideal of childhood and the 50s fantasy

We’ve already talked about how Mrs Butters functions as a parallel to Mary and a symbol of the ideal motherhood that both Mary and Dean struggled with. In Dark Side Of The Moon, we see a memory from Dean’s childhood, where we learn that Mary would cut off the crusts off his sandwiches. Mrs Butters also says that she cut the crusts off, establishing a direct parallel to Dean’s ideal of childhood and child-parent relationship. Or, we should say, as both Mary’s and Dean’s ideals of a child-parent relationship, because we know that Mary set up her life with John and the kids as an elaborate “scene” according to her idea-slash-fantasy of the perfect safe life.

She strugged with that, because her ideal life could never match with reality - she had loose ends from hunting to deal with, she at some level liked having those loose ends to deal with because as much as she hated the hunting life and craved for safety and “normalcy” that was still something she was in her element doing, probably more than the perfect housewife role. Of course when she came back she attempted to recreate the scene but quickly discovered that it was impossible and dropped all attempts to do so, embracing the opposite, or at least what she perceived as the opposite (having a pretty dualistic view of hunting life-domestic life where they cannot be reconciled).

Dean, on the other hand, started out with a similar dualistic view, figuring that he’d always belong to the hunting world and could never have the domestic, “normal” thing at all, embracing his “freakness” as opposed to the concept of normalcy represented by civilians, by the middle class, by the suburbs, by the apple pie, white fence life (insert heavy queer subtext here). And yet there was always an ambiguity with him (again, he’s never one-or-the-other, he’s always both), because, while on the surface he embraces this rebellious, devil-may-care persona, that’s not quite what he is as a full individual. He grew up essentially a housewife from a very early age, has a very caregiving personality, and thrives in taking care of others.

Dean is both Mrs Butters and Mary, where the difference between him and Mary is that Mary couldn’t (didn’t have the time, support, resources?) reconcile parts of her that Dean instead was able to (and in fact recently helped her with: before dying, she’d reached a pretty healthy balance of living her own life as a hunter and having a warm relationship with her sons, at least as healthy as it can get in that kind of circumstances).

Another important parallel to Dark Side Of The Moon, borrowed by Scoobynatural, is the nightgown that feels like being wrapped in hugs: we are reminded of Dean’s “I wuv hugz” from when he was a kid, a symbol for his early life of affection and safety that he lost with his mother. Childhood hugs, comfort food, loving gestures like cutting off the crusts are all symbols of a past that cannot return.

On a level, from a “coming-of-age story” perspective, childhood, with its innocence and perception that adults will always keep us safe, is obviously something that everyone needs to accept as something that belongs to the past and cannot return, to embrace instead the responsibilities and risks of adulthood in a healthy way. In a sense, Dean needs to go through all these steps - acknowledging that his mother was a flawed person, that in fact both of his parents were flawed people who made mistakes but he can forgive them for his own sake in order to be able to let go of trauma and carry on... - to become a healthy adult able to be a good parent to his own child.

(There’s also the cholesterol thing - Mrs Butters chastizes Dean for his diet, but we know that there’s a depth to Dean’s diet, not only his extreme appreciation of food due to experiencing food scarcity and insecurity as a child, but also the memory of his mother’s comfort food, such as the “Winchester surprise”, a monstrosity of meat and cheese. While the “meat man” persona would appear on the surface as a sterotypical masculinity thing, it has layers, in a typical Dean fashion... not coincidentally, in the latest episode he calls himself the meat man while wearing an apron that we’re told he’s very fond of, painting him, again, in a mixture of different meanings, masculinity and femininity, fatherhood and motherhood, devil-may-care attitude and caregiver attitude.)

On another level, a more political level, there’s the 50s fantasy element. We all know the significance of the idealization of the post-war period as the “good ol’ times” in American culture, and it’s an ideal that Mary definitely drew from when she built her perfect life with her family. Mrs Butters represents this in a very literal way, being literally from 1958 when she “froze” herself, and acts as a very stereotyped governess for a bunch of men that feel like they are above housework, what is considered women’s work. Dean initially comments “how progressive”, knowing exactly how bullshit these conversative ideals are, but then appreciates the comforts of the perfect caretaker.

In fact, Dean’s “giving in” to the comforts of a governess makes me think of that famous feminist manifesto “I want a wife” by Judy Syfers... because housework is very much Dean���s work in the bunker. It’s interesting that Mrs Butters immediately comments negatively on the cleanness of the bunker and their clothes: we know that Dean cleans and washes, and, while it’s likely that he cannot keep everything super perfect like a governess would because he’s busy doing many other things, it’s a way Mrs Butters uses to establish roles that she knows and is comfortable with. She is used to being the one who does “feminine” work while the Men of Letters have absolutely zero skills in that regard, and doesn’t really even stop to question if that’s the case with the men in front of her.

Anyway, let’s go back to the 50s fantasy. The show has repeatedly made commentaries on the vacuity of it. Peace Of Mind is the most obvious instance, but there’s plenty of subtext in the show that deals with that typically American aspect. Just like the childhood aspect, the narrative tells us that the “good ol’ times” are also an idealized thing that cannot return (if it ever existed, because Dean’s childhood was built on a fantasy, and the “good ol’ times” are also a fantasy, because the real 50s were horrible for anyone who didn’t swim in privilege). Mrs Butters cannot stay, the 50s fantasy-slash-childhood fantasy cannot last, and Dean embraces his role as an adult-slash-modern housemaker. Blah blah gender, blah blah cake. (Yeah, sorry, but you can fill in the blanks.)

- The contaminated drink. Poison and weakness from the forbidden sexual desire to the forbidden family domesticity

Aaaand now the second branch of parallels that Mrs Butters pinged on my radar, which sends us in an even more queer-subtext-heavy territory. We’re going to talk about the smoothies and the tomato juice. Yes, I know, the smoothies are given to Jack, not Dean, but symbolically Dean and Jack share the same semantic area; both are given a magically conjured drink, and both end up locked away waiting to be killed. For this analysis, they basically overlap.

Let’s start with the tomato juice. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that Dean is given something that visually reminds of the blood the vampires drink. The tomato juice is a stand-in for blood, and blood in relation to vampirism has a long history of subtext in the show that connects to sexuality, sex, sexual fears and contamination. While vampires are not necessarily always invested of those meanings every single time they appear in the three-hundred-whatever episodes of the show, their main symbology is connected to sex and sexual fears, as vampires do in modern western literature, after all.

You’re probably going to think, wait, what? What has Mrs Butters got to do with sexual fears? Yeah, I know, it sounds weird, but hear me out.

The tomato juice - a stand-in for blood, with a vampire reference - parallels Mrs Butters (who represents trauma, remember) to 6x05 Live Free Or TwiHard. Sexual assault, blood, contamination via the poisoning liquid.

Next to the tomato juice there’s the smoothie. It’s a poison in disguise, a contaminated drink that makes Jack weak. We have, in fact, a pattern of Dean being given contaminated drinks that place him under another’s power. Not just the vampire’s blood, but also Jeremy from 3x10 Dream A Little Dream Of Me, who offers Dean a beer through which he connects him to his dreams. There’s Nick the siren from 4x14 Sex And Violence, who contaminates Dean through the flask. The venom in the siren’s saliva parallels straight to the gorgon Noah in 14x14 Ouroboros, and I don’t have to start explaining what all those things represent, right? (I have written posts about these things, it would be nice if tumblr didn’t suck and showed them to me when I go look for them.)

(Oh, there’s also Crowley’s human blood addiction, which is not, as one might expect, a parallel to Sam’s demon blood addition, but Dean’s First Blade/Mark Of Cain issue, and the First Blade/Mark Of Cain arc is all imbued by the queer subtext of the Dean-Crowley-Castiel triangle.)

Basically, Mrs Butters is inserted in a history of queer subtext, although it appears as obvious that Mrs Butters hardly represents homosexual desire, unless we go a pretty stretchy route of her occupying Cas’ space in the Dean-Sam-Cas-Jack family (I mean, that’s true, but it’s not simply that). It is also true that Mrs Butters represents Cuthbert Sinclair, and here the radar pings, because Cuthbert Sinclair is totally inside the pattern! He wanted to make Dean part of his collection just like the vampire in 6x05 wanted to make Dean part of his pack, with supernatural means of exorting control over Dean and heavy heavy rapey tones. (I know we don’t like to talk about this, but the show does play with incest subtext, John mirrors are often rapey.)

So, we have all this semantic area of poison, weakness and submission to external control painted in overtones of sexual assault and sexual fears especially in relation to homosexual desire. (I am NOT linking homosexual desire to sexual assult, nor the show is, it’s a wide and volatile semantic area where the common denominator is fear, fear of being hurt FOR being different sexually, it’s about vulnerability because of being different. It’s a horror narrative, guys, remember, queer fear is a recurrent theme in the genre. Dracula was about the horror of what happened to Oscar Wilde, we’re running in circles.)

Now, what kind of fear is explored in 15x14? Well, the episode is about the fear of losing family. The plot is about Dean’s feelings towards Jack after he killed Mary. Dean doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to lose Cas soon also because of Jack. Mary and Cas are both very noisy absences in the episode, and we know that Dean is going to suffer something horrific again that will shatter his family again. This goes past the fears regarding forbidden sexual desire: we’re in the territory of forbidden familial desire, so to speak, Dean’s craving for a domestic peace with his family.

Jack is both the culmination of Dean’s process of family-building, as the son figure of the family, and the element of destruction of that family-building. Not a coincidence Jack’s birthday was referenced, as Jack’s birth coincided with Cas’ death and Mary’s supposed death or at least separation. Now Jack has supposedly killed Mary (or is it a inter-universe separation again? @drsilverfish​’s theory always pops up, and we keep getting reminded of other universes - the telescope is broken...) and we know that Cas’ ultimate death hangs above us.

We’re always running in a spiral, Dean’s relationship with Mary, Dean’s relationship with Cas, Dean’s relationship with motherhood and gender roles, Dean’s relationship with sexuality. There’s a big picture of mirrors in the semantic area of fantasies, idealizations, desires and dreams. I hope I managed to make this post make sense, but I’m always open to requests of clarification or elaboration. Thanks for reading!

[cynthiaandsamus]

Custom Toonami Block Week 79 Rundown

Code Geass: Lelouch is establishing the official United States of Fuck Imperialism which is like the UN but actually does stuff, plus he has to deal with the fact that CC’s lost her memory and is acting like a demure slave girl harem choice from a VN. Charles is still trapped in the Human Instrumentality Shadow Realm so everyone figures this is a great time to unify everyone against Britannia. Kallen beats the shit out of Suzaku for being a dick to her all this time and the Knight of Ten is making his rounds because they realize they forgot to give him any buildup and he’s going to be a miniboss later so they have to cram all his being a dick personality into like five minutes while all the Knights of the Round assemble to prepare for an attack on Japan once the National Federation is formed. Llyod and Cecile for some reason enhanced the Guren for Suzaku even though he’s clearly more used to the Lancelot but apparently they enhanced it too much and made it a death machine like the Talgeese in Gundam Wing so Suzaku has to stick with the Lancelot. Looks like the Guren will have to sit and collect dust unless a certain pilot is rescued and then immediately has a convenient upgrade. Amazingly all the countries go along with everything Zero says and give up their militaries and have the Black Knights be the official military of the Federation. I don’t know how that works given that the Black Knights have been struggling to fight off one nation’s military idk how it’s supposed to substitute for a dozen nations’ military but I guess they conscript support and troops from the other nations or something. Charles comes back on the tv after the Federation is formed and is all “Awww what a cute little UN you have, fuck off bro.” which you’d think this’d be the perfect time for him to just out Lelouch as Zero and wreck the Black Knights’ morale but he doesn’t for some reason and they’re just gonna fight. Lelouch is freaking out and knows that having everyone want to murder the Britannian royal family includes Nunally so he calls Suzaku who just straight up goes “Bro cut the crap are you Zero or not?” and after so much plotting and scheming Lelouch just comes right out with it. Suzaki agrees to protect Nunally as long as Lelouch meets him alone at the Kururugi Shrine where this all began.

Inuyasha: This is another one of those Modern Day filler episodes which are always fun. There’s just something about Inuyasha running around in modern Japan being Spider-Man and saving people and catching bank robbers on the way to deliver Kagome’s lunch that’s so thoroughly entertaining. Basically Inuyasha spends this whole episode jittery that everyone’s so chill and ready to relax after Naraku just got away and is probably an inch from death but after a big adventure in the modern era where Kagome is as usual unprepared for her test, he ends up passing out on the bed after insisting a little battle with Naraku wouldn’t exhaust him. It’s a really cute little episode to let everyone bide some time and reflect on the past arc now that we’re starting a new wave of filler before we get to the Band of Seven and Mt. Hakurei stuff.

Yu Yu Hakusho: The first match of the tournament is about to begin and Botan, Shizuru, and Keiko come in with Koenma who is sick of baby jokes and puts on his bishonen disguise to impress everyone. There’s some neat lore about how they gave Koenma the guest team every year to bribe him into not shutting down the tournament without giving him anything of value and how the bloody show of the Dark Tournament pacifies the demons so they kill fewer humans, so that’s cool. Since Yusuke is still passed out, Kuwabara is de facto Captain and decides on simple one on one matches while the other team Captain just kinda roasts an eight of the crowd to see if it’ll wake Yusuke up. Kuwabara’s in the first match versus Prototype Killua, complete with afterimages and yo-yo tricks. They size each other up for a while and Kuwabara shrugs off getting his fucking neck broken surprisingly well while they go back and forth with “Well I can track YOU better” for a while. Togashi really loves his yo-yos of death so those have Kuwabara on the ropes and turn him into a fucking kite ready to slam back down into the arena, so yeah, Kuwabara’s having a rough time of it.

Fate Zero: Waver’s been having strange dreams about Iskandar, and not the ones people usually have about him. So he goes to get a basic history lesson on the historical figure that’s been chilling on his couch for a few weeks and spending all his money on xbox live arcade. They also go through all the ridiculously obvious historical inaccuracies and Iskandar’s just like “idk bro, I’m here so the book must be wrong” which is hilarious because Fate also does this with more modern historical figures that we have pictures of and shit so they basically sit there saying all historians have no idea what they’re talking about and gaslighting the field of history as a whole. On the way back Waver’s upset that Iskandar’s so awesome that it basically takes any effort on his part to win and it won’t be an actual achievement despite the fact that they’ve taken out like… one servant, MAYBE, and most of the other historical figures are equally over the top. But still Iskandar says that if your aspirations are big enough it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, everyone’s tiny in the grand scheme of things and clawing at greatness you can’t truly perceive is what matters. Also Caster and his boy have found the wreck they made of their workshop of dead bodies and are kinda fucked up about it but also ready to fuck up more people because God sucks or some shit. So Caster summons a Bloodborne monster which you think more people would notice and mention during Shirou’s time, like nobody in UBW ever said “Hey remember like seven years ago when a giant Bloodborne monster appeared in the river?” so I’m guessing there’s some kind of perception blocking going on. But yeah everyone’s gonna jump on the Bloodborne Monster next time for the season premiere.  

Konosuba: So we pick up where we left off and Kazuma is working off his debt by… killing more toads. Wow this world really is like a video game, we get the same five enemies over and over again. However they’re fucked without Darkness throwing herself into monster orifices looking for a good time so Yunyun has to save them. We already met Yunyun in the OVA so it’s kinda weird to be re-introduced to her here in basically the same way but their relationship is basically like Gai and Kakashi if they only did the lame dorky challenges Kakashi suggested when he’s too lazy to think of a good one. Also there’s a cat now, I don’t think that really comes to anything, just a scene of Megumin going “we have a cat now” and everyone’s like “kay”. Kazuma and Megumin play Naked Chicken to see who can get more naked before the other backs down and end up taking a bath together because they’re both stubborn assholes. Also we get a quick snippet of Yunyun and Megumin’s backstories which you can basically make Yunyun’s the swing scene from Naruto (idk why Yunyun is bring out the Naruto references in me today) and Megumin is stealing bread like Les Miserables in increasingly bizarre and disgusting ways because she’s ridiculously poor or some shit.

Sailor Moon Crystal: So turns out that Usagi and Mamoru BOTH had their shots with the ‘fucks everything up’ sword with a pocketwatch and… the discarded gems of the four knights? Idk how that works given they were humans and also dead but what baffles me more is that both Usagi and Mamoru very obviously did not get hit by the sword but decided to fall down dead and not move for a couple minutes despite their shots very much being blocked and there being no blood. Anyway Queen Metalia has the crystal, bullshit is happening, 1000 years of darkness, you’ve seen Xiaolin Showdown, you know the drill. The remaining four Guardians get a cute little flashback of Usagi saying what she likes about them and then they give up their lives to revive her inside the dark energy blob of Queen Metalia and crystals and lights and shit happens and swords and wands are pulled out of nowhere and you know how a final boss goes, they beat it with the power of believing in themselves and shit like that. Also apparently the only difference between sealing Metalia away and killing her is hitting the giant bullseye on her forehead so yeah, hopefully she’s down for good this time. I don’t want to complain because this show was genre-defining but it’s hard to find things to say about something so generic and milktoast, it’s the Seinfeld problem where there’s been so many more interesting iterations that it’s just kinda “get on with it already” at this point. The only real markedly noticeable thing about it is how plainly and unashamedly it is about being a power fantasy for teen girls, and there’s something to that, harmless power fantasies can be fun but it just feels like the physical mechanics of this kind of progression being “She feels this shit REALLY HARD” is less exciting than some of the alternatives

Durarara!!: It’s the big Masaomi backstory episode and we get the whole deal of how he formed the Yellow Scarves and got into a relationship with Saki because Izaya wanted to orechestrate a gang war because that’s what Izaya does all day is orchestrate gang wars. It’s kind of amazing how many kids in this show are like “I don’t know how it happened but one thing led to another and suddenly I was at the head of one of the largest gangs in the city” like they kinda really yadda yadda over how that actually happens. But anyway Saki gets hurt in the gang war and Kadota’s gang has to save her because Masaomi’s adrenaline wears off at the last second and he can’t try and rush in and save her. I mean Dota’s van got there first anyway so how much he’d have been able to help would be doubtful but he feels bad about not even being able to try and Izaya says that fear and failure of his past will dominate his future actions which is exactly what he’s doing by letting his paranoia and frustration lead him to a war on the Saika army. Dota-chin tells him to face up to it and stop running or live with the shame of lying to Saki but Masomi can’t do that and his shame and determination to reverse the situation leads everyone into chaos as Anri discovers his secret.

[eleanor-writes-stuff]

keep calm and let HR handle it [II/VI]

Rey managed to go a full year without ever directly interacting with her new CEO, but now it seems like he’s dropping by her office every single week.

(Because what else is a love-struck fool to do when he falls for his head of HR other than find reasons to visit her department?)

OR: five times Ben gets summoned down to HR, and one time Rey gets called into the CEO’s office, based on this prompt from @optimisticsprinkles​: “Rey as the director of HR at [office] and Kylo/Ben starts finding reasons to be sent down to HR”.

Welcome back to this 5+1 modern AU in which Rey and Ben go from colleagues to friends to lovers (how predictable of me, I know). Today’s update: there's a ruckus on the 37th floor, but for once it isn't Ben's fault. He heads down to HR anyway because... well, three guesses why.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter and Ko-fi?

To: rey_niima@organafoundation.com From: dopheld mitaka@organafoundation.com Subject: CODE RED!!!

Rey,

We’ve got a code red on our hands. Grumpy Poe went into Mr. Solo’s office ten minutes ago and they started fighting pretty much immediately, something about Leia. Finn and I managed to separate them before things got physical, and Finn’s dealing with Poe right now. But when I tried to calm Mr. Solo down, he said he was going to go take a walk to clear his mind and that if anyone needs him, he’ll be down in HR.

So heads-up, I guess. Good luck!

Sent from my iPhone.

 To: dopheld_mitaka@organafoundation.com From: rey_niima@organafoundation.com Subject: Re: CODE RED!!!

Hey Mitaka,

Thanks for the warning. I’ll handle things from here. And tell Finn and Poe to get their shit together before HR gets involved, please.

Warm regards, Rey Niima, Head of Human Resources, The Organa Foundation.

 There’s a knock on her open door less than a minute after Rey hits send on her reply to Mitaka, and she looks up from her screen to find an unexpectedly nervous-looking Ben Solo hovering in her doorway.

“Hi,” he says, more to the ground than her, and takes a deep breath before finally dragging his eyes up to hers. “Do you, uh, have a minute?”

It’s odd, how she doesn’t even have to fake or call upon the smile that immediately tugs at her lips. What’s odder still is the fluttery feeling in her stomach that accompanies the realization that she’s the one he came to, but Rey sets that aside for later.

“Sure, come in.” She waves Ben in and watches him carefully shut the door behind himself before crossing the short distance between them to collapse into the chair opposite hers.

Ben closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose with a sigh before he sits up straight and turns to her. “Judging by your reaction, I’m guessing you already know about the clusterfu– the situation upstairs.”

Rey rolls her chair a little closer to her desk and leans in. “Given the state Poe’s been in these past few days, it was really only a matter of time before he finally got that fight he’s been itching for. I’m just surprised he went after you instead of literally anyone other than his boss.”

“Perks of being childhood friends with the CEO and the former CEO’s golden boy, I guess,” Ben shrugs, a hint of bitterness creeping into his voice. He notices it too, Rey thinks, because the next thing she knows he’s forcing a tight smile and cracking a joke he obviously does not find entertaining in the slightest. “Imagine being so confident in your job security that you get to target your boss’ biggest weakness just for sport. Must be nice.”

He drops the act when his forced smile starts looking painful, and Rey scrambles to match what little he’s just revealed about this morning’s fight with the bits and pieces she’s heard about his past with Poe and his relationship with Leia.

It’s an alarmingly incomplete picture, one that leaves her feeling almost helpless. But Ben is here, chose to be here with her out of all the places and people he could have gone to, so she must’ve done something right the first time around… right?

She thinks of the little smile he’d given her last Friday when she’d tried to be supportive of him, thinks of how sincere and surprised his eyes had looked, and wonders if maybe…

“It’s shitty of him, is what it is,” Rey asserts, and then holds her breath as she waits for Ben to react.

Maybe, just maybe… all he needs is someone to listen to him, to let him know he’s not alone. It’s a feeling she knows well, and one she’s spent years figuring out how to deal with – successfully, if the little twitch of Ben’s lips is anything to go by.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” he says, slowly sinking into his chair as the fight seeps out of his tense shoulders, as he senses an ally. “Good luck telling him that, though. Poe Dameron can do no wrong in the eyes of everyone, especially his own. It’s always been that way.”

Rey can’t help the little burst of laughter that escapes her at the thought, not with the memory of Poe being sent to the doghouse by his absolutely livid boyfriend still so fresh in her mind. “Maybe in your experience, but I’d bet good money that Poe is definitely getting an earful about his many, many failures at this very moment. Some of us have seen too much to be fooled by that act of his,” she tells Ben with a smirk, only to remember–

“You probably know what I’m talking about. Childhood friends, huh?”

“Friends, neighbors, two kids who just happened to be around the same age and were forced to spend time together because of it – same difference, right?” Ben shrugs without looking at her, unnaturally preoccupied with fixing a rolled-up sleeve.

Poe tells the story pretty differently, painting a picture of two boys finding brotherhood in their friendship and supporting each other through their toughest childhood years until one of them inexplicably abandoned the other. But then again, Rey supposes there are always two sides to every story.

She lets Ben stew in his residual frustration for a little longer before she asks, as gently as she can, “Do you want to talk about it?”

That catches his attention, but maybe not in the best way. Silence stretches out between them as Ben just keeps looking at her, and eventually Rey feels the need to add, “We don’t have to if you don’t want to, it’s totally–”

“That’s the thing, though,” Ben interrupts, his voice softer than she’s ever heard it, almost hushed with… confusion? Wonder? A secret he means to keep just between the two of them? Whatever it is, she has to strain her ears to catch what he says next. “I do want to – talk about it, that is… with you. Which makes no fucking sense, we’ve literally only met once and we’re practically strangers, so what is it about you that–”

He cuts himself off, and for a moment Rey is overcome by the sudden and visceral fear that history is about to repeat itself, that Ben is going to shut down and get up and leave her life just as suddenly as he’d crashed into it all over again.

It makes absolutely no sense, but that seems par for the course considering their… acquaintanceship started with her intending to dress down her CEO. So Rey doesn’t let herself think too much before she quietly says, “I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”

Ben forces out a sharp puff of breath, something she’d almost be tempted to brand a laugh if not for the clear frustration on his face. “All part of the job, right?”

His words, his tone – they jog something in her memory, and Rey recalls that he’d said pretty much the same thing on Friday too, right before he walked out. It’s not much, but at least it’s another piece to add to the puzzle she’s been trying to solve ever since that evening.

For now, though, she’s got a far more pressing issue to address.

“I suppose, but I’ve also been told it’s what makes me a pretty decent friend… if you’re looking for one of those.”

Because very little about her experience with Ben Solo so far makes any sense, but that instant spark of recognition she’d felt upon seeing his lost eyes? The way she instinctively understands what he’s silently asking for, what he desperately needs? How every single part of him seems to light up whenever she chooses to stand by his side?

That… that makes all the sense in the world to Rey.

So she offers him a small smile as he weighs her words and her offer, one that grows brighter when Ben’s lips curve to match hers.

“I could use a friend, I think,” he says, “especially since the only one I have is being kind of a dick right now.”

Rey makes a show of closing her laptop and pushing it aside. “Tell me everything.”

So Ben does, starting with the familiar story of a lonely, scared child that makes her heart ache in recognition and solidarity. She’d learned long ago that family isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be, but that doesn’t make the ugly truth behind the Organa-Solos’ picture-perfect family any less surprising or easier to swallow: two parents who loved and cared for their son but also loved and cared for many other things, two people who didn’t know what to do with the child who reminded them more of the ghosts of their pasts than themselves, two individuals who tried their best to give him everything only to end up giving him everything but the things a child needs most.

And then: the golden boy who was everything his parents wanted and everything he was not.

And then: the uncle who could see the good in even the worst of people but not him.

And then: the man who promised him the belonging and acceptance he’d longed for his whole life.

By the time Ben’s done speaking, he still hasn’t actually gone into detail about his fight with Poe. But Rey thinks she’s heard enough about their past to figure it out, seen enough of Ben’s barely-healed wounds to know how easy they would be to reopen. So she doesn’t pry or poke or prod – not today, not when Ben has already offered her so much. Instead, she wordlessly reaches across her desk and offers him her hand, giving Ben a smile and a squeeze while he slowly eases himself back into the present.

“Thank you,” he finally says, voice tellingly thick, “for listening. I’ve never… no one’s ever… I just, I needed to tell my side of the story, just once, you know?”

It’s funny – and a little sad too, Rey realizes – how she’d gone all these years working at the foundation thinking she knew Ben Solo’s story when really, she’d heard it from everyone but him. And she knows she’s not the only one – far from it, and Ben knows, Ben must know, Ben knew when he decided to come back and shoulder his mother’s legacy and work alongside people who’d formed an opinion of him long before they even knew him.

Rey gives him a smile in lieu of all the things she wants to tell him – how brave he is, how far he’s come, how she’ll be there every remaining step of the way if he wants her to…

“Thank you for sharing it with me,” she says instead, lacing their fingers together even tighter in the hopes of conveying all the things she can’t quite put into words without saying too much. “And anytime, Ben. I mean it.”

He stares at her for the longest moment, and then finally gives her a nod. “I’ll probably take you up on that quite a bit,” he says with a smile as he slowly pulls his hand away and stands up to leave. “You know, now that we’re friends and all.”

And he sounds so happy at the thought, it nearly breaks her heart.

Rey stands as well, though she manages to keep herself on her side of the desk and squash down the impulse to walk him the ten feet to her door, at least. “Friends and all,” she echoes in agreement, knowing even as she says so that it doesn’t make any sense or mean anything.

But Ben, Ben just smiles at her as if it makes all the sense in the world, and so maybe… maybe it does, just for the two of them.

Rey is no less puzzled by their interaction when Ben Solo leaves her office for the second time, but at least this time there’s a smile on her face as she gets back to work.

. . .

Hi, I still have no idea what I'm doing but hopefully this lived up to expectations and its predecessor, especially since y’all were so kind and supportive and encouraging the last time around. YOU GUYS!!! ❤️❤️❤️

Anyway, if you weren't pleased by all that convenient 'glossing over the backstory' I did to keep this chapter a manageable and uniform length: worry not. We'll get more of Ben's Sad Tragic Backstory soon, I promise. Until then, as always: thanks for reading, I hope you liked it, and please don't hesitate to like/reblog/comment!

[theoldlesbianwithcats]

Remember that French TV show (Dix pour cent) I told you about, that made their lesbian main character sleep with a man? Now that character is pregnant with him of course, but the creator of the show Fanny Herrero (a straight woman) has a very good reason, don’t worry!

“Andréa is gay but she’s liberated enough to, on a one-night-stand, have sex with a man and not have a problem with it, because her sexuality is mature and fulfilling enough that she doesn’t ask herself questions. From the beginning, I knew that this character would have a very rich, complex and liberated libido, and for me that goes beyond sleeping with women. I think Andréa is more modern than that.”

Did you hear, ladies? A modern woman with a rich, complex, fulfilling sex life = a woman who wants to have sex with a man! How progressive!

Anyway, for once a Buzzfeed article about lesbians isn’t completely awful, so @sespursongles and I translated it in English :

Why movies and TV have to stop making lesbians sleep with guys

Marie Kirschen, Buzzfeed France, 14th May 2017

Like recently in the TV show Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent in English), it regularly happens that characters introduced as gay or lesbian eventually sleep with a person of the opposite sex... to the gay fans’ great regret.

Andréa Martel is a small revolution. The main character of France 2′s TV show Dix pour cent, whose second season just ended, is charismatic, stylish, loudmouthed, beautiful, touching, badass, funny and... a lesbian. A lesbian main character in a prime time TV show on a big national channel ? It’s never been seen before in the French audiovisual landscape, so timid about LGBT themes.

There were a few made-for-TV movies about female homosexuality, often quite badly done, a few secondary characters, sometimes a bit clumsy. But nothing as exciting as this at peak viewing time. Andréa is a multidimensional, very well-written protagonist. Her homosexuality is there, without it being a problem, without being hidden. The icing on the cake, Andréa is wonderfully played by Camille Cottin. THE star of Dix pour cent, that’s her.

Like many lesbian viewers, hungry for visibility, I was hooked immediately. And then there was the third episode of the second season, broadcasted at the end of April. Andréa is competing with her boss, Hicham, to seduce a model. During a party at a castle, Hicham ends up winning the game : he enters a bedroom with the model. But that’s without considering Andréa’s hurt ego who, a bottle in her hand, decides to join them. Her catchphrase : “You didn’t think you’d have her all to yourself?!” But, as this improvised threesome begins, Andréa and Hicham forget immediately about the pretty blonde, kiss passionately and roll on the bed. Reaction of the abandoned model (and our reaction) : “Seriously ? (sigh)”

After loving women openly for eight episodes, Andréa abandons a blue-eyed goddess for her cruel, manipulative boss? Some viewers were a bit surprised, even disappointed.

[Tweets embedded in the article :]

@RomainBurrel (journalist for a cultural magazine and a gay magazine) It sucks to see one of the rare and best lesbian characters sleep with a dude... @PrincesseYuyu LET US HAVE A LESBIAN IN A FRENCH TV SHOW, DAMMIT, STOP SHIPPING HER WITH HICHAM. It depresses me.

@keedz75 Of course the gay character can’t be happy being a lesbian and must answer heterosexual fantasy by becoming bi

“I received a few harsh remarks”, tells Fanny Herrero, the creator of the show, to Buzzfeed. “There are gay women who took it badly. I can understand it because it’s quite rare to have a lesbian main character on TV, so we shouldn’t make her sleep with a guy, I get it. The relation to sex is quite liberated in Dix pour cent, there’s a freedom of tone, I thought that freedom of tone was enough and that it would let us play with the codes.”

Fanny Herrero clarifies that, if she’s straight, there are two gay women in the writing team. Visibly upset by those reviews, she concedes that :

“Maybe I took it too lightly. At that moment, we didn’t realize it could hurt. Maybe we should have been more delicate, but we write characters, we don’t write for a cause. From a writing point-of-view, we have a chessboard of characters that we animate and sometimes we exaggerate a bit for dramatization. Maybe we’re going to push characters faster to places where, in real life, they wouldn’t go, where it would take more time.”

Beyond Dix pour cent, if that little twist made people angry, it’s because it adds to the long list of films and TV shows where a main character is introduced as a lesbian (we’re not talking of bisexual or questioning characters, but characters clearly presented as gay) to make her have sex with a man a few minutes after.

The film lesbians hate the most

One film in particular embodies this trope: Chasing Amy wins the Oscar for Most Hated Film of the 90s in the lesbian community. The hero, played by Ben Affleck, befriends Joey, beautiful and liberated. He asks her a series of stupid questions about gay women and wonders how lesbian sex can count as "real sex" since, he reasons, there can be no real penetration without a penis. When - wait for it - he falls madly in love with Joey, she tries to make him understand that his advances are inappropriate and that he doesn't respect her identity… before jumping into his arms, in the rain, like in the worst kind of rom-com, and deciding that she’s found "the one".

One night, after some (obviously amazing) sex, she tells him why she ended up falling in love with him, because he "gets her". Ben reacts with a joke: "Can I at least tell people all you needed was some serious deep dicking?" Needless to say, after watching this film I felt like throwing my computer on the floor and setting it on fire. A few other examples? In The Kids Are All Right, a lesbian mother played by Julianne Moore, whose sex life with her partner has gone stale, indulges in an affair with Mark Ruffalo's character (and unlike the boring lesbian sex, their hetero sex scenes are muy caliente). In Gazon Maudit, Josiane Balasko's character decides that she must have sex with Alain Chabat in order to get pregnant. When it comes to TV shows - the only lesbian couple in Queer as Folk faces a serious crisis when Lindsay cheats on her girlfriend with a particularly unlikable jerk (and again, their hetero sex is very sexy while Lindsay — literally! — falls asleep while having sex with her girlfriend.) Same thing in the American Skins, in which the lesbian heroine falls for a boy right from the beginning, or in the Netflix show Dear White People, where we discover that the teacher who refuses to marry her girlfriend to resist "heteronormativity" is having an affair with a young male student. This plot twist applies to the boys as well. In The Wedding Banquet, a closeted Taiwanese gay man ends up having sex with his beard. More recently, in Toute Première Fois, the gay protagonist, about to marry his partner, has to come out "in reverse" to his family after meeting a beautiful Swedish woman. On TV, Clara Sheller's gay best friend ends up sleeping with her, just like Hannah's in Girls, who suddenly becomes interested in the group's hottie for no apparent reason. The list goes on and on… Viewers always complain: why add an all too rare gay character only to straighten them up, even temporarily? This kind of storyline is criticised as an overused trope. The "lesbian sleeps with a guy" plot line is one of the three major tropes condemned by the website "LGBT Fans Deserve Better", that listed 46 characters in this category. "Did we have to do that?" fumes lesbian website Autostraddle about Dear White People. "Haven’t we been fighting against this ridiculous trope for decades?" With this trope, screenwriters also contribute to making bisexuality invisible. The idea that one must be either gay or straight is an example of casual biphobia. Screenwriters, if you feel like the character you are creating could be attracted to both sexes, why not just label them bi?

A cliché that echoes homophobic remarks

Of course, we could oppose to disappointed fans the fact that, in real life, those kinds of stories can actually happen. Homosexuality is not only about desire, it’s also a question of identity. It can happen that a person identifies as “gay” or “lesbian”, because they think it’s the label that represents their identity the best, but one night, they end up with someone of the opposite sex in their bed. Sexuality is sometimes more fluid than cultural identities we identify with. It’s not about banishing those stories from our screens. But we can question their recurrence : why are those stories present so often in fiction when, in real life, it’s frankly not the most common?

Also, in real life, it also happens for example that straight men, drunk or not, end up sleeping with another man. Again, sexuality is sometimes more fluid than the labels we use to define ourselves. But this story is barely told. How can we explain that the gay-who-goes-both-ways cliché comes back so often in fiction, when its straight equivalent is so rare among the ocean of straight roles?

Above all, if that trope is so annoying to concerned viewers, it’s also because it echoes those old homophobic tunes we keep hearing all day, and that it seems to validate : “You’ll find the right man/woman”, “How can you be so sure that you’re not straight? Did you try at least?”, “It’s only a phase”.

With that bonus point for the lesbians : according to some people, a relationship between women can’t be considered “real” sex, so they will end up sleeping with a men at some point. I can’t count how many endless discussions I’ve had with straight people who wouldn’t imagine that I could be not interested by males, even though I’m a lesbian. When I mention my love story, some people can’t help wondering what I do in bed. Of “homosexuality” they only remember “sexuality”, and for them “lesbian” means porn. If you type “lesbian” in Google, the first results you’ll find will be many porn scenes where people of the opposite sex make an appearance. So dudebros think it’s legitimate to try their luck...

[Tweets in the article :]

@BabascoGueria 1 lesbian character out of 1000 and even she has to sleep with a guy. How original.

@BabascoGueria Some homophobes harass lesbian women and are convinced that they can convert them. Thanks for perpetuating that cliché.

What if it was that old idea that gay men and lesbians are above all hypersexual beings, free from norms, with wild sex lives, that made the writers do with them what they’d never do with their boring straight characters? Would it be easier for them to imagine a rock’n’roll Andréa surprising us with her conquests, rather than the boring Mathias Barneville ou the funny Gabriel Sarda— even if, in reality, there are many Mathias who can also have sex with men...

Beyond hetero sex, motherhood

“Andréa is gay but she’s liberated enough to, on a one-night-stand, have sex with a man and not have a problem with it, because her sexuality is mature and fulfilling enough that she doesn’t ask herself questions”, thinks Fanny Herrero. “From the beginning, I knew that this character would have a very rich, complex and liberated libido, and for me that goes beyond sleeping with women. I think Andréa is more modern than that.”

The writer highlights the fact that, on the other hand, she would have never written that same intrigue for the character of Colette, way more traditional. [Colette is Andréa’s love interest. Andréa slept with Hisham after Colette dumped her.]

In Dix pour cent, the hetero sex especially permits to continue with the question of motherhood, since Andréa gets pregnant. “I wanted to confront Andréa with that question, because she’s more rough with her relation to motherhood. I wanted to make a portrait of a woman who becomes a mother differently from what we usually see, I wanted her to be upset by that pregnancy.” For the writer, there’s no question of making her plan an ART (assisted reproductive technology), to make her take a train at Gare du Nord to go have an insemination in Belgium, between two appointments with JoeyStarr and Juliette Binoche. Not the character’s type. It had to happen to her. Hence the “threesome” option.

And that pregnancy is also used to make Colette come back, suddenly moved by Andréa who’s lost in that situation. And that’s where Dix pour cent makes a quite clever move, which puts it, in spite of a few mistakes, lightyears away from Chasing Amy. Hicham being particularly hateful and Colette being adorable, the viewer ends up wishing that Andréa wins the love of her ex-lover back and that the boss of ASK, the biological father, leaves them alone. “I found that interesting to tell myself what the viewers would think : ‘no she’s not going to sleep with a man, we want her to go back with Colette’”, says Fanny Herrero, amused. “I like tickling that kind of emotion.” A plot twist that, for once, we hadn’t seen coming.

[rachelmorris305]

A Long Townhouse Sets the Right Flow for Modern Living (Part 2)

While renovating their Brooklyn brownstone, Nazli and Larry discovered the merits of a dark, painted pantry and that heated floors were indeed worth fighting for

We’re back again this week with Part 2 of Nazli and Larry’s historic Brooklyn brownstone renovation in Bedford-Stuyvesant. If you missed it—check out Part I where Nazli walked us through their planning process and showed off the foyer and guest suite. Here, she shows off the rest of the parlor floor, including the kitchen, the dining room, and the powder room. Nazli explains the challenge of merging modern and traditional within the confines of a townhouse’s long and narrow configuration. Read on for her thoughts on powder rooms (wackiness is key), decorative mantels (rather pointless), and coming to terms with the budget required to achieve the renovation you want (very tough).

Guest post by Bedford-Stuyvesant homeowner Nazli

  Front parlor/foyer entry

I think the biggest challenge to any renovation is…the renovators obviously. There will always be a push and pull between the architect, the contractor, and the owners. And most of the time, that will yield a better product than any single entity could have envisioned (but not always). I think our Sweeten architect was fantastic in coming up with some great solutions to space challenges–especially on the parlor floor, where I insisted we needed a half-bath that was nowhere near the kitchen (because, gross), a hall closet, and a kitchen pantry. She really provided a lot of help in making sure the house was up to code and that the spaces flowed. Our contractor (and my husband’s best friend), did an awesome job of value engineering so we could get the most bang for our buck. The decorating of the spaces was left mostly to me and it was interesting trying to figure out my own taste.

We, like all imperfect clients, wanted this Brooklyn brownstone renovated on a contractor’s-grade budget. Obviously, we were being silly and went way over budget (and right at what our contractor told us it would cost; we were just deeply in denial about the cost of construction in NYC). The mechanicals in a home are so expensive that basically most of the money was gone before we made a single design choice. And for me, I care deeply about the fixtures, finishes, and materials and I wasn’t about to cheap out on the things we had to see and use every day. So just be honest with yourself about what you want and what you’re willing to pay or give up for it.

Standing in front parlor looking through the kitchen into the dining room

I was most excited about the kitchen—if that hasn’t already been made clear. I love throwing huge parties and dinners, and I like to spend my alone time cooking. It’s also a natural gathering spot, so it was exciting to think about getting the most out of the space. Turns out the space configuration of a Brooklyn brownstone made it hard to do that, but it still served us well—I am super happy with a long island (11 feet long!), a BlueStar stove, and the different stations for cooking, eating, making coffee, or baking.

The kitchen is my happy spot and I’ve spent years thinking about what makes a good kitchen. Is this ideal space planning? Nope. Is this my idea of a good time? For sure. The challenge was how to devise an open-plan area that was going to take up so much of the parlor floor without making it feel like a separate room. My solution was to forgo upper cabinets so there’s a clear line of vision from the front of the room all the way to the dining room. This created a storage challenge for me, of course, which we solved with a kitchen pantry. I wanted the pantry to be open so that I could see and access all my ingredients easily, but I also didn’t want a lot of visual clutter. I painted the cabinets and shelves a deep gray (same color as the island cabinets), which makes the whole space disappear once I turn out the light. I found a piece of scrap marble at the stone yard which I used for the kitchen backsplash and the countertops along the back wall closest to the pantry. Marble is expensive and hard to maintain, so my thought was to use it in low-use areas to give the look and feel of the material throughout the kitchen without spending that much. For the island and other countertop, I used poured concrete, which is a material I love. Surprisingly, it’s also pretty delicate, but it’s subtle and earthy and I like how it ages. The kitchen is, again, more traditional than I would have preferred, but I think the concrete and the open shelving give it a more modern touch. Also, I fought to get a second sink in the kitchen and am so happy I won that battle. It’s handy to set up a water station so people can grab water or rinse out cups without interrupting my cooking space.

I can’t say enough about how much I love these herringbone walnut floors. We splurged on these floors and went with the less costly white oak for the upstairs floors because…well, just look at them. My original vision was to have the tile floor in the kitchen, but it made more sense to continue the wood on the whole parlor floor and save the tile for the back extension. We mocked up the island with plywood and adjusted it until I was happy with the dimensions—how it felt to go from sink to stove, or how easy it was to take food out of the fridge and place it on the counter. That kind of stuff is important to me, and this was the first time I really got to design my own kitchen for myself. Everything is a bit taller and it suits me just great.

A note on accessibility: I’ve had friends and families with different mobility and impairment issues—whether wheelchair-bound, deaf, or arthritic—and time spent with them has made me very conscious of what it means to design well for many. A landmarked Brooklyn brownstone is a nightmare for anyone with a wheelchair, a walker, or a stroller, and I also saw firsthand some of the challenges that my design choices presented. The first set of cabinet pulls in the kitchen were a lovely set of straight, minimalist tab pulls. I loved that they gave the kitchen a more modern look. Cue my mother and mother-in-law coming over all the time and struggling with the pulls. They couldn’t grasp the straight pull with their arthritic fingers. I switched them out right away for pulls with a fully curved handle. Now they can just stick their finger under the pull, and a small motion opens the drawers. People keep talking about their “forever homes,” but really think about how you, your guests, and your children will have to adapt to the spaces as everyone starts to get older.

Dining room/bar

On the other end of our Brooklyn brownstone, and connected to the kitchen, is the dining room and bar. We love this room. We really felt like this room, a back extension added in the 1910s, was the reason we bought this place. Then we sadly rebuilt the entire room, but somehow, it’s still our favorite space in the house. So that was a great surprise—buying a house because of one room and then recreating it and still having that be the best spot in the house. It’s our dining room and bar, but we also have space under the dining bench to store all of Nacho’s gear so that he can draw and play at the table while I am cooking.

From being in other friends’ homes, I knew that extensions were always freezing cold and hard to heat. All I wanted was Moroccan tile for this room (in fact, for the whole house, but we just didn’t have the budget for that). Everyone fought me on adding radiant heating to the subfloor, but it’s by far the warmest room during the winter. Larry and I often come home and lie down on the floor and accidentally fall asleep! During the summer, this is the room we hang out in while kids run in and out of the house to the backyard. The best surprise? That giant Tiffany stained-glass window, which was hidden by a crappy 1970’s bookcase on the inside and vinyl siding on the outside. As soon as we bought the house, we ripped down the bookcase hoping we’d find a window, and lo and behold, we did. It was in near perfect condition. We completely sealed it with clear glass on the outside to avoid damage and heat loss, as we did with all the other stained glass details around the parlor floor. There was a large fireplace in this room, but I couldn’t figure out how to fit the mantel and Larry’s bar, and after much cajoling, I finally convinced Larry to agree to rip out the fireplace. The mantel has a new home in the living room, where the original had been removed previously. I will say, to the horror of preservationists everywhere, that I wish we didn’t have our mantels—they don’t work, they take up too much space, and they create artificial focal points in every room. Maybe if they were marble, I’d appreciate them more. It’s form without function, which I have no love for.

The powder room was a tough one to figure out. I hate the idea of guests having to go upstairs to use the bathroom, and with a small child, it’s great to have a bathroom on every floor. I think powder rooms should be wacky. This one is tiny, so doing a fun wallpaper or paint color was relatively cheap. I love the electric Cole & Sons Palms wallpaper—it adds a touch of fun to an otherwise formal dining room. I also love the pop of color from the door to the powder room. We hated having the stained glass window facing a dull orange wall because it cast a weird orangey glow into the room. Rather than fight it, though, we decided to paint the door an amped up version of that wall to tie the colors together in a fun way.

Thanks so much for sharing your gorgeous parlor floor spaces with us, Nazli and Larry! We can’t wait to see the rest of the home next week.

KITCHEN RESOURCES: Cabinets: custom. Cabinet pulls: Rejuvenation. Knobs: myknobs.com. Sink: Kohler. Fridge: Gaggenau. Range: BlueStar. Dishwasher: Bosch. Poured concrete countertops: Oso Industries. Marble countertops: PR Stone. Chelsea Gray paint color: Benjamin Moore.

DINING ROOM/BAR RESOURCES: Tiles: Cle Tile. Sconces: Rejuvenation. Abyss trim color: Benjamin Moore.

POWDER ROOM RESOURCES: Sink: Duravit. Faucet, toilet paper holder, hooks, and soap dispenser: Grohe. Wallpaper: Cole & Sons.

—

Jerry and Janet gut renovated a historic Brooklyn brownstone with an exterior that was in desperate need of a facelift and a virtually unsalvageable interior. The results are a perfect marriage of modern and traditional.

Sweeten handpicks the best general contractors to match each project’s location, budget, and scope, helping until project completion. Follow the blog for renovation ideas and inspiration and when you’re ready to renovate, start your renovation on Sweeten.

A post from originally from Sweeten