#The Gin Dictionary

[waynes-multiverse]

Time After Time – Chapter 1

Summary: Unable to control your abilities, you’re stuck in the present with Billy Butcher, his team, and America’s first asshole. At this point, you’ve become Soldier Boy’s personal punching bag. But when an accident leaves you stranded in 1942, you run into a familiar face and suddenly rely on your future tormentor’s help as your only hope.

Pairing: Soldier Boy x supe!Reader

Warnings: 18+ for language, angst, Soldier Boy being an insufferable ass, reader is a supe with chronokinesis (time manipulation), post S3 alternate ending, enemies to lovers & slow burn, set partially in 1942

Word Count: 6.0k

Posted on Patreon March 1, 2025

A/N: Weeee, so excited to finally share the first part of this series with all of you! From mortal enemies to classic romance, crazy and angsty time travel theories, and a glimpse behind the green suit (in both ways), we're gonna have a lot of fun with this one 😉💕

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Chapter 1: Of All the Gin Joints...

“Move, or I’ll move you.”

Annoyed, you huffed a sigh and lifted your feet off the coffee table, shifting a few inches to the right, so Soldier Boy could pass by with a deep grumble. You rolled your eyes back slightly when he plopped down next to you on the worn, old couch in the office of the Flatiron Building.

“A ‘please’ wouldn’t hurt you every once in a while,” you muttered with a glare at the supe.

“Disagree,” he huffed.

When Butcher and his team tracked you down and recruited you almost a year ago, you surely hadn’t signed up to spend your days with a fossil from the past century. All they had wanted you to do was find the weapon that could destroy Homelander. That weapon turned out to be Soldier Boy.

And you had found him, freed the man from forty years of Russian torture without receiving so much as a ‘thank you,’ and helped the team take down Homelander, who was currently powerless and safely locked up in a CIA black site. Now, you were still here – as was Soldier Boy.

To your dismay, he wasn’t just the most powerful supe on the planet, especially after his own son’s steep fall from grace, but he was also the biggest motherfucking asshole that ever walked the earth.

Soldier Boy was obnoxious, loud, rude, sexist, racist, lazy, arrogant, selfish, cruel, deceitful, complacent, vindictive, inconsiderate, paranoid, ruthless and unsympathetic. Honestly, you’d need a whole dictionary just to get through every single character trait you hated about that man.

This morning he’d been particularly belligerent as soon as he had set foot inside the office and Hughie bumped into him, causing Soldier Boy to spill his iced latte. To be fair, the guy had just been standing in the doorway like a moron for a full three minutes – he’d stared at you the whole time, probably thinking of new ways to torture you.

Today marked your 30th birthday of all things, so it was only natural your over six-feet playground tormentor would be present for the occasion.

“Led Zeppelin, huh?” he noted with an arched brow, eyeing your choice of outfit. You mostly wore band shirts from tours you’d been to from your time traveling adventures.

“Yeah, I got it for my twenty-fifth birthday. I went to Zeppelin’s first tour in 1969. Only wear it on special occasions,” you told him with a smile.

In some rare moments, it was actually possible to have a normal fucking conversation with him. You hoped it was one of those. Aside from his grumpiness in the morning, maybe he’d decided to give you a break on your birthday.

“Oh, yeah, right…” He rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Happy fucking birthday, I guess.”

“That is so sweet of you, thank you,” you replied wryly.

He knew what you were doing. His smile rose – and then morphed into a provocative smirk. “So, thirty, huh? How’s that feminist bullshit working out for your biological clock, sweetheart?”

“Don’t kill him,” Annie reminded you of the office mantra with calm in her voice as she sat behind you at her desk, causing Soldier Boy to snort a laugh.

“Isn’t it time for your nap, gramps? You’re sundowning,” you retorted instead with a teasing smile.

You took his taunts lightheartedly. After all, you didn’t think you’d have to worry in that department – much like him. For some reason, you didn’t age… a lot. At least, it was slower than the average supe and human. You figured it might have to do with dropping in and out of wormholes. You had aged just fine as a kid but it progressively began to slow around your sixteenth birthday – the first time you’d traveled through time and jumped to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged show in New York of December 1993.

You remembered your parents had been fighting behind the broken and yellowing partition slider of a trailer you had called your home. You’d lain on the pull-out bed with your headphones on and a Walkmen, trying to drown out their screaming. You listened to that record and wished you could be there – and then you were.

You’d found your ruby slippers.

To this day, you still got ID’ed at every bar, club, and liquor store alike. Soldier Boy had never been carded. He’d once claimed it was because he was famous, to which you’d almost spat out your drink and told him the wrinkles didn’t lie. Least to say, that little joke hadn’t flown well with the supe.

“You know, doll, if you ever need that tension to disappear from your shoulders, I’m right here.” Soldier Boy smirked cockily at you and spread his legs a little further apart. Not a day passed by when he didn’t hit on you either – or anything with tits, really. “Just say the word, and I fuck it right outta you. I do like ‘em older, you know, so I don’t give shit. But if you wanna get cracking on this baby thing, we better fuck on this couch right now.”

“Please don’t,” Hughie pleaded in a high-pitched sigh, glued in his spot next to Annie.

“No, thanks,” you scoffed and scrunched your nose in disgust. “You’re a fucking pig.”

“Hey, c’mon, I know you want to,” replied Soldier Boy without an ounce of self-reflection, his smirk only widening as his hand crawled up your thigh. “Bet you’ve been waiting for a big dick like mine, haven’t you?”

“Get your fucking hands off of me!” You slapped his fingers away, huffing in frustration.

Not even your kindergarten bully had been this fucking annoying – and that kid threw a dodge ball at your face and broke your nose.

Fortunately, while your own powers were on the fritz, you still had some superhuman strength. Sure, not as much as Soldier Boy, but if he shoved, you could at least push back enough for him to leave you alone.

For, like, five seconds.

Soldier Boy laughed loudly at your rejection. “I do like ‘em feisty,” he murmured with a sultry voice, invading your space even more as he shifted closer on the couch. Lion king on the prowl. “You know, you’d be less useless if you spread your legs every once in a while.”

Jumping up from your seat, you rounded the table to bring space between you and face him properly. It was always smarter when he was in your view at all times and you could watch his brazen hands with an eagle eye – the same hands that currently began to roll a blunt on the coffee table.

“Hey, if it weren’t for me, you’d still be frozen solid in a box in Russia,” you bit.

“Well, we’d like to think we would’ve found him eventually, love,” Butcher threw in from across the room, the sly grin on his face telling you he was enjoying the show.

“See?” Soldier Boy sneered complacently. “Fucking useless.”

“You’re fucking useless!” you yelled, anger surging through every inch of your body. “No one fucking likes you! You don’t have friends, you don’t have family, and everyone in this room fucking despises you – just like your old team!”

Slowly, he rose from his spot on the couch, nostrils flaring, his sheer height imposing as he towered over you like the Empire State. A part of you was glad there was still a piece of furniture between you – even though that wouldn’t stop him in the slightest.

“You take that fucking back,” he snarled, one hand balling into a fist by his side while the other pointed a warning finger at you.

However, you stood your ground, crossing your arms in front of your chest, a challenging look in your eyes but a subtle swallow in your throat. “No,” you said defiantly and bristled. “I’ll drop you into the fucking Jurassic era where you belong, fossil. Watch you become a T-Rex’s fucking chew toy.”

Soldier Boy’s grin boldly widened, green eyes shimmering daringly. “Do. It.”

“Oy, simmer down, kids,” Butcher assuaged but didn’t even bother to glance up from the newspaper in his hands. Instead, the Brit leaned back in his chair and threw his legs up on the desk, settling into a more comfortable position.

Soldier Boy threw him a dismissive look, annoyed at the interruption, before his attention turned back to you with a spiteful sneer. “You know, if I were you, I would’ve used those powers properly. I would’ve gone back and fucking killed baby Hitler or some shit.”

You scoffed a humorless chuckle. “Yeah, not surprising you would’ve killed a fucking baby,” you retorted dryly.

“See, this is why you’re a fucking failure,” he taunted and stepped closer, his face only inches away from yours now. You could feel his hot breath against your skin. “Those powers were clearly wasted on you, doll. Women are too fucking soft.”

You snorted, shaking your head. You didn’t even know why you still argued with that asshole. He’d never change. And you sure as hell couldn’t say shit like:

What d’you know? You’ve never seen a war zone from the inside, you fucking bigoted coward. 

“I’m not soft,” you insisted instead, narrowing your eyes to a glare.

“Prove it.”

“I wouldn’t hesitate to go back in time and fucking kill you!”

At this point, you wouldn’t. You really wouldn’t fucking mind at all.

However, Soldier Boy only laughed in your face like you were the bug about to hit his shield. “Oh, you can certainly try, sweetheart. But you can’t, can ya? ‘Cause you’re fucking broken. Like I said, useless,” he reiterated harshly, his sneer widening when his hand reached out and clasped your chin between his fingers. “Don’t worry. I’ll find some good use for you. Especially for that mouth.”

Furiously, you thwarted his advances once more. “I said don’t fucking touch me!”

“Yo, Soldier Boy, c’mon! Leave her alone now,” MM warned, finally getting fed up too. He usually avoided the supe to the best of his abilities, only snapping every once in a while when the asshole took it too far.

This time, MM only got involved because Hughie kept sending him frantic looks of panic during your heated exchange, probably worried you’d antagonize the supe so much he’d detonate the whole building.

“Mind your own fucking business, punk,” Soldier Boy dismissed the intervention, his venomous eyes still fixed on you.

The anger was storming through your body and closing your throat with a tight chokehold. You could barely breathe as your chest heaved and your ears rang. It was always worse when you got angry. Unfortunately for you, Soldier Boy had a way of pushing your buttons and setting off your triggers.

Your superpowers had the ability to control and bend time – or at least they used to. You had mostly used it to stop the clock and get an extension on your homework deadlines. But technically, you could also travel through time.

Once you had found out how that worked, well, you quickly became addicted. You went to concerts of bands that didn’t tour anymore, you’d shamelessly make money on Wall Street and placed bets on football games, and sometimes, you even ate dessert twice.

It was all about the little things.

But that all stopped when you accidentally cast yourself into the Middle Ages and almost got burned at the stake for witchcraft. For some reason, your powers wouldn’t work until the last second – you figured extreme distress had been a factor.

When you closed your eyes at night, you could still feel the scorching heat underneath your bare soles and smell the smoke reaching your nose and lungs.

Afterward, you didn’t want to use your powers any longer – not that you could. PTSD was a real bitch sometimes.

You had lived quietly and alone in a cabin near Montréal for years. After your parents found out they couldn’t make money off of you, they kicked you to the curb. And when you knocked on Vought’s doors, asking for help, they told you not to use your abilities – before they tried to kill you. That was the moment you’d realized you might be more powerful than you’d initially surmised. Until then, you had only used your powers for your pleasure and the occasional personal gain.

So, maybe, Soldier Boy was right when he said you had never used your gift wisely.

After your flight from Vought, you lived under a fake name and took up online college classes in physics and history to understand your abilities better and avoid grave mistakes.

And boy, time travel was a fucking bitch.

Years of study could be summarized to this, however: If you even so much so as killed the wrong fly in 1783, the whole world could go extinct.

Or in Vought’s terms: If you accidentally fucked up history, it might fuck with their business and money.

That was the reason why they had been trying to get rid of you for the longest time – until Butcher showed up on your doorstep. You had no idea how the Brit could’ve found you or even known about your powers in the first place. After your escape, Vought had kept your existence quiet. They knew if the wrong people found you, it would end direly for them.

Wrong people like William Butcher.

At first, he wanted you to go back in time and, in his words, “kill the chubby, little cape cunt.” Needless to say, you had declined. Even if Homelander was the worst creature to ever walk this earth, excluding his sperm donor, you wouldn’t kill a baby. You wouldn’t kill anything or anyone, really.

If anything, you could be classified as a bit of hedonist – or “a fucking hippie,” as Soldier Boy once had put it. Which, granted, was probably a trait you both shared. Although, Soldier Boy took the whole fucking cake and ate it, too. At least all you ever did was steal a tiny slice every once in a while.

In the end, you had never asked for these powers. You were just trying to make the best out of a bad situation.

But when Butcher then asked you if you could at least “hop back” to retrieve the weapon that had neutralized Soldier Boy in 1984, you finally told him you were essentially useless.

A part of you wanted to help, though. While you had closed yourself off from the rest of the world, you had still followed the news. You knew it had gotten bad out there. You could see Homelander spinning out of control and threatening to burn the world. You knew soon enough your house would burn, too.

You knew the monster needed to be stopped.

So, you offered Billy Butcher the only thing you could – a glimpse into the past, so he could find the weapon in the present.

And you did. You saw how Soldier Boy’s own team had despised him so much they handed him off to the Russians during an ambush in Nicaragua – but they hadn’t killed him.

The diabolical smirk on Butcher’s face had scared you. You knew he’d realized in that moment that you could be valuable after all. So, naturally, he threatened to give up your location to Vought if you didn’t join his team.

And well, here you were.

You’d traveled to Russia, you’d freed Soldier Boy, and you’d defeated Homelander. But even after the job was done, you stuck around.

Hughie, Annie, MM, Frenchie, Kimiko, and even Butcher – they had all sort of become your friends. And they protected you, even though Vought had sworn they were done hunting you. No one trusted Stan Edgar, and you knew he would probably still rather have you buried six-feet-deep if he ever got the chance.

So it was nice to know the whole team stood behind you. Well, all but one.

Part of the deal with Edgar had been a request to keep Soldier Boy away from Vought’s business. The guy was smart enough to know he wanted nothing to do with the ticking time bomb, either.

“And what are we supposed to do with that wanker, huh?” Butcher had asked as all of you stood in a very breezy office at Vought Tower – which had still been under heavy construction after the fallout.

“Let him play hero, keep an eye on him, and I’m sure we’ll have no issues, Mr. Butcher.” Edgar had smiled cunningly, his eyes flickering to you. 

Afterward, you had decided to pack up like Maeve and finally live your life. You’d even applied as a physics professor at a small college. But then Soldier Boy made his own request: Either you’d stay, or he’d walk. And if he had walked, your deal with Edgar would’ve fallen through.

Soldier Boy was a bully. In fact, he could teach master classes in it. You didn’t think there was one good bone in his body. So far, you could count the times the guy had actually been nice to you on one hand – two fingers to be exact.

The first time had been the very first night you’d spent together in that rundown motel after he’d killed Crimson Countess. You took over the nightshift of babysitting while Hughie and Butcher took a snooze in the adjoining room. That night, Soldier Boy had shown you a glimpse of a human being.

“Well, currently, there are two working theories on time travel: The closed loop theory and the alternate timelines theory,” you’d explained after he had asked you how actual time travel worked. Most people gave up after a minute, but he had still been in it after five.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Well, lemme see…” Musingly, you had pursed your lips and thought for a moment. “Terminator came out in ‘83, right? You’ve seen it?”

His lips had slowly risen to a smile. “Yeah… Actually one of the last fucking movies I watched before the fucking Reds got me.”

“Right.” You’d nodded. “Still remember what happened?”

He’d scoffed and rolled his eyes a little. “I’m not that old…”

“Well, it’s been forty years since you’ve seen it…”

“Schwarzenegger comes from the future to kill that blonde chick,” he’d summarized with a cocky smirk that should’ve proven to you he wasn’t demented.

“Yeah, remember the soldier who came back to save her, too?”

“Oh. Yeah, that guy…” His nose had scrunched slightly. Of course he’d be rooting for the killing machine. “What about that fucking wimp?”

“The Terminator was supposed to kill Sarah because her yet-unborn son would defeat the robots in the future, but the soldier who came back to save her is actually the baby’s father.” There had been no way you could’ve explained it any simpler than that. “So, the Terminator actually created the circumstance, which made him go back in the first place. That’s a closed loop. Does that make sense?”

He’d nodded slowly, his brow creasing heavily in concentration. “Yeah, I think it fucking does…”

For hours, he’d asked you questions about your powers, and when he was through all of that, he even asked you about your life, what you did for work, and how you ended up here. And you’d figured he was trying to schmooze up to you to use you for his gain – or maybe he’d just been coming down from all the drugs he’d taken that day.

Either way, after what you’d seen the Russians do to him, you could understand why someone like him might want to turn back time and get a redo. The unpleasant images, the inhumane torture he’d endured, actually caused you to have sympathy for the supe.

For a second.

When you’d tried bringing it up and be his friend, he had quickly shot you down. He’d been an even bigger dick since then, as if the sheer thought of someone seeing his weaknesses scared him.

Yes, a little, gray mouse like you apparently fucking terrified the biggest and strongest elephant in this world.

Honestly, you didn’t know why the supe had insisted on your presence. Maybe he just needed the perfect victim to antagonize as he passed the time. Sometimes, you did feel like the new Black Noir of Payback.

There’d only been one other incident where he’d shown something remotely resembling kindness:

He’d complimented you.

A real, sweet compliment – and he’d actually meant it – and he hadn’t hit on you in the same breath.

One night, a few weeks ago, Annie and Frenchie had dragged everyone of you to a karaoke bar to “decompress.” Even Soldier Boy tagged along and seemed in somewhat good spirits all night – there’d been no heinous taunting, only the usual flirtatious teasing.

One of those flirtatious attempts had been a dare for you to sing.

“Oh, c’mon! One song,” he’d begged and shifted closer to you on the small leather sofa in the corner of the bar. “How about something from the fucking 80s? Like Cyndi Lauper! I’m sure you’d like that, huh?”

“What, you want me to sing ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’? Really? You?” You’d arched a brow at him.

He’d chuckled, and it’d been a sweet sound instead of a mocking one. “Hey, look, I’m all about the girls having some fucking fun,” he’d said coolly before a lick of his lips turned him a bit more serious, mysterious even. “How about something a little slower… Time After Time!” He’d grinned proudly and raised his expensive whiskey glass to your cheap beer. “That’s fucking perfect for you!”

And then you actually went on stage and sung. You weren’t a bad singer, either, but you were by far no Mariah. However, you could see Soldier Boy watching you intently the whole time with that strange look he sometimes carried whenever he was staring at you – something he did quite often.

In fact, he’d stared at you pretty intensely when he’d first walked out of his cryo-chamber, too. It gave you the creeps the same way that naked homeless man had once done in a subway after 1 AM. And then, he had fucking detonated, which had freaked you out so much you’d accidentally disappeared back to New York with a five minute time difference forward – the only time you’d actually managed to travel into the future.

But after your performance, Soldier Boy had passed you on your way down from the stage and intercepted you by placing a tentative hand on your arm.

“You have a really beautiful voice,” he’d said and even gifted you a small but genuine smile.

“Thank you.”

Sweetly, you’d even mirrored his smile after no other insults or advances followed. You’d been practically baffled. As you had glanced at him more carefully, though, you’d noticed something gleaming in his eyes, almost melancholic. You’d supposed after 104 years, he had probably been experiencing a ton of déjà vu.

“You okay there, gramps?” you’d checked with a bit of a teasing smile, and maybe that’d been your mistake.

“‘M fucking fine,” he’d huffed. He’d suddenly turned cold again, the hard lines on his freckled face crestfallen. He’d spun around, marched out of the bar, and ditched you there on the spot. 

So, that was what you had done for the past few months – babysit Soldier Boy and keep the bomb from exploding. Which brought you back to this exact moment:

“What the fuck is wrong with you, huh? Seriously!” you snapped, feeling the fury overtaking you. “What the fuck happened in your life to turn you into such a miserable, toxic, overbearing, narcissistic, insufferable piece of shit?!”

“Insufferable?” He scoffed as if your words didn’t affect him, but you could see it was starting to get to him. “You’re the one who’s fucking insufferable, doll. Probably because you haven’t been fucked in a while by a real man.”

Exasperatedly, you gripped your temples. “Oh, it all trickles down to that, doesn’t it?” you deadpanned. “You sound like a fucking broken record, gramps!”

“Oh, you wanna fucking jump on me badly right now, don’t you?” he gritted through his pearly-white teeth, a challenging smirk playing on his plush lips as he leaned closer, his face only inches away from yours now.

“Please, it’s not gonna fucking make me like you more. Your dick’s not a magic eraser,” you bit sharply, your voice low and poisonous. “God knows you fucked your last girlfriend for years, and she still fucking hated you.”

Growling, he bristled, his jaw ticking. Mentioning Crimson Countess always hit a nerve. You knew as much.

“You’re just a drug-addicted loser with daddy issues. Nothing more, nothing less,” you nonetheless continued bitterly. “No one likes you! And believe me, asshole, I fucking hate you!”

As you looked up at him, you could tell he was close to exploding. Kimiko even desperately tugged on your arm to drag you out of the blast zone – not that it would’ve mattered.

“Butcher…”

Hughie’s panicked voice and wide eyes reached the Brit, who finally got out of his chair and slammed the paper on the desk.

“Oy, you two! Fucking stop it!”

And somehow, that had miraculously seemed to work. Soldier Boy managed to snap out of his temper tantrum, his breathing steadying, his smirk reappearing.

His lips twitched as he dipped his head and whispered into your ear, “You’re not fucking worth it.”

His thick fingers trailed up your hips before he grabbed your waist and pushed you closer to his body. You tried to shove him away, but this time he used his full strength on you to keep you caged.

“Get off of me!”

“Butcher!”

“Oy! What did I fucking tell you lot?!”

Kimiko tried to pull you away harder, but that only made Soldier Boy chuckle more.

“I said stop it! Get the fuck off of me!” you yelled louder, and he finally let go with a cunning laugh.

“Alright, you’ve had your bloody fun, mate. Why don’t you take a bit of a time-out now, huh?” It was the most Butcher could do as far as an intervention went. Everyone in the room knew Soldier Boy couldn’t be stopped.

“Fine,” the supe relented with a roll of his green eyes, but then his gaze landed back on you.

You hated to admit that he had gotten to you, but it was hard to deny when your whole body was trembling and tears stung your eyes.

“Fucking Christ on a cross, are you actually gonna fucking cry now?” Soldier Boy snorted condescendingly.

“Fuck you. Leave me alone,” you snapped with what little strength you had left and wiped the burning tears out of your eyes.

“Exactly why I said you’re fucking useless. This is the problem with women. Can’t even take a goddamn joke,” he ranted. The more he got to you, the more pleasure he took out of it. You could see it by the vicious twinkle in his eyes. “You keep talking how everyone hates me, but what about you, huh? You’ve got fucking no one, too. Your own fucking parents didn’t want you, and I don’t see an army of men lining up to take care of you, either.”

“Shut up!”

“Wanna know why? ‘Cause you’re a broken, useless, stupid, weak–“

“Stop it!”

But he didn’t. You couldn’t even hear the words properly anymore as they strung together into one explosion of abuse. Your vision blurred, and the ringing in your ears only got stronger.

“C’mon, fucking show me what you can do! Prove to me you’re not fucking useless! Do it!”

“I said fucking stop it!” you screamed loudly till he fell silent.

And then, poof. You were gone.

Soldier Boy blinked at the suddenly empty space before him. Knitting his brow, he shrugged your disappearance off only a second later and plopped down on the couch with an exhaustive groan.

“Fucking finally… Took her long enough,” he commented dryly and stretched out on the small two-seater, sighing blissfully.

“This isn’t fucking funny,” Hughie threw in, the anxious expression on his face only causing Soldier Boy to roll his eyes once more.

“Relax, squirt, she’ll be back,” the supe quipped, snickering. “Probably.”

“Y/N’s got PTSD, okay? She can’t control it,” Hughie argued, placing his hands on his hips in upset, his gaze scolding. “You know, you’d think you of all people would be a little more sympathetic to that.”

Soldier Boy’s eyes glowered darkly. “What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t have that shit. I told you.”

“You know, kid’s right,” Butcher chimed in, catching the ancient supe’s attention. “I’d be a little more worried if I were you.”

“Why? Not my fucking problem. And like I said, she’ll be fine,” he reiterated with a careless grumble.

“I’m sure you’re right, mate,” Butcher replied with a conniving smirk and a casualness that made the supe wary. “Let’s just hope our little Y/N doesn’t take your advice to heart about the proper use of her abilities. But if I were bloody you, I’d hope old-me watches me back.”

Soldier Boy snorted a laugh of amusement. “Oh, I’d like to see her try,” he replied arrogantly and stretched his spine with a yawn. “Well, anyways, I’m taking my fucking nap now. Just wake me when she gets back. I’m not fucking finished with her yet…”

Hughie and the others hurried around Butcher’s desk, their voices only whispers as not to disturb the grumpy supe, and the Brit knew by the worried looks on his team’s faces that he’d have to deal with this bloody problem now.

“Butcher, what are we gonna do?” Hughie asked, eyes still wide and kind heart surely beating a marathon on his sleeve.

“Yeah, how are we gonna get her back?” Annie agreed, calmer than her boyfriend, questioningly folding her arms and arching a brow.

“Mon dieu, what if she changes the timeline, Butcher? I don’t want to wake up speaking German,” Frenchie threw in.

“And I don’t want fucking slavery back,” MM added.

“Oy, calm down,” Butcher spoke with placating hands. “Y/N’s a smart girl. She knows more about this shite than anyone of you. I’m sure she’ll fucking figure it out.”

“What if she doesn’t, Butcher?” Annie pressed.

“Well, then, let’s hope worst she does is kill the snoring cunt over there.” Butcher smirked devilishly and gestured to Soldier Boy fast asleep on the couch as if he were hoping for that outcome. “God knows I’d be bloody fine with it.”

It took less than a second, a blink of an eye, but you felt it immediately, knew instantly what had happened as gravity itself stretched out its tentacles and wound them around your limbs, tearing and tugging until you ripped at the seams and atoms spilled out of you.

There was a stark drop in temperature – that was the first thing you’d noticed. Goosebumps formed within a beat on the bare skin of your arms, the biting cold making you not only shiver but fear for your life.

Please don’t be the Pleistocene... Death by saber-tooth? No, thank you.

But to your relief, you heard a strange, but familiar set of sounds around you – animated chatter, chiming bells and closing doors, and the occasional low rumble of a car. Your heart was pounding a furious and relentless rhythm in your ribcage as your eyes fluttered open and warily scanned your strange surroundings.

You’d landed on a street, your feet safely planted on a sidewalk. Glistening white snow covered the pavement in a thick veil, the sky a dull gray blanket above. Icicles hung from lampposts with patriotic banners flying in the chill, proclaiming messages to buy war bonds and save scrap metal.

Huh…

Powdered flakes swirled around you as a streetcar clattered past you on a cobbled street, the sound muffled by the snow. Storefronts and shops lined both sides of the road, shoppers bustling by you in coats, hats, and scarves. Your brow furrowed softly at the row of parked, snow-covered cars that looked a tad… old.

Oh no…

You had definitely traveled back a smidge, but luckily not as far as the Middle Ages again. Judging by the moderately busy street, you assumed you were at least still in New York City. A paperboy was shouting loudly further down, but you couldn’t understand him from the distance. The only word that was plastered everywhere was war.

World War I or World War II, maybe?

Wherever – or whenever – you were, you couldn’t get stuck here. Your short-lived fascination with your new environment was then quickly replaced by a rising panic in your throat.

You had to get home somehow.

Squeezing your eyes shut as tightly as you could, you tried to wish yourself back – unfortunately, you didn’t possess your pair of ruby slippers anymore that you could simply click. The more you tried and failed, the more anxious you became, and you knew a full-on panic attack was just waiting for you around the corner.

“Whoa! Hey, careful…”

With your hands on your knees, you bumped backwards into a man, your lungs constricting so much they barely let any air pass. You spun around, eyes wide and body trembling as a set of hands landed gently on your shoulders and waist for support.

“Miss? Are you alright?”

What little breath you had got caught in your throat as you stared into an all-too familiar set of outlandishly green eyes.

Soldier Boy.

“Don’t fucking touch me!”

It was a reflex at this point to slap his hands away and keep them as far from your body as possible. Of course the guy couldn’t leave you alone in any era.

Admittedly, he was hardly recognizable, though. While he was just as tall as his 21st century counterpart, he wasn’t as broad. Instead of the signature green outfit, he wore a long, black wool coat over a three-piece suit and a checkered flat cap. His hair was maybe an inch shorter, his beard replaced by a clean-shaven face. And while Soldier Boy surely didn’t look a 104, he didn’t look as young as the guy in front of you either. No furious lines from decades of anger management issues decorated his freckle-dusted face yet.

Maybe your reaction was ill-advised, considering the power he wielded. You figured any past version of the supe was even more ruthless than the current one you’d gotten to know. Moreover, you didn’t have the advantage of being spared because you had saved him from an ice box.

To your surprise, however, there was no detection of malice or offense on his features. To the contrary, he seemed strangely taken aback by your aggressive response, his hands swiftly shooting back as if your very skin was made out of scorching coals. They raised in surrender.

Surrender. 

Well, that was new. He had never, ever, ever done that before. Did you land in some alternate timeline where Soldier Boy was a nice guy?

“I-I’m so sorry, miss. Please forgive me… I was just checking if you were okay,” he stammered and forced a reassuring smile, his hands still held high in good faith.

“Just stay away from me. Leave me alone, okay?”

You backed farther away from him, your eyes desperately flickering around for an exit. Your voice jittered in sync with your body before you bolted down the street and sought shelter in a dark and quiet alley.

“Miss! Wait!” he called after you, his hands picking something up in the snow that you’d dropped during your flight. “You’ve lost your–”

His brow furrowed as he twisted the thin, rectangular device in his hand, his thumb wiping bits of melting snowflakes off the sleek, black glass. As he glanced more closely at it, it lit up brightly and vibrated in his hold. He startled at the unexpected tremble, almost dropping it into a pool of mud by his shoes. Fuddled, his gaze lifted down the busy street in search of you.

“What the hell…”

▶️ Chapter 2: Is This the 40s?

I think his curiosity is piqued lol... What did you think of his 1942 version vs. the, uhm, less nice future dickbag? 👀

Coming Up:

Ready to fend him off, you were surprised to find his grip wasn’t strong by any means. It was barely a brush before he dropped his hand again and looked at you remorsefully.

“I’m sorry! I just-… Please let me help you,” he reiterated with imploring green eyes. “Look, you clearly seem lost. Just tell me where you live, and I can get you home safely, okay? C’mon, you can’t do this to me.” He tried to loosen you up with a charming smile and a puppy dog look. “If you leave like this, I’m going to be up all night, worrying you’ve died of hypothermia out here.”

And my God, he seemed sincere! No wonder he had gotten attention from women like a goddamn bunny in a petting zoo.

Musingly, you then chewed on your lower lip and assessed the man in front of you. The people who strolled by you threw you the occasional weird looks – you’d chosen a bad day to wear a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and ripped jeans.

Admittedly, you could use a little help here. Maybe if you were being careful with the timeline – and him – you could risk it.

🚀 Read up to 4 chapters ahead on Patreon now

Tag List Pt 1.:

@alwaystiredandconfused @xlynnbbyx @lyarr24 @deans-spinster-witch @blackcherrywhiskey

@deansbbyx @foxyjwls007 @ladysparkles78 @roseblue373 @zepskies

@agalliasi @yvonneeeee @hobby27 @iamsapphine @globetrotter28

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@lamentationsofalonelypotato @supernotnatural2005 @stoneyggirl2 @little-diable @kr804573

[toxintouch]

I'm not sure if what I wrote is what this post had in mind but… also I meant to do this as a rb but my toxic trait is writing things in drafts/private posts so I err uhhh look I can't keep fighting with Tumblr formatting ok

Mhin receiving an unusually specific compliment. ᵕ ω ᵕ

“You're so fascinating, Mhin. If you wrote a book, I would definitely read it.  Even if you wrote the book about something really boring.  Even if you wrote…a dictionary, full of words I already know the meanings to.  I'd still read it, just because you wrote it.  Just to feel like I got to walk beside you in the world for a little while."

Mhin looks over at you despite themself. Your voice is low, tone affectionate difficult to parse over the incessant noise permeating the Wet Wick. They find themselves staring at your lips, as if to read your words despite hearing you clearly.

“You're really the most interesting person I know...  Which is saying a lot, in this city!”  You laugh at yourself, bandaged fingers trailing around the rim of the glass placed in front of you at the bar.  Your face is flushed, pupils dilated.  The longer they look at you, brows furrowed as they try to make sense of your words, the less you seem able to look them in the eyes.

The liquid in your glass is clear.  

Tequila?  Vodka?  Gin?  A stomach wrenching combination of all three, possibly.  Who knows what Leander was willing to put in front of you, if it makes you so…

Mhin huffs, mouth wrenching into a frown. They clasp a hand around the glass in front of you. "I think you've had enough." They must have gone (miraculously) nose-blind from the boozy scent of the Wet Wick because even as they slide the heavy tankard closer to themself, the pungent tang of alcohol is no more invasive than it was prior. They expected to be able to taste the fumes coming off of whatever concoction they just took from you.

"I'm--" You start to protest, but you find yourself cut off when Leander says something that causes the crowded bar to go wild, cheers erupting. One of the Bloodhounds jostles Mhin in their mirth, causing your confiscated drink to upend, contents sloshing over the surface of the bar and soaking the sleeve of Mhin's shirt.

It's water.

You were saying those things while sober.

Mhin's eyes find yours, no attention spared for the slurring Bloodhound beside them. You're looking at them affectionately, lips quirked.

"Would you be mad at me if I told you that you're too cute?" You ask, something far too warm, too inviting in your words.

Mhin is halfway across the bar in a heartbeat, burning red ears gone deaf to the sound of Leander's voice, calling out to them that they haven't picked their pay up yet. They'll get it tomorrow, they think, racing towards the respite of the fresh night air. Away from the urge to--

Mhin doesn't let themself turn to look back at you as they leave. Though they can't stop themself from wondering: if they did, would they see you staring back at them?

Damn Mhin just take the compliment. I made Mhin's about their brains instead of their looks etc. bc while I think mentioning wanting to kiss their beauty mark would fluster them I think this is the type of thing that would absolutely infect their brain.  Have them thinking about those words over and over until it completely ruins their nightly Soulless hunting; they give up & just stargaze all night.

[little-desi-historian]

A listing of 18th Century slang compiled by Leon Bienkowski and posted to the Revlist in 11 installments–last posting in June, 2000

A listing of 18th Century slang compiled by Leon Bienkowski and posted to the Revlist in 11 installments–last posting in June, 2000:

“The terms listed below were mostly gleaned from Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. There is a bit of a nautical bent to this list because of my own peculiar specialty, but there should be plenty of amusing and useful terms for everyone.

Your underly industrious servant,

Lee Bienkowski”

A

Abbess - a woman who is a brothel keeper

Abraham-sham - a feigned illness

Academician - a whore

Cast up one's accounts - to vomit

Admiral of the Blue - a publican

Admiral of the Narrow Seas - a drunk who vomits into a neighbor's lap

Adrift - discharged

Adzooks! - an expletive

Air and exercise - a flogging at the cart's tail

Akerman's hotel - Newgate prison

All Nations - a mixture of drinks from unfinished bottles

Amen-curler - a parish clerk

Amidships - the belly

Anatomy - a very skinny person

Bring one's ass to an anchor - sit down

Anne's fan - thumbing one's nose

Talk like an apothecary - talk nonsense

Apple-dumpling shop - a woman's bosom

Hang an arse - to hold back

Arse upward - in good luck

Ask bogy - an evasive reply

Avast! - Stop!

B

Not to know B from a bull's foot - to be ignorant

Bacon-faced - full-faced

Bacon-fed - fat and greasy

Empty the bag - to tell everything

Heavy baggage - women and children

Bagpipe - a long-winded talker

Bailed man - a man who has bribed the press gang for immunity

Baked – exhausted

Banbury story – nonsense

Bark at the moon - to agitate uselessly

Barnacles – spectacles

Barrel fever - ill health caused by excessive drinking

To grin like a basket of chips - to grin broadly

Bear - a very gruff person

Beer-garden jaw - rough or vulgar language

Bring to one's bearings - cause to see reason

Drink like a beast - to drink only when thirsty

Beau-Nasty - finely dressed but dirty

To go up a ladder to bed - to be hanged

Beef-head – idiot

Beggar-maker - a publican

Belly-gut - greedy, lazy person

Bender - a sixpence

Bird-spit - a small sword

Bit of red - a soldier

Black arse - a kettle

Black cattle - a parson

Give a bottle a black eye - empty a bottle

Blashy - rainy weather

Blood and 'ounds! - an exclamation

Blue as a razor - extremely blue

Blue stocking - a learned woman

Blue tape – gin

Shift one's bob - to move or go away

Bog orange - a potato

To marry old boots - to marry another man's mistress

Bosom friend - a body louse

To have some guts in one's brains - to be knowledgeable

Brandy-face - a drunkard

Brattery - a nursery

In bad bread - in a disagreeable situation

Break-teeth words - words hard to pronounce

Gold bridge - an easy and attractive means of escape

To be stabbed with a Bridgeport dagger - to be hanged

Broganeer - one with a strong Irish accent

Brown cow - a barrel of beer

Brown George - ship's biscuit

Buck fitch - an old lecher

Like bull beef - big and grim

Bull calf - a big clumsy fellow

Bull's eye - a crown piece (5 shillings)

Bung one's eye - drink heartily

Bung upwards - on his face

Butter-bag - a Dutchman

Buttock-ball - a dance attended by prostitutes

C

Calfskin fiddle - a drum

Cant a slug into your breadroom! - have a drink!

Caper - to be hanged

Captain Copperthorn's crew - all officers

Captain Grand - a haughty blustering man

Captain Tom - leader of a mob

Cat-sticks - thin legs

Caterpillar - a soldier

Caulker - a dram

Chalk - to strike someone's face

Chatter-broth – tea

Christened by a baker – freckled

Cinder-garbler - a female servant

Cite stage - the gallows

A house of civil reception - a brothel

Clapper-claw - to thrash someone soundly

Clicker - one who shares out the booty

Closh - Dutch sailors

Coach wheel - a crown piece

Cock and pie! - a mild oath

Coffee-house - a water-closet

Cold cook - an undertaker

Comb-brush - a lady's maid

Comb one's head - to scold

House of commons - a privy

Condiddle - to steal

Conveyancer - a thief

Cool crape - a shroud

Corinth - a brothel

Make a great harvest of a little corn - much ado about nothing

Corporation - a large belly

Cotswold lion - a sheep

Country-put - a silly rube

Covent Garden ague – VD

Crab lanthorn - a peevish fellow

Crinkums – VD

Crown-office - the head

Cucumber - a tailor

Cut throat - a dark lantern

Swear like a cutter - swear violently

D

The dam of that was a whisker - a great lie

Dangle in the sheriff's picture-frame - to be hanged

Dasher - showy harlot

Drunk as Davy's sow - very drunk

Deadly nevergreen - the gallows

The devil among the tailors - a row or disturbance

Devil-drawer - a bad artist

The Devil may dance in his pocket - he is penniless

Diddle – gin

Gone to the Diet of Worms - be dead and buried

Dilly - a coach

Dog Booby - an awkward lout

Enough to make a dog laugh - very funny

Dog-vane - a cockade

Dog's portion - a lick and a smell

Dog's soup – water

Go dot and carry - a person with a wooden leg

Double Cape Horn - be cuckolded

Roby Douglas with one eye and a stinking breath - the breech

Draggle-tail - a nasty, dirty slut

Draws straws - to feel sleepy

Drury Lane vestal - a whore

Duke of limbs - a tall awkward fellow

Dull-swift - a stupid fellow

Die dunghill - die cowardly

Drunk as an emperor - regally drunk

Dustman - a dead man

Dutch concert - everyone plays or sings a different tune

Dutch feast - the host gets drunk before the guests

E

Earwig - a malicious flatterer

Ensign-bearer - a drunkard

Eternity box - a coffin

Expended – killed

To have fallen down and trodden upon one's eye - to have a black eye

F

Hove no-one's face but one's own - to be penniless

Facer - a glass full to the brim

Make faces - to beget children

Faggot - a man hired to appear on a muster-roll

Fallen away from a horse load to a cart load - to become fat

Fantastically dressed - very shabby

Fegary - a prank

Fiddler's money - all small change

Fiddlestick's end – nothing

Finger-post - a clergyman

Fire a gun - introduce a subject unskillfully

To have been fed with a fire shovel - to have a big mouth

Fish-broth - salt water

Flag of defiance - a drunken roisterer

Flag of distress - the cockade of a half-pay officer

Flap with a fox tail - a rude dismissal

Flapdragon – VD

Flash the gentleman - pretend to be a gentleman

Flash it away - show off

Flats and sharps – weapons

Flawed – drunk

Flay the fox – vomit

Flump - an abrupt or heavy fall

Fly in a tar box - nervously excited

Foreman of the jury - one who monopolizes a conversation

Foul a plate - dine with someone

Frenchified - infected with VD

Frig-pig - a fussy trifler

Froglander - a Dutchman

Full as a goat - very drunk

Fustilugs - a dirty slattern

G

Gallied - hurried, vexed or over-fatigued

Gallows – enormous

Game pullet - a young whore

Gammon – nonsense

Gardy-loo - Look out! (Garde l’eau)

Gaskins - wide breaches

Gentleman in red - a soldier

Gentleman's companion - a louse

Melancholy as a gib cat – dispirited

Give one's head for washing - to submit to be imposed upon

Glass-eyes - person wearing spectacles

Glorious - ecstatically drunk

Glue-pot - a parson

God permit - a stage coach

Golden grease - a bribe

To find fault with a fat goose - grumble without cause

Play old gooseberry - play the devil

Gospel-shop - a church

Gotch-gutted - pot-bellied

Grapple-the-rails – whiskey

Green-bag - a lawyer

Greenwich goose - a Greenwich Hospital pensioner

The cat's uncle gringog - a grinning idiot

Groggified – tipsy

Ride grub - ill-tempered

Guinea-gold – dependable

In the gun – tipsy

Gundiguts - a fat pursy fellow

Gut-foundered - extremely hungry

H

Half an ounce - a half crown

Half seas over - half drunk

Hand like a foot - clumsy handwriting

Hang-gallows look - a villainous appearance

Hanktelo - a fool

Swallow a hare - to get exceedingly drunk

Under hatches – dead

Young hemp - a graceless boy

Hempen bridle - a ship's rigging

Hen-frigate - a ship bossed by the captain's wife

Herring-gutted - tall and very thin

To be on the high ropes - be very angry

Study the history of the four kings - to play cards

Old hock - stale beer

Hog in armor - a finely dressed lout

To drive one's hogs to market - to snore

Holiday - a spot left unpainted

It's all honey or all turd with them - they're either friends or bitter enemies

Off the hooks – peevish

Hopper-arsed - large bottomed

Send for a horse ladder - send on a fool's errand

Horse's meal - food without drink

I

Irish apricot - a potato

Irrigate - take a drink

Itchland – Scotland

J

Jack Adams - a fool

Jack in an office - an imperious petty official

Jack of legs - an unusually tall person

Jack Weight - a fat man

Jakes - a privy

Jaw-me-down - a very talkative fellow

Die like Jenkin's hen - die unmarried (Scottish)

Have been to Jericho - be tipsy

Jerrymumble - to shake

Going to Jerusalem - to be drunk

Jimmy Round - a Frenchman (from Je me rends)

Be laid up in Job's dock - be treated in hospital for VD

You are Josephus Rex - you're joking

K

Kerry security - breath the oath and keep the money

Kicksees – breeches

Kill-devil – rum

One of King John's men - a small man

Clip the King's English - to be drunk

Knob - an officer

Knock-down - strong liquor

L

Laced mutton - a whore

Ship the white lapel - be promoted from the ranks

Lazy as the tinker who laid down his budget to fart - very lazy

Cut one's leg - become drunk

Lay one's legs upon one's neck - run away

Lie with a latchet - tell a great lie

Light-timbered – weak

A line of the old author - a dram of brandy

Little house - a privy

Live lumber - passengers in a ship

Live stock - body vermin

Looking glass - a chamber pot

Lotman - a pirate

Louse-land – Scotland

Lumping pennyworth - a great bargain

M

Mab - to dress carelessly

Mag – chatter

Maltoot - a sailor

Man-a-hanging - a person in difficulties

Married to Brown Bess - enlisted in the army

Mauled - exceedingly drunk

Make mice-feet of - destroy utterly (Scottish)

Milk the pigeon - attempt the impossible

Load of mischief - a wife

Who put that monkey on horseback without tying his tail? - a very bad horseman

Monkey's allowance - more rough treatment than money

Mopus - a dull, stupid person

Morris - to decamp

Mourning shirt - a dirty shirt

Look like God's revenge against murder - look very angry

N

Eat one's nails - do something foolish

Navel-tied - to be inseparable

Born on Newgate steps - of criminal extraction

Nip-cheese - a purser

Dead as a nit - quite dead

Make a bridge of someone's nose - pass the bottle past someone

He numbers the waves - he's wasting time

O

Oaken towel - a cudgel

Give one his oatmeal - to punish

Off the hooks – crazy

Old Robin - an experienced person

Open lower-deckers - to use foul language

Overshoes, over boots – completely

Take the owl - become angry

P

Paddy-whack - an Irishman

Cut's one's painter - send a person away

Palette - a hand

Paper-skull - a fool

Parleyvoo - the French language

Parson Palmer - one who slows passing the bottle by talking

Make a pease-kill - to squander lavishly (Scottish)

Penny lattice-house - a low ale-house

To drop off the perch - to die

Peter-gunner - a bad shot

Peter Lug - one who drinks slowly

Pintle-merchant - a whore

Piper's wife - a whore

Tune one's pipes - begin to cry

Piss more than one drinks - said of a braggart

Pitt's picture - a bricked up window

When the plate-fleet comes in - when I get my fortune

Plump currant - in good health

Pontius Pilate - a pawn broker

Popper - a pistol

Prattle-broth – tea

Princod - a plump, round person (Scottish)

Alter the property - disguise oneself

Prow - a bumpkin

Public ledger - a whore

Pudding-bellied - very fat

Pump ship – urinate

Punch-house - a brothel

R

Rabbit hunting with a dead ferret - a pointless undertaking

Rag-water - bad booze

Rammaged - tipsy (Scottish)

Rapping – perjury

Red-letter man - a Catholic

Remedy-critch - chamber pot

Repository – a jail

Rib-roast - to thrash

Ride as if fetching the midwife - to go in haste

Ride the forehorse - to be early

Cry roast meat - boast of one's good fortune

Roast-meat clothes - holiday clothes

Rocked in a stone kitchen - a little weak-minded

Rogue in spirit - a distiller

Royal image - a coin

Rum gagger - one who tells false sea stories of hardship

Loose in one's rump – wanton

Rusty guts - a blunt, surly fellow

Buy the sack - become tipsy

S

Saddle the wrong horse - lay blame on the wrong person

Saddle one's nose - wear spectacles

Salamugundy - a cook

Salt eel - a thrashing with a rope's end

Sandy - a Scotsman

Sauce – VD

Sawney - a Scotsman

Sawny - to whine

Scald - infect with VD

Scandal-broth – tea

Scarlet horse - a hired horse

School of Venus - a brothel

Scotch casement - a pillory

Sea-crab - a sailor

Sea-lawyer - a shark

Settler - a parting drink

Shab-rag - very worn

Shake a cloth in the wind - be hanged

To have been dipped in the Shannon - to be very forward

Shapes - a name given an ill-made man

Keep sheep by moonlight - hang in chains

Sheep's head - a very talkative person

Shifting ballast - soldiers aboard ship

Shiners – money

Make children's shoes - to be occupied with trivia

Shreds - a tailor

Shut-up house - land headquarters of a press gang

Sick of the idles - a very lazy person

Silver-cooped - deserting for the merchant service

Sky-blue – gin

Snabbled - killed in battle

Smart as a carrot - very smartly dressed

Go a snail's gallop - move very slowly

Soldier's bottle - a large bottle

Solo player - a very bad musician

Sot-weed – tobacco

The Sovereign's parade - the quarterdeck of a man-of-war

Spanish trumpeter -a braying donkey

Spoil pudding - a long-winded preacher

Squire of the placket - a pimp

Stiff-rump - a haughty person

Take a stink for a nosegay - be very gullible

Stoupe - to give up

Strip-me-naked – gin

Sunburnt - having many children

Surly boots - a grumpy person

Surveyor of the highway - a reeling drunk

In deadly suspense – hanged

Keep a swannery - to boast

Purser's swipes - small beer

Swizzle – liquor

T

Tallow-breeched - having a large bottom

Tears of tankard - liquor stains on a waistcoat

Tea-voider - a chamberpot

Thornback - an old maid

Three skips of a louse - worth little or nothing

Tickle-pitcher - a drinking buddy

Tiff - thin or inferior liquor

Tilly-tally – nonsense

Tilter - a small sword

Swill like a tinker - drink immoderately

Make dead men chew tobacco - keep a false muster

Tol-lol - pretty good

Tongue enough for two sets of teeth - a very talkative person

Blast your toplights! - Blast your eyes!

Topping man - a rich man

Pay one's debts with the topsail - run off to sea leaving unpaid debts

Tripes and trillabubs - nickname for a fat man

Trunkmaker-like - more noise than work

U

Untwisted – ruined

The Urinal of the Planets – Ireland

V

Vaulting school - a brothel

W, X, Y, Z

As wise as Waltham's calf - very foolish

Wamble - an uneasiness in the stomach

War-caperer - a privateer

Water bewitched - weak beer

Water in one's shoes - a source of annoyance

You have been to an Irish wedding - you have a black eye

Whigland – Scotland

Whisk - an impertinent fellow

Whister-clister - a cuff on the ear

Whither-go-ye - a wife

Wife in water colors - a mistress

Windy – conceited

Wrapt in warm flannel – drunk

Yea-and-Nay man - a Quaker

Znees - frost

Source. Further reading. regency. hardcover edition.

[coquettishbaguette]

Echinacea or cone flower

Gin and Artifice: A Reading Journey with Capote

“And since gin to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara, her attractions at once dissembled.”

I recently started reading “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” I’m always amazed when I come across a book where the author manages to string together sentence after sentence of evocative language, seemingly designed to place you under a spell and drag you into the world of the story. I was enjoying the seemingly effortless way Capote juggled one chainsaw of a sentence with another flaming torch when I was brought up short. One sentence caught me off guard and caused me to stumble over it multiple times.

Not knowing what the issue was, I must have reread the sentence five or six times before halting. Usually, when I don’t understand a statement, it’s because I misinterpret the meaning of a word or a certain turn of phrase. In these cases, simply returning to the start of the sentence and rereading it resolves my confusion. I do this re-reading behavior unconsciously, similar to how I might unconsciously reread a single paragraph over and over because my mind is somewhere else.

But in this case, I just couldn’t grasp the meaning. I almost couldn’t understand the structure of the sentence.

I was definitely brought out of my focused reverie and began the tedious work of having to consciously pick apart the words. Some of the issue wasn’t just my clumsy reading but that the sentence was interrupted mid-flow with a page change. “Tears to” ended one page, and “mascara” started another. But it wasn’t a misunderstanding caused by the bisected sentence as I was just as confused with the sentence joined as it was parted. I noticed that my brain picked up on the possibility that “bears” and “tears” rhymed or that the former was a large, tricksy mammal. But altering the meaning of the words in my head just made things worse. Funnier, but worse.

I was flummoxed. I decided that I was incapable of rising to the challenge Capote presented and decided to call in the hired help. A dictionary would have likely gotten me close, and an internet search might have been helpful back in the olden days when internet searches provided answers and not advertisements. I skipped all that nonsense. I opened ChatGPT and asked it directly what the sentence meant.

It’s interesting that Capote cleverly disguised the structure of the analogy so that the existence of the analogy itself didn’t compromise the reader’s immersion into the story. Stating gin:deceit::crying:makeup would have yanked me out of the story and back to high school studying for standardized tests so rapidly, I might have right then put the book down.

Admittedly, I put the book down right then and wrote about how I felt about the whole thing.

[burningvelvet]

Every Instance of Lord Byron Hating On John Keats, Listed in Chronological Order.

“No more Keats I entreat — flay him alive. If some of you don’t I must skin him myself.”

To his publisher John Murray, 12 October 1820:

“‘I’m thankful for your books dear Murray / But why not send Scott’s Monastery?’ the only book in four living volumes I would give a baioccho to see, abating the rest of the same author, and an occasional Edinburgh & Quarterly – as brief Chroniclers of the times. — Instead of this – here are John Keats’s piss a bed poetry – and three novels by God knows whom [..] Pray send me no more poetry but what is rare and decidedly good. — There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables – that I am ashamed to look at them. [..] – I am in a very fierce humour at not having Scott’s Monastery. – You are too liberal in quantity and somewhat careless of the quality of your missives. – [..] No more Keats I entreat – – – flay him alive – if some of you don’t I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin. – – – – – [editor’s note: ‘dashes degenerate into scrawl’]”

To his publisher John Murray, 4 November 1820:

“They Support Pope I see in the Quarterly. [Let them] Continue to do so – it is a Sin & a Shame and a damnation – to think that Pope!! should require it – but he does. – – – Those miserable mountebanks of the day – the poets – disgrace themselves – and deny God – in running down Pope – the most faultless of Poets, and almost of men – – the Edinburgh praises Jack Keats or Ketch or whatever his names are; – why his is the Onanism of Poetry — something like the Pleasure an Italian fiddler extracted out of being suspended daily by a Street Walker in Drury Lane – this went on for some weeks – at last the Girl – went to get a pint of Gin – met another, chatted too long – and Cornelli was hanged outright before she returned. Such like is the trash they praise – and such will be the end of the outstretched poesy of this miserable Self-polluter of the human Mind [editor’s note: ‘untranscribable scrawl’]. W. Scott’s Monastery just arrived — many thanks for that Grand Desideratun of the last Six Months.”

Note: “onanism” refers to masturbation.

To his publisher John Murray, 9 November 1820:

“Mr. Keats whose poetry you enquire after — appears to me what I have already said; such writing is a sort of mental masturbation — he is always frigging his Imagination. I don’t mean that he is indecent, but viciously soliciting his own ideas into a state which is neither poetry nor any thing else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium.”

Note: “frigging” was slang for masturbation.

To his publisher John Murray, 18 November 1820:

“P.S. — Of the praises of that little dirty blackguard Keates in the Edinburgh — I shall observe as Johnson did when Sheridan the actor got a pension. ‘What has he got a pension? then it is time that I should give up mine!’ — Nobody could be prouder of the praises of the Edinburgh than I was — or more alive to their censure — as I showed in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers — at present all the men they have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. — Why don't they review & praise ‘Solomon's Guide to Health’ it is better sense — and as much poetry as Johnny Keates.”

To his publisher John Murray 26 April 1821:

“Is it true – what Shelley writes me that poor John Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for it – though I think he took the wrong line as a poet – and was spoilt by Cockneyfying and Surburbing – and versifying Tooke’s Pantheon and Lempriere’s Dictionary. I know by experience that a savage review is Hemlock to a sucking author – and the one on me – (which produced the English Bards &c.) knocked me down – but I got up again. Instead of bursting a blood-vessel – I drank three bottles of Claret – and began an answer – finding that there was nothing in the Article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head in an honourable way. However I would not be the person who wrote the homicidal article – for all the honour & glory in the World, – though I by no means approve of that School of Scribbling – which it treats upon.”

To Percy Shelley, 26 April 1821:

“I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats — is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing. Though I differ from you essentially in your estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow! though with such inordinate self-love he would probably have not been very happy. I read the review of ‘Endymion’ in the Quarterly. It was severe, — but surely not so severe as many reviews in that and other journals upon others.

I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress — but not despondency nor despair. I grant that those are not amiable feelings; but, in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he goes into the arena. ‘Expect not life from pain nor danger free, Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee.’

You know my opinion of that second-hand school of poetry. You also know my high opinion of your own poetry, — because it is of no school. [..] I have published a pamphlet on the Pope controversy, which you will not like. Had I known that Keats was dead — or that he was alive and so sensitive — I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his own style of writing.”

To Percy Shelley, 30 July 1821:

[First page missing] “The impression of Hyperion upon my mind was – that it was the best of his works. Who is to be his editor? It is strange that Southey who attacks the reviewers so sharply in his Kirk White – calling theirs ‘the ungentle craft’ – should be perhaps the killer of Keats. Kirke White was nearly extinguished in the same way – by a paragraph or two in ‘the Monthly’ – Such inordinate sense of censure is surely incompatible with great exertion – have not all known writers been the subject thereof?”

To his publisher John Murray 30 July 1821:

“Are you aware that Shelley has written an Elegy on Keats, and accuses the Quarterly of killing him?

‘Who killed John Keats? / ‘I,’ says the Quarterly, / So savage and Tartarly; / ‘Twas one of my feats.’ / Who shot the arrow? / ‘The poet-priest Milman / (So ready to kill man), / Or Southey or Barrow.’’

You know very well that I did not approve of Keats’s poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of Pope; but, as he is dead, omit all that is said about him in any M.S.S. of mine, or publication. His Hyperion is a fine monument, and will keep his name. I do not envy the man who wrote the article; — you Review people have no more right to kill than any other footpads. However, he who would die of an article in a Review would probably have died of something else equally trivial. The same thing nearly happened to Kirke White, who died afterwards of a consumption.”

4 August 1821, to his publisher John Murray:

“You must however omit the whole of the observations against the Suburban School – they are meant against Keats and I cannot war with the dead – particularly those already killed by Criticism. Recollect to omit all that portion in any case.”

To his publisher John Murray, 7 August 1821:

“All the part about the Suburb School must be omitted – as it referred to poor Keats now slain by the Quarterly Review — [..] I have just been turning over the homicide review of J. Keats. – It is harsh certainly and contemptuous but not more so than what I recollect of the Edinburgh R. of ‘the Hours of Idleness’ in 1808. The Reviewer allows him ‘a degree of talent which deserves to be put in the right way’ ‘rays of fancy’ ‘gleams of Genius’ and ‘powers of language’. – It is harder on L. Hunt than upon Keats & professes fairly to review only one book of his poem. – Altogether – though very provoking it was hardly so bitter as to kill unless there was a morbid feeling previously in his system.”

To Thomas Moore, August 27th 1822:

“It was not a Bible that was found in Shelley's pocket, but John Keats's poems.”

From his poem Don Juan Canto Eleventh written October 1822 and published August 1823. He was going off the popular gossip shared to him by Shelley (who believed it), which was that Keats health had sharply declined due to receiving bad reviews:

“John Keats, who was killed off by one critique, / Just as he really promised something great, / If not intelligible, without Greek / Contrived to talk about the Gods of late, / Much as they might have been supposed to speak. / Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate; / ‘Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, / Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.”

To his publisher John Murray, 25 December 1822:

“As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in – but I have lived in three or four – and none of them like his Keats and Kangaroo terra incognita – Alas! poor Shelley! – how he would have laughed – had he lived, and how we used to laugh now & then – at various things – which are grave in the Suburbs. You are all mistaken about Shelley – – you do not know – how mild – how tolerant – how good he was in Society – and as perfect a Gentleman as ever crossed a drawing room; – when he liked – & where he liked. – – – – –“

The excerpts above are taken primarily from Peter Cochran’s transcriptions.

[fatehbaz]

In the 19th century, British colonists faced several challenges in India, [...] [including] malaria. [...] The imperialists needed an answer to the problem and they found it in quinine. [...] [T]he British promptly embraced quinine, consuming tonnes of it every year by the mid-1800s. [...] Quinine was so bitter that soldiers and officials began mixing the powder with soda and sugar, unwittingly giving birth to “tonic water”. [...] [I]t prompted Winston Churchill to once proclaim, “The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire.” [...] If by some good fortune malaria did not claim them, plague, cholera, dysentery, enteric fever, hepatitis or the unforgiving sun could. Preserving and protecting the body was [...] crucial to the success of the colonial project. As historian EM Collingham aptly summarised in her study, “The British experience of India was intensely physical.”

One way the colonists tried to deal with this challenge was through food and drinks. “The association between food and the maintenance of health was a concern of Anglo-Indian doctors, dieticians and the British authorities throughout the duration of colonial rule [...],” writes Sam Goodman in Unpalatable Truths: Food and Drink as Medicine in Colonial British India. [...]

---

The Medical Gazette, for instance, recommended treating dysentery with a “low diet” comprising thin chicken soup [...]. Botanist-physician George Watt too extolled the virtues of sago. In A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (1893), he wrote that sago is “easily digestible and wholly destitute of irritating properties” and in demand [...]. For fever, weakness and sundry ailments, beef tea [...] was considered an ideal remedy. And for cholera, The Seamen’s New Medical Guide (1842) prescribed brandy during the worst of the sickness and half a tumbler of mulled wine with toasted bread and castor oil [...]. Ship masters and pantrymen would stock their vessels with foods with known medicinal benefits such as sago, arrowroot, lime juice, desiccated milk and condensed milk (the iconic Anglo Swiss Condensed Milk tins, later known as Milkmaid, enjoyed a permanent spot on British ships).

---

Businessmen too recognised the precarity of life abroad and realised that therein lay a perfect commercial opportunity. By the 19th century, numerous companies had cropped up across Europe, including in England, that would sell food in hermetically sealed tin containers.

One of these was Messrs Brand & Co. Recommended highly in Culinary Jottings for Madras by Colonel Robert Kenney-Herbert, Messrs Brand & Co had several offerings [...]: essence of beef, concentrated beef tea, beef tea jelly, meat lozenges, [...] potted meat, York and game pie, and A1 sauce [...]. Another company, John Moir & Sons, focused mostly on canned soups [...], selling oxtail, turtle, giblet and hare.

---

By the late 19th century such was the popularity of canned foods that rare would be the pantry in a colonial home that didn’t store them along with medical provisions like opium, quinine, chlorodyne and Fowler’s solution (an arsenic compound). [...] As Flora Steele and Grace Gardiner wrote in The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, “A good mistress will remember the breadwinner requires blood-forming nourishment, and the children whose constitutions are being built up day by day, sickly or healthy, according to the food given them; and bear in mind the fact that in India, especially, half the comfort of life depends on clean, wholesome, digestible food.”

To assist the British woman in this ostensible duty, there were a number of cookbooks and housekeeping manuals [...]. The Englishwoman in India, for instance, published in 1864 under the pseudonym A Lady Resident, had a whole section with recipes for “infants and invalids”. These included carrot pap cooked into a congee with arrowroot [...] and toast water (well-toasted bread soaked in water). Steele and Gardiner too had a few recipe recommendations [...], including champagne jelly (“most useful in excessive vomiting”) and the dangerous-sounding Cannibal Broth (beef essence), which they said should be consumed with cream [...] to treat extreme debility and typhoid. [...]

---

One dish born of this encounter was the pish pash. The pish pash is considered an invention of the colonial cook, who adapted the kedgeree – the colonial cousin of khichdi – into a light nursery food. The famous Hobson-Jobson defined it as “a slop of rice soup with small pieces of meat” [...]. None other than Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of Bengal, gave confirmation of its efficacy when in 1784 he wrote to his wife from the sick bed [...]. There are enough records to show that the imperialists counted marh (starch water from cooked rice) and bael (wood apple) sherbet among their go-to remedies and benefited from the medicinal qualities of chiretta water and ajwain-infused water.

---

All text above by: Priyadarshini Chatterjee. “How food came to the rescue of the British in India.” Scroll.in (Magazine format). 26 April 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[tenth-of-july]

is it over now?

How am I supposed to come up with new words out of over 600,000 entries in the Oxford dictionary just so I could avoid reusing all of what you left me? How do you explain the same type of pain that has lashed through your body over and over under a million times already? Would I be able to showcase the limit of my abilities through this piece? Can I recycle the words I used such as how devastating it was when your silhouette is still ingrained in the back of my mind to the point where I could spot you first in a room full of people under an already unusual day? Or how I remain breathless and unmoving in the coffin that you helped me build? All of these jumbled up letters that form into words meant to describe and relate to what I feel or have felt, will lie meaningless by the end of my point as its taste will subside but uncomfortably linger like the improperly flamed gin I mixed with grape juice to memorialize the morning I first saw you after a year of wanting to erase the traces of us from the capabilities of my episodic memory that right now, am unfortunate to have—from your face, to your voice, and down to the specific way your head would turn when you get to hear me call your name. What else is there to write other than the repetition of my woes and my alliterated miseries written between the lines of my poetry? 

How do I tell someone the fortuities hidden beneath this one encounter, perfectly timed at the 375th day (precisely a year and ten days; the tenth day, being the date of our parting) since that damned birthday party with the same drink I concocted and the similar restaurant where we had our first date? How do I tell someone that even after I chose to ignore your Christmas greeting last year, even after my third “last entry” about you in my journal, I still feel you cutting through me—and not in a way that someone would expect. Usually, it could mean that I yearn for you again, that I would like to talk it through and maybe change your mind if I were to gamble with my luck—But no one could ever be more wrong if they were to assume that to me. The closest word I can provide is torturous. My heartstrings, already tangled and unkempt outside the shells of every body system that any human being should encompass, beaten and tugged away yet again. When I walked through the door in that fast-food restaurant to escape from the pre-afternoon heat outside, I knew it was all over when the glint of your glasses led me to a spiral all those months ago. I looked away just when you noticed me walking in, your brows lifting in surprise and I think we had that same thought of, “Why now? On the last day of the semester? Just a year after?” I wanted to let you know that I knew we were in the same room that day, but then what? What would I do if I were to ever acknowledge you and the months that have passed without even a word from each other? That I forced myself to ignore your greetings in holidays because I was afraid of bursting? I sat behind your table, your back completely within my gaze, and I felt like I consumed a whole bottle of vodka at the sight of you trying to find my face through the front of your camera. I wanted to throw up and purge every drop of blood that was inside of me because you have already taken everything and what else was there left for me to keep but my organs and its vessels? This sudden pull occurred in the most agonizing way possible, happening in the blink of an eye—or more accurately (and quite literally)—in the blink of your eye. And now, I am forced to accommodate the fact that you remain constant on the soil where I stand as well. 

[scotianostra]

Robert Garioch Sutherland was born in Edinburgh on 9th May 1909.

His father was a painter and semi-professional fiddler and his mother a music teacher. Young Robert was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh, graduating MA (with honours) in English Language and Literature in 1931. He won the Sloan Prize for verse in Scots in 1930.

During the Second World War Garioch served in the Royal Signals, but was a prisoner of war between 1942 and 1945 - the subject of his moving memoir, ‘Two Men and a Blanket’. Both before and after the war he worked as a school teacher in the London area, a profession he later took up when he returned to Edinburgh until the mid-1960s.

Robert Gairloch then became a lexicographer on the 'Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue’, and was also a transcriber at the School of Scottish Studies. He was appointed Writing Fellow at the University of Edinburgh in 1971.

Garioch had met Sorley MacLean at Edinburgh University, and poems by both appear in 17 Poems for 6d, published by Garioch. Scots was spoken in the family home and Garioch wrote mostly in Scots all his writing life, but as somewhat of an outsider to the Scottish Renaissance – he was never part of MacDiarmid’s crowd. His Scots was not dictionary-bound in the way MacDiarmid’s was but while he based it on his spoken Edinburgh Scots dialect, he was happy to borrow whatever he thought appropriate. He cared deeply about the craft of writing and was adept at many different verse forms, especially the sonnet, which he used ‘with unsonnet-like tonalities’

Not only writing about Edinburgh, he also tackled larger themes. ‘The Wire’, for instance, is a long allegorical poem on death and imprisonment, based on his time as a prisoner of war; ‘The Muir’ explores science and religion. Both a wee bit too long for the poems I like to read.

His main impact was achieved through his well-crafted shorter poems. My type of verse, nothing too challenging, that keep my attention, which I admit often wavers, my school reports a testament to this, often had the words “Easily distracted” written on them.

Serving as wry observations of Scottish life, especially in Edinburgh, the poems retain a large fanbase to this day, and Garioch is remembered with an inscription in Makars’ Court outside the Writers’ Museum. The Aberdonian poet Roderick Watson said Garioch’s poems “(were) ‘the brilliant fusions of Humanist and modern observer which have established his reputation as one of the greatest of modern Scottish poets.’

He died 26th Apr 1981 in Edinburgh aged 71.

I've cosen this poem because I too have spent many times in Canongate Kirkyard at this Edinburgh Makar's grave.

At Robert Fergusson's Grave

Canongait Kirkyaird in the failing year is auld and grey, the wee rosiers are bare, five gulls leam white agin the dirty air: why are they here?  There's naething for them here.

Why are we here oursels?  We gaither near the grave.  Fergusons mainly, quite a fair turn-out, respectfu, ill at ease, we stare at daith - there's an address - I canna hear.

Aweill, we staund bareheidit in the haar, murnin a man that gaid back til the pool twa-hunner year afore our time.  The glaur

that haps his banes glowres back.  Strang, present dool ruggs at my hairt.  Lichtlie this gin ye daur: here Robert Burns knelt and kissed the mool.

[floofiestboy]

📌

External Links

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my translations

my commentary

my colourings

my creative pursuits

Character Tags

Detective Conan

akam

Rei: #c: if only I could forget you...

Akai: #c: men will wear aprons

WPS

Hiro: #c: normal only by comparison

Matsuda: #c: like a cold wintry wind

Hagiwara: #c: like a firework

Date: #c: I'll make a man out of you

Akai Family

Masumi: #c: she's just my type

Shuukichi: #c: shogi is surprisingly versatile

Mary: #c: look it's normal to ingest random pills

FBI

James: #c: there's an operative named bourbon?

Jodie: #c: turned out my dead wife faked his death

Camel: #c: akai-shaaaan!!!

Detective Boys

Conan: #c: six going on sixteen

Haibara: #c: living in spite of you

Ayumi: #c: I want to call you ai-chan!

Teitan High Schoolers

Shinichi: #c: sixteen going on six

Ran: #c: please karate chop your bf

Eisuke: #c: if you're not my sister then die

Magic Kaito

Kaito: #c: get that fish away from me

Hakuba: #c: a holmes outfit counts as casual wear

Nagano Trio

Yui: #c: give up is not in my dictionary

Kansuke: #c: I got an X too geez!

Koumei: #c: as swift as the wind

Japanese Police

Megure: #c: too many detectives in this town

Takagi: #c: number one malewife

Sato: #c: will personally kill every explosion

Yumi: #c: is not ready for the akai fam

Kazami: #c: deserves a pay raise

Black Organization

Gin: #c: the reason the org needs hr

Vodka: #c: henchman of the year

Vermouth: #c: a secret makes a woman woman

Kir: #c: an ally did appear

Chianti: #c: anti-vermouth fan club president

Rum: #c: the worst rum suspect

Kansai

Hattori: #c: kudo kudo kudo

Okita: #c: it's no fun without hattori-kun around

Momiji: #c: shinoburedo

Kazuha: #c: who's this kudo girl?!

Other

Yukiko: #c: nephew of the grandfather of the c-

Akemi: #c: nothing's stopping me from robbing a bank

Mouri: #c: smartest guy ever when asleep

Naomi: #c: stalking my childhood crush is normal

Haro: #c: *barks*

Disco Elysium

Harry: #c: what exactly is a *billion*?

Kim: #c: won't find another like him

The Greatest Estate Developer

Lloyd: #c: gonna take care of you until the day we end

Javier: #c: I want to see you laze around and grow old

[choiette]

A list of Chinese Given Name Characters to make names from (in Cantonese +Korean Pronunciation) [List in next post]

Introductory Notes: Unlike given names in Europe, Sino-Korean (Japanese names also follow similar trends but I believe they're slightly different) names work very differently in regards to how they're formed. For one, there are not many strict rules for creating a given name. - You can use a single character as your name such as the Korean poet Yi Sang (李箱). - It can be a two character name such as Chóu Gwong-kai (徐光啓). Two character given names can be further subdivided, - There are two character given names that create a combined meaning like Gin-gwok (建國) - to build a country. - There are two character given names where they have two related but separate meanings like Hong-man (康敏) - healthy and smart/ agile. - There are two character names where one character is a generational name denoting which generation a person was born.* For example, Yi Kwang-chae (李廣梓), Yi Chae-yóng (李梓穎) share Chae (穎) as a generational name denoting that they are in the same generation. Thus the following list is an collection of popular characters used for given names across Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia (I apologise for the Koreans, finding information on popular characters used for Korean names has been difficult if not impossible). By no means is this a strict list nor will it apply to every Sino-Korean name that exists - Whilst this list is sorted into Masculine-Feminine-Neuter categories These are based on what popular characters were used to name boys and girls. Neutral itself was just separating the characters that were used in both cases. Likewise these characters aren't always strictly used for either gender, it really depends on the trend and country. So mix and match to your hearts content. - I have used my own romanisation for both the spelling of Cantonese pronunciation and Korean pronunciation of the characters. I shall post these at a later date but for now here's a quick guide: + Cantonese: - "á" represents a long "ah" sound (ipa /aː/) - "é" represents an "eh" sound (ipa /ɛ/), also to denote a sound change from -it, -ing and -ik - "ó" represents an "oh/uh" sound (ipa /ʊ/) - "ú" represents an "uu/oo" sound (ipa /yː/) - "óu" represents an "ou" sound where the "u" is pursed (ipa /ɵy/) - lastly the initial ng- has been omitted. + Korean - "ó" represents the "eo/ŏ" sound - "ú" represents the "eu/ŭ" sound - The list of characters were collected from NameChef if you wanted to check out the proper list by region, - I have also given rather basic meanings or meanings I like for the characters, but for the a better definition I suggest you check out MDBG Chinese Dictionary. *Japanese names do sometimes follow the trend of all of the above, but they also have their own quirks such as using non-kanji based names or special endings that denote gender, for example -ko (-子) which is strictly used for feminine names.

[shiawasekai]

Gotta say it's fun to see people's last googled words and meanwhile i'm like, "wait, mine would be 実繰り"

(Which means ginning, albeit a slightly less popular way to say it from what i've inferred so it's not in the usual dictionary I use)

[storyofmychoices]

You deserve a nice ask and all the good and beautiful things. I hope you have the best of days and the best of weekends. You are marvelous!! I wrote you a little gift <3

The amber liquid sparkles as I twirl the cut glass tumbler delicately between the fingers. The firelight glows golden when filtered through the bourbon. Somehow the flames make the drink burn hotter and taste smokier than they would normally be.

Or maybe that’s just the quality of the bottle, I think to myself as I glance at the worn label beside my dark green leather chair.

Whatever the case may be, liberating this bottle from the side table in some long forgotten corner of this godforsaken palace had been the best idea and one that still draws a smile to my lips.

I’m beginning to think it’s the tiny jabs and small victories that will be the only thing to see me through this investigation.

I watch, mesmerizing by the refracted light.

It would be easy to find myself disappeared or poisoned in this country.

I look at the liquor again. This is how I’d hide poison. No one would smell death over the pain. Who knew death smelled of almonds and entitlement?

How did I find myself here? I wonder.

How’s that film saying go?

Of all the gin joints…

I sigh. This line of thought ain’t entirely healthy. But fuck if it ain’t true.

Of all the cases to come across my desk, of all the penthouse I could’ve walked into, of all the rich royalty I could have crossed paths with, it had to be him.

Why the fuck did it have to be him?

I finish off the bourbon. It’s a bit of a not all together unpleasant burn. Reminds me I’m alive somehow and, even more so, reminds me just how easily this could be my last case.

Our last case.

I look up to find him still studying the lab report Ruby dropped off. Countless medical books and, I chuckle, a pharmaceutical dictionary laid open as well.

“I just don’t know about this?” he says still concentrating on the report.

“I imagine you don’t know a lot about anything,” I tease. “You probably had your bread buttered on both sides since the day you were born.”

He looks up surprised, but grins when he sees my smirk.

“Why, Lilah, are you messing with me?”

“Me? Never, doll,” I wink.

lksjdf I absolutely love love love this! (even if it's a bit angsty) AHHH

^^^ totally mean when I opened this and started reading, knowing fully well the wonderful person behind the words and the lovely vibe you brought me.

Me to you always ^^^^

I will reblog again in the morning with a proper reblog because I have lots that I need to share about this! (but for now, my puppy has decided that I don't need time for myself to reply to this appropriately!... at least he's cute! ) I didn't want to not reply today so here is my initial thank you post! With many more thoughts coming soon!

Thank you my wonderful friend for always being so lovely and generous!

[rabbitcruiser]

World Cocktail Day 

Host or attend a cocktail party and try out some new flavors, or perfect your hand at mixing any number of drinks, from a White Russian to a classic Cosmo.

“No party is complete without cocktails! My friends all have different tastes when it comes to their drink of choice, so I like to maintain a well-stocked bar with different kinds of alcohol to keep everyone happy.” ~Khloe Kardashian

One of the best ways people get together and bond over life is through drinking. For a fun night out, cocktails provide a wide arrangement of scents and flavors to keep everything exciting and have a long history of becoming a steady staple in people’s lives. So, let us dive right in and see what World Cocktail Day is all about.

History of World Cocktail Day

In 1806, The Balance and Columbian Repository coined the term “cocktail” as a stimulating liquor with a wide variety of sweets, waters, and bitters. Originally, the Oxford English Dictionary defined the term with a different set of connotations, describing it as a horse with a tail like a cock’s, with its tail cocked up instead of hung down.

Cocktails as a drink, however, started as a British invention in the 19th century and has since become an American innovation when a Connecticut-born bartender Jerry Thomas wrote the book “The Bartender’s Guide.” The Bartender’s Guide basically broadcasted an encyclopedia of how to mix drinks and recipes on some of the best combinations of drinks and flavors.

During the 1920s American prohibition, many cocktails were mixed into existence that remain firm favorites today. With not much high-quality alcohol available, cocktails were the perfect way to make that smuggled rum, gin or whiskey just a little bit more drinkable. Enter the cocktail; rum mojitos, the Sidecar, and the Tom Collins all flourished at a time when recreational alcohol wasn’t legal.

The ‘Bee’s Knees’ cocktail was actually created to mask and sweeten the taste of illegally brewed bathtub gin. The roaring twenties took the cocktail and shook it up into some of our most popular modern-day cocktails. Drinking didn’t stop during the prohibition, people simply went underground. Many illegal speakeasies popped up, serving cocktails in jazz-style locales.

Post-prohibition saw the invention of drinks that still grace the pages of your favorite cocktail bar menus. 1954 saw the mixing of the Pina Colada in Puerto Rico when Ramon Marrero created the delicious pineapple treat at the Caribe Hilton hotel. 1988 saw the much-loved Cosmopolitan enter our lives, thanks to Toby Cecchini and his desire to share a drink with his fellow bartenders in San Francisco.

A constant throughout the cocktail era in America was the Rainbow Room. Opened after the prohibition in 1934, the Rainbow Room was a high-end club where New York A-listers could celebrate in style with post-prohibition cocktails. The Rainbow Room was revived and renovated in different forms over the years, being closed during WWII and for various restorations.

The 1987 reopening saw emerging mixologist Dale DeGroff create a pre-prohibition list of cocktails that revived some firm favorites and spearheaded the modern cocktail mixing revolution that made the cocktail bar increasingly popular.

The holiday itself is held annually by Drinkaware, a United Kingdom-based charity that brings awareness to the effects of drinking and aims to reduce the harm that drinking can have on people and families. The website provides facts and information about drinking, alcohol poisoning, and alcohol abuse. The World Cocktail Day page that Drinkaware hosts have events all over the world that you can partake in, a blog you can follow about your favorite recipes, and how you can drink safely while also having fun.

How to Celebrate World Cocktail Day

If you’re up for a night of fun drinking, then host a party at your place and mix up some of your favorite drinks for your friends. If you want to spice things up, check out a new recipe on some of your favorite blogs or newsletters, and make your kitchen or bar into an experiment place for you and your friends.

If you’re feeling confident, you could create your own home bar and serve some of your favorite fizz-fuelled cocktails, or make your own cocktail creations with a fresh twist. Give your bar a theme and add your own unique names to your new mixers. Treat yourself to a cocktail bible and teach yourself how to make the perfect passionfruit martini or rope in your own bartender friend for some mixology advice.

If you are creating your own home bar and are jumping in as a novice bartender, you could start with a classy cosmopolitan or cheeky sex on the beach. Why not take a theme to a whole new level and take your new bar theme to a party level. Whether you’re making a sneaky speakeasy or a chic cocktail bar, making it your own is the perfect way to celebrate World Cocktail Day.

You could even avoid doing the work yourself and enroll in a cocktail class for you and your friends. Learn from the best shakers and master mixologists. Don’t want to leave the house? Why not use an online video or order a beginner’s pack right to your door. Or splash out on an inhouse mixing masterclass (calling all bartender friends again).

You might be more of a cocktail connoisseur than a master mixologist. Why not get some of the good stuff mixed for you, so you can sample some delightful cocktails without having to actually make them yourself. Put on a cocktail-themed film, sip your mojito and feel like you’re in the summer sun.

Source

[bleachbleachbleach]

Once more in Library Mode--I appreciate your patience and answering all my questions very much--I am imagining how the awful mishmash of library items in the Library Space Station you mentioned works and it's a delight. The card catalog alone would be amazing, if perhaps something of a stream of consciousness after Aizen and Ukitake upended the place looking for clues. "Mission reports (Madarame and Ayasegawa)--cultivation of rice, pre-Gotei-13--soil analysis of Hueco Mundo--seed catalog (some seeds still in)." I bet they still have a card catalog. Also who do you suppose actually works in the library? Were they victims of Aizen? Is it a joint effort between Squads Nine and Twelve, and then the SRDI? Did Tousen and Aizen and Gin pretend to be librarians and give everyone the wrong answers to their reference questions on purpose? What a villainous act.

I would LOVE to watch a local news special spotlighting the stalwart work of the Gotei librarians! Like, can you imagine that interview. Can you imagine interviewing the head librarian as she explains the process of deciding what the taxonomies of knowledge are and what the map of subfields, overlapping categories, etc. are? And that's even before the interview with the head librarian emeritus, who was there when the deep magic was written?

It's not about librarians, but one of the anime series of all time is The Great Passage, which is based on a Shion Miura novel about a group of officeworkers and the ten years they spend developing a dictionary--THE dictionary. It's about the profound thoughtfulness required to ensure no word goes missing, even amidst employment changeover, the shifting needs of the publishing house, etc.--and to write definitions of things, concepts, ideas that speak to the true heart of what that thing really is. Imagine doing that for the ghost military. Imagine the kinds of things getting catalogued.

And YES to a seed catalogue with seed samples!!! A library of things!! The three- (or four, or five) dimensionality of the archive!

(lmao what if technically Muken is not a classified as a prison; it is part of the library system. It's a technicality, mostly--municipal infighting about property rights, the fact that the library and working at the library actually requires more training and expertise than working in a Gotei prison, etc., But after the Winter War, Aizen is not a prisoner; he is an archival object. And he has his own call number. There is a librarian whose entire job is to record, classify, and preserve, every memory and figment of thought they can squeeze out of him.)

[wuxiaphoenix]

Colors of Another Sky: Mending a Nation Follow-up

Some neat comments on that last bit! There were so many good questions I thought I’d put together a lengthy reply here, because it’s all connected and things get complicated.

First, let me give you the framework I’m building all of these plans off of. And that’s Jason Finn, retired historian (ahem encouraged to quit), 58, of Irish, Scots-Irish, and general American mutt extraction, who is an expert in Tokugawa-era Japan and a hobbyist in the Little Ice Age. None of this makes him any kind of expert on Joseon-era Korea.

(Which is just as well, because they’ve had a few centuries of oddly divergent history anyway.)

Jason does have a lot of patchy info on this time in Korea as it intersected with Japan (a major trading partner) and as the whole area was affected by the Little Ice Age (floods, frosts, baking heatwaves, droughts, dragons, locusts, horrible crop failures all over the place).

Outside of that, before he took this little trip, he tried to get down a basic vocabulary of modern Korean, plus all the hangul characters. And because he is from Florida he made sure he learned the word for shark, hoping he’d never have to use it. Oops.

Sure, he brought plenty of books... on an e-reader. Physical books are heavy. The e-reader may or may not be recoverable. Until he knows that he’s got maybe two physical books on Korea besides the dictionary, and they will be of limited use. He also has an (ahem, almost) fourteen-year-old fan of k-dramas.

...I can hear you facepalming from here. Go ahead and laugh. Even Jason thinks it’s kind of funny.

So. A bunch of points, in no particular order.

First, cotton is at this point in time already a major crop and fabric through the entire peninsula. Almost everybody wears cotton; even some yangban, in the summer. Though they tend to wear more ramie and linen.

So my best guess is that anything that made growing and harvesting cotton easier (not just the gin, there’s getting better seed germination, killing pests, keeping the soil fertile - a host of things!) would result in not more effort thrown into cotton, but more into growing silk. Everyone wants silk.

Silk-raising takes a lot of skill and care, to the point it pretty much requires workers get decent food, clothing, and rest. Or your whole crop of silkworms is ruined. Add that to, a large part of the thing about yangban owning nobi was not how much work they could get out of them, but the status of owning that many nobi. They have no need to work people into the ground, if they can make more profit setting nobi to other tasks.

...Speaking of silk, once Jason has a grip on where and when he is (and gets over the panic), he’s going to come up with a plan to rescue a particular town of silk workers in China. Famines are on schedule to wipe them out, and the few that in our timeline survived to flee to other regions couldn’t take their large and heavy looms. An entire style was lost.

While we’re on the subject of weaving.... powered looms and spinning machines were some of the first serious impetus for industrialization, often starting with water power. A steam engine can be put in a wider variety of places to be useful, but it requires fuel. Fuel is in short supply! Most of that available on the Korean Peninsula is wood, or charcoal. I’ll need to do research into nearby regions, but I can assure you Jason would have absolutely no clue where to look for fossil fuels outside of “I know Japan mines them, and that’s a bit far to ship....”

The existence of magic and how it works does allow for the possibility of steam engines. But it’ll take some creativity. And maybe a few booms.

About mass armies taking over versus small elite armies... I hate to break it to whoever didn’t know this, but Northeast Asia has had mass armies going at it since well before 600 A.D. The Imjin War involved lots and lots of gunfire!

Low interest loans to farmers would help. Interest could go up to something like 50% in this time and place, and bankruptcy doesn’t exist. Hence people ending up having to sell themselves to cover debts.

...And this circles back around to part of why I made Jason Irish. He has a personal historical connection to bad agriculture, bad leadership, bad debts, the horrible consequences of the Little Ice Age on food production (the potato blight was one), and people having to flee a system that would not let them pick themselves up and try again. He’s planning to make things better.

And yes, that’s going to include translating various concepts. The ones in the Declaration of Independence are going to be shocking....

As far as a reading list goes, I started from Everyday life in Joseon-Era Korea (ed. Michael D. Shin), worked my way through the Wikipedia bits on nobi, and started searching outward across the internet by way of people blogging on sageuks (historical k-dramas) and open access articles on JSTOR about Joseon, the Imjin War, and nobi. (thetalkingcupboard.com has a lot of good stuff on Joseon history and cultural setting.)

[chateautangerine]

@goldfanged for: send “📔” to read an entry from my muse’s diary about your muse (accepting)

He came to me as wakefulness teething on the corners of a dream, and we met in the parking lot by old Santori’s where I found flowers on the ground — the remains of lost love.

Dark hair, Irish coffee;

Thick eyebrows, bushels of thistle;

Unusually tall, 6’4”-6’6”; 

Four gold teeth;

A scar along the side of his neck. I imagine the horn of a great bull cleaving into him and of hooves against earth. Matador.

Below the rainclouds, he looked to be the Undertaker with his dark mane but eyes rampant and savage with loveliness.

His name is Theo.

Stay strong, matador.

[ another passage ] 

I’ve boned up reading the dictionary and cleaned a glass of gin. Theo is odd. He disappears in the night like a werewolf.

Little red riding hood...

Here's a passage for you:

Under the wide, glowing eye of a merciless moon he bellowed as his bones crunched and his hair thickened and spread until he was clothed in it. The evening sun declined before him beyond an endless swale and the dark fell here like a thunderclap, his crouching body snapping among the crickets and the gnashing weeds. This was his becoming. A thing that can not come back. He hunted a nearby town with its mudshacks and domes until there was not a soul save he, and he was lost of himself and not again in all the world's turning would he return for upon the dawning of the east, he found he delighted in it, and he did not weep.

Although I doubt he'll tear into anyone. Why won't he call me?

[ another passage ]

Theo tells me he used to be in love. Or maybe I asked him - although I can't rightly say why.

He sounded torn up about it — I believe he's still in love with whoever left him by Santori's. Speaking of: why do I get the feeling he sees through me? Does he see through me? He's very perceptive — and never tells what's on his mind.

I'm fond of him. Very much so.