#and ill have to go through the list (though i recognise some titles) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

daecheonsa · 16 days ago

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STARRING: The Watcher. FEATURING: Oh Byeongsang, Gu Yonghyung, Ji Yooseob, Jang Kitae, Shin Hwihun, Omori Shogo, Salome Mari, Song Sasung, Jung Kijung, Park Heejin. WORD COUNT: 10k. CW: There is a very brief and very vague mention of dieting, but it's barely there at all. Factual and non-descript mention of drugs, and open judgement of those who struggle with substance abuse - this is also over pretty quick. Other than that, I don't think anything requires a warning, but let me know if you spot something I've missed!

ㅤㅤㅤTHE SPECTACLE opens with an ill performance of dynasty. Your phone screen flashes through archival footage of a bunch of idols nobody has heard from in a while, and your first instinct is to roll your eyes. The lineup on offer starts out impressive, but the clips begin to move quicker as the years goes on. Names flash across the screen, and not one of them has appeared on the charts in the last five years, but you do recognise them, which is probably the point of this.

The audio cuts between songs at a dizzying pace, but the only ones you remember are the ones from over a decade ago. You remember them from when you were a kid. They played at your birthday parties and you danced to them at school festivals. Sang to them on the bus on the way to your first school trip. You think you’re supposed to be thinking back of those days with fondness, and it’s supposed to be filling you with so much nostalgia that you’ll immediately invest yourself in the poor boys you’re about to meet, but instead it makes you feel a little bit sad.

How had Ohjang Entertainment fallen so low?

When the show finally gets done reminding you of B-thru-D-list celebrities, it abruptly cuts to a shot of Oh Byeongsang, in some luxury looking office that you imagine has to be paid for by money laundering. He gazes creepily down the camera, with a prideful look on his face, as if reacting to what we’ve all just seen. He looks so much older than you remember him, and it’s kind of jarring to see him with grey hair. Surely he has a son or a nephew old enough to dump the company on by now, you think. No way he’s actually still running it.

“People are going to expect this group to fail.” He says. You can’t help but laugh at the bluntness of it. The camera pans in on Byeongsang’s aged face as he smirks. It sends a shiver down your spine. “That’s exciting.”

You scoff as the episode launches into its opening credits. You’d expected melodrama from this show solely from the fact that it was called GOD SAVE THE DAMNED, in all capital letters, but this was already feeling like a lot. You do kind of like the title song, even if the credits themselves seem a little unnecessary for a YouTube series. You’d already known that, though. Unfortunately, stupid as this whole thing already seems, you have an obligation to keep up with DAM.NATION. That’s what this group is called, by the way. DAM.NATION. In all capital letters.

You know that already because earlier in the month it came to your attention that Ohjang Entertainment were debuting a new boy group. That news alone was bizarre enough to you, because it seemed so utterly pointless. Last time they were in the news, they’d been trying to find buyers for their company, and failing. The time before that, they’d disbanded their final group with a two sentence notice. Just as you were wondering; ‘why even bother,’ you’d discovered the title of their reality show. You’re sure it has something to do with the dark and spooky concept the group seems to have, but it comes across so bleak and pessimistic that it made you laugh. So you wrote a mindless article about the new boy group, mostly just hoping to foster some harmless mockery in the comments.

It had backfired, though. It turns out that, for a bunch of weird reasons, people are interested in the trainees at Ohjang, and the article got more traction than you thought it would. Now, your boss wants you to review GOD SAVED THE DAMNED. To do that, you need to do the one thing you really hoped you wouldn’t, and actually watch it.

As the opening sequence comes to an end, we’re back in Byeongsang’s office. It seems to be a different day, as his tie is a different color.

“I don’t take offense when people say that Ohjang Entertainment isn’t what it used to be. I’m under no delusion about the state of my company.” He says, with a serious look on his face. “Ohjang produced some of the greatest artists of the first and second generations, but as times changed and the industry became more diluted, it was difficult to keep up. We were swept away in the wave.”

You’re not exactly sure what emotion they want you to be feeling, but for some reason you imagine how it must feel to be DAM.NATION’s parents, sitting at home and watching this. Their kids wanting to be idols at all must be a headache to begin with, and ‘my son is going to debut under Ohjang Entertainment’ can’t be an easy thing to say with pride in 2024. It’s just salt in the wound for the guy in charge to stare down the camera and say, ‘yeah, this is going to be a mess.’

“But something I pride myself on is that I can spot talent. If there’s one thing I excel at, it’s putting together a team.” Byeongsang says. Once again, the screen is filled with Music Bank stages of the past, and you’re given another quick briefing on the company’s former groups. Not one of them remains signed there; in fact, by all accounts, DAM.NATION are the label’s only act. They even have the audacity to include poor Bouquet, which only serves to make you notice that they were excluded in the first sequence.

Bouquet was disbanded because of constant lineup changes. You can’t help but laugh, so you pause the video to make note of that thought. If nothing else, it’ll make a good tweet.

“Over the past few years, I’ve put together six candidates. As of now, there’s no guarantee that all of them will make the debut team, though I have confidence that all of them have the potential to.” He finally seems to be getting to the point, and in spite of yourself you start to feel a little anticipation. You can’t help but be interested in who these trainees are. If the comments on your last article are anything to go by, some of them are already mildly controversial, and on average they seem a little old for a rookie group.

You’re glad of that; it’s refreshing to watch an idol group debut without feeling like a senior citizen, but you also can’t help but wonder what they’re planning to do in a couple of years, when the members start enlisting. Quickly, though, you suppose that Ohjang probably can’t afford to dream as far ahead as that anyway.

“Some of these boys are ready to debut, and some are not.” Byeongsang continues, tone grave. “Some have been training together for years, and some have been with us for a matter of months. I have a vision for these kids, and I’ve put them together for a reason, but we can’t debut an unpolished group. If they don’t pass the next couple of evaluations, they’ll be cut from the lineup.”

The camera cuts to an angle behind Byeongsang’s shoulder, where you can see six pieces of paper laid out upon his desk.

“The divide in skill happens pretty evenly down the middle.” He says. His voice sounds unnaturally clear, like obvious ADR. “We’ve three who are great, and three who are getting there.” As he speaks, he reaches out to turn over one of the pieces of paper. The camera just lingers long enough to get a glimpse of a face that you swear you’ve seen before, and then it cuts. Suddenly, you’re in a practice room that you remember from a ton of dance videos you watched in 2016, and staring at the back of a boy who sits on the floor, breathing heavily as a mess of legs dance around him, their top halves out of frame.

“The best of the bunch,” Byeongsang’s post-production vocals are piped in over the footage as the boy twists around until you can see his face, palm hitting wood as he readies to push himself upwards. “Is no stranger to any of this.”

Across the screen flashes the name YONGHYUNG.

As Gu Yonghyung rises out of frame,the background music launches into the familiar chorus of Giddy Up, the theme song of the 2019 survival show NextUP. Everyone watched that show; it spawned NBT- Next Big Thing, one of the five thousand groups to have featured now-star Cairo Go. They’d been aptly named. In just two years, they’d topped the charts thrice, appeared on just about every notable variety show you could think of, debuted in South Korea, Japan and America, and sold out Tokyo Dome and Seoul Olympic Arena. You remember NextUP, you remember NBT - and so you know that Gu Yonghyung wasn’t there for any of that. He’d been the sole representative of Ohjang and he’d made it all the way to the end just to lose out at the final stretch. They’d sent him right after disbanding Bouquet, which you can remember being a big scandal. As if it had been an act of disrespect for this random trainee to continue pursuing his career instead of giving up before he started, in solidarity with women he’d probably never even met.

The hate train hadn’t lasted though, and for most of the show, it seemed likely that he would make the cut and get into the group. When he didn’t, he had looked so crushed and injusticed that his teary lack of applause had been heartbreaking enough to inspire an entire investigation into the way they’d been counting votes, but from what you know, nothing had ever come of it. Yonghyung had worked peripherally ever since; you knew he was around and doing stuff, but none of it ever hit your radar, because it was pretty much anything and everything but releasing music. You had just assumed he’d probably cut his losses and signed to somewhere else. That he’s still under Ohjang is baffling to you. You have to wonder just what kinds of promises they’d made to these boys.

“Hey,” From a studio, Yonghyung greets the camera, after a small montage of his moments on the NextUP. He still looks about the same; a little older, a little thinner and a lot more tired, but the boyish, lopsided grin he gives is still the one that had once had all of your peers gushing and racing to download the app and spend all of their points on voting his name. There’s a swift cut to a closer shot, with just his head and shoulders in frame. “It’s been a while.”

“Yonghyung is ready to debut.” Says a dance instructor, as the camera cuts back into the practice room from before. A subtitle tells you that you’re being spoken to by Ji Yooseob, Dance Coach/Choreographer. You don’t recall ever hearing of him, but it’s not like you look into choreographers very often. He looks fairly young, though, and he’s teaching at Ohjang, so the likelihood is that he’s not someone people have really heard of. “He’s been ready for a long time. So it’s true that, at this point, he’s kind of stuck waiting for the other boys to catch up. For a lot of people, I think that could be quite demoralizing.”

While Yooseob speaks, we’re given some b-roll of Yonghyung interacting with the others; most of them have hats pulled over their brow, or masks on, or are just moving too quick for you to take attendance. “But not Yonghyung,” comes Yooseob’s voice, over a clip of Yonghyung laughing along with the others, clapping the little one- you think that’s Shogo- on the back as they move into their formations. “I’ve never seen him come to practice without a good attitude. He’s the ideal student, really. He’s good at motivating the other boys; whether that’s through being a good friend to them, or just giving them a standard to compete against.”

“What do you think I’m going to tell you?” Asks the version of Yooseob that you can see in the footage, rather than his disembodied voice. It’s a new scene, only the pair of them remain in the practice room. Yooseob sits in front of the mirror; Yonghyung stands in front of him. The camera closes into his face just long enough for you to see a droplet of sweat fall from his jaw.

“I don’t have a personality.” Yonghyung answers, flatly and without any emotion. Yooseob snorts, looking taken aback by the words.

“No,” He laughs. “I’d never say that about you. I know your personality. Every day, when you’re laughing with the boys, or listening to my feedback, you show it to me. But when you’re dancing…” He quickly splays his fingers out, as if mimicking a cloud. “Poof. Yonghyung is gone, and all that’s left is angles and math. You’re at the stage now where you have to forget about perfecting everything and start thinking about how to use the moves to communicate something to your audience.”

Yonghyung nods, eyes cast downwards as he takes the critique. “Yes, sir.”

Yooseob looks at him for a few seconds, face thoughtful. “What do you want to say?”

Yonghyung looks up at him, an expression like a deer in headlights. “Sorry?” He asks, off guard.

“What do you want to say? When you get on stage, and your fans watch you perform again, what do you want them to think? You’re training to be an idol, right? Not just a singer, not just a dancer, an idol. So when people ask ‘What makes Gu Yonghyung an idol?’ …What do you want the answer to be?”

With each ticking second, Yonghyung seems to grow more upset. He stares forward and doesn’t answer until Yooseob raises his eyebrows, impatience flashing across his face. Yonghyung hangs his head again, and says, “I don’t know.”

“Well. There lies the problem.” Yooseob shrugs, pulling his phone out of the deep pocket of his Chrome Hearts hoodie. “That’s the wall you’ve hit. If you want to keep making progress, you’re gonna have to figure out a way over it.”

Yonghyung nods again, with a frustrated look in his eyes; the camera angle chosen specifically to capture it. You can’t help but think it all sounds like nonsense. By the end of NextUP, Yonghyung already sang, rapped and danced at a high standard and he’d had years of training on top of that now. Besides, you’ve already been told he’s debut-ready. Nobody really cares what his personality is like; nobody expects to ever receive a true, unfiltered display of it, either.

You consider the fact that it may just serve Ohjang Entertainment best for Yonghyung, who carries in his basket every last egg they own, not to build up too much self esteem.

“Run through it once more, and then I’ll let you go. You’re filming today, right?” Yooseob asks. Yonghyung nods, and so he says, “Well, you should also think about the fact that some of the new skills you’re learning while acting may be transferable here.”

The camera lingers on Yonghyung’s frustrated face for a few seconds. His own voice precedes the cut back to his shot in the studio. “They keep giving me the same critique. Month after month.” He sighs as the camera reaches him, eyes cast downward as he wrings his hands. “I perform well, but I’m not showing enough of my personality. It makes me feel so stupid. I don’t understand what it is they want me to do.”

“Yonghyung has talent, but more importantly, he has brand recognition,” Byeongsang says, as we’re suddenly back in his office. He offers the camera a broad smile. “I wouldn’t say there’s anything that Yonghyung needs to improve on. However, he is a necessary player on this team. And so it’s imperative that his critiques remain aspirational, because if left to stagnate, I fear it’s quite likely that he may feel he has outgrown us and begin to look around for other opportunities.”

You can’t help but laugh. You want to think that you can’t believe that he would admit such a thing outright, but unfortunately, you very much can. If you didn’t find him to be so loathsome, you may be impressed by his complete, smiling lack of shame.

You’re taken sharply to a recording studio, where Yonghyung records his bridge in Boy Comics, the track you’d just heard in the intro. He’s having trouble finding the key, and it cycles through a few cuts of him messing up before a frustrated sigh tears through him and he buries his face in his hands.

“Just get Shogo to do it.” Comes his voice, muffled and defeated behind his hands.

“There’s no time to even get him here.” The producer says. They’ve been filming from behind his hooded head, but as he speaks, they cut to a shot from his desk. His name pops up on screen, but you don’t need to read it. You pause the video, a hand falling over your brow. Jesus Christ, this group really was destined to be a trainwreck.

Mid-frame, the slightly blurry face of Jang Kitae (Artist, Producer, informs the subtitle, which you suppose is one way to describe him) is void of emotion, the same usual heavy bags under his eyes and greasy hair. Of all the people in the world. You shake your head, and press play again.

“We’re hours behind schedule, Yonghyung. Sasung has been waiting outside for hours. You’re both late for dance practice now, so we need to get this quickly ‘cause your managers are getting pissed at me.”

“Then can Sasung hyung just do it?” For a second, the frame lingers over Yonghyung’s shoulder, and when it cuts back to behind Kitae, you can’t help but notice the camera man standing behind him in the already tight booth. You wonder if it occurs to anyone that that may affect performance.

“No,” Says Kitae, tone and expression still blank. Yonghyung’s face pulls downwards in stress as he tosses his head back. “You’re the one people care about, and it’s the big moment of the song.”

“But hyung, I can’t change my vocal range on the spot, how am I supposed to-” Yonghyung cuts himself off as the camera man in the booth tries to shuffle past to film him from the front, comically large camera coming ridiculously close to his face in the process. We see from its lens as he sighs roughly, shoving at the camera slightly and backing up. “Can we please just, for five minutes, turn these things-”

As the camera cuts off abruptly, discomfort begins to settle in your stomach, and you shuffle out of the tension. Why are they showing you so much strife, right from the beginning? Didn’t Byeongsang say this was the best of the best?

The camera had cut to Jang Kitae, in a confessional shot set up in the same studio. You’d assume it was filmed the same night, because he’s in the same clothes, but he looks like the kind of guy who’d stay in the same clothes for a few days at a time, so who knows. He’s been talking, but you have a proclivity for tuning him out, and you realise that you haven’t listened to a word he’s been saying. This is work, so with a roll of your eyes, you skip back to the beginning of his confessional.

“Yonghyung is extremely dedicated.” Kitae says, “There’s not many of these boys taking an interest in production yet, but Yonghyung has had really strong opinions on their sound from the beginning. If he doesn’t need to be somewhere else, he’s in the studio. That kid is always working on something, or trying to involve himself in what I’m doing. You got some pop-stars in this group of boys, and you got some who just like to sing and dance, but then in the middle you got Yonghyung, and he’s like, a musician.”

What a fucking asshole. He wipes under his nose, quickly, and you shake your head again.

“The thing about Yonghyung is, though, that he cracks under pressure. And he’s been cast in this new drama, so there’s a lot of that now.” As if they don’t expect their audience to believe him, they show us some PR footage of Yonghyung in a school uniform, holding a heat pack up to the cheek of another boy in slow motion, with orange tinted sunlight sparkling through the springtime trees behind them. You don’t recognise the other actor, and it seems to boast the standard production value of a moderately well-made YouTube video. A little subtitle in the corner tells us that the clip was taken from Heaven On Earth (2023), which is interesting, because it finally dates this show.

From what you’ve pieced together from endless nights of scrolling in desperation for context on this weird boy-group you’ve been assigned to, all of Yonghyung’s public schedules halted after the Warrior video was posted a year ago. That means they’ve been sitting on this docuseries for around a year, which probably shouldn’t strike you as all that strange, but you did think it was going to answer the question of what DAM.NATION have been doing since their introductory Warrior cover, not what they were doing before it.

“The drama itself is taking a lot out of him. Like, juggling filming with practice is a lot to handle, but then in the show he’s playing a gay guy, so there’s this portion of his fans who are crazy offended by that. What was it called? BL?” Kitae is given confirmation from someone off camera, and he nods gruffly. You note that he still appears a little dead behind the eyes, and has yet to communicate an emotion. “So there’s this pressure from them, too. I say screw them, if a role on a TV show is the final straw, but I don’t think he’s ever really had his fans tell him he’s letting them down before. Ohjang told all of us- I guess mentors is the word, they told all the mentors to go a little hard on Yonghyung for a while, and I try, but it feels cruel. I mean, you keep telling someone they’re doing bad when they’re not, they’re obviously just going to hit a point where they give up.”

You’re a little taken aback. Although you suppose it seems impossible for Jang Kitae to be trusted not to say things he shouldn’t, you’re surprised Ohjang is allowing open criticism of them in a video uploaded to their own official platform.

“It feels like it’s just gone, like,” We’re back in the studio, where a choked up Yonghyung now sits at the soundboard with Kitae. He flattens his hand and slides it diagonally up into the air, reaching a peak a few inches out from his nose and gliding it back down the other side. “For months I’m top rank, and it’s always just, like, no notes, no notes, ‘you’re definitely going to be our main rapper’, and now suddenly I just can’t do anything right. Like, I’m down to getting the worst critiques, consistently.”

“They’re being harsher on you because they consider you the best trainee.” Kitae says, swaying his chair in a way that almost completely obscures his face. That’s when you realise that the quality of the shot is weird, and you wonder for a few seconds if they’re aware that they’re being filmed at all. But the way that Yonghyung’s chair is positioned is almost like he’s cheating to camera, and you dismiss the idea completely as you remind yourself of the likelihood that everything you’re seeing is completely scripted at any rate.

“Well, how’s that fair?” Yonghyung asks, sounding a little more petulant than you’re used to him ever sounding on NextUP. “What’s the point in being the best, then?”

Kitae doesn’t dignify the question with a proper response, just gazes emptily forward as usual, mouth never fully closed. “You’re not the best. There’s not one trainee here who is consistent enough across every category to be the best. It’s all too many variables right now, for people to start categorising things like that. Shogo has you beat in singing, but he can’t do what you do when you got a camera pointed at you.”

“Push them out of the way?” Yonghyung asks, dabbing at his eyes with an unenthusiastic laugh.

Kitae leans back in his chair, pursing his lips. “Nobody expected you to make it that far on that show. The odds of anybody from Ohjang making it were nothing. But you got to the end cause you can make people like you. The advantage you have over the other boys, and the thing that makes the boss think you’re the best, is that I think you know what makes a good idol and you really care about being that. I think, based mostly on the fact that you’re strong-arming your name onto the credits of all of my songs, that you have a real investment in this music being good, and you want it packaged and delivered like a proper, old school idol should do it.”

Yonghyung looks at Kitae for a few moments, unsurely, and sniffs. “Of course I want it to be good. That’s why I’m so frustrated and upset right now. It’s like they’re setting it up to fail, now. If it’s so important that I sing this part of the song, why can’t we change it to be in my range? And why am I singing so much, anyway? I was supposed to be the rapper, and now-”

“It’s not about range. I wrote it for you. You learned how to sing by copying guide tracks, and you think it’s not in your range because they don’t make you sing like this very often. But I’ve done a thousand voice lessons with you guys at this point. I know what you can do. The reason you can’t sing it is because you’re trying to sing it pretty, and it’s not supposed to be pretty. It’s supposed to be spiteful.”

There’s silence for a few seconds. “Just tell me, hyung, was this all just for the cameras? We both know you’re going to autotune me anyway.” Yonghyung sits forward with a lowered tone, and you lose a little faith that they’re aware there’s still a camera rolling.

Kitae kind of makes a face, and almost looks disappointed. A few awkward moments pass; a weird cut in the middle implying that it lasts longer than you’re made to sit through. You feel like you’ve already sat through an age of this conversation. When are the pretty boys going to start dancing? Yonghyung just cries to himself, and for a second, the reality sinks in that you’re watching GOD SAVE THE DAMNED, in all capital letters, the reality show about the boyband DAM.NATION, in all capital letters. And all of this grief and introspection is over a tiny little bridge in a song named Boy Comics. You’ve heard the song, and Yonghyung sounds fine on it. You’ve watched enough of these shows to know the set up for a found-my-confidence arc when you see one, but Jang Kitae giving impromptu MNET survivor therapy is a pretty insane opening for a show designed to build hype around a boyband.

You’d started this show with a rather positive, though dispassionate, opinion on Gu Yonghyung, but right now, you’ve yet to see him do much more than whine and question instructions.

“You know what I think locked you in?” Kitae asks. You sigh, but resist the urge not to skip forward. “Like, the thing that made people remember you after you were eliminated?” He leaves it there, but Yonghyung doesn’t try to guess, or anything, so a few awkward seconds pass. More and more, you begin to feel as if you’re committing some kind of intrusion. “You didn’t clap. That [REDACTED] was rigged and you didn’t clap for the winners in the end.”

Yonghyung looks at him as if he’s grown another head. You already feel a little pity for him. Most NextUP contestants hesitated to even acknowledge they were even on the show, lest they be branded ‘sore loser’ and descended upon by Go Cairo fans. Those people certainly didn’t need reminding of who inspired the investigation into the authenticity of his win to begin with. “I’ve regretted that ever since that day. That was the stupidest thing I ever did.”

“No. That was golden [REDACTED] television. You got the last word.”

“It’s really nothing to be proud of.” Yonghyung says. “All of the effort I put into being professional went to waste in a second.”

“You kept your chin up. I guess that’s my whole point. I just think you need to think about that, instead of thinking about what the idols you liked at thirteen did, or the things you think made the NBT guys get picked. I’m not just inflating your ego, I’m saying all of this ‘cause I think what’s going on up here,” Kitae jabs at the side of his head with his index finger a few times. “Is that you’re all wrapped up in being ‘An Idol.’ And you’ve given that this rule of, like, perfect, and polished, and impossible to scrutinise. And you’ve got that down to an art, dude. But this part of the song needs impact, it needs some real, genuine feeling put into it, and it’s because I’m asking for that that you’re freaking out and convincing yourself you can’t do it.”

Yonghyung rubs at his eyes, sniffling as he simply nods his head. Kitae sighs, and slaps his knees as he stands.

“I’ll go distract Sasung for a few minutes. You stop crying, then get to dance practice. I’ll get up early tomorrow to get this finished if you will. But we’re running out of time. So it needs to be finished tomorrow.”

“Thanks, hyung,” Yonghyung mutters weakly. Kitae ruffles his hair as he passes him on the way out.

“What Yonghyung can offer a team in terms of musicality and notoriety is valuable.” Says Byeongsang, back in his office. “But when it comes to performance, he lacks command. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; any strong team needs balanced members like Yonghyung. But if they want to stand out, they also need an ace.” He turns over the next photograph. “So the most instrumental member of the team will be the centre.”

The camera cuts to a practice room. A familiar sample is pushed through tinny speakers. A gasp of breath warps and repeats as the lights flash upon the back of another trainee. Everyone in the country knows this song. And so none should be surprised when, as the first beat of Coming of Age Ceremony drops in and with it bends the young man’s knees, the name HWIHUN fills the frame.

You watch as, for a few minutes, Shin Hwihun follows the iconic choreography to a song he must have been born knowing the steps to. He dances well, but you can’t help but roll your eyes. Nothing had come across as more scripted or forced so far, than this moment right here.

You could give him props, if you really wanted to. Each angle is hit immaculately, his facial expressions never drop, eyes cast downwards at the instructor, haughty and hooded. Shin Hwihun is a good dancer, and easily, you could find praise for him with which to pad out the article you’re going to have to write about this episode. But you won’t do that, because you don’t particularly want to find the good in him.

His mother, the artist behind Coming of Age Ceremony, as well as a hundred other recognisable hits, is Na Younghwa. Before a couple of years ago, his presence in this group might have been enough to give them a fighting shot all on it’s own, but that was before Na Younghwa went to jail for getting caught with narcotics. Once upon a time, her fans would make post after post daydreaming about the day the cute little baby on her hip would follow in her footsteps and ring in a new era of idols.

It’s been some time since anybody waxed hopeful about Hwihun that way, and even longer since they would have cared to see him dancing to his mom’s inappropriate song. The apple never falls far from the tree. If they want you to tell him he sings like Na Younghwa and waacks like Na Younghwa; why should you bother expecting him to behave any less like a spoiled delinquent?

“Of course, reputation precedes Shin Hwihun,” Byeongsang says, back in his office, pulling his face into a complicated expression. “That can be a good thing, when the goal is to make a person famous, but I suppose the difficult part is that that reputation is not necessarily his own. And so some of the public opinion surrounding him is, unfortunately, not based on anything he himself has done. Hwihun’s… family issues are not unbeknownst to us. And as brutal as it may sound, we did need to carefully measure the benefits of keeping him within this lineup. After all, the troubles of one member will ultimately affect the entire group.”

Byeongsang smooths his hand across the obscured portraits, a grim expression on his wrinkled face. You’re aware that it would be a pointless endeavour, to try and get around addressing Na Younghwa, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t expecting Ohjang to try. Even mentioning her vaguely seems like a step too far, but you suppose that if there is anything you’ve taken from this show it’s that it seems intent on talking about things it probably shouldn’t.

“But at the end of the day, I believe Hwihun has everything it takes to be a star on his own merit. Regardless of whatever judgement you may have come to pass on anybody else, one can still objectively look at the situation and see that Hwihun had no involvement. One does not choose their family. He came to audition with us with a genuine desire to debut, and so in my opinion, he’s as deserving of a shot in this group as anybody else.”

And by now, you think, anybody who hadn’t made the connection between Shin Hwihun and Na Younghwa has had ample time to google his family and find out what the hell Byeongsang is going on about. All this yammering was doing nothing except making sure that any potential supporter of this group is aware, right from his introductory title card, that this boy is surrounded in scandal.

But he has an earnest desire to debut, so of course Ohjang Entertainment, who’s role in his management includes PR, would lead with the fact his mother is a drug addict. Because he’s the damned. (Sorry, you mean THE DAMNED.) Is that really the concept? Is this record label really stupid enough to debut a group that nobody will want to support on purpose?

Perhaps that’s why they’re all approaching enlistment age and all Gu Yonghyung has done so far is throw tantrums. You don’t doubt that these six boys have put real stakes in this group and genuinely want it to do well, and so for an overwhelming few seconds you become angry. You pause the video and wonder if this is exploitation and if you should be partaking in it.

Only partially because of the paycheck involved, you waver before you can close the video. Is k-pop really so jaded, or are you?

There is a chance that you have approached GOD SAVE THE DAMNED with bias. After all, if nothing else, they’ve given you a brutally honest view of the project already. You don’t often get that anywhere else, nor do you often get to see idols in such distress. Before a second has passed, there’s a thousand clickbait titles running through your head. People love to read about idols being mistreated, and they love to think they’re discovering the dark, hidden unseen of the idol industry. People are coming to you to read about DAM.NATION; for whatever reason, the topic at hand is serving you content on a silver platter. You know that, whether you like it or not, you need to write about this show. And so, you need to watch it.

You hit play.

You’re taken back to the dance studio, where Yooseob regards Hwihun, who’s now finished his performance of Coming of Age Ceremony, with a critical gaze.

“Why this song?” He asks.

“Well,” Hwihun says, standing before him, puffing out a laugh, eyes flickering towards the camera for just a second. “Best to just get it out the way, right?”

Yooseob sucks his teeth, eyes dropping down to his notes as Byeongsang’s voice is once more funnelled over the scene.

“Hwihun has a certain understanding that you just can’t teach. Perhaps it’s a benefit from being born in the game, but the things that Yonghyung has spent years honing - how to present oneself, how to intuit what an audience wants to see from you… they come naturally to Hwihun. He might not be the strongest singer or dancer on the team, and when he raps, it’s honestly a little funny. But he has the presence of a star. Frankly speaking, that makes those things not matter as much.”

“This is an evaluation.” Yooseob says, flatly. His eyes fall on Hwihun once more, who doesn’t let his smile drop for a second. “I’m well aware that you can dance to Coming of Age Ceremony. But you’re being judged on your ability to debut in a boyband, not how well you can perform as a Na Younghwa tribute act. I’d have liked to have seen you do a more recent idol choreography.”

Hwihun’s lips don’t drop from the curve he’s frozen them in, but there’s a shift in his eyes; something akin to annoyance. “Well, play an idol song and I’ll dance to it for you.”

Yooseob stares at him with a stony expression. A few moments tick by - both of them just look at one another, the camera cutting back and forth, and you can’t help but laugh as Yooseob eventually breaks the silence with a sigh. “The other boys didn’t get to change their song. I need to evaluate you based on what you presented to me. Would you like to do another run through of Coming Of Age Ceremony?”

“Will it affect my ranking if I do?”

Yooseob snorts. “I don’t imagine so.”

And, still with a sickly sweet expression, Hwihun bows deeply. “Then I won’t take up any more of your time. Thank you, seonsaengnim.”

“Yeah. Send Shogo in on your way out.”

“Nobody wanted me to do this less than my mom,” comes Hwihun’s ADRed voice, as we watch him strut out of the practice room, leaving an unimpressed Yooseob behind in the studio without so much as a backwards glance. As the glass door swings shut, we smash back to the studio that Yonghyung was in, where Shin Hwihun now sits, tucking a lock of long, inky black hair behind his ear. He is handsome, you’ll give him that. It was as if they’d cloned Younghwa - and for as much as you dislike the woman, there’s no denying that she was one of the most stunning faces this industry had to offer. “I wanted to be an idol since I was a tiny little kid, but I wasn’t even allowed to bring up the idea of auditioning for a label. I guess she knows better than anyone how hard this industry can be. But when I became an adult and still wanted to pursue it, she eventually gave her blessing. I came to Ohjang when I was nineteen, which would have been… 2018? Or maybe 2019, I think I just hadn’t had my birthday yet. Only Yonghyung has been here longer than I have. I have to admit, I didn’t think I’d still be training five or six years later. I kinda thought… well, I really don’t think I should say this, but I’d expected nepotism to come into play a tiny bit. I think it’s pretty clear to see that I’m not offered much special treatment here. They really make me work to prove that I can be a name of my own.”

“Hwihun’s good,” Yooseob says, as we’re abruptly thrown back to the dance studio for his own confessional. “But he runs the risk of resting on his laurels. Whenever he sees that he’s getting ahead of the other boys, he pulls back his efforts. It shouldn’t be a huge problem, but he, Yonghyung and Shogo are kind of aspirational to the other boys. Not only does it set a dangerous precedent for them to see the most consistently high ranking boys slacking off, but if they perceive someone like Hwihun, who has so many connections and such public interest behind him simply for being born, to be coasting by, then their motivation to perform well can totally plummet. Yes, the skills of being an idol come naturally to him, but the work ethic is a whole different story, and I’d argue that that’s far more important in the long run.”

Just from having seen shows like this before, you can only imagine that whatever work ethic is lacking in Hwihun will be discovered before the end of episode three. But still, it strikes you as an odd way to introduce a highly anticipated rookie to fans who have been eagerly waiting to see what he can do.

When the scene changes, they finally show you a new location. You seem to be looking at a very small, very cramped dorm room, the space in which is primarily taken up by a set of bunk beds and one twin bed. Yonghyung lounges on the single bed, watching something back on an iPad and lazily eating out of a bag of potato chips that’s been torn open and left on the nightstand. On the bottom of the bunk bed is Hwihun, animated in some kind of muted discussion, helping himself to the chips as well. Above him is another boy - you can see him clear enough to be sure it’s Shogo this time, though nothing appears on the screen to introduce him just yet. He lies straight, mostly under his bedsheet, tapping away on a cellphone, seemingly taking no interest in the mundane conversation below him. They’re filming from the top corner of the room, which means that, although you can see all three boys, you can’t really see any of them from an optimal angle.

“-So yeah, anyway, Yooseob got mad at me for doing my mom’s song, but… Iunno, if I didn’t do it now I’d just have to do it later. How’d yours go?” Hwihun asks. Yonghyung deflates, dropping his iPad on the bed. You get a quick glimpse before he clicks the screen off, and see what looks to be six boys in a dance studio, so you assume he’s monitoring some kind of rehearsal.

“Same as always, I’m technically good but I have no personality.” Yonghyung grumbles, seemingly still in no better of a mood than you’ve seen him in so far. Hwihun laughs.

“Dude, they’re just making stuff up to critique us for.” He says, shaking his head, though Yonghyung doesn’t seem any more convinced than he did when Kitae was the one saying it. “There’s no chance they debut this group without you.”

The words seem to give Yonghyung pause, and he turns to face Hwihun properly. “You really think they’re gonna cut any of us? This late in the game?”

“Yeah, Heejin.” Hwihun nods bluntly. That’s a name that’s never cropped up in your comment section, so you take note of it. It hadn’t escaped anybody with even the slightest interest in DAM.NATION that, of the boys who appeared in the Warrior video, there were only five names to put to six faces. Four out of six already had some kind of entertainment experience or were otherwise notable, but two were total strangers. Still, the budding fanbase had managed to track down Shogo and find out, at the very least, his name and birthday already - so the fact that the sixth boy was left a total mystery was especially odd. As far as you’re aware, this is potentially the first reliable piece of information about him. “Who I hear, by the way, has a major bee in his bonnet that you’re being allowed to film a drama, and he was told no.”

“Did you hear what Sasung-hyung was saying earlier?” Yonghyung changes the subject quickly, through a mouthful of potato. “Apparently the top three rankings this month are gonna get some kind of benefit.”

“All the more reason for him to have it out for you.”

Yonghyung snorts, quirking an eyebrow, but for some reason, still seems reluctant to discuss the topic of Heejin. “Yeah, but knowing this place, a special ‘benefit’ probably just means that they’ll be allowed to eat lunch for a while, or something.”

Hwihun laughs humorlessly, popping a chip in his mouth and crunching it down loudly as he shuts his mouth. “Still, who do you think will be the top 3 this month?”

“You two for sure,” Yonghyung shrugs, pausing for a second as his eyes drift around the room thoughtfully. “Ordinarily, I’d say Kijung, but…”

“We weren’t allowed to rap this time.” Hwihun finishes, in a comprehending tone. “Yeah, he’s screwed.”

“So it’s probably Sasung-hyung in third.”

Hwihun gives him a doubtful look, but seems to let whatever he’s thinking pass. “What about you, Sho?” He asks instead. When no answer comes, he rolls onto his back and kicks up roughly at the mattress above him to get the other boy’s attention. Shogo pushes himself upwards, pulling an airpod out of his ear that you hadn’t noticed was ever there and leaning over the railing of his bed to regard the others.

“Huh?”

“Top three,” Hwihun repeats, as he pushes himself back up to sit on his backside and leans forward, straining his neck to meet Shogo’s eyes. For good measure, he holds up three fingers. “Who do you think it’ll be?”

Shogo hums. Because he’s looking down, you can’t see his face anymore, but they don’t bother switching the angle of the camera. Once more, you start to feel a little weird. They do know they’re being filmed, right?

“Us.” Shogo says, simply, almost as if Hwihun had asked something stupid. For good measure, he adds, “Duh.”

“There’s no way I’m above four this time,” Yonghyung shakes his head. “I totally flopped in my eval, and I held back the Boy Comics recording for hours. Sasung-hyung sings well. He’ll be third.”

“Maybe,” Shogo counters, “But either way, you don’t have anything to worry about. The fact that we’re recording songs at all now means that we’re debuting soon. Jang Kitae sunbaenim is, like, an actual famous celebrity, if they’ve got him mentoring us then that means they’re starting to get serious. It can’t have been cheap to get him on board. They’re not gonna do something like that wastefully. And when we do debut, they’re gonna need you if they want anybody to tune in at all.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Hwihun agrees. “Plus, between the three of us, you got all your bases covered. Main vocalist,” He gestures to Shogo, “main rapper,” to Yonghyung, “and main dancer,” to himself.

Yonghyung makes a complicated expression, sliding further down the bed as he mutters, “I suppose,” and it sounds as if there’s going to be more to it, but before he can get it out, there’s a hammering on the door.

“Manager’s gonna be here in five!” Calls a male voice, which you can only presume is one of the other trainees. As if they’ve been shocked, the boys shoot upright. Yonghyung rushes to gingerly pick up the chips by their torn packet, balancing the pile precariously on the bag as Hwihun hastily pulls open the top drawer of the nightstand for them to be dumped into, closing it with a slam as Shogo pulls up the corner of his mattress, balancing his cellphone on one of the slats of his bed frame and letting the mattress fall back down with a thump.

Although you usually wouldn’t, you smile. It’s kind of endearing to see idols breaking the rules, when the rules are so mundane.

“Of course, when you’re dealing with a singing group, stage presence and survival show appearances can only get you so far.” Byeongsang, once more, feels the need to ruin the scene. They smash back to his office with no shame, as if the mood wasn’t finally picking up a little. His hand hovers over the third portrait, hovering as if for suspense. “The main vocalist is a key role in any group. There are plenty of good singers amongst these boys. But we’re aiming for excellence. There’s only one boy that comes close to that.”

You’re taken back to a recording studio. From behind, a boy speaks out a soft ‘Ah-ah,’ into the mic, and then begins to trill his voice, and make all sorts of odd noises that you can only assume are vocal warm-ups. Through the glass of the recording booth, you make out the glamorous face of Salome Mari - one which fills you with a great deal more confidence than that of Jang Kitae’s.

Salome produced most of Bouquet’s later stuff, the stuff that Lizzy was around for. You liked Bouquet - you’d always hoped that one day, you’d see them succeed, but it had never worked out that way. But thanks to Salome, they at least went out on a fantastic string of singles. As much as she deserves to be producing for a far wider range of artists with a far wider reach than anything Ohjang could offer her, it’s a comforting face. This is a pair of hands that are safe to be in, musically, and her involvement is probably the biggest selling point of this group you’d seen so far. She watches patiently as Shogo prepares, pressing down on her buzzer to politely say ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ which you think is her way of telling him to hurry up.

As he opens his mouth to sing the chorus of Bouquet’s Original Sin; which is coincidentally your favourite Bouquet song, as well as the last one they ever put out, the camera angle changes to face the recording booth. In it stands a boy you’d just seen, and redundantly, the name SHOGO is presented upon the screen. Were he to be singing any other song, you might feel as if he’d been robbed of a big entrance like the other two boys had gotten, but his voice kind of blows you away. Byeongsang hadn’t been kidding when he’d implied that Shogo’s talent was leagues above the rest.

That is- until he gets to the post-chorus refrain, and his voice pitches up and cracks halfway through a ‘we-o-ya-ya-ya.’ He cuts himself off with an embarrassed ‘oh,’ immediately covering his face and bowing to Salome. “Sorry,” he says into the microphone, but Salome just laughs kindly and shakes her head.

“That’s okay,” she says, gently. “Happens to the best of us. You were killing it up till then.”

“You rushed my warm-ups,” Shogo accuses in good humour, through his fingers, and Salome raises her hands in defence, chuckling along with him.

“Sorry, sorry. Take your time and let me know when you’re ready.”

For a few seconds, we’re treated to more of Shogo’s warm-ups, before the audio cuts out. As he mouths soundlessly, Salome’s voice fills your ears.

“Shogo is like my little prodigy,” She says, before it cuts to her confessional. She sits in the same swivel chair in the same recording studio as Kitae had filmed his in, and tosses her curly hair over her shoulder as she smiles fondly. Along the bottom of the screen, the insert-text announces her as Salome Mari, Producer. “He’s a joy to work with. I really hope he can make it through all these evaluations that are coming up, ‘cause he really has something of value to bring. The only thing that’s standing in his way is that sometimes his nerves get the better of him, but we’re still giving him grace with that, ‘cause this is all still very new to him.”

“It’s only been six months since I joined Ohjang, so I have a lot of catching up to do compared to the other boys. Since the other coaches have so much on their plate, Salome’s been taking the time to work with me on my singing, which is really nice of her. She doesn’t have to do that, it’s in her own time, so I’m trying my best to get to the level Ohjang want me at as quickly as possible. Working with Salome is really fun, but she thinks I have stage fright because I always mess up when I sing in front of her,” In Shogo’s own talking-head, he laughs bashfully and scratches at the back of his neck with reddened ears. You can’t help but pick up on the lack of honorifics. Of course, Shogo is Japanese and Salome is English, and so there’s no real reason to expect them to adhere to your cultural rules, but against your better judgement, it rubs you the wrong way. “I don’t do it as much when it’s Kitae-sunbaenim or Yooseob-seonsaengnim.”

“Why is that?” Asks a voice from somewhere behind the camera, muffled and reiterated through a subtitle. Shogo lets out an embarrassed snort.

“They’re not pretty like her.”

For a few seconds the screen cuts to black; and then, the ascending synthesisers of Original Sin’s instrumental filters in. In the dance studio, under the stern, watchful eye of Yooseob, Shogo launches into what seems to be an original choreography - the soft and ethereal dance moves of Bouquet replaced with something a bit more masculine and a bit more sensual. You’re not exactly sure how to feel about the changes, having held the original in such high regard, but given Hwihun’s critique, you suppose it’ll probably do Shogo some favours, at least.

Except for the fact that, though he sings exceptionally well, Shogo’s dancing clearly requires a bit more work. His powerful voice and near-flawless technique are at complete odds with the clunky and awkward movements of his body, and as he stumbles through his routine, Yooseob simply watches with an unamused expression. He only gets far enough into the song to redeem his ‘we-o-ya-ya-ya,’ before Yooseob raises his hand, and a non-descript staff member in a mask and cap, who has been hanging around the edge of the room, cuts the music.

“What the hell are you doing?” Yooseob asks, flatly.

Shogo blinks. “Uh, pardon?”

“It says here,” he taps his clipboard with his pen, “That you’re a consistently top-three ranking trainee. Is this supposed to be a top-three performance? How [REDACTED] bad are the other guys?”

Shogo bows ninety-degrees, and apologises in a small, nervous voice. Yooseob scoffs.

“Don’t just apologise. I’m actually asking. How bad are the other boys?”

Shogo’s eyes dart around nervously, and he takes a few minutes to speak, clearly very unsure of how to approach such an unusual question. You sigh. Here comes more cruelty, you suppose. “Everyone is talented,” Shogo eventually says. “I’ll work harder.”

Yooseob sucks his teeth. “Cut back on your vocal training. I want to see you here outside of lesson-hours far more often than I do. You don’t need to be in the recording studios hanging out with Salome every night. It’s not like they’re going to have you standing in the middle singing while the other boys dance around you.”

Shogo bows his head again. “Yes, sir.”

“I mean it, Shogo. Your voice may have carried you this far, but we’re getting serious now and you can’t debut in this state. Get Hwihun or Yonghyung to help you nail the basics down, before you start trying to do complicated choreographies like this. Don’t be so cocky.”

“Yes, sir.”

Yooseob is practically rattling his pen against the clipboard at this point, and with his free hand he pulls his baseball cap further down, covering his eyes, shaking his head. “I’m gonna let you try again tomorrow when the lower boys have their evaluations. Cause I can’t evaluate you based on what I just saw. I have literally nothing to say about it. This song is called Original Sin, it’s all about temptation. It’s up to you if you want to present yourself as Eve or the Serpent, but you have to present something. It’s not enough to know the moves. You need to put consideration into how you’re moving your body, not just where your body is moving to. You can pour emotion into a song when you sing it. Do that while you dance it, too.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” You can tell by the way the words have to be pushed through his throat that Shogo has gotten choked up. You don’t really think you can blame him. If you’d gotten a critique this harsh, you’d have just quit on the spot and walked out of Ohjang HQ never to look back again.

Though, you suppose, getting the hell out of Ohjang as fast as they can would be the advice you’d offer any one of these boys.

Yooseob nods once, and says; “Go.”

“It’s not like I ever thought I was the best dancer, or anything.” Shogo looks tearful even in his confessional, hanging his head in a deep sigh. “But if I’m so terrible, why would they wait until now to tell me? Yooseob-seonsaengnim made it sound like I haven’t been trying at all. I really have. I really, really tried my-”

Shogo cuts himself off as his voice breaks, and makes a frustrated face as he bites on his lower lip, looking off to the side and clearing his throat roughly. He dabs at his left eye with the back of his hand, and says;

“Sorry, can we take a quick break?”

The screen once more fades to black. As it fades back in, you’re back in the practice room, but you’re informed by yet more text that it’s now TWO DAYS LATER. Two, not one. You tap the screen to see that you’re nearing the end of the episode, and so you assume that the other boys will be properly introduced to you next time around. You snort. The main reason anybody will be watching this is to find out who the sixth boy is, so it stands to reason they’d drag out that reveal as long as they possibly can.

Still, the six boys sit in a line on the floor, cross-legged and all looking as if they fear certain death. Across from them, on uncomfortable looking, metal folding chairs are Salome, Kitae and Yooseob.

“The CEO isn’t exactly pleased with what you guys showed this month,” says Yooseob, grimly. “Don’t get emotional. No matter what happens today, it’s all in aid of your improvement. If you had all practiced harder, this would be a much happier occasion.”

Beside him, Salome shoots him a pointed look. “But just remember, we’re judging your singing and dancing, which are things that will always have room for improvement, no matter how good you are.” She cuts in, keeping her face kind as it turns to regard the boys. “We’re not judging your value as people. Just keep in mind that nothing said in this room will ever reflect that.”

Kitae, who looks exhausted, has as blank a face as ever, but raises his fist in weak encouragement as Salome speaks. The three of them don’t seem any more eager to be here than the boys do.

The room falls into an uncomfortable quiet once more. Fortunately you don’t have to sit in it for much longer, because the glass door soon swings open, and in steps Oh Byeongsang, looking even older and even uglier in the fluorescence, away from the perfectly crafted lighting of his office. The entire room scrambles to their feet to bow at him. He waves a hand dismissively, murmuring in acknowledging and signalling for everyone to take their seats as he strides towards the centre of the room, between the trainees and the coaches. He faces the boys with an unreadable visage.

“I don’t have a wealth of time, so before we get into the rankings, I’d like to give some announcements. I’ve heard that rumour has spread of potential benefits for this month’s top three. These rumours are true. This will be the last evaluation to utilise the ranking system, and next month will be the final evaluation overall. Following that, debut preparations will be officially underway.”

The boys break into murmurs, trading wide-eyed glances and whispering amongst each other. Very quickly, Byeongsang raises a hand to quell them.

“The top three trainees will be guaranteed a spot in the debut group.” He says, simply. You watch in real time as the implications of what he’s about to say next settle on their faces. The sixth boy - presumably Heejin, lets out a bitter laugh. Song Sasung nudges him, the other boys whip their heads around to shoot him incredulous looks, and Salome raises a finger to her lips from behind the CEO; who barrels on as if he hadn’t heard. “This is not the only benefit. They will also be given the chance to express their opinions in the formation of the final lineup. As, unfortunately, the final evaluation will still run the risk of elimination from Ohjang Entertainment‘s trainee programme. For those of you who are underperforming, it would be irresponsible of me to guarantee your debut.”

The shot faces Byeongsang long enough for you to see Kitae slot his tongue into his cheek and look to the side with a displeased expression, in an uncharacteristic display of minor emotion. Salome casts her eyes downwards, unable to look at the trainees, while Yooseob stares at a spot on the wall with a stony expression.

That feeling you had earlier, that all of this is unfair and cruel and exploitative, washes over you once more. This man really is a total prick.

“I understand that this is an anxiety-inducing thing to hear. So, I’ll skip the usual fanfare and get right to the results. In first place…” He pauses, seemingly for effect, perhaps a little more aware of the fact that he’s filming a television show than he is aware of the fact that he’s playing around with these boys’ futures. “Is Gu Yonghyung.”

The shot closes in on Yonghyung‘s face. He simply gapes for a few seconds, before folding himself over his knees in a bow. Beside him, Hwihun smiles uncertainly and claps him on the back, and when he straightens back up, he looks more shell-shocked than he does happy or proud.

“In second place… Shin Hwihun.”

Hwihun doesn’t bow, just sighs in relief, nodding to himself with his eyes trained on his sneakers, avoiding eye contact even as both Yonghyung and Shogo, who flank either side of him, try to make it.

“And in third…”

The camera lingers on Oh Byeongsang’s face for half a minute. He opens his mouth, and the footage cuts out.

The instrumental of Boy Comics blares.

And the credits roll.

#fictional idol community #fictional idol group #bts addition #idol oc #kpop fanfic #𝖣𝖠𝖬.𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡:ㅤㅤ( awake / arise or be forever fall'n ) ━━ㅤㅤ'predebut' era.#𝖣𝖠𝖬.𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡:ㅤㅤ( awake / arise or be forever fall'n ) ━━ㅤㅤprose.

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allthemusic · 9 days ago

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Week ending: 28th June

Summer is in full swing, and I don't know if we've had such a cool (or such an American-sounding) bunch of song titles for quite some time. Though at least one of them isn't American at all, as we'll see - and another one's going to take us on quite the world tour, while we're at it!

Hello Mary Lou - Ricky Nelson (double A-side, peaked at Number 2)

Ooh, okay. Straight away as we get into this one, you've got rock and roll, with a very country sound, all acoustic guitar, pacy drumming, and a vaguely southern-sounding to the twang as Ricky harmonises with himself. The end result's a rockabilly track that I don't think would sound all that out of place being covered by a more modern country rock artist. It's got a full, warm sound, and the country elements are subtle enough not to jar.

A quick bit of googling tells me that Creedence Clearwater Revival covered the track, as did Led Zeppelin - both of whom I can absolutely imagine smashing it out of the park. More surprisingly, Queen have also covered this one - Brian May was apparently a big fan of the guitar solo that comes in, halfway through. And fair enough, it's a good one, courtesy of a session musician called James Burton. I wouldn't rave about it, personally, but it's fine and perfectly enjoyable - and I'm not a guitarist, so I can't speak to the skill of it. Certainly everything else in the track seems to have been well thought-out, from the drumming, which keeps it moving along pacily, to the bassline, holding it all together subtly from underneath without ever really standing out - a tricky needle to thread!

On Ricky's end of things, it's a straightforward love song, with a chorus where Ricky repeats, over and over, hello Mary Lou, goodbye heart. You see, the moment he saw Mary Lou, it was love at first sight. You passed me by one sunny day / Flashed those big brown eyes my way / And ooh I wanted you forever more, Ricky tells us. The effect was immediate, swear my feet stuck to the floor. Which is kind of sweet - you have this rather endearing image of Ricky almost falling over, he's so smitten, it's cute. She speaks, and Ricky's done, wild horses couldn't make me stay away. It's hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart. No doubts, no regrets, no choice in the matter - Ricky's in love, and in love he's gonna stay.

Travelin' Man - Ricky Nelson (double A-side, 2)

So, will Ricky stay faithful to his Mary Lou? If ths song's to be taken at face value, absolutely not! If the version of Ricky we saw back in Hello Mary Lou was a sweet and slightly awkward romantic, the version we see here, the eponymous "travelin' man", is quite the lothario, a sailor with a girl in every port - and in a bunch of non-port cities.

There's something a bit gross about this, honestly - there's nothing overtly racist or misogynist, or anything, but the vibes just feel kind of patronising and vaguely exoticising in a way that I don't think I much like? I don't know, perhaps I'm overreacting, but I don't think I'd trust this version of Ricky as far as I could throw him. He just seems to be "collecting" foreign beauties, ticking them off a list. He's got his pretty señorita down in Mexico, his cute little Eskimo in Alaska, his sweet Fraulein down in Berlin town, his china doll down in old Hong Kong, and his pretty Polynesian baby across the sea. There's no suggestion of any ill intent towards these girls, or that they're anything other than willing and enthusiastic participants, but it just feels kind of gross, you know? They're reduced to an escapade, a faceless, nameless girl who's only interesting as a charmingly "exotic" notch in a bedpost. Not great, Ricky. I preferred you when you were hung up on Mary Lou.

(I'll also admit, I'm also rather pettily annoyed by the mispronunciation of "Fräulein", here, but I can at least recognise that that's a me problem - willing to bet barely anybody else even noticed it, let alone took issue with it!)

Musically, it's a slower, more soulful song than Mary Lou, with smooth backing oohs and tinkling piano - a different beast, compared to the more country-influenced Mary Lou. "Sam Cooke or some similar soul singer could do a really good job of this one", I remmeber thinking as I fired it up, the first time. And boy did I feel vindicated when I found out that yes, it was in fact written for Sam Cooke! Cooke's manager didn't like it, which is fair, because I also don't like it much, and it got passed to Ricky. But the song doesn't stop there, because the chord pattern got reused again, after the recording of Travlin' Man, for a song we've already heard, Neil Sedaka's Calendar Girl. Which I can kind of hear, now I've seen it. A surprising amount of connection for what's essentually a song that's just Ricky bragging about his various conquests.

Little Devil - Neil Sedaka (9)

Talking of Neil Sedaka, here he is, back again! And I'm glad to note that he sounds as poppy and perky as ever, here, with a song that's just on the serious side of novelty, but that's clearly meant somewhat frivolously, all about his little devil of a woman, and how he plans to make her his. Hey, little devil, he sings, you're always runnin' around / It's time that someone started taming you down. This is the sort of thing that can come off as kind of gross and judgily misogynistic, with this idea that "Neil's woman" isn't allowed to flirt with other men, and that women who step out of line like this need punishing or "taming" somehow. This is expecially galling when you get to the line about how someday soon I'm gonna make you mine - it would be one thing for Neil to be singing this about a woman who's actually his girlfriend, but this is just some girl he likes! She's not beholden to him, and doesn't owe him anything - let her flirt with whoever she wants to!

All that said, I do quite like the song. I think its saving grace, on that front, is just how lighthearted and fluffy it is, apart from that. Sure, Neil's singing about taming a "devilish" woman, which is theoretically kind of gross as sentiments go, but there's no real heat or menace behind it, and there are a whole bunch of lines about how you got me all in a whirl, or how you're a cute little devil, a mischief-maker, none of which make it sound like Neil's actually all that concerned about her. She's a "little devil", but there's almost a fondness to it, a sort of rom-com "we bicker, but I love you really" vibe that I find very appealing. Overall, it's the sort of track you could really easily use in a film or a play - I'm envisioning a setting update of something like Taming of the Shrew? 10 Things I Hate About You, but set in 1961, anyone?

It would work well for that, actually, because as well as fitting thematically, it is also just agressively 1961. It's got all the pop hallmarks, from the chords, to the strings, to the sax solo that comes in halfway through, to the liberal use of whoah-whoah-whoah-whoah-yeah-yeah-yeah backing singers. The latter, in particular, feels very timely. How many "whoah whoah whoahs" have there been recently? I haven't been keeping track, but I know it's got to have been quite a lot. So yeah, very fun, very bouncy, and very 1961.

Pasadena - The Temperance Seven (4)

Which of course means it's time for a jaunt back to 1923, to escape all this modernity. I'll be honest, here, I really didn't expect the Temperance Seven to have any more hits after You're Driving Me Crazy. They felt like the perfect quirky one-hit wonder band, popping up, taking the charts by storm with a fun, gatchy gimmick, then vanishing off the face of the earth. I should have known better. Though I'll admit, I suspect that this song only got as far as it did in the charts as a sort of "follow-up hit" to their previous one - because on its own merits, Pasadena's not up to much.

It's a sleepy cover of a 1923 Harry Warren hit - no, I hadn't heard of him, either, until now - and it doesn't even get going until the halfway mark. You've just got one long, quiet brass and clarinet vamp for pretty much a full minute and a half. Paul McDowell's vocals then do come in, but they're the same whimsically disaffected, ironically detached vocals we got on the Seven's previous hit - you can't take them quite seriously, nor are you supposed to, one suspect. The lyrics, such as they are, are about taking a "Pullman train" to Pasadena, Pasadena being the city where the Temperance Seven were supposedly founded, if you remember their fake backstory from last time. So I guess they get some credit for finding a song that so appropriately fits their backstory. Plus, there's a sort of fitting nostalgia to the whole thing - for a band whose whole shtick is playing nostalgic 1920s and 1930s-style covers, it seems fitting to be singing equally rose-tinted lyrics about being home where grass is greener / Where honeybees hum melodies / And orange trees scent the breeze.

It also sent me on a brief but very enjoyable side quest looking up information about what exactly a "Pullman train" was. It turns out that the Pullman Company was a company who made lounge cars, dining cars and especially sleeper cars for various railways from 1867 all the way through to 1968. Which is kind of cool, because it means that while the song is from 1923, people listening in 1961 would probably also have an idea of what it's about. Looking up pictures, I can also see that these Pullman cars were pretty luxurious - this is a song about travelling in style, it seems! Honestly, it's mostly just made me want to book luxury sleeper trains places - there are a few extant Pullman sleepers in the UK, though I suspect tickets would be prohibitively expensive. Still, a girl can dream - they really do look gorgeous! And heavens know, I love a train.

Amazingly, they were so widespread, at one point, that "Pullman" was and sometimes still is used in various languages as a term for a train or tramcars more generally - from specific type of trams in Russian and German, to coaches more generally in Italian, Greek and Syrian Arabic, to luxury buses in Latin America. This feels like quite a lot of influence, given that I've never heard of the company!

Well, that was quite the ride, and a tour through a few of the genres 1961 has to offer. We went from some pretty credible country rock, to a smooth but slightly sleazy bit of soul, to perky rom-com pop, to quirky but nothingy novelty - and learnt about trains, while we were at it! Truthfully, I'm tempted to give Pasadena the title, just because I enjoyed the train deep-dive. But if I had to name the song I actually enjoyed the most as a song...

Favourite song of the bunch: Hello Mary Lou

#uk charts #1961 #ricky martin #neil sedaka #the temperance seven

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writefightandflightclub · 4 years ago

Text

Return to Sender: (Richard Alonso Muñoz x GN reader)

What is this? This is 4/10 one-shots/blurbs for my “friends to lovers” event. I’m not gonna share the prompt as it’s spoilery, but it was requested by @sergeantkane who is a genius for picking this combo! It’s a prompt about LOVE LETTERS! Omg! And thus, it matches perfectly with Richard (trust me, I had NOT made that connection when I made the prompt list :P). Thank you so much for requesting, Clarke, and I hope you enjoy it. I’m excited about this one!

If you’d like to read/keep track of the other fics, I’m keeping an up-to-date friends to lovers list in my pinned post.

Author’s note: Oh, I really quite like this one. Hope it makes you feel as soft as I did for Richard while writing it! Also- it’s my first bash at writing him, so let me know what you think! Thanks to everyone who helped with film details too: those not already tagged in the post- @prurientpuddlejumper @witchyavenger @veuliee2 @waatermelon-sugaar @pascal-isaac

Word count: 4.5 k. So not a blurb, then? :P

Rating: Mature, for light steam (not explicit, but 18+ or out, please!)

Warnings: mentions of food/eating. Mild angst (but it ends well), Steamy. Kissing, brief non-explicit mention of erection. Implied coitus (cut scene). Richard works in a “correctional facility”. Small mention of attempted break-in. If I missed any let me know.

Tagging: @anetteaneta @isvvc-pvscvl @nowritingonthewall @supernovafeather (ONLY READ IF 18+)

GIF by @nathan-bateman

“Have you ever received a love letter?” Richard wonders shyly, without looking up from his crossword puzzle, his long eyelashes fanned out as his gaze dances over the monochrome squares.

Meanwhile, your eyes snap up immediately from your magazine, which you are idly leafing through, a breath catching in your chest.

You bristle at the question, and yet Richard seems either entirely oblivious, or entirely determined not to look-up at you. Perhaps both. So, instead of looking, he simply slurps the dregs of his milkshake, and pushes his plate of waffle remnants further toward the far end of the diner booth.

When he finally raises his gaze – a gentle prompt for you to answer him- his eyes are large and shining under the fluorescent lights as he peers at you over his glass, dabbing at his thick moustache with a paper napkin shortly after.

“No, never,” you state sadly, heeding his prompt with a small smile and a shake of your head. Not even a love e-mail.

“I’m surprised,” he flatters with a cautious smile. And, if you’re not mistaken, his eyes light-up with the faintest trace of desire. The barest undercurrent of passion, which is enough to have your heart beating like a drum. You notice it sometimes; this dull heat emanating off of him. It is a spark which never ignites, however - to your endless disappointment; you would fan that flame if only you knew how.

You swallow. He’s surprised? He can’t be that surprised, you think, a stone sinking through your stomach as you dwell too long on the topic of love letters, and meanwhile, Richard’s attention seamlessly diverts back to 3 across.

“You deserve one,” he says, still looking at the page, but a smile animating his wiry moustache. “A letter.”

You wrap your arms around yourself, a spiralling sadness catching hold of you. Does he not understand what this is doing to you? This painful reminder? “Can we drop it, Richard?” you say tensely, and when his eyes meet yours again, they are even more soft and cautious than usual, causing you to admonish yourself for the bite in your tone.

“Yes,” he says. “Of course,” he smiles thinly, apologetically.

It’s simply the new job, you think. Director of Communications. The man has letters on the brain. Richard is so considerate, that you realise he must not intend to hurt you in dredging up the past; he would never. In a way though, you think, it’s even worse that he brings it up so… casually. You can only conclude he has forgotten that you sent your letter to him at all. Had your heartfelt words, declaring your love, had so little impact on him?

Maybe that’s it. After all, they seemed to have so little impact upon him at the time. What could you expect years later? On the other hand, you -apparently- remain rather sore about the topic, all this time later. It’s natural to be sensitive though, isn’t it? You’d written him a love letter and he didn’t write you back. He didn’t say it back. Didn’t feel it back.

And, perhaps it still stings so much, even all these years later, because you never did stop loving him, even if he never started loving you.

Feeling a sudden, overwhelming haste to leave, you thumb through the pages of your magazine so furiously that the next table turn their heads to look at you, until you find what you were searching for.

“Here, Richard. The article I mentioned. Dramatherapy for people who are incarcerated.”

You fold the magazine back on itself, fobbing it off on him with an unprecedented urgency, hurriedly signalling to the waitress that you’d like the check. The roomy diner booth suddenly feels suffocating, and you want to get out. Meanwhile, oblivious, Richard chuckles at the title of the article -some kind of pun, you recall- as you try to push down the unpleasant emotions surfacing within you.

“Thank you for this,” he smiles, looking up at you earnestly. Looking concerned as he reads the expression on your face. “Are you alright?”

Your eyes fix on the table, where his fingertips inch hesitantly across the surface, hovering moments from yours as he debates whether to extend comfort. You make the decision for him, snatching your hand back from his reach.

“Yes. I’m Fine,” you say, unconvincingly. “Can we please go? I need some fresh air.”

“Alright,” Richard agrees gently. He looks a little flustered, but, now sensing your urgency, he begins to sweep up his papers and to shrug on his jacket. He pulls out a small comb to fix his neat curls in place, and offers you a soft smile. “Maybe we can go to the park next?” he suggests.

As much as you want to run, you nod, some of your agitation dissipating now that the prior topic seems to be forgotten. “Okay. Yeah. That would be nice.” You school your expression into something calm, and you offer him a reassuring smile as his soulful eyes dance over you, a lingering but unobtrusive concern there.

As you split the check, you tell yourself for the millionth time that being his friend is enough; but even after the millionth time, you can’t quite believe it.

Still, today -Sunday- is your one day with him this week. And, no matter what you can’t have; you’ll take anything you can get.

He’s too dear to you to settle for anything less.

************

One month later:

You crouch in amongst the boxes on Richard’s front lawn. He is having a clear-out, setting out some items for goodwill, and some for a neighbourhood yard sale happening next weekend.

You are having fun assisting him in sifting through various items, occasionally bursting into a fit of laughter when he reveals yet another ill-informed, late night shopping channel “bargain” – usually some new-fangled, scarcely-used exercise contraption, which he proceeds to demonstrate in good-humour, making you fold over clutching your stomach in mirth. Occasionally, as you rifle through the boxes, you’ll be overcome by a pang of sentimentality when he uncovers an item with a memory attached; and -no matter how useless- he usually sneaks said item into his ever-growing “to-keep” pile.

“But this is the picnic hamper we took to Bound Beach Island! For your birthday, remember?”

“Yeah, Richard, but it’s battered! It has holes! It needs to go.”

“It was a beautiful day. The light and the dunes were beautiful… and… and y-“

“-Oh my goodness, what is this?! Please for the love of God tell me you never actually wore this!”

You work through the midday sun until you come to a tired, dead halt on the grass, finally parking your ass down and wiping your brow. Richard looks warm too, a “v” of sweat soaking his old, oversized “Save the Turtles” t-shirt. No - he really doesn’t throw anything away. You smile fondly, though, remembering his sea turtle phase. Of course, he’d read some article. He always was looking for a cause.

“I’ll make us some iced tea,” Richard announces with a tired puff of breath, looking more spent than he probably wants to admit after shuttling the various boxes. Still, the way his grizzled curls have fallen away from his harsh side-part appeals to you, sitting disobedient and undone on his forehead.

Thinking of him undone, you hear a faint beating of drums sound in your chest.

You ignore the music though, like always, instead smiling gratefully as he heads inside, and you take a second to collect yourself before dragging the nearest box towards you, deciding you may as well continue. This next box is taped securely shut, and you chuckle quietly to yourself when you notice it’s labelled “workout-gear”.

You peel the packing tape away and open it up, scooping out the pile of miscellaneous papers sitting right on top. Beginning to leaf through, you surmise it’s mainly unopened junk mail; mainly garishly printed promotional flyers - from a pizzeria which closed down years ago, you recognise. Probably hastily stuffed in before his last move and never dealt with. Absent-mindedly, you begin to bundle it up for the recycling pile, when a smaller, more humble envelope drops out on to your lap, a hand-scrawled address on the front. The stationary is resoundingly familiar.

In fact, everything about it is familiar.

Your heart hammers in your chest as it immediately dawns on you.

It’s your letter.

The letter you sent him, all those years ago. You’d needed to be apart from him- needed to go away to take care of family, and you simply couldn’t go without letting him know. Letting him know you were in love with him.

The memory is like a slow knife sinking into your chest as you idly turn it over in your hands.

But… It can’t be…?

It’s… unopened.

All the air leaves you lungs.

No. No. It doesn’t make a shred of sense.

You’d spoken to him right afterward, on the phone. The first time he’d called after you left town he’d almost pleaded with you, giving you an unequivocally clear, and endlessly painful answer that he didn’t want what you wanted. What you’d written about. He’d made it abundantly obvious that he simply wanted to be friends. “I- I don’t want anything to change. I want everything to stay exactly like it is between us – please? Can we still talk every day?”

But if he didn’t read it…?

You heart pounds so hard that you hear blood rushing in your ears.

He doesn’t know.

His words didn’t mean what you…

Oh my god. All this time.

You shoot abruptly to standing when you see him approach, as if you’ve been caught red-handed, guiltily stuffing the letter into your back pocket before he can ask you what it is, an abundance of thoughts screaming in your head.

He hands you the glass of tea, ice tinkling gently, and you take it from him, the coolness shocking your palms.

Assessing what you’ve been up to in his absence, and noting the carcass of another box, Richard glances down at the pile of papers strewn at your feet. He looks suddenly worried for a moment, as if you might have found an old porn stash or something – and he looks just as suddenly relieved when he sees they are more innocent papers, scooping them up from the grass.

“Richard?” you say, your eyes burning a hole in the back of his head, and the letter burning a hole in your pocket as he drops the items into the recycling. He hums for you to go on. “Do you... You know when I moved away...?” your voice is strained, and you gulp hard. “Just before, do you remember getting any unusual letters or... weird post from me?”

“Like what kind of thing?” he asks curiously, turning back to you.

“I don’t know exactly,” you lie, nervously. “I have a feeling I sent you something? A sappy goodbye thing?”

You see him mull it over, combing his impressive moustache with his fingers. “I don’t remember, sorry. But apparently I was drowning in junk mail at that apartment. Maybe it got lost, or returned to sender?”

Despite everything, you exhale a small laugh. In a roundabout way, you suppose it had been returned to sender after all. You look at the ground.

“Was it important?” he asks, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand as he looks at you.

Biding time, you take a sip of your tea while you search for an answer. It’s refreshing.

“It… Uh. It was a long, long time ago. Doesn’t matter now, I suppose,” you muse, masking your sadness, and he nods, looking at least half-satisfied with your answer.

Except, it does matter. It matters more than anything. And, with a sudden, overwhelming need to grab on to the past, you track to the “to go” box, rescuing the battered picnic basket from the pile of junk.

“You shouldn’t get rid of this,” you state, your back to Richard, hoping he doesn’t notice the way your voice falters. You tense as you feel him settle by your side, his hand hovering tentatively at the small of your back but never quite touching. “It was a beautiful day.”

“No,” he insists. “You’re right. I shouldn’t hang on to it.”

His words are like a punch in the gut. You turn your head to your side, where Richard is, your eyes and heart almost overflowing.

Noting your sadness, and connecting it to the picnic basket, he does everything he can to smooth things over, like always. “We can get a new one,” he says, his brown eyes sweet and hopeful and bright.

You love him. You love him still and you can’t help but turn towards him and reach out your arms, dragging him in for a hug.

“No! No, I’m sweaty,” he protests self-consciously, but you don’t care. You just need to hold him, even only for a moment – and, for a moment he stills as you loop around him, never quite clutching you back.

When you pull away though, you could swear that dim spark of passion is present in his eyes again. That spark that never catches, no matter how much or how often or how hard you wish it would. Oh, how you wish.

“Don’t ever change, Richard,” you say sincerely, your voice imbued with fondness. “Okay? You’re a sweet, wonderful man.”

His eyes are immediately soft and bashful again, the colour of his cheeks deepening a little, a crimson undertone blooming under his brown skin.

“Yes. Okay,” he offers, with a nod, his eyes creasing at the corners, and his posture even bolstered by the compliment, you could swear, his chest puffing out proudly.

For the rest of the afternoon, you ignore the unread words in the back of your pocket; but for the life of you, you can’t ignore those drums.

************

One month later:

You bundle the yapping, happy little white dog into your arms, relieved that she’s okay as her little tail happily beats against your arm.

“Are you okay, Lady?” you coo as she nuzzles her snoot into your face, eagerly lapping little kisses on to your cheek. “Thanks goodness, sweet little floof,” you baby-talk as your eyes quickly scan around Richard’s place, setting his spare key down on the kitchen counter.

You’d barrelled across town to get here, after receiving a call about an attempted break-in. His neighbour to the left had your contact details in case of an emergency -it’s not very easy to reach him at work, of course- so here you are. You came to give things a quick checking over, assured that no-one suspicious had continued to loiter. Richard won’t be much longer -his shift has nearly ended, and you’d left him a voicemail so you’re sure he’ll hurry- but you still thought you’d go on ahead of him, especially so that he wouldn’t worry about Lady.

Looking around, thankfully all seems well, and you don’t think anyone made it inside after all. Slowly then, you allow your nerves to calm and your heart to settle, bouncing the little bundle of fur in your arms, and feeding her a treat from the packet on top of the microwave, just in case she’d been stressed out.

Calming, you can’t help but smile as you look around, absorbing all the little details of Richard. You do hang out in his apartment a fair amount, but most often you will meet or sit outdoors, when the weather allows. After all, he loves to feel the sun and fresh air on his face, especially after spending all day cooped-up in windowless rooms. To you though, this Richard-ness is like a breath of fresh air, and you let it all wash over you, drinking in the details of his simple daily routine. The discarded half-plate of frijoles and rice by the sink. The ironing-board piled with identical uniform-issue shirts, pants, and plain white t-shirts. The photos on the fridge door – some of you and him too.

Doing a lap of the living space, you further note the dining-for-one TV table, evidence of his relatively solitary existence, and you can almost see him sitting there. Can almost hear his soft voice relating the far-fetched storylines of his favourite telenovelas. You imagine him chuckling warmly - perhaps shedding a tear sometimes too.

You decide you should pop your head into the bedroom and bathroom to check there too, for good measure, and you set Lady down, the dog trotting along at your heels. Once you’ve done a loop, you sigh, seeking out a fresh task, and you circle back to the sink, scraping his discarded plate and rinsing it, stacking it in the dishrack. Then, you move towards the TV chair, intending simply to sit yourself down and wait for Richard to come home. After all, you’re here now - you may as well say hello; or, maybe you can even prepare him dinner after his long shift, you muse.

As you revisit the small, rickety table, however, your eyes more keenly notice that a bunch of papers are strewn over it, all identical- a series of pastel pink leaves of paper and envelopes.

Letters.

Handwritten, in his familiar scrawl.

Letters addressed to you.

Your brow furrows in confusion, as you wonder what they could be. You don’t want to invade his privacy, of course, but perhaps this is something that’s meant for you? After all, sometimes he leaves you notes when you come over to feed or walk Lady.

Still, this feels different, and, with a lump in your throat that you don’t quite understand, you pick up one of the leaves at random, skimming the first line, yet feeling only more confused than you did before.

You see your name at the head of the paper, followed by the words “my dearest love,”, and underneath, some other half-formed paragraphs, scribbled over and crossed out.

No, you shake your head, your stomach flipping over. That can’t be right, you think, even as your fingers scramble for another leaf - for leaf upon leaf, until you piece together what’s going on. Until, with every line you read, fragments of both English and Spanish, you feel as though you are piecing together his heart.

Could it be true? Is this really true?

Your fingers dive for a sheet more developed that the rest, where you see paragraphs of writing, and you devour the words like you are starved of love; for you are, aren’t you? Starved? And yet, you suddenly feel so full. Brimming.

My darling,

There are infinite ways to fall in love. Some are elemental, like a raging fire. A shock of lightning on first sight. Some are slow-burning and constant, the heat of friendship warming your hearth, defrosting your iced fingertips when you come in from the cold.

There are infinite ways to fall in love, and I should know, my heart, as I have experienced every one of them with you.

You can barely read the rest as tears blur your eyes, and your hand comes to clamp over your mouth as realisation sinks through to the pit of you, the page quaking -like a leaf- in your fingers.

You make my heart beat like a drum. When I look at you, I am music, without being played. When you’re with me I am dancing, without movement. If only you would touch my skin, I feel like I would sing. If only you would-

“-Are you safe? Are you alright?” Richard asks from behind you, and you tear your eyes away from the page with a start. You were so absorbed by this swell of beating music that you didn’t hear the scrape of his key in the lock. You didn’t hear his hurried footsteps coming up behind you.

“Richard,” you suspire, and for once his touch is on you without hesitation, his hands clasped around each of your shoulders, slowly running down your arms, and you nod quickly to reassure him, your mouth opening wordlessly. You’re safe.

His touch is warm through your clothes, and you think he is right- your skin would sing for him too if he touched you. Your love rattles you, like drums beating musically in your chest, pulsing through your body.

Then, Richard clocks your sideward, guilty glance at the pile of letters, and you see his panic instantly surface at the thought of all his unsent and unspoken words laid bare before you. All the pieces of his heart exposed.

At first, he looks apologetic, but then you step forwards a little more, into the circle of his arms. Arms which suddenly fall, unsure, at his sides once again. And, achingly slow, endlessly sure, you lift up you hand and you place it on his chest, over his heart, smoothing over his shirt and over the cool metal of the shield he wears there. You feel his heart really is beating like a drum. His chest is rising and falling beneath your hand, his breath quickened – eyes nervous.

You step a little closer, and your fingers continue their slow crawl, dancing up around his collar, inching further up until your fingers finally brush the bare skin at the nape of his neck, pushing up into the curls behind his ears, your thumb skimming his sideburn. You touch him, with your fingertips, and he does sing for you, a half-choked moan leaving his mouth at your tender caress.

“Richard,” you say breathily, searching his face, eyes openly appraising his beauty. “Don’t worry, sweet man. I love you too.” And, when you next meet his eyes there is no nervousness there. Not any longer. Instead, you find his dark, expressive eyes brewing with adoration, and that gentle but ever ascending note of passion.

“Darling, can I kiss you?” he pleads, his voice dogged by desire, his brow knitting together and his hands slipping bravely to your waist, circling you as you arch into him.

“Yes. Yes,” you say, and his mouth meets yours in a desperate, tumultuous crush. You sing too, your skin thrumming as you finally know the feeling of his thick moustache brushing against you. As you taste the sweet flavour of cherry sucker on his kiss. As you finally feel the texture of his slicked curls beneath your fingertips.

You kiss, urgently, until you are each smiling too broadly to continue, and instead Richard beams and presses sweet, intermittent kisses all over – your cheeks, your forehead, your hair, your neck- his moustache tickling wherever it touches. His hands are everywhere they can be politely, roaming over your back and your arms and your hair, and it feels so good to finally be held like this.

Eventually, he pulls back, his smile no longer tugging at his lips so keenly -lips now kiss flushed with deep colour- but shining in his liquid eyes. “How long have you loved me back?” he asks in a still choked, disbelieving voice.

You bite your lip, but then allow your face to split in a radiant, unrestrained grin.

Always. Always. I loved you first, you think.

You reach for your bag, reluctant to break from him so trailing your love’s hand in yours- and you fish out the letter. The one you’ve carried around since it was returned to you. “Take a look, Richard,” you encourage.

He looks from you to the small envelope, turning it in his spare hand as you pass it to him. “What is this?”

His brows rise in confusion as you tap the stamped postmark with your index finger. Years. Years ago.

“I sent you a letter,” you explain. “Telling you I loved you. That I love you,” you correct, squeezing his hand tightly in yours, amazed at how natural it feels already, to touch him.

He audibly gasps in air, looking pained. Devastated. “I never got it. I would’ve-“, he fumbles for words, but he can’t finish them, the magnitude of all those years lost to yearning too big to wrap his lips around. “I never got it,” he repeats sorrowfully.

You shake your head. “Don’t worry about that now,” you soothe. “I got your letter.” And, as you engulf him with your arms a soft smile takes over his features once again. He can’t help it.

“I’m so glad you did,” he beams, drawing you to him for another kiss, which you eagerly accept, opening your mouth to him.

God, he’s a good kisser, his tongue in you deep and eager, and the heat generated is quick to catch, a fire lit in the pit of you. That moustache is a divine thing too, his lips soft and full beneath, his mild-mannered tongue positively sinful as it works against yours.

Letting the kiss grow, you grab hold of him by the belt to draw his body closer to yours, arching your hips into his, and you feel an impressive bulge greet you as you do so.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers bashfully, angling his hips away from you, in case you’re not ready for… that yet. “You’re perfection. So perfect, I… I’m a little bit, uh, excited.”

You don’t blame him. You’re a little bit excited too. There’s a drum beating in your chest. Music in your heart. A song everywhere. A dance in your body.

“W-would you like to take me to the bedroom, Richard?” you purr, softly. “We’ve waited long enough, don’t you think?”

You wish you could capture the bliss which sparks in his eyes then, and keep stoking it forever more. His whole being glows as if you are the sun shining down on him. He loves the sun on his face. He loves you.

He loves you.

*******

Later that night:

At some point after round three, Richard is ravenous, and so you head to the kitchen to grab some snacks. One of Richard’s plaid shirts wards off the slight chill, settled over your otherwise naked body. As you microwave something quick, you can barely keep the smile from your face – even more so as you glance over at the table full of half-finished letters. As the microwave pings and you grab out the plate, another idea occurs to you, and you simply can’t help yourself.

So, you pad mysteriously back towards the bedroom, where Richard is waiting. The blanket is slung low over his hips, skimming the dark trail of hair which draws your gaze down beyond his abdomen. He is covered, and yet you bloom blissfully with heat at your new-found knowledge of what lays beneath. He’s laying with one hand folded behind his head, and one hand rested on the soft, roundness of his stomach, which you had laid your head on only moments ago.

Richard’s eyes shine with unadulterated admiration as you enter, and you flash him a mischievous smile as you transfer the plate to his hands, and subsequently tip a cascade of his letters into the middle of the bed.

“What’s all this?” he asks, with a contented laugh as you bounce eagerly into bed by his side, humming in equal contentment as you slot yourself under his arm.

“I want you to read them to me. Will you?” you ask, sweetly, and he looks bashful all over again. “No-one has ever sent me a love letter.”

“Me neither,” he chuckles. “Or I thought so…”

He hesitates, perhaps feeling shy, but he wraps his arm around you securely, nuzzling you into his side as he picks up the closest leaf of paper.

He hums gratefully as you begin to stroke his smooth chest. He really does sing whenever you touch him.

“They’re not finished,” he caveats. “I wanted to find the perfect words and I… I couldn’t.”

“The words don’t have to be perfect. It’s more important that they’re delivered,” you say, your voice soft as you sink into him, and so, he gently clears his throat and he begins to read, his words and his rich, soothing voice filtering over you like warm sunshine.

After a moment listening, and letting his love and his letters envelop you, you interrupt him gently. “My sweet man. Promise me you’ll never write me another love letter?”

“Are they that awful?!” Richard exclaims.

“No!” you laugh, into his chest, tipping your chin up to look him in the eyes. “They’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. It’s just… I think I hate love letters, Richard. They’ve only ever kept me from you.”

His expression becomes wistful, lost in thought until a smile finally captures him. Then, with a finger curling gently under your chin, he dips down to plant a small kiss to the very tip of your nose.

“No more letters then,” he promises softly. “Let’s always promise to say it out loud from now on. Let’s talk every day.”

You heart full, you bring your hand up to caress his cheek, before planting a gentle, lingering kiss to his lips; and, despite what you’d just suggested, you plead for him to keep reading to you, his voice and his love lulling you to sleep in his arms.

With the love letters as kindling, your dim spark finally catches, your fire now blazing. You set it in a hearth in your chest, and you vow to keep it stoked for always.

THE END

Bonus:

#richard alonso muñoz x reader #Richard Alonso Muñoz #the letter room #richard alonso munoz x reader #oscar isaac #richard alonso-munoz x reader #luna's tumblrversary

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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Treat Your S(h)elf: I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide To Wine, by Roger Scruton (2009)

You could say that wine is probably as old as civilisation; I prefer to say that it is civilisation, and that the distinction between civilised and uncivilised countries is the distinction between the places where it is drunk and the places where it isn’t.

- Sir Roger Scruton, I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide To Wine

When I first got talked into investing in the dreams of my two cousins and their French families to continue to manage an old French vineyard I thought of Roger Scruton’s book. I already had this book on my shelf alongside his other works. Re-reading it nudged me to take a risk and go for it.

For one I have always loved wine and have drunk it from a very early age. Secondly what could be more cultured or civilising than to marry body and mind through the palate of philosophy and wine?

And finally, and perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to escape the madness of modernity - as well as make peace from war as a British combat veteran of the Afghan war by not so much as coming home but finding a new one - by getting back into nature with hard honest graft on the land that Mother Nature blesses. All of this I found especially appealing.

Of all the things we eat or drink, wine is without question the most complex. So it should not be surprising that philosophers from Plato and Socrates onwards to our contemporary times have turned their attention to wine: complex phenomena can lend themselves to philosophical speculation.

Wine is complex not just in the variety of tastes it presents – ‘wine tastes of everything apart from grapes’, I once heard a crusty old French vintner say – but in its meaning. Only the most woodenly literal-minded would deny that wine has a meaning: in its history, its role in human social life, in religious and other ceremonies. Though they drink it copiously over dinner at High Tables in their Oxbridge colleges, academic analytic philosophers do not spend as much time as they might in this kind of investigation of meaning or significance of wine – what we might call a phenomenology or a hermeneutic investigation.

Of course, there are more narrowly phenomenological questions which wine raises.

How do vintners or winemakers manipulate the underlying biochemical material to create the kinds of taste which they intend their wine to have? Does the ‘terroir’ of a wine really make a difference to taste, and if so how? What is the basis of evaluative judgements about the quality of a wine?

Arguably only those who actually make the wine and those who are life long wine connoisseurs can conceivably answer that on some experiential and technical level. But these are not the only philosophical questions in this area: the hermeneutic questions have their place too, in an understanding of the phenomena.

Sir Roger Scruton’s 224 page book is about the hermeneutics of wine rather than its psychology or phenomenology more narrowly conceived. Scruton, the late great conservative philosopher, is that rare breed who comes closer than most to bridging the gap between the grass roots and the High Table in answering such mysteries. The result is an engaging, insightful, informative and (in parts) a very funny book. It is immensely readable, more in the anecdotal style of Scruton’s England: an Elegy (2000) or On Hunting (1998), than his more heavyweight philosophical works, such as The Aesthetics of Music (1997), Sexual Desire (2004), Beauty (2009), and his writings on Wagner and high culture. He does often come across as curmudgeonly, but his (written) relations with women, music and poetry are very delicate and tender. And so it is with his love affair with wine. It is indeed a very personal book and its is warmly personable, like the man himself, and it contains so much of Scruton’s distinctive wit and intellectual personality, it ought to be of interest not just to wine enthusiasts (whom Scruton likes to call ‘winos’) and philosophers but also anyone curious enough to understand the place of wine in our world civilisation.

The first and obvious thing to say about Scruton’s book is how the title of the book is of course a play on words. It’s a playful wink to Eric Idle’s “Philosophers’ Drinking Song,” in which the Monty Python cast, lightly disguised as a group of Australian philosophers all named Bruce, list the world’s thinkers from a drinking standpoint. This includes the couplet slightly amending Descartes’s proof of his existence: “And René Descartes was a drunken fart / ‘I drink therefore I am.’”

The pun on words is Roger Scruton’s way of taking the Monty Python couplet seriously. After all Descartes was a serious man and though he was born in Touraine, the rich French wine region, did probably not drink much. He treats all this as a paradox that G.K. Chesterton might well have toyed with - that is, as a truth standing on its head to attract attention - and examines the drinking of alcohol as a way in which human beings learn more about each other, fellowship, some of the deeper realities, God, and not least themselves.

In this Scruton is a wise philosopher who teaches us how wine cultivates our moral virtue and our civilisation. He encourages us to recognise that stream of liquid descending from our pursed lips into our throat as the red or golden chord that runs from heaven to earth, and binds everything in-between into a cosmic whole. Wine both reflects and helps constitute our participation in all strata of reality, and points the way to our redemption, divine or otherwise.

In Scruton’s Prelude (a musical term, of course) where he quotes Emerson “who commends the great wino Hafiz [a Persian poet] in the following words: “Hafiz praises wines, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and sympathy with every form of beauty and joy.” This is echoed in Scruton’s terms that “by thinking with wine you can learn not merely to drink in thoughts, but think in draughts. Wine, drunk at the right time, in the right place and the right company, is the path to meditation, and the harbinger of peace.”

The book is divided into two parts, labelled ‘I drink’ and ‘therefore I am’ respectively. The second part of the book is more strictly philosophical - Scruton starts it with the nice conceit that ‘therefore I am’ contain the whole of philosophy, each word standing in turn for reason (therefore), consciousness (I) and being (am). But arguably wine and Scruton enthusiasts will probably get more out of the first part.

The first chapter is a nice description of his own discovery of wine as a young man. Warmly written, the chapter is devoted to his friends who made him “fall” for wine (or is it he who made them fall?) and his acquisition of a 1945 Château Lafite, “the greatest year from the greatest of clarets”. His first memories are happy ones of his mother’s home manufacture of elderberry wine in a post-war England where the French (and Spanish and Portuguese) grape had not yet “conquered the suburbs.”

“For three weeks the kitchen was filled with the yeasty scent of fermentation. Little clouds of fruit-flies hung above the jars and here and there wasps would cluster and shimmer on the spilled pools of juice.” Other Englishmen of Scruton’s generation will recognise and sigh at this description as many fathers - including my own - made his own beer and wine from motives of both fun and economy.

Thus ill-equipped, Scruton goes to university ignorant of the rich variety of wines available even then to an English wino. At Cambridge and, later, in Paris, a succession of tutors, patrons, and friends not only introduce him to a growing list of wines but also teach him how to drink them. Some of the wines he is given are complex and expensive Burgundies, others cheap French supermarket vin ordinaire.

But Scruton discovers that all have certain inherent qualities that an educated palate can discover by drinking them attentively and appreciatively. By learning their provenance and history, he enriches his knowledge of the locality that produced the wine — and he can imagine (I would like to believe this is so) that he can glimpse the character of the local people in the wine itself. He learns finally that certain wines go with certain things, not merely certain foods, but certain occasions, certain friends, certain thoughts, even certain topics of conversation. He becomes a wino.

When in his early middle years, Scruton buys a farm in southern England, he discovers to his delight an array of homemade-wine equipment, identical to that of his mother’s elderberry experiments, on the kitchen floor: “I listened to the bubbles as they danced in the valves, and studied the wasp-edged puddles on the tiles. I had come home.” Yet it is a different person who comes home. Scruton celebrates his good fortune not with elderberry wine but by opening and drinking in quiet happiness a treasured bottle of Château Lafite 1945 that had accompanied him in the long wanderings now ended. For, by this time in his life, Scruton is a confirmed Francophile in his drinking tastes.

The chapter ends on a remark concerned with the “new habit, associated with American wine critics like Robert Parker, of assigning points to each bottle” which should not only be “viewed with nothing but contempt” but also compared to “assigning points to symphonies, as though Beethoven’s 7th, Tchaikovsky’s 6th, Mozart’s 39th, Bruckner’s 8th all hovered between 90 and 95.

Perhaps his second chapter ‘A Tour de France’ is the best one. This is a very personal, but informative and interesting, guide to Scruton’s favourite French wine regions. starting in Burgundy, down to the Rhône Valley, the Pyrenees and ending in Bordeaux with T.S. Eliot’s description of a spiritual journey that applies equally to a journey through wine:

We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring

 Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

With much reason, Scruton does not think very highly of blind tasting: “To think that you can judge a wine from its taste and aroma alone is like thinking you can judge a Chinese poem by its sound, without knowing the language.” I let out a whoop of appreciation when I read this. In one clean swoop he casually casts aside the resultant snobbery that comes from the ritualising and self-importance of blind tasting events.

I think blind tasting whilst sincere is also an exercise in showing off. I’m not saying people don’t have a nose for wine or can tell certain elements but blind tasting is not the best way to truly appreciate the full complexity of wine. Indeed in my embryonic wine making experience (by watching my cousins and the managers on our vineyard) I would say terroir is perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of wine making and it determines the difference between good wine and a bad one.

It’s great to read that Scruton defines himself as a terroiriste. Not the French word for a terrorist! But a believer in the French word, terroir. It is derived from the Latin word terra meaning earth or land. It’s a word coined by the French to express a wine’s sense of place. There is no English equivalent for this word. It was originally used to distinguish the wine making practices of old world wine. In other words terroir is how a particular region’s climate, soils and aspect (terrain) affect the taste of wine alongside the traditions gone into producing the wine. Some regions are said to have more ‘terroir’ than others. Johan Joseph Krug (1800–1866), the famous champagne producer, once suggested that “a good wine comes from a good grape, good vats, a good cellar and a gentleman who is able to coordinate the various ingredients.” No trace of terroir.

But I think Krug is wrong and vintners as well as the wine industry as a whole have come to the same realisation of the importance of terroir. Back in the 1980’s, many of these ‘terroir-driven’ wines were actually affected by wine faults including cork taint and wild yeast growth (brettanomyces). Vines thrive in a range of soil compositions from highly draining granite and schist based soils to limestone and clay and vines, in turn, react to these different soils in different ways. And on top of the differing soils, certain areas of the world have such unique combinations of geology and topography that interact with specific sun exposures that the resulting wines have distinct characteristics that cannot be found anywhere else.

Nowadays terroir is used to describe practically every wine region. Because much of European wine (old world) is steeped in tradition it is easier to get a sense of terroir. It’s a bit harder in a place like Napa or Sonoma (new world) because of the looser laws that govern winemaking but younger winemakers are coming around to the idea of terroir and trying to express the land. But certainly in France today vintners - as they come to increase their geological knowledge and environmental understanding and find ways to marry that to their unique artistry and craft - have realised the unique role terroir plays in the wine making process.

The next chapter looks at wine from “elsewhere:” Here Scruton looks at the Middle-East where wine was born; Greece where Bacchus, Dionysos, and more importantly, Eros used to hover; the United States; Australia, New Zealand and their misspelling of Syrah as Shiraz, the Iranian city of poets, gardens, nightingales and last but not least, wine; a few lines on South Africa, then Italy, Romania and Spain. But “travel narrows the mind, and the further you go the narrower it gets. There is only one way to visit a place with an open mind, and that is in the glass”.

Scruton had already warned the reader in the previous chapter not to read the “elsewhere” chapter: “After punishing body and soul with Australian Shiraz, Argentine Tempranillo, Romanian Cabernet Sauvignon and Greek Retsina, we crawl home like the Prodigal Son and beg forgiveness for our folly. . . [Bordeaux] is the wine that made us and for which we were made, and it often astonishes me to discover that I drink anything else.” I rather fancy he is being tongue in cheek here.

This is for the “I drink” part of the book. Its author then moves to the “therefore I am” part which often needs much deeper philosophical knowledge than perhaps than even your average educated layman might have some difficulty having if they are not versed in a basic understanding of aesthetics as philosophical discussion. But here his aim is to rescue wine from the philosophers and the so-called wine experts.

To those who have never been captivated by the complexity of wine and the way it is bound up with western civilisation, a book on the philosophy of wine might be dismissed as the typical product of conservative snobbery and elitism. But this would be a mistake. Scruton is not a snob about wine (nor, for that matter, about anything else). On the contrary, one of the strongest themes in his writing is his deep love of the everyday, of the simple pleasures of society as he imagined it once to be, where people were at one with the land and with the traditions of their culture. According to Scruton, this is something that (although it probably never existed) should be open to all, but which is being destroyed by the march of modernity. (In a nice aside, he asks: ‘Who am I to stand against the tide of history? Come to think of it, I am the only person I know who does stand against the tide of history’.)

In passing, Scruton evokes the great philosopher Avicenna who lived in Isfahan (Persia) during Islam’s Golden Age (980–1037 AD); he was a wine aficionado who recommended drinking at work defying “the Koranic injunction against wine, citing it as an example of sloppy reasoning,” that does not take into account whether it is a small or a large amount. Scruton (p. 133) also points to the fact that “in surah xvi, verse 7 of the Koran wine is unreservedly praised as one of God’s gifts. As the prophet, burdened by the trials of his Medina exile, became more tetchy, so did his attitude to wine begin to sour, as in Surah v verses 91-92. Muslims believe that the later revelations cancel the earlier, whenever there is a conflict between them. I suspect, however, that God moves in a more mysterious way.”

Scruton is very quite skeptical that the vocabulary used by so-called experts to describe wine is of much help: “If I say of a wine that it has a flowery nose, lingers on the palate, with ripe berry flavours and a hint of chocolate and roasted almonds, then what I say conveys real information, from which someone might be able to construct a sensory image of the wine’s taste. But I have described the taste in terms of other tastes, and not attempted to attach a meaning, a content, or any kind of reference to it. The description I gave does not imply that the wine evokes, means, symbolises or presents the idea of chocolate; and somebody who didn’t hit on this word as a description of the wine’s flavour would not show that he had missed the meaning of what he drank or indeed missed anything important at all. Our experience of wine is bound up with its nature as a drink [which] endows wine with a particular inwardness [and] intimacy with the body [that is not] achieved by any smell, since smell makes no contact with the body at all, but merely enchants without touching, like the beautiful girl at the other end of the party. . . Nothing else that we eat or drink comes to us with such a halo of significance, and by refusing to drink it people send an important message —the message that they do not belong on this earth.”

Again, I found myself saying amen to that.

The good part of the second part is Scruton trying to make a case for the cultural uniqueness of wine. In one sense, Scruton is right to do this: it is undeniable in many parts of western culture, wine has played a unique role in religious and social rituals, which no other drink has. But he can push his point beyond plausibility when he attempts to argue that because of the qualities of wine itself – and what it is to drink it properly – nothing else could play this role (more on this later).

The argument starts well, with a very illuminating discussion of the distinction between the various ways in which a substance can intoxicate. There are those that merely stimulate without altering the mind (like tobacco, for example). Then there are those which have mind-altering effects, but whose consumption itself brings no plea- sure (e.g. heroin). The third category contains those things which alter your mind and bring pleasure in their consumption: cannabis and forms of alcohol other than wine are his examples. Wine, Scruton argues, is in a fourth category of its own: here the alteration of the mind is internally related to the experience of consuming it.

These distinctions are very useful, and the distinction between the third and the fourth category is subtle but certainly real. It relates to the question of what non-human animals can and cannot do. Scruton makes the nice observation that an animal cannot savour wine (or any- thing else). In being able to savour or relish the taste of wine, a person no more separates out the effect of the wine from its taste than they can separate the meaning of a piece of music from its sound. Although one would not realise this from reading the thousands of words that are written daily about wine, wine would not be the drink it is if it did not intoxicate.

The last two chapters deal respectively with wine and whine, and being and bingeing. Though Scruton has something to say in favour of Puritanism, he castigates the ease with which “puritan outrage [and in particular, prohibition, but also sexual behaviour] can be displaced from one topic to another, and the equal ease with which the thing formerly disapproved of can be overnight exonerated from all taint of sin.”

He vehemently protests against “the humourless mullahs,” and the misuse of drinking, but also rejects the idea that fermented drinks are just shots of alcohol, and insists on their social functions across civilisations and time: “The burden of my arguments is that we can defend the drinking of wine, only if we see that it is a culture, and that this culture has a social, outward-going, other-regarding meaning. . . When people sit down together sipping drinks, they rehearse in their souls the original act of settlement, the act that set our species on the path of civilisation, and which endowed us with the order of neighbourhood and the rule of law.” But he has not much against drinking alone, and ends with a few words from the Chinese poet Li Po (700 BC), the same poet whom Mahler used in his Lied von der Erde (though in a very approximate translation):

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees; I drink alone, for no friend is near. 

Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,

For he, with my shadow, will make three men.

Scruton points out in several brilliant passages, the prohibitionist, like the modern day Islamists and moral police in the West and the all too familiar binge-drinker are alike in their ignorance of the virtue of “temperance.” They can envisage no stopping place between abstention and alcoholism. Their absolutist logic, he argues, is like objecting to a first kiss on the grounds that it will one day lead to a divorce. And neither can really understand drinking for any reason other than to get drunk.

Scruton confirms the wider value of temperance in our lives: “Virtue should be cast in human form if it is to be humanly achievable. Saints, monks, and dervishes may practice total abstinence; but to believe that abstinence is the only way to virtue is to condemn the rest of mankind. Better to propose the way of moderation, and live thereby on friendly terms with your species.”

As it happens, the occasional bender may actually have therapeutic qualities in moderation (i.e., if indulged in infrequently). George Orwell, who can hardly be accused of lacking a puritanical streak, thought that people should get drunk every six months or so. The experience, he thought, shook one out of one’s regular complacency and could be compared in this to a weekend abroad. Certainly it very often produces a feeling of greater humility in those who can remember what happened. Yet getting drunk is something that most drinkers do very rarely, if at all.

Changing our mood and outlook is a very different matter. Under the influence of a moderate amount of alcohol, our inhibitions are loosened. Shy people become bold, the tongue-tied talkative, the dull lively, the unimaginative fanciful, and the isolated social. (Even “mean drunks” usually start the evening in festive and forgiving mood.)

That last loss of inhibition is the most important because it promotes the fellowship that is the basis of a decent society. Not all intoxicants perform this vital function. Cannabis and similar drugs tend, if anything, to imprison the taker within his own consciousness (however expanded it may seem to him in his dreams). Except for those who lose themselves in alcoholism (and consequently become asocial in their attempts to deceive others about their condition), however, alcohol is a profoundly social drug. At the same time, not all varieties of alcohol are equally social in their effect. This thought leads Scruton to narrow somewhat the scope of his enthusiasm. Having rejected teetotalism, he continues: “The real question, I suggest, is not whether intoxicants, but which. And - while all intoxicants disguise things - some (wine preeminently) also help us to confront them by presenting them in re-imagined and idealised forms.”

Scruton makes a fascinating and intriguing point related to our historical relationship with the vine to make wine the highest ideal form. He claims that wine derives from a crucial historical transition in our relation to the earth – when human beings settled, put down roots and stopped being mere hunter-gatherers. In a memorable phrase, Scruton claims that in this way wine celebrates ‘the earth itself, as the willing accomplice in our bid to stay put.’ But of course one could say similar things about distilled spirits and beer. Such drinks are not made in such an incredible variety as wine is, but Scruton’s point is not about variety but about the intrinsic and relational qualities of the drink itself.

In the end, one cannot help feeling that he is relying a little too much on the sheer panache of his writing to help his argument bounce along: ‘Wine is not simply a shot of alcohol, or a mixed drink. It is a transformation of the grape. The transformation of the soul under its influence is merely the continuation of another transformation that began maybe fifty years earlier when the grape was first plucked from the vine.’ Wine is a transformation of the grape, to be sure. And the mind or soul is transformed in its consumption. But these two transformations are so very different that it is hard to see what can literally be meant by the one being the continuation of the other.

In fact, Scruton’s view is not just that wine is unique as a stimulant, but that it has to be drunk in a particular way in order for the harmony of taste and intoxication to take hold. It is not hard to agree with Scruton’s argument that there are more or less civilised ways of drinking wine. And this part of his thesis is very plausible: ‘The burden of my argument is ... that we can defend the drinking of wine, only if we see that it is part of a culture, and that this culture has a social outward-going, other-regarding meaning. The new uses of wine point towards excess and addiction: they are moving away from the old way of drinking, in which wine was relished and savoured, to the form of drinking typified by Marmeladov, who clutches his bottle in a condition of need.’

However I still found all this a tad unconvincing in that he makes a case that only the savouring and relishing of wine can play a central cultural role as opposed to other spirits - think of Scotch whisky for the Scots and beer for much of Northern Europe or even tea(!) for the English. So my apologies to Roger Scruton but I remain sceptical of his argument that of all stimulants, wine is uniquely civilising, however much I want it to be true.

I think Scruton is also wrong to despise cocktails. A well-made cocktail is as complex a set of taste experiences as a good Bordeaux. A good-strength cocktail is the perfect prelude to the theatre, giving one exactly the right lift to help the play to entertain, but not suppressing one’s appetite long enough to spoil a post-theatre dinner. It can be the booster rocket that starts a convivial evening. But the cocktail has its limits. The alcoholic strength of most cocktails reduces their usefulness both as an aid to sustained fruitful conviviality and to the kind of imaginative introspection that Scruton thinks necessary for a happy life.

That aside, Scruton knows that the best (including Li Po’s poetry) should be kept for the very end. The bouquet (of the wine, but in French the word is also used for the finishing of a firework) comes with the Appendix: What to drink with what, though here the second what does not stand for food, but for philosophers. This part of the book I very nearly coughed up my wine as I found it terribly amusing to pair a suitable wine, as one would with food, to a philosopher one might be reading.

St Augustine: Drink a glass of Moroccan Cabernet Sauvignon, though “the City of God requires many sittings, and I regard it as one of the rare occasions when a drinking person might have legitimate recourse to a glass of lager [which I did in Odessa, while reading Scruton], putting the book to one side just as soon as the glass is finished” [which I did not do, since I had three glasses, each of which containing half a liter].

Francis Bacon: “Any discussion of his insights should, I think, proceed by the comparative method. I suggest opening six bottles of a single varietal—say Cabernet Franc- one from the Loire, one from California, one from Moravia, one from Hungary, and if you can find two other places where it is grown successfully you will already have given some proof of the inductive method—and then pretending to compare and contrast, taking notes in winespeak, while downing the lot.”

René Descartes: “As the thinker who came nearest, prior to the Monty Python, to stumbling on the title of [my] book, Descartes deserves a little recognition. . . He has ended up as the most overrated philosopher in history, famous for arguments that begin from nothing and go nowhere. I would suggest a deep dark Rhône wine [that] will compensate for the thinness of the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza: “The last time that I understood what Spinoza meant by an attribute it was with a glass of red Mercurey, Les Nauges 1999. Unfortunately, I took another glass before writing down my thoughts and have never been able to retrieve them.”

Immanuel Kant: “And when it comes to [his] Critique of the Judgment, I find myself trying out [several wines], without getting any close to Kant’s proof that the judgment is universal but subjective, or his derivation of the ‘antinomy of taste’— surely one of his most profound and troubling paradoxes, and one that must yield to the argument contained in wine if it yields to anything.”

Friedrich Nietzsche: “Although we should drink to the author of The Birth of the Tragedy, therefore, it should be with a thin, hypochondriac potion, maybe a finger of Beaujolais in a glass topped up with soda-water.”

Edmund Husserl: “I recommend three glasses of slivovitz from Husserl’s native Moravia, one to give courage, one to swallow down the jargon, and one to pour over the page.”

Jean-Paul Sartre: “Sartre’s great work of philosophy, L’être et le néant, introduces the Nothingness that haunts all that he wrote and said. . . If ever I were to read Sartre again, I would look for a 1964 Burgundy to wash the poison down. Small chance of finding one, however, so there is one great writer whom I shall never again revisit—and I thank God for it.”

Martin Heidegger: “What potion to complement the philosopher who told us that ‘nothing noths’? To raise an empty glass to one’s lips, and to feel it as it travels down—noth, noth, noth, the whole length of the tube: this surely is an experience to delight the real connoisseur.”

In conclusion I really enjoyed reading this book (again and again).

This is a wonderful book for anyone who loves wine and wants to try identify what, in all its complex connections with so much of what is valuable in civilisation, might be special about drinking it. I think he does a wonderful job in looking at the philosophical and religious questions related to wine, from the Koranic injunction against alcohol to the true nature of temperance. These questions take us far from the vineyard at times, making excursions into terroir as different as Wagnerian music dramas and the philosophical nature of smells. His arguments as well as his beautiful prose are fresh, original, teasingly provocative, but also joyous.

This book is only about 224 pages but fun to read either in one sitting or dipping in and out at pleasurable intervals.

There are pages of useful advice on what wine to buy that are also glimpses into what to look for in the wine. I think his recommendations are good ones even if he leans too heavily into French wines. As someone who co-owns a vineyard I can say with reasonable confidence that I know my French wines but also wine from South Africa but confess my ignorance of wines from the new world such as California or Chilean wines. But I see that as an opportunity to discover rather than stay in my comfort zone. Here Scruton gently prods you along to do just that.

As an aside Scruton, who never shies away from his staunchly conservative Tory beliefs, perhaps forget to mention one juicy vignette in that Karl Marx’s political and philosophical ideas were probably inspired by wine. Indeed Karl Marx’s family were the happy owners of a vineyard in Trier, a small affluent Rhineland city, on the rolling hills of the Mosel River Valley. The family sold it due to hard times. Then as now these vineyards of the Mosel Valley remain mostly small-scale, are still known for their fruity white wines, and especially their lemony Rieslings and agrotourism. It seems the politics of wine (tariffs and import taxes) played a larger role in the history of leftist thought than their quaint appearance might suggest. In the early 1840s, the economic struggles of these very vineyards inspired Marx to criticise the draconian Prussian government - and in the process, some historians argue, begin developing the theory of historical materialism for which he is best known. In fact there is a delightful book I can recommend written by Jens Baumeister called, ‘How Wine Made Karl Marx a Communist’ (2018) if anyone is interested in reading more about that.

Of course it’s always hard to know how seriously one is supposed to take Scruton in some of his more extravagant comments in the book, like many things he says in his other books: ‘you could say that wine is probably as old as civilisation; I prefer to say that it is civilisation, and that the distinction between civilised and uncivilised countries is the distinction between the places where it is drunk and the places where it isn’t.’ His desire to outrage and court controversy rises to the surface, and can result in some of the funniest moments in the book. But as with everything he writes, some of Scruton’s claims must be taken with a pinch of salt or more appropriately, with a glass of claret.

Indeed I prefer to picture his words as if he was one’s old and familiar drinking companion sitting on weather beaten leather chairs and making provocative but teasingly good natured remarks out of a desire to amuse rather than to be boorish or loutish. Indeed this book is best enjoyed with a glass of wine on hand whilst sitting on a comfy old worn out leather chair curled next to log burning fire as the light dims outside.

I would whole heartedly agree with Roger Scruton that wine is a “drink that causes you to smile at the world and the world to smile at you.” Instead of imprisoning you inside a solitary introspection, it takes you out of yourself - and your ideas with you - to mingle with others and their ideas. Wine is therefore a voyage of discovery - and rediscovery - in many senses. And for this I can happily raise my own glass and say amen to that.

But what glass of wine would I raise when reading Scruton’s own book?

Well, one bottle won’t do. So temperance is out of the window then - sorry Roger. You will need a good French Sauternes or Barsac (preferably 2014) with the nostalgic autobiography, a finely bodied Bordeaux wine (I would go with a more complex wine from Saint Emilion) with the philosophy section of the book, and a champagne (of course) to drink with the philosophical jokes towards the end of the book.

Oh go on then, finish off with a tipple of Cognac before bed time, I am sure Scruton wouldn’t begrudge anyone that pleasure.

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cynicalrainbows · 5 years ago

Text

The Next Best Thing (Pt 2)

So people actually seem to quite like the baby-Cathy ficlet I posted yesterday? This whole chapter is absolute plotless fluff btw.

Going to Waterstones is a treat, but when they get there, she can’t make up her mind- there’s too much choice, too much. The thought of so many books, hers for the choosing, makes her feel a bit sick, in the same way that she would if she imagined eating ten icecream sundaes- too much of a good thing.

(Or perhaps it’s just that she’s tired. She’s always found it a bit hard to fall asleep but that used to be because she couldn’t stop thinking that she might be missing out on something interesting going on. Now though- she lies awake and thinks of home. She thinks of all the ways in which Catalina’s flat is different. She thinks about what will happen if something were to happen to her godmother- where she’ll go- and then she thinks about all the things that might happen to her, about how scary it is that no one knows what might happen next, how every day could be the last day you are alive and you just wouldn’t know at all. She doesn’t tell Catalina about these thoughts. She tells her she’s slept well.)

Choosing is hard- part of her wants to replace the old stories she lost, part of her is tempted by the new titles.

Eventually, she picks Matilda- out of all the books that got left behind, she misses that one the most. Thinking about it- about everything from that day, about the sad furniture on the curb, about how cold the house suddenly felt, about the strange hands pawing through her things- makes her eyes sting with sudden shameful tears and she has to stare at a shelf of stories about horses and blink hard until they go away.

Catalina looks surprised when she hands her choice to her at the till.

‘Don’t you already have this one, querida?’

She isn’t sure whether to nod or shake her head- it occurs to her that of course Catalina recognises it. It was the last birthday present sent before everything changed. She wonders if Catalina will be angry that she let her birthday present be left behind, if she’ll blame her for not taking better care of it.

(Will she want to keep her if she thinks that Cathy is careless with her presents?)

It’s scanned and paid for before she’s been able to think of an answer and her godmother doesn’t appear to give it another thought, but then the tears- which apparently haven’t gone entirely away- start to leak out while she picks at her muffin the Waterstones cafe and Catalina sees.

‘Cathy? What’s the matter?’

She shakes her head and sniffles.

‘Querida-’ Catalina gets up, crouches by her chair. ‘Are you ill?’

She shakes her head again, then wishes she hadn’t, she wishes she’d pretended she was- it would be easier to explain.

‘What is it, carino?’

She doesn’t protest much as she is scooped out of her chair and into Catalina’s warm lap (even though she’s too big, she’s seven after all and everyone knows that seven is more or less eight and eight is nearly ten and ten is very nearly thirteen and thirteen is a grown up).

Being wrapped up in her godmother’s arms feels nice, it feels safe, even if she knows that she probably will get into trouble in a minute, even if she has to close her eyes when she mumbles that she did used to have a copy of Matilda, that she doesn’t any more.

Her face is buried in Catalina’s jumper so her words come out a bit muffly but she seems to get the gist.

‘What happened to it? Did you lose it?’

She doesn’t sound at all angry but when Cathy explains about the moving-out, about her books being left on the curb, about how they told her that she didn’t need them any more because she’d read them once already, her face goes dark and draws tight.

It makes her afraid- that her godmother is cross that she didn’t make more of an effort to save her birthday present- but Catalina feels her squirm anxiously in her lap and her face looks like it tries to go back to normal.

‘It’s alright, querida.’ She doesn’t sound normal though.

‘....Are you cross?’ Her voice is very small and Catalina shakes her head emphatically and pulls her close again, holding her so tightly it nearly hurts.

‘Not at all, not with you. I promise.’

Her godmother is unusual for an adult, in that she tells the truth always, even when she perhaps shouldn’t (she is the only grown up who told Cathy that injections really did hurt when asked, and it;s thanks to her that Cathy knew there was no such thing as the toothfairy before she was even close to losing a tooth; she can still remember how cross her mother was over it) so she believes her.

They stay like that for a bit, Cathy tucked into her arms, without saying anything else. Eventually, Catalina gently wipes her damp cheeks with a blue paper napkin and smoothes her hair back thoughtfully. Then she looks at the muffin, mostly reduced to crumbs by now.

‘Are you finished?’

(That’s another odd thing- Catalina never seems to mind if she leaves food on her plate.)

Cathy nods.

‘Then we’ll go.’

She expects Catalina to make their way back to the car- instead, she follows her godmother back to the children’s book section, still sore eyed and sniffly.

‘Do you remember which others there were? Which others you had to leave?’

She nods uncertainly and Catalina gestures to the shelves.

‘Ok then.’

She stares back; Catalina kneels beside her and takes her hand. ‘We’ll replace them, querida. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if someone told me I had to move house without my- I brought everything from Spain, you know. Every bit of furniture, every book, every notepad.

I’m just so, so sorry that I didn’t think to make sure you could do the same.’

It’s not her godmother’s fault, but Catalina looks very, very sad until she forces a smile back onto her face.

‘We’ll get them back for you. I can do that at least.’

It’s a little much to take in- she’s never been bought more than one book at a time before. After a little more coaxing, she slowly starts to pick out familiar titles from the shelves. Catalina doesn’t let go of her hand as she adds the books Cathy gives her to the basket at her feet and she’s glad.

After a while she stops.

‘I- can’t remember all of them-’

(There were a lot after all.)

‘That’s ok.’ Catalina smiles reassuringly and squeezes her hand. ‘We can make a list, once we’re home- and if you remember any, we’ll add them to the list. We can always come back.’

It’s not until they’re at the cash point, watching the cashier scan her way through the basket, that Cathy thinks of something.

‘Catalina-?’

‘What is it, querida?’

‘The list….’

‘Yes?’

‘Well….’ She chews her lip, not sure how to say it. ‘You said I could tell you if I remembered other books and we’d get them…’

‘I did.’

‘Well….what if I just said books even if I didn’t used to have them? How would you know?’

‘Well-’ Catalina seems to consider and then presses a kiss to the top of Cathy’s head.

I suppose then we’d just have to get you another bookcase for your room to fit them all, querida.’

And she smiles.

The spare room isn’t her room but it feels more like her room when the books are unpacked later that day.

And she feels a tiny bit more grounded. More real. But then books have always had a soothing effect- the familiar words are like a lullaby. The fact that Catalina actually comes and sits down beside her bed when she comes to say goodnight this time, and gently asks if there is anything other than her books that got left behind, if there is anything else that she needs, might have something to do with it too, but Cathy isn’t sure.

(She also promises never to be cross, and as nice as it sounds, it makes Cathy a bit skeptical.

‘What if I-’ Catalina doesn’t look annoyed at her questioning, like some grown ups do when she points out holes in what they say- she just laughs and wraps an arm around Cathy’s shoulders, pulling her close.

‘Alright...how about I promise never to be cross until I am sure that you are doing something on purpose to make me so?’

Cathy considers this. ‘Ok...Then I promise to never glue your hat to your head. Or put a bird up the chimney. Even though you don’t have a chimney.’

Catalina looks very confused for a moment and then she glances at the book on the bedside table and her expression clears. ‘Ah! Yes- good. And for my part, querida, I promise never to put you in a cupboard or swing you around by your pigtails.’

‘I don’t have pigtails.’ Catalina smiles and puts a hand to Cathy’s tight curls, a mirror of her own.

‘Well, that is lucky. That will make it easier for me to keep my promise.’

Cathy smiles into the duvet at this, and Catalina leans in to kiss her forehead.

‘Sweet dreams and god bless. I’m just next door if you need me.’

She always says this, as if Cathy might forget where her godmothers bedroom is over the course of just one day, but she likes that Catalina still says it anyway.)

She goes to sleep that night with her new copy of Matilda under her pillow and for once, she sleeps soundly.

#six #sixfic #six the musical #six the musical fanfiction #six fanfiction

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artistic-writer · 6 years ago

Text

The Contract :: CS Omegaverse :: Chapter 1

Title: The Contract Rating: E Summary: Emma had never wanted much in her life, despite being married to one of the richest men in the world. For ten years she has felt like a prisoner in her own marriage, denied the one thing she wants the most, but her husband cannot help but bargain her want like a cheap business deal. Enter Killian Jones, the Alpha her husband has hired to make sure she gets what she wants. And then some. A/N: This is an Omegaverse fic featuring A/B/O dynamics. Whilst this varies from fandom to fandom, for the purposes of my fic, there will be no mpreg. Just so you know. There will however be knotting, breeding, heats and other delicious things that come along with A/B/O. If you do not know what A/B/O is, feel free to message me :) Many thanks to @hollyethecurious @kmomof4 @darkcolinodonorgasm @resident-of-storybrooke and @effulgentcolors for letting me bounce my complicated ideas of you lol

Also, I am no longer doing a tag list. This is something I have struggled with because of memory issues, so to be fair to everyone, and to make sure you don’t miss out, you should allow notifications or subscribe on AO3. If you wish to stay away from this fic, blacklist the A/B/O tag.

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Emma Swan was sick. Her head pounded from the daylight that had crept its way through her bedroom curtains, slipping through the only space it could which lead right across her face. The orange blaze burned its mark into her forehead, finally annoying her enough that she opened her eyes the tiniest crack and lazily watched the specks of dust dancing in the beam. Luckily for her, the sun was slow moving, and she easily avoided it by rolling out of the way across the huge queen size bed that she shared with her husband.

Unluckily for her, he was still asleep right beside her. He was normally gone by now.

Graham Humbert was normally an early riser, waking, showering and eating his breakfast like a military man who had repeated the same morning every single day of his life. But he wasn’t any sort of combat veteran, and held no stories of anything more sinister than a board meeting. No. Routine was his everything. There was never any room in his busy CEO life for any deviation and as a consequence, Emma had paid the ultimate price of marrying him.

She was lonely. He was good looking, she couldn’t deny that, and as she gazed upon the gentle rise and fall of his smooth back muscles as he snored softly beside her, she couldn’t help the smile that had crept across her face. Lonely or not, he was still the man who had married her, despite all of her issues, and for that she would always love him. And it wasn’t just today that Emma was feeling out of sorts; she had been sick her entire life.

It had all begun when she was around five or six, but she didn’t remember much of it, only the constant trips to and from the doctor’s office, but when she really thought about it, they were nothing like what they are today. The offices always seemed darker, more shady, and despite her heavy diet of prescription vitamins and supplements to keep the sickness at bay, she never remembered an actual doctor ever examining her.

She was just sick.

Her foster father had been a loving man, doting on her despite having three sons of his own as well, and giving her everything that she wanted. That was, until she had gotten sick. He had changed, becoming nervous around her, which seemed to increase each year that she matured, constantly making sure she was taking her medication. He cared too much and it made the man slightly crazy, as well as gave Emma a hatred for the pills that supposedly kept her alive. He obsessed over her medication so much, that when she was fourteen, he was declared unfit to care for her any longer and she was sent to live with the Humbert family.

They were nice but very different from her old foster family, who mysteriously, despite always living on the poverty line, suddenly decided to vacation in the Maldives just after she had gone. The Humberts looked at her with distaste at first, the one she recognised from her foster father before, and it made Emma unsettled. What had she done to cause so many people in her life to suddenly look at her so differently? She didn’t know, but she had discovered one thing; Graham Humbert was another scrawny teenager just like her and they got on like a house on fire.

Growing up was weird in the Humbert house. Graham’s father was an Alpha, from a long line of them in fact, and his mother had long since died before Emma even arrived . Living with an Alpha was intense, but it had been worse for Graham who, at the age of eighteen, still hadn’t become what his family had expected him to. Coming from a long line of successful Alpha’s meant that as the only Beta born in over three hundred years, Graham was, essentially, as excluded from the family as the foster kid.

Emma had always told him, being a Beta wasn’t so bad though. He might not have any of the attributes of his forefathers, but Graham was a good, kind man, and Emma had on more than one occasion told him any woman would be lucky to have him. It wasn’t exactly what she had intended, but Graham had proposed to her less than a year later and now here she was, ten years into a marriage she felt she had to be in out of obligation and because, she had to face it, who would want to provide for all of her medical bills?

Emma was sick, and she was lonely.

The sheet around her was pulled away as Graham shifted his weight, a grumble escaping his throat as he rolled towards her and relaxed back into sleep once he was on his back. He twitched, one of his hands flying up to scratch at the stubble on his jaw before falling like a dead weight against the smooth contours of his chest. His hair was a mess, the curls stretched and fuzzy, the only evidence of his inability to sleep longer than a few hours that only Emma knew about.

To the world, Graham Humbert was one of the most successful business owners the world had ever known. He was rich, powerful and if it were not for his unfortunate luck, he would have been another generation of mighty Humbert Alphas with their own company and a whole army of staff at their every whim. But he wasn’t an Alpha. He had never found his way into the patriarchal values of his own family and Emma pitied him.

Maybe that was why she had married him. Maybe she didn’t really think low enough of herself that she would have never found true love with anyone else because of her illness, but it didn’t stop her from saying yes. Graham hadn’t even gotten down on one knee, bought her a ring or taken off his damn business suit to ask her that day, but she had said yes and now, a decade later, they were both slaves to their own decisions.

If she had to really admit it, Emma knew they were both unhappy. They loved each other, and there had always been care between them, but lately Emma had noticed a distance between them that was gnawing away at their union. It seemed that not even the wealthy were immune to falling out of love, and despite what her head told her, Emma’s heart ached. She wanted more and had always felt like she needed something else, someone else. Graham had been the first and only man she had ever been with, as awkward as it was sometimes, and deep down Emma couldn’t help but think about the strangest thing.

Alphas.

Since she had turned twenty, just two years into her marriage and around the time Graham started to drift away from her, Emma had been fascinated with Alphas. Her friend and fellow socialite, Ruby Lucas, had told her stories, of all ratings, and Emma had guiltily wished she wasn’t married so she could experience one for herself. She hadn’t gone a single day of her life since then without imagining the strong arms of an Alpha male, holding her tightly as he emptied the frustrations of his rut into her. Alphas haunted her dreams, left her waking in a cold, horny sweat, but she was stuck with the man beside her; a Beta with an Alpha complex.

Graham stirred finally, Emma realising that for once, she had rose long before his body clock had him waking up. She blamed the sun, but if she was honest, she had been having the most amazing dream that had shaken her from her sleep with a coil in her belly and a welcome heat between her thighs that she hadn’t felt for an age in reality. A sex dream turned her on more than her own husband and Emma hadn’t had one of those for a good long time, just like she hadn’t had a good fuck either.

Graham was many things, including impotent at the worst times, and Emma hadn’t found a way to help him keep his erection long enough so that she could actually get off. Of course, that was her fault. Her mouth was too wet, her mouth was too dry, she was too wet, she was too dry - Graham had never once taken responsibility for his poor performance and a rift had formed between them. When things were good, they were great, but when it came down to pleasing his wife, Graham was filled with anger and contempt.

Emma watched him sleep, his fingers flexing against his chest and his eyelids fluttering, threatening to open. The sheet below his waist twitched, a gentle rise beginning to pleat the cotton. Things had been good lately, because Emma hadn’t broached the idea of sex, but with the intensity of her dream still fluttering between her legs, and Graham with evident morning wood, why not give it a go?

It was a sign.

With a smirk, Emma snuggled her body into Graham’s, snaking her hand over the bumps of his abs that he spent so much time toning. He was asleep, but Graham sucked in a breath, his leg twitching sideways and bumping against hers as she slid her hand lower. Her fingers brushed through the darkened hair over his groin and Emma watched the furrow of his brow as she scraped her nails lightly over the inside of his thigh.

She was trying to wake him, just like she had in the beginning of their relationship, except now she wasn’t out for his pleasure but simply and selfishly, just her own. Her dream had left an impression on her, her subconscious willing a beautiful man between her legs with a wicked tongue and a wit to match. If she squinted, Graham kind of looked like him as he slept, and after all, she could pretend. She had been faking orgasms for over half her marriage, what was one more to scratch an itch?

Emma’s fingertips danced around Graham’s now semi-hard erection, the organ stiffening and twitching under her light touches. Emma smiled when he groaned, his lips parting slightly to exhale and suck in another much needed breath to keep up with the rhythm of his heart, his thigh shaking a little under the thin sheet where they lay. It was fun, watching him helpless to her touch as he slept, because Emma knew if he was awake, things would be very different.

Even though Graham was not an Alpha, he liked to pretend he was, and that included in the bedroom. He had been loving at first, but then things had changed between them and he had become cruel, making her pleasure herself whilst he barely touched her. He liked to watch more than participate and Emma had found a huge void opening up in her sex life that had previously been occupied by the warmth of a man. Now all she had was sex toys and porn - if she was lucky.

“Mmmmm,” Graham hummed, the sound rumbling in his chest as Emma smoothed her palm over his length, swiping her thumb over the tip that had started to ooze under her assault.

“Does that feel good?” Emma purred into his ear, watching the hairs in his beard stand to attention under the soft warmth of her words. His skin prickled to life before her eyes and she smirked.

“Yes,” Graham hissed sleepily, his hips rutting up into her hand for more friction as his erection grew even larger under her hand, firming and springing from his body like a pole.

“Do you like that, baby?” Emma cooed, her tongue darting out to lick at his ear lobe.

“God, Ruby, yes,” Graham moaned, hissing through his teeth.

“Ruby?!” Emma snapped, pushing herself up into a sit beside him and pulling her hand away from him suddenly. She slapped his bare chest and he bolted awake with a fright.

“What? Emma, what’s going on?” Graham asked frantically, scanning the room, squinting when the light hit his face and then noticing that for the first time in a long time, he was lying next to his wife with an erection.

“Ruby?” Emma asked him sternly, folding her arms over her chest and arching an eyebrow at him.

Graham clutched the sheet to his lap, gulping hard and swallowing down the lump that had formed in his throat. His cheeks were pink, his eyes falling to his lap as he desperately tried to will away his shameful erection, pinching the bridge of his nose with a sigh. “I said that?”

Emma cast a knowing glance over his body, the position and language it was giving off telling her everything she needed to know. It all made sense now. The late nights away, helping out her friend in the absence of her own much older husband, constant invites and making sure he was seated next to Ruby at dinners. But still, she wanted to hear it from him. “Why would you think I was one of my best friends?” Emma prodded, watching him squirm.

“Don’t be crazy. It was just a dream,” Graham huffed, falling back against the pillows.

“Right, okay,” Emma nodded, turning from his obvious lies and feeling more than angry that her potential fun time had been ruined so abruptly.

“Don’t be like that,” Graham pleaded, sighing heavily. “It’s always the same with you,” he accused. “You can’t blame me for things I say in my sleep, Emma. That’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe,” Emma shrugged, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. She slipped her feet into her slippers and watched the bones in her feet moving under her skin. “Maybe you wish we weren’t married any more.”

“Come on,” Graham soothed, rolling over towards her and reaching a hand out to place on the bare skin of her hip. Emma was wearing just a loose fitting shirt and panties but Graham never noticed nowadays. “Come back and we can try again.”

Emma spun to face him, her frown so heavy on her brow that she thought it would leave lines. She was disgusted, more than that, she was hurt. “Try again?” She spat at him, batting his hand away from her thigh. “Like I’m not good enough?” Graham pulled his hand away, licking his lips nervously, rolling his eyes. “Whose fault is it that you can’t get an erection anymore, Graham, huh?” Emma snapped. “Whose fault is it that you can only get it up when you are thinking of another woman?”

“Emma-,” Graham began, but he was cut off abruptly when Emma slammed her palm into the mattress beside herself in frustration.

“Don’t ‘Emma’ me!” she screeched. “We both know I don’t do it for you anymore.”

“You’re my wife,” Graham ground out through clenched teeth, balling his fist.

“Bullshit,” Emma scoffed. “We both know that doesn’t mean a thing. Being married means love, it means you care, it means you have fucking sex with each other, not sit in the corner of a darkened room jacking off whilst your wife fucks herself.”

“But I like that,” Graham said defensively.

“Oh, good for you,” Emma growled. “It’s okay because you like it.”

“You don’t?” Graham asked dumbly.

Emma gave him a look, a mixture of disbelief and sadness. “If you cared about me, you would know the answer.”

Graham blinked at her accusation. “Of course I care.”

“If you cared for me, even a tiny bit, you’d let me have a divorce.” The sorrow in Emma’s voice hung between them, both looking away from each other to avoid the inevitable apologies that were to follow.

Graham always said how sorry he was, how it wasn’t his fault and it always ended with the same scenario; Emma riding herself into a muted oblivion on a fake Alpha sized cock Graham would strap around his waist. A silence fell between them, just as he had done the last time Emma brought up the subject of divorce. She was sure she was going to get the same excuse as last time, despite her sorrow, and it meant she was trapped.

“Humbert men don’t-,” Graham began in a well rehearsed voice.

“Don’t get divorced, I know.” Emma looked at him with a sigh, her arousal long since disappeared. For two people who were so similar, they sure like tearing each other apart piece by piece, until Emma finally approached the dreaded subject of separation. Emma knew she would never get a divorce, Graham was worth too much money to risk anything so public but that didn’t mean she couldn’t negotiate the terms of her marriage.

“I’m sorry,” Graham said with a sigh, his eyes dropping to the space between them.

“I want excitement, Graham,” Emma told him firmly and his gaze snapped up to meet hers. Her eyes were the most vibrant shade of green he had ever seen and he knew that she meant business. “I want sex, and I want it when I want it, not when you can fit me into your busy schedule.” He listened, blinking at her in disbelief. “I might only be a Beta, but you married me, you settled for me,” Emma said gruffly. “Even if you are fucking Ruby.”

Graham lifted his gaze once more, narrowing his eyes at the woman in front of him. He shifted his weight on his hip, his heart picking up its pace in his chest. “I’m-,”

“You are,” Emma laughed in defeat. “I’m not an idiot, Graham, so please don't take me for a fool.” Emma knew he was indeed fucking her friend, and she had known for a while now. Neither of them were discreet with their flirtation and their emails, which would make the most hardcore Alpha in rut blush, were easily accessible with their joint account. “So, here’s my offer.”

“Offer?” Graham cocked his head at her, intrigued. She nodded.

“I want sex. You can’t give me the sex I want. I want a nice, hard, real cock inside of me. You need to find me someone who can give me sex, and I’ll keep your little side piece a secret. You know, for public image purposes,” Emma smirked.

“That’s your offer?” Graham snorted.

“Take it or leave it,” Emma shrugged. “But every business journal from here to Japan will know about you and Ruby before nightfall.”

“You wouldn’t. You would be ruined too,” Graham told her darkly.

Emma shrugged and gently shook her head from side to side, her hair falling over her shoulders. “Graham, honey, at this point in my life, I have nothing left to lose.”

Graham narrowed his eyes with a sigh. He really was sorry, for what it was worth, but Emma was right. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Deadly,” Emma said coldly. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck if you were doing Ruby in the next room, as long as I am finally satisfied.”

“Can I watch?” Graham said hoarsely, the mere idea of seeing his wife in another man’s arms giving him a tingle downstairs that he hadn’t felt for an age.

“You wanna see me come, baby?” Emma cooed, leaning towards him and licking her lips. “You wanna see a big cock take me over and over until I scream?” Emma taunted him, her eyes darting between his and his slightly parted lips.

“You don’t get to have sex with another man if I don’t get to watch,” Graham grinned.

“Are you seriously negotiating this like a business deal?” Emma snorted, her lips twitching up into a smile and an eyebrow rising on her forehead.

“Of course,” Graham shrugged playfully. “It’s the only thing I am good at.”

Emma stifled a laugh and raised her eyebrows at him. “No deal, and I’d say fucking my best friend was enough leverage for me,” she began, inhaling hard and brushing a stray strand of her golden locks from her forehead. “So, I want someone tall, with a beard, blue eyes and very grabbable hair,” Emma told him firmly, biting her lip as she described the man of her dreams. “I want chest hair to rub my nipples and I want an accent. British.” Emma pointed at him, making sure he knew that detail was important. “Find all that, in one man, and you can fuck Ruby all you like.”

Graham looked at her, his lips twitched up into a sly smile. “Alright,” he agreed with a nod, accepting the challenge. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” Emma grinned, the thought giving her a tingle just by imagining it. “I want an Alpha.”

“What do you mean, she knows?” Ruby screeched. Her hands were thrust into her hair, pulling it away from her forehead as she stared blankly at the floor she was pacing on.

“She knows,” Graham shrugged, his head in his hands. Sitting on a couch in his study, he had decided to tell Ruby, his lover, what Emma, his wife, had said. He’d left out the part about how she knew, a slip of the tongue during his dream state, but that didn’t matter anyway because if the way Ruby was stamping her feet back and forth, wall to wall in the room, it wouldn’t have been a sensible idea to anyway.

“Well, did you tell her?” Ruby accused dryly, her shoes scuffing the floor of his study as she made yet another turn at the apex of her pacing.

“Of course not,” Graham scoffed, his voice vibrating off the floor between his feet.

“Then how does she know?” Ruby demanded, her voice an octave higher in her panic.

“Will you just stop pacing?” Graham looked up with a sigh.

“No. You know what? I think I’ll keep wearing a hole into your expensive floor because I am entitled to!” Ruby stopped, despite her words and pursed her rouged lips. She closed her eyes, inhaled so deeply she thought her lungs were going to explode and then exhaled hard, shaking her dark brown hair over her shoulders with a flick of her head. “Okay, okay, let’s just think here for a second.”

“It’s fine,” Graham told her calmly. He hadn’t really contemplated what Emma had wanted until this exact second, Ruby reminding him that if their affair got out it would be disastrous. She, a woman of high society, would be made out as some common harlot, whilst his reputation, that relied heavily on his family image, would be over quicker than he could blink. Not to mention the shame he would bring to his entire Alpha dominated family, all but guaranteeing his immediate shunning.

“Fine?” Ruby scoffed with a grunt of distaste. “Graham, if this gets out-”

“Don’t worry,” Graham said, pushing himself to his feet with a grunt. “It won’t.”

Ruby laughed, dry and so sarcastically it shook her whole body. “Graham, don’t be naive. She’s your wife and my best friend. This is classic revenge, black mail ammo.”

“Listen,” Graham assured with a few tentative steps towards her. He placed his hands on her shoulders, brushing his thumbs over the patch of skin between the two straps of her top, and gave her a quick smile. He felt her calm instantly, her body swaying under his gentle caress. “Everything is going to be okay, believe me.”

“But how do you know?” Ruby pouted.

“She’s not going to tell anyone, I just have to-”

“To what?!” Ruby panicked again, her body tensing and whipping from his grasp. She took a step back, eyes wide with horror of the unknown. “To stop seeing me?”

Graham looked at her, her lip quivering as she waited for what she thought was their inevitable break up. “No!” He frowned. “God, no,” he laughed.

“This isn’t funny, Graham!” Ruby snapped, slapping his chest and attempting to push him away. “I love you and she’s dragging us apart!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Graham chanted, clutching her fingers before she had time to totally pull away and yanking her to him. He wrapped her up in his arms, swaying from side to side. “That’s not what she wants.”

Ruby’s brow knitted together in her own confusion. “Then what does she want?”

“An Alpha.” Graham didn’t quite believe his own words but they fell from his mouth before his brain had time to stop them.

“An Alpha?” Ruby parroted.

Graham nodded. “With a very specific set of attributes.” He turned from her, a heavy sigh blowing past his lips as he contemplated his wife’s words. They were not unreasonable. Graham knew a lot of people, and his family had access to a fuck ton of Alphas because of, you know, all of them coming of age except him. Maybe Emma had already met this specific Alpha, maybe at one of his family parties. No. She wouldn’t be so shy. If there was one thing Graham knew about Emma, it was that she got what she wanted, especially if it hurt her husband. “I mean, it’s imposs-”

“Leave it with me,” Ruby interjected quickly and Graham gave her a questioning look. “What?” She smirked, sauntering over to him. “I know people and I’m very resourceful.”

“Mmmm,” Graham hummed as she pressed her body against his. “Yes, you are.”

Ruby glowed under his praise, a slight blush creeping across her cheeks. The tone of Graham’s voice made her skin come alive, dark and demanding, just like the colour of his eyes that had turned to a stormy grey. Ruby licked her lips, biting her bottom one with a playfully coy pout. “Does my Alpha approve?” She smiled sweetly, her hand finding the front of his pants and rubbing at his hardening length inside.

Graham loved it when she stroked his ego, amongst other things, the title from her lips fake but no less arousing. He growled, pulling her even harder to his body with a force that made her squeak excitedly for what was to come.

#A/B/O #a/b/o dynamics #alpha!killian #emma swan #killian jones #liam jones #will scarlet #ruby lucas #graham humbert #omegaverse #the contract #ch 1 #cs fic #cs au #emma is married to someone else #its complicated

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rose-tinted-juls · 6 years ago

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Twenty One Pilots Asks

What was the first Twenty One Pilots song that you heard?

Stressed Out. I really loved it, and checked out their other songs and by the time Heathens came around I was obsessed with them.

How did you first hear about Twenty One Pilots?

When Stressed Out became really mainstream (spring of 2016) and my classmates listened to it quite a lot in school and YouTube kept on recommending it.

What is your favorite Blurryface theory so far?

Blurryface theory? Oh, I'm a fan of theories, I don't have a favourite one, I love all.

Tyler Joseph or Josh Dun?

God, don't make me choose. I love both equally.

Which song are you most looking forward to hearing on Blurryface Trench?

Okay so this is an old ask sheet so I'm gonna replace it with Trench (though I already heard all songs). I think I was most looking forward to Chlorine and Morph. But actually? All of them, duh.

What is your favorite Twenty One Pilots vine?

I don't have a favourite.

Pick one; Fairly Local music video or Tear In My Heart music video?

Oohh gosh. I love them differently. But if I have to choose: Fairly Local. (Though I love Jenna in TIMH so muchh.)

Reply with a link to the best Twenty One Pilots cover you have heard?

https://youtu.be/2ZdnEnSNNxY

https://youtu.be/f5sBI1P4lyY

https://youtu.be/XeXjghr9FA8

I can't choose one so I just chose a top 3. But there are a lot more.

Do you have/want any Twenty One Pilots tattoos?

I don't have, but want to in the future.

Which album is your favorite so far?

Trench. Blurryface. Vessel. Self-titled. But Trench right now.

Which lyric(s) has the most meaning to you?

Ugh. Right now, it's this:

Find your grandparents or someone of age, pay some respects for the path they have payed. To life they dedicated, now that should be celebrated.

But actually there are lots of favourites here. Tyler Joseph is the best poet ever. The best songwriter ever. All of his lyrics are amazing. They always get straight to my heart.

Have you ever seen Twenty One Pilots live? If so, where?

Not yet, but I have tickets for the show at Sziget Festival on 13 Aug. I can't wait!!

Can you rap the second verse of Ode To Sleep?

Actually, sometimes I can, and sometimes I can't. I mean, it's not at all perfect and I often mess it up, but there were times I could do it.

What’s the largest amount of money that you have spent on Twenty One Pilots?

180 dollars I think, I'm a cheap ass european.

If you met Josh & Tyler, hug, handshake or fist bump?

All, duh. But probably hug. A hug that lets me tell them how much they and their music means to me and how much they helped me.

What is your favorite tweet from either Josh or Tyler or the band?

I was taking a bath.

Which of Josh’s hair colours do you like the most?

Pink. Or yellow. But right now I'm in love with this lovely shade of brown hair he has on his head.

Which song would you sing to serenade someone?

Smithereens.

What is your favorite Twenty One Pilots Tumblr blog?

I have a lot of favourites, I follow like 450 tøp tumblrs... (lockscreen makers, fanfic/imagine writers, fan art makers, picture edit makers, video edit makers, or just random blogs about them)

Which of Tyler’s tattoos is your favorite?

Every piece of tattoo on his left arm. (And the one he and Josh both have.)

Self-titled album or Regional at Best?

Self-titled, probably. But ugh, I love all their music.

What was the first Twenty One Pilots song that you learned all the lyrics to?

Stressed Out, probably. That was the first song I heard from them. OH WAIT. No. I think it's The Judge!

Have you made any good friends through the skeleton clique?

OH HELL YEAH. I met the bestest friend on Earth who's been my bff for a little more than 2 years on penpalworld after I searched for the keyword "twenty øne piløts". We immediately bonded and has been besties since then (though sadly we never met yet, I'm in Europe, she's in Australia).

Do you have either the self-titled album or Regional at Best on CD?

Nope, sadly, I don't have ANY albums by them on CD. Actually idek why. But I really want the vinyl versions of their albums. I love vinyls.

Have you ever been recognized in public for wearing Twenty One Pilots?

Not yet, but I've been trying. There's a girl in my geography class and she once wore an old tøp merch but I was too shy to ask her about it and then later I wore my own tøp merch to school and she wasn't there because of some illness... But I'm not giving up hope that someday someone from the skeleton clique will recognise my clothes.

How many of their albums do you have on CD or vinyl?

I have the Trench CD from the musical library actually which I haven't given back in time. I guess I'm keeping it lol.

No, I'm planning on buying all the albums on vinyl as I said before.

Would you rather see Twenty One Pilots in a small venue, a big venue or at a festival?

I prefer smaller venues. But it'd be amazing to experience a big venue as well. This summer I'm going to a festival so that will be checked off the list.

Have you ever been recognized by Twenty One Pilots on social media?

No, never. *loud sobs escaping my mouth* at least, not yet.

What is your favorite Twenty One Pilots song?

ALL. But okay, I'll choose one, that's the point of this question. Legend. I... it just sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it.

Have you introduced Twenty One Pilots to any of your friends?

I tried to, they didn't really like their style(s?).

What is your favorite quote from Josh or Tyler?

Excuse me, could you please leave?

Can you rap Zack’s verse of Kitchen Sink?

No. Once I tried but it was complete failure. Since then, I'm trying to gain the bravery to try again.

Ukulele or piano?

Oh. Both. I've been learning to play the piano for 10 years now in music school, and I've been learning to play the ukulele on my own in my room for 5 years. And I love both. But maybe ukulele.

How many Twenty One Pilots shirts do you own?

Only one. My parents don't want to buy me more and they also don't let me buy what I want because like it's too expensive? Which they actually are, so I'm searching for the cheaper stuff that look good and that my cheap self can actually afford.

Which song do you want to see a music video for?

SMITHEREENS or Legend.

Goner or Truce?

Truce.

Are you seeing Twenty One Pilots live this year?

YES FINALLY I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR SO LONG. I really hope nothing will come into my way.

On a scale of 1-10, how much do you love Jenna Joseph?

15? She's the most gorgeous, amazing woman ever. I love her with all my heart. (Also, #Jyler forever)

What is your favorite thing about Josh Dun?

His adorableness and talent.

Oh my. This was quite long but I enjoyed answering these questions because

1. I felt like I'm some famous person during an interview

2. I enjoy everything that connects to my smol beans.

Peace.

STAY ALIVE EVERYONE.

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helenmaybewriting · 6 years ago

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On Academic Precarity as Ongoing Anxiety

I’ve been given reason to think about making academic precarity visible lately. I’m applying for a big early-career grant but am outside the eligible period. I am fortunate that there is a way to seek an ‘exemption’ to the rules and ask to account for a period of time that meets certain requirements as a ‘career interruption’. For some this is children or carer responsibilities, for others it is illness. For some it is working in other sectors or not working for various reasons. For me, I am claiming a period in my life post-PhD where I worked sessionally in teaching roles at multiple universities and did not hold a research position. I need to collect and tabulate proof for this period. It must be made visible in very particular ways: a neat table that outlines the reason for career interruption, the time that can be claimed, the relevant dates. I’m asked to contain this messy, precarious, anxious time of my life in a neat grid.

The bureaucratic demands seem simple: account for it, tally it up. And don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful there is a way to recognise this interruption, disruption, abruption. However, I’ve encountered so many confused faces in trying to progress the process, as if accounting for sessional work is an aberration they’ve never come across. Sessional staff teach anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of students at Australian universities, yet my requests seemed alien to many.

I have persisted in my accounting, feeling the anxiety of precarity rise again in my chest. Someone said to me it was nothing to be ashamed of. I replied: I’m not ashamed of it, I am exhausted by it.

How long was the period of time from the award of my doctorate to getting an ongoing job? Already this request narrows the scope, as if precarity starts from award and not submission or before. I was already precarious when I finally wore the floppy hat. Yet here, the form asks for an accounting for this time—from award to ongoing job—in days, weeks and months. But my body remembers it as the blur of ill-defined time characterised by sounds that hiss and sigh in my memory: sessional, scramble, stress, yes and yes and yes and yes again because it is the week before semester and I don’t have enough hours to pay rent yet. Struggle, survival, collapse are words that hiss and sigh also. What is the FTE of a period that is experienced and remembered as the always-just-audible hum of the anxiety of precarity? Account for it. Give it form.

This is the period of my endless agreeability, of ‘yes I can take just the 8am and the 4pm tutorial that day’. The period of learning to be a chameleon, of ‘yes I can teach IR/development studies/anthropology of gender/sports sociology/peace studies/global governance’. The period of befriending the public transport app that helped me trace crazed patterns between universities and learning the locations of the best cafés where I could grab lunch as I swapped discipline hats and institutional languages so my students would believe my claimed authority.

This is the period of snatched time to try and write between tutorials while I could use an institution’s library access, because publication was the only way out of this but my schedule left no real time to do it. The period that included the semester with 280 essays to mark, of phone calls with incredulous university IT because I couldn’t remember which institutional password I needed to get in to this particular one of my seven email addresses, of making dinner plans with friends and asking if we could go to the cheap delicious Asian place where I could eat a whole meal rather than the nice restaurant where I’d eat an entrée as if I wasn’t actually hungry. This is the period of my always-availability accompanied by always-exhaustion; of recognising myself in articles about stress and burnout that I would read on the train between cramming in prep for the next tutorial. This is the period of my endless professional flexibility even as the stress of the precarity fixed the muscles in my shoulders in to (still) untangle-able knots. This is the period of “non-research employment not concurrent with research employment”. Account for it. Note it down.

The neoliberal academy, that runs on this sessional labour, works in subtle and overt ways to erase it too. Sessional academics are expendable, replaceable, not ‘real’ staff, despite the institution’s dependence on their work. This year I’ve had to chase down five universities to get them to write letters outlining the periods I worked for them and confirming my work was teaching-only—confirming explicitly that they gave me no support for research during my employment. This is my ‘evidence’, codifying on various letterheads my experience of uncertain, sporadic labour. While several universities have been very helpful and quick, making this process a little smoother, others have not. Not through maliciousness, but through the grinding, churning practices of bureaucracy and the inefficiencies of systems not set up to serve people like me.

One university couldn’t find evidence of my working for them in 2013, telling me it was ‘such a long time ago’. One university only allowed me to request a HR job logged in to their intra-net, the woman on the phone for general enquiries when I called to explain the problem kept suggesting I use my current username. Several universities wrote letters detailing the 12 to 18-month period I apparently worked for them, the period in which I learned only now I remained in their system in some manner (even though my login access was cut off precisely at the end of semester). I’ve now had to supplement these letters with contracts I’ve kept to demonstrate it was only 13 weeks of hourly-work, not a year-long sessional contract. In my neat table, a list of ‘no’s fill a column titled “was the employment research related”. Account for it. Make it present.

I am not sure I will ever not feel a residual anxiety, lodged in my throat, from this time. But having to tabulate it, to fit it in to neat boxes, to repeatedly note it was “non-research related employment not concurrent with research employment”, to calculate a patchwork of start and finish dates, to accumulate evidence of the precarity, has meant I can hear that hum again and taste the stress as bitterness on my tongue. The sounds, tastes, feelings can’t be accounted for in a 200 word ‘justification statement’ in this neat document, but I try and articulate the difficulty while sounding professional and capable; further contortions.

In this process of accounting, I’ve been asked to ‘remove duplicates’ in my record because, I am told, I can’t claim the same period twice. I’ve had to again make visible the hum and bitterness, by the act of explaining once again that I wasn’t trying to claim multiple jobs as separate time periods, but rather to give a full account of my employment as requested which included working multiple jobs, simultaneously. I can feel the act of putting it in to words working to bring the blurred time in to focus in hard edges and anxious spikes in my chest. This work did overlap, but it was not duplicates; this work was a complete list of my employment, yet still barely covered my half of our living expenses. Account for it. Point it out.

That period also holds bright memories. Memories of the yeasty smell of zaatar-top pizzas from our local shops in Melbourne, and the sweet taste of carafes of wine and gossip shared with one of my dearest girlfriends; of warm rooms in winter full of boardgames and laughter, and cut grass in lazy summer afternoons sprawled with friends across a backyard. It also forged friendships across shared experiences: the Friday morning early-career writing group that was a refuge and a delight, of peers who didn’t know they were mentors but for whom I will always be grateful, and unlooked-for generosity in offering office space or other necessities when someone had slightly more security than others.

Precarity and anxiety are not totalising but they are overwhelming. I am not shamed by them, but they are exhausting.

I feel, in writing it down that I am being required to make claims for legitimacy, to assert that I belong here. Precarity and anxiety run the risk of becoming the background hum and the overlooked bitter taste. The tactics of universities trick us in to thinking we are alone with this, but although the details may vary, the story is the same for many.

In writing this, I recognise that my form and experience of precarity is its own thing; that other people’s experiences will differ. I have a supportive partner. I don’t have children. My partner, however, started doing a PhD the year I finished mine. We had moved away from my established potential-employment networks for him to take up his PhD. My precarity was made more difficult through particular health challenges, and other personal circumstances. I write here from my own experience. I write with acknowledgement of my relative privileged position of having an ongoing job now, when so many clever driven precarious peers do not. I write with anxiety and trepidation about sharing these experiences. I write in apprehension that someone will tell me my experience isn’t as bad as I feel it to have been, that other people have it worse, that this is a rite of passage for all academics, that I should get over it. My anxiety about sharing proves the point about needing to share. The invisibility of this work, and how we write it into or out of our narratives, works to indivdiualise our experiences and isolate us.

I think in accounting for my interruption, my period of “non-research related employment not concurrent with research employment”, moving from the blur to the boxes forced me to describe the reality of that period, and that has been deeply discomforting. But writing this reflection, and naming the precarity and its attendant feelings, is a way of making visible these structures. It is a way of acknowledging that my survival of that period fundamentally depended on the support of others. I don’t have magical solutions, but after this rollercoaster of paperwork and bureaucracy count me in for the barricades if anyone is up for a revolution. Until then, know that while the institutions may not care—about precarity, burnout, stress, enduring anxiety—I do, and if you have a story similar to mine know I see you and I’m so glad you’re here. Account for it. Hold it to account.

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scifigeneration · 6 years ago

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Friday essay: how speculative fiction gained literary respectability

by Rose Michael

Biologists are gathering evidence of green algae (pictured here in Kuwait) becoming carbohydrate-rich but less nutritious, due to increased carbon dioxide levels. As science fiction becomes science fact, new forms of storytelling are emerging. Raed Qutena

I count myself lucky. Weird, I know, in this day and age when all around us the natural and political world is going to hell in a handbasket. But that, in fact, may be part of it.

Back when I started writing, realism had such a stranglehold on publishing that there was little room for speculative writers and readers. (I didn’t know that’s what I was until I read it in a reader’s report for my first novel. And even then I didn’t know what it was, until I realised that it was what I read, and had always been reading; what I wrote, and wanted to write.) Outside of the convention rooms, that is, which were packed with less-literary-leaning science-fiction and fantasy producers and consumers.

Realism was the rule, even for those writing non-realist stories, such as popular crime and commercial romance. Perhaps this dominance was because of a culture heavily influenced by an Anglo-Saxon heritage. Richard Lea has written in The Guardian of “non-fiction” as a construct of English literature, arguing other cultures do not distinguish so obsessively between stories on the basis of whether or not they are “real”.

China Miéville in 2010. Pan MacMillan Australia/AAP

Regardless of the reason, this conception of literary fiction has been widely accepted – leading self-described “weird fiction” novelist China Miéville to identify the Booker as a genre prize for specifically realist literary fiction; a category he calls “litfic”. The best writers Australia is famous for producing aren’t only a product of this environment, but also role models who perpetuate it: Tim Winton and Helen Garner write similarly realistically, albeit generally fiction for one and non-fiction for the other.

Today, realism remains the most popular literary mode. Our education system trains us to appreciate literatures of verisimilitude; or, rather, literature we identify as “real”, charting interior landscapes and emotional journeys that generally represent a quite particular version of middle-class life. It’s one that may not have much in common these days with many people’s experiences – middle-class, Anglo or otherwise – or even our exterior world(s).

Like other kinds of biases, realism has been normalised, but there is now a growing recognition – a re-evaluation – of different kinds of “un-real” storytelling: “speculative” fiction, so-called for its obviously invented and inventive aspects.

Feminist science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin has described this diversification as:

a much larger collective conviction about who’s entitled to tell stories, what stories are worth telling, and who among the storytellers gets taken seriously … not only in terms of race and gender, but in terms of what has long been labelled “genre” fiction.

Closer to home, author Jane Rawson – who has written short stories and novels and co-authored a non-fiction handbook on “surviving” climate change – has described the stranglehold realistic writing has on Australian stories in an article for Overland, yet her own work evidences a new appreciation for alternative, novel modes.

Rawson’s latest book, From the Wreck, intertwines the story of her ancestor George Hills, who was shipwrecked off the coast of South Australia and survived eight days at sea, with the tale of a shape-shifting alien seeking refuge on Earth. In an Australian first, it was long-listed for the Miles Franklin, our most prestigious literary award, after having won the niche Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction.

The Aurealis awards were established in 1995 by the publishers of Australia’s longest-running, small-press science-fiction and fantasy magazine of the same name. As well as recognising the achievements of Australian science-fiction, fantasy and horror writers, they were designed to distinguish between those speculative subgenres.

Last year, five of the six finalists for the Aurealis awards were published, promoted and shelved as literary fiction.

A broad church

Perhaps what counts as speculative fiction is also changing. The term is certainly not new; it was first used in an 1889 review, but came into more common usage after genre author Robert Heinlein’s 1947 essay On the Writing of Speculative Fiction.

Whereas science fiction generally engages with technological developments and their potential consequences, speculative fiction is a far broader, vaguer term. It can be seen as an offshoot of the popular science-fiction genre, or a more neutral umbrella category that simply describes all non-realist forms, including fantasy and fairytales – from the epic of Gilgamesh through to The Handmaid’s Tale.

While critic James Wood argues that “everything flows from the real … it is realism that allows surrealism, magic realism, fantasy, dream and so on”, others, such as author Doris Lessing, believe that everything flows from the fantastic; that all fiction has always been speculative. I am not as interested in which came first (or which has more cultural, or commercial, value) as I am in the fact that speculative fiction – “spec-fic” – seems to be gaining literary respectability. (Next step, surely, mainstream popularity! After all, millions of moviegoers and television viewers have binge-watched the rise of fantastic forms, and audiences are well versed in unreal onscreen worlds.)

One reason for this new interest in an old but evolving form has been well articulated by author and critic James Bradley: climate change. Writers, and publishers, are embracing speculative fiction as an apt form to interrogate what it means to be human, to be humane, in the current climate – and to engage with ideas of posthumanism too.

These are the sorts of existential questions that have historically driven realist literature.

According to the World Wildlife Fund’s 2018 Living Planet Report, 60% of the world’s wildlife disappeared between 1970 and 2012. The year 2016 was declared the hottest on record, echoing the previous year and the one before that. People under 30 have never experienced a month in which average temperatures are below the long-term mean. Hurricanes register on the Richter scale and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has added a colour to temperature maps as the heat keeps on climbing.

Science fiction? Science fact.

A baby Francois Langur at Taronga Zoo in June. François Langurs are a critically endangered species found in China and Vietnam. AAP Image/Supplied by Taronga Zoo

What are we to do about this? Well, according to writer and geographer Samuel Miller-McDonald, “If you’re a writer, then you have to write about this.”

There is an infographic doing the rounds on Facebook that shows sister countries with comparable climates to (warming) regions of Australia. But it doesn’t reflect the real issue. Associate Professor Michael Kearney, Research Fellow in Biosciences at the University of Melbourne, points out that no-one anywhere in the world has any experience of our current CO2 levels. The changed environment is, he says – using a word that is particularly appropriate for my argument – a “novel” situation.

Elsewhere, biologists are gathering evidence of algae that carbon dioxide has made carbohydrate-rich but less nutritious. So the plankton that rely on them to survive might eat more and more and yet still starve.

Fiction focused on the inner lives of a limited cross-section of people no longer seems the best literary form to reflect, or reflect on, our brave new outer world – if, indeed, it ever was.

Whether it’s a creative response to catastrophic climate change, or an empathic, philosophical attempt to express cultural, economic, neurological – or even species – diversification, the recognition works such as Rawson’s are receiving surely shows we have left Modernism behind and entered the era of Anthropocene literature.

And her book is not alone. Other wild titles achieving similar success include Krissy Kneen’s An Uncertain Grace, shortlisted for the Aurealis, the Stella prize and the Norma K. Hemming award – given to mark excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class or disability in a speculative fiction work.

Kneen’s book connects five stories spanning a century, navigating themes of sexuality – including erotic explorations of transgression and transmutation – against the backdrop of a changing ocean.

Earlier, more realist but still speculative titles (from 2015) include Mireille Juchau’s The World Without Us and Bradley’s Clade. These novels fit better with Miéville’s description of “litfic”, employing realistic literary techniques that would not be out of place in Winton’s books, but they have been called “cli-fi” for the way they put climate change squarely at the forefront of their stories (though their authors tend to resist such generic categorisation).

Both novels, told across time and from multiple points of view, are concerned with radically changed and catastrophically changing environments, and how the negative consequences of our one-world experiment might well – or, rather, ill – play out.

Catherine McKinnnon’s Storyland is a more recent example that similarly has a fantastic aspect. The author describes her different chapters set in different times, culminating – Cloud Atlas–like, in one futuristic episode – as “timeslips” or “time shifts” rather than time travel. Yet it has been received as speculative – and not in a pejorative way, despite how some “high-art” literary authors may feel about “low-brow” genre associations.

Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017. Neil Hall/AAP

Kazuo Ishiguro, for instance, told The New York Times when The Buried Giant was released in 2015 that he was fearful readers would not “follow him” into Arthurian Britain. Le Guin was quick to call him out on his obvious attempt to distance himself from the fantasy category. Michel Faber, around the same time, told a Wheeler Centre audience that his Book of Strange New Things, where a missionary is sent to convert an alien race, was “not about aliens” but alienation. Of course it is the latter, but it is also about the other.

All these more-and-less-speculative fictions – these not-traditionally-realist literatures – analyse the world in a way that it is not usually analysed, to echo Tim Parks’s criterion for the best novels. Interestingly, this sounds suspiciously like science-fiction critic Darko Suvin’s famous conception of the genre as a literature of “cognitive estrangement”, which inspires readers to re-view their own world, think in new ways, and – most importantly – take appropriate action.

A new party

Perhaps better case studies of what local spec-fic is or does – when considering questions of diversity – are Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things and Claire Coleman’s Terra Nullius.

The first is a distinctly Aussie Handmaid’s Tale for our times, where “girls” guilty by association with some unspecified sexual scenario are drugged, abducted and held captive in a remote outback location.

The latter is another idea whose time has come: an apocalyptic act of colonisation. Not such an imagined scenario for Noongar woman Coleman. It’s a tricky plot to tell without giving away spoilers – the book opens on an alternative history, or is it a futuristic Australia? Again, the story is told through different points of view, which prioritises collective storytelling over the authority of a single voice.

“The entire purpose of writing Terra Nullius,” Coleman has said, “was to provoke empathy in people who had none.”

This connection of reading with empathy is a case Neil Gaiman made in a 2013 lecture when he told of how China’s first party-approved science-fiction and fantasy convention had come about five years earlier.

Neil Gaiman. Julien Warnand/EPA

The Chinese had sent delegates to Apple and Google etc to try to work out why America was inventing the future, he said. And they had discovered that all the programmers, all the entrepreneurs, had read science fiction when they were children.

“Fiction can show you a different world,” said Gaiman. “It can take you somewhere you’ve never been.”

And when you come back, you see things differently. And you might decide to do something about that: you might change the future.

Perhaps the key to why speculative fiction is on the rise is the ways in which it is not “hard” science fiction. Rather than focusing on technology and world-building to the point of potential fetishism, as our “real” world seems to be doing, what we are reading today is a sophisticated literature engaging with contemporary cultural, social and political matters – through the lens of an “un-real” idea, which may be little more than a metaphor or errant speculation.

About The Author:

Rose Michael is a Lecturer, Writing & Publishing at RMIT University

This article is republished from our content partners at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

#science fiction #speculative fiction #literature

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sankta-arya · 7 years ago

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The Seasons of My Love (3)

Written for day 1 (soulmates) and day 5 (seasons) of @jonsa-week

Rated mature, major character death

3. Melting In My Hand

Chapter title from ‘Misty’ by Kate Bush

A widow at twenty-five and her only experience with marriage being quite a horrendous one, Sansa has no intention of ever getting married again.

That's until she meets a handsome young soldier in a pub.

After fifty-five years of marriage, two children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, Jon and Sansa are still happy. But then disaster strikes.

Sansa is twenty-five.

She and her friends have all signed up as army nurses. She wanted to spend her last night before leaving in peace and quiet, but somehow she let Margaery talk her into coming along to a pub. A group of soldiers awaiting deployment are spending their free night here as well and the girls are giggling too loudly as they try to catch the boys' attention.

Because that's what they are: boys, all ranging between the ages of seventeen and nineteen - perhaps one or two can boast to be twenty or twenty-one - and they have no idea what's waiting for them. The Knights of Summer, her mother would have called them.

Sansa feels out of place, being not only the oldest of their group, but also a widow. She can't say she regrets her husband's death, she's too relieved to be rid of him. Joffrey was a vulgar bully and at times she can still feel the bruises and cuts that used to litter her skin during their marriage. Between Joffrey and leering Uncle Petyr, she's had her fill of men, so unlike her friends, she's not keen on having an innocent flirt with an army boy.

She takes a sip of her soda, trying to smile at a bawdy joke Margie's cousin Megga just shared and excuses herself. She needs some fresh air and a cigarette.

It's colder than she thought outside, so she wraps her coat more tightly around her as she tries to light a cig. The flame of her lighter keeps flickering out and suddenly a pair of large hands cup around hers to shield it from the wind. His head's bent down, but she recognises the unruly dark curls. He's one of the soldiers from inside the pub.

"Thank you," she mutters.

He glances up at her with a smirk. "You're welcome, Miss."

Their eyes meet, and even in the dark, she can see colour flooding his face. His lips part in surprise and she instantly drops her cigarette, fleeing back inside.

She tries to ignore him for the rest of the evening, overwhelmed by all the beauty she can suddenly see and what it means.

It's not until later, when Margie is talking to her handsome stranger and lightly brushes her hand over his shoulder, that Sansa can't take it anymore.

She stalks over to them, heels clicking rhythmically, and practically shoves her friend aside.

She's not even sure what she was planning to do, but now that she's close enough to count his eyelashes and study the curve of his lips, she doesn't hesitate.

She cups his jaw, lightly scratching his wispy beard and dives in to kiss him deeply, encouraged by the hoots and delighted shrieks of their respective groups of friends.

I loved a maid as white as winter

with moonglow in her hair

Sansa sighed as she pulled the brush through her thick, snowy mane. They'll find him, she kept telling herself. He'lll be fine, the mantra repeated itself over and over again in her head.

She couldn't allow herself to think otherwise. Oh, how she wished she could be out there looking for him herself, but she would be of no use to them.

I shouldn't have sent him out by himself. Jon made the trip to the grocery store just around the corner and the bakery across the street almost weekly. The doctors said it was good for him to keep doing things independently as long as he could. The worst that had happened so far was that he got angry because the butcher wouldn't sell him any bread.

It's all my fault. She'd given him a list, told him exactly where to buy what, but perhaps she should have waited until she felt better and could have gone along with him, or asked Minisa for help. It's just that she didn't want to impose on her daughter's life more than she already did.

Suddenly the front door swung open and she pushed herself to her feet, bracing her hand on the table to keep herself steady.

"We were out of dog food," she could hear Jon explain to Mina. "Your mother forgot to put it on the list."

They hadn't had a dog in seven years and the store on Torrhen's Square he went looking for had closed nearly two years ago. When he couldn't find it, he'd tried to head home again, but he had forgotten how to get back.

***

The next morning she woke up to Jon opening drawers, a scowl fixed on his face. At first she'd asked him what he was looking for whenever he did that, but she'd learned it often set off his temper.

He glanced up to find her standing in the doorway and beamed at her. She was fond of his smiles, they made him look fifteen years younger and incredibly handsome.

He closed the distance between them quickly - he was still in an excellent physical condition for his age- and cupped her cheeks to kiss her. Suddenly his hands slid down her neck and collarbones and he started to fondle her breasts.

"Jon!" she cried out, swatting his hands away as she pulled back. "We're too old for that nonsense!"

She pushed past him to get to the kitchen. She almost jumped when she suddenly felt his hand groping her arse. "I can't help it, lovely girl," he whispered into her ear. "You drive me insane."

***

She was sitting on the bench under the cherry tree, trying to focus on her knitting, but the doctor's voice kept echoing inside her head.

She'd been able to hear the words, but she couldn't make sense of them. Lymph nodes. Metastasis. Early stage 4.

"Is it treatable?" Minisa had asked. Her stomach churned as she recalled the look of pity on the oncologist's face. He'd murmured excuses like "your mother's age" and "with her medical history."

I'm still sitting right here! part of her had wanted to scream, but she'd just felt too numb.

"How long?" she remembered asking.

"Difficult to tell, probably six months."

Dying didn't particularly scare her, being left behind was always worse, but she couldn't leave Jon, not now.

"Should we tell him?" Mina had asked after explaining the situation.

The doctor had rubbed his chin and removed his glasses, wiping them as he pondered her question. "I believe it's best to consult the physician who's treating your father before making a final decision," he'd stated eventually. "But I'd advise against it. He won't remember most of the time, and when he does, it might be too much to handle."

***

So Sansa tried to cope by herself, keeping her husband in the dark on the fact that she was dying. She willed her body to stay strong, for him. The doctors and her daughter and son had all agreed that she shouldn't tell Jon, but she kept worrying. What's going to happen when he wakes up one day and I'm gone?

She was aware telling him probably wouldn't make any difference, but it still hurt so much to lie to him and to bear this pain alone. She had Arya and Brienne, but neither of them were good at talking, and Sansa would never burden Mina or Ned with her own troubles. She was their mother, for Seven's sake!

Jon had been her rock for over fifty-five years, and though he was still with her, she was on her own now. Some days she felt like the Jon she'd known and loved for so long was already gone.

Jon would have never shoved her aside in frustration. Jon wouldn't stand in front of their open window stark naked, glaring and shouting at the people who pointed and laughed behind their hands.

***

Brienne and her husband Jaime were visiting. They'd just finished their tea and cakes when Jaime proposed they all play a board game together. Sansa tried to distract him by asking how his brother Tyrion was doing, not wanting to explain that Jon was no longer able to remember the rules to most games.

She couldn't make Jaime change his mind however, especially after sweet oblivious Jon agreed, both men's competitive streak coming out, but she did manage to steer their choice toward a relatively simple card game.

Yet twenty minutes in, Jon suddenly leapt to his feet, roaring: "You're all cheating!" and threw his cards in Jaime's face.

"Hey, sit down, caveman!" Jaime urged him, as Sansa hid her flushed cheeks behind her own cards.

"You're a fucking cheater, Lannister!" Jon threw back at him, banging his fist on the table.

Sansa thanked all the gods Brienne had the presence of mind to stop Jaime from taking it any further by putting a hand on his arm.

***

Jon was walking around naked again, but at least he wasn't near any streetside windows this time. He grinned at Sansa as she let her eyes trail down his body, desperately wondering how she was going to convince him to put on some clothes.

Suddenly he slapped his own arse. "I have a nice butt, don't I, Sansa? I've seen you looking at it. I know you want to get your hands on me," he purred, trying to wink at her.

She decided to indulge him, taking a step closer and admitting: "You caught me!"

Suddenly her vision became blurry and her knees buckled. The last thing she heard was his panicked cry: "Sansa! Sansa, baby! What's wrong?"

***

Five months later.

Jon hobbled on through the black-and-white streets of Wintertown, the snow flurrying down around him. For some reason he'd woken up in a hospital bed that morning, and though his joints felt a little stiff, he was quite sure he was not ill, so he had no business being in a hospital.

The world around him looked drab and dull. It hadn't always been like that, but he couldn't remember when or why it had changed. When he closed his eyes, he could still see colours: blue and pink and cream, and a rich rusty red that smelled like lemons and lavender.

He couldn't recall the exact significance of those colours and that scent, but he knew he had to get back home, where she'd be waiting for him, and everything would be fine.

Her name was on the tip of his tongue. He wet his lips, trying to remember. He kicked the lid off a trash bin, huffing in frustration.

He crossed the street when he saw a florist shop, going in to buy a pot of jonquils. After another forty-five minutes, he'd finally found the house with the cherry tree.

He patted his pockets, looking for a key. When he realised he must have forgotten it, he knocked on the door, but no one came to answer it. How foolish of him! It was the middle of the day, she must still be at work.

He sat down on the bench under the cherry tree and decided to wait for her. It was colder than he'd realized. He rubbed his hands together, blowing hot air into them, wishing he had a warmer jacket.

He pushed himself to his feet, groaning at his protesting joints and started pacing the front garden. He didn't really keep track of time, but after a while he decided to get comfortable on the bench again. She won't be long now.

He could feel fatigue settling in his bones and his head slumping to his shoulder. He jerked up, suppressing a yawn. She won't be long now.

He felt so sleepy suddenly. He'd just close his eyes for a minute.

A delicate hand touched his shoulder. "Jon," she whispered. He blinked, shielding his eyes from the bright light that suddenly invaded them.

She was standing in front of him in a lovely blue sundress, long auburn hair framing her face in soft curls. "Sansa?" he asked, his voice rough.

She beamed at him. "Come."

He took the hand she was extending to him without hesitating.

#jonsa #jon x sansa #my fic #jonsaweek #tw: mention of abuse #major character death #dementia #cancer #seasons of my love

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silentstep · 7 years ago

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WIP Tag Meme

List all the things you’re currently working on in as much or little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on: writing, art, gifsets, whatever.

Tagged by @elsajeni (thank you)! She split hers into “active” and “abandoned,” which I’m... only sort of going to do, because everything aside from The Fic (y’all know the one by now) gets ruthlessly forced to the eternal backburner to languish the second it starts looking like it’d be enough work that it’d interfere with The Fic. Work/family life/social life/my goddamn brainweasels all interfere hard enough with the fic as it is.

Active WIPs, or: The Fic, The Magnum Opus, The Giant Sprawling Hobbit Fix-It (that @rakshasi-sue says I am not allowed to call a fix-it despite its happy ending due to all the horrible whumpy nonsense I gleefully pile onto the characters in the meantime)

Chapter Seven is happening! I have no idea yet what chapter seven will actually be about! Dunlendings with salt mines! Stonefoots with massive self-contained chemosynthesis-based cave ecoystems! My ill-advised tendency to let the fact that I personally think dicks are hilarious influence my actual writing! (I definitely called my local library and asked the poor librarian how the fuck I was supposed to research methods of salt mining in medieval Europe though! “Is this for school” she asked! And I had to stutter my way through “nnooo this is for a... uh... a fantasy novel...”!)

chapter 7 is ~5,600 words so far, bringing the fic’s total up to ~263,500 words. (FINALLY BEATING ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, HAH.)

Not Abandoned, Hopefully Will Not Take Me Much Longer

@setnet asked “POV” for the fic meme so I’m planning to scribble out the dwarven perspective on the Daeron thing (though @setnet, please feel free to request a POV of something else specifically if you’d prefer)

Probably Abandoned, At Least Until The Hobbit Fic Is Done (In Approximately 50 Years At This Rate, Ugh)

a.) Yoda dies fighting Sidious, Obi-Wan takes Luke & Leia and runs away with Dexter Jettster post-Order 66 to raise them as Jedi as best he can on a merchant freighter (meanwhile, Katooni joins the Ohnaka Gang) (meanwhile, an injured-but-definitely-alive Mace Windu finds his tiny grandpadawan Caleb Dume and they start searching the galaxy for other surviving Jedi while helping the fledgeling Rebellion)

b.) an even-by-my-standards-stunningly self-indulgent fic where Ned Stark receives a whole slew of prophetic dreams (and a dæmon direwolf) the night Aerys murders his father and brother, successfully convinces Jon and Robert that the rebellion should not be about seating someone new on the Iron Throne but rather breaking the kingdoms back into seven, and then rescues Elia and her children ostensibly as bargaining chips to get Lyanna back from her captors (but also because Ned is Ned and Ned thinks killing children is bad to do because hes not a horrible monster)

c.) ah yes, the Damerons

d.) Obi-Wan Leaves The Jedi Over A Misunderstanding; Jedi Apprentice!verse, could also be titled Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan Talk Past Each Other: The Fic (don’t worry Qui-Gon manages to straighten things out and bring him back but only after a contrivedly long series of adventures that feature truly ridiculous amounts of Missed Him by That Much)

e.) Obi-Wan/Satine year-on-Mandalore (can I even call myself an Obitine shipper if I don’t have at least one of these I mean honestly)

f.) Obi-Wan/Commander Cody, Fake/Pretend Relationship For Purposes of Undercover Work (doylistically it’s also for the excuse to have Obi-Wan wear pretty skirts & show lots of skin)

g.) When Sidious commands Dooku to kill Ventress to prove his loyalty, Dooku agrees to his face then immediately comms Ventress, orders her home RIGHT NOW YOUNG LADY, reveals the whole plot to the Senate, helps the Jedi overthrow Sidious & de-chip the clones, then looks really smug when the Republic agrees to recognise the Confederacy as an independent body and there’s peace in the galaxy and the Jedi aren’t allowed to hunt him down as a Sith because he’s out of their judisdiction now, and in fact they have to stand there next to Republic dignitaries at diplomatic functions between the two political entities and furiously grind their teeth at his existence (meanwhile he hasn’t noticed how much lighter his and Ventress’ auras are slowly getting oops) (meanwhile Ventress and Obi-Wan keep meeting at these same diplomatic functions and dancing incredible Force-assisted tangoes together (meanwhile in a 20 mile radius of this event bodices ripping men turning bisexual it was amazing the end))

h.) listen unfortunately I’m probably going to write a “while living in the Blue Mnts the Ereboreans encounter a dark-haired Noldo with a very sad, very beautiful voice who’s just wandering up and down the shoreline spilling haunting laments all over the landscape & they eventually get fed up & just kidnap him underground and use sacred hospitality as an excuse to be very stern about one’s need to eat” because please someone take care of my poor precious kinslaying baby

i.) I’m not realistically planning to write this one but. Stratford Festival did a production of The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and it was very good and the ending was a good ending, it was perfect and cathartic and I am so glad of it but Have You Considered A Version Where The Bad Guys Win, Sincerely, SilentStep

(it’s so easy, listen, when Alcemero locks Joanna in the room and confronts De Flores with his knowledge of the murders right outside, within earshot, De Flores hears enough and then, breathing heavily, shouts Joanna! Permission! and there’s a two-and-a-half-second extremely charged silence before she cries Granted! in a voice that nearly breaks-- and De Flores leaps forward and kills Alcemero. And then the others come in but the two of them don’t even need to discuss their story to get it straight: O, Lord de Piracquo, here is the body of the man who murdered your brother, we are so sorry you could not kill him yourself but when Joanna found Lord Alonzo’s ring in her husband’s medicine-chest and confronted him he threatened her but she had already told De Flores as insurance so he locked her up and tried to kill De Flores intending to kill her afterward but De Flores killed him in self-defense-- oh, right, sure, he had an alibi for the time of the murder, but that was because he’d paid Antonio to actually do the deed & then disappear.

The innocent Tony is put to death. Jasperino flees in the night. Tomazo departs with some closure. And for his services, Joanna manages to suggest in such a way that her father thinks it was his own idea, De Flores gets her hand in marriage.

She turns up pregnant quick enough that rumors start that her son is actually Alcemero’s-- he does resemble De Flores, but it’s hard for people who won’t look past his father’s birthmark to tell. eventually the kid goes to his mother and asks her, shaky-voiced, if she’s sure he’s his father’s son, what if he’s not, what if he’s really the son of a murderer--

and Joanna goes to her knees and takes his shoulders in her hands and looks him steadily in the eyes and says, low-voiced and sure, An thou wert the son of two murderers, it could not make thee other than thou art, nor would we love thee less.)

I mean uh..................... I have morals

unfortunately I’m... actually unsure who of you guys are writing stuff! @ravensrising, @setnet, @edgewitch, @rubyredboots, @sandovers, @notbecauseofvictories, come on anyone who writes stuff pls do this meme & pretend I tagged you I want to know what you’re working on

#ask meme #answered ask #elsajeni #kvetching like a nudnik #my first love #spoilers for the silmarillion #roger roger #(zahn books excepted)#force ascending #ah yes the damerons #the collection of half truths and hyperbole known as obi wan kenobi #extraordinary gaze such as is bent on sunlike majesty #if any pairing in my shipping repertoire is truly starcrossed it's these dutiful fucks #codywan #let's hear it for the 212th!#so hard to know whom to trust these days isn't it #listen I'm sorry but I grew up and got saruman feels and apparently that's just going to extend to dooku now #things are fine #obi wan flirting with every single enemy gives me life #perhaps I killed a jedi and took it from him #*pounds fists on desk* POST ORDER 66 OHNAKA GANG KATOONI #lovely Mace Windu and his gorgeous fucking purple lightsaber #I'm not coming down until Ned and Cat and all the Starks are happy #fucking feanorians #things that make maedhros sad make me sad #within my chest beats the heart of a person who loves Edmund from Lear without reserve

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thatnerdgirl7 · 8 years ago

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OCD Master Post

Hello followers! 😊 So, I have seen some of these posts kicking around and I decided to make one of my own. It's not something I ever thought I'd do, because I don't really enjoy talking about my illness, much less sharing it on the Internet. But I feel that if I am able to share a few experiences with you, that I can help someone else get through their own struggle while simultaneously helping myself because writing down my thoughts is helpful because if they're on paper (or pixels in this case 😜) at least they're out of my head. About five or six years ago I was diagnosed with OCD and Anxiety. Actually, I diagnosed myself, since I read an article about a teenage girl who matched most of my symptoms (washing hands constantly, touching things many times, needing things to be "just right" or I couldn't continue my day etc) but I still attended therapy for CBT which helped immensely. For some reason as a wee un, I was terrified of chemicals. I think it was because I was aware of the dangers of under the sink items like bleach and what it can do to your body if you drink it. This made early secondary school hard because I had chosen biology as one of my subjects, and we had to work with chemicals on numerous occasions. What followed was: •Me literally running out of the room scared that the chemicals would spill on me or get near my mouth •Not trusting myself that I wouldn't drink said chemicals •Worrying the teachers who didn't know why I was acting like this •Prompting bullying from the other pupils •Me having to do textbook work while the others swirled liquids about in test tubes •One incident prompted a near panic attack when a pupil thinking they were being hilarious, found out I had a fear of Tippex (the correction fluid stuff) and smeared some on my jacket in front of a group of students outside the corridor •I was the reason one of my female classmates had her tippex unfairly confiscated when she wasn't even doing anything bad with it, I just felt uncomfortable Eventually, my fear of Tippex was overcome through the CBT and I learned not to act like a prat in class. But OCD is cunning like that. Once you get rid of one obsession your fear preys on something else. After the death of my grandparents, my anxiety went through the roof. You all know that scary Stephen King story It? Well, I watched the Nostalgia Critic's review of it (he was the crux of me getting my joy back because he made me laugh through a horrible time) Well after watching those clips, my Anxiety started to play havoc (and yet I LOVE horror movies so this was unusual) •Brain thinks how scary it would be to be a character in that book and have an evil clown following you •Brain thinks "Could this happen to you?" •Brain goes "Yeah actually and what if just like in the movie, you're the only one who can see him?" •Hence mind games with myself that I was hallucinating this clownish figure in my peripheral vision (despite the fact we can't see ANYTHING clearly in our peripheral vision and even if we could over active imagination/pseudo hallucinations don't necessarily mean you're crazy) •I convince myself that I must be Schizophrenic and that I was going to be committed to an asylum where they would stick needles and wires in me •Even today I can't watch a film or look at a picture of Tim Curry dressed in his clown costume for fear it might bring back an anxious episode (or as my OCD says "make you crazy." Then we come to my peak worst of the worst: My Obsession with the End. I know I'm not the first person to fear death and the inevitable end blah blah blah but from December 2013-through to 2014 I became terrified that wait for it: the UNIVERSE WOULD EXPLODE. Does that sound like a nonsense article to you? That's because that's exactly where I read it. A theory from Danish scientists speaking about how the universe may collapse into itself one day and "it could happen at any given time." Hence me searching up about outer space threats even though I knew deep down I was being very irrational. Strap in: it gets crazier •Remember in March 2014 when Russia marched into Crimea and then the rest of the world got into a huge proxy war over Ukraine? And how everyone was talking about it? Well, at school I couldn't escape talk of a WW3 and nuclear weapons. •My Anxiety went "HOLY MOLY I'VE STRUCK GOLD HERE!" •I began obsessively checking the news/any little hints and signs even Nostradamus predictions to make sure a world war wasn't starting soon (like I had any power to stop it if it did. "Duck and Cover children that'll save you from being roasted to a crisp!" •This subsided in summer until the MH317 plane was shot down over Ukraine. Then my Anxiety flared up again all throughout August, September and October. And then Winter cometh and I am a M E S S 😧 •I lost my appetite. I stopped eating because I felt like every time I did I was going to be sick. I took nothing but fluids and my weight dropped considerably to the point where my family became really concerned I was going to end up in hospital •I dropped out of school for seven weeks because I couldn't face anyone and spent most of November and December at home in a long depression where I spent most of it with my electronics confiscated (my parents couldn't trust I wouldn't look at the news) watching movies to try and cheer myself up and crying a lot. •Eventually after seeing my mum really upset and myself in the mirror at how much skinnier I was I decided to brave eating and soon my appetite returned and I resumed school •I was prescribed Setraline medication from the doctors which I found to work great for my anxiety but not for my ocd compulsions While things are MUCH better now, I still carry a lot of OCD symptoms that are noticeable on a daily basis: •Touching things a considerable ammount of times (must be certain numbers like 28, 57, 58, 64 and in some cases 84) •Having to thinking of a certain colour or topic while I do it (eg: blue, green, orange, purple, blue, green or film titles/celebrity names •Worrying about my sexuality. While I am straight as a ruler, my OCD tries to convince me that I am gay/bi. Even though I know it isn't true. Then I worry because I think if I am trying to erase through a compulsion the idea of being gay, does that make me a homophobe aka a grade A Twat? •Having scary intrusive thoughts about harming my family or children and sometimes animals and getting worried that I am an evil person if I am not immediately disgusted by it •Brain trying to convince me that if I like one thing eg a movie or an animal, I can't like both or many at once. That I must focus on one thing, and if attention draws from that thing it means I don't like it any more and have lost interest. •Replaying a part of a movie/song or rereading a paragraph a certain number of times until I'm satisfied •Worrying about stupid shit in general such as "If I ever met my favourite celebrity would they like me?" or "If I somehow become famous will the world like me or will they find me annoying?" or self-loathing, "If I wrote something would people think it good or would it make a good doorstop?" Anyway, that is all I have to say. But I feel like if I get this out I can look back on it years from now and see if anything's changed or if I'm still a head case ten years on. I hope I can help out a fellow OCD sufferer if they recognise themselves in any of the things I have listed above. Thank You!

#actually ocd #ocd #anxiety #mental illness

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artificialqueens · 8 years ago

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Train-Spotted (Katlaska) - Puck

A/N Hey everyone! Long time no see. Things got a little crazy for me with both personal stuff and university, but now I’ve got a bit more free time. So here you go, a brand new fic. If you’d like this to turn into a chaptered fic please let me know, I have places for this to go. (And yes, the title is a play off of Trainspotting.) I’ve never written Katlaska before, but I figured I’d give it a go. Cheers!

Summary: A recently sober Katya enjoys taking long metro rides to nowhere. One morning she runs into a fellow queen that she’d had a one night stand with about a year ago, before she’d gotten sober. Drag Queens but not Ru Girls.

Brian had never complained about public transit. Not once. Trains could be loud and hot and smelly, but Brian loved every second of every train ride. That may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but regardless, he’d chose to take the bus or the train over an uber any time. People lived out their lives on trains. People got engaged, broke up, traveled to interviews for their dream jobs, headed home after being fired with boxes filled with office-appropriate pieces of themselves. Every part of human existence (the negatives and the positives) had happened on a train at some point. And for just a few dollars, you could get a front-row seat. The Metro here in LA wasn’t as busy as The T had been back in Chicago, but maybe that was better. Instead of learning little bits and pieces about the 35 people crammed into the same small car, you could learn a lot about the 18 people. Sometimes they would even reply when Brian said hello.

Not today though. People on a train at 6:05 am were rarely talkative. People on 4:16 am trains were better. Most people on the 6:05 were heading to offices, and something about that particular commute fogged over the eyes of the trains passengers. Despite the ungodly hour, there was no detachment in the eyes of people on the 4:16. They were always headed some place interesting. Construction workers, heading off to build homes for the entitled assholes who rode the 7:02 train (hotshots were always above taking a 6:05). A Baker who was in the process of making a wedding cake for a woman who worked for a “Traditional Marriage Advocacy Group” had told him that he’d got a lot of satisfaction out of using his little gay hands to mix the cake batter while wearing his extravagantly homosexual engagement ring. (Brian had gotten the guy’s number, and had a threesome with him and his fiance a couple days later.) A nurse headed home after losing a patient (An old woman who’d tried to prove to her son that she could walk a tightrope). Brian had met some interesting people on later trains of course, but the 4:16 train was always his favourite. But today just happened to be a 6:05 day.

Brian was rarely headed anywhere important when he took morning trains. He’d make up a destination as he went along. He was usually heading back from somewhere, or heading out again to ride the trains to clear his head. A mix of drag and bartending kept him out late, and a mix of anxiety, insomnia, and attempts to get sober kept him out of the house in the wee hours. But it was always interesting to talk to people who were headed somewhere interesting, instead of just leaving something behind.

Last night had actually been a relatively good one, as far as Brian’s nights went. He’d had the night off work so he’d gotten to perform his drag, and the crowd had been fan-fucking-tastic. Not a bachelorette party in sight, and he was pretty sure he could feel a dollar bill glued to his back with sweat that he’d missed when de-dragging. He’d kept substance-free, and gotten to make out with a solid 8 during his performance. Sadly he’d missed getting the 8’s number. Now Katya’s gear had been safely dropped off at home, and he was on his way to the 4th street bridge to watch the sunrise.

There was a rough lurch, then a loud “ding” as the doors to the train slid open. A series of people filed through the bottleneck between the open doors, distributing themselves in predictable patterns through the car. Brian barely suppressed a smile. This round of passengers seemed a little more interesting than the usual 6:05 crowd. Their eyes were closer to a 12:48 train, though more sober. He scanned his eyes over them one by one, picking up little bits of information. There was a man in an ill-fitting brown suit (too broad at the shoulders and too short), but his hair was slicked back so forcefully that it looked wet, and the way that he drummed his fingers against his briefcase told Brian that he was probably on his way to his first day at a new job. Something corporate, in an office building that still looked like it was stuck in 1970. (Brian rarely got to find out if he was right about his musings, but the fun part was creating the story.)

There was a woman whose dress shirt was a little rumpled, as though she had worn it the day before. She’d slept over at someone else’s house the night before, Brian decided, but it hadn’t been planned and she isn’t planning on telling anyone about it either. She probably slept with another female coworker, the one who works in the cubicle next to her, and she’s still in denial that she’s bisexual.

There was a man with brown hair and a long face, his eyes halfway shut and his mouth curled into a lazy smile. Brian thought he could see some light black smudges beneath his eyes. Makeup. Definitely makeup. Brian probably had the same smudges under his eyes (or even more makeup remnants than that, he was always lazy about taking it all off). He’s probably been performing the night before too, but at a different club. He tried to picture what the guy must look like all dragged up, and for some reason Brian’s mind settled on extra large padded hips to offset the guy’s skinny frame, and a messy blonde wig…

Shit, Brian totally knew him. This was…

Fuck, he couldn’t remember his name.

He definitely had a blurry picture in his head, and the ghost of a nasal, drawling voice…

The guy happened to glance in Brian’s direction, and Brian saw a glint of recognition in his eyes. The man’s lips slid smoothly into a broader smile, and…

Oh – that did it.

Alaska. Her name was Alaska. They’d both performed at a WeHo Hamburger Mary’s a couple of months back. They’d ended up doing an impromptu group number, then doing each other back at Brian’s old apartment. Brian couldn’t remember if he’d learned Alaska’s real name, they’d probably stuck to drag names the full night. Or maybe Brian had been too high too high to remember. Both options were equally plausible. Another benefit of sobriety to add to his list (a sticky note on his fridge).

Should he go over? He wasn’t sure. He’s made friends with a lot of people he’d slept with (and slept with a lot of people he was friends with), but not usually after not seeing them for a year. Plus he was pretty sure something weird had happened afterward, but he wouldn’t be able to figure out what it was if Divine herself popped up from Hell and held a gun to Brian’s pussy.

But maybe he was wrong? Maybe nothing weird had happened. He was fairly certain something had, but to be fair most things he did were a little weird.

Fuck it, he should talk to him.

Alaska looked away from Brian, glancing up at the map above the doors. Shit, no, Alaska clearly wasn’t interested in talking. Brian should stay exactly where he was.

Alaska looked away from the map to glance back at Brian, who felt his stomach drop. Jesus, Brian groaned internally, as if he was a teenage girl. Why was he feeling so nervous? He was never this nervous. Ok, not true. He was the most anxiety-plagued person he’d ever met. But not about this sort of thing. Sex was one of the few things he never worried about.

And fuck, now Alaska was heading over.

The way the man moved was achingly familiar. Even though he was out of drag, there was still a sway in his hips when he walked, and his eyes remained fixed on Brian. The aftermath of the last time he’d been pinned under Alaska’s gaze flicked through his mind on repeat, and his throat went a little dry. The picture was a little unclear with a few frames missing, but the general storyline was enough. God that had been some good sex.

Alaska slid over to him and sat down. Not next to Brian, but on the bench across from him. Brian was grateful for the space. Not that he wouldn’t have minded being pressed up against Alaska again, but the situation was awkward, so the aisle between them was like a protective no man’s land.

Ian McKellen had been great in that play.

Fuck, he was rambling in his own head. He really was fucking nervous.

Alaska still hadn’t said anything, maybe he was waiting for Brian to start the conversation to make sure Brian recognised him. Brian licked his dry lips and opened his mouth without knowing what he was planning on saying, but thankfully Alaska seemed to sense Brian’s panic and spoke first.

“Hey.”

Fuck, why hadn’t he thought of saying that? This was a mess, Brian hadn’t even been able to think of starting a conversation with “hey”. What the hell was going on with him?

“Hi.” Brian replied with a genuine smile. See? He could be calm. And think of something on his own too, not just rely on repeating Alaska’s “hey”.

“Fancy meeting you here.” Alaska drawled like a Golden Era film star. His curled smile grew until it matched Katya’s.

“Yeah.” Katya laughed dryly, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Pretty sure it’s a year.” Alaska nodded. “You still living in that lovely apartment?”

He was teasing him. That apartment had been a shit hole.

“Unfortunately no.” Katya sighed dramatically. “I’m in a one bedroom now, I figured it was time to stop making a roommate put up with my insanity.”

“That’s too bad, I liked the place.” Alaska said, giving a small shrug. “And your roommate was funny.”

“I’ll never tell him you said that, he doesn’t need the ego boost.” Katya grinned. He’d forgotten that Alaska had met Tracey. Brian should call him, maybe he would know whatever weirdness Brian couldn’t remember. “What about you, you still performing at Hamburger Mary’s?”

“Headlining.” Alaska admitted with a thin layer of pride.

“Well look at you! Moving up in the world!” Katya said.

“And you, you still at Los Globos?” Alaska asked, leaning forward ever so slightly.

“Yep.” Katya nodded. “But a bartending gig has opened up at Showgirls, I was thinking of going for it. If I can get an in there I might be able to get on their stage.”

“Oh you’d do great at Showgirls.” Alaska grinned. “Give some of those Ru Girls a run for their money.”

“Oh please.” Katya scoffed.

“If you’re too intimidated then by all means, leave it to the professionals.” Alaska said with a wave of his hand, his eyes gleaming. “From what I remember you really weren’t shy about much.”

“And from what I remember you enjoyed that.”

Were they flirting? This felt like flirting. Brian was definitely grinning the way he did when he flirted, and they were both leaning forward, their elbows resting on their thighs.

He remembered Alaska’s thighs. Or more specifically, remembered biting them until he left marks, which he remembered Alaska liking a fair bit.

From the looks of things, Alaska was remembering something similar.

“Katya…” Alaska said coolly, and the way his tongue curled around Brian’s name raised goosebumps. Like most people in LA Alaska said it “Kah-Tee-Ah” instead of “Kah-Tyah”, but Brian had never really cared how people said it. And as long as he kept saying it like that Alaska could pronounce it however he damn well pleased.

“Yes?” Brian replied, leaning forward a little further.

“Are you seeing anybody?”

Brian let out a huff of surprise.

“No, I don’t really do that sort of thing.” He admitted, but according to Alaska’s smirk that was the right thing to say.

“Neither do I.”

Brian licked his lips again, and raised an eyebrow at Alaska. Alaska raised an eyebrow right back before leaning back into his seat and crossing his legs.

Alright, clearly Brian needed to make any sort of move here, if a move was to be made.

“Brian.” He said, sticking out hand for a shake.

Alaska reached out and took his hand, but instead of shaking it he laced their fingers together.

“Justin.”

“Nice to see you again, Justin.” Brian replied, giving Justin’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Would you like to-”

“Yes.” Alaska– Justin, replied, and his smile returned.

“Great.” Brian smiled back.“Can I get your number?”

The train lurched again, and their hands fell apart. Justin quickly stood up.

“Nope.” He said, heading towards the doors. “Find me on Facebook.”

“A challenge, I like it.” Brian replied, watching Justin leave and doing his best not to stare at his ass.

“Bye Brian.” Justin called back with a little wave, watching Brian through the windows as the doors closed.

The train pulled out of the station.

Brian could feel eyes on him. He supposed that, objectively, that had been a pretty interesting encounter. At least by 6:05 standards. He pulled out his phone. No bars. At least now he had a reason to get off the train.

#katya zamolodchikova #alaska thunderfuck #katlaska #au #fluff #puck #tw drug abuse #tw mental illness #rpdr fanfiction #canon compliant #trainspotted

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xsterois · 8 years ago

Text

[ALL ABOUT SHINHWA COMPANY] - Chapter 1. About SM Entertainment

The History of SHINHWA’s Relationship with Entertainment Companies: ALL ABOUT SHINHWA COMPANY

Original author: 미코 MIKO [2013.12.29] Original post: http://blog.naver.com/secgarden/150182106794

Chinese translation: 海天月夜 [2015.06.02] Chinese post: http://www.weibo.com/1251889924/CkJ1Gdqjc?from=page_1005051251889924_profile&wvr=6&mod=weibotime&type=comment#_rnd1488141816655

Chinese translation: Bestshinhwa [2015.09.01] Chinese post: http://www.weibo.com/p/1001603882403276969902

English translation: xsterois [2017]

Chapter 1. About SM Entertainment

It’s not unfamiliar that Shinhwa debuted around the end of 90s, at the blooming period of the creation of ‘idol’, and being called ‘First Generation Idol’. After H.O.T and S.E.S, leading the idol entertainment companies, they were SM Entertainment’s third product.

About Shinhwa’s audition

The above image is ranked by the date Shinhwa members joined as a trainee. We don’t have to talk much about what happened before debut, in short:

Andy who was living in America formed a dance group with few Korean friends, joined a dance competition and got casted by Lee Sooman. After that he was picked as the final member of H.O.T, but gave up due to his mother’s worry about debuting at a young age, hence went back to America. After a year, Lee Sooman met Andy again in LA and brought him back to Korea. (At this time, some believe that Andy is already chosen as a Shinhwa member, but it’s unknown whether if it is a rumour among fans or a rumour from Lee Sooman.)

As a foreign student, Shin Hyesung was casted in a SM audition held in LA. It was in 1996, and was the same year that Lee Sooman met Andy again, and according to Andy as a trainee that time, after listening to Shin Hyesung’s vocal, Lee Sooman exclaimed “It’s really great isn’t it”.

Eric same as Shin Hyesung, was casted though LA audition. Although he joined the audition as suggested by Andy, he already met Lee Sooman in the past. And according to Lee Sooman and Andy, Eric was already popular among Korean students at that time.

Lee Minwoo studied at Jeonju Art High school, he joined Everland Dance Competition with friends and got casted by a SM manager. (His friend who was also casted as a trainee wasn’t able to become a Shinhwa memebr but debuted through other entertainment company)

Junjin studied at Ogeum High School who was already famous for his dancing skills. And through sunbae Ahn Chilhyun, H.O.T Kangta suggested him to be a trainee.

At last, Kim Dongwan was popular as a band vocal in Whimoon High School. He also gained the title of ‘Whimoon’s Moses’ (Meaning that wherever he walked past, students separated a road like Red Sea for him.)

tvN The List 130311:

About Kim Dongwan at Whimoon High School

youtube

Different companies wanted to get Kim Dongwan in and they even sent special manager for him, knowing all his schedules following him around to get a chance (as reported by DSP relations). Until one day Kim Dongwan was unexpectedly casted by a SM manager on street, while holding a big teddy bear for his girlfriend.

None the less, they gathered as trainees and after one year to few months of training, only six were chosen to debut as Shinhwa’s final members.

People call them SM’s mischievous icon.

Different to other idols with a mysterious concept (especially SM’s H.O.T and S.E.S), arguing with fans outside the dorm, getting drunk, bringing a television to play games at broadcast stations, escaped dorm but got caught and all received punishment, etc. Until now these were remained as legend stories in the industry, and you can find these easily on different humour-sites as Shinhwa’s history.

Therefore even after 10 years, I believe that their weird and extraordinary stories will remain on the internet. And that because of the contrasting image to other idols during such time, their unique image brought them to the exposure in variety.

In 1999, Shinhwa’s 2nd Album (T.O.P) brought them a late-coming huge response, forming the unique passionate fans, and achieved their goals. In the 5 years of contract period, even though there were various incidents (especially the life threatening accidents).

They continued in striving and working hard, showing a different style with every album.

At that time, I also thought their story will conclude with a happy ending...

With the passing of time, 5 years of “idols’ maximum survival time” went by, Shinhwa and SM’s contract came to an end in 2003.

During that time, groups debuted before Shinhwa or debuted at similar time declared disbandment, even without an official announcement, the members left and worked in different fields. At that time, the running period of idols were expected to be around 5 years, and the number of albums was also ended at 5. However, Shinhwa in 2002 released their 6th Album. From that time onwards, they began slowing breaking the limits of idols.

Recalling SM Entertainment sunbae idol groups, in 2001 due to conflicts between members and company, H.O.T went in a status of “half disbandment”. S.E.S in 2002 disbanded according to members’ will, and debuted as solo singers.

And in 2003, when everyone expected SM’s third child, Shinhwa will go through the same path as the other idols.

But as we all know, such expectation did not came true. Before talking about Shinhwa’s next decision, let’s look into their experience in SM Entertainment which may considered as a turning point.

Chapter 1.5. Shinhwa Promoting as 5 (2001)

When Shinhwa released their 4th Album in 2001, without Andy, promoting as 5 members is what everyone knows. Andy also mentioned it on a programme himself, and as what we know, it was due to his personal issues. But the truth is, recalling the incident in 2001, it was not just solely a personal uncontrollable case.

Andy’s Activities on Hiatus

[Author’s NOTE: Although I do not know how much this incident has impact on Shinhwa, this could fully represent how they realised the actual relationship between the group and the company. And this is also the incident which made Shinhwa fans lost trust towards the company, and that it is not totally irrelevant to the future conflicts. Below is according to my recall of the situation and rumour during that time+ what was reported on media+ Andy’s future explanation.]

One day, KKFS (Korea Kent Foreign School) was rumoured to have students from high status families getting into university with no qualification. And in this school there were two popular idols. They are S.E.S’s Shoo (Yoo Sooyoung) and Shinhwa’s Andy (Lee Sunho). (S.E.S's Eugene was a graduate from this school)

Reporters who were starving for news did not miss this chance. News on TV and newspaper all brought the two names out. At first, it was “an idol member”, and then it became “S.E.S’s Miss Y and Shinhwa’s Mr L”. Later, they even reported with their real identities. People who heard about the university entrance scandal began to judge and blame them. Of course, this also happened in the fandom.

(For reference, I was only 4th grade at that time, just began liking Shinhwa, but still am able to remember this shows how big impact it brought…)

About this incident, if we start from the conclusion, the school which had an university entrance scandal, happened to have a foreigner student Andy (with foreign residence). Andy was 12th grade at that time, applied and got accepted for Hankuk University of Foreign Studies on English. Shoo also was accepted in university already.

However when the news broke, the spotlight of the media went onto “idol’s improper university entrance scandal” (in reality they just happened to be a student there) instead of the “high status family scandal”. Whereas the universities which were at the centre of the scandal, used “not qualified” as an excuse to cancel KENT students’ accepted university application. Of course, from the the surface their reason made sense. KENT was not a proper high school course, hence they were not qualified for university application from the start.

(I need to point out that, not only Andy and Shoo, whether all Kent students did got blamed due to “not qualified”. For reference, all foreigner high schools are recognised as proper high school course now. But it was only not recognised during that time.)

Therefore the high school education was not recognised, concluding with a Junior high graduate, cancelled university entrance.

ENDING LIKE THIS?? Then it would be great….

Due to the KKFS incident, a lot obstacles were created to Andy.

1. As Andy’s education was not recognised, Andy’s past 3 years studying at KKFS as a student was rejected. This created a problem to Andy’s reason to stay in Korea. Hence before his identity was made clear, the business activity (=as a singer) became impossible.

2. Male adult who is not a student, by principle is required to receive military health check, and before that travelling is forbidden.

Therefore, until Andy got the military health check, he was forbidden to leave the country. It would be great ending like this, receive the military health check and solve the legal problems. But to make thing worse, Andy’s “personal issue" broke out. Andy’s mother in US suddenly went really ill.

For reference, Andy was born in a single parent family, without any male parent, it means that he is responsible to act as the father’s role. Andy as his mother’s guarantor was really urgent to travel back to US, but due to what happened in Korea, until the travel ban is removed, he could only wait.

During such process, Andy even made a lawsuit about the university application was inappropriately cancelled. Some may misunderstood his action, but he did this not because of to escape from the military check, but instead if he could resume the “student” identity then the travel ban would be removed and he could rush back to US. But at last it did not succeed.

Also, rumours began to spread everywhere. From Andy leaving out of the dorm, to become missing, temporary leaving the group, withdrawal from the group, and even rumour on suicide. (About attempt of suicide, at that time the company explained it was because of taking excessive cold pills leading to gastric spasm, and was sent to the emergency. I personally think such issue is still questionable, but it is not a significant point here, so I will end this here.)

2001.05.10 Voice Message from Andy

Afterall, Andy successfully received the military check and due to not qualified education (finally as Junior high graduate), and was decided as “reserved placement” in military, he left all rumours behind and quietly left for US.

2001.05.10 [NEWS] Andy’s Military Position

After few months, Shinhwa came back with their 4th Album.

Without Andy, as 5.

What ironic is, Shinhwa with one member less, the album received well results, it’s actually really popular among the public. People started to give them more recognition for trying the un-idol-like concepts.

Some even said that ‘Hey Come On’ is the next level in music. And ‘Wild Eyes’ as the continuing song, received even greater reaction than the title song.

No matter if it is music, variety or the media reflected that Shinhwa could be perfect as a 5 members group. But this did not make people satisfy because of the subtle atmosphere. Some fans appeared to not care but feeling lost, and some fans even accepted that Andy is already not a member. Shinhwa seems to realise that before the return of Andy, they have the responsibility to stay in their position and try to make Shinhwa better.

However looking at Shinhwa promoting without him, Andy thought that he no longer had a position in Shinhwa.

Due to Andy’s inability to support the hospital fees (US hospital fees are different to Korea’s ones), he brought his mother back to Korea after few months. Looking at Shinhwa striving forth, began to feel the distance in between, or began to feel the guilt that may block Shinhwa’s development. He did not go back to the dorm but instead hid in a college building somewhere in Seoul.

Not getting a haircut, not shaving, shower with cold water, only able to sleep with soju and aspirin.

After that, as what we all know, Andy returned back to Shinhwa.

After Shinhwa’s 4th Album promotion, Shinhwa Changjo’s 5th Fan Meeting was held. It was the biggest event among all fan meetings held, and the venue was Jamsil Main Stadium. According to Andy, that day Lee Sooman contacted him and told him to join the fan meeting. Andy at the waiting room heard the fans shouted ‘Lee Sunho’ even without him on stage, teared up. To hide the weeping eyes, he borrowed a pair of sunglasses, and stood in front of the fans after a year.

youtube

When the fan meeting was coming to an end, Andy appeared at the last encore stage, greeted everyone shyly.

Shinhwa, once again returned as six.

However, even just naming this “after experiencing hardship, Andy returned to Shinhwa”, the impact this incident brought is definitely visible.

The point is, the person who called Andy to join the fan meeting is Lee Sooman, from this aspect both Andy and the fans were thankful for.

But the question is, this company called SM, left Andy out during their 4th Album promotion, appears to be doing a kind of experiment.

When Andy is not in Korea, leaving him out, released a new album. Using the finished recording, and re-record it as 5 members, and making it into an album with 5 members. [-> Do anyone know where this is from?]

Idol groups were normally with 5 people, even with 5 voices, they were flawless no matter if it’s album or variety, the appearance of the 5 members were perfect.

The members did not mention Andy as much, called Junjin as the ‘maknae’ and called Shinhwa as ‘5’.

From all these actions during the promotion, could SM be trying this out to make Shinhwa as a 5 members group? People already made such assumption.

Also, about Andy’s rumour, fans complained that SM did not handle it well. In reality, Shinhwa’s fanchant during 4th Album promotion, determined to add ‘Lee Sunho’, showing how much they anticipate Andy’s return.

But about Andy’s news or his future decision, SM did not voice out any opinion. When Andy was bothered by rumours before the military check, and the situation was so bad that he even went to the emergency, SM did not state clearly that Andy was not related to the university entrance scandal, and did not show a strong will to solve Andy’s problems.

2001.04.23 A Letter to SHCJ on Andy’s Rumour

At least this is what fans’ thought. (If SM actively solved the problems, the fandom won’t split). At such situation, SM still promoted 5 members Shinhwa, created fans’ further distrust towards the company.

Of course, with Andy’s return, the saying of “5 members Shinhwa” became solely a rumour, or you can call it SM’s failed tactic. Even if the rumour is true, that SM tried to take Andy away and make Shinhwa as a 5 members group, then this project was not only an experimental failure, but it brought unexpected negative impact to SM.

Using this incident as an example, not only Andy, SM can ignore their personal will and change the members of Shinhwa at any time.

Shinhwa could no longer be 6 at any time, even the group’s survival is uncertain, this is what the members clearly realised.

Back to 2003.

Even though it was revealed after a long time, H.O.T and S.E.S disbandment was mainly due to contract renewal. H.O.T’s situation was due to members’ individual contract renewal, conflicts and misunderstanding grew, leading to disbandment. S.E.S’s situation was SM tried for individual contract renewal, but due to contract problems, conflicts grew, and finally announced disband while at the top position.

Same as the two previous groups, before contract renewal, the company began to secretly seek individual members. The first person who got suggested for contract renewal was Lee Minwoo and Shin Hyesung. Lee Minwoo since debut was in charge of choreography, lyrics and song writing, these various areas, showing a strong individual talent. Shin Hyesung is Shinhwa’s main vocal, from the collaboration with Lee Jihoon, it showed that he is strong enough to become a solo vocal. In another words, SM saw their ability to step out of the ‘idol’ limitation and became a ‘musician’, hence chose them for another contract.

However, witnessing other groups’ unwilling disbandment, continued promotion while treating one member as non-exist, Shinhwa objected the company’s action, and decided to betray (?) SM as 6, making such significant decision.

End of Chapter 1. About SM Entertainment Next: Chapter 2. About Good Entertainment

#shinhwa #all about shinhwa company #haven't started chp 2 yet...

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