#betty really learns to love for that period of their life. for however long it takes them to get to 'fianceès' its really their perfect life

[jaggeduar]

I feel so crazy about that last episode I knew literally in my soul that the lich would appear eventually and be named the last scholar of golb. Throws up everywherr

[elenamcwrites]

folklore - a reading

If you’re a swiftie (officially not capitalized now), like me, you’ve probably been experiencing the mystical reverb and spiritual reckoning that is folklore. You’ve also probably been reading plenty of reviews and analysis articles--there are some stellar articles out there already.

Listening to the album is like lying in a meadow over the course of a summer day, afternoon thunderstorm, and the harsh sunset that comes afterwards, spiraling through memories and contemplation. It’s the best of the worst feelings you’ll ever have, and you can’t stop.

So, compulsively, I had to share my own interpretations and thoughts as I listen to the album again for the 7th time.

the 1 - Starting out with just piano, and then turning into what feels like a casual bop, the attitude of this song starts out very ‘I Forgot That You Existed’. And we hold onto that cavalier, ‘oh well’ attitude until... UNTIL. “If my wishes came true, it would’ve been you.” That line starts the slow ache that builds through the end of the track and makes this song much more more layered and complex than the first song of Lover. Perhaps this is a more honest version of the same feeling. Swift digs deep into that nostalgic feeling, letting us vibe to the wistful wishing at the same time. And of course, there is foreshadowing in the lyrics--film, graves, rose, chosen-family, painting. All of these reappear later on in various songs on the album, and some have been themes from earlier albums, too (especially graves).

Highlight lyric: “In my defense I have none // for digging up the grave another time.”

cardigan - We start with a beat that sounds reminiscent of “high heels on cobblestones,” and it emphasizes this early imagery. Being young is one of the major themes of this song, even though it’s also part of the triptych of songs about a love triangle. The nostalgia feels more specific to young love generally than to the specific lover, asking us to wonder why we judge the young perspective so harshly. The song is an anthem to how much she knew about love, including the pain of it, despite what people say. Swift has shown a special appreciation for the wisdom and raw experience of youth, and this song is another classic defense of the teenage experience. The metaphors in this song are classic Swift, and the structure of this song is reminiscent of ‘All Too Well’--the chorus lyrics change just a bit each time, and we get a powerful, gut-punch verse at the end.

Highlight lyric: “I knew you’d haunt all of my what-ifs // the smoke would hang around this long // cause I knew everything when I was young.”

the last great american dynasty - ‘The Man’ was probably Swift’s first real feminist anthem, directly stating how sexism affects her career and the perception people have of her. But this song gets at feminism from another perspective. First of all, she’s telling the story of Rebekah Harkness, who was the heiress that lived in her Rhode Island mansion before her. She was a trouble-maker in her town, blamed for her husband’s death and for ruining the calm status quo of the old money neighborhood. It’s completely apparent that Swift relates to this experience, and she likely knew some of this story before she purchased her home. In telling the story of a powerful, interesting woman, Taylor is rebelling against the patriarchy in a slightly subtler way than her previous songs--though she still makes her point pretty clear. Swift cares about the herstory of her home, and she’s made this story iconic by including it on her album. It’s like she took the idea of ‘Starlight,’ but instead of retelling a happy love story, she used her powers for an even more important tale. Now, there are also two potential connections to note: Rebekah also went by Betty, and her maiden name was West. Just remember that. And of course, the theme of the mad woman returns later as well.

Highlight lyric: “who knows if I never showed up what would have been // there goes the most shameless woman this town has ever seen // she had a marvelous time ruining everything.”

exile - I like to imagine this song as the follow up to ‘The Last Time,’ from Red. Both are duets, and they both have relatively simple, but strong chords as the primary musical backdrop. Where ‘The Last Time’ depicts a relationship at the cusp, moments before their final conversation, ‘exile’ is post break-up. She’s out with someone new, and we understand this is an unspoken conversation across a room. And the vibe of the songs fit with this progression perfectly. ‘The Last Time’ feels like anxious desperation, but exile feels heavy and depressingly final. We revisit the film motif, and there’s some potential connection to the archived ‘If This Was A Movie’. Now, is that intentional, or does Swift just really like movie imagery? Does it matter? The build in this song is arguably the best on the album, which I think is partly due to the style of the musicality, and partly because it’s helpful to have a lower voice to mix it up. This song sounds the least ‘Swift-esque’ to me--reminds me of Damien Rice most of all--but it still fits beautifully into the album. Also, lots of callbacks in here--town and crown are used a LOT in her prior albums. A few examples: “You traded your baseball cap for a crown” in ‘Long Live’, “They took the crown but it's alright” in ‘Call it What You Want,’ “Staring out the window like I’m not your favorite town” in ‘False God.’ Now, again, these could just be words that she loves to use (they also rhyme with a lot), or there could be some deeper connections. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the middle.

highlight lyric: “second, third, and hundredth chances // balancin' on breaking branches // those eyes add insult to injury”

my tears ricochet - I’ll admit this song had to grow on me a little bit. Why? Well, I don’t love revenge-ballads. But, this is much more complex than LWYMMD, and like the rest of the album, it centers the more vulnerable side of her anger. This song is 100% about Big Machine Records and Scooter Braun. The funeral is for her--or the version of herself that died just before Reputation--and she is back as a ghost (or another version of herself) to haunt those who caused her death. It’s slow, moody, haunted... Everything you want from a bitter funeral march. The best part of this song is that she doesn’t solely pass blame. She shows off her self-awareness, which has become more common in all her music since 1989, but still very clearly places responsibility on Scooter for her ‘stolen lullabies’ (i.e. her masters). Swift claims this song is about young love gone wrong--but, death is a pretty intense metaphor, and given that she blatantly used it (for the first, and maybe only time?) to talk about her career, I don’t think anyone is buying it.

highlight lyric: “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace // and you’re the hero flying around saving face”

mirrorball - Maybe I’m just a biased toward romantic and nostalgic songs, because I don’t love this one either. (I’m sorry!) But, here’s what I’ll say: this song is still exquisite. It reminds me of the reverb-radio-vibe of the late 80s songs, but with the astral, saccharine flavor of the rest of the album. If you condensed the Miss Americana documentary into a song, this would be it. A reflection (get it?) of fame and her desire to be everything to everyone--to be well liked, to be the center of attention. The coolest thing about ‘mirrorball,’ to me, is that she hasn’t written a song quite like this before. It’s sort of a manic-pixie-dream-girl version of herself. Swift is telling us that she knows who she is, and that comes with seeing the less ‘pretty’ side.

highlight lyric: “I’m still a believer, but I don’t know why // I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try try.”

seven - Can you say haunting innocence? This is a great song for half-attentive listening in the sun, and it could almost be a lullaby. In Swift-lore, the theme of childhood shows up every so often, like in ‘Mary’s Song,’ ‘The Best Day,’ ‘It’s Nice to Have a Friend,’ and ‘Christmas Tree Farm.’ This one is definitely the most dreamy, and it is also tinged with that darkness that consistently underlies all the tracks on this album--“Are there still beautiful things?” Imagine a sepia filter, and that’s kind of what this song embodies. Some fans have wondered about this song as a possible hint to bisexuality and/or relationships with women in general. (See Kaylor fan theories if you want to dive deep.) I can see this--the childhood friend has braids, which could imply she’s a little girl, and they ‘hide in the closet’. However, it seems more likely to me that this is coincidence. Lots of kids play in their closets, and if the song is about the friend’s father being angry all the time (and maybe abusive?) hiding in the closet also makes literal sense. I think the imagery in this song is some of my favorite on this album. 

Another interesting point that I haven’t seen discussed so far is that Swift names this song ‘seven’ spelled out, yet uses the number ‘1′ in the first track title. The only other track she uses numbers in the name is ‘22′, which is about being 22. So, she could be trying to push past the idea that ‘seven’ is just about being 7 years old--though I do think it’s about that, too. She could also be intentionally connecting ‘the 1′ to ‘22′ in some way. They are both a similar vibe, and perhaps they even refer to the same time period in her life. If we go with that theory, who was T dating at 22? The most likely candidate for that timeframe is Conor Kennedy, which was sort of short-lived, and didn’t seem to end with as much fire as many of her break-ups. So, it’s possible that it’s about him. Or, maybe she just wanted to make sure we knew that ‘the 1′ was a concept she doesn’t really believe in anyway, and didn’t want to grant it the full word ‘one’. Will we ever know?

highlight lyric: “Before I learned civility // I used to scream // Ferociously // Any time I wanted”

august - It seems clear to me that this is the second song in the love-triangle narrative. I’ve heard people claim this is ‘illicit affairs’, but those people obviously haven’t looked at the lyrics. The narrator says ‘James, get in the car,’ which is directly connected to the lyrics in ‘betty.’ But, even without that obvious link, the style of august fits in with the stylistic choices of ‘cardigan’ and ‘betty’. All three have strong instrumental tracks complementing the vocals, soft harmonies, and lots of wistful lyrics. ‘illicit affairs’ cuts much sharper and deeper, but more on that later. Combining the dreamy vibes of ‘seven’ with the slight bop of ‘the 1′, this track is sticky--easy to get stuck in your head. The only thing I wonder about this song is how old this narrator is meant to be. They’re drinking wine, and she references going ‘back to school,’ which sort of feels like a reference to the college experience. But, the betty and james characters make numerous references that feel like high school. So, maybe this affair took place in another city with a college girl? I have to wonder if this is Swift referencing some of the age-gap relationships she’s been in. Again, with Conor Kennedy, she was 22, and he was 18. She also supposedly crashed his sister’s wedding in August, and that was the start of the end of their short romance. I’m just saying...

highlight lyric: “Wanting was enough, for me it was enough // to live for the hope of it all.”

this is me trying - If ‘The Archer’ was Swift confessing to her bad habits after a couple early relationship fights, ‘this is me trying’ is a desperate reminder a few months into the relationship. The two songs are sonically very similar, and I didn’t love the vibe (sorry, again!) the first time. But, I do love the artistic continuation. ‘this is me trying’ slows us down even more than ‘The Archer’ did, with a drum line that is almost like a heart beat, and it feels much less hopeful as a result. The lyrics are also some of the darkest I’ve heard from Swift--”I got wasted like all my potential” and “could’ve followed my fears all the way down.” My heart almost can’t handle this song, to be honest. She also references films again, but my favorite imagery connection is her standing over the lookout, which calls back to Rebekah looking out over the sea in LGAD.

highlight lyric: “and maybe I don't quite know what to say // but I'm here in your doorway”

illicit affairs - This song has that ‘All Too Well’ ache with a hint of ‘Death by A Thousand Cuts’ energy, and personally, I love it. You’ve got the busy instrumental strings underneath a simple, yet haunting melody line, and it’s that light, anxious tension that fits beautifully with the theme of the song. The lyrics depict the simple, small heartbreaking things that remind you of the pain you’re putting yourself through, which is reflected in the slightly surprising, soaring note at the end of the line in the verses. Whether you’ve actually been involved in an affair, these feelings show up in plenty of toxic relationships, and that universality is part of what makes the song powerful. The lyrics aren’t about pretty images, but that’s sort of the point. It’s prime Swift conversational lyricism, and you could pick out any number of lines that make a painful short poem all by themselves. 

highlight lyric: “and you wanna scream // don’t call me “kid,” don’t call me “baby” // look at this godforsaken mess that you made me // you showed me colors you know I can’t see with anyone else”

invisible string - The primary love song on the album, this feels like a follow up to ‘Lover,’ maybe something she’d sing after being married a year or two. It’s sort of like ‘Mine,’ but much more mature, partly indicated by the pace of the song, which is steady and sure of itself. It’s also lovely to me that she’s returned to a bit of her country vibes--I ask you, would it feel like true end-game love for Swift if she couldn’t write a country love song about it? Back when she wrote country, all her happy ending songs were merely aspirational, and now they feel true. This is also 100% about Joe Alwyn, and to me, this is proof they have not broken up like some early reviews speculated. We also need to acknowledge that she’s past the Joe Jonas break up (um, good, that was ages ago) and is sending him and Sophie presents for their baby. I read a review that basically said this song seems a little too ‘all tied up’ for Swift, and that it doesn’t feel as genuine as a result. I sort of agree, but if we can take a sad song and accept that it isn’t how she feels 100% of the time, can’t we also do that with happy songs? Plus, she technically does say that it would be ‘pretty to think,’ which sort of implies it’s more a thought experiment than an actual belief. So, there’s that little twinge of sadness we needed to appease the folklore goddess. Oh, and of course, there’s a reference to Lover’s color scheme, saying time “gave me the blues and then purple-pink skies.” Which, many Kaylor hopefuls read as a reference to the Bi pride flag. To that, I just say... Maybe?

highlight lyric: “time, mystical time // cutting me open, then healing me fine”

Mad woman - My favorite thing about this song is the piano melody that happens in the background the whole song, working in concert with the main melody, but also completely independent (and haunting). It reminds me of one concept of madness--having multiple voices or thoughts going on simultaneously. But of course, it’s artfully and perfectly put together, which is the whole point. What could be perceived as madness is, in this case, what makes her able to create a masterful work of art. Now, this is also certainly a song about her masters, Scooter Braun, and Scott Borchetta. But it is also another feminist anthem. Women are taught not to be angry, not to yell, not to react with any emotionality otherwise we are discredited entirely. Swift directly calls this to attention by explaining that we’re angry for a reason--often antagonized intentionally until ‘you find something to wrap your noose around.’ She also makes the important point that women can also ‘hunt witches,’ and can be complicit in treating one another poorly. This is a reference to Scooter Braun’s wife defending him publicly against Taylor. Probably the most savage line is about the ‘master of spin’ having affairs, which she implies his wife knows about and seems to passively accept. But Swift doesn’t go too hard on her, reminding us that ‘no one likes a mad woman’, and that pressure is real. Could this ‘master of spin’ also be Scooter? I think probably. But I did read that some people are connecting this song to Hillary Clinton (she’s a scorpio, and the song references a scorpion sting), and that maybe Trump is the adulterer here... I feel like that’s a stretch, but I appreciate the interpretation.

highlight lyric: “What a shame she went mad // You made her like that”

epiphany - I suspect this song is directly related to how Swift is processing the current state of the pandemic. The atmospheric vibe with slow, clock-ticking beat in the background really feels momentous and poignant. Yes, she starts with images conjured from her grandfather’s stories of World War II, but she quickly seems to compare this awful battle to the doctors fighting COVID-19 on the frontlines in hospitals. The lyrics are simple, repetitive, and powerful. With so many ill literally struggling to breathe, the lines about breathing out really do hit especially hard these days. I can’t believe that wasn’t a thoughtful choice. The chorus is just barely hopeful, reminiscent of the numbness we all have to use as a coping mechanism to get through traumatic experiences. But it’s that little sliver of hope that makes the song even sadder--is that possible?

highlight lyric: “only twenty minutes to sleep // but you dream of some epiphany // just one single glimpse of relief // to make some sense of what you've seen”

betty - Give me all that Tim McGraw, Love Story, early Taylor pop-country. This song is definitely enhanced in part because of its connections to ‘cardigan’ and ‘august,’ but it stands strong on its own. It’s old news at this point, but James and Inez are based on the names of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’s daughters, so it’s all-but-confirmed that their third daughter was named Betty. Written from the perspective of James, there is massive speculation out there about whether the narrator is meant to be a boy or a girl. There are reasonable clues on both sides, so I’ll just say this: I love Taylor, but she’s always been a little late to the party when it comes to socialized ideas of male/female. Because of that, I don’t think she’d have a female narrator riding a skateboard. I also feel from the style of narration--“I don’t know anything;” “just a summer thing;” “would you tell me to go fuck myself”--it does sound more like stereotypical teenage boy language than what we know as swiftie teenage girl language. What I do like about this song, though, is that because it’s written from James’s perspective, it does sort of leave a wider opening for personal interpretation than some of her other love-story-like songs. The reason I personally love this song is that it’s mostly about redemption and forgiveness. Everyone has wished someone who broke their heart would write this song about them, and so it offers catharsis. Plus, it’s the only song on the album that truly feels happy at the end--thanks, key change! It’s refreshing and heartening, and it’s good timing, too. After the heaviest song on the album, we needed it. (Oh, and there’s a callback to the broken cobblestones from ‘cardigan’. And then he literally mentions her cardigan. So.)

highlight lyric: “if you kiss me // will it be just like I dreamed it? // will it patch your broken wings?”

peace - The vibe of this song is like laying on your couch in the summer with light coming in through the blinds and the ceiling fan is going around just fast enough to keep the warm air circulating, but not really cool you off. This song has a hint of ‘False God’ style, a little jazzy, but otherwise, it’s a pretty fresh feel for Swift. The message fits this thoughtful, lightly antsy feeling. She’s basically saying she wants to start a family with Joe (no, I don’t think she is literally pregnant yet) and settle down, but there is no real ‘settling down’ with her level of fame. I also think that Swift truly enjoys making music, performing, and engaging with her fans, and she doesn’t want to leave that life behind any time soon. So, she’s asking him if he can make that work. It’s, again, a mature vision of what a long-term relationship can actually look and feel like. Not all of us can truly relate to the burdens of fame, but there are other ways we can be unable to ‘give you peace’. No relationship is idyllic forever in the way romantic love often makes it out to be, and this song gives us a more realistic, consistent example. And just in case we thought this was just a nice song, the whole ‘clowns to the West’ is another potential Easter egg. In the lyric video, east is not capitalized, but West is. Most likely, this is a dig at Kanye. If we want to believe Taylor wasn’t being vengeful, it could potentially be a reference to Rebekah (West was her maiden name). I lean toward theory one, although it’s kind of amazing that it works out such that it connects to both.

highlight lyric: “but I'm a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm // if your cascade ocean wave blues come”

hoax - (Phew last one--I don’t have access to ‘the lakes’ yet) Swift can’t end the album without bringing us all back to the raw emotional space she opened up within us. This song brings back similar piano lines from ‘mad woman’ and the image of screaming on the cliffside. Chronologically, ‘hoax’ feels like it takes place after or during the death of her reputation, i.e. the feud with Kim and Kanye, when she was still very vulnerable. Based on timeline, this seems likely to be either Calvin Harris or Tom Hiddleston. It could really be some combination of the two, since many songs aren’t really about just one person. My gut tells me it’s primarily about Calvin, since she’s referenced that they didn’t have a very faithful relationship--”your faithless love’s the only hoax I believe in.” Both relationships travelled a lot--“I left a part of me in new york.” I’m guessing she’s referencing the feud with Harris over her writing credit on ‘This is What You Came For.’ She takes attacks on her career as seriously as hurtful relationships, and since she’s referencing being torn apart by the media when she says that “what you did was just as dark,” I think it’s likely that this also has something to do with hurting her reputation. It’s another hauntingly beautiful song, and you can totally imagine yourself out on that cliff looking at the midnight sea as the piano line ends.

highlight lyric: “you knew the password, so I let you in the door // you knew you won, so what's the point of keeping score?”

---------------------------------------------

Overall, the album is my favorite of Taylor’s so far for two reasons: 1) the continuity in both theme and sound is stellar, and 2) there aren’t any songs that I don’t like. Usually, there are 1-3 songs on Taylor’s albums that are either forgettable or too on-the-nose for my taste. I’m sure that is a product, in part, of having to craft songs for radio-play and for her amazing, cinematic live shows. Having given herself the freedom to make whatever music she wanted without thinking (so much) about whether they’d top the charts or be good for a stadium concert, she made an album without a single ‘pop just because’ track.

Now the real question is... What will she do with the remaining 6 months of quarantine???

[elliepassmore]

The Darkest Legacy Review

5/5 stars Recommended for people who like: dystopia, underground conspiracies, rebellion, psychic powers, Zu I’ve been nervous both times I’ve read this book. The first time, like usual, I read the last page, or couple of pages, first, and so I already knew something was going down with Ruby before I even started. Having been in her head for the past several books, it was obviously jarring to see her in a rough position without also being in her head. This time, I already knew what I was getting into and just absolutely hate the idea of any of the Black Betty Crew getting hurt or emotionally hurting each other. However, the anxiety is quick to go once I start reading and it’s so easy to get wrapped up in Zu and Zu’s story that everything else becomes a part of it. I really love being in Zu’s head and seeing how she’s grown and coped with the changes in her world. She was one of my favorite characters in the main trilogy, so I was super happy she got her own book. If I thought the setting in BTN was a logical step forward from the end of ITA, then the setting here is a leap forward. Perhaps it’s cynical of me, but I could realistically see the setting of zone checkpoints and Defenders and hateful, screaming crowds occurring in America. Despite everything that the government has done to move forward, the mask of civility that the US has in TDL is fragile, so fragile it cracks pretty much as soon as Zu is charged. I liked the glimpses we saw of a world in recovery, seeing how Sam and Lucas and Mia are living was a nice bit of normalcy. Seeing how Zu and Chubs and Vida are working and in DC or touring was nice too. The kids going to school, the businesses opening back up, cities and roads being populated again. Seeing all of it back-to-back after finishing the main trilogy does give a sense of comfort, especially knowing from Zu how much effort went into it all. I’m sure those who had to see it progress over a long period of time feel the same way….hence the ability to believe things that might not 100% be true but that are 100% comforting. I think one of the worst things about this setting and the other dystopic!America settings and actions we’ve seen in this series is that I can see it all happening, some of it I see mirrored today or in the past (also, if you pay attention to Presidential Candidate Moore in this book you’ll notice he seems an awful lot like another presidential candidate we’ve seen, and since this book came out August 2018, I’m going to assume that’s purposeful). An even better setting is Haven, which, as the name suggests, is a haven for Psi kids. As Zu points out, it’s what East River was supposed to be. There’s a cabin that’s hard to access, there’s a cozy atmosphere, tree houses, and the kids who’re there have been pulled from bad situations or were on the run. I get the sense that they don’t have to pitch in the kind of work required from East River, though, and that the kids are allowed to be just that. Also missing is the psychopathic Orange who controlled East River, which is a relief. Haven is genuinely a sanctuary by Psi kids for Psi kids, and it’s designed to either be temporary or long-term. It’s definitely my favorite setting of the entire book and I would love it if Bracken came back to it in a novella or in another Zu-book. Finally, there’s the more unpleasant setting. As much as Zu wants to believe that the government is doing the right thing, and that the facilities being built for Psi are basically boarding schools, she also realizes that things aren’t entirely as they seem. Zu and some of the other characters end up getting captured and placed into a facility called Wheeler, for Wheeler, Texas. It’s basically a rehabilitation camp, but with less cleanliness and order. In it, any kids brought in who haven’t gotten the cure procedure forcibly undergo it. After that, or if they do have the procedure, then the kids are tossed outside into mud and tents and are surrounded by an electric fence with PSF-equivalents walking above them. It’s definitely a kick in the teeth, even once you realize that things are Not Right in America despite Zu’s and the government’s best attempts otherwise. As for Zu, she’s now 18, if I’ve done my math right, and is working for the government. As a Psi kid who was in a camp and as one of the higher-spectrum colors, the government sends her around to speak at events and discuss current policy and to preach patience, to Psi and adults alike. It’s at one of these events that the story kicks off when someone tries to kill her. This story is very much about using your voice and, more importantly, deciding how to use it as well as whether it’s best to work within a broken system to fix it or better to step outside the system to fix it. Previously, Zu has worked outside the system to change it and now she wants to work within it to fix what’s still broken. In both cases, she’s used her voice, which she previously kept silent so she had at least one thing in her life she could control. In the main trilogy, we got to see Zu develop into someone who chose to shed that silence and use her voice as a rallying cry and a hold to justice for the Psi. As the story continues, we get to see her develop her use of voice further as she also decides which ‘fix/break the system’ method she prefers. Zu’s story is one of continually choosing to use her voice for things she’s passionate about, and it’s a story of choosing to help and protect others. Two new main characters come into the story: Priyanka and Roman. Both are Psi (obviously), but they’re also a little…unique in ways that are definitely spoilery. Priyanka is such an energetic character it’s hard to be mistrustful toward her, even when she’s being a little rough. She has a huge heart, which we see come out when she can’t help but pick clothes out for Zu even when the two are still not wholly trusting one another. We also see it when it comes to the kids in Haven, with whom she seems particularly gentle and energetic with, as well as with another character, Lana, with whom she’s dating. Priyanka’s a fun character because she’s a lot like Vida, only with a greater love for dresses and flowers and less a love of cursing. Roman, on the other hand, is far more subdued. I’d say he’s somewhere between Liam and Lucas, though not nearly as naïve as the latter. More to the point, he’s self-sacrificial, can’t help but trusting people, and wants to help everyone. He also has a tendency to truly see Zu, even when she’s putting up walls. Some side characters of note are Lana, Roman’s sister and Priyanka’s girlfriend. Her role in this is a bit spoilery, but she’s definitely a divided soul. Priyanka and Roman clearly love her, but for most of the time we know her, she’s a complete and utter monster. Vicious, but less of a subtle tool than Clancy ever was. Max is another Psi in the same weird position Lana, Roman, and Priya are in, though he felt guilty enough about everything that’d happened that he turned himself over to the Wheeler facility. The kid’s obviously got a lot of guilt and not a lot of faith in the ability to make a difference as a single person, but crazy, seemingly impossible, world-changing, single-person-caused changes are the group’s specialty, so he naturally gets roped in anyway. Liam shows back up in this one, about two-thirds of the way through. He’s searching for Ruby and had to make a pit-stop at Sam, Lucas and Mia’s place—though we don’t see them personally—which is how Zu’s group even manages to catch up with him. His character does come across as older than before while still maintaining that Lee-ness that we all know and love from the main trilogy. Chubs and Vida are both that way too, older and more mature, but still inherently them. Chubs works with the Psi Council part of the government, so he’s more straitlaced than he was before, if that’s even possible, and he’s one of the ones who still thoroughly believes the government can be fixed from within. Vida, surprisingly, takes the same stance, though she works with the FBI and is still a gun-toting and curse-word storm. Vida now keeps her hair it’s natural black, which I was sad to learn. I absolutely loved Vida dying her hair wacky colors, but the reason she gives—wanting to be taken seriously and professionally, especially in a world that hates and fears Psi still—makes sense. Ruby also drops in, though not as much as the others, and we also get some page- and conversation-time with several of the Haven kids. Of all the things I love about this book, the one thing I do dislike is how the Black Betty Gang is all fractured in this book. Like, they aren’t just in different places, but they’re also not really talking to one another and it’s so awful. I have the version with the annotated chapter at the back, so I know why Bracken chose to do it, but it just sucks (though I do love the set-up Ruby and Liam have going on at Haven). I think it’s made even worse because Zu ends up feeling abandoned by everyone. One other thing I hate is the position Ruby’s in, like, Jesus give the girl a goddamn break (I mean, I know canon-wise she got 5 years, but that’s so not enough to make up for every other shitstorm in her life). I don’t know if there’s anything in the works, but I really want to see another book centered around Zu taking place after this one (maybe another trilogy? Pretty, pretty please?). I really like the idea Bracken inserted toward the end of the book, with Zu being the leader of the Psion Ring and the other Psi kids coming out of hiding to help her and the others while also having a focus on Haven and helping kids who maybe don’t want to fight or who do and don’t have good/homes to return to. There’s a lot of potential there and I think that concept would be really interesting to read about and see develop in the future.

[spaceytingz]

1 year of my last.fm!

A year ago, on 20th of May 2019, I learned of last.fm from some peeps at a Carly Rae Jepsen Discord I joined because she had released her new album a few days ago and I wanted to discuss it with other fans. I’m a bit of a stats nerd, so it was really exciting seeing, like, analytics of the music I was listening to during the past year, and, now that I’ve hit the first important milestone, I’m doing this post so I can compile my observations!

Content:

General Stats

Month Recaps

Some observations

General Stats:

Total scrobbles (listens) :  33302 (Assuming an average 3 minute song length, this is 1665 hours, which is 69 days of music (nice). However, if we give 8 hours for sleep every day, that’s 104 days of music and sleep, which conveniently matches the duration of a summer vacation. Nice. This is 91 songs a day, AKA around 4.5 hours of music a day.)

Top 15 artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen - 6469 scrobbles (One fifth of all songs listened, around 323.45 total hours, which means around 53 minutes a day)

Ke$ha -  2150 scrobbles (around 107.5 total hours, which means around 17 minutes a day)

Marina & The Diamonds (I am gonna be referring to her as that because we don’t claim L+F) -  1741 scrobbles (around 87 total hours, which means around 14.5 minutes a day)

Taylor Swift - 1620 scrobbles (around 81 total hours, which means around 13.35 minutes a day)

P!nk - 1218 scrobbles (around 61 total hours, which means around 10 minutes a day)

Lorde - 968 scrobbles (around 48.5 total hours, which means around 8 minutes a day)

Tessa Violet - 697 scrobbles (around 35 total hours, which means around 6 minutes a day)

Tove Lo - 692 scrobbles (around 34.5 total hours, which means around 6 minutes 5.8 day)

Britney Spears - 684 scrobbles (around 34.2 total hours, which means around 5.6 minutes a day)

Halsey - 646 scrobbles (around 32 total hours, which means around 5.3 minutes a day)

Charli XCX - 588 scrobbles (around 29.5 total hours, which means around 4.8 minutes a day)

Kim Petras - 577 scrobbles (around 29 total hours, which means around 4.7 minutes a day)

Dua Lipa - 529 scrobbles (around 26.5 total hours, which means around 4.3 minutes a day)

Meghan Trainor - 492 scrobbles (around 24.6 total hours, which means around 4 minutes a day)

Ariana Grande - 485 scrobbles (around 24.25 total hours, which means around 4 minutes a day)

Top 15 albums:

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (1887 scrobbles, AKA around 94 hours)  - Probably my favorite album ever.

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (1740 scrobbles, AKA around 87 hours) - A chill album that I really like!

Emotion: Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen (923 scrobbles, AKA around 46 hours) - A collection of B-Sides that is better than other people’s main material and its parent album

High Road by Kesha (792 scrobbles, AKA almost 40 hours) - THE PARTY ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Melodrama by Lorde (642 scrobbles, AKA around 32 hours) - Masterpiece

Kiss by Carly Rae Jepsen (642 scrobbles, AKA around 32 hours) - To be fair, all my streams from Kiss have been streams of its good songs, which are, like, 60% of the album

Electra Heart by Marina & The Diamonds (585 scrobbles, AKA around 29 hours) - An amazing concept album

reputation by Taylor Swift (476 scrobbles, AKA almost 24 hours) - I love the energy of this album

Bad Ideas by Tessa Violet (473 scrobbles, AKA 23.5 hours) - Amazing.

FROOT by Marina & The Diamonds (454 scrobbles, AKA around 22.5 hours) - This album really grew on me. It’s almost as good as EH.

The Truth About Love by P!nk (408 scrobbles, AKA around 20.5 hours) - My favorite P!nk album, filled with bops.

Manic by Halsey (407 scrobbles, AKA around 20.5 hours) - It has high highs and very low lows.

Animal by Kesha (396 scrobbles, AKA almost 20 hours) - Incredible

Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa (373 scrobbles, AKA around 18.5 hours) - Very consistent and very good.

Sunshine Kitty by Tove Lo (358 scrobbles, AKA almost 18 hours) - Filled with bops.

Top 15 tracks:

Happy Not Knowing by Carly Rae Jepsen - Carly’s songs are usually growers for me - I don’t like them immediately, but when they grow on me, I love them passionately for a very long time. Happy Not Knowing was an exception. It was the song that I fell in love with on my first listen of Dedicated. It’s my second favorite on the album, after Too Much, but it turns out that it managed to beat it, even if Too Much has an MV. Good for it. Also, my aro ass can very much relate to the sentiment (even if Carly’s doing this to not hurt herself, I can very much Frankenstein this into an aromantic song, thank you very much) - (294 scrobbles)

Too Much by Carly Rae Jepsen - This song might as well have been called “Carly Rae Jepsen violently comes for Tumblr user @ravenclawer‘s ass”. I adore it, the MV is amazing, and it’s one of my favorite songs ever. - (277 scrobbles)

Your Type by Carly Rae Jepsen - I have called this song a song that can turn an aroace into a girl desperate for love for a period of 4 minutes and I stand by my word. My favorite CRJ song ever. - (251 scrobbles)

Want You In My Room by Carly Rae Jepsen - This song is so fun. - (217 scrobbles)

Let’s Get Lost by Carly Rae Jepsen - Let’s Get Lost is pure joy. I honestly think it’s a perfect pop song, and I could go as far as call it a quintessential Carly song. Like, one of the biggest advantages Carly has over many other artists in my eyes is the fact that her singing is so full of emotion - of joy, sorrow, pity. And this song showcases that well. My face literally lights up every time I hear it. - (206 scrobbles)

I’ll Be Your Girl by Carly Rae Jepsen - One of my faves on Dedicated. I love the pettiness behind it. To be frank, I was sleeping on this song until I saw fanart about it, and that fanart made the song click in my head. - (194 scrobbles)

Cry by Carly Rae Jepsen - This song is incredible. One of my top 3 favorite CRJ songs. I can’t really describe it, but.... it’s Cry. I have literally seen people pray for Dedicated Side B to have a “Cry”. It’s Cry, and that’s enough of an explanation. - (184 scrobbles)

Now That I Found You by Carly Rae Jepsen - It’s fun! I love the MV, it makes me wanna dance! A nice song! I am perplexed over why I have listened so much to it, as I like every single song from #9 to #15 more than it, but hey, data doesn’t lie. Oh shit, it just got to the prechorus, I take it back, it’s amazing. - (179 scrobbles)

Party For One by Carly Rae Jepsen - Jepsies shit on this song, and this angers me. It’s a bop, the music video is iconic, and it’s classic Carly. I love it. - (177 scrobbles)

LA Hallucinations by Carly Rae Jepsen - THE MOST SLEPT ON SONG FROM EMOTION. THE MOMENT WHEN THE “PLANES I’M HOPPING CARDS I’M DROPPING” HITS, MY WIG IS INSTANTLY EVAPORATED AND I DIE ON THE SPOT. - (172 scrobbles)

Run Away With Me by Carly Rae Jepsen - You know, this is also surprising, because I’m one of the three (3) CRJ stans that does not worship this song. Like, it’s amazing, but I can name 10 better song on Emotion only. But still, it’s amazing. LET’S RUN AWAAAYYY I’D RUN AWAY WITH YOUUUUU - (171 scrobbles)

Fever by Carly Rae Jepsen - You have not lived until you have shouted this song at the top of your lungs while biking in the countryside. One of my three favorite songs from CRJ. The live performance is also amazing. - (154 scrobbles)

The One by Carly Rae Jepsen - This song finally fully clicked for me in August, and, Jesus, this song is truly one of her best. IF YOU WANT TO, YOU COULD HOLD ME TIGHT, I DON’T WANNA BE THE ONE - (152 scrobbles)

Cut To The Feeling by Carly Rae Jepsen - It’s Cut To The Feeling, come on, it’s literally one of the best pop, nah, best songs in history. - (150 scrobbles, however, if we count a certain cover, it jumps to #5 with 209 scrobbles)

Making The Most Of The Night by Carly Rae Jepsen - I remember first hearing this song and reading a comment that said “This song is literal pop perfection”. And, you know what? I’m inclined to agree. - (149 scrobbles)

ooookay, so that top 15 is super diverse, so I’m gonna do a second top 15 with the songs that are not from CRJ lol

17. Crush by Tessa Violet - This song is SO GOOD. It’s not special to me or anything, but it’s SO GOOD. - (134 scrobbles)

20. Delicate by Taylor Swift - One of my favorite songs of all time. It’s up there with “Your Type”, “Please Don’t Leave Me” and the others. - (114 scrobbles)

23. Tonight by Kesha - as a user on r/popheads described it: “THE TRASHY HOE ANTHEM OF THE YEAR” - (134 scrobbles)

24. Primadonna by Marina & The Diamonds - My mental state when I drink five cups of Coca Cola in a row and I get too happy about life. - (111 scrobbles)

25. So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings by Caroline Polachek - I wanted to dislike this song SO HARD, cause she just kept popping in my recommendations, but once I gave in.... a masterpiece. - (110 scrobbles)

27. Stay Over by Tove Lo - What is with me and desperate bops? Amazing, a masterpiece. - (108 scrobbles)

28. Physical by Dua Lipa - LET’S GET PHYSICAL MISS DUA! The MV is a masterpiece. - (108 scrobbles)

30. Supercut by Lorde - One of my favorite songs of all time. A bop, a masterpiece, the moment. - (105 scrobbles)

32. Liability by Lorde - The only song that has ever made me cry. - (100 scrobbles)

33. Talking Body by Tove Lo - A sexy bop. - (100 scrobbles)

38. You Need To Calm Down by Taylor Swift - It’s catchy, I like it - (98 scrobbles)

39. Don’t Start Now by Dua Lipa - DON’T SHOW UP - (97 scrobbles)

45. Convenient by Lo Lo - This song is so bitchy, it captures the exact kind of energy I’m striving towards. Masterpiece. - (89 scrobbles)

46. Between You & Me by Betty Who - A bop I discovered in summer! Amazing! - (87 scrobbles)

48. Green Light by Lorde - I’M WAITING FOR IT! THAT GREEN LIGHT! I WANT IT! - (87 scrobbles)

some fun stats (for me):

Top Artists:

CRJ has more scrobbles than #2, #3, and #4 combined and if she had a couple hundred more, we could add #5 to the equation.

I’m honestly surprised Halsey and Charli XCX even made it to the top 15, considering I don’t think of myself as a fan of them.

Britney at #9 is a welcome surprise.

It’s very curious to me how I have listened more to Meghan Trainor than Ariana Grande

Also, the small gaps after #7 are really funny. Like the gaps in #1 - #6 are in the hundreds, and the gaps in #7 to #15 happen to be something like 15 scrobbles lol

Top Albums:

I didn’t expect Electra Heart that high, but good for her

I am pretty sure I listened to reputation enough to help TS get to #5 of my Top Artists.

Just Emotion’s scrobbles would have been enough to get CRJ to #2

Top Tracks:

40% (6) of the top 15 all-time tracks are from Dedicated, 33% (5) are from Emotion, and the rest 27% (4) are from Emotion Side B (if we count Cut To The Feeling)

60% of the top 10 all time tracks are from Dedicated, 30% are from Emotion and 10% are from Emotion: Side B

Month Recap:

I will be treating the statistics like charts cause it’s fun lol

May 2019:

May 2019 in one sentence: Carly Rae Fucking Jepsen.

Top Artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen (404 scrobbles, AKA around 20 hours, AKA 2 hours a day) - CRJ released her new album a few days before I started my last.fm, so I was obviously listening to her a lot.

Sara Bareilles (65 scrobbles, AKA around 3 hours) - I was just discovering her hit songs.

Ke$ha (36 scrobbles)

Paramore (34 scrobbles)

P!nk (30 scrobbles)

Top Albums:

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (184 scrobbles, AKA around 9 hours, so probably one listen of the album a day) - It just came out, and I am a slut for CRJ.

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (64 scrobbles, AKA around 3 hours)

Emotion Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen (63 scrobbles)

Kaleidoscope Heart by Sara Bareilles  (29 scrobbles solely from Gotta Get Over You)

Kiss by Carly Rae Jepsen (27 scrobbles)

Top Tracks:

Want You In My Room By Carly Rae Jepsen (37 scrobbles) - You know, I’m kinda surprised it’s on top, since it’s not in my top 3 in Dedicated, but, to be fair, I probably listened to my top 3 a lot in the three days the album was out and I didn’t have last.fm. A bop.

Too Much by Carly Rae Jepsen (33 scrobbles) - My favorite song on the album. Legendary.

Gonna Get Over You by Sara Bareilles (29 scrobbles) - I had forgotten exactly how much of a bop this song was. I discovered it around the time I set up my last.fm.

LA Hallucinations by Carly Rae Jepsen (21 scrobbles) - One of my faves on Emotion. Deserved much better.

The Sound by Carly Rae Jepsen (19 scrobbles) - You know, this is kinda surprising, cause The Sound isn’t one of my faves, but, hey, it’s a bop.

As there were only 10 days of tracking, there is less material. On to the first full month of tracking!

June 2019:

Top Artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (990 scrobbles, almost 50 hours, so about an hour and 40 minutes a day) - Miss Carly Rae Jepsen continued her dominance over my ears and my heart during June. As she should. 

P!nk (+3) (245 scrobbles, around 12 hours) - P!nk was my favorite artist of all time until 2019, and now shares that title with CRJ and Kesha. Dunno what I listened from her during June yet, but she is very much a summer artist.

Kim Petras (+16) (107 scrobbles, around 5 hours) - Kim Petras has bops, and released her debut album in late June, so I listened to quite a bit.

Taylor Swift (+33) (95 scrobbles)

Ke$ha (-2) (90 scrobbles) - Love her

Top Albums: (Carly Rae Jepsen Dominating My Life Part 2)

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (+1) (303 scrobbles, aka 15 hours) - Oh, wow, Emotion managed to outperform Dedicated? Surprising, but, to be fair, this album is timeless and it has so many bops, I adore it.

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (230 scrobbles, aka 11.5 hours) - Dedicated is very much a spring album in my eyes, so as summer gets closer and closer, it seems to give some place to Emotion. I remember being really obsessed with Want You In My Room in June.

Emotion Side B (=) by Carly Rae Jepsen (164 scrobbles, aka 8 hours)

Kiss by Carly Rae Jepsen (+2) (63 scrobbles, aka 3 hours)

The Truth About Love by P!nk (+23) (54 scrobbles)

Top Tracks:

Too Much by Carly Rae Jepsen (+1) (48 scrobbles, AKA around 1.6 times a day) - I mean, are we surprised.

Want You In My Room by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (46 scrobbles)

Cry by Carly Rae Jepsen (+7) (44 scrobbles)

You Need To Calm Down by Taylor Swift (debut) (41 scrobbles) - I was obsessed with this song when it came out. Don’t know why people don’t like it.

Happy Not Knowing by Carly Rae Jepsen (+1) (36 scrobbles) - The first appearance of what will eventually become my top track of the year.

July 2019:

July was the month of my internship and my sea vacation. I love July.

Top Artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (803 scrobbles, around 40 hours, so about an hour and 20 minutes a day) - Third month in a row!

Taylor Swift (+2) (245 scrobbles, around 12 hours) - I actually don’t remember what I was listening to from her during July, we’ll get to that in the Top Tracks section.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Cast (+8) (119 scrobbles, around 6 hours)

P!nk (-2) (118 scrobbles) - I always listen to P!nk when I’m on a sea vacation, it’s rules. Like, I associate Funhouse with the amusement parks near the sea.

Ke$ha (=) (106 scrobbles, around 5 hours)

Top Albums: (Carly Rae Jepsen Dominating My Life Part 3)

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (229 scrobbles, aka 11.5 hours)

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (226 scrobbles, aka 11 hours) - Dedicated out there giving Emotion a run for its money.

reputation by Taylor Swift (+12) (127 scrobbles, around 6 hours)

Emotion Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (85 scrobbles, aka 4 hours)

Kiss by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (74 scrobbles, around 3.5 hours)

Top Tracks:

In My Bed by Sabrina Carpenter (debut) (41 scrobbles, aka 1.3 times a day) - Wow, Carly has finally been dethroned on one chart! I remember discovering the MV for this song in July and really enjoying it. It’s a bop!

Too Much by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (38 scrobbles, aka 1.3 times a day) - Too Much ain’t going nowhere for a third month straight.

Now That I Found You by Carly Rae Jepsen (+54) / Your Type by Carly Rae Jepsen (+4) / I Did Something Bad by Taylor Swift (debut) (I had just discovered this song, and god, it’s amazing) (33 scrobbles, aka around 1 time a day)

Run Away With Me by Carly Rae Jepsen (+30) (31 scrobbles)

Between You And Me by Betty Who (debut) (This song is so summery, I adore it!) / Right Words Wrong Time by Carly Rae Jepsen (+106) (29 scrobbles)

August 2019:

I spent half the month biking in the German countryside, singing my heart out to Carly lol

Top Artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (544 scrobbles, around 27 hours, so about an hour a day) - Third month in a row!

Taylor Swift (=) (156 scrobbles, around 8 hours) - Her new album came out in late August, so I listened to it a bit.

Katy Perry (+6) (59 scrobbles, around 3 hours)

P!nk (=) (51 scrobbles)

Ariana Grande (+6) (48 scrobbles, around 2.5 hours)

Top Albums:

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (140 scrobbles, aka 7 hours)

Emotion Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen (+2) (125 scrobbles, aka 6 hours) - August 2019 was the moment Emotion Side B fuly clicked for me. Fever and The One got promoted to masterpiece level in my mind. Also, Side B is such an August album. I adore it.

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (85 scrobbles, aka 4.5 hours)

Lover by Taylor Swift (debut) (78 scrobbles, around 4 hours)

Kiss by Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (72 scrobbles, aka 3.5 hours)

Top Tracks:

Fever by Carly Rae Jepsen (+19) (THE MOST MEMORABLE SONG FROM AUGUST, YOU HAVE NOT LIVED UNTIL YOU HAVE SCREAMED “SO I STOOOOLE YOUR BIKE” WHILE RIDING A BIKE WHILE THE AUGUST SUN SETS AND THE SKY IS PINK) / Happy Not Knowing by Carly Rae Jepsen / Small Talk by Katy Perry (26 scrobbles, around 1 time a day)

Too Much by Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (25 scrobbles)

Party For One by Carly Rae Jepsen (+8) (24 scrobbles)

Queen Of Mean by Sarah Jeffrey (debut) (23 scrobbles)

I’ll Be Your Girl by Carly Rae Jepsen (+36) / Your Type by Carly Rae Jepsen (-2) (this particular song hits really different in August) (22 scrobbles)

September 2019:

Summer dies and I go back to school.

Top Artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (398 scrobbles, around 20 hours) - CRJ really said “y’all ain’t taking my spot on the top artists chart”

Marina & The Diamonds (+31) (107 scrobbles, around 5 hours)

Taylor Swift (-1) (103 scrobbles)

P!nk (=) (76 scrobbles) - P!nk is #4 for the third month in a row lol

Britney Spears (+1) (64 scrobbles)

Top Albums:

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (+2) (141 scrobbles, around 7 hours) - As summer dies down, Dedicated manages to outperform Emotion for the first time since the month of its release. Good for her.

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (87 scrobbles, aka 4.5 hours)

Electra Heart by Marina & The Diamonds (reenter) (74 scrobbles, aka around 3.6 hours)

Lover by Taylor Swift (=) (36 scrobbles)

Emotion Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen (-3) (30 scrobbles)

Top Tracks: (AKA Marina and Lana teaming up to finally kick CRJ out of the top 2)

Doin’ Time by Lana Del Rey (debut) (31 scrobbles) - This is such a September song, it’s amazing.

Starring Role by Marina & The Diamonds (debut) (29 scrobbles) - This was around the time I realised this song is actually a masterpiece. Fuck me up, Marina.

Want You In My Room by Carly Rae Jepsen (+73) (28 scrobbles) - The MV came out in September, and I, naturally, adored it.

Obsessed by Mariah Carey (debut) (26 scrobbles) - I discovered the MV on Youtube and it was and still is, a bop.

Happy Not Knowing by Carly Rae Jepsen (-4) (25 scrobbles)

October 2019:

My biggest memories from this month: Discovering Melodrama and Bad Ideas. (Also Body Talk by Robyn)

Top Artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (420 scrobbles, around 21 hours)

Taylor Swift (+1) (252 scrobbles, around 12.5 hours) - I’m calling it: this is from my autumn listens of reputation + the song Red

Lorde (debut) (214 scrobbles)

Marina & The Diamonds (-2) (151 scrobbles)

P!nk (-1) (127 scrobbles)

Top Albums:

Melodrama by Lorde (debut) (200 scrobbles AKA around 10 hours) - Carly finally gets kicked out of the first place by a masterpiece of an album. Discovering Melodrama in autumn was a fucking experience. A masterpiece.

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (196 scrobbles AKA around 10 hours) - It’s amusing to me exactly how close the two are lol

Bad Ideas by Tessa Violet (debut) (100 scrobbles, AKA around 5 hours) - I adore this album.

Turn Off The Light by Kim Petras (debut) (88 scrobbles, AKA around 4.5 hours) - I mean, it’s the Halloween month, you expect me not to listen to it?

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (-4) (79 scrobbles, AKA around 4 hours)

Top Tracks: In a shocking turn of events, CRJ is completely kicked out of the top 5. Autumn sadness (or, dare I say, melodrama)’s impact.

Graveyard by Halsey (debut) (42 scrobbles) - A bop. I also really liked the summer-autumnish aesthetics in the MV.

Supercut by Lorde (debut) (40 scrobbles) - Masterpiece.

Liability by Lorde (debut) (39 scrobbles) - When I listened to it for the first time, I cried. I never cry.

Do You Miss Me At All by Bridgit Mendler (debut)/ Clementine by Halsey (debut) (Ugh, this and Graveyard’s aesthetics. Me love it.) (35 scrobbles)

Red by Taylor Swift (debut) (34 scrobbles) - An acquaintance had the nerve to say it’s better than Delicate, so I gave it a listen. Spoiler Alert: It’s not, but it’s a good song.

November 2019:

Warm autumn is gone. Seasonal depression.

Top Artists:

Tessa Violet (debut) (256 scrobbles, AKA almost 13 hours) - And so, the artist who has the honor to end CRJ’s 6 month streak at #1 is revealed. I love Tessa. I continued to listen to her album in November, it’s amazing.

Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (248 scrobbles, AKA around 12.5 hours) - She ain’t giving up without a fight, your honor.

Lorde (=) (179 scrobbles, AKA 9 hours) - *screams in Melodrama*

P!nk (+1) (154 scrobbles, AKA 7.5 hours)

Britney Spears (+7) (126 scrobbles) - I think I was discovering Britney in autumn.

Top Albums:

Bad Ideas by Tessa Violet (+2) (179 scrobbles, AKA around 9 hours)

Melodrama by Lorde (-1) (178 scrobbles) - THE GAP addjajdasla

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (101 scrobbles)

The Truth About Love by P!nk (+4) (95 scrobbles)

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (72 scrobbles, AKA around 3.5 hours)

Top Tracks:

So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings by Caroline Polachek (debut) (62 scrobbles)

Don’t Start Now by Dua Lipa (debut) (54 scrobbles)

Haze by Tessa Violet (debut) (47 scrobbles)

Back To You by Selena Gomez (debut) (37 scrobbles)

Crush by Tessa Violet (debut) (34 scrobbles)

I feel like my variety of songs I get obsessed with shrinks as winter approaches. Or, you know, those five songs are that good.

December 2019:

*insert mental image of me desperately ignoring my final thesis project*]

Top Artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen (+1) (495 scrobbles, AKA around 25 hours) - Aaaand she’s back :)

Tove Lo (+43) (199 scrobbles, AKA 10 hours) - I think I discovered Sunshine Kitty around December, which was my introduction to Tove Lo after discovering Glad He’s Gone in the summer.

Tessa Violet (-2) (113 scrobbles, AKA around 5.5 hours)

Britney Spears (+1) (98 scrobbles) - It is most amusing to me how she keeps popping up in this chart, when I’ve never fully listened to an album of hers, and she doesn’t appear on the other two charts lol. Love her.

Taylor Swift (+1) (97 scrobbles)

Top Albums:

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (+4) (174 scrobbles, AKA around 8.5 hours) - Okay, I figured it out: Dedicated is a winter and spring album, Emotion is summer and autumn.

Sunshine Kitty by Tove Lo (debut) (170 scrobbles) - I discovered it that month, a solid album. Stay Over is my fave on it.

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (131 scrobbles)

Bad Ideas by Tessa Violet (-3) (75 scrobbles)

Emotion Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen (+14) (73 scrobbles)

Top Tracks: (wow, this top 5 is both diverse in terms of artists and immaculate in quality)

Happy Not Knowing by Carly Rae Jepsen (+117) (51 scrobbles) - Okay, so I’m pretty sure this is the point in which Happy Not Knowing began to gain on Too Much to eventually overthrow it as my most listened-to song.

Stay Over by Tove Lo (debut) (49 scrobbles) - I was and still am obsessed with this song.

Out Of Touch by Dove Cameron (debut) (41 scrobbles)

Crush by Tessa Violet (+1) (38 scrobbles)

Feeling of Falling by Cheat Codes feat. Kim Petras (debut) / I’m Fakin’ by Sabrina Carpenter (debut) (37 scrobbles)

January 2020:

I was in a trance between the middle of January and the middle of February. Music related things I remember: Listening to Selena Gomez’s singles and Halsey’s Manic in the beginning, being obsessed with Kesha’s new album High Road and Dua Lipa’s Physical at the end.

Top Artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (753 scrobbles, AKA around a whooping 37 hours, which is the highest scrobble rate since June and July lol)

Ke$ha (+10) (538 scrobbles, AKA 27 hours) - Her new album came out in the end of the month, I think she would have topped the chart if it was in the beginning lol

Halsey (debut) (291 scrobbles, AKA around 14.5 hours) - Her new album came out in the middle of the month. I enjoyed half of it, but that half was amazing.

Tove Lo (-3) (201 scrobbles, AKA around 10 hours)

Taylor Swift (=) (189 scrobbles) - I didn’t realise I listened to her that much lol

Top Albums:

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (+2) (301 scrobbles, AKA around 15 hours) - Emotion and/or Dedicated almost constantly beating new albums every month will never fail to amuse me

Manic by Halsey (debut) (249 scrobbles, AKA around 12.5 hours)

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (-2) (214 scrobbles, AKA around 10.5 hours)

Animal by Kesha (debut) (128 scrobbles, AKA around 6.5 hours) - OOH, I remember that, I was relistening to Animal to get ready for High Road. A great album.

Emotion Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (124 scrobbles, AKA around 12 hours)

Top Tracks: (This entire Top 5 outperforms every single song that has charted in the Top 5 yet, save for Caroline Polachek’s So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings, which is only outperformed by the Top 2)

Talking Body by Tove Lo (debut) (a WHOOPING 89 scrobbles, which is very close to 6 hours. This has to be a record) - I discovered this song in the beginning of the month, and gods, it makes me feel so empowered and cool. It’s amazing.

Lay All Your Love On Me by ABBA (debut) (Again, a WHOOPING 65 scrobbles, which I think beats every single #1 on the Top Tracks chart yet save for Talking Body) - I discovered this masterpiece on the second day of the new year, and, I don’t know, this song is so fitting for the timeless period in January. I can’t describe it, but it’s amazing.

You Should Be Sad by Halsey (debut) (59 scrobbles) - Such a nice song, I love the MV too.

True Romance by Ashley Tisdale (debut) (58 scrobbles) - I discovered this song along with the top 2 on this chart and it’s amazing, I love it.

Cut To The Feeling by Elijah Mann (debut) (this CRJ cover is probably the best one I’ve heard yet. Amazing) / VIP by Kesha (debut) (54 scrobbles)

February 2020: The trance continues as I do the majority of the work on my thesis project in the last three weeks. As one does.

Top Artists:

Kesha (+1) (663 scrobbles, AKA around 33 hours) - Kesha joins Tessa Violet as the only artists who have managed to dethrone Carly on this chart. (Both of them were riding off the wave of their new albums which I adore)

Carly Rae Jepsen (-1) (564 scrobbles, AKA around 28 hours)

Marina & The Diamonds (+7) (256 scrobbles, AKA around 13 hours) - And so we enter the so called “Marina” period. When I discovered Marina in early 2019, I listened to her constantly from February to April, and then I slowly stopped listening to as much. I resonate most with her during these months.

Meghan Trainor (+2) (166 scrobbles, around 8 hours) - Meghan’s album came out on the 31st of January, along with Kesha’s, and, in a criminal offense to the entirety of the Internet, I am proud to announce I’m a casual Meghan fan. Don’t come at me.

Taylor Swift (=) (157 scrobbles, also third month in a row where she’s #5)

Top Albums:

High Road by Kesha (+6) (549 scrobbles, AKA around 27.5 hours) - High Road joins Melodrama and Bad Ideas as the only albums that have managed to dethrone CRJ’s Emotion and/or Dedicated on this chart. (With a gigantic lead, mind you)

Electra Heart by Marina & The Diamonds (+19) (143 scrobbles, AKA around 7 hours) - Aaaand Marina barely manages to outperform Emotion. Good for her!

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (-2) (142 scrobbles, AKA around 7 hours)

Emotion Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen (+1) (115 scrobbles)

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (-2) / Treat Myself by Meghan Trainor (debut) (106 scrobbles) - THE WAY Meghan’s album could barely tie CRJ’s third highest album on the chart lol

Top Tracks: We have some insane numbers again due to my self-isolation to work on the thesis project.

Let’s Be Friends by Carly Rae Jepsen (debut) (76 scrobbles) - Y’all can obviously see what a new CRJ song can do to me lol

Physical by Dua Lipa (debut) (64 scrobbles) - It’s a bop with an incredible video!

Tonight by Kesha (+13) (61 scrobbles) - BITCH WE’RE GOING OUT TONIGHT

Kinky (feat. Ke$ha) by Kesha (debut) (58 scrobbles) - Dare I say, iconic.

BFF (feat. Wrabel) by Kesha (debut) (57 scrobbles)

March 2020: I attempt to get my life together and a global pandemic says “bitch you thought”

Top Artists:

Marina & The Diamonds (+2) (627 scrobbles, AKA around 31.5 hours) - Marina’s power over me during “Marina season” is unmatched

Carly Rae Jepsen (=) (477 scrobbles, AKA around 24 hours)

Lo Lo (debut) (222 sctobbles, AKA around 11 hours) - Lo Lo is an indie artist, whose music I discovered during March. She’s amazing, I DM’d her on Instagram to tell her so and she responded!

Dua Lipa (+6) (196 scrobbles, AKA almost 10 hours) - Her album “Future Nostalgia” came out at the end of the month. Amazing.

Conan Gray (debut) (175 scrobbles) - ALERT! ALERT! A MALE HAS APPEARED! The public is shocked. Anyways, his album Kid Krow also came out in the middle of the month - amazing.

Top Albums: (first time CRJ is kicked out of the top 3, and, hell, even the Top 4)

FROOT by Marina & The Diamonds (+8) (236 scrobbles, AKA around 12 hours) - That month, FROOT finally fully clicked for me. An amazing project.

Sweater Collection by Lo Lo (debut) (186 scrobbles, AKA around 9 hours)

Electra Heart by Marina & The Diamonds (-1) (167 scrobbles, AKA around 8.5 hours)

Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa (debut) (157 scrobbles, AKA around 8 hours)

Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen (-2) (150 scrobbles, AKA around 7.5 hours)

Top Tracks:

Convenient by Lo Lo (debut) (a WHOOPING 88 SCROBBLES, only 1 scrobbles below Tove Lo’s Talking Body, which currently holds the record of the most scrobbled track in a month) - This song is fucking amazing.

You & Jennifer by Bülow (debut) (I discovered this from one of Conan Gray’s vlogs, they are very relaxing to watch. Amazing) / Can’t Pin Me Down by Marina (65 scrobbles)

Solitaire by Marina (debut) (62 scrobbles) - I can’t believe I used to find this song boring before March.

Yours by Lo Lo (debut) ( (56 scrobbles)

Femmebot (feat. Dorian Electra and Mykki Blanco) by Charli XCX (debut) (50 scrobbles)

April 2020: Bored.

Top Artists:

Carly Rae Jepsen (+1) (212 scrobbles, AKA around 10.5 hours) - The Presiding Angel Of Pop returns to the top for the first time since January. As she should.

Marina & The Diamonds (-1) (194 scrobbles, almost 10 hours)

Kylie Minogue (debut) (176 scrobbles) - I really got into some of her singles, and I also listened to her album Fever. Sadly, it wasn’t good, so the majority of the scrobbles are from the singles.

Dua Lipa (=) (155 scrobbles)

Kesha (+3) (154 scrobbles)

Top Albums:

Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa (+3) (141 scrobbles, AKA around 7 hours) - A great album, it was also my workout music.

Pure Heroine (Extended) by Lorde (debut) (110 scrobbles, AKA around 5.5 hours) - I discovered this album in April and, Lord (e), it really is as good as Melodrama.

Fever by Kylie Minogue (debut) (85 scrobbles)

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (+2) (69 scrobbles (ayyy))

Pang by Caroline Polachek (debut) (68 scrobbles) - I really got into some of the songs.

Top Tracks:

Fever by Kylie Minogue (debut) (52 scrobbles)

I Will Always Love You by Dolly Parton (debut) (50 scrobbles) - I discovered this song that month and Jesus, it’s so much better than Whitney’s version.

Levitating by Dua Lipa (debut) (41 scrobbles)

XS by Rina Sawayama (debut) ( (38 scrobbles)

Cool by Dua Lipa (debut) (35 scrobbles)

May 2020: Spring approaches.

Top Artists:

Rina Sawayama (+3) (184 scrobbles, AKA around 9 hours)

Charli XCX (+28) (165 scrobbles, AKA around 8 hours)

Carly Rae Jepsen (-2) (162 scrobbles, AKA around 8 hours)

Kesha (+1) (130 scrobbles, AKA around 6.5 hours)

Lorde (+1) (127 scrobbles, AKA around 6.5 hours)

Top Albums: (this is the first month in which Emotion and Emotion Side B are dropkicked into oblivion out of the Top 40 lol)

Sawayama by Rina Sawayama (+27)  (182 scrobbles, AKA around 9 hours) - Okay, so, after having r/popheads scream at me indirectly and after getting obsessed with XS, I finally gave this a listen and, man, this is such a stellar record.

Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (+2)  (85 scrobbles, AKA around 4 hours) - I discovered Dedicated’s true calling as soundtrack while cooking. Amazing.

Pop 2 by Charli XCX (debut)  (74 scrobbles) - You know, the irony here is that I dislike, like, 60% of the album. Like, these scrobbles are solely from Track 10, Backseat, Out Of My Head and Femmebot.

Pure Heroine (Extended) by Lorde (-2)  (70 scrobbles) - Because it’s spring and we’re in a pandemic and I’m 19 and I’m on fire

WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? by Billie Eilish (debut) (44 scrobbles) - I first listened to this album when it came out and I found it boring. Then, I participated in a rate on r/popheads which made me do a relisten, and this album is actually really solid!

Top Tracks:

Track 10 by Charli XCX (debut)  (48 scrobbles) - I am not a Charli XCX fan. Like, I feel like a big part of her experimental tracks drop the ball. This, however? This is a masterpiece.

Queen Of Disaster by Lana Del Rey (debut)  (42 scrobbles) - I heard this song from Tiktok lol. First unreleased song on the chart!

Bad Friend by Rina Sawayama (debut) (28 scrobbles) - I do not want to comment on the ways miss Sawayama brutally called me out in this song.

Dead Horse by Hayley Williams (debut) (27 scrobbles) - A bop.

XS by Rina Sawayama (-1)  (25 scrobbles)

Some Observations:

Carly Rae Jepsen has spent 9 months on top of the Top Artists chart.

There has been a CRJ album in the Top 5 Albums every single month, with Dedicated only being kicked out in March, and Emotion in April and May.

The only Top Albums yet: Emotion (4 months), Dedicated (3 months), Melodrama (1 month), Bad Ideas (1 month), High Road (1 month), FROOT (1 month), Future Nostalgia (1 month), Sawayama (1 month)

The only male artists that have appeared on the chart are Conan Gray as #5 on the Top Artists chart in March and Elijah Mann on the Top Tracks chart in January as #5

The lowest place CRJ has been kicked to in the Top Artists chart is #3.

The lowest place CRJ has been kicked to in the Top Albums chart is #5.

The songs with the most scrobbles on the monthly Top Tracks Chart: (also, just noticed #1 and #2′s artists have Lo in their names lol)

Talking Body by Tove Lo

 - 89 scrobbles in January (#1). That correlates to around 3 listens a day.

Convenient by Lo Lo

- 88 scrobbles in March (#1)

Let’s Be Friends by Carly Rae Jepsen

 (#1) - 76 scrobbles in February

Lay All Your Love On Me by ABBA

 (#2) - 65 scrobbles in January.

You & Jennifer by Bülow

 and 

Can’t Pin Me Down by Marina

 - 65 scrobbles in March, tied for #2 in March

The only artists who have managed to briefly dethrone CRJ on the Top Artists chart: (The longest wait between CRJ’s #1s is two months: she didn’t have the top spot in February and March)

Tessa Violet (after the release of her new album and by 8 scrobbles)

Kesha (after the release of her new album, and with a healthy lead of 99 scrobbles)

Marina & The Diamonds (out of nowhere, and with the biggest gap yet, with 150 scrobbles)

Rina Sawayama (by 20 scrobbles) / Charli XCX (by 3 scrobbles lol)

This was fun, I might edit in some more observations later!

[confused-and-hurtzo]

Grey’s S15

So... I pranked myself like I always do, and I decided to do a mini grey’s rewatch of seasons 12-15. To be completely honest, I didn’t watch season 13 or 14 entirely, and I wanted to understand this past season better. (I lowkey also wanted to see Deluca’s character development b/c I want to understand the man that Mer just said ‘I love you’ to). So here is a review of Grey’s S15, what I hope to see in S16, a rant on some comments I have seen on the internet about. I just need to let my thoughts out. 

First of all, I am a big Grey’s Anatomy fan. Although I roll my eyes every time I say it's been running this long, this show has a special place in my heart. I started watching the show during my formative years, Cristina Yang basically raised my teenage self. I started in middle school, and now we are here, a year away from graduating my undergrad at UofT. I don’t want to discredit the amazing women that raised me, but I also don’t want to not mention Shondaland and its influence on who I am today. Overall, Grey’s is kind of like my bible, I rewatch it every time I need to feel comfortable, validated, and reasonable. Its storytelling has allowed me to understand so many things, such as addiction (s/o to Private Practice and Amelia Shepherd), family issues, loyalty, love, empowerment. Its most important lesson is that life goes on. No matter how hard it gets, it just keeps going, and that's the beauty of it. We all can take whatever it throws at us, and come on the other side, stronger and wiser. I hate it when people say that they miss the old Grey's, that they miss Derek or Cristina. It’s all very valid, I miss them too. However, that is life, people die, people move across the globe, and you just have to deal with that and move forward. 

I really enjoyed this season because of its attention to detail. I know this sounds very odd, but, after watching S12, 13, and 14, I feel that this season was packed with references. It mostly stayed true to the characters' storylines and amended some plot holes from previous seasons. I love that the Mer-Tatcher storyline had a conclusion, I always wondered what happened to him after Lexie died.  I also enjoyed meeting Alex’s mom, she is honestly a sweetheart. Benley’s story was so exciting, I am never concerned about them because they are perfect, but it is good to see them going through hard times. They brought back Teddy, which allowed Owen’s character to move forward. I loved that they gave Amelia a chance, we got a better explanation of why her family was not there, and her story became full-circle. There is more reference to the Mer’s kids, making us remember that she is a mom LOL. Finally, although he is a more recent character, I love Schmidt so much. He cracks me up, and his story is so underrated. 

In this part, I will focus more on my favorite characters of the show and what I liked about them this season:

Meredith: I have to admit, I always thought I was Cristina Yang, but the more I reflect on this, the more I realize that I am more of a Meredith Grey. I am so proud of how far she has come, professionally and emotionally. She is a warrior. I love how happy she is this season. It's partly because of her new relationship, but also she is very stable now, with her kids, her award, her friendships. She is always working really hard to be a better person, and it takes a courageous person to admit that you need to improve and actually doing the work to be better. She understands her past and moves forward, motivating the people that love her the most to do the same thing. She has changed, for good. And, people may say that she is not the Meredith Grey she was in season 1, and I say that this is a good thing. She has grown up and learned from her mistakes (some of them, she was still afraid of I love you’s and committed insurance fraud, but some things don’t change lol). Cece was such a central character for her storyline, I loved how she allowed her to believe in herself and in life-after-love (yes, this is a Cher reference), which is why Merluca is a thing now. I high-key believe that Cece intentionally created the Link-Andrew-Meredith love triangle for Deluca to step up his game and show her how much she wants to be with her. After all, Cece was there when they talked about the kiss, she saw something, and finessed her way into making it a reality. I can’t help but smile at the fact that Mer is smiling like a teenager again, it fills my heart. I too loved Derek, but he died. That happens, it sucks. But, Mer has every right to move on and fall in love again. She deserves finding love again. 

Alex: Alex as chief was my favorite thing this season. I love how he just got the job randomly, but this job allowed him to prove himself what he is capable of. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bailey as chief, but we all knew that she was going to be a great chief someday. I always root for the underdog, and in this particular situation, he was the underdog. My favorite part is when Bailey and Weber realized how good he was at the job because he understands that delegating is a thing (lol). I liked meeting his mom, that storyline just re-states how pure he is. I love how he doesn’t realize that Merluca is a thing, he is just completely oblivious. It broke my heart to see him freaking out about Jo because it made me realize how much Izzie scared him. He is the Most Improved Character of the show. Period. 

Amelia: I love Amelia so much. She is often very misunderstood by some fans, but you all need to watch private practice to understand her better. I liked this season because it made justice to her and her journey. We learned a bit more about Christopher. We saw her being a mom with both Betty and Leo. We saw her helping Betty through her addiction. We saw her standing up for herself and end a relationship that had become very toxic. We saw her talk to her family and, more importantly, talk to her mom. We saw her rise above her love for Owen and let him be happy with Teddy. She has grown so much and this season allowed her to do that, which I am very grateful for. After rewatching S15, I now am a full Amelink stan. I love how they start their first significant interaction with Link word-vomiting his feeling about the overdose wave. He talks a lot, just like her, and he is willing to listen to her talking. One reason why Omelia didn’t work out was that Owen didn’t talk and Amelia felt that she shouldn’t talk either, leading to significant miscommunications. I also love that Link understands addiction a bit better than Owen, which is already a sign that this relationship has potential. I loved Omelia, they had a very awkward, sometimes funny, sometimes dark relationship and helped each other in very dark moments. They did love each other, in their own twisty way. However, I think that it kind of became an addiction for them to be together despite all the red flags, which is not healthy.

Jackson: I love Jackson, he has such a big heart. Kind of salty about Japril not being endgame, but we gotta move on. I loved how supportive he was with Catherine during the tumor surgery, their chemistry is so good. Like. It’s hard for me to believe that they are not actually mother and son. I love that he is a high-key Merluca shipper and how much he respects Richard Webber. I hope he doesn't die. 

Deluca: OK... so I just going to say that I want him to be in peds so bad, he is the SOFTEST character atm, I am in love. He has also grown this season. I think its partly because the writers want us to believe he has now that he is dating THE Meredith Grey, but we stan this evolution. People always complain about how he didn’t want to date Maggie b/c she was his boss, and I would like to disagree with that to an extent. Yeah... the problem was that she was his boss, but the main issue was because he was afraid of the favoring situation, meaning that he didn’t love Maggie because was not willing to put up with what others would think about them. Sigh. Anyways... I enjoy how much depth his character is getting, learning about his family was important because we now understand the difficulties he has faced. He has shown that he is no longer an intern. I cringe every time people try to invalidate his character by pointing out how immature he was. No one on Grey’s is their intern self. Look at Alex, Mer, Bailey, SCHMIDT... everyone has grown out of their intern mistakes, so why should we just bring up Andrew’s to justify why Merluca shouldn’t be a thing? (and so what if he is not as mature as Mer? Mer wasn’t as “mature” as Derek, and no one batted an eye... double standards am I right?). The being beaten up by Alex storyline really shook him. He did say some irrational things, but how are you supposed to be 100% rational when you went through a very untenable situation? He deserves the benefit of the doubt and a second chance. Don’t tell me you all have never said impulsive things or had inappropriate crushes. Smh.  

What I want to see in S16

Meredith in jail and her village supporting her. 

Jo and Alex dealing with Jo’s depression in a compassionate and empowering way. 

Teddy and Owen being parents and being in love.

I want a Towen wedding, just because I want everyone to look pretty AF.

Owen and Amelia being good friends. As much as I think Omelia is no longer a viable love relationship, I really like their chemistry, and I would like to see them becoming good friends. 

Merluca being domestic with the kids and talking about their past. I want Mer to tell him about her losses, her feelings, her fears. I want them to talk about the age difference in a positive way. I honestly don’t see Mer getting pregnant, but like I always think about Ben and Bailey and how Ben just became Tuck’s dad and he loves him like his own son. I can see Andrew loving Mer’s kids in that way. 

Andrew choosing peds and Alex mentoring him, just like Arizona. Team Peds 2.0?

I want to see Carina more, more insight into her character. She is always someone’s lover or just Andrew’s sister, but we don’t get to see her by herself.

Andrew just dealing with the sister trifecta. I want funny, light, comic relief interactions.  

Knowing where the fuck Jackson is. I am ready to see him go, but I am also not prepared to see him go. 

[theolivechickken]

Windy in Wien

Jan 24

The bus ride to Vienna was super comfy. I’ve realized that I get ansy when I haven’t been in a car for a while. There’s something so comforting about being in a moving vehicle. And I love that it allows me to see parts of the city or country that I wouldn’t be able to see on foot or in a plane. Still haven’t tried trains yet though.

Still weirded out by how much snow there is. I wasn’t expecting it to melt overnight, but I think this is the longest I’ve been in a place with actual seasons so I keep expecting winter to end pretty soon. But it’s mid-January so I don’t think that’s going to happen.

We rolled into Vienna after a pretty quick drive (5 hours and half of it spent asleep) and immediately were welcomed into the city scene: towering renaissance and baroque architecture, gothic churches, rounded off street corners, and narrow cobblestone roads. Street art (or graffiti in some people’s eyes) stylizing public walls. Gentle waves in the Danube river. Trains, cars, and cable buses. Individuals and groups bustling through and conversing in different languages. It seems larger and livelier than Salzburg, yet still very similar to our home there.

We dropped our luggage off at Hotel Post, hobbled into a restaurant for a quick lunch (had some goulash), and met up in front of St. Stephen’s Cathedral for a guided walking tour lead by our professor, Elizabeth. IT WAS SO COLD AND WINDY. Thankfully, we were able to step inside the Cathedral and warm up before carrying on with our tour. We roamed the streets as Elizabeth bombarded us with historical facts and information about the city and architecture. I think the one thing I took away from the tour was the fact that there are bumpers that stick out on the sides of the walls and posts, and this was designed so that carriages wouldn’t scrape and damage the walls. This really got me thinking about just how long this city has been standing and how much history has passed. It’s wild to visit the museums that used to be actual homes of noble families or to see works of art that portrayed life in a specific period of time. Not long ago, individuals from a very different lifestyle roamed and built these magnificent structures or gave the lord a visit in these beautiful, Gothic churches.

For dinner, we stopped by a little Asian restaurant next to our hotel. I ordered soup and was expecting a cup but got a massive bowl. Perfect for my throat. Afterwards, we went to the Vienna State Opera (Wiener Staatsoper) to watch Sylvia. Both the opera house and the ballet were breathtaking. The architecture and interior design of the were so captivating to look at, and the story of the ballet kept me on my feet. I’ve seen many ballets, and this one was unique because it was accompanied with a live orchestra. It was a long performance with 3 intermissions, but it was a lovely performance.

Jan 25

Found the complimentary hotel breakfast and had some toast with eggs, bacon, and VITAMIN JUICE which I was probably slightly allergic to since it made my tongue all fuzzy (are there apples in it?) Once again we went on another walking tour with Elizabeth and tried not to freeze as we strolled through Imperial Vienna. Also went to the Kunsthistories Museum and got to freely explore all of the floors and exhibits. The top floor was interesting because it contained a collection of different coins and forms of currency that even dated back to ancient Greece. The middle floors were the main focus for our trip. We walked through several rooms that showcased portraits and

We still had some time to wander, so Patrick and I also explored the bottom floor which showcased several artifacts including glasswork, wooden figurines, and bronze and marble sculptures.

For lunch, we found a Chipotle style restaurant that advertised themselves as California-style burritos. We were excited because it was Mexican food, but also prepared for it to be not that great. Not gonna lie: it was off-brand, semi-sad Chipotle. But it was food and it was quick. We also saw a guy wearing a horse head and playing the accordion as we walked to Haus der Musik. Betty had us speed walk through this museum as well, but I liked that it was interactive and each room showcased a different composer and his personality.

Man, Beethoven was DEAF but I really feel like that could be me in the near future because I can’t hear half the time anyways.

You would think that I’d be all museumed- out but I’m only in Vienna once so might as well soak it all up! I ended up visiting the Albertina and this was probably my favorite part of today. I loved being able to walk through a museum and explore it completely on my own time. Also love modern, contemporary art and they definitely had an exhibit right up my alley. Discovered Erwin Wurm’s work and had a grand ol time feeling inspired by it.

Later that night, we were trying to find a place to eat dinner before going wine tasting. Nadia, Raine, Patrick, Aubree, and I were intrigued by the photos of the dishes that one restaurant was offering. BUT WE LEARNED TO ALWAYS REQUEST THE MENU BEFORE SITTING DOWN AND COMMITTING. We were seated and opened their menu to reveal extreme prices (for dishes that were probably worth the money but not within our budget). We ended up getting two dishes of spaghetti and sharing it family style. Which resulted in us each having legit 3 bites each.

Then the wine tasting place that we were trying to visit was packed and didn’t take any reservations for the rest of the night :( Most stores were also closed by 7pm and restaurants were shutting down for the night. It was nearly 9pm but there was one grocery store that was still open till then. We RAN to that place to get some wine, bread, and cheese and throw our own little tasting party at the hotel.

Jan 26

We had the chance to sleep in a little this morning but we had a tough time getting up and being ready on time as a group. We really scarfed down a quick breakfast and hurried to catch the bus so that we would make it to our museum appointments. We went to the Belvedere Gallery and visited the Schönbrunn palace. I wish I could say more about both but I think I really was museumed-out at this point. I wish I had more time to digest and enjoy Vienna instead of constantly going from one event to the next. However, both were very beautiful and I’m glad we had the chance to see these places.

In between these stops, we were dropped off at Naschmarkt to have some lunch in a restaurant of our choice. We stopped inside an Asian restaurant and I had some pad thai (I don’t think i’ll be missing Asian food as much as when I was in Swaziland, but I do miss some good Mexican food). We also stopped at a little cafe afterwards for some sweets. I got this pancake (crepe) with strawberry jam filling and it was pretty tasty.

After Schönbrunn Palace (sadly, we weren’t able to go inside since it didn’t fit in our schedule), we boarded the bus to head back to Salzburg.

It was a cozy, comfortable ride back. And a beast to climb the mountain. Aubree, Raine, and I were plopped on our floor for a good hour because we were too tired to move. Finally, we decided to go downstairs with Patrick to have a family dinner. Pasta Time. What could go wrong? Aubree and I had one pot boiling pasta noodles, one pot simmering the red sauce, and another pot warming pesto sauce. Then we tried to get creative with garlic bread. Patrick had the genius idea to stick the foil-wrapped butter in the microwave to warm it up. I was in the process of dumping out the boiling water and noodles into a strainer in the sink when we all heard ZZZZZZPT and saw a flash of lightning happen in the microwave.

Patrick learned something that day. I think we all learned something that day. Pro-Tip (brought to you by yours truly): hold the foil-wrapped butter in your hands to soften it up.

Eventually, we got the butter spread on the bread and the garlic powder dumped all over for some pizazz. Then SaVanna came in to make a grilled cheese. One too many people in the kitchen. One minute we were all trying to hustle and bustle to continue making our food. The next? GRILLED CHEESE IS BLACK AND BURNED, OUR PESTO SAUCE IS SOMEHOW BOILING (who turned it up to 9???), AND WE ARE ALL OPENING WINDOWS AND DOORS AND FANNING SMOKE WITH TOWELS (which Raine accidentally whipped Patrick in the eye with) AND CHAIRS SO THAT WE DON’T SET THE FIRE ALARM OFF AND GET A HEFTY FINE.

What a night.

Jan 27

Definitely slept 12 hours that day and could go for more. Only reason I got up was to eat some food. Raine, Patrick, Aubree, and I went to a cafe for some good eats. We were in the mood for sandwiches but that’s not really what we ended up with. We tried some glühwein and were intrigued by “burgers” on the menu (not a great combo btw). Afterwards, we stopped at the grocery store and then carried on to New Town to hang out at the coffee house and do homework. I think we were pretty productive for the few hours that we were there.

We came back to the Mönchsberg for pasta, wine, bread, and cheese night 2.0.

We started out strong with some pasta and tortellini boiling on the stove while we enjoyed our bread, wine, and cheese. Then Aubree’s tourettes decided to kick in. Her arm spazzed out and knocked over her glass of wine onto Patrick’s laptop. Poor guy was just trying to watch the soccer game.

We were up quickly, scrambling to throw towels and napkins onto the table and holding Patrick’s laptop upside-down while blowing on it to get the liquid out. I was quickly scrolling through Google’s answers on how to fix this situation while trying to make sure that our pasta wouldn’t somehow burn and catch fire.

Luckily, we had a Christmas miracle come early this year (or very late??) and Patrick’s computer finally turned on after attempting to restart 12 times.

What a night 2.0.

[purple-spring]

the vocabulary of us

Summary: Sometimes, words won't suffice to describe a love like theirs. Unless, of course, they're in alphabetical order. (Part 1 of 2)

Author’s Note: This is my tribute to the amazing David Leviathan, and his incredible book The Lovers’ Dictionary. The dictionary format that this fic has taken is not mine, and I use it here in homage to Leviathan.

Furthermore, this is a work of fiction. While it is based on a number of real-life events (filming of Riverdale 1.06, the Antelope Valley shoot, Comic-Con, the SH Hawaii trip, among many others), it is purely speculative, and was not intended to upset or offend.

Thank you to @jandjsalmon and @theatreofexpression for your incredible beta work, and to @stark, @gingerheel, @a92vm and @amab1060 for reading over this at different points and your valuable input.

Read under the cut, or on Ao3. 

aperture (noun)

I wanted to capture you on film the moment I first met you.

The lighting, at least from a photographer’s perspective, wasn’t ideal; you were lit by nothing more than the fluorescent gleam of the lights overhead. There was no natural sunlight in that audition room - just an artificial pallor that made all of us look greyish and pale.

Not you, though.

That day, you were radiance and lustre and fire. Beyond the sudden certainty in my gut that I wanted to look at you for an unusually long period of time, there was something about you that day that drew me in. I averted my gaze - I didn’t want to come off as a creep - but every nerve in my body insisted on the contrary. I ignored them. Reluctantly.

What was it, though, that pulled me under? Perhaps it was your steely conviction, or your absolute, unflinching belief in yourself, both so evident in the way that you kept your head down, your eyes fixed on your script. Whatever it was, it was palpable - glaringly apparent to anyone who saw you (ask Cami. She was there. She knew it, too).

I didn’t photograph you that day. But maybe it’s for the best.

There are some things that are better captured by the unfiltered, evanescent lens of memory.

…

banter (noun)

Should I have been surprised at the rapid accumulation of teasing remarks between us? My underlying, deliberate flirtation and your coy return?

One time, I threw out a joke - a half-insult, really - that would’ve thwarted a lesser being. To see if you would take it. To see how far I could push you.

I wasn’t prepared. You smiled, drew yourself up like a pistol, then roasted me so magnificently that my friends gasped, and couldn’t stop laughing for ages.

I fell so fucking hard for you that night.

…

confirm (verb)

When I sensed the turning of the tide, I FaceTimed Dylan. He was puttering around his apartment, occasionally turning towards his phone, which was propped up on the kitchen benchtop. I asked him when he’d be back in LA.

“Two weeks, if the meeting with the William Vale contractors goes well, otherwise I’ll have to stick around here and push the trip back,” he said. “Why?”

“I want you to meet her.” I cleared my throat. “Lili, I mean.”

At the mention of your name - a name he had heard many a time over the last few months - he turned right around. I stared back at him, hoping that the implication was obvious enough that I didn’t need to elucidate why I wanted him to meet you . My once-mirror image, his hair golden as mine used to be, fixed his eyes on me and nodded sagely.

“Alright.”

That day on the beach, you couldn’t have been more perfect if you tried. You cooed over photos of Magnus. You asked him about the brewery. Your interest didn’t even waver as he segued into an impromptu lecture on how to use squash blossoms to infuse mead. You both discovered an affinity for laughing at my expense, which I didn’t mind (at least not from you; he just likes being a dick).

When you left, he and I hung back at the beach in companionable silence, staring at the horizon while finishing off our beers. He spoke up first.

“So… did you need, I don’t know, my blessing or something?”

I shrugged. “I just wanted to know what you thought of her.”

“You want my honest opinion?”

I sat up. “Yeah. I do.”

He polished off the rest of his drink, then looked at me, his face absolutely deadpan. “Cole, I’m sorry. She’s way too good for you.”

I laughed my head off. “Fuck off, dude.”

“Love you, too, baby bro.”

...

draft (noun)

In my mind, I wrote and rewrote what I was going to say to you. It needed to be heartfelt, but not too sentimental. Articulate, but not overly verbose (as I often tend to be).

It haunted me, the thought of this hypothetical speech.

...

envelope (verb)

It would all prove futile.

I wanted to enrapture you with my words.

Instead, I wrapped you up in my arms.

…

found (verb)

Had I been lost before that moment? Because as I slipped in behind your sleeping form and you tensed for a brief, fearful moment before melting achingly into mine, I felt as though I existed only in the places where our bodies touched, and all the rest of me was smoke.

We fell asleep together on the couch. Actually, that’s a lie - you fell asleep while I grinned stupidly at the ceiling for what seemed like hours. I felt like I was discovering someone new that night. Not you: I was already learning you like most things I’ve learned in my life - passionately, persistently, obsessively.

I was discovering myself. Like a man seeing his reflection in the mirror after months in the wilderness, I was startled by the person I’d become.

He was happy. At peace. And he was falling in love.

...

green (noun)

When I was in college, I took a class on art theory and criticism at Gallatin, where we did a whole two weeks on colour symbolism. Red is passion, anger, lust, love. White is purity, innocence, perfection. Etc, etc. You get the point.

Now, as for green.

“The etymology of green is simple,” my professor - the artist Meleto Mokosi - said as he paced around the lecture room stage. “It comes from the Old English word grene, which has the same root as the words grass, and more significantly, grow. This explains many of our symbolic associations with the colour: nature, energy, freshness and growth.”

He clicked on his laptop and an image of an Egyptian painting filled the large screen behind him. “The Ancient Egyptians, however, were onto this long before Old English even existed as a language. To them, green symbolised more than growth. Its hues painted the face of one of their chief gods, Osiris, the god of the underworld. It represented vigour and health, but more importantly, it represented regeneration. Rebirth.”

How apt. That the fervent green of your eyes was all I saw before I leaned in to close the distance between our lips for the very first time.

I was reborn in that kiss.

…

historical (adjective)

It didn’t occur to either of us to mark the date. We only realised this months later. You were frantic. We need a date, Cole. And I understood that - the need to commemorate, to pay tribute.

But history is more than a timeline, is it not? And it’s more than just facts and people and places. It’s about feel. It’s about zeitgeist. It’s about what the senses recall.

I don’t need a date to remind me of the scent of your skin, the soft pillow of your mouth, the gentle pull of your teeth on my bottom lip, your hands on my chest, your wrists still caught in my grip.

The memory of you transcends chronology.

…

inarticulate (adjective)

Sometimes it’s a look - an upward, innocent glance or a slight, playful glint in your eyes. Other times, it’s the maddening curve of your waist, or the shape you take as you turn off the light and move slowly towards the edge of my bed, your smile palpable even in the hushed darkness.

It’s in those times when you render me - yes, even me - speechless.

...

juxtaposed (verb)

We were driving somewhere. I had one hand on the steering wheel, another on your knee.

“So you went to school to escape acting, and I escaped from school into acting.” Your eyes sparkled as you drew that contrast between us.

I turned to smile at that. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“We were going in two completely opposite directions, essentially.”

“Yep.”

Silence. Then: “Huh.” You let out a rush of breath. “That’s crazy.”

I stole a quick glance at you. “What is?

“Just… that somehow, in the briefest window of time, we met in the middle.”

...

keepsake (noun)

You thought you’d lost it - your white shirt, from the first night you stayed over.

I kept it for a while. I wanted to preserve the memory of its removal.

…

ladder (noun)

A kiss triggered it - the deluge of questions that we had managed to ward off in the haze of each other.

Our first onscreen kiss as Betty and Jughead was supposed to be simple and straightforward. We’d both made light of it in the lead-up to filming. After all, we’d kissed plenty by that point. What’s another one, right?

But on the day, I stood at the bottom of that ladder while Steven, our director, talked me through what he wanted. Slowly, it was becoming anything but straightforward.

“Jughead’s putting himself in a vulnerable place,” he said. “Yes, he summons up the courage to kiss this girl he’s been rapidly developing feelings for, but down here, your character’s still in a place of nervousness and anxiety because he has no idea how the hell this is gonna turn out. It’s a big move for him. The ladder has nine steps on it, but really, the emotional equivalent of what he’s going through spans the distance of a thousand miles.”

I nodded in agreement. The wheels in my head were already turning, anticipating his direction.

“It’s a pivotal scene, and Jughead is driving it. He’s acting out of his own agency, exercising initiative over one of the only areas in his life in which he can have power - his feelings. So I guess what I need from you as an actor is to access that same vulnerability. To tap into your own emotional memory. Is there a place in your life where that vulnerability exists? I want you to go there. Safely, of course.”

So I did. There were plenty of moments in my life in which I’d felt vulnerable, but none of them felt particularly safe to delve into unless I had some sort of epic therapeutic debrief afterwards.

Then I thought of you, and how you made me feel reckless and exposed and exuberant all at the same time. And then it hit me.

I was about to kiss this girl that I was falling in love with in front of a crew of twenty people.

My head started reeling.

Does this scare her as much as it scares me - all the noise that surrounds us?

What if the noise overtakes us?

What if it becomes too much?

What if we crumble under the pressure?

If I wasn’t feeling exposed before, I sure as fuck was feeling it now.

Suddenly the nine rungs leading up to Betty’s room stretched out to infinity, and the journey there felt like a quantum leap.

...

metaphor (noun)

I kind of botched the kiss. You thought I’d forgotten my cue, saying your line (“What?”) twice - the second time, more forcefully - because I probably looked as lost and worried as I felt. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Britta flipping through the script, unsure of what to do or whether it was supposed to play out the way that it did.

But your lips were my ballast in the storm, and as I went in for that kiss, I felt the chaos in my mind subsiding, my vision narrowing to only you. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that we were surrounded by twenty people, with three cameras pointed in our direction, because the only thing that carried weight in that moment was me and you.

I always think of our process for filming that scene as a metaphor for us. Or at least for how I feel about you. We’re constantly surrounded by so much noise, but you are my touchstone for clarity.

In the contented silences of our drives home, I remember this: that you are the quiet in the clamour, the stillness that steadies me.

…

north (noun)

“If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?”

You gave me a lazy smile from where you were lying down, near the foot of your bed. “I’d be right here. With you.”

I rolled my eyes and chortled at that. “Obviously. Besides here.”

You sat up, the sheets bunched around your body. With your hair all messed up and the sunlight hitting you just right, you looked ethereal. “Wait, don’t answer just yet,” I said, grabbing my camera off the nightstand. “Hold that pose for me.”

You kept your eyes forward, away from the lens, already accustomed to the way I worked. “Honestly, how many photos have you taken of me, Cole?”

I snapped a couple. “Not enough.” I put the camera down and crawled over to you. “Okay. Back to the question.”

You chewed thoughtfully on your lower lip. “I’d have to say… Antelope Valley. I’ve never been.”

I scoffed. “Really? That’s like an hour from here, Lils. You could’ve picked, I don’t know, Hawaii or something.”

“Well, Hawaii is such a dream. That’s on my ‘someday’ list.” (I took note of that.) But I like my fantasies accessible.” I smiled and opened my mouth to make a crack about accessible fantasies, but you clamped it shut with your hand. “And please, have a little self-respect, Cole: the joke’s too easy. Don’t even bother going there.”

(Have I ever told you that I love it when you call me out on my shit?)

“Alright then,” I said, taking your hand and kissing your open palm. “Why Antelope Valley? Why would you want to go there?”

“You’ll laugh.”

I shrugged. “Try me.”

“Alright. It’s a little self-indulgent, but… you know the poppy fields up there?” I nodded. “I want to go there, dress up like a fairy princess, and walk amongst the flowers and have my photo taken.”

I smiled. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Your face scrunched up in embarrassment. “Is that... lame? That’s lame, right? Like, total Manic Pixie Dream Girl bullshit.”

“No, it’s actually…” The first word that came to mind was ‘adorable’. Which was woefully inadequate. I felt as though I had to resort to some insanely specific German word, one that meant “an overwhelming desire to fulfill the dreams of a lover, fuelled by intense feelings of warmth and affection.”

Because even then, mere months into our story, I knew that I wanted to indulge every whim and wish of yours. That I would do anything in my power to make you happy.

“You there?” You waved your hand in front of my face.

I turned to you. “Alright. Let’s do it.”

“What?”

“It’s about an hour’s drive up north from here, and you’ll probably have to change there, but I guess you can always—”

You launched into me so quickly that our teeth knocked together, and I’m pretty sure I bit you by accident.

We laughed about it afterwards. Right before you went on to research every fast food outlet and candy store on the route to the valley. Right before I promised myself that I would do this more often - take adventures with you.

…

obsess (verb)

I traced the soft muscles on your back with my hand, the black dress you wore on the day accentuating it perfectly. Unfairly.

“Get in the car,” I whispered.

In the backseat, I followed that same path with my lips - the one my fingers had made - inhaling the scent of the valley and of your skin.

Creating an addiction from which I could never recover.

…

proprietorial (adjective)  

There are unspoken protocols in archaeology about what to do once you’ve found something incredibly valuable. The first priority is obviously protection, and archaeologists take this seriously; some use code words when talking about the found artifact (like “buttons” for gold, or “lemons” for silver) to avoid the constant threat of public theft, while others employ guards around the clock to preserve the excavation site. The more valuable the artifact, the more serious and intensive the protection.

It might be the archaeologist lying dormant in me, but I guarded the secret of us with a fierce protectiveness. Like a treasure goblin clutching its horde, I held on to the intimate knowledge of our relationship, reluctant to impart it to anyone else beyond my family and closest friends.

Because unlike so much of my life that is co-owned by my brother, or has been co-opted by the public, this thing that we had was wholly and completely mine. Or rather, ours. And I wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible.

There’s something sexy in that. In the secrecy. In what is hidden.

In looking at you from across the room, and knowing that no matter how beautiful you looked in that moment, you were still more transcendent in my arms that morning.

…

quell (verb)

“Tsk, tsk. Be careful, dude.” Mad appeared at my side, a cocktail in her hand. The Comic-Con shindig was our last media obligation for the weekend, and it was pleasing to see her there - one of mine and Debby’s friends from LA, and now one of yours, too.

I gave her a look. “‘Careful’? Of what?”

She shook her head and laughed. “Seriously? You have no idea what you look like right now?”

“Well, I am wearing a nifty red suit--”

“I think technically, that colour’s called oxblood.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll stick to red.” Mad rolled her eyes at me. “Besides my nifty RED suit, I haven’t the faintest idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

She leaned in. “Look I’ve known about it for ages now, so I’m not particularly surprised, but when you’re making those desperate bedroom eyes at Lili...” I scoffed dismissively. She ignored me and went on. “When you’re doing that, you’re pretty much broadcasting your relationship to the whole room. Actually, scratch that - to this whole fucking town. ”

I wanted to brush that off, but she may have had a point.

Comic-Con had been fun, but difficult. Both of us knew that we were under scrutiny, and had zero interest in responding to any rumour or speculation that had nothing to do with the show itself.

Even then, with that in the back of our minds, we just barely managed to suppress ourselves from enacting the normalcy of our relationship. Every time I was in your vicinity, I had to pull myself together, because after months of retaining the memory of your skin, I could barely trust myself not to touch you.

So instead, I sought you out in every interview, every crowded room. It didn’t matter where you stood or sat, whether you were close by or seated far away from me: I always found you, and somehow willed you to look my way. I didn’t really need much more than that - just the assurance that you were there was enough.

The party, however, felt different. As my eyes settled on you - as they were now trained to do - my gaze was drawn to others that had you in their sights. Particularly one - a brash industry type who none too subtly shifted course and crossed over to you and Cami.

Usually, I’m a fairly chilled out boyfriend, but it was the end of an insanely busy week, and I was exhausted and in no mood to look at other guys gawking at you. Or, in this case, brazenly chatting you up.

I put my beer down on a table next to me, my body steely with resolve.

Mad read my mind and nudged me sharply with her elbow. “Hey. Friendly reminder that it’s an Entertainment Weekly party.” The implication was clear: the place was swarming with reporters. Technically off-duty, but obviously still tuned in to any whiff of gossip. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Sure,” I said, shrugging off my blazer. “Fuck it. Tell them we were canoodling.”

I could still hear Mad’s bark of laughter as I walked through the crowd, blazer in hand, driven by purpose. Your back was turned; Camila had to tap your arm to get your attention.

You raised an eyebrow at me as you turned around. “Cole?”

I needed an excuse. Anything. “Are you cold?”

“Cold? Um, I guess...?”

I stepped forward and reached around to drape my jacket over your shoulders - a signal, clear as day, for anyone who cared enough to read into it, including this poor, irrelevant fuckboi who had stupidly attempted to launch a flirtatious offensive your way. As he slunk away, I stayed where I stood, inches away from you, uncaring as to who saw us standing that way, that close.

In your eyes mingled incredulity, confusion and delight. What are you doing? Do you know where we are? “Um. Are you okay?”

Was I? All I knew was that I was with you. And I’d been wanting to do just this one thing all night. Because I was tired of the pretence, and I needed my girl.

I leaned in and kissed you, right there in the middle of that crowded room. You went rigid with panic before melting against me, your lips soft and trusting and pliant in mine.

“I’m fine,” I whispered against your mouth. “Never better.”

…

recurring (verb)

Yours or mine?

At the beginning of every weekend, you asked that on the drive home, your overnight bag sitting in the back of my car.

Yours or mine?

I didn’t mind either. My PS4 was at my place, but at least your washing machine actually worked.

(Okay, so mine just hadn’t been used.)

Yours or mine?

From a Friday ritual, it became a nightly one. Until nights turned into consecutive mornings. You’d go home to get more clothes. Eventually, you bought a toothbrush and left it on my bathroom sink.

One day, you leaned over and whispered at the end of a long day at work, I’m tired.

Let’s go home.

...

surprise (noun)

I gave you a sleepy, lingering kiss goodbye before I left for my weekend shoot in LA. Making sure you were still asleep, I adjusted the folded printout of our Hawaii flight itinerary, propping it up on the nightstand, with a Post-it note stuck on top.

“You and me. New Year’s.”

I wish I was there. I wish I’d recorded it somehow, heard the screams that triggered the complaints to building management. As it turns out, all I received was this, a text message in all caps:

“YOU SNEAKY FUCKER I LOVE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH.”

...

trick or treat (noun)

“So this washes off, right?”

“For the fiftieth time, Cole, yes.”

You were carefully drawing my skull teeth lines over the thick white base you’d applied to my face. I poked at your stomach. You looked up, close to the edge of your patience. I’d been doing that to you the entire time.

“Yes?”

“Nothing, I just…” I tucked a stray piece of hair behind your ear. “You’re really good at this, you know? I love that.”

I watched as your hard, focused expression softened into appreciation. “Thank you, babe.”

“Also, we can still kiss with this on, right?”

You frowned. “It’ll smudge.”

“But how much are we talking, though? Like full-on smearing, or just a small streak here and there? Because if it’s just a streak, do you think—”

“Cole!”

“No kissing. Got it.”

I shut my mouth, clasped my hands neatly on my lap, the very picture of perfect behaviour. You giggled at the sight.

“Alright, you big baby. Just one more before I have to shade the black in.”

Like a kid being told that he could finally eat all his Halloween candy, I didn’t need to be told twice.

...

uneventful (adjective)

But, in all honesty, so much of who we are dwells in the mundane.

In passing out together on the couch after a long day at work. In the gaps of silence as we trawl through Instagram before settling in for the night. In the text messages compiling the grocery shopping list for the week. In the exasperation as I trip over one of your heels in the dark. In seeing your face dotted with pimple cream. In the arguments over whose turn it was to pick the driving playlist.

Between monotony with you and thrills with anyone else, I’d pick being boring with you. Every single time.  

…

validate (verb)

I rubbed my eyes in frustration and looked at the kitchen clock. 2 am. Fuck. I had an early call time, too.

“Cole?” You came out of the room, bleary-eyed and wrapped in the duvet that you’d dragged off the bed. “You’re still awake.”

“I am.” I swivelled around in my chair to face you. “Everything I’ve taken sucks. It sucks, Lili. I’m sitting here trying to edit my photos, and I’m dying of cringe.”

“Oh, come on. You’re only saying that because it’s two in the morning and you’re your own worst critic. Here, move over.” I shifted a little in my seat as you sat on my lap, duvet and all.

You scrolled through the photos on my laptop. “Okay. Look at this one. See the way you’ve framed Sam here? In the rips of the white plastic?”

“It’s super pretentious, right?”

“No! God, what is wrong with you? It’s stunning. And see how he stands in the landscape, beyond the confines of the plastic? That’s like, a gorgeous metaphor for his process as an artist, how he’s broken free from the mold, how he’s his own man now.”

I sat there silently.

“Oh, and this one? The way you’ve tilted the horizon, and captured the sweep of his trenchcoat, the top hat in his hand? The lines in this are so bold and--”

“Brash?” I grinned at you.

You rolled your eyes. “I was gonna say ‘striking’, but sure, you can go with that.” I hugged you close to me. “Your work is amazing, Cole. Don’t you ever doubt yourself.”

“Thank you.” I kissed your shoulder. “How do you know so much about photography, anyway?”

You gave me a cute little shrug. “I learned from the best.”

…

whipped (adjective)

See: COLE SPROUSE.

...

xenophile (noun)

I thought I was the nerd. But I wasn’t the one who loaned James Michener’s Hawaii from the library and took it out to read on the plane.

It was adorable. But also, it made me want to take you everywhere. To spark your curiosity, to ignite your discoveries, to stoke the wonder.

If there was anyone who could be by your side as you found that the world was your oyster, please, let it always be me.

...

yes (unclassified)

We’re light years away from the fact, but in my idle moments, I imagine it. I imagine how I’d do it - where, and when, and even who might be there.

Maybe our friends. My brother. Your family. Definitely a photographer. In my more delirious flights of fancy, a specially trained pug.

And you. Obviously you. Your hair caught up in the breeze, your eyes widening in surprise before crumpling in the weight of the moment.

Saying yes.

…

zenith (noun)

We stood at the summit, the warm air punctuated by pockets of sea breeze. So many people think of the beach when they think of Hawaii, but - as we found out ourselves - its lush, verdant mountains are just as amazing and sublime.

I held your hand in mine as we looked out over the gorge and at the sea beyond it, the vivid cerulean of the deep bleeding into the viridity of the shallows. There was no-one else around, just us. I pulled you in, holding you in my embrace, relishing being alone with you.

I thought of the year that had passed, and my mind wandered to where I was when midnight struck over to 2017 - running down to the lobby of the William Vale while my brother and our friends waited outside the room we had locked ourselves out of, eating the remains of a pizza off the floor. You and I had tried to call each other to wish each other a happy new year, but in the tangle of signals and the confusion of the room situation, we didn’t make it, settling for a text message instead.

Thinking of the marked contrasts between then and now, a thought began to formulate in my mind - that this was it. That I had hit the proverbial jackpot of fate. Standing there, on the peak of a mountain in Hawaii, holding you in my arms, I had the very best that life had to offer.

But then you tugged at my sleeve and excitedly pointed out a pod of dolphins swimming in the waves, and there and then, I realised that my earlier assumption was wrong. Or at least it wasn’t entirely right. There were surprises around every corner. New heights to be scaled, new adventures to pursue. All of them with you.

“Oh my god, did you see that?” you asked.

I did, Lili. And I saw you. And realised the truth.

Our best still lies ahead of us.

[floggingink]

Riverdale, “Chapter Nineteen: Death Proof”

Death Proof is a great movie. there’s one man in it and he gets Pussycatted at the end. Vanessa Ferlito gives a lap dance. Zoё Bell’s abs have a starring role

Jughead is a Serpent now, so it must follow that he’s taking care of Hotdog voluntarily

did he take the couch? Jug took the couch. he’s writing again, so he’s got his groove back via an emotional plateau/Toni

Betty hung up and was like, Shit. SHIT!

Nick has a knife for...protection? cocktail garnishes?

Mrs. St. Clair seems thrilled to meet Betty and then not at all surprised that Nick has charges brought against him, the ennui of the ruling class

Betty gets a free pass for her suspicious appearance at the apartment for just having been that much of a pain to Sheriff Keller by now

I liked Betty’s tone of disappointed confusion when she says “You didn’t kill him.”

I don’t like BH talking about “nakedness” in any context, no matter who he turns out to be

I want to say those are Veronica’s shimmery blue pajamas?

Penelope’s icy disregard reverts Cheryl back to calling her “mommy,” which I think is like Cheryl’s PR thing? Cheryl continues to be fascinating. she’s called Penelope “mother,” hasn’t she? it’s all about context. it’s all about context with Cheryl

Jughead eats: at breakfast with Jug, Toni daintily eats fruit out of a parfait cup, like Veronica

Toni’s uncle locks her out of his house, so there’s that. the Serpents don’t have somewhere for her to sleep?

Jughead was honestly about to be like “Last night was…[fun/amazing, similar],” because that’s what people do in Bridget Jones and he’s flying without a net here

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: in a remarkable turn, Toni puts an end to the whole affair, because she has better things to do (girls), which is a stress off everyone’s shoulders

Jughead’s “not over Betty” because it was like six hours ago?

also props for the classic bad girl-bisexuality revelation. it doesn’t get badder (it’s GOOD). this is PRECISELY what I want but now I want optical proof

Betty is done with the BH’s “Simon Says”

The Blossom spawn: “the people” at “the Farm” (CAPITALIZED in the closed captioning!) will help Polly “disappear” for while? I’m gonna need a Farm episode pronto. what the HELL is THE FARM

Archie checks up on Betty in the morning and takes care of her of best he can, because this is a Good Archie episode. Good Archie wants to know why Betty hasn’t fixed it with Veronica yet. Good Archie never lets you walk alone. Good Archie stops you from walking into your ex’s brunch

Certified pedigree: the sheer SPREAD of personalities at Alice’s living room shaming. the mayor and the sheriff and their felon children. BOTH Lodges showed up. can Fred handle any more disappointment? Reggie has a parent?? what’s next!!!

Nick’s party was “bacchanalian,” so it’s probably best Alice only saw Jughead’s birthday party from across the yard

Mädchen Amick, MÄDCHEN AMICK: “Except for my Betty”

I’VE HAD SOME WINE LET’S GET THIS BITCH DONE

SUCCUBUS VERONICA IS GREAT VERONICA. ARCHIE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT A SUCCUBUS IS

I relate to Kevin because “HASHTAG BUGHEAD IS NO MORE?” is coincidentally what I woke up screaming two Thursdays ago

Hiram says “ACID QUEEN ALICE” because there’s something in Riverdale’s water that just gives you that kind of inspiration!!!! apparently he knows some shit about her too!!! everybody’s parents seem to “know” about Alice. she’s got a lot of attitude for someone whose secrets EVERYONE KNOWS

—just like Betty!

“The Southside is the source of all our problems.” HOW’S THAT, HIRAM? because your northside succubus children were the ones who tossed it back like green apple sugar powder in a Baby Bottle Pop

Archie’s 180 with “Not all Serpents are dealers” is the kind of whiplash Archie is capable of. he knows he fucking broke up with his boy. fucking fix it with Jughead you twit before he gets a bigger tattoo

The 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: Josie was SO HOPING she would get out of there with plausible deniability!

Jughead is like NODDING ALONG with every word Mr. Phillips reads, waiting to be abandoned

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: JUG LEAVES THE INSTANT HE GETS A CAPSLOCK TEXT FROM THE BOY HE LOVES

he interrupts a totally warranted scolding from his beloved English teacher to PROBABLY get reamed again by Archie, but he CAN’T RESIST WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN

Archie coming to get Jughead is probably Archie’s “WHAT’S UP IS I SAW YOU, ARCHIE” moment. it’s not equivalent but rather proportional in that you know this is the best I could hope for from Archie, but also—I don’t want to shortchange him! he went to the scary school where everyone hates him, through the metal detectors (OR NOT!!!!!!), and stood dithering in the hallway until he saw his Jughead!!!!!!! HE CAME TO RESCUE JUGHEAD

this is a great example of Archie’s hands-on “justice,” which is sometimes more in quotes than other times, but he didn’t CALL Jughead, you know, he ran over there! fuck! FUCK! WHEN ARCHIE IS GOOD HE IS VERY VERY GOOD

Archie is like hauling him out by the fleece collar too, like Jug wants to get Toni, and Archie, his arms locked around Jughead’s waist, teenage boys scrambling

What damn high school in America: Sweet Pea punches the locker when he gets arrested, because of injustice

I think Veronica would have listened to Betty if Kevin had not interrupted!

“She’s not worth it” is way harsh, Tai, but Betty did seemingly attack her out of nowhere

anyway of course Betty answers the phone, because she’s stressed, down two friends, and doesn’t want to have done all that for no reason

the “Sugar Man”? the “Sugar Man”? SUGAR MAN

if one more person tells Jughead that the Serpents deal jingle-jangle, he’s going to absolutely blow a gasket

“Tall Boy wants to parley” is going to be a code sentence of mine for something. if we’re on the phone and it suddenly sounds like I’ve dropped it and you just hear “TALL BOY WANTS TO PARLEY!!!!,” the Winter Solider is there

Fifth period is AP English: Cheryl is sunbathing, in the shade, outside Thistle House reading Baudelaire because...it helps her feel calm…

Cheryl’s sheaths: I want to say those sick black sunglasses are Miu Mius

“Is there no memory, however traumatic, you won’t defile?” is an Alice-level read

oh, Fred would like to know how Jughead’s doing? ISN’T THAT NICE, YOU PRAWN

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: Malachi’s House of the Dead is exactly what I wish I’d had the guts to make my dorm room look like, like all the cool lesbians’ rooms in the art majors’ dorm building, like the cellars of the Opéra Populaire but in the Strand

Gay?!: quick question: if Tall Boy weren’t here, would Malachi be fucking Jughead?

Cheryl had so seamlessly incorporated the Sugar Man into her emotional life as a first grader that she drew a family picture with him in it, like in Children of the Corn (her parents are two TINY stick figures in the background, it’s incredible)

is Sheriff Keller letting Betty have “one question” a red herring? asking for Jughead

the zoom in on Betty looking at Veronica and the cut to her audibly sipping on a milkshake is classic art

Veronica is right that Betty needs to “break up” with BH, but Betty’s Bettiness instead makes her want to “turn the tables on him”

HOW EASY WAS THIS CONVERSATION, BETTY. YOU COULD HAVE JUST TALKED TO THEM TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AGO

OH MY GOD! Jughead and Archie, together again, it’s been like THIRTY YEARS!!!!!

Archie knows why Jughead joined the Serpents, has learned some lessons maybe? (no)

the second god-blessed cut to Archie (in his letterman jacket) and Jughead (fleeced, his man-about-town look) with the prison phones to their ears

“SP-24601”: FP Jones played by Hugh Jackman would be a sight to behold

poor FP has lost everything except his honor and now he’s lost his SON. his hair is such a mess. he’s gotta SLAM THE PHONE

“Ghoulies dress like fops” is great

they drive hearses, like Claire Fisher

“RIVERDALE DRIFT”? Jughead did NOT watch that franchise? (Archie’s expression is fantastic)

FP’s like, I hate that you joined my gang, but now you’re going to break some laws for me

Penelope eats hard boiled eggs with toast soldiers

the Caravaggio reproduction I liked from the wake escaped the fire!

did Penelope know about the drugs? I thought she didn’t know but I guess just knew the Sugar Man was sketchy and avoided him for Legal Reasons

“I wouldn’t even go cruising here.”

Reggie DOES look good in the county’s blue vest

I hope the reason Betty’s avoiding talking to Jughead, LIKE ARCHIE KEEPS TELLING HER TO DO, is because it’s too important and she’s scared to see him

Veronica’s purple pumps

God bless jingle-jangle: Verne the JJ dealer is a cutie!

you know he’s a Ghoulie because he hand-stitched a leopard-print patch onto his studded sleeveless vest

Veronica was rich: $150 for two stix of the JJ??? this is how you know it’s the northside kids with the drug problems!

“Drugstore Cowboy”

Sexy, aesthetic Southside:  these angels hot glue the ends of the stripey jingle-jangle sticks, because it’s a family-owned business. I kind of love the Ghoulies? like I’d rather hang out at Malachi’s than the Whyte Wyrm from what I’ve seen so far, as long as I get my next tetanus shot first

Jughead calls Archie his “boy” to impress Malachi, Archie is wearing his Riverdale jacket probably without thinking about the political symbolism

I couldn’t believe Maggie Kiley had the audacity to stage the “Veronica/Betty?” “Archie/Jughead?” face-to-face, but she’s this season’s Lee Toland Krieger, she is an artist

Y’ALL REALLY GONNA TAKE JUGHEAD’S FIFTH HOME AWAY FROM HIM?

“SHARON”?????????

Cheryl’s red crop top and paisley trousers

“an unrepentant spore”

Penelope is Cheryl’s “cobra-like mother”

I swear Graham Phillips was darling on The Good Wife

Archie approached Reggie for the car and Betty approached Jughead about fixing it, and that’s that

Jughead consented to sulk next to her while she tuned it up, because he loves her but he’s mad

and it’s okay that he’s mad, for the record, because he’s been broken up with three times in two days

his voice cracks, preciously, when he’s like YEAH AND YOU BROKE UP WITH ME

I love how pissy and curt Jughead gets when he’s peeved. “You just called it a date.”

I’m curious about “You did the one thing that could hurt me.” EVERYTHING hurts Jughead

Betty’s in denim overalls and Jughead’s in a mechanic shirt for no reason except they’re next to cars

Cheryl is getting some grade-A maple syrup this episode! leveraging the St. Clairs’ check for dirt on the Sugar Man? GIRL

The female gaze: Veronica slept with Archie one last time because he literally might die today

aw, he’s proud of Veronica for her Ghoulie stunt

Hiram and Hermione are LITERALLY playing chess

OKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY WHEN VERONICA SAID “HE TRIED TO DO IT TO ME,” EVERYONE IN THE ROOM WATCHING WITH ME WHEN HIRAM LOOKED UP WAS LIKE OOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SHIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!! I’M TELLING YOU!!!!!

Hiram is about to rip someone’s face off with his teeth and Hermione steps into frame and it rack focuses on her, GENIUS

These students are legally children: I want to say Tall Boy is the only adult at the race. the FP at Jughead’s party, if you will

Best costume bit: everyone of course looks fucking incredible at the race. the Ghoulies? slick and absurd dandies. Kevin’s powder blue bomber jacket? he’s not at Needle Park, and he’s cruising. Betty’s high-waisted post-WWII skinny Express trousers? she knows Jughead’s looking. Cheryl’s $1,000 leather jacket and Quentin Tarantino foot-fetish slingback? she knows I’m looking. and Jughead in all black? Jughead looks GREAT in leather. Betty, write this down

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: Betty’s bandana and ponytail

Please protect Betty: Veronica and Archie get to make out, while Betty and Jughead have to make do with Betty telling him she can never stop loving him and to drive good

Jughead doubts it: Jughead’s “You’re an enigma, Cooper” is the second-greatest thing he has ever said to her, after “That was haunting, Betty.”

so Jughead can drive? Jughead can drive STICK?

Toni and Sweet Pea got out on 1) lack of evidence or 2) Penny Peabody threatening someone

Gay.: Toni got a face full of Cheryl and she’ll be back. Toni, save Cheryl from the evils of this world

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: Cheryl was ABSOLUTELY “born for this moment”

Sixth period is Intro to Film: I know this is Grease, and I can appreciate Jughead being the Danny Zuko of this moment, but I don’t want to forget the chicken run from Rebel Without a Cause, where Natalie Wood starts the race with only her elated sky-high jump and tiny 50’s waist

Jughead gives Cheryl a thumbs-up and Malachi makes the rock-and-roll index-and-pinky signal

Cheryl’s hair: God, the see-through scarf? her immaculate cutout shirt? her Jesus Christ Superstar heavenward arms? CHERYL WAS BORN FOR THIS MOMENT

I don’t think Jughead is shifting gears

BUT HE IS HAVING A GREAT TIME!

oh NOW you say “abort”

Archie > Dawson: TURNS OUT ARCHIE HAD A GREAT PLAN! WOWZERS

Jughead can drive very well, has very strong arms, and can run very fast. these things I didn’t know!

okay but the race is forfeit, right? buys them some time, maybe

Betty and Veronica watching Jughead go lite-ballistic from stress and Archie being like, Dude, dude, calm down, like something was not right with the world (Archie did a great job)

although Jughead is right that the power politics are complicated and everyone is in danger, although it was frankly that way before

I liked Archie using a chessboard analogue. Veronica is rubbing off on him

is Betty getting a ride home with Reggie? classic

“Careful you don’t get burned again.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Penelope’s left hand makes her so uncomfortable that she wears ONE leather glove

when one Sugar Man retires, another seamlessly takes his place, like the Dread Pirate Roberts

“Damn good coffee”: fucking correct me if I’m fucking wrong, but is that the nightmare painting hanging over the fucking fireplace?

Cheryl hands the check back over, because as you will remember Cheryl honors business deals, but Penelope decides to be “a mother”

Pop’s trademark blue purgatorial lighting bathes the girls in their plotting booth

The Blue & Gold is basically just Betty’s awesome blog at this point

her “Care to comment?” is WICKED though

Betty has resolved to find BH, which means he has about three episodes left. the Serpents should really start involving Betty in their maneuverings, as she is just as much a hereditary Serpent as Jughead and much more effectual 

50 Shades of Betty: SHE’S BREATHING DOWN HIS NECK AND SHE LOVES IT. this is her driving fast! they love danger!!!!!!

was Mr. Phillips protecting Jughead by telling him to stay away from the drug world??? (I mean obviously he was, but because Phillips was an insider and liked Jughead and didn’t want to have to kill him) or did he just not want Mini Woodward and Bernstein on the case?

he and Jughead make the exact same sort of grimly resolved/horrified eye contact, respectively, as FP and Jughead when FP got arrested last season

Toni TOTALLY knows this shattered something of Jughead’s Southside foundation. look at her little smile

Archie thinks his plan with the race backfired and he’s worried he’s losing Jughead, PUNKIN

Fred’s popping Chekhov’s Valiums, so he’s about to be addicted to drugs

I can’t even do it out here with the fucking Lodges sitting around their cream salon with Andre being like, the St. Clairs are dead or whatever, ma’am, and Hermione’s like, Thank you Andre, go get yourself something nice

Summer + Blair = Veronica: Veronica’s like, I HAVE HAD A STRESSFUL DAY AND IT MAKES ME FEEL POWERFUL

“CHECKMATE,” HIRAM? HIRAM, HAVE YOU MURDERED? DID YOU JUST MURDER?

Betty and Jughead I want to say are back together, but they did not kiss this episode, which means I have to start over with the tally marks on my wall

Betty’s reading The Silence of the Lambs, to better figure out what her game is going to be (Jughead had a copy)

Jughead looks over at her like, Damn. My girlfriend is fucking scary. I fucking love my girlfriend

SUGAR GETS GOT!!!!!!!! BODY COUNT OFFICIALLY TWO! he’s almost caught up to Hiram Lodge

NEXT WEEK: Sheriff Keller does me a solid and takes his shirt off

[srubendavies]

Derek Ridges - Interview

1. What was the first commercial job you completed, could you describe your experience? The very first photos I took that were used commercially were in a couple of ads for the Spanish National Tourist Board in 1973.   That doesn’t quite fit here though because they weren’t really commissioned - I shot them whilst I was art directing a TV commercial. I suppose my first commissioned job was taking some live photographs of Betty Davis on stage at Ronnie Scotts.  It was in 1974.  I did it for Island Records and I still have a copy of the invoice I sent them - for £30. I don’t remember exactly how or why I got that commission because I wasn’t a photographer at the time.  I think I just rang up Island and persuaded them to commission me.  I was a Betty Davis fan and just wanted to opportunity to shoot her.  The commission was neither here nor there really. Back in those days, working as an ad agency art director, I had the gift of the gab and often used to ring people up and persuade them to let me do things. I lost that ability completely somewhere along the way.  Maybe it was the enthusiasm of youth doing most of the talking? 2. Do you prefer to work with a stylist or without one? And why? Ideally, I would always prefer to work on my own, without a stylist or anyone else, because once there are more people around than just myself and my subject, it adds an unknown element into the equation.  When personalities interact, you obviously never know what will happen.  Whether it will be helpful or unhelpful.  So it’s always best to have the minimum possible number of people involved in a shoot.  That minimum is usually two. But... for a fashion shoot or any shoot where a choice of clothing is involved, yes.  A good stylist is useful.   I’m not a good stylist myself and and a good stylist is certainly worth having.  Good stylists are a bit like hen's teeth though.  There are not so many about. 3. Could you explain how you developed your own style? I really have no idea.  Does anyone?   I assume I must have developed my visual aesthetic back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, long before I was aware that I was doing so.   I’ve pretty much stuck with a basic ‘60s / ‘70s type style.  A very simple and straightforward approach.  As I see it, there’s nothing about my photography that is particularly modern and I’ve always tried to avoid following any photographic trends. 4. Do your clients go directly to you or through your agent? Ideally, they would go to my agent first.  Sometimes people come direct to me but I always ask my agent to get involved.  It’s really a partnership and she has a living to earn as well. 6. How has your choice of camera influenced your work? To begin with, as I didn’t own a camera, I just used a borrowed camera.  It was a small, fairly cheap 35mm SLR and as soon as I could afford one myself, that’s what I bought.  A secondhand Nikkormat. So I guess it was economics that influenced my work, more than the choice of camera.  Back then, I’d probably have preferred a Hasselblad but it was 30 years before I owned one of those. 5. When producing a book or a large edit how do you select the images for the series? Of the ten books of my own photographs that have so far been published, I’ve only designed four of them myself, although I had a big hand in the photo selection of three of the others. Mostly my selection was based on what I felt were the best photographs that I had.  With some consideration also paid to trying to tell a story and make a logical flow.  This meant a few photographs were included each time which I didn’t necessarily feel were my absolute best but which helped the book overall. 7. What was your most enjoyable and rewarding experience when photographing 80s subculture? Looking back on it, I suppose.  I just wish I’d done a more thorough job and kept better notes.  At the time I was simply photographing everything I saw around me.  It wasn’t a project and I didn’t approach what I was doing in a very professional way.  To start with, I was just a bloke going around with a camera enjoying the moment.  The need to do things in a careful and considered way, only dawned on me half way through it all. Plus looking back and finding good photographs I have no recollection whatsoever of taking is also quite enjoyable. 8. When did photography become your full-time job? Towards the end of 1982. 9. What advice would you give to new photographers or students starting to make the move to the commercial world? I rarely give tips on photography because by far the most important thing to know is that there are really no rules.   Plus of course, I’m very much still learning myself.  I don’t say this from a position of false modesty either.  Once you start thinking you know it all or even most of it, your creatively is likely already dead. However… I do have one piece of advice, which I think would hold true in any creative pursuit, not just photography. In this day and age, where pretty much everything is ubiquitous, people have to have a USP.  You have to develop some aspect about what you offer the world that is singular. Also… I would certainly advise anyone thinking about going to university or college to learn photography to not do. It's simply not necessary.  And you don’t need to saddle yourself with all that debt. If you want to go to university or college in order to put off getting a job for a few years or get away from your parents or just mix with other like minded, creative young people, in an atmosphere of learning, fine.  Those are better reasons to go. But you don’t need to do it to learn photography.  You can learn all the basics inside a week.  The rest is just practice, which can (or should) be a habit of lifetime anyway. Henri Cartier-Bresson said that "nothing worth knowing can be taught" and he certainly had a point.   I’m not sure I’d want to apply that maxim to being a surgeon, a pilot or a civil engineer though. 10.In your opinion, what is the difference between the art industry and the fashion industry? I’m not a good person to answer this question, I’m afraid.  I’ve never felt myself to be a part of either. 11. Do you consider your work to have a vintage style or have more of a contemporary style? As I have already said, I think my photographic style is one which is very much more of the mid-20th Century than of the present. Some may say that means I’m stuck in the past and in some senses that is correct. But I don’t see this as being in any way pejorative.  I see it more as being consistent and eschewing the whims of every passing photographic trend.  If I were to be an artist, I would love to paint in oils on canvas and that is a very old fashioned medium.  I suppose I’m an old fashioned bloke. 12. Do you think having a strong body of personal work helps inform your commercial work? In my case, I guess it does but that would not be true of every photographer.  Some very successful photographers I know don’t shoot any personal work at all.  They hardly even shoot their own family holidays. I suppose it depends on which genre you work in.  In fashion, to shoot a lot of personal work would probably be a very good idea but for a news photographer, an editorial portrait photographer or a still life photographer, it might not be quite so necessary. 13. Do you find shooting fashion models now is more difficult compared to the models you shot within the 80’s? No, not at all.  Professional models are very easy to photograph because, mostly, they’re very good at their job.  It’s part of their job to make it easy for people like me to photograph them. To shoot them well is the difficult part.  But that was true then and it’s true now.   14. How did your work in the 80’s inform the work you are doing now? If it were not for the personal work that I did in the ‘80s, I would probably be retired now and no longer shooting.  I spent most of the ‘80s and ‘90s as a rock photographer and, though I still make money from licensing some of those images, there’s not a great deal of interest in that work now. But all through that period I was also shooting a lot of uncommissioned photographs in clubs, on the street and at gatherings and festivals.  That's the stuff that people are interested in and it is what has led some companies to commission me nowadays. 15.Is there any brands/groups that you have worked with in the past that’s helped transition your work from subculture into fashion? I don’t think so.   What many people who commission me say is “we like what you did back then and we want you to do the same for us now”.   What then often happens is (i) they try to tell me how I did what I did or (ii) set up a situation whereby I can’t really do it. It’s really crazy but human nature I suppose.  People always love to think they know best. So I do have to be a little careful about trying to shoot contemporary photos which look like ones I took in the ‘80s.  I’d prefer not to do it actually but if I refused, they’d just get someone else to do it instead.  

[barre2barresg]

Barre 2 Barre Beginnings on Hongkong Street

Confessions of a Barre Studio Owner

Barre 2 Barre has come a long way since our exciting beginning in 2016. It has been a labor of love, passion, and dedication, creating our lovely studio on HongKong Street, building a team and client base from scratch, creating a warm, inviting atmosphere, and delivering a top quality exercise experience. As the co-founder of Barre 2 Barre Singapore and in light of our upcoming move to a new location, I would like to share about my rewarding learning experiences prior to and during running this business.

My personal barre journey began in Los Angeles where I grew up. A friend invited me to join her at my first barre class in 2008. At the time, the barre movement was booming in LA, and I too quickly became a fan. When I subsequently moved to Hong Kong in 2011, it took me a while to find the right barre practice I was missing and searching for. Before long, I met the co-founders of Barre 2 Barre in Hong Kong, Karen Lim and Mylene Mackay.

I learned that Barre 2 Barre offers the BarreAmped method, a syllabus from the US created by fitness celebrity, Suzanne Bowen. This barre method was the most similar to the one I was exposed to in the West Coast – funnily enough, I discovered Suzanne Bowen actually taught the founders of the barre studio I used to attend in California!

I quickly became obsessed with developing my practice, gaining a lot of mind and body strength through attending class with Karen and Mylene. In 2014, I decided to take the week-long BarreAmped teacher training course. I hadn’t yet considered actually joining the apprenticeship program or teaching; I was just so excited that my training certificate would get me discounts on Lululemon, Sweaty Betty, and Lorna Jane AND discounts on class packages at Barre 2 Barre! The more barre classes I took, however, the more interested I became in the apprenticeship program, and soon committed to it.

Meanwhile, I was accepted to INSEAD’s MBA program in Singapore and decided to move. Before starting my MBA, I organized two pop-up Barre 2 Barre events in Singapore in the summer of 2015, both of which were fully booked and extremely successful. While getting further involved with barre was tempting, I was in no position to run a barre studio while attending a condensed 10-month MBA program.

Instead, I took entrepreneur classes which helped me practically plan and map out what opening a barre studio in Singapore would look like. At the same time, Mylene coincidentally happened to move to Singapore for a short period, so we decided to partner together to open Barre 2 Barre Singapore on Hongkong Street. We thought the street name was perfect given that Barre 2 Barre originated from Hong Kong!

The intention behind bringing the BarreAmped method to our clients was to offer a safe and effective barre workout for women and men of all ages, shapes, and fitness backgrounds. I believed in the method from first-hand experience, since I had once fractured and broke my ankle (the tibia and fibula) and managed to keep in shape by attending BarreAmped classes three times a week. It was the safest way for me to rebuild strength and heal before I could start running again. When I’m ninety years old, I know I will still be practicing BarreAmped.

Building a team from scratch in a new country with a young barre market was difficult. Mylene and I trained Ahilya as our first teacher, given that we were connected through a family friend, that she had attended UCLA, was a dancer, and religiously attended barre classes in Los Angeles too. With Mylene, Ahilya, and myself ready to start teaching, we turned our attention to creating the studio environment we wished to.

My idea was to replicate the same feel and community that Barre 2 Barre provided me during my four and a half years in Hong Kong. I wanted to create a special business and environment for myself in Singapore, a place where I would potentially live long-term and raise a family.

I wanted the studio to feel like a “home away from home” for myself and my clients, so a little feel of California and Hong Kong influenced my studio design. Our yoga mats are from Venice Beach and our yoga mat sprays are the same comforting, evocative, secret essential oil blend from Hong Kong. I believed the scent and quality of the products we used would also be a huge contributor to the atmosphere and aesthetic of the studio, which is when my partnership with Ashley & Co bloomed. I found it very important to provide a welcoming environment to people who might find Singapore intimidating or may be shy. Barre 2 Barre was meant to welcome all people, no matter their shape, size, nationality, age, or sex in a homey environment with a nice scent - we opened our doors to you, unless of course you’re late!

I can address our strict late policy here: I’ve been locked out of Karen’s class in Hong Kong, locked out of accounting class at INSEAD, and learned in business school how 15 minutes early is “on time” and being “on time” is late. Additionally, I’ve had a client pull a muscle without adequate warm up time during our first year of opening, and it is always distracting to our teachers and other clients when latecomers join class. All of this led us to implement our Swiss train policy - or should I say Japanese train policy - to avoid further injuries and create an environment where we respect time.

Our studio at Hongkong Street has been filled with so much love and support, and it has been an honor to meet numerous clients who have been touched by barre to the point that it has become a significant part of their lives. Some clients have gone on to get their teaching certification to teach at Barre 2 Barre or other studios worldwide, while others have taken their certification for their own self awareness in practicing barre with good form and alignment. We are also proud to have introduced barre to men, which T Magazine covered in an article, describing how male athletes like kickboxers find strength and flexibility through attending BarreAmped classes! We have been so fortunate to partner with our lovely neighbors like Punch for Barre & Brunch, Vasco for Barre to Bar, and Box Office for Barre + Boxing among numerous others! HongKong Street has been a really cozy and vibrant home to us, but, as with life, all good things must come to an end for even better things to be welcomed into our lives.

Our new home on Pickering Street will be closer to the Central Business District, will feature parking space underneath the Great Eastern building, is right next to the Hong Lim Complex bus stop, and is close to the Telok Ayer, Chinatown and Clarke Quay MRT exit. There will be more peace and quiet in the studio since we are not facing the street directly, we’ll enjoy a cleaner surrounding area, and clients will get even better attention to detail from our teachers, as we will max at twelve students per class. In addition, we will be getting a second unit right next door to be able to host two classes simultaneously without compromising on quality and the attention to detail, form, and alignment our teachers provide.

Managing a growing staff over the past three years hasn’t always been easy – I’ve hired, fired, engaged in serious talks, and generally learned a lot about communication, clarity of expectations, fairness, and managing people. Though sometimes taxing, the experience has been well worth it and I’ve learned a lot about others and myself. Despite any challenges or obstacles that have come our way, we are so proud of the community we have created and fostered over the past three years, and continue to be dedicated to the growth and success of our team and clients.

From starting with four hundred customers in our first month open, then growing to two thousand by the following year, we now have seven thousand customers in our database. We have grown from three BarreAmped certified teachers when we first opened to seven teachers and two more in training under our apprenticeship program. We also just began offering regular meditation classes at our studio. We have partnered with Oompf! Fitness on 130 East Coast Road to provide Barre 2 Barre classes to clients on the East.

In regard to our Teacher Training program, we began with three in-house courses before opening to the public in Hong Kong, Koh Samui, Taiwan, Jakarta, and soon our upcoming week long teacher training and retreat in Bali! We plan to continue offering BarreAmped training and apprenticeship programs for barre teachers all over the world, and we can’t wait to share our knowledge and passion for barre with everyone in Singapore and Asia.

Thank you to everyone who has stepped into our doors at 42A Hongkong Street. We will forever cherish those memories and hope to create more together. We cannot wait to welcome you to our new studio on Nankin Row, 3 Pickering Street #03-01 and continue to build mental and physical strength at the barre together!

Love Always,

Jessica Felicia

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

About Me - Life Story Part 1

Dear tumblr,

Every few years I introduce myself in some fashion, just to keep an updated version of myself current. This year i decided to retry giving an elaborated, but still somewhat brief outline of my life story so far. I did this a few years ago, and i probably did it better back then - but i didn’t finish. And i lost half of it and the rest is on a computer i don’t really use anymore. I will write this saga in segments as to not to explode the heads of anyone who wants to read it by taking up too much time at once, or overdoing information, and it give myself time to go through the different parts. So here goes part 1.

My name is Renee Clariss Sanborn. I was born and raised in rural northern Idaho in a town called Kendrick that was ¼ meth town, ¼th Garth Brooks/hunters/trucker land, 1/4th early 1900's antiquity, and ¼ woods with no people. My house was an antique historical monument that my father bought for my mother so they could fix up based on my mother's fantasies of fixing it up to be a place where socialites from all over the world might visit (nothing of the sort ever happened). The home even has it's own wikipedia page – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kirby_House . I have two younger siblings, a brother and a sister, and two older half sisters, and 11 nieces and nephews, and two great nephews. I have a number of uncles and aunts too, but other than my grandmothers, I really have not spent a lot of time with most of them.

My father and mother met in a factory. My mom, Sandra, was very pretty and had spent most of her young life in an abusive marriage to her first husband. My father, Dave, was a failed musician, turned body builder, turned cocaine dealer. After a few years of a rocky relationship, my mother ended up getting pregnant, so my father stayed with her mostly based on that fact, and when I was three they moved us all out to Kendrick, with a population of 300 people.

My mom grew up near Couer de' Alene Idaho to a highly sociopathic and abusive father who made her and her mom and brother's lives hell. She also likely contracted lead poisoning since she lived for much of her time in a town called Smelterville where there has been very heavy lead poisoning due to the mines and stuff around that area. I don't really know what my mother was like when she was young other than she tended to follow boys around, soccer, and she sewed her own clothing. She did some modeling at a college for a short period, posing nude for artists to paint, though she never did go to college herself. My grandmother didn't like that and forced her to stop. My mom's first boyfriend took her up to Alaska when she was seventeen while they were building pipelines. She worked as a waitress at a strip club. She had my oldest sister up there, and shortly after her boyfriend ditched her. My mother refuses to say much about this time period, but from stories I have gathered from my family, the owner of the club was also a pimp, and he raped my mother and beat her and my sister Maria, and tried to force her to be a prostitute. I don't know the details of this situation, but when her and Maria escaped and came back to Idaho, they were both severely malnourished and bruised from head to toe.

My mom didn't really get along with the rest of her brothers and her own mom, and was a bit of the black sheep of the family. She moved down to Lewiston Idaho with Maria when she was nineteen. My mom, being apparently clueless, married the first man she saw in the first bar she applied to be a waitress on her first day looking for work in Lewiston. He was a very rich, older abusive drunk of a man. She stayed with him as a housewife for several years throughout the eighties, had my second half sister Roxanne, and eventually after ten years of marriage, she left him. A month later, she was working at the bullet manufacturing company and she met my dad.

My mom never really has felt love for men at all. She sees them as dumb creatures who are also dangerous who can pay your bills for you if you look good enough. So, that's how that worked out. My dad for whatever reason bought the shtick and after a few years of an on again off again relationship, and after finally having broken up permanently, was told that my mother was pregnant. Since my dad was kind of a fifties guy, he married my mom out of duty, and because he wanted to get out of disco-drug culture but didn't know how. So my existence was what more or less gave him reason to start life anew.

My dad never really knew his father. He has one very vague memory he says, of being in a highchair and seeing his father screaming at him because he would not eat the baby food on the spoon. My father's father, my grandfather I am told, was a very angry and abusive guy. They all lived in southern California. My grandfather Robert was a sailor, and my grandmother Betty who's father was a member of the mafia, but we never knew who he really was (a different story for a different day), was raised by nuns and for her entire life, both chain smoked continuously, and was absolutely phobic of just about everything. For this reason, she never learned to drive. She would cry hysterically when it rained. She talked the way fifties women should talk, only she had a slightly more baby-talk way of speaking. Anyway, my grandfather was a very physically abusive man, and it's been suggested that he was probably bipolar. But he didn't really live long enough to figure much out. He was hit by a drunken semi driver who went in the wrong lane. And so my father and his family packed up and moved to Lewiston Idaho.

My dad grew up without a father, and so he followed his older brother Bob around, who was and is highly intelligent and also quite criminal. There was always a rivalry between him and Bob, with Bob always being jealous of Davy. This is only notable, in that it came to shape who my father was. My dad was one of those very simple 50's boys who actually needed a father in his life. I don't believe that all boys 'need' dads, and I think that can be a very outdated idea that implies that male influence is better than women's, or that family structures have to have that patriarchy in them. But my dad longed for a male figure to look up to. Behind a lot of his attitude throughout his life, I think that underneath it all he is still trying to live up to some invisible male expectation that was never laid out for him.

In the late 60's, my dad became one of the few kids in the town of Lewiston to be a hippie. This was a very big deal, and he got into a lot of fights for it, for having long hair. He did LSD over three hundred times before he turned 17. He became a bassist in a band that played a sort of New York Dolls style of music, though they mostly did covers. After high school they toured all over the north west and were considered quite a popular act in their day, considering the scarcity of that kind of music in the inland north west. After three or four years however, the entire band had gotten very much into drugs, and were not able to keep a tight ship. My dad has always been sort of a fool about people. He cannot tell when people are his friends, he tends to act in a way to play all his cards. He also is very extroverted, at times quarrelsome and overbearing. So they likely started to play him like a fool. My father bought most of the instruments and speakers with money he inherited when he was 18 from a trust fund set up because of his father's death. They stole his instruments and they kicked him out of the band.

He cut his hair and at some point developed a taste for body building and Huey Lewis and the News. He applied at the local bullet factory that paid well, and after ten or so years of dealing coke and being a steroids taking self centered – and most likely totally dickish asshole, he met my mother and decided that was a good idea for whatever reason. (I apologize for my thinking that my parents relationship, and my birth were terrible ideas).

So my oldest sister Maria, who is eleven years older than me has some serious mental health problems. She displays very strong signs of Borderline Personality Disorder. I am not diagnosing her per say, but from what I have read, she really does fit all the criteria. My mom for whatever reason decided to distribute love very unevenly among her children (my mother also has some serious issues). Maria had it the worst. My mother's first husband hated Maria and made her life a fearful hell, Maria's own father didn't want anything to do with her, and my father was also abusive to her. My mom would literally push Maria away when she was a child and needed a hug. This really affected Maria for the worst. She stopped going to the bathroom on the toilet, and this was when she was eight. She started lying and stealing compulsively. And my mom kept shipping Maria off to other families, other friends from work, whoever she could con into taking Maria, some of these families also being abusive. It was very clear that my mom just didn't want Maria.

My dad came into the picture, and he being an aggressive dummy – particularly in those times, would make a habit of whipping her whenever she wet herself. This went on this way till she was twelve. Maria tried to commit suicide when she was eleven by drinking a bottle of rubbing alcohol. My mom found out, but even then, my crazily cold mother didn't seem to care. My dad did care, but he and my mother were both horrible about this, and instead chalked all of this behavior up as just ways to get their 'attention' as though that were something Maria didn't deserve, and she was scolded for her suicide attempt. I honestly, for the life of me cannot understand why nobody in my family took Maria to see a mental health professional. Instead, she was further ostracized and resented until she ran off when she was fifteen.

This behavior from my mom and dad's part really goes to show what kind of cold selfish people the two of them can be. It's confusing because they are not always this cruel, there seems to be random bursts of care at random times. It's hard to explain. But I have seen this side to my parents. I use this as a reference because anything I might say from personal experience is bound to be a bias interpretation. Maria's case is clear cut abuse and I can site it to make my point when I need to.

Roxanne, my second oldest half sister had a much different life than Maria. Roxanne was very hyper and giggly. She was my mother's pride and joy. She would go on to spoil Roxanne terribly. Buying her whatever she wanted on a whim. She was considered everything Maria was not. Maria grew up with this little impish angel dancing around her, and Maria grew to hate Roxanne to the point of putting Roxanne in some very dangerous situations hoping she could get Roxanne maimed in some way. Roxanne was also one of those little children that wants to start dating when they are kindergartners. I grew up with Roxanne as a sort of role model in some ways. She always seemed really cool to me. I didn't have her energy though. I also had a different father, and was raised under different circumstances. I was always fearful where she was always foolishly fearless. She was tall and thin, where I was clumsy and pudgy. Roxanne would laugh on a roller coaster, and I would always cry. In this way, we were just very different. The similarities are mostly in our facial structure – out of all my siblings, I look like her the most I think. And I tried very hard to be a cool 90's girl like her.

When Roxanne was thirteen, her father's girlfriend sent photos of her to seventeen magazine. They accepted her, and for a short while, it looked like Roxanne was going to be a model. But at the same time, Roxanne had been sleeping with boys and partying. She was only twelve when she started doing this. I remember very vividly that we shared a room. Roxanne would always torture me in some fashion, but then she would wait till she thought I was asleep, and she would climb out the window and off into the night to go do god knows what. I never told on her.

So, at age twelve, she got pregnant. It was kept as a secret from my father for a time, but then he found out and all hell finally broke loose completely in the family. My father didn't feel like Roxanne had any business raising children and thought she should put the baby up for adoption. Roxanne wanted to keep the baby and my mother stood by her on this decision. On top of this, my mother had stopped working for a few years around this time and had ran up 80,000 dollars in debt – mostly on things you order on television and clothing for Roxanne. So my dad was working constantly trying to keep up with my mom's spending. She simply would not stop. They had half finished fixing up the old house, but it was clear at this point that half done was all it would ever be. Also, my mom had my brother and sister as babies around that time, so that added to the stress of it all. Maria had caused fights until she moved away to live with her boyfriend. I had had a brother William who, due to a drunken doctor, was born brain dead and died five days later in the hospital. This loss kind of ruined my parent's marriage. It was all just crumbling.

So there was a bitter war in the house, and general tension that my dad would explode. Roxanne had grown to hate my father for being the meathead who tried to keep a patriarchal order in the home who called the cops on her when she ran off to do drugs for days at a time. My mother resented my father because he didn't like her spending, because he talks constantly and over everyone else (he still does), and he never seemed to listen at all, and by this time it was clear that I was his favorite person in the family, so at six, though I was not aware of it at the time, I was resented by my sister and my mom.

So, what happened next, during this time was, Roxanne made up a story that my father had molested her when she was young. It was shocking, and it caused a lot of problems for my personal morals – not knowing the truth of the situation until I got much older and Roxanne confessed that she lied. This basically made my father evil in my mother's eyes. So, she kicked him out of the house. And then my mother drove off to party. My dad was living in a camper somewhere at this time, working three jobs, still paying the bills. Roxanne had accused him of the most foulest crime ever. It was really something.

At this point, I want to take a step back though and explain that even though this sounds bad, and in some ways for me it was, I personally did not live this life that everyone else had chosen for themselves. My personal world was quite magical and I was not fully affected by the circumstances in my family.

From my perspective, my mother was always distant. This might have affected the kind of nurturing person I am, or rather, am not. I felt very distant from my own femininity because I didn't really get allowed in the female circle of my family. I was pushed away, and this essentially made my father the major influencer over me. I am not like other girls. I don't know why, but I think it is because of my mother's lack of involvement with me whatsoever after age three. She didn't play with me, hug me, or talk to me. I remember her as a silent statue while my father just blabbered and blabbered. It may be one of those mysterious favoritisms my mother has, but it might have simply been that she resented that my dad loved me more than he did her or her other daughters. In any case, it wasn't my fault. She favored Roxanne over me, and so having been rejected by the mother figure, I went to my dad for reassurance. This kind of set the stage I think for how I am able to fit in in female social circles as a whole. I have female friends in my life, but they are never like other female friends. And the girls I hang out with have always been social outcasts. And I usually feel like an outcast even to them.

However, my mother was good at providing me with a sort of homemade way of living. She sewed half my clothes, which were generally frilly old fashioned outfits. Half my toys were actually antiques. I was taught to pick up after myself. I became quite organized. Breakfast was made for me every morning on an antique tray, that I would take into my antique table, and chair, and I would eat my meal and then put it outside the door. I was very self sufficient when I was young and I never got bored. The bread we ate was homemade. She was really good this kind of thing. I think growing up in an old house, with a wood stove, with old fashioned furniture, clothing, living in a town of old fashioned brick buildings with old men that still dressed like it was the 20's gave me this really strong sense of bygone eras. I was somewhat immersed in antiquity from a young age.

My best friend in the world growing up was actually my grandma. Until age five, my phobic chain-smoking afraid-of-everything grandma lived in a few upstairs rooms in the house. She always owned cats. She always smelled like cigarettes. I would visit her just about every other day and we would watch Bob Ross, and Mr. Rogers. I used to hold her hand and push on her big mushy veins. When the weather was bad, my mom and dad would not let me near her door, knowing that she was secretly crying in fear. I only found out later what was happening. She had two cats, Stanley and Booker. My father hated cats back then, and he resented her love of animals. My grandma Betty, and my mother however, did not get along. My dad didn't agree with either one of them, but they put him in the middle of their squabble. Eventually, my grandma moved to live with my dad's younger brother Steve. It was very hard for me, and my family didn't tell me till she already moved.

I had a lot of structure when I was young. I do remember the sorrow in the house when William died. That kind of changed things. But everyone was quite nice to me, aside from Roxanne, who delighted in picking on me. I had a friend up the street named Colt, who would come to my house and we would make mudpies. There was a public pool that was open in the summers, and a creek that ran through the town. It was a beautiful place to grow up when you were very small. The old people that my grandma Betty would sometimes visit down at the diner would always dote over me, in my antique style dresses my mother sewed for me. I remember these days very positively.

I mostly looked forward to my father coming home after work. I used to eat dirt for some reason and I think I got worms at some point for this. I found scissors one time as well, and I chopped half my hair off. My mother had to chop off the other side to make it even, and I cried thinking I looked just like a boy. I used to play games where I made ants have competitions to see which one could live the longest in water. It was probably the meanest thing I ever did. I was generally a very calm and well behaved child. There were only three times I ever got into trouble. The first one was, I decided I wanted to be a black person. I am not sure at all where this came to me. I just felt that I should be black. I didn't know anyone who was black. I just thought black skin looked better. I just felt like my family didn't understand me for this. I decided I was going to change my skin color with dirt. I realize this story might seem kind of racist to anyone reading it, but I am attempting to just be honest about what happened, I was four and I didn't mean anything at all to be insulting, other than having an honest need to change the color of my skin. I wasn't trying to be funny. I seriously thought mud would do the trick somehow. I got naked, went outside, filled up a basin with mud, and completely soaked myself in it. Then I proceeded to walk around covered from head to toe in mud naked in broad daylight down the street. My father came home from work, he saw me and I not only got hosed down with cold water that made me cry, I also got whipped. My dad is racist too, so he probably indoctrinated me with some terrible bullshit to defer me from wishing I had dark skin.

Aside from my mother buying things online, she also would buy animals we could not take care of, birds, fish, iguanas, cats, dogs, pigs. We'd keep them for a short while, before they would eventually die or we would have to get rid of them. She never would talk to my dad about it at all. She would just wake up one morning and buy the animal. My dad would come home and there we would have three iguanas, or a new dog, or whathaveyou. We had a pig for a short time named Angie. Angie was my friend. I would pet her and feed her popcorn. She was a very sweet little pig. Eventually my father got rid of her, selling her to essentially be slaughtered. After this I refused to eat meat. I didn't know that meat was animal flesh until that point where it was explained to me by Roxanne, and it took a a lot of firm punishment to get me to eat meat after that. I eventually did of course go back to the brainwashed world of meat eating, but I never really forgot it entirely, which is why I eventually went vegan as an adult as soon as I was able to as an adult.

The third thing I did was uncharacteristic of me and shocked my family. My best friend Colt had a cousin named Carrie. Carrie was very well liked by the adults. All the kids wanted to play with her. She lived far away, so her visitation was also taken as a celebration. Even Roxanne liked her over me. She said so herself. I remember sitting off away from everyone else by the trees. Carrie wasn't mean to me or anything, but I remember feeling like I needed to set things right in some way. I felt like Carrie threatened my place I guess. I was instantly left out the second she came to visit. I was a very introverted child and I didn't know how else to get attention other than to be at the right place at the right time. So I went and found a big stick. It might have been Carrie's birthday, I cannot quite remember. I walked straight up to her friendly smiling face, and I remember mindlessly whacking her as hard as I could in the face with the stick. The funniest thing about this incident is that I was not mad at Carrie. I did not do this aggressive thing because I was mad at her. I remember feeling compelled, but not by strong emotions. Which was why I was equally confused when everyone around me began scolding me. It even confused me why Carrie was crying. Nobody could understand why I did what I did. I didn't feel guilty because I didn't understand it either. It just happened. Everyone around me was angry at me or in shock. I just felt confused by the entire event.

A week before I started school, my friend Colt (who moved at the end of that summer), convinced me to put a bead up my nose. I remember it very well. It was a pretty red sparkly one. I put it up my nose, and I could not get it out. Eventually Roxanne found out, then my mother. Everyone did everything they could but it was lodged into the very back of my nostril at this point. So I was driven forty miles to the hospital, where they used some strange doctor's equipment and pulled it out. I remember feeling very relieved. A week later, I turned five. My father found this obscure Japanese cartoon that I fell in love with – which just so happened to be Totoro.  They took me all the way up to Spokane to Chucky Cheese (which wasn't really as fun as I had hoped – all the kids seemed really wild and the pizza was sub par). It felt like the rites of initiation.

Anyway, school officially sucked. Kindergarten was probably the hardest year of school I ever had. My grandmother had moved away. Maria had moved out, and despite being a pain to the family or whatever, she was actually quite sweet to me, always letting me look at her stuff, she would read the bible to me, teach me cheesy songs by guns 'n' roses. I didn't really know about how often she stole, or lied. I didn't know about the orgies or how she ripped up her papers in class. I thought Maria was a beautiful princess. Anyway, she was gone. My grandmother had moved. Colt moved away as well. He had been my best friend for two yeas of my short life, and he was gone. I had just gotten a bead pulled out of my nose.

Maria had me watch Crybaby for the first time. I was enchanted. At five I was madly in love with Johnny Depp in Crybaby. I didn't see it as a satire, or a comedy. I thought of it as a really intense romance. I was absolutely obsessed and consumed by any passion that a very little girl that I was could possibly feel for someone. I was probably more in love with Johnny Depp than my parents had ever been with each other if I am going to be honest. My mom, though obsessed with her boyfriends, has never actually been in love at all. I am not sure she really actually likes men, or trusts them. And my father is not a romantic person. I think by definition he would be considered aromantic by scales of sexuality/gender/and romantic inclination. He just sees utility in human interaction and no poetry at all. I kept trying to draw Johnny Depp over and over. I also by extension thought Elvis was pretty nice too. It was never good enough. I was a bit of a perfectionist. I remember crying because my drawings kept looking like a typical ungifted child's drawings. I wanted to make adult art. I was not capable of it. I remember the frustration. But it was this early age that I decided I wanted to grow up to be creative. I realized that with art, you can take the beautiful things in the actual world, and you can insulate them and pack them together into music, stage, words, and pages of lines and color. And you can study those beautiful things and work with them in their purity in a way that life rarely provides the opportunity for.

[mexcine]

Split (2017) review

I’m not an actor, but I imagine there are certain parts actors must love to play: drunks, crazy people, and people with multiple-personalities.  These roles, they are like candy to them!

           I wonder if the initial conversation between James McAvoy and the producer of Split went something like this:

Producer: James, we don’t have much money to pay you, but you’re going to love this movie.

JM: Go ahead...

Producer: Get this, you play a character who has 24 different personalities! You get to act like a little kid, a flaming gay man, a woman, a psycho...

JM: I’m interested, keep going...

Producer: And you get to take off your shirt and show your muscular body—don’t worry, we’ll CGI it, you won’t have to work out—but you do have to shave your head.

JM: Hmmm...

Producer: Best of all, you get a whole scene where you do a wacky interpretive dance to “Frogbass” by Snails!

JM: Sign me up!

           Split is an entertaining thriller, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, which has recently made a lot of money in the USA (in, admittedly, a slow time of year).  Obviously made on a low budget ($10 million, which is “low” by Hollywood standards), it’s consistently interesting and although the conclusion leaves a little something to be desired (to be discussed below, although I’ll avoid overt spoilers), all in all this is a slick piece of work that delivers more or less what it promises.

           James McAvoy, surprisingly, isn’t the whole show, but he’s a big chunk of it.  He doesn’t get to bring all 24 of his character’s personalities to life, but he ably creates half a dozen of them in some detail, with minimal props and makeup.  Mostly, McAvoy does it with his acting ability: his voice, his body, and his attitude. There are a few moments where things get a little confusing (deliberately and otherwise), but on the whole McAvoy rises to the challenge and provides a solid basis for the film’s “hook”—the multiple-personality thing is a gimmick, of course, but McAvoy makes it believable.

           There are really only 4 other performers of significance in the picture, and only two of these have much screen time: Betty Buckley (hard to believe she was the nice, sexy gym teacher in the 1976 version of Carrie and now she’s playing grandmotherly roles) as Dr. Fletcher and Anya Taylor-Joy (who looks familiar but isn’t, since I’ve never seen her in anything else) as Casey.  Their characters play off of McAvoy’s, but they aren’t merely foils, and in fact have substantial footage without him.

           The plot: students Casey, Claire, and Marcia are abducted by a man and taken to an underground facility.  They discover the cool abductor, Dennis, is just one personality in the man’s body: he’s also gay fashion designer Barry, 9-year-old boy Hedwig, and British woman Patricia (we later meet, in fleeting fashion, history professor Orwell and another woman, Jade, and are told the total number of Kevin’s alternate personalities is 23).  His real name is Kevin, and he’s being treated by Dr. Fletcher.  Dr. Fletcher believes individuals with Dissociative Identity Disorder may actually change their physiology from “alter” to “alter,” citing a case where some of a blind person’s alters regained their sight, while others remained blind.  She is aware of Kevin’s various personalities, but when she’s told that a new alter—The Beast—has emerged, she’s uncertain as to whether it exists or not.

           Claire and Marcia urge Casey to help in their escape attempts, but she demurs.  In flashbacks, we learn Casey was sexually abused as a child by her uncle.  Claire and Marcia are placed in separate rooms for their misbehaviour.  They’re told “The Beast” will soon be here, and they’re “sacred food” (sounds ominous, doesn’t it?).

           Eventually, Dr. Fletcher becomes suspicious and the last 15 or 20 minutes of Split gets more frantic and wild, if slightly ridiculous.  Without going into any details, I’ll simply say that I was picking up a sort of “X-Men” vibe at the end—maybe it was prompted by the presence of McAvoy (the coincidence of the “Beast” name is just that, the characters aren’t related)—and there’s a final scene which (maybe) sets up a sequel to both Split and Unbreakable.  Oh noes, another movie series is born!

           This last-minute left-turn aside (although to be fair, the idea of The Beast is set up very carefully throughout the film), Split is a reasonably grounded psychological thriller.  There has been some criticism of the picture for its negative image of Dissociative Identity Disorder, but there’s no suggestion in the script that individuals with DID are inherently evil, that they must have at least one “bad” alter, or anything of that sort.  Kevin’s personalities—referred to collectively as “The Horde”--have come to believe that DID represents a higher stage of human evolution, which is at least partly supported by Dr. Fletcher’s research. However, the ability to in some fashion control one’s physical nature via the power of the mind is morally-neutral and it does not necessarily follow that these people are evil (the protagonist of Unbreakable and, for that matter, the good “mutants” in the “X-Men” series are examples of this).

           For most of its running time Split doesn’t deal with these issues, and is content to be a well-executed but standard cat-and-mouse game between captor and captive. After their initial enthusiasm for—and attempts at—escape, Claire and Marcia don’t really do much (and are off-screen in fact) for a long period of time, then suddenly become frantic about finding a way to get out.  Were they asleep?  Casey, on the other hand, periodically tries to cajole Hedwig, the “youngest” and least sophisticated alter into freeing her or at least into making a mistake that will allow her to flee, and also takes other steps towards gaining her freedom. Since her flashback scenes center around deer hunting, I was waiting for Casey to use some of the wilderness skills she learned as a little girl, but this never happens (and the flashback scenes turn out to have served another purpose--to explain her current behaviour and, ironically, to save her life in a different way at the end).  There are some loose ends and plot holes, but they’re not egregious.

           Overall, Split is quite satisfactory for what it is, a glossy, effectively-directed thriller built around a gimmick that is validated by an excellent starring performance by James McAvoy.

[michaelfallcon]

Kendra Sledzinski: The Sprudge Twenty Interview

Welcome to The Sprudge Twenty Interviews presented by Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2020 Sprudge Twenty honorees please visit sprudge.com/twenty.

Nominated by Kayla Baird

“How do I put into words how Kendra has affected my life and countless others? We met at Joe Coffee in New York five years ago and hit it off right away. Who was this friendly person, I wanted to know! Soon I became aware of Kendra’s influence in the coffee community of Philadelphia. When I went to visit her, everywhere we went, she knew someone. Kendra constantly went above and beyond in Philly to encourage professional development and community with the Joe staff and baristas of Philly—doing palate development and cuppings that were never required, but she knew how to make baristas stay. She works hard for her community, and works hard to lift other people up—and she does so selflessly. Thank you Kendra!”

What issue in coffee do you care about most?

Equal access to education, resources, and professional development and opportunities. The industry is incredibly complex with lots of moving parts and many issues more critical than this, but I say it because it’s within my immediate reach. So many coffee professionals start as baristas. I think back to the days when I subscribed to some elitist coffee thought and language, and I cringe when I think of it.

These days, I want to use my experience as a trainer and educator to empower people with the knowledge they can grow with. This means promoting diversity and giving someone who is only working in coffee because it’s the job they have just as much attention as someone who wants it as a career. It also means listening. I stayed interested in coffee early on in my career because I was lucky to have managers and leaders who took me and my curiosity seriously and encouraged me to grow and learn. When I was training baristas, I would tell them that regardless of how long they occupy the role, knowing how to make coffee well is a valuable (and employable) life skill. I had the time of my life as a barista made easier by safe, healthy, and supportive work environments. Because of that, it’s important to me to help others have a positive experience working in coffee, too.

What cause or element in coffee drives you?

The humanity of the entire value/supply stream. Coffee isn’t possible without the labors of humans and that is a fact that has never eluded me.

What issue in coffee do you think is critically overlooked?

The value of that labor on all ends of the supply stream. Producers are not paid enough for their coffee and baristas are not paid enough to make it, either. I don’t think this is overlooked and certainly do not want to oversimplify it, but I do think it’s an ongoing challenge and conversation that should not stop. I hope we can find ways in our industry to make those challenges and conversations more tangible and accessible to our customers and guests without being polarizing.

It starts with our offerings and even how we encourage them to engage with the coffees they buy—encouraging them to buy what they like, not what we think is best or more righteous. I think the pandemic has put a bit of a lens on all supply streams and how consumers buy and interact with products and goods. Maybe we’ll see some positive impacts of this in the aftermath. Either way, working in coffee isn’t sustainable for so many people. How can we make it so we can all be prosperous? I don’t have an answer but I’ll spend my life’s work trying to make it so.

What is the quality you like best about coffee?

Coffee is an arbiter of human connection, culture, and social change. The industry is a global community and cafes are community spaces. We can diversify and educate our communities by making those community spaces welcoming and inclusive to all. I went to journalism school because I wanted to see and understand the world, but a career in coffee has given me that in a different, more enriching, and meaningful way.

Did you experience a life-changing moment of coffee revelation early in your career?

There have been so many moments that impacted my trajectory and kept me going and eager to learn that it’s hard to pinpoint just one. However, there is no doubt that many of those early moments were facilitated by Betty Ortiz at Spruce Street Espresso. Spruce Street closed a long time ago, but Philadelphia coffee wouldn’t be what it is today without its influence.

What is your idea of coffee happiness?

Usually I’d say I’m outside a coffee shop with some buddies and we’re sipping, sharing, and laughing in the sunshine. Because that world doesn’t exist right now, it’s my first cup in the morning. I’ve been using brewing my coffee as a way to practice some mindfulness at the start of my day. I brew my cup and sit in my window to drink it. I don’t look at my phone, I don’t read the news. I just sit, sip, and watch the day get brighter.

If you could have any job in the coffee industry, what would it be and why?

In some ways, I’ve already had the job I wanted for so long. I love sharing the joy of learning about coffee and flavor with others. My own ambitions are still malleable. In my fantasy world, I have the means and financial security to start a cooperative company with a bunch of badass coffee friends. We will be approachable, we will provide a great working environment and pay well. People will want to work with us and we’ll lead by example by having a diverse team, balanced power, and transparent, accountable leadership. This, of course, will be after I live out the other part of my fantasy world that involves me learning everything I can about coffee production by studying or doing research and living and working in a producing country for an extended period of time. I have never wanted to stop learning or growing my coffee skill set and I never will!

Who are your coffee heroes?

Many of them are also included on the Sprudge Twenty list. What a true honor it is to be here with them! I am also fiercely inspired by Coffee At Large and really any organized group of coffee workers. Taking risks and standing up for what you believe in isn’t easy and it takes a lot of courage. Folks farther ahead in their careers can learn a lot about workplace health, safety, and justice by taking some cues from these folks. I have so much hope for the future of coffee because of them.

And after this year’s Brewers Cup season, it would be remiss of me not to mention Beth Beall and the way she supports and encourages others. She’s a role model to so many, supports her own team’s growth and professional development in a way that makes me aspire to be able to do the same one day. Most of all, she does it with wisdom, kindness, and grace. We love you, Beth! Thank you for everything you do for the greater coffee community.

If you could drink coffee with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

My late grandmother Elsie Flora Spencer Sledzinski, but she would be drinking tea because she was British and that’s all I ever knew her to drink. She passed in 2009, but I’d like to talk to her openly as a grown adult woman and hear her take on the state of the world. I know she would be disgusted by Trump, and I’d love to bond with her over that.

If you didn’t work in coffee what do you think you’d be doing instead?

Anytime someone asks me this I say, “lavender farmer.” Doesn’t that sound like a nice way to live?

Do you have any coffee mentors?

I wish! I always wanted one, which is why I think I try to be a mentor I never had to others. But I still have so much to learn, and it’s never too late to have one if anyone is feeling generous!

What do you wish someone would’ve told you when you were first starting out in coffee?

To not take myself so seriously! I started having a lot more fun when I quit worrying about being perfect or being right. There is absolutely no one way to brew or enjoy coffee.

Name three coffee apparatuses you couldn’t do without.

I feel stumped, especially after spending more time with brewing vessels during quarantine. Going to have to go with a Baratza grinder, a glass V60, and one of my favorite mugs.

Best song to brew coffee to at the moment.

Tell me you don’t want to get back behind the bar and crush a rush when you hear “Space Jam” by the Quad City DJs?

Where do you see yourself in 2040?

Hopefully happy, healthy, and living extra well because I am finally living out my dream of residing in a beautiful place next to a body of water.

What’s your favorite coffee at the moment?

*sips* Jen Apodaca is slaying it with Mugshots by Mother Tongue! I love a coffee that is easy to brew and tastes sweet and balanced.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted you personally and professionally?

I am one of the thousands of coffee workers laid off from a job I loved. I miss it and many of my colleagues dearly. In the first few weeks, I felt minor relief. Sure, it was a full-time job just navigating the unemployment portal, but with rapidly evolving news made it hard to focus on much of anything but that. Now that more time has passed, it’s hard not to feel discouraged or disheartened. How can I be laid off? I’ve given 13 years of my life to coffee. Am I not good enough? Are my contributions and ideas not valuable? These are some thoughts that have entered my brain despite trying so hard not to. How can any of us in this position not have these thoughts? There’s no manual or reference for how to get through this and it looks different for everyone. We all have different needs. I’ve accepted that some days are just going to be harder than others and truly take it one day—sometimes one hour—at a time. Yet, there is an extraordinary amount of comfort in knowing I am not alone in navigating this. I cannot say I’d be managing it as well if I weren’t connected to so many coffee friends and peers at this time. The shared experience, the empathy; it’s refreshing and it makes me feel immense gratitude for the life choices I made that led me to this work and the coffee community.

I know that one day I will reflect upon this time of cooking projects, 24/7 athleisure, Zoom hangs, movie marathons, and learning the choreography to all my favorite ’90s music videos because I have the time. I know I will ultimately be thankful to have spent it safely in my home with my love and our house plants. Until then, what a way to get better at being patient.

Is there any donation fund or resource in your community we can share with our readers?

I’ve been co-hosting Coffee Break Northeast with the imitable Tommy Gallagher! It’s a way to connect with others in a time of social distancing and we support virtual tip jars, employee fundraisers and coffee businesses in our region daily at 1 pm. We have quite the crew of “regulars” and the camaraderie of Coffee Break has been instrumental in getting me through this time! coffeebreak.group is the website and we do ours at 1 pm eastern. All are welcome!

The Sprudge Twenty Interviews are presented in partnership by Sprudge & Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2020 Sprudge Twenty honorees and a complete interview archive, please visit sprudge.com/twenty.

Kendra Sledzinski: The Sprudge Twenty Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

[shebreathesslowly]

Kendra Sledzinski: The Sprudge Twenty Interview

Welcome to The Sprudge Twenty Interviews presented by Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2020 Sprudge Twenty honorees please visit sprudge.com/twenty.

Nominated by Kayla Baird

“How do I put into words how Kendra has affected my life and countless others? We met at Joe Coffee in New York five years ago and hit it off right away. Who was this friendly person, I wanted to know! Soon I became aware of Kendra’s influence in the coffee community of Philadelphia. When I went to visit her, everywhere we went, she knew someone. Kendra constantly went above and beyond in Philly to encourage professional development and community with the Joe staff and baristas of Philly—doing palate development and cuppings that were never required, but she knew how to make baristas stay. She works hard for her community, and works hard to lift other people up—and she does so selflessly. Thank you Kendra!”

What issue in coffee do you care about most?

Equal access to education, resources, and professional development and opportunities. The industry is incredibly complex with lots of moving parts and many issues more critical than this, but I say it because it’s within my immediate reach. So many coffee professionals start as baristas. I think back to the days when I subscribed to some elitist coffee thought and language, and I cringe when I think of it.

These days, I want to use my experience as a trainer and educator to empower people with the knowledge they can grow with. This means promoting diversity and giving someone who is only working in coffee because it’s the job they have just as much attention as someone who wants it as a career. It also means listening. I stayed interested in coffee early on in my career because I was lucky to have managers and leaders who took me and my curiosity seriously and encouraged me to grow and learn. When I was training baristas, I would tell them that regardless of how long they occupy the role, knowing how to make coffee well is a valuable (and employable) life skill. I had the time of my life as a barista made easier by safe, healthy, and supportive work environments. Because of that, it’s important to me to help others have a positive experience working in coffee, too.

What cause or element in coffee drives you?

The humanity of the entire value/supply stream. Coffee isn’t possible without the labors of humans and that is a fact that has never eluded me.

What issue in coffee do you think is critically overlooked?

The value of that labor on all ends of the supply stream. Producers are not paid enough for their coffee and baristas are not paid enough to make it, either. I don’t think this is overlooked and certainly do not want to oversimplify it, but I do think it’s an ongoing challenge and conversation that should not stop. I hope we can find ways in our industry to make those challenges and conversations more tangible and accessible to our customers and guests without being polarizing.

It starts with our offerings and even how we encourage them to engage with the coffees they buy—encouraging them to buy what they like, not what we think is best or more righteous. I think the pandemic has put a bit of a lens on all supply streams and how consumers buy and interact with products and goods. Maybe we’ll see some positive impacts of this in the aftermath. Either way, working in coffee isn’t sustainable for so many people. How can we make it so we can all be prosperous? I don’t have an answer but I’ll spend my life’s work trying to make it so.

What is the quality you like best about coffee?

Coffee is an arbiter of human connection, culture, and social change. The industry is a global community and cafes are community spaces. We can diversify and educate our communities by making those community spaces welcoming and inclusive to all. I went to journalism school because I wanted to see and understand the world, but a career in coffee has given me that in a different, more enriching, and meaningful way.

Did you experience a life-changing moment of coffee revelation early in your career?

There have been so many moments that impacted my trajectory and kept me going and eager to learn that it’s hard to pinpoint just one. However, there is no doubt that many of those early moments were facilitated by Betty Ortiz at Spruce Street Espresso. Spruce Street closed a long time ago, but Philadelphia coffee wouldn’t be what it is today without its influence.

What is your idea of coffee happiness?

Usually I’d say I’m outside a coffee shop with some buddies and we’re sipping, sharing, and laughing in the sunshine. Because that world doesn’t exist right now, it’s my first cup in the morning. I’ve been using brewing my coffee as a way to practice some mindfulness at the start of my day. I brew my cup and sit in my window to drink it. I don’t look at my phone, I don’t read the news. I just sit, sip, and watch the day get brighter.

If you could have any job in the coffee industry, what would it be and why?

In some ways, I’ve already had the job I wanted for so long. I love sharing the joy of learning about coffee and flavor with others. My own ambitions are still malleable. In my fantasy world, I have the means and financial security to start a cooperative company with a bunch of badass coffee friends. We will be approachable, we will provide a great working environment and pay well. People will want to work with us and we’ll lead by example by having a diverse team, balanced power, and transparent, accountable leadership. This, of course, will be after I live out the other part of my fantasy world that involves me learning everything I can about coffee production by studying or doing research and living and working in a producing country for an extended period of time. I have never wanted to stop learning or growing my coffee skill set and I never will!

Who are your coffee heroes?

Many of them are also included on the Sprudge Twenty list. What a true honor it is to be here with them! I am also fiercely inspired by Coffee At Large and really any organized group of coffee workers. Taking risks and standing up for what you believe in isn’t easy and it takes a lot of courage. Folks farther ahead in their careers can learn a lot about workplace health, safety, and justice by taking some cues from these folks. I have so much hope for the future of coffee because of them.

And after this year’s Brewers Cup season, it would be remiss of me not to mention Beth Beall and the way she supports and encourages others. She’s a role model to so many, supports her own team’s growth and professional development in a way that makes me aspire to be able to do the same one day. Most of all, she does it with wisdom, kindness, and grace. We love you, Beth! Thank you for everything you do for the greater coffee community.

If you could drink coffee with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

My late grandmother Elsie Flora Spencer Sledzinski, but she would be drinking tea because she was British and that’s all I ever knew her to drink. She passed in 2009, but I’d like to talk to her openly as a grown adult woman and hear her take on the state of the world. I know she would be disgusted by Trump, and I’d love to bond with her over that.

If you didn’t work in coffee what do you think you’d be doing instead?

Anytime someone asks me this I say, “lavender farmer.” Doesn’t that sound like a nice way to live?

Do you have any coffee mentors?

I wish! I always wanted one, which is why I think I try to be a mentor I never had to others. But I still have so much to learn, and it’s never too late to have one if anyone is feeling generous!

What do you wish someone would’ve told you when you were first starting out in coffee?

To not take myself so seriously! I started having a lot more fun when I quit worrying about being perfect or being right. There is absolutely no one way to brew or enjoy coffee.

Name three coffee apparatuses you couldn’t do without.

I feel stumped, especially after spending more time with brewing vessels during quarantine. Going to have to go with a Baratza grinder, a glass V60, and one of my favorite mugs.

Best song to brew coffee to at the moment.

Tell me you don’t want to get back behind the bar and crush a rush when you hear “Space Jam” by the Quad City DJs?

Where do you see yourself in 2040?

Hopefully happy, healthy, and living extra well because I am finally living out my dream of residing in a beautiful place next to a body of water.

What’s your favorite coffee at the moment?

*sips* Jen Apodaca is slaying it with Mugshots by Mother Tongue! I love a coffee that is easy to brew and tastes sweet and balanced.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted you personally and professionally?

I am one of the thousands of coffee workers laid off from a job I loved. I miss it and many of my colleagues dearly. In the first few weeks, I felt minor relief. Sure, it was a full-time job just navigating the unemployment portal, but with rapidly evolving news made it hard to focus on much of anything but that. Now that more time has passed, it’s hard not to feel discouraged or disheartened. How can I be laid off? I’ve given 13 years of my life to coffee. Am I not good enough? Are my contributions and ideas not valuable? These are some thoughts that have entered my brain despite trying so hard not to. How can any of us in this position not have these thoughts? There’s no manual or reference for how to get through this and it looks different for everyone. We all have different needs. I’ve accepted that some days are just going to be harder than others and truly take it one day—sometimes one hour—at a time. Yet, there is an extraordinary amount of comfort in knowing I am not alone in navigating this. I cannot say I’d be managing it as well if I weren’t connected to so many coffee friends and peers at this time. The shared experience, the empathy; it’s refreshing and it makes me feel immense gratitude for the life choices I made that led me to this work and the coffee community.

I know that one day I will reflect upon this time of cooking projects, 24/7 athleisure, Zoom hangs, movie marathons, and learning the choreography to all my favorite ’90s music videos because I have the time. I know I will ultimately be thankful to have spent it safely in my home with my love and our house plants. Until then, what a way to get better at being patient.

Is there any donation fund or resource in your community we can share with our readers?

I’ve been co-hosting Coffee Break Northeast with the imitable Tommy Gallagher! It’s a way to connect with others in a time of social distancing and we support virtual tip jars, employee fundraisers and coffee businesses in our region daily at 1 pm. We have quite the crew of “regulars” and the camaraderie of Coffee Break has been instrumental in getting me through this time! coffeebreak.group is the website and we do ours at 1 pm eastern. All are welcome!

The Sprudge Twenty Interviews are presented in partnership by Sprudge & Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2020 Sprudge Twenty honorees and a complete interview archive, please visit sprudge.com/twenty.

from Sprudge https://ift.tt/36yw8Tu

[estelaparas4580-blog]

The New Soccer Train

Little one work is actually not as serious a concern as this was actually a centuries back, but that still impacts countless youngsters worldwide. Angel Hair for Kids is among A Youngster's Vocal Foundation's numerous programs serving financially disadvantaged Canadian little ones struggling with a disability or even illness. Even further, kids which are well-bonded as well as really loved through involved fathers, have the tendency to possess a lot less behavior complications, as well as are rather injected from alcoholic drinks and substance abuse. ( HealthDay)-- A sizable portion from parents whose kids have food allergies possess problems over the safety from their child at college, inning accordance with a research published on the web May 12 in BMC Pediatrics.|Parents are regularly dealing with limitations on their kids's tablets, mobile phones, pcs, as well as Televisions. 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As moms and dads, don't go for simple parenting given that you think that will harm your child's feelings. ( HealthDay)-- There are actually an amount of points you can possibly do to guarantee your youngsters possess a soft start to the new school year. Set up paternal, as you may should modify your child's last name via the Family Court. With an autistic youngster, going off the car to the property calls for mindful preparation, yet half the time, there are still tantrum, Coppenrath mentioned. Moms and dads could find that their youngster could be actually not able to sleep, taking a long time to go to sleep or waking many times in the course of the night. Some research studies have presented that United States moms and dads spend under 12 mins everyday connecting with their kids. One such unpleasant surprise over the last few years has actually been the phenomenon of moms and dads and also guardians that overfeed their kids. My buddy informed me last opportunity she contact ICA to ask for this as well as the upcoming day an ICA police officer call her and told her that she can drop to gather the certified correct copy from each docs on next day liao. Most of these problems vanish as your kid grows older, however some way of living variables can easily aid improve your youngster's rough peeing patterns. Moms and dads must manage any kind of impacts that the divorce or even splitting up may carry their little one in a good way as they take place as well as aid their little one change even more conveniently to this hard life adjustment. For some youngsters along with autism, Anndietportal18.Info the supplement melatonin offers a natural way to enhance drowsiness, aiding all of them sleep as well as stay asleep in order that everyone in the property can get a great evening's rest. When a youngster sheds a relatived to death, that reduction can easily have a profound result that can also last a lifetime. Right here are actually 3 things you could perform to create that successful if you as well as your youngster's other parent test arbitration. He skips his children and possessing a domesticity along with all of them He sees them often but their is whole in his center given that he could certainly not find them every day. Seeing you go through will definitely communicate to the kid that reading is very important, enjoyable, and also that assists our team learn and also accomplish particular objectives. When children reside in their infant stage some might function tough and also respond in a damaging method to it's environment, but a mother has to prep herself properly to take care of such conditions. Every child possesses a right to experience really loved as well as to become nourished through both moms and dads. Feel free to describe your child care strategy or even recommended daycare planning, Feature the title and also address of the baby-sitter or even day care center. 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✪ ROGERS, allison margaret → introduction 🍸

❝ 𝚒 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚜𝚘 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚢 // 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚢 𝚜𝚔𝚒𝚗, 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚊𝚖 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚏𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚍 // 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚎𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚢𝚘𝚞, 𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚎𝚍, 𝚒𝚗 𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚗 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚛 ❞

✪ is that LIZ GILLIES ? no, it’s just ALLISON ROGERS, the 24 year old kid of STEVE ROGERS / CAPTAIN AMERICA ! she is a TEACHING ASSISTANT of POLITICAL SCIENCE & LAW, and they got into the academy because of their GENIUS LEVEL INTELLECT. I’ve heard they can be PEDANTIC, but are also HARDWORKING, and that they plan to NOT follow in their parents’ footsteps and BECOME A HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER. [ wanted connections ] [ pinterest 01 ] [ pinterest 02 ] [ wip playlist ]

hello hello !! i’m lara and this is my literal daughter allison ! i usually play her as a stark, which is why that’s her name in one of her pinterest boards lmao. i was here a while ago playing betty ross ( and will probably pick her up again at some point because betty is love of my life ) and now i’m back ! check out some of the links above and hit me up for plots !

BASICS.

FULL NAME: allison margaret rogers.

NICKNAMES: alli, sonny, rogers.

DATE OF BIRTH / AGE: january 3rd, 1994 / twenty-four.

HOMETOWN: new york, ny.

ALIGNMENT: chaotic good.

ZODIAC SIGN: capricorn.

PERSONALITY TYPE: entp — the debater.

OCCUPATION: teaching assistant ( political science & law ) at hot academy.

HOBBIES: crossword puzzles, chess, debating, clubbing.

SKILLS: polyglot, hand-to-hand combat, mechanics, analytical ability, logical reasoning, persuasiveness.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual.

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: biromantic.

FACECLAIM: elizabeth gillies.

SUMMARY.

allison has always admired her father greatly, and has many of the traits that make steve, well...steve. she’s intelligent, hardheaded, determined, loyal to a fault, and will always stand up for what she believes in. contrary to her dad, however, she fights her battles with her words rather than her fists ( although she’s well trained to do the latter, too ). she’s argumentative, and has a quick tongue that often runs ahead of her brain, and in a battle of wits, she will not back down. she rarely thinks before she speaks.

in high school, she would often get in trouble by being a smartass. she would talk back to her teachers, disagree with them if she felt something was wrong, and would often correct them if she saw the smallest mistake. she’s always been oppositional. defiant. confrontational. she’s always had a really hard time keeping her mouth shut. she always speaks her mind because she really believes her opinion is that important. so you just know she was the captain of the debate team and everyone hated her guts.

she truly believes she’s smarter than everyone else. it’s the one thing she’s actually confident about. everything else, she’s been faking. being so smart made her extremely competitive, because she knows she’ll always win. she’ll do everything in her power not to lose. she hates losing. she can argue her way out of a paper bag. she can’t stand being wrong ( in her eyes, she never is ).

she definitely feels the pressure to be perfect. while she knows she’ll never be captain america 2.0 ( she doesn’t want to, either ) she definitely feels the weight of the shield. she feels like she has to make some difference in the world. it’s because of this that she wants to become a human rights lawyer. she knew she wanted to study law because she just had the mouth for it, and because she loves to argue. she gets a real kick out of winning verbal matches. it’s not because of her bleeding heart, but due to a strong moral backbone, and a big problem with big bullies. it’s more about strong convictions than the goodness of her heart.

she rarely shows any sign of vulnerability. she sees caring too much as a weakness, which is a shame, because she cares a lot. so much, that it scares her. she compensates by acting superior to everyone, which makes her a little hard to love. she won’t dumb herself down just because she intimidates someone. she won’t soften up to make others comfortable. she’ll take care of others, but she’ll make it seem like she’s getting something out of it.

those who are actually friends with her have probably learned to see right through this. alli cares, she just shows it in unconventional ways and it too proud to admit it. she would actually die for every single one of her friends and is kind of in awe that they’ll even tolerate her because she knows she’s not easy.

in college, alli became a bit of a partier. the stress of being the perfect daughter ( pressure that was placed on her by no one but herself ), drove her to drinking. first a drink or two every now and then, just to let go of those thoughts. this escalated to the point where she would sometimes show up to class drunk. she still aced all her classes, but she started using alcohol as a crutch. she made sure to hide this from her dad, so she wasn’t aware of how deep seated her problem was ( is ).

currently, she has a better handle on this. she definitely has a drinking problem, she’s just learned how to hide it. she’s functional. she can stay ( mosty ) sober for long periods of time, and then get absolutely plastered and wake up days later in some stranger’s bed. alcohol is what gets her through periods of high stress. it’s what gets her through the day ( her life is a long period of high stress ). she can’t get through the day without one drink. there’s always the tiniest bit of alcohol running through her veins. there’s always a bottle of wine waiting for her in her room. she knows when she can and can’t drink. she won’t show up drunk to class ( at least not anymore ), but you’ll notice her speech is a little slurred if you call her late at night.

she can be selfish and arrogant, but that’s because she’s used to being the smartest person in the room. most things come easy to her. she’s actually very selfless and self-sacrificing when it comes to her friends or her family. she pretends she doesn’t care about anyone but herself, but the truth is that she cares too much. she cares so much it weighs her down. she feels like she needs to take care of her friends, and sometimes that gets to be a little too heavy for her. she forgets to take care of herself ( she doesn’t really care about her own wellbeing ).

she lowkey hates herself, but she’s very proud of her academic achievements, and will not let people tear her down. the only person who’s allowed to put allison rogers down is allison rogers ( and she does it well ). however, she’ll always put up a front and act like she’s the best.

aaaaaand that’s all for now, folks !! i would love some plots and connections, so hit me up either here or on discord ( i’m currenty at movie rogue is blasphemy#5676 )