#gerald ben eitan

[shivadh]

A tiny fragment of a Roman jar that once held olive oil, produced in what is now southern Spain, has left archaeologists delighted, puzzled and “saucer-eyed” after they deciphered a quote from the ancient poet Virgil that was cut into its clay by an unknown but erudite hand 1,800 years ago.

The highly unusual find [...] was turned up by researchers from the universities of Córdoba, Seville and Montpellier who were excavating a site in the town of Hornachuelos, in Andalucía’s Córdoba province, seven years ago.

[...]

It turned out to be from the first section of Virgil’s second major work, the Georgics: “[Earth] once changed the/Chaonian acorn for the plump wheat-ear/And mingled with the grape [your newfound gift].”

[...]

Given the fragment was found in a rural area where much of the olive oil sent to Rome was produced and bottled, the team thinks Virgil’s agriculturally themed Georgics may have struck the engraver as more fitting that the heroics of the Aeneid.

[xtrahxtrah]

Hey guys. Latest set is now live. Will be playing this at my gig today at SubStation in Brixton. Enjoy! https://soundcloud.com/jdent2612/goldhawk-substation-set-240223 https://www.mixcloud.com/josephdent1989/goldhawk-substation-set-240223/ Set Journey: Melodic (1-22) -> Tribal (23-28) -> Psychedelic (29-34) -> Progressive/Techno (35-63). Enjoy! 1. S.P.Q.R - Tribal Experience (Paul Kalkbrenner Version) 2. A Guy Called Gerald - Voodoo Ray (Grant Nelson Remix) 3. Skepta - No Security (Ben Sterling Edit) 4. Corbi - Dudes Start Saying 5. D:Ream - U R The Best Thing (Sasha Full MIx) 6. Richie Blacker - Atlantis 7. Shadow Child x Diana Miro - Open 8. Trutopia - Homecoming 9. Hot Since 82 feat. Jem Cooke - Buggin' (UR2wo Remix) 10. Yotto, Something Good - Rhythm Of The Night 11. James Zabiela - The Healing (Tinlicker Edit) 12. Zoo Brazil - Anything You Want 13. Richie Blacker - Ketamine Dreams 14. Aubrey Fry - The Loop (Satoshi Fumi Remix) 15. Slam - Azure 16. Joseph Ray - Give Me A Reason 17. andhim - Nice To Meet You 18. Franky Wah - I Know You 19. Double Touch feat. Reigan - Storm 20. Sébastien Léger - Ariana 21. Dulus - Discordia 22. Sahar Z - Back in My Arms (Shai T Remix) 23. Kidnap Kid - Freedom 24. Kashovski - Poison 25. Francis Mercier, Nitefreak, Lenny Auguste - Ayibobo 26. Francis Mercier & Magic System - Premier Gaou (Nitefreak Extended Remix) 27. Stephan Jolk - Sleeping Beauty 28. Moshic – 12 Laws of Karma (G Monk & Katar Remix) 29. Hidden Empire - Jaws 30. Gigee - Berlin 31. James Monro - Spark (Diamandy Remix) 32. IsoQuant - Chain Reaction 33. Roumex - Saphirah 34. Eitan Reiter - Smile (Yuli Fershtat 2019 Remix) 35. Solee & Boss Axis - Still Here (Solee Club Re-Edit) 36. Mark Hoffen - Dreams 37. Fred again x Swedish House Mafia feat. Future - Turn On The Lights Again (Anyma Remix) 38. Armonica - Devotion 39. Stephan Jolk - Better Together 40. Stephan Jolk - Morning Comes 41. Zoo Brazil - Dance With Me 42. ARTBAT, Pete Tong - Age of Love (ARTBAT Rave Mix) 43. Helsloot - Lets Pretend (Extended Mix) 44. JOPLYN - Can't Get Enough (Adana Twins Remix) 45. James Monro - Alchemical 46. Oxia - Domino (Frankey & Sandrino Remix) (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpBp5XiIZbg/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[shivadh]

One of the things I thought about a little, while in Amsterdam, was one of the short stories I'm working on to go with the Shivadh novels -- it's a flashback to 2012, where Gregory is at the London School of Economics and not doing well mentally. He calls up Jerry, currently living in Amsterdam, to see if he can come over and hang out for the weekend.

What I was thinking about was that Amsterdam is visually dense in a way I'm not sure I can vocalize properly, and after the Rijksmuseum and then wandering a while, I asked myself, could Jerry handle LIVING here with rampant undiagnosed ADHD? I'm medicated and my diagnosis is milder than his and I'm not doing super well with it. I thought perhaps I should move him to some other city with good drugs and nightlife, which is his whole reason for being there.

But then I turned off the main road near the market because I was a block from Sarphatipark, where I had placed Jerry's flat overlooking it, and wanted to see it. The second I got off the main roads it felt like someone just muffled all the noise and chaos (most of which was likely in my very tired mind in any case). The streets around the park are lovely and quiet and I had three or four people make friendly conversation with me -- one clocked my Roma jacket and wanted to talk football and his buddy joined in -- and then I spent a few minutes in the park and it's absolutely delightful.

So Jerry gets to stay in Amsterdam and oscillate between loud nightclubs and afternoons on pretty tree-lined streets bullshitting with strangers.

[shivadh]

n the mirror-flat valley of the Po River, the Euganean Hills stick out of the vast landscape, their shallow peaks topped by sloping vineyards and groves of olive trees. Nestled between them is the tiny medieval village of Arquà Petrarca, where a microclimate created by the shaded hills and their abundant water produces perfect conditions for one of Italy’s rarest crops.

The giuggiole, or jujube fruit, resembles an olive and tastes, at first, like a woody apple. After withering off the vine, it takes on a sweeter flavor, closer to a honeyed fig. Among the medieval elite, the fruit was so popular that it gave birth to an idiom: “andare in brodo di giuggiole” — “to go in jujube broth” — defined in one of the earliest Italian phrase books as living in a state of bliss. Every fall, the handful of families that still cultivate the fruit in the village gather in medieval garb to celebrate the jujube and feast on the fine liquors, jams and blissful sweet broth they create from it.

Italy is full of places like Arquà Petrarca. Microclimates and artisanal techniques become the basis for obscure local specialties celebrated in elaborate festivals from Trapani to Trieste.

***

The morià, or kiwi death, is not the only disease to threaten beloved Italian delicacies in recent years. This summer, an outbreak of highly infectious African swine fever was found in the country’s ample wild boar population, threatening the rural pig farms that produce staples like prosciutto and Parma ham. The threat was great enough to drive Italy’s environmental agency to erect a chain-link wall around parts of Rome.

***

For the last 30 years, Morettino and his family have been engaged in what he calls a “huge, ambitious, experimental project” to adapt to these changes in their environment. Using heirloom seeds from the botanical gardens in Palermo, his family raised a small crop of coffee plants — the first-ever commercially grown on Italian soil.

[shivadh]

Can't recall if I re logged this to here, guess I'll find out eventually if so...

Sam. I need to know. Does the kingdom of Askazer-Shivadlakia know about Gritty? If so, what are their thoughts?

I think any given individual in Askazer-Shivadlakia knows more about Gritty than the entire country combined knows about hockey. Which is how I live, too, so there's that. Outside of football and F1 racing, the Shivadh attitude towards sports in general could probably best be described as "amused".

If we don't count Gregory II's unfortunate, unlamented, and still un-named son, the last three kings -- Gregory II, Jason, and Michaelis -- introduced a lot of changes into the country that raised the standard of living considerably, but it's still a small country with limited resources particularly when it comes to mass media. So the Shivadh think American culture is extremely cool and very much enjoy American movies and books and such, but a lot of them also agree that you could not pay them to live there.

They're very much of the opinion that of course Americans need Gritty, since any country with as many issues as the United States definitely needs a trickster god, and given it's America of course he's a sport mascot. But with typical Shivadh arrogance they'll tell you "Well of course we don't need Gritty, every Shivadh is their own Gritty. And also we have the Duke of Shivadlakia, who is clearly a sacred fool of some sort."

[copperbadge]

robinade

Ok but now I want to hear about therapist man, and how much face palming he must do when no one is looking.

This poor bastard. I mean, imagine, he's been busting ass helping Gregory manage his anxiety and stress over the coronation, not to mention this new man in his life who Gregory insists is not a boyfriend and yet sounds exactly like a boyfriend, and finally a week after the coronation Gregory's like "So...feeling good. The kingdom hasn't collapsed in ruin, the not-boyfriend's now a boyfriend, and I think my dad....approves?!" and he's like FANTASTIC, Gregory, great work, super proud of you, same time next week.

He's only got one more appointment that week before he can go home and make himself a cuppa and exhale.

And then in walks Gerald dux Shivadlakia, one of the most notable party boys of Europe and Gregory's beloved cousin, who says "I stopped drinking three weeks ago and last week I got an ADHD diagnosis. This should be fun, right?"

I don't think this particular book is one I'd write, because current therapy aside (jury's still out) my experiences with therapy have not been positive; I'm very pro-therapy in a general sense but also an outlier personally, and not really interested in writing about the practice. And I suspect there might be some kind of conflict of interest issue with treating very close cousins who also work together. But I do enjoy the idea that there's a quiet, discreet therapist's office in Fons-Askaz that has just seen some real shit on account of the Ben Jason family.

I've been re-reading the Shivadh novels with unusually deep focus -- once you've written, edited, and typeset the thing, you don't tend to go back to it unless you need to find something specific. But I'm building a story bible for it, so I'm close-reading for details I might have forgotten.

Re-reading Lady And The Tiger a year on is interesting; I didn't have an ADHD diagnosis when I started writing it and I finished it before starting medication. You'd think what would jump out to me now is anything unrealistic or details I would have added, but I was writing in the knowledge that I probably would have a diagnosis soon and anyway a lot of Jerry's mannerisms come from my undiagnosed coping methods regardless.

So what really struck me this time is that Jerry left the country, was profoundly homesick, told someone about his ADHD for the first time, confessed his love and proposed marriage to the same person who accepted, committed what could be considered espionage ahead of what was definitely a coup, and exported a tiger from Europe to Texas, all in the space of two weeks. And sure, he definitely arranged ahead of time to be able to text with his therapist occasionally, but that first session they had after he got back must have been buck fucking wild.

Jerry: "I'm back in-country! Doing really well!" Therapist: "Great! 3pm Friday as usual?" Jerry: "Let's maybe see if you have a longer block of time available. There have been developments."

I would imagine there aren't a surfeit of therapists in Fons-Askaz and particularly people who are security-cleared to treat the royal family, so there are non-zero odds that Jerry's therapist is also Gregory's therapist. Which must at least keep things extremely interesting for the poor man.

[shivadh]

Shivadh Hunthunds

Note to self, I need to go into the LATT word documents and find the name of the person I was discussing hunthunds with. 

Given Shivadh culture, hunthunds probably are landrace -- I would imagine, given Eitan's passion for them, that Jerry's family is the most significant contributor to the local breed standard. A Shivadlakia-estate hunthund is really top of the line, especially now that Jerry is trying very hard to get his mother to stop breeding dogs neither of them really want and thus the estate's stock is slowly being broken up and distributed to breeders around the country. 

I think Gregory is the No People Food guy and Eddie is the "well, wolves eat chickens, therefore a slice of chicken is fine" guy. I have a scene in my head where Jerry, knowing Eddie wants to get a dog, invites them to the estate for their "wedding gift", walks them out to the kennel where there's a young litter, and goes "Please, take as many as you want" and literally before he can finish talking, Eddie is in the kennel, covered in puppies. 

They only take one, but definitely they took their time selecting which one. :D And certainly Jerry finds it much easier to slowly empty out the kennels once Eddie starts posting videos of his adorable fluffy Shivadh Hunthund to Photogram. (With appropriate narration regarding enrichment and breed temperament, of course. Probably from Jerry, who knows it all whether he wanted to or not.) 

[copperbadge]

lacylu42

Before he got his own book, I pictured Jerry as something like Klaus from The Umbrella Academy.

You aren’t alone! I had a lot of people say that when Jerry actually showed up in Fete he wasn’t what they expected from the discussion of him earlier, but in a good way. 

I think there is a sense, probably from the last few dozen years of television, that someone who is...not necessarily antagonistic to the hero, but at the very least antithetical to their character, has to be a specific way. You can’t be the slightly-shiftless, always-in-trouble, charming-regardless character unless you are also specifically making problems for the hero. And it’s a shame, because antiheroes like that are super fun and yet I absolutely cannot stand that plotline, where the entire conflict comes from one person being a selfish dickhead. (As is perhaps evident, I found Klaus intolerable.) 

The thing is that I really like the type, because it’s fun to write someone who is likable in spite of their flaws. So Jerry is the other option, the guy who is fun and enjoyable to read about and feels deeply even if he clearly hasn’t got his shit together...but is also earnest, and doing his best to be helpful. What he has which a lot of other characters of his archetype don’t is the ability to be reflective, which made him a real joy to write about. Gregory has 99 problems but Gerald ben Eitan ain’t one. 

niennanir

An amusing story to write would be Gregory and Eddy presumed dead in some sort of accident and Jerry suddenly being thrown into succession only to be "Oh no, their fine" at the point where he decides he really wants to nope out of this but he'll do it for the people he loves.

It would be super hilarious if Gregory and Eddie were temporarily indisposed -- say, a car accident that didn’t severely injure them but did put them out of commission for a bit, and the palace lawyers are like “Uh, Alanna, something you should know that we just discovered in consulting the constitution for precedence, turns out if the King and his consort are both incapacitated, technically the Grand Vizier takes over...” and Jerry is like “I realize this is poorly timed but we are in an emergency room, can I have an emergency Valium.” (”No, you can’t mix Valium and Adderall.”  “Curse my unique royal brain chemistry!”) 

Meanwhile Michaelis is like “I am...right here. Forty years of kinging, standing here. I’m here. Do we need a king? There’s a king in the room. King since I was twenty years old. Right here,” and the lawyers are like “Uhhhhhh technically once you give up the crown you can’t take it back, on account of rules about former kings trying to seize power again.” 

Be even funnier if Jerry does a really good job of it. Like, gets a bill passed that Gregory’s been trying to get into law for months, finds a couple of budget line items that can be reduced, hosts a goodwill visit from the royal family of Norway* that goes so well they decide to buy a summer home there. 

Gregory: What....did you do?

Jerry: Took an Adderall and opened some spreadsheets. You’re lucky I wasn’t medicated five years ago, I’d probably be king now. 

Gregory: Fair play, I guess. No coups, Jerry.

Jerry: Who has the time for a coup? I have shopping to do. While I was king my whole entire wardrobe went out of style.

Gregory: That’s the spirit. 

* My mother used to be an avid follower of the British Royal Family but after the nonsense of the last few years she simply can’t, so I suggested that we be fans of the Norwegian Royal Family instead. They’re more photogenic and appear to be a good deal more useful. Also the name Harald is fun to read and to say. 

[copperbadge]

To give you all an idea of how my thought process works, the second this posted the logistical, data analytical side of me said, “Well, someone had to be managing the wine cellar between the last guy leaving and Hugo arriving. Probably someone on palace staff who just likes wine and earning extra to choose and serve the wine. Oh man, and then Hugo comes in like a snobby dickhead and displaces her -- “

And then the nerd side of me yelled SLOW BURN ENEMIES TO LOVERS

And then I realized this story would take place in 1995ish, because Gregory and Alanna are four when Simon and Hugo arrive. Which means not only is Miranda alive but so is Michaelis’s brother Eitan. And wee little Gerald ben Eitan dux Shivadlakia is five years old. Kid’s smaller than his name is long and more trouble than both put together. 

Anyway just going to stash that idea away for the day when I run out of ideas....

I know that you're writing it this way on purpose, so I thought i might as well tell you that it works. Every time Michaelis complains about the wine, I build up my own personal argument against him. I mean rose? Mikey, really. Eddie's probably perfectly aligned the wine with his pizza and Michaelis just has terrible taste...

Ahaha, the best part of this is that I don't like wine at all. I don't even like the smell of it. I don't mind ice wine, which I'm informed is the Most Basic way to drink wine, but even then I really have no taste for it. (I've been told it's cheaper in Italy to drink the table wine rather than order water, so my time in Rome in April should be interesting.)

In my mind, Jason and Eitan, Michaelis's father and brother, preferred red wine because they were normal wine-drinkers in a region where red is very common. Jason probably even had something of a developed palate. But Michaelis and Eitan have different mothers and Michaelis's mother passed on to him a sensitivity to tannins, which makes red wine very bitter to his palate regardless of how good it is.

But as a theatre artistic director once told me, "In this job you have to drink a lot of bad wine." He puts up with the red wine at public events and essentially just gets a reputation as a very light drinker.

So you're not wrong about the pizza -- Eddie paired it so that an ordinary palate would find it pleasing, but because Michaelis is used to red wine basically tasting like fruit-flavored paint thinner, he's expecting that's the flavor the pizza will pair with.

Poor Hugo, the palace sommelier. It's probably for the best Gregory didn't get the sensitivity from Michaelis, since his developing palate is making up for his father's refusal to even discuss reds anymore. :D And I'm sure when Eddie, who grew up local to California wine country, asked Hugo if he could source a decent Cannonau, Hugo began to weep with joy.

[shivadh]

This is the research/storage tumblr for material related to Sam Starbuck/@copperbadge’s writing; most specifically the Shivadhverse, a series of romance novels, although other “ideas” posts are sprinkled throughout. 

Tags Index

Character Tags

eddie rambler

Gregory iii

gerald ben eitan

alanna daskaz

noah deimos

jes deimos

michaelis ben jason

Monday rambler

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jason michaelis

caleb canto

Royal librarian

noah's dad

georgie altaras

monday rambler

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Writing Tags

random ideas -- Stuff I don’t know what to do with yet

research -- Specific to ideas I have

fishing lodge history -- History related to the fishing lodge/wwii

future novels -- Ideas for future stories (not stuff within future stories, like whole-ass future novels)

not shivadh -- ideas for non-shivadh stories (good place to stash em)

reference -- information to preserve about the books

Shivadh Tags

shivadh judaism -- specific Jewish customs in Askazer-Shivadlakia

shivadh culture -- Cultural norms and traditions outside of Judaism

Specific Novel Tags

the chicken salad war

Roman ruin

Where the oleander grows

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the nantucketer

shivadh alan turing

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