#that i will be the first child unable to taste the difference between an industry-made bottle and a homemade concoction?

[everiistence]

it's being depressed over a disconnect from culture time again besties

[streets-in-paradise]

The Greek of New York

American Gods and Percy Jackson crossover - Part 2

Word Count: 2794

Characters: Zeus, Eira ( Vanir demigoddess OC), Wednesday, Shadow.

Pairings: Zeus x Eira. Platonical relationships of Wednesday's crew.

Warnings: Mentions of smoking and alcohol consumption. Heavy flirting, no smut but some sexy teasing and sexual tension. Zeus being a classy hot shameless asshole. Mentions of cheating. There is age difference because she is statted to be young . Of course, she is +18.

Summary: The crew's expectations get crushed in their meeting with the misterious man while Wednesday struggles in his goal to make him join their side.

Disclaimers: Please, don’t take this nonsense seriously. It’s just a fun piece i wrote to satisfy my needs for Sean Bean as Zeus. @yerevasunclair​ is my big inspiration for this and encouraged me to post it. Otherwise i would had never done it because of my total lack of faith in my attempts of writing fiction. This is a translation to english so, i apologise for any mistakes. 

Thanks for reading and i hope you’ll enjoy it. 

The trip ended on the facade of an imposing New York City skyscraper. Whoever this Theo was, Shadow got the impression that they were messing with someone really powerful. He was surprised to consider Mr. Wednesday's vast network of contacts and the variety of strange places he was taking them. Within minutes they were inside a luxurious apartment on the top floor.

The man for whom they were received was exactly the opposite of what they expected.

" Wednesday!! I was waiting for you. I knew you were going to come since the first rumours started spreading. What took you so long? " he welcomed in a tone equally playful and imponent. 

" I had other concerns to attend to. I didn't wanted to come to you with empty hands, my friend" Wednesday replied

Shadow and Eira were stunned. Theo was not at all the old stranger they had imagined. He was a mature man, but not exactly old. Blond, tall, elegant, of a distinguished royal bearing and very attractive. They realized that they had been tricked again. 

" I see you didn't" they heard him reply as he looked at them with a playful smirk. He didn’t seem to be paying particular attention to any of them yet Eira couldn't help to get the feeling of his stare all over her. It was the first trait she noticed in him, the charming ways of his beautiful green eyes. Shadow was seriously regretting the bet he did with their boss. 

They were barely paying attention to Wednesday's attempts of formality. 

" Allow me to introduce you. These are my servants, Shadow and Eira. " 

Theo saluted Shadow with a strong, confident  handshake and kissed Eira's hand without losing eye contact with her for a single instant during the action.

 All she could focus on was the intensity of his gaze and she quickly forgot about Wednesday's warnings. 

" We know who you are. You don't need introduction." 

He was perfectly capable of noticing the strong impression he left on her and it pleased him. 

" Surprised, little one? I understand it.  You must have been expecting to see an eldery man of long curly white hair and a matching beard. That damn Disney movie keeps ruining the general perception of most people. It's a price I have to pay for refusing to join the new paradigm. Although, my wife likes it. It portrays her in a far better light. The motherly way in which she always wanted to be seen, it also does wonders for our relationship. Of course, it's not because Media wanted to be softer with us... Marketing choice. Disfunctional families, half blood bastards and murder in divine induced crazyness is not Disney s style. Not exactly kids friendly fun" he joked, trying to come out as friendly so she would be able to calm her nerves around him.

" She is one of my special maidens" Wednesday replied, taking away any chance for her to keep the previous conversation. “ I don’t have the original upline anymore but I had been thinking in rebuilding a new one for modern times. She’s the first I got so far but i’m making plans for more additions.” 

" Those beautiful horse rider angels, right? Your best idea regarding orders of servants. " 

Eira wanted to keep talking to him. Not only because he was handsome, a strange push made her feel unable to shut up. 

" Actually it was my mother's invention. She was the founder of the institution and it represents her partnership with Wednesday. That's why I got selected"  she told, adding more details to her boss's simple explanation. 

Theo seemed to be even more interested in her after hearing that. 

" I knew there was something special about you. At first i thought it was just your radiant beauty but now everything makes sense. You are a halfblood. " 

Shadow wasn't able to understand most of the conversation but the sweet, friendly attitude of that man towards her was pretty easy to get , as well as his intentions. 

Getting excited, Eira kept telling him details about her. 

" My mother's fields are love, fertility, beauty, witchcraft and she shares war with Wednesday." she told him like if it meant something for someone. 

"Interesting.... very interesting" he stated, looking at her in the eyes with a thoughtful expression. Since he didn't wanted to intimidate her, he changed his tone quickly " It looks like the nordics finally started to follow our business model... and they had amazing results" 

Wednesday was so annoyed that he didn't took a lot of consideration in his answer 

" Her mother decided to keep her at her side. It's not a common choice between our kind but what can you expect from a Vanir? It's the softer side of the family. The rest of us aren't opening summer camps" 

" You should. It ‘s  a wonderful business that keeps growing. Nothing is stronger than the blind faith of a child and it gets particularly better when a parent is involved. I don't even need to have my own, all the cabins of the camp have to put their faith in me before their parents because i'm their leader. Every year more and more keep joining and we have entire generations raised in our ancient ways." 

Shadow started to wonder if Theo was a cult leader instead of a mob boss. 

" Did you make a fortune with summer camps for children? How? " he asked. 

" It's a surprisingly profitable business, i told your boss long ago that it was the solution to all his problems but he still stands in disbelief. You can even adapt the format to your particular cultural tastes. Want some advice? Replace the whole “giant palace with thousands of rooms” thing with a hotel. It fits better to your tale than a camp. '' he replied in a very relaxed mood. He sat on a small , fancy couch like a king would sit on his throne and gave Wednesday a condescending  smile while lighting up a cigarette.  

" I don't have intentions of converting to the touristic industry. My business is war. " he stated, proudfully. 

"it's a shame. Time should have made you more pragmatic. "  Theo teased him after exhaling the smoke of his cigarette.  

Both of Wednesday's assistants were thinking about how different his way of smoking was to Czernobog . Instead of the usual disgusting smell and creepy vibe this man was classy, smooth and the smoke he left behind felt like a different perfume to each one of them. Both cases being pleasant smells they enjoyed. 

He offered a cigarette to Shadow first. He got used to that sort of socialization code in prison so it wasn't a problem to him. When Eira received the same offer she seemed to hesitate. 

" I don't smoke. I never got interested in the habit despite, or maybe because, I have a fríend who is a heavy smoker. " she said, slightly embarrassed. She feared her reply would upset him but he was smiling at her.

 It was like her answer was exactly what he was expecting. 

" There is always a first time for everything"  he teased her,  seductively. " Come here and let me show you"

The girl stared doubtfully at Wednesday, but she understood she wasn't able to deny his request even despite her boss's disapproval. As courtesy, she had to obey. She sat on the dangerously close spot the man indicated for her,  the arm of his couch. She had the impression that, if it wasn't for the presence of Wednesday and Shadow, she would had been on his lap. The idea didn't seem so bad. 

Meanwhile they sat in another less magnificent couch, they had to stand the whole thing. 

Theo put the cigarette between Eira's lips, he lit it , and told her how to smoke it. He wouldn't stop looking at her and he smiled pleasantly when she exhaled , laughing a bit when she coughed briefly. 

Nerves made her laugh as well and he caressed her cheek and jaw with one hand, reaching her lips and tracing them with his index finger. It was his way to show her how pleased he was. 

" Good, you did it so good. Not bad at all to be your first time, eh?" he told her, in a sweet but sinful tone. " You must understand, dear. I made you do it for a reason. Some like alcohol, some meat, others prefer blood. What pleases me is smoke. Since you are in my house, or at least one I like to use temporarily, you must smoke at least a little bit for me." he explained as he reached her waist with his arm. 

Shadow couldn't believe what he was watching. Eira seemed entranced by that man. 

"You are such a sweet girl, soo well behaved. Your boss must adore you. " he kept saying to her in the same casual and calm but lust driven way. For such an elegant man, that behaviour was openly shameful yet he didn't seem to lose his royal vibe. He was like a shameless king seducing the unmarried daughter of a noble friend in a feast. 

" Not really, I'm a disappointment. He picked me because there was no one else willing to do the job. " she admitted to him. 

" Don't say that, you are such a good girl" he emphasized the last two words. " Do you want to know something more? You have really pretty lips, it makes the gesture of the offering even better. Why don't you keep trying with that cigarette? I like the sight as much as I like the feeling. " 

Eira rushed to pick it again and keep smoking.

 Wednesday was done with their bullshit and interrupted them. 

" I would like to discuss our common problem instead of watching you degrading my servant." 

" She is a lovely creature. Is she entirely yours?" Theo asked as he played with the girl's hair. 

" She doesn't serve me in the ways you are suggesting. Our bond is only professional with hints of familiar feelings on her part. Her mother is an important member of my family. She sees me as an old uncle because of this , i really don’t care. "  Wednesday explained. 

Theo seemed even happier. 

" That's so sweet. You are adorable! " he said to her. " Aren't you more comfortable now? I don' t want you to shy away from me, pretty thing. This feels so much better"

" I had never seen her like that. Is she alright?" Shadow asked

" She is a bit overwhelmed. That's all. She is enjoying herself, you don't need to worry. I think she likes me as much as I like her"  Theo answered. He was in a good mood, ready to hear whatever they were bringing to him. " So, going back to our business. What do you want from me?" 

" War is upon us, sooner or later it will affect every single one of us. I expect to count with you and your family on our side. "  Wednesday stated. 

" We live in perfect balance with the new people. They don't touch our worshippers" 

" For how long? Can you trust in an impulsive, unstable young brat like the Technical Boy? Your children would be his if you weren't in the way. How much do you think he would be willing to wait if he hears about the existence of a camp full of bored kids untouched by his toys? " the norse insisted 

" Mr World knows we have territories they shouldn't trespass" the greek pointed out. 

" With all the respect, sir. No one is able to predict what the boy is capable of doing if he is angry or offended enough. " Shadow added. " I had been there, you don't want to be his target." 

" What do you think, darling?" Theo asked Eira. " Should i trust in their advice? " 

" The boy lynched Shadow on his first day of work because he wasn't able to get information out of him. He is unpredictable and he doesn't tolerate when things don't go his way. Based on what we know he can see the system you had created to deny him access to your kids as a personal challenge to him. Young people are his biggest fans after all, specially little kids and teens in the age range of your lands' ' she answered. 

" Thanks for your honesty. You sound genuine in your concern and your observation is fair. Still, it is not enough to convince me. The young brat doesn't scare me. He is nothing without my electricity, his wifi goes around my sky and his phones don't do well in bad weather. Your boss will have to do better. "  he mocked him, making her a participant of it. 

" If you don't join us now they will come for you later and you will not have a backup. Once they end with us you are the next one. They want the whole market. They don't care who they are stealing from " warned Wednesday

" I'll not risk my family in a preventive war against an enemy that hasn't offended me yet. All I can offer you for now is a team of our halfblood heros as a  contribution." 

" We don't have Donar. We need the strength of the thunder with us and you are the only one who can replace him. Even if the rest of your people doesn't join we could use the help of your bolt. "  

" You are asking too much and I don't see a benefit. I'm sorry, my friend, but i can't help you this time." 

Shadow was pretty lost but he had a small fear regarding the route the conversation was heading. 

" Please, don't tell me you are thinking of trading Eira for his acceptance of the deal." 

" Don't be ridiculous. Of course i don't."  his boss denied. " She is not enough. The minimum he would accept is the mother. " 

" That is so rude. Are you always so demeaning to her? She is a servant you should be proud of." Theo complained. " Actually, i got the feeling that she is the only one who really likes to be here. Don't you, Eira?" 

" I do. You are very kind "  she agreed

" Well, if he keeps being so mean with you consider leaving him to serve me. I will value you a lot more, I can assure you that." 

The girl smiled while hearing his sweet talking. 

“ I give you two months before your wife finds out and kills her. She knows better. We taught her better” Wednesday teased him 

“Don’t scare her off like that. We are starting to know each other!” the greek replicated.” Don’t listen to him, sweetheart. She is not aware of my every step and she will not bother us if i don’t want us to be bothered.” 

“I don’t wish to bring troubles on a married man, or to enrage his wife.It’s not my style. I don’t have the experience required to deal with that sort of situation.” she declined politely. 

“ So naive, my shy girl. I have plenty of experience. I would love to keep teaching you stuff.” he replied, losing the few glimpses of shame he could had left. “ If the Vanir lady is your mother  i’m sure you must be like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. All you need is a push in the right direction to make the wilder side come out” he assured. 

Suddenly and without even being touched, the girl lost the balance in her seat spot. She wasn’t able to explain what made her do it. She ended up exactly where she imagined before, exactly where he wanted her: spreaded on his lap. In any regular circunstance she would have been extremely ashamed but the irresistable charm of the man was stronger than her shame. From her new point of view she had an even better access to contemplate the magnificence of the god’s face and she couldn’t help to feel entranced by him again. 

“ Shadow, go to my kitchen and get us some wine. You can pick whatever you like. I would do it myself but now i have this princess getting comfortable over here.”  she heard him requesting to her co worker. 

 During the rest of his excharge with Odin Zeus kept Eira on his lap, encouraging her to drink a few sips of wine from his own glass and keeping himself entertained messing with her without paying too much attention. He told him he was going to consider his idea just to get rid of him but he wasn’t on board with it. 

He would had kicked him out far sooner if he wouldn’t had picked an interest in his girl. 

[hopelessromanticspoonie]

As You Are

Title: Grilled Cheese

Co-authors: hopeless_romantic_spoonie, yespolkadotkitty

Summary: A reader insert series about a spoonie Stark Industries IT tech who finds a kindred spirit in Loki, God of Spoons, because it’s hard being different on the inside.

Rating: General Audiences

Also found on Ao3 here :)

Taglist: @just-the-hiddles, @yespolkadotkitty

“Is it a critical emergency or can it wait until tomorrow morning?” you asked distractedly, holding the phone to your ear with your shoulder while you perched on your stool in front of the stove, watching over your grilled ham and cheese sandwiches sizzling pleasantly.

“How long do you think an issue like this will take to wrap up?” Tony shot back another question, voice distorted slightly by the cell phone speaker wedged into your shoulder.

You flipped over the first sandwich, nodding silently to yourself in approval, and then flipped over the second. Your mouth quirked to the side and you shrugged your shoulders lightly, as if your boss could actually see you. No, the only one who could currently see you was the long and lean Asgardian draped across your couch.

“Hard to say. A few hours, maybe? But it’s…” your eyes drifted to the clock on the stove, “already eight o’clock. I’m not sure if I’d get anything done besides staring at the screen blankly at this point, Boss.”

“Fair enough, Spoons. Take your meds, get some sleep. We’ll touch base tomorrow,” he paused, and his tone shifted from kindness to concern, “Reindeer Games still there?”

“Mhm,” you hummed your assent, not wanting to think about the implications that held.

“He bothering you? Say the word, Dorothy,” he added referring to your home state, “I’ll have his ass out of there.”

“He’s fine.” It was, shockingly, true.

You hung up and slid the phone onto the counter beside the stove, directing your full attention to the sandwiches frying in front of you and maintaining your precarious balance on your cheap stool. It had only been five dollars at a local thrift shop, and with what you paid for rent for your tiny one-bedroom apartment in New York City, you preferred to save any money that you had. Medical bills ate at most of your expenses, and you never knew when a new one would arise.

“Why does that overgrown manchild Stark address you as cutlery?” Loki came up behind you, watching you tend to the sandwiches as he waited for your response.

You carefully leaned forward to turn off the burner to the ancient stove and pulled the pan off of the heat. “Grab a couple plates? They’re in there,” you pointed him in the right direction.

He didn’t object to your request, simply grabbed them for you and deposited them on the counter beside your phone. “I asked you a question, mortal,” he repeated, the barest hint of frustration peeking through his typical bored tones.

You rolled your eyes and slid a sandwich onto a plate, holding it out for him with a small smile. “You did, but I was focusing on not falling on my butt from this rickety stool and burning your precious sandwich. So impatient. Now, do you want your sandwich cut up?”

He looked so offended at the suggestion that it was comical, and your smile grew to crinkle around your eyes and nose. “I can handle Midgardian food perfectly well without your help.”

“Suit yourself. It tastes better cut into triangles. Not rectangles. If you cut it into rectangles then you’re a heathen and cannot be trusted,” you explained with mock seriousness, grabbing a knife from the silverware drawer and cutting your sandwich in half the correct way. You slid off of the stool and took your plate to the coffee table, settling down on top of your duvet nest beside Loki.

He had cut his sandwich the wrong way while you were getting situated, probably from one of his conjured daggers, and a mischievous twinkle glittered in his eyes as he bit into it while maintaining eye contact with you.

You shook your head in over-dramatic disappointment. “See? Heathen.”

Quick as lightning, he snagged the other half of your sandwich off of your plate and took a bite off of one of the corners. He feigned deep thought for a second before putting it back. “It seems your theory is correct.”

A laugh barked out of you, easy and free, and you nudged his arm with your shoulder. You were aiming for his shoulder, but Loki was tall. You decided to finally answer his question after you had eaten a few bites. You shook pills into your hand from your pill container, Sunday PM. “Well, we all know how he loves his nicknames, Rock of Ages, and I’m a spoonie. It’s just one that he’s stuck with more than the others.”

Loki, having eaten his sandwich much quicker than you, leaned back onto your couch, draping an arm behind where you were seated and appearing fully relaxed, excluding the crease of thought between his eyebrows. “What does it mean to be a ‘spoonie’?”

Unable to hold the position any longer, you clutched your plate carefully in one hand and slowly sat back into your pile of duvets and supportive pillows. Loki held his hand out for your plate without comment, and you handed it over so that you could use both hands to get comfortable before retrieving it from him. You were acutely aware of both the small amount of relief the supportive position held and the way his thumb rested against the nape of your neck, brushing your skin just enough to raise goosebumps.

“Well, as you’ve so nicely put it, I’m ‘substandard’. Here on Earth, it’s just called disabled, if they’re going to be nice about it. It’s why I take so many different meds. Anyway, there’s a theory called the ‘Spoon Theory’ that was used to explain how people who identify it have to go about their daily lives.”

You took a beat, gathering your thoughts and taking another bite of your sandwich, watching him as he listened to you. You had his full attention, and it was almost too intense to be the sole focus of his piercing gaze as he waited for you to continue. Clearing your throat, you plowed on, doing your best not to ramble too much, “Everything is harder for me, but you know that. It’s why you brought the books. You figured out that I was going to be exhausted and in more pain from going to that party. The way the spoon theory would phrase that is that I used up spoons from the next day to have more fun that night. It’s easier to explain if I have spoons handy, or something to draw with…”

He huffed in exasperation and held out one elegant hand. Spoons, presumably from your kitchen, flew into his outstretched hand. You only had four, living alone and all, but it would do to prove your point. You took them with a nod of gratitude before pressing on, “So, say I’m having a really terrible pain day and I wake up knowing that I’m not going to have the physical and mental strength to get much done that day. So, I have to decide what is important to ‘spend’ my spoons on and what isn’t.

“Getting out of bed already takes away one spoon.” You place one on his thigh. “Cooking usually is the one thing I can kind of let go, with food delivery and freezer meals, so I can forget that. But then it takes spoons to shower, get ready for the day, change out of my pjs, do any tidying up, etc. If I desperately needed to shower, for instance,” you dropped the rest of your spoons unceremoniously onto the duvet currently cocooning you, “then that’d be all that I really got done for the day. It’s just a way for those not in the disability community to understand how we have to look at life and prioritize what we do each day.”

He was silent for several minutes, frowning in thought.

You left him to it, finishing the rest of your cooling sandwich before leaving the plate in your lap. It wasn’t worth leaning forward and possibly falling on your face just to put it on the ramshackle coffee table.

“What do you do when you cannot finish all of your tasks for the day?” His expression was difficult to read, curiosity and frustration warring on his elegant features.

“Well, I do what I can. And I hope that whatever I can’t get done can either wait until tomorrow or isn’t important.”

He grabbed a book from the impressive stack that he renewed daily on your coffee table, resuming his previous position that anchored his thumb to the nape of your neck. The familiar touch made you shiver, but you couldn’t pinpoint the exact reasons why.

“That will not do. Your fragile mortal body is already delicate enough as it is without you taking proper care of it,” he stated, matter-of-fact, cracking open the book in his deft-fingered hands. “I will be of your assistance when necessary.”

You opened your mouth to say something, then shut it, unable to come up with the words to properly express your confusion at his insistence to help you out. You eventually eeked out: “Why?”

He glanced over as if you were a remedial child in need of education. “Because my time in what Stark generously calls a Tower does not require all my hours.”

God, he was a dick sometimes. “Why me,” you clarified.

A smile touched at his lips. “Because, as I told you at the gala, I know what it is like to appear as everyone on the outside, yet be different on the inside. We are kindred spirits, you and I.”

You snorted. “Sure. We’re practically soulmates. Apart from the whole destroying New York thing,” you deadpanned.

He arched a black-as-sin brow. “As you well know, mortal, I was not myself during that period.”

Your stomach lurched, and guilt ate at you a little, making the sandwich you just finished sit like lead. "I know." Over the last few months, you had learned that while Loki could be an arrogant asshole, a pedant and an egomaniac, he wasn't a destroyer of worlds. "Sorry."

He rolled a shoulder as if this was no big deal. "I have learned a thing or two about perception, Midgardian."

And then he picked up a battered copy of Hamlet and started to read to you as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Maybe your life wasn't perfect. But cocooned in the duvet, your stomach full of grilled cheese, your feet propped on his solid thigh, listening to the cadence of his soothing British drawl, you thought: it's pretty darn close.

[ofhamlcts]

hi all!!! I’m Emily and I am absolutely thrilled to be here writing with you! I seriously cannot wait to begin plotting and writing and all of the angst we’re going to kill each other with! but for now, i’ll quit my rambling and start introducing the mess that is my child.

without further ado: larissa griffith aka hamlet

PINTEREST / APPLICATION 

I do not - and will never - expect you to read my long ass, rambly application because we are all adults with lives!!! below, i’ve summarised the most important information into short(er)  bullet points for your consumption! these should give you a good insight into who lar is as a character and serve as a launch pad for plotting!!!

(TW: Alcoholism and abuse)

larissa has strong roots in Britain's working class, going all the way back to the industrial revolution. traditionally miners, her entire family has a chip on their shoulder about Thatcher and that stand off with the miners, forcing them to turn abandon their traditions and livelihoods. instead, her mother was/is a careworker and her father was a factory worker. 

she grew up poor - dirt poor - but her mother forbade her from knowing it. instead, she enlisted lysander to conceal the truth; a kindness on both their parts. she encouraged the pair to “make their own magic” -  bus-trips to neighbouring towns to substitute for far-flung holidays, treasure hunts in charity shops instead of newly wrapped birthday treats, bargain hunting in supermarkets instead of gourmet dishes.

Lysander was at the centre of her childhood. Two years her senior, they were a two-pieced puzzle, complementary in their opposites. The boy with the bleeding heart, he was kindness personified; the first to befriend an outcast, accepting of people’s shortcomings, optimistic in his belief that the trajectory of life was up. Lysander was both best friend and brother, co-conspirator and protector.

Shit hit the fan after the 2008 financial crash. Her mother’s pay was frozen and her father was laid off. Faced with failure as a provider, husband and father - his identity eroded - he transformed into something else. He drank. A lot. At first, the drinking isn’t so bad.  Between one and five glasses, he’s a joy. He sings Christmas songs in July and dances like he’ll never have the chance to again. After that comes the bits Larissa never saw. Arguments between her parents - over money, unemployment and benefits - soon grow physical. At the end of the night, her father always begs for forgiveness and promises to never drink again. Her mother always forgives him. And he always breaks his word. Lysander ensured she never knew what was going on in their house.

He protected her in other ways too. when Larissa was eleven, her father came home drunk and demanded she go with him on a father-daughter road trip. lysander intervened, first attempting to reason with him. when that fails, he orders you out. child that she was, larissa wriggled free from her father’s trip and fled to lysander’s room, where she knew she’d always be safe. hours later, Lysander pulled back the covers, his face shaded in dried blood and hastily applied bandages. come on, he urged, it’s time to go on an adventure.

Adventure turned out to be two children and one shaken mother moving into their grandparents house thirty minutes outside of Edinburgh. Determined to ensure that abuse didn’t blight their future, she insisted on both siblings sitting and passing entrance exams and scholarship interviews for the leading private school. Both she and Lysander passed. But from the very beginning, it was clear that they were different from everyone else. The other students had double-barrelled surnames and parents who were titans of industry and the creme-de-la-creme of society. Possessed by their own self-worth, they were the very embodiment of entitlement. Larissa despised them instantly, taking their existence as proof of a fundamental ill in the universe. It wasn’t fair that they had so much when she had so little, or that their families continued to be whole.

Lysander saw things differently. Fire and water, sun and moon - she had always known there were fundamental differences between the two of them, but hadn’t thought they would ever drive them apart. Whilst Larissa spurned her new school, preferring to bury her head in her work and befriend the librarians, Lysander threw himself head first into his new life, choosing to see the opportunity and kindness in his new peers. Bit by bit, the gulf between them widened - until they led separate lives. It broke her heart. Larissa didn’t know what to do with her sorrow except unleash it upon Lysander, leading to their one and only argument. She accused him of looking down upon his family and of being ashamed of them. She even used the words class traitor

Fences were only mended between the two of them on account of Larissa finding out what had really happened between her mother and her father - and realising the truth of her own past. Once she understood what Lysander had done to protect her, Larissa bit her lip and swallowed her pride; knocking on his door to apologise. From that moment forward, she swore she would do whatever she could to repay him.

More than anything else, Larissa felt guilty that she hadn’t known about her father’s true nature. Remorseful that she hadn’t helped. Whilst her family told her not to chastise herself, pointing out she had only been a child - Larissa insisted on bearing a cross and atoning for her sins. From then on, she swore to repay the kindness shown to her by her mother and Lysander and dedicate her life to protecting society’s most vulnerable, single handedly correcting the injustices she witnessed, whether they be gender, racial or class.

Larissa entered Ashcroft with her fists curled, ready to go to war and burn the establishment to the ground if that was what it took to succeed. Mind already made up, she decided that Ashcroft was like every other university - dominated by white men, more obsessed with statistics than welfare and infected with rampant sexism.

Sure enough, she got to work immediately. Unable to bite her lip, Larissa called out every slight, intentional or otherwise. Headstrong and stubborn, once she has the bit between her teeth she’s restless in her pursuit. In her two-and-a-bit years at Ashcroft, she’s prosecuted several successful campaigns. From picking apart the English literature reading list for being too colonial, calling out Lecturers on their sexist bullshit and launching a petition to force Ashcroft to divest from fossil fuel investments, no cause escapes her attention. By far, her most ambitious campaign was in her first year, once she  discovered that Ashcroft’s cleaners - as agency workers - were being denied fair wages, holiday leave and sick pay. Outraged, she spearheaded a campaign to bring them ‘in-house’; the first person to arrive and the last person to leave the picket lines.

Larissa initially rejected Oberon Ashcroft’s invitation into the Imperium society. Invited after she stormed into his office and delivered a list of cleaners demands, she refused to join until he acceded to the cleaner’s demands. He did so immediately - trapping her in her own promises. 

Larissa’s dislike for Octavia was no big secret. Her brother’s taste in partners has always been poor - so whilst she wasn’t surprised he went for another blonde heiress, Larissa was disappointed; knowing that it could only end in heartbreak for her brother. Girls like Octavia did not end up with boys from families like hers. 

There’s no such thing as justice. That’s Larissa’s new motto; practically every other sentence out of her mouth since Lysander was arrested. Whilst her brother put - and continues to place - his father in the judicial system, she saw the writing on the wall from the beginning - suspecting that he was one small pawn in someone else’s game. There is no doubt in her mind that Lysander is innocent - nor has there ever been any. 

Larissa offered to lie on the stand for Lysander; offering him the alibi that would have seen him slip the noose around his neck. He forbid her, telling her to think of her career, her freedom, her life. He didn’t know that there wasn’t a life worth living without him in it. 

Besides, her life has changed beyond all recognition. Some of those changes are of her own making. Stricken by grief, she’s abandoned almost everyone and everyone who meant anything. Theresa was the first to fall by the wayside, abandoned without a moment’s thought. It’s too selfish to try to be happy whilst her brother rots. Academics go next - her grades slip letter by letter, until Headmaster Ashcroft writes sternly worded letters warning of a scholarship loss. She’s even lost interest in her causes; all injustices paling in comparison to the one committed against Lysander. In short, she’s turned against the world, half-gladly.

Coming back to Ashcroft was a bad idea, but she’ll never admit it. Her newly minted title of “sister of the murderer” is not an easy one to bear. Someone starts a rumour that she’ll be expelled from the Imperium Society. More people hope it’s true. Never apt at biting her tongue, she punches them - and half a dozen more - in the face. 

Larissa has tried to convince Lysander to fight back - to launch an appeal, do an interview with the media to tell his story - to do something, anything! Every time, his answer is the same. Sadly, he shakes his head.

Octavia comes in the space between dreams and nightmares. Her beauty has been snatched from her, drained with her life force. She finds this version of Octavia an easier one to stomach. Without facade, Larissa can stare directly into her soul. How is it that dead, Octavia feels more human to her? Younger too - before her eyes, Larissa sees Octavia as she must have once been - a little girl with all the fire of life inside of her. Any hate borne towards her in life softens into pity. Catching her glancing at a photo of her and Lysander, Larissa asks the one question that will shake the universe. Did he kill you? With only half a second to consider the weight of that question - and whether she wants to hear the answer, Octavia shakes her head. No.

Larissa makes Octavia a promise. She swears not to rest until she finds the person who did. Not for her, but for Lysander.

[enaasteria]

Apartment 5108 // 16

Apartment 5108 — ft. Oh Sehun // Contemporary Romance // Adult Fiction // Sexual & Explicit Language — in later chapters

A/N: It’s long (19,000ish words) and I’m sorry. This chapter is more of closing loose ends but nevertheless---please read with low expectations. 

Chapters // 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14 // 15

16

I remember staring back at Sehun that night.

I remember his imploring request to believe in him one last time. I remember his each and every sentiment sinking deep into the well of my heart and I remember how all of my words were lost beyond grasp while I listened to his final plea.

‘Believe in me.

Believe in me one last time, Ahri.’

It wasn’t hearing the four letters to my name muting my lips or hushing my thoughts. It was his determination in expressing how he was trying to do better---to be better than the man he once was.

Sehun finally showed me progress. He displayed his will to become someone far different than the man I lived with months ago and he was a person untethered to his past just as I have moved forward from mine.

It’s all I ever wanted from him.

It’s all I ever wanted to see from him.

For countless moments, I tied myself to the quiet night. I was unable to summon any sensible reply in head or heart. I remained without speech and could only watch as Sehun mirrored my voiceless actions. My stillness became his own while he patiently waited for my response.

And all I could give him, all I could answer with was a nod void of any sound or noise. Every small movement I made was filled with a myriad of emotions traversing through my skin and bones. They were heavy feelings I inwardly felt but couldn’t translate nor properly convey into letters or sentences. It was a mixture of uncertainty, worry, but also wonder and curiosity in how he’s going to show me precisely what I always longed for in this lifetime---

Love.

“Again,” my best friend demands. She’s full of breathless anticipation as the unfaltering amazement spills from her voice. “Tell it again from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”

“Soi---

“Please?”

“This is the sixteenth time I’ve told this story.”

“And it gets better with each time, Ahri. You know I love a good romance.”

A weighty sigh rolls off my tongue as I dig my face into a pillow, suffocating my groans from reaching the surface. As much as I enjoy love stories, reciting my own intimate tribulations repeatedly from weeks ago doesn’t stop the embarrassment from making a home on my rosy cheeks. 

But I’m awestruck with her reaction to Sehun as of late. For a while, she refused to pronounce his name, finding the sound of it leaving a bitter taste at the back of her throat. It’s a black and white disparity now as she revels in my narrative, flopping her slim extremities across the expanse of my bed. The thought summons a light over my face because she, along with my other two friends, see his improvement.

“And I must remind you, Sehun and I are not characters in one of your romance novels.”

“True. You’re not filthy enough. Him? Maybe. You? Possibly with some practice.” She rises from lying position and pulls me up with her.

I give her an intrigued expression of what she reads in the privacy of her home but make a note to ask about it later, not now because it’s definitely not the right time to hear about fantasies. Instead, my soft laughter fills the bedroom. “Please go get ready. You can give me lessons from your suggestive, fictional dalliances on the way to the party. We have a busy night ahead.”

“We most certainly do.” Her brows wiggle up and down before she jumps out of bed like a child racing towards their favorite treat. 

I internally cringe, hoping she doesn’t trip over the mass of decorations I’m temporarily housing for Seunghyun and Lia’s wedding. Calligraphy signage, linen table cloths and napkins, picture frames, and even their wedding favors---a copious amount of reserve Merlots bottled in the year they met are scattered throughout my apartment. Everything was shipped to me because their living spaces no longer have the capacity to accommodate even an additional speck of dust. But she manages to avoid disaster and disappears into my closet. 

There’s an extra bounce in her steps as she remembers why she’s spending this weekend before their wedding at my apartment in the first place.

Myungsoo invited Chanyeol, Soi, and I to KALON’s magazine release party located at an industrial warehouse a few minutes from where I live. He submitted our photoshoot to the lifestyle publication and found out they’re including the feature in their Autumn/Winter print edition. None of us have seen any of the photos and I assume it’s why Soi is particularly excited to dress up so she can witness her vision in matte paper form.

Although, I’m not sure what she expects to find inside my closet because my less than abundant amount of party clothes equate to slim selections. 

“Ahri.”

“Hrm?” I walk to her as she calls out my name but all sense dissolves once my sights settle upon the ghastly mess she created. It takes me back to our room at Seunghyun and Lia’s getaway and I find being neat truly isn’t one of Soi’s many prized qualities.

Everything is out of order and I’m baffled she managed all of this within two minutes of being alone in the confined space. My folded clothes ranging from sweaters to pants are thrown askew. Wooden hangers dangle haphazardly off the rack and even my shoes are misplaced from one end of the closet to the other.

“What are you going to wear?” Soi asks, incognizant to how she’s a human tornado.

Holding in a low chuckle, I attempt to search for the outfit I set aside and find it pinned underneath the laundry basket. Myungsoo mentioned it wasn’t a formal event so I chose something simple. A white rayon short sleeve blouse with black jeans. I give them to Soi before sitting down on the hardwood floors and watch her gaze study the two pieces. “Should I wear something else?” I offer in between her many beats of contemplation. “A dress perhaps?”

She shakes her head with a pleasant merriment stretching from ear to ear. “No, these are perfect and very much you.”

“Figured you would say that but if you must, there’s a shopping bag in the back right corner. I bought them to try on at home but haven’t had the chance yet. Maybe you’ll find something in there to wear.”

“Moon Ahri buying dresses at a store? Who would’ve known this would be the you of today.”

Her sarcasm doesn’t go unnoticed. She tosses my chosen outfit over to me while I scoot towards the door and lean against the frame. “Really?”

“Yes, really. You avoided the mall like it was a contagion.”

“It still is.”

She scoffs before a succinct gasp breaks the soundtrack of her rummaging through the pile of clothes. “This. What about this one?”

My body sways over to see what she picked but rather than finding something new, she somehow managed to choose my mom’s blue dress. The same dress I wore to Sehun’s parent’s Christmas Eve dinner and the very one he wanted me to shove into a shredder.

A bewildered grin emerges as I refuse. “No, definitely not that one.”

“What---Why not?”

“Because it’s my mom’s dress and I said right corner. Not the left, Soi. You were looking through the donation bag.”

Her jaw unhinges, latching in place as if she can’t discern if this is a dream or occurring in real life. “This is your mom’s dress? That dress? The dress she wore while she gave you your one and only gift?” Soi trudges over to where I’m sitting and collapses to her knees in front of me. With the cobalt fabric draped over one arm, she takes in my face and stares directly into my eyes, searching for some kind of answer I doubt she’ll uncover just by ogling at me in this peculiar manner. “And you’re throwing this dress away?”

“Not just the dress,” I mumble in between short breaths because she’s squishing my lips along with my ability to speak properly. “The earrings are somewhere in there too.”

“But you’re throwing them away.”

“I’m donating them. Didn’t have the heart to completely trash them since some good can still come out of it.”

Soi releases her grasp on my cheeks and waits for me to elaborate. She’s wondering why I decided to give them away as opposed to ripping and burning their essence. It’s easier for her to understand if I inflicted the same calamitous treatment on the two items as my parents subjected upon me.

But what I strive for isn’t to act like my parents. It’s to become a person they wholly believed I could never grasp within this world.

“I thought my mother loved me. It was a hope. It was a minute dream I conjured up because I forced myself to believe she cared enough to give me one of her possessions. It was my innocent method in coping and I didn’t want to consider the real reason. I ignored it because it felt better to hope than to ensue life into the fact that---

“That she didn’t.”

I nod as Soi finishes my sentence. 

My mom was never seen wearing anything twice. It was unfathomable for her to wear any attire or jewelry more than once so she constantly threw away her belongings. The blue dress and earrings were no exception---as I wasn’t either.

“She believed once an item was no longer new, they lost their value. They were unworthy of her and she implied I was just that to her---that I deserved nothing more than the items she rejects. I was, down to the very core, fitting of only the trash she gave me. I held no merit and couldn’t mentally process her cruel beliefs back then. It was too much to deal with on my own.”

“But it’s different now. You’re different now.”

My gaze lingers on the blue dress. I take it from Soi and hold onto the garment for one last time before placing it flat on the floor. I brush over the textile, feeling the fabric glide against my skin and find there’s no lingering desire of what my mother felt towards me. 

“I don’t want her to have a hold on me anymore. I don’t want to continue hoping when the blatant answer was always there. She didn’t love me or care for me but it doesn’t mean I should allow it to imprison me in futile wants and wishes for the rest of my life.”

“That’s why you’re giving them away. You’re freeing yourself from them.”

“Once and for all. The reason why I’m not throwing them away is because my mom would’ve tossed them into the bin without a second glance. I’m not like her. I'm the contrast of who she was and these items can still do good. They can be given to someone who wants or needs them.”

“So someone else can enjoy the dress for what it is---just a dress.”

Finally folding up the garment, I hand it back to Soi and recite her exact thoughts. “Right. It’s just a dress.”

I fail to control the delight spreading inside my chest. It expands through every vein and vessel, trickling all the way up to the winged corners of my eyes and it’s because of the peaceful contentment. The long overdue chapter with my parents is officially closed and I’m finally at a stage in my life where I’m perfectly happy. It’s not forced. It’s not an emotion I’m making myself show the world but it’s originating from within and my smile swells from satisfaction. 

“And you’re right in every sense. It goes to prove how you’re a much better person than your mom could ever aspire to be, Ahri. She couldn’t and will never measure up to you.”

“I’d like to think the same too.”

“Really. You are.”

The lightheartedness is short lived as I catch onto Soi’s voice waning to a whisper. She copies my sitting position and her head leans on my shoulder. We descend into a strange silence; it’s a kind I’m not accustomed to especially in her presence.

I’m used to her vibrant personality. She has the skill to view the positive in all she does but there are moments when she’s quiet with her deep breaths outweighing her speech and her timbre unveiling a tinge of sadness. It’s then when I realize even she bears her own qualms without knowing how to explain them. “Soi? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.”

“Honestly, it’s silly. It really is. I don’t even know why I’m letting it get to me---again.”

With the latter word, I know she’s referring to Yixing. “You helped me through so much. I’d like to think you can confide in me as well.”

She lifts her head with her chest rising and falling to a steady tempo. Her vision roams around my closet as if the action will somehow release her encaged emotions. “You’ve grown, Ahri. You’re incredible and it’s like you said, everyone has the ability to change if they worked hard enough. You did with your parents, your relationships, and with how you live your life. Seeing and listening to what you’ve been through, I can’t help but wonder why couldn’t Yixing?”

The pain stitches itself onto her skin like an invisible tattoo. It’s a scar she tries to cover behind a brave smile but she’s hurting. The anguish is still there and I entwine my fingers within hers to ease the aches.

“We were great together but with every relationship, we’re supposed to grow with each other. Learn off of each other. Build a life with one another but Yixing didn’t want anything to change. It felt stagnant with him. He didn’t want our lives to converge more than it already did because something more meant time and attention away from his dance. There was no middle ground. He couldn’t cooperate and refused to budge on any issue. I was willing to compromise because I understood how important his work meant to him.”

“But in the end, he still couldn’t.”

Her hold on me tightens as she stops the difficult feelings from spilling out into the open. “No, he couldn’t. It was a situation he didn’t want to deal with and dismissed the matter in favor of his own stern beliefs. The way he behaved made me think I was inadequate like I wasn’t important enough for him to try.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re not enough. Don’t permit his lack of ability to see how great you are determine your self-worth.”

“I know. It used to eat me up inside. It used to gnaw at my flesh and bones when I was consumed by the negativity. It’s much less now. I don’t let it get to me as often but a part of me is still regretful over it.”

“Like when your thoughts wander and you think about the what ifs and could’ve beens.” 

I know how she feels. I’ve been in her position. I’ve thought about the same dangerous questions and endured the grief she sustained on a daily basis. But she can overcome them. She can push through this obstacle and strive towards something far greater than what Yixing could ever offer.

With a deep breath and a strong exhale, her mood gradually cheers up. She voices a comment seemingly coming from out of nowhere while her sharp diction and honed speech spreads throughout the room. “Exactly, but what prevails is my anger and annoyance over the whole matter.”

It takes me a second to acclimate when her tone suddenly increases in melodic key. My vision on her widens because as fast as her somber demeanor appeared, it just as quickly vanishes. Her mannerisms are defined as dynamic and lively. She was never the type to dwell in pessimistic tides for long. 

Her nose scrunches into a tight ball while her gaze fires imaginary daggers straight into my rib cage. I wonder why she’s abruptly giving me this seething expression as if I did a serious wrong to her and wish this isn’t one of the rare occasions where she unleashes her wrath on my poor old soul. 

I’m scared to ask but proceed with caution. “You’re annoyed?”

“Absolutely annoyed.”

“At---me?”

“Partly you, but mostly annoyed over your Oh Sehun because even he changed. I thought he would be the very last person on the planet to mature and grow in character, but he did. He made the effort for you. And again, it makes me want to scream up to the high heavens, why couldn’t Yixing? Where’s the justice in all of this?”

She airs out an infuriating sigh and returns to her normal self as she stands and makes small, whiny stomps over to the shopping bag. Wrath averted but amusing, nevertheless, as I watch her petite frame walk away with such vexation. 

“You sound bitter.”

“Can you blame me?”

I give her a whimsical grin and shake my head. “No, but may I correct you on two minor details?”

“Go for it.”

“One. He’s not mine.”

“He is.”

“No, he’s not.”

“He is, Ahri. If what he said on the bridge was any indicator---he is, without a sense of doubt, completely and entirely yours.”

“Soi---”

“We can agree to disagree. What’s the second?”

I concede but her sentiments rattle my heart, shaking the tiny strings and lines scattering throughout my body because having someone all to myself is an otherworldly sort of notion. I don’t mull on the matter for more than a minute before moving onto the next number. “Two. I’m not sure you can say he’s fully changed per se.”

“What do you mean?” 

My shoulders shrug as my fingers play with the hem of the white shirt sitting on my lap. “Sehun hasn’t said or done anything more beyond the norm since our talk that night.”

“He hasn’t?”

My head turns left and right and she makes a huh noise. It’s not a question or confusion. It’s her method in running through all the possible scenarios and reasonings. I can’t read her expression but she’s perturbed by the issue. 

I am worried about the sincerity of Sehun’s words. I wonder if he meant every single promise but I don’t want it to consume my spirit and life. It’s not something I’m waiting for minute by minute or second by second. I choose to carry on without overthinking which is different from how I was prone to doing so in the past.

“You don’t seem very bothered by it, Ahri.”

“I may not seem like it, but I am.”

“You are?”

“I would be lying if I said it didn’t bother me at all because it does. I’m just not letting my curiosity eat me alive.”

“So you’re not too concerned with his promise---with what he said? To believe in him, to believe in him one last time.”

I bury my face into the palms of my hands because she’s mocking me. She’s making fun of my odd circumstances with her singsong voice trilling through the enclosed space. I’m tempted to lock her in my closet for all of time but instead let out a dubious laugh. “Disregarding the last portion of your dialogue, I don’t know what Sehun’s planning to show me or if he’s planning anything at all. But if he does, then he will. He’ll show me what I want to see but if he doesn’t, then I guess we both move on.” 

Her hand sweeps over her lips while her top frame bobs up and down. It appears she’s going along with what I’m telling her but when she does this, I know she has something else to say; it’s something she’s keenly aware of and I’m not.

My fingers move to the crook of my neck, kneading the skin as I recount my statement and debate the validity of my actions. “Is---is that not right? Is that not what I’m supposed to do or how I’m supposed to feel?”

“There’s no right or wrong feeling and it’s okay to behave as you have.”

“But?”

“But there’s another option besides waiting in limbo or moving on.” She hums a melodious tune with a smile stretching from ear to ear. “You could ask or talk to him about it.”

I shut my eyes to a pinch because it wasn’t what I thought she would say. Her more than straightforward approach astonishes me and I joke with her. “Is that what the characters in your books would do if they were in my situation?”

“If I remember correctly, you and Sehun aren’t like the characters in my novels full of secret rendezvous and moonlight trysts. So, no, they wouldn’t do that in your situation. The fictional characters I read about will dance in between miscommunication and unsaid words. They will wait until the very last moment to reveal what they’re feeling when most could be solved if they addressed it right away. But again, that’s why they’re books. They’re entertainment. You and Sehun. You’re not them so if you’re feeling uncertain about how he’s been acting lately, even if it’s just a tiny bit---talk to him. Ask him directly and you’ll find out why.” She emphasizes the final word and my figure cranes at her heightened elocution.

“Why do I have the feeling you already know the reason behind his behavior?”

“Because I do.”

“Care to tell me?”

“No, not really. It’s not my place to reveal such significant matters of the heart,” she sneers and grabs a bunch of clothes, making her way to the bathroom.

I throw a stray sock at her bottom before she disappears behind the safety of closed doors. “Killjoy.”

“I heard that.”

Feathery chuckles swim along the expanse of my chest but all the while, I keep her advice. 

I place it securely inside my mind and consider it for the next time I meet the fateful man.

After an hour of Soi trying on dress after dress and wrangling over which one accentuates her petite figure better, we make it to KALON’s magazine release party. With the sky darkening to night and the sun setting beyond the horizon, I feel the late autumn air bring in a chilled wind. The clouds overhead blanket across the rising moon and we meet Chanyeol at the entrance which is already bustling with an eclectic number of people. 

Even in casual all black attire, Chanyeol exudes a dapper appearance. Unfortunate for most, the dashing impression only lasts up until he decides to open that witty mouth of his. His love for spewing nonsense doesn’t relent as he greets us. “Well, if it isn’t Soi and my former wife with the sadistic talent of breaking men's hearts.”

“How could I break something which was already broken to begin with?” I retort without hesitation because he’s not the only person who loves to dabble in meaningless banter and harmless quips.

Chanyeol’s eyes grow wide, pluming to round orbs of horror. His hand draws over his chest with nails digging into his shirt as if I punctured him with a sword imbued with poisoned love. “The pain. Must you hurt me so?”

“Always.” I give him a cynical smirk before checking my phone to see where we’re meeting Myungsoo and ignore Chanyeol’s fake cries into Soi’s shoulder. Though, she does very little to appease his sorrows. “Myungsoo’s still driving. Traffic in the city but he should be here in about 5 minutes.”

“That means 5 minutes to get myself a drink,” Soi pipes and saunters off into the building while Chanyeol and I wait outside in the brisk weather. I mentally chastise myself for not wearing a jacket as my arms wrap around one another, rubbing my exposed skin to create a sliver of warmth.

The tall male next to me notices with his sulking tendencies subsiding. Per his usual habits, there’s an enjoyment prancing along the highs and lows of his voice in lieu of his former brooding mood. He takes a step towards me, inching closer and closer while angling his grand frame down to my size. “You know, hugs are a great solution to when you’re feeling cold.”

“I, regretfully, must pass.” I push out my bottom fold into a pout, sending it off into his direction and see what other creative comebacks he’s prepared for our trivial competition of words.

“How about my oversized tee?”

“Are you wearing anything else under that oversized tee?”

Chanyeol ponders on the question before gracing me with his addictive, mischievous grin. It’s contagious and enough for me to believe even I can smile forever if I’m around his buoyant personality. He peers into his shirt, examining his form and I slightly wonder what he’s hiding under there (but not for long because a half naked Chanyeol should never be one of my concerns in life). “Nope. Nothing.”

“Then, I must say no.”

“A hoodie. I have one in the car.”

“Pass again, which reminds me. There’s a collection of your leftover hoodies at my apartment and they’re all waiting to go home to their proper owner.”

“Who says they’re not already with their proper owner?” he retaliates as if what I said was exactly what his ears wanted to hear. “Plus, your apartment is like my second home. I think I’ll leave them there for now.”

“How is my apartment your second home? It’s more or less you ran out of closet space. Please pick them up, Chanyeol. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with 15 of your black hoodies.”

“Wear them. They look better on you anyway.”

It’s an enticing notion. As much as I love comfortable clothes and huge sweaters to curl into at night, I, nonetheless, abstain from his offer because my apartment is turning into everyone’s excess storage room. “Wouldn’t you rather have someone else wearing your clothes?”

Chanyeol raises his brows and shakes his silvery locks at me. Metallic strands of hair drape over his eyes and I note how there’s no sadness lurking in them. If anything, he appears enthralled over some unknown fact beyond my understanding. “Maybe someone else later on but right now, the thought of you wearing them is my greatest joy.”

“Why is that?”

I catch a glimmer of evil perch at the corner of his mouth. He speaks clearer than before, enunciating every letter and syllable with precise diction. “Because it’ll bring me wondrous pleasure when I think about you wearing my clothes in front of the person you love, Ms. Just Moon Ahri.”

He ends his peculiar statement with a flirty wink and waltzes around me. I hear him greet Myungsoo from behind but I’m left pinned in a daze. Whereas my feet refrain from moving, my lips open and close like clockwork. They mutter to themselves, repeating his sentiments as if pronouncing it again will provide insight on how his clever brain ticks. My body finally wills itself to turn around for clarification but the question is heard by more people than I originally intended. “Why are you talking about the person I love?”

It’s in that moment when I realize the demonic boy trapped me in his horrific game of fun. Chanyeol lured me into a destructive path and easily won this round, perhaps even this entire war. I grit his name in between my teeth because I’m struck mute when I see the number of individuals Myungsoo brought with him to this event.

Lia and Seunghyun are included in the mix but the one person my eyes naturally trail towards is the last person I thought would ever show up tonight.

Sehun.

The elated boy stands with his height shadowing over me as I snap my jaw to a shut, contemplating a vow of silence for all of eternity. He doesn’t pass on the opportunity and hammers the last nail into my coffin, sealing in my death with ease. “And who is this person you love?”

My heart sinks into my gut and I feel my soul leave the atmosphere. I cry for it to take me along because I don’t know how to rid myself of this dire situation. My cheeks heat up and I’m certain they’re changing in hue as the distinct feeling of dread trickles down every part of my limbs with no remedy for a cure.

Sehun’s on the opposite spectrum. There’s a light glowing in him, a hope or desire in needing to hear the answer to his question. Soi’s lingering advice shoots through my head like a fire cannon and I mentally quiet the chaos to keep it from seeping onto my face (knowing far well it’s a fruitless cause). 

As much as I want to shout out a name, none is spoken because it doesn’t feel right. It’s not the right place; it’s not the right time. I swallow the lump hinging inside my throat and barely manage to talk like a normal functioning adult, albeit rather slowly at a chopped pace. "I---I-I--lo--”

Sehun hangs onto every word and it’s similar to the night when we sat on the bridge overlooking the stream. He’s waiting for my response. He’s eager to hear a specific name marry into the air between us but somehow in some bizarre universe, there’s a deity looking out for me. There is a supreme being living on this earth and she’s come to save me in the form of Soi.

“Ahri.” 

My attention snaps to my best friend reappearing. She’s sipping on her drink, unaware of what she’s stumbling into and I take advantage of it. “The person I love is Soi,” I declare. It’s not a lie. It probably not what Sehun wanted to hear but it did comprise of a truth; it’s just not the truth he was hoping for. 

Soi is oblivious in how she’s become my new god as she peers at us through long lashes. She blinks from me to Sehun and there’s a brief shock as her attention ambles onto the latter male, puzzling over why he’s here of all places. I link my arm within hers, greet the rest of the group in one swooping breath, and walk in the way she came. 

With one glance back at Sehun, I see him grinning to himself. It’s a soft, velvety laugh bouncing through his shoulders and travels all the way down to his knees.

And I can’t help but do the same. 

My actions reflect his captivating movements. I don’t have an understanding on why I’m amused over the encounter but hide my embarrassing smile from emerging. Once we reach a comfortable distance away from the others, Soi tugs on my shirt with a free hand and an intrigue peeps through her bright visage. “Did I miss something?” 

"No, nothing important---only my ultimate demise.” 

“Oh, so the usual then?”

“Yes. Just the usual.” My head shakes and feel I should simply accept my entire life as one, terribly drawn out joke. I decide not to relive my shortcomings with Sehun in intimate detail and instead focus on the surroundings (because concentrating on the scenery around us won’t phase me into a blushing red pumpkin for the rest of the night).

KALON magazine emphasizes beauty from within. They favor inner attractiveness, praising the humble and modest rather than when it’s typically seen in outward appearances. It’s evident in the building they chose to host their party. The exterior portrays a cold, almost frigid construction and most wouldn’t take a second glimpse at it in passing. Its muted gray tones convey little to no spirit but once inside, the bones of the warehouse shine and provide a warmth filled with familiarity.

The high ceilings are lined with exposed metal beams. They’re painted charcoal in color and contrast against the crisp, white walls and golden light. The open plan layout is accentuated with wooden columns. They’re rich in hue with the grains depicting the structure’s old age but what piques my fascination is the furthest right corner. Black stairs lead up to the mezzanine level framed by hazed glass and black steel railings. The balcony design provides a view over the vast space and I note the easel placed in the center. It’s supporting an artwork but the piece is covered by a dark linen cloth.

“It’s the magazine cover,” Myungsoo says and follows my line of sight. “They’re revealing it tonight.”

“Are you one of the contenders?”

“Yeah, along with about 20 other photographers who are also featured in the magazine.” Myungsoo gestures to the displays around us. 

Each photo is printed on heavy stock paper the size of posters and hang from thin wires attached to the ceiling. Some are single photographs while others are pages of the magazine spreads with descriptions and stories shown at a larger scale for guests to read. They’re an inside look into the publication and we walk around, perusing the various images around the gallery.

Myungsoo wasn’t lying when he said the competition for the cover art was intense. Every picture we pass by represent what KALON truly is about---a beauty instilled deep within the spirit. And somehow, I suddenly feel apologetic towards the photographer next to me. 

“I’m so sorry if you don’t win, Myungsoo.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“Because your chances would’ve drastically increased if you had professional models for your shoot.”

Myungsoo chuckles and waves a hand to stop the nonsense. “Here. Let me show you something.” He leads us over to a shoot illustrating a female artist in her studio. She sits on the ground with charcoal drawings surrounding her feet. A man, assuming he’s her boyfriend or husband, is off to the side. His back is against the wall with a coffee and newspaper in his hands while he watches her render large sketches of the human form. 

To the untrained eye, it’s a charming image just like every other image in the exhibition. It’s unique enough to be in the magazine because it shows a simple lifestyle built on a passion for the arts but also for each other. It’s how I perceive the image but Myungsoo expands on how it’s good---just not great. 

“It’s an excellent image from a textbook stand point. The colors are balanced, the shot is perfectly framed, exposure, light, everything is good. It’s everything you learn in a classroom translated onto a film picture. It’s technically sound and it’s why it was accepted into the magazine.”

“But something is missing,” I follow up and he agrees.

“Yes, and can you tell me what that is?”

I study the picture, going over every detail until I notice a discrepancy in their expressions. It’s in the way they hold the items and in the manner they position themselves in the room. “Love.”

“Exactly. The photographer and stylist hired models for their shoot. You can tell by how she has the piece of charcoal in between her fingers. Artists have a natural way of drawing. It’s innate. There’s an inherent movement to their actions and it’s not easily imitated by amateurs. There’s a strain in her hands and arms and the same can be said for the guy. You can feign intimacy with longing looks and smiles but nothing beats the real deal.”

“But what Chanyeol and I did wasn’t a real love though.”

“Who’s to say it wasn’t? Love doesn’t always equate to romance. It can be a familial love, a love of the arts, or a passion for what you do in life whether it’s living or breathing. But it can also be found in a love between two friends who happen to share a platonic affinity towards each other.”

And I begin to comprehend Myungsoo’s interpretation. “It’s an understanding of one another and as the topic of our photos illustrate, it’s a comfort.”

His countenance brightens with his crescent eye smile, “You got it. Their shoot was curated. The props, the event space, and down to their very expressions were organized together. They posed in these positions because they were told to and not because they felt it. Although it all appears nice on the surface, it doesn’t leave a lasting impression. So to answer your trepidations, no, having professional models wouldn’t have increased my chances but working with you and Chanyeol definitely did. I might have to hire you two again for a future editorial.”

“Please, no. Once was more than enough.” 

Myungsoo and I break out into a fit of chuckles. He runs a free hand through his hair before digging the other into his pant pocket. “I guess you’re right. If I put you and Chanyeol together in another intimate setting, the poor guy dawdling behind us with Seunghyun and Lia might actually do the impossible and self-implode.” Myungsoo clicks his head to the right and I see Sehun. 

He strolls around the gallery while maintaining a distance from us. It’s a contrast from earlier when he was knitted into my space, stealing the air from my lungs and wrecking havoc on my tragic soul. 

What I’m met with now is how he tends to act around me ever since our conversation all those weeks ago. We’re cordial to one another. We talk. We share the same area but there’s an implicit barrier between us. It’s a wall comprising of unanswered questions, intrigue, and tension. The last portion isn’t like the strain in the photos Myungsoo showed me. It’s not a tension felt in muscles or ligaments. It’s the kind where my heartstrings are attracted to Sehun’s. They’re unwillingly hypnotized by him and I’m either supposed to relinquish control and freely go towards him or stay absolutely stationary against the tide and currents.

They are my inward struggles but I leave the matter alone at present because the male notices me looking at him. The edge of his mouth curls into a smile and he conceals it with the back of his hand. I immediately sever my observation on him as I’m caught staring and ignore how the blushing on my cheeks is returning full force.

Myungsoo takes no heed over my veiled frets and goes on to explain why Seunghyun and Lia are here. He had a final venue walkthrough with the couple before the magazine party because their wedding next weekend will take place in a historic library located in the city’s center. 

With an Old World ambiance, he tells me the ceremony room is decorated with ornate trimmings including heavy stone walls and a ceiling illustrating countless murals of rippling clouds and azure skies. But even with large arched windows stretching from top to floor breaking up the line of cold walls, the main issue Myungsoo had was the lack of natural lighting to balance out the wood accented expanse. He states the meeting took much longer than anticipated, carrying on well past the set one-hour appointment and it was why he was running late. 

He adds how Sehun was asked to join at the last minute because Seunghyun and Lia wanted him to familiarize himself with the building layout. He’s one of the groomsmen but has the extra task of guiding guests to their proper seat and the go-to person for questions on the special day.

Towards the end of the walkthrough, Myungsoo mentioned the magazine party. They asked what it was for and he explained how we’re featured in KALON. 

“Seunghyun and Lia wanted to know if they could come since they want to do a photoshoot the morning after their wedding. I figured this would be a great place for them to grab some ideas on where to have it and what to do.”

“They’re definitely inspired,” I say and see Lia pointing at one photo after another as she pulls insight from every single piece of artwork. 

“I think so too.”

“Do they have a favorite yet?”

“They like certain elements from each but nothing quite hitting the mark. I think it’ll change once they see your photos with Chanyeol.”

“Why us?”

“Not sure. A feeling, I suppose?” He wiggles his brows and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. 

Like many artists, Myungsoo has pride over his work. It derives from his personality and how he dedicates so much of his time towards his chosen passion. He realizes there’s always room for improvement---to be someone who can always better their skills and talents. But for the photos he took of me and Chanyeol, I somehow sense he finds his greatest achievement strictly within those prints. 

He explains there’s something else about them; something vastly richer which will transpire through every individual here tonight. Each image portrays an ease felt in the heart but they also depict how everything in the end will be all right. It’s a comfort in realizing no matter the battles or scars laced in and onto our bodies, we will all be okay.

My hand naturally moves up to my own set of imperfections and feel there’s a familiarity in what he says. They are the words I relied on heavily throughout my life and hearing them dictated out loud by Myungsoo reinforces all of my beliefs---that what we endure will eventually lead to an ending fitting of all the hardships.

“Was this the reason why you didn’t show us the photos until now?” I ask.

“Partly, but also because of my greed in wanting to see all of you react towards them first hand. Although, I didn’t plan on having Sehun here so not sure how that one’s going to work out.”

“Are you worried about his reaction?”

“A little, but I’m wondering what he’ll do once he sees them.” 

“Hopefully not self-implode,” I profess into his frame and he chuckles over my use of his exact words from earlier in the conversation.

“He very well might, Ahri.”

I shy away a pleasant merriment and view Sehun from the corner of my eye. My vision rests on him and I inhale a breath of air while correlating what Myungsoo told me. 

Everything will be all right.

No matter the outcome, everything will happen the way it’s supposed to and we’ll all be okay.

With a pat on the shoulder, Myungsoo leaves me with Soi as he goes off to mingle with his colleagues and industry vendor friends. I see her reading over one of the full large scale spreads featuring KALON’s editor in chief, Ji Changwook. It consists of snippets from a day in his life, behind the scenes shots of his morning to night routine, and how he runs the magazine label. 

While she’s fully immersed in the writing, I scan around the warehouse and catch Chanyeol hiding behind some of the hanging posters. He appears afraid of the repercussions about to unfold due to his former games and I find it’s time for his ultimate ruination. 

His dark pools of umber turn doe-like as if he’s pinned on a road and sees I’m about to shoot an arrow straight into him. He swivels around on his heel for an escape but his lanky and clumsy movements slow him down. They work in my favor because he lacks control over his gargantuan body and elongated limbs. My fingers latch onto the sleeve of his oversized tee and haul him back with a stern grasp. “Park Chanyeol.”

“Ms. Just Moon Ahri.” He displays the most innocent smile; it permeates with cherubic appeal as if he prays it’ll convince me in sparing his mortal life.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Bathroom?”

“Bathroom’s the other way. Were you running from me?”

He’s appalled by my accusation. “No, of course not. I would never do such a thing.”

“And you think I can trust the words of a man who threw me into a wolf's den earlier this evening.”

“Well, I wouldn’t really call Sehun a wolf---”

“So you admit your wrongdoings?”

“Again, wouldn’t call it wrong.”

“Chanyeol.”

“All right, okay. I’m sorry. I really am. What can I do? How do you want me to repay you? For what it’s worth, you were cute with all the stuttering and stumbling.”

I could strangle him. I really could. My hands would just have to wrap around his neck and squeeze hard until his hyoid bone fractures and his pretty little face turns blue. But I bite down on my murderous intent, grumbling over how it’s not worth going to prison on a homicide charge. 

Instead, I settle the score with a small jab into his stomach and come to the horrifying conclusion about how all my friends are terrible people. They are the worst and take the ultimate pleasure in seeing me squirm inside my skin. “You’re doing a terrible job at apologizing.”

“How’s it terrible? I’m giving you a compliment.” He proceeds to extend out his arm for me to take and attempts another tactic to appease my glowering displeasure. “But if flattery isn’t what you want, may I ask what is? Perhaps I can be your genie for the night and grant you what you’re wishing for. Would that be a better form of an apology?”

He’s resorting to transforming into a genie because acting as an angel didn’t work to his benefit. I cast away my disbelief, hoping he doesn’t expect I’ll iterate his name and he’ll offer himself up like some sacrificial tribute. I grab onto him, albeit with much reservation, and follow as we make our way through the final portion of the gallery. 

“I had genies fail me before, Chanyeol. What makes you far superior amongst the rest?”

“They didn’t have my wit or charisma.”

“That they did not, but I believe we’re at an impasse because there isn’t anything I want.”

Chanyeol chuckles as if I muttered a ridiculous notion and affirms everyone on the planet wants something regardless if it’s a small wish or object. He states his otherworldly talents allow him to see what others can’t and he knows all of my aspirations even if I don’t articulate the words. Worst of it is he offers to grant me three wishes without having me speak a syllable. I can’t fend off the curiosity as I tuck free falling locks of hair behind my ear.

Similar to Soi and Myungsoo, Chanyeol radiates positive energy. He thrives off the fire of carefree moments and lighthearted experiences, basking in all optimism. It’s a trait I’m learning to partake in more and more with each passing day as I join in his jests because any resistance is a hollow effort.

Before he begins, I give him a warning shot. “But if you speak one letter to your name as something I want, I will shake you silly until you’re in the right frame of mind again, Chanyeol.”

“Do you think this lowly of me?”

“I don’t, but you are one of my closest friends which means I know you rather well. So---was I wrong?”

“You’re not completely mistaken. Perhaps one day you’ll change your mind, but until then.” Chanyeol exhibits his candied grin again it’s the very smile indicating how our lives could be so different if we were made for each other. Only, we’re a shade of mismatched pieces. He doesn’t speak the sentiments wafting through our thoughts and maintains the air of our childish games. “The #1 thing you want is: to completely wipe away the existence of the dating app.”

I exhale a guffawed laugh into him and breathe out my amusement. In this case, he isn’t one bit close to wrong. For the past few months, Soi has dragged me into the hellish depths of the online dating world and I’m tormented by the notifications ordering me to swipe left or right. The blinking red light, the list of potential suitors, the deafening chimes. They all contribute to my suffering of the acutest kind. “I can’t deny this is something I desperately want.”

“Told you. Magic genie.”

“But how do you suppose you’re going to release me from this dating app prison? Soi dictated my friendship with her will be revoked if I dare uninstall it.”

“Oh my dear girl, it may come sooner than you realize.” Chanyeol winks and his benevolence is soaring through the roof as we walk side by side. He flicks his attention to where Soi is and we see her enthralled in a conversation with Changwook, KALON’s editor-in-chief. He was the man she was reading about earlier with great interest. 

With hands behind his back and tousled jet black hair, Changwook beams at Soi and exudes boyish charisma as if it’s his god-given right. It’s not arrogant; it’s a bashfulness and I observe it in the way he fiddles with his fingers when he speaks to her. I’m not an expert on body language or anything but believe the poor boy is nervous (in the good way, of course). There’s a slight, growing infatuation he has for my friend and the same can be said for Soi as I haven’t seen her jubilant appearance light up a room like this in a while.

“She won’t have a need for the dating app much longer which will unbind you from your contract as a result.”

“Nicely done, Genie.”

“Like I said, your previous genie lacked my ingenuity. Wish #1---granted. Wish #2 is Ehle.”

“Ehle?” My footing stops and I direct my worries up to the tall man next to me. “Please tell me you’re not planning on stealing Ehle from Myungsoo. I rather not stand trial and testify against your criminal deeds.”

“As much as I would love to give you Ehle, I don’t want to die a horrible death by his owner’s hand when he finds out I was the mastermind behind the canine heist. What I can do is provide you with an alternative.” Chanyeol pulls out his phone, taps the screen a few times before ushering me to look at my own device.

Swiping down, there’s a mile long list of notifications from him. Every message received is a picture of Ehle’s fluffy white face and his heart tugging grin. I melt from each photo and keep it to myself how I’m already planning on printing them out so I can frame them all over my apartment. “When did you take these?”

“The day I adhered to your suggestion and borrowed Ehle so he can help me win Naia’s favor, which utterly failed by the way.”

I nearly gasp in horror, unable to fathom any person in the world not falling under Ehle’s hypnotic spell. “You must be joking.”

“Not in the slightest. Turns out she’s petrified of dogs. She hid behind anyone and anything she could get her hands on and screamed to get Ehle away from her as if he would devour her toes. You and I both know how Ehle behaves. The only thing he has a taste for is designer shoes and window curtains. It was ridiculous, Ahri. She wouldn’t give him a proper chance.”

“Similar to how she didn’t give you one either.”

“No, she didn’t. It was at that precise moment when I realized I couldn’t do it; I didn’t want to chase after her anymore.”

“And you decided to move on.”

“I did, hence the pictures. I celebrated my freedom from the horrid cycle by taking ample amount of photos with Ehle. I think you’ll appreciate the bedroom ones,” he teases and swipes my phone to the right, showing him and Ehle in matching bathrobes. Despite the latter promiscuous pictures, I give his arm a supportive squeeze; it’s the same kind he’s shown me in the past. Chanyeol appears ever so satisfied with himself and his visage is brighter than the fluorescent lights hanging above us. 

What strikes me the most is the pride in his performance. It’s a blend of optimism and positivity because he’s pleased with actions, gratified he surpassed the struggles of knowing when to keep fighting and realizing when it was time to walk away from her.

“I’m glad you did.”

“Me too. It was worth it in the end.” His smiles don’t relent and if it goes on any longer, I’m certain the dimple in his left cheek will permanently carve itself into his flesh. But there’s a hidden meaning behind all of it. There’s an unknown detail spanning along the gentle features of his inviting face and it reminds me of when a person reflects fondly on a happy memory. 

“Chanyeol---”

“Hrm?”

“Is there someone else you want to tell me about?”

His eyes lock onto me as his index etches itself along the edge of my chin and his response doesn’t shock me. “Yes, there is and I do want to tell you about it, but now isn’t the time, Ms. Just Moon Ahri. For at current, I will sadly have to spend the rest of my evening relinquishing my first love.”

I can’t help but find he’s spurting absurdities again but he guides my attention to the middle of the gallery. Chanyeol angles us to the last photo suspending in the center of the exhibition and I immediately sense all my breaths leave the sanctum of my heart. What he reveals is not any ordinary picture. It’s not of any random model or person.

It’s us.

It’s me and him and we’re teleported back to the cottage house with warm summer rays and a blissful scenery rivaling even the best fairy tale endings. The picture lives up to my memories as I recollect every intimate action performed. Chanyeol’s fingers against the lining of my face. His gentle hand to my thigh and the otherworldly smiles depicted on our faces as our foreheads connect to the faintest of touches. I remember every feeling felt, every thought transpiring through my mind as my eyes roam through the four corners of the image. 

But Chanyeol adds to the surreal fantasy; he speaks to my hidden desire and unearths it to run wild and free.

“This photograph---this is what you want.”

My gaze links to his as he stares down at me and it’s because he knows me as much as I understand him. He’s answering what I can barely conceive or acknowledge on any given day. He’s telling me what I want, what I dream of, and what my wishes and hopes are in this lifetime in the form of one single picture.

His soft embrace on my forearm remains steady as his thumb grazes over my skin, subduing any nerves from fragmenting into shambles.

I remain stationary and permanently in place as Chanyeol’s voice echoes throughout all the corridors of my mind. I memorize the exact love felt in this image---the intimate expressions, the affectionate touches, and the distinct warmth filling my spirit as it all makes their way to my beating heart. I sense it drumming to the tempo of another and Chanyeol is quick to point out this single fact.

“This is what you want. You want the contentment, the ease, the unconditional love and how it’s simple and effortlessly clear. It’s what you imagine your life to be; it’s the future you’re searching for. Only, the male lead is someone else. He’s someone different; he’s someone other than me, isn’t he?”

My lips separate but the words fail in reply. Silence is my companion but what astonishes me is my ability to continue smiling because I remember what Myungsoo said. Whatever burden we bear, it’ll be okay and we’ll each find a resolution deserving of the struggles dealt to us. It’s an equilibrium. It’s a balance between the two halves. 

“You know everything, don’t you?” I ask with my voice at a whisper.

“As much as your one and only genie should.”

“But as my friend, tell me. Do you think he could give me that? Could he give me the very thing in which I seek---in which you just described?”

Chanyeol arches to my height and he twists his head slightly as if to capture the attention of another. He’s making sure this person is listening to every word spoken. “If I was him, I would. I would do that and so much more for you, Ahri. But I’m not the one you want. You and I would make each other happy but we both know there’s another kind of happiness. A kind of love our souls yearn for because that person is the one we’re meant to be with. They are the ones we feel most at home with.”

"And you found that person, haven’t you?”

He straightens his posture and neither agrees nor disagrees to my suspicions. “Too early to tell, but again, not the right time to be discussing my active love life, Ahri. You have your own to worry about.” Chanyeol brushes a few strands of stray bangs away from my face before we return to the photo. 

As the minutes go by, I can’t help but observe everyone’s reaction to it. Surrounding individuals turn quiet. Their voices dim as they inch closer and closer to study the photograph. Like Chanyeol and me, they survey every detail. They notice the loving ambience down to the imperfections situated on my skin. I hear their exhales end with a tender smile and realize how Myungsoo was correct when he said our picture would elicit an emotion transcending the norm.

The photo reveals a simple hope for the future and once more, I feel my soul strings seeking out a certain person. 

Sehun is focused on the photo. His eyes are firm on the large print but his gaze doesn’t drift around the image. What moves are his fingers as his thumb sweep across his lips and chin. He releases a heady breath but whereas others sighed in relief, his encompassed a determination filled with resolve and grit. 

His actions leave me in a plight of mystery but my thinking is interrupted by Changwook’s vocals channeling through the warehouse speakers. The editor stands on the second floor balcony as all guests rotate their attention onto him.

Changwook dives into the final portion of the event and begins thanking every vendor for submitting their work for a chance to grace the cover design. Within the number of attendees, I can easily point out all of the photographers because each are waiting in anticipation. Their bundled up nerves fill the air and even Myungsoo, to my far left, has his arms swung behind his back with fingers crossed for good luck.

“At KALON, we have a passion for the spirit. It’s an inner love for who we are, what we do, and who we choose to share our lives with. It’s a simple statement but extremely difficult to achieve in today’s world which is why this magazine came to fruition. We’re purveyors of simplicity and natural comfort whether if it’s within ourselves and or with another.” Changwook pauses and the audience mimics his prolonged silence. With a free hand, he grasps onto the black cloth and steadily drags it off.

Without looking at the revealed cover art photo, I can tell who won just by the sentiments expressed by the editor. Ease and comfort. Myungsoo shuts his eyes closed with his palm to his forehead. It takes him a moment to suppress the shock before bowing to his fellow photographers showing him their genuine applause. 

As the celebration comes to an end, we all purchase our own print edition to keep before leaving the building. Soi and I have two whereas Myungsoo and Chanyeol grab ten each. I understand why the former is buying more than usual but have no idea why Chanyeol requires the same amount. He refutes my bafflement with how he must preserve his first marriage for as long as possible by laminating as many pages as he can. I conclude his acts are nonsensical but endearing in the least despite his aberrant behavior.

We all walk to the entrance and Soi drapes her arm within mine. She skips to a jovial rhythm and speaks my name. It oozes with caramel sweetness as she elongates the last letter, stretching it upon minutes. “Ahri---”

“Yes, Soi?” I mewl with a giggle and can’t help but ponder over what she wants. She issues my name in this manner when she needs something or feels guilty over a trite matter.

“Don’t hate me.”

“I don’t think I could ever hate you.”

“You might.”

“Again, I haven’t ever gotten close, but it would greatly help if you tell me why you think I would.”

After a few seconds of chewing on her inner cheek, I feel the excitement pour out of her like a waterfall cascading over a river’s edge. “Changwook asked our group out for drinks,” she confesses.

I raise my brows at her, “And?”

“And I know you don’t like bars. You will most likely say no to going but would you hate it if I said yes?”

“Why would I hate it?”

“Because I’m spending the weekend with you but---”

“Soi, I’m perfectly all right with driving home and having a quiet night indoors. Enjoy yourself. He seems genuinely nice.”

I see her clench the magazines closer to her body, withholding her glee from spinning out of control. If it was possible, I’m almost certain her exuberant jumps would land her straight on the moon. “I could ask Chanyeol to keep you company,” she suggests and I refuse without blinking.

“No, it’s okay. If he comes over, it means my collection of Chanyeol hoodies will increase from 15 to 16. I mustn’t allow that to happen.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Do you remember the pass code to my apartment?” 

“You mean Yoo Yeonseok’s birthday?” she catches me stashing away a blushing smirk. “I still can’t believe you changed it from Won Bin’s. That’s simultaneously the most amazing and quite shocking thing you’ve done as of late.”

“A woman must move on once she’s been rejected in the clearest way possible,” I digress and continue, “And you have your phone just in case there’s any trouble?”

“Yes. I’ll even be home before curfew.”

"Good. I’ll be watching the clock.”

She sticks her tongue out at me as if I’m acting like her guardian and making sure she arrives home safe and sound. But she ends on the note of appearing relieved and more or less eager to spend time getting to know Changwook. It seems her days of reminiscing Yixing are coming to a finite end.

We reconvene with the rest of the group by the entrance before saying all of our final congratulations to Myungsoo as well as goodbyes for the night. Lia, Seunghyun, and Sehun already left earlier to pick up their wedding attire from the alterations shop before they close for the night and Myungsoo and Chanyeol decide to join Soi for drinks with Changwook. They ask if I want to go once more but the idea of an evening alone is much too tempting as I enter my empty apartment. 

The silent solitude is a welcoming sight as I journey up the stairs to my bedroom with peace of mind roaming along beside me. A solo evening indoors provides a chance to tidy up after the mess Soi displaced in my room as I fold and organize the haphazardly tossed clothes. My phone rings while I place the last hanger on the rack and I look at the ID, finding it’s the said person herself.

“Soi.”

“Don’t hate me.”

I chuckle into the receiver and it’s baffling how this girl thinks I could hate her---twice. “Is this déjà vu or have we not gone through this already?”

“No, it’s serious this time so please remember I’m your best friend and I know you don’t like surprises but I literally have no choice in the matter. I would save you if I could but I can’t and he’s already on his way to your apartment but all in all, this might be your opportunity to ask him.”

I ignore Chanyeol’s wails in the background. He’s spewing something about being my genie and this is him granting my third wish but I’m confused as it is so hearing him doesn’t aid in my problems. “Wait---who is on their way here?”

“Sehun.”

I nearly choke on my saliva and an eruption of coughs bellow out of my esophagus. “What?”

“Sehun is on his way to your apartment.”

“Why?” The ability to remember how to inhale and exhale shoots out the nearest window when the doorbell goes off. An instant cold sweat roams through my bloodstream and the sound of the alarm is loud enough for Soi to hear as she curses under her breath.

“Shit. I’m sorry, Ahri. Remember, I love you. We all do. Don’t hate us or plot our demise.”

Against my every refute and call for her name, she hangs up with a click and I’m left inwardly struggling on why this is happening because it’s apparently against the will of the gods to have a quiet night alone. 

The doorbell chimes for the second time and I rush to the entryway, checking the peep hole. Standing there in all his proper glory is Oh Sehun himself with not a hair out of place. I wince at this grim predicament but tow in a gulp before unlocking the dead bolt. With one hand on the door and the other affixed to my left earlobe, I barely manage a greeting. “Hi.”

“Hi, Ahri.” He responds in kind with a heated smile warm enough to melt even the coldest glaciers. I push away how the sound of my name entwines and tangles my flustered heart strings because there are more prevalent concerns stationed before us. The leading questions being---why is he here and how did he know where I live?

As if he can decipher my inner most thoughts, “Lia and Seunghyun emergency. Lia wants to have the wedding favor wine bottles etched with their names and date in calligraphy but the letterist needs them dropped off tonight so she can complete them by next weekend.”

“Oh---I could’ve drove them down.”

“They thought you would offer but they already feel bad about using your apartment as a surplus warehouse. Lia didn’t want you driving so far late at night. She suggested if I would go in their stead since they had another appointment and I said I could only if you were okay with it.” 

I watch as his neck slants slightly, examining my current bewilderment and it’s because my brain is having to overclock itself trying to compute the situation. 

He appears confused as if he was given wrong information. “Lia gave me your address---did she not call you? They both told me you were okay with it.”

“No, well, I assume she called Soi. I haven’t had a chance to process it all since Soi told me you were coming literally two seconds ago.” I brush my bangs away from my face and open the door wider for him to enter. But he doesn’t move from his stance and it’s as if his feet are bonded to the tiles. It hits me that he’s acting in this way because he wants to make certain I’m okay with him being here in my space. “It’s fine, Sehun. You’re not the person I want to murder tonight,” I joke. 

The two on my hit list are Soi and Chanyeol. My best friend would never act under this pretense without the influence of another---that being is the devilish genie by the name of Park Chanyeol. He’ll be the first to go but I stash away my villainous side because unfortunately, I might be the one losing my soul tonight before the rest.

Sehun’s alleviated for the time being as he nods and takes the initial step into my apartment. I lead him out of the foyer and into the open living area shared with the kitchen. He circles around in place, visually sifting through the loft I now call home. In a way, our roles switched as I remember walking into Apartment 5108 for the first time nearly one year ago. 

With two floors and two bedrooms, my new residence has more amenities than I require. I kept most of the furniture from when it was a model home and added only a few of my personal touches---landscape photographs and black and white portraits of my friends accenting the walls and tables. I never had many possessions to begin with but my collection is slowly growing due to new interests and hobbies. 

Sehun’s hand drags along the exposed brick outlining the back wall. He feels every groove and indent as his feet advances across the aged hardwood floor. I can only imagine what his thoughts are but break him out of his musings to avoid any awkward small talk if possible. 

“The wine boxes are in the guest room. It was the only place cool and dry enough to house them for the time being. Unfortunately, it’s on the second floor.” I explain while navigating.

The windowed wall in the living room leading out to the terrace provides too much light and warmth whereas the guest room is AC controlled and barely used unless Myungsoo or Chanyeol stays over for a night.

Sehun follows me up the stairs from behind as we pass my bedroom in the hallway. It still shows remnants of Soi’s destruction and I can hear him chuckle through his nose before clearing his throat. The nostalgic sound of it causes a fondness to spread inside my abdomen and it expands throughout my extremities. I’m not anal retentive when it comes to cleanliness but I do lean towards being neat more so than the average individual. Even when I lived with Sehun, the apartment always remained spotless and void of dust and dirt. I assume Sehun realizes this as he witnesses the unruly clutter.

“Soi’s doing?” he asks.

“How’d you know?”

“Seunghyun told me horror stories from when they were kids. He wants to submit her to Hoarders.”

“She’s not that bad, is she?” I turn around before reaching the guest bedroom and effortlessly laugh with him. And I miss this already. The ease of conversation. The laughter. The simple method in which we could say anything and everything to each other. 

Sehun bounces his head up and down as strands of hair play over his happy eyes. “Why do you suppose she had to do renovations to her apartment?”

“That makes so much more sense now.” I quip and open the guest bedroom door.

We spend the next half hour loading his car parked outside with the wine cases. He offered to do the job all himself since he felt terrible for showing up out of the blue but I wasn’t having any of it. Didn’t seem right to sit back and watch him move all the boxes alone. Soi would beg to differ but since she’s decidedly not here, her opinion is invalid.

With the last box safely tucked in the back seat, Sehun shuts the door before a pitter patter of rain hits our shoulders. He and I both hold out our palms simultaneously while looking up but are met with an onslaught of downpour. It soaks through our clothes and onto our skin. Words barely leave my lips before I steer him to shelter under the apartment entrance overhang. Thunder and lightning rip across the atmosphere while the rain continues to plummet without a chance of stopping.

“The weather did not call for rain tonight,” I mutter and wipe away the moisture from my forehead and bare arms. Only, there’s no response as I look to the drenched male beside me. His stern gaze darts from my figure and then away to the parking lot before he slides off his suit jacket and holds it out to me. 

I’m confused by his gesture but finally notice how my thin white blouse clings to me like a second skin. Everything is seen from my nude bra to the small birthmark below my breast and my left arm instantly covers my chest in haste.

I don’t even know why I did it since it’s not like Sehun hasn’t seen everything before but I’m grateful of his consideration as he walks over. He refrains from looking straight at me and places the jacket over my shoulders, holding out both lapels as I insert my arms into the sleeves. My fingers get lost in the arm holes but upon closer inspection, I finally discern this particular jacket. His suit. His entire outfit. I didn’t pay attention to it when we were at the magazine party due to my embarrassment but find he’s wearing the very garments I chose for him at SPAO. 

The perfect tailoring shapes to his figure even if he’s soaked from top to bottom. The subtle vertical pin stripes elongate his already tall frame and in lieu of the lavender dress shirt, he opted for a crisp white finished by the diamond plaid tie. I don’t know what to make of his clothing choices because it could just be a coincidence. It could be just something that happened with no reason or rhyme but nevertheless, I force down the urge to stare and overthink it into the pit of my stomach.

“Think it’ll end soon?” he questions while angling his sights up to the still pouring skies.

I keep it under wraps with how the way our lives tend to pan out, it will sadly not go in our favor. “No, I don’t think so.” My answer is interrupted by vibrations and beeps coming from his jacket’s breast pocket. I quickly pull out Sehun’s phone and pass it to him.

He scans the ID and treads off to the corner as he talks with a person on the other line. He’s still within earshot so I can’t disregard his words even if I tried. I do my best not to listen but his tone suddenly changes in frequency and is at a decibel hard to ignore. My ears take in Sehun’s half of the conversation while his frustrations crowd into the outdoor area. 

“You have got to be kidding me, Seunghyun.”

“She’s changing her mind---now?”

“Yes, Ahri and I loaded all the---”

“Yes, it’s storming.”

“Like hell I am, Seunghyun.”

“No, I’m not going to let you talk to her.”

“Why not? Because you’re all being certified rotten idiots and this isn’t how I wanted things to go.”

“No, shut up, Seunghyun. If you weren’t my best friend, I would’ve killed you by now.”

The overdrawn sleeve clasps over my mouth while I hold in a snort and find I’m not the only person wanting to commit homicide tonight. I curl into Sehun’s suit jacket and trek over to where he’s standing. His broad shoulders and long back face me and with folded arms, I ask, “Everything okay?”

From this close distance, I can already hear Seunghyun on the other line demanding Sehun lend over the phone. The gentleman in front of me sighs and I give him a reassured look. Dejection permeates through his eyes but he performs as ordered. 

Holding the device up to my ear, “ Hello?”

“Hi, Ahri. Sorry and don’t hate us.”

Everyone seems to believe I hate people easily, in which, I don’t. Disliking a person is completely plausible and within my character spectrum but I could never hate my friends. Despite their questionable antics, they mean it all under good intentions. It’s just their execution is a bit skewed. 

I release a gentle laugh, “For?”

“Lia changed her mind. She doesn’t want the calligraphy.”

“Of course she doesn’t.”

“Also the storm. We’re worried about Sehun. It’s a bit late and he doesn’t drive well in the dark. It’s a long commute and the rain. Slippery road conditions. Visibility is reduced. Hazardous trek.” Seunghyun drawls on and on and continues to stress the weather and drizzling torrent. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

“Message heard loud and clear, Seunghyun.”

“Really?” He almost sounds too astounded by how quickly I folded.

“Yes, really. Have a good night.” I tap the red end button on the screen and catch a glimpse of his wallpaper. Us. Another jingle of my heart is felt tapping against my ribs but I placate its commotion as I pass the phone back to Sehun. However, I can’t taper off the small giggles bubbling in the craters of my belly as I raise my brows at him. “You realize we have dreadful people as friends and this was all a ruse, right?”

“I’m beginning to reach that conclusion, yes.” He fiddles with his device and stares out into the lot of cars as another strike of lightning bolts across the weathered skies. It makes him jump in his skin as a child would tremble from the crackling noise. 

So, I make it easy for him. 

A part of me believes I shouldn’t and I should merely send Sehun on his way to drive back home but it is dangerous. It is a risky journey back and if something were to happen to him, I don’t think I would ever be able to forgive myself for telling him to leave. 

I turn in my footing and take swift strides towards the front door. “C’mon. No use staying outside.”

“Ahri---”

Another rupture of lightning shakes him down to his bones and I stifle an amusement over his fear of rainstorms. “Look, even Mother Nature doesn’t want you to leave.”

“Is that a challenge?” he retorts with another pang of nostalgia.

“No, but it’s an offer. You can drive home freezing wet with the chance of catching a bitter cold or you can come inside. You can shower, dry off, and plan on how we can kill our friends without getting caught.” The argument appears to ease his rigid hesitancy and in a way, he looks grateful---almost relieved I’m allowing him to stay with me.

As we re-enter my apartment, I motion for Sehun to follow me up the stairs like from earlier. “I have some of Chanyeol’s clothes you can borrow.”

The sudden comment makes Sehun clear his throat as if there’s an itch, scratching and irritating him under his layers. The sensation bothers him as his left reaches around his neck, rubbing his skin to alleviate the sullen exasperation. “Ch---Chanyeol?”

“Yeah. He has a knack for leaving his hoodies all over the place and forgets to take them home.”

“Does he---” A throbbing vein strains against Sehun’s male flesh before he forces out his question with significant difficulty. It’s like the imagery is leaving an acrid taste at the back of his tongue as his mind darts off into forbidden lands, creating visual nightmares and bad dreams. “Does he stay overnight often?”

“What constitutes as often?” I choke down my glee from Sehun’s flustered inquiry and try not to smile too hard because the man in front of me has changed in character but there are traits of his which will always remain. His boyish envy is one of them.

I retreat into my closet and rummage through the contents to find him suitable clothes. I grab one of my oversized zipped sweatshirts and loose lounge pants. They’re large on me and I have a habit of purchasing pajamas from the men’s department rather than the women’s for they don’t cling to me like glue.

When I return to Sehun, he’s still suffering from my previous jests as his body leans on the metal railing. Beads of water drip from his ebony locks. They create woven straits along the contours of his prim face as I guide him to the guest bedroom. Opening the closet, he finds it lined with Chanyeol’s multitude of hoodies, t-shirts, and sleeping pants. 

“He does leave a lot of clothes here,” Sehun croaks to his appalling distress. He loosens one of the buttons on his dress shirt as if the realization is restricting his oxygen flow more so than the shirt itself.

But I know how he feels about Chanyeol and the idea of wearing that male’s clothes will probably destroy Sehun’s livelihood faster than him being lit on fire. It’s all the more why I’m giving him an alternate option. “The ones in the closet are Chanyeol’s and these are mine if you want to try them on. I doubt they’ll fit you properly so you might be more comfortable wearing Chanyeol’s. Guest shower is through the door on the left and toiletries are in the bottom drawer.”

Sehun holds onto my clothes but before he vanishes into the bathroom, he flips around to me. His mouth balls into a circle as it swishes to and fro like a pendulum. It’s like he wants to ask or say something but can’t decide on which to convey. It’s a few passing moments before he accedes to a short thank you and we both disperse into our respective rooms to heat up with a warm shower. 

All the while, I ignore the nagging thought of how Sehun is staying overnight in my apartment. He’s in my space. He’s in my home.

I’m not exactly sure how I feel about it as I finishing washing up and descend down to the bottom floor. I switch on the television as it aids in drowning out my emotions. I make a cup of tea while waiting for Soi and dearly wish for both her sake and mine that she keeps her promise and doesn’t leave me stranded with the man upstairs for the night. But my hopes in her returning dwindles as my eyes survey the clock.

The ticking sound hypnotizes my inner struggles while I steep my tea bag in a drone like fashion. I remain staring at the second hand while it goes around minute by minute and it’s only then when Sehun snaps me out of my despondent reverie.

“Ahri---are you okay?”

My hand stops bobbing the tea bag in my ceramic mug and I look over to Sehun standing at the other edge of the kitchen counter. What makes my movements halt isn’t him enunciating my name; it’s rather the clothes adorning his towering form. A pained grin emerges as I peer at the boy in front of me. He’s dressed not in Chanyeol’s clothes, but pitifully within mine. 

I don’t know what I was expecting considering Sehun has a certain distaste for my other lofty friend. It’s apparent as I observe him in my sweatshirt. It’s zipped halfway, showing more skin than I care to be beckoned with (and I’m inwardly screaming for I’m sure I gave him a t-shirt to wear underneath) and sweatpants sticking to parts of him tighter than honey. I fight the heavy urge to sigh longingly because it’s not the right moment to reminisce previous late nights with him.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I divert my attention away and concentrate on my cooling drink. “Tea?”

“Only if it’s caffeinated,” he answers and I send him a hurried glance of why as he explains. “Don’t feel like sleeping just yet.”

“Oh? Why not?” 

“Secret.” Sehun attempts to wink at me but cutely fails as it looks like he’s simply blinking both eyes. A cherry tint surfaces on both of his cheeks and the temptation to sigh again is back. 

As I finish steeping both teas, he carries the two mugs while we walk over to the living room and sit on the L-shaped sofa. He chooses to maintain a distance between our bodies and takes the longer leg of the sofa while I sit on the shorter end. He does it to separate us, to keep us a breadth apart and I swallow the affair (because perhaps having him closer might not be the wisest decision).

We settle into our seats as I surround myself with small plush pillows. There’s a relief as I remember how he said he didn’t feel like sleeping and not that he couldn’t or can’t. We don’t live together anymore but ever since Camberley, I was worried about his sleeping schedule---how he always had trouble falling asleep until I moved in but it seems the problematic habit is finally broken.

I put a cushion over my lap and inquire on his previous answer. “Why is it a secret?”

Sehun’s broad frame ticks left to right, stirring over my question with his eyes leading straight onto the television screen. His smooth features suddenly light up as if he came across a brilliant idea. His spine straightens and he wrinkles his nose to my direction. “I’ll tell you the reason why if you find a white item in the TV show.”

“Like our color game?”

“Yeah, just like our color game. It’ll also help keep you awake while you wait for Soi to return.” Sehun’s smile deepens as he hears me say our game and I force myself to peer into my less than luster tea rather than him. The manner in which his mouth curls into a grin was always an addiction. It’s easy to get lost in his expressions and I fear it’s a practice I haven’t lost even after all this time. 

“To be quite honest with you, I don’t have much faith in her coming home tonight.” I turn to the right and see the relentless downpour still soaking the landscape. Weather is probably one factor as to why she might not return but the other is her giving me this opportunity to talk with Sehun. I’m still wary over her advice and temporarily set it aside to the far off corners of my mind for now.

“Then how about we play until we’re both tired and want to fall asleep?”

I contemplate the offer but nod in agreement. Although, the action is cut short as I forgot how fast he typically is and has already found a white item. In my dire defense, the show playing on the screen is a Yoo Yeonseok medical drama rerun and there are about a million white things in every scene.

Sehun is clearly proud of himself early on and I make a mental reminder for myself to never play games with my friends ever again. I’m neither good at them nor is winning ever a possibility. 

“White lab coat.” 

“Would you like a secret or a task?”

“Task.”

I was half expecting secret because the last time we played this game, Sehun always chose secret. He wanted my words, my speech, my thoughts to hold onto but it’s changed this time. I place my mug on the coffee table before preparing myself for his task, inwardly pleading it’s not embarrassing or too strenuous to perform.

He senses my apprehension and presents me with a comforting reply, a hybrid game of sorts as he clarifies. “It’s nothing physical but if you don’t mind, can the task be answering a question I have for you?” 

“Like the personal question of the day?”

“Yes, but without the veto power. It’ll be easy. I promise it won’t hurt.”

He and I must have varying opinions on what pain constitutes but I curl in my legs and perch my chin on bent knees. I hope what he asks of me won’t be terrible or unsettling as I await his first question.

“Can you tell me about your new job?”

“My teaching job?”

He nods, clearly interested in my line of work. I’m not quite certain what he wants to know specifically or what kind of information he wants to hear but tell him the whole of it without hesitation. “Good. It’s different from what I used to doing at St. Albans. Some days I’m scared to admit I might enjoy it more than I should.”

“You don’t mind the permanency?”

My eyes flick towards him because he remembers my conversation at the Christmas Eve dinner with his family. He remembered how I said I was afraid of settling down with a full-time teaching job because I wanted the ability to up and leave at a moment’s notice. It makes me wonder if he’s asking these atypical questions for another reason---perhaps to gauge if I’m content with settling down within other aspects of my life. “No, it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would and in a way, I kind of like getting to know the students in my class for a full term.” 

“It lets you build a solid foundation with them.”

“Exactly.”

Sehun shifts on the sofa and orients himself more towards my way. His small movements captivate my every and all attention as we talk about my students. The topic reminds me of another detail. I battle if I should speak about it or not but decide it doesn’t hurt to bring it up. My fingers drum along my calves as I tell him a secretive fact I’m sure he’ll find amusing.

“My students actually ask about you.”

“Me?” His perfect brows rise in surprise and he wonders why my students would inquire about him out of all people.

“Yeah. Ada and Joon---well, mainly just Ada.”

“I thought they both went to St. Albans.”

“They did, but Ada persuaded her mom. She said if her parents wanted to provide her with the best possible education, they should let her transfer to Windemere and place her in my class. Somehow Joon got dragged in and with numerous teacher recommendations and both their parents making generous donations to the school, they were introduced into my class against my utmost dismay.” 

The day when they appeared at the classroom door is still a vibrant memory. They hugged my legs and fought hard not to spill any tears from their doe-like eyes and I believe their determination in achieving the impossible is something incredibly unrivaled. It’s either that or they have parents who can’t help but cater to all their wants and needs. I smile into myself and think no other students will ever compare to those two. 

Sehun catches on and shares in the benevolence displayed on both our faces. “You’ve taken a liking to them.”

“I have grown attached to them. I try not to pick favorites but it’s hard not to when they act like this. They insist on staying late with me after school and like it when I read to them before their parents pick them up. They even share a notebook together now. Ada writes quotes and quirky little facts she finds interesting.”

“And Joon?”

“He writes her little love stories.” I don’t tell Sehun some of the stories are based on us because it would mean revealing a hint of blush on my cheeks. I’m reminded of how each of Joon’s short stories all have happy endings and I’m envious of the innocence they still both preserve. “On occasion, they inquire on your whereabouts. They ask about what you’re doing and how come you don’t stop by and disrupt my class anymore.”

Sehun adjusts in his seat. He circles the ceramic mug within the palm of his hand before a grin piques at the edge of his pink-hued lips. It twists in a boy crush inducing kind of manner and he adds, “Should I then?”

“Should you what?”

“Should I come disrupt your class more often?”

Sehun’s gaze is rooted on me; his irises pierces gaping holes into my skull as if he wants to make an opening to read my inner thoughts. It feels like he’s measuring whether he can take one step deeper into my new life or not and I slowly begin to see the reason behind his distant actions and the caution he has when interacting with me.

But I’m unaware of how to bring it up and instead send him a look I give my students when they misbehave. “Only if it’s an emergency, Sehun.”

He stares back down at his tea and I ignore how whenever I speak his name, his happiness increases ten fold. I wonder if it’s derived from his name not causing me grief anymore but rather something similar to delight and contentment or hope and assurance. Although, I fear his emotions are a distraction as he points out another white item from the show.

“White ultrasound machine.”

“Should I even try anymore in this game?”

“How about I let you win the next round?”

I decline his offer and don’t want anyone to pity me even if I’m more than inept at these games. It’s also a way for me to extend this game because if I win a round, I’m afraid I’ll eventually have to ask him the very question I’m avoiding at the moment. It’ll be the one Soi voiced and I’m not entirely ready to hear his answer just yet. “Don’t worry about it. Secret or task?”

“Task.”

“Question or action?”

“Question.” Sehun pauses for a minute and places his warm mug onto the table as a preventative action before vocalizing his second ask. “I happened to hear you’re on a dating app?”

I nearly choke on my drink as I cover my mouth and swallow what I can. My hand balls into a fist as my eyes plume to astonished orbs because it’s frightening how his questions start off seemingly safe and instantly transition into disaster. I mentally groan and inwardly weep to the gods because this app will forever haunt my night and day. “H---How do you know about that?”

“Today in passing. Chanyeol has a voice which tends to echo.”

I regain whatever composure I can muster and Sehun doesn’t appear worried by it. He’s the reverse and is enjoying my ruffled behavior mingled with absolute mortification. His pure mannerisms aid me in no shape or form as I say, “It’s nothing serious.”

“It’s not?”

“No, no. Definitely not.” I shake my head more than I should because I don’t think I once considered it a viable form for dating. Not yet at least. It’s only because I never felt ready in that measure. I was and am still perfectly content with the people surrounding me and I don’t want to burst whatever comfortable bubble I'm in with the inclusion of another. “I joined solely because of Soi. She wanted someone to do this with after her separation with Yixing and I volunteered. Although, she basically did the majority of the work. Signed me up, filled out the description, and uploaded the pictures.”

“Did you end up getting matched with anyone?”

“Yes, but no one of consequence.”

“Not even Chanyeol?” Sehun inquires and I hear the end of Chanyeol’s name wing to a lilt. He’s doing the same thing he does when he’s forced to speak Myungsoo’s name and I note the annoyed tendency he still retains. His free hand moves up to the back of his ear as he scratches the annoyance away.

“No, I don’t think he’s on the platform. He only knows about it because Soi told him and since he’s decidedly one of my most wicked acquaintances, he likes to constantly pester and tease me about it.”

“I think it means you’re both comfortable with one another.”

“I am---as I am with Myungsoo and Soi as well.” I make it clear I view my two male friends as only friends. But what I see on the man in front of me is not a jealousy out of love. He seems envious of the friendship as if he desires for a type of companionship like the one I have with my three close friends---ones where he can converse with effortlessly without apprehension. “They’re easy to be around, easy to talk to even if it’s something as embarrassing as a dating app.” 

“You have good friends, Ahri. I’m glad you have them.”

And I know he now has people he can rely on as well. He mentioned he had no one at first but finally depended on his parents, especially his mom, to help him through his troubles. It shows in his features---the tiredness and exhaustion a mere memory and in place of it is the face of the man seamlessly belonging in otherworldly stars.

Sehun mirrors my gaze and ambles it over towards the television screen thus concluding the short inquiry on the dreaded dating app. He implies he’s letting me have the next round and I follow suit with an item in white. “White sweater.” Like the previous turns, I choose a task.

“Question or action?”

“Question.” I contemplate on what to ask and watch as Sehun rolls up the sleeves of the sweatshirt he’s wearing. I try not to think about how he fits into my apartment so easily as if he belongs and stop the notion from growing and thriving as I concentrate on our game. “Why did you choose my clothes to wear? I know you don’t have a particular liking towards Chanyeol but he’s more of your size. You would be more comfortable in his rather than mine.”

He winces as his wide shoulders scrunch and tighten into his firm body. “You’ll laugh at my reasoning.”

“I promise I won’t.”

Sehun releases the tension and falls back onto the sofa. Grabbing a small cushion from the tail end of the couch, he covers his chest as if to conceal his swelling shyness. His reserved speech is slow and I hear a hesitancy in voicing the truth. It’s only until he says it that I understand his reluctance. “Because this is the closest I can physically get to you right now. It’s the closest thing to being with you, to breathing you in, and feeling you next to me. It’s why I chose these clothes.” 

My confusion returns and I’m left stranded in the middle of uncertainty. As of recent, Sehun has this tendency of pulling me towards him with simple gestures and tempting words but within a second, he can change to a stranger and takes five steps back from an unspoken wall of fear and wary. I let out a silent sigh and turn away from his steady attention, oblivious on how to properly reply.

I remain mum. 

I stay connected to my silence and feign concentration on the game, knowing full well both our hearts are speaking something vastly different. It’s as if this game is cover up to what we need to face but both are unwilling to let it surface.

The night goes on with more rounds and iterations than I can count. Sehun and I take turns asking each other carefree questions. They range from a myriad of themes and topics including: his parents, his living situation, the photos hanging on my walls, the Yoo Yeonseok drama on repeat, and even Sehun revealing a secret on how he doesn’t know how to wink. 

He tried earlier tonight while we were making tea and adorably failed, telling me he only attempted because he saw Chanyeol performing the motion with ease during the KALON party. I revived my skills in googling and wiki-ing to search for instructions on how to wink but to no avail. The talent eludes him.

As the evening progresses into the late hours of the AM, my eyes turn heavy and a yawn escapes my lips. I’m sprawled on the short leg of the couch and lie on my side. My limbs are outstretched while my arms hug a pillow close to my chest. "This might be my last round.” But my words come out as a jumbled mess because as the hours dwindle, apparently so does my pronunciation and speech. “White sheet of paper.”

“Secret or task?” 

My ailment doesn’t seem to affect Sehun as he’s much more awake than I am. His genteel eyes flow over me, amused over my fatigued state. The tea seems more potent on him than it is on me. “Task.”

“Question or action?”

“Question.” Exhaustion is winning as another weary yawn slips in between my teeth. It’s my final question for the night but I’m still stubborn over my unwillingness to adhere to Soi’s advice. Half of me wonders if Sehun and I are characters from her novels as I choose not to ask the very question lingering on my mind. I choose something else, something much lighter because of my greed in wanting to end the evening on a good note. It’s my desire in wanting to keep this blithe atmosphere even if it’s for a few more seconds. “Earlier you said you didn’t want to go to sleep just yet. Was there a reason why?”

“Yes, there’s a specific reason why.” His sheepish smile calms me as I curl in my legs, waiting for his answer. But he sees my drowsiness and makes one last deal. "Close your eyes first and then I’ll answer.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re on the verge of falling asleep---so close your eyes and I promise I will answer your question.”

I want to fight him on it but I’m already battling heavy eyelids disobeying my orders to stay awake. I hopelessly surrender to the fatigue but as promised, I drift off to Sehun’s silvery tone swimming like flows of rivulets inside my head.

"I don't want to fall asleep because it will mean tonight will end. It will become a new day and when morning comes, I know I'll have to leave. I'll have to leave your side. I’ll have to leave you and this night will end. So---I'm prolonging it. I'm making tonight last so I can be with you for as long as you will allow."

The following morning, I wake from the sun’s early rays beaming down on my skin. With eyes fluttering open, I blink once, twice, three times before adjusting to nature’s warm light. My immediate action is looking to my left as I slip the quilted covers off my body. I assume Sehun took them from my bedroom and placed them on me before he went to sleep as my sight settles onto his slumbering facade at the other end of the couch. His steady breaths are a slow ballad to my less than norm daybreak, but not one that I mind so much as I slide off the sofa. 

A smile manifests from my lips as I’m reminded of Sehun’s final sentiments from yesterday night. I don’t fight how the feeling of waking up next to him still brings me a joy no other person can ever match or replicate.

But my happiness is assuaged as I finish washing up in my bathroom and head back downstairs into the kitchen. Sehun’s no longer on the couch and I believe he must’ve woken up shortly after I did. 

I lean onto the kitchen island as my fingers wrap around a cup of coffee. My wishes linger on this sole warm mug, hoping the ebony liquid will imbue me with some sort of bravery to finally ask him the question I avoided conveying all of our prior evening. It’s the very one Soi told me to relay so I can figure out the ambiguous state of what Sehun and I are. With each passing sip, I find no solution on how to even begin asking him and it doesn’t help as his voice calls out my name, putting an end to my inward thoughts.

“Ahri?”

Sehun’s grin graces my vision and all of which was once blurry starts to come into focus. His bed hair is tousled into an array of directions but still charming as I take in his winsome face. His eyes form crescent moons with the irises pooling in umber. His Grecian nose is straight from bridge to tip. And his lips flush with rose as his tongue slightly wets the upper fold. 

I swallow the rock in my throat as I see him do the same. His Adam’s apple hitches for a second before I apologize for the commotion and clamor slipping him away from his deep dreams. 

“Sorry---did I wake you earlier?” I ask.

“No, no. I was half awake already when you got up.” 

He shakes his head with a sheepish grin and I can’t but wonder if his heart is thumping to an erratic beat like mine. It’s humming and pounding against my chest, making a noise deafening to my ears and I force myself to speak so it can flood out my inner banter. “Coffee?”

“Yeah, please.” 

With a nod, I grab him a clean cup before pouring the dark drink into the empty vessel. His voice is quiet as he thanks me. Taking a step away, he leans his back on the the Carrara countertop. We remain stitched to our silence and perhaps he’s in need of liquid courage to progress through the rest of this morning as much as I do. 

But I soon realize—it’s now or never.

My arms lower the drink from my lips. I set it to the side before my fingers fiddle with one another, abating the nerves from creeping through my pores. I look to all the items in the kitchen. Everything from the stove, to the refrigerator, even the pantry. I set my sights on everything but Sehun because I fear staring at him will steal away my words. I find it’s my turn to speak concisely, but the only method I can muster up is finishing our game from yesterday night.

“White mug,” I say, albeit with considerable difficulty.

Sehun’s brow raises and a tiny simpering smile twists at the corner of his lips. He’s motionless for a few moments but the seconds feel like hours before he responds. “Secret or task?”

“Task.”

“Question or action?”

“Question,” I articulate and feel my heart moving up my throat centimeter by centimeter. 

I don’t want to feel the prickling nerves but they are, nevertheless, there. My hands and fingers tremble as they find a fixed point on the counter to help keep myself steady and still. My inhales and exhales become short before the final breath breathes out my hidden concerns.

“That night—did you mean it? Did you really mean it when you told me to believe in you?”

Sehun doesn’t skip a beat and answers without hesitation. There’s no wait. There’s no insecurity or doubt. “I meant every word.”

“Oh.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“No, it’s j—just. It’s just I’m wondering why—“

I battle with how to properly pronounce my worries but Sehun saves me. He helps me by voicing the very sentiments chained inside my chest and conveys his honest truth in the clearest way possible. He makes certain his eyes are on me before the quiet is cut with his voice filling the air between us. “Why haven’t I shown you how my affections for you will last longer than the duration of our lives.”

My gaze finally meets his and my beating heart, which was once at my throat, plummets into my stomach as it swims in an ocean of unreadable emotions. His specific speech hits the mark straight center. My head dips up and down before he tells me not to move and to stay firmly planted in my position. 

His long legs take him upstairs and he disappears into his room before coming back with his wallet in tow. It’s the one I gave him last Christmas as he pulls out a thin strip of paper from one of the pockets. For the time being, I ignore the picture of us clearly marked inside the window panel and train my attention on Sehun. 

He clasps both hands together with the thin paper in the palm of his left. He holds it down at his lap but doesn’t show me what’s written. “I remember that night as much as you do. I remember every detailed description from the moon shining over us through the thick trees, to the tranquil stream flowing over stray rocks and stones, to even our actions and the wordless dialogue exchanged from your lips to mine.”

Sehun remembers it all and in a way, he’s telling me to think back to that night, to replay the events between us. He wants me to acutely remember what he saw through his perspective. 

My left hand naturally travels up to my earlobe as I knead the skin and cartilage. Every time I blink, I see more of that night flashing back like a disconnected movie reel and slowly it all comes together into one piece. I remember the vulnerability he displayed between the last two sentences. I recollect how he waited for my response that night with bated breath and the part rattling my poor spirit is how I answered his final words.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t vocalize any literal response. My voice was left unheard and I didn’t utter anything to guarantee my acceptance of him or his promise. “I only nodded.”

“You did.” 

It was a nod where I couldn’t will myself to even look at him. I nodded because I didn’t know what to say. I nodded because I was left with a feeling I couldn’t fully grasp and it was because of my wordless actions that we’re standing here now. 

Yet, he doesn’t tell me I was wrong. He does the opposite and explains his comprehension of why I performed in that manner---how he knows my habits and common practices down to the very minute facet.

“You nodded because you weren’t ready. There’s nothing wrong with your reaction to my words that night and I understand why you did it. You’re perfectly happy right now, Ahri. You’re happy with your life, with the people around you, with yourself. It’s the best you’ve ever felt and deep down you know what I am to you—you realize I’m a risk to the happiness you fought so hard to achieve.

And it’s why I don’t want to mess this up or move too fast. I don’t want you to regret giving me this one and final chance. I want to do this right because that’s who you’ve always been to me. You were always the right person.”

I watch as Sehun wrings the small piece of paper in his left hand. His fingers brush against the texture, feeling the crinkled edges before he holds it out to me. I gently grasp onto the end as I see his handwriting stretch across the strip. 

I have a sheet of paper similar to the one he gave me. It was when we stayed at the glass house and slept on the same bed together for the first time. The following morning, Sehun left behind a tiny piece of paper next to me in which he asked what I felt sleeping next to him. I answered, ‘warm’. What I didn’t realize was he wrote his feelings out as well. He wrote out his emotions on another piece of paper and kept it with him all this time.

‘Sleeping next to you feels right.’

“My heart knew it before my head could catch up. I should’ve realized it then how right you always felt which is why I don’t want to move too fast. I don’t want to move at pace uncomfortable for you. I want to move as slow as you want me to. It’s why I haven’t progressed any further than how I’ve been acting lately because I’m waiting until you are okay with me—

Whether it takes months or years, I’ll wait until you tell me you’re ready. I’ll wait until you tell me it’s okay so I can show you the extent of how much I love and will love you for the rest of my life.”

My fingers clench onto the sheet of paper as I realize the lengths he’s going through solely for me. He’s placing me above everyone else and making certain I’m comfortable. He’s making sure in all ways possible that I see he’s doing his best to show me he’s continually learning to be better than his previous self. And it’s this single fact trembling my heartstrings as I lower my walls. 

My sight connects with his. It creates an invisible line permeating with an understanding of what he did as I whisper a single thought through my lips. “Okay.”

My sound causes him to stir. His spine straightens and he matches my voice as if making sure he heard correctly the first time. “Okay?” 

I hum an mhmm and add to his wishes. “Show me, Sehun. Show me a love and an eternity I can truly believe in for the rest of my life.”

Our actions mirror one another as we exchange silent glances. He draws in a hushed breath and returns with a hopeful grin reaching all the way up to his eyes as it consumes my every spirit. He takes one step forward; it’s slow, paced. His body envelops me in a familiar intimacy and it’s an act I dearly missed. His arm wafts around my waist, holding me effortlessly as if it’s where I always belonged and it finally feels right. It’s the right moment. It’s with the right person.

His left hand glides up to my bangs, sweeping away my dark locks. A warmth emanates from his lips brushing onto my forehead as he does the single action signifying something especially meaningful for us. His gentle kiss flutters about onto my skin and creates small smiles illuminating both of our faces.

With three words, Sehun proves the one thing I always searched for in this lifetime. He shows me that from the moment I wake, the one person who’ll always be there to greet me, to be next to me, to love me in the purest way possible---will be him. 

“Good morning, Ahri.”

[cyberpoetryballoon]

Instagram's Jelly Cake Revival Turns Vintage Camp Into Modern Art

Jelly first came to Lexie Park in a dream. In her over-10-year career as a fashion designer, Park felt a pull toward texture and transparency, and as she’s transitioned into food over the past year, those qualities drew her to jelly. She wondered what she could suspend and preserve inside a translucent, wobbling mass.

Now, Park has become one of Instagram's most iconic jelly artists. Through Nunchi, which she has developed into a full-time food business, she makes colorful, glassy-looking cakes that her followers fawn over for their pastel hues and glints of sparkle. Often, they have alternating layers of cloudy and clear confection, or pieces of fruit, jelly flowers, and even cartoon bunny heads floating inside. "I feel like [it's] psycho but cute," said Park, of the aesthetic that has earned her collaborations with brands like Nike (a swoosh floating atop tiers of baby pink and blue jelly) and the razor company Billie.

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

Not all of Park's work is so dainty. "When I first started, all my previous cakes and posts were a little bit crazier and uglier, in a sense," she said. Her cakes for commissions are primarily cute, but her more experimental jellies have an edge: a fish sliced into four pieces drifts in a jelly aquarium; Pedialyte forms caviar spheres, served in a tin; blobs surround a skin-colored baby, as though it's gestating in an alien womb. "I'm very extreme in my personality, so I don't want to just stick to one [style]—it's really based on how I feel."

In its growing Instagram niche, jelly art is all about duality. Jelly cakes can be adorable and pastel, like a child's toy—or they can be grotesque, making familiar foods look inexplicably foreign. Duality exists in the format of jelly itself: Whether it's made with animal-based gelatin or seaweed-derived agar agar, jelly looks artificial enough to seem almost inedible, and to some, there's still a knee-jerk aversion to Jell-O on premise alone. Despite jelly's niche revival on Instagram and groups like Show Me Your Aspics, which has accumulated more than 42,000 members since 2016, some people still feel that technicolor Jell-O and jiggling, vintage-inspired molds of meat are pieces of the past that they would rather forget.

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

But jelly isn't just a medium; it's a state of mind. It engulfs an object and solidifies, making anything set inside visible yet distant, like insects trapped in amber. A photo is a reminder, but jelly is an encapsulation; it has the power to literally suspend items in time and place. The perfect California produce that Park gathers for her cakes, like family farm-grown peaches that taste like "nature's candy," stay pristine in jelly, twinkling in the sun as perfect as they were when Park cut them. For the food artists exploring the scene, jelly can call back the past and capture the present.

Park left fashion for food when she turned 30 as part of a "quarter-life crisis" that prompted her to take risks. "I wanted to try something completely new, but I think I was also holding a part of my youth," she said. She drew from her warm memories of the Sanrio characters and Morning Glory stationery of her childhood when thinking through her jelly cakes. Look at a Little Twin Stars design, and suddenly, the soft shapes and colors of a Nunchi cake carry a pleasing nostalgia. "I was thinking, what will make me feel like a kid again?" she explained.

Jelly cakes by Kiki Cheung/@murder.cake | Photos courtesy Kiki Cheung

Kiki Cheung, who runs the Hong Kong-based cake studio Murder Cake, feels similarly soothed by jelly. As a result of the political protests last year, Cheung felt exhausted; baking cleared her head. Now, her cherub cakes are her most recognizable work: A glossy layer of jelly surrounds a wistful three-dimensional baby angel, pale like a Victorian cameo portrait. "I always imagine my cake is a pond," Cheung said. "There is a cherub antique floating on the water. Perhaps it creates an extreme sense of peace and calm." (The idea of calm might seem dichotomous with a bakery named for murder, but this is because cake is "born to be murdered," Cheung said, unable to be eaten without being destroyed.)

Working as a fashion editor, Cheung is surrounded by eye-catching visuals, and though she loves color, she struggles to incorporate it into her clothing. Jelly cakes, however, give her countless ways to express that creativity, so her work drifts between "kawaii, gothic, vintage, and girlish" depending on her mood or on customer requests.

At times, Cheung tags her cakes with phrases like #uglyfoodisbeautiful. Though the ugliness of Cheung's smooth, pleasingly shaped jellies is debatable, it's a nod to the way a friend once described her work. For this reason, too, Cheung sees her jelly art as a freeing break from the "aesthetic fatigue" of seeing beautiful things. "There is no boundary between pretty and ugly," she said. "Perhaps occasionally we need some 'ugly' things to refresh our tired eyes."

Jelly cakes by Laura Taylor/@laurctay | Photos courtesy Laura Taylor

Still, if Park and Cheung's cakes are dreamlike, like preservations of pleasant moments, then other designs in the Instagram jelly scene might be more like nightmares. A 2014 Globe and Mail piece about the aspic comeback in high-end restaurants concluded that when done right, aspics could be a "culinary horror show" no longer. But what if you want to capture that sense of disgust?

Laura Taylor works in public relations for the fashion industry by day, but she started making jelly cakes as a hobby after discovering her grandmother's vintage Jell-O molds, finding that ideas tend to come to her as she's falling asleep. Once, she suspended hard-boiled eggs in clear jelly, with each section of the mold magnifying and refracting a chalky yolk. She's made jelly in the shape of a koi fish, with lychee fruit inside, and a red jelly cake spiked with yellow plastic fingers, each with a pointy red fingernail.

Jelly is intriguing because it's different from what people see in daily life, Taylor said, though the medium calls to mind the Jell-O she made with her family as a kid. Jelly can look artificial and gross, mirroring a movement within fashion toward the weird and grotesque, she added. "When I saw that people were updating jelly cakes and doing them for modern times and making them super weird and cool, I was, for some reason, super attracted to it," she said. "I think that kind of nostalgic part of it threw me into it a little bit as well."

Jelly cakes by Jasmin Seale/@jasnims | Photos courtesy Jasmin Seale

In Australia, graphic designer and photographer Jasmine Seale makes jelly cakes that are more art project than they are edible, drawing inspiration from "gross aspic recipes" and using ingredients she's scrounged from the garbage or found rotting in the fridge. Currently living out of a van, Seale is trying to find ways to make jelly on the road. Her work, posted on the Instagram page @jasnims, is the type that sears itself into your memory: Coarse, curly hair shakes within pale yellow jelly and falls on the ground with a plop, and ramen noodles dangle in blue goo into which Seale inexplicably inserts a grubby MacBook charger.

For Seale, jelly cakes are about the feeling and the format—but not so much the taste. Her worst so far, she said, was a pickle brine jelly with piped mashed potato that required so much gelatin to hold its shape that it had the mouthfeel of rubber. Since much of her work is made with garbage, Seale doesn't usually eat it. "I sometimes give the top a little lick to see how it tastes but it's never nice," she said. When it comes to her work, revulsion is an understandable (and somewhat intentional) response.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @jasnims

Like Instagram's messy cake scene, the jelly niche is refreshingly transgressive. It's a creator's state of mind molded into a shaky and gelatinous form, blurring the lines between dinner and dessert, past and present, edible and inedible, disgusting and delicious. Jelly congeals a vibe into jiggly layers, trapping a moment in time for viewers to interpret however they please.

"I want people to have a good time looking at them, maybe have a laugh, maybe be a little confused—something that makes you want to zoom right in," Seale said. No matter how you feel about her work, she finds a sense of excitement in grossness, whether that's by photographing moldy food, or by immortalizing waste—like a crusty, half-eaten sausage roll her housemate left in the trash—in jelly.

"You know how people are pretty gross, with all that pus and body fluid, but also beautiful and sexy?" she asked. "That's what I want my jellies to feel like."

Follow Bettina Makalintal on Twitter.

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[carolrhackett85282]

Instagram's Jelly Cake Revival Turns Vintage Camp Into Modern Art

Jelly first came to Lexie Park in a dream. In her over-10-year career as a fashion designer, Park felt a pull toward texture and transparency, and as she’s transitioned into food over the past year, those qualities drew her to jelly. She wondered what she could suspend and preserve inside a translucent, wobbling mass.

Now, Park has become one of Instagram's most iconic jelly artists. Through Nunchi, which she has developed into a full-time food business, she makes colorful, glassy-looking cakes that her followers fawn over for their pastel hues and glints of sparkle. Often, they have alternating layers of cloudy and clear confection, or pieces of fruit, jelly flowers, and even cartoon bunny heads floating inside. "I feel like [it's] psycho but cute," said Park, of the aesthetic that has earned her collaborations with brands like Nike (a swoosh floating atop tiers of baby pink and blue jelly) and the razor company Billie.

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

Not all of Park's work is so dainty. "When I first started, all my previous cakes and posts were a little bit crazier and uglier, in a sense," she said. Her cakes for commissions are primarily cute, but her more experimental jellies have an edge: a fish sliced into four pieces drifts in a jelly aquarium; Pedialyte forms caviar spheres, served in a tin; blobs surround a skin-colored baby, as though it's gestating in an alien womb. "I'm very extreme in my personality, so I don't want to just stick to one [style]—it's really based on how I feel."

In its growing Instagram niche, jelly art is all about duality. Jelly cakes can be adorable and pastel, like a child's toy—or they can be grotesque, making familiar foods look inexplicably foreign. Duality exists in the format of jelly itself: Whether it's made with animal-based gelatin or seaweed-derived agar agar, jelly looks artificial enough to seem almost inedible, and to some, there's still a knee-jerk aversion to Jell-O on premise alone. Despite jelly's niche revival on Instagram and groups like Show Me Your Aspics, which has accumulated more than 42,000 members since 2016, some people still feel that technicolor Jell-O and jiggling, vintage-inspired molds of meat are pieces of the past that they would rather forget.

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

But jelly isn't just a medium; it's a state of mind. It engulfs an object and solidifies, making anything set inside visible yet distant, like insects trapped in amber. A photo is a reminder, but jelly is an encapsulation; it has the power to literally suspend items in time and place. The perfect California produce that Park gathers for her cakes, like family farm-grown peaches that taste like "nature's candy," stay pristine in jelly, twinkling in the sun as perfect as they were when Park cut them. For the food artists exploring the scene, jelly can call back the past and capture the present.

Park left fashion for food when she turned 30 as part of a "quarter-life crisis" that prompted her to take risks. "I wanted to try something completely new, but I think I was also holding a part of my youth," she said. She drew from her warm memories of the Sanrio characters and Morning Glory stationery of her childhood when thinking through her jelly cakes. Look at a Little Twin Stars design, and suddenly, the soft shapes and colors of a Nunchi cake carry a pleasing nostalgia. "I was thinking, what will make me feel like a kid again?" she explained.

Jelly cakes by Kiki Cheung/@murder.cake | Photos courtesy Kiki Cheung

Kiki Cheung, who runs the Hong Kong-based cake studio Murder Cake, feels similarly soothed by jelly. As a result of the political protests last year, Cheung felt exhausted; baking cleared her head. Now, her cherub cakes are her most recognizable work: A glossy layer of jelly surrounds a wistful three-dimensional baby angel, pale like a Victorian cameo portrait. "I always imagine my cake is a pond," Cheung said. "There is a cherub antique floating on the water. Perhaps it creates an extreme sense of peace and calm." (The idea of calm might seem dichotomous with a bakery named for murder, but this is because cake is "born to be murdered," Cheung said, unable to be eaten without being destroyed.)

Working as a fashion editor, Cheung is surrounded by eye-catching visuals, and though she loves color, she struggles to incorporate it into her clothing. Jelly cakes, however, give her countless ways to express that creativity, so her work drifts between "kawaii, gothic, vintage, and girlish" depending on her mood or on customer requests.

At times, Cheung tags her cakes with phrases like #uglyfoodisbeautiful. Though the ugliness of Cheung's smooth, pleasingly shaped jellies is debatable, it's a nod to the way a friend once described her work. For this reason, too, Cheung sees her jelly art as a freeing break from the "aesthetic fatigue" of seeing beautiful things. "There is no boundary between pretty and ugly," she said. "Perhaps occasionally we need some 'ugly' things to refresh our tired eyes."

Jelly cakes by Laura Taylor/@laurctay | Photos courtesy Laura Taylor

Still, if Park and Cheung's cakes are dreamlike, like preservations of pleasant moments, then other designs in the Instagram jelly scene might be more like nightmares. A 2014 Globe and Mail piece about the aspic comeback in high-end restaurants concluded that when done right, aspics could be a "culinary horror show" no longer. But what if you want to capture that sense of disgust?

Laura Taylor works in public relations for the fashion industry by day, but she started making jelly cakes as a hobby after discovering her grandmother's vintage Jell-O molds, finding that ideas tend to come to her as she's falling asleep. Once, she suspended hard-boiled eggs in clear jelly, with each section of the mold magnifying and refracting a chalky yolk. She's made jelly in the shape of a koi fish, with lychee fruit inside, and a red jelly cake spiked with yellow plastic fingers, each with a pointy red fingernail.

Jelly is intriguing because it's different from what people see in daily life, Taylor said, though the medium calls to mind the Jell-O she made with her family as a kid. Jelly can look artificial and gross, mirroring a movement within fashion toward the weird and grotesque, she added. "When I saw that people were updating jelly cakes and doing them for modern times and making them super weird and cool, I was, for some reason, super attracted to it," she said. "I think that kind of nostalgic part of it threw me into it a little bit as well."

Jelly cakes by Jasmin Seale/@jasnims | Photos courtesy Jasmin Seale

In Australia, graphic designer and photographer Jasmine Seale makes jelly cakes that are more art project than they are edible, drawing inspiration from "gross aspic recipes" and using ingredients she's scrounged from the garbage or found rotting in the fridge. Currently living out of a van, Seale is trying to find ways to make jelly on the road. Her work, posted on the Instagram page @jasnims, is the type that sears itself into your memory: Coarse, curly hair shakes within pale yellow jelly and falls on the ground with a plop, and ramen noodles dangle in blue goo into which Seale inexplicably inserts a grubby MacBook charger.

For Seale, jelly cakes are about the feeling and the format—but not so much the taste. Her worst so far, she said, was a pickle brine jelly with piped mashed potato that required so much gelatin to hold its shape that it had the mouthfeel of rubber. Since much of her work is made with garbage, Seale doesn't usually eat it. "I sometimes give the top a little lick to see how it tastes but it's never nice," she said. When it comes to her work, revulsion is an understandable (and somewhat intentional) response.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @jasnims

Like Instagram's messy cake scene, the jelly niche is refreshingly transgressive. It's a creator's state of mind molded into a shaky and gelatinous form, blurring the lines between dinner and dessert, past and present, edible and inedible, disgusting and delicious. Jelly congeals a vibe into jiggly layers, trapping a moment in time for viewers to interpret however they please.

"I want people to have a good time looking at them, maybe have a laugh, maybe be a little confused—something that makes you want to zoom right in," Seale said. No matter how you feel about her work, she finds a sense of excitement in grossness, whether that's by photographing moldy food, or by immortalizing waste—like a crusty, half-eaten sausage roll her housemate left in the trash—in jelly.

"You know how people are pretty gross, with all that pus and body fluid, but also beautiful and sexy?" she asked. "That's what I want my jellies to feel like."

Follow Bettina Makalintal on Twitter.

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[carolinechanson97838]

Instagram's Jelly Cake Revival Turns Vintage Camp Into Modern Art

Jelly first came to Lexie Park in a dream. In her over-10-year career as a fashion designer, Park felt a pull toward texture and transparency, and as she’s transitioned into food over the past year, those qualities drew her to jelly. She wondered what she could suspend and preserve inside a translucent, wobbling mass.

Now, Park has become one of Instagram's most iconic jelly artists. Through Nunchi, which she has developed into a full-time food business, she makes colorful, glassy-looking cakes that her followers fawn over for their pastel hues and glints of sparkle. Often, they have alternating layers of cloudy and clear confection, or pieces of fruit, jelly flowers, and even cartoon bunny heads floating inside. "I feel like [it's] psycho but cute," said Park, of the aesthetic that has earned her collaborations with brands like Nike (a swoosh floating atop tiers of baby pink and blue jelly) and the razor company Billie.

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

Not all of Park's work is so dainty. "When I first started, all my previous cakes and posts were a little bit crazier and uglier, in a sense," she said. Her cakes for commissions are primarily cute, but her more experimental jellies have an edge: a fish sliced into four pieces drifts in a jelly aquarium; Pedialyte forms caviar spheres, served in a tin; blobs surround a skin-colored baby, as though it's gestating in an alien womb. "I'm very extreme in my personality, so I don't want to just stick to one [style]—it's really based on how I feel."

In its growing Instagram niche, jelly art is all about duality. Jelly cakes can be adorable and pastel, like a child's toy—or they can be grotesque, making familiar foods look inexplicably foreign. Duality exists in the format of jelly itself: Whether it's made with animal-based gelatin or seaweed-derived agar agar, jelly looks artificial enough to seem almost inedible, and to some, there's still a knee-jerk aversion to Jell-O on premise alone. Despite jelly's niche revival on Instagram and groups like Show Me Your Aspics, which has accumulated more than 42,000 members since 2016, some people still feel that technicolor Jell-O and jiggling, vintage-inspired molds of meat are pieces of the past that they would rather forget.

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

But jelly isn't just a medium; it's a state of mind. It engulfs an object and solidifies, making anything set inside visible yet distant, like insects trapped in amber. A photo is a reminder, but jelly is an encapsulation; it has the power to literally suspend items in time and place. The perfect California produce that Park gathers for her cakes, like family farm-grown peaches that taste like "nature's candy," stay pristine in jelly, twinkling in the sun as perfect as they were when Park cut them. For the food artists exploring the scene, jelly can call back the past and capture the present.

Park left fashion for food when she turned 30 as part of a "quarter-life crisis" that prompted her to take risks. "I wanted to try something completely new, but I think I was also holding a part of my youth," she said. She drew from her warm memories of the Sanrio characters and Morning Glory stationery of her childhood when thinking through her jelly cakes. Look at a Little Twin Stars design, and suddenly, the soft shapes and colors of a Nunchi cake carry a pleasing nostalgia. "I was thinking, what will make me feel like a kid again?" she explained.

Jelly cakes by Kiki Cheung/@murder.cake | Photos courtesy Kiki Cheung

Kiki Cheung, who runs the Hong Kong-based cake studio Murder Cake, feels similarly soothed by jelly. As a result of the political protests last year, Cheung felt exhausted; baking cleared her head. Now, her cherub cakes are her most recognizable work: A glossy layer of jelly surrounds a wistful three-dimensional baby angel, pale like a Victorian cameo portrait. "I always imagine my cake is a pond," Cheung said. "There is a cherub antique floating on the water. Perhaps it creates an extreme sense of peace and calm." (The idea of calm might seem dichotomous with a bakery named for murder, but this is because cake is "born to be murdered," Cheung said, unable to be eaten without being destroyed.)

Working as a fashion editor, Cheung is surrounded by eye-catching visuals, and though she loves color, she struggles to incorporate it into her clothing. Jelly cakes, however, give her countless ways to express that creativity, so her work drifts between "kawaii, gothic, vintage, and girlish" depending on her mood or on customer requests.

At times, Cheung tags her cakes with phrases like #uglyfoodisbeautiful. Though the ugliness of Cheung's smooth, pleasingly shaped jellies is debatable, it's a nod to the way a friend once described her work. For this reason, too, Cheung sees her jelly art as a freeing break from the "aesthetic fatigue" of seeing beautiful things. "There is no boundary between pretty and ugly," she said. "Perhaps occasionally we need some 'ugly' things to refresh our tired eyes."

Jelly cakes by Laura Taylor/@laurctay | Photos courtesy Laura Taylor

Still, if Park and Cheung's cakes are dreamlike, like preservations of pleasant moments, then other designs in the Instagram jelly scene might be more like nightmares. A 2014 Globe and Mail piece about the aspic comeback in high-end restaurants concluded that when done right, aspics could be a "culinary horror show" no longer. But what if you want to capture that sense of disgust?

Laura Taylor works in public relations for the fashion industry by day, but she started making jelly cakes as a hobby after discovering her grandmother's vintage Jell-O molds, finding that ideas tend to come to her as she's falling asleep. Once, she suspended hard-boiled eggs in clear jelly, with each section of the mold magnifying and refracting a chalky yolk. She's made jelly in the shape of a koi fish, with lychee fruit inside, and a red jelly cake spiked with yellow plastic fingers, each with a pointy red fingernail.

Jelly is intriguing because it's different from what people see in daily life, Taylor said, though the medium calls to mind the Jell-O she made with her family as a kid. Jelly can look artificial and gross, mirroring a movement within fashion toward the weird and grotesque, she added. "When I saw that people were updating jelly cakes and doing them for modern times and making them super weird and cool, I was, for some reason, super attracted to it," she said. "I think that kind of nostalgic part of it threw me into it a little bit as well."

Jelly cakes by Jasmin Seale/@jasnims | Photos courtesy Jasmin Seale

In Australia, graphic designer and photographer Jasmine Seale makes jelly cakes that are more art project than they are edible, drawing inspiration from "gross aspic recipes" and using ingredients she's scrounged from the garbage or found rotting in the fridge. Currently living out of a van, Seale is trying to find ways to make jelly on the road. Her work, posted on the Instagram page @jasnims, is the type that sears itself into your memory: Coarse, curly hair shakes within pale yellow jelly and falls on the ground with a plop, and ramen noodles dangle in blue goo into which Seale inexplicably inserts a grubby MacBook charger.

For Seale, jelly cakes are about the feeling and the format—but not so much the taste. Her worst so far, she said, was a pickle brine jelly with piped mashed potato that required so much gelatin to hold its shape that it had the mouthfeel of rubber. Since much of her work is made with garbage, Seale doesn't usually eat it. "I sometimes give the top a little lick to see how it tastes but it's never nice," she said. When it comes to her work, revulsion is an understandable (and somewhat intentional) response.

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Like Instagram's messy cake scene, the jelly niche is refreshingly transgressive. It's a creator's state of mind molded into a shaky and gelatinous form, blurring the lines between dinner and dessert, past and present, edible and inedible, disgusting and delicious. Jelly congeals a vibe into jiggly layers, trapping a moment in time for viewers to interpret however they please.

"I want people to have a good time looking at them, maybe have a laugh, maybe be a little confused—something that makes you want to zoom right in," Seale said. No matter how you feel about her work, she finds a sense of excitement in grossness, whether that's by photographing moldy food, or by immortalizing waste—like a crusty, half-eaten sausage roll her housemate left in the trash—in jelly.

"You know how people are pretty gross, with all that pus and body fluid, but also beautiful and sexy?" she asked. "That's what I want my jellies to feel like."

Follow Bettina Makalintal on Twitter.

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[encephalonfatigue]

capital and the plantationocene: faith or defeat

a review of Anna Tsing’s “The Mushroom at the End of the World”

Since my late undergraduate years, Donna Haraway has been a continuous figure of fascination for me. I always found her to be a very fashionable writer, maybe because I had a very unfashionable taste for 90’s postmodernism during my politically formative years. Around the time I started toying around with vegetable gardening in my backyard I began getting fairly interested in Haraway’s work on companion species and how species are mutually constituted by each other. Species (including humans) of course do not exist in a vacuum, but exist in relation to other species, and have been formed by the history of these other species with whom they have been interacting over vast periods of time, genetically and behaviourally adapting to what Haraway calls ‘kin’ — family. (Also Haraway references in Orphan Black only added fuel to this smouldering interest.)

More recently, Haraway’s Marxism has been more often foregrounded in discussions. I suppose this is simply a result of the political mood that has been surfacing over the past few years. But I listened to a podcast interview Haraway did with Jacobin on why using the term ‘anthropocene’ was inadequate for trying to understand the nature of the anthropogenic climate catastrophe currently underway. Many leftists use the (rather clumsy) term ‘capitalocene’ to signal that it is the specific political economy of capitalism and specifically the actions of the capitalist class — the wealthy few — that are driving this climate catastrophe. Haraway mentions she finds that term useful but more often refers to a term that her colleague Anna Tsing uses which is ‘plantationocene’, which signals the type of socio-ecological and political-economic organization that came to exist under colonialism that became the basis of capitalist production today — and how that was the driving force behind the ongoing climate catastrophe. This is how I first encountered Anna Tsing.

It is interesting how certain liberal science writers like Elizabeth Kolbert in The Sixth Extinction go out of their way to try and frame ecological destruction as an intrinsically human thing. Almost as if it is inevitable that humans as a species would cause mass extinctions either way — with or without capitalism. Ironically, this is a rather fascist idea behind a lot of eco-fascist calls for genocide. Haraway sometimes gets accused of this because she emphasizes population control as an important ecological tactic (with slogans like “Make kin, not babies”), even though she has been extremely critical of these sorts of fascist impulses in movements like deep ecology. Haraway’s emphasis on population control is inverted from the typical liberal one that carries deep anxieties over ballooning third world populations. Haraway claims that having a child in the highly consumptive environment of a Western ‘middle-class’ life is far more worrying than having a child as a third world family. I ultimately don’t really agree with Haraway’s emphasis on population as a primary mechanism of dealing with this climate catastrophe, but certainly I think it’s worth admitting that our planet can only sustain a certain number of human beings.

I want to point out though how radically different indigenous anthropologies are from the sort of picture Kolbert paints in The Sixth Extinction. For example, Leanne Simpson talks about how human abandonment is not the solution to environmental destruction but human care and responsibility:

“So when I think of the land as my mother or if I think of it as a familial relationship, I don’t hate my mother because she’s sick, or because she’s been abused. I don’t stop visiting her because she’s been in an abusive relationship and she has scars and bruises. If anything, you need to intensify that relationship because it’s a relationship of nurturing and caring.”

The botanist Robin Wall-Kimmerer also talks about finding this common notion among her ecology students that humans are not beneficial to ecosystems:

“One otherwise unremarkable morning I gave the students in my General Ecology class a survey. Among other things, they were asked to rate their understanding of the negative interactions between humans and the environment. Nearly every one of the two hundred students said confidently that humans and nature are a bad mix. These were third-year students who had selected a career in environmental protection, so the response was, in a way, not very surprising. They were well schooled in the mechanics of climate change, toxins in the land and water, and the crisis of habitat loss. Later in the survey, they were asked to rate their knowledge of positive interactions between people and land. The median response was “none.”

I was stunned. How is it possible that in twenty years of education they cannot think of any beneficial relationships between people and the environment? …When we talked about this after class, I realized that they could not even imagine what beneficial relations between their species and others might look like. How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what the path feels like? If we can’t imagine the generosity of geese? These students were not raised on the story of Skywoman.”

I think what people like Haraway and Tsing offer is a framing beyond nature as something radically distinct from humans, as if humans are not part of nature or ecosystems. Their critique of rendering nature as something static or pure is also at the same time a critique of anthropocentrism. To recognize humans as a species formed in parallel together with all other species on this planet, and that we as a species affect other species just as other species affect us, and affect each other also. What we cannot lose sight of is the hegemonic influence the humans species (more specifically an elite subset of the human species) has had on all other species on this planet. We cannot divorce anthropocentrism and certain destructive humanisms from a proper class analysis.

Tsing actually works through a number of Marxist concepts throughout the book. She explores labour (wage labour and precarious gig labour), capital, privatization, alienation, and commodification. I think many on the left are quite impatient of postmodern sermonizing (maybe rightly so), yet Tsing is working in the tradition of Marx and has many worthwhile things to say. Some of Marx’s earliest articles as a journalist and editor of the German paper Rheinische Zitung was on the wooded commons. He wrote a series of articles on the ‘theft’ of firewood from German forests in the autumn of 1842, which many consider formative to his further politicization.

One of Tsing’s observations I found most useful was her exploration of capitalist co-optation which she terms the ‘salvage economy’ writing:

“In this “salvage” capitalism, supply chains organize the translation process in which wildly diverse forms of work and nature are made commensurate—for capital.”

Tsing elaborates:

“In capitalist farms, living things made within ecological processes are coopted for the concentration of wealth. This is what I call “salvage,” that is, taking advantage of value produced without capitalist control. Many capitalist raw materials (consider coal and oil) came into existence long before capitalism. Capitalists also cannot produce human life, the prerequisite of labor. “Salvage accumulation” is the process through which lead firms amass capital without controlling the conditions under which commodities are produced. ”

Tsing then turns to two very interesting literary examples of capitalist co-optation of indigenous knowledge by colonizers to generate capitalist wealth:

“Consider the nineteenth-century ivory supply chain connecting central Africa and Europe as told in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. The story turns around the narrator’s discovery that the European trader he much admired has turned to savagery to procure his ivory. The savagery is a surprise because everyone expects the European presence in Africa to be a force for civilization and progress. Instead, civilization and progress turn out to be cover-ups and translation mechanisms for getting access to value procured through violence: classic salvage.

For a brighter view of supply-chain translation, consider Herman Melville’s account of the nineteenth-century procurement of whale oil for Yankee investors. Moby-Dick tells of a ship of whalers whose rowdy cosmopolitanism contrasts sharply with our stereotypes of factory discipline; yet the oil they obtain from killing whales around the world enters a U.S.-based capitalist supply chain. Strangely, all the harpooners on the Pequod are unassimilated indigenous people from Asia, Africa, America, and the Pacific. The ship is unable to kill a single whale without the expertise of people who are completely untrained in U.S. industrial discipline. But the products of this work must eventually be translated into capitalist value forms; the ship sails only because of capitalist financing. The conversion of indigenous knowledge into capitalist returns is salvage accumulation. So too is the conversion of whale life into investments.”

I cannot help but recall Caliban in Shakespeare’s Tempest crying out:

“...I loved thee

And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:

Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o' the island.”

After the extraction of indigenous knowledge for capitalist gain comes the inevitable violent process of enclosure and privatization that dispossesses the colonized from their land.

Tsing is a Southeast Asianist and I think her writings on Southeast Asia are some of the strongest aspects of the book. The influence of Japanese capital for example in Indonesia was fascinating, and how the reinvigoration of Japanese capital after WW2 was largely a function of anti-communist foreign policy.

“American occupiers arranged for the rehabilitation of once-disgraced nationalists and rebuilt the Japanese economy as a bulwark against communism. It was in this climate that associations of banks, industrial enterprises, and specialists in trade formed again, although less formally, as keiretsu “enterprise groups.” At the heart of most enterprise groups was a general trading company in partnership with a bank. The bank transferred money to the trading company, which, in turn, made smaller loans to its associated enterprises… Trading companies advanced loans—or equipment, technical advice, or special marketing agreements—to their supply chain partners overseas. The trading company’s job was to translate goods procured in varied cultural and economic arrangements into inventory. It is hard not to see in this arrangement the roots of the current hegemony of global supply chains, with their associated form of salvage accumulation.”

Tsing also tells the story of Nike which started as a U.S. outpost distributing Japanese sneakers, and eventually moved to this model of heavily subcontracting every stage of production to the extent that one of its Vice Presidents remarked:  “We don’t know the first thing about manufacturing. We are marketers and designers,”

It is then interesting to see Tsing write about her first encounter with commodity chains as a Southeast Asianist was to observe how Japanese capital functioned in Indonesia by way of subcontracting not unlike the way Nike did:

“I first learned about supply chains in studying logging in Indonesia, and this is a place to see how the Japanese supply-chain model works. During Japan’s building boom in the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese imported Indonesian trees to make plywood construction molds. But no Japanese cut down Indonesian trees. Japanese general trading companies offered loans, technical assistance, and trade agreements to firms from other countries, which cut logs to Japanese specifications. This arrangement had many advantages for Japanese traders. First, it avoided political risk. Japanese businessmen were aware of the political difficulties of Chinese Indonesians who, resented for their wealth and willingness to cooperate with the more ruthless policies of the Indonesian government, were targets in periodic riots. Japanese businessmen evaded such difficulties for themselves by advancing money to Chinese Indonesians, who made the deals with Indonesian generals and took the risks. Second, the arrangement facilitated transnational mobility. Japanese traders had already deforested the Philippines and much of Malaysian Borneo by the time they got to Indonesia. Rather than adapting to a new country, the traders could merely bring in agents willing to work with them in each location. Indeed, Filipino and Malaysian loggers, financed by Japanese traders, were ready and able to go to work in cutting down Indonesian trees.

Third, supply-chain arrangements facilitated Japanese trade standards while ignoring environmental consequences. Environmentalists looking for targets could find only a grab bag of varied companies, many Indonesian; no Japanese were in the forests. Fourth, supply-chain arrangements accommodated illegal logging as a layer of subcontracting, which harvested trees protected by environmental regulations. Illegal loggers sold their logs to the larger contractors, who passed them on to Japan. No one need be responsible. And—even after Indonesia started its own plywood businesses, in a supply-chain hierarchy modeled on Japanese trade—the wood was so cheap! The cost could be calculated without regard to the lives and livelihoods of loggers, trees, or forest residents. Japanese trading companies made the logging of Southeast Asia possible. They were equally busy with other commodities and in other parts of the world.”

This habit of disarticulating production is the common experience of capitalist alienation. Ching Kwan Lee, who has done some remarkably important studies on Chinese investment in Africa made some very interesting remarks on subcontracting:

“The worldwide trend has been to use subcontractors who in turn offer minimal training to short-term contract workers. The use of casual and contract workers was equally prevalent in construction.”

She observed many mining companies backed by global private capital (e.g. traded on the London stock exchange) were far more likely than Chinese state-owned mining companies to engage in widespread subcontracting in their mining projects:

“CM was particularly notorious and ruthless in using competition among subcontractors to drive down costs, to the extent that there was an internal discourse among its own managers about the “tyranny of finance.””

Lee argues in one of her lectures on her book “The Specter of Global China” that subcontracting and the casualization of labour often significantly reduces the chance that workers will engage in strikes together, and consequently their bargaining power. She says:

“The more subcontracts you have, they fight more over things like equipment — it’s harder to manage. But on the books, you’re cutting costs by subcontracting… Why do I mention this as a very important feature? Because it has extremely important consequences for labour power — the capacity for labour to force the hand of management. Because if you only have one subcontractor, your workers are unified, because they just have one employer. But if you have many many subcontractors, your workforce is totally divided, and that’s why more strikes happen in the Chinese state mine, and they have to make more concessions to their workers because they care so much about.. smooth production.”

Lee’s point is that Chinese mining is less concerned about maximizing profits by selling minerals on a global market, than actually directly using those minerals for state infrastructure projects. This is the classical distinction between ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ (mentioned in both Adam Smith and Marx). But Lee emphasizes that this is only in the case of mining. Subcontracting is still very common in Chinese construction and the bargaining power of labour power in Chinese construction in Africa is sometimes even worse than construction undertaken by global private capital. So it cuts both ways.

I work at a small firm engaged in distributing and ‘integrating’ power engineering products and am intimately confronted by the bizarre world of a subcontracting and sub-subcontracting that happens in almost every dimension of the field. It’s remarkable how many middle people are involved in small value-adding steps and plastering their ‘brand names’ on goods simply manufactured in third world countries where labour is much cheaper.

Anyway, with these issues of mining and landscapes ravaged by capitalism, I think Tsing raises an obvious but important point that humans are not the only species that radically transform landscapes. She writes:

“Making worlds is not limited to humans. We know that beavers reshape streams as they make dams, canals, and lodges; in fact, all organisms make ecological living places, altering earth, air, and water. Without the ability to make workable living arrangements, species would die out. In the process, each organism changes everyone’s world. Bacteria made our oxygen atmosphere, and plants help maintain it. Plants live on land because fungi made soil by digesting rocks. As these examples suggest, world-making projects can overlap, allowing room for more than one species. Humans, too, have always been involved in multispecies world making. Fire was a tool for early humans not just to cook but also to burn the landscape, encouraging edible bulbs and grasses that attracted animals for hunting. Humans shape multispecies worlds when our living arrangements make room for other species. This is not just a matter of crops, livestock, and pets. Pines, with their associated fungal partners, often flourish in landscapes burned by humans; pines and fungi work together to take advantage of bright open spaces and exposed mineral soils. Humans, pines, and fungi make living arrangements simultaneously for themselves and for others: multispecies worlds.”

Tsing also mentions how

“Pines have made alliances with animals as well as fungi. Some pines are completely dependent on birds to spread their seeds—just as some birds are completely dependent on pine seeds for their food.”

Yet this interdependency is not isolated from ‘destructive’ human practices. Tsing points out that human deforestation also benefits pine trees in certain circumstances:

“Humans spread pines in two different ways: by planting them, and by creating the kinds of disturbances in which they take hold. The latter generally occurs without any conscious intent; pines like some of the kinds of messes humans make without trying. Pines colonize abandoned fields and eroded hillsides. When humans cut down the other trees, pines move in. Sometimes planting and disturbance go together. People plant pines to remediate the disturbances they have created. Alternatively, they may keep things radically disturbed to advantage pine. This last alternative has been the strategy of industrial growers, whether they plant or merely manage self-seeded pine: clear-cutting and soil breaking are justified as strategies to promote pine.”

I have mixed feelings about the emphasizing of this framing by postmodernists like Tsing and Haraway. On the one hand there is something dialectical to this sort of analysis. Yet also this reiteration of slippage and blurring of boundaries can obscure the real dominant power dynamics at play, and the clarity of the task before us. 

Catherine Liu did a really interesting interview with Jacobin criticizing postmodernism from a Marxist perspective. She mentions that most textbooks locate the pivotal turn to postmodernism as the destruction of Pruitt-Igoe (a social housing project in St Louis that ‘devolved’ into a hotbed of ‘gang violence’). This narrative framing was also the case of for me in a first year international development course, where this landmark moment in architectural history had resounding consequences in art more generally and philosophical and political currents. Liu claims that the postmodernist disdain for large-scale ‘alienating’ and ‘dehumanizing’ mass-produced social-housing projects and efficiently designed rooms like the Frankfurt Kitchen designed by the communist architect Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky dovetailed well with reactionary initiatives to dismantle social housing, which were largely used by poor working-class people of colour. Liu sees this as a defeatist impulse in postmodernist ideology. That grand projects to provide housing for all and not leaving poor racialized communities behind is seen as an impossibly utopic vision bound for failure. The failure of Pruitt-Igoe housing projects is not properly located within the active efforts of the rich white business class to stop public funding of social housing and providing adequate maintenance for it, but as the fault of modernism’s large ambitions and excessively managed ‘imposition’ of egalitarian ideas on normal people that cannot relate to these idealistic elites, and are too violent and ‘uneducated’ to take care of and maintain these unworkable projects of modernist monstrosity.

Each of these critiques Liu puts forward, I can see within the texture of Tsing’s book here. When I first picked up this book, roaming about a big box store book retailer (one I recently learned from a member of the United Jewish People’s Order is often subject to BDS boycotts because of its funding of the HESEG Foundation), I encountered Tsing’s mention of the anarchist pamphlet Desert, which basically asserts that stopping a climate catastrophe is impossible as is any effort to put an end to the global capitalist order, and that radicals should simply focus on how to better live in radical communities of mutual aid under the ruins of capitalist power. 

In many ways Tsing’s book is about how life has thrived despite the circumstances of capitalist destruction, and found ways to survive outside the orbit of typical capitalist modes of production. I tend to agree with Liu more that such defeatism is dangerous. Yet it should not be ignored wholesale. Questions of how to survive under capitalism are important. But being a person of faith, I do believe another world is possible and worth fighting for. Tsing talks about how ‘scalable’ operations of colonial plantations (e.g. those involved in the production of sugar cane) became templates of capitalist production today, yet also recognizes that scalability is not intrinsically good or bad, it just has certain consequences that one must properly consider. 

I think I’ve have spent many years believing in a vision that E.F. Schumacher put forward in Small is Beautiful, along with these critiques of technology and industry put forward by Ivan Illich (a Catholic anarchist of sorts) embraced by certain Latin American leftists. The Marxist historian of Southeast Asia, Michael Vickery in his 1999 introduction to his seminal text on Cambodia, fascinatingly mentioned a connection one of his acquaintances made between the ideology of the ‘Pol Pot regime’ and Ivan Illich, though Vickery thought Illich did not intend to be taken so literally or seriously. But this utopic agrarian idea of collectivization without the imposition of Western technology on peasants (as modernization is often framed as) is something that Vickery sees as part of the tragic ideology infused within Cambodian revolutionary society, even if they likely did not read Illich at all, but shared certain ideological impulses with him.

As migrants and refugees from Laos and Cambodia, as well as some Hmong immigrants constitute many of the matsutake pickers that Tsing spends time with and interviews, I found Vickery’s insights on Cambodian revolutionary ideology (which he does not really characterize as communist or Marxist) rather relevant to these issues of scale, modernization and progress that Tsing so strongly criticizes. I too had a certain disdain for notions of ‘progress’, but am coming to think I have been mistaken about them. The eschewing of ‘progress’ in many ways is defeatist as Liu suggests.

I think these are all very complex issues. What Tsing’s book did provide and one of my favourite parts of it involved these fascinating elaborations on pine and oak trees that for some reason provide a sense of hope. Some sense that out of destruction, life can still persist. In that sense it is not sheer defeatism. Tsing puts forward fascinating facts like “felled oaks (unlike pines) tend not to die; they sprout back from roots and stumps to form new trees.” The Asian history Tsing tells about pine forests is also fascinating:

“Long before they came to central Japan, Dr. Ogawa related, Koreans had cut down their forests to build temples and fuel iron forging. They had developed in their homeland the human-disturbed open pine forests in which matsutake grow long before such forests emerged in Japan. When Koreans expanded to Japan in the eighth century, they cut down forests. Pine forests sprung up from such deforestation, and with them matsutake.”

I think about the enormous white pine forests that covered the landscape of Mississauga once, and were wiped out in what Anishinaabeg ethnobotanist and Dalhousie professor Jonathan Ferrier referred to as a “genocide by sawmills”. Yet I recall Leanne Simpson speaking of Mother Earth recovering, and I think about the resilience of pine to thrive in the wake of human or more specifically capitalist destruction. Despite all the ruins of capitalism, beautiful things can still persist. That does not mean we should be resigned to the terms of capital. We must fight with everything inside us, and draw strength from the pockets of resilience that survive the destruction such an economy has sown. We need not feel embarrassed about the lines we draw in the sand, while still recognizing that ultimately we do things out of solidarity and love. We love our oppressors by speaking truth to them about their oppressive ways and moving them towards helping in the abolition of such relations of domination. Ecosystems are inevitably full of suffering and pain, certain species gaining from the downfall of another. Yet they are also full of examples of immense interdependence, mutuality, and cooperation. As Arundhati Roy has said:

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.“

The question is how she will look like when she arrives.

[our-dailyimpact]

10 SURE WAYS TO SAVE MONEY BY VICKI ROBIN AND JOE DOMINGUEZ

1. Don’t Go Shopping

If you don’t go shopping, you won’t spend money. Of course, if you need something from the store, go and buy it. But don’t just go shopping. About 53 percent of groceries and 47 percent of hardware-store purchases are “spur of the moment.”4 Indeed, shopping—at malls and online—is one of our favorite national pastimes.

More than the simple act of acquiring needed goods and services, shopping attempts to fill (but fails, since we have to shop so often) myriad needs: for socializing and time structuring, for a reward after a job well done, for an antidepressant, for esteem-boosting, self-assertion, status and nurturing. An alien anthropologist might conclude that the mall is our place of worship, and shopping the central ritual of communion with our deity. Lewis Lapham observes, “We express our longing for the ineffable in the wolfishness of our appetite... The feasts of consumption thus become rituals of communion.”5 Consumption seems to be our favorite high, our nationally sanctioned addiction, the all-American form of substance abuse. So don’t go shopping. And while you’re at it, stay away from advertising that whets your appetite for stuff you don’t want. And for pity’s sake don’t tune in to the Home Shopping Network, and the like. You may be saving more than money. You may be saving your sanity, not to speak of your soul.

2. Live Within Your Means

This notion is so outmoded that some readers might not even know what it signifies. To live within your means is to buy only what you can prudently afford, to avoid debt unless you have an assurance that you will be able to pay it promptly and always to have something put away for a rainy day. It was quite a fashionable way to live a couple of short generations ago, before we started living beyond our means. There are two sides to the coin of living beyond your means. The shiny side is that you can have everything you want right now. The tarnished side is that you will pay for it with your life. Buying on credit, from cars to houses to vacations, often results in paying three times the purchase price. Is going to Hawaii for two weeks this year worth working perhaps four additional months next year to pay it off? This doesn’t mean you have to cut up all your credit cards—you just have to avoid using them as much as possible. We recognize that credit cards can be a way to put food on the table for those who unexpectedly hit hard times. But in general, it’s important to distinguish between necessity and indulgence so you have as little debt as possible to pay off. Living within your means suggests that you wait until you have the money before you buy something. This gives you the benefit of avoiding interest charges.  It also gives you a waiting period during which you may well discover that you don’t want some of those things after all. He who hesitates saves money. The bright side of living within your means is that you will use and enjoy what you have and harvest a full measure of fulfillment from it, whether it’s your old car, your old coat, or your old house. It also means that you can weather the economic bad times when they come—which they will.

3. Take Care of What You Have

There is one thing we all have that we want to last a long time: our bodies. Simple attention to the proven preventive practices will save you lots of money. Flossing and brushing your teeth, for example, could save thousands in dental bills. And eating what you know agrees with your body (judging by your energy, not by your taste buds) may save you thousands in expensive procedures—not to mention your life. Extend this principle to all your possessions. Regular oil changes are known to extend the life of your car. Cleaning your tools extends their life. (How many hairdryers and vacuum cleaners have choked to death on hairballs?) Dusting your refrigerator coils saves energy and could save your refrigerator. One big difference between living beings and machines is that machines are not self-healing. If you ignore a headache it will probably go away. If you ignore a funny noise in your engine you could throw a rod, burn out a water pump, or otherwise incur major (and costly) damage. Many of us have lived with excess for so many years that it no longer occurs to us to maintain what we have. “There’s always more where that came from,” we tell ourselves. But more costs money. And more may not, in the long run, be available.

4. Wear It Out

What’s the last item you wore out? If it weren’t for the fashion industry (and boredom) we could all enjoy the same basic wardrobe for many years. Survey your possessions. Are you simply upgrading or duplicating last year’s electronic equipment, furniture, kitchenware, carpeting, and linens, or are you truly wearing them out? Think about how much money you would save if you simply decided to use things even 20 percent longer. If you usually replace your towels every two years, try replacing them every two and a half years. If you trade-in your car every three years, try extending that to four. If you buy a new coat every other winter, see whether every third winter would do just as well. And when you’re about to buy something, ask yourself, “Do I already have one of these that is in perfectly usable condition?” Another way to save money is to ask, before trashing something, whether there might be another way to use part or all of it. Old letters and e-mails become scrap paper. Old dishcloths become cleaning rags. Old magazines become art materials. Old grocery bags become . . . grocery bags again, or garbage bags. A word of caution to the already frugal. Using something until you wear it out does not mean using it until it wears you out. If you must continually fiddle with a lamp to make it work and you’ve already tried repairing it, it may not be worth your life energy to coax it along for another year. If your car is taking you for a ride, costing more hours in tinkering (or more money in repairs) than it’s giving you in service, buy a newer one. If your knee joints are suffering from running shoes that have lost their bounce, it would be cheaper to buy a new pair (on sale) than to have knee surgery.

5. Do It Yourself

Can you change the oil in your car? Fix a plumbing leak? Do your taxes? Make your gifts? Change the tire on your bicycle? Bake a cake from scratch? Build a bookshelf? Refinish furniture? Plant a garden? Hem a pair of pants? Cut your family’s hair? Form your nonprofit corporation? It used to be that we learned basic life skills from our parents in the process of growing up. Then the Industrial Revolution put our parents in factories and, after the passing of child labor and mandatory public education laws, put us in schools. Next our grandparents were put in rest homes, removing the people who traditionally taught life skills to the children while the parents worked. Eventually home economics and shop classes had to be incorporated in the curriculum as supplements to the ever-decreasing skill-nourishment we got at home. By the 1970s it was no longer fashionable for mothers to stay at home with their children. By the 1980s many couples assumed it wasn’t even possible, economically, for either parent to stay home with their children. Is it any wonder that the only way we know how to take care of ourselves in the twenty-first century is to be consumers of goods and services provided by others? To reverse that trend, just ask yourself, when you’re about to hire an expert: “Can I do this myself? What would it take to learn how? Would it be a useful skill to know?” In the context of a fast-paced, high-tech life a “do-it-yourself” orientation might seem quaint, but most humans, throughout history and on the planet today, are far more able than most of us to make and provide for themselves what they need for daily living—and many experts think that we’ll be thrown back on our resources increase in the coming decades. Years ago, when Suzie T. was young and lived in Fiji with her doctor husband for several months, she was embarrassed by how the native Fijians seemed to revere them. She tried to diminish their respect to an appropriate level, but they would have none of it. Then she discovered that since they made—and could repair—every single thing they depended on to live, they assumed that Suzie and Bill made their transistor radio, watch, and typewriter. They were unable to understand that no, these were made by others and Suzie had no idea how. Basic living and survival skills can be learned through Web sites, adult education classes, extension agents, and, last but not least, books. Every breakdown can be used as an opportunity for learning and empowerment. What you can’t do, or choose not to do, you can hire others to do and tag along for the ride. Every bit of your energy invested in solving these breakdowns not only teaches you something you need to know for the next time but helps prevent mistakes and reduces the bill. One FIer tells the story of how her heating system failed one winter. Three companies sent out repair people to assess the problem and make a bid. Each one told her with absolute certainty what the problem was. Unfortunately, each told her a different story. So she cracked the books, meditated on the Rube Goldberg maze of pipes, came to an educated guess, and chose the company that came closest to her analysis, thus saving herself hundreds of dollars of unnecessary and possibly destructive work. By staying with the repairman and observing his work she also was able to avert a few more expensive mistakes and to save (expensive) time by doing some of the simpler tasks. A typical working couple might have paid ten times what she did to have the job done and then felt fortunate to have two paychecks “since the cost of living in the modern world is so high.”

6. Anticipate Your Needs

Forethought in purchasing can bring tremendous savings. With enough lead time you will inevitably see the items you need to go on sale by the time you need them—at 20 to 50 percent under the usual price. Keep current on Web discounts and catalogs and sale flyers of national and local catalog merchandisers. Read the sale ads in the Sunday paper. If you have access to the Internet, type “discount merchandise” or “price comparison” into your Web browser and find the current meta sites that allow you to comparison shop. Online auctions allow you to see the prices discounters and warehouses might be offering. Watch for seasonal bargains such as January and August “white sales,” holiday sales (such as Memorial Day and Labor Day), year-end clearance sales, and back-to-school sales—but be sure these are real sales. By simply observing the poor condition of your car’s left rear tire while it still has some life left, you can anticipate a need. By simply being aware of this need you will naturally notice the phenomenal tire sale that will appear in the sports section of your Sunday newspaper three weeks from now—and you’ll know it’s a phenomenal sale because you have been watching prices. In the shorter term, shopping at the corner convenience store can be expensive. Anticipating your needs—that you’ll be wanting evening snacks, that you’ll run out of milk mid-week or that you’ll need paper for your printer—can eliminate running out to the corner store to pick up these items. Instead you can purchase them during your supermarket shopping or on a run to the office supply store. This can result in significant savings. Anticipating your needs also eliminates one of the biggest threats to your frugality—impulse buying. If you haven’t anticipated needing something when you leave your house at 3:05, chances are you don’t need it at 3:10 when you’re standing at the gazingus-pin counter at the corner store. We’re not saying you should buy only things that are on your premeditated shopping list (although that isn’t such a bad idea for compulsive shoppers); we are saying that you must be scrupulously honest when you’re out and about. Saying, “I anticipate needing this,” as you’re drooling over a left-handed veeblefitzer or cashmere sweater is not the same as having already anticipated needing one and recognizing that this particular one is a bargain. Remember the corollary to Parkinson’s Law (“The work expands to fit the time allowed for its completion”): “Needs expand to encompass whatever you want to buy on impulse.”

7. Research Value, Quality, Durability, Multiple Use and Price

Research your purchases. The print and online editions of Consumer Reports and other Web sites and publications give excellent evaluations and comparisons of almost everything you might buy—and they can be fun just to read. Decide what features are most important to you. Don’t just be a bargain junkie and automatically buy the cheapest item available. Durability might be critical for something you plan to use daily for twenty years. One obvious way of saving money is to spend less on each item you buy, but it’s equally true that spending $40 on a tool that lasts ten years instead of buying a $30 one that will need to be replaced in five years will save you $20 in the long run. Multiple-use is also a factor. Buying one item for $10 that will serve the purpose of four different $5 items will net you a savings of $10. One heavy-duty kitchen pot can (and perhaps should) replace half a dozen specialty appliances like a rice cooker, a crockpot, a Dutch oven, a deep-fat fryer, a paella pan, and a spaghetti cooker. So, if you expect to be using an item, buying for durability and multiple purposes can be a good savings technique. But if you’ll be using the item only occasionally you may not want to spend the extra dollars on a high-quality product. Knowing what your needs are and knowing the whole range of what is available will allow you to choose the right item. Besides reading consumer magazines and Web sites, you can evaluate quality by developing a sharp eye and carefully examining what you are buying. Are the seams in a piece of clothing ample? Are the edges finished? Is the fabric durable? Is it washable or will you be paying dry-cleaning bills to keep it clean? Are the screws holding the appliance together sturdy enough for the job? Is the material strong or flimsy? Is the furniture nailed, stapled or screwed? Here is where you will become an expert materialist—knowing materials so well that you can read the probable longevity of an item the way a forester can read the age and history of a fallen tree. This is the opposite of crass materialism. This might not be as uplifting as standing in a redwood grove, but it is respecting the wonder of creation in its way. Everything you purchase has its origin in the earth. Everything. Knowing the wear patterns of aluminum versus stainless steel is honoring the earth every bit as much as lobbying for stronger environmental protection laws. Changing yourself and changing the system go hand in hand. By the same token, engaging only in personal strategies is inadequate. We all need to become active citizens and to encourage our local, state, and federal governments to provide high-quality public transportation, public schools, public hospitals, universal sickness-care insurance and other basics so that we can all be frugal together —and decrease gobs of personal spending.

8. Buy It for Less

If you’ve spent any time in the marketplace, you know you can pay a lot of different prices for the same item. Things don’t cost what they cost. They cost what you pay. Where you get the item and how much you pay often relates more to questions of values and convenience rather than differences in quality. All things being equal, however, the goal is usually to get it as cheaply as possible. The following section contains a few tips on how to do that. Comparison-shop by phone: Where do you shop and how did you choose it? Is it where you’ve always shopped? At the mall closest to your home? Where your friends shop? Where advertising or status-seeking has told you is the only place to shop? We research products via the Internet, compare prices there too, but try to buy locally—and for big items always do. For those items we comparison shop via the telephone. Once we know what we want, we phone around for the best price. The more educated you are about the product and the more specific you can be about the exact make or model you want, the more successful your bargain-hunting will be. You will be amazed at the range of prices quoted for the same item. If you prefer doing business with a particular store or supplier, phone-shop for the best price and then ask your favorite vendor if he or she can match it. Seven years before writing the first edition of this book, after much research, we decided we wanted a Toyota Tercel with a four-wheel drive. We then called every dealership within 100 miles—and shaved 33 percent off the highest bid by purchasing a demonstrator (a deluxe model with everything but air-conditioning) that had 3,600 miles on it. Seven years and 100,000 miles later, nothing had gone wrong. Seven years before this edition, the author pulled the same trick with a Honda Insight, at that time the most fuel-efficient hybrid car on the road. The new car was $24,000. One dealer offered a right-off-the-showroom-floor-but-2001 model for $16,800. A few calls later a new right-off the-showroom-floor 2002 model was offered by another dealer for $16,000. A similar 33 percent savings. Some things never change. Like phone comparison shopping. Bargain: You can ask for discounts for paying cash. You can ask for discounts for less-than-perfect items. You can ask for the sale price even if the sale begins tomorrow or ended yesterday. You can ask for further discounts on items already marked down. You can ask for discounts if you buy several items at the same time. You can ask for discounts anywhere, anytime. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Haggling is a time-honored tradition. The list price of any consumer item is usually inflated. As soon as you hear the words, “The list price is . . . you should say, “Yes, but what is your price?” According to Jim Dacyczyn you should be able to shave 24 percent off the sticker price for a car, but this strategy applies to more than houses, cars, and other major purchases. You have nothing to lose by asking for a discount at any store—from your local hardware store to a clothing emporium. A case in point was our recent outing to buy new running shoes. A $95 (list price) pair was sitting on the manager’s special rack with no price. They fit perfectly. We asked a salesman what they would cost. “$39.99,” he replied. “Would you take $30?” we asked. Surveying what he had left, he said, “Twenty-eight dollars.” We could have pointed out that haggling etiquette suggests that his counteroffer be higher, not lower, than ours. But we were astute enough just to shut our mouths, open our wallet and take advantage of a great bargain. By the way, this strategy works best at independently-owned stores where the owner has more authority to make instant decisions. So if the chain store has it for less, at least give the independent, local store owner a chance to meet the price. Buy it used: Reexamine your attitudes about buying used items. Most of us live in “used” houses—someone else probably built your home and inaugurated the shower, toilet, fridge, and more. Many of us drive used cars; if you define your needs and research prices via online sales outlets (like Cars.com, craigslist and AutoTrader.com in the United States)—or use a purchasing agent—you can certainly save a bundle. But what about everything else? If you are a thrift store or garage-sale addict, look at whether you are saving money or whether you are buying items you don’t need just because they’re “such a bargain.” But if you wouldn’t be caught dead in a Salvation Army thrift store, look around your town: thrift stores have become fashionable emporiums. Clothing, kitchenware, furniture, drapes—all can be found in thrift stores, and you may be surprised at the high quality of many of them. Donating brand-new items to thrift stores is one way that shopaholics justify excess purchases. If you just can’t bring yourself to shop at thrift stores, consider consignment shops. The prices are higher, but the quality is consistently high as well. In our experience, thrift stores are best for clothing, but garage sales are cheaper (and more reliable) for appliances, furniture, and household items. If you’re an early bird (arriving before the sellers have even had their morning coffee) you can often find exceptional buys—unless you get shoo-ed away because you are too early. On the other hand, the later in the day you go to a garage sale, the more eager the people will be to get rid of the stuff for a song.“Swap meets” and “flea markets” are two names for the same event—weekend open-air bazaars where you’ll find merchants of every stripe displaying their wares: shrewd hucksters, collectors of every kind and families hoping to unload their excess before moving across the country. Just as when you shop at discounters, you have to know your prices. Some clever nomads are working the flea-market circuit who will sell you tools, clothing, housewares, and other items for more than you’d pay at the shopping mall. In recent years, eBay and other online auctions have become a craze and helped move buying used from tacky to smart.

9. Meet Your Needs Differently

The principle of substitution says that there are hundreds if not thousands of ways to meet a need. Traditional economics would have you believe that more, better, or different stuff can satisfy almost any need and is just a credit card swipe away. But who says frugal pleasures are less pleasurable because they are less pricey? For example, what’s the best way to lift your spirits? An antidepressant? Running? Cognitive therapy? A change of scenery? Going to a funny movie? Helping someone in a worse pickle? Retail therapy? Which works best for you? Do you have just one strategy or many different ones? When you feel depleted, where do you turn? Rest? Exercise? Caffeine? Therapy (retail or talk)? TV? In other words, there’s a difference between needs and the strategies we use to “satisfy” those needs. The Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef has studied needs and the strategies that satisfy them. He found that across time and culture the following needs are universal: subsistence, protection (safety), affection, understanding (making sense of life), participation (being part of some social process), recreation (in the sense of leisure, time to reflect or idleness), creation (making things), identity (who you are) and freedom (choosing for oneself). If these needs are not met, to some degree, in your life, likely you’ll feel dissatisfied and search for something to satisfy that longing. The consumer culture would say, “Shop!” Your habit patterns would say, “When I feel this way, I always. . . .” But let’s take one of these needs and see how to meet it by widening your repertoire of how needs can be met and then choosing the strategy (or strategies) that fits best. One of the universal needs Max-Neef identified is “freedom.” Freedom is the need for autonomy (making your own choices according to your own best lights) and independence (doing what you will, apart from the demands or expectations of others). In America, freedom has become deeply tied to mobility—getting in something with wheels (or wings) and going away. It’s also connected with not having to share with anyone, so you can have access to everything you want whenever you want. It is also linked to any product that will let you ignore the consequences of your actions—from antiaging cream to credit cards. Of course we are freedom-loving people—all people are! But here’s a substitution exercise I’ve run about freedom... If when I think “freedom” I think “travel,” what am I looking for? What values or desires lie behind that core need? Often it’s novelty and stimulation and getting out of daily and sometimes deadening routines. It’s needing some aimlessness and idleness in contrast to my norm of purposefulness. It’s learning—new languages, cultures, facts. Meeting new people. A slower pace with less stress. Swimming in a different set of assumptions, getting jolted out of narrow-mindedness. Tasting new foods. Indulging in a novel during a long flight. It’s being out of town and unavailable for all the meetings and decisions that tend to whittle down my store of daily joy. But do I need to travel to faraway places to experience these things? Remember, substitution as a frugality strategy isn’t about downgrading pleasure. It’s about ensuring that I get precisely what I am seeking at half the cost—or no cost at all. I’m not limiting myself (waaa!), I’m focusing on myself (yum!). Freedom from my daily routines might involve letting go of rigid standards (let the house be less clean), some burdensome responsibilities (don’t always say yes to those requesting my help), and some entrenched habits (why not go out to eat with friends more often)? With rising gas prices, people are traveling locally—seeing the sights within a day’s drive—and discovering exotic people and places nearby. Staying closer to home also reveals some hidden treasures in your backyard, or over the backyard fence—like your beautiful flower garden or your neighbor’s interesting stories. Stay put long enough and the details and delights of where you have become more evident. See, substitution isn’t deprivation, it’s about getting creative. Substitution also reminds us that consumption is rooted in changing a feeling state, which is a signal that a need isn’t being filled. We feel hungry so we eat to have a feeling of satisfaction. We feel lonely so we join a club or make a date to feel connected. We feel bored so we go to a movie or read a magazine or go on a trip to feel enlivened. As Max-Neef points out, most of our needs are not material! Substitution says, “When you feel a desire to shop, take time to trace it back to the need and ask if creativity rather than consumption might best fill it.” Donella Meadows cuts to the heart of it in Beyond the Limits: People don’t need enormous cars, they need respect. They don’t need closets full of clothes, they need to feel attractive and they need excitement and variety and beauty. People don’t need electronic equipment; they need something worthwhile to do with their lives. People need identity, community, challenge, acknowledgment, love, and joy. To try to fill these needs with material things is to set up an unquenchable appetite for false solutions to real and never-satisfied problems. The resulting psychological emptiness is one of the major forces behind the desire for material growth. Substitution isn’t a limitation. It’s liberation. It’s letting go of assumptions and habits, looking at the richness of reality and picking from the smorgasbord of pleasures available right in front of your nose.

10. Follow the Nine Steps of This Program

The steps of this program have been successfully followed by hundreds of thousands of people. These people have found that doing all the steps leads to a transformed experience of money and the material world. It’s the transformation, not the tips, that saves them money. Mild shopping addictions evaporate. Self-denial and self-indulgence both yield to self-awareness, which ends up being a much bigger pleasure. You can use this program as a series of tips or advice, or you can let it work its magic by doing the steps. They are a whole-system approach to money and stuff that changes your habits by changing your way of seeing. All the steps matter. They synergize to spur you on.

[aliceslantern]

Nocturnal Memory, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic, chapter 19

[Summary:  Dying takes a lot out of you, it's true, but when Demyx wakes up for the first time since his fight with Sora nothing's right. His memories are fragmented and he's missing his true name. And he's not the only one. An incomprehensible mystery and an inevitable war make him question what, exactly, he would do to become whole, and reclaim the music lost to him.

on FF.net/on AO3]

Demyx had been sleeping strangely, either dead to the world for hours at a time, or so lightly as to be unable to tell the difference between asleep and awake. That same memory still haunted him as he tried to sleep, of his mother's immobile form. He felt no grief, just a strange paralyzed detachment, a numbness he could practically taste. To him, it was even more disturbing than if he were openly mourning; it was all too much like being a Nobody. What about the other people that had been in his life? Were they gone too?

Needless to say with all these thoughts a good night's sleep was a crapshoot. It led to him being crabby and snippy, which Lea teased him endlessly for.

"Think this training is tiring? I was in Merlin's goddamn time pocket for weeks."

"That was your choice," Demyx pointed out.

"And this was yours," Lea said. "Now let me see your form."

He had a point. All this hard, tedious work; Demyx had undertaken it on purpose. Sometimes he really just wanted to give up, especially because it seemed that nothing good would come of it. But other times, he would be enjoying his time with the rest of the committee, and realize that maybe life after the Organization wasn't that bad.

He didn't seem to be having any luck on the guitar front, though he had spent hours and hours scouring the rooms full of junk. There had to be something of use; he must be missing something obvious. All this searching made him frustrated and, combined with the no-sleep days, his mood would be decidedly unpretty.

One afternoon several days after Merlin's arrival, Ienzo took him aside after breakfast. "There's something I recovered that you might find of interest," he said.

Demyx couldn't imagine what this might be. "Um, okay."

Ienzo smiled in that pinched way of his. "Come with me."

They proceeded down towards the library, but then trailed away towards a section Demyx was less familiar with. "So… what have you been up to?" He asked.

"Mostly… gathering information," Ienzo said.

"Still?"

"It's a massive job," Ienzo said. "My reading speed is far above average, but I can still only search through so many volumes a day. There are all of the castle reports, and the Organization reports, as well. Besides…" He exhaled. "I've been experiencing particularly troubling migraines lately."

"Have they been getting worse?"

Ienzo did not answer. He gestured to a plain wooden door. "This is it," he said. "I had nearly forgotten about this room. I know you've been having trouble with the guitar… I figure we could all benefit from it."

"…From?"

Ienzo opened the door. The room was large and bright, with empty cupboards, bookcases, and an industrial sink in the corner. "This used to be an art studio. Ansem the Wise liked to paint in his spare time, and he often brought me with him. Look." He gestured to a corner of the room. "We found it covered with sheets in a hidden corner of storage."

It took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the light. Next to the massive windows was an upright wooden piano. His breath caught.

"I played quite a bit as a child," Ienzo said. "I'm afraid it's in poor shape. I did try my best to tune it, but my ear is not exact. And there's the weather damage."

Demyx approached it warily. The bench was broken, and a book bolstered one of the legs. Woodgrain on the side panels was warped. He traced it with one callused finger.

"I found these among my childhood things," Ienzo continued, coming up next to him. He held up a few lesson books. "I figure… perhaps what little I know can help you."

His throat had closed up.

Ienzo sat down on the rickety bench and pulled out a piece of sheet music. "There's an old song Ansem the Wise was fond of," he said. "It's the one I remember best… Forgive me if I'm not as eloquent as you are." He lifted his fingers onto the stained keys and began to play.

Ienzo was right; the piano was out of tune. He staggered through several minutes of a long, sad, lonely piece. It reminded Demyx of aimless corridors. Ienzo was obviously out of practice, but he wasn't inherently bad.

His face was wet. He touched the tears and waited for some memory to attack from the shadows, but none came. The numbness in him deepened.

"Sit here," Ienzo said, patting the seat next to him.

"Why are you helping me?"

Ienzo touched some of the white keys. "I should hate to see us all struggling along alone," he said. "We'd be much better off helping one another." He flipped open one of the books to the first page. He touched a key towards the center of the keyboard. "This is middle C. Do you remember?"

The sound sat heavily in the room with them.

They spent about an hour or two a day working together at the piano. The scales and music on the page seemed foreign to him, even when it was explicitly spelled out what he should play and how. His hands were clumsy on the keys. Ienzo would play a scale somewhat effortlessly; Demyx would try to copy him down to the fingerings, but something in his mind crossed and he would stumble through it.

"It will take some practice," Ienzo said. "I suppose you must have lost your muscle memory as well."

Trying only reminded him of what he didn't have. When he was out and about with Lea and the committee, he could at least pretend that he was normal. This only served to show him how scrambled he really was.

He practiced. Diligently. His coordination fought him. His thumbs stumbled over the keys. As much as he tried to commit the notes of the treble and bass clefts to memory, it seemed to slip away from him.

"Try it one more time," Ienzo said to him. He played the simple song again; a child's nursery tune. "See where I place my hands."

Again Demyx felt hot and teary. "It's not working."

"Of course it won't happen overnight. You have to—"

"Practice. I know. I've been fucking practicing every minute I can. It doesn't seem to go in." He put his head in his hands. The discordant clang the piano made when he leaned into it caused Ienzo to flinch.

"Let me see," he said gingerly. "I'm afraid… I'm afraid I might butcher it…" He brushed Demyx's elbows off of the keyboard. He thought a moment, set his hands, and then moved them again. The first chord he played was deep and almost menacing. He hesitated, found a second chord, and adjusted it slightly. Ienzo combined the two chords and found his way into a song. The melody line was dreary, a slog; sad undertones carried through the mistakes.

"What's… that?" He asked. A couple of tears dribbled down his face, though he wasn't sure why.

"Do you recognize it?"

"I…" His head was starting to hurt. "I think so…"

"I would hope so." Ienzo repeated the first few bars again. "You wrote it."

The pain worsened. "I… I did?"

"Of course, I'm transposing—and poorly at that—but all the same. You played this quite often. We could never figure out why. You always changed it slightly, so I figured it was no folk song, but something of your own creation. I had always hoped to see you write it down. But evidently… you didn't. This one, I remember, as well." He played a few bars of another piece; this one was more whimsical, and lighter. "Nine?"

Demyx nodded. He covered his mouth. "You thought this would fix me," he said through a mouthful of tears.

Ienzo played the song through again. "There are no certainties." He moved his hands and gestured for Demyx to try.

The keys were still warm. The first chord came as a surprise to him. He tried to put the pieces together. His heart was beating hard in his chest and the headache bloomed larger. It took a few tries to find the right note. It came in pieces. The piano keys were clunky and unnatural. Hot water ran down his chin. His hands seemed to be resisting. He found he was muttering to himself; he whispered the note names under his breath. He couldn't get them to sound right. They were wrong, off, perverted—his hands shook and he shoved them between his knees.

Ienzo touched him on the shoulder and said nothing.

"I can't do this," he said through his teeth, with difficulty. "It's not right. It's broken. I—" His head throbbed steadily, consistently, in time with the song. The pain made everything shimmery. He couldn't breathe. He hovered on the edge of the memory and wondered whether or not to let go.

"…Nine?" Ienzo prompted.

He didn't move. Maybe if he stayed still enough it would go away. The pain tightened and the keyboard slipped out of focus.

"Nine?"

The memory started loudly and all at once. The bazaar was loud and crowded and smelled like any variety of things; perfume, incense, various types of food frying, and the sweat and humidity of too many people crammed in too small a space. Overhead dim lanterns hung from strings and poles, and strips of canvas and muslin swayed in the wind. The whole room seemed fuzzy and it was hot; sweat crawled all over his body.

He was trying to get through the crowds. It was a festival day. Almost everyone was covered in blue paint, and splotches of it caught on him as he tried to shove past. Some people didn't seem to notice, others grumbled. Other than chatter, it was quiet. They were waiting for the music to start.

Someone—or something, it was quite vague—was chasing him. It had followed him from that first shadow he'd seen at the pier, on the boat. It undulated.

"Stop!" the figure yelled. Nothing had been stolen, though. The wind intensified. He'd been spotted. He chanced a glance behind him as he continued shoving past; the crowd disappeared neatly into the pressing darkness. The lanterns snuffed out.

He had almost reached the stage. There wasn't much more town after that. The lights snuffed out one by one, quick and concise. People seemed to have turned still, and it was all so quiet. He could hear himself breathe. He jumped and reached for one of the sitars before being tackled sharply to the ground. His head knocked into the edge of the stage.

"Where do you think you're going?" the hooded figure asked. He was too disoriented to move. It picked him up under the arms and heaved him into darkness.

The floor was dusty and his heart clanged madly in his chest. Before he remembered the rest of his body he knew he was going to be sick, but all that came up was spit. His muscles shook.

"Nine?" Ienzo's voice gently asked.

Demyx couldn't respond. He tried to stop heaving and trembling. It didn't seem to do much good.

"I came as soon as I heard," Even's voice came from behind him.

"This one was much longer," Ienzo said.

Even helped him sit up. The whole room swam. His chest ached. Brightness stabbed at his eyes and he swatted blindly. The pen light clattered to the floor. He couldn't seem to catch his breath.

"Can you speak?" Ienzo asked.

"I saw…" Hoarse. "I saw him. Braig. As…"

"You remembered turning," Even said.

He hugged himself. His skin was slick with sweat; his shirt was practically stuck to him. "What the fuck—"

"It was only a memory," Even said.

"It still feels real to him," Ienzo said.

He felt at his chest. There was no blood or darkness there, just sweat and dirt. He pressed his face into his hands. He wanted to scream but wasn't sure he had the strength. His skin seemed to slither on him and he could almost see the darkness writhing on it.

"Should I—" Even asked.

"Not yet. I don't know if that would make it worse."

He could barely see them. The room was dim in the midafternoon. The pain subsided slowly, hesitantly, and the trembling gave way to pure exhaustion.

"Welcome back," Even said. He checked his vitals. Demyx sat there numbly.

"How long?" he asked. He still sounded breathless. "How long was I out?"

"I suppose it was about fifteen minutes," Ienzo said. He looked pale. "Though it was more of a seizure than a loss of consciousness."

No wonder all of him hurt. "…Really?"

He frowned. "This happened… before," he said. "During your first week… back. Before you really regained awareness."

"It makes sense," Even continued. "Every recovered memory triggers certain neuronal firing. I suppose more intense memories might manifest more physically than others."

"I'm tired," he said. He tried to stand and wobbled.

"Of course you should rest," Even said.

Alone, later, Demyx tried to sleep. He didn't want to think. While the memory didn't have the same sharpness as when it had been remembered, it was still slick and icky and made him feel cold all over.

He hadn't realized he'd been brought into the Organization by force.

Of course he had. He'd been, what, fifteen at the time? He knew he'd been recruited by Xigbar, but he hadn't made the connection that the transformation had been triggered directly by him. The Organization must have had some sort of way to sense the strong-willed. They needed vessels. To them, he'd been no more than a bottle. Besides, if he hadn't gotten scrapped up by them, what would have happened? The world fell. He would have become a Nobody, one way or the other.

He felt dirty. He'd taken his Nobody memories for granted, because they were the only substantial ones he had—were there gaps in those, too?

He lay still for a long time and counted the ceiling tiles.

[thehandmaidstalehulu]

"This is going to sound wanky," says Max Minghella over the phone from Los Angeles, "but I really love stories about women. If you go to my Netflix, the sections that they recommend are ‘Thrillers with a Strong Female Lead,' ‘Comedies With a Strong Female Lead,'" he continues. "I find women more interesting to watch on a lot of levels, and I like the idea of being involved with something I would watch." We are discussing Hulu's adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, which, aside from the odd short, marks Minghella's first project as an actor since Into the Forest (2015). "I took a couple years off acting and was mostly producing for those years," he explains. "I found I wasn't very good at it—it's not a skill set that I possess." It was, in part, the quality of The Handmaid's Tale that lured the 31-year-old North London native back in front of the camera. Based on Margaret Atwood's alarmingly prescient 1985 novel, the 10-part series takes place in a fictional future America, a totalitarian patriarchy in which every individual is relegated to a specific role. Offred, the show's narrator played by Elisabeth Moss, is a handmaid—a walking womb assigned to an elite commander and his wife who are unable to have children. Minghella's character, Nick, is a driver, another low-status member of Offred's commander's household. Or at least, that's what he claims to be. He might be a spy for a group of rebels or, worse yet, a double agent reporting on the commander and his associates. "I feel like he's true to the Nick in the book, but at the same time, he's investigated and looked at more thoroughly," Minghella notes. "It's Lizzy Moss's show, 100-percent, but we all have very, very interesting arcs. They gave me a lot of weight and some juicy stuff. I felt like it was one of the more challenging acting things I've gotten to do."

EMMA BROWN: I read that you wanted to be a music video director when you were a teenager. MAX MINGHELLA: That's 1000-percent true. I think I still want to be a music director as a grown man. BROWN: You sort of are now, aren't you? MINGHELLA: I've done one music video. I don't know if that makes me a music video director, but it's a medium that I love. I'm obsessed with the power of music and image together. There's also something about music videos that are incredibly glamorous—there's a fetishistic aesthetic to them that you don't really see in movies in the same way. You get away with indulging imagery, and there's something very melodramatic about them, which I love. I think a lot of people love music videos, but I think the business model for them is probably quite complicated at this point. When I grew up, there were music videos on television all day and now I have to go on Vevo. [laughs] It's a different time. But I feel like there's a bit of a resurgence, which is nice—those Kendrick Lamar videos are great. BROWN: I also read that you decided you wanted to act after you saw This Is Our Youth in London. Was that the production at the Garrick? Who did you see it with? MINGHELLA: Yes, it was. I saw every cast. That was the most significant passage of my youth, no pun intended. I think there were four casts in total, and they were all incredibly patient with my fandom. I sort of stalked that play, I would say. Between the ages of 15 and 17 I lived in that theater. I went to as many shows a week as I could. It definitely shaped me as a person, for better or worse. I really became religious about it. I'm still quite religious about it. They just did it again on Broadway and it was a very emotional experience for me to see it again. I don't think there's any piece of writing that I've engaged with more heavily than that. There's something quite nostalgic for me hearing any of those words. BROWN: I remember the production at the Garrick. I was very excited because I was about 14 and Freddie Prinze Jr. was in it at one point. MINGHELLA: Oh, I remember. Freddie Prinze, Chris Klein... BROWN: Hayden Christensen, Jake Gyllenhaal. Have you met Kenneth Lonergan? MINGHELLA: I have. He's had to endure lots of letters and coat-pulling. [laughs] BROWN: I know that you're working on your first feature as a director, Teen Spirit. When did you decide that you wanted to try directing films? MINGHELLA: It's something I've wanted to do for a really long time, to be honest, and have swung at a couple of times. I probably wasn't ready in lots of different ways. This movie that I'm about to make feels like the most personal and in my taste of anything I've tried to take a shot at. I'm excited that this is going to be the one that I'm getting to make. BROWN: You wrote the script as well. Was it easier to write after already having written a film, The 9th Life of Louis Drax [2015]? MINGHELLA: No, this is still really fucking difficult. I've been working on it on-and-off for eight years and if you read the script, you would find that very embarrassing. [laughs] It's quite a tricky thing to pull off, and I don't feel like I've gotten there yet. I hope I will magically before we start shooting principal photography. I think there are some really exciting elements to it, and I've been very, very blessed with the people who have come on-board to help me make it, so I'm going to rest on their wisdom and talent and hope it carries us through. It's going to be an interesting adventure.

BROWN: Was there a moment where you felt, "It's not done, but I'm ready to show it to people and start the process of making it?" MINGHELLA: Never! But you also have to remember that if you don't do that at some point, nothing will ever happen. But, like any writer, it's kind of awful having to let other people read it. I don't take pleasure in that at all. I'd love for no one to read the script and just show them the movie, but unfortunately that's not how it works. BROWN: Who was your first reader, the first person you gave the script to? MINGHELLA: I work with Jamie Bell, who is a rock in my life. He's a great friend and a very patient support, and I don't think this movie would have gotten to this stage without him being a soundboard and putting up with all my neuroses. He was probably the first person to read it and was a massive influence in shaping the story. BROWN: Did he give you good critical feedback? MINGHELLA: Completely. He's been intrinsic to the creative process on this film in particular. I've tried to woo him for other things to help me on, but I think this was the only one he had any interest in. [laughs] But it's been very helpful and I definitely rely on that. I'm an only child and so I over-rely on my friends to lend their support. BROWN: Are most of your friends in the film industry? MINGHELLA: I wish the answer was no, but it's probably yes. BROWN: I know you grew up in North London but went to Columbia. What made want to attend university in the States? MINGHELLA: That was genuinely born from not finishing [high] school. I didn't finish college [either], but at the time, I hadn't finished school in England, so I didn't have the qualifications to go to university in England unless I went back to school. I was 21 at that point, so it would have been slightly eccentric. The most logical way to continue my education was to do it in America and just take the SATs. BROWN: What made you want to go to university at all? MINGHELLA: Honestly, probably the guilt of having very academic parents. I think they were slightly ashamed. I've always been a terrible student, but they really hoped that I would be better, and I kind of hoped for them. It was, in retrospect, an apology, probably, for being a high school dropout and becoming an actor young and naively. But I'm so grateful for the experience—whatever motive I had to go, it definitely was a great thing. I made key relationships in that time. It also rescued me from a lot of bad career decisions. BROWN: Did your parents have grand dreams of you being a doctor? MINGHELLA: I don't think so. They were fine with me pursuing the things I like; I think they were hoping that I'd be a more well-rounded person, which makes total sense. But I've only ever been interested in one thing, and at a certain point, I gave up trying to be interested in other things. We just have to accept who we are and I'm a film nerd, for better or worse. BROWN: So you took a break and tried producing and screenwriting. What made you want to return to acting? MINGHELLA: I wasn't anticipating it at all. It was a script [The Handmaid's Tale] that was sent to me by a lot of people I trusted. In my life, I've made a lot of decisions on my own and have ignored wisdom from other people, and I wanted to change that. When they unanimously felt like this was a good idea, I read it quite seriously and I understood why they were excited about it. It all felt quite organic. I didn't have to force myself to be excited about it; it was something that I really thought had a lot to say. In the [first] script, my character, Nick, had maybe one or two lines of dialogue. It was a very small piece of the ensemble. But I was very taken by the writing and I just wanted to be a part of something that felt very substantial and worthwhile, and it turned out that there was more to do with the character as well, which was nice. But ultimately it was about respect and the people involved, who were all very esteemed. I was very grateful that it was something they were willing to give me a shot at. I thought it was really quite a special piece of material. It proved to be even more special once we started making it, so I felt very clever by Episode Five. I was like, "I knew this was going to be good." [laughs] BROWN: Do you remember your first time on set? MINGHELLA: I remember the first thing I did as an actor. I was an extra in Sense and Sensibility [1995], and I got cut from the movie. [laughs] I think I got cut quite a few times as an extra, but that was the most memorable first experience I had because I was very young and excited to do my first part. I was a beggar or something. BROWN: Did you over-act? MINGHELLA: I probably wasn't very good. I probably found some way to fuck it up. I remember when I started acting officially I was unbelievably green. My first audition tapes were just horrendous. I think the first audition I ever did officially was for Pirates of the Caribbean [2003] and the casting director sent the tape to my parents without a note, just to say, "Maybe he's not cut out for this and you should try and talk him out of it." I definitely learned on the job. BROWN: I always wonder, as a young actor, how you balance taking parts that you believe in with getting exposure and doing roles that will lead to other roles. MINGHELLA: Well, I've been absolutely shit at the latter, as you can probably tell from my CV. I've never been good at strategy. But I'm not remiss about it. I've never taken a job as an actor that I wasn't 100-percent sure I wanted to do. I've never had to think about whether or not I wanted to do something, and there have always been a lot of factors to that. I don't think I'm an actor who's driven by character, to be honest. I don't think I'm like, "Oh, I'm not sure about this story, but I love this role." That's never been my process. You look at the quality of the script, the quality of the filmmaker, and then the actors you're going to be spending time with. Increasingly as I've gotten older, I'm much more interested in what the reality of the shoot is going to be versus what the result of the shoot might be. I'm so bad at guessing what's going to be good and what's going to be bad—there doesn't seem to be any correlation between things that are within your control. At this point, I just go, "Will this be fun to make? Will I like going to work? Will I be excited to go to work?" BROWN: Has being behind the camera—as a producer and when you directed the music video—made you more nervous as an actor? MINGHELLA: No, not more nervous. One thing it's been great for is stripping away a lot of my ego. When you have to cast movies from a producer's standpoint—when you've been on the other side of casting sessions—you just get a completely different perspective on what that process is of getting a job for an actor. You realize how completely impersonal it is. If anything, I think it's made me a lot less sensitive. So much of this is logic and business, and it's got nothing to do with whether people are good or not. Unfortunately, I think that's one of the last things that gets factored in when you're assembling a cast.

[50books50movies]

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017), Logan (2017), and The Fate of the Furious (2017)

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I’m at an age where many of my friends have become or will become parents. Since I was the first person in my peer circle to become a father, they sometimes turned to me to ask what advice, practical or philosophical, I could give about becoming a parent. By this point, I’ve refined my patter to a performance. I will consistently tell my friends, “Don’t have kids.” Either that draws them in further to inevitably ask why, or they take the words on the superficial level and move on with the conversation. If they ask why I, a father of a delightful kid, would say that, I ask if they want the practical or the philosophical reasons. The practical reasons are simple: having a child is a major financial commitment, a guarantee that you will never have a sound night of sleep ever again (and not just because an infant’s needs will interrupt your sleep), and a turning point in the relationship that you and your partner have. You and your partner’s relationship may not survive; the roles that you and you partner played in the relationship before you became parents will not be the roles that you will play after. The philosophical reasons are based in pessimism: if we accept that any actions that lead to the suffering of others is immoral, then having a child is an immoral act because human sentience means that we all live in constant pain born from a terror of knowing that our lives are finite. We are always dying. We die every second. In response to the absurd notion that we are born only so we can live to know that we will die, the most common options are: commit suicide, embrace the absurdity of life, or to recognize how absurd life is and rebel. How could you then morally justify creating life? 

What could have been in the creative air to inspire three major blockbuster films (The LEGO Batman Movie, Logan, and The Fate of the Furious) from three different distributors (Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Universal Pictures, respectively) to tackle the ideas of family unity and fatherhood in three different ways? (And it’s noted that these three films offer their takes on fatherhood specifically, not parenthood.) I suppose it’s natural that someone will explore the paradoxical idea that characters like Batman and Wolverine, who are so often defined as loners who don’t believe that they deserve human connections to other people would actually have many relationships that form an extended family with characters who choose to be with them. In other words, you could imagine Batman, Wolverine, and Dominic Toretto each saluting their respective families with their beverages of choice. 

Colorful and bombastic, The LEGO Batman Movie contextualizes the characters around Batman as his extended family. From Alfred the patriarch (voice by Ralph Fiennes) to Batman (Will Arnett) to Batman’s adopted son, Robin (Michael Cera), to Batman’s co-dependent nemesis, the Joker (Zach Galifianakis), to Batman and Joker’s extended work friends and acquaintances like Harley Quinn (Jenny Slate), Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), and Clayface, the many bonds that Batman has with the world around him are highlighted in bright neon explosions. As Batman’s surrogate father and like a father who worries about his kid’s ability to make the right kind of friends at school or meet the right partner, Alfred worries about his charge’s ability to form social bonds that will sustain Batman if he were to ever die. 

The film’s inciting incident is Batman breaking the Joker’s heart by telling him that he means nothing to him; the movie ends with a play on romantic comedy beats by climaxing with Batman and the Joker telling each other that they hate each other. It’s the psychosexual dynamic between the two that Frank Miller famously explored in The Dark Knight Returns and Scott Snyder years later in “Death of the Family” sanitized for the elementary school set. 

The cinematic versions of Batman always come around to embrace the idea that Batman isn’t the loner that he thinks he is. He travels with gods like Superman and Wonder Woman. In The LEGO Batman Movie, he craves the attention from his peers in the Justice League so badly that he has to put up a front to pretend that he doesn’t want it when he doesn’t get it. In other films, he actually founds the Justice League.

He’s also a father figure, whether in the figurative sense (Batman’s vigilantism gives birth to a more demented class of villains, and his rogues slowly transition from mobsters to supervillains) in a more literal sense (Batman becomes the guardian to the various Robins over the years and the central figure in a cohort of vigilantes, from the Huntress to Spoiler to Red Hood to Batwoman to Batwing). Michael Cera’s performance as Robin in The LEGO Batman Movie makes the character guileless and eager to please than normal to contrast with the bravado that Will Arnett infuses into his Batman. 

Like his bald counterpart in The LEGO Batman Movie (coincidentally portrayed by Ralph, another Englishman, Fiennes), Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier is concerned that Logan (Hugh Jackman) will lose his chance to reforge a connection to the wider world around him in Logan. Bitter, broken-hearted, and betrayed by his body, Xavier insists to Logan that there is still time for him to reconnect with the world after the rest of the X-Men were killed when Logan meets Laura (Dafne Keen). Logan, Laura, and Charles’s adventure across America remind Logan what a warm household full of affection, as the X-Mansion might have been once, looks like compared to the dusty and solitary existence he, Caliban (Stephen Merchant), and Charles lived in Mexico as he tried to raise enough money to go somewhere so he and Charles can die in peace. As Logan undergoes this journey and reforges connections, he travels from a dusty broken down industrial plant to a neon-bathed city to a corn farm and back to nature, his soul undergoing a revival even as his body continues its breakdown. 

Both Logan and Batman begin their films as reluctant fathers, each haunted by loss and unable to figure out the hedgehog’s dilemma. Both are convinced that their lonely lives are the only ways that they can pass their days. Both are pushed by their surrogate father figures to bond with children who unexpectedly enter their lives. And both try to demonstrate their acceptance of the responsibility of fatherhood through sacrifice. Logan overdoses on a drug in order to protect Laura and her friends from a physical avatar of his wild past, while Batman volunteers to return to the Phantom Zone to honor the agreement he made with the Phantom Zone’s keeper that allowed him to return to save his fledgling family. 

There’s a thrill to seeing Logan cut a bloody swath across the screen, but the film’s melancholy gives it a bitter taste. The shock of Logan cutting off an arm from a man who was trying to steal the tires from his rented limousine is undercut by how hard it was for the legendary Wolverine to fend off those four men. The excitement of Logan bearing his claws at Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and the Reavers is undermined by how ineffectual Logan is against them. You might be surprised that Logan is casually murdering Reavers who were trying to capture Xavier, but the surprise is subverted by the realization that the Reavers were completely defenseless and neutralized by Xavier’s psychic seizure. Logan facing down goons to help Will Munson (Eriq La Salle), a farmer that he helped on his journey, but his violence against the Reavers and the goons only brings more violence upon the Munsons, which leaves them all dead. In the climax, Logan is temporarily restored to his former vitality due to a healing serum, but by the end of that burst of violence, Logan can barely stand. Violence in Logan is a bittersweet fruit.

Every time Logan fights the Reavers, they come back with more and stronger soldiers. When he faces them in Mexico, the Reavers have heavily armed Mexican police officers riding in SUVs. By the time that he faces them in North Dakota, the Reavers have armored trucks, jeeps with mounted machine guns, and a young feral clone of Logan. Nonetheless, Logan can’t help but feel fatherly pride during the climactic fight against the Reavers. Laura had already saved him once after he collapsed on the side of a highway by getting him medical attention. But he becomes proud of her when she fights to defend her friends against the Reavers, and they coordinate their attacks. They bond through violence because, as Xavier said, they’re very alike.  

The price of violence makes explicit the idea that becoming a parent raises the stakes. One might be tempted to quit an unsatisfactory, unfulfilling, underpaying job, but the income or health insurance from that job might be the only thing that protects your family from deprivation. One might be tempted to lash out at the world or to go it alone, but that might be the selfish thing to do. 

James Mangold, the director of Logan and one of the screenwriters, along with Scott Frank and Michael Green, unintentionally struck political relevance in the current political climate. The film’s development began in 2013, and the screenplay was complete by early 2016, around the same time that Donald Trump was campaigning for President of the United States on a platform of xenophobia and racism. In the film’s opening scenes, we see Logan chauffering four young white men past a Mexico-US border checkpoint. They’re standing through the limo’s sunroof, chanting “USA!” at the immigrants waiting to pass the border. By March 2017, President Trump’s administration is floating trial balloons to test the idea of separating women and children who are caught crossing the Mexico-US border together. Laura and her friends are Mexican children whose humanity has been denied by a corporation so they can be experimented upon and trained to be weapons. As Donald Pierce references repeatedly throughout Logan, Laura and her friends are commodities, patented intellectual properties of the company that employs him. Whereas other X-Men stories would be metaphors about how the Other is demonized, here the Other is completely dehumanized. Principal photography for Logan ended in August 2016, but the idea that Laura and her friends are not seeking refuge in the United States because the United States is not a hospitable place for children born from Mexican mothers and the image that they are running toward the Canadian border to seek asylum make for accidentally potent juxtaposition.

While The LEGO Batman Movie and Logan present their protagonists in trigenerational families, The Fate of the Furious presents two different types of families. There’s the circle of friends that become a family that Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) often toasts with a bottle of Corona. Then, there’s also the son that he and Elena (Elsa Pataky) created during their relationship when he thought that Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) was dead. Dominic accepts fatherhood without reservation and is willing to betray his la familia in order to protect his biological family until he can find a way to save his son from Cipher (Charlize Theron, mostly underutilized in the film), a legendary cyberterrorist who is blackmailing Dominic to steal an EMP device, a Russian nuclear football, and a Russian nuclear submarine for her.  

There is, of course, another father in la familia who is noticeably absent. Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), Mia Toretto, and their son are written out of the film with a line delivered by Letty to explain that they cannot contact Brian for his help in subduing Dominic and capture Cipher. Within the context of the film, this allows Brian and Mia to raise their child in peace, though I cannot imagine that they would feel much peace watching news reports of the theft of an EMP device in Germany, the assault on a Russian defense minister in New York City, or the chaos in New York when la familia attempted to take Dominic down. Outside of that context, this allows Walker, a father himself, to live on through his character.

With Brian removed, The Fate of the Furious screenwriter has to pile the human pathos on to Dominic, Letty, and Elena, and the film creaks and moans under the pressure. Making Dominic a father certainly raises the stakes for him, and the film is focused only on what becoming a father would mean to Dominic. Unfortunately, the film again can only define Dominic’s fatherhood by his sacrifice of his honor and his betrayal of his familia; the film is completely uninterested in Elena’s experience or perspective as the child’s mother. Because the existence of Dominic and Elena’s son is a shock revelation, there’s no time for them to form a connection or for the viewer to form a connection to them. We feel sympathy for Dominic in theory (one can only imagine the horror of someone holding your child hostage and leveraging them to make you commit crimes and betray your loved ones), but the film tries to split our focus by making us feel the pain from Letty’s perspective as the loved one who is abandoned for unexplained reasons. It’s an attempt to give Dominic a shade of humanity, but it’s done only in abstract.

By comparison, we have a better sense of the surrogate paternal relationship between Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) and his trainee, Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood) or between Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and his daughter, Samantha (Eden Estrella). Hobbs is a devoted father to Samantha and a committed coach to her soccer team; the cinematic appeal of their relationship lies in Johnson’s charm and their characters’ shared history, which dates back to Furious 7. Even the Nobodies evoke a more real emotional reaction than Dominic and his son because we see how they interact with each other and how Mr. Nobody tries to teach Little Nobody the tricks of the trade. 

Without the human connection, the spectacle of The Fate of the Furious felt hollow. I should have been wowed by remotely controlled cars barreling through New York City’s streets and raining from parking lots in skyscrapers, but I was bored. I should have been impressed when Dominic and company were racing across ice away from a nuclear submarine, but I was bored and almost nodding off. While the stakes for Dominic as a character were raised with his son’s introduction, the movie itself felt rote, from Cipher’s poorly outlined motivations to a moment that upends the importance of family that is the core of the franchise.

Dominic pays tribute to the bond between his peers that form la familia. However, there is dissonance in the way that Letty, Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) seemed to have no objection to Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) joining the team. Shaw murdered Han Lue/Han Seoul-Oh and attempted to kill Dominic, Mia, Brian, and Mia and Brian’s son in Furious 7. Even though Dominic was desperate, contacting Deckard’s mother (Helen Mirren) in order to convince her to persuade Deckard and Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), who has his own disagreeable history with Dominic and company, to save Dominic’s son seemed to betray Han’s memory and to put aside the threats that were made to his family.  

The LEGO Batman Movie, Logan, and The Fate of the Furious presented their respective protagonists in non-traditional families. Batman adopts Robin, and they form a trigenerational family with Alfred. Logan becomes Laura’s de facto guardian, and they form a trigenerational family with Xavier. Dominic, Letty, and Dominic’s biological son form a blended family. Indeed, the only traditional nuclear families that we see in these films are the Waynes, which is broken when Batman’s parents are murdered, and the Munsons in Logan. 

You could strain to draw a connection between how casually the Munsons are killed to how dystopian the world in Logan is, but the Munsons’ deaths feel almost cruel. From the moment that Logan stops the truck to help them wrangle their horses, the audience begins to wait for the Munsons to die. It gives the otherwise tranquil scenes of Logan, Xavier, and Laura observing what a normal family looks like as they dine together suspenseful tension. Their deaths for doing nothing more than extending hospitality to Logan, Xavier, and Laura felt like a manipulative exercise in cynicism and nihilism. They’re collateral damage in Logan’s violence trap, and the viewer empathizes with Will Munson when he pulls the trigger on Logan after they’ve incapacitated X-24, the younger, feral clone of Logan that was sent to subdue and capture Laura. With his dying breath, Will doesn’t distinguish between X-24 and Logan because they are both monsters that trampled the Munsons’ lives. That the gun’s chamber was empty only emphasizes that violence, even in the cynical world of Logan, isn’t a solution.

Finally, if we accept the notion that becoming a parent is one of the few rites of passage into adulthood left in today’s America, then the other side of that passage is observing your own parents’ decline and eventual death. In Logan, Charles Xavier is suffering Alzheimer’s disease, and Logan and Caliban are Xavier’s sole caregivers. When Xavier doesn’t recognize Logan, he is afraid of him because, to Xavier, Logan is the person who drugs him into unconsciousness. When Xavier is awake and lucid enough to recognize Logan, he berates him for being a disappointment. Xavier’s seizures cause Logan physical pain, and his words cause Logan emotional pain. Xavier is angry at himself and Logan because he needs Logan’s help with something as fundamental as using the bathroom; Logan is resentful for Xavier’s role in the Westchester incident, the physical and emotional pain that Xavier causes him, and the fact that he has to take care of his father figure in his decline. 

It was curious to me that three different and big budget films released within two months of each other wove in different ideas about fatherhood into their tales. Each film tried to examine its respective protagonist through the lens of fatherhood and came away with slightly different conclusions. Batman, for as much as he describes himself to be a loner, is character with myriad connections. Logan, another self-professed loner, can’t help but to connect to his daughter when they both do what they do best, even though what they do isn’t very nice and could trap them in cycles of violence. Dominic, a man who talks constantly about his familia, showed that his biological family is ultimately more important to him than the friends and peers around him. 

[misswsposts]

You are always more important...

You Are Always More Important

“What concept, what belief, what rule can make people see what they don’t want to see? As long as other people’s pain is less important than your own issues.” - Meltem Arikan, Enough is Enough.

I am a performer currently working on a theatre production, a piece of “artivism” called Enough Is Enough. It is a feminist piece shouting out about patriarchy and violence against women and children. It’s a powerful, thought-provoking piece with important points and a strong statement and it’s a remarkably rewarding experience to be a part of it. 

I am also an ethical vegan and can’t help but notice parallels between the abuse of women and children with animal abuse. I don’t need to tell you about how the meat and dairy industries breed animals solely for our consumption, genetically modify them to have unnatural, painful defects which make them tastier and commercially viable, enslave them in pens, cages and sheds, violate their sexual organs on “rape racks” (it’s an industry term), steal their babies, murder them, chop them up, rip feathers from their living bodies, peel off their skin while they’re conscious. I don’t need to go into details because WE ALL KNOW what goes on. Everybody who eats a kebab or drinks a glass of milk knows how it got from the animal to their stomach. Why then, when we are all aware of it, do we continue to allow it? Because you are always more important, that’s why. Society has brainwashed the vast majority into believing its acceptable behaviour. People truly believe that because they enjoy the taste of bacon or cheese, it is worth sacrificing the comfort and entire life of another being. It’s worth someone losing his or her ENTIRE life, the only thing they possess, for a brief minute on your lips and a few hours of tummy fulfilment. We turn a blind eye to the abuse because it’s so inherent and normalised in our society. Smiling cartoon chickens and cows laugh at us from TV screens and billboards. “EAT ME” they dare us. But we all know, it’s not the animals themselves challenging us to savour their flesh, it’s their masters, humans. There’s another parallel here. When we see a woman in her underwear advertising a product on television or on a billboard, she has been placed there by a man, daring the audience to consume her with their eyes. Feminists call them up on the exploitation, the male gaze is criticised, all the while, the hypocrites are tucking into sushi made from a fish who has been traumatised, murdered and stolen from its environment through no fault of its own. 

But why is it OK to treat animals as subservient creatures we can dominate? Surely women can identify with them? The feeling of helplessness, being controlled, having no voice in a world created for them by others who are not like them. We justify it by saying animals are less intelligent than us, they lack reasoning and understanding. But how much intellect does one need to feel pain? It’s a basic feeling shared by all animals and some plants. Anybody who’s stepped on a dog’s foot will be familiar with the bloodcurdling yelp that follows. We’ve all seen a cat head for the warmest, most comfortable area of the living room. But cats and dogs have a special kind of relationship with humans. They are members of our family. We curse those who mistreat pets, yet all the while, we are shovelling a once living, breathing pig between our teeth. If we are using intelligence as a gauge, it’s misguided. Pigs have been proved to be more intelligent than dogs, and as intelligent as a three-year old human. The argument for intelligence doesn’t stand up, otherwise we’d be enjoying roast toddler of a Sunday. 

The real reason is speciesism. Another “ism” alongside racism, sexism, ageism, and all the other words which describe discrimination. It’s the last taboo but is just as relevant. Numbers-wise it effects more beings in our shared world than any of the other “isms”. In the early days of feminism and the civil rights movement, people mocked activists fighting for change. People were blinded by the system and comfortable with how things were. They couldn’t see the point of fighting for change, at least those people who weren’t suffering couldn’t. But the difference is that the victims had voices and the ability to fight against their oppressors. Their movements gathered momentum from those who were once complacent and they continue fighting to this day. But animals don’t have voices, or at least not ones able to communicate with humans. Their screams, yelps and cries are never in adverts. They are silenced, yet they exist. Animals are unable to unite and stand together, form unions, create Facebook groups. They’re the most vulnerable inhabitants on our planet. It’s for this reason I and others are speaking out for them, and yes, our cause is gathering momentum.

Animals breathe, feel pain, seek warmth, shit, have sex, shiver, feel fear, run away from or fight threatening behaviour, sigh, yawn, eat, drink and fuck, just as we do. How are they really different from us on a basic level? Why do we not give them the same respect we give other humans? Because they look, and think differently? Women look and feel differently to men, children look and think differently to adults. We wouldn’t tolerate that as a reason to abuse women and children so why do we tolerate it for animals? I can’t see the logic behind the justification of animal abuse.  

I’m surrounded by animal exploitation and have realised that like the women featured in the play, I too am part of the system. I hear jokes about meat and veganism, and rather than shout out about it, for the most part I stay silent. Compliant. Because I don't want to appear difficult or have my outgoing, fun reputation tarnished. I am more important. I now see I’m no better than the mothers who let their husbands abuse their children for an easy life. I’m no better than women who brush off the banter which oppresses them. Why? Because veganism is still a taboo. If a bandmate had brought back a 12 year old girl to our digs to sleep with, the rest of us would speak out, yet I watch people drink the juice from a raped female cow who has had her most precious child stolen from her and I stay silent. Dairy cows are voiceless females and I am a feminist who is not standing up for them. I am not taking part in the abuse personally but I am doing little to stop it. I remember the works of Edmund Burke, ”The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." I am angry with myself, but feel helpless at the same time. 

Animal rights activists are painted as weirdos or extremists. But what is extreme about eating a plant-based diet and feeling compassion for and empathy with the oppressed? How is it more extreme to choose to eat an avocado for breakfast than somebody’s legs? I’m not even getting started on the environmental impact of meat and dairy. I choose a cruelty-free diet because the choice is there. Even in the smallest towns and villages I’ve found plant-based foods. I have the privilege of choice, unlike animals. They don’t choose to be born into an unjust society. When people “choose” to eat meat, they do not like to think their choices have a victim behind them, but they do. Choices should not have victims. 

Peers often pity me for not eating the tasty cake or rack of ribs they are enjoying, but believe me, I do not feel hard done by. I only have to think of the poor creatures who’ve suffered to end up in your hands and any feelings for myself go out the window. How can I feel bad about missing out on tasting chicken soup when those chickens missed out on happiness, comfort and life itself?

 Discrimination of all forms should be fought and challenged, whether it's the rights of women, children, religious groups or animals. The first step is getting people to see their actions are harming others and have an effect. People need to open their eyes to new ideas, be open to criticism and more flexible in their way of thinking, but it's difficult when society has been hard-wired to be a certain way and when those in power don't share the same ideals. I truly believe there will be a point in the future when people will look back on our society's treatment of animals and view us the way as we view slave drivers during the years of the Transatlantic Slave Trade or the Nazis during the Holocaust, but in the meantime and to reach that stage, we must be non-compliant, continue to shout out and share the real life stories of all victims to incite positive change from the bottom up.

[cryptodictation]

curiosities behind the camera

A successful series is recognized in different ways. Great audience numbers (like game of Thrones). Some important social discussion being raised (in the case of The Handmaid’s Tale). Or even both, as happened with Mad Men and Breaking Bad, curiously both of the golden times of AMC.

In this whirlwind of content that we have right now, it is always important to remember what really matters – quality. It is not those golden actors that the sponsor likes or that standard story that appeals most to the average American. Therefore, I saw the idea of ​​talking behind the scenes of Mad Men.

Therefore, I invite you to continue with us and read our column. In addition to commenting, criticizing, praising and proposing changes … After all, we need your help to improve.

Continues after advertising

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Taking care of health

Cigarettes were almost a character throughout the trajectory of Mad Men. However, none of the actors actually smoked tobacco. In fact, they 'smoked' herbal tea cigarettes, which contain neither nicotine nor tobacco. In an interview with The New York Times, creator Matthew Weiner confirmed that strategy. “You don't want the actors to actually smoke cigarettes,” said the showrunner.

They get restless and nervous. I've been to studios where a lot of people were vomiting because of the amount of smokers in that place, ”he said. Still, alternative cigarettes didn't have many fans, either. In conversation with New York MagazineJon Hamm (Don Draper) did not hide his disgust. “Terrible,” said Jon. “They taste like a mixture of marijuana and soap,” he said.

Bad example

According to an article published by Esquire magazine in October 2013, the role of one of the make-up artists in the series, Lana Horochowski, was to keep Jon Hamm's beard trimmed and shaved at all times. The problem is that the facial hair of the actor, as well as the one I write to you, grows especially fast. The complication was so great for the makeup and hair crew that on long days of recording, Jon needed to shave until 3 times by the way it appeared on the camera. The article was so shocking that Dr. Peter Hino, a dermatologist, warned viewers not to reproduce the same process as it could damage the skin.

The character behind the character

Each character represented a different type. Don, for example, was the man who grew up with his own sweat. Born in misery and conquered the American dream after determination and hard work. Joan has the ability to change at different times because of her upbringing during World War II, where many women have occupied functions that were hitherto male – such resilience is one of Joan's strengths. Roger in turn is the antithesis of Don Draper.

Born in a golden cradle, he took advantage of privilege and represents the decline of masculinity at the time. Megan is the modern woman who flaunts her independence and personality; Sally is the bridge between the old and the new; Betty is the 1950s housewife, unable to accept the changes of the time; Peggy is the woman who, like Don, has conquered everything she has on her own effort without having other women to look up to or seek advice. Pete, finally, is the one whose surname went into such a decline that he had to reinvent himself in the face of new times.

I'm you tomorrow

Robert “Bobby” Draper's role was played by four different child actors throughout the series. Bobby was originally played by Maxwell Huckabee; this, in turn, was replaced by Aaron Hart at the end of the first season. At the beginning of the third year, the role was played by Jared Gilmore, who was in charge until the beginning of the fifth season, when he was replaced by Mason Vale Cotton. The pace of change is particularly notorious in light of the fact that the Draper's eldest daughter, Sally, was played by the same actress from the beginning: Kiernan Shipka, who was just six years old when the pilot episode was shown.

Corruptions aside

In June 2016, just before Donald Trump officially became the Republican candidate for the United States presidency, the then candidate filed his monthly tax return with the Federal Elections Commission. That document showed that payments (in the order of more than $ 35,000) would have been made to a company in New Hampshire for digital advertising. The problem is that, in the statement, the company was named “Draper Sterling”. An investigation by journalist Judd Legum, now extinct Think Progress, found that the company was actually run by members of the campaign itself. The report also recalled that, “Draper and Sterling, of course, are the names of the protagonists of Mad Men“. Sad.

Same house, different location

The pilot episode was recorded at Silvercup Studios in New York City, as well as other locations around the city. Interestingly, the subsequent episodes were recorded at the Los Angeles Center Studios, due to the tax incentives granted by the state of California.

Quickies

– Phil Abraham and Matthew Weiner are the only directors who have directed episodes in all seasons, including both parts of last season. Weiner, however, is the only one to write in all seasons.

– Christina Hendricks originally auditioned to play Midge Daniels.

– Each episode was budgeted between 2-2.5 million dollars. The pilot episode in particular cost somewhere around three million dollars.

– In 2008, Mad Men and Damages became the first cable TV series to be nominated in the category of Best Drama at the Emmy.

In short

As usual, I had no idea about some backstage issues in this series. I also confess that I have not yet shamed myself in doing one of those gigantic marathons and watching it completely. Still, as a consumer (and producer) of information about the industry, it was a delight to discover that all the characters have a meaning behind it. Besides, who would have guessed that a certain candidate's tricks and cheats would drink from this source to hide his problems? Fascinating, just like the series itself.

So, thank you for reading this week. I take this opportunity to remind you that next time we will talk about the Backstage in MacGyver. I hope you guys!

The post curiosities behind the camera appeared first on Cryptodictation.

from WordPress https://cryptodictation.com/2020/03/25/curiosities-behind-the-camera-2/

[jakehglover]

E-Cig Flavoring Harms Blood Vessels

By Dr. Mercola

Unlike traditional combustible cigarettes emitting an offensive odor, electronic cigarettes (e-cigs) are nearly odorless and usually misperceived as being harmless to your health. Tobacco companies have produced powerful advertising campaigns and print ads to forward this idea to children and adults.

Alas, even bystanders are exposed to toxic nicotine, heavy metals, fine particulate matter and formaldehyde from these devices. While the number of people smoking traditional cigarettes has been dropping, the number of teens using e-cigs, also known as vaping, has steadily risen, and research data suggests that teens who take up vaping may also be more prone to smoking.1

It is currently believed e-cigarettes do not expose you to the thousands of toxic compounds the average combustible cigarette contains, but researchers are only just beginning to understand the toxicities involved in vaping. In some ways, these man-made tobacco alternatives are just as dangerous to your health as traditional cigarettes. Recent research has found the liquid used to flavor the vape experience damages your cardiovascular system.2

Vape Flavors Damage Your Cardiovascular System

According to a study from Boston University School of Medicine, liquid used to flavor e-cigarettes may induce early signs of cardiovascular disease leading to heart attack, stroke and even death.3 The scientists found changes appeared almost immediately on the cellular level. Flavor additives are popular in the teen population, who often initially choose vaping over traditional cigarettes.

While the health effects of traditional cigarettes and hookah are well established, the dangers of e-cigarettes are only beginning to be studied. One of the key factors in this study was the direct testing of the effect of just flavoring at levels likely to be reached inside the body. According to lead author Jessica Fetterman, Ph.D., the measures evaluated during data collection were some of the first changes seen in the development of heart disease.4

The researchers used endothelial cells, which make up the lining of blood vessels, from two groups of people. One group regularly used menthol flavored traditional tobacco cigarettes and the other used unflavored tobacco cigarettes. They compared these cells against nonsmoking volunteers.5 The cells from both types of smokers were unable to perform a key function in the same way nonsmoker cells were able — the production of nitric oxide, a colorless gas the body uses to dilate blood vessels.

When the nonsmoker cells were directly exposed to menthol, the same thing happened. This gave the researchers a baseline against which they compared flavoring additives commonly used in e-cigarette. Nine chemical flavorings were tested, including:6

Menthol (mint)

Eugenol (clove)

Vanillin (vanilla)

Acetylpyridine (burnt flavor)

Cinnamaldehyde (cinnamon)

Dimethylpyrazine (strawberry)

Eucalyptol (spicy cooling)

Diacetyl (butter)

Isoamyl acetate (banana)

The researchers then exposed endothelial cells to different levels of the nine flavorings. The chemicals were heated to the same temperature a vaping device would normally create. At the highest level of exposure the chemicals triggered outright cell death. At a lower level, researchers noted impaired nitric oxide production and inflammation. Fetterman commented on the importance of the study, saying:7

"Our study suggests that the flavoring additives used in tobacco products like e-cigarettes, on their own or in the absence of the other combustion products or components, may cause cardiovascular injury. [That] could have serious implications, as flavored tobacco products are the most popularly used products, especially among youth."

She added:8

"Increased inflammation and a loss of nitric oxide are some of the first changes to occur leading up to cardiovascular disease and events like heart attacks and stroke, so they are considered early predictors of heart disease. Our findings suggest that these flavoring additives may have serious health consequences."

Children Are the Tobacco Industry’s Market

In their sprint to grow a consumer base in an environment where the number of people smoking traditional cigarettes is declining, tobacco companies are selling their products to a new market — children. While scientists are proving e-cigarettes hold greater health risks than previously believed, companies are chasing profits and poisoning another generation.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are aiming their resources at branding using the same colors and packaging as commonly sold juices and candies. One product, Twirly Pop, is even packaged with a lollipop.9 "E-liquids," the liquid used in vaping devices, are a combination of nicotine, flavoring and other ingredients that, when ingested, can cause poisoning and death, especially in small children.10

Nearly 8,300 children under the age of 6 were poisoned by e-liquids between January 2012 and April 2017, according to the National Poison Data System.11 The number of children exposed appeared to decrease after January 2015, which researchers attributed in part to federally-mandated child-resistant packaging. Until this point, manufacturers had not voluntarily designed child-resistant packaging despite a 1,398 percent increase in poisoned children from vaping liquid between 2012 and 2015.

The rising popularity of e-cigarettes increases health risks, especially in small children who are 2.5 times more likely to experience a severe outcome than children exposed to traditional, combustible cigarettes.12

The FDA and FTC are concerned this risk will rise when the product is packaged resembling candy and juices. Additionally, the agencies are cracking down on the sale of Juuls to underaged buyers. Dubbed the "iPhones of e-cigs," Juuls resemble a flash drive, have little vapor, are fruit flavored and are easily concealed from parents and teachers.13

The FDA is also demanding Juul Labs release documentation of their marketing, focus groups, toxicology and development process in an effort to confirm the manufacturer’s statement they are not intentionally marketing to children.14 An assistant superintendent for student services at a large Chicago public school hopes by making the risks associated with vaping more public, and Juul more accountable, it may make the health consequences clearer to students.15

FTC Is Requiring Immediate Action on Misbranded Products

In a press release, the FDA announced they have begun a large-scale nationwide undercover operation to find retail stores selling e-cigarettes, especially Juul products, to minors.16

In an effort to force manufacturers to change branding and labeling of e-liquids so they don’t closely resemble children’s products, the FTC and FDA have told companies their products’ "labeling and/or advertising imitating kid-friendly foods is false or misleading."17 The FTC is citing their authority falls under the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive advertising.

The manufacturers have been given 15 days to respond with their plans to change labeling or packaging of the products. The agencies warn failure to respond and take action may result in further action, including seizure of product or injunctions. Additionally, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb told reporters it would be difficult to imagine the products were not aimed at children as the packaging imitates items children frequently consume.

Vaping Advertisers Copy Big Tobacco Playbook

The tobacco industry used strong advertising campaigns to grow an enormous consumer base addicted to their product. Electronic cigarette companies appear to be following directly in these footsteps, using some of the same advertising tactics traditional tobacco products are now banned from using. While traditional cigarette ads were aimed at adults, these slick tactics are now being used to garner new consumers in the pediatric population.

Many old advertisements for traditional cigarettes featured celebrity spokespersons, like Gary Cooper and Marlena Dietrich, who made the habit appear trendy and cool. E-cigarette companies are using actors, TV personalities and musicians to demonstrate to children the same thing. Magazine ads feature rugged men and glamorous women, giving teenagers the impression those who are masculine, sexy or rebellious should be vaping.18

E-cigarette companies also sponsor sporting events and music festivals, much like their tobacco counterparts once did. Cigarettes sponsorships are banned, but e-cigarette brands have auto racing sponsorships of their own. In 2009 a federal law banned fruit and candy flavored cigarettes in order to help reduce the number of children who were tempted to begin smoking combustible cigarettes. Today, e-cigarette liquids pitch similar flavors to an audience enthralled by sugar.

Apollo Vapors offers Almond Joyee, "the candy bar taste without the calories!" and French Vanilla flavor that is "like biting into a deliciously sweet vanilla cupcake."19 Advertisers use cartoons and urge their customers to switch, don't quit, in much the same way True cigarette advertising urged their customers in advertisements: "Considering all I've heard, I decided to either quit or smoke True. I smoke True." Blu e-cigarette print ads say: "Why quit? Switch to Blu."

The ads build on the misconception many teenagers hold that vaping is harmless. The irony is the same companies who convinced doctors to recommend smoking to alleviate anxiety20 are now hawking similar products to a new generation with the knowledge that only the packaging has changed. While society begins shunning traditional cigarettes after decades of education about the significant hazards to health, vaping appears to be accepted.

Headlines Don’t Tell the Story

The 2016 Surgeon General Report stated e-cigarettes are a major public health concern, as use from 2011 to 2015 in high school students had risen an astounding 900 percent.21 Although headlines have reported the number of people vaping is on the decline, there remains an estimated 3 million vaping adolescents.22 This represents only an 11.3 percent drop since 2015, as compared to the 900 percent increase in the previous four years.23 Reports of declining numbers are based on this slim decrease.

While considering the number of teens who are vaping, it’s important to realize there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco products, smokeless or combustible. Teens who begin by using e-cigarettes are also more likely to start smoking combustible cigarettes.24 Results of several studies support this concern,25 as well as data finding students are more likely to move from vaping to traditional cigarettes than to switch from traditional to electronic.26 Research authors wrote about the risks to teens:27

"For example, adolescents may be more likely to use e-cigarettes before conventional cigarettes because of factors unique to e-cigarette products, such as perceptions that e-cigarettes are less harmful than conventional cigarettes, the widespread availability of unique e-cigarette liquid flavors that may be especially appealing to youth and limited enforcement or restrictions on youth access to e-cigarettes."

The risk of addictive behavior as teens grow into adulthood also increases when teens are exposed to nicotine. Researchers from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania28 used an animal model to demonstrate that when exposed to nicotine as a teen, the animal grew up to drink more alcohol than unexposed animals. According to the researchers, exposure changed the neurological circuitry in the brain’s reward pathway. Other studies have demonstrated similar results.29

Administration of nicotine during adulthood did not produce the same alteration in function of the inhibitory midbrain circuitry as did exposure during adolescence. The researchers found the alteration in transmission of neurotransmitters were responsible for signals during stress or in the recognition of reward. Long-term changes in the midbrain reward center may also be a gateway to other addictive drugs, such as cocaine, heroin and morphine.

Bystanders Are Affected by Vaping Toxins Too

The lack of offensive odor from the devices have led to a greater acceptance of the habit in public places. However, bystanders are not immune from the health risks associated with vaping. In one study, researchers found significant levels of lead, nickel, chromium and magnesium were produced by vaping devices.30

While the results were consistent with other studies,31 the researchers found larger amounts were released when liquid was exposed to the heating coils32 and nearly 50 percent of the vapor samples contained lead levels higher than limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency.33 Inhaled lead may attack your brain and nervous system, kidneys, liver and bones.

The nicotine-containing aerosol produced by the devices also contains fine particulate matter easily absorbed through inhalation by bystanders. E-cig vapor also contains acetaldehyde34 and formaldehyde,35 both known carcinogens.36 At least one brand tested had 10 times more than found in traditional cigarettes. The FDA has also detected antifreeze chemicals in e-cigarettes — another known carcinogen.37

Secondhand vapor may contain at least 10 chemicals identified on California’s Proposition 65 list of reproductive toxins and carcinogens, according to Americans for Nonsmokers Rights.38 Likely the most well-known is diacetyl, one of the flavorings tested in the feature study that demonstrated a damaging effect on your blood vessels. The chemical also causes known damage to the respiratory system and permanent scarring of the airway.39

The number of teens using vaping devices and suffering health risks is a critical public health concern and affects the future health of every community. The 2018 American Lung Association State of Tobacco Control40 report calls for significant and important action from state and federal agencies toward the elimination of tobacco use to positively impact the number of preventable deaths and to reduce the pain and suffering experienced by smokers and their families.

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/06/27/e-cig-flavoring-harms-blood-vessels.aspx