#which could be after new years. WAUGH

[chocolatewoosh]

Here I am, minding my own business drawin' as per the Usual when suddenly the outlet where my power bar is plugged in died! :) And I mean the outlet. Not the plug or the power bar, the OUTLET. EXCELLENT ! (sarcasm)

Thankfully I have my secondary setup (of which I am posting from Right Now) but my first setup is where all my current doodles, wips and finished art and such are................... 😔man

[justforbooks]

The fashion designer Mary Quant had perfected key aspects of 1960s British pop culture long before midnight chimed on the last day of 1959. The Chelsea girl and her try-anything attitude, her short, narrow garments casually bought from a Kings Road boutique – Quant had been working on these since the mid-50s. It took the zeitgeist until at least 1963 to catch on, let alone catch up.

Quant, who has died aged 93, opened her first Kings Road shop, Bazaar, in 1955, the year after Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel ended her postwar hiatus and reopened her Paris salon. They shared a similar ambition: to clothe young, independent women unsuited to fashion dominated by Christian Dior’s 1947 New Look and the work of the grand couturiers. Quant and Chanel designed their clothes to allow new physical and mental freedoms; Quant (unlike Chanel) was also in favour of fun, in reaction to her own teen years under postwar austerity.

Life then had been rationed, begrudged; almost the only place where the young could create their own excitement was at art college, with the Chelsea Arts Ball an annual chance for frivolity. At that ball a teenaged Quant, clad chiefly in balloons, hooked up with a fellow Goldsmiths’ College student, Alexander Plunket Greene, who swanned around long-haired in his mother’s silk pyjama top, trumpet in one hand and film script in the other.

“Life … began for me when I first saw Plunket,” she wrote in her 1966 autobiography Quant By Quant. He was short on ready cash, with an income of “four bob a day,” he recalled, “if one bought cigarettes one couldn’t go the cinema too”, but posh and sexually sophisticated. “Alexander had no use for straightforward sex at all,” Quant said, and he also was consistently unfaithful.

He came from a family said to be Evelyn Waugh’s model for the Flytes in Brideshead Revisited and was at art college crossing social classes. She, born in Blackheath, south-east London, had been persuaded by her parents, Jack and Mildred, both schoolteachers, to study art rather than fashion on leaving Blackheath high school.

After Goldsmiths’, she worked as a trainee assistant at the Mayfair milliner Erik. Quant picked up pins with a magnet and counted out the ration of one chocolate biscuit a day for the assistants, who were so poorly paid that, as Cecil Beaton exaggerated, “there were weeks when only an aspirin touched Mary’s lips and, but for the Jamaicans in nearby Claridge’s kitchens handing over their refuse bins, she would have starved”.

The creation of a hat was Quant’s practical introduction to fashion, and the sculptural moulding that quickly shapes millinery influenced her approach to clothes. She had reservations about “spending three days making one hat which would be worn for one afternoon by a grumpy, spoiled middle-class woman”, learned dress-pattern-cutting at night school, to put outfits together for herself, and briefly worked for the Butterick pattern company.

Plunket’s poverty ended on his 21st birthday when he inherited £5,000; advised by the entrepreneur Archie McNair, who became Quant’s financial brain thereafter, he took a mortgage on a property on the corner of Markham Street and Kings Road, Chelsea.

He wanted to open a nightclub in its basement, but could not get an alcohol licence, so that level became Alexander’s Restaurant, a bistro influenced by his friend Terence Conran and the recipes of Elizabeth David. Plunket told McNair that his girl was good at clothes, and Quant set up Bazaar on the ground floor.

Bazaar acted in lieu of the desired club, with wine or scotch under the counter and girls shedding their garments on the floor, attracting anti-establishment former art-school characters who had gone into photography and journalism. It was hardly a shop – the preferred word was boutique anyway – since the couple never understood business. Incoming bills were piled up and those at the top were paid – Conran said you could not open the front door for writs. They were part of the new bohemian Chelsea set and their stories became SW3 legend.

Quant bought fabric from Harrods at retail prices on a Plunket family account, and had to sell each batch of clothes before she could buy more; when she ran out of stock, she simply shut up shop and started sewing. When she asked manufacturers to make for her, few would, since her ever-skimpier, shorter shapes did not promise big enough profit margins.

Besides, Bazaar might be closed for weeks with a “gone fishing” sign placed in the window while Quant and Plunket went on holiday. They wanted a wider life, flying off in chartered planes to gamble in Le Touquet: because of the era’s currency restrictions, Quant smuggled out in her knickers the cash to buy a French home. They ran an illegal chemin-de-fer game in the Quant delivery van parked in a different Chelsea street each Thursday.

By the late 50s Quant had synthesised her Chelsea girl look from elements of left bank kooky beatnik and practical details of American sportswear, plus her preference for vulgarity over good taste. Then she began supplementing it with memories of her ideal – a girl of about eight glimpsed during a childhood dancing class, who had a Dutch doll haircut and wore a dark skinny knit, very short pleated skirt, white socks and black patent shoes that focused on the boot button of their ankle strap. Quant made similar clothes the basis of the dolly-bird look of the 60s.

In retrospect, this sexualised projection of a very young girl feels disturbing. Dolly-birds skipped, and knocked their knees, and pointed their toes in what Quant called “the wet-knicker pose”. Stocking-tops and suspenders were slowly replaced by patterned or coloured tights, and Quant developed stretchy undergarments no heavier than those tights.

Quant’s own hairdresser, Vidal Sassoon, cut geometric variants of the bob. The whole ensemble pointed in one direction. “The crotch is the most natural erogenous zone,” said Quant, directing her models in their Banlon, Bri-nylon and PVC mini shifts to prance for maximum pelvic thrust, and claiming that her husband once cut her own green-dyed pubic hair into a heart shape. Angry bowler-hatted men beat with fists and umbrellas on Bazaar’s window, Quant recalled: “It got to them in some way, what I was doing.”

Being a dolly-bird was just about affordable on teen pay. Quant went wholesale in 1961, and two years later launched mass-market fashions under the name Ginger Group – ginger, prune and grape being the previously non-fashion colours that she favoured. She also signed on as an adviser with the US retailer JC Penney: from then on she could afford to hop on big jet planes to distant destinations at whim, as she had once done buses on Kings Road; her personal transport was a black Mini car with a black leather interior.

But she was never comfortable with large-scale clothes production and soon realised that the real money lay in franchising household goods such as bedding, and, even more, in designing faces.

Mary Quant cosmetics arrived in 1966 and were more original than her clothes. Cosmetic containers had traditionally been designed as ornaments for dressing tables, with lipsticks and compacts based on 18th-century boudoir trinkets. Quant observed that professional models painted their faces like canvases with brushes and theatrical grease sticks, and as an art student she had worn the contents of her watercolour paint tubes. She commercialised these ideas, and the daisy logo that was always the doodled focal point of her dress sketches then appeared on makeup packaging – yellow tins of crayons, and simplified bottles, sold not from store counters but from “pods” that might have been moon landing capsules.

Skin cream was sold with matching vitamin pills. Bazaar closed in 1969, by which time 7 million women worldwide had Quant’s label in their wardrobe.

Quant cosmetics also dwindled away in the 70s but were revived under licence in Japan in 1984, and re-exported to the west in the 90s. Japan was Quant’s most logical market, for young women there have cultural sanction to present themselves as prepubescent – pretending to be very young is seen as liberating, which appealed to Quant, who said: “I grew up not wanting to grow up, growing up seemed so terrible, children were free and sane.”

She eventually resigned as director of the company, and lost control in 2000 of her name and her daisy, but stayed as consultant. She also began designing clothes for the New York store Henri Bendel, which realised her vintage work was being collected. Her approach was understood as being as dramatically simple as Chanel’s – “Only I had better legs than Chanel,” said Quant.

Her first retrospective exhibition, Mary Quant’s London, in 1973 at the Museum of London, had a 50s gloom room so visitors could appreciate the difference she had made, for which she was appointed OBE in 1966 – a very big deal at the time. She was made a dame in 2015, and a companion of honour this year.

When the V&A put on a lifetime retrospective show in 2019, it sourced exhibits radically by asking the public to loan Quant clothes they had kept. Many of those selected were displayed with old photographs of their owners wearing them, captioned with the outfit’s personal “story”. The exhibition drew huge crowds, with visitors talking to each other – a rare occurrence – about what it had been like to wear Quant fashion when it was new.

Although the Chelsea set regarded home as the place you went when there was nothing better to do, Quant loved her house in Grasse, Provence, and a retreat in Guildford, Surrey. There she gardened by torchlight when day faded, and installed a 60s Claes Oldenburg plastic statue commemorating dolly-bird knees.

The turbulent marriage of the Plunket Greenes, which had begun in 1957, ended with his death in 1990. Her later partner, Antony Rouse, died in 2014. Quant is survived by Orlando, the son from her marriage, and three grandchildren.

🔔 Mary Quant, fashion and cosmetics designer, born 11 February 1930; died 13 April 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[dandyshucks]

hiii dandy !! i wanted to ask, what do you think you and guzma would do post-canon after the events of sun & moon ? (i might have asked this before - if i have, i apologize..) (i also wanted to say that its been really cool seeing ur progress on ur plush!! it seems so hard, so you having that skill is rly admirable and i wish u lots of luck w finishing it!!) (@dmclr)

CLARA HI i hope u (and dimitri hehe) are doing well :] !!! wah thank u for the question, u havent asked it before dw !!! 

OKAY SO admittedly I mostly only know the story through reading Guz’s wiki page a few times (teehee) and through osmosis from the general fandom dsgjkl, i want to play the game one day and maybe read the manga, and I’ve watched the anime eps he’s featured in and that’s all i’m watching of that LOL. I haven’t actually experienced much of his story (or su/mo in general) first-hand myself though fdsjkl

answer below the cut because.... the rambler's curse got me LOL

after the events of su/mo, I don’t think he’d actually disband Team Skull because… what is the point of that honestly LOL, so Team Skull stays together in MY version of the world hehe. they’re required to do community service to make up for whatever shenanigans they get up to, but they stop stealing pokemon and move onto just like… graffiti and casual pranks and stuff. they still cause trouble, but it’s mostly mischief now rather than any actual crime. I set them up to work on murals for shop owners around the islands so they can spraypaint and be artistic that way rather than randomly tagging walls and getting into trouble for it fjdskl. they keep their disdain for authority figures and rules because at the end of the day most of them are rowdy teens who feel outcasted from society, and that’s just the way the ball rolls with them (also a certain level of that is healthy and warranted tbh). I work with Plumeria to organize events and outings (outside of community service) for the squad though, which helps give everyone healthier outlets for their energy and focus.

Hala mentors Guz to help put him onto (and keep him on) the right track, and Guz learns to appreciate the islands and their traditions a bit - even if he still doesn’t agree with all of them. Part of that mentorship is also sort of therapy (in a more holistic naturally-occurring way rather than like... clinical therapist sitting with patient), so trauma gets unpacked and healthier ways of handling emotions are learned and implemented. Also fuck the Aether Foundation HFDSJKL I keep Guz far away from Lusamine and make sure she never gets close to him again (idk what Gladion and Lillie get up to, I haven’t thought enough about them yet fsjkl). There’s a lot of healing and self-improvement and learning how to Be A PersonTM for both of us tbh!

Beyond that, it is mostly just regular Alola/island living!! Beach visits, walking around, getting ice cream and popsicles, casual battles with tourists, catching wimpods, all that sort of thing :] Also we visit Sinnoh (my home region) for half the year (i have… a whole schedule worked out for that actually LOL) so there’s that, too.

as for the plushie omg thank u sm WAUGH :D i cannot tell if it’s just because i have a weird hodge-podge skillset but i DO think it is not actually all that difficult !!! you just need a pattern for cutting the felt and then I learned the ladder stitch for hand-sewing, and it’s been very straightforward on how to sew the pieces together!! the hardest part so far has just been the hair because I have a difficult time translating 2D images to 3D reality in that way.

I just really want to encourage ppl to try their hand at new crafts and creative skills because I think it’s really fun and honestly really good for ppls well-being!! i am very passionate about making creativity accessible to people as much as possible!!! maybe i could make a tutorial or smth… the pattern I'm using is free and available on the creator’s website, and it’s genuinely not that difficult esp compared to some other things i’ve tried my hand at in the past LOL I feel like some of my paper mache projects have been more complex than this lil goober!!

THANK YOU AGAIN, AND SORRY ABOUT BECOMING THE RAMBLING RAMBLER LMAO i actually entirely rewrote this once because I wanted to shorten it and it STILL ended up this long 😭

[judgeanon]

So I'm the guy who always asks this question year. Just joined Tumblr this year, what was the best and worst for the prog and the Meg this year?

Nice to see you around! How's the family? Ready for Christmas? Anywho, let's get to it...

As far as tops of the progs go, Kenneth Niemand continues to be my favorite part of Dredd. Which is a weird thing to say in a year that also had a John Wagner story, but I think Wagner has settled into this odd rhythm where he writes rock-solid stories pitched around a single weird twist that gets diffused like a bomb at the end, which is fine but eventually turns into a series of anti-climaxes and... what was I saying? Oh yeah, Niemand, great guy, love his one-shots and shorts and just about everything he does with Dredd.

Apart from Dredd, I dug KINGMAKER, BRINK was utterly delightful, LOWBORN HIGH has a lot of promise (and gorgeous art), and I'm still enjoying SINISTER DEXTER far more than anyone should be enjoying it in the year 2022. I liked the premise of THE CRAWLY MAN 3riller too, hope that gets a series some day. But the biggest surprise for me is how much I enjoyed the newest HERSHEY book. That was a real "against all odds" for me, especially after the last one, but this was a huge improvement.

As for the bad, I'm sure everyone and their mom is having a go at HOPE, and as much as it breaks my heart, it's completely warranted. That series is a mess. I do like the coven of witches idea, but everything else is just ehhh. And speaking of messes, ENEMY EARTH is another one. I like the art's energy but it makes me feel like I'm reading inside a malfunctioning amusement park ride.

As for the Meg, let's get it out of the way: LAWLESS is still awesome. Metta becoming a vigilante rules. Still the star of the show. I also really enjoyed DEATH CAP, although that was mostly because of Boo Cook going absolutely hog-wild on the last couple of episodes. The new bits of Psi-Division lore in ANDERSON were very fun. Dunno if it counts but HAWK THE SLAYER was another surprise delight. So weird to see both Ennis and Flint doing genres they don't usually go for and making it their own.

Meanwhile, I don't really care for Ales Kot's DEVLIN WAUGH or DIAMOND DOGS, but at least the latter had the good manners to, y'know, end. But beyond that, the Meg was solid this year. Same could be said for the prog really: very solid year, nothing particularly show-stopping but no deal-breakers either.

Also, I'd like to give a special mention to that zombie crossover event thing because I rolled my eyes at it a little when it got announced but it ended up being a really cool little ride. Plus it gave some artists I love a chance to draw the shit out of a bunch of characters they otherwise wouldn't and that's always welcome.

[pepprs]

dont worry abt responding to my messages!! they can be little trinkets for u to keep forever if u wanna :)))

dear anon… how could i not respond to THESE!!!!!!!!!! 😭💗💗💗💗💗💗💗 you are the sweetest kindest most WONDERFUL soul. it is an honor to receive these beautiful letters and i hope you know how much i cherish each and every one. not just the words but the adventures you take me on and write up for the two of us!!! and the beauty and magic you help me to see in the world around me and the peace and love and love and love you conjure for me in moments when i cant find it or feel it so easy!!!! like idk i know i have no idea who you are outside of being dear anon and i only answer asks once in a blue moon but it truly means the world to me. TRULY.

your writing feels like all the best things, all the things i love most. like leaf piles in the fall and the pikmin bloom soundtrack (btw if you dont play that already i HIGHLY recommend it to you specifically, i think u would really like it and tbh you sending me these letters has the same vibe as my pikmin bringing me postcards from their adventures :"~DDDD!!! if you ever do join it please lmk i would LOVE to be friends and send you postcards and do adventures together!!!!) and frosting on cupcakes and twinkly dust motes in the sunlight and cumulus clouds and dogwood flowers and the way things made of glass refract rainbows and SUNLIGHT SUNLIGHT SUNLIGHT. and even that isnt cutting it. how magical it all is. like i wish i wasnt so exhausted so i could express it better but it truly is so... idk. NOSTALGIC! COZY! HOME!!!!!

so... in order to try to articulate it (and also show my thanks / return the favor / etc.), i am sending this letter along with a care package knitted with word and song and magic and light. enclosed please find:

wind chimes that sing like the sun hitting the lake (also i REALLY want to get a butterfly hair clip!!! i cant wear hair clips or anything else fancy in my hair bc of my mask headbands but id love to have one in case im ever able to wear it in the future 🥹)

a heart-shaped pebble from brighton, to add to your collection (btw i LOVE the part about how you lost them a long time ago but you love them so you remember what they look like. WAUGH. gut punch GUT PUNCH IN THE BEST WAY!!!!)

a mug for hot chocolate, so we can share some together when it gets cold again -- decorated with hand-painted stars in all colors!

a tiny needle to knit your sundust satchels -- like the kind youd find in pixie hollow or the tale of desperaux or something (also both things that have dear anon vibes to me and are also DEEPLY nostalgic for me!)

a recipe for starfait, with illustrations!! (also i LOVE that idea for a replacement for "tesscore"!! but i may end up using that for my personal tag on my undertale / deltarune blog instead bc its so perfect (and also im HONORED that u associate that with me 😭😭😭😭))

a crown and wand for you to wear to match the fairy queen mouse while you write the same kind of magic and comfort she brings!

a packet of magical flower seeds that sprout the most whimsical sweet-smelling flowers, with petals that are soft to the touch!

a hand-woven scarf in your favorite color threaded with shiny silver strands, like comets streaming through the sky (also i am SO late to say this but UNO REVERSE CARD re: your new years wish to me which is genuinely making me lumpthroated and teary eyed reading it again in AUGUST. you are the sweetest EVER. and also ive never played journey before but ive been interested in it for years!!! i'll have to check it out and/or watch a playthrough!)

a hummingbird sculpture on a long stick for you to plant in your garden among the flowers, to sing to them and to you! (also RE: your question about your vocal range -- it just means that you can cover a little over two octaves (the number after the letter is the octave it's in, and each octave is a span of c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c -- so your range starts at about halfway through the third octave and goes to halfway through the fifth!) i think your range is about the same as mine iirc so we can hum along with the hummingbird and all three follow each other's notes :"~D <3)

a golden acorn on a thread for you to wear as a necklace when we go to the bird tea party! (by the way, have you ever read the book ""until the last acorn "when the last acorn is found?" it's a BEAUTIFUL book and it made me cry reading it! i think you and the acorn people would get along very, very well!!)

a lantern made of jelly moonlight and silver foil stars (see: ilomilo chapter 4 :"~D) for you to carry on your walks through the dim nights (you can hang the stars in the sky, and they'll brighten the world and light at your touch!)

a copy of one of my favorite books of all time, "the ten thousand doors of january," which is so much about wedging cracks open into other worlds, and something i think you might like very much / resonate with too!!

a big, big hug.

dear anon: THANK YOU. for all these words and for being you. i dont know how i got so lucky to have you sending me these little trinkets but i will most CERTAINLY keep them forever. i hope you experience all the peace and love and love and love to infinity. may you always know and shine with the light you bring and the light you are.

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

An aspiring bartender:

Can someone at that bar teach SH how to open a stuck shaker? He is seldom able to provide precise origins for most drinks—which ironically he prepares.

French 75 Cocktail

The French 75 is amongst the most popular champagne cocktails we have ever known. A pure and beautiful amalgamation of bright citrus flavour with a base liquor of gin or cognac, this could be a perfect cocktail for literally any occasion.

When Charles Dickens visited Boston, way back in 1867, he liked to entertain the literary lions of the town in his room at the Parker House with “Tom gin and champagne cups,” as an 1885 article about the hotel claimed. A Champagne Cup is bubbly, sugar, citrus and ice. Add Tom gin, as that story seems to indicate, and you’ve got something perilously close to the French 75.

Indeed, the combination of gin and Champagne was a popular one with gents of a certain class. According to their contemporaries, it was a favourite of Queen Victoria’s son, Edward, the Prince of Wales. The combination of cognac and Champagne was just as well-known, if not more so; as the “King’s Peg,” it was a standard served in the eastern parts of the British Empire.

Rudyard Kipling, in his short story, "At the End of the Passage," also notes the existence of "King's Peg," where the whisky is swapped out for cognac, and the soda water is transformed into champagne.

Though cocktail historians are unsure of the French 75's exact origin—some trace a cocktail of gin, champagne, sugar and citrus back to the 1860s—everyone agrees that one strand of its DNA points directly to a combination of cognac and champagne that used to be known as the "King's Peg." Those roots inform the swap-in for Grand Marnier, adding richness and complexity to this cocktail, and a pop of vibrance from the orange liqueur.

However, the popular story of the provenance of the French 75 (Soixante Quinze) is that a British Army Officer named George Clappison stationed in France at that moment. It was he who made this less potent cocktail. He put together the key ingredients at their disposal – London gin from home and the local champagne – to create a punchy drink, which he named after the iconic French M1897 75mm artillery gun. When the soldiers returned to their home, they brought the recipe along and since then, there has been no looking back, and the drink's fame was sealed in cocktail history.

The Canon de 75 modèle 1897 is the source of the name of the cocktail. The Canon de 75 modèle 1897 is still used in France on ceremonial occasions.

Some legends also claim that this champagne-based cocktail was invented somewhere in the 1920s at the New York Bar in Paris—later Harry's New York Bar—by a Scottish barman from Dundee Harry MacElhone, and was originally called 75th Infantry. MacElhone began working at Ciro's Club in London after World War I and years after in 1923, he took it over and it became one of the world's most famous cocktail bars.

Harry’s A B C of Mixing Cocktails – Harry McElhone – C.1920’s

The cocktail gained popularity at New York City's famous Stork Club. This recipe was republished with the name "French 75" in The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), which helped popularise the drink.

Harry's New York Bar in Rue Dannou, Paris's opera district in the 2nd arrondissement.

When the formula of gin or cognac, Champagne, lemon and sugar got the moniker of the fast-firing, accurate French field gun that had become an icon of victory in World War I, it suddenly took on a new cachet. As the British novelist Alec Waugh dubbed it, “the most powerful drink in the world.”

THE FRENCH 75: 1920s The British novelist Alec Waugh dubbed it “the most powerful cocktail in the world” and he was only half referring to its potent combination of liquor and champagne.

A few cocktails are mentioned in films, but, we're going to look at the French 75. This cocktail It's one of the most sophisticated and refreshing cocktails around and was referenced in the Oscar-winning film “Casablanca” in 1944.

It gained popularity through this Hollywood classic, where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman's character regularly sipped on the cocktail in the nightclub. The French 75 seems to be the ultimate coping mechanism at Rick's Cafe for both sides of the battle.

Early in its life, this classic cocktail was made with cognac. Gin quickly overtook it as the most popular base, and London dry is the preferred style of gin.

Those are not your only choices: The French 76 uses vodka, the French 95 features whisky, and almost every spirit (including tequila) has been used in this drink over the years. No matter which liquor you choose, the best French 75 is made with top-shelf brands and fresh juice No matter how this cocktail came into existence, there was nothing that could replace it. You can make this cocktail by following these simple steps!

French 75

INGREDIENTS:

.5 oz Lemon juice

1 tsp Sugar

2 oz London dry gin or cognac

Champagne, chilled

Glass: Champagne flute

PREPARATION:

Add the lemon juice and sugar to a shaker and stir to combine. Add the gin and fill with ice. Shake, and strain into a Champagne flute filled with cracked ice. Fill slowly with Champagne.

Note: The original French 75 cocktail recipe is not made with ice.

It's surprising how the French 75 cocktail is so popular outside of France. Yet look around the cocktail menus in most bars around Paris and elsewhere in France and, chances are, you'll not even see it listed!

#French75 #SoixanteQuinze #George Clappison #HarryMacElhone #75thInfantry #Ciro'sClub #London #WorldWarI #Harry'sNewYorkBar #Paris #Champagne #cognac #Britisharmy #EdwardPrinceofWales #King’sPeg #cocktail #BritishEmpire #AlecWaugh #novelist #film #Casablanca #At theEndofthePassage #story #RudyardKipling #FrenchM1897 #artillerygun #75mm

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

>friendship wasn't just a euphemism; it was an integral part of how queer people understood their relationships

I agree. "Romantic friendship" is a very Victorian/Edwardian concept which — while not always a synonym of same-sex desire — was used by a lot of gay people of that period, and it's quite present in the literature they produced, particularly school stories:

Carol bowed his head without a word and kissed him. And thus their friendship was sealed at either end.

– Tim: A Story of School Life (1891) by Howard Sturgis.

He wondered how it could have come about, and he pondered old tales he had read—some of them long ago—tales of a pagan world, in which this wonderful passion of friendship, then so common, had played its part. Returning to him now, they wore a new and added beauty, a meaning he had only dreamed before, but which at present filled his mind with a kind of heavenly radiance. Might not his own friendship be just the same?… Might not it, too, be something more than a mere romantic reverie, than the shadow of a beautiful dream?

– The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys (1905) by Forrest Reid.

This was almost the last holidays Cæsar and he would spend together; and, afterwards, would this friendship, so romantic a passion with one at least of them—would it wither away, or would it endure to the end?

– The Hill: A Romance of Friendship (1905) by Horace Annesley Vachell.

After tea at the club-house, it seemed a necessity to play again, and this time, regardless of financial stringency, Frank treated David to a caddy, and they went forth with pomp, now playing seawards into the hazy east, now westwards into the blaze of the declining sun, absorbed in their game and yet absorbed in their friendship of boy-love, hot as fire and clean as the trickle of ice-water on a glacier.

– David Blaize (1916) by E. F. Benson.

He knew that his friendship for Morcombe would lead to nothing: very few school friendships last more than a year or so after one or other has left. He thought of Byron's line: "And friendships were formed too romantic to last." It was too true, he had yet to find his real ideal.

– The Loom of Youth (1917) by Alec Waugh.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)

Walt Whitman, "When I Heard at the Close of the Day" (1867)

Edward Prime-Stevenson, Imre: A Memorandum (1906)

Bram Stoker, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906)

E.M. Forster, Maurice (1913)

Romantic Friendship and the Birth of Gay Identity

[daggerzine]

The interview: Inside the mind of Aug Stone.

Aug Stone is a writer, musician, comedian and probably a few other things i am not aware of. I first got turned on to him in his terrific book Nick Cave’s Bar. Then, shortly after that, came The Ballad of Buttery Ass Cake, his latest novel which was even better than the Cave one. I wanted to know what makes this guy tick so I shot some questions his way and he was more than happy to answer. 

Read on and check out his website, too (listed at the bottom of the page...lots o’ goodies there). 

Ladies and gentlemen, i present, Aug Stone!

On stage in Brooklyn. 

When/where did the writing bug come from?

AS: I was working at a temp job at a bank in Boston after I graduated college in 1998 and I kept making notes on the adding machine paper. I had no real plans for what I was jotting down. But I was a voracious reader at the time, trying to devour all of Nabokov, Evelyn Waugh, and Martin Amis. At my next temp job, they only needed me for certain tasks so a lot of time was just spent waiting at my desk and I continued to write down whatever popped into my head. During this time I realized a novel was taking shape. I wrote a couple novels which were never published. Good practice. Though the best practice comes from just writing every day. As for writing about music, I clearly remember being on a train between Brussels and Antwerp in 2010 and it dawning on me that I should just start a blog. It comes from always being so excited about music and books and wanting to tell other people about them. I forgot about the blog thing for a few months but one night in March 2011, I went to a gig PennyBlackMusic was putting on in South London with The Hall Of Mirrors (Jessica Winter’s old band, excellent 60s-esque tunes) and Nick Garrie. I enjoyed the show so much, the next day I was inspired to start my First Kiss Lips blog. I just kept doing it and Bill from God Is In The TV soon told me if I ever wanted to write for them I could and I went at that with gusto. By the end of the year I had written my first piece for The Quietus and I was thrilled that John Doran emailed me when it was published that I should ‘write some more’ for them. Back in 2004 when I returned to the States after living in London for the first time, I had the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever had, so I knew I had to do it. I had been re-reading all the James Bond novels and I came up with the character of James Vagabond of the British Drunken Secret Service. I was really pleased with this and thought ‘well what can I have him do?’ Soon it hit me that he should go back in time to stop Prohibition from ever happening. I banged out a first draft of Off-License To Kill in about five weeks then revised it a few times over the years, and one last time after I quit drinking in 2012. It became a sort of ode to my drinking days, which were pretty fun for a while. It was around this time it was becoming easier to publish to self-publish so I decided to do that. After my best friend Andy died in August 2020, it was very important for me to get the Nick Cave’s Bar book out, as a tribute to our friendship. I had been telling the story live in the months before the pandemic hit and really wanted it to keep going. In fact, in the months after Andy passed away it became imperative to get it out there. I’d wake up every day and just have at it, wanting to share this bizarre adventure we went on as 23 year olds, trying to find a bar it was rumored our favourite singer owned, in a foreign country, without a clue as to its name or address, and which in the end turned out not to exist at all. Writing and publishing that was such a rewarding experience I’ve been full-steam-ahead ever since. Finished two books last year – The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass and a collection of tall tales about the role facial hair has played over the years in athletic competition, called Sporting Moustaches, which Sagging Meniscus is publishing next April. Hard at work on a new one as well.

Do you remember your first piece of writing as a youngster?

AS: Yeah. And it’s kind-of strange because it wasn’t really mine. Along with a couple others in my fifth grade class, I was picked to write a short story. I told my grandfather about it and he told me that he once had an idea for a story. My grandfather was a very creative man musically, artistically, but this was the only time I’d ever heard him mention writing. So I took his idea and added the details. The plot was about a scientist who is arrested and will most likely be sent to the electric chair so he lets it slip that as a safety measure he has invented and swallowed a device the size of a pea, that if connected to a surge of electricity has the power to blow up an entire city. Not the sort of thing I’d usually write. I also found recently some ideas for comics I wrote when I was even younger which were basically just Asterix rip-offs set in outer space and in feudal Japan (I was fascinated by martial arts as a child). I’ve got a couple comics scripts in the works as well. Would love to find an artist for them.

Southpaw Beach Sunset

What’s the last book you read?

  AS: Ned Beauman’s latest novel, Venomous Lumpsucker. Which I very much enjoyed. I’m a big fan of his work. I took a chance on his Madness Is Better Than Defeat when I was driving across country in 2018. Loved it. And The Teleportation Accident is even better. I love how his work takes you all over the place and you never know where it’s going next, all while maintaining a strong narrative that doesn’t get knocked about by these wild waves. It’s quite unique. Very funny too.

Where did the inspiration come from The Ballad of Buttery Ass Cake?

AS: When my childhood best friend and I were teenagers we used to make up fake bands to ask for at record stores. And to this day, one of the funniest things I have ever heard in my life was hearing Bri ask the clerk at Cutler’s Records & Tapes in New Haven, CT one day during winter break in 1991 if they had anything by Buttery Cake Ass. The guy behind the counter really wanted to help, you could see it in his eyes, there were a lot of bands with strange names around at the time – Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Poi Dog Pondering, Meat Beat Manifesto – and New Haven was a big college town with good taste in music. He asked us ‘Is there any particular album you’re looking for?’ Without missing a beat, I said the first thing that popped into my head ‘Live In Hungaria’. The guy looked even more puzzled. ‘Do you mean ‘Live In Hungary’. Bri and I got very serious, shaking our heads no. ‘It’s definitely Live In Hungaria’. And as that poor man walked away to go check their stock for a record we had made up only seconds before, holding in that laughter was a feeling of utterly absurd joy. A feeling I always try to get back to whenever I do comedy. So I decided to tell the Buttery Cake Ass story, based around two best friends who go on a years long quest to find Live In Hungaria and along the way, piece together the history of the band. It’s bizarre how much of my own life went into a book called The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass. But I ended up using a lot of what it was like in my early bands, when you have these huge ideas about music and what you want your place in it to be, all the while having little idea how to make any of that happen. And when I got to college my friend Vic and I went on some pretty epic record shopping extravaganzas around Boston. Ones that left both body and wallet utterly exhausted. I drew on those experiences quite heavily for the quest part of the story.

At Repo Records.

Is the writing, music and comedy all intertwined in your brain?

  AS: Yeah. This all comes out in its purest form in my Young Southpaw stories. That’s really how my brain works, going off on wild tangents sparked off by some musical connection or other. Ideas like ‘what if David Bowie had replaced David Lee Roth as the singer of Van Halen?’ or ‘what if Gilligan’s Island had been a musical, with instead of Bob Denver get John Denver, have Geri Halliwell/Ginger Spice as Ginger, Professor Griff from Public Enemy, and of course Thurston Moore as Thurston Howell III’. I’ve really liked putting those stories to music in recent years, and I have a backlog of stuff I still have to record.

When was your first stand up gig? how did you feel before and afterward?

AS: October 4, 2018. I rarely make New Year’s resolutions but that year I did because stand up was always something I’d wanted to try. I’d recorded the first long form Young Southpaw story, “At The Movies”, in August so I finally had ‘material’. And I realized time was running out, 2/3 of the year was already gone. Now, I have a big interest in Chinese Metaphysics and within that realm there’s something called Date Selection, choosing the optimal time to do something. So I chose that date and then set about looking for open mics in Nashville, where I was living at the time. And there weren’t any! But there was one in Memphis, 210 miles away. And I thought, well, if I’m gonna do this, this will show the seriousness of my intent. I took the day off work and drove down, listening to the audiobook of James Montague’s excellent Thirty-One Nil: On The Road With Football’s Outsiders and occasionally going over my 5 minute set. Not too much, to keep it fresh. The feeling before was one of just pure intent and focus. I was going to do this. Though I had no idea what to expect. And it did dawn on me how strange what I was doing was, especially considering the out-there-ness of the Southpaw material. But I got to the place, The P&H Café, and there was a big painting of Elvis above the stage and I love Elvis. Everything seemed right, like this was what I was supposed to be doing. I went on sixth and it was AMAZING! That first laugh came about 30 seconds in and it was just the best feeling. The host thanked me for getting the crowd laughing, because no one really had been before, and people came up to me to say how much they liked the surrealness of it and all the musical references. I was on cloud nine. I mentioned Cynthia Rhodes in that very first set. She was my first crush after seeing her in Staying Alive and I remembered the final scene to that movie where John Travolta tells her what he feels like doing now is to strut so I strutted all the way back to my car and drove the three hours home feeling great the whole way, like my new life had begun.

Aug in front of a window. 

What’s your top 10 desert island discs?

AS: (in no particular order) The Afghan Whigs – Black Love Dolly Mixture – The Demonstration Tapes Pharoah Sanders – Pharoah Miles Davis – Tribute To Jack Johnson Rancid - ...And Out Come The Wolves Hanoi Rocks – Back To Mystery City Girlfrendo – Surprise! Surprise! It’s Girlfrendo Guided By Voices – Human Amusements At Hourly Rates (is a Best Of cheating? I need this for the full-on rock version of ‘Game Of Pricks’) Van Halen - 1984 The Replacements – Pleased To Meet Me

The first band that made you want to give music a shot?

AS: It was seeing the world premiere of David Lee Roth’s ‘Yankee Rose’ video in the summer of 1986 that made me want to pick up a guitar. I thought Steve Vai making the guitar ‘talk’ was the coolest thing ever. I learned on an old acoustic that my grandfather built, the strings were 3 inches off the fretboard! But this convinced my parents I was serious and for xmas that year I got my first electric guitar, a white Japanese Squire Stratocaster. I immediately formed a band with my friends and we did very rudimentary versions of ‘Twist And Shout’ and ‘Jump’. A couple years later I discovered punk and was so drawn to its energy. I remember that same band doing a blistering version of ‘Anarchy In The U.K.’ one summer day in our drummer’s basement. But it was developing a deep love for AC/DC the year after that that got me writing songs with my friends. Funnily enough, the same summer day in 1986 that my father took me to see Rodney Dangerfield’s Back To School at the movie theatre, we went across the street to the mall afterwards and I bought David Lee Roth’s Eat ‘Em And Smile. I’m pretty sure that day set in motion the rest of my life, carried along by the forces of comedy and music.

German Vegan

How’d you meet Bill Drummond?!

AS: I was writing a piece for The Quietus about the origin of The Teardrop Explodes’ name - https://thequietus.com/articles/09596-the-teardrop-explodes - and Bill was promoting his latest book, 100, at The Idler Bookshop, so I went down to talk to him about the Teardrops. I’ve always considered his work fascinating and it was great to talk to him. He was off to Paris the next day to do his The Lone Sweeper. I moved back to the States at the end of that year but on my subsequent visits, if he was free, we’d meet up for tea. I remember one particular conversation in 2016, where I starting telling him about a lady I was “smitten with”. It wasn’t going well and I was rather depressed about it. I often recall Bill’s words on the matter - “That’s the thing, it’s the work I’ve always been smitten with.” Damn good advice. Get smitten with the work. It’s really served me well in recent years.

What’s next in your world? Another book perhaps? AS: Right now I’m still focused on doing readings for The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass. The tour in February was great, awesome to hang out at record and book shops and talk to people about records and books all day. I’m still doing little jaunts. Heading down to Atlanta Memorial Day weekend with a stop at the very cool Epilogue Bookshop in Chapel Hill along the way. I’d really like to do more of this for as long as I can. I have an offer to go read in Seattle, which if I can find a couple other places to read in the Pacific Northwest, I’d love to make happen. I’d love to hit New York, L.A., Chicago, and Detroit too. And anywhere that has a cool record or book shop and wants me to come talk about music. Working on making all those happen. I’m really excited about Sagging Meniscus putting out Sporting Moustaches next April. Every day I continue to work on the book after that, about halfway done now. I also have a new musical project with Sean Drinkwater from Freezepop. We’re called FoxxMachine and it sounds very New Order/Depeche Mode. I also reformed my old punk band from 1995, Inbetween, to record a 7” that will feature a song that never made it to tape back then, and the definitive version of our set closer ‘Vampyro’.

Bonus question- Any idea if Nick Cave has read your book?

AS: I sent it to him (via his management) but I never heard anything back

www.augstone.com

[teabooksandsweets]

There was one part of the house I had not yet visited, and I went there now. The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient, newly learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked back, and the cookhouse bugle sounded ahead of me, I thought:--

The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

And yet, I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, where the bugles after a pause had taken up the second call and were sounding Pick-em-up, Pick-em-up, hot potatoes--and yet that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame--a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

— Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hello Steph 😊 Do you have any BAMF Molly or just some good fics that feature Molly? I need some Molly love at the moment because I just read a fic where she "turns to the drak side" so to speak, and my heart 😭😭😭

Hey Nonny!

Ah I did a few comm. recs lists recently with Molly, but here are what I can offer you from memory, LOL. PLEASE add your fave Molly fics, guys! PLEASE NOTE these are fics I’ve read, and please check the sub-headings for a TONNE of stuff I haven’t read!! Big title so I can find it later LOL.

MOLLY PLAYS A ROLE

See also:

COMM RECS: Coming Out To Molly

COMM RECS: Molly with Women

COMM RECS: Molly and Greg Push John and Sherlock Together

COMM RECS: Molly as a Villain

Santa Knows by Itsallfine (T, 1,719 w., 1 Ch. || Christmas Party, Love Confessions, First Kiss, Fluff, Matchmaking, POV Sherlock, Pining Sherlock) – Sherlock and John both get exactly what they want from the Yard's secret Santa exchange. Pure holiday fluff.

What John Doesn't Know (Won't Hurt Him) by blueink3 (NR [T], 4,392 w., 1 Ch, || S3 Fix It, Pining Sherlock, Snippets of Life, Hurt/Comfort, Scars, Fluff and Angst, Five and One, Hopeful Ending, POV Sherlock) – Five people who see Sherlock's scars before John Watson. But Sherlock's secrets were never something he could keep from his blogger for long.

Thirty Three Hours Without John Watson by Bookaholic, mybrotherharry (M, 6,232 w. || First Kiss / Time, Pining Idiots, BG Mystrade, Crackish) – Sherlock can SO TOTALLY survive without John Watson. It should be a piece of cake. AKA the time when Sherlock braved grocery store lines for milk, purchased and gave away a box of tampons and figured out what the X-Factor is. Greg and Mycroft didn’t sign up for this shit. Next time, they are going to the Bahamas.

Wonderful, Etcetera. by VictoryCandescence (T, 16,955 w., 3 Ch. || Wonderful Life AU || Alternate Timelines, Brotherhood, Homophobia, Suicidal Ideations, Mentions of Drug Use, Friendship, Different TRF, Sherlock’s Past, Victor Trevor is Past Boyfriend, Depression, Hallucination, Love Confessions, Christmas, First Kiss) – Sherlock thinks everyone would be better off if he had never existed, including and especially himself. When he finds himself in a world in which his wish has been granted, he begins to think perhaps even he could be wrong – but it takes an unlikely chaperone to make him not only observe, but understand.

Insanity in the Middle by DotyTakeThisDown (E, 28,010 w., 8 Ch. || Equestrian Sports AU || Alternate First Meeting, POV John, Pining John, Bottomlock, Clueless Sherlock, First Kiss/Time, Passionate Kisses, Hand Holding, Caught Making Out, Bed Sharing, Spooning, Blow Job) – John is a world-class eventing rider with a gold medal and several four-star wins to his credit, but he's never won at Rolex. Sherlock is an up-and-coming rider taking the sport by storm.

Love or What You Will by miss_frankenstein (T, 31,987 w., 11 Ch. || College/Uni AU || Professor John, Ph.D Student Sherlock, Pining John, Poetry, Falling in Love / Slow Burn, Light Angst, Happy Ending) – John is an English professor who specializes in War and Post-War Literature and Sherlock is the brilliant yet impossible Ph.D. student assigned to be his TA because no one in the Chemistry Department is willing to put up with him. And - somewhere between Waugh and Plath, e-mails and takeaway, novels and villanelles - they fall in love.

The Wrong Wagon by DancingGrimm (E, 35,663 w., 20 Ch. || Alternating POV, Molly/  John [Molly pines for John], Public Sex, Casual Sex, Obliviousness, BAMF!John, Awkwardness, Angst & Humour, First Time, Virgin Sherlock, Jealous Sherlock) – Molly sees John in a new light and realises that she may have hitched her horse to the wrong wagon...or something like that. John pines for Sherlock and worries what he will think if he ever finds out. And Sherlock doesn't know what Molly's up to...but he knows he doesn't like it.

The Pieces That Fall to Earth by Itsallfine (M, 49,513 w., 84 Ch. || S4 Fix-It, Epistolary, Love Confessions, Slow Burn, Parentlock, Past Abuse, Coming Out, Internalized Homophobia, Questioning Sexuality, Mental Health Issues / Therapy, Angst, Happy Ending) – John and Sherlock have hit rock bottom, but with all their armor stripped away, they can finally speak honestly, seek healing, and find the truths that matter most. An epistolary post-s4 fix-it fic. Now complete. (This fic is rated T except for one very clearly marked and easily skippable chapter, which is rated M.) Part 1 of The Pieces that Fall to Earth

floating through a dark blue sky by Lediona (M, 58,966 w., 15 Ch. || Notting Hill AU || POV John, Celebrity Sherlock, First Date / Time / Kiss, Past Drug Addiction, Angst with a Happy Ending) – Of course, I’d seen his films and always thought he was, well, brilliant -- but, you know, a million miles from the world I live in. Or, when John is the owner of a travel book shop and the famous Sherlock Holmes stops in one day.

This Thing All Things Devours by cypress_tree (E, 63,844 w., 15 Ch. || In Time AU || Science Fiction, Dystopian Universe, First Meetings, Action / Adventure, Romance) – In 2169, time is money—literally. Humans are genetically engineered to stop aging at 25, when the numbers on their arm start counting down from one year. When that time is up, they die. The only way to get more time is to earn it, borrow it, or steal it.John Watson lives day-to-day in the crowded slums of Zone 13. He never imagined living any differently—until he meets the practically-immortal Sherlock, and helps him on a case to track a local time-thief...

Northwest Passage by Kryptaria (E, 95,157 w., 27 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Canadian AU ||  BAMF!John, Canadian John, PTSD, Anal / Oral Sex, Rimming, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Drug Rehab, Falling in Love, Pining Sherlock, Love Confessions, Sherlock’s Violin, Panic Attacks, Switching, Anxious / Protective Sherlock, Hugs for Comfort, Suicide Mentions, Healing Each Other) – Seven years ago, Captain John Watson of the Canadian Forces Medical Service withdrew from society, seeking a simple, isolated life in the distant northern wilderness of Canada. Though he survives from one day to the next, he doesn't truly live until someone from his dark past calls in a favor and turns his world upside-down with the introduction of Sherlock Holmes." Part 1 of Tales from the Northwest

The Stars Move Still by BeautifulFiction (E, 96,022 w., 5 Ch. || Magical Realism, Demons, Slash to Pre-Slash, AU, Happy Ending, Souls) – "What could I want so desperately that would make me sell my soul? What could possibly compel me to surrender the part of myself that makes me who I am: the source of my magic, my self-control, everything?”

Definitions by siennna (T, 101,528 w., 12 of ? Ch. || Dev. Rel., Pining, Fluff and Romance, First Kiss, Love Confessions, Fluff, Cuddles, Girl’s Night, Texting, Virgin Sherlock, Drunk Sherlock, Background Mollstrade, Hair Petting, Laying on Lap) – Sherlock’s journey in defining his flat mate and stumbling through the muddled world of emotion. {{This feels complete; the chapter count is listed as ? but I feel like it is done}}

between each beat are words unsaid by darcylindbergh, hudders-and-hiddles (T, 107,998 w., 215 Ch. || Epistolary, Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers, Angst, Happy Ending) – On their wedding night, John and Sherlock gift each other with the things they each said when the other could not hear, the things they each put down where the other could not see: a collection of writings that illustrate the way their love for one another has grown over the years. Part 1 of between each beat

The Burning Heart by May_Shepard (M, 119,150 w., 21 Ch. || Canon Divergence, Post-TRF, John’s Sexuality, S3 Rewrite, Pining, Angst with a Happy Ending, POV John Watson, John’s Gay) – When Sherlock dies, John Watson feels like his life is over too. He’s completely shut down, until Mark Morstan, a new nurse at John’s medical clinic, catches his attention, and helps him uncover the long buried truth of his attraction to men. Although he’s certain he’ll never get over Sherlock, John plans to move on, and build a new life with Mark, unaware that Sherlock is not quite as dead as he appears, and that Mark is hiding secrets of his own.

A Further Sea by i_ship_an_armada & ShinySherlock (E, 125,492 w., 23 Ch. || Historical Pirates AU || Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Doctor John / Pirate Captain Sherlock, Sailing, UST / RST, Masturbation, Action / Adventure, Mild Angst & Peril, Romance, Shaving, Molly/Janine, Bottomlock, Hand / Blow Jobs, Past Drug Use, Slow Burn, Mild Violence, Facial Shaving, Happy Ending) – Here be a tale of adventure for both body and soul, but beware if ye be not of stout heart, for this be piratelock, ya savvy? Luckless ship's surgeon John Watson takes a chance, and finds himself eye to eye with The Ghost, the scourge of the seven seas and a definite thorn in the side of the blaggard, James Moriarty. But when John finds there's more to this most cunning pirate than be meetin' the eye, he has to choose... is it a pirate's life for him?

The Horse and his Doctor by khorazir (T, 129,003 w., 13 Ch. || Horse / Vet AU || Magical Realism, Horses, Vet John, Horse Sherlock, Implied Alcoholism) – Invalided after a run in with a poacher in Siberia, veterinary surgeon John Watson finds it difficult to acclimatise to the mundanity of London life. Things change when a friend invites him along to a local animal shelter and he meets their latest acquisition, a trouble-making Frisian with the strangest eyes and even stranger quirks John has ever encountered in a horse.

Performance In a Leading Role by Mad_Lori (E, 156,714 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Hollywood / Actor AU, Secret Relationship, Falling in Love, Slow Burn, Romance, Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, Pining) – Sherlock Holmes is an Oscar winner in the midst of a career slump. John Watson is an Everyman actor trapped in the rom-com ghetto. When they are cast as a gay couple in a new independent drama, will they surprise each other? Will their on-screen romance make its way into the real world? Part 1 of Performance in a Leading Role

Mise en Place by azriona (M, 161,004 w., 28 Ch. || Restaurant (Kitchen Nightmares) AU || Sherlock is Gordon Ramsay / Celebrity Sherlock, Restauranteur John, Harry Plays Prominent Role, Alternating POV, Mutual Pining, Cranky Sherlock, Bed Sharing, Slow Burn) – John Watson had no intentions of taking over the family business, but when he returns from Afghanistan, battered and bruised, and discovers that his sister Harry has run their restaurant into the ground, he doesn't have much choice. There's only one thing that can save the Empire from closing for good – the celebrity star of the BBC series Restaurant Reconstructed, Chef Sherlock Holmes. Part 1 of Mise en Place

[moremusic]

I heard this weeks guest on a Podcast. His music tells stories of what it is like living in this great country. Here is my interview with the great Matt Scullion.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

My name is Matt Scullion and I’m a well traveled Australiana-Folk singer/songwriter. As an artist I have two albums and a Golden Guitar award to my name.

As a co-writer I’ve written with everybody from Lee Kernaghan to Cold Chisel and have had 25 number one songs to date.

I grew up on the South Coast of NSW in a little town called Ulladulla and have pretty much been infatuated with music since I can remember.

What/who inspired you to get into music?

My Mother’s record collection and our next door neighbours who were a very arty/hippie family. My first instrument was the Bass guitar which I bought off the fella next door. He gave me a couple lessons and I caught a bad case of the music bug which I still have.

How, if at all did the pandemic change your approach to your music?

It’s definitely forced me to think outside the box as far as where I book my shows. It also gave me time to learn the Banjo.

Have you got any new releases due to come out?

I have one more single to release called “From The Ashes” a song about resilience after the 2019/20 bushfires. It’s the 5th single off my current album Aussie As Vol II.

I also have a new album in the pipeline. I’ll be heading into the studio this February to record with Shane Nicolson. Shane has produced my last two albums and I totally trust him with my songs.

When you record, how does the process develop? Drums first followed by guitar etc?

We always start with me putting down a guide instrument/vocal track. Shane then builds the music around my groove. We tend to go for a more percussive approach than a full drum kit, so it’s quite a fun process finding things to bang on in the studio to come up with new sounds.

What is your career highlight so far?

Performing at the SCG. I got to sing my song “1868” to a sea of faces. It’s the story of the first Australian sporting side to tour internationally which was an all Indigenous cricket team.

Any upcoming gigs you want to promote?

I’m looking forward to all the shows I have lined up this year, but I’ll give a shout out to The Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival, Oct 14-16. It’s a wonderful festival with a top line up.

What do you think of the Australian/Adelaide music scene?

I can’t speak for the whole Australian music scene, but the circuit I tour in is alive and well. The Aussie Country Music scene has always been really well supported by community radio which is a great way to reach the rural areas, which is where I do most of my shows.

What are\were some of your favourite venues to play?

I haven’t really got a favourite, but I definitely have a soft spot for the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

Who are some other upcoming bands we should have a look at?

An Aussie Folk singer/songwriter named Michael Waugh and a wonderful traditional Irish group called Lynched.

What venues or tours are still on your bucket list?

I’d love to perform at the Sydney Opera House, it’s a beautiful intimate setting with amazing acoustics. Also the Big Red Bash out in Birdsville QLD, I’ve heard it’s a fantastic festival to perform at.

What are your long and short term goals?

Just to keep making music that matters and writing songs that connect with everyday Australians.

If you could only keep one album, what would it be?

That’s not fair!! Can I have two please? John Williamson (Warragul) and Paul Kelly (Greatest Hits).

Finally, where can people find you? Socials etc?

www.Instagram.com/mattscullionmusic

www.mattscullionmusic.com

[bowl-of-shortness]

Sorry, wasnt very clear 😅

With Sparrow how he ended up adopted by Robyn and Winter and just kinda his backstory.

And with Merle Branwen, how she ended up as the leader of the tribe, was there some kind of inheritance thing, fighting the previous leader etc.

Waugh I’m so sorry I forgot this was in here bc of my memory orz

Sparrow was put into the foster care system at 9 years old after being taken out of his violently unstable and abusive biological family and home. He was a bitter child, his mother murdered his father, whom he adored, and was never charged for it. Being able to pay her way out of a trial or conviction and cry victim because of her identity as a woman.

When he was adopted by Winter and Robyn, which happened when he was 14, he was incredibly distrustful of them, having faced a world of many variations of abuse from plenty of different women. He had a strong distrust of them. Eventually with a lot of trial and error, he warmed up to Winter and Robyn.

They quickly taught him the ways around and through the Atlesian law, bringing forth a new aspiration for Sparrow. He quickly realized how fucked the system was and why his life turned out the way it did, and he was angry.

So, he did something very similar to Qorbyn, he put that anger towards becoming the best attorney and detective he could possibly be.

As for Merle?

Merle showed up one day in Qormac’s as her village had been destroyed by a group of oathbreaking hunters. Qormac’s tribe was not the friendly nice tribe that we know Merle and Qormac ran when they were adults, instead, it was run by Qormac’s Mother, Jackdaw.

Jackdaw was a force to be reckoned with but was nothing compared to what Merle would become in her place. She only fostered and took Merle under her wing because of Merle’s identity as the spring maiden.

Also, her oldest (albeit hated in her eyes) son had taken interest in the young woman (both Qormac and Merle 14 at this point), and took this as an opportunity to gain some possible strong blooded heirs to the tribe.

However, Jackdaw was not kind to Merle, treating her awfully. Nothing compared to how she treated Qormac, however Merle would day accidentally see just how cruel Jack was to her son.

At 17, A week after she witnessed the abuse her bestest friend experienced from his own mother, she walks onto the tribe grounds to see Qormac being publicly ridiculed and beaten in front of the entire tribe by Jackdaw.

Sick and tired of Jackdaw’s attitude and temperament, she blocks a hit to Qormac with one of her two sickle swords (Prophecy and Prediction).

A collective gasp silences the laughter from the other tribe members as she does this.

“And just what do you think you are doing scum?”

She simply glares before pointing Prophecy at the chieftess.

“I want your title, in your oldest son, Qormac’s, name, I challenge you to a duel for the title of chieftess.”

Another collective gasp.

The fight would not be pretty, duels for the title of chief were never as pretty as hereditary passings of power. It would be bloody

The way duels for the title of chief work is that in order for one to be left with title of chief is that they have to kill the other opponent. If they cheat, the cheating party is forced to commit suicide.

Needless to say at 17, Merle became tribe chieftess besides Qormac.

[lem-argentum]

FORGOT TO FINISH UP THE RF5COUNTDOWN QUESTIONS BEFORE RELEASE SO HERE THEY ARE <3 ITS A LONG ONE. HAPPY BELATED LAUNCH DAY

31. what’s your highest skill in rf4?

i maxed out forging for rune prana so it’d be that :]!!! <3

30. favorite plot twist in the series?

i’m trying to think of things that would qualify as plot twists n i don’t know…. maybe the whole thing with ethelwill counts because that shocks me on every rf4 playthrough EHENDBN

29. favorite flower crop?

inclined to say toyherb but as a pink enjoyer, pink cats too <33!!!!! if i knew my favorite characters’ favorite flowers it would be those <3

28. if you could have any rf4 monster as a pet, what would it be?

SNOWY……… but it might melt. so a pomme pomme :>

27. favorite season?

WINTER <333 i love whenever it snows in selphia <3 both my anniversaries w/ marian and doug happened to be in winter which is a complete LEMMY WIN

22. will you mostly wear outfits on your in-game model, or stick to the original?

i don’t think rf5 has the color alts that rf4 (and 3?) had but i’ve always liked changing em :) in rf4 i like the red and black outfits on lest!!!

21. favorite part monster/wereanimal character from the series?

dylas comes to mind first.. fishing idiot <3

16. if you could cosplay any character from the series, who would you choose?

IT IS MY *DREAM* TO LOOK LIKE MARIAN there’s this one person i’ve seen cosplay marian and ohh i need to reblog those pictures sometime. otherwise it would be lest :> <3

15. do you think there’s a “canon” love interest for the protagonist in each game?

logically speaking there definitely is, mist/mana/shara my beloveds <3 but i’ve never considered it for the others. though i’ve heard doug and meg are considered the canon ones for rf4 which i find hilarious because they’re my favorites HEHEHDJ <3 in my mind dolce is frey’s love interest and doug is lest’s <3

14. in future games, would you want to have character customization?

i think there’d be benefits to it because your character could actually look like you (and rf lacks lots of diversity/representation that it could potentially add) but having a set character to play as is nice too? maybe they could do a pokemon type thing where the design is mostly set but you pick skin/hair tones??

13. how do you name your monsters?

LOVE THIS QUESTION I JUST PICK THE FIRST WORD I THINK OF. in every game i have a monster named cringe and a monster named gay. so sorry to them

12. any tips for new rune factory players?

INCREASE YOUR MINING SKILL AS YOU GO…. IF YOU CARE ABOUT EVENTUALLY BEING GAMER AT THE GAMES THEN MINING EARLY WILL MAKE IT SO MUCH EASIER ….. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKEZ…..

11. favorite rune factory memory?

WAUGH when i was super depressed n opened up rf4 to all the characters being kind to me n telling me they were there for me. i am emotional over selphia

10. are you playing as ares or alice in rf5?

i picked ares already :>!! for pronoun purposes. he’s growing on me but i might switch sprites over to alice once i unlock it!! <33

9. do you plan to finish the main story asap or take it slow?

probably take it slow, no point in rushing for me! i am taking my time trying to figure out martin’s favorite gifts <3

7. do you like to name the protagonist after yourself or use a different name?

i like sticking to the default names (since i prefer playing a character over playing myself! <3) but otherwise i go with cos or lem :]

5. if you could be best friends with any rf character, who would you pick?

CAN I SAY ALL OF THEM? doug, meg, marian, zaid, gaius, micah, arthur, martin, violet….

3. do you have rf4 special data to get doug and margaret in rigbarth?

i didn’t get it *for* them (i think they were revealed to be the cameos after i got the switch ver?) but it was a WONDERFUL coincidence those are my best friends <3

2. are you getting the game on launch day or waiting?

ITS PAST LAUNCH NOW but i had it preordered :) i spent too much on video games this month remind me to not do that for the rest of the year

1. are you doing anything special on launch day?

NO I DIDNT BUT IM ON VACATION SO THAT COUNTS PROBABLY. LOOK AT THESE TREES

[ephemeral-winter]

the year in books, 2021

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (reread)

i am problematic and i am obsessed with ms rooney and i’m not apologizing for it

The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, ed. Charlotte Mosley

can you believe i am [redacted] years into my mitford obsession and it took me until this year to read their letters? your honor, i love them

How to Speak Brit by Christopher J. Moore

my uncle bought me this after i got into grad school (in the uk) as a joke and i read it to be polite? why? 

Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony (reread)

!!!!! once again i heartily recommend both reading this and following @entertheaardvark

A Fine Old Conflict by Jessica Mitford

this is decca’s underread and underappreciated second memoir, and it is mostly about her time in the communist party in the us in the 50s and 60s. what a life! 

The Book of Night Women by Marlon James

i’m not including 99% of what i read for school this year because who has that kind of time, but i’m making an exception for this because holy shit. all the content warnings apply (novel is about a slave revolt in jamaica c. 1790), but holy shit. 

The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia  Woolf, edited by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska

yeah i cried what about it

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

fuck she’s so funny

No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

this one was less funny

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

i learned a lot of new slang! but i suspect i am not the target audience

Saturday by Ian McEwan

lmao so my creative writing teacher this past spring told me to read this because she thought my story draft needed a sex scene and this novel apparently contains a great example of one? 1) my draft did not need a sex scene 2) the scenes here were not good and 3) i can source and read good erotica on my own, thanks

Codex by Lev Grossman (reread)

he wrote this before the magicians and it’s about video games and medieval manuscripts and has lovely descriptions of the tedium of archival librarianship so

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

i completely missed the twist in this and was so confused for the last 50 pages… idk if you like spies this might be good

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adam’s (reread)

i read this about every 3 years and every time i forget what happens in it, which is nice for me i guess? 

Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick

read for my bookclub with my grandmother. meh. 

The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

well i AM a sucker for thinly-disguised retellings of the wills/kate saga what can i say

The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr

the best nonfiction i read this year

Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers

based on everything else about me i should have fell in love with peter wimsey years ago but i never got around to it and maybe i’m too jaded now but i just was not impressed? 

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart (reread)

holds up imo! i watched the disney+ show and reread at the same time; book is better

The Magicians by Lev Grossman (reread)

i had a cold and wanted to stay in bed

Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik

oh wow another memoir of an american journalist in paris. tell me more about navigating french department stores for the first time, please, i find it so fascinating

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (reread)

fuck did i really do this one TWICE in one year? i hate myself

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

brandon’s twitter is miles more interesting than this book but i guess i see why it got shortlisted for the booker. i guess. 

One Last Stop by Casey McQuinston

look it’s not my fault i needed something easy to pick up and put down while the kids i babysat this summer took their naps

Helena by Evelyn Waugh

i think i read this one in one sitting in the bath but other than that i could not tell you anything about it

Normal People by Sally Rooney (reread)

i’m clinically insane

The Past by Tessa Hadley

i actually liked this a lot! never read any hadley before but i might get into her now

Quartet by Jean Rhys

i think i prefer good morning midnight over this one

The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan

interesting stuff but i gotta ask: haha and then what? 

Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney

read this on the plane on my way to start grad school. i have no interest in rereading it

White Houses by Amy Bloom

FUCK this is so good. she captured the intimacy of eleanor and hicks so beautifully. goddamn

Matrix by Lauren Groff

i was supposed to love this especially since my mentor was the historical advisor and also i was present at the lecture that inspired it but uh…. twas not my ideal representation of a 12th cen nunnery

How to Be Both by Ali Smith

picked this up on my first day out of a stupid week of stupid isolation and whizzed through it! i am an ali smith stan now

Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford

this reprint of a 1930s novel was charming! recommend

The Covent Garden Ladies by Hallie Rubenhold

very interesting history, but i prefer the tv show (harlots)

[hmgfanfic]

Hi! I’m a huge fan of your fic but I’m slightly 😬 about the premise of your MBB. Cheating is a sore spot for me but I love how nuanced your Eliot POV is. Could you give a little bit of context about how you approach it? The angst level? You can ignore this if you don’t want to give things away! I’m happy to reread Not Always Folly a thousand more times 💛

Hey there, anon friend! First of all, thank you so much for your kind words about my writing and about my weird rebel child fic, which still occupies a big soft spot in my own heart. I appreciate it so much! Second of all, I’m ALWAYS happy to talk about my fic at even the slightest provocation, so thank you for that, too. ;)

As for your question about Anchor Escapement—

The opening scene  features Eliot hooking up with one of his classmates, Aaron, with whom he has had a preexisting acrimonious relationship, after they manage to have their first semi-civil interaction at a New Year’s Eve party. But more pertinently to your interests, the hook-up comes on the heels of Aaron bitching about the inattentiveness and “aggressive melancholy” of his current boyfriend of ~10ish weeks… but Eliot doesn’t particularly take this information into account in his decision to sleep with the guy (or if he does, it’s not in the way most people would like.) So the hook up commences lacklusterly, until, of course, inevitably: enter Quentin, aka Eliot’s future husband, who is arguably more horrified by Eliot’s dismissive reaction to the situation than the fact that he just got cheated on. Then fade to black and cut to three months later.

SO.

If you read this set up and instantly recoiled and/or found it essentially irredeemable, then… yeah, this fic probably isn’t for you. And that’s (hopefully obviously) totally cool! There’s plenty of stuff that I can’t deal with in fics even by writers I admire, and reading experiences are super personal. I knew when I wrote this that cheating and infidelity are definitely among the most common squicks, so this question doesn’t surprise me at all. But if your interest is still piqued enough to give it a shot, I’d also say if you can get through NAF’s angst levels, this one is honestly a piece of cake, lol.* There’s some conflict towards the end that comes from early-laid external circumstances/plottiness, which in turn sparks insecurities, but it’s pretty short-lived, tbh.

Ultimately, my goal was to tell a story about forgiveness, trust, effort, and the value of baby steps of progress, with a foundation centered on how much Quentin and Eliot really, really, really like each other, no matter what. And it’s also about how Eliot Waugh can be a touch self-involved (<3 ily baby), a lot of which is trauma-based and some of which is being 25, but how that isn’t actually incompatible with his enormous heart. Whether I succeeded is up to you, but the fic as a whole is maybe not necessarily as juicy/scandalous as it sounds on the tin?

Anyway, tldr: If you can get through the premise/the first chapter, I think the fic itself is manageable even if you’re hesitant about infidelity. If not, zero hard feelings. 💗

*MILEAGE VARIES. I am notoriously bad at gauging angst levels! But at the very least, I *intended* this one to be far less “angsty,” especially from an emotional landscape perspective, insofar as it doesn’t mimic the Mosaic/El’s not so closed off here.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Ian's idea of giving up smoking on doctor's orders was to cut down from sixty a day to thirty … and on instruction he reduced his intake of Vodka Martini from three lethal doses to one. He was very shaky, his normally brick-red complexion the dry mauve of a paper flower.

- AIan Ross, Coastwise Lights

Fleming was 56 and indifferent about living longer. He once revealingly described his own character thus: "I've always had one foot not wanting to leave the cradle and the other in a hurry to get to the grave." This strange mixture of the infantile and the world-weary seems very typical of the man. A few months earlier he had been visited by Evelyn Waugh. Waugh was a friend of Fleming's glamorously waspish wife Ann and didn't like Fleming much. The feeling was mutual. Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford: "[Ian] looks and speaks as though he may drop dead any minute. His medical advisors confirm the apprehension."

Where did this implicit death wish come from? In some ways it's a very English slow suicide – one that Waugh, incidentally, was also participating in – obesity, cigars, alcohol and assorted drugs hastening him to an early grave two years after Fleming. Yet, on paper, Fleming had everything to live for. Born into a rich and well-connected Scottish banking family, he went to Eton, briefly to Sandhurst and then became a remittance man, notionally working in the City – "the world's worst stockbroker", in his own estimation – enjoying pretty girlfriends, fast cars and foreign holidays. After the war, during a spell at the Sunday Times, he began to write the James Bond novels, one a year from 1953 to his death. To new global fame could be added even more riches. Why was he so unhappy?

It's hard to explain this taedium vitae when it seems that most of life's injustices, hassles and difficulties – large and small – have been erased by wealth. A few biographers and friends have said Fleming couldn't get over the second world war. I think this rings about true.

For many of his generation the war was both a gigantic upheaval and an astonishing adventure in his life, an unparalleled episode in which he had found himself and felt his work had been both meaningful and useful. In other words, during the war, paradoxically, he had been happy. When it was over the meaninglessness of his feather-bedded existence slowly re-established itself.

Fleming's good fortune was to be recruited in 1939 into the Naval Intelligence Division as personal assistant to NID's head, Admiral John Godfrey. He had a rank in the RNVR – commander – wore a uniform and went to work in the Admiralty. Everything about his life had changed. As a result of this key role and position he not only was connected to the very centre of the secret world of spies and spying but he could also actively participate in it – travelling to France and Spain, the US and Canada – suggesting ideas and schemes as they came to him, some of which were taken up and provided notable covert successes.

The most remarkable and lasting of these was his suggestion that a special commando be set up – a small group of intelligence-gathering raiders – who would attack and plunder targeted German establishments – radar stations, Kriegsmarine offices, naval installations and the like – and "pinch" anything that that might be useful – code books, movement orders, bits of Enigma machines and so forth.

The force that was established as a result of Fleming's brainwave was called the 30 Assault Unit, a commando that saw its first operation during the disastrous 1942 raid on Dieppe. Fleming was on board a destroyer not far from the beaches during the raid and it was not an auspicious start, as even he had to admit, but 30AU was to prove itself invaluable in north Africa, Sicily, Italy, Rhodes, Yugoslavia, the invasion of France – and, most effectively, in Germany during the final days of the Third Reich when, among the wholesale larceny of German technology that was taking place as the war ended, its most audacious "pinch" of all was achieved, namely, the entire archive of the German Navy – the Tambach Archives, a vast document haul that weighed more than 400 tons.

As well as being intrepid fighters it seemed as much a requisite of joining 30AU that the soldiers possessed strong, not to say eccentric, personalities. These included such extraordinary men as Bon Royle, Lofty Whyman, Patrick Dalzel-Job, "Sancho" Glanville and Peter Huntington-Whitely among others. Together they went on audacious exploits from 1942 onwards.

Many of 30AU's pinches facilitated the code-breakers of Bletchley Park. Captured Enigma machines, cipher books and coded messages were sent back for analysis and, as the code-breakers grew ever more efficient at their work, it is clear that Fleming's commandos actively aided the general war effort and possibly shortened the conflict.

The commandos were unaware of the actual contribution and long-term effects of their looting – as, probably, was Fleming. He remains something of a background figure to the group itself. Fleming occasionally visited the men on the front line (and complaining about the quality of the brandy he was served) and not much loved, it has to be said. This again is probably a result of a particular trait of the privileged English classes. Fleming found it hard to mix with others outside his own society and to express emotion, like many of his peers, and cultivated instead the very English phenomenon of putting on a façade of nonchalance.

If the war made Fleming feel fulfilled as a man it also provided him with a vast store of memories that consciously or unconsciously fed into the plots, characters and situations of the novels themselves. "M" in the novels is a portrait of Fleming's old NID boss Admiral Godfrey. The "Lektor" machine in From Russia with Love is clearly modelled on the Enigma encryptors.

An old 30AU member, Tony Hugill, became a minor character under his own name in The Man with the Golden Gun, and so on.

Most telling of all is the late story Octopussy that can be interpreted as a deliberate self-portrait of the author as embittered, self-loathing drunk, living off the capital of his war.

For Fleming, one feels, nothing ever matched the intensity and excitement of his life between 1939-45 and all his worldly success after it could not drive away his demons. His wife, Ann, described him in his last days as living in a state of "total misery".

Alan Ross, however, an old friend and together they would watch Sussex cricket at the Hove would write his own memoirs of his dear friend. Ross just saw another multifaceted and complex man and also a naval officer in the war: "Not many of [Fleming's] wife's friends cared for him, a feeling that was reciprocated, but to me he was a good and entertaining friend and I missed him greatly."