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sheerfreesia007 · 4 years

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Just Deserts

Title: Just Deserts

Fandom: Kingsman

Pairing: Agent Whiskey x Reader

Author: @sheerfreesia007

Words: 1,498

Warnings: Fluff, Making Out

Permanent Tag List: @paintballkid711, @fioccodineveautunnale, @phoenixhalliwell

Author Notes: This was a super cute request and I loved writing it! Thanks for sending it in anon! Feedback is always appreciated and welcome. Thanks for reading!

Gif Credit: @daishannigans

Your lips press tightly in on themselves as you try with all your might to withhold the laughter that wants to break free. The acrid smell of smoke and burnt food fills the breakroom as you spy the anxiety riddled man in the middle of the room. Walking further into the room Agent Whiskey turns to you with wide panic filled eyes.

“I don’t know what happened. I followed the recipe. I just don’t know happened.” He said in a dazed tone as if he was shell shocked. Smiling softly at him you nod your head in sympathy as you hold up a hand as if to try and ease his anxiousness.

“It’s alright Whiskey we can just start over.” You say with a slight shrug as you move closer to him. You watch as he heaves a large frustrated sigh that seems to rack his whole body before he turns to you.

“I used up the last box of cupcake mix though.” He says morosely while his hand sweeps out to gesture at the mess on the counter tops. You wanted to hug him and tell him it’d be alright just so that downtrodden look would leave his face. But you couldn’t, you weren’t close to him like that. Even though every fiber in your being wanted to be.

You had been harboring a rather large embarrassing crush on the senior agent ever since you had met him. It was so bad that every time you spent just even a minimal amount of time with him it would fuel your day dreams for days later. Never had you felt any courage to do more than share polite chit chat with him. But you wanted more. So much more.

“We’ve got all the ingredients to make coffee cake muffins from scratch Whiskey.” You said matter of factly as you moved to pull out all the of the ingredients for him.

“From scratch? Sugar, do you not see the three failed attempts of the boxed ingredients?” he asked exasperated as he moved around you to actually show you the burnt hockey pucks he had made. You flushed softly at the pet name he used, probably unknowingly, but still. Shaking your head you looked up at him with a determined look.

“C’mon Whiskey.” You scoffed softly. “It’s just muffins. And besides I’ll help you honey.” You said confidently as you nodded at him. You watched as his face softened at your words and the confident determined energy you gave off. He moved closer to you with a warm smile.

“Alright what do we do first Sugar?” he asked sweet as honey and you could feel yourself melting under his attention. Steeling yourself you internally shook your head. Focus.

“We need a clean work station first. So cleaning duty!” you said brightly as you clapped your hands together. As you moved about the kitchenette cleaning you missed the warm affectionate look that Whiskey kept shooting over to you. What you didn’t miss was the flirty vibe that descended on the room. Or the hip checks Whiskey would give you every once in awhile as you two cleaned.

Once everything was clean you set up all the bowls, measuring cups, ingredients and muffin trays that he would need. You then moved to the side and pulled up the recipe on your phone so Whiskey could read it as well.

“Sugar, this looks a little outta my league.” Whiskey says unsure from over your shoulder where he stood reading the recipe. You shivered slightly as his warm breath ghosted over the back of your neck and could feel the light blush starting to race up your neck.

“Nonsense, now c’mon Whiskey I’ll walk you through it.” You said reassuringly as you tried to tamp down your rioting feelings.

And you did walk him through it. It may have taken much longer to get it done but it was important to you for him to do this so that you could prove to him that he could do it.

Whiskey was mixing the glaze that would go over the cooling muffins while you sat atop the counter surveying him. You smiled softly as your eyes danced over Whiskey. He was standing at the counter next to you as close as he possibly could be without touching you as he mixed the glaze together. His posture was steady and almost stiff as he focused on his task at hand but you could see every few moments that his eyes would shift to the side to get a look at you. But before you could ask him what he was looking at he’d dart his eyes back to the mixing bowl. Just as you shifted in your spot next to him his head shot with a wicked grin on his face.

“Wanna taste?” he asked and held up the spatula that had a coating of the glaze on it. You reached forward and swiped a finger through the glaze absent mindedly and popped your finger into your mouth. Not noticing Whiskey’s eyes widening and then narrowing on your mouth as you sucked the glaze off with a soft hum. Pulling your finger from your mouth with a pop you heard a strangled noise coming from Whiskey and snapped your head over towards him concerned.

“You al-“ you began to question when Whiskey crowded your personal space and stepped in between your open legs. He was standing so close to you now that you could smell his musk cologne as it swirled in the air around the two of you. “Whiskey?” you questioned quietly as he stood in between your legs just gazing at you heatedly. His hands came up to rest on your knees his fingers digging into the skin on either side of your knee caps.

“I don’t think you understand how distracting and seductive that was Sugar.” He whispered to you hotly and your eyes shot up from your knees where you had been staring at his large hands to his molten chocolate eyes. “I have trying my damned hardest to keep it polite. But you are going to be the death of me Sugar.” He confessed and his eyes darted over to the corner of your lips. “Now I’ve tried my hardest but I’m afraid Sugar that I can’t hold off any longer. I’m going to kiss you is that alright?” he asked sweetly in a low tone and you felt your eyes widen as your head began to bob in a nodded answer.

Large hands cupped your face and he stepped even closer crowding you against the cabinets at your back before his lips descended on yours. You hummed softly into the kiss as you felt how soft his lips were. His tongue swiped out to the corner of your mouth and you squeaked in surprise before he was pulling away. “Hmm, it is delicious.” He said lowly in an almost growl and you felt your body swaying closer to him to go in for another kiss but was stopped suddenly when a loud beeping came from the oven.

You both turned to the offending oven to see that the timer you had set for the muffins to cool was going off. Huffing softly you leaned over and pressed the button to cease the noise. When you sat back on the counter top Whiskey was watching you with amusement in his eyes.

“What?” you asked with a quirk of your lips.

“Thank you for helping me.” Whiskey says softly with a warm smile and you return the smile in kind.

“No problem Whiskey.” You respond easily.

“However can I repay you?” he asked softly and you laughed brightly.

“How about another taste of honey?” you asked cheekily as your finger came to tap at your bottom lip. Whiskey smirked softly at you and leaned forward to press another heated kiss to your mouth.

“Wow Whiskey! These muffins are amazing!” Ginger exclaimed as she took another bite of her muffin. You grinned proudly over at Whiskey who was trying to take the compliment in stride but you could see how proud of himself he was. His chest was slightly puffed out and he was grinning widely as well. His eyes darted over to you and he shot you wink that made your chest tighten and a blush to rise to your cheeks.

“These are marvelous Whiskey.” Champ said assuredly as he came over and clapped Whiskey on the back. “Maybe we should make you the designated baker for the meetings.” Champ suggested and you tried to hide your snigger as Whiskey’s eyes widened before they darted over to you in panic. You smiled softly at him and instantly saw him calm down as he knew you would definitely be helping him again for the next month’s meeting. Just as that thought registered in his head you watched his eyes heatedly gaze at you and you blushed again remembering how last night had ended.

#fic request #my writing #agent whiskey x reader #agent whiskey #kingsman the golden circle

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cara-terra-pace · 4 years

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Rich Neighbors Au Part 3: Bye Bye Miss Parisian Pie

Part 1 Part 2 The Gabrieling Procrastination Art Rich Neighbors Vine Animatic

-Oh my watermelon kids

-they are finally in America!!!

-First stop: Trash City!

-oops sorry NYC, sorry, they just sound the same when I say them out loud so I get them confused sometimes :)

-(I’m kidding New Yorkers don’t kill me please)

-okay, okay, getting off topic.

-so they’re in New York

-they’re just kind of wandering and they end up running into the Elmos.

-Mari was almost pulled into a hug with one and Felix had to drag her out of the way, saving her from the creep

-they then immediately booked it to a restaurant, hoping that would give them a bit of a reprieve.

-Hard Rock Cafe was the one they picked, Nino’s choice, obviously.

-Marinette gushed over the mini milkshakes for like ten minutes.

-someone ended up recognizing them. They took a picture, posted it on twitter and now BOOM

-every single one of their fans and customers know exactly where they are.

-but ANYWAY

-they’re in nyc, why not go to a broadway show?

-Six. They go to see Six. Don’t @ me, I like six and I thought Marinette and Nino would both enjoy it

-Mari is LIVING for their outfits.

-Nino is also loving every minute.

-They’re in the front and Nino is basically grinning the whole show but during Heart of Stone you can see him tear up a bit.

-Felix actually enjoys it. He shoves all the thoughts of historical inaccuracies out of his head and mostly just listens to Mari ramble about the outfits.

-Adrien vibes with Seymour honestly. And Parr. And basically all the queens.

-Nathalie likes the show too, mostly because it’s a nice break for her and the songs are pretty catchy too

-for Mega Six, Mari is filming and all the queens look directly into her camera

-they also take it and dance on stage with her phone, filming everything

-Mari is about to faint. Doesn’t matter that she’s technically famous, she is DEAD

-they don’t see her face when they take and give back the phone so when she comes backstage afterwards with the gang, at first they just recognize her hair and see her as the girl who was filming the Mega Six

-then they see her face and the costume designer is trying so hard not to squeal, oblivious to the fact that she’s doing the exact same thing.

-Mari is absolutely gushing to them about how great the show was

-She tells Parr that her song was what kept her going in school, since she’s listened to the Broadway and West End soundtracks about a billion times. (Pretend like the broadway one is already out time is a construct with rich people)

-side note, they post the pictures and video and suddenly A BUNCH of Six fans are now following Mari and now Mari is designing outfits inspired by the queens because AH THE COSTUMES ARE GORGEOUS I COULD TALK ABOUT THEM FOR DAYS I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

-fun fact, they are all wearing a “If Found, Please Return to Nathalie” shirt

-Felix is adorable and bought Mari some hair pins with watermelons because Watermelon Kids

-yes Nathalie has a shirt that says “I’m Nathalie”

-they actually did lose Adrien and these two girls were able to return him to Nathalie and they all took a pic with them and followed the two on Twitter

-they don’t know what else to do in New York, so they just make their way down to...

-New Jersey!

-Seaside Boardwalk!!

-they mostly stick to the arcades, Mari sticking to casino pier, and them getting fries and lemonade as a snack.

-they spend the night at the boardwalk, going on a few rides like Moby Dick, and Pirate’s Cove.

-they spend the night at a house of a friend of Tom Dupain’s and the next day, they go to the Ocean County mall because it was close to the house.

-Adrien complained a bit about going to “the least cool mall in the state” but stopped when he found a five below at the plaza.

-five below is his weakness.

-mall, fun, yada yada yada

-bath and body works is inside? Mari’s in heaven.

-Friendly’s for lunch! Ice cream all around my friends!

-that afternoon they go to laser tag and completely dominated.

-Twins on one team, Watermelon Kids on the other.

-for some reason (the reason is called because I said so) they decide to go down to another boardwalk further south.

-on the way they go to lobster house for lunch (lobster house is amazing I don’t even really like it for the food it’s just the VIBES. they are. immaculate.)

-they go to Wildwood and ohhh

-Nino and Adrien are living it up on the rides

-rollercoaster, log flume, submarine ride slash game thingy!

-they’re doing it all

-and Felix and Mari are being so cute and domestic winning each other things at the games

-and then the arcade, where Felix is hopeless at Skeeball and ends up slipping and Mari helps him up while trying not to laugh

-can I just say that I think Mari is probably really good at claw machines?

-she has some weird sort of luck when she’s playing and she’ll always end up winning a prize

-they spend the night at a cute little hotel and the next day they go mini golfing

-now this is where Felix for some reason shines

-Mari keeps losing her golf ball and having to go search for it

-Adrien and Nino are both mediocre at it.

-Adrien got a hole in one and he and Nino screamed and Nino picked him up and spun him around

-they also got ice cream at said mini golf place

-Khor’s is just...*chefs kiss*. They all got the orange and vanilla swirl because I said so and it’s a Khor’s classic

-Felix picks an Italian place for dinner that night. It’s called Little Italy and it’s pretty good.

-and, that’s a wrap for New Jersey! Next...

-alllll the way down to.... North Carolina!

-they spend only a day in North Carolina, but they do go to these caves.

-and also, this place with food that’s mainly made of... alligator?

-basically, it’s a rest day.

-Mari gets SUPER inspired and buys fabric to make a jacket inspired by the caves and honestly it’s gorgeous because she used not only the tan of the rocks, but the beautiful blues of the water.

-NATHALIE BREAK

-she’s so tired but she’s having so much fun with her boys!!!

-she actually feels pretty well rested a few days into the trip.

-Nathalie can’t help but fuss over the kids

-and coo at their cuteness when they do cute things

-She and Mari always share a room

-and the three boys share a room

-Nathalie helps Mari do complicated braids because she’s super good at those and Mari can only do a basic braid.

-next!

-South Carolina!

-specifically Charleston.

-ghost tout ghost tour ghost tour

-“and this is the building where a dude saw the ship that held all his crops sink. He then proceeded to-“

-it gets graphic in that moment and Marinette is having fun but also isn’t a fan of thinking of... uh, head not being on body???

-pirates!!! They go into this cave thingy and see piratey stuff, which is entertaining for everyone because it’s creepy in the cave, which Mari enjoys, PIRATES, which Adrino enjoys, and history for the grumpy Felix

-it’s quiet and everyone’s happy, which Nathalie is living for.

-they mostly just walk around looking at pretty things the next day

-rainbow row rainbow row

-Mari is so inspired that she buys a cheap sketchbook from target just so she can get all these ideas down

-she desperately wants to sew but she has to wait since they don’t have access to a sewing machine.

-so, they eat at a sandwich shop before hitting the road.

-they make a quick stop in Georgia, laugh at a sign that lists the marvel movies made in Georgia, then leave.

-(sorry Georgia. I’m sure you’re a very nice state but I’ve had limited interaction with the state besides passing through and sometimes stopping to eat lunch.)

-this is the thing they’re very excited for!!!

-Florida!

-specifically, Orlando

-that’s right, DISNEY WORLD.

-they are spending a whole week here.

-that’s right, 7 days of fun.

-day 1, animal kingdom because they get there in the afternoon and there isn’t as much they want to see in animal kingdom. They have loads of fun though and are planning on dropping by another day for the first half of the day.

-next day is Magic Kingdom

-they go on so many rides.

-small world is Adrien’s favorite ride, don’t @ me.

-Casey’s Corner is where they get lunch because Mari loves the aesthetic.

-MINNIE EARS ALL AROUND

-Marinette has a different one for every outfit

-Aristocats ears!!!

-she can’t explain why she loves it, she just DOES.

-for their last day (yeah this is out of order but who cares) they park hop, ending in magic kingdom and staying for the fireworks. Our favorite designer wears these lovely light up ears

-when they went to animal kingdom on the first day you KNOW Mari had some cute ears

-shh don’t tell the boys and Nathalie but Felix actually asked Mari to be his girlfriend when they were in Hollywood studios

-they walked off together, and sat on a bench somewhere sharing a snack

-our extra boy asked if she could be his girlfriend with matching beauty and the beast rings

-Mari said yes and she smiled soooo much.

-it’s kind of hard to explain everything so let’s just talk about the interesting stuff!!

-Marinette VIBES with the princesses oh my god

-TIANA INSPIRED OUTFIT PLEASE

-Disney is V fun but... sorry boys, it’s time for Marinette to get some sewing done! (Also I’m kind of bored of writing Disney this took several weeks bc I would write like a sentence a day lol)

-CALIFORNIA TIME

-they do go for one day in Disneyland but most of it’s spent going to get some inspiration for Mari.

-fabric stores fabric stores.

-that girl is sketching and coming up with ideas like her life DEPENDS ON IT

-inspiration explosion

-also some normal Knick knack shopping, so Mari gets some time away from staring down at her tablet and sketchbook.

-resting and just going to try all different sorts of normal, causal restaurants

-living the life

-also, Felix and Mari go on their first date. I say first date Very Loosely because it’s actually them sitting in Mari’s hotel room eating pizza and watching a movie and though they both consider it a date, they want to have a cute, cliche first date when they back home.

-Speaking of home...

-They are about to fly back to Paris when they get a message from Jess, one of the girls who found Adrien in NY.

-It was a message from her asking if she could check her latest tweet.

-it was a recording of Jess playing guitar, the song (an instrumental version of Miraculous but slightly modified) being wonderfully sweet. Aeon, the other girl, was also in the video, humming along to Jess. At the end, Jess dedicated the video the them and they both gushed about how nice they were in person and that both of them had waited until they had the arrangement ready before they posted it on social media.

-it thawed even Felix’s icy heart.

-and as they flew back to Paris, Nathalie couldn’t help but think of what a perfectly wonderful trip it had been. Minus... the accidents.

-But there’s no need to talk about that here.

-They reach Paris safe and sound, and Marinette takes a long, long nap right before she goes into creative mode and sews all the outfits she had sketched. Advantages of being rich, you know? You don’t have to worry about fabric price.

-While Mari was sewing, everyone else was also slowing down.

-And gearing up to go back to school

-*dramatic music*

-What will happen next? Even I have no idea!

.......

It’s almost like.... I exist??? Haha, but seriously, sorry for sort of going MIA??? I finally finished this, mostly by getting lazy towards the end. Yes, before you say it, I don’t hate NYC. It’s cool there, I just love making fun of it and the fact the special cam eout a few days ago is just pure irony. All of those links should work, so you can actually buy the Disney things I’m talking about! If they aren’t, please tell me so I can fix them. Next up is the Nathalie mentioned “Accidents”. That should take way less time because I’m going to go with the tried and true method of “Make stuff up and hope it makes sense”. I say should because you never know with me, I’m a mess ❤️❤️❤️

Tag list: @bigpicklebananatree @kris-pines04 @animegirlweeb @akana-sama @insomniac-nerd-posts-things @virgolioness @goblinwhoships @toastlover21 @buginetye

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gaming · 5 years

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Indie Game Spotlight: Cat Lady

Get ready to live your ultimate cat lady dreams this week with our latest Indie Game Spotlight. Cat Lady is an action roguelike game where Ally, our cat-loving hero, goes for a nice visit to Grandma’s mansion… only to find that it’s haunted! Grandma’s many cats gain magical abilities and team up with Ally to pound and paw perilous poltergeists in the ever-growing mansion—featuring a cute art style, cats that need rescuing, and tons of upgrades for your weaponized kitties.

We chatted with Will Lewis, co-founder of Rose City Games and director of the game, its artist and animator Jake Fleming, programmer Nic Biondi, and designer Christian Scandariato. Read on!

Which games or movies inspired Cat Lady?

Will: My head jumps around a lot when I think about the inspiration behind Cat Lady. I grew up playing a lot of dungeon crawlers and was always a fan of exploring creepy and dark medieval settings, but never really played roguelikes. Playing a lot of interactive fiction adventures like Dark Castle and King's Bounty on Mac, or newer indie games like Bernband over the years really kept those interests in my head. After watching the funny, over-the-top scene in Invader Zim in which Dib gets lost in the mall’s parking garage, I started working on an interactive fiction where you needed to find your cat in a series of weird dark places, and I think that was the only thing I ever wrote down that linked cute cats with creepy mansions. This was years before the release of Cat Lady’s gameplay inspirations like Nuclear Throne and Binding of Isaac, but Jake and I explored the general style of something that might come from my original idea and things just kind of came together from there! It’s also been super fun to work with Jake’s character design style to mesh that cute and creepy vibe—he definitely comes up with awesome stuff that I would never think of.

Jake: I’ve always been a fan of limited color palettes, which probably stems from playing a lot of games on NES and Gameboy growing up. With Nintendo being the console I ended up having as a kid, I got very accustomed to cute and quirky characters like the cast of Kirby or even River City Ransom. I remember seeing a Boo for the first time in Super Mario Bros 3, and thinking it was simultaneously adorable and terrifying. From a conceptual perspective, the NES game Stinger had a very profound influence on me in terms of enemies in Cat Lady: There are some very fun and weird inanimate objects that, for some reason, are alive and trying to kill you!

The original concept for Cat Lady was created at a game design jam in 2017. How much has changed from then to now?

Will: Cat Lady has changed a whole lot since then, but thankfully not too much! The art has certainly changed: cats were originally tiny, with tiny eyes and little to no expression. We had a lot more facial details on ghosts, even more so than the main character, Ally. We learned from The World Next Door that people loved the archetypes and being able to level-up their characters, sometimes even more than using them in some cases, so you’ll now see numerous cats with very different facial and body details which gives them much more personality.

We also made a big change in gameplay: Ally used to have a flashlight, which she used to reveal ghosts and mark objects in the environment as safe. Once cats started shooting fireballs and punching everything, we thought there’s probably no need to shine a light on a box if you’ve blown it up with magic, and removed the flashlight mechanism.

What has been the team's favorite thing to create in the game?

Will: Personally, I really really like writing the backstory and lore. Cat Lady is a way more combat-focused game, but there’s still a reason for why everything exists in the way it does!

Jake: The visual vibe! The relationship between cute, creepy, and weird is something I’m always toying with. I love hearing feedback like, “Oh wow. That is adorable…and gross!” It can get kinda boring if everything is nothing but cute. Take Kirby for example. I think everyone can agree that Kirby is a pink squishy little ball of cuteness. HE ALSO SWALLOWS HIS ENEMIES WHOLE AND CONSUMES THEIR POWER. Cute and weird.

Christian: Levels! Creating the bulk of the content is always a good time. Also Puddles the blobby, watery cat. Puddles is my favorite.

Nic: Cat Lady has been a dream to work on, so it’s hard to pick just one thing as my favorite. If I had to pick something, I think it would probably be the level editor and content tools. I enjoy making systems, and it’s been really fun to see the awesome cats, enemies, items, and levels the team has created using those tools.

If you could have any famous cat appear in the game, who would it be and why?

Will: I would want Scuba to be in the game because she’s the cutest. Or any famous sneezing cat. Or a British Shorthair but that’s not necessarily a famous cat.

Jake: I know this isn’t a real cat, but it’d have to be Garfield. That dude loves lasagna.

Nic: Oh, that’s a hard one! It would either be Keyboard Cat or Grumpy Cat. Grumpy Cat would be rocking a suit and wielding a powerful gavel celebrating her successful “Grumppuccino” litigation. Keyboard Cat would, of course, be driving a motorized baby grand piano around and flattening all who stand in his way.

Ready to get your paws on Cat Lady? You will, of course, be able to purchase it on Steam, where you can also wishlist the game to keep track of announcements like the release date. And their website has a newsletter you can sign up to that will keep you up to date on additional announcements!

#Indie Game Spotlight #Cat Lady #Rose City Games

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tinytanpopo · 4 years

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Now that Gegege no Kitaro 2018 is over, and I remember it's one of your favorite Gegege no Kitaro iteration, what's your overall and concluding thoughts about it? What are your favorite episodes of all 97 (or each season) episodes? The positive and negative? Characterization of Sawashiro Kitaro and the other Kitaro family (including Mana)? I would love to know your opinion of the sixth remake!

This is going to be a long answer. And full of spoilers, for those of you looking at this who haven’t watched the 2018 version of Kitaro. Here goes!

What are your favorite episodes of all 97?

I watched all 97 episodes 3 times over the course of its run. I started out watching on my own, then eventually my friend wanted to watch with me. But the crappy Crunchyroll subs got in the way of his enjoyment, so I polished them for him, and then we started watching together.

So for each episode, I’ve…

1.) Watched for my own enjoyment when the raw came out

2.) Fixed the subs

3.) Watched and enjoyed again with my best friend.

Before my friend and I started watching together, I also did a rewatch of the series up to the middle of the Backbeard arc, so, 3.3 times? And it only made me like each episode more, and notice more tiny fun details about it. Sawashiro actually smiles a lot, u guys

Anyways, here are my stand-out favorites. Titles may be self-translated or shortened, as I’m looking at the Japanese wikipedia entry for the episodes, and my opinions are mostly disorganized gushing:

1: The Day the Youkai Awoke. Kitaro, Eyeball Dad, and Mana are all very cutely introduced, as well as their dynamics with each other. Great action, ends with the apparent death of the hero. (I was new to Kitaro.) Got me to watch the next week, that’s for sure! Also, world full of weird freaky monsters, already suited to my tastes.

3: Tantanbo’s Youkai Castle. The episode that earned Sawashiro Kitaro his “Gorilla” nickname from the fandom. Also Mana asked to be friends and made Kitaro bashful and the whole latter half is so sweet. FRIENDSHIP

6: Sunekosuri. This is the first Kitaro episode that made me cry, like I really wasn’t expecting that kind of emotional impact. Another thing that kept me watching was that, even though Kitaro has its formulas (as does everything), I still didn’t know what to expect.

7: Ghost Train. Ah, my first experience with the Ghost Train story. Y'know this is the only one where the human passenger pair are both already dead? I’ve seen many other renditions of this story, but this one’s the darkest.

11-12: The 808 Tanuki arc. The whole Kitaro Family shows off their skills in a big cool battle, and Mana overcomes an intense struggle to save the day (with some credit to Murder Momen Rollo Cloth). As my friend often says, Mana is too good for this world.

13: Wanyuudo. Got some insight to Kitaro and Ratman’s odd, long-lasting friendship. When I first watched this, I didn’t really understand why they were still friends. But over the next 2 years, I would.

The meta reason? Ratman was Shigeru Mizuki’s favorite out of all his characters.

14: Makura-gaeshi. The second episode that made me cry. (not hard for a show to do that, but still) Also shot my already-present respect for Eyeball Dad through the roof.

I’m pretty sure this is the episode that changed GeGeGe no Kitaro from “one of the shows I watch once a week” to “I must find and learn about the rest of this franchise.” I’d looked up characters and little facts here and there on wikis, and occasionally browsed the Kitaro tag on Pixiv before this point, but this was the tipping point.

The door to the unseen world was open, and I jumped through.

18: Kawauso’s Lie. haha, Mana’s a city girl who’s scared of bugs

22: Gyuuki. Body horror, despair, and a really good Catgirl episode.

27-37: The Backbeard arc, or 6th Kitaro’s version of the “Great Youkai War” story. For a refreshing twist, the designated “Witch” isn’t evil in this retelling. In fact, Agnes quickly became one of my most favorite and relatable characters.

She definitely had a rocky start with the Japanese youkai, and watching her develop friendships with Mana and Kitaro was great to see, and even better on the rewatch. My friend likes Agnes a lot, too. Just assume I cried at the Mana/Agnes friendship stuff, I’m sure it happened on the rewatch, too.

Also Kitaro finally invites Mana into GeGeGe Forest! She fucking earned it!!

38: Kasha. I had already seen Reverse Mochi Murder 3 different times by this point, but it’s best whenever freaky ghost-eyeballs are involved.

Also Mana punched Kasha in the face. Well, Kitaro’s face.

39: bang. I lost it.

40: This is the darkest version of Sara-kozo! And I like it. His song was best put to use in the 4th Kitaro series, and even had a callback in one of my most favorite episodes of that series. The song, of course, is terribly catchy.

42: The Great Youkai Trial. Having seen the other versions of this story, I’m glad the writers made the 6th series version stand on its own, weaving it into the overarching Nanashi plot.

43: Odoro-Odoro. This isn’t the first Odoro-Odoro retelling where Kitaro’s efforts are thankless and reviled, but it is the one that shows it the most intensely.

47-49: Nanashi arc conclusion. Each Kitaro anime has its harsh and intense moments (even the relatively gentle 5th series), but 6th is the one that goes hard most consistently. Not just into darkness, but

50-51: complete and utter sweetness KITTENGIRL dgjklfhjlkHFDGKMBHKjl

54: Dorotabo. Sometimes, there is no “right” choice that can make everyone happy. Being a mediator can be hard, frustrating, and sometimes impossible. But despite all the stress, frustration, and repeating the same tragic scenarios, Kitaro keeps on trying.

Also, Kitaro totally carried that frog up to the roof of his house for company at the end of the episode.

56: Vampire Elite. The most sympathetic retelling of Johnny’s story. And a great Kitaro/Ratman friendship episode.

57: La Seine. He doesn’t have a top hat this time. A great retelling of Hand, and a Kitaro/Mana friendship episode. Two vampire episodes in a row, and it didn’t feel repetitive at all.

58: Kamaboko. 6th Kitaro’s crossdressing episode, with Sawashiro Kitaro at his most vindictive. Fun for all sorts of reasons. :3c

59: Ushiro-gami. Also known as the youkai cactus episode, somewhat of a series staple. This one had great horror vibes, and Mana overcoming her fear and risking her life to help Kitaro save the day. Never gets old! Mana’s the best.

62: Kitaro and Ratman fighting like children. Kitaro’s shocked face when Ratman steals his pork. Kitaro’s admiration for Ratman’s persistence to keep on living, and appreciation for yanking him back to reality during the end of Nanashi.

The Kitaro/Ratman friendship dynamic is eternal.

64: Suiko, the Water Tiger. If you find an old jar in a dirty hole somewhere? Don’t open it, don’t drink it, don’t let anyone force you to drink it. And if the jar starts talking, shove some dirt in it.

That town full of assholes totally deserved what they got, though.

66: The Grim Reaper and the Hidden Village. Well, in this context, “hidden village” is more like “Shangri-La,” which is what I changed it to in the fixed subs. The only other version of this I’ve seen is the one from the 2nd Kitaro anime. It’s a well-known trauma episode in the fandom.

In the 2nd anime, Kitaro got the trauma. In the 6th one, Mana did, and Kitaro already knew it was coming.

68: Hell Exile. Yet another one where I wasn’t sure if it’d end cynical or hopeful. One of the fresher takes on the Hell Exile story, too.

69: Ibukimaru. Nicely advances the Four Treasonous Generals arc, and has some interaction between Rei and Mana. Oh yeah, this arc introduced Rei Isurugi, an intense chuuni with Megaman demon powers. It’s neat to watch how Rei and Sawashiro Kitaro bounce off each other as individual characters.

70: Mysterious Footprints. Calls back to another one of 2nd Kitaro’s infamous trauma episodes, incidentally one of my favorites. This was great, but the 2nd anime had more intense face-melting.

72: Iyami. Mana Is Gay. That is all.

73: Yamata-no-Orochi. A great take on Kitaro’s Orochi story, now with more monkey’s paw shenanigans!

74-75: Conclusion of the Four Generals arc. Mana convinces Kitaro not to resign himself to shouldering the heaviest burden alone, as he so often does. Agnes and Adel make an appearance(yay!), and they team up with Mana and Catgirl to help save the day. Rei finally chills out, and gets a new mentor.

77: Neko-sennin. Nurarihyon startles the holy hell out of Kitaro, and further establishes how he’s going to operate this time around, connecting to his previous actions in episode 76.

Also, cats. Kitty Kitaro. Cats are my second-favorite animal, so I appreciate the many Kitaro stories involving cats.

78: Mouryou. This one gets retold in several of the other Kitaro series, with decent variation. This one has its own 6th Kitaro touch, with that fucked-up photographer, and an ending I was positive would be dark.

80: Onmoraki. I’d also consider this story a Kitaro staple, though Onmoraki was way tougher this time. Must have had something to do with Nobuyuki Hiyama. :B This is always the episode where Kitaro puts on his old painter costume, and proves he can’t think up fake names worth a damn. Gets me every time.

81: Hideri-gami the mangaka. I love comics, I translate comics, GeGeGe no Kitaro originated as a comic. This episode’s just a love letter to the medium. And seeing Kitaro genuinely enjoying Hiderin’s Totally Original Comic Do Not Steal was adorable.

83: Houkou. Some kind of disaster usually happens in this story. In the 4th anime version, Kitaro was burned to ashes. This one hit harder. Nobody won. No one was happy. We’re reminded of Dorotabo, and how Kitaro never “gets over” tragic situations like these, no matter how often they repeat. I think it’d be worse if he was desensitized, and gave up trying to make anything better.

84: Mr. Chin. The Japanese dialogue is full of puns involving the word chin and yeah I lost it. Sunday morning changes with the times, and they still get this guy in.

I died at “three rainbows” ghjghjk

89: Te-no-me’s Curse. Te-no-me is a youkai who either shows up in the youkai trial story, or has an episode for himself. Also, we finally get to see that Kitaro can just pop his hands on and off. Well, maybe not as casually as in the comics…

90: Sazae-oni. Normally you’re not “supposed” to do “it was all a dream” endings, but this is the first time they’ve done that with Sazae-oni, and the dream reveal means we just saw inside Sawashiro Kitaro’s mind. The fancy sushi restaurant exterior, the plain sweets shop, the body pillow how does he know about those?! Does he know why they look like that?!!

Kitaro seemed disappointed that he didn’t get to sing on stage. And Rei was in his dream-audience! An adorable episode.

93: The Phantom Train. Catgirl got Homuhomu’d. But KitaNeko is finally canon. This whole episode left the fandom reeling, as usual for 6th Kitaro. Best retelling of the Phantom Train story yet.

94: Hot Springs Trip. Mana carried Kitaro over 90 episodes ago, and Kitaro doing the same for Mana repays that favor, in a way.

Kitaro also admits he has Terminal Kitaro Face.

95-97: The end. I did not think they would poof Kitaro. That’s the deadest I’ve ever seen him, in any version. And the most broken, worse than a giant hate-baby crushing his dad. Kitaro giving Ratman his chashu pork made my heart explode, Mana’s sacrifice made the heart-pieces explode, and Mana reuniting with Kitaro 10 years later made my heart whole again.

Nurarihyon offing himself made sense, especially with this being his most dignified characterization in any version. Glad they let Shu-no-bon live, even if he was an actual hardass this time. Shu-no-bon’s usually a teddy bear in comparison to dual-wielding gatling guns

I’m sure the prime minister didn’t keep her position for much longer.

Episode 97’s subs left out most of Mana’s text to Catgirl at the end, so here it is:

“Cat-Sis! Here’s the pic Nebutori took for us on our recent trip! Also, I found a sweets shop near my workplace. Let’s ask Kitaro to go there with us!”

A very sweet ending, indeed.

The positive and negative?

I wish we’d gotten to see more of Agnes and Rei outside of their own arcs, and the conclusions of other arcs, though they clearly had their own lives to live and paths to take.

We didn’t get Akamata or Shisa or a bunch of other youkai I was hoping to see in the episodes. We didn’t get stories for Jami or Kamanari, both of who showed up as bit characters at the very end. But I can accept this, too, as writers and staff working within limits, and telling the story they wanted to tell as best as they could.

I’m glad they focused more on new stuff than old, though. Maybe they didn’t want to risk a repeat of 5th Kitaro’s non-ending, but they were ready to end the 6th anime with the Nanashi arc. Even with a 2nd year, though, the writers didn’t lose their focused storytelling, and ended the series in a way that left my heart full.

Characterization of Sawashiro Kitaro and the other Kitaro family (including Mana)?

Sawashiro Kitaro continues to be that weird youkai kid, that boy who lives in the woods. He’s chill and has a bunch of comic book youkai powers, a unique sort of superhero, while also not being a cop, thank goodness. Every Kitaro is a bit of a pessimist (except 3rd anime’s Toda Kitaro, I guess), but Sawashiro is especially so. This made his gradual development even more fun to watch. The fact that he never could give up on that dream, not completely, made me appreciate that development even more.

Sawashiro cried the least out of all the Kitaros—twice, and it was only onscreen once. He kept everything in so much, it’s no wonder he imploded and went to Ultra Hell when the prime minister pot-shot him.

And, Sawashiro Kitaro is so pure and cares so much it hurts.

Eyeball Dad. Since Isamu Tanonaka passed away in 2010, the legendary Masako Nozawa (the original voice of Kitaro) took on voicing the role. Like Kitaro, Eye Dad’s characterization changes a bit with each anime, though not as much. Nozawa’s performance made Eye Dad feel more laid-back this time, I think, and more patient. In older series, he had more “Showa dad” tendencies. And we got to see him outside of eyeball or mummy form! 6th series spoiled us!

Ratman. He’s usually the same between every adaptation, save for the voice. Sometimes he’s nicer, sometimes he’s more of a bastard. But he’s always Kitaro’s friend. He may nasty, greedy, and cynical, but he’s usually right about how the world works, and his priorities are hard to disagree with entirely. He knows how to survive, even when treated like dirt for centuries. Ratman’s got a particular brand of wisdom, if you look past the ringworm.

Catgirl. In other versions, she looks like she’s in elementary or middle school, and 6th anime is the most mature she’s ever looked. This is also Catgirl at her most tsundere, but with zero “mean girl” tendencies. All it takes is Mana shooting pure admiration at Catgirl for them to become friends, and that’s cute. I always like Catgirl, and the 6th anime is no exception.

The Kitaro Family. Sandy’s mostly unchanged, except now she doesn’t own the Youkai Apartments, and can use modern technology to make a shitload of money. Old Crybaby is 100% the same, down to his old person banter with Sandy.

Rollo Cloth’s minor interest in finding a girlfriend got turned up to 11. He’d get a lecture from every previous Rollo.

Wally Wall has less vocabulary, no wife and kids, and they thankfully didn’t show his mouth this time. Still a good dude.

Mana Inuyama. The 3rd anime had Yumeko, but even if she wasn’t damseled as often as you’d expect from a typical 80s cartoon, it still happened a lot. In the 6th anime, Mana clearly has more agency from the get-go, and refuses to leave herself out of Kitaro’s business. She’s serious about being his friend, and never stops being serious about it, even when things worse than she could ever imagine happened.

All she has are good memories with Kitaro.

Like my friend said, she’s too good for this world.

What’s your overall and concluding thoughts about the 6th Kitaro anime?

What an emotional roller coaster. The writers pulled no punches with this, and very much managed to make “their own Kitaro” while still firmly being “Kitaro.” With the dark and cynical twists it sometimes took, I often didn’t know if there’s be a happy ending to an episode, or a bitter one. It’s a Sunday morning cartoon at its core, but very good at making the audience forget that.

6th Kitaro was my introduction to Kitaro as a whole, and I was hopelessly obsessed by episode 14. Well, because of episode 14, probably. I downloaded all the other Kitaro anime series, got into the comics (official ones by Mizuki, official ones not by Mizuki, and a shit-ton of doujin), and now my brain is just “kitarokitarokitaro” all the time.

I don’t think it’s going to stop anytime soon.

#gegege no kitaro #ask #books-are-my-life-stuff #long post

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shellyb04 · 4 years

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More Kdrama reviews

So I’m finally back with more kdrama reviews!

Reply 1988- Five friends and their families in one neighborhood in 1988. I can see why people really loved it, but for me, it had some pacing issues. I felt like some episodes dragged on unnecessarily. But the last episodes hit me in a really personal place so it gets a bump for that 8/10

To the Beautiful you- Girl pretends to be a boy and enrolls in all boy school to help her sports idol make a comeback. 6/10. Wish there was more time to after she left the school and more with the other students. It was okay but I wanted...more.

Jugglers-9/10 Secretary and boss romance. I really like this one. Yes, it is fairly predictable but the main leads chemistry is so enjoyable and I liked the secondary leads quite a lot. I did roll my eyes a lot with the "villains" of the show though.

Happy Once Again or One More Happy Ending- Mi Mo and her friends navigate life in their 30s. The four are in four different points on their life despite being the same age. 9/10 I really liked the friendship between the women and how they deal with things in their lives. Only real complaints are that I wish we had less of the doctor and his ex-wife and the weird Conan O'Brien cameo completely took me out of the show.

Protect the Boss-Immature boss with agoraphobia whipped into shape by his "punk" secretary. I love the supporting cast in this a lot as well as the main couple. Could have been shorter and been better though. But it did flip a few tropes in ways that I really liked. 8/10

The legend of the Blue Sea- A mermaid falls for a human in the Joseon era and in modern times. 9/10 I was really skeptical about this one at first. It was gorgeous but started kind of slow. But once I began to understand the plot, I was HOOKED. There were a few twists that kept me guessing. And the love story was great as were ALL of the supporting characters. The main guy is Lee Min Ho and I really like him. I just really loved this one. (Although I do have some questions during the ending)

King 2 Hearts- 10/10 South Korean prince meets North Korean Intelligence officer. Hate to Love, but then the King is assassinated and now there are even more political ramifications. I loved this show from start to finish as you watch the Prince grow into a man and work with his significant other to solve problems. The supporting cast is good. I really like all the characters especially the queen mother. The villain is a bit cringey, but smarter than I first thought. You definitely root for his punishment. The only slight detriment is one that most Korean dramas seem to share. Their English speaking actors are SO BAD. There's one in this that is pretty good, but the rest not so much. Still I really loved this one and plan to revisit it.

I am not a robot- A man with a human allergy makes friends with a newly designed robot...who is actually a human. Cute story. I think the "antagonists" were totally unnecessary to the actual plot. There was a lot more to play with, but overall pretty cute. I felt like the main couple made sense and I loved that she was an inventor. 8/10

Healer- A thief for hire gets entangled with a reporter. 10/10. The mystery works for me, All of the relationships work for me. The romance is *chef's kiss.* The only teeny tiny nitpick is I would have loved a tiny bit more epilogue showing more of the characters new normal. But that is so minor. I just LOVED this one! Seriously, this one is just so good.

Playful kiss- Korean Itazura kiss. 7/10 There were some things in this version that I really liked (Ha Ni not being nearly as clumsy comes to mind) But overall I definitely prefer Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo.

Extraordinary You- A girl realizes her life is a comic book...and she's only a supporting player. But a nameless background extra seems to hold the key to changing her fate. 9/10 I LOVED the concept, the parody of romance comics, and the main couple. Really I enjoyed all the characters in one way or another. The only real flaw was the last episode didn't give me enough.

She Was Pretty- Childhood friends and first loves are due to meet up, but girl has gotten "ugly" and has her best friend impersonate her. Then girl gets job where naturally, guy works. As cheesy as the set-up sounds, it is really good. Has a bit of an Ugly Betty vibe at first. 10/10 Both the men are absolutely lovely. The main woman is very real and I understood where she was coming from most of the time. Second love interest is wonderful (Si Won of Super Junior) and I fell in love with him. Also he is super easy on the eyes. The chemistry is there between everyone. The friendship between the two women is amazing! Just really good.

Oh my Ghostess- A virgin ghost possesses a woman's body because she needs to have sex to move on. The person she possesses is a shy timid girl with a crush on her boss. Can the both get what they want? 8.5/10 I liked this one, but the beginning was difficult to get through and I felt some dubious consent vibes throughout as the main guy doesn't know about the ghost. And the woman doesn't know what happens while she's possessed. Ultimately, it all works out, but there's a bit of weirdness in the middle. The acting is pretty good and the side characters are okay, but the fortune-teller/shaman woman is hysterical.

Secret Garden- Rich CEO man and stunt woman switch bodies. 9/10 The only major complaint I have is some of the side stories. I hated the evil Mom and wished she and her sister had been more than moustache twirling villains. This one did get me near tears toward the end as well.

Five Enough-A widowed father of two meets a divorced mother of three. They fall in love and begin to meld into a new family. The drama also follows the widower's brother, sister, and sister-in-law as they find their own relationships. There is a subplot with the ex-husband and his new wife as well. 10/10 This is the first longer drama I watched at 54 episodes it was a lot to get through. The majority of the storylines were so well done and the reality of how to combine the family felt truthful. There were no real crazy plot twists, just a story about family. The only storyline I could've done without was the ex-husband and his new wife. I felt like they were rather unsympathetic no matter how much the drama tried to get me to care. The main couple and the sister's love story were my favorite. I originally started to watch for Sung Hoon, but was quickly drawn in by all the family.

#kdrama #kdrama reviews #reply 1988 #to the beautiful you #jugglers #happy once again #protect the boss #the legend of the blue sea #kings 2 hearts #I am not a robot #healer #playful kiss #extraordinary you #she was pretty #oh my ghostess #secret garden #five enough

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justformyself2 · 4 years

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San Francisco (Part Two)

Click here for Part One.

Hi, guys. It has been long, but it is finally here. I’m pretty happy to be posting this one and I hope you feel happy reading it.

There is going to be a part three, so stick around in case you like this one.

I have other stories if you want to check those out (i have to make a masterlist, but it easy to find them)

If you have a request or just want to chat send me an ask.

special tag @lullabieswrappedinlies

if you want to be tagged, let me know.

Before you jump in, be advised:

. There is some cursing words, some f-bombs.

. Consumption of alcohol.

cccccccccc

"Morning guys." Dex greets enthusiastically, before bowing down to place a kiss on his bride-to-be's cheek.

You are staring too much, but you can't miss the view.

The gift of ignorance was a delicacy underappreciated, at least while it lasts. It would make you eternally grateful if Rachel could keep everything to herself till ten years later. She will be sitting at her fancy dinner table, arrived from France, laughing too much because of that one bottle of old wine, from another place in Europe, maybe from Spain, she won't remember quite well. Then after recovering from laughing, putting the last sip of wine on her glass, she will tell him the story. With a sad, mildly drunk expression, Dexter would stop laughing.

"Morning." You respond.

She smiles at him and goes back to reading the newspaper.

Rachel was good at this, controlled, on the surface, as a lawyer should be. It brings a mixture of fear and thankfulness, that hid underneath itself another problem that walked into the kitchen.

"Hey, just so you know, Claire is coming today, she just called." Her mouth moves and her eyes don't lookup.

Dex sighs and you get up with the last spoon of cereal still laying on your tongue. You take the bowl and go towards the sink, planning to stay a long time with your back turned.

"Morning everybody."

It was visible the tiredness in his voice, tone low and deep, while you washed the white ceramic bowl in auto mode.

"Morning." Dex and Rachel responded together, laughing afterward.

"That's cute."

A chair's screech filled the room before a previous subject arose again.

"So, she is really coming?"

Dex sounded worried.

"What, who is coming?" Now Ethan was worried too.

But why would he be worried about who was coming when he will be leaving tonight?

"Claire," Rachel says neutrally as before.

You place the bowl and the spoon carefully on the dish rack and spin back, spotting Ethan for the first time in the morning since you woke up to an empty bed.

He stares from the not very long distance, with no longevity, because you cut it right away going towards the door, a way out to the porch, out to where random people were laying in the sand.

Harsh winds of the morning shaping up weaves. You have to pay attention to that, to anything at all other than your head.

You sit at the wooden bench, that didn't quite match the rest of the design on the porch next to a luxurious white couch, a unique setting for a suffering old seat that didn't belong. The best guess, could it be someone's favorite? Why wouldn't they throw it away when they thought about putting a much better couch beside it? Why did it remind you of the ones in San Francisco?

"What the fuck am I thinking?"

"Am I interrupting something?"

Dex leans over, and your heart skips a beat from his sudden appearance.

He was observing. God knows for how long.

"No, I'm just thinking out loud, like a normal person."

He laughs, while you tried to shake the uncomfortable off, and takes a seat next to you.

The next thing was silence, what you observed to happen a lot when Dex would talk to anyone other than Rachel, something normal considering you two barely knew each other, but still. Dex was the type to slip under radar if it wasn't for his looks. He was quiet, polite, unlike the stereotypes set for someone on his position, he possessed some of the same traits Rachel had, good traits, that combined make them good people if you could only erase all the cheating behavior Ethan mentioned.

Now you see why his ex-fiancé wouldn't suspect them at all.

Yet, it was none of your business, and the only thing that kept you involved in this world was the one that wasn't sitting on this bench with you.

"It is a good view right?"

Dex asks, and it is clear that making small talk wasn't his thing, and you were on the same level right now. Smiles appear to compensate.

"Yes, it is amazing."

You breathe in, deep. It could be some type of nervous vibe easy to detect, hovering, or you were projecting.

"So, you and Ethan... You guys look good together."

"Oh, you think so?"

Your mouth open's in surprise, genuine surprise.

Before advancing to a judgment that could compromise, you try to relax and answer as naturally as possible.

"Yeah, I thought he was... Nevermind-." Dex interrupts the took, shaking his head and looking down at his feet.

"Gay?" You completed with confidence, spotting a mix of surprise and discomfort in the way he smiled back.

"Yeah. To be fair, Ethan gives the vibe sometimes." You continued, knowing that Dex was probably confused, reminiscing Ethan's lie about being gay so Claire would leave him alone, and the fool never cleared it out before moving to London.

Something bumps into the door, somewhat aggressively, and the first thing you recognized was the hand.

"What are you guys gossiping about out here?"

Ethan comes out to the porch, exchanging looks towards you and Dex, taking the space left between the two of you.

"I was just saying to (y/n) that I think you two make a great couple."

"Oh, you think so?"

Ethan responds, reclining his back against the bench and puts an arm around your neck. It is all that it takes to remind you why you escaped to the porch in the first place.

"And we were also talking about your gay vibes, babe."

"What?" He looks at you, confused.

"Yeah, like when you said you were gay to drive Claire away, like the mastermind player that you are. That is like, his thing Dex. He loves doing stuff like that-."

You incline forward to look at Dex, but Ethan blocks the view. His arm traps your body next to his chest, and you were obliged to stand up with him.

"Okay, babe. Do you want to take a walk on the beach? Hun? Dex, catch you later, bud." You don't resist since that at some point it all had to be addressed.

Ethan loosens the grip while you both were walking down the four steps. His hand travels down your arm slowly, and before you could cross them, he beats you by the timing and takes your hand.

You wait for a fair distance before taking your hand back.

"What was all that?"

Ethan asks. The audacity of the annoyed tone he used makes you start to walk faster in front of him.

"Does it matter? we are leaving tonight, right?"

"No, we're not leaving."

You stopped and turned around. Ethan faces you with both hands on his hips. You waited for some confirmation that he was messing with you.

"Ethan."

"Look, I talked to Rachel this morning, I apologized, and she decided to forget all it. It is going to be weird if I suddenly left. I'm her best friend."

"Oh, so that's why you left me this morning? To go talk to Rachel."

"I'm only trying to fix this, find an answer to make this right."

You complete the steps that separated both of you, being centimeters away from his face and the way he observed you.

"Look. Do what you want to do, every crazy pathetic thing you want, to get a woman that doesn't want you but don't use me and leave me like I'm nothing because I'm not your rebound anymore, Ethan."

You breathe in, feeling your chest rise and the beats of your heart multiply by the second. Suddenly there wasn't control over thoughts or words. Everything wanted to break loose.

"Are you even listening to yourself right now? 'I'm her best friend.' You mocked. " Stop using this bullshit to excuse what you are thinking. The answer is Dex, Rachel is not choosing you. She never did, not then and not now. You should do yourself a favor and get the fucking hint already Ethan."

You wanted to explode, wanted to scream. It wasn't the first time this same conversation took place between both of you, and yet, you were waiting for a different outcome that never happened before. It was useless. You saw it in his eyes. You saw it in the way he walked right past you and didn't look back.

(Ethan POV.)

There is something worse about positive emotions. Something buried underneath, and It's ugly, blinds you, makes you live in denial for a very long time, till it turns the question 'What the fuck am I doing?', into a daily mantra from a bad religion.

I asked this more times than it is possible to count. I asked a thousand times while I was doing my bags, and another thousand while I was on the plane watching (y/n) asleep. I asked it again for a couple more thousand times when I saw Rachel, and since then it has been a background sound for my thoughts, the usual ones she belonged.

Her face. Her laugh, ever-living memories, that insisted themselves on my central vision like jumping ghosts, obliging me to keep feeding my brain with any distraction. Sinking myself with work till numbness almost did the thing, but the closest I came to the remedy was (y/n).

That one night, I went out to the bar on my block, not feeling like me anymore after diagnosing myself with derealization through a quick search on google. The impression of furniture moving convinced me to run away from the claustrophobic place that became that apartment.

It all happened at some time past one in the morning, at the right time and place to meet someone like her, someone very different from me. I guess, just what I need it.

The crisp vision of things gives you a perspective, but she never centered around only one thing. (Y/N) was always in movement while I was still ruminating about Rachel and what I couldn't let go.

When the post-coital conversation started flowing, after weeks of our same scheme passed by, I realized that not everything was cold with (y/n), only the way she perceived love. The way she rolled her eyes when I talked about it, but not the way she makes it, which can make one confused at first and be careful at least.

I had reasons to strongly believed in my immunity because I knew I was still in love with Rachel. That was what my brain reminded me on the daily, being in love with an unavailable person was becoming a personality trait instead of a problem to be dealt with it, and it was that I accepted. Only at San Francisco, when I made no attempts to contact Rachel, I realized too late that I had mixed the medicine with alcohol, and now they had the same effect.

All of the past mess, mixing with the habit of sweeping things under the rug, made me start thinking about ending everything. Still, a burden compounded with a miracle came when we got back from San Francisco, and we discovered to be new working partners. The universe seemed to have done everything for me, except providing the answer I was still looking for when Rachel's wedding invitation arrived. I was about to mix the medicine with alcohol all over again.

When they hugged at the airport, my stomach ran laps. 'What the fuck am I doing?'. The mantra comes back again.

"Can I take your order, sir?"

A redhead girl, holding a notepad, appeared next to the table I occupied. Her Blythe doll eyes blinking at me.

How long was she there while I rewind all the past regrets only God knows.

"Sorry. I'm... I'm waiting for someone before ordering."

I simulate my way out of the situation with a smile. My wallet was at home, and it was a good thing because it was too early to drink something distilled.

"Oh, okay. I'll just leave the menu here."

She left two menus over the white cloth before leaving with a condescending smile.

I decided to spare some time. I faked looking at my clock and looking around at random times as if I waited for someone very tardy before I left the table. The Blythe doll eyes must be cursing me, and I deserve it.

The sun outside, hitting my eyes was already alarming hot, or London made me a stranger to the feeling of warmth. I look behind me, but there is only the bridge, and random people passing by.

It felt familiar to the place where Rachel and I spend time together, but like everything else after a while became a blur under what happened that night.

I can replay it quickly while continuing to walk with no destination.

It happened when Rachel smiled and ordered a Heineken. I was explaining the order to myself, controlling my eyes and planing my words, usually with gastric reflux would be burning the walls of my stomach, but now the house was quiet.

I was alone with her, after years, after long years and miserable scenarios played inside my head, and now there was total silence, the silence of death.

"What?"

Rachel asked, still smiling, brightly, I loved that fucking smile, I loved.

I loved.

"We need to talk."

#john krasinski #fanfiction #fanfic #story #imagine #john krasinski imagine #something borrowed #interative imagine #interative #imagination #original #i hope i didnt wrote something wrong #lol #mine #god i'm hungry #i hope you enjoy

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curewimdy · 4 years

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alright i gotta get my Stars War thoughts out before i explode. spoilers i’m sorry if you’re on mobile and the cut decides not to work

tlj and Carrie Fisher’s death straight-up broke the sequel trilogy but this movie did a pretty good job with what it had left, i think. i loved:

the emphasis on found family and emotional ties, and Rey ultimately deciding to take over the Skywalker mantle

the movie had to establish and develop the trio’s entire dynamic on its own since tlj kept them almost completely separate for some fucking reason but the actors have great chemistry and i loved finally seeing them together. loved when Poe promoted Finn to husband, loved Poe and Rey bickering over the Falcon and BB-8, loved that Finn/Rey continues to be real. it’s just big ot3 vibes across the board & i hope that whatever tie-in material we get with them later continues to build on that

REY AND LEIA’S LIGHTSABERS!!!!

AHSOKA AND THE PAST JEDI’S VOICES COMING TO REY.... I CRIED?? I CRIED /DURING THE CREDITS/ WHEN AHSOKA AND KANAN AND LUMINARA’S NAMES SCROLLED BY i actually like that Ahsoka’s in there even though she’s not a Jedi at the end of her journey.... she’s a light side Force user who shows up when it counts and she’s FOR SURE a part of the Skywalker legacy so it’s good. God i wish we could’ve gotten Ahsoka mentoring Rey it would have been perfect

i don’t think that Ezra’s voice was in there even though Kanan’s was which... INTERESTING.... implying that Ezra’s still alive somewhere maybe?? hey when are we gonna get that fucking Ahsoka+Sabine quest

but re: the actual movie. i’m glad that they retconned in Leia completing her Jedi training and then going on to train Rey, it’s good

FORCE SENSITIVE FINN CONFIRMED

JANAH AND THE OTHER DEFECTED TROOPERS RULE

d-o or dio or whatever was cute

Lando!!!!

horses!!!!!

the actors were all really just turning up the charm the whole time. the story was a bit of a shambles but i loved everybody in this bar

stuff that was very stupid but in a fun way:

fucking Palpatine’s back and he’s got like 8 Snokes in a jar and a giant auditorium full of ???? mysterious cloaked figures???? who the fuck were those guys???????

the Knights of Ren are such nothing characters but i love their designs and their dumb weapons

REY PALPATINE is SO DUMB but SO FUCKING FUNNY

“hey we’re tired of fighting the Death Star in every single movie can you come up with another kind of climax” “ok how about this. this time, instead of one massive murder orb, there’s a MILLION slightly smaller murder TRIANGLES”

i can’t believe they had Hux pull a Kallus

there were a few points where i got caught up on like, logistical issues and “can the Force/Force ghosts do that” and w/e but ultimately like, it’s fine. Star Wars is loaded with logical inconsistencies and honestly i like being given the opportunity to think up explanations for things instead of like, having Rey turn around and say “i learned how to make a lightsaber from the Jedi texts and Luke’s notes and using the skills i learned as a scavenger” or Luke set the X-wing down and be like “Force ghosts have always been able to interact with the real world actually”

and things that sucked:

i fucking hated the kiss. dont do that

where the hell was Rose?? she was barely in the movie??

these characters have had completely different arcs and personalities in every single movie they’ve been in.

i’m a little weary of the st being so beholden to following up on the legacy of the ot.... can you imagine a timeline where Lucas made the prequel trilogy first and then the ot had to be extremely concerned with satisfying people’s nostalgia for those movies all the time. like as a fan i get excited about like, Rey flying Luke’s X-wing and seeing the ruins of the Death Star and but i do wonder how much of that is good for the story & how much is kind of added weight. but then on the other hand my favorite part of the movie was when all of the past Jedi acted like fairies waving miracle lights and shouting “Precure ganbare” in an All Stars movie even though Rey has no idea who Mace Windu or Luminara Unduli were so like, i’m kind of throwing rocks from a glass house here

we’re back to extreme black-and-white morality again huh. we’re back to Jedi ideology being 100% good and Sith ideology being 100% evil, after all of that

did not care for the implication that Janah was Lando’s daughter. it brings up so many issues with the way people talk about/react to the First Order and certainly undermines the whole point about literal bloodlines not mattering in the face of other types of legacy. if they’re not related but he takes her under his wing anyway then that’s good, though

#tros spoilers

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mygreatadventurehasbegun · 6 years

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Watched The Last Jedi again last night.

Sad I didn't get to see it in the theaters for a 2nd time.

Here's a collection of random thoughts:

All of the battle scenes are really well done. Especially the fight between Kylo Ren, Rey and the Red Guards.

Pretty much anytime Luke was onscreen, the movie worked. Except when he threw the light saber. I really wish he just dropped it, rather than tossing it. But I love Luke as a teacher, I love the curmudgeonly attitude. And he felt like OT Luke when he sees R2.

Why do they show us Luke's TIE fighter if he never flies it?? I thought he might pull a Yoda, and use the force to lift it out of the sea....

Do we really need Porgs? Yes, they are cute....but they serve the plot not one bit.

I love the connection between Kylo Ren and Leia. The way they kept cutting back between them was great.

I love that Leia was using the Force...I'm just not a fan of her flying threw the air like that. My logic took over and was like: "you can't survive in space like that". Maybe use the Force to keep herself from leaving the bridge in the first place?

The Canto Bight sequence.....like most people, I just did not care for. It's an interesting idea, but it just slows the movie down. It's the part of the movie where it's a good time to get up and go to the bathroom. But I do like the dynamic between Rose and Finn.

I do not like Benicio de Toro's character. At all. Even before he betrays them...I just didn't like him.

Are we ever going to know the significance of Rey's staff? She's been carrying it around for two movies, and we still don't know. And if they explain it in the novelizations, that doesn't count.

I am so happy that Rey did not end up related to the Skywalkers. I like that she's a "nobody from nowhere". Because that's who Luke was in the first movie. The whole father/son thing didn't start until Empire.

I thought the connection between Kylo Ren and Rey was interesting....but no romance, please! I may have been ok with it, if there wasn't the whole: "you're nothing....but not to me". That pretty much put an end to that for me.

PUPPET YODA!!!! Though was he CGI when we first see him? Or is it because of the "Force Ghost" effect? When he's sitting still, he looks CG; but when he moves, he's definitely a puppet.

Couldn't Andy Serkis have just worn makeup? He's a great actor whether he's mot/capped or not. The design just wasn't so crazy that they couldn't have done a Harvey Dent style makeup/CG effect. Snoke did seem pretty useless, on the whole.

Captain Phasma was such a let down. We know nothing about her and she didn't even get to do much fighting. And Gwendoline Christie is obviously great at fighting and stunt work. It felt like a bit of a waste of a great talent. Kind of like Snoke/Andy Serkis.

How amazing would it have been if while Rey and Kylo Ren are fighting for the saber, Luke showed up and took it from both of them???

Holdo's sacrifice should have been Leia's. She just wasn't able to be fleshed out enough for her sacrifice to mean as much as it should have.

The Salt planet looked GORGEOUS. Loved all the red against the white.

Leia using a blaster like the badass she is.

Finn's sacrifice could've been an amazingly poignant moment, and it was frickin' RUINED. Not that I wanted the character to die, but it would've been an incredible moment.

THE LUKE AND LEIA REUNION WAS ALL I WANTED FROM THE MOVIE AND I GOT IT AND IT GAVE ME ALL OF THE FEELINGS.

Liking the samurai vibes I got from the fight between Luke and Kylo Ren.

Luke looking out at the twin suns was just beautiful and a fitting end for Luke.

BUT the question remains: what now?? I know that the original plan was to have each character from the "main three" to have a significant story arc in these new movies. Han in TFA, Luke in TLJ, and Leia in the final film. But....we no longer have Leia. And I know they didn't want to reshoot anything after Carrie Fisher's death....but....what now? I'm just thankful that they aren't going to make a CG Leia.

After watching the movie again, I'd probably grade this at a solid B/B+. There are some AMAZING moments in this movie, but there are a few "what?" moments, too. I think I'd classify this as a movie where the sum of it's parts are greater than it's whole.

#the last jedi #star wars #movies

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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What If Nothing But Chain Restaurants Survive?

Ruth just wanted to eat somewhere — anywhere — that wasn’t a chain

Their vibe had been great on the app, but for their first date, the girl suggested the Garden, and Ruth almost ghosted. It was the newest location, the one on York Boulevard that got spray-painted with anti-gentrification graffiti saying things like, “GO BACK 2 UR SUBURB” a couple weeks back; after cleaning it off, the Garden had made a big show of installing a community fridge. Honestly, Ruth wouldn’t have agreed to go if she couldn’t have walked there from her house. On a Saturday night, York was busy, the outdoor parklet tables overflowing at Torchy’s Tacos and Shake Shack and True Food Kitchen; people with laptops were still hunched in the Go Get ’Em Tiger, and tired-looking parents hauled growlers of beer from the Golden Road pub, maybe with a six-pack of Bud under their arm.

The Garden was the street’s newest addition, its glass exterior covered in long green vines, looking disconcertingly hip and inviting next to the local chain Thai Town, huddled in a former barbershop. The girl, Sierra, was waiting inside, perusing the menu projected on the wall in old-school Italian-joint cursive. She was shorter than Ruth had expected, and the ponytail peeking out from her trucker hat was bright pink. She greeted Ruth with a huge smile, and Ruth tried to act normal; meeting someone after messaging back and forth always felt so unbearable, even worse if they were actually cute. Sierra was cute. They bantered back and forth about whether the cauliflower parm would be good or a disaster, and agreed they could not not get mozzarella sticks. After ordering at the counter, they sat down and a runner immediately brought out a basket of warm breadsticks, the only reminder of the chain that had spawned the Garden.

The breadsticks were the best thing, soft and salty and comforting. Ruth’s cauliflower parm was soggy on the bottom, and Sierra’s vegan alfredo was like slurping nutritional yeast. Their messaging over the app had been playful and cheekily uninformative; now Sierra explained she was a storyboard artist on a kids cartoon about girl superheroes, airing on Prime. Ruth used to lead with her now-defunct Instagram ice cream business, or even her old restaurant in New York, the one that closed. But the endless grind of first dates had sanded down her pride, so she stuck to honesty: She was a corporate chef at Alexa’s.

“So we both work for Amazon,” Ruth said. “What are the odds?”

“Honestly, this isn’t the first time this happened on a date,” Sierra said. “Though you’re the first chef I’ve gone out with. And I brought you to a competitor!”

The Garden was not a competitor; Alexa’s did full table service, with good wines and produce pulled from the Whole Foods pipeline. Every dish was made by a person, at some point, from scratch. Ruth didn’t like how tightly she clung to this. “I appreciate Olive Garden’s way with breadsticks.”

“I was so pumped when this place opened in the neighborhood.”

“It’s not really my style?”

“Then on the next date, take me somewhere with better breadsticks.” She laughed, and Ruth decided she liked her.

Sierra came back to Ruth’s fixer-upper bungalow she’d run out of money to fixer-up, and they made out for a while. It was pleasantly awkward; neither quite knew why they liked the other yet, but what they stumbled onto was promising. Sierra said she’d be back for breakfast the next morning, a move Ruth honestly kind of appreciated because she’d worked a surprise double shift Friday and needed sleep. The next morning, Sierra let herself in with a bag of glossy chocolate Dunkin Donuts and sweet, milky coffee. Ruth asked if this was technically a second date, and Sierra slid her hands up Ruth’s loose T-shirt. The ice melted in the coffee by the time they got to it, but Ruth was glad for the doughnuts, even if they were a little stale.

Both she and Sierra worked 70-hour weeks — animating an empowering kids show was a real nightmare, it turned out — so they stole time together when they could. Mostly, they spent Sundays together, since Ruth was working Saturday nights again, the exact thing selling out was supposed to fix, but Alexa’s kept expanding and taking her chefs to open in Venice and Inglewood and Glassell Park and then she was stuck expediting again. Alexa’s was technically a New American restaurant, built around exclusive deals with farmers and Whole Foods’ zero-waste pledge (if a bunch of bruised peaches went from Whole Foods to Alexa’s house jam, everybody except the cooks who had to scramble to make jam was happy). The menu was shaped by algorithms that analyzed purchases and searches, or that’s what corporate claimed; Ruth would never have put Huli Huli chicken and a brown butter pasta on the same menu, but she had dutifully developed the recipes and watched them sell out night after night.

They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering.

Ruth kept putting off taking Sierra out for old-school Italian all the way across town. Instead, on Sundays they’d spend most of the day in bed, ordering in Sweetgreen if they couldn’t remember the last time they had vegetables, or Domino’s if they didn’t need to feel virtuous (mostly, they didn’t). Occasionally, they’d walk down to York or head to Figueroa for brunch. At the Houston’s in a historic former hotel, they always split the spinach artichoke dip, and at the Taco Bell Cantina that opened in one of the many former Mexican restaurants that used to line the neighborhood, they drank shitty bright blue frozen cocktails under a local graffiti artist’s mural that was preserved alongside the Taco Bell logo. Ruth hadn’t gone out this much since moving to Los Angeles, and it felt gross, sometimes, eating nothing but chain food. They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering. But it’s not like there was very much else, not anymore.

Late one Sunday morning while Sierra was listing off the usual brunch and delivery options, Ruth tried to express this to her, but all that came out was, “The thing is all these places kind of suck?”

Sierra stared at her phone. “I will not let you slander Domino’s in bed.” One of the characters on her show was obsessed with greasy pizza, and she had personally designed the cheese pull.

“Don’t you miss eating at mom and pops?”

“Taco Bell and the Garden are mom and pops. They’re all franchises.”

“We should make actual memories together.”

“Sharing breadsticks at the Garden is a real memory!”

Ruth took out her phone and started scrolling through Instagram. She found the image of pork belly drenched in a glossy red sauce she’d been thinking of and showed it to Sierra, saying they should try something authentic. So they put on pants and drove to Alhambra and went to this new Hunan restaurant every food person Ruth followed on Instagram was hyping up. When they opened their menus, Sierra let out a snort and pointed to the cute illustrated map of the restaurant’s 50 locations across China.

After that, Ruth’s thrashing about chain restaurants became a thing, mostly a cute joke. Sierra regaled her friends about her obsessive chef girlfriend dragging her to an old-school burger stand literally surrounded by a luxury apartment building (Shake Shack was taking over the lease) and a 7/11 secretly serving Sri Lankan food and a backyard barbacoa set-up, all of them requiring at least an hour in traffic, maybe more. Ironically, this kind of restaurant tourism wasn’t a thing Ruth had had time for when she had her own restaurant, but now that she had gone corporate, sometimes there was such a thing as a slow week, so she could check out other people’s restaurants. Actually, Sierra would continue, the barbacoa stand they’d spent all Sunday seeking out had been glorious, but it was also so sad — the city had raided it the next week. The cooks at Alexa’s told Ruth the city was raiding street vendors all over the city, not just on commercial strips, now that the big chains were lobbying the city to clean up “unsafe” competition.

For Sierra’s birthday, Ruth surprised her with tickets to a secret pop-up supper club high up in Montecito Heights, hosted on a terraced patio overlooking the hazy towers of downtown. It was run by two white, queer chefs, an impossibly attractive tattooed couple, who were maybe 10 or 15 years younger than Ruth; in New York she would have known them, but out here she was so disconnected. There was a land acknowledgment and prompt to send money to a local mutual aid fund, and then 15 small courses of pepino melons over glass noodles, blistered purple okra with popped buckwheat, and hot-smoked salmon collars with a yuzu-miso glaze, broken up by two “palate cleanser” courses: a Spam sando and tiny Magnum ice cream bars. The food wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was seasonal and playful, and Ruth had only a few quibbles over technique: The house sourdough was overproofed, and the popped buckwheat did nothing for the okra.

“So what’d you think?” Ruth said on the ride home.

“Great view,” Sierra said. “That whole house was insane.”

“I really loved the corn pudding, but I’m not so sure about that buckwheat on okra.”

“There were a lot of really pretentious courses, and then, like, tiny ice cream? I wish there’d been more stuff like the bread and butter.”

“Oh, I thought it was overproofed,” Ruth said, but Sierra wasn’t even listening.

“Maybe you’d hate your job less if you did pop-ups like this, too,” Sierra said.

“Who says I hate my job?”

“Ruth, you work for the biggest corporation in the world and you hate chain food.”

“I hate chains because they swept in and took up everyone’s leases after COVID and now no one can open a restaurant.”

“I guess this means you don’t want to go to McDonald’s right now.”

“Why don’t we try to find a taco truck?” But even along Figueroa, which used to be lined with trucks, their bright signs scrolling BIRRIA MULITAS ASADA in the night, no one was out. The Garden was still open, though; Ruth sat in the car as Sierra ran in to get breadsticks.

That week at work, Ruth’s job was to find a use for this new buttermilk the company had sourced. It was genuinely fermented buttermilk, and good quality; it was perfect for biscuits, and if she could find a recipe that worked at scale, Alexa’s could change this dairy farmer’s life. By the end of the week, she had a biscuit she thought worked, and she gave it to the pastry cooks to test for the next night’s service. She even texted Sierra to tell her to swing by early for dinner, the first time she’d invited her to work. Ruth grifted some company time making a fresh batch of the biscuits herself to bring down for Sierra; when she got to the kitchen, she saw the cooks unwrapping a huge frozen pallet of premade biscuits to lob in the oven, next to the batch the pastry cooks had left to rise.

“What the hell is this?”

“We’re A/B testing, apparently,” Alonzo, the new chef, said with a roll of his eyes. “Kyle said these really taste homemade.”

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself.

Kyle was the efficiency officer sent down from Seattle to oversee what he called Alexa’s “workflow.” He’d already been asking a lot of questions about why there were pastry chefs working here when most desserts could be bought frozen, as if the whole point of Alexa’s hadn’t been to offer a premium restaurant experience.

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself. Sierra was sitting at the wine bar drinking ginger ale; Ruth tried not to watch her too intently as she munched on first the packaged biscuit, and then Ruth’s.

“Which do you like better?” Ruth said.

“Is this a test?”

“Either you can tell me or let the cameras assessing your expressions take a guess.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

“The cameras are a staff rumor.” But they all wore fitness trackers that monitored the tone of their voices as they spoke to each other and to guests, and produced a rating on “harmony” and “service” at the end of shift. No one shouted in the kitchen. But the servers had learned that only the most obsequious tone of voice got them good customer interaction ratings.

Sierra broke off a piece of both biscuits and chewed thoughtfully. “To be honest, I wish you guys had breadsticks.” She said it with a little flirty smile, trying to deploy it as an inside joke.

“Clearly biscuits aren’t worth the trouble,” Ruth said, and took the basket back.

“So this was a test.”

“One of these is a recipe I’ve spent all week on, from a batch I made myself, for you. The other came frozen out of a box. If my own girlfriend can’t tell that my version is better, then there’s probably not much hope for me here.”

“Babe, I don’t even like biscuits that much —”

“When you get your check, be sure to leave your feedback about breadsticks.”

Sierra asked her to sit down; Ruth made excuses about having to work back in the kitchen, and then hid, taking up space and messing up people’s flow. Kyle would not have approved; the step tracker was probably wondering who was standing stock still during a busy service. At one point, she tried scrolling Instagram to distract herself, and there was a message from one of the pop-up chefs, asking if Ruth could get them a job at Alexa’s until they finished rounding up all their investors, you know? They were sure they’d find a space soon.

“You’ve never cooked for me before,” Sierra said on the car ride home. “Maybe if I’d had your cooking, I would have recognized it.”

“You don’t seem to care much about food, so I don’t see the point.”

“What the fuck, Ruth. I care about you.”

“I mean, the cooking doesn’t make me who I am, right? We used to have to remind each other of that all the time. That we’re more than a job.”

“I work for this huge company and make something I care about. Why can’t you try to too?”

They had the conversation they always had, about how Ruth should start a secret pop-up, and Sierra would do all the branding and promotion, and then she’d get rich investors and live her dream again. The next week, Ruth got her pay docked for rudeness, probably from when she’d snapped at Sierra about the biscuits. On Sunday, they went out to the Garden, and Ruth ate breadsticks until her mouth tasted of nothing but salt.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34UCH3U https://ift.tt/3bkKdpY

Ruth just wanted to eat somewhere — anywhere — that wasn’t a chain

“So we both work for Amazon,” Ruth said. “What are the odds?”

“Honestly, this isn’t the first time this happened on a date,” Sierra said. “Though you’re the first chef I’ve gone out with. And I brought you to a competitor!”

“I was so pumped when this place opened in the neighborhood.”

“It’s not really my style?”

“Then on the next date, take me somewhere with better breadsticks.” She laughed, and Ruth decided she liked her.

They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering.

Sierra stared at her phone. “I will not let you slander Domino’s in bed.” One of the characters on her show was obsessed with greasy pizza, and she had personally designed the cheese pull.

“Don’t you miss eating at mom and pops?”

“Taco Bell and the Garden are mom and pops. They’re all franchises.”

“We should make actual memories together.”

“Sharing breadsticks at the Garden is a real memory!”

“So what’d you think?” Ruth said on the ride home.

“Great view,” Sierra said. “That whole house was insane.”

“I really loved the corn pudding, but I’m not so sure about that buckwheat on okra.”

“There were a lot of really pretentious courses, and then, like, tiny ice cream? I wish there’d been more stuff like the bread and butter.”

“Oh, I thought it was overproofed,” Ruth said, but Sierra wasn’t even listening.

“Maybe you’d hate your job less if you did pop-ups like this, too,” Sierra said.

“Who says I hate my job?”

“Ruth, you work for the biggest corporation in the world and you hate chain food.”

“I hate chains because they swept in and took up everyone’s leases after COVID and now no one can open a restaurant.”

“I guess this means you don’t want to go to McDonald’s right now.”

“What the hell is this?”

“We’re A/B testing, apparently,” Alonzo, the new chef, said with a roll of his eyes. “Kyle said these really taste homemade.”

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself.

“Which do you like better?” Ruth said.

“Is this a test?”

“Either you can tell me or let the cameras assessing your expressions take a guess.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

Sierra broke off a piece of both biscuits and chewed thoughtfully. “To be honest, I wish you guys had breadsticks.” She said it with a little flirty smile, trying to deploy it as an inside joke.

“Clearly biscuits aren’t worth the trouble,” Ruth said, and took the basket back.

“So this was a test.”

“Babe, I don’t even like biscuits that much —”

“When you get your check, be sure to leave your feedback about breadsticks.”

“You’ve never cooked for me before,” Sierra said on the car ride home. “Maybe if I’d had your cooking, I would have recognized it.”

“You don’t seem to care much about food, so I don’t see the point.”

“What the fuck, Ruth. I care about you.”

“I mean, the cooking doesn’t make me who I am, right? We used to have to remind each other of that all the time. That we’re more than a job.”

“I work for this huge company and make something I care about. Why can’t you try to too?”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34UCH3U via Blogger https://ift.tt/3gPS2os

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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liztalksmusic-blog · 6 years

Text

Let’s talk about (cancelled)shows and ghosts and shows and clothes designs and shows and shows okay...: Made In America Tour Blog #1

Simply put, yesterday was fucking WILD. I don’t even know where to begin. Aspen and I dragged our asses out of bed at 2:30am on less than 3 hours of sleep, got ready and drove up to the venue in Denver. By the time we were in line and settled it was a few minutes before 6. The morning was uneventful; I grabbed us coffee, we awkwardly ignored advances from the homeless population of downtown Denver, and freezed our asses off. Yesterday was probably the coldest I’ve EVER been. It wasn’t terribly cold all day, but the venue was in the shade and it was super windy-- we got maybe 30 minutes of sun in 11 hours. I kept finding excuses and things to do to walk around so I could feel my feet again. Time went by quickly, and the line grew a lot slower than expected. Considering it was a Saturday, I expected a few early people and for the line to noticeably start growing around noon, but it stayed quiet and laidback. The day had weird ass vibes from the beginning .Everyone was tired and no one wanted to be social. I chalked it up to it being the weather, but looking back I now know the day was cursed from the beginning.

The line gained a few people, most of which I recognized from past shows. After trying to sleep for a few hours and failing considering how god-awful cold it was and how under-dressed we were, Aspen and I decided it was time to run a few errand before the line started really growing and things started to get more lively and hectic-- even though that never actually ended up happening; more on that later.

We found this cute sandwich place, which was refreshingly clean and friendly for the particular area of town we were in. The girls working there were great and for $5, I was stoked for a ham and swiss. I wasn’t expecting much for the price but it ended up being one of the best subs I’ve ever had. They were like a bistro crossed over with a Subway, topped off with overpriced drinks and cute decor. They were called Stack-- check ‘em out if you’re ever in the area, or going to a show at the summit.

I was able to sleep for a few minutes after warming up and filling my tummy, but was very abruptly awoken by the jarring sound of a construction vehicle of some sort backing up about 10 minutes after I dozed. There was a ton of construction going on right in front of the venue so anytime we had to go to the car crossing streets was a bitch.

Then things started going downhill. We had found out a few hours earlier via twitter that one of the opening bands, Sleep On It, were stuck in Wyoming. (Which by the way, if you haven’t already, check them out. 200% worth it. The band, not Wyoming. FUCK Wyoming.)

Not a big deal, we thought, maybe they’ll stick make it. As the day went on, we continued to fit more pieces into the puzzle. Chapel, another one of the opening bands was stuck with them. The reason being that I-80 was closed due to weather conditions and since it’s Wyoming and no one who loves themselves would choose to live there, I guess there weren’t many options. It’s my understanding that everyone was either stranded, or trying to get out the same way which means stop and go traffic for God knows how long. We realized this meant it was a very real possibility that As It Is (another opener) and Waterparks could be stuck, but they had been silent on social media so we really had no way of knowing. While originally stressed about there only being 2 bands on the bill instead of 4, we started stressing about whether there was going to be a show AT ALL.

But we continued to wait and suffer through the cold. I shut my eyes in an attempt to catch a few more Z’s, but woke up very quickly to the sound of a british accent in the entryway to the venue next to me. As It Is is here! There’s still hope! They started loading in their stuff, but it eventually got back to everyone (via someone w As It Is-- I’m not sure if he’s the temporary replacement for Andy or a roadie, either way it was a very nice long-haired blonde dude) that the only reason As It Is had made it was because they made it through before the interstate totally closed down and took a different route-- Waterparks did not. At this point, we were just waiting for the official announcement that the show was going to be cancelled, especially considering it was around 3pm at this point.

After sometime passed, Patty Walters (lead vocals and frontman for As It Is) brought out some hot tea and coffee for those of us in line. It was a really kind gesture and genuinely really helpful and pleasant because as mentioned earlier, it was cold as shit. Not many band dudes I know would go out of their way to do something like that-- Patty Walter is just a really fuking nice dude. We asked him what the deal was with the show-- he basically told us that for now the show was still happening as planned and we would probably have more news within the hour.

It became clear even if the show was going to happen, VIP wouldn’t, because at this point it was physically impossible. A half hour later we had a conversation with a venue employee who told us that show was still happening-- it was going to be super last minute and they may have to push back doors an hour or an hour and a half, but it was going to happen because they were on the way. Hope had returned, and the mood lifted and became less stressful. More people began showing up and everyone seemed to come to me to ask me what the fuck was going on and where they should line up--apparently I’m super approachable or seem to hold some sense of authority. Moms made beelines for me and asked me all their questions.

Another venue employee came out and gave us an update--the show was on and VIP would happen afterward. They would funnel everyone else out of the venue and we would stick around and do it then. They would find a way to also make sure everyone who had VIP still got early entry, but at that point they didn’t have the necessary list and it was still very up in the air as far as when doors were going to be.

The sun was going down now and the wind was picking up, and the cold became somehow more bitter and miserable. But we held on to the hope that it would all be worth it once the show began, and were even looking forward to a longer set from As It Is and for post-show VIP to not be rushed since the following day was an off day. Then finally, the inevitable happened; just before 5:30, venue employees came out to tell us the show was cancelled; Waterparks wasn’t anywhere close enough to making it in time to play a show. They told us how refunds would work and that they were offering a show at another Denver venue they owned for the opening bands if they wanted it for the following night. The bands all tweeted out that the show was cancelled and everyone at the venue was just disappointed and cold.

Everyone there was really hoping that since As It Is was there with all their equipment that maybe they would play an acoustic set outside considering there was less than 30 of us, but that didn’t happen. In my experience, the guys in As It Is are nothing but incredibly kind to their fans and I’m certain there’s a good reason that they couldn’t or didn’t. Patty did come out again to chat and meet everyone who was still at the venue, which was kind. I talked with him about Aspen and I’s travelling to the next few shows and got him to film something for my vlog (which will be up in the next day or two-- subscribe and turn on post notifications for my channel here to see it when it goes up as well as future content), and left.

When it comes to the show being cancelled, I’ll just say this-- at first I was upset and a little angry. Not at any of the bands or venue staff because none of this was any of their faults in the slightest-- I was just very angry and disappointed with the situation. As far as I know they had never cancelled a show and we just got unlucky-- I’m sure they wouldn’t have cancelled if they didn’t absolutely have to, and I’m also sure they did everything they could to try and make it happen. Unfortunately, there’s just some situations we don’t have control over. I had been waiting outside in the freezing cold since 6am and was upset I had wasted my time and really bummed a hometown show wasn’t happening, but at the end of the day I’m glad everyone on the tour ended up safe and incredibly thankful that I still had 5 more opportunities to see them--most people counting on that show weren’t so lucky. I do feel really bad for Aspen as this was the only show she had VIP for and they’re sold out for the rest of them-- I know having a minute with the guys meant a lot to her and that this is a really, really rough time of year for her. Myself and a few friends are trying to figure out if there’s anything that can be done for her in regard to VIP for upcoming shows, but nothing as of yet.

I also give mad props to Sleep On it and Chapel-- Chapel held an event in Denver today (A Sunday Brunch at a Denver IHOP to hang out with Denver fans who missed out on a show and celebrate their New EP, “Sunday Brunch”. I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, but I’m planning on listening to is on this drive and I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. Check it out, it’s on Spotify), and Sleep On It took the offer from the venue to book a show at another venue and invited some Denver local bands to open. Only $10 and SOI got a headlining show, which is pretty cool. I talked to a solid handful of people yesterday that were mainly there for Sleep On It, so that’s really rad for them. I’d be there if I could, but Aspen and I decided it’d be best to not try to do our drive to Kansas overnight considering the amount of overnight drives we DO have to make over the next few days.

Anywho, back to what happened after the show was officially cancelled. Inviting a few girls behind us in line that we had met at a Waterparks show in February, we all went to a wendy’s near by to eat our feelings and try to not think about the negatives of the situation. The plan was to stop by Walmart on the way home to grab a few last minute things we needed for the rest of our trip on the way home and then get a full nights’ sleep before heading out for an 8 hour drive to Kansas the next day, but we were met with a very unexpected and slightly terrifying setback.

You see, whilst in this wendy’s chatting and enjoying our food, a fist-fight broke out in the lobby. Honestly not unusual for this particular strip of downtown Denver, but still startling. What was more startling was how oblivious the employees were. Although my memory of the whole thing is a little fuzzy due to lack of sleep, I remember it didn’t last long and they went outside to seemingly cool off. Before too long they started violently fighting in the parking lot and one of the guys reached for his belt in a way that one would reach for a concealed carry if they had one. Here’s the thing; I don’t fuck around with guns. Especially not with how many violent shootings have taken place the past few months in the US, and in the past few weeks in particular in the Colorado Springs and Denver areas. The employees went outside to break it up and they left, but we decided it would be best to leave.

On the way out, an old guy asked me “Girl, do you take them shots like Nicki Minaj?”Not entirely sure what he meant, but just assuming it was a comment about my ass, because, I mean, it’s Nicki Minaj. If this means something else, please enlighten me. Again, not an usual to be uncomfortably hit on by dirty homeless men in this part of town, but still a weird note to leave the Wendy’s on. We sat in our car while we waited for one of the girls we were with’s ride to show up.

While we were waiting, the guy who was acting like he had a gun earlier came back. He was circling the parking lot in his car, and eventually parked the car and got out, like he was looking for the guy from earlier. This happened like four times and he had a murderous look in his eye. At this point I was honestly shocked no one had called the cops yet-- was it that much of a casually regular situation in this part of town? I was starting to get more scared of the fact that this guy probably had a gun and was angry, so I called the cops. I guess at some point someone else had already called, because while talking to the operator like 6 squad cars showed up. She told me to go ahead and hang up and talk to the officers on the scene instead since they were already there. This led to us sitting out in the cold, again, for another solid half hour while the cops collected information on the guy and asked us questions about what we saw and such. This guy made the mistake of sticking his head around the corner and we told the officer, who ended up finding and detaining the guy in an alleyway a few minutes later. Turns out the guy just had a knife, not a gun, but was lying to the cops about the car being his when they traced the plates back to him. I don’t know exactly what the deal with the dude’s car was, but I’m pretty sure they were fake or from a stolen car based off the overheard conversation between officers and watching them take the plates off the car. We answered a few more questions, gave our contact info, and FINALLY left.

We made a few errands on the way home and passed out at my apartment in CO Springs around 11, too tired to function. After a lot of typical travel setbacks this morning, we finally got on the road to Kansas around noon and at this point I’m praying to any God there may be out there that the rest of this trip goes better than expected, or at least as planned. We’re about 3 hours away from our AirBNB in Lawrence, KS now and the sunset is pretty rad. Enjoy this low quality picture of a high quality sky:

The plan is to get a full nights’ sleep and get in line early for the Lawrence show tomorrow; Not 6am early, but still early. We’re gonna be going on no sleep for some of these shows, so we wanna take advantage of the off days and the nights when we’ll actually be able to sleep in a bed. It’s still kind of surreal that after all the time we spent planning this trip that we’re actually getting to do this kind of travel. Even though I’ll be spending most of my time sleeping or waiting outside venues, I’m really excited to see parts of the country I’ve never seen before and for the experiences I’m gonna have, for better or for worse. Thank you for doing it with me; I’m gonna try to catch a nap and work on some other stuff, but I’ll be back in a day or two to update on my experiences and hopefully, a show. (I don’t know why another would get cancelled, I’m just afraid to expect anything in fear of being disappointed again at this point). Holy shit, I just realized this is like 8 pages. If you made it this far, thanks for sticking around. See ya in Lawrence!

--LIZ

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Ruth just wanted to eat somewhere — anywhere — that wasn’t a chain Their vibe had been great on the app, but for their first date, the girl suggested the Garden, and Ruth almost ghosted. It was the newest location, the one on York Boulevard that got spray-painted with anti-gentrification graffiti saying things like, “GO BACK 2 UR SUBURB” a couple weeks back; after cleaning it off, the Garden had made a big show of installing a community fridge. Honestly, Ruth wouldn’t have agreed to go if she couldn’t have walked there from her house. On a Saturday night, York was busy, the outdoor parklet tables overflowing at Torchy’s Tacos and Shake Shack and True Food Kitchen; people with laptops were still hunched in the Go Get ’Em Tiger, and tired-looking parents hauled growlers of beer from the Golden Road pub, maybe with a six-pack of Bud under their arm. The Garden was the street’s newest addition, its glass exterior covered in long green vines, looking disconcertingly hip and inviting next to the local chain Thai Town, huddled in a former barbershop. The girl, Sierra, was waiting inside, perusing the menu projected on the wall in old-school Italian-joint cursive. She was shorter than Ruth had expected, and the ponytail peeking out from her trucker hat was bright pink. She greeted Ruth with a huge smile, and Ruth tried to act normal; meeting someone after messaging back and forth always felt so unbearable, even worse if they were actually cute. Sierra was cute. They bantered back and forth about whether the cauliflower parm would be good or a disaster, and agreed they could not not get mozzarella sticks. After ordering at the counter, they sat down and a runner immediately brought out a basket of warm breadsticks, the only reminder of the chain that had spawned the Garden. The breadsticks were the best thing, soft and salty and comforting. Ruth’s cauliflower parm was soggy on the bottom, and Sierra’s vegan alfredo was like slurping nutritional yeast. Their messaging over the app had been playful and cheekily uninformative; now Sierra explained she was a storyboard artist on a kids cartoon about girl superheroes, airing on Prime. Ruth used to lead with her now-defunct Instagram ice cream business, or even her old restaurant in New York, the one that closed. But the endless grind of first dates had sanded down her pride, so she stuck to honesty: She was a corporate chef at Alexa’s. “So we both work for Amazon,” Ruth said. “What are the odds?” “Honestly, this isn’t the first time this happened on a date,” Sierra said. “Though you’re the first chef I’ve gone out with. And I brought you to a competitor!” The Garden was not a competitor; Alexa’s did full table service, with good wines and produce pulled from the Whole Foods pipeline. Every dish was made by a person, at some point, from scratch. Ruth didn’t like how tightly she clung to this. “I appreciate Olive Garden’s way with breadsticks.” “I was so pumped when this place opened in the neighborhood.” “It’s not really my style?” “Then on the next date, take me somewhere with better breadsticks.” She laughed, and Ruth decided she liked her. Sierra came back to Ruth’s fixer-upper bungalow she’d run out of money to fixer-up, and they made out for a while. It was pleasantly awkward; neither quite knew why they liked the other yet, but what they stumbled onto was promising. Sierra said she’d be back for breakfast the next morning, a move Ruth honestly kind of appreciated because she’d worked a surprise double shift Friday and needed sleep. The next morning, Sierra let herself in with a bag of glossy chocolate Dunkin Donuts and sweet, milky coffee. Ruth asked if this was technically a second date, and Sierra slid her hands up Ruth’s loose T-shirt. The ice melted in the coffee by the time they got to it, but Ruth was glad for the doughnuts, even if they were a little stale. Both she and Sierra worked 70-hour weeks — animating an empowering kids show was a real nightmare, it turned out — so they stole time together when they could. Mostly, they spent Sundays together, since Ruth was working Saturday nights again, the exact thing selling out was supposed to fix, but Alexa’s kept expanding and taking her chefs to open in Venice and Inglewood and Glassell Park and then she was stuck expediting again. Alexa’s was technically a New American restaurant, built around exclusive deals with farmers and Whole Foods’ zero-waste pledge (if a bunch of bruised peaches went from Whole Foods to Alexa’s house jam, everybody except the cooks who had to scramble to make jam was happy). The menu was shaped by algorithms that analyzed purchases and searches, or that’s what corporate claimed; Ruth would never have put Huli Huli chicken and a brown butter pasta on the same menu, but she had dutifully developed the recipes and watched them sell out night after night. They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering. Ruth kept putting off taking Sierra out for old-school Italian all the way across town. Instead, on Sundays they’d spend most of the day in bed, ordering in Sweetgreen if they couldn’t remember the last time they had vegetables, or Domino’s if they didn’t need to feel virtuous (mostly, they didn’t). Occasionally, they’d walk down to York or head to Figueroa for brunch. At the Houston’s in a historic former hotel, they always split the spinach artichoke dip, and at the Taco Bell Cantina that opened in one of the many former Mexican restaurants that used to line the neighborhood, they drank shitty bright blue frozen cocktails under a local graffiti artist’s mural that was preserved alongside the Taco Bell logo. Ruth hadn’t gone out this much since moving to Los Angeles, and it felt gross, sometimes, eating nothing but chain food. They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering. But it’s not like there was very much else, not anymore. Late one Sunday morning while Sierra was listing off the usual brunch and delivery options, Ruth tried to express this to her, but all that came out was, “The thing is all these places kind of suck?” Sierra stared at her phone. “I will not let you slander Domino’s in bed.” One of the characters on her show was obsessed with greasy pizza, and she had personally designed the cheese pull. “Don’t you miss eating at mom and pops?” “Taco Bell and the Garden are mom and pops. They’re all franchises.” “We should make actual memories together.” “Sharing breadsticks at the Garden is a real memory!” Ruth took out her phone and started scrolling through Instagram. She found the image of pork belly drenched in a glossy red sauce she’d been thinking of and showed it to Sierra, saying they should try something authentic. So they put on pants and drove to Alhambra and went to this new Hunan restaurant every food person Ruth followed on Instagram was hyping up. When they opened their menus, Sierra let out a snort and pointed to the cute illustrated map of the restaurant’s 50 locations across China. After that, Ruth’s thrashing about chain restaurants became a thing, mostly a cute joke. Sierra regaled her friends about her obsessive chef girlfriend dragging her to an old-school burger stand literally surrounded by a luxury apartment building (Shake Shack was taking over the lease) and a 7/11 secretly serving Sri Lankan food and a backyard barbacoa set-up, all of them requiring at least an hour in traffic, maybe more. Ironically, this kind of restaurant tourism wasn’t a thing Ruth had had time for when she had her own restaurant, but now that she had gone corporate, sometimes there was such a thing as a slow week, so she could check out other people’s restaurants. Actually, Sierra would continue, the barbacoa stand they’d spent all Sunday seeking out had been glorious, but it was also so sad — the city had raided it the next week. The cooks at Alexa’s told Ruth the city was raiding street vendors all over the city, not just on commercial strips, now that the big chains were lobbying the city to clean up “unsafe” competition. For Sierra’s birthday, Ruth surprised her with tickets to a secret pop-up supper club high up in Montecito Heights, hosted on a terraced patio overlooking the hazy towers of downtown. It was run by two white, queer chefs, an impossibly attractive tattooed couple, who were maybe 10 or 15 years younger than Ruth; in New York she would have known them, but out here she was so disconnected. There was a land acknowledgment and prompt to send money to a local mutual aid fund, and then 15 small courses of pepino melons over glass noodles, blistered purple okra with popped buckwheat, and hot-smoked salmon collars with a yuzu-miso glaze, broken up by two “palate cleanser” courses: a Spam sando and tiny Magnum ice cream bars. The food wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was seasonal and playful, and Ruth had only a few quibbles over technique: The house sourdough was overproofed, and the popped buckwheat did nothing for the okra. “So what’d you think?” Ruth said on the ride home. “Great view,” Sierra said. “That whole house was insane.” “I really loved the corn pudding, but I’m not so sure about that buckwheat on okra.” “There were a lot of really pretentious courses, and then, like, tiny ice cream? I wish there’d been more stuff like the bread and butter.” “Oh, I thought it was overproofed,” Ruth said, but Sierra wasn’t even listening. “Maybe you’d hate your job less if you did pop-ups like this, too,” Sierra said. “Who says I hate my job?” “Ruth, you work for the biggest corporation in the world and you hate chain food.” “I hate chains because they swept in and took up everyone’s leases after COVID and now no one can open a restaurant.” “I guess this means you don’t want to go to McDonald’s right now.” “Why don’t we try to find a taco truck?” But even along Figueroa, which used to be lined with trucks, their bright signs scrolling BIRRIA MULITAS ASADA in the night, no one was out. The Garden was still open, though; Ruth sat in the car as Sierra ran in to get breadsticks. That week at work, Ruth’s job was to find a use for this new buttermilk the company had sourced. It was genuinely fermented buttermilk, and good quality; it was perfect for biscuits, and if she could find a recipe that worked at scale, Alexa’s could change this dairy farmer’s life. By the end of the week, she had a biscuit she thought worked, and she gave it to the pastry cooks to test for the next night’s service. She even texted Sierra to tell her to swing by early for dinner, the first time she’d invited her to work. Ruth grifted some company time making a fresh batch of the biscuits herself to bring down for Sierra; when she got to the kitchen, she saw the cooks unwrapping a huge frozen pallet of premade biscuits to lob in the oven, next to the batch the pastry cooks had left to rise. “What the hell is this?” “We’re A/B testing, apparently,” Alonzo, the new chef, said with a roll of his eyes. “Kyle said these really taste homemade.” Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself. Kyle was the efficiency officer sent down from Seattle to oversee what he called Alexa’s “workflow.” He’d already been asking a lot of questions about why there were pastry chefs working here when most desserts could be bought frozen, as if the whole point of Alexa’s hadn’t been to offer a premium restaurant experience. Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself. Sierra was sitting at the wine bar drinking ginger ale; Ruth tried not to watch her too intently as she munched on first the packaged biscuit, and then Ruth’s. “Which do you like better?” Ruth said. “Is this a test?” “Either you can tell me or let the cameras assessing your expressions take a guess.” “Wait, are you serious?” “The cameras are a staff rumor.” But they all wore fitness trackers that monitored the tone of their voices as they spoke to each other and to guests, and produced a rating on “harmony” and “service” at the end of shift. No one shouted in the kitchen. But the servers had learned that only the most obsequious tone of voice got them good customer interaction ratings. Sierra broke off a piece of both biscuits and chewed thoughtfully. “To be honest, I wish you guys had breadsticks.” She said it with a little flirty smile, trying to deploy it as an inside joke. “Clearly biscuits aren’t worth the trouble,” Ruth said, and took the basket back. “So this was a test.” “One of these is a recipe I’ve spent all week on, from a batch I made myself, for you. The other came frozen out of a box. If my own girlfriend can’t tell that my version is better, then there’s probably not much hope for me here.” “Babe, I don’t even like biscuits that much —” “When you get your check, be sure to leave your feedback about breadsticks.” Sierra asked her to sit down; Ruth made excuses about having to work back in the kitchen, and then hid, taking up space and messing up people’s flow. Kyle would not have approved; the step tracker was probably wondering who was standing stock still during a busy service. At one point, she tried scrolling Instagram to distract herself, and there was a message from one of the pop-up chefs, asking if Ruth could get them a job at Alexa’s until they finished rounding up all their investors, you know? They were sure they’d find a space soon. “You’ve never cooked for me before,” Sierra said on the car ride home. “Maybe if I’d had your cooking, I would have recognized it.” “You don’t seem to care much about food, so I don’t see the point.” “What the fuck, Ruth. I care about you.” “I mean, the cooking doesn’t make me who I am, right? We used to have to remind each other of that all the time. That we’re more than a job.” “I work for this huge company and make something I care about. Why can’t you try to too?” They had the conversation they always had, about how Ruth should start a secret pop-up, and Sierra would do all the branding and promotion, and then she’d get rich investors and live her dream again. The next week, Ruth got her pay docked for rudeness, probably from when she’d snapped at Sierra about the biscuits. On Sunday, they went out to the Garden, and Ruth ate breadsticks until her mouth tasted of nothing but salt. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34UCH3U

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/09/what-if-nothing-but-chain-restaurants.html

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