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handeaux · 11 months

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Whither Cincinnati’s Erstwhile Wooden Tribe? The Demise Of The Cigar-Store Indian

Throughout the summer of 1888, Cincinnati erupted in celebration of its centennial, marking 100 years since the first settlers pulled ashore here. In the middle of the festivities, an unnamed reporter for the Cincinnati Post [2 July 1888] composed a fantasy in which he imagined all of the wooden cigar-store Indians in town brought to life one midnight. With the temporary gift of movement and speech, the statues gathered on the banks of the river to contemplate the pageant of the past century.

The gist of that fairy tale – that one hundred years of progress had done little to improve on the conditions that existed before the settlers arrived – is irrelevant to our story today. The important fact is the reporter’s estimate of the number of participants:

“The group consisted of about 200 wooden Indians that usually adorn the fronts of the Cincinnati cigar shops.”

Just how many cigar shops did Cincinnati have in 1888? A quick count of that year’s city directory reveals nearly 500 cigar and tobacco shops in a town of 290,000 people. If a large minority of these vendors plunked a wooden native on the sidewalk in front of his shop, it is entirely possible that there were, in 1888, something like 200 wooden statues of Native Americans in Cincinnati.

William C. Smith, in his delightful book, “Queen City Yesterdays,” recalls their ubiquity when he was a child living on Central Avenue:

“Indians were plentiful on the Avenue but they were of the inanimate type, constructed of wood, and stood on pedestals in front of cigar stores.”

With so many statues scattered around town, it makes another item from the Cincinnati Post all the more remarkable. Just 28 years after counting 200 wooden Indians, the Post [12 September 1916] published this squib in its Village Gossip column:

“By the way, what has become of the old cigar store Indian? So rare is he that if any cigar dealer who still keeps an Indian in front of his store will notify me to that effect, I will send or photographer to get a picture of him – I mean the Indian.”

In response to the Village Gossip, several readers directed the Post’s photographer to Nathaniel Aglar’s cigar store on Front Street near Broadway. Mr. Aglar claimed that his wooden sales associate had stood outside his store for 30 years and that the statue was 40 years old when he acquired it.

Twenty years onward, Mr. Aglar’s Indian had apparently disappeared because the Post [5 March 1938] could only locate two wooden Indians still standing outside Cincinnati tobacconists. “Chief Kusnick,” also known for unknown reasons as “Sam Pincus,” stood guard outside John Fugazzi’s cigar shop on East Sixth street and “Chief Mueller” guarded William Mueller’s store on East Fifth Street.

During their heyday, Cincinnati’s cigar-store Indians actively participated in the city’s street life, usually against their will. The local newspapers regularly published accounts along the lines of this item from the Enquirer [30 July 1876]:

“A young man, well known in the West End, went over the Rhine last night and dropped his wealth so freely around among the beer halls that he was soon in a frame of mind to avenge Custer. His first victim was a wooden Indian which was standing in front of a cigar store, innocently pointing people to the fine stock within. The warrior disposed of, the Avenger tried to get in his work on a policeman, whom he mistook for Sitting Bull. But he failed, and to-morrow Judge Lindemann will throw chuck-a-luck with him to see whether it shall be $5 and costs or $10.”

As late as November 1938, police arrested an inebriated waiter for assaulting Chief Mueller, thus ending a tradition of fifty years or more,

It wasn’t only drunks who attacked the statues. In 1848, the Cincinnati Commercial reported that a pack of dogs attacked a wooden Indian mounted outside a cigar store at Third and Sycamore. This must have been among the first such statues erected in the city.

And then there were the practical jokes. On a frosty night in December 1882 Cincinnati Police Sergeant Philip Rittweger discovered that some miscreants had hoisted a cigar-store Indian from its customary perch and dunked it into a horse trough on Freeman Avenue, where it was frozen fast. Sergeant Rittweger telephoned Sergeant James Young of the Oliver Street Station and informed him there was a drowned man in his district and foul play was suspected. Sergeant Young assembled a group of officers and rushed to the scene. On discovering the frozen statue, Young put out a call for Rittweger, who made himself scarce.

The cigar-store Indian began appearing in American cities during the 1840s as steamships began to replace the great sailing ships with their magnificently carved figureheads mounted at the prow. The streamlined steamships dispensed with such decoration, leaving a generation of woodcarvers looking for a new market. As the big sailing vessels were dismantled, woodcarvers found the weather-beaten pine masts to be exceptional material for carving cigar-store decorations. Soon, a painted Indian was as essential to the tobacconist as a red-striped pole was to a barber or three suspended balls to a pawnbroker.

What happened to Cincinnati’s substantial tribe of cigar-store totems? Mostly they disappeared as fashions changed. A sign hanging above the door was more visible than a statue at street level. City ordinances prohibited sidewalk obstructions. And, very importantly, wooden statues in a folk style were becoming quite collectable. As early as the 1930s, Cincinnati newspapers reported collectors paying $500 for an authentic cigar-store Indian.

The Cincinnati Post’s Village Gossip, now writing under a more distinguished byline as “Cincinnatus,” lamented the passing of this tribe [25 June 1936]:

“Cincinnatus used to know many a wooden Indian . . . a friendly, mellow spirit that seemed to summon Cincinnatus into the store to stay awhile, to talk with the proprietor about the price of cabbages and the state of the nation and the way the Reds were going. The unbusinesslike Indian was like an invitation to leisurely loitering in a cigar store which in the Indian’s time was more a club than a business. But what now? Cincinnatus buys his can of tobacco and is quickly on his way again. With the departure of the Indian, cigar stores have gone into mere trade, abandoning romance, philosophy and leisure.”

#cincinnati tobacconists #native americans #cigar store Indians #wooden indians

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aeonmagnus · 3 years

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Happy 20th Anniversary Robots In Disguise!

This year, and today in particular, marks the 20-year anniversary of Transformers Robots in Disguise airing in the United States. This was the official English language dub of the Japanese show Transformers Car Robots, which aired in Japan the year before. This show and it’s accompanying toy line were a big shift in the Transformers brand and affected how things moved forward in the new millennium. It was also a big influence on me and this website in it’s early years, so both the brand and TFW2005 may not be what it is today without it.

We hope you will read on after the break to check out our celebration of Robots in Disguise on it’s 20th!

Intro

The following is not a comprehensive article on the show proper, but rather a trip down memory lane from my personal perspective. It was a period of change in my life, in the fandom, in the brand, and in the world – all happening at once. Robots in Disguise was smack dab in the middle of it all and I think that’s why it still resonates with me all these years later. For a deeper dive into the world of Robots In Disguise you can check RIDForever.info, a site I maintain just about RID and Car Robots. The 2021 updates are here, and the 2017 round of updates are here. I’d also suggest checking the TFWe issue all about RID over on the 2005 Boards. Now, onto today’s festivities…

The Show

RID, and yes I say RID as if it is the only RID. If you must reference that other RID show and it’s off-shoots, refer to it as RID 201x, thanks. 😊 RID aired during the Fox Kids programming block on a Saturday morning, with additional episodes set to air each weekday during the afternoon hours. Instead of stretching the show out over the course of 30+ weeks with only a new ep each weekend, they were going to blaze through it non-stop. By the end of the first week, we would have been 7 eps in. That however hit a big roadblock due to 9/11 just three days later. While some local markets did air the episodes, many larger city networks, and especially east coast markets, stuck with news coverage. Many of us did not catch the early episodes on TV the first go around. In addition, several of the episodes got pulled from TV due to depictions of buildings being destroyed and other similar visuals which understandably could upset children that just experienced 9/11. So right off the bat, the new millennium and new era of Transformers were dealing with a new reality.

The show, for those that don’t know – was a weird one-off in Transformers history. We had G1 and then the G2 remixes for a bit. Beast Wars came on the scene and ran all the way through 2000 with it’s successor – Beast Machines. During the Beast Wars era – Japan did a couple of their own Beast Wars shows, non-CGI extensions of what we saw in the US. Their market wasn’t quite ready for full CGI so they stuck with traditional anime. When Hasbro decided to continue Beast Wars into Beast Machines, Takara went a completely different way – a traditional animated show which brought back Autobots and “Decepticons”, mixing them in with the beasts. They focused the toys on a couple new and complex molds, then filled the rest of the line with repaints of previous toys. Old 2nd tier Beast Wars toys, G2 Laser Prime, and even some Generation 1 molds in the form of the Combaticons got new life as new characters in this show, capped with the biggest TF of them all at the time – a repainted G1 Fortress Maximus, now Brave Maximus. It was the prototype for what the Transformers brand did for years to come – repainting old toys into new characters. Universe, Classics, Botcon, and even some Generations runs used this method to give us some great toys in the 00s.

While there is a very complicated and long explanation for how every single Japanese show is one continuity, to someone casually starting with Car Robots it was a refresh, a new story, a new arrival on Earth. The Autobots vs the Predacons, and eventually the Combatrons/Decepticons. It was a hard cut from the last 5 years or so of CGI Beasts. Hand drawn traditional animation featuring vehicle Transformers. It wasn’t G1, but many of the folks who grew up with G1 were just getting out of college around this time. They were rediscovering their childhood love of Transformers through Beast Wars, flea market finds, raids on their parents’ attics and basements, and for the internet savvy – imports of Japanese reissues from Takara. It was a perfect storm of nostalgia; a return to Autobots and Decepticons was welcomed by kids and adults alike.

RID and TFW2005

In the years leading up to Car Robots, I was just getting into the internet, coding, design, some digital music, and all the possibility that came with it. Beast Wars, especially when it hit Season 2/3 and the inclusion of G1 lore, really got me focusing on Transformers again as a hobby. I eventually combined the two newfound hobbies into one and Transformer World 2005 was born. At no point did I ever think it would last 20+ years and take over my life in the way it did. I started the full version of TFW2005 around April 2000, with some starts and stops before that. That was right around when Car Robots started airing in Japan. Through the magic of 56k internet, I was able to connect with folks in Japan and get them to send me VHS tapes of Car Robots. Really nice, high-quality tapes too, I still have them hehe. To the younglings reading – try to picture this: no youtube, no video sharing. The concept of streaming anything did not exist yet. Napster and the eventual peer to peer stuff hadn’t fully kicked off. Plus, we were all viewing the internet on giant computers in our rooms at the speed of 1x on your phone. Less than 1 bar 3G mobile speeds today.

Yes, someone recorded episodes from TV to video tape over there, did that a couple weeks at a time, then physically mailed them across the world to me, who then got them on the internet. Can you imagine waiting weeks to watch an episode of TV the size of a twitter profile avatar? Crazy. Uploading a full episode to the internet was a big pain in the ass, not easily done. I decided to get a converter that allowed me to plug my VCR into the computer and encode the tape into digital format. From there, it was reduced using Microsoft’s WMV technology so that the episodes were about 5 MB each. 30 minute episodes at 5MB each. Dimensions – 176 x 144 pixels. 4k video today – 3840 x 2160 pixels. You can imagine that video looked like crap. But we didn’t care – we were blown away. Old school animation, vehicles, some cool Japanese anime vibes, it was what we as G1 fans kinda had in the back of our heads on what Transformers should be in a new era, and we were seeing it. Most of us had no clue what they were saying or what was going on. Also didn’t care. I still to this day think CR/RID is better like that.

So one of the first things TFW2005 did on the internet was provide these super small windows into Car Robots and what was going on in Japan. It helped get US fans hyped up for what Transformers could be. It got us wanting the toys, and importers bringing the Takara toy line over were moving serious product. It helped swing Hasbro, who was planning to return to Autobots and Decepticons again down the road, to move that schedule up. Instead of running Beast Machines until 2002 and then starting what we now know as the Unicron Trilogy, it was cut short. Robots in Disguise as a toy line and show came over in 2001, ran fast and hard for a year with non stop releases, got extended because it did so well, and then faded into the Universe line of repaints. The new millennium of Transformers was here and Robot In Disguise kicked it off with a bang.

Wrap Up

As we all continue with collecting Transformers now, regardless if you tagged into the fandom during G1, Beasties, the Unicron Trilogy, the Movies, or just yesterday – let’s take the time to give Car Robots and RID some props! It set the tone for what the new millennium of the brand would be. It gave us some toys ahead of their time. It solidified the repaint as an accepted thing in the hobby. And it gave us one crazy 39 episode run of TV that’s still a fun ride 20 years later.

For those that would like to learn more about RID and Car Robots – I still maintain a Robots in Disguise website that archives everything I have or came across. There is a lot there if you want to go on a tour of all the awesome Car Robots and Robots In Disguise era stuff. Check it out at RIDFOREVER.INFO! FIYAH!

Let us know what you think and remember from the good old days of RID on the 2005 Boards here!

Epilogue

If someone over there at Hasbro is reading – can someone please figure out who owns the rights to the show in the US market and then get it out on DVD in full, finally? Work all that funky licensing stuff out (if there is any) and get it done. The US has never had access to it via an official release. Maybe get it up on YouTube like G1? Something. Announcing plans for that before the end of 2021 would be a nice 20th anniversary tribute.

#Transformers #Transformers: Robots in Disguise #20th Anniversary #Robots in Disguise #Optimus Prime #Megatron #Car Robots #Transformers: Car Robots

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mxrcayong · 4 years

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the avatar series: 01.02

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The apartment was borderline full. If anyone wanted the perfect example of the opposite of silence, it would be Doyoung’s and Tari’s apartment. Usually, the apartment would be full of conversation between the roommates – but never this many happening simultaneously. However, their neighbors wouldn’t be complaining. It’s Avatar Day! Everyone is celebrating today; evident through the cheers and large parties on the streets.

Kilari is standing on the couch, having a playful argument with Lucas who was sitting down and holding his arms up defensively. On the other side of the room, Taeil and Doyoung are discussing something they saw today at the festival regarding a strange performance that involved a clown that “looked deranged”. Sonan, Tari, and Johnny are preparing the table – Sonan talking with Johnny about his article while Tari just offered any extra commentary – which often included teasing Johnny and supporting Sonan. The food all arrived from local vendors only a few minutes ago; mostly consisting of fried rice, stir-fry noodles, chicken pan dan, and a series of skewers.

“But, you must have gotten some interesting feedback from the girl who went to her first festival today!” Sonan enthused, her emerald eyes gleaming as she motioned to Tarir. She always seems to have a positive attitude – everyone deems her as the mom friend, always the one to brighten moods and to make sure everyone has eaten. “How was it?”

Tari smiled, “It was really great.” A small silence followed as they continued putting down the plates, but was ended when Johnny looked up at her with disbelief in his eyes.

“What insightful comments, descriptive, newspaper-worthy.” This comment was responded to with a playful slap from both Tari and Sonan, making Johnny flinch. “Hey!”

“Finnneee.” She breathed out, “It was so much more fun than I imagined, but it’s just too crowded.”

“Is that why you left?” Sonan asked, looking up at Tari with a sympathetic look as she temporarily halted putting down the last plate.

“She left because she’s a coward.” Johnny teased, making Tari roll her eyes and stick her tongue out. “Honestly though, I bet you Hendery’s burn wasn’t even that bad. If the crowd was so bad, you should’ve just stayed with Doyoung and I. We could’ve protected you. Doyoung could’ve even casted an air bubble around us.”

At the mention of his name, Doyoung took his place next to the group. “Johnny, as a non-bender, you may not understand this but with great power…” he paused dramatically, “comes great responsibility. And I will not be using my responsibility to accidentally hurt others because of the bubble.”

“Didn’t you bend to fly a fork closer to you yesterday because you were lazy?” Tari reminded him, making Doyoung go red with a sheepish smile.

“Yes, but it was my responsibility to feed myself.” Doyoung excused, singing to himself.

“And Tari’s responsibility to heal me from you accidentally stabbing me with that same fork.” Johnny reminded. A glare warning Johnny of impending doom came from Doyoung, who was wondering what he did to deserve all this mockery. Especially as Taeil, Lucas, Kilari, and Sonan have all tuned in and started laughing at the conversation. “You stabbed me!” Johnny reiterated.

Without missing a beat, Doyoung turned to look at Johnny with the best sincere look he could muster. “Why are you here all the time?” Johnny decided to do a cute look, scrunching up his nose and pulling his lips into a tight smile. It was a common joke between the three of them; but it was usually said by Tari and then she would get scolded by Doyoung for making that joke.

“You love it really.” The butt of the joke said with too much pride.

Doyoung lunged at Johnny, pinching his sides. “Do not mess with me, I’m not scared to ‘accidentally’ stab you again.”

“And I’m not scared to forget my responsibility to heal you.” Tari said off-handly and quickly, making Johnny’s jaw drop with fake offence. “Come on everyone, let’s eat!” Before Johnny could retaliate, everyone came rushing to the table where the smell of relatively-fresh take-out food was enticing.

“You know, I really do nothing wrong and get treated like this.” Johnny sighed teasingly, taking his seat and eventually fake-crying. But everyone turned their head to look at him as soon as he said ‘do nothing wrong’.

Everyone in an unsynchronized chorus, everybody repeated after him. “Nothing?” Lucas let out a loud laugh while Tari snapped and did finger guns at Johnny from across the table.

“ANYWAY,” Sonan sang as everyone started reaching forward to grab their servings, “G-Dragon came across the stall today and said there will be a special event for Avatar Day.”

Taeil widened his eyes, “Honestly about time,” He chuckled, “This will be their first time doing something special for today.” NCT usually only has bending fights three times a week, but due to this special event, this week will be having four different bending fights. In addition, they normally never do bending fights on Tuesdays with G-Dragon famously calling Tuesdays and Thursdays ‘those awkward days that fail to fit in’.

“Yeah, but I can’t go because I have a warrior class to teach tonight – I’m gonna teach them some moves Kyoshi is most known for, but you guys should go.” She looked around the table, observing the reactions of everyone on the table. “If you emit aenough details, you could add that to your article.” She said to Johnny, as if he wasn’t convinced already. Everyone was on board – the bending club was how a lot of them have met and bonded with other members of the bending community. However, she couldn’t help but notice Tari scratching her head with uncertainty.

“Do you just hate fun?” Kilari poked her tongue out at Tari, also having noticed this behavior. “What’s up with you and today?”

Lucas fake gasped, “Are you secretly anti-bending?” Everyone joined his fake shocked reaction; hands covering their mouths or jaws dropped, revealing some pretty unsightly views of indigested food in their mouth. “Are you against the Avatar?”

Tari rolled her eyes, playing along. “Totally, all benders should not be benders. Okay? It’s unfair!” She said in the fakest valley-girl accent she could muster. “Also, close your mouths please, I don’t enjoy seeing unchewed food in your mouths.” That was only responded with Lucas over-exaggeratingly chewing his food, mouth open and revealing the indigested food in his mouth.

“I love how the only non-bender in the room seemed the most angry with that statement.” Kilari pointed out Johnny who was looking at Tari in complete disbelief, playing along as well. Johnny looked like a deer in headlights; his eyes widened, his lips slightly parted – having flinched to face Tari. “Okay, but seriously, why not? You love being there.”

Tari just shrugged, “Isn’t a whole day of festivities enough? Like, I’m not anti-Avatar but like, I don’t know! All we do is celebrate the Avatar today, but it was a group of people who helped? Like Katara and Sokka and Suki,” She pointed at Sonan as she was the granddaughter of Sokka and Suki, “And Toph and a shit ton of tribes.” She sighed, “And like, yeah, Aang was amazing, all the Avatars are amazing. But… where is the new Avatar? Will they even be good enough to live towards that standard? If we keep hyping them up, then the new Avatar will seemingly be nothing.” Even saying those words made her heart drop, a guilty feeling rushing through her veins as she put her thoughts into words – the first time she has said these feelinsg out loud.

Everyone went silent. Usually perspectives were for the Avatar and expressing excitement for the new one. They’d expect Tari to have that attitude; she was always the one who’d always uncontrollably smile at the sight of people bending. She was always the one who was quick to name facts about the Avatar or the history behind their world. In fact, when Tari was brought to a pub quiz night, she basically knew all the answers immediately.

Kilari was quick to speak; after all, she grew up in a family that’s the head of the group that basically focuses on celebrating the Avatar and identifying them. It helps that she’s one of the most outspoken people - other than Johnny - Tari knows. “The Avatar will only be as good as their training, but they also have access to the previous Avatars.” She reminded, “And, the Avatar doesn’t need to do anything unless the world is in danger. Which, luckily, we currently aren’t. Their main purpose is to protect mankind and there’s not much to protect them from.”

“Except our danger is the current government,” Lucas added, about to say more but then noticed Doyoung and Taeil’s expressions warning him to stop the talk about politics. “But, let’s not talk politics over dinner. I definitely want to go to the fight. Majority rules as we all know everyone has nothing to do tonight.”

“Excuse me?”

“Except Sonan.”

Johnny came equipped with his camera, of course. It’s like these days he’s nowhere without it. He always wants to capture the action; even if the action is just his friend smiling at a cup of coffee. He wasn’t going to miss any action here. Before coming, everyone changed into less heavy clothes with the knowledge that the theater will be absolutely packed, and they’ll only sweat from the amount of heat from the crowd.

Entering the arena; which is flooded with people as it normally is, everyone felt like family. For such a secret community, it’s quite large. It’s always the same people attending, maybe with one or two extra people. The people who come are a community; they all support the same cause of allowing benders to be treated equally and enjoy seeing people try and improve their skill or show it off in the ring.

The theater itself is unknown, but the fighting ring is whispered about by everyone. It’s not like the government doesn’t know its happening - they just don’t know where, when, or how. It’s how they chose this abandoned theater, left in ruins that G-Dragon and the Big Bang crew bought and fixed to host make-shift, illegal probending tournaments since the government banned it 20 years ago. Due to the illegality, a community was built - but to be fair, its more like a family.

The arena was full of whispers; everyone chatting and theorizing what they might do for the secret festivity. This year would be the first year G-Dragon did something explicitly special for Avatar Day, as the years prior, the day fell upon the usual fight days and therefore nothing special was done. “I’m going to try and go to the front, I think Renjun is the announcer for today’s match.” Taeil commented, excusing himself to the front.

“No way!” Both Doyoung and Lucas chorused, both obviously familiar with Renjun. “Let’s drop by and say hi, yeah?”

With that, it was Kilara, Johnny, and Tari against the crowd – going the opposite direction as their friends who already managed to move with the current and made their way to the announcer’s location. “This is the most crowded fight I’ve seen in a while.” Tari commented off-handedly, noticing how although it was the same people – all of the usual people were in attendance. As of the last year, only slightly above half the people would attend the event due to previous commitment or work.

“It really feels like the community is all back together, huh?” Johnny winked, smiling wildly as he scanned the crowd – diverting his attention similarly to Tari. They were on the first floor, which has an audience that is half-standing and half sitting, while upstairs is all standing. “It’s most likely due to the lack of work people had today so everyone can probably stay until the end of the match.” He reasoned before grabbing his camera to take photos of the crowds.

“Do you think the Osaka Prince will fight today?” Kilara asked, standing on her tip-toes to look over the crowd of people to try and get a better view of the fighting box where the pre-signed up fighters would sit and stretch. All benders who participate fight under performance names. There was Mouse, Boulder, Osaka Prince, Flyer – all the names you can think. The cringiest one? It was a school boy who wanted to take a swing and signed up under the name ‘Swagbucks69’. “Literally, he is so hot, I will jump on him if I could.”

Johnny only chuckled, “I mean, he always fights. He is practically the king of NCT.” The Osaka Prince attended his first match two years ago and ever since then, he’s practically undefeated. Everyone looks to him as the owner of the rink – he managed to beat even G-Dragon, a previous pro-bender, during a match. The Osaka Prince is usually the last fight of the night, fighting whoever won the most matches and anyone who dares to go against him.

“And I’ll do anything to be his queen.” Kilara winked, making Tari chuckle and Johnny go beet-red at Kilara’s flirty manner. “Literally, like, he makes me so flushed.” She started attempting to use her tight-fitting crop top to fan herself over exaggeratingly. While Kilara and Johnny discuss the local celebrity, Tari made eye-contact with someone she didn’t expect to see there. The person was wearing a dark hood, her eyes making direct eye-contact with Tari as if she watching her the whole time. She held up her arm and signaled Tari to come over. Tari shook her head, refusing the offer and trying to look away, but as soon as the lady started mouthing words – she found herself entranced.

“You barely see his face!” Johnny commented, looking confused. All fighters also wear a mask that covers most of their face to avoid their identities being leaked.

Kilara suggestively looked at Johnny, “I don’t need to see his face to see the muscles on that guy. Were you not there when he fought shirtless?”

“I was, I think I have some photos of that actually.” He teased.

“Send me!” Kilara practically begged, “I bet Tari will enjoy the view too.” The use of her name snapped Tari out of her trance. “Okay wait can we try to get closer? I think I see him and I want him to see me.” Tari’s vision shifted and at the sight of a familiar face, a smile graced her lips as she lifted her hand up to wave.

Johnny thought for a moment, sighing in defeat. The things I do for my friends, he thought. “I know G-Dragon quite a bit from interviewing him a lot, do you want to sit in the medics box today? He lets me sit there whenever I ask.”

Tari stood back – not wanting to hold them back from having fun, “You guys go! I see a friend over there, and I don’t think I’d like to be that close.”

“You okay being alone?” Johnny asked, concerned and serious. Tari bit her lip and nodded, noticing this is one of the first times in two years she’s seen Johnny this serious.

“I won’t be alone, I see a friend.” She reassured, “I’ll meet you guys outside? We can work on your article tonight, Johnny.” The duo nodded, letting Tari head off, walking over to someone Johnny doesn’t recognize.

“And you never asked for me before?” Kilara sounded almost offended as the two started their journey of squeezing through the crowd to get to the front.

“It’s because I almost always watch with Tari,” He commented between apologies to familiar faces for moving to the front to where G-Dragon usually stays, “And we know Tari. She gets sometimes flakey or anxious during these events and just needs to leave. I don’t like her leaving alone.”

Kilara sighed, remembering that Johnny and her only met a year back due to both of them knowing Tari. Tari actually brought them both here, accidentally promising both of them to hang out. It was a tradition for Tari to come to these, and Johnny and Doyoung always go with her. “You’re right, but I’m glad she found a friend.”

“Do you recognize him by the way?” Johnny asked, concerned to the unfamiliar face. Johnny, Doyoung, and Tari are practically inseparable – they know almost everyone the other encounters regularly.

“Umm,” Kilara searched through her head as they finally reached the edge where the rink meets the audience, “I think his name is either Sehun or Kyungsoo. They know each other from the coffee shop. I remember seeing him always come in to the café when I worked there for a bit and he was always with someone and I never distinguished who was who.”

Johnny nodded solemnly, “Okay, I’ll go ask G-Dragon if we can sit with Ten.”

“Hello everybody!” G-Dragon screamed, getting into the middle of the ring. “Welcome to the first ever Avatar Day special!” Everyone cheered, including Sehun, Suho, Chanyeol, and Jongdae who stood beside Tari. She came initially to say hi to Sehun after months of not seeing him, but he was quick to introduce her to some of his friends and mentioning that Kyungsoo had signed up to fight today. Tari remained more quiet, cheering not as loudly as the other people around her.

The spotlights lit up the arena, bringing the light to center the focus on whoever will be in the ring. The gray walls of the abandoned building felt blank in comparison to the lit up stage. It also reminded everyone here of the severity and the illegal nature of the event they’re participating in; even just as audiences. Everyone found this ban ridiculous; they still allow non-benders to fight with guns and tasers, and they still allow boxing. But they don’t allow bending tournaments. And the first duo who got caught in a bending tournament ended up in jail for 10 years and are still being patrolled and watched closely every day since.

The stage is distinguished from the rest of the theater through a risen up ovular stage and with a buffer zone and a air bubble by an air bender to prevent any audience members to get hurt.

“Today, we celebrate the end of the 100 year war. But we first must acknowledge the beginning of it – by a fight between the air nation and the fire nation.” G-Dragon said in his story telling voice that entranced the audience, “Although we know the results of this in history, we’ll allow for some creative liberties.” G-Dragon had a marvelous stage persona; he was hypontising the audience with his gleaming smile and his charisma. “Once that fight is over, the competition will begin. We’ll host 10 to 15 competitions between benders and the winner will move on to the next round. Whoever wins the finals will be, drumroll please” The sounds of people clapping their thighs filled the make-shift stadium with the drums by the medic box bellowing along. Tari noticed how Kilari and Johnny sat next to the famous dancer Ten, who Tari always wanted to talk to. She also noticed how Johnny looked up at the very moment she noticed him. When he noticed her eye contact, he greeted her with a soft smile and a wave. She returned this and then chuckled, pointing at the stage to remind him to watch.

“So, you’re probably sick of me yapping about! Today, our announcer is the amazing Renjun, who you may know from his podcast ‘Reloaded”. G-Dragon motioned to the box suspended on the second floor, where Renjun sits with Doyoung, Taeil, Lucas, and someone with blue hair she didn’t particularly recognize. She noticed Doyoung was already looking at her, probably previously looking for her in the crowd. He gave her a thumbs up as if asking her she was okay, to which she nodded and did a similar motion to him. He grinned and nodded, before turning his attention back to Taeil.

Renjun’s voice then filled the stadium, “Hello everybody, my name is Renjun and I’m your announcer for today.” He grinned, “Today we have an amazing group of contesters, but first we start with a fight between the Figure Penny and The Foreign Swagger!” Two people stepped on stage; The Foreign Swagger wearing a red vest with cream one-piece outfit and Figure Penny wearing black over wear reminicient of traditional army wear with red traditional bottoms. Figure Penny also wore a black headband, keeping his hair from his face. “After this, we’ll have The Mouse and The Ice Queen fight!”

Everyone’s shouts beat with the beat of the drum, with the beat of their hearts. Adrenaline – even second hand – seemed to be pumping their blood. The last fight was between the Mouse and The Osaka Prince, which made Tari think that G-Dragon set this up. No one has beated the Osaka Prince, so she cheered for the Mouse. Unfortunately, she was now left alone as the people she was with left to check up on Kyungsoo after someone messed up their aim and hit him in the crotch – which is a no-go area in the rules of the game. She told them to congratulate him for her as she didn’t want to fight through the crowd.

The Mouse was one of the smallest contestants whose been fighting for a while. He hasn’t won any big games yet, but he won all the smaller matches he would do. It was impressive – he can’t be older than 17. Despite the mask on his face, Tari could distinguish some youthful features; particularly kind and innocent doe eyes and a face that looked like he has yet to see any major wrongs. She hopes nothing bad happens to him, she’ll make sure of it. At least, she hopes she can.

Tari mentally focus on each of their steps; they were both amazing benders. She knows she can never live up to them. They all equally deserve to be Avatar for the day, hell – Avatar for life. Every single bender today only showed that literally anyone is better than Tari in bending. If Johnny had powers for a day, he’d better than her in a second.

She couldn’t help analyze his movements; the beauty behind it, the skill. He truly is the king of the ring. The Osaka Prince moved in a way he is compressed. He kept his energy close to him, not trying to do any flare or any energy draining movements. He kept himself close, probably to prevent him from having more available targets. It’s clear that he uses multiple culturally bending techniques into his; Earth Bending’s conservation of energy and efficient movements plus its stability and Fire Bending’s precision and agility. He has the momentum of a waterbender – he gooes with each movement, completing each of them to it’s fullest and avoiding losing energy as a result of hastily ending it. It looks like he has some ability to control how long he stays in the air – probably something he learnt from the Air Nation, where they encourage the use of arms to make your momentum last longer while jumping and lunging. He also goes against tradition - she notices he doesn’t step off the balls of his feet – only a few times letting his heel touch the ground. She was always taught to stand with at least oone heel always on the ground to keep herself stable, but he doesn’t need that.

She also looked at the Mouse; but noticed it seemed he was mimicking some movements from the Osaka Prince. She swore the last time she watched the Mouse, he was more rigid with his movements. He must be learning from The Osaka Prince. She can physically see how much the Mouse seemed to cringe whenever his heels naturally touch the ground, as if someone taught him to stop doing it.

Tari was so distracted by analyzing the movements, she didn’t realise the Mouse hit the floor with a thump. The Osaka Prince has won again, making Tari roll her eyes. His movement was beautiful – but no offence to the Mouse, but he had no chance. This was a set up for failure.

About to leave early, she heard G-Dragon announce the winner before The Osaka Prince’s disguised voice took over the room. She turned around to face the stage, intrigued to what he will say.

“I win everyday,” Okay, so cocky, Tari thought to herself, chuckling. “And I am treated like royalty here already, but I’ve been training The Mouse and I think he has improved. He deserves to be the Avatar. I give my title to him.” Two thoughts ran through Tari’s head – both ‘I knew it’ regarding The Osaka Prince influencing The Mouse and ‘okay that was really sweet’.

She decided to leave early still, despite the amount of claps and applause that filled the room during the bowing moment. She overheard many people as she pushed through talking about ‘how fun it would be to be the Avatar’, ‘how blessed’ the Avatar is, ‘how powerful’ and ‘how amazing’ they must be.

It felt too much. Overpowering, her head spinning. She needed to leave. And once she managed to get outside, she let her back rest upon a wall, and she took deep breaths. She aimed her palm facing her and blew a gust of wind at her face.

“I’m glad to see you haven’t ignored your powers completely.” A voice chuckled. Tari quickly stopped an action – fuck, I’m caught, she thought to herself before berating herself. She’s usually so careful. “No, no, no, continue! I’m happy to see you do it. I thought you’d forget who you are when you got here.” It was the same lady frorm earlier.

“Sukiara.” She pushed herself off the wall, startled.

“Tari, I need to talk to you.”

As Johnny and Kilara left the theater to wait outside for Tari – they didn’t realise Tari would be out before them. They invited Ten and his friend Taeyong to come along, knowing Tari mentioned seeing them in the water bending gym and how she finds them impressive. Tari wasn’t with the person they saw her with earlier; but with an older woman. Tari’s arms were folded across her chest as she was looking at anywhere but the lady in front of her. They couldn’t see her face directly nor could they see the lady’s but it was definitely not the same person as earlier and clearly, Tari didn’t want to be there.

“I’ll try and pull her away.” Johnny noted, before a hand pulled him and Kilari back – startling them both, making their heart race faster than prior.

It was Lucas, who was followed by Taeil and Doyoung.

“I swear to the Avatar, you are a massive doofus.” Kilari swore, holding her heart. “Why did you do that?”

Ignoring the question, Lucas started rambling – loudly. “Dude, it must be so cool to be the Avatar. I swear, I think The Osaka Prince is secretly the Avatar and disguises himself as a fire bender to keep it a secret.”

“Interesting theory actually.” Johnny commented, still glancing over to Tari. But Tari heard Lucas’s voice from over there and she quickly walked away from the lady dressed in black.

“Bro, I’d kill to be the Avatar.” Lucas kept talking, making the crowd around him laugh. Tari can hear every word and it felt like her head was about to explode.

“You good?” Doyoung asked, quickly noticing the water bender walking their way.

She hid her grimace and pain behind a smile, “Yeah, perfect.”

Doyoung made a mental note in his roommate to do list; get Tari some ice cream, watch a movie, and once she’s in a better mood, ask her what’s up.

“ANYWAY,” Kilari said, interrupting Lucas who was still rambling about how cool it would be to be the Avatar and how he’d use his powers in a way that’s definitely not the purpose of being the Avatar. “Taeyong and Ten, this is Tari. She’s also a water bender.”

“Oh my gosh,” Tari quickly recognized their faces from the gym and from their performances, “I’m literally always in awe whenever I see you guys practice,, I always see you whenever I’m in the gym.”

Ten dramatically flipped his not-long enough hair, “Thank you, we try.” Taeyong got flustered, turning pink as he smiled and thanked her. “Why don’t we normally see you at the gym?”

Tari smiled softly, “I normally go to visit Irene, she’s the head of the gym. I bring her coffee and we have a chat once in a while.”

“How do you know her?” Taeyong asked. “I literally never see her around, she stays in her master room.” Irene is the designated Master of Water bending in Sooman city.

Tari decided to tell a half truth, “She’s a regular at the café I work at. We bonded over our families both being from the Northern Water tribe.”

Kilari noticed odd behavior radiating off of Tari and changed the conversation the best way she knew how. “Yo, you should’ve joined us there. I think the Osaka Prince winked at me.” She boasted.

Ten teasingly smirked, “it was at me honey.” This made Tari grin widely.

“Okay but back to the Osaka Prince,” Lucas started again. He was oblivious to the daggers Kilari was sending his way, “he is definitely the Avatar. Only the Avatar can be that good. Like I don’t think anyone is better.”

Kilari sent a hesitant glance to Tari, knowing how insecure she is with her water bending abilities. “Yeah,” Tari agreed softly, “I don’t think anyone can be better.”

request anything for future parts / penny for your thoughts here

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antiquecompass · 4 years

Text

Untamed Winter Fest Day 2: Ornament

Wherein there is a tree, of a sort, and the start of a new tradition.

(Also on Ao3).

The Lans didn’t celebrate Christmas for the most part. Outside of a few adjacent-Lans and some married-ins, they weren’t Christian. They did try to incorporate as many holidays as they could for their vast student body over the winter break. And living in America it was impossible not to be slapped in the face by everything Christmas even before Thanksgiving, but Lan Xichen had never had a Christmas tree inside his house until now. Or a wreath on his door for that matter, but he’d come home to a package from L.L. Bean yesterday containing a live wreath. Sent from Madame Yu. He took it as her approval, but part of him still wondered if it was some sort of pine-scented threat.

The Jiangs weren’t Christian either, but Madame Yu loved the holiday. Almost notoriously loved it. Her normal understated classic taste apparently disappeared as soon as December hit. Xichen had seen the pictures. The woman loved multi-colored, borderline garish, Christmas decorations. And her children had grown up with that tradition. He’d seen the small tree Jiang Cheng kept his condo. Xichen wanted him to have that here as well.

So last night he went to the local grocer and bought one of the trees they sold. It was just a little one in a pretty gold pot that could be planted once the season was over. It came with its own packet of ornaments, but Xichen frowned down at them. They were too generic, not personal, and Xichen had purchased this <i>for</i> someone.

He looked over at the cats who were staring at him from their window-seat beds.

“I’m going to need to go shopping, aren’t I?” he asked.

Nutmeg just turned her back on him and started licking herself, but Pepper trilled and came over to him. She hopped from the floor to the chair to the counter. She rubbed up against his hand, ran her face there, once, twice, then sat back and with one her massive paws, knocked the tiny pack of ornaments to the ground.

“Clearly someone has an opinion,” he said. He still dropped a kiss on her head and fished out a treat for her.

He already planned to go out for a tiny set of lights, he could easily find some ornaments as well.

*********

“If you get him a bunch of fancy-ass ornaments, he’s going to get pissy. We can just go to Target.”

“We will go to Target,” Xichen said to his best friend. “And quench your apparent thirst for a, what do they call it, Target Run. But first, I’d like to try and support a small business.”

Nie Mingjue sighed. “I can’t even make fun of you for that.This is why they want you to run for mayor.”

“I’m very happy as headmaster,” Xichen said as he pushed opened the wooden door of Mountains and Mole Hills.

“Do you at least have a theme?” Mingjue asked. He unconsciously hunched his broad shoulders, trying to make himself smaller in the small, overpacked store.

It was very much like trying to watch a bull tiptoe through a Christmas-themed china shop.

“Animals, nature, and the like,” Xichen said. “But...natural looking. I want it to be unique to us.”

“Holy shit, you’re going to make him a dog themed christmas tree,” Mingjue said.

“Not just dogs,” Xichen said. “Birds too. Deers. And cats. Maybe.”

Mingjue grabbed something and put it in their basked. Xichen said nothing as he spotted the small, cloth fox.

“Not a fucking word,” Mingjue said as he put a wolf and a pig in there too.

“Don’t you need one for Xuanyu as well?”

Mingjue looked around the store. “Do you think they have unicorns?”

“Go,” Xichen said, waving him off.

He wandered over to the wall of ornaments, looking for something that grabbed him. Despite what the’d told Mingjue, he really didn’t have a theme. The tree wasn’t that big, so he didn’t need that many, but he wanted something for them.

A collection of agate ornaments caught his eye, so he selected one purple and one blue. Predictable, yes, but it was still them. A badger in a scarf, for their Hufflepuff jokes. A cabin ornament for Maine. None of the cat ornaments quite represented their cats, so he just grabbed the cutest one, same with the dog ornaments. Lastly he grabbed a small collection of mini ornaments. He looked over his basket and nodded in approval at what he’d collected.

He found Mingjue with a stuffed unicorn under one arm and a set of his own ornaments.

“Not a single fucking word,” he hissed as Xichen smiled at him.

**********

Xichen was just shutting down his computer for the weekend when the familiar commotion that signaled the start of his weekend began outside his office.

“How is she extra fluffy today?” Maria asked.

“Just picked her up from the groomers,” Jiang Cheng said.

“And look at her little bow!” Ali said.

“She smells sweet too!” Maria said.

Xichen laughed to himself as he pulled on his coat and scarf. He closed and locked his office and joined the group gathered around Sugar.

“Hey, babe,” Jiang Cheng said, giving him a quick, soft kiss. The best kiss to start the weekend. One that promised more.

“Good afternoon, my love,” he said.

“Cats didn’t kill you, I see,” Jiang Cheng said.

“They’ve been perfectly well behaved,” Xichen said.

They had to have a discussion about the orchids and Xichen had to google how to keep cats away from an area that involved him having to figure out how to make a peppermint spray, but they’d all survived in the end, even with the overwhelming smell of peppermint. It was festive, he supposed.

“You’re such a bad liar,” Jiang Cheng said.

“They’ve been mostly well behaved,” he corrected.

After they pulled Sugar away from her admirers, Xichen relaxed for the drive home, his hand reaching back between the seats to scratch Sugar’s head. Such a small part of his weekend, but one of the best parts.

At the house they let Sugar run free and Jiang Cheng went to greet his cats. Xichen lingered in the foyer as he took off his shoes, coat, and scarf. He lingered and waited and was soon rewarded.

“Xichen?”

His boyfriend’s voice sounded soft, tremulous, in awe.

Xichen smiled to himself. A job well done then.

Xichen wrapped his arms around Jiang Cheng’s waist. He was frozen in front of the tree, Nutmeg cradled in his arms.

“I figured,” Xichen said, kissing the soft skin behind Jiang Cheng’s ear. “I figured we could have our own tradition. We’ll plant this one when the season’s over, or when the ground is soft enough, and get another one next year. And the year after that, and so on and so forth. And then one day, when we’re old and grey, we’ll look out our bedroom window and see the roots of our personal forest.

A shudder went through Jiang Cheng. He carefully placed Nutmeg down and turned in his arms.

“I love you so fucking much,” Jiang Cheng said.

“I love you too,” Xichen said.

Xichen was all for making new traditions, their own traditions. And he was happy to start here, in their kitchen, with their pets around them, and a tree representing years to come beside them.

#untamed winter fest #day 2 #xicheng #the untamed #verse: lahl #fic: hold me like you want me #fandom: the untamed #my ridic writing

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for-bucks-sake · 5 years

Text

Low Hundreds.

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes. Word count: 3.5K. Warnings: Fluff! All the fluff! And also smut. Summary: This year, Captain America will not be celebrating his birthday with America, or in America. But with his boyfriend. Far, far away. A/N: I am beyond fashionably late, but that idea started to form solidly literally two days ago. I’m so soft for vacation!Stucky. And Greece is really cool. I think the boys would appreciate its old fashioned vibe, (although I haven’t been there a good couple of tears, so I might get something wrong.) HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAP! Thank you so much for reading, hope you enjoy! Btw, requests are open!

Gif’s not mine.

They flew out of the states yesterday. Leaving New York behind for the sake of a place that was the embodiment of peace and quiet, providing them with complete anonymity.

Waves of sand collided with real waves, cerulean blue met gold as they reached the shore, looking at the beautiful act of nature.

Bucky glanced at Steve, smiling, putting his bag down conspiratorially, “last one to get to the water is a little bitch!” He shouted, speeding up a little too fast for it to look natural, hands all but tearing his navy t-shirt off.

No one could see them there, and Bucky didn’t know if it was for the fact they were completely alone, or just the reassuring presence of Steve next to him, but for the first time in a long time, he felt safe.

“Guess you can call yourself a bitch now.” Steve had a shit eating grin on his face, making Bucky literally eat sand as he ran past him so swiftly on the soft, grainy ground, it came flying backwards. Right into Bucky’s face.

“Fuckin-“

The loud splash of a body hitting water told him the competition was over. Bucky found he didn’t care much as he watched Steve’s perfect form swimming quickly, receding from the shore on to the bottomless blue.

He too entered the welcoming ocean, skin shivering at the new sensation of cool wetness and warm breeze, chasing deeper right into the arms of a welcoming lover.

“Punk.” Bucky muttered as Steve pulled him closer, easily finding his waist through the clear waters.

“And what about it?” Steve smirked, leaning in for a kiss. He brushed Bucky’s full lips with his. Bucky tried to nudge his head closer, but before he could, Steve pushed his full weight on top of him, forcing them both to sink back into the sea.

Steve could see Bucky’s wide eyes when he realized what had happened, a determined look replaced the tenderness in them as he moved hastily, using his metal arm to work through every law of physics as he forced the water out of his way, chasing Steve yet again while the latter tried to get away as fast as possible. This time he was short handed;

Bucky caught one of Steve’s legs, jerking him back forcibly so he could grab his waist. Air didn’t seem to run out even then; calloused palms met rock hard stomach, legs working overtime to keep them afloat, bubbles that could be hot breaths surrounded them, nothing was heard but that muted silence you could only find underwater.

Steve buried his hands in Bucky’s floating hair, closing the left distance between them and connecting their mouths. He could taste the salt on his lips, water infiltrating their kiss when Steve adjusted his palm and brought it to cup the stubbled jaw. Bucky squeezed his waist softly, tongue slowly licking its way deeper into Steve’s mouth, meeting his in a stinging briny mix.

They left early, successfully avoiding any troubles that may be caused by the Forth of July rush. Steve was reluctant to agree, anxious as always for the fate of the world, only backing down after weeks of creative persuasion; if it wasn’t for the years Bucky spent perfecting a stubbornness that only matched Steve’s - they would still be in Brooklyn right now. A break was well deserved, and they accrued enough vacation days for nine lifetimes, anyway.

Bucky pushed them up in a single swift motion, lips still connected as they moved above waters like a single body instead of two, the change in scenario embracing them with a hit of a fresh breeze, sounds that only echoed through under, were now ringing pleasantly in their ears.

The subtle shift of the waves on top of each other created an impossibly calming rhythm, their strong bodies giving in to the ripples and letting the ocean guide their movements, happily complying as they drifted closer to each other.

Steve moved away and gasped for oxygen, inhaling a lungful of clear air only to sink down again, emerging a moment later a few meters away from Bucky, almost as if he couldn’t leave him alone for too long. He shook his head, letting the new acquired droplets fall from his bright hair down to his angled face, the small drops parting from his skin when they met his clean shaven chin, falling back to their source.

It was as if some divine entity decided to interfere, making Steve stop at the exact spot and the Sun to appear just behind him, lengthening its rays far enough to reach and shower his body with a yellow, afternoon light, illuminating him golden.

He looked overwhelmingly beautiful, untouchable, even.

Wet strands of his hair desperately tried to hung off his forehead, only few succeeding, lips scarlet from kissing and salt, so aesthetically pleasing over the background of his perfect skin, resembling blood stained white silk.

His cerulean eyes stared back, actively stealing all the color from the water, soaking it in to make his eyes even bluer, as if he needed that.

Bucky forgot how to breathe. And not as a cliche everybody says. He genuinely forgot how. Maybe everyone thinks they can’t breathe anymore, but he was the only one to actually witness Steve Rogers looking like that.

Steve’s lips were slightly parted, staring at him in awe, the left corner of his mouth curved into half a smile.

Bucky licked his lips and exhaled as he rediscovered the ability to breathe, flashing a toothy grin when Steve swam his way to him, closing the distance one last time and not looking away from his eyes.

His hair reached his shoulders, less dark somehow as he grew it longer. Steve couldn’t tear his gaze from the couple of skies that settled inside Bucky’s orbs, looking stunningly alike the origin above them.

And water drops on metal, he soon found out, looked exactly like stars when the sun hit them.

Steve approached the sky full of stars in front of him, getting painfully close without touching. There will be a lot of touching, later. For now, he was content with just watching.

As Bucky inhaled, Steve exhaled. They worked like a well oiled machine, doing nothing but drinking in each other’s appearance, absorbing where they were and what they did, living the proximity they were so comfortable staying in, forever.

Summer days were longer, but still so short. Whether they were spent by the beach, on the local market, or just in bed - everyday, the colors outside seemed to soften before they could notice; Neon yellow surrendering its place for the sake of low oranges and pinks that in time, were slowly fading away as well, replaced by midnight blue.

In those moments Bucky didn’t miss home. He didn’t miss seeing the national flag everywhere, he didn’t miss tensing every time a loud noise would go off, he didn’t miss the stares that followed him wherever he went, he didn’t miss America.

All he wanted was to stay here, in that little piece of heaven they somehow managed to find, keep it close to their chests and never let go.

Maybe never was a big word, but so was love. -

Greece was kind to them, for sure. Peaceful as always, even on the night of the Third.

After a long day inside their private ocean they decide to walk around for a while, showing off their impressive tan lines and sun kissed cheeks.

“Let’s enjoy the last night before you turn a hundred and…something years old!” Bucky announced with honest to god enthusiasm.

They missed more birthdays than they could count, so they simply stopped counting. Age was meaningless to them and time could never catch up. They were beyond time.

Always have been, when you think about it.

They strolled around the local businesses spread around a nice area, also near a beach; there was a beautiful stand of homemade jewelry, mostly colorful beads made of wood that decorated thin threads. Near that there was an actual store full of shabby manakin torsos, dressed in all kinds of graphic t-shirts.

In a fluent Greek and a perfect accent that both surprised and didn’t surprise Steve, Bucky purchased him a cheap looking tank top with a cheerful logo on it that ironically said, “Captain Greece.”

“You are…” Steve began, nostrils flared as he smiled and shook his head,

“Spoiling my boyfriend for his birthday? You’re damn right.” Bucky nudged his shoulder and continued walking, pulling at Steve’s hand that was intertwined with his.

They walked past a boutique that was filled with fake designer bags, and about three sunglasses stands covered with SALE signs written in English before Bucky decided it’s a sophisticated scheme to make him want to buy shades he didn’t need.

He ended up buying three pairs. Immediately pairing up Steve with ones that had a plastic frame covered with the American flag.

“You realize that joke is getting old, right?” Steve snarked, adjusting his new glasses on the top of his head.

“Not nearly as old as you, pal.”

“Are you hungry? I’m starving, that thing over there smells delicious!”

“Don’t ignore my awesome bur - that actually does smell good, c’mon.”

Ethnic street food is amazing and cheeseburgers suck, they decided then (well, maybe they don’t suck, but they’re nothing compared to the festival of flavors their tastebuds experienced). As they were snacking on what was left of their greek dessert filled with rich cheese and sweet syrup, Bucky glanced at his watch only to realized it was nearly midnight. They had to return to the small cabin they rented before the clock hit twelve. Deep inside he knew, that hour had no real meaning, but it was a principle. He will celebrate Steve the birthday he deserves, even if it’s just the two of them. Especially when it’s just the two of them.

“C’mon old man, hurry up now, we need to get to our place as soon as possible.” Bucky hurried him, half jokingly but mostly not.

Steve licked his fingers from the sugar and butter that coated the tips, muttering a tired “yeah, yeah’, but moving faster nevertheless, matching his pace to Bucky’s.

They approach the place they grew more and more comfortable with everyday, Bucky reached for his pocket and drew out a single key, shoving it into its place and opening the door with a creak.

“Stay here, baby. I’ve got somethin’ for you.” Bucky ordered Steve to stay in the small living room space, disappearing inside the single bedroom they shared.

“Oh, so I’m baby now?” Steve cocked an eyebrow just before Bucky turned around, “seriously though, Buck, we said no presents, please! This vacation is more than enough, I swear t-“

“Hey Stevie? Shut up.” Bucky shouted from the room, the amusement evident in his voice, “you’re gonna like it. Promise.”

After low rustles and a soft thud, Bucky was near him again, hands behind his back and a face decorated with an undeniable giddiness.

They waited in silence for the hands behind the glass to collide, Bucky refusing to do anything but glare murderously at the clock, urging it to move just a bit more to the right. The enthusiasm of a child took over when it happened, it was finally midnight and the date subsequently changed. Bucky shifted his arms, bringing the neatly wrapped present from behind his back, placing it in front of Steve, who was sporting a small pout and shiny eyes when he saw its size -

Never really getting over the complex of hating to be given anything but being too excited to refuse it. It reminded Bucky of old times, when neither of them could even dream about what they had now. Birthday gifts were a luxury, something they could rarely afford, even once a year. He wanted to give Steve the world he deserved ever since he met him. Now he actually could. Out of all the things about the future, that - he will never forget.

Steve sat cross legged on the sofa, stance as straight as always, almost like he waited for permission to open the thing.

Bucky was flustered just the slightest, still standing up, now stepping near Steve and looking at him expectedly.

“Happy birthday, Stevie.” He said hoarsely, a sign of upcoming tears he tried his hardest to fight.

Steve looked up to the towering frame above him, after so many years he could recognize every single crack and hitch in Bucky’s voice.

“C’mere.” Steve grabbed the back of his thigh, pulling him over to his lap.

Bucky gladly complied, once adjusted on the comfiest sit in the world, he grabbed Steve’s face, attaching their lips.

“It’s so much.” Steve whispered, unwrapping with that neat politeness his mother thought him.

“Nothin’ is too much for you.” Bucky whispered back, squeezing Steve’s bicep reassuringly.

Steve placed the large box on Bucky’s lap, caressing his thighs with every movement he made, lingering his touch when he removed the wrapping paper from the bottom of it.

Bucky huffed but didn’t say anything, the knots inside his stomach stretching out and restraining him from speaking. Anticipation overcoming his primal instinct to tease Steve back.

Steve’s breath hitched when he opened the simple box. He could feel that lump of air stuck in the middle of his throat, unable to move up or down, shocked just as he was because he knew exactly what these were.

He stared at the leather journals for so long Bucky thought he did something wrong. And when Bucky got nervous, he started talking.

“I thought…well, I thought I should try and get them back.” He scratched the back of his head, “didn’t even read ‘em again. Didn’t want to because I was afraid I’d read something there that would make me regret givin’ them to you.”

The pain in Bucky’s voice must’ve woken up Steve from his trance. He picked the first notebook from the top of the stash. Opening a random marked page slowly, only to meet his own face looking at him back. Just like all those years ago.

“You’re probably not gonna like most of what you read in there. But there are some good memories, too. It’s mostly a mess and there are too many and I’m pretty sure there are solid three pages of me rambling about your eyes but, it’s me.” He took a deep breath, “it’s another part of me whether I like it or not. And I want you to know it.”

“Is it double sided?” Steve spoke after a long moment.

“What?”

“The pages about my eyes. Are they double sided?”

Bucky begrudgingly lost the battle against his tears. Barking in relief as his whole body started to shake.

Steve laid down the journal to his right and wrapped his arms around the man on his lap.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I love it. It’s the most beautiful gift I was ever given. Thank you, sweetheart. Thank you.” He held him firmly, not quite knowing what to do but to stay like they were.

“It’s not everything.” Bucky snuffled and raised his head from Steve’s neck. It wasn’t stained with tears, and somehow, it was worse, “there’s more.”

“Oh god, Buck. You really shouldn’t ha-“

“It’s at the bottom of the box.” Bucky shuffled closer, as to watch even closely Steve does open it.

He looked under the three additional journals that were inside, all completely identical, and found a cardboard box. Way smaller, and long. Like one you’d put jewelry in it.

“Buck…”

“Go ahead.”

Steve opened the cover gently, looking at another fragment from his past. Their past.

“I thought they were at the museum! How did you get them?”

“Turn it over.” Bucky smiled sadly.

“Holy shit.”

“The museum had a replica, I think. A fake. These are our real tags. And they’re yours. Oh and, open them.”

Somehow, Bucky had their dog tags connected together and the edges, what ultimately had turned them into a locket.

Steve unlocked it carefully, revealing a picture of the two of them. It was taken recently, for sure. Bucky’s hair was long like it was now, and he was smiling wide. His own face was beardless, also twisted with a smile. The breathtaking landscape of Wakanda was in display behind them, arms wrapped around each other’s waists.

“I thought, with all the things from the past, you could use something from now.”

“Does that make me your girl now, serge?” Steve smirked and closed the necklace, putting it on, the hint of tears in his eyes as well.

“I sure hope not,” Bucky grinned mischievously, hoisting himself up from Steve’s lap and kneeling between his legs, “‘cause then I wouldn’t be able to suck your dick.”

Steve swallowed, intensely watching Bucky unzipping his pants and pulling them down along with his boxers, revealing his already hardening cock. He wrapped his left hand around the base, and Steve, responsive as always, twitched at the new sensation, breath rugged as he was stroked, slowly.

Steve eyes shot open when he felt Bucky’s tongue on his tip, joining his hand on working him wet and filthy. He groaned and leaned back, trying to get more of himself into Bucky’s mouth.

“Relax, baby. I’m gonna make you feel good.”

Steve didn’t question it for a second, relaxing his shoulders but then tensing up again as Bucky licked the side of his cock, down from his balls and up to his tip again - tracing strips of spit all over Steve’s impressive length.

“Shit, Bucky.” He moaned, hands trailing down to the brunet’s hair and weaving through it, slightly pushing him forward.

Bucky was always a tease, even today he couldn’t help it. But he got the hint, lovingly kissing Steve’s underside and fitting half of him inside his mouth.

He started to work on Steve’s cock, up and down, swirling his tongue around the sensitive skin. The wet sounds his mouth created in sync with his movements made everything feel even dirtier.

“Just like that Buck, yeah, just like that.” Steve sighed with pleasure, pushing Bucky’s head a little bit farther up. His cock hitting the back of Bucky’s throat.

Bucky hollowed his cheeks, staying completely still beside swallowing, creating the vacuum sensation he knew Steve loved, drawing salty precum from him.

Steve let a delicious, desperate sound as Bucky released the cock from his mouth with a loud pop, grazing his teeth on a particular thick, visible vain on the way out.

“Fuck, Bucky.” His moans went straight to Bucky’s own hardening cock, getting rather uncomfortable trapped inside his jeans. He gripped at Steve’s strong thigh with his right palm and massaged the inner part, composing himself.

Steve grunts were getting louder. He clutched the couch and inhaled sharply; Bucky’s mouth never seizing to work wonders on him, and he was close, he was so close.

He moved his bare foot to caress Bucky through his trousers, giving him at least some of the relief he knew he needed.

Bucky hummed on his cock, exhaling a rugged hot breath from deep inside his throat, and Steve was done for.

He came with a string of curses, a mouth as dirty as a soldier’s, shooting load after load of warm cum into Bucky’s willing mouth.

Even then he didn’t stop sucking. Still working on milking the birthday boy out of every drop and every whine he had. Only to ruin him all the same minutes later.

“My ears,” Steve breathed heavily, chuckling at Bucky’s stained beard, “are fucking ringing.”

At least it’s not from fireworks. Bucky thought.

“Oh, you think we’re done yet?” He cocked an eyebrow, shoving that thought far away and taking off his clothes quicker than Steve could blink. His shirt was off by the next second as well - leaving them both completely naked, raw.

“Mornin’ birthday boy.” Bucky hummed, covering every inch of his face with kisses, gradually leaving a trail of sloppy pecks down his neck, and collarbone. He was about to get even farther under the blanket before Steve stopped him.

His eyes blindingly bright, one long finger tilted his chin up.

“Am I going to get another one of your famous blowjobs?”

Bucky smirked, “oh, so they’re famous now. Why? Who told you about them?”

“I dunno. About ten, twenty guys.”

“Now that’s a relief!” Bucky let out a loud phew, “‘cause I stopped counting at the low hundreds.”

Steve shoved his shoulder, then guided him back up to capture his lips in a kiss, “you’re a jerk, you know that?”

Bucky nodded in agreement, laughing into Steve’s mouth.

#Steve Rogers #captain america #Bucky Barnes #the winter soldier #steve x bucky #stevebucky #stucky #steve rogers x bucky barnes #steve rogers smut #bucky barnes smut #stucky smut #i write

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the-lupine-sojourner · 5 years

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Chestnutfest 2k19 Day 6: Matching Outfits/Confession

For this one, I went with ‘matching outfits’ and had 18 match Krillan because I don’t see Krillan wearing any of 18′s outfits lol.

Anyway, I hope I did this scenario justice and kept the characters in-character. I am trying to portray them well in these stories.

Once more, we all owe @chestnutisland a huge thanks for this marvelous event, and Here’s the Link to the info post. :)

Now, I do reference yesterday’s fanfiction for the prompt ‘Birthday’ fairly briefly.

For those who haven’t read it, all you need to know is 18 made a chocolate cake and used buttercream frosting. Krillan also flicked a little at 18 as a bit of a practical joke. I reference that here.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this story!

God Bless and Good Day!

~The Lupine Sojourner

18 was never one to be sentimental, but this felt different.

After all, it was their five-year wedding anniversary. She was allowed a bit of emotion, right?

She looks in the mirror, smiling to herself. It was a perfectly recreated version of Krillan’s martial arts gi, made to fit 18 as well as it fit Krillan.

Krillan had no idea she’d gotten this outfit made, and she was hoping he’d like it.

Krillan had recently gotten back into training again, even installing a home gym despite 18 thinking it might not be the best idea. She didn’t see the value in spending all that money on exercise equipment but gave up arguing when she saw how important it was to her husband.

18 loved Krillan but didn’t always know how to express that love and affection.

She had a feeling that this was a fantastic idea.

She also made a chocolate cake, smiling at the memories, and liberally applied a premade tin of buttercream frosting onto the cake, being sure to leave a decent amount in the tin.

“You making a cake, Mommy?” Marron asks, waddling into the kitchen. 18 puts the knife down and smiles.

“Yes, Marron. Daddy and I got married five years ago.” Marron’s eyes go wide. She was still learning about numbers and words, so 18 liked to talk as normally as she could to her daughter, explaining things as clearly as possible. “So Mommy wants to celebrate with Daddy.” Marron frowns.

“What does ‘ce-re-blate’ mean, Mommy?” 18 chuckles.

“Cel-le-brate.” She corrects gently. “It means I want to help Daddy make today special, make Daddy feel happy.”

“Is that why you’re wearing Daddy’s clothes?” Marron asks. 18 smiles, her cheeks heating up a little.

“Yes, Marron.” She replies. “I tihnk it’ll help us celebrate and make Daddy happy.” Marron beams.

“I wanna cereblate with you, Mommy!”

“Celebrate, honey.” 18 corrects again, smiling at her daughter. “And of course you can help.”

“Yay!” Marron cheers. 18 lets her grab some sprinkles she’d instinctively grabbed to add to the cake.

“Now put them over the whole top of the cake, Marron.” 18 instructs. Marron does, not very evenly, so 18 does what she can to correct it and adds more to the top, evening the cover of sprinkles. 18 was proud of her work, and even let herself enjoy throwing the remaining sprinkles on the sides to completely cover the cake.

Just when the pair were getting silly, throwing the sprinkle at each other rather than the cake, they hear the door open.

“And what’s all this, girls?” Krillan asks, amused, as he sets his bag down. He had a job as a manager at a local store. It paid enough that they could get by and if he could, he’d win some money at festivals and other small tasks when he could. He biked there and back to keep up fitness even when he wasn’t home. 18 walks over, brushing a few sprinkles off her clothes and her face.

“We were putting sprinkles on the cake.” She explains, still smiling. He laughs.

“I see.” He kisses 18 soundly. “I appreciate it, honey. Not to mention the outfit.” He adds, getting a better look at 18’s outfit. Marron comes running over before 18 can reply.

“Daddy, daddy, we’re cel-le-blating!” She squeals, trying hard to pronounce it right. 18 sighs as Krillan scoops his daughter up, laughing.

“Is that so?”

“Yes. We made the cake to celebrate our anniversary.” 18 explains, chuckling. “I was trying to teach Marron some new words. She hasn’t quite gotten it yet. And I thought the outfit was a good idea.”

“Gotcha. Well, how about we have dinner and then have a slice of that cake?” Krillan suggests, tickling little Marron as he talks. 18 rescues her daughter moments later and chuckles as she walks back into the kitchen.

“Good idea. I’ll see what we have.”

=#=#=#=#=

All too soon, Krillan and 18 were left alone in the living room.

“Don’t think I didn’t catch what you did with the cake and the choice of frosting, babe.” Krillan muses, smirking. “And the outfit. That was a nice touch.” 18 huffs.

“I wasn’t exactly hiding it. And of course the gi was a good idea. It was my idea.” She replies, trying to make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal and she wasn’t flustered. But she was. He always managed, somehow, to make her feel flustered and embarrassed like a schoolgirl.

And he knew the effect he had on her. He knew and kept doing it. He then reveals the can of leftover frosting behind him, grabbing it. Before 18 can protest, he gets a bit on his finger and flicks it playfully at her cheek. “Gotcha!” He cheers, laughing. Luckily, Marron was a heavy sleeper.

“Krillan!” 18 protests. Krillan grabs her hands, leans over her, and kisses the icing off her cheek all in one motion. This time, Krillan made sure to stay there for a lingering moment, allowing himself to revel in the noticeable warmth of her blush under his lips. He drew back. He laughs as 18 pouts up at him, gently tugging her hands out of his grips. “You jerk.” She grumbles, pretending to be upset.

“Can’t I enjoy a quiet evening with my wife?” He asks innocently. 18 tries to keep up the facade but ends up laughing. She sits up, allowing Krillan to stay on her lap.

“We can do that without smearing icing all over our faces.” She replies. Krillan settles against her, humming contentedly.

“Okay okay. Happy anniversary, 18.”

“Happy anniversary, Krillan.”

#chestnutfest #chestnutfest 2k19 #fanfiction #Krillan #Android 18 #Krillan/Android 18 #Marron

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imagine-loki · 5 years

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Giftless

TITLE: Giftless CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 20/50

AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE:

Imagine that you are Stark’s niece and you secretly share a strong relationship with Loki since he entered the crew. One day you get hurt so bad during a mission that you are about to die. Loki knows a spell that will save you and share his immortality with you but you and he will be linked forever sharing thoughts, pain, emotions…

RATING: T NOTES/WARNINGS: Underage reader (no sex!!) Also on AO3 click here

“Y/N KATHRYN STARK!” you heard your named bellowed the next morning. You and Loki were sitting on your couch in the common room minding your own business and actually not causing trouble. It was an impressively quiet morning around the tower. Until Tony started bellowing anyway.

You looked up from your laptop, on which you were supposed to be writing an essay that was due Monday, but instead you were posting the pictures of yourself and Loki from yesterday on social media. Loki had taken a bunch of pictures yesterday, so the upload was taking awhile, but that couldn’t have anything to do with Tony’s anger. You quickly thought over everything you had done recently, but couldn’t think of anything you’d done that would upset Tony. At least not that much.

“What’s wrong, Uncle Tony?” you asked, really having no idea this time why he was so pissed.

He glared at you as if you should know why he was angry. “WHY ARE YOU ON THE NEWS?” he demanded, still roaring.

You just stared at him, shocked. You weren’t concerned over his roaring or anger, especially not after he’d accidentally thrown you into a wall. He wasn’t going to risk your safety again anytime soon after that.

“I’m on the news?” you asked dumbly. That was the only reaction you could think of to that accusation. You hadn’t done anything worthy of getting on the news for.

Tony grabbed the remote and smashed buttons until the local news came on. You stared at it in shock. They were showing images and a short clip of you and Loki on your date yesterday.

Oops.

You knew you were a celebrity, but you forgot that led to being on TV on occasion.

“WHY IS HE KISSING YOU ON TV?” Tony roared, as they showed the image of you kissing in front of all the fangirls. You blushed and looked away from him. “WHY THE HELL IS HE KISSING YOU AT ALL?”

You rolled your eyes at that. Even Tony couldn’t be that oblivious. “He’s my boyfriend. Kisses do kind of come with the territory,” you replied with snark and sarcasm in your voice. It wasn’t your fault your dumb uncle hadn’t realized that you and Loki were officially an item.

The news reporter drew your attention as he was talking about how local celebrity niece of the infamous Ironman, appeared to now be dating Tom Hiddleston, famous actor who played the character Loki in all of the Avengers movies. “Their info is wrong anyway. Someone will rectify it eventually,” you shrugged. You weren’t concerned. Hiddleston’s publicity team wouldn’t let the mistake go on for long. “Calm down, Uncle Tony. It’ll blow over in a few days. Go do something heroic and it’ll go away faster. I’m not nearly as interesting as you are,” you reminded him and the rest of the supers in the room laughed and cheered in general agreement that they’d take down a bunch of villains so you’d be out of the news again sooner. You couldn’t help laughing at them. The younger supers were always so enthusiastic.

You were recognizable especially since Ironman and all of the Avengers were so famous, even the younger supers who lived here after magic exploded across the world. They did save the world, and especially New York, all the time. Since Tony was one of the few supers whose secret identify was compromised, you ended up being a topic of celebrity gossip too. It was an occupational hazard of being a Stark. You were usually boring, so you didn’t end up in the news often, but it happened on occasion, especially when there wasn’t much news. Your hair was a hindrance since it was so distinctively colored, which is why you had tried dying it last year. That hadn’t ended well.

You went back to work on your laptop, ignoring Tony’s spluttering. He growled about it awhile longer, but the story went away quickly when the press was notified that the person you were kissing was in fact not Tom Hiddleston. Duh. Tom didn’t have Loki’s hair unless he was filming. The news people claimed they were going to try to find out who the mysterious Tom Hiddleston look-alike was, and the story blew over from there.

Tony finally calmed down, and even seemed to accept that you were dating Loki, though he didn’t seem to like it. You figured it was just because he was your uncle and legal guardian.

The rest of the week was fairly quiet. You went to school with Loki every day. He sent you notes during classes all day and was generally adorable. You had combat training every day, and you were getting better with the dagger as well as with hand-to-hand fighting. Loki was even teaching you how to speak with him telepathically. It wasn’t perfect, since you were a human without magic, but he taught you meditation and how to order your mind. He could speak to you with his own telepathy and if you thought about your response in a focused manner, he could hear the reply. He taught you how to put up boundaries on thoughts and memories you didn’t want him to overhear and you trusted absolutely that he wouldn’t invade your privacy. You didn’t master it in a week, or course, it would always be a work in process, since you didn’t have powers, but you made headway. It made it a lot easier to talk to him when he was guarding you.

Tony took you out for breakfast on the morning of your birthday. He took you to the same restaurant every year, which was adorable and showed he cared. You also went to the arcade and the indoor amusement park in the mall, which was also tradition. You had a feeling Loki was sad that he couldn’t spend the entire day with you, but he was glad you were enjoying the day with your uncle. He would see you that evening for your party.

Your birthday was also one of the days each year that you went to the cemetery to visit your parents. You brought flowers to their grave and told them everything you had been up to since the last time you had been to visit. Tony stood nearby, but out of earshot. This was another tradition. You couldn’t actually talk to your parents anymore, or get advice from them, but you liked thinking that they were watching over you, and it made you feel better to talk to their graves, talk to them like they could hear and answer. So you told them all about Loki and how much fun you were having. You told your mom how you had chosen to date your best friend, just like she always said you should. You told your dad how he was a perfect gentleman and how he would be able to find no fault in Loki’s behavior towards you. You told them both that you were careful, even living with the supers, and how much you loved them and you would try to come visit them again soon. You promised to bring Loki to come meet them, so they could interrogate him for themselves.

With bittersweet tears, you went to Tony’s spot. He wrapped you in a hug. “You ok, kid?” he asked as he hugged you too tightly. This was hard for him too, though he held it together better for your sake.

You nodded against his chest. Tony wasn’t big on hugs, but he made an exception for you. Especially today.

“I just miss them,” you told him, rubbing the tears from your eyes. He kissed the top of your head.

“I know. I do too,” he held you for another minute. “Do you mind if you tell them goodbye?” he asked. You shook your head and waited for him to say a few words to their graves. He didn’t talk to them like you did, but he always said something before you left. Your dad was his brother after all, you weren’t surprised he missed them too.

You felt phantom arms wrap around you while you watched Tony. The arms were cool, just like their owner. You weren’t surprised he had found out what you were up to. “Thank you, Loki,” you whispered, knowing his touch even when he wasn’t really there. “I’m ok. I’ll see you soon.” He was too far to talk to you telepathically safely, apparently he risked hurting you if he used to much power to make the connection, so he didn’t do it unless you were in fairly close proximity already.

Tony took you for ice cream to try make you smile again before you went back to the tower to spend the evening with your super family.

Loki hugged you the second you walked through the door of the tower. “Are you ok?” he asked, concerned. “You were crying,” he whispered in your ear. He didn’t usually spy, but he must’ve felt your emotions leak through.

“We went to visit my parents,” you explained softly. He nodded his understanding and pressed a kiss to your hair, comforting you.

Almost immediately afterwards, the festivities began. There was a huge sign reading “Happy 18th Birthday!” And stupid party hats all around. There was cake, pizza, and even more ice cream. All of the supers stopped by to wish you a happy birthday and add their donations to the huge pile of presents in front of you. You opened them to find mostly books, which you thanked everyone for. Though Nat got you a new taser, Clint decided you needed a bow and arrow set that you’d never use, Bruce got you some scary book about science he insisted helped him through med school. The original Avengers tried their best, even though you rarely saw them.

The last present came from Loki. The tiny familiar teal box appeared in his hand. You had seen your dad give your mom gifts in those boxes all the time growing up. There was only one store in the universe you knew of that used that particular shade of blue in their gift wrapping. And no way that Loki should have been able to afford anything from there. “Happy birthday, darling,” he told you.

You took the box from him, surprised. “Thank you,” you replied automatically. You opened the box to find a gorgeous silver bracelet with black and green gems in it. There was also a gift receipt in the box, showing that Loki had actually bought the bracelet instead of conjuring it. You wouldn’t have minded if he conjured it, but you knew it was extra special to him for actually buying it. He had gone and done the thing the Midgardian way. “It’s gorgeous,” you told him as you pulled the bracelet out of the box and clasped it around your wrist. “I love it!” you jumped up and hugged him, wrapping your arms tightly around his neck. “And I love you,” you whispered in his ear. You hadn’t been brave enough to say the words until then.

“You are most welcome, my darling,” he replied. You kissed him deeply to catcalls from your family.

“Come on! Time for movies!” one of the teens called. You relocated the party to the common room where the movie was already set up.

“Sorry,” you told Loki. “It’s tradition. Superhero Musical followed by the first Avengers movie.” He smiled.

“That is nothing to be sorry for. They love you, my dear, and want to spend time with you, as do I,” you grinned and sat on the loveseat with Loki, in the place of honor directly in front of the TV. You sang your way through the musical with your friends and family around you. Loki even tried to join in for the duet, but he hadn’t memorized all of the words yet. You applauded him for trying, though.

Part of the way through the Avengers movie, Wanda, who had the remote, paused the movie and looked directly at Loki. The heads of everyone else turned to him as well. “Why are they staring at me?” Loki asked you.

You erupted into laughter. “They want you to say the line,” you explained. You weren’t surprised this was happening, especially after the news story everyone saw confusing him for the actor in the movie.

“Say the line!” the supers called. “Say the line! Say the line! Say the line!” the words became a chant. You laughed even harder.

“They’re not going to stop until you say the line,” you told Loki over the chanting. He sighed and rolled his eyes. With his put-upon expression he held up a hand to quiet the chant. The room fell silent immediately.

“I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose,” he intoned in the most dull dry monotone possible. The crowd groaned at him and started throwing popcorn and other small harmless object at him. You shrieked and held your arms up in front of you to deflect the projectiles. Not everyone had good aim and didn’t care if they hit you in collateral damage.

“Do it right!” they complained.

He sighed again, but you saw the glint in his eyes. He was pleased and enjoying himself. He held up his hand again. He stood, and then stepped up onto the coffee table. In the same movement, his clothing changed to an exact replica of the character’s including the golden horned helmet.

“I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose. Kneel before me,” he hesitated for a moment. “I said KNEEL!” he bellowed. You burst out laughing at the cheers of the crowd. A few of them actually knelt, while the rest applauded his rendition. Loki rejoined you on the couch, not bothering to change his clothes back to normal. You laughed and leaned over to give him a kiss.

After the movie, Loki walked you up to your suite. After you’d hugged your friends and your uncle one last time and thanked them all for a wonderful birthday. “I have one other gift for you, darling. Though I did not wish to give it to you in front of the others,” Loki told you when you were safely away from the others.

“Loki, you shouldn’t have,” you chided him. He had already done enough by getting you the bracelet. You knew it couldn’t have been cheap, not when it came from that jewelry store.

He moved his hands and a box appeared in them, despite your protests. He wasn’t going to give up no matter what you did, so you took the box and opened it to find a leather dagger sheath. An empty leather dagger sheath. That seemed like a strange gift and you raised an eyebrow at Loki when you looked up at him.

“It is enchanted,” he explained. “Anytime you reach for a dagger from it, one will be there. You need never be without a weapon again,” he added.

“Thank you. That’s amazing!” you told him. You tried it, attempting to pull a dagger from the empty sheath. One appeared and you were able to pull it from the sheath. You wondered how much work had gone in to making such a thing, but you had a feeling you would never find out. That didn’t make it any less fantastic.

You felt a lot safer knowing you’d always have a weapon.

“Did you have a good birthday?” he asked you once you were curled up on the couch in your sittingroom together. You nodded.

“It was perfect,” you replied.

You got to spend the last moments of the day enjoying kisses from your boyfriend.

#Loki #Lover #Submitted fic #submission #giftless #chapter 20 #Nekoamamori

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berlinaura · 4 years

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Last spring in Finland I attended a course “German for those who are going to have an exchange year”. They told us about the stages which one usually goes through during an exchange. As far as I remember, the stages were roughly somewhat like this: firstly one views everything and everyone better than in their home country and everything is super interesting and fun. This basically means that the everyday life hasn’t kicked in yet. The next one is getting annoyed at everything and everybody. Comparing the country to your home country and maybe even feeling like it would have been a better idea to just stay home. After this comes the stage of adaptation where one gets used to customs and stops comparing everything to one’s home country. Last phase is coming back to home country and seeing it in a new way. And of course telling stories of the exchange year to friends and family until they are bored to death.

I remember thinking two things when we were taught about this. Firstly, who the hell would go through a phase of hating the country they go to? It seemed so irrational. The second thing was “Now that I’ve heard about this stuff, I can rise above it and use my brain and self-knowledge to avoid it. Yeah... As you might guess, it did not happen. I admit, during last few weeks I have spend a huge amount of my time wallowing in “WHY DO YOU DO THIS LIKE THIS” “Why can’t you do it in the right way” “What the hell is wrong with Germans!”. Mostly my frustrations have been related to my university. The mornings I am usually in a good mood. I drink my coffee, get ready (I have started to care more about what I wear and how I look like now that I am in Berlin hahaha) and go to school. All in all it takes me around 45 minutes to get from my home to university which includes walking, tram and S-Bahn. The way there and back are usually my favorite bits of the day. I enjoy watching people, traveling through Berlin in S-Bahn and listening to music. On the way back from university the people in public transport are usually going to pubs or parties so it’s nice to see happy and lively faces. I try not to overwhelm myself with school even though I feel like I need to be constantly studying to keep up. The thing is, even though the courses seem a bit challenging, partly because I am not used to academic English and partly because I am studying in a new study field, I find all of them interesting and genuinely think they are useful. I think I will shortly find a balance because now I feel super drained after every day and still feel like I have the “responsibility” to do fun things and go to places whenever I am not studying. It’s like a freshman year all over again.

So, what has happened after the last post? Quite a lot. I was on a Wanderlust trip to Dresden in October. We also visited a famous bridge (Bastei) in Saxony. The views and the scenery were incredible! Dresden was also very cozy and historical city. It was a lot smaller than I expected. We only had a few hours to browse through the city but we could easily reach the most important sights by just walking. On the bus we opened bottles of wines we got from Lidl and played some car games with the people who sat around me. I suggested searching “questions to get to know each other” so on the few hour way back we just simply shared our biggest secrets and fears as if we had been knowing for a long time. The french boy sitting in front of me got interested as I mentioned we are throwing a sitting here, so he wanted to help. We formed a committee of 5 people for a sittning, planned it in a cafe and contacted international office. Their response was rather dry and due to International office organizing a similar event in December, we decided to postpone the sittning and start planning it again in January.

Wanderlust trip was good because everything was already planned and sorted out for us. We just had to be on time to catch the bus. I already booked another wanderlust trip to Magdeburg in December. They have a Christmas market there. I also want to see the city that was my other option to have an exchange year in. By the way, I am super glad I ended up choosing Berlin over Magdeburg.

The next day me, the Austrian girl who sat next to me on the bus and her friend went to see a light show in the city centre. There is this light festival held in Berlin where they project things onto famous buildings and monuments. The one projected on Brandenburg gate left me speechless. They projected things like collapsing of the wall, JFK’s speech and techno culture of today’s Berlin.

One Friday evening my friend, my roommate and her friends decided to go to a burlesque show. The bar was super fancy as was the show. I just couldn’t get my eyes of the woman who performed. She danced to a remix of Britney Spears’ Toxic so naturally I had to ask her after the show if she liked Britney Spears. She said they only picked it because they needed something that people would recognize but at the same time something that isn’t the actual song. :( She was amazing tho.

In October I also went to see Prinz Pi live at Columbiahalle. I’ve never been to this venue before and it was so cozy! Man the concert just got better and better and I just had goosebumps for like half of the show. At the encore Prinz Pi said something in the lines of “You know.. The next place I go to.. You don’t want me to tell the audience that the audience of Berlin was dull? Go crazy then!” and I have never seen an audience getting so hyped during a song (”Gib dem Affen Zucker”). I got inspired of this so I already booked a ticket for Sido’s Christmas show in Columbiahalle. Actually I tried to go to his normal tour’s concert which is actually today, but I thought too long and it got sold out. People were asking 200€ per ticket (the original was around 45€) so I gave up. Then I decided to go to his christmas show but AGAIN thought too long because they are held in 20.-22.12. and I needed to sort out my flights to Finland first. But one day I decided to go to eventim’s page to see if someone was selling their ticket (they were, but overprized again) and I saw that there was one original ticket on sale even though it was sold out before. Someone had cancelled their ticket and some forces of the universe told me to refresh that page at a right moment. So now I have my ticket and just can not wait for it!

In the beginning of November I went to Prague to see my friend. The train ride was only 19 euros and I could easily do my homework and watch Kotikatu there. Priorities were sorted out! I navigated to Revnice where we went to a local brewery and shared things about our lives. The beer was the best beer I have ever had in my life which is sad because I literally can’t get it anywhere else than from there. Damn brewery! The next day we played board games, ate well and went swimming. My friend introduced me to a new thing: putting honey in a coffee. At first I doomed the though: ew, who the hell does that? Honey belongs to tea, not coffee. Then I tasted it and... it was delicious. It is yet to discover if it because of the honey or their super fancy coffee maker. Then we went to the brewery again and played a Czech card game called “bang”. I think I got the gist of it and even won the game once. On our last day we were just sightseeing and went to a concert together. The songs were translated to me and for a moment I felt super ambitious to learn Czech. I don’t want to miss out on funny songs just because I don’t know the language!

Last weekend there was a celebration in Berlin due to it being 30 years from the fall of Berlin wall. It was a bit similar to the light festival. We were out with friends two nights in a row and found a super cute place in Prenzlauer berg: Houdini. They have Indian food and cheap cocktails. We continued the evening to this living room looking place that was connected to a Späti. The Späti-drinking culture is something that is missing from Finland. Here Spätis are these small shops that mostly sell drinks (beer, soda, water, cider and so on) and candy.They are open late which is actually where the name Späti (Spätkauf = late shopping) comes from. There are often benches and tables where people can enjoy their drinks which are cheaper than in normal pubs of course. The Späti man asks if the beer is to be enjoyed in the living room and adds a small fee if it is. And there’s a bottle opener on the counter. Everything is sorted out so in my opinion Späti-drinking is a good way to go out and get drunk with small budget.

Yesterday we had an excursion with my German class. We went to Berlinische Galerie which is a museum of contemporary art. They had an exhibition of Bauhaus, the art/design/architecture Academy in pre-WWII Germany that affected modern design and architecture. We were walking around and filling up a worksheet the teacher gave us. I enjoyed it so much and everything seemed so pleasing to the eye.

Afterwards we went to a open stage event which was basically a talent show. There were 10 acts of which everyone had 10 minutes to convince the audience who voted for a winner. We also had beer and wine counter there naturally. My favorite was this one dude in tight ballet outfit who preformed a circus act which was funny and impressive at he same time. His background music was swan lake but the dude sang along in a terrible way which made it less serious. Then he juggled with 6 balls and every time he messed up, he cried out in a dramatic way. Then at the end of the show he turned his back to the audience and we could see he was digging something from his crotch and then he turned around and swiped of sweat from his face with a pile of tissues he had as a crotch-filler the whole time. The tipsy audience laughed so much that the winner was pretty much clear at that point. The dude who went after him performed a horrible keyboard improvisation and his face screamed “ I am sorry to be here, I just want to flee!” hahahahah. The act that came second was funny as well, they performed “Let it go” but with a German translation, the google translate type of translation. Conclusion is: the audience wants to laugh at talent shows, not see real talent.

On top of all the events I have also been attending the hiphop dance class I think I told about. The teacher is super funny (and hot :D) and the dancing is so intensive and so much fun! I look terrible, though but it’s not the main point here. I might continue this hobby when I get back to Finland.

Now I have to start packing my things because I am going to Szczechin (Poland). I heard it is a city where Berliners go to shop because it is cheaper there. I feel like this trip can be either a massive success or a terrible flop. Time shows...

#erasmus #exchange year #berlin

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Gunman in Dayton Had History of Threatening Women, Former Friends Say https://nyti.ms/2T7A0DV

Gunman in Dayton Had History of Threatening Women, Former Friends Say

By Campbell Robertson, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Timothy Williams | Published Aug. 5, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 6, 2019 |

DAYTON, Ohio — The police on Monday were still trying to determine what motivated a gunman in Dayton to kill his sister and eight others, but people who grew up with him were conducting a different kind of investigation, looking back for any signs that might have foreshadowed his explosion of violence.

For more than a few, and for women in particular, these signs were not hard to find.

“I don’t want to say I saw it coming,” said Mika Carpenter, 24, who met the gunman, Connor Betts, 24, at a summer camp when they were both 13. “But if it was going to be anybody it was going to be him.”

Like others who knew Mr. Betts as a teenager, Ms. Carpenter recalled his dark and often violent jokes, including riffs about “bodily harm” that led many to keep their distance.

“He was kind of hateful to women because they didn’t want to date him,” she said. Still, she became friends with him because, she said, she saw that he had a good side.

Mr. Betts often expressed concerns to her about having dark thoughts, she said.

“I remember specifically him talking about being scared of the thoughts that he had, being scared that he had violent thoughts,” said Ms. Carpenter, who cut off contact with him in 2013 after he lashed out at her during an online chat. “He knew it wasn’t normal.”

The police in Dayton were quick to caution on Monday that much about the shooting early Sunday morning was still unknown. There was still no clear motive, nor an understanding of how three people — Mr. Betts, his sister and a mutual friend — all went out together and one ended up shooting the other two. The friend, who has not been named by the police, was shot in his lower torso but survived; the sister, Megan Betts, 22, was killed.

“It seems to just defy believability that he would shoot his own sister,” said Dayton’s police chief, Richard Biehl, at a news briefing on Monday morning. “But it’s also hard to believe he didn’t recognize that was his sister, so we just don’t know.”

On Saturday night, the three drove together to the Oregon District, a stretch of bars and clubs that is usually crowded on weekends. They separated at one point but remained in touch, the chief said. The police have no indication that the sister or mutual friend knew about the weapons Mr. Betts would later use in the shooting.

Mr. Betts fatally shot one person in an alleyway before turning his fire on his sister and their friend, the police have said. Nine people were killed and at least 27 others were wounded, including 14 who were shot. Others had cuts and injuries from the stampede of fleeing people.

The police said on Monday that Mr. Betts had purchased an AR-style pistol online from Texas, but had modified the gun with a pistol brace to improve stability. He also had a drum magazine that could hold 100 rounds, the police said.

Mr. Betts had up to 250 rounds of ammunition and fired at least 41 shots, Chief Biehl said. Six officers fired a total of 65 rounds at the gunman, killing him as he tried to enter a bar, where many people had taken refuge when the shooting began.

“I ran, I got trampled, I lost my shoes,” said Jessica Westover, 23, who was among the hundreds of people who gathered on Sunday night at a crowded vigil in the Oregon District. They mourned the dead and cheered the actions of emergency medical workers, but some also expressed anger over inaction on gun control.

When Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, stepped to the microphone to say a few words, some shouted “Do something!” and drowned out his remarks. A chant soon broke out: “What do we want? Gun control! When do we want it? Now!”

Mr. DeWine planned to hold a news conference on Tuesday morning to announce proposals to address gun violence and mental illness.

For many who grew up alongside Mr. Betts in the quiet Dayton suburbs, the shooting had summoned uneasy memories.

“He wanted to scare people, he really enjoyed it,” said Hannah Shows, who became friends with Mr. Betts when they were in the seventh grade. She recalled his talk of guns and gore, but chalked it up at the time to his being a 13-year-old boy.

But in ninth grade, Ms. Shows discovered she was named on a list that Mr. Betts had made of people in the school. The list threatened violence or sexual violence toward those who were on it, most of them girls, said Ben Seitz, 25, whose girlfriend at the time was also included.

Ms. Shows said she was never told the details about the threats, but the principal had asked her, “Is there any reason he would want to hurt you?”

Ms. Shows said she had assumed she was on the list because Mr. Betts had expressed interest in her and she turned him down. “After that, it turned into cold hatred the way he stared at me,” she said.

“People knew he was this way,” she said. “A lot of people could have helped, but no one did anything about it.”

Asked about the list from high school, Chief Biehl said that, even if the reports were true, he would be wary about making any connections.

“I’m a little bit reluctant, even if there’s such evidence, to interpret it 10 years later as somehow this is indicative of what happened yesterday,” he said.

At a brief talk with reporters later on Monday, the chief said he expected the investigation to be lengthy. Detectives were continuing to look at phones, computers and videos to understand what happened and why, though he added that there was no evidence that the shooting was a hate crime.

“I think there will be some familiar themes that will emerge from this investigation, so it will not be a surprise in some regard,” Chief Biehl said. “I think there are some unique aspects of it that we perhaps have not seen in other shootings.”

He declined to say what those unique aspects might be.

Here Are the Nine People Killed in Seconds in Dayton

The gunman’s victims ranged from a graduate student to a grandfather, a young mother to longtime friends.

By Farah Stockman and Adeel Hassan |

Published Aug. 5, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 6, 2019 |

Two were friends from work, enjoying a night on the town. One had recently given birth and was finally getting out of the house. Another had just gotten a new job at a place he loved.

The crowd outside the Ned Peppers bar in Dayton, Ohio, had much to celebrate on Saturday night and the small hours of Sunday morning. But in an instant, their festivities turned into deadly chaos as a gunman clad in black opened fire with a military-style rifle and a large-capacity magazine. Nine lives were cut down and 27 more people were injured in a matter of seconds before police officers shot and killed the gunman.

Those who died left behind at least eight children, and countless friends, co-workers, classmates and family members struggling to grasp how so much could be lost so senselessly. Here is what we have learned about each of them.

Megan Betts

Ms. Betts, 22, was the younger sister of the gunman, Connor Betts. She attended Wright State University, a commuter school in the Dayton area, where she studied earth sciences and was expected to graduate next year. The university posted a message on Facebook offering counseling services to students.

Ms. Betts was a graduate of Bellbrook High School, where she played in the marching band along with her brother. Another former member of the band, Alex Gerbic, recalled her as very outgoing and kind. “She was a very bubbly personality,” Mr. Gerbic said.

According to a résumé she posted on LinkedIn, Ms. Betts spent much of the summer in Montana working as a tour guide at the Missoula Smokejumper Visitor Center. Last summer, she supervised children’s water activities at an urban park, according to Trish Butler, director of marketing and community engagement for Five Rivers MetroParks in Dayton. She also worked at Bed Bath & Beyond and Pier One.

Monica Brickhouse

Local media outlets reported that Ms. Brickhouse, 39, grew up in Springfield, about 20 miles from Dayton. She lived in Virginia Beach for a time, where she worked for Anthem, the health insurance company, according to WAVY, a television station in Portsmouth, Va. The station reported that Ms. Brickhouse had recently transferred to Dayton to work for Anthem from home.

At the time of the shooting, Ms. Brickhouse was out with a friend and co-worker, Beatrice Warren-Curtis, who also was killed. Anthem’s chief executive, Gail Boudreaux, sent a memo to the company’s employees describing the two women as dear friends “known for their positive energy,” according to the TV station.

A Facebook user, Brittany Hart, posted on Sunday that she had been close with both women and was shocked at their loss. In her post, Ms. Hart remembered Ms. Brickhouse as “like another aunt to me” and someone “I always wanted to tag along with.”

Thomas J. McNichols

Mr. McNichols, also known as Teejay, was 25. He was the father of two girls and two boys, and was living with his aunt in the Westwood neighborhood of Dayton.

“He loved to have fun, and every time I seen him, he was either laughing or smiling,” said Jevin Lamar, a cousin of Mr. McNichols who grew up in Dayton and has since moved to Los Angeles. “At family events, he was playing kickball. He was a great father, a great brother. He was a protector. He protected his family. He protected his sisters. He just was just happy.”

Lois L. Oglesby

Ms. Oglesby, 27, was the mother of a 6-year-old daughter and a newborn girl, according to a message posted by the Miami Valley Community Action partnership, where Ms. Oglesby’s mother has worked for almost 23 years. The agency is collecting funds for funeral costs as well as the long-term care of Ms. Oglesby’s two children.

According to The Dayton Daily News, she worked at a day care center, and grew up attending church and going to drill team. She was a former student at Sinclair Community College.

Nicholas P. Cumer

Mr. Cumer, 25, had just five more days to go in his internship at Maple Tree Cancer Alliance in Dayton, the final requirement for his master’s degree in exercise physiology from St. Francis University in Pennsylvania. Then he planned to take a permanent position that Maple Tree had offered him.

“He really wanted to spend the rest of his life working with cancer patients,” said Karen Wonders, Maple Tree’s executive director. “Most 25-year-olds don’t think that way.”

Two colleagues had just bought a house and were celebrating on Saturday, and they took Mr. Cumer along to show him the best his new home city had to offer. “If you’re going to go out in Dayton, that’s where you’re going to go,” Ms. Wonders said of the Oregon district, where the shooting took place. The two colleagues were injured in the shooting.

The Maple Tree Cancer Alliance guides patients through exercise sessions during their treatment, and Mr. Cumer, who had worked full time since May, was responsible for 20 patients.

“One of the things that stands out about Nick is that for every single one of his patients, he made them feel that they were the most important person in the world,” Ms. Wonders said. “That’s not something you can teach.”

Working with cancer patients, “we’re accustomed to heartbreak,” Ms. Wonders said of her staff. “We’ve lost some very special people — patients — to us this year. What caught people off guard is, now it’s one of our own. We’re the ones who are strong for everybody else. Now the tables are turned.”

Derrick R. Fudge

Mr. Fudge, 57, spent the last day of his life with his entire family — all 100 of them — at a cookout by a reservoir in Springfield.

“It was a wonderful opportunity for all of us — now it’s the best memory,” said Twyla Southall, his younger sister. “He was sitting at the table, laughing, eating and drinking.”

Mr. Fudge was with his son and 10-year-old granddaughter, whose house was devastated by a recent tornado in the area, Ms. Southall said. They had just repaired the home, and Mr. Fudge was looking forward to painting the girl’s room.

“We were actually celebrating an aunt’s victory over cancer,” Ms. Southall said on Monday after visiting a funeral home to make arrangements for a service on Aug. 10. “She’s not sick anymore, but it wasn’t her that we would have to worry about.”

Mr. Fudge, who grew up in Springfield with two sisters and three brothers, worked as a cook at several restaurants, Ms. Southall said. When he was a child, she recalled, he was hit by a train while playing, and lost three toes.

On Saturday night, he had gone out in Dayton with his son to celebrate a friend’s birthday. His son escaped without injury. “He loved life and he loved his family,” Ms. Southall said of her brother.

Beatrice N. Warren-Curtis

Ms. Warren-Curtis, 36, grew up in Wilmington, Del., and had moved to Virginia, where she worked in the Virginia Beach office of Anthem, the health insurance company. She was in Dayton visiting a co-worker and close friend, Monica Brickhouse, who also was killed in the shooting.

“She loved her family, especially her mom; she enjoyed traveling to watch her nephew play basketball and hanging out with her niece,” recalled her friend Lakisha Jarrett. “She loved to go to the football games to see her favorite team play, the Philadelphia Eagles.”

Ms. Jarrett said that she met Ms. Warren-Curtis, or Nikki, as her friends called her, in 2000 when they both worked at Coleman & Associates in Norfolk, Va.

“We instantly clicked,” Ms. Jarrett said. “She touched many lives with her presence. You were guaranteed a laugh or two, and maybe even three, if she was around. She was just full of life.”

Friends mourned her on Facebook as someone of strong religious faith who loved traveling. She posted photos of herself walking a beach in Cancún. When the film “Black Panther” came out, she posted that she would take children to see the film if their mothers could not afford tickets.

“Living life as He has designed for me to do!” she wrote. “I am who I am! Confident never cocky!”

Saeed Saleh

Saeed Saleh, 38, grew up in Eritrea and emigrated to Ohio about three years ago, according to Yahya Khamis, a leader of the Sudanese community in Dayton, which assists Eritrean immigrants, most of whom are recent arrivals. “Most of the Eritreans have been in Sudan,” Mr. Khamis said. “We understand each other. We speak the same language.”

Mr. Saleh lived in Dayton with his wife and a young daughter, while two other children live in Eritrea with his mother, Mr. Khamis said. Like many African immigrants, he said, Mr. Saleh held down several jobs, working at a warehouse and driving for a car service.

The Oregon district of Dayton, where the shooting took place, is a magnet for drivers looking for fares, and Mr. Khamis said he believed that was probably what Mr. Saleh was doing there on Saturday night when the gunfire broke out.

“He was a very good guy, he was very quiet,” Mr. Khamis said, adding that on Sunday, he had spent time with the family. “His wife was crying all day, and they had a lot of pictures with him and his daughter.”

Logan Turner

Logan Turner, 30, worked as a machinist operating computer-controlled tools at the Thaler Machine Company in Springboro, about 12 miles south of Dayton. After three years on the job, he had already gained a reputation as one of Thaler’s top employees, according to Greg Donson, the president of the company.

Mr. Turner was earning an associate degree at a vocational school and working as server at the Whiskey Barrel Saloon when Mr. Donson met and recruited him. Mr. Donson said Mr. Turner soon distinguished himself as an intelligent, hard worker with a good attitude.

“He was quickly working his way to the top,” Mr. Donson said. “A very positive person, with a big smile. Just a great guy.”

The governor of Ohio pushed for a ‘red flag’ law after the Dayton shooting.

(THIS IS NOT ENOUGH, BAN WEAPONS OF WAR, LARGE CAPACITY MAGAZINES AND UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS. ANYTHING LESS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH)

Two days after being drowned out by shouts of “Do something!” at a vigil for mass shooting victims in Dayton, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio announced proposals on Tuesday that he said could reduce such shootings and limit gun access for people with mental health problems.

Mr. DeWine proposed adopting a version of a “red flag” law, which would allow the authorities to take firearms from a person deemed by a court to be dangerous.

He also said he would ask the General Assembly to pass a law requiring background checks for all firearm sales in the state, with some exceptions, including gifts between family members.

Mr. DeWine, a Republican endorsed by the National Rifle Association, encountered an angry, grieving crowd Sunday evening in Dayton, where nine people were killed in an entertainment district by a gunman with a history of misogyny and violent threats. Mr. DeWine was delivering condolences when his speech was interrupted with chants of “Do something!” that made it impossible to hear the governor. Later, some in the crowd chanted “What do we want? Gun control! When do we want it? Now!”

Mr. DeWine, who took office in January, had previously spoken in support of red flag legislation, but the Republican-led Legislature never took up the proposal.

His latest ideas could face skepticism from both sides of the political divide: Democrats are unlikely to find the proposals sweeping enough, and Republicans lawmakers are often loath to consider any legislation that would curb gun rights.

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phroyd · 5 years

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We lost one of the Great Film Makers yesterday. Her soul will live on In Cinema! Rest In Peace, Agnes! - Phroyd

Agnès Varda, a groundbreaking French filmmaker who was closely associated with the New Wave — although her reimagining of filmmaking conventions actually predated the work of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and others identified with that movement — died on Friday morning at her home in Paris. She was 90.

Her death, from breast cancer, was confirmed by a spokeswoman for her production company, Ciné-Tamaris.

In recent years, Ms. Varda had focused her directorial skills on nonfiction work that used her life and career as a foundation for philosophical ruminations and visual playfulness. “The Gleaners and I,” a 2000 documentary in which she used the themes of collecting, harvesting and recycling to reflect on her own work, is considered by some to be her masterpiece.

But it was not her last film to receive widespread acclaim. In 2017, at the age of 89, Ms. Varda partnered with the French photographer and muralist known as JR on “Faces Places,” a road movie that featured the two of them roaming rural France, meeting the locals, celebrating them with enormous portraits and forming their own fast friendship. Among its many honors was an Academy Award nomination for best documentary feature. (It did not win, but that year Ms. Varda was given an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement.)

It was her early dramatic films that helped establish Ms. Varda as both an emblematic feminist and a cinematic firebrand — among them “Cléo From 5 to 7” (1962), in which a pop singer spends a fretful two hours awaiting the result of a cancer examination, and “Le Bonheur” (1965), about a young husband’s blithely choreographed extramarital affair.

Ms. Varda established herself as a maverick cineaste well before such milestones of the New Wave as Mr. Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” (1959) and Mr. Godard’s “Breathless” (1960). Her “La Pointe Courte” (1955), which juxtaposed the strife of an unhappy couple with the struggles of a French fishing village, anticipated by several years the narrative and visual rule-breaking of directors like Mr. Truffaut, Mr. Godard and Alain Resnais, who edited “La Pointe Courte” and would introduce Ms. Varda to a number of the New Wave principals in Paris.

These included Mr. Truffaut, Mr. Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer, all of whom had gotten their start at the critic André Bazin’s magazine Cahiers du Cinema, and who became known as the Right Bank group. The more politicized and liberal Left Bank group would come to include Mr. Resnais, Chris Marker and Ms. Varda herself.

Arlette Varda was born on May 30, 1928, in Ixelles, Belgium, the daughter of a Greek father and a French mother. She left Belgium with her family in 1940 for Sète, France, where she spent her teenage years. At 18, she changed her name to Agnès.

She studied art history at the École du Louvre and photography at the École des Beaux-Arts before working as a photographer at the Théâtre National Populaire in Paris.

“I just didn’t see films when I was young,” she said in a 2009 interview. “I was stupid and naïve. Maybe I wouldn’t have made films if I had seen lots of others; maybe it would have stopped me.

“I started totally free and crazy and innocent,” she continued. “Now I’ve seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don’t do commercials, I don’t do films pre-prepared by other people, I don’t do star system. So I do my own little thing.”

Her “thing” often involved straddling the line between what was commonly accepted as fiction and nonfiction, and defying the boundaries of gender.

“She was very clear about her feeling that the New Wave was a man’s club and that as a woman it was hard for producers to back her, even after she made ‘Cléo’ in 1962,” T. Jefferson Kline, a professor of French at Boston University and the editor of “Agnès Varda: Interviews” (2013), said in an interview for this obituary. “She obviously was not pleased that as a woman filmmaker she had so much trouble getting produced. She went to Los Angeles with her husband, and she said when she came back to France it was like she didn’t exist.”

Ms. Varda was married to the director Jacques Demy (“Lola,” “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”) from 1962 until his death in 1990. From 1968 to 1970 they lived in Hollywood, where Mr. Demy made “Model Shop” for Columbia Pictures and Ms. Varda made “Lions Love,” which married a meditative late-’60s Los Angeles aesthetic to the New York counterculture. (The cast included the Warhol “superstar” Viva; Gerome Ragni and James Rado, the writers of the book for the musical “Hair”; and the underground filmmaker Shirley Clarke.) During that same period, she shot the short documentary “Black Panthers” (1968), which included an interview with the incarcerated Panther leader Huey Newton; commissioned by French television, it was suppressed at the time.

It was also during that period that she befriended Jim Morrison, the frontman of the Doors, who visited her and Mr. Demy in France; according to Stephen Davis’s “Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend” (2004), she was one of only five mourners at Mr. Morrison’s funeral in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris in 1971. That same year she became one of the 343 women to sign the “Manifesto of the 343,” a French petition acknowledging that they had had abortions and thus making themselves vulnerable to prosecution.

In 1972, the birth of her son, Mathieu Demy, now an actor, prompted Ms. Varda to sideline her career. He survives her, as does the costume designer Rosalie Varda Demy, Ms. Varda’s daughter from a previous relationship, who was adopted by Jacques Demy.

“Despite my joy,” Ms. Varda told the actress Mireille Amiel in a 1975 interview, “I couldn’t help resenting the brakes put on my work and my travels.” So she had an electric line of about 300 feet for her camera and microphone run from her house, and with this “umbilical cord” she managed to interview the shopkeepers and her other neighbors on the Rue Daguerre. The result was “Daguerréotypes” (1976).

In 1977 she made what she called her “feminist musical,” and one of her better-known films, “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” which also seemed inspired by personal circumstance.

“It’s the story of two 15-year-old girls, their lives and their ideas,” she told Ms. Amiel. “They have to face this key problem: Do they want to have children or not? They each fall in love and encounter the contradictions — work/image, ideas/love, etc.”

One of Ms. Varda’s more controversial films, because of its casting, was “Kung-Fu Master!” (1988), a fictional work about an adult woman — played by the actress Jane Birkin, a friend of Ms. Varda’s — who falls in love with a teenage boy, played by Ms. Varda’s son. The title — it was changed in France to “Le Petit Amour” — referred to the young character’s favorite arcade game. The film was shot more or less simultaneously with “Jane B. par Agnes V.,” another of Ms. Varda’s border crossings between fact and fiction, which she called “an imaginary biopic.”

After Jacques Demy’s death, Ms. Varda made three films as a tribute: the biographical drama “Jacquot de Nantes” (1991) and the documentaries “Les Demoiselles Ont Eu 25 Ans” (1993), about the 25th anniversary of Mr. Demy’s “The Young Girls of Rochefort,” and “L’Univers de Jacques Demy” (1995).

Ms. Varda was then relatively inactive until 1999, when, armed for the first time with a digital camera, she set about making “Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse” (“The Gleaners and I”), which resurrected an artistic career now well accustomed to under appreciation and resuscitation.

“She was a person of immense talent, but also enormously thoughtful,” said Mr. Kline of Boston University. “When you look at some of the films you might think they were more spontaneous than thought out. A film like ‘Cléo,’ for instance, you might have said, ‘O.K., she just follows Cléo around Paris,’ but the film is extremely beautifully imagined and thought out beforehand.”

In “Vagabond,” an 1985 film in which Sandrine Bonnaire plays a woman who is found dead and whose life is recounted, often in documentary style, “the traveling shots in the film are always ending, and each subsequent shot beginning, on a common visual cue,” Mr. Kline said. “It makes you look at film in a completely different way.”

Alison Smith, author of the critical study “Agnès Varda” (1998), called Ms. Varda “a poet of objects and how we use them.” In an interview for this obituary, she added, “Varda as an artist intrigued, and intrigues, me by the constant freshness and curiosity which she brings to her inquiries into the everyday world and how we relate to it, particularly how she uses the detailed fabric of life.”

Richard Peña, who as director of the New York Film Festival helped introduce “Gleaners” to an American audience, praised that film and Ms. Varda’s “The Beaches of Agnès” (2008) as “touchstones for a new generation of nonfiction filmmakers.”

Ms. Varda is represented at the Museum of Modern Art by photographs, films, videos and a three-screen installation titled “The Triptych of Noirmoutier.” “A decision to change direction and move into installation art when over 80 is, by any standards, remarkable,” Ms. Smith said. “But her energy was awe-inspiring.”

Phroyd

#france #agnes varda #rip

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tuscanwalker · 3 years

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September 5, 2021 - I’m the King of the Castle

12.5 km, ~500m (1700 ft) CUS

Late start as breakfast was not open until 8:30. Gulped it down quickly and ran to catch the 8:56 back to Oberwesel on West Bank, which I saw from the east bank when I passed yesterday. Of course, after all my mad rushing about, the train was 15 minutes late this morning.

I had a look at the walking notes last night. They recommend the train to Oberwesel and then walk back to St Goar (8 km- 3 hours). Then you could/should continue on another 13 km (5 hrs) to Hirzenach and catch the train back to St Goar. This seemed like a lot given the very late start I anticipated, that tomorrow is the hardest walk of the trip and I am concerned about walking in the heat of the day in 25C+. So in the choice between taking the small loop or the big loop, I (Being the conformist that I am known to be) stubbornly did neither. Wait and all will be revealed.

On arrival in Oberwesel I took a short stroll around town. It was very short as, predictably, everything was closed early on a Sunday morning (including all the churches). Nonetheless, it was worth the walk to see the architecture of the three large churches and the city wall, which is mostly intact. Two huge towers on the river served to intimidate and collect river tolls just like 15 others small kingdoms from Bingen to Koblenz (my walk). Walking the wall, I passed the 13th Century Hospital Chapel. It was built into the city wall, as was the 14th Century St Martins Church which has one of the defensive towers incorporated into the back end. Next to it is the Cowherders Tower, a private home. Apparently you can obtain a 100 year lease on a tower at 1€ per year so long as you pay the restoration costs. This one apparently has a cute moat and drawbridge. Local legend says the family teenager once threw a party and when neighbours complained and the police arrived, he simply raised the drawbridge and carried on (story courtesy Rick Steves).

Up out of Oberwesel (another 50 story building) but this time mostly on roads and trails which are much more user friendly than rough cut stairs with 12-16” risers. After that only a few short (50m CUS) slopes with inclines that varied from easy (think groat hill to the University) to challenging (think Walterdale Hill) to downright abusive (think twice before climbing).

Trudging through the forest, I passed 6 fun sculptures of trolls. They reminded me of something Logan might build from scrap metal with a little help from Brent and his welder. Each one reminded me of someone I know, I will let you try and guess who (except of course for the one that could be either my brother Don or I in his back garden on a summers day).

Just past that point, I got another look at the summer bobsled run I saw yesterday on the other side of the river. Looks a lot faster from here. Continued on past the Loreley Rock again and at a water break was overtaken by a lovely mother-daughter couple. We chatted and walked together for a brief while, but I was clearly slowing them down.

When I was almost at St Goar I took a wrong turn and headed down toward the town. I thought that I was simply climbing into and out of another ravine when I hit the middle of an endless concrete stair case and a sign saying that if I went right (down) I was only 400 m from town. As my choice had been to continue on as far as Schloss (Castle) Reinfels I turned left and climbed about 250 stairs to the altitude I left 1/2 hour before. Right at the top of the staircase I ran into a local festival. I wandered though and was several times offered beer from small, two wheeled pull carts. I never did find out why the celebration was happening, but only that it centred around the local fire station and a rather well dressed manikin.

Soon I was off again to arrive at the ruined castle. Part was the fancy hotel where the walking company booked me dinner after they failed to get me a room on short notice. Unfortunately, the hotel also cancelled my dinner a few days before I arrived. I assume that they decided a table for 1 is not very profitable. If only they knew how much I can eat and drink on these walks.

Like all the others I have seen, this Castle was built to guard a toll tower below and housed up to eight branches of Reinfels family in different precincts of the fortifications. The Castle was reinforced repeatedly from the 13th century and withheld an assault by 28,000 French troops in the 30 years war (17th Century). Of course I could not resist climbing up everything I saw including a 100 ft (?) tower which gave the day’s 30th great view of the river.

After the Castle, I decided that enough is enough and climbed down to St Goar for a well deserved beer (that I declined at the festival).

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violetsystems · 6 years

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#personal

I deactivated my Facebook yesterday. I had to create a dummy account to save the artist pages but put “do no contact” in the bio. I suppose you could say like everything I do that it’s some sort of performance but really I’m just bored and exhausted. It all seems like a dark, echoing void where everybody talks and nobody listens. I was genuinely sad for the passing of Bourdain. Reuters didn’t immediately report it as a suicide. I found that out in my feed from people who never openly acknowledge me but suddenly care for my well being in the form of a phone number. If I can admit to being triggered by anything it’s suicide. It is ironic when you walk around with a patch on your messenger bag commemorating the life of Daul Kim I know. But most people don’t even know who that is or particularly care. I can say Daul has always been inspiring to me. Her writing especially. How she openly criticized cocaine. How she used the internet and blogs in a way most net artists wished they had years before anyone. She even called out Jun Takahashi for casting only white models in his shows. I’m obviously biased. But she was also a painter. She could have been the next Nam June Paik. She wrote about wanting to be something like that. And for whatever reason she didn’t. She ended her life. And I saw a lot of that in people around me including myself. How fighting against things that contradict what you really believe in is hard and exhausting. Bourdain to me obviously also has some parallels. I travelled to Asia in a similar mind state maybe. Except in some ways I felt chased out. It boggles my mind how someone with that much experience can make that choice. A local newspaper noted that his death ‘served as a reminder that celebrities, who sometimes feel more familiar to us than friends and neighbors, are at the same time total strangers.’ I do believe celebrity is a group hallucination. It’s the ethereal worth of someone’s legacy in the eyes of those who envy it. And it can be a trap when people don’t have a complex sense of worth and value. In American society, it’s the thought that counts. It’s a phone number and a copy and pasted sentiment on a webpage that “this user knows how you feel” but is unavailable for your emotional labor.

Whether it’s a French flag in solidarity in your avatar or your favorite pundit’s youtube explanation of why Trump is bad, empty actions don’t really change much. It’s not to discourage them from happening. Who am I to judge whose personal revolutions are more valid and timely? It just so happens people have judged mine for years. How I’ve appropriated this or that. I stole that hangul for thief directly from the youtube video for the Mr. Pizza commercial it came from. It literally is a Korean guy standing outside of a Brooklyn pizza parlor with a sign in Korean with Marco Polo’s face with the word for thief. I make bootleg t-shirts. I skirt around the law on occasion. My Korean language skills are shitty. I haven’t opened up a kim chi taco truck in my neighborhood yet or bought up a mixed used industrial building to flip in the middle of a lower income neighborhood. I work a regular job where Korean and Chinese are spoken regularly. I volunteered for three years for a Korean American Chamber of Commerce in a very diverse neighborhood up north. Most of my friends still made fun of me. Didn’t keep up with what I was doing. Watched from afar through my facebook posts but said nothing. I thought maybe in hindsight if I did all these things people would just see my intentions. Year after year I would have to state my intentions as they changed and my perspective grew. But for the most part, there was one constant. People I knew generally ignored me and what I did. If they talked about it behind my back it was always negative. I was problematic according to some social tribunal I’ve never answered to. And in some of those ways I agreed and turned inward. I made things that reflected what I felt about the world that felt empty to other people. To me it seemed pretty simple. Wear the word thief on your back in America in Korean and nobody would tell the difference. What you were really saying. My friend’s brother in Shanghai recently said that with these elements of foreign cultures there wasn’t enough appropriation. There was a very narrow appreciation and hierarchy of cultural acceptance in America like food, models, clothes, etc. That these have been made to feel exotic in the Western context and exclusive. People would rather fetishize than empathize. And there is no greater mind fuck than recognizing all the times you’ve failed to properly empathize because you weren’t emotionally available to care enough about the nuances.

I’ve been there. I can say I’m not now. Reality to me is a much greater mind fuck than I could imagine. How nobody listens. How you are supposed to accept that and move on. How all the time you waste trying to hold up your end of the bargain for society it’s never returned with the same intention and vigor. How they expect you to smile when they eat their piece of cake and yours in the same bite. How desperately you need validation that you haven’t wasted your time digging so deep. How people lash out at you because you are the only person who will listen. That Bourriaud text is pretty fascinating to me. It’s been floating around art school for years. Relational Aesthetics is something I know very well. I got dragged into an artist collective by a friend at school years ago that focused on cleaning. We did a bunch of performances. One we actually made art in the restrooms at school. That’s like the one rule you can’t break. We had set up a washing station in the bathroom and cleaned the floors of the basement of the school. We worked in shifts on our hands and knees while this performance festival went on, wiping the floor at people’s feet. It was an intense experience for somebody who actually worked there and never considered themselves an artist. This was back in 2013. The group was mostly women and it was a very strong dynamic. I was invited to do a sound piece for another show. I was really proud the group asked me to do it. I was also part of a year long exhibition at Jane Addams Hull House around that time. Jane is like Chicago’s first anarchist. She fought for immigrant rights, workers and the poor. Around the time of the war, nationalism had taken a grip of the country and many of the same people she helped turned on her. I learned how to weave the rags we cleaned with from old bedsheets we got at the thrift. We built our own looms out of frames and nails. Then in 2014 I decided to go and try to explore music again and travel. And somehow I ended up here. More lonely and isolated than I’ve ever been. Misunderstood and alienated. History forgotten. None of these were just thoughts and prayers. I went out there and did something. And I saw results. Sometimes the results I saw from people revealed their true intentions. Sometimes it revealed my own and I adjusted. By now I should know better. And I know it’s not worth my time like it’s worth down here where people actually feel things. <3 Tim

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capricorn-0mnikorn · 6 years

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(Meant to post this yesterday, but insomnia meant I ran out of spoons part way through)

During the last two years of my career in high school and for one year after I graduated (1982, ‘83 and ‘84) the faculty conspired to create a school-wide May-Day celebration in the most Pagan way possible, under the banner of historical/cultural appreciation (we were not officially Pagan, but we were small, private, Leftist-leaning, Parent-teacher cooperative run school for ages 3 - 18).

That first year was the biggest one, of course -- when everyone had the energy for it... it got smaller in the following two years before being given up.

It started in the Fall, when our avant-garde art teacher had the high school art elective class build a paper maché dragon big enough and sturdy enough for the littlest kids in the school to climb around and inside of. This was our “Dragon of Winter” and it was destined to be ritually set alight on the First of May at the culmination of a day long festival.

It started with the headmaster teaching us a May Day carol, the chorus of which is the title of this post; he told us it was sung as people went from house to house at dawn, handing out newly-budding twigs, to bring good luck. He also taught us, and had us sing the long, PG-13 version of Rattlin’ Bog, which has a bed made from the feather from the bird, [elided over] sex on the bed, baby from the sex, man from the baby, ... and ending with the grown man planting a new tree (I’ve timed it -- it takes me about 15 minutes to sing the whole thing aloud from start to finish... I sometimes use it to time my exercises).

Then, after everyone knew the songs, more or less, we formed a school-wide procession to take the dragon out to the middle of the soccer field (yeah - I know - football), where it was destined to meet its fate.

Then we had a Morris dance (one of our teachers was a member of a local Morris troupe) and a May Pole dance, and then we all gathered in a great big circle around the dragon (with the local fire department, keeping an eye on things).

The biology teacher (Who was also an archer, as a hobby), came jogging out of the wooded area behind the school, wearing a Green Man mask (made by one of the high school students, for the occasion) and a set of antlers, and shot a flaming arrow into the dragon. ... and the flame went out. Second attempt: flame went out. Third attempt: Dragon went up in a spectacular bonfire... (my mother snapped an excellent picture of him raising his hand in triumph, but the picture has since been lost. :-(). And just as the flames of the fire were dying down, a (rice paper, if I recall correctly) “spirit of the dragon” rose into the air, lifted by the heat of the flames, to remind us that winter would come again.

It was pretty epic.

And then, it was time to get on our buses and go home.

I do remember that one of my classmates standing near me watched the goings-on with crossed arms and groused: “This is communist!”

I just looked at her and said: “No, it’s not.” I did not bother to explain to her that the cultural traditions we were basing this on went back several hundred years before Communism was a gleam in Marx’s eye (though May Day pageants were often organized by a villages workers’ guilds, which is how modern May Day became “International Workers’ Day”).

The next year, the two guys who were the senior class clowns, went to the headmaster’s house and pounded on his door at like, 5:30 in the morning, and when he answered, barefoot and in his pajamas, proceeded to sing “Hal an Tow” to him and give him flowers picked from their gardens.... He gave a very proud call-out in the high school morning assembly.

Lyrics to “Hal an Tow,” as I remember them, below the cut along with a video that gives the melody (and slightly different lyrics):

Chorus:

Hal an Tow! Jolly rumble-O! We've been up, long before the Day-O! To welcome in the summer, To welcome in the May-O! For Summer is a-comin' in. And Winter's gone away-O! Since Man was first created Our life has been debated And we have celebrated The coming of the spring (Chorus) Take no scorn to wear the horn it was the crest when you were born Your father's father wore it And your father wore it, too. (Chorus) Robin Hood and Little John Have come to the fair-O! We will to the jolly green wood, To hunt the buck and hare-O! (Chorus) What happened to the Spaniards, To make so great a boast-O? They shall the feathered goose, And we shall eat the roast-O! (Chorus) | God bless Saint Mary, Joseph, And all their power and might-O! Send us peace to England -- Send peace by day and night-O!

(fancy-pants choral concert arrangement, which... isn’t as boisterous as I think the song should be... ya know?):

youtube

#May Day #high school memories #cryptic paganism #songs I sing to myself

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janeaustentextposts · 6 years

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Michelmas seemed to be more celebrated than Christmas in Regency times. I think we only get the one mention of Christmas (in 'Emma'). How would Jane Austen's characters have celebrated Christmas? (I've been waiting since Halloween to ask this.)

Michaelmas was probably more notable in a legal and agricultural sense, as it marked a financial quarter when some wages would be due, and fell around harvest-time (A Big Deal) and saw the beginning of a term in the Inns of Court. It has liturgical significance in the Church of England, of course, but nothing like the significance of Easter or Christmas, even in the Regency. (And of the two, Easter was still the bigger deal.)

Now, Christmas…

Naturally the Regency slightly precedes the glut of what are now cliches surrounding the notion of an English Christmas celebration, much of which was ushered in by Victorian fads and the burgeoning consumerist culture among the exploding monied-middle-class. Also, my problematic fave fuckboy, Dickens.

The celebration of Christmas in the Regency would have been, I think, a subtler affair than what was seen later in the century, though not necessarily less boisterous. In 1824, shortly after the end of the Regency, Christmas celebrations around Pall Mall were noted for their “rampant, insolent, outrageous drunkenness,” though more teetotal trends were increasingly apparent. Regency Christmas probably owed more to the Georgians than the incoming Victorians, so it’s safe to say that any establishment that could afford it would be well-furnished for booze during the holiday season. (In 1815, guests at hotels could regularly consume five bottles of wine a day, and there were many fashionable “three-bottle men” at regular dinner parties.)

In the spirit of the season, charity would have been an integral part of Christmas observances at the time. In the late 18th century, a good parson is noted as giving out gifts of money to poor housekeepers and single people in his parish on St. Thomas’ Day (21 December) and later inviting the poor for a meal on Christmas Day, later writing of it in his own records:This being Christmas Day, I went to Church this morn’ and then read prayers and administered the Holy Sacrament. Mr. and Mrs. Custance [the squire and his wife] both at Church and both received the Sacrament from my hands. The following poor old men dined at my house to day, as usual, Js. Smith, Clerk; Richd. Bates, Richd. Buck; Thos. Cary; Thos. Dicker; Thos. Cushin; Thos. Carr –to each besides gave 1/0 - in all 0.7.0. I gave them for dinner a surloin of beef rosted and plenty of plumb-pudding. We had mince pies for the first time to-day.Houses would be decked with seasonal evergreens, usually holly or laurel boughs. The same clergyman wrote, in 1791:

This being Christmas Eve, had my windows as usual ornamented with small branches of Hulver (alias Holley) properly seeded [with berries].

Genteel people would attend a religious service on the morning of Christmas Day, followed by a dinner with plum-pudding and mince pies. (’Plums’ actually being raisins or currants, in these instances.) On Twelfth Night, 6 January, a ‘Twelfth-cake’ would be baked and eaten, containing a bean and a pea (presumably dried) to chose the ‘king and queen’ of the night’s festivities, which were generally the singing of carols and a feast.

A newer custom was to give servants and tradesmen small presents of money, called ‘Christmas boxes’, but in general at the time gifts were more likely to be exchanged at the New Year, and many people still customarily celebrated Old Christmas Day on what is now Twelfth Night (calendars had been changed in 1752, losing eleven days.) One man complained of an employee:

The Clerk was here today carrying out dung tho not yesterday it being old Christmas day as he calls it and therefore a holiday; that is after he had kept a week of holidays for new Christmas day.

Personally, I think we should bring this cheeky Two Christmases back.

Christmas hymns and carols would be sung, and the Yule tradition of ‘wassailing’ would see singers visiting homes on January 5th or 6th (though some, keeping to the old calendar, would go on ‘Old Twelvey Night’ on 17 January.) Modern caroling is a practice distinct from wassailing, but they’re similar enough to often be conflated, as both involve house-to-house singing in groups in exchange for treats offered by the homeowner. In feudal times these would have been the tenants singing for the good-will and blessing of their lord and master, who would then offer the hospitality of food and drink in return. In some parts, this largely innocent tradition took on a rowdier tone, with bands of young men said to break into well-to-do houses and demand their free bite and sup, and if the household refused, vandalism and curses would follow. (Like hardcore Halloween trick-or-treating.) Wassail itself is a hot, spiced, fruity, wine punch (sometimes spiked with brandy or sherry because why the hell not?) drunk from a shared large two-handled bowl in a spirit of community goodwill.

It was a time of flux in the traditions of English celebrations, as new industry and urban living began to shift focus away from England’s more pastoral observations of older Yuletide traditions, though people continued to mark the solstice with general celebrations and varying regional customs. The Christmas Austen would have known would have been primarily marked by the service her father would have given in church, charity for the local poor, as well as gifts to servants and labourers, and perhaps some quiet parties at home or a festive assembly or ball for friends and neighbours, with plenty to eat and drink.

Which still sounds like a solid Christmas, to me.

God rest you merry, followers!

#Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA #Jane Austen #gifs #Christmas #celiaequus

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theloniousbach · 3 years

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Week 33: Resist/s/urge: An Epilogue

[This entry concludes a weekly series of Facebook posts started as I sought to cope with going on lockdown. Though we may well be heading back or should be, I have ended the series. They are no more than ephemeral, but I archive this one as a record of the series.]

My title is meant to mash up “resist surge” and “resists urge” as I bring to an undoubtedly temporary end to this series which I started as we headed into lockdown. I used it to focus on how I was coping—how as a measure and how as methods. I shifted the heading every eight weeks as it seemed that we and I were entering new phases.

We are certainly entering a new “resist surge” phase as we seem to have had almost 100,000 new cases yesterday and deaths over 1,000 the day before and nearly that many yesterday. Most states are surging as is Europe and Latin America. So, despite the profound US leadership crisis, the problems are not even primarily of that character. It is not who is captain of the Titanic but that we are on poorly designed vessel sailing into a sea of icebergs.

It is also odd to suspend this series right as we end a US Presidential Election cycle where this issue is at the center. But I have easily “resists urge” to write about that. More challenging to resist is the urge to write about the broader, more fundamental politics underlying it. I have such opinions and lived them in my 20s and 30s with pride and no regrets. But this format is far from the avenue for those discussions—and, frankly, dear readers, even the young ones, for those discussions to matter very different social forces will be involved and lead them.

But I felt the series drifting in that direction as I have been settling into personal solutions to the profound challenges are living through. So, it’s time for a balance sheet and an epilogue for now. Again, there are new challenges/icebergs on the horizon.

But I started with addressing how I would keep body and soul together with attention, focusing on physical and mental health in the face of stress. I continued and continue with intermittent fasting and, rather than the pandemic 15, I have continued to get rid of that middle aged gut and my weight is down 3% (rather than up 10%). I am back in the range I was 30-35 years ago, but I am well aware that I don’t have the body of a 30 year old.

Still I might be as fit as I have ever been. From the start, I knew that daily exercise was key—and daily walks had been my prime exercise for year. They were and are important for getting out of the house. But I made daily yoga the focus witchin that first month. I’ve been doing yoga fairly regularly for over 20 years, since I gave up alcohol as part of a detox prompted by getting off Codeine 3 for a long term bout with kidney stones in 1999 that culminated in surgery. So I know my poses and had been using Yoga with Adrienne once or twice a week for several years. I ramped it up with her several annual 30 Days of Yoga series working my way through all of them. Now I’m a subscriber and follow mostly her daily classes. I have much better muscle tone, posture, and lung capacity.

So, with the body part of body and soul going, I took up soul in parallel.

I rolled with the punches with work and teaching fairly well, adjusting to the technology and tempo of remote work. I am productive in ways that I couldn’t/cannot be at the office and feel connected to students and colleagues. I get enough peopling in.

But, as someone important once said, life begins when this activity ceases, at the table, at the tavern, in bed. Now the sale of my labor power is complicated and elements of it truly are unalienated and the rest of it is certainly rewarding and meaningful. But it is alienated in the sense that, at 65 years of age, I can see the day looming when I can choose not to do it. Life begins when I do the things I doubled down on to keep soul together.

STORIES—At first it was quite hard to concentrate and I could not read anything with a long arc. So I read the Decameron, a story or two, but no more than three, a day until I had all 100. It was a story of plague and distraction, so it fit. I also discovered streaming plays at first from the National Theatre of London but soon the Globe and Stratford Festival. I homed in on Shakespeare, particularly lesser known plays. That welcome habit has fallen off and I have missed an October series of three Shakespeare plays from a National Theatre partner. But it is an acquisition that I hope to foster and grow.

I settled back into novels soon enough with mysteries mostly. Right now, I’m rereading Elsa Hart’s The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne to teach and for a Webster University Book Club with my class and Elsa herself. Since she is someone I take my beginner’s questions about my retirement project book, it is useful to outline it on this reread as I took my note taking to a deeper, multiple purpose level. Recently I got caught up in the 1632 universe of alternate history. There have been several Anna Eliot/Charles Veley Sherlock Holmes/Lucy James pastiche novellas which are also good to study for my own project. I got back into mysteries by rereading, 35 years on, the Martin Beck series on the occasion of Maj Sjowall’s death. I also dipped into the Hogarth Shakespeare series to see how modern authors dealt with the very challenging source material of “The Taming of the Shrew” and “The Merchant of Venice” which were part of the theater season. There were also a couple of Jodi Taylor St. Mary’s/Time Police novels as I keep up on that series.

SCHOLARSHIP—My teaching, an unalienated part of my labor and the part that I will do after retirement from the day job, has been rewarding. I took Science in the News remote and asynchronous as we locked down. That worked in the moment as I could make COVID our subject matter (because that what we were all studying anyway) and could think about how the world was testing us far more than I as a teacher could. So I could relax about some of the mechanics. I had already built eight weeks of rapport with them, so that helped too. My current class happens synchronously but largely remotely. It’s topic—the role of place—has been a way to test some concepts (place as human constructed, therefore rich in history worth studying, and where community happens) that are part of a broader collaboration that may result in a conference.

As we were shutting down, I had made some significant changes to my “last” Edgar Anderson paper for the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden with Gar Allen’s suggestions. It received further polishing from the Annals editor and also pal Peter Hoch. So it is well and truly done, set to appear in the last quarterly paper issue of that renowned journal. While I have said it’s the “last” Edgar paper, gee, maybe I could write about his collaboration with Pioneer Hi Bred Seed Company and so might see if Agricultural History might want it.

Place and a historical mystery are where my intellectual interests will shift.

MUSIC—The biggest threat of the pandemic is/was the loss of live music. That very first weekend of lockdown I had the decision to not go taken out of my hands by cancellations of the SF Jazz Collective celebrating Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way and Sly Stone’s Stand at the Sheldon and Joe Russo’s Almost Dead (where I have invested my Deadhead energy as I don’t think I’ll see any original members again, though talk about “resists urge” pressures) at the Pageant. Those cancellations were sensible and necessary, but gee it would have been hard to make the decision to stay home.

The pull for live music is that strong.

But I’ve found it in ways that might even make for more opportunities.Jorma Kaukonen has done two dozen Quarantine Concerts, mostly solo with local friends from his Fur Peace Ranch operation, but Jack Casady came in for two shows in July and is around currently with the third show tonight. Kaukonen is not only musically formative, but so forthrightly himself that it is comfortable to be with him. I have similar warm feelings of connection with Larkin Poe who are extending the southern Americana blues roots etc tradition with slide guitar and killer vocals. They have done various streams, both from their spare bedrooms to empty venues with their band.

The piano has been key and, at first, the recitals under the auspices of the 92nd Street Y and Fred Hersch’s almost 40 Tunes of the Day were the start. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the BBC 4/Wigmore Hall collaboration (with the helpful YouTube algorithm kicking in) gave me more choices. Wigmore Hall is my go to source and through them I have seen Angela Hewitt wrap up her Bach cycle and Andras Schiff dig into the last three Beethoven Piano Sonatas. I have discovered key parts of the horn repertoire including the Brahms Trio and the Mozart and Beethoven Wind Quintets and some of the clarinet chamber works (watching Gassenheuer for example. I’ll click on most cello sonatas and ensembles and all piano trios. There is something about this listening that has paid benefits to my jazz listening, particularly more challenging out there works, as I can hear structural elements better.

Jazz is my go to though and there is a wealth of in real time performances as if we really were in New York and had to choose between the Jazz Gallery (got a membership), the Vanguard (an annoying platform but top drawer stuff), the Blue Note, Smoke, and Small’s (a place to check for up and comers but also, with a contribution, through their archive, people who upped and came on the scene). I have seen folks I wouldn’t have otherwise—George Cables, last night Oliver Lake/Reggie Workman/Andrew Cyrille, David Murray, Billy Hart with Mark Turner, Kenny Werner, Omer Avital. It goes on and on. I have lots of Couch Tour FB Note/Tumblr entries.

I was playing piano lots until we went on vacation, exploring how tunes fit together. Nothing ready to unplug the headphones even for Ellen, but rewarding. I have a new tune, “Everything Happens To Me” to understand, so I think that habit is returning. But I do sit at the piano frequently for my almost weekly discussions with a young singer/songwriter/marching band tuba player about music theory where we explore things together. They’re free to her and she still may be getting a bad deal but it’s part of keeping my body and SOUL together. Between her, Jorma, and my own inclination, I do play lots of guitar and that helps too.

But it is WRITING that has been my biggest solace. I come out of this experience comfortable saying I don’t just like to write and that I have a decent body of published work but I am a writer. It’s how I live in the world. It’s how I pin down my musical experiences for example.

But obviously this series itself about coping with the pandemic is how I have coped with the pandemic. I treasure that more of you have read these than I would imagine and I do take you all into account somewhat as I write these. I want them to be organized, appealing, and clear. But I am a writer and I would do this even if you weren’t here. But social media means that I’m not Franz Kafka or Emily Dickinson writing to make sense of the world but creating papers that they would just as soon be destroyed. That said, these are thoroughly ephemeral and this one will be the only one in the series curated in the sense that it’s on my Tumblr.

So, I am a writer who makes sense of the world by writing. The world will call me to write by being insensible. Very soon very likely. But this series has run its course. So as we resist the surge, I will resist the urge to do the same old thing.

Still I bet I see you soon.

#2020

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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The Best Thing I Can Do for Harlem Right Now Is Feed People

Marcus Samuelsson serving food in front of the Red Rooster | World Central Kitchen

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Marcus Samuelsson’s regulars have changed, and so has his idea of what it means to feed a community

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On May 30, I joined hundreds of people from Harlem for a peaceful protest. From the oldest to the youngest, all had come out to listen and to stand with the leaders of the community, and it made me feel proud to be a Harlemite.

As I stood in the crowd, waiting to give the speech the organizers had asked me to prepare, an elder told me, “I was here when Malcolm was killed; I stood here when Martin Luther King was killed.” Normally, I don’t get nervous about speaking in public. But here, now, in the days of Ahmaud Arbery, of Breonna Taylor, of George Floyd, I felt the weight of this moment. I took a deep breath and drew strength from looking out at our community. I spoke about my son, Zion, and the conversations I have to have with him. I described the three things that Zion loves: chasing after birds in the park, running, and police officers.

Every Black parent knows you have to have the Talk with your child. I thought I would have it with Zion when he was around 12 or 13. Now, I realize that it will have to happen much, much sooner. Zion sees police officers at the park every day and thinks they’re the coolest people in the world. How do you make a 4-year-old understand that things can go another way?

These are the kinds of things that I and many of the people here in Harlem carry every day. For the last three months, we have carried them in addition to the weight of the coronavirus pandemic, which is itself loaded with much of the same weight of racism, given that it disproportionately affects Black and Latino communities: Nationally, Black people make up less than 13 percent of the population, but represent 22 percent of all COVID-19 infections — which also kill Black Americans at twice the rate as white Americans. They’re part of the same story.

When I ask myself what I can do as a chef, I always go back to what I know: Feed the people. But what serving the people means now has changed from what it meant a few months ago. Back then, I knew I was doing a good job because of my regulars. At the Red Rooster, the backbone of our success has always been the diners who show up every Monday to eat, drink, and jam with the band, or the folks who come every Sunday for brunch and gospel music. As a number of our customers can attest, many of our friendliest regulars were longtime Harlemites who were happy to strike up a conversation with other locals, downtowners, and out-of-towners alike.

When I ask myself what I can do as a chef, I always go back to what I know: Feed the people.

In the second week of March, the pandemic changed everything. As restaurant dining rooms across the city shuttered and New York went into a state of lockdown, we had to decide what to do next. We could have closed or pivoted to takeout, but it was clear that the only real option was to continue to feed the community, which was immediately in need as jobs and resources vanished overnight. We placed calls to potential donors who could support our efforts; one of the first was to my friend chef José Andrés. We partnered with his World Central Kitchen to become a community kitchen, giving out meals to those in need. Our first customers were the homeless, followed by the newly freed former inmates whom Rikers Island drops off on the corners of 145th and 125th streets. We also started seeing customers from the two methadone centers next to the Whole Foods on 125th Street.

As New York’s lockdown continued, the ranks of my new regulars has only grown: The line outside now comprises school teachers, construction workers, the people who used to run the mom-and-pop shop around the corner, and cooks and hospitality workers from other restaurants. Some hop off the bus and get in line; others pull up in their cars. By the time we begin serving at 10:30 a.m., there’s already a line halfway down the block. The hardest part of my day is when we realize we have only 150 meals left and need to tell people, “That’s it for today.”

My new regulars are like any regulars: They have preferences. “Hey, chef! I liked the chicken better yesterday.” Or, “I don’t need an apple; I don’t have teeth.” They still want to talk, with each other, with me. They’re cordial, and they remain kind to each other. They stand on line and call out encouragement. “What’s up, chef? You did it on the chicken!”

But grimmer conversations also float by. I hear people asking each other if they know someone with the ’rona. An older gentleman who showed up every day at noon is suddenly gone. “Where’s he at?” my regulars ask, looking around for his familiar face. Someone on the line tells us, “’Rona took him away.” We share our grief six feet apart.

Harlem has given me so much: dear friends, teachers, and a sense of place and home. When the pandemic broke out, being from Ethiopia helped give my family perspective: Tuberculosis killed my mom; Ethiopia has been ravaged by drought and numerous pandemics. Even as many New Yorkers contemplated leaving — or did leave — we knew we couldn’t leave Harlem, a place that has music and dignity, and whose people have each other. Now, more than ever, I need to be here, helping people, feeding every hungry mouth I can.

So this has become my new normal: walking to work, phone in hand, juggling calls while making sure we have the kitchen team up and ready to serve, and making family meal when I can. Robert is managing the line and making sure people are social distancing; after they leave, he’s on cleanup, too. Jamie, our server, is talking to people like she would when she worked the line at Ginny’s. “Come on over, honey,” she tells them. She also talks them through the ins and outs of social distancing, and how they have to keep six feet apart while waiting for their meals. We have Courtney expediting, and she’s quick: “Chef! Two top, three top, four top!”

The people who stand on line tell us how many are in their own families — two, four, six — and we give them what they need. On a fast day, 1,000 meals are served in an hour and 45 minutes. And every day, I ask myself: How can we serve more people?

The answer is that we can’t do it alone. We can serve more by enlisting more restaurants to cook alongside us to serve our community. World Central Kitchen has brought on neighborhood restaurants like LoLo’s Seafood Shack, Vinateria, and Melba’s, friends and partners that have long been a part of Harlem EatUp! — our annual festival celebrating the food, culture, and spirit of Harlem. Building a network of restaurants in our community means we can meet the growing demand of those in need: All in all, 3,000 to 4,000 people a day can now be fed in Harlem through World Central Kitchen.

In getting to know my new regulars, I know that who and how we serve will be changed forever.

This is happening as the restaurant industry takes baby steps toward a new normal. Three months into the pandemic, people are tired and scared — of working and of not working. We’ve got gloves and masks on, but the fear is there; my cooks have families to go home to, too. But everybody knows that we have to stand together or we’re all going to fall apart. The pandemic has cast a searing light on how interdependent we are. As we have been forced to be socially distant, we have also been made painfully aware of how much we need one another to survive and thrive.

We’ve been able to rehire employees at all three of my restaurants. At the Rooster, we pay $20 per hour. That’s almost double the state’s minimum wage of $11 per hour, because we know essential workers deserve higher pay while putting their health on the line, and coming as close we can to paying people their worth is part of how we climb back from this crisis — and also begin to address the issues of economic justice and fair pay, which go to the heart of the sweeping systems that the ongoing protests aim to address.

Right now, so much is unknown. I don’t know what is coming, for the Red Rooster or the world, or what the new New York is going to look like. But one thing I know is that I’m still serving customers. And in getting to know these new regulars, I know that who and how we serve will be changed forever. Restaurants were built to restore, which is why we won’t stop serving the neediest when the pandemic ends. Building partnerships like the ones we have with World Central Kitchen, Citymeals on Wheels — which I’ve worked with for years — and local food banks is something that will grow and evolve so that our kitchens can continue to be of service to the most vulnerable in our communities, particularly as the pandemic continues to reveal who is most at risk, from both the disease and our country’s systemic racism.

Service. Community. Unity. That’s what I saw in the sea of people who gathered to peacefully protest that afternoon. That’s what gives me strength at a time when it has felt so hopeless. Our community has taken shape and come together within my industry too, most visibly in the recent creation of the Independent Restaurant Coalition. With my Black chef brothers and sisters, Melba, Mashama, Nina, Kwame, JJ, Nyesha, we call upon each other. We share stories, we compare notes, and we enjoy the gratification of being able to tap into a network beyond our own kitchens.

Now, more than ever, that kind of network is vital for helping to promote practices like more inclusive, local hiring. Our kitchens must reflect our community from the inside out. It’s our responsibility, but also our opportunity, to have a broader and more inclusive vision for both who we serve and how we rebuild our businesses. We each have our job to do, our voice to raise, our strength to give.

Marcus Samuelsson is the James Beard Award-winning chef behind restaurants including Red Rooster Harlem and Marcus B&P in Newark, New Jersey, as well as the author of Yes, Chef and the Red Rooster Cookbook: the Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem.

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Marcus Samuelsson serving food in front of the Red Rooster | World Central Kitchen

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Marcus Samuelsson’s regulars have changed, and so has his idea of what it means to feed a community

When I ask myself what I can do as a chef, I always go back to what I know: Feed the people.

In getting to know my new regulars, I know that who and how we serve will be changed forever.

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