EmpathyAbroad
Are you a tourist with a heart of gold? Do you long to see a new country while simultaneously saving a handful of its local residents on your week long vacation? Then this Sean Penn-endorsed app is for you, you business-class hero.
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Nick Jonas, Nick Jonas
Grease
Any and all KISS songs that refer to specific fabrics a woman is wearing (usually “leather and lace” or “silk and satin”)
The entire Twilight series (movies only)
Whatever it is that Russell Brand does
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Anna Pulley’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Fifty Shades of Spay
Our heroine finds
herself enslaved by the CUTEST
tripod tabby.
*
Fifty Shades of Stay
Surprise! That “contract”
you signed was for a time-share
in Provincetown!
*
Fifty Shades of Gay
A bisexual
is born and no one questions
her identity.
*
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Susan Harlan’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Names: Jane, former long-suffering governess; Edward, ill-tempered member of the aristocracy
Location: Yorkshire, England
Size: Enormous enough to effectively represent inherited privilege
Years lived in: Probably since William the Conqueror; Owned
Jane and Edward’s charming ruin Thornfield Hall may no longer be their primary residence, but it persists as a reminder of the extraordinary beauty of the Great Houses of the English countryside. Jane recalls languid days spent tutoring Edward’s neglected and isolated ward Adele in one of the castle’s many sitting rooms. Edward remembers evenings next to the fire, wallowing in misery. Their housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax remembers a lot of dusting.
When Thornfield burned to the ground, its style was already rather outdated. Edward had made few changes to the house, and in time it took on an old-fashioned vibe some might describe as “creepy,” but which Jane characterizes as “retro” and “in need of a woman’s touch.” Before their interrupted wedding, Edward had planned to refresh the dining room with a regal shade of red, but Jane asked him to please reconsider the color palette as she’d spent much of her childhood locked in a red room by an evil aunt. Edward’s taste tends to run to jewel-encrusted goblets, mahogany armchairs, and tapestries of King Harold being gouged in the eye.
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This novel is for John, without whom I would still be writing fantastical accounts of beasts, magick, and women allowed to smoke in public.
This novel is for Friederich, who had access to a reputable publisher for male writers and, with the pomp of his cravat, saved my precious manuscript from becoming a worthless serial, installing it to proper jacketed status with a mostly self-explanatory title.
To dear Roderick: you knew that vampiric fiction would never sell.
To Gideon, who convinced me that the class system made for a better villain than a one-legged highway bandit in this novel about the human condition.
For Gilbert, who always knew that I was better than the tight plotting required of a successful Gothic novel, and could instead be persuaded to fictionalize my life into an easily digestible tome for women readers.
For Fred: I followed your advice to write what I know, and that turned out to be mostly just stuff about sitting in the parlour, waiting for something to happen.
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Amy Collier’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
1. High Reflective White:
More reflective than a dialogue with Socrates, more reflective than the exiled Dostoevsky during his sentence in Siberian prison, more reflective even than Jesus when he prayed at The Garden of Gethsemane in the hours before his impending death, High Reflective White blinds you with enlightenment.
2. Polar Bear:
Polar Bear roars onto your walls with ferocity unmatched by other whites. Bring to mind its powerful haunches and fearsome claws when you consider what color to paint Baby’s room.
3. Modest White:
Imagine an Anglo-Saxon virgin so pale, the slightest sight of any man, or any woman, any living being at all whose mere existence implies copulation, introduces a blush upon her cheeks. More modest even, is our Modest White.
Jesse Berney’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
The Avengers is the best comic book movie of all time, and anyone who disagrees is a shill for the Batman-industrial complex. It introduced us to the greatest team of superheroes the big screen has ever seen, and then it sent them their separate ways.
But they didn’t stop saving the world. In the three Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that have followed the Avengers, individual team members have faced catastrophic threats to our very existence — and they faced them largely on their own.
Why didn’t they call their fellow Avengers when the world was on the line?
Or did they?
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