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seijorhi · 4 years

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asks :)

Below the cut 💕

OMFG I JUST READ UR SPLIT FIC AND AHHHHHHHHHHHH IT WAS SO GOOD. Ur such a good writer I’m jealous

BBY!!! I’M GLAD YOU LIKED IT!!! but fr no need to be jealous it’s just some horny ramblings 👉👈

I just wanted to say that I LOVE your haikyuu fics! Especially the Oikawa/Iwa soulmate au one! Just a quick question tho, would their darling be able to turn the duo against eachother? Like maybe she/he/they prefers Iwa more than Oikawa and that could lead to some competition?

ok i’ve talked about this a little bit before in another ask but my tags are a mess and i can’t find it but tbh i think it would be almost impossible for their darling to actually turn them against each other - even in a tiny way just because their own relationship with each other is rock solid. Iwa knows how to deal with Oikawa at his worst and vice versa. if you do end up showing preference to one over the other - say you cling to Iwa because he doesn’t go as hard on his punishments or Oikawa because a pissed off Iwa scares you they’re gonna notice, and there is nothing like a little exposure therapy to cure your fears.

Inquiring minds need to know: does the slasher trio fuck you in front of their victims? When they’re alive? When they’re dead? Both???

Bruh.... I think you know the answer to that ;)

I just read Final Girl and I just wanna say that it scared the shit out of me??? I rarely watch horror let alone slasher movies and most of the time I imagine what would happen if they keep one of their victims and your fic just damn. It was scary good

you have no idea how happy that makes me?? because like when i write fics i’m trying to convey emotions and build tension and stuff but until somebody else reads it you never know if it’s actually worked?? so this makes me all 🥺

Yo I just read your Shiggy fic the chikan and boy oh boy I am a huge fan of it. He’s so gross but it does something to me and I don’t know why but I’m here for it. Also I love your writing I may or may not have just binged your blog but it was so good and I just could not help myself 😅, anyway I hope you have a good day!

SHIGGY SUPREMACY!! no but i took so long with that fic and now i just wanna write a bunch more creeper shigaraki i love him sm! anyway thank you fo being such a sweetheart - i hope your day’s going well too!!

Idk if it's thirsting hours, but I'm a horny bastard, so I'm just gonna express myself. Every time, I watch Ushijima show emotion and get excited about volleyball, I think about Outrunning Fate and daydream about the kind of face he would make while he rails a resistant, crying reader. And I feel like Tendou would just watch his facial expressions for a while because this is a side of Ushi he's never seen, and he just wants to admire him. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. @ks350

so it’s not exactly a secret that Ushi’s a little... stoic, but with things he genuinely cares about - volleyball, and you guessed it, his adorable little resistant soulmate - that’s when he lets himself soften a touch, smiling easier, seemingly without even realising it. He tends to get a little carried away when he’s fucking her because he’s honestly just so fucking content, this is exactly where he’s supposed to be and nothing else matters, not even your pretty tears and soft whimpers for him to stop. Of course Tendou’s gonna watch!

Okayyyy so I just read Split and, as always, your writing is superbbbb. Osamu acting like he was innocent in the whole situation? Atsumu being the sadistic little shit that he is? 💯 My brain is just full of thoughts of the Miya Brothers that I decided to read their Soulmate AU this early in the morning and I noticed how the party was set in the new captain's house.

And OMG as third years Atsumu's the new captain of Inarizaki and holy fuck there's a huge possibility the reader, their soulmate, just lost her V card in either of the twin's room or bed. Wouldn't that situation be a cluster fuck that drove them both crazy to do those things at the end after denying reader? Goshhhh I love this little subtle details in your fic. You are such a genius writer that endless possibilities are available to be interpreted by us readers. Thank you so much Rhi 💖💖💖 @pamdamonyum

👀 sqirugpq3urnioklnjk you’re a sweetheart

but can you imagine if it was Atsumu’s bed and he was the one to find you and the soccer captain? because like i genuinely debated about having them kick his ass and i think in that circumstance... not even Samu would be able to hold him back!

❤️❤️😍😘💕✌️

I love you too, you funky little anon

Ok omg split was amazing! I have to share smth tho when my bro and I were kids (like pretty young), when one of us did something “bad” we’d be like “no that wasn’t me it wasn’t me it was my evil twin,” and like then we’d forgive the other and shit talk abt our “evil” versions bc it wasn’t the “good” twin’s fault lol. So the “Osamu you promised!” “Osamu isn’t here rn,” had me dying. Like so perfect. What bs. Then the end with Osamu “I couldn’t stop him” miya like oh yeah ofc just your evil twin nothing you could have done 🙄 like it was so perfect, I loved it!

aw that’s actually really cute tho! i honest to god think that Osamu’s worse in this one - at least Atsumu never pretends to be anything other than what he is. Osamu’s just as toxic and warped, but he acts like the hero, like it wasn’t his obsession that started this all

So, I just read the Dear Old Friend Osamu drabble and I couldn't help but grin. The implications I got from it and the initial one-shot were the following;

1. Atsumu is a titties man, considering how much he bit and teased them in DOF.

2. 'Samu I don't have a favourite twin how dare you is an ass man considering how many words of that drabble were dedicated to his thoughts lingering on the titular dear old friend's arse.

And I'm just LIVING for it because they really do complete each other in that regard. But also because 'Samu strikes me as the kind of guy that likes face sitting and spanking his partner while they sandwich his face between their thighs. And Atsumu strikes me as the kind of person that likes just randomly fiddling with his partner's tiddies because tiddy = fun.

Also, hi! I love your writing! Pretty sure this is my first ask, even though it's not, really??? @pavlovs-titties

ahh you’re so sweet, thank you bby!!

and yeah, Atsumu’s definitely a tiddies kinda guy and Osamu prefers ur butt (but also not me writing that little drabble because i wanted to tease the idea Osamu have his turn leaving his mark on the reader by spanking her till she’s nice and sore 😉)

Baby, you were amazing ❤️! I don't know how I still get surprised by your awesomeness, but I do. You're amazing and no one can tell you different 🥺🥰

💖💖💖 sdfghjhgj you’ve got me all blushy and soft, thank you!!!

the jokes on you tho because in actual fact you’re the one who’s amazing?? ily!!

#BD answers

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makeste · 5 years

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BnHA Chapter 250: Why Is This Family Not in Therapy

Previously on BnHA: Fuyumi invited everyone over to Camp Todovid for a wholesome family meal because what could possibly go wrong. Kacchan and Deku proceeded to spend the evening blinking distress signals at each other in Morse code while Natsu shoved breadsticks into his purse and skedaddled after getting mad at Endeavor in a completely unexpected turn of events which absolutely no one could have foreseen. After dinner, Shouto had a heart to heart with Fuyu (and then Deku) about whether or not he was ready to forgive his dad, and meanwhile Endeavor said a prayer for his very dead son Touya. Poor Touya. He was such a nice boy. You know what he really used to like? Messenger bags. He’d put the oddest things in them, too. I wonder if Touya would still enjoy collecting strange and disturbing things in bags if he was still alive today. Alas. We’ll never know.

Today on BnHA: Some guy named Takami who just got out of prison decides to show up out of the blue and fucking kidnap Natsuo because WHY NOT. But before that happens, we get a nice scene of Kacchan and Deku sitting down with Shouto and Fuyu, who finally decide it’s high time they talked about THEIR SECRET DEAD BROTHER seeing as LET’S BE REAL, THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS DINNER TO BEGIN WITH. So basically, (1) he’s definitely dead! For sure! 100% deceased!, and (2) Natsuo apparently blames Endeavor for his death, lol no big. Deku and Kacchan are for some reason super fucking chill about hearing this, and then Endeavor comes over and is all “TIME TO HEAD BACK” and omg I’ve never hated him more. And then as they’re driving away from Todofield Hall, Takami shows up and is all “HEY ENDEAVOR LOOK I KIDNAPPED YOUR CHILD AND I’M GONNA KILL HIM!” and holy shit but Horikoshi is just fucking with us now, though.

(As always, all comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity afterward, and added some ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)

all right manga, do your worst. I’m completely spoiler-free on this one. watch it not even be a flashback, after all of that lmao

(ETA: lol I read these two asks after I read the chapter and they’re pretty great:

honestly this week wasn’t that bad, though! the worst part of it was the whole “only 13 pages again” thing honestly. next week, though, it looks like we’ll be in for some fun times. oh goodness.)

so it appears night has fallen on Todofield Hall, and hoooooooooly shit you guys, are they. are they all gonna have a sleepover at Shouto’s house, because fdszllk I. I’m gonna. ldskfjla

(ETA: [kicks Endeavor in the shins] why do you hate fun!?)

who is talking?? are these prison stripes??

so is this the Takami guy narrating, then? just like we all predicted last week. ???

(ETA: so I saw all these people going “wtf is this Hawks’s dad??” and I was like “lol what” and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to put two and two together, but anyways, long story short, “Takami” just so happens to be Hawks’s recently revealed surname (with the same kanji and everything -- 鹰見). so while every instinct in my body is screaming at me “gtfo no way they’re related”, it is an extremely bizarre coincidence, so uh. ?? I got nothin’, basically.)

WHAT THE FUCK

IS THIS GUY STALKING THE TODOROKI HOUSE. ABOUT TO BREAK INTO TODOFELL IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT WHILE MY CHILDREN ARE ASLEEP!? CAN THEY JUST NOT CATCH A BREAK

also I will never understand villains who get all smug about being captured alive. “your one mistake was not killing me when you should have!” like okay, so you’re admitting you’re a piece of shit who should have died, and that the hero totally could have done it, but they were nice enough not to so SHAME ON THEM, apparently

anyways I really don’t understand what’s going on at all lol. some guy looked up to Endeavor and then got himself captured by him for some reason. let’s continue I guess

oh lord it keeps getting creepier

-- oohhhhhhhh shiiiiiiit, is this fucker about to air Endeavor’s dirty laundry?? is that what this is about?

AHHHHH

NATSU SWEETIE WHERE ARE YOUR SELF-PRESERVATION INSTINCTS?? IT IS NOT SAFE! and also what the fuck, does Endeavor just not have any security in his home at all? surely he must, if for no other reason than the fact that HE HAS KIDS and he’s not always at home! I have to imagine that any pro hero with a family understands that they’re a potential target for villains and would take precautions. I wonder if we’re about to see this sneaky guy get wrecked

(ETA: nope, Endeavor really has no security whatsoever and Natsu got snatched while waiting outside for his Uber. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was too busy missing his brother and being sad to remember that he actually has a quirk himself. c’mon Natsu.

-- actually, come to think, props to Horikoshi for once again bucking the trend and having a guy be the one who gets kidnapped and becomes the damsel in distress. I’m just going to assume that had Fuyu been the one to get captured, Endeavor wouldn’t have even heard about it until he received a text from her with a picture of the guy encased in ice and a caption asking “so dad, uh, what should I do with this?”)

BUT FIRST, WE’RE CUTTING BACK TO THE TODOROKI KITCHEN, WHERE TODOBAKUDEKU ARE CURRENTLY HAVING TEA WITH FUYU BECAUSE SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME YESSSSS

hhhglkohhhhh myyyyy godddddd

I KNOW!!! WHAT’S WITH THAT! WE’VE WAITED 250 FUCKING CHAPTERS PUTTING UP WITH YOUR SLY-ASS HINTS ALL “ALL RIGHT THEN, KEEP YOUR SECRETS” but is it finally time now? IS IT??!

Shouto says it’s not exactly an easy topic to bring up, and okay, fair. buuuut also, this is the same child who ambushed Deku in a corridor back when they barely knew each other and was all “let me tell you all about my dad’s quirk marriage and how he abused me and my mom and how I got this scar” so like. what exactly do you consider “easy to bring up” though

OH MY GOD IT’S HAPPENINGGGGGGG

we’re getting DETAILS. ABOUT. TOUYA’S PAST fkdslfh holy motherfucking shitballs someone pinch me

she says it happened right after Rei got hospitalized, which yeah, we all figured based on the middle school uniform in the photo. so that definitely pins down his age then, doesn’t it? Shouto was six when that happened, so if Touya was in middle school he’d have been between 12 and 15. so it’s very likely then that he was 14, the exact same age as Fuyu, so therefore THE TWIN THEORY IS CONFIRMED! WE DID IT TUMBLR

anyways back to being sad though, because

can someone please hug this child?? what are you all even doing?! do you not see his face?? jesus christ

oh no oh my god are you serious are you

okay, before I go on to the next panel and commence FREAKING THE FUCK OUT, I need to stop here though, because the thought that the Todos actually were in the process of healing nine years ago and could have potentially been spared years of additional pain had it not been for this tragedy is. just. I fucking can’t. I need a minute here. god

anyway. so now on to the freaking out though, because

:) :))) :))))))) huh. you don’t say

(ETA: hmm in hindsight I promised freakouts and then all I did was go “:)” but please understand that the “:)” conveys so much more inner freaking out than words could possibly communicate. just picture me screaming and waving my arms around like a Kermit the frog gif okay.)

look at this you guys. this revelation is so stone cold fucking sober that it even got Katsuki to make an actual normal face for the first time in god knows how many chapters, wow

by the way, words can hardly express how much I appreciate that Katsuki is sitting here chilling out drinking tea with the rest of them and listening to this tale of woe and empathizing like a normal, well-adjusted person, though. I will never take that for granted. thank you character development gods. y’all are bros

anyways the face in question that Natsu was making is so fucking sad, and just. THEY ALL NEED HUGS. why is this family not in therapy

NO!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU SON OF A BITCH!! JUST LIKE THAT YOU’RE RIGHT BACK ON MY SHIT LIST, ENDEAVOR!! CHRIST ALMIGHTY ARE YOU SERIOUS, SO WE’RE REALLY JUST GONNA LEAVE OFF THERE? “LOL SO YEAH, NATSU STILL THINKS DAD KILLED OUR BROTHER AND THAT’S WHY ALL THE TENSION” and Deku and Kacchan just nod like that is in any way a satisfying explanation rather than an INCREDIBLY OMINOUS STATEMENT which only goes and raises about A BILLION MORE QUESTIONS OMG. “oh okay, so he hates your dad because he thinks that he murdered your mysterious other brother we’re only just now hearing about. say no more. no further context necessary” fucking --

listen, you two. where the fuck are your investigative skills?? SOME SCOOBY SQUAD YOU ARE!!

oh my goodness gracious

listen guys, things I was not expecting to check off my character development bucket list today: Katsuki joining the Fuyumi fanclub and bonding with her over recipes. I wasn’t even aware that was on my list. BUT IT SURE WAS, AND IT’S CHECKED NOW AND I LOVE IT

also love that Shouto tells Fuyu to just text the recipe to him, and then he will share it with Katsuki. because they are best friends

also Deku is the only one here with any manners at all but oh well. we all been knew

(ETA: though to be fair, Katsuki asking for the recipe is about as big a compliment as one can give to a chef, and it kind of serves as a combination “thanks for the meal” and “everything was really good” tbh. shit, now I want her recipe.)

fdlkjfg

... [reaches out to gently touch the panels] so soft

-- BUT DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S EVEN SOFTER?

[faint sound of my heart imploding] ah

oh my god his face

and Katsuki’s face too. boy are you jealous. to think you were all “WHY THOUGH!?” coming here, only to walk away from it all with a kickass new mapo tofu recipe as well as a new person to add to your secret list of people you would literally die for. awwwwwww

and Shouto. omg. this is the most bashful panel I’ve ever seen. what a blessed chapter

anyway so now they’re all driving away (back to school?? I think he said?) and Endeavor’s talking to them about their upcoming schedule. so I guess they are heading back to school, then

anyway so he wants them to work the weekend as well as two weekdays? damn that’s a lot of class to be missing, he’s asking them to skip literally half the school week (since they have Saturday class too)

wow you guys look at this panel

takeaways from this: 1.) I honestly would have thought Deku would be the one tutoring other people in English, if anything. as of the midterms, he was above Shouto in academic rankings, but more importantly he’s also the biggest All Might fan on the planet, and All Might spent a lot of time in America in his youth and presumably speaks decent English himself, so you’d think Deku’s English would be passable just from his obsession alone. but I guess you just can’t beat that fancy private school education

and the other takeaway: Katsuki doesn’t like being squished in the backseat of a cramped Japanese car with Deku and Shouto. this one is absolutely shocking. I’m gonna need a moment to process this for sure. anyways poor Deku, he’s probably getting so many elbows to the ribs right now. I hope he elbows back

(ETA: actually the fact that Katsuki is apparently sticking his head out the window here in addition to complaining about the cramped conditions makes me wonder if he’s actually getting carsick. my poor baby do you need some dramamine.)

guys, meet Endeavor’s chauffeur

so anyway this is a bit sudden but I have a new favorite character now. life is funny like that. does he remind anyone else of Major Armstrong

wow Endeavor is answering the question seriously

okay but shit, I really fucking love this answer, though. he’s so matter-of-fact about it. because the thing is, the question isn’t really “when did you start baby-sitting a bunch of kids”; it’s “when did you actually start caring about something other than yourself?” and the answer is that it happened when he finally reached the top and realized the responsibility that went hand in hand with that role. it forced him to finally look past just himself, and to think about what it really means to be a hero. shit, I feel another essay coming on, but it’ll have to wait for some other time lol. we still have to see if Natsu’s going to make it out of this alive

anyway so now Armstrong is chuckling and saying that status really does change people huh, and they’re driving on into the night

OH SHIT

THAT’S A NICE SON YOU’VE GOT THERE, ENDEAVOR. IT WOULD BE A SHAME IF SOMEONE... okay you know what, I’m not sure where I was headed with that joke, but in any case I can’t finish it because this isn’t funny at all actually, this is actually SO FUCKING BAD oh shit oh shit

NATSUUUUU

oh no he’s so scared oh fuck. fuck. he’s only 19, he’s just a kid still. god. why do I always get so worked up over these parts. what am I doing reading a shounen manga if I can’t handle seeing kids in peril. HORIKOSHI PLEASE BE KIND TO MY BABIES

holy shit

okay, is this implying that Katsuki was sticking his head out of the window in that previous panel?? I realize more important things are happening and this is hardly the time to dwell on this, but jesus christ my kid is out here trying to get himself decapitated. boy what is wrong with you

anyway so now something is going "pop” and I have no idea. ??

(ETA: lol I guess it was Endeavor? you know, how Endeavor sometimes just goes “pop” for no reason. that’s just the sound someone makes when spontaneously bursting into flames.)

far be it from me to start whipping out analogies about a mama bear and her cubs, but. damned if that ain’t what’s happening though. motherfucker, you mess with his kids? so would you like to die fast, or slow

so now some weird fucking shit is happening to the car, and I guess it’s this guy’s quirk again?

wow my man, so you’re really attacking the car with the three protagonists with SOMETHING TO PROVE in the backseat. you really do have a death wish

(ETA: on top of that, attacking the car mere minutes before the winter break ends, and with it, the deadline for “defeating a villain quicker than Endeavor.” HMMM anybody got some popcorn?)

now Endeavor is shouting “LET HIM GO!” because that’s what superheros shout when someone is being kidnapped

lol poor Natsu looks kind of awkward now

like, don’t get him wrong, he’s still scared for his life. but also he’s starting to get a bit of that same feeling that Katsuki and Deku were getting in the last chapter, like he’s suddenly found himself right in the midst of some grade A melodrama from which there is no escape. anyways don’t mind him, he’s just going to chill here in this big pile of bandages and see where this goes

so Endeavor is all “........... YOU’RE FROM SEVEN YEARS AGO!” and honestly that’s impressive. I guess the quirk is a pretty memorable one, though

wow now they’re suddenly being all coy with this guy’s name? what the hell

?? Natsu bud, I feel ya, this really is some awkward shit right here

ohhhh!

that’s the name of the chapter! well all right then, so at least that much makes sense now

so now Ending is apologizing to Endeavor, and wow, tons of essay fuel in these next two panels here

“you had so many things that I could never get” doesn’t this sound remarkably similar to Deku’s speech to Kacchan during their second fight at Ground Beta? huh

and also, I think we are slowly dancing closer and closer to the Thing Katsuki Lacks That He Needs To Learn From His Internship From Endeavor. what do you guys think? I have a lot of thoughts about this, but again, I’ll save it for another post seeing as shit is hitting the fan right now and all

OH SHIT

ARE YOU SERIOUS, OF ALL THE TIMES TO HAVE ANOTHER THIRTEEN PAGE CHAPTER! HORIKOSHI YOU ARE FUCKING KILLING ME HERE

well shit. okay so when he says “don’t make the same mistake twice”, he’s clearly talking about Endeavor letting him live the last time they met, but also I can’t help but feel like there might be some kind of double meaning here as well. the fact that he went from theft to kidnapping and attempted murder, on top of him mentioning earlier about how he went digging into Endeavor’s past, makes me wonder if he could possibly be trying to recreate a specific set of events. or is that crazy??

but just, hear me out. what if something similar to this went down before, with Touya perhaps being taken hostage by a villain (though it couldn’t have been the same guy because the timing is off, and also Endeavor didn’t recognize him right off the bat), and Endeavor making some critical mistake which resulted in him failing to save him, and Natsu then blaming him for that and holding him responsible for the death. honestly that makes the most sense to me, since I would think that “literally murdered his own kid” would be kind of a deal-breaker as far as the rest of the family ever reconciling with him. so yeah, this could get very interesting here

(ETA: hoo boy, so I’ve been browsing the bnha tags a bit, and it seems that a lot of people are interpreting the hints in this chapter very differently from me lol. I admit I could certainly be wrong about the “don’t make the same mistakes” bit having a double meaning. but like, do we really believe that Endeavor just straight up murdered his son and got away with it, or that it was covered up or something? or that he drove Touya to suicide? I think it’s much more likely that Touya pushed himself too hard, or that he accidentally got caught up in one of Endeavor’s attacks, or something along those lines.

what really struck me, though, was that a lot of people actually seem to be hoping for it to come out that Endeavor really is responsible, though. like, to the point where they’re prepared to be outraged if it turns out he’s not, and this part of the story doesn’t end up conforming to the narrative of Endeavor just being a sinister cartoon villain. and like, I don’t really know what to say about that. except that I really hate this idea that if an abuser is ever portrayed as something other than a heartless monster then it’s super-problematic and/or just bad writing. that Endeavor not murdering his son = Horikoshi endorses child abuse. or something. anyways I don’t have the spoons to really throw my hat into the ring here, but basically my opinion is that life is rarely just black and white in that way, and this story reflects that, and I think it’s absolutely the right call to make and is actually very good writing and I respect it.

and also like, it’s not some all-or-nothing thing here where he’s either a perfect saint, or the worst person to ever exist! what he is is a man who made some terrible choices in the past and abused and hurt the very people he should have loved and protected the most. and what he is, also, is a man who has realized the awfulness of the things he’s done, and is trying his best now to be a good person. what he is is a human being. and acknowledging that doesn’t mean that you condone the abuse; it simply means that you acknowledge that people are made up of more than just the worst things they’ve done in their lives. that’s it.

anyways, for all of my “not gonna through my hat into the ring” nonsense, I’m doing a pretty good impression of exactly that, so I’ll shut up now. damn you Endeavor and your controversy-sparking ways. what kind of psychopath looks at the fucking BnHA fandom and says “not bad, but you know what this place could use? more discourse.” you knew exactly what you were doing, you fiend.)

anyways I’m going to hope and assume that Natsu isn’t actually about to meet his end here at the hands of this bestriped man and his peculiarly thematic villain name and sinister bandage arrows (are they bandages?? maybe not since they seem pretty solid and he’s threatening to stab Natsu in the eye with one. idk). and for all of my joking earlier, this guy actually does appear to have a real, genuine death wish since he keeps talking about how Endeavor should have killed him before. so in addition to all this other drama, toss in an attempted suicide by cop as well! this fucking arc, man. goddamn

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independentartistbuzz · 4 years

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7 FROM THE WOMEN: RED FLOWER LAKE

Red Flower Lake is lush, heady electro-pop. Aloe vera for our dried-out hearts. Sweeping melodies and understated yet complex soundscapes. These songs are open doors to a relationship: two people who know each other about as well as two humans can, singing to the other, about each other, offering a brave and heartfelt depiction of the territories they have survived and navigated together. It’s all here: intimacy and distance, heartbreak and ecstasy. Vulnerability, insecurity and courage.

1. What have you been working to promote lately?

It feels like I have been working on promoting a lot lately (internally and externally). Things like honesty, clear communication, empathy, patience, naming emotions, opening my heart, peace in my family, etc, etc.

But that’s not quite what we are talking about. ;)

I have been working alongside my husband to promote our EP Three Truths as well as an exhibit of our multi-media work at the Torosiete museum of contemporary art - a virtual museum unlike any other. Our exhibit just opened at the end of October and will be open for all of time - as long as there is internet.

Our EP Three Truths consists of three songs, Heart is Breaking, Baby Don’t Go, and Brave. The first two were written when we had super young kids (about 8 years ago).

When we were first considering releasing some songs this past May, we weren’t sure which songs to begin with. We were pretty tired of Heart is Breaking and Baby Don’t Go but also felt like they were worth something, belonged together, and like they might be the beginning of a story. We figured we would see what mixing one of them would do and take it from there. We sent out Baby Don’t Go and after trying a couple different mixers, we landed on Mike Pepe through a family friend named Kelly Musgrave at Linear Management. He did his thing and we actually got inspired enough to completely redo the vocals which was pretty satisfying. I had started voice lessons several months earlier and felt like I had more to offer the song. Once the energy was back in Baby Don’t Go it was pretty exciting to see what some mixing would do to Heart is Breaking. Deciding to release those particular songs really felt like the end of a pretty challenging time. It has been nice to have them out in the world where people might be able to relate to them giving voice to an experience that is painful but also real. I don’t know how many emotions we get away with leaving unturned but I appreciate a song that can help me reflect on a feeling.

Heart is Breaking was the kind of song that was so of a moment, it didn’t feel worth it to try and enunciate the words better or change what I was unsatisfied with after hearing it mixed. I am curious whether that choice will actually impact my satisfaction long term but, so far, I have found it both surprising and amusing that putting something out into the world that is a little bit vocally unfinished doesn’t bother me at all.

As for Abel’s vocals though, they are straight from the heart. They are also his original vocals. I remember when I first heard them I felt a lot less significant as part of our musical duo. He just put it all out there and it sounds so good. Heart is Breaking speaks to the experience of wanting love even though it seems to always end in heart break. An experience that, as a young parent, felt very prevalent.

Brave to me is all in the title. My setup is such that if I want to play around on the keyboard with a feeling I’m having, I still need to pull up ProTools and title the session - even though I don’t know what I am going to play which is the case a lot. Often when I am sitting down to play music, it is to explore something in my mind and on my heart and in this case I wanted to be brave about that exploration so I titled the song Brave. Brave is about sticking around and being present to see what is true even if it is scary.

All of the songs I write are deeply personal. In the past, it has sometimes surprised me that Abel would even touch the material, considering how blatant it is but I’ve learned that I’m not the only one in the relationship that sometimes feels paradoxical and complex feelings.

Having made music together for such a long time now without releasing any of it, we are both really excited to share more of the story and more of our music. It feels like an epic tale that is still revealing itself in real time. Three Truths feels like the beginning of a bigger message - this first message being “Damn this is hard but relationship is sort of like that sometimes”.

2. Please tell us about your favorite song written, recorded or produced by another woman and why it’s meaningful to you.

Sade’s Smooth Operator. There are a lot of songs and a lot of reasons why to pick them but this one pulls me right back to a time in my life when not a lot of things were easy but at that moment, the house was warm, the whole family seemed happy and there was an abundance of food. I was maybe 5, my family was living with my great aunt and her daughters who were at least ten years older than us. We were all still getting used to living together and my family was still getting used to living in Va after moving from New Mexico. When Smooth Operator came into my awareness, it was the day after Thanksgiving and there was a bounty of leftover mashed potatoes, peas and onions in cream sauce, and stuffing that needed to be eaten. While we formed those leftovers into little balls and baked them, we were introduced to that song. I think we may have listened to the whole album a couple times through but we named our food creation after Smooth Operator and it is one of the special happy memories I have from an amazing but also pretty heavy childhood. Throughout my childhood from then on, Sade was a voice I leaned into. I remember one night my twin sister and I lay down in the dark of her empty room in middle school and listened in consecutive order through Diamond Life, Promise, Stronger Than Pride, and Love Deluxe on our tape player to the light of a big moon. One of my all time favorite nights.

Smooth Operator felt like a warning. Like watch out girls, they’re everywhere. The first song of their first album. Her voice was always my reference. I wanted my voice to sound like hers. I wanted to make songs like hers - with a point, with heart, and with a voice you want to listen to. Smooth Operator is our family anthem, made so by a moment we all recall fondly - an odd anthem perhaps but my family is as odd and as amazing as they get.

3. What does it mean to you to be a woman making music / in the music business today and do you feel a responsibility to other women to create messages and themes in your music?

Having an opportunity to use my voice as a woman at this time feels very special and important and I hope that I am doing my part in honoring the power of the feminine, and the important work of keeping it real in all my relationships at all levels.

I work to be authentic and express as clearly from my heart as I can. Making music - making art, is a way for me to connect with my emotions, my inner wisdom, a way to express those feelings, ultimately it is a way to communicate something that means something to me. I recognize that this is a potentially self indulgent process and I pray that my purpose of honoring the human experience and reminding us of our power is conveying.

It is important for me to be super honest because there are so many feelings I have felt ashamed of and wouldn’t even admit to in the past that I am now realizing are actually just part of a human experience. Honoring and expressing my truth thus far has been a thousand times more empowering than the results have been of hiding from my truth as a result of believing I should be ashamed of my feelings and for believing in my worth - what I know is true in my heart. Denial of my truth has wreaked havoc in my life and it isn’t worth another moment of time to feed or encourage such disempowering paradigms.

I recognize that we all have a lot to heal from and a lot of healing work to do individually and collectively. I think a large part of that healing work is around being brave enough to honor our feelings, identifying their source, and getting empowered to speak/know/honor our truth - a truth that is both unique and valid.

Perhaps if we are able to honor ourselves in this way, we will be able to hear each others’ truths with compassion, recognizing ourselves in each other's struggles.

A big step for me in my healing journey has been accepting and being willing to hear and honor my own truth. No more wars - internal or external. When I am not fighting myself, I am one less person who is fighting themselves and that is extremely motivating. I think all of my fighting ultimately comes from internal conflicts so I might as well start with that and find some way to work that stuff out. I have been working on not making other people the bad guy but, if I see ‘bad guy’ out there in the world, to note that I see a reflection of parts of myself I still am in a healing process with.

I am not sure what the depths of our world’s healing will entail but I know my responsibility is to my own healing and it is empowering to own that responsibility. I pray we all honor ourselves like the magnificent and unique creations we are and honor ourselves like we are somebody’s child who adores us. Even if we can argue that our parents did not or do not love us, there is still and always will be immense love for each of us in the vast universe and from our mama earth. We are worthy of our best life. In fact. I think it is the only sustainable future.

My responsibility is to honor and stay true to my truth.

4. What is the most personal thing you have shared in your music or in your artist brand as it relates to being female?

All of the songs I write are extremely personal and expose my deep internal struggles. But I am okay with being a voice and a sound. Being an image has not been easy. Learning to embrace my face, my body, my movement, my inner style, etc, feels much more exposing and personally challenging. The entire world of what is sexy, what is beautiful, what is inspiring, what is useful, etc. has been out of reach for me since forever. I find that the more I turn toward my spiritual truth, my spiritual purpose, toward awe and gratitude for the children in my life, the more permission I have and the more energy I have for exposing my physical person on a true and personal level. What feels beautiful, what feels empowering, what feels good and right?

I have in the past, been absolutely disempowered around beauty and sex that I feel like only now am I getting access to any answers internally about what is beautiful, empowering and what feels good for me. I am a mother and it is important to me that the children in my life have examples of real women and men in their lives who are empowered and strong and honest- not because of our physical form but because of our clarity in purpose and our open hearts.

I know the sexiest thing a person can do in my heart/ mind is their inner work, get straight with themselves about what they are doing here and live and breathe their purpose.

On the level of the eye, I think playing with what my spiritual guides have to say to me at any given moment feels the most appropriate and fun. I’d rather be in a conversation with them about physical expression than with old paradigms of sex appeal and survival on this physical plain.

5. What female artists have inspired you and influenced you?

Oh my goodness, So many. I really believe that the unapologetic art of all women throughout time has molded me as part of the collective creative conscience. Art begets art.

I come from a family of bohemian artists and I would be remiss in not honoring them particularly and their absolute influence in my life. Their authentic expressions have absolutely shaped and inspired me and I am so grateful to each of my family members for their conscious participation in living their best lives.

My highschool teacher and friend Zap McConnel reinforced and added to what my family already inspires in me. She was my first real mentor and example outside of my family in living a life of integrity and breaking the molds of our boxed beliefs.

And Beatrice Ost. She has been part of my family for a long time but it really wasn’t until her grandchildren connected with our kids that we became better acquainted and, just as kids tend to do, through our children we have been led into a most beautiful and inspiring relationship of collaboration and inspiration. We wouldn’t be where we are now without her and really everyone in the world. The ripples are real.

6. Do you consider yourself a feminist? If so why and if not why?

I consider myself a feminist because I believe in the unique and essential wisdom of the feminine and its absolute importance in the balance of life. I could also consider myself a divine masculinist but that movement is really in conjunction with the healing of the divine feminine. It is for all of us to heal from this woundedness - not just women.

There is no denying that women have been oppressed for millenia - longer than any other human group except children - and it feels important to me to keep raising the collective awareness to the long lasting effects of oppression that continue to weigh on the lives of everyone. If mama is oppressed, everyone is oppressed because if mama is oppressed she does not have the power she needs to stand up for what she knows in the depths of her heart - to care for the hearts of her family and that kind of pain and injury is passed down a long way.

I have been considering the narrative of our media history around witches - how they have been conveyed so terribly in our social history. I am interested in those stories from the witches’ perspectives. I’d love to hear the backstory of Ursula the deep sea witch in The Little Mermaid. It seems to me that she may have wanted to say something to someone… An easily identifiable sentiment for most human beings at this point. There can be no more pretending how much we have all suffered because of fear and domination. I don’t think we need to gender specify suffering generally but just like with race, it is true that there are some significant stereo types that have been disempowering for a long time.

We are still living in the antiquated world of shame about menstrual cycles for God’s sake! It’s bonkers. I can attest that this particular gift has felt like a burden in this worn out world of 9-5 schedules and limited sick days and - if any - and our basic needs for survival are not cared for enough so that we don't even know this immense gift as an honor. But as we each recognize our person as an immense gift and when we honor ourselves and each other as such, we change the world.

I am a feminist and a masculinist because I strongly believe that each of us as individuals needs to feel empowered as part of something larger than just our individual egos. Each of us is essential and honoring our unique gifts will and does heal our world in deep and profound ways. Each of us knows something, has a purpose here that needs to be respected by everyone. Men and women both would benefit from honoring the feminine in all that is and vice versa. It is a balance and as long as the balance is off there will be a need for feminism. And just as much there is a need for honoring the divine masculine. It truly is a matter of balance - one that needs support internally and externally as individuals and as a collective.

7. What was the most challenging thing you have had to face as a female Artist?

The most challenging thing I have had to face as a creative being is myself. My own pride and jealousy, self doubt, and a need for external approval have kept me from taking risks, whether it is going into action or taking a nap. Everything I did or didn’t do was based on what I thought somebody else might think which gave me very little room for actual self expression. Giving myself permission to exist independently of other people’s approval and trusting the creative flow has been a matter of challenging oppressive systems - both external and the ones and the ones in my head that I have defended as part of a fear based world. As I continue to grow wiser and my body becomes more of an ally for my heart rather than a sculpture project, I find myself in battle with old paradigms around self image.

It is an interesting time to be alive and I have lots of hope for us as a collective as I continue to break my own belief systems because if I can do it, it can be done. Breaking out of old and limiting beliefs, considering new paradigms, recognizing my inner/outer calling and prioritizing that calling beyond all else has been liberating and empowering. My dream is that all our dreams come true. I know my heart is based in love and that all the struggle has been for learning. This knowledge has helped me come to terms with trauma but I would say I think oppression is systemic and the more we can break free of our own excuses and reasoning to defend oppressive systems, the more swiftly and easily we will transition to a new world. I am more than happy to be inviting in a paradigm of inclusivity, kindness, inquiry, compassion, and honesty. An undeniable breath of fresh air from so many oppressive paradigms past and present.

Listen to “Three Truths”

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rosesanthology · 4 years

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And Yet... | Akaashi Keiji x F!Reader [musician!AU]

Violinist!Akaashi x Pianist!Reader (yes i saw that one Viria fanart)

Ive been feeling extremely bad these days but im managing to write some things for my emotional support hq boys (Akaashi and Kenma) so here u go even tho its probably a lil shitty 👁3👁 its all about them la la land type of vibes

Warning : i didn't proofread this, also it's VERY self indulgent

Songs : • city of stars from La La Land (but Dodie and Jon Cozart's cover)

• any of the songs in the fic but especially Bach's violin sonata in presto IT SLAPS

[Tags] : @raevaioli

- You've always admired the way human life entertwines itself with art. The vicissitudes of a fleating existence finding a way to express themselves in external stimulations, the way someone could pour as much of their soul, as much as themselves in just one moment, one performance, one artwork.

- it is the main reason why you decided to become a pianist. The second one being that you could hardly put as much effort on anything else

- your mother would argue that it is but a mere childhood dream to do something as uncertain, sure.

- and yet, the first time your performed in front of an actual audience, even if it was just at your high school's theatre auditorium, still felt like the best

- you had registered in the student showcase program without your mother knowing, wearing not the dark blue dress you dreamed of but a hoodie, some jeans and sneakers

- in the moment it seemed fine even if you did look way underdressed than the other kids who registered for piano too

- but it all seemed to tie together with your whole personna as you sat on the stool making sure to put your tiny moomin plushie on top of the grand piano

- he helped a lot

- at that time you played Tanjirou no Uta because well....there's only so much you can expect from a high schooler who lacks confidence in their skills

- regardless of the song your fingers danced onto the heavy keys, the sound swirling with your own emotions as you tried to concentrate on the one thing you wanted the most,

- "Somebody, look at me."

- because there is such a big difference between only being seen by people and actually being looked, observed, analysed

- at the time you wanted someone to look at you and wonder if what they were feeling listening to your piece was flooding their brain the same way it flooded yours

- if the lingering sound of pressed keys made their heart and time stop in the same way it did yours so well whenever you played

- it mattered. In that moment, only that mattered, but sooner or later it had to end

- until then, the only person who was able to exactly tell the things you wanted to convey was your childhood best friend Akaashi Keiji

- he was of wealthier upbringing, his parents always so uptight and pressuring him into their perfect mold in which he seemed to fit so oddly well

- and yet, he always found time to be there for you and help you in your struggles, he was far more musically inclined than you because of his background but his eyes never lost their gentle glint as you would mess up the keys to a piece

- he'd always take his time to let you know how much he liked hearing you play even if you insisted that you weren't as good as him, his smile never wavered as he rested his chin on his palms and closed his eyes, listening to your fifth poor attempt at playing Clara Schumann's sonata in G minor

- that was your typical sunday afternoon in his living room, playing the day away intoxicated in the calmness of his scent of flowers and warm cotton

- when you finished, people didn't seem to mind the choice of the song nor the stuffed toy that added to your whole appearance, if anything you only heard encouragements, advices and heartfelt returns

- among them was Akaashi of course, ever so gentle but marking in his praise, making you feel like maybe you were worth standing on that stage

- it wasn't much compared to what the middle school kids who played Mozart got but, it gave you enough of a push to have the strength to call yourself a pianist today

- nothing really changed in your little world, you still had your moomin plush sitting on the piano everytime you performed and the same simple attitude, now you just knew your classics and could play something else than anime music even if you did manage to fit a little song once in a while

- what changed tho is that you and Akaashi had grown appart after he had left

- his parents had suddenly decided to register him in some fancy music college in Paris

- away from you

- at the time, you knew that no amount of tears and words could possibly matter in the final decision

- but it's not like you could ever control yourself when he held you in his arms like he did when he broke the news to you

- you were never that gracious at goodbyes

- but if it meant that he could get the life he deserved than you were willing to make that sacrifice, even if he wouldn't have the time to talk to you as much as before

- in the meantime you would continue to grow as a person and as an artist if not for you then for him

- and that's what you've been doing for the past four years

- and it is exactly what brought you to accept the offer to perform at another musician showcase tonight

- it was fancier than a high school show that's for sure. It was held in one of these candle lit restaurants, but not the impersonal ones where the tables are five meters away from each other

- it was one of these places where everybody seemed to know each other and relish in the warmth of sharing the same pleasant time while listening to live concerts

- after your own performance you sat back down with the other musicians, talking a bit with the pretty cellist Kiyoko Shimizu, who finished her own before yours

- when the lights dimmed and the next musician stepped on the stage your heart almost stopped

- there stood your dearly missed friend in flesh and bones, violin and bow in hand, or at least you thought so

- he started playing and you watched from the side, amazed, your heart achung with the resonance of the instrument as he gently swayed to such a hard piece as Bach's sonata No. 1 in presto

- the ground and the rest of the room seemed to dismantle around you as all you could think about was the man playing music off of your very heart strings, the man who you've known for a long time and who had been such a huge inspiration and motivation in your existence

- the man who always was so sensible and observant despite coming off as stoic to most people, the same one who was always gentle and motivating all the whilst excelling in what he did himself

- this was Akaashi Keiji.

- and right now he was playing such a fast piece with an unspoken surprising sadness to it as if he'd disappear into ashes the second he stopped, the second he relaxed

- but it eventually had to come to an end, the sound of the strings tearing you appart to reveal the most vulnerable parts of yourself to him like it always did on sunday afternoon practice

- the realization came crashing into you as he bowed to the audience and locked eyes with you, sending you a small smile before disappearing backstage

- naturally, you went after him your breath hitching and your whole being coming to a halt three meters away from him

- you had been way farther away from each other and yet, these three meters felt the worst

- he turned to you, and as casually as if he never left opened his arms for you to run into and that's just what you did

- his own heart was pounding as he caressed your hair, whispering phrases like "it's okay" or "im here now" as you sobbed into his chest

- he still smelled of wild flowers and cotton.

- "let's go catch up outside Y/N?" He said just for you to hear

- he brought you two outside on a bench overlooking the city and its lights but you couldn't help but keep your eyes on him by fear that he'd disappear again

- "w-why are you here ?" you stammered without thinking

- "why you don't want me here ?"

- "Yes- Well no- i mean yes i want you here and-"

- his laugh resonated even more than his violin if that was possible and you didn't have to wait long to feel your face heat up

- "first thing you do is laugh at me...." you said, playing with his fingers on your lap, a thing you did back then whenever he was nervous and started fiddling with his hands, even tho you were the nervous one now

- he sighed, the previous sadness from his playing as if blown away by that tiny impatient breath of air

- "i came back on my own. I missed you Y/N", he smiled again,

- "i missed you too...but what happened to your studies ? You always said you lived for music ?" you incquired, squeezing his hand maybe a little too hard in aprehention

- "i did...i did but i realized many things abroad"

- "like what ?"

- "im a little disappointed Y/N you used to be so good at guessing what i wanted to convey with my music" he said raising an eyebrow at you and laughing once more when seeing the confused look on your face

- "i may have said i lived for music yes and yet...i always knew that i live for you."

#tbh its no secret that i love him i mean #its pretty easy to tell🤡#oh to be able to smooch Akaashi #anyway i wrote this listening to DAGames' Break My Mind #how very anticlimatic #haikyuu x reader #akaashi haikyuu #haikyuu!!#akaashi imagine #akaashi keiji x reader #akaashi hcs #akaashi keiji #akaashi x reader #fukurodani #hq!! fic #hq akaashi #hq au

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dailyaudiobible · 4 years

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09/29/2020 DAB Transcript

Isaiah 57:15-59:21, Philippians 1:1-26, Psalms 71:1-24, Proverbs 24:9-10

Today is the 29th day of September welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you today as we continue the journey, the voyage that we embarked on so many days ago, 200…I don’t know…270 something days ago we started our journey and here we are moving forward through one of the strangest years we've ever experienced in the rhythm of the Scriptures and our lives. It's been such a gift to have in our lives. It’s been such a gift to have each other to take this journey with. So, we’re reading from the Lexham English Bible this week and we’ll pick up where we left off in Isaiah. And then when we get to the New Testament, we’ve got a new letter from the apostle Paul. It's known as Philippians and we'll talk about that when we get there. But first Isaiah chapter 57 verse 15 through 59 verse 21.

Introduction to the book of Philippians:

Okay. This leads us to the letter to the Philippians, although of note…and I don't usually like talk right here in the middle but the we see yesterday we…we read as we were closing, Ephesians about putting on the whole armor of God and we see the inspiration for this in Isaiah today. But anyway, let's move forward. Philippians. So, there’s…there's very little debate among biblical scholars about whether Paul wrote Philippians, and there's really not a lot of debate about sort of the circumstances behind Philippians, what ill Paul's circumstances where. He was incarcerated. He was in Rome. He had appealed to the Emperor and he was awaiting trial. So, as Paul writes this, he is imprisoned. And the letters that he writes from…from…from incarceration are known as his prison letters, right, his prison epistles. We should also note that Philippians, as well as all of Paul's letters, that these are some of the earliest, and in some cases, the earliest Christian writings, documents, that still exist. So, this letter that we’re going to read, even though we’re well into our year, this letter is earlier than the New Testament for sure. It became part of the New Testament. But there was no New Testament for this letter to be added to. This is a letter that predates the Gospels, predates the book of Acts. All of that stuff came a little later. And, so, this letter is roughly, couple, three decades after the life of Jesus, His earthly life and ministry. And Philippi itself, this is a Roman colony in the region of Macedonia, which is northern Greece today. And it was a prosperous city but the church that was founded there, they weren’t particularly powerful or wealthy or influential. What we’ll find is that they are rich in love and their rich in their concern about Paul who had come to them and brought the Good News. And, so, part of Paul writing this letter is just to encourage them and thank them because they've encouraged him. So, basically when the church in Philippi found out that Paul was in prison they sent a man named Epaphroditus, who was part of their congregation, to Rome to bring…to bring a gift, but also to bring the gift of love, like to lift his spirits and to find out how he's doing and to bring word back. And of course, Paul being imprisoned in Rome, receiving a visitor, like a friendly face, you can only imagine the joy and the comfort and peace that that would bring. And, so, Epaphroditus stays with Paul while he's in prison kind of trying to help care for his needs and just…just be there for him. But while he was in Rome with Paul, he became deathly ill and in fact, we’ll find out in the letter, like nearly died. And, so, when he recovered and was restored to health Paul was...was determined to send back Philippi and he carried this letter back to Philippi with him. And it shares of the circumstances and it's meant to be…it's meant to be encouraging. It…it's meant to lift up those that read it. And as we’ve mentioned before, these letters, these letters…like we’re actually reading these letters as they were originally read. They weren’t silently read. Like you didn't go to church, and you know to congregation one day and there are Xerox copies of a letter that had just come in and everybody gets a copy and then they just sit there and silently read. That’s not how letters worked. So, the letter would've been recited. It would have been read aloud before the congregation as if the reader were Paul. And in some of Paul's letters, we even hear him saying, “although I'm not with you present…like I'm not physically with you, I'm with you in Spirit.” Those are in the letters, and those are supposed to be read aloud, like “I'm with you in spirit” that people took that to heart. Not literally like there's some kind of a metaphysical thing going on here. More like the spirit of Paul, like what Paul is trying to convey, somebody else's voice is being used but these are the words that are actually being said. The spirit of what's being said is from the spirit of Paul. And what we see that he’s trying to convey, like what his spirit is trying to say to them is encouraging, is to lift them. Even though he's in chains, even though persecution and marginalization is beginning to occur he wants to talk about the joy of salvation. And we’ll see that he wants to talk about perseverance, which we won't be able to escape as we move forward. The idea of endurance as a necessary component of the Christian life is impossible to avoid as we move forward into the New Testament. So, like it's…it's been crazy out there. Like I know you guys have noticed. It's been a crazy year. It's been crazy. And it’s still kind of crazy…like it's still crazy if we’re just being honest. This has been a very disruptive year. Just a lot of uncertainty and a lot of divisiveness. And that's only gonna amp up here, especially in the United States since we have an election year. So, it is kind of a crazy year with a lot of disruption. And, so, Philippians kind of comes in right now when we need it most, with joy and encouragement, I mean, with lots of things, but fundamentally, with words of encouragement and perseverance. And, so, we begin. Philippians, chapter 1.

Prayer:

Father we thank You for Your word. We love You Lord. We just…we’re continually thanking You for the gift of each other and the gift of Your word and we are grateful every day, but we worship You. We just take a moment to worship You. And it's because of who You are, but the benefits that are bestowed upon us that we cannot get any other way that are just gifted to us when we reach out to You in faith, is unspeakable. It's good news. And, so, we are grateful. We love You and we thank You. And as we move through Philippians, we invite Your Holy Spirit to bring words of encouragement into a very discouraging time. Come Holy Spirit and lead and guide us. May we put on the full armor on a daily basis knowing that we are equipped, that nothing can get to us, nothing can get to our spirits to destroy the union that we have with You, nothing can access that spot, that place unless we allow it. And we don’t. We declare it. Nothing is getting between You and us. You have never left. You have always, always been there for us. We confess we have come and gone more times than we could possibly count. But there's nothing getting between us now. We need You now more than ever and we thank You for the opportunity for…for the odd circumstances that surround us to make us aware of our utter dependence upon You. And, so, we rest in that. We get to depend on You. We are fortunate. We have a rock and a redeemer. And, so, we rest in You. Lead us forward we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, it's where the Global Campfire is, it's…it’s where we gather, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here, its where we get connected. So, let's do just that and stay connected on our journey as we continue forward.

The Community section will be a great place to start. That's where the Prayer Wall is and different links to different social media channels that we are on. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you, first of all. Thank you, humbly and gratefully. This mission that we started so long ago to bring the spoken word of God read fresh every day for anybody who would listen to it has grown into this community that we now have and the Global Campfire that we come around every day and that has happened because we've done this together. And, so, thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning DABbers today is Friday, September 25th this is Lelah from Virginia. I’m a 9 or 10 year listener but first-time caller. I don’t often listen to the prayer requests but this morning I did, and I know God kept me on the program to hear the heart of Denise from North Carolina. Denise I too am in a 3- year marriage with no intimacy. I suffer greatly as you are suffering now, longing for connection to the one I love. Being lonely in a house full of people is so a very hard to endure. I am praying for you sister. Praying that your heart would be totally enveloped with the love of God for you, praying that you would not be jealous of your friends who have these seemingly perfect soulmates as spouses. My ability to endure and have peace about the situation came when I recognized that my desire for my marriage to be more had become an idol to me. I desired that more than I want to God. I was able to let it go and became satisfied with the companionship. It’s still not easy but it’s so much less painful. I’m praying for peace for you. The situation may never change but God will never change, and He loves you. Sink into His love dear sister. Cry in His arms. He is there for you. You are not alone. You have never been alone. I love you. I love all of you DABbers. Thank you for being such an important part of my life. Thank you, Jill, Brian, China and the rest of your family. May God bless you all richly. Thank you.

Good morning fellow DABbers Joe the protector from Georgia it’s Friday, Friday, September 25th 7:54 in the morning. Just got finished listening to the DAB and I heard Pelham from Alabama call in and state how he wanted to start a new…a new part of his life by calling in for others and encouraging them. And, I don’t that is much as I need to or should. But Terry the trucker did call in the other day. Terry you’ve been a part of this community for a while and we should all be encouraging you. But I can remember just a couple years ago you called in when you had your accident. And brother, you know, I know you’re away from your family do to the COVID but you’ve been through worse, you know. If I remember correctly, you told us that…that you almost or could have died from that accident and you went down an embankment if I recall correctly. So, you know, you’ve been through a lot and the Lord’s still with you. He hasn’t a left you. And just consult Him as we all know we should at all times. Alright fellow DABbers you all have a blessed and wonderful day. See y’all.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is Preston from Sunnyvale California today is September 25th. I want to lift up today the people of Dubai or at least the people working there. Seems like we’ve been getting a few prayer requests from different people whose job situations seem to be in somewhat a challenging situation. So, I’d like to pray for them. Dear Father, we thank You for those of us who are called to work in foreign countries. We thank You for those of us who make the choice to live and work in places that are not their home. Father we love You and we thank You for calling us to…to…to be in those places Father. We ask that for those individuals who have called in, that You would make their work situations viable, that You would make those work situations…just smooth out those paths where they are crooked and make it so that they can continue to live and work and prosper in where they are. Father we love You and we thank You for sending Your son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins. We thank You that You sent the Holy Spirit to be our helper in these difficult times and we just ask that Your Holy Spirit make…make Dubai a hospitable place for these individuals who have called in. In Your precious name Jesus.

Hello, I just want to ask everybody to pray with me for Denise who called in from the Carolinas seeking intimacy with her husband. And Father we lift up Denise to You and her husband and we ask Lord that You would bless them with a battery relationship Lord God. We ask Lord God that by Your Holy Spirit You would move in each one of their lives and bring them together, knit their hearts together, knit their love life together Lord and bless them and their marriage Father in the name of Jesus. Denise is a believer looking to You and crying out to You and we thank You Father for moving in that situation in Jesus’ name. And if it would be good for them to go to counseling Lord God we ask that You would put that desire in their heart and lead them and guide them and direct them to a good godly counselor and we thank You for doing that Father. Thank You for Denise. Thank You Lord that everything is important to You, every need we have is important to You and that is an important thing that she is believing for You to work in. And we thank You for doing that work, for Your glory in the name of Jesus.

Well hello again fellow DABbers this is James the Mighty Warrior. I called in a couple of days ago. I really just was more or less edifying, exhorting the DABbers and expressing my regards for this….for this…for this family but I do have something to pray about this time and I’d like for you guys to pray with me. Actually, my wife and I, we’ve been separated for about two years and I hadn’t heard or seen her but maybe once or twice since then and it was very, very brief. But I called a friend of mine today and he told me that she had called his wife and explained to her that she had met some guy from O wherever and she’s going to be get married and she’s going to be filing for a divorce and all of that kind of stuff. But it’s so…it’s like a coincidence because over the last three weeks I’ve been dreaming about her, seeing her in visions and things like that. And, so, the Lord laid on my heart to fast and pray for her today and I did and I got on messenger and I hadn’t heard from my friend in a long time but anyway he told me that, you know, what had transpired. She had talked to his wife and she told em that we’re getting divorced and all this. So, guys, I just ask you all the pray for me, with me, that we could get the mind of God on this thing. I really don’t want a divorce even though we haven’t been around each other in about two years because I just don’t want another divorce, you know, for whatever reason. And I believe God is into reconciliation...

Hello this is the first time I’ve ever called. I’m Melissa from Louisiana. I was calling…I wanted to pray…I have a prayer request of my own. I’ve had multiple eye diseases for the last 20 years. About 18, 19 surgeries in both eyes. Last month I had a macular hole repair in the left eye but the doctor says that the right eye his family, my pressures a 4. It’s because the capillaries keep bleeding into the eye and it’s…it’s been inflamed for 10 years. I’ve been using steroids and it is not responding to the steroids. So, the inflammations causing everything from the macular…the eye is failing. So, I just…I believe in the Lord and I need everybody’s faith to help carry me to a miracle. I am believing for an absolute miracle, that the Lord will heal my eyes so I can see out of this eye, so it doesn’t hurt when I blink or move from left to right. So, there’s just a lot of pain and issues in this right eye and I just pray for a miracle in Jesus’ name. Thank you, DABbers.

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sadprose-auroras · 6 years

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‘Too Late’ - John DeaconXFem!Reader (Part 2)

(Read Part 1 here)

A/N: This can absolutely apply to Joe Mazzello’s portrayal of Deacy – whatever floats your boat. It’s also heavily inspired by the structure of the movie Love, Rosie. Also – with regard to the chronology of the story, and characterisation of real people, it’s pretty inaccurate! Pls just take everything with a grain of salt. It’s meant to be an AU.

Honesty all the maths I subjected myself to in this story is hurting my brain. Why do I do this to myself…. I’m never doing a story that jumps all over the place again. OKAY ANYWAY ENJOY AND PLS GIVE ME CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM ON HOW TO WRITE P ROPERLY THNX,,,,,

2 years later

A knock at the door startled you from your slumber. You sat up groggily, rubbing your eyes. Your boyfriend, Sean, was sitting on the couch adjacent to the one you were lying on, Annabel sitting on his knee. You glanced at the clock, shocked to see it was 8pm; the last you were aware, it was 6 o’clock. You frowned, mumbling, “Who would that be at this time?”

“Guess you should see. I’ll put Annabel to sleep,” Sean said, standing up. You walked over to your daughter, kissing her on the top of her head.

“Goodnight sweetheart,” you said. “I love you bub.”

“Night Mama,” she said sleepily, her voice muffled by her thumb in her mouth. You smiled fondly at the sight of your beautiful miracle. As Sean took Annabel to her room, you quickly went to answer the door. Your last thought before you swung it open was that it must be someone selling something. In a way, it was.

He looked different since the last time you saw him; only briefly, for coffee, five months earlier when he was in town. He had matured rapidly in such a short time; his features more defined, his eyes more sombre, his build broader and his hair shorter. He stood with his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth nervously. You couldn’t help but reach out and hug him.

“Oh my god, John, what are you doing here?” you gasped, pulling back to place your hands on either side of his face, while his hands rested at your sides.

“I just had to see you. I missed you.” he replied, pulling you back in to hug you again. He stroked your back, causing a shiver to involuntarily run up your spine.

“Well come in, come in!” you held the door open for him. He thanked you, then wiped his shoes on the doormat, polite as always.

You both entered into the lounge room, where Sean was sitting on the couch. He furrowed his brows in confusion, glancing at John. “Who’s this?” he asked, standing up to face him.

“Sean, this is John, my oldest and dearest, dearest friend. John, this is Sean, my boyfriend.” You introduced them, as they shook each other’s hand. A look of realisation overcame Sean’s face.

“Oh, the bassist! Y/N told me so much about you,” he said, smiling at John kindly. How awkward, you hadn’t told John about Sean. He thankfully didn’t comment on this though, and instead said, “That can’t be good. Hopefully she didn’t tell you the story of how I tried to ask a girl to the school dance in the middle of class when I was 16, then sneezed in her face. She loves that one.” You rolled your eyes, shaking your head at him.

“Actually, she didn’t,” Sean replied, in a rather sharp tone. You tried to ignore this; he wasn’t jealous, was he?

“Well, I’m actually gonna head home, give you guys a chance to catch up. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sean continued, quickly kissing you on the cheek, grabbing his coat from the back of the couch and leaving before you could say anything except goodbye.

---------

After asking John a million questions about his life since you last saw him, and catching him up on how Annabel was, over a cup of tea, John finally asked you what you were dreading.

“So, how long have you been with Sean?” he asked, raising his eyebrow at you. You took a sip of tea, placed in down on the table in front of you, praying he wouldn’t be offended at your answer.

“A little over a year,” you bit your lip. “Sorry I didn’t tell you about him when we saw each other last time. Or when we spoke on the phone. It didn’t seem like the right time.”

What you didn’t want to admit to John, or even to yourself, was that you concealed personal life events such as your pregnancy and relationship, because it felt like you were betraying him. The truth was, Sean could never replace John’s hold on your heart, no matter how hard you tried. He just felt like a distraction, until you ended up with the true love of your life. And that wasn’t fair to anyone, especially to Sean. He deserved all your love and devotion.

“When someone asks you what’s new in your life, you expect them to tell you about a relationship! Especially when you’d been together for ages already!” John said. “I’m just confused as to why you didn’t tell me, that’s all,” he shrugged.

“I… I don’t know why. It just didn’t seem important to mention. I’m so sorry, Deacs.”

“Is there another reason you didn’t tell me?” he asked, his gaze suddenly vulnerable. Your heart began to beat rapidly. Surely he wasn’t implying what you thought, was he? You remembered the conversation you overheard in the very room you were in two years ago, wherein John said you were just friends, and nothing more.

“What do you mean?”

“Damn it, Y/N,” he said abruptly. “I don’t mean to be harsh, but can we just cut the crap? You didn’t tell me because you didn’t want to hurt me. You’re not happy with him; I can see it in your eyes. There’s someone else you’d rather be with.”

“John, I –“ You were at a loss for words. “I don’t know what you expect –“

“Y/N, I love you. I realised recently, that you’re the only one for me. We both know it. You shouldn’t…” John sighed, glancing up at you beneath his lashes, as if he was finding the courage to say the next words. “You shouldn’t be with him. You should be with me.”

And there it was – all you had secretly always wanted to hear from him. But, when you actually heard it out loud, “I don’t want to hear that, John.” He flinched; small enough to cover up, but not from you. You were always so aware of his every, miniscule movement.

You took a deep breath and continued, “It’s too late, I’m with Sean. We’re a family. Not perfect, but a family nevertheless. I need to give him a chance. He’s great with Bel, and he really cares about me.” John pursed his lips together, his eyes becoming glassy. He looked up, avoiding eye contact with you. This absolutely broke your heart, but you knew it would be too difficult. You were already with Sean, a man who wasn’t constantly travelling. A man who could support you and help take care of Annabel.

You never imagined you would be the one to break John’s heart, and you never imagined it would hurt you so much.

2 years later

Hindsight really was 20/20. You had never regretted anything more in your life, than rejecting John when he, finally, loved you back. And now, you had missed your chance forever. You were alone, again, Sean turning out to be a lying, cheating prick, and John marrying someone else after a whirlwind romance. He was gracious enough to accept you back into his life as a friend, after moving on so quickly. Of course it stung, but you had no right to be upset. It was your fault; you let him slip through your fingers once again.

Now, here you were, sitting alone at his wedding, your only company your champagne. Just as you were standing up, about to make your way to the bathroom (you didn’t really need to go, you just wanted something to do), you heard a feminine voice behind you.

“Y/N!” you turned around, and John and Veronica stood before you, hand in hand. “Thank you for that lovely speech,” Veronica continued, pulling you in for a hug.

“My pleasure,” you said, kissing her on the cheek. “You look beautiful.” You pulled away, moving to kiss her husband on the cheek. Your hand lingered at his shoulder, and you closed your eyes, relishing in the feeling of his lip on your cheek. Nothing would ever be the same again. You could never secretly hope a kiss on the cheek, or a hug, would turn into something more. You had to accept that the door was closed forever.

“Congratulations, Deacs. I’m so happy for you,” you said softly, trying to mask the lump in your throat and the tears threatening to spill out. “For both of you.”

“Thank you, Y/N. We really appreciate your support.” John said, squeezing your shoulder reassuringly. He looked at you directly in the eyes. Within that look, were all the memories and emotions you had shared throughout the countless years you had spent together. The joy, the laughter, a thousand words conveyed in a single glance, the comfort of knowing that, no matter how lonely you were, somebody was always there for you. The pain of knowing how close you came to a perfect ending so many times, the hole in your heart when he was absent, and the beautiful wholeness you felt when he was around. And, now, the sheer agony of knowing he would never be yours.

But, maybe it was okay. All of those memories, some painful and some exhilarating, you were grateful for. You were grateful for the beautiful, kind-hearted, funny man before you. Even though you were nothing more than friends, it was enough; it had to be. His friendship was enough. Maybe, some point in the future, things would happen for the two of you like you always believed they would. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t. You had missed your chance, because you didn’t fight for him. And you were okay with that.

#john deacon x reader #john deacon #joe mazzello #joe mazzello x reader #queen band #queen imagines #queen #freddie mercury #roger taylor #brian may #its deacy not deaky #oof sorry controversial

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eccacia · 7 years

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Favorite Snowbarry Fics

So I have a bit of free time before things get busy again, and being Snowbarry Trash™ I thought, What better way to spend it than rereading my favorite SB fics????? At first I compiled all the links in one place as a reference for myself, but what the heck, it won’t hurt to put these fics out there again and send the writers some love.

Before anything, a caveat: this is by no means a comprehensive list of all the best SB fics. There are a lot of other great fics out there. Also “favorite” here probably more accurately means “fics I reach for when I’m having a bad day,” lol. So to these writers here, THANK YOU. Your fics really get me going again. (And to other fanfic writers out there, keep writing! You’ll never know when a fic will make someone’s day a little better, as these did for me.)

The fics are below the cut, arranged alphabetically. I put in the summary and a brief gushing of what I liked about them. Happy reading, everyone! Don’t forget to give the ones you like some love!

& If It Never Ends then When Do We Start, by @ttinycourageous

Far too soon, a common occurrence for them, their time together is up. Looking up at him Caitlin wonders how long they’ll be able to keep this going; Barry gone on a mission, she back to the lab ignoring Jay’s advances, both of them under the scrutiny of the agency they work for. How long before her heart gets broken?

“Can you keep a secret?” Barry asks.

[00Q au in which Barry's the spy, and Caitlin one of the scientists providing the gadgets. The two grow closer over the course of several months, mostly due to Barry's insistent inquiring after her real name.]

Spy AU? Secret Identities?? Forbidden Relationship?????? Uh, count me in. What really gets to me about this, though, is that unlike other spy AUs, the language isn’t punchy and action-packed; instead the story’s told with restraint, and the language pulses with quiet longing. Tension and suspense aren’t so much in the external circumstances as in the internal conflict, so the moment that they finally come together is the climax in both external and internal tension. It’s just brilliant. Also I live for coded affectionate exchanges, that whole saying one thing but meaning something else, and it was so well done in this fic.

at first sight, by @tinytendril

College Pride & Prejudice AU. Literature student Barry swears he hates everything about the privileged side of Central City, including one leggy, doe-eyed, bon-mot tossing, label-worshiping vortex of girly vapidness Caitlin Snow. Until, as these things go, he doesn’t, not even by a small measure, and not at all.

I’ve read this so many times I’ve lost count. But really, wow. Barry as Lizzy and Caitlin as Darcy just makes so much sense, and the rest of the cast were slotted so naturally into their P&P counterparts that I couldn’t imagine it any other way. The dialogue’s also very witty. I love how Caitlin calls Barry out for his pretentiousness. (The pretentiousness is so well-done, by the way. I mean, just look at the summary. It’s a mini-adventure into the dictionary.) I always get this sense of vindictive joy when Barry realizes that Caitlin can match him line for line. Ha, you show him, girl. Serves him right for underestimating you. Anywaaay, I could go on, but in short, I love this fic to bits.

Blind Date, by @chasingblue57

Iris just knows that Barry & her TA are perfect for each other, she just needs to get them in the same room [college au].

Iris as a matchmaker, Barry and Caitlin being set up on an awkward blind date, them talking about awkwardness during said blind date... It’s the most adorable thing, I tell you. Even if the same can be said of nearly all of Blue’s fics, this one’s close to my heart.

cold and paperskin, by @briarsrosie

You're Killer Frost. Caitlin Snow is dead. You deserve to die, too. / Trigger warning.

This technically isn’t SB or even romance. It’s Snowbarisco friendship, and I’m glad it is. It’s also a great rendering of Caitlin’s disjointed, fractured consciousness following her rampage as Killer Frost, and the obsessive repetition of that “you-deserve-to-die” reveals the destructive quality of her guilt. But what really got me was the friendship. I mean, friendship’s usually light and fluffy, but their friendship here is tenacious and stubborn and hopeful, and it’s what saves Caitlin in the end. It’s so precious.

Could End in Burning Flames or Paradise, by NeoNails

Or 5 Times Caitlin Had Sex with Barry & the 1 Time It Meant Something. "She didn't know what series of events culminated in Barry's mood that night, but she did know it began with him pulling the bottle out of her hand and taking a long swig for himself."

This one needs little explanation. I don’t know about you, but one of the first things I did as a new SB fan was to look for good smut, and this one was the first one I came across. It definitely did not disappoint. It was written way back, but it remains my favorite smutty fic.

here is my heart (your love is everything i need), by @roastytoastyprincesss

AU: In a world where soulmates exist, when your first touch with them shall brand you for life, Barry Allen gets marked. By who he's not quite certain, but he's determined to find out. Caitlin Snow however, she knows... she's just not ready to deal with it's repercussions. Snowbarry.

The angst almost killed me in this one. It’s a masterful prolonging of a misunderstanding, with every opportunity to right it consistently thwarted; and when the truth is finally revealed, it’s in the worst circumstances possible. It’s what makes their reunion so cathartic, and their hot make-out scene towards the end so satisfying.

(i know that) we’re cool, by Lint

She hasn't smiled much because there hasn't been anything worth smiling about. But all of a sudden some string bean of a police scientist wakes up from a lightning induced coma, and her facial muscles magically remember how?

Probably the first SB fluff I’ve read. Whenever I reread it my facial muscles still ache from smiling. Also, I’m pretty wordy as a writer, so it amazes me to see how much happens and how much is conveyed through short sentences and succinct dialogue.

If summer is for lovers then consider me in love, by gustin puckerman

When Barry finds out about the kiss.―Barry/Caitlin. Post 1x19 "Who is Harrison Wells". Oneshot.

This has the most adorable SB conversation ever. Barry and Caitlin tiptoe around the elephant in the room in the most endearing, awkward way, but what really gets to me is that behind the innocence of their words, their verbal dancing around each other feels like a strip tease, a slow revelation of the truth one line of dialogue at a time. It ends in the purest way possible, though: not with a kiss, because that would have been a decisive gesture, one that doesn’t quite fit with the atmosphere of the story, but with tentative hand-holding and a walk home. What’s not to love?

Knowing the Flows of Time, by @christinafalls

There is no greater pain than knowing. Barry travels back in time to save his mum, that single event is the catalyst that allows him to have a life with Caitlin he never expected he'd want. But could he truly fight destiny when he knows they were never meant to be?

I was an emotional wreck after reading this fic. I was in tears by the end. Everything hurt. I was in a daze for the rest of the day. This story, I remember thinking to myself then, is one that knows how to end. The storytelling was beautiful, with not one scene out of order. I still reread this from time to time just to marvel at how seamlessly everything unfolds.

Lifeguards’ Summer, by @destianac

This was going to be the longest summer of her life. First, she had to work instead of travelling with her best friend. Second, she was paired with that tall brown-haired guy and his cocky grin. Snowbarry AU one-shot. Summer Lovin' 16 - Day 2 - Lifeguards AU

My favorite SB summer read. Destiana pulls off a Barry with boyish charm, cocky and goofy at the same time. The dialogue is light and funny, and there’s a ton of fluff. Not just any fluff, too — it’s sexy fluff. Destiana practically invented that genre for SB. I read this on bad days to cheer up, and it always does the trick.

Swimming Lessons, by chasingblue57

The gang heads to the beach so Barry can teach Caitlin to swim, things get a bit handsy.

This is one of my favorite tropes of all time, and Blue just nails it. The moment when he first sees her in the bikini. The tickling. The not-so-accidental, lingering touches over bare skin. The “Don’t Worry, I Won’t Let You Drown” speech. The innocent flirting contrasted with the fact that they’re both half-naked and, well, wet. I grin like a fool every time I read this, especially when I reach the last line, because it recasts everything in a different light. Read it if you haven’t yet and you’ll see what I mean. It’s just delightful.

somebody sweet to talk to, by tinytendril

Isolated and jaded, executive assistant Caitlin finds an unexpected companion with a stranger, or her IT specialist, Barry. Except, they’ve only got a single phone line to connect them.

AUs are usually more difficult to ease into, but in this case I’m in awe of how I already have a feel of the setting and the characters from just the first paragraph. I also love how Caitlin and Barry’s relationship progresses through dialogue, how they initially get in touch because of professional necessity, and how that professional necessity soon (d)evolves into a sly ruse for another kind of necessity altogether. I’m a sucker for those things, and this one was beautifully done.

text me a heart attack, by @shyesplease

Caitlin texts Barry because she needs a little bit of saving, but Barry might be the one having a heart attack.

One of the best things about reading drunk!Caitlin is watching how she (and the author) comes up with ways to reduce Barry into a flustered, tongue-tied mess, and in this fic it’s done so deliciously: drunk!Caitlin sends Barry a hot pic of herself that he receives during a nice, wholesome family dinner... and, well, you can read on to enjoy the hilarity that ensues. I also love the devious twist at the end, during the post-drunk!Caitlin conversation in the morning. Barry’s teasing her mercilessly, as expected, and Caitlin endures it... until she turns the entire conversation on its head with a single line, and then saunters away leaving Barry simultaneously confused and turned on in her wake. Poor Barry. Good thing there’s a sexting sequel...

Untitled, by @snow-bellarke-barry

Barry sneaks into Caitlin’s house at night & asks for her help.

My favorite Caitlin-nurses-Barry-back-to-health fic. I just keep going back to the scene where Barry, after two days of being knocked out by an injury, finally wakes up to see Caitlin dozing off, and then he correctly surmises that she hardly slept for the entirety of those two days while keeping watch over him. It just seemed so Caitlin to worry to the point of forgetting to care for herself, but at the same time not exactly revealing or broadcasting the extent of her worry (except probably in the form of a warning, or in this case in eliciting a promise from Barry). And the scene at the end when they kiss after the culmination of all the anxiety was definitely a wonderful bonus.

wanna be around, girl, by tinytendril

1960s Snowbarry AU - Marrying into wealth isn’t Caitlin Snow’s idea. It takes an annulment and a pool boy with a smart mouth to break out of her perfectly colourless suburban lifestyle.

Oh my God, I live for this fic. I have a soft spot for heroines who go through their lives having everything externally but feeling a diffuse, unnameable restlessness inside, and then meeting someone who finally, really sees her behind all the glamor. I’d like to think it goes beyond just romance, this seeing; it’s like being acknowledged and respected and accepted as an individual... Or is that what romance is? Lol anyway, I love how the choice of setting further emphasizes the importance of appearances. It makes Caitlin’s developing relationship with Barry all the more deviant, and it becomes an important stepping-stone to her questioning of societal expectations and finally breaking free of them; it enables her to not only choose whom she wants to be with but also what she wants to do with her interests and talents. Other than that, I also love the progression of their relationship: how rigid their interactions first seem, marked by the obligatory proprieties; how they slowly shed those proprieties; and then how, during the climax, they just throw all caution to the wind. A really wonderful, engrossing read. I always feel so content after reading this.

Well, that’s it for now. I might add more in the future when I’ve read more fics or if I’ll suddenly remember one that I’ve missed. If you liked anything, don’t forget to let the writers know, or reblog with your comfort fics if you like :)

#snowbarry #snowbarry fanfiction #snowbarry fic recs #barry allen #caitlin snow #barry x caitlin #fanfic appreciation #favorite snowbarry fics #fic recs

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thefairystales · 7 years

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Mashima Hiro long interview translation (part 1)

This long interview with Mashima Hiro is published in Magazine Pocket. The interview was carried out right after the storyboard for the final chapter was completed. The interviewer was Hashimoto, who had previously served as Mashima-sensei’s editor for 2.5 years. Mashima-sensei’s current editor was also present at the interview, and the responses labeled with “editor” are from him.

The interview is really long, and I have broken it up into 3 parts. The other parts will be posted some time later.

Translated by thefairystales | DO NOT EDIT OR REMOVE SOURCE Please credit by linking back when using. (usage rules)

On the final chapter

How’s the storyboard for the final chapter coming along?

I finished my final meeting a short while ago and the chapter is complete.

It wasn’t rejected?

Somehow or other. (laugh)

Editor: It was OK the first round!

What are your thoughts about finishing the storyboard?

I don’t know how the readers feel about it until I get to hear from them, but I am personally satisfied with how I drew the final chapter. I didn’t aim for something touching or literary, but rather showed “FT-ness” or what’s “FT-ish” to the maximum. I hope the ending satisfies the readers.

You gave priority to what you regard as “FT-ish”?

Right. I think the fans all have their own opinion of what’s “FT-ish”. However, I drew all that I felt was “FT-ish” in the final chapter.

Serialization of the manga began in issue 35 in 2006, and ended in issue 34 in 2017. It’s exactly 11 years.

I didn’t intend for it to be so long.

You were 29 when the serialization began, and you’re 40 now. You devoted the whole of your 30s to FT.

It’s the period where I gain the most weight. However, I was able to draw the manga. I’m completely satisfied.

Is there anything that you didn’t manage to draw?

Nothing at all. I managed to draw everything that I wanted to in the manuscript and it’s something I’m thankful about.

It’s out for the first time in 11 years. An issue of Weekly Shonen Magazine without Fairy Tail.

Now that you mention it, that’s right. The series had never been a break during serialization, and I guess it has become natural to expect a new chapter.

For the first time in about 500 volumes.

It’s a very long time if you put it that way (laugh). Was it in serialization when you join the editorial department?

I joined the company 9 years ago, and the manga was already in serialization. It was at the “Tower of Heaven” arc. I had more than 20 staff working under me, and almost all the staff working for Weekly Shonen Magazine joined the company after Fairy Tail had begun its serialization.

That’s unbelievable. Isn’t the editorial department of Weekly Shonen Magazine too young? (laugh)

Have there been any changes from the time the manga began its serialization till now?

My body is still healthy, but my stamina has dropped. It’s a little different from the time when I was alright even after pulling an all-nighter. However, my energy hasn’t declined. It’s been surging instead.

Do you feel the difference in your stamina more when you’re working on the manuscript as compared to the storyboard?

In my case, the storyboard is more of a product of energy rather than stamina. I always work on it when I’m at maximum energy. The techniques and intuition that I’ve developed over the years have also helped me when it comes to working on the storyboard.

What about the manuscript?

It’s not purely an issue with stamina. The density of my drawings have been going up year by year, and it has become time consuming. I don’t want the quality of the manuscript to decrease once it has gone up, and thus I’ve been spending more time on the scenes.

It’s a problem that arises because you want to give your best with every chapter.

On Natsu

I don’t feel that the author’s age has gone up even as the manga ends. It’s a classic shonen manga.

It might be because I want to cling on to shonen manga forever. (laugh)

Natsu had a prominent presence.

He’s a simple and straightforward protagonist, and there’s no need to make him like a character in an adult-like manga. Natsu was Natsu from the start till the end.

But he grew.

Of course. However, he never changed when it comes to things that are “Natsu-like”. To me, that might be what makes it “shonen manga-ish”.

My impression of the first chapter is that Natsu didn’t fight because he wanted to rescue Lucy.

Natsu was mad that Bora lied that he was from Fairy Tail. However, he ended up saving Lucy when he fought Bora.

He isn't the type of protagonist who helps others just because they are in need. You showed what was important to him in your own way, even though he appeared to help Lucy because she was in trouble.

That was all that I drew in the first chapter. (laugh)

Is there anything else you have to say about Natsu?

There are minute things, but... Natsu doesn’t have any monologues, and is someone who reveals all his thoughts through his actions. Thus, there isn’t really anything important that I have left to say about him.

On the guild

There are many characters.

The characters who had names were counted before, and there were more than 300 of them.

That was done 2 to 3 years before this, and it seems like the final character count exceeds 400. Can you remember everyone?

That’s impossible (laugh). Various characters appeared in the penultimate chapter, and I couldn’t remember how they’re supposed to look like.

(laugh)

I thought that I would just go ahead and draw them since they’re my characters after all, but when I looked over them later they were completely different from how they’re supposed to look like. (laugh)

The number of characters will increase no matter what due to the nature of the manga. If a guild appears there will be around 10 more characters.

I wanted to draw many characters from the start, and I thought “I’ll draw as many characters as I like!” when the serialization first began. However, at the end, I wondered why there were so many characters when I was drawing the colour page with all the characters gathered together. You reap what you sow, but it was fun. It was truly wonderful. (laugh)

Did you want to draw a guild right from the start?

I wanted to draw a group of people, or perhaps I should say a team. I wanted to draw something like a gathering of people or a community. I wanted to convey the enjoyment that comes from having various people around.

The guild members seem fun to be around.

Right. It’s difficult to put in words, but I’ve always drawn things like bonds and friendship in my manga. I touched on it more deeply in Fairy Tail as compared to RAVE.

Fairy Tail gives the impression of a classic shonen manga, but it was actually a fantasy battle manga at the start.

There were many comrades right from the start.

Don’t you normally gain more friends from fighting enemies or meeting people during events?

There were challenges that happened in the manga, but that’s the kind of world I wanted to show.

They are nearly all defensive battles. I think it’s something revolutionary.

Really?

The protagonist usually wants to become a certain type of person, or has something he wants, and he fights for that reason. However, Natsu already has all that. He has friends, a home, and enjoyable days.

That’s why he only fights to protect these. He gives his all when it comes to protecting these things. Natsu has these things right from the start, and they are irreplaceable.

I thought that the guild would head to Alvarez at the end, but they ended up returning to the guild, and it became a defensive battle once again.

I wanted the final battle to happen within the guild. It was something that I had decided early on.

The enemies gradually became greater and more powerful but your stance never changed till the end.

It’s about protecting your comrades. I never intended to change that. (laugh)

It’s difficult to draw a manga that’s filled with the protagonist.

People who are motivated are unique.

Wasn’t it difficult to move the story forward? How did you get things moving along smoothly?

It’s a mystery.

You make it sound it it’s somebody else’s affair. (laugh)

Now that you mention it, I hard a hard time with the storyboard at the beginning. It showed how great and interesting the bonds between an existing group of friends are, and that required laying out a framework.

Can you give more details?

The second chapter is easy to understand as an example. The first chapter describes how a Fairy Tail mage is like, and the second chapter shows what kind of guild Fairy Tail is.

I see.

You can’t avoid the characters when it comes to a guild, and thus I had to show them in the second chapter. That would confuse the reader. However, I can’t go on to depict the guild, comrades, and bonds if I don’t do that. That’s why Makarov appears as the guild master when a brawl is about to break out. He is, in a way, a symbol of the guild. The guild is full of reckless members, but there are instances where everyone shares the same point of view. This was the impression I wanted to give when I was drawing the chapter. However, it is difficult for the readers to follow along with just that, and thus Lucy makes her appearance.

Lucy?

Lucy shares the same point of view as the reader. Her reactions are that of someone who comes into contact with the guild for the first time, making it easy for the readers to get into the story. In addition to “the members of Fairy Tail”, the presence of “the mediator Makarov”, and “Lucy, who overlooks what’s happening” helps to put everything together for the readers, making it easy to read.

I see, it had to be done that way.

“FT” couldn’t have been realized without Lucy.

On Lucy

Lucy’s monologue always appears at the beginning of each part.

Lucy has been the core of the story of “FT” right from the start. No matter what type of characters or complicated world views appear in the manga, Lucy is by the reader’s side. She doesn’t understand the things that the readers don’t understand, and she says it out.

But there are many manga where the main character takes on the monologues...

It’s impossible for Natsu (laugh). Natsu is a character who doesn’t have any monologues, and he cannot explain things in a manner that strikes a chord with others.

Lucy does seem like she views things from a third party standpoint.

She’s the newest person to join the guild at the beginning of the manga, and thus, she feels a little like an outsider. Doing the monologues became her role in the end.

Editor: Lucy said “I wouldn’t be who I am today if I never met [Natsu] and Happy” in the final chapter. It would be great if that also became the reader’s thought. After all, Lucy is the voice of the reader.

Lucy’s monologue, which I had written in a rectangular box, became the meta at the end. It’s something really small, but it was something that I wanted to do in the final chapter.

On Gray

Can you tell us more about Gray?

I’ve said it before, but he became more popular than I had expected and it surprised me. I didn’t intend to make him a character that gives off a cool impression, but rather someone who readily chimes in with others. However, he gradually became who he is now. There are few males among the regular characters, and Gray was originally meant to be a character that’s the opposite of Natsu.

It seems that Gray in particular has many troubles and worries thrust at him.

Is that so? I wasn’t aware of that. However, the episode concerning END wouldn’t make any sense if not for Natsu and Gray’s relationship.

Which scene with Gray left an impression on you?

His battle with Silver. It was a pleasure to draw it.

I remember. I was still your editor at that time, and you suddenly came to me with around 3 chapter’s worth of storyboards that day. And also 2 chapter’s worth of manuscripts.

Eh, was it so? I don’t remember.

You made huge revisions to the storyboards of the previous 2 chapters, and you redid the storyboards and the manuscripts at one go. You said “I’m confident of this week’s work” when you handed me the storyboards, which was unusual. You rarely say something like that.

Eh, I give up. I really do not remember. (laugh)

Why did you forget? (laugh) It left a huge impression.

I remember being confident of the work I handed to you, and it must have been a memory of that time. However, I really don’t remember. (laugh)

You must be kidding...

(to be continued in part 2)

#fairy tail #mashima hiro #translation #natsu dragneel #lucy heartfilia #gray fullbuster

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nancydsmithus · 5 years

Text

Smashing Podcast Episode 1 With Andy Clarke: What Is Art Direction?

Drew McLellan

2019-11-05T14:30:59+02:002019-11-05T16:06:22+00:00

The new Smashing Podcast is the perfect way to take a little bit of Smashing along with you on your morning commute, when working out at the gym, or just washing the dishes. We’ll be bringing you a new interview with a Smashing expert every two weeks, directly to your podcast player of choice. You can subscribe in your favorite app to get new episodes as soon as they’re ready, or just listen using the player below.

To get things off with a bang, we’re launching the first two episodes today. Each episode will be accompanied by a post (just like this one) with a full transcription of the interview here on Smashing Magazine.

In this inaugural episode, Drew McLellan talks to designer, author, and speaker Andy Clarke about Art Direction. What is it, and how can it be applied to our web design projects? We dig into the topic and see if we can get to the bottom of things.

Show Notes

We discuss Art Direction for the Web, a new book by Andy Clarke.

Andy’s Inspired Design Decisions series of articles can be found on Smashing Magazine, and are available first with your Smashing Membership.

We found some examples of the art direction involved in the Boddingtons Cream of Manchester campaign discussed in the episode.

You can follow Andy on Twitter where he is @Malarky or via his website Stuff & Nonsense.

Transcript

Drew: He’s a well known designer, public speaker and author of numerous influential web design articles and books and has recently released his new book, Art Direction for the Web, with Smashing Magazine. Along with his wife, Sue, he founded and runs a web design studio, Stuff and Nonsense, in North Wales where he consults with companies big and small all around the world. You may know of his passion for gorillas but did you know that as a school child he was Junior National Bassoon Champion for three years in a row. My Smashing friends, it’s Andy Clarke. Andy, how are you today?

Andy Clarke: Eee, I’m smashing, lad.

Drew: So, as I mentioned your new book, Art Direction for the Web, is now available but obviously this isn’t your first book. Hard Boiled Web Design, that I’m sure people will know, and way back in the day, Transcending CSS. When did the idea for this particular book come about?

Andy Clarke: This was an interesting one because, like you say, this is number four in terms of books. Sue had always said that she’d hunt down and kill anybody that asked me to write another one because I am such a bastard when I’m writing books. I’m just not a nice person to be around and so I kind of didn’t ever want to do another, kind of, major book after Hard Boiled. So my original plan was actually to write three little, we called them shots in the whole, kind of Hard Boiled theme. Three kind of little 80 to 100 page, little shots. In the kind of the style of, or the length of, A Book Apart type length. Art Direction was going to be the first one and when I started to get into it which was way back at the beginning of, I think it the beginning of 2018 when I started it.

Andy Clarke: The more and more I kind of got into it, the more I realized that this, there was no way this was going to be a short book. All the things I wanted to talk about were just never going to fit. So I kind of threw the whole three shots idea out of the window and we just concentrated on doing this one. So I suppose the idea for this one came actually quite a few years ago even before a lot of the stuff that I talk about in the book in terms of what we can do with design and what we can do with CSS and all that kind of stuff was even a possibility. But it’s been a long time coming this one, I think it’s the kind of spiritual successor to some of the other stuff that I’ve done in the past. That sounds a bit grandiose, doesn’t it?

Drew: No, not at all. I mean, like many people, I’ve come into this field of building stuff for the web without any real formal background in, well, I’m a developer. I don’t really have a formal background in programming. I’ve just sort of picked it up as I go along and I certainly don’t have a formal background in anything to do with design. I’m not really familiar with the terminology and the concepts and the, a formal training would instill, particularly in design. So for people like me, when we talk about art direction, what exactly is art direction?

Andy Clarke: That’s an almost impossible question to answer because it means so many kind of different things at different levels. But I’m going to give an example. Do you remember back in, I mean we’re talking 15-odd years ago now but do you remember the adverts? In fact, for the show notes I’ll send you some links. But do you remember, there was an ad campaign called “The Cream of Manchester” for Boddingtons Beer. One of the things that they did, there was some really funny TV commercials but one of the things that they did incredibly successfully was a whole series of graphics which went on posters and various other things which were a glass of Boddingtons beer with the incredibly creamy head, which was the most important part of Boddingtons Beer and they shaped the head into all kinds of different things. So it looked like an ice cream and it looked like a quiff and it looked like all kinds of stuff. And what that did was it told the story of what was important about Boddingtons Beer through the medium of design. So it didn’t necessarily just say Boddingtons has a very creamy head. What it did was it showed you that through the visuals but then with the, in combination with the words, you got this very, very clever idea about what Boddingtons Beer was all about. And that, in one level, is art direction.

Andy Clarke: Let me give you another example. I can’t remember which magazine it was, now it might have been Rolling Stone. I can’t remember exactly which magazine cover it was now but a couple of years ago there was a very famous magazine cover and it was a picture of Donald Trump and they’d taken the barcode which normally sits in the bottom left or bottom right hand corner of the cover of the magazine and they’d put it on his top lip and made him look like Hitler. That’s art direction. That’s using design to convey a message to tell a story, to communicate something to an audience but through design.

Andy Clarke: And when we think about applying those things to the web, it is exactly the same kind of purpose but what we’re doing is we’re using all of those aspects of design. We’re using a layout. We’re using typography. We’re using color choices. We’re using all of these kind of design ingredients to do whatever it is that we’re trying to do online. So we might be telling a story of…a story through an editorial magazine or a news story or we might be telling a story about why you should buy my brand of power drill rather than somebody else’s brand of power drill. And it extends even into user experience because we’re really thinking about what is somebody feeling at this point? How do we communicate with them? How do we try and cheer them up, try and cool down. Do we want to be kind of quirky and delightful or do we want to be sort of more serious and conservative. And all of those aspects of evoking an emotional response in somebody is art direction.

Drew: Like accessibility, we often say that that really is the responsibility of everyone in the team but then in practice there tends to be an accessibility expert who really knows their stuff and can sort of help everyone review their work and push things forward. Is it the same with art direction? Is it something that everybody in a team should be looking at? Or is it something you hire in a big bright art director like yourself to come in and tell everyone what they should be doing?

Andy Clarke: No, it is exactly the sort of thing that everybody should be paying attention to. Every decision that we make in terms of design is an opportunity to tell a story. And that can be a big story or it can be a tiny story. And even things, for example, the style and the wording of microcopy can help to tell the story. Now, what we really need is not just everybody kind of paying attention to what that message is but we also need to know what the message is to begin with.

Andy Clarke: And one of the things that I think has been lacking over the last however many years when we’ve been kind of evolving the web as a medium is we’ve kind of moved away from this idea of the web as either a kind of creative medium or as a great medium for storytelling. And that’s the kind of thing if you go to an ad agency, then you’re not going to walk far through the door before you fall over an art director. But that’s not something that you generally find, it’s not a job title that tends to happen at digital agencies. It’s just, you’ll find UX people and project managers and developers and all manner of different, in parentheses, product designers. But the overall thinking about what message are we trying to convey, how do we implement that through design? But then there’s that kind of, what you would think of as creative direction but it is slightly different. Where somebody is basically just checking that everything is on brand, is on message, is part of telling that story.

Drew: As a developer, if I want to start getting involved in the art direction of my projects, where on earth do I start? Is this something that I can learn or do you have to be born this way?

Andy Clarke: I can’t think about the way you were born. You’ve landed on your head. No, it is something that can be taught and it is something which takes practice. So you don’t need to have gone to art school or studied advertising or whatever. I never did. I didn’t even do a graphic design degree back in the ‘80s. I was a failed painter. But it’s the kind of thing where, I think it’s a change of kind of, mindset a little bit. In thinking about, it’s not just about the practical aspects of designing a website but it’s also the thinking about, “Well, what are we trying to do?”

Andy Clarke: So let me give you an example, right. So Smashing Magazine, I did some early conceptual work with them for the redesign that we see right now. And the way that we did that was to basically just host a bunch of workshops where we all got together and we sat around a big table for a week and we did this kind of three or four times where really what we were trying to do was to get to the bottom of what the Smashing message was. And how Smashing wanted to be perceived and that was basically a great big roundtable exercise which was basically designed to just get the Smashing guys, Vitaly and Markus and others, thinking about what the real purpose of Smashing was and how they were going use design to communicate the unique kind of personality and attributes of Smashing.

Andy Clarke: And to help that along, we did a load of, kind of early rough design stuff. And then from what they learnt, they then turned to Dan Mall and said, “Right, we’ve got these words, we’ve got these, call them design principles if you like, that we want to then pull out through the design. We want to be bright and bold. We want the experience turned up to eleven. We want to be quirky” and all these kind of words that had come out of our early design discussions. And then he would then produce designs that sort of fitted with that brief.

Andy Clarke: And the interesting thing about that if we relate this back to your question where you’re saying “Where do I get involved?”, it’s, is, if we were kicking off a project for Notist, for example. The very obvious thing is that it does some things. It hosts your slide decks. It adds your speaker profile or whatever but those are just, they’re the things that it does. But your aspirations for that product are much, much more than just the bunch of practical things that it does. So from a brand and from an art direction point of view, yes, you want to be designing a product which is streamlined and simple to use and reliable and all of the stuff that it, kind of goes with it. But there’s a bigger picture and I would be speaking to you about what that purpose really is. Is it to inspire other speakers to get onstage? Is it to share information more widely? Is it to make talks that happen at remote conferences much, much more visible to people wherever they are in the world. There’s obviously a bigger thing going on in here.

Andy Clarke: And then once we’ve kind of understood what those real, kind of, what our real purpose was, then we can think about how do we convey that message through the design. And that’s where a designer would come in with a creative brief and then we would look at, well, what typography style is going to convey that message? What kind of layout? What kind of color scheme? What kind of graphics are going to really tell that story because you can easily just say the world’s most popular slide deck sharing site as, what’s that nasty one? Not Speaker Deck, the other one. SlideShare. Dreadful, absolutely dreadful. What we would look to do is something like Notist if we consider an art direction point of view is to consider, how do you want people to feel when you’re using the product and how do you want them to feel when they’re making the decision to choose your product over somebody else’s. And that’s essentially what it boils down to.

Drew: So it’s very much about how the brand, in a sense, is embodied in every little detail and every part of the design, both the sort of visual design and the functional design. Would that be accurate to say?

Andy Clarke: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, and that should be the case with anything that we’re making. It’s why I get so disappointed when I see stuff which is not a gajillion miles away from framework default in terms of layout or button styles or type hierarchy or whatever it happens to be, all of these kind of design things. Because, to me that’s like completely missing the point of the design. Yeah, it might be a functional thing to use but does that make it nice?

Drew: So obviously modern websites are mostly spat out of a CMS into identical templates. So if kind of one of the jobs of art direction is to invoke this sort of emotional response to something on a page, can that be done through spitting out content into templates or can it be done by machine?

Andy Clarke: Well, if I had the solution to that problem, I’d be a very rich man because it is actually the problem that a massive amount of the web is struggling with. Whether it would be news outlets or magazine outlets or editorial or whatever. And it’s a question which comes up again and again and again. And actually the people that have really solved this problem best of all that I took to my knowledge it ProPublica who I talk quite a lot about in the book. And our old friend Rob Weychert basically designed the CMS implementation for ProPublica. And the way that they did it was that they said, “Right, okay, these are our foundations style, this is what the ProPublica website looks like and an article on that website looks like if I do nothing. This is what it is.” But obviously they want to be able to customize that in all kind of different ways whether it would be type or layout or color theme or anything else. What they did was very simply they just had a field in the CMS that they could inject custom CSS. And because they understood the cascade and they understood how CSS builds they would only then be able to overwrite certain things.

Andy Clarke: Now, not everybody’s going to want to go to the extent of custom designing articles in the way that ProPublica do. And they don’t art direct or over design everything. It is only these really kind of special pieces that they tend to do a really great art direction job on. But there are ways in which we can do this. One of the great, we always talk about separation of, or we used to talk about, it used to be the thing where we would separate content and structure and style and behavior. Now it seems like everybody piles everything into JavaScript but moving swiftly on. One of the things that you can do, is you can separate out the CSS logic. And as long as you don’t bake in the style of the page into the HTML, as long as you keep things flexible, you can then do an enormous amount, particularly when we’ve got things like CSS grid, flex box, which are kind of, almost like content independent in a way, and CSS variables.

Andy Clarke: So I’m working on site with a French football magazine which will hopefully be finished by the time this podcast goes out and that’s a question that we’re trying to solve right now. So what I’ve done over the last couple of weeks is I’ve designed probably about half a dozen different layout templates. Now, some pages are fixed. They’re never going to change, they’re never going to be wildly different. If you think about something like a league table or a list of results from a football Saturday then you’re not going to do an enormous amount with it. But when it comes to things like player profiles and team profiles and some of the more, kind of, involved content, what I’ve done is I’ve designed about half a dozen different layout combinations. All based on exactly the same CSS. And what I’m doing is I’m then extracting out certain things that, for want of a better word I’m calling themes. Just in terms of right, in this design, Design A, and I give them all names. I give, I’ve given the theme, I’ve named them after French football players. So if you want to, if you look at the Cantona design or Cantona theme, what do the headlines look like? What do the block quotes look like? What do the table headers look like? What do the buttons look like? There’s a specific style that goes into that theme which is independent of the layouts.

Andy Clarke: And the other thing which is independent of that theme is the six different color schemes that I’ve come up with. So basically by the end of the project, you’ll have a color layer, a theme layer and a layout layer that they are able then to kind of pick and choose. And that can be automated, it can be turned into toggle switches in the CMS or whatever it might happen to be. So there are ways of doing that.

Andy Clarke: Now that’s not a particularly kind of appropriate thing for, in terms of pure art direction but the same mechanics can then be used if we want to be saying right, “Well, we do want to customize this so let’s introduce these new fields.”

Drew: One of the examples in the book, quite early on of a, sort of art directed site is the UK government’s gov.uk site, which is excellent as a user of it. It’s a site I really enjoy using it but it’s not one that I would immediately think of as being art directed, in inverted commas. It’s not very visually rich. It’s quite sparse and not sparse in a minimalist way but sparse in a utilitarian way. Art direction doesn’t need to be flashy, I’m taking from that?

Andy Clarke: Well, I have spent years joking about gov.uk and I’ve always thought of gov.uk as being the website that design forgot. I’ve often said gov.uk, not known for its creative flair. And it was interesting, when I was doing a series of podcast interviews for the book, I was talking to Mark Porter, who used to be creative director at the Guardian. You can’t read a book about editorial design without Mark cropping up at some point. In fact, he’d be a great person for you to speak to on this podcast at some point to get a different perspective. And I was saying to Mark in our conversation, “Look, I can remember great art directed ad campaigns on TV, in magazines. We’ve talked about art direction in newspapers and print publications, etcetera, give me an example of what you think is great art direction on the web.” And I was absolutely stunned when Mark said, “Gov.uk.”

Andy Clarke: And it took a while to sink in but actually he was absolutely right because if art direction is about making people feel in a certain way then gov.uk does its job incredibly well. It doesn’t need to be flashy. It doesn’t need to be overly designed. It doesn’t need to push boundaries or do any of these things that you might associate with newfangled CSS grid webby stuff because it does what it does and it’s, the design is absolutely appropriate to, not only to the audience and what they want to do but also how gov.uk want people to feel when they’ve left the site. When you’ve gone on there and paid your car tax or looked up when your bin collection’s going to be or whether it’s safe to travel to Cameroon or…I leave that site reassured that I’ve been given the information that I was looking for in a thorough and professional way. I don’t think to myself, “Oh, is that site trustworthy?” And not just because its gov.uk but because the whole experience has just been designed to leave no unanswered questions in my brain.

Drew: Yes, it’s so, sort of simple. It gives you real confidence in the information you’ve found is correct or the process that you followed, there’s a very clear way through it so you feel like, “Yes, I’ve completed that successfully because it was unambiguous.”

Andy Clarke: Now, would I design certain things differently? You can bet your bottom dollar I would but would I want to think about improving typography? Yes. Would I want to get more granular in terms of typographic design so that we can improve the way that numerals look or dates look or tables of data look or whatever? Yes, absolutely there’s some things that I would look at there and say, “I want to improve the design of that aspect of gov.uk.” But in terms of the art direction, no, everything that they, that you see whether it’s intention or not in terms of, I don’t know whether there is an art director at gov.uk, but everything that you see just contributes to how people feel at the end of the experience and that’s good art direction.

Drew: The book itself is really beautiful. I’d seen the ebook version of it early on which is absolutely terrific and I recommend that. But then I had the pleasure of picking up an actual printed version and I really recommend the printed version even more. It’s, every sort of spread is as you’d expect, sort of custom designed and it’s just jampacked with loads of inspirational examples. And it’s so heavily illustrated, I mean there’s hardly a double page spread that’s all text. It’s all illustrated with stuff. It’s really great. To be honest, it’s not the sort of book, not knowing anything about art direction before our conversation, and before looking at, actually looking at the book. It’s something I wouldn’t have picked up thinking it was for me but once I started looking through it, I thought, “Yeah, this is really good.” Obviously, you’ve designed it, you’ve designed every spread by hand. What was that process like?

Andy Clarke: It was a lot of work. I mean, first of all, I just want to say an enormous thank you to my son, Alex, who actually typeset that entire book from start to finish. What we wanted to do when we set out to produce the book was to show off some inspiring stuff but we also wanted it to be incredibly relevant to people at various different stages or different areas or whatever. And Sue would be quite, sort of brutal with me and say, “Don’t forget to explain it this way. If somebody’s using Squarespace or Shopify or Bootstrap Grid or whatever, then you need to talk to those people as well.” So what I did was, I actually spent about three months designing a whole ton of different examples. And me being me, I had to kind of, everything had to be perfect. There had to be a theme so I kind of came up with this hard boiled based London gangster theme for an app and a website that kind of goes with it. And then everything kind of just spread on from there. What was interesting in terms of the actual design of all those examples was what you learn how to design in one part of the book you then learn how to build in another part of the book. So there is this kind of balance to it.

Andy Clarke: But then, so basically what would happen is, was that I came up with about half a dozen different layout scamps for the main body of the book. I was much, much more detailed on the, sort of the examples I didn’t design, some of the other examples from elsewhere on the web. But the general body of the book, I just did half a dozen, kind of just very simple box layout sketches. Alex would then interpret that and chapter by chapter we would then go through it. So literally every single page has been tweaked. And I haven’t done, I’ve never done a book that’s got, had that much attention to detail.

Drew: Yeah, it really shows and the end result is fantastic and I’ve been learning a lot from it. So something I always like to ask people. I’ve been learning about art direction, what have you been learning about lately? Is there anything in particular in your work and your projects that you’ve been learning and swatting up on?

Andy Clarke: Yeah. I’ve been really trying to get to grips with more advanced grid stuff. That’s something which I’ve been really trying to sort of push the boundaries of. And along with this kind of, because I’ve been experimenting with, “Here’s a great, here’s a quirky layout. How would we build that?” And along the way comes things like SVGs and making SVGs responsive and I actually learnt today that you can’t use the picture element with inline SVG. You have to use an IMG element if you want to swap one picture for another or one source for another in HTML. So my main, I’ve actually been going back to really just learn a hell of a lot more about code. I think that quite, you go through phases where there’s a huge amount to learn or it seems that way and there’s something new that you want to get to grips with. And then things kind of plateau out and you churn through the same stuff or you use the same patterns or the same kind of methodology for awhile and then there’s another spike. And I’m kind of in one of those spikes at the moment.

Drew: Obviously the book is available now. You’ve also been writing a series of articles for Smashing Magazine around some of the same sort of ideas, picking out some bits and bobs which we’ll link to in the show notes. But you’re also doing a webinar series, is that right?

Andy Clarke: Yeah, well, the articles in the webinar is all the same stuff so I called it Inspired Design Decisions. And it came about because I was actually in Magma Book Shop, which is a brilliant magazine book shop in London, before Christmas. I was with our friend, Al Power, and we were kind of thumbing through magazines and I was geeking out and going, “Oh, look at this beautiful quote. That layout looks amazing. Coo, I love the way that they’ve tied this image with the color of the text and blah, blah, blah.” And Al said, “Well, I’ve never really thought a bit like that. I’ve never really thought about lessons that we can learn from editorial design or magazine design or other things. And you just talk about it in ways that just make sense. You ought to write about this stuff.” So I don’t want to write another book at the moment because well, Sue would hunt down and kill anybody that asked me to. So the idea came about was, well, why not do a series of articles over the course of the year where I would touch on a particular topic and a particular piece of inspiration.

Andy Clarke: There’s three gone out now, so far. There’ll be four, maybe five by the time this podcast goes out. Each one is the webinar content with Q&A. Everybody that is a Smashing member also gets access to a really, really nicely designed PDF version of all of the articles and all the code that goes with it. And then what we do a month later is we’ll put that article out for free on the public Smashing Magazine website. And what we’ll do sometime next May, is we’ll collect all of those twelve articles together and we’ll re-edit them and get the continuity right and that’ll be another book that comes out, probably next April, May time.

Drew: That sounds great.

Andy Clarke: It’s a lot of fun.

Drew: If you, dear listener, would like to hear more from Andy, you can follow him on Twitter where he is @Malarkey and find examples of his work and hire him via his website, stuffandnonsense.co.uk. Art Direction for the Web is available now through Smashing at smashingmagazine.com/books and I commend it to you. Andy, do you have any parting words?

Andy Clarke: (Beep) to Brexit.

(dm, ra, il)

0 notes

sadprose-auroras · 5 years

Note

9 & 13 for the writing asks!

Thank you for asking, lovely! xx

Writing asks

9. Favourite trope?

It’s got to be best friends to lovers, especially with mutual pining. Basically every single one of my self-insert fics I’ve ever written is based on this premise. I’m not even sorry about it skkskfdskfds

13. Favourite line you’ve written

I had a bit of a scroll through and found some sections from my fics (excluding blurbs, cause I actually focused on decent writing when I was doing proper fics, oops) on here that I don’t absolutely despise (if, for some reason, you wanna read the entirety of one of these, just ask and I’ll drop the link for you);

1. ‘The thought of him finally being happy, even if you weren’t the cause, made you smile.’

2. ‘“Goodnight, Roger.” It absolutely broke your heart to stand up and leave the room. It took all you could to not turn back around to look at him, just once more. To just have one more moment of weakness.

“Stay with me,” you heard a distant voice behind you. You ignored it, shut the door, and went downstairs to sleep on the couch.’

3. ‘You’re not happy with him; I can see it in your eyes. There’s someone else you’d rather be with.”

“John, I –“ You were at a loss for words. “I don’t know what you expect –“

You never imagined you would be the one to break John’s heart, and you never imagined it would hurt you so much.’

4. (Also from the same fic): ‘Within that look, were all the memories and emotions you had shared throughout the countless years you had spent together. The joy, the laughter, a thousand words conveyed in a single glance, the comfort of knowing that, no matter how lonely you were, somebody was always there for you. The pain of knowing how close you came to a perfect ending so many times, the hole in your heart when he was absent, and the beautiful wholeness you felt when he was around. And, now, the sheer agony of knowing he would never be yours.

5. ‘It was different to what you expected at the start, when you were falling in love and it was all forehead kisses and butterflies and giggling. You had built up the idea of love so much in your head. Its absence in your life allowed you to blame your unhappiness and discontent on that void in your life. But it didn’t make all of that go away. Despite your hopes, being in love and having a stable relationship didn’t complete you. You were two imperfect people who loved each other as much as they could, fumbling their way through life’s trials and tribulations.’

6. ‘Meeting her was likecoming into yourself. It wasn’t as if you were just meeting each other, butrather getting to know her all over again; as if you had loved each other inall of your previous lives. She made you feel like your body awoke. Every timeshe held you, you felt complete; as if that was always where you were meant tobe. Every time she kissed you, you had never been so aware of your senses; theeuphoric tingling of your skin, the intoxicating scent of her. She had the abilityto bring out all the best parts of yourself, without any intention; that wasone of the many things you loved about her. When you got emotional, she didn’tmake you feel ashamed. She held you, as she allowed you to feel. When thingsgot too much, and it felt as if the two of you would never recover fromsomething, she immediately came up with the best solution that would make bothof you happy. You had no idea how she did it.’

#ask

0 notes

earthroll22-blog · 5 years

Text

How did Gothard dupe so many?

Greetings! I haven’t posted as much in the past few weeks because life is getting pretty busy, and probably won’t slow down until…who am I kidding? It won’t ever slow down. But I’m trying to keep to a at-least-once-a-week schedule anyway!

After posting last week’s blog, I kept feeling like I had missed something important. Sure enough, my friend Craig pointed out another problem.

Is there another dangerous unstated insinuation by the testimony that you highlighted? If this woman’s morning sickness was cured when she repented then, MORNING SICKNESS IS CAUSED BY SIN. If you can figure out what that sin is and repent your morning sickness will depart. Or if the husband can point out the sin that is causing the morning sickness and get his wife to repent, then he to can “conquer his wife’s morning sickness.” What a disgusting anti-gospel message.

In other news, Throwing Out the Bath Water was featured on Recovering Grace, which was pretty cool. Recovering Grace also recently linked to a blog post about Gothard’s teachings on giving up rights, which I highly recommend that you read. I had several major “ah-ha!” moments when reading it, and it’s going to take me a while to process through it all.

Today I want to look at a supplemental material that apparently comes from a seminar on church ministry. This book is going to take a little time to get through, because there is so much to be discussed.

Some of these statements seem rather benign, even if they are a tad simplistic. But I want to take a moment to talk about it, because these few sentences show very clearly how Gothard works, and, to a large extent, answers the question, “how could Gothard manage to dupe so many people?”

He starts with a statement that seems to be undeniably true, yet is extremely over simplified. He also commits a major logical error, arguing that because weak families result in weak churches, any church that is weak must have weak families. Weak families do cause weak churches, but not all weak churches are weak because of weak families. To put it in different terms, termites cause structural damage to a building, but not all structural damage is caused by termites.

The next statement commits the same error, although it’s not quite as egregious, considering how much influence the father and mother have in the family. Nonetheless, there are still things beyond the control of the mother or father that can weaken a family. Illness, employment, abuse by an uncle, a neighbor selling drugs; all of these things can also weaken families. Life is not always as clear cut or straight forward as Gothard would have us believe.

And finally, we get the kicker: all it takes to strengthen families and churches (two excellent goals!) is to have somebody personally explain responsibilities. It’s just that simple. Gothard has the magic ingredient to fix these problems. He has the information for this “forgotten fundamental” for every church.

Now stop for a minute, and put this into normal-people language. Gothard, for all of his talk of “faithful women” and “dynamic potential,” is actually proposing that churches implement a women’s discipleship program. That’s his “forgotten fundamental.” It’s not forgotten at all: there are literally thousands of resources available for these types of ministries, and hundreds of thousands of people involved in these ministries. They’re not new, they’re not unusual, and they’re certainly not “forgotten.”

So why does Gothard try to paint a women’s discipleship program in this light? Simple. He wants to be seen as the only source of wisdom on this topic. He doesn’t want to compete with other writers or speakers who have spoken on the subject. So he wraps it in strange terminology and claims everyone else has “forgotten” about it in the hopes that nobody will go shopping elsewhere.

This is how Gothard dupes people: simplify a problem that people want desperately to fix, and then claim he is the only one who knows how to quickly and easily fix that problem.

Next, Gothard lists ten benefits of training faithful women. Some of them are very interesting.

Ok, cool. I have no issue with this reason. It’s good for younger women (and younger men and older men and older women too…) to have people they can look up to and emulate. But then we get a list of women in “God’s hall of fame” and it gets a little strange.

Several of these really jump off the page here. Deborah, a woman of discernment? Really? What about leadership? Bravery? Kick-ass-ed-ness? Or Priscilla, a helpmeet? Priscilla was an industrious craftswoman (a tent maker, like Paul) who was an important evangelist and church planter. Priscilla even functioned as a 1st century talent scout, seeing and nurturing the potential in Apollos (someone who Scriptures says “was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures.”) All her ministry boils down to “a helpmeet”?

Some of these make sense; Hannah, a woman of prayer, or Esther, a woman of courage. But honestly, this lists seems to cheapen them; it seems to convey that the great works and examples of these women were simply the result of working really hard on one of Gothard’s 49 favorite words. Maybe I’m being too picky here….but it still bothers me.

Reason number 2:

“The danger of…wrong attitudes or behavior of wives” is not clearly stated in Scripture. People are all capable of corrupting doctrinal truth; there is no particular sub-set of people who are more likely than others to corrupt. We do need to be aware of the danger of corruption coming from wives, but also from husbands, and from youth group leaders and song writers and from blacksmiths and computer technicians and U.S congressmen. Particularly singling out wives as a dangerous source of corruption paints them as time-bombs in our churches, rather than people loved by God.

The Scripture quoted here does not support the claim made by Gothard either. Briefly summarized, it tells us that young women should develop the character of Christ in their daily life (which, for those young women in Titus’s church and cultural setting, meant particular things), so that God’s word would not be spoken evil of.

Wow, every single one of them? Man.That’s tough. I wonder if men ever violate truth…

Now I’m confused. We need older women to teach women how to ask their husbands to teach them things? Wouldn’t it be a whole lot more efficient to just have the men teach their wives about this? And since women are so susceptible to doctrinal error, whose crazy idea was it to put them in charge of training other women?

I’m not going to address the quote from 1 Tim. 2, because, bluntly, I’m still very confused by that chapter, and I really don’t think I can speak with any authority on that passage. Perhaps some of my readers would care to share their thoughts?

“When a women pours out her problems to a minister, she exposes him to the strong temptation of becoming inappropriately involved with her in his emotions.” And loving her as a sister in Christ isn’t an option here? Weeping with those who weep isn’t a good idea? Sharing your struggles with someone who is charged with your spiritual welfare should be discouraged? And if a women sharing her problems with her pastor causes him to become “inappropriately involved” with her, is the real problem with her sharing, or with the pastor?

This tendency (that can be seen through IBLP material and at all IBLP sponsored functions) to build walls between the sexes is disturbing for multiple reasons.

It over-sexualizes all interactions and prevents real, solid friendships and real fellowship from happening. I remember not being allowed to eat at the same table as my sister when doing CharacterFirst! work in Memphis. (There were about 9 of us in the basement of a large church, and we literally sat on opposite ends of the fellowship hall.) Rather than speaking to a person, you find yourself speaking to a gender. It’s institutionalized objectification.

It divides the body of Christ, and prevents members from loving their brothers and sisters in Christ. (How can I “do good unto…the body of believers” if I am not allowed to even talk to a significant portion of them?)

Walls that prevent communication serve to protect abusers. If a women is not able to speak to her pastor about an abusive husband, that is one more door that is closed to her. And if we are to take all this talk about ladies speaking only to their husbands about their problems seriously, it does not take much imagination to picture a pastor telling a wife to talk to her husband about these issues!

“When a women seeks regular personal counseling from a pastor, she will usually cause signals of caution or alarm in the pastor’s wife.” Wow, there is so much more wrong with this pastor’s marriage than a counseling session with a church member if the wife is getting signals of caution or alarm! There is an obvious lack of trust and understanding between the couple. At the very least this couple needs to have an open discussion about what they are comfortable with, and what type of boundaries they should put in place to protect their relationship. And if this alarm becomes “seeds of contention” that damage the marriage…well, again, there’s a bigger issue here that is causing the damage. A pastor counseling a church member does not destroy a marriage.

Side note: how insulting is this to pastors? Do we think male pastors (because female pastors are never addressed) are unable to handle a situation like this? If a pastor can’t manage to deal with the temptation of talking to church members about their problems, is this guy qualified to be a pastor? And if this pastor is honestly that weak, will preventing these conversations actually prevent problems at your church? Rather than giving advice on how to “pastor proof” your church, wouldn’t it be far better to put out a booklet titled Kick That Guy Out and Hire A God-Fearing Professional?

Finally, notice who is to blame for broken marriages and sex scandals in the church: women who try to seduce pastors. Those poor pastors! Those poor, passive pastors! Why, they had no more choice in the matter than you or I; these evil women seduced them.

No. This thinking is wrong. It’s disrespectful to women and to pastors. It paints women as the bad guys and men as innocent victims. It erects walls between members of the body of Christ. It excused the sins of pastors who abuse women in counseling.

Final note: Isn’t it interesting how Gothard carried on private counseling sessions with multiple young girls for literally years and yet had the audacity to teach this?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On a personal note, tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the passing of my son. My wife and I would appreciate your prayers.